Prepare MacBook for sale when OS X Lion reinstall requires Apple ID I'm going to sell my Macbook Pro.

When I reinstall OS X Lion, I have to enter my own Apple ID. Another Apple ID won't work, I get message "This item is temporarily unavailable".

How can I deassociate my Apple ID with this computer so that the next owner will be able to reinstall the OS with their own apple ID?

Go to appleid.apple.com
Log in using your Apple ID and password.
Scroll down to "Devices."
Click on the name of the Macbook Pro.
A small window will open; click on "Remove."

You may also want to read Apple's advice on What to do before you sell or give away your Mac.


Add/Delete/Modify files within a Disk Image (.dmg)? I know this may stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the way disk images are intended to work, but even when full permissions are granted on a .dmg file, I am unable to add or remove files on the mounted disk image. Is there any way (natively or via a 3rd-party tool) to do this?

I know that when a disk image is mounted, a checksum verification is done, so I'm guessing that because modifying the image at all would destroy the checksum, this is inherently not allowed, but I'm wondering if there's a utility that could re-image the disk with a subset of its contents, perhaps recalculating the checksum in the process.

NOTE: Copying all the contents over, deleting, and then re-imaging is not a plausible option, due to the size of the image and the fact that it already fills most of the available space of the external drive on which it resides.

A disk image is designated as read-only or read-write when it is created. Simply changing the permissions on the DMG file will have no effect.

Here is one purported solution that I have not tried myself, that uses the hdiutil convert command to make a disk image writable, and hdiutil resize to add extra space if required for any additional content.


RAM disks - can I use APFS and/or compression? I use a 200MB Ram disk to write some throwaway files that I use repeatedly but can forget from run to run and don't mind losing on a shutdown.  I often run out of space however and have to clean house.

This comes from a typical recommendation to mount a RAM disk until Macos:

can I use APFS instead?  Would there be much benefit in a Ramdisk?  Would it compress?
can I activate compression by default?  I am dumping out a bunch of throw-away diagnostic HTML files that would take a lot less space if there was transparent file system compression like you can do on NTFS.

                  old-school, what about APFS?

diskutil erasevolume HFS+ 'RAMDisk' `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://409600`

Diskutil itself doesn't help much:

Not one mention of APFS.

$ diskutil erasevolume -h

Usage:  diskutil eraseVolume format name MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
Erase a single disk partition or whole, laying down a new file system volume
that will be empty of files. Format is the specific file system personality
name of the new volume, e.g. "Journaled HFS+" or a common alias e.g. "jhfs+".
Name is the new volume name (subject to file system naming restrictions) or
can be specified as %noformat% to skip initialization (to skip newfs). You
cannot erase the boot volume. A pseudo-format of "free" or "Free Space" will
remove the partition altogether, leaving a free space gap in the partition map.
Ownership of the affected disk is required.
Examples: diskutil eraseVolume JHFS+ UntitledHFS /Volumes/SomeDisk
          diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" FooWholeVolEgRaid disk7
          diskutil eraseVolume ms-dos FOO disk0s5
          diskutil eraseVolume free free disk0s5

Not much documentation from Apple - it's terminal stuff.

Looking at man page we still only have old file systems.

Here's what using the GUI has to say:

Compressed Disk Images.  what's that?

I have also seen the term compressed disk image with regards to macos.  Does it have any relevance here?

giving it a try didn't help much:

Mount a 50MB

diskutil erasevolume APFS 'ram2'hdiutil attach -nomount ram://102400``

output:  No clear error, but no disk either:

Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Erasing
Mounting disk
Could not mount disk2 after erase  not good
Finished erase on disk2

ls /Volumes doesn't show a ram2 disk

total 0
drwxr-xr-x+  4 root  wheel  128 Feb 26 16:03 .
drwxr-xr-x  28 root  wheel  896 Sep 30 13:10 ..
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    1 Feb  8 12:51 MacHD -> /
drwxrwxr-x   8 jluc  staff  340 Feb 14 23:01 RAMDisk  existing one

@klanomath has the correct command in the comments above.

diskutil partitionDisk $(hdiutil attach -nomount ram://SIZE) 1 GPTFormat APFS 'RAMDisk' '100%'

My results:

$ diskutil partitionDisk $(hdiutil attach -nomount ram://12128430) 1 GPTFormat APFS 'RAMDisk' '100%'
Started partitioning on disk15
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Formatting disk15s2 as APFS with name RAMDisk
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk15
/dev/disk15 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +6.2 GB     disk15
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk15s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk16        6.0 GB     disk15s2


Can more than 10 devices be associated with one Apple iTunes account? I'm not an active user of Apple devices, and researching this for a project. I'm trying to have a group of MP3 players for shared use with a shared library. I wouldn't care if it costed more, but I'd really want the music to be shared. But, I am sure that paying double for double the device sharing isn't a feature. Note these devices will not have wireless (probably going to use like iPod shuffles or something with no Camera/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, due to the project requirements.

From what I understand, no more than 10 devices where maximum of 5 can be Macs can be associated with an Apple ID. However, I am aware of Family Sharing feature. I'm not sure though if it's possible to have 10 devices associated with one Apple ID, share that iTunes library with another Apple ID and have another 10 devices, and so forth.

If this isn't possible, suggestions on how to get the largest shared music library on multiple devices, while maintaining an easy and automatic way to sync all music? I don't want the manager of these devices to have to drag and drop MP3 files on all devices. I'd prefer plug-n-sync functionality.

More than 10 Apple devices can not be associated to a single Apple ID.

A single Apple ID can be used to log into upto a maximum of 10 Apple devices where no more than 5 of them can be macOS devices.

A Family sharing group can consist of upto 5 members (apart from the organizer). Each of the 5 members setup their devices using their own Apple ID.

The original limit of being able to use an Apple ID on upto a maximum of 10 Apple devices apply to each family member.


What kind of "messages" does Activity Monitor track with the "Messages Sent" and "Messages Received" columns? In Activity Monitor on OS X, it is possible to add additional columns to the process list view.  Two columns available in that list are "Messages Sent" and "Messages Received", which show up as "Sent Msgs" and "Rcvd Msgs", respectively.  Witness:

What kind of "messages" is Activity Monitor referring to?

When I saw "message", I thought at first of Objective-C "messages" that are dispatched with objc_msgSend(), but I can't see how those would be tracked by the operating system since most of those messages would be internal to the process itself. A debugger might track those kinds of messages when attached, but I can't see the OS doing it all the time — very high overhead.

So I am guessing those are heavier-weight messages. Are they a form of RPC between processes?  Or, are those messages calls from user-land into the kernel?  Seeking definitive references.  Thank you.

Those numbers match the Mach messages in/out counts, so you seem to be correct in not interpreting them as the objc_msgSend counts.

You can learn more about higher level message counts by firing up Instruments (part of the freely downloadable Xcode toolset) and digging into a specific application to see what messages are being sent and when.

It can filter all allocations as well as allocations relating to ObjC and you can dig into much lower level details than just message send counts. The canonical documentation that is part of Xcode will help you make sense of these statistics and how they relate to Activity Monitor.

Specifically, search for NSObjCMessageLoggingEnabled and objc_msgSend in the Mac OS X Debugging Magic - Tools Guide portion of the Reference Documentation to get at the objC counts.

Search for mach message in Xcode and look for the IPC/Message Queues section of the Kernel Programming Guide for mach message queue details and what makes them up. They are much lower level IPC kernel traffic as you have surmised.

You probably can find it on developer.apple.com as well, but having the documentation local from within Xcode has many advantages.


Does the app vendor obtain your name upon In-App subscription? Does the app vendor gain access to your name upon doing an In-App subscription?

I’m not sure how to read Apple’s privacy pages to understand what information (if any) is transmitted to third party developers from Apple Account details when you enter into a monthly subscription through the iOS App Store?

The app vendor does not gain access to your name when doing an in-app subscription. No personal information at all is transmitted to them in the process of buying in-app subscriptions (nor during the initial app purchase). This is contrary to how the Google Play store works.


Updating Office 2011 on Mavericks I'm opening Microsoft Word (read; Office 2011 for Mac) for the first time after installing my new Macbook Pro Retina 13". However, if I check for an update there will be one.
After I update it, there is another update.

Why don't I get the latest update right away? Is there any way I can enter my current version number and get updates for the next x-updates?

I've updated 6 times already, and it's going to bug me because I have to do the same on another MacBook.

Microsoft has major and minor updates.  Major updates include all previous updates, minor updates only have what is new since the most recent update.  Their downloads website has all of the updates, both major and minor, that have been released for Office.  The most recent Office update is the top of the list.  As of this writing (Feb 2014), the most current version is 14.3.9.  Its knowledge base article says that it only requires that you have version 14.1.0 installed, which would require you to do two updates (but not more than that).  Sometimes, I've seen it not get the update order right if you haven't rebooted your machine between updates, although I've usually not found that to be a requirement.  I've also seen people run into problems on updating if their license key is a pirated one, but I'm sure you're not doing that. :)  So, for your other MacBook, you should only need to do two updates if you're installing 14.0.0: 14.1, and 14.3.9.


Move Time Machine from case-sensitive USB disk to case-insensitive Airport Time Capsule My wife's MacBook has a case-sensitive Time Machine backup (her backup is stored on a case-sensitive file system). Our Time Capsule is not case-sensitive.

How can I migrate her Time Machine history from the case-sensitive USB disk to the Time Capsule, without losing the already existing Time Machine backups on the same Time Capsule?

I just tried the approach from #104277, and it worked.

Apparently Time Machine doesn't care about the file system case sensitivity when copying Time Machine backups from a local USB disk to a networked Time Capsule disk. The only thing that matters, is having Time Machine first create the Sparse Bundle on the Time Capsule.

In other words, the instructions from #104277 can be followed, even in case the Time Machine backup originated from a case-sensitive file system.

I however can't rule out that it worked only because there were no case insensitive file/folder name collisions in the first place (e.g., no distinct files named 'file', 'File' and 'FILE' in the same origin folder).


boot camp fails to copy windows 8 installation files I have been struggling to get Windows 8 installed on a brand new Macbook Pro Retina.  It seemed simple enough to just run Boot Camp 5 with a 16GB flash drive in the USB port and a Windows 8 Professional ISO sitting on the desktop with the intent of creating a bootable USB drive, but it's not working for me.  After selecting the path to the ISO file, boot camp proceeds to format the flash drive, create the WININSTALL partition, and attempt to copy the contents of the ISO to it, but it fails.

