iPhone: Game app able to access Photos without permission I have downloaded a game from the App Store onto my iPhone. My understanding is that apps need to ask for, and be granted or denied,  permission to access iCloud, Photo gallery etc.

But in this game, there is an option to change the profile picture, and when I tap on it, it accesses my Photo gallery and I can change the profile picture from images in my gallery.

In Settings, I don’t see that there is any Photo gallery access permission for this app.

What exactly is happening in the background? Does iPhone treat game apps different from normal apps?

The app in question is a game called Word Domination.

The app in question is presenting a system provided UIImagePickerController to choose image for setting as user's profile picture.

From the PhotoKit Apple Developer documentation, Requesting Authorization to Access Photos:

  When using the UIImagePickerController to bring up the user's photo library, your app doesn't need to request permission explicitly.

This behavior is by design since iOS 11. UIImagePickerController runs in a separate process from the app, and doesn't directly get to read the Photo gallery data. Thus, for read only access to photos, no special permission is required.

This explains why you don't get the see an alert seeking permission to Photos, and the same isn't displayed under app preferences in Settings app. The user is explicitly setting the picture and the app couldn't read the Photo gallery directly.


bash output inside the terminal : command not found Hi everyone,

I wanted to ask a question about the bash output inside the terminal

The following procedure generates a command not found :

TEST:~ SniperDMC$
TEST:~ SniperDMC$ $HOSTNAME
-bash: TEST.local: command not found

How to avoid this and beautify the output ?

Best regards

SniperDMC

Well, $HOSTNAME is a variable, and if you just write it on a single line and press enter, bash will simply replace it with the respective value, i.e. "TEST.local". Since "TEST.local" is not a valid command, bash will complain.

If you want to print the value of any bash variable, you should use echo, i.e. echo $HOSTNAME.

For a quick bash scripting tutorial regarding variables, see here for example.


Open youtube link in Safari In iPad Safari, when a page has a link to a youtube video, if I click the link, Safari will open youtube app. Is it possible to change this behavior? I don't want to use the youtube app and I want to open the youtube page in safari.

iPad 2, iOS 5.0.1.

Do you use the Youtube.app at all? Because if you don't use it, you can disable it. Go to Settings > General > Restrictions. There you can disable several apps, one of them being the Youtube application. With the youtube.app disabled a youtube link in Safari will no longer redirect you to the native Youtube.app. The Youtube application icon will also no longer appear on your home screen/springboard and you will not be able to launch it from spotlight either, so you'll need to use the mobile youtube site in Safari if you want to browse through Youtube video's.

If you're not willing to disable the native Youtube application there is no way to change this behavior.


com.apple.qtkitserver CPU usage on OS X Lion I'm on Lion 10.7.3 and every now and then, com.apple.qtkitserver hogs my CPU @ 100% for a little less than a minute, especially when there's something happening on Finder.
I know that QTKitServer is the Quick Look server, but it seems its generating files unexpectedly or something of the sort.

Does anyone have a fix?

Note: This started happening when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

Normally this is due to unfinished/corrupted video files in your downloads folder. I am assuming this is the case for you.

This should solve the problem:

Open Finder an navigate to your downloads folder.
Right-click and select Show View Options.
Untick Show Icon Preview.


How do I change streaming buffer size in iTunes 10.5? I want to change the buffering of streaming radio in iTunes 10.5.  Every help document I've found online says to go to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced Tab.  I see no such buffer option there.  I'm running on Windows XP Service Pack 3.

I recall seeing it there once upon a time.  It appears they've removed this option.


MacBook Pro no longer outputs native resolution to external monitor when rotation is on I have a mid 2012 Retina MacBook Pro running Yosemite 10.10.3. As of last week, I was running an external Dell 24" monitor connected with a Thunderbolt to DisplayPort cable and rotated to portrait orientation without problems. This morning when I reconnected my computer, I could not get native resolution output to the monitor.

![Resolutions before selecting native resolution][1]

In the Displays preference pane, I noticed it was set to scale to 1080p resolution. I clicked on the native resolution. The displays flickered. The external monitor display was restored but still running at 1080. At this point, there were no longer any resolution options in the box although scaled is still selected.

![Resolutions after selecting native resolution][2]

If I select "Default for display," that radio button turns on for a split second before reverting to "Scaled" with no resolution options.

I changed the rotation back to standard, and the display runs at normal resolution. I called AppleCare and was told I would have to contact Dell. The senior support rep told me that the monitor rewrites the driver in the OS to provide the rotation setting and that it is not supported by Apple and is only a setting that exists after the monitor sends information to the computer (which sounds pretty wacky to me).

At one point, I switched the orientation to 270 degrees rather than 90 and got native resolution. When I then switched back to standard and again to 270, I was back to 1080 with the same issue as the 90 degree rotation.

I feel like this has to be an issue either with the graphics driver in OS X or with the graphics card. Outside not being able to display above it's native resolution, I can't imagine the monitor is making a decision about what images to display based on their rotation. In fact, I don't think the monitor is at all aware of either its physical orientation nor of the orientation of the image. Am I right about this? Does anyone have a suggestion for how I might fix this problem?

Update: Console output changing orientation to 90 degrees and back to standard: https://gist.github.com/raddevon/fcd76586bf4170bc4ae7

I had exactly the same problem, with the same monitor, Dell U2713 / U2713H / U2713HM / U2713HMt. I had two of them plugged in to my late-2014 Retina Macbook Pro 15" and only one was experiencing the problem. I tried 100s of different solutions (I can say for sure it's definitely not the cable!) and nothing worked. Just like you, I could get landscape 2560x1440 but not portrait. And I was getting the same error WindowServer: description_for_mode_number: IOFBGetPixelInformation failed (-536870206) when I tried to switch to portrait. That is, until I came across this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5485930?start=0&tstart=0. I regenerated the EDID override for the screen using the Ruby script, copied it into the correct location, rebooted and now it works again. I think I caused the problem by playing a game (Trine 2) in vertical (720x1280) resolution - after that, I tried everything to get the screen back to displaying portrait 1440x2560 but to no avail. Until I got the Ruby script from the thread above which fixed it.

Just to note, in case the linked thread disappears... the override file is in /System/Library/Displays/Overrides/ under the folder DisplayVendorID-10ac which is for Dell displays. The file for the U2713-series of monitors (and I think the U2711-series too) is DisplayProductID-4080. The contents of the file should be:

<?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>DisplayProductName</key>
  <string>Dell U2713HMt</string>
  <key>IODisplayEDID</key>
  <data>AP///////wAQrIBATDA1NB4WAQSlPCJ4Iku1p1ZLoyUKUFSlSwCBALMA0QBx
T6lAgYABAQEBVl4AoKCgKVAwIDUAVVAhAAAaAAAA/wBHSzBLRDI3TjQ1MEwK
AAAA/ABERUxMIFUyNzEzSE0KAAAA/QAxVh1xHgEKICAgICAgAA0=
</data>
  <key>DisplayVendorID</key>
  <integer>4268</integer>
  <key>DisplayProductID</key>
  <integer>16512</integer>
</dict>
</plist>


Can I make the trackpad tracking speed faster than allowed in System Preferences? The title says it all ... I have the trackpad speed on my Macbook Pro Retina 13" set to the max, but I'd like to try it faster. I recall some of these things can be configured by modifying ~/Library/*plist files or somesuch. Thanks in advance for any help.

Open up the terminal and type

defaults write -g com.apple.trackpad.scaling x

"x" being how much you want your mouse speed increased. "6" worked perfectly for me.

Simply log out and log back in and your setting will be changed!

Under System Preferences the trackpad speed will now be in the middle of its slow/fast options, and if you change it it will override your new changes.

Source was this guy: https://gist.github.com/brandonb927/3195465
Found this in line 328 of his code.

Hope it works for you as well as it did for me!


MacOS: Rationalising Fonts — Cannot disable fonts According to Font Book, I have 260 fonts installed on my system. Many of them are for languages which do not affect me.

Three such fonts are Al Bayan, Al Nile and Al Tarikh, Arabic fonts which I do not read.

I have tried to disable some fonts, but I get the message:

The selected fonts cannot be disabled.

The current selection contains protected fonts, which cannot be
disabled. Please unselect these fonts and try again.

I understand that I can probably delete them.

Why can’t I disable them? Is there a potential problem if I delete them (or move them to an archive folder)?

The fonts you are trying to disable are used by the System and hence are protected. You could still try to delete those fonts but I would not advise that.

I suggest you start over and try deleting one font at a time. if the font you try to disable is dimmed out then it is a system font. Use the disable button in font book to diable the fonts. This is shown below.


Repairing a Partition that doesn't show up in Disk Utility I have a friend's flash drive that has been acting very strange. I am able to get the Sandisk factory partition that is 64 MB to show up, but not the actual 8GB partition with all of his files. Nothing has been intentionally formatted.

Anything I can do in Disk Utility to solve this issue?

Thanks for your help!

Scott

If you run following in Terminal

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

That will enable new tab in Disk utility called debug.

In that tab you can now select to show all partitions (including the hidden ones)


LG Ultrafine 5k -- right half is a slightly different color from left New refurbished model # 27MD5KA. I have attached a photo (apologies for the reflections).

There is a line down the exact middle of the screen, directly below the webcam. On the right side of the screen the panel is slightly lighter than the left side (or the left is slightly darker -- I'm not sure which is the 'correct' color/brightness). You can tell very clearly in Intellij IDEA in the default darcula color scheme. It's harder to tell on light backgrounds.

I'm guessing this has something to do with the dual display port 1.2 streams that the monitor uses.

Is there any way to color correct this?

Thanks!

I've been having this issue for quite some time. Usually, a reboot would make it go away, but recently it has become much more persistent. One workaround I found was to turn on Night Shift but set it all the way to the "Less Warm" side.

It looks like an issue with macOS. I have filed a bug report to Apple.


