MacOffice 2011 crashes on Mavericks I know that this has been posted several times and each time it's a slightly different description. Neither one fits to the behaviour on my iMac (Mid 2011 / 32GB RAM) nor does any of the solutions solve it.

But, long story short.
Any app from Office 2011 for Mac (Word, Excel or Powerpoint) crashes upon rightclick with the same error message.

from MERP it says:

Microsoft Error Reporting log version: 2.0

Error Signature:
Exception: EXC_CRASH (SIGTRAP)
Date/Time: 2013-11-05 19:43:30 +0000
Application Name: Microsoft PowerPoint
Application Bundle ID: com.microsoft.Powerpoint
Application Signature: PPT3
Application Version: 14.3.8.130913
Crashed Module Name: merp
Crashed Module Version: 2.2.4.130913
Crashed Module Offset: 0x00004422
Blame Module Name: MicrosoftComponentPlugin
Blame Module Version: 14.3.8.130913
Blame Module Offset: 0x0000c4d8
Application LCID: 1033
Extra app info: Reg=en Loc=0x0409
Crashed thread: 2

so I took Solution 1 that i found (Update MERP to version 2.2.8)
--> without success :-(

it didn't update correct somehow, in Finder it shows as Version 2.2.8 but in it's report it lists itself as version 2.2.4

Now I found Solution 2 (re-install 14.3.8 aka SP3)
--> no success either :-(

MERP now displays version 2.2.9 in Finder but still 2.2.4 in it's report.

Solution 3 was disabling MERP
--> didn't help so far but shed some brighter light on the issue as follows

Process:         Microsoft Excel [301]
Path:            /Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Microsoft Excel.app/Con-
tent/MacOS/Microsoft Excel
Identifier:      com.microsoft.Excel
Version:         14.3.8 (14.3.8)
Build Info:      Unknown-130913~0
Code Type:       X86 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [154]
Responsible:     Microsoft Excel [301]
User ID:         501

Date/Time:       2013-11-05 20:35:44.179 +0100
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.9 (13A603)
Report Version:  11

Crashed Thread:  4  Dispatch queue: com.apple.datadetectors.dynamiclookup

Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException',
reason: 'condition "DDABAddRecord should not be called with NULL type"'

Everything else that i tried before was:

uninstall Office 2011 German completely according to MS KB 23987668
install Office 2011 German
update MERP and MS AutoUpdater
uninstall Office 2011 German completely according to MS KB 23987668
install Office 2011 English
switch OS language from German to English
update MERP and MS AutoUpdater
... (the above mentioned follows here)

SideNote: I have no issues with Office 2011 for Mac German on my MacBook Pro (late 2009 / 8GB RAM) on German Mavericks and I had no issues before with OS X 10.8.5

Any further hints to solve this issue are very welcome!

Thanks to the folks from bitprotect I got this solved by following their description. (in German here: http://www.bitprotect.de/loesung-abstuerze-von-office11-nach-upgrade-auf-macos-10-09-maverick/)

for all others, the short summary is:

disable MERP

Go to /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MERP2.0
open Microsoft Error Reporting.app
go to Preferences and uncheck "Enable Microsoft Error Reporting"

open Terminal
execute "defaults write com.Apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE;killall Finder"
in Terminal go to /Library/Contextual Menu Items
delete all files and directories in this folder "rm filename" or "rm -r directoryname"
execute "defaults write com.Apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE;killall Finder"

open office program and rightclick to check if it works. --> yes it does!

optionally you can now re-enable MERP.


How can I increase text size in single-user mode? I spend a lot of time in single-user mode on our company Macs as part of my maintenance and OS mass-deployment work.  We recently made our first foray into Retina display territory by purchasing some of the new MBPs: MacBook Pro Core i7 2.6Ghz 15-Inch (Dual Graphics - Late 2013 Retina Display), a.k.a. MacBookPro11,3.

When booting into single-user mode (Command-S) on these Retina display Macs, the text is ultra tiny -- I'm guessing because of the high pixel density of the display.  My eyes are pretty decent, but I still find myself having to use a magnifying glass just to see what I'm typing.  The font size used for the text is just ridiculously small.

Is there a command I can run to increase the text size, decrease the resolution, adjust the DPI, or otherwise "blow up" the text to a legible size in any way?

This is going to be your experience with Single User mode until Apple rewrites the underlying code to allow it to understand what retina is.

Photo courtesy of Bev Sykes


How to stop bluetooth from activating every time Mac wakes up? I have a Bluetooth speaker that I use occasionally, but not often.  A few weeks ago I decided it was time to upgrade my Mid-2011 iMac from Mavericks, to Sierra (not High Sierra).  Ever since then, the BT speaker connects itself as my Mac's audio device every time the machine wakes up from sleep.  This is very annoying... if I disconnect a device, I expect it to stay disconnected unless I manually connect it.  Why does this keep happening and how can I stop it?

It's probably because it's been paired with the mac. Unpair the device.

  Remove a Bluetooth device from your Mac
  If you want to remove (unpair) a Bluetooth device from your Mac's device list, follow these steps:
  Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Bluetooth.
  Hover the pointer over the device you want to remove, then click the button Cancel button that appears next to the device's name.

After you remove a Bluetooth device, you'll have to repeat the pairing process if you want to use it again.


Are there reliable VNC client to access from Windows 10 connecting to macOS Sierra? I want to remote access my MacBook Pro running Sierra from my Windows 10 PC.

I followed these steps from the Apple site but it does not work.

Both RealVNC and the VNC app for the Chrome browser result in connection timeout errors. Both computers are on the same network and I have tried providing port 5900 with no success.

Any to make these more reliable or change software to achieve a solid connection?

Try TeamViewer. It has an ID for your computer that's tied to your account and can be used to control your computer from anywhere. I've used it to control OSX from Windows 10 and vice versa.


Does this MacBook have a screen or GPU problem? This is on an Early 2011 Macbook Pro 17" with i7 2.2ghz and the Intel + Radeon HD6750:

If it is a screen error then I don't mind fixing it myself, but if the GPU is the problem, I'm worried I might have to buy a new logic board assuming I can't use the GPU.

The folder with the question mark means it cannot find a bootable system.

That said, because it can display that image, then I would think it is a screen problem - does it show signs of being bent or having dents in it...

Are you sure of your skills to do the necessary repairs or is this a "throwaway" project...


Prototype - iPhone screen sized Keynote Slide (Resize slide) I watched WWDC 2014 Session -223 where they explained how to make quick and interactive iOS app prototypes using keynote. As shown in the image below, they made the slide to look like iOS screen. however it wasnt explained how they did it. Is there anyway to resize slides?

You can customise the size of your slides using the Custom Slide Size… option.

An iPhone 5's screen resolution is: 640×1136

Other iPhone screen sizes are available on http://www.iphoneresolution.com.


Terminal not displaying colors for directory listings I don't know why my bash session doesn't show colors. I have tried Terminal as well as iTerm.

I have tried:

ls -G
Setting export CLICOLOR=1 and export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced
Using different themes such as solarized and something else

The versions of my software are:

bash: GNU bash, version 3.2.51(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin13)
osx: 10.9.2

I have Homebrew installed

I don't know what other information might be helpful. I spend a lot of time on the shell, this problem is becoming very annoying :)

edit: in terminal preferences, I have 'Declare terminal as: xterm-256color' and 'Display ANSI colors' along with 'Use bright colors for bold text'

I would suggest installing the GNU Core Utilities via Homebrew, which will give you the "Linux" version of ls (instead of the FreeBSD version that ships with OS X), as well as other powerful tools

brew update
brew install coreutils

You should then be able to show colors with:

gls --color

Additionally, read the caveats to configure your PATH so you can use commands like gls with their normal names, i.e. ls:

$ brew info coreutils
coreutils: stable 8.23 (bottled)
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils
Conflicts with: ganglia, idutils
/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.23 (214 files, 10M)
  Poured from bottle
/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.23_1 (214 files, 10M) *
  Poured from bottle
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/coreutils.rb
==> Dependencies
Build: xz ✔
==> Caveats
All commands have been installed with the prefix 'g'.

If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you
can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:

    PATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

Additionally, you can access their man pages with normal names if you add
the "gnuman" directory to your MANPATH from your bashrc as well:

    MANPATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnuman:$MANPATH"


How can I get unblocked from Apple CheckCoverage? Apple has a website that allows you to check warranty coverage/AppleCare status by entering the serial number of an Apple device.

I was recently updating inventory records at the office where I work, and I think I used this tool too many times in a row because now I'm blocked. Since a week ago, every time I visit I am presented with this error message:

  403 Forbidden

  Apple

Who should I contact, or what can I do to get unblocked from this? And is there a better way for businesses to check warranty status on a larger amount of devices/serial numbers?

I would ask you Apple sales person to get you an account on Apple Business Manager. That one account will unlock all manner of goodness. You can then apply for customer seeding programs, get global service accounts to check serials and more.

https://business.apple.com/

If you don’t have a business contact, just estimate how many Macs and Apple products you manage and call sales 1-800-MY-APPLE and ask for a referral or walk into an Apple Store and ask for the business team.

Your contact will then go to bat and either get you trained on the new tools or cleared from the abuse filter for the web page you triggered.


Permission error on postinstall from App Store I'm trying to install an application using the App Store on Mavericks.  The download succeeds, but the install hangs at the very end of the process.  I've been through the standard procedures (multiple restarts, cache clears, login / logout, etc).

