how to retrieve archived files I have MacBookAir and all my downloaded files are going into Download dir. I see that there are nothing older than June 1, 2019 in the Download dir, however. I have important document that i downloaded in March of 2019 and i can't figure out on how to retrieve it if even possible.
It is my conclusion that the files are being archived by the Mac automatically.
How do i retrieve the files older than the June 1, 2020 or any info would help on how it is being automatically deleted/archived?

You have to set up Time Machine to have backups. There is no archive process since that is different than backup.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

Short of you using time machine to look at that folder in the past, you would need to locate another copy of the file using spotlight in case you moved it to a different location.
Since you don’t mention your version, here is an article describing some clean up options.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206996

The system doesn’t purge any files unless you set that up, and then only in trash.


Managing iLife Asset Management I log into my Mum's computer with my iCloud account, and I've found that it has copied over 70Gb of my photos to the iLifeAssetManagement folder in user account on her computer.

Her MacBook Air is now complaining about lack of storage space. I scratched my head rooted around and found it was down to this "feature".

Deleting will only mean it will return; however can I turn this off?

Perhaps I should just decouple my iCloud account from being on her computer, but it is handy for Facetime, etc.

You can disable Photostream by going to System Preferences -> iCloud and deselecting Photostream (and any other iCloud synchronisation you don't need).


4K: option to revert back to 1080p on Macbook Retina? I've got a 2012 Macbook Retina talking to a Samsung 4k TV.

I'd actually like to revert back to 1080p.

All the google searches I try talk about going to 4k, but I actually want to go the other way, back down to 1080p.

Although I do get the font-size option to make the fonts larger, it's still only 30 hertz, and it's SUPER choppy when I do screen mirroring.  Also I'm seeing actual rendering bugs.

I bought the TV because it was large, not because it was 4k.  I've used MacBooks with 1080p TVs for years and generally like it.

You should be able to do this with SwitchResX. It'll let you select whatever resolution you choose, and let's you disable HiDPI mode (scaling).


MacBook Pro (2006, A1150) fails to boot My MacBook Pro (2006, model A1150) fails to boot beyond the white screen AFTER the screen with the Apple logo and spinner.

I have tried:
Resetting PRAM     (doesn't work)
Resetting SMC     (how can you tell?)
Apple Hardware Test     (says no problems)
Swapping RAM chips with a similar machine     (no effect)
Re-installing OS 10.6.3.     (Seems to be O.K.)
Booting in "Verbose Mode"     (Stops at "Unable to read Block 16 17 18 19" etc)
Booting in "Target mode"     (this works!)
Booting in "Safe mode"     (this works too!)

What is preventing it from booting, and how can I resolve this matter?

When you re-installed the OS, did you erase or repartition the hard drive? The Apple hardware test never found a hardware problem I had with my MacPro so it is not necessarily comprehensive.

The Verbose message sounds like a "can't read the hard drive at block...." message. Which would mean a damaged hard drive.

There appears to be some part of the OS that is stored on the hard drive at a particular place that can't be read at boot time. This part appears to be bypassed in safe mode and target mode.

Good luck!


Right shift key on Lion suddenly doing very strange things I am running OS X Lion 10.7.2 and have a bluetooth keyboard, magic mouse, and magic trackpad.  Over the weekend the behaviour of the right shift key changed in such a way that if I use it to capitalize a letter or shift a number to get '*' or '(', etc. it will randomly lose focus on the window, or jump to another part of the screen (often highlighting part of it so I end up over-typing what was highlighted (say in a text entry form such as this).

I can really reproduce this in Terminal, just by typing ********* (and have reproduced it just now in Chrome by doing so).  This is frustrating beyond words, and I've gone through and disabled Mission Control keyboard shortcuts, I've stopped almost every program to see if something like that was reproducing it (new things installed/updated shortly before this started happening was MenuPop and iTerm2).  Initially I suspected LaunchBar (having read about oddness with the clip merge feature, which I've disabled) and MenuPop, but with both of those not running, I still get the same behaviour.  In Terminal it's the worst, but does happen randomly with other apps where I'm entering text.

Has anyone seen this before?  Google isn't giving me much help.

This is a screenshot:

Alright, just 'fixed' it. It's caused by that plastic divider on the Magic Wand! I guess the way it's holding the trackpad with the keyboard causes it. I've removed the plastic and moved the trackpad and keyboard in contact with each other. No more problem!


In Grapher, can functions be used to define parametric curves? I'm drawing a curve using matrices in Grapher, for instance:

However, any time I try to use a function (i.e. a(x)) as a matrix element:

I get errors:

I've looked through the unofficial manual, but it doesn't specifically say. If I'm not able to use a function as an element, I'd have to re-type the expression in multiple locations whenever I want to change it :(

Just define function a in terms of t rather than in terms of x. For example, the following

produces 3 turns of a helix


iOS 11 mail - manual fetch gone? Except for my iCloud account, which gets very little traffic, I only use POP3 email. I prefer it because it means I don't have to store 17 years back catalogue on every device I own.

I get all my mails on my Mac & have done since time immemorial.

My phone I only ever need to check for mail if I'm out & about for a long period of time.

So, I always had it on 'manual check for emails'.
This seems to have disappeared since iOS 11 & now I have 2 phones with hundreds of emails I don't want. I've already read them & dealt with them... yet still they're pouring in to my mobile devices.

Is the old manual-only method still there somewhere, or did someone decide I am no longer master of my own destiny?

BTW, I have my POP3 server usually delete 24h after fetching, to keep the potential backlog short if I fetch on another device.

I also use POP rather than IMAP and also for the same reasons, although my overall setup is a little different. That said, you should be able to still manually fetch your emails on iOS 11 as follows:

Open Settings
Tap on Accounts & Passwords
Tap on Fetch New Data
Ensure that the Push toggle at top is off
Now at the bottom of the page, tap on Manually


npm commain in Automator Hi,
I would like to write an automator workflow which allows me to install node packages.

I tried with

$ npm insall

but doesn't work any idea how I could solve this?

That's because when you run shell command from Automator, it's PATH variable does have all the paths as when you run from Terminal. Use full path to npm executable. You can find the full path with which npm in the Terminal.


How can I sync Outlook with my iPad? I have a Outlook synced with my HTC Hero, but now I also want to sync it with my new iPad.

However, I never touched an Apple product before, so I have absolutely no idea how to do this.

So can anyone explain me where these settings are hidden?

Use iTunes to Sync Your iPad With Your Outlook Calendar.

Update iTunes in the computer to the recent version: click "Help" --> "Check for Updates."
Use the cable which comes with your iPad to connect it directly to new computer.
iTunes will launch in the PC automatically.
In the iTunes source list, select your ipad and click on "Info" tab -> the "Sync Outlook calendars" option.
In the lower right-hand corner of your screen, you can find the "Apply" button. Click it on.
Then your computer will sync with your iPad.


Man md5 displays dgst man page I just wanted to look at the man page for the command md5. So I typed man md5 but it displayed the man page of dgst instead of this one.

Any idea why and how I could access this manpage from the terminal ?

Edit : man -w return the path used to look for manpages :  /opt/local/share/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/texbin/man

But where does this come from ? Not from my /private/etc/man.conf.

On my ML installation, man md5 does indeed show the MD5(1) man page.

It's possible some local software installation or configuration is causing the display of a man page for dgst instead, though (which appears to be part of OpenSSL.)

A few things to check:

Do you have the MANPATH environment variable set in your shell?  It could be looking in an alternative directory for manpages before hitting the system manpages.  MANPATH does not appear to be set by default.

Are there alternative MANPATH directives in /private/etc/man.conf?  My system has

MANPATH /usr/share/man
MANPATH /usr/local/share/man
MANPATH /usr/X11/man

Has /usr/share/man/man1/md5.1 been replaced by a symlink to another man page that could be producing the dgst content?  Try

$ ls -l /usr/share/man/man1/md5.1
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  12332 Nov 16  2012 /usr/share/man/man1/man.1

If /usr/share/man/man1/md5.1 has not been changed, then you can read its content specifically this way:

$ man /usr/share/man/man1/md5.1


How to Install Windows 8.1 on Haswell Mac? I have a Haswell retina MBP, but following the installation process with Bootcamp Assistant v.5.1.1 results in an error when Windows attempts to install. Are there any guides available that walks one through this process?

This is how to fix the bootcamp windows install error:

"Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration."

Do not try to fix with a workaround - you'll find solutions of people manually selecting their Windows partition during reboot by holding down the OPTION key. This will work, but you are circumventing the way that apple wanted you to install it (via EFI).

The solution to this error is simple: it's a PRAM problem. I've seen a lot of different ways of people claiming to fix this problem. I've experienced it multiple times on my Haswell 15" retina Macbook Pro, but it seems to be affecting a lot of the other Haswells as well.

Here are the steps:

Create a USB install like normal using Boot Camp Assistant
(include the Apple support software)
Partition your drive for OSX and the new BOOTCAMP partition
Let it automatically reboot, follow the normal procedures to format the new BOOTCAMP partition, and get to the "finishing" step during the Windows installation. You will get the error
At this point, when you press OK it will automatically restart after 10+ seconds.  When that happens, quickly hold ALT+COMMAND+P+R. You will see
your screen flicker and you will hear the bootup sound twice, which means you reset the PRAM successfully
Your OSX install should now boot instead of the failed Windows install
Open Boot Camp Assistant again. Remove the Window partition that was created and restore OSX back to the partition size it had at the beginning of these steps
Go through the Boot Camp Assistant once more to create the BOOTCAMP partition. You do NOT have to recreate the USB, so just uncheck and skip those steps
Let it automatically reboot and follow the same Windows installation steps as before. You should not get the error the second time.

I found that this is the only thing that consistently works for me.  I've installed Windows 8 and 8.1 on Mavericks 10.9.2 Haswell Macbook a bunch of times, so I'm pretty sure of it. This will result in you installing it as Apple meant it to be installed.


What is the most efficient order to install Mac OS with Boot Camp and large application suites? I’ve been using Macs for a long time. In the past to optimize performance and save wear and tear on the disks it was recommended that when building a Mac OS image you should install the OS followed by applications in the order you most frequently used them. For me this has always been OS followed by Adobe suite, then Microsoft Office suite.

