Keep getting locked-out of corporate domain accounts I have a macbook pro running mavericks and recently changed my password per corporate policy. I have done this regularly for the past two years without issue. However, it has now been two weeks of hell being constantly locked-out of my account. I have deleted/recreated my keychain several times. Cleared all cached passwords in all browsers several times. Yet I keep getting locked-out and need to request unlocking by admins.

So, my question is whether there is a way to monitor what is attempting to login from my machine? I tried running wireshark but did not capture anything obvious. (It is possible I was looking for the wrong things)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm about to wipe my laptop and re-image.

I tried everything suggested many times and have finally had to just re-image my machine. there was apparently something running on my laptop that was attempting to constantly login but, neither I or our corporate Mac support team could figure it out. I have not had any issues since re-imaging.

Thank you for all the suggestions!


How to disable battery charging? From the pmset man page:

  POWER SOURCE ARGUMENTS

  -g with a 'batt' or 'ps' argument will show the state of all attached power sources.

  […] Certain Apple battery calibration tools may temporarily disable
  battery charging, even though your Apple portable is plugged into AC
  power.

  Such tools will never surprise you with this behavior; you will know
  it's happening. This state will be reflected in an additional line of
  output to 'batt' or 'ps' readings, including the pid of the app
  inducing this behavior.

     'ChargeInhibit':    1432

So, does any piece of publicly available software exist to force the battery not to charge?

If you use a small piece of tape to block the middle (signal) pin on your MagSafe charger, your Mac will not charge because it can't identify the charger.


Is it possible for a mobile phone manufacturer (other than apple) to make their phone sync with iTunes and iCal? I am wondering why some mobile phone company other than apple doesn't make their phone sync up to a Mac in the same way that the iOS devices do, and sync their calendars, music, etc. We can ignore the sync-by-wifi method for now -- even just using the regular cable to USB would be fine.

Is the barrier to this only a legal/licensing one?  Or is there also a software or hardware technique that is used by apple to prevent this?

(I am an iOS user that doesn't want a big slab iPhone in my pocket, so I would love it if some smaller phone would grab just the essentials from the mac. That's the context here.)

Remember the Motorola ROKR? Apple did license the technology at that point in time to build an iTunes compatible phone with Motorola, before the iPhone era. The Motorola SLVR L7 was one of the other few non-Apple devices compatible with iTunes.

There was also the case of the Palm Pre which supported iTunes syncing (unlicensed), but Apple kept breaking the syncing (purposedly?) with new iTunes versions, forcing users of Palm Pre's to search for hacks to get it working again.

I think this shows that it is technically possible (even through reverse engineering), but Apple is not going to sit by and allow it. This probably is even more true nowadays, as they are fiercely protecting the iTunes/iOS eco-system.

You could also use iSync to sync contacts and calendars with many different phone models, but it has gone missing since Mac OS X Lion. Here's a hint to install it again though.

EDIT:

Found a quote from Apple regarding "non-supported" devices, which illustrates their stance:

  Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media
  players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not
  provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital
  media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions
  of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality
  with non-Apple digital media players.

And here's a reaction from Apple to Business Week regarding the Palm Pre:

  iTunes 8.2.1 is a free software update that provides a number of
  important bug fixes. It also disables devices falsely pretending to be
  iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we've said before, newer versions of
  Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality
  with unsupported digital media players.


Sharing books between iPhone and iPad Could someone give me instructions on how to share the books I actually have in my iPhone to my iPad, possibly via WIFI and without connecting the iPad to iTunes.

With music I did it, but not with books. The funny thing is that since the iPad iBooks application display the titles of the collections (eg Technical, Novel, etc.), it doesnt show any books inside them.

I finally need to connect the iPad to the iTunes. Then, in my iTunes, I go to the place where I see my books, select them, right click, add to the playlist and select the iPad.
I think that the confusion comes for refering to a list of books as a playlist (which I think is more addecuate for music); but I is just an opinion.


Unable to install Internet Explorer on MAC OS X 10.7.4 I have a mac mini containing MAC OS X 10.7.4

I must need to go through some sites / links which are strictly allowed only for InternetExplorer,

So that i installed ie on my mac,

while open ie application it doesn't opened and prompt amessage like as follow,

You can't open the application Internet Explorer because PowerPC applications are no longer supported.

what should i do.. i need internet explorer very usrgently

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17963475/unable-to-install-internet-explorer-on-mac-os-x-10-7-4?noredirect=1#comment26256483_17963475

There is no Internet Explorer for Mountain Lion.

If you must have IE you need to run Windows virtually (e.g., with Bootcamp).

I would try the Chrome or Firefox (or Safari) on Mac and see if they can work for you.

In Safari, you can try this:

Go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced > click on Show Develop Menu in Menu Bar.
In Develop menu > User Agent > Internet Explorer 9.0

This might trick the websites into thinking that Safari is Internet Explorer.


Client side DHCP log Is there a dhcp logfile available in osx (snow leopard or lion) where I can see when a new ip-address was received from the DHCP server?

OS X doesn't log this sort of information by default to one central file.

You will get a configd message in the /private/var/log/system.log that the network configuration has changed.

Jul 18 11:06:54 mac configd[15]: network configuration changed.

Also, the kernel will log several messages - including the base station MAC address in the case of Wi-Fi networks - that are easily viewed in the Console utility.

7/18/12 11:06:28.000 AM kernel: wlEvent: en1 en1 Link DOWN virtIf = 0
7/18/12 11:06:28.000 AM kernel: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 8 (Disassociated because station leaving).
7/18/12 11:06:28.720 AM UserEventAgent: CaptiveNetworkSupport:CaptivePublishState:1211 en1 - PreProbe
7/18/12 11:06:28.778 AM configd: network configuration changed.
7/18/12 11:06:28.787 AM applepushserviced: <APSCourier: 0x108b322a0>: Stream error occurred for <APSTCPStream: 0x108b198e0>: The operation couldn’t be completed. Socket is not connected
7/18/12 11:06:53.000 AM kernel: MacAuthEvent en1   Auth result for: b8:8d:12:64:36:60  MAC AUTH succeeded
7/18/12 11:06:53.000 AM kernel: wlEvent: en1 en1 Link UP virtIf = 0
7/18/12 11:06:53.000 AM kernel: AirPort: Link Up on en1
7/18/12 11:06:53.000 AM kernel: en1: BSSID changed to cb:3e:44:64:63:60
7/18/12 11:06:53.000 AM kernel: AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1
7/18/12 11:06:54.240 AM configd: network configuration changed.
7/18/12 11:06:54.612 AM UserEventAgent: CaptiveNetworkSupport:CaptivePublishState:1211 en1 - Probe
7/18/12 11:06:54.612 AM UserEventAgent: CaptiveNetworkSupport:CaptiveStartDetect:2343 Bypassing probe on gator because it is protected and not on the exception list
7/18/12 11:06:54.613 AM UserEventAgent: CaptiveNetworkSupport:CaptivePublishState:1211 en1 - Unknown
7/18/12 11:06:54.638 AM configd: network configuration changed.

It's not clear if the system logs a "network configuration changed" message upon expiration of a DHCP lease when the routing table doesn't change. You should be able to use the console to debug this if you have a DHCP server that you can force (or simply observe) a renewal or DHCP change when the network connection itself remains stable. The messages above were from a manual forcing off of Wi-Fi and then back on.

