The excel doesn't show chinese characters I download an excel file which contains chinese characters, but the excel on my macbookpro/osx/snow leopard is not able to show these chinese characters.

However if I copy a chinese character from somewhere and paste it into a cell, it is able to show the chinese character.

What might be going wrong?

We recently had a similar issue with all Asian fonts in Excel for OSX (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean).  The solution that worked for us was to change the font to "Arial Unicode MS".  You can do it for just the cells in question or the entire sheet.

Answer originally found from the question chain here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3456247?start=0&tstart=0


What does "plays" really count in iTunes? iTunes displays the number of "plays" for each track. What exactly does this mean?

For example, playing a little bit of a track does not seem to increment the number. But playing most, but not all, of a track seems to.

Does playing n seconds trigger the increment? n percent of the track? Or something else?

I have a 4GB iPod Mini, if that matters.

The motivation is, I have iTunes set to automatically delete podcasts after they're played, and I don't want to accidentally trigger a deletion.

I believe that you just have to listen to the last few seconds of a song. You can skip all of the beginning part, and it will increment the Plays if you listen to the end.


Mysterious behavior: keyboard input is repeating some whole words! As I am typing this message I might have a few letters or even a whole word repeated. So I type:

"repeated"

and I see

"repe repeated"

I've rebooted, removed plugins, changed keyboards wholesale, checked all the accessibility settings that could conceivably be involved and I cannot figure it out. This started happening about a month or so ago. Maybe when I updated to Catalina.

It happens in:

Browser (Chrome/Brave) (just happened entering this message)
MacOS Mail
VS Code

When it happens I think I see something white flash in the bottom left corner of the scree. It happens so fast that I cannot ever move my gaze there fast enough to read what it says or what it means. But there's a connection.

I've deleted all my text shortcuts and other custom keyboard bindings.

Any guesses?

I found the problem. I don't remember the source so help me with the citation if you know it. I uninstalled all Wacom drivers and this solved the problem. Wacom is a pen tablet and I can't imagine what it might have had to do with keyboard input.


What is the difference between Export as PDF and Export > Format: PDF (Preview) Recently I drew a simple line on a blank page in Preview. I realized, that if I export the Document via File > Export as PDF, and open the exported Document, I don't have the ability to move around and edit the line.
If I alternatively use File > Export and then choose 'Format: PDF' I can edit the exported file later.
So this lead me to the question, why there are 2 different PDF Export 'Formats' in Preview. I believe that this might pose a slight security risk, since editable PDF Documents can later be manipulated.

Firstly, PDFs can always be edited, and if you used a decent vector artwork editor (of which Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, Inkscape, and Picta Inc.'s Graphic are examples, and Preview is not), you would be able to move the line from either export method. There is no 'security' to be had.
There are certainly differences between the two types of PDF Export. File > Export As PDF will place your image onto the default paper size. This is most noticeable if you have an image that's not A4 or US Letter. File > Export > Format: PDF will keep the dimensions of the image.
The former type of Export keeps the line data as an annotation, whereas the latter type of export flattens the data as just a 'line' within the PDF.
As to why Preview has such as clumsy interface: only an Apple insider can tell you that. There are many mysteries about why Preview is such a terrible showcase for the brilliant Quartz graphics APIs that lie beneath, and we may never know.


App for Cropping and Resizing an image Is there an application where I can crop an image then resize it into custom dimensions?

I would like to crop it like with the built in Command+Shift+4 , then in a window I could select the dimensions.

So is there an app for this?

But of course Preview!

To resize: Choose Tools > Adjust Size, then enter the size you want to change the image to, then click OK

To crop: Click the "Select", then click and drag to select the area of the image that you want to retain. Next, choose Tools > Crop or press Command-K. If you crop too much, you can press Command-Z or choose Edit > Undo to undo the crop.


iMail rules are very slow After I updated my Mac to Mojave, the mail app became very slow, particularly with the rules.

I have rebuilt mailbox, restarted Mac and Mail multiple times.

My account connects to MS Exchange.

It takes ages to open rules, scroll down and add new senders to a rule I have created to mark "spam" and move all emails from this sender to junk folder. I have checked today, and to run the rule on one email takes about 1 minute. Any ideas?

I've had the same issue for Mojave and now Catalina. I've posted several 'suggestions' to Apple for improvements, especially the clunky UI, but nothing's come through yet!
The only way I know to speed things up is to move to a new, identical rule once the number of conditions grows to over 100, otherwise the interface just gums up.


Enabling Automatic Login via Terminal I’m running MacBook with macOS Sierra version 10.12.5. I would like to know the commandline setting to change to UNCHECK the “Disable Automatic login” under “Security & Privacy”. I can do this by using the UI. However since I have to redo this repeatedly, I’m trying to do this using a script.

Edit: This is a corporate owned MacBook. If I want to do this, I have to do it everytime I reboot because this setting gets reset on reboot. This may also be the reason why my attempt mentioned below did not work. However, I can do this manually, so the settings are not so restrictive, so I'm guessing I might be able to do this on the commandline.

I tried the process mentioned in Editing System Preferences via Terminal   - but the only difference I get is in com.apple.loginwindow.plist where it differs in the LoginwindowText. I don’t think this is the setting.

Can someone tell me which is the commandline setting for unchecking this box?

Edit: In response to Mark's suggestion, I tried the following:

try
    set thePW to "mypassword"

    tell application "System Events"
        tell application "System Preferences"
            activate
        end tell
        tell process "System Preferences"
            activate
            delay 1
            click menu item "Security & Privacy" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
            delay 3
            if title of button 1 of window 1 is "Click the lock to make changes." then
                click button 1 of window 1
                delay 2
                keystroke thePW
                keystroke return
            end if
            get properties
            --set properties to {automatic login:true}
        end tell
    end tell
on error errMsg
    display dialog errMsg
end try

This code starts “Security & Privacy” and puts in my password to login. Unfortunately, the get properties does not show me anything about automatic login. I get the following result:

  {has scripting terminology:true, bundle
  identifier:"com.apple.systempreferences", file:alias "Macintosh
  HD:Applications:System Preferences.app:" of application "System
  Events", creator type:"sprf", subrole:missing value, entire
  contents:{}, selected:missing value, application file:alias "Macintosh
  HD:Applications:System Preferences.app:" of application "System
  Events", orientation:missing value, role:"AXApplication", accepts high
  level events:true, file type:"APPL", value:missing value,
  position:missing value, id:28015286, displayed name:"System
  Preferences", name:"System Preferences", class:application process,
  background only:false, frontmost:true, size:missing value,
  visible:true, Classic:false, partition space used:0, role
  description:"application", maximum value:missing value,
  architecture:"x86_64", short name:"System Preferences",
  focused:missing value, minimum value:missing value, help:missing
  value, title:"System Preferences", accepts remote events:false, total
  partition size:0, description:"application", accessibility
  description:missing value, enabled:missing value, unix id:57066}

In the above mentioned code I have commented out the set properties to {automatic login:true} line. If I enable it I get the error:

  error "System Events got an error: Can't make {automatic login: true} into type of properties of process." number -1700 from
  {automatic login: true}

I'd be grateful for any help.

I do not recommend doing this, as it increases security risk, but to answer the question, see below.

I do not have the same macOS version so was not able to test, but you can try creating an AppleScript to do this for you.

Create AppleScript to Disable automatic logic and save to ~/bin/disable-automatic-login.osa

#!/usr/bin/osascript
-- AppleScript to set Security settings "Disable automatic login" unchecked

tell application "System Events"
    tell security preferences
        set properties to { automatic login: true }
    end tell
end tell

Make sure to enable execution chmod +x ~/bin/disable-automatic-login.osa

Add ~/bin to path and run $ disable-automatic-login.osa to disable the automatic login.

Troubleshooting

The documentation is out of date, so the properties may be incorrect, but the idea is the same. You can discover the properties in the Script Editor.app by running the following in the app:

tell application "System Events"
    tell security preferences
        get properties
    end tell
end tell

and change the script with the correct properties.

Extra: Automatic Launch at login with launchd

See http://developernotes.com/archive/2011/04/06/169.aspx


ExpressCard SSD continusouly indexing I've had a 48GB SSD in my ExpressCard slot on my '09 17" MBP for the last 8-9 months and haven't had a problem up until this past week.  When I look at spotlight it says that it is indexing the SSD, and it won't stop.  I've left the laptop on over the weekend and I come back and its doing the same thing.

Is there a way to fix this?  If there is no obvious method, is there a way to at least turn of indexing for this drive?

The simplest [yet not only] way to prevent Spotlight indexing a drive is...

Connect the volume or drive you want excluded to your Mac.
Open the System Preferences application.
Click on Spotlight, then click on the Privacy tab.
Drag your volume or drive into the Privacy menu to exclude it.


How to send an email through an outlook.com alias email address on iOS? Outlook.com (past Live Mail / Hotmail) allows creation of email aliases associated to one main account, which is very convenient.

Using Exchange ActiveSync with an iOS device works really well on all tasks, but one can't send/reply emails using one of those aliases.

Is there any productive way of using these outlook.com aliases on an iOS device?

I haven't found any actual answer for my question, but instead found a very good alternative.

Basically @icloud.com accounts also allow the creation of aliases that can be used in all iOS Mail apps, with one particular advantage: the alias allows changing the name of the recipient as well, something @outlook.com account aliases does not allow.

You can create @icloud.com aliases using the web interface options.


How can I install Mac OS on my MacBook running Linux Mint? I am new here and I hope that this is the right place to find an answer.

My questin is: How can I install a new copy of OS X on my Mac, using Linux?

I recently bought a Macbook Pro from a friend. I am not sure what's the exact model. This friend installed Windows XP on the mac (I don't know how exactly) and that's it. Nothing else is on the HDD. I tried to boot into recovery mode - doesn't work. I tried to boot into internet recovery - nothing happens. I tried Safe boot by pressing Shift Key - nothing happens.

I created a bootable USB using another Windows PC - doesn't show up when I press C or option key.
The only thing that show's up when I press the option key is a HDD icon named Windows with an arrow under it. If I click it, it takes me to Windows XP, which I cannot use properly. The only thing I was able to do is to install Linux Mint 14 from an old DVD, which works ok except I don't have Wi-Fi.

