"iPad is disabled, connect to iTunes" Trying to turn on my kids' iPad which has been off for a few months.

Tried several of my 'usual' passcodes, but iPad became 'disabled' before I could try them all.

Now it's "iPad is disabled, connect to iTunes"

Connecting to iTunes via hold-home-and-plug-in-USB pops up iTunes with "Restore" or "Update".

Do NOT want to lose all data, there are probably photos on there that are not backed up.

Is there ANYTHING I can do?

I'm not even sure which version of iOS is on there, but it's 8.something...

If I could just get a few more attempts to enter PIN, I would figure it out eventually.

Can I jailbreak it in this condition? Somehow pull the data before Restoring/Updating?

HELP!

I heard that Jailbreaking it may work, it's probably your only option to salvage the data on the iPad. Normally, I would never even suggest Jailbreaking, but in this case, it's probably your only option. I've never done it and have no interest whatsoever in Jailbreaking, so I can't tell how to do it, what to use, or even if it will for sure work, but it's worth a try.


How can I download Snow Leopard? I am running a MacBook Pro on Mac OS X 10.5.8

I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion, but cannot download it as I do not have Snow Leopard.

I cannot find Snow Leopard to download. Where might I get this?

Snow Leopard was only officially available on DVD, so you would need to buy a copy of that before you can buy the Mountain Lion upgrade if you want to stick to the official upgrade path.

Apple still sells Snow Leopard media as well


Freeing up iPhone storage I'm trying to figure out how to free up phone storage space without losing all my pics. I have some loaded onto my laptop (Windows); don't know why they aren't all loading. I want to free up phone pic space but not lose all the pics.  Some have suggested turning off "upload my photo stream"...

I have the iOS 10, there is no longer a "stream", it is now "All Photos". But when I turn it to off position I get the prompt "turning off photo stream will delete all photo stream photos from your iPhone".  Will they be saved to the cloud or not?  Pretty confusing.

In iOS, they recently introduced an option to have all your photos saved to the cloud, and have low-quality photos remaining on your phone. If you go into Settings > Photos and select Optimize iPhone Storage, this will happen and a considerable amount of space will be freed.

Another alternative is by an app that you can download. Search for "battery doctor" on the app store. The icon is a green battery with a plug coming out with a silver border.

Here's where it gets weird:

Open the app
Wait for the spinning wheel to go away (located in the top menu bar, next to the WiFi indicator)
Double tap in the blank bottom area (above the bottom menu, but below the top header)
Quit the app via the app switcher
Open the app again, if it looks different, you're good. If not, go back to step 2.
Go to the bottom menu item labeled "Junk"
Clear your cached files.

As always, I recommend backing up before you do this. I was able to clean >1 GB this way, results may vary.


How to remove xattr com.apple.quarantine from all .webarchive files with that extended attribute? Spread across multiple file system I have numerous .webarchive files that were saved by OmniWeb. So for example:

sh-3.2$ ls -@ 2012-03-19.webarchive
2012-03-19.webarchive
sh-3.2$ ls -@l 2012-03-19.webarchive
-rw-r--r--@ 1 gjp22  staff  3722852 19 Mar  2012 2012-03-19.webarchive
    com.apple.quarantine         26
sh-3.2$ xattr -l 2012-03-19.webarchive
com.apple.quarantine: 0000;4f66fcc8;OmniWeb.app;

Those files are treated as from an unidentified developer. I can open each one with a Control-click but it's tedious.

So I'd like a command, probably involving find(1), to remove all such extended attributes.

find . -iname '*.webarchive' -print0 | xargs -0 xattr -d com.apple.quarantine

will remove (xattr -d) the com.apple.quarantine extended attribute
from all files with an extension of .webarchive (-iname '*.webarchive')
located in the current directory and its subdirectories (. -depth, where the -depth is implied)
going through xargs (-print0 | xargs -0) to avoid problems with filenames containing spaces and other special characters (a similiar goal can be accomplished with slightly reduced efficiency by using find . -iname '*.webarchive' -exec xattr -d '{}' \;).

Explanation of the efficiency difference:

Whenever the syntax allows for it such as in this case, xargs assembles one or more command lines such as xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/file1.webarchive /path/to/fileN.webarchive

while the in-my-opinion easier to remember find-only version repeats the command every time: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/file1.webarchive ; xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/fileN.webarchive


Performing unit conversions in Spotlight Is there a way to perform unit conversions from within Spotlight?  For example I want to convert 1 ft^3 to cm^3 in spotlight.

There isn't really any way to customize the Spotlight menu or add features to it.

I know it would be nicer to display the results inline, but it doesn't take that long to search with Google either:

There are some Alfred extensions that use Google's calculator API or Wolfram Alpha's API, but they display the results as notifications, so you can't copy them as text.


How can I check if leap year in AppleScript? The following code is to check if it's a leap year once the program detects the current month is February.

The "if" code seems quite redundant.

set MM to month of (current date) as number
if (MM = 2) then

    set YY to year of (current date)
    if (YY mod 400 = 0) then
        set Prefix to Gregorian_Leap
    else if (YY mod 100 = 0) then
        set Prefix to Gregorian_28
    else if (YY mod 4 = 0) then
        set Prefix to Gregorian_Leap
    else
        set Prefix to Gregorian_28
    end if

else if (MM = 4 or MM = 6 or MM = 9 or MM = 11) then
    set Prefix to Gregorian_30
else
    set Prefix to Gregorian_31
end if

An alternative approach would be to ask for the month of February 29. In a non-leap year, it should return 'March'.

month of date "2/29/2018"

This shows the approach but as pointed out in the comments, the above is automatically compiled into a long date.

To address this and to also provide flexibility as to the year, this will return ‘February’ in a leap year, and ‘March’ otherwise.

month of date ("2/29/" & (year of (current date) as text))

-> March

Incorporating the question code, it could look like this. I ordered it this way so as to bail out of the elses earlier for more months.

set g31 to {1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12}
set g30 to {4, 6, 9, 11}

set MM to month of (current date) as integer

if g31 contains MM then
    set Prefix to "Gregorian_31"
else
    if g30 contains MM then
        set Prefix to "Gregorian_30"
    else
        if month of date ("2/29/" & (year of (current date))) as integer = 2 then
            set Prefix to "Gregorian_Leap"
        else
            set Prefix to "Gregorian_28"
        end if
    end if
end if


Is there any part of OSX that gets a significant speed boost from Intel AES instructions? I've been comparing some specs between Mac Pro models, specifically with the jump from Harpertown (a.k.a. Core 2) to Gulftown/Westmere (a.k.a. Core i7).

While there were expected incremental performance increases across the board, the most significant jump benchmarked is for the AES instruction set that were introduced in the later generation; on the order of 24x faster. I've understood enough of it to gather that it is used for encryption and that things like BitLocker and SSH would see improvements, but it almost feels like those would go unnoticed in typical use.

My question is, is there any part of OSX that benefits from AES that results in noticeable performance improvements? Perhaps at a minimum would HTTPS connections in a web browser see an improvement? I know it is a bit of a stretch, but worth asking :-)

So... A bit of poking lead me to a simple conclusion: it's unlikely Apple will tell you where they use AES-NI instructions within Mac OS or the rest of their software, but they are definitely present and available.

Firstly, Intel talks a bit about AES-NI and where it is used. Some of the comments talk about its presence or lack there-of in the comments. Given that I have homebrew and wine installed on my Mac, I followed the interesting instructions here to test if the openssl dependency of wine is able to use AES:

$ openssl speed aes-256-c
...
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-256 cbc      69308.49k    74198.23k    75165.95k    74875.63k    76098.51k

$ openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc
...
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc     421057.71k   432531.16k   447445.08k   450021.03k   444866.56k

These numbers broadly agree with cyberciti's quote about 6x performance improvement using AES-NI.

Finally, we have some actual evidence in the SE community itself: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12634305/.

Apparently, Apple used to provide an API for Mac OS which would not allow direct use of AES-NI instructions. The work-around used to be using Intel's compiler or building gcc from source. It appears that since 4.6.3, this is no longer the case, and developers can make use of AES-NI if they so choose. The performance improvements are then a function of the developers, not the OS.


Sync Local Folder with NAS storage device I have a local folder Photos which keeps growing as I import pictures from the camera. The question: is it somehow possible to easily synchronise the folder with a NAS storage device?
I stumbled over this answer, but I wonder if it is also possible with the "onboard tools" of Mac OSX.

Actually I would not mind using the command line and kicking of the process manually

I would recommend that you look into using rsync. This is a very powerful and widely used backup tool that is included in OSX. You control it via the terminal, or via a script. Meaning that it can be scheduled to run backups at certain times or manually when you invoke it.

The prerequisite is that your NAS has an rsync server daemon running on it.

The beauty of rsync is that you can tell it to incrementally update files - that is, it will only upload files that are new, or have changed. (It can even upload the bits of existing files that have changed). It's very quick and efficient.

Check that your NAS supports rsync and then read into it, rsync is a large topic to cover here but I highly recommend it!

Typically, you'll run the command like this:

rsync [options] source destination

Check this page out for some good explanation and usage examples.


Can I add my own commands/scripts to the mail.app toolbar? Is there a way (or an add-on) that lets me customize the Mail.app toolbar beyond "View -> Customize Toolbar"? At a minimum, I want to add buttons that do "Move to <somefolder>".

I think you can use Mail Act-on for this, it provides Shortcuts for doing stuff with various mails. Not a Visual Shortcut, but a Keyboard one.

  Move messages by keystroke only Mail
  Act-On’s interface includes the
  ability to move or copy messages to
  any folders by keystroke, even if you
  don’t have an Act-On rule for a
  particular mailbox.

http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html

Hope it helps,

Karl


Can't update Boot Camp in Windows 7 (MacbookPro9,1) I've been looking for situations similar to these before posting, but failed to find any. When trying to install Windows 7 (64bit) through Boot Camp Assistant on Lion, the Windows Support Software download failed. Thus, I followed the instructions from this post and from this cafe-encounter.net page and downloaded the suitable package for my model (MacBookPro9,1). I then installed the package and all the drivers seem to be working properly. The problem is that now I can't install the 3.1 (and consequently the 3.2) Boot Camp updates available from Apple Downloads website.

When trying to run the update, an error message stops me from proceeding:

"The Boot Camp 3.1 Update requires Boot Camp 3.0 or greater. Please install Boot Camp 3.0 before proceeding with the install of the 3.1 Update."

