Apple Music + pluggable media library I'm newbie with iTunes/Apple Music doomsday machine, so probably my question is absolutely incorrect.

Is it possible to do following:

move Media Library to pluggable external drive
add songs to Media Library - it will sync songs to iCloud and make them available from any device using streaming
unplug external drive and listen music through streaming using same Mac
when plugging external drive again, listen or add music to Media Library on external drive

What I want to do is to have master copy of Media Library on external drive, while on the regular basis using streaming to listen music, to make Mac's disk empty enough.

You can do all of these five (five because your second question is actually two separate questions) by subscribing to either iTunes Match or Apple Music service. How you do exactly any of those five, however, depends a bit on which macOS version your Mac is running on.


Mac doesn't respond after sleep mode: how to Prevent this? My mac often doesn't respond after sleep mode. What can be the reason?

There are a lot of articles about what to do in this situation. But I can find nothing about how to Prevent it.

Mac is macbook Air. OS is OSx 10.7.4

I had the same issue on my mini.  The first thing you might try is resetting your PRAM and then your PMU.  These control sleep on your mac.  If they fix it, and it goes bad again, you may need to take it in for warranty repair (if under warranty.)


macOS Sierra caps lock disabled in non-latin languages I've installed macOS Sierra and I got an annoying behavior, which I'm trying to solve:

Prior to Sierra (and in Windows, too): I have two languages - English and Hebrew. I'm switching between them using cmd+space. When in English, I'm using the caps lock to write uppercase letters. That's the exactly same behavior as any other English keyboard user.
However, when using Hebrew as the input source, I'm using caps lock to write in english (small letters only). In this way, I can use some english terms in my hebrew sentences (which is quietly common, to be honest).
This is the behavior in Windows too.

Since Sierra: Apple disabled this function, so when I'm using Englis I can use caps lock to move between uppercase and lowercase as excepted. However, when in Hebrew - the caps lock does not work (the green light automatically turns off).

I'll note that when Googling this issue, I saw that Apple added the ability to switch languages using the caps lock. That solution does allows me to switch between Hebrew and English, but it rises another problem - In English, I can't switch between uppercase and lowercase letters (since the caps lock already mapped to switch between input sources). The only way to get into uppercase letters, is to hold the caps lock for 3 seconds, and that makes it very hard to type.

Anyone knows how to restore the functionality of the caps lock to the old, good, way?

I have verified that if you use Ukelele to create a duplicate Hebrew keyboard layout (with a different name of course), Caps Lock will function on it like it does in El Capitan.


Pulled too hard when opening iPhone. Did this kill my iPhone 5 screen? So I bought a replacement home button for my iPhone 5. I tried to gently lift the screen with a suction tool, but when it finally lifted, it yanked something off and now the screen won't work :(

I took my phone apart twice, back to back. I successfully reattached the 3 cables and the screen was working fine.. I reassembled and realized I forgot to remove one of the adhesive backings, so the new home button wasn't working. When I took it apart again is when something pulled with it. I fixed the button and tried to reconnect the 3 cables again. But the screen remains  black :(

I have no idea what the part is or how to fix it. I hope I didn't just destroy the screen! I found a picture online and edited it to show the part that pulled off from the backing. Please help meee!

iFixit has a great guide about the disassembly of the iphone 5. All courtesy of the pictures goes to them. Step 11 clearly demonstrates the ribbon cables .

I highly suspect that you just yanked a little bit too hard on the LCD cable and hence the black screen. I am in no way affiliated with iFixit but I recommend the use of the iSclack opening tool. It only lifts the screen as much as it needs to preventing you from breaking the delicate ribbon cables.


Any way to get Time Machine to backup to Amazon Simple Storage Solution? Just curious if it is at all possible to have Time Machine backup to the 'cloud' using Amazon Simple Storage Solution. I've setup Time Machine to work over the network before to unsupported volumes (NTFS) but wasn't sure if this is possible. Anyone ever tried?

Dolly Drive is newly-announced software that lets you do TimeMachine backups to "cloud storage". Their docs say the space is their own cloud-based storage space, not S3, so that might be sticking point. But other than that it's pretty much in line with what you're after.

In addition to doing the TimeMachine -> cloud bridge, they also help you duplicate your data to a local drive so you can do fast restores without having to wait for delivery of an cloud -> hard drive dump of your data.

Looks promising. I'm lukewarm on the pricing.


Is there any app to copy Ctrl+C any text from Desktop (Windows) and paste Ctrl+V in iphone at anywhere? Is there any app to copy Ctrl+C any text from Desktop (Windows) and paste Ctrl+V in iphone at anywhere; at editor, address bar in safai and wheneever we have keyboard on and we can paste?

Have you tried Pastefire? It is a little more constrained than any box, but it works.


Organizing and tagging plain text notes (macOS and iOS) For the last 5 years, I've been using a fork of Notation Velocity called nvALT 2. Truly a fantastic app.

Some of the benefits:

plain text/markdown. So I can sync the data folder via dropbox and have access to all my data on iOS or another computer. Plaintext also allows me to use TaksPaper for task management.
Sparse and performant interace. Even though I have more than a thousand notes, search is extremely fast. Creating new notes is easy.

What's becoming apparent though, is with that with such a relatively large amount of notes navigating and search is an issue. If I'm looking for a common word I get tons of hits. nvALT 2 supports rudimentary tagging but it's very basic (can't search or navigate by tags).

What I'm looking for is an app that's similar to nvALT in spirit but supports:

hierarchical folders
tags

I've considered the following:

Evernote, the elephant in the room. However evernote uses a proprietary format and is slow.
Quiver looks almost exactly like a dream note taker, but it uses a custom (though "open source") file format. It will make interop with other apps difficult.
Microsoft OneNote. Not plaintext.
SimpleNote a more basic version of nvALT with the same problems.
Apple Notes, not plain text although it would obviously sync nicely across mac and ios.

Are there any other plain text note takers with solid organization that I'm missing?

Try DEVONthink to Go for iOS, paired with one of the DEVONthink family of apps for macOS. It meets all of your criteria: it supports creating and organizing (with tags and hierarchical folders) notes in plain text, markdown, and other formats, as well as PDFs, images, and URL bookmarks. It also has a unique semantic artificial intelligence engine and other features.


What apps are available for subscribing to podcasts directly on the iPhone I listen to a lot of podcasts - A lot of stuff from twit, cnet, smodcast and npr.  I sync my phone about once every two weeks or so which for a lot of my daily podcasts is not good.  For twit there's a decent mediafly app that is specifically for twit but it seems buggy - when you go back to listening to a podcast after stopping for a while it goes back in time and will skip back anywhere from 30 or so seconds to about 20 mins and  you then have to scrub to find out where you were.  There is also a standalone mediafly app that is supposed to be for alternate podcast locations but it doesn't seem to do a good job handling the RSS and misses quite a bit plus it has some of the same bugs as the twit version.  Also as with any background audio api (aside from the iTunes app) they never properly are able to display the right info on the lock screen - some times it shows the title of the app, sometimes it shows the last thing you were playing in itunes (even though it doesn't play that and plays what you want it to), sometimes it's blank - and it never shows the artwork.

Right now I've resorted to subscribing via iTunes on mac, then on my iPhone go to the podcast, get more episodes and them download from there. It works but it sucks if I'm away from wifi when I want to do that as there is still the 20 meg limit.  I'd settle for a single download limit going away and a button to download all new episodes being wifi only

What I would like ideally is to press one button that will download all of the latest versions of my podcasts to the itunes app - this isnt likely to happen.

Failing that I'd like to have an app that lets me do the same thing, download the latest episodes with a single button, delete older episodes automatically, play nicely in the background, and have a good browser/management interface.

You could try Podcaster which does over-the-air podcast streaming.

Check out the features


Yosemite hdiutil: create failed - error -5341 I could successfully use hdiutil for creating a dmg file for my program in Mountain Lion, but after upgrading to Yosemite (and after updating it to 10.10.1), when I execute

hdiutil create -srcfolder build/Thonny.app Thonny-0.2.5.dmg

I get following error:

hdiutil: create failed - error -5341

Verbose mode didn't reveal anything useful.

Folder build/Thonny.app contains a Python application.

Any idea what this error means and what to try next?

UPDATE: Looks like the number of files in my app affects the result. When I remove one of the files (doesn't matter which one), then the command is able to produce the result. Currently there are about 70 files and few folders under Thonny.app/Contents/MacOS

I had the same error -5341 and was able to work around it with the -megabytes option as suggested here.

hdiutil create -megabytes 130 Reassembly.dmg -srcfolder Reassembly

In this case the Reassembly directory is 107M and the resulting Reassembly.dmg is 97M. The -size 130m option did not work for me. My issue was intermittent - adding or removing one or two files would fix it or break it.


Expedite iOS app review to less than 24 hours Is it possible to get the app reviewed within a day or few hours? I know there is an expedited app review process if the app is time sensitive then Apple will review the app very quickly, but that also might take 1-3 days sometimes. We built an app which is needed to be in store tomorrow, though one version is already up there but it is not working properly as expected. We have fixed the bug and want to app to be in market before tomorrow morning.

Can my app's review be expedited further than the process above? We are even ready to pay some amount if Apple is ready to review and submit our app in less than a day.

I have heard of people using their paid tech support instances to expedite a review or determine why exactly it's being rejected if there is a code problem (such as Apple suspecting that a private API is being called when you are not calling any private API), but your best bet is probably to follow the normal process outlined here:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/

  Urgent Bug Fix
  If you've submitted an update to fix a critical bug in your app on the App Store and you are requesting an expedited review, be sure to include the steps to reproduce the bug on the current version of your app.

Be sure to explain why the bug is critical before you burn a chance at an expedited review. I would call someone that's not a software developer and have them give you an honest reaction if your bug is really critical after you take 60 seconds to explain to them the nature of the problem.

If you can't explain to a lay person in 60 seconds why this is critical to them as a potential user of your app, you might not get Apple to bump you to the front of the line. If your description of the critical nature of the patch is in the end user's interests, this seems to be your best shot to move things to the front of the queue.


How do I move an app out of a folder on iOS 8? (e.g. newspaper out of "newsstand") The news app I use most frequently is buried in Home->News->Newsstand.
How can I move this app up to my first main page of apps?