Even though disks have gotten faster, fragmentation isn’t as important a factor as it once was and several of my machines now use SSD drives, I still follow this rule out of habit.

Does this have any effect on modern Macs and how does Boot Camp, Windows and Windows applications come into play? I rarely use Windows or Windows apps where on the disk should they be? The beginning or later on the disk?

SSDs simply do not conform to this paradigm at all.

There is no inside or outside, early or late, beginning or end, partition border, or any of the old things you associate with spinny rust Hard Drives.
SSDs allocate storage of any data sector entirely where their wear-levelling algorithms decide is 'next favourite'.
It is well beyond the prediction of us mere mortals.

Additionally, modern OSes, Mac & Windows, are optimised to this SSD behaviour & so don't even make any attempt to 'categorise' or 'optimise' data placement at all - often to the detriment of old HDs still in use as boot drives [best get them replaced as soon as poss].

Feel free to put anything on, in any order, at any time.


Where is the TV out option on iPhones using iOS 5? I have an iPhone 4 running iOS 5 and an Apple Composite AV Cable. I cannot find the TV Out option that used to be under the dearly departed 'iPod' settings menu that is now gone for iOS 5. This is quite perplexing because I have been watching video off of this iPhone and operating system as recently as a week ago, on a different television, and now I cannot figure it out.

Where is the TV out option? Can I suddenly not watch videos?

EDIT: I have seen that it is supposed to magically appeared when it is plugged into the dock, under "Settings > General", but I have it plugged into the cable and nothing is happening. I don't have a "dock," I just have the composite cable.

The cable has a faulty connection and takes effort to connect to the iPhone. The TV Out option wasn't appearing because the cable wasn't connecting to the iPhone unless I pushed it in, held it, and then gently left it alone. When that happens, the TV Out option appears.


OS X change Admin user to Standard user with command line I would love to send a Unix command through ARD that will change a OS X admin user to a standard user. The only thing I found close is

sudo dscl . -delete /Groups/admin GroupMembership USERNAME

which does remove the user from the list of admins, but they are still listed as an admin in the user preference panel, and can still use their account to authenticate for admin privileges.

Just fought this battle, you can drop the dscl line and use the following;

Type the command
:

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -d UserName -t user admin

Where UserName is their actual AD username.

Berry


Can I get my iPhone to AirPrint to my HP Officejet 6500 E709n I have an HP Officejet 6500 E709n.  It is not the exact model that is listed as "AirPrint" compatible.  Is there a way to get it to work any way?

I would love to be able to print from my iPhone.

Its not quite AirPrint, but have you tried the official HP ePrint Home & Biz application?

I have it installed on my iPhone and it picks up and prints to HP Photosmart C4500 really easily. Also, installing this application adds a "open with" option when you are viewing a compatible document (pdf/doc/etc) in the web browser / email application etc. That means you just click "open with" then select Hp ePrint and it opens the document straight into the app ready for printing. you even get a print preview as you would printing from your desktop.


Solarized and Terminal in OS X 10.8.4 Mountain Lion I am trying to install the Solarized color scheme for my terminal on 10.8.4 Mountain Lion. I downloaded the .terminal files from https://github.com/tomislav/osx-terminal.app-colors-solarized and followed the instructions in the README which said:

  OS X 10.7 Lion: Double click to install or import into Terminal.app preferences.
  OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: Import into Terminal.app preferences.

I declared the terminal as xterm-256color:

But the Terminal looks like this:

What can I do so that the all the colors in the Solarized theme show up? You can see in my second screenshot that I ran ls and the directories aren't colored properly.

The bright green, yellow, blue, and cyan foreground colors seem to be almost the same as the default foreground color:

Or if you were expecting the themes to add colors to new places, they don't. They are Terminal settings files just change some of the settings that can also be changed from Terminal's preferences. You can make ls use colors with something like export CLICOLOR= LSCOLORS=dxfxcxdxbxegedabagacad.


How to make hyperlinks in iOS Mail app? Using the standard iOS Mail app, how do you make a hyperlink from part of the text you are composing?

In the animated gif below, I want to have the word "Lincoln" contain the hyperlink instead of pasting it below (which looks ugly), but as you can see there are no options to do so in the popup menus.

Making links like this is easy here on StackExchange, within Gmail, Word, Excel, google Docs, etc... but for some reason, I've missed how to do it in the iOS Mail app.

How can I get this level of polished mail with hyperlinks on iOS?

I always compose my mails then save them as draft which lets the processing of links happen. Have you verified you’ve given the software time to process what you type?

This is the simple way described here: Create hyperlink on Mail.app/Notes.app on iOS

Your adding an alternate text needs something more complex and since Mail does not support markdown or other editing like that, you need to compose in another program and then copy/paste/mail if you don’t want to have the full link typed out and then converted.

The Drafts app is my editor of choice for this. The first line of the document becomes the subject when you use the Markdown Mail quick action (tap the icon on the top far right)

This gives you exactly the alternate text and full editing without mail.app needing a more sophisticated editing suite.

  How to markdown an email from Drafts app on iOS

Markdown is awesome


Removed app is still available - how to remove it? I just removed Calibre app via Finder Cmd+Backspace. The app cannot be found via F4 key now. But it is still available via context menu "open with", even two versions there. So how app can be really removed?

macos 10.12.6

If you are trashing an app manually, then you have to delete it's supporting files. Those could be in Application Support, Contextual Menu Items, Preferences, Receipts etc folders.

Use apps like AppZapper to uninstall apps completely with all the related files. It's a paid app, but it works very well.


grep command is killed I am running grep -o $string ~/giant_file
where

string="foo
bar
baz"

This process keeps being killed after running for awhile and generating results, and I don't understand why. When it is killed, the following is output to the console:

[1] 69923 killed grep --color=auto --exclude-dir={.bzr,.cvs,.git,.hg,.svn} $string *

Is there a way to check the kernel logs to see why this is? In linux I would got to /var/log/kern.log to see if it is an OOM issue but I am not sure what to do on osx. If it isn't an oom issue, I am not sure what could be causing this, so other hypotheses are welcome.

Logs are in /var/log/System.log, you can also access them by running Console.app
Memory consumption of a process can be checked in Activity Monitory.app, at least as long as the process is running


How to make path prompt easier to read by color-coding each `/` (forward slash)? I would like to get another configuration for the path, more a detail than a real request:

Below an example of zsh PROMPT :

In order to make reading the path easier, I would like to change dynamically the color, except for the first slash (into ~/) of every slash in the path in blue (more precisely %F{75}) by the color pink (%F{13}) But I would like to be able to use with deeper path, that would help me to better locate myself into the tree.

On the image above, this would be only one pink slash changed (Phd_2019_2020/Travail_3_...).

Here's my current PROMPT:

PROMPT='%F{13}|%F{green}%n@%F{cyan}%m%F{13}|%f%T%F{13}|%F{75}%~%F{13}|%F{7} '

Is it possible to perform this dynamic change of color with zsh-5.8 ?

If I understand the question correctly, you want to have your prompt display the entire path of your current directory in blue but with each of the forward slashes ("/") in pink.

Unfortunately, you can't do this in your prompt.

Use the builtin precmd () function.

ZSH gives us a precmd function which is similar to Bash's PROMPT_COMMAND.  These allow a command to be issued before the prompt is displayed.

I also wouldn't recommend a long prompt anyway as it makes usability very difficult when entering commands. Putting the full directory above your prompt is much better from a UI standpoint.  The following code accomplishes that.

Simply put the following in your ~/.zprofile.

precmd ()  { printf "\n"; pwd | awk -F "/" ' {for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) printf "\033[01;34m"$i"\033[38;5;206m/"; printf"\n" }' }

And here are the results:

The above screenshot is my iTerm window showing that I have traversed deep into my /Applications/Firefox.app directory with the current directory formatted in blue separated by pink forward slashes.

How it Works...

I've expanded the one line premcmd function above so that it's multi-line and added in some variables so we can better see what's going on.

precmd() {
printf "\n";
pwd | awk -F "/" '{ blue="\033[01;34m"; \
                    pink="\033[38;5;206m"; \
                    for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) \
                      printf blue $i pink "/"; \
                      printf "\n"
                   }'
}

Here's what it all means:

printf "\n" prints out a new line char.  This is for aesthetics.
pwd returns the working directory name (man pwd) which is then piped ("|") to the next command, awk (man awk).
-F "/" defines the field separator to the forward slash; awk's default is a space.  I kept my prompt to it's short and succinct setup.

Within the awk "program," delimited by the braces ("{" and "}") we have the following:

variables blue and pink are set to their ANSI escape codes \033[01;34m and \033[38;5;206m respectively.
We then have a for/do loop that iterates through each of the fields that awk has processed.  NF is the total number of fields.
printf blue $i and printf pink "/" prints out the directory name in blue and the forward slash in pink


How to change the password of a local admin user that has never being logged in using a bash script Every Mac OS X system in my company uses 3 local users accounts.

1st user is a local administrator user, the 2nd user is a local standard user and the 3rd user is a local administrator user.

The 3rd user account is being used from my Security Department to scan our Mac OS X systems.

This 3rd user has never been logged into the system.

The 3rd user is there, but this user does not have a regular /Users/username path folder.  Again it is there, I can use it, I can SSH, etc. but once again does not have a regular /Users/username home path because we never log in.

I need to create a bash script that will change and update this 3rd user password.

Surfing the web, I found this solution:

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -passwd /Users/username newpassword
sudo security set-keychain-password -o oldpassword -p newpassword /Users/username/Library/Keychains/login.keychain

My problem is that the user does not have a regular /Users/username home path, because we never log in.  We just created the user so the Security team can use it for scanning.

How can I create a bash script that will change the password?

Just so you know, the user has been created with the following script:

USERNAME="Batman"
USERFULLNAME="Batman Scan User"
USERUID="512"
USERPASS="BatmanPassword"

dscl . -create /Users/"${USERNAME}" isHidden 1
dscl . -create /Users/"${USERNAME}" UserShell /bin/bash
dscl . -create /Users/"${USERNAME}" RealName "${USERFULLNAME}"
dscl . -create /Users/"${USERNAME}" UniqueID "${USERUID}"
dscl . -create /Users/"${USERNAME}" PrimaryGroupID 20
dscl . -create /Users/"${USERNAME}" NFSHomeDirectory /Users/"${USERNAME}"
dscl . -passwd /Users/"${USERNAME}" "${USERPASS}"
dscl . -append /Groups/admin GroupMembership "${USERNAME}"

I would just make new accounts with the credentials you need and worry about deleting the broken ones later.

