Make `hostname -f` return fully qualified hostname How can i make hostname (i.e. the unix commandline tool hostname, invoked in terminal) return a hostname including the domain information?

At the moment, hostname, hostname -f and hostname -s return the same name, all without the domain information, but host <hostname> returns the full hostname:

$ hostname
> jvf-imac
$ hostname -f
> jvf-imac
$ hostname -s
> jvf-imac
$ host jvf-imac
> jvf-imac.fritz.box has address 192.168.178.31

The question is not about how I can get the full hostname in general. Some scripts I use rely on hostname -f to get the fully qualified hostname, so I need to make hostname -f return the correct hostname. Anyone any idea?

Updates

System Overview

System Version: OS X 10.10.5 (14F27)
Kernel Version: Darwin 14.5.0
Computer Name: jvf_imac

Content of resolv.conf (shortened)

domain fritz.box
nameserver 192.168.178.1

DNS Setup (shortened)

$ scutil --dns
resolver #1
  search domain[0] : fritz.box
  nameserver[0] : 192.168.178.1
  if_index : 4 (en0)
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : Reachable,Directly Reachable Address

resolver #2
  domain   : local
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  order    : 300000

resolver #3
  domain   : 254.169.in-addr.arpa ...

...

resolver #7
  domain   : b.e.f.ip6.arpa ...

DNS configuration (for scoped queries)

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : fritz.box
  nameserver[0] : 192.168.178.1
  if_index : 4 (en0)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records
  reach    : Reachable,Directly Reachable Address

OS X is different in this case in that it might change your settings when it gets a response from your router / DNS+DHCP.

If you aren't getting a FQDN out of hostname, you couod set a FQDN first.

The Mac tool is scutil

scutil --get HostName            # same as hostname
scutil --get LocalHostName       # same as hostname -s
scutil --get ComputerName

If you want jvf-imac.fritz.box then simply:

sudo scutil --set HostName jvf-imac.fritz.box

You could set the host name with sudo hostname ... as well and it wouldn't be wrong. If I were to guess, you probably have fritz.box in /etc/resolv.conf which is why the DNS lookup appends the domain name since you didn't specify one more fully.


Is there a way to track a run with a map on Apple Watch 2? As we know, the Apple Watch 2 has GPS and provides accurate distance and cadence information when going for a run, for example, even without an iPhone. However, I'm having trouble finding a way of seeing a map of where I ran. Is there an app or way to track a run (without an iPhone) and get/save a map outline as well?

I've tried the Workout app and RunKeeper.

It turns out that it is possible. Runkeeper updated their app just after I posted this question.

Also, in the Activity app, go to the Workouts tab, tap a workout that would have been tracked with GPS and scroll down to the Route. Tapping the Route will display a map of the route.


Two different versions of Finder in OS X 10.8 after migrating from OS 10.3 Panther While setting up new Mac Mini I checked the option to move files and settings from my old Mac to the new Mac. The old Mac was a 2008 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.3 Panther.

Everything seemed to go well and all my apps copied over to the new machine, but when I open Finder I get the old Finder window, the one from OS X 10.3 Panther. If I open a folder using Spotlight I get an OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Finder window.

How can I fix things so my system only ever uses the Mountain Lion version of Finder?

The only way to fix this is to do a fresh erase and install to Mountain Lion and when you restore from the previous backup, do NOT transfer the settings.  FYI, if you made a "Time Machine" backup you had to be much newer than 10.3.

If this is the case then the backup should be fully compatible.  Just do not put a check mark in the settings box.  I often recommend you also leave out "Other files & folders", but that is your call.


iPad 3 not connecting to a cellular network at all My iPad 3 doesn't want to connect to my cellular network. When i want to go onto the appstore or internet it says I'm not connected. We have taken it to our local iStore and to the network providers but it hasn't done anything, probably made it worse. We have turned it off and on, reset network settings and even changed networks. its second hand and we haven't used wifi on it yet. What could it be and what should we do?

Which iOS version is installed? Did it ever work since you bought it? Have you updated the iOS since you own the iPad?

Your description reminds me of my fahter's 2nd hand iPhone 3GS. He bought it and updated to the latest iOS 6.0.1 without knowing that the iPhone he bought was jailbroken. The update made the iPhone totally worthless because it could not connect to mobile network nor WLAN any more.


Why does Time Machine only backup after a reboot? I have a Mini running Lion Server that has a USB hard drive attached to it for backups. I also have a MBP running Lion that I've set to use that same drive as a remote backup destination over the network.

The remote backups have never failed; however, the local backups from Server to its USB disk only work right after a reboot. When the machine tries to run its next scheduled backup it fails with

  Time Machine Error

  Unabled to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.

  Latest successful backup: 12/2/11 at 11:50 PM

at which point I usually reboot the machine and manually run a backup, which succeeds.

Things I've tried

I've tried googling that error message, but "An error occurred" isn't much to go on.
I've tried repairing the drive in Disk Utility, but it didn't find any errors.

Other Notes

When I first plugged in this USB disk I told Time Machine to erase it and set it up. It has a GUID Partition Table, one 1TB partition formatted to Case-sensitive, Journaled Mac OS Extended.

What can I do to have my backups run without needing intervention?

Things to check:

Software Update (read the description to see if it fixes the issue
for your OS X 10.7 server)
Check if OS X 10.7 Server requires its Time Machine to be formatted
using Case-sensitive, Journaled Mac OS X Extended. Anecdotally,
I've always formatted my Time Machine backup as  Mac OS X
(Journaled) and Time Machines works fine.
Check the Permissions. Check that your OS X 10.7 Server user id has access to the USB partition.


Check if an OS X user is an administrator? In a script, how can I check if user "Bill" is a member of the admin group (group 80)?

I plan to use this in a script to check if he is and if he is not, make him an admin user.

See the man page for id.

id -G user

will output a space delimited list of groups for a particular user. You'd have to detect 80 in the output list.


Keyboard Shortcut to maximize a window? On Ubuntu to maximize a window we can select the window key and then the up arrow and the window maximizes.
It's also possible to select the window key and side key to pan a window to one side.
Are there any similar shortcuts on MacOS?

Simultaneously holding down the control-command-F keys maximizes the window.
Re-typing the same keys reverse the process and puts the window back to its original size.


live screencasting solution that supports Power PC Macs I have a Power PC and I have been wanting to do a live screencast of a this thing I do, but there doesn't seem to be a single widget out there that would help me out.

It is not just a matter of grabbing the screen, I have Snapz Pro X and it will work, but I want to share it with a bunch of people in real-time. There is no love for the Power PC architecture.

Any ideas?

:(

How about Copernicus?

http://danicsoft.com/software/copernicus/

Or this (More promising, as it is live):

http://b-l-a-c-k-o-p.com/GrabberRaster.html


How can I cancel an app installation on the iPhone? I started downloading an app then realized that it's really big (over 600 MB) and that I don't want it anymore. Is there any way to cancel the installation?

I just figured out one way to do this:

Pause the download on the iPhone by tapping the icon.
Connect the iPhone to iTunes. This will cause iTunes to start downloading the app.
Go to the Downloads tab in iTunes and delete the download.


Shortcut for opening an app? I am using a Macbook Pro (Retina, Mid-2014) running El Capitan. Is there a way to set a shortcut that opens a specific app (in my case Activity Monitor)?

You will find several solutions (Keyboard Maestro, Karabiner, Automator Wrapper) or here (LaunchBar/Quicksilver) to accomplish this.

Another Karabiner solution is the Launcher Mode:

Download, install and start Karabiner.
In the menubar open Karabiner -> Preferences
Search for Launcher and enable the preset.
To open Activity Monitor hold OA and release A


Getting a rented movie from iPod touch back to the PC I just rented a movie using iTunes on Windows 7 and then transferred the movie to my 4th gen iPod touch using drag & drop.

It has disapeared from the list on the PC, and I have not started watching the movie yet.

Now I want watch it on the PC, how do I get it back on the PC?

You will have to rent the movie again if you did not watch it within 30 days of renting.

The movie will disappear from your iTunes library
You will not be able to transfer the movie from your iDevice to iTunes

More information here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1657


El Capitan - Losing internet connection every 20/30 minutes MBP Early 2015 keep losing internet connection! Still connected to the router but no data in or out, can't even access router settings.

If I toggle wifi on and off it will be good for 20/30 minutes and then same cycle. What should I do, what is the problem?

I know the same exact question is out there but nothing is working!

I have tried:

Remove airport/network configs
sudo ifconfig awdl0 down
5gHz band
Removed network
Replaced modem
Cleared DNS cache
Removed proxies in network settings
Disabled "wake for wi-fi network access

Don't know what else to do... Haven't done any PRAM or SMC resets.

If you create a new user account in macOS and that solves the problem, then you have a configuration issue or an app or daemon misbehaving.

If that does not solve the problem, based on the steps you've taken already, check to make sure your router/access point has its firmware up to date.

If it's up to date, you might try resetting it to its defaults.


Applescript for Outlook 2011 that moves all messages from a specific folder that match a source account to a different folder As the Title states "Help with an Applescript for Outlook 2011 that moves all messages from a specific folder that match a source account to a different folder."

So, I have a "rule" that moves all new mail on my exchange account into a "Inbox" in a subfolder On My Computer. When I delete items form this subfolder inbox it goes into the "Deleted Items" On My Computer. I have made a sub-folder for "Deleted Items" in the same place as my "Inbox" sub-folder and I would like to run an Applescript on a schedule that can go into the main Deleted Items On My Computer and find the messages from that exchange account and move them into "subfolder/Deleted Items".

Googling about I cobbled the below together which will move ALL mail in Deleted Items:

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
set topFolder to mail folder "AT&T" of on my computer
set destFolder to folder "Deleted Items" of topFolder
move every message of mail folder "Deleted Items" of on my computer to destFolder
end tell

The part I can't get past is now only selectively moving mail whose "account" is a specific value, like thus:

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
set topFolder to mail folder "AT&T" of on my computer
set destFolder to folder "Deleted Items" of topFolder
move (every message of mail folder "Deleted Items" of on my computer whose account = "Att") to destFolder
end tell

Any help appreciated!!

