iPhone Birthdays vs OSX birthdays My OSX calendar app is configured to show all the birthdays of my contacts (they are displayed as this special calendar with the parcel icon in OSX). It seems that iOS (6, on iPhone 5) does that too but doesn't recognize that this is the same calendar as the one in OSX.

As a result, when I sync all my OSX calendars with my iPhone, suddenly there are two birthday calendars, one seems to come from OSX and does not have the parcel icon. That calendar is called "Birthdays" when viewed in iOS. The other one seems to be the one intrinsic to iOS and just like in OSX has special parcel icon.

I would have assumed that the two apps of the two OSes should figure out that this is basically the same calendar. To get rid of the double events in my calendar view in iOS I can uncheck that "Birthdays" calendar in iOS so that the events of this calendar are not displayed. But that calendar still gets synched from OSX and I can't uncheck the "Birthdays" calendar in the OSX iTunes sync settings because there this calendar is not listed.

My question is now, how do I get rid of the redundant calendar on the iPhone?

On the mac, turn off Birthday calendars in the Calendar app preferences.

On the iOS device, unselect the check next to the programmatic calendar to suppress those entries. Short of jailbreaking the device and patching the Calendar app, you can't suppress the package calendar - just show or hide it.

Alternatively, you could purge all birthdays and anniversaries from all Contacts, but that seems too brute force to me when you can suppress each calendar with settings. Most that I have asked choose either the OS X calendar and suppress the iOS one or skip the OS X one and rely only on iOS for birthdays and anniversary entries.


How to add a directory to my path that includes a colon and a space? I installed MIT/GNU scheme and am trying to add the directory to my $PATH variable so that I can run it from Terminal.

The app name MIT:GNU Scheme.app is a veritable "perfect storm" (for path names) as it includes a colon and a space.

I've tried adding each of the following to my ~/.bash_profile, none have worked:

export PATH=$PATH:"/other/paths:/Applications/MIT\:GNU\ Scheme.app/Contents/Resources"
export PATH=$PATH:"/other/paths:/Applications/MIT\:GNU Scheme.app/Contents/Resources"
export PATH=${PATH}:"/other/paths:/Applications/MIT\:GNU\ Scheme.app/Contents/Resources"
export PATH=${PATH}:"/other/paths:/Applications/MIT\:GNU Scheme.app/Contents/Resources"

It won't work. You have several options:

Create an alias for bash to run the command.
Create a symbolic link to the executable from a directory in your PATH. (I like to have a directory ~/bin at the front of my path for such things.)
Create a symbolic link to /Applications/MIT\:GNU\ Scheme.app/Contents/Resources somewhere and put the link in your PATH.
Rename the application.


Login - Screen Flashes and Returns to Login Screen - Terminal Explanation I found this question Login - Screen Flashes and Returns to Login Screen - Tried Everything Possible, which is exactly like the problem I'm having.
But the answer confuses me....

There is one troubleshooting step that OS X shares with the classic Mac OS, removing preference files. But on OS X there are TWO folders:
/Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences
--The latter being in your user/home folder--
Since the issue doesn't exist under another logon it is specific to that user folder. SO there is something specific to that user that is causing the problem. This takes the /Library/Preferences folder out of consideration for troubleshooting preferences. The first thing I would do is use a utility like Onyx to verify and clean the system. This includes verifying preferences files. After that rename the ~/Library/Preferences folder to something like
~/Library/Preferences-old
You'll probably have to do that in Terminal and use sudo as those files are owned by another user on the system. then create a new ~/Library/Preferences folder and reboot.
If you can now log into that account it is a simple (HAH!) matter of putting preferences files in the new Preferences folder and rebooting till you find which one it is.
No guarantee, though, that it is a preference file, it could be a startup item. So do the same thing with the ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder.
The other thing to consider is that it might be easier to just create a new user folder. Copy the things you need out of the old user folder and delete the old user. That could save you a lot of troubleshooting time. It would be my preferred way of doing it (after running Onyx) as I care less about what happened than just finding a fix that gets me up and running more quickly.

How would I go about doing this? I have terminal open, what do I type?
My computer is a hackintosh, I did not build it. This problem just happened suddenly.

To rename the folders you listed in Terminal you would use the move command or "mv". Like this: (I will use an account called "userx" for this example)

sudo mv /Users/userx/Library/Preferences /Users/userx/Library/PreferencesOLD
sudo mv /Users/userx/Library/LaunchAgents /Users/userx/Library/LaunchAgentsOLD

To create directories in Terminal use "mkdir"

sudo mkdir /Users/userx/Library/Preferences

Lastly, the step they skip is allowing "userx" to use the new directory you need to make userx the owner of any new folders you create in this manner.

sudo chown userx /Users/userx/Library/Preferences


airpods flashing orange and sound is gone in left I have had my airpods for about a couple months and they have worked completely fine. I charge my airpods every 2nd night, today after charging them they have been flashing orange and the sound is gone in the left. I know that orange means it needs to be charged but i am charging them right now and they are still flashing orange. When i remove one pod from the case, the light changes to green but when I put them both in together it flashes orange. Also they won't connect to anything device it doesn't know and won't reset using the button. pls help

Press the reset button on the white case(you can miss this as it is flush with the case) hold the button until the light goes white. Then pair it with Bluetooth again... hey presto


Set default "From" address to none in Apple Mail In Apple Mail, is there a way to make the "From" address blank so that you are forced to select and outgoing mail server each time you create a new message. I keep sending from the wrong address!!

I do not know how make and use "none" in the from field that will remind you to select the correct sending server but:

You can set up the default sending server that is going to be the default from now on.

  Send new message from

, change to the server of your choice.

Remember all emails from now on will go out from that server, regardless in which server you received them.


XRG: How to minimize? XRG system monitor is awesome!

But I can't figure out how to minimize it. I'm sure I'm missing something simple.

Any ideas?

iMax
El Capitan 10.11.3
XRG 2.0.0

Glad you like the app…

To minimize the XRG window, just double-click on the title bar.  This will be either on the top or right side of the window depending on which graph orientation you are using.


Direct link to download for big sur I'm looking for a way to download Big Sur installer to an external drive. I am trying to create a backup-USB installer - so I can replace my 128 ssd with a larger one.  I don't have enough space. I backed up with time machine, but still cannot manage to delete enough space (128 gb is literally nothing nowadays).
Is there a place to directly download the installer so I can copy the installer to an external drive?

Download installinstallmacos.py from either:
https://github.com/munki/macadmin-scripts
or
https://github.com/grahampugh/macadmin-scripts
Follow the instructions and you can get a regular DMGs.


Remove a device from 'Find My iPhone' app I cannot remove any devices from the list of devices in the 'Find My iPhone' app.

I have also looked on iCloud.com and cannot seem to remove them there either. Is this possible outside of MobileMe?

If you have physical access to the device, to into the iCloud settings and turn off "Find My iPhone". If you don't, You can remove devices from iCloud.com, provided iCloud can't find them. Go to the "Find My iPhone" section on iCloud.com. Click the device to select it, then click the circled "X" on the right. This removes the device from Find My iPhone.

You can also remove devices from the Find My iPhone app by swiping horizontally on the device. Again, the device must not be locatable for this to work.


iPhone Screen Shadow iPhone 4S suddenly have screen shadow, it start when i charge my phone, and now it didn't disappear.

Is this software defect? since i just update my phone to iOS 7.0.6 (two days ago as i remember).

Here is the actual photo of the shadow defect.

And here is the screenshot taken from iPhone (show now shadow)

Which make me afraid if this hardware defect because of age :(
My phone age is 2 or 3 years, it's new purchased. Never jailbrake. It is sad if iphone screen can only hold off 3 years (-.-")

That looks like a clear case of LCD image persistence which might go away in a few hours or day or might require service to exchange the panel if those changes are permanent. Depending on how long the image was static - you probably won't see the ghosting after it's off for a few hours or the panel gets used to the new pattern you are displaying on those pixels (retaining that image rather than the old one).

Software defects would show up in the screen capture and this is a very common limitation of plasma and LCD displays due to the physics behind how they produce and filter light.


Putting files outside the user/home folder Can I put my folders outside the user folder (e.g. on the root of Mac HD), such as personal folder or work folder, where I have many files? The reason I want to do it is that OS X may have performance issues where one folder has too many files (reference), and as a recent Windows switcher, this is more like the partition/disk letter approach to file organizing. I'm the only user of my macbook so there's no privacy issues. When I first copied the files to the root, the os asks for admin password. Will I have issues with permissions if I do that? And in general, what's the potential cons with this and what's special about the home folder?

If you create (or rename) a folder at the root, OS X will ask for your password. This is because you do not own the root folder. Once the folder exists, you can copy (or add) as many files and folders to it without having to enter a password. In terms of permissions, the only difference, between such a folder and your home folder, is the home folder has an Access Control List (ACL). Entering the command ls -led ~ in a terminal window results in listing the home folder's permissions. On my computer running OS X 10.10.4, I get the following output.

Davids-iMac:/ davidanderson$ ls -lde ~
drwxr-xr-x+ 20 davidanderson  staff  680 Aug  6 21:51 /Users/davidanderson
 0: group:everyone deny delete

The ACL is group:everyone deny delete. I assume denying everyone delete permission prevents the deletion of your home folder.

One small point, normally your files are assigned to the group named staff. If you create a folder in the root folder, the group will be wheel instead of staff. You can correct this by typing the command chgrp staff /newfolder after creating the folder. Substitute your folder name for newfolder.


Enable ssh-key-only login to my Mac for 1 user I have a Macbook Air that I would like to allow remote SSH access to without a password. I have created a user called remotepair that I have logged into and verified I can used the Mac with. I have also added this user to the "Remove Login" service's allowed user list and turned on the service. This was all done in the "Sharing" control panel.

I have gotten the public key of another computer and added it to the file /Users/remotepair/.ssh/authorized_keys. When the other computer does ssh remotepair@<my ip> I still get a password prompt.

How do I disable this password prompt?