The current DHCP status is logged in clear text to /private/var/db/dhcpd_leases and the last lease for each network interface appears to be logged to /private/var/db/dhcpclient with a dated file beginning with enX.

It seems plausible you could use the tmutil compare function to detect a change to this file if just knowing the last successful lease time was not what you wanted.

mac:db mike$ tmutil compare /private/var/db/dhcpclient/leases ....


Keyboard Layout suddenly grayed out/disabled I have been using a keyboard layout usd2.keylayout for 4 months on this laptop. After rebooting this last time (after many many other reboots..) it is grayed out.

Why might this be?  I am on el capitan

[![enter image description here][1]][1]
     $ll ~/Library/Keyboard\ Layouts/
    total 80
    -rwxrwxrwx@  1 boescst  USWIN\Domain Users  37414 Nov 15  2015 usd2.keylayout
    drwx------+  3 boescst  USWIN\Domain Users    102 Nov 29 15:53 .
    drwx------@ 58 boescst  USWIN\Domain Users   1972 Mar 21 20:40 ..

OK here's a hack that has worked: I simply re-added the same keyboard layout. It now shows up twice .. but at least one of them is enabled.  I will go and delete the other (corrupted??) one now..

And deleting the previous (same file) one did clean it up.  That was .. weird ..


How does Apple Pay work when used with Family Sharing? Is it possible to use Apple Pay alongside Family Sharing? Is Apple Pay restricted to just the family organizer, or can everyone in the Family Group use their own Apple Pay accounts individually?

Apple Pay is separate to Family Sharing. Each person maintains their own Apple Pay cards and being part of Family Sharing has no effect on this. It's just like not being part of Family Sharing.


Equation Options on Word 2011 for Mac I use both Macs and PCs. In the PC version of Word, I can modify the equation options directly from the Equation ribbon bar. One option I need is the ability to copy the equation as plain text. Does this option exist on the Mac Word 2011?

I realize this is a very old question, but here goes.  The option to change to linear allows for copying as plain text.  This option can be found in the Equation ribbon.  Also, the Equation box dropdown has the change option as well.


How to I change the password of a keychain item from the Terminal? I am able to list the password of a particular keychain item, but I need to be able to change the password using the Terminal. I intend to write a small script that will automate such a process.

Note: I need to be able to do that using the Terminal only without any GUI!

To display the password of my keychain item, I do the following:

security find-internet-password -gs my.site.com | grep "password:"

The above command works nicely. How do I change this password? For now, let's assume that the security and Keychain Access.app applications have full access to the keychain item. I eventually need to find a way to give access to that keychain item via the Terminal, without any pop-ups/GUI. I have Administrator \ sudo rights to this Mac machine.

Thank you!

If you create the password with the security utility, you can also update it.

security add-internet-password -a 'someuser@domain' -w 's0m3passw0rd' -U -s 'www.some.site -p '/optional/path' -T '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/'

you can update it with the -U flag:

security add-internet-password -U -a 'someuser@domain' -w '0therp4ssw0rd' -U -s 'www.some.site -p '/optional/path' -T '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/'

I've not found a reliable way to update passwords created by other means then the security utility. The -T flag should of course point to the application(s) you want to give access, the -T flag can be repeated multiple times for multiple applications. The -a (accountname) flag can also be any form that your username has.


Sum of VLookups in Numbers? I may just be missing the right terminology, spreadsheets have never really been my thing.  But I'm struggling to combine SUM() and VLOOKUP() for my needs.  (Assuming these are even the functions I want to use, there could be something better that I'm just not noticing.)

Given a lookup table of Customers, for example:

Name  |  Miles from Office
--------------------------
Bob   |  3.4
Joe   |  9.1
Tom   |  2.9

And a table of Transactions, for example:

Date     | Customer | Amount
----------------------------
1/1/2019 | Bob      | $1.23
2/1/2019 | Tom      | $2.34
3/1/2019 | Bob      | $3.45
4/1/2019 | Bob      | $4.56
5/1/2019 | Joe      | $5.67

How can I get a sum of "Miles" for the transactions?  For any given transaction I could do:

=VLOOKUP("Bob", 'Customers'::A2:B4, 2)

And that would successfully return 3.4.  But if I were to wrap that expression in a SUM() then how would I get it to run the VLOOKUP() on each item in the range being summed?  I tried:

=SUM(VLOOKUP('Transactions'::B2:B6, 'Customers'::A2:B4, 2))

Which I didn't think would work (but was worth a try), and indeed it didn't and just returned the first value, in this case 3.4.

(Specifically using Numbers in iCloud in my browser, if that makes a difference.)

Create another column in Transactions. Put the VLOOKUP in that column. So then you have the miles for each one: 3.4, 2.9, 3.4, 3.4, 9.1. Then in another cell, use SUM(D2:D6) to add those up. If you don't want that column visible you can always hide it.


How can I identify which application I have installed for mouse gestures? My middle mouse button is set to create mouse gestures. I've spent several hours on different occasions trying to understand which app I installed to set up the gestures but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

Does anybody know how I could track down a currently active app?
Or, maybe, is anybody able to visually recognize the app from looking at the "gesture track" the app creates? See here:

The app that creates this mouse gesture path is called Jitouch.
It creates the gesture path when drawing a gesture with two fingers on the trackpad AND when using the middle mouse button of a classic computer mouse.


iTerm opens instead of default web browser when links clicked in Apple Mail Clicking on links in Apple Mail (http or https, doesn't matter), opens a new iTerm 2 terminal session instead of my default browser. I can't figure it out.

Weirdly, iTerm.app shows up as a potential email handler under Mail.app > Preferences > General > Default email reader.  It wasn't selected (Mail.app was), but I tried selecting something else (Microsoft Outlook.app, in my case), as per this question, just in case some setting there had been messed up (obviously this should be irrelevant to the problem at hand but you never know how things are cross-linked under the hood). Interestingly, that setting would not stick: upon quitting and re-opening Mail.app, Mail.app would again be selected as the default email reader. But none of that changed the behavior. It's very confusing, but I'm wondering if I've just reached the end of the useful lifetime of Apple Mail under OS X 10.11.6 (yes, yes, I know, way out of date - I haven't updated because of compatibility concerns with software I need to use to do my job.. but maybe I will bite the bullet soon). Mail.app version is 9.3 (3124).

Update: So, looking at my default browser under Apple > System Preferences > General > Default web browser shows nothing selected, and when I click on the dropdown menu, there are no items available to select, which of course is ridiculous, as I'm software developer and have four browsers installed (Opera, Safari, Chrome and Firefox). So I'm guessing some .plist that contains the default web browser has become corrupted.

Rebooting solved this one. After the reboot, the list of browsers under Apple > System Preferences > General > Default web browser was restored, and clicking web links in Mail.app resumed opening in my default browser.

Interestingly, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist, which was empty before the reboot, remained empty afterwards, so I'm guessing the list of browsers isn't stored there. (Thought it might be stored there because of this post). (The file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist doesn't exist, either)


I accidentally used "touch .." , is there a way to safely delete this document? I am using zsh, macOS 11.0.1 (Big Sur), was working on a project and for some stupid reason I decided to write touch ... A file was created in the Desktop so I don't think that it will affect the computer's performance in any way.
I tried doing vim .. and a document was opened.
It contains so many things it is not the one that I just created, also on the top I read /Users/Serax instead of /Users/Serax/Desktop.
I don't want to damage or delete something that i should not. I tried using mv .. my_stupid_mistake.txt but it didn't work.
I also checked Desktop in the finder but found nothing.
Is it safe to do rm ..?