The error message isn't all that helpful, but the console logs seem to indicate that there is some sort of problem remounting the flash drive after formatting:

5/15/13 2:05:05.609 AM fseventsd[40]: could not open <</Volumes/WININSTALL/.fseventsd/fseventsd-uuid>> (No such file or directory)
5/15/13 2:05:05.609 AM fseventsd[40]: log dir: /Volumes/WININSTALL/.fseventsd getting new uuid: FD5D8B3E-A08E-4710-8925-CAA898FA70C3
5/15/13 2:05:05.679 AM fseventsd[40]: Events arrived for /Volumes/WININSTALL after an unmount request! Re-initializing.
5/15/13 2:05:05.679 AM fseventsd[40]: creating a dls for /Volumes/WININSTALL but it already has one...
5/15/13 2:05:07.176 AM diskmanagementd[857]: mount blocked by dissenter PID=857 (/usr/sbin/diskmanagementd) status=0xf8da0003 log=kDAReturnBadArgument message=(null)

I have tried rebooting, removing and re-inserting the flash drive, mounting, umounting, and reformatting.  Boot Camp always winds up in the same place.

Any hints as to what might be going wrong?

Update: I've now cross-posted this to the Apple forums.

Have you tried to use a different flash drive? I have had issues particularly with SanDisk Cruzer flash drive that are unable to be used as boot devices because of the firmware on the flash drive. Try a different flash drive and see if you have the same result. I have an 8 GB Sony flash drive and a 4 GB Kingston flash drive that have never failed as bootable USB devices. Using the same process, I just could never get the SanDisk to work.

Otherwise burn the ISO to a DVD and and Bootcamp should be able to find it just fine.


How many threads is normal in OSX Lion? I just rebooted my system and right now Activity Monitor is showing over 500 threads running. Before I rebooted it was over 900. Is that normal?

That really depends on how many applications you have open and what Mac you have. I currently have 650 threads with minimal usage. As long as it doesn't affect your Mac's performance, it shouldn't be a problem.


Re-install the App Store application on OS X 10.6.8 I deleted the App Store application with AppCleaner some months ago, after ongoing problems with a freezing Finder. Now I would like to reinstall, but I cannot find a way. The 10.6.6 combo updater of course will not do the job because it needs an older OS X incarnation and I'm running 10.6.8.

Download and re-install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.
at the link above.


Minimum virtual memory (swapfile) size setting Is possible set the minimum swapfile size in OS X?

Currently OS X allocating swapfiles on demand, e.g. when when need 3.2GB will allocate 4GB and so on. But when the swap requirements start getting low the system deletes un-needed swap files. All these IO operations are very IO intensive.

Therefore looking for a way how to define the minimum swap file size, e.g. I want default allocate minimum 4GB virtual memory. When the system will need more than 4GB will allocate on demand, but at releasing will never release under 4GB size.

Is this possible somewhat? (using lion)

… set the minimum swapfile size …

dynamic_pager(8) Mac OS X Manual Page
With Terminal, a one-off command to convert a property list to a format that will be easily editable:
sudo plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist
Then if you're happy to edit with nano:
sudo nano /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist
Use option -S to set a size in bytes, then save that property list and either:

simply, safely, restart the Mac; or
unload then load the daemon – but that may be risky (and I suspect that only a restart of the Mac will reap the potential benefits).

That's a single size for all files, and any use of option -S will cause dynamic_pager to not use variable sized paging files:

we can not simply set a minimum – alone – amongst that set of variables.

… I want default allocate minimum 4GB …

Based on my tests with Mountain Lion, you might find that dynamic_pager will quietly fail to begin with a file that is so large.
Proceed with caution – pay attention to the actual size of swapfile0 and if it is zero bytes, then beware of inexplicable reductions to free space on the volume where the files are expected.

… at releasing will never release under 4GB size. …

Consider dynamic_pager option -L

If there are more than low-water-trigger bytes free in the external paging files, the kernel will coalese in-use pages and signal dynamic_pager to discard an external paging file. Low-water-trigger must be greater than high-water-trigger + filesize.


Long iPhone voice memos won't import to my Mac I recorded a lengthy meeting today in two parts.  The first part was 20 minutes, and it was easily imported to my Mac.  The second, about 55 minutes, will not sync.  It is still on the phone, but I want to transfer it to my computer so that I can create an MP3 version.

Can anyone tell me whats wrong?

Yesterday I just created a 2h recording using the standard Apple's Voice Memo and "imported" seamlessly to my Mac, no issues at all. It went to my music library in an album "Voice Memos".

I can only say there's nothing special that should cause such an issue and I confirmed it. What I would do in your case is checking the Console hoping for some informative warning and trying to record another file and see how that goes.

But there's a good chance you've got it and is just not finding it, like other dudes. Worst case scenario, get iPhone Explorer and grab them manually. There are some steps you might want to follow and see if it helps in you case. The first one is: Restart you mac.


Not able to create new project in Xcode Here are the steps I used

open Xcode
create a new project
choose the command line prompt
On the the option for new project I put the product name
For language I choose C++

Then I can't proceed. At the bottom I see "cancel", "previous",  and "next" but next is greyed out. What do I have to do to proceed?

You must type an Organization Identifier; you can even invent it!


Converting AVCHD files to mp4 I have recently recorded some college lectures using my Canon handycam.

The files I seem to have are in AVCHD format.

I'd like to know if there is a relatively fast method to convert them into .mp4 format.

I bought iMovie but with dismay I have been totally defeated by its interface.

I was thinking of using ffmpeg but thought I'd ask the question here first.

Thanks.

Handbrake should be able to handle AVCHD files. It relies on some codec library files from VLC player, so it may help to have that installed as well. Handbrake uses ffmpeg underneath the hood.

Alternatively, AVIdemux may also be useful. It's a bit more of an editor than just an encoder, but if it can read the source files, it should be able to output the desired encoding.

Commercially, SmartConverterPro has worked okay for me.


How to copy pdf files to be view with iBooks on iPad using iTunes So I found this location on my Mac:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

I then copy pdf files to that location.  In iTunes, from the left column under Settings I clicked on Books.  On the right view I can see a list of books that I downloaded from AppStore and pdf files that I downloaded directly using Safari on my iPad.  But I do not see any pdf files that I just copied to the Mac location above.

So how do I transfer pdf files that I have manually to my iPad without using Safari to download?

Might need a bit more info on what you're trying to do and what gear you're using but if you're on Yosemite then just open the iBooks app on your Mac then drag your pdfs into that. Then connect your iPad and open iTunes. Select your iPad in iTunes then select the Books tab and make sure Sync Books is ticked and All Books selected. Then sync your device. Alternatively, you can use Adobe's PDF Reader app or one of the many other PDF apps for iPad and use iTunes File Sharing to copy the PDFs across.


Google Calendar will not sync with Calendar.app after Yosemite I recently clean installed Yosemite on my 11" Macbook Air and my Google calendar will not sync with Calendar.app. Everything else on my Google account syncs with no problem, but the calendar refuses. I tried with another google account and had the same problem. Turned off 2-factor auth, same problem. Tried with CalDAV, doesn't work.

In Preferences > Internet Accounts > Google Account in Question, the box next to Calendars is unchecked by default. When checking it, I get a progress wheel that spins for a minute or so and then...nothing.

Is there something I'm missing here?

Have you tried changing what to be synced here? This is the Google Calendar Sync select page, it is also available for iPhone.

On these sites you are able to choose, which calendars are being synced. Your choices are:

All of your own calendars
All the calendars you've subscribed to.


How to install Snow Leopard from USB where USB disk is prepared using Linux? I'm trying to install Snow Leopard (a retail version) into my MacBook, but seems like that the MacBook can't find the boot disk over USB.

I guess this is related to the fact that I mounted the .iso of Snow Leopard via Linux, using dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdx and this rewrites the boot sector.

Is there a way to copy the ISO into my USB disk via Linux and make the MacBook recognize this?

Why use Linux for this? Just do it in OS X. To prepare the USB drive (e.g. 8-GB flash drive), you need to partition it using the GUID scheme and format it to the file system standard 'Macintosh Extended (Journaled)', also known as 'HFS+ (Journaled)'.

Then use Disk Utility's Restore feature to copy the contents of the iso image file (Source) to the USB drive (Destination). When done, restart the Mac keeping the Option key pressed – the USB drive should then show up in the boot volume lineup...

There are many tutorials for this process on the Internet, e.g., http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html


iOS auto-erase after 10 wrong passcode attempts: will the iCloud activation lock still work? After a recent and unsettling experience of having my iPhone stolen a few weeks ago, I have tried to harden the security settings on my new device. The old device has still not responded to a remote wipe request via Find My iPhone, so I presume that will never happen.

On the new device, I have turned on the "Erase data" setting in the Touch ID & Passcode settings: "Erase all data on this iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts".

I know that, in the event the erase happens, this will disable the Find My iPhone client on the device, but will it also disable the iCloud Activation Lock? That is, will someone be able to exploit deliberately the erase process to obtain a factory clean iPhone to use and activate as he wishes?

Activation lock happens regardless of the content on the device.

You are protected since any wiped phone needs to check in with Apple's activation servers to determine if the device was purchased through DEP or is covered by an existing activation lock.

You don't have to worry about enabling a wipe conflicting with the inability of someone to activate the device down the road - they were designed and implemented to not conflict. Activation Lock works whether you wipe or not and without regard to how the wipe actually gets triggered.


Not Receiving Standard SMS on iMessage for Mac I have a new Retina Mac running Mountain Lion (10.8.2) and an iPhone running 6.0.1.

On my iPhone I can send and receive text messages from my email test@example.com and +1 (555) 555-5555. On my phone it has iMessage turned on, Send Read Receipts is on, Send as SMS is on, Send & Receive (2 Addresses which are my email and number), new texts sent from my number.