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/6438/best-way-to-create-hidden-admin-account

If your MDM is JAMF, use their tool to automate hidden admin account creation and push the script out. If not, look for the github / Mac App Store tool CreateUserPkg

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/createuserpkg/id540673598?mt=12
http://magervalp.github.io/CreateUserPkg/

I wouldn’t reinvent the wheel here and instead, stand on the shoulders of these giants above.


How do I remove videos from iPhone I have a few videos on iPhone under the Videos app, not Photos.app video stream.

I have synced with iTunes, unchecked sync videos etc, and they have still not been removed, even though they are unchecked in iTunes.

The videos were bought on the iPhone if that makes a difference.

Please note: I have looked at this question which relates to video files but they are through the Photos app not iTunes and the Videos app.

Try to manually delete them (swipe right in the list view, then you should get a delete button) on the device.


Does Apple allocate a different app id for an app when submitting multiple builds for different geos? If I submit one build for the US and a different build for the rest of the world, will Apple give me 2 separate app ids? I.e. if everything is the same (app name, etc.) except for the actual game code, do I get one app id for the US and another one for the rest of the world?

This is important for cross promotion purposes, because if I hardcode the link to my app in another app then I might need to do some geo segmentation to account for the different app ids, depending on where the users are located.

No, you can't do this the way you're describing, only 1 build is allowed at a time for each app name and App ID. So obviously you can have different builds (v1, v1.1, v2, etc), but only one is live on the App Store at one time.

To solve your issue, you should look at having the code in your app handle the different locations (or language/Region Format) of each user.

It's generally thought that having different versions of the same app makes it more difficult to promote (which is why there are less Lite/Pro apps now, and more with the freemium approach with in in-app purchase to unlock more features), so having a single version of the app would also help here.

I would also point you to the following two entry points that describe how to use app-id wildcards.

App ID under iOS
the recently updated App Distribution Guide

Without getting too deep into the guts of how code signing works, there is truly no "one size fits all" answer since your marketing needs may override the extra work needed to properly localize one unified release. Additionally, app id choice has ramifications for iCloud data storage and will affect a small but highly vocal subset of customers that want to switch their Apple ID to another country.


iTerm2 & Terminal show my Mac serial code I had problems with colours not showing in iTerm2 for me. I tried a few fixes I found online which didn't work and now my serial number of my laptop is showing in iTerm & Terminal. Anyone know how to remove this?

You want to modify something called the prompt or PS1.  You can see the current value by typing echo $PS1 To get rid of the first part you don't like and leave only the user name type export PS1="\u"  If you want to persist the next time you open the terminal, you would write that line in ~/.bashrc   A detailed walk through is here http://osxdaily.com/2006/12/11/how-to-customize-your-terminal-prompt/


What app/feature/software is this microphone image from? What is this microphone image from? It appeared on my friend's MacBook and she can't figure it out.

This is the Mac OS X built in voice input mechanism.

To turn it off, visit preferences - it's possible to turn it on via a keyboard shortcut which may explain it's random appearance.

  Speech Recognition

  Speakable Items, built into OS X and located in the Speech pane of
  System Preferences, lets you control the computer using your voice
  instead of the keyboard. And you don’t have to train your Mac to use
  it. You can use Speakable Items to navigate menus and enter keyboard
  shortcuts; speak checkbox names, radio button names, list items, and
  button names; and open, close, control, and switch among applications

This article from Lifehacker explains how to use the feature is you are interested in learning more.


Change Dock color on left/right site in OS X 10.9 Mavericks New in OS X Mavericks, when using the famous dock on the left or right site:
It has a white background now. It makes it hard to see the icons and the design is awful.

Does anyone know how to change it back to the old black and transparent style?
(in the screenshot on the left side)

  Same Topic available on apple boards:
  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5469133

You can set hide-mirror to true to remove the blur effect:

defaults write com.apple.dock hide-mirror -bool true;killall Dock

Before:
 After:

I don't know how to make the background dark though.


What is wrong with my PHP on my apache2 web server (OS X 10.6) I have a web server on my mac mini that runs the default (installed with snow leopard) apache2 web server.  It works fine for any programming language that outputs stdout for cgi scripts, but every attempt I have made to enable PHP has failed.  Please help! I can upload any files that you need to see like php.ini or httpd.conf

I have tried scanning through the php.ini file values, php5 module load is uncommented in the httpd.conf.
These are the only steps that I have seen to enable php on a mac.

php5, from what I hear, is installed by default on Mac OS X snow leopard.

You need to include the following directive in your httpd.conf file:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

Edit
To make this answer more useful for others, the full configuration for php on apache2 is:
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Or whatever your path is your php module. This is the default path which come with Mountain Lion. Al I had to do was uncomment it. This is followed in the apache2.conf file with:
<IfModule php5_module>
    AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
</IfModule>


MacBook Air Screen Probem My MacBook screen looks like this!!! The laptop hasn't been dropped or anything. I closed it down fine and then when I started it up it looks like this. The laptop works as normal.

I've tried pressing Command (⌘)-Option-P-R and nothing

That clearly looks like the LCD screen is physically damaged, to me. The vertical stripes below that only serve to reinforce that opinion.


Universal Clipboard doesn't work anymore First time I've installed Sierra a couple of months ago, I tried the universal clipboard with my iPhone 6. It worked immediately like a charm and since I used it, I found this feature really useful for many use-cases.

Unfortunately, this feature doesn't work anymore after I upgraded from a 2 year old iPhone 6 to a new iPhone 7 Plus.

I know what I need for that feature to work (as it used to work fine):

Both devices are connected with my iCloud account (same Apple ID)
Bluetooth and Wifi are turned ON on both devices
Both devices are connected to the same Wifi network
Both devices are next to each other (less than 1 meter).
iMAC 10.12.3 (16D32)
iPhone 7 IOS 10.3

Both iMac and iPhone have been rebooted a couple of times.

No text, no URL, no picture can be copied & pasted from one device to the other anymore.

Any thought what could be wrong with the new iPhone 7?

Turn continuity (=handoff) on for both devices, and also make sure they are logged into the same iCloud account.

Relevant documentation on Apple's website.


macOS X El Capitan bootable USB not working I have created El Capitan mac OS X bootable USB using TransMac and El Capitan dmg from Apple. When I boot the iMac (2011) and holding option key, the USB doesn't show in boot menu.

I have changed the clock to 01010116 but the problem still exist.
I have tried this with other sticks (USB 2 and 3) but no luck.
I have tried formatting USB with GPT (diskpart) but no luck.

Can someone give me a few hints on how to get El Capitan installation start?
Thanks

I have used another mac to create bootable USB. For some reason I couldn't use TransMac on Windows to make it happen.


What is the difference between `open (-a) ` and double click in finder/spotlight? I recently installed leksah on my Mac (once directly, once via brew cask).

When I try to open it in Finder, Dock or use spotlight the window flashes open for a second and then closes immediately.
When I open it via terminal using open -a Leksah or open ~/Applications/Leksah it opens just fine.

Other users have experienced the same issue with other apps and other OSX versions as well. Is there a difference in behavior when opening an application using any of these methods? How can one debug what's going on?

Well, one difference is that via Command Line, you can pass the file to be opened as an argument, but I guess this is not the difference you are after.

The behaviour you speak of appears to be a bug which can be observed when running Yosemite. The issue is still open: https://github.com/leksah/leksah/issues/37


Blocking/Remove Boot Camp ablities I'm looking for a way to prevent Boot Camp from being used on a mac. IDEALLY while keeping the user as an admin (or close to it). The issue I see is that basic user access is too restrictive and admin is too liberal. Users should be trusted to install their own apps yet I don't want them booting from a different partition.
I've tried to delete Boot Camp Assistant but that is restricted, even when using csrutil. I can't even set the permissions on it.
Any ideas on how to disable or remove it while allowing users to install other apps?
I saw How to disable Boot Camp and prevent any other OS installations? but it doesn't have an accepted answer (because it doesn't answer the question)

One of the simplest methods of preventing the use of Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows on a drive is to create a Fusion Container on the drive and install macOS into this container. Normal, a Fusion Container is composed of a partition on a SSD and another partition on a HDD. Here, I intend for the Fusion Container to have both partitions on a single drive.
The Boot Camp Assistant requires very specific partitioning arrangements to exist before allowing Windows to be installed. The configuration I propose would not meet the requirements. Also, a user would not be able to change the partitioning from macOS to meets the requirements.


How to use a 2 TB external hard drive containing existing data as TimeMachine backup storage without losing data already on it? I have an 2 TB external hard drive. It is formatted as NTFS format, supported by ntfs-3g which is installed using Homebrew. There is already about 500 GB data existing on it that I need to keep. I now want to use the rest of the space on it to store my TimeMachine backups. There is only one partition on the hard drive. I do not have other hard drives to shuffle the data. How can I start to use this hard drive to store my Time Machine backups?

Time Machine can only work on a volume formatted as HFS+. So you will need to repartition this drive. A quick Google shows that it is possible to resize an NTFS partition, but this can't be done with Disk Utility on MacOS.

I wouldn't recommend playing with the partitioning on the volume if the 500Gb of stuff isn't also backed up somewhere else.


Upgrade to iOS 9 Final from Public Beta? I've been trying out iOS 9 Public Betas on my iPad and I'm pretty happy with it, but yesterday I got a prompt to update to v9.1 beta... Which is probably a bit too tender for my tastes :-)

Anyhow I was wondering what'd be the process to move from the public beta to the final version when available?

Will removing the beta profile and rebooting mean I'll get the prompt to update to final when available next week? I think that's what make sense (I don't think Apple really expects all Public Beta users to restore from Backup)

Or do I have to wait until 9.0.1 as some answers in this site suggest? (These answers were mostly related to moving from GM to final; in that case the build # is likely the same so it makes sense that you don't get a prompt to update).

Really hoping that update doesn't entail wipe and restore

Thanks!!

As no answers are forthcoming, I'll report here my findings.