Help troubleshooting Early 2009 Mac Pro (2x 2.66 GHz Quad Core) Fan Issues I have an early 2009 Mac Pro (2 x 2.66 GHz Quad Core) that recently started having issues.  It started as the black screen issue, that I troubleshooted to find that there was an issue with the CPU tray.  I found this out by doing the usual troubleshooting, replacing the graphics card and then buying a used second machine and interchanging the CPU cards between chassis.
I ended up replacing the 2009 Octocore CPU tray with an Early 2009 2.8GHz Quad core tray, as this machine has now become a spare machine, but the fans are cranking loudly.
When I run hardware diagnostics I see that the PS, Exhaust and Intake fans are not running and the PCI and Boosta fans are running at 850 rpm - seemingly not too far above min spec.
I would love to get guidance as to how to get the three fans running again and got my lovely mac pro back to its usual quiet self.  The loud noise is unbearable in my home office.
Thanks for the guidance.

After some research I discovered that the fans were blowing because I put a single CPU tray into a machine that originally had a dual CPU tray.  Apparently it doesn't like this mismatch and runs the fans full, as it thinks it has suffered failure of a CPU.


Is my Magsafe 2 Power Adapter fake? Look please at the pictures below. The old charger is genuine when I bought a ME865 (sealed box).
Today I bought MF841 (2nd) along with a new one. Is this a fake?

AC Charger Information:

  Connected:    Yes
  ID:   0x0921
  Wattage (W):  60
  Family:   0x0085
  Serial Number:    0x0105181c
  Charging: No

My guess is genuine. I recently purchased an 85W off Amazon that's similar to yours. It came in all the Apple packaging trappings and I think it's genuine because my guess is Apple changed the location of the serial number to that harder-to-print location specifically to make the game harder for fakers. (Why would a faker bother to move the serial number into such an awkward location? It's quite possible that printing in that confined space requires special equipment, which would force fakers to either forego the serial number, use a sticker, or use two pieces of plastic instead of one solid piece.)


Make Siri Ding Again on Pressing Home Button So according to this Apple support article, Siri doesn't make that bell sound after holding the Home button to launch it on iPhones with iOS 9 or later. Instead, it vibrates.

  On your iPad or iPod touch, Siri will chime when it's time to ask a question. If you have an iPhone with iOS 9 or later, Siri will vibrate instead. You'll only hear the chime on your iPhone with iOS 9 or later when you're using headphones.
  Siri will also chime when you use "Hey Siri" on a device with iOS 9.

That's really unfortunate because I really liked that ding.

Does anyone know if there's a way to make Siri play the "ding" sound again without headphones or Hey Siri? (Aside from jailbreaking)

The only solution I have found with ios 9 is to go to Settings > Accessibility, and turn Vibration off. Extra caveats can be found in the source link.
Source: apple.com discussion


Is it possible to disable macOS requesting permissions via Apple Watch, but still use it to unlock Mac? I've found that it's quite slow to go from typing my user password to unlock/allow something in macOS by double clicking the side button on my Apple Watch.

So is it possible to keep the unlock my computer with Apple Watch feature, but disable it for all other requests?

Similarly, is it possible to disable Touch ID on the MacBook Pro for unlocking things, e.g. when unlocking the secure system preference, but still keep it to unlock the computer from lock/sleep?

So is it possible to keep the unlock my computer with Apple Watch feature, but disable it for all other requests?

macOS doesn't provide any setting under the Security System Preference that lets you disable app authentication while keeping the setting to unlock the computer via your Apple Watch. It's either all in or out.

However, if you prefer not moving your hands away from the keyboard to Apple Watch or even Trackpad, you can still authenticate via keyboard. If you need a handy way to navigate through the on-screen controls, you can enable Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls under System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts.

Enabling this lets you use your keyboard to navigate between on-screen controls. Such as, in the following, you can use the Tab key to navigate to the Use Password... button and use either the Enter or Space key to press the button and enter the password, all without moving your hands away from the keyboard.

  Similarly, is it possible to disable Touch ID on the MacBook Pro for unlocking things, e.g. when unlocking the secure system preference, but still keep it to unlock the computer from lock/sleep?

You can go to System Preferences → Touch ID and uncheck Use Touch ID for all the items except Unlocking your Mac.


Is anyone else having signal strength problems on an iPhone 3GS since the iOS 4.1 upgrade? Since upgrading my iPhone 3GS to iOS 4.1, I've periodically seen 1 bar or "Searching..." at home and work where I used to have 4 or 5 bars.  And I've sent text messages with 4 bars, only to have it immediately drop to 1 and the text message error out.

I'm trying to learn if I'm alone with this issue (and should therefore bring my phone to my local Apple Store—after trying a restore just so I can say I did when they inevitably suggest that), or if this is a common problem (and we should then file bugs at bugreport.apple.com).

Update (to answer Louis Gerbarg's question): I've installed every new update, so I believe I upgraded from 4.0.2 to 4.1.  I think I noticed Apple's bar display calibration changes after the 4.0.1 upgrade, though the difference was subtle.  I did not have dropped call problems and errors sending text messages until the 4.1 upgrade.

Update #2: I restored my iPhone to factory defaults (but still with 4.1 installed), and still had the problems.  So I took it to my local Apple Genius Bar and explained this, and they exchanged the phone for a new one.  The new iPhone 3GS had 4.0.2.  But I still don't have the problems after installing 4.1.  This must have been a hardware issue.

Did you move from 4.0 to 4.1, or from 4.0.1/2 to 4.1? Between 4.0 and 4.0.1 Apple changed the calibration of the bar display, such that at a given signal strength it shows a fewer bars. They did that in response to the iPhone 4 antenna publicity, but the changes were done for all devices that support 4.x.

So, if you went straight from 4.0 to 4.1 getting fewer bars is expected, though if you are dropping calls where you previously didn't that is a real issue, or if you updated from 4.0.2.


File path to file on Mac Mini via LAN I have a bunch of data files on a Mac Mini that I want to read over my wireless LAN in a script (F#, not that it matters I think). I can see the files in Finder, but don't know how to read them in a program.

What path to the file would I use in my script? For example if I had a file called myData.csv in a folder called MyUserId/data, what would the path be?

Network volumes get mounted in /Volumes. So look for a folder within /Volumes that corresponds to the name of your Mac Mini or the network share.

Additionally, you can drag any file into a Terminal window, and its full path will be entered onto the command line.


How to clone user accounts via Apple Remote Desktop - Mountain Lion I am trying to configure a middle school lab of 25 new iMacs running 10.8 Mountain Lion. I would have liked to have cloned them over the network, but we don't have a Mac server. Right now they are all turned on and configured with a basic Admin and Student account. I want to synchronize the preferences and parental controls on the student account on all of the systems.

My question is this: Is there any downside to simply copying the 'student' user folder from the properly configured system to all of the others? It appears to work, but I'm not sure if it will lead to any problems down the road, I don't have a lot of experience with this.

I don't have a experience with OS X 10.8, but I've done plenty of computer-lab admin work back around OS X 10.3 / 10.4 / 10.5. I'll edit and/or remove my answer if better answers come along.

I'd venture that your basic application preferences -- for browsers, word processing apps, etc. -- will duplicate OK (with the notable exception of certain licensed software, i.e. Adobe CS Suite, Filemaker Pro, etc.) -- but probably the Parental Controls settings live outside of user home folders, somewhere under /Library (the System-level /Library, not ~/Library.)

You may have success hand- or scripted-copying the relevant directories and files from /Library, but there could be other issues lurking.

I have little doubt that, without a lot of toil and expertise on your part, your students are probably going to "tear the machines up" software-wise. You'd better have an easy method for wiping & refreshing machines on a regular basis if you want to keep a semblance of consistency.

It'd be much better to run OS X Server 10.8 and use the workgroup-management features built into it, that would give you a robust, easy-to-manage setup.


Apple Mail, how do I hide the Archive folder? I like a very lean Mail system and have been searching for a way to hide the Archive folder in Mail. Is this possible? If so, how?

So here's kind of crappy workaround, but as for me it worth it. The solution requires one external useless email, say useless@mail.com, maybe fresh generated or some old one.

Starting settings: You have several mail boxes that is shown in Archive parent mail box. So the Archive box shows as extendable one, e.g. with the arrow that allows to expand it to see included mail boxes.

In some useful mail account, say useful@mail.com, in the web interface create some additional folder, like "arch" make sure that it available by imap.
In the "System Settings" -> "Internet Accounts" add some additional useless email account.
Check that it shows in mail.app
In the Mail "Preferences" -> Accounts -> useful@mail.com choose "arch folder as the Archive one.
In that point you're should have extendable Archive folder in mail.app (like any other Folder which have subfolders).
Expand Archive folder to see what subfolders it have.
Select the one that are from useful account, hit right click and select "delete mail box".
After mail.app have been reload its state you should have non extendable Archive folder again. (If this is not true — make steps above till it will be). And the only one mail box in it is the useless one.
Completely delete useless mail account from system.
Restart mail.app and there's none Archive folder.


Sparrow mail app seems to make my imac act funny I was wondering if anyone has experience with Sparrow mail app? I've just downloaded Sparrow and it seems to do something funny.

First the volume thing self disabled and when I tried to flip the screen to another screen back and forth, it enables itself again then it disable again and like that on and off for some period of times and I've tried to restart it like 5 times and now the volume problem seems OK now.

But the wifi is acting funny. It kept disconnecting on and off I've restarted it twice now and still the same. When I quit Sparrow, everything is ok. I've tried to open Sparrow an hour later, it did the same thing again with the wifi.

Why is that? Is it because of the Sparrow app? I'm running latest os x lion 10.7.3.

When first launched, Sparrow can be pretty intense on your harddrive and internet connection, since it's downloading every email.

About the column thing, it was probably still syncing your labels and everything, and that's probably why it was misbehaving.

About your WiFi issue, it could be the same thing, since Sparrow is downloading every email, you WiFi router or connection is probably too weak to handle the load and crash.

My advice would be to delete your account from the app, connect to a wired connection, re-add your account and wait 20-30 minutes (depending on the number of email you have and the size of your inbox).


Vulnerability and patch management on macOS - what works? I am trying to design a plan for patching Mac endpoints at my company.
Are there any readily available tools which I could leverage for continuous security patch/update management for 3rd party apps on Mac. AppFresh seems to be discontinued. I looked into the Sparkle framework. Has anyone used it within an organization, and if yes, what is the best way to use it?

