How to get a list of Apple Time Zones How would I get a listing of all the time zones that Apple has on macOS. For example:

Pacific Daylight Time
Central European Standard Time
etc.

macOS uses the same TimeZone layout as FreeBSD.
Look in /usr/share/zoneinfo for each time zone file.
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
Africa          Australia       Etc             MET             WET
America         CET             Europe          MST             posixrules
Antarctica      CST6CDT         Factory         MST7MDT         zone.tab
Arctic          EET             GMT             PST8PDT
Asia            EST             HST             Pacific
Atlantic        EST5EDT         Indian          SystemV

Traverse the directories to drill down to the timezone you need.  Eg.  Eastern time would be:
/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/NewYork
The file is a C library.  To get the output of the file, you can use one of two commands - zdump or file:

zdump /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York
file /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York


My Android no longer receives text messages from an iphone since signing in to imessages on my mac I have a Mac, running Big Sur. I signed in to iMessages, and sent a message to my wife's iPhone.
Now, messages from her iPhone no longer go to my Android, and I can find no way to stop it from sending to iMessage.
Is this a bug? How do I fix it?

Generally only an iPhone will register your cellular number with Messages, but you can check and deregister it here:

https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/

Once that’s clear, you have to be sure her app is sending to the phone number and not the email.


ssh key persists even after I delete the private key from ~/.ssh -- why? I generated ssh keys (public and private) and stored them in ~/.ssh/myServer/.

I added the public key to the server's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file and everything works great!

In my effort to try and understand how the keys work I deleted them and was surprised to find that I was still able to connect to the server.

Why is it that I am still able to connect without a password?

Welcome to the wonderful world of OS X Keychain and ssh-agent! From the man page:

  ssh-agent is a program to hold private keys used for public key authentication (RSA, DSA, ECDSA).  The
       idea is that ssh-agent is started in the beginning of an X-session or a login session, and all other
       windows or programs are started as clients to the ssh-agent program.  Through use of environment vari-ables variables
       ables the agent can be located and automatically used for authentication when logging in to other
       machines using ssh(1).

Your private key was cached in the agent and is being fetched from there to authenticate your session. OS X, via Keychain, does automatic ssh-agent caching for you because it's "user friendly". It can be a little alarming, but it's mostly a handy thing that this happens.

The default time-to-live for cached keys is forever. That's probably not a great default. It'll flush the cached keys on a logout/login-cycle or a reboot. Or you can force a flush by killing the current agent using:

ssh-add -D

You can list all credentials cached by the agent by running:

ssh-add -l

This will do the same but show the full public keys:

ssh-add -L


How to put songs to my iphone from itunes without deleting songs in my iphone I have a problem. My friend placed music in my iphone using his laptop recently. Unfortunately i want to put more song in my iphone using my computer. However, I cant sync my iphone to my comuputer since it says that syncing will delete all the music in my iphone. How can i put music in my iphone without deLeting the songs in my iphone? :| :|

You will need to manually manage your music now. You can do this by plugging your iPhone into your computer (or wifi connecting to iTunes), and then, after selecting your iPhone, under the "Summary" tab, select "Manually Manage Music and Videos".

If you are running iTunes 11 go to the the "On my iPhone" tab, and you can now manually manage the music that you have on your iPhone. Unfortunately, unless you erase the music he shared with you, you won't be able to automatically manage your music.


Xcode error The maximum number of apps for free development profiles has been reached I am under the age of 18 so I can't get into the Apple Developer program. I am forced to just use my free developer account and I have been for the past year. Today for some reason I am getting this error:

The maximum number of apps for free development profiles has been reached.

I've had a similar error to this before when I was creating new apps left and right and it said I had too much profiles for the week, so I waited and continued development. This error on the other hand isn't giving me any actions to fix the issue and I can't solve on myself.

Is there a way to possible delate some of the developer profiles that I have registered? Do I just need to wait a couple of days? I don't know what to do because the error message has no recommended action. Thanks!

In my case this guide worked; that is, in Xcode go to Window → Devices then under Installed Apps delete some of your apps and afterwards I could run my own apps on the device again.

I also rebooted the phone beforehand, but I assume that was not necessary.


How to downgrade SMC firmware I have a MBP 6.2. Some time ago (1,5 year I guess) I have installed latest Mountain Lion upgrade and my WiFi (airport) stopped working.
Tried many options, spent lot of time on different forums, did update to Mavericks and Yosemite but nothing helped. AirPort still refused to connect.

I have small TLink wifi dongle and managed to make it working via Wireless Network Utility but the dongle has weak antena so MBP went to the cupboard for some time.

Recently I decided to install fresh Mountain Lion again hoping that maybe old software will help. I noticed that if I reset the SMC nadn NVRAM, AirPort connects and works for several minutes and then stops again.

Is it possible that the firware update has broken my Wifi ? I have the idea to downgrade to the previous firmware version hoping it will sove the issue. The version I currently have is EFI: MBP61.0057.B11 (2015-002) and SMC: 1.58f17 (SMC 1.7).

And now the final question. Could anybody suggest a site where can I find list of SMC and EFI software versions proper for my MBP6.2? I have found this: https://support.apple.com/pl-pl/HT201518 but it says only what is the latest version. I'm looking for the previous one.

Best Regards
Hightower

Download the 1.69f3 SMC 1.5 Update from (MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.5). This gives you the file "MacBookProSMCUpdate.dmg", mount that and look for the file "MBP15.pkg" and copy that to your HD.
Download unpkg from (http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/) and install it.
Open unpkg and drop the file "MBP15.pkg" on it. This unpacks that file into a folder called MBP15. Open MBP15 ▸ System ▸ Library ▸ CoreServices ▸ Firmware Updates and locate the file "MBP15SMC15.smc". Copy this to a folder on your desktop called SMC or something like that.
Now download the 1.69f4 SMC 1.7 Update from (MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.7). This files is also called "MacBookProSMCUpdate.dmg" so mine was renamed "MacBookProSMCUpdate (1).dmg" this may vary on your system so make sure you know which file is which. Mount this file and look fot the file "MacBookProSMCUpdate.pkg" and copy that to your HD.
Open unpkg again and drop the file "MacBookProSMCUpdate.pkg" on it. This gives you a folder called MacBookProSMCUpdate. Open MacBookProSMCUpdate ▸ MBP91 ▸ System ▸ Library ▸ CoreServices ▸ Firmware Updates and locate the file "SmcFlasher.efi" and "VerifyRequirements". Copy those to the SMC folder you created earlier. That folder should now contain 3 files "MBP15SMC15.smc, SmcFlasher.efi and VerifyRequirements". I´m not sure if that last file is needed but this worked for me. I also renamed the file "MBP15SMC15.smc" to "2011MBP15.smc" because that is the name of the 1.7 SMC that is used with that version of SmcFlasher.efi, again i´m not sure if this is needed.
We need a way to boot into an EFI shell. Download the disk image for rEFIt from (http://refit.sourceforge.net/). Mount that and copy the folder "efi" to the same place as your "SMC" folder, for me this was my desktop.
Use a USB drive, i used a simple 2GB stick, format that as HFS+ journaled extended, GUID partition table. Copy the two folders "SMC" and "efi" onto that drive. Start Terminal and run the script "enable.sh" that is located in "efi/refit" on your USB drive. Once again i´m not sure if that script is needed but this is how i did it =)
Boot your MacBook Pro and hold down "Alt", choose to boot from your USB drive. This brings up the rEFIt user interface, choose the icon that looks like the Terminal. This boots up your EFI shell. It will show you a list of your available drives. My thumb drive was fs2 so i just typed fs2: to mount that. If you mount the wrong one you can just type that command again, for example fs3: and so on. When you find the right one you can type "ls" and it should show you that you have the folders "efi" and "SMC". Type "cd SMC" to go into that folder. Type "ls" again and make sure your 3 files are there.
Now the fun part =) MAKE SURE YOU ARE CONNECTED TO A POWER SUPPLY BEFORE PROCEEDING!
Type "SmcFlasher.efi -reset 1" and then type "SmcFlasher.efi -force -LoadApp 2011MBP15.smc", your fans should now go to max and it will start flashing you SMC. Reboot when finished by typing "reset".
Enjoy 1.69f3, this made my fan controller work again, the fans now kick in as they are supposed to.


Is it possible to record Quick Time video of iPhone that is rotating? I want to record a short video of the app I'm developing.

I'm using QuickTime and iPhone connected via lightning cable.

The moment I rotate my phone the recording stops.

Is it possible to record such a video?

Possible workaround: record my whole screen while preview of the iPhone is on.

The reason this happens is because a video cannot change orientation mid-record.

IE: My wife starts many of her video recordings on her phone in a
vertical position. I remind her that we will likely have a terrible
experience watching that video at a future date from a television
because of the huge black bars on the left and right. She rotates it
mid recording session, but all this does is make it so we have to turn
our head on the couch.

There's a reason you haven't seen anything rotate on Youtube either -- it simply isn't equiped to all the sudden change from widescreen to portrait.
Solution:
Quicktime (assuming you're on a mac based on your screenshot) also lets you select "New Screen Recording" from the File dropdown menu. You could record your whole screen like you alluded to, but if you want a more controled/correct size, you would do the following:

Pretend like you're going to do a new iPhone recording. Have the phone on the screen. Take note of where the phone is on the screen in portrait mode, as well as landscape mode.
Use sticky notes on your monitor to create a "square" that will make sure your phone is completely visible during landscape as well as portrait. (see where I'm going with this?)
Tricky part. Open your applications folder. COPY quicktime to your desktop. Double click the desktop icon. This will open a SECOND instance of quicktime.
Use the second instance of quicktime to do a "New Screen Recording". You do NOT have to record your whole screen; Select the square that you made with sticky notes on your monitor so we record this area.
Hit record on the second instance of quicktime, while the first instance of quicktime is simply used to watch the phone in both portrait and landscape!