I thought that maybe the Boot Camp version I just downloaded is the most recent one. But if that's the case, shouldn't the message be different? And if that's not it, then I'm out of ideas.

So my first guess was right, the WindowsSupport.dmg downloaded from the post's links installed Boot Camp 4.0.0.1. I just checked the details tab on the Bootcamp executable (Program Files\Boot Camp), didn't think of that before.

Nonetheless, I still believe the updates should be prepared to check for more recent versions and throw a different message.


Workflow for dealing with incoming files to keep the file system tidy? The cluttered desktops of our computers at home (Macs and PCs) made me think about a better workflow to deal with new files (self created or downloaded from the internet).

My question is:

Which workflow do you use to keep your desktop uncluttered and your file system tidy?

I have a hierarchical folder structure for the data of my personal "projects" and for some general things like e. g. finance, photos, etc., but there are lots of incoming files which do not seem to fit in any of the existing categories and therefore clutter the desktop.

I tried to create an "Inbox" directory, which removed clutter from the desktop but on the other hand only moved the problem to another place.

The GTD* method (getting things done, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done) has some useful tips and habits for managing tasks and I'm trying to use it, so it would make sense to create a "next action" on my list to "review file xy", or something similar. I could add a link to the file, but the question is where to store those files.
I tried creating a "temporary storage" directory where I put those files, but it filled very quickly.

* I'm currently using iGTD for managing my tasks and personal projects, but I'm considering buying Thingsor OmniFocus, as iGTD is not developed any more and has some [for me] annoying bugs and limitations.

So I would be interested in other ways to manage the electronic "information overload", maybe using tagsor a database like DevonThink Pro or ...?

You might look at Yojimbo from BareBones. File and information manager. Quite powerful. http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/


is it worth it to install SSD internally, instead of using USB3? I prefer to keep my boot drive external, so that I can quickly boot using another Mac if my primary Mac fails. I use a USB3 drive dock to connect the drive to my Macs.

I bought a 120GB SSD w/SATA3 (6.0Gbps) interface, capable of pushing >500MB/sec read and 260MB/sec writes, sustained.

USB 3.0 is pretty fast -- spec'ed at 5.0Gbps. I'm thinking that performance over USB 3.0 should be at least in the same ballpark as SATA3 (6.0Gbps). It's about an hour of risky, careful work to install the SSD internally in my Mac Mini, is it worth it?

YES, it's definitely worth it. With my setup, sustained transfer speeds were roughly 75% better using SATA, vs. USB3.

I tested both configurations using ZoneBench as follows:

SSD: 120GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G

Mac: Late 2012 Mac Mini, 2.6Ghz core i7, model ID Macmini6,2, 16GB RAM

Hot-Swap unit: StarTech USB3-to-SATA dock, model SATDOCK22U3S ver2

  All speeds are in MB/sec (mega-bytes per second)

  Configuration A: SSD connected via Hot-swap USB 3 Dock
  Lowest / Avg / Highest R/W speeds:  95 / 150 / 185

  Configuration B: SSD installed in internal HDD bay in 2012 Mini (direct SATA):
  Lowest / Avg / Highest R/W speeds: 145 / 250/ 460

All tests were repeated 5 times at intervals of 1 hour, under normal system usage. (A few apps open & idle, CPU & system I/O load 99% idle.)

As one can see, in this configuration, taking the trouble to mount the SDD in the Mini's internal SATA bay is well worth the massive performance gains.


How to review macOS 10.12 Server documentation without installing? I can't find any substantial documentation for macOS 10.12 Sierra Server with Google.

I've got a couple tutorials (which are entirely useless for my needs), a bunch of marketing info, but what I'm looking for are the PDFs that used to be shipped with every previous version. Or websites with the same thing would be fine. Even a gopher site would be fine.

I'm gathering that some of this is in the Mac Help after installation, but the thing is, I'm researching and brainstorming our migration checklists so we don't break anything. Would be awfully nice to know what I'm doing before I actually install anything.

(Crosspost from https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8070144 because I need this asap)

Apple does not bundle any PDFs with macOS 10.12 Sierra Server.

A standalone macOS 10.12 Sierra Server installer does not exist. Server.app is just an app which is downloaded from the Mac App Store.

The 'Help' Menu in Server.app has an entry called 'Server Help' which forwards to https://help.apple.com/serverapp/mac/5.3/index.html .

The macOS server requirements are available in the Server Help as well. The checklist Install macOS Server may be helpful as well.


What kind of performance can I expect from Mid 2015 Macbook pro connected to two external 4k displays -- I mostly do development? I have a Mid 2015 Macbook pro.
It is currently connected to two 1080p external monitors (I don't use the built in display).
I am thinking of upgrading to two 4k external monitors - I use my macbook pro as a big Terminal server for development - all the processing is done externally on the cloud or on a virtualization box I have sitting next to my macbook pro.
Question:
Can my macbook pro handle the 4k displays
I have noted a significant degradation in performance of late with all the Zoom and similar apps I have to use in this new world of virtual teams.
Detailes Specs

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)
2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache.
2.5GHz - 512GB Intel Iris Pro Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and automatic graphics switching

EveryMac.com reports that:

This model can support a single external display up to 5120x2160 at 60
Hz via Thunderbolt 2. Via HDMI video output, it can support 1080p up
to 60 Hz, 3840x2160 at 30 Hz, and 4096x2160 at 24 Hz.

So you could have one 4K via Thunderbolt and one 4K via HDMI.
Two 4K displays are at least within spec, but whether it can 'handle' them, in terms of heat generation/dissipation and performance load, while performing other tasks, remains to be seen. (Discrete GPUs on MacBook Pros have a chequered history in terms of reliability.)


How to deactivate all python ports I just started using enthought's canopy to manage my python packages; thus I want to disable and/or uninstall all of my macports python packages.  Nominally, I'd like to deactivate them first - make sure things still work - then uninstall and delete them.

I've tried doing:

sudo port deactivate py-*

but that returns the error:

Error: port deactivate failed: Image error: port py-abjad is not active.

I've tried to uninstall all inactive ports (sudo port uninstall inactive), but that didn't seem to resolve the issue.

Finally, if I try

sudo port deactivate active py-*

that just starts to deactivate everything...

edit:  e.g.

sudo port deactivate active py-*
--->  Deactivating py27-pygtk @2.24.0_1+x11
--->  Cleaning py27-pygtk
--->  Deactivating libglade2 @2.6.4_7
--->  Cleaning libglade2
--->  Deactivating gtk2 @2.24.22_0+x11
--->  Cleaning gtk2
--->  Deactivating atk @2.10.0_0
--->  Cleaning atk
--->  Deactivating autoconf @2.69_2
--->  Cleaning autoconf
--->  Deactivating automake @1.14_0
--->  Cleaning automake
--->  Deactivating bash @4.2.45_2
--->  Cleaning bash

sudo port deactivate py-* and active should do what you want. Note that py-* packages in MacPorts are usually just placeholders for the versioned ports, e.g. py27-*, so you might want to deactivate those, too.


Migrating to new user account: must chown old account's files... I think Is there a way to selectively chown the files/folders owned by a particular user, while leaving other files/folders untouched? I'm in the process of migrating to a fresh user account on my machine. I copied what I need from the old user's home directory and chowned it recursively, as described on an Apple support page. The support page makes no mention of chowning files/folders elsewhere on the machine, but I've found plenty of stuff in other locations that are owned by the old user:

/Applications (lots of stuff)
/Library (lots of stuff)
/private/var/tmp (a small lot)
/private/var/vm/app_profile/ (2 files)
/usr/local/clamXav/ (1 easily replaceable file)
/usr/local/lib/codec/ (4 files/folders)

I'm planning to delete the old user once I'm confident that everything is working, and I'm not sure what would happen if some critical files are owned by a deleted user. The old user was an admin account, if that matters. Oh, and I'm running OSX 10.4.11 on a PPC mac, if that matters.
Any help appreciated :)

You can check and re-assign ownership recursively over a directory tree with find, stat and chown.

#!/bin/bash

olduser=<oldusername> # replace this with your old username
newuser=<newusername> # replace this with your new username
dir=<dir> # replace this with the directory you want to run through

find $dir | while read filename
do
  owner=$(stat "$filename" | cut -d ' ' -f 5)
  if [ $owner == $olduser ]
  then
    chown $newuser $filename
  fi
done


How to change the Shift+Click hotkey in Safari? I want Shift + Click to open hyperlinks in a new window. The default Safari hotkeys are quite bad:

Shift + Click adds a hyperlink to the Reading List.
Command + Option + Shift + Click opens hyperlinks in a new window.

How do I customize these hotkeys? The usual Keyboard UI for customizing hotkeys doesn't appear to handle hotkeys involving mouse clicks.

If you disable "cmd-click opens a  link in a new tab" in Safari Settings (Tabs) then cmd-click becomes "Opens a link in a new window".


Can one create an iTerm / Terminal (MacOSX) Secure session? I use iTerm for doing things such as creating passwords by selecting random words from /usr/dict.  I prefix the commands with a space so they aren't saved in the shell history.  I discovered to my horror that iTerm2 keeps recent paste, commands and other history.  See Session > Open Paste / command / ....  Its all there in plain text sqlite db file.

I found that these are saved to ~/Library/Application\ Support/iTerm2/ and I simply deleted these files.  However this is not a very good solution since everything is deleted and has to be done every time.

My questions are - is this data saved anywhere else and is there a way to create secure sessions so this doesn't happen?

Ahhh, it seems that Terminal (MacOSX Default app) doesn't save such data anywhere (at least under ~/Library/Application\ Support/)?  So my answer is how to have secure sessions (generally).  But it doesn't answer if iTerm2 does this anywhere else nor how to create 'secure sessions' (one where the commands aren't saved) using it.

This is my answer though I welcome anything better.


Cannot remove the HomeSync Icon I hooked my MacBook up to an Apple server for testing and I created a mobile account on the unit. I've since decided to go back to just having a local account on the MacBook. The process I did was to the following:

Create a new Admin account on the MacBook.
Log into the Admin account.
Backup the home folder of the network account.
Delete the network account from System Preferences -> Users.
Create a new local account with the same name as the old network account.
Restore the backed up home folder.
Reset all permissions on the restored home folder (sudo chown …).
Logged into the newly created local account.

Now everything has been working fine on my system and I'm not having any permissions issues, or weird ghosts coming out of the closet except for one thing.
I cannot seem to be able to get rid of the HomeSync icon from my toolbar. I've pressed command ⌘ while dragging the icon off of the toolbar (disappears in a cloud of smoke), but when I log out and log back in, it's back.
How can I get rid of the HomeSync icon once and for all? I am trying this in lion

update
Updating to mountain-lion did not solve the issue.

