Any data on Big Sur market share? I can't find any data on Big Sur market share among Mac versions.
The only source that covers this is https://gs.statcounter.com/macos-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide
However on that source there is no data for Big Sur - if you download .csv you will see that all values add up to 100% and there is no 'Big Sur' or 'Other' category. I would assume that Big Sur has similar to what Catalina had in this period of year (41%) and that all other values should be corrected by multiplying with 59%.
But that is just a guess. Does anyone have any data? Including from his own site if nothing else just if it has at least 1k Mac users a month?

In my experience data for macOS adoption (as opposed to iOS) is fraught with inconsistencies. Many sources just lump the different versions of macOS together in the one bucket. Others even lump macOS and iOS together in the same bucket. In some cases, the data is based on web traffic which is also fraught with difficulty (as the same version of browser can be installed on multiple versions of macOS).
One thing to keep in mind is the sale of new Mac hardware will include the latest version of macOS (e.g. the M1 Macs all come with macOS Big Sur pre-installed, etc).
The last figure1 I recall seeing of new Mac sales was  for the three month period ended 26 December 2020 (8,675,000 Macs, a big jump attributed mainly to M1 Macs). However, many new Mac sales occurred prior to the release of macOS Big Sur or the release of M1 Macs, so that figure will be a mixture of macOS Catalina and macOS Big Sur.
However, the reason I mention Mac sales figures is because your post asks at the end about macOS Big Sur having "at least 1k Mac users a month" - which of course is well and truly below the millions it will be based on those sales figures.
In any case, over time sites like statcounter (which you've already referenced) and statista will include the latest version of macOS in their charts etc. And for most people, that is all they can really wait for or rely on in terms of these figures.
1 Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations, Apple, 27 January 2021.


MacBook Air 2013 with circle slash while trying to install Mojave I've always been a Linux and Windows user, but I bought this used MacBook Air to mess with. I figured a fresh install was best for it so I erased the primary drive in disk utility and got a known-working Mojave installer from work to reinstall Mojave. However, I get about 2/3rds of the way to the loading screen before it goes to circle-slash. I reset SMC, PRAM 3-4 times, and also reformatted the SSD to no avail; always hangs on the same step. Anyone know what might be the issue?

Updater didn't find a previous OS X install.

  Technical requirements:

  OS X 10.8 or later
  2 GB of memory
  15 GB of available storage to perform upgrade
  Some features require an Apple ID
  Some features require internet access

  Mac Hardware requirements:

  MacBook: Early-2015 or newer
  MacBook Pro: Mid-2012 or newer
  MacBook Air: Mid-2012 or newer
  Mac Mini: Late-2012 or newer
  iMac: Late-2012 or newer
  iMac Pro: Late-2017 or newer
  Mac Pro: Late-2013 or newer, mid-2010 and mid-2012 models with recommended Metal-capable GPU

What caught my attention was the
requirement for OS X 10.8 or later. Which (to me) indicates that a previous Mac OS X version needs to already be installed.
So if I were you, I'd probably get my hands on a copy of Mountain Lion, and install that first. Then attempt to install Mojave from there.

While you indicate yours is 2013, if it does turn out to be matter of your hardware being too old. Do note, that the OS Installer has a white, or blacklist that it consults to determine whether the hardware is an actual candidate for install/upgrade. I used to know where this file (.kext) was
located. But have since forgotten. A search on the internet should quickly reveal the location of the .kext file. Good sources for this information are in Hackintosh venues. :)

In case you didn't already know, and are interested. You can easily make a (USB stick) installer in the following fashion:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

where /Volumes/MyVolume should point to your USB stick (formatted with a GUID Partition Map and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) )

Good luck!


remove scratch from iPhone 5 front glass Because I thought the gorilla glass of the iPhone 5 is pretty tuff I decided to omit a screen protection. Unfortunaltey now I have a very thin and subtle but very long (6 cm) scratch on the front glass. It is very hard to see and can only be seen at bright light and from a very specific angle and only when the display is turned off but it is still there, so ...

I always handled the device very carefully and I have no idea where this scratch came from. I suspect the rivets near the pockets of some of my jeans.

To make sure that this is really a scratch I polished the screen with a little bit of water and a glasses cleaning cloth. The proposed scratch doesn't go away.

Is there any way to get rid of this sratch?

Yes, probably the rivets from your jeans.  I've done that before.

A screen protector is always a good idea because of the time and money involved in replacing the touch screen.  Especially for any of the iPhones; they are expensive.  I have always loved the screen protectors from Screenguardz.  Compared to the ones at Best Buy (forget which brand), they are extremely smooth and the anti-glare is great.  Here's the one for the iPhone 5...

ScreenGuardz - iPhone 5

Also, if you already have scratches in your touch screen since you didn't have a screen protector there in the first place ( duh, :D just kidding), you might check out the compound from these guys.  It looks like industrial grade stuff or something of the sort.

TDI Smart Technologies - Glass, Acrylic, and Gorilla Glass Compounds


Set Firefox as default browser to open links in Gmail I’m not seeing a way to choose a different default browser in the Gmail App's "Settings" dialog and I want to use Firefox:

How can I circumvent Google's restriction on opening links in Gmail using only Chrome or Safari on iOS 13.3 or iPadOS 13.3?

UPDATE:
As @Nimar points out, the method I show below is no longer required- the user can now set a browser preference directly in IOS' settings. No need anymore for the below hack- see @Nimar's Answer below-
The only way I found was through the "Share" facility. Basically, the procedure is to add Firefox (or a another browser of your choice) as a sharing option so it can be selected when the link in a Gmail message is long-pressed.
"Share" Menu Configuration:
The following illustrated procedure uses Firefox to modify the list of apps available as a source to share with to add Firefox. However, you can add Firefox as a sharing source from some other app if you care to.  Procedure will still be the same.  Please note the images are cropped to only show the parts of the interface you need to work with

Using Firefox with Gmail:
Using a Gmail message, I'll now illustrate how you can open links with Firefox using a long-press on the link:

That's how you can circumvent Google's restriction on using a browser other than their own and Apple's Safari.  Hopefully a future version of Gmail will make all this unnecessary, but until; they do...


Black MacBook WiFi drops when fan starts blowing I have a 2007 Black MacBook running the latest version of Mac OS X Lion. It has a strange issue wherein the Airport shuts down if the fan starts blowing, and will not start up without a reboot.

Any ideas as to what would be causing this? All sorts of things can make the fan start, but the screensaver and iTunes visualizer are major culprits. It sometimes even does it when I have too many programs open for an extended period of time.

Does anyone have any ideas as to the cause of this? If so, what would be a good solution?

That's quite an odd issue.  I would suggest re-installing OS X Lion and seeing if that rectifies the situation.  If that doesn't fix it, I'd take it to an Apple Authorised Service Provider (AASP) or an Apple Store - sounds like either the AirPort card or the Main Logic Board in that unit is faulty.  I wish I could look at that unit personally, I'd love to find the root of that issue.

Good Luck!


Accept auto-correct suggestion with one keystroke Sometimes, there's an auto-correct suggestion I want to accept, but I don't want to type a period or space followed by a delete. Nor do I want to hit down arrow, return. (That's incredibly lazy of me, now that I think about it.)

Is there any way, barring macro apps, to do this with one keystroke?

I have 69 non-modifier keys on my MacBook Air and 9 modifier keys. Having worked my way through all 78 single keystrokes possible on my keyboard, I can say with confidence that none of them have the effect of both accepting the autocorrect suggestion and not producing any input on your system. If you are looking for a single key press, the answer is definitively, as set up out of the box, no this cannot be done. Once you open the door for multiple key presses, there are options, as you acknowledge, but if your standard is a single key press, no, it cannot be done.


How can I recover from a "AMD-Action:downloadProduct:SP" during installation of macOS? Just wiped my hard drive on my MacBook Pro from 2013. Went to install a new copy of MacOS Sierra. I get the following error:

AMD-Action:downloadProduct:SP

I looked online and tried change the date using the Utility Terminal and the following command:

date mmddHHMMyy

Then did

csrutil enable
csrutil clear

Then I tried clearing the NVRAM using command + option + P + R on startup.

Still no luck. Still getting the same error message.
Apple support told me to go to a "computer repair store".

Any advice?

I had the same problem with my Macbook Pro mid 2010. I tried everything, but Sierra installation allways crashed with AMD-Action:downloadProduct:SP error. Then I created install USB with OSX Mountain Lion and it worked flawlessly. I upgraded to Sierra later via App Store.


I forgot the Password for WPA/WPA2 Personal where can I get it I'am trying to set up a wireless connection to my HP OfficeJet printer. For this I need to enter the password to my WLAN which I forgot.

How and where can I retrieve it?

Open the Keychain Access app (located in the Utilities folder, within the Applications folder).
In the search box (upper right corner), type in the name of your Wi-Fi network.
Double click the corresponding entry in the main panel. If there is more than one, look for the most recent one with a type matching "AirPort network password".
Click the checkbox labelled Show password, and enter your user account password when prompted. The password will be displayed in the text box, where you can copy it as needed.


MacBook Pro a lot slower after reset I recently had some issues with my computer and since I had a backup of all of my files I decided to just wipe the hard drive clean.  After, what I thought, was a full reset I am beginning to suspect I did something incorrectly.  What used to take about 15-20 seconds to go from powered off to using my computer now takes about 2 minutes.  Also, when my computer goes to sleep it says "My_Name_MacBook_Pro(2)" where as it used to just say "My_Name_MacBook_Pro".

I was hoping someone could give a possible explanation as to what I might have messed up in the factory reset process before I take it in to the Apple Store.

I had this issue recently, and I realized I had incorrectly reset the NVRAM. I simply went through the reset again, and all was well. It's fairly easy to do. You just need 6 fingers on each hand.. Here's the Apple site explaining how to perform the reset. Here are the salient points (but I urge you to read the article).

On Mac notebooks with non-removable battery:

Mac notebook computers that have a battery you should not remove include: MacBook Pro (Early 2009) and later, all models of MacBook Air, MacBook (Late 2009), and MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015).

To reset the SMC:

Shut down the computer.

Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your computer.

On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time. (note, not the Command key!).

Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.

Press the power button to turn on the computer.

On MagSafe power adapters, the LED might change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.

On Mac notebooks with removable battery

Older MacBook and MacBook Pro computers have removable batteries. Learn about removing the battery on MacBook and MacBook Pro.

To reset the SMC:

Shut down the computer.

Disconnect the MagSafe power adapter from the computer if it's connected.

Remove the battery.

Press and hold the power button for five seconds.

Release the power button.

Reconnect the battery and MagSafe power adapter.

Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Hope this helps.

It's worth a try before heading the dealership..


Iphone "shortcuts" for wifi / 3g / localization the iPhone may be a real battery hog and sometimes having the battery last till evening is hard. The obvious tips are turning localization, bluetooth, wifi, 3g and so on off. The problem is that this requires a lot of tipping. For example, if I just want to turn 3g off because i'm not browsing or something, I have to tap Activate -> Unlock -> Setting -> General -> Network -> 3g.

One really cool feature of Android is that you can simply swipe down (the gesture that in the new iOS 5 shows the center message) and you have all the icons for turning features on / off. Moreover, every mobile phone has different "modes" that you can activate with a few clicks and that encapsulate a set of settings. On the iPhone you just have sound on / off and the radical "aeroplane" mode.

Is there a way (shortcut, setting, app...) to set up different modes? For example, most of the times I just need to use the iPhone for messages and calls and receive pushes (mails) but not using 3g, but I want to reactivate all the features if I need to look up something on the internet or check something nearby with an app and I don't want to do dozens of clicks just to reactivate the localization, searching for networks and re-enable 3g. Thanks

Yes, Apple has added some URL shortcuts for these functions and Jeff Broderick (blog at http://brdrck.me/ ) has assembled a nice dashboard of these shortcuts with gorgeous icons to save the web clips to the home screen of your iOS device.

Wifi toggle from http://brdrck.me/settings/wifi

Simply browse your iOS device to http://brdrck.me/settings/ and pick from the many web clips that he has assembled. These are basically the same as taking a web site in the iPhone configuration utility and adding it to your home screen with a nice icon. I don't see one set up for Localization/International or 3G but will poke around to see if I can figure out the syntax to get those sorted for you.


Database program with CSV import and ad-hoc SQL queries? Is there a database program for the Mac that makes it easy to import a CSV file into a table and then query and manipulate the data using ad-hoc SQL queries?

(A Windows example of a similar product would be Microsoft Access ... it also has forms and reports, which are not as important, but I would not mind a Mac solution that has those too.)

Filemaker Pro will be your best bet overall. It is easier to use than Access, and will give you what you want and more. It's going to be a learning curve with anything if you're used to Access, so just jump in to one of them.

Filemaker Pro -

http://www.filemaker.com/products/filemaker-pro/

If you're wanting to do something SQL related though, then I'd check out the following: Sequelpro; Querious; Navicat; or MySQL Workbench.

Sequelpro is best out of all of these though, in my opinion, and it's completely free. Bam!

http://www.sequelpro.com/


Submit update to app without original certificates generated by prior developer I joined a company which had one iOS developer who has created one app and put it on the App Store already. Then he left the company. We have an organization Apple developer account. The developer who left has created the development/distribution certificate, provisioning profile, etc. for the app.

I joined the company after that developer left. For the same app, I need to fix some bugs and release to the App Store again. What do I need to do with those development & distribution certificates?

I think the private key is on that developer's laptop right? Do I have to have that private key in order to release an update for that app?

Can I just revoke the development & distribution certificates created by that developer & create all those certificates & provisioning profiles again for the same app, then update the app in App Store? Or does an app update need the same distribution certificate created by the previous developer?

Also, for a new app, can I re-use the same certificates (development & distribution) but re-generate provisioning profiles with new app's bundle ID?

Revoke the certificates of the old developer and start fresh with your own new certificates.

You must generate a new one if you want to be able to compile your app, to commit an update or submit an app from scratch. Apps already published in the store are not affected. For new apps you use your new generated certificates.

When revoking a distribution certificate the below scenarios will occur for your users:

When you revoke a certificate that means that any app that is not deployed onto a device (not hosted by AppStore) will no longer be valid. Existing users can continue to use the app.
When you revoke a certificate and your App is being hosted on the AppStore; users that have already installed the app will not be affected. New users that go to install the app will not be affected.
When you revoke a certificate and your App is being hosted in-house (internally) and users download it via OTA; users that have already installed the app will not be affected. New users that go to install the app will not be able to install it. Please note this is based off of behavior we have experienced from Apple.
Revoking a certificate will not affect the ability to update existing apps regardless of whether they are AppStore or in-house apps.

Please note that this has been the behavior observed from working with Apple recently and if any updates were made on Apple's end than this is subject to change.


How to check which currency conversions that spotlight supports? Is the currency supported by different regions different? How to check which currency conversions that spotlight supports? Is the currency supported by different regions different? Currently, I set the area to Hong Kong, supporting most currencies including HKD TWD RMB EUR USD SGD. But does not support Turkish lira(TRY) and Vietnam Dong(VND).

Spotlight uses the Calculator App to convert the currency. You can check the supports currency in Calculator——convert——currency.
Because the data source comes from Yahoo, I think that as long as I can access Yahoo, it should be the same. I tried China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. There is no difference.


How can I use iPhone GPS and share it with an OS X application to get live position on Mac? How can I use iPhone GPS and share it with an OS X application to get live position on Mac?

Note: I am looking for a way of seeing current location, live, in Google Earth, Google maps or something similar.

I assumed a configuration where I share my internet connection from iPhone and I connect a  mac to it. I know that at least the iPad can get the location when it is connected to an iPhone.

I think he's asking about actually using an iPhone as a GPS module for a laptop, rather than sending a location which can be viewed on a laptop.

This functionality isn't available unless you jailbreak your iPhone, then you can use xGPS or any of the similar apps on Cydia which can turn your iPhone into a bluetooth GPS module.


How can I update homebrew and upgrade the new packages in one step? I often run brew update followed by brew upgrade.

Can I do that in one step?

Yes, by putting the following line in your ~/.bash_profile file:

alias brewu='brew update && brew upgrade --lock'

brewu can be replaced by whatever alias you want to use.


Why does my iPhone disconnect from wireless when it is in use? Whenever I watch videos through the YouTube app on my iPhone 4 (iOS 6.1.3), after being on wireless for a while it will often spontaneously disconnect and start downloading from the 3G network. I only have a 200 MB data plan so this is a major problem. I'm guessing it is not app-specific, I just only happen to notice it with YouTube. I have 3/3 bars of wireless signal and my laptop in the same location has no problem so I don't think it's an issue with the wireless. I've tried restoring various levels of default settings and the entire phone to no avail.

I wish I could comment, but do not have enough reputation.  Since it sounds like this problem is isolated solely to your specific iPhone, it sounds like it could be a problem with your router, or maybe the antenna in the phone itself is some how damaged.  I know you said you don't think it could be a problem with your wireless router, but do you experience any of the same problems when using any other devices?  My recommendation would be to reset your router to factory settings and then using your iPhone to view or download a large file over that connection.

I really do think it is a problem with your router, as I have seen other wireless connections exhibit the same problems when they are about to fail.


How can I enable Personal Hotspot on iOS 7 even though my carrier has disabled it? On my iPhone running iOS 7, I have the Personal Hotspot feature, but I can't turn it on. I've read that it's been disabled by my carrier, AT&T, since the feature is plan dependent. How can I bypass this and still enable Personal Hotspot?

If you're willing to jailbreak, you can use TetherMe. It will enable Personal Hotspot then change the location of the data to appear to be coming from inside the device, thereby bypassing the carrier's disable.

 TetherMe
Dynamically enables native tethering or personal hotspot for iOS3.X or newer devices. This should work on any carrier without the need for customised bundles or preferences.
TetherMe has been tested to work on all iOS versions from 3.0 to 6.1 and works by telling the iPhone to allow tethering on any APN that is used for iPhone data. As a result, you should not be charged any more for tethering data than normal data by your phone company as all tethering data appears to come from the phone itself.


Display glitches on a MBPro 15 inch Late 2013 (base model) (video) I have a late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 15 inch with integrated graphics (base model), which has display glitches that occur sporadically. This seems to happen more often when an external display is connected.
https://streamable.com/ip8n8q
In the video, you can see the display glitches appear. Sometimes the glitches disappear when I move my cursor over it. This wasn't the case now, moving the cursor over to the external monitor fixed the issue.
My question: What could cause this and is there any known fix for it?

You may have one of the Macbook Pros with an acknowledged video issue - unfortunately the free repair program ended long ago. Apple used to have a page where you could check if your model was affected, but it is long gone.
There's some info on https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/macbook-problems-recalls-3699153/
A 2013 model is probably not worth paying to repair these days. The product is listed as Vintage, so Apple would probably repair it, but at cost.
There's a list of Vintage & Obsolete Macs here - Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty
You could try running hardware diagnostics - Hold D at boot - & see what is reported.


I forgot the passcode for my iPad restrictions. How can I disable them? I added restrictions to my iPad and I forgot the passcode for them, now what? Is there a way to remove it without resetting the device?

The short answer is no.

The long answer is wipe the device and then start over. If you have a backup, hopefully it's from before the restrictions were set.


Finder directory containing latest iCloud Photos I often want to included a recent photo in an email, file upload, or other similar context.

I want to select this image via the normal macOS file picker.

I do not want to go through the hassle, each time, of exporting the photo from my Mac Photos library or AirDropping it from my iOS device.

I'm fine finding and exporting older photos via Photos. But I want the most recent photos easily available in this directory so that I can quickly select them with the macOS file picker.

Is there any way I can "mirror" my latest iCloud Photos into a much-simplified Finder directory?

Requirements:

I want to save this file location in my Finder sidebar, just like I do for my "Downloads" folder, "Screenshots" folder, etc. ~/Pictures/Recent/ or similar.
The single directory should contain all of my latest photos from the last day or week or so. Or just the latest 100 images. No subdirectories for each image.
The images should be in common image formats such as .jpg, not .HEIC.
I don't want the images to be iCloud "masters", or pick up edits, or delete from iCloud, or anything like that. Just a dumb copy of photos from iCloud.

