Cannot connect to public Wi-Fi: "a problem occurred" Every time I try to connect to a public Wi-Fi with a login (train station, hotel), my Mac (macOS 10.14.4) connects but generates an error when asking for the credentials:

Rebooting does not solve the problem. Any idea what I could try?

Using Cmd + Spacebar, Open System Preferences -> Network -> Wifi -> Advanced -> DNS

In the DNS section, remove all the DNS addresses and search domains and apply the new settings, so that the public wifi could use the one that it is configured with.


Magic Mouse Middle Click in Windows 7 64-bit Bootcamp? This question might be similar to some that others have posted, but I want to be more specific: Does anyone know how to enable Magic Mouse's middle-click in Windows Bootcamp (specifically Win 7 x64)?

In OS X we can use MagicPrefs or Better Touch Tool, I'm looking for their counterparts in Windows. Also, this feature is enabled in Windows Guests if we use Parallels or VMWare Fusion while having the aforementioned tools active in OS X.

I have found a partial solution:

Using AutoIt, an automation software for Windows, the middle-click can be simulated by pressing ctrl-left click using the following script:

#include <Misc.au3>

Global $iFlag = 0

While Not _IsPressed("1B") ;Esc to quit
    If _IsPressed("01") And _IsPressed("11") And Not $iFlag Then
        $iFlag = MouseDown("Middle")
    ElseIf Not _IsPressed("01") And Not _IsPressed("11") And $iFlag Then
        $iFlag = (MouseUp("Middle") <> 1)
    EndIf
    Sleep(20)
WEnd

The script is taken and modified from here: http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/132174-simulate-middle-mouse-click/, which is exactly the same scenario that I am facing. The script can be compiled to an .exe, which I have already done. If anyone's interested, I can share it.

This solution has a drawback, however. It can only simulate middle-clicks, you can not middle-click-drags.


Do new iPhones (iOS 13) support NFC in peer-to-peer mode? Yesterday I did quite a googling about iPhone and NFC. Learned cool things like iOS 13 adding support for tag writing and background tag reading. And that there are 3 modes in NFC (read/write; peer-to-peer; card emulation).

All I wanted (before googling all of this) was simply to share an URL using NFC and I failed at that.

Since tag writing is now supported I thought that that was possible, but couldn’t find anything.

With iOS 13, does anyone know if it’s possible to exchange information (peer-to-peer mode) like an URL using NFC?

No.

Peer-to-Peer mode (like sharing contacts, URLs or pictures) is currently not on the road map.

A quick look at the Apple developer site and we can confirm this.  The only function Core NFC supports (at the time of this writing), is tag reading and writing.

  Detect NFC tags, read messages that contain NDEF data, and save data
  to writable tags.

A Computerworld article, WWDC: Apple’s NFC plan is a big developer opportunity, seems to confirm this.  The focus appears to be reading/writing tags that enhance "guest experience" like that of payments, security, loyalty cards, and even drivers licenses and passports.  There's no mention of "convenience" like that of sharing digital assets between users.


How to print PDF documents without highlights in Preview.app I was trying to print a PDF document in which I highlighted some texts. In the printing preview, I saw those highlights, which I didn't really want for the printed document. I tried to disable the highlights but didn't find such an option, and ended up removing all the highlights before printing. So, does such an option (hiding highlights for printing) exist in Preview at all? Thanks.

By the way, I'm using Preview 7.0 (826) on OS X 10.9.1.

In Preview.app there isn't an option, although there is a way:

  Open your .pdf document
  Select All (Command A)
  Everything should be highlighted
  Control mouse click on any page
  From the popup menu > select the circle with a slash through it

  Print your document
  Press Command Z to undo (re-enable highlights)


How do I quit multiple versions of Firefox with Apple Script? I have two versions of firefox. One has an application name "Firefox" and the other is called "Firefox 2".

I'd like to tell AppleScript to close both instances of Firefox. Here's my code

tell application "Firefox" to quit
tell application "Firefox 2" to quit

It's weird because I can type this into Script Editor, but when I press save it always turns into this.

tell application "Firefox" to quit
tell application "Firefox" to quit

I ran this code and I'll put the output below.

tell application "System Events"
    set theVisibleApps to (name of application processes where visible is true)
end tell

{"Finder", "Terminal", "Script Editor", "firefox", "firefox"}

And here's the error code: error "Firefox got an error: Connection is invalid." number -609

How do I make sure they both close?

I'm assuming that you made a physical. on-disk copy of Firefox.app, and renamed it in the Finder to "Firefox 2.app". Is that correct? If so, that is going to cause you headaches. The visible name in the Finder isn't really used by the system much. The system uses the app's bundle identifier — for Firefox, I believe that's something like 'org.mozilla.firefox' — which is found in the info.plist file within the app bundle, and draws display names and such from that plist also. Unix, on the other hand, tends to use the name of the executable, which is in the MacOS folder inside the app bundle. Since your physical copy will have the same bundle ID as the original, the system will get confused if you try to distinguish between the apps that way.

The normal way to run two instances of an application is to use the unix open command with the -n option, e.g., one of these:

open -n '/Applications/FireFox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox'

open -n -g org.mozilla.firefox

Each opened instance will have the same name and bundle id, but they will have different process identifiers (pid), and you can distinguish between them using those. There are a few different ways of doing that, depending on how you've set things up, but for a quick hack in AppleScript you can use something like:

tell application "System Events"
    set unixIDs to unix id of (every process whose name is "Firefox")
end tell

Whichever unix ID is lower should generally be the instance that was launched first.


Bind mouse key to continuously send clicks Question is in the title. I have a mouse with extra buttons and would like to bind the button so that it sends continous left clicks when I hold it down.

What mouse brand? Some mouse brands provide macro software to individuals for games mostly.

Logitech Macro Software(G-SERIES ONLY):

http://support.logitech.com/en_gb/software/lgs

Razer Macro Software:

https://www.razerzone.com/synapse

The ones I've used are those and they allow you if you have one of their products at bind, change and macro at ease.

THERE IS ALSO KEYBOARD MAESTRO, don't need any exclusive product(never used this before, use at your own risk):

https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/


Can a Standard User format an encrypted drive? I have recently partitioned my drive into a trap OS. If my Macbook is stolen I want to give the users access to use the device to increase the chances they will connect it to the internet and I can recover it.

My main partition is encrypted with FileVault 2. The second (trap) partition has no encryption on it. I have changed the user that automatically logs in to a Standard User and created a hidden Admin account. These are the only 2 accounts on that install.

How can I lock down my system so this Standard User can't break anything?
And more specifically how can I prevent a Standard User from formatting the first partition?

I have tried accessing Disk Utility from the account and the full hard drive is grayed out (I have prevented it from mounting via the fstab file). However the erase function is available (the button is there, and I can click it) and I don't want to actually start erasing my system inadvertently.

You're right- while booted from the other partition you don't need admin access to erase a disk.

You can set a firmware password to prevent someone from changing the startup disk if you're worried about that. But keep in mind they could just physically remove the disk from the computer. The data will still be encrypted but the firmware password won't follow the disk (pretty sure).

Setting a strong user password and, of course, storing your recovery key in a secure location are important for securing your data.


Is it possible to install 2 windows under 1 mac? I don't want to use virtual machine software because of performance issues.

So I want to use Mac and has Mac OS. And from time to time use Windows, but I want to install 2 Windows (because I need to use 2 versions of Microsoft Office).

Does anyone know if it is possible with Boot Camp? Is there any other solution?

I am considering buying the newest Mac Pro with 512 GB of internal storage.

PS: I don't need to run these OS simultaneously, Mac == restart ==> Windows 1 ==> restart ==> Windows 2 ==> Mac will be fine.

The answer is Yes, you can install macOS and two copies of Windows 10. They can  all be on the internal disk, but that might be a little tight with only 512 GB. This would not leave much space for your own files. I suppose if you ran out of internal space, you could add an external disk for your additional personal files. Apple's macOS can fairly easily installed on any combination of internal and/or external disks. Windows installation can vary from simple to extremely complicated.

Installing one copy of macOS followed by a single copy of Windows 10 on the first internal disk is fairly simple. Once macOS is installed, the Boot Camp Assistant can setup everything for Windows and the pass the installation to the Windows installer to complete the task.

Putting two copies of Windows on the internal disk would result in the partial loss of the use of the Boot Camp Assistant. You would use the Boot Camp Assistant, followed by the Windows installer, to install the first copy of Windows 10. You would be unable to use the Boot Camp Assistant to install the second copy of Windows. This would require you to manually partition the drive. There also would be some copying of files to their initial locations. The good news is that the Windows installer can still be used to install the second copy. The procedure for the second copy would be similar to the answer to this question. The necessary changes to the procedure are itemized below.

In step 11, choose the "Recovery" partition with the lowest number..
Before executing step 14, any "MSR (Reserved)" type partitions that exist after the "WINSTALL" partition need to be deleted. The image below is an example of such a case.

In step 20, choose the "BOOTCAMP" volume with the drive letter (Ltr) C.

With external installations of Windows, you loose the use of the Boot Camp Assistant and the Windows installer. You end up typing in all the commands needed to install Windows. In other words, you can run windows from external disks, you just can not use the graphical Windows installer to help you do so. An example, of one such install procedure, is given at this link.


How to add an application specific service contextual menu for an automator created service I have just created a service for my text editor.
I would like to be able to add a services item in the text editor contextual menu when right clicking.
Can this be done?

Depending on your service restrict it to your text editor while creating the service in Automator and save it to ~/Library/Services/.