Here I mean the New York Times app, which I want on my home screen. I've tried holding the NyTimes app until it wiggles, but it won't move out of the Newsstand (violating my expectations of the ability to move anything shaped like an app anywhere I want).

Maybe say what version of iOS you are using?

Newsstand is not a normal folder.  You put items into it by subscribing to them.  And remove them by un-subscribing.  You can move Newsstand to the top level, though, in the same way as you move other icons (see the documentation).  One way is to use iTunes, switch things around there, then sync.  Another way involves holding your finger on the icon until it starts wiggling, then drag it.


Make Mac boot upon plugging in power I have a MacBook and I'd like it to boot automatically upon plugging it into a power source. Is there a way to do this?

No. It's just not designed to do this: it doesn't have the necessary hardware for lights-out management nor built in features.


How can I find alert-type dialogs that prevent other windows of the same application to be focussed? Here's the problem:

I just finished burning a CD using the standard feature through Finder, I could hear the "done" sound.
At that time, I had a different application focussed (e.g. Chrome).
An alert-like dialog window must have popped up somewhere (e.g. to tell me it's done or something), but I can't find it.
I now can't focus my already opened Finder window, or even my desktop! I actually can't click any file on my desktop. It will give the short "You can't do that"-sound, kind of a "Bloonk".

I have tried:

Hiding all windows (of all apps).
I ejected the CD, thinking maybe the dialog would close then, but it didn't.
Right-clicking the Finder icon on the dock, to see if the alert dialog is listed, but it's not, and again the only remaining window is not clickable:

Checking the Expose and moving all windows, no success.
"Show/Hide Desktop" trackpad gestures in the hope the dialog would pop up.

I have not yet tried logging out or rebooting my computer, I've got tons of project stuff open and I'd prefer not to have to do that. Besides that, this is a childish problem that I shouldn't have to lose to.

How do I find this pesky little dialog? Where is it at? Any help is greatly appreciated.

In Expose, look for the alert window separate from the other applications, separate from finder.

If that doesn't work, hold command and tap tab until Finder is highlighted, release command. In Finder, swipe up with 4 fingers for Mission Control, or 4 finger swipe down for App Expose (if this isn't enabled, select trackpad in system preferences and under the more options tab, select App Expose and Mission Control. Then repeat these steps. Select alert window.

I've had that problem, Mission Control and Expose should solve. If the alert doesn't show, it may be in another screen. control arrow or use mission control to get to other screen and repeat above steps. Good luck!


Is it possible to disable the audio of a specific application using Jailbreak? I have a game on my iPhone that always interrupts my music even if I turn the volume down to zero (every 30 seconds or so). Is there some kind of a workaround that lets me continue playing music? Thanks!

If you're JailBroken, install and open up iFile from Cydia. Navigate to /var/mobile/Applications/, tap the gear in the bottom-left corner and make sure "Application Names" is set to On, and then find the app you mentioned inside that folder. To completely disable audio from that app, you're going to need to delete every audio file inside that folder (and subfolders). It might take you a while, but that's the only way to do what you want without writing your own JailBreak tweak. If the app you're muting is written poorly, it may  crash when it cannot find those files you deleted. If this is the case, just reinstall the app, and you won't be able to mute it until somebody nice comes along and writes a tweak.


Setting environment variables (TEXINPUTS) in El Capitan I am a user of TeXShop, an application launched from the Launchpad. Everything works great except that in order to get full functionality, I need to set the TEXINPUTS environment variable. (To be precise, the variable must be set for certain processes launched by TexShop. It is normally inherited from the parent process.)

Until I upgraded to El Capitan, I could do this by calling launchctl setenv TEXINPUTS some-appropriate-value. Unfortunately, this has stopped working after upgrading. The command appears to succeed, and querying with launchctl getenv TEXINPUTS shows me the value I set, but it is not passed to applications I launch from the GUI. (I have confirmed this by launching a Terminal and checking the environment.)

The launchctl manual page has this to say about the config system command:

  path:     Sets the PATH environment variable for all services within the target domain to
  the string value.  [...] Note that if a service specifies its
  own PATH, the service-specific environment variable will take precedence.

  NOTE: This facility cannot be used to set general environment variables for all
  services within the domain. It is intentionally scoped to the PATH environment
  variable and nothing else for security reasons.

So it seems that Apple (a) does not want to pass my environment settings to applications willy-nilly, may have a way to customize the environment of specific "services". Does anyone know how I can get my editor to "see" the TEXINPUTS variable?

PS. Almost all related questions I've seen are about setting PATH. Solutions specific to setting the system path are not going to help here.

The problem is well known and is due to Apple - the /usr folder cannot be anymore written. The solution is to add a link to this location: /Library/TeX/texbin - depending also on your TeX version, see more info in this link: https://tug.org/mactex/elcapitan.html


Any way to get back itunes music after losing it? I upgrading my version of windows and I forgot to backup my iTunes music, is there a way I can re-download it from iTunes without buying it all again?

Send Apple a support email to the iTunes Store (e.g. by using this form). Tell them what happened and they should allow you to redownload all of your old purchases. That's what they did for me. You won't be able to redownload content that has changed on the store. It seems as though some songs get removed and then readded so their IDs won't match the same ones you purchased. I was able to redownload about 95% of my purchases.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with their policy of not allowing you to redownload purchased content; please don't abuse their generosity, and try to back it up yourself next time.


Mojave: Pasting text with control characters I use git from within Terminal.app, and will occasionally end up (particularly after a merge resolution) with something like:

$ git status
  ...
  Untracked files:
      foo/bar/baz.orig

Where the whitespace before foo is a tab character.

Since Mojave, copying and pasting that line (which I want to do to rm the file) results in an alert (complete with loud bonk) asking me to confirm whether I want to paste the nasty control characters.

Anyone know if either:

there's a way to disable the alert and just paste with the control
characters, or
there's a keyboard shortcut to paste without the control
characters?

FWIW, I understand that there are other ways to remove the file (e.g. git status|grep orig$|xargs rm) and I understand why, in the general case, you'd want to limit pasting of control characters.

Update your OS to 10.14.1 or later

It seems that Terminal in 10.14 would present this dialog when pasting a tab character, but the updated Terminal in 10.14.1 and 10.14.2 does not.

I was scratching my head as to why I was only able to reproduce this issue on one install but not another. Unable to find any settings that had any impact, I eventually tried updating the machine that showed the dialog, and it was gone.


Error installing Wine on 10.6.8 I was installing Wine on 10.6.8 and got this error:

Error: Target org.macports.configure returned: configure failure: shell command failed (see log for details)
Error: Failed to install expat
Log for expat is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_textproc_expat/expat/main.log
Error: The following dependencies were not installed: expat expat flex gettext libiconv gperf libiconv ncurses ncursesw ncurses fontconfig freetype bzip2 zlib zlib freetype gnutls libgcrypt libgpg-error libtasn1 lzo2 pkgconfig glib2 autoconf help2man p5-locale-gettext perl5 perl5.12 perl5 perl5 m4 automake libtool pkgconfig readline jpeg jpeg lcms tiff tiff libpng libxml2 libxml2 libxslt mesa makedepend xorg-xproto py27-libxml2 python27 db46 gdbm openssl openssl python_select sqlite3 python27 xorg-dri2proto xorg-glproto xorg-libXfixes xorg-fixesproto xorg-libX11 xorg-bigreqsproto xorg-inputproto xorg-kbproto xorg-libXau xorg-libXdmcp xorg-libxcb xorg-libpthread-stubs xorg-xcb-proto xorg-util-macros xorg-xcmiscproto xorg-xextproto xorg-xf86bigfontproto xorg-xtrans xorg-libXi xorg-libXext xorg-libXi xorg-libXmu xorg-libXt xorg-libsm xorg-libice xorg-libsm xorg-libXcomposite xorg-compositeproto xorg-libXcursor xorg-renderproto xrender xrender xorg-libXinerama xorg-xineramaproto xorg-libXrandr xorg-randrproto xorg-libXxf86vm xorg-xf86vidmodeproto
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
To report a bug, see

I checked out the log file and at the end of the file I saw this:

:error:configure Target org.macports.configure returned: configure failure: shell command failed (see log for details)
:debug:configure Backtrace: configure failure: shell command failed (see log for details)
    while executing
"$procedure $targetname"
:info:configure Warning: the following items did not execute (for expat): org.macports.activate org.macports.configure org.macports.build org.macports.destroot org.macports.install
:error:configure Failed to install expat
:notice:configure Log for expat is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_textproc_expat/expat/main.log

Wine can be a pain to compile. It can be easier to use precompiled binaries such as Wineskin: http://wineskin.doh123.com/ or Winebottler http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/.

Try those links and see how you get on.


NUMBERS: Lookup hourly rental rate based on date of transaction I have a resource that has an hourly rental rate. That hourly rate has changed (increased) over time. To capture that rate history, I have created a table with the date of the rate change and the new rate that looks like this:

Date of rate change     | Rate

2015-01-01              | $60

2017-01-01              | $65

2017-07-13              | $68

I am trying to create a formula that will look up the hourly rate based on the date of the transaction/rental and then determine what the rental rate would have been on that date. I figure there must be some way to do this with a vlookup but from the documentation, it looks like that function requires an exact match and I want to match based on the input date being after the date in the lookup table not an exact date.

Any ideas?

Ok, so now had chance to test, use this formula :

=IF(C2<=A4,B4,IF(C2<=A3,B3,IF(C2<=A2,B2)))

The date tested is in cell C2 and the three dates are in A2, A3 and A4, while the three rates are in B2, B3 and B4.

The logic has been reversed ie test for the oldest date first.

You could also use names for the 3 rates, but it will work the same.


How is the /AppleInternal directory hidden from users on macOS? If you didn't know macOS has a well hidden directory called  "/AppleInternal" that is pretty secretive. It's not possible to ls or rm it and I've never seen it referenced before with anything other than fs_usage, where it was being listed frequently as /AppleInternal or /AppleInternal>>>>>>>>>>>>>> with usually between 5 and 20 >.

Thought it was some reference to something other than a directory but the / before AppleInternal made me wonder and google has an article about how to enable it, which apparently added some hidden features to Xcode.

