Where is the keyboard profile file stored on my MacBook for VMware Fusion 8? I am trying to add some keyboard shortcuts to VMware Fusion 8 but the dialog is kinda wonky:

Here the two dropdowns doesn't drop down, so any key I don't have on my MacBook is impossible to configure. For instance, I was trying to configure Cmd+Right to be the Windows End key, since I'm programming in Visual Studio I want quick keyboard navigation, however, since the dropdown doesn't drop down, it is impossible for me to pick the End key.

So, the configuration file that contains this keyboard profile, does anyone know where on my system this is stored so perhaps I can hack it directly in there?

VMware Fusion's Application Preferences are saved on a per User basis in:

/Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/preferences


Can an Open Directory (10.8) user's home directory be changed from the terminal? I'd like to use SFTP/SSH for users (students and faculty) to manage their web content. The default home directory is "/Users//". I'd like to point them to something like "/Users//web" to block access to the other folders that are created in the home directory.

I want to use terminal in order to avoid manually changing the setting for > 400 users. Is this possible?

Yes, it's certainly possible, but you'll need a bit of scripting knowledge to do it entirely. I wish I had a more elegant solution to edit things in place, but here's ham-fisted option if no one has a more surgical option.

I typically use slapcat to dump the current user details to a text file and then process is using perl or whatever other tool you want. Since it's one file, even TextEdit can do a search/replace. By putting the users in a group, you can specify that in slapcat.

At this point, I'd convert that text file into the import format that server app wants - see it's help guide - Server Help: Create a file to import users or groups (or click this after pasting it locally to your Mac help://bookmark='https://help.apple.com/serverapp/mac/2.2/help/index.html?localePath=English.lproj#apd41051F16-D4B7-464F-BD1C-0CBEDF7CA29A')

At this point you could delete the affected records and re-introduce them with the correct home directories.


Where can I find the OS X installer? Everything I've seen says get it from the App Store, but when I search the App Store I get 'nothing found'.

I am trying to build a USB boot stick on one old 15" MacBook Pro for an even older 17" MacBook Pro.

Working mac:
MacBook Pro 15-inch Early 2008
OSX Verison 10.9.5 (13F1911)

Mac with corrupt disk:
MacBook Pro 17-inch April 2006

The latest OS that will run on your machine is Snow Leopard. There is no software download for OS X Snow Leopard. You need to find the install disk, buy a new install disk, or take your laptop to an Apple Store, where they will reinstall the OS for free.


What are the dimensions in pixels of a picture taken with iPhone 8 and X? Does anybody know the dimension, in pixels, of a picture taken with the front and back cameras of both iPhone 8 and iPhone X at their maximum resolutions for both cameras?

iPhone X / iPhone 8 Plus / iPhone 8

3088 px x 2320 px (FaceTime Camera)
4032 px x 3024 px (main cameras)

So the cameras have the same resolution on each model. The wide-angle lenses on the back are all stabilized. iPhone 8 Plus features a telephoto camera which is not stabilized. iPhone X has the same telephoto camera but also sports an optical image stabilization.

Source: Apple.com


Macbook Update to High Sierra unbootable I updated my late-2013 MacBook Pro from macOS Sierra to macOS High Sierra this morning.
The update ran fine and I got back into my system everything looking ok.

Then I shut the MacBook down to go to work.
When I tried to boot it up again I end up with a black screen and nothing to happen further.
(In detail: The screen turns on (apple on back is bright). I hear the boot up sound. Then nothing happens. The screen stays turned on even if I remove power and close the lid. Only pressing power button for a view seconds turns the MacBook completely off. Another interesting thing: when I let the MacBook stay in this black screen state for a while I start hearing the cooling ventilator running at low power which suggests that the MacBook is making use of its computational power but does not display anything)

Any ideas what to do now?
(of course I have a Time Machine backup on an external drive but I don't have an idea how to make use of it at this point)

Further information:

The macOS partition was encrypted with FileVault and a modification:
only he root user can decrypt it
Also there was a Boot Camp partition with Windows 10
It seems like pressing Option key works and booting the Windows partition works!
When I press the Option key I can select between Windows and Macintosh HD. Menu works fine. The second I press Enter on the Macintosh HD it seems to freeze. So maybe it's related to the encryption?
I managed to boot into my time machine backup using the boot menu with connected backup drive. Using the Disk Utility I found a crazy fact: It seems like the macOS partition is gone. Not sure if this is normal (could be because Disk Utility can't read the encrypted partition?)

Possible reason for the problem

I am not 100% sure but my guess on why all this happened is the special way I set up my disk encryption. (For detail: I used normal File Fault encryption but because my standard user has a weak password I removed this user from the users who are able to decrypt and instead added a root user with a strong password who was able to decrypt the drive.)

As my research provided the the update to High Sierra changes the file system format from HPFS+ to the new standard called APFS. With a different encryption as well. My guess is that during the upgrade either the special root user was removed or another error occurred in connection to this constellation.

How I finally dealt with it

As written above I was able to boot in the recovery mode of the TimeMachine disk. But I had to realise that this time machine was running OSX El Capitan (obviously the running system of my Mac when I created the first backup) and El Capitan was of course not able to either decrypt or even identify the new APFS file system on my internal drive (which explains the missing partition in my picture).

The next try was (don't know why I didn't try this earlier) to boot in normal recovery mode by holding down CMD+R while booting. This worked and I was able to use the disk utility to delete the Macintosh HD partition, create a new one instead (as APFS) and the reinstall macOS High Sierra from the recovery menu.

After the complete new installation finished I was asked if I want to move any data and I selected my Time Machine backup. It needed a few hours but after this my system is back on track. Everything seems and where I left it.

Notes

As general note for all of you who want to perform the upgrade: Back up your data immediately before doing it!
And after the update is done shut down the Mac once to check if everything is fine. (Don't wanna think about the scenario where I would have worked a few days without shutdown any new backup and then shut it down to end with this...)
After my described fix I had to set up the disk encryption again (now I only use my normal user and instead of any trick the account now has a strong password...)

Thanks for your help :)


How to get an iPad to switch automatically to the strongest network? I work in an office that has 3 WiFi networks, the strength obviously depending on where you are in the building. All 3 networks have been set up on my iPad 3. I often move around in the office, but find that my iPad never switches to the strongest network, but always stays on the network I have manually selected (assuming there is even a slight signal of that network). I have to manually go to the Settings app to switch over to the strongest network, which is a hassle.

Is there a way to get the iPad to switch automatically to the currently strongest network?

Sorry mate, unfortunately no such thing exists.


How to contact Apple for the Mac store billing support? I've recently registered to the Mac Store and provided the credit card though I didn't plan to buy anything immediately. Some people say that there is an option "no card" when registering, but I didn't know that, so whatever.
After the registration I was charged 2 euros, without any explanations.

I've searched throughout the Apple's website but I cannot find any way to contact the support. I am all the way redirected to some manuals, while the support with the real people seems to be available for the devises' sales only.

All of this is not about the 2 euros, but about the disappointing experience.

It's a three step process - with pictures below!

Click support in the Quick Links tab
on the right hand side of the App
Store app.
Click billing in the web page
that opened as a result of step 1.
Feed in all the information and wait
the 24 hours or so it takes to get
an initial response.

It is so worth it to ask for a refund or help (especially in your case where you didn't intend to buy yet) - everyone wins in the end as developers and Apple really don't want a sale that ends up with an unsatisfied customer.

The system is not perfect nor is it set up to allow previews of purchases, so no one should feel bad requesting a refund or two. Especially so if the program wasn't explained well or is seriously faulty. Would you want a $ and change if it made someone have a lasting bad impression of the work for which you get paid?

Do feel bad if you find yourself abusing the system or on your 10th refund request with no good reason and just not getting the picture.


How can I scroll down to the bottom of document (HTML) in Safari? I normally can use Command-DownArrow, to go to the bottom of the document in text editor such as TextMate.

How can I do the same thing in Safari? How can I scroll down to the bottom of the document with Safari when I read the long HTML document?

And, how can I scroll one screen with keyboard?

Command ⌘ + Down ↓ or Function (Fn) + Right → should both work.

Fn Right is the built-in key combination that is most equivalent to the End key.


retrieve lost selection in Finder Everytime I have to manually select a lot of files by hand picking them from a big folder, I often click somewhere by accident and lose the whole selection and have to do the work all over again. I've gotten into the habit of doing this in chunks, to minimize the pain inflicted when this happens, but would like to find a better solution.

My question then is, is there some log somewhere I can query for a list of the last item selections in finder?

Or, alternatively, is there some Finder extension/alternative which kills this problem by, say, selecting files by ticking a checkbox instead?

I find the design of this has stagnated and there should be better ways on this day and age...selecting and dragging stuff around like that is fiddly and error-prone

Try labelling them & then sort by label.


Time Machine alternatives to save registration information When restoring a Time Machine back-up to a new machine, none of the registration information for the purchased programs carries over to the new machine.

Is there a back-up program which would contain this information? I've got dozens of programs and in some cases the developers have disappeared.

Looked at this similar question: Time Machine alternatives to clone one mac book to another

but it doesn't contain any information about restoration of registration information for purchased programs.

Time Machine backs up every file on the target volume. So any method of storing the registration that involves files on your disk can be restored from a TM backup. No other software is required.

So it's up to you to restore the required files. For instance, relevant data may be in .plist files in the user or root level Library/Preferences or /Library/Application Support folders.

However, many developers understandably use hidden files and obfuscated methods to store registration details and confirm authorised usage.

If you selectively restored files and folders from your backup, then you won't have restored those hidden files. You can see hidden files in the Finder and Time Machine by pressing Shift Command .

It may be easiest just to clone the entire disk, so you may want to try SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner; though I've found that this doesn't always work: Devs may hash hardware characteristics, such as the volume's UUID, in order to ensure that the software won't work without re-registration on new hardware.

It's always a good idea to keep all the serial numbers in text files in a folder for just this occasion, which isn't usually needed very often. I also still have the emails which provided the serials when I made the purchase.