Do not delete it! In unixish filesystems (including macOS), .. is a link to the parent directory. So if you were in the directory /Users/Serax/Desktop and you ran touch .., that's equivalent to touch /Users/Serax, which just marks your home directory as being modified.
Similarly, when you're in /Users/Serax/Desktop, trying to delete .. is equivalent to trying to delete your home directory. If you succeeded, you'd lose all your files. You do not want to do this.
Running that touch command will not have damaged anything, so there's nothing that needs to be fixed, deleted, or cleaned up. Just go about your business.
BTW, do you have a good backup? If not, I'd strongly recommend you make one. Because accidents happen, and sometimes you delete your entire home directory by mistake.


Unix "ln -s" command not permitted in OSX El Capitan Beta3 I was installing nodejs for Symphony when I hit an "Operation not permitted" error.  Anyone know why this happened?

MacBook-Pro-de-XXX:~ XXX$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/node /usr/bin/node
Password:
ln: /usr/bin/node: Operation not permitted

This is the so called "rootless" mode in the new version of OS X. It effectively makes certain system directories read-only (even for admins). "/usr" is one of those protected directories (the only subdirectory that is excluded from this rule is "/usr/local")

One can disable this rootless mode with the following commands:

$ sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0"
$ sudo reboot

But this is not recommended! The best practice is to install custom stuff to "/usr/local" only.

Update (27-Oct-15): 10.11 (El Capitan) Public Release

Please note that the above described workaround will not work with the public release of El Capitan anymore as Apple has changed things around.

The proper way to disable the "rootless" mode (aka System Integrity Protection, "SIP") is to boot temporarily into Recover Mode (hold Command+R during boot) and use the csrutil disable command (or csrutil enable to reenable) from the Terminal. The Terminal is reachable via the menu of the Installer that launches in Recovery Mode.


Disable Autohide Dock displaying slowly when in fullscreen I have autohide enabled for my dock and it seems to be a feature (at least in OS X 10.11.6) that, when I drag my mouse to the bottom of the screen when on a full-screened program, the dock will not display until I have attempted to drag the mouse down at least another time.

This problem does not occur when I am not on a full-screened program; the dock displays instantly.

I'd like my Mac to have the functionality of displaying the dock as if I was not ever in full screen mode.

Edit: If it is important, I use HyperDock. A change to this also would be sufficient for me; I have a license.

Completely remove or minimize HyperDock delay

How to auto hide the dock and remove its delay on the Mac

Open Terminal
Copy and paste the following command into a Terminal window:

==UPDATED CODES==

defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0 && killall Dock

To restore the default behavior, enter:

defaults delete com.apple.Dock autohide-delay && killall Dock

If you don't want to remove the delay altogether, but just want to shorten it, you can play around with the number after the -float option. For me, this is a good fit:

defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0.05 && killall Dock


Do these horizontal lines on MacBook screen signify logic board or graphics card failure? My friend has been experiencing problems with his MacBook recently. The machine powers on but at some stage, usually during the boot, it will freeze and the display will look as pictured with black and white horizontal blocks on screen, arranged in 5 columns. Very occasionally it will boot all the way to open the user profile and allow a few minutes of normal use before the lines appear.

Apple Hardware Test doesn't highlight a problem. On the couple of occasions that macOS Recovery did load, Disk Utility ran First Aid without any errors.

We would like to know is the odds of a hardware problem e.g. graphics chipset or logic board?

MacBook support USB target disk mode so you should still be able to boot and back up the data from the storage and/or pay for just labor when it goes in for hardware repair.

It might be hard to see what’s up, but most times this is GPU / cabling when you have those glitches - it’s less likely just the screen based on the image.

You might even be able to connect the Time Machine drive or navigate carefully and set up Time Machine and let it run overnight to get a backup still. That will also let you know the GPU / graphics is the only failure and not the core processing and storage.

Since the MacBook has a unified storage / logic board / GPU - it won’t matter so much what fault is as 95% of the repairs will be to swap out that assembly entirely and send that part back to get refurbished in the factory. A mail in repair for this would be covered under AppleCare or warranty in all likelyhood and if you paid for an official repair, expect less than $350 for parts and labor and shipping and testing in the US.


Odd permissions issues on Windows Share I'm handling the IT for a Mac based design studio and they're having weird issues with files on a Windows Server 2008 R2 server. They should have complete access to everything, they can create, delete, edit files but sometimes they can't move them or rename them. It seems to be limited to files they created but I'm not 100%, anyone come across this before?

Edit:
On further investigation, it's not permissions it's file locking. Some programs including preview or opening files (assuming locking them) and not releasing. Killing all the programs or remounting the share sees to working but it's a workaround that's not really acceptable to the users.

We have had a very similar (if not the same) problem ever since we upgraded our server to Windows 2008 R2. (WinServer 2003 was fine.) However, the main symptom we encountered, is somewhat different:

We work in a mixed Mac / PC environment. Desktop operators work on Mac only, whereas our backend services are Windows based. Also some manual operations are done on Windows 7.

We call our problem "Ghost Folders". These are folders, that are inaccessible even for Windows Administrator account. Windows displays no privileges for anyone! Even admin user cannot see folder permissions or owner - nor can ownership be taken by Administrator. Total lockdown.

Such folders are created under following circumstances:

A windows share is mounted on Mac by SMB://<IP-address>
notation.
Mac or Windows user attempts to move or delete a folder with some files inside.
Mac Finder gives error "No access" or "Insufficient privileges", as does Windows.
Windows Server shows the folder as with no permission for anyone. This folder will disappear by itself some time later (!!) Time span can be anything from a few
minutes to several hours.
On Mac, the UNIX 'ls -la' command shows
the folder permissions as normal. However 'ls -la' for the folder contents lists nothing. Not even the "." or ".." for 'current' and 'upper-level' folders.

This scenario can be repeated at will - Deletion can be attempted either on Mac or Windows.

Similar behavior is also seen when attempting to save (overwrite) a file from a Mac application. This will give permissions error - and the original file disappears from the server. This suggests a successful deletion of the original file, but failed write of the new content.

This scenario will only take place if at least one Mac has the share mounted and any folder of the share is open in Finder. A share that is not accessed by any Mac does not produce this problem.

We have sketchy evidence that the initial deletion attempt (when unsuccesful) will actually (or partially) delete the folder from the Windows file system. We have seen deletion apparently to succeed on Windows Explorer. However, the Mac SMB connection appears to somehow, as if "re-create a shadow" of the folder - or "deny" the deletion after the fact, bringing the folder back to Windows file system, but with null permissions.

We would appreciate if someone checks for this behavior on their systems, if you see the same chain of events as we do. It may help us all to more accurately pinpoint the source of this elusive problem.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.


Remove duplicate files from TargetFolder that are also in SourceFolder -- if they have same filename This is a clarified version of a question asked two days ago.
I'd like to remove files from TargetFolder  that are also in SourceFolder  (what I was calling a reference directory) --  but only if they have the same name.  I'd like it to operate recursively,  on a Mac (high sierra).  Thanks.