I tailed the install.log, which revealed the following:

Apr  5 21:28:46 swift.local _atsserver[3347]: Running Install Scripts . . .
Apr  5 21:28:46 swift.local _atsserver[3349]: Begin script: Pages_PP
Apr  5 21:28:46 swift.local _atsserver[3353]: End script: Pages_PP
Apr  5 21:28:47 swift.local _atsserver[3354]: Begin script: updateHelpPost
Apr  5 21:28:47 swift.local installd[3164]: postinstall: shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Permission denied
Apr  5 21:28:47 swift.local installd[3164]: postinstall: 2014-04-05 21:28:47.067 defaults[3358:d07]
Apr  5 21:28:47 swift.local installd[3164]: postinstall: Domain (com.apple.helpd) not found.
Apr  5 21:28:47 swift.local installd[3164]: postinstall: Defaults have not been changed.
Apr  5 21:28:47 swift.local installd[3164]: postinstall: find: .: Permission denied

It looks like something is wrong with the permissions on install.  I used the disk utility to fix all the permissions on the machine and still no luck.

Any insight would be awesome!

Based on the error log you provided it looks like helpd has crashed or is causing some issues. This will mess up all kinds of stuff.

try:

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.helpd
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.helpd.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help.plist
Restart computer
Try again

Warning: rm = remove, rm -rf = Remove recursively. Use with caution.


Conflict between devices in call log if we have the same Apple ID I have iOS 9.0.2 on an iPhone 5s and my wife has an iPhone 6 with the same iOS version. We have the same Apple ID and we have issue after upgrading the two call logs are the same now. If she has a call I will find it in my log.

Yes, this is part of iCloud which synchronises features across multiple devices which use the same primary Apple ID. If you don't wish this to synchronise, change your primary Apple ID on one of the devices.


OSX Server File Sharing - Allow users to change password? We are running OSX Server 10.7.5 in our small office. On the machine, in the Server application, I have each employee setup as a user, with file sharing turned on.

This allows each employee to login to the server via Finder and access shared files.

Is it possible to allow these users to change their passwords somehow? Or is the only way to do it, to give the Admin their new password and he enters is into the Server app for that user (which is a horrible idea imo)?

Also, on our server, these users are NOT users on the OS itself, they are only users in the Server application. The only user on the OS is Administrator.

A while back at a different company I remember accessing an OSX File share via Finder and it asked me to change my password. So I thought there was an option for an Admin to set this for a user in the file sharing, but I can't find it anywhere. Basically looking for some sort of "Force user to change password on next login" checkbox...

I think you would need to make them actual users, and then give them screen sharing access to the system.

Or, you could give them SSH access and write some kind of shell script (perhaps embedded in an Automator/AppleScript application) that changes the password using unix tools.

Or, you could enable Apache server and write a PHP application that changes the password from a webpage. This is what I would do but it's only a good idea if you're capable of doing this in a secure fashion.


Any way to tell apart macOS versions by the login screen or lock screen? Is there any way to tell apart macOS versions by quick or close inspection of the login screen or lock screen?

Knowing this would speed up macOS identification if (for example, only High Sierra shows the day of the week top right or the change user icon is rendered differently)

Are there any major / minor builds of macOS that have telltale clues as to what OS is running looking at the lock screens of macOS?

Until 10.10, there was a textured background for the login screen.
10.10-10.11 was flat grey I believe, then 10.12 on showed a blurred background image.


Backup mailbox of mail.app with applescript I would like to automate, with applescript, the back up a mailbox of mail, which is manually done with the menu "Export mailbox ...", but:
I can not set the folder where the mailbox will be saved;
I can not set the mailbox to export, it works only with the mailbox that I've previously selected manually with the following command: Click menu item...

The lines of the script, which does not work, are:

tell application "Finder"
  --set mboxSavePath to "HD Macintosh:Users:simonepiersigilli:Desktop:e-mail:" -incorrect command to set the save path-
  --set mboxSavePath to "/Users/simonepiersigilli/Desktop/e-mail/" -incorrect command to set the save path-
  --set path POSIX to mboxSavePath -incorrect command to set the save path-
end tell
tell application "Mail" to activate
tell application "System Events"
  tell process "Mail"
  --click menu item "cesare@appuntidigitali.eu" of menu "Entrata" of menu "Caselle" of menu bar 2 -wrong command to set the mailbox to export-
  click menu item "Esporta casella di posta…" of menu "Casella" of menu bar 1 -correct command to open the menu "Export mailbox ..."-
  -- Now click the Go (choose) button
  click button "Scegli" of sheet of front window -correct command to click the button choose-
  tell application "Mail" to close the front window
  end tell
end tell

**UPDATE****

The intention is for the script to be run every week and it will have to backup the following inbox and sent mailboxes highlighted in red.

GUI scripting is not that great. And can easily fail due to timing or GUI changes.

But try this:

set mboxSavePath to "/Users/simonepiersigilli/Desktop/e-mail/"

tell application "Mail" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "Mail"

        click menu item 20 of menu 6 of menu bar 1
        delay 2
        keystroke "G" using {command down, shift down}
        delay 2
        keystroke mboxSavePath
        click button 1 of sheet 1 of sheet 1 of window 1

        click button 1 of sheet of front window

    end tell
end tell


Turn off mail notification in terminal I'm running some cron jobs on my machine and every time I fire up a terminal session I'm getting a 'You have mail.' message. Any way to turn this off?

It's likely to be in the spool file: /var/mail/$user. Because sometimes your mailbox will contain important messages (a failed cronjob task, etc.) you don't to check it every time by yourself.

Also, you can check man mail


Why is my 'Harddrive' and 'User' folder shared when I turn on file sharing? Mac to Windows I entered some commands in terminal in efforts of disabling 'Harddrive' and 'Users' folder shared, did not receive much response. What exactly do the commands do?

command:

1$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server VirtualAdminShares -bool NO
2$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server VirtualHomeShares -bool NO
3$ sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist
4$ sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist

responce:

1$ "password?" (fill in password)
2$ "operation in process"
3$
4$

Bellow is the forum with the terminal commands.
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/376494

I’ve never needed any command like that, so I’m not sure what they do. Why not just enable sharing with the GUI and then remove all the shares you don’t want?

That takes about 2-3 minutes tops.

I do love to teach if your goal is to learn those commands in general (and not just to get a result), so what’s happening in the first two commands is you are writing structured values (think environment variables) on windows / unix.

VirtualAdminShares is FALSE or NO
VirtualHomeShares is FALSE or NO

Then the load/unload cycles the program so that it will start up and have a chance to read the values you changed.

Just like environment variables, if the code doesn’t look for that variable or you don’t get the syntax correct - either case it does nothing.

I don’t get what your second code block indicates, so you might need to copy / paste everything in the command line so we can help debug that. I’m guessing you are not entering the password. If so, try this:

sudo date

That should ask for your password. As you type your password (the same one you would use to unlock the system preferences or log out / log in with) that gets you root permissions and should report back the date for the system time. Once you have sudo, then try the other commands within a few minutes and it shouldn’t ask for a password a second time.


Apple Books won't download any books/files saved in iCloud only on Mac (macOS Big Sur) I can't download any books/files I saved with iCloud in the Apple Books app on my Mac anymore (it worked before though). Books from the Apple Books store will download fine. I can also download all books saved in iCloud with iOS without problems.
There is no error message, instead the Download will apparently start as indicated in the sidebar:

However, the download will never process at all (again, every other download works without issue).
Things I tried that didn't work:

Rebooted the system
Logged out and back in with the corresponding Apple account
Disabled and reenabled syncing for Books in the iCloud settings
Removed all ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.iBooksX.* folders and rebooted
Removed ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks folder and rebooted

This seems to be related to the storage optimisation feature for iCloud (maybe it is somehow stuck or blocking these downloads). It can be found under System Preferences -> Apple ID -> Optimise Mac Storage. After turning the future off and on all downloads in Apple Books now work again.


How to disconnect from specific WiFi network (while remembering the connection) I would like to disconnect from my WiFi network on OS X Lion without having the computer to forget the network. So basically I'm looking for a way to just disconnect and connect to a specific WiFi network at will.

How do I do this?

You can disconnect from the current wireless network without turning wireless off by running the following command on the command line:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -z


Command line brightness (Lion) Possible Duplicate:
  How can I dim the screen from Terminal?

Is there a command I can execute to modify screen brightness? Interested to see if the min/max are hardware or software controlled, and what can be done for quick brightness changing without an apple keyboard.

I don't believe there is a built in way to adjust brightness in Terminal.app.  However, several people have written programs which can do this.  You'd need to download the code/copy it and compile the program so you can run the utility from Terminal.  Here's an example on mattdanger.net


Reminders no longer move to the top when you uncheck them? I'm hoping that I've just got a setting set wrong somewhere or something.
For years I've used the Reminders app for various things but one of the most regularly used is a shopping list.  Our household tends to pretty much always buy the same things, so basically at this point I have a list of everything we ever buy and I just go into it and uncheck whatever we need, do the shopping, and check stuff off as they get bought.  Anything I uncheck, automatically popped up to the top of the list and stuff maybe we stopped buying, would gradually move down the list further and further.
I recently upgraded my iPhone SE from iOS 12.x to iOS 14.4.2.  I hate upgrading because you can't roll back if you don't like it, but there was an app I needed to use that required a newer OS.  And now I've run into this problem with Reminders.  They now seem to remember their placement in the list so that when I check off an item, it disappears back down into the bowels of the list wherever it came from, and becomes hard to find again.
This has made Reminders basically useless for me and has me thinking I'll need to turn to a 3rd party app for something so simple and basic.  Hugely disappointing since it's always worked great, until this nonsensical change.
Is there any way to gain the old behavior back again?

I had the same issue going to iOS 14, but there's actually a good reason: Reminders now has a few different sorting options to choose from, and the default seems to be ‘manual’ which won't do what you (or I) want.
To always keep unchecked items above completed items:

Open the list of items
Choose the ellipsis menu from the top-right
Tap Sort By
Choose Priority
Choose the ellipsis menu again
Tap Sort By
Choose Highest First


What will I lose if I let iTunes Match expire, and instead subscribe to Apple Music? EDIT:  I just discovered that an Apple Music Family Plan actually requires OSX Yosemite and iOS8, which is a non-starter since we will not be upgrading past Mavericks (Yosemite caused me massive problems and I had to remove it and downgrade immediately) and my partner despises iOS later than iOS 6 and won't use it.  So I guess this means I'm stuck with only an individual plan regardless.