I've tried different USB sticks, created with Transmac or power iso or with terminal in Linux but nothing showing up the USB so I can boot from.
Any ideas why? Thanks in advance.

A possible solution for your problem may be the creation of a bootable USB using another Mac computer.

In this way the formatting (Mac OS Extended) of the drive will be compatible with Mac systems and it show up when you press C with option key. Then, following the steps you can erase the disk (removing Linux) and install the OS X that you desired.


App for changing between a work and private mode I use my Mac for private and work. Between this two scopes I share a lot of configuration. Because of that I want to use only one account.

Here is my question:

Is a app existing with which I can change between a work and private mode? Here some things that the app should do:

enable and disable my work email account
mount and unmount a list of devices
start a specific collection of software

I would go for ControlPlane which is location-aware or can change state depending on what devices are plugged in.

You will then need to configure it with a work location and a private or home location.

Things like launching multiple apps would be firstly set up in Automator and saved as a double-clickable script.

For example, I have one that launches Safari and opens a number of websites, then launches iTerm.

You would get ControlPlane to run this script when it detects the stage change.


Will backing up files also include files that are marked for deletion? If i use Time Machine to back up my data to an additional disk, will the backup also contain files marked for deletion that have not been overwritten yet?

To clarify, I do not mean files in the recycling bin, I mean files that have been already emptied from the bin that require tools like Photorec to recover

Thanks for any help

No. Time Machine only backs up files present on the filesystem and furthermore, only those not excluded by a rule or explicit exception.

On OS X, what files are excluded by rule from a Time Machine backup?
What does Time Machine back up?


When Screen Sharing, why does the remote screen continually go black? As an ongoing issue (for at least the past three major OS X versions), I find that when trying to remote to another machine using Screen Sharing, the remote screen gets painted completely black. Moving the mouse will result in the area immediately under the pointer being redrawn correctly, and dragging a window (in the remote session) off screen then back on will redraw that window. Sometimes other areas of the screen will redraw themselves (usually when there is an actual change), but most the screen simply remains black, sometimes even repainting back to full black again.

Network connectivity doesn't seem to be a factor; this happens both on a fast LAN and across the Internet with 400-500ms latency. Hardware doesn't seem a factor either; using a range of Mac Minis and Macbooks. Screen sharing sometimes initiated via Remote Desktop, sometimes just clicking on Share Screen in the Finder. While I can work around this glitch (I tend to just SSH in for maintenance), I thought I'd see if anyone out there has any suggestions!

I'd second the idea that it may be a RAM issue -- I'm noticing that it happens particularly when:

I've got huge uptime on the remote system (so... memory leaks, cruft, have accumulated)
I switch apps on the remote system (loading things in and out of RAM)

From practical standpoint, I've found that greping for the the screen sharing daemon and killing it forces the remote machine to respawn a new one that isn't blacked out... but that doesn't last for long:

ps aux | grep screensharingd

and then sudo kill XXXX once I know what what procid I'm targeting. But that's a really short term solution (buys another 15-90 seconds, usually).

The finger the I would also point is at mdutil, the spotlight indexer, which just gets out of control, especially on a system with a lot of large drives with a lot of small files. I've had best success clamping down on Spotlight (which, imho, isn't very useful) and restricting it by either marking most of my drives and directories "private".

If the remote system is tight on RAM, it may be because Spotlight is being a pig.


Need solution for RAID from old Mac I have an old Hackintosh which I no longer use, except as a server to access 2 RAIDs made of 6 disks.

The machine is too big, uses too much power, makes too much noise, and generates too much heat to justify just being a file server.

So I'm looking for an economical way to 're-house' the disks in some kind of box/enclosure that will be smaller, quieter, and more energy efficient -- and which I will be able to access from my new laptop, preferably with Thunderbolt?

The 2 RAIDs contain 6TB of data; they were set up with Disk Utility:

A 'safe' 4TB RAID 1 (mirror) made of 2 x 4TB disks, 3.68TB used
A 'fast' 8TB RAID 0 (striped) made of 4 x 2TB disks, 2.41TB used

Is there a good NAS/enclosure/dock that will let me house the disks and not lose the data? I.e., will my machine 'see' the existing RAID structure?

Ideally it would be one box, like the Pegasus R6 -- which unfortunately is NOT available without disks.

And I don't really need the 'fast' storage anymore; I'm OK with putting all on one big RAID10 or RAID1 volume.

You're using Apple's RAID which means you need a device which just hosts the discs and then your new laptop will see them and use the existing RAID structure. This rules out NAS.

AS these are existing RAID arrays you can't simple merge them together to create a single new RAID. At least, you can't while keeping the data on them.

Essentially, in one device you just need a 6+ array of the disks to be presented as individual drives to the new machine, which will then pull them together into the RAID.

You could also use any number of single, double, quad enclosures too, but, I'm assuming you want a single device.

A device like this: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=4274&Nav=|c:4269|&Sort=3&Recs=10 would do it in one.

Put the drives in, connect to your new laptop and start using RAID.

If you've happy to lose a drive, the Drobo's are pretty neat. Not the fastest, but very usable, and generally easier than normal RAID. It's the easier, most it-just-works storage solution.

If you want to get geeky, then ZFS is the best solution: https://openzfsonosx.org However, it's still essentially beta (despite being very stable), and it's not an officially support Apple filesystem. It'll give you a nice range of options to use your disks with. Again - this requires a rebuild, unless you were really cunning and broke the RAIDs up, kept the data on one half, at least the mirrored one, started a new ZFS and then copied the data over and created two mirrored vdevs in a pool together. You'd need a spare 2Gb drive in the meantime.


I am sharing my iMac's ethernet connection as a WiFi hotspot. Who is connected? I would like to monitor who connects to my iMac's WiFi hotspot.  I have protected it with a password, but WEP is easy to crack. Is there a utility for OS 10.7.3/Lion to see who is connected?

arp -a
gives a list of connected interfaces on the same network.

en1 is Wi-Fi
en0 is Ethernet (on the Macbook Air this is Wi-Fi)

How to use
Type this command in the Terminal located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app. To learn more about this command, type man arp in the terminal.


Can I run an AppleScript upon my 3G modem connecting? I'm looking for a way to run an AppleScript after my 3G modem is successfully connected to the carrier.

The modem is using the standard OSX network panel to connect, so it's not using any crappy carrier software.

Around the web I've found a lot of people running stuff after the modem is connected but it seems to be sending AT command to the modem, and I don't want that. I want to launch an AppleScript on my computer.

Try ControlPlane. It lets you trigger various events, including launching scripts, based on various system events, including what networks you're connected to. I'm not 100% sure if it will read any network interfaces, or just the default ones, but it's free and probably worth a look.


How do I open a new Terminal window for same directory as the current window When I have a Terminal window open, ⌘N opens a new one.

Is there any way to get the current directory in the new window to automatically be the same as it was on the window where I pressed ⌘N?

To accomplish this within a new window, go to Preferences within Terminal.app.
Within the General tab, you can adjust the behavior (you likely want to select Same Working Directory) for both new windows and new tabs.


What's the default Notes account setting used for on the iPhone? What's the default Notes account setting used for on the iPhone?

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Default Account (in the "Notes" section).

What does it do?

I couldn't find any documentation in the user's guide for this setting.

Each Mail account on your iOS 4+ device is able to sync notes. When you have it enabled for multiple mail accounts you're able to have notes stored in different accounts. The Default Account setting will be for which account the notes are associated with unless you say so otherwise (Identical to the Default mail account in terms of functionality). The screenshot below might help - namely showing the Notes app is like the Mail application - an All Notes (Mail) view and just viewing on the individual accounts.

(Source of Photo)


Resolution of iPhone photo stream upload! I've not been able to pin down whether the photos uploaded from an iPhone to photo stream are full resolution. I saw mention that they are downloaded in full resolution to OSX machines and not iOS. But not how they have been uploaded.

Yes, I can confirm to you they are exact the same.
Photo's are exact the same format and file-size.

You can also verify this yourself by connecting your iPhone to your PC using the USB cable and get one picture from it. Check the size, resolution and format.
Now open your Photostream and do exact the same.


Mac/OS X AppStore 'buttons' inactive, not showing screenshots I've been putting off from using the App Store, and now it seems I'm kind of obliged to keep doing that. Screen shots are not being loaded, and when I click the button to download an app, nothing happens. I did get the update for an app I installed a while back, I can log in normally, search, check my account, etc.

Has anyone ever seen something similar?

Update: just noticed slews of this log entry. That might at least explain why I'm not seeing any screenshots!

20110802 22:56:17   [0x0-0x165165].com.apple.appstore[14137]    Tue Aug  2 22:56:17 XXX.local App Store[14137] : CGBitmapContextGetBitsPerComponent: invalid context 0x1012658d0
20110802 22:56:17   [0x0-0x165165].com.apple.appstore[14137]    This isn't a bitmap context. Forcing destination format to ARGB_8 for CGContext.

Unless you want to try turning on the store debug menu to muck about, Here are some general tips that might help narrow down the causes.

The Mac App Store app loads in two phases.

The first just brings up whatever cached data was saved the last time the app quit.

The second actually paints in the artwork and may refresh the app with current data, updates, whatever else it cares to do in response to the servers on the internet.

This second part is taking between 10 and 20 seconds for me lately.

The store isn't known (of late) for being particularly speedy when launching. You can fire up iTunes - that online store should paint in about the same time as the Mac App store if your app and account are working correctly. It's more like a thin version of safari that knows how to spend your money with a secure wallet. Any network filtering, proxy, date errors, or slow servers will cause your app to poke along.

You could try signing out of your account to see if that is delaying the response.
You could also try disabling OCSP/CRL in the Keychain Access preferences. That helped in some 10.6 slowdowns, but it's not making as much of a difference in Lion as far as I can tell.


Remove Linux partition on Mac. CoreStorage problems I have a Macbook pro 2015 with a 256 GB SSD and a Linux partition. I would like to remove the partition. Following the steps written in here, I got stuck in the Modify step. Once I execute the command gpt add -b 409649 ... and than I do the diskutil list command, it does not appear any disk with the size 60 GB.

