How to find MAC Adress of second system? I'm on Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, but have a second OS on my hard drive: Mac OS 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. I'm resetting my router and am therefore looking for the MAC hardware addresses of my two systems.

The MAC address from the system I'm currently on (10.11) I've found within the system report and in the internet preferences within the system preferences (menu "Hardware").

Is there a way to find the MAC address (somewhere in the depth of my hard drive) of my second system without rebooting into said system or is it even the same on both systems? Yes, I'm lazy.

Many thanks in advance!

A media access control address (MAC address) of a device is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for communications at the data link layer of a network segment. In other words, the MAC is independent of the operating system.

With certain hardware (such as routers), it is possible to assign your own Mac address. This is often referred to as cloning. I do not believe this is possible with macOS. Although, you can assign a your own MAC address to any virtual machines running in VirtualBox.


Cant Close Windows, app already quit I am running a 2019 macbook pro with GIMP 2.10 installed

For some reason, gimp's windows will stay open, even after the app is quit

how can I close these windows?

I face similar problem with octave-GUI.

I run

killall -9 octave
killall -9 octave-gui

twice to get rid of that.

So you can run

killall -9 GIMP

Make sure you're using case sensitive name of the app.


Trouble downloading apps from the app store I am downloading apps on my iPad off of the App Store and they are downloading on the App Store but aren't actually coming out on my device.

It says they have downloaded on the App Store but I have looked everywhere and it's not there.

Something is wonky with your iPad.

First try rebooting the iPad.
Hold down the power button until you see the spinning cog wheel and your iPad shuts down. Then hold the power button again until it reboots.

If that doesn't work, then try syncing your iPad to iTunes. If the apps don't appear in iTunes, and on your iPad, then use iTunes to download them, and then sync them over.

If that doesn't work, then place your iPad in restore mode by holding down the home button while then plugging into cable attached to your computer and restore your iPad with iTunes. If after iTunes reinstalls the system and syncs your apps, these apps do not appear, then...

try restoring your iPad without restoring the last backup. If after restoring and syncing, these apps don't appear, then...

seek Apple Genius at Genius Bar at nearest Apple Store.


Show dialog at login (bash script) The idea is that when somebody logs in to my Mac, a popup will show up and the date/time are written to a log.

I run the bash script from a cron job:

 @reboot ~/Develop/login.sh

(I know about launchd but choose to use cron, much easier)

the login.sh script:

#!/bin/bash
osascript <<EOD
  tell application "System Events"
  activate
  display dialog "Unauthorized Login" buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon caution with title "WARNING!"
  end tell
EOD

echo "$(date) LogIn Alert" >> ~/Develop/login.log

I can execute the script with ./login.sh. All working well, the dialog is shown and login time is written to the log.

But when restarting my Mac the login date/time is written to the file (so the cron job is working), but the dialog is not popping up.

(I did look at the question Run AppleScript from bash script)

So my question is how to show this dialog when rebooting my Mac?
(macOS 10.12.3)

You shouldn't need System Events just to display a dialog, nor can you strictly speaking 'activate' it...
try just

#!/bin/bash
osascript <<EOD
  tell me to display dialog "Unauthorized Login" buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon caution with title "WARNING!"
EOD

echo "$(date) LogIn Alert" >> ~/Develop/login.log

I can't really test it as I'm totally clueless on cron/bash/osascript itself, but that would be all you'd need for a regular Applescript to display a dialog.

If that doesn't work, then the next step would be to set it up in Automator, as an Application, then set to launch at login.


How to watch a .ts video file on an iPad I've got a .ts video file on my harddrive, and I would like to transfer it to my iPad to watch it there. Here's some data about the file in question:

Size: 3.5 GB
1 Video Stream: h264, 1920x1080
2 Audio Streams:

1st: AC-3, 5.1, German
2nd: AC-3, Stereo, English

I only care about the English language track, getting rid of the German 5.1 audio would be fine.

If possible, I would like to avoid re-encoding the video due to the amount of time it takes. Re-encoding the audio (e.g. to AAC) would be fine.

Two questions:

Is there an app for the iPad that would allow me to watch the video without making any changes? Free solutions preferred.
If not, is there a process to convert the video (or the container) to a format that is natively understood by iTunes and the iPad? I know that the AC-3 audio may be a problem. Command line solutions are fine. No online conversion services, please.

I've tried the following using ffmpeg (installed through Homebrew):

ffmpeg -i in.ts -c:v copy -c:a aac -b:a 384k -strict -2 -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a:1 out.mp4

It converted the file, copying the video, and re-encoding the audio to AAC. The resulting file plays fine in QuickTime, but can't be imported into iTunes. I've read about the moov atom and its placement in the file, and the problems with ffmpeg to place it in the right location. Is this what I'm seeing here?

Handbrake should do everything you need:

  HandBrake is a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.

It will re-encode the video but it does it relatively quickly, and re-encoding audio formats/selecting audio tracks and subtitles is all possible. Great software, free too.


iPhone 1 gen , slide to unlock is not responding I have an iPhone 1 gen and the iOS version 3.1.1 the latest for 1st gen iPhone. Suddenly I am not able to slide the slider which unlocks the home screen.

Your phone has likely hung. Press and hold the power button to try to power it off. If that still fails to happen, the other solution would be to hard reset the iphone:

To reset the iPhone, simply press the POWER/SLEEP button and Home button together. Hold them until you can see the boot screen, which is with black background and Apple logo. One point to note is you have to release both buttons at the same time.

This will not erase your data.

If the iPhone fails to work after that, you might have to restore it using iTunes. But I don’t think that’s the case.


How to add managed GSuite account with mail disabled to iOS 12.0? I'm at a university with a centrally-managed GSuite account. They've disabled Mail there (we're using Office365 for that) but the Calendar function does work. I'm trying to add my calendar account to iOS. What I do:

Go Settings -> Passwords & Accounts -> Add Account -> Google
Enter my university email address
It shows a custom logon screen; I enter credentials
I get "Login successful, redirecting..."
I see the screen with switches for Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Notes, and a spinner at the top of the screen
I get redirected back to the "Add Account" screen, with iCloud, Exchange, and so on listed

I don't get an error message or anything, it just bumps me back.

Anyone know how I might make this work, or if there's even some sort of logging I could see?

For what it's worth, this works fine on MacOS.

I have the same situation and problem. I contacted Apple Support today, they stated that they are aware of this issue and working together with Google to sort things out, they said it is a problem on the Google side.

I am going to contact G Suite support (I am an organisation admin) and will put the information provided by Google in this post.


How tough is the aluminum body of a MacBook? I had an older macbook with a plastic shell. I broke and replaced the screen several times  over it's lifespan.

I now have a MacBook with an aluminum body and am really nervous about cracking the screen.

Should I be that nervous? Have you seen an aluminium cased MacBook with a cracked screen?

Is getting a "MacTruck" case overkill?

Update: 20 months of use with a thin Speck case and no cracked screens.

The unibody construction is substantially more impact resistant than the previous plastic design. This is especially true in the display area where the front glass and the rear aluminum act more like an I beam than the old design. Not only is the construction more sturdy, but in falls, the damage tends to be less expensive to repair should you actually break things.

For example, the unibody macs with enclosure damage usually cost between $300 and $400 to repair where a cracked screen can cost upwards of $800 to $1200 for an Apple repair. The unibody parts require better tools and training to repair inside them, so that's about the only down side I can see to the newer design. Aluminum is really much stronger than the old LCD panel with thin metal braces and a plastic shell to cover the display. Even the new macs with matte displays are much stronger than the old pre-unibody displays on MacBook Pro / PowerMac line.

Of course, many single falls can break even the expensive parts in a unibody mac as the tolerances inside the machines leave little room for deformation to safely absorb the shock of a fall, but I have seen far more unibody macs that have skidded across pavement at highway speeds that still worked and had only surface damage than the previous generation of non-unibody macs. (Yes - it happens more than you might guess and when placed on the top of a car or truck, sadly they don't actually leave the vehicle until you get up to highway speeds. Now the ones run over by a following vehicle - unibody stands up better, but still doesn't usually survive that ordeal.)


Power button doesn’t seem to work I have a 1st or 2nd generation iPad and it’s been charging in the wall for more than 24 hours but all I get is the Apple logo. My power button seems stuck as well, It doesn’t move when you press it. I have tried to plug it into my computer to do the reset but it doesn’t appear on my iTunes so I wasn’t able to go that route. Is there anything else I can try?

Not sure if this will help but sometime device may get into a weird state. Have you try a hard reset? i.e., holding down power and home button for 10 seconds -- the screen should go blank and then show the Apple logo, that's where you can release the button.


Configuring sshd on OS X Lion I'm trying to set up some (rudimentary) ssh security on my workstation behind a router on a home network. It's running Mac OS X Lion (10.7).

As I understand it, what one would normally do under such circumstances is change the appropriate parts of an /etc/sshd_config file. For example, I might have

# akil@computerA:/etc/sshd_config
Port 12345
Protocol 2
PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no

And this would, respectively only listen on port 12345, accept authentication method "2" only, disallow root logins, and only allow key logins. I would then restart the ssh daemon and then everything would be great.

Apparently this worked Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), but it does not seem to work for Lion. Lion seems to ignore anything in the sshd_config file.

For changing the port, you can follow the advice of some blogs and forums posts (1,2) that direct you to change (a) add a new ssh service by editing /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist and (b) defining the port of the new service in /etc/services.

This works -- doing ssh akil@computerA.local refuses the connection, but now ssh akil@computerA.local -p 12345 works fine.

The problem is that I have no idea how to use similar steps to change anything else: how do I disable root logins and/or password authentications?

1: Changing sshd port on Lion

2: Changing sshd port on OS X 10.4

You cannot change the port sshd listens to by changing it in sshd_config since sshd is not yet running when the connection comes in. sshd is instantly launched by launched when a connection arrives. So you need to change the port in the appropriate launched item, or create another one to have a second port listening for incoming ssh connections.

