unzipping split zip files named filea, fileb, filec, file1, file2, I got my first mac today and Im really going crazy trying to do something quite simple

I have some split zip files called

somefilea.zip somefileb.zip    somefilec.zip somefiled.zip ... to     z.zip somefile1.zip somefile2.zip ...

I'm trying to merge these into the same folder and let the files they contain join into one folder.

I've tried app "the unarchiver" for this but I failed. It kept making new folders for every part.

Is there an unzip tool in which I can do this?
On windows I'd select them all, right-click, select "extract" in the winrar menu and it would do what I want.

I managed to do it with StuffIt expander

I did have to click "merge" and "skip" 32 times but it eventually did the trick..


How do you customize Lion Finder sidebar icons? I'm not looking to hack resources or use SIMBL plugins, but I would like to be able to show custom icons in the Lion sidebar.

As far as I've understood custom icons on the folder no longer show up in the sidebar and the "built-in" icons that are there are hardcoded to resources pathed in: /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources

However, I notice that the new versions of Dropbox now update the "Dropbox" sidebar icon to be a custom icon and it seems to be able to do this:

Without using some code injection thing like SIMBL or needing root access
Without the actual Dropbox process being running

So this leads me to believe that Lion sidebar icons are customisable, but this metadata is stored elsewhere?

xattr -l ~/Dropbox doesn't seem to list anything interesting:

com.apple.FinderInfo:
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020

There's a good topic on this over at StackOverflow

The gist of how Dropbox does it is this:

injecting code into the mach_kernel so that it's not dependant on Dropbox running

So the answer is probably no, you can't do it without using code injection, but this may change in the future, or not as the case may be.


Installing git on OSX 10.8 without Xcode I'd like to setup my dev environment on my girlfriend's iMac, but she's not cool with me wasting 3GB of space, which is what Xcode takes up. She also doesn't want to/can't upgrade past 10.8 because then Photoshop won't work, or some nonsense.

How can I get git on OSX 10.8 without Xcode. I somehow doubt that it's impossible to run a few megabytes of git without 3GB of Xcode.

Note that this is a plain copy of a previous answer of mine on superuser.com.

Here's a way to install git on Mac OS X without XCode.

Git's official web site provides an installer : http://git-scm.com/download/mac

After installing git, you also have to add its directory to your path :

echo "PATH=/usr/local/git/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

Adding the directory to the path will prevent Mac OS X from aksing you to install XCode each time you type git in the terminal.

Credits goes to Bobby Allen and to GoZoner's answer on SO.


Character accent menu only appears for some letters Although when I hold down 'e' the accent menu appears fine, if I hold down 'r' it does not. This is not due to no accents existing for r - the character I am trying to get is ' ř ' - as I have had the accent menu appear for it before. I do not know what has changed between my previous usage and my current that should have caused the menu to disappear.
 Help would be much appreciated.

(I am currently using a MacBook Air running OSX Yosemite 10.10.5)

There are no accents on "r" on my El Capitan with the US keyboard, and I don't remember ever seeing ř on it or any others, except for Czech, which I think is the only language that uses it.


How can I remove specific top hits in Safari's address bar? (Similar to this How can I remove an autocomplete suggestion from Safari's address bar?, but those answers do not help)

A site I visit frequently is located at:

http://example.com/sub

Unfortunately when I begin typing "exa" in the address bar, I get two propositions in top hits:

http://example.com
http://example.com/sub

with the first being highlighted, and used if I (miss the arrow down key and) hit enter

I have bookmarked and favorited the http://example.com/sub site and try to never visit http://example.com but never the less it always shows as top site.

I cleared my history of each and every entry to http://example.com/* except for http://example.com/sub, and redo that step every time I accidently visit the wrong site

And no, I don't want do delete my whole browsing history

It's actually not possible to remove the root domain from Safari's top hits. I've always had this problem and find it irritating.

As seen, I've never visited Apple's US website, but only the SG site. However, it still auto completes to it.

Unfortunately, the problem is that Safari autofills the root domain, before auto completing the sub domain.
So, even if you don't visit http://example.com, it would still show up since you visit /sub.


How to remove special character from a folder name? I am creating a folder like

mkdir -p ../service/target/static

but windows creates it with some special character static. I need to explicitely remove that special character using shell script.
I tried with rn and mv commands but doesn't seem to work and rename command giving error command not found.

FWIW. Below is a simple script to rename a file(or directory).

> cat rename-file
#!/bin/bash
source=$1
target=`echo "$source" | sed -e 's/[^A-Za-z0-9._-]/_/g'`
if [ "$source" != "$target" ]; then
    mv "$source" "$target"
fi

For example (go to the directory, write the command and tab-expand the filename)

> ls -1
'a\b(c#d@e'
> rename-file a\\b\(c#d@e
> ls -1
a_b_c_d_e

You might want to fit the translation to your needs.

s/[^A-Za-z0-9._-]/_/g


Keyboard shortcut (almost) never works for Automator service I have bash script that creates a screenshot in a given directory saved as an Automator service. I've then assigned ⇪⌘2 from System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services. The problem is that it doesn't work much at all. The only place I've found were it actually runs when using the macro is (how random) when click on the urlbar of Safari, and even then not without inconveniences, as it popups an error message saying "The “Take Screenshot” service could not be used because the “Take Screenshot” workflow did not provide valid data. - Try running the “Take Screenshot” workflow in Automator.", even though the process works fine and the screenshot is indeed captured and saved as intended. What's wrong?

fdate=`date`
screencapture "/Users/username/Unorganized/Studio/$fdate.png"

In summary you will need to use:

Automator to create a service that runs your bash script
System Preferences to assign a keyboard shortcut to the service

Below are the steps involved for each.

1. Create a service using Automator

Launch Automator (usually found within your Applications folder)
Go to File > New
Select Service and click Choose
In the top right hand of the window that appears, ensure that "No input" is selected from the Service receives drop-down list
Ensure the In drop-down list is showing "Finder"
In the second column containing the long list, find "Run Shell Script" and double-click on it
This will add the Run Shell Script window on the right
Within the Run Shell Script section ensure you have selected the "/bin/bash" option for your Shell
Now add your code
Save the service using a meaningful name (e.g. Take Reference Screenshot).

Now to the next step.

2. Creating your shortcut

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts
Select Services from the sidebar
Find your service (it'll be in the list on the right-hand side)
Add a shortcut by double clicking on the service name
Now go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy
Select Accessibility in the sidebar
Click on the + sign (you may need to unlock the padlock if it's locked)
Add Automator.
Add Finder (to find this you will need to navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app).
Exit your System Preferences.

Let me know how you go.


How do I get a Windows ISO to set up Boot Camp? I have a new Macbook Pro. I have an external USB Superdrive. I have a Windows 8.1 DVD and legal product key. I have a blank 8 GB USB Drive.

I'm trying to set up Boot Camp and install said copy of Windows onto my new Macbook Pro. In order to do so, it seems I need to create a USB installer from an ISO of Windows; it won't allow me to just use the DVD. I've found Microsofts site to allow for downloads with a product key, but all require the use of a .exe download manager application that I can't run without another, separate Windows computer available.

How do I make an ISO out of my Windows 8.1 DVD to allow the Boot Camp assistant to create a USB Installer?

You can do this using macs built in DiskUtility.app.

Insert the Windows installation DVD into the external Superdrive.

Open Disk Utility, Select the USB optical drive in the left DiskUtility window.

Click new image in the top bar.

Select DVD/CD master from the "Image Format" submenu.  Choose "None" for encryption.

After the image is done, locate it in Finder and highlight the file.  Press enter/return and rename the disk image file extension to .iso

Eject the Window installation DVD and insert your USB that is FAT32 formatted and use Master Boot Record for the partitioning scheme.

Open up Boot Camp Assistant and make sure "Create a Window 7 or later version install disk" is checked.  When you click continue it will prompt you to select the location of your .iso file you created.

Link to Apples Guide for creating a Windows .iso for BootCamp


Office lock files on SMB share seem to still be present after Office is closed One of our Mac user (macOS 10.12.6) is working together with some other guys who use Windows. The data they are working on resides on a central server which the Mac guy connects to via SMB.

Microsoft Office creates lock files when someone opens an Office document. When the document is closed, these lock files are also removed. The lock file contains the name of the user who has the file opened. With this mechanism Office is able to show a dialog like "You can't save this file as it is currently opened by XXX". The filename is ~$<original file name>, so test.xlsx has the lock file ~$test.xlsx.

The problem is that those files are still visible on the Mac, even when the Office document is already closed. I crosschecked the folder contents from a Windows VM and wasn't able to find the lock files. Also the guy, which the Mac claimed to have the file open, actually didn't had it open.

I have no idea why those files are still shown on the Mac when they actually aren't present anymore. Could this be related to the ~ sign in the name? Or do we have to add some mount options to the SMB share?

[Edit] The computer is connected via Gigabit Ethernet, the building is connected via 10G fiber to the data center. Throughput to the SMB share was around 80MB/s the last time I measured. So, I guess, this doesn't count as slow connection.

[2nd Edit] I don't know about the OS of the central server. But the Mac is connected to an Active Directory which is provided by Windows server (at least I have remote access to a Windows machine where I can manage my department users). The local user account is not connected to the AD, but when mounting the remote share, an AD user is used for authentication.

This happens all the time in my experience for enough Mac clients that hit a server that can’t keep up with the requests. You almost surely cannot change this on the Mac end and need to either deal with broken temporary files or be sure your support organization reviews the performance / loading of the appliance and OS that actually runs the SMB shares.

At best, you could check what version of SMB was negotiated and if you’re using an older protocol, try to force your mac to connect SMB v3 or so. (This is the only time when you might be able to “solve this” on your end)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207520
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205926

You can also upgrade to High Sierra as it has a lot of settings changes to make SMB browsing and sharing better.

Things to ask the people that support the SMB share at work:

give them specific dates, times, IP address of your mac when you see these issues.
give them the full path
ask if the storage / disks have convention or performance overload
ask if there is a macOS best practices document from the vendor and if they can or plan to implement all the items.

