Directories listed in /etc/synthetic.conf not accessible via the link Background:  Catalina removes access from the root filesystem. We can not create directories there even as sudo and even when disabling SIP.  There appears to be a kind of workaround by using /etc/synthetic.conf.

Here is the contents of my /etc/synthetic.conf

  data    /Users/steve/data
  git     /Users/steve/git
  shared  /Users/steve/shared

I have created those directories under my home directory and rebooted.

$ls -lrta /Users/steve/data /Users/steve/shared
/Users/steve/data:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    2 steve  staff    64 Apr 11 19:02 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 250 steve  staff  8000 Apr 13 11:29 ..

/Users/steve/shared:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    2 steve  staff    64 Apr 11 19:02 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 250 steve  staff  8000 Apr 13 11:29 ..

$ls -lrta /Users/steve/data /Users/steve/gut
/Users/steve/git:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    2 steve  staff    64 Apr 11 19:02 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 250 steve  staff  8000 Apr 13 11:29 ..

So those directories do exist ..

But then using the link from /etc/synthetic.conf does not work the way I had expected:

(base) 11:29:14/git $ls -lrta /data
ls: /data: No such file or directory

How is that association/link supposed to be used?

Update Permissions for /etc/synthetic.conf are

First make sure that you have created the file with the correct file permissions:

  Owner: root
  Group: wheel

  Owner: read+write
  Group: read
  Everyone: read

Make sure that the two columns in your file are seperated by tab characters, and not just spaces.

Additionally the names of your existing folders probably need to be written without the leading slash. At least this is how the man page specifies it, and it is the only way I have tried it - it might work with a leading slash though.

I.e. you need to write Users/steve/data instead of /Users/steve/data.

Next ensure that you have rebooted your system after modifying or creating synthetic.conf. The links are only available after a reboot.


How can I get my own phone number from an iPhone running iOS 8? I am trying to get my own phone number but I can not find it. This is available in jailbroken phones and iOS 7 and lower versions. Please any help?

Go to settings > phone

First line is My Number


Open selected text in an iOS app? I just got an iPod Touch 5G (iOS 8.2) and I would like to open text in an installed apps, e.g.; TextCrafter. Is that possible? Images can be opened in a number of apps but how to do it for text?

Text is handled by default with copy/paste. While it would be possible to create an app that allows text to be sent to TextCrafter (or similar), and a new document to be automatically created from that text, it is not default in iOS.

As a result, the only option is to copy the text (which is available system wide) and paste it into TextCrafter.


Time Machine Error - The backup disk is not available Problem

My automatic backups for my Macs have recently started failing with the following message (same error if I attempt to "Backup Now"):

Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "DeviceName".
The backup disk is not available.

Every other attempt or so I also get a warning that it was a while ago that a backup succeeded. If I open Time Machine Preferences there is a red icon with an exclamation mark next to the backup disk which if clicked produces the following message:

Time Machine Error
The backup disk is not available.
Latest successful backup: <date>

I just tried to re-select the backup disk from Time Machine Preferences > Select Disk, which worked without problem, but now Time Machine seems to have forgotten all my previous backups (I can still find the backups on disk using Finder, but Time Machine claims that I have no previous backups).

Questions

Now that I have reselected the backup disk, how do I get Time
Machine to find the existing backups?
Is there another way to get Time Machine to find the backup disk?

Setup: One Macbook Air, one Macbook Pro, one Netgear ReadyNAS Duo claiming to be a TimeCapsule. Both Macs use Mountain Lion.

I've now gotten Time Machine to see the older backups. Not sure if the first step is necessary as I noted that Time Machine Preferences took a while to update the "Latest backup" date, so it might have been enough to just perform a backup.

Step 1 - Verify the backups

Following a guide on a similar topic I deleted the
com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist file (on my ReadyNAS this was
located under /c/.timemachine/MachineName.sparsebundle/)
Have Time Machine verify your backups by having the alt-key pressed while clicking the Time Machine icon and choosing Verify Backups

At this stage Time Machine Preferences still states that I have no backups, but by choosing Enter Time Machine I can see the earlier backups.

Step 2 - Take a new backup

After this was done, Time Machine Preferences update both the Latest Backup date and Oldest Backup date to correct values.


Move full screen apps? Is it possible to move full screen apps in Mission Control to be at the beginning, (before space #1)?

I think the sequence depends on how frequent you use the Desktop and the full app.


Vimeo embedded videos don't show in Safari Vimeo embedded videos do not appear in Safari although they appear in all other browsers on the same machine. Not only do the video not play but the placeholder where the video should be on the page is blank. This seems to be Safari 5 related.

First thing that comes to mind for me is if you happen to have any Extensions installed in Safari. You might consider turning them off and reseting Safari from the Safari drop down in the menubar. Clear out caches and and website data.

If you are familiar with looking at the page source code and know how to enable and understand Safari 5 developer mode and debug features, you will probably be able to get a good amount of information for that. Keep me attuned and all the best!

Trial video


How to simulate network connections / ipfw on macOS? I would like all UDP traffic on my localhost to have 1% packet loss, 10 ms propagation delay, 10Mbit/s bandwidth.

On other computers I have experience using ipfw something like this:

ipfw add pipe 1 in

ipfw add pipe 2 out

ipfw pipe 1 config delay 5ms plr 0.005 bw 10Mbits/s
ipfw pipe 2 config delay 5ms plr 0.005 bw 10Mbits/s

I thought I could use macOS' built-in dummynet to achieve something similar.

I ran at the terminal

sudo dnctl pipe 1 config bw 10Mbit/s delay 10 plr 0.01
echo "dummynet out proto udp from any to any pipe 1" | sudo pfctl -f -

sudo pfctl -sa and sudo dnctl list show the expected outputs (the rule seems to have been added).

DUMMYNET RULES:
dummynet out proto udp all pipe 1

00001:  10.000 Mbit/s    10 ms   50 sl.plr 0.010000 0 queues (1 buckets) droptail
    mask: 0x00 0x00000000/0x0000 -> 0x00000000/0x0000

Now I expect all udp traffic to be slowed.

But, the UDP traffic through my localhost is clearly not having any dropped packets at least, and is likely not following any of the other rules.

What's the correct method to simulate poorer network connections on macOS?

Your own commands are actually almost the solution. You basically just need to ensure that pf is enabled, and then repeat your rule for outgoing packets to also apply to incoming packets.

You can do this like this:

sudo pfctl -E
sudo dnctl pipe 1 config bw 10Mbit/s delay 5 plr 0.005
echo "dummynet out proto udp from any to any pipe 1" | sudo pfctl -f -
echo "dummynet in proto udp from any to any pipe 1" | sudo pfctl -f -


Can I automatically remove my signature from all replies? Mail 6.2 OS x 10.8.2 In OS X Mail.app (version 6.2 from OS X 10.8.2), I can see how to automatically add a signature for all new messages, but I do not want it automatically added when I reply to a message. Is there a way to achieve this?

Not sure if anyone ever answered this. I came here looking for a solution which was ever so simple.

Open Mail.app, go to Mail -> Preferences or use the key-combo Command,

Select the Tab that says 'Signatures' and uncheck the box that says to have the 'signature' above quoted text.


Can't install Apple Fitness app to iPad 14.3 I just updated my iPad Pro 2020 to iPadOS 14.3.  I'm also an Apple One Premier member.
When I try to download the Apple Fitness app to my iPad, the App Store doesn't let me.  I get an error message: "This app requires specific features not available on this device."
Apple's announcement states

For usage with iPad, Fitness+ requires iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation or later), iPad mini 4 or later, iPad Air 2, or iPad Air (3rd generation or later), running iOS 14.3.

It looks like there might be a problem for iPad users right now.  I can get it to work on my iPhone so I know it's available.  Is there a way to download this to an iPad?

It's looking like there is a delay in rolling it out to iPadOS devices at the moment.
I'm sure they will get this issue resolved shortly.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/14/apple-fitness-plus-ipad-unavailable/

Added a link with new about the issue.


How do I fix failed aliases? I had two external hard disks: External and Backup. External had many aliases which pointed to other files on the same disk. Backup was used to backup External.

External failed, and I now use Backup, which I have since renamed to External. Unfortunately, all those aliases now point to /Volumes/Backup/… and thus no longer work.

I don't want to have to fix them or recreate them one at a time.

Is there a way to fix all the aliases so that they point to /Volumes/External/… instead of /Volumes/Backup/…?

Here's my stab at solving this problem with Applescript. The following applescript will take selected aliases in the Finder and try and relink them to the new path replacing Backup with External in the POSIX path.

Hopefully it's straightforward. You could probably make it recursive to search for aliases in selected folders, but that's more work than I care to do -- and then there's the problem of dealing with aliases to folders. Things could get messy. ;-)

Hope it helps.

tell application "Finder"
    set these_items to the selection
end tell

repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
    set this_item to (item i of these_items) as alias
    set this_info to info for this_item

    if class of this_item is alias then
        tell application "Finder"
            set original_file to original item of this_item
            set this_alias_file_name to displayed name of this_item
            set container_folder to container of this_item

            set the_path to the POSIX path of (original_file as alias)
            set new_path to my replaceText("/Backup/", "/External/", the_path)

            move this_item to trash
            try
                make new alias file at container_folder to (POSIX file new_path) with properties {name:this_alias_file_name}
            on error errMsg number errorNumber
                if errorNumber is -10000 then -- new original file not found, try relinking to old
                    try
                        make new alias file at container_folder to (POSIX file the_path) with properties {name:this_alias_file_name}
                    on error errMsg number errorNumber
                        if errorNumber is -10000 then -- old original not found. link's dead Jim
                            display dialog "The original file for alias " & this_alias_file_name & " was not found."
                        else
                            display dialog "An unknown error occurred:  " & errorNumber as text
                        end if
                    end try
                else
                    display dialog "An unknown error occurred:  " & errorNumber as text
                end if
            end try
        end tell
    end if
end repeat

on replaceText(find, replace, subject)
    set prevTIDs to text item delimiters of AppleScript
    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to find
    set subject to text items of subject

    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to replace
    set subject to "" & subject
    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to prevTIDs

    return subject
end replaceText


iTunes 11 reverts to season 1 of a show after watching an episode Since upgrading to iTunes 11 with it's wonderful interface I've run into an issue. I have several TV shows with multiple seasons. It's great that the interface now groups the seasons all into one icon for the show. However, if I select a later season (eg. 2) and watch an episode, when it finishes and iTunes goes back to it's window, I'm back on Season 1.

