Confusion about installing ESXi on Apple hardware I am confused about VMware and/or Apple's commitment to supporting ESXi running natively on Apple
hardware.
According to VMware, there are only 8 Apple products that support running ESXi natively (see table below).  Only 5 of these are Mac Pros and of those, none are the current model of the Mac Pro (MacPro 7,1).
Additionally, from my own experimenting around, any version of ESXi (up to and including 7.0b) fails to successfully install on a Mac that already has Big Sur installed.  It boots and the ESXi installer runs, but ultimately it fails.
And since Big Sur has been out for 5 months and no version of ESXi (that I am aware of) will install on a machine running that, I have to conclude that VMware and/or Apple isn't serious about supporting ESXi natively on Apple hardware.
My plan was to purchase Apple hardware (a rack mounted Mac Pro) so I could run, among other OSes, a virtual Mac.  But this goal is looking more and more unrealistic.
Have I missed something?  Are people out there successfully installing ESXi over their MacPro7,1 machine's Mac OS Big Sur (specifically Big Sur)?  Has anyone successfully installed any version of ESXi on top of Big Sur running on any Mac (i.e. not necessarily the MacPro 7,1)? And if people are able to do this, how are they doing it?  I have been using UNetbootin to create bootable flash drives from ESXi ISO images.  These all boot and run the ESXi installer (regardless of ESXi version), but the ESXi installer never completes successfully.
And... when I say "on top of" I mean replacing the existing Big Sur OS with ESXi such that booting the machine takes you straight into ESXi.

I don't believe that Apple has any goal of supporting ESXi natively. Officially Apple supports installation of macOS and Windows via bootcamp on certain Apple hardware, afiak.
I believe the ball is in VMware's court: if VMware wants to include support for Apple hardware configurations they're free to do so. They even might get lucky and an Apple product matches a hardware configuration that they already support. I'm not aware of Apple contributing to the VMware code, and from what I understand Apple is not likely to design a hardware configuration specifically around the ability to support existing ESXi code.
If you want to run VMWare guest operating systems on Apple hardware that isn't explicitly supported by VMWare for ESXi you might want to investigate if VMWare Fusion meets your requirements.


Check Network requests happening from iPad without any proxy setting changes Can we check network requests of an application whose bundle identifier is known?

Note: Application is not created by us - its from another third party. We don't have code we just have ipa and we have installed it on iPad.

I am aware of Charles and other third parties that use proxies. In my case I don't have admin rights and we dont want to play with proxy.

It is not possible to do so directly on the iPad without using a proxying or VPN app such as Charles.

Instead you'll need to use tools on the network itself to inspect and check the network request from your app. You can use standard tools such as a PC/Mac with Wireshark connected to the same ethernet segment to inspect the packages. Note that most apps today use encrypted communication. As it is your own app, you might have the option to disable encryption or you have the encryption keys from the server, so that you can decrypt traffic within Wireshark.


Most Compatible Software for MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014) I managed to upgrade to Sierra 10.12.6. Whats the next step for me? MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014) Processor: 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5 Memory: 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB
I want to have the latest yet most compatible software! Catalina from Appstore is still not installing '...target volume failed' Should I download a previous software (High Sierra or Mojave) the same way I downloaded Sierra? If yes then which one is the best one for my MacBook and its health...? also do you have a download link for your recommendation?

MacBook Air Early 2014 allows to update to macOS Catalina (10.15), even the yet unreleased macOS BigSur (11.0) will run on it.
I suggest to use macOS Recovery installer with
opt + cmd + R during a restart to upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.


How to browse iPod from terminal How should I use the terminal to browse and manage my iPod Touch? I mean is there any way to do this just with terminal, not with installing MobileTerminal or something like that, or sshing into the iPod.

Enable disk mode, then in terminal

$ cd /Volumes

then:

$ ls

and then cd into the directory that's your iPod.
From there, you can use ls and cd to browse your iPod from Terminal.


How to allow standard user to install software in Sierra? Thank you in advance for the wealth of knowledge on this site.  I am setting up a new MacBook Pro with Sierra and need to ensure the standard user account is able to install software and make changes to printing.  Besides these two items it needs to be a standard account.  With the research I have done it seems the security authorizationdb would be used however I am unsure on how to use this command correctly.  Can someone please advise on how to achieve this?

There is this jamf post. The solution there is to tweak 1th. the authorisation database an 2th. allow standard users to add/remove printers by adding them to the lpadmin group.

security authorizationdb write system.preferences allow

security authorizationdb write system.preferences.printing allow

dseditgroup -o edit -a $username -t user lpadmin

Refs:
JAMF
DSSW

terminal macos


How do I limit caching in Mail for Mavericks? I have a really low capacity MacBook Air. Earlier this year, I discovered I could keep it usable without a bunch of "running low on disk space" warnings by limiting the caching performed by Safari and Mail. In Safari it was easy, it's in Preferences, but in Mail it was a bit buried - select the account, advanced tab, and then "don't keep copies of any messages".

Problem is, it seems like in Mavericks this preference is gone. Is there an equivalent? I'm out of room on my Air once again.

With GMail, you can slightly aleivate this problem with:

Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > Folder Size Limits > Limit IMAP folders to contain no more than this many messages = 1000

Also, in Mac Mail you can still disable Automatically download attachments.

This will leave you with the text of latest 1000 messages from each GMail label.


Where in the file system is my shared folder? (AKA: Where is /Volume, and Why Can't I Open It in Finder?) I want to run a bash script periodically to track the size of a shared drive on my network. The command that produces the data I want is du -sh. I have created a Login item to mount the shared drive when I login using System Preferences. I mount the drive as follows:

cifs://raspberrypi3b.local/passport2tb/data_lib

I have tried numerous variations for specifying the folder location for du, but none of them work properly. I get the following error message:

  du: //raspberrypi3b.local/passport2tb/data_lib: No such file or directory

It seems there is no folder path specification that du (or bash) can find. Yet, I know the share is mounted. I can get the stats using File, Get Info in Finder  (commandI).

Where in the file system is my shared folder?

The folder you are looking for is under /Volumes in your file system. /Volumes is sometimes called a hidden file in MacOS parlance.

Using Finder with Hidden Files:

There are at least two ways to expose hidden files in Finder:

Use the Finder menu to navigate to arbitrary folders:  Go, Go to Folder..., (ALTERNATIVELY: shiftcommandG), and then enter /Volumes in the text box. Of course this method requires that you know the name of the file/directory you're looking for, but once that's known this will get you there.
If you're running macos Sierra (or later), you can view all hidden files/folders in Finder like so: shiftcommand. (shift-command-period). Repeating this sequence will hide the hidden folders again.

Note: To see /Volumes using the 2nd method, you must position Finder at the proper place in the file system; i.e. at the Macintosh HD level (selected from Finder's sidebar if you have it enabled!).

Once Finder has listed the hidden file/folder of interest, use the menu (File, Get Info) or shortcut (commandI) to yield the info window with lots of handy information.

At this point, your questions re. Finder and hidden files have hopefully been answered. Now let's move on to the rest of your question re. how to display usage stats from the command line:

Hidden Files from the Command Line:

Open a terminal window (bash is the default macos shell). Just like every (?) other *nix system in the universe, the file system root is simply known as /. So, let's see what's in /:

$ ls -l /
total 13
drwxrwxr-x+ 80 root  admin  2560 Mar 17 18:42 Applications
drwxr-xr-x+ 64 root  wheel  2048 Feb  4 01:43 Library
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    64 Feb  4 01:39 Network
drwxr-xr-x@  5 root  wheel   160 Sep 21 05:05 System
drwxr-xr-x   7 root  admin   224 Feb  4 01:39 Users
drwxr-xr-x@  4 root  wheel   128 Mar 17 22:48 Volumes
drwxr-xr-x@ 37 root  wheel  1184 Feb  8 02:57 bin
drwxrwxr-t   2 root  admin    64 Feb  4 01:39 cores
dr-xr-xr-x   3 root  wheel  4512 Mar 17 12:17 dev
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 root  wheel    11 Feb  4 01:37 etc -> private/etc
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     1 Mar 17 22:10 home
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   313 Aug 18  2018 installer.failurerequests
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     1 Mar 17 22:10 net
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel    96 Sep 26  2016 opt
drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel   192 Feb  4 01:39 private
drwxr-xr-x@ 64 root  wheel  2048 Feb  8 02:57 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 root  wheel    11 Feb  4 01:37 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 root  wheel   320 Feb  4 01:44 usr
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 root  wheel    11 Feb  4 01:38 var -> private/var
$

Listed here are all of your files and folders, including links, and the hidden files, including /Volumes. If this makes you wonder about the conventional wisdom (or current practice) re. "ease of use" for Graphical User Interfaces (GUI), then you are on the right track :) But I digress...

Now, take a look to verify that your mounted shares are listed under /Volume. In your case, assuming your raspberrypi share is the only one mounted, you'll see something similar to this:

$ ls -l /Volumes
total 32
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root    wheel      1 Mar 17 12:17 Macintosh HD -> /
d--x--x--x+ 2 macusr  wheel     64 Mar 17 12:18 passport2tb
drwx------  1 macusr  staff  16384 Mar  4 23:56 passport2tb-1
$

The first line is a link showing the mapping from the Macintosh HD to the file system root /. The second line will show your mounted network drive, but note the permissions - you won't be able to use this one. It's apparently an artifact. I don't know why it's there other than to set the executable permission bit for the folder; perhaps someone else can offer an explanation? At any rate, while we needn't be overly concerned about why it's there, automating this task will require that we identify the correct share name.

Automating the process via bash script:

The correct share name can be found as follows:

$ ls -l /Volumes | grep drwx | head -1 | awk '{print $9}'
drwx------  1 macusr  staff  16384 Mar  4 23:56 passport2tb-1
passport2tb-1
$

To recap: grep will filter the output of ls -l to get the actual share (instead of the artifact), head -1 will filter duplicates (which may show up as passport2tb-2, etc) and awk '{print $9}' will get the 9th field in the string which is the share name. If you have other shares mounted in /Volumes, simply add another grep stage to get the one(s) you're interested in.

Knowing the location of your mounted share will allow you to successfully execute the du command to display the usage statistics of any folder in the mounted share; for example:

$ du -sh /Volumes/passport2tb-1/data_lib
 75G    /Volumes/passport2tb-1/data_lib
$

In this case, the folder data_lib folder contains 75GB of data... and this may take a few minutes to tally, even on a fast network.