You can find the correct file in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist

Copy that to /Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh-alternative.plist and change the following part:

            <key>Listeners</key>
            <dict>
                    <key>SockServiceName</key>
                    <string>ssh-alt</string>
            </dict>

Notice that the SockServiceName has been changed from ssh to ssh-alt.
To make it work you need to add a service named ssh-alt to /etc/services
For example like this (to match your example) add this line:

ssh-alt         12345/tcp   # ssh-alt

You can then load your new ssh-alternative config with
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh-alt.plist

If you're running ipfw make sure to allow tcp connections to the new port. The Sharing.PrefPanel will only allow you to turn on and of the standard port 22 listening sshd (Unless you change ssh in /etc/services which I do not recommend).

In addition you can prevent this service to be advertised by Bonjour by removing the corresponding part from the launched item.

        <key>Bonjour</key>
        <array>
            <string>ssh</string>
            <string>sftp-ssh</string>
        </array>

If this was already running you need to unload and load the item again.


Get Spotlight to search in Caskroom subdirs (which is now in /usr/local/) I'm using Homebrew with Caskroom and since a recent update, it installs the apps downloaded through brew cask within /usr/local/Caskroom/

I always used Spotlight to find and open these apps, but now that they're within /usr/local/, Spotlight doesn't seem to find them anymore.

I've checked Spotlight's preferences but there is no folder excluded, nor is there anything else disabled that could cause this.

Is there a way to tell Spotlight to search within /usr/local/Caskroom/?

I found the answer provided by user vitorgalvao on the project's Github page: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/issues/22317

  Spotlight doesn’t index /usr/local/, that why we started using /opt in the first place. Reinstall your apps with --force and they’ll be moved (our new behaviour). Spotlight will see them then.


How to install a FTP client from the command line on Mac? I'm using Mac OS X (High Sierra) and would like to run FTP from the command line (as opposed to a client with a GUI).  Unfortunately, I don't seem to have it installed ...

localhost:myproject davea$ ftp
-bash: ftp: command not found

and when I tried to install using "brew install ftp" I got the following error ...

Error: No available formula with the name "ftp"
==> Searching for a previously deleted formula...
Warning: homebrew/core is shallow clone. To get complete history run:
  git -C "$(brew --repo homebrew/core)" fetch --unshallow

Error: No previously deleted formula found.
==> Searching for similarly named formulae...
==> Searching local taps...
These similarly named formulae were found:
bbftp-client      curlftpfs         git-ftp           lftp              ncftp             proftpd           pure-ftpd         swiftplate        uberftp           uftp              vsftpd
To install one of them, run (for example):
  brew install bbftp-client
==> Searching taps...
==> Searching taps on GitHub...
Error: No formulae found in taps.

How do I install a command line FTP client on my mac?

Both ftp and telnet have been removed from High Sierra. If you have Sierra installed and are using either of these commands, you will need to make a copy before upgrading to High Sierra.

You would not necessary need Sierra. If you can find another Mac running macOS or OS X, I suppose you could copy ftp from this machine to your Mac.


How do I disable double-vibration when I dock my iPhone? How do I disable double-vibration when I dock my iPhone (6 Plus)?
I am running some past version of iOS and using Cydia is not an option.

Short of disabling all vibrations (General > Accessibility > Vibration) in Settings, there is no way to accomplish this when running stock iOS, at least AFAIK.


What Is Optimal Battery Usage & Lost for iPad? I am using my iPad  Pro about 2.5 years.

If %8 is lost from  iPad Battery in 2.5 years ( March 2016) is this a sign of a bad battery?

According to Apple, you're not bad at all and very much in the healthy range.

https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/

  iPad Owners

    Your battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 1000 complete charge cycles. The one-year warranty includes service coverage for a defective battery. If it is out of warranty, Apple offers a battery service for $99, plus $6.95 shipping, subject to local tax.


How to delete duplicate photos from an iPhoto event? I did a stupid thing with one Event in iPhoto library. I thought of making a copy of this Event, and I did use the menu duplicate.

Instead of creating another copy of event, it did copies of all the photos inside the existing event. (new to iPhoto usage ;-))

So the big task I have is to delete the possible duplicates of 350 photos. Is there any tool/ option in iPhoto/ apple script etc.. to accomplish task ?

Just because there are duplicates within iPhoto, doesn't mean that iPhoto actually has duplicated the file.  Navigate to ~/Pictures/.  Right-click on iPhoto Library, show package contents.  Find your event within Originals/<year>/<event name>.  Backup the directory.  Remove the event from iPhoto - I don't know if this removes the actual folder or not, that's why I suggested backing it up first.  Re-add it.  Voila.

Let me know if it has actually duplicated the files.  I know of a great duplicate removal app, but it's not free.


Where are Email Messages Stored? I need to restore my Apple Mail messages and mailboxes from Time Machine.  Where can I find these files on Time Machine?

The Mail.app stores all Messages in your User Directory:

~/Library/Mail/

Depending on your OS Version there is a Subfolder, f.e. "V3" for 10.11 and "V2" for 10.10., containing Subfolders for each Mailbox.

The Library Folder is usually hidden, but you can access it in the Finder from the Menu "Go to" > "Go to Folder" (or CMD+SHIFT+G) and typing in the Path listed above.


Does changing the password for Apple ID make iCloud and Find My iPhone stop working? My phone has recently been stolen. I have been trying to locate it. I had previously set up the Find My iPhone app and after the theft, I have changed all my iCloud and Gmail passwords.

Can the person with my iPhone change it over to his iCloud account so that the Find My iPhone app won't work for me?

You need the original Apple ID to deactivate the Find my iPhone function on the phone.
If the person who has it has put it on DFU mode, and its iOS version is 7 or higher, he will need the original Apple ID to reactivate it.

You may wish to put the phone on "Lost Mode", that will put a message on the phone lock screen with information of your choice.

It's important to know that downloading the Find my iPhone app is not the same as enabling Find my iPhone.

There is a detailed explanation of the functionality of Find my iPhone on this article on Apple Support


iPhoto does not open a window after Lion Upgrade iPhoto is not properly anymore since I upgraded on Lion. It starts and seems to be alive in Task Switcher or in the Menu Bar, but there is no open Window for iPhoto.

I re-installed from the AppStore several times, (after deleting it), but I can not open a iPhotoLibrary.

This is the console output:

24.07.11 14:48:12.874 iPhoto: *** NSMapInsert(): attempt to insert notAKeyMarker
24.07.11 14:48:15.000 kernel: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_select_segment - send HI_WAT_ALERT
24.07.11 14:48:15.000 kernel: macx_swapon SUCCESS

Any idea what I could do next?

iLife(iPhoto is part of iLife)does not come with Lion you have to download it separately, make sure it's installed XD


Downloading and uploading files through Safari iOS I am aware that iPad does not have a file-system in traditional sense.

I want to know how Safari for iOS behaves when trying to download/upload files from/to a website.

Suppose I go to sourceforge.net and click on a link to download zip file? Would Safari download it? If yes, where does it get stored and how do I access it (without using iTunes to first move it to a PC).

Does Safari on iOS allow the downloading of only some files and reject others, or does it allow downloading all of them or rejects all of them?

Lastly, if a webpage has a file upload control (input type="file"), how does Safari behave (would it allow upload, allow upload on only some sites or the download control does not work at all)?

Actually the iOS does have a filesystem, and each app gets access to a sandboxed portion of the file system.

The iOS "system" itself has several programs that do access the filesystem directly, but mobile safari acts more like a restricted app purchased from iTunes than say springboard or the app store app itself.

Uploads are basically impossible in iOS. Mobile Safari doesn't read from the address book (which most sandboxed apps can and will do by default). It also doesn't use the photo picker to upload pictures or video.

Downloads are possible, but often require a helper app to store and use the download. Safari handles mp3, streams, and other media itself and lets you listen or watch the "download". You can't save it in the way a computer allows, but the web server thinks a download happened and safari actually downloads the file to it's cache (where it stays until the cache fills and it ages out and gets deleted). All other file types are handled as the iOS uses UTI file detectors to see which apps installed can handle a potential download. (The developer document I linked to has several paragraphs readable by anyone, but it dives into developer minutia very quickly so feel free to bail on that link before the simple idea behind UTI gets confused)

If safari detects another app has registered for a download, you will see an "open in apptastic" to indicate that mobile safari will download that file but hand it off to another app to store in that app's sandbox.

Safari uses a system API call to have the iOS do the writing across sandboxes.

Since you asked about a zip file, all you need on your iPad is to find an app that tells iOS it can handle zip files, and as long as the sourceforge servers send enough data for mobile safari to detect a zip file, you can download it over to your app. The reverse trip is harder, your ZIP app can't really push a file to safari for upload. Your app has to be programmed to log into sourceforge directly and call the upload API itself. (which technically will probably use the mobile safari code / webkit to do a http upload - but that all happens behind the scenes, not in what we see and control as mobile safari with the blue compass icon)


Certificate error when using Chrome for iOS with company CA I am using an iPad with Google Chrome installed to access the internet. I have downloaded and installed the Netbox Blue certificate authority from their website. I can currently access https:// websites using Safari however I cannot access these sites using the Chrome app. I am not getting any certificate errors while using Safari.

Is there a particular way you need to add certificate authorities to the Chrome app, or is this an issue with my connection?

There is no way to add Certificate Authorities to Chrome.app on iOS. The only way to manage them is in Settings > General > Profiles.

It seems like this is an issue with Chrome.app that's not resolved yet. See Chrome for iOS ignores trusted root CA certificate. You may get additional help by posting to the Google Chrome Forum (linked before).


Process named after website executing? While looking at Activity Monitor processes, I noticed a process whose name started with "http://".

Shortly after observing and screenshoting the process disappeared.  This morning, it briefly re-appeared and then died.

lsof and dtracte indicate the process is looking at standard system libraries, one of which is /private/var/db/mds/messages/se_SecurityMessages.