On 2015-09-16 , before iOS 9 GA, I removed the "Beta" profile from the iPad and rebooted. After reboot, software update says:

  iOS 9.0.
  Software is up to date

The version of the software is 9.0 (13A4325c)

So it looks good. There's an oddity, though. When I've rebooted (and hard-restart too to be on the safe side), every time I unlock the iPad I still get a notification saying:

  There's an update available. Update the iOS 9 beta version.

I hope that when 9.0 final comes up, the update check will pick it and I'll be back into mainline versions. I'll update here when things change.

Edit 2015-09-16 19:39 CEST: Apple has just released v9.0 final and going to software update in Settings I get prompted to upgrade, so it looks like I'll be able to get back to mainstream. The notification after login stills says the same. Will report later when I have the chance to upgrade.

Edit 2015-09-18: After installing the 9.0 update, and the subsequent reboot, the device says its updated to 9.0 and I no longer get the prompt to update -- so all seems to be fine!

Edit 2015-09-25: Just a final update to confirm that after a few days running, all seems to be fine. I've just got the prompt to update to 9.0.1, so I seem to be fully in "mainstream" now.


Which changes are necessary for XM and XMTrading applications to both be approved and not rejected by Apple Guideline 4.3? There are two applications:
One you can see it directly in app store: https://apps.apple.com/gr/app/xm-trading-point/id1072084799
The second one I'll share it to you via Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xmtrading.webapp
When the two aforementioned apps are being submitted to the same countries then they might be rejected with reason:

Guideline 4.3 - Design
This app duplicates the content and functionality of other apps submitted by you or another developer to the App Store, which is considered a form of spam.

Which are the minimum amount of changes to be done in order for the two apps to not be considered similar and both be approved ?

Apple Developer Guideline 4.3 states:

4.3 Spam
Don’t create multiple Bundle IDs of the same app. If your app has different versions for specific locations, sports teams, universities, etc., consider submitting a single app and provide the variations using in-app purchase. Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, and Kama Sutra apps, etc. already. We will reject these apps unless they provide a unique, high-quality experience. Spamming the store may lead to your removal from the Developer Program.

This means you already have more than one app that does the exact same thing except there's slight variances.  This is not a new rule, it's been in place for years.  Apple started really enforcing it about 2 years ago.
Your options are to either talk directly to Apple about what, specifically, caused them to reject the app or you can do what they suggest and put them into a single app.
There's nothing in 4.3 that states what you have to change, that's going to be different for each app.  Apple only states you must "provide a unique, high-quality experience".


3g dongle not working on el capitan My 3g dongle (micromax mmx352g) is working fine in the Mavericks in my MBP but in My MAC Mini which i upgrade to el capitan GM is not working .it's not even detecting the dongle. Is there any generic script or software that detects the 3g hardware and connect it internet via apn .

Following are the steps

Restart Machine and press CommandR while booting
It will take you to the Recovery Mode
From Utilities Menu open Terminal
In the Terminal Window enter csrutil disable
Then restart
Install regular EVO drivers that came with the dongle, you will be able to see the modem in Network Preferences and might have to do configuration manually like entering *99# as number etc.
Then restart in same mode as step 1
Open Terminal and enter csrutil enable

It will start working at step 6


Is it possible to order a new Mac mini with an Nvidia graphics card? This may be obvious to many , but is it possible to have a current generation Mac Mini with Nvidia graphics card option . I looked into the spec sheet on Apple website which says that it ships with AMD graphics card . I am looking for the one that has Nvidia graphics card.

I've searched over Google and did not find a plausible answer (but I'm a bit rushed and may have mislooked the answer).

No you can't order the current generation Mac Mini Mid-2011 with anything other than what Apple will offer to you as a build to order option for graphcis.

Currently the only options for graphics on the Mac Mini are:

Intel HD Graphics 3000
AMD Radeon HD 6630M

Recall from iFixit's Mac Mini tear down that the Mac Mini is a highly integrated machine, and there really is no such thing as a "graphics card" in it, its a graphics chip set on the motherboard as pictured below from iFixit, what Apple puts on it is what you have to choose from.

However, with the Availability of Thunderbolt there is opportunity for expensive external graphics options on Mac Mini's with Thunderbolt. Products such as the Sonnet Echo Express offer external PCI express x4 speed slots, but as of yet there are not listed graphics card that are compatible.


How to insert .flv in iTunes library I have downloaded a flv file, and I would like to save it in iTunes library for later play. I guess I should convert it first, but is this supported by OSX or do I need an extra application. And which file format will keep the quality and the size of original video?

You can convert it to the mp4 and insert it. I use handbrake to convert or fix indexes.

Also you can give a try to Perian if it'll work in your OS.


Dropbox vs .DS_Store: prevent syncing How to prevent Dropbox from syncing .DS_Store files on OS X?

According to Dropbox's help, the .DS_Store files are not synchronised.

  Ignored files

  Some small system files aren't synced over Dropbox. These include:

  desktop.ini
  thumbs.db
  .ds_store
  icon\r
  .dropbox
  .dropbox.attr

If you want to manually delete all .DS_Store files, OS X Daily shared a how-to guide: Delete All .DS_Store Files from Mac OS X.


YouTube at double speed on mobile How do I listen to YouTube videos at double-speed?

On the desktop I'm able to change the playback speed to 1.5x or 2x. With podcasts, I'm able to listen to them on my iPhone at 1.5x or 2x speed. Shouldn't  I be able to watch YouTube videos at double speed on the iOS app?

Updated answer for those who still prefer to watch in Safari

In the iOS Shortcuts app you can find a shortcut that will change the speed of any video it finds on the web page you're on when you run it. You run it from the share sheet in Safari.

Activate it in the Shortcuts app in Gallery → Javascript Shortcuts → Change video speed.

Visit a Youtube video in Safari and use the share sheet to run the newly added shortcut. It will ask you what speed to play the video at.

Original answer

On the video's mobile Youtube page, tap the menu button at the top left (or right). Scroll to the bottom and switch
to Desktop view.*

Change the speed controls just like you would on your computer.
Play the video by tapping it and it will use the new speed settings.

*If you're in YouTube desktop mode but still don't see the gear icon then tap Safari's action/share button and request desktop version from there as well. The request desktop icon looks like a monitor/iMac.

(I recently learned that you can also tap and hold Safari's refresh button to request the desktop version of a page)

If you lock the screen Safari will pause playback, but it can be resumed either from the lock screen or your headset to allow audio only.


Difference between enabling Time Machine's "Encrypt Backups" option, and encrypting from Disk Utility? I'm setting up Time Machine backups on a new external hard disk.

I chose to first encrypt the disk via Disk Utility:

But I also see these options:

Is there any difference between an "Encrypted" format via Disk Utility and selecting "Encrypt backups" in the Time Machine preferences? What happens if I do both? Or if I encrypt with Disk Utility, but then don't select "Encrypt backups"?

Aha! The answer comes when you try to deselect the "Encrypt backups" option:

So it appears they are one and the same.


hfs-bless / Booting into MacOS / Windows directly from Ubuntu (triple boot, MacPro 4,1 -> 5,1) Currently I have MacOS High Sierra, Windows 10 (Legacy, not EFI), and Ubuntu 18.04 triple-booting on a 2009 MacPro 4,1 (firmware upgraded to 5,1). I installed Ubuntu after Windows using the procedure described here. All three operating systems boot normally using Apple's Startup Manager (holding ALT during bootup). My question is, how do I boot directly into Ubuntu, Windows 10, and MacOS HS from each of the other partitions?

I can use the terminal to boot directly into Windows 10 or Ubuntu from MacOS using the following commands (output of diskutil list at bottom of post for reference). For Windows 10:

sudo bless --legacy --device /dev/disk0s4 --setboot --nextonly && sudo reboot

and for Ubuntu EFI:

sudo bless --device /dev/disk0s5 --setboot --nextonly && sudo reboot

But is there an equivalent terminal command to "bless" my MacOS or windows partition from Ubuntu 18.04? I'm aware of 'hfs-bless' in mactel-utils, but this does not appear to support Ubuntu 18.04 (only previous Ubuntu versions). Is it possible to install mactel-utils in Ubuntu 18.04? If not, is there an Ubuntu equivalent of MacOs' "Startup Disk" or bless so that Ubuntu will restart into my Windows 10 or Mac partition?

Output of diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            1.5 TB     disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                290.3 GB   disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS Ubuntu                  200.3 MB   disk0s5
   6:                 Linux Swap                         8.0 GB     disk0s6
   7:           Linux Filesystem                         201.5 GB   disk0s7

I know it's an old thread but for your information: you can still download mactel-boot .deb package from this link http://ppa.launchpad.net/detly/mactel-utils/ubuntu/pool/main/m/mactel-boot/mactel-boot_0.9-1~xenial_amd64.deb (Xenial version). It's install smoothly in Ubuntu 2018.04.3 LTS correctly and, apparently, works.


Why will Time Machine not restore Mail? I don't know how it happened -- I was reviewing my email on my old MacBook Pro, running Sierra, and somehow managed to send all of my Apple Mail Inbox emails to the Trash, and then they disappeared. Unfortunately, I did not back up the MBP. But, I have email being stored in the Cloud and am constantly backing up with Time Machine on my iMac, running Catalina. I am trying to restore Mail using Time Machine from the date before I noticed all of the emails were gone.
When I clicked Enter Time Machine, and selected the date I need to restore, Mail did not appear in the list of applications in the Finder. I went to the hard drive and found the Applications folder there, and found the Mail application, selected it, and clicked the Time Machine Restore button. This error message popped up:
“” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by macOS.
I checked the Trash and did not find the emails there.
Is there any way I can restore all my emails using another method?
Apple Discussions have not directly answered my question, given all the steps I have taken.

I have a new iMac running Catalina and I too found that I could not travel back in time when entering Time Machine from Mail (but it was OK when entering Time Machine from Finder).
The problem may be with backing up Mail messages.  During a Time Machine backup, the Console app issues unpromising messages including Couldn't create MailLibraryItem at path: /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/(my mac)/2020-08-16-141340/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/(my user)/Library/Mail/V7
I have just spoken to Apple support, and their engineers are aware of the problem and are working on a fix, to be included in a future OS update, which is great news.
I appreciate that this reply doesn't help with the original problem, but the lady from Apple I spoke to did say that there may be other ways to restore lost email messages, so it might be worth your while calling Apple support.  Good luck!