Example:

After selecting some text, the context menu offers the service "fiona-babbles":


How can protect all privacy from someone that needs to use my Mac? A friend of mine is going to stay here for two days, and I am sure he will need to ask me to use the Mac (and PC) in the study room.  (which will be tons of work to move them and no matter where they are moved, the friend for sure will ask for use of a computer).

In such case, what is the best way to protect my privacy, so that he won't be able to look at my Documents folder, Photos folder, etc, and all of my Firefox, Chrome, Safari's History, Bookmarks, and Stored Passwords?

I can create a temporary account, I think, and log in using that tmp account, but will that protect looking at my default user folders on hard disk, and also, the Safari / Firefox / Chrome etc were installed so that they can be used by all users, so do I also need to remove all those History, Bookmarks, Stored Passwords, on each browser?  (and it is not good to remove the bookmarks and stored passwords because I may need them later).

Is there a better way?

Just make sure your admin account has a good password that isn't written down anywhere (or add some numbers you will remember to your usual password.)

From there, you can make a guest account for them - as long as it isn't an admin user - they can't grant themselves access to your files.

If anything is truly sensitive - don't let them near the mac. It's easy to boot any mac from an install disk and access your files since my operating system won't care what your password was. Your guests would only need time, a little knowledge and curiosity (or worse) to have access to anything that isn't otherwise encrypted on your Mac. You can (should?) make encrypted disk images to store any sensitive information that you wish to protect from someone that would access your mac against your wishes.

See this article for an explanation. Even if you store your password in your keychain (less secure) - a technician can't see the contents of the folder unless they crack your password (or your keychain/log in password). It will just be scrambled bits.


How to find cause of high kernel_task cpu usage? Occasionally my machine will have a kernel_task instance max out the CPU:

This can last from minutes to sometimes hours. The machine is effectively unusable in this state. Restarting doesn't help; a new kernel_task pops up again until it finishes whatever it's doing.

How can I find out what this process is doing?

TLDR; If your MacBook Pro runs hot or shows a high % CPU for the kernel task, try charging on the right and not on the left.

High kernel_task CPU Usage is due to high chassis temperature caused by charging. In particular Left Thunderbolt port usage.
Solutions include:

Move charging from the left to the right side. If you have a second charger then plug it in on the right side. Avoid plugging everything on the right side (see last paragraph below).
Unplug something from the left side. Either power or another accessory until the battery is full.
Force fans to max before plugging in. iStatMenus has an easy Sensors -> Fans menu item to do so. This only helps in marginal conditions.
Move to a cooler room.

Proof:
Actual CPU temperature or application CPU usage is uncorrelated with kernel_task. A hot CPU is throttled by reducing its clock speed, not by scheduling fake no-op load.
The graphs below are from iStatMenus. The machine had been used on battery then plugged in.
State A a USB-C hub (a mouse and keyboard, plus power) and a USB-C HDMI 2.0 adapter, both on the left side. You can see the Thunderbolt Left Proximity temperature sensor rise quickly. About 3-4 minutes later the dreaded kernel_task high CPU usage starts.
State B cures the kernel_task problem by moving power from the left ports to the right. The left side temperature drops and the kernel_task goes away within about 15 seconds.
This is causal. Moving power back to the left side, restoring State A, quickly restores the temperatures and kernel_task again comes back after 3-4 minutes. Again moving power back to the right side, restoring State B, resolves the problem immediately.
State C shows that simply having stuff plugged in to TB ports raises their temperature significantly. Both the hub (mouse and keyboard ONLY) and HDMI adapter individually raise the temperature about 10 degrees, and 15 degrees together.

(all other temperatures were both low and flat. Under 55 degrees.)
Note that high temperature on the right side appears to be ignored by the OS. Plugging everything into the two right ports instead of the left raised the Right temperatures to over 100 degrees, without the fans coming on. No kernel_task either, but the machine becomes unusable from something throttling.
Ergo, high CPU usage by kernel_task is caused by high Thunderbolt Left Proximity temperature, which is caused by charging and having normal peripherals plugged in at the same time.
2017 15" Macbook Pro, MacOS 10.14.5

To actually answer the question:

How can I find out what this process is doing?

The only way to actually ask the kernel what it's doing is to attach a kernel debugger. That means getting a debug kernel from Apple, rebooting, then using a second Mac to attach to the debugged machine. You can then examine stack traces and guess what they mean.
Otherwise guessing and testing is the only way. Of course that leads to false conclusions more often than not.


Trimforce on third party SSD disables keyboard and touchpad Specs: MBP 15" Mid 2010 i7 8gb ram
SSD: Sandisk PLUS 240GB SATA3
OS: macOS Sierra 10.12.1

Brand new SSD. Fresh install of macOS Sierra with the latest update 10.12.1.

When using sudo trimforce enable it enables successfully and reboots the machine. After the reboot during the first 20-30 seconds built-in keyboard and trackpad stop responding and they never recover back. The only fix is to disable trim: sudo trimforce disable.

When trim is disabled everything works absolutely fine - no issues with keyboard nor trackpad.

What could cause such behaviour?

a. Trim is not really necessary on modern SSD's. GarbageCollection works pefectly fast when there is enough free space, say 20% or more.
b. Do not use Trim when the SSD has not a modern Marvel controller (never install trim on a SSD with Sandforce controller.
The new Sandisk SSDs have a Marvel controller, I do not know what controller is in the Sandisk Plus.


What is the architecture CAD app that was shown in the iPad Pro video In the video for the iPad Pro, there was an architecture app that was shown several times. I assume this is some CAD or floor plan tool available for the new iPad. When I checked on the experience page, it didn't show any CAD tool that was specifically used for architectural drawings.

The best I can guess, it may be AutoCAD 360, something from Morpholio, or uMake. None of those look exactly like the demo so I'm a bit stumped.

Does anyone know for certain what app that was in the video?

I think the app you're referring to is BIMx, our building information viewer app that lets you interact with and explore architectural CAD drawing files on iOS.


pkg-config won't run I'm trying to fix a path-related problem with glib, but as part of this another problem has appeared:

brew install pkg-config
Warning: pkg-config 0.29.2 is already installed and up-to-date

Ok, good, so:

pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0
-bash: /usr/local/bin/pkg-config: Permission denied

Right, right...

sudo pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0
sudo: pkg-config: command not found

Does anyone know what's going on here?

Update: one of the commands fixed things:

pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0
-I/usr/local/Cellar/glib/2.62.3/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/local/Cellar/glib/2.62.3/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/local/opt/gettext/include -I/usr/local/Cellar/pcre/8.43/include

I wouldn’t sudo anything brew related for installs in /usr/local and use one Unix user only to manage homebrew. The only exception is some initial setup or remediation steps when you are explicitly instructed by the tool to use sudo

What’s happening is some permissions (using sudo likely) went bad in /usr/local so you might need to revert them.

brew doctor

The above command is designed to find and help you fix many of the common ways people can have issues installing packages so I would start there. Also run a command to see what leaves you need in case you have to clean up and remove all the brewed items and reinstall one by one once your permissions are set.

brew leaves


Deleted everything from MacBook but storage space is still half full I recently ran out of space on my MacBook Air. I moved all my Mac data to an external hard drive, created a new user administrator and deleted the old one in order to erase everything without loosing my applications. It was effective, more than half of the space was freed and I have nothing on my MacBook drive, yet when I check my storage I keep seeing this:

I have 5GB of photos and 5GB of movies filling my space, while in reality I have 0 photos and videos. I don’t even know what the 21GB of “others" contains.
I tried finding the folders with the largest usage and this is what I got:

The contradiction is, as you can see, the disk takes 41GB of space, but if you sum up the sizes of its folders you’ll only get 29GB. The space gap is around 10GB, the same size as the photos and videos combined, which are nowhere to be found.

I’m confused, if you have any idea how to solve this issue please let me know.

There are two issues here. The first is that the Storage indicator is not particularly reliable. You may want to try re-indexing Spotlight, which is used to identify the categories.

Secondly, the visible folders are not everything on your disk. MacOS can store 'local backups' on the system disk - normally these would be listed as "Backups", but if the identification process fails, then they might be listed as "Other". Normally, you don't need to worry about these filling up the disk, as the OS will manange it.

There are special utilities such as DaisyDisk and OmniDiskSweeper, which list all file hierarchies by size, allowing you to drill down and discover which files are taking the most space, and then delete them.


Is there a way to set microphone input volume level if a change is detected in input volume level? When I'm on a Microsoft Teams call, the in-built microphone input volume level always automatically adjusts to 100%, which is way too loud for other people. There doesn't seem to be any setting I can change to prevent this within Microsoft Teams, so I'm looking for a way to set the microphone input volume level to 50% automatically when a change in input volume level is detected.

Right now, every time the input volume adjusts, I manually type in osascript -e "set volume input volume 50" into terminal, so is there a way to trigger this command when input volume changes? (Preferably without third-party software)

You can bind both output volume & input volume in one script that can be accessed via Script Editor.app > preferences > show app icon in menu bar.

tell application "System Events"
    set volume 2 -- this can be from 0-7
    set volume input volume 50
end tell


Can I backup my ICloud documents with TimeMachine to my TimeCapsule? I want my docs en pics in the cloud but also a backup. Want to backup to a TimeCapsule with TimeMachine (or if necessairy an other softwareprogram). Wonder if that’s possible.

This is possible (requiring no interaction), however you need to make sure that "Optimize Mac Storage" is not enabled and that all your files are downloaded. If they're not downloaded, they won't get backed up.