It must have been a bug in the OS that was finally fixed. I just "ignored it" for, well, months... and upon looking at this question today, I decided to look up, and low-and-behold, it's gone.

After months of having to drag it off of the bar, it's now gone for good. Not sure when it left, but it's fixed.


Consistently slow and unreliable Wi-Fi everywhere I go. 2012 MBP I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro. (13-inch, 8gb memory.) I work remotely and spend a lot of time working from coffee shops and other places with public Wi-fi.

Lately - for a couple of months now - I've noticed that I'm getting far more problems with Wi-fi connectivity than normal. My wi-fi connection will drop, I'll be unable to connect ("A connection timeout occurred") or the connection will be hopelessly slow.

This is happening so often, on so many different networks, that I'm starting to think that the problem is with my laptop and not with the coffee shops.

How would I even begin diagnosing this problem? I have no idea. I downloaded an app called Little Snitch which displays information about what's using the Internet connection but I can't see anything unusual which might be clogging the bandwidth.

For what it's worth, here's the information about my Airport card from System Profiler:

Software Versions:
  CoreWLAN: 3.4 (340.18)
  CoreWLANKit:  2.0.2 (202.11)
  Menu Extra:   8.1 (810.11)
  configd plug-in:  8.5 (850.252)
  System Information:   8.3 (830.5)
  IO80211 Family:   5.3 (530.5)
  Diagnostics:  2.1 (210.25)
  AirPort Utility:  6.3.1 (631.4)
  Interfaces:
en1:
  Card Type:    AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0xF5)
  Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.17)
  MAC Address:  5c:96:9d:83:bd:5d
  Locale:   ETSI
  Country Code: FR
  Supported PHY Modes:  802.11 a/b/g/n
  Supported Channels:   1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 120, 124, 128, 132, 136, 140
  Wake On Wireless: Supported
  AirDrop:  Supported
  Status:   Connected

Since I wrote this post my Internet problems seem to have gotten a lot better. As far as I can remember, I only made two more changes. I can't say for sure which one of these helped, or if either them helped at all and maybe there was some other factor I'm forgetting, but they may be worth a try:

I changed my DNS settings to use Google's Public DNS. I can't remember what they were previously, but I definitely remember playing around with my DNS settings a few months ago so this may have been the culprit.
I changed the automatic MU settings, following the instructions on this page.

Hopefully someone will find one or both of these to be helpful!


Apple password verification showing weird characters I recently had to reload Yosemite on my Macbook Pro Retina (Mid 2014)
and after booting it up this morning and allowing a application to run, my password box looks like this.

Any help would be appreciated.

That looks like font corruption. I'd run the "standard toolkit"

Fix permissions, Verify & if necessary Repair disk, using Disk Utility.
Reset Home folder permissions & ACLs using OnyX  - Maintenance tab/permissions, tick the box at the top then Execute.
Update to [or re-apply if already up to date] 10.10.5 using the 10.10.5 combo update, not the delta from App Store.


Can't open files after changing username I use OS X Mavericks 10.9.4.

I changed my username and this may have caused that I am not able to open any files. I still can see my PDFs and photos in Preview! I get this:

  File XYZ couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it.

I have tried to run Repair Permissions in Disk Utility but that didn't help. I tried manually chmod files but didn't have a permission to do that.

The strangest thing is that I can see my photos in Preview but when I open them I get the error.

The files are not locked. The folder is not locked too and in permissions tab I can see my username "Lukas (Me)" as "Read Write" access.

Make sure that all the permissions are correct on your home folder.
You can use the ACL tool on the Recovery HD to do this:

Boot into the Recovery HD using ⌘R.
Run resetpassword in Terminal (available from Utilities → Terminal).
Select your account from the drop-down list.
Click the Reset button for Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs.


How can I combine text in multiple rows into one text block in numbers? I am attempting to automate a set of instructions that have variables. I can combine the text across the rows. But I need to then combine each of the final rows together for one simple text block that I can copy and paste into an email.
For example, the screen shot shows Name, Gallery Link which then combines together in Column C.
How can I create a cell that then collects together all of the rows in Column C?

I want it to look like this at the end.
Bob Bob Gallery Link: http://www.mckeephotography.com/gallery1
Doug Doug Gallery Link: http://www.mckeephotography.com/gallery2
Sue Sue Gallery Link: http://www.mckeephotography.com/gallery3
Sort of a sum of Column C but with text.

you can use the CONCATENATE fuction to combine multiple text strings into one. See the image below for an example:
.
The next image shows the result.


How to exchange two keys on the keyboard (El Capitan) I am currently using a German keyboard on El Capitan. I want to change the keymap for y and z. I have searched relevant information on Google, but the information which I have found so far is so old that I could not apply them.

I also tried to use the following .Xmodmap:

keycode  52 = z Z z Z leftarrow yen leftarrow
keycode  29 = y Y y Y guillemotright U203A guillemotright

But this does not work.

Use the (free) program Ukelele.

Create a new keyboard layout based on your current one (File -> New From Current Source).
On the graphical interface click on the key to which you want to assign a different value, then  provide the intended output:

Save the new layout as a .keylayout file to /Library/Keyboard Layouts*.

Log off, log on.
Open System Preferences and select the new layout in Input Sources -> + -> Others -> your_layout_name.

* You can also save the file in your user's Library folder instead of the system one, but then if you lock the machine (i.e. switch to the lock screen), the keyboard layout might change at each unlock.


imessage won't send or receive on my mac I am trying to link up with my wife at home (send IM). I am on a platform in Brazil and am hooked up to the platform network via an ethernet cable.

When I try to send to my wife's mac I get a red explanation mark saying the message was not sent, and I receive nothing from my wife.

Any ideas?  Does iMessage work with WiFi only or something?

There’s currently a bug with iMessage in iOS 7 that is preventing iMessages from being sent/received. If your wife is on iOS 7, she can try turning iMessage off, resetting her network settings under General ⇒ Resets, then turning iMessage back on. This has worked for some users. iOS 7.0.3 is expected to address this bug next week.


How do I count words in a PDF file on OS X? I'd like to count words on a PDF file on OS X. The inspector doesn't contain the word count.

Use the GhostScript tool ps2ascii,
$ ps2ascii MSWiM_2016.pdf | wc -w
*** Warning: composite font characters dumped without decoding.
    8964


What does macOS consider "enough space"? In iCloud preferences, there's an option called "Optimize Mac Storage" which says, "The full contents of iCloud Drive will be stored on this Mac if there's enough space."
Just what does "enough space" mean? At what point will the Mac start offloading things to iCloud?

It's based on the available storage space of your device.  iCloud is a syncing system which means it allows you access to your files from all devices signed-in with the same Apple ID.  When you change a file on your Mac, your iPhone will show you that changed file (after the change syncs, of course). You're not changing a copy of a file, you're changing the actual file. So files are kept on your computer and are stored in Apple's Cloud.
This is different than a system like Dropbox in that Dropbox keeps a copy of a file online.  You can have a 64GB iPhone and 1TB in Dropbox space, there's no correlation between the two.
Taking a sidetrack to understand iCloud better, a good explanation is provided by The Mac Observer:

iCloud syncs your data between your Apple devices. If you delete a file in iCloud on one device, it gets deleted on all your other devices. But that means if one device is infected with malware, and your files get messed up, they will be messed up on every iCloud-enabled Apple device.
iCloud Backup is a good start but it’s not a true backup either. This service does back up many things on your device, but it doesn’t back up data that is already in iCloud. Services like Contacts, calendars, Safari bookmarks, Apple Notes, and Messages in iCloud are not included in iCloud Backup. A true backup would back up everything.

So when you ask "At what point will the Mac start offloading things to iCloud?", the answer is that it always offloads some things to iCloud. You can fine-tune your storage needs vs speed in accessing files.
On your Mac when you select "Optimize Storage", it will move things like movies and TV shows that you've already watched from local iTunes storage to iCloud (freeing up some of your drive space).  You also have options to store other items, like email attachments, in iCloud.


Shutting down running apps in iOS I often have many apps running in the background. I have heard this can cause the battery to drain faster (especially location-aware apps) as well as generally slow the use of the device down.

Is there a fast and easy way to shut down all running apps in iOS?

You don't need to.

See
iOS Multitasking in Detail
and
iOS: Understanding multitasking

Basically, if you're using an app (you can see it on your screen) then you're app is running. When you press the home button and leave the app or switch to another app then the app is NOT running. It may be in one of a few other states (see first link) but it is not consuming any processing power or memory. There are very few situations where closing the app will save you any time or effort and it's best forgotten.


"Permission denied (publickey)" every time I try to push to git I've recently faced a problem: each time I try to push to git repository (in my case, Bitbucket), I get that error:

$ git push origin master
git@bitbucket.org: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

I've found a way to solve it by running these commands:

eval `ssh-agent`
ssh-add -l
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

If I'll do this and then try to git push origin master, it'll work. But the problem is, this issue starts to appear after some time (probably after reboot, I'm not sure what causes it to appear again). UPD: it's most likely not caused by rebooting, cause I've just faced it 10 minutes after executing the code above, and got the same error. I didn't reboot my laptop since then.

What can cause such a behaviour and how can I fix this?

I think this happen because when you generated your ssh key, you entered a passphrase for security. When you start the ssh-agent and add ssh/rsa_id it should as for the passphrase.

[root@user xxxxx]# eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
Agent pid 12082
[root@user xxxxx]# ssh-add /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa
Enter passphrase for /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa:
Identity added: /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa)

git push -u origin master
Counting objects: 94, done.


Is it safe to swap the "duckhead" connector from an old power supply to a new MagSafe 2? Working from home today and I just pulled my macbook pro out to realize that I left the "duckhead" part of my magsafe 2 power supply (85W) sitting on my desk when I left the office last night. I happen to have an old power supply from (I think) a PowerBook G4 (65W adapter) that has a similar design with a detachable "duckhead" piece. But I can see that the two power supplies are definitely not identical.

Is it safe to swap the "duckhead" from the old power supply onto the new magsafe 2, or do I need to head in to the office? The "duckhead" from the old supply seems to fit on the magsafe 2 adapter just fine, I just don't know if it is safe.

The duckhead is very simple and it's safe to swap.

When you buy Apple World Travel Adapter Kit, you get various connectors that work with their whole range of AC Adapters.  There are not different models.