On my Mac iMessage I'm logged into my Apple ID and it says I can be reached from my email address or number (which are same as on my iPhone).

If an iPhone user texts me, it shows on my Phone and Mac and I can respond on my Mac or Phone.

My issue is that I cannot send or receive texts on my Mac to/from non iPhone users as I've been able to with Google Voice. I had thought with Mountain Lion you would not be able to at least receive texts sent to your phone number. Or is it still limited to only iPhone users? I would think if a non iPhone user sends to my iPhone number it would sync that message to my computer.

Unfortunately, Messages for Mac only sends iMessages, and unlike Google Voice, doesn't send SMS messages. This limits Mac Messages to only be able to send and receive iMessages from other iMessage enabled devices (such as iPhones, iPods, iPads, and Macs). Also, another result of this is the fact that only iMessage threads will sync over to your Mac - SMS threads won't (as you have noticed).

This is indeed a limitation of the software, and not a configuration problem.


I can't run Eclipse on Macbook on Yosemite: "Version 1.6.0_65 of the JVM is not suitable for this product." and I have Java 1.8 (shows in settings) I can't run Eclipse on Macbook on Yosemite: "Version 1.6.0_65 of the JVM is not suitable for this product." and I have Java 1.8. When I open settings I can see that version of Java is 1.8

It has worked for me to change inside info.plist

<key>JVMVersion</key>

from
<string>1.6*,1.7+</string> to <string>1.8*,1.6*,1.7+</string>

and inside ./bin/idea.properties
change JVMVersion=1.6* to JVMVersion=1.8*


John the Ripper and sparsebundle password help Around January 2014, my original hdd died on me, I bought a new hard drive and let the old one sit. Got myself an external enclosure recently, to recover my old work, only to realize my main folder had been encrypted with FileVault and i'd forgotten the password.

(It was encrypted on OS X 10.6, with legacy filevault)

I've seen John the Ripper mentioned a lot for cracking passwords, I've gotten as far as getting a build (1.7.9-jumbo-7 [macosx-x86-64]) installed. I have a word list ready and a vague idea of what my pass could be, I'm just not sure where to go from here.

I'm hoping I could get some guidance on what I would need to do next.

Edit: I'm running on os x 10.9, if this is relevant?

See this official tutorial for cracking encrypted Apple DMG files.


Will an original Smart Cover work on an iPad 3? I bought an iPad 2 and Apple smart cover last year, before they updated them and got rid of the orange color. Now I'm thinking of upgrading to the new iPad, will my Smart cover work on the new iPad or do I have to shell out another $40 for a new one?

(The reason I ask is because I think the dimensions of the new iPad are slightly different? and the sides are apparently more curved?)

According to the Smart Cover page on the Apple store:

  The iPad Smart Cover is compatible with iPad 2 or later.

Also at the bottom of the page:

So, the answer, based what Apple has said, is yes, the original Smart Cover will fit both the iPad 2 and the iPad 3.

There are also several questions linked in the product page that say that the cover will fit.

Edit 9/1/12:
I did mean to update this when I found the link, but I lost it for a time and recently found it again.

According to a MacRumors report on March 22nd, some people did (and presumably still are) have some trouble with the magnets on the iPad 3. According to Marc Booth, Apple changed the polarity of the magnets sometime in 2011, because "some iPad 2 customers were having issues with their iPads entering sleep mode when they flipped Apple's Smart Cover around flat behind their iPad 2". Marc also reports that "Apple is replacing older Apple Smart Covers at Apple Stores for customers who ask."


Using my iPad with IOS 7.1.2, how can I sync my calendar from my iPad, iPhone, iPad mini to Google claendar? I realize I can sync my Google calendar to my devices.  However, can someone explain to me in simple steps how to get my iPad, iPad mini, and iPhone 5S to return the calendar information to my Google calendar.  I would REALLY appreciate it:)  I have red various preposts similar but most of those questions and answers are about syncing from Google to Apple devices like mine.  Be gentle.  I am a newbie at this site.:)

If you add your Google account in the "Settings" app under "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" the sync works in both directions: Events entered on http://calendar.google.com appear in the iOS calendar app and events saved into the Google calendars on your iPhone/iPad will appear on the Google Calendar website.

However this works only for new events. If you have existing events that you would like to copy into Google Calendar you can use my free app SyncCal (iTunes Link).


Time Tracking App with Alfred integration Is there a time tracking that integrates with Alfred, so you can start/stop time tracking using typed commands?

I use Harvest to track time. It has a robust API. There is a command-line tool called hcl for interacting with Harvest time sheets.

I haven't bought the Alfred Powerpack myself, but I presume that since the Powerpack includes an interface to develop your own shell scripts to extend Alfred that it would be fairly straightforward to start/stop new tasks:

$ hcl start mytaskalias adding a new feature

$ hcl stop

You've inspired me to look into this for improving my workflow. I currently use the Harvest application which has a very handy menu bar control, but being able to start/stop a timer quickly from Alfred sounds like a nice option…


How do I enter DFU mode on an iPhone 3G OS 4.2.1? I've tried several solutions to enter DFU mode but none worked:
- the Home + Sleep combo
- the DFU program here

Somebody has an idea?

DFU has always worked as follows:

Turn off the phone
Hold power and Home for 10 seconds (exactly 10 seconds, use a clock with seconds)
Release Power, but keep holding Home
After 5-10 seconds you should get the phone detected on the computer with the screen still black.

I've tested this on 2G, 3G, 3Gs and works on all of them fine.

Here's a video on how to do DFU properly: iPhone DFU Mode

Also I just like to note that this procedure must not be mistaken for recovery mode (iTunes cable screen), which is done by:

Hold Home
Keep holding Home, press power to start the device (1-2 sec is enough)
Release power, keep holding Home until you get to the iTunes cable screen


Ipod Classic not recognized by iTunes (Windows 8.1) I have an 80GB iPod classic that is not being recognized by iTunes.  Here's what happened:

Ipod ran out of battery. I charged it on a speaker dock, and it opened with no memory, restored to default settings (no idea why)
I tried to connect it to itunes, and it didn't work.  My computer recognizes it as a removable drive and it indicated it was charging but itunes did not recognize a device was connected.
I uninstalled and re-installed itunes (no change)
I put the ipod in disk mode and connected it (no change)
I ran an diagnostic in itunes, and theses were the results:

Microsoft Windows 8 x64 Home Premium Edition (Build 9200)
Dell Inc. Inspiron 3521
iTunes 12.2.0.145
QuickTime not available
FairPlay 2.8.28
Apple Application Support 3.2
iPod Updater Library 12.0
CD Driver 2.2.3.0
CD Driver DLL 2.1.3.1
Apple Mobile Device 8.2.1.3
Apple Mobile Device Driver 1.67.0.0
Bonjour 3.0.0.10 (333.10)
Gracenote SDK 3.06.1.3084
Gracenote MusicID 3.06.1.3084
Gracenote Submit 3.06.1.3084
Gracenote DSP 3.06.1.3084

iTunes Serial Number 000000897B7B8E7C

Current user is not an administrator.
The current local date and time is 2015-07-05 18:27:22.
iTunes is not running in safe mode.
WebKit accelerated compositing is enabled.
HDCP is supported.
Core Media is supported.

**** External Plug-ins Information ****

No external plug-ins installed.

**** Device Connectivity Tests ****

iPodService 12.2.0.145 (x64) is currently running.
iTunesHelper 12.2.0.145 is currently running.
Apple Mobile Device Service service 3.3.0.0 is currently running.

No Universal Serial Bus Controller found.

No FireWire (IEEE 1394) Host Controller found.

Most Recent Devices Not Currently Connected:

iPod classic running firmware version 1.1.2
Serial Number:  8!@#$%^&*()

Note: It gave the real serial number, not sure if i should post it with that though.

Other things:
My computer is a Dell, running windows 8.1; I have connected this ipod to this computer and updated it successfully before.  There is no damage to the cord, or USB ports.  I do not have access to another computer to test the ipod.

Thanks in advance for any advice as to how to proceed, I really want to be able to use my ipod again!

That is a know problem.

Choices are to go back to iTunes 11 or try to fix the iPOD.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6807069


How does "sharing" of purchased apps work on iPhone and iPad? If I buy an app for iPad or iPhone, then login to my account on a few other iPhones and download that app, are there any restrictions on how many devices I can install that application on?

Once I've downloaded the app to the maximum amount of devices, will my restriction be lifted if I delete the app on those devices?

Basically, how exactly does installing apps, with the same account, on multiple devices work?

There isn't a limit to this (or there isn't yet a limit that is imposed by Apple); you should be able to install iOS apps that you purchase on all your iOS devices (obviously using the same Apple ID).
From the Apple iTunes Terms of Service:

APP STORE PRODUCT USAGE RULES
(i) If you are an individual acting in your personal capacity, you may download and sync an App Store Product for personal, noncommercial use on any iOS Device you own or control.


ZSH terminal displaying characters and cursor in the wrong place When my command is long and I move the cursor through it, it jumps randomly to different places and start writing in any location of the command.

I'm using OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) and have installed oh my zsh. I've also tested an alternative terminal (iTerm) and the same is happening.

I've just added

export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

to the file

~/.zshrc

and solved the issue


Can Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6.15 coexist on the same OSX machine? Firefox 4 is out and I'm a little bit worried about the lack of compatibility of my loved Addons on this new version.
Can I install Firefox 4 to try it without the need to upgrade the 3.6.15 version?

Yes, you can have both versions. In fact you can install the new Firefox in your home directory's Application folder (and it will be only accessible with your account). If you don't have ~/Applications folder, you can create it (and Finder will mark it with the same icon as the /Applications one). Note that you cannot use both versions simultaneously. You can also rename the Firefox.app to Firefox 4.app, and install it in /Applications - it'll work flawlesly.

ps. I prefer the first method - Install applications that I'm testing in my home Applications folder, and when I'm sure they're ok, move them/replace application in /Applications.