Installing GNU compilers on PureDarwin/Darwin? I hope this is not off-topic, because there is no better place to ask this sort of questions on SO/SE. I have Downloaded and ran PureDarwin on QEMU using instructions here:

Now I want to know if there are any package managers? Can I install HomeBrew preferably here for example or even MacPorts? If none possible how can I install GNU C/C++/Fortran compilers (GCC/g++/gfortran) here? or if it is not a possibility is there any compiler on this operating system at all? My goal is eventually to provide some Open Source developers who don't have macs with an alternative to test their software or maybe create macOS compatible binaries/packages if possible. Thanks for your support in advance.

Your link is broken to the instructions.

FYI, the point of macOS is, to a large degree, the fact that it IS a walled garden. Having control over the entire hardware and software stack lets Apple provide a seamless, polished service and products at a premium cost.

As far as Homebrew goes, as a maintainer, I have zero optimism that it will work at all, unless the Linux version can be coerced to get installed and/or run, then maybe it could work (no promises) but will likely require a lot of time compiling things. Normal Homebrew (on macOS) checks for Xcode CLT and other very macOS specific stuff that won't be present in Pure Darwin. I think Homebrew on Linux will also fail because it looks for Linux headers, etc.

No matter what, this is an unsupported configuration for Homebrew and I'm 99% sure it won't work, but would be curious to learn where it fails.

I would assume/guess PureDarwin has some sort of package manager, or a package manager planned? Maybe?


my iPhone is show only white screen and black apple after erase on icloud I saw on some website if forgot restriction pass code erase the phone so I do it then my phone show only white screen and black apple for along time till now what should I do

I am assuming your phone is not turning back on, if so then just do this.

Hold the Power Button (3 secs)

Continue holding the power button and also hold the home button (15 secs)

Release the power button while continuing to hold the home button (10 secs)

Your device should prompt with the "Connect to iTunes Screen"

From here just set up your iPhone as new or restore a previous back up.

Try this a few times just to make sure you did it right, however if this does not work then be sure to take it to the apple store.


How to recover data from MacBook which won't startup properly? My 2012 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.7 Lion would not start up properly (it has the doomed flashing white question mark on a grey folder). I have tried the following: couldn't access Safe Mode; holding the 'option' key when turning on does not show 'Macintosh HD' only 'internet recovery'; there is no Recovery HD drive present; tried Internet Recovery -> Disk Utility, but my Startup Disk (named "Macintosh HD") doesn't appear in the left column (only SuperDrive appears, and disk0); and PRAM & SMC reset didn't help. I also tried booting a Linux OS from the CD Drive, but it would not boot as there was 'no bootable device, please insert disk and press any key'.

I do not have a backup of this data on Time Machine (my big mistake). My MacBook doesn't seem to recognise the internal hard drive.

Is there a way to transfer the files to another external drive or get my MacBook working again? or is the data doomed to be lost forever?

More information:

diskutil list output:

-bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                 Apple_partition_scheme                         *1.4 GB      disk0
1:                    Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB      disk0s1
2:                     Apple_Driver_ATAPI                          2.0 KB      disk0s2
3:                              Apple_HFS Mac OS X Base System     1.4 GB      disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                       *524.3 KB      disk1
/dev/disk2
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                       *524.3 KB      disk2
/dev/disk3
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                       *524.3 KB      disk3
/dev/disk4
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                       *524.3 KB      disk4
/dev/disk5
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                       *524.3 KB      disk5
/dev/disk6
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                         *6.3 MB      disk6
/dev/disk7
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                         *2.1 MB      disk7
/dev/disk8
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                         *1.0 MB      disk8
/dev/disk9
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                       *524.3 KB      disk9
/dev/disk10
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                       *524.3 KB      disk10
/dev/disk11
#:                                   TYPE NAME                    SIZE         IDENTIFIER
0:                               untitled                         *1.3 MB      disk11

If you happen to have a thunderbolt cable and a spare mac you can try your luck with target disk mode. Target Disk Mode is a feature that allows a Mac to act as an external hard drive.

Connect the two computers with a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable.
Start up the computer to be used as a disk in target disk mode:

If the computer is off, start it up while holding down the T key.
If the computer is on, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Startup Disk, and then click Target Disk Mode.

When the computer has started up, a disk icon appears on the desktop of the other computer.
Transfer files by dragging them to and from the disk.
Eject the disk by dragging its icon to the Trash. While you drag, the Trash icon changes to an Eject icon.
On the computer you used as a disk, push the power button to shut it down, and then disconnect the cable.

Instructions thankfully provided by Apple's KB


How can I obtain older versions of Xcode? How can I obtain older versions of Xcode?

Is there a way that I can freely download a version that only requires OS X 10.6.8? So far this is all I've found on the matter; but, when I click the 'download Xcode 3' link, it simply brings up the page for downloading version 4.

You can download older versions of Xcode here after you've logged into the dev center.

Uncheck all of the options except "Developer Tools" in the Categories section on the left side of the page. Every version of Xcode back to version 1.0 in 2003 is available there.


How to stop my Mac from cloning MP3 files on my USB stick? Whenever I move my MP3 files to my USB and play it in the car, the files get cloned. For example:

Sia - Chandelier

Then the clone looks like

.Sia - Chandelier

The clones don't actually work. They're simply the MP3 file names. Whenever I select them in my car, it skips to another song that doesn't have . before it. So on my Mac OSX, the MP3 look normal, and have no clones, but once I plug in the USB to my car, every song has its own clone.

If you delete them manually a lot of them will reappear at eject. .DS_Store, trashes, fseventsd & spotlight files especially.

There have been a number of software solutions over the years, most only partially successful. BlueHarvest was about the best I'd tried until recently, but wasn't 100% effective.

I'm currently testing CleanMyDrive, freeware, though they are using it as a bit of an advert for CleanMyMac for your internal drives, but you can ignore that. So far it seems to be fairly effective, but still misses the trash files every so often.


All pages in Google Chrome are rendered with a very thin, bad looking serif font In every later release of Google Chrome (including the just released version 11), all pages are rendered with a very thin, jaggy serif font.

This is how it looks in Chrome 11:

And here is Safari 5.0.5:

The picture might be too small to really show how bad the serif font is, but on-screen it's horrible.

There's no difference if I try to edit the font settings in Chrome. It's always the same font. I've also — of course — tried to remove and re-install Chrome, multiple times. Have tried to remove everything Chrome-related from $HOME/Library (Application Support, Caches etc). No change in behavior.

Here is an example of my font settings, but as I said, the font is always the same — on all pages — regardless of what I set in the font settings. I can set it to Helvetica and it's still a jaggy, horrible, small serif:

So, what do I do? Suggestions?

Before you go blocking fonts and so on, first check this page:
http://www.google.com/webfonts

How you get rendered the fonts? On my chrome - without any problems, the chrome CAN render different fonts.

You can try these commands from the Terminal.app

sudo atsutil databases -remove
sudo atsutil server -shutdown
sudo atsutil server -ping

the above will remove your font cache. Work only in snow leopard!


Time Machine/Time Capsule: What is the difference between "Waiting for index to be ready (100)" and "Waiting for index to be ready (101)"? What's the difference between these (100) and (101) indexing processes?

Having finally created a successful backup to Time Capsule using Time Machine under Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63), I'm still experiencing longer than expected indexing wait times. These are recorded in Console ("backupd") as "Waiting for index to be ready (100)" and "Waiting for index to be ready (101)."  While the process/function is being performed, a related entry is recorded in Console every minute (example follows).

My curiosity is specific: what is the difference between "101" and "100"?

10/8/12 7:33:24.150 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
10/8/12 7:34:24.359 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
10/8/12 7:35:24.553 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
10/8/12 7:36:24.621 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
10/8/12 7:37:24.697 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
10/8/12 7:38:25.169 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
10/8/12 7:39:25.351 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:40:25.723 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:41:26.031 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:42:26.200 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:43:26.244 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:44:26.357 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:45:26.462 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:46:26.618 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:47:26.664 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:48:26.851 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:49:26.974 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:50:27.185 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:51:27.338 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:52:27.516 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
10/8/12 7:53:27.715 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

The answer to your question is that the difference between these two codes (100 and 101) is not publicly documented by apple.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23429422?ac_cid=op123456#23429422

However pondini.org/TM/D2.html gives reasons why and how to fix those errors, and the issues you are experiencing.


Can I insert the page number of a specified bookmark into a Pages document? In Pages (version 7), I can create a Bookmark and I can insert a link to a Bookmark. When linking to a Bookmark, the page number the Bookmark is on is visible. (That is, Pages is aware of what page number the Bookmark is on.)

Separately, I can also insert the current page number and it will automatically update when I add content at the beginning of the document and cause that page number to go to a different page.

Is there a way that I can insert a reference to a Bookmark's page number such that it will automatically update when I add content at the beginning of the document and cause the Bookmark to go to a different page? In the screenshot above, I'd like it to say (page 4) instead of (page #), and for 4 to auto-update as the Bookmark moves around the document.

Interesting question! I checked the Add bookmarks and cross-references in Pages page and couldn't find anything that would achieve what you want.

I then turned my attention to MS Word, thinking that if I could find a way to do it in MS Word, perhaps then I could adapt it to work with Pages.

The good news is I've found a way to do what you want in MS Word, but the bad news is I haven't been able to replicate this in Pages. So as it currently stands I don't think this is currently possible in Pages.

I would recommend you provide feedback via Apple's Pages feedback page (Note: You can also access this from: Pages > Provide Pages Feedback.