EDIT 01.31.2016:  Turns out that there is a VERY significant, but somewhat subtle, reality in dropping iTunes Match and using Apple Music instead.  ALL music you add in the future, will become DRM-encoded if you ever download it from the iTunes Music Library, including your own non-DRM CD rips!  Looks like the only actual "solution" is to have both iTunes Match and Apple Music.  =(

I've been an iTunes Match subscriber for a couple of years, and I have my ~15,000 songs all uploaded and also local on my Mac.  I don't really use it for mobile devices much at all, and primarily got it so that I could update my library (much of which was ripped from CDs long ago at 96kb to 128kb) to 256kb versions.

Now I've been playing with Apple Music during the initial free trial period and I have to admit, I like it a lot.  I've been discovering music like crazy including many albums by artists I like a lot, that I had no idea were even still releasing albums (OMD anyone??  WOW!)

But now, iTunes Match wants to renew again in a few days, and I'm really unclear on if I need it or not.  Info online seems to be incomplete and conjectural, since Apple Music is still so new.

What exactly will I lose if I let iTunes Match expire, given that I already have all of my library downloaded locally?

I understand (correct me if I'm wrong please) that with Apple Music, all matched music that is downloaded will have DRM.  I can live with this.  I also believe that any music that is not matched and instead is uploaded by Apple Music to my iCloud Library, will stay in the original format i.e. DRM-free.  This is good because some of my library is music I composed myself or by other musicians that I know or work with, and I wouldn't want that stuff to suddenly be locked down.

Given this, is there actually any reason I'll regret letting iTunes Match lapse and instead signing up for an Apple Music subscription?  I know the cost is significantly higher, but I'm so enjoying the music discovery process in iTunes that I'm actually thinking it's worth $15 for a family plan for myself and my partner.

Your understanding of the DRM is correct.

The functionality of iTunes Match is included with Apple Music, so yeah: win win.


What is wireless beaming and how do I use it? In the new version of iPhoto for iOS it has a setting for "Wireless Beaming". I'm not quite sure what this even is. If I can share photos among devices, do they all have to have iPhoto installed? What is used to do the "beaming"? Do I have to have wi-fi or bluetooth on?

How to use Wireless Beaming

The first step is to install iPhoto on two iOS devices such as an iPhone and an iPad on which iPhoto is compatible. You then start up iPhoto on both devices and head to the "gear" icon which is the settings menu. You want "Wireless Beaming" set to On for both devices inside of here. As far as I can tell, you actually need to have both devices on the same wifi network for this to work, so if necessary turn on wifi and connect to a shared network. From this point, all you have to do is find an image and click the share button(pointy arrow) which brings up the share menu. Inside of that you will find an option for "Beam" that looks like a wifi network icon. Once you hit the beam icon you can then select up to 100 images to share, and you are provided with a list of devices to share the images with. Once you select the "Beam Photos" button, the receiving device will be asked for a confirmation, and within seconds the images are sent.

What exactly is Wireless Beaming

Wireless beaming requires both devices to be on the same wifi network. The Bonjour networking from Apple is working behind the scenes to create a zeroconf network that keeps it dead simple for the user. According to this article iPhoto Beaming: Under the hood - iPhoto Beaming uses a UDP service called _mobileiphoto._udp. The article also describes that it looks as though this communication is setup specifically for iPhoto only, and not as an iOS wide implementation of file sharing. To send the files, the source iPhoto looks for potential recipients, connects to them, negotiates a handshake, asks for permission from the receiver, and sends the files. More detail with flows can be found at the link above.

As ughoavgfhw pointed out in the comments, the Apple iPhoto site notes that the functionality works over wifi OR bluetooth, but I have not been able to verify this, and other users have noted it requires the same wifi network. I will be testing this on my own shortly.


How to make DHCP domain name registration work with OS X? On Windows computer that are inside a domain the names are auto registered in the domain DNS when the DHCP assigns their IP addresses.

This is happening because the DHCP server is configured to dynamically update the DNS.

The problem is that this is not happening for OS X clients and I suspect that I need to configure something in the client to make it work.

How can I solve this problem?

I believe you need to set the DHCP Client ID in System Preferences > Network > Ethernet > Advanced...


How can I make a Dynamic wallpaper (like the ones in macOS Catalina) in OS X Yosemite I am running OS X Yosemite (10.10.5) and I want to make a dynamic wallpaper (or use the one from macos mojave), is there an extension or something that allows me to do this sort of thing

I don't think there is a way to do this effectively because dynamic wallpapers were introduced in macOS Mojave (10.14) alongside dark mode. The dynamic wallpaper is reliant on that although you could try doing an AppleScript script that changes the wallpaper based on the time or whether you're in dark mode or not. Wallpapers are found at the path /System/Library/Desktop Pictures. You can try adding your wallpaper(s) there and then using AppleScript or Bash as a startup item that is always running in the background and changed the wallpaper based on the time.


iOS - How to set iOS to ask for the passcode only on boot? I need to make an iPhone 4 (iOS 7.1.2) ask for the password only after boot, so I can use it and close the screen when it's already on without the need of writing my passcode.

Nothing like this exists for iOS devices. You can either set it up to ask for a passcode all the time or never, but not only when you turn it back on after restarting.


macOS Sierra doesn't have the crispy fonts as they used to be in earlier versions First, running the following command:

defaults -currentHost read -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing

gives me back 3.

But the fonts nowhere look the way they used to look in earlier versions of macOS. I was using Yosemite before, and today I upgraded to Sierra. Below is the screenshot of Sublime Text editor.

They look OK in iTerm, but elsewhere - including browsers - font rendering is much worse.

So how can I make these fonts as crispy as they used to on earlier macOS/OS X versions? I guess it definitely has something to do with AppleFontSmoothing, or font anti-aliasing in general, but I have tried the many other options in this regard, that are as follows:

Setting AppleFontSmoothing with and without currentHost flag, and restarting the macbook each time I make a change to see the changes.
Ran the command sudo atsutil databases -remove to remove all the user installed fonts.
Re-installing the font that I was using to get the desired result. (Note: I was using "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono")
Tried to change font smoothing option for specific applications like com.apple.terminal but it didn't work either.

Note: a similar question.

Tried clearing the Font caches? Kind of an odd issue- I'm not sure if this is gonna help, but worth a try. Maybe it needs and refresher ;)

defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing

sudo atsutil databases -remove and reboot, and maybe it needs and refresher. Its odd since it returns a 3, but maybe something is wrong with your defaults.

Re-pply after rebooting AppleFontSmoothing -int 3 and see if anything first without the string set, you already know that - but let keep the references for others:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 3


Find source of Spotlight Dictionary result When we look up the meaning of any word through Spotlight:

There is no 'source' information.

Even the Dictionary.app, which Spotlight uses, does not show the source.
The best I can find so far is to disable / enable different Dictionaries in Dictionary.app's Preferences, until the definition disappears / changes, to figure out from what dictionary the meaning is from.
How can I see where the definition comes from without this pain?

The Dictionary app does tell you the source, though it is not intuitive. When you add a new "source" through Dictionary's Preferences, the Dictionary app adds a tab button for it on the top.

Example 1 - Oxford Dictionary:

Example 2 - Apple Dictionary:

When a search result is displayed in Dictionary, the tab button name highlights the source from which it found the result.

Sometimes, the tab button names are not helpful. For such cases, you can rename it to what you want:

Right-click the tab name, and click on Edit Label:

Type the new name, and click OK.

The tab button will now be renamed:


Unable to collaborate on a Numbers spreadsheet I have a Numbers spreadsheet that I have previously setup to use Collaboration with my wife. A few weeks ago, as I was editing the spreadsheet on my Mac, Numbers told me that it couldn't connect to iCloud, and any changes I make won't be shared. I figured it was a temporary issue and would fix itself.
Last week the issue still wasn't fixed. When I open the spreadsheet on my iPad, everything is fine - it connects to iCloud and changes are uploaded. I tried creating a new spreadsheet and sharing it with my wife (I chose Messages as the sharing option), but after pressing the Share button, Numbers displays an error: "Sorry, your invitation couldn't be sent." If I use the "Copy Link" option, it also displays an error ("Sorry, people couldn't be added."). It works fine to share a spreadsheet from my iPad.
I thought maybe creating a new spreadsheet and sharing it from my iPad would fix the problems, but on my Mac Numbers still can't connect to iCloud.
During this time, any spreadsheets that aren't shared work fine - I can edit them on my Mac, and the changes show up on my iPad.
Rebooting my Mac hasn't helped.
Today I tried logging out of iCloud on my Mac and logging back in, but the problem persists.
Do you have any ideas how to fix this? I'm sure if I did a clean install that would fix this, but I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

The easiest way to fix this is to use the web app. (To triage and also buy time to sort out the failure)
Both you and your collaborator should sign in to https://www.icloud.com/numbers
This way, there can’t be any issues with local passwords, local version issues, account problems. Once you’re signed in to the servers at Apple data centers, you can open up your document and be sure the sharing is saved and live online.
Then track back one by one to isolate an issue on a specific device or specific local version of numbers.
Once you confirm the issue is the local user account you may need to remove your account and start over to test things further. It’s less likely a system issue, but erase install everything can sometimes work without needing to remove the iCloud keys from the keychain and re-establish identity on that Mac user account.
AppleCare might have insight if they can read the precise error message on server side and compare with your account error.


iTunes 12 update problems Just updated iTunes to version 12 and all of my music was pushed to the cloud even though I didn't select for it to do so.  Now I have no music on my MacBook Pro and have to have an internet connection in order to listen to my music.  Not happy with this.  Is there a way to reverse this feature without having to redownload and create all new playlists?  Very frustrated with Apple right now.

Activating Apple Music also turns on iCloud Music Library, that is why your music was pushed to the cloud.