I know, it's a little involved. Likely easier to buy some software, but for free -- you can't beat it.


MacBook Air Early 2014 responds to SMC reset but doesn't turn on MacBook responds to Shift+Control+Option+Power button, the magsafe's light color changes from orange color to green momentarily then goes back to orange. So it means the MacBook is still alive.

What could be the possible cause why the machine won't turn on?

UPDATE

It's working again now, after letting it rest for about two weeks since it crashed.

While in the middle of booting (progress bar is not finished) the computer just turns itself off. Tried to turn it on again it just kept on turning itself off while booting.

This permanently fix the boot crashing: https://discussions.apple.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-29433214-653435/image.jpg

You probably have defective hardware. The SMC appears to work, so it's simply not allowing power-on due to a problem elsewhere in the computer.


Phantom AirPlay device named "Apple TV (2)" Since upgrading to Sierra and iOS 10, both my Mac and iPhone find an AirPlay device named "Apple TV (2)". The thing is, I don't own an Apple TV. Selecting the phantom device always results in "Could not connect to “Apple TV (2)”".

This is on my home Wi-Fi network, which is definitely locked down (and I can see from AirPort Utility that there's only these 2 Wi-Fi clients on it). I've also noticed this problem occur on some other Wi-Fi networks.

I have a MacBook Pro running Sierra 10.12.1 GM (latest), iPhone 6s running iOS 10.0.2 GM (latest), and a 5th gen (current) Time Capsule with firmware 7.7.7 (latest).

Yes, I have rebooted all three devices.

I've even done a clean install of Sierra (following http://www.macrumors.com/how-to/macos-sierra-clean-install/) and created a clean user account. The problem reproduces across user accounts.

I'm clearly hitting a bug somewhere, but I wonder why more people aren't hitting this problem? Any ideas on how I can further debug this? I don't see anything relevant in Console logs, but perhaps I'm not looking in the right place.

Apparently I'm seeing a neighbor's Apple TV via peer-to-peer AirPlay. So they're not on my Wi-Fi network but don't have to be.

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-ipad-sees-atvs-on-neighbors-wifi.1887338/
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/33j6yn/multiple_apple_tvs_showing_up_over_airplay/

This is annoying. Now I'd like to know how to disable this (it's particularly annoying when trying to change the volume via the menu extra since the slider moves from under my mouse after a second), but it seems impossible to disable this mis-feature.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7723176
http://help.apple.com/deployment/ios/#/apd8fc751f59


Screenshot the entire web-page In macOS, one can easily get a screen capture by using key combination Command + Shift + 4.

But, are there any keyboard shortcuts that can scroll a webpage or any other pages and get the screen capture?

I am looking for a keyboard shortcut and not an app or browser extension that needs to be downloaded from the Internet or Mac App Store.

Safari now has a ScreenCapture feature built-in, as explained in the article Full Page Screenshots in Browsers:

  In Safari DevTools, select a node, right-click, and you'll see Capture Screenshot in the context menu.

There isn't a keyboard shortcut AFAIK, but it is available without additional third-party software. To capture the entire page, you would right-click on the <html> or <body> node, as demonstrated in this image from the CSS-Tricks article:


AppleWorks to FileMaker I have been using AppleWorks -- and think very highly of it.  However, I also know that I need to move on.  Is FileMaker the most similar piece of software?  Can I transfer files from AppleWorks to FileMaker -- or do I need to start from scratch?

Filemaker is only a database app, and a pretty hefty one at that. So it will only take the place of one of AppleWorks' modules.

Do you use the drawing and writing component too? There are a number of apps that will open these files but it will depend on your needs. A search on MacInTouch.com for appleworks should turn up a whole bunch of helpful information on converting your files and replacement programs. It is not strictly a forum like Stack Exchange but you can ask relevant questions, but they are heavily moderated.


MacBook Pro 2017 headphone jack seems to go to sleep when the laptop is idle I have a 2017 MBP and i'm using a pair of basic Sennheiser earphones. I am finding when the laptop is idle for a period of time (I can't work out exactly how long yet) the earphone jack seems to hang up.

The only way I can get sound out of it is to unplug the earphones and plug them back in and after 2-3 seconds I get sound again.

The spec of my machine:

  MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
  macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G65)
  3.1 GHz Intel Core i5
  16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

The problem seems to be that OSX selects the wrong output device when returning from sleep mode. For me the issue is that it selects the DisplayPort audio instead of the headphone port.

I did the following to fix this:

Install switchaudio-osx and sleepwatcher (I personaly use Homebrew for this)

brew install switchaudio-osx sleepwatcher

Check the name of the audio output device you want to use by running

SwitchAudioSource -n

(for me this was Built-in Output)

create a wake-up script using the output device from step 2:

echo -e "#\!/bin/bash\n/usr/local/bin/SwitchAudioSource -s 'Built-in Output'" >> ~/.wakeup

Set the permissions for the file

chmod 700 ~/.wakeup

Test the script (execute the command below and let your Mac go to sleep)

/usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher --verbose --wakeup ~/.wakeup

Set-up the launch configuration for sleepwatcher

ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/sleepwatcher/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher-20compatibility-localuser.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher-20compatibility-localuser.plist
brew services start sleepwatcher

Done! Now every time your machine returns from sleep the script will run and select the correct output


What's the terminal equivalent of Windows' netsh wlan add filter? On my windows wifi devices I am able to add wireless network filters to disable connectivity to unwanted signals.

First I whitelist any networks I deem secure using the following command:

netsh wlan add filter permission=allow ssid=myNetworkName networktype=infrastructure

Then I blacklist all the others using:

netsh wlan add filter permission=denyall networktype=infrastructure

I recently got a MacBook Air and now I want to do the same thing with it.
What are the terminal equivalents of these cmd commands?

Thanks in advance!

Edit:

This question is not a duplicate. It's alright if you don't have the answer, but don't mark it resolved just for the sake of it. Leave it up in case someone else knows the answer.

First of all, that script fails to connect most of the time. Secondly, I need a way to stop non-administrators from connecting to ALL networks other than the ones I've white-listed. That solution has you list the 'bannedList' of networks one by one. And it doesn't mention how to force non-admins to connect through the script rather than just using the regular WiFi list or network preferences.

I refuse to believe there is no solution to such a trivial network security question. Especially since it was so easy on Windows.

If it's running High Sierra you can turn off auto-join in the system preferences > network > airport panel.

EDIT: question was unclear.  Here's another answer that might be better for the question-asker.

You can create a 'Profile' to install on the system.

Buy Server.app on the App Store.
Learn about Profiles and how they work.
Create a profile with a restirction that prevents the user from accessing the 'network' control panel.
Make sure the WiFi network(s) it's OK to connect to are already set up - the credentials will be stored in the System keychain, so all users will be able to access them.  If the administrator has connected to networks that other users shouldn't - you'll need to 'forget' those networks or move them from the system keychain to a user one.
Install the profile in the users' account, and make sure to disable the WiFi menu while you're at it, so the only way to change networks - other than the command-line if they figure out how - is through the Network control panel, which is now disabled.


ipadOS downloads go directly to iCloud Drive folder, while iOS downloads stay on local device I recently downloaded a file to my iPhone and noticed that even though I have iCloud Drive turned on, the file did not automatically sync to iCloud Drive. Conversely, when I downloaded the same file on my iPad, the file was immediately uploaded to iCloud Drive. Why the discrepancy?

There is a setting for the Safari download location in the iOS/iPadOS Settings app.

Settings app > Safari > Downloads

Your iPhone is probably set to a local download folder on the iPhone, while your iPad is set toe the download folder within the iCloud "folder".

Can you check in the "Files" app if the downloaded file on your iPhone lives in the "On my iPhone" location?


Raise maximum connection limit for Internet Sharing? I’m using Internet Sharing (USB 10/100/1000 LAN → Wi-Fi) to give a tech demo of a web site, running locally on my machine, to multiple phones.

I want to connect 15 phones to the shared network, but upon connecting the 6th phone, the phone reported “Access point temporarily full”.

Is there a way to configure how many devices can connect to Internet Sharing? I’m fine with delving into the Terminal.

The limit seems to be hard-coded into macOS and cannot be modified by setting properties or similar.

However, if it is an option to use additional hardware, you may put a router in between. That way, only the router would connect via Internet sharing, while the other devices would connect to the router.


Has anybody used Dragon Dictate on OS X with MacVIM I'm a Ruby on Rails developer and I've seen a very intriguing video of a developer using Dragon Dictate on Windows to do software development. I'm a long-time OS X / VIM user and I am wondering if anybody uses Dragon with MacVIM. Googling doesn't seem to turn up any results.

The setup in the video is quite impressive.  I imagine that there was a lot of customization necessary to have the software work that way. Dragon Dictate works with vim for inserting text (I just tested this myself), but it doesn't do as well at navigation or editing the text, and it certainly can't do all the fancy code insertion straight out of the box. I imagine that if you have a disability that prevented the use of your hands that you would be motivated to make such an environment work, but I imagine that for normally-abled people it would take more work than it's worth.


Is Python Pre-Installed on Every Mac Version? Is Python pre-installed on every mac version? If so, how far does it go?

Also, I know in CentOS, its encouraged not to use the Python Pre-Installed and to actually use your own Python version (to maintain longevity)

Does this apply on Mac's? Or can I just use Python thats already installed like as if i just installed it myself

Python has been installed on the Mac far back, though some of the earlier versions of the OS will have particularly old versions of Python. You can discover the installed version of Python by running python -V at the command line. MacOS 10.11.6 has Python 2.7.10 installed.

If you want Python 3 or a later version of Python 2.7 then I would recommend using either Homebrew or Anaconda (if you want Python with a bunch of bells and whistles pre-installed) to install it. Homebrew and Anaconda currently install Python 2.7.12


iPhone pauses or plays songs when the headphone plug moves My iPhone 3GS has decided to pause music playing when the headphone plug happens to move a bit or to start playing music without warning for the same reason. Sometimes it also skips to the next song or podcast. It's very annoying.