Cross-referencing bookmarks in MS Word

In the interests of perhaps helping someone else come up with a solution for pages, (and in helping users of MS Word), here's how I achieved this in MS Word:

Create your bookmarks as usual
Add your links to your bookmarks throughout your document
Now, let's say you have a bookmark called Diagram7 that's on page 10 and you're linking to that from the words "see Diagram 7" in a paragraph on page 3. To create your cross reference you would do the following:

place your cursor after the words you're linking from
now go to Insert > Cross-reference... to bring up the Cross-reference window
select Bookmark for your Reference type
select Page Number for your Insert reference to
select the Diagram7 bookmark in your list of bookmarks
click on the Insert button

Now the page number will be displayed at the location your cursor was at

NOTE: Just like other fields within MS Word, when the value changes (e.g. the diagram moves to page 12, so the value needs to change from 10 to 12), you will still need to use the Update Field option as normal to update the values displayed.


How to set a date-based x-axis in Numbers with incomplete data? I have a simple table (date, value) and I want to display that data in a chart.
This is my current chart:

As you can see, I don't have a value for each day, there is about one month between the last two dates. This makes my chart looks wrong, because it creates the same spaces between two dates, irrespectively of the date value.

If I create a new table with one row per day, I get the expected chart. But I need to create all that useless empty rows:

Is there a way to create a chart with a date-based x-axis? Can I create a chart that looks like the second one, but with the data from the first table?

Thanks.

You can make a plot using your x,y values and then change the x-axis to be what you want. maybe your x values only run from 0 to 5 but y-data has x-values from 0-50. Click on your plot and then click on the axis tab in the right sidebar. From here you can select the x-axis and on the panel that appears you can input the min and max x-values you wish to use. See figure below.


I have installed Windows 8 on my Mac. Now, when starting up and selecting Mac, it begins to start, then shuts down I have had Windows 8 installed with bootcamp on my Mac. The disc was partitioned to allow both Mac and Windows to be used.

When I now go to use MacOS, it begins to start up for a minute then shuts down? The Windows side will start up ok.

When I boot the machine, I have 3 options:

Mac
Windows
Recovery

First, why it this happening? Second, unable to boot to Mac OS X and thus unable to start Boot-Camp Assistant how may I uninstall Windows?

I did something similar and ended up incidentally tweaking the partition table from inside of windows. Because of that it wrecked the EFI and GUID and nearly bricked me completely I thought. Start the computer and hit command-r and you should be able to tell where to go from there. I have to warn you though its probably going to involve wiping one or both partitions. If the EFI table has been altered you're going to have to wipe and clean install to get it back to normal working conditions. Hopefully you can just verify and repair your disk though and that'll do the trick.


Unable to add another email in iMessage or login with a different iCloud account on iOS 11 I upgraded to iOS 11 today, and I am no longer able to add another email in Messages. And when I sign out of Messages, I can no longer use a different iCloud account (i.e., iOS will not allow me to edit the email address in the login form).

This option in the circle is no longer available

Is there another way to add another email to Messages?

To use another iCloud account, please go to

Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and tap 'Apple ID: >your Apple ID<' > Sign Out.

You also need to sign out of iCloud in Settings > iCloud in order to use another Apple ID for messages/iMessage.

Now you can sign in with another Apple ID.

To add another email address you be reached with using iMessage, manage your Apple ID in a browser and add another email address there.


How to remove a file that 'ls' finds it but 'rm' does not? I have a weird situation with a file that sticked into my file system and apparently there is nothing I can do to remove it. There is a file in the Trash folder of my external hard drive, and it can not be deleted. Trying with mac "Empty Trash" it says the file is in use:

"The operation can’t be completed because the item “Funny Film” is in use."

I tried to remove the file/folders from command line:

$ pwd
Volumes/My Book/.Trashes/501/Clip old/Funny Film

$ ls
000␀0000.␀P4

$ rm 000␀0000.␀P4
rm: 000␀0000.␀P4: No such file or directory

$ ls -i
ls: 000␀0000.␀P4: No such file or directory

$ ls -l
ls: 000␀0000.␀P4: No such file or directory

$ stat ./000␀0000.␀P4
stat: ./000␀0000.␀P4: stat: No such file or directory

I had this problem for some time now. I have tried several different things without success. The external hard drive have been used over ftp, with Windows, Ubuntu and Mac operation systems. How it is possible that 'ls' finds the file while 'ls -l' failed? More importantly, how I can fix the situation and delete the file?

Use ls -i On the entire directory. Then use the find command to pass the inode to rm.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/29618/5472


How can I use an iTunes smart playlist to find and delete audio files? I just imported 300 AIFF files into iTunes in order to easily convert them to AAC. That part is done, and now I want to delete the AIFF files. I know how to do this from Terminal, but I'd like to find the best way to do this from iTunes.

I created a smart playlist with these rules:

date added is 2/24/2012
kind begins with "AIFF"

This smart playlist contains all 300 AIFF files that I want to delete, as expected. But when I select the files in this playlist, the Edit > Delete menu item is disabled, and the context menu does not display any menu items related to deleting or trashing the files. If I go to the smart playlist, select all the files, then change the source list selection to the entire Music library, the selection is lost.

Since my iTunes library only contains these 600 files, I could do the manual step of showing the Kind field in the list, sorting by kind, and selecting the 300 AIFF files. But I was hoping to be able to do this from the smart playlist. Does anyone know how to do this? Maybe I'm missing something obvious.

(Mac OS X 10.7.3, iTunes 10.5.3)

Select all songs hold  ⌥ and press ⌫. Confirm and they are gone.


Accessing certain diacritical vowel characters in the Spanish layout in Mac OS X I need the following Portuguese characters: ã, õ.

I write in Spanish/Portuguese all the time, but I am used to the Spanish keyboard layout. I can do anything but write the mentioned characters.

I do NOT want to constantly switch between Spanish/Portuguese layouts.

I would like to remap the key combinations: "option+a" and "option+o" to ã and õ respectively. Right now on those keys, I have these (å and ø) which are almost useless to me.

I cannot find a way to map those key combinations to my desired characters.

Can someone please help me? I downloaded keyremap4mac, but couldn't find a way to do it. Do you know a piece of software that would let me define the combination and the desired characters?

Option/alt + ñ on the Spanish ISO layout, followed by a or o gives you ã and õ.

To make a custom layout, use Ukelele

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele

PS If you are running 10.7, you can also get those characters by holding down the a and o keys until the Character Picker popup menu appears.


Google Contacts sync with iPhone 3G (iOS 4) without EAS I'm setting up an old iPhone 3G (latest iOS 4.x.x) and I'd like to sync contacts with Google.

Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) is no longer an option, and you can't use CardDAV on a pre-iOS 5 device ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4872 , http://support.google.com/mail/answer/2753077 ).

Any ideas?

I ended up using the iTunes sync feature ( http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1296 ) with Google Contacts.

It works pretty flawlessly, with the only (huge) downside that you can't sync without the PC.


How can I make a bootable Windows 7 USB in OS X Lion? I want to make a bootable Windows 7 USB in OS X Lion. How can I do that?

You need a install ISO image downloaded from Microsoft and a USB flash drive with 4GB or more.

Per the offical Bootcamp Guide for Lion by Apple (see page 4):

  You may be able to install Windows 7 with a USB flash drive that contains a Windows 7 ISO image downloaded from Microsoft. To check whether you can do so, open Boot Camp Assistant, click Continue, and see if the option “Create a Windows 7 install disk” is available. To install Windows 7 with a USB flash drive, you need the following:

  An ISO image of Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate downloaded from Microsoft.
  A USB flash drive with 4 GB or more.
  Boot Camp Assistant erases the flash drive, and copies to it the Windows 7 ISO
  image and software drivers that let Windows work with your Mac hardware.

  To see how much free space you need on your disk for Windows, refer to the documentation that came with Windows.


Where the ambient temperature sensor is located on 27" iMacs? I'm using iStat Pro Dashboard widget to get live system data of my mid-2010 27" iMac.

Under temperature readings it lists Ambient. Where the sensor is approximately located?

As per the manual and take apart guide provided by Apple to Apple Certified Mac Technicians: the ambient temp sensor is attached to the CPU blower (or fan).


Unable to connect to the internet on my iMac despite being connected to the network For the last several months, I have used wifi to connect to the internet through an unsecured wifi network that my organization controls - had been working fine since last night. Today my iMac shows that I am connected to the proper network same as always but I am unable to connect to the internet in any way (web browsers, ssh, ping, etc.). The Network settings show me as connected and assigned proper IP and DNS numbers. Renewing DHCP Lease doesn't seem to make a difference. Also because this is a large wifi network managed by an organization and not me personally I contacted the administrator to make sure I hadn't been blacklisted (I had not) and also tried spoofing a new MAC address, which also didn't work. I also know that it is not an issue with the router itself as I am typing this from another device right next to my iMac connected to the same access point (several other devices are also connected with no problem).

I'm unsure if it has any significance but I had been running a bitcoin node for several weeks on the computer and began running a tor relay a few days ago but my internet had been working since configuring the relay. I also tried stopping both services and checking that all processes were gone with ps, which didn't do anything. The output of ifconfig also looks normal to me and my computer seems to be acting normal other than this issue but I'm at a loss for how to continue debugging this problem. Has anyone encountered anything similar or have any suggestions?

Edit:
It is a 2015 5K 27 in iMac running the most updated version of 10.11

Below are a number of things you can try (apologies for anything obvious, but I take nothing for granted).

Restart the iMac

Does restarting the iMac do anything? Rebooting can often resolve these types of issues.

Disable/Enable Wi-Fi

Similar to restarting, but without needing to. You can use the Wi-Fi menu to turn Wi-Fi off. Try this for about a minute and then turn it back on. This also often works.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your iMac
Restart your iMac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. can you now connect to the Wi-Fi network)
To exit Safe Mode just restart your Mac as normal

The act of booting into Safe Mode will actually perform a number of background tasks, and this often resolves issues when you've rebooted normally.