Does any one know how to solve my problem?

By accident the OP took one command in the answer Remove Ubuntu and grow Mac partition literally and entered:

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 118430560 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

to add a partition table entry, though his original macOS volume was much larger. The command above creates a ~60 GB CoreStorage partition right after the EFI partition.
No output of the previous partition table was available (sudo) gpt -r show diskX.

To recreate the partition table an external volume with a full macOS install, wxHexEditor and some knowledge about the typical sizes and internal structures of macOS recovery volumes is necessary.

Install macOS to a thumb drive and configure it.
Download and install wxHexEditor
Search for the typical start blocks of the Recovery HD like in this answer.
Recreate the Recovery HD with gpt add -i 3 ...
Recreate the main macOS volume between EFI and Recovery HD partition gpt add -i 2 ...
Verify the disk and the volumes with diskutil verify[Disk|Volume] diskYsX
Expand the recovered main volume


Apple script to lock computer using knock There is a great app called knock which lets you unlock your mac by tapping on your phone twice while in proximity.

http://www.knocktounlock.com

Unfortunately in order for the app on your phone to unlock your mac, you must have locked your computer using their lock utility.

The 3 ways I normally lock my computer do not seem to work with the app.
- Alfred
- control + shift + eject
- Waiting for screen saver

Their utility must be interfaced with a mouse and can not be triggered from the keyboard as far as I can tell.

How could you write a script (applescript?) that would lock the computer using their interface?

knock to unlock interface

Alfred lock interface

I sent a question to the support personel at knock, and they informed me that a script has already been written. The creator blogged about this just hours before this question was opened.

http://blog.ambroselittle.com/lock-mac-with-keyboard-shortcut-and-knock/

There is both an alfred workflow and an apple script to do this.


iPad initial setup join Wi-Fi by scanning QR code Is it possible to configure things such that iPad gives me an option to open the Camera app to scan a QR code to connect to a Wi-Fi access point? Do note that the iPad will be enrolled into DEP and this is required during the initial setup.

It is not possible to access the built-in Camera app before the initial setup is complete.

As the iPads in question will be configured via DEP, the appropriate approach would be to provision for your device to join the desired Wi-Fi access point(s) automatically via your MDM solution. When done, the iPad will automatically connect to the said Wi-Fi network if it is available, even during the initial setup.


Login user when connecting via ssh on MacOS I've added MacOS Sierra machine to a corporate Active Directory domain and have enabled the remote login for several users in an AD group.

Those users can log in locally via UI and even can log in via opened SSH to mac.

The business requirement that this was done for is to allow users to connect to a Xamarin Build host from Visual Studio to develop for iOS, but this is outside of the scope of this question. So ultimately the connection from Visual Studio is done via pure SSH. Once the remote MacOS machine accepts the ssh credentials that are entered in VS UI, it tries to deploy a program part required by VS to perform needed tasks, a Broker application. The log of the attempt is the following:

Starting connection to Mac mac.mydomain.net... Starting Broker
4.3.0.795 in port 58116...
The user must be logged in on the Mac in order to execute an SSH command.
Disconnected from the Mac mac.mydomain.net (IP of mac.mydomain.net)

The problem is this entry:

The user must be logged in on the Mac in order to execute an SSH command.

Basically, if I go onto the MacOS via UI and login that user, then using Fast User Switching I will just move the screen back to login window, while maintaining the user's UI session on, I would be able to connect via Visual Studio just fine.

So ssh login is not the same as UI login. How can I set up the events or something, so that upon SSH login, a user would be "as in in UI" logged in as well?

Update: Probably duplicate of https://superuser.com/questions/39322/induce-mac-graphical-login-from-ssh

Short term, you will probably have to limit the logged in users to one or two since Mac OS doesn't implement a terminal services model of many remote users. Not only does your setup likely violate the explicit terms relating to Remote Desktop functionality in the software license (assuming your company didn't negotiate a custom license agreement with Apple), many subsystems, tuning parameters and scripts are designed for one primary user at a time.

Long term, you'll probably choose to re-architect your build toolset to set up some mix of:

a continuous integration server that builds without GUI
Apple's server.app and leverage Xcode server service to handle logging in to the GUI so you don't need to script and automate the local windowed session for the shared build account
multiple Mac for each developer so they can build locally instead of remotely.

TLDR; the system wasn't designed for 5 remote users - you'll experience oddities and issues if you run that way for long


Can I use slower or fastest Memory in my MacBook Pro mid 2012? Different speeds? Different sizes? I’d like to know if there’re any side effects to these memory configurations for MacBook Pro mid 2012 (I guess this can be extended to any Macs with removable memory).

Doubt 1:  any side effects if I use slower or faster memory?

Doubt 2: should I use different sized modules, such as a 4GB in one slot and a 2GB module in the other?.

Doubt 3: can I mix the speeds (such as 1 memory slower than the other).

Doubt 4: is dual channel used in the 2012 Macs?  (I can’t see this stated in support.apple.com/specs)

Only two MBPs match your description, and they both require:

204-pin PC3-12800 (1600 MHz) DDR3 SO-DIMM.

Either MBP 13" & 15" can take 16 GB (actual) but are equipped by Apple with 8 GB.

Simple answers:

Use the RAM speed the MBP was designed for (in this case 1600 MHz.)
You can use differing sizes, but performance will suffer as interleaving (dual-channel) will be disabled.
Do not mix speeds (see #1.)


Good software for watching videos on Mac? I want to watch videos on my Mac but I don't like QuickTime. I was wondering what the community recommends.

In particular, I was interested in some granular ability to slow down the video or speed it up. It seems that QuickTime can only double the speed. I wish I could, for example, say, increase speed to 1.5 or 1.25 (like YouTube). Sometimes I end up just uploading it to YouTube and watching it there - which is, I think, a little dumb.

Also, if it has any additional ability to rotate videos and save them, or concatenate two videos together and save the result; that would definitely be a plus, though not a requirement.

This answer will be short: VLC. Has everything you need except the rotation. It's a media player, not a video editor.

To alter the playback speed in VLC: Go to to Playback → Playback Speed. You can also alter the playback speed using ⌘= and ⌘-.

For rotation, as user Iwillnotexist Idonotexist notes in the comments below, you can go to Window → Video Effects → Geometry → Transform.

Bonus: A list of some VLC keyboard shortcuts for OS X.


Backing up files from corrupt disk from Windows Bootcamp So, mysteriously with no previous bad behavior my computer stopped booting, stuck in the gray loading bar cycle and then shutting down, the problem I believe wasn't obvious at first. I booted to recovery-mode (cmd+R) to access the disk utility and for my bad luck (terrible luck!) my hard drive was indeed failing and was not able to be fixed by disk-repair application. So, I'm willing to wipe the entire thing BUT as a software developer I've been working on a huge project on my own that never wanted to be anywhere outside my domain (hohoho!) , now I know it was a pretty dumb idea, because s**t happens. The thing is that I'm only looking forward to back up about a folder and that's it! And I was wondering if I could access my Mac partition from the Bootcamp Windows partition that is working completely fine, by the moment there's no disk unit identified on Windows. So.. Could I access the Mac-HD from my bootcamp partition so I could finally start wiping the thing out and re-installing OS while hitting my head against a wall for being so dumb?

I'd appreciate any kind of help.
Thanks!

The solution is MacDrive, you'll be able to download a trial version for 5 days that should be enough to grab everything you need before formatting! Download it, install it on your windows partition, restart your computer, access Windows once again, open MacDrive and from there you can access your MacHD partition, if it's corrupt it will tempt you to fix it, you might as well try to, you never know, but if things don't go the way you wanted well just open the disk and try to reach for your most desired files! Copy them on a hard-drive and you are set to wipe everything! Of course if you really appreciate the software you might as well buy it! Good luck!


Does -tef in the extension stand for anything in documents saved to iCloud in ML? When you save a new iWork document under Mountain Lion you are given the default extension of .pages-tef or .numbers-tef. These files appear to be directories and a different format than your standard .pages or .numbers file (I haven't had the chance to create a new Keynote preso yet).

Does 'tef' stand for anything? Are these just 'iCloud compatible' files and they've been dubbed '-tef' as the extension? Apple isn't one to name things without a specific intent and nothing specific comes to mind.

This seems to be the iCloud version of the iWork file format. A good article about it (albeit still without explanation of the acronym) can be found on Mac Observer.


How can I get Mail.app notifications without keeping it running? I like getting Growl notifications for incoming emails in Mail.app, but I'd prefer not to have to keep Mail.app running to see them. Is there a setting or third party tool for this?

If you're just using Gmail (like OP), then you can use the program Gmail Notifr. It lives in your menubar, and checks Gmail at a specified interval, it also supports Growl notifications.


Samba share randomly unable to move files/folders I'm having strange permissions issues with my OSX 10.8.4 server. I stopped using the Apple v2.2.1 server app due to numerous issues & now have samba 3.6.15 installed via Macports, which mostly works ok except...
Every now & then OSX asks for a password when trying to move specific files or folders from one place to another (within the same volume) Entering the users own password doesn't work, he is already logged on to the server as himself & is able to move other folders, save files & otherwise work ok.
When I do a 'get info' to look at the permissions for that file, it has 'staff - read/write' even though staff is not set as owner group for that folder & none of the users have staff as their primary group id.
If I expand 'details' it is 'com.apple.desktopservices' that is asking for the password
Guessing 'staff' has something to do with it although any suggestions appreciated!
Thanks,

After a bit of research I've come up with a workable solution - at least I'm not changing it for the time being.
Check 'ignore ownership' is unticked on the external volume where the share resides.

