Why can't Time Machine see shared drive? I am having trouble setting up a Time Machine backup to a shared network drive. I have an external drive plugged into a MacBook Pro (MBP), and I want to use Time Machine to remotely back up a MacBook Air (MBA) to it. I followed the instructions in “Can Time Machine back up to an external HD connected to another Mac?” but Time Machine will not present the remote drive as an option.

The drive is formatted properly. I have an identical partition to which the MBP does a local Time Machine backup.
The drive is shared properly. In fact, the MBA can see and mount the remote drive.

However, the partition is not shown as a potential Time Machine drive.

Finder can see and access the drive, so why can't Time Machine? Is there a bit somewhere I can flip to tell Time Machine to see it?

When you click the "Options..." button in the File Sharing preferences, is "Share files and folders using AFP" enabled? Time Machine over the network requires AFP, so it won't work if only SMB is enabled.

You may also need to disable SMB. I am not exactly sure why this is the case, but sometimes the SMB share takes priority and Time Machine can't seem to see the AFP share. Note that this will prevent Windows clients from connecting to file shares.


Open an application periodically in Mac OSX I want to open a GUI application (most likely Electron based) periodically on a Mac Book. The period will be configured (daily, hourly etc..) within the application. How would I go about achieving this?

There are numerous approaches you can take.

launchd or Third Party Launcher

You can use tools like macOS's built-in launchd or third party tools like Power Manager (which I wrote, so feel free to ask me questions about its use):

Power Manager includes a task covering How to Schedule an Application to Launch on Mac OS X.

Prefer launchd over cron

You probably want to avoid cron because it does not operate in the current user's graphical session. cron is good for command line tools and scripts, but less well suited to graphical Mac applications.

AppleScript and Calendar

A simple AppleScript application combined with a calendar event's Open File as an alarm may be enough. The AppleScript snippet below will open a specified application and bring it to the front:

tell application "My Electron Application" to activate

These related questions go into specifics:

How can I schedule sending the day’s iCal events via email?
Schedule open automator application every days works only one time


FN key seems stuck on MacBook Air. Can't use function keys as normal When I press the function keys they act like the fn key is pressed. For example f11 usually lowers the volume, but when fn is pressed at the same time it shows the keyboard - and that's what happening now whether fn is pressed or not. This results in that I can't for example lower my volume (f11), or play music (f8).

I've tried:

Restarting my computer
Changing "Use F1, F2, etc as normal function keys" (System preferences > Keyboard) on and off
Spamming the fn key trying to feel if something is physically stuck making it being pressed down
Booting in safe mode

TL;DR

Expected behaviour

When pressing f11 the volume should step down

Actual behaviour

The desktop is shown (windows moves aside)

Mojave: 10.14.6

By updating to Catalina the problem was fixed! Although I don't belive it was solved by the update itself but rather some sort of reset or reboot that occured while updating.


How to make notes read-only? Can I set the default notes read-only, so I can't edit them  unintentionally?

Note: I don't want to lock them, cause then I can't read them, unless I can edit them too. I want to be able to read them but not edit them by default.

There's no default way to do this in either iOS or macOS.

Recommendations from several similar questions on this site (use the Search function to find them) include using 3rd party applications instead or taking a screenshot of the Note (and locking the original) so it can't be edited.


Downloading large photos from Photo Stream on iPad Downloading from Photo Stream gives me a small size picture (approx 200 KB) and I want to download the full size (1 to 2 MB) file. How can this be done?

What is the criteria for deleting my iPad photos? I have lost a lot of older photos without any notification or approval.

On your first question, this is what the Apple My Photo Stream FAQ says:

  What resolution are My Photo Stream photos?

  On a Mac or PC, your photos are downloaded and stored in full
  resolution. On iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV, your photos are
  delivered in a device-optimized resolution that speeds downloads and
  saves storage space. Dimensions will vary, but an optimized version of
  a photo taken by a standard point-and-shoot camera will have a 2048 x
  1536 pixel resolution when pushed to your devices. Panoramic photos
  can be up to 5400 pixels wide.

On the second question, the Photo Stream criteria for deletion –not the images you took or saved with the device, which stay indefinitely on the Camera Roll– is defined as follows in the same document:

  How long are My Photo Stream photos stored in iCloud?

  The photos you upload to My Photo Stream are stored in iCloud for 30
  days to give your devices plenty of time to connect and download them.

  How many photos are stored in My Photo Stream on my devices and computers?

  My Photo Stream pushes all your photos to the My Photo Stream album on
  your devices and computers, and manages them efficiently, so you don’t
  run out of storage space.

  Your iOS devices keep a rolling collection of your last 1000 photos in
  the My Photo Stream album. From there, you can browse your recent
  photos or move the ones you like to another album to keep them on your
  device forever.


What are the numerous incoming connections I see on public wifi for? In general I have incoming connections disabled by my security software (Little Snitch). But even when I do this, on public wifi, I see numerous incoming connections for netbios and mDNSResponder allowed automatically.

For example, at a recent hotel stay, I was confronted with a long list as soon as a logged on to the wifi there (listed as automatically allowed by Little Snitch)

which quickly grew to the thousands

What are these incoming connections for? Why are they being automatically allowed? Are they a security threat?

Note that if I explicitly block all of these connections using Little Snitch, my network access fails, but the network still seems to function when I alternatively block incoming connections using Apple's (OS X 10.9) firewall

and enable stealth mode

netbios

You could block the netbios connections with Little Snitch. These connections are connections attempt most usually coming from Windows sharing the same Wi-Fi network and testing which share and printers are available on your computer. This protocol behaves like a guy entering a new building and testing all door knobs, when the door opens he asks: What's your name? What do you share? Do you print?
This protocol is stupid, and dangerous, but most notably for Windows.
This protocol is the leading vector of malware broadcast inside LAN of companies using Windows since more than 20 years (toward the floppies era). This protocol is responsible of the largest security damages within big companies.

netbios is a security threat.

On all my Mac I tear off this service (netbiosd), during the post installation procedure (see: …to disable WINS in Network settings, working on 10.7, 10.8, 10.9).

mDNSResponder

You couldn't and shouldn't block the mDNSResponder because you would break the normal working of the DNS on your Mac. I.e. you won't be able to find the IP address of www.microsoft.com.

mDNSREsponder isn't a security threat (today).

Firewall setting

Your method to block connection through the MacOS X firewall is the correct and safe one within any aggresive environment.


How to export a list of recently opened files from Office:MAC? 2011? I recently inherited some old mac machines and was told to look for anything important on the before formatting them.

One of the things that is installed on these machines is Office:MAC 2011, and everytime I open one of these documents I'm concerned that another falls off the recently opened list.

I'd like to save the list of recent files some how so that I don't loose anymore recently opened documents.

Is it possible to somehow export this list so I can view the list without destroying the list?

You can do this, but it's complicated.

The recent documents for all Microsoft office products are stored in a preferences file (plist) in each users's library:

~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist

This file is in standard plist format, and can be viewed using the plist viewer built into Xcode.  If you open it up it will look something like this:

The list of recent items for each application is stored in the key File MRU.  The example above is for Word, which corresponds to the MSWD code.  Each document compromises one numbered item under this plist key.

As you can see, unfortunately the values for these keys are binary encoded, not plain text, so you need to paste the Value strings into a Hex editor to see the file names and paths.  (I use HexFiend .)

Bottom Line: Copy the com.microsoft.office.plist file to a safe location.  With some elbow grease, you can pull all the recent files out of this document.

You could also check out this Python script that does some of this parsing automatically, but your mileage may vary.


How to force iCloud profile photo to update So my iCloud profile picture is synced across most of my devices, except one of my computers and strictly in the app store on one of my other computers. My iPhone and iMac are perfectly up to date. Is there a way to force an update? I've cleared the cached files on the computers and no luck. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

As you have done major steps like clearing cache, the following is a tweak which also allows you to sync the photo in all your Apple devices. Keep this a try

First, open Messages from your iPhone.
Tap the ellipsis (•••) button at the top, then "Share Name and Photo."

Once you see the Share your Name and Photo with the Friends splash screen, tap the "Choose Name and Photo" button to continue. On the next screen, your Display Name will be listed as whatever name is associated with your Apple ID, but you can change it to whatever you want. Only one field needs to be filled out, so you can just choose a first or last name or special moniker or nickname.

As for the photo, if you've set a custom photo for yourself in the Contacts app or have already created a Memoji, you'll see those options in the large circles above your display name. You can swipe through the options and select the one you'd like to use. If you want something different, there should be a "View More" option in one of the circles.

Once you've selected one you like, tap the "Continue" button at the bottom, and you'll get a prompt asking to "Use This Photo Everywhere?" It states that using the new image will change the photo associated with your Apple ID and in your My Card in the Contacts app. Tap "Use" to continue.

On the last page, you'll be asked to choose who you share your name and photo with. You can choose to share it automatically with "Contacts Only" or one a case-by-case basis with "Always Ask."

By default, "Always Ask" is recommended to maximize your privacy, which will display a permissions prompt within each conversation's thread, where you can choose "Share" or hit the (x) to keep it hidden.

This tweak might help you to sync the photo.


Icons and other graphics have strange colored strips after waking Macbook I am running OS X Lion on a late 2008 model Macbook (not pro). From time to time, usually when left on and unattended, the battery gets low and it goes into sleep mode. I kick myself for letting it happen again, plug it in, and power back on. My session is restored as expected, but with some additional interesting graphic effects:

All of the application icons when Mission Control is activated have the same green and pink striped pattern background you can see just below the menu bar, and all over the UI of Activity Monitor. This never happens after a normal sleep/wake cycle- only after the battery dies.