Some specific items are patching to recent SMB versions that include things like vfs_fruit extensions, disabled changing permissions from mac clients on file moves, clean up scripts or suppression of things like .DS_Store files, whether .TemporaryItems is writable by all at the root of the share, if they can enable debugging logs for the folder where you save your files or set up a small test share so they can change that to match the “best practices” and see if these orphaned / ghost files no longer happen

tell them if you can make this happen reliably and on command - that is gold for them to debug a share - without it they can’t test things out methodically and have to wait for a timing or repeat of the issue


Can I change the LTE bands supported by my iPhone 5s I bought an iPhone 5S in Chile, model A1457 knowing that it doesn't have the LTE bands that are needed in Argentina. It was the only model available.

Is there any way to add the band/s that are missing in order to use LTE?
Via software or a carrier update hack?

No. The missing "bands" are physically missing hardware (antennas).


Disable text message sound when in CarPlay I don’t particularly use text message notifications and I’d rather not have them interrupt what I am listening to. I still want to keep the visual notifications, I don’t want to enable “do not disturb”. The only thing I want is to disable the notification sound, and only when in CarPlay. I can set the phone to silent, but I am wondering if there is a better way that lets me permanently disable these sounds when in CarPlay only?

The easiest solution that includes this silencing of texts is the standard do not disturb while driving.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208090

I also generally don’t want text messages to ring so I often just set their alert to be no sound, ever. The third option isn’t automatic, but I often do days with my entire phone in do not disturb. If I see a call, I pick it up, if not, I react when I pick up the phone and look at missed calls, voicemails and texts. Worst case, you would have to manually change either the sound or the DND settings.

Hey Siri, turn on do not disturb.
Hey Siri, turn off do not disturb.


iMessage frozen/crashing I have an iPod Touch 5th gen and I sent a really long emoji message to my friend and both our iPods froze! Now everytime I try to open it, it goes to the conversation menu, freezes for about 10 seconds, then crashes back to home screen.

I tried:

Restart
Long Restart
Double clicking home and closing all recently used apps
Turning off imessage then turning it back on and logging in
Going to contacts then clicking to iMessage them

Nothing works.

I just had the same problem. After seething my iPad and restoring it through icloud I still wouldn't work but what did work was going to a random contact and clicking send message, it opens iMessage right up and I was able to delete my conversation that was causing the problem!


Compiling / installing shotdetect for OS X I would like to find scene changes in a video with this command line tool:

  Shotdetect is a free software (LGPL) which detects shots and scenes
  from a video.

Dependencies are:

  sudo apt-get install libavdevice-dev libavformat-dev
  libgd2-noxpm libgd2-noxpm-dev

What I did already:

git clone https://github.com/johmathe/Shotdetect.git
mkdir -p build; cd build; cmake -D USE_WXWIDGETS:BOOL=OFF ..

I get this error message (full output):

CMake Error at cmake/FindGD.cmake:112 (MESSAGE):
  Could not find GD library
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  CMakeLists.txt:85 (FIND_PACKAGE)

I have homebrew installed, but I do not know how to map the dependencies mentioned above to a brew install ... command.

Is homebrew the way to go? If so, what would be the "install" command?

PS. I am on OS X 10.8.5 with Xcode 5.0.2 and Xcode Command Line Tools installed.

How to compile

Easy version (late 2015)

make sure you have homebrew installed
install dependencies
download source code:
git clone https://github.com/johmathe/Shotdetect.git
cd Shotdetect
run install script: ./compile.sh all
find the binary "shotdetect-cmd" in the build directory.
for details, check How to use section below

Old version (up to late 2015)

brew install gd    # ... obviously, http://brew.sh is needed for this!
git clone https://github.com/johmathe/Shotdetect.git
cd Shotdetect

I found XML output was broken as of 2014-02-11, so I applied these two patches. This might be a hack:

curl https://patch-diff.githubusercontent.com/raw/johmathe/Shotdetect/pull/8.patch | git apply
curl https://patch-diff.githubusercontent.com/raw/johmathe/Shotdetect/pull/9.patch | git apply

Finally:

mkdir -p build; cd build
cmake -D USE_WXWIDGETS:BOOL=OFF ..    # make sure you include the two dots! :)
make

The resulting binary is shotdetect-cmd.

How to use

Here is a sample command that worked for me:

./shotdetect-cmd -i test.mp4 -o outputDir  -s 60 -w -v -f -l -m -r -a FOO

Flags explained:

-i file      : input file path
-o path      : output path (MUST exist already)
-a id        : (required!) movie ID (alphanumeric, creates subfolder in output path)
-s threshold : threshold (optional, default=75, 60 is recommended in the docs(??))

-w           : generate xml of audio
-v           : generate xml of video infos

-m           : generate the thumbnail images
-r           : generate the images in native resolution

-f           : generate 1st image for each shot  ( -m or/and -r flags must be set)
-l           : generate last image for each shot ( -m or/and -r flags must be set)

Troubleshooting

On a second install in spring of 2015, shotdetect complained:

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libtiff.5.dylib
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/libgd.3.dylib
  Reason: image not found
Trace/BPT trap: 5

I could fix this with brew reinstall libtiff.


Why is the iPhone 5 magnetic on the back near the camera lens? The iPhone 5 magnetic enough on the back near the camera lens to attach a staple to. Why there is a magnet there and what it is for?

It's very likely to be the speaker. Because yes, speaker use magnets.

It's on opposite side of the top speaker only and looking at this picture (courtesy of iFixit's iPhone teardown) there is nothing else that is magnetic.


View printers from Windows Print Server on a Mac On windows,

  Get-Printer -ComputerName \\XXX

will give me a list of printers that exist on that print server. I wanted to accomplish the same\similar thing using a Mac.

The issue\reason:at my workplace, we have articles on how to add a windows network printer on a Mac. However, staffs without a windows machine won't know what the printer name is as we have hundreds of printers.

Here are the steps to setup the shared printer on a  Windows 10 Pro (Version 1803) Machine.

  Note: To get a better view of an image, either click on the image or open the image in a new window.

Open the "Control Panel".

Next, select "Network and Sharing Center"

Next, select "Change advanced sharing settings", then "Private
(current Profile)". Make sure the you have the setting shown below.
If necessary, click on the "Save changes" button.

Next, select "All Networks". Make sure the you have the radio button
"Turn off password protected sharing" selected. If necessary, click
on the "Save changes" button.

Next, return to the "Control Panel" and select "Devices and
    Printers". Right click on a desired printer to share and select
    "Printer properties".

Click on the "Sharing" tab. Make sure the "Share this printer" box
is checked off, then click on the "OK" button.

Here are the steps to select the shared printer on a Mac running High Sierra (macOS 10.13.6).

Open the "Printer and Scanners" pane of the "System Preferences"
    application.

Click on the "+" button. If neccessary, select "Add printer or
    scanner...". Next, click on the icon labeled "Windows"

Select the computer ("herring" in this case), then select the
    "Guest" radio button and finally click on the "Connect" button.

Select the printer and choose a driver, then click on the "Add"
    button.

The added printer is shown below.

When print to this shared printer, you may get the dialog box shown
below. Enter the name "guest", then click on the "OK" button. You
should not need a password.

A few final thoughts.

Both Windows and macOS were clean installs with all the default settings. Your workplace may have setup your computers with additional security that I did not have to deal with.
Users of the Windows machine should check to make sure any shared folders require a password to allow access over the internet.
I already had the driver for the example printer installed on the Mac. You may have not have this luxury.


MacOS Sierra vs my installer DMG's icon I am distributing my (heavily edited in the picture below) app via a read-only installer DMG. Both the app and the DMG are signed and pass the Gateway validation.  My build machine is an El Capitan 10.11.6.

On Sierra (10.12) only, after mounting the DMG, this is what Finder shows me (except the popup on the left that, of course, I trigger afterwards):

As you can see:

the Applications icon is not what one would expect;
right-click -> Get Info shows the expected icon for the alias (at the upper-side as well as under Preview).

Force-quitting Finder will rectify this situation.

I downloaded a Skype for Mac kit, knowing that it uses the same deployment mechanism. Interestingly, the Applications icon is properly shown from the get-go.

Another interesting aspect is that hitting Get Info on my DMG's Applications alias will display (at the bottom of the window) the Sharing & Permissions section, while the Skype one won't.

Details that may be relevant: my DMG is created using a "template" one, that I am modifying, then cloning and making the clone read-only. The alias placed on the template image is an alias that I created on my system and simply copied it there.

I would appreciate any idea on what I am doing wrong. Thank you. [Question updated below, left this one for consistency purposes.]

[UPDATE] Found this SOV thread, which seems to suggest that I am not doing anything wrong per-se. Is there any work-around, e.g. relaunching Finder programmatically after it opens the window (AppleScript)? Or something even less ugly? I wouldn't bet my $ on Apple fixing this anytime soon, as Finder "fetching" apps "in a hurry" and showing the strike-through circle over their icon as if they were broken, while they were not in fact, was a long-standing issue.

My original comment: It looks like you're using a Finder alias to the Applications, rather than a unix-style symbolic link. Aliases store a lot of info about the original item on the computer it was created on, which sometimes confuses things when they're moved to another computer. Try creating a symlink instead, with something like ln -s /Applications /Volumes/QST-6.5-devel-setup/Applications -- that might be better-behaved.

Here's a more detailed comparison of the two:

The Finder's Info window lists them both as "Kind: Alias", but only the true alias has a "Select New Original" button. Also, the symlink is much smaller, since true aliases include all sorts of information about the original item (the file's file ID number (inode) and name, the file ID and path of the folder it was in, info about what volume it was on, if the volume was a disk image or network volume, it'll have info about how to remount the volume, ...). My example alias, at 612 bytes, is much smaller than yours, probably because it was made under Sierra, and I think Sierra may've changed the format a little. The symlink, by comparison, is only 13 bytes -- it's really just the text "/Applications" (which is 13 characters).