Is there some way to tell my iPhone not to do that?

The headphones are original Apple headphones for the iPhone. I bought two pairs and it happens with both pairs but only with that iPhone. I have a second iPhone 3GS which doesn't appear to react like that.

It happens because a quick jog of the plug causes a short interruption in line level.  It's the same with headphones -- Apple or otherwise -- that include a play/pause button (usually place on the cable itself, where it splits to go to each ear).  That button functions in exactly the same way, by momentarily interrupting line-level on the phone's cables.  iTunes starts playing because it assumes the interruption from plug movement (or a dirty plug) is a play/pause signal.  As a simple demonstration, start iTunes playing something and wiggle the phones jack, same conditions as make iTunes launch and play, only if it's already playing this will make it pause.


how to use hpn ssh with sftp command I've installed hpn ssh using this command:

sudo port install openssh +hpn

I want to transfer lost data (100GB at least) using sftp command terminal command.

I am wondering, is installing hpn ssh all I need to do to gain speed advantage with sftp command? After installing hpn ssh, my current upload speed is around 1.8MB (i have a line of 2.5 MB, so that is pretty close). Sadly, I didn't do a test before installing it. stupid me

Also, I noticed that transferring lots of individual files takes a lot more time than transferring 1 big file. Is zipping all the files and than sending that 1 zip the recommended way of transfering to remote host? I would prefer the option to not zip the files first, since zipping 100GB takes some time.

If you know a better solution to transfer large amount of data to remote host, I am open to it:)

MacPorts would install sftp in /opt/local/bin/. You can test against the OS installed /usr/bin/sftp.

The OS installed zip uses gzip compression by default but can be configured to use bzip2 (with the -Z option) which should give you better compression. I would split the 100GB of files into smaller archives.

Next, consider using tar or xar to create your archives. tar with xz should give you the best compression,xz should already be installed by MacPorts. Of course these suggestions depend upon the tools available on the remote host.


Is there a way to disable incremental search search on a Mac, especially in Preview? Sometimes when typing a search term in the search bar in Preview or Spotlight the text entry locks up for a few seconds. I assume this happens because it is beginning to search on the letters I've already typed to return a fast result. The problem is if I mistype my search, which happens often, I now have to wait for it to catch up on the incorrect search just so I can correct my text.

Is there a way, even involving Terminal hacking, to turn off the automatic searching as you type functionality in Preview, and maybe across the whole OS so that when I hit enter it sends the search and not before?

No - spotlight has live searches hard coded into the app.

You have two options:

Work on tuning the system so it's less busy and that the disk IO needed to look up things from the spotlight database are faster.
Paste the entire search string into the search field to avoid incremental updates.


Game audio is tied to the ringer switch. Is this a bug or a feature? I've got an iPhone 6 running the latest iOS 9.2.1 public beta, although the following behavior has been happening to me for a few iOS updates now. I'm wondering if it's a beta bug that should be reported or if it's the intended iOS behavior.

When I'm using headphones, everything works the way it should, regardless of the ringer switch setting.
When I'm not using headphones and the ringer switch is set to on (i.e. the orange isn't visible), everything works the way it should.
When I'm not using headphones and the ringer switch is set to off, audio from video-playing apps (YouTube, the native Videos app, etc.) works fine, but the audio from games is totally silent.

So, is this a bug or a feature? Let's define "feature" as "it can be reproduced on a device that has never touched beta software."

This is intended behaviour as per Apple Guidelines.
From the Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines:

Users switch their devices to silent when they want to:

Avoid being interrupted by unexpected sounds, such as phone ringtones and incoming message sounds
Avoid hearing sounds that are the byproducts of user actions, such as keyboard or other feedback sounds, incidental sounds, or app startup sounds
Avoid hearing game sounds that are not essential to using the game, such as sound effects and soundtracks

Specifically for games:

Scenario 3: A game that allows users to guide a character through different tasks. You provide:

Various gameplay sound effects
A musical soundtrack

In this app, sound greatly enhances the user experience, but isn’t essential to the main task. Also, users are likely to appreciate being able to play the game silently or while listening to songs in their music library instead of to the game soundtrack.

Deeper in the Audio Guidelines per App Type, Apple recommends use of the AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient or AVAudioSessionCategorySoloAmbient categories, which are defined as:

AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient/AVAudioSessionCategorySoloAmbient
[...]
Your audio is silenced by screen locking and by the Silent switch (called the Ring/Silent switch on iPhone).

Accordingly, for playback type apps, the recommended category is AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback, defined as such:

AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback
[...]
The category for playing recorded music or other sounds that are central to the successful use of your app.
When using this category, your app audio continues with the Silent switch set to silent or when the screen locks.

As long as the developers follow the guidelines, this is the expected behaviour unless Apple decides to change how the categories function in the operating system.


Mac OS X administrator account still requires sudo when trying to install Ruby, Vagrant, and Grunt using terminal I am still required to use sudo on my installs. I am sole proprietor of the laptop and have an administrator account. Shouldn't I be able  to install software without using sudo?

Even though the account is an administrator, you still need to use sudo to become the root user. Administrator still has restrictions on what files can be read or written to.

For example, the /System/Library/User Template/ folder is set to System: Read/Write and even though you are an administrator, you won't be able to open this folder without either changing the permissions or using sudo to become the root user.


How does OS X decide when to switch graphics processors? I use my early 2011 15" MacBook Pro for nearly everything under the sun - I often monitor which GPU is active using gfxCardStatus. I've noticed some idiosyncrasies in how OS X decides when to switch graphics processors:

MOST apps that require X11 will trigger auto-switching, but not all
It seems every app that requires java will trigger the auto-switching, though I've not tested this with non-GUI apps.
Some apps (like Mathematica or XCode) which COULD require a high-performance GPU will force movement to the discrete card straight away, even if only fired up for a trivial task (dynamic switching in-app would be cool, off topic)
Many legacy apps (silverlight) which have no business asking for my discrete card will force it regarless
Finally, some apps (GIMP, in particular) which could definitely benefit from a discrete GPU actually don't ask for it at all.

Does Apple document how it chooses when to switch cards? Can apps make an OS-level request for the discrete card if it exists?

On a high level, it's like an automatic transmission - when you press the gas gently, the throttle increases but when you stomp on the accelerator pedal the engine downshifts the transmission to increase the mechanical advantage.

You can influence switching to the powerful GPU by hitting the API with significant work and expect the "transmission" to dispatch that load to the non-integrated GPU.

The documentation on the API are all in Xcode (and online too, but I prefer using search on Xcode to hunt for a document).

I would start with:

xcdoc://?url=developer.apple.com/library/etc/redirect/xcode/mac/1153/technotes/tn2335/_index.html (online web link of the same article)

Those links cover the Mac Pro and the "What you should know when using OpenCL" section contains a helpful note that WWDC 2013 Session 508: Working with OpenCL describes how to switch between two GPUs in a Mac portable using power considerations.


Do any iPad e-book readers support sharing excerpts? Are there any e-book readers for iPad that allow the user to highlight a block of text and share it, either by email or blog post?

Use case:

While reading the fifth chapter of The Brothers Karamazov, the user has an insight into The Grand Inquisitor sequence and wants to blog about it.  The user highlights a sentence and activates a share feature, and the e-book reader copies the highlighted section into an email, or posts it to Instapaper, with appropriate annotation.

Amazon supports a "public notes" feature.  When you create a note or a highlight on a section using a Kindle or any of their apps, including the iPad app, it's uploaded to the Amazon servers and visible to you at https://kindle.amazon.com/kindle.   From there you can copy and paste into Instapaper or email if you wish.

On that site, you can make your notes public so that other people can see them.

For more information see https://kindle.amazon.com/faq


Download a file from a FTP server to a specific location? I know I can get to a FTP location by accessing:

open ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file

This will download the file in the Downloads folder.

How can I tell FTP tp download the file to a specific location I want?

I am looking for something like:

open ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file=/tmp/fileDownloadedFromFtp

Use curl instead of open :-)

curl 'ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file' > '/tmp/fileDownloadedFromFtp'
curl -o '/tmp/fileDownloadedFromFtp' 'ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file'
(cd /tmp && curl -O 'ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file')

curl by default dumps the received data on standard output, so the first option just uses output redirection to store it. The second option explicitely sets the target directory/name, the third changes to the target directory first and then has curl store the data into a file named the same way as on the source side.

If you want to avoid that username/password are visible to other users by running ps (or by looking into your shell history)

create a text file .netrc in your home directory with the following content (replace my_ftp_server, user, pass with the real values)

machine my_ftp_server login user password pass

run chmod 600 ~/.netrc
Use curl -n ...


Avoiding being locked out of Apple Store - password Twice I put in an incorrect password. I did not want to be locked out.. so I stopped trying.. I know that I can set a new one.. BUT I would prefer to keep the one that I have for the time being... If I wait a full day.. will I be allowed to try my password again (twice if nescessary)  or will I be locked out if I try it once more - even if 24 hours has passed?  Thanks

On my MBA with Mavericks, I can find the Apple Store Password in my key chain.

Open key chain (in Utility folder), log in if you have to (usualy it is the same log in as your computer)

Next type "Apple Store" in the search window

Open it and use show password (you might have to provide log in again).

You should see the password.


How to run apple and custom git side-by-side I have installed the Apple Developer Tools 5 on Mac OS X 10.9.4 which comes with Git:

git version 1.8.5.2 (Apple Git-48)

I also have installed Git 2.0.1 using the Mac OS X installer. How do I best set it up so that all applications use Git 2.0.1 by default? I could exchange the Apple Git binary for a symlink to the custom one. Alternatively I would have to modify the PATH so that it looks up the custom Git first. Is there any reason to prefer one over the other?

Also, is that even a safe thing to do? Would anything, for instance XCode, break if I replaced Apple Git with Git 2.0.1?