Why is my Apple Watch noise monitoring suspended? I have a new Apple Watch Series 5 running WatchOS 6.  The noise monitoring feature seemed to be working fine yesterday but today the complication shows a microphone with a line through it and when I open the Noise app I get the following screen telling me that measurement is suspended because the Watch is in Water Lock or the microphone/speaker is in use.  The Watch is not in Water Lock and the mic/speaker are not in use so I don't understand what the issue is.  I've tried restarting the Watch with no success.  I also tried enabling and disabling Water Lock.  Nothing I've tried so far has enabled the Noise monitoring feature again.  Has anyone any idea what might cause this and how to fix?  I guess I could try a factory reset but that's a bit of a sledgehammer approach so I thought I'd look for alternative suggestions before I go that route.

It seems this is a hardware issue with the mic. Further observations and actions taken listed below.

Siri dictation doesn’t work
Voice memos will record but there’s no audio recorded
Factory reset did not resolve the above issues.

Apple recommended returning for repair


Is finder search supposed to work as "full text search" at all in OS X El Capitan? Scenario: I am trying to find a picture (which is named DSC_2345.jpg) inside the Photos Library in Finder. When I type "234" (without quotes) directly in the finder search field, all the photos whose names contain "234" are displayed in finder; however, when I type "2345" (without quotes) no photos. When I Type DSC_2345 I see the photo.

So my question is:

Is this full text search just supported with a maximum of 3 digits? It seems strange to me... I had a similar strange Finder search problem somehow also in Yosemite.

Finder uses Spotlight to index and search for files and folders.  There are several resources that can help you with understanding the way Spotlight indexes files on your Mac.

Since you are looking for an exact phrase type of text search, use quotation marks.  (See below)

In Finder select the Help menu and type in Spotlight for further information.

Apple support: If searching your Mac doesn’t return expected results

From Apple's Support site regarding unexpected search results:

  OS X El Capitan: If searching your Mac doesn’t return expected results
  There are several things you can try if a search doesn’t return the
  items you expect.

  Check the text you entered in the search field
  Make sure the word or
  phrase is spelled correctly.

  To search for an exact phrase, enclose it in quotation marks.
  For example, enter “trip to Paris” to find items that contain that exact
  phrase. If you don’t use quotation marks, the search results include
  items that contain those words in any order.

  Check the location you’re searching
  If you began your search in Spotlight, the search results can include email, Calendar events,
  Spotlight Suggestions, information from other apps, and more. If you
  began your search in a Finder window, the search results include only
  files and folders on your internal disk.

  Check your Spotlight preferences
  You may have removed items from Spotlight search results. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences,
  click Spotlight, then click Search Results.

  You may have excluded certain folders or disks from searches. Choose
  Apple menu > System Preferences, click Spotlight, then click Privacy.

  You may have turned off Location Services for Spotlight Suggestions.
  For more information, see About Spotlight Suggestions.

  For more information about Spotlight preferences, see Spotlight
  preferences.


How to use a wired headphone AND a mic at the same time on the Macbook Pro Retina? I'm surprised that the Macbook Pro Retina has only one 3.5mm audio jack. It seems that port can be either headphone or mic in depending on what's connected but I need BOTH at the same time for Skype! My Skype headset has 2x 3.5mm jacks - one for output (headphones) and one for input (Mic).

How is Apple expecting us to use Skype on the MPBr? I've tried:

in-built speakers + in-build mic: The loudspeaker throws feedback into the built-in mic => unusable
headphones + in-built mic: Keyboard clicks and other ambient noises are picked up => unusable
microphone + speakers: Works but I can't use this unless I close my office door (i.e. only person in the room). I can't use this in coffee shops, campus areas, shared office environments etc
Bluetooth headset: Its a pain to make sure the headset is fully charged before the call and that it doesn't kill my WiFi (which it sometimes does).

How can I get a real wired headphone and mic to work with the MBPr? This thing is killing my conference calls ...

You will need the same type of headset that you use with an iPhone. It will have one 3.5mm plug that carries both the stereo audio and mic input (aka a TRRS plug). Some examples are apple's own EarPods, Sennheiser's PX 200-II i's, and any other iPhone headset.


Why won't Google Reader load in Safari 5.1.4? Ever since I updated Safari to v5.1.4 on my MacBook Pro (Lion) I've been unable to load Google Reader. I can load and view Google Reader in Chrome on my MBP, but not the latest version of Safari.

When browsing to Google Reader, the normal yellow Loading box displays, but eventually this is all that shows up:

I'm running Safari 5.1.4 on Mac OS 10.7.3. I've tried all of the suggestions listed on the page, and nothing works. How do I get it to load?

Had the same problem. Tried resetting cache, making sure latest Flash was installed, turning off all extensions, etc. Turns out changing Safari to 64-bit mode was what did it this time. Open Finder, Applications/Safari, "right-click" Get info (or command + "i"), uncheck "Open in 32 bit", restart Safari. Hope that helps!

After the fact: Apple released Safari 5.1.5 this afternoon. The update addresses this 32-bit issue specifically.


How to view per-app cellular data usage in iOS 10? In iOS 9, under settings -> Cellular, I can see how much cellular data each and every app has used.

But in iOS 10, it's no longer there. Has it been moved to somewhere else? Or removed at all from iOS 10?

Here is a screenshot of iOS 10. I've scrolled to the very bottom.

Hmm, should still work as before (screenshot from iOS10):


Applescript to find word in text file Mac, How do you use applescript to find a word in a text file and if there is that word then it will do something, but if there isn't then it will do something else?

In Unix, it is very easy to find words in files using tools like grep, awk, sed etc.
Here, I reckon, we can create a small shell script to find the word you want in a text file using grep and then we can call it directly from your AppleScript as shown below:
Solution 1 Putting the search keyword and filepath inside a shell script.
Let's call the shell script: find.sh:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

grep -w <search-word> "text-file-path"

Let's assume that we want to search for the word foo in a file called bar
Our shell script will look like this:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
grep -w "foo" "bar"

Note: grep -w will look for an exact match. For more info, look at man grep
Save the script find.sh in your working directory.
You can test it by:
bash find.sh

Now, you can call find.sh from your AppleScript like this:
try
  do shell script "bash /path-to/find.sh"
on error
  display dialog "no word found"
end try

It is needed to satisfy the sanity check by yourself, by making sure that you pass the correct filename and filepath (bar in our case) in your script.
Solution 2 Putting the search keyword and filepath inside your AppleScript.
If we can guarantee the sanity check of correct filepath, the shell script can be simplified further, especially if you want to put your search keyword and filepath in your AppleScript instead.
After simplification, find.sh will look like this:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
grep "$@"

Save the script find.sh in your working directory.
You can test it by:
bash find.sh "foo" "bar"

And your AppleScript will look something like this:
try
  do shell script "bash /path-to/find.sh -w 'foo' 'bar'"
on error
  display dialog "no word found"
end try


Is this a valid Apple request to download software? I seem to have a USB connection that's a little flaky and will address it.

When my iPhone, connected to my MacBook made that sound it does when it is first connected a few times in rapid succession, this message appeared.

I snapped a quick screen shot, unplugged my phone and clicked Not Now rather than Learn More, or check Activity Monitor, so I can say much more than "this is how it looked," and no matter how I wiggle the connection I can't reproduce it.

It looks vague and ominously non-Apple, for reasons I can't explain. Is this a standard thing to happen, or is it weird or even potentially dangerous?

It looks legit, but was probably shown to you by mistake, triggered by the rapid connecting and disconnecting. If you are concerned, you could run MalwareBytes Mac to make sure you have no malware. But that message looks legit to me, unless it's a perfect replica of the real message it is emulating.


Why Photos and Photo Library differ in size? Today I saw that 2 different positions in "manage storage" menu differ in size: Photos and Photo Library. I would like to know what is stored in which, but it is my first Mac and I cannot (or do not know how) simply check what lies underneath - both positions opens in the same window of Photos app.

Screenshot below:

I checked the file sizes on my computer as well:

As you can see, my Photos application is 56.4 MB, while my Photos Library is 13.38 GB.
What's Going On
The reason that the Photos application is so small compared to the library is because the application only contains the files necessary to run the application - you can right-click and select "Show Package Contents" to confirm this. The library, though, is stored externally, by default in ~/Pictures/Photos Library/, and all of your photos are stored there instead of in the app.
I believe the reason the application works this way is so that you can store your files externally, saving space, while keeping the core application internally, where it doesn't take up much space but still runs more quickly than accessing an external drive. Note that you can move your Photos Library and/or use option+click on opening to select a different library to flip through.
Other native applications that work in the same or a similar way include iTunes (files stored in ~/Music/iTunes), Photo Booth (~/Photos/Photo Booth Library), iPhoto (RIP; ~/Photos/iPhoto Library), and iMovie (~/Movies/iMovie Library and ~/Movies/iMovie Theater).
Why the Size Changes
In a comment, you had mentioned that

It was one of my suspicions, but initially I am sure I saw, that it was bigger than 294mb (approx. 1GB), so it looks like it also changes in time.

This is entirely possible. You don't say how long ago you saw it being that large, but Photos does contain some files that can be accessed by other applications as well, such as those contained in .../Photos.app/Contents/Library/Automator, which, on my copy, contains 13 Automator actions which can be inserted into workflows, such as "Add to Album," "Display Reference Photo," or "Instant Slideshow Controller." Furthermore, at .../Photos.app/Contents/Plugins there is, on my mac, two plugins. It's possible for this list to be modified by adding in other .appex files.
The simplest explanation for what you're seeing, though, is that the software was updated in a MacOS software update at some point. Remember that the filing system was completely overhauled in High Sierra; perhaps a corollary to different files being stored differently is that they are now smaller.


Only alphanumerics and some other keys work on magic keyboard My Magic keyboard is acting very weird.  The caps lock’s light is off and non-functioning. Mainly its alphabets + numbers, Enter , Cmmd work. But the tab, space and delete keys don’t work. The right arrow key works. But if I hit the left arrow key, then it produces the following single quote: '
Is it botched or mis-configured or is some accessibility feature? I already forgot the device and re-connected it. That didn’t do anything
It’s just this one magic keyboard. I have another which works fine. I’ve done a reboot.
Sticky keys are disabled.
When I use the keyboard viewer. Nothing gets highlighted for the space or delete button. Surprisingly when I click on the left arrow key, I got the left arrow and the single quote key highlighted

I also followed most steps from here and here but not worked for me.
I'm starting to think that this is mainly due to the bashing my little one has done on my keyboard...