Some command line gymnastics that might be useful:

If you don't want/need the path information in du, use awk to strip it:

$ du -sh /Volumes/passport2tb-1/data_lib | awk '{print $1}'
75G
$

And if you don't want the "G":

$ du -sh /Volumes/passport2tb-1/data_lib | awk '{print $1}' | cut -d "G" -f 1
75
$

To wrap this up in a script:

#!/bin/bash
SHRNM=$(ls -l /Volumes | grep drwx | head -1 | awk '{print $9}')
SIZE=$(du -sh /Volumes/$SHRNM/data_lib | awk '{print $1}' | cut -d "G" -f 1)
echo $SIZE

Finally: Save it, name it, make it executable, and add it to your crontab to be executed periodically.

This answer has gotten long-winded, so I'll leave this as an exercise for the reader.


Restarted phone now its stuck in a loop I restarted my iPhone 6s and it went to the apple logo then went off and will repeatedly do so when on charge. It is a black screen unless I click the power button when off the charger in which case it also only shows the apple symbol. Granted it's three years old. Is this the end of its life or something I can fix ???

Force restart it
 To force restart or hard reset your device, press and hold the
 Sleep/Wake and Home buttons simultaneously for at least ten seconds.
 After about ten seconds, you should see the Apple logo and can
 release the buttons.
If you have the iTunes app at your PC/iMac?? Restore your
 iPhone through iTunes. S O S ..before restoring it you have to back
 it up to iTunes or iCloud.


Help Creating a Smart Playlist I am hoping someone can help me with a smart playlist creation question.

I have two smart playlists (A and B)

Playlist A contains songs that are
"singles" (meaning I don't have the
full album) and are not in playlist B
Playlist B contains songs in my
Library that are rated 5-stars

I would like to create playlist C that includes all songs for a specific genre in playlist A and B.

This sounds simple, but if an artist is in Playlist A and B, I can't get the songs in Playlist B to appear.

Before creating a playlist, you have to separate the items into very small pieces, otherwise, you risk contradicting yourself.

  Playlist A contains songs that are
  "singles" (meaning I don't have the
  full album) and are not in playlist B

Why are you using “not in playlist B”? I assume you want to have a list of ’singles’ that are 1-4 stars rated. Why not add that to the conditions?

Now your “A" list should be the same as before, but doesn’t mention B at all.

Now you happen to have a list “B” that has 5 rated songs (the good ones!).

And now you want your less than 5 rated singles (A) of “XX Genre”, and your 5 star ones…

As easy as it sounds, in practice it’s more difficult… because what sounds like “this and that” is not really like that.

Let me try to replicate.

My “A” playlist is (I’ve used Track = 1 but I’m sure your condition to determine singles is different and I’m taking 0,1,2 and 3 stars)

My B playlist is easier:

Now I have a C one… that contains tracks from A that have a “Rock” genre:

We’re getting close!

Now we need to group B and C into a single D playlist to enjoy the Joy of single Rocks and 5 start songs!

Here’s our D list:

And that’s it. Now two things are important:

This song must always be in any playlist or you’re doing it wrong.
If you also want to include the “genre” in the B playlist (is not clear), then modify B playlist to also have a “rock” genre.

Ahhh the joy of playlists. :)

EDIT: You specified two pseudo-contradictory things, but here’s the idea:

  Playlist B contains songs in my Library that are rated 5-stars

cannot be intersected with:

  all songs for a specific genre in playlist A and B.

In order to achieve that, you’ll have to modify (or create a B2) list that is:

Match All of the following rules:
“Rating is *****”
Genre is “Rock”

You can’t modify a previous list from a new. This is not a relational database. Smart lists only work as far as simple pascal logic goes. True/False/Intersection/Union…

If you don’t want to change your B playlist (because you use it for something else), go ahead and create B2 and make it include “all from B” and “Genre is rock” and use that B2 in your final “D” creation, much like we created the “C” list, which is pretty much “A” with Rock Genre.


Duplicating images and resizing one of the copies in Automator I am trying to create an Automator action for a workflow I often need for web publishing:

Select some images inside Aperture
Export two copies of the original image with different resizing settings applied (say, a 1000 px version for viewing and a 150 px thumbnail)
Rename the exported copies, prompting me for a file name

I have not yet found a possibility to actually duplicate input files and then work with one of the duplicates in finder. Using the following sequence of actions results in the error message "could not access the needed files":

Select Finder objects
Scale images (to 1000 px)
Duplicate Finder objects (the idea is that the duplicate should remain at 1000 px and the subsequent edits only affect the copy)
Scale images (to thumbnail size)

Any ideas what's wrong here? I suspect that the duplicate action doesn't return any file handles to the next one, but I could be wrong.

This workflow seems to have worked for me, is this what you did?


Repeating /Systems/Volumes/Data/Systems/Volumes/Data I'm using ncdu to see where my storage space is going, and noticed a seemingly endless file path it seems to be traversing:

/System/Volumes/Data/System/Volumes/Data/System/Volumes/Data/System/Volumes/Data/System/Volumes...

This file path doesn't actually exist if I try to cd in there (thank goodness):

$ ls -lshart /System/Volumes/Data/System/
total 0
0 drwxr-xr-x@  3 root  wheel    96B Aug 24  2019 .
0 drwxr-xr-x   9 root  wheel   288B Sep 29  2019 Library
0 drwxr-xr-x  26 root  wheel   832B Apr 20 02:15 ..

But it does seem that I'm inexplicably using more data than I think I am; ncdu says I'm using about 40GB under the user space, and I try to keep the machine fairly uncluttered. XCode and Docker are the largest applications of the few I have, by far.

For example, ncdu is telling me I'm using 487GB (and counting), while the machine has only an 120GB SSD:

Total items: 17767208 size: 484.7 GiB

On Catalina 1.15.4.

Related: What's /System/Volumes/Data?

This is a problem with firmlinks which are used by macOS and not supported by ncdu.
You can use ncdu --exclude /System/Volumes/Data -x / on macOS Catalina to avoid the problem and scan the whole file system.


How can you open a video on your desktop at a specific time using terminal? I wanted to know if it was possible to open a mp4 file located on my desktop right at a specific time of the video (e.g. 1 hour 10 minutes 30 seconds) using the terminal?
$ open /Volumes/USERNAME/Desktop/lecture.mp4
This works for starting at the beginning of the video.
But how could I include a specific time (hours, minutes, seconds) at where the video opens/starts at?

If you have the VLC media player installed, you can run the following example  compound command in Terminal to start playing the video file at the 1 hour 10 minutes 30 seconds mark:
open -a /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC '/path/to/name.mp4' --args --start-time 4230

Showing on two lines to see the whole compound command:
open -a /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC \
    '/path/to/name.mp4' --args --start-time 4230

Using the default macOS open command to open VLC and pass it the --start-time option, the value of which is expressed in seconds.
open options:

-a application -- Specifies the application to use for opening the file.
--args -- All remaining arguments are passed to the opened application in the argv parameter to main(). These arguments are not opened or interpreted by the open tool.

VLC option:

--start-time  -- Starts the video here; the integer is the number of seconds from the beginning (e.g. 1:30 is written as 90).

See also: Documentation:Command line


Since upgrade to iOS my phone does not remember position in audiobooks I upgraded my iPhone 3GS to iOS 6 from iOS 5 last week.

Since then the phone doesn't remember its position in audiobooks any more and most often (sometimes it remembers the position) starts at the beginning of a chapter near my last position. This happens whether or not the phone was turned off between plays.

Also, the phone forgot its ringtone and when I configured it to use my ringtone again, it suddenly started playing it very loudly despite the fact that it was set to mute. It also wouldn't stop playing it for several seconds even though I returned to the home screen and pressed the on/off button a few times.

Are these issues with iOS 6, new "features" or problems with my old phone?

I found this solution to work:

Plug in your iPhone (or iPod or else, here we'll assume an iPhone) , fire iTunes
In iTunes, select all the songs in your Music (not in your iPhone)
Right-click and choose "Get Info"
On the window appearing, choose the "Option" Tab and select "Yes" for "Remember Playback Position"
Click OK to save and then synchronize your iPhone (depending on your iPhone synchronization settings, it should take over the changes from your Music to your device)


Can the component AV cable and the HDMI cable mirror third party apps on TV? So I heard of the following:

1) the component AV cable and the HDMI cable for iPad 1 cannot show the game play (3rd party apps) on TV.  Those 2 cables can only show movies and photos -- that's it.

2) The HDMI cable for iPad 2 can do 100%, exact mirroring NO MATTER WHAT THE APP IS.  Whatever shows on iPad 2's screen, it will show.

Are the above 2 facts true?  And what about Component AV cables for iPad 2, can it do 100% mirroring or is it limited to movies and photos?  thanks.

Number 1 is exactly true, unless the developer chose to output the gameplay through the cable. A few games do this, but most do not.

Number 2 is exactly true.

On your last question, I'm not 100% certain and haven't tried it (I don't have the component cables). Video mirroring from the iPad 2 works with the VGA adapter, so it would likely work with the component cables, but I can't guarantee it.

Edit: Looking at the specs on Apple's site under TV & Video, it seems pretty clear that component out work with the apps that do video out, but not for mirroring.


Can't find Excel 2011 Auto-recovered spreadsheet Yesterday morning my colleagues Excel 2011 (on Mac OSX 10.8) crashed. He reopened Excel and was asked if he wanted to recover the previous document. Yes, he said and then got a document named previousfilename(version 1). To be certain that this document was saved he continously saved the (restored) document manually during the day and by the end of the day he saved it finally and went home.

Today there is NO trace of the document whatsoever.

We have looked in the original location, Trash, userfolder/Microsoft userdata/Office 2011AutoRecovery etcetera and there is no document except for the original unedited version. Spotlight doesn't find it either.

Since we have a running Time Machine backup we have lots of backups from yesterday but all the same locations are also empty.

This is a freshly installed product. If this behaviour is expected Excel then having no auto-recover function would actually be better. I hope someone out there might help out. Manually saving a document SHOULD leave a trace somewhere in the filesystem?

Info: System MacBook Pro 2012, OSX 10.8, Office 2011, Excel version 14.2.4 Swedish version.

Finally we found the file in the folder:

/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Microsoft Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery

As the /Users/username/Library folder is a hidden folder since OSX 10.7 and not by default searched by Spotlight it's incredibly stupid that this folder is auto-suggested when saving a recovered file.