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD837AM/A/apple-world-travel-adapter-kit


Is running two monitors off a 2017 MacBook Pro 13” too much for the computer to handle? So recently, after about a year of steady use, the onboard graphics on my 2017 MBP 13” failed. The setup I use every day for work is running two 1080p monitors off of the computer. One of the guys at the Apple store said that running two monitors is pretty intensive, and while I understand that, it doesn’t seem probable that it would cause the onboard graphics to outright fail.

I have the computer sitting flat on my desk, so I’m thinking once it’s repaired to get a stand to help elevate it off the surface and help with ventilation. The computer can and has run pretty hot (fans get real loud), so this is the only thing I can think of to try to stop this from happening again.

When I get the computer back, should i try only running one monitor off of it? Should i sell it/trade it in and get a 15” model that has a dedicated video card? I really want to do anything I can to not have this happen again.

No, it’s not too much for the 13 but it does get hot. The 15 churns out even more power in my experience, so I would stick with 13 inch models or the 2018 Air if you want less heat with the current generations of MacBook Pro.

I would get a stand and not run in closed clamshell mode and also consider a Mac mini and an Air or iPad if you can let your desktop run cooler and not need a MacBook Pro.

We buy Macs at work to run Adobe products as well. I have about 250 people globally that push their MBP hard all day in closed clamshell mode and we've had a handful of failures like you describe - KP / GPU halts / then need a repair. People that do not have one or someone new to running them without fail say "these are running too hot" - all 250 just run hot - especially driving pixels or doing video chat in MS teams for instance. Some even KP / GPU halt occasionally and never need repair (or haven't yet). The repair rate is less than 1% for us even when we push these hard / all day / CPU hot / closed / driving two displays.


What do the partitions /dev/disk1s* in filesystem mean (disk storage management)? When U run df -h  I get the following output (formatted as table for better viz).
What do all these /dev/disk1s* mean? Can it be that I lose space due to some imposed partition?

Filesystem
Size
Used
Avail
Capacity
Mounted on

/dev/disk1s5s1
233Gi
14Gi
22Gi
40%
/

devfs
193Ki
193Ki
0Bi
100%
/dev

/dev/disk1s4
233Gi
5.0Gi
22Gi
19%
/System/Volumes/VM

/dev/disk1s2
233Gi
320Mi
22Gi
2%
/System/Volumes/Preboot

/dev/disk1s6
233Gi
1.0Mi
22Gi
1%
/System/Volumes/Update

/dev/disk1s1
233Gi
192Gi
22Gi
90%
/System/Volumes/Data

map auto_home
0Bi
0Bi
0Bi
100%
/System/Volumes/Data/home

My OS version is BigSur (11.2.2)

The disk1s* in /dev/disk1s* are identifiers for the APFS volumes and snapshot in the container with the identifier disk1. These are not partitions as stated in your question. The APFS container resides in either a single partition on a drive or two partition on separate drives. In your example, the APFS volumes and snapshot all share in the same APFS container. Below shows the sum of the volumes, snapshot and available space equal the APFS container size. There is no lost of space.
 disk1s5s1    14. Gi
 disk1s4       5. Gi
 disk1s2       0.320 Gi
 disk1s6       0.001 Gi
 disk1s1     192. Gi
 disk1s3        .569 Gi
 Available    22. Gi
           ------------
 Size        233. Gi

Note: You did not include in your question the size of the unmounted Recovery volume (disk1s3). The value of 569 MiB came from my Big Sur installation. This value should be the same on your Big Sur installation.

Below was taken from man diskutil. I edited out the text that does not directly relate to the OP's question.

You are referring to disk identifiers. In your example, the (BSD) disk identifier string variously identifies a virtual logical volume.  It will take the form of diskCsV, or diskCsVsS where C, S, and V are positive decimal integers (possibly multi-digit), and where:

C is an APFS Container.  This is a virtual disk constructed by
APFS to represent a collection of APFS Volumes.  Multiple APFS
Containers can be active simultaneously.
V is an APFS Volume; it refers to a virtual logical volume that
is shared out of an APFS Container.  For example, exported from
an APFS Container designated as disk1 there might be an APFS
Volume disk1s1, mountable as a file system and usable for file
storage via its mountpoint path.
S is an APFS Snapshot; it refers to a frozen moment in time of
the state of files on an APFS Volume.  For example, if APFS
Container disk6 has an APFS Volume disk6s3, and two APFS Snapshots
have been "taken" on it, these, when mounted, might be
designated as disk6s3s1 and disk6s3s2. Zero or more snapshots
can be persistently defined on a volume, but only "active"
(mounted) snapshots have disk identifiers.

It is important for software to avoid relying on numerical ordering of
any of the parts.  Activities including but not limited to partition
deletions and insertions, partition resizing, virtual volume deletions
and additions, device ejects and attachments due to media insertion
cycles, plug cycles, authentication lock cycles or reboots, can all cause
(temporary) gaps and non-increments in the numerical ordering of any of
the parts. You must rely on more persistent means of identification, such
as the various UUIDs.


No right to open file once copied on the desktop I'm new to Mac, so I may not have the correct vocabulary.

We have a Mac 10.5.x configured to share files with AFP and SMB.
We have 4 other Mac as clients, various versions between 10.5 and 10.6.
Each of them access the server with the correct user+password.
The share is now configured to ignore permissions, but the problem was identical before that.
We can create/open/modify/delete/rename/etc files on the server, from every clients.

The problem :
When we copy a file from the server to the desktop of a client, the copied file can not be opened. The error message says the permissions don't allow the file to be read.
This is for every file from the server, on all 4 clients.
The files are copied with the finder, from the client.

Edit:
I checked the permissions.
On the server's share, when I look at the permissions from a client computer, every files are -------rw- cedric cedric (read-write for everyone) with the user and group identical to the people connected (here cedric, but this is another user when viewed from another computer).
Once the file is copied on the desktop, the permissions and owner are the same. So it is not possible to open the file because the permissions are not correct (I just tested on Linux, when a file is RW for everyone only, the owner can't open it).

So, is there a way to automatically copy the files with better permissions ? Or the share the files correctly ?

Edit:
Every client computer is now upgraded to 10.6.x for the oldest, and 10.7.x for the two others. The problem is exactly the same.
I also noted one computer can't save files from Adobe softwares to the server. The user saves the files on his desktop, then use the finder to move them to the server.

There are known issues (Apple-created bugs) with several revisions of OS X 10.5 Leopard Client and AFP file access, including permission problems and in certain cases even the potential to lose or overwrite files completely.

There is no work-around for these bugs, they are in the operating system itself and can be reproduced on 2 freshly-formatted & installed Macs running Leopard 10.5, and most or all of the later revisions, i.e. 10.5.1, 10.5.2, etc.

Your best solution is to be sure to update all 10.5 Macs to 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. Failing that, updating everything to 10.5.8 (the last release of Leopard) may solve your problems.

Here's a list of references that go into more detail:

http://support.grouplogic.com/?p=1508

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1423847

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67625-preping-for-105-permissions-issues-with-afp-shares/

http://lists.apple.com/archives/macos-x-server/2010/Dec/msg00267.html

http://www.mailinglistarchive.com/html/xsan-users@lists.apple.com/2008-07/msg00409.html


A popover shown from the Spotlight menu is stuck on the screen How do I get rid of it? It doesn't show up on task manager. It isn't dead, it responds to the  mouse wheel and scrolls up and down.

Screen shot below...

The process "QuickLook UI Helper" normally quits automatically after Spotlight is closed, but if it doesn't:

Open Activity Monitor
Find QuickLook UI Helper
Quit it (x button in the toolbar)


Can you actually use Terminal to crash your computer? People who don't understand Terminal are often afraid to use it for fear that they might mess up their command and crash their computer. Those who know Terminal better know that that's not the case - usually Terminal will just output an error. But are there actually commands that will crash your computer?

WARNING: you could lose data if you type these or copy paste, especially sudo and rm commands.

One way to crash a computer is to execute a so called fork-bomb.

You can execute it on a unix-sytem by:

:(){ :|: & };:

It's a command that will recursively spawn processes till the OS is so busy it won't respond to any action anymore.


Recognise command and colour it on the terminal? I was wondering if it's possible to colour a recognised command in real time while typing and/or when switching to previous commands using the arrows.

For example, if I start typing gre, it should not color anything, but once I finish typing my command completely, i.e. grep, it should color grep with a certain color.

This would be useful to immediately recognise also the position of arguments in a complex command. I'm using the default terminal that comes with the notebook.

Not a bash answer, as I don't have one, but if you switch your shell to zsh (a close relative of bash) and install the configuration framework prezto you'll get this functionality more or less out of the box, as well as significantly better autocompletion. Switching to zsh most likely won't change your day to day bash workflow at all, but it'll open a a lot of doors in terms of customisation and extension, and also adds some clever features worth learning - like shared command history across all prompts that can be included in the autocompletion dictionary, file globbing to efficiently work with multiple files at once, and most importantly compatibility modes, whereby zsh can emulate another shell - meaning that if some of your bash scripts don't work the way they used to after switching to zsh, you can just emulate it - although personally all the bash scripts I've written still worked fine in zsh.

Useful links:

Installing the latest version of zsh in OS X
Installing prezto
Some in-depth discussion of how switching can improve your workflow


How can 2020 16" MacBook Pro output to 2 displays that also get used by a PC? (See diagram) I have a new 2020 Apple MacBook Pro with two Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports on each side, and I have an old desktop Windows 10 PC with a GeForce GTX 970 graphics card that has 2 DVI outputs, 1 HDMI output, and 1 DisplayPort output.
As shown in the diagram, I also have 1 keyboard, 1 mouse, and 1 headset.
Throughout the day, I sometimes need to use the MacBook, and sometimes I need to use the PC. (I have no desire for them to communicate with each other or share files.)
Goal: I'd love if my 1 keyboard, 1 mouse, and 1 headset would automatically work with whichever of the 2 computers I wanted to be using at the moment, and I'd love if the active computer would display an extended desktop across 2 monitors too (and I'll leave the MacBook Pro lid closed).

I've heard that MacBook's don't support Multi-Stream Transport (MST) ("daisy-chaining"). Is that true of mine too? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210754 is unclear.
Daisy-chaining was just one idea, and if it's not possible, I still want to achieve my goal.
I am willing to buy whatever is necessary to accomplish my goal (e.g. whichever two 23"+ monitors, whichever cable adapters or KVM switches, etc), but I can't figure out whether what I'm trying to do is even possible. What would work?
UPDATE: Or what about this diagram using 3 USB-C cables on the MacBook Pro? Maybe certain monitors act as a KVM?