The difference in the amount of info they have has important implications for how they work. True aliases are much more robust: you can rename a file, or move it to a different folder, and the alias can still find it by file ID; on the other hand, if you delete & replace it, it'll find the replacement by name & folder. A symlink, on the other hand, is more fragile: if you move or rename the original file, the symlink has no info at all that can help locate it.

But for portability, the lack of additional info in a symlink is actually a real advantage: on a different computer, the everything will have a different file ID, the volume info will obviously different, etc. Worse, some completely other file might have the same ID as the original had on your computer, and the alias might(*) resolve to it! All that extra information is really just creating opportunities for confusion. But the Applications folder will always be at "/Applications", so the symlink will always resolve to it, with no possibility for confusion.

(*) [Edit:] A long time ago, if an alias resolved to one file by file ID and a different file by folder&name, the ID match would take precedence. Apple switched the priority a while back -- either in an early OS X version or maybe even a late Mac OS 9 version, I don't remember -- so now the file ID should really only cause trouble if nothing exists at the "right" path. But if you create a true alias to, say,  /Library/Application Support/YourApp, and that doesn't exist on some other computer, it might resolve to any other file or folder that happens to have the same file ID.

There's another difference I forgot to mention: all of the file access APIs in OS X know how to resolve symlinks, so they work great with both GUI apps and command-line and ported unix tools. True aliases, on the other hand, are only understood by the Cocoa and Carbon APIs (basically, the Apple-proprietary GUI programming environments), so command-line tools (which use plain POSIX APIs) just see them as files, and have no clue how to resolve them to the original item. This isn't relevant in your situation, but I thought I should add it for completeness.


Can two iPhones access the same iCloud content? My wife and I have iPhones. We have separate Apple accounts on the phones. Can we share the same iCloud music and pictures?

Nope. The same account would need to be signed in on both devices.


How can I make the Cisco VPN Client work with Lion? Worked in Snow Leopard and now gives error 51 and the sudo restart system command in Terminal i used to use doesn't work.  Any idea?

Have you tried using the on-board Cisco VPN Client? I had serious issues with Cisco's client (it kept kernel panik-ing my Mac) and had the IT department help me set up the built in client.

It basically works the same way as it does on an iPhone or iPad, so if you can connect with that device, you should be able to do so as well with your Mac.

What I needed:

the ip address of the VPN Server
the Group Name
the shared Secret

Login was done by using Active Directory authentication.

This is how I set it up:

In System Preferences -> Network hit the + button on the bottom of the list. The following dialog will open up

As you can see you'll need to choose VPN for the Interface and Cisco IPSec for the VPN Type. Name it as you please.

You'll find your newly created entry in the list, select it and you'll get a similar picture

Enter the IP Address you got from your IT department. You can leave the login stuff empty as you'll be prompted when connecting.

Hit the Authentication Settings... button.

Enter the group name (IT) and the shared secret. If your IT guys don't want to hand the data out to you, then ask them to kindly enter it for you.

Hit OK and then Apply your settings and you should be pretty much able to connect now. I like to have the Show VPN status in menu bar option enabled in order to have quick access to turn on and off the connection.

I also had to add one additional thing in order to be able to access remote computers just by their name instead of having to type name.domain. To do so I hit the Advanced... button and added our domain name to the Search Domains.

Hope it helps.


count of desktops only returns 1 Any idea why the following script would only return 1, when I clearly have more than one Desktop open?

tell application "System Events"
    set n to count of desktops
    display alert n
end tell

I have even tried it with JAX JavaScript and also get 1.

Note: For reference I am using El Capitan (MBP Mid 2012)

'desktops' are 'monitors' not Spaces.
There's no programmatic way to count Spaces, short of using the GUI, which is very hit & miss.


Black background on any app window Suddenly my computer (iMac 27" late 2012) screen appears like the screenshot I am attaching (happens with all apps)
Could it be just software issue that can be fixed or looks like a hw problem?

Looks like graphic distortion.  If resetting NVRAM and resetting SMC don't resolve the issue (and you don't have any other symptoms, e.g. crashing applications), visit the Genius Bar.

P.S.  If you feel up to the challenge, run Apple Hardware Test and see what you find.  Then bring your results to your Genius Bar appointment.


How do I find and remove a download that was interrupted and is not in any downloads or cache folders? I recently tried to download a large file from a storage website that only allows for 5GB of data without having a paid plan. Without checking the file size, I started the download and I got a popup saying that my free limit has been reached and if I wish to continue then I will have to start paying. I clicked off of the page and checked to see how much of the download had been completed but there was nothing in my downloads folder. When I checked my system settings, sure enough I had 5 GB of less space than I did before. There is no record of the download when I check Chrome downloads either and I just cleared my system cache but I am still missing the 5GB of space. I don't have much space left of my laptop so if anyone could help point me in the right direction as to where the file might be so I could delete it I would appreciate it! Thank you!

I've already tried Googling the issue and trying to clear my system cache as well as my browser's and system's downloads folder.

Let’s assume you just need to locate files larger than 3 GB - here’s an answer on the site for searching 1 GB - so you can adapt that for your case.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/53036/5472

The finder size search is easy to see how to change 1 GB to 4 GB - and here is the command line option for 3 - change up or down based on how many results come back to filter through.

mdfind "kMDItemFSSize >$[3*1024*1024*1024]"


Convert .help to .pdf I can save in .pdf just one or two pages at one time, using default Mac viewer. But I have several hundred of pages to save. Does anyone know how to do it faster?

You could try importing the individual pages inside the help files into Calibre and then export as a book format or PDF

Since the .help files are just HTML pages, this could work but I guess the linking might not work correctly

Here's a page from the Calibre features talking about HTML pages import


right click creates new finder window at click location I would like to create a finder window by right clicking and selecting "new finder window" similar to the right clicking to create a new folder . Is this possible through automator?

If you are looking to open a new Finder window with its position being the current position of your mouse location… this will accomplish that for you.

This code requires the third-party utility, Cliclick.

  “Cliclick” is short for “Command-Line Interface Click”. It is a a tiny shell/Terminal application that will emulate mouse clicks or series of mouse clicks (including doubleclicks and control-clicks) at arbitrary screen coordinates. Moreover, it lets you move the mouse, get the current mouse coordinates, press modifier keys etc.

It's free to download but it's donationware, and is easy to install.

On my system I have. cliclick in the following directory: /usr/local/bin/. Because of this location, in my AppleScript code and in Terminal app, I need to use the full path to cliclick to call the command. For example: do shell script "/usr/local/bin/cliclick rc:." In AppleScript is telling cliclick to right-click.

This works for me using the latest version of macOS Mojave.

Create a new Automator Quick Action document and add a “Run AppleScript” command to your workflow.  Then overwrite the pre-existing text in the AppleScript command with this following code. Then save your file.  I saved mine with the name “New Finder Window At Mouse Location.workflow”

set mousePosition to do shell script "/usr/local/bin/cliclick p:."

set mouseCoordinates to makeCoordinatesRecord(mousePosition)

tell application "Finder" to set position of (make new Finder window) to mouseCoordinates

on makeCoordinatesRecord(mousePosition)
    set a to offset of "," in mousePosition
    set x1 to text 1 thru (a - 1) of mousePosition as number
    set y1 to text (a + 1) thru -1 of mousePosition as number
    set mouseLocation to {x1, y1}
end makeCoordinatesRecord

You won't be able to access this command through “Right Click” menu but you can create a keyboard shortcut to run your new Quick Action which will open a new Finder window at your current mouse location.


Can a Mac Pro be upgraded from a 5150 CPU to a 5365? Is it possible to upgrade a first-generation 2.66 Ghz 2-core Mac Pro (Woodcrest) to a faster model by replacing the CPUs? I've read that some Mac Pro models shipped with 3 Ghz 4-core Xeons (Clovertown).

Yes, you can but only with Intel Xeon E53xx,  X53xx or L53xx series processors that have a LGA 771 socket.

Although one word of warning,  the supported OS upgrade life time of the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 looks like its coming to an end. Apple as we have seen in the news is prepping for Mountain Lion, and dropping support for all macs that lack a 64bit EFI. So it appears highly likely that Mac OS X 10.7 is the last OS you will be able to run on these Mac Pros, unfortunately. Be aware of that when prepping for your Mac Pro 1,1 and Mac Pro 2,1 upgrade plans, especially if keeping current is a priority of yours.

That said, now on to the upgrades:

The Mac Pro original Upgrade process

Here are processor upgrades that people have completed and confirmed in Geekbench as working, see their results below.

MacPros using L53xx Xeon processors.

MacPros using E53xx Xeon processors.

MacPros using X53xx Xeon processors.


iTunes match will not upload any unmatched songs I've got a few audio tracks (hypnosis audio CD's which I imported into iTunes) which iTunes can't match and tries to upload. However it iTM gets stuck on stage 3 and never uploads these files.

I have tried converting them in iTunes to AAC format but this doesn't seem work either. It just sits there trying to upload without any error messages.

I've already tried signing out of iTM, iTunes Store and re-enabling. I've also ripped a fresh version of the files from the original CD to make sure the files weren't corrupted. I've also tried uploading other audio files that iTunes can't match and it seems to be any audio. Nothing will upload.

Any suggestions?

OSX 10.9.3
Latest version of iTunes
Macbook Pro late 2013 version

After a back and forth between apple suport it turns out the tracks I had been trying to upload didn't have enough information. Once I added as much track info as possible to each track they eventually uploaded. Hope this helps someone else.


Graphics driver for Macbook Pro Retina BootCamp and AMD M370x Has anyone had any luck finding a BootCamp driver to work for the new 2015 MacBook Pro Retina with AMD m370x?

I've installed Windows 8.1, but the AMD driver installation tool says that there is no suitable hardware available, even though it clearly shows up display properties.

Maybe there is a Beta driver somewhere?

Why would there be terrible performance out of the gate for this video card, when it should be an upgrade from previous gen?

Have you run the AMD driver setup from your WININSTALL flash drive? That should do it for you.