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
    set topFolder to mail folder "AT&T" of on my computer
    set destFolder to folder "Deleted Items" of topFolder
    set srcFolder to mail folder "Deleted Items" of on my computer
    set selectedMessages to messages of srcFolder
    repeat with theMessages in selectedMessages
        set thisAccount to account of theMessages
        if (name of thisAccount as text is "Att") then
            if (is read of theMessages is false) then
                set theMessages's is read to true
            end if
            move theMessages to destFolder
        end if
    end repeat
end tell


Serious problem with Time Machine (external HDD) My Mac Mini (late-2012) got repaired by Apple, and the hard drive was reseted.
Now I want to restore the Mac Mini from my Time Machine Backup (on an external 1TB HDD), but it doesn't appear in the installation or migration assistant.
If I choose to set the Mac Mini up as a new device, I can see the backup in Finder, and it also looks complete (about 700GB for one Backup - pretty close to the storage before the repair). The backup was done completely and also the volume is working just fine. I also updated to 10.9.1 - so the current OS version matches the backed up one.
Any ideas? If I use CMD + R at start and select time machine backup it says there wouldn't be any OSX backups on the backup volume, if I use the migration assistant the "looking for sources" spinner just spinns and nothing happens or is found...

I really need this help because I need both important files from before but also the Applications, it would be really bad and much work for me if I had to restore the files manually - except the fact that the Applications are not shown in Finder...

In the case where you can't restore an entire backup, it's often best to just skip the entire migration and get a few files by hand.

That often gets you a feel for whether the new OS is working properly or a second hardware issue cropped up or the backup has any issues.

The migration assistant can bring an entire user over once you have some confidence in the various parts of the system.


How to gain insight into spotlight index? I'd like to get a list of all indexed files and their path that spotlight came across. How would I do that ? mdutil does not seem to be of any help.

This command will list all files indexed by spotlight system:

mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == '*'"

To store the output in a file:

mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == '*'" > listOfFiles.txt


Kernel Panic - Random Shutdown - Please Help Recently (the last three day) my late 2013 iMac has been suffering from kernel panics.
After reboot, console shows a 'Previous shutdown cause: -62'.
Can someone please tell me what this means.
The only thing I have changed is I added a new backup drive (2TB external).
It seem to only happen after about ½ hour after wake (from sleep).
It only does it when doing multiple processes, like running photoshop, iTunes open in background, youtube vids playing etc.
So, any ideas.
Any help would be appreciated,
Thanks, BR

This has happened to me before. You should back up your computer to the drive and re-install OS X, because this behaviour from an Apple device occurs when some system files are missing/corrupted.


Weird characters appear when pressing command-A,C,V I'm not using Mac keyboard however it did work properly before. I changed the Command key to Ctrl. Until today, using this Ctrl key yield extremely odd characters. When pressing

Ctrl-A yields å
Ctrl-V yields √
Ctrl-C yields ç

And I have no idea where these characters come from? So how could I fix this issue? Can anyone please help? Thanks.

EDIT
Here is my screenshot

It looks like you have accidentally configured your control key to be your alt key. Case in point: when I press alt+a, I get å. alt+v returns √, and alt+c gives us ç. Go into your settings and check again. They are located in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys. Note: alt is also option.

Edit: I cannot duplicate this phenomena (see comments on this answer), so I will guess that the non-Apple keyboard is messing up the process somehow.


How to open a file in Excel from the command line Is it possible to tell Excel to open a file from the command line?

In Linux, I could do this using the command

libreoffice --calc test.xlsx

You can use the open command:

This will use the default application for the file type, which may not be the desired application.

open test.xlsx

or, to specify the application explicitly:

open test.xlsx -a /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2011/Microsoft\ Excel.app/

or even,

open test.xlsx -a "Microsoft Excel"

A really useful way of doing this is to make an alias to Excel (in your .bash_profile)

alias xl='open -a "Microsoft Excel"'

Then you can just type the following to open an file in Excel:

xl file.csv


How can I edit the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file? I tried editing the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file on my Mac to change the forwardX11 from no to yes, and this to enable X11 features.

I try to change permission in the file ssh_config and in the folder etc, I did it, but in vain; still no permission to go inside the file to change something.

I find the answer, with this line in Terminal :

sudo nano -w /etc/ssh/ssh_config


I've created multiple DMG files from the same folder - checksum is different on each? Quite some time ago I've noticed that even if I create DMG files from the same directory, with same files and etc, the results are always different. Not only their size is ~15 bytes shorter/longer from one another, but their SHA checksums (and their contents, when being viewed from the HEX editor) differ drastically. Just out of curiosity, I've created 5 compressed unencrypted DMG files from the same folder containing nothing but a single text file. The results are:

0.dmg | size - 26 204 bytes, checksum - 5ba9ba0ee4d8ec5ba4718f1b491baf31c2c4e642
1.dmg | size - 26 221 bytes, checksum - a86d76f6c07ee5a81c0aefb31b6fd40ef787ebd5
2.dmg | size - 26 235 bytes, checksum - a31f4cf29e4e2858b7ac63c82574499200d81108
3.dmg | size - 26 209 bytes, checksum - f3c19414279b6d6b94b90341453906e4a69e28dd
4.dmg | size - 26 217 bytes, checksum - 9603c0334125762fc7908343e3ee400e038fe779

I've been browsing the internet hoping to find anything about the "data randomizer in APFS", but... obviously couldn't find a single thing, and in addition, not a lot of people actually knew about this "feature". Is there any info about it?

I'm running macOS 10.12.6, the DMG files were created using Disk Utility, but I get the same results with hdiutil.

Copies of an existing dmg will be identical but separately created dmg files will not.

Effectively Guaranteed to Differ

The Apple Disk Image .dmg format effectively guarantees that no two disk images will be bit for bit identical. Equality between disk images containing the same contents is not a practical requirement of the format.

UUID within the 0x6B6F6C79 / koly Block

Within the dmg file format is the koly structure. This structure includes a SegmentID of type uuid_t. This is a 128 bit Universally Unique Identifier (UUID). The SegmentID identifier alone will ensure that every dmg file differs by more than one bit.

Using HFSleuth on the iTunes 11.0 disk image shows the embedded UUID:

HFSleuth> ver
Verbose output is on
HFSleuth> fs iTunes11.dmg
KOLY header found at 200363895:
    UDIF version 4, Header Size: 512
    Flags:1
    Rsrc fork: None
    Data fork: from 0, spanning 200307220 bytes
    XML plist: from 200307220, spanning 56675 bytes (to 200363895)
    Segment #: 1, Count: 1
    Segment UUID: 626f726e-7743259b-6086eb93-4b42fb65
    Running Data fork offset 0
    Sectors: 1022244

In the example above, the line Segment UUID: 626f726e-7743259b-6086eb93-4b42fb65 is a universally unique identifier embedded in the disk image.

One Bit Differences and Hash Functions

A difference in one bit should result in a 50% or more change in a cryptographic hash function output, such as SHA-2.

The use of a UUID within the structure is not to ensure every disk image is unique but to ease segment identification within the disk image. That a UUID provides uniqueness properties beyond the scope of the disk image is a by-product of the UUID's use.


Spotlight is broken on my main partition in OS X 10.7.4 Not long after updating my main OS X installation from Snow Leopard to Lion, Spotlight stopped working on that partition, and I'm desparately trying to get it working again.  It will find no files for any search, though it is working normally for other partitions and network volumes.

I'm running OS X 10.7.4 on an early 2009 Mac Pro.  My main partition is 1 TB, and at about 75% capacity.

For what it's worth, I remember this started shortly after I installed a developer preview of Mountain Lion, but that could be a coincidence.

'mdutil -s /' prints the following:

/:
    No index.

I've tried many, many things to fix this problem, and all of them have been unsucessful.  They are:

Repaired disk permissions
fsck'd my main drive
double checked that in Spotlight Privacy preferences my system volume wasn't excluded
Tried 'sudo mdutil -E /' but it prints:

/:
    No index.

Tried 'sudo mdutil -i on /' but it prints:

/:
Error: unable to perform operation.  (-400)
    No index.

Other people who got the -400 error reported that terminating all mdworker processes and quickly recursively deleting /.Spotlight-V100 would fix it, but I tried that (several times) and it didn't resolve the error.
Ran my drive through DiskWarrior

Also, importantly:

I reinstalled Lion using Lion Recovery (not a fresh installation), which fixed Spotlight for about a day or two, and then it became broken again in exactly the same way.

I'm totally out of ideas on how to fix this problem.  I could resort to installing OS X fresh to a blank partition, but it would take hours and hours to migrate all of my data, settings, scripts, tweaks, and to reinstall all of my professional software.  I really don't want to have to do that.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I found this issue when searching for the web. Though it's been some time since the original asker has posted his question, I thought that it would be worth noting that, as of October, the Mac OS X 10.7.5 supplemental update resolved my Spotlight issues.

I was experiencing symptoms similar to the original poster's, with the same error messages that he encountered.


Send mail after found new items inside the folder I am running an applescript application using stay open option.

Function of the script is:

the applescript will ask for "javascript" to run the below is my
code. the  functions of the javascript is to find a files & folders
inside the folders and then copy and paste into other path, which is
defined inside the script.
after copying mail, the email will be send to the person, saying
"please check the file".

But, what happens is, each and every time the applescript send the mail to the receipient.

My need is to send email only when the folder has some items inside in it and always.