Any thoughts or guidance on operationalizing patch management on macOS in a startup would be highly useful.

For large scale Mac usage in enterprises, you can use Patch Manager Plus

All the latest security/non-security applications of the OS, as well as third-party applications such as browser updates, Adobe, Java updates, can be patched. Moreover, you can also upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave, apply all the latest supplemental updates with ease. Click here to learn more about Mac patch management offered by Patch Manager Plus.


Mails sent from my work gmail come back in my personal gmail I have two accounts that are hosted by Gmail. One is my personal account with a gmail domain, the other is a work account with our company's domain.

When I send or reply to mail from my Mac using Apple's Mail.app, replies to those messages always go to my personal account.

I looked in the obvious places - Accounts and Preferences. The only thing that seemed related was under the Composing preference, which was set to "send new messages from account to selected mailbox", which I think is the right one.

Can anyone offer some insight?

Ah, so this turns out to be a feature interaction issue.

Gmail always sends mail out with the address of the login of the SMTP account that sent it.

Mail will try multiple SMTP servers to send a mail if the first one fails.

So what was happening is that the settings for the SMTP on the work account were wrong, and the login failed. Mail silently failed over to the next server on the list, my home account. That login used my home address, so Gmail silently changed the name on the message.

Interesting.


How to create the "show in mail" link in Apple Calendar? I'm wondering how can I make the "show in mail" link as seen in the photo below. Currently if i click a date in an email it will automatically create the link in the Calendar app. Can I do it manually for emails that don't contain dates?
How can I link associate a mail with an event in Calendar ?

You can

Drag & drop a mail into the Calendar window to create a new entry with a link to the mail
Open an existing event in Calendar and drag&drop a mail into the "Notes, URL or attachments" field


How to see the latest apps released in the App Store? I seem to remember that you could view the latest apps/games released in any category of the App Store. I used to love trying out new games and you could usually find a few gems that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to find.

So is there anyway of finding an true list of the latest released apps/games? And if there is, is there a way to find a list of latest releases within a certain category (such as the latest action games). The closest I could find is ‘new games we love’ in store and in the RSS feed.

Also I have seen a section in the App Store for ‘pre-orders’ but have never found the section since (it was one the main page of the App Store with the apps of the week etc) any ideas on how to find this again would also be a massive help!

Apple doesn't show a list of new apps or games. However, you can use a third-party site like 148apps.com to view the newest apps.


Is there a way to display audio bitrate in Finder? I want to have a quick and easy way to check bitrate of compressed audio files, without having to open iTunes/Quicktime etc.

Either a Finder option (Get info/Inspector/List view) or perhaps an AppleScript via Right click > Service would do, via output to Terminal or system pop-up.

Are there any established solutions out there, or will we have to look at a scripting solution?

You could fashion a service in Automator using the Terminal.app and your shell with something like:

mdls -name kMDItemTotalBitRate file


Do I have an HDD or an SSD in my MacBook? I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014). I am running macOS Sierra
10.12.4 . Is there any way to find out if I have a hard disk or a solid state disk? (I have a total of 250 GB of storage if that is necessary)

All retina Macbook Pros have PCIe SSDs. Previous MBPs (2012 + earlier) shipped with HDDs.

To find this out, find your model information by going to Apple (top left corner of the screen) -> About this Mac. Find the year (Mid 2014), then use either Apple's website or a website such as everymac.com to determine the specifications of the storage originally shipped with the computer.


Is my 13" rMBP capable of running a 4k monitor at 2560x1440 scaled resolution? I have a late 2013 13" rMBP and a 4k monitor (3840x2160) that's running at 60Hz over mini display port. Right now it uses a scaled 1920x1080 resolution so everything is displayed at 2x HDPI (retina mode), which seems to be default.

Everything is a bit big for my liking, however, and on the flip side 3840x2160 is far too small, so I was hoping to go for around 2560x1440 for a happy medium.

As System Preferences seemingly doesn't permit this, I downloaded SwitchResX, created a custom resolution ("scaled" mode and 2560x1440 resolution) and selected "save", rebooted, but it still won't show up in System Preferences.

What am I doing wrong? Is my computer not capable of displaying that resolution (I realize it has to scale it up to 5120x2880 first)?

Option-clicking the scaled button in System Prefs will bring up many more options.


Mountain Lion sleep and caffeinate command I am having an issue where my retina MacBook Pro (10.8.1) will sleep when uTorrent is actively uploading or downloading. I have tried my old go to programs like "Caffeine" and "InsomniaX" to no avail. I was about to try Jiggler, but when I am finished working at the machine for the night, I like to sleep the display (using a hot corner) and I want my display to remain off/asleep. Jiggler would wake the display every 5 minutes with the password prompt, then the display would sleep and this would repeat till the morning.

I have read this question and the best answer was helpful but left me wanting to know more.

I am wondering if someone can give me a little more info on how the caffeinate command works?  For example, if I were to run the command caffeinate -i open -W -a uTorrent.app (which I assume is working because it will open uTorrent) does the caffeinate command remain active until:

The terminal window is closed,
Break (control+c) is entered,
uTorrent is closed,
Until restart or log out, or
Until a 'decaffeinate' or (complimenting command) is entered in the Terminal.

Basically if I wished to run the caffeinate command, would I have to run it every time I launched uTorrent?

The assertions are removed when the caffeinate process exits.

  caffeinate creates assertions to alter system sleep behavior.  If no assertion flags
  are specified, caffeinate creates an assertion to prevent idle sleep.  If a utility
  is specified, caffeinate creates the assertions on the utility's behalf, and those
  assertions will persist for the duration of the utility's execution. Otherwise,
  caffeinate creates the assertions directly, and those assertions will persist until
  caffeinate exits.

caffeinate (or caffeinate -i) prevents idle sleep until the process is terminated by for example pressing control-C or closing a shell window. caffeinate open -Wa uTorrent would also remove the assertion when open exits.

You can get a list of power assertions with pmset -g assertions. caffeinate or caffeinate -i should set PreventUserIdleSystemSleep to 1.

To always prevent sleep when uTorrent is open, you could add a line like this to a crontab:

* * * * * pgrep -x uTorrent && caffeinate -t 60

(Use EDITOR=nano crontab -e if you haven't changed $EDITOR and don't know how to use vi.)


Apple Business Manager. How do we revoke a code or license? We are not using a MDM The small dev company that I work for has been contracted to build an app for client. This client is using Apple Business Manager and wants us to publish to it.

I have built the app and deployed it for review to the Apple Connect. It passed and I see it is now in the client's Apple Business Manager account.

Here is where I am confused. Our client DOES NOT have a MDM. How can I use Apple Business Manager in this case?

Initially I thought I could simply use redemption codes, but now I see that this is not going to work, as redemption codes are similar to "gift cards" that we give out to people. Unless I am mistaken, there is no way to manage them and revoke them when we need so.

It seems that the only way to manage the licenses is to implement a MDM (like Mobile Iron, etc.), but this seems like a lot of work.  There must be another way.   What about contractors that require a corporate app? Surely, there has to be a way to use the Managed Licensing aspect of ABM without using a MDM.

How can use ABM to do "managed licensing" without our client(s) having a MDM. Is there a way that I can revoke a redemption code once I have issued it?

The ordinary way to do what you want is to use MDM.

If you do not want your client to setup MDM, then the only way to do this is by adding a login system to your app. This way you can have employees of your customer install the app via the App Store using redemption codes, and then be able to stop them from using the app by invalidating their login.

To make matters easier, you could implement the initial login in the form of a link for the employee to follow (similar to the link used to redeem the app), it could be a QR-code to scan or a simple username/password.


escape the target mode I tried to install Windows on my Mac Pro but it failed because my disk needed to be repaired; it was suggested that I hold cmd + r during a restart.

I tried that but when it restarted I was showed a grayish window that asked for my password. I typed my password but it won't work.

I retried several times but it refused my password. I am very sure I hadn't forgotten it because when I restarted normally it accepted my password.

Because I needed to install Windows so bad, I opted to transfer my data to another Mac, thus I was advised to restart my Mac in target mode. I did restart in target mode but when it started the grayish login window is presented.

Now since it won't accept my password, I basically have a dead computer and I don't know what to do. Any suggestions to get past this window?

From your description, I believe you're looking at the firmware password:

This isn't specific for Target Disk Mode, and would have been set through the Firmware Password Utility.

This script may be able to decrypt your firmware password, however it doesn't work on all Macs.

python -c "print ''.join(chr(int(c, 16) ^ 170) for c in '`sudo nvram security-password`'.split('%')[1:])"

Source: CNET


How does one Copy, Paste and Tab using AppleScript? I am looking to automate Copy, Paste, Tab and Left in Microsoft Excel and either Safari or Firefox using Applescript. I have limited experience in coding, and have recently complied a code, but unfortunately it doesn't work as planned...