I haven't been able to find anybody else experiencing this, let alone somebody who has come up with a solution other than just rebooting.

I have done a few hardware upgrades to this machine- I replaced the original memory with 8GB, and I installed a 128GB OCZ SSD a few months ago. My best guess so far is that maybe it's some sort of disk cache problem, but to be honest I have no idea. So here I am.

What causes this, and how can I fix it?

I have the exact same Problem! I have a MBP 2011 model with OSX 10.75.

I have also done a few hardware upgrades to this machine: I replaced the original memory with 8GB, and I installed a second 128GB OCZ SSD disc a few months ago. The SSD is the OS disc and the original disc is now my second disk.

I have the exact problem after the deep sleep, when the machine runs out of power.

From Mark’s tip, I replaced the new 8 GB RAM back to the original 4 GB RAM, but the problem remains! I assume it is a problem of the OCZ disc. I tried to update the used firmware but I failed as I need a Windows OS to do so.

So I made a workaround: I entered in the Terminal:

$ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

This means that the laptop will never enter DeepSleep (or hibernation, that is the RAM is always powered and in the event of a power loss the state is lost), and in this case the sleepimage /var/vm/sleepimage can also be removed.

Orginial Article: http://linuxtoosx.blogspot.com/2011/10/optimizing-mac-os-x-for-ssd-drives.html

It is no solution for the problem but a workaround to avoid the deep sleep. But this means that your work will not be recovered after shutdown from low battery.


Spotlight stopped working For some reason my spotlight shortcut stopped working yesterday my MBP running Sierra 10.12.6

I am not using BetterTouch tools, it is a very non customised install of OS X:

Spotlight shortcut (cmd+space) no longer working

Have also checked, unchecked and clicked Restore Defaults in System settings> Keyboard:

I have followed the following answer with no luck, and would like to get to the bottom of this before I do a reboot:

Command + Space Spotlight shortcut stopped working

When I do press command + space I get a ping but the usual spotlight window does not show up anywhere.

Could I have accidentally disabled the shortcut with another shortcut somehow?

A reboot fixed the issue.  However before the reboot, I restarted finder and the process would not start up, I could see my files in terminal but not on the desktop and could not navigate via finder windows.

Both the finder and the Spotlight issues were fixed with a reboot.


How can I create an APFS fusion drive in Mojave using my SSD and HD? Now that Mojave supports APFS in fusion drives, how can I create a fusion drive from scratch with my SSD and HD?

I have a Mac Mini with an 128 GB SSD and a 1TB HD, already updated to Mojave and using APFS since High Sierra. How do I integrate both in a fusion drive?

Nothing could be easier with Mojave : just enter the following command at the command prompt

diskutil resetfusion

The process is done completely automatically. Just take care that the detected hard drives solid state and mechanical are correctly determined before answering Yes.

Sample command output :

-bash-3.2# diskutil resetfusion

Internally-located hardware disk devices known to the currently-running macOS:
Rotational                               (disk0)
Solid State                              (disk1)

Volume exported by partitions or storage systems hosted on the above devices:
Macintosh HD                             (disk23)

WARNING: All of the above will be erased
Do you want to continue? (Enter "Yes" to proceed to erase) Yes

Forcing unmount of all volumes on the solid-state (SSD) disk drive
Started on disk1
Finished on disk1
Forcing unmount of all volumes on the rotational (HDD) disk drive
Started on disk0
Finished on disk0
Partitioning the solid-state (SSD) disk drive
Started on disk1
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Finished on disk1
The partition that will become the solid-state Core Storage PV is disk1s2
Partitioning the rotational (HDD) disk drive
Started on disk0
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Finished on disk0
The partition that will become the rotational Core Storage PV is disk0s2
Creating a Core Storage Logical Volume Group
Started
Unmounting disk1s2
Touching partition type on disk1s2
Adding disk1s2 to Logical Volume Group
Unmounting disk0s2
Touching partition type on disk0s2
Adding disk0s2 to Logical Volume Group
Creating Core Storage Logical Volume Group
Switching disk1s2 to Core Storage
Switching disk0s2 to Core Storage
Waiting for Logical Volume Group to appear
Discovered new Logical Volume Group "515C316B-D0E8-4507-AF51-3B7F6F65B74A"
Finished
The new Core Storage LVG is 515C316B-D0E8-4507-AF51-3B7F6F65B74A
Adding a Logical Volume to the Core Storage Logical Volume Group
Started
Waiting for Logical Volume to appear
Formatting file system for Logical Volume
Initialized /dev/rdisk23 as a 571 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 49152k journal
Mounting disk
Finished
The new Core Storage LV is 60BD449A-F95B-49D7-B55D-81978D4567FF (disk23)
Confirmed that your new volume "Macintosh HD" (disk23) is a Fusion Drive
Operation successful


Is it Possible To Move Menu Bar To Applications I have just bought a MacBook Pro 15 and I am finding the Menu Bar very difficult to work with.

For example; if the calculator is in the bottom right of the screen an I am focussing my eyes on it I can't even see the Menu bar. If I want to use something from the menu I have to push the mouse 3 or 4 times with the track pad to get up to the menu (e.g. for a convert function) then 3 or 4 times to get back down.

Is it possible to make the menus appear in the applications?

No is the simple answer.

The Mac UI is based on the premise of the application menu always being at the top. The reasoning was that you just have to move the mouse to the top of the screen to ensure you were at the menu, no hunting to find the menu bar on a window that could be anywhere on the screen.

This has been the case since the beginning of Mac OS in the early 1980s

This can get some getting used to if you are coming from Windows.


GCC with-gxx-include-dir is set to iOS 11.4 simulator I'm trying to compile https://github.com/zeromq/libzmq which requires me to run autoconf and then ./configure. It was working a few days ago, but now this happens:

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/local/bin/ginstall -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /usr/local/bin/gmkdir -p
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... no
checking for nawk... no
checking for awk... awk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether make supports nested variables... yes
checking whether UID '502' is supported by ustar format... yes
checking whether GID '20' is supported by ustar format... yes
checking how to create a ustar tar archive... gnutar
checking whether make supports nested variables... (cached) yes
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables...
checking whether we are cross compiling... configure: error: in `/Users/rajiv/libzmq/libzmq-4.2.5':
configure: error: cannot run C compiled programs.
If you meant to cross compile, use `--host'.
See `config.log' for more details

config.log shows:

configure:4489: checking whether we are cross compiling
configure:4497: gcc -o conftest    conftest.c  >&5
configure:4501: $? = 0
configure:4508: ./conftest
dyld: mach-o, but built for simulator (not macOS)
./configure: line 4510: 98877 Abort trap: 6           ./conftest$ac_cv_exeext
configure:4512: $? = 134

After searching GitHub for a while it seems like something might be wrong with GCC:

$ gcc -v

Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator11.4.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1

Apple LLVM version 9.1.0 (clang-902.0.39.2)

Target: x86_64-apple-darwin17.7.0

Thread model: posix

InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin

It seems like it's trying to include from the iOS 11.4 SDK. How can I change it back to the correct path and how did this change happen? The only things I can think of are that I installed an update for the Xcode Command Line Tools and I may have updated autoconf with Homebrew

I was seeing a similar issue.

$ gcc -v
    Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator11.4.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1

In my case, that configuration resulted in includes like #include <stdlib.h> referencing the iOS/iPhone simulator platform libraries rather than the macOS libraries. This resulted in my getting errors about the wrong architecture being used when compiling.

The only viable solution I found was to uninstall Xcode (deleting the app from /Applications) and uninstall the command line tools. That and a reboot seemed to resolve this issue in my case.


How to properly (quickly) iterate over Reminders using AppleScript/osascript? What is the proper, efficient way to iterate over Reminders using AppleScript?  The script below works as expected, but takes 18 seconds to iterate over 180 Reminders when run from the command line using osascript!  (This same script takes only 2-3 seconds when run from within the ScriptEditor.)
# Find all Reminders whose name contains "Alumni"
set findMe to "Alumni"
set answer to "Maches: "

tell application "Reminders"
    set names to name of every reminder
end tell

repeat with name in names
    if name contains findMe then
        set answer to answer & " --- " & name
    end if
end repeat

return answer

I've run this script two ways from the command line: As a compiled script:  osascript testReminders2.scrpt and as a text file:  ./testReminders2.applescript (where this file begins with #! /usr/bin/osascript.  Both versions take about the same amount of time.

I don't have enough reminders to test for speed but give this a try. You can get the 'named' reminders into a list with one step and then coerce that list into your text output with a second. This should be faster than iterating through them individually.
# Find all Reminders whose name contains "Alumni"
set findMe to "Alumni"
set answer to "Maches: "

tell application "Reminders" to ¬
    set names to name of ¬
        (every reminder whose name contains findMe)

set {TID, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to ¬
    {AppleScript's text item delimiters, " --- "}
set answer to answer & names as text
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to TID

return answer


How can I kill a process by its name? Sometimes I notice that the process Python hung up. Then I'll kill it via the Activity Monitor and everything is fine.

I'd like to kill that process in the Terminal instead. However, looking up the PID seems kind of unecessary because there's only one process by the name Python.

Is it possible to kill a process by its unique name?

You should be able to run the command sudo killall Python.

You need to run as root because Python belongs to root, not the user.


Lost everything after iPhone sync--How can I get it back? I plugged my iPhone into my computer last night and opened up iTunes.  It said I needed to sync and download the latest version. I clicked ok.  After all was done my iPhone has been set back to Decemeber.