MacOS terminal "login: illegal option -- e" Whenever I open my terminal on my Mac I get this:

login: illegal option -- e
usage: login [-pq] [-h hostname] [username]
    login -f [-lpq] [-h hostname] [username [prog [arg ...]]]

[Process completed]

All of the fixes I've tried aren't working. I've tried deleting my preferences for the terminal, changing my shell, and deleting my terminal profile.

How can I resolve this error and get a working shell?

The problem is occurring because of an improper account name beginning with the dash ("-") character. So the solution is changing the name of the account via the steps given in this link: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201548

When you open the terminal an automatic login command like login -pf [account-name] is executed. Let's say the account name is "-gi". In this case the command will be login -pf -gi and naturally, the terminal will show the error illegal option -- g. Therefore you should change the account name properly.


How to Connect printer to macbook pro I have a printer HP deskjet f4210 connected to a windows 7 system, I am trying to connect my macbook pro os 10.7.4 to it, however I get the message authentication required. I tried entering guest/guest as I found this tip from another forum, and it connected. However it goes through the print process and nothing is printed. There are no errors, it shows the progress bar and then the job is removed from the queue as if its printed.

What is the fix?

Have you done a software update? As HP updates their drivers to suit different versions of OSX different updates are pushed through to users. Read more on hp's website.

You could also try resetting the printer system.


Switch "Touch Bar shows" per app Some apps (eg IDEs) I like to have Function keys directly shown, but most other apps I like the Quick Actions with Control Strip.

Is there a way to get the Touch Bar to automatically switch between the settings rather than having to manually goto Keyboard prefs?

You can designate certain apps to show function keys instead of app controls (in the touch bar) by adding them in System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → Function Keys.

Related: Is it possible to set touch bar in F1-F12 mode for a specific app?


MacBook Diagnostics Not Working I have a MacBook Pro 15” with Retina display from early 2013 which I am unable to run Diagnostics on. Due to ongoing problems with crashing, I recently wiped the hard drive and reinstalled macOS, but I am continuing to have the crashing and hardware issues.

I attempted to run Diagnostics, but it did not work and I found I had lost the “.diagnostics” folder when I wiped the hard drive. I followed the instructions in this post (Replacing "apple hardware test" with "apple diagnostics") but the problem that I’m having is I get to the point where I’ve installed the AHTxx.dmg file and found the .diagnostics folder, but I am unable to copy it onto my hard drive. It appears as a faded, grayed out folder which I cannot touch, even though I’ve double checked and it is not locked or anything.

My question is, how can I copy this folder into my /System/Library/CoreServices folder in order to be able to run the diagnostics?

I attempted to run Diagnostics, but it did not work and I found I had lost the “.diagnostics” folder when I wiped the hard drive.

When you reinstall, Apple Diagnostics will get reinstalled as well.  If it’s missing, it calls into question how you did said reinstall.  Booting from Recovery, wiping the drive and installing macOS will leave a pristine, fully functional version of macOS on your drive.  If you’re missing things, this was an “out of band” re-install (meaning non-standard).  When that happens, you’ll have the devil’s own time trying to pinpoint the cause of your troubles.

I followed the instructions in this post (Replacing "apple hardware test" with "apple diagnostics") but the problem

No!  Don’t do this!  First off, Apple has diagnostic procedures specific to their machines.  You can’t “willy-nilly” change them because you feel one is better than the other.  Even when you upgrade, Apple doesn’t change your diagnostics.  For example, a Mid 2012 MacBook Pro which is capable of running Catalina still uses AHT.  Catalina doesn’t upgrade it to Apple Diagnostics.
How do we know this?
Apple tells us in their support document How to use Apple Diagnostics on your Mac:

If your Mac was introduced before June 2013, it uses Apple Hardware Test instead.

Secondly, it’s well known that Apple’s diagnostics lose usability with each subsequent version, so “upgrading” to a later version will actually give you less useful diagnostic data.
Use Internet Diagnostics
Your Mac has the ability to boot from Internet Recovery; it should also have the ability to boot Internet Diagnostics.  Boot your computer while holding OptionD (obviously you need an Internet connection). This will ensure that you download and use the correct diagnostic utility for your Mac.
Do a clean, proper install of macOS
Based on what you described, it sounds like your install is a bit of a bodge.  My advice is to clean things up so you’re  working on a solid footing.

Back up your data. Verify that it’s good
Wipe your drive clean
Install the latest version of macOS (Mojave if you need 32-bit app support; Catalina if not necessary)
Make sure Recovery (hold CommandR) and Diagnostics(hold D) works
Here, step 5, is where we’re going to figure out what’s causing your crashes.
Once you have a stable system, use Migration Assistant to move your data over.
Verify that everything is working as it should.  If so, immediately make a backup and verify.


Copying my iphone stuff to android? I've got a ton of purchased and non-purchased music on my iphone. Same with movies. I've also got a pretty big collection of audio books. I'd like to dump a copy onto my android tablet. Is there any way to pull all the media off my iphone and strip freeplay so i can copy it into my android?

Bonus points if I can also transfer text history, apps, etc. Ideally I'd like to just run 'something' that will make my android have everything my iphone has.

You will have far better luck syncing the iPhone to a computer or otherwise getting the media from a computer to Andriod.

The economics of the flow is such that people seem motivated to make quality tools for Andriod to iOS but not the other way.

On Mac, your first step at liberating data might be a tool like Phoneview. It hits your music sync, text history sync and can generate a list of apps I believe.


Qt Creator and iTerm2 Qt Creator opens the UGLY Terminal app for running/debugging programs. Using this script:

#! /bin/bash

# ugly escaping: for apple script \ and " need to be escaped, whereas %q takes care of all bash escaping
declare -a args
mydir=`pwd`
mydir=$(printf '%q' "$mydir")
mydir="${mydir//\\/\\\\}"
args[0]="cd ${mydir//\"/\\\"};"
for a in "$@" ; do
    x=$(printf '%q ' "$a")
    x="${x//\\/\\\\}"
    args[${#args[@]}]="${x//\"/\\\"}"
done
mArgs=${args[@]:0}

osascript <<EOF
    --Terminal opens a window by default when it is not running, so check
    on applicationIsRunning(applicationName)
            tell application "System Events" to count (every process whose name is applicationName)
            return result is greater than 0
    end applicationIsRunning
    set terminalWasRunning to applicationIsRunning("Terminal")

    set cdScript to "$mArgs"
    tell application "Terminal"
        --do script will open a new window if none given, but terminal already opens one if not running
        if terminalWasRunning then
            do script cdScript
        else
            do script cdScript in first window
        end if
        set currentTab to the result
        set currentWindow to first window whose tabs contains currentTab
        activate
    end tell
EOF

How can I force it to use iTerm2 instead of Terminal..?

The script you posted is a pretty good base for some edits. The second part is AppleScript, and iTerm2 offers a nice interface with it.

First, create a script (let's say ~/newiTerm.sh) and put the following content

#! /bin/bash

# ugly escaping: for apple script \ and " need to be escaped, whereas %q takes care of all bash escaping
declare -a args
mydir=`pwd`
mydir=$(printf '%q' "$mydir")
mydir="${mydir//\\/\\\\}"
args[0]="cd ${mydir//\"/\\\"};"
for a in "$@" ; do
    x=$(printf '%q ' "$a")
    x="${x//\\/\\\\}"
    args[${#args[@]}]="${x//\"/\\\"}"
done
mArgs=${args[@]:0}

osascript <<EOF
set cdScript to "$mArgs"
tell application "iTerm2"
    set newWindow to (create window with default profile)
    tell newWindow
        select
        set _session to current session
        tell _session
            write text cdScript
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Then, go to Qt Preferences ( ⌘, ) > Environment > System > Terminal and set the value to ~/newiTerm.sh

Works well for me.

Cheers


Possible to give Airport wifi extender a custom wifi name? I have two recent Airport Extremes and a Netgear router (with wifi turned off).
I'd like to connect one of the Airports to the Netgear via ethernet, and have that
Airport provide a wifi network called ALPHA. Then I'd like to use the second
Airport to extend the ALPHA network such that the extended wifi is named BRAVO.

I've looked at the Airport Utility and I get the impression that if an existing
Airport wifi network is extended using a second Airport, the extension wifi will
have the same name as the source wifi from the first Airport: that is, ALPHA with no option to use the name BRAVO.

However, I may be wrong. Is there to way to give the second extender the wifi
name BRAVO?

You can change the base station name in AirPort Utility by following these steps:

Open AirPort Utility
Click on the AirPort of whose name you want to change
Click Enter Password and enter the password if necessary
If this isn't necessary, click Edit
Navigate to the Base Station tab of the menu
Edit the name, then hit Update

But in terms of changing the Wi-Fi name, this is not possible unless you give the AirPort its own network, instead of extending an existing one. It will use the same name as the source network, like you said.


View iCloud photos on iPhone iPhone 5C on iOS 9.1

I've created new albums and uploaded photos from a desktop on the icloud.com "iCloud Photos" page. How would I view these photos from my iPhone?

I have "iCloud Photo Library" on, "iCloud Photo Sharing" on, and I can't really find any other settings for photos. I know iCloud storage is confusing and I still don't understand how it all is supposed to work, but there has to be a way to view these photos, right? I can't even go to icloud.com on the phone because I get a watered down mobile site.

The app to use for viewing iCloud photos is the Photos app and not mobile Safari (or any other web viewer).

Tap on Photos and then go to the shared tab. All the photos you have access through over iCloud should be there.

If not, open the settings app and check the settings under iCloud -> Photos and that you're actually logged in with the same Apple ID as you are using to upload the photos. If you can't do that, be sure to invite the AppleID you use on the iPhone to see the shared photos from the uploading account. For most people, the account is one and the same, but you don't have to do it that way if you have reasons.


Undo restoring from backup on iPhone I accidentally deleted a downloaded book from iCloud and wanted to restore the book to my phone. So I restored my phone to the last time I synced my phone. In doing so, I have lost all my Apple Watch activity rings data. Is there any way to undo that restore, and bring my phone back to before I restored it? I don't even care about the book anymore. I just want my old activity rings back.

Unless you have a backup you made of the data you wish to restore, no, the data is lost.