I booted into recovery and used mkdir (you aren't allowed to do it outside of recovery mode) and there is now a folder with that name but its empty. fs_usage no longer makes any reference to /AppleInternal and ls shows the created date as when I used mkdir. Seems like a questionable use if it could just be done away with once discovered as well as be hidden so well and referenced so frequently prior to adding my own.

Seems like a fairly good place to hide malware really.

I found a single, vague reference to AppleInternal in all of the man pages. It's in ani (Apple Net Install) which says AppleInternal and AppleInternalAssistant are both dmg image types.

So does anyone have any idea how it is able to hide so well or have any additional information on its true purpose?

It is not really a "hidden" directory or "secretive" in any way.

It is simply that some Apple employees have use a folder with this specific name when testing/using prototype or in-development software on iOS and macOS. The idea is to store testing tools and other files that are not meant to be in the software meant for customers.

The technical concept here is that the contents of that folder is combined with the "ordinary" file system (sort of like an overlay). So if you want to add something to /System/Library/ for testing, but don't want to do it in the "real" software - you could add it to /AppleInternal/System/Library/ instead - and get the same effect.

The folder does not exist unless it is actively created. Therefore the folder is not hidden - it is simply not there on an ordinary installation of macOS.

When you run Xcode, which is meant for developers, it will check if this folder exists - and then for example the iOS simulator will have a few extra options, that are primarily meant for Apple employees. This could be for example features that haven't been tested well enough to be exposed to customers.

The AppleInternal folder has been well-known by non-Apple employees for years - so it is not a new discovery.


Cannot seem to add internal testers with existing iTunes Connect accounts I am trying to add internal beta testers to my app. The app is still in development, so I do not wish to submit the app for review for external testers. It seems the only way I can add an internal tester is if I add them as a new iTunes Connect User. When I try to though, I cannot because the Apple ID (email) of the person I want to invite already has an iTunes Connect account. Is there any way I can add people who already have Connect accounts as internal testers?

You can use a "+" sign to add the same email to your desired iTunes Connect Account.

If the email is someone@gmail.com, you can add it like this: someone+0@gmail.com

The system ignores the "+" sign and any character after that, it works like a charm but you have to use the altered email for the login.


iPhoto crashes on import Every time I import photos with iPhoto, it crashes!

I have no idea how to diagnose. I used cleanapp to remove all traces of iPhoto
I just purchased http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ to try rebuilding and importing photos, but no luck
I have created and removed about 10 libraries, and still no luck
It's always creating folders called "iPhoto Library Recovered Photos"

Every time I try to import it just crashes.

If you are using iPhoto '11 9.2, you are not alone. The upgrade to 9.2.1 this week fixed this for me.


How to stop Milanese Loop Apple Watch band from slipping? I recently purchased an Apple Watch with the Milanese Loop band and have been struggling with the band loosening over the course of the day. Multiple times an hour I need to re-adjust the magnetic clasp. Googling for milanese loop band slipping shows a lot of other people having similar problems, but no clear answers.
How do I stop my Milanese Loop band from slipping?

I was surprised at just how bad the Milanese Loop band was at staying fastened, and couldn't explain why some people were having problems and others weren't.
Reversing the band solved the problem for me.
The band is reversible, in the sense that the side that is fixed and the side that is looped can be swapped. If you're having trouble with slippage, try swapping the two sides using these instructions

This significantly reduced slippage for me and made the band much more pleasant to use. I almost never think about slippage anymore.
The reason this works (I believe) is because of the way our forearms are constructed. When we rotate our wrist, the ulna on the bottom stays relatively fixed and the radius rotates around it, causing more motion on the top side of our wrist (by our thumbs) than on the bottom. Moving the fixed band to the motion side decreases the tension on the loop, reducing the chance of slippage.


Invalid Canadian Postal Codes when ordering print products When trying to order a print product through iPhoto or Photos, the following error code blocks the ability to get to the final step to place an order

  The information in the following fields is missing or incomplete:
  postalCode value '[POSTAL CODE e.g. W9W 9W9]' failed to match any valid regexes.

  "Fix" / "Cancel"

This happens even with addresses and postal codes that have been previously used for print product orders.

Pressing Fix and changing the postal code to a W9W 9W9, W9W9W9, or W9W-9W9 doesn't work, and neither does trying to use lowercase. (Canadian postal codes are uppercase.)

How can one place an order for print products when this error message appears?

NOTE: iPhoto can no longer submit orders for print products. The solution below only works with the Mac OS X/macOS app Photos.

As posted in these threads, there seems to be an occasional issue with address validation that fails when the letter O follows the letter P (regardless of whether there are other characters between them).

For instance, the address

  123 Park Avenue, Montreal, QC, W9W 9W9

would be ok, but

  123 Parkour Avenue, Montreal, QC, W9W 9W9

would fail.

In my case, since both the city and province contained the letter O, I removed the letter O from the street address, I removed the whole city name and replaced it with a single letter, and then changed the province to one without the letter O. My address went from something like this

  123 Parkour Avenue, Waterloo, ON, W9W 9W9

to

  123 Parkur Avenue, W, BC, W9W 9W9

That let the process continue and (after pressing Ignore on the suggested address dialog), I was taken to the final Place Order dialog.* On the phone with Apple, they also mentioned the possibility of changing the address even at that final step with the down arrow indicated in the image:

Photos froze sometimes, especially at the suggested address dialog (the one where you press Ignore), so this may take a couple of tries.

*There's a chance that you might be able to successfully place the order here, avoiding the final address change. Your postal code, combined with the (hopefully similar-enough-to-the-real-one) street address should be enough for the postal service to figure out the phony city and province. However, since print products aren't cheap, you may not want to take that risk.


What type of provisioning profile is required for TestFlight external testing? I've been trying to get Ionic push notifications to work on my TestFlight app for beta-testing for weeks now and I still have not managed to implement them successfully. When I build for release via Xcode, everything works fine. I have double-checked to ensure that the necessary certificates are set up fine yet for some reason however, push notifications fail to be received (though device token registration works fine) on TestFlight.

I have read many conflicting answers on forums, documentations and tutorials stating that an Ad-hoc provisioning profile is needed for TestFlight while others state that a distribution profile must be used. First of all, somehow the Ad-hoc profile does not attach with the build when I Archive and try to upload onto TestFlight via Xcode. Second of all, I have managed to upload on TestFlight using the Distribution profile but the push notifications are not received. I am now stumped on how I have to get push notifications to work on TestFlight.

My question is: which provisioning profile has to be used for a TestFlight app and what could be the reason why it is not working? Thank you.

Since Testflight has been integrated in the App Store / iTunes Connect, you'll need to upload it to iTunes Connect, which means you need an App Store provisioning profile, not an Ad-Hoc one. I can imagine that older tutorials, made when Testflight was a stand-alone platform, still describe the situation were an Ad-Hoc provisioning profile was necessary.

As for the push notifications:

are you sure you use the Production environment of APN (the Sandbox environment only works for debug builds)?
do you get any error messages (on the server) when sending the push notifications?
if you call the Feedback service of APN, do the devices appear there?


Using hosts file on Mac OS X Snow Leopard I have added two new host entries in

  /pricate/etc/hosts

 127.0.0.1/wys/sub-folder local.wys
 127.0.0.1/les/sub-folder local.les

I have flushed the DNS using

  dscacheutil -flushcache

I now want to access local.wys and have content served from

  localhost/wys/sub-folder

This doesn't work, I have tried 127.0.0.1 and localhost in the hosts file.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jake

A friend of mine provided the answer via email....

Almost.

The purpose of the hosts file is to serve as a local supplement to a dns lookup (on linux, you can actually specify whether it asks DNS or the file first).  As such, it is only used to return IP addresses.  You need to use this in combination with Apache VirtualHosts to make apache respond to a host using a specific directory.

So... you hosts file should look like

127.0.0.1 local.wys
127.0.0.1 local.les

Find your apache configuration directory.  Under XAMPP this is c:\xampp\apache\conf (yours might be ‘conf.d’)
In conf you’ll have a folder called ‘extra’ and it that a file called ‘http-vhosts.conf’.  Open that file.

Make sure that the following line is uncommented

NameVirtualHost *:80

You’ll need a default entry, and then any specific ones for each hostname you want to use.

The default one...

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin technical@satellite
    DocumentRoot "c:/webroot"
    ErrorLog "logs/localhost-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/localhost-access.log" combined
</VirtualHost>

The custom ones should look like this, replace ‘airbase.local’ with ‘local.wys’ and the value of document root to where you want it to start serving files from.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName airbase.local
    ServerAdmin technical@satellite
    DocumentRoot "D:/webroot/airbase/magento"
    ErrorLog "logs/airbase-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/airbase-access.log" combined
</VirtualHost>

Restart apache and it should all be working nicely!


Acceptable CPU usage for 4 core 3.4gHz i7 Creating a kiosk application for the Mac and am testing performance and CPU usage.
The activity monitor shows a total of roughly 90 to 150% CPU usage for the always up, kiosk processes.

My first confusion is how CPU usage can be over 100% but I understand it is related to the number of cores.

So my question is, is 150% total CPU usage acceptable for a kiosk based mac with constantly running 24-7 applications? Or is that too high?

addendum> the application is processing video constantly, the only 'interaction' is the video feed coming from a webcam.

Zero is Ideal

Ideally, your kiosk application should use 0% CPU when not actively being used. It is unlikely you will achieve this without considerable effort but even a target of 5 – 10% use is good.

At 150% constant CPU use, the application would likely be considered faulty by Apple's Mac App Store reviewers – and by many customers.

Hints: Offload to the Right Framework

If your kiosk application is animating or showing moving content such as adverts or movies, do as much as you can with AVFoundation/QuickTime. This will typically offload the processing to the GPU and allow the CPU to idle.

For other animations be sure to adopt CoreGraphics and CoreAnimation. They will dramatically improve your application's energy impact.

Energy Efficiency Guide for Mac Apps

Study Apple's Energy Efficiency Guide for Mac Apps. The introduction sets out Apple's intentions:

  Your Obligation as a Developer

  Even small inefficiencies in apps add up across the system, significantly affecting battery life, performance, responsiveness, and temperature. As an app developer, you have an obligation to make sure your app runs as efficiently as possible. Use recommended APIs so the system can make smart decisions about how best to manage your app and the resources it uses. Whenever possible, avoid unnecessary updates to the user interface and I/O. Power-intensive operations should be under the user’s control. If a user initiates a large iMovie render, Automator batch job, Compressor conversion, or Xcode compile, for example, the user should not be surprised if the activity consumes power. Strive to make your app absolutely idle when it is not responding to user input.

