How to use Time Machine backup on a different computer? I had a MacBook Pro, Mid-2010, which I regularly made weekly Time Machine backups of.  The computer accidently got destroyed.  When it died it was running OS X 10.10.4.

I then got a new MacBook Pro, 2014 model and it has the same size hard drive.  Is it possible to restore the data on the new computer using the Time Machine backup from the old computer? If so, how?

Yes, you can.  When you set up the new Mac and connect it to your Time Machine backup either through the network or via cable, you can select restore from Time Machine Backup during setup.  If you have already set up your new Mac and want to now restore, use Migration Assistant found in your Applicatons > Utilities folder.

The instructions can be found on Apple Support.  See the link below or search support for Migration Assistant.

From Apple Support:

  Migration Assistant and Setup Assistant

  Setup Assistant opens the
  first time you start up a new Mac. It helps you enter your information
  about your network, and guides you through setting up a user account
  on your computer. Use it to transfer user accounts, settings, and
  documents from another computer to your Mac.

  If you don't use Setup
  Assistant to transfer information when you first set up your new Mac,
  you can do it later using Migration Assistant.

  Migration Assistant in
  OS X Mavericks and Yosemite can transfer information from other
  computers that have OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.8 or later installed. If
  you're migrating from a computer with an earlier version of OS X,
  update your older computer first, or manually copy your data from one
  computer to another. If you're migrating from a Windows-based PC to a
  Mac, you can use the Windows Migration Assistant as part of this
  process.

  Migrate from a Time Machine backup or external drive Use these steps to migrate users, data, or other information from an existing Time

  Machine backup stored on a Time Capsule or external drive.

  If your Time Machine backup is on an external drive, connect the
  drive to your new Mac.
  On your new Mac, open Migration Assistant. You can find it by
  choosing Go > Utilities, or using Spotlight or Launchpad.
  Enter an admin password when prompted, and click OK.
  Select "From a Mac, Time Machine backup, or startup disk", then
  click Continue.
  Select the Drive, Time Machine backup, or Time Capsule volume you
      want to migrate from, then click Continue.  The Continue button is unavailable (dimmed) until you select a source.
  If you're migrating from a Time Capsule, enter your Time Capsule
  password when prompted, then click Connect.
  Select the specific Time Machine backup you want to migrate from,
  then click Continue.
  You can customize the type of information that is migrated on the
  next screen. If you want to transfer only a portion of an account,
  deselect anything you don't want migrated. If there is more than one
  user on your original Mac, you can click the triangle next to a
  user's icon and deselect anything you don't want to migrate for
  specific users.
  After you click Continue, the Migration Assistant begins
  transferring files to  Mac. The amount of time that it takes for
  migration to complete depends on the amount of data being copied,
  and the speed of the connection. After migration finishes, the login
  window reappears. Log into the migrated account on your new Mac to
  see your old files.


Can I use a Shure Beta 58 vocal mic with my PowerBook MacIntosh laptop? I have an older Shure Beta 58 mic purchased in 1996 that I would like to use as an external microphone in lieu of th built in mic on my PowerBook laptop.  What interface do I need?  I would like to use it for conferencing software like Zoom.  I am also supposed to make an audio recording of some songs to send to a virtual choir project.

An XLR (the connector on the Shure mic) to USB audio device is what you need. There are several varieties on the market, but this is a very handy gadget which has worked well for me.

Shure X2U XLR to USB USB Signal Adapter


iPod 5 stuck on voice over and is locked My iPod 5 is stuck on voice over, but it's also on lock screen. I do not know how to unlock it and get to settings to turn it off.

You can use voiceover to tap and enter your passcode or you can connect it to iTunes where you synced the iPhone previously and disable the "assistance" that VoiceOver is "providing"

Can I enter my pass code when in voice over mode?
How do i enter my numeric password in iPhone 4 in VoiceOver mode?

Depending on whether you have trusted a computer, you might need to learn the basics of voice over or bring your phone to someone that can tap and listen to the audio prompts to get the setting changed or the device paired/trusted to a computer running iTunes.


Question about charging and using an iPad mini I just purchased a cellular iPad mini but I cant seem to find out if charging an iPad mini while using the device affects battery life, and does charging overnight affect battery life?

You should be fine using the iPad while it is charging. The thing you want to avoid that affects battery life is always keeping it plugged in. You want to make sure you regularly "use" your battery, allowing it to drain and then recharging to full. If it is always plugged in and sitting at full you'll start to notice a decrease in performance when the battery finally does get drained.


How can I connect two VGA monitors to a Mini using Thunderbolt and HDM adapters? I am running one VGA display using Thunderbolt/VGA adapter from Apple and it works fine.

Trying to connect second VGA display using HDMI/DVI adapter which comes with the mac using an additional connector DVI to VGA, but nothing happens!

I only have VGA monitors, so question is can this be got to work in some way ?

You cannot run VGA from the HDMI port the way you have it set up.  You need a direct HDMI->VGA converter.  The reason is that HDMI does not output analog signals.  The cable head actually has a digital-to-analog converter chip in it, but your HDMI<->DVI adapter does not.  So even though the DVI<->VGA adapter fits, the analog pins aren't actually connected.

Technically, the HDMI<->DVI converter you're using was manufactured incorrectly.  They should have used a DVI-D connector, but they used a DVI-I instead.  A VGA adapter will not fit onto a DVI-D connector, but a DVI-I connector will accommodate anything.


Mountain Lion: Problem With Permissions I recently tried compiling Textmate 2 now that it's open sourced. Followed all the directions hereand downloaded all the dependencies. Now, when I tried to build (using ./configure && ninja) I received the following error:

make: *** [/Users/~/build/TextMate/Frameworks/SoftwareUpdate/fixtures/secret.pem] Error 1

[6/1169] Copy ‘"Frameworks/OakFoundation/src/NSString Additions.h"’…ninja: ERROR: mkdir(/Users/~/build/TextMate/include/OakFoundation): Permission denied

ninja: build stopped: .

Now, I figured that maybe Mountain Lion messed with permissions, so I gave it the ol' sudo try. I still receive a similar error -

rm /Users/jlvillalobos/build/TextMate/Frameworks/SoftwareUpdate/fixtures/secret.pem
[7/1169] Compile ‘Frameworks/scope/src/match.cc’…ninja: ERROR: mkdir(/Users/jlvillalobos/build/TextMate/Frameworks/scope): Permission denied

Now, I'm pretty stuck. I tried just checking my bash profile and I get a permission denied error on that too! I've ran "repair permissions" in disk utility for posterity and getting the same error. Anyone run into similar issues?

Looking at the first error message from make it seems as if the paths got configured wrongly by configure. So just rerun it and make sure to specify any required paths in full (without ~).


How to find if iPhone is unlocked for worldwide GSM use I am new here. I am looking for an iPhone online but, want to know if a particular phone would work with GSM carriers outside US. Is there a proper way to find that? Specially the iPhones unlocked from US carriers.

If the Iphone is unlocked just trying with a difference SIM card from another carrier should be work without any problem.


Backup crisis: Will Time Machine backup iCloud Drive files ? Will it backup Box? I've ben religiously backing up my Macs using Time Machine, onto a NAS. Everything runs, I get no errors. However today I was looking for a file that I had accidentally deleted and couldn't find it.

Which led me to want to find a final answer to the questions:

for files stored on the iCloud drive that I access on a daily basis directly from my Mac, will those be backed up to Time Machine?
for files stored, similarly, on Box.com, that I also access on a daily basis... Will those be backed up to Time Machine?

By default, iCloud Drive files are backed up with Time Machine. You can find them in this folder:

/Users/username/Library/Mobile Documents/

where username is the username of your account.

Note that if you have excluded the the Mobile Documents folder, Library folder, etc. from Time Machine - then the files will ofcourse not be backed up.

Also note that Time Machine can only backup the files that are actually on your computer. If you have set iCloud Drive to optimize storage usage, some files could be stored only in the cloud and not on your own computer. You can see that in the Finder when opening the iCloud Drive - a cloud icon will appear to the right of those files that are not stored on your computer. They will then not be included in your Time Machine backup.

The same applies for files on Box.com and other cloud storage service. If the files have indeed been stored on your computer, and you haven't manually excluded them from the backup, then they're included in your Time Machine backups.


iMessage User "is not registered with iMessage" Recently bought an iPhone 5 & iPad Mini.  Today tried to message a non-iphone user and got a red name icon in the addressee box that came up as "...is not registered with iMessage" that came up" with an option to "Remove".  Did a little web search and discovered that the Mini iMessage" option page in Settings does not show a toggle for "Send as SMS". My new and older iPhones do have that option and don't show the error message..even when I turn that toggle off.  I called Apple Help and was told that there is a fix for it, but that I would have to purchase a three month version of Apple Care for them to address it.  I really love my new Mini, but at $600+ if they won't fix a basic function, it's headed right back to the store.
Any help would be appreciated
Thank you

Messages on an iPad can't send an SMS so you can't send a message to a non-Apple phone. You'll need an SMS apple like Google Voice for that.

There Shouldn't be any problem sending an SMS from Messages on the iPhone though.

I've never heard of a three month version of AppleCare but both the iPad Mini and iPhone 5 come with 90 days of free phone support and a year warranty so I don't know why Apple would want you to buy anything.


What are the minimum requirements to charge the 2016 MacBook Pros? As the MacBook Pro 2016 series supports various USB PD profiles, I'm wondering whether they will also charge using other USB standards, for example:

USB Type-C, 1.5A or 3.0A at 5V using the passive marking resistor (not PD)
USB Type-A using an A to C cable, connected to a USB BC DCP at up to 1.5 A (for example newer iPhone or most Android compatible chargers)
USB Type-A, connected to an iPad charger at 2.1 A or 2.4 A (using Apple's proprietary D+/D- voltage handshake)

I'm aware that most of these will not be able to supply enough power for normal operation of the computer, but being able to charge slowly while in standby would still be useful.

After some experimentation with a 2016 15" MBP, it seems that they are very flexible:

A USB charger capable of 5 V, 2.4 A proprietary Apple signalling was recognized as providing 12 W of power, and an iPhone charger (which complies the USB BC specification) was shown as providing 5 W. The Nexus 5X charger, which provides USB-C 5 V, 3 A charging, was also correctly recognized as providing 15 W.