Is usr/local/bin the correct directory to place JAR files? I have built an application that includes a JAR file I developed and I've had issues trying to run it correctly from the AppleScript application with:

set foobar to POSIX path of (path to me) & "Contents/Resources/Scripts/foobar" as text

I have thought about checking usr/local/bin if the JAR file exists and then copying the JAR from the application to usr/local/bin but I'm unsure if this is the correct place to add JAR files so I can call them from AppleScript or through terminal. Is there a better approach to do this? I do have another block that checks to see if a program has been installed by Homebrew by checking /usr/local/Cellar/ then running the rest of the AppleScript application with do shell script but I'm unsure where all installed additional programs should be placed so I can run them with AppleScript and Terminal. What is the correct way to do this?

From a SIP perspective, /usr/local/bin is perfectly fine to place JAR files.

SIP excludes the directories:

/usr/local
/Libraries
/Applications

Anything in these directories can be read/written/executed.  Which one of those makes more sense for you to place your JAR files is entirely up to you.  (IMO), since it is a run-time and presumably it's part of an application, putting it in a sub-directory within the /Applications directory is not a bad place to start.


Restore a repaired iPhone 5 from backup I had a ton of problems with my iPhone 5. I backed it up and took it to the Apple Store. I got a loaner while getting it fixed and put the latest iPhone backup on loaner phone. Then I got my iPhone back and went to restore from same backup, butd it's not in my options in iTunes. Where could I find this restore point as it has everything in it? Any help would be great. Thank you.

You have to make a backup of the loaner phone to have it available to restore on your repaired phone.

You already appear to have done so on your phone, but if needed, steps described by Apple are:

  Make a backup using iTunes

  Open iTunes and connect your device to your computer.
  Save content that you downloaded from the iTunes Store or App Store by clicking File > Devices > Transfer Purchases. If you're using Windows and you don't see a File menu, press the Alt key.

  Wait for iTunes to finish transferring your purchases. Then, click File > Devices > Back up. If you're using Windows and you don't see a File menu, press the Alt key.

  After the process ends, you can see if your backup finished successfully by clicking iTunes Preferences > Devices. You should see the name of your device with the date and time that iTunes created the backup.

  Follow more steps if you need help making an iTunes backup. Learn how to encrypt your backup.


Trying to disable guest account gives 2 accounts After upgrading to High Sierra, I have 2 guest accounts.  It's disabled in the settings menu and I've tried the trick of turning filevault off and back on.  Find my mac is turned off.

I've attached a screenshot of the login screen.  Notice how the the account to the left has a distorted logo.  Both ask for passwords when selected.

Even I had re same issue but I didn't have two guest user accounts but I know how to remove them go to System presences> Users&Groups then click on login options then click on network join then open directory utility then unlock the lock then click on directory editor then search guest and delete one of the guests.

To remove password from guest open terminal located in Applications>Utilities then type sudo passwd guest it will prompt new password then type 'f' then again type passwd Guest it will prompt 'old password' type 'f' as the password then it will prompt 'new password' don't type anything then again it will ask for 'Retype Password' again don't type anything. If you have any other problem comment below.


Is it possible to use Bento for Mac as the database for a database-backed website? I'm looking to create a website on my Mac, with content coming from a database also on the Mac. The website is static, and I'll probably need to write some scripts that will periodically (1) create new HTML pages on my Mac based on new content in the database, (2) sync the HTML pages on my Mac to the web server on the Internet using SFTP.

Can this be done using Bento, or should I be looking into Filemaker Pro instead?

Bento isn't well-suited for your needs, in my opinion. It's possible to export information from Bento into a variety of formats, including text files, Numbers, or Excel. But it doesn't have the hooks needed to be queried by a Website creation tool. As you mention, FileMaker Pro does have that ability. Here is their web publishing page.

This may be overkill for you, but if you're familiar with SQL databases, you might also take a look at Sequel Pro.


Put OSX under version control I have recently learned about Docker and love their declarative approach which enables me to put everything under version control and make the whole application basically immutable.

I understand that this is a much harder task to accomplish for a full blown OS like Mac OSX.

Still, I would love to have more control over how everything runs.

I am a developer so I frequently install stuff on my machine to try out, use command line tools that download packages, etc. pp.

A recent example was that I installed a OSX Developer Beta because a sound controller was not longer working and it was already fixed in the beta version. It did fix the sound problem but introduced other problems so having the ability to "easily" roll back to a previous state would have been really handy.

So what's the best approach to bring my OSX from a clean blank install to a desired state and from there on "put it under version control" so that I can easily try out new stuff but roll it back at any point in time?

Maybe even incorporating the idea of "sandboxing" stuff, for example when a family member or friend asks lend my MacBook without me having control on which websites they surf and what they may download and install.

A third thing that would be nice to have if I could share those states between two machines (for example when I both have a macbook and iMac)

I know that Time Machine is able to do some of this this stuff, but maybe there is something like "Docker" which brings this to a whole other level.

To be honest I have never really used time machine because I was frequently traveling and it was more convenient to backup files into the cloud instead of needing an external hard drive for time machine backups. This situation has changed as I am now planning to get a NAS where time machine backups could be done.

Maybe somebody knows other best practices or has a good article that answers those questions.

Thanks

You can create APFS snapshots of your disk using tmutil.

tmutil localsnapshot

I am not aware of how long these snapshots are kept for. They are marked as purgeable space so macOS can remove them at will. There may be a way to mark snapshots to be kept without being automatically removed.

You can list existing snapshots with

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

These snapshots can be restored from Recovery:

Screenshot from https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2017/11/02/apple-software-updates-creating-apfs-snapshots-on-macos-high-sierra/ which has more details about how macOS creates snapshots automatically on macOS updates.


SD card slot is always read-only I have a 4 GB Micro SDHC card and I use a Micro SD adapter sleeve to read it with the built-in SD card slot of my 15" mid-2010 MacBook Pro. It's been a while since I tried to use it, but I just realized that my Mac will always treat it as read-only, no matter the position of the physical lock on the adapter sleeve.

I can't even format the partition because all the options in the "Erase" and "Partition" tabs of Disk Utility are grayed out for the SD card.

Why is the card read-only, and more importantly, how can I write to it?

In my case, a physical misalignment is causing the read only status. Gently pushing the disk away from the display reliably makes my cards write again.


Would Apple (UK) change a part with another for you? I was just wondering if Apple would swap my Optical Drive on my MacBook Pro for an SSD, and how much it would cost, as I would rather they do it and I keep my warranty then doing it myself and losing my warranty. I have AppleCare if that makes a difference, and the laptop is also still in it's 1st year warranty.
I would be supplying the SSD and bracket and cable and anything else needed to fit the SSD into the MacBook Pro.

I'd be very surprised if they would - there's no standard Apple product to replace an optical drive with an SSD.

You'd either need to do it yourself using any one of the third-party optical bay solutions (see this question) or have a third party hardware repair firm do it for you. In both cases, however, you'd be voiding your Apple warranty as the optical drive is not a user serviceable part.


Why is htop producing different reports than Activity Monitor? I'm using htop on my Mac. I put it side by side with Activity Monitor, but the reports are widely different.

On Activity Monitor, I can get finder using up to 100% of CPU, while it doesn't show at all the process on htop. Is there a better tool for monitoring processes for Yosemite?

In order to get accurate processes, cpu usage and accumulative time, the user running htop should be root. This is not the case with top, because it has the "set-user-ID-on-execution bit" (suid) set.

Execute sudo htop from your user terminal or if you trust your local users add the suid to the binary (# chmod u+s path-to-htop-binary).


Can Node.js version be checked with AppleScript? Starting to use Node.js more I was wondering if Node.js could actually be tested with a do shell but I've run into an issue. I did a search to see if this was asked but closest result was "Automator - Running Node Command in AppleScript Error".

Here are my attempts:

tell application "System Events" to set username to name of current user
set nodePath to "/Users/" & username & "/.nvm/"
set nodeCommand to "cd " & quoted form of nodePath & " node --version"
try
    set result to do shell script nodeCommand
    return result
on error result
    return "ERROR:" & result
end try

my result is "".  Modified change to:

tell application "System Events" to set username to name of current user
set nodePath to "/Users/" & username & "/.nvm/"
set nodeCommand to quoted form of nodePath & " npm config list"
try
    set result to do shell script nodeCommand
    return result
on error result
    return "ERROR:" & result
end try

my result is "ERROR:sh: /Users/username/.nvm/: is a directory".  Is there a way to check Node.js version similar to the Terminals command npm config list or node -v?

I have node installed in the directory /usr/local/bin, so this command will return the version:

do shell script "/usr/local/bin/node -v"

A couple other scripting points:

You needn't use System Events to obtain the user's username.  If all you need is the username, you can use

short user name of (system info)

However, it looks like you were trying to get the path to your user home folder.  In AppleScript, this can be done like so:

POSIX path of (path to home folder)

However, as that was all going to be plugged in to a do shell script command, none of that is necessary, as you can use ~ to denote your home folder, and the shell will automatically expand this for you (provided it's not inside any quotes):

do shell script "cd ~/.nvm/"

There's no need to set result to.  result will automatically contain the result of the previous AppleScript command.  return result will work fine without needing to set result to.


Restoring from IPSW. Unable to connect to gs.apple.com (error 3014) I had been running jailbroken ios7 on my iPad for a long time. Last month I  decided to update to 8.4
Downloading the update from itunes failed a few times so I grabbed the file from apple servers myself

When I tried to restore using the ipsw file, itunes gave me 3014 error. I tried again next day, same error.
I'm running windows 10 x64 and I have:

Made sure my HOSTS file is not causing it. There is
definitely nothing apple related in there.
Checked my firewall rules, disabled the firewall. That did not help either
performed restore process multiple times with no luck
Tried pinging gs.apple.com from another computer with windows 7.. it times out just the same

Its been more than a month now and my iPad is just sitting there...

Itunes network dianosis shows me this -

Firewall Information

Windows Firewall is off.

Connection attempt to Apple web site was successful.
Connection attempt to browsing iTunes Store was successful.
Connection attempt to purchasing from iTunes Store was successful.
Connection attempt to iPhone activation server was successful.
Connection attempt to firmware update server was unsuccessful.
The network connection timed out.
Connection attempt to Gracenote server was successful.
Last successful iTunes Store access was 2015-08-16 13:05:38.

---------------

The server I cannot connect to is gs.apple.com. I believe that's what causing itunes to throw the error (3014)

Tried pinging it, failed -

Suprisingly, however, I can access it from the browser (why/how?)

My iPhone can recieve updates just fine over the same network. I'm stumped, can someone help me out, am i missing something?