Any ideas on:

Whether this is a normal process?
How to find where and how it's launched? (Mac doesnt have /proc...?)
How to investigate what its doing?

This is Normal in the way Safari now operates.
Each process is part of Safari sandboxing.
If you go to the View menu in Activity Monitor and down to the 'All Processes Hierarchically'

You will see that they all gathered and are owned by Safari.

Also this is a known feature: apple.com/safari

Sandboxing for websites.
Sandboxing provides built-in protection against malicious code and
malware by restricting what websites can do. And because Safari runs
web pages in separate processes, any harmful code you come across in
one page is confined to a single browser tab, so it can’t crash the
whole browser or access your data.


Why is application switching slow on Late 2013 Mac Mini compared to early 2008 Macbook Pro? I recently purchased a Late 2013 Mac Mini Quad Core i7 2.6Ghz with 4gb DDR3 ram, 1TB 5400 rpm drive model APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E662 running OSX 10.8.2

I used Migration Assistant to migrate apps and files from Macbook Pro to Mac mini over gigabit Ethernet.

The Macbook Pro is an early 2008 model equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor at 2.4Ghz with 4GB DDR2 Memory and an (upgraded) 750GB 7200 RPM hard drive model ST750LX003-1AC154 running OSX 10.7.5  Link to model: http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/laptop-hard-drives/momentus-xt-hybrid/

Why does my 2008 Macbook Pro completely outperform my Late 2012 Mac Mini when switching applications? (CMD+TAB).  The Mac Mini outperforms the Macbook on all other fronts.

I normally run Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop CS5, Adobe Bridge CS5, OpenOffice, and FireFox and I regularily switch between them all. Changing from Lightroom back to Firefox will bring up the beach ball for 15-30 seconds, and beachball again if I wish to open a new firefox tab.

This doesn't happen on the Macbook.

It is purely the hard drive RPM difference?

4GB of RAM isn't much to be running all of those heavyweight apps at the same time. My guess would be that it's doing a lot of paging to disk. Check the size of the swap files on both machines.

Go to the Finder's "Go" menu and select "Go to Folder…".
Enter /private/var/vm/ into the box and press the "OK" button.
Add up the sizes of the swap files.

If it's more than 1GB I usually reboot. That will clear out these files. I've seen these files up to 4GB on a machine with 8GB of RAM.

Since running out of RAM can cause writes to disk, the difference in disk speed may be what's causing the delay.


Run AppleScript Applet at boot I am a complete amateur at this. How would I get this AppleScript to work on my Macbook Pro on boot? What steps do I need to take? What does the script do?

If you want it to launch at login (which I don't recommend, and I'll explain why), add it to your login options. To do this, open System Preferences -> Users and Groups. Select your name in the sidebar, then select Login Items in the main pane.

Next, hit the + button and navigate to wherever you have TardisGlow and hit add.

Now it will launch whenever you login.

However, I'm not sure I would recommend this, for one simple reason: the way the script works (though completely harmless) is by dimming and raising the backlight, which will be extremely distracting if you want to use your computer. Admittedly, as configured, it only runs for 7.2 seconds before resetting it to normal (after playing some sounds)–but if you want to keep running that effect, it will need to keep running.

If, however, you decide that you do want to have it continually run, you'll need to change the line repeat 4.5 times to repeat in the script. To do so, go to the app, right click it, and hit show package contents. Next, navigate to Contents/Resources/Scripts/main.scpt and open it. Then, change the line as noted before and save.


Cannot boot to OS X using rEFInd I have installed rEFInd 0.8.7 on my 2015 13" MBP onto another partition however it does not detect OS X.

Here are my disk partitions:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            234.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s6
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Linux                   15.1 GB    disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS rEFInd                  423.7 MB   disk0s5

disk0s4 is where I would like to install Linux when I get rEFInd to work, while disk0s5 is where I have rEFInd installed to by using the command sudo ./install.sh --alldrivers --ownhfs /dev/disk0s5.

The issue I am getting is when I boot up it does not show Yosemite 10.3 (I only have accsess to the buttons at the bottom). To boot to OS X I have to reboot and hold the option key and select Macintosh HD.

How would I get rEFInd to detect OS X?

Edit this file:

/Volumes/rEFInd/System/Library/CoreServices/refind.conf

Add the following text to the end of the above file.

scanfor manual,internal,hdbios,external,biosexternal,optical,cd
dont_scan_dirs /System/Library/CoreServices
menuentry "Mac OS X" {
    icon \System\Library\CoreServices\icons\os_mac.png
    volume "Macintosh HD"
    loader \System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
    graphics on
}


How do I restart the cron service on OSX? ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.11.6
BuildVersion:   15G31

$ sudo cron restart
cron: cron already running, pid: 257`

None of the answers in here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10193788/restarting-cron-after-changing-crontab-file seem to apply to OSX. Well the one above is the closest one but it appears to be just telling me that cron is running so I don't have to worry about restarting it. Which isn't the point of restarting something.

How do I stop and restart the cron service on a Mac?

The cron daemon is managed with launchctl.

If you insist on restarting it, you have to unload and load the respective launch daemon:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vix.cron.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vix.cron.plist

But: adding or removing arbitrary crontabs shouldn't require a reload of the daemon to enable or disable them.

The above launch daemon plist contains a Watch Directory directive which detects (crontab) file creation and deletion or modified dates and "instructs" cron respectively.


Where does Ulysses store its local content? I'd like to backup my local content with my own scripts. But I'm not familiar about how OSX apps works. So I can't find where does Ulysses stores its local content.

Or generally, where usually does an OSX apps, stores its buffer content?

It’s really up to each program to decide if it stores in the home folder / documents and lets users manage things or if it makes a database in plain view (like Photos or iTunes) with aspects of the database elsewhere or entirely hide the filesystem and manage all files / syncing.

In the case of Ulysses - the developer has decided to manage things in a bundle/database and either sync it to iCloud via a local cache or store the content locally in your user library folder - out of view of normal expectations in ~/Documents or ~/Desktop

Content stored On My Mac

If you do not sync your local content using iCloud (i.e. it's in the On My Mac section in your Ulysses sidebar), you can access each group in your Ulysses library at the following file path:

~/Library/Group Containers/X5AZV975AG.com.soulmen.shared/Ulysses/Documents/Library/Groups-ulgroup/

Each group belongs it its own -ulgroup directory and will have an (unhelpful) hash for a name—for example, cba24c5b16a949c388b0204c9aa28867-ulgroup.

Within each -ulgroup directory, your documents will each have their own .ulysses file. And you guessed it, they also have a hash for a filename. Note that .ulysses files actually contain both a Content.xml and a Text.txt with your content in them.

Content synced via iCloud

You will have a hard time accessing your Ulysses iCloud-stored library from Finder, but I seem to be able to access mine fine using the Terminal if you're comfortable doing that. It's stored similarly as I described above, but here is the file path you'll be looking for instead:

~/Library/Mobile Documents/X5AZV975AG~com~soulmen~ulysses3/Documents/Library/Groups-ulgroup

A note on iCloud. The com~soulmen~ulysses3 is the application bundle/group name provided to Apple by the developer when they created the iCloud entitlements for this application. The X5AZV975AG is Apple’s provided identifier that combined with the reverse dns type name space, makes each iCloud bucket unique but common across everyone that uses that app.


How do I make comments visible in Microsoft Word 2011 for OS X? I had my comments in Microsoft Word showing up on the right had pane as usual, but I must have done something to make it disappear. I can't figure out how to make it visible again. When I attempt to add a new comment, all the old comments show up on the left side of the pane, but no longer linked. Instead I have this bracketed indicator [12], in with the comment number inserted. When i click on it, it jumps to the comment.

What so I have to change to have comments show up on the right side again?

Right now, you are seeing comments in the sidebar because of a change that you made at some point in "Preferences." This should be what you are currently seeing:

What you are hoping to get back to, if I understand correctly, is this:

To make this change, go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and click on "Word" which will invoke a drop down menu. From the menu, select "Preferences..." Once the preferences window opens, select "Track Changes." When the Track Changes pane opens, make sure to check the radio box at the bottom that reads "Use balloons to display changes" (see screenshot below). This will make the change you're looking for.


Safari can't open the page because Safari can't establish a secure connection I am running Mac OS X 10.7.3 in VirtualBox. The reason is I have to deploy an old iOS app to the app store. And it runs on Xcode 4.3.2. If I try running the xcode on a newer version of Mac OS X, like 10.9.5, I would get an error “This installation of Xcode 4.3.2 requires Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.” My iPhone app is 100 percent complete and 100 percent working. I just need to deploy to app store. When I try to deploy on 10.7.3 on VirtualBox, I first try to go to Apple’s Developer Portal. I get the following message:

  Safari can’t open the page. Safari can’t open the page
  “https://developer.apple.com/account/overview.action” because Safari
  can’t establish a secure connection to the server
  “developer.apple.com”.

I am looking for the quickest way to deploy this to the store. What can I do?

That's because developer.apple.com no longer supports older TLS and SSL protocols - it only supports TLS 1.2 (see https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=developer.apple.com). Older Safari versions (before version 7) do not support TLS 1.2  (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:TLS/SSL_support_history_of_web_browsers) .

You could try installing Firefox or another browser in the VM to access the site.


RAM Caching - Exploiting RAM to the fullest extent possible This may seem weird, but I'm actually looking for ways to increase my memory usage.

I have a Macbook Pro (8,1) with 4 GB that I updated to 16GB.

I really feel like I'm losing a lot for those 10 unused GB, aren't there any caching techniques that would help me put 'more useful stuff in my RAM' (assuming, of course, that I don't overflow this amount and start swapping on the HD, which would be counter-productive) ?

For instance, while looking for SSD's, I had a look at Samsung's RAPID technology that seem to do what I had in mind (although it does not seem to be compatible with Macs, and the amount of cache is not tunable ) ...

I have to add that I am perfectly *nix capable, work in a proper brewed environment and I am not afraid of the command line.