Therefore all my photos since December are gone.  All my contacts - gone!  All my conversations on Messages and WhatsApp - gone!! This is a major issue as my iPhone is part of my work scheduling.

What has happened?  Can anyone tell me what I can do to get it back?
Also why did it do this?

If you've backed up recently, you might want to do a full restore, which will wipe your iPhone clean and reinstall iOS. After it's done that, it will offer to restore from a backup, reinstalling all apps, calendars, email accounts, etc.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1414


iCloud Drive folders dissappared Normally when I click on my iCloud drive, I see this:

iCloud

|--Pages

|--Numbers

|--Keynote

However, now, when I click on iCloud drive, I am presented with a new folder called com~apple~CloudDocs.

All the Pages, Numbers and Keynotes sub folders have disappeared (and the documents within them).

How can I get my folders (and documents!!!) back?

Logging out and back in seems to fix the issue.


Is there a free alternative to copilot that doesn't require the helpee to do anything ever I want to set up my Grandfather's mac (running lion) so that it's got a vnc server always running that I can connect to anytime without any input from him. The point is to try to circumvent the hour long support calls I end up doing when his "email is broken", by being able to take control of his computer and do it for him.

I've tried setting him up with Copilot (from fogcreek), but that still involves talking him through launching the application and letting me connect. Are any of the mac-native things (like ichat, icloud, screen sharing?) going to be any better? What do you recommend? (I run 10.6.8)

Simplest and cheapest would be to setup iChat on both computers and use Ask to Share screen feature from context menu.

Usually it will work from the start. Sometimes you need to configure router, here is a list of ports used by Apple services. Enabling uPNP or NAT-PMP on the router will usually work. In any case you need fast enough connection for it to work (at least 300kbps recommended still it's better to have faster one but what is more important is quality of the connection).


iPhone App for External Microphone Is there a special app needed on my iPhone XR for the video camera to sync an external microphone?

I have all the TRS/Lightning connections correct, but no voice is recording with the video.

No, there's no special app needed.

It sounds like you're using some kind of adapter/dongle for converting between the Lightning interface and a simple TRS. You do not mention what dongle or microphone, you're using.

It sounds likely that you are using incorrect cables. The TRS plug comes in two versions - the CTIA version used on iPhone (and most Android phones), and the OMTP version used on some Android phones and especially older equipment. If you have the incorrect verison, you'll get no voice recorded.


Tools to monitor App files write activity under OS X What tools can be used to monitor system activity under OS X? I am interested in which files are modified or created while using a specific app, Safari to be exact. I am familiar with fs_usage, but I find it cumbersome, since I do not want to monitor read actions, just write.

Instruments is a tool that comes with Xcode.  This tool was designed to help developers get a lot of detail about what was happening on a computer when their software is run.  One of the things it can do is watch all file I/O.  If you run the program and add the File I/O instrument, you can attach it to safari and see what happens.  You can also filter and sort the output.

More information can be found on the Xcode page from Apple.


How to get statics on OS X finder folder visits? Is it possible to know which folders I'm visiting often in the finder app?

I want to put those often-visited folders on the sidebar.

You can create a Smart Folder (which continually updates with the results of a Spotlight search).

Open the target folder (e.g. Documents, your user home, Macintosh HD, etc) in a new folder.
Click on File > New Smart Folder
Click + to add additional criteria.
Set the criteria as Modified within the last 7 days.
Set the Kind to Folder.

You can save the Smart Folder in the Sidebar.

This won't give you a 'leader board' of Most Visited Folders, but it will give you some idea of what you've been doing recently.


How can I empty the trash from the Terminal? How can I empty the trash from the Terminal?

Another solution would be to create AppleScript containing the folowing code

tell application "Finder"
    empty the trash
end tell

save it as emptytrash for example and execute it via open emptytrash.app

or even better (as suggested by Chris) - execute:

osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to empty'

Since trash is a Finder thing, this should be more compatible in the long run.


iCloud Recovered_Files Just for my knowledge and curiosity,

I was looking at the different type of data located in the Cloud under my iOS iCloud Storage.

What are exactly Recovered_Files?

Example if I delete all the files included in this folder and I restore my iOS device from an iCloud back, what type of settings or files or metadata will be missing?

Thank you

I wish I could answer the exact question you're asking. If you want a quick recommendation, I'd say do not delete anything in this folder, simply because there's no way to know exactly how it'll effect your devices/syncing either today or in the future.

I'm a programmer with over 15 years of experience and after running into an issue with iCloud that escalated Apple tech support didn't know how to solve I decided to start investigating how iCloud works. I've sifted through the guts of every part of iCloud & its syncing service for a couple weeks now. What I've found may help you and others at least understand why issues like this exist.

Some of what I've found so far...

iCloud Secretly Syncs Data ->
iCloud syncs an enormous amount of information and a lot of it is done silently without your permission or knowledge. This raises security concerns as well as obvious privacy issues.

Some examples of data being synced silently:

Finder preferences and tags
Search histories for Mail, Finder & Spotlight
Recent items including File names opened, folders, server/computer names you've accessed on your network
Wifi connection histories as well as the passwords that go along with them (encrypted)
Data from your Maps app

The list goes on, but you get the idea. I actually discovered a spotlight search I'd done over a year ago on an old Mac I no longer own synced to my brand new Mac with a clean installation. Perhaps Apple plans to do something visible with this synced data in the future, but without an advanced GUI to manage this kind of thing, they're taking a lot of liberties with your data. What I'd recommend is that you enable iCloud on as few computers as possible unless you know for certain no one you don't want will have access and that nothing you do on your synced computers includes activity you wouldn't want exposed.

I'm not suggesting any of this is malicious. It is however, quite irresponsible to pass around data like this storing it on every device that connects to your iCloud account, which of course includes Apple's servers.

iCloud Sync Data is Complex
I created a way to track how iCloud's sync data is stored on each computer. Hundreds of files are being synced, the data is coded (not encrypted) and very difficult to track, and the preferences for what's to be synced and how are mirrored in dozens of locations on your computer. All this makes it nearly impossible to fully understand the changes that occur during a sync. This is not only scary since developers have a hard time keeping things clean, but it also pretty much ensures a lot of issues when a sync goes wrong or there's a conflict in what's being synced. Check boxes just won't help you solve an iCloud issue.

The reason I went into all that is to illustrate the importance of not trying to adjust iCloud files manually. You could really cause a lot of damage and possibly lose data.

The bottom line... The number of iCloud issues like yours are growing and until Apple overhauls the system and/or offer a user interface to allow advanced management of the data being synced, I don't think it's going to get any easier.

Unless you can get some insight on that folder's purpose directly from Apple, I'd leave it alone.

Best of luck!


Create multiple files with different extensions with one command I am looking for a way to create multiple files with one command and automate the process.
They should share a common name but different extensions. The extensions are always the same.
For example index.js, index.css, index.html
So instead of using
touch index.js, index.css, index.html

I would like to have an miracoules command which does something like this:
*miracle* index

and 3 files are created.

Something like
touch index.{js,css,html}

should work. Which of course can then be turned into a shell function with
miracle() {
    [[ "$1" ]] && touch -- "$1."{js,css,html}
}

The test ensures that the files only get created if a name is passed as an argument, the touch -- ensures that miracle -foo doesn't lead to an error.
and used as
miracle index

To have this defined automatically in bash add the function definition to ~/.bash_profile, for zsh use ~/.zprofile.


Can I direct audio from a single app to a particular output? For example, I would like for iTunes to play thru my iMac's speakers, but iChat's notifications thru my headphones.

If the software you're using doesn't support specifying an an audio output, you'll have to rely on a third-party utility. Someone else already mentioned Ambrosia's WireTap products, but there is one other I'm aware of: Audio Hijack by Rogue Amoeba. At $32, it beats the pants off WireTap for price.
Update for 2020  …
Audio Hijack is current, but now $70.
A simpler yet still effective solution targeted towards this very use-case by the same company is now SoundSource & is about half the price.
[Prices [& tax] vary by territory]
There's also a piece of software called SoundSiphon by Static Z Software that provides the same functionality as Soundflower, plus single-application audio capture. Priced at $29.
*Update for 2020 …
Soundflower no longer includes Soundflowerbed, which was the component allowing this type of routing.
Unfortunately, there are no free utilities for this. Not even Soundflower can capture audio from individual pieces of software. I think Rogue Amoeba's relies on the same underlying magic that allows them to hijack audio from individual pieces of software for their AirPlay utility AirFoil (which allows you to route any application's audio to any AirPlay device, as well as any device running their AirFoil Speakers app).


Does rm -rf * in home directory in MacBook Pro deletes all my pictures in Photos app? Actually I have sold my MacBook Pro and before doing that, I did rm -rf * in home directory and then in Disk Utility I erased both the disk options then I was not able to boot again , when restarted it came up with a flashing question mark sign.

My question is that can I be sure that all my pictures files and in Photos app have been deleted or not?

The Photos app normally uses photos that are stored in the Pictures folder inside of your home directory, although you can change the location that the app looks for and stores photos in.

rm -rf *  means delete all files and folders in the current directory without warning me that I might be deleting something important or asking if I'm sure.

So this would have deleted the photos in the current folder.  It would also delete things like your user Library and all the settings for your user account, which can make the account unusable.

Using disk utility to reformat the hard drive erases the entire computer, operating system and all.

To answer your question, unless someone used some kind of forensic tools to take apart your hard drive, your photos are gone.


Recover Bookmarks, Mail, iCal and more after HardDrive upgrade I have allowed myself a new SSD HD for my MacBookPro.
Now since i had a case-sensitive HD (don't aks) and i wanted to get rid of it and also finally install Lion, i didn't copy the image of my old system.