To disable password authentication you need to edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config. In Terminal:
sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config

(or replace with your favourite editor)
Look for the line:
#ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes

And change it to:
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no

That is, remove the # at the beginning, and change yes to no.
All subsequent ssh logins will now REQUIRE you to use an ssh key and will not prompt for a password. Ensure your ssh key works before doing this if you have no local access! There's no need to restart the ssh daemon or anything because it is started on demand for each new incoming connection. Note that you may also see a PasswordAuthentication line, but that defaults to no already.
If your ssh keys aren't working then that's a separate issue really, but this answers the question as it is posed now :)


Can't increase my disk size I can't modify the "BOOTCAMP" disk to be larger or remove it completely, an error message will occur when attempting to do that. All I'm trying to do is install Xcode and since the size is too small I need to increase it.

When I've had to resize BootCamp volumes in the past I would use CampTune from Paragon.

It looks like they added support for Catalina recently, so it should work well for you.

As for removing the BootCamp partition altogether, I've always used the Boot Camp Assistant to do that.

Note: It's recommended that you make sure you've backed up your stuff before adjusting partition settings with either the CampTune, Disk Utility, or Boot Camp Assistant. I've had situations where things go south quickly when adjusting partitions.


App to sort iOS photos by file size I have a lot of photos/videos which is not fitting into my iCloud storage. I would like to be able to sort them by size to see which photos/videos are taking up the most storage in order to either delete or transfer them to my computer.

Sorting iOS photos by file size is not offered by the stock iOS Photos app. However, I remember using a third-party app a few years ago to sort and see which photos and videos were taking up the most space, so I know that it exists. The closest thing I've found right now by searching is PhoTop. However, it doesn't seem to include videos in its sorting, which is quite important to me. I was thinking of using iOS 11's new built in video delete feature (found in the iPhone Storage section of the Settings app), but that only seems to be accessible in certain circumstances.

Does anyone know which app I am talking about?

Right after posting this question I managed to find a bunch of apps which do something like this. I will post what they are and any advantages/disadvantages I see from them (also, please note that my mini reviews are only accurate as of my writing this; features may have been added or annoyances fixed after I wrote all this).

Photo Cleaner, $1.99

The app I was originally looking for. It has multiple features such as the ability to detect duplicate and similar photos, and it allows you to browse your screenshots (while seeing their file sizes). Most importantly, it shows you your photos/videos in a grid format with their sizes on the icons, allowing you to decide which ones to keep/remove.

However, it doesn't seem to go much further than that. Even though you can see screenshots' file sizes which is helpful, it doesn't allow you to sort the screenshots by file size, which would have been greatly helpful. You also can't inspect the photos from the "similar photos" feature and see which one you'd like to keep over the other(s). Surprisingly it doesn't even allow you to see the date/time the photos were taken which would allow you to look them up in the photos app.

The way I worked around this was by deleting a photo, going to the trash where it is kept (third party apps are not allowed to permanently delete photos – they will always be sent to the trash), and looking up the date from there. This is however inefficient and provides a bad user experience.

Something else I noticed is that videos don't seem to play when trying to view them from within this app, most likely a bug because they seem to play file with the other apps I mentioned.

Video Compressor, Free w/ IAP

This is actually a video compressor app, but shows you your biggest photos/videos as well as their file sizes. However, it doesn't allow you to delete or mark the photos/videos in any way, or even allow you to look them up in the photos app (no date is shows). So for this purpose it's not very useful.

iCompress, Free w/ IAP

Although also a compressor app, works much like Photo Cleaner without the extra features. Has the added benefits of being able to play videos properly and being able to see extra information about the videos, like creation/modification date, duration, resolution, frame rate and bitrate. Probably one of the best apps for the job, in my opinion, especially since it's free. However, it doesn't show photos – only videos.

PhoTop, Free w/ IAP

The app I mentioned in the question. It's quite good for seeing your biggest photos. In this way, it can be used in tandem with iCompress which shows only videos (alternatively, you could use Photo Cleaner to deal with photos if you're set on using iCompress).

In any case, one would preferably try all of them out to see which ones work best for them. The reviews I wrote are of course subject to my opinion, and although that might help someone make a decision, these apps are likely made for slightly different people/workflows. Use whatever works for you!


Setting a static route every boot with launchd / plist is failing I hope to use launchd to set a static route on a server at boot time since I haven't figured a better way to configure this sort of networking on a server.

My problem is that the command seems to be running before the network stack is set up, so I'm looking for advice how to change my plist to somehow depend on the system routing being set up before it runs.

  Jan 16 14:39:45 server com.company.route.legacy_printer[149]: route: writing to routing socket: Network is unreachable

  Jan 16 14:39:45 server com.company.route.legacy_printer[149]: add net 10.1.1.1: gateway 10.0.1.2: Network is unreachable

I get this error after a reboot, but loading the same plist as root once the mac has booted works just fine so I'm hoping it's an easy tweak or someone clueing me into a better way to get a static route reliably after each boot.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.company.route.legacy_printer</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/sbin/route</string>
        <string>-n</string>
        <string>add</string>
        <string>-net</string>
        <string>10.1.1.1</string>
        <string>10.0.1.2</string>
        <string>255.255.255.0</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <false/>
    <key>AbandonProcessGroup</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

I have reviewed both Running a command whenever Mac boots up with launchctl/plist and How can I run/stop/relaunch an application automatically, at boot/login/some other time? to get this far, but need an extra nudge on finding the correct dependency to get the timing right for the route command.

A short call to scutil should help with testing whether the network is up for a specific interface on IPv4 which should suffice to determine when you can add an IPv4 route. The following command will return a 0 if the first ethernet connection has a viable IPv4 address within the default 15 second timeout period.

/usr/sbin/scutil -w State:/Network/Interface/en0/IPv4

You could instead call a script to do the testing and routing - perhaps using the -t command to adjust the timeout if needed. I don't know a way to overload the launchd arguments to have everything contained, but it should be fine to have launchd kick off a script on the local filesystem to accomplish this task. Use care if you are not using en0 for your IPv4 or wish to have routing on other than the default networking interface.

That script can then check for errors, perhaps check for other interfaces as well as log success and failure using the logger command.


Forgot Password After Amnesia I need to connect my 2012 iMac back to the internet. I had it shipped back to my parent's house (completely different state from where I had it) after I had a motor vehicle accident while working for my dad.

I did have a password to log into it, but I forgot it because of the amnesia I had after being hit. I need to connect it in Recovery mode to use the reset password tool so it can successfully change the code. Right now it says "There was an error connecting to the Apple ID server."

If the machine has an Internet connection, worst case you can use iCloud.com —> Find my iPhone, which will also show your Mac. You can put it in Lost Mode, which will wipe the drive, but let you log in with your iCloud password. You need a backup though since this will zap all the files on the machine.


Iterm2 Issue: "INSERT" not showing in VIM I have installed the latest version of iTerm2 and I have found that INSERT while inserting a file under vim is not showing on the screen. Also, I am not able to see parameters under top command.

That was the issue of the colour. I have previously changed the background colour to white Hence, it was not showing. I have changed the colour of the "BOLD" text to black and now I am able to see the --- INSERT --- and the bold text on the TOP.

Also, I have deleted all of the setting to check.

Ref: http://iterm2.com/faq.html

defaults delete com.googlecode.iterm2


High Sierra root vulnerability: how to check if someone logged in remotely? In macOS High Sierra, where can I find the IP addresses that logged in to my Mac through Screen Sharing or ssh?

That would be useful in light of the recently discovered root login vulnerability.

As @Melvin points out, a patch was just released. But to the question at hand, the easy is answer is no, they were root on your machine. It is compromised, period, by definition you cannot trust anything on it if you suspect it was compromised.

To further elaborate, if someone got root access remotely to your machine, you would never ever be able to se the traces of that if they know what they are doing and clean their tracks.

This was not "somebody got the key to the boss's office and messed around a bit in there", this is "somebody got the master key, unlimited funds and an unlimited contruction crew with unlimited time at hand". If you suspect you where compromised, format and reinstall.

To answer the question in layman terms (i.e. how would someone without the prereq skills of cleaning tracks probably leave tracks).

Lets start with ssh, for a full discussion see this question. In short search for ssh or sshd (the "server" part of ssh) in "Console.app" or by terminal:

cat /var/log/system.log | grep sshd

The problem with sshd is that normally nothing is really logged (security concerns AFAIK).

The same problem exists with VNC / Screen Sharing and Apple Remote Desktop / Remote Management, see for example this, this and this, that normal accepted connections are not logged. Only refused ones. Refused ones would probably come from "screensharingd", so search for that in the "Console.app" or terminal

cat /var/log/system.log | grep screensharingd

Except this what other tracks could easily be found? I would look through users and make sure they are only valid users and that no permission levels have changed etc.

I would also check if any remote services are enabled. See picture below. Of interest are "Screen Sharing", "Remote Login" and "Remote Management". cmd + space -> "sharing" is the easiest way to get there.


Remap broken "Tab" key to a function key on MacOs Sierra I need to remap the tab key to a function key, as the Tab is broken. I've looked at Karabiner, but it doesn't work on Sierra

While Karabiner does not work in MacOS Sierra they offer Karabiner Elements which has a subset of Karabiner's features.

One of the features it does have is the ability to map a function key to tab.


So how do you re-download movies now? In the iPad 3 keynote, they mentioned that you are now (or will be?) able to redownload movies just like music and TV shows.

However, if I go to my iPad I still only see Music and TV Shows in the redownload section.

Has anyone actually tried this yet?   It's a Disney movie so it should qualify (I know some Fox movies or something aren't allowed to do this yet)

Is this an upcoming feature or is this supposed to be available today?

Also, I'm in Canada if that makes a difference... thanks.

UPDATED WITH ANSWER:
Appears to be US only at the moment :(

I don't know if there's a difference in Canada, but here in the US if you select the Purchased tab in iTunes, it now appears to be split into 3 sections. Music, Movies and TV Shows.