EDIT 1

I've found some links where people (manually) simlinks cache directories (for instance, Safari's) to RAM disks, any experience with that and/or soft handling that ?

EDIT 2

I am using Mavericks, OS X 10.9.2 (13C1021)

Manually tuning RAM usage is not always as smart as it seems.

Apple have spent quite a lot of time making OS X use memory as efficiently as possible, and so even when you are not using it directly, the OS will be using it as a file cache or for keeping data ready in anticipation of future use.

If you artificially limit the amount of RAM that is available to the OS by fixing some of the RAM as a RAMdisk, then you are not allowing the OS to work as efficiently as it can - and in fact could be constraining the memory available when it needs it, for a RAMdisk that might not be necessary at that time.

The OS tunes RAM usage constantly, and will ensure that it is being used to its maximum potential. Generally, this is the best use of your RAM, even if it doesn't 'look' like it's being used for anything.


apple TV audio streaming Possible Duplicate:
  Options for playing music wirelessly from iPod touch and iPhone?

I've been searching online, but I'm confused and cannot really figure this out. Would it be possible to stream audio to an apple TV using an ipad or an iphone? What abouta 2009 mbp? And which apps do I need?

Yes, you can stream audio to a second or third generation Apple TV (the smaller black ones). The first generation ones (larger silver/white plastic box) doesn't support the necessary AirPlay protocol.

On iOS, the app playing the audio needs to be programmed with AirPlay support (the iOS Music app and Safari both support it), but if it is, you should see an AirPlay icon (). Tap it, and you should see a list of possible outputs, including your Apple TV. If you don't see the AirPlay icon, and your Apple TV is on, make sure they're both on the same local network.

On a Mac, iTunes can output to your Apple TV. You should see the AirPlay icon in the lower right corner. If you want to play audio from other apps, you'll need a third party program like Airfoil, which allows you to send any audio your Mac plays to the Apple TV (or any other AirPlay device).

If you have more questions, read Apple's support article, Using Airplay (HT4437).


iWork purchasing options I purchased Pages, Keynote, and Numbers for my Mac Mini running Lion, but they're not showing up as purchased in the App Store with my usual Apple ID. They don't appear to be registered. I'm trying to find out how I bought them, since I have a new MacBook Air with Mountain Lion and I don't want to pay twice if I can help it. They might have been downloaded outside of the App Store. How do I trace my purchase and find out what I'm entitled to?

If I have to purchase these three again, is the App Store the best method from now on?

You purchased them from the Mac App Store, and they don't show up in your Purchased list? That's odd. I'd contact Apple's support team and get them to fix it. However, if you bought them outside the Mac App Store - back when the suite was sold on a DVD - then I think you can get updates anyway. In either case, contact Apple.


How do I make the mouse click at current location using AppleScript? So I've been trying to make a program using AppleScript, but there's one thing that's been teasing me for some time now - How do I make the mouse click at current location without using Mouse Keys?
Also, is it possible to simulate a long click (that means I set the length of it)?

You can simulate a mouse click with AppleScript code like this:

tell application "System Events"
  click at {123,456}
end tell

This means to simulate a click of the mouse at coordinate (123,456).

To click at the current location you'll need to first find the current location of the mouse pointer, if you don't know it already. This is not easily done with AppleScript itself, so a neat way is to use the third party tool "MouseTools".

You can download it for free here.

On the download webpage you'll find an AppleScript example for getting the current mouse coordinates.


iMac has blue line on screen at startup iMac won't turn on any farther than this.  Blue line down the middle and that's it.  Help!

Looks like the GPU is hosed to me. Try restarting it while holding down commandoptionpr and see if that helps. If not, try holding down commandoptionshiftpower button for 10 seconds to reset the SMC. If that also doesn't work, send it to Apple for repair.


What are the available stylus pens for iPad? Am looking for a good quality stylus primarily to be used for note-taking apps.

If you want cheap, there's a youtube video on making your own stylus from the thin metallic-coated wrapper from a powerbar.

I cleaned up and cut out a narrow strip of the stuff, looped it over the tip of a comfortable but dried-out rollerball pen, and it seemed to work as well as the expensive foam tip stylus for which I paid $15.

Added: Here's the Walt MossPuppet video.


Connect an external SSD (USB Type-C) to Mac Mini (mid 2011)? I have a Mac mini (Mid 2011) and I want to use an external SSD (Samsung Portable SSD T5) with it. Now the problem is that Mac mini (Mid 2011) only has:

Thunderbolt port (up to 10 Gbps) (not Thunderbolt 3, perhaps Thunderbolt 2) :-(
Four USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)

I guess that the only way I can leverage the speed of the external SSD is by using it thru the Thunderbolt port. The external SSD is back compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. But AFAIK using it on one of the USB 2.0 ports will defeat the whole purpose of using a SSD. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

So, I tried to find a Thunderbolt 2 to USB Type-C cable, but couldn't find it anywhere. Only items which I could find are USB C to Mini Display Port Cables but they specifically state that they:

Supports video only (not data transfer)
Check for a Mini DisplayPort port (not a Thunderbolt / Thunderbolt 2 port

I also found that using these:

Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter
with an Apple Thunderbolt Cable

can (possibly) resolve the issue, but these items are super expensive. I was hoping to spend a little less on the connectors.

So, essentially I want to use a high-speed external SSD with an ancient machine. Is there any way I can do that?

I do not think a simple cable to going to be sufficient. The differences between Thunderbolt and USB Type-C are different enough that an adapter will be needed. One such possible adapter would be the Kanex Thunderbolt Male to USB 3.1 (G2 Type-A) Female/ eSATA Female Adapter - Black. Unfortunately, this item is more expensive than anything mentioned in your question.

Another possible way to access the speed of a SSD would be to replace your internal drive. Although, these instructions show the upgrade procedure may be difficult.


Can the iOS Dropbox app download all contents of all folders to my iPad? Is it possible to force Dropbox on iPad to sync all files?

(That is, to make it working it the same way as it does on a laptop/computer.)

As far as I see, it saves only files marked as "Favorite". Adding everything manually does not seem convenient...

Not really. It isn't designed to store everything, but does try to cache files you have downloaded and save them as long as the iOS device doesn't run low on space and tell apps to throw away files that can be re-downloaded.

Keeping more than a Gigabyte of free space on the filesystem will keep iOS from purging the files dropbox has downloaded.


Please help me fix my partition table - I completely messed it up I messed this whole thing up in the course of manually removing a boot camp install. I then removed OSX while in recovery mode (yeah...). Disk Utility will not allow me to recover 750gb of free space. The Disk Utility GUI--whether in OSX or in recovery mode--will not allow me to delete the free space it sees.

I reinstalled OSX through internet recovery, but it is stuck on a 248gb partition. I believe that is disk0s2 in the below:

When I open terminal and run

diskutil list

this is what I see:

    /dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         248.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +248.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Untitled                11.4 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.6 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                1.0 GB     disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4

I'm having a terrible time finding a command to nuke the whole thing and start over. I'd really appreciate the help recovering all my missing free space.

Also, FWIW, I have no idea what /dev/disk1(synthesized) is, but maybe it's left over from my boot camp, in which case I'd like to get all of that free space back too. There's no need to preserve data.

thanks all!

Boot to internet recovery.
Open the Terminal application.
Enter the following command.

diskutil erasedisk apfs "Macintosh HD" gpt disk0

Quit the Terminal application.
Install macOS.

FYI:

The synthesized drive disk1 is just the physical partition disk0s2 which resides on your 1 TB physical drive (disk0). This disk0s2 partition contains the volumes disk1s1, disk1s2, disk1s3 and disk1s4.


iMessage on Mountain Lion disconnecting AIM and GTalk I'm not sure what the cause is, but I never had this issue until I installed Mountain Lion.  I had the iMessage Beta prior to installing Mountain Lion and I did not uninstall it after.  However, I get disconnected constantly and its been going on and off.  I have a lot of difficulty connecting to AIM, but GTalk is disconnecting frequently.  I am not sure where to start.

I have been having this pesky problem as well.  Mine was solved by reseting the password with the provider.

I found a post that stated that someone solved this by logging into AIM.com website and reseting their password. I tried this and found that since my AIM account was set up through another provider (Apple) that I needed to go to Apple and change my password.  I did this and it resolved my issue.  (I needed to change the Apple password anyway for good security in that I had not changed it in YEARS).


YouTube video quality list not showing 720p or higher resolution on iPhone XS Max I recently switched from Android to iOS.

I have installed an YouTube app from App Store on my new iPhone XS Max.

Now, when I'm playing any video on YouTube, the default max resolution quality is showing as 480p in video quality settings of the YouTube.

Therefore, I'm not able to watch the higher resolution videos in higher resolution.

Question :

Is there any extra setting that I have to make in iOS 13 to enable watching videos at higher resolution as I'm not finding it anywhere ?

I'm guessing you are using Youtube App from India.

Keeping in mind the increased load during the lockdown, they have capped the maximum quality of streaming at 480p.

You can check out this link for further confirmation.

The workaround to resolve this issue is by using VPN.


“SQLDeveloper.app” can’t be opened because the identity of the developer cannot be confirmed I am looking to install SQL developer

I downloaded the .app file.

When I try and open it I get

“SQLDeveloper.app” can’t be opened because the identity of the developer cannot be confirmed.

For any application which Gatekeeper doesn't trust, yet you deem to be safe...

Right click the app & Select Open from the menu.

This will leave Gatekeeper in place for other apps.


Where does Lion Server store apps used for iOS deployment? I was messing around with the "Edit Apps" feature in the Profile Manager. I saw the "Edit Apps" button and I uploaded an app to test it.

Unfortunately it was a commercial app, so I cannot actually deploy it to an iOS device (in fact it errors when trying to add it).

Now that I'm done playing, I'd like to delete it from my server, but I have no idea where to find it, and the Profile Manager doesn't allow the deletion of apps.