P.S. I used https://app.creately.com for drawing the diagram, which I mention in case you'd find it easiest to draw something when answering.

There are a couple paths you can take to solve this problem:

A hardware only solution.  It's simple to implement, strong and features and equally strong (high) on price.
Software based KVM with some bodging to address the audio needs.  If you can live with some manual switching of USB and audio, you've got a strong solution here.

A Proper KVM
Something that's definitely not in the consumer market is a KVM that handles multiple computers, dual headed high-res display and audio.  There's lots of gimmicky firms out there, but to do it right, you need something like the Avocent SV300.  It checks off all of your requirements: supports UHD 4K Resolutions in a dual headed configuration, audio and your USB devices.  It's not cheap at about $800USD.  However, this is that piece of kit that you gawk over when you go into a broadcast studio or a big dev shop and watch them seamlessly move between their multiple computers.
Disclaimer:  I used to work for a company† that was acquired by Avocent and have many years experience with their KVM and secure console servers (RS232/RS422 over IP).  I've even used their digital signage products when I was with other companies so I'm quite familiar with them and their capabilities.
An Open Source Solution
There's an FOSS KVM solution that is probably well worth looking into.  It's called Barrier and I've mentioned it in a couple answers here on Ask Different:

Multiple Macbook Pros with one monitor
Linking MacBook Pro and iMac as single system

The one area you'd likely have issue is the audio.  For that, you would need a simple, inexpensive audio source switcher.  Basically, it's a four input, one output switch that you'll connect to your headphones.
The upsides here are this is very inexpensive.  This will require some time and very little in the way of hardware (the audio switcher).  The downsides are that the audio is manually switched (minor) and there's no USB switching (could be major depending on your requirements).  There are USB switches available, but this is where it starts becoming a bodge.  Instead of an all-in-one solution like the Avocent, you've got a minimum of three different disparate solutions and one being open source.
Since this is software and it requires you to go over your network (I'm assuming all the computers are on the same network), your video performance will be limited.  The performance will be like using a remote desktop app like VNC or RDP.  A wireless network is good, a wired network will definitely be better.  If you're hoping to do video editing and/or gaming, this probably won't work.
Barrier Configuration Screen

A note on the cheaper KVMs
There are some cheaper KVMs that you can find online from IOGear, TrendNET, and StarTech.  I wouldn't say that they are bad, because they're not.  If you're working a dev environment in mostly text or lower resolution graphics, you can certainly use these; so don't rule these out.  However, all these new video standards are bandwidth hungry and being able to accommodate all of that bandwidth and provide you with smooth experience requires quality components and some strong engineering.  In the end, you get what you pay for.

† I worked for Equinox Systems (no, not the fitness club or water filtration MLM company), a direct competitor to Digi International that made RS232/RS422 and UART over IP products that spanned applications from Unix, Solaris and even Citrix.  It's here I gained my in depth experience with these types of products.


does iPhone4 run 2-time faster than iPhone 3GS since iPhone4's memory is 2-time bigger than iPhone 3GS's one I have never tried any iPhone, but want to research about it.

Apple said that "iPhone 3GS" is  2-time faster than "iPhone 2G" since 3GS' memory is 256 MB eDRAM & thus is twice as big as 3G's (128 MB eDRAM)

In turn, iPhone 4's memory is "512 MB DRAM", so my question is

does iPhone4 run 2-time faster than iPhone 3GS since iPhone4's memory is 2-time bigger than iPhone 3GS's one?

Also, eDRAM and DRAM is almost the same? or they have any difference?

No. Well.... maybe.
Although the phone may run twice as fast (I don't know, I don't have any iPhones), it is not the addition of memory that makes it run faster. If the phone was running out of memory and had to kill processes, then more memory would make it seem faster.

What really makes phones, (or any computer-like device for that matter) run faster, is a fast processor. The iPhone 4 also has a faster processor than the 3GS.


What is the shortcut for fullscreen mode in Lion? Some apps allow their windows to be viewed in full screen, such as Google Chrome, which is really good.

Wondering if there is a shortcut to do it?

ctrl+⌘+F works for Safari and Chrome.

The ^ is old unix style for ctrl, which is why the option in the menu is:

Edit:

While the answer above only works for both Safari and Chrome, the following shortcut works only for Chrome and Firefox:

⇧+⌘+F


Office for Mac 2011 Font Tahoma working but not showing in font list I have the following problem: Using office for mac 2011 on Mac Os 10.9.4, I can use the font Tahoma in Word and Excel, but it doesn't show in the list, where you have to pick the font. If I just manually click into the list and write Tahoma, it works and I am able to use the Tahoma font.

Other applications, like TextEdit, show Tahoma and I am able to use it just from picking it from the font list.

I found lots of guides here one AskDifferent, as well as on the apple support forums and some other forums. Things I checked and tried:

The folder /Library/Fonts contains "Tahoma Bold.ttf" and "Tahoma.ttf"
The folder /Library/Fonts/Microsoft doesn't contain any Tahoma fonts
I tried to copy the two fonts also to /Library/Fonts/Microsoft - this didn't work
I used font book to check the fonts and search for duplicates, everything was alright
I booted Mac Os using safe mode (holding shift) to reset the font cache, this didn't help either
Microsoft Office is up to date, no new updates are available

The strange thing is, that the font was showing before. Probably it was removed from the list during some previous updates.

Do you have some ideas, what else I could try? Thanks in advance!

Microsoft's applications use their own font cache. You could try deleting the cache and launch one of the applications again. It should just generate a new cache file.

You will find the cache file named "Office Font Cache" in "~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Preferences/Office 2011".


How should I set up my coding environment for PHP, mySQL, and JavaScript development? I'm having trouble finding a coding environment that is comfortable and I'm hoping anyone has had the same problem. On my windows box at the office I've found my ideal coding environment that I really dig. VS2010 or Eclipse, Notepad++, WinScp, Fireftp is often everything I need.

On my macbook pro however, I've not yet found that environment that just says "click".

What I'm looking for is a solution that can handle "intellisense" with php, ssh browsing like WinScp and snapping windows over halv the screen like Windows 7.

I've found one solution for the last point, but it had a lot of bugs so it got disabled. For some reason I find Eclipse to be a bit slow on my mac, and I haven't found a nice way of integrating a browser for the remote server via ssh either.

I'm making this community wiki since I'm really looking forward to seeing how everyone sets their environment up. I'm sure there are some gems to be found.

On my mac I mainly do PHP, mySQL, javaScript development.

I have about 7 years of experience coding in a Windows environment before I got my first mac early this year.  So I know exactly what you're talking about.  I was very used to the combination of Visual Studio for c++ and .net, Notepad++ for .bat and other scripting and lightweight tasks, and the occasional bit of Eclipse for java.

When I first started using my Mac, I was frustrated by what I saw to be a lack of equivalent software for OS X.  I tried different IDEs and text editing solutions (Eclipse, Aptana, Textmate, Smultron, Fraise, etc), but like you said, nothing really 'clicked'.

However, at some point I stopped looking for replacements and started using the tools that were commonly used on *nix machines.  Particularly vim.  I've found that once my expectation of finding software equivalents to everything I had used on Windows dropped away, my horizons broadened.  I feel like my interest in coding has been renewed because I'm learning a completely different way to work and think about the process.  I'm using the command line way more than I ever have in the past, and this has translated into new techniques even in my Windows development (like using powershell and command line versions of tools rather than the gui).

I was in a huge programming rut before I started using my mac, but I'm finding that being forced to look at my process and tools in a different way is really bringing out talents and interests I didn't know I had before.  I'm coding in python and c++ rather than javascript and c#, in one of the oldest editors in existence, and I'm loving it.


Does iBooks sync metadata across devices via iCloud? Just updated to using the new iCloud-enabled iBooks for PDFs, etc. On my Macbook, I've also gone and fixed the metadata for all of the books, but it doesn't appear to sync that updated metadata to my iPhone (which is also iCloud-enabled for iBooks). Here's a screenshot from the Mac app:

But on the iPhone, I'm still missing authors, categories are incorrect, etc. Not sure if metadata simply syncs locally and this is a non-issue, or if something odd is going on w/ my devices. Thanks!

Found a solution; not through iBooks but the Terminal instead (must install Homebrew first):

brew install exiftool
exiftool -Title="New Title" -Author="New Author" -Subject="iBooks Category" file.pdf

This actually edits the PDF metadata, and that will reflect in the Title, Author, and Category columns in iBooks.


How to make script to convert lower case characters into upper and vice versa Need to create 2 scripts in automator.

Select text in any application (textedit, pages etc.) and change all letters from lower case to upper.
Same, as above, but from upper case, to lower.

Scripts should work not only with English, but with other languages as well. Thank you.

You can do it for a lot of apps [not all, but certainly all Apple apps] from

System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App shortcuts


How to make CarPlay and Google maps coexist peacefully The 2018 Subaru I bought has a "Starlink" media center that supports CarPlay. I have an iPhone 7, tethered to the player by USB. For various reasons I strongly prefer Google Maps to Apple Maps. However, if I'm playing anything in the foreground (radio, podcast) and Google Maps interrupts it with spoken instructions, the media doesn't resume playing afterward.

The problem doesn't happen when using Apple Maps.

There's very little documentation about how CarPlay, apps, and the media center co-operate. I was wondering if anyone could enlighten me as to how to make CarPlay work in this situation.

This is likely an issue with your Starlink media center. Try looking through the settings on it for an autoplay on connect or something similar. In my car's media station, a bluetooth connection will pause and auto-play when using Google Maps, but does not always perform the same when using the USB connection.


Mac says password is wrong but it's right. I have to enter it twice to start Mac every time. How could I solve it? Mac says password is wrong, but is right, and wants me to enter it again to start Mac every time. My password is used to be characters and numbers. I changed my password into all numbers but it doesn't work.

How could I solve it?

Thanks.

If you are talking about the user password and you are locked out of your mac, you can try the following:

Reboot into the Recovery Drive by choosing the ‘Apple‘ menu > Restart, hold down the ‘command’ + ‘r’ keys on the keyboard during the start up process, when you see the start up screen you can let go. When the machine boots eventually you will see the macOS or OS X Utilities screen.
Go to the Utilites menu and select Terminal
At the prompt type ‘resetpassword’ (hit enter)
Reset your password

Keep in mind that this deletes your keychain, so your saved passwords are lost


How can I restore the previous system state after formatting my Macintosh HD? I tried to fix my MacBook Pro with Yosemite because it was always stuck on the Apple logo. I've never been in the boot menu and when I tried to open the Disk Utility to repair and verify, the result was the HD can't be repaired and fixed.