Use the developer tools to profile your application's energy impact and ask away on Stack Overflow for ways to reduce CPU load. Good luck!


App Store - Free app with externally paid for login - does this require revenue split with Apple? I'm trying to get clarity on this, I believe I know this answer but would like validation that I am correct.

I am building app and which will be free on the App Store, but users will have to login to a privately paid for system to access it.

E.g. anyone can download the App, but to use it, will have to have a contract with my company and then be provided with the credentials to login.

My thought is that this is fine without the revenue split, as lots of other apps do similar things, e.g. Facebook, Banking Apps, etc.. and to me, it wouldn't make sense for them to rev share either.

Thanks

This is fine, providing there is no link within the app to your website to purchase access.


How to find in one sheet in Numbers? When I try to search something in Numbers, it will find in all sheets. Is it possible to search in currently selected sheet only?

MacBook Air macOS Sierra 10.12.3, Numbers 4.0.5

Open the sheet and use Find & Replace.

Command-F or Edit -> Find -> Find...

For most Apple productivity apps, Command-F can be used to find text in that app.


Compare content of two folders, including subfolders Over the years I have imported photos from iPhone to Mac and organized them in folder by month.

I now want to import all photos I have on the iPhone and compare those with the files that I've organized in folders over the years - if there are any missing.

Is there any tool (included in OSX or free/purchaseable) or other procedure that can compare folder content, with one folder holding the files in root and the other in many subfolders?

Terminal: diff

You can compare two folders in Terminal using the following command:

diff -rq /path/to/folder1 /path/to/folder2

To ignore folder hierarchy you can copy all the files out of a folder into a third folder, then compare these:

find /path/to/folder2 -mindepth 2 -type f -print -exec cp {} /path/to/folder3 \;


Create calendar to post overseas I would like to create a calendar from my iPhotos and mail it directly in a country different from my billing country (to reduce delivery cost). Is this possible?

Yes this is possible. You'll have to create a contact while setting up the Create a calendar process. You can add an address and ship it to that location.

If you can't locate it, call Apple Support and they can assist you very easily with a screenshare.


2nd monitor is mirroring the first external monitor For years I've been using a Dell U2515H monitor as external display for my Macbook Pro. Yesterday I purchased a second monitor (exactly the same) and connected it through HDMI to my Macbook Pro (2018) using a docking station. The first monitor is connected over DP.

The screen is working, but my Macbook doesnt recognize it as a second monitor, it just sees the Macbook and one external screen (Dell U2515H) in Display settings.

I have tried to hold down the option key to use the 'Detect displays' function, but that doesnt do anything.

I have no other screen around to test on to see if this is an issue because the two external monitors are exactly the same model.

I was using the Hyperdrive Pro Docking Station, and apparently its sharing the signal for its HDMI and DP port. I had to buy an adaptar (USB-C to HDMI) to attach the second monitor to the hub, and this solved the issue.


Can't download OS X Mavericks I'm on OS X Lion (10.7.5) and still cannot download OS X Mavericks (10.9). There is no progress bar on the Mac App Store. Also, it is not resumable. Whenever I pause the download and shutdown/reboot my MBP, it restarts the whole download process.

A random guy from the Power Mac Center (Apple Retailer) told me that it has something to do on the speed of the internet. I have a 3 Mbps plan and seems like there nothing inadequate about it.

Any workaround on this issue?

A few initial tips/suggestions/thoughts

The random guy at ‘Power Mac Center’ was close. It’s not the speed of the internet that matters, it’s the combination of: A) the speed at which Apple sends the files, and B) the bandwidth capabilities of your connection. In my experience “A” never comes close to “B”.
Large downloads from the Mac App Store should be resumable, but for some reason they often aren’t. You can pause them for awhile, but if you pause it for too long, it always seems to start over.
Someone told me that their download speeds from the iTunes Store varied greatly depending on which DNS servers they were using. I don’t pretend to know why that would be the case, but he said that it made a great deal of difference in his experience. So if you are using your ISP’s DNS servers, you might try OpenDNS or Google DNS and see if that helps.

The excruciatingly long and nerdy answer that just might help. But no promises.

GUI progress meters are often not very helpful. If you want the real scoop on what is happening, you’ll want to get down into the place where the actual files are being downloaded.

In this case, that’s (somewhere under) /var/folders/.[1]

Now, you could try to do this in Finder, but really, you’d be much better off firing up Terminal.app from /Applications/Utilities/. Then you can copy/paste this command:

find /var/folders -ipath '*/com.apple.appstore/*' \
-name manifest.plist 2>/dev/null

Note that you can copy that command as two lines as long as the first line ends with \ or just remove the \ and keep it as one long line.

Translated into English, that command says “Look in the folder /var/folders/ for any file called ”manifest.plist“ in a path (series of folders/directories) that has ”com.apple.appstore" in it.

For example, on my computer right now (with no active Mac App Store downloads), I have only one of these, which is at:

/var/folders/bk/cb9y7rbx30q_6n40wp096grc0000gn/C/com.apple.appstore/manifest.plist

Once you find that plist file, you need to look inside it for the name of the ‘package file’ which is being downloaded from the Mac App Store.

Usually that file will end with “.pkg” so if you wanted to skip a step, you could try just looking for .pkg files:

find /var/folders \
-ipath '*/com.apple.appstore/*' \
-iname '*.pkg' \
-ls 2>/dev/null |\
egrep '\.pkg$'

This is a similar command as before, except that now we are asking find to look for any files which end with ‘.pkg’ and then show us the output of ls on any matching file or folder.

If you track the file size of any ‘.pkg’ files found in that directory, then you can see how much data has been downloaded.

Example: Since I don’t have any downloads currently, I don’t have any .pkg files to show, so I’ll use a ‘.plist’ file for this example. Here’s what the output of that command would look like for me:

4446464 8 -rw-r–r– 1 luomat staff 226 Dec 3 01:03 /var/folders/bk/cb9y7rbx30q_6n40wp096grc0000gn/C/com.apple.appstore/manifest.plist

Most of the stuff on that line we don’t care about. You can probably pick out the date “Dec 3” and the time “01:03” but actually the only part we really care about is the size of the file, in bytes, which is the number just before the date: 226.

(Just stay with me here.)

If you count the number of ‘columns’ in that line, you’ll find that the ‘226’ is the 7th column, and the filename is the last column. Using another Unix tool called awk we can run that command again and only see the fields that we want to see: the file size and the file name.

find /var/folders \
-ipath '*/com.apple.appstore/*' \
-iname '*.plist' \
-ls 2>/dev/null |\
awk '{print $7" "$NF}'

Again, from top to bottom, that says: (1) look in /var/folders (2) for anything in a path of folders/directories which contains ‘/com.apple.appstore/’ (3) and files which end in ‘.plist’ (which you’d want to change to ‘.pkg’)
and then (4) show us the file listing (ls) output for anything that matches, and filter (|) the results through (5) awk and print out only: the 7th column, a space (that’s the “ ”) and the last column ($NF means ‘last’ to awk).

Whew! Ok, did you get all that? I hope so. If not, don’t give up yet. There’s a surprise at the end of this post. I’ll stop with the details there, but just imagine if you ran a loop which kept checking the size of that .pkg file every, oh, 15 seconds or so. Then you would be able to see how many bytes had been downloaded, and if you kept the old value and compared it to the new value, you could even tell how much of the file you had downloaded since the last time you checked.

But what! There’s more! In that manifest.plist file that I mentioned before, not only does it give us the name of the .pkg file that is being downloaded, it also tells us how many bytes it is supposed to be.

So, if you really wanted to, you could:

Look for the manifest.plist file
Find the name of the .pkg file that the manifest.plist said we were currently downloading
Find the total size that .pkg file is supposed to be when it has completely downloaded
Run a loop as long as that .pkg file exists, checking its size, comparing that to the previous size, and the total size, and give you an idea of how much has been downloaded, how fast it is being downloaded, and how much more there is to go.

Wow. Doesn’t that sound fün?

Well, I have some good news. These sorts of tedious tasks are just the sort of thing computers are really good at doing. All you need is someone who tells the computer what to do, and put it together in some kind of a ‘program’ or ‘script’.

Which is what I did. You can find it at https://github.com/tjluoma/maswatch. My script uses Growl, and, more specifically, growlnotify to send you a notification every time the script loops.[2] That notification will show you the total size, the downloaded size, and the difference between the current downloaded size and the previous download size (to give you an idea how fast it is downloading).

To use the script, you’ll need to:

Download and install Growl and growlnotify.
Download the script

curl -L –remote-name https://github.com/tjluoma/maswatch/raw/master/maswatch.sh
Make it executable:

chmod 755 maswatch.sh
Then start your download from the Mac App Store using the App Store app.
Once the download has started, run the script in Terminal:

./maswatch.sh

It should find the .pkg file and then start reporting the download size.

If you have stray ‘pkg’ files in /var/folders/ (inside the “/com.apple.appstore/” folder), it might be that a corrupted download is interfering with subsequent attempts. That seems unlikely, but is theoretically possible and it felt like I should at least mention it.  ↩

Someone with a basic understanding of Un*x could read the script and change it to use echo instead of growlnotify, but that, as my Comp Sci professor used to say, “has been left as an exercise for the reader.”  ↩


Website block on a time schedule I would like to find a way to block the access to some websites from all the browsers of my Macbook, but not just as Self-Control does. I want to make kind of a time schedule, for example blocking Facebook between 8am and 8pm, and let it free outside this "window", and do the same with different "time-windows" for other websites... Is there a way to do this?

My preferred method of doing this is to use a DD-WRT router and block specific sites on a time basis. (See here.)

Also, Netgear offers similar functionality in conjunction with OpenDNS. (See here.)


Which NAS for Mac users? i work for a company with a 'Mac' department (they are creative/graphics).
At the moment they are using an old server mac with a shared Hard drive formatted in HFS+;  i would like to buy a NAS with full compatibility with HFS+ partition. I know Synology and QNAP offers compatibility with Mac World (using AFP), but i'm sure they use EXT filesystem as main partition.
Is this correct to use Ext partition either for 'existing' Mac datas ?