The power settings were showing these as "not charging" with the Mac running, but it turns out that even the large 15" MBP is capable of slowly charging from the tiny 5 V, 1 A adapter (it went up by about 2% after charging in sleep mode for about half an hour).


Advice about eBook Readers for Mac/PC Forgive me for my ignorance but, I recently purchased an eBook only to find that I also had to download Adobe Digital Editions in order to be able to view it on my Mac.  The PDF that I downloaded in the process is encrypted.  Does this mean that I can only view it using Adobe Digital Editions, or can any ePub Reader (including any that I install under Windows) be able to read it?

I know that there are many (better) ePub readers out there, the prominent ones of which are listed in the following post.

What could I use to read epub books on OS X?

If I now were to install Calibre, for example, would it interfere with Adobe Digital Editions?

Note that I bought the eBook from http://www.ebook.com.  This is the message I get when I try to double click on the PDF file to open it using Acrobat Reader:

This document requires digital rights management (DRM) features supported
by Adobe Digital Editions. Would you like to open it in Digital Editions now?

This is the information that I have been able to retrieve about the file using Adobe Digital Editions:

Permissions set by the publisher
  Allow viewing: on any device
  Allow copying: 5 copies with an additional copy accrued every 6 days,
  capped at 5 copies, on any device
  Allow printing: 20 pages with an additional page accrued every 1 day
  12 hours, capped at 20 pages, on any device

ePub is a digital publishing format, but it's not as straightforward as you might hope, in that not all ePub files are the same.  There are 3 main types of ePub in the wild today:

Straight ePub, any ePub reader should be able to open these
ePub with Digital Rights Management protection:

Adobe Digital Editions
Apple iBooks from the iBooks store

The protection mechanisms are portable to an extent, you can see the Digital Editions protection on other formats other than ePub.  The main takeaway is that to read the file, you need a compatible reader.  For the non-protected files, that is straightforward enough.  Pretty much anything can read them.  For the protected ones, it's more difficuly.  Adobe protection is compatible with a small number of desktop apps for a bit of extra portability, but iBooks ones can only be opened in iBooks in iOS, full stop.

It's a pain, and like the MP3 fuss we are starting to see people dropping DRM entirely from their ebooks.


Mac bash doesn't remember alias I'm trying to create a simpler alias to launch MIT-scheme from the Terminal so I did:

alias mit-scheme="/Applications/MIT-Scheme.app/Contents/Resources/mit-scheme"

Then I can launch MIT-scheme by simply typing mit-scheme.

However if I close this Terminal window and open a new one, when I type mit-scheme I get -bash: mit-scheme: command not found.

What am I doing wrong?

Running the command will define it for the current shell, but that's it. There's nothing specific about macOS here — this is a bash thing. You have to run the command on every shell. To do this automatically, add the line to a sourced file such as ~/.bash_profile.


Login items with niceness other than 0 I have quite a few login items on my Mac, mostly Apps that I want to have idling in the background (like Tweetbot or Reeder), but that I don't use immediately. I would like to give these Apps an initial niceness of -20, since I care more about a snappy system start than Apps that I don't use right away (but still want to have started automatically with the system).
However, after some time they should automatically be reniced to 0.

Is there any way to achieve this with login items? I know that you can give launch daemons an initial niceness (but you have to manually renice them). I suppose it's also possible to write a script that sets the niceness of some Apps to -20 on system launch, but I would prefer a cleaner ans easier to maintain way to achieve this.

Rather than using nice, you might be interested in an app that lets you delay the launch of certain apps for a few seconds after startup.

DelayedLauncher
Exhaust
Startupizer


Chrome window buttons hidden when Save As / Open window appear I am having issue with chrome, when ever I want to download or upload any item, the default window which appears, I cant see the buttons of that window, they kind of go down the dock, until unless I click the browse button (marked in black) to collapse the window and scroll back full again, only then I can see the buttons.

Is it issue with chrome?

Check screen shot for details.

Option 1 = Switch to fullscreen

Option 2 = Autohide the dock

When you try to save this time resize the dialog window so its not so low and continue saving.

It should remember the same size when you switch back to your normal screen or dock settings.


What does the CLEAN badge mean in iTunes? I noticed an indication 'CLEAN' on iTunes today. What does it mean?

Screenshot:

It is opposite to the Explicit version of a song, which may contain profanity or other unacceptable language. I do assume these don't have bad words in the text, etc. Unlike Explicit, which are more "clean" from author's point of view — they aren't "beeped" over phrases inappropriate before certain ages.

BTW there are several threads on Apple.com about people losing their Explicit versions after Music Match, just because songs are the same but Apple hasve a Clean version of it.


Apple Mail: no search results after Sierra update After a Sierra update, Apple Mail is not searching anymore, and Spotlight provides incomplete results - it does not provide a top lists e.g. searching for "Excel" does not show Excel or it does not provide results in Mail.  What should I do now?

I would start with the procedure described in Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac:

  Choose Apple  menu > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
  Click the Privacy tab.
  Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching. Click OK to
  confirm.
  Select the folder or disk you just added, then click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.
  Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.


Why did my Time Capsule disappear, while continuing to work as wireless router? My Time Capsule cannot be mounted for backups, and the Time Capsule does not appear at all in AirPort Utility. However I can see and connect to its WiFi just fine. The truly odd thing is that I can connect to it using "Configure other..." in AirPort Utility, and see all of its configuration and backup drive.

Some screenshots follow. First, this is what I see in Airport Utility:

If I hit forget, I get this:

Note that the globe and the nice little green dot and "Internet" is my WiFi connection through the Time Capsule that is not there!

Clicking on "Other Wi-Fi Devices" shows no devices discovered.

If I click on the globe, I see the local IP address for the router, 10.0.1.1:

Now I do "Configure Other..." from the File menu, enter the router address 10.0.1.1, and the Time Capsule password. I get the full configuration of my otherwise invisible Time Capsule!

All of the tabs show the correct configuration. But I still can't connect to the very Time Capsule that I am connected to the internet through!

I have tried power cycling the Time Capsule and computer, and doing a soft and hard reset of the Time Capsule, reloading the configuration from a saved file (using Import and Export Configuration File). I end up right back in the same place.

Does this ring any bells for anyone here?

The same thing happened to me yesterday; I don't know if this will work for you.

What fixed it is as you said go to "Configure Other", then disable Back to my Mac by clicking on the - sign on your email adress. It will reset and then I could see the HDD.

That fixed it for me. Hope it helps!


Low/bad signal on iPhone 4 after upgrading to IOS 6 I recently upgraded my iPhone 4 to IOS 6 (from 5.1.1 it had before), and since then I'm having lots of signal troubles: the signal is always low and unreliable, and the iPhone continuously switches between 3G and GPRS (also draining the battery in the process). Internet access is almost unusable, and sometimes I can't even make or receive calls.

I'm in Italy, my carrier is TIM; however, this is not a carrier problem, and is unrelated to the actual place I'm in: I'm having these signal troubles in the very same places where I had full signal strength before the IOS upgrade.

I've been searching around for a while, and looks like this is quite a common problem; various solutions have been proposed (including downgrading to IOS 5 on the assumption that this is caused by some bug in IOS 6), but no agreement has been reached about how to actually solve it.

How to fix this?

The only solution that actually worked was a full factory reset:

Make a backup of your iPhone using iTunes.
Using iTunes, perform a full reset of the iPhone.
After the iPhone reboots, disconnect it from iTunes and go through the initial setup.
Connect the iPhone back to iTunes.
When asked by iTunes, choose to restore the backup.
If applications are missing after the restore, perform a full sync to have them re-installed.

I also called Apple support, and they confirmed this is a known and common problem when upgrading to IOS 6, and a full reset is the only way to permanently solve it.


Finder takes long time to load some folders When opening some folders, the Finder takes a long time (30-60 seconds) to load all the files in it. Specifically, these folders typically contain 10-50 PHP files (which are text files), each about 10 kb.

I also notice that sometimes, after the files are listed, their icons are still loading and the "Kind" column is also still loading. (I've got the "Name", "Date Modified", "Size", and "Kind" columns showing; "Calculate all sizes" is enabled" while "Show icon preview" is disabled.)

In addition, when opening a directory such as this and viewing Activity Monitor, I see that coreservicesd is at 70% CPU and Finder is at 30% CPU. After all the files have loaded, both services are still at these CPU levels for about 60 seconds afterward.

Anyone know how I can fix this? I already did "Repair disk permissions" and "Repair Disk", along with a ton of miscellaneous Onyx tasks, but the problem still remains.

Hallelujah! I figured it out. Okay, so first thing I did was create a new account, as suggested by another answer. The problem did not occur in there, so clearly the problem was limited to my account. I then went into Safe Mode into my account. The problem did not occur as well. So clearly something was loaded in normal mode but not in safe mode that was causing the problem.

While in safe mode, I then cleared the caches (in Terminal, using sudo mv /Library/Caches ~/Temp/ and the same for ~/Library/Caches). Problem solved! I've had other problems as well in Finder so perhaps this will fix this as well. I'm curious as to why using Onyx to clear the User caches didn't clear these as well, but anyway, from what I've read online it seems like getting rid of these two folders is safe. Also, Time Machine never backs up ~/Library/Caches (but it does back up /Library/Caches), so that's reassuring.

In addition, while this post was made in 2003, it still applied to my situation and this was what convinced me to clear my Caches folders.


Minimize buttons are disabled when I connect an external monitor Whenever I connect an external monitor all the minimize buttons on existing apps get disabled (they are gray).  Why does this happen and how can I prevent it?

This is not expected behaviour, and without more information sounds like you might have a 3rd-part window management tool running that could affect the behaviour of existing windows.

If you run applications in Full-Screen mode, the "Minimise" button does get greyed out, if that helps


What are the 1st macbook models(year) that support booting from usb? So it appears there are a lot of questions requesting the ability to boot from usb on a Macbook.  Example and here

Now I believe these questions are missing 1 important point and that is that I believe it isn't possible on older machines.  So what are the first year macbooks that supported booting from usb?

Short Answer

Any Intel Mac capable of running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.5 is capable of booting from USB (so long as the version of Mac OS X on that USB is at least Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.5.

Since all MacBook models are Intel Macs, the model year is irrelevant aince all Intel Macs are capable of booting from USB so long as they're running Mac OS X 10.4.5 or later. For the record though, Apple started producing MacBooks in 2006 and the original MacBook Pro (January 2006) came pre-installed with Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.5.