Once you've tried the above let me know how you go.

[EDIT]

Okay, let's continue troubleshooting...

Run Wireless Diagnostics

You can use Wireless Diagnostics to analyse your Wi-Fi network. Follow these steps:

Close any apps you have running
Connect to the Wi-Fi network
Hold down the option key and go to the Wi-Fi status menu and select Open Wireless Diagnostics
Enter your administrator name and password

Now follow the steps to see whether any problems are found.

Try another 'Wi-Fi' network

It'd be interesting to see whether your iMac can get internet connectivity from another Wi-Fi network. Can you share an internet connection from an iPhone's cellular connection (or similar) and connect to that via your iMac's Wi-Fi port? Does this allow your iMac to browse the web, send/receive emails, etc?

If you can't get an internet connection, then I'd be testing your hardware, although it may be worth first resetting the NVRAM and SMC (in that order). See below for steps.

Reset NVRAM

Your iMac uses Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM) to store many of its settings. You can reset this with the following steps:

Shut down your iMac. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your iMac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your iMac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Now proceed to resetting the SMC.

Reset the SMC

Your iMac has a System Management Controller. It may be worth you resetting this too:

Shut down your iMac
Unplug it from power
Wait 15 seconds
Plug the power cord back in
Wait for an additional 5 seconds
Press the power button to turn it back on

How does your iMac go with connecting now?

Run Apple Diagnostics

If all else has failed, follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

Fully shut down your iMac
Restart your iMac
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.


iTunes/Mp3-Player and actual multi-tagging of MP3s I search for a software to allow multi-tagging.
Meaning, i want to add more than one genre to a song/album to be able to easily access specific songs i.e. ("female singer, jazz" or "duet, jazz") which i can not realy do by choosing just one genre.

Is there an option to do this with iTunes?
If not, is there a player able to do this?
Maybe even with pandora/last.fm/musicbrains interface so i don't even have to tag all the songs myself?

For a thorough analyse of the topic, read Ways to store multiple genres in your digital music, where Dan says:

  MP3. MP3s (or rather, the ID3 tagging format used by MP3s) don't support multiple tags for genre. Instead you must useone existing tag and use a delimiter character to separate the genres within that tag.

If you use iTunes player, I'd recommend to use the Grouping tag for that purpose.

Now, can you do that automatically ?
As you pointed out, Last.fm offers an interface to retrieve tags for songs.
And bdefore used that API to develop an iTunes Multi-Genre Tagger (description blog post here, last version of the script here). I think that's the tool you're after.


How to configure the battery percentage at which the mac will hibernate I've replaced my macbook pro battery with a non-official one and since the battery lasts a few hours less that the original one did at first (6h < 9h) when my battery starts running out at 1% there's not enough battery power to perform the hibernate to disk, so I always end up with a forced shutdown. Is there anyway to tell the mac to force the hibernation at a 5% of battery or something like that? I've tried pmset but that only work if you have an attached UPS.

I had a similar problm, and found that there was no ready-made solution to force the computer to sleep at a different battery percentage (eg. go into "Safe Sleep" at 5% instead of 1%).

The (lame) workaround I ended up using was using SlimBattery Monitor to issue a pop-up warning at a custom battery percentage (for me it was 20%), at which point I must close my laptop/manually tell it to sleep, until I can get it on AC power.

It seems you would have to write your own applescript to make the computer sleep if the battery is too low, and add a LaunchAgent to have it repeatedly run the script to check the battery power.  Annoying enough that I didn't venture down that path.  I was surprised none of the many battery-monitoring programs had this funcitonality (I may have just missed the one that does).


Can I use an iPhone 4S USB power adapter with an iPhone 5S? I have an iPhone 4S, and I am thinking about upgrading to an iPhone 5S.  I know that the iPhone 5S has the new Lightning connector, so I will have to get new cables.  But what about the USB power adapter?  Can I use the iPhone 4S USB power adapter with the iPhone 5S?

I found an Apple page that discusses their iPhone 4S USB power adapter, and they do not mention the iPhone 5S, so I'm not sure if it is compatible with the iPhone 5S:


accessing Keychain Access from terminal - OSX I am on OSX and using my terminal to access my Keychain Access. So I use this command

security find-internet-password -a myaccount -s myservice -g

and it works correctly but before I can get the response to this query, there is a pop-up showing and telling me that security wants to use confidential data kept in the Keychain... (translated from french). Why is it so? How can I desactivate it?

Btw, I tried to ssh to my own computer, in order to prevent the popup to show, but then I got no output when I ran the same command...

You can deactivate the message by adding security to the list of applications allowed to access the entry inside Keychain Access.app:

You can also add an allowed application to an already existing item using the CLI (you will get a GUI box asking for confirmation though):

security add-generic-password -a ${USER} -s playground -T /usr/bin/security -U

-T is the path of the application you want to authorize and -U is to update entry if it already exists (what's called an "upsert" in some databases). (and playground is the name of my test entry).

See man security (or the online version) for further reference.


What happens if I restore an iPhone with Find my iPhone off? I have an old iPhone of mine and I made its Apple ID on a burner email (I know very stupid of me, I was in middle school then). I recently found it again after like 2 years of it sitting in some box, I want to reset it and sell it but will me not being able to access the Apple ID conflict it if Find my iPhone is off?

If it’s activation locked, restore won’t remove that lock.

If it’s clean, you can restore and it’s ready to use so unless you want to try brute forcing the password, restore it and take your chances.

How can I bypass Activation Lock?
How secure is Activation Lock on iOS 7 (and later)?


Tidy up iTunes library? I am trying to do a spring clean on my iTunes library. I have around 500 songs that are tagged incorrrectly. The Name is in the format '11 Artist - Song Name'. Is there any quick way of extracting this and retagging the files without manually editing each of them?

Cheers

You could possibly write an AppleScipt to go through selected tracks, and change the name that way, but you would have to make sure you only select the ones in that format.

Ive had to do this a few times before, and have tried various apps, but usually end up just digging in and doing it manually. While it takes time, I can give a lot more care to each thing, espc. artwork and genre at the same time. I usually just take a night and go through everything in groups (like artists starting with an A, then a B, etc).


Toggle caps lock programmatically using applescript I'm looking to toogle capslock programmatically using applescript. Here is something I tried to make it work. It seems to work for all other keys except capslock.

tell application "System Events"
    key code 57
end tell

57 is the key code for caps lock

Submitting a separate answer, as it is entirely distinct from my first in that it solves the issue at hand.  Credit goes to @user3439894 who pointed the OP and I to a link (Toggle caps lock programmatically) that features some source code written in C that can programmatically toggle/set the state of the caps lock.  Thus credit goes also to the original author of that code, for which I offer a translation into JavaScript for Automation (JXA), which is the JavaScript flavour of AppleScript.

This script toggles the state of caps lock upon each run:

ObjC.import("IOKit");
ObjC.import("CoreServices");

(() => {
    var ioConnect = Ref();
    var state = Ref();

    $.IOServiceOpen(
        $.IOServiceGetMatchingService(
            $.kIOMasterPortDefault,
            $.IOServiceMatching(
                $.kIOHIDSystemClass
            )
        ),
        $.mach_task_self_,
        $.kIOHIDParamConnectType,
        ioConnect
    );
    $.IOHIDGetModifierLockState(ioConnect, $.kIOHIDCapsLockState, state);
    $.IOHIDSetModifierLockState(ioConnect, $.kIOHIDCapsLockState, !state[0]);
    $.IOServiceClose(ioConnect);
})();

This, like any AppleScript, can be run from within Script Editor (choose the language option in the navigation bar at the top of the window).  Sadly, Script Debugger doesn't cater for JXA.  But, in practice, the script will be most usefully executed by way of some other automation software, such as Automator, Keyboard Maestro, Alfred, etc., all of which can execute JXA scripts directly; and any software that doesn't provide this option can execute it by way of the shell command osascript:

osascript -l JavaScript /path/to/script.jxa.applescript

You can use an .applescript or .scpt file extension to save the script.


Why does resetting to factory settings not restore 2019 Macbook to Catalina? My Macbook 2019 came with Catalina. I upgraded to Big Sur. When I restore to factory settings, it seems the only option is for me to go back to a fresh install of Big Sur, and not Catalina. Why is I can't reset to the operating system that the macbook came with? After all, it is a "factory reset," and when it came out of the "factory," it had Catalina and not Big Sur.

"Factory reset" is a slight misnomer. It doesn't really mean to restore everything back to the same state that it had when it came from the factory, because the original contents of the hard disk are not save anywhere when you upgrade the OS or applications. When you installed Big Sur, Catalina was overwritten; whenever you upgrade an application, the previous version is deleted.
What it really means is that all personalizations are removed. Accounts other than the built-in ones (e.g. Administrator) are removed, and system and application preferences in the built-in accounts are set back to their default values. Applications that weren't included with the system will be removed, but applications that were included will be kept in their upgraded versions. I also assume that local Time Machine snapshots are deleted.
The purpose is to get a "clean" system, usually because you intend to give/sell the computer and don't want them to get your personal data, passwords, applications whose licenses don't permit transfer, etc. It's not intended to go back in time and revert everything you've ever done to the system.
In the old days a computer came with external disks containing the operating system and applications, and you could reinstall the system from them to get back to its original state. Now they no longer do this (and recent Mac models don't even have DVD readers, although one could imagine doing it with flash drives), but you can still reinstall from the network to get an earlier OS.


Changing of iMessage account I want to make a new iMessage account and stop using my old Apple ID for messaging. I need to know if it will change my apple id from which I download my apps?