Thank you!

I recently needed to replace an old NAS at home, and the cheapest option for my requirement was actually to build one and install FreeNAS on it.

You can add as many drives as your chassis will take, configure them to be RAID, mirrored, or independent, use UFS/ZFS on the partitions, and configure your shares as Windows, CIFS, or AFP with individual user accounts, groups, or getting permissions from an LDAP server.

Once you're set-up (which takes about 10 minutes from the CD) you're ready to go with a web interface which controls everything else.

While it's not HFS+, it is AFP capable out of the box so to speak, and works perfectly on my network with 2 Apple computers, and a Windows computer. It contains all of the resource fork information (meta data), and of course you can copy any existing data to it from anywhere else on the network.

Performance on a box like this is also going to be a lot better than most low to mid range NAS boxes too, which may be important with multiple users accessing large files. I backed up 580gb in just over an hour on a gigabit LAN connection.


Troubleshooting IKEv2 on 10.11 El Capitan How do I troubleshoot IKEv2 VPN issues on El Capitan?

I've followed these instructions to create an IKEv2 VPN (and certificate) on a Ubuntu server that I want to connect to, which all seems pretty reasonable.

I'm now trying to connect to it from my Mac.
I've created an IKEv2 connection with (what I think are) the appropriate details. When I click connect, the VPN menu icon just shows the connecting lights for 2 minutes but nothing happens. There is no output (error or otherwise) in /var/log/system.log or on syslog -w. There is no error message or evidence of any sort of connection attempt on the server. If I change the server address in the VPN config to something non existent, the results are identical, so clearly it's not really doing anything useful.

How do I find out what it actually thinks it's doing though? Surely something should be getting logged somewhere. I have tried adding

log debug;
path logfile "/var/log/racoon.log";

to /etc/racoon/racoon.conf and restarting but I still get nothing.

Update - I'm now getting some error output (post reboot):

Oct 12 21:27:06 testing nesessionmanager[519] <Notice>: NESMIKEv2VPNSession[VPN (IKEv2):930E0F86-1878-42E5-9CBD-08FD10677429]: Received a start command from SystemUIServer[415]
Oct 12 21:27:06 testing nesessionmanager[519] <Notice>: NESMIKEv2VPNSession[VPN (IKEv2):930E0F86-1878-42E5-9CBD-08FD10677429]: status changed to connecting
Oct 12 21:27:06 testing nesessionmanager[519] <Error>: Failed to find the VPN app for plugin type com.apple.neplugin.IKEv2
...
Oct 12 21:29:06 testing nesessionmanager[519] <Notice>: NESMIKEv2VPNSession[VPN (IKEv2):930E0F86-1878-42E5-9CBD-08FD10677429]: status changed to disconnecting
Oct 12 21:29:06 testing nesessionmanager[519] <Notice>: NESMIKEv2VPNSession[VPN (IKEv2):930E0F86-1878-42E5-9CBD-08FD10677429]: status changed to disconnected, last stop reason Tunnel did not come up in time

Now that I've found the error string, it looks like this is actually missing from the release. Perhaps it wasn't ready to ship.

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/18197

http://www.openradar.appspot.com/22735440


Deleting iCloud photo duplicates After downloading my phone to a MacBook Pro I have experienced multiple photo duplicates in iCloud. 30,000 plus photos are now on my iCloud and the duplicate photo fixer only scans 2200. Any advice?

I have Photo Fixer Pro and guessing the lite version you have may have a limit.  My icloud photos have over 80,570 photos and videos and if I scan weeks to months it scans way over 30,000

my first try it crashed because I have so many but it scanned 53,204 the first time until I narrow my search down.


Connecting 2 iPads with a router without internet I need to connect two iPads to a network without internet connection. Can I just do it with a simple router? Is there a good type of router to share data without internet?

You can do this of course.  Any wifi router that the two iPads both support should connect them.  Just don't bother to connect to the Internet.

I'm curious as to why you need this? Most iOS apps don't do peer to peer, though some obviously do.  Bittorrent Sync for one would possibly be useful here.


Utility to integrate iTunes with Amazon Is there any utility or script that integrates with iTunes and helps me organize my libraries by doing lookups on large databases such as Amazon?

For example:

downloading track names from Amazon
downloading CD covers from Amazon
downloading book categories from Amazon (this one especially would be useful)

Or in general, at least a "look it up on Amazon" script would be great.

Meta X works great for me for movies, not sure if you're looking for that though since you just mention music and books.


How to proper setting root mysql password I'm trying to make Mysql and phpMyAdmin works.

I installed mysql using brew

Following those answers https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6474775/setting-the-mysql-root-user-password-on-os-x

I tried to set a plain text password

UPDATE mysql.user SET authentication_string='root' WHERE User='root';

But now when I try to login into phpmyadmin I get 2 errors (I'm not able to connect even with mysql cli with "Access denied" error):

 mysqli_real_connect(): The server requested authentication method unknown to the client [caching_sha2_password]

 mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/2054): The server requested authentication method unknown to the client

I got the problem, basically almost all the solution you can find around are outdated.
With mysql 8.0.15 you have to follow this guide
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/resetting-permissions.html

I recommend to read the whole page, but basically you have to use

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MyNewPass';

NOTE Using the method UPDATE mysql.user SET authentication_string.. will lock you out from your own mysql server (you won't solve even with mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables).
If you end up locked out, I guess the only hope (I didn't test it) is to stop mysqld and relaunch mysqld manually using --init-file="myinitfile" where myinitfile is a plain text file containing the ALTER USER instruction I mentioned before (I'm not sure it is even doable if you have installed mysql using brew, but note I'm new to macOS). Mine was a fresh installation, so I've just deleted the whole /usr/local/var/mysql directory and reinstalled mysql.


Unexplained memory usage in iPad iBooks? I have a 16GB Apple iPad 3(with Retina Display). Today, while checking up my available memory, I saw the iPad had about only 1GB left. After deleting major unused apps, I found out that iBooks was using up 1.4GB of storage. I found it to be extremely weird, since iBooks isn't supposed to be consuming so much of space, unless you cram thousands of ebooks in there.

I have only 4 PDFs and 4 books(purchased from the App Store). Each of these books have about a few hundred (max ~600-700) pages. So, I'm not sure how is the 1.4GB being used up by iBooks.

I'd really like to free up the space iBooks seems to be using. Any help would be appreciated.

A few PDF files of 500 pages with high quality graphics could easily fill up that amount of space. Check how large the PDF files are (easiest way is via iTunes under application data).


Lost my "Artists" field in iTunes Most of my old CDs that I'm adding to my iPod touch 4th generation are compilations, so I have to add in the details my hand. I accidentally got rid of the "Artists" column in iTunes, which made it nice if I wanted to sort by artist.

How do I get that field back, and do I have to re-enter each artist for several hundred songs by hand?

Right-click on the column headings and select Artist to add the column back.

You won't need to re-enter information for the songs since the information will not have been deleted.


how to stop this bogon host running from my macbook? I have noticed from my macbook a new hostname is exposed with the name bogon

even if I block this mac address on the router, it comes up with a new one.
And  do not have any clue where is it coming from ?
please help.

A bogon is an illegitimate IP address that falls into a set of IP addresses that have not been officially assigned to an entity by an internet registration institute, such as the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). Bogons arise as a result of a misconfiguration or intentional misuse that fools recipients about its source IP address. The term bogon is used as slang and is derived from the word bogus.
Prevention of bogons.
Many internet service providers (ISP), firewalls and intrusion prevention systems block bogons. This can be accomplished through bogon filtering, or the practice of assigning access control lists (ACL) or Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) blacklists to a device. A list of bogons can be obtained from a variety of sources including HTTP, BGP peering, routing registries and the DNS.
This is not an unusual problem and much has been written about it here, here and here. These are commonly found as the source addresses of DDoS attacks. I don't know enough about them to do more than refer you to these sites. There are ways to prevent these from showing up on your machine.
a Google search on Bogon returns many other sites with helpful information.


Custom keyboard shortcut not executing service I have a custom keyboard shortcut created for a finder service to compress selected files.

However despite working once or twice when I first created it, it has no effect now. The service works perfectly if I manually select it but not with the shortcut. As you can see from the screenshot the shortcut is definitely assigned...

Edit:

Just discovered that it actually works in all finder views except column view...

What's going on here?

Usually this happens when there are conflicting keyboard shortcuts with other apps. Here is how I troubleshoot this type of problem.

Restart and prevent all login items from running.
Try the shortcut you’ve assigned, in this case, Option+Command+C.
If it works, that means there are other apps that prevent you from running the service.
Run the apps in login items one by one and test the shortcut until you find the conflicting apps.

Most of time it solves my problem. If it’s not conflicting keyboard shortcuts form other apps, you might use Key Codes to check the state of each key when pressed.


Can I zoom text size on the iPad in Safari? It's easy enough to zoom in on a page with the pinch gesture and on most websites it works well to zoom in past the navigation and ads to make the text big enough to read but some sites don't have all that left and right margin area and I want to be able to zoom the text and have it reformat it to fit my screen like Android does. Is that possible? Is there some magic gesture I'm missing like three finger zoom scroll or two hand double finger split scroll?

You can double-tap to zoom in to a section. I find this feature very useful. As you use it you'll soon learn where to double-tap to get the zoomed-in view you want.

Safari does not have support for changing just the font size without zooming the page, but Opera Mini does have that feature. You can go to settings and choose from small, medium or large font sizes.

But note that this only works on some websites, not all. This is because changing font size can very likely break the website design/layout. Website creators like to control the user experience so they explicitly set the font size so the browsers can't change it.


"Inbox Zero" with Apple Watch Siri watchface and Activity? I am a big fan of Inbox Zero and any item left in my inbox means "I have yet to do this!"

The Siri watch face on my Apple Watch tends to follow this but there seems to always be one item left, no matter what I do, and this is the "Activity" item.

For example, today I went for a short bicycle ride. I'm not in the best shape so the short ride filled up my activity goal for today. I had already filled the "stand up" quota, I was close to my calories quota and the bicycle ride filled my exercise quota.

However, the Activity item is still there. I'd be the first to admit that is probably a "Good Thing™", considering the shape that I'm in, but it bugs me far more that I can't get "Inbox Zero", but rather "Inbox One-to-go".