Change the users primary group id from 'staff' to custom group id

sudo dscl . -change /Users/lmessi PrimaryGroupID 20 567

Remove all ACLs from External drive 'Disk1'

chmod -RN /Volumes/Disk1

[if you get any errors, try recursive unlock files beforehand]

sudo chflags -R nouchg /Volumes/Disk1

change group ownership recursively for the group 'design'

sudo chgrp -R design /Volumes/Disk1

You can check ownership with ls -gl

ls -gl /Volumes/Disk1

Then my smb.conf file looks something like this

[global]
    socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=65536 SO_SNDBUF=65536
    unix extensions = no

        guest ok = No
        read only = No
        force group = design

    create mask = 664
        force create mode = 664
        security mask = 664
        force security mode = 664
        directory mask = 2775
        force directory mode = 2775
        directory security mask = 2775
        force directory security mode = 2775

[Share1]
        comment = Share1
    path = /Volumes/Disk1/Share1
        valid users = mickey, donald
        admin users = mickey, donald


Apps that have just gone free or are going to? Is there any way to know ahead of time which paid apps are going free, or does Apples RSS feed actually contain data for apps that have just gone free "today" ?

There are a lot of Apps which provide a daily list of free Apps. These kind of companies base their business in agreements with the developers, who pay for their Apps to be featured on these App-of-the-Day lists.

So, the Company makes it's business, the Developer's App get notoriety and publicity, which means that on the long shot more people will download the App once it's paid again and the user gets to get free Apps daily. It's a win-win-win.

The best and easies way of knowing of paid Apps going free for limited time is using some of these Apps.


I tried updating my iPhone, but now it says "SIM is invalid" I have an iPhone 3GS 32GB. I have just tried updating the phone using iTunes. The phone is second hand, and was unlocked when I bought it. I didn't know that when you try to update it, it loses everything. Now it isn't reading my SIM, even though I've used this same SIM in the phone before I tried updating it. Now, when I turn the phone on, it comes up with:

  SIM not valid - Only compatible SIM cards from a supported carrier may be used to activate iPhone. Please insert the SIM card that came with your iPhone or visit a supported carrier's store to receive a replacement SIM card.

What does this mean? And how can I get my phone working again?

This means that the phone was software unlocked (which requires a jailbreak). Because you updated the device using iTunes, you have removed the jailbreak and the phone is no longer in a state of carrier unlock. This is actually common practice and a great number of people end up getting burned (they either just don't know better or are lied to and told the phone is factory unlocked).

You can call the carrier the phone is originally locked to and have them unlocked it (they may charge a modest fee or if you luck out, do it for free as that particular model no longer being manufactured) or re-jailbreak the device and software unlock it yourself, provided you have a baseband revision of 06.15.00 or older.

Note: Apple can't help in these matters.


What does "Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library" mean? I just plugged my iPhone into my new mac (previously it was managed using itunes on a PC)

I just want to delete some songs that are on the iPhone.

It seems I can't press delete on the songs in iTunes when the phone is connected.

When I select Manually manage my songs and videos it prompts "the iphone is synced with another itunes library. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library?"

I don't understand because it was manually managed on my PC not synced to a library. Also the prompt isn't very helpful, what does "erase this iPhone" mean? Delete everything? Just music and videos?

If I check "Manually manage my songs and videos" and receive the prompt which says it will "erase this iPhone" what will it actually erase? Is it just the songs and videos?

The first part of the sync error message means exactly what it says - your iPhone can only be associated with a single iTunes library.  The second half is tricky for people that are analytical, but for most users it's meant to make them want to back up their phone before they erase it.

Regardless of how you choose to copy your content (sync manually or automatic) it maintains a connection to a single library to which is is allowed to copy music/films/apps etc to and from, and where backups/restores etc can be made. Unless you know exactly what was synced - you could be inadvertently erasing some content hence the scary general error message.

If you introduce your iPhone to a new iTunes library, then it can remove any content that is associated with the previous one.  Assuming you still have access to the old one you can copy the files from one computer to another to enable you to sync them back again after, or you can transfer the purchases to the new iTunes library assuming it has been authorised using the same Apple ID.  This is an attempt to limit unauthorised copying of music and other content etc, otherwise you could happily take your phone or iPod around to all your friends laptops and merrily copy all their stuff onto your device, where you could then happily sync it back to your iTunes library at home.

Other phone content, like emails, contacts, settings should remain unaffected, as these are not held within the iTunes library (even if you have set iTunes to be the sync mechanism for putting them on your phone, they belong outside of the library.

Rule of thumb: if the original iTunes copied the content on in the first place, it will be removed.  It won't just wipe the whole phone, just what came from iTunes.


Disable spell checking only for specific section of text in Pages '13 I know, you can disable automatic Spell checking for the entire document (Edit->Spelling and Grammar->Check Spelling While Typing) but I want to disable it just for the text in that specific text box (it's code, so it will underline nearly everything which makes reading it very hard...).
Is there any way to do that in Pages 5.2?

No, disabling the spell check will disable it globally — there is not currently a way to specify a section of text to disable or enable the spell check.

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding this on the following page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html


Should I care too much about battery cycles? I bought a MacBook Pro 13 inch 2017 two days ago and it’s been already 4 cycles

Is it something that I have to care about?

It may have been through a handful of cycles in the factory for testing (unless you checked that it was at zero cycles when you unboxed it?). I'd just keep an eye on it over the next couple of weeks and make sure the number doesn't keep increasing too fast.


Is it possible to play one song through speakers, and another through headphones/earbuds? I'm wondering if anyone knows if there is a way to play one song on speakers, yet a different song through headphones, using a Mac.  I use songs as examples for any given audio.  The way I assume this would work is by having some kind of external device that plugs into the aux port on the Mac, that in turn would have multiple inputs for the aux jack for your speakers and also the headphones/earbud jack, and then you could set your web browser playing YouTube to the speakers and your iTunes to the headphones, or something along those lines.

Has anyone heard of anything that would enable you to listen to one song on headphones while the rest of the room listens to another, without interference between the two?

You can use a piece of hardware called a MIXER to take two (or more) audio signals, mix them together, and have one OR MORE outputs.  For example: Behringer XENYX Q502USB / Audio interface.

There is a learning curve for operating a mixer (where to plug in the sound source / what cables to use), but if you want to take recording to the next level, you might enjoy getting a mixer.


What happens to iCloud mail if storage payment fails I'm thinking of switching to iCloud Email and to buy more storage (currently 5gb) but im not sure if it's reliable to be charged for the storage on a monthly basis. Can someone tell me what happens if a payment fails for some reason, can I still receive messages for some time until I resolve the issue (even if unable to login to my mailbox) or the sender will receive a delivery error?

Your data will remain but you won't be able to add more data until you reduce it back to below 5GB, i.e. If you have a 6GB backup, it will be unable to backup until you repay or you reduce your backup size below 6GB.


Safari keeps refreshing itself Safari is keep refreshing itself multiple times a day which is quite annoying.
It prompts a message to me: "Force Reload" and then it reloads every tab in every window. This is unacceptable.

Any idea what is going wrong?

(Safari 5.1.3 / OS X Lion 10.7.3)

Safari on Lion exhibits similar behaviour to on IOS, in that it can decide to arbitrarily drop a loaded page in order to save memory, regardless of the fact that you likely have many many more times more Ram than on your iPhone...

When you switch back to a tab that has been dropped, it will then proceed to redownload it to get it back to how it was.  This is irritating, pointless, and potentially disruptive depending on exactly how the page was formed.

Sadly, before you ask your next question, no, there's no way to stop this:


Low Battery Performance - Activity Monitor Shows Faults in CPU statistics My Macbook battery (I guess batteries is the more correct term in this new Macbook) isn't getting battery life as estimated by specs, and it is already lessened in only about 2 months. Today, I ran a hardware diagnostics with no errors reported.

I ran a CPU analysis in Activity Monitor, but nothing seemed to be using a ton of CPU (not that I really understand it, b/c Apple support threads say to analyze by percentage to see if any one process is hanging, but they continue changing so how to know anyhow??)....but I digress.

So, I had also been having some problems with Safari freezing and other issues with a variety of programs, and ended up having to reinstall the
OS X, some of which continue to occur despite this "fix". While I was looking at the CPU %'s I clicked Safari (w/in the Activity Monitor) and when it was open, I clicked on the Statistics tab...for what, I don't know because none of it makes a lot of sense to me, by way of what it really represents, but regardless, I did it. There I found what seemed like a huge number of "faults".

I did the same with a few other running programs/apps and they showed no faults (or even a listing for faults where they could be displayed).

What are faults in this context and what does a high number represent? Is this reflecting errors? Is this something that could drain battery? Is it something else I should be concerned about?

In the context of the statistics shown here, the 'faults' represent 'page faults', which are actually benign and refer to an attempt to read something that was not present in memory. This is taken care of in the virtual memory system by 'paging' the requested memory into the memory map of the process. But the OS keeps track of how many of these there were. If the number is very high, it can mean that you don't have enough RAM, or that you have a large number of processes trying to use more RAM than is currently to hand.

Assertions represent something unexpected by the program, and would be indicative of some kind of problem. I would be surprised to see any of those in 'live' commercial software, though.

Things that can drain battery more than expected include:

The Flash plugin. This is a memory hog and should die already.
Google's Chrome browser. It has been shown that using Safari instead of Chrome can add up to an hour of usable battery life. (This is a known issue)


Why does iPad run out of batteries while it's plugged in? I'm playing Vain Glory with my iPad Pro plugged into the 12W adapter via the supplied Lightning cable. Screen goes black, battery dead. Takes a few minutes to come back on.

Why on earth did the device turn off even though it's plugged into the mains? Why does it show the battery dead symbol, instead of just turning on using the power from the mains to operate?

This is so frustrating and lame.

The 12.9" iPad Pro can use power faster than the 12W power adapter can supply it. That's why it can run out of power when running for example a game, even though it is connected to the charger.

To avoid that, use the 29W Apple power adapter instead. The 29W adapter is not supplied with the iPad Pro, but must be bought seperately.


Why is there static noise when playing media at zero volume on iPhone? I have iPhone 6 on iOS 10.3.
Recently, while watching a video (not stored on my phone, but on YouTube on Firefox browser) with volume set to zero, I put the bottom speaker on the iPhone to my ear (because in the silence of the room, I heard something), and I heard static, despite volume being zero! I closed the tab, which caused the static noise to stop, then opened the Music app and played a song on zero volume, and when I put the bottom speaker next to my ear, the static noise had come back!

Is this normal? Why is there static noise when media is playing at zero volume instead of no noise?