Where does Lion Server store apps (ipa files) used for iOS deployment?

I believe the files are stored in /Library/Server/ProfileManager/Data/FileStore but are not stored as IPA files.


How to set the default command, with options, to open a file on MacOS? I know how to a associate default application to open a particular file type. But I want to open a file with "command -option1 -option2" when I double-click in Finder or when I invoke "open" command on terminal. For example, I want to open all the text files using command "emacsclient -a emacs -c". How to do this on MacOS?

Create an Apple/Shell script or Automator action. The Shell script can be put in a Wrapper like Platypus, the Automator action can be clickable or even a service.


What exactly does the Mountain Lion Migration Assistant transfer? I have a mid-2012 Macbook Pro, but I am likely getting a new one soon. I have lots of applications and documents. I understand that Migration Assistant can transfer my documents and applications. Will it be able to properly transfer my Steam games and my Parallels Win7 install (which also has Steam in it with a few games)? Will I have any issues with licensed software that I've purchased, such as Sublime Text 2, BusyCal, and any other software?

Also, I have an HDD Time Machine backup; is it easiest to transfer from that or from my current Macbook?

Apple has a very nice explanation of how Migration Assistant works, what steps and accessories you need and much more:

How to use Migration Assistant to transfer files from another Mac

In a nutshell, Migration Assistant has three bins of data to move:

Applications (just the programs - no user data or settings transfer)
Users (the user data, settings, preferences, saved files and such - but no Applications. You could have all your Word docs, but no Word to edit them in this case)
Everything else that's not an App or a User. This gets oddball things like /Users/Shared files and folders that don't belong to one user, unix and command line tools like homebrew that get installed outside /Applications and /Users.

So with three check marks (let's assume you don't have multiple users), there are 7 combinations you could migrate - each leaving a different set of data on the destination Mac. (If Applications was A, Users was B, and Everything else C) You could combine them as follows: A, B, C, A+B, B+C, A+C, or A+B+C

I would say, you get to experiment when you get your new Mac. Run the migration you think is best, and then test it. If you don't like it, erase the destination Mac (booting into recovery mode, erasing the HD and re-install a clean OS might take 25 minutes on a fast network - the OS download is 4 Gb or so) and re-run the assistant.

For me, I would recommend both migrating from your Backup and then optionally re-migrating from the old Mac. It's important to test your backup - when was the last time you tested a restore to be sure you have a viable backup?

Everyone says "make sure you back up" but they really mean and might be better saying is, "make sure you can restore your backup and it has what you need!"

I would encourage you to configure your Time Machine on the old Mac to exclude any things you don't want moved to the new Mac, make a back up and write down the time of the back up. Then eject the backup drive and change the backup settings to back everything up again.

You could take that "latest" backup and Migrate it to the new Mac and test for a while (re-connecting the backup drive to the old Mac) to keep your "main" Mac backing up.

As you test the new mac for a day or so, you can decide it's time to move over. At that point, turn off Time Machine on the old Mac and connect the backup drive to the new Mac. It will offer to "inherit" the old backups and you can move forward. Worst case, you still have the backups to restore something needed and then can clear the old Mac for donation, sale or mothballing.


Can't run a application on 10.7 I'm trying to run an application named "Test.4a". The icon has a line going across it (similar to a "No Smoking" sign). And it says "You can't open the application Test.4A because the Classic environment is no longer supported". Any ideas on what to do with this? I'm on Mac 10.7. The application was created with "Supercard". That's all I know.

If you select the application and choose File > Get Info, you'll be able to see that the "Kind" of the application is of the kind "Classic", mean it is designed to run on Mac OS 9 (or earlier).

From Mac OS 10.0 to 10.4 (Tiger), PowerPC Macs came with an emulator of Mac OS 9 for running these older applications. Since 10.5 (Leopard) and the switch to Intel processors, these applications have given the error "The Classic environment is no longer supported." when you attempt to run them.

If you really, really need to run this application, here are some alternatives:

Emulate an older Mac, using software such as SheepShaver. This is not for the faint of heart, but there are instructions.
Use an older Mac (such as an iBook G4 or PowerBook) which is still running 10.4 or earlier.
Use an even older Mac running Mac OS 9.


Combining users on OSX 10.6.8 I just bought a new mac and when migrating my old to my new mac, I accidentally put it in a different user. Is there a way, I can combine both users?

There's no way to combine user accounts. If one of the accounts is empty the best option is to delete it. Otherwise, move everything you want from one account's home folder to another and then get rid of the old one.


Starting with gpg under macOS I'm a Linux/Windows user but in the near future, I might have to support users running macOS on questions related to file encryption/decryption using GPG.  I have to provide support without having my own macOS to try...  I don't need to know the details, but I would appreciate it if someone could throw a few program names to help me get started on my reading.  Of course, Google returned some options, but I can't tell based on a web page if that is "the" most common way for macOS users.
My understanding so far is that within macOS' terminal, I can run the gpg command which is part of OpenPGP.  Is this standard on any "recent" Mac or does a specific software package have to be installed?
I came across the GPG Suite which is commercial with a 30-day trial.  It seems that this is gpg with a GUI interface, GPG keychain, etc.  How is this option?  Is it common?  It seems equivalent in functionality to the Gpg4win for Windows.
So far, these are the two options for users that I have found.  Have I missed anything?  And would this be the recommended options for GPG under macOS or am I completely off?  Thank you!

If you want GUI support, GPGSuite is the way to go.
To use GPG in Terminal, install Homebrew first and then use it to install the gpg package


Missing Hardrive icon in Finder, OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 MacBook Air I purchased a Mid 2013 MacBook Air with OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 and I am unable to locate the hardrive icon in Finder.

Go to Finder -> Preferences -> Sidebar and make sure "Hard disks" is selected.


Is there an emulator for the Apple Watch? I was wondering if there were any simulators that I could download that would emulate the functionality of an Apple Watch?

I know the watch was just released, but is there something that simulates its functionality?

You can simulate the Apple Watch using the latest version of Xcode on the Mac AppStore.

To run a watch app, you run the app on the iPhone Simulator with an Apple Watch target (the target is added in the Xcode project). The Watch Simulator then starts automatically.

You will need the source code for both the iPhone and watch apps.


Looking for a text editor with specific syntax highlighting features I'm a pc guy, but I have a programming student who's got a mac. We have been using TextMate, but there are a few features missing that I either can't find, or that are not available in TextMate.

In my beloved Notepad++ I have the following features:

vertical gridlines, that help you see how far indented you are
when putting your cursor next to a pair of brackets or inside an html tag, the matching bracket or tag will be highlighted, in the case of curly braces the aforementioned gridlines will even be highlighted (so if you have consistently indented code, you'll just have to scan down the highlighted, dotted line, and you'll find the matching bracket)
when highlighting a word (which is quick by double clicking on it) all other instances of that same word will be highlighted (where else did i use that function/variable? did i name it consistently?)
Commenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[k]
Un-Commenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[shift]+[k]
Indenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[tab]
Un-Indenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[shift]+[tab]
the ability to chose how to interpret the file (what language) textmate's interpretation is quite buggy... somethimes you'll open a file and it'll be all white even though it's clearly a .css file or so.
function completion, such as parameter hints, closing html tags automatically, and completing brackets, would also be helpful. I love hot notepad++ shows you when you type a variable what variable names you have already used in the document.

Textmate's handling of brackets and quotations rocks: it adds the matching pair for you, but wont advance the cursor, so if it's in your muscle memory to do them at the same time, it won't waste your time. and you can highlight a word and hit quotes or brackets, and it'll wrap the word in brackets. So those would be a bonus, but it's nothing I miss when using Notepad++, however the combination of lacking the above is frustrating.

Does anybody know a free program for Mac with these features?

And while you are at it, could you please point out how to activate and use these features?
For example I know TextMate has a way to indent, but the key combination it gives you makes no sense to me...

Thanks for any suggestions!

Sublime Text

There are some things worth paying for in life and a solid text editor is, in my opinion, one of them. If it's the tool you use every day, what's a few dollars to ensure that tool is high quality? For me, that editor worth paying for is Sublime Text. I'm still on 2, but 3 is a pretty stable beta and can be had for free for the time being. Both 2 and, when it leaves beta, 3 can be "evaluated" indefinitely if the price and paying for quality software really turns you off.

The upside to Sublime is it has a long and illustrious with a great community behind it. It has an awesome package management system in Package Control that lets you add a ton of features very quickly and easily.

To address your specific feature requests...

  vertical gridlines, that help you see how far indented you are

Yes. Add:

"draw_indent_guides": true

to your preferences file.

  bracket matching and tag matching when you're inside a tag

The BracketHighligher extension does this and more. There's a snazzy screen shot on its Package Control page that shows off all the ways it can highlight things out of the box.

You can find my Sublime preferences file here which has most of things you desire enabled in it already.

  when highlighting a word (which is quick by double clicking on it) all other instances of that same word will be highlighted

Sublime calls this Multiple Selection. Select a word and then press Ctrl+Command+G or Cmd-D to select all occurrences of the word in the file. Typing will replace all occurrences simultaneously. You can do a lot more than that with Sublime. See the aforementioned page for other multiple selection ninja moves you can do.

  Commenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[k]

Highlight the block and press Command-/ to toggle comments on and off for the block. You can combine this with multiple selection mentioned above to comment out non-contiguous lines.

  Un-Commenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[shift]+[k]

It's Command-/ in Sublime to toggle comments which is easier to remember than an 'add comment' and a separate 'remove comment' action if you ask me. If you don't like the short cut you can reassign key bindings freely in Sublime to map the actions to a preferred combination.

  Indenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[tab]

That works exactly how you want: select the lines, TAB to indent, Shift-TAB to un-indent.

  Un-Indenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[shift]+[tab]

It's just Shift-TAB in Sublime.

  the ability to chose how to interpret the file (what language)

You can override Sublime's language guess using the View > Syntax... menu. Pick the language you want it to be instead of the one Sublime guessed. Sublime's guessing is much better than TextMate's though IMO.

  function completion, such as parameter hints, closing html tags automatically, and completing brackets, would also be helpful.