You can read more about how to set up and use an external Mac startup disk.

Long Answer

In practice I've found that it's easier to boot from USB with MacBook models from late 2008 onwards, espececially if you want to boot from a USB flash drive. I cannot advise specifically why this has been the case in my personal experience (maybe I wasn't doing it right in those early years of Intel Macs), nor whether other people have had different levels of success. However, since your model MacBook Pro is a 2009 model (based on your comment) this will not be an issue for you. Just be sure to follow the how to set up and use an external Mac startup disk if you intend to do this.

Extra info

It may be of interest to some people that it was technically possible to boot from USB in the pre-Mac OS X era with the introduction of dual channel USB in 1999. Slot loading iMacs and a model of the AGP PowerMac G4 were able to boot from USB drives.

As an aside, you can't start a Mac in Target Disk Mode using a USB cable. To do this your Mac will need to have a FireWire port or a Thunderbolt 2 or 3 port or a USB-C port. See Share files between two computers with target disk mode for more info.


WX in Notification Center calls up Weather Channel in browser I'm new to El Capitan, after using Snow Leopard for years.

Notification Center is nice, but clicking on a city in the weather list kicks me over to my browser and opens up a tab for that city at the Weather Channel website. WTH?

How do I prevent Notification Center from calling up my browser?

Clicking on the City Name will open the appropriate page from The Weather Channel in your default web browser. That is by design.

If you do not want to open the webpage and instead expand a panel showing the forecast for the city, click anywhere other than the city name (the blank space, the time, the temperature, etc.).


Upgrading a 2006 MacBook Pro to 3 GB Ram, is this a good idea? I'm considering upgrading my end of 2006 MacBook Pro RAM. Yet I'm hesitating: it will not support 4GB of RAM, but only 3GB (I have 2x 1GB at the moment).

This means that each slot will have a different amount of memory, and I read somewhere that would prevent it from using double data rate or something like this.

Do you know if this decrease of performance is noticeable? Is it worth the extra 1GB of RAM?
I'd welcome advice; especially if you have done so yourself.
Thanks!

You might know already the discussion here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/8053632#8053632

If you are actually limited by RAM, then I would not assume that the performance impact of a mixed 1GB/2GB setup would change much. Swapping to disk is so slow, it's hardly compensated by RAM timing issues.

However, first make sure that RAM is actually your issue.


Dialing from MacBook shows that my iPhone is already on a call When using the new continuity feature in OS X Yosemite together with my iPhone 5S running iOS 8, I can't dial from my MacBook. Here's what I do:

Both devices are on the same Wifi network
Both devices are logged in using the same iCloud/Apple ID
On the MacBook, I open FaceTime and type a phone number into the search field
Next, I click the phone icon next to the number and select the "Call Using iPhone option"
A popup is shown indicating that the phone is dialing the number

After a couple of seconds, the following message is shown:

The message says: "iPhone in Use. Your iPhone is already on a call." I'm pretty sure that my phone is not on a call at this point.

Clicking the "Try Again" option provides the same result.

What am I doing wrong?

tl;dr A reboot of the phone fixed the issue.

When I tried the same on my iPad (making a call through my iPhone), the same thing happened, I received the error message that my iPhone was already on a call. This showed that the error seemed to be with the phone, not with the MacBook.

I closed all open applications on the phone, but ended up with the same error again. After finally restarting my phone, it worked, I was able to initiate a call from the FaceTime app on the iPad.

It looks like something on the iPhone prevented calls from being initiated from another device. Phone calls from the phone were working fine throughout the day, just not from another device.


How can I re-map Mail's "Sent Messages" folder to an IMAP server's "Sent Mail" folder? I use Mail to connect to a traditional IMAP server (non-Gmail). I've noticed that all the messages I send are placed in Mail's "Sent" folder and that Mail is translating this folder to a server folder called "Sent Messages". The problem is that on the IMAP server, the real folder meant to store sent messages is called "Sent Mail".

I occasionally send messages using the server's web interface. Because of this, over time I will have my sent messages spread out over "Sent Messages" and "Sent Mail" in the server. If I want to find a sent message, and because these messages are not consolidated, I now have two places I need to search thru.

My iPhone does map its "Sent" folder to the real "Sent Items" folder, so both the messages I send on the web interface and on my iPhone are stored in the right place. How can I get Lion's Mail app to play along? I am not entirely sure if this same problem was already present in Snow Leopard.

I cannot seem to find the setting that will allow me to re-map IMAP folder in Mail. I think I recall previous versions of Mail having such an option, although I am not 100% sure that the option even existed. I don't think it matters, but I am using the Lion GM--which should be basically the same as the release version.

Update

I've been suggested to use the "Use This Mailbox For" option. That feature will take a local folder and re-purpose it. So, I could take my LOCAL COPY of Sent Items found in the local IMAP mailbox and say "Use this mailbox for... Sent". I did just that, but what happened is that the local copy of Sent Items disappeared (bug?) and when I send a message on Mail, that message still goes to Mail's default Sent folder--which in turn re-creates the Sent Messages folder in the server containing the message I just sent.

It seems that whatever goes into the local "Sent", gets mapped to a server folder called "Sent Messages" (and the IMAP server's web interface confirms a new "Sent Messages" gets created every time, even if I delete it). That is why I still need to re-map the local "Sent" and NOT the local "Sent Items".

Update #2

After I restarted Mail (which I had not done) I found out that Sent is now mapped to the server's Sent Items folder and that was the reason Sent Items disappeared locally. The IMAP server's web interface does no longer show the Sent Messages and all messages sent by Mail are now stored in Sent Items, just like the iPhone does. I have marked the answer by @mwidmann as the correct one. Thanks!

Have you tried selecting the folder in the folder list and then using the menu entry "Use This Mailbox For -> Sent" in the Mailbox menu?

!

That should do exactly what you want.


Where is POSIX Ex editor on Mac? Since Ex is a standard Unix editor (standardized by POSIX), I expect to be shipped with OS X, however it's linked into vim instead as shown below:

$ stat /usr/bin/ex
  File: ‘/usr/bin/ex’ -> ‘vim’

My goal is to test some syntax within Ex it-self (not using extended vim-like ex syntax) in order to check if my command is POSIX-compliant.

Therefore where I can find the original Ex editor on OS X? Or if it was removed or not shipped with, how can I get it back?

You could install it using Homebrew.
It is part of the brew ex-vi package, e.g.:

brew install ex-vi


App Store password keyboard When I go to the App Store on my iPhone 4s, the password box pops up, but the keyboard to enter the password does not pop up, so I have no way to enter a password.  Any idea how I can correct this?

Close the app, double-click the home button to bring up the currently running apps, and hold down on the App Store until they bounce. Then kill it.

Then you can go back into it.

I've had a bunch of issues like this with the App Store app. sometimes I don't get the update button for apps, or no keyboard, etc. Restarting the app afresh sorts it out.

A total phone restart should also work.


How to contact Apple Support? I had a Apple developer program account. I was the company owner, and I had a user account. I lost control of it a couple of years back, when Apple got broken into and suffered one of their data breaches. I lost control because of all the password resets, new challenge questions, and tools like Xcode logging in with old credentials.

The company is out of business and I abandoned the account due to all the problems caused by Apple corporate. However, when I log in with my email address, its still attached to the non-existent company under the abandoned account. I'd like to contact Apple support and have my email address separated or disgorged from the company and the abandoned account.

Trying to find a support contact is a labyrinth of rabbit wholes that lead nowhere. I visit the website (both Apple and the Developer), go to Support, try a Contact Us link, follow it for a while, and then I realize I've been punk'd because there is no way to contact them following the path I went down. For example, I start at Apple's How To Contact Us traverse through Manage your Apple ID and it ends in a dead end.

Question: How do I contact Apple support to have the email address separated from the non-existent company and abandoned developer account?

-----

My apologies for asking this question. One would think this would be a relatively easy endeavor, but its not. I'm fairly certain Apple is actively trying to keep folks from contacting them.

I challenge anyone to start at Apple's How To Contact Us, and traverse through Manage your Apple ID, and actually end in a way to really contact Apple by email (preferred). The case of Heinekens is on me for the first winner. I will ship it anywhere in the world. You just have to agree that I can use your name so others know I was good to my word.

How do I contact Apple support to have the email address
  separated from the non-existent company and abandoned
  developer account?

devprograms@apple.com


Image size above 1536px for iBookstore? I'm putting together a picture book in iBooks Author.

The images for each page are around 3500px by 3500px.

I'm uploading them as square images, and just leaving a margin on each side of the images.

As I understand, the maximum image size on the short side of an ipad is 1536px.

I can reduce my image sizes to 1536px.

But I'd prefer to keep them bigger so any future ipads with finer resolution, are accounted for. I'd drag the images to the pages in the iBooks Author document and then use the handle-drag things to fit them to the screen size.

But if for users it will increase the download time / make my book run slower, then I'll reduce the images to 1536px.

Or if there's another reason to reduce them, then I will.

Is there reason to make the images 1536px and not bigger?

The main disadvantage is the current iPad will not be able to show the whole image with the high resolution as it was intended to be seen. Unless you were able to make the images a kind of "downloadable content" to view on a computer monitor.

It would increase the download time of the iBook, but that also depends on how many images are in the book and what the overall finished and compiled file size is going to be.

I personally have downloaded books that were 1GB directly to my iPad via wifi, but that is because I have fibre optic connection. Also I wanted that book!

It comes down to what do you think people would want to go through to get your book. Trial and error. There is no "correct" answer for your question. Only advise.


How to put music on someone else's device without erasing their data? I have a friend who wants me to put my music from my iTunes onto her iPad.

The problem is her iPad has not been backed up onto another computer, so when I plug it in it asks to set up as new iPad or restore from settings or something like that.

How can I do it that her apps and data won't get erased, because she has very important work on there?

It is fine if her music gets deleted but nothing else. Is there a way I can put music onto her iPad without erasing data?

You can transfer files to her computer via an external hard drive, from there she can import them into her iTunes, then onto her iPad. She should really back it up though.


What is the Best App to Create Gifs? I have photoshop CC but it feels a bit limited.  If I want to turn a video into a gif I can, or if I want to move things around I can but what is used to create flash type effects? like bending lines or if I wanted to create animated characters what are some apps I can check out?

Check out Hype. It doesn't do GIFs, it does HTML5 animation. But it will give you a Flash-like timeline to create vector animations that are cross-browser compatible.