What I want to happen;

In Browser Copy
In Excel Paste, Left, Copy
In Browser Tab, Paste, Tab x8
Repeat

repeat 50 times

    tell application "Safari" to activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Safari"
            keystroke "c" using command down
        end tell
    end tell

    delay 0.3

    tell application "Microsoft Excel" to activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Microsoft Excel"
            keystroke "v" using command down
            delay 0.3
            key code 123
            keystroke "c" using command down
        end tell
    end tell

    tell application "Safari" to activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Safari"
            keystroke tab
            keystroke "v" using command down
            keystroke tab
            keystroke tab
            keystroke tab
            keystroke tab
            keystroke tab
            keystroke tab
            keystroke tab
            keystroke tab
        end tell
    end tell

    delay 0.3

end repeat

Its hard to know exactly what you are trying to accomplish but some improvements were introduced into the code below, with comments added in the code.  Several points:

Note that depending on how fast/slow your system is responding you may need small delays after every keystroke or action.  You'll have to figure the minimum time empirically.
Any time you "activate" or launch Safari, Excel or any application within the script there will be a delay until the app is up and running.  To deal with this,  you will need these apps running prior to running the script, or you need to introduce long enough delays into your script, or better yet you need to add code that pauses the script until the app is launched.
When you open Safari and Excel you are not specifying any specific window, file or URL  to target for the subsequent keystrokes. So as written the script will default to the front window/tab of each app. I guess that's OK if what you are targeting is the front window. If no open window exists then the script will fail.  So for example, to get around this I added code to open a new excel file.
As currently constructed, the script copies from the front window in Safari, then eventually comes back to the very same window to execute the tab - paste - tab x 8. One has to assume that was the intention?
As currently constructed the default is to paste to cell A1 of Excel.  Then you tell Excel to move to once cell to the left, but there is no cell to the left of A1.
Much of the code is written for GUI scripting.  Where possible its better to use Applescript commands to accomplish the desired activity.  I'll just leave it like that for now.  You probably have enough on your mind learning the basics right now.

tell application "Safari" to activate

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
    keystroke "c" using command down
    delay 0.3
    end tell
end tell

tell application "Microsoft Excel" to activate
    delay 5 -- time required to launched Excel if not already open

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Microsoft Excel"
    keystroke "n" using command down -- open new excel page
    delay 0.5 -- wait for new excel page to open
    keystroke "v" using command down
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
    key code 123
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
    keystroke "c" using command down
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
end tell

end tell

tell application "Safari" to activate

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
    keystroke tab
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
    keystroke "v" using command down
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry

    repeat 8 times
        keystroke tab
        delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
    end repeat

end tell

end tell


Application to record each individual action in contact list I would like to record each good thing someone in my contactlist or maybe not in my contact list did to me or record a happy time we did togethers.
So i can read all the happy memories. See the list when i get angry at someone who might ever did a lot of good thIngs to me or send this list to them at the approprite time. I saw that there is a note section in my contact list. But i wonder Is there any apps that are more suit than this like organize by date and Save Photo.

Bento from Filemaker is an easy-to-use database application that leverages and integrates with Core Data—the storage bins for Address Book and Calendar. You could roll your own solution or use/modify an existing Personal Journal template.


install .ipa via iTunes on friends Mac I don't want to erase all my existing apps. I just want to install the .ipa file and KEEP all my existing apps. However iTunes says

  Are you sure you want to sync apps?
  All existing apps and their data on
  the iPhone "Simon Strandgaard's
  iPhone" will be replaced with apps
  from this iTunes library.

I really don't want to click the "Sync Apps" button.

I could go home and open iTunes on my own computer, but I'm at my friends place. How to do get the .ipa on my iPhone?

You can use the iPhone Configuration Utility to side-load apps onto an iOS device without 'syncing' and erasing your current content.

Config Utility for Mac
Config Utility for Windows

Keep in mind, though, that this will only work if the app is correctly codesigned and the device is correctly provisioned.


Terminal bash commands stopped working I was trying to install some stuff for scala development on my MAC, and probably I managed broke the shell/terminal while I was mindlessly running some scripts that I don't know.

Now when I start the terminal it always starts with this line;

$ /sbin:sbin:/usr/local/bin': not a valid identifier

And now when I try, I see some bash commands does not work, for instance grep, syslog..etc I get an error saying;

-bash syslog: "no such file or directory"

Any idea what is wrong and how can I fix this

Try to edit the .profile or .bash_rc file on the terminal

 /usr/bin/vi ~/.profile

and see if one of the software has put stuff in there that should not be there (especially if one has put up a messed PATH command there).  (Alternately but less likely affected are  /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/vi /etc/profile or /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/vi /etc/bashrc).

If you don't know how to use the VI editor, you can also use /usr/bin/nano instead of /usr/bin/vi

For a start, until you find where this happens, editing the .profile (see above) you can put the following command as the last command to the end of your ~/.profile file.

export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin

This should at least give you back access to your normal commands.


I am trying to make an Applescript that launches a different set of apps depending on user input. However, it won't compile. What is wrong with it? I made a simple AppleScript that launches a different set of apps depending on user input. I am new to AppleScript and it is tweaked from a bunch I found on the internet, modified for my usage. It is included below.

What it should do: Buttons 2 and 3 simply launches various sets of apps, while button 1 checks if Spotify is running, and if it is, switches to it. If it isn't, open 3 apps (including Spotify).

However I get an "Expected end of line, etc. but found end of script." error when compiling. Here is the script. What is wrong with it?

set question to display dialog "What do you want to launch?" buttons {"Spotify", "MiniPlayer", "Remote"} default button 1
set answer to button returned of question

if answer is equal to "Spotify" then
    set myAppName to "Spotify"
    set isRunning to false
    tell application "System Events"
        if exists process myAppName then
            set isRunning to true
        end if
    end tell
    if isRunning is true then
        tell application myAppName to activate
    else
        tell application "Spotify" to activate
        tell application "Spotifree" to activate
        tell application "Spotify Notifications" to activate
    end if
end if
if answer is equal to "MiniPlayer" then
    tell application "MiniPlayer" to activate
end if
if answer is Equal to "Remote" then
    set question to display dialog "What remote do you want to launch?" buttons {"IR Remote", "Android", "Both"} default button 2
set answer to button returned of question
    if answer is equal to "IR Remote" then
    tell application SpotifyIrRemote to activate
    if answer is equal to "Android"
        tell application RemotelessHelper to activate
    if answer is equal to "Both"
        tell application SpotifyIrRemote to activate
        tell application RemotelessHelper to activate
    end if
end if

You are missing a bunch of end ifs and 2 then.

set question to display dialog "What do you want to launch?" buttons {"Spotify", "MiniPlayer", "Remote"} default button 1
set answer to button returned of question

if answer is equal to "Spotify" then
    set myAppName to "Spotify"
    set isRunning to false
    tell application "System Events"
        if exists process myAppName then
            set isRunning to true
        end if
    end tell
    if isRunning is true then
        tell application myAppName to activate
    else
        tell application "Spotify" to activate
        tell application "Spotifree" to activate
        tell application "Spotify Notifications" to activate
    end if
end if

if answer is equal to "MiniPlayer" then
    tell application "MiniPlayer" to activate
end if

if answer is equal to "Remote" then
    set question to display dialog "What remote do you want to launch?" buttons {"IR Remote", "Android", "Both"} default button 2
    set answer to button returned of question
    if answer is equal to "IR Remote" then
        tell application SpotifyIrRemote to activate
    end if
    if answer is equal to "Android" then
        tell application RemotelessHelper to activate
    end if
    if answer is equal to "Both" then
        tell application SpotifyIrRemote to activate
        tell application RemotelessHelper to activate
    end if
end if


How to force OS X Notes application to lose formatting when I paste text from clipboard? While I do find Notes.app very useful, especially due to the iCloud integration with iOS counterpart apps, I am very annoyed about the text formatting used by the application.

I just want to be able to copy text from web pages and paste it as plain text in this application.

Is there any way to obtain this? Maybe some Clipboard manager that can work in background, or even another application that I can use to obtain this.

While I would like to keep bold and hyperlinks, I do not want to keep any fonts or sizes when I paste the text.

Note: the solution should be transparent — not requiring me to use extra steps for pasting, ⌘V only.

You can use OptionShift⌘-V to paste and match the current style. This removes all previous formatting, links, etc.

If you would like to make this the default action when pressing ⌘V, open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts, and select Application Shortcuts from the list on the left. Then, hit + to make a new shortcut, select Notes.app from the dropdown list, enter Paste and Match Style exactly in the Menu Title box, then hit ⌘V with your cursor in the Keyboard Shortcut box. After hitting Add, you can flip back to Notes.app and click on the Edit menu to see that the shortcut has been reassigned.


Recover photos from the iTunes backup of a dead iPhone My wife's iPhone 4 just died: it won't turn on and doesn't charge. It's basically a brick right now. She needs to recover the photos on it. Is there any way to recover this from the iTunes backup files?

If you have backed up to your computer previously, you can use iExplorer to do that sort of thing.

http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/


iPhone 5s stuck at Apple logo and progress bar iPhone stuck at Apple logo, so I decided to restore it using iTunes app. After successfully restoring it (extracting software, verifying iPhone SW/FW etc.), it rebooted. As I've seen on many forums, as next step it should display the slide to setup screen. But it displays only the progress bar (again!). This time it stuck at ~ 5-10% every time I try.

I have followed all the instructions (update iTunes, drivers, I've also disabled all services except MS and APPLE). Reinstalled iTunes. Used different USB ports, tried on another PC. Sometimes it even displays a blue screen. But thats rarely. So basically, I can't access the phone.

As I wasnt here for a longer period of time, here is what did I do to solve this:

I finally managed to boot the phone. Here is what I did.

After I've already tried on another computer, a customer brought me a desktop PC (before I had 2 laptops). I installed Win 8.1, previous laptops have win 10. So from this point of view, I gained hope.

A fresh installed OS, newly downloaded iTunes.  As next, I've connected the device to the PC which succesfully installed new Apple drivers (I was carefull at those events).

So I ran into DFU mode (power off > sleep/wake + home button > release sleep/wake button). It successfully detected it in 'recovery mode'.  I chose RESTORE. I had the notification for the new 9.1 (which usually wasn't here - except probably for the first time I ran the app on other PCs), And as next the Restore button greyed out. I thought it was 'frozen'. As I checked in the task manager, the iTunes process was using network, which was meaning it downloads the new large 9.1 iOS.

When it installed, everything was as usual. Finished the extracting, verifying...that it rebooted and disappeared from iTunes. With no other option left, I decided to let it install, even if for hours. BUt then I unplugged it and saw low battery.  When I began with charging, after few minutes a vibration with "Hello" screen appeared.

I would advice other who have the same issue to be careful at these steps.


How to use Control or Command for Cut-Copy-Paste I use a lot of Windows VMs and Remote Desktop into Windows on my Mac. I am going mad trying to find the correct keyboard shortcut based on which window I have in the foreground for Copy (or Cut) and Paste.

With some Google searching I learned I can go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> App Shortcuts and map Ctrl + X/C/V to Cut, Copy, and Paste respectively. However, this disables Command + X/C/V, which is required if you want want to Copy (or Cut) and Paste using keyboard shortcuts in Google GSuite Sheets.