Absolutely -- they're called Snippets in Sublime's parlance. It ships with a bunch of defaults for some common languages like CSS, HTML, Ruby and Python that are useful. You can add your own snippets and you can find more language support and snippets in Package Control.


Batch Video Transcoding for the web OS X (GUI, not command line) Is there a way to batch transcode video files to mp4 and webm for HTML5 videos in OS X?

Our video department needs to hand over a lot of videos in multiple formats consistently. Workflow current consists of utilizing Adobe Media Encoder for the MP4s and Miro Video Converter for the WebM files.

The video guys are all very familiar with Adobe Media Encoder, so the ultimate solution would be to have everything run through there, but Adobe doesn't look like any time in the near future they're going to support WebM -- still pushing Flash player.

Miro Video Converter works great, but is lacking a way to queue/batch files.

I've Googled but have yet to come up with a good GUI-based solution the video team can use for batching the multiple formats need to ensure videos work on the web everywhere.

You should have a look on Sorenson Squeeze.

It is a professionnal video encoding software supporting a lot of formats including WebM, mp4(h264).

It has an intuitive GUI like Adobe Media Encoder.


Mavericks Server /Work group manager issues I upgraded a test server running snow leopard to mavericks and then was having some weirdness so I decided to recreate my open directory, users and groups.

Server appears to be running and I am able to connect from a laptop /user

But... Work group manager does not see the users in Server except the server diradmin user, and there is a message at the top that says
"Viewing local directory /Local/Default. Not Authenticated."

Now I'm assuming the problem is that I need to authenticate Work group manager but I don't see how...

Previously I did see my users but they were all grey'd out. I think that's when I decided to recreate my open directory, users and groups. but now I see nothing as I said.

Also I get a message from Work Group Manager You are working in a directory node that is not visible to the network.

I should mention,

HOST NAME is nserver.local

WORK GROUP MANAGER Version 10.9 (421)
SERVER Version 3.1.2 (1354517)

My users are all Local Network Users,
My server does not use a domain name, I intend to have shared user storage, VPN and perhaps calendar.

Any tips or ideas?

Thank!

SOLVED FOR ME.

I don't recall seeing this before in Snow leopard (the interface was slightly different...), on the same line at the message "Viewing local directory /Local/Default. Not Authenticated." there is a small triangle --- clicking on this reveals a drop menu.

Select LDAPv3 from the list.  Then click on the lock at the far end of that bar.
Authenticate as DIRADMIN and it works.


Install rEFInd on another partition I recently tried to install rEFInd onto my Mac but it could not boot into the Ubuntu disk. To uninstall It I formatted my drive and reinstalled OS X along with my backup.

To avoid this issue again I would like to install it onto another partition. How would I do this?

Here is my disk layout

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            217.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data LINUX                   15.0 GB    disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS rEFInd                  17.1 GB    disk0s5

I would like to install rEFInd onto disk0s5 and linux ubuntu on disk0s4 if this helps

Thanks

This answer applies to Yosemite (OS X 10.10). If you are using El Capitan (OS X 10.11), then you would be better of installing rEFInd in a EFI partition.

In your example, the command would be as shown below.

./install.sh  --alldrivers  --ownhfs  /dev/disk0s5.

I assume disk0s5 has been formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". I don't think I would use a 17.1 GB partition. The rEFInd partition on my Mac is 134 MB in size.

If you need to write to disk0s5 while booted to Ubuntu, you may have to disable journaling. This usually happens when you need to modify refind.conf.

To turn journaling off, do the following using the Disk Utility application.

Highlight the partition.
Press and hold the "alt/option" key.
From the menu bar select "File->Disable Journaling"
Release the "alt/option" key.
You may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility to see the change.

To turn journaling on, you need to highlight the partition and click on the "Enable Journaling" button. To see the change, you may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility application.


Compatibility of SSD with macbook air does MacBook Air7,2 early 2015 support PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 NVMe1.3

If it is not available by Apple in the initial configuration then it is NOT a supported drive. Your best bet it to try and plug it in and see if it works.


Disk Utility says Bootcamp partition has storage left but in Windows, the C: disk says there is no volume left? I partitioned 42GB for bootcamp and the windows system is about 17GB, I have one game on it plus Steam which combined with system files makes up to 34.1, and disk utility says I have 8.6GB free but when I'm actually in Windows, it says C: disk is almost full. Where did this 8GB go?

Very likely pagefile &/or hiberfile, each of which can be the same size, or even larger than, your total RAM size. You can remove/disable the hiberfile but not the pagefile.
Having only 8GB free space on a drive is actually critically low anyway. You ought to have at least 10% even on a large drive/boot volume. On a tiny drive unfortunately you really need even more. 15 - 20 GB would be the minimum free space I'd recommend on a drive that size.
How-to-Geek has an article on how to disable hiberfile - What Is hiberfil.sys and How Do I Delete It? which I won't précis here as it's really a Windows issue not Mac. Basically, you stop Windows from allowing Hibernate then you can delete the file.
There are many disk/map/storage apps for Windows so you can see what may be using more space than you'd like -  I don't use Windows enough to know which might be best suited. This site lists several of them. Hongkiat - 10 Best Disk Space Analyzer for Windows 10
It is possible to customise your pagefile size, but I would recommend against this, & certainly against reducing it below your RAM size, as it can cause crashing/memory issues.


Any way to copy message body from Apple Mail keeping quoted line prefix (">")? When I copy the body of messages in Apple Mail and paste to the text editor or web textarea, quoted line prefixs ('>') is alwasy lost. This is annoying behavior.

Is there any way to copy them with keeping quoted line prefixes?
Such Applescript, Mail extension or App?

* My environment is:  OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) + Apple Mail 7.3 (1878.6)

On my Mac with Mail 10.3, I can select a message in a viewer window, go to the menu bar and choose View > Message > Raw Source.  In the resulting window I can scroll to find the part of the message I want, and select the text I want to copy.  I just tested this on two messages from my Sent mailbox, one with Rich Text, one without.

Blank quoted lines seem to get an '=20' escape, so you'd want to do a search and replace after pasting.  It might not be too hard to make an AppleScript or Automator thing to help with this.

With an older version of Mail you might find the Raw Source command in a different menu, I seem to remember.


Is there a way to merge Time Machine backups? Last year, I switched from an iMac to a MacBook Pro, and I restored from my Time Machine backup. I've been using Time Machine since then, and never checked it until now. I just found out that my backups are split into 2, "dee's iMac" and "dee's MacBook Pro" when I expect them to be just one backup since I moved everything from my iMac to MBP.

The "dee's iMac" backups aren't accessible through "Enter Time Machine" and aren't deleted when Time Machine is full; instead, it will delete the newer backups from my MBP backups, which currently holds only the past 2 months while there are backups from my iMac from last year.

Is there any way to merge these backups? What happens if I just move all the contents of the "dee's iMac" folder to the "dee's MacBook Pro" folder? Or should I just delete the entire "dee's iMac" backup folder?

Note: Currently on OS X Yosemite, 2013 MBP (non-retina)

You can still access data from "dee's backup" by selecting "Browse Other Time Machine Disks" from Time Machine's Dock menu. (Right click or click-and-hold on TM's icon in the Dock.)

TM is holding onto both sets of data because even though YOU know you copied all the data from the old machine to the new, all TM knows is that a bunch of data just showed up on the new machine. It doesn't know where that data came from, but knows it should be backed up.

When TM, running on "dee's Macbook Pro", needs to delete files to make room, it can only delete files backed up from "dee's Macbook Pro". Even the root user on that machine has no authority (and cannot give TM authority) do delete some other computer's backup files.

You don't need any of "dee's iMac" backup. As you say, everything from that computer got copied over, and none of it has been needed since last year. It's time to let it go. To do that, open the Backups.backupdb folder on your backup disk, and delete the subfolder named "dee's iMac". (I'm assuming you're backing up to an external disk connected to your MBP. Details will be different if you're backing up to a Time Capsule or a network volume, but the principle is the same.) Time Machine won't let you modify that backup in any way except that it will allow you to delete it in its entirety. You'll need to authenticate as an admin to do that. And it will take a while. You should be able to delete it using Finder, but if not you can enter the Terminal command:

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/"disk name"/Backups.backupdb/"dee's iMac"


Where can I find all the documentation for mac's builtin shell commands? The OS X Man Pages lists out all builtin functions.
But where can I find the documentation of a particular one?

For instance, the command fc, on ubuntu I can get its manual by:

> help fc
fc: fc [-e ename] [-lnr] [first] [last] or fc -s [pat=rep] [command]
Display or execute commands from the history list.

fc is used to list or edit and re-execute commands from the history list.
FIRST and LAST can be numbers specifying the range, or FIRST can be a
string, which means the most recent command beginning with that
string.
....

Another example is the if expression, on ubuntu:

> help if
if: if COMMANDS; then COMMANDS; [ elif COMMANDS; then COMMANDS; ]... [ else COMMANDS; ] fi
Execute commands based on conditional.
...

What am I missing here?

You do the exact same thing.

So...

$ help if
if: if COMMANDS; then COMMANDS; [ elif COMMANDS; then COMMANDS; ]... [ else COMMANDS; ] fi
    The `if COMMANDS' list is executed.  If its exit status is zero, then the
    `then COMMANDS' list is executed.  Otherwise, each `elif COMMANDS' list is
    executed in turn, and if its exit status is zero, the corresponding
    `then COMMANDS' list is executed and the if command completes.  Otherwise,
    the `else COMMANDS' list is executed, if present.  The exit status of the
    entire construct is the exit status of the last command executed, or zero
    if no condition tested true.

Or...

$ help fc
fc: fc [-e ename] [-nlr] [first] [last] or fc -s [pat=rep] [cmd]
    fc is used to list or edit and re-execute commands from the history list.
    FIRST and LAST can be numbers specifying the range, or FIRST can be a
    string, which means the most recent command beginning with that
    string.