Next I tried to erase my Macintosh HD which had 250 GB used space but now is back to having 500 GB total free space. I know my files in Macintosh HD are deleted and I forgot to back up files to my external HD.

Now my MacBook Pro gets stuck on the prohibited sign logo whenever I try to boot it.

Is there any possible way to recover my previous files that I deleted using Disk Utility, after I reinstall macOS? Is there any way to fix this?

Or, would going to the Apple Centre be an option, as it takes me a long time to get there since I work on a tanker ship.

First, recovering your files may be impossible. You should immediately stop using the disk. The data may still be there, but marked as free for storing other files, so the longer you use the disk, the more likely it is that something will get overwritten by chance. There are services you can buy that will try to recover what's on your disk.

Once you get that sorted out, regarding the boot problem:

According to this Apple Support article, it means the computer couldn't find a valid system folder to boot from. Try starting in Recovery Mode by holding ⌘R.


corrupted files, fail checksum but , disk and FS checks with disk utility A couple of files appear corrupted on the SSD drive on my son's MBP, currently on macOS Catalina.

They are WAV files which refuse to play and if from a shell I run:

$ sum -r <filename>

I get "Input/output error" on the two offending files, instead of a checksum.

$ sum -r *
23188 45843 01 Bombtrack.wav
58127 58913 02 Killing In The Name.wav
40298 63213 03 Take The Power Back.wav
64550 54096 04 Settle For Nothing.wav
47065 58063 05 Bullet In The Head.wav
38280 55418 06 Know Your Enemy.wav
11798 68313 07 Wake Up.wav
sum: 08 Fistful Of Steel.wav: Input/output error
sum: 09 Township Rebellion.wav: Input/output error
17779 68693 10 Freedom.wav

My concern is that macOS can't find anything nothing wrong with it, and the SMART data checks out. This SSD was a replacement for the original HDD and was fitted at the apple store.

I have run disk utility first aid on both the logical and physical volumes.
The disk utility doesn't find anything wrong with the filesystem or underlying disk
I'm assuming these two files sat on a corrupted part of the SSD.

In the end, Is there anything else I can do to repair or prevent corrupted parts of SSD from being used?

I treat all Input/output (IO) errors as 5 alarm situations. When I see IO in the console log, I save all work, quit all apps and then get a full backup. The filesystem is designed to keep the filesystem intact which means when a file has a problem, the file gets truncated and deleted. Your data loses, the filesystem gets healed. Seeing an IO error bubble up to the application layer is either:

no big deal - you have some corrupt files
a huge deal - you have limited time to back up files that aren’t already backed up

Then once I have a backup - I do watch a day or so for IO errors and delete the files that are affected. If I see the IO errors spread, I do an erase installation and keep monitoring.

SSD are a bit different than HDD so I’ve only seen one SSD ever throw an actual IO error since the controller almost always intercepts and corrects these with checksum. In my experience, 100% of issues are just bit rot, crash and app failures - not that the SSD is starting to show signs of failure. I’ve never had warning of an SSD failing - they just go. Also, the SSD Apple delivers are way, way, way more reliable than the HDD Apple delivered. Erase install is basically a cure-all, get out of jail free card for me in the last 10 years managing Macs. Only when a system can’t install and run a blank OS do I think hardware needs diagnosis and repair.

Back to you, if you don’t have a full backup you trust, please do that now with haste. Next, read up on how to erase. All signs you have indicate your hardware is fine and you might not even find any IO errors in the console app (or using log stream). Since you know exactly how to summon that error - watch the log as you poke at these broken files trying to read / open / checksum them.

Your instincts to test are perfect - the disk and hardware are almost certainly OK - just may only need to wipe the filesystem and restore good files on to a clean OS when the system can’t self heal itself. The SSD controller maps multiple chained storage cells with data, so TRIM and bad blocks are more about keeping a substantial portion of the space free so that “bad blocks” don’t get hard mapped out like hard drives needed. My understanding is perhaps 10% of the drive can go bad and you won’t lose a block or capacity as far as the operating system is concerned.


How can I view the current price of an app I've previously purchased? I want to view the price of Cut The Rope 2 on the iOS App Store. However, because it's an app I've already purchased, the price listing has been replaced with the "redownload" button.

Is there a way to view the current price of an app I've previously purchased?

The best place I have found for this information is AppShopper.com. They list all of the current apps on both (iOS, Mac) app stores. They track the current price as well as the price history and update history for the app.


Google Play Music on Alarm I'm new to iOS, I've come from Android and to avoid loosing time migrating all the musics from Google Play Music to iTunes (and since Google allows you to have 50,000 songs on their servers for free that can be accessible on any device with a Google account), I decided to keep using Google Play Music on the iPhone.

But if I want to set the alarm it only lets me choose ring tones from the iPhone or musics from iTunes.

Does anyone knows if it's there any way to set Google Play Music musics to the alarm?

Thanks in advance!

Such functionality is not supported by the built-in alarm for iPhone unless the music is stored in the Music app of the phone. You would have to see if there is a third-party app which can pull from Google Play music.


Opening New Terminal Tab Moves Window Above Dock This is difficult to explain, so please bear with me.

When I open a new tab in Terminal, the Terminal window moves. This only happens when the window is at the bottom of the screen. The window moves up vertically just enough so that it is not below/beside the dock anymore. It does not move horizontally. It also remains the same size.

No other apps behave this way, only Terminal. I am using version 2.8.

Terminal did not behave this way in macOS 10.12 Sierra. It started behaving this way when I updated to 10.13.1 High Sierra.

Step by step, this is what happens:

Open Terminal.
Move Terminal window to bottom left or right corner of screen (flush with the edges).
Open new tab in Terminal.
Terminal window moves up so that it is higher than the dock.

How do I prevent #4 from happening? How do I prevent the Terminal window from moving by itself when I open a new tab?

Before

After

According to macOS, windows should not be behind the Dock. When the bounds of a window are updated, macOS moves any windows from behind the Dock above the Dock.

The window bounds update when you add a new tab, so macOS looks at those bounds and moves them such that they don't overlap with the Dock section of the screen. There's no way to change this currently.

As for why this happens in High Sierra and not in Sierra, I presume it's because Terminal now uses the unified tabs functionality provided in AppKit.

Terminal has always had tabs, but macOS recently introduced tabs as part of the OS, for any app to use. I believe Terminal now uses this functionality for its tabs, which has caused this. You can test this by opening Terminal with multiple tabs and pressing ⇧⌘\ for Show All Tabs — this is functionality provided system-wide by the OS, not by Terminal, for managing tabs including the tab bar.


Selecting a whole line of text, including the newline Kind of a tricky one to describe. Here goes though. Open up your favourite text editor on OSX (well, Textedit, Coda 2, a Chrome textarea at least). Type a long line of text, followed by a short line. Place your cursor at the end, like this:

I am a long, long, line of text.
I am short.|

If I want to delete the line "I am short" and the line break, in Windows I'd Shift+Up, then Ctrl+Shift+End. (Similarly, Ctrl+Shift+Home would select both lines in their entirety.)

On OSX, I can Shift+Up to select the second half of the first line fine, but Cmd+Shift+Right doesn't do anything. Cmd+Shift+Left does, however, select both lines like on Windows. You can repeat the same behaviour with using Ctrl+a/e for home/end.

Why doesn't Cmd+Shift+Right work? Can I make it work? Is there a similar command which would work?

I know I can do Cmd+Shift+Left, Shift+Left and it achieves the same thing with the same number of pushes, but Shift+Up etc is pretty ingrained in my muscle memory. I still use a Windows PC on a regular basis too, so would prefer to use the same general method, and Ctrl+Shift+Home, Shift+Left on a PC is a bit more cumbersome as Home and Left aren't in the same block of keys.

What if you want to select 78 here (after having pressed ⇧↑)?

Or if you want to select both 12 and 78, on Windows you couldn't press shift+home and shift+end.

Methods like moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection: are unanchored in most applications, which means that they always extend selections. They are actually anchored in Xcode, TextMate, Sublime Text, and BBEdit, but I don't know any way to change the default behavior.

If you just want to make selecting and deleting lines easier, you can create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
    "~l" = selectParagraph:;
    "~z" = (selectParagraph:, deleteBackward:);
    "~x" = (selectParagraph:, cut:);
    "~c" = (selectParagraph:, copy:);
}

After reopening applications, ⌥L should select a line. See http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html and http://lri.me/keybindings.html for more information.


When I shake my MacBook Pro it makes a strange noise. I have bought brand new MacBook pro 15-inch model with highest specifications in this June. I have also installed newest Mac OS, Lion.

Now I have a small problem (or maybe not) here. I would like to ask you what could be possible wrong that when I shake my MacBook Pro it makes a strange noise? Maybe it is just the noise of the keys on the keyboard?

The only thing I can think of that would be shaking is a loose screw.  I'd recommend taking it to an Authorized Apple Service Provider to have them poke around and see if they can get it out.  If you are daring enough (or out of warranty), you might want to try it yourself.


iOS sync software firefox beta The Bookmarks On The Go iOS app has a "Use custom server" option where a server URL is manually entered.

Where do I obtain this server URL?

Firefox Sync allows the use of a server other than the official server provided by Mozilla, and it is possible to set one up yourself. The "Use custom server" option is provided to allow for this.


Every time I start my terminal, I get ".zshrc:source:18: no such file or directory: /sourceme.sh"? I've been trying to download some softwares. I've deleted those files, but now, I think my zsh file keeps wanting to source a file that's no longer there. Because of that, I get the following message every time I open up my terminal:

This is really annoying, and I'd like to get rid of it somehow... Thanks!

I was able to solve this issue with the following steps:
Open .zshrc and edit it. This can be done with the following:
sudo nano ~/.zshrc

From here, you may find a file, whatever it may be named (in this case, it was sourceme.sh). Delete the line that was installed in there. There are many reasons it's in there using nano. Then, save.
Where sourceme.sh came from: I downloaded another program that automatically wrote that line in when I configured it, and when I deleted, it could no longer find that file. It could be any other shell script (.sh).


Fonts on my iMac randomly become blurry (badly anti-aliased) until restart I have a late-2009 iMac with Yosemite 10.10.2.