You can have separate accounts for iMessage and iTunes purchases. Having a different iMessage account will not affect your purchased apps.

To change the iMessage account, go to Settings -> Messages -> Send & Receive. Tap on your current account name to change it.

For iTunes purchases, your account is specified at Settings -> iTunes & App Store.

You can even have a separate iCloud account.

The only caveat with doing this is that when setting up a new device, you need to be sure to enter these accounts separately. If you follow the default setup flow, both Messages and iTunes will use the same account (but you can change it as outlined above.)


Apple has ditched matte laptop displays: Display replacement options? I was thinking about buying a MacBook Pro for coding while not at home, but suddenly realized that they all come with glossy displays. The glare/mirror effect is utterly unacceptable for me. Are there good and easy ways to fix this?

By good I mean:

No voiding of warranty
No other nasty visual side-effects (apart from slightly reducing overall brightness, which is OK)
No noticeable additional weight

By easy I mean, either somebody else would install it, or it may be installed by a very silly guy like me with near-zero probability of breaking anything. :)

Apple sells an Anti-glare filter on the online Apple Store.

An alternative is the Moshi iVisor which you can find on Amazon.


what is the symbol I just saw on one of my notifications that is a small white triangle with circles behind it? This symbol was in the upper right corner of green notification box, IPHONE MESSAGES, that had what appeared to be either recording me or playing some recording. and then just suddenly disappeared. Ive never seen this before. any idea whats going on here?

In the comments, @Lizzan discovered that it might be the AirDrop icon, you have seen.

I just want to assure you that AirDrop neither records you or plays some recording. It is meant exclusively for transferring files from one device to another. An AirDrop notification would be about someone within your vicinity trying to send you something. You would have been prompted to accept or reject the file.

On the other hand, AirDrop doesn't have anything to do with iPhone Mesages, nor does it usually appear in the top right corner as far as I know. Therefore I think it might be that the icon you have seen is actually the new AirPlay icon, which is very similar to the AirDrop icon. You can see that icon here:

Note that the icon is displayed in the top right corner of the media controls, and reachable from the control center that you can access from everywhere on your iPhone - including the Messages app.


My Macbook Pro says I'm connected to a power source even when unplugged I have a Macbook Pro mid-2010 (Macbook 7,1) that is acting a bit weird. The battery status always says I'm connected to a power source even when the charger is unplugged. The battery still discharges, but the battery status says I'm connected to a power source. The exception is when I'm at the login screen, where the battery status displayed in the menu bar will be correct.

What I have tried to do:

Done a clean install of Mavericks
Reset SMC
Reset PRAM
Reinstalling the battery
Using another charger
Boot from my Macbook's original HDD

But to no avail.

Additional information: I just got my Macbook back from repair where they changed a faulty logic board. I have an Optibay installed where the CD-drive used to be and I have upgraded to 8 GB RAM. For the last 1-2 years I've been getting the "Service battery" in the battery status, but I have never had any issues with the battery before.

What do you think might be causing this, and how can I fix it?

(Screenshots taken while charger was unplugged).

this is how i fixed mine. I went to "energy saver preferences" in "system preferences", and went to "power adapter" at the top, then i clicked "show battery status in menu" option off then on again and that seemed to work for me.

Hope this helps!


Applescript: "can't get tab group 1 of window" (El Capitan) The following is an applescript that I use to change audio output devices:

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "System Preferences"
        tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"
            click radio button "Output"
            if (selected of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1) then
                set selected of row 1 of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true
                set deviceselected to "Headphones"
            else
                set selected of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true
                set deviceselected to "MX279"
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit

It worked on Yosemite, but when I updated to El Capitan it is giving me the following error:

"System Events got an error: Can't get tab group 1 of window \"Sound\" of application process \"System Preferences\". Invalid index"

I'm pretty unfamiliar with applescript, so any ideas why this might be happening will be much appreciated.

In the first part of your script you load the Sound preference pane. It can happen that the pane isn't fully loaded before you send commands to it in the second part of the script. The error says that the tab group 1 (the one that contains the Output tab) doesn't exist at the moment you are trying to access it.

To make sure the tab group 1 exists, we can wait for it with these two lines:

repeat until exists tab group 1 of window "Sound"
end repeat

The full script:

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "System Preferences"
        repeat until exists tab group 1 of window "Sound"
        end repeat
        tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"
            click radio button "Output"
            if (selected of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1) then
                set selected of row 1 of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true
                set deviceselected to "Headphones"
            else
                set selected of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true
                set deviceselected to "MX278"
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit


Executing cd in a bash function called by subshell causes extraneous output Consider the bash function:

func() {
  cd /;
  echo test;
}

Calling it does what you'd expect:

~:>func
test
/:>

But when called from a subshell (eg using backticks or $()) it performs very strangely.

~:>func() { cd /; echo test; }
~:>echo $(func)
test Saving session... ...saving history...truncating history files... ...completed.
~:>

This issue does not appear if cd is not executed in the function:

~:>func() { echo test; }
~:>echo $(func)
test
~:>

This is causing issues with some scripts that rely on certain output behavior, eg CLASSPATH=$(func) where func is complex and requires the use of cd.

What's strange is that this worked fine before. It did not start to happen until recently, but I don't know what would have caused it.

Note: alias cd reports "alias: cd: not found" and which cd returns /usr/bin/cd which is a script that is identical to another Mac which does not have the problem.

There seems to be something odd going on as cd is not defined to behave as you are seeing it. Evidence suggests it's definition is being over-ridden somewhere.

It is possible that your cd command is aliased somewhere.  The alias command with no arguments will display a list of aliased commands on most shells. A workaround for an aliased command is to preface the command with a backslash (\cd). That quotes the first letter of the command and defeats any alias processing by the shell.

It is also possible that it is a shell function.  declare -f should list the defined functions, at least in bash, and you can see if cd is being defined as a function.

With luck, your which command may support short-cut ways to do these checks.   Check out this on-line man page for how one implementation of which can be used to check functions and aliases, then see if your which operates in a similar manner.


Why my sound is mute? I have problem with my mac mini, sound icon is mute and i am unable to click to unmute it.

Tomorrow night it was working fine, but getting issue now, i inserted headPhone but nothing happen.

and

list of Audio devices uder System Report

From the screen shots you posted it appears that your Mac doesn't think it has any sound output devices.

This could indicate a hardware fault.  If after rebooting your Mac there are still no output devices listed in System Preferences > Sound try running a system report.

You can access this by choosing About this Mac from the Apple () Menu and then pressing the System Report... button.

On the left of the System Report window there should be a section for Audio.  If you select that you will get a list of Audio devices.  If that is empty you most probably have a hardware fault and need to take your Mac to an Apple Store for repair.


Upgrade to High Sierra installed version of Fuse too old for OS I just updated to High Sierra, now I see this this message (as shown in the screen shot)

"Installed version of macOS unsupported.
The installed version of FUSE it too old for the operating system ..."

Could somebody help me -

a) Find out why / how and by whom fuse was installed (I have not done it specifically as far as I can recall)

b) How to upgrade it to remove the error

Thanks for your help.

If you are not aware of any app needing FUSE you can remove it. You should see an icon in System Preferences for FUSE. You can remove or update from there:

See also: FUSE for macOS website


What's the relationship between homebrew and xcode command line tools？ Are they the same thing?

I was reading the "homebrew-php" github page, and it mentions about xcode and its command line tools.
My understanding about homebrew is it is a package manager like npm, why does it have anything to do with xcode, which I think doesn't have much to do with PHP.

Homebrew doesn't include a compiler and other tools that would duplicate Apple's development tools. Instead of that - it just asks for you to get the basic tools from Apple.

Xcode uses the same tools under the hood as homebrew - so you could satisfy this specific requirement either by installing the command line tools directly or via an Xcode install.

So, they aren't the same thing and you need both for the brew package manager to run.


Email won't load on iPhone 4s Lately my iPhone 4s has been glitching a lot. The latest thing to not work is email. I try to load it and it says "Cannot Get Mail. The mail server 'imap.gmail.com' is not responding. Verify that you have entered the correct account info in mail settings". The thing is - is that I have entered the correct email address. What do I do?

Also - it lets me send emails, just not receive them

This usually happens to me when the wifi connection is established without Internet connection. Also when the Internet involve passing credentials through a proxy server.

You claim that you're able to send messages but not receive them. Did you verify if those messages are sent? They are usually stored in the outbox waiting to be delivered.


How to print as PDF using Acrobat 10, when no printer is installed? Preview or Acrobat can both print out individual pages of a PDF file, as a new PDF file containing only those pages, but I think Acrobat 10 probably can print out page 1, 10-12, and 5 -- in any order, while Preview can only print out the "selected page" and must be in ascending page number order.

Preview can do that, but if using Acrobat 10, then going to File -> Print will actually trigger a "No printer is installed.  Please install a printer first"...  The thing is, I am really trying to print as a PDF file and there is no printer around... so is there a way to get past that dialog and print the pages as a PDF file?

When you have a file that you want to print as a PDF, go to "Print.." (Command ⌘ + P) and select "PDF" in the left hand corner:

Then select "Save as PDF...":

Then, you'll be presented with a save dialog:

Using this method, you shouldn't need to have a printer installed.


What do the appleprofilepolicyd and wdhelper processes do? I found in activity monitor appleprofilepolicyd and wdhelper but after googling a while didn't found any interesting information:

wdhelper - could be a webdrive or webdav - found only wdhelper.dll but nothing really related to the process
appleprofilepolicyd - something related to “Apple Profile Policy” ("captain obvious to the rescue!") - but still no related search results for it

What are theese processes do and what are they required for (dependencies)?