If there's a way to update without the itunes server-check I'd love to hear it. Methods involving jailbreak are welcome

Enter DFU Mode, and then try a restore. Method:

First, plug the iPad into your computer, and then power it off. Make sure iTunes is running on your PC.

Now press and hold both the Power button and Home button simultaneously, until you see the Apple logo. Now let go of the Power button while still holding down the Home button. iTunes can now associate with the device and is told that the iPad is in Recovery Mode.

Finally, simply Restore your iPad to the ipsw file that you downloaded (or just restore, whatever your choice is).

Just in case you didn't know, in order to restore an iOS device to a certain backup/ipsw file located on your Windows computer, shift-click the Restore iPad ( / iPhone / iPod) button in iTunes and find & pick the file manually.

(Note: There is a tool I know of called Cydia Impactor. There's actually a desktop version of it as well. Unfortunately, however, it apparently only works with iOS 8.3 and 8.4 in the jailbreak version of the tool.)


How do I turn off scroll for page navigation on the mouse, but not the trackpad On my Macbook pro I frequently use an external mouse while working.  When the option to use the "Swipe Between Pages" gesture is enabled, it also makes horizontal scrolling on my mouse do the same thing.

I like the feature on the trackpad, but not on the mouse.  Is there a way to restrict this gesture to certain devices or in some other way turn it off ONLY for the mouse?

Using Sierra 10.12.6 with internal trackpad and Logitech MX Master with "Logitech Options" software.

It looks like the solution in this case was to turn down the sensitivity on the side scroll wheel for the mouse.  This way you must scroll very quickly before it reads as a swipe.


OWC Aura SSD Firmware Update from Mac Recovery Terminal I bought a 480GB OWC Aura SSD with a known compatibility issue for my Macbook Pro 15" (mid-2015) after my old SSD died. I installed the drive and partitioned it. It shows up when running diskutil list in a High Sierra recovery terminal, but not on any older OS versions (Yosemite or El Capitan)

The High Sierra installer lets me choose the new SSD as a target destination, but after the first reboot the machine goes to the "question mark folder". Apparently, I need to upgrade the firmware on the OWC Aura Pro SSD, but I'm having a hard time getting the PHP updater to work.

Should I request a refund/replacement or is there a way to make bootable USB to update the drive's firmware?

Edit: I managed to boot into High Sierra from an external and ran the Marvell firmware updater, but it does not detect any drives under the "Device" list for me to update.

I'm responding to this post late, and my contribution is a workaround for Aura SSD install/upgrade to High Sierra on a Power Mac, late 2013.

Install High Sierra on your OEM SSD.
Shut down, remove power cable.
Move the OEM SSD to the Envoy enclosure.
Install the Aura SSD into your computer.
Connect your OEM SSD (in the Envoy enclosure) to the USB port of your Mac.
Power up, zapping the p-ram (hold down Option,Command,P,R)
The computer should boot from the OEM SSD (in the Envoy enclosure). If not, restart and hold down the Option Key. The computer will show startup disk options. Choose the OEM SSD.
Once you have booted from the OEM SSD, start Disk Utility.
From the menu, choose "Restore". Select the OEM SSD as the source drive and the Aura SSD as the target drive. This will clone your OEM SSD to the Aura SSD.
Power off the machine, disconnect power cable, and disconnect the USB from the OEM SSD.
Power on, and the machine will boot from the new internal Aura SSD. If not, zap the p-ram again. Also, if you're on a Mac Pro, do not use wireless Bluetooth keyboard/mouse throughout the process, use wired ones.
This worked for me, hope it'll work for you.


Where does Mac OS X or Safari remember which application to use for Gopher sites? When I try to access a Gopher site in Safari it opens OmniWeb to open the site. Where does Mac OS X or Safari store which application to use for Gopher sites? (I assume Safari doesn't support Gopher itself?)

I'm guessing Safari uses Launch Services, which means it uses the system's default handler for that URL. These settings are stored in the file $HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist. You can edit this using the defaults command in Terminal, or using a plain text editor if it is in the XML format.


How to focus the list of songs in iTunes after typing the search query? Is there any way in iTunes to move the focus from the search query to the list of songs?

I just typed something, the list of songs got updated and I'd like to play the first (or any song) from the list so I'd like to use my keyboard to navigate through the results.

With Full Keyboard Access set to "Text boxes and lists only" in System Preferences, press
tab tab, then the list is in focus and you can use the up/down arrows to navigate.
(even if the focus is not visible at first, which seems wrong)

With Full Keyboard Access set to "All controls",
tab through to "Songs", then "Library", then tab twice more and use the up/down arrows to navigate the list. (As in the first method above, there won't be any visible indication that the list is in focus)

Subsequently the focus should be visible.


iTunes "smart" playlists - unable to limit filter to any other existing playlists Someone has already asked this question about a month ago, and he did a fine job of explaining it and it is EXACTLY what is happening to me. Here is the link to the original post.

I am posting this here now (I'm sorry if you consider it a "duplicate") because I want to add more info to his problem and it's not allowing me to comment on his post since I'm a brand new member.

My new info - I have tried everything - deleting, moving, uninstalling... NOTHING has worked. The last step I tried was to completely remove EVERY single piece of Apple software, AppData, user files, etc. from my machine. No dice. I'm using the latest Windows 10 with iTunes 12.5.5.5.

I also had my Apple pro buddy try and help me since he has worked at the Apple Store in Tokyo forever, and he couldn't figure it out. But that may likely just be because he's been a Mac guy his whole life and has no Windows experience.

And now my smart playlists that WERE working using the playlist filter are gone forever... Thanks, Apple...

If anyone can help I will be extremely grateful.

Actually, I received helpful answer from an Apple forum, I have posted it also to the original article
How to create iTunes smart playlist of playlists


Force sync Photos to iCloud on macOS I have recently been on holiday and saved all my photos on my mac whilst I was away. They didn't sync to iCloud as I wasn't connected to the Internet.

I am back home now and setting up a new Windows laptop. The Windows laptop is showing all my Photo Stream pictures taken as of yesterday, but my holiday photos saved on the Mac doesn't seem to have synced to iCloud. The mac is now online and I have checked System Preferences → iCloud → Photos and it is all showing automatic sync, but this hasn't happened.

How can I force it to save these pictures on iCloud? I wish to get access to the holiday photos on my Windows laptop and remove all the data from the Mac.

On your Mac, open Photos and go to preferences under the Photo menu. Once in preferences select the iCloud tab at the top. In that window, there is an option to upload and store your photos on iCloud.


Keychain won't let copy passwords after 10.11.1 update After the 10.11.1 update, I can not get access to some of encrypted data stored in my keychains with Keychain Access.app. Most notably, I can not see or copy passwords stored.

Normally, to do so, you'd have to:

unlock a keychain with keychain password;
unlock an item itself with keychain password.

During 2nd step, when password is typed in, you can select 2 options: "Allow" and "Always allow". The difference is that if you click "Always allow", you won't have to perform 2nd step for this item again.

Here's some things I was able to detect:

if I had clicked "Always allow" on an item before OS X update, I can access it fully;
if I haven't clicked "Always allow", I can not copy password from right click menu, nor see it when ticking "Show Password" checkbox on Info Screen.
if I add new item, I can not copy password from right click menu, but can still see it on Info Screen.

I get what seems to be mostly full keychain data using following command (though, I am not sure everything's there):

security dump-keychain -d elmigranto.keychain

UPD: After more detective work, I found following message appearing in Console.app when I click anything in password dialog:

26.10.15 10:19:52,345 SecurityAgent[770]: Ignoring user action since the dialog has received events from an untrusted source

UPD2: Pretty sure this is caused by HT205375, which among other changes lists the following:

  SecurityAgent

  Available for: OS X El Capitan 10.11

  Impact: A malicious application can programmatically control keychain access prompts

  Description: A method existed for applications to create synthetic clicks on keychain prompts. This was addressed by disabling synthetic clicks for keychain access windows.

  CVE-ID

  CVE-2015-5943

Third-party utilities such as Alfred, TextExpander, or MagicPrefs might appear to take "control" of the window as far as the OS is concerned.  You can find the culprit by disabling them all, and turning them on one by one until you find one (or more) which affects Keychain in that manner.

You can add the offending program to the list of approved apps ( System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Accessibility ) and this issue will go away.  (hat tip to @elmigranto for this addenda)


How to view movie taken on Android Lenovo Tab device via Xender on iPhone I have an iPhone 4s, and have installed xender for iOS. When I record a movie in mkv and flv video from android via xender, the transfer to the iPhone completes but the movie cannot be viewed.

I'm from Xender representative, I am sorry for inconvenience.
I personally just tried to send MP4 Video from Sony Xperia Z2 to iPhone 5 via Xender and yes the video played perfectly on Xender.

Please don't hesitate to send us some message if you have more questions and feedback to anmobi@xender.cn we will try our best to help you for all your issues.


Turn off both displays when in clamshell mode I've been using this Macbook Pro for about 2 years now and recently got an external display for it. It is connected via a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter.

Before I got the display, I could simply shut the lid to enable clamshell mode and the system would mostly power down (HDD would stop etc).

However, now whenever I shut the lid, the external monitor becomes the primary display and continues to work and keep the laptop awake. I do not have an external mouse, trackpad or keyboard connected.

Is there any way to make the laptop go back into clamshell when the lid is shut and turn both displays off? I would prefer if it were possible without disconnecting the external display, as every time I do that I lose my window arrangement across displays.

I found this, but I don't want point two. I want both displays to wake up when I open the lid, and both displays and the mac to sleep when I close it.

You are confusing sleep and clamshell mode. Clamshell mode means using a laptop with an external display while keeping the lid closed.

Anyway, clamshell mode behaved differently in 10.6 and earlier:

Closing the lid put a laptop to sleep even when the laptop was connected to an external display
To use the laptop in clamshell mode, you had to press a key or click a mouse button after that
If you then opened the lid, the internal display didn't turn back on

You can restore the old behavior by changing the boot-args firmware variable:

sudo nvram boot-args=iog=0x0

You have to restart to apply changes. To undo it, run sudo nvram -d boot-args and restart.