Likely the keyboard is physically damaged by my child or water damaged. I just tried it with my iPad and same symptoms.
Sounds like a good opportunity to do a keyboard teardown


How to create a 'Sharing Only' account via terminal in OS X? I'm attempting to create a 'Sharing Only' account in an OS X app.

I've tried code based on examples like these:
Can user accounts be managed via the command line?
What steps are needed to create a new user from the command line on mountain lion?
without success.

From System Preferences -> Users and Groups -> Advanced Options for 'Sharing Only' account:
Home directory: /dev/null
Since /dev/null discards streams directed to it, substitution in place of '/Users/NewUser' into above code doesn't work.

Based on bispymusic's answer to a previous question:

#!/bin/sh

dscl . create /Users/sharinguser    # use whatever account name you want
dscl . create /Users/sharinguser RealName "Sharing-only Account"
dscl . create /Users/sharinguser hint "Password Hint"
dscl . create /Users/sharinguser picture "/Path/To/Picture.png"
dscl . passwd /Users/sharinguser thisistheaccountpassword
dscl . create /Users/sharinguser UniqueID 550    # Pick something unique
dscl . create /Users/sharinguser PrimaryGroupID 20    # Staff group
dscl . create /Users/sharinguser UserShell /usr/bin/false    # No shell access allowed!
dscl . create /Users/sharinguser NFSHomeDirectory /dev/null    # No home directory!

As with the script it's based on, you'll either need to run it with sudo, or prefix each dscl command with sudo. Be sure to adjust the account name, RealName, password, and UniqueID (and probably the hint and picture). Note that the critical attributes to make this a sharing-only account are the UserShell and NFSHomeDirectory attributes -- leave these as I have them.

It's a bit confusing that all of the lines refer to /Users/sharinguser (or whatever account name you choose) despite this not existing in the filesystem -- this is because it doesn't refer to a file path, but to the path to a record in OS X's directory service. The filesystem and OS X directory services both use the same path notation, but actually have very little to do with each other. Thus, the home directory path can be set to /dev/null while the account's path directory service stays normal.


How to create shortcut for "⌘+¨" or "⌘+^" in BetterTouchTool? Adding a shortcut for "⌘+P" or most other letters (different than P) just works fine. However, if I want to register a shortcut for "⌘+¨" or "⌘+^" BetterTouchTool prohibits to register this as an input. It aborts and plays the sound for unacceptable input (system sound).

What can you suggest to record a shortcut for these keys? Is there a way to edit a file somewhere?

Apparently, this is an unsolvable issue:

https://github.com/fifafu/BetterTouchTool/issues/316


screen zooms randomly on iMac 2012 iMac running el capitan 10.11.6

screen zooms in and out randomly. does it with video and maps most often.

Check if you enabled trackpad smart zoom in System Preferences

Got to system Preferences Apple Icon > System Preferences > Trackpad
Click Scroll & Zoom tab
Check the zoom options and uncheck Smart Zoom


Macbook Pro, completely broken keyboard, can't login! I have 15 inch macbook pro and the keyboard recently stopped working completely.  None of the keys work.  I got a wireless apple keyboard, to fix the problem.  The issue is that I need to login in order to set up the external keyboard, and since the keyboard is  broken, I obviously can't login. My trackpad still works though.

Is there a way to login if nothing on my internal keyboard works.  Please note, the answer can't be some sort of reset for which I need to push any keys - I have tried these, and they don't work, because the keyboard doesn't work.

Thanks!!

You can't setup Bluetooth devices without logging in, USB keyboard is the only way to go. Bring you Macbook to school or work and use one of their keyboards for a minute to logon and pair the Bluetooth keyboard.


Can I configure the modem on my G5 to only allow calls from certain numbers to ring through? This is a weird question, I know, but... I have an alarm system which I can call into and send commands to, I.E. to arm/disarm/listen to the ambient noise. However, for this to work obviously it has to pick up the line, which prevents me from using voicemail for anyone who calls me.

Instead of getting a separate phone line, I was wondering, if I plug my G5 into the phone line and plug this device's telephone line in to the telephone line out of my G5, is there any way the G5 could only tell the alarm system the phone is ringing for certain caller ID numbers?

I can think of a variety of methods to do what you want, but none of them are easy solutions. You'll probably need to write some code. This question should be tagged PBX, but that is too obscure for this site.

You'll probably want minicom installed to control the G5 modem. Get it via fink or macports. If you can use minicom to check the number without answering, then you are mostly done. If it doesn't match, ignore it. If it does match, you'll need to find some way for minicom to answer/forward/pass the incoming call out the modem out line. I'm not yet sure how to do this.

If minicom needs to answer the call in order to determine where it came from, then the situation is as above, but you might need two modems. If it is a call for the security center, pass it out one modem. If it isn't, pass it out the other, which goes to your home phone I presume.

If minicom cannot determine the number, or if can but has to answer in order to check it and this is problematic, then I would get a caller ID display, put it in next to the G5, and use a webcam to read the numbers off the caller ID. OpenCV would help with this part, or any script-able optical character recognition (OCR) software. You can get gocr from fink or macports too, and that might be sufficient. Determine the number and if it should go to the security console, have minicom patch it through.

But, why do you need to call in?

If your G5 is at home and online, it might be easier to not call into the security system, but SMS or email yourself, have the G5 fetching the mail, and taking action based on that (perhaps that action is using minicom to connect to the security system, but you don't need a phone line to the outside world in this case).


Could a 'damaged' TimeMachine backup still be of any use? I've got a Synology NAS here and a few months ago I sadly got the message, something like

  Time Machine backup is corrupt and therefor has to start a new backup.

However, as my NAS is starting to get more and more filled, I'm seeking to kill some data. I found this old backup which is about 650GB of size.

And my only question is: Can it be of any use or should I just remove it completely?

If you ask "But by starting a new backup, the old one gets deleted. Why do you still have it?" That's because it ended up in the Trash, instead of permanently deleted.

The nature of Time Machine is such that it isn't an archival backup, as files deleted from the source drive will eventually disappear from the Time Machine backup set.1 If you have no other backup however, it might come in handy.

If the sparsebundle can be repaired, you'd be able to extract files from it. Following the instructions in the first green box of http://pondini.org/TM/A5b.html might let you access the backup set.

If you do gain access to it, you can use the Time Machine interface2 to remove all backups of folders you don't care about, but it might be tricky to cause the sparsebundle to take up less disk space.3

1 See the text starting with "Time Machine keeps" in https://support.apple.com/HT201250
2 "Remove a backed-up item from your backup disk" - https://support.apple.com/kb/PH11241
3 "Changing the size {…} of a sparse bundle" - http://pondini.org/TM/A8.html


How to boot Mac from CD from verbose command line So already I've tried booting Ubuntu on a USB from the Mac's command line (verboes or something like that). But it didn't seem to work at all and said load size is too small or came up with a no entry symbol.

So I put a Ubuntu 32 bit on a CD and now I don't know how to boot it. I can't open up the boot menu as all of the important drivers are gone from the computer.

Mac hardware will always boot to an os chooser holding down option. You of course need a USB / thunderbolt / FireWire drive with bootable media at that point.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

Newer Macs use internet recovery to net boot and from there you can repartition any drives and reinstall all drivers needed to boot macOS and start again.

Accessing Internet Recovery

For a PowerBook, you might also use cd / DVD media since internet recovery isn't an option for PPC hardware.


How would I bring View Controller Scene in Xcode to the main working area? I cannot figure out how to get View Controller Scene on my main working area in Xcode rather than to have it on top of my working area. I want to be able comfortably navigate  thought my view items.


Outlook crashes after adding second account after upgrading to iOS 9 on iPhone 6 Does any body know any solutions to solve the problem of Outlook for iOS crashes after adding second email account on it when the iPhone 6 was upgraded to iOS9?

The only reliable way I had to resolve this issue was to delete the application and then reinstall it from the App store.

To do this, on the screen with the Outlook app, press and hold the icon until it starts shaking, then click the 'x' in the top left hand corner. Then go to the App Store and redownload the app.

You'll need to do the configuration of it again unfortunately, but it shouldn't take too long.


Quick entry for Google Translate via MacOS? Is there a way to input text into a quick-entry form that takes that text to Google Translate, and then spit out a translation? You know how to-do list managers like OmniFocus and Things you can quickly add a to-do or when you press cmd-space for Spotlight Search? I have a feeling it would be through Automator, and saw the following question

Automator Service with Google Translate

but its all greek to me! How would the UI look like?

There are dashboard widgets that offer translation. https://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/travel/languagetranslator.html
Then I use a hot corner to quickly launch dashboard. It can also be done by a keyboard shortcut.


iPhone stolen, Activation Lock was turned off but iPhone is still iCloud device list. Can it still be used by the thief? My phone was snatched. Its Activation Lock was turned off and it was not signed in on iCloud. However, I still see my phone as listed among the devices in iCloud.

Since the iPhone is still in my iCloud's device list, will the next user still be able to use my phone? Or would it be possible for them to add my phone to their iCloud?

Yes. The finder / thief can use your phone unless you protected it with a passcode lock.

If you cannot use the iCloud find my iPhone app to remotely lock the device, your data is at risk.

If you chose a passcode, hopefully the finder can't guess it. Apple does limit the wrong guesses, so the casual thief can't brute force it.

If you can't secure the device remotely, start on changing all the passwords and monitoring all the services and apps you stored credentials on the phone.

banking
social media
email
work apps and files
things like contact lists and social security numbers

Going forward, get an app like 1Password so you can easily change all your compromised passwords and limit the damage that losing control of your email entails.

See: Wiping a stolen iPhone that wasn't connected to iCloud and Stolen iPhone: what is the security risk? for more tips.


How do I delete voice memos off of itunes? My brother and I share a computer and often use the same itunes app for all our music. Something that it does that I hate is it puts all my voice memos in, too. I would rather them not be there because I'm worried my brother will get on and listen to them one day. I try to delete them but it says if I delete them off itunes, it also deletes them off of my iphone which I don't want it to do. What should I do??

You are correct. Basically Apple's approach is a case of Better to be safe than sorry.