From the Apple Developer man pages:

  appleprofilepolicyd is a system daemon that implements a policy for the services provided by AppleProfileFamily.  When an AppleProfileFamily user asks to perform an action, this daemon is invoked to make the final policy decision.

Essentially, this governs what apps, accounts, processes, etc. have access to what services and activities.

I believe wdhelper is a LaunchDaemon that is implemented by, for example, a WD MyBook drive when it is installed to the Mac.


Keyboard Only Control When Hotkeys, Hinting, and Tabbing Fail I'd like to never need to reach for a mouse or trackpad.

Right now I spend most of the day mouse free. Alas, I occasionally must reach for a mouse or trackpad. It can really derail a good day.

What is the most efficient method of last resort for "clicking" those elements that have no hotkey, that I can't get any program to provide a keyboard hint for, and that can't be tabbed to?

My expectation is that the answers will be methods to move the mouse cursor and click via keyboard (like mousekeys) but any solution is applicable if it allows a keyboard to do anything a mouse can do.

Update Here's a very specific example of something that I don't know how to control by keyboard. In Firefox I'm unable to start this video:
http://vimcasts.org/episodes/comparing-buffers-with-vimdiff/

This specific example isn't too important, the point is that even with tools like Shortcat and Vimperator, sometimes hinting isn't provided. Video controls are a good example of something challenging. (Vimperator sometimes works for video controls, sometimes doesn't.) Maybe there's a better way to get hints for these?

I've settled on an ultimate method of final last resort when mousing is simply not an option. Karabiner (recently renamed from KeyRemap4MacBook) offers a "Mouse Keys Mode" which allows vim-style hjkl control of the mouse pointer and uio for left-middle-right click. There are a few options for the hotkeys that will activate this mode. My current preference is Cmd + S + D.

https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

As much as possible this method should be avoided but if you, like me, often don't have a mouse or trackpad readily available then it can be useful.


iPhone SE Random contacts Random contacts are appearing in my contacts, some are old friends, some I have no idea who they are. I have made sure that contacts from apps like Facebook and Linkedin, are not allowed to be synced. I thought that might be the end of it but no. A new contact appears on my phone with disgusting messages (redacted by IconDaemon) in the mobile number. I have a picture to show. I have deleted these contacts off my phone but can anyone help?

Open the contacts app and tap "groups" in the upper left.  This should list all potential sources of new contacts.  For instance, I only have groups listed under "iCloud" and "Facebook".  If you see a source that you're not expecting you might be able to narrow down where these contacts are coming from.

It might also help to restrict what apps have access to your contacts and perhaps disable some. To check go to settings... privacy... contacts.


Which version of iOS causes Messages.app to combine message threads with a single contact with multiple different phone numbers into one? Assume the following:

You add a contact (let's refer to them as "Person A") to your iPhone and add two separate numbers for them - one entry labeled "Home", and the other as "Work"
You open Messages.app, and compose a new message to Person A's Home phone number - this creates a new message thread, because up until this point you hadn't ever messaged them previously
Person A then replies to your message, but using the number that you have labeled as "Work"

Whenever the above scenario was encountered, I can recall that in older builds of iOS that two message threads would have been created - one for each number (in this case, Home and Work). Now, however, iOS appears to combine the conversations from both numbers into a single message thread because it recognises that despite being separate physical phone numbers, the contact is still the same person.

So - my question. Would somebody be able to clarify which version of iOS introduced the new behaviour described above?

The merging of message-threads with the same contact was introduced in iOS 12. But Apple didn’t officially announce it, what caused a lot of confusion, because sometimes it also merged different contacts: Forbes: Apple iOS 12 Has An Embarrassing Problem


Possible to automate entering star ratings and play counts for identical/duplicate song in iTunes? I'm in the process of replacing my low quality <192 kpbs MP3s into either 320 kpbs MP3 or ALAC files in iTunes.

Right now my routine is to import the new HQ files to iTunes, go to "Show Duplicate items" mode, sort according to Song Name, manually replace the star ratings and using Doug's Applescripts to add the new Play Count to the new songs.

Anyone have a better and faster way of doing this? I have a large library and it's really cumbersome manually replacing ratings and play count for the same song but in higher quality. I searched Doug's page but can't find anything like what I'm describing.

Thanks

Here is my little script to do what you are asking for. Tested on a couple of tracks on my iTunes 11 under Snow Leopard and it run just fine.

tell application "iTunes"

    set myMusicLib to some playlist whose special kind is Music
    log "Debug: Count of library items: " & (count of tracks of myMusicLib)

    set myNewTracks to (get tracks in myMusicLib whose bit rate is greater than 256)
    log "Debug: Count hi bit rate tracks: " & (count of myNewTracks)

    repeat with newTrack in myNewTracks

        -- Try to match it with a low bit rate track
        set trackName to name of newTrack
        set albumName to album of newTrack

        --log "Debug: Hi Rate Track Name: " & (get name of newTrack)
        --log "Debug: Rate: " & (get bit rate of newTrack)

        set oldTracks to {}
        try
            set oldTracks to (get tracks in myMusicLib ¬
                whose bit rate is less than 256 ¬
                and name is trackName ¬
                and album is albumName)
        end try

        if (count of oldTracks) is 1 then
            log "Debug: Dup Name: " & trackName
            log "Debug: BitRate: " & (get bit rate of item 1 of oldTracks)

            set oldPlayCount to (get played count of item 1 of oldTracks)
            set played count of newTrack to oldPlayCount
            log "Debug: Reset Play Count to: " & oldPlayCount

            set oldRating to (get rating of item 1 of oldTracks)
            set rating of newTrack to oldRating
            log "Debug: Reset rating to: " & oldRating
        end if
        if (count of oldTracks) is greater than 1 then
            log "ERROR: Found more than 1 duplicate. Not doing anything."
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

EDIT:

You can get a glimpse of what is going on by looking at the output it sents to the Events pane. Just run it inside the Applescript Editor and click on the Events & Replies buttons to unhighlight them.

EDIT2:

To limit the script you can change the line

set myNewTracks to (get tracks in myMusicLib whose bit rate is greater than 256)

to

set myNewTracks to (get tracks in myMusicLib whose bit rate is greater than 256 and Album is "My Album Name")


Does deleting a Facebook account in my iPhone Settings delete the actual Facebook account? I have a hand-me-down iPhone 4S from my wife running iOS 6.1.3. I have deleted the Facebook app. However other apps (like Instagram) still think my wife's Facebook account is linked to the phone and log in using her account.

In the iPhone's Settings app, there is still a Facebook subsection which lists my wife's account. There is a big red button to delete the account. This seems like the thing to do. But before I do, I want to confirm that doing so will only delete the account from this iPhone, NOT her actual Facebook account, which she naturally still wants to access from the web, her new phone, etc.

So -- safe to hit the big red button in this case?

It only deletes from the phone. It will not delete the Facebook account from Facebook.


How do I remove domains from the network browser? When I go to the network browser (in the Finder, hit command K, then click the "Browse" button, or just shift-command K), I see three domain names from a network I used to connect to six years ago. The appear in a list with dropdown trinagles to the left:

example.org
example.biz
example.com

How can I remove those? The computer was bound to an Active Directory domain, but nothing I try in the Directory Utility seems to remove them.

This was true on 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, and now on 10.8.

I will not wipe the system and start virgin for something like this that is not causing a problem but annoys me.

When this periodically happened to me, it had to do with permissions being incorrect in the following areas, preventing me from making changes:

In Snow Leopard (10.6) and later

Open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist in a plist editor
Find the section favoriteservers
Remove listings for those stubborn locations

In Tiger (10.5) and earlier (if I remember correctly)

Navigate to ~/Library/Favorites
Add/Remove the files with the pesky server names

Hope this helps


Album covers getting mixed up on phone from iTunes I had this problem earlier but then knew how to fix it, it was when I sent songs to my iphone the cover art got messed up with art from songs I already have on my phone. I fixed this by uploading the covers on iTunes again but making them album covers then sending it to the iPhone but now I have the same problem but it wont let me fix it with the album art. It gets mixed with art from songs I already have on my phone. The art is correct on iTunes on my computer, but it's messed up on my phone, this has only happened with 3 of my songs and an album with 7 songs. I want to prevent it from doing it again. I have an iPhone 5s by the way, if that's needed.

I had the same problem. Twice... You will most probably have to remove and then re-sync your music.

Attach your iPhone and go to the music section. Remove the check mark to sync music. Your selections will stay intact for later re-sync. Sync your phone. When finished all music should be gone from the phone. Now re-check the mark for syncing music and do the sync.

This fixed the messed up covers for me.


Where did my desktop preview icons go? When I started up my MacBook today my preview icons where gone as can be seen by attached screenshot.

Any clue why they disappeared? And how to get them back?

Thanks!

On the desktop, press Command+J or select Show View Options from the View menu to bring up the view options. From there, select "Show Icon Preview."


Headphone volume low This just started happening recently. When I plug my headphones in, I get full high fidelity volume for a fraction of a second and then it becomes significantly muted.

I've checked "Sound" in Preferences to ensure that I've not reduced my system volume.

Any other ideas on what might be causing this?

UPDATE:

Tried restarting (multiple times)
Tried resetting NVRAM to no avail

System Specs: MBP 15" Mid-2014 on Yosemite

I waited a couple of days and randomly I tried playing a video and the sound worked perfectly fine. I would just try waiting a couple of days like I did.


MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012) built in keyboard problem My keyboard has suddenly stopped working properly.

I can only write by using the keyboard viewer!