To find the setup file, open Windows File Explorer, and then go to D:\BootCamp\Drivers\AMD\AMDGraphics\Setup.exe. Remember to replace D with the correct disk that WININSTALL is on.


MacBook has poor Bluetooth range My current workspace setup is a black MacBook that is plugged into a 21" monitor, with a Wireless Apple Keyboard and Magic Trackpad, both connected with Bluetooth. The issue is, I cannot take the two input components more than 12 to 18 inches away without either adding a delay or losing the signal entirely.

Is this normal? Is there anything I can do about it?

No, this isn't normal.  Considering the age of the machine, I'd guess that it's a failing Bluetooth card.  It could also be some sort of interference.


How do I destroy postfix on mac os x I see these two log statements non-stop in my console logs..

I have previously tried to eliminate postfix using this command

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist

and

sudo launchctl remove /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist

But it keeps coming back to life after every reboot.

Do I really need postfix? I am a regular GMail user and I don't need any system apps to send emails.

I tried using the instructions at
How can I revert my etc/postfix/main.cf file?
to reset my postfix configuration to the stock version with the hope that it might start working normally but it did not help.

sudo rm /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist  will prevent postfix from starting at launch and being daemonized (if it has been installed in a usual way). This will effectively prevent postfix from running. However, removal of all files and config is another matter. If you installed using a package manager then that’s the way to remove it. Otherwise you have to search your computer and remove postfix-related files.

The unload comando just stops a service from running but, as you have noticed, starts again at boot because the plist file is still present.

You probably don’t need postfix on your Mac. It’s mostly for use for sending mail from a server (smtp server)—Gmail, yes, does that for you. You might have installed postfix so PHP can send emails, but for development you could try a faux postfix that logs instead of sends like Mailhog.


Trackpad delay on 15" MacBook Pro with touchbar late 2016 I recently purchased the new 15" MacBook Pro with touchbar (late 2016). My trackpad is set to 'click' with either a press (audible click noise) or a tap. If I right click by using a two-finger press, the response on the screen is virtually instantaneous. However, if a use a two-finger tap, then there is a noticeable delay (generally under one second). When I first noticed the delay, this delay was about one second long with a spinning pin wheel sometimes popping up. I restarted the laptop, and the delay was significantly shorter, though still noticeable (maybe 0.25-0.5 seconds).

I'm trying to determine if it is a software or hardware issue before complaining to Apple. Is there a quick fix for this, or will I have to take the laptop to get repaired?

I'm pretty sure it's a built-in delay allowing macOS to detect the smart-zoom gesture (two finger double-tap).  If you go to Settings → Trackpad and disable the smart zoom, does the delay go away or noticeably shorten?


Issue syncing iPhone 4 with iTunes My wife owns an iPhone 3, and I recently bought an iPhone 4. Now I want to use the same iTunes (on my MacBook Pro) and same Apple ID as her, because I want to use the apps & music currently authorized for that account without having to buy them again.

However, when I sync my iPhone 4, it says that it's backing up, and then that it's syncing, but it suddenly stops and nothing more happens. When I sync my wife's iPhone 3, though, it syncs correctly. I've tried everything but same thing keeps on happening.

What's happening, and how do I fix it?

It sounds like you have a couple of options to try.

Approach one: First, backup your wife's iPhone 3 in iTunes. Then plug your iPhone 4 into iTunes and on the initial screen for your device select Restore. Select her most recent backup. This should put all her settings as well as apps on your phone. After this you can change settings to suit you best

Approach two: Turn on iCloud on your wife's phone, and plug it in and lock it. After it is backed up. Wipe your phone (Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings Warning this will completely delete everything off of your phone!!). Then, when you boot it up, click restore from iCloud and sign in to your Apple ID there.

It is important to note that all her settings (including email, etc.) will be synced in either of these methods. You can obviously change that after the restore, but both methods should provide all the apps and such. I'm not familiar with how it would work having two iPhones with the same Apple ID in the long run so there may be other bumps down the road with this process.

Depending on where songs were bought, you may, with her phone plugged in, have to select File > Transfer Purchases from "her name's" iPhone. It will prompt you to login with your Apple ID, and should transfer the music to the computer. From there, you should be able to just copy the music onto your phone. Otherwise select the Music tab with your iPhone 4 plugged in and select the music you would like to sync to your phone.


On Macbook Pro, how to tell if my hard drive access speed is a bottleneck to my current computer performance? I'm considering giving my 2010 Macbook Pro an upgrade.  Whether upgrading its 500 GB hard drive to SSD drive is a priority depends on how much it bottlenecks the computer's performance.  Is there a reliable and quantitative way to measure this?

Update:

Current system configuration:

Mac OS X 10.10.2
Macbook Pro 17" (,id 2010)
Memory: 8GB
CPU: 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB
Hard drive: 500GB SATA disk
About this Mac > System Report > Hardware > SATA/SATA Express > ... Rotational Rate: 7200 ...

With Yosemite, we're noticing an somewhat, but not totally, subjective slowdown to all aspects of the OS, despite the minimum 4 GB RAM.

At our school we are actively replacing any faculty member's MBP's internal HDD with a SSD if they complain of 'slowness' and they can demonstrate it concretely. This can be in the form of a slow startup; slow-loading apps; frequent SPODs; anything which gets in the way of teaching. Stock MBPs use slower 5400 RPM drives, which is where some of the problems originate. Even updating to a 7200 RPM drive can help alleviate the perceived slowness.

Granted, some of the slowness can be attributed to never restarting the MBP, ever; having the ENTIRE Office '11 suite of apps open at startup; few free GB on the HDD; and similar user issues, but we've found the complaints go away when the HDD is replaced with something faster.

The only complaint we get after the swap is that the SSD we offer is usually 1/2 the size (or less) of the stock HDD, forcing users to move their iTunes libraries onto external disks or actually cleaning out the cruft from the HDDs. To alleviate this, we put the removed HDD in an inexpensive USB external enclosure as part of the deal.

Go for the SSD upgrade. You won't look back.


Why did I receive a text message on my Mac prior to my iPhone? Since the Yosemite and iOS 8.1 updates, we can now receive our non-iMessages (SMS) messages on our Mac (more info).

However, the following strange scenario happened to me:

I was using my Mac and my iPhone — just near me — was locked,
the Message Mac app notifies me of a text message from my friend's phone (definitely not an iPhone user),
1 minute later, my iPhone vibrates and finally notifies me of the same text message.

Since my iPhone is the first and only device to get the text message from my cell phone provider, why did my Mac notify me first?

I think I understood and it's about:

  I was using my Mac

When Apple knows we are using device X, it vibrates device X first so that device Y doesn't vibrate for nothing.

(even if device Y gets the information first)


Keyboard Shortcut to Right Size All Columns Individually in Finder in OSX Lion? Is it possible to set a keyboard shortcut for resizing all columns individually in Finder in OSX Lion?

The way to do it without a shortcut is right clicking a column divider and choosing the second option (Right Size All Columns Individually). The problem is the option gets reset when I open a new window.

What works for me (although some quirks remain) is this: in view options (CMD-J) set up your finder window exactly how you would like them all to be. Make sure to check "Always open in ... view" and "Browse in ... view". When you're happy, click "use as defaults". Then open a terminal window and enter the following command:

sudo find / -name .DS_Store -delete; killall Finder

(it prompts for password and generates some "no permission" errors. Could take a minute or two)

It removes all the .DS_Store files from your folders. These are hidden files that contain the view settings of a specific folder (you might have noticed them when opening a mac USB stick on a windows machine or whatever).

It's not perfect, right size is relative to your finder window size i believe, but it's much better than the frustrating craziness that comes from every folder having different settings...

CMD-J opens the view options. When in that window, Fn will change the "Use as Defaults" button to "Restore to defaults". That's pretty close to a shortcut, I'll do some digging to find out how to make it full circle...


Is it possible to launch a program in a specific language? I'm a developer, and my primary language is French, so I use Mac OS X in French. However, I need on a regular basis to open an application in English to do support.

Right now I'm going to the International System Preferences and I put English above in the languages list, then I open the app I need to run in English. When I'm done, I switch it back to French.

This is an annoying process. Is there something else I can use, like a command-line program, to launch an application in a specific language?

You can change the language inside the preferences file of the application :

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit AppleLanguages '("en-US")'

Or just run once one application with another language :

/Applications/iCal.app/Contents/MacOS/iCal -AppleLanguages '(de)'

To determine the bundle identifier, run

mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier /Applications/Mail.app

or directly in one command:

defaults write $(mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier -raw /Applications/Mail.app) AppleLanguages '("en-UK")'

(via SuperUser)


Is it safe to update to OS Catalina while running Logic Pro X version 10.4.6? I have heard some negative reports concerning Logic's behaviour when updating to Mac OS Catalina. I also had a friend who updated and couldn't even open the program because it was way to glitchy and wouldn't run. Most of these reports are from a while ago, though. Does anyone know if it would be safe for me to update now?

All the negative reports I could find center around Catalina's lack of support for 32-bit code and heightened security that may affect 3rd party FX, plugins, and other software and hardware some folks use to supplement Logic Pro X.

If you use 3rd party software or hardware, check with the developer or manufacturer to make sure it is compatible.

ProToolsExpert has a searchable Ultimate Pro Audio Guide to macOS Catalina Compatibility chart with 152 developers listed.


Can I exclude itunes from the Software Update feature in system preference? I've reverted from 11 back to 10.7 three times by now because I keep forgetting to uncheck iTunes whenever it prompts me to install patches. I'd like to be able to tell the updater to skip over iTunes automatically.

In the Software Update app, select the update and select Ignore Update... from the Update menu.

If you ever want to bring it back, select Reset Ignored Updates from the Software Update menu.


Retina Mac shows gray screen when waking up This is the first time that my Retina MacBook Pro wakes up from sleep with a gray screen. After about 10-20 seconds, the MacBook falls asleep again.