I've talked about modifying system tools before and the short of it is: don't do it! Things will use the system tools expecting a certain version of a certain tool and if you change that you could break many things.

Instead, change your path. For example, if your git is located at /usr/local/git/bin/git, add the following to your ~/.bash_profile or equivalent:

export PATH=/usr/local/git/bin:$PATH

This way, you can use your git by running git but the system git will remain available.


Adding a new directory to PATH varibale What is the de-facto way to export a binary/executable to my global PATH? I have seen different answers to this, but I am looking for the best answer.

Basically, if I go on Github and download a directory or folder and then I want to add whatever I download to my PATH, what is the recommended way to do that, so that I can echo it in any shell?

If you want to one line it (which I find more convenient):

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:"/path/to/your/dir"' >> ~/.bash_profile && source ~/.bash_profile

of course you can change this to your preferences (ie. append or prepend to $PATH, .bashrc, .bash_profile, .zshrc, etc.)


Sierra won't install From my mac OS 10.8.5 I downloaded OS Sierra from app store. It said it was downloaded and the icon was in my apps folder. I clicked it, agreed, gave my password, but it wouldn't install.

Per advice from Mac Support, I dragged the download to trash, and did a new download (took 22 hours). However, that one will not install either. I tried restarts, holding keys down and everything suggested, but still nothing.
It's a mac mini 2013, OS 10.8.5. I gave the serial numbers to Mac Support over the phone and they said it should work.

Why will it not install?!

It is a 5 Gb file.

Find a place where you can download it in 1-2 hours (22 is not good).
Apple store can do it for you!
or at Starbuck coffee shop you can do it in about 2 hours :)

Also, Verify the downloaded file is correct.

Open a terminal window up (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) then type:
cd "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport" with those double quotes.

then type in:

shasum InstallESD.dmg

and after a couple minutes it should return:
139ef35e4af0da8286b2a3af326cb114d774f606  InstallESD.dmg


How to get the content of a Resource Fork? I want to get the stored resource fork. In PHP, I'm trying to:

system('DeRez' . $_icon . ' | perl -ne \'m|/\* (.*) \*/| && print $1; END {print "\n"}\', $content);

which in Terminal really returns the content of the icon. However, creating an image from it using imagecreatefromstring returns an error.

So, there's a command-line voodoo that outputs the raw data of the resource fork (in my case, the folder icon)?

The icon encoded within the resource fork is not in a format PHP's imagecreatefromstring can understand.

PHP's imagecreatefromstring requires:

JPEG
PNG
GIF
WBMP
GD2

Use sips

Investigate the Mac OS X command sips for working with icons on the command line. See Manipulate Mac OS X file icons from Automator or command-line for examples.

DeRez

The DeRez command will output the raw resource fork data. The manual for DeRez provides options for filtering the output data and requesting specific encoding; be aware that the encoding options are limited to how the hexadecimal is escaped. Rather than allowing for graphic format conversion.


Cycle between the last two windows (similar to CMD+TAB) I generally have two screens but I'm stuck with just a laptop for a while.

Is there a way to cycle between the last two apps you're using? CommandTab would cycle between all open apps. I'd like just between the last two.

A workaround I have is to maximize the screen of the two applications I'm using, and Control→ or Control← to cycle between the Desktops but is there something easier that happens in the same Desktop?

Cmd ⌘   Tab ⇥    already does that, so long as you let go in between & let the 2nd app come to the front.

That then makes your previous 1st app the 2nd - therefore 1st to switch to when you  Cmd ⌘   Tab ⇥


How to make iFile not cache .plist files after updating to iOS 8? A friend recently updated to iOS 8 on his iPhone. The iPhone is jailbroken and has an iOS 8 supported iFile version installed.

Before the update he was able to start an app and then tab out to desktop, open iFile, find the app's .plist and exchange it for a different .plist. When he resumed the app the new .plist would take over and continue running the app.

After update, he can tab out of app and exchange the .plists but when he tabs back into app, iFile reverts back to the original .plist file.

My question is, does iFile for iOS 8 have a cache that is storing .plist files in different places and if so, how do I go about locating them or is there possibly some options that can be turned off either in iOS 8 or in iFile that will stop this from happening?

It's not iFile caching the property lists, it's iOS 8 doing this. For improved performance, preference files are not actually read from file often—only when necessary. Furthermore, the cache that iOS maintains can overwrite the stored property list files when necessary, meaning that it can be difficult to change preferences. SyncedPreferences also adds to the complexity, being that iCloud must update the key-value pair asynchronously with the iOS 8 cache. As far as I am aware, there is no way round this other than changing the property list when the app is guaranteed to not be storing its preferences in cache (i.e. just after a reboot).


Win 7 size within VMWare I use VMWare with a Win 7 virtual machine.

I have a late 2012 iMac with 20GB of RAM. I use Windows for ...

running Groupwise constantly
using Respondus occasionally
Explorer (please don't judge--I have to test Blackboard LMS occasionally)
 :-)

What is the appropriate size for it to run in?

I'd go with VMWare fusion's defaults for Windows 7:

60 GB drive
1 GB RAM

Unless the memory on the guest OS becomes very constrained, you might only need to bump it to 2 GB to get a little speed up if needed. The 2012 iMac CPU is quite capable and you do have significant amounts of RAM so you could juice the VM to a lot more RAM if needed without starving OS X for memory.


How can I show a slideshow of pictures in multiple subfolders while keeping them in order? I have a folder that contains a number of sub folders that are full of pictures.  What I'd like to be able to do is start a slideshow from the parent folder that will show all the images in all the sub folders, however I would like the pictures to be shown in the order that they are in inside of each subfolder.

So, considering the following folders:

Parent folder
- Pictures 1
- More pictures
- Best pictures

I would like the slideshow to show all of the pictures in the 'Pictures 1' folder before moving on to 'More pictures' and so on.

Is this possible natively in OSX Lion?  I'm open to other tools is there's something reasonably priced.

While iPhoto may work for some, it doesn't come bundled with every Mac and it's not free. It also relies on a library.

The quickest, cheapest (free) and easiest way to view/slideshow a folder and its subfolders is using Sequential. Just drag it to your Applications folder, run it once so it shows up on your Open with menu, right click on a folder, choose Open with > Sequential and hit the 5 key (for a 5 second slideshow).

Check its preferences if you want it to always start in full screen and its menus for aditional hotkeys (show thumbnails bar or skip to previous/next subfolder, for example). Besides supporting images, it also supports PDFs and archives (.zip, .cbz, .rar, .cbr) and you can choose to display them sequentially (folder's default order) or randomly.


Mail.app unable to login to 1&1 mail account after upgrading to macOS High Sierra I upgraded my iMac to macOS High Sierra 10.13.4. Since then my email account with 1&1 (that was previously working fine) - decided to work intermittently, then just failed completely. I contacted 1&1 and they couldn't help, saying I was using the right login credentials. They even screen shared and were still none the wiser and said it must be an internal problem.

I deleted the account from Mail.app and tried to Add Account - but it just says Unable to verify account or password. If I ignore that and just carry on filling in the appropriate fields, I get another window Select the Apps you want to use with this account. I check Mail and press next and there's spinning beachball connection icon for a split second and then nothing happens.

How do I get my mail account with 1&1 to work again with Mail.app?

I had the same problem. The solution was in the Mail app itself to go to Preferences, select Accounts, and to enter the complete email myname@myisp.de as user name for my IMAP account.

I also had to change the port for IMAP to 993 and for SMTP to 465 (for secure connections via SSL.)


Safari - Easy way to open a link in private window? Is there an easy way to open links in a private window in Safari in OS X?

With this, I mean copying the link and pasting it in a new private window not as being easy.

In Chrome and Firefox, you can easily open a link in Incognito/Private mode, right clicking on the link and from the context menu, choose Open in an incognito window. This is a feature that I use quite often in my browsing, but I'm trying to switch to Safari because I noticed that Chrome uses more battery and read some articles about it too.

I would really appreciate it if you tell me of any way to add an option to the right click context menu in Safari to open in a private window, or a keyboard shortcut so that you click while pressing some keys and it opens in private mode, or maybe an extension that adds this functionality.

In Safari 9.0 (El Capitano) you can right-click on the URL while holding down the option key and you then have the option to open the URL in a new private window. This option is provided from regular or private windows, unlike what appears to be the case in previous versions of Safari.


How Many Hours of Game Playing can Iphone 4 Support? iPhone 4 supports:

up to 6 hours of 3G
up to 10 hours of wifi

But how many hours of game play can iphone 4 support?

I've been playing Angry Birds recently and it seems to me that the iPhone can only support 5 hours of Angry Birds. Is this normal?

Playing games on your iPhone uses a lot more processing power than 3G or wifi.  The higher the cpu usage, the faster the battery drains.  I'm actually surprised you get as much battery life as you do, that seems pretty good to me.


Internet connection no longer reliable after installing Mountain Lion I installed Mountain Lion yesterday and find that when my 2 year old iMac comes back from sleep it finds the router and connection but fails to allow internet connection.  In other words it indicates the machine is connected but I cannot access Mail or use any Internet browser.
I have two PCs in the house that have no problems, so I assume the problem is neither with the modem or the router.  There was never a problem when I was running Lion, it began only after installing Mountain Lion, so once again I assume the problem is with the new operating system.  My iMac is circa early 2010. My son's iMac (2012) is not demonstrating the same problem.
The most reliable way to establish an internet connection is to reboot my router (NetGear N300).  When the computer reconnects after the reboot, it invariably finds the Internet.  I have occasionally been successful Turning Wi-Fi off, and then back on, but most times not.
I see that other users are reporting similar difficulties.  Even if no one has an answer I hope that this is brought to the attention of Apple Engineers and a fix is quickly forthcoming.