How do hide iPod icon with SBSettings? On my Jailbroken iPad, I have SBSettings installed. I chose to hide all my application icons, but iPod will not go away, no matter what the switch setting is. I was thinking about just going into the file system and manually deleting the icon, but I don't know where it's stored.

Any suggestions?

Are you running OS 3.1.x or 4.0.x? I've had some inconsistencies with hiding certain icons on my jailbroken 4.0.1 phone. It may be that SBSettings isn't fully compatible with OS 4.x yet.

edit: Fail on my behalf. Somehow I missed "iPad" in both your question AND tag. /facepalm


What is the best solution for a free partition recovery? Recently I accidentally partitioned my Seagate Backup Drive (1 TB) not knowing that everything would be wiped off (silly me). I am now in shock knowing that my files are somewhat gone.

I have tried many such as Wondershare or EaseUS but all require me to pay upfront, the trials do no good whatsoever. Is there any 100% free software for recovering partitioned external drives? I just need an answer.

I do realize the risk of putting a wide variety question on here, but I am in dire need of getting my files back and would just like some experience on the matter.

Data Rescue from ProSoft* works, it has a trial and no-cost limited-recovery options. You won't get the whole volume recovered by freeware.

It is unlikely you will get everything back, and if you are still using that drive your recovery percent goes down every hour as files get overwritten. Also unlikely you will get filenames back, just a great big folder of "Recovered File 000238.txt"

Of course you need a different drive to recover things to - no sane recovery program touches the original volume.

Just for comparison, if you want to let the pros at DriveSavers handle the recovery the bill will start at $1000.

prosofteng.com, NOT datarescue.com


Disabling the "keep pressed" function of OS X sticky keys I use the accessibility feature called sticky keys in OS X, what it does is that if you press a command modifier key (Ctrl, Cmd, Alt, Shift, Fn), it stays "pressed" until you press another key. This is very useful if you often use your keyboard with one hand, and actually quite convenient even when you use two hands.

The thing is that if you press a modifier key twice it stays "pressed" until you press it again. While it is sometimes handy, for me it would be preferable if this aspect of the functionality could be disabled, since I trigger it accidentally every now and then.

I realize that if this is at all possible it probably means fiddling with some system file somewhere, that's fine. I just want to see if someone out there might know where to look? :)

You can't turn off the "key lock" functionality (last checked on OS X 10.8.2). You can however install KeyRemap4MacBook, which allows you to make modifier keys sticky without this "key lock".


MBP Retina 2015: Graphical glitches after update to 10.12.4 my Macbook Pro has random graphical glitches. Most of the time they are present in Spotify, and less often in Chrome. An example of such glitches is on the photo attached.

Is there a known solution to this problem?

You're not alone (see this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7908354?start=0&tstart=0). I had the same artifacts and reverting to 10.12.3 "solved" everything. Let's hope this bug will be fixed with the release of MacOS 10.12.5 (sadly, I doubt it).


Proxy Login Popups on Mavericks I have updated my Mac OS  from Snow Leapord to Mevericks recently. I work behind proxy and I have set proxy for network and saved creadentials in Keychain too.
Still I get annoying system prompts for logging into proxy too many times.
Any solution to get rid of the Proxy login Popups ?
EDIT
I did following steps

deleted proxy credentials from keychain List item
removed the same from Proxy Settings
Added  proxy settings again ( without credentials )
tried to access google from safari it prompts for crdentials ( twice - maybe for http and https connections as I am adding proxy for both ) -- After above prompts I can see my credentials saved in kechain as well for proxy
Still can not access google from safari, can access same from Firefox / chrome ( they have seperate prompt for login ), even can access itune store from iTunes. (iTunes asked me for keychain access of proxy )
removed https proxy and kept only http, now I can not Access iTune Store so added the same again

Here are my keychain attributes for proxy

Name : 127.0.1.1 (vishal.kardode)
Kind : Internet Password
Account : vishal.kardode
Where : http:// 127.0.1.1:80 ( for https proxy its https://... )
Comments : default

Added space between "http://" and "127.0.." as it was not allowing to post
EDIT2
The Issue Persists, now I can not conect to iTunes Store either ( using iTunes )
every time I open Safari or iTunes I get the prompt, every time keychain gets updated as I login using the prompt but not able to connect to https://google.com or iTunes Store. Surprisingly I can connect to other https site
Here is screenshot of the proxy authentication prompt

I have changed the ip of proxy server in above post to 127.0... . Actual ip starts with 172...

Quick question first, are you setting the proxies manually or are you getting the settings via Auto Discovery or an Automatic Proxy Configuration (APC) URL?

If you are setting them manually then you should be able to select Proxy Server requires password and enter the correct credentials there.

If you are getting them as an APC URL then you may have a problem with that particular keychain. Using the Keychain Access utility look in both your login and iCloud keychains and delete any you find for the the proxy server.

Now you should be able to save your credentials properly.


what is access_bpf group? Does anyone know what the "access_bpf" group is / does. I noticed it when I went into Preferences > Users & Groups.

I've searched around and found that it has something to do with Wireshark, however I have not installed the program on my Mac so I'm too sure how the group got added.

Wireshark's installer configures your system so that the user doing the installation can capture network traffic without the capturing program having to run as root.

The way it does this is to:

create an access_bpf group;
put the user into that group;
install a StartupItem (in older versions) or a launch daemon (in newer versions) that, when the system is booted, changes the permissions of the BPF devices to rw-rw--- and the group owner of the BPF devices to access_bpf;
arranges that the StartupItem/launch daemon run at that time.

Note, BTW, that this also allows you to capture traffic with Wireshark (or Wireshark's TShark or dumpcap programs) without having to run them as root, it also allows you to capture traffic with tcpdump without having to run it as root.


Vi for Mac OS, differences with Vim I am using Mac OS X, with vim and I am getting a bit used to it. A teacher at the university told us he will ask us to demonstrate him our knowledge on Vi and specified that it is Vi and not Vim. I read a lot of posts on different website and this forum about the differences between the two, but they do not seem really big especially looking on how to use it. In order to practice for my exam on Vi should I move to Vi instead of Vim?

Is there a way to install Vi and not Vim on my Mac? I have found a lot of Vim version, I am using the native one.

From the vim man page : https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/vim.1.html

There are two vim options to do what you want :

vim -v          Start Vim in Vi mode, just like the executable was called "vi".   This  only  has  effect
                   when the executable is called "ex".

vim -C          Compatible.  Set the 'compatible' option.  This will make Vim behave mostly like Vi, even
               though a .vimrc file exists.

You can also install ex-vi which is the traditional vi text editor through brew, first install brew http://brew.sh/.
Run brew install ex-vi, but it may cause a conflict with vim.


How to block a developer certificate I accidentally installed Mac Cleanup Pro when I was going to upgrade Flash for a web site. I've used 'Little Snitch' to block the sites it connects to. The malware is all signed by a Developer ID 'vijay ameta (3Q3PBWQ48N)' which is issued by Apple Inc.

Is there a way to block that certificate?
(is there a way to get Apple to withdraw the certificate?)

I’m not sure you can block it other than uninstalling it and whatever you did to install it (other installer, other app, ???)

To get Apple’s attention, unless they sold that app on the App Store or you were sure you can locate an app that’s signed from the Mac App Store or iOS App Store from the same developer, I’d start with Apple Support to report potential loss of that developer’s Apple ID.

https://getsupport.apple.com/

If you assume no developer would sign code that does bad things, you can also assume that somehow they lost their keys and someone is abusing their keys to spread bad software. If it turns out they are the bad person, you’re not making the assumption of anything other than their keys were used for something they may or may not have approved.


Can you play h.264 saved in Dropbox on iOS? I want to save h.264 video files on dropbox and play them on iPhone. Can we do that?

Yes, it should work. According to this article, it works on the iPhone 4. I don't see a reason why it shouldn't work on iOS. Although, if it does not work, you can use this iOS app that converts formats of files you transfer from PC to iOS.


Which iOS versions are affected by the 2nd December date bug? There is a date bug on iOS 11.1.2 which causes iOS to constantly respring after 2nd December, caused by recurring local notifications. iPhone with repeating loading spinner

I'm currently on iOS 11.0.1 and unaffected by this bug. Which versions of iOS are affected?

The Apple support article about the bug does not state which versions of iOS are affected, only that iOS 11.2 resolves the problem.

I was backing up my device ready to update to 11.1 as I haven't seen any reports of this version being affected, then watched as Apple stopped signing it right before my eyes. I don't want to update to iOS 11.2 for the potential of a jailbreak. Is 11.1.1 (the only other non-11.2 version being signed right now) susceptible to this bug?

iOS (11.1.1 & 11.1.2) version are affected.

This bug fixed in iOS 11.2

Article link : https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/12/02/new-ios-bug-causes-some-devices-to-crash-on-dec-2-heres-how-to-fix-it


Can you FaceTime over 3G with jailbroken iPhone 4? Can you FaceTime over 3G with jailbroken iPhone 4?

If so, can you FaceTime in following situations?

A initiates FaceTime over 3G with jailbroken iPhone 4. B is also on 3G with jailbroken iPhone 4.
A initiates FaceTime over 3G with jailbroken iPhone 4. B is also on 3G with non-jailbroken iPhone 4.
A initiates FaceTime over wifi connection. B is on 3G with jailbroken iPhone 4.
A initiates FaceTime over wifi connection. B is on 3G with non-jailbroken iPhone 4.

Yes to all of your questions.

The Jailbreak app My3G tricks your iPhone into thinking it is on WiFi, enabling you to use FaceTime over 3G.

Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2010/08/02/facetime-over-3g-comes-to-jailbroken-iphone-4s/


Lossless DVD Conversion to iTunes Is there a program for Mac that I can use to copy DVDs to iTunes? I've tried Handbrake but the quality is poor. Maybe there's just a setting I need to change?

Given that you want playback on your Mac and iOS devices, Handbrake is really the way to go. As you note in the comments, it's not lossless, but you should be able to get pretty good quality, and with a good reduction in file size.

If you find the quality of your first attempt unacceptable, you can adjust the settings to improve it (typically at the cost of file size).

A good starting point is the Universal or iPad preset in Handbrake. The RF slider adjusts how much compression is used (higher RF = more compression = less quality).