My Bluetooth is turned off, and the Alerts switch (whatever it's called) is turned off (I.e. You can see the orange line next to the volume buttons).

Hmmm...I did the same thing and I noticed the static too! So, I contacted Apple Support via Online Chat with the exact same wording you provided as above and a helpful representative provided the following answer:

"Now light static is going to be normal on your device even if it is fully down because there’s audio playing. You don’t have anything to worry about."

I replied:

"Ok, because I was worried that despite being on zero volume that the audio would suddenly start playing out loud! It's just that I wasn't aware of this before"

To which Toya, the representative, replied:

"Yes I definitely understand. That’s never fun, but you’re good. Now if it ever becomes loud static or screechy you have a problem."

=====================================

So there is no issue here!


What are the type and creator options in SetFile? I have read the setfile man page in detail several times, but I still did not understand some commands.
-t type Specifies the file type, where type is a string of exactly four characters.

What exactly is meant by type and how do I use it?
-c creator Specifies the creator of the file, where the creator is a string of exactly four characters.

What does this command do? Does it change the author of the metadata? And how exactly do I use that?

Type and creator are four characters each of metadata which can be applied to a file to indicate the file type and the application or system which could create or consume the file.
You can get the type/creator from a file using /usr/bin/GetFileInfo /path/to/file:
$ GetFileInfo ~/Downloads/video.mov
file: "/Users/g/Downloads/video.mov"
type: "\0\0\0\0"
creator: "\0\0\0\0"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 12/14/2020 11:16:08
modified: 12/14/2020 11:16:08

More about the historical use of these fields in Mac OS are described on Fiddling with Type/Creator Codes and File Extensions - O’Reilly, such as HTML files having type TEXT and creator MSIE for Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Nowadays in macOS these fields are likely empty on files you encounter.


iPhone 7+ text message with no contact or text but location is on? Browsing through my Messages on my iPhone 7+, I recently found a thread with no name, no number, and no message body. However when I click the ⓘ in the top right corner, I get the options to Send My Current Location and Stop Sharing My Location.

I do not currently have my location shared with anyone, and seeing Stop Sharing My Location is a little scary.

Has this happened to anyone? What would cause this? Thanks for the help!

This could be a corrupted Messages database. If you have your texts set to expire after a certain amount of time (under Settings → Messages → Keep Messages), your message threads would normally get emptied out, although the number would remain at the top.

You can find out for certain whether you’re sharing your location with anybody by going into Settings → Personal Profile (at the very top) → iCloud → Share My Location. If the list there is empty you should be fine, though you might still want to Stop Sharing My Location to see if an error/change occurs.

The Personal Profile submenu exists in iOS 10.3 and later. Otherwise just directly scroll down to iCloud after opening Settings.


How to make iCal event repeat based on Chinese calendar? My MacBook Pro running Yosemite has Finder in Simplified Chinese and iCal is set to show Chinese calendar dates next to the Gregorian calendar dates.

I know how to make events repeat every year on a certain Gregorian calendar date but how can I make events repeat every year on a certain Chinese calendar date (for example, for major Chinese festivals)?

iCal (actually now Calendar.app) is strictly a Gregorian calendar. It shows Chinese dates as a matter of convenience, but it does not actually operate on the Chinese calendar system.


Mail.app: How can I archive the "smarts" of Smart Mailboxes? I have certain Smart Mailboxes in Mail.app (Mountain Lion, Version 6.3 / 1503) which help me find invoices for my tax declaration. I only need them once a year and would like to archive them for the other 50 weeks, because they clutter my mailbox list.

I could edit the rules and note down the search criteria, re-creating the lists once a year ... but I am looking for an elegant solution.

Is there something like Smart Playlist Management (app that exports the smarts of Smart Playlists for iTunes) ... only for Mail.app? Any idea (App, Terminal, workflow) is greatly appreciated.

Well, really, a smartmailbox is like a rule that is stored inside a mailbox.

I would suggest, creating the criteria for a smart mailbox as a real rule.
Mail(menu)>Preferences>Rules(tab).
This way, you can just check/uncheck those rules when you want. This may adversely affect the rest of your organizational routines. However, you can choose to move or copy the messages, so perhaps copying could avoid the aforementioned caveat. Or an alternative
is
For me, if I go (in Finder) to /Users/myusername/Library/Mail/V2/MailData  there is a file called SmartMailboxes.plist . You could always drag this out (Mail should not be running), and return it when you need it again.

(There are also these associated files:

SmartMailboxes.plist.backup
SmartMailboxesLocalProperties.plist
SyncedSmartMailboxes.plist
SyncedSmartMailboxesLocalProperties.plist
VersionedSmartMailboxes.plist
VersionedSmartMailboxes.plist.backup
that may either need to be moved with, or just deleted. I don't use smart mailboxes at all, just a few dozen rules that I have changed/deleted/had in various forms for years over multiple OS/computer combos.) (Italics indicate a file that is there if you have synced smart mailboxes, which I never have, so that file doesn't exist for me, but does for the OP).

as far as a terminal shell script, you would want to edit the relevant plist files with the strings you need, by adding/removing them as need. You will get the strings you need by looking at the files themselves. You might want an app to look at them cleanly though, this could be XCode, PlistEditor, or something lite like TextWrangler if you're not messing around with XCode.

Notes: I'm running Mountain Lion with Mail.app 6.2. You should endeavor to always give the software version number of all relevant apps/os's to help the helpers help. I don't know if those files exist in the same way for you (more/less/different name/location), but the place to start for any recent Mac OS X version is the ~/Library/Mail (where ~ is your username/home folder), if your library folder is invisible you can get there by typing in the string in the window that pops-up with command-shift-g.


How to claim free disk space in APFS after deletion of huge amount of files? Given: Macbook pro 13 Inch with MacOS 10.15.1 (Catalina), 500 GB SSD built in.
Hard drive had 34 GB of free disk space according to diskutil and df -h.

Wanted: Reclaim  free disk space.

What I did:

I moved a huge folder of 120 GB onto an external disk. Trash was empty. I rebooted the machine, ran Disk Utility's First Aid as well.

It remains with 34 GB of free disk space.

I moved another folder of 9 GB to an external disk drive.
It still remained with 34 GB of free disk space.

I gave the system some hours of probably internal reorganizational tasks (if any... because you'll never know)

Then I figured out 2 further cache folders on a project holding 25 GB each and removed them via rm -rf.
du -sh gave me proof that these 50 GB was really deleted and my whole projects folder was 50 GB smaller than before.

However, my disk is still quite full. Free space: 34 GB.

How can I fix this without reformatting and reinstalling everything from scratch?

Okay, I can answer by myself.

In further investigation I came across the hidden space called local snapshot space that is caused by local time machine snapshots and tried to purge them for giving back at least 100 GB:

♠ sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 100g 1
Password:
Thinned local snapshots:
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-12-07-134712.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-12-07-134712.local

Although some snapshots should have been deleted, nothing happened in order to show more free disk space. I increased the argument to 110g and now at least 72 GB was released and show up as free disk space.
I plaid a bit with separate values, found a tool called Daisy Disk that is able to show the size of hidden spaces.

I tried to remove all these local snapshots with

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /

and it seems to remove them. At the end there are still 50 GB of hidden spaces left according to Daisy Disk that I am unable to find their location at the moment.

It seems that under the hood APFS would care by itself to free up this space if required. However, the UX around all this is as bad as possible and a huge black box from the perspective of a user.


What does a 2012 Mac Mini need for microphone input? I need a simply jack Mic unamplified physically connected to my Mac Mini (late 2012 model) through Audio-IN and it doesn't work.

I also tried the original iPhone's headphones to no avail and I wonder if this is normal?

Does the Mac Mini require a USB microphone or can I use the Audio Line-in port with another type of microphone?

UPDATE 10/14: I tried using a 3 channel splitter like this

then I plugged my speakers and my earphones with mic but nothing to do, mic still doesn't work... (maybe just because this splitter has a 3 channel male jack but it's a normal 2 ch; I bought it for 2€ from China so it's possible..)

The audio-in port on Mac Minis is a line-level port, meaning that a standard PC microphone may not be audible without some sort of amplifier.

On any Mini from 2010 and later, you can use the Apple headset (the kind that comes with the iPhone), but you have to plug it into the headphone port, not the audio-in port. There are also adapters available that allow you to use any standard PC headset with that port.

On older Minis, you'll have to use a USB audio adapter. The iMic is a popular one, but there are many others out there.


MacBook Pro touchpad not clicking? (Hardware issue?) My hands were a little wet when I touched the touchpad on my MacBook Pro 15". I think that a little water went into the cracks, or the tiny space around touchpad. The "click" mechanism stopped working properly. Multitouch still works perfectly.

I ordered a new touchpad, but NO! Problem remained. Touchpad still only registers "clicks" from bottom left corner.

I use my comp for work (Photoshop, Illustrator).

I tried loosening, tightening the screw on touchpad. Still nada.

Please help?

Edit: I need the physical "click." I use laptop for work. The touch to click does not function well with real work in Illustrator and Photoshop. I don't want to sound like a jerk, but please don't suggest the use of a mouse or "touch to click". These are not real answers to my question.

Check your MacBook's battery. My trackpad stopped clicking consistently, and then sometimes locked in click-down, keeping me from de-selecting things. When I opened it up I noticed that the battery was puffed up a bit. If I removed the battery and closed the case, the trackpad clicked just fine. Apple replaced the battery and all's good.


I can't write to my flash drive, and it is already in the MS-DOS (FAT) Format. Why? This is my first question on this website. I am using a Mac Air, and I have a flash drive in which I can read from. I am able to copy files from this onto my Desktop, or anywhere on my computer for that matter. I cannot write to my flash drive, however. I know this is a common problem for some people. I looked into their solutions. There is one difference between the cases I've found, and my case. The flash drive's format is normally a 'NT' format, which is a Window format from my understanding.

My flash drive is formatted in 'MS-DOS (FAT)' according to Disk Utility and the 'Get Info' window from Finder. It did tell me I had removed it wrongly before. I am not sure how to fix the flash drive. Do I reformat it? If so, how and what do I format it to. Please let me know.

Thank you in advance for your help,
  ~Rane

Screenshot:

I do have the flash drive selected in the Disk Utility picture.