Below is my code:

property pathToScript : ""

on idle
    if pathToScript is "" then set pathToScript to (choose file with prompt "Please choose the Javascriptfile") as text
    tell application "Adobe InDesign CS5.5"
        do script pathToScript language javascript
    end tell

##sending mail after the "javascript" is complete"

    set recipientName to "Rajni Kanth"
    set recipientAddress to "rajni.kanth@xxxx.com"
    set theSubject to "Please check Files has been completly copied from server"
    set theContent to "check files have been copied"

    tell application "Mail"

        # # Create the message
        set theMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:theSubject, content:theContent, visible:true}

        ##Set a recipient
        tell theMessage
            make new to recipient with properties {name:recipientName, address:recipientAddress}

            ##Send the Message
            send

        end tell
    end tell
    return 0
end idle

Change your code so that the do script captures a return value and use that to decide what to do. For example:

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    set theScript to "new Date().toJSON().slice(0,4);"
    set theResult to do JavaScript theScript in current tab of first window

    if theResult is "2014" then
        display dialog "IT IS 2014"
    end if
end tell


How can I export all calendar entries from iCloud? I'm trying to export my calendar for use in Magic Mirror (https://magicmirror.builders), but only one repeating entry is exported, even though I have many entries in my calendar. Is there a setting I'm missing?

I got the URL by going to iCloud calendar and sharing the calendar publicly, and I even looked at the data received by changing the protocol from webcal:// to http://, but I can't see my upcoming entries in the data received, so it's not a problem in the plugin. The entries show up properly in my iDevices and macOS Calendar.app.

Found a workaround for this:

Make the calendar public in iCloud
Open the Calendar.app on an iOS device
Tap the Calendars button on the bottom and then the i on the calendar you want to share
Tap the Share Link... button and send the link to yourself somehow

For some reason this link works fine, but the one from https://icloud.com doesn't.


Parallels desktop keeps creating windows/ubuntu folders in launchpad When i remove Windows/Ubuntu folder from ~/Applications i am not seeing them in the launchpad.

But whenever i launch parallels desktop - it automatically creates Windows/Ubuntu folders:

How to prevent parallels from creating these folders again?

EDIT. My question is not about how to delete these folders - question is about how to stop parallels from creating these folders again and again after i launch parallels.

Turn the first one off and they won't show up in Launchpad:


Can't delete manually added static route On Mountain Lion, I manually added a static route like this:

$ sudo route -n add 10.10.10.1/24 10.0.0.2
add net 10.10.10.1: gateway 10.0.0.2

That worked just fine. Now I want to remove the static route, but this fails:

$ sudo route -n delete  10.10.10.1/24 10.0.0.2
route: writing to routing socket: not in table
delete net 10.10.10.1: gateway 10.0.0.2: not in table

Even though it says "not in table", the entry is there, according to netstat and route:

$ netstat -rn | grep 10.10.10
10.10.10/24        10.0.0.2           UGSc            1        2    tap0

$ route get 10.10.10.1
   route to: 10.10.10.1
destination: 10.10.10.0
       mask: 255.255.255.0
    gateway: 10.0.0.2
  interface: tap0
      flags: <UP,GATEWAY,DONE,STATIC,PRCLONING>
 recvpipe  sendpipe  ssthresh  rtt,msec    rttvar  hopcount      mtu     expire
       0         0         0         0         0         0      1500         0

What's going wrong here?

Edit: My local interface on the 10.0.0.1/24 network is a tap device created by OpenVPN. Stopping the OpenVPN client clears the route. Would still like to know why I can't remove this route without stopping the VPN client.

I was using the wrong syntax. This works:

$ sudo route -n delete 10.10.10.0


How to save a shared video to my Camera Roll on iOS? I have the app Photos on my iPad mini, on iOS 7.

I am viewing a stream shared by a friend.

When I am on a photo, I can save it to my Camera Roll.

But, when I am on a video, I cannot save it to my Camera Roll. The feature is missing.

1) How can I save a video to my Camera Roll ?

I want preferably a solution that do not need a computer.

2) Bonus question : Why has Apple limited this feature to photos ?

Apple doesn't have a solution on iOS to accomplish this. I've not found any third party app from the App Store that will read the shared stream videos or receive a paste event (you can copy the video from Photos app on iOS, but pasting it anywhere seems to not work for me on iOS 8.x)

I use iPhoto on OS X to view the shared video and then import them into my library. From there, I can get the videos onto iOS. Not exactly your preferred solution, but it works well enough for me.


Is there a way to capture text messages into an image? On the iPhone, if you hold down the Power button + Main button, it'll take an image of what's on the screen.  I've used it in the past to capture and print out text message exchanges.

Is there a way to do this if the text message exchanges span multiple pages?

Only by scrolling and capturing repeatedly and then assembling in a graphics program. Nothing built into iOS currently does it, and SMS data is completely inaccessible to App Store 3rd party apps (protecting your privacy).


No popup in App Store that app is bigger than 100 MB I published an application in the App Store named HIV Clinical Guide. This application is more than 100 MB, so it is not possible to download it on a cellular network. Normally when you press the download icon in the App Store, you get a popup that you can only download the app on Wi-Fi, because Apple doesn't allow you to download an application that is more than 100 MB by 3G/4G.

The problem is that with my application, the download starts (you see the blue square), but is not really downloading (because using cellular). When switching to Wi-Fi, the circle is filled (so the app is downloading).

The question is why the user doesn't get the popup when on cellular? Now it looks like that notting is happening (and that's correct) but now we get a lot of questions why the app is not downloading.

I cannot find anything about this. Everywhere I look the documentation says that you get a popup…

Any ideas?

Tried to download both the Askers application and an another application over 100MB. Neither I nor the Asker did get the pop-up about downloading large apps over cellular.

It looks like it is a temporary issue with the AppStore.
My recommendation is that you try again tomorrow or the day after that and see if the issue have fixed it self. If not, then you can continue further investigation in the issue.


Can you run OSX as a server without OSX Server.app? I have just set-up a new Hackintosh server running ML (10.8.4) but I have been unable to get a redeem code for the OSX Server.app from the Apple Developer site (some temporary problem).

However do I really need it?

My definition of "server" is: web server, file server (SMB, AFP), sshd, git server.

Does OSX Server.app provide additional server components or is it simply a UI frontend to the config files?  I seem to be able to start sshd and apache without the Server app and have been doing UNIX admin long enough not to be scared of config files, so I'm thinking I can get the server running without it.

Can anyone advise?

For the uses you need, you can do it with base OS X.

OS X server adds stuff like Time Machine support on networked drives, networked spotlight, Open Directory, policy support, etc.

They're useful features, but you don't really need them for the stuff you're describing.


How, if possible, can you chat using talk or write in the app Terminal? I have heard you can send messages to other users in Terminal with the command "talk" or "write". If you can in fact do this, how?

The command is just talk. It's disabled in OSX by default. See the comment at the end.

eg.

talk alex

It will then open a split screen and ping the other person to chat to you. They have to be logged into your computer at the same time though. Given that most Macs are single-user, this is unlikely, but possible. Have a friend connect in via SSH or screen-sharing and give it a go.

write allows you to write straight onto the other users console. By default though users have it disabled. You can turn it on with 'mesg y'.

write alex

Then type away to irritate the other user.

These are pretty old unix commands. Been around on linux/UNIX for years and years.

The man pages will help you too:

man write
man talk
man mesg

You can test this on one computer by creating a different ID and opening up Terminal with two windows. In the first window log back into your box with the other ID:

ssh otherid@localhost

Then write to the main users Terminal:

write mynormaluser

eg:

write alex

You'll see the text appear in window 2 of the Terminal

To get talk to work on OSX you need to enable it first. As root run this:

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ntalk.plist

or, as a super user:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ntalk.plist


Apple Script + VPN + Textbox I have an applescript :

tell application "System Events"
    tell current location of network preferences
        set VPNService to service "VPN (Cisco IPSec)"
        if exists VPNService then
            connect VPNService
        end if
    end tell
end tell

When I execute it a dialog box is showing up and ask me for my password. I would like to automate this process and put directly my password in my script and validate automatically the dialog box.

Is there a way a to do that ?

Here is a simple solution.

tell application "System Events"
    tell current location of network preferences
        set VPNService to service "UJF"
        if exists VPNService then
            connect VPNService
        end if
    end tell
    delay 1
    keystroke "yourpassword"
end tell

If 1 second delay isn't enough for the popop to open feel free to increase it !

But don't forget, a password *should* NEVER be stored like that.


Is it possible to remove or at least hide the “Family Sharing” Preference Pane from Catalina? I can hide the other preference panes the usual way (Preferences -> Menubar -> View -> Customize) but not this one. Is it possible at all?

I've discovered that if you log out of your iCloud account, the Family Sharing pref.pane goes away. It's a very flawed solution, but it does work for me.


Weird problems with Safari: search bar and tabs Suddenly Safari is having weird problems:

The search bar is no more searching: I can type URLs but the suggestions are not appearing and queries are not sent to Google (or any other search engine I choose in the preferences)
If I open a new tab, the tab is not shown: I see the old one in dark grey, the new one is open but not shown in the tab bar. The address bar shows the URLs of both tabs superimposed

Restarting the whole machine did not bring anything.

Any idea what could I try to fix the problem? I am using Safari 9.0.3 on El Capitan.

I had exactly the same (but on Yosemite), and found this (https://discussions.apple.com/message/29693684#29693684) resolved it.

Uncheck Use Safari Suggestions in the Search tab in Safari Preferences.

Certainly not a solution to the problem, but gets around it until more concrete information comes out..


How to know which directory contains the file that I'm editing in TextEdit? Very basic question - I am editing a file using the basic system TextEdit app.  As I actually have the file in question in several locations, how can I tell what directory the one that I am editing is actually residing in.

In Linux and Windows I can find this out easily but this does not seem obvious on my Mac.

This is using the basic TextEdit on my Mac and my Mac is OSX Lion 10.7.5

Hold down the Command or Ctrl key and click on the icon or file name in the center of the title bar of text edit's document window.