I tried all the tips imaginable.
The only solution was to set the channel on the wireless router on channel 11.
It seems to me, the Mountain Lion has a problem when the channel the router is in automatic, then every time the channel is changed, the connection of the Wi-Fi card of MacBook drops.


Why is networking slow to start up after exiting the screensaver? For the past month, networking on my iMac has had strange behavior after waking up from the screensaver. For example, the first website that I visit in Google Chrome (after exiting the screensaver) displays an error page at first:

There is no internet connection
...
ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED

Then, if I don't touch anything, a few seconds later, the error page refreshes and the browser connects to the website normally. This didn't used to happen. Safari does it too.

Afterward, all web browsing and networking are normal, until the next time the Mac sits idle and the screensaver activates. Then the behavior repeats.

I've also noticed that incoming network connections have a similar symptom. The first time I "ssh" or use a VNC client to connect to this iMac (after the screensaver has kicked in and some hours have passed), it takes many seconds to connect, but a second connection attempt is instant.

Anybody know why this happens and how I can fix it?

This is MacOS 10.12.6 with the latest Google Chrome.

It could be that when asleep your wifi become disconnected. When you then try to connect the 1st time it thinks there is no connection. After a few seconds, the wifi is restored and pages load. I don't know how to prevent it from disconnecting. I'm still working on that.


Adobe Acrobat Pro on Macbook Pro scrolls very slow Whenever I open a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro (version of Adobe Creative Cloud) on my Macbook Pro (early 2013 Retina version with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB) scrolling through the document is unacceptably slow.
In terms of 'frames per second' it would be about 2 fps when scrolling.
Does anyone have a suggestion on how to improve the speed of this? I expect it to run about as smooth as scrolling/viewing a webpage.
Edit: added summary from comments below:

It happens with any PDF, no big difference between 'text only' PDF or one build up with images. Text PDF example: http://www.vivin.net/pub/pdfjs/TestDocument.pdf - still renders too slow.
Also tried with the laptop of a colleague, same Macbook model, same specs, same Acrobat -> same behavior :) I'm amazed why that is so slow. When I open the PDF in Chrome, it is fast (because Chrome has pdfjs integrated, a different viewer). However, I want to solve it with Acrobat.

You have to turn on Enable Scrolling from the View menu. I also had that issue before.


Can similar apps be uploaded on Apple Store? I have uploaded 2 similar apps with different colors,name,icons.
ios team rejected my latest app upload giving the following reason:

Guideline 4.3 - Design
We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or language, which is considered a form of spam.

Is it possible to upload similar app with different developer accounts?

The problem is you're trying to upload an app that already is very similar to existing apps.

Yes, you're probably getting rejected because both apps are under the same dev account.  You could try 'reviewer roulette' and see if you submit under another dev account that another reviewer will approve it. That's unlikely based on how the App Store has been cracking-down on apps such as yours (that are very similar to other apps).

My recommendation is not to do this.  Add the items from the second app into the first app.


All my Folder and Application icons disappeared in Finder I've been using Yosemite happily since it was released, but yesterday all my icons disappeared. See the attached screenshots. My dock only shows the icon for the Finder, and within Finder itself none of the icons for applications or folders show up. The only thing that seems to work is thumbnail previews for things like Word documents, PDFs and image files.

These are some things I tried already:

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/* and sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/*
rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db && killall -HUP Finder Dock
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
I tried booting in Safe Mode, the problem persists there.
I even tried reinstalling the OS and for some reason the problem still exists.
Unfortunately I can't log in as a different user, this is a company mac and my login is our network login.

I'm at a total loss. What can I do? The only thing I can think of that I changed recently was uninstalling an app called Bitcasa by manually removing some of its application files, including /Applications/Bitcasa.app, ~/Library/Preferences/com.bitcasa, ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.bitcasa.Bitcasa.plist, ~/Library/ScriptingAdditions/BitcasaIntegration.osax, ~/Library/Caches/com.bitcasa.Bitcasa, and ~/Library/Application Support/com.bitcasa.Bitcasa.

I was having a similar problem--not with icons in the dock--but Illustrator icons in Finder list view would just display as blank white icons instead of the Illustrator CC icons.  Using the info in this thread, I showed all hidden files.  This can be done using the XtraFinder app.  Once all hidden files were shown, I went to the path below and moved the store.index file to the desktop and logged out and logged back in.  The store.index file re-created itself and all of my Illustrator icons were back.  You can delete the one on the desktop and empty the trash before once again hiding all the hidden files through XtraFinder.  Solved!

HD/private/var/folders/*/*/C/com.apple.iconservices/store.index

The asterisks represent random folder names that are different for each computer.  The last asterisk may have more than one folder.  Find the C folder that is not locked.


What steps should I take in preparation for upgrading to Mountain Lion? I am considering upgrading my Mac to the new Mountain Lion operating system. What steps should I take to make sure the process goes as smoothly as possible?

According to The Tech Scoop and Lifehacker, there are a number of things you should do before upgrading.

Make sure your computer will actually run Mountain Lion. Here is a list of all the Macs that will not support Mountain Lion.
Run Software Update. Go to the Apple menu > Software Update and make sure you have all the current updates installed. Make sure that you are at least running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (as required on Apple's website).
Make sure you have enough space on your drive. Mountain Lion requires 8GB of space, so make sure you at least have that amount free (preferably more though). If you don't have the space required, you can use a disk visualizer such as DaisyDisk ($9.99) or Disk Inventory X (free) or use AppCleaner to remove old, unused applications. More detailed information on that is available from Lifehacker
Check  that all your applications wil run on Mountain Lion. RoaringApps is the best place to check. It has a status indicator, and a feature list of what feature the application supports
Repair disk permissions and disk. If you are running Snow Leopard, start from the install disc and open Disk Utility. If you are running Lion, shut down and restart while holding Command ⌘ + R (restart into the Recovery partition). In Disk Utility, click on your main hard drive and then click "Repair Permissions". When that's done, click "Repair Disk".
Thanks to cksum for commenting that repairing permissions before an install is not necessary. "You don't need to repair disk permissions prior to installing Mac OS X over a previously-installed OS. The installer will do this automatically." (Apple KB doc about repairing permissions)
Backup your computer. This is the most important step. If something goes wrong while installing Mountain Lion, you want to have a backup to go back to. Also, if for whatever reason you want to revert to Lion, backing up your computer will make it a million times easier to revert. The Tech Scoop recommends using Disk Utility to backup your computer. Lifehacker recommends using either Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner to backup your computer. My preference is Carbon Copy Cloner, freeware software for cloning a hard drive. If you want to use the other options, check out the links above. Open Carbon Copy Cloner, select the source and the target and click "Clone". Wait for it to backup your computer...

If you've completed all the above steps, your Mac is ready for Mountain Lion! Go to the App Store and install Mountain Lion.


iTunes Connect: How can I generate promo codes for Pro apps? I used to get an option to generate promo codes however since the new redesign which Apple did for the iTunes Connect, I haven't been able to find that option.

Where is it hidden?

Tunes Connect has moved the location where the promo codes are generated.

To generate promo codes as of 10/22/2015 select the app -> Features -> Promo codes


Determine cpu usage in safari tab Is it possible to somehow determine which of my safari tabs has the most cpu usage?

NOTE: I haven't turned on any flash (i'm using a "plugin customs" extension) in my tabs so it's really hard to figure out visually which of the tabs is a cpu hog

Chrome will do this.

I know your question is about Safari but bear with me. Chrome works slightly differenty from most web browsers in that each tab is created as a separate process rather than just as separate threads. This means that if a tab starts misbehaving or crashes then it won't bring down the whole application

This also means that you can bring up the Chrome task manager and it will tell you about the CPU and memory usage for each time.

With Safari though.... I don't think this is possible.


What is a painless and free way to test Internet Explorer 10 on a Mac? I’m a graphics (minimal tech) guy struggling to find an easy way of testing Internet Explorer on my Mac. I don’t have access to a Windows PC, and I don’t want to spend any money to test IE.

Obviously Chrome, Firefox, Opera (and Sarari) are interchangeable between the Mac and Windows OS. I can’t seem to find a clear method to test Internet explorer on a Mac. I wouldn’t use IE for any other reason and really don’t want to fork over any money to Microsoft if I don’t have to.

I found this tutorial which seems nicely written and detailed about how to do this. In a nutshell it  explains all I need is a copy of VirtualBox (free virtualization SW), and a developer copy of Windows 8 (free? really?) and I can test IE10 no problem. Anyone else tried this approach? Does Microsoft dumb down IE in the developer copy? Is there a better/easier way before starting down this path? Here's the tutorial I was talking about:
https://centroy.com/blog/testing-internet-explorer-mac-its-actually-quite-easy

It’s the same end result as the tutorial above, but ievms is way easier—all the steps are automated. Just run:

curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env IEVMS_VERSIONS="10" bash

and you’ll have a fully functional VM with IE10.


How can I crop a video? How does one remove a black border around a video. The input video has the size 720x576 and has the output video should be 720x480. I need to crop away 96 pixels from top and bottom.

I have gazed through this list of video tools for Mac, but I'm unsure which tools can do this. I have tried MPEG Streamclip and avidemux2, but they doesn't seem capable of it.

Preferable a free tool.

Handbrake is the way to go here, as mentioned by roguesys and  canary_in_the_data_mine in the accepted answer.

I am using Catalina. MPEG Streamclip does not support this version of OSX, and iMovie's cropping tool is married to the 16:9 aspect ratio.

As soon as you open your clip, if it has black bars (which was my case), handbrake will crop them automatically and it will show you in its summary how the converted video will look like.

You can tweak out things in the other tabs (dimensions where you can do a fine tune of the cropping, video for the compression codec and other things, filters, audio, etc).

Once you're satisfied with the settings in the summary, go to the bottom of the App window, choose the folder where you will save the video, and press the green Start button at the top.