What I mean is that music originates from your iTunes library (or Apple Music), so you can afford to lose it if something happens to your iPhone. You still have your music on your Mac or in the cloud. Voice Memos, on the other hand, originate on your iPhone. If something happens to your iPhone, they are gone forever. So Apple has designed iTunes to treat Voice Memos differently, and automatically sync them back to iTunes for safe keeping. This is all based on the fact we're more likely to lose our iPhones (or have them stolen) than we are our Macs.

Unfortunately, this approach has frustrated many users as there is no way to manually override this. Apple did create a Voice Memos playlist to help users better manage/navigate their memos, but there's no way to stop them syncing from your iPhone to iTunes on your computer. The only built-in option is to stop it syncing back the other way.

Getting around your situation

There are really only four options to try and avoid your brother listening to your voice memos. These are as follows:

Use separate User Accounts on your Mac. That is, use one for you and one for your brother. Each of you will then have your own instance of iTunes. To set up separate user accounts go to System Preferences > Users & Groups and click on the + sign at bottom left. You may need to unlock the padlock before you can make changes. Also, in your login options you may want to turn off Automatic Login. Basically, using this option means you should not share your password with your brother! :)
Manually delete your Voice Memos from your iTunes Library / Store them somewhere else. The easiest way to access voice memos is to go to the Voice Memos playlist. You can just delete them BUT before you do, you may want to make a copy of the ones you want and store them somewhere else. The easiest way to do this is to right-click on them and select Copy. Then go into the Finder and paste them into a folder somewhere. Once you've done this, delete them from your iTunes playlist. However, this approach does mean needing to keep on top of this for whenever new voice memos are synced from your iPhone to computer.
Use a different Voice Recording app instead of the built-in iPhone app. There are many out there and many also offer ways to sync and back them up separately from the usual iTunes process.
No longer share the same computer. A more expensive option, no doubt! :)

You may want to provide feedback to Apple about this also. My personal preference would be that Voice Memos are handled totally outside the Music Library and have it's own designated category and options. Whatever your preference, you may want to send the same feedback for both iTunes and iPhone.


How do you launch an application.app stored in nfs share from bash script? I need to run *.app from our NFS share where the different apps and versions are stored.

I can't get it to work as part of a bash script.

For exemple, for Sublime Text, here is the command I use to launch:

elif [ `uname` == "Darwin" ]; then
    exec open -a "/path/to/nfs/"Sublime\ Text.app" "$@"
fi

When I call my script, I get the following error:

FSPathMakeRef(/path/to/nfs/Sublime Text.app) failed with error -43.

I know the path is right. Permissions are also fine.
I'm able to launch it with the full path exec open -a "/path/to/nfs/"Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/MacOS/"Sublime\ Text"" "$@" but then all the content of the .app folder isn't available.

Is there another way to launch .app from command line?

The primary issue I see with your command:

exec open -a "/path/to/nfs/"Sublime\ Text.app" "$@"

Is you have used a backslash to escape a space while also quoting the command. Use one or the other, but not both, e.g.:

open -a "/path/to/nfs/Sublime Text.app"

Or:

open -a /path/to/nfs/Sublime\ Text.app

I also see no reason to use exec when the open command by itself works in this context, or from a script, e.g.:

open -a "/path/to/nfs/"Sublime Text.app" "$@"

That said though, when using the open command with the -a option you might consider using the --args option, which from its man page states, "All remaining arguments are passed to the opened application in the argv parameter to main(). These arguments are not opened or interpreted by the open tool.", thus making the command as, e.g.:

open -a "/path/to/nfs/"Sublime Text.app" --args "$@"


Can I run two 4k (3840x2160) displays at 60hz on a Macbook Pro 13" 2015 I think the title says it all. Can I run two 4k (3840x2160) displays, both at 60hz on a Macbook Pro 13' 2015? I understand they might need to be SST and each connected to a Thunderbolt 2 port. But I cannot get a confirmation whether that setup would work.

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP719?locale=en_US says:

  Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on up to two external displays, both at millions of colors.
  …
  Support for up to 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz on a single external display (model with AMD Radeon R9 M370X only)

Unfortunately, it does not state at what frequency the two displays can be run.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587 says:

  With OS X Yosemite v10.10.3 and later, most single-stream 4K (3840x2160) > displays are supported at 60Hz operation on the following Mac computers: … MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) and later. MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) and later

Unfortunately it does not state whether two displays can be run at 3840 by 2160 at 60hz

Assuming that you are using an Early 2015 MacBook Pro 13", it uses the Intel Iris 6100 chip.

From the review of the Intel Iris 6100 by NotebookCheck:

  All Broadwell GPUs support OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 12 (FL 11_1). The video engine can now decode H.265 using both fixed function hardware as well as available GPU shaders. Up to three displays can be connected via DP 1.2/eDP 1.3 (max. 3840 x 2160 @ 60 Hz) or HDMI 1.4a (max. 3840 x 2160 @ 24 Hz). HDMI 2.0, however, is not supported.

The capability is there to support up to 3 displays with a max resolution of 3840x2160 @ 60Hz.

You connect it via mDP (mini Display Port) through the Thunderbolt 2 port.


MacBook Pro 2010 all of a sudden slow So literally out of the blue, my MB Pro is giving me the rainbow for minutes at time for 99% of the things I try to do.

I maxed out the memory to 8GB last year, and that made a huge improvement, but like I said, this afternoon it went from being a really productive machine to acting like a 10-year old computer.

I'm thinking my hard drive is about to die considering I plugged in for a time machine backup and it says 14 hours for a 210GB backup. Is that right?

A solution would be great, but just knowing what could possibly be going on would be a relief as well.

There are quite a few causes for the SBOD (spinning beach ball of death), but you'll have to narrow them down to figure out what you need to do.

Possible Reasons:

You are maxing out your CPU
You are maxing out your RAM
Your hard drive is full
You have malware

Now, with what you put in the question, I think the most likely answer is that your hard drive is full. To check, you can do the following:

Go to "About This Mac"

Then click on the Storage tab:

If you have less than 2 GB free, it's likely that's the problem. If you have plenty of space, then the most likely cause is the CPU. But if it is the CPU, there is probably another underlying problem because it wouldn't start so abruptly. Try to think of anything you might have downloaded around the time it started to slow down.

To figure out what's plaguing the CPU:

Launch Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app)
Sort by "% CPU"

Then you can google around for the specific process screwing up.


OS X spotlight UI bug The spotlight search UI on my mac seems to have broken. It doesn't have a rounded corners. Nothing seems to solve it.

The corners become squared when you have reduce transparency turned on in accessibility.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯


My keyboard (numpad) overwrites everything I have a Mac mini with High Sierra (10.13.4) with a Windows-keyboard (it has a numpad).

Everything went fine for a long time but a few months ago I got a big problem: In many apps (Calculator, Excel, etc.) when I want to write for example "567" with the numpad, the number I push overwrites the last number. So if I push 5, 6 and 7, than instead of "567" it just shows a 7 (because the 6 overwrites the 5, and the 7 overwrites the 6).

In some apps however it works fine, for example in TextEdit or Firefox...

I probably just pushed some keyboard-shortcut which made this issue, but it really makes me go crazy. Could you please help me?

Thank you very much!

I was having the same problem with my HP SK-2028, and I found something that at least sort of works. If you turn on 'slow keys' in the accessibility settings and play with the settings a little bit, eventually there is a sweet spot where you will be able to type your numbers in, albeit a little slower, but at least it will function like it is supposed to. I found a spot in between the first two bars so I don't have to type tooooo much slower than I usually would. You can press alt+command+F5 to bring up the quick-accessibility options pane to quickly deselect or re-select slow keys as needed

-Amy


To what degree is Siri listening? Siri must "listen" for commands, however, that being said if it does not receive the command prompt "Hey Siri," can users rely on the algorithm to not record/send conversations or other private audio?

If device specificity is required for the question.  Assume an iPhone X with IOS 13.X

Your asked about the trust-worthiness of an algorithm. The answer to your question is a firm and absolute "No" - users can not rely on the algorithm to not record/send conversations or other private audio. Some algorithms are definitely better than others, but no algorithm is perfect - what is invented by the human mind can be defeated by the human mind.

Let's muse over another word in your question: rely. Reliance is not a binary state of mind; it's much more subtle than that. Consider that we may rely on the mail carrier to deliver our mail each day, but as the consequence of failure is not catastrophic, we do not rely upon it heavily. OTOH, if you are a diabetic living in a remote location, your reliance on the mail carrier's delivery of your insulin has far greater implications.

The "threat" is also a factor in our reliance. Security-wise, perhaps the thing we have going for us is that nobody really cares what we say or write or do. But if we happen to attract attention to ourselves - perhaps as a suspect, or the target of a criminal enterprise, or have become involved in "matters of national security" as this chap recently did, then our level of reliance on algorithms - and computer security in general - becomes a different matter. And so it is with your reliance on Apple's algorithm: does the mail carrier bring you junk, or does he/she deliver insulin?

Finally, let's consider the other variable in reliance: the quality of the algorithm. Reliance is not a binary state, and no algorithm is perfect. Nevertheless we must still consider how good it is in determining how heavily we should rely upon it.

Unfortunately it is a practical impossibility for us to know how secure Apple's algorithm is:

it's not open source - people outside Apple have to disassemble the code to inspect for flaws. They cannot read the source
even if it were open source, it wouldn't be perfect
even if it were perfect, Apple still makes mistakes
Apple could even abuse their privilege or not catch an employee that attempts this abuse

Instead, and as a substitute for a quantitative analysis of the algorithm itself, perhaps the best we can manage is an attempt at objective assessment of some facts. Consider the following:

A complete and massive failure of the algorithm would be bad for Apple's business. Consequently, it seems likely that Apple would put a serious effort into the algorithm, and safeguards for the data.
Apple has weighed up Siri's business value against the risks of failures of their algorithm, and have made the decision to retain Siri. Impose may be a better word than retain in this case as Apple has not provided an option to remove or un-install the Siri software.

These facts do not shed much light on the actual quality of Apple's algorithm, but they do speak to motives and motivation. We can safely conclude that Apple has reasonably strong financial incentives to design a reliable algorithm. However, it also seems safe to conclude that Apple considers our private data to be within their purview. Why else would they not provide an option for removal of Siri to accommodate their customers' preferences?