Try setting it around 19, maybe 18 (it's logarithmic, so small amounts make big differences) and do an encode, see how you feel about the quality. If it's still lacking, reduce the RF a bit more and try again. Perhaps just pick a chapter or two as a test encode until you figure out what settings you want.


Photos imported from iPhone lose their albums I've got a load of albums that I made on my iPhone to organize my photos. But when they get imported into iPhoto (which I do over Photo Stream), they lose their albums and come in just as one long stream.

This also seems to happen if I just bring them in using iPhoto and the USB lead.

Is there any way to bring them in and preserve the albums, or do I have to rebuild each album again inside of iPhoto?

I don't have an answer, but I think I can clarify the question:

In the built-in IOS Photo app, you can create Albums, which are essentially folders of aliases. So I created the album Selva Verde fauna, for photos of animals I'd taken in the Costa Rican lowlands. In iPhoto, this album seems to be inaccessible: all I see is my iPhone device name (say, David's iPhone) and the photos in my Camera Roll. So all the time I spent selecting photos is wasted, and I have to guess which are the edited versions I've tweaked in Filterstorm (a truly fantastic app: 70% of Photoshop's capabilities for 2% of the price!). To make things even more irritating, in the iPhone Photos app the images are in chronological order, so edited versions always come after originals. iPhoto, however, puts them right next to the original image.

What I'd like, and I think it's what Sam's asking for, is a way to import albums from the iPhone, instead of just individual images.


Can I use iPhone headphones with microphone on MacBook Pro? Can I use iPhone headphones with microphone on MacBook Pro?

Yes, but it only works on Unibody Macs. You can also use the volume and play/pause controls.


OS X Yosemite suspends inactive windows I have some user script that runs every about 10 minutes on specific page at opened tab in Safari 8.

The surprise is that safari somehow suspend javascript execution when tab is not active by user for a while.

The question is how to force javascript execution and prevent this behavior?

UPD: actually the same behavior is detected in Opera. I think the problem is  related to Yosemite release?

It might be going into "App Nap"

To disable this for Safari go to Finder, hit ⌘+I and check "Prevent App Nap":

You can check to see if it worked by going opening up Activity Monitor, clicking the Energy tab and seeing if Safari is in sleep mode.


Mac automator to rerun a python script if first attempt failed I wrote a python script to automatically send emails and used automator to run it by run shell:

/usr/local/bin/python /Users/austin/PycharmProjects/assignments/assignments.py

This assignments.py prints 'successfully sent the mail' after emails are sent

I'm wondering if there is a way to let automator rerun this script if it did not receive the 'successfully sent the mail'

It really depends - is there any "pause" or do you want to continually keep sending emails? This sounds a bit SPAM-y?

If you have created a 'process' that does some checks and then if there is work to be performed - it does its work and when finished goes back to "sleep".  This sounds more like a daemon task loop.

You can leverage launchctl.  It will keep a daemon/process running indefinitely. I'd suggest you install your script in your user space not the system.  The only difference is it will not start up until you log into your Mac.


Deleting icloud.com mail account from single user on multiple user computer Our iMac is set up for four different users. For  some reason my icloud.com mail account has appeared on my daughters side of the computer. If I delete this from her side will I delete it on my side( and consequently on my iPad and iphone)? Or can I simply delete my mail account from her mail programme.

When you delete an iCloud account from OS X system preferences, nothing changes on Apple's server side. No data is lost, just your local copy is removed and the syncing stops.

Sign out in one or all accounts
Sign back in on the Mac account where you want to use iCloud

No matter what I say, a Time Machine backup before starting any change is always a good thing, just in I wasn't clear to you or something goes wrong or I'm wrong.


How can I delete everything from my MacBook Pro before selling it? I have a Mac that runs Snow Leopard and I intend to upgrade it to Mountain Lion and sell it on ebay. However, I only have one hard-drive, and I'm sure I can't use something in my OS to delete my OS and all user data.

Is there something for this that's built into the firmware that I can do on boot, or otherwise?

I have source code on my Mac for multiple corporations' proprietary software and I can't risk somebody gaining access through the use of any sort of disk recovery tool. I plan to use a 7 pass erase rather than simply deleting the directory.

On Snow Leopard, you would need to boot from an external OS to wipe the drive.

On Mountain Lion (or Lion), the system makes a recovery HD so you can self-wipe the Mac. This is a much, much faster and easier task, so I recommend you upgrade first and then do the wiping using a recovery boot and Disk Utility.

I personally would do these steps (and you could skip the first three steps if you wish since things are going to get erased later whether you clean up first or not):

Make a new admin account on Snow Leopard - call it Apple or something generic and set it to be the account that logs into the Mac.
Log out of all accounts and reboot
Delete your account and let the system do a quick delete of the content
Install Lion or Mountain Lion
Install updates to the OS and then shut down the Mac
Reboot into OS X Recovery - hold down Command-R during startup
Use Disk Utility to do a seven pass erase or whatever level of wiping you prefer.
Quit Disk Utility to go back to the main Recovery menu
Reinstall your OS on the cleanly wiped drive from the main menu
Power off the Mac once the OS has been installed so that the buyer gets that "Welcome to the Mac" experience but no chance to recover your files or data

If I were doing erasing of a personal Mac, I would do a one pass zero and then enable FileVault on Mountain Lion. That would take the zeroes and then encrypt each block securely - so that no two blocks would be identical on the drive. If there were work data, I might repeat zeroing it and turning on a second FileVault pass or follow whatever policy work approves for disposal of confidential data. In reality, anyone that wants to recover data from a one pass write of zeroes needs to take the drive apart in a clean room and image it with some high priced tools, so scrambling things with FileVault seems like enough overkill to me.

Also, you might look here for answers and comments on selling a Mac with software that is licensed for download like Lion and Mountain Lion - most people ask the seller for an email and gift the purchase to them so that the buyer has a legitimate copy. My steps above won't keep your Apple ID on the Mac and the intaller self-deletes itself, so at worst, the seller could undelete that one file and recover the Apple ID email you used. To counter that, you could boot into recovery after the OS was installed and wipe the free space using Disk Utility.

Reinstall Mac OS X Mountain Lion before selling a Mac
Where can I get a copy of Mountain Lion that I can resell with my Apple hardware?


How can I install Mac OS X 10.7.5 on my Macbook Air? I have a 2008 Macbook Air that was running Mac OS X 10.7.5. I purchased it on eBay and wanted to do a full OS reset. This being my first Apple computer (and ONLY Apple computer in my household), I figured it would be a simple procedure -- 1. Wipe the partition, 2. install the OS. Boy was I wrong.

The only thing the computer boots into is "Mac OS X Utilities". When trying to reinstall Mac OS X, it comes up saying "This item is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." Ok, I've tried "icloud.com" where it comes up telling me I don't have a supported version of Safari (lol). I tried the "recovery boot with internet" or whatever, and the 2008 model doesn't support that.

After some research, I've determined I need the operating system (the .app file), and from there, I can put it into TransMac to copy it onto a USB drive, then insert it in the computer. Simple enough, right? Nope! The file doesn't exist online and the only way to obtain it is through the Apple app store.. How can I get on an apple app store? I need a Mac, of course!

What can I do???

The MacBook Air should have come with either a DVD or a USB pen-drive containing the operating system installer. If you haven't got these in your eBay purchase, try contacting the seller to see if he'll send you a digital or physical copy. Otherwise you can try to borrow from a friend.

If you have a USB pen-drive with the installer, you can ofcourse install directly from there.

If you have a DVD with the OS X installer, you can use a USB-connected DVD-drive to run the installer. If you haven't got such a drive, you can use the DVD-drive on a seperate PC (or Mac). Apple has a guide for that scenario here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT3263#

The easiest way to solve your problems seems to be to take the Mac to an Apple Store. They should be able to reload the OS on your MacBook Air. I don't know if the original USB pen-drives are still sold at Apple Store as they were back in the day.


Mac OS Update to 10.14.5 error The error:

Console log:

 2019-06-12 11:21:10+08 Williams-MacBook-Pro-6 softwareupdated[525]: SUBridgeOSUpdateManager: bridgeOS update prepare for 041-57074 failed: Error Domain=BOSErrorDomain Code=111 "An error occurred extracting the update or brain package." UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=An error occurred extracting the update or brain package., NSUnderlyingError=0x7f9c071cd9a0 {Error Domain=PKXARArchiveErrorDomain Code=101 "archive verify failed" UserInfo={NSURL=file:///Library/Updates/041-57074/BridgeOSUpdateCustomer.pkg#Payload, NSFileOwnerAccountID=0, NSFileHFSTypeCode=0, NSFileSystemFileNumber=23313017, NSFileExtensionHidden=false, NSFileSystemNumber=16777221, NSFileSize=327028014, NSFileGroupOwnerAccountID=0, NSFileOwnerAccountName=root, NSFilePosixPermissions=420, NSFileHFSCreatorCode=0, NSFileCreationDate=2019-05-21 02:38:18 +0000, NSFileType=NSFileTypeRegular, NSFileExtendedAttributes={
            "com.apple.quarantine" = <30303836 3b356365 33363731 393b3b>;
        }, NSFileGroupOwnerAccountName=wheel, NSFileReferenceCount=1, NSFileModificationDate=2019-05-22 02:42:43 +0000, NSLocalizedDescription=archive verify failed}}}
    2019-06-12 11:21:10+08 Williams-MacBook-Pro-6 softwareupdated[525]: Changing status (foreground bridgeOS prepare failed) for key 041-57074 from "preparing bridgeOS update" to "download error"
    2019-06-12 11:21:10+08 Williams-MacBook-Pro-6 softwareupdated[525]: Stopping transaction with ID [0x6]
    2019-06-12 11:21:10+08 Williams-MacBook-Pro-6 softwareupdated[525]: SoftwareUpdate: Removed foreground transaction [0x6]
    2019-06-12 11:21:10+08 Williams-MacBook-Pro-6 softwareupdated[525]: Running session-idle tasks.
    2019-06-12 11:21:10+08 Williams-MacBook-Pro-6 softwareupdated[525]: Checking for inapplicable local products remaining on disk for cleanup
    2019-06-12 11:21:10+08 Williams-MacBook-Pro-6 SoftwareUpdateNotificationManager[875]: SUAppStoreUpdateController: status for 041-57074: 041-57074 (a=0x3): download error (2806700848 of 2806700848) 80.0% 1.0s (error: Error Domain=SUErrorDomain Code=602 "An error occurred installing the update." UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x7fc7500218f0 {Error Domain=BOSErrorDomain Code=111 "An error occurred extracting the update or brain package." UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=An error occurred extracting the update or brain package., NSUnderlyingError=0x7fc750038cd0 {Error Domain=PKXARArchiveErrorDomain Code=101 "archive verify failed" UserInfo={NSURL=file:///Library/Updates/041-57074/BridgeOSUpdateCustomer.pkg#Payload, NSFileOwnerAccountID=0, NSFileHFSTypeCode=0, NSFileSystemFileNumber=23313017, NSFileExtensionHidden=false, NSFileSystemNumber=16777221, NSFileSize=327028014, NSFileGroupOwnerAccountID=0, NSFileOwnerAccountName=root, NSFilePosixPermissions=420, NSFileHFSCreatorCode=0, NSFileCreationDate=2019-05-21 02:38:18 +0000, NSFileType=NSFileTypeRegular, NSFileExtendedAttributes={
            "com.apple.quarantine" = <30303836 3b356365 33363731 393b3b>;
        }, NSFileGroupOwnerAccountName=wheel, NSFileReferenceCount=1, NSFileModificationDate=2019-05-22 02:42:43 +0000, NSLocalizedDescription=archive verify failed}}}}, NSLocalizedRecoverySuggestion=You can try again to complete the installation., NSLocalizedDescription=An error occurred installing the update.})
    2019-06-12 11:21:10+08 Williams-MacBook-Pro-6 system_installd[896]: PackageKit: Removing client PKInstallDaemonClient pid=525, uid=200 (/System/Library/CoreServices/Software Update.app/Contents/Resources/softwareupdated)