Be sure to click on the title itself. The containing directory structure will be shown in reverse-hierarchical order.


iTunes Match + manually managed music? My iPhone is set to manually manage my music, and I'd prefer to keep it that way. However, I also like some of the features that iTunes Match offers. Is there any way that I can enable Match on my phone, download what I need, and then disable it again without it deleting my existing, manually-copied music?

(The reason I don't want to switch to iTunes Match full-on is a) I have a lot of unique masterings and recordings that iTunes Match will match generically, b) I listen to a lot of one-off tracks that I don't want stored permanently, and c) it feels wrong that I can't copy music from my computer if I so wish, even if my phone is plugged into it.)

Note that iTunes Match is fairly precise in how it matches songs.  A unique recording will probably be uploaded, not matched -- certainly, if the unique recording has a different length than the standard ones, it won't be matched.  If you are willing to potentially lose $25, get iTunes Match and see what is matched.  If stuff that you want to be uploaded is matched instead, don't use iTunes Match.


Is the gloss on iOS icons automatically applied? Clearly it isn't completely automatic, as many icons don't have a reflection, but is there some sort of checkbox when creating an app to determine whether the gloss is applied?

Yes, it is automatically applied by iOS.

There is an option for iOS application developers to turn this off, called UIPrerenderedIcon. This is a value in the Applications Info.plist, that can be turned on and off (checking it would note that this is a pre-rendered icon, and to not apply the gloss).

You can read more details in the iOS Human Interface Guidelines.

Web Applications (as noted in Mathias's answer) also do have this reflection applied to them. You can override this by naming your file apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png. More information is also provided in the HIG for web clip icons.


Xcode 6 on Yosemite: Give me back my title bar! On prior versions of OS X and Xcode I constantly used the title bar right-click to view the folder hierarchy of the Xcode project: right-click the title bar and open up the containing folder (or an ancestor).

However now that Xcode has no title bar I can't do this anymore. Is there any way to bring back the title bar so I can open the containing folder quickly and easily again?

I know I can right-click the project icon in the project navigator pane and choose "Show in Finder", but this is much less convenient as it requires that pane be visible, and it only opens the direct containing folder, not any ancestor I want (nor can I use it to quickly verify the project is the one I think it is). Thankfully the Finder windows still have a title bar so I can do it then, but it's still at least a couple steps extra for something that used to be a single-click operation.

Try command clicking on the blue Project folder, for you it's the Portfolio Manager App bit on the left.


Gifting an App Store app to an Apple ID that is part of a Family Sharing family? I want to give an app to a friend as a gift. My friend is joined to an Apple Family Sharing family and has access to the apps within that family, and also does not have her own payment method registered due to this.

My questions:

If I gift the app to my friend, does the entire family get access? (This isn't a problem, but it's something that I think would need to be communicated, especially if others in the Family Sharing plan decide to use the app and then my friend later leaves the family)
If my friend decides to leave the Family Sharing plan, will she retain access to the app I gifted her under her own Apple ID, or will it revert to being owned by the Family Sharing family owner?
If my friend uses in-app purchase to buy an add-on for the app (not a transient item like coins or credits, but say unlocking a feature), will that attach to her own Apple ID (and thus be available should she disconnect from the family sharing plan) or will it belong to the family and thus not be available later?

If I gift the app to my friend, does the entire family get access? (This isn't a problem, but it's something that I think would need to be communicated, especially if others in the Family Sharing plan decide to use the app and then my friend later leaves the family)

Yes. After you gift the app to your friend's Apple ID, it appears as a purchased item under their account. If the app in question has family-sharing enabled, it would also become available to the other members of the family.

  If my friend decides to leave the Family Sharing plan, will she retain access to the app I gifted her under her own Apple ID, or will it revert to being owned by the Family Sharing family owner?

The app gets tied to your friends Apple ID. So she'd retain access. If the other family members have downloaded and installed the app before your friend leaves the family, they can continue using it. After your friend has left the family, the other members of the same family would lose access to download it for free.

  If my friend uses in-app purchase to buy an add-on for the app (not a transient item like coins or credits, but say unlocking a feature), will that attach to her own Apple ID (and thus be available should she disconnect from the family sharing plan) or will it belong to the family and thus not be available later?

The In-App purchases are tied to the Apple ID that purchases them, not the family. So she'd continue to have access to the In-App purchases made with her Apple ID, and the family she's a part of would not have access to it, irrespective of whether she remains a part of the family or not.

A very simple way to understand and get answer to these questions is this: There is no such concept as family ownership of content. Content such as an app purchase is owned by a single Apple ID, and it appears under the list of purchased item for the said Apple ID. If the developer of the app has enabled family-sharing for their app and someone from the family purchases the app, it becomes available for download to the other members of the family the Apple ID is a part of.

To understand more about Family Sharing, you can consider going through the following links:

Family Sharing - Apple
What types of content can I share with my family using purchase sharing?


Any reason not to run my Macbook Pro upside-down in clamshell mode? My MacBook Pro gets stupidly hot when I'm working on it normally (not clamshell). I am worried that the heat could damage the screen if I use it in clamshell mode.

I thought that I could place it upside down (in the sense that the Apple logo and LCD panel lie flat on the table) on a non-slip surface so that the heat would vent right out of the (now) top and away. Could I knacker the fans by running them upside down?

The laptop is a 15" MacBook Pro with retina display.

You can place the Mac in whatever orientation you like during clamshell mode as long as it's supported and protected from falls.

I really like the Book Arc stand so that the trackpad area is by the table and all the warmer section near the hinge is up and exposed on all sides to airflow. If you really need maximum cooling, try the SVALT D cooling stand.

Your proposed mechanism should be measurably cooler when you have the CPU generating maximum heat and for some reason the airflow / ambient temperature wasn't cooling things as much as you had hoped. The air trapped in the LCD panel can have a fairly good insulation value and if the surface is soft, airflow under the feet is diminished.

The Apple fans are high quality and likely magnetically suspended or have so little play it's not a concern unless you have shocks or other accelerations.


Ipad 3 cover not deactivating screen My iPad 3 with the original apple cover seems to stay turned on (display is on) when the cover is closed. This causes massive battery drain. Restarting did not fix this issue.
Anyone here has the same issue or any solutions?

Ok the cover itself was somehow the issue. After trying out a magnet which was working, a friend came over who also has a cover for the iPad. It's working with his cover. My cover is also not working on his iPad.


How do apps recognize you after you delete them? For example, there's this server based game. You delete the app, log out of gamecenter (since they claim to save your progress on the cloud) but once you redownload the app again, you return to where you left off. How is this possible?

Developer access to the UDID was removed in iOS 6, so they are not (no longer?) using that.

The replacement was identifierForVendor. However, once the last app by a particular vendor is removed from a device, even if an app from that vendor is re-downloaded in the future, the identifierForVendor will change. So that's out too.

Given that a factory reset of a device will cause the link to break (according to various reports on the internet), the best guess is that SuperCell, or whomever, is using the advertisingIdentifier. This uniquely identifies the user, regardless of app vendor, and survives deletion of apps. The only time it changes is, you guessed it, during a factory reset.


How to slow down iPad keyboard response, to get fingers off the keys before the letters repeat? My Dad has a Parkinson's like disease.

His fingers move very slowly and so he gets multiple repeats of lettttters, like that.

Is there a way to slow down the keyboard response to that he can get his fingers off the keys before the letters repeat?

Which version of iOS are you using? My brother has an iPad 1 running iOS 5, and keys don't repeat at all. Instead, if you hold them down long enough, you get the option to chose special characters, but if you don't choose any special characters you still get the letter you pressed. iOS updates are free, so if I were you I would update to iOS 5, which should fix your problem. (You can do this by plugging your iPad into a computer, opening iTunes, clicking on the iPad in the sidebar, and clicking the 'update' button.)


How do i send a message from my MacBook Air to a Non-iPhone user? How do I send a message from my MacBook Air to a Non-iPhone user?
I want to text my friends from my laptop (Apple) and I can't. What should I do?

You could use a third party messenger(which would be preferable to SMS):

Telegram (open source)
Signal (open source)
Discord
Hangouts by Google
WhatsApp by Facebook
Messenger by Facebook

Update: I don't recommend using WhatsApp or Messenger due to security/privacy concerns


Adobe/mac users: what are the LS1.dmg files(can i delete them)? I'm using Disk Inventory X to help open up some space on my hard drive. I found some disk images in my users folder, each taking up more than a whole gb of space:

the files : http://i.imgur.com/A5K7L.png

They seem to be installation packages for Adobe Creative Suite applications. I have CS5 already installed (as of a couple years now, just noticed these files, they may or may not have been there the whole time). The are for versions I have already installed. Here's one of them mounted:

dmg mounted contents : http://i.imgur.com/emSz2.png

An extensive google search was no help, but the jargon file names seem to be familiar as they generate a lot of google results but again with no help as to whether or not they're spare trash or important.

I know disk images can be deleted after installation but I just want to make sure these aren't particularly important. What can I do to be sure it is safe to delete these without messing anything up? Why are they so huge? Thanks in advance.

Those are the full install images for both CS4 and CS5 applications. Presumably you'd downloaded them at some point to install.  They can be deleted, if you have copies of the media otherwise.

If you purchased through Adobe.com, you can download those images again at any time.


Boot windows bios from second internal drive MBP Mid 2012 I'm facing a little big problem concerning my windows partition:
State of the art is, that I removed my CD-Drive and replaced it with a second SSD. Therefore I thought of moving windows 10 to one disk and leave os x on the "main drive" might be a good idea (just in case of possible future drive problems to fix them more easily). Although, Mac lists them both as internal drives, I firstly wasn't able to install it via Bootcamp on the second drive, so I installed windwos without Bootcamp directly on the drive using efi boot. Unfortunately efi boot isn't completely supported on this MBP model, (soundcard and TB2 for external displays don't work) but at least everything else worked that way!
This is why I turned the efi boot into a bios boot.
It worked perfectly, when only the drive with windows was inserted but when I added the second drive with os x, suddenly booting into Windows wasn't possible anymore! I did a little research and found out, that windows obviously needs to be on the "first" drive (disk0) to start. So, I shuffled the SSDs and was immediately able to boot windows again. Happy that I finally reached my goal I switched to os x.
But when I tried to boot back into windows it didn't work again.
I tried to recreate the boot files for windows with "bcdboot" and also created a startup partition on the os x drive of 200MB with the windows boot files but it's still not working.
So now I don't know what to do anymore! I don't want to shuffle (or unmount) the disks every time I want to use windows!
Is there a possibility to do a work around for that problem? (A virtual machine is no possible solution as I'm in need of full RAM capacity).
Thanks in advance!