Ideally, I would like to use Ctrl + X/C/V  or Command + X/C/V to Cut, Copy, and Paste, but I don't know how to set this up on macOS Sierra.

I spend much of my time in these problems to access different Windows environments:

Jump Desktop
Microsoft Remote Desktop
Parallels

I prefer to someone map the keys at the macOS level, instead of inside these problems.

Can someone tell me how this could be done?

You don’t specify what software you’re using to create your virtual machines, but usually you’ll have an option in its settings to allow the VM to recognise both the command and CTRL keys interchangeably for the Cut/Copy/Paste keyboard shortcuts.

For example, if you’re using Parallels Desktop, you can customise your keyboard shortcuts by going to the Parallels Desktop menu in the Mac menu bar and navigating to Preferences → Shortcuts and selecting your VM from the list.

So I would check your VM configurations to see if you’ve got the option of doing this. Doing so means you can’t go wrong in your virtual machine.

In terms of the macOS side of things, you can refer to Karabiner (or, more specifically for macOS Sierra, Karabiner Elements) for some advanced  keyboard shortcut functionality.


Are auto-downloaded malicious .dmg app files a security risk if they are never opened? I visited a page to stream a TV show, and upon clicking the search result link got the following pop-up:

I clicked OK, as nothing on Chrome was available, and when I did that, Chrome auto-downloaded a file called FlashPlayer.dmg.

Here is a picture of that file:

I didn't open the .dmg file or click on it at all.  Instead, I immediately went to my downloads folder, deleted the file, and then emptied my trash.

I then went to see my downloads on Chrome; the URL seems to be something like www.makeymcmacface.com/prod/... (which Google indicates belongs to the Mac.Trojan.Genieo.33 type of adware).

My question is this: If I download a malicious .dmg file, but don't click on it to install it, am I safe? Or is there a possibility that by simply visiting a website that auto-installs a .dmg file, I could have compromised my security?

If I download a malicious .dmg file, but don't click on it to install it, am I safe?

You are safe. The .dmg (disk image) file is not the actual installer. The .dmg must be double-clicked to install it before it can run any code. Even if you double-click it (so long as you leave the security feature Gatekeeper on), you must approve both the downloaded from the web alert and the authentication prompt to actually permit the install to proceed.

  Is there a possibility that by simply visiting a website that auto-installs a .dmg file, I could have compromised my security?

No, your security is not compromised unless you manually install the file. The reason for this is that a website can only offer a .dmg file for download. There is no "auto-install" for a .dmg app file. You may click on a link (or a button) to start the download, but disk images themselves are not "installed" by the download process—meaning they can't run any code on your Mac until you type in your password to install them (again, because of macOS's built-in security feature Gatekeeper). The disk image is merely saved to your designated folder (typically Downloads) then waits for you to take further action by double-clicking on it to mount it. For any code from that app to be run, you have to authenticate with your password.

Bonus tip: When a website tells you that your flash player is out of date by way of a pop-up like you've shown, that should be an automatic red flag! Outdated Flash Player alerts are almost never legitimate. Instead of clicking on that OK button on the notification like you did, you should force quit your browser: choose Force Quit from the Apple menu in the menubar ()—or just press Command+Option+Esc—then select Chrome/Safari and hit Force Quit. Hold down Shift while opening Safari to prevent the website from reloading.


Mail on my Mac Pro running the latest update of High Sierra (newest OS I can use) keeps crashing when I use "Select All" to empty the trash Application Specific Information:
* Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSRangeException', reason: '* -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndexedSubscript:]: index 9223372036854775807 beyond bounds [0 .. 1]'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

Mail does not crash when I delete each email in the trash individually, only when I select them all then hit "delete." I have tried to delete the mail preferences, rebuilt the mailbox, deleted/reinstalled the account, reset the VRAM, erased the disk and reinstalled High Sierra (then restored from CCC5), ran disk utility from Recovery Drive, called AppleCare (very dismissive of my "obsolete" Mac Pro), booted into Safe Mode (same problem).

When you rebuilt the mailbox did you also get it to re-index?

Quit mail, then ~/Library/Mail/V6/MailData/ delete all the Envelope Index files [duplicate to the desktop first for safety] & re-launch Mail.

The rebuild may take some time


Alfred 2 script filter executable loading unusually slowly I created a workflow for Alfred for searching DuckDuckGo and automatically displaying the results in the window, with a script filter.

It takes ~4 seconds to start from Alfred. It takes 0.506s to return the results in Terminal, so this looks like an Alfred problem.

(Subsequent times, as I add to the query, it runs in under a second again, so I don't know what's going on). Also, if I use it and then use it again quickly, that extra wait time doesn't happen. It would be nice to at least allow the cache to live longer if that's possible, but I have no idea what is being cached.

I feel stupid now. It turns out that HTTPS was being slow the first time because it has to check the cert or something. It has nothing to do with Alfred. I switched to HTTP (while I don't like it going through in plaintext) and it's about 1.2s the first time instead of 4 or 5.


Why does the Finder run at such a low process priority? I'm at a bit of a loss about this.
I'm running a big import in aperture, and it's causing my system to slow down to a complete crawl, basically rendering it unusable for anything, even browsing the web. Since this seems a bit unnatural, I spent a little time looking around.

Running ps -Al shows that, apparently by default, the Dock, Finder, and SystemUIServer all seem to run at a priority far lower then userland applications. While user applications typically have a priority of 33, the Dock, Finder, etc have a priority of 53.

The end result, is ANY processor intensive task completely clobbers the UI, and renders the system unusable until it finishes.

Anyways, using renice -20 -p <prid> bumps them up to the same priority as the rest of the userland UI, and results in not having to wait 1-3 seconds (!) for the UI to respond to something as simple as a mouse click.

Thad said, I have two questions:
Is there any reason I shouldn't be altering the thread priority of the finder like this?
Is there any way to make the priority change persistent, e.g. so it stays that way after reboot.

I'm not sure anyone short of Apple's own developers would be able to answer this question, Finder's inner secrets are their domain. If you do think there are some noticeable lag problems with the UI you might want to submit a bug report to Apple about it.

Judging from the sound of things (processes intentionally taking up all resources) this is a bit of an edge case for memory management. I've yet to see a system perform at their best without somewhere around 10-20% resources free, as a buffering aid.

Just curious, what are these processes you're running?


Bash subshell in Terminal has Mac OS's session save enabled At some point, Terminal started saving sessions. It's controlled with /etc/bashrc_Apple_Terminal. For some reason, my subshells are also using this feature:

echo $(cd && pwd)
/Users/ehrmann Saving session... ...saving history...truncating history files... ...completed.

As a workaround, I can do

echo $(SHELL_SESSION_FILE= && cd && pwd)

Luckily, it works across platforms, but it's kinda silly.

Did I accidentally do something that turned this on? This can't be the intended default behavior—it breaks all sorts of things.

I’m not certain when this became the default, but I agree, it’s an annoying default; it was added in one of the last few major releases. I came across this question because I was searching for how to best disable this, and I think you may have provided the solution yourself:

In /etc/bashrc_Apple_Terminal, there is great amount of documentation about how the functionality in the file is implemented.

The final comment is the kicker:

# The save/restore mechanism is disabled if the following file exists:
#
#   ~/.bash_sessions_disable

I tested this on my machine and it works, no more session saving.


ERROR 1013 Restoring iPhone 4 I have a MacBook 2.4 Intel Core 2 Duo version 10.6.6 i updated the iTunes to the newest version 10.2.1 & and an iPhone 4 .. when i was updating to the newest software of the iPhone a error occurred 1013, i went to the apple store and they change my phone.. i came back to restore the iPhone again (the new one) and the same error happened is it my iTunes or my computer making my phone break down?

According to the Apple Support forums, it looks like a fix for this is to comment out gs.apple.com in your hosts file.

Comment it out in /etc/hosts by doing the following (taken from that page):

Open Finder
Hold down COMMAND + SHIFT keys and press 'G'
Enter "/private/etc/" in the field and press "Go"
Find "hosts" file in the directory
Drag the file to your desktop
Open it in text editor
Remove the line that has gs.apple.com entirely or put a # at the beginning of it to comment it out
Save the file
Drag it back to the /private/etc/ folder.
You'd need to enter your username and password to authenticate the move


iTunes creates its own playlists when I add folders When I Add a number of folders to iTunes it automatically makes playlists of them which I find annoying. Can anyone help please?

It should only do that if you drag the folder to the playlists list on the left - drag to anywhere else & it doesn't.
Intentional behaviour.


Why some emoji doesn't display well on my Mac? My Mac:

And I find some emoji doesn't display well on my Mac. Check out that Link:

Emoji are a true type font in...

/Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttc

Sierra comes with version 12.0d19e1, which doesn't include the newest emoji (the ones that are displayed as square in your screenshot), unlike High Sierra, which shows the font as version 13.2d1e1 and can display those newer emoji.

You can use "Font Book.app" in the /Applications folder to preview the font.


How do you maximize windows? Unlike Windows, you cannot maximize a window in Mac with a click of the button. The little green (+) button next to the red and yellow buttons at the left of the windows does some strange stuff sometimes when you click it and doesn't do the expected operations.

How would you fully maximize a window on a Mac?

On Yosemite:

Double click the window top bar (Like in MS Windows)

or

Option-click the green dot in the top left.

On older OS X versions: Shift-click the green (+)


Will my iPhone charge slower if I connect it to my laptop? Possible Duplicate:
  Charging an iPhone, difference between USB port and power outlet

Will my iPhone charge slower if I connect it to my laptop than if I connect it directly to the plug ?

Most computer can’t charge an iPhone as rapidly as the dedicated wall chargers sold by Apple. The exception to this generalization is some macs do charge iOS devices rapidly. The iPhone 4 and most other iOS devices are designed to charge at higher currents than the baseline USB can power.

Many newer Apple products will provide up to 1100mA of charging current at 5V even though the USB specification limits current to 500mA at 5V.