After System Update last night, the system will not boot with IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1504 error I have had Lion for a 2, 3 months on the iMac 27 inch purchased last October (2011).  Last night I chose to update the system, and deselected iMoves update because it was 1GB, and chose only 4 updates, including iTunes, Safari (i think)...  But the update says error, and ask to restart the system (it won't restart itself, so I waited 30 minutes, and then pressed the Power button for 10 seconds, to let it power down, and press Power again to power it up).

However, after that, the system failed to boot up, showing a

panic(cpu 0 caller .....)" "Unable to finder driver for
    this platform: \"ACPI\". ... xnu-1699.26.8/iokit/Kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1504

This is not typical of the upgrade process.  So I searched the Internet for IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1504 and some people said it is a hard drive error, but then I powered down and pressed Options when booting up, and was able to boot to Windows 7 (bootcamp)... and was able to boot to the "Recovery", which let me choose

Restore from Time Machine Backup
Reinstall Mac OS X
Get Help Online
Disk Utility

what should I do now to fix it so that it can boot again?

Tried clearing your PRAM? Hold down Option + Command + P + R before turning the mac on, keep holding them until the mac makes the startup chime again (twice in total).
Apart from that, boot off the recovery partition and reinstall over the top of your hdd. Your data won't be changed, the OS will just be repaired.


Where does the Apple app Contacts store its files in Mavericks? I'm making a clean re-install of Mavericks on a client's computer. I believe she had a large number of address book entries in the Contacts app that were not in iCloud, and I need to restore them from the backup. Where are they stored? I'm guessing they should be in Users/~/Library/ but I cannot find the location.

Contacts.app stores its data in ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook.

For the individual databases, you can list them using the following command:

find ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/ -name "AddressBook-v22.abcddb"


Unable to exit full screen mode in Eclipse I just installed Eclipse and went into the full screen mode but, unlike with other apps, the top bar wouldn't appear when I positioned the cursor at the top of the screen, so I was stuck in full screen and had to restart the computer.  Any way to exit the full screen mode in Eclipse?

Using MacOS 10.8.1, Eclipse 4.3.0 (Kepler).

Control-command-F toggles full screen in the version of Eclipse I have.

If it doesn't, try opening the preferences with command-, and setting a binding for a command like Toggle Full Screen in General > Keys.


Why is it that my CPU goes 100% when syncing music/photos to iPad? I wipe my iPad quite often since I'm an iOS developer, but what I'm wondering is that why does my CPU goes 100%? Isn't it quite the same as copying music/photo to a USB drive (which doesn't make my CPU 100%?).

Granted I ticked the "convert to 128 kbps AAC" option, but for photos, I thought they'd only have to resize the photos when syncing?

Resizing the photo's is also CPU intensive operation.

Apple could potentially speed it up by using the GPU for resizing the images, but iTunes must be compatible with old Windows PC's. So I wouldn't hold my breath.


How to identify owner of lost iPhone? Let's say I lost my phone. If the person that finds that phone wants to return it, how would they be able to locate me? How to display my contact details and/or a custom message on the lock screen? Are there other ways to tag the phone with your details in case such event takes place?

Assume the person that finds it knows how to use a smartphone but is not a tech expert.

You can add a message to Lost Mode, informing 'honest finders' of how to contact you. See - iCloud: Use Lost Mode

It's also possible to add text to your lock screen [We have that on both my & my partner's lock screen images, just in case either of us walks under a bus... which of course would not be a 'lost mode' situation]

I've been trying to Google some ideal lock screen info - but they all seem to be based on apps... all you really need is to know the screen size of your current lock screen image, add the text in Photoshop or Gimp etc & set as your new lock screen :/

This gives a decent general overview of how to change your lockscreen, but what you really need are the sizes, so you can make one with the '3D' view or just static - this page has a guide to image sizes [ignore that they're trying to sell you an app to do it, any image editor can do this].

This is my lock-screen...


To view the full contents of this document, you need a later version of the PDF viewer Sometimes I receive PDF files that open with Preview (Version 7.0 (826.4), Mavericks) with the following message:

  To view the full contents of this document, you need a later version
  of the PDF viewer. You can upgrade to the latest version of Adobe
  Reader from www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
       For further support, go to www.adobe.com/support/products/acrreader.html

or sometimes the message is same same but different:

  Please wait... If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF viewer may not be able to
  display this type of document.

  You can upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Reader for Windows®,
  Mac, or Linux® by visiting http://www.adobe.com/go/reader_download.

  For more assistance with Adobe Reader visit
  http://www.adobe.com/go/acrreader.

  Windows is either a registered trademark or a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Mac is a
  trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the United States and other
  countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the
  U.S. and other countries.

Here you can find a real life example PDF (Thanks to @Tetsujin), Canadian immigration application

I dislike Abobe's bloatware so much that I will not install their Acrobat Reader on my Mac. Ever.

When I use a Windows machine and open this PDF with Acrobat Reader there it contains a form with dropdowns and input fields.

Is there a way to open this pdf in OS X? I would prefer the Preview.app.

Screenshots:

Certain PDF files (dynamic XFA forms) created in Adobe LiveCycle can only be opened in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat. When you try to open these files in an alternative PDF viewer, then you will see this error message.

Unfortunately, it's not easy remove this message and modify the PDF so that it can be opened in alternative PDF viewers. The person who created the original form must re-create the form using options that do not restrict which PDF viewers can open and display the file.

Adobe has made the decision that since very few non-Adobe products support these special PDF files, that it is better to show this message -- and require the user to download Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat -- than it is to let the PDF viewer try to render the document.

Source : http://www.quickpdflibrary.com/faq/if-this-message-is-not-eventually-replaced-by-the-proper-contents-of-the-document.php

...so the answer to your question is no, Preview can't do it. It's Adobe Reader or nothing


OSX 10.9.2: Stuck at quick user switch I want to quick switch to the other user in the system, but this login screen has stay there for almost half an hour

Can I cancel the login via command line or other keyboard combination? I can ssh into the box as an admin

/EDIT: I want avoid reboot or shutdown

I had the same problem and it turned out the computer was looking for an external hard drive to mount that wasn't connected properly. If you have any external hard drives, you may want to try unplugging them and then doing a forced restart?


I would like my application to overlap the dock (with the app behind of course) I'm on 10.7.3.  I have my dock at the bottom.  To the left and right of the dock, I see the wallpaper.

I would actually like the app I'm in to extend all the way to the bottom of the monitor, with the dock on top of the bottom of the app.

So now it looks like this:

I'd like it to look like this (this is just a crude mockup, I don't really want to see the wallpaper bleeding through of course).  Can this be done?

If you turn hiding on for the Dock, using the + button will extend maximized windows to the very bottom of the screen. When you mouse down near the bottom of the screen the dock will appear and be on top of any program windows on the display.

If you turn Dock hiding off after maximizing windows in this fashion they'll stay maximized all the way to the bottom of the screen. The Dock will be on top of the windows.

As promised, here's some AppleScript to make this happen:

tell application "System Events"
    set the autohide of the dock preferences to true
end tell
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
    set frontApp to first application process whose frontmost is true
end tell
tell application (name of frontApp)
    set zoomed of window 1 to not (zoomed of window 1)
end tell
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
    set the autohide of the dock preferences to false
end tell

You can follow these directions to assign that script to a keyboard short cut. I put the delays in there because I found every few runs the dock would unhide before the window had maximized and as such, it wouldn't be behind the dock.


Hiding the quoted messages in Mail? In the Mail application, when I choose the option "see more from " the app unfolds the replied messages in different colors as quoted texts. How can we undo the unfolding and hide the quoted text? It is so messy right now.

Please see the image below for the part that I want to hide.

From the list of mails, change the mail and come back to the previous one. It automatically folds all the quotes, when you revisit it.


How do I share my Wi-Fi connection through USB to my MacBook Pro without using cellular data or hotspot? I have a MacBook Pro (running OS X and Windows) with a broken Wi-Fi card. I plan to get the Wi-Fi card fixed soon, however I want to back a few things up on the Internet before I hand off my Mac to the Genius Bar.

The last time I had this issue, I had an Android phone and was fairly easily able to download an app (FoxFi, if I remember correctly) and share my Wi-Fi connection with my laptop via a USB cable.

From reading answers to similar questions, it seems that according to Apple a Wi-Fi connection cannot be shared. I understand why a Wi-Fi connection might not be possible if you're using the antenna to broadcast a Wi-Fi hotspot, but why would you not be able to share a Wi-Fi connection over USB? It seems like it must be technically possible for an iPhone and not something that would be restricted due to carrier concerns about cellular tethering.

I basically want to use my phone as a Wi-Fi USB dongle and don't want to buy a USB dongle because I'm planning to fix my Wi-Fi soon anyway. Also, I don't have easy access to Ethernet at the moment.

Note: I do not want to use cellular data, only Wi-Fi. I would prefer a solution that doesn't involve jail breaking my iPhone. I do not wish to enable hotspot if I have to pay for it (I am on Verizon, which does not allow free cellular tethering).

First, turn tethering on. Then, plug your phone via USB. Open system preferences on your Mac. Click network, then check the left side for your iPhone. If it's there, you're good to go. Else, click the '+' button. Set the name to whatever you want and set Interface to iPhone USB. The, restart tethering on your phone.


When the apple store replaces a battery in a 13in retina MacBook Pro, do they replace the top case and keyboard/trackpad assembly too? I ask because I have a key missing and my keyboard and would like them both fixed at the same time.

Did you bring it into a Apple store? If you did and asked I'm sure they would do it. If you sent it in, they don't have to do it, but maybe if you get a lucky the technician will do it.


How can I identify who is using Sharing to access my Mac? How do identify who is using Sharing to access my Mac remotely?

I have a new 2013 27″ iMac using OS X 10.9.2

Why do you ask? What are the things you are noticing? If you haven't turned on your firewall, you should. (System Preferences>Security and Privacy). The likelihood of you being 'hacked' are very low regardless.