Below is a excerpt From page 6 of the Boot Camp Installation & Setup Guide (Copyright 2011). These instructions do change significantly with the next release of the Boot Camp Installation & Setup Guide (Copyright 2013).

  If you have a Mac Pro with more than one internal disk and you want to install Boot Camp on a disk that isn’t in the first hard drive bay, remove the drives in the lower numbered bays. You can reinstall the drives after you install Boot Camp.

Back in 2011, all Macs were still BIOS booting Windows. Although the excerpt does not explicitly say Mac Pro's where the only models that could BIOS boot from a second internal drive, this was already generally known to be true. So, the answer to your question is your 2012 MBP can not natively BIOS boot from the second internal drive.

rEFInd is a Boot Manager. This means rEFInd does not actually boot operating systems. Instead, rEFInd saves information in the nvram. The Mac firmware reads this information to determine which operating system to load. The means rEFInd can to be directly used to BIOS boot windows from a second internal drive.

On the other hand, GRUB 2 is a boot loader. You may be able to BIOS boot GRUB on the primary drive and configure GRUB to boot Windows on the second internal drive.


Brand New iPhone 6 and Refubrished I am thinking to Purchase iPhone 6. The problem is that in my country there are no Apple Stores. I need to purchase it through shops who import iPhone's from UK or USA. My friends are telling me that iPhone's that are sold in some shops are Refurbished or opened to replace original parts with duplicate that are similar to original.
The cost of an iPhone 6 16GB in my country is around £480 or $750 which is comparatively high than original price on which iPhone are sold in Apple Stores.

I do not want to waste my money on purchasing a refurbished or repaired iPhone. I want to ask that is there any way to detect that the iPhone have been opened or it is refurbished?

Normally when you buy an new iPhone it is not used before and sealed. The only ways to get an refurbished iPhone is via the apple online store or when you have damaged your device.

Apple doesn't repair the iPhone when you send it in. Instead they will give you back an refurbished iPhone.
After that they repair your iPhone and will use it for another client.


How can I autofill a formula in Numbers, but keep some referenced values the same? So I have a chart in Numbers (iOS version, but I can use the macOS version, if needed,) which has formula that references some values from the chart, as well as some values from a different chart. I want to autofill this formula, while keeping the references from the other chart the same.

I want A2 to change for each row, A3, A4, etc. But I want values from table 2 to stay referenced to B2.

Click on the up arrow to the right of the cell reference (at the bottom of your screenshot) for the one you want to fix, then check the Row and Column boxes to fix the reference to both the row and column.


How to enable Double-Tap to Drag in Mac OS X Catalina? I found a few solutions how to enable this(double click and drag) feature

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13048479

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8094988

so on...

But on Catalina OS I can't find this feature...

What am I doing wrong?

System Preferences → Accessibility → Pointer Control → Mouse & Trackpad → Trackpad Options…

Enable dragging → Without Drag Lock (or With Drag Lock per your preference)


iPhone screen periodically unresponsive My iPhone 6 had a problem where the screen stops responding to touch for a period of time. It always becomes responsive again after a while, although sometimes it requires a power button cycling.

For reasons I cannot explain, I feel this is a software issue. It happens in all apps, but it seems to have a sort of schedule.

Has anyone else an anything like this?

No, not as a general issue across all apps.

Some apps such as for example Safari may be "slow to scroll" (for example web pages that have Javascript scroll handlers that do not declare themselves as never calling preventDefault() can be slow to scroll).

However, if you see this as a general problem across all apps, and you have to powercycle the phone - it sounds that a hardware problem is likely.

If the phone is still under warranty - take the issue to Apple Support. If it is not, you could still try Apple Support.


Can you use an iMac backup for a MacBook Pro? Just curious: Is it possible to use a backup from an iMac on a Time Capsule to restore a MacBook Pro with the same items? It seems like it would be possible given that all it really backs up is the software, files, etc., and not the actual system drivers or anything.

Yes, you can. The system, cache, or any hardware-specific data such as drivers are not backed up. Even if they were, any installation of OS X contains the necessary drivers for any supported Mac model by that version of the system (with the exception of printer drivers IIRC, which are not included to save space and will be downloaded).


Image capture opens after iPhone is connected Everytime I connect my iPhone to my laptop, Image Capture opens. How to I stop it? I just need to use iTunes, not Image Capture.

The preferences you are looking for are located in Image Capture itself.

Here is what to do:


How can I get parallels 6 to run well on my MBP I've been trying to run windows 7 on my MBP on parallels so that I can test different browsers.  Trouble is, it is just slow, I mean excruciatingly slow.  Like booting it up takes 15 minutes.  It's ridiculous.

I'm running a MBP with 4M Ram and and i5 quad core processor.  I mean really, this should be enough.  Any tips on getting this to actually perform?

I had the same issue. Moving the Parallels virtual machine to an external hard drive completely changed it for me, from terrible to tolerable.

I'm using an old laptop hard drive, 5,400rpm (so not even a fast one), and it works fine.

All you need to do is plug in the hard drive,drag the Parallels virtual machine to the hard drive, and double click to open (or go through the Open virtual machine dialogue in Parallels.


Cloud download icon gray and cannot re-download purchased app Why can't I download this purchased app on iOS 12.3.1?

It might not be available at the moment in either your Store or anywhere at all.

You had downloaded it in the past, so it has the cloud and arrow but due to some reasons, the app is not on the App Store, thus the greyed out icon.


Magic trackpad starts pairing but does not complete succesfully with one Macbook I have two Macbook pro retina's:

MbPro 15" retina late 2015 El Capitan
MbPro 15" retina mid 2012 El Capitan

The first one is able to pair with the Magic Trackpad (not the "2" - instead the older version).

But the 2012 one has the following behavior:

initially detects the trackpad -including showing the serial #
but then cannot complete the pairing - and I'm back to square one.

The initial detection of the trackpad happened several times.

But usually I do not even get that far: the trackpad is simply not detected.

There is obviously no problem with signal or batteries (new): the trackpad works all day on the other MBPro.

What should I look for as potential culprits and fixes?

Just found a related question and answer: apparently the trackpad can only be paired with one mac at a time - even if the other one were powered off (as is the case here)

How can I pair my Magic Trackpad with multiple Macs?


Remap caps lock key on iPad keyboard I have a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for my 3rd gen iPad, which is a Bluetooth keyboard. Is there any way to remap the caps lock key so it acts as the control key instead?

Just by using the default software, there is not a way to do this.

Theoretically, someone could write an app for jailbroken iPads to do this, but I did some searching and couldn't find anything.


In GarageBand iOS, does the "Optimizing Performance" operation induce an irreversible degradation of recorded signals? I have GarageBand on both my iPad Air and iPhone 6 (iOS 9.2.1, GarageBand 2.1). I have experienced this problem on both platforms.

I have put many hours recording guitar and bass on relatively small projects (max 10 tracks, about 1 minute). I experienced the "Optimizing Performance" message some times, that lasts for about 5-10 seconds. When I saw this, I thought it was okay; it was caching and/or preprocessing stuff to accelerate 'live' playback. I would accept that.

However, I noticed that the playback sound quality degraded after this. By degradation, I mean the following. I record many high-pitched rock guitar parts with enough gain to have a 'rock' distortion, so the signals have a fair amount of high frequencies. After the "Optimizing Performance" degradation, the high frequencies distorted to be painful to the ears. I am not an expert, but my guess is that the "Optimizing Performance" is in fact a 'downsampling' or a 'compression' of the signals.

Again, I would accept that, if it was only for the 'live playback'; when exporting the project to a sound file (*.m4a), I would expect GarageBand to take the original full bandwidth good quality signals that I recorded in the first place. However, it does not; the resulting exported songs' quality is still bad.

So, my conclusion (that I turned into a question to this community for a confirmation) is that this "Optimizing Performance" is a downsampling/compression of the signals in an 'irreversible' way, which is a pretty way to say that it is ruining everything (by everything, I mean a lot of time and efforts). Again (I am a good guy), that would be okay, but if at least I could be warned that this might soon happen, so that I can clean up my project to release memory. For now it just explodes in my face and I cry.

Anyone else experienced a degradation from the "Optimizing Performance"? Is it really an irreversible downsampling/compression of the signals? Is there a way to block or at least revert this to get back the original signals when it happens?

I have to say that I did not test the 'undo' option; each time it happened, I freaked out and closed/opened back GarageBand (it clears any possible undo). This was panic acting. But still, I would like to hear anyone's experience on this.

Apple is pretty mum on what "Optimizing performance" means, so we only have speculation to go by, but I have noticed a few things and have an idea for you. I have noticed that turning off all reverb and delay effects causes it to happen much less frequently. This would indicate it's some sort of preprocessing or pre-generation to save CPU cycles on playback. The fact that I currently have a 40-minute piece in iOS GarageBand that is taking up 6GB on disk, even though the piece is almost entirely midi tracks and contains no live instrument or vocal tracks, would corroborate that it is storing audio tracks. This is also corroborated by the fact that if I change the tempo, it reliably immediately does an "Optimizing Performance" the very next time I try to play it.

Remember, GarageBand is much more processor-intensive than ordinary audio, because instead of just a left and right channel, it has individual left-and-right channels for every track, which must individually be panned, processed with reverb/delay, etc. So it's entirely possible that it's generating much lower-bandwidth lossy-compression versions of your audio for playback within Mobile GarageBand just to reduce processor load while multiple tracks are playing.