How to increase speed between changing photos in Photos/iPhoto? I am trying to view through the photos, but the process is painfully slow. How do you increase the speed of transition or remove the transition  altogether so that when you press arrow keys or do three finger swipe the change is instantaneous.

Turns out my question was not fully researched.
Swipe takes some transition time which I do not know how to modify but using arrow keys gives instantaneous transition.


VMWare Fusion OS X 10.13.5 GUID partition I'm using VMWare Fusion 8.5.10, and OS X 10.13.5 as client.

In VMWare I shutdown the vm first, then I increased the size of the virtual hard disk. Now in OS X I use Disk Utility to increase the size of the existing partition by deleting Free space first, then resize the existing partition to use up all the deleted space.

But Disk Utility says:

Operation failed...
An internal error has occurred and the disk for one of the specified operations could not be found.

Does anyone know how to work around this?

Restart the system in single user mode.

To restart your system in single user mode, restart your Mac and as soon as it turns off and is about to start, press and hold CMD + S buttons.

You should see a command prompt logged in as root.

Now, run the following command:

/sbin/fsck -fy

if your drive was OK, the screen will say “The volume (name of your hard drive) appears to be OK”. If any repair was made, you’ll see the prompt, “FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED”. Then, you’ll see the root# prompt again.

Then try to restart the system and try deleting the space. It should work. If not, you'll have to use the diskutil command to override this thing and get it to work.

In case the solutions I've provided here is not working for you, please do this:

Reboot your mac in Recovery mode(While rebooting hold CMD + R), launch terminal and run diskutil list and update your question with the screenshot.


Problems Connecting Canon Powershot to 2015 Macbook Air I have a Canon Powershot G12, and I am attempting to get some files over onto my Macbook Air. This is the first time I attempted to do this, I normally upload them onto my Macbook Pro. But when I do connect it, it shows up as "Remote Disk", and there are no files in the "Remote Disk". Do I have to install a driver?

Yes, you need driver & software for your Canon PowerShot G12.


Where do I find the full man page for afplay In Terminal afplay -h shows full help text but the man page shows hardly nothing.

Is there any way to get a longer help page for man afplay?

I never use Terminal and it would be much easier if i could see this longer complete man page in Man Viewer or if there would be some kind of AppleScript or unix script which reads it from somewhere and then shows it or re-writes the man page.

Some other unix apps has this problem too and it would be nice if it works for all apps with short man page.

I wanted to use afplay long time ago, but when i saw its short man page i didn't start to use it because i didn't know it has all those settings which are listed in Terminal.

No afplay comes with a short (incomplete) man page.

You could open a bug report request but I doubt it will taken into consideration or you could use the content of the afplay -h to re-write the man page.


Itunes won't display total number of songs when I'm in my music playlist Itunes used to display my total number of songs/hours/days when I was in the MUSIC playlist. It displays this info for all of my playlist, just not in MUSIC. I know how to use control +/ to get the info to appear, just can't figure out why it won't show the info for all of my 15,000 songs...

If you're still looking for an answer, go to Playlists, then on the right side it will have a drop down menu that says Songs, if you choose Artists instead, it will show you how many songs you have on the left side


Keyboard layout keeps reverting since upgrade to High Sierra I have a custom keyboard layout that I have been using for many years on OS X (alternative to the french layout).

Since I upgraded to High Sierra today I face these issues:

the layout keeps switching back to the default (french), e.g. when I open a new application
sometimes I cannot switch back to my custom layout
when I reboot, I have to re-add the custom layout in the Preferences

I have tried resetting the NVRAM but no changes. What can I do?

I had the exact same problem: a custom keyboard layout that had worked just fine on macOS 10.12 Sierra suddenly refused to work with default applications and applications installed from App Store after updating to macOS 10.13 High Sierra. OS would always revert back to default keyboard layout of my region (Finnish). This got me thinking and I managed to fix the layout I use so that it now works with all apps, not just those installed from homebrew.

The trick is to modify your custom layout so that it is set to your current region. You can do this by either modifying the bundle manually or using Ukelele.

1. Editing the layout with Ukelele

Download and install Ukelele from for example homebrew. When you open the app open your custom layout from file or if you have it currently active you can create new bundle based on it by choosing ‘File’ → ‘New from current input source’. After you have it open you must set correct language (and possibly region) for it from ‘Language…’ settings found from ‘Keyboard Layouts’ tab. The language doesn't have to match the language of the OS and I don't know if the region has anything to do with this issue (Ukelele says it's optional) but setting it to your region can't hurt.

After setting the language from the ‘Keyboard Layouts’ tab you need to set the localisation from ‘Localisations’ tab. If there is already a locale line in the list you can edit it by double clicking it and setting the language (still doesn't have to match the language of the OS), if not you can add a new one with the button with a ‘+’ sign on it. Setting the region is optional here as well but better safe than sorry. After this you can save the bundle and jump to installing and enabling your layout.

2. Editing the layout manually

Keyboard layout bundles are actually just directories with certain structure, so you can also edit them manually from command line. What do you need to do is to cd into the Your.bundle/Contents and edit Info.plist by adding KLInfo_<your-layout-name> dict. Here's an example of the Info.plist from the layout I'm using:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
        <string>com.apple.keyboardlayout.arkkudvorak</string>
        <key>CFBundleName</key>
        <string>ArkkuDvorak</string>
        <key>CFBundleVersion</key>
        <string>1.0</string>
        <key>KLInfo_ArkkuDvorak</key>
        <dict>
                <key>TISInputSourceID</key>
                <string>com.apple.keyboardlayout.arkkudvorak.arkkudvorak</string>
                <key>TISIntendedLanguage</key>
                <string>fi-FI</string>
        </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

The main thing here is to include your language and region abbreviations as string value for TISIntendedLanguage. I guess TISInputSourceID can be anything as long as it's prefixed by CFBundleIdentifier.

After you've set the language and region you can save and close the Info.plist file. You still need to edit the directory struture a bit though. cd into Your.bundle/Contents/Resources and rename the <something>.lproj into <language>_<REGION>.lproj, in my case fi_FI.lproj. After you've done that you're done with the changes.

3. Installing and enabling your layout

After correcting the language, region and localisation settings and saving the bundle move it to /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ if you didn't edit it directly from there. Restart your computer, re-add the layout from ‘System ‘Preferences’ → ‘Keyboard’ → ‘Input Sources’ and it should now work with all apps.

This did it for me, let me know if it worked for you.

Disclaimer: I'm not the author of the ArkkuDvorak bundle, I just use it.


How do I attach more than one photo to a single email sent on my iPhone? There doesn't seem to be a way to attach photos to an email in the Mail app on the iPhone.  I can send photos from the Camera Roll in the Photos app, but I can only attach one photo per email?  Is there a trick I'm missing?  Or is there an app for that?

OS 3.0 and above allows you to email out up to 5 photos.

Go to your Camera roll. Select the roll you want.
Tap Share icon (bottom left)
Tap each photo you want to send via e-mail ( you should get a red check mark in each photo > Share count will increase to the number of photos selected).
Tap "Share Icon" again
A pop up "e-mail" message will appear
All the photos you selected will appear in your e-mail message to send.


Make new macbook work on iMac Is there anyway I can make my new Macbook (12 inch) that comes with only USB-C work its display on my iMac? I used to do it with the my previous macbook air, but the new one does not have a thunderbolt port.

I also have the USB-C - HDMI adapter but apparently it is of no use in this scenario.

Thunderbolt Gen 1 and 2 don’t support USB 3.1, Type C or even 3.0 for
  that matter. An adapter wouldn’t have fixed this problem. However,
  Apple is releasing Thunderbolt 3 later in 2015. It’s not ready yet,
  because it’s developed with Intel and now Gen 3’s functionality is
  tied to Skylake chips – which will replace Broadwell shortly. I know.
  You’re thinking “But Broadwell just came out!” That’s true, but only
  because of delays. Now, you may wonder how a new MacBook without a
  Thunderbolt port or a Skylake chip will support a Thunderbolt Display.

  Well, in short it won’t. That is unless Apple releases a firmware
  update for their Thunderbolt cables. Which they won’t. So it probably
  won’t support it. Considering the last time they updated it, I think
  we’ll see an update at WWDC, with a USB C port on the display itself.

http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/09/apples-12-macbook-gets-new-usb-c-power-vga-usb-and-hdmi-adapters/

  What might be a solution is an ungodly combination of:

  StarTech’s female Mini DisplayPort to male DisplayPort adapter ($4.50)
  A female-to-female DisplayPort coupler ($13.50)
  a DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable (as little as $6)
  Apple’s $79 USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter, which has an HDMI port
  on it in addition to pass-through USB-C power and USB Type A 3.1 for
  data

http://www.macworld.com/article/2966043/displays/how-to-connect-an-apple-display-to-a-usb-c-macbook.html

Good luck ^^


How to remove/delete a partition in single-user mode? I have a HD partition that is having problems. I have 3 partitions on that drive.

When the partition is mounted (after boot) the disk can not unmount. However in single-user mode the partition is not not mounted. This would be the best time to delete the partition.

What do I need to type to remove the partition in single-user mode?

Note:
You can use an example with the names disk0s3 and the name of partition "Install".
Also I am using OS X Mavericks.

Boot to Recovery HD or internet recovery since the Disk Management Framework isn't loaded in single user mode:

diskutil unmount disk0s3
diskutil reformat disk0s3

If you run into more problems - diskutil verifyDisk and verifyVolume and their repair variants might help to get at the underlying error condition on your volume.


Fetch new mail only while on Wifi (but not while on cellular data) I'm using Mail on iOS 7.  I have it set to fetch new mail manually (only when I request it to fetch new mail; do not fetch automatically).

It would be nice if I could set things up to work differently when on Wifi then when on cellular data.  In particular, when on Wifi, it would be nice to fetch mail as often as possible, or to use push.  When on cellular data, I would prefer to stick to manual fetch only, to minimize use of cellular data.

Is there a way to do this?  I can't see a way to do this from within Settings >> Mail, Contacts, Calendars >> Fetch New Data.  Am I missing something, or is this simply not possible with the default Mail app?  Is there a third-party Mail app that offers this functionality?