If you didn't erase your local music, I can't find any mention of iTunes iCloud Library having that function (I'm thinking of iPhoto iCloud Library and it's space optimisation function).

You are not required to be connected to internet to listen to your local library.

There have been reports of music libraries, playlists, albums, artwork and other being corrupted.

To recover your playlists, you can use a previous iTunes Library file:

Disable iCloud Music Library on iTunes Preferences > General.
Quit iTunes.
Locate your iTunes folder.
Inside you will find a folder called "Previous iTunes Libraries" with backups of your iTunes Library file, with an appended date that reflects the date of the backup ("iTunes Library 2015-07-15.itl", for instance);
copy the most recent file before the problem occurred to the
containing folder ("iTunes").
Rename the current iTunes Library file ("iTunes Library.itl") file to "iTunes Library(corrupt).itl" or something to that effect.
Rename the backup you copied to the iTunes folder to "iTunes Library.itl"
Restart iTunes.

If you have problems with your itl file, you can recover most of the iTunes Library from the xml version; there is a guide here.


Finder sidebarlist won't update after changing I'm trying to update sidebarlist without rebooting computer (in this case they sidebar is updated well after changing values).

My operations are:

Convert into XML

plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Editing changing things (adding, removing, etc ...)

(using text editor)

Convert into Binary again

plutil -convert binary1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Trying to restart Finder in many ways

osascript -e 'quit app "Finder"'
sleep 1
osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to launch'

killall Finder
killall Finder SystemUIServer
killall -HUP Finder
killall cfprefsd

but the sidebarlist never won't update ...

As I said if I reboot computer, then I see changes.

Any ideas ? Thank you !

P.D. By the way, I'm in Yosemite ... maybe it has something to do

NEVER manipulate directly any of the files in ~/Library/Preferences. All preferences are managed by a background process named cfprefsd (short for Core Foundation PREFerences Daemon), which slurps up and caches in RAM the files in ~/Library/Preferences. It used to be that you could often get away with manipulating preference files behind cfprefsd's back, so to speak, but cfprefsd has recently gotten very aggressive about how much it caches.

Instead of editing one of these files, ask cfprefsd for a copy, edit the copy, and then send the contents of the copy back to cfprefsd. Your interface to cfprefsd is the defaults shell command.

For example, to edit the preferences for the com.apple.sidebarlists domain:

defaults read com.apple.sidebarlists > ~/Desktop/sidebarlists.txt
... edit sidebarlists.txt to your heart's content
defaults write com.apple.sidebarlist "$(cat ~/Desktop/sidebarlist.txt)"

You will need to make Finder aware of the changes, so throw in

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'
sleep 0.2 # not always necessary
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate'

Remember to play nicely with other programs. Killing isn't nice, so don't kill anything (especially not cfprefsd) that you don't absolutely need to kill. Don't jerk around with another program's persistent store while it's running. In particular, since cfprefsd is always running, NEVER directly alter the contents of ~/Library/Preferences/*.

If you need to delete a preferences file, the right way is with:

defaults delete its.domain.name

Let cfprefsd worry about getting rid of the file (or, as it is wont to do nowadays, rewriting an essentially empty file on top of it).

The filename ~/Desktop/sidbarlist.txt is, of course, only an example. Use a .plist extension instead of .txt if you prefer. The file will be in NextStep text plist format.

If you prefer some other property list format, use pllist -convert .... Or let the defaults command write it as a .plist file in a format of its choosing with

defaults write ~/Desktop/sidebarlists "$(defaults read com.apple.sidebarlists)"
... edit the file ...
defaults write com.apple.sidebarlists "$(defaults read ~/Desktop/sidebarlists)"

But the important thing is that you keep your copy, the one you edit or otherwise manipulate, out of ~/Library/Preferences. Let defaults worry about communicating with cfprefsd, and let cfprefsd worry about manipulating ~/Library/Preferences.


How do I suppress iTunes internet connection alerts when listening with Wi-Fi disabled? I will sometimes use iTunes to listen to my laptop's music library while on an airplane or somewhere else I don't have an internet connection, and thus I turn off Wi-Fi to save battery. I haven't had problems with it in the past, but I took several flights today and encountered an annoying alert that came up every time a new track started playing, letting me know that iTunes could not connect to the iTunes Store. The network is down or unavailable.

Well, of course the network is unavailable, I turned it off!

None of my library was purchased from the iTunes store; my entire library is unencrypted mp3 files on my local drive (mostly purchased from Amazon).

These same files are all synced to my iPhone and play just fine on there in Airplane mode.

The files play as normal, but the above alert comes up every time a new track starts, and bounces the iTunes icon in the dock as well.
If I start iTunes with an internet connection and then turn the Wi-Fi off, I don't get the alert on every track. However, if I Quit iTunes and start it again with Wi-Fi disabled, I get the alert.
My last flight was in December and it didn't happen then, but I have automatic updates on and I suspect something may have changed in an update. I'm currently on macOS 10.12.2 and iTunes 12.5.4.42.

Is there any way to allow me to use iTunes with Wi-Fi turned off that doesn't give me the above alert every time a new track starts?

Today I chatted with Apple Support who told me this is now expected behaviour, that iTunes looks for a connection. Not great.

I have recently moved to El Capitan and use iTunes 12.5.4, I too get this message even when I am offline.


Two Monitors Setup On a MacBook Pro I want to setup a two-monitor environment for me and my MBP15 Late 2011. I already have an external monitor (Dell) and I want to buy another one and somehow link them together.

I heard about thunderbolt splitters.
If anyone ever done this please provide me with options and how to carry this out.

A standard MacBook (non-retina) only has one thunderbolt out. You can chain Thunderbolt displays but they are very expensive.

To attach a second display I use a DisplayLink USB device. This is basically an external USB graphics card.


How to connect Smart TV to Time Capsule? I want to be able to copy movies on a Time Capsule and watch them on my Smart TV (Philips 32PFH5500) without the computer on.

How can I set this up?

Time Capsule shares files via SMB protocol, so if your TV can connect to a networ share, you are good to go.

If your TV cannot do that, you'd have to jailbreak the TC since it doesn't allow running apps or media streaming code out of the box.


How to join split clips back in iMovie? After I split clip, now I have two parts of one clip. However my split was very useful, now I prefer to join it back, but my option to join clips is greyed out. Why?

In order to join clips you will need to hold down shift and click on the two clips you want to join, making sure that both clips are highlighted in yellow (I am using iMovie on Yosemite). See attached photo.


modifying the timestamps of multiple files I have been trying to change the date created and date modified for multiple files inside multiple sub folders. There are about 29000 files spread access 500 folders, each with at least 1 level of sub-folders within.
I have been experimenting with the touch command via terminal, but can't get it to work for more than 1 sub solder (about 15 files) at a time.
I am working on the files locally on an external hard drive.
What syntax do I need to use in order to bulk process all of these files in one go, changing both the date created and date modified to a specific timestamp (20200601 12:01:01 for example).
cheers

The typical way to do this on Unix-based system is to combine find and touch
find path/to/top/directory -type f -exec touch -t 0601120101 '{}' +

path/to/top/directory: top directory to start search in, its content and all subdirectories will be searched. You can add several if required
type -f: only find files. If you also want to touch directories, just remove it
exec ... +: run the command on the matching items (in our case all files), replacing {} with the names of the items.

PS: To just see the files found use find path/to/top/directory.


Find and remove all photos below a certain size threshhold So, I had a relative's hard drive collapse, and I've used photorec to look for the most obvious files to retain (fortunately they only had pictures on the computer, everything else was cloud-synced, such as email) so I now have a parent-folder with 208 subfolders of all the PNG and JPG files from the old drive. Obviously a lot will be either "OS and Application images" (toolbars, sample images, thumbnails, system caches) and some will be "family photos".

If I can find some way to find all below a certain size (preferably say 300px wide) then sorting the rest should * be easy.

How can I use iPhoto or Spotlight or something to do this automatically? I'm also open to scripts using easily installed (brew perhaps?) libraries, if a script of some sort can be pointed to.

* famous last words

You can use the terminal to do this. The following command should work:

find /path/to/the/folder \
  -name "*.jpg" \
  -exec bash -c "sips -g pixelHeight -g pixelWidth {} | grep -E ' [12]?[0-9]{0,2}$' >/dev/null" \;\
  -print

That command will find all JPEG files under /path/to/the/folder which have a width or a height of between 1 and 299 pixels.

Replace /path/to/the/folder with the actual path to your folder.

You can change "*.jpg" to "*.gif" to find GIF files instead.

You can change [12]?[0-9]{0,2} to change the size of the pictures you wish to locate. For example, to find pictures smaller than 500 pixels, use [1234]?[0-9]{0,2}

If you want to review which pictures this command finds, use:

find /path/to/the/folder \
  -name "*.jpg" \
  -exec bash -c "sips -g pixelHeight -g pixelWidth {} | grep -E ' [12]?[0-9]{0,2}$' >/dev/null" \; \
  -exec mv {} /path/to/some/other/folder \;

Replace path/to/some/other/folder with the folder you want the files moved to, and that command will move the files it finds there.

The way this works is as follows:

The sips command is the scriptable image processing system. The terminal command sips -g pixelHeight -g pixelWidth some.jpg will print out the width and height of the JPEG file.

The find command, as one might expect, finds files. -exec passed to find tells find to execute the specified command and only return files for which the command returns a successful result.

The command bash -c "sips -g pixelHeight -g pixelWidth {} | grep -E ' [12]?[0-9]{0,2}$' invokes a shell, runs sips to get the image size, and then runs grep, which searches text, asking grep to search for either a 1 or a 2 followed by between zero and two digits (0 through 9). This is a regular expression, and it matches the numbers (strings) 1 through 299


Apple Airport Extreme AC True Wireless Roaming? Just a quick question to people who use airport extreme's / express's to extend the coverage of their wireless. I've seen this referred to as wireless roaming..