Quite an irritation to have to scroll back up to the top of the show, go back to the season I'm watching, and then scroll back down to find the episode I was on.

Is this just a bug, or am I missing a setting somewhere?

Looks like a bug that was fixed in 11.0.1 today.


How do I delete files from a timemachine backup So my mac was acting very slow and so I backed up all my files to an external hard drive using time machine and then proceeded to restart the entire mac. Now that I plug in my hard drive with my back up I dont really want to put it all back since my computer is running so much faster. My question is then how do i delete some files on that back up. Every time i press delete it says files can not be deleted from this back up time machine?

You need to 'Enter Time Machine' by clicking on the menu bar icon that looks like a clock face. One of the options is to enter time machine. This transforms your screen temporarily into a time machine window. From there you can select and delete time machine files.


Best practice/OSX software for managing Hard Drive archives I have two dozen bare hard drives (3.5" and 2.5") which are used as long-term storage for personal photos, videos and documents. Most files are duplicated across at least two drives. For the most part, these drives sit idle in storage.

When I need to use them, I use either a USB 3.0 Voyager S3 dock, or for the smaller drives, a Crucial Nextar USB 3.0 enclosure.

Every year or so I would like to "exercise" these drives to verify they are still functional and the data is still available.

Way back when, I might have used TechTool Pro, DiskWarrior, or other Mac OS compatible software to run diagnostics. (Disk Utility is very limited and does not really give me much insight into the health of drives. With S.M.A.R.T its pretty much all or nothing...).

Is there a clear standard recommendation for OSX compatible software to verify the health and integrity of HDs and SSDs?

You do not want to use solely techniques/tools such as Disk Utility, SMART, etc. as they do not actually verify the integrity of the data.

For validation of archives, you'll want to store not only the data to the drive but also checksums of each part of the data. Periodically you'll then want to read in all the data from the drive, recalculate the checksum and check that it matches.

This is necessary because modern hard drives can often fail in a mode where everything seems to be working, but as soon as you try to read specific part of the hard drive - they fail. There's a large risk that you won't get an advance alert from SMART or programs like Disk Utility that check only the file system structure.

To generate and validate the checksums you can use software such as "Checksum Folders":

http://www.nordcode.eu/checksum-folders/

You can also create your own solution by using commands in the Terminal. Open up the Terminal and issue the following:

 find /Volumes/MyDisk -type f -not -name “checksums.txt” -exec md5 ‘{}’ \; > /Volumes/MyDisk/checksums.txt

where "MyDisk" should be replaced with the name of your disk.

This generates a text file with the checksums of every file on the disk. Then to later validate the checksum, you run the same command, but redirect the output to "checksums2.txt".

Then run:

diff /Volumes/MyDisk/checksums.txt /Volumes/MyDisk/checksums2.txt

if you have any output from that command, it means that the checksums do not match.


Why does my iPad require me to tap 'OK' for a 6 digit PIN, but my iPhone does not? I'm using a 6 digit PIN on both my iPad and my iPhone.

Both are running iOS 9.0.1.

My iPhone takes the six-digit PIN and opens to the home screen.

My iPad takes the six-digit PIN and then waits for me to touch OK before I can go to the home screen.

I have the iPhone 6S and the 3rd Gen. iPad

So,why does my iPad require me to tap 'OK' for a 6 digit PIN, but my iPhone does not?

On your iPhone, you have a 6 digit code, replacing the prior 4 digit code.

On your iPad, you have an alphanumeric password, which just happens to consist of just 6 digits. Alphanumeric passwords on iOS are just like other passwords in that you have to confirm when you have finished typing.


External Hard Drive - Get Write Access Rights I have a Mac Book Pro. When I attach my external hard drive to it, I can only read rights. How to I get read and write rights?

A common cause of this would be the external drive being formatted in NTFS.

If your external hard drive is NTFS formatted (a common Windows format), MacOS X can only mount it read-only. There are third-party add-ons that would allow a Mac to write to a NTFS, but out of the box, Macs can read but not write to this format.


Can the magnetic field from an Apple Watch charger affect external hard drives or credit cards? One time I disconnected the Apple Watch charger and the magnetic attachment landed right next to an external hard drive.  Since the charger uses magnetic field to charge the Apple Watch, will placing it a few inches or right next to an external hard drive on the desk cause possible data loss to the hard drive?  Or what if it is a wallet with credit cards in it.  There are some possible scenarios:

a few inches next to it
right next to it
while charging, especially if it is 8 or 10 hours
when just within the few seconds disconnected from the Apple Watch
when not attached to the Apple Watch

The short answer is no, you aren't going do any damage with a wireless charger being near any magnetically sensitive devices.

Let's tackle each one of the points you brought up.

Inductive charging is only effective up to a maximum of  4cm (about an inch and a half).  Anything past that and the magnetic field is simply too weak.
It would need to be "right on top of it" to be close enough, but that point is moot.  See #5 below.
Time is irrelevant when it's out of range.  Again, it would have to be on top, but it's a moot point.
Same as #3
When your wireless charger is not attached to the Apple Watch, it's not transmitting an the electromagnetic field used for charging.    Within the base station is a "communications and control" unit that regulates how much power to use to create the magnetic field.  When a device is not in range, it will output very nominal power.  Once a device comes within range the "comm and control" unit will negotiate how much power to output to charge the device.

Granted, this is a very simplistic description of the charging process, but the key concept is there.

Bottom line is that when not connected, the magnetic field is so low that you would have have remove all of your drive's enclosure, electrical shielding, and casing of the drive itself to actually affect the magnetized platters.  With the watch charging, you would have to somehow keep the base station watch and drive in direct contact with each other which is next to impossible due to physical constraints.

If you notice, your watch must be in direct contact with the charging station for it to charge.  You can be assured that the electromagnetic field being generated is going to be very weak past the physical dimensions of the watch.

More info:  Qi Wireless Charging

Backstory...I came upon this info while researching how to build my own Qi wireless charger under a glass desk.  I have a frosted white glass desk which if I put the transmitter coils in a particular area, you wouldn't be able to see that a charger was in fact part of the desk. All you would have to do is place your phone on the desk in the right spot and it would start charging.   Unfortunately, I couldn't make it work because the glass desk, being 5mm was too thick to use Qi (same used in the Apple Watch).  I would need a resonant charger to get the distance, but it was incompatible with my phone.


USB drives connected to hub disppearing I've got four external USB drives connected to a 7 port powered dlink hub.  All of them are externally powered, save for one of them.  The hub is connected to a late 2012 Mac Mini.

If I connect the drives directly to the mini, they work perfectly.  When I connect them to the hub, they randomly start to disappear and the finder shows me the "You have unsafely disconnected this drive" dialog for each of them.

I am running OS X Mavericks, but this occurred under Mountain Lion as well.

When they disappear I am unable to get them to re-mount save rebooting the machine. Launching Disk Utility actually just hangs until I force quit it, and if I try to mount them with diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk9 or similar I get One or more volume(s) failed to mount.

They are sort-of visible in the diskutil list command though.  I mean sort of since not all of them are listed there and some of them are listed twice (e.g. the drive named Hobbes is on there as /dev/disk7 as well as /dev/disk3.

Here is the output from diskutil list.

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         499.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Calvin                 *498.9 GB   disk1
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Hobbes                  999.9 GB   disk3s2
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk4
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2:                 Apple_RAID                         992.2 GB   disk4s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk4s3
/dev/disk6
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk6
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk6s1
   2:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk6s3
/dev/disk7
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk7
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk7s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Hobbes                  999.9 GB   disk7s2
/dev/disk8
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk8
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk8s1
   2:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk8s3
/dev/disk9
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk9
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk9s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Spaceman Spiff          2.0 TB     disk9s2

Any ideas? I've tried turning off the Energy Saver preference for "shut down hard drives when possible", but it keeps happening.

To troubleshoot this, you could use System Information to inspect the USB tree on all ports and see if you can see the connected hubs.

That might make it easier to diagnose what part of the chain is dropping.

Additionally, the console app can let you search for error messages around the time when the devices go missing. Searching for USB and other disk related messages might turn up some idea if it's an overpower condition where the hardware is shutting down the ports as a preventative measure or due to sustained errors on the USB bus.


Blinking screen on Macbook Air 2011 13" I have some issue with my macbook air mid 2011 13" One day screen start blinking and flickering. This is a short video how it looks like click Only blinking, no stripes on screen or other artifacts.

Any suggestions what is the reason? Screen, motherboard, I/O board? How can I fix it without changing the screen?

This definitely is a screen issue with the backlighting failing. Your only option will be to replace the screen.


Applications in appstore aren't binary? Sorry if the title is confusing, I do not know how to describe it better. Perhaps an example will help you understand:

When I download a 1GB file (it's an example) the appstore I notice that the download is quite fast, or I do not down 1GB, the application gets 1GB only after installation.

So I was curious, the application before being installer is:

Compressed source and compiled in the installation

or

Pre-compiled and compressed

Would any of these? Or is it something else?

Apple stores their applications in what are essentially ZIP files, with a different extension. You could replace the ".ipa" on an iPhone app for example with ".zip" and extract its contents. So yes, they do use compression.