Wired mouse detected but not responding I have a wired mouse connected to my Macbook Pro, OS X 10.9.5.  The mouse is powered, but completely unresponsive.  The mouse works on my windows machine, and the usb port on my Macbook works with other mouses/devices.  The mouse is detected in my System Information as

  USB OPTICAL MOUSE:
  Product ID:   0x0a4c
  Vendor ID:    0x15d9
  Version:   1.00
  Speed:    Up to 1.5 Mb/sec
  Location ID:  0x14100000 / 8
  Current Available (mA):   500
  Current Required (mA):    100

I have tried resetting my PRAM, with no effect.

Does anyone know what steps I can take to fix this?

I think your Mac book not providing proper current and voltages. A normal wired mouse requires 5 volts of voltages and 0.9 ampere of current to work properly


How can I remove/turn off shadows in macOS 10.14 I think this has been asked somewhere for lots of versions of OS X/macOS and it seems like it's always a different answer.

I'm trying to remove the shadows around windows and the shadow below the menu bar in macOS 10.14.  I'm not using Dark Mode.

I've tried various options from previous OS versions including Onyx and Reducing transparency in Preferences.

I'm not interested in turning off SIP.

Are there any options out there?

The previous answers in your links all involve using SIMBL -- which is a third-party app that performs a variety of system 'hacks' or extensions. That (and the absence of any known defaults write key, suggests that removing shadows is not something that Apple have provided.


AppStore require apps for iPhone and iPad to be build with iOS 13 SDK after June 30, 2020 Is possible to build and deploy the first versions of the app with iOS 12 SDK, before the deadline(June 30, 2020) and after that to upgrade to iOS 13 SDK the app and the new updates so all the users will have the minimum first versions of the app, but the new updates after June 30, 2020, to be for users that can and have iOS 13?

Can someone guide me towards a tutorial or something to clarify if it is possible and how should I approach this?

Yes, that is entirely possible. It is just setting the target version to iOS 12 in the first version, and iOS 13 in the second version. You will have to set the iOS 13 release to be timed for release on 30th of June, but apart from that there's nothing "special" in this.

Note: It seems you might have mixed some things up. The deadline requirement for June 30th 2020 is just that the app is to be built with the iOS 13 SDK - it doesn't mean that you have to set your target deployment version to iOS 13. So you can definitely build with iOS 13 SDK to fulfill the deadline requirement, and still only require iOS 11 or iOS 12 or whatever you need.

Users on iOS 12 (or even earlier) should have no problems running apps built with the iOS 13 SDK as long as the target deployment version is set accordingly.


FTP app that can monitor a local folder I recently switched to another text editor from Coda. The feature I miss most from Coda is that it can monitor any folder and publish any changes made with a click of a button. I have been looking for an FTP application that offers this functionality, but haven't found anything. Most apps will "synchronise" a remote and a local folder by scanning them and looking at the size and/or timestamp of each file. Since many of my projects contain thousands of projects and I'm on a slow connection, this is not a good solution for me. So I'm looking for an app that can:

Monitor files in a local folder (don't care about remote changes)
"Mark" these when they are changed
Offer to upload the files that have been changed since the last upload

I only need to watch for local changes. I am the only one editing these files. So I can safely overwrite anything on the server when it has been changed locally.

I can not use Git or any versioning protocol because most projects are running on cheap shared hosting, without shell access. However I am fairly experienced using the shell so if there's a solution there that's also an option, although I would prefer an app with a GUI.

Transmit can achieve what you're looking for thanks to its Transmit Disk feature.

Once you have specified a remote location as a favorite (analogous to bookmarking it), you can use Transmit Disk to create a local volume with the same name as the favorite. Any changes made to this volume's files are mirrored to the server. The two are kept in constant sync.

According to Panic's website (and my own usage), the files are uploaded even if Transmit.app itself isn't running. Transmit Disk runs as a separate background process. On my system, with one volume mounted and shortly after requiring a sync, this process is using 0% CPU and 13MB of memory. Performance, it seems, is not an issue at all.


What app can I use to browse photos on my iOS devices from a Mac on the local network? I am trying to figure out if there's an app out there that can let me browse photos from my Mac via wifi.

So I have a

mac on the local network
iOS devices on the local network
1000s of images on the mac (Aperture/Shared_Folder)

I want

access to these images on the iOS devices
slideshows etc

Can't seem to find anything yet.

Thanks.

If you have Aperture, you can create libraries without importing the original. I have my photos on different libraries. One on my usual Mac and and a few others on external disks on another Mac. It might be a bit slow but it works


How do I recover a HFS+ journaled drive? EDIT: I found a quasi-solution that sort of kind of works:

mount -o loop,offset=209739776,rw -t hfsplus /dev/sdc /mnt/mountpoint/

It appears (via "find /mnt/mountpoint/") that all my data is there, but attempts to access some of my data yields an "input/output error".

I had an external 2 or 3 TB (I'm not sure which) USB drive connected
to my Mac (running OS X Snow Leopard) with an HFS+ journaled
filesystem on it.

The drive was working fine, but was a bit slow and occasionally gave
I/O errors, so I backed up my files and ran fsck_hfs on it.

fsck_hfs died while trying to rebuild the B-tree, and the drive won't
mount at all now. Also, I lied about making backups first.

How do I get this drive working again? Given the redundancy of HFS+,
this should be possible no? Other notes:

If I run fsck.hfsplus -df /dev/sdb3 on a Linux box, I get this:

** /dev/sdb3
        Block 1565298166 is not an MDB or Volume Header
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
   Invalid number of allocation blocks
(-1, 0)
        IVChk - volume header total allocation blocks is greater than device size
        volume allocation block count 732533183 device allocation block count 195662271
** Volume check failed.
volume check failed with error 7
        volume type is pure HFS+
        primary MDB is at block 0 0x00
        alternate MDB is at block 0 0x00
        primary VHB is at block 2 0x02
        alternate VHB is at block 1565298166 0x5d4c8df6
        sector size = 512 0x200
        VolumeObject flags = 0x03
        total sectors for volume = 1565298168 0x5d4c8df8
        total sectors for embedded volume = 0 0x00

Using a Perl script and "seek", I can see some of my filenames
  surrounded by information that I assume is telling me where on the
  drive to find my files. If all else fails, I'll pursue recovering
  files this way, but I'd prefer a "cleaner" recovery option.

DiskWarrior 4. It will run you $99. I've used DiskWarrior for several years and I'm very pleased with the results.

Data Rescue 3. $99. Similar to DiskWarrior, just an alternative program. Never used it before, but I've heard some good things about it. It's also sold in the Apple Store which gives it a lot of credibility.


iMac shows frozen at bootup, but computer running normally in background I'm on an Intel iMac running Lion.

I'm having major issues with my iMac. The iMac froze whilst using Chrome, and I was forced to reset it.

After the reset the screen seemed to freeze on the apple logo, with the spinning wheel. I've followed several steps on different sites with weird results.

I've reset the PRAM/NVRAM as Apple suggested.
I've tried a safe boot, the progress bar got to about 35% then gave up and showed the screen I have now
Tried booting from an install disk (Snow Leopard) to use Disk Utility. This produced a Kernal Panic error message.

The weird thing is that the computer behind the screen seems to be running fine. I've SSH'd in from my laptop and logged in fine, it all seems ok.

I've tried running fsck like Apple suggest but it says it can't perform a repair because the disk is in use.

UPDATE
I've tried booting up in single-user mode and running /sbin/fsck -fy and it says that everything is fine, but if I try exiting and booting again the same issue persists.

So any ideas on what I could try next?

You can try to follow the steps described in HT1492:

Shut down your Mac if it is on.
Press the power button to start the computer.
Immediately press and hold Cmd-v for verbose mode.

This should give you some insight into where in the boot process the problem occurs. As you can still access the iMac via SSH it might be possible to fix it.

But as single-user boot seems to work without problems you might be better of with having a look at TS2570.


How do I do a pivot table in Numbers? I can't find any equivalent of the Excel Pivot Table or Open Office Data Table features. I'd like to sum up my data grouped by values in various columns.

For example, if I have

A       B       C
red     left    2
red     left    3
green   left    4
green   right   4

I want to be able to get

        red     green   all
left    5       4       9
right   0       4       4
all     5       8       13

Assuming the tables are named Original and Pivot,
the cells in Pivot are filled using this formula:

=SUMIFS(Original::$C, Original::$A, "="& $A2, Original::$B, "="& B$1)

i.e. sum values in Original::$C if

corresponding value in Original::$A = value in first column of Pivot
corresponding value in Original::$B = value in first row of Pivot

The 'all' values are just simple sums of those rows or columns.


iOS custom keyboard clicks sound Is there a way to customise the sound of the keyboard click that can be turned on / off under:

Settings > Sounds > Keyboard Clicks

Simple answer: No. You're stuck with the sounds in the interface Apple provides, which have default settings for ringtone, text tone, new voicemail, new mail, sent mail, calendar alerts, reminder alerts and airdrop.

You can customize entries in Contacts to use alternate sounds and ringtones for texts and calls, but that's it.

It may be possible to change the click sound if you jailbreak your iPhone, but I'm just guessing.


Why is Apple Mail showing as 61GB? Can anyone explain/help with this? (My local Mac techy can't.)

My 2013 Retina MBP (running Mojave) is almost full, but it tells me Mail is somehow using 61GB. It was showing 70GB until I deleted almost all my mails and changed the settings so downloads do not automatically download. What is creating this mysterious 61GB and how to get rid of it (and prevent it from coming back), please?

Mail is one of the easiest to clean up in most cases.

Verify your mail providers have all of your mail stored in the cloud.
If you are cloud based, remove each mail account one by one, then repeat the measurement of the databases.

Usually it’s attachments and indexing that take that much space, but when you delete the mail account from settings, that should clean up all the local storage.

If you have local copies of mail, you’ll have to export / back that up to be sure you don’t lose those mails before removing the account.

How much space is used once you delete all accounts or get a good backup and then delete accounts?

If you show a screen shot of how you're measuring, we might have some extra advice, like not using the system information if there are time machine local snapshots (or how to purge them) or if you just need to remove some library files or ask for a database "vacuum" process.


Can I use my iMac OS X Yosemite as a phone and phone system I am not happy with the capabilities of my cable service providers phone and answering system. Can my iMac take over with all the bells and whistles of a business phone system?

Yes you can do just that. You could use an SIP line. There are hundreds of phone companies which offer SIP phone services (also called VoIP). Some internet provider also give you the access to the SIP configuration so you can handle your calls the way you like.

Check with your provider if they use SIP for your phone line and if so they could actually let you manage your phone calls with your own software.