However, based solely on long experience, I would conjecture that it does not reduce the quality of your original audio, but rather, generates a second "optimized" file for use just within the program during playback. I bet if you were to export the entire project to an audio file, your original guitar sound wound be there in sparkling full fidelity.

If you wanted to test this out and report the results back here, I bet you'd be doing a service to the community and the odd Googler who finds this while hunting down the same question.

Obviously, if I'm right about that, it would mean iOS GarageBand is not an ideal app to do final mixes on, since you can't actually hear what it will really sound like until you export the results. Hmmm... An Apple app that includes a fundamental shortcoming which makes it a less-than-ideal tool for a serious user who wants it to do what they're advertising it for... Could that even be possible? Hmmmm.


C# programming on macOS I am looking for a C# programming compiler on macOS that is a good value.

Could you give me any advice?

In April 2017, Microsoft released Visual Studio for Mac. Visual Studio Community is free for students, open-source and individual developers.

It supports development of the following:

Mobile with .NET: Android, iOS, tvOS, watchOS
Mac desktop apps
.NET applications (in C# and F# by default)
ASP.NET Web applications
Cross-platform Unity games

Minimum Requirements:

macOS El Capitan 10.11
Xcode 8.2
An Apple ID (for signing into Xcode)

For iOS development, macOS Sierra 10.12 and Xcode 8.3 are required.


Is it safe to force shutdown a mac while booting? So I have the 2015 "13 MacBook so I read some articles to update firmware by holding the power button so i tried to try it for fun but I misunderstood the article and I held the power button while my mac had completed 1/4 of booting process. So I accidentally force shutdown my mac while it was booting. So should I worry about some firmware error or some sort of software error which I can't notice?

Any forced shutdown can leave a file in a bad state. At boot, you would only corrupt a system file, so that's usually easy to reinstall the OS so I suppose if you care about user data - that's the best time to force a stop.

High Sierra supports internet recovery and bootable install media, so the options to reinstall are much better than the old days where you needed a CD or DVD to reinstall and it took a long time.


iPhone error "Unable to connect to network" Two iPhone's in the house, a model 4 (on iOS 6) and a model 5 (on iOS 7), can not connect to the home WiFi network, but can connect at the Apple shop. All other devices on the home network, including desktops, laptops and Android's, are fine.

The error message is displayed about 0.5 seconds after hitting "Join", and is simply "Unable to Join Network".

Trawling forums the advice seems to be to a combination of resetting the network settings on the iPhone and turning the router and iPhone off and on again in various orders.

However, this does not work.

Whilst I have no idea what caused the problem, it was solved in this case by

Disabling security on the Wi-Fi network,
Connecting the devices to the unsecured network (which worked),
Re-enable security,
Connecting the devices to the secured network.

Somehow, this solved the problem and all devices were able to connect normally.

On our TP-LINK router, a reboot was required whenever the security settings were changed, i.e. after steps (1) and (3).

Rebooting the phone's was not required, though I think I may have turned the Wi-Fi on the phone off and on again.

Hope it helps!


Is it safe to run a Mac Mini (i5) on its side? I recently got a Mac Mini with the i5 chip. Is it OK to set it on its side and run it that way? I wanted to shrink the footprint.

Sure.  Just make sure it is in a secure position so it doesn't fall over.

Apple actually has a support page on this:  http://support.apple.com/kb/TA22804


Set Services keyboard shortcut via script OSX I need a way to set the following programmatically:

Specifically for shortcuts under Services, if that makes a difference. I'm wondering if this is possible via shell or AppleScript?

EDIT:

I've seen https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7219134/programmatically-add-keyboard-shortcut-to-mac-system-preferences but I'm still not clear on how to set a shortcut for an existing service.

@chrisKnadler made a good point of using Applescript to do this.

I have used this before in the past but discounted it because of the new problem in Mavericks of preference being cached system wide.

Meaning you could only use the unix command

  defaults write...

to get the results to actually change instead of manually changing them or using Applescript plist item commands.

But just now having a look around found a suggestion that you can simply flush the cache and initiate a the system to read the preference again by just calling a

  defaults read ...

on the plist file you have change. This does indeed seem to work.

  set theServiceName to "(null) - Print to PDF - runWorkflowAsService"
set libPrefPath to POSIX path of (path to preferences folder from user domain as text)
set PlistFile to "pbs.plist"
set PlistPath to libPrefPath & PlistFile as text
set mainPropertyItem to "NSServicesStatus"
set theKey to "key_equivalent"

tell application "System Events"

    set gp to (get property list item theServiceName of property list item mainPropertyItem of property list file PlistPath)

    tell gp
        --set value of property list item "enabled_services_menu" to true
        --set value of property list item "enabled_context_menu" to true
        set value of property list item theKey to "@^h"

    end tell

end tell

do shell script " defaults read " & quoted form of PlistPath & > /dev/null

You may still need to quite individual apps for them to show the change ( as is normal)

UPDATE:
Small change.

Added  > /dev/null to the end of the defaults command so only errors are returned.


How to unblock extensions in Safari so I can install adblock? I'm trying to install AdBlock Plus so pages like beliefnet.com won't have so many ads. Safari says my extensions are blocked.  HELP?

Make sure Safari has Extensions turned on by going to Safari > Preferences > Extensions and slide the On/Off switch to On.


Create 2 resizable logical drives from one physical drive under Catalina I have partitioned a drive to create two logical partitions from one physical drive in the past, but the partitions were not resizable after I initially created them and it ended up being a nightmare to undo.
I have a new MacBook Pro that I'd like to set up two logical drives that can be resized. What is the correct way to go about doing this? I see articles online about it, but they discuss El Capitan and older OSes.

Here is Apple's guide on the much better way of using containers to hold all the space on a drive and then make resizable and shares space logical volumes.

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/add-erase-or-delete-apfs-volumes-dskua9e6a110/mac

In practice this is so much better than the old way of having to guess beforehand how much space each needed and being forced to jump through hops to grow and shrink volumes. APFS does need SSD to run fast, but you gain so much flexibility to create new volumes it's worth selling an old Mac to get a new one IMO. I don't recommend this on Fusion Drives - there, try to void any split unless you can't get external SSD for a better APFS experience.
If you like hearing how this works, watch this video alerting at 12 minutes in on the benefits of space sharing...

https://developer.apple.com/wwdc17/715 Check out What's New in Apple File System

As to how to add, back to the first link. I have never needed to reserve space or use quotas, but feel free to experiment if you feel it’s better to restrict things for your setup.


Which Ports are open by Default on iPad 2 (iOS 6)? I have a Question:

Which Ports should be open on iPad 2 by default?

Because on a port scan, my iPad shows some completely irrelevant ports open (ex. IIS on port 1027)!

No ports are open by default on iOS 6. This shouldn't be confused with the also true statement that iOS 6 will open network connections to several Apple servers so that APNS and iCloud push email and software updates work.

You will have to configure things like WiFi sync or run file sharing software or a web server to get the device listening on IPv4 ports.

I use an app called Netstat from the iTunes Store to inspect all network connections. That should help you determine which setting or app has opened port 1027 on your device. On all my iOS 5 and iOS 6 devices, the only default open port (LISTENING) is on localhost/loopback.


Can't connect to 802.1x network on "rMBP 2014" using Windows 8.1 through bootcamp I installed Windows 8.1 using Boot Camp on my new rMBP 13" 2014.
In OS X I can connect to the network in my company but when I'm in Windows I can't.

It gives me a popup after I entered my credentials and ask's me if I want to accept the certificate. I do. Then after some time it just says it can't connect.

I searched for this problem and came across people who had experience the same, but they were on older rMBP and the solution they offered was to use older network adapter drivers.
Because my macbook is recently released, there aren't any other drivers available.

Anybody got a workaround for this problem?
Before you say "just stay on OS X": I can't. I'm a .NET developer ;) .

In the end I did resolve the problem by approaching the same solution as the guy did. Which was going to the website of the manufacturer and download the most recent driver and now it's resolved.


How to update Xcode? I have a Mac running High Sierra, version 10.13.6. When running MacPorts I get the following error message that I should update my Xcode installation:

  Error: The installed version of Xcode (8.3.1) is too old to use on the
  installed OS version. Version 9.3 or later is recommended on Mac OS X
  10.13.

Running xcodebuild -version confirms this:

  Xcode 8.3.1

  Build version 8E1000a

But when I launch App Store I can't find any updates.

Has anyone an idea how I can update Xcode including command line utilities?

You probably just install the current version from the MAS.

https://itunes.apple.com/app/xcode/id497799835?l=en&mt=12

The command line utilities are included within the Xcode bundle. On first launch symlinks to the utilities are installed into the system so they can be accessed from the Terminal/command line.

There is also a separate Command Line Tools package available from the Developer Account download archive (needs an Apple Developer Account).

https://developer.apple.com/download/more/?=for%20Xcode


Can't boot into or mount Mojave APFS partition after repartitioning for Linux MacBook Pro 2015, 256GB SSD disk
I have created a second partition on my disk to try Linux. Everything was fine, but at some point, macOS disappeared from the boot menu.
After some googling and trying some things, I thought it was a problem with the boot manager. I installed rEFInd but it didn't help. So I tried torecover everything using recovery mode. But there was no option to reinstall macOS on the first partition. I could only erase it. I also couldn't mount it to macOS Recovery.
I installed OS X 10.10 Yosemite (base for my MacBook) on the second partition and updated it to macOS 10.14 Mojave (to be able to mount that first APFS partition). But I still can't mount it:
daniils-MacBook-Pro:Volumes daniilkk_yose$ sudo mount -t apfs /dev/disk0s2 plz/
mount_apfs: mount: Inappropriate file type or format

Also, diskutil outputs many F's instead of type and name:
daniils-MacBook-Pro:Volumes daniilkk_yose$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF               129.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         121.6 GB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +121.6 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s3
   1:                APFS Volume disk1s3                 12.8 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 43.1 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                510.4 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4

Disk Utility doesn't show this partition at all:

Is there a way to mount it and get my data back?