Now i want my old iCal prefs and Mail Accounts. Also i would like to have my bookmarks from chrome.

I have the old HD in a case so i can plug it in and use it as an external harddrive.

I tryed just copying the whole Library Folder - didn't work.
Any Ideas anyone?

Though not a selective copy, you could use Migration Assistant (under /Applications/Utilities) to copy your entire user data from the older hard drive to the Mac. Turn off Time Machine before doing this (to avoid unnecessary backups and slowing down the migration).

Since you already have the user account and Migration Assistant has created a second account, there is no simple way to merge the two accounts (definitely not the configuration used by various applications and the data, since there may be conflicts). But you can copy over data across from the individual folders under the home directory (and somewhat tediously, application data on an application-by-application basis).

See:
How to use Migration Assistant to transfer files from another Mac
Using Migration Assistant on Lion
Combine two+ Users Accounts on the same machine
Transferring files from one User Account to another


How do I get more RAM for my iPad mini? I can’t play Fortnite because of my iPad has only 1 GB of RAM.

RAM is hardware within your iPad that is soldered in place. It can not be upgraded.

The amount of RAM depends on your model of iPad. Newer iPads generally have more RAM.

How much RAM do the different models of iPad have?

RAM is part of the system on a chip and not replaceable separately even if you disassemble iPad.

  Apple A7 APL0698 SoC
  Within the A7 package we find SK Hynix H9CKNNN8KTARKR 1 GB LPDDR3 DRAM

iFixit iPad Mini 3 Wi-Fi Teardown - Step 6


Apps on two different iPads with same account Dumb question but if you have the same apps on two different iPads with the same account will deleting one also delete it from 2nd iPad?

No, the two installations are independent of each other.


Ways of retrieving photos, notes from iPhone? I'm trying to copy photos and notes from my iPhone 6 to my macbook. The phone was synced to my old computer which suffered a hard drive failure, so I'm trying to save whatever I can from my phone before syncing it to the new one. I haven't had any luck with iCloud and would really like to avoid dming every note and photo to myself one by one :/ Any help appreciated.

For photos, please ask a separate question. As for notes:

Airdrop
Collaborate with the Apple ID in your new Mac
Save to files as text if the notes don't have any photos, and import them back to Notes on new Mac
Easiest one, set up iCloud notes on the new Mac with the same Apple ID as the iPhone.


Transfer music from iPad's iTunes to MacBook's, devices have different iTunes accounts My Dad has an iPad with a lot of songs downloaded onto its iTunes library. Is it possible for me to put the songs onto my MacBook?

The iPad uses my Dad's iTunes account and the MacBook mine.

The only way I know of to share iTunes content between multiple Apple IDs is their family sharing plan. My father and I use it to share movies and TV shows with each other. Apple gives instructions for setting up family sharing. While it is nice to share content, it definitely has drawbacks. The biggest is that there can only be one credit card registered to all accounts under a family plan. Hope this helps.


Specify genre for iTunes Radio On older versions of iTunes Radio, I could type in free-form text for a genre for iTunes Radio (eg "Mongol").

Now, clicking on "Radio" just gives me a list of genres that Apple has chosen ("Alternative", "Classical Alternative", etc.). How can I search for a Radio Station of a genre I specify?

The top-right corner of iTunes has a search box. Typing in "mongol" gives "Search for "mongol" in Apple Music". That gives "Showing Results for "mongol" in Apple Music".

Listed amongst that is "Top Results", "Albums", "Songs", "Artists" and "Stations". Stations lists radios such as "Mongol Radio".

Seems a rather roundabout approach, but at least it works.


Disable window snapping to top on move to second monitor/display This annoying behavior started happening in 10.8 or 10.9 and I'd like to turn it off and make it never ever happen again.

What happens is that when dragging a window from one display to another, when I let go of the mouse button on the second monitor, the window doesn't stay where I left it upon mouse button release, but instead it snaps to the top of the screen where I did not position it.

Does anyone have any idea how to disable this annoying setting?

Thanks in advance.

Very annoying indeed and it's getting worse. The situation I am in is trying to view webpages in different screen widths. As the browser edge gets closer to other windows, Mac now thinks it must "jump to and hold it there" interrupting my process of expanding the page through every pixel width.

There is no setting to manage this yet, however, holding +alt while you scale or move windows dismisses the feature. The very nice bonus of dismissing the 'feature' with alt is how much video/CPU time it took to implement this nuisance is released back to your use. The dragging and re-positioning now becomes much more responsive and smooth rather than just jumping around the screen. It's now a habit to just hold alt as I resize any window on the screen.


When am I allowed to drag a space/app between displays? When I go into "Mission Control" mode, some full-screen apps and other spaces can be dragged between my two displays, and some cannot -- they just stop at the edge.

I haven't figured out the pattern yet.  Some spaces can be dragged between displays, yet other spaces that seem very similar (same kinds of windows in them) cannot, even in the same Mission Control session.

What's the rule?  Why can't I drag things between spaces, sometimes?

After playing around with it some more, I have discovered the pattern.  (It was tricky to figure out because it changes!)

You can't drag the current desktop (of any display) off of that display.


Completely uninstall Adobe CC I want to get rid of all the services, background processes, and apps that would have been installed when I got CC.

The software has a heavy footprint from licensing daemons, always running update processes that use side channel loading and sync processes like these:

How can I uninstall everything related to Adobe CC from my computer?

Every CC app has an uninstaller filed with the app.

These are repeated in the Utilities folder, in Adobe Installers.

The only one that doesn't is the Adobe Application Manager, for which there's an uninstaller here


Is iTunes required for iOS7 iPhone to trust PC with Windows 7? Every time I connect my iPhone 5S (7.0.3, but have had this issue since 7.0 with both 5S and iPhone 4) to my computer (Latitude E6410 with Windows 7 Pro) I get prompted to Trust the computer. I trust it, and each time I reconnect the USB cable, the prompt returns.

I am not alone.

Googling this issue, it seems to affect a large number of Windows 7 users. There isn't a single solution that appears to work for everyone, but this one seems to have helped some:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1567

However, it presupposes the presence of the AMDS service. I do not have this service, I presume because I do not have iTunes installed (and I would prefer not to install it). Nowhere could I find any information from Apple about whether iTunes is required for Trust.
So my questions are:
(a) is it true the iTunes is required for establishing "Trust"?
and
(b) if so, is there a workaround?

Note: this post (related to Linux) would imply to me that it should work without iTunes:
iOS7 won't trust linux computer

Definitely yes. You must have iTunes installed in order for the "Trust computer" option to be remembered.
What you can do is the following:

Temporarily install iTunes, do not run the program itself on your computer

Connect the iPhone and tap "Trust"

Go to the newly-created Apple Lockdown folder on Win 7 it is found here:
C:\ProgramData\Apple\Lockdown

Copy the whole folder and paste it to a location you can remember (i.e. PC Desktop)

Fully uninstall iTunes from your computer

Install the iOS drivers without installing iTunes (these drivers are needed in order for your PC to correctly recognize the iPhone

Restart PC if needed

Navigate to:  C:\ProgramData\

Add a new folder named "Apple" and inside it paste the "Lockdown" folder along with its contents.

This will keep your iPhone trust setting without the need for iTunes being installed


Desktop icons rearrange spontaneously (Yosemite) I like to have all my desktop icons and shortcuts in very specific places. When I take a screenshot of the screen (for example) and it is saved to a file on the desktop, all the desktop icons arrange on the right of the screen by name and I have to move all my icons back to where they were.

I have my desktop set to "none" sorting and "snap to grid" turned off so I can always keep my icons exactly where I want them all the time, without them moving around randomly whenever a file appears on the desktop.

Has anyone else experienced this? It's pretty annoying and very detrimental to the efficiency of my workflow, and others too, I'm sure.

iMac 21.5 inch, late 2012, OS X Yosemite 10.10

I just had the same problem.  If I tried to move an icon, it would bounce back.  The answer was so simple I couldn't believe it.  I went into "View" and clicked on to Sort by "None".  Simple.  Problem solved.


How to have Safari open links with the evil target attribute open in the same tab? In some pages, there are (still) links marked target="_blank".

Safari opens such link in a new tab.

How to have Safari open such link in the same tab ?

I have Safari 7 on Mavericks. I have older Safari as well.

Install the Safari extension LinkThing to customize links behavior. It should be able to solve your problem, additionally, you can also customize the onsite and offsite links behavior.


Is it possible to increase history length on iPhone Safari? Is it possible on Safari for iPhone to increase the length of the browsing history? It seems to only keep one week of browsing history, which makes it hard to go back to stuff more than a week later.

I don't think this is possible without a jailbreak of your iPhone.

The history should clear it's self twice in a month - but how the logic is (every 1. and 15. ??) - I don't know.


How can I sync places between iPhone and computer? I'm looking for a way to drop pins on the map from my computer and have those pins accessible on my iPhone.

I know Maps app has Bookmarks but it appears I can't sync them with Google account or anything. Can I achieve this functionality, with or without third-party apps?

Google Places does exactly that.

You can manage places through web interface or the iPhone app.
Places marked with a star (Saved for later) will be displayed in Saved section in the app:

You can rate and review places from the app as well.


BootCamp 6 on MacBook Pro Early 11 - Unable to install Win10 I just fresh install macOS Sierra on my MacBook Pro early 2011. Now I would love to install Win10 using BootCamp. When I launch the BootCamp utility and insert the Win10 DVD, an error message appear saying that Win10 is not supported for my MacBook. OK.