I used this script with the latest Bash 5. You should be fine with the stock install. Please be careful. You should be able to set your directories as "dir1" (source) and "dir2" (destination files that will be removed if they exist in source).
Basically, the "getall" function will create two arrays of recursive files like: "/fullpath/filename." The ladder part will trim the paths to the filenames for comparison, compare the file names and file sizes, and list or delete duplicates.
You should always make backups and test the script on dummy files. Hopefully you can edit the script to meet your needs. You can simply copy and paste into terminal after you choose your directories.
#!/bin/bash
#This tool is for removing duplicate files among backup directories.
#compares two directory trees, matches filenames, calc/ compare sizes to determine duplicates.

unset _my_array
unset _my_array_1
unset _my_array_2

function getall() {
  local home="$(pwd)"
  for file in *; do
    if [[ -d $file ]]; then
      cd "$file"
      getall
      cd "$home"
    else
      ! [[ -f $file ]] && break   #ensure the entry added is a file
      _my_array+=("$(pwd)/$file") #add path/file to array
    fi
  done
}

dir1="/User/user/Downloads/somefolder"
dir2="/Users/user/Downloads/someotherfolder"

#generate recurisve full paths array for each directory
clear
echo "parsing tree 1"

unset _my_array
cd "$dir1" || exit
getall                          #create dir list 1
_my_array_1=("${_my_array[@]}") #create array 1

echo "parsing tree 2"

unset _my_array
cd "$dir2" || exit
getall                          #create dir list 2
_my_array_2=("${_my_array[@]}") #create array 2

#comparison process
for filename1 in "${_my_array_1[@]}"; do
  trim_name_1="${filename1##*/*/}"
  for filename2 in "${_my_array_2[@]}"; do
    trim_name_2="${filename2##*/*/}"
    if [[ "$trim_name_1" == "$trim_name_2" ]]; then
      size1="$(stat -f %z "$filename1")"
      size2="$(stat -f %z "$filename2")"
      if [[ $size1 == $size2 ]]; then
        echo "SAME $filename1"
        echo "     $filename2"
        #  rm "$filename2" #uncomment to REMOVE FILES PERMANENTLY
        break
      fi
    fi
  done
done


AppleScript Help: Wait for Safari Page to load I am trying to create a script to open the URL csbsju.instructure.com in Safari, wait for the page to load all the way, click the login button, and then double check if the URL is correct (there's a bug that adds dashboard-sidebar, so I'm just checking the URL and if it's incorrect, redirecting the page.
The typing of credentials is handled by Safari's iCloud Password thing, so I don't need to worry about that.
The big issue I'm having is the waiting till page is loaded part. I've been looking around, and currently am attempting to use this code, although it does not work:

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    delay 1
    repeat
        if (do JavaScript "document.readyState" in document 1) is "complete" then exit repeat
        delay 1
    end repeat
    delay 1
end tell

I'm currently using this script to click the login button and check if the URL is correct:

tell application "Safari"
    set theURL to URL of front document

    tell front document
        do JavaScript "document.getElementById('btnLogin').click()"
    end tell

    set theURL to URL of front document
    if (theURL = "https://csbsju.instructure.com/dashboard-sidebar") then
        tell application "Safari" to set the URL of the front document to "https://csbsju.instructure.com"
    end if
end tell

Any suggestions on how to make this work better? Namely the checking if page is loaded part?

There are a few methods you could use to check whether the page has finished loading.  Here are a selection that I've had good results with during testing:

Document name

Monitor for the existence of the Safari document that has the same name as the title of the webpage, which (I believe) only gets assigned after the page has finished loading, up until which point it retains the name it had previously, or "Untitled" if it's a newly created document:

tell application "Safari"
    make new document with properties {URL:"https://csbsju.instructure.com"}

    repeat until the document named ("Central Authentication Service " & ¬
        "| College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University") exists
    end repeat

    log "Finished loading"
end tell

The Login button

Monitor for the existence of the "Login" button, given that you can't do what you need to do until that particular HTML element has been created:

tell application "Safari"
    make new document with properties {URL:"https://csbsju.instructure.com"}

    tell front document to repeat until (do JavaScript ¬
        "document.getElementById('btnLogin').id") as text is not ""
    end repeat

    log "Finished loading"
end tell

Safari's Reload button

Monitor particular properties of Safari's Reload button, which changes according to whether a page is loading or has loaded:

Note: This was written and tested under macOS High Sierra; however, for macOS Mojave one minor edit is required. Change UI element 1 to ¬ to UI element 2 to ¬ in the code directly below.

tell application "Safari" to ¬
    make new document with properties {URL:"https://csbsju.instructure.com"}

tell ¬
    application "System Events" to tell ¬
    process "Safari" to tell ¬
    window 1 to tell ¬
    toolbar 1 to tell ¬
    groups to tell ¬
    UI element 1 to ¬
    set reload_button to a reference to ¬
        (first button whose name is "Reload this page")

using terms from application "System Events"
    repeat until the accessibility description ¬
        of the reload_button ¬
        contains "Reload this page"
    end repeat
end using terms from

log "Finished loading"

Page content

Monitor for specific text to appear within the page content.  In this case, I've chosen to monitor for all of it, but you can choose smaller elements instead.  Items that appear towards the end of the page are most suitable:

tell application "Safari"
    make new document with properties {URL:"https://csbsju.instructure.com"}

    ignoring white space
        tell front document to repeat until its text contains ¬
            "Central Authentication Service Network Username: " & ¬
            "Password: Warn me before logging me into other sites. " & ¬
            "Copyright © 2017 - All Rights Reserved College of Saint " & ¬
            "Benedict and Saint John's University"
        end repeat
    end ignoring

    log "Finished loading"
end tell

Username & Password fields

Since these fields are getting filled out automatically by Safari's password manager—which only happens when the page has fully loaded—you can monitor the text content of the Username and Password fields:

tell application "Safari"
    make new document with properties {URL:"https://csbsju.instructure.com"}

    tell front document to repeat
        set a to (do JavaScript "document.getElementById('username').value") as text
        set b to (do JavaScript "document.getElementById('password').value") as text

        if length of (a & b) ≠ 0 then exit repeat
    end repeat

    log "Finished loading"
end tell


How to connect a YPG-625 keyboard to a modern Mac I'm trying to connect Yamaha's YPG-625 musical keyboard to a Mac, but it seems like there are only USB-MIDI drivers for Mac OS 10.1.5-10.4.0. Is there a way to connect it to a system with OS X El Capitan?

After some searching, I found out that, even though the keyboard page doesn't point to these drivers, the generic USB-MIDI drivers from Yamaha work.


To give STDIN for Sed? Pseudocommand

echo '1,2,3,5' | sed -n data.txt

which gives

sed: 1: "data.txt": extra characters at the end of d command

I want to give linenumbers for search from other command.
Actually awk is giving those numbers from this thread.

data.txt:

hello
amigo
this line 3
and here we go 4
and 5 is here

where output should be

hello
amigo
this line 3
and 5 is here

How can you give sed those linenumbers?