Recently, I've noticed that some system fonts randomly become blurry, as though there's a problem with the anti-aliasing. This affects:

The OS X Menu bar
The right-click context menu
The side-bar in the Finder window
Etc.

In this screenshot - you can see how the text in my browser window looks sharp, but the right-click context menu items are blurry:

They are not blurry when I restart. At some point, usually with in a few hours, and not after any specific, repeatable event - they become blurry. (I've never noticed exactly when it happens. All of a sudden, when I stop focusing on my work, I notice that they're blurry.

If I restart the Mac, they become sharp again, but only temporarily.

I've never played around with any settings that might have caused this change (e.g, I haven't changed LCD font smoothing or anything). And I haven't replaced the graphics card. In short - I haven't changed anything that I'm aware of.

Thanks in advance for any advice or insight!

Perhaps you should change your font smoothing strength  and contrast settings. Many other people are having the same problem. Check out this link for information on how to do this


Record MacBook Audio Out With iPad/iPhone Earphone Jack I just bought myself an iPad to take notes with Notability so that I can record my teachers' voices along with my notes, for this upcoming summer semester. Now with the mandated lock down, all my summer classes will be taking place online with Zoom.

To try to still be able to record them while taking notes (without having to play the sound out loud), I bought myself a TRRS cable. I connected one end to the MacBook earphone jack and the other end to the iPad earphone jack. (Inspired by this Cult of Mac article: How to record any audio on your iPhone).

However, when I try recording sound coming from my Mac, here is what my iPad is picking up:

Any ideas what could be causing this?

Also, here is the cable I bought : CableCreation 3 Feet 3.5mm TRRS Auxiliary Audio Cable

The reason you have this problem is not because of the cable, it’s because you’re sending speaker output to a microphone.  It’s no different than taking a regular microphone and holding it front of a speaker and trying to record; it’s not going to work.

See this similar post for more details:  Use 3.5mm jack as line in for a musical instrument

Instead of sending the audio out to your iPad to record it, just record it on your Mac (bypass the middleman):

Soundflower. Free, but abandoned by the original dev. Project is now hosted on GitHub.
Audio Hijack. Same developer as Soundflower, but a paid at $60USD)
Use a hardware solution like a USB DAC.  I prefer this because for less money (half of the cost of AH) I get a device I can record from and output to.  I get much better sound from my Mac when hooked up to my Bose wave radio than from the internal speakers.

As for your cable, it's looks to be a good one, but it won't change the fact that trying to record speaker output with a microphone is spotty at best.


How can I backup my Icloud synced notes locally? I have both a macbook running 11.1 Big Sur and iPhone running iOS 14.
I have lots of notes that I'd like to locally backup just in case. Ideally I can export them to a folder so I’m sure they are backed up clearly.
Is this possible without third party apps?

The locally stored notes are stored in a database at ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/
while iCloud notes are stored here: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/
How to access the directories are described in this OXDaily link. https://osxdaily.com/2020/01/15/where-notes-stored-locally-mac/
There is a free app called Exporter, available from the AppStore, which will extract each note and save it as a markdown file.  MacDown and other apps will display the notes on the screen.
There is also a way to export all your Notes as pdfs using a script. I don't know much about this but found it on the internet.  The script and a description are given at https://macmost.com/export-all-of-the-notes-on-your-mac-using-a-script.html


Does Notational Velocity/nvALT securely sync with Simplenote? I set nvALT to use a single database to store my notes. Using a database provides the benefit of encryption. I also sync my notes using Simplenote.

I just noticed this warning at the bottom of the synchronization settings window:

  Note contents will be delivered in clear text.

This came as a bit of a shock because I have personal sensitive information stored in nvALT.

I searched for the syncing APIs of Simplenote which seem to use HTTPS but I'm not sure about that. Can anyone explain how the synchronization works exactly and what the warning message means?

The Notational Velocity FAQ appears contradictory:

How does encryption work in conjunction with Simplenote?
If database encryption is enabled under Preferences > Notes > Security, then your notes will be encrypted on disk. However, they will still be sent to Simplenote without encryption. (And obviously Notational Velocity will always use SSL regardless.)

It seems to say that the encrypted DB will be decrypted and then re-encrypted with SSL. So Simplenote will be able to see your notes after they receive and decrypt, but an eavesdropper would not.


Dropbox syncing issue (permissions) after new hard drive migration on OS X Since upgrading my hard drive (and reinstalling OS X), doing an OS X "Migration" to the new drive, and finally re-logging into Dropbox, I now show 700 files have syncing issues.  This shows up when I click on the Dropbox icon in my top bar.

I can only see one of the files though, as the menu to see more is grayed out. The error is "Permission denied", but I checked the permissions on the file, and it is owned by me.

Questions:

Is there a log file somewhere that shows me the other 699 files with issues?
Any ideas why some of my files have syncing issues?  Other files are syncing fine.  The OS X account username is the same as it was before my reinstall, although I was wondering if it had something to do with user ID's being different (i.e. the underlying Linux UID, asssuming Dropbox uses it).

Dropbox support will walk you through how to fix this on their web site. Search for permission error "OS X" and you'll get this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/72/en

Here is the summary of steps needed on OS X since the article is mostly about Windows errors and antivirus causes of the same error.

For our advanced users

If unlinking and relinking your account doesn't solve the issue, your settings may be protected or inaccessible due to a permissions problem. If this is the case, you can remove your settings by hand using an administrative account. Here's how:

Quit Dropbox by clicking on the Dropbox menu from the menu bar and selecting Quit
From Finder click on the Go menu and select Go to folder... (Shift-Command-G)
In the resulting field, type:

  ~/.dropbox

This will take you directly to your settings files, which are normally invisible in the Finder.

Move all the files in your settings folder to the trash
Restart Dropbox.

Dropbox is located in your Applications folder. Once Dropbox loads, the application will rebuild your settings files and you will be asked to relink to your account.

Note: We're working on a way to check and fix your Dropbox installation automatically from within the application. Stay tuned...

If you are reading this and use a version of Dropbox much newer than v1.4.12, you might check Dropbox help before deleting the .dropbox folder and restarting the app, just in case they have implemented a better fix in a newer version of the software.

If this doesn't work on your Mac, you might also need to take a second step of renaming the actual Dropbox folder to ensure it can download everything from Dropbox and then use a tool like Kaleidoscope to diff the two folders and check that nothing was lost in the shuffle.


Can't connect to L2TP over IPSec VPN from Mac 10.12.4 Have troubles with connecting to my VPN from Mac.
Using default Mac client, pre-shared secret.
Also this works well on iOS 10.3.2 from the same Wi-Fi network.

Firewall is disable, no Little Snitch.
macOS error message says 'The L2TP-VPN server did not respond'

Also, I've tried to connect open free VPN, us.freel2tpvpn.com and got no response again, so I think it's a macOS problem, not the server / routing.

Do you have any ideas?

Here is my /var/log/ppp.log

Tue Jun 13 15:34:58 2017 : publish_entry SCDSet() failed: Success!
Tue Jun 13 15:34:58 2017 : publish_entry SCDSet() failed: Success!
Tue Jun 13 15:34:58 2017 : l2tp_get_router_address
Tue Jun 13 15:34:58 2017 : l2tp_get_router_address 172.16.21.1 from dict 1
Tue Jun 13 15:34:58 2017 : L2TP connecting to server '86.102.88.210' (86.102.88.210)...
Tue Jun 13 15:34:58 2017 : IPSec connection started
Tue Jun 13 15:35:03 2017 : IPSec connection failed

update 1
checked udp ports 500, 1701, 4500 — all open from mac

update 2
set up another l2tp ipsec preshered secret server on windows and got same result — don't respond on mac, connected on iphone

update 3
wiresharked booth on 'connections', and there is no udp packets from mac on connection, but test packets are ok.

definitely the mac vpn client is broken (firewall is off), where should I dig?

First step: Ensure that outgoing L2TP connections work properly. To do that, run the following commands in Terminal (you can copy and paste if you want):

/usr/bin/nc -uvw5 portquiz.net 500
/usr/bin/nc -uvw5 portquiz.net 1701
/usr/bin/nc -uvw5 portquiz.net 4500

You should get something that looks like this (note the three "succeeded" lines):

found 0 associations
found 1 connections:
     1: flags=82<CONNECTED,PREFERRED>
    outif en0
    src 192.168.1.2 port 56916
    dst 178.33.250.62 port 500
    rank info not available
    TCP aux info available

Connection to portquiz.net port 500 [tcp/isakmp] succeeded!
found 0 associations
found 1 connections:
     1: flags=82<CONNECTED,PREFERRED>
    outif en0
    src 192.168.1.2 port 56917
    dst 178.33.250.62 port 1701
    rank info not available
    TCP aux info available

Connection to portquiz.net port 1701 [tcp/l2f] succeeded!
found 0 associations
found 1 connections:
     1: flags=82<CONNECTED,PREFERRED>
    outif en0
    src 192.168.1.2 port 56918
    dst 178.33.250.62 port 4500
    rank info not available
    TCP aux info available

Connection to portquiz.net port 4500 [tcp/ipsec-msft] succeeded!

If that works, then you should be able to connect, and the problem is likely the server, or a configuration problem (I've used the macOS L2TP client for a long time and haven't experienced any issues). If not, something is blocking an outgoing port.


Understanding Intel iris graphic card spec for mac mini I'm reviewing moving to some software that has a system requirement of a 1GB of video / graphics card.

The computer in question is a 2014 Mac mini, which I remember at the time of buying had a "Intel Iris Graphics" but no stated MB / GB number so I presumed it was a not very powerful graphics card built directly onto the CPU.

Just now i checked "About this Mac" and it seems to state that the graphics card is "Intel Iris 1536MB" - Does that mean that I have a 1.5GB graphics card ?

If so why doesn't apple list it as that, even now on the current mac mini page they list the graphic card as "Intel Iris Graphics" ?

Mac Mini Specs

The Intel Iris graphic chipset uses shared memory meaning it allocates up to 1.5GB (not 1.5Ghz which is frequency or more commonly known as speed) of RAM from the system to be used as VRAM.

So, If you have a Mac mini with 8GB of RAM, you really have a Mac mini with 6.5GB of usable RAM because 1.5GB was allocated to video.

From Apple's website:  Integrated Video on Intel-based Macs

  Apple computers using Intel Iris Graphics as the primary GPU dynamically allocate up to 1.5 GB of system memory.

You were correct in your presumption - it's not a powerful graphics card built onto the CPU.