I expect that this will need to be done via a script or regular automated process.

Do any tools exist that provide this functionality?

How can I create such a regularly-updated directory of my recent photos?

You can access Photos directly in the standard macOS file selector

If you don't see the sidebar you can enable it with the dropdown behind the icon on top left


How much video can you record on a 64 GB iPhone 12? I’m considering a phone upgrade, but don’t really need a lot of storage.
Approximately, how much of different resolutions video, can one record onto a 64GB iPhone 12?
How many minutes of video would a gigabyte of HDR Video Recording with “Dolby Vision” contain? How can I research this without knowing the technical specifics of a format I cannot access until I purchase a phone?
I’m not looking for very exact answers, just an approximation of HD video sizes and lengths in the context of the camera tech used in this specific phone.

The Camera settings on iPhone 12 shows

4K @ 60fps is 440MB per minute.
4K @ 30fps is 190MB per minute.

I don’t have an iPhone 12 to know exactly how much space is reserved by iOS but supposing it’s 15 GB that leaves 110 minutes of 4k60 or 257 minutes of 4k30.


Setup Apple TV (2nd Gen) with neither a remote nor home sharing turned on How to pair Apple TV (2nd gen) without a remote and without home sharing turned on?

I decided to answer my own question after 2 hours of figuring out ways around the problem that "If home sharing is not turned on, apple TV cannot be controlled with an ios device".
Note that I am talking about a 2nd gen apple TV. A 3rd gen can be worked around by http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5900?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
You actually can get the 2nd gen synced with your ios, a little sneaky but it is easily managable.
Here is what you do...

Connect the apple TV to your laptop and reset to factory settings on the apple TV (I did this to get a clean box + latest software update).

Now when apple TV powers up (just hook the HDMI to the TV and the power up the apple TV) it will ask you for a bluetooth keyboard pairing if needed (if you have one, rest is straight forward, if not go to step 3 else step 5). New versions of apple TV software ask you for this pairing, hence the restore to factory + software update on the apple TV. NOTE: Restoring may not work on a Mac running Catalina, perhaps because Apple broke the functionality when they decided to remove iTunes. On MacOS 10.15.2 it gave an "unknown error (1)" and left the Apple TV stuck in recovery mode (showing the "connect to iTunes" screen when plugged into the TV). However it seems to work fine on macOS Mojave which still has iTunes.

I do not own a bluetooth keyboard so I downloaded 1keyboard app from the app store for free (I own a mac, something like this should be doable for windows too).

Using 1Keyboard I could emulate a bluetooth keyboard functionality from my mac.

Once I had the keyboard connected to the apple TV, use up down etc. keys to navigate and setup your apple TV. Then go to settings and pair your ios Remote App.

Save 20$ by not buying the remote :-)
Hope this helps someone.


iTunes does not have ibooks option I recently bought mac book air. In that I have itunes 11.2.1 version. Now I want to move all of my contents from my previous mac book's itunes to this new one and completely sync both my ipad and iphone with new mac book. But the problem is that I don't even have any option to selection ibooks from new itune 11.2.1. Below is the screenshot.

When I want to add ibooks there from preferences there also does not have the option to add ibook. Below is the screenshot of preferences

How can I add ibooks so that I could sync my books with my ipad?

iBooks has moved to the iBooks app - you should have seen this splash screen the first time you opened the Books tab...

BTW, the current iTunes is 11.4

You sync the same way as before, from iTunes...


XCode change Comment SYMBOL I know how to change key-bindings. My question, which is almost nowhere to find on google: could someone please tell me, how to change the comment-symbols. For example, I want to sometimes define them to be #, sometimes %, sometimes //, etc.

This is dictated by the language you are writing in, not by the IDE.


How to rename (main) hard disk back to default? And is the disk default really LVG? I recently reinstalled OS X, when it asked me to erase the disk I just left it Untitled, since there's no instruction to rename it to whatever on this Apple support page, after restoring with Time Machine the disk name became Untitled, same with the partitioned name, which I easily rename to Macintosh HD.

Here are screenshots of the Untitled HD

specs: MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014) - 256GB

AFAIR the original name has something to do with the capacity and SSD brand. Now I can't remember the original disk name and I don't know how to (safely) rename it,

To add up, I think my old disk is GUID, not LVG, did I do something wrong? How can I revert back everything to the default state, I'm quite anal about these things since it might results in problems in the future etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

The naming scheme for non-CoreStorage devices/volumes looks like this:

(hard-coded) name of the disk device

EFI (invisible in non-tweaked Disk Utility)
Volume 1 (usually Macintosh HD)
Volume 2 (optional)
... (optional further volumes)
Recovery HD (invisible)

And the naming scheme for CoreStorage devices/volumes looks like this (a Fusion-disk has an additional invisible EFI partition, an invisible Boot OS X volume and a second invisible Physical Volume):

name of the Logical Volume Group

EFI (invisible)
name of Logical Volume 1 (usually Macintosh HD)
name of Logical Volume 2 (optional)
... (optional further volumes)
name of the Physical Volume (invisible)
Recovery HD (invisible)

The names of the Logical Volume Group and the Logical Volumes usually derive from former volume names or is just "Untitled" for Physical Volume(s) but the hard-coded physical device name is rarely used (I have seen it only once, probably the owner renamed it).

Renaming the Logical Volume Group:

To rename the Logical Volume Group use:

diskutil cs rename lvgUUID|lvgName newName

To get the lvgUUID just enter diskutil cs list. It's the first UUID listed. Alternatively you may use the Logical Volume Name. I don't know whether this works if you have several equally named LVGs or PVs. Therefore I always prefer the UUID.

To get the previous visible disk device name open "About your Mac" -> System Report -> Hardware -> SATA/SATA Express and search for your device.

Reverting CoreStorage to non-CoreStorage:

To revert the CoreStorage non-destructively to a traditional non-CoreStorage volume boot to Recovery Mode/Internet Recovery Mode or an OS X thumb drive.

Open Termínal.app and enter:

diskutil cs list

to get the Logical Volume UUID (usually it's the last listed) and enter:

diskutil cs revert lvUUID

to convert your CoreStorage device to non-CoreStorage.

Though the command converts CS to non-CS non-destructively it's always a good advice to have a current backup of your main volume.

You mustn't do this with Fusion drives or you will destroy all your data.


Changing my sound Output Device also changes my Play Sound Effects Through setting - should it? If I set my sound effects to come out "Selected sound output device" via the sound Preference panel while using my bluetooth headphones, everything works as expected - both regular sound (like music or video sounds) and sound effects (like sent mail "swoosh" effects) come out my headphones.  If I then go up to the volume control icon on the top right of the toolbar, and set the Output Device to Internal Speakers, then all the sounds come out of my laptop's speakers.  But then if I set the Output Device back to my bluetooth headphones, then it also "magically" resets my "Play sound effects through:" setting back to "Internal Speakers" - so that now Music and Video sounds come out of my headphones, but sound effects come out of the laptop speakers themselves.  This seems broken - changing my output device shouldn't change other settings.  Does this do this for other people?  Is there something strange I'm doing to cause this odd side effect?
Update (due to some confusion highlighted by the first attempted answer) - I did not disconnect my headphones during this experiment - I just toggled the Output Device from Headphones to Internal Speakers and back to Headphones.  I would assume that most people would want their "Play sound effects through" setting to be "Selected sound output device" all the time - since you'd want those sounds to come out of the same place sounds from the Music, TV or other audio/video apps to come from.  It was disconcerting to me the first time I was listening to music through my headphones and heard my laptop make noises (e.g. the mail sent "swoosh" sound).  So while I can imagine someone wanting to manually decouple the sound effects device from the general sound device, I would be highly surprised that people would want it to be automatically decoupled every time they put headphones in or out.

This is how it’s supposed to work because when you disconnect a Bluetooth sound device, it no longer exists. When that happens everything goes back to the default of Internal Speakers
I just tried it. I had everything set to my headset and when I disconnected it, it no longer showed up as an output device.
There are some apps that remember by output settings so if and when I reconnect my headset it will automatically switch.  It seems that the safety setting is to make sure Notifications always plays and that’s done by the system always setting them back to Internal.
I also checked with my USB speakers by making sound effects go there and as long as those speakers were there even if Bluetooth was connected and disconnected, the notifications didn’t change to Internal.


I accidentally used CMD+drag to remove my fast switching icon. How can I restore it? In the top right hand corner, near where the Notifications sit used to be the name of the account I was using on this computer. I CMD+clicked it as you can use this to re-arrange the bar. I dragged it off the bar by mistake and it's disappeared. How can I restore this please?

Open System Preferences / Users & Groups
click lock to make changes
click Login Options
Check "Show fast user switching menu as ..." (in Mountain Lion)

Account name should now appear on the menubar again.


Creating a shortcut for Zooming (maximizing) windows that actually works on every app? As of MacOS 10.6.6, there's no keyboard shortcut that I know of for zooming (maximizing) the window.
There's ⌘M to minimize, though.
I made a custom shortcut, defined it on the keyboard preferences pane, but as it identifies the menu command by name ("zoom"), it clashes with other commands in some applications, for example this one I'm using right now, Firefox. It briefly highlights the view menu, giving me a hint that the command matched by "zoom" is inside that menu, but in this case, zoom is just a submenu that has the options zoom in and zoom out, but it's obviously not related to zooming the window.
Is there any other way of setting this shortcut to work in such cases?

The following Applescript will trigger the zoom button (that´s button 2) in the frontmost application´s window.
You could make this a service and define a global shortcut for it or use an application like quicksilver to call it.

tell application "System Events"
set frontApplication to (get name of every process whose frontmost is true) as string
tell process frontApplication
    click button 2 of window 1
end tell
end tell


Deleted photos from MacBook but storage space not reclaimed I recently ran out of space on my MacBook Pro because I have a lot of pictures saved to it, so I went out and bought an external hard drive (2 TB).