       -e ENAME selects which editor to use.  Default is FCEDIT, then EDITOR,
          then vi.

       -l means list lines instead of editing.
       -n means no line numbers listed.
       -r means reverse the order of the lines (making it newest listed first).

    With the `fc -s [pat=rep ...] [command]' format, the command is
    re-executed after the substitution OLD=NEW is performed.

    A useful alias to use with this is r='fc -s', so that typing `r cc'
    runs the last command beginning with `cc' and typing `r' re-executes
    the last command.


Can the App Store be installed on Xcode's iOS Simulator on the new ARM/M1 powered Macs? Years ago on Stack Overflow people already asked about installing the App Store on the iOS Simulator but the answer was you couldn't because the Simulator doesn't run ARM code but Intel code.

The Simulator does not run ARM code, ONLY x86 code. Unless you have
the raw source code from Apple, you won't see the App Store on the
Simulator.

So you can only run apps you're working on and compiling yourself, and the few that are preinstalled on the Simulator.
But as of very recently Macs now also run on ARM. So can the iOS Simulator on an M1 powered Mac have the App Store installed on it now?

No.  The iOS Simulator does not have an App Store.
There are many iOS Apps available in the macOS App Store on Apple Silicon Macs.


I can't download macOS Sierra I do not have "Install macOS Sierra.app" anywhere on my computer yet when I open the app store the button on macOS Sierra reads "open" instead of download. After I click open, nothing happens. I removed the cache folders of the app store and restart, the problem sticks.

after I logged off and logged back in with my Apple account it worked...


What is the unit of `Power_On_Hours` in `smartctl`? Macbook Pro, OS: 10.13.6 (17G65)

9 days ago, my smartctl's output:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x000f   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1638

9 days later, today's output:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x000f   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1644

The macbook has been on from about 9:00 to about 22:00 everyday. The value from 1644 - 1638 = 6, it's definitely not hour, so what is it?

Edited:

If the smartctl's result in MacOS is incorrect, can anyone suggest me another tool which can check the correct harddrive's power on time? Thanks.

SMART Monitoring Tools

The smartctl tool claims hours, so that suggests one or more of the following:

A fault in the tool;
A fault in your drive reporting firmware;
Or that your drive was only active for six hours during that period.

Drives will power up and down whenever they can to save energy. Six hours of storage access may not be unrealistic but it all depends on how the computer is used.

Try using the -v flag to customise the output. You can specify times in minutes or other units. This may give a better insight into the reported values.

If you need help using and understand the results of smartctl, please contact the developers. They are best placed to provide authoritative answers.


Hide .DS_Store and .localized from Desktop only without 3rd party app There is an app called XtraFinder which does exactly that - it shows hidden files while it can still hide those two files from Desktop only.

Is it possible to do something like that without installing a 3rd party app (I'm using Mavericks)?

This first command will remove all the icons on your Desktop, but keep the files visible in finder:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder

While this second one will restore all the icons on your Desktop:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true && killall Finder


Can't update MacPorts after upgrading to Mavericks I ran port selfupdate and MacPorts tried to upgrade itself to version 2.2.1, but eventually fails. When I add the -v flag, I can see the build fails after these lines:

checking for Tcl configuration... configure: error: Can't find Tcl configuration definitions
Command failed: cd     /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/base && CC=/usr/bin/cc OBJC=/usr/bin/cc ./configure --prefix=/opt/local --with-tclpackage=/Library/Tcl --with-install-user=root --with-install-group=admin --with-directory-mode=0755 --enable-readline && make SELFUPDATING=1 && make install SELFUPDATING=1
Exit code: 1

How can I get MacPorts back?

You need to update the command line tools Xcode installs. For whatever reason, Xcode doesn't seem to want to update them itself, but you can force it by running xcode-select --install. This will pop open a GUI prompt; select "Install" and let the installer do its thing. After this, MacPorts should build itself successfully. (You may need to rehash first; rehash in tcsh, hash -r in bash and zsh (I think).)


how to find files with .j or .jp extension I have some image files that have a messed up extension. The files are of the following format:
"filename."
"filename.j"
"filename.jp"

I need to find all these files which are in several folders and rename all of them to .jpg.

Anyone can show me a quick way to look for all these files?
Also once I find them how can I rename all of them to .jpg in batch?

Assuming you are running Yosemite...

Open a Finder window and navigate to the parent folder that contains all of these files.
Hit CMD and F to convert it to a Spotlight search window.
Select your folder as the search target in the bar just under the toolbar (in the screenshot below I've selected "Downloads"). Unless you changed the setting in the Advanced pane of Finder Preferences it'll default to "This Mac" but it should offer whichever folder you selected in step 1 as an option.
Open the search attribute dropdown by clicking on Kind, search for "File extension", tick it and click OK.
Enter the extension you want to search for. The window should update quickly with your results.

Select all the files it finds, right-click and select "Rename..."
Enter ".j" in the "Find:" box and ".jpeg" in the "Replace with:" box. I'd include the dot at the start of the extension just to make sure it doesn't replace any letters anywhere else in the filename.
Click "Rename". Then "Use .jpeg" at the prompts (unfortunately it'll ask you once for each file). It should rename all the selected files.

Then repeat for ".jp".


is there any alternative OS to give more lifetime to an older iPad? I have an old iPad that was stranded in my possessions a while ago. It has iOS 9.xx installed and won't update any longer. Also more and more Apps are stopping to work because the newer version won't run on 9.x OS anymore.

Considering the state of the planet on the whole it would be nice to being able to install any sort of alternative OS to such a technological masterpiece in nearly mint condition and likewise give it a few more years of being useful.

Can anyone advise whether there is any project that would be worth looking at in this regards?

As far as I know: Not really.
All you can do is to jailbreak it - as @Nimesh Neema suggested -, which is usually done to do some customization of iOS. It shouldn't allow you to install apps that require a newer iOS, yet you can install apps outside of the AppStore. I am pretty sure though, what you are looking for, does not exist.


How to delete a copy of a system font At some point I made copies of all the fonts in the System>Library folder. I would now like to delete those duplicates, which are not in use and are not in a System folder. But macOS (Mojave) won't let me because the copies inherited the protections of the originals. I'm not trying to change anything that's in the System folder itself. Any suggestions? Thank you.

Okay, this proved far easier than I expected. All I had to do was temporarily disable System Integrity Protection.


Applescript exits return loop before complete I have to go through a stack of hard drives & usb keys looking for old quickbook files.  So, I've written an applescript which triggers when a new drive is mounted.  It then searches the drive for qbb or qbo files and copies them to a folder on the main drive.

I have it working almost perfectly but, for the life of me, I cannot get the repeat loop to run past the first item in the list.  So, it grabs qbb files, but not qbo files.  I know it is failing because I trigger it with a USB kye that has dummy qbo and qbb files on it.

I know I am missing something obvious, but keep racking my brain to no avail.

Here is my script.  Can someone please give me sanity check (and solution)?

Thanks!

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving addedItems

   # set the path for the files to be copied too.
   set thePath to ((path to home folder as text) & "00_QBB:")
   if not pathExists(thePath) then
       display dialog "Could not find the path. Files have not been copied."
       return
   end if

   try
       # get name of Loaded Drive
       set loadedDriveName to item 1 of addedItems

       # set paths for source source drive
       set loadedDrive to POSIX path of loadedDriveName

       # create folder, named for Loaded Drive, for inbound copies
       set thePath to thePath & loadedDriveName
       set thePath to POSIX path of thePath
       set makeFolder to "mkdir " & thePath
       # display dialog makeFolder
       do shell script (makeFolder)

       # set search criteria
       set qbFileTypes to {"qbb", "qbo"}

       # lookthrough drive for desired file types to find and copy
       repeat with n from 1 to (count of qbFiletypes)
           set qbCount to (count of qbFiletypes)
           set qbCurrentType to (item n of qbFiletypes)
           # display dialog qbCurrentType & " + " & qbCount
           set grab_qbb to "find " & loadedDrive & " -iname \"*" & qbCurrentType & "*\" -exec cp {} " & thePath & " \\;"
           # display dialog grab_qbb
           do shell script (grab_qbb)
       end repeat

       on error
           display dialog "Could not copy files."
       return
   end try

end adding folder items to

on pathExists(thePath) -- pathExists("path:to:folder: OR :file")
   try
       get thePath as alias
       return true
       on error
       return false
   end try
end pathExists

I would have gone about this a bit differently.

First, I'd use Disk Arbitrator so the external disks would mount read-only and not preform any Spotlight indexing. There's no need to allow indexing if the target is just .qbb and .qbo files to be found using the find command.

Second, I'd use an Automator Folder Action with a Run Shell Script action, as IMO it's just much easier to code.

The following example bash code preforms these tasks:

Creates all destination directories as needed.
Handles disks with multiple volumes.
Finds the .qbb and .qbo files and copies them.
Ejects the target disk when finished copying.
Notifies the process has completed.

Also, as an Automator Folder Action there is a icon on the menu bar which aside from being a visual indicator a process is running, it also allows one to terminate the process if necessary.

Setup the Automator Folder Action as shown below:

        Hint: Open image in new tab to clearly see settings.

When the process is finished it displays the following notification and makes a sound, which can be omitted if not wanted.

Example bash code:

p="$HOME/00_QBB"

[ ! -d "${p}" ] && mkdir "${p}"

for d in "$@"; do
    n="$(basename "$d")"
    mkdir -p "${p}/${n}"
    find "$d" -type f \( -iname '*.qbb' -o -iname '*.qbo' \) -exec cp -an {} "${p}/${n}" \;
done

sleep 3
diskutil eject "$1"

osascript -e 'display notification "Insert another disk to start new search..." with title "QuickBooks File Recovery" subtitle "The find command has completed." sound name "Purr"

Obviously you might be inserting disks that you do not need to or want to search, so you can use Folder Action Setup to enable/disable this easily.