This more apparent on the iPhone. On the iPad in the upper left corner is a tab indicating "View: Music". If you tap it you can change to Movies or TV Shows.


iTunes accidentally deleted on iMac G5 with OS X 10.4.11 - how to install iTunes? I accidentally deleted iTunes on my old iMac G5 running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11. It is not in the trash, and I would really like to get it back. I tried getting the latest version of iTunes available for my system from https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1056?locale=en_US. When I tried to open the DMG file it gave me, all I got was a notice that said "The following disk images failed to mount: iTunes9.2.1.dmg".

Got any suggestions? I would really like to have iTunes back.

Your downloaded DMG should work, but assuming you still have the Mac OS X Tiger install DVD you could try the following instead:

Insert the Mac OS X Tiger install DVD
When Finder opens the Mac OS X Install DVD window, scroll down till you see the System folder
Navigate to System > Installation > Packages
Locate the iTunes.pkg and double-click on it
This should launch the iTunes installer
Follow the steps to see if you can install iTunes.

Assuming you can, after doing so use the Apple > Software Update option to update it or launch iTunes and go to iTunes > Check for Updates option instead.


Why did my Mac reboot into the "Set up your new Mac" screen after a power failure? I accidentally turned off the power strip that my iMac was plugged into while it was still running. When I turned it back on again, it put me at the "Set up your new Mac" screen, asking me to accept the Terms and Conditions and create a new user account.

I held off on doing so for a while because I was afraid that setting up a new user would erase my home folder and thus all my data. After trying several times to boot normally and failing, I eventually gave in and created a new account under a fake name.

Once I was in, I was able to select and log in to my original account from the drop-down menu on the top right of the taskbar. Thankfully, my original user account and all my data was still there.

What happened? Why wasn't I able to just boot normally after the power failure?

At boot, it was having a problem in finding any users accounts, so it offered to create a new one.

In process of doing so, it repaired it self when it found out there are already users.


How can I convert an m4a to mov? I have a m4a audio file that I need to convert to a mov file. How can I do this?

This creates an x264-encoded mov file with image.png as the background:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.png -i audio.m4a -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest output.mov

You can use mp4 or mkv as the container by just changing the name of the output file.

-c:a copy disables re-encoding the audio.

-loop 1 loops the image infinitely so that it is not shown for just one frame. It also makes the video stream infinitely long, so -shortest is needed to finish encoding after the audio stream finishes. -shortest has to be after the input files in new versions of ffmpeg.

-crf (constant rate factor) can be from 0 (lossless) to 51 (lowest quality). If you remove -pix_fmt yuv420p, ffmpeg uses yuv444p, which is not supported by many video players.

You can use a black background by replacing -loop 1 -i image.png with -f lavfi -i color=c=black:s=1280x720. You can resize an image by adding an option like -filter:v '[in] scale=-1:720, pad=1280:720:640-iw/2 [out]'.

More information:

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/EncodeforYouTube
https://superuser.com/questions/98980
http://tdb0.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/how-to-upload-a-song-without-a-music-video-to-youtube/


Mirroring iPad to Apple TV using local router and using data connection? I have a iPad 3 or the new iPad and it's 3G. I plan on using this at trade shows so I can mirror what's on my iPad to the TV using Apple TV. We'll be using a local router instead of wi-fi because it's a fortune to purchase internet at shows. My question is once I access an app that requires 3g connection will I lose my connection to Apple TV?

If your cellular network allows you can turn on the “personal hotspot” feature on iPad and connect Apple TV to that network. Then you can AirPlay the content to Apple TV (not mirroring) and at the same time use the cellular 3G network for internet.


Xcode 4 and Snow Leopard This is the thing :

I have Xcode 4.3 on my MacBook Pro (running Lion)
I am stuck with 4.0.2 on my iMac (running Snow Leopard)

Given that I would really like to retain a SnowLeopard-running machine (for development purposes), is there any way I could get anything 4.1 or above, to run on my iMac?

If you have registered for the paid iOS developer program, you should be able to see Xcode 4.2 for Snow Leopard available in the iOS Dev Center.

Here's what I see from a paid account:

Here's what I see from a non-paid account (there's no Xcode 4.x for Snow Leopard):

This also explains why Xcode is a paid download in the Snow Leopard App Store, but is free in the Lion App Store.


How do I make aliases hidden in macOS? When I enter in Terminal:

chflags hidden location_of_alias

it hides the actual original folder the alias points to but it does not actually hide the alias itself.

How do I do it?

To change the file flag of a symbolic link, or a Finder alias, rather than its associated file, use the -h option:

$ chflags -h hidden file

To  unhide a file that has the hidden flag set, use:

$ chflags -h nohidden file


Installing windows 8 using bootcamp or virtual box I've been looking around and haven't found an idiot proof guide to partitioning my mac to run windows 8. Unfortunately, that's what I need as I have not knowledge of any of the required software/firmware or OS's in general.

I'm running OS X 10.10.3 with bootcamp v 5.1.4 and I also have virtualbox 4.3.28

I have ownership of a copy of windows 8.1 student from the microsoft store but the only thing I've been able to download there is an .exe file.

I think the problem is that I don't have a bootable usb or iso from which to boot. Is there any way for me to install windows on my machine?

Also, what would be better for uses like CAD on the windows partition: virtualbox or bootcamp. I'm running entirely on a solid state drive (MB pro) so rebooting isn't a huge issue but I wonder if it's worth it in terms of performance to use bootcamp.

Sorry for the long-winded two part question.

With just having an .exe file you'll need to run that under Windows to create either an USB Installer or an ISO Image or both as they can be used for either Boot Camp or in a VM using VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop or VirtualBox.

To install in a VM you can use an ISO Image.

To install using Boot Camp Assistant and creating a USB Installer you need an ISO Image to create the USB Installer if the one created under Windows will not work.

If your Mac has an Optical Drive a DVD can be used, creating it from the ISO Image.


Apple Game Center - Unlinking games I have games challenging me that I have not had on my phone for years...Please help me remove them as it drives me crazy!

Simply open Game Center on your iPhone, switch to the games tab and swipe left on the games you want to remove. This will present you with a delete button.


Word 2011: No new paragraph / line break possible in text box? I have a Word document (didn't create it myself) containing a text box in which I am unable to insert new paragraphs. Nothing happens at all when I hit Return in there. Shift+Return pretends to work at first, but on saving the document, the line break is stripped.

I can create new text boxes in this document which behave absolutely normal.

Has anyone got an idea how the behaviour I am describing above is coming about? What do I have to do in order to get it / get rid of it again?

Before you begin, make a copy of the document somewhere.  Don't try this on the original in case you run into additional problems.

Can you select the text before and after this text box? EG if you drag to highlight in the paragraph before the text box and you continue to drag (even if you have to go to the bottom of the document) down the document does it highlight?

If so cut that part of the document and paste it into textpad, then save it as a plain text file (use TXT; do not use RTF, RTFD, or DOC/DOCX) and quit out of Textpad.

Save the document, open it back up and open the text file in Textpad. Paste all the text from the textpad document back where it came from and re-apply your formatting.

Sometimes, the document itself is damaged.  This trick might help.  Open the document and turn on invisibles (the backwards P in the toolbar). Now click in the document and select all. Scroll down to the bottom of the document, and while you are holding the shift key click just to the left of the very last paragraph mark. So the entire document is selected except the last paragraph mark. Copy what you just selected, open a new Word document, and paste. See if you can edit that text box in the new document.

And if none of this works at least you have an unchanged version of the document to continue to hammer on.


iphoto to photos: where are files stored? I migrated my iPhoto library to Photos 1.5.  Where are the original image files stored?  I've searched the file system for specific file names and don't find anything.  The menu item 'show referenced file in finder' is greyed out.

The original images are stores in:

/Users/USERNAME/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/

If you're having trouble with that, I would suggest opening a Terminal and searching manually in your user directory:

find ~/ -name '.jpg' -o -name '.png' -o -name '*.tif'

It find everything that ends in .jpg, .png or .tif in your /Users/USERNAME/


How can I sync photos and videos from iPhoto to my windows server I've historically kept all my photos and videos on my Windows Home Server (WHS). I've now got an iMac and I'm using iPhoto to manage all my photos (linked to the server, not managing the files locally).

How can I still use iPhoto to import my photos and videos from my iphone and camera, but keep the files on my server for backup purposes? I don't want to fragment my collection over many machines

Thanks

James

You can move the iPhoto archive in your Photos folder in your Home folder to a location on the external drive, create an alias in Mac OS X from the new location, and drop that where the archive used to be in your Photos folder in your Home folder. iPhoto will automatically redirect to the external drive. I do this at home and it works great. As long as that external drive is backed up, you're all set.

Otherwise, you will have to use backup software (not Time Machine in this case) to ensure backups are made from the internal HD to the external hard drive on an automatic, ongoing basis.


TeamViewer QuickSupport - Scam Damage Assessment I'm a freelance IT support tech. One of my customers was trying to install Amazon Music on his new TV, googled how to do it, found an 800 number and called it. Sure enough, a very helpful professional was glad to help him set it up. He was asked to install TeamViewer on his Iphone. He did and shared his ID, then clicked on "Allow". He relays that was as far as he got because the allow button did not seem to work, even though he tried it twice. The helpful operator then asked him to share the last two deposits made to his checking account so they could "confirm his account". Once the words checking accounts came up the spell was broken and he realized he had called a scam call center. My question is, the call lasted 11 minutes. Is it possible they copied content from his iphone without him seeing it? In other words, once connected into the iphone, can the scammer run an app in the background that the victim does not see on the screen? It is my understanding that IOS does not work like that (as you could on a PC). For example, could they have hoovered up his Onedrive docs? Or installed spyware?

I'm a regular licensed TeamViewer user and frequently lament the security inherent in the iPhone OS. In your case, it's a good thing. The phone app is for remote control in which the phone owner is controlling the other computer. The "allow" button doesn't work, because the remote scammer can't penetrate the iPhone. Additionally, when the connection is PC to PC, there are flags which appear during file transfer.
Unless passwords and login information was provided via voice, no OneDrive access is likely and certainly no spyware installed on an iPhone.