Some points that might be relevant:

The only difference between power adapter and no power adapter is that with power adapter it does not go to sleep again.
The battery is almost full (I closed the lid last night when it was about 90%)
An external monitor was not attached when sleeping it, so I don't think How to fix a Macbook that does not always draw its internal screen after waking from sleep and having unplugged external display while asleep? applies.
I've run gfxCardStatus, almost always in "force integrated mode" (to conserve battery). And normally it wakes up correctly.
I run VMware Fusion 4.
All software is up-to-date and fully patched.

I tried to plugin an HDMI monitor and switch displays with Command-Fn-F1 and Command-Fn-F2, but that did not help (it would not switch displays).

Edit: I also tried logging in (see the comment by George Garside) but that didn't work (though the password field had focus, the screen didn't fade).

Before trying to:

reboot (by force a power off),
reset SMC
and/or reset PRAM/NVRAM

What options do I have that do not loose my work?

This is a workaround to save my work, then reboot.

Assumption: remote ssh is enabled and accessible on the Retina MacBook

Steps (note: "it" is the Retina MacBook):

Connect it to power, switch it on, and make sure it is connected to your LAN
Login over ssh to it through a terminal from another machine (I used a MacBook Air, but could be any machine that has an ssh client)
Enable screen sharing as described at Enabling OS X Screen Sharing from the Command Line
Remote connect through VNC to it
Save all your work
Shut it down
Start it
Login
Install DeepSleep (or a free DeepSleep)
Force a Deep Sleep
Wake

It woke fine, so I hope this was a one-time issue.


Share Mac Files (Yosemite) with Windows I have a combination of Win7 - XP & Apple macbook machines, running on my windows network.

The macbook up and till recently had Mavericks 10.9.5 OS X ,, a few days ago I upgraded the macbook to OS X Yosemite.

With upgrades you do get the odd thing going wrong but I have managed t resolve all but one problem in that I can no longer see any of the macbook-shared folders within the XP network icon.

I can see them and login to them via the Win 7 machines network icon, but I can not see any of the mac folders ( or drive ) within XP …

I therefore have to do the following :-

Start - Run

Then type the path to the macbook folder .. a login prompt and password appears but when I put in the user and password ,, the login re-appears but first with my XP machine user name back slash and the macbook user with password .. reappearing again and again after trying to login.
The error was logon failure: unknown username or password

I can though WinSCP from my XP to the macbook using the same login credentials

But I just can not get past this XP to macbook network access – I can however login from the macbook to the XP machines network drives and folders.

Does anybody have any solutions to this as I have come up stuck here

I had a similar issue and this post solved it for me:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/26964292#26964292

It may be the same discussion that Tetsujin references, but the setting to use is NOT "Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated" -- you should use "Send NTLMv2 response only". After I made that change, I connected to the share, put in my Mac username & pwd, and it connected.


Are Google services backed up by iCloud? I saw that on my iPhone under iCloud settings Mail was turned off but under iCloud Drive it's turned on and Google Drive is turned on as well (didn't mess with those settings before). Are my Emails from GMail and Google Drive files backed up by iCloud? That would make no sense and only steal my space.

Sorta–but no.

There are actually three different things we're talking about here.

iCloud mail
Storage of attachments in iCloud
Backup

Each of these items are very distinct, but all pull from the same storage pool (your 5GB default.)

Let's go over each.

The first is iCloud mail. This is an email service effectively equivalent to any other, provided by Apple. Depending on when you registered for it (if at all), you'll have either an @icloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com address. If you're not registered (which is what it appears is the case with your account), you simply don't have one. It's by no means necessary.

The second storage in iCloud. There are two versions of this: the first is temporary storage of large attachments in iCloud. This is a fairly new feature: you may notice if sending an attachment over a certain size that it will ask if you'd like to store it in iCloud instead. The second is just saving attachments you receive, which is pretty self explanatory In essence, this is no different from any other app using iCloud for storage.

The third and final is backup–or rather lack thereof. Backups (at least of iOS devices to iCloud) do not store mail data, as it has to exist somewhere else in the cloud–be it on Apple, Google, or whoever's servers.

In summary, you aren't using any space for mail in iCloud (unless you told it to, and you can always turn it off.)


What does setting Media Kind to Audiobook do? If I change the Media Kind option on a track to Audiobook, what does effects does that have on my iTunes library?  How does it change the presentation and functionality of the track?

Jesse Hollington wrote a great guide to Audiobook handling "The Complete Guide to iTunes Books, Podcasts + iTunes U" at iLounge. Basically it comes down to separating AudioBooks from music and providing different sync and management options within iTunes.

Your sync differences are obvious, you get a different sync category enabling you to sync all or selected Audiobooks. One really interesting difference is that on iOS devices, media kind Audiobook lets you adjust playback speed. I haven't tried setting a music track to audiobook and then changing playback speed - might be useful for learning guitar tracks if pitch is maintained.


Used my external hard drive as backup and now I can't see files that were previously there I wanted to save my data (around 150 Gb) on my external hard drive (Toshiba Canvio 1To), which already holds around 700 Gb of movies, old work, stuff that I don't use on an everyday basis.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner, it worked fine. But now I don't see those previous files anymore.

The external hard drive is full, but those files aren't displayed anymore: it only shows my backup. Tried the Shift+Cmd+., didn't reveal anything. Can someone tell me how to get them back?

Thanks.

Carbon Copy Cloner makes a clone of one entire disk volume on another disk volume. In other words, it duplicates the source disk on another volume, replacing whatever was already there.

A safer method would have been to use the drive as a Time Machine disk, which would then backup everything to the external drive, but keeping existing files in place.

If you can indeed recover all your files using Data recovery software, then you should go ahead with that. It is 'not easy' for you to do it yourself, as you would have to write code to read entire disk data blocks and work out where files begin and end (because they lack the catalog entry that the Finder can use to display files).

It is essential to have a second copy of every file that you want to keep, on another device, exactly to prevent situations like this.


Are there any differences between MacPro4,1 2009 and MacPro5,1 2010 besides firmware? I've noticed on many used MacPro listings that people have upgraded a MacPro4,1 (a.k.a. 2009) to a MacPro5,1 (a.k.a. 2010) simply by updating the firmware. From this, it appears that these machines are now able to accept 6-core Xeons as well as utilize 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM.

While this sounds all great and magical, is there anything else that changed between the two revisions of the tower? I'm asking more along the lines of physical rather than software; i.e. is a 2009 model with updated firmware inferior in any way whatsoever to a 2010?

UPDATE 2015-11-02 just to be a bit more specific, my curiosity is more around if the 4,1 and 5,1 are identical except for the upgraded firmware and new CPU/GPU options? Considering the CPU/GPU can be replaced aftermarket, I'm curious if (say) the motherboard is identical between the two revisions or were there any modifications?

The Mactracker app (for Mac and iOS) is a great resource for questions like this. You can check out all the specs for yourself side by side, but the more significant differences are:

4,1:

Processor:          Intel Xeon 3500 or 5500 series ("Bloomfield, Gainestown")
Graphics Card:      NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 or ATI Radeon HD 4870
Graphics Memory:    512 MB GDDR3 (GeForce GT 120) or 512 MB GDDR5
                    (Radeon HD 4870)
Display Connection: 1 - Mini DisplayPort and 1 - dual-link DVI

5,1:

Processor:          Intel Xeon W3530, W3565, W3680, E5620,
                    X5650, or X5670 ("Bloomfield, Westmere,
                    Gulftown")
Graphics Card:      ATI Radeon HD 5770 or ATI Radeon HD 5870
Graphics Memory:    1 GB GDDR5
Display Connection: 2 - Mini DisplayPort and 1 - dual-link DVI


OS X shows "Sign in to use this application on this computer" dialogs when opening App Store applications After a reboot of OS X, I often need to re-enter my Apple ID password in order to use the apps I bought in the App Store. Sometimes I have to re-enter my password only once and all the apps work (until the next reboot), but often I have to repeat this for every single App Store app I open.

For example, I might get this dialog the first time I launch Reeder after rebooting OS X:

  Sign in to use this application on this computer

  “Reeder.app” was purchased using App Store on another computer. To install “Reeder.app” on this computer, sign in using the Apple ID and password used to purchase it.

I have tried to delete the following files:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.storeagent
~/Library/Cookies/com.apple.appstore.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.appstore.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.storeagent.plist

But this didn't solve the problem. I have reinstalled all the apps, but that didn't help either. Moreover, I have done a clean install of OS X (for another reason) but I still have this issue with Mac App Store apps. Could this be related to my hardware or Apple ID?

Is there anyone who has had a similar problem or someone who might help me?

This same problem plagued me for months.  Any non-free mac store app would ask for a user name and password to access with the dialog box shown above.  When I lacked internet access, the app simply wouldn't load at all.

After trying all sorts of solutions - deleting the apps and reinstalling, re-entering passwords and credit  card numbers in the app store itself, etc., I finally found something that solved the problem:

I reinstalled Mountain Lion from the rescue partition installed on my hard drive.  While this takes some time (about three hours), it isn't as drastic as it sounds.  All my apps and files and passwords were intact after the reinstallation, and for the past two weeks I haven't had to re-enter any mac app store passwords for the apps I've purchased.

here's a link to a Macworld article that explains the process of reinstalling the OS:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167870/hands_on_with_mountain_lions_os_x_recovery_and_internet_recovery.html


Safari 8 fails to play any (mp4) video in-browser I'm using Safari 8.0.4 on OS X 10.10.2. Anywhere and everywhere, Safari refuses to play any (mp4) video on any website. Youtube and Apple's website are the only places where Safari plays any videos.

Even on my own Google Drive account, my uploaded videos fail to play.

This is what I see:

How can I resolve this?

It could be caused by a corrupt or incompatible video codec or interfering third-party software. Playing MP4 video files should work in any browser.

Here is what you can try…

Installing the latest OS X Yosemite Updates also updates the Quicktime framework which is used by Safari. Safari loads video Codecs from the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins directory. So make sure Safari is updated by going to App Store -> Updates -> Safari (version 10.x is the latest version).
Make sure that the Internet plugin-ins checkbox is enabled. Safari -> Preferences -> Security -> Internet plugin-ins -> Allow Plug-ins

Does using a browser with Flash built-in (like Chrome) allow you to play mp4 files? If so, try deleting or updating Flash in System Preferences, which could fix Safari.