I moved every single photo on my MacBook hard drive to the external hard drive and deleted all the photo copies remaining on my macbook drive. Currently there are 0 photos on my MacBook drive, yet I keep receiving a message saying my disk is critically low on space. When I check what is taking up that space, its all photos, about 49.83 GB to be exact.

This is really frustrating as I searched my entire MacBook drive for any remaining photos, yet I can't find a single one even though it says that Photos are taking up about 50 GB of space on my MacBook hard drive. I am a photographer if you are wondering why I have that many photos, and keeping that in mind I also thought maybe it's my Lightroom catalogs thats taking up space. I moved my entire catalog folder into my external hard drive and deleted the original from my MacBook to make space, but that only created about 2.98 GB of space.

Someone told me I should turn off my Time Machine and delete all my backups, but I can't seem to find where the turn off button is.

Did you empty Trash (Recycle Bin for Mac) (After moving your files to the external HDD?

If you have Time Machine setup on your primary HDD (where your OS X is setup), setup it up on another HDD (External HDD).


Emailing photos in iOS 5.0.1 I have been trying to send an email with a picture attached from the Photo app on my iPhone 3GS, but every time I hit the option button for the photo the app crashes. Its been frustrating. Does anyone know what is the problem?

The problem can be in 1 of 2 areas.  Either there is a problem with the photograph, or it is a problem with your Mail setup.

You can test both areas, try sending a different photo, see if it works.  Or, try sharing the same photo via another mechanism, e.g. messages, or Twitter, see if that works.

If one of them fails, then that is your likely cuprit.  If they both work, then it's likely to be a little more nuanced and harder to track down!


Use Dell Inspiron laptop monitor as only monitor for mac mini I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop and I am planning on purchasing a mac mini, new version , I am tight on money for a while and want to use my current laptop screen as monitor for mac mini, I just want to know if it is at all possible to do, I have windows 7 and ubuntu 11.04 installed in my laptop, and I don't really care if need to wipe them out, or purchasing a monitos is the only option left, also I am planning to use it for coding and stuff, so VNC is probably not a good choice.

You cannot connect the Dell laptop's screen to the Mac Mini.  Not easily anyway.  I am sure somebody could hack something together, and it would involve opening up the case of the Dell, and possibly the Mac.

However, you could use VNC on the Dell, to view what the Mac Mini is "displaying"

I don't think you can use the Kick Start utility to start the screen sharing service on the Mac Mini, so you will need to borrow a monitor form somewhere to get the Mac set up in the first place...

Then, after setting up the Mac, go to System Preferences -> Sharing, and set up Screen Sharing.  Also you will need to allow computers using VNC to connect to it.  It's all there is the settings pane.

Then...  You will use VNC on your ubuntu box (ick, don't use Windows) and connect to the Mac using it's IP address.  You will be able to view and control the mac, from the Dell's monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse.

There will be some lag...  such is life with VNC...


Disable Kerberos / Single Sign-on We have a Mac mini running OS X 10.7 Server which has a number of shared folders/drives using AFP. We have a user account called fcp setup as sharing only which coworkers use to access the shared files.

Whenever a coworker clicks on the machine in finder we get prompted for a Kerberos password:

We can get around this simply by clicking cancel (and we are then presented with the classic login window), but it confuses people.

How can I disable single signon/kerberos? (or alternatively, would it just be better to configure it properly? and if so what are the benifits since we only use filesharing?)

I assume this is something that comes activated with server because I dont remember anyone ever 'turning it on'

To disable Kerberos, open Terminal at Mac mini and enter the following command:

sudo sso_util remove -k -a username -p password -r YOUR.KERBEROS.REALM

Replace username, password with the user name and password of the Open Directory administrator (user/password with admin rights on Mac mini). It seems that YOUR.KERBEROS.REALM is "LKDC".

The Open Directory Overview pane of Server Admin (at Mac mini) should show the Kerberos service status as stopped.

Source


Behavior of macOS After Toggling Secure Boot on T2 Chip: Does It Remember the ECID? I am reading up on the T2 chip as I look at plans to avoid multiple machines by consolidating various OS requirements onto a single computer.

It sounds like I can use Full Security for Secure Boot in the Startup Security Utility for macOS and Windows 10.

For Linux, I plan to disable it and enable Allow booting from external media.

When booting back into macOS after re-enabling Full Security, would there be any issue here, or would it boot just as if it had never been disabled?

I ask because of this paragraph:

  When an operating system is being installed, the system communicates
  to an Apple Signing Server and requests a personalized signature that
  includes the ECID—unique ID specific to the chip—as part of the signing
  request. The signature s unique and usable only by the operating system
  with that T2 chip installed. Therefore, when Full Security is configured, > the T2 chip ensures the operating system is uniquely signed for each
  computer.

To rephrase the question again, does the T2 chip remember this unique ID (ECID) after turning Full Security back on? Or rather, does it discard it when choosing No Security?

Yes, the T2 always "remembers" its unique ID (ECID) even if you turn Full Security off and on again. It is never discarded.

However, this is really not the question you would like to be asking:

The ECID is burned into the T2 chip and cannot change. The actual signature file created when the operating system is installed is stored on your disk drive as an im4m file. A valid signature can only be signed by Apple, and it contains the ECID from your T2 chip, limiting its validity to your specific computer.

The real question you want to ask is if those signature files are retained when turning off Full Security - and the answer is yes, they definitely are.

Every time you have a new signature created (for example when installing a new OS), the system creates a new, uniquely named im4m file on your drive. The old ones are not deleted.

When you disable "Full Security" and set it to "No Security", then the T2 chip stops checking the validity of the signatures in those im4m files. It doesn't discard them, delete them or anything of the sort.


Apps purchased on iPhone 'timing out' I buy quite a few apps on my iPhone, but as of late I am noticing a weird issue: any app that cost money, 'times out' after a few days use. 'Timed out' apps don't appear on my iTunes purchases history, and I am forced to buy them again(?) and re-download them before I can use them again. When the app 'times out', the icon remains, but the app immediately exits when pressing on the icon. It seems as though my iPhone may have lost the connection to the store somehow? Any ideas?

It sounds like your iOS software is corrupted. I would back up your iPhone to iTunes or iCloud, follow these instructions to enter your phone into DFU mode, download the newest iOS version, and restore your iPhone with the newest iOS version. Contact iTunes support and get your purchase issues resolved. Let me know in comments if you have any questions!


External microphone with mid-2012 Macbook Air I cannot get any of my external microphones to work with my
mid-2012 MacBook Air (which runs Arch Linux).  Neither the
four-pin-jack headphone that comes with iPhones, nor the Beoplay
H9i (three pins).  It is clear in pavucontrol that only the
internal microphone is listened to.  Output works.  Any advise?

More than likely, you are using a non-Apple headphone so the Mic pin is in the wrong location on the TRRS jack

My advice is to avoid using the built in a jack and use a quality USB microphone or at least a quality DAC that accepts standard headphone input  I’ve personally gotten better audio quality going the USB route (no pops or hums) versus the built in connector.


Can I use Google CardDAV sync on my Mac? Is it possible for me to use Google's excellent CardDAV contact sync service on my OS X (10.8) computer?

It works very well on iOS, but the same settings do not work on a computer.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like CardDAV sync feature is only avaliable from iOS devices. I did however find an article showing how you can do so on your mac, it could be worth a try.

  After opening Contacts, go to the app’s preferences pane. Navigate to
  the “Accounts” section:
  http://ismh.s3.amazonaws.com/2012-12-16-google-contacts-1.png
  Hit the plus sign to add an account. Here are the required settings:
  Account type: CardDAV:
  Username: Your Gmail Account
  Your password
  Server address: google.com

  Hit the “Create” button:
  http://ismh.s3.amazonaws.com/2012-12-16-google-contacts-2.png
  Contacts.app will then ask if you want use these credentials for other
  types of information. Select what you wish and press the “Create”
  button again.

  Once the account is listed in Contact.app’s preferences, go to the
  “General” section and set your Google account to be the default
  account:
  http://ismh.s3.amazonaws.com/2012-12-16-google-contacts-3.png

  By default, the application defaults to saving vCards locally on the
  Mac, which means information added from other programs won’t end up in
  the Google cloud.


UNKNOWN NAME Showing up instead of actual phone number When receiving a phone call from a number not listed in my Contacts, the name displays as "UNKNOWN NAME" rather than simply showing the number initiating the call. I'm pretty sure this hasn't always been the case, and that my phone used to list the number itself.

Is there any way to get it to go back to listing the number? There seems to be no option for this under Settings.

The cell phone carrier sends this information, so I would do in order:

check for carrier setting update
Check for iOS update
Test with a couple numbers (delete the number from contacts if needed)
If it’s systematic, restart the device and update it.
If it’s not systematic, call your carrier for support.

In the end, carrier support may be needed to validate why this happens if it’s not a simple need to update or restart and retest.


Is "suspend-to-disk" memory dump encrypted when using FileVault2? I am conserned about cold-boot attacks on my full disc encrypted (filevault2) laptop.

Therefore I am wondering if the memory image dump to /var/vm/sleepimage is encrypted before it is saved to disk?

I notice that the suspended drive asks me for my password before unlocking so it appears this is the case, but could anyone confirm this?

Everything written to the volume under Filevault 2 is encrypted live and in-stream by the kernel / device drivers.

As long as there isn't a bug where data leaks to outside the core storage wrapper, you don't need to worry about someone analyzing the contents of your RAM by snooping the locked drive.


How can I exclude certain ports from the firewall notifications? First of all, I know I can manually configure the firewall through IPFW but I hope that the OS X firewall system has an option for this by default.

The problem I am currently having is that when I'm doing web development with Django I get a 'Do you want the application "python" to accept incoming netowrk connections?' every time I save a file within the project.

Note that I need Django to be available throughout the local network since I usually use multiple computers during development (i.e. IE box to test) so I cannot set it to localhost only.

Is there any way to have OS X remember this "Allow" permanently instead of asking every time I save a file?