How to run terminal commands when terminal itself isn't responding? Mac paused all my running apps (including Terminal) when the OS was low on memory. Now due to a Mac bug, the paused apps wouldn't continue even while I had clicked resume. I'd like to send SIGCONT (kill -cont) to the Terminal app.

Is there an alternative Terminal?

No. When you’ve gotten a system in extreme and memory is fully committed, your only home is to ssh in remotely or get lucky with an app launch.

You might need to just power off the machine and pick up the pieces of lost and unsaved data as needed.

Unless you have the shell already open, chances of spawning a new one are slim.

Force quitting any non needed apps might also get you a narrow window to resume control.


Exporting podcasts from iOS app as OPML I have finally decided to switch from the Apple Podcast app to Overcast, but I cannot find a way to move my subscriptions. A (similar question) was asked a while ago, but iTunes has changed since then, and the new MacOS app doesn't have those menus. So, I was wondering if anyone knows another way to get an OPML file.

The Podcasts app appears to store its data inside a sqlite database. Using the information inside we can create an OPML file that Overcast (or any good podcast app) will accept.

Here's a script that I made that will create the OPML file:

#!/bin/bash

sql() {
    sqlite3 "${HOME}/Library/Group Containers/"*.groups.com.apple.podcasts/Documents/MTLibrary.sqlite "select ${1} from ZMTPODCAST ${2:+"where ${2} = '${3}'"};" |\
        sed -e 's/&/\&amp;/g' \
            -e 's/</\&lt;/g' \
            -e 's/>/\&lgt;/g' \
            -e "s/'/\&apos;/g"
}

opml_export=${HOME}/Desktop/podcasts.opml
cat > ${opml_export} << HEAD
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<opml version="1.0">
  <head><title>Podcast Subscriptions</title></head>
  <body>
    <outline text="feeds">
HEAD

sql ZUUID | while read -r uuid ; do
    feed_url=$(sql ZFEEDURL ZUUID "${uuid}")
    home_url=$(sql ZWEBPAGEURL ZUUID "${uuid}")
    title=$(sql ZTITLE ZUUID "${uuid}")
    cat <<EOT
<outline type="rss" text="${title}" title="${title}" xmlUrl="${feed_url}" htmlUrl="${home_url}" />
EOT
done >> ${opml_export}

cat >> ${opml_export} << TAIL
    </outline>
  </body>
</opml>
TAIL

This will create podcasts.opml on your desktop.


Can I make a call from iPhone 5s via WiFi? I have an iPhone 5s that ATT will not unlock.  Can I make calls via WiFi if the SIM card is still in it but I have no cell carrier? Phone is at IOS 8.1.3.

There are 2 VoIP apps that are widely used here in Southeast Asia.

http://www.viber.com/en/#iphone

https://itunes.apple.com/app/id414478124?mt=8&ls=1

Check them out.


Calendar show more all-day events Is it possible to increase the area dedicated to all-day events? It grows automatically up to 5 events, the 6th is partially shown and from the 7th they are hidden.

To see multiple (>5) "all day" events in a single day, you need to use the View by Day option.

Or alternatively you can use the week view but with scroll function.


Keyboard doesn't work on selecting boot disk macOS I'm using macOS 10.12.1 on mac mini 2012 with Plume 84 keyboard attached to back of it. When I try to boot into bootcamp disk(by holding option key while booting procedure), it doesn’t work.

keyboard is plugged into the back of the computer directly. It's connected on rightmost port.
Win 10 is installed on bootcamp section
I tried rEFInd, selecting disk screen appeared but keyboard didn't allow me to select disk. I pressed the arrow key but focus didn't move.
BOOTCAMP disk isn't appeared on 'boot disk' section in Preferences app.
Other keyboard(Tesoro M7) does work which uses PS2 cable with usb converter. It even worked when plugged into USB Hub.

Since the other keyboard worked, I think it would be the matter of Plume 84 keyboard itself. But I doubt if that's something possible happen, and would appreciate if anyone can give me explanation how this happened. Also, if there's some way I can use this keyboard to be recognized while booting procedure, I would be grateful if you enlighten me. Any suggestion are appreciated as well.

Apology if this post is duplicate one. Every solution I googled didn't work.

This issue is a common issue experienced by almost everybody that uses bootcamp on a Mac. There are a few ways that you can try to fix/do.

Method 1

Have you checked the installed drivers on the bootcamp side. Launch the bootcamp application on the Mac and deselect disinstall windows 10 or lower versions. Then select the "Get latest drivers from Apple" and insert a USB driver inside the computer.

Make sure that the USB is working well and formatted on FAT32.
If you're experiencing issues try to format using SDFormatter that is free. Press the continue button and let it download the latest drivers.

Keep the USB inserted and boot on Windows10. In normal conditions, Windows should recognize the driver data and launch it automatically but if it doesn't recognize, just launch it like another program on your computer via the USB drive.

After doing this process reboot your computer and the latest Mac drivers including the CD reader, keyboard, SD reader and many more hardware will work.

Method 2

Make sure that your keyboard is recognized by Windows10. Check your hardwares inserted/paired with the computer you're using through the control panel. If the keyboard is not seen here contact Apple Support.

Note: First Method should work and in normal conditions drivers are not working on almost every user out there.

Take care and let me know if you need more help.

Arda


Quickly create/edit keyboard shortcuts for menu items Currently, if I want to bind a new keyboard shortcut to a menu item, I need to go through a somewhat tedious, many-step process:

Open System Preferences, then Keyboard pane, then App Shortcuts
Click the + button
Find the application in the menu
Forget the exact name of the menu item I want to bind
Go back to the other application, find the menu item, remember exactly what it’s called
Go back to System Preferences and type that in the field
Type the desired shortcut and click “Add”
On testing it out, find that I somehow mistyped it and spend a couple minutes troubleshooting steps 5–7

For something so simple as binding a keyboard shortcut to a menu item, I feel like there should be a very easy way to achieve this in about two seconds.

Is there some sort of script or app which I can use to easily manage an app's keyboard shortcuts?

I would be equally happy with something resembling either of these:

A small script/background app which I can call, which prompts me to select a menu item and type my desired shortcut
A somewhat larger program which will list and let me edit every menu item and/or keybinding within a certain app

Here's the AppleScript for it:

on run

tell application "System Events"
    set theActiveApp to name of 1st process whose frontmost is true
end tell

set theApplicationID to id of application theActiveApp
set theMenuItem to text returned of (display dialog "Enter menu item name" default answer "Example: New Window")
set theShortcut to text returned of (display dialog "Enter shortcut (use these: ⌘=@,  ⌥=~,  ⇧=$,  ^=^)" default answer "Example: @$1")

do shell script "defaults write " & quoted form of theApplicationID & " NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add " & quoted form of (quote & theMenuItem & quote) & " " & quoted form of (quote & theShortcut & quote)

end run

So, it gets the current application's identifier and then adds your menu item name and shortcut as required. You can even click the application's menu bar without the popup going away!

However, note that this is merely a rudimentary version of what you wanted; it only adds entries. If you make a mistake, that's yours to manually fix (and it might not appear in System Preferences). Also, lastly, it did not seem to work in Automator or Script Editor, but worked fine for the Finder. As for the former two, it adds the entries but for some reason they don't show up in System Preferences and can't be used, even after restarting the app. I don't know why but hey, at least it's something ;)


Error importing videos to Photos in Catalina: Unsupported resource set: video,xmp I have several Photos libraries; my system library that's synced with iCloud, and some additional libraries for things that I want to keep but don't need to have available all the time. Here's my workflow for getting photos into those libraries:

Take photos and videos with my iPhone XS Max.
Wait for them to appear in my system library through iCloud sync.
Export them to a folder using File > Export > Export Unmodified
Original... with Export IPTC as XMP checked.
Open the destination Photos library.
Drag the exported folder onto "Photos" under "Library" in the sidebar to import its contents.

This worked fine up until Catalina. Export still seems to work fine, and import works fine for images, but it no longer works for videos. Now when I drag my exported folder into Photos it imports the images, but gives the following error message for each video:

  ** Invalid: Unsupported resource set: video,xmp **

This only appears for videos that are pure video. Live Photos with a video component import fine.

The videos are all HEVC in a .mov container, recorded on an iPhone with iOS 13, synced with iCloud, and exported from Photos in Catalina, so they are definitely not an incompatible or older codec.

I can import the videos by themselves, without the .xmp files. They appear to have all their metadata intact, so maybe the .xmp files are no longer necessary.

Anybody know why this is no longer working?

macOS 10.15 (Catalina) has removed support for a number of things, the old Quicktime Pro no longer works (unfortunate as it is a nice, simple, movie editor) and (among other things) support for older codec movie files.

It is likely that those files that won't import are in a (now) unsupported format.

I would recommend just re-encoding them into a modern format like H264. Handbrake is what I use for such tasks. it is free and open source, updated regularly and highly recommended.


Unlocking old Sprint iPhone 4s I have an old Sprint iPhone 4s that hasn't been under contract for around a year now and I have a friend on T-Mobile whose contract doesn't end for another year. He still has a flip phone so I want to give him the old iPhone. Is there a way to unlock the iPhone if it is no longer under contract?

Unlocking is trivial with carrier support.

Here is Apple's article on how to proceed technically once your carrier has unlocked the device:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5014

We have a nice thread on this Sprint to T-Mobile shift here:

Getting an unlocked iPhone 4/4S to work on T-Mobile


How to host Etherpad (node.js) AND create a closed Wifi network from the same Mac? I have a successfully running Etherpad install running on my Mac, and when clients on my network connect to my node.js server through the IP address assigned by my router, all is well.

But I'm going to take this Mac offsite to a location which might not have Internet access, so I'd like to create a closed local Wifi network, allowing clients to connect to this same Mac running the server.

But without an active router connection, I don't have an IP address. How should I proceed?