Basically you can do something like

eval $(echo sed $(for i in 1 2 3 5; do echo "-e ${i}p"; done) -n data.txt )

To read the line numbers from a file containing the numbers, separated by space, use

eval $(echo sed $(for i in $(< line-numbers.txt); do echo "-e ${i}p"; done) -n data.txt )

In this case, you can use any command which produces a list of line number instead of the < line-numbers.txt part.

Or, if the numbers in the file are separated by ,

eval $(echo sed $(for i in $(tr \, ' ' < line-numbers.txt); do echo "-e ${i}p"; done) -n data.txt )

(and again, the command can be anything producing line numbers separated by ,)


What keeps waking my Mac up from sleep? My Mac constantly wakes itself up from sleep for apparently no reason. Middle of the night, middle of that day, it just can't stay asleep. Why? I ran pmset with the following results:

[redacted]:~ [redacted]$  pmset -g assertions
2015-01-26 08:27:29 -0800
Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    0
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  1
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     0
   NetworkClientActive            0
Listed by owning process:
   pid 72(hidd): [0x0000b0bc000906ce] 18:03:19 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle"
   pid 26(powerd): [0x000000230008012c] 43:45:02 ExternalMedia named: "com.apple.powermanagement.externalmediamounted"
Kernel Assertions: 0x10c=USB,BT-HID,MAGICWAKE
   id=501  level=255 0x4=USB mod=1/24/15, 12:48 PM description=EHC1 owner=AppleUSBEHCI
   id=503  level=255 0x100=MAGICWAKE mod=1/26/15, 6:47 AM description=en0 owner=en0
   id=504  level=255 0x8=BT-HID mod=12/31/69, 4:00 PM description=com.apple.driver.IOBluetoothHIDDriver owner=BNBTrackpadDevice
   id=506  level=255 0x8=BT-HID mod=12/31/69, 4:00 PM description=com.apple.driver.IOBluetoothHIDDriver owner=AppleBluetoothHIDKeyboard

As for what:

The message Kernel Assertions: 0x10c=USB,BT-HID,MAGICWAKE says it.

Also the ExternalMedia is set to wake it up over your USBbluetooth. connection.

So you have a device (BT keyboard) that does that.

As for why:

You BT track pad wakes up (do you have a Cat?) other BT devices interference, low battery... see this for more.

To test do "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" OFF.

If you have the Magicwake app installed, remove it.


No Machine Remote Desktop Issue I use the program No Machine to open up remote desktops to my development servers. I choose No Machine because the client software reportedly runs on Windows/Linux/Mac, but I am having trouble with the Mac client.

When I startup the No Machine (also called NX) client, I get an error message saying "NX Client for MacOS/X was not able to find the Apple X11 Server. Please be sure that the Apple X11 bundle is installed in either the /Applications or the /Applications/Utilities directory and retry."

I have heard X11 is installed by default on Snow Leopard (I run Snow Leopard). I have the X11 app, when I open a terminal and type startx the X11 server appears to start up, but I get a message about a missing .serverauth file.

Any advice on how to get this working?

I installed the XQuartz application. It was in /Application/Utilities/XQuartz.app. I just renamed it from XQuartz.app to X11.app and everything works fine, so far.

Update: don't install XQuartz for use with No Machine. I opened a text editor and started typing, all the keys were screwy. For instance, the Delete key was now comma, all the letters were transposed, general chaos. I replaced XQuartz with the official X11User.dmg package and this keyboard problem went away. One more step I had to take: when on the remote desktop I tried to cd into a different directory, and hitting the "d" key kept showing me the desktop. If you want to cd, you will need to go into System->Preferences->Keyboard shortcuts. Scroll down, and notice an entry "Hide all windows and show desktop" which is mapped to "D". Change this to Alt+D or Ctrl+D and cd away!


phpinfo() displays Wrong version openssl in OS X I upgraded openssl from version 0.9.8zc to OpenSSL 1.0.2 version. I used this web page How to upgrade OpenSSL in OS X? to do this. The next step I upgraded php to 5.6 version from this web page http://php-osx.liip.ch . When I checked openssl version in terminal it was correct version 1.0.2 but  phpinfo() always shows old 0.9.8zc openssl version . What is wrong? Is in my mac installed new version but apache uses old version? How can I change it?

This is because the version of PHP that came with your Mac is compiled with the version of OpenSSL that came with it, too. By you compiling OpenSSL, all you did was compile a separate version.

If you compiled PHP and told it to use the newer version, that would work.


Mac terminal says "-bash: echo: write error: Broken pipe" on opening I opened my terminal, like I do most days Mon-Fri, and was surprised to see this error:

Last login: Fri Jul 27 17:19:25 on console
-bash: echo: write error: Broken pipe
SomeMac:~ user568458$

Everything seems to work fine currently, but things like this worry me because they could be a clue that something is wrong which might blow up later.

Doing some searches suggests that this message can appear if someone introduces an error into .bash_profile - but I haven't modified that file in a long time and haven't installed anything that would modify it recently. In fact, my .bash_profile file reports its "Modified" date as February (5 months ago).

How can I investigate what caused this or how serious it is? Or is it something that can be safely ignored?

In case it's relevant, since that other linked Q&A mentions .bash_profile commands related to NVM (which I do use), here's the contents of my .bash_profile file:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

But this doesn't include the infinite-loop causing line source ~/.bash_profile in that other guy's answer, and these have (as far as I can) not changed since February, so I'm not sure how they could be the cause of the error.

A shell's error message is really straight forward. The structure consists of the command, the filename, and the error message.

command: filename: message

Your error message is a bit more complicated in the fact that you are using  a shell builtin command and the filename is a stream through a pipe. So, my best guess would be that somewhere in nvm.sh, there is a line that is something like echo something | command, where command is closing the pipe before echo finishes sending the data.


Application tries to launch although it is deinstalled In my console a message is occurring every 10 seconds. I think it's trying to launch a deinstalled application (NetDrive2):

18.12.15 23:55:40,047 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.bdrive.NetDrive2.nd2svc[2777]) Service could not initialize: Unable to set current working directory. error = 2: No such file or directory, path = /Applications/NetDrive.app/Contents/Resources: 15B42: xpcproxy + 12028 [1353][19011403-4854-3CCD-9FCF-49C36302EB40]: 0x2
18.12.15 23:57:30,155 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.bdrive.NetDrive2.nd2svc) Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

I searched for files named com.apple.xpc.launchd or com.drive.NetDrive2.nd2svc, also with the Terminal, but it seems like there are no such files.
I'm running OS X 10.11.1
Does anyone know how to fix this?

The NetDrive2 installer creates a launch agent plist here: /Library/LaunchAgents/com.bdrive.NetDrive2.nd2svc.plist.

The file wasn't removed and is responsible for the log messages.

To get rid of the file first unload the agent with:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/com.bdrive.NetDrive2.nd2svc

Then remove the file with

sudo rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.bdrive.NetDrive2.nd2svc.plist

Using the uninstaller in the mounted NetDriveInstaller_2_7_0_dev_262.dmg image instead of simply moving the app to the trash also removes the plist.


Will grayscale increase or decrease battery consumption? If I turn on grayscale on my iPhone 6, will the consumption of battery increase or decrease?

It makes no difference on the iPhone 6. So neither a reduction, nor extra consumption.