Go to the settings app:

Cellular

Turn of mail for using cellular data. (Swipe up to see the M section).  Unfortunately, this will disable all syncing over cellular data, and it will prevent you from even a manual fetch of email while on cellular data.  So, you'll need to twiddle with things whenever you want to do a manual fetch while on cellular data.


How do I install python pyRAPL module on MacOS? How do I install python pyRAPL module on MacOS high sierra 10.13.6?

The following errors are coming up whenever I try to install. How do I solve it?

pip3 install pyRAPL

Worked fine for me

If you have any errors try the following:

python3 -m pip install pyRAPL


SelfControl for iPad? I'm looking for something equivalent to SelfControl for the iPad. Is there anything like that?

Are you referring to the self-discipline-enforcing mechanism like this one?   That is: something that notices that you are spending a lot of time doing various things that you don't want yourself to do (too much web browsing in general, or perhaps too much Facebook in particular, or too much email...?).

If that is the case, then it is difficult to imagine how something like that could be written using the official SDK that Apple provides, because you would need to modify Safari, or block IP addresses, prevent other apps from launching, or some such thing.  These are not things that the official SDK allows a software developer to do.

Perhaps there is something in the world of jail-broken devices, but I can't speak to that point since I have never ventured into that territory.


Prevent Amazon Mobile app expiration I'm running my old Amazon app on iPod Touch 2G. On opening the app I noticed something peculiar happened: it said "Please update your app, the app you using, will be retired on June 30, (pushed back from July 1st)" I got that many moons ago (late April/early May).

How do I prevent this from happening? I want to track my orders.

You can't. The API that the app uses is to be turned off and will no longer be able to be used to provide information to the app, thus making the app non-functional.


How to disable / change the photoshop cc splash screen (on Mac) When you open photoshop cc on mac you get this image: Photoshop CC Splash screen

I want to disable it, or (if impossible) to change it to my own image.

I know that is not something you can do by just change some pereference but i'm sure there is some kind of a hack that will do it...

Thanks.

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2043396 This maybe?

Or

Search the Photoshop Libraries for Image files. Most likely the image file can be replaced with a different file?


Suddenly can only manually mount disk images from Disk Utility I used to be able to mount disk images from the Finder via ⌘O, Double clicking, etc. but after using High Sierra for 1 day, it suddenly couldn't anymore in the middle of me using it.

Can anyone help? I can't think of any reason this would have happened.

I can still mount disk images, but, as explained in the title, I need to do it manually from Disk Utility.


How to sort files entirely by date? Is there any way to sort all files in a particular directory by date, even ones in subfolders? For example:

drive root -> documents -> mysite -> dev

Drive root contains a bunch of individual files, plus a folder called documents. Documents contains a bunch of files, plus a folder called mysite, and so on. What I want to see is just a list of files sorted by date, from all the folders, rather than having to open each folder separately and seeing only its files sorted by date.

I have Cocoatech's Pathfinder installed, so if it isn't possible in the standard Finder, maybe there's some way to do it in PF?

(If the folder tree were really as simple as my example, it wouldn't be an issue, but what I'm really looking at is a website's build directory, which contains about 5 levels of subdirectories, and I need to see all files sorted by date so that I can move whatever changed today (regardless of which folder it's in.)

If you don't mind using the terminal you could try this:

find . -type f -exec ls -lth {} +

This will list files from current directory and all directories below, sorted by modified date. A variant not listing modification date would be:

find . -type f -exec ls -t {} +

But I believe that it would be better to just list the files that have changed the last 1440 minutes

find . -mmin -1440


Log everything in OSX (not just what I see in console) Is there any way I can log everything of what happens in Mac OS X snow leopard and not just what I can see in the console? I can barely see errors logs there, I would like to see which applications asked for which resource in my computer and log all of this activity.

How can I do this? Which is the most accurate and in-depth log that I can get of what happens on my computer?

What you can see in logs are what applications write there. All Apple software writes to the Apple logger database. You can see this and what is written to syslog and files in Console.app. The only easy way to read the database is via Console.app. Note that you might need to start Console.app under an admin user to see all the entries.

Not all you are asking for like "applications asked for which resource" is logged by the application so this information is not normally available.
What can be done to get more information is use some Unix tools like lsof to get a snapshot of what files and sockets are open or Apple development tools like dtrace, googling for examples gave this blog which has scripts to record what files are used by which processes.


MacBook Air Will Not Restart Yesterday, my 2013 MacBook Air powered down unexpectedly, and since then I have not been able to restart it. It appears to be cycling through restart and shutdown every 5 seconds. I can feel that the case is heating up and the fans turn on but then they shut off and the cycle restarts. The screen remains blank, and there are no start up bells.

I have tried the various shortcuts I have found on Google to restart my Mac, but none have worked. What should I do next?

It was a problem on the motherboard. I had to take it to apple and they changed it.


Does the new 12" MacBook (2015) allow for dual displays, or just display mirroring? I have been unable to determine if the new 12" MacBook (the one with the USB-C port), when hooked up to an external monitor, will only mirror its retina display, or if it has the ability to use the external display for separate content.

You get two distinct, functioning displays unless you choose to mirror. Same with AirPlay.

From http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs/ :

  Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution [2304 by 1440] on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors


Is it possible to count time with Siri? I'd like to be able to ask Siri:

Start counting time
[Some time later] Tell me how long it was?
Siri: It has been 2 minutes and 10 seconds

or

Tell me the time with seconds
Siri: The time is 3:19, 23 seconds

Any of the above, or any way to count the duration, can work.  Is there a way?

This just worked for me on my iPhone 11 with current iOS.

Hold side button to invoke Siri
Say, "start timer for 15 seconds."
Timer starts immediatly counting down.

You have to be a little clever to work around the limitations of the voice interface. After all we are not at the point of the computers on Star Trek. Yet.

So for your particular use case, perhaps a command like, "Siri, start timer for an hour." and a bit later you can do something like, "Siri, stop timer."

It requires you to think like how would you tell Siri to do something that you could also do on the phone through a series of taps. And often it will take a few tries to get the phrasing correct, but once you get the hang of it you will learn how to ask a question of Siri that will give you the answer you need in as few words as possible. Kind of like programming the phone with voice.


View all Growl notifications Does Growl logs all the notifications that it handles? And if yes, is it possible to view a list with all of them?

It's not a built-in feature so you won't be able to view past logs.  However, you used to be able to enable/disable logging of notifications with scripts I've included below but I don't know if these still work.  If they do, then you could enable logging of future notifications.

Enable Growl Notification Logging:

#!/bin/zsh -f

function growl_setdefault { defaults write com.growl.growlhelperapp $* }

growl_setdefault 'Custom log history 1' "$HOME/Library/Logs/Growl.log"
growl_setdefault 'GrowlLogType' -int 1
growl_setdefault 'GrowlLoggingEnabled' -bool YES

Disable Growl Notification Logging:

#!/bin/zsh -f

function growl_setdefault { defaults write com.growl.growlhelperapp $* }

growl_setdefault 'GrowlLoggingEnabled' -bool NO


Will forcing integrated GPU mode prevent GPU panics? If so, how to do that? Context: My mid-2010 MBP 15" has started to get random GPU panics:

Anonymous UUID:       84FEDF51-A1D6-EDC2-CC8C-6B53B7959874
Thu Feb  5 09:29:06 2015
*** Panic Report ***
panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f9bbb0f63): "GPU Panic: [<None>] 3 3 7f 0 0 0 0 3: NVRM[0/1:0:0]: Read Error 0x00000100: CFG 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0xffffffff, BAR0 0xd2000000 0xffffff8134a1d000 0x0a5480a2, D0, P3/4\n"@/SourceCache/AppleGraphicsControl/AppleGraphicsControl3.8.6/src/AppleMuxControl/kext/GPUPanic.cpp:127
Backtrace (CPU 2), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff8137c5b590 : 0xffffff8018f2fe41

My system has two graphics subsystems: the built-in Intel HD Graphics and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M.  I've heard anecdotally that the NVIDIA 330M is problematic.  (I also heard that I just missed the deadline for an Apple warranty repair for that very problem...sigh.)

So I'd like to try forcing the system to always use the Intel HD Graphics and see if that makes the problem go away.

My questions:

Will forcing the system to use the Intel HD Graphics will cure the panics?
If so, is the gfxCardStatus app the recommended approach?

Yes, use gfxCardStatus. I do this all the time to save battery and it works great.


iPhone 4S iOS 6.1.2 Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Add New Shortcut not case sensitive My custom shortcuts are not case sensitive (the opposite was claimed here).
Example:
Under Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Add New Shortcut
I specify:
ME : Schorsch
Unfortunately, both ME and me in the text will be replaced with Schorsch. Clearly, the custom shortcut is not case sensitive.
How/where can I fix this?

It's not the Shortcut which is case sensitive, but the Phrase. And I don't think making the shortcut so is possible. And here's a reason why. If you enter in the phrase section a sentence, or a word, in lowercase, the way you use the shortcut will define the way the phrase will appear. Lets clarify this a bit.

Having the shortcut me: whatever, writing Me will be replaced with Whatever, and writing ME will be replaced with WHATEVER, and, of course, me with whatever.

This won't work if you've used any capitals in the phrase section, which, therefore, makes a point.


Am I going to lose my data on my Mac partition if I delete the Linux partition to extend my Mac partition? I have a MacBook Pro with two partitions:

macOS partition (200 GB).
Linux partition (100 GB).

When I enter the Recovery Mode and open Disk Utility, and click "partition" on my whole HD device, I can see a pie chart showing each partition and its size.

My goal is to delete the Linux partition and get back to the normal state where my Mac has a full 300 GB of storage instead of 200 GB.

My question is:
If on the pie chart I clicked on the Linux partition and clicked the minus "-" symbol, will it achieve my goal?

Is it going to delete my Linux partition and give its size to the Mac without losing any data on my Mac partition?

The answer is no you will not lose your data.

You now are a potential member in the "Unintended Consequences" club. So what we do here is change "no" to "you probably won't lose data if everything goes well."

Which means, backup the entire Mac partition and then boot from the backup and make sure it is good before proceeding.

Once you have your backup that Murphy's Law of Unnecessary Backups says you will now never need the backup you just made, you may now proceed with deleting the Linux partition and expanding the macOS partition into the empty space. Which is not supposed to delete anything on your macOS partition, if everything goes well.