My question, is this true wireless roaming? Will the clients automatically roam between access points without any packet loss (like some small business of enterprise solutions with a wireless controller) or is there a brief period of re-connection while you move around to your closest access point?

Cheers!

You're always on the same IP network with the same IP address, you're just changing the radio transmitter you're exchanging those packets with. The computer automatically finds the strongest signal and changes it's connection fluidly as long as all the base stations have the same wifi name.

For best performance I strongly recommend ethernet hardwiring wifi access points whenever possible rather than extending a wireless network via repeating.


All data lost? External Hard drives encrypted with filevault and 'espionage'. Macbook pro internal hard drive damaged I have several external hard drives, most encrypted with FileVault.  Some with a 3rd party software called 'Espionage' (FileVault is better).

My MacBook Pro's internal hard drive suddenly started clicking and I can never start it up now.  Hardware problem.  Always starts clicking when I tried to start my MacBook.

I replaced it with an SSD. However, the old keychain encryption is lost.   I still have the passwords but they are useless without the keychain encryption password generated by the computer that is stored in the damaged internal HD.

So am I in ruins with all my data from my internal HD gone and all my external hard drives?

Chances are fairly good that your data is still intact on your old internal drive. It depends on exactly what part failed.

Send your old drive to a data recovery company. Drivesavers is one, there are others. They will do things like replace the controller card, or remove the platters and put them in a working drive.

Expect a bill somewhere between US$1000 and $2000.

For comparison purposes, an external backup drive costs about $150, and restoring a Time Machine backup takes an hour.


Removing the taskbar transparency in uBar Is there any way to remove the taskbar transparency in uBar? (i.e. set the transparency to 0%, i.e. 100% opaque)

The version 2.3.8 that came out the day after you asked this implemented a Custom theme in Preferences that allows you to have 100% opacity.


How do i enter my numeric password in iPhone 4 in VoiceOver mode? My iPhone 4 is in VoiceOver mode. It`s currently locked and not accepting my passcode which is absolutely correct. And now it's saying iPhone is disabled.

Any solution?

Try triple tapping the home button.

If that fails you, it might be more involved to rescue the device.

Either connect the iOS device to iTunes and disable voiceover or learn enough of the voiceover interface to get to settings and change them on the device.

For many people, VoiceOver is not at all intuitive at first go and really optimized for people that learn how to use it. This learning is an effort unlike the normal iOS interface that toddlers can get with no real training needed. I would say learning VoiceOver is like learning to ride a bike - not hard, but easier if you have someone guiding you or you practice on soft ground while learning and falling.

Tips on using VoiceOver

The touch interface is totally different in VoiceOver. First you have to tap once to select the number, then you double tap anywhere on the screen to select the spoken element.

If your password was 1228, you would:

tap once on 1, then double tap anywhere on the screen to enter 1
tap once on 2, then double tap twice anywhere on the screen to enter 2 twice
tap once on 8, then double tap anywhere in the screen to enter 8

Tips on disabling VoiceOver from iTunes

In iTunes you select summary and click Universal Access, then choose either Zoom or Neither rather than VoiceOver.


iPhone 4S Software restore error I've been trying to repair an iPhone 4S for a friend, but can't get it to play ball. It almost fully succeeds (75%) to reinstall iOS, however iTunes then says Unknown Error (-1). I have read online that this could mean a hardware failure, but since the phone is able to get 75% of the way reinstalled, and it looks fine inside, surely nothing too serious has occurred. I don't care if I have to reinstall officially or via special software or jailbreak, as long as I can get this phone running again. Also, after iTunes displays the error, the phone just sits at the 75% mark on the installation screen (Apple logo with bar underneath).

Thanks for any help.

I'd try putting the phone in DFU mode (Device Firmware Update). It's a method of last resort, but it's worth a try since it's not working now.

http://m.imore.com/how-to-iphone-ipad-dfu-mode


Safari download bar rar file icon show as VLC icon,which associate to The Unarchiver should shows its icon Safari download bar rar shows file icon as VLC icon, but .rar is associated with  associate to The Unarchiver and should show its icon

If you want .rar to be opened with The Unarchiver as default, you can:

Get info on this .rar file
Set file to open with in the info window
Click Change All

The Change All button will make all .rar be opened with The Unarchiver and have The Unarchiver icon on it.


iPhone texts going to email instead My father is new to iPhones and smartphones in general. He has an iPhone SE and whenever he tries to text people, the texts going straight to their email instead of to their actual phone number.

I assume he saves peoples email to their contacts. I don't want to go snooping around in his phone looking at all his contacts so I don't know for sure.

But he has iMessage turned OFF so there's no way he can be sending it to their email using iMessage and he also doesn't have data so this is puzzling for us on why this is happening.

I assume (again) that he connects to his work's WiFi which is how its actually sending via email, if you understand what I am saying.

I've gone through the iMessage settings on the phone and found nothing on this. How can I fix this and stop the texts going to peoples emails for him?

I've tried stuff on other posts but it didn't seem to work.
For example; someone said that when you create a new conversation with someone, you might have started a conversation with the email address and one with the phone number.
That didn't happen with him. There's only conversation and it doesn't say if its email or phone. Some times it goes to phone and sometimes it goes to email. (The text messages I mean)

Given what you have said, the other people must be sending messages to your father from their email, so you will need to check what the other person's address/phone number is. If he wants to text them, and not email them, he will need their phone number and not email. I suggest you add a screenshot of the contact information of your father's friends, but it is likely the other person's Contact information includes an email but not a phone number.


How can I mount the root Data volume as writable on macOS 10.15 Beta 1 when booted into Single User Mode? I need to reset my admin password (https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/61932/17533). Can't boot into Recovery Volume, so I need to boot into Single User Mode and modify the Data volume.

When booting into Single User Mode, the system shows the following help:

To mount the root device as read-write:
    $ /bin/mount -X /

However, that leads to an error message:

mount: illegal option -- X

I also tried the old mount -uw -, but that leads to some firmlink related messages, and afterwards I still have no writeable Data area.

mount shows that the Data volume is already mounted at /System/Volumes/Data as read-only. Trying to unmount it with umount leads to an "Operation not permitted" error.

mount -uw /dev/disk1s1 (which is the Data partition as shown by mount) leads to the error "Found 2 volumes in group ... Failed to stat file //AppleInternal, error No such file or directory".

I remounted the root first with mount -uw / followed by mount -uw /System/Volumes/Data to remount the data overlay. Be careful not to add a trailing / because it'll fail with "unknown special file or file system" /System/Volumes/Data/
Both issued a bunch of error messages, but everything was writable after that (as verified by the output of mount and also by touching some files in / and ~.


Search iOS App Store by sharing features included with app iOS 8 introduced sharing extensions.

But what apps show up in what share lists?:

  Activation rules tells the system when to offer a particular app's extension. For example, when photos are selected, the activation rules for a photo app would tell iOS that it should be included in the options... [Apps] can and will all have different, if sometimes overlapping activation rules. Developers can indicate their activation rules by using a predicate with as simple or as detailed a query string as is needed.  [same article].

I have an App that shares plain text files via the share button. (App is HoursTracker tho I don't think that's relevant).

So I want to search the App Store for an app that "activates" for plain text sharing extension. I don't want a cloud app (eg Dropbox). I've searched for hours, downloaded 20 [free] that seemed like they would, and none of them do.

One could imagine a generalized search function categorizing apps by what they share, and what sharing extensions they provide.

Is there a way?

No, there's no way to search the App Store like that as Apple doesn't expose that data. Most apps don't even list the ability in their description text, so while you could try running a Google search, e.g. https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=site%3Aitunes.apple.com%20text%20share%20extension, unfortunately it won't work too well.


Is there a way to force ssh tunneling to be required for Screen Sharing I have enabled Remote Management on a mac. Everything works fine when I connect from another mac using Apple's Remote Desktop app. However, I also want to have a client on a windows machine. In that case can I go to the computer settings under Settings > Sharing > Remote Management and there is an option "VNC users may control screen with password" where one can give a password for accessing them.

From what I understand the initial transaction of exchanging the password is done securely. However, all subsequent transactions are not. This implies that when a user attempts to login to the machine and gives his/her actual password, then that password is out there without any encryption what so ever. So, what I would like to do is to allow VNC connections only when the client has already established an ssh tunnel with the server/machine. However, I do not see such an option anywhere.

So, what I really want is to force this ssh tunnel on the client side. On the other hand, just letting it to good will of the clients is not a good idea, especially if I rely on people running windows to have to remember constantly to tunnel say through putty and only then attempt to use vnc.

Moreover, Apple's Remote Desktop app does allow full encryption for all interactions by selecting an option under preferences > security (on the client side). I can be OK with that in the sense that this option should be enabled once, and from that point and on all subsequent interactions will be encrypted. (By the way, is there a windows program out there with such a simple option so that one can use it under windows and connect to a mac?) However, the problem remains here as well, as I am not sure how the server would force all the transactions to be encrypted. There is again no option on the server side for such a thing.

Is what I am trying to ask irrational?

I am looking forward to your answers.

I would advise you to create a permanent ssh tunnel so you can local forward the connection port from the Windows host to the connection port on the Mac host using Bitvise Tunnelier: https://www.bitvise.com/tunnelier, while not personally having used it, this question explains a similar problem: https://superuser.com/questions/235395/automatic-ssh-tunneling-from-windows


Can I upgrade my iPhone's iOS from 4.1 to 4.3? I am currently using an iPhone 3GS. My phone's iOS version is 4.1. I want to upgrade to 4.3 but the latest version is 6.0. How can I upgrade to 4.3 or 4.5 from 4.1?

Simple answer is no it will not work.

Apple stopped signing old versions long ago; you either have to stay on the iOS you have or update to the latest your device will support.