This will certainly charge an iPhone 4 faster than most computers or "by the spec" USB chargers. The The iPad 10W charger is much faster than the iPhone charger so I don't know who would win in a race - a mac with extra operating current, the US iPhone adapter, the UK iPhone adapter or perhaps the Swedish iPhone adapter

The Mac/USB bus details are documented at Apple Computers and Displays: Powering peripherals through USB as well as in the iPad: Charging the battery article. The nice picture is from the "Powering through USB article".


if external disk found by terminal applescript Hey so MacBooks have this nasty habit of not mounting external disks when plugged in before... reference link

the solution is quite simple with terminal eject the disk and the manually unplug replug the drive.

I'd like to make a small AppleScript that can do the whole process of looking for the disk and if found eject it. This is what i got, but I'm stuck on recognising if the external disk is found by terminal...

tell application "Terminal"
do script "echo \"diskutil list\"" in window 1
if exists disk2 then
    do script "echo \"diskutil info disk2\"" in window 1
    do script "echo \"diskutil eject disk2\"" in window 1
    do script "echo \"diskutil list\"" in window 1
end if
end tell

the error i get is The variable disk2 is not defined.
questions are:
1) if i print the diskutil list, how would i define variables for all the external disk terminal found?
2) see if it's mounted, if not try to mount, if fails eject?

You're actually writing a shell script, and the AppleScript context seems rather superfluous at the moment.  If you're predominantly using shell commands, you may want to consider writing a shell script instead.

I've employed a little of both because they each have their usefulness in this situation: the shell commands are necessary to retrieve the disk information via diskutil, since AppleScript has no inbuilt means of getting that information by itself; but then rather than mess around with grep, awk, or sed to pattern match text from the raw output, we can invoke the -plist option to return the output as XML-formatted property list data, which AppleScript can be very good at handling.

1. Retrieving a list of local disks and volumes

Locally attached disks and volumes have a blockdevice inode in the folder /dev, so getting a list of disks is pretty easy with AppleScript:

use application "System Events"

property devices : a reference to files in folder "/dev"
property disknodes : a reference to (devices whose name begins with "disk")

set diskinfo to name of disknodes

With my USB drive attached, I get this list of inodes:

    --> {"disk0", "disk0s1", "disk0s2", "disk1", "disk1s1",
         "disk1s2", "disk1s3", "disk1s4", "disk2", "disk2s1"}

2. Isolating the desired volumes

To filter the list so that we only run the appropriate utilities on the appropriate disks or volumes, diskutil now does its part.  We can create a shell process from inside AppleScript rather than doing it via Terminal.  The relevant shell command is this:

diskutil info -plist <disk|volume>

To execute this from AppleScript, use the do shell script command:

do shell script "diskutil info -plist" & id

where id is the name of a disk retrieved from earlier and stored in diskinfo.  You can't pass in the entire list all at once, so we have to iterate through the list and run the command once for each item:

use scripting additions

delete every property list item
repeat with id in diskinfo
    set shellcmd to "diskutil info -plist " & id
    set plist to do shell script shellcmd

With the property list data returned by diskutil, AppleScript can turn it into a property list object.  The property list data returned by invoking diskutil info is all contained within a single level, so there's no hierarchy to traverse.  The great thing with property list objects is that AppleScript can transform them into a record, which then becomes really easy to retrieve values:

    make property list item with properties {name:id, text:plist}
    tell the value of property list item id as record to if ¬
        (its |Ejectable|) and (not its WholeDisk) and ¬
        (its MountPoint = "") then set the contents of id ¬
        to its {disk:ParentWholeDisk, volume:DeviceIdentifier}
end repeat

In a single line, AppleScript has read the property list data, and discarded any disk that is:

Not ejectable;
Is a "whole" disk (i.e. not a mountable volume);
Has an identifiable mount point on the system.

It also bins all the useless data we don't need, and returns only the name of the partition and its parent disk.  These will only be ejectable disks (so not the recovery and boot disks, and not your computer's hard disk), and will be mountable volumes that are not currently mounted.  For me, and my single USB drive, which I unmounted first, I got this record list back:

set unmounted to records of diskinfo
    --> {{disk:"disk2", volume:"disk2s1"}}

3. Mounting and ejecting each volume

The parsing of the data is now done, so now you can run diskutil operations on the appropriate disks.  You have the choice of either mounting individual volumes, or mounting an entire disk (which will mount all of its volumes).  The method is the same for each: iterate through our record list stored in the variable unmounted and use either the disk or the volume from each item as an argument for the appropriate shell command:

diskutil mount <volume>
diskutil mountDisk <disk>
diskutil eject <disk>

The AppleScript loop looks like this:

repeat with diskitem in unmounted
    set shellcmd to "diskutil mount " & diskitem's volume
    try
        do shell script shellcmd
    on error
        set shellcmd to "diskutil eject " & diskitem's disk
        try
            do shell script shellcmd
        end try
    end try
end repeat

do shell script returns on success the output to stdout.  After successfully mounting my disk, the messages pane in Script Editor contained:

"Volume USB on disk2s1 mounted"

I haven't instigated a situation that forces my drive not to mount, but typically, upon failure of any shell command (that is, whenever a shell command returns a non-zero status), do shell script throws an error.  This will be caught by the try block, which will redirect the script to execute another shell command responsible for ejecting the drive.  This is also in its own try block in case it, too, returns a non-zero status, in which case the script will continue onto the next volume.

Below is the final script with some additional modifications.  The script will return the original unmounted record list with extra information appended to each disk item reporting the outcome of the attempt to mount and/or eject the volume.  A complete failure will simply be reported with false.  So my final script result looked like this:

--> {{disk:"disk2", volume:"disk2s1", result:"Volume USB on disk2s1 mounted"}}

The final script

use application "System Events"

property devices : a reference to files in folder "/dev"
property disknodes : a reference to (devices whose name begins with "disk")

set diskinfo to name of disknodes

use scripting additions

delete every property list item
repeat with id in diskinfo
    set shellcmd to "diskutil info -plist " & id
    set plist to do shell script shellcmd
    make property list item with properties {name:id, text:plist}
    tell the value of property list item id as record ¬
        to if (its |Ejectable|) ¬
        and (not its WholeDisk) ¬
        and (its MountPoint = "") then set ¬
        id's contents to {disk:its ParentWholeDisk ¬
        , volume:its DeviceIdentifier ¬
        , result:missing value}
end repeat

set unmounted to records of diskinfo

repeat with diskitem in unmounted
    set shellcmd to "diskutil mount " & diskitem's volume
    try
        do shell script shellcmd
        set diskitem's result to the result
    on error
        set shellcmd to "diskutil eject " & diskitem's disk
        try
            do shell script shellcmd
            set diskitem's result to the result
        on error E
            set disk item's result to E
        end try
    end try
end repeat

return unmounted


Terminal PATH startup message I messed up when installing Cisco Packet Tracer for Linux and it some how changed a few bash files. After a few hours of looking around and changing my PATH, when I open a new Terminal window I get a message of every PATH that I've had (I think).

Last login: Wed Apr 10 14:38:52 on ttys000
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Library/TeX/texbin:/usr/local/share/dotnet:/opt/X11/bin:~/.dotnet/tools:/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/bin:/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin:/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands:/Applications/Wireshark.app/Contents/MacOS:/Applications/Xamarin Workbooks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/path-bin"; export PATH;

I have tried to reset my PATH without any luck. The same message appears. It is as if it executes it at every new session.

Which file am I suppose to change to make it work?
EDIT:
when I run as suggested: grep PATH ~/.bash_profile ~/.bash_login

I get:

Method #1, inspection of files

Depending on how the software installed it likely would've one or more of these files:

/etc/profile
/etc/bashrc
~/.bash_profile

Given it's a Linux scripted installer running on macOS it will likely have created some additional files which are typically not present on macOS but can augment the behavior of Bash when they're encountered.

~/.bashrc
/etc/profile.d/*

I'd take care to go through all these locations' files and inspect them for any residual cruft from the Linux installer.

Method #2, searching

Since you have some hints from that $PATH output you could search for files that contain bits from that string. For example:

$ grep -r '/Applications/Xamarin Workbooks.app' /etc ~

And then make note of any files that are returned. These would be the files that require repair.


iPhone 3gs 'Bricked' I have an iPhone 3gs that my friend pulled the cable out of it during a restore. It is now "Bricked",as it will not restore. I have tried restoring it myself, but now I keep getting error 37.

My iTunes version is 11.1.3. Any ideas?

Edit: The SIM card was not in the phone... could this contribute to the fact that the restore is not working? I do believe it is not unlocked.

That is Apple's solution, maybe it helps.

Check for hardware issues
Try to restore your iOS device two more times while connected with a cable, computer, and network you know are good. Also, confirm your security software and settings are allowing communication between your device and update servers. If you still see the alert when you update or restore, contact Apple support.
Common errors: 1, 10-47, 1002, 1011, 1012, 1014, 1000-1020.


How do I access Itunes U Course Manager if my country isn’t supported? I want to create a course but where I come from Itunes U Course Manager isn’t supported. I tried solving this but with no success. I use Chrome and have downloaded an extension called Bitternet which sets up a Proxy so that my IP appears to be in the US. I have also created a new apple ID which has an adress in the US but still when i try to log into the Itunes U Course Manager it says “Country not supported”.
Is there a way to bypass this?

Use a VPN.

You can use a service like TunnelBear (not affiliated) so that you can appear to be using the service from another country.

If you have a "friend" in the country of question, you can set up your own VPN (OpenVPN) between your and their locations.  This is obviously a DIY solution and you would need the requisite skills.


Can I swap the SSD from mid-2013 Macbook Air and mid-2014 Macbook Pro? I bought a Macbook Air with a 256 GB in mid 2013.

I bought a Macbook Pro with a 128 GB in mid 2014.

I'd like to swap the SSDs if possible. Are the parts compatible?

I'm looking at these two guides on iFixit.

Macbook Air 13" Mid-2013 SSD replacement
Macbook Pro 13" Mid-2014 SSD replacement

The parts look compatible, but I'd like to a little further confirmation before dissecting both of the laptops.