I fumbled around trying to create custom network interfaces and trying to make them available through both 'Create network…' and 'Internet sharing', but no luck.

(I'm aware I can bring a router, or set up another Mac to act as one, but I'd like to figure this one out.)

Ah, it seems that the problem is that while "Internet Sharing" is ON, OSX does not instantiate the child connection (in your case, the WiFi network) until you actually get an internet connection on the parent connection.

You can potentially fool it with a loopback adapter on your ethernet connection (and perhaps static addressing and setting the router as itself), but I have not tried it.


Can ping Mac from machines on network but can't connect to any of its ports So, I have been dealing with a rather peculiar issue:

I have a Mac on my home network connected via Ethernet, which I use for web browsing, checking email, etc. I have no problems accessing both my local network and the outside Internet.
I have a Linux box and a MacBook also on the same network, the Linux box on Ethernet and the MacBook via WiFi.
From both the MacBook and the Linux box, I can ping the Mac, and from the Mac, I can ping both the MacBook and the Linux box.
From the Mac, I can ssh into both the MacBook and the Linux box, but I am unable to ssh from the MacBook or the Linux box into the Mac (connection timeout). Remote Login is enabled in the Sharing preferences pane.
I can ssh from Mac into itself (ssh localhost, ssh <local_ip>), so the daemon must be up.
Web servers hosted on the Mac (on port 80, 8000, etc. - I tried several ports just to make sure) are accessible via localhost or local IP on the Mac, but aren't accessible from the MacBook or the Linux box.
Firewall on the Mac is turned off, and there are no third party firewalls or AV software installed.
I have rebooted the router, the Mac, the MacBook, and the Linux box many times.
mDNS resolution works: pinging the mDNS name of the Mac resolves to the local IP.

So, as far as I can tell, it seems that none of my listening ports on the Mac are available to anyone on the LAN, but my outgoing connections still reach them just fine.

Any ideas on what's happening? I'm running out of ideas.

I ended up just backing up my boot drive to a disk image and reinstalling the OS (not restoring the backup, but occasionally mounting it to pull what I need off of it). Problem seems to be resolved now.


Is there a way to configure Mac OS X Snow Leopard server as an Internet gateway with bandwidth tracking per user? I'd like to use Mac OS X 10.6.7 Snow Leopard Server as an Internet gateway.  My router would connect to the Internet facing NIC on my Mac Mini server and the internal NIC would connect to a WiFi access point.

I want to be able to track the bandwidth users on the WiFi network are using, but I am aware of the fact that MAC addresses on wireless clients are easily changed.

How can I do bandwidth accounting based on WiFi clients without MAC addresses, logons each time and having the Internet gateway server act as a DHCP server ?

UPDATE - It appears I want to run RADIUS for WiFi auth and usage accounting...is this available in server/daemon form for Mac OS X 10.6.x Snow Leopard Server ?

Thanks,

Scott

There's a RADIUS server in OS X Server, and it can easily be used for Wi-Fi authentication.

However, traffic accounting is a different thing here. Mac OS X uses Freeradius, which can collect this information, but it is unconfigurable through Server Admin. So, you'll have to set up this by editing proper configuration files manually.


Disk Utility does not show OK message after Verify Disk Rebooted and Verified Disk twice. There is no OK message and stops here:

Is it a new behaviour under Mavericks, or something wrong? How can I fix it?

As stated above, this is a known bug issue. However, booting to the recovery partition (CMD + R while booting up) or by holding down Option to boot to a USB recovery drive (for those of us with home-brew FusionDrives who haven't gotten around to setting up a Recovery partition again), the process seems to complete without issue.


Macbook Pro shuts down at 30% battery I have a Macbook Pro from late 2011. it shuts down when the battery percentage is anywhere from 20-45%. Everything that I've been reading online says that the battery is dying and needs to be replaced, but I replaced the battery less than six months ago, and to my knowledge, they're supposed to last upwards of 4 years.

The first thing I'd recommend you try is resetting your MBP's System Management Controller (SMC).

Resetting the SMC

To reset the SMC on your particular MBP follow these steps:

Shut down your MBP
Unplug the power cable from your Mac
For 10 seconds, press and hold at the same time the shiftcontroloption keys (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button
After 10 seconds let go of all keys and the power button
Plug in the power cable
Turn your MBP back on with the power button

Once you've done this I'd fully charge your MBP and then test to see if the same behaviour returns.


Is it possible to change the Bluetooth UUID on my iPod? Is it possible to change the Bluetooth UUID (the 128-bit value) on my iPod (Currently running iOS 5.0)? or is this a factory locked value?

No it is not possible. No known private API or jailbreak methods to do so AFAIK.


WD External Drive shows empty in Finder, won't unmount or repair unless unplugged Symptoms: after coming back from sleep, the external WD drives show empty in Finder. But if you look at the info, it reports the used capacity correctly. Disk Utillity First Aid will fail to check it. WD Drive Utilities will fail also. You can't eject it, even though it should not be in use. The only cure I have found is to manually disconnect the drive, and reconnect it. Once it remounts, the drive appears healthy on both Mac and WD disk utilities. Happens on my iMac under High Sierra, but has been reported numerous times with many older and newer versions of MacOS. Both of my external WD drives (Passport and WD Ultra) do this. Does not seem to happen with other hard drive brands. Sounds to me like a big bad driver bug, maybe from WD. Have seen many complaints, but no solution to date. Anyone good with drivers has a solution for it or a way to investigate this further? Where should I report this so it gets developers attention?

First, try running First Aid while the device is readable. If that doesn't fix the issue, then you can try using Safe Boot to isolate and fix issues with your Mac. This does not seem like an issue with macOS, more like an issue with your drive.

What is your External Drive's format? If you will be using it only on a Mac, then I would recommend formatting it to HFS (macOS Extended) or APFS. NTFS and FAT32 are not always the best choice on macOS. Before formatting, make sure to copy and paste your files to your Mac so that you can put them on the drive after formatting.

Before formatting, can you see if the data is still accessible via Terminal. To do this: cd /Volumes/YourDiskName then ls to see all the contents.

To format the drive (This will erase all data):
1. Open Disk Utility
2. Select your drive
3. Select Erase (at the top)
4. Select the format APFS or macOS Extended
5. Select Erase

If you would like to report this to developers, you can try submitting feedback to the manufacturer of the Disk or to Apple.

Here is the link to submit feedback to Apple: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Good luck!


Reinstall Office 2011 without dmg? I currently run Lion with Office 2011 and need to re-install Lion after wiping out my HD. I however no longer have the DVD with which I installed Office. How shall I go about re-installing it again having no access to the DVD anymore?

You can download the Office 2011 Trial and enter your product key in the Setup Assistant. If you also lost your product key, you'll probably need to contact Microsoft Support. You can find info about replacing your DVD at this Microsoft Support page.


Cannot reach webpage for certificate generation on my developer account I am trying to reach the webpage for certificates under developer.apple.com. But I get redirected to the Welcome page. My Apple ID is an iCloud address *...@icloud.com.

Why does https://developer.apple.com/account/ios/certificate/
 redirect to https://developer.apple.com/account/#/welcome ?

Your AppleID appears to not be registered as a Developer.  You must enroll in the Developer program to operate on certificates.


How to get cpu/memory usage from command line output I am writing a program to read cpu and memory statistics from a remote host. The remote host can be Linux or Mac. So I need a command which returns the cpu/memory usage as output. I have found the command for Linux which is vmstat. But I couldn't find a good one for Mac. I know there is one command vm_stat on mac but it only returns memory usage. Is there a command for CPU usage as well? I have searched that most people use top. But top is good at monitoring and it would be hard to parse the result if I analyze its output in my program. I want to use one shipped with MacOS not a third party library.

If you are looking to capture the total utilized CPU and Memory for all process, you could use this command that is native to Macs:

ps -A -o %cpu,%mem | awk '{ cpu += $1; mem += $2} END {print cpu , mem}'


Can't change wallpaper for Secondary Desktop; I've already tried system preferences I can't change the secondary desktop wallpaper. I've already gone to system preferences and have chosen a wallpaper for second desktop, but it remains all white???

On Mountain Lion, you have to open System preferences and drag the window to corresponding desktop at which you want to change the wallpaper. Then select background picture of choice.


Time Machine from networked Mac? Is it at all possible to setup Time Machine so that it backs up to a disk image on my external Mac?

Here's my setup:

My MBA which will be backed up
MBP which is connected to the wireless network
External drive connected to the Mac which I want the data to be backed up to
MBP is running Snow Leopoard
MBA is running ML

Is this possible? I could also connect this drive to my router, but as of right now, it doesn't look like it's seeing it.

This tutorial should be able to help you:

http://www.reasonablyopinionated.com/2011/11/time-machine-backups-to-drive-on.html

I just tried it and it worked for me.  Not sure how reconnects will go after a reboot or something, but it shouldn't be that difficult to get working again.


Confusion regarding Mac Pro graphic cards I have an eraly 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 and I'm interested in upgrading its graphic capabilities. It currently has an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. I have looked online for compatible graphics cards but I'm confused regarding compatibility. For example, the GTX 770 is said to be compatible for the Mac I have if flashed, but I don't understand how that works. Is any GTX 770 available on the market compatible off the bat? Would I need to flash it? Is it possible to keep the graphics card I curently have and add the other one?

Which version of macOS runs on your MacPro? I believe 10.11 is the last version that the cMP3,1 supports... Anyways, if you plan on using the Mojave Patcher I would recommend getting a GTX680. If you really can't live without a bootscreen I would recommend looking at flashing tutorials for NVIDIA GPUs. There are a few on YouTube (esp. GTX680) and macrumors is also a good source. You could also buy a flashed card from MacVidCards, but they are a bit pricey..

I don't miss the EFI Screen on my MacPro 5.1 with an unflashed RX580.