A 3GS will support iOS 6.1.6 available via iTunes or direct from http://ipswdownloader.com


Copying Files From Windows Share To OSX Share Results In Access Denied When copying files/folders from a share on a Windows server to a share on our OSX (10.4.7 Server) using a Snow Leopard workstation. The Linux workstations get "Access Denied" errors.

All users are using the same credentials.

Windows users can access the files on the OSX Server.
OSX workstations can access the files.
Linux workstations and the (admin) user logged on to the OSX sever itself cannot access the files.

On the OSX server itself, the folder has a little red indicator on it with a line through the icon. Get Info -> Ownership & Permission has "You have [No Access]".

I looked into chmod -R -N on the server, but I guess this version of OSX Server does not support then -N switch. Anyway, I would rather get to the root cause.
This only happens on files/folders that are copied from a separate Windows server's share. Folders/Files created by the OSX workstations can be access everywhere fine.
All copying is being done from the Snow Leopard OSX Workstations.
Tried copying the files from the Windows Servers to the local workstation, then copying them to the OSX server, same result.

Any suggestions as to where to begin debugging this? Is there anyway for the Snow Leopard users to copy files from the Windows server to the OSX server without copying permissions? (or ACLs?)

UPDATE: By checking "Ignore ownership on this volume" for the volume in question, I am now allowed to access the folders on the OSX server itself. However the Linux clients still cannot access said folders. And this actually locks out the OSX workstations from accessing said folders.

Just open the shared folder in Finder where you want to copy. And open its info tab. In that you will find the permission section at the bottom. In that change the permission to read & write to everybody. I encountered the same problem and I solved it this way. To edit permission you will need super user access.


screen sharing from Windows to Mac over LAN What software do I need to install / use on a Windows box to be able to remote desktop into OSX locally on LAN?

Versions don't matter really, but to be specific: OSX 10.7.5, with "VNC viewers may control screen..." enabled, Windows can be any flavor of 7 or 8.

As it has to be local but also because of the policy, I can't use commercial / free TV, CRD, LMI, etc. on the Mac side, and prefer not to install anything on the Mac as it already has a built-in VNC server (as well as ARD installed). I can however install viewers / clients on the Windows side.

Tried Real VNC (including Enterprise trial) - it gets stuck on the login screen and I can't get past it.

Any ideas are welcome - thanks in advance.

(Tried to find threads that ask (or answer) this exact question but couldn't find anything. Regardless - apologies if this is a duplicate.)

According to Real VNC support, this is a 10.7 issue. I sort of confirmed it by successfully using Real VNC to connect to 10.6.8 and 10.9.3 hosts. Regretfully my Mac Pro (2,1) is too old in the tooth for OS X 10.9.x, so I have to figure out a different solution.


Permanently save iOS backups Whenever I connect my iPad to my mac itunes backs up it's current state. This is great and I want to keep it this way. Though it overrides the previous backup, which is ok most of the time, but now I want to keep my current state, permanently.
So is there a way to select the current backup and keep it saved permanently, without it being overridden next backup?

By extension, is it also possible to keep iOS 6.1.2 saved somewhere (even after 6.1.3 is released), so I can try out 6.1.3 but can then always go back to 6.1.2 for jailbreaking? I was thinking of just restoring my iPad to 6.1.2, then back it up, and then save that backup, but perhaps there's a better way?

~user/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Just copy it :)

if you want the os too

iOS Firmwares


How do I prevent my PPP connection from disconnecting when it's idle? I've installed a Huawei-based "surf stick" (a USB stick with a mobile/wireless modem inside) as a backup internet connection in case my main connection goes down.

I've configured it as a PPP connection in the Network control panel.

All works fine apart from the fact that after a few minutes of idle time on this secondary network interface, the PPP connection gets closed by the system with the message that the connection was idle.

I like to disable this automatic "disconnection when idle".

Apple's support site has this to say about accomplishing it:

  Click PPP, and then make sure the “Disconnect if idle for __ minutes” checkbox is not selected, or if it is selected, increase the number of minutes that the computer can remain idle before disconnecting.

Well, this is how it looks on my system:

As you can see, there is no such "Disconnect if idle" checkbox option.

Where is it gone, how do I get it back? Or is there another way to control this setting, maybe with a defaults command?

This is on 10.10.5, BTW.

Also, I wonder why the "Connect automatically when needed" option is disabled. I've asked about this in the Apple discussions forum but didn't get an answer on that, either.

I found a solution. The file preferences.plist inside /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration contains the configurations for the various network interfaces.

Looking at the file with a plist editor I found the following data under Root / NetworkServices / ... / PPP:

After I've modified the Disconnect... related values from 1 to 0 with BBEdit, the automatic disconnect has been successfully disabled.

However, after another ~40 minutes, the connection was dropped with a different message saying that the connection was dropped because no (phone) number was given. That made no sense to me, because when I manually reconnected afterwards, it worked again. So, there's still something wrong with my setup but the idle disconnection is not it any more.


Any idea what might be making my Touch Bar and Touch ID NOT work only in Safe Mode? On my Late 2016 15" MBP running 10.13.4 the Touch Bar/Touch ID are not functional, but only when I am booted in Safe Mode. The ESC key doesn't appear either (when holding the fn key) and doesn't work if I try to just imagine it's there (I tried Force Quit shortcut--cmd opt esc).

I've reinstalled the OS several times and have cleared the NVRAM but this issue has persisted and began before the release of High Sierra. From what I can gather online it seems that the Touch Bar should work when in Safe Mode since booting into Safe Mode seems to be frequently recommended when others report issues with their Touch Bar.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this or what files and processes might be effecting it?

Assuming I understand your problem correctly (i.e. this issue is not present during Safe Mode) then your best bet is to investigate login items, fonts, and kernel extensions.

Investigating login items, fonts, and kernel extensions

Let's start with Login Items:

Startup normally
Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups
Select the Login Items tab
Take a note of your Login Items
Now remove all of them by highlighting them and clicking on the - button below
Restart your computer

Now your Mac will boot up without those login items loading. Test to see if your Touch Bar and Touch ID work okay now.

If they work okay, you know one (or more) of the Login items were causing the problem. You can then add them back in one by one until you've identified the culprit. Problem solved.
If they still don't work, it's either a problem with fonts you've installed yourself or with a 3rd party kernel extension. A little more info below:

Fonts:- You can remove any of the fonts you've installed yourself to see if this makes a difference.

Kernel Extensions:- You can open Terminal (found within your Utilites folder) and enter the following command:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

The above command will list 3rd party kernel extensions (you may need to stretch the Terminal window so it's easier to read). Look for anything you don't remember installing, or something that belongs to software you've removed, or just anything that looks out of place. Remember though, this is a list of 3rd party kernel extensions and therefore any of them could be causing the problem.

Create another user

If your Touch Bar and Touch ID still don't work after going through the above process, you could create a new user in Apple > System Preferences > Users & Groups and then log into that user to see if the problem persists. If it doesn't persist, it may be better to use that user (or create another one you're happy to use) and migrate your data across to that account.

If all else fails

If none of the above works it may be time do a totally fresh installation of macOS (your question didn't specify whether you had already tried a "fresh" installation - but if you've already tried this then it may be best to try installing an earlier version of High Sierra).

NOTE: Make sure you have a current backup if you decide to do a full fresh installation of macOS.


Sharing between different iTunes accounts My wife can stream the music on her iPad2 to our home theatre via Apple TV. We have one iTunes acct for our purchases, etc..When she goes to visit family in Ga. Is there a way she can stream the same music via her dad's home theatre/Apple TV set up. I'm assuming there's an issue related to our iTunes acct vs her dad's iTunes acct.

One Computer must activated for a specific iTunes Account. Once the Mac/iPad/iPhone/AppleTV is activated, you have to wait 90 days to switch the account.

For example: If your Dad has activated iTunes Match, he has to wait 90 days till your wife can activate iTunes Match on the same device with her account.

The solution would be to carry around your iPad and stream it from there.

  There is no sharing between iTunes Accounts. So currently you have no
  chance to transfer all music from one account to another.


Apple Time Machine: Not backing up every hour I have another question regarding Time Machine problems (Time Machine always makes a full backup), which I think I have resolved. As soon as I am sure, I will post my solution there.

I am now getting the sort of behaviour I expect from Time Machine (proper incremental backups) but it seems to skip some backups.

I found this morning, that it had not backed up overnight, and I found this afternoon, when I got home from work, that it had backed up this morning, but not during the day.

The iMac was put to sleep, and, obviously, there was no activity to warrant more backups. However, the control panel does say the it keeps “Hourly backups for the past 24 hours”, and that’s clearly not what’s happening.

The question is, is this the correct behaviour of Time Machine: only making backups when the machine has been busy? This would imply that the message is not quite correct.

Time Machine backs up only the files that changed since the previous backup, to make future backups much faster, if nothing has changed on the Mac or the computer has been asleep then there's nothing to warrant a backup.


Use GarageBand's metronome for practice In GarageBand '09, I find that the Metronome plays only when I'm recording.

How do I use the Metronome just for practice?

Well, you could just start a recording every time you practice and delete it at the end. Not very practical probably.

Alternatively you could download Metronome which "is designed with the practicing musician in mind which means that it's fast and easy to use. Nearly all of Metronome's functions and settings can be changed by using a single key." Actually there are probably a lot of other metronome applications, this was just the first I found in Google.


Does a black screen save battery on an iPhone 4? Where can I found information about the power consumption of an iPhone 4 display? Which technology is used? Does it save battery lifetime when the screen displays black or dark pixels?

Additionally, there is a brightness control in the settings. Does this setting really affect battery lifetime?

I'm asking about the hardware to learn the details so I can develop iOS applications and be sensitive to power consumption based on the settings I apply in our applications.

Yes - brightness is the major thing you can change to save power if the screen is prevented from dimming. Having the screen off entirely significantly extends the runtime of the battery across the iOS platform.

I haven't found a good reference to determine if the natural state of the IPS transistors that control whether the pixel is open (colored) or closed (blocking or black) but the amount of power needed to activate all of the transistors and let all the backlight through is certainly dwarfed by the amount of power needed to run the backlight itself.