So, here's what I did after much face-palming and cursing of Apple and their absolute disregard for their users:

From the terminal:

Identify your USB by NAME and IDENTIFIER:

diskutil list

Output is:

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE    IDENTIFIER
0:               FDisk_partition_scheme              *2.0 GB     disk3
1:                 DOS_FAT_32 MIXTAPE                 2.0 GB   disk3s1

In this case, NAME=MIXTAPE and the IDENTIFIER=/dev/disk3s1

Now unmount the USB:

sudo diskutil unmount /dev/$IDENTIFIER

Example:

sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1

Output is:

Volume MIXTAPE on disk3s1 unmounted

Now create the Volume directory - this appears to be the key!

sudo mkdir /Volumes/$NAME

Example:

sudo mkdir /Volumes/MIXTAPE

No output.

Now mount the USB to the Volume:

sudo mount -w -t msdos /dev/disk3s1 /Volumes/$NAME

Example:

sudo mount -w -t msdos /dev/disk3s1 /Volumes/MIXTAPE

No output.

Validate that the USB is now writeable:

touch /Volumes/$NAME/tmp.txt

Example:

touch /Volumes/MIXTAPE/tmp.txt

You should now be able to see that you were able to create the tmp.txt file on your USB in the Finder app or by:

ls -al /Volumes/$NAME

Example:

ls -al /Volumes/MIXTAPE


How to recover iMessages sent to main phone number when using a different SIM card overseas? I am a U.S. AT&T customer with an unlocked iPhone 6 plus, but am currently travelling through Spain and using a pre-paid Vodafone SIM card.

One major problem I've run into:

After inserting the new Vodafone SIM card, my AT&T number gets deactivated from iMessage and all messages being sent to that number aren't being delivered.

My questions are:

1) Will the iMessages currently being sent to my AT&T number be delivered once I put my AT&T SIM back in?

2) If not, what should I do so that I don't lose all of the messages that are being sent to my AT&T phone number?

Apple stores iMessages on their servers only until they are sent to your device. Therefore, they will be sent to your iPhone once you put your original SIM back in.

Another option would be to add an email address to your iMessage account and then even messages sent to your original number will be forwarded to your phone with the temporary SIM in if it has the email address associated with your iMessage account.


A few applications are automatically opened when I first turn on the mac I have a few applications that are automatically opened when I start the computer, for example TextWrangler or Activity Monitor. Is it possible to start the computer without this stupid behaviour?

Either these apps were running when you turned off the Mac and you are have selected to 'Reopen windows when logging back in' on the log off or shutdown dialog, or you have these apps listed in the Login Items list available from System Preferences → Users & Groups.


Horizontal scrolling not working in macOS calendar app I have scrolling problems very often with the calendar app on macOS.
It works "a bit" but get stuck into the current week, scrolling left or right will just bump but not scroll, driving me insane.

You can see something about that here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7954399

Although the solution enunciated there works, it's very inefficient and boring procedure to do.

A stupid and so simple solution, which for months (if not years...) I didn't think about, is simply to right click in the calendar app (with the same two fingers you use to scroll).

And that's it, problem gone!


Removing the builtin command-line utilities from PATH, zsh Okay, so I'm a Linux power user, that is I feel most at home when I have access to the command-line, and I'm very much used to using GNU coreutils, so now that I've installed GNU coreutils on Mac OS X using Homebrew, how would I go about removing the builtin coreutils that vanilla Mac OS X comes with?

Please keep in mind that I'm using zsh, so when I set the path to something I do it like this:

path=(/usr/local/bin ~/.gem/ruby/2.0.0/bin ~/.nvm/bin ~/bin /bin $path)

I want to be able to say,

Include everything present in the current path in the new path, excluding these files: /usr/bin/ls, /usr/bin/grep...

Add the following to your path to replace the OS X tools with Homebrew Coreutils:

$(brew --prefix coreutils)/libexec/gnubin

Per zsh syntax…

path=($(brew --prefix coreutils)/libexec/gnubin $path)


AppleScript : do JS on different Safari windows I'm using some script which basically get text from safari, click button and fill up textfield.

e.g :

tell application "Safari"
    set texttograb to do JavaScript "document.getElementsByClassName('the_variable_as_text')[0].value;" in document 1
    do JavaScript "document.getElementsByClassName('text-entry')[0].value=" & quoted form of myText in last tab of window 1
    do JavaScript "document.getElementsByClassName('Approve-button')[0].click();" in last tab of window 1
end tell

This work perfectly but I have a change in my workflow and I need to use different safari window.

How can I refer one javascript to one specific safari window and the other to a different window.
Especially when some tab might have the same URL/Name ?

I remember seeing that a while back (when the tab happen to have the same name but I never manage to run a script which refer to the window id

Otherwise I suppose I can use another web browser (e.g one safari the second safari technology preview) as a workaround but that not really ideal and limit to two windows

any idea how can I found the window ID and refer to it in AppleScript/JS ?

It's not the best (won't work if the same tab is open in different windows) but This seems to work

set searchpat to "My Tab"
tell application "Safari"
    set winlist to every window
    set winmatchlist to {}
    set tabmatchlist to {}
    set tabnamematchlist to {}
    repeat with win in winlist
        set ok to true
        try
            set tablist to every tab of win
        on error errmsg
            set ok to false
        end try
        if ok then
            repeat with t in tablist
                if searchpat is in (name of t as string) then
                    set end of winmatchlist to win
                    set end of tabmatchlist to t
                    set end of tabnamematchlist to (id of win as string) & "." & 1 & ".  " & (name of t as string)
                    set theWindowID to (id of win as string)
                    ##return (index of t as string)
                    --display dialog name of t as string
                end if
            end repeat
        end if
    end repeat

    set w to item 1 of winmatchlist
    set t to item 1 of tabmatchlist

    set current tab of w to t
    set index of w to 1

end tell

then I can refer the window using theWindowID

e.g:

tell application "Safari" to tell window id theWindowID to set current tab to tab 1

or

do JavaScript ResolutionPopUp in tab 1 of window id theWindowID

(I'm referring the tab manually)


Load MacBook Air back-up on MacBook 2017 I've recently purchased a MacBook 12' 2017 and would like to restore it with a TimeMachine back-up of my previous MacBook Air 13' 2014. When I try to do that from the recovery mode, an error message says something about the two models not being compatible. I wonder if this is indeed the case and if there is a workaround.

Don't restore as a backup, use Migration Assistant during initial setup at first boot.

If you set the machine up first & try to Migrate later, you'll end up with two users & then have to try merging them manually, which is not a lot of fun.


Open "Screen Sharing" tab in System Preferences > Privacy using terminal I have been searching for a way to open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Screen Sharing using a script. I'm a systems admin and I'm trying to deploy TeamViewer to my users in the easiest way possible, but PPPC creates an obstacle; I can't remotely enable Screen Sharing and I want my users to click as few times as possible.

So far I have this:
open "x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy"

I'm so far unable to find the correct ID for Screen Sharing. If I insert
...?Privacy_Photos" or any other number of options, it works, but I cannot find the ID for screen sharing. Is there an ID for this? Or is there a better way to do this? How is TeamViewer able to do this using their GUI?

Found it! it's Privacy_ScreenCapture

I found it by going to /System/Library/PreferencePanes showing contents on security and then looking at the PrivacyServicesOrder.plist


How to permit running an application only within a predefined time I am looking for a way to forbid myself from running an RSS application I am spending too much time on during the day. What I want is to turn on the app when I wake up, read the news, and once I am done, to quit the app, and not be able to run this app until the next morning.

SelfControl is free and lets you lock access to a url for a period of time... It would require you to switch to an online RSS reader like Feedly though.


Screensharing slow, even over gigabit ethernet When I connect from my laptop to my server with Apple Screen Sharing, it is extremely laggy, even over gigabit ethernet.

Files copy at expected speeds (~100MB/s) but Screen Sharing is terribly slow.

Any way to speed this up?

Some (all?) Macs when run without a monitor turn off the video circuitry so they do not waste energy, even though this circuitry is used by screen sharing to dramatically speed up screen stuff.

There might be a way to turn this circuitry back on through software, but I have not foud a reliable way to do so. What works very well is to plug in something into a video port to get the Mac to think it has a monitor connected.

You can build one yourself:
https://macminicolo.net/blog/files/build-a-dummy-dongle-for-a-headless-mac-mini.html

Buy one to plug into a HDMI port on some MacMinis:
https://macminicolo.net/blog/files/an-hdmi-adapter-for-a-headless-mac-mini.html

Buy one to plug into the MiniDisplay Port:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/CBLMDPHEAD/

Instructions for a resistor added directly to the video card:
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=11

I picked up a handful of the HDMI ones a while back, they are very useful.

A similar question/answer is at Force the resolution on a headless mac mini server


A player with global hotkeys in Mavericks for back/forward I want to use Dictatation in order to dictate a text that I listen in a headset. I would like to be able to pause and go back/forward without switching between the windows of the text editor and of the player.

Using global keys for this would be a  way. I already have the button f8 for pausing, but what about back and forward?

Is there a player with such global keys?

You can use Automator to create Services that control the playback of QuickTime Player, then assign keyboard shortcuts to the Services in System Preferences.

The Automator Service:

Keyboard Shortcut in System Preferences:


Windows 7 installation permanently operate as the only OS? If I download and install Windows 7 onto my MacBook Pro, will it permanently operate as Windows, or will I be able to switch between it and OS X? I am downloading Windows 7 strictly to operate Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

Firstly, be sure to have a license for Windows 7, Windows operating systems are not "free to be used" as many Apple OSs.

Regarding your question, you can install Windows 7 in a new partition of your disk driver in order to have the possibility to choose each time you boot the machine with OS to use. There are a lot of guides online and also in this community that can help you to proceed with the installation of a dual boot.

You can also install Windows 7 on the top of the OS X you are currently using. This will remove the Apple system and you'll be able to use only the Windows one. As a personal opinion, I don't think this is a good option (and I also think you don't want to use this option) because the MacBook Pro hardware is design to work with Apple operative system, therefore, you may have some bugs/problems when you'll use Windows. Anyway, for sure the performance of the machine will become worse.