Good Luck!


iTunes not accepting me to download apps from the App Store I was bought an iPad yesterday. I'm actually a 12 year old and want to download Subway Surfers but can't. I always have internet but whenever I try my account is not verified. What's the step foward guys?

Is the account in your name or a parent/guardian?

There maybe restrictions set on the account, or the email address or password maybe incorrect.

As Subway Surfers contains in-app purchases this may also be restricted.

I would recommend speaking with your parent or guardian to get the issue resolved.

Although more information would allow use to help resolve the issue.


Which mail daemon does OS X 10.8.4 run by default? I'm debugging some mail related stuff on my Mac, and not quite sure how my system is even sending mail.

I can run a simple command like date | mail -s test myemail@mydomain.com and receive an email just fine. Cool. I can also use PHP's mail() function to send mail. PHP's sendmail_path configuration variable is /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i, looks okay.

But the weird thing is I don't think Postfix is even running...

$ postqueue -p
postqueue: fatal: Queue report unavailable - mail system is down
$ ps -aef | grep -i postfix
  501 28403 25525   0  2:10PM ttys042    0:00.00 grep -i postfix
$ launchctl list | grep -i mail
-   0   com.apple.MailMigratorService
70829   -   0x7fa87941a060.anonymous.Mail
$ launchctl list | grep -i postfix
-   0   org.postfix.master

How is my Mac even sending mail from the mail terminal command if Postfix isn't running? Is there some other mail daemon OS X runs?

It is using postfix. At a high-level, when you execute the mail command, the following is happening:

Invoking mail drops your message as a file in the postfix maildrop directory, i.e.,  /var/spool/postfix/maildrop. This happens because mail calls sendmail which calls postdrop which puts the file in the maildrop.
The postfix main daemon, master is configured to startup when the maildrop has files in it. This is specified in the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist file.
The master daemon starts other needed postfix processes such as pickup, qmgr and smtp to deliver the mail.
All these process including the master daemon die after being idle for period of time.

The postqueue -p command needs the showq daemon which will be started  only when master is running. When that's not the case, you see that error. The showq daemon can be configured to always be running so that you can use the postqueue -p command. If you want to just see the mail queue, you can do this:

$ sudo postfix start && postqueue -p && sudo postfix stop

But note that if you start it this way, you must shut it down too. Otherwise the postfix master daemon will be resident and won't be on-demand anymore.

If you want to know which processes start after you issue mail, you can use the execsnoop command to see which process are starting up:

$ sudo execsnoop -v
STRTIME                UID    PID   PPID ARGS
2016 Apr 20 23:57:52   501   2358   1154 mail
2016 Apr 20 23:57:52   501   2359   2357 date
2016 Apr 20 23:57:52   501   2360      1 sendmail
2016 Apr 20 23:57:52   501   2367   2360 postdrop
2016 Apr 20 23:57:52     0   2369   2343 cleanup
2016 Apr 20 23:58:23     0   2384      1 master
2016 Apr 20 23:58:23     0   2385   2384 pickup
2016 Apr 20 23:58:23     0   2386   2384 qmgr
2016 Apr 20 23:58:24     0   2387   2384 bounce
2016 Apr 20 23:58:24     0   2388   2384 trivial-rewrite
2016 Apr 20 23:58:24     0   2389   2384 local
2016 Apr 20 23:58:24     0   2390   2384 smtp


Mac OS disable shutdown prevention when user is logged in At our office, there are tons of different users who use the same Macs running High Sierra over the course of a day. Unfortunately, sometimes people forget to log out after they've used those computers which leads to the last people in office in the evening not being able to shut those computers down without the admin password. I cannot give our Admin credentials to all of them because that would pose a huge security risk. Is there a way to modify Mac OS so that it doesn't ask for the Admin credentials when trying to shut the machine down while another user is logged in?

There’s rarely a good technical question to a purely human problem. I heard one company change every account to the cell phone of people that don’t clean up so that everyone would call that number any time someone forgot to log out. Until the person paying the salaries resolves if it’s always IT’s responsibility to clean up after other people or set a standard for people to clean up after themselves, you’ll be stuck. A bit brutal, but it’s better than them losing their data by an unclean shut down.
The technical solution would be to trial the feature to log out idle connections and see if that works.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/set-your-mac-to-log-out-when-not-in-use-mchlp2443/mac

Barring that, you would enable a non-admin account to force power off / shut down but again, without them taking over the accounts that are logged in, you are left with the damaged app data or unsaved work dilemma. For that, an admin resetting the password would let someone take over the accounts to exit them cleanly, and then presumably lock that person out the next day since they wouldn’t know their password.
If you want to go down the path of a command you could enable a non-admin helper account, here are several options:

Way to logout a user from the command line in OS X 10.9

I prefer you take the tack of explaining the issue, why it’s disruptive when people leave before they clean up and then let the manager manage.


Does initial FileVault encryption require user to be logged in? If I enable FileVault using a specific account on macOS Sierra, does the account have to be logged in for the initial encryption to take place or does the computer just have to be plugged in and awake even if a different user is logged in?

It depends on the specifics on how you did this. If it is an internal disk that you booted from and the file system is mounted, then the computer just have to plugged in and awake. The encryption takes place in the background even when another user is logged in to the computer!

On the other hand, if it is an external drive that you unmount when logging out, the encryption will not continue when another user logs in.

The important thing here is whether or not the file system is mounted. It doesn't really matter if the drive is external or internal, but that is just how people treat these two types of drives in practice.


Sending a product on the Apple Store as a gift to a friend? I want to make a purchase from the Apple Store as a gift to my friend. The purchase is a physical item (e.g., iPhone), rather than an app to download.

Because I live far away from her, I want to use my Visa credit card and send it directly to her address with the option of "Gift" selected. Would that be possible? I will be using her address instead of mine. So, what would the transaction look like when I check my Visa transactions at my bank? Would her name appear on the transaction? Would I still be able to send it to her directly with her information, or do I have to send the package to myself, and send it to her after that?

You have multiple questions here.

First see Apples instructions here http://store.apple.com/us/help/gifting

Will your Bank show and what, you can answer that based on prior experience. My Visa shows the Store name and the amount, not to whom is it shipped or what it was.

In your case better option might be a Gift Card, that you can mail your self, thus no trace.


How to upgrade boot rom firmware without an original drive I have a 2015 MacBook pro that I am in the process of refurbishing. I purchased it used and it was missing many parts (wifi card, IO board, SSD). I have replaced all of these parts and purchased an aftermarket SSD (it looks like an M.2 with an adapter on it).

The machines internet recovery wants to install Yosemite so I assume this machine is on an older firmware version which predates support for NVME drives.

As far as I understand I need a boot rom upgrade that comes with high sierra  in order to boot/use the aftermarket disk. I tried installing Mac OS on an external disk and upgrading it to High Sierra, but I ran into a firmware validation error.

Since apples boot rom/EFI firmware upgrades are staged on the internal disk, it seems this upgrade path is impossible without an original proprietary apple drive.

Is there a way to manually install the boot rom/EFI firmware upgrade in this situation? or is my only option to purchase (a very expensive) original apple drive?

Update: I have personally resolved this by sourcing an original drive, running the upgrade, then swapping in the new drive. I will accept an answer to this question if a feasible alternative is proposed.

Why not try the (alternate) command and (better) restore using latest macOS?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


What is a software or app that extracts old flip phone data to a Mac via USB? UPDATE, here is how I got the photos out.

I'm looking for a software, preferably free, that can extract old flip phone data to a MacBook Pro. I have some photos and sound recording saved on my Samsung AT&T SGH-a687 phone with a broken gpu (so I can't see anything). These are not saved on the SD card.
The manual of the phone doesn't seem to have an option to transfer photos and sounds out. So I would like to have a software that can extract all those phone data for me via USB onto my computer.

I tried downloading a trial version of DataPilot, but that appeared to just be an updater, not the actual DataPilot. (I also hope it isn't a malware.)

If there is nothing free, what are the software you'd recommend me using? I'm willing to pay up to around $50.

Btw, I have a backup PC, if there's an extraction software for a PC, that would work too.

Have you tried contacting any local stores your phone provider has? It's becoming less common nowadays as basic phones are no longer the norm but back in the day they had a machine they could connect your phone to and transfer information out of it then on to a different phone.
Maybe you could call around to local stores and see if any of them still have such machine.
Otherwise, I did a bit of research because I used to know of some software that was for advanced phone modification before smartphones came around however it had a small feature to also see saved files.
I can't seem to find the software I remember using anymore, however I did find BitPim:

BitPim is a program that allows you to view and manipulate data on many CDMA phones from LG, Samsung, Sanyo and other manufacturers. This includes the PhoneBook, Calendar, WallPapers, RingTones (functionality varies by phone) and the Filesystem for most Qualcomm CDMA chipset based phones. To see when phones will be supported, which ones are already supported and which features are supported, see online help.
http://www.bitpim.org/

It seems very similar to the software I used to use, however I've never used it before so I can not offer any help with it other than this YouTube video I found.


Is it possible to highlight the current "active selection" area in the Mac App Store window when using keyboard navigation? I find it easier to use the keyboard to navigate around my Mac.

Most of the apps I use work OK with keyboard shortcuts as they tend to highlight the currently active control.

However, I find the Mac App Store difficult to use with the keyboard as it does not highlight controls as I move around the app's window.

To give an example…

I launch the Mac App Store.
I hit CMD + F to enter the search box. (I know the search box is active as it's highlighted with a blue border.)
I type in 'Pages' and hit enter.
The search results appear.
I hit TAB to move out of the search box to the search results area, but as I move around using TAB, SHIFT + TAB, etc., the active control is not highlighted.

To be clear, I can "move around" using the keyboard without a problem, but as nothing is highlighted I don't know "where I am".

I've checked through the Accessibility Preference Pane in case there's something there that can help, but can't find anything that might enable highlighting.