Showing comments when presenting in Keynote I want to use the yellow "post-it" style comments in my document to show when I'm presenting slides, but they disappear automatically when I start playing the slideshow. How do I keep them there when presenting?

You cannot (if you want to be sure of it, simply search for “note” in Keynote’s help).

Comments are explicitly made for the presenter, not the audience. They behave just like Presenter Notes, except they are positioned on the slides instead of being meta-data.

If you want to show post-it notes on the screen, you'll have to obtain a post-it image somewhere, and then fill it with text.

The easiest way to do so is to take a screen capture of a dashboard widget. I'll be nice, here it is for you  ;)

You can then simply add it as background image of a rectangle, and fill it with text however you please.


How do i transfer an app that has been downloaded to the PC iTunes Store to my iPhone 5? I downloaded Real Racing from PC iTunes Store.

How do I transfer it to my iPhone? I see a Cloud sign in in the app on the iPhone but when I press it, it asks me to be connected to WiFi but I don't have a WiFi connection but mobile data is available.

Real Racing, if I recall, is too large to transfer to your phone over the air unless you're connected to Wi-Fi. So, you will need to use iTunes to install it to your phone (unless you find a Wi-Fi Hotspot to use.)


What does ⌛ Preview Hidden in macOS Messages app mean? One of my contacts with whom I exchange iMessages, has started showing ⌛ Preview Hidden in the macOS Messages app just below their name.

Interestingly, this is not shown in the Messages app on my iPad and iPhone, just the Mac. Also, I have not enabled Hide Alerts for the said contact. I am able to communicate with them normally, and I also receive the notifications for any messages that they send.

My questions are:

What does ⌛ Preview Hidden mean?
What causes it to get enabled?
How to remove/disable it?
Does it apply to all the devices linked to my Apple ID and where Messages are enabled?

I use Messages in iCloud, and I am running current up-to-date version of OS on all the devices that I use (macOS Catalina 10.15.4 (19E287) on Mac and iOS/iPadOS 13.4.1 on iPhones/iPads).

I had this too and this seemed to give me what I wanted (the preview):
System Preferences->Notifications->Messages->Show Notification Preview->set to Always. Then Quit Messages and restart.


How do I change the playback speed in iTunes? On the iPhone I can speed up the playback of podcasts to 2x.
Is there a way to do the same in iTunes?

This is not natively possible in the Mac version of iTunes (nor Windows for the matter). You don’t mention if you have OS X or Windows. If you have the former, you have two choices:

1) If the podcast is an MP3 file, you can convert the file to an AAC file in iTunes (with an extension of m4a.) and then change the extension to m4b; the file becomes an audiobook which can be played faster if I am not mistaken.

2) Another alternative is to hear it in Quicktime, which has speed controls: Right click the file in iTunes and choose "Show In Finder”. Option-click the file (right click) and select “Open With…”, select QuickTime. Once in Quicktime option-click the "Accelerate" button to change the playback speed.


Outlook 365 - cannot search mailbox after restore I'm a business user of Office 365, including Outlook. I recently had to replace the main SSD drive in my Mac Pro; I was unable to do a normal Time Machine restore (bombed out halfway through the restore), so instead I did a full reinstall of Mojave (10.14.5) and used the Migration Assistant to restore my entire system.

This seemed to work pretty well, except that I can no longer search for messages in Outlook - every search returns "No Results" almost straight away. I've tried the usual advice - rebooted, rebuilt Spotlight index etc, but nothing appears to fix it, and it's becoming increasingly frustrating. Everything else, including Spotlight search for other things, seems to be working fine.

Before I try deleting and recreating my profile from scratch - which I really don't want to do - is there anything else I can try to get searching working again?

EDIT: I've since tried removing and recreating the account, and still it doesn't search :(

According to this Microsoft Knowledge Base article, the search bug has been fixed in macOS Mojave 10.14.5. However some users still are unable to search Outlook messages, even with fresh Mojave installations.

Solution A

Make sure that your new SSD drive is NOT excluded from the Spotlight index. Open System Preferences > Spotlight > Click the Privacy tab. If so, remove your disk partition. Rebuilding the Spotlight without command line:

Open again System Preferences > go to Spotlight > Click the Privacy tab
Click the Add (+) button to add your SSD disk
Select your SSD disk that you just added, then click the (–) button
Spotlight will begin reindexing you new SSD disk

UPDATE to Solution B

Microsoft provides a Outlook Search Repair for previous macOS versions. It turned out Outlook Search Repair is no longer compatible with macOS Mojave.

Solution C

Let's try to manually re-index specifically the Outlook profile folder.

In Finder Select Go → while holding down alt on your keyboard select → Library". Navigate to → Group Containers then open UBF8T346G9.Office
Open System Preferences > Go to Spotlight > Click the Privacy tab
Drag and drag the Outlook folder to the Privacy window list
Close the System Preferences window
Open again System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy tab.  Select the Outlook folder that you just added, then click the (–) button
Wait 10-20 minutes

Depending on your disk size, rebuilding Spotlight could take some time e.g. 30-60 minutes before result will show up in Outlook.

Solution D

I have stumbled up the following solution. Before proceeding, please make absolutely sure that you create a full backup (You have been warned!). This process could take a lot of time.

Close Outlook
In Finder Select Go → while holding down alt on your keyboard select → Library". Navigate to → Group Containers then open UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile/Data
Move Outlook.sqllite file to your desktop or trash.
Open Outlook and click Repair. It will start a rebuilt process and it creates a new Outlook Profile, including a new *.sqllite database.
Depending on your Outlook Profile size, rebuilding might takes several hours.


Loading purchased music onto my iPhone 5S I have purchased a lot of music from iTunes on my MacBook. Whenever I select that music to be moved to my iPhone, it appears (on the iPhone) with a "Cloud" icon beside it. As far as I can tell, the only way I can play this music is to re-load it from the "Cloud" - which the phone tells me will cost money. Why is this happening? I have already bought the music! All I want is for it to appear, like any other music, on my iPhone, as a playable file. Suggestions?

Make sure the iPhone and iTunes are connected to the same iTunes store account and are both 'authorized'. Then you should be able to drag-and-drop in iTunes between your computer and iPhone.


iMac only works in safe mode and cursor showing weird black lines (pic attached) Have a Mid 2010 model computer IMac 21.5 that is acting up. Won't work in normal start up, will start in safe mode, but cursor shows strange black lines (see attached photo). These lines follow the cursor around.

Running Yosemite

Yeah, your video card is bad.  The good news is that your iMac can run pretty well without a video card; it'll be fine for everything but the most demanding video games.

So what you need to do is move the video driver out of the way, so the kernel doesn't try to load it.  Do an "ls" in /System/Library/Extensions ("sudo ls /System/Library/Extensions") and look for something that looks like the name of a video card: on my system it's called ATIRadeonX2000.kext.  Now move that file somewhere else (like, to your home directory).  Reboot (into normal, not safe mode) and you should be good to go.


How to export conversation history from Microsoft Communicator for Mac (2011)? Got a new Mac & trying to move my stuff from old Mac. I am unable to find a way to move the conversation history of Microsoft Communicator 2011 (version 13.1.2) from old Mac.

After running this command,

find ~ -type f -exec grep "special search string" {} \; -print

I was able to find the Conversation history at

/Users/<my_mac_user_id>/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Microsoft Communicator History/<my_communicator_login_id>

Just copying the entire folder to new mac solved my problem.

"special search string" is an unique string you would have used while chatting with your friends/colleagues.


At what level of battery health does iOS begin to throttle performance? I have an iPhone SE running iOS 10.3.3, planning to upgrade to iOS 13. A third-party app indicated I can charge to about 80% of my battery's capacity. I know that right now it lasts less time than when it was new, but it still works pretty well and is perfectly fast. I also know that iOS 13 drains battery faster than iOS 10. But at this level of battery health, would iOS 13 be an additional problem that results in performance throttling which wouldn't happen in iOS 10?

When you go to Settings -> Battery -> Battery health you see the capacity of the battery. That number indicates the power storage capacity of the battery relative to a brand new battery. It does not directly indicate the health of the battery in terms of what you are asking for, therefore the question cannot be precisely answered in the way you have asked it.

You want to know when power throttling starts, but that starts after the iPhone has noticed that there has been an unexpected shutdown due to the battery not being able to deliver enough power during a peak power consuming operation. That is therefore not the same as the battery's capacity, but has to do with how much power (or amps if you will) that battery can deliver in bursts.

There is definitely usually a correlation between the capacity and its peak power delivery capability, but there is no direct relationship. Power storage capacity is one thing, peak power delivery capability is another.

iOS can only report directly and a priori on the first. The second is a matter of learning 'the hard way' that the iPhone asked for too much power during some operation, therefore experienced an unexpected shutdown, therefore iOS will thereafter, unless you disable it again in the same Battery health screen, run in throttled mode, so as to not have the same thing happen again.


iMac not logging probably due to keychains problem iMac OS X Lion.

I have 2 accounts with password.

On the first account, I was messing up the keychains thing. If I recall correctly, I think I deleted all private keys I had and added exported keys from a different Mac (long story).

I have logged out.

Now, when I try to login to the first account, I write the password, the screen goes blank for a moment, and then goes back to the login screen. No popup messages at all etc.

I can, however, enter my second account, probably because I didn't mess with the keychains in it.

So I need help figuring out how can I.. err, login to the first account and fix this keychains problem?

I was suggested to enter safe mode, following the steps here: iMac Lion not logging in but it doesn't seem to work.

You need to boot your Mac into Recovery HD mode, and then use the Reset Password utility utility to reset your log-in password.

Shut down your Mac, and press the power button. As soon as you heard the start-up chime, hold down the Option key. Images of more than one boot volume will show up. Use the arrow keys to select Recovery HD. When bootup in Recovery HD completes, you can find the Reset Password utility in the menu commands. Sorry, I don't have a screen shot.


How to install GNU Objective-C on OS X? I have OS X Mavericks and I want to try to learn Objective-C(++). For this, I need to install the gobjc compiler, how do it (I've tried to install gobjc from sources but it's still not present)?