I search the Internet and found a way by modifying Info.plist and removing my Mac version in the UnsupportedWin10Model tag. I try to do that but the file seems to be locked (using sudo su and whoami returns root).

Is there any way to install Win10 on this "old" MacBook without having to install Win8 then update it to Win10 ?

Windows 10 is not supported under Boot Camp for your particular Mac.  See the Apple Support Document:  Use Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp.

If you are able to install Windows 7/8/8.1 and then upgrade to Windows 10 then this is the workaround you should do.


Why does deleting a Mac OS X app leaves its shortcut in the Launchpad? Whenever I delete an app from the Applications folder, its shortcut stays in the Launchpad. In order to delete it, I have to click on it (a question mark appears), and then drag to the trash can. Is it a bug, or does this mean I am doing something wrong?

It may be a bug, but I am thinking it may mean your Spotlight index is corrupt.

I just tried deleting Evernote from my Applications folder. After authenticating, it moved it to the trash. I then checked launchpad again, and it was no longer there. Then, when I dragged it back out of the trash and placed back into Applications folder. Relaunched launchpad, and it was there again on the last page. As in, worked as expected here.

Launchpad keeps its own plist of what files there are, etc, and thats why there are some modification tools to allow to you to edit it. But I am assuming they would use spotlight to 'watch' your Applications folder to add new items not through the Mac App Store. I assume Spotlight because its a great tool for the job, installing Lion does a huge spotlight re-index, and they do use spotlight often behind the scenes.

First, the GUI way I have seen online is to do this (I do the command line way below):

In system's preferences -> spotlight -> Privacy add the drive you want to re-index
Quit System's preferences
Logout of your sessions
Login again :-)
In system's preferences -> spotlight -> Privacy remove the drive you want to re-index
Wait.. a faily long time. You should see mdworker and/or mds running

Personally, I have always done it through the command line.

Launch ‘Terminal’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
At the command prompt, type this exactly: sudo mdutil -E /
You will be asked for your password, provide it, as this command requires
administrator privelages to run
You will receive a confirmation message saying that index will be rebuilt
Wait until index is finished rebuilding, this can take a while depending on the size of your hard drive, amount of files, etc.

While I can't find any documentation online that 100% confirms that Launchpad uses Spotlight for this, this would be the first place I would look for the problem you are having.


How can you reset security questions on an Apple ID when you have the password, but the security email is incorrect? There's a bit of a story, but the nub of the issue is we have forgotten the answers to the security questions on an Apple ID used for purchasing apps and music and can't reset the answers / questions due the security email address pointing to an account we don't control.

Here's the rest of the story...

Being the good son I am, I bought my mother an iPhone4s for her birthday.
Now, don't get me wrong - my mother is fairly tech savvy considering her age. She runs her company's website, manages a Facebook community, and shares pictures of her grandsons via Gmail. But Apple Accounts is what stumped her.

She registered and signed up her Apple account using her iPhone, all nice and well. When she came to making her first purchase on the AppStore, she was asked the security questions. The questions were phrased in Hebrew, and for the life of her she couldn't remember the answers. To make matters worse, she did not know whether she answered them in Hebrew or English.

This is where I stepped in. After trying out dozens of combinations, I resorted to resetting her security questions via her account page. But alas, the security email points an email account with a typo, rather than her main defined email account.

Still I did not lose hope, and sent an email to Apple support, which instructed me to contact their security team via the phone number in this page. The phone number provided for Israel does not work (I think it's disconnected or out of service).

I tried contacting Apple Support in the US, but they claim that the device, as identified by its serial number is not covered by Apple support. Great.

What can I do at this point? I'm at a loss.

I really don't want her to  open a different account. How can I help her salvage this one so she can answer the three security questions when they are asked for adding new devices or adding a credit card to the account?

Focus on iTunes billing support. When you need support on a device and the software support window is over, you pay for that help.

iTunes billing support is generally free since you can't spend more money in the store without a working account. You always have to get a support person to call you since people that have access to the store accounts are a very limited subset of all the support personnel.

Just be persistent - keep good notes, provide a phone number where they can reach you and have all the details of the account you can muster ready. Things like purchase history, credit card bills so you can tell the person the last two or three purchases made from that account in terms of date, transaction number and amount.

Once you've gotten the password reset, you can go back and fix all the security questions at https://appleid.apple.com

Worst case, you can add a new email address to the account, verify it, and then see if you can send a security question reset after that email is verified by Apple and in use for a week or so. Also - make more purchases from that account (free apps are fine) to show that the device that was registered to that account is still in use and still associated with the account even though the email address on file is new.


accidentally deleted entire iTunes Match music library - is there a way to recover? I'm slightly panicking here.

I don't keep local copies of songs in my iTunes library, instead streaming them on demand via iTunes Match, to save space on the SSD drive.

In certain situations such as buying music from a source different than iTunes, or if i decide to download an album for listening locally, the songs end up on my disc. So whenever i feel like it, i select all the music in the library and hit delete in order to delete the local files. My music is still stored on Apple's servers.

Today though, in a hurry, i must have hit the wrong button which, in a blink, deleted my entire library from iTunes Match. It disappeared from my iOS devices and from iTunes on my Mac without a trace. Gone. Help! is there a way to undo this step?

I should add, ~99% of my collection is not bought through iTunes, so it's not a matter of re-downloading previous purchases.

update: okay, shortly before this incident, i was adding an album to iTunes in ALAC format which i had reencoded from FLACs bought from boomkat.com - this was "exotic" music not available from iTunes, and the Match status said "uploaded" from all tracks. Now, when i added these same files again to my freshly wiped library, it didn't upload them. Sure enough, the status says "uploaded", but the process took like 2 seconds. The files were definitely cached on Apple's server, so I still have a little hope..

Unfortunately, iTunes Match really isn't made to be a backup service in this way, and it can be really easy to loose stuff if you don't have other means of recovering it.

For those songs you purchased from iTunes, you should be able to still see them in the purchased list in the iTunes store, and re-add them to your library. Many other sources, like Amazon, will also allow you to re-download their files.

If you had a Time Machine backup, maybe your old library is stored there as well?

If you happen to have an iPod, and had any music synced to it, you could actually use that as a 'backup' and pull your songs from there using an application like iRip. This would only work though if you had a device with the files actually on there, as in a iPod classic or nano, or an iOS device you had downloaded music too.

Finally, you MAY be able to contact Apple Support and see if they have any way of helping, but this may take a very long time and not actually produce anything. I have had a hard time getting support on anything with Match, so replacing an entire library may even be harder. I would recommend calling them if possible.


Postfix SMTP server slow to accept incoming connection I have a snow-leopard os-x Server configuration running postfix with no local firewall on the X-Serve.

When a client attempts to connect to the SMTP port the connection takes about 15 seconds to accept the connection and get the smtp id string back.

Does anybody have any idea what the delay could be.

telnet smtpserver 25
takes 15 seconds externally

telnet localhost 25
is almost immediate

Using tcpdump on incoming firewall (separate host) and smtp server for the port shows that the connection is being passed through almost immediately but the response is very slow in coming back.

Thanks for the support.

The Delay is due to postfix doing a reverse lookup on the client IP and doing another lookup on that result to see if they get back to the IP.

if you are using a consumer connection to the internet most likely the first test will pass. but the second test will cause the problem.

you can verify this on the server itself.

nslookup <your client IP>

returns something like 80-41-90-213.dsl.iwx.uk.net

but on reversing that

nslookup 80-41-90-213.dsl.iwx.uk.net

you will probably get SERVFAIL after a delay.

it is that delay that is showing up when you connect to the server.
To find out which one go through each server in /etc/resolve.conf

nameserver x.x.x.x
nameserver y.y.y.y
nameserver z.z.z.z

test them with

nslookup 80-41-90-213.dsl.iwx.uk.net x.x.x.x

One or more will show a delay before they come back to the command prompt.

Once you've found which DNS causes the big SERVFAIL delay, replace it with another. i.e. Googles 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 currently return relatively quickly.


MySQL server wont start For some reason, MySQL won't start anymore. Suddenly happened out of the blue.

This is what is written in

  /var/log/system.log

right after I try to open MySQL.

Feb  8 16:07:31 mys-MacBook-Air.local System Preferences[2795]: about to perform command
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_authenticate(): Got user: mybak
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_authenticate(): Got ruser: (null)
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_authenticate(): Got service: authorization
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in od_principal_for_user(): No authentication authority returned
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in od_principal_for_user(): failed: 7
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_authenticate(): Failed to determine Kerberos principal name.
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_authenticate(): Done cleanup3
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_authenticate(): Kerberos 5 refuses you
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_authenticate(): pam_sm_authenticate: ntlm
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_acct_mgmt(): OpenDirectory - Membership cache TTL set to 1800.
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in od_record_check_pwpolicy(): retval: 0
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in od_record_attribute_create_cfstring(): returned 2 attributes for dsAttrTypeStandard:AuthenticationAuthority
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Establishing credentials
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Got user: mybak
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Context initialised
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Got euid, egid: 0 0
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Done getpwnam()
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Done setegid() & seteuid()
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): pam_sm_setcred: krb5 user mybak doesn't have a principal
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Done cleanup3
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Done seteuid() & setegid()
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): Done cleanup4
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): pam_sm_setcred: ntlm
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local authorizationhost[4202]: in pam_sm_setcred(): pam_sm_setcred: no domain found skipping
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local com.apple.SecurityServer[15]: UID 501 authenticated as user mybak (UID 501) for right 'com.mysql.administrator.server'
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local com.apple.SecurityServer[15]: Succeeded authorizing right 'com.mysql.administrator.server' by client '/Users/mybak/Library/PreferencePanes/MySQL.pre\
fPane/Contents/Resources/mahelper' [4200] for authorization created by '/Applications/System Preferences.app' [2795] (100003,0)
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local coreservicesd[26]: Application App:"System Preferences" [ 0x0/0xc40c4]  @ 0x0x7fe49cb90aa0 tried to be brought forward, but isn't in fPermittedFrontASN\
s ( ( ASN:0x0-0xe40e4:) ), so denying.
Feb  8 16:07:36 mys-MacBook-Air.local WindowServer[176]: [cps/setfront] Failed setting the front application to System Preferences, psn 0x0-0xc40c4, securitySessionID=0x186a4, err=-13066
Feb  8 16:07:39 mys-MacBook-Air.local System Preferences[2795]: status= 0

Further googling these lines did not return any clues.