Then you would have to install one of the SIP apps to handle your calls and even configure the way your calls are redirected or answered depending on the time of day and other parameters.

A list of SIP server software is available on wikipedia. Asterisk is the most common one is free and quite full-featured. There is a host of visual interfaces to help you with the administration and operations of SIP lines through asterisk, you can also find entire distributions dedicated to asterisk.

If installing and configuring your own SIP setup sounds like too much trouble some providers will have many features like:

multiple phone numbers
multiple phone calls per number (incoming and/or outgoing)
auto forward
redirection after x tones
call transfer
conferencing
call monitoring
welcome menu: "Welcome to My Global Company. For department press 1..."
auto attendant: "If you know the extension of the person you would like to speak to, you can enter it now"
announcements: "Welcome to MGC. Please wait while we connect your call"

The level of service depends on the provider you chose. But the advantage of using a standard VoIP service is that you can move your setup to a new company, add lines from multiple companies and do whatever you like if you setup your PBX yourself.

If you want to use a normal phone there are SIP converters which can be installed between your internet provider's router and your phone. There are also full featured SIP phones.

Some phones let you use both, your normal land line and multiple SIP accounts, for example I use one similar to this one:

Other phones have a phone standard integrated which let you setup call redirections and other features.

There is also skype as already answered here.

They offer a very simple package but it is severely limited in comparison to an SIP installation.

There are multiple phones available to use skype like a normal land line (note: these are not compatible with the standard SIP protocol)

You can subscribe to a skype number to receive standard phone calls directly to your skype account. So people will be able to call that number without having to use skype on their end.

But when it comes to managing multiple lines or setups with multiple extensions skype is not made fo that.


Back up only actual files in directory structure I want to backup my savegames:

+ /Library/Containers/com.doublefine.dfaosx/***
+ /Library/Containers/com.doublefine.dottosx/***

I initially wanted to do this as part of a larger rsync backup. However, because of some macOS sandbox insanity, the folders include dozens of symlinks that I don't want to backup up, and excluding these has proven difficult with rsync (see related question).

How can I backup only the valuable savegame files and exclude the symlinks, without explicitly specifying a lot of subfolders. I want to specify "Back up all real files under this root folder, excluding symlinks and subfolders that don't ultimately contain a real file".

I tried zip also, but it doesn't even seem to have an option to exclude symlinks. Can tar do it? It would be best if rsync can do it, but if not, any standard Unix tool would be acceptable.

The files I want to backup are as below. Of course I could specify them explicitly, but I want to learn a way to backup real files and ignore symbolic links without getting specific about it.

Library/Containers/com.doublefine.dfaosx/Container.plist
Library/Containers/com.doublefine.dfaosx/Data/Documents/BrokenAge/saves/*
Library/Containers/com.doublefine.dfaosx/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.doublefine.dfaosx.savedState/*

The files in saves are called auto.sav, auto.cav, slot_1.sav, slot_2.sav and then some.

Example of symbolic links are (there are about 60 of these, most of which are irrelevant for the game, they are just created by default as a means of reaching some Library files):

Library/Containers/com.doublefine.dfaosx/Data/Library/ColorPickers

You can pass a list of file names to backup to tar by running find first:

cd ~/Library/Containers/
tar -T <(find com.doublefine.dfaosx -type f -print) -cvzf ~/dfaosx.tar.gz
tar -T <(find com.doublefine.dottosx -type f -print) -cvzf ~/dfaosx.tar.gz

If you prefer rsync it supports a --files-from option which more or less does the same as -T for tar.


Restore path to be read from /private/etc/paths I used the how to from
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-install-macos.html

to install AWS CLI on macOS.
After executing command source ~/.bash_profile it seems that my default PATH location from file /private/etc/paths was lost.

/private/etc/paths file content:

/usr/bin/vim /private/etc/paths

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

~/.bash_profile file content:

# Setting PATH for Python 3.6
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

For example next command cant find the location of basic files installed in /usr/bin/:
-bash: vim: command not found

Is it a way to restore path to be reading from /private/etc/paths?

echo $PATH
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:/Users/<myusername>/bin:/Library/Python/3.6/bin/

Also I can't use the same command to reread from the location

source /private/etc/paths
-bash: /usr/local/bin: is a directory
-bash: /usr/bin: is a directory
-bash: /bin: is a directory
-bash: /usr/sbin: is a directory
-bash: /sbin: is a directory

Fix your /private/etc/paths content:

The default content is:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

If you want to include /usr/bin/vim (but only if vim is a folder containing some executables - the macOS installed vim exec is /usr/bin/vim!) modify the content to:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin/vim
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

You have another (superior) export PATH line somewhere (i.e. bash config files) with the following content:

export PATH="/Users/<myusername>/bin:/Library/Python/3.6/bin/:*"

with *= either completely missing or a falsely defined PATH variable (e.g. Path instead of PATH)

At least it doesn't inherit the standard paths defined by /private/etc/paths

This first PATH export and the second in your ~/.bash_profile then yield something broken like:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:/Users/<myusername>/bin:/Library/Python/3.6/bin/

as PATH


Can inexpensive prepaid plans for iPhone work in the USA? How can I minimize total cost of ownership (primarily means low monthly rate) for an iPhone if my voice and data usage is light?

Update: The following rate plan is no longer available.

AT&T has a $(25+5)/month GoPhone service plan that works with an iPhone that you acquire yourself.

The $25/month GoPhone service provides 250 minutes (extra cost $0.10/minute). The $5/month data package provides 50 MB data (extra costs $5/50MB). To save 10%, don't buy credit directly from AT&T. Instead, purchase a discounted electronic refill card such as the TMI Wireless $100 refill for $90 and paste the card number into the AT&T GoPhone website. This brings the actual total cost to $27/month for base usage.

There are also the one-time costs of a GSM-compatible iPhone (e.g. used from eBay, either unlocked or locked to AT&T) and an AT&T GoPhone Micro SIM Card ($4). Setup involves installing and activating the SIM card.

If you need more than 50 MB data, there is the $40/month plan, which has 500 minutes and 200 MB data ($36/month after 10% off).

Per the rate plan terms, you could in theory buy the $60/month plan for one month, and use it to buy 1 GB data packages for $10 each, then switch back to the $25/month plan and keep the data from expiring using a $5 for 50 MB auto-refill. However, the $25/month rate plan has an undocumented data package cap of 150 MB; data above that is lost when you switch rate plans.


Do Safari private tabs stay open after iPhone shutdown? Does Private Browsing in Safari keep private tabs open when you restart your iPhone 6, or do they get closed automatically?

If private tabs remain open, when opening Safari will you see the normal tabs or the private tabs?

I just checked this on my iPhone 6 running iOS 10.3.3. I opened a private browsing tab and went to a site then powered my iPhone off.

When it restarted I opened Safari again. My private browsing tab opened up to the exact site I was on when I powered off.

So I think you're busted on this one. But you've learned a valuable lesson about private browsing and always having a passcode on your device :-).


My iTunes sync completes, but my iPod doesn't get any music. What can be done? Device : iPod Shuffle 2nd Second Generation
OS     : Windows 7 64 bit

My steps were as follows

I checked the "Sync only checked songs"

Even though i checked some songs before syncing, i did not find any of them in my iPod. The sync completed without any error output.

Settings tab

Contents tab

There is an Autofill button that you must select (click) before syncing to get the music onto the device.


Downloads folder is showing empty when it's not! My Downloads folder looks utterly empty, not a single file or folder. And I have already emptied the Trash too. But for some reason, a Terminal ls run for this folder says there are 16 items! Here's the exact results on the Terminal:

Amits-MacBook:~ Amit$ ls -axhl ~/Downloads
total 16
drwx------+  4 Amit  staff   136B May 16 19:26 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 21 Amit  staff   714B May 16 19:25 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 Amit  staff   6.0K May 16 19:26 .DS_Store
-rw-------   1 Amit  staff     0B May  6 15:18 .localized
Amits-MacBook:~ Amit$

And the Get Info window shows 1 item:

Please advise what's going on here and how I can get my Downloads folder to stop imagining things?

The ls manual page explains this:

total 16

Total, here, does not represent the number of items, but the sum of the number of BLOCKS allocated to the files in the directory.

For example, if the block size is 512 bytes (don't quote me on this, but the math checks out), and the total disk space used by the directory is 8KB on disk:

8 KB = 8000 bytes
8000 B/512 B = 15.625
Rounding this value up equates to 16 blocks.

My empty Downloads directory reads the same:

njboot$ ls -axhl ~/downloads
total 16
drwx------   4 njboot  staff   136B May 16 20:17 .
drwxr-xr-x  20 njboot  staff   680B May  9 10:02 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 njboot  staff   6.0K May 16 20:17 .DS_Store
-rw-------   1 njboot  staff     0B Dec  8 14:27 .localized


What can change the calendar in iPhone/iOS to start weeks on Mondays and not Sundays? My iPhone's calendar, configured by me to start week Sundays, suddenly started starting week Mondays. I cannot find the setting to configure this any more. I found when I switch the phone's region settings from Irish (I am in Ireland) to US, the weeks start Sunday again, but then PM times are shown as 4:06 (rather than 16:06).

What can I do to have my weeks shown properly and the time in 24 hours and remain in my local region?

24-hour vs 12-hour time is set in Settings=>General=>Date & Time:

The Sunday vs. Monday thing may be entirely dependent upon the International setting; there's no explicit place to change it, anyway.


What is the difference between a Mac mini and a Mac mini server? Apple sells two Mac minis; one is a server edition, the other is a standard Mac mini. What are the differences between the Mac mini and the Mac mini server?
I know that the server doesn't have an optical drive and runs a server edition of OS X. Besides this, what are the other differences? What is the advantage of buying a Mac mini over buying a Mac mini server? (besides, of course, that the server runs OS X Server, and one is faster than the other) Will the server last longer, be able to handle running 24/7, whereas the standard one won't?

Comparison of Mac Mini and Mac Mini Server (as of mid 2011)

Processor:

Server: Quad core i7
Mac Mini: Dual core i5

The base model of the Mac Mini does not support AES-NI which is recommended when using FileVault 2.

Graphics:

Server edition and Mac Mini base model: integrated HD Graphics 3000
High end Mac Mini: dedicated graphics, AMD Radeon HD 6630M with GDDR5

Note: This is very recommended for Lion on large external displays. The integrated HD Graphics 3000 do not perform well in Lion as of 10.7.3 - even on my 15'' MBP.