The error could be the download progress was interrupted.

The macOS updated files are located in /Library/Updates, needs to clean up that folder. You can't simply delete it.

By the following steps:

Restart your mac, press Command + R, then enter into Recovery HD.
Choose utility menu, select Terminal.
csrutil disable to disable SIP.
reboot.
Delete the files in folder /Library/Updates.
Enter Recovery HD again, and input csrutil enable in Terminal.
reboot.
Check the update should work.

Hope this helps someone.


If I used tar to archive Time Machine's Backups.backupdb folder, can the resulting file be uploaded to a cloud service and later used without issues? If I were to use tar -xvf to create an archived .tar file of the Backups.backupdb folder Time Machine creates, would it sufficiently preserve hard links, etc? For example, if I uploaded to, say Google Drive, and later downloaded it in the future and extracted it to a new drive, would the extracted folder still be readable my Time Machine? Or would the safer route be imaging the entire drive?

Creating an archive with tar (using the -c option) does by default preserve hard links. I.e. the file will only be stored once in the archive, and when you unpack the archive you'll get hard links on the file system again. It's only when you use the --hard-dereference option to tar that hard links are ignored.
Remember also to use the -p option when creating and restoring the archive. This will preserve the permissions of files, including the ownership, ACL and other information.
Finally I would strongly recommend that you test the backup of the backup after you have made it to ensure that it can be read properly by Time Machine to enable you to restore the actual backup.


What is the finder's default midi player and how does it know which instrument to associate with tracks? What is the finder's default midi player and how does it know which instrument to associate with tracks?

Also where does it take those instruments from? A VST? Is it possible to use these sounds someone with another program like a digital audio interface?

If you mean Quick Look, it uses Audio.qlgenerator:

$ qlmanage -m plugins|grep midi
  public.midi-audio -> /System/Library/QuickLook/Audio.qlgenerator (555.5 - loaded)

Information about what instruments tracks use is part of .mid files. .mid files predate the VST format, but there are 128 instruments defined by General MIDI and the sounds for them are usually synthesized from wavetables in soundfont (sf2) or DLS files. In earlier versions of OS X you could change the soundfont from System Preferences, but it's much more difficult now.

If you want to use .mid style sounds in a DAW, there's the DLSMusicDevice AU:

In Live you can change the sound by changing the program and playing at least one note from a clip:


Getting Safari to forget Keywurl Having discovered the excellent SafariKeywordSearch thanks to an answer here, I'd now like to get rid of the warning which Safari pops up on launch about Keywurl not loading because it hasn't been tested with Safari 5.1.

I thought I had circumvented this by deleting the Keywurl bundle from ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins (it had only been installed locally, not globally), but Safari still stubbornly pops up a warning. In actual fact, I was seeing two instances of the incompatibility popup before I performed this deletion, but that second one still persists. I've used Spotlight in an attempt to track down the phantom second instance, but without success.

Has anyone any idea where it might be lurking?

From Keywurl's ReadMe:

Installation
Copy Keywurl.bundle into Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins
under your home folder, or in /Library/Application
Support/SIMBL/Plugins in the hard drive root if you want Keywurl to be
enabled for all users on the computer.
Uninstalling
To uninstall, just delete the file you copied.

You said you mentioned that it was only installed locally, not globally, but I've had issues with other SIMBL plugins where I thought they were installed locally only to find another copy lurking at the system level.
So I'd check /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins as well, just to be sure. Note that this is a different hierarchy than the one mention in Gio's answer.
Make sure that you quit/relaunch Safari after you do this. A logout/restart might also help.


Which Mac models are afflicted with the "repeating keypress" issue? My Mac is starting to exhibit unwanted key repeats, where tapping a key once will show two keypresses on screen.

This problem is documented at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8536157

Which models are and are not affected by this issue?

Is there any indication of relative occurrence rate across different models?

These models are affected as of 2019-07-16:

MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015)
MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2016)
MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, 2017)
MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2018)
MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2019)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2019)

Source: https://support.apple.com/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-notebooks


Can’t add clock to world clock widget in El Capitan Whenever I try to add a clock to the World Clock widget in the Today area of Notification Center, it never gets added. Sometimes I can’t even search for the city I want to add. However, whenever I am able to search for a city, it finds it, and when I press enter or click on the name, it behaves as it should be, but the clock never gets displayed.

And yet it remains like this:

What I tried so far:

restart Finder;
restart computer;
delete the widget and add it back.

The solution is you need to click the (i) ("Info") button in the upper right of the widget before you click on the "Add" button.

If not an explicit bug, this is certainly a major usability issue, but only is an issue when adding the first clock (otherwise the "Add" button doesn't show up until you press Info). I had run into this as well and couldn't figure it out for months. Finally poked around at it more just now and finally figured it out.


Can I make iOS 8 look like iOS 6? This has to be my #1 wish for iOS, bar none. I swear the look of the GUI in iOS 6 fits my brain far better than that of 7/8. It's not just a matter of cringing every time I look at it; there is no contest in terms of my productivity being much higher on iOS 6.

Is there any way (via Cydia etc) to make all apps (or at least some of them) use the old GUI style?

I know there are lots of apps in the app store that simply haven't been updated and so use the old style so it seems that a small amount of runtime injection could achieve this.

Try this: http://cydia.saurik.com/package/org.thebigboss.ios6completetheme/

I'm not yet jailbroken but plan on doing it soon so I can't garuntee this works


Long running process defined as Service I created a service for starting a Virtual Box headless, which works fine - but the service does not end until the virtual machine is stopped again (the spinning wheel is in the menu bar (or whatever the bar in the top right is called).

This is understandable, as the command runs until the VM is closed again.

I tried appending "&", using "nohup", "exec", but still, the "spinning wheel" does not disappear until the virtual box is closed again.

I also tried to create an automator app, but the same.

Is there a way to either background the command, detach it, or make at least the spinning wheel to disappear?

EDIT:

Here is the plist:

?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>NSServices</key>
        <array>
                <dict>
                        <key>NSMenuItem</key>
                        <dict>
                                <key>default</key>
                                <string>VBox Start Headless Ubuntu</string>
                        </dict>
                        <key>NSMessage</key>
                        <string>runWorkflowAsService</string>
                </dict>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

And a screenshot:

If you want to create a service on demand create a service with Automator and enter

/usr/bin/VBoxManage startvm "Ubuntu" headless &

with the same settings as in your screenshot and that's it.

And here is a nice icon for the service to get rid of the default one:

Coipy and paste it in the info window.

If you want to start it at log-in create a shell script somewhere in your User folder and a plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents:

Start Terminal and enter:

mkdir ~/bin
cd ~/bin
touch vboxmanage.ubuntu.sh
chmod 755 vboxmanage.ubuntu.sh

Use a text editor or nano to edit the script and add:

#! /bin/sh

/usr/bin/VBoxManage startvm "Ubuntu" headless

Then create a plist file in ~/Library/LaunchAgents with the name com.vboxmanage.ubuntu.plist and the content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.vboxmanage.ubuntu.plist</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/YourUserName/bin/vboxmanage.ubuntu.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>LaunchOnlyOnce</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Modify the file:

chmod 644 ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.vboxmanage.ubuntu.plist

and launch it with:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.vboxmanage.ubuntu.plist

Afterwards the VM will be started after every log-in to your account


When I buy an iPhone 6 from the Apple website and select contract-free from T-Mobile, is the phone carrier unlocked? When Apple were selling iPhone 5s on the site, the T-Mobile option was a subset of "unlocked".

Are the T-Mobile iPhone 6 unlocked?

If not how does get an unlocked iPhone 6 unlocked?

I found this answer for you

Best Answer:

after speaking with all the following - apple care, apple tech support, apple online sales, and tmobile sales - the "no contract" t-mobile phone IS officially unlocked and will work on any gsm carrier with the correct sized sim card.

Background:

A new law eff Aug. 2014 allows you to legally unlock your phone.
http://www.cnet.com/news/president-signs-cell-phone-unlocking-bill-into-law/

As result the carrier are adjusting to that by offering unlocked phones true they services in the hope you will stick with them, this time voluntarily and not be forced buy a 2 Years contract.