Another possibility, is to use a virtual machine that work under OS X and simulate the Windows machine where you can install the software you are interesting to use.
Again as before, I don't think this is a good option knowing that the software you want to install required high performance.


Looking for a tool to automatically two-way sync SFTP with local folder I use OS X for development and I want to push changes to dev server on every ⌘+S.
When I check out  a different branch, I want the local folder to update accordingly.

So I figured I need an automatic, two-way sync solution.

My editor of choice is Sublime Text (which is awesome, you totally should check it out).
I began my quest with Sublime Text SFTP plugin by Will Bond but found it unstable and slow.

Then I attacked the problem with Panic Transmit.
It is stunningly beautiful. However, it didn't help me either.

Transmit offers two options:

two-way sync between local and remote folder;
mount SFTP to the filesystem.

Alas, its two-way sync is manual and has to be invoked by pressing a button.
(I could probably get around this by writing some clever AppleScript—but I don't know it.)

SFTP mounting is great—unfortunately, it has major disadvantages: file searching is predictably slow and there seems to be no way to tell Transmit that files have changed on server. You need to unmount and mount again to see the remote changes. This makes branches impossible to work with.

I'm really confused now and I don't feel like wasting a couple of hours on a wrong solution. I'm open to suggestions for a tool to improve my workflow.

Here's what I found so far. I'm not sure any of those can actually watch remote folder for changes.

writing some AppleScript to sync Transmit both ways each ten seconds;
using rsync and Folder Actions;
using rsync and FSEvent;
using DoubleDown (open source);
buying FolderWatch (commercial);
doing something else.

Note that I'm looking for a solution that works out of the box. I don't want a tool that can't handle new/changed/deleted files or folders without fiddling with its source code.

Old question, but here's my answer:

I use a Unix tool called Unison. This is a command-line tool that allows for two way sync.

The good is that it's highly configurable: ignore certain file names, directories, synchronize multiple folders, which side wins in a conflict, many other things.

The bad is that you have to not be scared of the command line and both the server and the client have to have Unison installed; both installations need to be the same version and built with the same version of OCAML.

But I've been using it multiple times an hour every work day for the past year and it's been awesome -- it's really fast, really easy to fire off from the command line.


Mac OS X 10.10 doesnt recognize 1 and 3-finger gestures I have Macbook Pro 13" 2014. Everything was working fine. But suddenly it stopped recognizing some gestures.
I was always using built-in trackpad. But now my computer doesn't respond to tap or physical click. 3-finger gestures are not recognized as well.

A few hours before this, the computer was working fine. Then I left my laptop open for about 40 min. When I returned, it looked like the mouse button was clicked and stuck in the clicked state (I don't have a mouse, it is just how it looked like). Of course, I tried to stop it, but nothing helped... The laptop was unusable at all, so I just restarted it by holding power button.

When I connect a standard PC mouse, I get the same outcome - 2-finger tap, zooming, swiping work. But not clicking.

If I go to settings and set the secondary click to be the click in the right bottom corner of trackpad - this click is recognized.

Clicks are also recognized in login screen, but not recognized in recovery mode.

When I log in - clicks are detected, so I am able to log in. But it stops responding to clicks after that. Even when I log out, the clicks doesn't have any effect. I cannot login back!

I believe this is not a hardware problem and I can fix it as soon as possible.
But how? I cleaned it, performed reboots, cannot reinstall OS though - simply cannot click "next"!

On the forums say that it might be a battery problem, but from the outside I don't see anything abnormal. And I cannot open the laptop and look at the battery.

How to make my laptop recognize clicks? Please, help me!

UPD: I added a few details.

One Queston, then my suggestion.

  When I connect a standard PC mouse, I get the same outcome - 2-finger
  tap, zooming, swiping work. But not clicking.

Did the machine respond normally to the mouse click?

Given your description of the issue, here’s how I would proceed:

Make sure your software and firmware is up date. Apple Logo > About This Mac.. > Software Update
Disconnect all peripheral devices. Hold down Shift at the boot chime to enter Safe Mode. If you can’t recreate the problem, it’s software related. The most likely culprit would be a third party driver that's interfering with your trackpad functionality.
Run Apple Diagnostics on the machine. Do so two times, back to back, regardless of the result. The machine must be plugged into your MagSafe. If the machine is not plugged in, you may receive a false positive that there is an issue with your battery. If you do receive an error code, follow the on screen instructions. Make an appointment to bring your machine in for a definitive diagnosis and servicing.
Follow these instructions to reset the SMC. Components such as the keyboard lights, fans, battery, power supply, and trackpad all rely on this controller. If one is behaving abnormally, a reset may do the trick. See if the issue persists. If it still does, then proceed to reset the PRAM.
Make an appointment with Apple to bring the machine in for a free and definitive diagnosis. Remember, your machine is covered under warranty. The last thing you want to do is void that warranty. Especially when you can’t even pinpoint the problem. Simply unscrewing the bottom enclosure will void it if detected. So, do not try a DIY fix. Bring it in. If it’s a hardware problem, they’ll fix it free of charge. If it’s a software issue, they’ll proceed accordingly (see below) until the problem’s solved. No matter what the issue is, as long as it’s under warranty, they assume responsibility for fixing it until it’s fixed. I don’t mean to come off as preachy, but I can't stress this point enough.
I see no purpose in reinstalling OS X before diagnosing the issue. It’s the first step Apple will suggest to take after the hardware checks out. Not before.  However, if you do so, I’d recommend a clean install (wipe the machine completely, then selectively restore your data).

Best of luck.


Mac crashed after changing disk permission I'm facing a problem with my Mac Mini with Mountain Lion.

When I changed my disk permission of Macintosh for everyone to no access my Mac crashed and and it's not restarting when I boot the Mac. It just stops after showing the Apple logo.

How can I fix this?

If you just selected Macintosh HD and changed "everyone" to "No Access" and did not select "Apply to enclosed items", try to:

Start up in single user mode by holding command-S on startup.
Run mount -uw /. fsck -fy is not necessarily needed.
Run chmod 755 /.
Run reboot.

If that doesn't work, try to reinstall OS X from the recovery partition. It installs a new copy of OS X over the current installation while keeping user files and settings in place. It solved a problem I had where my Mac got stuck during the startup process. If nothing else works, try to erase and reinstall OS X, or erase the Macintosh HD partition (not the whole drive) from Disk Utility and then choose Reinstall OS X.

If you don't already have backups, try to save a disk image to an an external drive in Disk Utility on the recovery partition or copy files to an external drive in single user mode.


How can I zoom in TextEdit without breaking word wrap/wrap to window? I am using the TextEdit in the default mode i.e wrap to window mode for the rtf files.

How do I zoom in(using 2 finger zoom gesture on trackpad) to view the text without breaking the wrap-to-window feature?

In Finder, locate the file and use quicklook cmd + space and pinch to zoom.


How does group 'wheel' get on my files? My MacOS non-admin account is not a member of group 'wheel.'  But any file I create in /tmp from Terminal commands is always group wheel.

There is no sticky bit nor ACL nor extended attribute to explain this on the symlink /tmp or on /private/tmp which it points to.

I like to use /tmp as a scratchpad because the system cleans it up for me on every boot.

By default, new files inherit the group assigned to the directory they're created in. /tmp (actually /private/tmp) is assigned to the wheel group, therefore your new files created there get assigned to the wheel group.

BTW, if you're worried that this assignment is going to cause problems, don't. The default permissions on new files in macOS gives the group and everyone else read-only access, meaning that the wheel group gets ... exactly the same access that everyone else does. Also, the wheel group itself is sort of a nothing. In traditional unixes, it's sort of the group for computer administrators; in macOS, that function is taken over by the "admin" group. The only remaining member of the wheel group on macOS is the root user, which has full access to everything anyway, so its group membership doesn't really matter. Actually, the way wheel gets used in macOS is more-or-less as a placeholder; there has to be some group assigned, but it's not actually going to do anything... I know, just use "wheel".


Applescript - Close all windows except frontmost window I have created an automator quick action that runs the following apple script

tell application "System Events"
    set frontApp to name of first application process whose frontmost is true --retrieves name of open application
end tell

tell application frontApp
    repeat while window 2 exists
        close window 2
    end repeat
end tell

It works; however, it takes a while to run if I have a lot of windows open.

Is there a way to close all windows simultaneously except for the frontmost one?

I typed in tell application "Finder" to close every window from 2 to 5
After I compiled it, it automatically changed to tell application "Finder" to close ( windows 2 thru 5 ). However, I get the error message error "Finder got an error: Can’t get windows 2 thru 3." number -1728 from windows 2 thru 3. So, then, it accepts the structure of the command, but I'm still missing something.

Edit: I tried the following script

tell application "Finder"
    close (every window where index is greater than 1)
end tell

However, I get the error "Finder got an error: Handler can’t handle objects of this class." number -10010

Why does this not work?

If you're running it as an Automator quick action, then you can close all windows except the frontmost window of the frontmost application by using the code below inside a Run AppleScript action (you can delete any sample code that appears, including on run {input, parameters}...end run:

tell application id "com.apple.SystemEvents" to tell the first process ¬
    whose frontmost = true to tell a reference to windows 2 thru -1 to ¬
    if exists then tell the value of attribute "AXCloseButton" to click


If I use a prepaid SIM card from AT&T retail store in iPhone, do I get 3G or GSM service? I have an officially unlocked iPhone 4 from a non-US carrier. Now that I'm in US, if buy a prepaid SIM card from AT&T and use it in iPhone, do I get 3G(WCDMA) or GSM network? To put it in the context, do I see "3G" or "E" in the iPhone status bar?

Could anyone clarify if this chart is correct?

Enable 3G, Enable Cellular Data, Result
Yes      , No                  , Make 3G call;  use no data
Yes      , Yes                 , Make 3G call;  use 3G data
No       , Yes                 , Make GSM call; use EDGE/GPRS data;
No       , No                  , Make GSM call; use no data;

Presuming that it's not a CMDA iPhone (i.e. not from Verizon/Sprint), you will see '3G' if you're in a 3G coverage area. The Enable 3G and Cellular Data options must be turned on in the Settings.