Software recommendations for projector titles/slides and simple visual effects at an event I'm looking for recommendations for software to use to run companion slides and visual effects on a projector screen at a public event.

Ideally, I'd like something that can:

Show titles/slides full-screen on an externally connected display
Show movies full-screen on demand
Show specific images on demand (i.e. 'go to John Doe's introductory slide', which I don't think a presentation tool like Keynote could achieve given its reliance on slide order)
Show simple visually interesting animated graphics - something to leave running while people are finding their seats.
Preferably be free or relatively cheap.

I considered Processing, but it seems a bit heavyweight for my needs. Keynote and PowerPoint are probably insufficient, given that I will need to jump around my different items quite a bit if the event order changes, and I can't really exit the presentation and click on a different slide while the event's running.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations.

You can do this in either Keynote or Powerpoint by building a simple menu system in a master slide. Simplest is to build a menu slide that will hold all the content you want to target and jump to. Then make a link back to this main menu slide on the master of all your slides. You can make it visible or quite small. Your choice.

In Keynote the main menu slide is done via Insert > Text Hyperlink.
In Powerpoint you have far greater capability with macros, but can easily jump to a slide in the same way.

I believe macros can be linked to text or graphics (button) where with Keynote, it's a text link.


How to register an AppleScript as a potential default web browser? I've written an AppleScript that I want to set as the default browser.

I've added a CFBundleDocumentTypes section to the p-list (copied from Safari) and rebuilt the launch services database, but that didn't work.

The script doesn't show up in the Safari default browser list. If I choose it manually in that preferences dialog, it's ignored, and Safari becomes the default browser.

Have you tried adding the CFBundleURLTypes and the sub-key LSIsAppleDefaultForScheme?

<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>CFBundleURLName</key>
        <string>Web site URL</string>
        <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
        <array>
            <string>http</string>
            <string>https</string>
        </array>
        <key>LSIsAppleDefaultForScheme</key>
        <true/>
    </dict>
</array>

Not sure that it will help, but I have noticed these keys in the info.plist of all the apps that I have checked that show up in that browser list.


How can I connect a cassette player to my Macbook (Mid 2015) to record cassette tapes on my mac? I tried connecting the two headphone jacks to each other but the Mac is not recognizing this as an input source. I also have a cord to connect the headphone jack on the cassette player to a USB but the Mac isn't recognizing that either.
What is the proper way to go about this? I know nothing about cords and inputs/outputs. I want to somehow feed the audio from the cassette to the Mac to eventually be able to digitize the audio on the cassette tapes.
Thank you!

You can try this device, or something similar. It connects to the USB port on your Mac. The app Audacity will digitize the audio. I've used this device from Behringer for this exact purpose.


Cannot recover space after deleting Windows partition in bootcamp First I used Disk Utility to create a 100GB partition for sharing data between OSes, I then used Bootcamp Assistant to create a Windows partition to install Windows.
Later, when I removed the Windows partition again through Bootcamp assistant, it hasn't restored the space back to my original Hard disk.
Below is how my disks appears on Disk Utility, I'm not sure what is going on with it.
Does anyone know how I can recover the space?

Your disk has an APFS container, followed by a ‘Microsoft Basic Data’ partition called ‘datashare’, then free space. You can't join non-contiguous partitions.
Either delete the partition named 'datashare', or create a new separate partition in the free space.
You can perform these operations by choosing Partition from the toolbar in Disk Utility.


Why can't Safari display this emoji when I am logged in? http://www.halfapp.co uses the  emoji.

In Safari on macOS I see a question mark in a square. See screen.
I also have this issue in emoji used on my Instagram profile.

Also, in the web inspector, I see the emoji.
And if I use Look Up, the emoji is shown.
Logging in as a guest user I see the emoji.

No duplicate fonts, no fonts with errors.
Apple Color Emoji is where it should be.

And the emoji is displaying just fine in this post!

Permissions have been repaired and re-checked, but I can check something specific if that would help.

If I remove "-apple-system" from the CSS font definition the emoji appear (and of course the font changes).

Any ideas?

macOS 10.13, Safari 11.0 (13604.1.38.1.6)

The problem is that auto activation of fonts had been disabled. FontExplorer X Pro was the culprit.

Safari seems to need auto activation to be able to display emoji correctly.

The solution is to manually re-enable auto activation. In Terminal:

atsutil autoactivation -e

Credit: https://discussions.apple.com/message/32553150#message32553150


Installing OpenMP-enabled XGBoost I have scoured the web trying to figure out how to install XGboost. A simple pip or conda install does not work, even though it worked for many of my colleagues. I went to the installation guide which directed me to run the following to install gcc:

brew install gcc --without-multilib

To confirm I already have it installed I tried again and received the following message:

Warning: gcc-7.1.0 already installed

So I should be good there.
Then I clone the repository with:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/dmlc/xgboost

and then run the following:

cd xgboost; cp make/config.mk ./config.mk; make -j4

and run in to the following errors:

  c++ -std=c++11 -Wall -Wno-unknown-pragmas -Iinclude   -Idmlc-core/include -Irabit/include -O3 -funroll-loops -msse2 -fPIC -fopenmp -MM -MT build/learner.o src/learner.cc >build/learner.d
  c++ -std=c++11 -Wall -Wno-unknown-pragmas -Iinclude   -Idmlc-core/include -Irabit/include -O3 -funroll-loops -msse2 -fPIC -fopenmp -MM -MT build/logging.o src/logging.cc >build/logging.d
  c++ -std=c++11 -Wall -Wno-unknown-pragmas -Iinclude   -Idmlc-core/include -Irabit/include -O3 -funroll-loops -msse2 -fPIC -fopenmp -MM -MT build/c_api/c_api.o src/c_api/c_api.cc >build/c_api/c_api.d
  c++ -std=c++11 -Wall -Wno-unknown-pragmas -Iinclude   -Idmlc-core/include -Irabit/include -O3 -funroll-loops -msse2 -fPIC -fopenmp -MM -MT build/c_api/c_api_error.o src/c_api/c_api_error.cc >build/c_api/c_api_error.d
  clangclang: : errorerror: : unsupported option '-fopenmp'unsupported option '-fopenmp'

  clang: error: unsupported option '-fopenmp'
  clang: error: unsupported option '-fopenmp'
  make: * [build/c_api/c_api_error.o] Error 1
  make:  Waiting for unfinished jobs....
  make:  [build/logging.o] Error 1
  make: * [build/learner.o] Error 1
  make: *** [build/c_api/c_api.o] Error 1

I can't make sense of what the issue is, but really need XGboost to run through Python on my computer!

installation guide:
http://xgboost.readthedocs.io/en/latest/build.html

system version: macOS Sierra Version 10.12.4

I know this is old, but I had the exact same error as you and here is what I did to solve it.  I edited the first few lines of the config.mk file yopu are copying to be

export CC = gcc-7
export CXX = g++-7

because you are using gcc 7.1

Then you can finish making and building as you can find in many tutorials (e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39315156/how-to-install-xgboost-in-python-on-macos)


How can I disable search suggestions for Safari 6? I have a lot of bookmarks, and I'm used to navigating by typing in the first few letters of each bookmark and using the arrow keys to select the correct one. In Safari 6, however, only the first two results are bookmarks, then there are around 7 search suggestions, and then the rest of my bookmarks. Is there any way to disable these search suggestions?

In the Privacy tab of Safari preferences, check the box to Prevent search engine from providing suggestions.


How to open a network drive on MacOS? On Windows if I want to open the internal bugzilla file server I just used to run (Windows+R ) //engweb.eng.company.com/bugs/files/ and it would open up the files on the Windows explorer.

How do I achieve something similar on Mac?

Things I have tried:

Cmd+k, Connect to file server but it just keeps waiting and then times out. I have no idea whether smb is the right protocol that should be used.
Use open from the terminal, again not sure about the protocol.

Note: New MacOS user

Try to ping the website as an example
 ping engweb.eng.company.com,
and get the IP of it.

Then from "Connect to Server", put the network path as IP/bugs/files , and try to connect it as smb://IP/bugs/files .

It could be an FTP network path so, worth to try ftp://IP/bugs/files, also you can try with cifs://IP.bugs/files if the above-mentioned option didn't work.


Make one MacBook Pro use the screen of another MacBook Pro I have two MacBook Pros: a 2011 17 inch  and a 2017 15 inch; both have the latest macOS installed.

Does anyone know if it is possible to make the 15" MBP  use the 17" MBP as an external monitor?

You can't physically connect the display of another MacBook (or any other laptop for that matter) to use it as an external monitor.

However, there is an app called AirDisplay that will turn any display into an external monitor via WiFi (or wired network if you prefer).

  Wirelessly connect to an iPad or Android device from your laptop to
  create the ultimate road-warrior workstation. Or repurpose any nearby
  Mac or Windows PC to give yourself more screen real estate for your
  main Mac.

It's a pretty good piece of kit, but (IMO) it's better to just purchase an external monitor that meets your needs; it's much more stable, reliable, and better performing.


Running an OS off an external drive I'm looking to do away with my Boot Camp partition. Now I've bought a 2 TB external drive, and I was wondering if it's possible to either install a Boot Camp partition onto the external drive, or failing that, how much of a performance drop I'll see if I install a VM via Parallels Desktop onto the external drive.

It's a USB 3 external drive.

My Mac is a MacBook Pro late '13, 2.4 GHz Intel i5, 8 GB of DDR3 RAM

It seems to be possible to install Windows 7/8 to an external drive but a lot of work is necessary to overcome Boot Camp/Windows 7/8 restrictions.

The following guide is shamelessly stolen at bleeptobleep.blogspot.de.
All credits go to the the respective  persons/groups of persons.

To keep the formatting and improve readability i didn't choose the quote tags.

Mac: Install Windows 7 or 8 on an external USB3 or Thunderbolt drive without using bootcamp

Introduction

After I received my new iMac with a 3 TB Fusion Drive, I was disappointed when I realized that Bootcamp was not running on this model and prevented me from installing Windows on it. I wanted to take advantage of the powerful iMac hardware to play games but I couldn't.
There are a few ways of working around this limitation, but I found most of them quite complex and most of the time they required formatting the internal hard drive or repartitioning it and go for a brand new installation of Mac OS X. I was not comfortable with that.
But there is another way, and that is to install Windows on an external hard drive, using either USB or Thunderbolt. Personally I used a Lacie Rugged 1 TB drive that has both USB3 and Thunderbolt connectors. Both work very well.