Some sources that tell the same story:

From a SuperUser question LCD/LED screens; how color affects the power consumption?:

  Conventional LCDs and LED based LCDs consume power that largely depends only on the intensity of backlight. This means to save power you want to reduce brightness of the screen.

  OLED displays, like those found in Samsung (and other) smartphones, on the other hand, have power consumption that depends on color being displayed.

As the iPhone 6 uses a conventional IPS LCD panel, it means that the power usage is mainly due to the backlight - and the backlight power usage does not change whether the displayed image is full color or monochrome. However it does change according to the brightness setting and how dark the displayed image is.
From CNET's article LED LCD vs. OLED: TV display technologies compared:

  The energy consumption of LCD only varies depending on the backlight setting. The lower the backlight, the lower the power consumption. A basic LED LCD with its backlight set low will draw less power than OLED.


How to focus on list of found files after search in Finder using the keyboard with full keyboard access activated? I like using the keyboard as much as possible. In particular, I'd like to be able to activate a search, type my search term, press a key to move to the search list, and then use the arrow keys to navigate to my search result.

I can trigger a search in Finder in a number of ways:

commandf
commandoptionspace

When I search "This Mac", pressing the tab key six times enables keyboard access to the search list. When I search within a particular folder, pressing tab gets me as far as "This Mac", and then the tab key stops working.

Pressing the tab key six times is not a particularly efficient option, and it doesn't always work.

After a little exploration, I learned that if I switch Full Keyboard Access from "All controls" to "Text boxes and lists only" (in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts), it only takes one tab keypress to activate search results. However, in general I like to have full keyboard access.

I was hoping there would be some key combination that could be used to focus on the list of files in Finder. Thus, my question is:

How can I focus on a list of found files after search in Finder using the keyboard with Full Keyboard Access set to "All controls"?

An ideal solution would be a single key press that is relatively intuitive and consistent with other keyboard interface rules. Nonetheless, I have found a couple of hacks that seems to work.

Cmd+[ then Cmd+]: This navigates back then forward. After this has occurred the focus is on the file list. A mild nuisance with this option is that the search is refreshed, which can lead to a brief lag.
Cmd+Shift+G followed by escape: This opens the go to folder dialog box; escape exits the dialog box and returns focus on the file list.


Wifi password is too short on Mac Air in Lion I have MacBook Air with Lion which has problems to join WIFI network which password is 7 chars long. Basically button is grayed out until i add more chars. Is there a way to force Lion to ignore this behavior or the only way to go thru is to change WIFI password? It's not my network so it's not so easy.

I assume you are being prompted for a WPA password. My SnowLeopard system (10.6.8) requires at least eight characters before enabling the OK button when I try to join a network using WPA.  The Wikipedia page for Pre-shared key (PSK) indicates that the valid password length is between 8 and 63 characters.

I also tried joining an example wireless network configured with WEP, an older wireless security method.  After entering just one character for the password, the OK button was enabled.

So, assuming you were given the correct password for the wireless network, it sounds like your computer believes that the wireless network uses WPA security when it actually uses WEP.  There's no way that I see to change the security protocol for the wireless network from the password dialog; your computer automatically detects the security protocol and sets the minimum password length accordingly.

Are you sure you are trying to join the correct network?  Does the password dialog specify WEP or WPA?  Do you know another person who is successfully joining the network, and can you have them disconnect and reconnect to the network, entering the same password?


How can I specify a minimum font size for viewing email in Apple Mail? Similar questions have been asked in the past, albeit not in the last five years, it would seem, and the Mail application has changed enough to make the answers to those older questions entirely irrelevant. For instance, there is no longer a messages.css to edit in Mail.app's resources directory and defaults write com.apple.mail MinimumHTMLFontSize 12 does not have any effect, although the strings command confirms that specific key still exists in the executable.

In Preferences, you can change the font and font size, but that's for composing email.

How can I set a minimum or default font size for viewing received email in the preview pane? I am aware that HTML email is now the de facto standard and that Mail is probably using the font size specified in the HTML tags or CSS. However, if browsers can resize a webpage and I am fairly sure Mail is using a WebView internally, then it would stand to reason that it can be done. Whether this is a user-accessible option is, of course, another matter.

At the top of the Mail app, there is a toolbar as shown below.

As shown above, there are buttons to increase and decrease the size of the font. If these buttons do not appear on your mail viewer you can edit the toolbar by going to the View menu item and selecting 'Customize the Toolbar'. When you click on this you get the panel shown below.

The red line on this image is directly below the icons for increasing and decreasing the font size. Adding these to your toolbar will enable you to change the font size for any mail message you view. This is same as ankiiiiiii's answer bit a different way of implementing it.

Another option which may stick is to go to Preferences under the Mail menu item. Once the Preferences pane appears, click on the 'Fonts and Colors' tab near the top of the panel. This brings open a panel where you can set the font size and font color.


Automatically shrink existing Time Machine Backup to a fixed size I googled for hours to find a solution for this issue, but I couldn't find an answer that fitted for my problem.

My setup:

I have an iMac with a ~1TB Hard Drive
I'm backing it up via Time Machine to a Synology NAS DS214+ with ~2.7TB Space

My problem:

I forgot to set a size limit for the backup user. No my Time Machine Backup uses about 2.3TB space. That's not cool.
I can't set a quota to the Synology user, because it beginns to count starting zero.

What I want to do:

If anyhow possible I want to tell my Time Machine Backup to shrink automatically to a limit of ~1.5TB by deleting the oldest backups.
Then I want the sparse bundle to not get bigger anymore.

Does anyone of you see a solution? Or do I have to delete all my old backups to reach my goal?

Time Machine will respect a size determination - but only when you make the container. This functionality is all that Apple provides for native backup so you'd need a custom setup to do what you ask, and you can't limit things once you've started backing up to a container.

Going forward if you want to make a new restricted container, the concept isn't hard to map out though.

make a new container on the synology and be sure to enforce the size constraints when you start the process.

Server.app does that easily - I'm not aware of synology code that reverse engineered that feature, but would be surprised if it's not on GitHub or published somewhere public.

At that point, you could delete all backups of user folders that are large and then block by block copy the old backup data to the new destination and then inherit the backup.

You can also thin backup intervals from the command line or script this automation as well.

Lots and lots of work, but it might be worth it as a project if someone is inclined.

When I'm in your shoes, I just copy off the old "too large" backup to an offline hard drive and put it on a shelf and start over with new backups of the size you like. In 6 months or a year - wipe that old drive unless you really feel you need that older history.


Is it harmful for the battery to use a 60 W instead of 45 W charger? So, my dog bit through my MacBook Air charger and i just ordered one online without really knowing what all the specs meant.

Now my question, does it hurt my battery to use a charger with a higher charging capacity?

Your battery will only take as much as it needs. Thus a larger charger will not harm it.


Is the font in Messages.app changed in iOS5? The fonts in the Messages app look much better in iOS5 than in iOS4, and wanted to confirm it. I couldn't find any discussion or note about this online. I don't have a phone running iOS4 around to compare myself.

Has it really changed? Any sources?

Same font, but Apple added a very subtle text-shadow and tweaked the bubble reflection. That's the difference.

iOS 4

iOS 5


Notification center does not open Ever since upgrading to Yosemite 2 days ago my notifications no longer work. I can't even open the notification center by clicking the icon in the menubar. Nothing happens when i click it.