I'd be grateful if anyone knows a way to enable highlighting of the currently selected control in the Mac App Store app, whether that's by changing a setting in the Terminal, by using a third party "tweaker" app, etc.

I'm currently running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 (14C109).

Many thanks.

added as answer to provide picture…

Do you have "All controls" selected in System Prefs > Keyboard > Keyboard ?

ahhh… I see what you mean. Enter will highlight 'Install App' but before that there is no indication of where you are.


Isolate Mac & Windows sharing parallels I am using parallel desktop. Before I installed parallels drivers both were isolated. Now all my folders are shared with Mac and Windows mutually. I can't simply uninstall the drivers because drivers fixed my windows resolution. Now, I am running Windows on Retina Display. Please help me to fix this sharing issue without uninstalling the parallel drivers. I have tried to change the sharing option in preferences options for windows but even that didn't fixed it. Sharing drivers is still their.

Open your Windows VM and go to Actions -> Configure... in the menubar

Choose the Options-tab and highligt Sharing in the left pane

Uncheck all boxes like in the picture below:

Hit the Custom Folders... Button and remove any user-defined OS X folder by highlighting it and clicking the - button:


Can I download iTunes U courses to USB flash drive? My Macbook Air is limited on hard drive resources right now.

Can I download iTunes U courses onto a USB flash drive（formatted to Mac OS Extended）instead of downloading courses on my own Mac?

I personally haven't seen an easy setting which will let you choose a destination while the course is being downloaded.

You still have two options:

In iTunes go to Preferences and then select Advanced tab on top. There is an option to change the iTunes Media folder location. You can connect a USB drive and temporarily select that drive for downloads.

I would recommend backing up your iTunes library before you try it out.
Also, don't forget to change it back.

If you have enough space on your hard drive you can wait until the download completes and then copy the downloaded files to any location you want.

iTunes downloads are stored in the following directory usually. (unless one has selected some other location)

  ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media

There are separate folders under this for downloaded Mobile Applications (.ipa) and iTunes U content also.


How to remove the use of master boot record from an external hard drive? I have a 1TB external hard drive and I want to slice it into different partitions. When I try to do so, I get this error:

  can not modify external drive because it uses master boot record

Is there a way to fix this without deleting the data that I have in it?

I have 700GB of data, and therefore I can not back it up; even when I try to compress it or make a dmg file in Disk Utility.

I have also tried to use the Disk Management on Windows 7 and still it does not allow me to shrink this.

Is there a way to shrink this partition without losing the data?

Here are the steps I took (note: my drive was blank so I don’t the impact on any data)

Get drive name:

Run Disk Utility
Click External Drive
Click Info icon
Scroll to bottom and find the Parent disks name ex. disk3

Replace Windows MBP with GPT:

Open Terminal
Replace the “disk3” in the command below with #4 above:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 GPT HFS+ newdisk R

copy-n-paste the above text to the command line and run
returned to Disk Utility and was able to partition away


Prevent installation of malware, spyware... Admin password requirement I am new in Mac world. I am the only user of my Mac with OS X 10.9.3 but sometimes other people use my computer.

My purpose is to prevent installation of malware, spyware and surveillance software.

Is OS X secure about this, if not, how can I make it secure?

Can I let my Mac ask administrator password whenever a user including admin and Guest accounts install applications?

If other people use only the guest account, then they have no privileges to install anything.

I have added another account (beside the admin and guest account) which I use for daily work. The reason: sometimes someone ask me if he can use my computer for a short moment, and this way I do not have to switch to the guest account.

And because this third account has no admin privileges, it is more secure than using an admin account for daily work.


Easiest way to repeat MANY mouse clicks? Problem
I imported a large OPML file to a Feedly (a RSS/source aggregator web service), and the import got messed up. I now need to delete the entries on their website using Google Chrome, but there is no way to bulk delete.
Instead of manually clicking almost a thousand times, I'd like to quickly automate a Left-Mouse Click and loop it for as many times.
The reason I'm stating my specific use-case is because I am unlikely to ever use this particular automation again. I need a quick and dirty solution.

Question
What is indeed the fastest and easiest way to record and repeatedly perform a mouse-automation tasks, in macOS Sierra?

Solutions
I took a stab at macOS Automator's Watch Me Do but really didn't get it to work with Chrome as it seems to interpret Left-Mouse clicks as "Drag the scroll thumb in the scroll area" (??)1.
I also investigated some third-party options like Keyboard Maestro and Murgaa (not endorsing any of these, nor have I tried them), as well as some scripting alternatives like CliClick but I must admit that learning how to script with these utilities feels a bit cumbersome right now.
I'm preferably looking for a reliable, and free, Mouse/Click Automator circa 2017 with a GUI. Is there something like that which is recommendable? Or should I tinker more with Automator or something else?

1I've added Automator to the macOS Accessibility settings.

I know you already rejected CliClick, but what if the script was provided for you? It’s actually quite simple. In Script Editor enter the following:

tell application "Google Chrome"
    activate
    repeat 500 times
        do shell script "/Users/<you>/Desktop/cliclick c:" & "1694,18"
        delay 1.5
    end repeat
end tell

Replace 1694,18 with the actual coordinates of the button you want to click. Those can be obtained by pressing ⇧ shift ⌘ cmd 4 and hovering your cursor over the button.

Also replace <you> with your account name, and adjust the delay as appropriate, to account for any animation or form postback.

Obviously this is all assuming the click occurs in the same spot each time. Your question doesn’t specify, although I get the sense that that is the case. Otherwise it would be very hard to script as a repeating click.


E-Mail with attachments (3,5 MB in Entourage. Why? I just added two files as an attachment to an e-mail in MS Entourage 2004.
In Finder, the files have a size of 2,5 MB respectively 205 kB.

When I send them as an e-mail, Entourage tells me that the sent mail has a size of 3,5 MB!

Why? Does this have to do with AppleDouble encoding?
Is there a way to avoid that increase in size?

This isn't an Apple or Entourage issue, this is normal behaviour that happens when attachments are encoded to be sent with emails -- encoding the data to the email format makes the attachments roughly one-third heavier.

This has nothing to do with the Apple filesystem.

There is no way to stop this happening. If file size is a problem, consider uploading to an FTP server, or using a system like Box.net, YouSendIt, or DropBox to share the files -- these methods don't require encoding and will not increase the size.


Set Mac Firmware Password from Linux I would like to set a firmware password on my MacBook Pro, but I only run Linux on it. I know I could download a macOS installer and use that to set the firmware password without installing macOS, but it would be a lot easier simply to set the password from Linux.

Is it possible to set the Mac firmware password from Linux? If so, how?

No, I'm not aware of any software for Linux that allows you to change the EFI firmware password on your Mac.

If you have a recent Mac that supports internet recovery you can reboot straight into internet recovery mode, even if the boot disk has been formatted or overwritten. Once you've booted into a recovery environment, you should be able to use the firmware password tool.

If you have an earlier Mac, then your best bet is to find another working Mac and create a bootable installer to get into recovery mode without needing to overwrite your Linux installation.


Can Automator distribute a large number of files into counted subfolders? I would like to build an Automator application that counts the files in the hostfolder, creates a numbered subfolder named " [hostFolder name] [counter] ", moves at maximum 128 files from hostFolder in sequential order into this new subfolder, and loops until all files in hostFolder are sorted into subfolders (i.e. the last subfolder will have fewer than 128 files in it). Before the workflow runs, the hostfolder will always only contain files, no subfolders.
Here's the desired outcome of my ideal workflow using as an example an arbitrary folder containing an arbitrary number of files, also arbitrarily named. (Note I do not need the workflow to rename any files):

A folder named Beans contains 1027 files, the files Legume 0001 to Legume 1027. My Automator application receives the folder Beans as input. Once the workflow has run, the folder Beans now contains 9 subfolders, named Beans 1, Beans 2, Beans 3, and so on all the way to Beans 9.
The subfolder Beans 1 contains files Legume 0001, Legume 0002, Legume 0003, and so on to Legume 0128. The subfolder Beans 2 contains the files Legume 0129 to Legume 0256. In other words, each subfolder contains 128 of the files named Legume **** in sequential order. The only exception is the final subfolder, Beans 9, which contains only 3 files, the files Legume 1025, Legume 1026, and Legume 1027.

This should do what you've asked for. As coded, the only thing you may need to change in the bash script is filesPerSubDir="128" if you want a different file count per subdirectory within the parent directory that's passed to the Run Shell Script action.

Add a Run Shell Script action to your Automator application/service/workflow and set Shell: /bin/bash and Pass input: as arguments. Remove the default code and then copy and paste the code below into the Automator Run Shell Script action.

#!/bin/bash

filesPerSubDir="128"

for argument in "$@"; do
    if [[ -d $argument ]]; then
        cd "$argument" || exit 1
        dirName="$(basename "$argument")"
        fileCount="$(find . -maxdepth 1 -flags nohidden -type f ! -iname ".*" | awk 'END{print NR}')"
        subDirCount="$(( fileCount / filesPerSubDir + 1 ))"
        for (( i = 1; i < subDirCount+1; i++ )); do
            find . -maxdepth 1 -flags nohidden -type f ! -iname ".*" | head -$filesPerSubDir > .moveList
            if [[ -s  .moveList ]]; then
                mkdir "$dirName $i"
                while IFS= read -r file; do
                    mv "$file" "$dirName $i"
                done < .moveList
            fi
        done
        rm .moveList
    fi
done

The image below shows a testing of the code and the workflow completed successfully as noted by the green circles with the check mark. This is just and example of how to implement the Run Shell Script action, it can be done numerous ways however you just have to pick what method you want to pass the Folders in Finder to it, the rest is done by the script.

The image below shows the code with syntactical highlighting and is included as it helps in reading the code (especially when the code isn't commented, sorry don't have time at the moment).