You can try and disable pam authentication under your ssh server and see if that helps


Is it bad to store a mac on top of a windows laptop due to the magnetic power cord? I have a Windows Laptop and a MacBook and I like to keep them both in the same place.  Is it bad to stack them on top of each other?

This has been asked a couple different times (as in What computer components are currently vulnerable to magnets?), but with nothing explicitly addressing the close proximity of a non-magnetically placed power source right next to a mac.

Unless the laptop comes from the mid-1980s and has the floppy drive directly below the magnet, no.

The components most affected my magnetic fields are the hard disk drive and the CRT display. Laptops haven't had CRT displays for quite a while now, and are largely losing their magnetic storage. If you do have a spinning drive instead of a SSD, the current ones are far less sensitive to external magnetic fields than they used to be: increased capacity -> less sensitivity.

So unless you have a massively-powerful rare-earth or electromagnet on the shelf, don't worry about it. The tiny magnet in the power connector won't even be noticed.


MacBookPro 2011 GPU failure. Csrutil command will not work at all I am having the GPU failure issue and I'm trying to disable some kexts however i'm constantly told operation permitted.

I am following Lizardtrons video on Youtube where it seems atleast 2.2K people have had success however I'm stuck.

https://youtu.be/nFFPk3SeQbQ

I have installed Dosdudes software to automatically delete the kexts for me however it still says SIP is enabled.

I am running MacOS Sierra 10.12.6. I can add more info if needed.

I cannot for the life of me disable csrutil in terminal, safe mode or recovery mode. It says the command is not found. It is as if computer does not know the command.

However when I type in 'csrutil status' in terminal on the desktop it actually says SIP enabled.

So its recognising it on the desktop terminal but not on safe mode(cmd S) and Recovery mode (cmd R).

I have also tried internet recovery to newest install newest OS however it only promts me to install OX Lion.

I installed El Capitan onto an external HD to see if I could boot a new OS from that but when holding option key prior to boot, the only HD that comes up is the internal drive and not the external boot drive.

I am running MacOS Sierra 10.12.6

All i need to do is 'csrutil disable' so operations can be permitted.

I've been at it for 3 days now and I really don't want to give up as I've got a week off work and decided to dig this out of its death!

Any help is greatly appricieated. I am not 100% tech savy however I can adapt fast with instructions etc

Also sorry if the question is all over the place.

Just incase anyone had this same issue.

I had to use a new external HD (backed up everything onto it) and booted with that using option button.

Then erased the internal disk using disk utility and it then allowed me to do a fresh MacOS which then updated the recover software to 10.12.6 Sierra.

Which then therefore allowed me to disable csrutil in Recovery mode.


What replaces x86 intrinsics for C when Apple ditches Intel CPUs for their own chips? There are whole industries founded on the use of Intel Intrinsics for CPU parallelisation (with SIMD). For example, the community of Lattice QCD physicists depend on that for boost in the efficiency of lattice simulations.

Intel-based macs can be and are routinely used by such professionals to do their job. However, there are rumours about Apple replacing Intel CPU with ARM cpus in future Macs. Will these professionals have to replace Macs with other Intel-based computers, or are there alternatives to Intel Intrinsics for C that are supported on ARM-based CPUs?

Intel Intrinsics are really just a library that provides easier access to a number of Intel instructions sets - such as SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions), AVX, etc. - for C programmers. The goal is to be able to utilise these instruction sets for parallelisation, etc. without having to do low-level assembly programming by hand.

The ARM platform has similar instruction sets that serve many of the same purposes. For example NEON is the ARM alternative to SSE on Intel. NEON gives you SIMD instructions that you can leverage to increase parallelisation.

And similar to the Intel Intrinsics, you have the ARM Compiler Intrinsics, that serves the same purpose. You can include "arm_neon.h" in your C program to be able to use NEON instructions with a C interface without having to resort to low-level assembly programming.

It is worth noting however, that the instructions available on Intel and ARM are not identical. So similar to "ordinary programs", you cannot use SIMD instructions for Intel on ARM (or vice versa) directly. In practice, software programmers often use software libraries with ready-made higher level operations that are able to take advantage of both Intel instructions as well as ARM instructions. A good example is the "Simd" image processing library (https://github.com/ermig1979/Simd) which offers high level operations that have seperate, optimized implementations for SSE, AVX, VMX, VSX and NEON (i.e. Intel, PowerPC and ARM).

As far as I can see, the growth in new parallisation features is very high on both Intel and ARM platforms - it is essential to providing next generation performance for some users. On newer ARM chips you have access to for example the SVE instruction set (Scalable Vector Extensions, which is essentially an even better SIMD instruction set for 64-bit ARM processors). There's no inherent advantage to either the Intel or ARM platforms in terms of providing new and enhanced SIMD instruction sets for programmers in the future.

Apple's own processors (in for example iPhones and iPads) have had the NEON instruction set for many years. The A5 CPUs and later also have the Advanced NEON set. The newer A11 CPUs have the SVE instructions, and the very latest A12 CPUs add SIMD support for complex numbers on top of that.


Text Editor on iOS that can edit files from any folder in Dropbox Can anyone recommend an iOS text editor (iPad and iPhone) that can open arbitrary text files from Dropbox?

I've used a few, but they tend to be restricted to a specific subdirectory of my Dropbox root, e.g. Elements only lets me work in the ~/Dropbox/Elements directory.

There's a large number of applications available that can do this.

My preferred text editor happens to be Byword. By default, it'll link to a specific dropbox folder (/Apps/Byword), but you can change this in the app's settings; just setting it to "/" will give access to every folder in your Dropbox.

iA Writer is another popular choice.

If you're looking for something more geared towards code than writing, Textastic is nice.

Additionally, Brett Terpstra has compiled a large list of iOS text editors and features here, though it doesn't specify which apps have full access or if they are limited to a specific App folder in Dropbox.


How to downgrade from El Capitan to Snow Leopard? I am not happy with El Capitan, and it is also not compatible with both music hardware and software that I have, so I want to go back to Snow Leopard on my late 2009 iMac.
After installing El Capitan the CD drive on my iMac is not working, and I was unable to install Snow Leopard from it.

So I made a bootable USB that gets recognized when I hold option when the machine is booting. When I choose it, I get the white screen with the Apple logo, but it doesn't go into the installation phase. I have formatted my drive and no longer have El Capitan on it.

How can I install Snow Leopard? It looks to me(and I'm hopefully wrong about this) like El Capitan has blocked the option to downgrade to an earlier OS, and it is a bit infuriating that I am not in control of hardware that I have spent a lot of money on.

As Monomeeth pointed out, a firmware update which requires 10.6.3 might have prevented me from installing from the CD and bootable USB.
I was able to get an image of 10.6.8 and restore it to my hard drive, and I am now finally running Snow Leopard!


How to fix macOS High Sierra Boot Failure on iMac Apple 21.5-inch Computer? Few weeks ago, on an Apple 21.5” iMac Desktop Computer (4th-Generation, late 2013), I installed the just released macOS High Sierra v.10.13.1. I’ve recognized that on November 29, 2017, Apple Released a Security Update for macOS High Sierra and installed it on the iMac in the background (without consent). During the next weekend I’ve Shut Down the computer, then turned it off with the power button and unplug the power cord overnight. When I reconnected the power cord and turned on the iMac with the power button on the next morning, I could see the log-in screen, enter the password, and then a muddy picture with a unusually slow moving progress bar, which run (filled) completely, but the screen did not progress, as typically, to open a functional Desktop (picture) with the Dock. After waiting for about an hour, I’ve tried to Force Shutdown the computer by pressing and holding the power button, then restart the iMac with the power button, but only got the same muddy picture with the slowly moving progress bar, which, again, after running till the end, the computer did not progress to opening a functional Desktop with a Dock.

I restarted several more times, unsuccessfully, then I contacted Apple Support and talked on the phone to few advisors (Case ID: 100370008105). In order to correct this situation, together, or I myself, did several times the following:

Manual restart
Start up in Safe Mode
Reset the System Management Controller (SMC)
Reset the Nonvolatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM)
In Single-User Mode, a “senior” advisor from Apple Support wanted me to run the following commands (without further explanation):
mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
reboot

However, after the log-in screen asking for the password, we have always ended up at the following GRAY SCREEN: user account picture, user account name, and progress bar (initially “filling” fast until the middle, and then slowing down, “filled” completely, till the end, after about 20 minutes). But NO visible progress to open the Desktop with the Dock (when waiting for several hours).
GRAY SCREEN

Since I could not recognize whether the computer could communicate with the original wireless keyboard and mouse in Bluetooth, I’ve replaced them and connected an Apple wired keyboard and mouse to the iMac.