Is there a way for me to say "When I've filled all the quotas I've set, please hide the Activity item"?

If this can (only) be done with watchOs 5, which is in beta, I would accept this as an answer, even though I'm on watchOs 4 (which would imply it isn't possible right now).

At this time, with watchOS 4.3.1, it's not possible to remove Activity from the Siri watch face.

watchOS 5 is still in beta and there's been no indication from Apple that Activity can be removed, either.

Of course, Apple has in the past added and removed features while the software is in beta so this could change before it's officially released.


Where's the best place to download Ubuntu virtual machines? I'm using VirtualBox, and found a list of Ubuntu images here. But as of today it doesn't include an image for 14.04, which I need to install GitLab on, (or build from source).

What URLs would you suggest to ease the search for a client image of Ubuntu 14.04?

The image file downloads for the latest version(s) of Ubuntu (including 14.04) are listed on Ubuntu's Release/Downloads page (searchable in Google).

Here's a guide on how to install the system from the ISO format, using VirtualBox (your tool of choice):

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/07/how-to-set-up-ubuntu-linux-on-a-mac-its-easy-and-free/

For the VirtualBox image (instead of ISO), go here (lists versions from 14-15):

http://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu/

As such, it goes without saying that you should use the original source whenever possible.

Good day to you!


apple tv and roku - strong wireless? I have a broadband dsl at home, but my wireless signal isnt that strong in the living room. I am excited with getting one of these 2 devices, but I don't know how it will all work without cable.

If I am working at home or downloading stuff, then the available bandwidth is even lesser. Does that mean bad streaming and buffering? Will these devices let me buffer the movie when I am not at home and then watch the stream later?

Thanks.

The Roku HD has 802.11b/g WiFi. The Roku XD and XDS have 802.11b/g/n.
The Apple TV has 802.11a/b/g/n.

802.11n is the fastest network speed, and reaches the farthest. If the WiFi in your home is 802.11n, I strongly recommend choosing one of the players that supports that.


How to make preview jump to a specific line on startup I am using TexLipse for working with latex, producing pdfs as output. I have configured it to use preview as viewer using this command line:

open -a "/Applications/Preview.app" %fullfile

Where %fullfile is the name of the file to be opened. TexLipse supports the adding of a %line argument, that can be passed to the viewer to make it jump to the position where the cursor in the editor is at. However, I could not find a way or any documentation on how to pass that argument to preview. Can anyone explain how to achieve this? Is it even possible?

If you are working with LaTeX, you should use Skim.app not Preview.app

Skim has support for moving bi-directionally between LaTeX source and the PDF, to a specific line in either the source or PDF file.


How to organise overflowing config files and folders in the home directory and beyond! The Context:

I'm a long-time macOS user who has spent many years dabbling here and there with the *nix side of Apple life since the first iteration of OS X (10.0) originally shipped.

Recently, I find myself compelled to dig a little deeper after deciding to embark on a journey of self education in all things scripting/programming/system administration. Thankfully there exist fantastic tools such as Homebrew, amongst others, to make the management of this macOS shadow-land far more straightforward, but sometimes it's neccessary to work outside of these self-contained ecosystems.

The Core Problem:

I find myself gathering a large quantity of configuration-related files and folders in my home directory. This unwiedly & miscellaneous collection seems sub-optimal and I'm wondering if the more experienced have some "best practice" guidance for this situation - maybe even a decicated utility or two?
I'm keenly aware that the ecosystem of *nix software is extremely sensitive to directory/path structure; and minor changes can have major side effects that aren't immediately obvious,resulting in increasingly time-costly troubleshooting and conflict-resolution in the future - particularly when the problem at hand isn't recent and "fresh in the mind".

Any suggestions/pointers/links or path/environment variables welcome - thanks!

These tools expect their .foorc file to reside in ~ so there is no easy way to "organize" this better (besides not using the -a of ls so you don't always see them :-)) unless you want to compile everything from a (appropriately) modified source yourself.

Some tools use an environment variable to read their configuration from a custom location. This is tool-specific though, you need to consult the man page to see whether this is an option.

Some people use git or similar tools to easily share configurations between systems (and also as a way to have access to old versions), see (among a ton of other sources) these links.

PS: This is a rather broad answer to a broad question. If you want specific advice for a specific tool, please ask a new question including the relevant details


How to combine multiple mailboxes in Mail.app? My OS is Mavericks.  The mailboxes shown are grouped under headings MAILBOXES, SMART MAILBOXES, ON MY MAC, and MY EMAIL ADDRESS.  I have Sent and Trash under each.  Their contents are not entirely duplicative.  When I go to mailbox/use this mailbox as, the options are grayed out.  In Preferences/Accounts/Mailbox Behaviors all options are checked to 'store messages on server'.  How do I combine these mailboxes?
Thanks,
Rick

In the Menu Bar, go to Mailbox after selecting the sub-mailbox, one of your Sent folders, for instance, and then choose "Use This Mailbox For…". You can lump the redundancies together this way, but it's true that you will not be able to completely customize all the boxes.


How to get write access to High Sierra (APFS) drive in Read-Only mode on Macbook with faulty AMD GPU Some background: My 2011 17" MacBook Pro (running High Sierra) has finally succumbed to the Radeon issue and won't boot up. I know this because it would flicker green where there was pixel shading so I was using the gfxCardStatus utility to only use the Integrated GPU.

Well this week it crashed and when I booted up, it would show green vertical bars over the grey background. It booted up once, I saw the desktop and then rebooted. since then I've been looking at all of the articles online and was going to proceed with disabling the AMD GPU using the terminal in Single User Mode.

This answer was particularly useful and I managed to get as far as disabling the GPU on by setting the NVRAM variable:
nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00

The only problem was mounting the drive as writable, seems that my APFS formatted drive is in read-only mode and I'm unsure how to proceed from here. I've removed the drive and mounted it in Windows using Paragon APFS but it's only in read-only mode. So I'm unable to move the required AMDRadeonX3000.kextand am now stuck.

When I boot up now, I see the normal bootscreen, see the Apple logo and the progress bar goes to about 50-60% and then nothing else happens.

The real question(s): Does anyone know how to either disable the Active Snapshots? Is this the right path to follow? Am I going to break things further?

Would I be complicating things if I installed this drive in my 2012 MBP i7? I have a feeling it's not going to boot like a Windows machine would and I don't want to do any damage.

I'm not opposed to reflowing etc it's just that in South Africa, the guys who will do it seem sketchy.

MacOS protects system level files as well as kext files. Maybe the following will help you. Please backup everything up and research it a little further before attempting making any of these changes.

To disable System Integrity Protection:
Boot into recovery mode and enter the following terminal command

csrutil disable

Reboot

Changing Kext Files
To allow yourself the ability to change kext files you should try this:

sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"

If you replace or edit any kext files, it’s very important you maintain the correct owner and user/group permissions.  You may also need to rebuild your kextcache after changing any of the files within your extensions folder.

To always boot and shutdown in verbose mode
This will help identify hang ups.

sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

To return your system back to normal

sudo nvram boot-args=


OSX El Capitan split-screen (4-way) Any good ways to easily do a 4-way split screen on OSX? I love split-screen and would love to also have 4 (in four corners) in addition to 2 (left-right).

On my El Capitan Mac, I use BetterSnapTool. It’s a very good program for managing multiple side-by-side windows.

I even used it to to create a custom resizing command so my windows will not extend into the Notifications Area.

Available on the Mac App Store. Also see the developer’s web site: https://www.folivora.ai/bettersnaptool


Picasa Mac: timeline or chronological view? In Windows Live Photo Gallery, there's a timeline view (see below) that shows all the Months/Days that any photos in my collection were taken.  I found this very convenient. Is there something similar for the latest Picasa for Mac?

Not possible, unless the photos are sorted this way on your disk and you use the folder view.
In the albums view, all you can do is sort the albums by date, but then they are not grouped by year/month.
The picasa timeline feature is not available in the latest release of picasa mac.


Apple Mail marks email as read This is very annoying and makes me miss important email. After receiving an email, it's marked as read by the Mavericks Mail App. Anyone bumped into the same issue? Any ideas?

I had/have the same issue.  With IMAP email server, if you have another computer, or phone, etc.  checking mail from the same server it marks it as read in Mail.   Change your settings (or remake a profile) to POP instead of IMAP.  Solved for me.


Late 2012 iMac - Thunderbolt : no hardware was found I have an Late 2012  27" iMac (iMac13,2) and somehow when looking in system report for the Thunderbolt ports say "no hardware was found.”

I have tried:

Endless searching to find a solution
Resetting SMC and NVRAM
Updating OS to High Sierra

Clean Install, deleting HD and installing High Sierra
Clean Install, with 2nd level secure disk delete in hopes to delete firmware

Updating Thunderbolt firmware 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 to no avail
Tried to create a bootable installer of Yosemite to trick the machine into letting me "downgrade" firmware to v1.0 or v1.1. I’m almost positive that it's a firmware issue as the system does not see any Thunderbolt firmware.

This system was used as the heart of an audio editing project studio and is now completely non-functional as the two high-end Thunderbolt audio interfaces used to get audio in and out of this iMac are no longer functional.

What can I do to fix the Thunderbolt ports?

Hardware not found
When it comes to hardware, there are two “conditions”

Detected
Functional

Hardware can be detected and non-functional, but it is impossible for it to be functional without  being detected.
When something is detected, the system says “I found this piece of hardware.  It’s identified by these numbers at such-and-such and address.”  That’s a very simplistic description of what happens but it encapsulates the concept.
Hardware is functional when a driver(kext) is loaded and the device can be used by the system to do whatever it’s designed to do (i.e. webcam displays pictures and captures sound)
Your Thunderbolt subsystem has failed
Now, if a previously functional device suddenly is no longer detected, the device has failed.  It could be the Thunderbolt controller or the associated circuitry, but in the end, it has failed to the point where the system doesn’t see it.

I’m almost positive that it's a firmware issue as per the system does not see any thunderbolt firmware.