Macbook Pro Retina external HDD First of all, I haven't used any Mac computers before. And now I'm considering buying a Mac book pro retina 15 with 256 or 512 Gb SDD as my travel laptop. I need to run both MacOS and Windows 7. The problem is that 256 and even 512 Gb is not really enough for me, so I'm considering buying an external HDD. I'm thinking about 2.5 inch 7200 rpm HDD with at least 750 Gb capacity with an enclosure which supports USB 3. I'd really like it to be very portable so I can use on a plane. It should be both accessible from MacOS and Windows. At first I thought that I would install Window 7 on this external HDD, but after reading some blog I found out that it is almost impossible because of Windows limitations. So my goal is to insert both OSs on the internal drive and keep the rest on the external HDD.

Can I get some advise about this setup?
Any pitfalls like driver problems on Mac?
Any suggestions on particular hardware and software?

My goals are: portability and speed.

You can't run Bootcamp from an external hard drive, but you can install Windows via a virtual machine (MV Ware or Parallels are the best known). If you install Windows on the internal drive you have the option of booting from it directly or using one of the VM machines while running Mac OS.

As for the hard drive size you should consider the 768GB drive if possible. The drive space goes quickly and isn't upgradable. (Well, it is, but AFAIK nobody makes larger or faster replacement drives.)

The OSs run independently of each other, so you don't have to worry about cross-contamination. When running BootCamp you can't even see the Macintosh partition.

In my experience it works as well as can be expected considering the limitations of running software on hardware that wasn't specifically designed for it.

Good Luck.


Gray screen immediately upon boot. Cannot enter into safe mode, and cannot show boot loader with the Alt key. How the problem came to be:

I wanted to dual boot Debian on my MacBook Pro 8,1. I got my USB ready, downloaded ISO, and installed rEFInd. I restarted to make sure the new boot manager worked. It did.
To burn the ISO on my USB, I followed the instructions on the official Debian page, which require the dd command.
However I was careless in my typing, and instead of choosing my USB to load the iso to, I chose a 10GB partition that I had set up long ago (i.e. of=/path/to/10GBPartition instead of of=/path/to/USB ). Tragically, I restarted my computer right as I realized what I had done.

Now, my computer loads immediately into a gray screen, and stays there. The screen comes up just about a second after the boot chime sound. I tried SHIFT, ALT, SHIFT+CMD+V, and I even tried inserting my OS X Lion CD, but absolutely nothing works. It simply goes straight to a gray screen, with nothing on. Any ideas on how to salvage this system?

Thanks for any and all help.

You could also try holding command-R to start up in recovery mode, option-command-R to start up in Internet recovery mode, or command-S to start up in Internet recovery mode. Or try using Recovery Disk Assistant to create a recovery partition on an external disk.

If you can somehow start up from the recovery system, one thing you can try is to choose the Reinstall OS X option. It downloads and installs a new copy of OS X over your existing installation and keeps user files and settings in place. It fixed a problem I had where my Mac got stuck during the startup process. (I don't remember what part it was though, and I was able to start up in single user mode and from the recovery partition.)

If nothing else works, you could try replacing the hard drive with an empty drive. Since your Mac has firmware support for Internet recovery mode, it would normally start downloading a disk image for the recovery system from Apple's servers, and then allow you to install a new copy of OS X on the empty drive.


840 EVO performance restoration I got a Samsung 840 EVO mounted in a Mini late 2012. Now, this is the SSD affected by the notorious performance degradation problem.

Searching samsung site, I was able to find an upgraded firmware "for mac users", but you know that a firmware alone does not solve the issue: data have to be re-copied from decayed cells to fresh cells. This is what Magician software for windows does.

Edit: But look at this page:

  http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/us/html/support/downloads.html

  Under "840 evo firmware for mac" I read: Supports Advanced
  Performance Optimization in Magician 4.6, wich should be the
  performance restoration function. Can someone explain?

Has someone found a way to do performance restoration on a mac?

Thanks.

First of all, as you already mentioned, the firmware can be updated on a mac, too. So you do not need windows for that. Here is a Manual. It does not mention 840 EVO, but it should be fine. (Maybe EVO isn't mentioned just because the EVO update came out 30 days later than the non-EVO update and the manual wasn't updated after that?)

Secondly, not the cells are decayed, only their content is decayed. And this can be fixed by a rewrite of the data. The first firmware update (from October 2014) only modified the algorithm used to read data (trying to compensate the aging of files). As you indicated, this alone does not completely solve the problem. A refresh of the old data was necessary. This is where the Performance Restoration Software came into play. It just does this (a full rewrite) in order to ensure that there are no old files.

As it seems, the first firmware update wasn't sufficient and the reading of files got again slower the older the files became.

With the second firmware update (in case of 840 EVO it is EXT0DB6Q) Samsung again modified the algorithm but also introduced a recurring (hardware performed) rewrite of all data. Thereby data does not grow old and the explicit Performance Restoration process is not necessary anymore. Instead, the Performance Restoration will be done by the new firmware recurrently when the drive is idle.

If you really want the data to be rewritten immediately, you could clone the drive and copy the clone back to it, I guess. But there should be no need for that.

Source: Various websites, primarily the ssd review. I suggest to give it a read for a deeper understanding. :)

To your question regarding the Advanced Performance Optimization let me quote anandtech:

  The new Magician 4.6 also includes an Advanced Performance
  Optimization feature, which is similar to the performance restoration
  tool that Samsung released earlier. Basically, it's a command that
  tells the SSD to rewrite all of its internal data, which resets all
  cell charges and hence recovers performance. It's merely a
  supplementary tool as the firmware upgrade itself should be enough to
  restore performance, but in case the performance isn't fully restored
  after the firmware upgrade (and some idle time to let the drive
  refresh the cells), the tool can be used to force a cell charge
  refresh.


If I delete a photo on ICloud from both my photos and the 'recently deleted' folder, can it still be recovered? Does Apple still save the image(s) somewhere for an undisclosed period of time, or once it's deleted, it's gone everywhere for good? Thanks.

No. Apple only holds photos for limited time in deleted items. That is your chance to reconsider. You could open a case with support to confirm, but the place to get these is from local backups. iCloud isn’t a backup just like files on your devices aren’t a backup.

So sorry if this wasn’t your expected answer. It’s never good to lose data or learn you didn’t have backups.


Can I get warranty on unlocked iphone 11 in India bought in US? Iphone 11 is much cheaper in US in compare to India. One of my friend is currently there for some business work. I am aware about Apple providing global warranty now, But still want to get sure before I make a purchase.

Thanks in Advance.

Usually its global warranty for one year. I had an issue with Mac bought in Europe and in India it was fixed for free.


Transmission aborts automated shut down. My ISP offers unlimited downloads at a certain time period at night, but I don't want to wake up to shutdown my MBP 13.3 at that time. I tried to specify a certain shutdown time using the Energy Saver option.

However, I found out to my utter dismay that Transmisison needs to be explicitly closed before it for the computer to shut down.

In Transmission go to the preferences
uncheck System sleep under Network

uncheck Quit with active transfers under General


How to resolve messed up GPT (FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF) from Ubuntu without data loss I was having Ubuntu installed along with MacOS Catalina. I need windows for project work so I decided to create a partition and flash windows in it... Doing this I messed up and there was showing no option to boot into MacOS.
Right now I can log in into Ubuntu with no problem so is there any way, by which I can boot into MacOS located at disk0s2? Disk0s1 is EFI
I have access to /EFI/EFI from Ubuntu I can see 4 folders there... Apple, Boot, Microsoft, Ubuntu. What should I do?
P.s.: I have a blank partition of 50GB and in external hard disk I have a 5.5GB ISO file of old version of MacOS file.

Edit No.1

derek@derek-MacBookPro:~$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 490234752 sectors, 233.8 GiB
Model: APPLE SSD SM0256
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/4096 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): F3A656EC-6327-4E3B-B8D4-24D7C90F18DD
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 490234718
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 105470093 sectors (50.3 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640       294970071   140.5 GiB   FFFF  MacOSX
   3       400439296       490233855   42.8 GiB    8300

Edit No. 2 result of sudo efibootmgr -v

derek@derek-MacBookPro:~$ sudo efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 5 seconds
BootOrder: 0002,0001,0000,0080
Boot0000* ubuntu    HD(1,GPT,ba591477-7a5b-4314-95e2-3ea359d0b28c,0x28,0x64000)/File(\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi)
Boot0001* Linux HD(1,GPT,ba591477-7a5b-4314-95e2-3ea359d0b28c,0x28,0x64000)/File(\EFI\ubuntu\grub.efi)FFFF.0000.0080...............
Boot0002* Linux HD(1,GPT,ba591477-7a5b-4314-95e2-3ea359d0b28c,0x28,0x64000)/File(\EFI\ubuntu\grub.efi)4.1.2.3............
Boot0080*   PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1c,0x4)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Sata(0,0,0)/HD(1,GPT,ba591477-7a5b-4314-95e2-3ea359d0b28c,0x28,0x64000)/File(\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.efi)
BootFFFF*   PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1c,0x4)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Sata(0,0,0)/HD(1,GPT,ba591477-7a5b-4314-95e2-3ea359d0b28c,0x28,0x64000)/File(\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.efi)

Edit No.3 : Output of sudo sgdisk -i 2 /dev/sda

derek@derek-MacBookPro:~$ sudo sgdisk -i 2 /dev/sda
Partition GUID code: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF (Unknown)
Partition unique GUID: 4D99D8DA-F7FF-451F-B9F2-074010EBF442
First sector: 409640 (at 200.0 MiB)
Last sector: 294970071 (at 140.7 GiB)
Partition size: 294560432 sectors (140.5 GiB)
Attribute flags: 0000000000000000
Partition name: 'MacOSX'

Edit No 4: sudo sgdisk -t 2:7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/sda

derek@derek-MacBookPro:~$ sudo sgdisk -t 2:7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/sda
[sudo] password for derek:
Warning: The kernel is still using the old partition table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you
run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
The operation has completed successfully.

Enter the following command. This will change the MacOS Catalina partition back to an APFS container.

sudo sgdisk -t 2:7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/sda

Next, you will need to reboot. Immediately after rebooting, hold down the option key until the Startup Manager appears. Hold down the control key before selecting macOS from the Startup Manager choices.