But: (there is always a But)

If you do the math, you will come to a result showing that a iPhone purchased without contract and on a cheep provider ($40/M), ends up about the same when purchased with 2 years contract at ($60/M).

The reason! the unlocked phones are way more expensive, it is the money you pay upfront.

So what is the gain? it is the freedom price you pay, the Freedom of choosing and switching providers at your leisure.


Apple Store Purchase history Knowing I can't get rid of the purchase history at all, I've removed payment details and changed the email address from one@whatever.com to a fake one.

Then started using a new one, two@whatever.com. I have purchased several apps.

I was wondering, if I add the first email address now (one@whatever.com) as a secondary e-mail address to this two@whatever.com Apple Store account, so I could log into Apple Store with that aswell, would the account show purchases I've initially made on the previous Apple Store account - one@whatever.com?

You cannot add any email address that is in use for any other Apple ID.

You cannot transfer purchases from one account to another.

You could set up Family Sharing - but all that would do would be re-expose the purchase history to both accounts.


MacOS Catalina duplicating files on save I'm a software developer and I constantly need to save files of course. The problem I'm experiencing right now is that intermittently my laptop creates new files of the ones I'm saving/compiling. I'll provide an example in a minute. My thought initially was that perhaps this is due to some file permissions I'm not looking at. I've had this laptop for a couple of months now and this is the only problem I've encountered. It has happened on both Visual Studio Code and Atom. I also thought this was because of the language I'm using but it also happening with NodeJS applications I've worked with. And while this does not cause any malfunction, it is very annoying every time I need to compile a project my terminal screen is super cluttered with errors because these files are not valid.
The errors go like this
[error] beam/beam_load.c(1433): Error loading module 'Elixir.Poison.Encoder.FileName 4':

So it creates files like the one above but replace '4' with whatever number it decides to put, it can be 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on... I've deleted the build directory of my projects to get rid of the error but it is only temporary. Thanks in advance and let me know what else I can provide to make this easier to debug.

Do you save these files in iCloud Drive? To prevent data loss, iCloud will sometimes resolve sync issues by making a copy with a number on the end that holds the alternate file contents.
There is no way to avoid this, since it's a data consistency measure. You can keep your source code outside of iCloud Drive – I myself have a folder outside of iCloud specifically for Git repositories that are stored elsewhere.


How to disable profile tab/toolbelt when opening new window in iterm? I have been facing this problem for a quite while now.
Whenever I open new window of iterm, a profile tab/section is automatically opened.

Here is a screenshot.

It's annoying to close it every time

Any help will be appreciated.

Finally, I was able to find what it's called.

 "Toolbelt"

And it can be disabled

Cheers


Web Inspector crashed in Safari 7 When I try to display web inspector just a grey background shows instead of that. I tried to restart browser but it didn't help. It happens in Safary 7 OS X Mavericks.

Anybody knows what is that could be?

A quick fix that brought the inspector back for me was to resize the web inspector pane by moving the mouse to the top edge until the pointer changed to the resizing pointer and dragging.


How to change a directory name? My home directory was not where it was supposed to be. I was able to fix the directory location. Then needed to fix the permission of home directory with

$ cd /Users/
$ sudo chown -R hook1:staff /Users/hook1
chown: /Users/hook1: no file or directory
$ ls -F
Shared/    chris/      hook1???/

Home directory incorrectly appears as hook1???/ not hook1/
Is there a reason for this?

If what you posted was literally what the directory name is, then this should work:

cd /Users
mv hook1\?\?\? hook1

The problem, as fd0 points out, is that you have invisible/unprintable characters in your directory name. Use basic, non-destructive shell commands to isolate the directory name using wildcards, then rename it.  For example, try this:

cd /Users
ls -ld h*

That should result in exactly one directory being listed. If it does not, continue to add letters before the * in order to create a wildcard mask that produces exactly one result:

ls -ld ho*     # produces 3 results
ls -ld hoo*    # produces 1 result

If you get to a point where you go from more than one result to zero results, then you've stumbled upon another invisible character. Back up one letter, add a question mark then re-add the letter.

ls -ld ho*     # produces 3 results
ls -ld hoo*    # produces 0 results
ls -ld ho?o*   # produces 1 result

If you still have problems, play around with more * and ? until you have something that produces exactly one result:

ls -ld ho*     # produces 3 results
ls -ld hoo*    # produces 0 results
ls -ld ho?o*   # produces 0 results
ls -ld ho*o*   # produces 1 result

Once you have that, then use that in your mv command:

mv ho*o* hook1

If none of this works, please post the results of you ls -ld experiments.


How do I obtain iPhoto for a second-hand Mac Air? I obtained a Mac Air from a friend, second-hand. He restored a clean install of the OS, without the free Apps (iPhoto, iMovie…). These apps were included in the original purchase. We understood that it would be a simple matter of downloading these apps afresh from the Appstore. However, I am required to pay for them. I use my Appstore login, of course, not my friend's.

I guess one way to get these apps is to go and visit my friend and ask him to log in to the Appstore under his identity, but I would prefer to download these myself. I also suspect that this method may cause problems for a number of reasons: the device is now linked to my login, he probably already has his quota of devices linked.

The only legal way to transfer the iLife applications from him to you would be if he had the original iLife installation DVD that used to ship with new Macs. Being that it's an Air, and doesn't have a DVD slot on it, it's unlikely he still has that media.

Unfortunately, you're stuck with re-buying the iLife applications from the App Store using your own Apple ID. Using his App Store ID to put the software on your Mac and then switching the ID to your account would definitely be on the wrong side of Apple's terms of service.


Logitech G613 Bluetooth keyboard stops working after first connection on 2019 Macbook Pro My G613 Logitech Keyboard connects to my MBP correctly at first. The MacBook ask for a pin code, the keyboard is working and it works without any problems.

As soon as I power off the keyboard just one time, or put the MacBook to sleep, the keyboard stops working.  However, it still shows as connected in the Bluetooth device list.

Some informations :

Keyboard works perfectly on another PC
Macbook is on Catarina, last available update.
Catarina is an update, not preinstalled
Keyboard worked before, can't remember if on catalina or not
Tried a SMC reset
Tried reinit Bluetooth module (shit+option on Bluetooth icon > Debug)

I faced exact same problem. This worked for me :

press and hold the Bluetooth button in the g613 keyboard until it starts blinking faster.

On Mac, do the BlueTooth connection as explained by @Vadim Flaks, once connected you can remove the old G613 from your BlueTooth settings ( which is now disconnected )


Time Machine drive takes long time (~5 minutes) to mount on boot My time machine backup drive (a Samsung T5, 1TB) is giving me trouble: I noticed that it takes a long time for the drive to show up on my desktop (5 minutes or so) after start or restart. The drive indicator light flashes a lot, showing some kind of activity, but I don’t know what. I checked that it is not doing a fsck. Even stranger is the fact that the drive shows up right away when I plug it in after the boot has completed and I see a normal desktop. Other USB sticks mount and unmount just fine. The troublesome drive shows up right away on a different, much older Mac. The lsof command returns nothing when I try
sudo lsof +D /Volumes/Samsung_T5
The Samsung SSD app, called SamsungPortableSSD.app, shows the drive as disconnected during the slow mount from boot.
Disk Utility shows no errors (sudo time diskutil verifyVolume disk2s2). The drive already has about 750GB of backups on it.
Is there some logging facility I can turn on or browse to see what’s going on during the 5 minutes the drive is flashing without mounting? Is it worth it to try USB logging? What are the risks?
In the meantime, I can browse through the backup files on the Time Machine external drive through the Finder just fine. I would like to be able to preserve all these backups and fix the problem. Is this possible? Or do I really have to erase it all, format, and start over? Or is there an intermediate path where I can preserve maybe five total checkpoints over two years' worth and the rest gets erased? In the end I’d like to get back to normal behavior where the drive shows up right away on start and goes away quickly on shutdown.
Machine: I’m running Big Sur 11.2 on a 12-inch, Early 2015 Retina MacBook.
History:
Initially the drive worked fine for two years even though I didn’t install the driver. The trouble started about two months ago or so during Catalina and got worse with the Big Sur versions. The problem first became visible when the drive didn’t show up right away after boot. Later on, the actual shutdown would take a long time, again maybe five minutes or so. It really got my attention when I got a black screen of death after a long shutdown with an accompanying kernel panic report. Things are much better since I’ve installed the driver: now the drive will always eventually mount after boot (as opposed to almost never) and there are so far no more black screens of death. I can accept slow mount and unmount times, but I'm really concerned about the kernel panics. What risk is there now of kernel panics with an updated driver?

On macOS you don’t need to install any drivers for external drives that comply with the USB Mass Storage class, which the Samsung does (unless you’re doing something funny like using their proprietary encryption scheme). Any external USB SSD will ‘just work’ when you plug it in. I would uninstall the driver as it can do more harm than good, particularly with the major rewrites to the driver architecture in Catalina and Big Sur which not all third-party developers have caught up with yet.
You’re definitely right to worry about the slow mounts on boot, though. That can be due to a variety of things. One of these is a heavily worn SSD, which could be the case if you’re using it for Time Machine, but two years isn’t a very long time. It may still be valuable for you to run the Smartmontools package (which will also require you to install USB SMART support) in order to determine the wear & lifespan on your SSD. Heavily worn SSDs will have increased latencies which get worse over time. If you’re only seeing this issue on first mount and you’re not seeing a reduction in read or write speed, though, then that’s unlikely to be the issue.
It sounds like you’re more concerned with your kernel panics. Without seeing the panic reports, we can’t determine if they’re something you should worry about or if they’re even related to your SSD. Can you please provide your panic logs? They’ll be found in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and have the file extension .panic. Put those up on PasteBin and we can review them.
To your question of preserving your backups: I don’t know of a straightforward way to cherry-pick specific checkpoints (although there may exist tools out there that I just haven’t looked for, so feel free to DuckDuckGo it). Time Machine is persnickety about the contents of its backup bundle and any omissions could result in an unreadable backup. I would instead try cloning your entire SSD to another drive wholesale and pointing TM to that. (But I have never done this and it’s entirely possible that TM will detect the different device UUID and force you to recreate the backup anyway.) You have to be ready to accept that you might need to start from scratch.