I've had exactly the same issue on an older MBP running 10.13.6.  I've tried twice to work around it and got your problem.
In the end (both times) I had to do a recovery using internet recovery (option-command-r) and then restore my stuff from Time Machine.
I looked at rEFInd but didn't install it, so I can't say how to drive it.
It seems that APFS doesn't like to be messed with.  I'm looking at dropping the APFS and just living with the old journaled FS as a fixed size partition.
After that, I figure I can tinker with the EFI partition until I get it right.


Using Command + [number] to go between terminals Before I upgraded to Mojave I was able to use command + [number] to go between various windows in Terminal. After the upgrade that ability is gone and I am unsure how to get it back. Is it possible to enable this configuration?

The Terminal.app Command+[number] shortcut was remapped to switch between tabs instead of windows.  The new shortcut is Command+Option+[number].

If you want the original shortcut back, turn off the "Use Command-1 through Command-9 to switch tabs" preference option under Terminal -> Preferences -> General.


Is there a simple texteditor accessible from the menu bar for making fast snippets? Do you know some solution or some clever way how to link some text editor to menu bar with an icon in the menu bar?

The desired app should look something like this:
http://www.sourcedrop.net/mac

BUT:

no need for hosting on the Internet
using of local files
enabling inline editing
enabling easy search

NoteAway is a free* menu bar oriented notes app that seems ideal for your situation.

* with pro in app purchase


Time Machine: many different Macs on one disk? I'd like to get a 2TB external USB drive and put Time Machine backups for 3 different Macs on it.

Is there any configuration I need to do for this?  Or do I just start a new TM backup on Mac 1, wait till it finishes, disconnect the USB drive, move on to Mac 2 and repeat?

In other words, will Mac 1 take the entire USB disk for itself or something of that nature?

Yes, sharing a single drive amongst several Macs is doable. For more details, here are some resources to review:

This Apple.SE question may provides some pointers, such as not using File Vault 2 when sharing the drive with Macs running OS X prior to Lion.
Another Apple.SE question provides some suggestions for network backup.
Other discussions (such as this post) recommend using multiple partitions on the shared drive.


How does Time Machine estimate required space for backup? For over 6 months now, every Time Machine backup requrests around 15GB of space for backup, but sometimes only backups up 200MB. That is a big difference.

Does anyone know exactly how the required space is estimated? I'd really like to reduce it because it drives Time Machine to delete old backups unnecessarily.

Much of what happens in Time Machine is undisclosed, but we know how the algorithm works so making an educated guess is possible:

Time Machine stores full versions of changed files on every backup. Not incremental differences. At the outset of a backup it does a search of your filesystem for files that have been modified since the last backup date. This cuts down what it has to look at. Then, for every file on this list, it compares it against the version that was last backed up. If it hasn't actually changed it just stores a pointer to the old version with some new metadata for the inode changes.

You've probably got timestamps changing on lots of files, but not the actual contents. So at the outset of a backup, Time Machine is adding up the size of the all files with changed timestamps and getting 15GB, but once it does the file diffs it turns out to be far less data that's actually changed. Time Machine, in the interests of being expedient about things, is likely making the cleanup space decision upfront and based on the worst-case estimate.

It can help to exclude some often-changing data from Time Machine backups. Things like the browser cache and IMAP mail offline archive (for example the local cache of your Gmail account). You can use the excellent and free TimeTracker tool from CharlesSoft to view the contents of your backups on a Time Machine volume. This might be able to give you an idea of what has changed from backup to backup so you can build a good exclusions list. For my recommendations on excluding things from Time Machine backups see this Ask Different answer.


GCC not found, but Xcode is installed I have Xcode installed, but when I type gcc in terminal I get "command not found". Maybe I messed up the $PATH variable? What is suposed to be the default value?

EDIT:

(...):/ imac2$ echo $PATH

/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/Applications/SenchaSDKTools-2.0.0-Beta/jsbuilder:/Applications/SenchaSDKTools-2.0.0-Beta/bin:/Applications/SenchaSDKTools-2.0.0-Beta:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

You need to install the Xcode command-line developer tools. Open Xcode and go to Xcode → Preferences → Downloads, select the Components tab, and click the button next to “Command Line Tools”.

See Is the installation of Xcode from App Store enough for having the developer tools?.


Can you find Airpod Case using Find my iPhone? My Airpods are in my ears but the case is missing. It's possible it fell out of my pocket while walking around town. Is it possible to use the Find my iPhone feature to find just the Airpod Case?

Unfortunately, you can only find the AirPods themselves. The case itself does not support Find My iPhone. You can order a replacement case under the section “Replace a missing AirPod or case” on this page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207581.


How do I Assign Contacts to iCloud? I'm discovering the Contacts process is a mess.  Even worse, it all looks pretty cool, the hidden complications can mess you up.  Read on.

I've learned the default account can be set to either iCloud or the device when new contacts are created.

If it's set to the device, new contacts won't sync to iCloud.  The process appears the same no matter how it is set.  So, it's easy to create a new contact, and it's natural to expect it will sync by default, but maybe it won't.

Two question.  1)  How do I identify the non-synching contacts on my device?  2)  Once I do, how do I set them as iCloud contacts, so they will sync?  Or do I have to re-input them?

There are apps which let you manage the contacts (on device, icloud, etc) directly on the phone.  I've used the one linked below to do just that.  (Create a contact, and remember to copy it to the other side).  In the Contacts app, contacts which are in both the device (which is synced to the non-icloud computer) and icloud are shown as "unified info" when the data matches up, and at the bottom of the contact is a link to both cards.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/smart-merge-duplicate-contacts/id519076307?mt=8


App that changes network settings, launches apps, etc. when changing network connection ~5 years ago an enthusiastic coworker was telling me about some awesome app that would do stuff like automatically change your volume, mount network drives, launch apps, etc. when it notices that your location (I guess defined by network IP address) has changed. I was sort of "meh" and ignored him. Now I wish I had that app, but my google searches are not turning up anything.

ControlPlane

ControlPlane is a context-aware application that lets you do all kinds of things based on where you computer happens to be. Move from home to the coffeehouse and ControlPlane can switch your computer to high security mode.

  ControlPlane allows you to build configuration profiles, contexts in ControlPlane lingo, for your Mac based on where you are or what you are doing.  ControlPlane determines where you are or what you are doing based on a number of available evidence sources and then automatically reconfigures your Mac based on your preferences.  Evidence sources can include your current location, visible WiFi networks, attached USB devices, running applications and more.  You can even write your own evidence sources using shell scripts!

There's a long list of things ControlPlane can do for you and it includes the things you're asking for. ControlPlane is based of the MarcoPolo project, which is no longer actively under development.

And: it's free.


Trouble using Time Machine with SMB share in OSX El Capitan I'm having problems using and SMB share in my local network as a time machine destination.

I followed the tutorials widely available on the internet but in the end when I open the Time Machine app I get the error message:

  Can't connect to a current Time Machine backup disk

I followed these steps:

Created the sparse bundle
Copied the sparse bundle to the smb share
Double clicked in the sparse bundle to mount it
Enabled ownership on the mounted sparse bundle
Used tmutil to set the Time Machine destination as the mounted sparse bundle
Opened Time Machine app.

I find this strange because I can perfectly access the sparse bundle via Finder or the terminal, and have write access:

I can't really find anything in the logs in the Console app to determine what is in fact the connection trouble. Can someone please guide me to the answer?

I'm using OSX 10.11 El Capitan.

Thanks

This is going to be a throughly unsatisfying answer, but it comes down to the fact that random network drives were not meant to be used as time machine backup targets.

I'd wager one of the things you did in your guide was to run a terminal command along the lines of:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Unsupported being the watchword here.

I've run into this exact problem myself, but only when backing up to network shares.

Usually what it takes to break Time Machine out of its funk is to completely disable it (toggling the switch to off in the preferences pane), unmount your network share, remount it, and then re-enable time machine. The system is smart enough to see that you already have backups in the bundle file and you won't lose any data.

Still - you're playing with your safety net. If the contents of your machine are super important, please pick up a time capsule so you don't wind up with a nasty surprise some day.

I've no idea what triggers this behavior - it appears to be completely random.


Must there be notification alerts for anything to appear on lock screen? I disabled Instagram from posting a notification alert ( banner or alert ).
However any posted item or notification do not show in the lock screen or notification center.

Prior to ios7 this causes no problem, as comments/notifications from such an app show up in the lock screen or notification center, but is this feature disabled now ?

How did you disable the notification alerts?

You should have three different settings in the notification settings:

Alert Style: if you set this to none, you will not see any banners or alerts when you have your phone unlocked.
Show in Notification Center: you should keep this on
Show on Lock Screen: and this one on

Those settings should be independent to each other I believe.


Does installing iOS 7 disable Find My iPhone? If Find My iPhone is activated on an iPhone 4s and I install new iOS 7, will such an installation automatically switch off Find My iPhone on my phone?

No, Find My iPhone will remain activated. Using Update to update the device will keep your settings, including the device's Find my iPhone status.

If you put your device in recovery mode or DFU mode then once the restore has taken place the activation lock will be enabled and you will be prompted to bypass the Find My iPhone with your Apple ID.

However, if you attempt to restore the device in iTunes, you will be prompted to deactivate Find My iPhone before the restore can take place.


Can the macports doc folder be safely removed? My /opt/local/share/doc folder is more than 1GB. Since I'm never using the offline documentation of any installed port, I would like to reclaim the disk space. Can I simply delete the folder?

Yes, if you can live without documentation and configuration examples.