Starting up from macOS Recovery, I’ve been able several times to

“Install the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac, without upgrading to a later version” using Command (⌘)-R
“Upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac,” macOS High Sierra v.10.13.2, using Option-Command-R
“Install the macOS that came with your Mac, or the version closest to it that is still available” using Shift-Option-Command-R

Options 1 and 2 download and installation had always run (apparently) without problems, until I’ve ended up, again, at the same GRAY SCREEN. Option 3 could NOT be completed: “OS X Mavericks cannot be installed on “Macintosh HD” because a newer OS was installed.

Current Startup Disk (is):
Macintosh HD
OS X, 10.13.2

The iMac’s hardware (hard drive) appeared NOT damaged:

Starting up in Single-User Mode by pressing Command-S as the iMac starts up and running a disk check [sbin/fsck -fy], showed “The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.”
Disk Check
The Apple Diagnostics and Apple Hardware Test showed “No issues found”
Hardware Test
Running the Disk Utility displayed “Operation successful”

The only issue I’ve able to identify was after a start up in Verbose Mode and using the key combination Command-V. It did display “indefinitely” the following message: “Process [x] crashed: opendirectoryd. Too many corpses being created.” After several hours it went from Process [187] to Process [1379], when I’ve lost patience and did a Force Shutdown.
First Aid on Macintosh

I appeal to all iGeeks to show their prowess and assist me in fixing the (software, macOS) issue on this iMac, so I can use it again before the Holidays, and thanks in advance for your consideration.
Verbose Mode

Have you tried using disk utility to delete all partitions and create a new one when installing? That might work, I bet there's an error on your disk, since it was probably was writing someting to it when you forced it to shut down, that's bad. It's ok to do that when reading data, not writing.

Alternatively, take the disk out (or tryt slave mode) and use paragon partition manager on some windows pc to check for errors. (paragon is not free)


Terminal won't open on non-admin accounts in Sierra Terminal works just fine in my admin account, but won't open a terminal window in any of my regular user accounts.  If I choose Shell > New Window > New Window with Settings, I get the following "Internal error":

Exception Name: NSInvalidArgumentException
Description: -[TTView touchBar]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fde735b0710
User Info: (null)

macOS 10.12 Sierra

Go to System Preferences —> Parental Controls —> (select your Standard User Account) —> Allowed Apps
In the below list see whether terminal is allowed or not. if not just enable it.


How to remove symlinks created after a specific date? Say I did a

ln -s /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/* /usr/local/include/

Now I regret it. How can I delete all these links? The good news is I created them today, so can I filter on the creation date of these symlinks?

Inspired by How to delete files from a specific date?:

# Create a marker
touch -t 201910190000.00 /tmp/PID$$.marker1

# View the files you would like to delete
find /usr/local/include/ -type l -newer /tmp/PID56680.marker1 -ls | less

# Delete them
find /usr/local/include/ -type l -newer /tmp/PID56680.marker1 | xargs rm -f


Create Wireless Bridge Connection Between Modem & WNDR3700 Router My ADSL modem is in one room and my Computer (Mac) and Router is in the other. I'd like  the Router to connect to the Modem wirelessly to access Internet.

I've enabled Bridging in the Modem and I'm able to connect to the internet via an ethernet cable after setting up a PPPoE connection (with ISP settings) and connecting directly to my Mac. However, when I try and unplug the cable and even after entering the Internet access settings (username and password) in the Router I'm unable to connect to the Internet wirelessly.

Im using a Netgear WNDR3700 Router and a Technicolor TG582n Modem. My Mac is running OS X Mavericks.

I'm not sure where I'm going wrong!

Nothing is going wrong, this is expected behavior.  You are disconnecting the path used by the router to connect to the modem.  The short answer is, you can not do this this way.  The router needs to be physically connected to the modem if the modem is bridging.

The long answer includes explanations that have to do with the Data Link Layer versus the Networking layer and using the router as a wired to wireless bridge...

If the modem has built in wireless capability you could turn everything on in it.  I do not know if your router will act as a wired to wireless bridge (backwards from the usual).  This would require special configuration that is not what is usually expected.


Bulk Changing Application Icons on System So the question is pretty straight forward. I've disabled SIP (System Integrity Protection) and I am able to use the "copy paste" method, described in numerous tutorials, successfully to change my Application Icons. I'm wondering however if there is a folder where all the Application Icons are stored. I know that the Trash Icons and the Finder Icons are located at System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources and that I'm able to for all intensive purposes "click and drag" the new trash and finder icons to this folder and it update the icons accordingly.

Is there a central location where all Application Icons are stored so that I can click and drag all 50 of my 'new' icons to a folder and then restart the dock app to refresh the icons?

@klanomath is close, but you actually can bulk change the icon. While the .icns file is stored within the application, it's referenced in an .xml file known as info.plist inside the Contents folder of every app. There's a string CFBundleIconFile with specifies the name of the .icns file inside the Resources folder.

While simply finding every .icns file and changing it would probably work in most cases, it's not the best practice. While it's rare for .icns files to be used for anything other than application icons, some app bundles include multiple side apps. This method minimizes risk.

If you'd like, I'll gladly assist in building an app to fit your renaming needs.


In MacOS, is there a way to prevent unwanted input when the screen is locked? When I walk away from my MacBook Pro (2016, if it matters), I lock the screen, but leave the laptop open.  If my cat decides to make a bed from the computer while I am away from the desk, when I return, I often find a number of programs opened once I unlock the screen.
My only assumption is this is the Touch Bar, hotkey shortcuts, or some combination of the two.  How is this even possible?  Shouldn't the computer be completely unresponsive to non-login input?  If that's not the case, how can I make that the case?  I don't want anything but the ability to log in.
Currently running Mojave (10.14.6), but this happened on prior versions as well.

Did you set your Mac to lock by going to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General, and then select Require Password, as shown below?


Prevent page reload in safari due to excessive power usage How can I prevent Safari from refreshing the page showing the message "This web page has been reloaded because it was using significant energy"?

I would like to leave the coinhive miner running when my machine is idle but it always gets stopped by the Safari refreshes.

Thanks

I found this apple support discussion on the matter:

  Well, my "solution" so far has been to run that process in Chrome
  instead of Safari. Not only does Chrome let it run for as long as I
  like, it turns out that it's able to execute it more than twice as
  fast (for this particular case).


iPhone App for Weather Push Notifications Is there an app that sends weather alerts push notification to the iPhone? I have seen similar apps on Andriod but haven't seen one for the iPhone.

Yes... WeatherBug.  I don't use it on my iPod but it works great on Android.  Their product description page mentions the same functionality on iOS as on Android, i.e. National Weather Service (NWS) alerts.

On my Droid it pops up with a red triangle in the notification area when there's an alert.


Will Eclipse + Android Developer Tools plugin work on OS X Yosemite? I would like to update my system to the newest 10.10 Yosemite version, but I use quite intensively Eclipse + ADT to develop apps for Android. Does anyone have any experience with running this software on Yosemite (maybe beta version)?

I am asking this question, because I would like to update, but on the other hand I don't want to mess things up with Java and ADT (btw. There were problems and I needed to use workarounds even on Mavericks).

I got this error

I tried updating the Java to the latest Java 8 update 25 but still didn't work.

but after going to the recommended website from apple and download and install it: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

it worked just fine again. It was able to start.

It says Java 6. I'm not really sure what other repercussions will be. It's like a downgrade.

i still do have 1.7 in my eclipse compiler though.


Mac OS X Recovery Mode - Headless Access? I have a Macbook Pro, which unfortunately the screen has died on. External displays do not work either.

I can normally ssh and screenshare into the mac fine, but now need to repair the internal HD.
Is it possible to screen share or ssh into a machine in recovery mode?
At the moment it doesn't seem to be appearing on the network, but I know recovery mode should connect to my wifi.

Is ssh enabled or can I enable it somehow?

Turn the problem upside down. Boot the laptop in target disk mode and use another (working) Mac to access the drive over firewire or thunderbolt. It will behave just like an external drive.


Very strange partition table: Missing a sector between Main and Recovery partition So I have been trying to get Windows 7 on my machine using no DVD or USB (I have only an ISO to work with). I used various combinations of Boot Camp, Toast Titanium, Virtualbox / VMWare, Disk Utility, and rEFIt to attempt this, and after realizing that nothing had worked and getting a DVD-RW, I set about putting everything back to normal, i.e:

Changing my MBR table back to a single EFI protective partition spanning the entire disk (apparently, Boot Camp magically did that for me)
Making my OS X partition fill my whole disk again (in the EFI table, using Disk Utility).

So now everything looks pretty much fine from the outside, but there's on detail that bothers me a little bit. Here's the output from diskutil list:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s4

As you can see, I have no disk0s3 partition. My Recovery HD partition should be in disk0s3 and I should have no disk0s4. But I have no idea how this came about or how severe it is, and only the faintest idea how to fix it (deleting, making a new Recovery HD, not sure if that'll work)

As well, here is the output from rEFIt's Partition Inspector:

*** Report for internal hard disk ***

Current GPT partition table:
 #      Start LBA      End LBA  Type
 1             40       409639  EFI System (FAT)
 2         409640    975503591  Mac OS X HFS+
 3      975503592    976773127  Mac OS X Boot

Current MBR partition table:
 # A    Start LBA      End LBA  Type
 1              1    976773167  ee  EFI Protective

MBR contents:
 Boot Code: Unknown, but bootable

Partition at LBA 40:
 Boot Code: None (Non-system disk message)
 File System: FAT32
 Listed in GPT as partition 1, type EFI System (FAT)

Partition at LBA 409640:
 Boot Code: None
 File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
 Listed in GPT as partition 2, type Mac OS X HFS+

Partition at LBA 975503592:
 Boot Code: None
 File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
 Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Mac OS X Boot

Which confirms that my MBR table is in the right place, and also tells me that my disk0s2 and disk0s4 are indeed right next to each other, so there is no invisible partition in between.