Hard drive:

Server: 2 x 500GB at 7400rpm
Mac Mini: 1 x 500GB at 5400rpm - and thus quieter

Optical Drive:

Server: none
Mac Mini: none

Weight:

The server edition weights 0.3 pounds more.

Video, Audio, Network, Dimensions:

same


GarageBand multiple takes doesn't work I'm trying to simply record multiple takes using GarageBand 11.  I enable cycling, record once, the hit stop, rewind, record again... BUT NO TRIANGLE APPEARS on the track folder. Also, while the track plays back a 2nd time, its playing out loud so I cannot hear what I'm doing.  I tried with the REPLACE mode enabled and disabled, but that doesn't help.

Any ideas on how I can record multiple tracks?

I have logix 10 installed too and have the same problem there.

Do you want to record multiple tracks, or multiple takes?

For multiple takes you need two things

Make sure Cycle mode is on
In General settings (GarageBand/Preferences/General) Cycle on is set to Create Takes

To record multiple tracks simultaneously:

Make sure that the Record Enable button is shown

Activate recording for multiple tracks. You can only do that for separate input channels.


iCloud is not accepting my Apple ID I use my work email address as my Apple ID, and have it set up more than a year ago.  I have had this same email address for almost 15 years and it is still functioning.  Today when I went to sign into iCloud it says incorrect ID or password.  I first tried to reset my password, but it tells me the email address is not a valid Apple ID.  I thought that was odd, and tried to set up the email address again as an Apple ID, but now it tells me that is not available.

There are several reasons why you can't setup a new AppleID with a previously used email such as it's used as an emergency contact / backup account for another AppleID and verified or it's already the primary account.

No matter what the case, your best bet is to follow precisely the steps at:

https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid

There is a link below if you can't unlock the AppleID you think you had titled "Forgot AppleID" at the end of that online tool, there will be a link to contact Apple Support - they are truly the ones best suited to help you with your specific details. They can look up purchases, talk with you to determine your AppleID and help unlock if needed.


How do I write a Mail.app rule to mark messages as read in one mailbox but leave them as unread in my in-box? I have a Mail.app rule that copies certain incoming messages into an archive mailbox. I'd like those messages to be marked as read in the archive mailbox but remain unread in my in-box until I actually read them. I tried adding "Mark as Read" to the copy rule but that marks the message as read in both the archive mailbox and my in-box, so I never have any unread messages in my in-box. Any ideas?

It seems Mail 6.0 in Mountain Lion has fixed this for me. When I have new mail it shows as unread in both my in-box and my archive mailbox. And now, when I read it in my in-box it gets marked as read in both my in-box and my archive mailbox. Chalk one up for Mountain Lion.


Script to automatically make a new bookmark folder in Skim for each PDF and store every bookmark created in it's respective folder? Skim by default makes every new bookmark in the bookmark menu for all the pdf's,  even if I create a bookmark folder for the pdf manually, there is no way of making it save the bookmark in this folder automatically because in the save bookmark dialogue by default the Add To field will show Bookmarks Menu as the default location, which I have to manually change to the folder I created each time. So I was wondering if there is a applescript method of automating all this so, a bookmark folder will be automatically created when I save the first bookmark and every consequent bookmark will be automatically saved into this folder.

Apparently Skim has a nice Wiki, which covers much, including Wiki: AppleScript and has quite a few scripts available.  One of which is called: Synchronize Folder Bookmark

Also read the section on the Script Menu.

Synchronize Skim Folder Bookmark.scpt

(*
Folder Action script to keep a Skim folder bookmark synchronized with the contents of a folder.
• Save this in ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts
• Select the folder in Finder
• Choose Services > Folder Actions Setup… from the main or contextual menu
• Select this script
*)

on adding folder items to theFolder after receiving addedItems
    my synchronizeFolderBookmark(theFolder as alias)
end adding folder items to

on removing folder items from theFolder after losing removedItems
    my synchronizeFolderBookmark(theFolder as alias)
end removing folder items from

on run
    my synchronizeFolderBookmark((choose folder) as alias)
end run

on synchronizeFolderBookmark(theFolder)

    set theName to displayed name of (get info for theFolder)

    tell application "Skim"

        set wasRunning to running

        if (bookmark theName exists) and (type of bookmark theName is folder bookmark) then
            make new bookmark with data theFolder at bookmark theName
        else
            make new bookmark with data theFolder
        end if

        if not wasRunning then quit

    end tell

end synchronizeFolderBookmark


Using "Stop Time" option prevents play count from being updated Im using the option to stop a song at specific time. However I realised that the Play Count does not update when this option is applied.

Following the issue from iTunes 11 where play counts do not update if crossfade is activated, is this another possible glitch ? Or has it always been this way ? Any workaround that can fix it ?

It's somewhere between a bug and not-a-bug. Play count increments when the last sample plays (or something roughly equivalent). But the duration metadata options don't actually change the file, so the very end still exists, but is always skipped. So, the play count never increments.

The only workaround I know involves changing the audio file itself.

If you're using mp3s (or AAC or another lossy codec), doing this in iTunes involves re-encoding (transcoding) an already lossy file, a minor pet-peeve of mine and something I do not recommend. I suspect there are paid audio editing tools which can cut an mp3 without further losses, but I don't know what they might be.

If you're using apple lossless (or wav), or you really don't care about transcoding, you can do it simply enough in iTunes:

I'm assuming you've already set the start and stop time metadata appropriately.
In iTunes, go to Preferences -> General -> Import settings... and set everything to match the encoder settings of the original file (you can see this info by choosing "Get info" on the song in question).
Select the song, right click it and choose "Create [codec] Version", where [codec] is whatever you selected (for instance, if you chose ALAC it will say "Create Apple Lossless Version").
Done. iTunes has truncated the audio file to the limits set by your start/stop time metadata.


How do I remove websites from the Limit Adult Websites > Always Allow list in iOS 12 I have added a website to the 'Always Allow' list in iOS 12 restrictions, but there doesn't seem to be any way to remove it from the list once it has been added.

Can anyone help?

In iOS 12, you can remove an added website from the "Always Allow" list by swiping left to delete.

In the image below, I created an entry for "StackExchange."  I then swiped left which brought up the delete button.


iPhone Medical app that retains information through an upgrade Is there a medical application for the iphone where you do not lose all info entered when getting an upgraded iphone?  I did not realize I would lose all the information I entered.

Most iOS apps will transfer data to a new iOS device if the old device with the app data is Sync'd and backed-up to iTunes on a Mac or PC, and the new device is then restored from the backup of that old device on the same Mac or PC.

You might want to make a backup of your iTunes backups to be more safe.

If you don't want to restore from backup, but set up a device as new (blank), the you may need to find a medical web app where your info is stored online somewhere.

In the future, there may be some iCloud enabled apps (assuming they can somehow meet HIPPA requirements with your private medical info).


How do I backup my iPhoto library to Dropbox or to an external disk? I use iPhoto 11, and I'd like to backup the library, along with all the photos.

I'd ideally like a continuous backup, by putting the iPhoto Library.photolibrary file / package in Dropbox. But I'm concerned that Dropbox may not preserve everything HFS+ provides, such as:

Symlinks, hard links and aliases.
Resource forks and extended attributes.
File modification times. Imagine if iPhoto expects the library to have two files with one of them always having a modification time always older than the other's. When the files are synced to the cloud, and synced back to another device, does Dropbox guarantee to preserve the relative order of the modification times? If not, if I lose my Mac and buy a new one, the iPhoto library may be corrupt and unreadable (or things may appear to work but go wrong later).
Dropbox may have path length limits or may disallow certain characters in file names, etc.

I could not find any definitive documentation from either Dropbox or Apple about this.

Assuming that my reasoning above is correct -- that it's not safe to put my iPhoto Library in Dropbox -- that means that I can't have continuous backup.

In that case, I must do periodic backups, and hope nothing goes wrong in the meanwhile. Is it safe to backup the iPhoto library to a FAT32 filesystem?

I found http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 but it says only that I shouldn't run iPhoto with the library stored on a FAT32 disk, not that I shouldn't back it up to a FAT32 disk.

I also found http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2504 , which encourages us to back up to an external disk, but doesn't say if FAT32 is okay.

Let me take a stab at actually answering the question.

First of all, do NOT use a FAT32 drive to back up your iPhoto library. The library frequently contains aliases/symlinks, and FAT doesn't support those, so they would either result in duplicate photos (in the best case) or break a bunch of your photos.

I don't think Dropbox has any limitation that would prevent it from backing up any/all normal files you'd store on Mac, which would include filename restrictions. Those would be a dealbreaker for any syncing cloud storage. So I think you can be confident there.

Dropbox seems to handle symlinks by turning them into duplicates. Other than that, people have been moving their libraries over to the Dropbox folder successfully. Here's a post to that effect – and in the comments are some common problems and solutions to this technique.

I've also (through a post on Apple's forums) found an app called Insync which utilises your Google Drive account. They claim to support symlinks … in fact a large part of the draw is that you can create symlinks to anywhere on your computer and direct them to the Insync folder (which then goes to Google Drive). In other words, you should be able to create a link to your iPhoto library and it will make a synced backup, rather than having to actually move the library to a synced folder.


Deleting orphaned files from iphone Is there an easy way to remove all files NOT referenced by "iTunes Library.itlp" on my iphone? I need to free up some space and I know I have audio files saved on the iphone that are just orphaned..

Backup the phone using itunes and then restore to defaults and reload the backup. That should delete any files not in the itunes database. If the files are used by other apps they might still hang around and you might need to tell itunes not to load that app any more.


Apple ID Sharing with daughter My daughter and I both have apple phones and up until about 1 month ago she was always logged in on her device using my apple id.

I am trying to find out does this give her access to make any changes on my phone (not necessarily on purpose or even knowingly).  Specifically, under contacts, where my name is listed, right under my last name was listed a nick name that I didn't put there.

Could she have some how on her phone updated my either her name and it transferred over to my name because of the sharing issue?  Or if she was talking to Siri and she asked Siri to call her something, could that have updated to both her name and to mine?

I'm trying to figure out how it got there when I didn't put it there, or how to avoid that problem in the future.

To prevent future problems, disable the current set up (where you have second device under Apple ID, but it is actually your daughter).

Just change the password on your Apple ID so she can not log in to that.

Then set her up as Family sharing, where you have some control over her account.

Follow Apple Instructions on how to.