Unlikely. Even if the firmware was corrupted, your system would  report an “unknown device” because something would be there, it just can’t identify what it is.  Upgrading/downgrading firmware is not going to work if it can’t find the device which to apply the update.
Diagnostics
The very first thing that should be invoked long before you reinstall the or do any sort of firmware patching is to run Apple Hardware Test (Hold D while booting).  An OS reinstall should be done last.  In fact, you should install macOS onto an external drive and boot off of that instead of wiping the drive.  Why? If there is any sort of forensic evidence of the failure, it gets erased with the new install.
Resetting the NVRAM and SMC are usually fruitless because they’re unrelated, but it can’t harm anything.  Before wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the OS, try Safe Mode or Recovery Mode.  These are clean, versions of macOS (Recovery, especially) that have only the native drivers.  If the hardware device can’t be seen here, it’s definitely a hardware failure.
Bottom line
It’s got to go in for service or you need to replace the unit.


Add music files from my computer to an iPhone I need to put some music files on somebody's iPhone.
How can I do that without erasing the content of his iPhone ?

You can only sync media from one iTunes library with the iPhone at the same time.
This applies even if you have activated "Manually manage music and videos".

If you see a message that the device is synced with another library, iTunes can't sync the music without first erasing and replacing all iTunes content on the device.

Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201593


How do I stop Big Sur from installing on my computer? I have Catalina running on a 16" MacBook Pro.
I do not want to upgrade to Big Sur until next July.
Is there a way to do that?
Responding to BMike:
Two days before Big Sur dropped I set Software Update as follows:

On the day Big Sur dropped I got the update message and I told it to remind me tomorrow.
Today I tried the sudo command and got this:

I am going to leave this open for another day, but at the moment it looks like the answer is "You can't"

Disable the Automatically keep my Mac up to date check box.

Use the second “more info ...” blue link to get security updates until you are ready to take the invitation to upgrade. It’s listed below the Other Updates text in the middle of the window.  If you like the command line you can pick and choose from any or all available update(s) and also suppress them by name.
sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Big Sur"

Please read this entire article before trying sudo for the first time, you could delete all your documents and photos with a syntax error or bad copy/paste of a good command. If you use Time Machine, one sudo alone won’t delete your backups.

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/preventing-the-macos-big-sur-upgrade-advertisement-from-appearing-in-the-software-update-preference-pane-on-macos-catalina/

The article above explains the down side of trying to block Big Sur before it's advertised and the error message you will see in that case. A more invasive solution would be to use an MDM product to block the actual installer. Or compile an app like the following open-source tool which anyone can compile with a free AppleID and free version of Xcode.

https://github.com/hjuutilainen/bigsurblocker


If I store music in CloudDrive, can I play it in somehow? I do not realy like this iTunes syncronization, connect device with cabel, start iTunes, .. too complicate. Can I sync and play music via CloudDrive?

No. Unless you use a specific third-party app that allows this (I don't know of any) then synchronisation of music from a computer to an iOS device with iCloud Drive is not possible.

However, you may find that iTunes Wi-Fi syncing sufficiently solves the problem you describe of having to physically connect your iOS device to your computer in order to synchronise media.


How can I send out my caller ID info? Is there a way to send out my Caller ID info to people not on my contact list, or to people whose contact list I am not on?

If your carrier supports showing Caller ID, it can be configured under Settings → Phone → Show My Caller ID. For more options, contact your carrier.


Cannot change anything inside a folder, however it's not Locked and I have all the rights I copied several folders from my TM backup (made in El Capitan) to the current system (Sierra), (I also have different username than on the system where I made the backup if that could matter) and now their contents can be changed only via sudo.

I tried running sudo chown -R <my_name> <folder> — no effect at all.
Also tried running find . -exec sudo chown <my_name> "{}" \; from them — again no luck.
Also tried find . -exec sudo chmod u+rwx "{}" \;, sudo chmod -R u+rwx <folder>. Nothing changed anything.

These folders and all their contents show up in Finder as Read&Write for my user, and they also do not have Locked property set. Somehow this is not true in practice.

What can I do to fix this insanity?

I have found only one thing that actually solves it — copy the whole folder, delete old one with sudo, rename it back. But it's impractical for huge folders because it's slow and hurts SSD life.

UPDATE 2 (now I got it):
The culprit is the ACLs. Apparently Time Machine uses them, and copying via Finder preserves ACLs.
They are easy to remove recursively from folders where you know they are not needed:
sudo chmod -R -N ~/Pictures for example will drop all ACL rules in ~/Pictures and everything inside.
Source/more info: https://backdrift.org/fixing-mac-osx-file-permissions-and-acls-from-the-command-line
older unsuccessful attempts:
After some more desperate searching and brainstorming, I came up with one workaround:
1: Install coreutils from Homebrew (if not already done so)
2: gcp -dRl <broken_folder> <temporary_folder> — this will "copy" it with hardlinks instead of actual copying while not preserving permissions and any other "invisible" things which could be broken, so it's fast and almost zero damage regardless of file sizes
3: Test if permissions in temporary folder are OK "in practice"
4: sudo rm -rf <broken_folder> && mv <temporary_folder> <broken_folder> — remove bad one and put fixed one in its place
based on this answer and GNU cp manual.
UPDATE:
In newer versions of macOS even this doesn't work. Looks like they are actively trying to make me switch to another OS.


How can I get all of my Gmail contacts into my Mac Contacts? I was able to import all of my Gmail contacts into my iPhone but my Mac doesn't include them.  How can I get all of my Gmail contacts into my Mac contacts app?

On Lion/Mountain Lion, go to the Preferences on your Contact app, choose Accounts and then On My Mac, and there should be a checkbox Synchronize with Google, you will just need to provide your Gmail credentials.
Just as a precaution, make a backup of your contacts first. Just need to go to Gmail, select Contacts, then the More button, Export to download all your contacts to your hard drive.


Are these temperatures on non-retina Macbook Pro 13 Mid-2012 normal when browsing? I wonder if the temperatures on my non-retina Macbook Pro 13 Mid-2012 normal. I browse using Firefox. I tried using Safari but no noticable difference. CPU load is low. OS X version 10.8.5.

Yes - everything looks normal. Battery and charger are good. HDD and GPU are fine. CPU and cores running cool.

T-JUNCTION of the processor is 105 °C for the i5 (Intel® Core™ i5-3210M Processor) and the i7 (Intel® Core™ i7-3520M Processor ). The Junction Temperature is the maximum temperature allowed at the processor die.

The temperature shown in your screenshot is ~30 degrees Celsius lower than the max. allowed. So I would expect it to be still completely normal.

Surfing with a Intel® Core™ i7-2720QM Processor (T-JUNCTION 100 °C) in a MacBook Pro with a CPU-load of 15% and an environmental temperature of ~10 °C I get an average of about 60 °C.


How to make iPhone/Siri start timing? I want to start a stopwatch to time how long something takes. There are many posts on count down timers (a.k.a egg timer) but none cover a way to start a count-up timer (a.k.a stopwatch) using Siri voice command.
I suspect not, based on all answers to this related question don’t answer the core question of automation + count up.

I prefer to not jailbreak the OS
Native solution is preferred
I’m open to third party apps if needed
I’m open to python or other scripting language or framework if that is “the only way”

Is there any way to achieve this, perhaps via scriptable?

To start a countdown timer, simply say: "Hey Siri, set a timer for [hours][minutes][seconds]"
Example: Hey Siri, set a timer for three hours, 12 minutes and 52 seconds.
The upper limit on timers is 24 hours, and you can have only one timer running on iPhone (HomePod allows multiple named count down timers now).

You can ask Siri how much time is left on the timer by asking Hey Siri, how much time is left on the timer?
You can stop the timer by saying Hey Siri, stop the timer.

There's no native way for Siri to start a stopwatch / count up timer, unfortunately, except through the UI.


How do I run VNC (any flavour) from the iPhone (Jailbroken/not jailbroken) How do I run VNC (any flavor) from the iPhone (Jailbroken/not jailbroken)? I would like a solution to remotely manage my PC from my iPhone, I could even use an RDP client? (I'm running a number of OSes Windows XP and Windows 7 and Hackintosh 10.5.6 but I'm interested in remotely managing the Windows XP box first!)

Check out Mocha VNC. The lite version is free.


Safari extension builder no "+" sign to add new extension folder I have an extension that I need to build back to safariextz, but there is no + sign to add new extension. In the tutorials there are + signs but they are old tutorials and there is no new information. How do I build extension?

In Safari, from the Develop menu, choose Show Extension Builder.

Choose Continue from the Xcode promotion sheet if shown.
From the bottom-left of the window, click the + button.


AirPods battery level with `ioreg` I can query the battery level of my bluetooth devices with ioreg with

ioreg -r -l -n devicename | grep  '"BatteryPercent"\ ='

with the following devices

Keyboards: IOAppleBluetoothHIDDriver, AppleBluetoothHIDKeyboard
Mice: BNBMouseDevice, AppleHSBluetoothDevice
Trackpad: BNBTrackpadDevice

Any idea which is the object name for Apple AirPods?

You can query /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist with the defaults command line utility to get airpod battery levels. It doesn't use ioreg but is fairly extensible.

Some examples:

# Parse as XML and store in environment variables
battery_left=$(defaults export /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth   - | xpath '//dict/key[text()="BatteryPercentLeft"]/following-sibling::integer[1]/text()' 2>/dev/null )
battery_right=$(defaults export /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth   - | xpath '//dict/key[text()="BatteryPercentRight"]/following-sibling::integer[1]/text()' 2>/dev/null )
battery_case=$(defaults export /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth   - | xpath '//dict/key[text()="BatteryPercentCase"]/following-sibling::integer[1]/text()' 2>/dev/null )
echo left: $battery_left
echo right: $battery_right
echo case: $battery_case

# Just show values from defaults plist text output
# Left
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth    | grep BatteryPercentLeft | tr -d \; | awk '{print $3}'

# Right
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth    | grep BatteryPercentRight | tr -d \; | awk '{print $3}'

# Case
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth    | grep BatteryPercentCase | tr -d \; | awk '{print $3}'

My case seems to always report as 0 unless the airpods are in it. If you have more than one connected set of airpods (or if other devices return similar information) you'll have to do something more complicated to differentiate between multiple devices.

This blog post has more info: https://blog.duklabs.com/airpods-power-in-touchbar/


Is there an Enterprise version of iBooks Author? Apple's licensing terms for iBooks Author are quite restrictive towards the distribution of work: They require the output of iBooks Author to be distributed only through Apple's retail operation.
How can this work for business that create content using iBooks Author? If you export your book as a PDFs to sell for a Kindle, it would be against the licensing terms.
Thus, I'm asking: Is there a version of iBooks Author with adequate licensing terms for enterprise?
Here's the extract (iBooks Author 1.0 licence agreement section 2.B.)

Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this Licence and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
if your Work is provided for a fee [...], you may only distribute the Work though Apple [...]

The restrictions only apply to the .ibooks format.

From the iBooks Author Publishing and Distribution FAQ of 2/7/12:

  Are there any restrictions on the distribution of works produced with
  iBooks Author?

  If a fee is charged for the work and it is in the .ibooks format, the
  work may only be sold through the iBookstore. If the work is in a
  different format, such as PDF or ePub, this restriction does not
  apply.

Here's the relevant part of the updated license agreement regarding the distribution of work:

  (i) if the work is provided for free [...], you may distribute it by any means;

  (ii) if the work is provided for a fee [...] and included files in the .ibooks format [...], the work may only be distributed through Apple, [...], however, that this restriction will not apply to the content of the work when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format [...]. You retain all your rights in the content of your works, and you may distribute such content by any means when it does not include files in the .ibooks format [...].


Is there a way to slightly adjust the subtitles offset in the VLC player? Is there a way to slightly adjust the subtitles offset in the VLC player?

Often I just need they to appear 1 second before or later.

The keys h and j should respectively decrease and increase the delay.


Blocking messages on iPhone and iPad If I block someone on my iPhone will I stop receiving their messages on my iPad as well or do I have to block the number on both?

If both of your devices are syncing to the same iCloud account, your "Blocked" contacts will sync across both devices.

This also holds true if you wipe either device and restore it with your iCloud contacts. I believe this is a contacts configuration so it comes with your contacts.

Blocked numbers on a device will block both SMS, iMessage, and calls, however last I knew if a voicemail is left it will still be received because that is a wireless company end receiver. Apple cannot block that feature as they aren't your provider.


openssl claims to use /private/etc/ssl, but appears not to, What The Heck? In the course of trying to help a friend with a problem with pip and ssl sites (GitHub issue here), I've become confused about how the High Sierra /usr/bin/openssl finds its certificates.  My "keg-only" openssl does not have any trouble with the site.

Here's the test case that I've been playing with:

(alice)[14:22:06]~>>/usr/bin/openssl s_client -connect files.pythonhosted.org:443 | head 2>&1
depth=1 C = BE, O = GlobalSign nv-sa, CN = GlobalSign CloudSSL CA - SHA256 - G3
verify error:num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate
verify return:0
CONNECTED(00000005)
---
Certificate chain
 0 s:/C=US/ST=California/L=San Francisco/O=Fastly, Inc/CN=r.ssl.fastly.net
   i:/C=BE/O=GlobalSign nv-sa/CN=GlobalSign CloudSSL CA - SHA256 - G3
 1 s:/C=BE/O=GlobalSign nv-sa/CN=GlobalSign CloudSSL CA - SHA256 - G3
   i:/C=BE/O=GlobalSign nv-sa/OU=Root CA/CN=GlobalSign Root CA
---
Server certificate
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
^C

I've been scratching my head because an appropriate key resides in the Keychain utility (Determined by downloading the Mozilla cert bundle from the Curl site, finding the one cert that rescues the test case when provided via -CAfile, and comparing its fingerprint to certs in the Keychain app.  See the pip issue for gory details).

The value of OPENSSLDIR in the openssl version -a output suggests that /usr/bin/openssl should be using /private/etc/ssl:

(alice)[14:05:27]~>>/usr/bin/openssl version -a
LibreSSL 2.2.7
built on: date not available
platform: information not available
options:  bn(64,64) rc4(ptr,int) des(idx,cisc,16,int) blowfish(idx)
compiler: information not available
OPENSSLDIR: "/private/etc/ssl"

And, in fact, pointing at that directory with the -CApath command line option rescues the test case:

(alice)[14:26:32]~>>/usr/bin/openssl s_client -connect files.pythonhosted.org:443 -CApath /private/etc/ssl | head 2>&1 < /dev/null
depth=2 C = BE, O = GlobalSign nv-sa, OU = Root CA, CN = GlobalSign Root CA
verify return:1
depth=1 C = BE, O = GlobalSign nv-sa, CN = GlobalSign CloudSSL CA - SHA256 - G3
verify return:1
depth=0 C = US, ST = California, L = San Francisco, O = "Fastly, Inc", CN = r.ssl.fastly.net
verify return:1
^C
(alice)[15:21:22]~>>

What's going on?  Do the CApath/CAfile commands enable behavior that doesn't otherwise occur?

I'd love to understand what's going on.

This issue is the result of a known bug in OpenSSL that was reported in February 2013 and tracked here (log in using username guest and password guest). At the time, the latest public release of OpenSSL was OpenSSL 1.0.2. The issue was marked resolved in October 2016, and the bug no longer exists in releases after this date, the earliest of which is OpenSSL 1.1.1. Some users have reported that the bug was also not present in "version 1.1", to which they may be referring to OpenSSL 1.1.0 or forks of it — I have not confirmed whether the bug exists in OpenSSL 1.1.0.

The openssl binary included with macOS is LibreSSL, which is a fork of OpenSSL that originated from OpenSSL 1.0.1g. Since the bug existed in that version of OpenSSL, it persisted in LibreSSL until it was noticed and fixed by their developers, which was somewhere between the version you're using (LibreSSL 2.2.7) and the version I'm using (LibreSSL 2.8.3, which is packaged with macOS Catalina).


What would I lose from switching from iPhone 4+ e-reader to dumbphone+iPad I'm currently using an iPhone 4 and a cheap e-reader that was given to me as a gift. I don't think I can afford both an iPhone and an iPad, so I was considering switching to a dumbphone (non-smartphone) and an iPad. What features would i lose, or miss, from making this switch - specifically in the iphone-ipad part?

It seems to me that you would spend less money overall if you just kept the iPhone and got a wifi-only iPad rather than switching phones and plans (not including that nasty early termination fee on the iPhone contracts). That is what I have now and I really like it.

But, to answer your question specifically, even taking into consideration the iOS 4 release for iPad later this year, you will be missing, at minimum, all of the camera-related functionality of the iPhone, but then there is visual voicemail and easy (and cheap) email. That's a lot to give up all things considered.


Is there a way to get Smart Playlists to work with iOS and iTunes Match? I'm an iTunes Match subscriber, and since I signed up, Smart Playlists haven't been working in conjunction with my iPhone.

I have several Smart Playlists and each one has a song limit.
On my iPhone, the Smart Playlists completely ignore the limit, which makes them sort of useless, because I can't download a playlist without filling up my phone.

It also seems that my Smart Playlists aren't updating, even though they're all set to "live update."

Is there a way to get Smart Playlists working with iTunes Match and iOS?

My recently added and recently played playlists were my way of keeping my phone up-to-date without having to manually manage my music. Not having functional Smart Playlists is a pain.

There are a couple of potential solutions to this problem. I say potential because everyone's listening habits and needs are different, so your mileage may vary. Here goes:

The Smart Playlist problem is not new, and certainly not unique in your case.  There seems to be an overall problem with Smart Playlist syncing through iTunes Match (1) across different devices, (2) with any expediency (usually takes >= 48 hours), and (3) with respect to honoring certain rules (e.g., number of songs allowed).  Another common theme seems to be that "nested" playlists cause even more of a problem than standard Smart Playlists. Nested lists are those that are created when you use your option key to turn the + into an ellipsis (...), which creates a sub-rule for your master rule.

Solution 1: Dumb it down

  Create a standard playlist (Dumb) and give it the same name as your Smart playlist. Copy the content from Smart to Dumb. Sync your device, computer, whatever. Rinse, wash, repeat for each Smart Playlist you want to have properly represented on your other devices. This works.

Solution 2: Really Dumb it Down

  Do your best to avoid the aforementioned nested playlists. This may require you to build several smaller smart playlists with limited criteria. Not the easiest workaround, but we're going for functionality here, right?

Solution 3: Really make your "Recently Added" folder songs that are "Recently Added"

  For your "Recently Added" folder, tack on just one more rule to force songs added after a date, rather than only within the last two weeks (see pic below)

So, I hope this gets you at least a little closer to your goal. I tried to add as much info as I could here since, one more time: everyone's listening and categorizing habits are different :-)
You may find other variations on these, but do realize that, at least for now, this is a server-side problem and workarounds like these represent the best available solutions.


Collection of albums in iTunes? Essentially a playlist of albums? From within iTunes (or Music on iOS), is it possible to make a collection of full albums that is separate from my main library? So, essentially, a playlist of albums.

I know that I can put all songs from an album into a playlist, but that's not exactly what I need to do. It comes down to the fact that I have a fairly substantial music library. I'm an album-centric music consumer... meaning I tend to listen to full albums as opposed to individual songs. I want to be able to group albums in my collection based on mood, genre, release date, theme, whatever. So again, a playlist of albums is really the best way to describe it.

Maybe I'm going about this all wrong. Open to suggestions!

There does seem to be a way to make Smart Playlists that only include whole albums - you need to love ('Heart') the album (not the individual tracks) and then use "Album is Loved" as one of your smart playlist conditions.

Strangely it seems to only work on my home library - my work laptop with iCloud Match messes up the albums - but it seems to work for my iPad and iPhone syncing, which was my purpose, as I like to listen to whole albums not random tracks.


How do I create a keyboard shortcut to go to a specific folder? I have a folder called ~/Documents/Work and I'd like to make the Finder shortcut cmd-shift-W go to that folder, similar to how cmd-shift-H goes to the Home folder (and the equivalent shortcuts for Applications, etc., all under the "Go" menu).

Is it possible to do this? And if so, how can I do it?

Try this AppleScript:

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    set workFolder to (POSIX file "/Users/yourname/Documents/Work") as alias
    reveal workFolder
end tell

For some reason, the tilde doesn't work in the path, so you have to enter your home folder. Since you want to assign that to a shortcut, download FastScripts which enables you to assign shortcuts to AppleScripts.

Hope this helps!

UPDATE:

You can alternatively make an Automator service to run the Applescript.

Open Automator and select Service
On the left-side menu, select Utilities.
In Utilities, drag and drop the "Run Applescript" action into your workflow
Copy the applescript above into the "Run Applescript" action
Save