The dialog is not coming from ipfw but from socketfilterfw, the OS X Application based firewall. That one is not port based, like ipfw but based on processes. If an application/script wants to bind a port the application firewall checks it's ruleset and subsequently asks the user if that should be allowed which is what you already see. If you allow this, the binary in question gets signed and is allowed access in the future without user interaction. If the binary changes, you get asked again.

The only way to prevent getting asked is to turn off the app firewall which I do not recommend. Alternatively you could start signing each change of your python files which is likely to become annoying.

Sidenote: If you need a port based firewall as well you should be using pf (pf.conf(5), pfctl(8)) on Mountain-Lion as ipfw is deprecated.


Does Apple have a warranty on their hard drives? I got a hard drive installed about a year or so ago and now the hard drive seems to be failing. Making intermittent beeping noises. I got the hard drive installed at the genius bar. Is there an automatic warranty that comes with these hard drives or did I have to pay an extra amount to get the warranty. This hard drive was installed fairly recently so It shouldn't be failing like this.

Since you had an Apple authorized service provider for my repair (i.e. the Genius Bar) you now have coverage under two legal agreements.

The original warranty on the machine is still in effect ( or is expired ) but it does not get extended due to the fact that you had a repair. http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/

The AppleCare terms of service generally offer a 90 day warranty on all parts that runs concurrently with whatever other AppleCare service agreement or original warranty exist.

Since your repair was a year ago, the 90 days certainly isn't going to cover you and it would be your responsibility to pay for the repair at this point instead of apple's responsibility. http://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/terms/repair/retailservice.html

The only out would be if you had purchased AppleCare on the original machine and if you were still within the three-year window for coverage. In that case the repaired machine and parts are covered as if they were the original machine and parts.  In that case the repaired machine and parts are covered as if they were the original machine and parts


Reuse a SSD MZ-JPV1280/0A4 as external SSD I have a 128GB SSD Samsung Model MZ-JPV1280/0A4 from my 2015 MacBook Pro Retina and I would like to reuse it in my new PC (ASUS Vivobook Pro, with Core i7 7th Gen, Nvidia GTX 1050, 16GB RAM) where i have done a partition of 50GB for popOS (Ubuntu).
I would like to exploit the power of the SSD as external disk. Is it possible? How?

To use any of the Apple SSDs as an external drive, you will need a USB Enclosure just as you would for any other drive.  You simply need to ensure that the enclosure is compatible with Apple's SSD interface - check the specs of the enclosure!
That said, given the extremely low price point of off-the-shelf SSDs (not proprietary Apple) and the very high prices Apple SSDs fetch on the secondary market (eBay, Gumtree, etc.), you are better off buying a new regular SSD and selling the Apple SSD to someone who needs it for their Apple machine.  You'll likely make a nice profit.


How to use `click` in a shortcut? (Run a service when clicking a link) Is it possible to run an Automator service with an alternate click, e.g. ⌘ + ⇧ + Click? This kind of combination is built into browsers with ⌘ + Click typically opening a link in a new tab.
I have a service for handling links. Right now I can right click the link, pick services from the context menu, and then select my service. I'd rather not navigate the menu. Is there a way I can harness Click when making a shortcut?
A half-option is to right click the link, click elsewhere to close the dialog, and then press the keyboard shortcut, but this is cumbersome. (I'd be happy enough if I had to right click and then do a shortcut, but this seems to not work without clicking away.)
I've internet sleuthed with enough search strategies that I think this may not be possible but am hoping I'm wrong and simply a careless querier!

BetterTouchTool
You can use better touch tool to remap your clicks on your trackpad or mouse. Here is a screenshot of the rule I created. It copies the url from the hyperlink and sends this to a shell script, where you can handle it as you wish.

The last line actions, "Execute Shell Script" has this configuration:

This just runs an executable script and pastes in the url as its argument. If you don't want to use a bash/zsh script you can use applescript or javascript or python or perl or whatever you are comfortable with by changing the launch path.


Windows drivers for MacBookPro 5,1 I'm trying to install windows 2k8 R2  on an old MacBook Pro (5,1). Thats the first unibody macbook with core2duo.

The harddrive did crash so I don't have any option to use bootcamp to retrieve my drivers. Any advice where I can find the driver package for a 64 bit windows operating system?

You should be able to find the appropriate drivers on http://support.apple.com/downloads/#bootcamp.


How can I adjust the sequential numbering scheme when exporting Photos? I'm trying to export ~200 or so photos from Photos.app to setup on a digital picture frame. These photos are in an album, in sequence, and I can export them in numbered order from Photos.

However, Photos exports using the following format:

"Filename - 1"
"Filename - 2"
...
"Filename - 10"
"Filename - 11"

etc.

My digital frame does not understand that 10 does not come before 2, so it plays back as 1,10,11,12...20,21

This ought to be solvable by having the Photos export using a format of 001,002,003, etc. I'm pretty sure iPhoto used to even let me do this! But I can't find any option to do so in Photos.

Is it possible to export using a sensible number order that my frame will understand?

Select the photos to export and then press: ⇧⌘E

In the Export sheet, select the Photo Kind: and then select Sequential for File Name:, while leaving Sequential Prefix: blank, and Subfolder Format: to None.

Click the Export button.

Select a location for the photos to be exported to and click the Export button.

For the number of photos you mentioned, "~200", this will take a little while.

When the exporting is finished, then in Terminal change directory to the location of the exported photos.

cd /path/to/exported/photos

They will be named e.g. 1.png, 2.png, etc.

Use the following compound command to rename the files for a three digit zero padded filename.

for f in [0-9]*\.*; do mv -v -n "$f" "$(printf %03d "${f%.*}")"."${f##*.}"; done

The files will now be named e.g. 001.png, 002.png, etc.


AppleScript saving global variable I'd like to access the variables origTrack and origPlaylist from another AppleScript so that I can return to the track and playlist that were playing before the first script executed.

Here's what I have in the first script:

global origTrack
global origPlaylist

on run arguments
    if ((count of arguments) is 0) or (first item of arguments) is not "paused" then

        set origTrack to ""
        tell application "iTunes"
            if player state is playing then
                set origTrack to current track

            end if
        end tell

        set origPlaylist to ""
        tell application "iTunes"
            if player state is playing or player state is paused then
                set origPlaylist to current playlist
                set newPlaylist to playlist "Morning Mix"
                set view of front window to newPlaylist
            end if
        end tell
        tell application "iTunes" to play newPlaylist

    end if
    return arguments
end run

Second script:

on run
    set isPlaying to false

    tell application "iTunes"
        set isPlaying to player state is equal to playing
        pause
        set current track to origTrack
    end tell

    if isPlaying then
        return "playing"
    else
        return "paused"
    end if
end run

I usually save text files as the variable they are named after, and recall them in other scripts. I use a folder in /var, i created my own hidden folder so it wouldn't clutter it too much. You can make hidden folders with mkdir in terminal. Example: mkdir /var/.scriptvariables


How to disable disk cache in Yosemite My MacBook constantly freezes because of using all RAM (8GB). The disk cache seems to be the cause. The command sudo purge only helps a little bit. In some older versions of OS X, my MacBook worked fine because it had (just) enough RAM for running Xcode (with big project) without constantly swapping.

This is the memory usage after compiling my project once. The memory usage of Xcode can grow few hundreds more MB after few hours of usage.

This isn't directly answering your question since I don't know of a way to disable the file cache mechanism in OSX. That being said, I can't think of a good reason WHY you would want to do so in the first place? What makes you so sure it is because of the file cache?

The file cache is a dynamic thing in that it gets larger as you do more I/O with your disk, but gets purged and shrinks as soon as an application needs RAM to get something done. What lives in the file cache is copies of recently used files with the idea that if you need them again shortly thereafter, the I/O will be much faster since it is already in RAM. While this is similar to the RAM cache function of the older MacOS, the big difference here is that it is completely dynamic and grows to make use of unused RAM in your system and will shrink as soon as ANYTHING needs RAM. In other words, it isn't locking up your memory and shouldn't be the cause of any slowdowns on your Mac.

That all being said, there is somewhat of a balance between how OSX manages your RAM. I have seen that there are small delays as things go in/out of the "compressed" state and in general the idea is that once something is compressed, it will stay there until there is a real need otherwise. The bigger cause for a delay would be if you were using swap since that is the slowest form of memory, but your screenshot even indicates 0 bytes dedicated to swap. Compression and swapping aside, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some overhead and delay as a result of shuffling all this around when all of your RAM is being utilized. However, the question might be more around what applications are freezing up when you're in this situation. Perhaps even your disk is near capacity and you're rather experiencing the fact that HFS+ is much slower when the disk is near full?

In general, you might have some short term benefit from purging or disabling the file cache, but I would hazard a guess that it would actually degrade your performance since you wouldn't get the benefit of a filesystem cache.


This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later I am trying to install an app form App Store and getting "This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later." Tried to install the app on different macs (with the same icloud ID), but still getting the same problem. Any ideas on how to fix this?

If your "try again later" is minutes or even a few hours, you might just have to wait for the web service to complete the transaction scheduled for that app.

You could use the developer's contact information / support site to see if they are in the middle of a release - the developer knows when the product is released for sale and/or a price change which can cause this error temporarily.

Lastly, you can contact Apple Store support to have them investigate whether it's a problem on their end with the app in question or whether it's a problem with your AppleID / store account. If so, they can tell you if it's on Apple's end to fix or if you have to fix it.

Basically, several things could be broken and you'll need to work through them one by one to reach a solution.


Why do the Image Capture Extension and softwareupdated processes consume so much memory? I recently updated my 2008 MB Pro (2 GB RAM) to Yosemite from 10.6 and I've found that it's often unusably slow. After keeping an eye on Activity Monitor over a couple weeks, I notice that the Image Capture Extension and software updated processes are often using over 400MB of RAM, 95% of which is compressed.

Quitting the processes seems to make the system more responsive, but I assume that these are supposed to be running in the background.

The only applications I usually have running are Safari/Chrome, Textmate and LibreOffice. I've been closing app's from the bar when I'm not using them.