Thanks for your help!

Matt

Rebooting the system reorganized the list on my mac


Apple-provided software to measure or estimate the CPU load associated with Core Storage With Mac OS X 10.7 (Build 11A411) alone, or with Xcode 4.1:

Q: is there a way to accurately measure, or at least estimate the CPU load associated with Core Storage?

A graphical view of load on a timeline would be useful but not essential.

I would be equally happy with useful results from something run at the command line.

Distinguishing this question from others

Popularly-referenced (and well written) sources such as Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica review (page 13) (2011-07-20) discuss uses of the CPU in ways that are reassuring, for example:

  … Whole disk encryption takes advantage of this nearly omnipresent CPU cycle glut to sneak in the tiny chunks of work it requires to encrypt and decrypt data from the disk. Apple also leverages the special-purpose AES instructions and hardware on Intel's newest CPUs, further reducing the CPU overhead. The end result is that regular users will be hard-pressed to notice any reduction in performance with encryption enabled. …

In AnandTech — Back to the Mac: OS X 10.7 Lion Review (page 18) (2011-07-20) there's benchmarking and performance, and screenshots of a CPU graph in Activity Monitor, but those graphs are too broad for this question: any number of things could contribute to peaks of activity. Another set of benchmarks: Filevault 2 Benchmarks : Max Cho (2011-07-22). And so on.

In this question I am:

less interested in benchmarks, less interested in performance.

More interested in:

Core Storage-related load on CPU that is, I suspect, not presented by Activity Monitor.

Possible relationships to other questions

Not limited to Ask Different, some users of Lion observe occasions when running of fans to cool the CPU is inexplicably high for the detectable load on CPU.

An answer to this question might help us to assist with questions elsewhere. Currently on my radar:

What variable in the operating system determines the fans in OS X?

Use cases

I would probably begin with measurements during:

forward conversion with passphrase encryption
forward conversion without encryption
backward conversion with decryption
backward conversion without decryption.

(Around this time — less than two weeks since Lion was released — forward conversion may be most commonly encountered after beginning FileVault 2 encryption of a startup volume, or after beginning Time Machine encryption of a backup volume, but there can be many other applications of Core Storage.)

Notes

Apple's manual page (not yet published) for corestoraged(1) offers the following description:

  corestoraged manages CoreStorage volumes.  It is invoked by launchd(8) when a CoreStorage volume needs management.

— so whilst corestoraged appears in Activity Monitor, CPU load for that process alone is probably not an indicator of everyday (non-management) uses of Core Storage.

There's the kernel extension, /System/Library/Extensions/CoreStorage.kext but currently in Apple's Kernel Extension Programming Topics there's only one reference to CPU and honestly, I lack the skills to interpret most documentation for developers.

A 2011-07-22 post Re: [Fed-Talk] Lion FileVault (highlights) draws attention to kernel_task but as far as I recall, that process has not been noticeable to me whenever my CPU is hot without explanation.

Not ruling out the possibility of greater attention to kernel_task … an answer to a different question led me to experiment with fs_usage but it seems not applicable to pid 0.

Thank you!

iotop would be the first place to go if Activity Monitor wasn't getting you an answer. It uses dtrace instead of the activitymonitord and has far superior probing skills without the "needing to learn DTrace" part.

Instruments would be my second choice but it has so many presets, it might be some probing until someone answers with an easy 1, 2, 3 to reveal the specific workload of FileVault 2.


How can I open a file with extension DAA on Mac? How do I open a file with a .daa file extension on my Mac? Is there a Mac program that will convert it to an ISO image?

According to this reference, .daa is an extension related to the PowerIso application. This 2008 MacWorld article suggests an open source application - DAA Converter for OS X. The app page states:

  DAA Converter is a free utility for converting DAA & GBI disk images
  to ISO format so they can be accessed on your Mac.

  DAA Converter is a native GUI application which wraps the command-line
  tool, DAA2ISO/GBI2ISO, by Luigi Auriemma.  It runs on Mac OS X 10.3
  Panther or later.

I don't have any .daa files to test with, so I can't verify that this utility works. However, it's a GPL freeware app, so it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot.


Is there still integrated login on the iPhone for Google, Facebook, and Twitter? It seems that since iOS 11, integrated login for Facebook and Twitter was removed (which was introduced in iOS 6).

What about for Google?

Yes, Apple has removed the Facebook and Twitter integration starting with iOS 11.

Google integration has never been available in iOS in the manner similar to how Facebook and Twitter was. However, it has been always possible to add a Google account on your iPhone to access Mail, Contacts and Notes within the 1st party apps. The option can be found Passwords & Accounts section of iOS Settings app.


How can I add a second Twitter account to iOS Contacts/iCloud? iOS 5 recently added Twitter and Facebook fields for contacts, and this was also incorporated into iCloud. However, it seems that you can only add one Twitter (and Facebook) account per contact, which is rather inconvenient as I know several people who have 2 Twitter accounts.

Is there a way to add a second Twitter field to iOS Contacts or iCloud? I know I could add a twitter:@username URL, but I was wondering if it's possible to natively add a second account.

It is possible to assign multiple twitter ids to a contact. You have 2 ways of achieving this. Through iOS or through the Address Book app on Mac OS.

On iOS 5 you can add multiple Twitter accounts to a contact on the device like this:

Chose a contact
Edit
Add field ...
Select Twitter
Enter the twitter account

When you already have a Twitter account field you can't add another one like this anymore. Instead you will have to do as follow:

Under the Twitter field you will see an empty field for Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace or Flickr
select this empty field's name and chose Twitter
Enter the additional Twitter account

You can repeat this procedure for additional accounts.

This doesn't seem very intuitive at first, but it looks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace and Flickr are simply subcategories for a dedicated "social network" field and are managed just like other multiple entries fields on the device:

email -> work, home...
url -> home page, home, work, other...
date -> anniversary, other

On Mac OS using the Address Book Application.
Select the contact you want to edit, edit it.

To to the menu Card -> Add Field -> Twitter ...
And add the twitter account.

Repeat as many times as needed.

Your contacts will sync shortly afterward.


How to setup Disk Quotas on macOS Big Sur? Is there a way to limit a user's disk space usage in macOS Big Sur?
I found this article to setup disk quotas from CNET, but apparently it is not working anymore with Big Sur. There are two problems that I discovered:

The root "/" file system cannot be written on (even with sudo).
Creating the quota files (.quota.ops.user) within the /System/Volumes/Data directory had no effect in setting up the quota (e.g. running sudo edquota) had no output.

You would need to install quota-tools from Homebrew and then use that to configure your disk quotas.
Install Homebrew (if you haven't done so already)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Then install quota-tools.
brew install quota-tools

Afterwards edit your /etc/fstab to enable disk quotas for the file sytem
/dev/rdisk0 /home apfs defaults,usrquota 0 2

Then run edquota to add disk quotas for the individual users:
sudo edquota -p user1 user2

After that restart the system to have the disk remounted and disk quota to take effect.


Do any window managers allow me to snap windows to the sides of the display? Can you recommend a Window Manager for the Mac? I would like to have a keyboard shortcut that would snap a windows to the left or right half of my screen.

SizeUp is exactly what you need:

  SizeUp allows you to quickly position a window to fill exactly half the screen (splitscreen), a quarter of the screen (quadrant), full screen, or centered via the menu bar or configurable system-wide shortcuts (hotkeys). Similar to "tiled windows" functionality available on other operating systems.


URL to individual email Is it possible to have an url that links to an individual email message on my local machine? So that if I click on osxmail://759847982 my mail client will open that specific message.

GMail can do this, but I wonder if it's possible in a native client.

I'm open to any application, it doesn't have to be Apple Mail.

You can simply drag the message from Mail.app to a folder to create the link you want. The link that is generated is automagically named using the subject line of the email message. Yes, there are many such situations where Mac OS will do the natural thing.

You can also drag any message to TextEdit.app (as long as it's to an RTF document).  Sadly, I haven't gotten this to work with Pages '09, but TextEdit isn't that bad.  The same is reported to work with Stickies. See this link for a stickies example.

Here is another approach:

In Mail.app, on the message that you'd like to link to, select

View->Message->All Headers

(or ⇧⌘H)

and look for the a line that begins with Message ID.  Copy the text to the right of "Message ID" and use it to link to that message via

message://<copied-messageid>

.  Make sure to copy the < and > along with the rest of the id. I've tested this and it works with Safari.app as described in this article on MacOSX Hints.


How to save a .css file from TextEdit or Word? I once read you could force the color of visited links in Safari by adding a:visited { color: #6611cc !important; } in the .css file under Preferences < Advanced. In this way, it will turn every link you've clicked on purple and by so override the actual web design.

I like the idea but I tried to do so, but TextEdit or Word won't allow me to save the file. It wants to add .rtf, .webdesign or other extensions behind the .css.
How can I force to add this to the .css file?

First, use TextEdit, don't use Word.

Before you save your document, select Make Plain Text from the Format menu. (If the menu says Make Rich Text then you are already in plain text mode.)

If you save the document now, you should be able to give it whatever extension you want. Since the file is plain text, you can be sure that TextEdit won't add any additional formatting instructions that will turn it into an incorrectly-formatted CSS file.