Weird Output in terminal I am using the terminal for some debugging and I noticed that it has stopped displaying my user before the path. Now its displaying (null) like so:

(null):mspgcc-examples dean$

Whats changed? As i've changed no configuration to change it. Viewing the shell variable $PS1 I get the following results:

(null):mspgcc-examples dean$ echo $PS1
\h:\W \u\$
(null):mspgcc-examples dean$

You can read through the thread on Apple Discussion Group for details. The most important that some routers doesn't like computer names which can't be part of valid DNS name (English letters, numbers, dashes, underscores).

To name my Mac I use something like Eir-Mac or EirMac and have no problems.


Why does hiding the Finder toolbar cause so many side effects? I'm on Yosemite, and I'd like to hide the Finder toolbar. But doing "View > Hide Toolbar" causes two undesired side effects:

Tab functionality is disabled: "File > New Tab" is grayed out. If there are already multiple tabs, then "View > Hide Toolbar" is grayed out. So we can hide the toolbar, or we can have tabs, but not both. I have been able to work around this issue by installing XtraFinder and using its tab functionality.
Folders open in new windows, instead of the same window. This behavior is actually documented. We can revert to the regular behavior with various key combinations, depending on how we're opening the folders, for example by using Ctrl+Cmd+O instead of just Cmd+O. This is not a great solution, though -- I don't want to have to use more complicated keyboard shortcuts just to get Finder to behave normally.

My questions:

Are there better workarounds to get Finder to behave normally when the toolbar is hidden?
What possible reasons could there be to have Finder behave this way? It seems like "the principle of most surprise" at work.

As to your second question of "why does the Finder behave this way?", I will hazard a guess that it mimics the decades-long traditional behavior of Finder windows.  This was how Finder windows worked in Mac OS through version 9.

In earlier versions of OS X, there was a button in the top right corner of windows that toggled between the "old" Finder window behavior and the "new" (toolbar) behavior.

The button was removed in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, but you get the same results by hiding the toolbar.


When migrating from iPhoto to Photos my trainer deleted Photos library rather than iPhotos library OS X Yosemite v. 10.10.5... When migrating from iPhoto to Photos my trainer deleted Photos library rather than iPhotos library. What needs to be done to correct?

Just re-migrate. Open Photos and it will ask you if you want to migrate your iPhoto Library.


Does switching the keyboard language (literally) works? I’ve used US format keyboard along all my life, a couple days ago I bought a Macbook Pro 13’ mid 2012 in in Mexico it was way more cheaper and with no issues at all with the computer, but I’m not used to that keyboard keys, I wanted to know if it’s possible to swap the keyboard language not just on software but in hardware as well.

If you want to replace your existing hardware keyboard, you need to contact an Apple store or other service operation directly yourself and ask whether that is possible and what the cost would be.  Whether the right parts are available somewhere for a 7-year old machine is hard to know.

An easier solution would be to try using a "skin" over the existing keys or otherwise mark them to meet your needs.


Murus firewall - redirect an ip to localhost web server Edited to simplify question:

using host file, we can redirect a domain (example.com) to localhost:

127.0.0.1 example.com

How can we redirect an ip (for example 35.166.133.11) to localhost (web server port 80) using Murus firewall’s custom pf rules?

Action: block, pass, rdr, rdr pass, dummynet, no dummynet
Direction: in, out
Protocol: all, tcp, udp, icmp, igmp, gre, esp
Interface: all, gif0, stf0, en0, p2p0, utun0

IMHO your web server environment is flawed because you may simply replace 35.166.133.11 by 192.168.1.2 in the sources instead of routing packets from 192.168.1.2 to lo0 (35.166.133.11 keep state) and later redirecting them from lo0 to the source en0(192.168.1.2) again.

But in other setups it may be useful. E.g. if you run a second web server mimicking the Amazon Linux AMI Test Page at localhost or 192.168.1.3/4/5.

rdr only accepts incoming packets. Thus, you have to first route those packets to lo0, then add an rdr rule there (which will catch them as they will be routed in from "somewhere") to send them to your local web server at 192.168.1.2.

The order in the config file is necessarily rdr incomming packets, then filter packets (like pass), but chronologically the 2nd rule will hit first (on en0), which will then activate the first rule (on lo0).

# Step "2". redirect those same packets that were routed to lo0 below
rdr pass log on lo0 proto tcp from en0 to 35.166.133.11 port 80 -> 192.168.1.2 port 80
# Step "1". Route new IPv4 TCP connections leaving en0 to lo0
pass out on en0 route-to lo0 proto tcp from en0 to 35.166.133.11 port 80 keep state

in pf.conf this would look like this:

...
scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr pass log on lo0 proto tcp from en0 to 35.166.133.11 port 80 -> 192.168.1.2 port 80
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"
pass out on en0 route-to lo0 proto tcp from en0 to 35.166.133.11 port 80 keep state

In the above example you would have to change the interface en0 to e.g. en1 if en0 doesn't have the IP 192.168.1.2 but en1 does.

Unload your current pf.conf and stop pf: sudo pfctl -d. Then add the two additional lines above. After modifying pf.conf check the syntax of the file with sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.conf which should result in the following output:

pfctl: Use of -f option, could result in flushing of rules
present in the main ruleset added by the system at startup.
See /etc/pf.conf for further details.

scrub-anchor "/*" all fragment reassemble
nat-anchor "/*" all
rdr-anchor "/*" all
rdr pass log on lo0 inet proto tcp from 192.168.1.2 to 35.166.133.11 port = 80 -> 192.168.1.2 port 80
anchor "/*" all
pass out on en0 route-to lo0 inet proto tcp from 192.168.1.2 to 35.166.133.11 port = 80 flags S/SA keep state
dummynet-anchor "/*" all

and if successful load it with sudo pfctl -e -f /etc/pf.conf.

After shutting down the web server on port 80 you can test this with netcat:

In a terminal window enter sudo nc -l 80. In a second terminal window enter sudo nc 35.166.133.11 80. Now enter some text in the second nc session and hit the enter key. The text should appear in the first, "listening" nc session. You can also enter text in the listening session which should appear in the second window. To end the session enter ctrlD in either of the two nc sessions.


How can I remove iOS 4.2 from an iPad? I need to remove iOS 4.2 beta from an iPad which I added using iTunes and the option+click Restore button feature.

When I click "Restore" in iTunes I get an error (image attached). I have the iOS SDK & XCode installed.

Step 1: You need to put the iPad into recovery mode.

Press and hold the home and sleep/wake buttons until the device shuts off. Keep holding the home key until the "connect to iTunes" graphic appears on the screen.

Step 2: Make sure you have iOS 3.2 somewhere on your system. Drag it into the organizer.

You can get any version of the iOS firmware from here.

Step 3: Open XCode's organizer and connect the iPad.

Step 4: Select your iPad in the organizer and choose the firmware version on the top right.

NOTE: You can probably use replace steps 3 and 4 with Option + Click in iTunes, just make sure to have the proper firmware lying around on your system.

NOTE2: Excuse me, I meant iOS 3.2, not iOS 4.1. I'm a little distracted at the moment.


Why does my MacBook sometimes ring the startup chime four more times after the initial chime? Sometimes, not always, upon restarting my Macbook (late-2006), the chime is repeated four more times after the initial chime.  It then starts up normally.

Does it happen in quick succession to where you could say the the unit chimes 5 times at start up? Or does the system reboot between each chime?

If they happen in quick success I would suspect a RAM Module issue. If it is so that the system reboots each time I would lean more towards an issue with the MLB's boot ROM. Late 2006 MBP parts are getting scarce since a Apple computer can only be serviced for 5 years from DOP. Hopefully that will give you a bit of information.

Another (distant) possibility is that the OS is corrupted after trying to do a software update. That one is a bit tricker to find but best tip is to run a complete backup of the unit, re-install the OS from the DVDs that shipped with the unit and the reapply all available updates (making sure the unit is attached to power the entire time).


Fast way to download a video from an URL Is there an easy way to download a video from an URL to the device or to your Dropbox?

The only way I have managed to do that is using Mercury: manually copying the URL, going to the download manager and then pasting the URL there. Then, from Mercury I can save it to my camera roll or upload it to Dropbox.

Is there an easier way of doing this? Any way that doesn't involve copy/paste, either using Mercury or any other browse?

In addition to fiddling around in Mercury Browser:

I found a collection of ugly-looking spammy apps: Video Downloader. I tried the purple one by Appsneon, it seems to work fine.

It shows a download button on iOS video player overlay, when browsing through the app. This is more convenient than Mercury Browser's approach. I wish mainstream browsers would offer this option as well.


Apple Numbers : countif and stats I have a sheet with a few columns,

Columns A contain dates, Columns T contain some text

What function can I use to count :

The numbers of result in the columns A which match the current day

I tried COUNTIF(Table 1::A2:A72, DATE(TODAY()))

The number of recurrence of the same text on columns T (e.g how many time "Approved" is listed on T

I tried  =COUNTIF(T1:T99,"Approved") but this return an error

Update for question 2 COUNTIF(Sheet 1::Table 1::T1:99, "Approved") is actually working

COUNTIF(Table 1::A2:A72, A3)
and add manually the date on A3
COUNTIF(Sheet 1:T1:99, "Approved")


How to import Chrome passwords into iCloud Keychain Latest MacOS release (10.15.4) added the following option:

  Option to import Chrome passwords into your iCloud Keychain for easy AutoFill of your passwords in Safari and across all your devices

Where do I find the settings for this / how to actually achieve this?

Finally found it. It's in Safari menu. Too bad it seems like a one-off action instead of true sharing of this data:

Then:


Sudden drop in gaming performance (FPS) on a mid-2010 iMac About two weeks ago, I had a sudden drop in gaming performance on my 27" iMac with ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics. While before I could play games without any problems at high graphical settings, suddenly playing Diablo3 for example became unbearable with around 10FPS at the lowest possible settings. Oddly enough I simultaneously started having similar problems when playing games on my Windows Bootcamp installation on the same machine.