Since the backlight is dimmable, it could be more of a factor when the backlight is set at the lowest light level, but I would expect the actual panel itself to still be negligible compared to the backlight (and more importantly negligible compared to the CPU / GPU and radio power usage)

If you take a look at the official specs you can see for the iPhone 4S:

6 hours: 3G Internet - screen on all the time
8 hours: 3G Calling - screen off most of the time
9 hours: WiFi Internet - screen on all the time
10 hours: Video Playback - screen on all the time
40 hours: Audio Playback - screen off most of the time

It would be interesting to see how long the audio playback test would last if you had a simple app to keep the screen on the entire time...


iOS 7 Messages app reverts from iMessage to SMS at random I am having an issue with the Messages app on iOS 7.0.4 (11B554a) whereby on conversations that were previously all SMS and the other person purchases an iPhone, Messages reverts from sending iMessages to SMS seemingly at random.

I have tried:

Disabling/re-enabling iMessages in the Settings app (temporary fix)
Killing Messages from the multitasking view (temporary fix)
Disabling the "Send as SMS" option in Messages settings (does not work)

Has anyone else experienced this or know of a possible solution? I am considering using a third party tool like iExplorer to export all of my conversations and starting fresh, but I really view it as a last resort since some of these conversations have been with me since the launch of the original iPhone in 2007.

Edit 1: I should point out that these are not failures to send an iMessage that results in a fallback to SMS, rather I notice as I'm composing the message that the text entry box has the subtle "Text Message" on it and the Send button is green. I perform steps #1 or #2 (typically #2) and the iMessage is sent and received just fine.

Edit 2: Further investigation has shown that when the Messages app isn't used for a long period or is suspended due to a using resource intensive app (like a 3D game), this behavior will occur -- the Messages app will show messages to the one person who I used to contact with SMS has reverted to SMS again while everyone else still shows as being iMessage capable so I don't believe my connection Apple's servers is the issue. Again, simply killing the Messages app from the multitasking view shows everyone is capable of iMessage again and iMessages are sent and received properly.

iMessage is essentially an Apple operated Instant Messenger service deployed to compete with, or augment, SMS and MMS.

iOS will use iMessage to deliver a message if there is a data connection available to Apple's servers and both the sender and recipient are known by Apple to have iMessage configured for their respective addresses.

Most likely if a person you regularly iMessage with is now sometimes receiving as SMS it is due to intermittent data connection (ie you are mobile and data service is failing). Otherwise it could be an Apple iMessage server issue - seems to crop up regularly.

Furthermore in the last three weeks several of my friends and family have reported issues with iMessage so possibly there is something deeper and worse going on with iMessage servers.

cheers


OS X 10.11(.1) Randomly freezes while browsing Ever since I updated to El Capitan I keep getting random freezes.. this is the 2nd time it happened while browsing on safari and while watching videos on Youtube. Anyone having problems with this as well? Im on 10.11.1.

I tried resetting the default things, such as PRAM etc. I even brought my MacBook back to the store and there wasn't any hardware issues.

I checked the log and both of the times these freezes happened I see something about watchdog daemon becoming unresponsive. After the freeze, which takes 1 minute or a bit less.. the macbook becomes responsive again but is very very sluggish.

I'm running OS X 10.11.1 on a MacBook Pro 15" 2014.

I could get you log files if needed, not sure which part would be interesting for you but just let me know.

I kept having this too. After using Youtube for a while, Safari froze and was then on behaving very sluggishly even if restarted. Only reboot of the whole system restored Browser back to normal (until Youtube would freeze it again).

The problem seems to have disappeared along with the latest OS X 10.11.2, so I recommend you just update the OS X.


Early 2015 MacBook Air and two external monitors: how to do it and maximum resolution? I have an Early 2015 13" MacBook Air with Intel HD Graphics 6000 1536 MB. I'm trying to figure out what its capabilities are in terms of connecting two external monitors.

First, if I just used the two external monitors and did not use the MacBook Air's built-in monitor, what is the maximum resolution I could run both external monitors at simultaneously? For example, could they both do 1080p resolution, or perhaps higher? And does it matter whether I use the built-in monitor? (I've scoured the internet looking for information about this but haven't found anything so far!)

Second, is there a device I can use just for connecting two external monitors via DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort to the MacBook Air's Thunderbolt 2 port, other than an expensive general purpose Thunderbolt 2 dock like one of these? I should add that I'm not interested in using devices that connect to a USB 3 port and use a DisplayLink driver.

Just for posterity I'll answer my own question:

After doing quite a bit of searching around, I eventually figured out that the easiest and cheapest way to accomplish this would be to use the StarTech brand Thunderbolt 2 Dual-Monitor Docking Station. Even with a MacBook Air, you can still plug in two external monitors simultaneously. I found reports that it works as advertised. Note that I have not purchased one and tried it myself, though.


iMac shut down due to power outage; started working after a few hours I am using an iMac which got shutdown due to sudden power cut. Once the power came back it wasn't starting up.  However, when I tried again after few hours it started.
Can anyone please tell me what actually happening at hardware level due the power suddenly being gone and how it started working after a period of time doing an NVRAM or SMC reset or without doing anything?

Once power came it is not starting but when I tried after few hours it started.

Switching power supplies have a re-settable fuse that will trip if there is a power surge and reset itself after some time or if you remove the power cord and hold the power button to dissipate any remaining charge in the circuits.  So, the symptoms you describe are very much in line with how these circuits work.  They cut off current for a period of time and then reset themselves so your power supply works again.
When you have a power outage, it is very common for the power to come back with a power surge (also known as a voltage spike).  This fuse is built into the power supply to protect it from surges like this.
That said, I wouldn't depend on it as it's not designed to absorb higher spikes like those that come from lightning strikes - get a quality power surge protector (not a power strip, but an actual surge protector (they are significantly more expensive than a power strip).
Resetting the NVRAM or SMC will not have any effect.  The NVRAM only holds pre-boot environment variables and the SMC doesn't control this fuse.  For the SMC to function, you need to have power (3 VDC), if the power was cut off (like the fuse did), the SMC is in an off state and won't respond to anything.


Are my battery cycle counts increasing when MBP is on and plugged in? I often leave my Macbook Pro (13" - Late 2011) plugged in while working on it with the charge at 100%. This post suggests that when the battery is at 100% and the laptop is plugged in, the battery stops charging altogether.

Let's say I use my computer in this configuration for 10 hours at a time. Would this "cycle" of use actually contribute to my battery cycle count?

If your battery is at 100% and your MacBook is plugged in then the battery isn't charging or discharging, so it isn't using a charging cycle.


Is there a quick way to relink my homebrew kegs? I just upgraded my MacBook Air to Mavericks.  The process appears to have removed almost all of the symlinks that homebrew put in /usr/local/bin.  As I notice things missing then I relink them via brew unlink <keg> && brew link <keg> (although the symlinks are gone, homebrew still thinks they are there so I need to unlink first).  This feels somewhat inefficient.

I could just loop through everything in /usr/local/Cellar but not every keg is automatically linked and I don't want to link those.  So my next guess is to list every linked keg and relink them (using the above).

Is there some magic command that will find all the kegs that homebrew thinks are linked so that I can relink them?

This bash command (taken from there) will unlink all installed formulas and then link them again:

brew list -1 | while read line; do brew unlink $line; brew link $line; done

I guess all formulas need to be linked, otherwise, whichever tool depends on them, won't be able to find them..


Batch Renaming Folders Is there a way to batch replace current folder names with increasing numbers? The "Rename Finder Items" built-in feature only lets you replace in the 'Find and replace text' kind of way. Not all my current folder names have common characters.
I'm using Mojave, btw.

Select all the folders you want to rename, right click them and select "Rename [number] Items..."

When you use the "Rename Finder Items" feature, you have to change it from "Replace Text" to "Format" in the drop down menu:

Now you can rename it however you want:


Best practices to migrate from a single shared iTunes account to family sharing Since iOS 4, my family is equiped with multiple iOS devices. I used the same iTunes account on all devices to share :

Applications
Photos
Notes
Musics
Data (game progression)

With iOS 8 Apple introduced family sharing. Firstly I didn't see any advantage in this new functionality.
But with this post, I understand that 1 account per physical person is the new golden rule.

So what are the best practices to migrate from a single shared iTunes account to family sharing without loosing anything ?

Some data (game progression) aren't shared accross all devices, how can I be sure that my daughter will not loose her data when she will use her newest iTunes account ?

Personally I would create subsequent accounts for other family members, then you can use your current account as the "parent" or "leader" account and then add the new accounts to the family.

You are still using your original account so you're guaranteed not to loose anything, the others should also have access to the content you choose to share with other family members.


Two identical USB microphones at once -- is it possible? I just got a pair of Blue Yeti USB microphones. Unfortunately, my Mac only wants to recognize whichever one was plugged in last. To be more specific, they both appear under USB in System Information, but only one in System Preferences and Audio MIDI Setup.

Is it possible to use both at once?

It used to be that two USB audio interfaces/mics would require you to create an aggregate device in order to use them both at the same time with OS X. As this was still the case in early 2014 (see the Macworld article, below), it probably is still the case today.
However, there are differing reports when it comes to identical USB devices.
Back in 2011, an audacity user was testing this specifically and reported:

So, far from being the outlier, Aggregate Device is required any
time you plug in two identical USB sound devices.

But in 2013, Blue Microphones themselves are reported to have said:

Because of the nature of USB devices, you won’t be able to use two of
the same USB microphones at once. Since they have similar digital
thumb prints your computer won’t be able to distinguish the devices as
separate devices. With that being said, you can use two different USB
devices/microphones at once with no problem. As far as being able to
use it within a specific program you would have to find out if it
allows multiple USB connections [...]