Are there any settings I can tweak to change this behaviour?
Could it be a bug? (I've noticed similar complaints elsewhere online)

Notes:

I have a relatively large iPhoto library, but I don't leave the program running
No peripherals (usb keys, cameras, storage, etc) are physically connected

Update:

I did a firmware restart several weeks ago and the Image Capture Extension has been behaving so far. softwareupdated continues to have high memory demand, the process regularly ends up with 400+MB of compressed memory. I suspect that at least some of my problems are related to (un)gzip constantly running.

Since I upgrade my late 2009 iMac (4GB memory) to Yosemite, the system had not been performing well. It would be slow at time particularly after it had not been rebooted for a a day or more. In the Activity Monitor I noticed the it Image Capture Extension was steadily growing to become a major user of memory, and the memory pressure was in the yellow as the extension used more memory. I could not determine what program or process was causing this. I then installed two 4GB memory boards increasing my memory to 12GB. Now the Image Capture extension stays at a low value (25-50MB) and does not grow, and the memory pressure stays in the green. Memory is now cheap, your 2GB is likely your problem.


Stop asking Touch ID to Open Voice Memos Some time ago, after an update of the iPhone OS, it started to ask Touch ID after screen goes black when recording voice at Voice Memos.

How can I do in order to Voice Memos stop asking Touch ID? It doesn't seem to have an option to disable this

Your phone is locking, and it needs to unlock to go back to the Voice Memos app.  Like any other app.  The only way to change this is to change the global Passcode/TouchID settings in Settings > Passcode/TouchID, but note that this will affect the behaviour of the whole phone, not just the Voice Memos app.


How to change the font size of Open/Save dialogs? On Sierra ... my Open/Save dialog file listing are displaying in a larger-than-normal font size.

How do I change this?

It depends on which application is showing the larger text as it may have it's own view settings.  For instance, your Finder window has view settings (accessible from CMD-J or View->View Settings) where you can change the font of the view window to produce exactly the results you are seeing (the default is 12), whereas in Mail you can configure this from the Fonts & Colors section of Mail Preferences.  I know in some programs I've used that those settings are in the data stored in Application Preferences in the Library.

If nothing else works and it's system-wide there isn't really a systemwide way to change fonts in macOS but there are some tools out there to help.  You could try TinkerTool to see if that is helpful for you, there is a specific tool to adjust macOS system fonts:


External GPU allow a late 2014 mac mini run 4k at 60Hz? Would an external GPU allow a late 2014 mac mini run a 4k display at 60Hz?

Or would the CPU in the mac mini prevent this.

In theory, yes - an eGPU could allow you to run a 4k display at 60 Hz. It depends on the specific eGPU (i.e. which graphics card is actually plugged into the breakout box).

The CPU in your Mac Mini is not going to be the limiting factor for running 4k at 60 Hz in itself. However, it might be that some games/applications that you would like to run do not run with optimal performance on that Mac Mini. You'll have to test and judge yourself.

The reason I say "in theory" is because Apple has made it so that eGPU support on the latest macOS requires Thunderbolt 3. Your Late 2014 Mac Mini only has Thunderbolt 2, so it is not officially supported.

Some community scripts exists to allow eGPU on Thunderbolt 2, but obviously the performance is not going to be the same.


How does Coconut Battery determine a Macbook battery's design capacity? A macbook's battery has three charge numbers:

The current charge
The maximum charge
The design capacity

Even if a Macbook remains plugged in, OS X does not attempt to charge—as long as (1) is 95% of (2), which is why the percentage in the notification bar will often be between 95% and 100%.

These two numbers are in contrast with a battery's "design capacity".
Coconut Battery is the only software I've found that reports a Macbook battery's "design capacity".

This design capacity does not appear in Apple's specs, in System Information, or at everymac.com.

How does Coconut Battery determine the design capacity of a battery?

You can find this information along with much other battery and/or system information from the command

ioreg

This command, according to its man page, does:

  ioreg displays the I/O Kit registry.  It shows the heirarchical1 registry
       structure as an inverted tree.

1: heirarchical [sic]

Using a filter by class name (AppleSmartBattery for battery) to get only battery-related information:

$ ioreg -brc AppleSmartBattery

-b    Show the object name in bold.
-r    Show subtrees rooted by objects that match the specified criteria.
       If none of -c, -k, or -n are supplied, -r has no effect.
-c    Show the object properties only if the object is an instance of, or
       derives from, the specified C++ class (e.g. IOService).

  From man ioreg.

Will print something like this:

$ ioreg -brc AppleSmartBattery
+-o AppleSmartBattery  <class AppleSmartBattery, id 0x100000254, registered, ma$
{
  "ExternalConnected" = Yes
  "TimeRemaining" = 0
  "InstantTimeToEmpty" = 65535
  "ExternalChargeCapable" = Yes
  "FullPathUpdated" = 1464849055
  "CellVoltage" = (4298,4292,4299,0)
  "Voltage" = 12889
  "BatteryInvalidWakeSeconds" = 30
  "AdapterInfo" = 0
  "MaxCapacity" = 5524
  "PermanentFailureStatus" = 0
  "Manufacturer" = "SMP"
  "Location" = 0
  "CurrentCapacity" = 5524
  "LegacyBatteryInfo" = {"Amperage"=0,"Flags"=5,"Capacity"=5524,"Current"=5$
  "FirmwareSerialNumber" = 1
  "BatteryInstalled" = Yes
  "PackReserve" = 200
  "CycleCount" = 318
  "DesignCapacity" = 6330
  "OperationStatus" = 58371
  "ManufactureDate" = 17726
  "AvgTimeToFull" = 65535
  "BatterySerialNumber" = "D864403T3UVFVN7A6"
  "BootPathUpdated" = 1464353527
  "PostDischargeWaitSeconds" = 120
  "Temperature" = 3096
  "UserVisiblePathUpdated" = 1464849490
  "InstantAmperage" = 0
  "ManufacturerData" = <000000000702000a03890000034a34340330304103534449032$
  "MaxErr" = 1
  "FullyCharged" = Yes
  "DeviceName" = "bq20z451"
  "IOGeneralInterest" = "IOCommand is not serializable"
  "Amperage" = 0
  "IsCharging" = No
  "DesignCycleCount9C" = 1000
  "PostChargeWaitSeconds" = 120
  "AvgTimeToEmpty" = 65535
}

The field you are looking for is DesignCapacity. For convenience, filter it out with grep (unit is milliamp-hours, or mAh):

$ ioreg -brc AppleSmartBattery | grep DesignCapacity
      "DesignCapacity" = 6330

Your DesignCapacity field may not display 6330 as its value. I'm using a 13" mid-2014 rMBP, but you may be using another system with different battery ratings.

Apart from battery information, ioreg can be used to find out more about your system and other peripherals - somewhat like a command-line System Information tool.

If you're looking for a code-implementation of this command, take a look at Beltex's SystemKit over on Github. It's one of the coolest Swift libraries I know of.

Disclaimer: not affiliated to SystemKit or Beltex. Just a happy user of SystemKit.


Git stopped working after installing both Github osx client and RailsInstaller Perhaps it was due to some conflict but now when typing git I get a blank line, it doesn't say command not found, just goes to the next line

If I press return, it exits, and does nothing

How do I reinstall / remove everything and start from scratch?

I'm a new mac user, so please don't assume I know anything obvious

I didn't find a way to uninstall the git version that railsinstaller (allegedly) installed
(I could have just removed any file that starts with git in /usr/bin but it doesn't seem right)

What I did was just change the system path, which I thought should be trivial

well, apparently there are quite a few places, here are a few from that answer (not in order)

/etc/profile
~/.bash_profile
~/.bash_login
~/.profile
~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
/etc/paths
/etc/paths.d/

Eventually, what helped was to change /etc/paths (had to learn a bit vim to do so)

I moved /usr/local/git/bin to be the first entry, above /usr/bin and that was about it


How to copy a zip with symbolic link in OS X? I am trying to create a zip file with a symbolic link.
I have a subfolder in my mainfolder with some.bundle. I create symbolic link for this some.bundle which is placed in another subfolder of mainfolder.
I then zip it using Terminal.

My problem is when I open the zip via Terminal and then try to copy the bundle to some other folder using the symbolic link. It doesn't works.

It gives an error something like this..

cp:/path to my subfolder with bundle symbolic link/some.bundle No such file or directory

I did the following to check/solve this (but I don't really know if I understand the question/the problem correctly):

Create a file.bundle with

touch /Users/user/temp/step1/file.bundle

Create a symlink in another folder

ln -s /Users/user/temp/step1/file.bundle /Users/user/temp/step2/

the (re-transcribed) hex content of the symlink is:

/Users/user/temp/step1/file.bundle

Zip the symlink

zip -y /Users/user/temp/step3file.bundle.zip /Users/user/temp/step2/file.bundle`

Create a folder (step4), cd into it and unzip step3file.bundle.zip

mkdir /Users/user/temp/step4
cd /Users/user/temp/step4
unzip /Users/user/temp/step3file.bundle.zip

the (re-transcribed) hex content of the unzipped symlink in /Users/user/temp/step4/Users/user/temp/step2 is still:

/Users/user/temp/step1/file.bundle

Copy file.bundle in folder step1 using the symlink in a subfolder of folder step4 into folder step5

cd /Users/user/temp/step4/Users/user/temp/step2
cp file.bundle /Users/user/temp/step5

The above steps work. You probably zipped the folder containing the symlink and/or got some paths/commands (and maybe some options) wrong.


Launch homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq when NIC becomes available? I am running homebrew dnsmasq on my Mac.

Dsmasq is configured to only respond to traffic on one NIC (en7).
en7 is a usb-c ethernet adapter.

When this adapter is not active (not plugged in, switch not switched on) homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq is spamming my system logs that dnsmasq cannot be started because the NIC is not available. Retrying every 1 second.

I know the KeepAlive.NetworkState key can make that homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq only launches when a network is available. The issue is that there is ALWAYS a network available, my Wifi adapter is always on.

What i am looking for is a way to launch homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq only when en7 becomes available (adapter plugged in and switch switched on).

Is this possible?

Not possible....