Note: The bash script is not coded to handle an embedded newline in the name of a filesystem object, which IMO doesn't belong there in the first place! Feel free to modify as needed/wanted to suite your needs, adding/modifying code and or additional error checking if/when wanted/needed. Additionally, this is by no means the only way to code  the script to handle what you want automated but it's what I threw together to get something posted for you. If you have any questions, just ask.


Macbook screen freezes when I move my external mouse I recently updated to macOS Big Sur, and I wanted to use my external mouse for work and gaming. I plugged in my mouse using a USB dongle, but every time I moved the mouse, the screen would freeze. In the games that I was playing, if I didn't move my mouse, I was getting around 80 FPS but as soon as I started moving my mouse, my frames would drop significantly, to around 15 FPS,  but they would improve as soon as I stopped moving my mouse. This issue doesn't happen at all when I use the trackpad. Is there any fix for this issue?
Laptop Specs:
MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015)
1.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core M
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 5300 1536 MB

I have been experiencing a similar problem with my Logitech G Pro Wireless mouse plugged into an Anker hub. I believe I have resolved my issue by changing the mouse's polling rate from 1000 to 250 in the G Hub software for the mouse. You may try changing the polling rate, if your mouse supports it, and see if that helps with your issue.


Can't install Lan9500 driver properly So I recently bought 4-port Lenovo USB hub with LAN. It came with a driver I needed to install to get the LAN to work. But the documentation said that the USB hub should be unplugged while installing the driver.

Unfortunately - I had the USB hub plugged in while installing the driver. And now the LAN doesn't work.

I've tried installing it on another computer and things work fine.  The driver I installed was LAN9500.

Is there anything I can do to make things work?

Uninstall the driver then try again, correctly

This has instructions, but I can't copy/paste them to here.

http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en//softwarelibrary/man-lan95xx/lan9500_lan9500a_lan951x%20software%20user%20manual%20rev.%201.2%20(05-01-09).pdf

Cmd/F to search, then search in the 'extra' box inside the page, not Safari's usual search box - for 'uninstall'
It will take you straight to the Mac uninstall page.

I got it… but I really hope you're not doing this on Yosemite… unless you have unsigned kexts switched off

  MAC OSX Driver Uninstallation

  Note: The device must be safely removed from the computer before beginning the uninstallation.

  To begin the uninstallation process, open up a command terminal and enter the removal command sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/LAN9500.kext/
  This causes the device driver to be removed from the operating system.

  The final step is to remove the network entry that was created during the installation process. Click the systray network icon (top right corner of the screen) and select “Open Network Preferences...”


iMessages sending to old phone I gave my old iphone 3 to my friend and have realised he is receiving my imessages that i receive on my new iphone 4S. Please can you tell me how i stop this so he stops received my messages?

thanks

Caroline

Try doing this on the iPhone 3:

Go to Settings / Messages / Receive at...
Tap on your Apple ID and Log Out.


In Finder, the file size is dimmed I copied a file from my Mac to a server on my LAN. In the Finder window for the destination, the filesize is slightly smaller, and is dimmed.

What does it mean that the filesize is dimmed?

In the screen shot, the file is 1Password.agilekeychain and the size 11.6MB you can see as dimmed. The size on my Mac is 12.2MB.

Dimmed means it is displaying a cached value while waiting for the size to be calculated again.

The .agilekeychain file is in fact a folder with lots of small files in it so it will take a few seconds to finish adding each individual size. Why isn't it there already? Maybe the Finder is occupied calculating another size on a previously opened window, it is not very efficient on focusing its work on the front window. Or the server does something else at this time, for example my Time Capsule can be horrifyingly slow to display folder sizes while indexing a backup.

As for the size difference, it means it has taken its snapshot value at a bad time during the copy process, when the folder was not fully copied. Dimmed values can be unreliable, it's outdated data by definition.

So either you wait for the Finder to update its data and display a correct size (in black), either you open a Terminal window, type du -s --block-size=1000 --apparent-size  [space] then drag and drop your file, you will get its size far quicker (in kiB). Far quicker also because the Finder, in my experience, sometimes "forget" old tasks and never actually update the size :(


Wifi doesn't stay connected with 2010 MacBook Pro after upgrade to Mountain Lion After upgrading from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion the Wi-Fi on my 2010 MBP basically stopped working. It would stay connected for a few minutes at a time and then drop the connection, connect, drop, etc.

My Wi-Fi access point continued to work with all other devices - it just stopped working on this one machine.

It appears that this issue is also in Lion - there are many threads on discussions.apple.com with users complaining about similar issues:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144707?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191630?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3235078?start=0&tstart=0

The only solution I found that actually worked was to replace the Mountain Lion Wi-Fi drivers with the ones included in Snow Leopard.

NOTE: This solution is not for the faint of heart and please ensure you've backed up your system - at worst this should only bork your Wi-Fi (which I'm assuming is already broken if you're trying these steps) but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Insert the Snow Leopard DVD into your DVD drive.

Open a Terminal:

sudo -s
cd /System/Library/Extensions
mv IO80211Family.kext /Users/<your acct>/Desktop
cp -R /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext .

Run Disk Utility and Repair Disk Permission on your system drive

Rebuild the kext cache:

sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions

Wait a few minutes to ensure that the cache has been regenerated and then reboot.


Bring only one app to front after "show desktop" applied Consider the situation:
I have many active apps on my (main) workspace and I've taken screenshot of one of them, which was auto saved on desktop. I need to put this screenshot to another active app(e.g. mail).
To achieve this Should I go through minimizing all unneded applications one by one (there could be a dozen of them) until the desktop is seen and only target application is active and in front of workspace, so I could drag the file?
I could have use "show dektop" hot key/gesture but it hides the target app as well as others and it's not possible AFAIK to bring only it to dektop, as soon as I touch it all apps will jump back to the places they've been before "show desktop" were applied.
Would be nice if I clould bring only one app to front.

I use this script set up as a folder action. Basically, whenever I make a screenshot, this script activates, opening the folder I use for screenshots in the Finder, and opening the screenshot in Preview for editing. Copy it into Script Editor, save it as a script to ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/some_name.scpt and then use the Folder Actions Dispatcher app (available through spotlight, from down in the /System/Library/CoreServices folder) to attach the script to the desktop folder or whatever folder you prefer.
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
    repeat with this_item in these_items
        set item_path to POSIX path of this_item
        tell application "System Events"
            set this_disk_item to disk item item_path
            tell this_disk_item
                if its name begins with "Screen Shot" and kind is "PNG Image" then
                    -- this opens the containing folder in the Finder
                    open its container
                    -- this opens the screen shot in Preview for editing
                    open it
                end if
            end tell
        end tell
    end repeat
end adding folder items to


Macbook Pro Mid 2014 stuttering and small lag spikes @ 4K 30Hz with HDMI 2.0/1.4b So the limit of the Macbook Pro mid 2014 is 3840x2160 at 30 Hz through HDMI 2.0 (I guess it's only 1.4b). When I fire up VLC and look on my Macbook, the image is clear and there is no stutering what so ever. It runs butter smooth. When I look at my TV, however, the quality is still very, very good, but the video stutters all the time. It's like a bungee/elastic effect when there's a panorama shot, and when there's a rolling shot going very fast, it's like watching 10 FPS clips.

I can see my Macbook Pro uses the integrated 750M graphics card, and it does get quite hot.

What's the issue here?

I have a new 15 inch MacBook Pro. it has 4 thunderbolt ports on the sides. 2 on each side. no USB ports. so I bought an adapter for it. its  called a lention and has 4 different ports,3 usb an one lightening so I could plug my mouse in to it.i  began experiencing stuttering on my games and video. every 4 seconds it would stutter. my frame rates were going from 60fps to 30 fps and back an forth causing the stuttering.i unplugged it(the lention adapter) from my MacBook Pro an stuttering stopped!I went too the apple store an bought a different one(white one with just 1 USB port)an the stuttering has stopped completely.just wanted to share this in hopes it will help.


Font changes on Preview 2017 for text on photo I can find no answers to changing the font size on a photo in Preview. It is not a PDF.
All the answers I've seen are for PDF or from years ago.
Thanks.

If you are using the Markup feature to add annotations to the image, you need to have the Markup Toolbar enabled:

Text options are then available:


WiFi slow on MacBook Pro but not on other devices I am using a 15" and a 13" MacBook Pro with these profiles:

They're both connected to the same wifi network and they're at the same distance from the router.

Problem is that the 15" has a slower network. Sometimes youtube videos buffer. And generally feels less snappy. And as can be seen from the image above - and the speed tests on the right -, the network has these "moments" where it drops all of a sudden on the 15" (you can see the drops in the top orange graph), whereas it remains very stable on the 13".

The only major difference I was able to find between the two is that one uses DFS and the other doesn't (as pointed by the arrow).

Would anybody know why I'm getting lower speeds on the 15" and is there a way that I can also make it connect using DFS?

Note that my iPhone also seems to work with stable speed tests and no "drops".

EDIT What I've noticed is really a problem with these so called "drops". The network sort of stalls in the speed test run on the 15". Here's a few randomized speed tests on the 15":

What I want to highlight here is not the speed but the "flat lines". When I see the speed-test run in real time I can really notice the number stalling - as it's waiting for something, and then all of a sudden dropping.

On other devices I really don't notice these kind of stalls; sure there are sometimes slower speeds but the graph is drawn fluidly and I don't notice so called "flat lines".

Here's a few test runs from another well-functioning device (an iPhone) showing how "the stalling" never seems to occur (there are no flat lines followed by sudden drops):

As a last resort I also uninstalled a VPN but that didn't make a difference (the graph above was drawn after uninstalling the VPN software).

EDIT 2 Note that also if I plug the 15" to the router directly using ethernet, the "stalling" doesn't happen anymore and I get fluid speed tests.