None of this is intended as "Apple-bashing". I am an Apple customer - I have spent more money than I'll ever admit on their products. But I feel it's also important to be realistic. Apple's interests do not coincide perfectly with ours. Should we rely on Apple's judgments and algorithms to protect and safeguard our security and privacy? I hope this answer has provided a little food for thought.

Epilogue:

I have just read @Bradley's answer to this question. I have to say that if the allegations leveled by Apple's contractor in Ireland over the "Siri Incident" are true, then Apple deserves far more than the "Apple-bashing" I tried to avoid in my answer. They deserve substantial fines - perhaps even criminal proceedings. It is simply unacceptable that anyone or any organization be allowed to use their wealth and influence to trample the rights of others. More to the point of answering this question, this episode (if true) speaks volumes on how we should consider relying on Apple's software.


Printer Setup Utility gone in Mavericks, how to set default printer in Applescript now? I have some Applescripts that set the default printer using "Printer Setup Utility", that seems gone in Mavericks.

Anyone have an alternative to suggest?

You can use AppleScript to execute shell scripts, so you can use:

do shell script ("lpoptions -d printername")

Replace printername with the actual printer name. It may not be exactly as it shows in System Preferences (I think ALL non-alphanumeric characters are replaced with underscores, but I'm not certain) so you can view your list of printers with:

lpstat -p


iMac Doesn't see Ethernet Cable I have a strange problem with my iMac (mid. 2011 21,5) -  I can't connect to the network using Ethernet because OS X tells me that it's disconnected when it's plugged in. Sometimes it can see the connection, but  the Internet won't work.

Now, I also have this problem with Wi-Fi, it connects to a network but after random time Internet connection stops working. All other computers and phones are working with Ethernet and Wi-Fi; only the iMac isn't.

I tried to do all tests and resets but nothing, today I formatted it returning from Yosemite to Snow Leopard but the problem is still there. Any solution?

Just for grins and giggles...

Did you verify that your cable and network port are good?

First thing to try is moving your connection from whatever port on the switch it is on to another.  Sometimes a port on the switch just may be bad.

You will also want to verify the cable.  If you have access to another computer or a laptop, remove the patch cable from your iMac and plug it into the laptop.  If the problem persists, then you will need to solve that issue before doing more diagnostics on your iMac.

Once you have verified that the connection from the switch to your iMac is good, then I would proceed with diagnosing the hardware, then the software on the iMac.


IntelliJ / Android Studios: hide the project pane I'm quite new to mac but have managed to figure out a lot of the shortcuts but this one baffles me.

In intelliJ / Android Studios, occassionally, I need to hide some of the panes so that I have more space to see my code. The shortcut to hide the project pane on the left side of the screen when I hover over it has the following shortcut displayed:

I can see a shift there, but the circle with the arrow is nowhere to be found on my keyboard. Also, the click with the Alt button makes no sense as a normal click will hide the project pane in any case.

Where is the arrow out of the circle button on my macbook pro?

That is the Escape (esc / ⎋) key.

You can find more explanations for Mac Keyboard Symbols here.

The click with option/alt/⌥ function exists to hide the entire sidebar. The sidebar can contain multiple panes, such as the Favorites pane. Without holding option/alt/⌥, it will hide only the Project pane and expand any other pane in the sidebar (if none, it will hide the sidebar).


How to enable COVID-19 Exposure Logging in India How to enable Privacy => Health => COVID-19 Exposure Logging on a iPhone 6S+ device running 13.5.1 in India. Whatever Region I choose, it seems to be disabled and it mentions that its not enabled for the region.

We are developing an App using the Exposure Notification specification but aren't in a position to enable the above attribute

Non developers don’t get to enable COVID-19 logging in ares where Apple hasn’t enabled it.

Apple has documented volumes of technical data, reasoning, white papers and more: https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing

If that’s not enough to get you going, since you are developing, you do have an avenue that all consumers lack. Open a developer support ticket with Apple using your developer account to get access to a pre-release OS and register any requests that support development of an app before it’s rolled out.

https://developer.apple.com

That’s the best way to move forward on this if you can’t wait for it to be rolled into the production OS for your region or you want to see the beta SDK / API so you know what is coming as opposed to what shipped. Also, look at WWDC dates - since that is less than 20 days away, you might wait quite some time for an answer or have to rely on the developer forums / documentation already written as there’s a lot in the air right now on the development side.


Hide or minimize (not force kill or quit) a temporarily frozen or stuck program window? Using OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan, sometimes I'm confronted with a 'nonresponsive window': a program that keeps stalling for like 10-30 seconds. In most cases this happens to be Adobe Photoshop, but I've encountered it with other programs as well (e.g. Firefox or Chrome).

Note that the program isn't completely frozen or cashed, it's just doing some heavy calculations or whatever, and the window doesn't respond (I can't click or drag it) but eventually it comes back to life and continues working normally.

I can reproduce it, for example by having a very large image open in Photoshop and then going File > Save for Web.

While this is happening, I get the spinning color wheel, and I can't bring other program windows to the front. For example if Photoshop is stalling, I would like to cmd+tab to my browser or whatever and do something else there. But that doesn't work, the stuck Photoshop window remains in front of any other program I switch to.

Is there a way to hide or minimize such a program in OS X, so I can continue to work in others while this particular thing does whatever it needs to do?

Note that I do NOT want to force quit or kill a program, it need to keep running, it just needs to do so in the background, allowing me to use other programs meanwhile.

Edit:  Cmd ⌘   Tab ⇥   still works, but Photoshop will not drop to the background whilst busy, as in this illustration…

I'm tempted to post this as an answer, even without full info…

I am assuming that if you cannot  Cmd ⌘   Tab ⇥   to another app at this point, it is because the entire machine is currently too busy to respond, not just the frontmost app.

If an app itself is unresponsive [& you can see other apps around/behind it, i.e. not full screen or maximised], you ought to be able to simply move the cursor outside that unresponsive app & the daisy wheel will go away, returning to the standard cursor. Clicking one of the other apps will bring it to the front.  Cmd ⌘   Tab ⇥   at this point would also work.

If the daisy wheel doesn't go away outside the borders of the unresponsive app, then the entire machine is too busy to respond - usually just temporarily, until whatever process taking all the resources has finished its task.

Photoshop processing a very large image for the web is just the kind of task that can temporarily use large amounts of RAM & CPU. I just tested on a 5000 x 3000 image. Photoshop went busy for approx 15s, RAM usage doubled & CPU usage went to 100% [which is 1/24th of the number of virtual cores I have, so in essence used one core to its fullest] . I was able to change screens, switch to other apps etc, but I'm running on a 12-core Mac Pro with 64GB RAM.

From this snapshot you can see the brief effect [highlighted in red] on the cores & the drop to 'not responding' in Activity Monitor.
Perhaps try some comparison tests & see what figures you get at the same point.


Can a Keyboard Shortcut be Set to Connect to VPN? I now this may sound quite lazy, but I connect to a VPN several times a day (since the laptop gets disconnected from time to time).

I am aware of the "Show VPN Status in the Menubar" option, but is there a way I can make it a keyboard shortcut?

You could create an AppleScript which would run a shell script to racoonctl - the specific commands will depend upon your VPN connection.  Then use Script Utility to enable the global Script Menu, then add a new keyboard shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, and assign it to the script (or use a launcher utility such as Quicksilver).


Applescript to automate process for screen cast setup I'm currently looking for an Applescript to help automate my desktop processes, as I do a lot of screencasts and I'm looking for something that would do the following.

hide the dock
hide the top bar
change the wallpaper to a specified wallpaper

is there a place on the web that has automator scripts that would do something like this ?

You didn't say what version of OS X you're using, although I'm assuming it's OS X El Capitan, which is what this was tested under. This is kind of a kludge but it works nonetheless. Using Script Editor and the AppleScript code below, I made an AppleScript application that toggles the state of hiding/unhiding the Dock and Menu bar, as well as changing the wallpaper between the two states.

Here's where the kludge comes in. Because there is not one explicit way, that I know of, to code the script to do everything in the background as easily as toggling the state of the auto hide preference of the Dock and changing the wallpaper, a mix of methods needs to be used. One of which requires giving the application assistive access rights to perform the toggling of the "Automatically hide and show the menu bar" checkbox in the General section of System Preferences.

It'd be nice if something like tell menu preferences to set autohide to not autohide would work the same way it does for the Dock, but it doesn't and why using a UI programmatic method is required to toggle the state of the Menu bar.

Otherwise this could all be done in the background and not having to give the application permission to manipulate the UI. (There actually is a way, however it's not as clean as this way is, in that it requires programmatically killing Finder for the change to the global preferences .plist file to toggle the state of the menu bar to take effect. So I prefer this method as the changes appear more gracefully made, then... bam... done and now wondering what the heck just happened.)

Note: As coded I'm making the assumption that the state of both the Dock and the Menu bar are in sync. In other words, they are both always either showing or hidden together under normal usage and as such this script toggles the state of each to the opposite of the current state prior to its execution. If that is not the case, then additional logic needs to be applied.

In this example code, the wallpaper is set between the OS X El Capitan default and another in its Desktop Pictures collection. Obviously you can choose whatever you want for each state.

The only code you should have to change is the pathname of the image files being used for the Desktop wallpaper.

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    reveal pane id "com.apple.preference.general"
    delay 1
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    click checkbox "Automatically hide and show the menu bar" of window "General" of process "System Preferences"
    key code 12 using command down
    tell dock preferences to set autohide to not autohide
    if (get autohide of dock preferences) is false then
        set picture of desktop 1 to POSIX file "/Library/Desktop Pictures/El Capitan.jpg"
    else
        set picture of desktop 1 to POSIX file "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Desert.jpg"
    end if
end tell

To use this code, do the following:

Open Script Editor.
Copy and paste the code from the Browser to Script Editor.
Edit the pathnames of the images to be used for the wallpaper.
Save the script as an Application.
Open a Finder window to the location you saved the application. (This it to facilitate giving it assistive access in the next instructions.)
Open System Preferences and navigate to: Security & Privacy > Accessibility > Privacy
Click the lock to make changes.
Provide proper credentials and click Unlock.
Drag and drop the application from Finder into the "Allow the apps below to control your computer." window and then check the checkbox next to the application's name.