I am not noticing any other problems besides those when gaming. Rebooting the machine does not help at all.

What could be the problem and how can I solve this?

I had this and fixed it!

Basically something was overheating.  It would freeze as it hit the overheat temperature and then resolve once the temperature dropped about 5 degrees celsius.

So I downloaded some random fan speed app (link below), cranked it up to full speed and haven't had a problem since!

http://www.eidac.de/


iPad messenger for Windows Live Network I'm looking for a FREE chat client that supports Windows Live network (Messenger) and is designed for iPad.

The iPad Windows Live Messenger application is designed for iPhone, so when you install it on iPad, you get a iPhone screen application.

Can someone help me?

Yahoo! Messenger says it supports Windows Live/MSN Messenger accounts, and is a Universal (iPhone & iPad) app.

Not free, but only $0.99 is Live Messenger Pro.


OWC's thermal sensor connects only to power - but sends data? I want to upgrade the hard drive in my iMac (21.5" Mid 2011) from 1TB to 3TB.

OWC sell an "in-line digital thermal sensor".  They describe the need for this:

  Unlike Prior Generations, Apple iMacs from late 2009 to current 2015 & later utilize digital reporting and even custom firmware for SMC drive temperature reporting. OWC's Exclusive HDD Kits include our custom digital monitor that 'talks Apple SMC' and maintains proper temperature reporting and Apple Diagnostic compatibility allowing you to upgrade an existing 3.5" HDD with any 3.5" SATA HDD of your choice up to 8.0TB

Below is a picture of the sensor, which they sell here:

Given this "talks to the Apple SMC", I was expecting it to be connected to the SATA data connector.

But oddly, it isn't: it fits "in-line" to the SATA power connector.  (The two connectors on this assembly plug into the existing power connector in the iMac, and into the power connector on the hard drive... see OWC's video starting at about 4:13 for instructions.)

I've looked at the Wikipedia description of SATA power connectors but don't see any mention of this kind of signalling.  (Pin 11 is for "staggered spinup / activity", but from the description, this doesn't seem capable of passing information about temperature.)

How can this sensor communicate with the iMac when it is only plugged into power?

How can this sensor communicate with the iMac when it is only plugged into power?

Because it's not only plugged into power; look at the number of connectors on the logic board side compared to the number of leads on the drive side.

You are also working on the assumption that the power connector is "power out only."  This is not the case.  The SMC can read changes in expected voltages across a circuit as well as send/receive signaling embedded within the power


Disable screen blur on fast user switching in Yosemite Anyone aware of a way to customize the appearance of the screen during fast user switching? I'd like to disable the background blur to make it look more like it did in Mavericks.

Yes, you can change the blurred background image on the login screen in Yosemite.

In root /Library/Caches (make sure you're not in the user ~/Library) you will find a file called: com.apple.desktop.admin.png. This is the blurred image that was created when you set your Desktop wallpaper.

Replace this file with any image you would like on your login page. Make sure to keep the permissions the same as the original file.

Hat Tip to Bobby T from Apple Support Communities: https://discussions.apple.com/message/26879262#26879262

Cheryl


Installing Mavericks on a new Mac Mini (end 2014) shipped with Yosemite pre-installed? Excuse me for my english, I'm french and I try to find a solution for my new Mac Mini buy in December. My new Mac Mini it's configured with Yosemite 10.10.0. and it's a problem for me because I use some professional music software like Cubase Elements 7 or Studio One 2, it's not compatible for the moment with Yosmeite. I want to downgrade and I read your post and I'm in panic because I view that not possible to downgrade my new Mac Mini in OSX Mavericks. I have created a external bootable usb key with a Mavericks in my other Mac. When i restart on my usb key bootable, appear this symbol

It's the kernel panic when I try to boot on the usb key. I think it's mean it's not possible to downgrade on Mavericks with this New Mac Mini (end 2014) ?

Actually I'm in OSX 10.10.1, it's possible that the problem come because I'm in this version ?

Thanks for your help and your answers...

The general rule is, you cannot instal an OS on a Mac that is older than the Mac itself.
See Don't install a version of Mac OS X earlier than what came with your Mac

That said, Cubase 7 should run OK on Yosemite, though you will need the Steinberg Installer patch. I don't know Studio One 2 so I can't say on that.
Google did find this from Presonus about it.

Edit: I also found this, officially qualifying Studio One 2.6.4 as Yosemite-compatible


foxit reader harmful? I downloaded it form foxit reader's page but I got file may harm your computer warning like above.

How do I verify this? Or should I just follow that suggestion by firefox?

MacOS Sierra, firefox 52.0.2

It just means that Firefox does not recognize the app through standard Apple procedures for checking downloaded applications. It may mean that Foxit Software does not sign their apps with an Apple-recognized certificate, or that the cert expired.

However if you are sure you downloaded the installer from a reputable download host (EG the manufacturers website and not something pretending to be that site...) then the download is likely safe.


Copy text that only selectable with 3 fingers tap On my Mac Yosemite 10.10.5, I can tap 3 fingers to lookup for a word. That lookup could select text from virtually anywhere. I would like to copy that text to clipboard instead of doing lookup. How could I do that?

Just right click and copy. Or highlight the word(s) and press command-C


Finder: show video thumbnail for all kind of formats/containers I wish that Finder show video thumbnail for all kind of formats and containers. *.flv doesn't get a preview, some *.mp4 not, *.mov not.

Is this possible? Maybe a video browser in place of Finder? I have Perian installed.

Flash Video Viewer added thumbnails for flv files and Flip4Mac for wmv files.

I didn't find any way to add support for mkv or other formats. VLC, MPlayerX, Movist, and NicePlayer don't come with Quick Look plugins.


MacBook Pro not booting, lost partition I have a big issue with my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.10.4). I tried to enable yesterday the TRIM on my SSD disk (a Crucial I replaced myself). Everything was working fine since months but after restarting the laptop because of a Mac update, it got stuck at boot.

I have started on the recovery partition. I have tried all the Terminal commands to revert the TRIM (quite easy: touch, rm, cp,...) but I realized that my disk named "MACBOOK" was not even mounted in /Volumes.
So I opened the disk utility and I tried to mount the disk manually but that failed. I checked the disk, it said it had to be fixed. So I tried to fix it, but this failed too.

At this point, I have booted on Disk Warrior that detected an error on the disk: "Invalid record count".  Disk Warrior tried to fix it but it went worse:
the "MACBOOK" partition has disappeared and a new partition named "Untitled" has appeared. The disk can now be mounted though but seems empty.

So I ran to buy a hard drive dock. I took off the disk from my laptop and plugged it into my brand new dock on my iMac. The disk mounts properly but it is empty.
I opened the disk utility and I can see the disk. When displaying all partitions in the Debug menu, I can see this:

So I see the "Untitled" but also the "MACBOOK". So the partition is still here somewhere.
When I click on "Untitled", the disk utility says:
Capacity: 510Go
Free: 498Go
Used: 11,98Go
So clearly, Disk Warrior did something nasty like deleting the index table or such as the disk is now considered as empty.

Now, I am using a disaster data recovery tool. It finds thousands of files so the data is still on the disk. But files are not properly named. Like "file00001.png", "file00002.png". That will be very fun to clean all this mess.

I must precise that FileVault is NOT activated on the disk. My mac was running on Yosemite latest version. The ideal would be to fix the permission but at least I'd love to access the disk and get all my folders and file names back. I have a quite recent backup (3 months), I just need to get what has changed in the meantime. I will reinstall afterwards.

I am really getting crazy so any idea would be really appreciated.

Thanks a lot

What you currently are doing is correct. In this case it is a good idea to quickly restore EVERY file you can find through a file recovery program. You are very lucky that the data was not completely erased. DO NOT WRITE anything else to the disc, as you risk loosing more data.

In my personal experience restoring lost data, I usually:
1. Backup ALL Data I can recover to an External HDD.
2. Restore from a Time Machine Backup.
3. Look for missing Data.
4. Copy from External HDD

Which is basically what you said above. There is no other way to recover all the data quickly. Good luck.


XCode as a debugger, tutorial? I've never used debuggers, except for occasionally GDB's backtrace to find a segfault.  I'm currently working with a moderate sized C hydrodynamics code, where I think it might be time to start using a nice GUI debugger instead of sticking fprintf statements everywhere.

Can anyone point me towards a good getting started tutorial on using XCode (10.7) as a debugger for a C project?

Is the code already setup as an XCode project? If yes, this question has already been answered: Where is there a good tutorial on how to use Xcode's debugger properly? Admitted, most links are dead by now. But google comes up with a lot of useful links, even video.


How to change app store user for pre-installed apps on a Mac? We have two Macs in the family, one registered to me, the other to the wife. Whenever I tend to updating both machines, I have to call in the wife, to let her enter her AppStore password for the iLife apps (Numbers, Pages, etc). However, I have those apps as well, but the Mac AppStore does not let me use my account for this machine. Is there an easy way to change this, so that I can update the apps with my account?

There isn't an automated way to do that.

You would need to request a new redemption code from Apple for all of the apps. I've seen them grant that for businesses that can prove they purchased the Macs.

For used Macs, I've generally bought a gift card for the buyer or discounted the selling price to account for the lack of license for the built in apps.

I suppose you could ask for a "do-over" for that Mac to Apple Support if you can't put both accounts in a Family Sharing situation and use the AppleID you want to access "puchases" from another account.


Is there a way to preserve app icon categories (folders) in iOS when factory resetting an iPhone? I have a lot of them, and it takes literally hours to arrange them. Any shortcuts to make it easier?

I found this, and it works:

Say you restore your iPhone with a full wipe and restore. Then you choose a previous backup to restore all of your settings and applications. When your iPhone is done restoring to your backup, all your icons are mixed up on the SpringBoard.... what the heck? You want to get them back don't you? Well, I know a trick and I don't think it's documented anywhere. Here it goes.

**Important: Before starting these instructions, backup your iPhone. Then go into iTunes preferences and turn on "Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods" This way your backup won't get overwritten after your iPhone gets restored.