Code editor with key authentication I have been using Dreamweaver for many years simply because it has a built in FTP manager. This makes working on a website very efficient.

The code editor isn't all that great but I manage with it ok.

However I now have a problem in that Dreamweaver does not support key authentication on any of it's versions.

I am having to access a website that will only allow access using a key, passwords are off limits.

I have had a look around and there doesn't seem to be a solution.

You haven't really asked a direct question here; But I assume you're asking for a code editor which supports SFTP key auth?

In which case, Coda 2 has built in support for each type of connection (including key authentication).

If you're after a free alternative, I'd use Cyberduck and Sublime Text. If you open a file from Cyberduck (into Sublime Text), it automatically uploads each time you save.

If on the other hand you're looking for a way to use key authentication within Dreamweaver and the software simply doesn't support it, there's no way solve that.


Open files with same extension in different directories with different applications Say I have mp3 music in directory 'A' which I want to open with iTunes. And I have some more mp3 files in directory 'B' which I want to open with VLC player.

How can I set the default 'application' for each set of files and store it permanently in OSX Mavericks? The idea of having a single application type per extension and using 'open with' is too painful to use on a repeated basis.

(Now, answering the 'why' - to be honest, I dont have this requirement with mp3 files but with source code from different projects. Due to project specific requirements, certain application works best for a source file in project 'A' and another application works right in project 'B')

That is possible with Folder Action.

Means your files have to be in separate folders.

I assume you mean Folders when you say Directory.

As step one lets create a Automator flow for Folder Action.

Step 2 select the folder you want and create the work flow by dragging following in to it. You are done with this step, save it under a name you want for future references.

Step 3: In finder right click on the folder you want this to work on and select Services- Folder Action Setup..

In the pop up window select the file you just created. (yourfile.workflow)

That's it, now all files inside that folder will be opened with specified application, so you can now set that for other folders using the above procedure to set other applications to open same file type. It will do it automagicaly from now on as soon you drop a new file in the folder.


Retrieve Previous Computer Serial Number From Old Ext Hard Drive This is a long shot, but I thought I'd ask anyways. I used to have an iMac 24" and the internal hard drive went bad on it. So I bought an external hard drive, installed OS 10.7 on it and booted the computer from that hard drive. I gave it to my friend and he used it for a while with his own external hard drive and I kept mine. It was stolen the other day and he didn't record the serial number. Is there some way I can pull from some file the serial number from the external hard drive that I have in hopes to at least file a police report?

The serial number is read directly from the machine's logic board, so it won't by default be located in any file on the computer.

Did you purchase this computer from an Apple Retail Store? They keep receipts going back many many years in their retail systems and will happily pull a receipt for you if you can prove identity.

Likewise, if you registered the system with Apple upon purchasing (from anywhere) and can call AppleCare, they should be able to provide you with the serial number for your police report. Best of luck!


How to disable the 'Offload Unused Apps' option in iOS? I have turned on the 'Auto deletion' option in iOS which will remove an App from my phone if it is not frequently used.

The screenshot shows how the home screen looks on my phone. The icloud download icon mean the app has been offloaded.

I find this feature very inconvenient but now I am unable to find a way to disable it.

Once it is activated the option disappeared

How can I stop the auto offload?

This is in the settings app in two places by default:

Offload Unused Apps

You can search settings or just do a spotlight search system wide to go right to the place where this is set. (It’s under General and iPad/iPhone storage)

If you don’t see it there, head over to the 'iTunes & App Store' section of the settings app and scroll the content up to look for the same toggle at the bottom of the page. Tap it to disable the opt in for this setting.


Windows 7 computer not showing up on Apple TV Both iTunes on Windows 7 and the Apple TV 3 are updated to the latest versions.  My PC is connected to the router via Cat 5 and the Apple TV is connected on wireless.  I can AirPlay with my iPad or iPhone. I've had this work just fine before with other computers. Home sharing is enabled on both devices and connected to the same account with the correct password. I can't figure out what's going on.

The problem could be with your firewall. You should check the firewall software you use and open relevant ports. Some firewalls actually have predefined rules for the services, but for most you'll have to define them manually.

Most commonly the services used are named mDNS or Bonjour sharing. If these aren't found, you can find a list of relevant ports here and add them manually.


Upgrade iPhone 5 from iOS 7 to iOS 8 I want to upgrade my iPhone 5 running iOS 7 to iOS 8. I dont want the current iOS 9 update in my device. Is there any way to update my phone to iOS 8 without iOS 9?

Yes this can be done you can download iOS firmware from http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/

Once it is downloaded keep it on your desktop. Now put your device in DFU mode. (You can learn it from youtube if you dont know how to put your device in DFU mode.) iTunes will popup telling you it has discovered a device in recovery mode. Now press shift on your keyboard and click on restore. iTunes will start restoring your device.

NOTE: you might get few iTunes errors during the restore.


Can different Apple ID co-exist for iTunes and iCloud backup? If I register and actually sign with an unique Apple ID  on iTunes and main account, on iPhone, in order to use different accounts between iTunes and main Apple identity (without having iTunes available on my PC), how should I change the account without losing backed-up data?

The description is not very clear, but yes, you can have different Apple IDs for iCloud and for iTunes purchases (if that's what you are asking).

To do this: on the iPhone, go to Settings > iCloud > E*nter the Apple ID you want to use for iCloud Backup* > Turn On "iCloud Backup".

Now, to setup a different Apple ID for iTunes purchases, go to Settings > "App Store" or "iTunes & App Stores" > Enter the other Apple ID to be used for purchases.

That way, you can sport 2 separate Apple IDs: one for iCloud backup and one for iTunes purchases.


How do I resolve FW800 daisychaining issues? I use a MyBook 1Tb FW800 drive from Western Digital as my Time Machine backup, and I also have a FW800 Lexar CompactFlash card reader. My 2011 MacBook Pro only has one FW800 port so I have to daisy-chain the two devices, which both have 2 FW800 ports each.

However it seems to matter in which order I connect the items together. If I connect the drive to the Mac, then the card reader to the drive, the card reader might not show up, or the drive may dismount; I've not really had the time to tabulate all the possible permutations of chain order and port use. Are issues like this common with FW800, and is there some way I can resolve them?

Firewire attempts to use "smart" daisy chaining, which permits links in the daisy chain to be off. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work effectively. Apple recommends you first plug the device into the Macintosh, wait for it to become visible, and then add devices one at a time. 1
As for particular details with regards to your problem, I've had issues with card readers in which they either didn't really truly meet the firewire spec and therefore were unhappy with daisy chaining, or they would attempt to "smart" turn-off when a card was not in them, which caused it to also disable other parts of the chain.
In short, daisy chaining with Firewire is great, except when it isn't. YMMV.


Can I use Split View on an older iPad model? I can use Slide Over, but not Split View. Can I modify any plist files or do something in order to be able to use it on my iPad mini 2?

There's really nothing that you can do to change that. iOS is not open-source, so users can't change source code. But it's also hardware limitations, so even if you were to find a way to force Split View multitasking into your iPad Mini, there's no telling what would happen. Apps would likely randomly crash, if they were even to open in the first place. Apple does a great job of supporting older hardware, so if Split View was feasible to implement on older iPads, Apple probably would have done it.


How do I upgrade my internal SSD using a third party if my current one is not recognized (failed)? I have a Late 2013 MBP whose 1TB SSD (PCIe) decided to suddenly fail last week. I managed to wipe and reformat the drive via target disk mode, but I cannot reinstall macOS from target disk mode (I didn't know that part beforehand). Even after reseating it multiple times my CPU doesn't even know it's there.

My plan was to buy a crucial PCIe SSD + Sintech Adapter (Apple uses a propriety PCIe connection) to replace the SSD. In addition to propriety hardware, Apple uses proprietary firmware. The workaround is to update the firmware on the internal SSD before swapping it out, but I cannot access my internal drive from my CPU!

As a sidenote, I am confident it's not the logic board since I can boot from an external HDD + there are no issues according to the Apple Diagnostics Test.

How do I upgrade without paying $$$$ to Apple in my current predicament?

Even though it's a "vintage" Mac, it's worth taking it to an Apple Store, if there's one near you, and see if they will look at it and what they would charge. I've often been pleasantly surprised.

Alternatively, you can often find secondhand Apple SSDs for these Macs on sites like eBay.

FWIW, you should be able to install MacOS via target mode from another Mac: I've done so with a 2014 MBP, for instance. The fact that you can't might be a result of the hardware fault.


How to clear selection in OS X Terminal? Usually in Terminal to delete text you have to sit there for an hour holding the ⌫ Delete. This is particularly annoying since I use vim in the terminal for Text file editing.

But anywhere else in OS X or any computer since 1988 really you can just select text and delete. Not in terminal.

I know terminal isn’t meant to be the latest in computing, but batch deletion of text is really essential. How do I fix this? Also, yes, I know about ⌥ Option⌫ Delete to delete full words. Still it's no bueno for text editing.

How can I delete whole lines of selected text?

You need to learn the keyboard commands for the editor you are using; in this case, vim.

To delete, press Esc for "Command Mode" then....

x -  for a character
dw  - for the current word
dd  - for the current line
5dd -  for five lines

Terminal isn't a GUI environment so mouse interaction is minimal.  See Vim Help Files for full documentation on how to use Vim.

(I personally prefer nano as it's much more user friendly and included with macOS)


How do I stop a particular service from running? I had previously installed an app for syncing my Android phone with my Mac. I deleted the application, however, today when I checked the system logs, I found out that its running every 10 seconds. How can I stop this?