How do I increase significant digits in Grapher? How do I increase the significant digits in Grapher?

All the numbers settings can be found via Grapher → Preferences → Numbers.

You can set the “Notation” setting to “Engineering” to display numbers as 123,4568e3 (7 significant digits) instead of 1,2346e5 (5 significant digits).

Perhaps the “Number of Decimals” setting is of interest, too.


I deleted Macintosh HD - Data and now the computer won't boot even in Recovery Mode Okay all, I think I messed up really big time.
Was so excited and delighted today to see my brand spanking new MacBook Air arrive (running Catalina). Everything was wokring great; I started Migration Assistant to get it migrating over from my old computer and, after a little while for the preliminaries, it said it was going to be 6.5 hours. So I thought let's not do this right now, so I can still use the old computer, and cancelled it.
That was my first mistake.
It wouldn't let me go back to the original state of Migration Assistant; the users were already on the new computer. Okay, fine, I have to go into Utilities to find Migration Assistant on the new computer. But then when Migration Assistant did start up again, it would keep freezing in the early stages, stalled and not progressing - never even got to the part where it estimated time remaining. It did this in multiple ways, whether I was connected through WiFi or Ethernet, direct from the old Mac or through my Time Capsule.
So I figured I wanted to start clean. And this appears to be where I made the REALLY big mistake. I thought "well, I'll just wipe the data so I can start clean, right?" I tried to followed instructions for a factory reset: went into Recovery Mode (cmd-R), entered Disk Utility, deleted the Macintosh HD-Data partition. I thought that what I was supposed to do next was delete the Macintosh HD partition too. But it wouldn't let me do that because it was in use. I also tried to reinstall the US, and it wouldn't let me do that either (also because it was in use). Okay, I thought, I'll just restart and see what happens.
And now my brand new $1800 computer is completely bricked.
The Apple logo appears, followed briefly by the start of the progress bar - and then I hear this whooshing sound, like ocean surf or a heavy breath, and it turns back off again... and then the Apple logo appears again and the same thing happened. Over and over on an endless cycle, just Apple and whoosh. I can sometimes get it to turn off by holding the power button, but turning it back on just gives me the endless cycle and whooshing again; I can't get into Recovery mode. In the old days I would have tried sticking a paper clip in or some other option for a hard reboot, but there's nowhere to do that.
Help! How can I get back to a brand-new computer with the old data smoothly migrated?

If you have a time machine backup of your old computer or can make one (buy or borrow a spare disk drive) you can recover using the backup in recovery mode. Follow this https://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/02/29/how-to-restore-mac-time-machine-recovery-mode/ for instructions.


Outlook quick-steps functionality on Mac In Outlook 2010 on Windows, I use the quick steps functionality a lot to automatically sort incoming messages to different folders. The good thing is it applies these rules on subsequent messages as well. For example - if I don't want to be part of a conversation, I create a rule called "Mute" which will move that message to a folder called "Muted" and Mark as Read. All future messages with the same subject line automatically get moved to the Muted folder. I have several such folders like Follow-up, Hold, Archive etc. All new messages automatically flow to those folders. It helps me keep everything organized.

I had to move to using a Mac and I'm sorely missing this feature in Outlook 2011 for Mac. Is there ANY app out there (free or paid) that mimics the quick-step feature on Mac with support for Exchange?

Not in Outlook, the 2011 outlook is a lousy rewrite of Entourage and 2015 Outlook X is just a new UI looking like 2013.

If you want similar functionality you need to use Apple Mail and plug-ins like MailHub. Please know that Mailhub is a for pay plug-in, but you can test drive it. Personally I have completely given up on Microsoft at this point in time as there are so many missing functions in their Outlook, from accepting a proposed time change in calendar, no ability for Quick-Step, even worse no rule (they track the reply and link it, so you might figure I can pick that up and write rule that moves e-mails after reply as an example) NO not Microsoft.

As I said Mailhub and a couple of plug-ins make life better.


Backup picture using FreeFileSync I would like to backup my pictures using FreeFileSync, I say pictures because i want to migrate both iPhoto and photos libraries till i figure which one i want to keep

I have my reasons not to use TimeMachine

So with FreeFileSync which folder should i be selecting as the folder to sync?

To back up photos visible in Photos.app and iPhotos.app, select the folder:

~/Pictures/

Where ~ is your home folder.


Access iCloud.com from iPhone I noticed that in the HTML of icloud.com there are meta tags for creating a webapp on iOS devices. However it is impossible to get to just icloud.com on the iPhone, instead it redirects you to icloud.com/iphone_welcome.

Am I missing something? Or is this some future capability?

Safari on iPhone will always be redirected to the welcome page. AFAIK there's no chance to just access www.icloud.com with Safari.
However, you can try Google's Chrome Browser. It has an option to access a page in a desktop version. That will bring up the original iCloud page with the login dialog.


Send messages using Apple ID email instead of phone number I’m trying to send messages by using my Apple ID email instead of my number. I went to send and receive everything is set right my iCloud is check and so is my number which I can’t uncheck. I want to be able to receive and send messages using my iCloud just in case I don’t want that person having my number. How can I do this?

Settings → Send & Receive and set ‘Start new conversations from’ to an email address.
The ‘You can be reached by iMessage at’ option has no bearing on what's used for sending messages, so you can ignore the checked options here. The phone number can't be unchecked here as you can always receive messages sent to the phone number of the device.


How to quickly jump to another application without using command tab I am trying to do a screencast and I use ⌘+⇥ to move from browser to my IDE . During editing I need to remove all the screenshots of me moving from one app to another since that is distracting.

I was wondering if there is any utility I can buy or if there is a trick so that I can quickly move from my browser to my IDE.

Note that my browser and my IDE are of the same size while doing screencasting so they overlap each other. I just need a trick so that browser comes to the top just like that and when I need IDE to the top I can bring IDE to the top with some key combinations on my keyboard.

If you press ⌘+⇥ quickly, you switch to the last app used and the icons don't show up.

To make sure it works, ⌘+⇥ to your browser. Then to your IDE. Then, quickly press the ⌘+⇥ shortcut. You'll immediately switch to the browser. Do the same again to immediately switch back.

Hope this does it for you.


How can I make ipad Safari bookmark list wider? How can I make ipad Safari bookmark list wider ?

I want to see as much text as possible for each bookmark, not have more than half the screen devoted to a dimmed-out web page.

iPad Air 2, iOS 9.3.1

See picture.

When you choose larger text sizes, the default value doesn't allow for much text to show.

There is no way to make it wider without a jailbreak.  The only thing you can do is to make the text smaller so you can see more of it.  That stinks but it's the only thing available.


Is there a way Spotlight indexes my Skim bookmarks/notes ? I find Skim is a great pdf file reader and want to spend a great deal of time adding notes and bookmarks to some of the pdf files I have.

I know Spotlight indexes pdf files but it doesn't seem to index my Skim bookmarks.
(I just created a bookmark in Skim and search for that bookmark in Spotlight. No results).

I may force Spotlight to index net.sourceforge.skim-app.skim.bookmarks.plist (it is where bookmarks are stored) ?

What do you think ?
Thanks in advance.

The solution I've found+tested:

In Skim:

  File - Export -> Skim notes.
  You now have one .skim file with your annotations only + their pages number.

Skim notes are indexed by Spotlight.

Source: here


Mac OS X Mavericks - add to path I'm trying to set up a phonegap project and while trying to add a platform it outputs the following error:

Error: The command "android" failed. Make sure you have the latest Android SDK installed, and the "android" command (inside the tools/ folder) is added to your path.

I've tried what I've read here: How do I set environment variables on OS X?

and wrote the following in the .profile file:

export PATH=/users/ophir/android-sdks/tools

while it did add the android command to my path and I was able to run it and get a response, I started noticing that a simple "ls" command suddenly didn't work - until I removed what I have done.

how can I add another path to the PATH variable? how does it all work on OS X anyhow?

thanks

Your command replaces the entire path variable with your path, thereby removing folders such as /bin. You need to add your path to the existing path, not replace it:

export PATH=/users/ophir/android-sdks/tools:$PATH

Alternatively, so that you don't replace the tools found in folders that are in your existing path, you can add your new folder to the end of the path variable:

export PATH=$PATH:/users/ophir/android-sdks/tools


Delete own user from Mac OS I was wondering if it is possible to delete my one and only user account because I am creating a script to add and remove users on my Mac.

I have this command here:

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/ali"

I'm a little bit worried to test that because I don't want to delete my only user with all my files so is it possible?

The command sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/ali" will remove the user ali  from the local Directory Services database.

After login out you won't be able to login with user ali again. The user folder of ali won't be deleted.

To delete the folder /Users/ali and its content an additional command is necessary.

The user ali can be recreated though by booting to single user mode and using the remove .AppleSetupDone file trick in a two-stage process.

Create a new admin with a different name than ali (e.g. ali2)
After the configuration is done create a new admin with a different name than ali (e.g. ali3)
Logout as ali2 and login as ali3
Modify ali2 (e.g. name/user directory/user id etc.) with Users & Groups PrefPane/Directory Utility.app/command line to restore the previous entries of ali.

This won't work if your main volume is encrypted with FileVault2!

It's absolutely not recommended to test user creation/deletion scripts like this on your production Mac. Download VirtualBox, create a virtual machine running macOS and test your scripts inside there.


Macbook pro - does time machine restore to original state or just add removed files? Macbook pro OS X 10.9
If I backup using time machine and 3 months later decide to restore it back because I have a virus, would it be able to eliminate the virus? Also does time machine delete all the new files i've added since then?

If you believe your Mac has a virus or any kind of malware you should clean your Mac using a piece of software designed to remove malware. Time Machine isn't intended to be used to remove malware. There is nothing to stop a piece of malware from infecting your Time Machine backups.


What are minimum specs for a MacBook to develop iOS apps? I want to buy a MacBook to develop iOS apps. What are the minimum requirements?