The most straightforward way to install an Objective-C compiler is by installing Xcode (which is available free from the App Store). It gives you both the IDE and the command-line compilers (there's an option inside Xcode to install the latter). If you don't want to install the IDE, you can install the command-line tools only using xcode-select --install.

Once you have the command-line tools installed, you can use them to bootstrap GCC if you'd prefer to use that.


Connect bluetooth earbuds in Mojave failing I have the following earbuds model: Panasonic Wireless Bluetooth in-Ear Headphones with Sound Mic Controller & Quick Charge Function Blue (RP-HJE120B-A)

Here's my macbook Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,4
System Version: macOS 10.14 (18A391)

I am trying to pair my earbuds following the directions in the manual, but to no avail. I've paired them with my phone, but I know that that isn't interfering (I turned bluetooth off on my phone. I also tried to delete the file at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist also no go. Any suggestions? Other devices like computers pop up and my UE MINI BOOM speaker is showing up in the menu (though it's already been paired).

I tried a PRAM Reset and it seemed to work for me. Other things you can try are

Check your system log
tail -f /private/var/log/system.log
If you see something like the following in your log, then likely the PRAM reset will help

com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.preference.sound.remoteservice[4642]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by com.apple.preference.sound.remot[4642]

Also try the following

sudo mv /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/BluetoothAudioPlugin.driver ~/Desktop
Restart
sudo cp -R ~/Desktop/BluetoothAudioPlugin.driver /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/


How do I make a custom context menu item in Finder? I do a lot of command line work, which involves a lot of folder navigation with cd.

To make my life easier, I'd love to be able to right-click on a folder in Finder and have a context menu item I could click that simply opens Terminal and cds to that directory.

How would I go about this in OS X (Snow Leopard)? I'm a website developer, so familiar with programming languages and computer literate, so feel free to get technical with me.

If you want the cd command in a new window or tab, you can simply turn on the built-in services, "New Terminal at Folder" and "New Terminal Tab at Folder", by going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services > Files and Folders.

If you want the cd command in the active window or tab, you can make a simple Automator Service.

In a new Automator Service, change "Service receives selected" to folders.
Add a "Run AppleScript" action.
Replace (* Your script goes here *) with the following:

tell application "Terminal"
    reopen
    activate
    set cmd to "cd " & quoted form of posix path of input
    try
        if busy of selected tab of window 1 then error
        do script with command cmd in window 1
    on error
        do script with command cmd
    end try
end tell

Save the service with whatever name you want your menu item to have, then it's ready to go.

An alternative to using a contextual menu is to just type cd (with a trailing space) then drag the folder to the Terminal window.


Is there any way to daisy chain a 2009 24" iMac to a 2013 macbook pro with dvi cable? I have seen the apple support guidance located at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3924, but find it hard to believe there is not some kind of work around.  Any ideas?

You can attach your 24" iMac to your MacBook Pro using a MiniDisplay cable. Your MBP has Thunderbolt and the iMac has MiniDisplay. Follow the instructions on the site you linked to and enjoy.

*Daisy chaining is when you have a line of devices that use the same connection (Thunderbolt or FireWire) and you can attach several devices (external hard drives for example) and the devices are attached to each other with one of the being attached to the computer.


Sudden barrage of "too many open files" in log, cascading app failures I came into work today with a cascade of "Application Unexpectedly Quit" messages on my desktop.

Looking in system.log I'm seeing many failures due to too many open files. The first instance looks like:

Core Sync[525]: dnssd_clientstub deliver_request: socketpair failed 24 (Too many open files)
Core Sync[525]: tcp_connection_host_start 7318 DNSServiceGetAddrInfo failed: -65537

There's about a dozen or so of these pairs of errors, after which I see:

Core Sync[525]: nw_interface_create_with_index_and_name information socket creation failed: [24] Too many open files, dumping backtrace:
            [x86_64] libnetcore-583.50.1
        0   libsystem_network.dylib             0x00007fff967aade9 __nw_create_backtrace_string + 123
        1   libsystem_network.dylib             0x00007fff967ccc0a nw_interface_create_with_index_and_name + 657
        2   libsystem_network.dylib             0x00007fff967cd30f nw_interface_create_with_index + 195
        3   libsystem_network.dylib             0x00007fff967877fa tcp_connection_create_connected_path_evaluator_for_connected_dst + 182
        4   libsystem_network.dylib             0x00007fff96787499 tcp_connection_handle_destination_complete + 726
        5   libsystem_network.dylib             0x00007fff967bc686 __tcp_connection_destination_setup_socket_events_block_invoke_2 + 2658
        6   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff87d4240b _dispatch_client_callout + 8
        7   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff87d52675 _dispatch_source_latch_and_call + 2235
        8   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff87d46a83 _dispatch_source_invoke + 983
        9   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff87d47200 _dispatch_queue_drain + 1207
        10  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff87d4d707 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 549
        11  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff87d45d53 _dispatch_root_queue_drain + 538
        12  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff87d45b00 _dispatch_worker_thread3 + 91
        13  libsystem_pthread.dylib             0x00007fff88a0c4de _pthread_wqthread + 1129
        14  libsystem_pthread.dylib             0x00007fff88a0a341 start_wqthread + 13

There's several screens full of this error and the previous one.

Following that is a bunch of other sorts of failure from a variety of applications, and an ongoing smattering of the above errors.

There's also several pages of kernel[0]: Sandbox: mdworker(802) deny(1) file-read-data /Applications/App Store.app
which I think is from Spotlight, probably a side-effect of the too many open files problem.

Using lsof and an awk script, I found that the process with the most open files is Core Sync with a pretty consistent count of 7227 files open.

CPU and memory usage seem to be what I'd expect.

I tried rebooting in safe mode, repairing the boot drive, resetting PRAM, and used Onyx to clear all the caches. I don't recall installing anything new or unusual recently, and everything was fine when I left work last night.

I'm on Mac OS 10.11.6 on a Mid 2012 Mac Pro.

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

So the problem turned out to be in Adobe CC. I ran the Adobe CC UNinstaller, and selected "Repair", rebooted, and things were back to whatever normal is. I just wish I'd connected Core Sync with Adobe sooner!

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, here's the script I used to figure what had the most files opened. It lists all the processes by name, and sorts by number of open files.

#!/bin/bash
lsof +c 0 | gawk '
{
    if (! $1 in count)
        count[$1] = 0
    count[$1]++
}
END {
    for (var in count)
        print var, count[var]
}
' | sort -n --key=2

It depends on GNU awk (gawk) so not sure how well it would work with the installed awk.


Can Apple Motion export with alpha to bring into iMovie? I currently use After Effects / Premier Pro at work. For my home use I need a new laptop and am considering a Mac. The deciding factor will be cost and if iMovie/Motion can do what I want.

(I'll probably eventually get Final Cut but its going to be a while due to budget)

If I use Motion to create lower thirds, title sequences, and playing a bit with other special effects like particle systems and such... afterwards can I export them with a transparent / alpha background to import into iMovie?

I read How useful is Motion 5 without Final Cut Pro X? but it doesn't really cover this. Says I would have to slice up the movie and do the Motion work on top of the exact segment I want it.

Until I can afford to upgrade to FCP would Motion and iMovie give me the tools I'm looking for?

Yes, Motion can export with transparency into iMovie. I have used this exact procedure in the past and can confirm it works great. Using iMovie's picture in picture with some resizing retains the alpha and lets you overlay whatever you've exported from Motion into iMovie.

The linked question's answer is from 2011 and things have changed a lot since then, namely the introduction of the 'Advanced Tools' which include picture in picture (and have recently been abolished and integrated directly into the workflow). This means you don't have to 'splice' your video and work on it externally — it's all integrated pretty smoothly.


Smart Playlist song count incorrect on music app I have a smart playlist that has 804 songs.

The smart playlist also has the same song count when viewing the device via iTunes

However, the music app displays 6 less songs.

Why would this be happening? I've deleted and re-created the playlist, but that did not work. I'm not sure what else to do.

The most like answer for that is that not all songs may have been transferd to your device maybe do to unsupported format or maybe you have duplicates in your itunes library.


Confusion! when it says "iPhone 4S AT&T", does it mean that the 4S was locked to AT&T GSM & unlocked CDMA? I saw an add in Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B005SSB0YO/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

It says "Apple iPhone 4S 16GB (White) - AT&T", so it means that that iPhone only works for AT&T. SInce AT&T uses GSM so that phone can not be used for any other GSM carriers right?

Ok, but the iPhone 4s also supports CDMA & CDMA do not need any sim card, so will the above phone work with any CDMA carrier?

It seems that even 4s supports both but if the phone was sold as locked phone then the CDMA part was disable in 4s, is it true?

And via versa, ie if the 4s was locked to Verizon then the GSM part of 4s was disable & that phone can not be used for GSM net work, but it can be used for GSM in oversea where Verizon has no competition. Is That true as well?
(http://www.cnet.com/au/news/why-you-cant-take-your-unlocked-iphone-4s-to-another-u-s-carrier/)

The only place to buy an unlocked iPhone is direct from Apple. Buying one from anywhere is a risky proposition. It may either not work as advertised, or worse yet, be a previously stolen phone.

Even though you are correct that the iPhone 4S has a chip that works on both GSM and CDMA networks, per Apple, the unlocked phones will only work on GSM networks.


Submitting apps containing ports of chromium browser or webkit engine in the app store A small doubt here:

I am building an app which will contain either a custom, modified version of Chromium or a modified version of the webkit rendering engine.

Does Apple have a policy of not allowing Chromium/webkit into the apps (I am guessing Apple prefers only Webcore - https://www.webkit.org/blog/114/webcore-rendering-i-the-basics/)? Is there an alternative if yes?

WebKit is in fact the only rendering engine allowed into the App Store, but you have to use Apple's preinstalled version, not your own. Relevant bit:

App Store Review Guidelines §2.17
Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript

So it's possible that, if it doesn't qualify as “browsing the web”, you have a chance at getting past that. Some of the most important parts of WebKit on iPhone are also closed source.
WebCore, as part of Apple's WebKit, is accepted, but it does not appear possible with these guidelines to modify it, and I think you still have to go through the WebKit framework. Plenty of people use JavaScript with JSCore in the default WebKit.
The choice to disallow all other web frameworks is honestly a bit odd, but it looks like you might have to do something besides that; it really depends on what you want to change or add from Chromium/WebKit.