Here's the system log:

Feb  8 17:05:15 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Feb  8 17:05:25 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon[15509]): Service could not initialize: 14C109: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][63706214-56DC-3155-B46F-D4F21C9B1C0B]: 0xd
Feb  8 17:05:25 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Feb  8 17:05:35 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon[15510]): Service could not initialize: 14C109: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][63706214-56DC-3155-B46F-D4F21C9B1C0B]: 0xd
Feb  8 17:05:35 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Feb  8 17:05:45 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon[15511]): Service could not initialize: 14C109: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][63706214-56DC-3155-B46F-D4F21C9B1C0B]: 0xd
Feb  8 17:05:45 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Feb  8 17:05:55 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon[15512]): Service could not initialize: 14C109: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][63706214-56DC-3155-B46F-D4F21C9B1C0B]: 0xd
Feb  8 17:05:55 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Feb  8 17:06:05 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon[15513]): Service could not initialize: 14C109: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][63706214-56DC-3155-B46F-D4F21C9B1C0B]: 0xd
Feb  8 17:06:05 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Feb  8 17:06:15 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon[15514]): Service could not initialize: 14C109: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][63706214-56DC-3155-B46F-D4F21C9B1C0B]: 0xd
Feb  8 17:06:15 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Feb  8 17:06:25 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon[15515]): Service could not initialize: 14C109: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][63706214-56DC-3155-B46F-D4F21C9B1C0B]: 0xd
Feb  8 17:06:25 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Feb  8 17:06:35 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon[15517]): Service could not initialize: 14C109: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][63706214-56DC-3155-B46F-D4F21C9B1C0B]: 0xd
Feb  8 17:06:35 Sanjeet-Suhags-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

You can stop with this command:

$ launchctl unload com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon

Additionally if you want to completely delete it, you have to search for it on /Library/LaunchDaemons/, /Library/LaunchAgents/ and ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ to delete the configuration file, that should be called com.wondershare.mobilegodaemon.


New digitizer stopped working after 30 seconds I plugged a brand new digitizer into my 2g iPod touch and I wanted to test it before I clip it in. It worked great at first and I managed to click with it for about 30 seconds, while not moving the digitizer or the iPod.

Suddenly, it stopped working and I have been unable to get the digitizer to work again, despite reseating it numerous times. The iPod works otherwise normally.

What happened?

Make sure that both sides of the connect cable a plugged in, then make sure that the center button works.  The center button has broke for many of my friends and myself.


Weird screen problems---iPhone 5S, iOS 8.3 I was using the "Alien Blue" reddit app on my iPhone when suddenly the app closed out and my phone turned off.

After turning the phone back on I was greeted with a flickering backlight in both lock screen and home screen. After a few soft resets, the screen flicker has gone away, but now I can not open any app. They all force quit/crash immediately. Has anyone else encountered something similar? The phone is in a LifeProof case and has never been washed, dropped, or damaged in anyway.

Details:

Capacity: 16 GB
Available: 5.9 GB
Version: iOS 8.3(12F70)

Fixed this by:

Resetting phone until screen flicker went away, then updated app store items. Still didn't need to upgrade to 9.0.2.


How to get the watch face that's on the Apple Watch box? I've browsed through all the available Apple Watch faces, but I can't find the watch face (all white background with no markings or numbers) that is on the Apple Watch box.  Anyone know where I can find this or if it is possible to set it?

Edit 2: watchOS 5.1 does allow you to do fullscreen color watch faces, but the hands do not match the color on the box.

Original: After doing some looking, this watch face simply does not appear to actually exist as an option in watchOS 5.0.

Edit 1: It looks like a similar full screen color watch face exists in iOS 12’s watch face gallery, but it doesn’t work properly on the Apple Watch; it simply shows as a standard numberless dial.


Does personal hotspot always use cellular data? If I have my iPhone connected to a wifi connection, then put it on personal hotspot, is the device I'm connecting to my iPhone with using cellular data bandwidth, or the wifi bandwidth?

You'd think it's a silly thing. But I'm JUST out of range of a wifi signal with my laptop, so my plan is to put my phone in a window not too far from my desk, and use it almost as an extender.

Personal Hotspot mode detaches the device from any network and is intended to make all data flow to and from the cellular account. If you pulled the SIM card your plan just might work as a stunt to connect two laptops in the absence of another router, but it certainly won't extend an existing wireless network in the manner you describe.


Reinstall Mac App Store on Mac OS 10.7? I accidentally removed the Mac App from my Mac Mini while removing the iTunes 10.5 Beta. How can I reinstall the Mac App Store?

Here's the .app file off my machine: http://cl.ly/0f293H081S2e1Y2B3f1r


output of the who command I am trying to understand the output of the who command. When I add the -H flag to print the headers, the second column ( the one signifying the users logged in) is titled LINE. I am trying to understand what LINE is. I am logged into my computer twice, according to the who command, but one of the lines is bad. To understand what that means, I would like to know what LINE is.

LINE indicates the TTY the process is running on. It is correct about you being logged into your computer twice, as you are logged in once to Cocoa (the OS X desktop), console, full path: /dev/console, and again in the terminal, ttysXXX, full path: /dev/ttysXXX (where "XXX" is a three-digit number, starting from 001).

console is Darwin's (OS X kernel) only 'real' TTY, the only one that isn't running in a terminal emulator. console, being the only non-emulated TTY is therefore the only one GUIs can run on.

The Apple logo that appears when Cocoa is not running (booting and shut-down) is generated by the kernel except when in verbose mode (start the Mac with the boot argument -V either by holding ctrl-V while booting or running nvram boot-args="-v" as root, however that will make your Mac always boot in verbose mode until you run nvram boot-args="" or clear nvram).

When boot in verbose mode instead of an Apple logo the kernel will log any boot messages and related to /dev/console and anything written to /dev/console will show up on the console and therefore on-screen (since nothing is generating a GUI on it, whether that be Cocoa or the Kernel). The main part of this is how other Unix-like/POSIX systems work.

I know this answer is kind of crappy but I hope it helps.


Lync and automatic reconnect I am using Microsoft Lync (14.0.8) with Mavericks (10.9.3) on a laptop. When my IP address changes Lync does not reconnect automatically. From time to time I see a big red X icon in the dock but in the majority of the cases the icon is not shown.

When the error icon is not shown I do not notice that I am offline for a long time.

From time to time (but not often) the client reconnects automatically.

The Windows Lync client behaves differently and always reconnects when there is network connectivity.

Any idea on how to force Lync to automatically reconnect?

You would need to turn on debugging in Lync and see what was being logged. As you mention, there is no off switch for reconnect and it does work sometimes with the setting you have - but not all the time.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2629861

I would wager you need to flush your dns cache per the above link, though, based on experience and your reporting of the issue. Although, there are about a dozen different failure modes contemplated in that guide, so you might start from the top and systematically work through the troubleshooting steps.


Filter out duplicate keystrokes in software? I have a flaky keyboard which sometimes translates a single keystroke into several, and while I hope to repair it soon, I am wondering if there is a software solution which would help for the time being. For example, it could notice that a single key is being repeated too fast for a human to produce and filter out the bogus key events.

Does such a program exist?

Have you tried setting the Key Repeat Rate in system preferences to Slow?  This may help with your problem.


Iphone 5s stuck in headphone mode I have a pair of Sol headphones that would always fit into my iphone until recently I realized that my iPhone didn't have any sound coming out of the internal speakers.

It was my headphone jack that is causing the issues and i just cleaned it out but now its not working and the sol headphones I mention just don't fit into my iPhone. I barely get the tip in and nothing else can go through and im not trying to force it in.

How do i fix this?

If there is nothing physically jammed into the headphone jack then it should be easily fixable.

This happens to me occasionally when sound refuses to play out the external speakers and the simplest solution is to restart your phone by holding down the sleep button until it says slide to power off. Then, restart it by either plugging it in to a power source or holding the sleep button for an extended few seconds.

On the other hand if this doesn't work and the piece logged in there is the problem, try cleaning out the jack using things such as tweezers or compressed air. If all else fails, turn it in the the nearest Apple Store ( via in person or by mail ) and have them take a look at the device in person.

Hope this helped!


/dev/tty.usbmodem disappears after Mountain Lion upgrade I just upgraded from 10.6 to Mountain Lion.  Prior to the upgrade I was using an Arduino and talking to it via /dev/tty.usbmodemmfa141. That device does not appear to exist anymore.

When I plug in the Arduino via USB, the Mac should detect it and add /dev/tty.usbmodemXXXX for communication, but it does not. How can I force the Mac to see the Arduino or search for USB devices?

I beleive that plugging the arduino into the Mac via USB causes the port to be created automatically as part of the device detection.

If it's not showing up, then the OS is not detecting it as a device or the name of the device is no longer waht you expect it to be.

It may well be that under Mountain Lion, that the port name has changed, I found a script over on StackOverflow that detects for changes in the /dev folder by comparing a list of all the devices in /dev before and after the device is plugged in.


How can I record my weight using Siri? I want to use Siri to record my weight in Apple’s Health app. However, when I tell Siri “Record my weight as X pounds”, she responds “I can’t answer that on your iPhone, but you can find it in the Health app”.

Is it possible to record my weight in Apple’s Health app using Siri?

It's not directly possible to say "Hey Siri. Record my weight as X pounds" currently (up to and including iOS 12).

However, there are two ways you can do this(-ish).

Siri Suggestions: if you launch the Health App (manually) and log your weight enough times, it will start showing up as a Siri Suggestion in Search. This will launch the Health App in the Weight section, and you can then log your weight manually.
Shortcuts: you can create a shortcut in the Shortcuts App. Use the Log Health Sample action, and select Body Measurements --> Weight. This will allow you to manually log your weight from a prompt. You can have it triggered by saying "Hey Siri. Record my weight". If you want you can make this more sophisticated with a combination of alerts/prompts and variables. It is not possible to launch a Shortcut and pass it input in the same statement (i.e. "Record my weight as X pounds", but you can launch the shortcut, and then have the shortcut use voice prompts and take voice input from you (note, you will have to convert text input to a number for the Health App). You will very quickly come to realise that Shortcuts is not a programming language, and gets clunky very fast. It's ugly (and fragile!), but it works (except when it doesn't)