Unread mail count on iPhone / iPad is often out of date Apparently, data is only pushed to the iPhone when a new unread emails arrives.
If you read an email on your desktop or on the web, the 'Read' status is not being pushed down to the iPhone until another new email is being pushed down or you check manually.

It's very annoying because I always think there are new messages when there aren't, and the only way to find out is to launch Mail.

Is there a solution?

Unfortunately No

As far as Apple is concerned this is by design, and even the latest mail upgrade on MobileMe did not enable this functionality. This has been discussed at length on the Apple forums and hopefully at some point this change will be made.

There is no known workaround, as this is controlled by the server, and not the local app. Even jailbroken their is no solution I am aware of.


Is there a way to safely eject a USB hard drive from the lock screen? Often I come to my mac sitting on my desk in the morning and need to simply unplug it and put it in a bag. While maybe not strictly necessary to properly eject the attached USB drive, it sure would be nice if there were a way to do so without first logging in.

AFAIK there is no save way to eject an external drive from the lock screen.

You have several options though:

Purchase and install Mountain and enable "Unmount external volumes on sleep". The feature still seems to be experimental.
Create a LaunchDaemon which ejects your external drive(s) gracefully at say 5am. Here is an example of a bash script to start with:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/diskutil list | grep -e 'disk[1-9]s.*' | sed 's/.*\(disk[0-9].*\)/\1/' | xargs -I{}
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount {}

If you don't want to write a LaunchDaemon, Sleepwatcher should support your efforts.
Unmount all external volumes before setting your Mac(s) to sleep.


Invisible Space preventing me from growing HD partition to original size I want to restore my original Macintosh HD disk to its maximum size however in the partition map which should be 121.33GB it only adds up to 84GB. How can i get this "invisible" space back onto my Macintosh HD.

OSXRESERVED is create by the Boot Camp Assistant. This is suppose to contain the Windows installation files. You can remove this partition by entering the following.
sudo diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s3

The free space can be added back to macOS by entering the following command.
sudo diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk0s2 0


How to Delete Drive That is Missing From a RAID I had a RAID drive fail. I replaced the bad drive with a new one and, after some work, got it up and running. I want to delete the bad drive from the config. This is the latest listing:

AppleRAID sets (1 found)
===============================================================================
Name:                 Data
Unique ID:            A14C84DA-C663-4FFB-95BB-8D102912A2E5
Type:                 Mirror
Status:               Degraded
Size:                 2.0 TB (2000054910976 Bytes)
Rebuild:              manual
Device Node:          disk5
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DevNode   UUID                                  Status     Size
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#  -none-    1BAC60DD-CA77-444D-B4C4-BDAB73248240  Missing/Damaged
1  disk4s2   9BB10E86-07CF-4F6A-8886-FCC3607E4729  Online     2000054910976
2  disk2s2   FC76DA2A-4FDD-4795-A3B6-D35770476FCF  Online     2000054910976
===============================================================================

I just noticed when pasting this, the status is still degraded. When I tried to remove it I got this error:

@ Yamadoshi (curt)| => sudo diskutil appleraid remove 1BAC60DD-CA77-444D-B4C4-BDAB73248240
Password:
Usage:  diskutil appleRAID remove MemberDeviceName|MemberUUID
    RAIDSetVolumePath|RAIDSetDeviceName|RAIDSetUUID
Remove a member or spare from an existing RAID set.
Ownership of the affected disks is required.
Example: diskutil AppleRAID remove disk2s4 /Volumes/RAID
     diskutil AppleRAID remove 11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555 disk5

How do I get rid of the missing drive? Do I have some other problem given the Degraded status?

The answer is, that you have to add the path to the Mounted volume at the end instead of the disk number. For example:

diskutil AppleRAID remove 11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555 /Volumes/MYMOUNTEDDISK/


Getting HTTP error 403 when trying to download macOS Mojave from App Store When clicking on the link to download the installer for macOS Mojave from the App Store, Google Chrome is giving me an HTTP error 403 "Access Denied", and Safari is just showing a blank page.
Here's the link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12
I've tried clearing my cookies and cache, as well as signing out and back in to my Apple account.

Forcing the link to open in the Mac App Store app solved the problem for me. Just run this command in Terminal:
open -a App\ Store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12

Since the App Store app opens the link just fine, the problem must be something with the browser.


How do I run a terminal script when mounting a specific disk? I have rsync set up, I have set up rsync as a UNIX executable and named the bash script as 'backup' and I saved it to /usr/local/bin so whenever I type backup in terminal it would do a backup to my external disk. But I want it setup in such a way whenever I plug in that drive it would run that bash script. I have already googled this but it doesn't work with High Sierra.

Ok as per all the suggestions the users gave I googled and found a nice .plist file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC -//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd >
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.company.popup</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>sh</string>
        <string>-c</string>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/backup</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartOnMount</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>`

I have put this code under ~/Library/LaunchAgents and runs at login.Thanks for all your replies again it helped me find a better code.


New DDR3 Memory for Mac Mini I bought a Mini last year and I want to update the RAM.

I was shopping around to find some compatible memory and found (this)from a Spanish retailer. They are selling what you see on the picture and I'm trying to understand if this memory is compatible with my machine or not.  I wrote to the company and they said that there will be no problem but I want to be super-sure.

This info is about my mac:

2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
2 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
And running OS X Lion.

Can anyone let me know if this memory is definitely compatible? Or advise on what else I am able to use?

You didn't actually specify the model of your Mac Mini, but by going off the data from here, I think you have the mid 2011 model (Mac Mini 5,1).

If that is correct, then Apple's technical specifications on this model confirm that the Mac Mini uses 1,333 MHz DDR3, up to 8 GB (4 GB x 2).

HOWEVER, that memory that you linked to is "DESKTOP" MEMORY, a DIMM (dual in-line memory module). The Mac Mini uses "laptop" memory, SODIMMs (small outline dual in-line memory module).


How do I make Messages.app override a contact's buddy icon? I have a Jabber account configured in Messages. When other people on the server change their buddy icons, the changes are pushed to my machine. I want to override their icons and force Messages to display an icon for them that I select.

From the buddy list, right-clicking on a contact brings up the context menu option "Show Contact Card". This launches Contacts.  But I have a custom image set for them and Messages is not displaying it.

I recall iChat having an option to specify using a custom image rather than the pushed image, but I can't find anything here.

This is for Messages version 7.0.1 (3314) on OS X 10.8.2 (12C60).

Select a buddy in messages, go to the Buddies menu, then click on 'Show Info'.
In the "Info for  window, go to the tab on the very right called 'Address Card'. Next to their picture, is a checkbox for "Always use this picture". I believe this is the option you want.


Define different screen resolution when external monitor is plugged in I have a Macbook Pro that I use both at home and at work. At home when I'm using it as a laptop, the standard resolution of 1440 x 900 is fine as it's closer to my eyes. However, at work I plug in an external LCD so that I can dual screen and the resolution of the Macbook screen is a bit too large for my eyes.

Is there any way for me dictate a smaller resolution when I have an external monitor plugged in? Or is there an app that does this?

You don't need any apps, Snow Leopard and Leopard (and possibly earlier versions) do this out of the box.  I just tested it and it worked without any effort at all.

Go to System Preferences > Displays
Select the checkbox 'Show displays in menu bar'
Connect your external display
Arrange them however you like
On your menu bar, you'll see an icon shaped like a screen with two legs, click it
Set your resolutions and that's it

When you disconnect your external screen, your MacBook screen will return to the original display setting, if you plug the external screen back in, the resolutions you setup last time will be automatically selected.

Note: I tried this with a Mini-DisplayPort cable because that's all I have.  I don't know if behaviour is different if you use a different connection.  I'm on a 13" Unibody 2009 model and running OS X 10.6.6


Using a wi-fi and an ethernet connection at the same time thus having more bandwidth? Is there a way on OSX or with a 3rd party software to use both a Wi-fi and an ethernet connection, thus having the sum of the connection speeds?

Or maybe making some applications connect to one connection and other apps connect to the other?

P.S. I don't want to bridge one connection over the other.
P.P.S. Both are different connections with two different ISPs and both are paid for, there's no wifi stealing if you might ask.

Even with multi-homing on iOS 7 starting to allow traffic over LTE and WiFi simultaneously, there isn't a good way to accomplish this on OS X Mavericks and lower.

I have run Link Aggregation on macs since 10.4 and it's really nice when you have a gigabit switch. You will need a switch that runs LACP and two physical ethernet ports like is typical on G4 & G5 PowerMacs days and of course the entire MacPro line. This is built into the OS X network stack and you need nothing but the hardware and a compatible ethernet switch.

Mac OS X won't show LACP as an option without two ethernet ports. I don't know of a switch that does LACP over wireless or allows mixing of wired and wireless interfaces. You might be able to trick the OS some way, but without the switch to cooperate you'll have to rewrite LACP on the switch for that to work.

It's much easier to segregate certain traffic over specific interfaces by modifying your routing table. This will allow you to send some traffic over wifi and others over the wire.

For example netflix and such could be routed over one connection if you set up a route to their network to prefer one gateway IP on the ISP you prefer. It's not feasible to tell an application to use only one interface as that has to be "baked" in to that app and not common practice. What is common practice is to use local routing tables (or routing tables on the router) to steer certain traffic to one gateway. More sophisticated routers have quality of service where you specify some metric like VOIP or video conference traffic is a priority - so when the network is overloaded in some specific, measurable way, then non critical traffic will be shaped or steered to a different route to keep the fast network clear for  better responses.

These routers and the knowledge to run them do not come cheaply. I'd guess $3k us for the hardware and triple that for training and software licenses on the routers.


What is the support of AVX-512 in MacBookAir9,1 This could be checked if you have the new 2020 MacBook Air by using command:

sysctl -a | grep cpu

I am not in possession of this Mac and can not find this documented by Apple or elsewhere online.

According to this Anandtech article and ark.intel.com site it looks like they have it:

Core i3-1000ng4

Core i5-1030ng7

Core i7-1060ng7