Today, I'd go with either a 15" or 17" MacBook Pro. They would allow you to work with the iPad simulator at its native resolution. It's a bit too big to run full-size on the 13" models, so I always end up running it at half size, which is less than ideal. Even if you're not planning to develop for the iPad right now, I'd still plan the hardware purchase around that possibility. The likelihood that you'll do iOS development and never build for the iPad is pretty low.

Beyond the simulator issues, I like to have the largest screen possible when I'm programming. I have a 13" MacBook Pro, but I connect it to a 24" monitor when I'm at my desk. If you're like me, the 17" would be ideal, if you don't want to have a second screen.

However, Apple is holding a Mac-focused special event tomorrow, and it's never a good idea to buy a Mac this close to one of those events. The entire laptop line is due for updates, and there has been (unconfirmed) speculation that any new models may run at higher screen resolutions, especially on the smaller end of the range.


Apple Airport Time Capsule with Airport express I've a apple airport express plugged and setup already and hooked onto it's WIFI.

Recently I bought Apple Time Capsule that comes with the router. I'm wondering what are my options.

Unplug the express and setup time capsule as the primary wifi
Extend the existing wifi (apple airport express) with this time capsule (not sure if possible) and use capsule as a backup for files only.

Is the router in the time capsule better than airport express?

Please note that I live in a studio so I don't have a range requirement.

I would just give the Airport Express to someone who can make good use of it.

The Time Capsule is all you need, given that you don't need extended range.

Keeping your configuration simple will benefit you greatly compared to having two points of failure when something inevitably goes wrong.


Can you change an iPhone startup screen background from white to black? It seems light-coloured iPhones have a white startup background colour with black Apple logo. As you can’t control the brightness on startup - this screen is offensively bright at night - searing your darkness-adjusted eyes and waking any nearby creature who happens to be peacefully sleeping.

Can you invert it like on dark-coloured iPhones? Black background, white Apple logo?

Unless you jailbreak the phone, no...can't be done.

The startup screen even ignores the accessibility settings.


How do I view the iOS app store on a mac? (OS X 10.11.6) The default way to install an iOS app was through iTunes. Having not used iTunes in several years, I'm trying to put an app on an iPad I have, and can't for the life of me find the iOS store in iTunes.

What am I missing?

You're not missing anything. Late in 2017 in iTunes 12.7, Apple removed iTunes ability to access the iOS App Store. Using iTunes 12.7, the only way to access the iOS App Store was via the iPhone itself.

Many users disliked this change, as it's harder to navigate and review apps on iOS than it had been using macOS. A month or so later, Apple retreated and offered a version of iTunes that restores iOS App Store availability. This version of iTunes is 12.6.3, and you can read more about it on this Apple page. iTunes 12.6.3 can be installed even if one has already installed 12.7. The Apple page cited above contains a link to download iTunes 12.6.3.

I am very happy to have iOS App Store access back on macOS.


DIY repaired iPhone won't boot fully - flashes Apple logo when powered via USB I recently tried to do a screen repair on an iPhone 4.

It won't boot fully, so I may have managed to break something else. Basically it wont turn on, and I only get a flashing Apple logo when plugged into a computer. I believe it could be the motherboard, although I have visually inspected it extensively to determine if i could have physically broken anything. I could not detect any fault. When I use the suspect motherboard on another iPhone frame I get the same problem.

Get into DFU mode and do a restore in iTunes.

For DFU mode:

Turn the iPhone off (not needed in this case :)
Push the sleep button for 3 seconds (Apple logo should appear)
Push both buttons for 10 seconds (Apple logo should disappear)
Release the sleep/wake button and hold the home button for at least 15 seconds.

Nothing will show up on the screen, but if you connect it to iTunes it should recognise it. Then do a full restore.

If that doesn't work, you screwed something up inside, you might want to open it up again and re-check all connections.


what does the pie symbol mean in macOS finder? could someone explain this symbol? The files are on a AFP share which is mounted.

The pie symbol indicates that the element is being uploaded or downloaded to/from a server. Those elements may not be available locally.

The grayed part of the pie represents the percentage of data already transmitted so in your case as this part is very narrow it means that for each file the update has just started.


Is there a possible way to recover a backup that i deleted from iTunes? When I tried to restore my iPhone from iTunes, it would give me an error code. So, I went into preferences and deleted the backup, thinking its just some cache that might be generating the problem. Is there some program or way to recover the deleted backup?

You'll have to use a third party solution to attempt to recover that backup file. Third Party solutions usually don't work well, so if you do take a chance with it, you can keep that in mind.

EaseUS has a recovery option - https://www.easeus.com/file-recovery/recover-deleted-itunes-backup.html

If you are on a Mac and have a Time Machine backup, it keeps backups in this directory:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup


2012 Macbook Pro won't eject CD My sister bought an ancient peripheral that only has drivers for Windows.  But her Windows box has no CD drive, so I put the CD in my Macbook, made a tarball of it, put in on my web server, and downloaded it in Windows.  No problem there.

But the MBP won't eject the drive.  Keyboard button, shell command, finder control: all dismount the CD, make a lot of noise, then re-mount it.

Recently purchased refurb.  Return as warranty claim?  Or is there an alternative?  Leaving on a trip in two weeks and want to take a computer along.

Most Macbook DVD drives have a manual release. You'll need a straightened paperclip (or something similar) to push the release. The release is at the extreme right or left edge of the DVD slot (sorry can't remember which edge it's on—it depends on the model too). Insert the clip about 1cm. It should touch a hard surface. Carefully apply some pressure and the DVD will release. If the paperclip inserts more than 1-2 cm your on the wrong edge. Also be careful to not angle the paperclip.


Best way to uninstall; backup programs on Mac Macbook laptop has a few programs .. in which I'd like to uninstall
and then keep the programs on a disc or external hd.

Should I clone the program? (best suggested freeware? eg. Clonezilla or ..)
or use a software such as Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner?

What are other best tips on speeding up Mac OS settings? (tuning particular features, functions on control panel?)

To uninstall programs, just delete them.

To back them up, the best idea is to keep the installer. In most cases, this is the .dmg the app came in. If it came from the App Store, there's nothing to keep. Other programs can come with installer packages (.pkg) or apps; these are what you'd keep in this case.


Bootcamp cannot find both systems at startup Something strange happened:

I closed my macbook pro while using windows 10
When I opened it again it didn't wake up for a while so I forced it to shut down by pressing the power button for 10 seconds
When I restarted the computer, it could not find any OS and just displayed a flashing question mark. I tried starting the computer while pressing the usual special keys, but nothing worked.
I gave up and went for 2 days of vacations, instead of being angry.
I just came back from vacations (after two days) and everything works fine.

Update

Today nothing works, it is impossible to find the SSD, even when I try OS X Recovery over the Internet Disk  Utility does not find the SSD (just a drive of about 1.28 Go where the OS X recovery is installed). I tried reseting the NVRAM and the SMC without any luck.

Is it necessarily a disk failure?

Update 2

It's not a disk failure since I installed my SSD into a friend's Macbook Pro (same model: retina 15" late 2013, 2.3Ghz) and it works properly. I also tried to insert his SSD into my Macbook Pro and it is not recognized.

I returned my computer to an Apple reseller...

Author of the question answering:

It's not necessarily a disk failure since I installed my SSD into a friend's Macbook Pro (same model: retina 15" late 2013, 2.3Ghz) and it works properly. I also tried to insert his SSD into my Macbook Pro and it is not recognized.

I don't know where it comes from though...


How to find files in different specific folders? I have several folders named "auto_saves" around my hard drive. I want to make smart search to find all image files from all folders named "auto_saves". But how?

I don’t think this is possible in Finder.

You can get the desired search result using HoudahSpot. HoudahSpot is a third party file search tool that uses the existing Spotlight index. Full disclosure: I am the developer of HoudahSpot.

With HoudahSpot you can search in several folders at once. This would however require that you list all “auto_saves” folders you want to search.

I recommend, you search for image files in HoudahSpot and then use the “path filter” feature to show only search results where the file path contains “/auto_saves”. In HoudahSpot you will find the filter field right above the list of search results. Set it to “Filter by Path” and enter “/auto_saves”.

You can save your HoudahSpot search as a template so you can return to it later.


Best way to mirror iPad to tv for my parents? My mother got an iPad 2 and rarely ever uses her old computer anymore. She mostly uses it to look things up and watch video in the different Swedish TV-channels apps (like SVTPlay or TV4Play). The problem is that she has no way of viewing them on anything else but the iPad so she told me that she and my dad actually sat on the sofa in front of the TV looking at the iPad screen to see a show that they had missed. I was thinking that I should solve this problem for them for her birthday in a month.

What is the best, and most importantly, easiest way for them to watch these videos on their TV instead? I'm not sure if the apps support video out but since she has an iPad 2 I was thinking of video mirroring.

The real question is if it would be better to only use the cable directly to the TV or if they would gain from having an Apple TV so that they could wirelessly control the program from the sofa. The cable is a very direct and physical interaction that is easy to understand but it's not very long so you'd need to get up to pause the program.

If money is not a problem I would recommend Apple TV.

Apple TV has the advantage of begin wireless, and as you said, your parents will be able to control it from their seat. This quite useful for watching watching shows, but even better for other things, like looking at pictures on your iPad on the big screen, for example.

On the intuitiveness, if your parents already know how to access the multitasking bar at the bottom of the iPad it is pretty easy: just a switch away. Practically speaking, easier than dealing with walking, plugging it in, and having to stand up to input things to the iPad, or dealing with a long cord.

Apple TV has many other advantages/features: Photo Stream through iCloud, Netflix, Youtube, flickr, Internet Radio, WSJ, Movie Rentals, TV Show Store, etc. I don't know how many would your parents use/need, and of course Movies and Shows come for an extra cost, but its something to keep a thought on.

It's $40 dollars more expensive though. If your parents don't need such features, they don't mind a cord, and if they don't really need controlling their iPad while displaying something on the big screen, than it's some good $40 to save, but if you can spare it I think you get plenty of extra features and wireless commodity from it.