From https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Chapters/Introduction.html

Network Availability

If your daemon depends on the network being available, this cannot be handled with dependencies because network interfaces can come and go at any time in OS X. To solve this problem, you should use the network reachability functionality or the dynamic store functionality in the System Configuration framework. This is documented in System Configuration Programming Guidelines and System Configuration Framework Reference. For more information about network reachability, see Determining Reachability and Getting Connected in System Configuration Programming Guidelines.


Attempting to setup Exchange account in System Preferences causes crash I have two computers both installed with OSX 10.9.2 and on one computer I did this with no problem what so ever but on the other computer, when I attempt to setup my Exchange account in the System Preferences>Internet Accounts menu, it throws this error:

There was an error in Internet Accounts preference pane.

Having looked for a solution on Apple Discussion Forums, I have attempted to delete these files:

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.system preferences .plist

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver.<12digitHexNumber>.plist

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist

/Library/Preferences/By Host/com.apple.systempreferences.xxx.plist of them)

/Library/Caches/com.apple.systempreferences

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

followed by emptying my recycle-bin and restart the computer, but the problem persists.

Screenshots:

Console Excerpt (Link to view complete Console report)

Process:         com.apple.preferences.internetaccounts.remoteservice [970]
Path:            /System/Library/PreferencePanes/InternetAccounts.prefPane/Contents/XPCServices/com.apple.preferences.internetaccounts.remoteservice.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.preferences.internetaccounts.remoteservice
Identifier:      com.apple.preferences.internetaccounts.remoteservice
Version:         1.0 (1)
Build Info:      InternetAccounts-225004000000000~1
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  ??? [1]
Responsible:     System Preferences [232]
User ID:         501
Date/Time:       2014-05-10 18:12:32.176 -0700
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.9.2 (13C1021)
Report Version:  11
Anonymous UUID:  F82228C3-4125-D958-C4C9-1F3EF208729F

Crashed Thread:  11

Exception Type:  EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** setObjectForKey: object cannot be nil (key: serverName)' terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException abort() called

I figured it out.. After looking more closely at the log and mulling over it for a moment I noticed in the log:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** setObjectForKey: object cannot be nil (key: serverName)'

So I attempted to setup the account in Preferences>Internet Accounts again but this time, I started the process with all of my internet connections disabled.  So I disabled the wifi and ethernet adapters beforehand.  Now, when after entering my info, and selecting continue instead of crashing it displayed a new window requesting that I manually enter the server address.  I manually entered the server, reactivated my network connection, and selected continue, at which point it completed successfully.

The problem must be that when the system attempts to find the server automatically it fails to find it, and rather than request it manually, it crashes.  But if there is no internet connection its forced to request the information since it is unable to search for it.


iTunes Connect - Contact Info form not working Okay, so I go to iTunes Connect to manage the contracts I have to sign to become a developer (yeah, fun stuff, and I got to encounter a bunch of fun puzzles on the way, see my Stack Overflow profile). I go to the "Agreements, Tax, and Banking" section and click "Contact Info" and fill that out. I then click the "Done" button on my screen. The dialog for it later disappears and so does my contact info. As in, when I go to select a contact for each thing listed there, the only thing selectable is Select.

Typically, I'd ask this on Stack Overflow, but it's not about programming. It's simply about the final information that's somehow even more confusing and makes you want to throw even more inanimate objects across the room. Any ideas on how to fix this in the sense where I can actually select my information?

I guess it worked after I tried it repetitively. Apple has forms that haven't been updated for a couple years, considering their extensive use of Lucida Grande as a font.


Block port on all interfaces using PF Trying to block incoming traffic on all interfaces to a specific local port on Mac OS X 10.11.15, including loopback.

This is my /etc/pf.conf:

scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"

block in quick to any port 63342

However, when attempting to apply this rule, I get an error (line 29 is the one with the block rule):

✗ sudo pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf
pfctl: Use of -f option, could result in flushing of rules
present in the main ruleset added by the system at startup.
See /etc/pf.conf for further details.

No ALTQ support in kernel
ALTQ related functions disabled
/etc/pf.conf:29: port only applies to tcp/udp
/etc/pf.conf:29: skipping rule due to errors
/etc/pf.conf:29: rule expands to no valid combination
pfctl: Syntax error in config file: pf rules not loaded

What would be the correct syntax in this case?

The proper rule is:

block in quick inet proto { tcp, udp } from any to any port 63342

Some parts may be omitted (e.g. inet or from any) with a slightly different meaning.


Locate empty folders within a folder I want to find all folders within a given folder that contain no files (but folders are ok).  This needs to be recursive - it looks in all child folders.

I can find folders that are completely empty using the Number if Items search criteria set to less than 1.  However, this does not return folders that have other folders inside them.

I am basically trying to delete folders that had files in that I have deleted the contents from using a previous search.

Here is a terminal command

find . -type d -empty

And if you want to delete these files :

find . -type d -empty -delete


How can I download iWork from App Store I have purchased iWork from an apple store couple of years ago. The software it has is the latest, same with those found on App Store. Is there anyway that I can make my account able to download Pages,Numbers and Keynote from the App Store? I do have the box of the software and even the receipt.

Apple doesn't offer a way to move iWork licenses to the App Store. There isn't much to gain from such a move anyway because new major releases of iWork have (at least til now) always be sold as full versions only (which still was cheaper than e.g. MS Office upgrade versions).


Is it possible to convert window into tab? I can drag a tab out of window, and it becomes independent window in Safari, Finder and other apps that support tabs. Is it possible to reverse this operation, convert window into tab by dragging it to another window?

You need to drag a tab - Safari won't let you drag an entire window into another one.  You can hit ⌘T to create a new empty tab (thus making the tab interface visible), then drag your original tab to the other window.


How to remote control Youtube from an iPhone? I tried Chrome Remote Desktop but it's very difficult to use, specially because the Windows screen resolution is much higher than the phone's and it has a different orientation.

I remember Android used to have an app called Youtube Remote and I believe this functionality has been integrated into the main Youtube app, but it doesn't remote control Windows, only TVs.

Is there anything similar to the old Youtube Remote for iOS?

On your PC/Mac, go to http://youtube.com/tv  (that's not your usual URL, it's the "Lean Back" mode)
Go to settings -> Pair a Device (on the sidebar, on the PC)
Once instructed to do so, go to your phone and just navigate to http://youtube.com/pair ... if you have the YouTube app, it will ask if you want to open on that app, say yes - if you don't - just move forward
Put the pair code from your PC into the pair box on the phone

Presto - you're driving from your phone.

Essentially, "Lean Back" mode treats your PC like a TV, that's why it works.


How can I fix Gboard hang after I use google dictation (long press on spacebar)? I'm trying to use Gboard dictation on my iPhone 6s+ running iOS 9.3.3.
Dictation pops up when I long-press on the spacebar and it takes dictation BUT - once it decides to switch back to the requesting app - either by timing out or my pressing on the color bars - the colored dots spin forever.

If I switch manually to the other app the text is there.

Anyone know what's going on here? Can anyone else repro it? Is it unique to iOS 9.3.3?

I'm dev-knowledgable but not for iOS. Any tips on debugging this? Wish I could get a stack trace and know what system call Gboard is hanging on.

Xcode has a visual profiler and debugger called instruments. Once you r device with your Mac, you might be able to snoop on the error logs, system calls and such. You will be at the mercy of however much symbols and logging google enables.

Better might be to seek support from the vendor of the app if Xcode is either not an option or not helpful once you try it.

N-2 iOS version support might be scant from google, but it’s only your time to try and get support from them.


Remove Starbucks badge from iPhone Lock Screen I’ve tried all of the solutions I could find but none of them have worked. I also called Starbucks customer service several times but nobody could help me. Can anyone offer any new suggestions?

Open your Starbucks Card by opening the Wallet app. Tap the ⓘ in the bottom-right corner:

Now disable Suggest on Lock Screen:

Alternatively, you can also remove your Favorite Stores from within the Starbucks app. Those are the ones that cause the Starbucks Card to show up on the Lock Screen when nearby.


Bug in 'file' command on 10.5.8? (Or am I doin' it wrong?) On my OS X 10.5.8 system, the man page for 'file' says:

  -h, --no-dereference

    option causes symlinks not to be followed (on systems  that  support  symbolic
    links). This is the default if the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is not
    defined.

and also:

  -L, --dereference

    option  causes  symlinks to be followed, as the like-named option in ls(1)
    (on systems that support symbolic links).  This is the default if the
    environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined.

For me, the default seems to be the "-L" behavior (i.e., always traversing symlinks and reporting the type of the target file), regardless of whether I have POSIXLY_CORRECT set or not.

The "-h" option does the right thing if I explicitly specify it, fortunately.

Can anyone still running 10.5.8 (yeah, I know...) verify whether this is the behavior for them as well? And if it does work for you as advertised by the man page, any theories on what I'm doing wrong? I've checked my spelling, just to get that out of the way...

On my copy of Mac OS X 10.5.8, I see the same behaviour as you. file somelink and file -L somelink have the same, --dereference behaviour, regardless of the presence or absence of an environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT. file -h somelink has the --no-dereference behaviour.


See other's Android location on an iPhone I have an Android phone (Nexus 6P) and my wife has an iPhone 6.

We would like to have the same functionality as Find My Friends offers, without both having iPhones.
Thus, we share each other's location through Google.

I have no problem seeing her location on my Android.

Previously, my wife could see my location using the iPhone Google+ app. There used to be a Locations tab in the app, showing my location. Now, the Location tab is gone. The Google support article "See friends' locations on a map" is obsolete.

Is there any other way on an iPhone to see someone else's location information?

We both have location history, reporting and sharing in Google turned on. My wife has both the Google+ and the Google app installed and running on the iPhone (and is logged in, of course).

My family—one Nexus 6P user and two iPhone 6 users—is really happy with Life360. It provides just the same service as Find My Friends (letting family members view each other's current location), just cross-platform. It isn't battery intensive, works great, and even has some additional features as compared to Find My Friends.

Life360 is free on Google Play and the App Store.


How can I show the Cover Art window in iTunes 11? I like to see the album art for each song as it comes on; in iTunes 10, I would have iTunes DJ playing, hidden under my other apps, whilst the current song's cover displayed in a floating window on my second monitor...