Sidenote: AT&T requires purchasing a data package for their smartphones; no Pay per use.

As AT&T also had a GSM network, you could also access that (and GPRS/EDGE as well).

Usual Terms and Conditions will probably apply.


Where is the iCloud data on a third-party iOS app stored? I would like to see the data stored by a third-party iOS apps via iCloud. I tried to access the following filepath on my Mac:

  ~/Library/Mobile Documents/APP-IDENTIFIER/

However, under the app-specific directory there is no file but an empty directory named Documents. That said, there should be a file at other part, since the iCloud data must be stored and synced elsewhere.

So where is the iCloud data that the third-party apps use on iCloud stored, and how can I access it?

The ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ folder only contains data that is stored in your iCloud Drive.

iCloud is an umbrella marketing name that also covers other services that are not implemented in the same manner as iCloud Drive. Apps that store data in iCloud directly often do so via iCloud CloudKit. iCloud CloudKit is a service provided by Apple that makes it easier for app developers to store and sync data. As the lower tiers are provided for free by Apple, it is a relatively popular service.

When apps store data in iCloud via CloudKit it is not generically accessible to the user. The app itself needs to provide an interface for accessing the data before you as the user can access the data.

If no such interface exists within the app, you have to contact the app developer to request such an interface.

If you're a citizen of the European Union, you might have luck sending the app developer a GDPR request for your data. That is often a one-time, manual process however.


Launchd script's output not being logged to system.log Sample script:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Hello?"
... (other things)

When run via launchd, it definitely runs (the other things are being done) but nothing shows up in system.log. I'm running OS 10.9.

I tried replacing that line with

syslog -s "HELLO?"

but that also shows nothing.

You can use the command loggerinstead.
For example logger "test" will result in
Nov  7 17:37:20 bounty.local napcae[82311]: test
in the file /var/log/system.log.

Altough you can use it, I'd recommend to write to your own log file.


How to clean my Mac from malware like ps4ux only been using it for 2 months. (OS X El Capitan 10.11.4) I'm creating web application using Ruby on Rails. I know it is a bad thing to find a cracked installer with license so, I got my karma. i was searching for a Rubymine license because i'm using Sublime.
When I searched for a license I found this website:

http://warezfileshere.me/sofware/rubymine-license-key-keygen.html

So I installed the apps and nothing happened but my browser was always redirect me in this site:

http://ps4ux.com/click?h=Ax722bagzrl8Vk3_frrT0FPvs0OX4u2wcw-CZ0O4YnvDYH1wjKXE4iV9P95-WidXJPKiD812ZxRTjI8Qx1BL9WAfhPBAA4nvNYpjf-AoA4ejDT8vvexcesyw7q_qR_pMPbfLAdUg3tQypcwz3gl-bKhrw3c-Ramb9bSnlqQTZu9r2VGZmBI5nlhHftqW8RDVrTOfb2YhTxW2gDB9GaAMbJnU0oTGij8m8o67Dz4xhQe4JNJdDZbdSmgq36DUOzlIVIJPv5I0RsuTuYAtPcQdMhEK_RrtYLfIoVpxrbI5cbSA3GAPP2SxJXgXWPfYQBlnPpTkK5efW7DHCOzWJvyKPQfmjtxKlS_sH5a6c8RJJvvu2nQSW8PE5F-UTdbcxAlAZR0_sjuG11DW0kQ0HjcuU1IJCzxTLyU6YnGwjnfDlj7bSuEQNXMS7bh1o1WVlAGkpvYQR2MQMu_ql93KYvcR46waJWV_qn9GevqQHRNlBiLhs1US4EBcZQ-xkvunmUVt31VKfAtTN8ADu9NHg5Uli71psw52-rhFlG8xVdCC6KJ66oSdNkoPJZwNGXMHT_CYciKLX9KF8U3fiy0nMmgLxG4hFfL83svXuM2Gjumv6qEpMjNm2dnvnrjK4rAAjrVo0batWO5DZLusvb008B-0CGzDHQ6XMxwbnu_NQHJ87LZwLqbHArlc2_c4PmFc8_6NLUvciqusbCv-Lc4IOpbzNZsZf3LkLH5rKCVGJygTySJcBtC8xoz9QoGESRfZXPepQgt0yocZnQxP4MyLSYzgWz-FNAmGVpjje5ez-JyMnQhr1oPZmlx2Qdh75rgB-vpGIycVePZ4UkE&subid=g-88322244-b77466937d0641a891fcdbdd16c020f7-&data_test=2016082307_t&data_fb=no&data_rtt=0&data_proto=https%3A&data_ic=false&data_ss=732x1280

I didn't know what that was so I search for ps4ux and  found out that is  malware.

Then, when I'm working on  my project, Chrome gives me this

I don't know where they came from. Please, someone help me! I learned my lesson:  don't ever search for or use a cracked license..

One of the apps that can help here is malwarebytes. It's free to use for 14 days and seems to work for the ps4ux problem.


Change volume of individual speaker My headphones are a bit damaged it seems and the left has higher volume than the right. It isn't my ears, the song or the device :). Is there a program to change just one speaker's volume? Lion allows you to set the balance, but I don't think this is the same thing - it would lead to the sound shifting into the left speaker, effectively reducing the stereo effect. Windows 7 can do this, but I'm not quite that desperate.

Balancing changes the volume of both speakers at the same time.

Since it only changes the volume, there is not manipulation of the stereo effect (sound shifting).

For example: If you play a track that plays on the left speaker and then shift the balance to the very right - you will not hear anything. If you play a stereo track, you will only hear the right track in the same case. This can be very easily verified using this this sample track.


Which chargers to buy for a charging station? To make a charging station effective, it needs to be able to charge all recent Apple laptops. As you know, Apple chargers are not cheap. So, we'd like to buy as few chargers as possible.

Given this article, what would be the most cost effective way to set this up?

I've read online about how higher wattage chargers can be used for lower wattage computers. If we were to buy one Magsafe 1 85 Watt charger and a Magsafe to Magsafe 2 converter, would we be able to charge all apple laptops besides the new Retina Macbook Pro?

The answer is YES.

You can use the higher power Charger on lower power laptops. The battery will only take as much as it can handle.

It is a pull not push process.

Extra info: If you were to use lower power charger on high power laptop, you could end up newer charging the battery fully, or it could take extended time to charge.


Is a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo better than a 2.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 with turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz? I think my 2008 Macbook is about to bite the dust and wanted to buy a new Macbook Pro.....I noticed that I have the option to purchase a 2.0GHz processor which has a 3.1GHz "turbo boost".  Would the turbo boost make this a better/faster processor?  I will be using the Macbook mainly to run Logic Pro along with music plugins.

Don't be fooled by the Ghz. The i5-6360U is in the Late 2016 13" MacBook Pro and is a Skylake CPU. I assume your 2008 MacBook Pro is a 15" model, as the 13" did not ship with that CPU.

The newer i5 machine has a Geekbench score of 3609 vs 1320 for the Late 2008 MacBook Pro 15".

Not only that, but the newer Mac features better graphics (even integrated graphics), built in SSD, etc. If  you still have a hard drive in your old Mac, the SSD alone will shock you in performance improvements for your Mac.

GeekBench

Update: I see some additional questions in the comments about how a 2 Ghz processor can 'beat' a 2.4 Ghz processor. One thing to note is that the transition at Intel from Pentium to Core Duo essentially ended the Ghz wars. Intel found the adding cores, reducing heat and improving cacheing improved performance more than Ghz. This really showed when their mobile CPUs were beating out their desktop CPUs, so Intel switched to their 'mobile architecture' for everything, thus Core and Core Duo.  The i Series are built on that philosophy.

Another way to look at it is this: Most common car (US) V8 engines in the  70s produced as little as 110 HP. (Muscle cars made much more, but enlarged the engine and got terrible gas mileage) Today, we have 4 cylinder engines that produce 300 HP, and V8s that produce muscle car HP but get economy car fuel mileage. So, how does a 4 cylinder make more horsepower than a V8?  Its far more than the number of cylinders, just as its is far more than Ghz for CPUs.


Is there a way to exactly position a window? I have a Quicktime window, and I would like to have it positioned at exactly (533,118). I have (painfully) achieved this using the Macbook's screenshot functionality (because it shows the coordinates of the cursor, so with a couple tries it can be done).

I know that windows normally remember their last position, but sometimes I need to move them to another location. It would be great if I could just input the desired coordinates.

I'm using macOS 10.13.

Here's an example AppleScript that sets the position of window 1 of Quick Time Player to {533, 118}, if it's running and the window exists.

if application "QuickTime Player" is running then
    try
        if (count windows of application "QuickTime Player") is greater than 0 then
            tell application "System Events" to set position of window 1 of application process "QuickTime Player" to {533, 118}
        end if
    end try
end if

This can be saved as a script or application or incorporated into an Automator workflow as a Service and assigned a keyboard shortcut, if you prefer.

Here's an example AppleScript that you can enter the {x, y} position info as a space separated value in a display dialog box:

if application "QuickTime Player" is running then
    try
        if (count windows of application "QuickTime Player") is greater than 0 then
            tell application "QuickTime Player"
                set theReply to (display dialog "Move window to position, e.g.: 533 118" default answer "533 118" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2 with title "Enter Windows X Y Coordinates")
            end tell
            tell application "System Events" to set position of window 1 of application process "QuickTime Player" to {word 1 of text returned of theReply as integer, word 2 of text returned of theReply as integer}
        end if
    end try
end if

Note that you can set default answer "533 118" to default answer "", if you don't want a default value set.


Office 2011 issue with emailing an attachment My laptop was recently upgraded to Mavericks and has Office 2011.  With an office document, I like to use file>>share>>email(as attachment).

When I do this now, I get an alert that Word was unable to mail your document.  Please make sure your mail program is configured correctly and that you can send mail with it.

Outlook 2011 is the default mail program and I can receive / send email with it.

Thanks for any help!

I just fixed this for a customer, go into preferences in Outlook and deselect "Make Outlook the default..." checkbox. Then close all Office apps.

Re-open Outlook and re-enable the setting, and the other apps should be able to now email as attachment.