Additional info

I just did a speed test on each drive.

                  Model      Read        Write       Vendor
Macbook Air 13"   Mid-2013   ~750 MB/s   ~700 MB/s   Samsung/Samsung
Macbook Pro 13"   Mid-2014   ~750 MB/s   ~350 MB/s   Sandisk/Marvell

The Macbook Air's SSD has double the write speed! So if it works, I have even more (than disk capacity) to gain from making the swap.

Makes me really sad that Apple isn't more specific with these details on their website.

Tools required

              Security Bits
Macbook Air   P5 Pentalobe, T5 Torx
Macbook Pro   T5 Torx

I ordered the iFixit 54-Bit Driver Kit which includes the tools I'll need to try this.

I'll post the results here once I attempt the surgery!

It doesn't work

My Pentalobe and Torx bits arrived today and I tried swapping the drives. When I put the 256 GB drive in my Macbook Pro, it doesn't boot and displays this image

I tried holding down opt to boot to a usb drive and do a fresh install of Mavericks on the drive.

When I attempt to boot from the USB drive, the crossed out circle image is displayed again.

I've also tried holding down shift during boot to boot into safe mode. The neutral gray screen displays for a longer time, but eventually the crossed out circle appears again.


Kindle books on another iCloud account If I add another iCloud account to my iPhone, will I be able to access my kindle books on that iCloud account?

The login information is discrete for Amazon Kindle and Apple iCloud. You may need to re-login to your Kindle account, but the iCloud account shouldn't effect it any other way.


Connect MiniDv camcorder via USB C & Firewire or MiniDisplay port I'm looking to transfer MiniDv tapes to my 2017 Macbook Pro via a USB C connection. The camcorder has a Firewire 4-pin connection. Therefore I'll need a few converters in order to be able to import to my Macbook Pro. I'm wondering what adapters will work.

I understand that worst case I'll need a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter and then a Thunderbolt to USB C adapter. I'm wondering if there might be cheaper option...

Would I be able to use an adapter like this which is a Mini DisplayPort to USB C instead of the $50 Apple Thunderbolt to USB C.

I know that Mini DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 1 inputs are the same shape, but will an adapter like I linked above be able to handle the transfer of video from my camcorder to laptop?

I understand that worst case I'll need a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter and then a Thunderbolt to USB C adapter.

No.  You will need a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter and then a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter.

USB-C is only the connector type, it’s still a Thunderbolt port.

You can’t use a mini DisplayPort cable because you’d be missing the Thunderbolt signaling.  Yes the, the physical connectors are the same, it doesn't mean all the connector pins are there.  Remember, DisplayPort is a component signal/protocol of Thunderbolt.  In other words, a a Thunderbolt cable will support mDP, but an mDP cable doesn’t support Thunderbolt.


Audio output gone, "internal speaker" device disappeared A few days ago, my MacBook Air (13", mid-2011) running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 (17E199) would no longer produced any sound, neither through its built-in speakers nor the headphone jack.

Pressing the volume keys on the keyboard brings up the volume overlay, but with a stop sign underneath, and none of the keys have any effect.

The volume (speaker) icon in the menu bar is greyed-out, and its volume slider is disabled. Option-clicking displays both input and output as grayed-out, with no devices shown.

To be clear: It's not about audio being distorted or noisy or flaky or weird; I don't have any audio output at all.

Apparently, my machine no longer has an audio output device.

Editors, please keep reading before you mark this as a dupe: I am aware that this issue has been asked here many times, but none of the suggested fixes work, so I'm kind of trying to pull all the bits and pieces into a single coherent post.

Trying to fix the issue, I tried all of the following (suggested here and elsewhere), sometimes repeatedly, with no luck:

Rebooted the machine (duh); checked if my OS is up-to-date (it is)
Plugged a headphone jack in and out repeatedly, also jiggling it around a little, as people have been suggesting that the jack's internal switch may sometimes get stuck and cause this issue
Checked the system prefs for sound/audio, which would normally let me select "Internal speakers" as the default output device. But there is no such option, nor any other device to choose from (the selector window is just completely empty)
Launching audio/MIDI setup (which showed up with an empty main window), I tried to set up a "main device", which worked, but it said that the main device was not available/present (or something to the effect that the hardware in question is apparently AWOL)
Tried fixing permissions on the main volume (but learned that this isn't even possible anymore on Sierra)
Did both a PRAM/NVRAM and SMC reset
Rebooted into hardware test mode and did both the normal and extended tests; both found "no trouble"

Other than this issue, my machine is completely fine, both hardware and software wise.

Now I’m all out of ideas.

Of course I may also have damaged the sound hardware, but that wouldn't make any sense. First of all, I did nothing to the machine that could have caused this. It was sitting comfortably on my desk all the time. Second, a hardware malfunction would surely result in some kind of problem being reported on the OS side, or would it?

The only thing left that comes to mind is that the audio device driver at kernel or IO device level may have become corrupted or disabled. Could this happen? (If so, how? I haven't changed any system settings, installed any software (especially no "flaky" ones) or did anything else unusual). How could I check for and fix this?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Update, thanks Allan]

The output of running system_profiler SPAudioDataType is

Audio:
Devices:
    Hauptgerät:
      Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
      Current SampleRate: 0
      Transport: Unknown

My situation was NEARLY as you described -the issue was on a mid 2011 27" iMac. I had recently replaced/upgraded the original 1TB HDD with a 4TB HDD thinking/hoping it would resolve a problem with vertical lines on my monitor. It did just that, briefly, but then about a day later, the problem returned. I swallowed hard, opened up the iMac again, and replaced the graphics card, upgrading from the original 1GB to an AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB. To do that, it was necessary to completely remove the logic board as the graphics board connectors are on the back of the logic board (thanks a lot Apple!). It all went back together well, and everything but sound is perfect. It's possible that I could have damaged the logic board at some point, but it seems likely something else given the number of complaints about this with nothing being done internally. Whereas the original poster had NO system out options, I had one - digital output. Internal speakers option had disappeared, although internal microphone and line input functions remained normal.

All the tricks described in detail in others places failed to work, headphones connected to the jack do NOT function, but using a Bose wireless Bluetooth headphone works normally. The solution for me was rather than pour any more $$ into this old machine that is no longer my primary computer was to purchase and pair a Bose portable speaker with the iMac. The sound is much improved over the old internal speakers, I can leave it on it's charging pad to have continuous sound, and I can take the speaker anywhere I want pairing it to the iPhone X or an iPad.

The only thing bugging me is that I couldn't figure it out, but not worth wasting any time over either. Hope you've solved your problem.


Time Machine doesn't backup folders with same name as user Let's say my OS X user's folder is called Attila and I have a folder with the same name in a folder, e.g. ~/Xcode/Attila/. Now, if I do a Time Machine backup, the ~/Xcode/Attila/ folder won't be copied.

Why is it? Is there a workaround to fix this?

(OS X version: 10.8.3)

EDIT

tmutil removeexclusion doesn't seem to work in this case:

EDIT 2

Might not be relevant, but my user account was migrated from a Time Machine backup.

I am assuming you have already checked in in System Preferences > Time Machine > Options to ensure those folders have not been excluded?

We can then use the tmutil utility to find out some more information about this.

From Terminal enter this command:

tmutil isexcluded ~/Xcode/Attila

This will tell you whether it has been excluded from Time Machine backup or not. If it lists

[Excluded]    /Users/Attila/Xcode/Attila

You can then remove it from the exclusions list by running

sudo tmutil removeexclusion -p ~/Xcode/Attila

For more information on tmutil, check out its documentation


booting linux from external drive on mac I had Linux installed on USB using pure EFI boot. I had been using this tutorial.

Everything was working flawlessly to the moment of installing Windows using Mac Boot Camp. Now I don't see the EFI disk anymore. Is there any chance of getting it back without deleting all files on my external drive with Linux?

The instructions you have linked to seems to modify the first partition on the flash drive. This changes the partition from an EFI type to a HFS+ type. This modification should not have been altered when Windows was installed. The only plausible explanation I can deduce is you made the modification to the first partition of the internal drive instead.

You should be able to make repairs by executing the steps starting at the beginning of section titled "The manual boot"

Just as a personal note. The author of the linked site has posted a unnecessarily complex solution to a problem that no longer exists with the introduction of Ubuntu 18.


Why my photos are missing in iPhoto events but not in Aperture projects? All my iPhoto events are empty. If I open a event there are no photos in it. But when I use the Photos perspective I can see all my photos!

In Aperture I see all my photos in the Photos perspective and in projects (= iPhoto events).

How I can repair my iPhoto library?

I already tried to repair and rebuild my hole library with iPhoto an Aperture!

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In Library Manager it's the FIle -> Rebuild command)

This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.


Supplemental update stuck on installation screen - how to break free? Mojave, Mac Mini late 2014.

Tried to install Supplemental Update 2, but it froze. Progress bar was only 1 cm. After 2.5 hours, forced it shut, then used CMD+ALT+P+R and now progress bar slowly got to the end, filling entire bar... and stuck.

Forced it shut again, then tried to reach both Recovery Mode and Safe Mode.
It will not go there, just keeps installing.

It has been several hours since leaving it to do it and no changes at all. Progress bar is full, but nothing happens.

At this point I just want to break free from installation screen and get to my files. Is there any way to do this or do I really have to go to technican?

In general, Apple software updates will try again and if you’re stuck, you’ll eventually need to power off the machine and risk leaving the disk in a bad state.

I would power down and try restarting and see how it goes. Worst case, use Internet Recovery when you can to install whatever version of OS you want. As long as you don’t install an older version, your data should all be intact. Command R is the usual command to initiate internet recovery when you hear the power on chime or see the Mac start to power up.

Sometimes booting in Safe Mode (hold shift) can get past an install that’s staged, so that’s a long shot if you don’t want to seek hardware service or have a bootable OS brought to the mac so you can triage further.


Booting up gets hung up at around 50% I have a 2008-era 15-inch MacBook Pro, with Yosemite on it. The battery recently failed and, using only the power adapter, with the battery removed, the status bar gets stuck at 50%.