Can I do something similar in iTunes 11? (at the moment, I'm using the iTunes DJ replacement suggested here, but the thumbnail is tiny!)

I've sifted through the menu and prefs, but didn't find anything.. I'm hoping that someone will have a tricky way / script that replaces my 2nd Desktop Wallpaper with the art!?

Fingers crossed, Tx!

To get the second window back, all you have to do is click the album artwork thumbnail in the Now Playing area, either in the full version:

Or in the Mini Player

Both will pop up the larger album art view you are looking for.

In iTunes 11.0, there currently isn't the sidebar album art view that used to be there.


Why can't I have unique sorting options for folders in Finder? For example, when I set the Documents folder in my user folder to "Sort by: Kind", it also sets the sorting option for every other folder on my computer. Can I have unique folder sorting options? Or is it impossible?

EDIT: This is on El Capitan.

Indeed, unique sort order is possible.

Open a new Finder window for e.g. Documents and
Go to View > Show View Options or hit Command + J.
Define your Sort order. That's it. Close the window
Repeat the step for every window. This way you can define the Sort order for every Finder window.


Is it a bad idea to daisy chain to an internet router through an external drive? I'm interested in setting up a wired connection to my router, in order to achieve a faster internet connection than I can get from built-in 802.11n. My 2012 Mac Book Air has only one Thunderbolt 1 port, and that port is in use by an external LaCie HD with two Thunderbolt ports. So I would be connecting to the internet this way:

2012 MacBook Air >
Thunderbolt 1 Cable >
Lacie HD >
Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter >
Fast Cat5E UTP Patch Cable >
Netgear Router >
cable modem

Will having a hard drive between a laptop and its internet connection impose a significant performance cost?

No, there will be no significant performance loss, if any. The reason is that Thunderbolt is a low-latency, 10Gb/s (minimum) connection, which is far faster than the gigabit speeds you get from the adapter. Thunderbolt will have to wait for your ethernet adapter, not the other way around, which is exactly what you want.

If you're worried about the hard drive taking up some of the performance, keep in mind that the first iteration of Thunderbolt (the one you have) was designed with two lanes. Each device will utilize one of those lanes, and have complete access to dedicated 10Gb/s performance.


Change the default text editor in Terminal I just discovered that Control + X + E opens a text editor in the Terminal that allows me to edit the most recent command before executing it again (I think it is actually a bash thing).

However, the editor that gets opened is always Emacs. How can I change it to vim?

Simply set the EDITOR variable to vim in your bash startup file.

EDITOR=vim

From the bash manual

   edit-and-execute-command (C-xC-e)
      Invoke an editor on the current command line, and execute the result as shell commands.  Bash
      attempts to invoke $FCEDIT, $EDITOR, and emacs as the editor, in that order.


My MacBook Pro freezes if nothing is moving on the screen My MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) started freezing every time I boot it.

I've tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC, and have even reformatted it.

After doing that, I noticed that if I kept moving the mouse (trackpad or external mouse), my computer would no longer freeze. However, if I stopped moving the mouse, then the computer would freeze again.

The computer doesn't have this behavior if I start it in Safe Mode.

How might I troubleshoot this further?

Edit: When I was trying to copy the log from Console, I had to move the cursor or the computer would freeze. But after I open Safari, I could stop with no issue. I shift tabbed on Console and then the Mac froze again!

Edit 2: After some test, I figured out new strange behaviors. If something is moving on my screen, no freeze.

I was on Youtube, and I played a video > no freeze during the entire video. I stopped the video > freeze after 2s.

I tried something else: I launched another video then I minimized the window > freeze after 2s, but I could still hear the sound.

It's like the computer's freezing only if nothing is moving on the screen.

From your Console log, the last event before reboot was the

Sep 26 03:35:00 Ashleys-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.bsd.dirhelper[379]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.bsd.dirhelper

What is Dirhelper

http://www.manpagez.com/man/8/dirhelper/osx-10.6.5.php

Possible solution..

Copy Dirhelper Plist as safety precaution  located in

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.bsd.dirhelper.plist

Then delete it.

Restart

You can also try Safe mode to isolate the issue..

What safe mode does...

Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed
Loads only required kernel extensions
Prevents startup items and login items from opening automatically
Disables user-installed fonts
Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files


Time Machine - Preparing takes forever... (> 6hours) My time machine backup always takes a really long time. I actually don't know what caused the problem... but it's happening since a long time.

It takes about 6hours or longer, it doesn't matter if there are just small changes on the files or bigger ones. It always takes that long. But the backup finishes after that time.

It would be great if you could help me.
Thanks

... ~ %  tmutil status
Backup session status:
{
    BackupPhase = Starting;
    ClientID = "com.apple.backupd";
    DateOfStateChange = "2020-05-23 17:06:00 +0000";
    DestinationID = "013AD7A7-C1AE-4E9B-A28B-2F8539045349";
    Percent = "-1";
    Running = 1;
    Stopping = 0;
}

How long since the previous backup?

There is a correlation between how much time/how many changes/the size of the changed files and how long it takes to prepare and how long it takes to complete.


Can I simply make a partition on my Mac, install an OS to it, and boot from it via Startup Manner? On my Mac, can I simply create a new partition in Disk Utility, install an Operating System to it, such Arch Linux, and then boot from it by holding alt/option during boot (Startup Manager)?

I don't think so. On my Mac, even though I don't have OS X (I think its all the same though) you don't have to use option to boot into Ubuntu, but any other OS like OS X you will have to use Option to boot into it.
EDIT : Ubuntu or anything like Linux WILL NOT show up in the Option menu. It just boots straight away to Ubuntu.


Gesture to hide rising notification in MacBook? Is there a keyboard shortcut or hand gesture to quickly hide notification popups from the notification center when they're arriving? (the whole notifications bar is of course closed, and only the new arriving notification is shown)
This is instead of clicking the very little "X" on the small window

These steps were tested using macOS Big Sur 11.2.1.
To dismiss an alert-style notification without clicking the little "x", you can utilize the following options:

If you're using a trackpad, hover your cursor over the alert-style notification then swipe right using two fingers.

If you're using a mouse, hover your cursor over the alert-style notification then click and drag the notification to the right.


TotalTerminal doesn't work with full-screen apps TotalTerminal (former Visor) is an awesome plugin for Terminal that turns it into a Quake-style console that slides down on a key combination.

This is tremendously useful for development because I can type commands while writing code or browsing without extra window hustle.

Unfortunately, TotalTerminal doesn't play well with fullscreen apps. If I put Sublime Text in fullscreen mode and trigger Terminal, Mission Control will scroll to the nearest non-fullscreen space available, and only then will it show the Terminal.

This is very annoying. Is it possible to fix or work around this issue?

This is a known issue and the author doesn't plan to fix it.

  I encourage someone to go further and implement it because personally I don't use fullscreen apps right now and I don't plan to fix this anytime soon.

Luckily, there is a workaround described by vvlad.

  As an workaround you can set LSUIElement in Terminal's Info.plist

It has several drawbacks but otherwise works like a charm:

  Terminal no longer shows on Dock;
  There is a space the size of the top bar on top of every TotalTerminal visor opened on fullscreen apps windows;
  You can no longer ⌘⇥ to regular Terminal windows;
  You cannot Force Kill Terminal process.

This is how it will look like:

How It Works

  LSUIElement (String - Mac OS X) specifies whether the application runs as an agent application. If this key is set to “1”, Launch Services runs the application as an agent application. Agent applications do not appear in the Dock or in the Force Quit window. Although they typically run as background applications, they can come to the foreground to present a user interface if desired. A click on a window belonging to an agent application brings that application forward to handle events.

  The Dock and loginwindow are two applications that run as agent applications.

How to Do It

Open Terminal (assuming you already have TotalTerminal installed)
Run sudo nano /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Info.plist
Add these two lines right after opening <dict> tag:

<key>LSUIElement</key>
<true />

Save and close the file by pressing ^O Enter ^X
Quit Terminal and launch it again


Can I permanently disallow OS upgrades on an iOS device? Is there a way to prevent OS upgrades on an iOS device, such that the user is unable to remove the restriction (without going into full "kiosk mode")?

We will be loaning iPhones or iPads to people, and don't want them making ANY changes to the devices, but we do want to let them use all the applications that are on the device. I see that parental restrictions will let me prevent users from adding or deleting apps, but there isn't an option for OS upgrades.

If I tell iTunes to stop doing updates, and then prevent the user from accessing the iTunes store, will that do it?

I've just checked the Apple Configurator, and there is an option to completely disable the ability to upgrade iOS.


Trackpad works fine but there is no haptic feedback in Macbook air retina 2018 The trackpad stopped giving haptic feedback suddenly however force touch and other gestures are working fine. Hence, it didn't seem a hardware issue. Also,I did SMC reset and NVRAM/PRAM reset. No improvement.

The “haptic engine” is basically an electromagnet that causes a vibration in the trackpad and is “outside” how the trackpad capacitive touch sensors work. Something in that system has failed.
So even though your track pad works for input, you need to take it in for service because the trackpad needs to be replaced. Technically, the entire top case, which is comprised of the case, keyboard, trackpad, and battery will have to  be replaced. If your Mac is not under warranty, I would just live without the haptic feedback until you have to replace the battery due to age - it’s an expensive fix


Best way to transfer iphone contacts away from Exchange server The primary location for my contacts currently is with my company's Exchange server. I've sync'd with this since I got my first iPhone 3G in 2008. This is my last week with this company and I need to start using my contacts elsewhere.

I've exported a copy of my contacts using the OS X Addresses app as a backup.

Options that I can think of are:

Starting to use my iCloud account (which I've never done before)
Transfer to my gmail account -- but that'd get mixed in with a huge mess of less useful contacts
Simply copy to use locally without an external syn. Is this possible? easy?

Are there other strategies that I should consider?

Since you indicated you didn't want to mix things and had an open account in iCloud which is not only free, but supported by Apple - I'd say you should start there and then ask us a more detailed question in followup if you run into any gotchas.