If none of this helps, just try switching to a different browser (popular ones include Chrome, Firefox, Vivaldi, and Opera) or a different WiFi network.


How can I use Homebrew to install MongoDB 2.8 with "Wired Tiger" storage engine on my MacBook? I want to install MongoDB on my MacBook, and I would like an no-problems installation experience such as Homebrew offers.

However, it looks like brew install mongodb will give version 2.6.6 and adding the --devel flag will install version 2.7.7.

I would like version 2.8, which is still in "release candidate" stage so that I can use the new Wired Tiger storage engine that is available with version 2.8.

How can I use Homebrew to install version 2.8 of MongoDB on my MacBook?

You might have to wait for whatever volunteer updates Homebrew recipes to adopt 2.8 or perhaps pitch in and submit an update to the repository to bump the development version to 2.8.

There aren't any other competing packaging services that are as active as homebrew so watching there might be your best bet if you don't care to DIY.

If you have brew show the recipe for mongodb you see this issue as to why --devel is pinned at 2.7.7: brew cat mongodb

# This can't be bumped past 2.7.7 until we decide what to do with
# https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/33652

You could also weigh in there to see if there's something you could do to help unwedge this recipe. My guess is you'll need to just download the specific unstable 2.8 build you want from mongodb directly:

https://www.mongodb.org/downloads


Order an non-standard keyboard layout on new MacBook Is it possible to order a new MacBook with a keyboard that's non-standard for a given country? Let's say I want to have a Norwegian keyboard, but I'm living in Australia. Is this possible? And if it is, how to do it?

I've asked in one Apple shop, but I really hope their answer isn't the final one.

As far as I know the only way to do this is to contact an Apple retail store directly yourself and ask if they can do a special order for you.  No guarantees, but I have heard that it works for things like Arabic in the US.

http://www.apple.com/retail/


News channels on ITunes Radio? On iTunes radio I have been unable to find any new news channels with the exception of public radio in every city.

Are there any other news stations on iTunes Radio?

In iTunes you should have two options for listing to radio stations.

1) Internet stations (available in all Countries) - see the "Internet" tap under Music, where you should be able to find live stations with or without news.

2) Radio (not available in all Countries) - see the "Radio" tab under Music, this will only offer music streaming from a standard radio setup (possible to setup with your own music taste).


Can one create a multi-partition USB Stick with Mavericks, Yosemite, Snow Leopard installers? Does anyone have any experience creating a multi-partition USB Stick with bootable partitions for installing Mavericks, Yosemite and Snow Leopard?

I have a 32Gb stick I'd be perfectly willing to devote to this venture - if such a thing is even possible to create.

I have experience creating a singular Mavericks installer USB Stick - but does Option-booting a Mac allow for booting from multiple partitions?

Okay.. Apple have a perfectly workable website titled "Create a bootable installer for OS X" ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 )

Which tells you what to do via the Terminal, once you have successfully downloaded Install OS X El Capitan.app, Install OS X Yosemite.app and Install OS X Mavericks.app.

Their instructions are as follows:

EDIT: note, added macOS Sierra, which works with the same method - but is not listed on their website

macOS Sierra

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

OS X El Capitan

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

OS X Yosemite

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app

OS X Mavericks

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app

I was able to use these commands from the Terminal, onto a Disk Utility -made 5 partition USB stick. I verified it with option-down-during-boot (alt-down-during-boot) and both of them booted up fine.

I was unable to find an OS X Snow Leopard installer from my hard drive or elsewhere, so I'm considering this question answered.

Note: Mountain Lion installer app does not have "createinstallmedia" like Yosemite+Mavericks do, hence I didn't install that one on a USB stick - for that, one would have to use a secondary set of instructions for installing the installer to a USB stick via the usual way (Disk Utility, mounting, copying, copying some more..)


Is AirDrop possible between iPad, iPhone and MacBook? A new MacBook came with something called AirDrop and worked between many MacBooks such as MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Can I also use AirDrop to exchange data between Macs and iOS devices?

You cannot use AirDrop with iOS devices. It is a feature that is exclusive to supported Macs (and unsupported Macs through a hack, as you've pointed out).

If you are interested in sharing files with your iOS devices, I recommend a solution such as SugarSync or DropBox, or a Wi-Fi tool such as Instashare.

Apple intends for you and developers to use iCloud to get documents from PC to iOS, but it's not widespread yet and perhaps ever.


Time Machine monitoring app using data from the "tmutil status" command I'm sure the information is irrelevant to the question, but I'm running macOS 10.14.6.

Just today I discovered the very interesting tmutil status Terminal command. For instance, while the menu bar icon merely displays "Preparing backup", this command provides actual progress information, similar to this:

Backup session status:
{
    BackupPhase = ThinningPreBackup;
    ClientID = "com.apple.backupd";
    DateOfStateChange = "2019-10-06 15:54:55 +0000";
    DestinationID = "XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX";
    DestinationMountPoint = "/Volumes/XXX";
    NumberOfChangedItems = 2020012;
    Percent = 0;
    Running = 1;
    Stopping = 0;
}

It bears mentioning that this information is continually updated (as fast as I can rerun the command in Terminal), letting me know the backup is progressing, whereas the menu bar icon shows no progress at all during this phase.

And after the actual backup starts, this is printed:

Backup session status:
{
    BackupPhase = Copying;
    ClientID = "com.apple.backupd";
    DateOfStateChange = "2019-10-06 16:14:36 +0000";
    DestinationID = "XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX";
    DestinationMountPoint = "/Volumes/XXX";
    Percent = "2.26301435425844e-05";
    Progress =     {
        "_raw_totalBytes" = 68715697586;
        bytes = 1727829;
        files = 30385;
        totalBytes = 75587267344;
        totalFiles = 2093070;
    };
    Running = 1;
    Stopping = 0;
    "_raw_Percent" = "2.514460393620488e-05";
}

Clearly this is much more information than the menu bar icon or System Preferences pane provides. On the other hand, it's not too user-friendly: one has to run the command periodically in Terminal, and parse the text output.

Is there a GUI app that presents this information in an easier to read way, which is automatically updated?

I have made a shell script to output of 'BackupPhase' from tmutil status to the menu bar, and then I have the rest of the information available if you click on the menu bar item.

To display the output of this script in the menu bar, you will need the excellent TextBar app, which costs $5 (IIRC) and is well worth it.

Here's what it looks like right now (the "ThinningPostBackup" part is what is shown in the menu bar. The rest only appears when the menu bar item is clicked.)

You'll notice the top 3 sections are formatted, and then I just include all of the tmutil status information below (everything from "Backup session status" and below), because sometimes it might have interesting stuff in it, and I'm nerdy like that.

I have put my TextBar / Time Machine script up on GitHub for anyone who would like to use or adapt it.


Typing option+s results in surprise emoji () instead of eszett (ß) Up until a few days ago typing option+s resulted in the German eszett (ß). Currently typing option+s results in the insertion of the surprise emoji (). If I bring up the Keyboard Viewer and press the option key by itself, I can see that in theory at least typing s should insert ß as I would expect. Clicking on the ß character in the Keyboard Viewer also inserts a .
I have tried

a different keyboard layout which provides option+s as ß: surprise emoji
activating the standard German keyboard and pressing the key to the left of 0 (zero): ß
disabling Karabiner, although nothing in the settings suggests such a substitution to be active: surprise emoji

As indicated in an older question, the emoji substitution check doesn’t work on Big Sur.
Do you have any idea how I can debug what is causing this? I cannot recall installing anything recently which might be causing such a change.

I have successfully found out where the replacement was coming from - it turns out there was an entry in ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict which mapped option+s to the surprise emoji. I had forgotten putting the entry in there.


My Macbook Pro Retina 15" has a 250G H/D which is full. How do I identify what I can remove In The about this MAC- under storage- thedrive is full. The colour bar named "other" takes up 170G. I want to clean my hard drive to open up some operating space

I'd personally recommend using a tool like DaisyDisk to get a clear indication of what files are taking up the most space.

After that you could also run a tool like CleanMyMac (paid) or MacClean (free) to help you delete more hidden files like browser caches and language files.


iTunes on OS X: How to rename files using in-line editing in main window, using keyboard only? When I'm on my Windows computer and using iTunes, I can conveniently hit the F2 key when I have a song selected, rename the song using the in-line edit field that appears, and then hit Enter to commit the change.  No mouse or Get Info dialog is used in the process.

Is there a keyboard-only method in iTunes on OS X for quickly renaming a song?

On OS X, I can avoid iTunes' Get Info dialog by using the mouse to click twice ... not double clicking, but rather: click, wait, click again .. (and getting the timing right is annoying!)  Such clicking activates in-line editing functionality (so I know it exists) but it requires the mouse. How can I activate the in-line editing functionality with just the keyboard?

I tried F2 on OS X and that didn't work.  I also tried Enter, which can be used to in-line edit file names in Finder, but that didn't work either :-/

I'm interested in renaming files with the keyboard only because I have a ton of songs imported with "Artist Name - Song Name" titles to correct.

There sure is.

When you have a song selected, you can press ⌘ + return and it will allow you to quickly edit the song title.


Do I need to decrypt the hard drive before repair? Today I left my MBP Retina at local authorised Apple service (it's a mid 2012 model, and it's having some gfx issues), and then I got an email telling me that I have to go back there and decrypt my hard drive, because they can't test if it qualifies for the free repair program.

If I will have to do it, then what should I do before giving them my laptop back (is just disabling keychain and deleting important files ok)?

Why do they need me to decrypt the whole disk? Isn't it just the hardware thing?

You should have to remove an EFI password or permit them to reset that since it prevents Service Providers from network booting to diagnostic images or selecting an attached bootable volume to run test software.