This guide may interest you if:

You have an internal hard drive of more than 2TB and you can't run bootcamp at all (like late 2012 iMacs with a 3TB drive)
You have limited space or you don't want to dedicate disk space on your internal hard disk drive to a Windows installation

What this guide will make you do:

It will make you erase all your data from your external USB3/Thunderbolt hard drive
It will make you install Windows on your external USB3/Thunderbolt hard drive
It will make you install bootcamp drivers

What this will not make you do:

It will not make you modify anything on your internal Mac hard drive
It will not make you use or install the bootcamp assistant
It will not activate the Preference Pane for the default boot drive. You have to boot by pressing the ALT key to manually select your boot drive each time you want to boot Windows.

What you'll need

An external hard drive with a USB3 and/or Thunderbolt connector. This drive will be formatted so ensure you saved your files before going further. You can use either an SSD drive or a classic hard drive.
A Windows 7 or 8 install DVD or ISO (check whether to install 32 or 64 bits versions based on your Bootcamp drivers) and the corresponding Windows serial number.
One of the following:

Mac OS X with a Windows 7 or 8 Virtual Machine (use VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop for example. Note: VMWare Fusion seems to have some issues with Thunderbolt and USB3. Plug your drive to a USB2 enclosure or hub to work around this -it worked for me-, or use another VM software) → Read the important note below
A PC running Windows 7 or 8 → Read the important note below

Windows AIK (free) running on your Virtual Machine or on your PC, or just the imagex.exe file (the rest of the Windows AIK package is not needed)

Download imagex.exe
Download Windows AIK 7 or Windows AIK 8 (this download and installation is not required if you have already downloaded imagex.exe)

Bootcamp drivers for your Mac. You can get these either by running bootcamp from your Mac (Applications > Utilities > Bootcamp) or, if like me you have a 3TB drive and can't run bootcamp at all, use the direct download links here.
A USB stick to store your bootcamp drivers

IMPORTANT: If your Mac has a 64 bits processor, your Windows Virtual Machine on OSX, your Windows installation on your PC and your Windows DVD/ISO must also be in 64 bits!

Step by Step guide

Step 1: Get the install.wim file

If you have a Windows ISO file:

Mount the ISO

If you're on OS X: double click on the ISO file
If you're on on Windows 7: Use a software like Virtual Clone Drive (free)
If you're on Windows 8: double click on the ISO file

Open the mounted drive, then go to the "sources" folder and locate the "install.wim" file. Save this file to C:\wim\ on your Windows installation or virtual machine.

If you have a Windows DVD: open the "sources" folder on the DVD and locate the "install.wim" file. Save this file to C:\wim\ on your Windows installation or virtual machine.

IMPORTANT: If instead of a "install.wim" file, you have "install.esd", you can not continue this step by step guide. And an ESD file can not be converted into a WIM file. So you must get a version of the Windows installation DVD/ISO that has an install.wim file.

Step 2: Clean, partition and format your external hard drive

On your Windows installation or virtual machine, plug in your external hard drive (can be plugged using USB2, USB3 or Thunderbolt at this stage)
Open the command prompt in administrator mode (cmd.exe). To run it in administrator mode, right click on cmd.exe > Run as admin.
Type the following and hit enter to open the disk partitioner utility:
diskpart
Type the following and hit enter to list your drives:
list disk
This will display a list of disks mounted on your computer or virtual machine. Make sure your drive is listed here before you continue.
Identify the disk ID of your external hard drive. Replace # by your real external disk ID in the command below:
select disk #
Clean all partitions by typing the following (warning: this will erase all data from your external drive!):
clean
Type the following to use MBR as partitioning format:
convert mbr
Create the boot partition by typing the following followed by the enter key:
create partition primary size=350
This will create a 350MB partition on your external drive
Format the partition in FAT32 by typing the following:
format fs=fat32 quick
Set this partition to active by typing:
active
Assign a letter to mount this partition. We will use letter B in our example. If B is already used on your PC, replace B by any other available letter:
assign letter=b
Windows will detect a new drive and probably display a pop-up. Ignore that.
Create the Windows installation partition using all the remaining space available on the external drive by typing the following:
create partition primary
Format the new partition in NTFS:
format fs=ntfs quick
Assign a letter to mount this partition. We will use letter O in our example. If O is already used on your PC, replace O by any other available letter:
assign letter=o
Windows will detect a new drive and probably display a pop-up. Ignore that.
Exit the disk partitioner utility by typing:
exit

Step 3: Deploy the Windows installation image

Still using the command prompt in admin mode (you didn't close it, did you? ;) ), locate the imagex.exe file mentioned in the "What you'll need" section and access its folder. In our example, we have put this file in C:\imagex\imagex.exe
Your Windows installation ISO has probably several installation options in it. So in order to identify the right one, type in the following:
imagex.exe /info C:\wim\install.wim
Now identify the INDEX number of the installation that you wish to deploy. You will use it in the next step.
Type the following and hit enter. Replace 1 with the INDEX you identified in the previous step. Also remember to replace o: with the letter you have chosen in the previous step:
imagex.exe /apply C:\wim\install.wim 1 o:
This will take some time. The Windows installation image is being deployed to your external drive
Once done, type the following to create the boot section (remember to replace o: and b: with the letters you've chosen in the previous step):
o:\windows\system32\bcdboot o:\windows /f ALL /s b:

If you get an error message saying that you can't run this program on your PC, then most probably you are running on a 32 bits installation of windows and you're trying to deploy a 64 bits install. This means you did not read the important notes in the beginning of this guide ;)
If you get an error message on the options that can be used with the BCDBOOT command, then it's because you're installing Windows 7, and the /f option is not supported. If that is the case, remove /f ALL from the command and retry.

Step 4: Boot from your external drive and install Windows

Plug in your external drive:

If you've done all the previous steps from a Windows PC, unplug your external drive from your PC and plug it to your Mac, either on a USB3 or a Thunderbolt port.
If you've done all the previous steps from your Mac using a Virtual Machine, ensure the external drive is plugged in to a USB3 or Thunderbolt port. Using USB2 should also work but you'll get very poor performance so I don't recommend doing that.

Reboot your Mac and once the bootup sound is over, immediately press the ALT (option) key and release it only when the boot drives selection screen appears. If you did not get the boot drives selection screen, reboot and try again. The timing to press the ALT (option) key is quite short. It must not be too early or too late.
On the boot selection screen, choose "Windows" using the arrow keys on your keyboard, then press enter.
The Windows installation starts. Follow the on-screen instructions as normal. The installation program will restart your computer one or 2 times. Don't forget to press ALT (option) right after the bootup sound, and boot on Windows again each time to continue the installation.

Step 5: Install bootcamp drivers

Once the Windows installation is complete, plug in the USB stick where you stored the bootcamp drivers (see "what you'll need" section), open it and right click on "setup.exe" and select "Run as admin". Follow the on-screen instructions.

If you have an error saying that you can't run this program on this PC, obviously you have installed a 32 bits version of Windows and the bootcamp drivers for your Mac are made for a 64 bits version. You have to restart the whole guide and make sure to get a 64 bits version of Windows this time!

Once the bootcamp drivers are all installed, reboot and press ALT (option) after the bootup sound to boot on Windows again. And Voilà, you have Windows installed on your USB3/Thunderbolt drive running on your Mac.
Now each time you want to boot on Windows, press and hold the ALT (option) key after the startup sound and select "Windows", then press Enter.

Credits, sources and big thank you to:

tweaks.com where I got the info on how to install Windows to go on a USB external drive
Chris F Caroll where I finally found where to download the bootcamp drivers without running bootcamp
Macrumors forums for the very helpful forum members

To answer your second question about performance drop:

I don't have a Boot Camp partition so i can't compare Windows Boot Camp to a Windows VM.
But i may give you a Mac <-> Mac VM comparison and single Windows 7/8 VM benchmarks:

Geekbench 3 Benchmark:

iMac14,2 3.5 GHz i7 4 cores 8 threads 32 GB 10.9.5: single-core score: 4009 multi-core score: 14951
iMac14,2 3.5 GHz i7 2 (virtual) cores 4 GB 10.9.5 Parallels VM single-core score: 3870 multi-core score: 7127

Windows Experience Index:

Windows 7 Parallels VM, 2 (virtual) cores, 4 GB (WEI: 1.0-7.9):

Processor:        7.3
RAM:              7.9
Graphics:         7.8
Gaming Graphics:  7.8
Prim. Hard Disk:  6.0

Windows 8.1 Parallels VM, 2 (virtual) cores, 8 GB (WEI: 1.0-9.9):

Processor:        7.5
RAM:              7.9
Graphics:         8.2
Gaming Graphics:  8.2
Prim. Hard Disk:  7.5


Menu bar app for plain text/markdown notes? I'm converting from Evernote to Dropbox/Markdown for my notes. And I really love the quick note capture menu bar applet for Evernote (image below).

Anyone know of something similar for plain text notes? Ideally it quickly stores the note as a .md file in ~/Dropbox/Notes. But .txt files can also work. This is on macOS Sierra.

I recommend NValt, a fork of Notational Velocity:

http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

It doesn't work in the menubar, but you can configure a shortcut to show/hide the NV window if you want. It's also got a built in search, kind of like spotlight, which you can use to open notes quickly. Here's a screenshot:

By default it saves the files in a database, but you can also save the notes in a specified directory as plaintext, RTF or HTML files. Or you can synchronize it with Simplenote (but Dropbox will work just as well if you use files/db). Markdown support is not first class, but it works when you save as RTF or HTML.


Identify whether an icon represents a package or file There are some way to know, by the icon, if it's a package (like a .app) or a single file? I'm talking about some app or config that adds a flag in the icon, or something like that.

Control- or right-clicking a package in Finder will show the context menu item Show Package Contents.


How to enable "Click-to-play" in Google Chrome Version 43.0.2357.124 (64-bit)? I run Google Chrome Version 43.0.2357.124 (64-bit) on OS X Yosemite.

I want to enable Click to play option, mainly because I would like to lower the power usage of Google Chrome and Google Chrome Helper processes.

However, I cannot find it under Settings > Content settings > Plugins and it should be there according to Why does Google Chrome Helper spike my CPU? and many other webpages.