You should check with the vendor of your software to see if it has a requirement of 1GB of dedicated video memory (meaning it's built into the card and doesn't share with the system) or not.


Use widgets on Desktop Lion How can I use my widgets on the desktop in Lion? I have done

defaults write com.apple.dashboard demoed yes

But, when I click and hold and hit dashboard, it stays on the dashboard. How can I use widgets on my desktop in Lion? @Nathan, how did you do it? I talked to you earlier about it...

YEah! I found the solution.

Turn Off “Dashboard as a Space”
head to System Preferences > Mission Control.
Uncheck the “Show Dashboard as a space” box and you’ll have the widgets back.

Then again you can go to terminal en type in:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
hit return/enter
then type in: killall Dock (mind the capital D in Dock)
That's it!


How can I increase command line memory_limit for PHP with MAMP PRO? I've edited every single php.ini on my Mac (at least all the ones found by "locate") and still can't seem to increase the memory_limit directive for PHP.

I'm using MAMP PRO and running PHP scripts in the terminal.

How to solve this?

Instead of guessing which php.ini you need to alter, run this command to locate the file:

php -r 'phpinfo();' | grep 'php.ini'

Even though I use MAMP PRO, by default my command-line PHP commands are not executed using their copy of PHP. In my case it says the file is found at /etc/php.ini

Once you have located the file, follow the instructions on all of the other answers to bump the memory_limit setting:

memory_limit = 256M


Gnuplot with xterm in yosemite I installed gnuplot on my yosemite system using brew. When I try to plot cos(x) the way I would on ubuntu, I get this:

gnuplot> plot cos(x)
WARNING: Plotting with an 'unknown' terminal.
No output will be generated. Please select a terminal with 'set terminal'.

I also notice that when gnuplot loads, it says Terminal type set to 'unknown'. I would like to load the graphs in a new window, so I tried set terminal xterm, which seems to work at first glance, given the message Terminal type set to 'xterm'. But then I try plotting again, and it produces garbage:

How do I get the terminal to function correctly, as it does on ubuntu?

Don't know if you resolved, but seems strange to me you want to plot in the xterm terminal...
Perhaps you want to display in the x11 terminal, you'll then find this discussion useful: Can't plot with gnuplot on my Mac


Are the changes to Lion's screen sharing documented anywhere publicly? I am looking for a general technical overview of the changes Lion brought to screen sharing (VNC).

Specifically, the server now can differentiate and communicate the difference between dropping in and observing whatever user is presently logged in as opposed to starting a new and completely virtual loginwindow process and environment independent from the physical screen.

If you can write the book here detailing all the changes, awesome. If not, any pointers to articles, resources or hints of what changes actually shipped with Lion would be most welcome.

I am not finding any relevant documentation or discussion on the googles, the blekkos, or even the Apple developer site. (other than pre-release discussion that change is coming and the numerous VNC is now broken threads)

I love screens on iOS as it works well with the Lion changes - I presume their screens for Mac handles these changes as well. Lots of other clients seem to be not so happy with the Lion changes:

VNC Vinagre to OS X Lion
VNC from Windows gives blank login screen
Why isn't the multisession login in Lion's VNC server working properly?

Maybe … multi-session screen sharing — the license for Mac OS X (Lion) uses the expression separate graphical desktop session.
Mac OS X v10.6 to v10.7 API Diffs
Items of interest but nothing overtly related to screen sharing.
Open source
Released for 10.7 but some of what's there (example: Open Directory) is not amongst Apple's list of open source projects, so I would not treat the latter as comprehensive.
Again I can't see anything specific to screen sharing in Lion.
Timeline of recent documents in the Mac OS X Developer Library
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/
Filtering the list of documents for the word screen doesn't reveal anything obviously relevant, but you might like to review that list occasionally.
Overall
Considering what's in the license, my hunch is that Apple will not be especially open about recent and forthcoming changes (if any) to screen sharing in Lion.
Update
Comments from bmike rung a bell. Apple's article HT4715 About Apple Remote Desktop v3.5 includes a section Lion screen sharing with the following information:

A third party VNC viewer will always be connected to the login window. If the login window is not on the display, a new login window is started that is not shown on the display. The screen sharing user can then log in with any valid account on that computer.

If a third party VNC viewer has difficulty, then maybe it's not following best practice, or the most appropriate standard … whatever those practices/standards may be! With apologies for teaching grandmothers to suck eggs (bmike won't need this but someone else might): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Network_Computing


MacBook Pro printing fails with an Epson printer I am unable to print from my MacBook pro to an Epson 5500 proof printer.
The printer works with an old G4 Mac. But it stubbornly refuses to work from the MacBook running Lion. The computer knows the Epson is there and allows the setup procedure. However when I send a file, the print status goes to Printing  and then almost immediately to Ready, suggesting that the job has been completed.

The printer only has a USB interface. I have tried different cables, but all to no avail. I have even sent the same file from the G4 and the PowerBook.

Any suggestions please? Yes I do have a driver for it.

Thanks

Mike

Have you tried sharing the printer from the G4 box? This could be a case where the older system is running a set of printer drivers which work well with the printer, but the newer system has either those specific drivers removed, or they just don't work correctly.

To do this, on your G4 box, go to System Preferences > Printer, and select the printer you are trying to do. In there, there should be a checkbox that says "Share this Printer". Once you have done that, you should be able to see it in your print dialogs through Bonjour.

See if that helps.


Can I tether with my iPhone 4 without jailbreaking my phone or paying for the additional service? Basically, I want to be able to tether my laptop to my iPhone 4 but I don't want to pay for extra service or lose my unlimited plan.  I've heard there were some apps that had easter eggs but are no longer available.  I've also heard that you can do some things if you have a developer account.

So, are there any free, simple ways to do this without jailbreaking my phone?

It's probably not an easy way but since there have been some apps snuck into the app store that had hidden tethering abilities: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/apple-approves-pulls-flashlight-app-with-hidden-tethering-mode/ It's clearly possible to do this in an app but not one that will be in the official store. One way around this would be to spend the $99 for a developer account, find some source code, compile it and install it onto your device. Don't mind the hand waving around finding appropriate source code though.


Apple Configurator refreshes as soon as it finished I've got several iPads which I manage with Configurator. Since the 9.2 update when I plug in an iPad and refresh it, as soon as Configurator finishes refreshing the device, it starts over.

The process is basically:

Check iOS
Wipe device and reinstall
Install apps
Go to 1 and repeat.

I had the same problem so I thought I'd share my solution:

After the device goes to refresh again, manually stop the refresh. Once you are able to clear the refresh screen and see the settings for that device, it should refresh correctly in the future.


How do I copy photos edited via the Camera app on my iPhone to my PC? So, I know that the photos edited via the Camera app can't be copied to a Windows PC along with the edits.

I realise that the alternative is to email 5 photos at a time.

This is obviously cumbersome. Can anyone suggest alternatives?

Okay. I've found it.

The easiest alternative to getting the edits onto your PC, instead of emailing them to yourselves is to upload it to Flickr.

Obviously, you'll need iOS7, as it has native Flickr integration.

You can upload 10 photos at once which is far better than emailing.

Moreover, if you're like me, who backups photos to a cloud, you can use IFTTT to create a trigger and upload it to your favorite service whenever a new photo is uploaded.


How do I stop a macOS download? I was on the App Store, and accidentally started downloading macOS Sierra. I have no desire to download this, so I want to cancel the download, but I can't figure out how.

From what I have searched, you should go to the purchased section of the App Store, and cancel the download, but macOS doesn't show there:

What should I do?

The answers to Can I cancel a download of a Mac Store app? do not help me because:

The ~/Library/Application Support/AppStore folder does not exist.
Holding the alt key and clicking the 'x' button does nothing.
Running defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true does nothing.

Let the download finish. After it's downloaded the Install macOS Sierra app will launch. You can simply Quit the app as you normally would any app.

If you also want to remove the downloaded file, by default it'll be in your Applications folder (not your Downloads folder). Depending on your setup it may be in your root Applications folder rather than your User's Applications folder.


How do I take a screenshot on a Mac? Possible Duplicate:
  How do I take a screenshot on my Mac?

I haven't found any shortcut or application on my Mac which provide such functionality.

I would like to know the keyboard shortcut.

Command ⌘-Shift ⇧-3 will save a screenshot of the whole screen to your desktop. Command ⌘-Control ⌃-Shift ⇧-3 copies it to your clipboard.
⌘-⇧-4 lets you drag to take a shot of a portion of the screen, or press Space to select a specific window. Add Control ⌃ to the mix to copy to to the clipboard.

You can view and change these in the Keyboard pane of System Preferences, under the Keyboard Shortcuts tab:


Can't remove stalled "inProgress" Time Machine backup My backups stopped functioning.  The error message says problems were encountered when attempt to create the folder for the backup.  I looked at a list of folders and files on the backup drive and discovered a "package" from a few days ago with an inProgess extention.  I tried to drag it to Trash without luck. Then, reading a suggestion (by @grgarside) to another  user with - seemingly - the same issue, I went to Terminal and executed the suggested tmutil listbackups command, but the inProgress package did not appear in the resulting list (perhaps because it's a package rather than a file?)

Despite its path not being listed, I continued to follow the suggestions of @grgarside and executed the sudo tmutil delete /path/to/backup.inProgress command (replacing "path/to" with the path shown on my backup drive), but the result was this: No such file or directory (error 2)

Any suggestions?  Please note that I'm a total novice.  I had never heard of sudo nor tmutil until reading this thread.

Don't remove that is my advice. Apple protects the Time Machine space from anyone making changes so you need to break those locks first, then you need to unlink every single file in that directory and then delete them.

The system is designed to reclaim that folder the next time a backup starts, so you aren't saving yourself any time and just doing what the system will do but slower.

I would make a decision - do you need the backups on that drive. If so, restart the Mac and then let it take a day or several to get the next backup set.

If not - set aside that drive and connect a new destination if you need a quick backup. Time Machine can handle multiple destinations so you can get your next backup done, then let it chew on fixing the interrupted one.

Or - wipe that drive using Disk Utility / remove all backups of that machine using the tmutil delete to remove the machine backup and not just one interval.

Since you're still learning of sudo - please don't use it unless you know you have a good backup and that backup isn't connected to the Mac when you run sudo and you have time to do a full erase of the OS and then full restore from your backup.

Once you're set with a good backup - here's the tutorial on sudo and sudo tmutil delete

How can I manually delete old backups to free space for Time Machine?