Restore your iPhone and let it restart and activate.
Then iTunes will happily ask you if you want to restore from a previous backup (with all of your settings and Applications). Click the backup you want to restore to and let it restore and reboot.

(Here's where things get messed up. Your iPhone backup actually restored the correct icon positions except none of your apps were installed before the restore was complete, so iTunes has to copy all of your apps back to your iPhone. When it does this, it copys them in alphabetical order, thus messing up the location of all your 3rd party icons). Here's how to fix this without memorizing where all your icons went.

Right click (or Control-click) on the iPhone icon in iTunes and choose "Restore from Backup" and choose the backup you chose in step 2 again.
Let your iPhone restore for a second time and when it reboots, all of your icons will be in their original places. (This is because iTunes didn't have to install the Apps because they were already there, thus keeping them in their original locations according to the backup).
Return your iTunes preferences and uncheck "Disable automatic syncing for iPhone and iPod"


System Preferences icons lost/gone all the same I have Mac mini (mid 2010) server running  Mac OS X Server Lion 10.7.3 (11D50b)

At some unspecified point in time (which could have coincided with the installation of Logitech Media Server to serve a SqueezeBox in the next room, but I can't prove that), all the icons in the System Preferences turned into the default icon of System Preferences itself.

Besides the visual change, everything else is working as expected.

Now, the primary question is - how do I get the icons back? Secondary question is, how this could have happened and what could be done to prevent that.

EDIT : My link concern an older version of Mac OS so you will not find all the files.
I updated my answer to match with my version of Mac OS (10.7.3).

It's seems that this person had the same problem and found a solution on this site.
Try the following and let us know what happens :

  Quit System Preferences if it's running and trash the following files (make a copy of these files on your desktop for backup purpose) :

  /Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist
  /Users/yourusername/Library/Caches/com.apple.preferencepanes.cache

  Then log out/in or restart and check System Preferences for proper
  functionality.

You can access your library by pressing the CMD key when clicking on the Go menu of the Finder.

And about the reason of that change it can be possible that one of the setting file of the system preference pane has been corrupted. That's why you can try to trash settings file and see if the problem is gone.

Hope this helps !


iTerm colors for Prompt, Command, and Output Right now my iTerm2 looks like this...

Everything is the same color and is hard to read. Can I make any of the Prompt, Command, and Output different colors like this?

There's a pretty exhaustive description of editing the bash prompt here there might be some linux specific stuff, but most of it is generic bash stuff.

But just for getting started, I recommend this bash profile generator

It is pretty simple, so I've since learned more and my prompt looks like:

using:

[[ -s "/Users/dwightk/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "/Users/dwightk/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM into a shell session *as a function*

function parse_git_branch {
git branch --no-color 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/(\1)/'
}
export PS1="  \[\033[01;35m\]\u@\h:\[\033[01;34m\]\$(parse_git_branch) \[\033[01;32m\]\w \[\033[01;34m\]\n>\[\e[0m\]"

which is pretty useful when dealing with git. Everything before the export PS1= is what enables the git branch to appear.

The  is from my first foray into bash prompt editing after I read this blog post.


Installing Applications on Mac through Network I need to install an application to number of Macs. Is there any way i can do it over the network or any other advise on this.

Thanks

There are a number of ways to do this. I use Apple's "Remote Desktop" application which allows you to both copy files and install packages (in addition to other management tasks) to multiple computers.

Here is Apple's page on the software:
http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

The management software you pay for runs on one Mac. The client is already part of the Mac OS and you just have to turn it on -- System Preferences -> Sharing then check "Remote Management". You can allow access from any user or specified users. I normally limit access to the local admin user on the computer. In the Remote Desktop application you add the computer to a list of managed computers and in that process you authenticate as the user under which you will be administering the computer. If you have a lot of computers to manage, you can create lists of computers in addition to the big list of all computers.


Port forwarding on iPhone? I'm using iPhone as a modem.

Is there a way to port forward to my computer because I'm using it as a development server.

Short answer
Until now (iOS 9.1) there has been no way to configure port forwarding in Personal Hotspot
Long Answer
Activating Personal Hotspot on an iOS device enables it's built-in NAT router. Other devices that connect to this iPhone (using USB, WiFi or Bluetooth) get an IP in the 172.16.0.0/12 subdomain.
There are no NAT settings in iOS, nor does it provide UPnP or NAT-PMP for remote NAT configuration.
Why?
Nobody knows Apple's reasons.
Wild guess: Knowing that availability of the Personal Hotspot feature on an iOS device depends on it's carrier, Apple may have disabled further features as way to play nice with the carriers.
Possible Workarounds

On the device that needs to accept incoming connections: connect to a VPN that provides a public IP and incoming connections
If you have access to the remote device you could create a tunnel (e.g. with ssh)
If the remote device is connected to the same iCloud account, enabling Back to my Mac will put you on the same private IPv6 network
Using a 4G modem instead of your iPhone will give you a direct internet connection accepting incoming connections

Edit: BUT...
Even you could bypass NAT on your device, your cellular IPv4 internet connection is very probably also behind a carrier-grade NAT.


Getting the lower variable In applescript I have 4 variables, each one with its number.
I'd like to have a function that tells me which variable is set to the lower number.

EG.

set one to 12
set two to 55
set three to 2
set four to 1244

function(which one is the lower) - returns three.

I'm new to applescript, in PHP I would do this thanks to associative arrays, but in applescript we have simple lists.

It would be awesome if it could return the first variable name if two or more variables are set to the same number. Eg if 'one' and 'four' are set to 0 it should return 'one'.

From what I've found by Googling, I haven't found any built in Min/Max functionality, however you can easily write your own:

    to min(n1,n2)
       if n1 < n2 then
--> change "<" to ">" to make a max handler
           return n1
       else
           return n2
    end min

After you've written that function (called a handler in AS), whenever you need to set a variable to the lower of two values, you can:

set smallerNumber to min(numberOne, numberTwo)


Macbook Pro 16 Inch Overheating I just got my new macbook pro 16 inch yesterday, upgrading from a 2016 macbook. I am slightly worried at the battery life thus far. This morning for example, I have been browsing the web to check email and read websites- nothing too intensive and no streaming video or anything even approaching that. However, the battery has dropped over 20% in an hour from doing this, with the fans on pretty loud at times. I also had other apps open in the background, including Xcode, but with nothing actively running- xcode was simply open on a project but nothing was built etc.

I have the i9 version, so I expected that the processor will run a bit hotter than my previous laptop. But the battery life seems abnormally bad... Can anyone advise me if this is normal/any quick fixes for it?

This is the output from Activity Monitor:

iCloud is uploading some files right now, but the process 'bird' in particular is taking up a lot of CPU all the time.

Unfortunately, the fault t is a bad design concerning the heat dissipation of the laptop. Especially if you use the display with an external monitor it gets very noisy and hot. Maybe they can solve it with a software update by reducing the voltage of the cpu and gpu. Please report this problem to Apple. If you look on google there is really a lot of people complaining about it.
(Tip: you should charge your laptop on the right side).


How to make a slow browser go fast? I've had my MacBook Air for about six months. Now all the browsers are extremely sluggish — sometimes taking minutes to load a web page that would have used to take under one second to load back when everything was new.

Questions

What's causing the sluggish browser response? (Most likely.)
What is a stepwise procedure to troubleshoot and/or fix it?

Configuration Details

O/S: OS X Yosemite 10.10.5
Memory: 4 GB @ 1600MHz DDR
Browsers: Safari, Chrome

Changing my DNS settings to Google's DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 seems to help a little but might not be the comprehensive solution I was looking for.

Procedure

Bottom toolbar > System Preferences > Network > Advanced... > DNS > + > 8.8.8.8 > + > 8.8.4.4

Or, via command line:

networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

The procedure is detailed here.


How to show passwords in Keychain Access? Is there any setting that is supposed to cause the macOS Keychain Access app to show, in the password area, not the passwords themselves but instead random-looking capital alphanumeric characters?

This is what I'm seeing but I'd rather see the passwords.

I'm not sure if this is a setting I don't know about or if something is broken.

Okay, I figured out why this is happening, after reading this article and this answer.

If you have access to a WiFi network because at one point or another you or someone else explicitly shared the password with you using the "Share Password" feature on iOS 11+ and macOS High Sierra+, then you never actually received the true plaintext password and so it is not saved in your keychain.

Instead, you get a kind of alphanumeric hash that was based on that password. Your device can use that hash to connect to the WiFi, but it's not feasible to reconstruct the original password from it.

So:

I am seeing these alphanumeric hashes for certain WiFi networks because I must have entered the true password on iOS and then explicitly shared it to my Mac (instead of relying on iCloud Keychain sync, to sync the true passwords across devices).
since that hash is all that's saved in my keychain, I have no way to recover the true password
whenever you use the "Share Password" feature to share a WiFi password to nearby devices, you're not actually sharing the password but only access to the network.


No file descriptor left in emacs I am using emacs on my mac book pro with Big Sur 11.2.3
And I frequently run into the issue of file descriptors
File watching not possible, no file descriptor left: 975

After several hours of googling the issue I tried several approaches of updating sysctl options.
currently, my relevant options are:
kern.maxfiles: 10485760
kern.maxfilesperproc: 1048576
kern.maxproc: 4096
kern.maxfilesperproc: 1048576
kern.maxprocperuid: 8192

and I still get the same error.
ulimit -a result:
-t: cpu time (seconds)              unlimited
-f: file size (blocks)              unlimited
-d: data seg size (kbytes)          unlimited
-s: stack size (kbytes)             8192
-c: core file size (blocks)         0
-v: address space (kbytes)          unlimited
-l: locked-in-memory size (kbytes)  unlimited
-u: processes                       2048
-n: file descriptors                1000000

See this code snippet in src/kqueue.c:
  /* Check available file descriptors.  */
#ifdef HAVE_GETRLIMIT
  if (! getrlimit (RLIMIT_NOFILE, &rlim))
    maxfd = rlim.rlim_cur;
  else
#endif /* HAVE_GETRLIMIT  */
    maxfd = 256;

  /* We assume 50 file descriptors are sufficient for the rest of Emacs.  */
  ptrdiff_t watch_list_len = list_length (watch_list);
  if (maxfd - 50 < watch_list_len)
    xsignal2
      (Qfile_notify_error,
       build_string ("File watching not possible, no file descriptor left"),
       make_fixnum (watch_list_len));

I would say that you have registered 975 file notifications in Emacs, which exceeds the maximum number of file descriptors on your system: (975 + 50) > 1024
I have no idea whether you can change this upper limit. However, I believe 975 file notification requests are, hmm, quite high.