So, without further information, your best bet would be to try to create an aggregate device from both mics, and then test with an application which can record multiple channels (which I assume you already have since you want to do this in the first place).
This Macworld article gives details:

Plug both USB microphones into your Mac, venture to the Utilities
folder (/Applications/Utilities) and launch Audio MIDI Setup. In the
bottom left corner of the resulting window click the plus (+) button
and choose Create Aggregate Device from the menu that appears.
To the right you'll see a list of all the audio devices attached to
your Mac, including those two mics. Tick the Use checkboxes for the
two microphones (if any of them have multiple entries, look for the
one that has a 1 in the In column). As you do so, subdevices entries
will appear above the list of audio devices. This tells you which mic
is using input channel 1 and which is using input channel 2. If you
like, click on the name Aggregate Device in the column to the left and
change it to something more intuitive such as “Two Mic Setup.”

If you are able to do that, then the resulting device should be both mics, one on each channel, so they can be recorded separately (or, potentially, recorded as stereo and separated later).
Of course, if only one of the mics appears in Audio MIDI Setup then it's possible you won't be offered the option of selecting them both when creating an aggregate device.
Update:
Sadly, this post suggests it will not be possible but, if you contact Blue, they should be able to 'reprogram' one of your mics so you can get this working as an aggregate device:

Bue Yetis have identical digitial footprints and therefore no matter
how many you plug in, they will be recognized as a single device.   I
contacted Blue and ultimately I was able to send one of my Yetis to
them for reprogramming and now my Mac will recognize it along with
another Yeti in order to create an aggregate device.
Fair warning, this process took over 2 weeks and I had to pay out of pocket
shipping, they paid FedEx ground (signature required) back to me.


I-beam cursor color in Mavericks's terminal After upgrading to Mavericks the I-beam cursor in the terminal became less visible (see screenshot, I am using the Pro profile with a dark background)

Is there a way to change the cursor's color or to make it more visible? In the preferences I only managed to change the color of the text cursor.

As many have mentioned above, I did this -

Take a backup of existing ShadowedIBeam.tiff

cp Terminal.app/Contents/Resources/ShadowedIBeam.tiff Terminal.app/Contents/Resources/ShadowedIBeam.orig.tiff

Make your own cursor .... or, if you are a lazy one, just use this one -  (credit: Chris Dragon and his answer on this thread)
Then copy it over the original ShadowedIBeam.tiff

sudo cp ~/Downloads/TIbeam.tiff Terminal.app/Contents/Resources/ShadowedIBeam.tiff

And finally, run this -

defaults write com.apple.Terminal UseCustomIBeamCursor -bool YES

If you were as lucky as I was, you should have your eyes profusely thanking you in sheer gratitude!


MacBook display screen Is it possible to fix a MacBook Pro display glass for a cracked one of a MacBook unibody? Since they have the same dimensions.

Per the fixit-store: There is only one LCD glass panel for each model in a similar era (providing the "screen size" spec matches).

So, yes, as long as they are of a similar year!


Is there away to see the internal process of a software? I would like to be able to see/monitor how a software "works" once it's running. For example I would like to see what happens internally when you click on a button, or any other interaction within an app. I tried using Instruments (xcode), but Instruments only let me select an application that's already running. Which means I always miss the initial process of when the application starts running.

I am not looking for resource usage, just trying to understand how the internal files work.

Open Activity Monitor
Select the process you want to monitor
Click the "Gear" icon and choose "Sample Process"

NB: I am not claiming this will be of any use to you. It is generally only helpful for tracking bugs for someone who has the source code.


iPads in the corporate world Is anyone using an iPad in the corporate world? If you are:

Is it better than carrying around a laptop, and if so, how?
Do iPads connect to networks like notebooks do?
Can I remote into my Windows PC in a corporate environment using an iPad?

Yes, it is indeed better than carrying around a laptop, because it is lighter, faster and instant-on "computer". Also great for taking notes during the meetings, answering emails if that is the sort of thing you do. The typing may be a bit difficult if you are too much used to the normal keyboard. Of course, you can attach the Bluetooth keyboard.
As Philip pointed out, iPad has Wifi, so you shouldn't be having any problems connecting to Wifi network, if your office has one. Also, with 3G you can stay connected even when you don't have the Wifi.
About the Remote Connection, iPad supports VPN networking if that is needed, and there are several applications on iPad that allow you to use it as a Remote Desktop. But I think it might be difficult thing to get used to - using touchscreen to control the mouse etc.

If you're on an environment which doesn't need custom applications that run on Windows/Computer, and you can get all your work done by just email and the browser, yes iPad can replace your netbook.


An app that can scan archive files and delete them I'm looking for an app that have this features:

Scan all archive files inside a directory (say, Downloads folder)
Determine whether if I have already extracted the archive files or not (inside the directory)
If I have already extracted the archive files, then delete them (archive files). If I'm not extracted them yet, keep it inside the directory

Any recommendations?

To automate things like that, I use Hazel (paid software, 29$).

  Hazel watches whatever folders you tell it to, automatically
  organizing your files according to the rules you create. It features a
  rule interface similar to that of Apple Mail so you should feel right
  at home. Have Hazel move files around based on name, date, type, what
  site/email address it came from (Safari and Mail only) and much more.
  Automatically put your music in your Music folder, movies in Movies.
  Keep your downloads off the desktop and put them where they are
  supposed to be.


iPad and iPhone no longer connects to iMac since downloading IOS 9.0.2 Since downloading IOS 9.0.2 my iPhone and iPad no longer connect to iTunes in my iMac (OS X version 10.6.8). I get a message saying I need to update my ITunes, however I currently have version 11.4.8 and when I search for an update, it says there is no update. Please can someone help?

Current iTunes is 12.3 which will be required for iOS 9 devices to connect.

Your Catch 22 is that the minimum OS for iTunes 12 is 10.8.5.

It would appear that your only alternative would be to update your OS.
However, unless you have previously purchased any of the OSes between 10.7 (Lion) & 10.10 (Yosemite) your only available option from the App Store will be 10.11 (El Capitan)

I couldn't even speculate on the compatibility issues you might have jumping 5 major releases in one go, but I wouldn't even dream of it without a full backup or clone in place first.


iMessage coming up as new thread in text instead of continuation If a person adds a new e-mail account to imessage would it then come up as a different thread or contact in my iPhone?

I received a message today from somebody I imessage and text daily, today when they imessaged it came up as a completely new text and an email address instead of a continuation of old conversation as it normally does, does this mean it is coming from a new phone number using e-mail account for messaging?

are there any other possibilities as to why this would occur?

Please, check if that new phone number is in your address book. I found that having all iMessage numbers and emails in the same contact card solves this issue.


How can I move an iTunes library from one computer to another? I'm getting a new laptop and I want to move my iTunes library from the old to the new computer. How can I do this? Of course I want to preserve as much information as possible: metadata such as ratings and play counts, cover art, my purchased content from Apple.

I also own an iPhone which I used to sync with the old computer and now I want to sync with the new one, preserving my apps, contacts, purchased content, etc.

What would be the best way to do this? Is just moving the whole “iTunes” folder from one computer to the other an option?

Yes, simply coping your entirely iTunes folder to an other computer will do the trick. This assumes all of your media is consolidated within the iTunes Media and iTunes Music folders. iTunes will assist in copying music to the folder and organizing a library if you would like to ensure all the media is portable when it comes time to transfer.

Do not forget to reauthorize the old computer if you are not going to use it regularly in case it crashes and one of your 5 slots is taken up. You can reset things after a lost computer, but it is somewhat time restricted to prevent abuse of that feature.


How can I copy the full smb:// link from a file in Finder? I work in a Windows environment with many different shared drives. I commonly have Finder windows open to different shared drives and nested folders. I have a Service set up (that I created in Automator) that allows me to control-click and "copy full path" of a file or folder that I have selected in the Finder.

What I'm getting looks something like:

/Volumes/someFolder/someFile.docx

However, if I select that item in the Finder and do command-i, I see the full smb:// path that also includes the server name. I would like to copy this, so that it looks like:

smb://Server/someParentFolder/someFolder/someFile.docx

How can I create a service in Automator that will copy the entire smb:// network path to the selected file instead of the one that reports as being the full path?

If Automator won't copy the smb:// network path, is there another way I can create a utility that will do this?

You can right click the file, and choose "Get Info" - the popup window will have a property for Server which lists the full URL path with protocol (e.g. smb://example.com/Data/file.png)


Is Thunderbolt backwards-compatible with mini-DP for both input and output? How compatible or not is the new Thunderbolt connection?

If I have a MacBook Air with Thunderbolt, can I use my existing mini-video cable to connect it to a VGA overhead projector?

If I buy a new Cinema Display with Thunderbolt, can I connect my existing Mac Pro to it?

Are there special cables, convertors needed, or are there any fundamental incompatibilities?

Your existing Mini DisplayPort cable (VGA adaptor, etc.) should allow your Thunderbolt equipped MacBook Air to connect to a projector (assuming it worked previously with a Mini DisplayPort output) but, as with all things presentation, you'll want to test the setup in advance if possible.

According to Apple's specs, the  Thunderbolt Display requires a:

  Thunderbolt-enabled Mac computer, including MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac

Your existing Mac Pro can't use the monitor.


Editing contacts creates a duplicate I have 5 different email accounts: iCloud, GMail, Hotmail and two others which my iPhone does not give the option to sync its contacts.

So, I have only synced my contacts with iCloud and since barely a month ago, when I edit a contact it appears immediately a copy of it and if I delete one, both of the are deleted.

Does anyone know what is going on?

Does the duplicate appear on your iPhone or within your iCloud account.

Try editing your iPhone contacts directly via this tool for example:

http://www.copytrans.net/iphone-contacts.php

Also, where do you edit the contact entries from which the duplicates result - on your iPhone or within the iCloud. I would assume that if you are editing them on the iPhone, a temporary local copy is created on your iPhone until it is synced back to the iCloud after which the duplicate copy (physically residing on your iPhone) will be gone.