Or if you didn't first locate it in Finder, click the [+] button and navigate to the location you saved the app, etc.

Close System Preferences.

That's it... It should now be ready to use.


copy maverick installable from first mac to second Would it be possible to copy the Maverick OS downloaded using another Apple ID on the first Mac to be installed on the second mac using a different Apple ID?

Yes.

Once you have downloaded the installer, you won't be asked for an Apple ID on installation. The Apple ID is only requested when the installer is downloaded, either from the Mac App Store or from the Recovery HD.


What is the ppi of the MacBook Pro retina 13" when at a resolution of 1680x1050? I know the resolution when it's at the retina resolution of 2560x1600, but what about when it's scaled to 1680x1050?

Does 148.96 PPI seem correct?

PPI Calculator


mac mini > apple tv: no audio except using itunes The 2014 Mac Mini is connected via ethernet cable to the latest-generation Apple TV, which in turn is connected to the TV via HDMI. Controlling the Mini via Screen Sharing, I start up iTunes, and am able to route its audio to the Apple TV and thence to the TV speakers. However, I'm unable to do this using Swinsian. (Swinsian is just another music player.)

ITunes does have its own widget next to the volume slider for speaker selection

Computer -- Great Room (plus sign)
Great Room -- Available (check mark and volume slider)

which Swinsian doesn't. However, in the menubar there is an "Airplay" widget. It has

Airplay: Great Room -- use as separate display
Airplay to -- Great Room

Number 1 is checked, and I can't switch it to #2.

I've rebooted/restarted each device. No luck.

How do I send audio from Mac Mini to Apple TV? I don't care one way or another whether the picture of the screen goes to the TV.

To route all sound from the Mac to the Apple TV, option-click the Sound menu in the menu bar on the Mac, and select Apple TV.

(Note: running Sierra)


How can I associate localhost in Snow Leopard to a specific ip? I've disabled the web server on Snow Leopard, and I'm using an emulated Ubuntu with Lighttpd web server.

In order to access to the web pages I need to specify the ip of the emulated machine. However I now need to associated such ip with "localhost" in Leopard environment.

When I type localhost in Leopard I actually want to visit the localhost on the Ubuntu machine.

Do I need apache on leopard to make the forward or can I change network settings in Leopard or what?

You don't want to do this. As you pointed out, there are warnigs in the /etc/hosts file not to change the localhost entry.

The localhost entry is meant to resolve to the local host and more specifically the loopback address 127.0.0.1. On your Snow Leopard machine, localhost should resolve to your Snow Leopard machine and on your Ubuntu machine, localhost should resolve to your Ubuntu machine.

If you are trying to access the Ubuntu system from your Snow Leopard system, why don't you just use the IP address of the Ubuntu system?


Restricting/Blocking iPhone access with a passcode for workers? I would like to implement an app that is capable of doing the following when a worker doesn’t return the iPhone for 45 days:

Based on IMEI or a unique app client id the phone should be disabled with a random passcode, by bypassing the faceid or touch id.
It should not be enabled until allowed from backend admin end.
The iOS should not be overwritten while the app is enabled.

I would like to seek advice if this software exists?

Apps can not do this on iOS due to how the OS restricts an app to the sandbox. However, this is precisely what an MDM does.
You need no app whatsoever on the iOS side - just a profile and an identity to get Apple to recognize your authority and for each device owner to accept your MDM profile.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202804

If you are a company that owns the devices - you will want to use Apple Business Manager and then work with Apple or someone else to shop for and set up the best MDM for your size. There are some great for 5 devices and some great for 50,000 devices.

https://support.apple.com/business

If you are a service provider, you also can learn about MDM and then offer it to clients. If you’re a developer, there are open-source MDM frameworks so you can learn if you want to build a better wheel.

https://micromdm.io/

Most of the professionals that manage mac and iOS devices congregate under the MacAdmin community, so reach out if you need help managing your devices or are just a highly motivated learner.

https://www.macadmins.org/


Any way to get the "Open With..." list via AppleScript? I want to create an AppleScript that gets the Finder selection and displays a list of applications that are capable of opening it.

In other words, is there any way to get the list of apps that appears when you use Finder's "Open With >" contextual submenu?

One option would be to use AllApplications in a shell script:

tell application "Finder"
    set p to POSIX path of (item 1 of (get selection) as text)
end tell
set l to do shell script "~/bin/AllApplications -path " & quoted form of p & " | sed 's/.*\\///g;s/\\.app$//g' | sort -f | uniq"
set answer to choose from list (paragraphs of l) without multiple selections allowed
if answer is false then return
set a to item 1 of answer
set p to path to application a
tell application "Finder" to open selection using p

You could also use System Events to get the applications from the Open With menu:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Finder"
    set l to name of menu items of menu 1 of menu item "Open With" of menu 3 of menu bar 1
end tell
set text item delimiters to linefeed
set l2 to do shell script "grep -vx 'missing value' <<< " & quoted form of (l as text) & " | grep -vx Other… | sed -E 's/ \\([^)]*\\)$//g;s/ \\(default\\)$//g;s/\\.app$//g' | sort -f | uniq"
set answer to choose from list (paragraphs of l2) without multiple selections allowed
if answer is false then return
set a to item 1 of answer
set p to (path to application a)
tell application "Finder" to open selection using p

I didn't really test the scripts, but they're probably affected by rdar://9406282: Finder scripting selection may refer to bogus value not correlated with UI.

Related questions at Super User:

Access Finder's "Open With" menu from the commandline (for tab completion)
Is it possible to query the launch services database for applications that will open an arbitrary file or UTI type?


Run bash script at login stored in the home folder? When I try to load a LaunchAgent plist from launchctl I can't find out how to run a script in the home directory.

My code is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>bash</string>
        <string>~/script.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.tyilo.test</string>
</dict>
</plist>

I have tried both with and without bash and also replacing ~ with $HOME.
I have also tried using bash -c without it working.

The error code is:

`com.tyilo.test: bash: ~/script.sh: No such file or directory`

EnableGlobbing doesn't work on OS X Yosemite 10.10. It has been deprecated (ref).

You can see in logs The EnableGlobbing key is no longer respected. Please remove it. (from /var/log/system.log)

The problem is that launchd cwd (current working directory) is /, so you can't use ./ like some people said.

To run a script from your home the simple way is to use (bash|zsh|sh) -c. option. This way you will have the ability to use the tilde ~ or the $HOME variable.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.your.stuff</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <!-- here is the important thing -->
      <string>zsh</string>
      <string>-c</string>
      <string>~/you/script/in/your/home</string>
    </array>

    <!-- code below is just for the example -->
    <!-- Keep running... -->
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true />
    <!-- ...every day. In sec, 60*60*24 = every day -->
    <key>ThrottleInterval</key>
    <integer>86400</integer>
  </dict>
</plist>


El Capitan : How to disable Force Click "Dictionary Pop-ups" in Chrome? In my Chrome Browser, whenever i "Force Click" (hard clicked by one finger) upon a Word, the dictionary lookup Pop-up is always popping out.

Like this:

I have already DISABLED the "Force Click" setting in the Trackpad Settings:

And then already Restarted the Chrome. And also did (related or not) the:

$ killall SystemUIServer

But this annoying pop-up (Dictionary Lookup) is still there. I'm sure it is not a Chrome Extension.

What should i do to totally get rid of that, please?

Thank you all!

Switch 'Look up & Data Detectors' to 3-finger tap.  You can then re-enable it.  This avoids disabling force touch entirely.


Software Glitch iPad 2 Caused Activation Lock I’m very new to this thread and I hope I’m in the right place for help.

I’ve got an iPad 2 WIFI only model and have an issue, some time ago whilst I was using the iPad it suddenly and out of nowhere went to an activation required screen.

I believe this to be a software issue as the iPad hasn’t gone to the very beginning of the setup process, I’ve attached 3 screenshots showing what it does.

When I turn on the iPad I can see my wallpaper I’m required to enter my PIN to unlock but after that it goes straight to an activation required screen. Unfortunately it’s been years since setting up the device and as I’ve never had need to use iCloud password as I’ve got a seperate iTunes and App Store Apple ID have forgotten it. I can’t reset the password as I’ve got two step verification setup and I can’t find the recovery key, and unfortunately when two step verification is activated Apple automatically take away elements of the account recovery process. I no longer have the option to reset the password by answering security questions, recovery email or even submit an account recovery request.

Unfortunately Apple won’t assist me without proof
of purchase and as I purchased the iPad in Oct 2013 I’ve found it impossible to get a copy of an invoice from the supplier thus no help at all from Apple.

As the iPad still has everything installed on it is there some way of extracting the password by some means.

Is data extraction or connecting the iPad to my iPhone Wirelessly to access the iPads data even possible?

I’d appreciate any assistance anyone could give me.

I would try contacting Apple about resetting the password on your Apple ID. Did you set up any security questions? Do you have a recovery email? Your best bet is to give them a call or live chat and tell them that you do not know the password to your account and do not have the 2WA code.

See what they say, you might be lucky enough to get it one-time reset with the right answers to their questions :)


Leave iPhone on when changing SIM card I have to switch quite often between 2 SIM cards on my iPhone. I always used to turn it off to do that, however, it seems to work just fine even if I leave it on. Can it harm my iPhone or SIM card or the data on in any way by not turning it off during the procedure?

No, this will not harm your device or SIM card. Although Apple mentions it in their manual and theoretically you can short-circuit your device (I have no clue how, but theoretically...), in practice, when done with common sense, this should not harm your device. You do need to be careful with static charges and dust.


forwarding SMS messages to email on Iphone 4 For the holidays I will be in a small town with no cell service. However my job requires that I respond to SMS messages day or night. Is there a way to forward SMS messages to my email address so I will be able to check them (even though my phone hasn't received them yet as it is out of service and shut off)?

Because this wasn't hard enough already, I'm working on an iphone 4.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

This is something only your service provider could do.

If the phone gets no messages, there's very little it can do about forwarding them anywhere else ;)

Though it does make me wonder how you would get the email...