Question:

Has Google decided to removed this particular Click to play feature from Chrome or for e.g. it has moved to some other section of the Settings?

One way or another, is it possible to enable Click to play option for plugins?

Google Chrome Version 55.0.2883.95 (64-bit) on macOS Sierra 10.12.2

It looks like the solution for Chrome 43 doesn't work any longer as the Let me choose choose when to run plugin content option is no longer present in the settings.

At the moment you can:

Open Settings (you can do it by clicking  and then Settings or by clicking ⌘+,).
Click + Show advanced settings.
Enter the Content settings in the Privacy section.
Go to the Flash section and choose Block sites from running Flash.

More information here: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/142064?hl=en

Google Chrome Version 43.0.2357.124 (64-bit) on OS X Yosemite

Ok, so I've found it. It is not presented as Click to play any longer (it used to be in previous versions of Chrome and is still presented like this in Chromium).

If you want to turn this option on you've got to:

Open Settings (you can do it by clicking ☰ and then Settings or by clicking ⌘+,).
Click Show advanced settings....
Enter the Content settings in the Privacy section.
Enable Let me choose choose when to run plugin content in the Plugins section.

It seems quite obvious now, but I've been trying to find this for a few weeks by now, because it was called Click to play before.


How can I use Terminal to monitor a network interfaces total traffic in Mb I would like to use the terminal to monitor the network traffic on a given interface, with a view to providing alerts when certain cumulative totals have been exceeded.

The script needs to gain statistics from the point in which it is started, and there is no requirement to store values for future reference, or retain values over reboots etc.  I would like the output to be human readable, so values in Gb or Mb, not packets or bytes.

The intention is to be able to include this script in an Automator application that will run in the background, and open a dialogue box at set thresholds to alert me to when I nearing a download limit, allowing to choose to disconnect the modem etc.

I do not wish to download any tools or applications, and just wish to use the tools a standard installation provides for the terminal.  Getting data out of an application via applescript would be acceptable, but only if that application is also a standard tool, like activity monitor.

Sounds like nettop is what you're looking for.  Start it with the help parameter to see the options.

nettop -nc -m route seems to be the best overall traffic gauge but will need additional scripting to parse the output for you


Cannot install macOS Mojave on external spinning drive. Error: This Mac can only install macOS on APFS-formatted drives I am using the Install macOS Mojave.app installer on my Mac mini (2018) running Mojave 10.14.5 to install Mojave on a formatted external spinning disk laptop drive (a Toshiba model with case).

I successfully formatted the drive using Disk Utility app in the GUID format.

Now when running the Mojave installer, it refuses to install on the external drive saying:

  This Mac can only install macOS on APFS-formatted drives.

But I thought APFS was intended only for solid-state drives, not spinning drives. And there was no APFS option in Disk Utility that I could see.

➥ Is it now impossible to install and boot on an external spinning drive?

You are almost there. Check again in Disk Utility app.

Format

You will find APFS as an option in the Format pop-up menu.

Scheme

You make the same choice of GUID Partition in the other pop-up menu Scheme.


Open CSV File with Different Separator I'm currently using the default Numbers application to open my CSVs. My current use case involves a file that I had to use a different type of separator (|). Is there any way to change the separator? Right now when I open the file it just puts the entire row in one column.

In Numbers you can use any separator when importing csv tables.

On the format sidebar, in the table tab, look for adjust Import settings. Inside it you have delimited options where you can even use custom delimiters


Verifying my email address for AppleID: Where is the verification link? When setting up my AppleID I get a verification email but there doesn't seem to be a link to click on. There is a line that says "Verify now" but it's not a link. The only other thing on the page is a link to Apple that starts the process all over again.

Does anyone have a solution for this problem?

I got this fixed. I went to appleid.apple.com, clicked on "Manage your account", logged in, and then clicked on "Send verification email"; the email had a link in it.


Install Windows 10 on MacBook Pro 8.1 I want to install Windows 10 on a MacBook Pro 13" 2011. I don't nessearly need macOS installed on the machine. Win10 single boot would be fine.

I have a bootable WIN10 USB Installer. I tried to partition the drive via diskutil and the Win10 Installer disk tool. Everytime I get the message I can't install it on this partion.

Your Mac does not officially support Windows 10. However, this does not mean Windows 10 can not be installed on your model Mac. Here are some points to be aware of.

With the newer versions of macOS, you can download the Windows Support Software for your Mac by using the Boot Camp Assistant application. This may be the same as the Boot Camp Support Software 5.1.5621.
Make sure the Windows Support Software have beed copied to the Windows 10 installer flash drive before installing Windows 10.
You want to have first installed the latest version of High Sierra. This will insure you have the latest firmware updates. (Firmware updates are included in the latest versions of macOS.)
You would be better off installing Windows 10 to BIOS boot. Most likely the Windows Support Software for you model Mac was designed for BIOS booting and may not work properly if you install Windows to EFI boot.
The Windows Support Software for your Mac may contain a BootCamp.msi file that is to old to be used with the latest versions of Windows 10. See the question WDF VIOLATION Blue Screen after Upgrading Mac to Windows 10 May 2019 Update (1903) Edition.

If you do not want or need macOS installed on your Mac, then you can just have Windows 10 installed. However, you would be better off first installing Windows 10 for a dual boot with macOS. One possible procedure which might work with your Mac is given as the answer to the question How to install Windows 10 into a 2011 iMac without using the Boot Camp Assistant, an optical (DVD) drive or third party tools?. Once you have booted to a working Windows 10, you can use the Windows 10 flash drive installer to reinstall Windows 10. This time you will need to erase all partitions to remove macOS before installing.


Troubleshooting MacBook Air boot issues I have a late-2010 MacBook Air (11inch, 3,1), running Snow Leopard.  I hadn't run software update in a month or two, so I plugged it into the wall and ran software update last night.  Unfortunately, the update failed, giving the informative message "An error occurred."  Nothing happened for an hour or so after this, so I forced a restart.

Now the MBA won't boot up at all.  It hangs on the grey screen, with the little grey wheel spinning forever.  I was wondering what additional steps I should take before bringing it in to the apple store?  I've already:

Booted from the provided USB drive and repaired permissions.  Permissions repair finds lots of SUID issues it can't repair, but I guess I can ignore these.
Booted from the provided USB drive and run disk utility.  It runs without issues.
Re-installed Snow Leopard from the USB drive.
Re-set PRAM
Re-set the PMC
Ran the apple hardware test (the short one, not the long one) from the USB drive. Everything passed.

None of these procedures fixed the issue.  Ominously, when I try to boot in single user mode, this also fails.  It displays lots of errors messages, and never actually gets to a command prompt.

Have there been any recent firmware updates for the 3,1 macbook airs?  It doesn't seem to be a software problem, but I'm stumped, and any help is appreciated.

Thank you.

Edit: Here's what the screen looks like:

Edit 2: I did a "Safe Boot" and that appears to hang too.  Here's the last few lines of output:

fsck_hfs: Volume is journaled. No checking performed
fsck_hfs: Use the -f option to force checking
launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisory.plist
systemShutdown false
AppleMCP89TMS::powerGatingDown(0): Done

and nothing more for over an hour now.

If single user mode boot fails, the OS is broken on a fundamental level and since you already did the reinstallation of Snow Leopard the mac now should boot into safe mode or single user mode if it were working properly.

No matter how bad your user account or third party software was corrupted, a safe boot after a reinstallation of the OS should work. It's odd the installation didn't flag an error since i've almost never seen an install complete and not be able to get a safe boot/single user mode boot afterwards.

You did a great job of following the steps in Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup - I'm assuming you checked the peripherals, etc...

It's probably time to make a call to Apple for service, but if you care to try some more - here are two things I would do.

fire up disk utility and repartition the drive - make three partitions to see it can accept a new partition map, then make it back to one.
write zeroes to the entire drive

It's rare, but sometimes the drive needs to be really cleaned out and installing into the existing partition clearly didn't help you. Both of these make it almost impossible for even a professional to do data recovery if you don't have a backup - so use care before trying these.


How do I hide 'Hidden' files? I set hidden files to be shown with the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder showHiddenFiles TRUE
killall Finder

This worked as expected.  Then I tried to hide them again with the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder showHiddenFiles FALSE
killall Finder

This has worked in the past, but it doesn't seem to be working for me today.  All hidden files are still visible in Finder windows.  I tried a reboot and a disk permissions repair to no avail.  I'm not sure what else to try.  Anyone got any bright ideas?

Try:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles false

or with a lowercase f in finder, depending on the version of Mac OS X. And then:

killall Finder


Which models of iPhone 5 are compatible with CDMA in India? Can I use my CDMA sim in iPhone 5 ? I am using TATA INDICOM CDMA sim.

No.

iPhones only have GSM SIM slots.

The CDMA iPhone 5 can only use CDMA on the carrier which sold the phone. Those phones also have a GSM nanoSIM slot for use around the world.


How can I repair my music library after iTunes Cloud has made a Hash of it? Since turning on iTunes Cloud and Apple Music, I have noticed creeping corruption in my iTunes library. There are songs which exist, but only as items which are NOT available offline, and NOT available ONLINE.  They are gray, and when I click on the cloud download icon they do not download from iCloud.

I suspect I must use Time Machine to retrieve a copy of my iTunes library that has not been munched up by the fine engineers at Apple and turned into a worthless pile of bits.  Before I despair, and go back into backups, is there any way to repair this?

Here is a screen-shot example:

First turn iTunes Match and iTunes Cloud off. If you have not added a lot of music you can't stand adding back manually, you can just go to ~/Music/iTunes and rename one of the Previous iTunes Library files to "iTunes Library.itl"and move it back up to the iTunes folder, leaving out the quotes. See the screenshot of my folder; the closer the file's date is to the date of the current file, the less adding back of music you will have to do. This does not add the music just the 'music  library stats'.


When and by who was a password changed I have created a specific account on my Mac (called skype) to use with risky software, Skype. This account is a standard account.

Since I didn't want to use this account very often, I saved its password in an encrypted file and I am fully sure of the password.

Today I can't login on this account. Once I type the password for the skype account in the login window, the password area is shaking which should mean "wrong password". I checked that the usual suspects aren't playing here:

the doomed caps lock isn't involved,
by pressing ⌘+space I checked that the mapping of my keyboard is the one I want,
I used /usr/bin/su skype to check its password and it is rejected.