You don't need to decrypt FileVault 2 in any service I've ever seen unless you want them to log in to your user account and look at your software. With physical access they can wipe a drive, make a clone/copy of it, but encryption is your way to protect the contents of the files reasonably well without impacting service testing.

My guess is that the person communicating with you mis-spoke or mis-understood the notes from the technician and if you call them back (or have AppleCare update the case notes and alert the technician), they can confirm if you have EFI locked firmware password set.

Apple documents this in the repair terms and conditions both online and you should have received them before signing the machine in for service.

Technically, they could wipe your drive and reset all passwords per the terms, but generally they give you a courtesy notice before doing so intentionally.

See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203253

Despite my generally trusting Apple repair employees, I would not give a machine password to an AASP until I had a very good understanding of who in that organization would have access to it, how it would be protected and when it would be destroyed. As to an iCloud password, the bar for yielding that is far, far, far higher bordering on almost never ever.


How to make an iPad backup when buying a new device? I'm going to resell my iPad 3 to buy a new one.

I need a simple way to backup everything from current iPad to be able to restore to the new one. This includes iBooks library with pdfs added from e-mails, Apps, App data, photos, etc.

I tried doing backup from iTunes, but it does not backup everything. On iPad 20 GB is in use, but back up archive is only 6 GB.

How is a user expected to backup an iPad?

There are really only two ways to back up your iPad. Both of them are comphrehensive and should transfer everything onto a new iPad. Chances are, the space difference is comprised of music, and movies, and such that you can re-download from iTunes. iCloud will handle that part automatically, and iTunes probably won't. But, it's not hard to do.
Option 1: iCloud
iCloud is likely the easiest backup solution. Configure it in Settings > iCloud, and make sure the initial backup completes before wiping your device. This is a helpful article including information that is backed up. The only thing is there is a 5GB free storage limit. After that, you will need to purchase more storage (for a nominal fee).
Option 2: iTunes
The traditional way of backing up iOS data, this way still stands strong and true. iTunes should backup all your needed data. Check out this great article about iTunes backups. I didn't find a specific mention of iBooks PDFs (which should be stored in iTunes, correct?), but it did mention on the 3rd bullet:

Application settings, preferences, and data, including documents.

This likely includes iBooks PDFs.
So, in summary, iCloud is likely going to be your best, easiest, and most user friendly way to backup. If it were me, I would do both. I have restored a backup from iCloud and found it remarkably easy and simple.


Launch an Application on login for the Guest User I would like for the Guest Account on the iMacs in my school to automatically launch Google Chrome when the Guest Account is logged into.

With normal users, you can accomplish this with the Login Items tab of Users & Groups in System Preferences, but that tab is missing for the Guest User.

If I attempt to login to the Guest User and navigate to Login Items, I am able to add Chrome, but when I logout and log back in the login item is deleted.

How can I accomplish this?

Here is a really good answer for this question:

  The easiest way would be the following:

  Download, install and update the free Server Admin Tools from Apple.
  If you´re currently logged into the Guest User Account, log out.
  Open /Applications/Server/Workgroup Manager and connect to Address:
  localhost with the username and password of your admin user
  Ignore the warning message about working on a local configuration,
  then go into the menu "View" and select "Show System Records".
  On the left hand side, select the Guest-User and in the window
  titlebar click on "Preferences"
  Click Dock on the right side. Select "Manage Always" at the top of
  the window and then add and remove the Dock items you want in your
  customized Dock. Uncheck the checkbox "Merge With User's Dock" at
  the bottom of the window. Click on "Apply Now" and log in as the
  Guest User to see it in effect.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/9537/258380


What SATA does an early 2011 MacBook Pro has? I want to get a SSD for my early 2011 MacBook Pro 15" and I'm not sure what SATA interface it has and what it would be the best price/performance blend.

I happen to use a MBP 15" early 2011 and it has a SATA 3 (6.0 Gbit/s) interface.


USB drive not showing on my Mac after using it on Windows I have noticed this on my pin drives and also my external hard desk. They were perfectly working fine on my Mac Pro, and then after using them on my friend's Windows they don't show up again on my finder, and also they're not found in desk utility. What to do?

I've had this problem and its common.  I would like to help but will need more information about your attempts to solve because there is more than on potential solution.

Restart your computer.  Sometimes that works just like a nap will make you feel better.

Check the power adapter (try a different one but be careful to pick the exact same voltage and cable) and trying different USB cables.

Drive format/file system issues are the next best guess for why its not working.  I'm sure you didn't reformat the drive for Windows when you used it on Windows because if it was reformatted then it will need to be reformatted again and the data is probable gone and while you could pay for data recovery its highly unlikely that would help.

Drive letter issues is another.  Open Disk Utility and see if the drive is showing up there and if it is run First Aid on it and see if it starts showing up in the file system after you do that.

To use it for both you need to format it for FAT32 or exFAT.  exFAT enables larger file sizes relative to the older FAT32 which caps files in the 4GB range but exFAT only works on newer computers with more recent Windows XP and/or Snow Leopard (10.6) or newer operating systems.

For more information, you can try this more comprehensive guide: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/external-hard-drive-not-recognized/

Hope this helps!  With more information I could help!


iPhone suddenly drains battery quickly, but only sometimes My iPhone 7 normally lasts about a week, but sometimes it suddenly starts draining very quickly. I have Background App Refresh completely turned off, and I wasn't using the phone at all when the activity shows 100% screen turned off. Why does it do this, and how do I stop it?

I wasn't able to find anything online, since searches only result in "turn off your apps" or similar.

You should be able to scroll down farther on that screen with battery level and activity and see specifically which applications are using energy.  Never seen the "not available message" however...


Macbook Pro Push Notification for Hotmail I received a notification from Apple stating that push notifications for Hotmail is getting revoked on April 8th.

Can someone help me reactivating this notification?

Your Apple ID at some point was used to generate a certificate.

Either log in to your servers/service or MDM that use push services or start here:

https://identity.apple.com/pushcert/


External disk takes a long time to appear in Finder I'm running Mac OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan) and it seems the larger the external disk I plug in, the longer it takes to show up in Finder.

A 2TB disk is taking almost a minute.

If I plug the same disk on a Windows or Linux PC, it shows up instantly.

Why does this happen on Mac? Is there an option or configuration to make the disk show up faster?

After upgrading to macOS Sierra, I uninstalled FUSE and ntfs-3g and started using the hidden NTFS support from Apple (through Mounty). The disk now mounts very fast, so I'm assuming it was the NTFS driver.


Is it possible to override the SD Card write protection setting in software? I'm using the built-in SD card reader on a Macbook Pro (15", late 2011) running Yosemite, and it treats every SD card as write-protected regardless of the position of the physical switch on the card.

Apparently this is a fairly common problem. I've already tried all the solutions given in this question, with no success. The only thing left that I can think of to try is making physical repairs to the drive. Since this problem is likely caused by a malfunctioning sensor for a setting I don't care about, that seems like overkill if there is a way to do it in software.

Is there any known way to tell the drive or the OS to ignore the write-protection setting and treat a protected SD card as writeable?

No.  You cannot override the write protection status of an SD Card via software.

The read/write status is handled by the firmware of the SD card host controller not by the driver.  From Toshiba (manufacturer of these chips):

  Content protection can be realized by using the [controller] with
  firmware.

Inside the SD card reader are a series of pins that get connected if the write protection is enabled.  This tells the controller that write protection is enabled (Picture is not of the MacBook connectors, but the best one to illustrate how it works I could find online).

It is most likely that these pins are "stuck" together causing the controller to "see" the card as protected.  You can attempt to clean it out or as a better alternative, just purchase an inexpensive USB SD Card Reader.


iOS and AES encryption I have been searching for a diary/journal application for the iPad that will encrypt the contents of the journal. Though there is no shortage of journal and note taking apps I have yet to find one that specifically mentions that the user content is encrypted while on the device. Does iOS provide APIs to allow for AES or similar encryption (Blowfish etc ...)? Is it difficult to encrypt user data within an iOS application?

Just to clarify ... I am not talking about simple password protection but rather encryption of the user data such that if the iOS device were compromised the user data would be unreadable.

1Password.  Not strictly a note taking application, but it does have secure notes built into it.  You're not going to find markdown support, but you get a place to type text.  Will sync via dropbox with it's desktop version.

Neither the iOS and OSX/Windows app are free.  (Plus it's a really awesome password vault)


Where does winetricks install stuff Where does winetricks install packages? I installed steam using the command 'winetricks steam' and I couldn't find it in ~/.wine/drive_c or just anywhere in ~/.wine

Found it

$HOME/.local/share/wineprefixes

more info on https://code.google.com/p/winetricks/wiki/WhereAppsGo


Can't unlock preferences - no password dialog In system preferences, if I click the "lock" icon to allow me to make changes as the administrator, no dialog opens.  The message "Authenticating..." appears momentarily, then disappears, and the lock stays locked.

I'm on OS X 10.6.8.

Any idea what could cause this or how to fix it?

I've had this same issue for months. Before it was my old MBP since "upgrading" from Snow Leopard to Lion, and now again on my brand new MBP with Mountain Lion.  After some digging it looks like a fairly common problem, possibly to do with CAC/ID card readers.

Anyway, this worked for me (without a reboot!). From Terminal:

sudo pkill -HUP securityd

When I did this Mail apparently lost it's connection to the security framework and started prompting me for passwords; I just restarted it and it was good to go.


Why can't iPhone 11 on iOS 13.0 upgrade to 13.2.2? A friend got a brand new iPhone 11 just over three weeks ago. It's running iOS 13.0 (17A577), so presumably it hasn't ever had a software update.

When my friend tries to update iOS to the current version (13.2.2), the "Verifying update..." dialog appears for a while, then the

A dialog then appears, saying:

  Unable to Install Update

  An error occurred installing iOS 13.2.2

  Retry

  Remind me later

Retrying ends up with the same result.

iOS 13 has various fairly serious bugs, including super-slow tap responsiveness (several seconds passing before taps on the screen register).

Is there any way to get past this error and get my friend's iOS updated?