Basically the characters: ijklmno u and a few other keys don’t work on the Mac's built in keyboard.

System information:
MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012)
1.8 GHz Intel Core i5
4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB
Mac High Sierra 10.13.1

Also not able to modify system settings for scrolling.

Any solutions are appreciated!

This sounds like a hardware failure since all the keys that are not working are around one area. You may have to consider using a USB or Bluetooth keyboard with your MacBook Air. Repairing the keyboard may be expensive.


Can I restore a Lion Time Machine backup from a MacBook Air onto a MacBook Pro (currently) running Snow Leopard? My MacBook Air w/Lion is getting sent in for repairs, and IT gave me a MacBook Pro w/Snow Leopard. I have a current backup of my Air, and I'd like to get this MBP to run Lion with all my apps, files, settings, etc...

We were theorizing that we need to wipe the hard drive on this MBP and then try to boot from the Snow Leopard disk and do an install from Time Machine backup. And since that is the Lion install with all my stuff, everything will just work.

Does that sound like it will work?

I think the best way to proceed is like this :

First, see with your IT department to gave you an Mac OS Lion copy (from
Mac App Store or on a usb drive)
Next install Lion and restore with your TM Backup

If you cannot have a Mac OS Lion copy, you can try to navigate to your TM Backup (with a Finder) and copy only what you need on your disk (it depends on what you need to work, if it's just some documents for example it should ok, but I do not recommand to copy an app).


How do I move my IPhone backup from one machine to another? I used to sync my IPhone to my Macbook air using ITunes. All my Apps and other stuff like music and podcast were fully backed up there.

Recently I bought a new mac mini and now I want to create a full backup of my Iphone there. However after, authorizing and fully syncing I noticed that only recently installed Apps were showing up.

How can I get a full backup on the Mac Mini like how I used to have in my Macbook air ?

P/S - I do not backup my Apps on ICloud.
Thanks.

Find device backups in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

To locate a specific backup:

Go to iTunes > Preferences.
Click Devices.
Control-click the backup you want and select Show in Finder.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204215

How to back up your devices using iCloud or iTunes

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203977


Post data to url using AppleScript I am trying to take user input and send the data to a url on my site to do some checks against my database.  In my php script I cant display any of the POST variables.  it seems like the data is not being sent.  I am new to AppleScript so perhaps I am not doing this correctly?

APPLESCRIPT:

set email to the text returned of (display dialog "Enter in your Email:" default answer "")

set productKey to the text returned of (display dialog "Enter in your Product Key:" default answer "")

display dialog "Email: " & email & "
Product Key: " & productKey

set theURL to "http://mysite/testing.php?email=email&productKey=productKey"
do shell script "curl " & quoted form of theURL

PHP:

<?php
echo "made it before post";

    if (!empty($_POST))
    {
        $email  = $_POST["email"];
        $productKey = $_POST["productKey"];
        echo "Made it here";
        echo $email;
        echo $productKey;
    }
?>

While I cannot throughly test your issue, because I don't have access to your site, nonetheless, the following line of code is malformed:

set theURL to "http://mysite/testing.php?email=email&productKey=productKey"

It should be in the form of:

set theURL to "http://mysite/testing.php?email=" & email & "&productKey=" & productKey


`type -a` works even though `-a` not an option I could check installed apps with command type -a

$ type -a python
python is /Users/gaowei/Desktop/Django/learning_log/ll_env/bin/python
python is /Users/gaowei/anaconda3/bin/python
python is /usr/bin/python

However, there's no -a options in 'man type'

What's the reason?

If you type help type then you will see that type does have the -a option.


How do I prevent access to a folder on a non-boot drive My /Users folder is on the boot drive.

On another drive, I have a folder (F) that I want to protect by providing no access to other users.

How can that be done without encrypting F?

You can't unless you are willing to accept some serious limitations.

The operating system will enforce ACL and normal posix permissions, but that presumes no-one will have an administrator account and no-one will access that external drive with any other OS than the one you have set up with the permissions.

If you're OK with this light level of security, just use Finder and the Get Info pane (or the inspector) to set no access to folder F for anyone but your user.

Here is the basic (dry) article on how permissions work, then a more wordy tutorial on ACL that let you say no one can read a folder and lastly a reminder how easy it is for someone else to change those permissions by using an admin account on the OS you set up (or if they connect it to another computer that they control)

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8342.html
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/mac/introduction-to-os-x-access-control-lists-acls/1048
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH3708


How can I permanently disable App Store notifications in Big Sur? I found it impossible to disable update notifications for apps - notifcation centre does not provide App Store option, disabling "automatically check for updates" only disables checking for OSX updates. Is there something I'm missing or is there a way to solve it in the terminal?

See https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/mas-notifications.html for a solution to this
defaults write com.apple.appstored LastUpdateNotification -date "2029-12-12 12:00:00 +0000"

You can use any future date of course :-)


Access emails from Time Machine backups of old machine Killed my old MacBook in November last year, and was able to access everything I needed for the new MacBook Pro using Time Machine, apart from emails. This Time Machine drive now has backups for the new MacBook Pro, so when I open Time Machine from within Mail it only shows me the emails from the MacBook Pro, and not the old MacBook.

Any suggestions as to how I can find the old emails?

I would try importing the old emails goto mails file menu-> import mailboxes
navigate to to the backup device, locate the old backup folder and navigate to users/{ussername}/library/mail/v2/mailboxes and import the mail


How do I create totally independent web browsers in different Desktops? Help! I just got a Mac Air that's running Mavericks, and I was playing with the different desktops. I had Safari open on each, and they both had totally different tabs open. I shut it down, and now, they're mirroring each other. When I close a tab on one desktop, it closes on the other, too.

In Mission Control, "Displays have different Spaces" IS checked

In Display, "Mirroring Options" is NOT checked.

What do I do, so that each web browser is totally independent?

If you actually need two distinct Safari instances running, this may be of help: Assign Application Windows to Different Spaces/Desktops , but if all you want is to have two Safari windows in different desktops, all you need to do is to open two windows and drag one to the right edge of the screen. If you hold it there for a second, it will move over to the next desktop. (The desktop has to exist first, dragging won't create a new one) You can also do this by dragging the windows in Mission Control. As far as I know, the only way to have the same windows open in two desktops is if Safari is assigned to All Desktops. You can check by right clicking Safari in the Dock and going to Options.


Earbud Audio Not Working? I have a Macbook Pro and it has a problem when plugging in headphones/ear buds into the audio jack may cause the audio to lower/raise by itself, but simply just unplugging and plugging back in helps with it, but recently the audio in my earbuds aren't working, I had another pair of earbuds that wouldn't work so i switched to the ones I'm using now but they stopped working as well. Whenever I check the audio when the earbuds are plugged in, it says that there's sound but not connected to the headphones. I have a set of gaming headphones and put them in the usb and they work just fine. Anyone else experiencing this weird audio problem, or at least can redirect me to an solution.

clean your audio plug

something is stuck in it

do not use metal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei9Z4M91E5o


Can't upgrade to Lion with error "can't be installed because a recovery system can't be created" I've formatted my newly bought SSD and did a clean install of Snow Leopard from the install CD I got with my MacBook.

Snow Leopard installed just fine and everything works, but when I try to upgrade to Lion from the App Store, I get an error saying

Mac OS X can't be installed on the disk Macintosh HD, because a recovery system can't be created. Visit www.apple.com/support/no-recovery to learn more.

Is there any way around this? What can I do other than just cloning my old HDD to the SSD?

when installing Snow Leopard did you delete and create partitions on the disk using the Disk Utilities as part of the installer, or did you install direct onto the pre formatted SSD?

If the answer to the second question is yes, then a new install of Snow Leopard on the SSD, but this time delete all existing partition data and allow SL to create the partitioning and install onto the SSD from there will allow you to update to Lion without that error.


Updating a chart dynamically in Numbers Background: I've been having some sleep issues so I have started tracking my sleep habits along with some other data but so far, they are just entries in Evernote and as such it is not possible to see any patterns. Obviously I need a spreadsheet app with charting capabilities (doh!). I've been using a great iPhone app called Sleepbot for data collection for sleep times and then enter those into Evernote.

I have the iWork set so I have been looking at Numbers and going through some tutorials but I still can't tell if it will do what I want. Given that my data set will increase daily, I'd like to be able to "page through" a chart/data set, so it shows say the last 30 data entries. With all the tutorials I have seen, the charts are of fixed size and adding more data to a linked table just causes the chart to cram more stuff in.

Can Numbers do this sort of "paging" of data? I would like to have this sort of "on the fly" charting rather than having to explicitly build a chart each time I want to visualize the data.

(sorry the question is rather garbled: I don't know really anything about using a spreadsheet type app)

To save on the cramming part of the Chart you could try using an interactive Chart with a scroll bar.

1, Start a new sheet and fill it with your data:

2, Go to the Chart menu and select Interactive Chart & the style you want.

I have chosen the simplest. Others you may have to play more with.

3, Click the Chart and then it's  Add Chart Data button.

4, select either rows by clicking on each day of week row.

4.1 Or Columns by clicking on the WEEK columns

5, Click the DONE button at the bottom of the page when you have completed your selection.

If you need to remove/add a column or row from the Chart data. Then Click the Chart. And then the Edit Chart Data button.

Adding is the same as you did before.

Removing is clicking on the row or column and hitting the delete/backspace key.
this does not remove the eta from the sheet only from the chart.

The chart I chose has a scroll bar which you can scroll through.

You can change the text size by using the format palettes.

And you can add labels to the Chart columns

by using

If I figure how to make it pick up the sheet info by it's self I will update.