The conclusion is clear: the password of the skype account was changed, or is failing after a MacOS X upgrade.

I didn't changed it
I am the sole administrator of this Mac.
There isn't even a guest account set.

I would like to find what might have happened to block this account.

1st step of investigation:

how to find when an account password was last changed?
how to find through which method it was changed, either with the graphical interface of System Preferences... or with the passwd command, or through none of these and with the use of a security vulnerability?

The Mac where this incident happened is running High Sierra 10.13.5.

You can get the last time a password was changed by using dscl:

$ dscl . read /Users/<username> | grep passwordLastSetTime -A1

You will then get a result similar to the result below; the time will be in epoch (Unix) time.

<key>passwordLastSetTime</key>
<real>1489446910.113889</real>

Then, to convert epoch to something useful, you need to drop the mantissa (fractional part) since epoch is measured in nano seconds (useless for our purposes here)

$ date -r 1545267484
Wed Dec 19 19:58:04 EST 2018


OSX App Store updates with multiple users My mac has several users. If I want to "update" an app, it says only the original user can do the update. But I don't have access to his account!

How can I either:

Update apps from another user
Download my OWN apps instead

Applications downloaded from the App Store are available to all local users, there is no way (and also no real reason) to buy and download the same application twice. For updates you must be logged into the Store with the Apple ID used for the initial purchase.

In the situation described in the question the asker can

log into the Store with the "other" Apple ID to get the download
ask whoever purchased the application to log into his/her account and get the update


View the current clock Speed of a CPU in OS X? Does anyone know of a utility to see the current speed of the processor?

To be clear, I'm not looking for the model/speed of the CPU, but rather what the CPU is currently clocked at (i.e. it will reduce speed if it overheats).

There is a tool that does that called Intel® Power Gadget.

It will show the current load and Frequency

And Version 3.5.3 on macOS (latest is 3.5.5):


How to make Macbook Pro recognise gigabit speed of ethernet adapter dongle via USB-C connection? It works with up to 100mbps, and it shows in Network as "USB 10/100LAN", but I know it can do up to 1000mbps, but when trying to add + a new interface, the "USB 10/100/1000 LAN" does not appear as an option. The rest of the dongle works. Ethernet adapter works up to that speed.
How can I make the Mac recognise the full speed of the dongle, namely connect under a "USB 10/100/1000 LAN" connection and actually run full speed?
It says in the box 1000mbps.

I had another adapter, different model, that stopped working, that did show as "USB 10/100/1000 LAN", and did run close to 1000mbps in tests.

It reaches 1000mbps in other laptops and the seller has confirmed other clients, presumably using other laptops or OSs, don't have the problem.
It's a non-branded dongle. I have tried installing Realtek drivers but it didn't solve the problem.

Judging from your screenshots it seems like the LAN cable is not directly plugged into your Mac, instead:
LAN cable → USB 2.0 Hub→ 4-port USB 2.1 Hub → USB 3.1 MBP Controller
USB 2 spec does not allow for high speed data connection like 1GBit/s. As mentioned in the system report, the maximum speed is 480MBit/s. Therefore you can't establish a 1000MBit/s connection.
As long as you have one device in this connection tree that is not at least capable of USB 3.0 speeds, you will not get the faster 1GBit/s speed on your LAN connection.

Edit: There is another faster 4-port USB 3.1 Hub being mentioned in the system report. I think that since your dongle has so many ports, it also has two different controllers that are being recognized by the Mac and shown as separates Hubs, although they are one dongle.


How to compare 2 Pages documents? I worked for a long time on a Pages document: file.1.pages.

I didn't activate Edit > Track Changes.

I saved the modified Pages with a new name: file.2.pages.

Now I would like to check I didn't forget a key point or made any error
and review all the modifications I made.

How may I compare file.1.pages and file.2.pages?

This isn't a comparison I can deal with manually (too much text, too many small spelling fixes).

I can't use any Microsoft software. I can use any Unix command line.

Here is how to proceed. The receipe isn't as simple as I thought.

From Pages export files to plain text:

File > Export > Plain Text...

so as to get 2 files: file.1.txt, file.2.txt.
Open both files with vi and apply the following command:

:%s,⌃+V⌃+M,⌃+V⌃+M,g

this command contains twice the sequence control+V, control+M which is the way to enter the raw return character. The strange effect of this command is to replace any return character (0x0d) with a standard newline character (0x0a) everywhere (g = global). Then the 2 files are now splitted in different lines and it becomes useful to compare them with any Unix text tool.
Change the 2 files encoding:

:set fileencoding=utf-8

so as to encode them as text files (and not binary files as they were exported from Pages).
Save the two files and quit vi:

:wq
Run the standard diff command to compare the 2 text files:

diff file.1.txt file.2.txt


How to create smart playlists on iPhone? I have a problem: each time I create an album in a smartplaylist in iTunes and sync it with my iPhone, I have multiple items of the same album with different artists names.
I'm wondering how to create smartplaylists so that I can unify my albums.
Have you heard of Smartplaylists? Which app would you suggest me?

Either you have on your library same album and different artists or, most likely, you're creating some weird rules that generate that behavior, like other folks did. If that's the case, seems like you'd have to change + to ... in any rule that uses the plus sign. Granted, it is inconsistent behavior in this second case and it might get fixed in the future. And, who knows, there might be few other little bugs like this as well.


How to fix "Killed: 9" error in mac os? I've upgraded my OS to Sierra recently, in El Capitan I had some apps and they were working perfectly, but in Sierra they show me:

Killed: 9

I even execute them via sudo but they won't work.

Any idea?

Close the terminal window you're getting those errors in and open a new one.


Why doesn't spotlight return this file? I am on macOS High Sierra 10.13.3. I created a file with Python but when I search for its name inside Spotlight (or Finder), it's not there. When I os.getcwd() and manually follow its path, it is where it should be.

Why is this happening? What am I missing? Btw in order to manually find it, I turned on the hidden files visibility with (⇧⌘.⇧).

Edit: Assuming it has something to do with the fact it's inside hidden folders, is there a way to make Spotlight or Finder also return these files, or another way to search them by name (third party app maybe)?

Check out EasyFind (Freeware). It will search through all subfolders including hidden folders.


How to connect a pretty old hard drive to MacMini? I have a rather old iOmega external hard drive which I'd like to connect to a quite new Mac, but I always get confused by Apple plugs so I have no idea what type of cable do I need.

These are the connectivity options for the hard drive:

and these are for the Mac:

Any ideas what type of cable do I need for connecting these two?

You need an USB B to A cable.

USB B is the type of connector that fits your hard drive.
USB A is what you'd call "classic USB" and that fits your Mac.

Alternatively you can use an Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter and then a Firewire cable. This might offer higher speeds. But it's also the more expensive option.


Wifi doesn't work: interface not powered Since yesterday I don't see any wifi network after turning it on:

That's the error I get from the console.

Does it mean it is a hardware problem?

It's a Mavericks install (10.9.2), build 13C64 in a MBP 15-inch, Mid 2012.

Interestingly it does show Connected but the WiFi settings are wrong and the Network settings are wrong?

Anyway, lets bypass the GUI and use Terminal for some direct commands.

In Terminal type (to turn it on)

networksetup -setairportpower en0 on

Next type (to scan)

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport scan

Finally type (to connect)

networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 WIFI_SSID_I_WANT_TO_JOIN WIFI_PASSWORD


How to delay hibernation after sleep in Mac mini? When I press a power button on my Mac mini, it goes to sleep mode and when I press it again, it turns on very quickly. However, after a longer sleep, it hibernates. How can I make this delay longer?

I know that I have tu use pmset but I don't know how exactly. Should I change the standbydelay?

My current config:

Last login: Wed Oct 23 08:52:38 on ttys000
Mac-mini-Pawel:~ pmichna$ pmset -g
Active Profiles:
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
 standby              0
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 womp                 1
 autorestart          0
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 darkwakes            0
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            0
 sleep                0 (sleep prevented by mds, storeagent, storeagent, storeagent, storeagent, AddressBookSour, UserEventAgent)
 autopoweroffdelay    14400
 hibernatemode        0
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         10
 standbydelay         4200

I use OS X Mavericks.

Yes, you can increase the standbydelay value:

sudo pmset -a standbydelay 18000

The value is in seconds, so 18000 is 5 hours. sudo pmset -a standby 0 would disable standby mode completely.

See man pmset:

standby causes kernel power management to automatically hibernate a
machine after it has slept for a specified time period. This saves power
while asleep. This setting defaults to ON for supported hardware. The
setting standby will be visible in pmset -g if the feature is supported
on this machine.

standby only works if hibernation is turned on to hibernatemode 3 or 25.

standbydelay specifies the delay, in seconds, before writing the hiberna-
tion image to disk and powering off memory for Standby.

Standby mode is also documented in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392.


Wifi issues with multiple devices I have about 4 devices always using the internet on my home wifi network. Everything is fine and dandy until I start to do intensive bandwidth stuff like gaming and streaming movies. So I thought this was an issue with my internet speed so I upgraded to 100mbps down and 20mbps up but this hasn't improved the issue.

I have a 3 year old Linksys E4200 router. I've tried different DNS servers and i've looked for the optimal wifi frequency so that there's no interference with neighboring wifi. Because of the distance of my devices I cannot connect anything to ethernet.

Please help. My hulu keeps glitching and I can't use my laptop and xbox at the same time with out something slowing down.

One other thing is I have my xbox on DMZ would this cause any issues?

Thank you in advance for you time and help!

The 100/24 Mbps are actually good numbers.

The question is are those actually arriving at your computer.

One suggestion I would make is for you to switch to 5GHz router/Network.

That should eliminate lots of neighborhood interference.

5GHz also has much higher data transfer rate between your router and your computer.

On Mac the Transfer Rate is shown in the WiFi profile and it is the one key measure how fast is your connection to the router.

My Transmit Rates are 70 on a 2.4 GHz network and 250 on my 5 GHz network.

PS, try turning off the dual frequency on your Router.


Apple TV works with my iPhone but not with my PC on the same wireless network I have:

Windows 7 PC with latest version of iTunes connected to my network (wired). Windows Firewall is turned off.
Apple TV (2nd generation) connected to my network (wireless)
iPhone connected to my network (wireless)

I am able to AirPlay from my iPhone to the Apple TV, but it does not work from my PC.