EDIT 3 The slow 15" is a work laptop. I just realized there might be something installed that could cause this network stalling. I have uninstalled all software relating VPN or antivirus so I'm not sure what it could be. Thing is when I plug in ethernet I don't see these stalls so my feeling has more to do with something relating the wifi configuration.

As with all mysteries such as these, it is best to narrow the tree of possibilities with a sort of binary search, as it were.

Here are some starting point (and if you're lucky, ending point) tests to eliminate whole branches from the tree:

Test a wired connection. You've already done this test ✅, so now we know:

It's not a hardware problem with the possible exception of wifi-specific hardware, which is highly unlikely, especially given the symptoms you report.
It's not an OS problem, again with the possible exception of wifi-specific components, which I think is also unlikely.

Boot your Mac in safe mode.  Run the speed tests again. If the problem is gone, follow the steps under If the issue doesn't continue in safe mode at the provided link. If it is NOT gone, I would hold off on OS reinstall recommended by If the issue continues in safe mode fo now, trying the things below first.
Test it on an entirely different WiFi network. This might narrow it down to your router or how your Mac connects to that router via WiFi. If it turns out to be this, report back and we can go from here.
Test whether the flatlining is system wide when it occurs. First open a browser window open with a quickly loading web page already loaded. Run a speed test. When it flatlines and while it is flatlined, refresh the webpage. Does the webpage refresh stall too? It would be best if your speed test is not running in the same process as your web page test. If it is browser based, use a different speed test that isn't, or use different browsers (e.g. Safari and Firefox). Alternatively, use something other than a web page to see if the speedtest stall is a system-wide stall.
Test using a different browser, or a non-browser-based speed test.

I can come up with more but let's start with these.


Incorrect apostrophe character in MS Word 2011 on Mac I'm using Word for Mac 2011. When using the default font - Cambria - extra spaces appear when I type an apostrophe followed by another character. See the screenshot at:

As you can see in the screenshot, the font for the apostrophe character (which includes a big space after it) isn't actually Cambria; instead, it's

ＭＳ 明朝 (Body Asian)

It seems that Cambria automatically uses this font for apostrophes, and that the apostrophe character for this font includes the extra space.

How should I go about fixing this so that apostrophes appear correctly? I'm guessing it might be some kind of font conflict, but I'm not sure: and I don't know how to fix font conflicts, in any case.

(Originally posted at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16873412/incorrect-apostrophe-character-in-ms-word-2011-on-mac)

After updating OS X to 10.9 and opening Word for the first time since the update I encountered the same problem. I spent half a day testing all the suggestions put forward here and in other forums responding to the same query (including checking autoformat preferences/searching for font duplicates/verifying fonts/testing in new mac user account/repairing permissions etc.) with no luck.

Finally, I deleted the Cambria font from the Font Book and reinstalled again. I reopened Word and tested and the problem seems to have disappeared.

I'm using OS X 10.9 and Word for Mac 2011, v14.3.8.


Our Canon MX340 printer/scanner is connected wirelessly to my MacBook Pro, but I can't get the scanner function to show up anywhere I have tried adding a printer, hoping to see the scanner as a choice.  It isn't.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled, but still see nothing about a scanner option.

This might help:
http://www.mac-forums.com/apple-notebooks/212319-canon-pixma-mx340-macbook-pro.html

Let us know if it does or not, please!


start.command permission denied even after chmod I have been trying to run my server.command file forever. I have tried changing access privileges with chmod x+u pressing enter then dragging the file into Terminal and pressing enter, but when I do, it says:

  -bash: /Users/Alec/Desktop/Tekkit_Server_v1.2.9g/start.command: Permission denied

If you actually used chmod x+u filename then here is the results of a sample from Terminal:

$ echo 'echo Hello World!' > hello.command
$ ls -l hello.command
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff  18 Aug  5 14:24 hello.command
$ chmod x+u hello.command
chmod: Invalid file mode: x+u
$ ./hello.command
-bash: ./hello.command: Permission denied
$ chmod +x hello.command
$ ls -l hello.command
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user  staff  18 Aug  5 14:24 hello.command
$ ./hello.command
Hello World!
$

It just needs to be: chmod +x filename

If you only want it executable for the User, then use: chmod u+x filename


Is paid Apple Developer Program subscription required to distribute test IPA file? I am building an Ionic app, and I want to distribute it to a few people in my organization.

Ionic Cordova iOS build command runs successfully. Now i need to generate the IPA file to install the app on iOS devices.

When I am running Product → Archive in Xcode Menu, it gives code signing error.

My queries are:

How to get the IPA file? Does it need paid subscription to the Apple Developer Program?
Best solution to distribute to app to a limited number of people?
Getting signing error?

Code Signing Error: app has conflicting provisioning settings. app is automatically signed for development, but a conflicting code signing identity iPhone Distribution has been manually specified.

Set the code signing identity value to "iPhone Developer" in the build settings editor, or switch to manual signing in the project editor.

Code Signing Error: Code signing is required for product type 'Application' in SDK 'iOS 12.1'

So as a new iOS developer i found three way for building and distributing app.

For app store distribution normal developer license can work.
For in House apps you can buy enterprise edition license. With this you
can distribute app via MDM and diawi when you want to
distribute .ipa file of your app.
If you have limited in house
users and have physical access to those devices you can directly
install app via xcode in the device.


How to run privileged programs without elevation by sudo? I got the mtr ping-traceroute combo util through Homebrew and I'd like to run on new Terminal windows without having to become superuser (or elevation, sudoing, whatever it's called on UNIX) each time first, or, if there's no way around it, have the program ask me for credentials on the spot like some commands do, e.g; scutil, sputil, brew itself.

A while ago I got into the habit of creating [very simple] scripts, then added the scripts directory to $PATH for simple tasks like, for instance, to flush the DNS cache I type anywhere flushdns and it asks me for my creds if I wasn't elevated before because sudo is in the script.

I thought about doing something similar to this but (1) I'd have to use another command since mtr is already in the $PATH and, (2) I don't know how to work it with the arguments that the utility needs.

I'd appreciate any suggestions you have, or, a link to an existing question--I didn't find because because the elevation/superuser thing, I think. :/

The low hanging fruit is to make an alias in your shell to avoid having to type sudo

Assuming bash, add this to your ~/.bash_profile (or other dot file of choice)

alias mtr=‘/usr/bin/sudo /usr/local/sbin/mtr’

Then close your command / shell / window or paste the alias command after saving it for next shell start to be active. I would recommend against adding this to the sudoers file, but I’m sure someone will edit this to post how to do that or post another answer if that’s viable. I’d also advise against moving the tool or setting the uid of the tool to be root permissions on the filesystem. Discussion on that decision is happily well covered at the source:

https://github.com/traviscross/mtr/issues/204#issuecomment-487325796


Why is "Send Movie to Final Cut Pro" completely missing from iMovie 10.1.3? I'm running OS X Sierra and the latest iMovie, 10.1.3. I have a project and I'm trying to send it over to Final Cut Pro... the "Send Movie to Final Cut Pro" option in the File menu is missing. Not greyed out, just totally not there at all! Why? How can I get it back so I can get my movie into FCP?

My only idea is that it isn't an option because I'm running the 30-day trial of FCP (downloaded from Apple's web site), but I can't imagine why they would remove the option.

Here's my iMovie's File menu:

Aha, figured it out: Had to quit and restart iMovie. Now the menu option is there. Weird!


How to type with Hebrew Nikkud on an iPad Is there a way to type with Hebrew nikkud/ niqqud (diacritical vowels) on an iPad?
There is a Davka app which allows you to type with nikkud within the app, but I'm looking for a way to type text with nikkud into a graphics app or into the web browser.

I am especially looking for a way to insert the nikkud/diacritical characters for free.

If you have iOS 8, there is Davka Nikud

https://itunes.apple.com/app/davka-nikud/id917653147


Can't change kext file ownership from _unknown to root I use Lion 10.7.2 and while I was trying to make Bluetooth kext work, I removed a kext named IOHIDFamily.kext from /System/Library/Extensions (SLE) folder but this gave a kernel panic so I copied it back to SLE. However after copying, it kept on giving kernel panic and I noticed that it had owner information like _unknown:_unknown Thinking that it was this false ownership causing the kernel panic

I tried:

# chown -R root:wheel IOHIDFamily.kext

but it doesn't change the ownership neither does it return any error message.  I've tried to chown using an app called Path Finder 7 but it didn't even have an option to chown or I couldn't manage to find one.

How can I solve this problem? Thank you.

You might try running the chown command on the whole /System/Library/Extensions/ directory from single-user-mode (hold Command-S on boot, or use -s as a bootflag if using Clover/Enoch/Chameleon), or doing the same thing from the Terminal app in your recovery partition. Also make sure you include su or sudo in front of the command, or are logged in to a fully root shell before doing so.


Retroactively geotag photos On my iPhone, I normally turn off Location Services on the Camera for privacy.

I turned it in today for a specific event, but not before I had taken several photos without location information.

How can I retroactively fill in the location information? I know exactly where each photo was taken, and even have pins bookmarked in Maps for each location.

It needs to be lossless, no JPEG recompression. An iOS app would be nice, or a Windows/Mac solution.

You can geotag photos in iPhoto or Aperture on the Mac. If you sync them to your iPhone/iPad you'll also see the geolocations.

To do this on the iPhone/iPad itself, iPhoto for iOS may also let you do this (I don't have it to check). If not, you could try something 3rd-party like PinApp, though this will not modify the files in your Photostream (since Apple don't allow that), but can make a geotagged copy, which you can save (and then perhaps delete the un-tagged original?)

Once geo-tagged, it depends exactly where (in what application/device) you want the photo to be visible on the Map. iPhoto/Aperture can sync (via iTunes) with your iOS device to store photo albums on it (which will include geolocation info). And obviously the iOS apps let you save back to your camera roll and/or photo stream.

You could probably also email it to yourself or otherwise copy it back to your iPhone photo-stream if that's where you want it...