Is it only a battery issue, or is this a different problem?

Follow those instructions for single-user-mode, then when you are done, type "exit" and copy some of the first few lines of the output - on paper if you need to. I'm mentioning this because I skipped the exit step a few times, but more interesting things might come up there. When I brought the lines with me and showed them to the Apple tech (genius) he recognized them right away and knew what had to be done (clean OS install). Back up what you can and what you know is good; my hard drives were fine, but I didn't want whatever was causing the problem.


Any way to make a transparent Keynote background? Longtime Keynote user, and I'm starting to turn many of my Keynotes into movies that I can drop into Screenflow (a video editing app). I'm doing a lot of animated text instruction videos, and wondering if there's a way to create a keynote that has a clear transparent background, so that if I add other images into the Screenflow timeline, they can appear in the background of the Keynote movie. I'm pretty sure the answer is no, but I wanted to ask. Adding text into Screenflow is 10x slower than Keynote. Keynote really is the best text animator I've found for videos.

Screenflow supports Chroma Key, to automatically remove the background of your video.

In your Keynote presentation, open the Format inspector and choose Edit Master Slide.
For each master slide in use, set the slide background to green, then choose Done.

When you import your Keynote video into Screenflow, select the video and under Video Properties, add a Video Filter for Chroma Key.

Screenflow - Using Chroma Key


set PATH in terminal OS X 10.11.3 I need to set path /usr/local/gnupg-2.1/bin to the command line.

I tried to enter "export PATH=/usr/local/gnupg-2.1/bin:$PATH" in the command line, but it works until the terminal session ends.

I tried to create .bash_profile, but I don't know how to create hidden file, where to put it, and what it should contain?

Open your terminal an paste de following command:

echo "export PATH=/usr/local/gnupg-2.1/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile

This will create the file .bash_profile if does not exists and append your command at the end if the file exists.

To create a hidden file you just need to prepend a dot (.) in the file name when you save it (profile -> .profile). That's all you need.


2 apps, diffrent audio ouputs? I would like to play music (nuryl) on the bluetooth speaker (for my son), while listening to a different app (siriusxm) via headphones. Possible? Iphone 6S.
Thank you for any information.

No - the system controls the output so it’s not easy for an app to remember a different output and override the system choice.

Unless Apple releases a new version of Workflow or some automation for iOS, you can’t script a change to the output device and then launch an app.


Map Control+Delete to Forward Delete I use a wireless Apple keyboard at home and a wired (full sized) one at work. Now I constantly get confused when I want to do a forward delete, since I'm used to the fn+delete combination.

Is it possible to somehow map control+delete to do the same thing? (control is in the same location as fn on the full size keyboard)

You can do this with Karabiner with a private.xml such as this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Forward Delete with ⌃⌫</name>
    <identifier>private.ctrlbackspace</identifier>
    <autogen>
      __KeyToKey__
      KeyCode::DELETE, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE,
      KeyCode::FORWARD_DELETE
    </autogen>
  </item>
</root>


Is there a way to sync Lion's Reading List across two or more Macs? For example: if I add a URL to the Reading List on my iMac, can it then be synced to the Reading List on my MacBook? It does not appear so even though I believe Reading List is going to sync with iOS 5 devices? (if it is not officially supported, is there a hack to do so)?

Syncing between all macs, pcs and iOS devices will be possible when iCloud is released to the public along with iOS 5.


Viewer for HEIF/HEIC images in El Capitan or Sierra Is there any "native way" to view the new HEIF/HEIC format (or the viewer-application) in El Capitan or Sierra without upgrade of MacOS itself? It is not yet possible to upgrade yet to HighSierra for me, but I'd like to natively view images from iPhone 8 and up generation, avoiding conversions to JPG.

There been questions asked about convertors of .heic to .jpg, but I don't think it's reasonable to convert images (via the means of online convertors, specialized apps, Dropbox, etc.). Soon or later .heic support will become normal, and all the online services and applications will finish the transition, so obviously there will be no need to convert to JPG.

The question: Is there any way to install some kind of plugin or extension to MacOS to support HEIF/HEIC within the Preview App, or it may be there are good applications alike XnView or analogues, which support it out of the box?

The current version of Graphic Converter (from https://www.lemkesoft.de, free trial available) supports HEIC format.  I did not try it in Sierra or El Capitan, but the description says: MacOS 10.9 or later.


Restrict "Find My" on kids' iPad Is there any way to restrict access to the Find My app on my kids' iPads? I'm concerned about the possibility of precocious six-year-olds marking their parents' devices as lost or remote wiping them.

I took some time to research this.  It doesn't appear that you can disable 'Find My' using the Apple Parental Controls.

It seems strange to me that this isn't possible but I couldn't find any authoritative way to prevent changes in this app.

Using the regular Parental Controls on your child's iPad allows you to prevent changes to many system settings and apps so I would recommend doing that, at a minimum.  Also, there might be 3rd-party apps that provide more granular control, for a price, but that's a space that I don't know much about.


Using applescript with Calendar in El Capitan I've been trying for weeks to script an ipad restore process for Apple Configurator 2.  My script works fine when ran within Script Editor, and it also works as a stand alone application.  The problem occurs when my script is launched from a Calendar event (which is the whole idea so I don't have to run it manually).  Here is the first part of my script:

tell application "Apple Configurator 2"
activate
delay 30
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Apple Configurator 2"
        keystroke "a" using {command down}
        delay 5
        click menu item "1 - Erase" of menu 1 of menu item "Apply" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Actions" of menu bar 1
        delay 5
        click button "Apply" of sheet 1 of window "All Devices"
    end tell
end tell

The script triggers just fine, and all is working until it attempts to click the "Apply" button.  My script application returns this error:
Can't get window "All Devices" of <> "Apple Configurator 2" of application
"System Events".

System Events got an error: Can't get window "All
Devices" of process "Apple Configurator 2". (-1728)

As an Applescript newbie, I'm out of ideas. Anybody else?
Thanks!

Code does not work as is. I have tested this and it works.

tell application "Apple Configurator 2"
activate
delay 30
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "a" using {command down}
    delay 5
    click menu item "1 - Erase" of menu 1 of menu item "Apply" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Actions" of menu bar 1
    delay 5
    click button "Apply" of sheet 1 of window "All Devices"
end tell
end tell


Does OSX suffer from bad performance over multiple OS upgrading processes? I started with Leopard OSX, then upgraded to Snow Leopard, then upgraded to Lion.

Now Mountain Lion is unleashed. Is it recommended to make a fresh install or upgrading is just fine?

Does OSX suffer from bad performance over multiple OS upgrading processes?

As a rule, the OS takes care of itself. An upgrade both ensures the core OS is intact, but also disables code that is too old to run.

If you would have done a clean install anyhow - lots of slowness, crashiness, etc. Then that's the reason to do a clean install. In the past (10.4 and earlier) the install process was different than the migration assistant but as the migration assistant has matured, it now runs anytime you upgrade so unless you hand migrate files and preferences, there is no difference between a clean install and an upgrade in place (assuming you select apps and settings in the assistant).

I personally love a clean install and using all the defaults for a week. Consciously installing just what I need feels "right" for me and if I end up missing everything, I can always wipe and migrate the entire setup a week I to using the new OS.

In summary, for most users, the changes in the OS have disabled the worst offenders in terms of performance, and gatekeeper keeps most old apps from running until you explicitly allow them to run. If you have performance issues, you can always flip that switch and reboot to isolate the cause of slowness.


Do iPhone chargers need any certification to correctly work? Since lightning cables need MFi certification, I would like to know if wall (and car) chargers need this or any certification too to get all features like fast charging.

It is not necessary that the charger is MFI certified to work at all, nor is it necessary to get fast charging working. Depending on the model of your iPhone and iPad, you can use a standard USB-C charger to charge the device - fast or slow.


How can I whitelist applications for users? We had few MacBooks where users without admin rights had Parental Control turned on and could open only whitelisted apps. It was working very well and it was everything we needed really.

With macOS 10.15, Catalina, update Parental Control is gone and all we have now is Time Screen which doesn't do anything like Parental Control. All I can do is time limit to (not every) application and I can't whitelist any applications, or set time limit to 0:00.

Is there any other solution to restrict user to use only whitelisted apps?

Under Screen Time there's a setting called "Downtime", it's for specifically for white-listing apps and you could schedule it by day. Any new apps introduced will be blacklisted by default, at least that's the way it works on iOS.


Can FileVault protect a macOS partition from a Ubuntu partition? I’m working on setting up Ubuntu dual-boot on my MacBook Pro, and I’m terrified of doing something that breaks one or more of the systems now on my computer (like an rm -rf that manages to hit both partitions somehow). I was thinking, would encrypting the macOS partition with FileVault serve to prevent Ubuntu from accidentally doing something to it, or is that not how any of this works?

The are four types of Apple partitions that are commonly used:

Apple_HFS (MacOS Extended Journaled)
Apple_Boot (MacOS Extended Journaled used for Recovery)
Core Storage
APFS

These partition either can not be mount by Ubuntu are can be mounted as Read Only. So there is no danger of Ubuntu overwriting a macOS volume.

  Note: Most Linux (including Ubuntu) can write to non-encrypted Apple_HFS partitions if journaling is turned off. A macOS installation will always have journalling enabled by default.


Which 27" iMac can be used as external display on a MaBook Pro Mid 2015? What is the latest 27" iMac model which can be used as an external display on a MaBook Pro 15" Mid 2015?

And can I run latest macOS on both MBP and iMac to have this working or need to use older macOS?

From Apple KB: Use your iMac as a display

  Target Display Mode isn’t supported on iMac models with Retina display. Only iMac (27-inch, Late 2009), iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010), and iMac (Mid 2011 to Mid 2014) support Target Display Mode.

That's it, just those iMacs, so Mid 2014 would be the latest.

After comments: It seems you additionally need to be on High Sierra or lower, support has been dropped in recent OSes - From Apple KB: Use your iMac as a display with target display mode

  Make sure that your iMac is using macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 or earlier. You can't use target display mode with later versions of macOS, or with Boot Camp and Windows.