In the Apple TV menu under Computers, I can see my computer's library but when I try to connect, it takes a while and then it fails. I don't see the Apple TV from iTunes on the PC. (I don't see the iPhone either under sharing but I don't know if it should show up there or not).

I don't think it's a router issue otherwise it wouldn't work with the iPhone either.

I have reinstalled iTunes on the PC and rebooted all devices (router, PC, Apple TV).

What do you think could be the problem?

This sounds like a home sharing issue to me. I would check that the Apple ID you have set in iTunes on your PC matches the ID you have configured for home sharing on the Apple TV and that the password is correct for both.


How to back up shsh blobs and APTicket in iOS 9.1 in order to be able to downgrade to it after update? Just got a new iPAD air 2, iOS 9.1. It says I should update it to iOS 9.3.1.
I might be interested to jailbreak it later on, so I'd like to preserve that option for me possible.

I hear jailbreak for 9.3.1 is not available yet, and on the other hand, apple stopped signing iOS 9.1 and it is impossible to install or downgrade to iOS 9.1. I want to know how I can back up the current state with iOS 9.1, and later after I updated the iOS, when ever I wanted I could restore to the iOS 9.1.

I know that I should backup shsh blobs using Tiny Umbrella. but I cannot find the official download file in their website.
Also I don't know how to backup APTicket.

Thanks

From your question, it seems you're mainly concerned with wanting to keep (or return to) iOS 9.1? If that's the case, then just don't update.

If, however, you're concerned with your data, such as contacts, text messages, photos, etc then updating to iOS 9.3.1 is not going to result in you losing any of this data.

If for some reason you've had to erase all data and start again with a newer version of iOS, then restoring data from a backup with an older iOS version works fine, so long as it is a backup from the same device.

So I guess what I'm saying is that as long as you have done a backup prior to updating iOS, then you will have no reason to ever go back to iOS 9.1. Even if you lost all your data, you'd be able to restore the data from your backup.

Also, I want to add there are a lot of reasons why you should update to the latest iOS version as Apple has recently resolved a number of serious (albeit rare) issues that could have bricked your device.

Hope this helps. Any questions, just ask.


What is "ss_conn_service " running on OS X? I'm using OS X El Capitan on iMac 21.5". As an experienced user, I follow activity monitor sometimes for security of my device. For 2-3 days,"ss_conn_service" is running on my device. I cannot determine what the process do. I suspect from a Galaxy Tab which I plugged to my device 2-3 days ago. Did you encountered with this process ?

Sample of the process obtained from Activity Monitor:

  Analysis of sampling ss_conn_service (pid 62) every 1 millisecond
  Process:         ss_conn_service [62] Path:
  /Library/LaunchAgents/ss_conn_service Load Address:    0x100000000
  Identifier:      ss_conn_service Version:         ??? Code Type:
  X86-64 Parent Process:  launchd [1]

  Date/Time:       2015-11-20 15:09:20.236 +0200 Launch Time:
  2015-11-20 10:30:28.221 +0200 OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.11.1
  (15B42) Report Version:  7 Analysis Tool:   /usr/bin/sample

Thanks.

I delete it from /Library/LaunchAgents. Now, everything is going well. I don't encountered any problem right now. Thanks for answers.


Ukelele not working on High Sierra I'm trying to switch to a Hungarian keyboard layout in High Sierra.

I downloaded Ukelele for this and got a custom layout which I installed and then selected in System Preferences.

Unfortunately this does not work nor selecting the "Appl" Hungarian QWERTY layout. They keys on my keyboard enter the same thing regardless of what I choose here, even with other languages.

Any ideas?

I'm on a MacBook Air

You should have no problem making Hungarian Qwerty work. Have you verified that the correct layout is showing in the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen when you are trying to type, like this:

To see the "flag" menu, you check the box for "Show Input Menu in Menu Bar" in system preferences/keyboard/input sources.

(Selecting something in system preferences/keyboard/input source does not accomplish anything other than show you a picture of the layout).

Ukelele is for making a custom keyboard layout.  Do you really need to do that for some reason?


How can I fix a weird WindowServer bug which only occurs on one machine? I've got an odd bug on one of my machines.  It only occurs on the one Mac so it's not a bug in the OS per-se, but it's very annoying and I can't work out how to fix it.

Basically panel windows which are not set to Hide on Deactivate (such as Mail's Activity Window) aren't properly hidden when I hide their parent application.  The window remains on-screen but cannot be interacted with.

See a demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9BPCYqpdKI

I suspect that WindowServer has become screwed-up somehow.

How can I restore WindowServer to sanity?  Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for any help.

I had to wait a while - but upgrading to Mountan Lion fixed this for me. (just in case anyone else had this issue - unlikely though it seems.)


How do I add a user and group with a specific ID This is the method in Linux:

groupadd -g 5000 vmail
useradd -g vmail -u 5000 vmail -d /var/mail

How is it done in OS X?

Found the answer that works from in a 4 year old post on this board.
This creates the user, and the group, with the specific gid.

dscl . -create /Users/vmail UniqueID 5000 PrimaryGroupID 5000 RealName "vmail"

It can be checked, because it runs silently, with the following. The command in my case gives the following output.

bash-3.2# dscl . -read /Users/vmail UniqueID
UniqueID: 5000 PrimaryGroupID 5000 RealName vmail
bash-3.2#

Ok, for some reason it doesn't actually add a the group - so you have to go into the GUI, System->preferences->Users/Groups and add the group, and set it's UID at the top, to 5000 - then it all works


iPhone stuck in Recovery Mode My phone has is displaying a symbol saying connect to iTunes, I have tried connecting to iTunes to fix this and it didn't work.

I've also tried to restore the iPhone but that also didn't work.

I have now disconnected my iPhone from the computer but the iTunes screen remains, what can I do to fix this?

It sounds like it is telling you to connect the phone to iTunes not that it is connected.  Why was the iPhone disabled?  Apple has a support article here with some suggestions on how to address this:

  On an iPhone 6s and earlier, iPad, or iPod touch: Press and hold both
  the Home and Top (or Side) buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you
  see the Apple logo.

  If you still see the Connect to iTunes screen after you restart, you
  need to reinstall iOS:

  Make sure that you're using the latest version of iTunes. Connect your
  device to your computer using the cable that came with your device.
  You should see this message: "There's a problem with the iPhone [your
  device name] that requires it to be updated or restored." Click Update
  (not Restore) to reinstall iOS and keep your personal data.

This will wipe you're iPhone completely so if there is any data on the phone that you need you should consider that first.

If the iPhone being disabled is iCloud related you will still need to enter the associated account credentials after restoring.


What is the gray circle Finder shows next to a file, that is not a tag? Today, I noticed a image I downloaded earlier (one of two) has a large gray circle at the right-hand edge of the Name column in Finder:

Note that the other image made at almost the same time doesn't have it.

This is not a tag. When adding the gray tag to the file, it looks like this, with a second small gray circle.

The large gray circle is something different. What is it?

This is macOS Sierra, 10.12.4, on a 2013 model Macbook Pro. Last night, when the image was made, neither had a gray circle.  It's appeared sometime in the last 24 hours.

Edit: the file is located in Downloads, and (edited from original) was actually a downloaded file from Chrome. I do not have iCloud sync enabled for files. The gray circle was not present last night or earlier today; in fact since I posted the question, the circle has disappeared, reappeared, and disappeared again - only for this file and no others.

Thanks for clarifying the question about the location and your OS.

In your case, the grey dot is a progress indicator for a downloaded file. It used to be a horizontal bar, filling up as the download progresses. Now it's a circle filling up clockwise.

Sometimes, the circle does not disappear, like in your case, indicating an incomplete download.

IMO, it is not directly an application problem, since I have seen this behaviour in Google Chrome as well as Opera and Safari. There was a report here on SE about this being a bug in Chrome (see here), but in the comments, you see other users had had it happened in other apps as well.

Since the file still opens, it seems to be a finder refresh problem for which there are several solutions.

The easiest would be to wait (not clear how long) for it to disappear (like in your case).
Try restarting the app with which you downloaded the file, in your case Google Chrome.
You could try forcing a refresh of the finder window by changing the directory, e.g. by moving up or downward a level or closing and reopening the finder window.
You could logout of your profile and login again (a bit too much IMO).
There is a similar problem with the finder dock and recommendations are to kill the dock via a terminal command (again look here on SE in the comments). You could do something similar with the finder, but I would not recommend it.

I hope it clarifies this problem a bit.


Change IAP Display Name Is there any way to change an In App Purchase display name after you've created the IAP?

I see the option to change other items, just not that... am I missing something?

Thanks!

This is referring to the Display Name in iTunes Connect when you add an IAP item.

Even though it looks like you can't, just double click Display Name to edit


Why is my Safari unable to open links from Google under VPN? Safari 8.0.2, OS X 10.10.1--Problem occurring in Mac Pro 2009 and MBP ret 2012.

Once I log into my employer's VPN, Safari has a quite unique problem:

if I go to Google, do a search and click on any result link, I get a "Safari Can't Open the Page" screen
if I do the exact same Google search on Firefox or Chrome (latest versions) they will load the linked page without any problems
if I type any web address in the Safari URL bar, it will load that page normally
if I click on a Safari bookmark that page loads normally

This appears to be a problem localized to Safari and how Google redirects a search result to the appropriate URL. This problem does not happen with Yahoo or Bing.

Has anyone seen this behavior or know how to troubleshoot?

Copy the URL that gives you trouble and paste it into the address bar. You said that pasting the URL directly works. Does it for that URL?

From there on you can try to reach that server by using the ping command in terminal. You can see if the DNS is properly resolved to an IP and also if any connections are blocked to that IP.

traceroute <host> might also give you a hint on what is going wrong.


How can I stop Finder from trying to 'pre-load' audio files? I have a lot of audio in my storage devices.

Finder for Mac OS X Snow Leopard tries to get a 'snapshot' of the audio whenever a folder is opened and this can take a while if there are lots of files. It seems to integrate iTunes with the Finder so that audio can be played directly from the Finder icon and not just in iTunes.

I don't want Finder to do this, I just want it to list the files with normal icons and then I can pick which to play. Normal listing happens almost instantly whereas audio pre-loading takes a while.

Any help?

View > Show View Options > uncheck Show Icon Preview

(If you're in List view or Icon view, click Use as Defaults to make it the default). Repeat for each view mode as necessary.

Hope this helps....