Find My iPhone issues This answer, or something extremely similar, has already been asked before, at MacBook Pro locked with Find My Mac and won't let me boot. That said, this question is not a duplicate, as I need an answer not listed there. One of the solutions was holdign down command-option-P-R as the computer turned on. This does not work for me, even though it should. Apple support has said I would need to come in to a store, but as it's a long drive, I would prefer to find an answer that does not require me to drive there. If nobody can answer this, please tell me what they would do at the Apple store, if you know.

What they would do in the store is work with you to make sure you don't really have access to the Apple ID. They would also seek to identify you as the original purchaser - if you can provide proof of identity and proof of purchase, they might have a procedure to erase the lock.

I would work with AppleCare on the phone or internet to see if they can help with the Apple ID. Then you can decide to drive in person to Apple or perhaps see if there is a closer Apple Technician that could assist you with an unlock. The benefit of Apple is they don't charge money for this service - and you might pay someone else to assist.


Recovering a confused partition table? So I've got a MacBook Pro which I use for work (and thus every file is precious information) and my BootCamp partition was getting a bit small, so I resized it with GParted, but not before resizing the OS X partition using diskutil.

However, after modifying the partitions, when I hold the option key at boot, I exclusively see the "Windows" partition, no Macintosh HD or Recovery HD.

I can see both of these drives from Windows, and all files are intact.

Is there anything I can do to repair this without

Requiring a backup drive (My backups are done to a NAS and thus cannot be booted)
Damaging any data on the device
Going to the Apple Store (Nearest one is a good few hours away)

Can I use the Internet Recovery system to get into a recovery environment?

Edit: I should mention I have a 64GB flash drive that I can use for anything, and the backups are exclusively of my "Documents/IdeaProjects" folder since that's the "important" work-related stuff. All of Windows and my personal files are not backed up (since the NAS is a work-owned system)

Further edit: I can no longer boot to Windows. I should mention that the value of th data on this drive is such that I am fully willing to pay a professional recovery company anything to recover it. How does that process work if I need to do it?

Alright, I fixed it. I installed a Live image to my flash drive and copied the TestDisk software to it. My live image was Windows 10 To Go, but I believe any OS could handle it.

Then, I ran a scan using TestDisk, and re-enabled the "deleted" partitions. After doing this, I wrote the new GPT to disk, and rebooted. Held the option key, and the partitions showed back up.

I essentially followed this guide, but since my partitions weren't actually in the partition table, it showed them as 'deleted' - setting them back to 'primary' and writing it fixed it.

Moral of the story - Don't mess with any partitions on a Mac from anything else than software in OS X or you may trash your partition table.


Show read instead of delivered on my device for messages I send All my friends and I have read receipts turned on, and on their phones, delivered turns to read, but mine never does!

Can anyone tell me why and how to sort it so mine turn to read as well?

I'm assuming you are talking about the default Apple messaging app - iMessages. In iMessages, you (as a sender) can set your iMessage Read Receipt to ON/OFF. If it's set to ON on YOUR phone, when a person sends you an iMessage text and you read it, they will get a READ indicator on their phone.

Conversely, if you send a text to a person who has set their Read Receipt to off, you will only see "Delivered" when the text was delivered. There will be no "read" in this case.

Take a look at this Engadget article which describes this in depth.

  Apple's iMessage app provides message status updates that let you know
  when a message has been delivered. It also has a handy feature called
  Read Receipts that lets you know when someone has read the message.

  This status update can be a blessing when you want someone to know
  automatically that you have viewed their time-sensitive response.
  Apple handles the status update so you don't have to do anything other
  than open the message. Just read the iMessage and the sender will see
  the "Read" timestamp in their timeline.

  As useful as the Read Receipts feature may be, it also can cause angst
  both for the sender and recipient. You can imagine the following
  scenario -- a wife discovers she is pregnant and sends an excited
  message to her husband. She sees that he read the message an hour ago
  and is upset because he never responded. On the other end is the
  husband, who viewed the message right before an important meeting. He
  now is agonizing over how to respond while his boss is breathing over
  his back, knowing that his wife is aware of the fact that the message
  has been read.

  If you wish to avoid such complicated message relationships, you can
  easily turn off read receipts, which hides the fact that you have read
  a message from the sender. The sender will still see the "delivered"
  status, so they can be assured the message arrive on your handset.
  They just won't know if or when you have read the message. Follow
  these steps to turn off Read Receipts...


iOS In App Purchases and other content deleted every few days Every few days, all in app purchases disappear. I have to go into each app and use the "Restore Purchases" option to get everything back.

Also:

My alarms keep being deleted - the alarm page is just blank and I have to add them again.
Passwords/Log in states for apps are being lost - for example I have to log into Instagram, etc, every few days.

It feels like some sort of caching/preferences issue, stuff getting deleted when it shouldn't be? I have an iPhone 7, 128GB, with 35GB free space.

This has never happened in 10 years of using iPhones, and as far as I can recall nothing has changed, i.e., no updates or anything.

Any ideas?

Could you check if Apple ID is correct in Settings > iTunes & App Store, as below pic, check if the AUTOMATIC DOWNLOADS optionns are checked? Well I prefer to cancel all of them.


Can I control the sensitivity of the back gesture on the Magic Mouse? So I stopped working from home last month and took my beloved Logitech to the office, which means I'm stuck with the horrendous Magic Mouse here at home now.

Whenever I'm wanting to go back in Firefox, the slightest two-fingered left gesture sends it spinning back about a dozen pages.

Any way around that, short of using Safari?

Have you tried using MagicPrefs? You can use it to adjust the tracking speed, per their documentation.

Fine tuning tracking speed
MagicPrefs does not have available in the interface the fine tune tracking speed settings from the apple control panel, however they can be set manually by entering the next command in Terminal.app (change 0.3125 to your desired speed)
defaults write com.vladalexa.MagicPrefs TrackingMouse -float 0.3125
defaults write com.vladalexa.MagicPrefs TrackingTrackpad -float 0.3125
The Apple Tracking speed slider for the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad has 10 speed settings : 0.0, 0.125, 0.3125, 0.5, 0.6875, 0.875, 1.0, 1.7, 2.0, 3.0
The MagicPrefs Magic Mouse tracking speed slider has 10 speed settings : 0.0, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0
The MagicPrefs Magic Trackpad tracking speed slider has 10 speed settings : 0.0, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0


Is there a way to set a different Safari download folder per website? Is there any way in Safari (6 on Mountain Lion) to have it remember a different download folder per website?

So if I visit my bank and download a statement I can pick my /finance/ folder to download to and have it remember that location for future visits.
Meanwhile I can go to basecamp and have anything I download there go straight to /work/

In Firefox there's a secret flag you can set that allows this behaviour, is there any way to do the same thing in Safari or through an extension?

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to do it in Safari. The only things you could do is use a Shell script to move stuff around (based on file types or so). Or you can use the Automator to define rules for your download folder. A good alternative, which specifically focusses on file management is Hazel.


Which iPhone 5s sold in the US is better to use in spain? Specially for LTE use I'm planning a visit to New York and I'm wanted to buy a new iPhone 5s unlocked but someone has told me that if I'm going to use it in Spain I might have problems to use LTE. Does anyone know if that's true? It's a problem with the LTE bands used in the US ans in Spain. Or so they say...

Short answer: Get the A1457 model.

You can see the different models and their verified compatibilities here. According to the site, iPhone 5s model A1457 has the support for the LTE bands which are used in most of Europe, while A1453 and A1533 have support for the most common LTE bands in the US. I don't know if the A1457 model is sold that much in the US since it supports only two US-based carriers, but if you can find it, it willl work.


deleting multiple photos I simply want to delete the bulk if not all of several hundred photos I have uploaded from my camera, to free up space as it is already full.
However I cannot find how to delete them unless I do it one by one which requires at least three different actions and would take forever!
Someone said highlight first and then delete, but I cannot find any control to highlight them!
I went to the nearest Apple shop today. It is 125 kms from where I live. Apparently it does not open until 9.30 am and at 9.10 there are already 30-40 people patently waiting outside!
I do not have time for this, and returned to pay $6 for parking my car!

I SIMPLY WANT TO KNOW HOW TO DELETE GROUPS OF PHOTOS. The photos I want are already transferred to my PC, so even it they are deleted from Cloud it does not matter, but at present when I go travelling I will not be able to download photos as I take them.

You can simply highlight all files in a folder using cmd+A. Then you can delete all highlighted files by using cmd+backspace. You can also highlight multiple files in a folder by clicking the first, then pressing and holding shift while clicking the last.


Wine, Wineskin, or Winebottler for IOS? I've survived for two months or more without my MacBook Pro but I really miss a Windows app called Azuon.  With that, I'd set up a search in ten seconds, start it, and come back a half-hour later to find what would have taken me days with Kayak, SkyScanner, Adioso, Momondo, Matrix, Rome2Rio, etc.

I did a web search but the only hit was an Italian video that had "IOS" in the title but had a MacOS screen for the whole first minute.  I can read Italian, but I can't follow it as audio without the help of lip reading.

So, I'm wondering if anyone knows of a way to run Windows apps on IOS.  (Actually run them on IOS, not on a networked Windows host via RDP, Citrix, VNC, etc.)

I can't even try to port Wine myself, since I don't have anything to run XCode on.

There is no Wine or similar for iOS. Besides probably being in conflict with Apple's Guidelines iPhones/iPads are not running on Intel chips so the Windows binaries wouldn't be usable anyway.

Having said that, there are apps like Hipmunk, Kayak etc. available for iOS which provide flight search functionality.


Why doesn't the power connector on my thunderbolt display fit in my 13" macbook pro? This is beyond irritating and I can't find any info.

The magsafe connector for my new 13" retina display MBP is different than the one for my old (12 months) 15" MBP and is not compatible with the 27" thunderbolt display.

I could understand if one were older than the other, but I literally just got the new thunderbolt display and 13" MBP from Apple yesterday and the magsafe power coming from the display does not fit into the magsafe connector on my notebook.

What gives?

Your Thunderbolt monitor has a MagSafe Connector - your MBP has a MagSafe 2 Connector. Apple now supplies a MagSafe to MagSafe 2 converter with the display (check the packaging - the adapter is small). If you are missing the converter, check with Apple - they should give you a replacement.