Anyone know what's going on or where to look to further investigate the issue?

I had the same problem and found an answer on this site. Did you ever use Terminal to disable Notification Center in and earlier OS? I did, and this tip brought it back - How do I re-enable Notification Center in Yosemite or El Capitan post-upgrade?


How can I change the default programs that open Outlook email attachments? On my MacOS Catalina I chose already to always open JSON files with VSCode. This works from Finder.

But from Outlook (for Mac v16.35), when I get receive an email with a JSON attachment, the file icon shows the Xcode icon and the Open context menu or the double click on the attachment open Xcode.

How can I change the default programs such that even Outlook opens it using my system default application for that file.

I tried and did not work:

restarting Outlook after making VScode the default application for JSON files

I found the answer when reading this post.

Choosing Always Open With in the Open With -> Other... for one file applies this default application ONLY to this file and it is not a system wide setting. To update the system default application for all files with a certain extension do:

open the Finder context menu item Get Info
in the Open with section you must select the application to open this file with
to apply this setting for all other files with the same extension, there is the Change All... button below the application dropdown.

The confusion might be made because in Windows in place of the Always Open With MacOS option, you have the Always use this app to open .ext files (where ext is the extension of the file).


Airport Express with IPv6 tunnel and dynamic IP address I'm trying to set up an IPv6 tunnel through HE, using an Airport Extreme (7.6.1). I got it to work once, but have a real chicken and egg problem: I'm on a PPPoE internet connection, the Airport Express being the primary router/dialup device. Every single time it dials in, it receives a different IP address. I have set up an automated script on a machine that's permanently on, which will update HE with the current IPv4 address, but I'm running into timing issues. It seems the Airport Express only tries to establish the tunnel once after rebooting. If HE hasn't been updated by then (very likely), it will fail and apparently never try again. To make it try the IPv6 tunnel again, I need to reboot it, which makes it assume a different IP address etc etc.

Is there any solution to this conundrum? Can the Airport Express be persuaded to try reestablishing the tunnel without restarting it?

Right, slightly late, but I had the same problem.  Although my circumstances vary a little.  I am using a FortiGate FW instead.  The solution should be almost the same though.

You can read my "guides" on this here:

http://blog.belodedenko.me/2013/07/dynamic-ipv6-updates-using-ddclient-for.html
http://blog.belodedenko.me/2013/06/a-practical-guide-to-setting-up-ipv6.html

In summary you will need to configure ddclient with a helper script to extract your IPv4 public IP directly from the Apple router (not via default web mechanism) [see n1] and update the HE tunnel end-point (e.g.)

# /etc/ddclient.conf

daemon=300                              # check every 5 minutes
syslog=yes                              # log update msgs to syslog
#mail=root                              # mail all msgs to root
#mail-failure=root                      # mail failed update msgs to root
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid               # record PID in file.

# update tunnel end-point address
protocol=dyndns2
use=cmd, cmd=/opt/scripts/use-apple-snmp.sh
server=ipv4.tunnelbroker.net
script=/nic/update
login=your_HE_tunnelbroker_login
password=your_HE_tunnelbroker_password
<your-HE-nick>-<#tunnel>.tunnel.tserv<#num server>.lon1.ipv6.he.net

Once your router reboots and/or and gets a new public DHCP lease, you HE tunnel will be temporarily down.  Once ddclient runs and updates the HE tunnel end-point, your tunnel should come up.  I've had this running for a while now, and it usually taken no more than x2 ddclient intervals (10 minutes) to get the tunnel back.

Notes:

[n1] http://ampedup.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/get-the-internet-ip-address-from-your-airport-via-bash-script/


iPad screen broken, cannot unlock - need to backup I have an iPad Mini, the screen has broken and is unresponsive. Although the device is still on and getting notifications.

I need to backup the device and download photos, but cannot do this until the device is unlocked using the passcode.

How can I unlock the device without the screen working?

Or how can I back up the device even if its locked?

I was able to connect and browse the filesystem by connecting my iPad via USB to a computer running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. The photos and videos were in the DCIM folder.

!


Xcode: where is the option? In this instructions Apple references "Instruments".

However, I don't see them in my Xcode install (version 5.1.1 for OSX 10.8).

Do I need to install something? Or its not available on that version?

To run Instruments from Xcode:

Open Xcode.
Choose: Xcode > Open Developer Tool > Instruments


Bought an iPad but it's supervised.Is there a way to remove it? I bought an iPad Air 2 from a third party and I see it's supervised.It has many restrictions.There is no delete button in Settings.The iPad is iCloud free.I tried restoring it in recovery mode, restore and update in iTunes and then Set up as new, erase all data from the iPad but the configuration won't be removed.When it's being set up it says "retrieving configuration".I tried iActivate win but it says that it's not in their servers.

From what I've read, if the configuration persists then it's in DEP.Can it be removed from DEP somehow?
Is there a WAY to make this iPad  a normal one so I can use it?

Supervised devices lock in management, so your only recourse is to wipe the device. At that point you may discover that it’s also an enrolled device (DEP) and wiping does not unenroll from DEP as that is different than a MDM profile.

You cannot, by yourself, remove the iPad from DEP. The iPad has all these restrictions because it was previously managed by a company or school. You’ll need to figure out which school or company it is and send their IT and email and hope that they will remove it from their program for you. Their and IT and only their IT can unenroll an iPad from DEP.

You likely have bought an iPad that a student/teacher/employee/malicious actor stole. I doubt that an IT department knowledgeable enough to use DEP wouldn’t know to disown the devices before resale.

Also, I know this question will likely attract a lot of attention by students wishing to remove their devices from DEP: short answer, you can’t. Long answer: if you jailbreak the device you can remove the profile. This change will persist while you are on that iOS version and maybe once you update however if you restore the device it’ll come back. I of course don’t recommend this and you’ll violate your school policy (and IT will know, it’s not hard to detect a jailbroken device).


IPad mini MD531LL/A and MD528LL/A What is the difference between Apple iPad mini MD531LL/A and MD528LL/A I want to purchase a new iPad and I don't know what this means is there a difference between the two?

The part numbers you refer to are not actual model numbers, but indicate which country the part would be sold through and hence the pricing and warranty country of origin.

MD531LL/A appears to be the original iPad mini (Late 2012) Model: A1432 WiFi only, white, 16 GB with resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels and an 2.4 GHz Apple A5 CPU. The MD528LL/A is the same but in black.


Mac Mini 2013 remote setup with a macbook pro I bought a current model mac mini server and it arrived today. Yay.

I have a macbook pro running 10.8 and the server is connected to my router by ethernet, laptop is connected wirelessly to same router.

The mac mini is straight out of the box, yet to have it's OS set up. Yes I turned it on.

I have assigned the mac mini an ip address of 192.168.1.222 which I can verify is accessible through the terminal with $ ping 192.168.1.222 returning the expected response.

However, when I go through Finder->CMD-K I get connection failed.

My network preferences screen sharing set to on.

Thoughts?

I'm in the process to buy a Mac Mini and want to setup without keyboard and screen and found this:

  Using Screen Sharing or Apple Remote Desktop

  If the remote server is running Lion Server v10.7.2 or later, you can
  set it up using Screen Sharing or Apple Remote Desktop.