In my experience, when unable to update on the device itself due to an error, I use Apple Configurator 2 on macOS to install the update.

When Apple Configurator 2 is installed, the process is pretty simple:

Open Apple Configurator 2.
Plug your iPhone in via USB.
Unlock your iPhone. You may need to trust the computer if this is the first time you've connected to it.
Your iPhone will now show up in Apple Configurator 2.
Right-click your device and select Update...
Your computer will now check your iPhone to see if there are any app updates and iOS updates.
If there is a new version of iOS available, follow the prompts to install.

If this fails, there could be an issue with the update itself or your iPhone, which may warrant resetting the device.


Why does the external monitor on my MBPR constantly lose its signal? I have a Macbook Pro Retina, manufactured in August of 2012 (mid 2012). The laptop seems to be incapable of continuously driving an external display. On some monitors it will lose the signal once or twice a day; on my home monitor it will lose the signal many times an hour, sometimes taking minutes to "settle down". The effect is as if I had un-plugged and re-plugged in the HDMI cable. However I see this happen on three different monitors, two of which come in through HDMI and one through Thunderbolt. I even bought an apple monitor for $1000 that I returned, because on that one every now and then the MBPR just wouldn't detect it at all (and I would still see it quickly drop and re-establish the signal a few times an hour).

Here is a video of what that looks like, as it flashes to blue repeatedly: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19671563/IMG_1363.m4v

I tried gfxCardStatus and using Discreet Only, no luck.

The apple store guys were no help. They claim they have never heard of this issue even though I repro it daily. When I check the Console, this is the first message I always see during an incident (for the worst-performing monitor, at least):

8/24/13 4:30:01.312 PM WindowServer[82]: Received display connect changed for display 0x3f003d

I have tried every conceivable Display setting (Best for Retina display, Best for External display), and I am mirroring. I never had even a single problem on my older Macbook Pro; I have had problems since day 1 on my MBPR and they are getting worse (i.e., the external monitor is losing its signal more frequently every day).

Can anyone recommend a solution or suggest a cause?

I was able to resolve this issue by using this $10 adapter: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A8DSY2/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For whatever reason, the MBPR likes the monster adapter much better than the Dynex DVI to HDMI cable I purchased from Best Buy. Now I use a DVI to DVI Dynex cable connected to a Monster adapter and it is much more reliable.


How does File Vault 2 handle a Windows 7 virtual machine Thinking about using File Vault 2 on 2010 macbook air.  I have a windows 7 virtual machine using vm fusionware that is 13 gb large.  What/how will File Vault 2 handle this large space?

Filevault 2 encryption happens on the fly while the system is running.

It does not affect a specific process or application. However, it does affect the I/O performance to the disk. Because Virtual Machines have a lot of read/write operations to the hard drive, the Machine will start slower when loading from the disk.

I have 15GB Virtual Box image for Ubuntu 11.10. It runs very good because my CPU supports the New AES Instructions for accelerated encryption which Filevault 2 makes use of.

In answer to your question:

As long as you still have 10-15% of total free space on your hard disk, Filevault 2 will handle any large VM.
But, I've looked up the Intel processors used in the 2010 Macbook air models. Unfortunately, none of them support the accelerated encryption!

Because your Macbook Air is not very powerful, I do not recommend using VMs in Filevault 2, or Filevault 2 at all, if you don't really need it.
Enabling Filvault 2 will cause large drops in reading/writing speeds to your flash drive without accelerated encryption.

Also see:

Intel® Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
Filevault 2


Different Computer Modes for MBP Is there a way to set different modes on my Macbook Pro. For example, I use my MBP for work, school and home. When I am at school I do not have my macbook plugged in to a charger and have to choosy as to what apps/services I can run so my battery does not drain. However, when I am at work or home, my MBP is plugged in and the apps/processes running are inconsequential.

What I would like to be able to do, is have like a school mode, which would automatically turn off iCloud Drive sync, OneDrive, Dropbox, Bluetooth, and some other services, all with the click of a button. Then, with another click of a button, turn on, or reenable these app/services when I get to work or home.

Is there a way to achieve this, or do I just need to manually do it?

Thank you.

You can easily do it with Automator workflow and AppleScript:
Open Automator
When it asks you what to create, choose "Application"
Then from the Utillities folder on the left, drag the "AppleScript" one into the workflow, and instead of the line saying "You script goes here", type:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal pane id "com.apple.preferences.Bluetooth"
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
        click checkbox "On" of window 1
    end tell
    quit
end tell

quit app "OneDrive"
quit app "Dropbox"

The first part turns off bluetooth, and the last two lines quit applications. If you want to quit more applications, just add quit app "<application name here>" to the AppleScript.

Two re-enable bluetooth, and re-open the applications, just create another workflow with an identical AppleScript, except change the last two lines to:

tell application "OneDrive" to activate
tell application "Dropbox" to activate

and if you want to add more applications, just add tell application "<application name here>" to activate.

Hope this helps!


enable dictionaries in dictionary app under el capitan os x el capitan, new mac book air with fresh os x installation.

In dictionary app preferences, no foreign language dictionaries appear in the the list of available dictionaries.   However, in /Library/Dictionaries there are many available dictionaries.

How can I access these dictionaries?

Go to Dictionary > Preferences. That will bring up a window like this:

Then, check them off and they will appear on the Dictionary front-page.


What would be the repercussions about lying about age in apple developer program? I cannot enroll in the Apple Developer program because I am under 18. What would be the repercussions if I lied about my age and then signed up?

If you just want to create apps, you can download Xcode and do that for free. You can even deploy the apps to your own devices.

If you want to sell apps on the App Store, it takes more than just signing-up for the Dev Program; you have to sign contracts and bank agreements. You could be susceptible to charges of fraud and/or misrepresentation.


Can I install CentOS via Target disk mode on a 2010 MacBook Pro I've got an old 2010 Mackbook Pro, but the graphics card has died, so the display is useless. Can I repurpose this as a headless server by installing CentOS via target disk mode from my current MacBook Pro (over thunderbolt cable)?

Once I've installed CentOS, how can I SSH into it without a display on the host machine to get credentials?

Yes, there are absolutely no problems with that:

Plug the Thunderbolt cable to both Macs;
Start the broken Mac in Target Disk Mode by pressing T during startup;
Plug a USB drive or insert a DVD with the installing image of CentOS to your second Mac;
Start the second Mac by holding option (Alt) at the startup and select the CentOS drive to boot it;
Complete the installation process paying attention to not wipe your second Mac's HDD but installing the OS on the broke one;
Create a user account with password, not just root;
After installing everything, reboot both Macs normally;
Connect the broke Mac with a Ethernet cable to the same network of your second Mac or you can just run a cable directly to it;
Find out what's the IP address of your broke Mac by looking at your Gateway interface or type arp -a in the terminal;
Use a SSH client and connect to the IP address of the broke Mac logging with the account you created earlier and then type the password: ssh youruser@192.168.1.20.

Enjoy your new server!


What does errAEWrongNumberArgs error mean running AppleScript? I copied a script that I found online, but it will not run. The error I receive is

Logical operator NOT used with other than 1 term (errAEWrongNumberArgs:-1721)

Here is the script.

on run {input, parameters}

-- Bring Screenflick to the front
tell application "Screenflick" to activate

-- Start a recording
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Screenflick"
        -- Open the Recording view
        click menu item "Recording" of menu "Window" of menu bar 1
        -- Set the recording timer
        tell window "Screenflick"
            -- Turn the timer off
            tell checkbox "Set Timer"
                if (its value as boolean) then click it
            end tell
            -- Turn the timer on
            click checkbox "Set Timer"
            tell sheet 1
                set value of text field 1 to "0" -- hours
                set value of text field 2 to "0" -- minutes
                set value of text field 3 to "10" -- seconds
                keystroke return
            end tell
        end tell
        -- Start Recording (Open the Screen Selection view)
        click menu item "Start Recording" of menu "Record" of menu bar 1
        delay 1
        -- Set the screen area to record
        tell window "Selection Window"
            perform action "AXRaise" -- makes the window frontmost
            tell pop up button "Selection Type"
                click -- Show the menu
                click menu item "Fixed Size" of menu 1
            end tell
            -- Set the left / bottom of the selected area in global screen points
            -- Must set the values to strings, not integers
            set value of text field "Left" to "100"
            set value of text field "Bottom" to "100"
            -- Triggers Screenflick to use those values
            -- (only confirming one of the fields is fine)
            perform action "AXConfirm" of text field "Left"
            -- Set width and height of the recording area
            set value of text field "Width" to "800"
            set value of text field "Height" to "600"
            perform action "AXConfirm" of text field "Width"
        end tell
        -- Now start recording
        click button "Record" of window "Selection Window"
    end tell
end tell
return input

end run

How can I figure out this error code?

With a script that long, you have two options to cure an error:

Use a debugger to step through the code and find out which of the 40 lines contains the error and inspect the value of the errors and the syntax for the command that’s being run or throws the error
Use the concept of minimum complete verifiable example - where you will remove the code logical part by logical part until you have the smallest amount of code that produces the errors. In this case, removing (or commenting out) all of the delays, all inner loops and have only a couple of lines of code to debug.

For debugger, the Apple tool is barely OK - so I would run and not walk to something like https://latenightsw.com/ Script Debugger which has a fully featured trial and then a free tier of functionality that will suit your needs perfectly.


Finder opens new window each time I just created a DMG and threw some folders in it. If I double-click a folder it opens in a new Finder window each time. Folders outside of the DMG are still opening normally. Holding option when I double-click causes the former window to close, but it's pretty inconvenient. Does anyone know how to get a DMG to show up in a normal Finder shell?

This is what I'm seeing, for what it's worth:

There are many things that could be going wrong here. First of all, make sure that when you navigate to Finder > Preferences > General, the option "Always open folders in a new window" is unchecked. If not, there are many solutions to your problem listed below:

Naviate to View > Show Toolbar
Navigate to View > as List, as Columns, or as Cover Flow
Get TotalFinder (http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/), which adds many more settings to Finder

Good luck!