I use Spotlight to bring up Folder Action Setup and then check/uncheck the checkboxes as necessary.


Is there a Git GUI client for OS X Lion (10.7.5) in 2017? I've been looking for a Git Desktop client. I'm a high school student with an old early 2008 white MacBook. Its maximum OS is Lion. My hard disk is too small to effectively use two partitions with bootcamp to run Windows. Does anyone know if a GUI client I could install for Lion? Thanks.

Yes. I have an app called Github.app  I did a search and it may be called Github Desktop app now. I haven't used mine nor updated it in months. I know there is an update but I haven't installed it.  A google search on Github app will take you to the appropriate location.


How to get full resolution from a Dell E207WFP connected to a 2015 MacBook Air? I have a Dell E207WFP connected to an Early 2015 11" MacBook Air on Yosemite (10.10.5) (then upgraded to El Capitan 10.11.2) via a VGA cable. The monitor is documented to support 1680x1050@60Hz, but the Mac's Displays preference pane only offers 1280x1024 and 800x600. If I option-click on Scaled, it expands to offer 1920x1080, 1400x1050, 1344x1008, 1280x1024, 1280x960, 1280x768, 1280x720, 1024x768, and 800x600, but these still don't include the monitor's actual native resolution. A 15" Retina Early 2013 MacBook Pro running El Capitan (10.11.2) detects the monitor and its native resolution correctly over the same VGA cable.

I tried forcing the monitor to RGB mode using the instructions at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/106937/43392, which folks on that post said helped Dell U2713H, U2713HM, and U2711 monitors, but it didn't improve the situation for my monitor.

The System Information | Displays pane claims the monitor is a "13.9-inch (800 x 600)", which is, of course, incorrect.

How can I convince the MacBook Air to use the monitor's native resolution?

Attaching the monitor with a DVI cable instead of the VGA cable caused Mac OS to recognize the monitor and use the full resolution.


Ridiculously high CPU temperature and fan speeds on MacBook Pro Retina, late 2013 The temperatures on my CPU cores spike up for no reason sometimes. This bumps my fan speeds to run near 6000 rpm, which is extremely loud. I know this is not normal because my previous Retina MacBook Pro, early 2013 never ran at this high fan speed, even when the processor had a greater load to process and more memory was used.

Does anyone else have this problem?

By default iStat Menus reads in Fahrenheit.  Those are not unreasonable values for Fahrenheit.  Go into the settings and switch to Celsius.


How to fix Samsung printer JobAccounting2 module printing crashes? There are 2 brand new iMac running Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. Both machines have a wired ethernet connection to a wired Samsung CLX-6260ND MFC (multifunction) printer.

Installation is a piece of cake, go to system preferences, printers and scanners, add a new printer, and the printer is already there in the Bonjour list. Now the OS downloads additional software and ready to print.

Then the issues start occurring, before even creating a print preview the applications crashes.

Word JobAccounting2 printing error

Microsoft Error Reporting log version: 2.0

Error Signature:
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS
Date/Time: 2015-03-18 10:45:27 +0000
Application Name: Microsoft Word
Application Bundle ID: com.microsoft.Word
Application Signature: MSWD
Application Version: 14.4.8.150116
Crashed Module Name: JobAccounting2
Crashed Module Version: 2.14
Crashed Module Offset: 0x00005b06
Blame Module Name: JobAccounting2
Blame Module Version: 2.14
Blame Module Offset: 0x00005b06
...

Safari JobAccounting2 printing error

PlugIn Path:       /Library/Printers/Samsung/PDEs/JobAccounting2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/JobAccounting2
PlugIn Identifier: com.samsung.driver.print.pde.JobAccounting2
PlugIn Version:    2.14 (2.14)

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000000000000a8

The faulty JobAccounting2 module is:

$ ls -l /Library/Printers/Samsung/PDEs/JobAccounting2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/JobAccounting2
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin  194320 Oct 31  2013 /Library/Printers/Samsung/PDEs/JobAccounting2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/JobAccounting2

The fault printer driver version number according to: System Preferences > Printers and scanners > Printing > Samsung CLX 6260 Series > Open print queue > Settings > General: 1.11.01

Regression:

Word, Excel, Outlook, Safari, Firefox, they all crash.
Have installed OS updates, still printing crashes.
We installed the most recent (09.03.2015 also known as 5.00.0a04) printer driver from Samsung website, and still crashes all over. This driver installation doesn't seem to update the Apple installed Samsung driver: driver version for the already installed printer doesn't change.
Install the Samsung network printer on a different Mac, running OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks), JobAccounting2 print crashes there too.

How to fix these JobAccounting2 module print crashes?

There is no README or similar file in the Samsung updated printer driver distribution. For the already installed printers the driver won't be updated when installing the updated driver.

The trick is to remove all Samsung printers affected from System Preferences > Printing and scanning > Printing. And then adding those printers again.

Then the Samsung driver version updates, in this case from 1.11.01 to 5.00:


Is there a way to tell if I can use a SATA III SSD in my early 2011 MBP 15"? I put my MBP next to the new Retina MBP today, and although the new display was incredibly crisp, and normal usage distance, it's just not that much better than mine as I'd opted for the high res (1680x1050) display. I'd thought I could for a lot more on the display, but it's not enough of a difference to justify cost, so I'm sticking with this, and going to upgrade the HDD to SSD instead.

I've heard that some of the early 2011 SandyBridge models had a problem with the SATA controller and that they didn't actually support SATA III.

Is there a way to check this out without actually just installing one to see if it works?

Intel 6 Series Chipset:

Vendor:   Intel
  Product:  6 Series Chipset
  Link Speed:   6 Gigabit
  Negotiated Link Speed:    3 Gigabit
  Description:  AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

I see from the system info that it has a 6gb link speed, but obviously the standard HDD is only SATA II, other than that I'm at a loss to see how to tell.

Any ideas?

I have the low-end MBP 15'' early 2011.

It has a SATA3 interface. As I have a SSD build-in, the negotiated link speed is 6Gb/s as well. Benchmarks achieve speeds of up to 510 MB/s, which is clearly SATA3.

Also, make sure that you have the latest firmware installed. The early 2011 MBP received firmware updates which enabled full link speed (as of revision 2.2).


How to cancel iCloud Storage Subscription without IOS, OSX or Windows device? I've switched to Linux recently due to my work specifics, now I want to downgrade to free iCloud storage plan, but the related apple support page only describes how to manage iCloud subscription using OSX, iOS and Windows PC.

Is there any other way to cancel iCloud subscription without those devices?

If you can borrow a computer or iOS device, you can use that to sign into iCloud and then change to settings that way. This is probably the only way to do it yourself without calling Apple directly and seeing if they will do it for you.

Apple devices will have iCloud software already installed, but for Windows machines, you would need to download the iCloud software and install it - https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204283

Other than installing a VM running Windows, there is no iCloud software for Linux.


Activity Monitor not showing correct memory usage? I have a strange memory issue: I've been running out of free memory for months now, which I thought was OK, since I use the Creative Suite apps and Xcode regularly, all of them is quite memory intensive.

But somehow the situation seems to be getting worse. Today I logged off to free up some RAM, then when logged back in, all the 4 GB of my RAM was used. (I've uploaded the list to here)

I exported the processes, and added the memory usage, but they add up to 684 MB only.
("All Processes" is selected in Activity Monitor)

How could I check which process is using up the memory in the system?

Most of the difference was marked probably memory marked as inactive. Any app can still use this memory, so it's not marked as used by some process.
For more info about inactive memory, see this thread.

Wired memory usually makes up a much smaller portion. This is memory used by the OS; it isn't available to your apps.

For more info, see the Apple article Reading System Memory Usage in Activity Monitor.


Mail app shows junk mails in my inbox Here is the Junk Mail settings:

Also, junk mails are shown in Smart folders even when the "Message is not in mailbox Junk" condition is set ("Contains messages that match" is set to "all" as well).

Messages are identified as junk by Mail.app (they color is yellow and the icon is shown).

My question is how to make Mail app to hide junk mails in all non-Junk mailboxes.

Is it an IMAP mailbox? I had this problem with my self-hosted IMAP account, where iMail couldn't move the message into the junkbox on the server and kept finding it in the inbox. I deleted the IMAP account, it's associated mailboxes on the server and started again and it worked alright.


ios 5 - exctracting sounds Is there a possiblity to get / exctract alert and ringtone sounds (sound files) from iOS 5?

I was also trying to find them elsewhere on the internet, but without any luck.

Thanks

PhoneView can access pretty much any file on any iOS device, it doesn't matter what version of iOS you are running.

1...Launch PhoneView and go to preferences and make sure that (Show entire disk (Advanced Disk Mode), is checked).

2...In the window to your left select "Disk" Then go to Library -> Ringtones. This is where the ringtones are stored.

3...For the alert sounds go to System -> Library -> Audio -> UISounds. This is where all of the alert sounds are stored.

If you have custom made or downloaded any ringtones in iTunes or other programs, you can find them in the window to your left under Ringtones.


Task Switching with the Keyboard I'm a long time Windows and Linux user giving an old Macbook I brought back to life a fair shake.  I'm running Snow Leopard.

One of the frustrations I've had over the past couple weeks is that I can't easily navigate large numbers of windows.

I'm used to alt-tab and the task bar.  I'd use alt-tab to go to the most recent windows, and the task bar to go to very old ones.

On MacOS, I've been using command-tab to switch between applications, then command-backtick to switch between active windows, but command-backtick is inconsistent, and command-tab isn't consistent in Firefox with multiple virtual desktops (it seems to take you to the most recent window on the active desktop, rather than the most recent window in the app).

While Expose shows me my three-dozen windows in a neatly tiled, seemingly random mosaic.

Somebody who grew up on Macs might be able to tell me the secret.  What am I doing wrong?

For the full Windows functionality for switching windows look at Optimal Layout or Witch which both make AltTab switch to all windows.