Boot Camp script broke after El Capitan update I have a script that I call from Terminal to boot into my Windows partition:

#! /bin/bash
sudo bless -mount "/Volumes/BOOTCAMP" -legacy -setBoot
sudo reboot

After updating to El Capitan (10.11.1) I can’t use it anymore. The error message says something about being unable to set a disk property, so I’m guessing this is related to the security features that were added in this update.

You can't set the bootable disk with bless if System Integrity Protection is enabled. This is because bless writes to NVRAM, which is prohibited by SIP. This is why System Preferences → Startup Disk is able to set the startup disk, but other binaries are not.

  To disable System Integrity Protection, you can do the following:

  Boot into the Recovery HD by restarting whilst holding ⌘R.
  Open Terminal (from the Utilities menu).
  Run the following command in Terminal:

csrutil disable

  Restart.

Source: Disable OS X El Capitan Rootless and permit write actions to System Integrity Protection locations


Save screenshot with document name and page Is it possible to add the document name and document page when I do screenshots?

So, if I open a PDF and do a screenshot at page 6, I will have:
Document Name | Page 6 | Screen Shot 2012-06-12 at 8.02.40 AM

Is it possible to add the document name and document page when I do screenshots?

Using just what's setup by default, no; however, aside from doing it manually, it can be automated to various degrees depending on what methods and applications are involved.

So, if I open a PDF and do a screenshot at page 6, I will have: Document Name | Page 6 | Screen Shot 2012-06-12 at 8.02.40 AM

As an example, using Preview and AppleScript along with an Automator Service/Quick Action, and assigning it a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, the example AppleScript code, shown further below, will take a screen shot of either the full window of the front window of Preview or just its document scroll area, depending on its settings.
The name of the screen shot will be in the format shown quoted above from your question.

Here is a sample file name and a scaled down image of the screen shot taken of the document scroll area in Preview of The Room Where It Happened and was saved as:
    The Room Where It Happened | 3 | Snap Shot 2020-7-7 at 8.55.30 PM.png

There are three variables at the start of the example AppleScript code that are user configurable:

saveToLocation - Where the screen shot will be saved.

The default is the users Pictures folder.

ssFileType - Which can be set to: png, jpg, pdf or tiff.

The default is: png

captureArea - Which gets set to to either whole window, or scroll area.

The default is: scroll area (of the document, not whatever shows in the Sidebar.)

You should not need to edit the code below these initial variables, unless necessary, and the code is lightly commented to help one understand what it is doing.

The following example AppleScript code was tested as an Automator Service in macOS High Sierra, and should also work as a Quick Action in macOS Mojave and later. The Automator Service was assigned a keyboard shortcut of ⌥⌘S and was pressed while Preview had focus and was frontmost.
--  # Set the save to location, screen shot file type, and the capture area.
--  # The code below these three settings should not need to be edited.

--  # The saveToLocation must be in the form of a
--  # POSIX path for the screencapture command.

set saveToLocation to POSIX path of (path to pictures folder)

--  # ssFileType can be set to "png", "jpg", "pdf" or "tiff".

set ssFileType to "png"

--  # Set the capture area to either 'whole window', or just the 'scroll area'.

set captureArea to "scroll area"

--  # Do not edit the code below this line unless necessary.

--  # In Preview, when a PDF document is opened, the 'window name' is in the
--  # format of 'filename (page x of y)' for multi-page documents, or
--  # 'filename (1 page)' for single-page documents, and the 'filename' may contain '.pdf'.
--  # Example: "The Room Where It Happened.pdf (page 1 of 570)"
--  # Parse the text items of the 'window name' for parts of the screen shot name.

--  # Get then name of the first window of Preview.

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    set windowName to ¬
        the name of ¬
            the front window of ¬
                application process "Preview"

--  # Check to see the document is a PDF, and terminate if not.

if windowName contains "(page" or windowName contains "page)" then
    -- # Document is a PDF file. Continue processing...
else
    return
end if

--  # Parse 'windowName' to get the doc name and page number.

set text item delimiters to "("

set documentName to ¬
    the first text item of ¬
        the windowName

if documentName contains ".pdf" then
    set documentName to ¬
        characters 1 thru -6 of ¬
        the first text item of ¬
            the windowName
else
    set documentName to ¬
        characters 1 thru -2 of ¬
        the first text item of ¬
            the windowName
end if

if the first word of ¬
    the second text item of ¬
        the windowName is "1" then
    set pageNumber to ¬
        the first word of ¬
            the second text item of ¬
                the windowName
else
    set pageNumber to ¬
        the second word of ¬
            the second text item of ¬
                the windowName
end if

set text item delimiters to ""

--  # Get position and size of the front window or the
--  # document scroll area of Preview for the screen shot.

if captureArea contains "whole window" then
    tell application "System Events" to ¬
        set windowPositionSize to {position, size} of ¬
            the front window of ¬
                application process "Preview"
else if captureArea contains "scroll area" then
    tell application "System Events"
        if exists scroll area 2 of ¬
            splitter group 1 of ¬
            window 1 of ¬
            application process "Preview" then
            set windowPositionSize to ¬
                {position, size} of ¬
                scroll area 2 of ¬
                splitter group 1 of ¬
                window 1 of ¬
                application process "Preview"
        else
            set windowPositionSize to ¬
                {position, size} of ¬
                scroll area 1 of ¬
                splitter group 1 of ¬
                window 1 of ¬
                application process "Preview"
        end if
    end tell
end if

set x to item 1 of item 1 of windowPositionSize
set y to item 2 of item 1 of windowPositionSize
set w to item 1 of item 2 of windowPositionSize
set h to item 2 of item 2 of windowPositionSize

--  # Build out the date time string for the screen shot file name.

set currentDate to (current date)
set d to day of currentDate
set m to month of currentDate as integer
set yr to year of currentDate
set t to time string of currentDate

--  # Replace ':' with '.' in the 'time string'.

set text item delimiters to ":"
set t to text items of t
set text item delimiters to "."
set t to t as string
set text item delimiters to ""

--  # Set the screen shot file name.

set ssFileName to ¬
    (documentName as string) & ¬
    " | " & ¬
    pageNumber & ¬
    " | " & ¬
    "Snap Shot " & yr & "-" & d & "-" & m & " at " & t & "." & ssFileType

--  # Define the shell command.

set myShellCMD to ¬
    "screencapture -R" & x & "," & y & "," & w & "," & h & " -t " & ¬
    ssFileType & space & (saveToLocation & ssFileName)'s quoted form

--  # Take the screen shot.

do shell script myShellCMD

For the Run Shell Script action in the Automator Service/Quick Action, replace the entire default code with the example AppleScript code, and then edit the first three variables as wanted, if the default values are not what you want.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any additional error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors. Additionally, the use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


iPhone 5 sound not playing through headphones I have tried multiple working pairs of headphones (tested on other devices) and the iPhone doesn't play any sound through headphones.

If the problem persists, you may have a whole different problem on your hands. Basically, dust can get into the earpod jack and cause an electrical disruption. To fix this, put the earpod plug in the jack until you hear the click, and then pull it out again. Do this over and over again.
   Try it out, and if you have sound, then you have fixed it. If this has not happened yet, it will most likely happen in the near future, so be prepared. (it happens to some apple devices after a while).


Is there a way to see what numbers I entered after calling an automated service? On my iPhone 6 is there a way to see what numbers I entered after recently calling an automated service (like when you call the cable or power company and have to press the number that corresponds with the options you provided, like "press 2 to speak with a person, press 3 to pay your bill")? Not the actual number that I initially dialed to make the call but the numbers that I entered after the making the call that I had to press to navigate the options of the automated call service?

No, this information is not stored anywhere for calls you have made, only vice versa where you write the numbers specifically into a contact with pauses added in the first place for iOS to enter the numbers for you.


What is the advantage to buying a carrier-specific iPhone over a sim-free version? Apple sells "carrier-specific" versions of their phones, as well as "sim-free" versions.

If paying in full, these are the same price (e.g. a Verizon or AT&T 64GB iPhone SE costs $499, as does a sim-free 64GB iPhone SE).

I understand that the sim-free iPhone does not work with Sprint, so if I wanted to use it on Sprint, I would have to buy the Sprint-specific version.

But in the case of Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, why would anyone buy the carrier-specific version instead of the sim-free version?  Do they offer any advantage?  Why does Apple even sell them?

Apple sells carrier-specific iPhone models so that the carrier can do subsidizing or financing. The carrier-specific ones comes with a pre-activated SIM for the carrier that you choose. There is no advantage other than convenience when paying in full (other than the Sprint requirement). One thing, though, is that the SIM-free version doesn't come with a SIM, so you need to get one from you carrier, which might cost money. The SIM-free and T-Mobile versions come factory unlocked, and the others might not.


How to copy to folder: /System/Library/Filters? I am trying to create a new "reduced file size" export filter within preview.

Therefore I copied the original file to desktop, made my changes and then I tried to copy back to the folder. This seems not to be permitted. Even with admin account and with sudo on terminal as well.

sudo cp Reduce\ File\ Size.114dpi.qfilter /System/Library/Filters
cp: /System/Library/Filters/Reduce File Size.114dpi.qfilter: Operation not permitted

How can I move this file to the folder?

User-created Filters should be saved to /Users/yourUserName/Library/Filters. You may need to create this subfolder if it's not already present in your user Library.

Also, note that the easy way to edit or create a new Filter is to use ColorSync Utility. If you edit the file in a text editor and get invalid XML, it can bring down the whole QuartzFilter system.