  On your administrator computer, look for the remote server in the
  Shared computer list of the Finder sidebar, or in the Scanner list in
  Remote Desktop. The new server may be listed with a name generated
  from the computer model and the Ethernet hardware address (the MAC
  address), or with a name from your DNS server. If the server you want
  to set up is listed in the Finder sidebar, double click it, then click
  Share Screen... in the upper-right corner of the Finder window. If the
  server you want to set up is listed in the Remote Desktop Scanner,
  select it, then click the Control icon in the Remote Desktop toolbar.
  When prompted for authentication, leave the user name blank and enter
  the remote server’s complete hardware serial number for the password.
  You can find the serial number on the case of the product, on the
  original product packaging, and on the original product receipt or
  invoice. For more information about finding the serial number, see How
  to find the serial number of your Apple hardware product.

  Note: Match the capitalization of the serial number when you type it.
  When you have control of the remote server's screen, proceed through
  the server setup assistant panes.

Lion Server: Setting up a remote server


What can a 1st gen Apple TV do than a new Apple TV cannot? I have a 1st gen one and I'm thinking about selling it to get a new one.

People on ebay seem to want the old one.

Why are 1st gen Apple TVs selling on ebay for over $100 while a new Apple TV is sold for $99?

The only super major differences the 1st Gen Apple TV's has from the new ones is the ability to store Movies, Music, Content, etc because they have a physical hard drive in them for doing those things.  The other things is that they can connect to TV's through Red, Blue, Green Component Cables.  They also do not support Airplay with out a hack or a software fix. Also, the newest Apple TV, the 3rd Gen, allows for 1080p HD playback, where the older ones only support 720p HD playback.

There are also a few other minor differences in size, power consumption, software options/OS and so on.

The new Apple TV's do not have hard drives or Component Cable outputs and support Airplay out of the box. Airplay is probably the biggest feature that makes people who don't want to hack to jump ship to the newer box.  It is pretty cool. The 1080 HD playback is nice, but depending on your TV, may or may not be noticeable/important.

Some people like the older ones also because they can be hacked and used as linux computers (link) with actual storage and since they can also store things on them, you can take it with you and have videos/music on it and not require internet for streaming your content.

Though the biggest reason is most likely the hack-ability of them, they are tiny computers with a decent amount of power. And since they aren't sold any more and are still sought after, that would explain their above average price.

The new Apple TV's require internet of some kind or at least a local network for stream video and movies and data from a computer or the internet.

They are also significantly smaller too, the older Apple TVs are much larger.

You can see all the differences on their wiki page, it lays out the differences in features between the devices and even talks about most of the hacks that are available. Very informative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_TV

I hope that this answer helps you out.


Can I use my 87 watt MBP charger for other things like portable batteries? I have a powerstation XXL and want to charge it with my MacBook Pro USB-C charger. Is that ok?

Yes, that's perfectly fine. Neither the battery nor the charger will be damaged by doing this.

Note that it won't be able to charge using the full 87W. The Powerstation XXL is limited to charging at 17W (5V at 3.4A).

The specification is in the manual here:

https://www.zagg.com/en_us/mwdownloads/download/link/id/483/

The manual also describes that charging from a standard USB-C charger (such as your MacBook Pro charger) is OK.


How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space? Every few days I get notices on my MacBook that it's running or run out of hard drive space. Curiously, restarting the computer will enable me to recover gigabytes of space (this past time, it was able to recover about 2.2GB). However, I can't identify anything in my personal activity that consumed that space.

It's possible that it's a rogue iTunes podcast or a huge software update that my Mac is automatically downloading - would either of these reclaim the space upon a restart?

One possibility that I can think of is that FileVault has some sort of disk leak, allocating but not freeing files. Does this make sense? Is there a tool that I can run to determine where this space is going? Assuming it is FileVault, should I try to disable it? What's the best way to turn of FileVault on a nearly full computer?

I've had a very similar issue, and so I decided to compile several methods for solving it. So, following, there are those options and some of them I got from the answers already provided here. I understand this is a little bit offtopic from the question, but it's in tune with the answers. This has many parts and those are all softwares I could try myself somehow.

It's generally a good idea to pay close attention for using the sudo options below so the software can have access to every file, which will likely include some big hidden ones.

Here's a brief list of apps for checking the disk usage:

GrandPerspective is only graphical, using the Treemap, it can measure files by logical or physical methods before scanning, show/hide package contents and change color scheme on the fly. It also is able to save the scanned data for archiving or comparing multiple windows.
Disk Inventory X also uses the Treemap graphical scheme but along side a list view of folders and files. The grahpics isn't as good as GrandPerspective neither the list as good as OmniDiskSweeper, but it does a good job mixing both. It has a Finder plugin and the most options between the 3 on preferences. It's the most complex, but not all complete.
OmniDiskSweeper is non-graphical and very similar to Finder's column view. You choose the folder or disk to analyse, it will order them by disk usage after taking its time to calculate. You can then just delete (move to trash) anything listed.

So each one has its advantages and highlights, I'm still not sure if there's one that comes on top. They're all free.

There is also a different approach, of apps for scanning specific expected places and files for space usage in non-optimal ways. They basically gather some known things about the system that can be bloating your disk all in one nice interface so you can see and decide what to delete.

CleanMyMac lists caches, logs, language files, universal binaries, development "junk", extensions and applications. It scans through the files and also uses some knowledge base it has. Great interface, simple to use. CleanMyMac has a free trial which will only clean up to 500 MB.
XSlimmer is very specific. It remove "unnecessary" code from "fat" binaries and Strip out unneeded languages, as it says on the website. Universal Binaries, that is, use a lot of space for storing files to run in several different architectures and languages. So, this strips all of them to shrink to only your computer needs. XSlimmer is currently discontinued.

Another approach is looking for duplicate files. There are many commercial options, some may be better than the listed below, I haven't tried them all. Anyway, I'm listing my choice of apps considering which ones I was able to try.

TidyUp is a very well known app in this subject. You can specify where to scan for what kind of duplicates. It offers basic and advanced modes, several different strategies and criterias.
MrClean is a free tool that just scans for folders for duplicates and trash them. Very simplistic but efficient if you're sure on what you're doing.
Chipmunk scans duplicates and let you choose which ones you want to trash. It offers a node-view of folders and you can select to "delete all files in a folder that have duplicates elsewhere, or vice versa" as well as hand-picking. It may take very long to scan all files, but it does a very decent job after that.
DupeCheck "drop a file on it and it will use your Spotlight index to see if you have a potential duplicate somewhere." That's about this nice open source app. Not a great tool for space cleaning at once, but over time it helps you keep your space clean.
DuplicateFileSearcher from the website: "is a free powerful software utility that will help you to find and delete duplicate files on your computer. It can also be used to calculate MD5 and SHA hashes. The software runs in Windows, Linux, Solaris and MacOS.". Enough said.

Next I'll briefly discuss on a similar approach by quoting relevant parts about two other things that can be done to look for missing disk space, without installing anything new, just using the command line (the Terminal).

This (long but good) one is from MacFixIt forums (go there for more options and details):

  In most cases, there really are files occupying part of the volume, but the files are invisible in normal use of the Finder.

  Using the Finder’s Go to Folder feature (in the Go menu), look at the sizes of the contents of these folders, by pasting in these pathnames:

/private/var/vm
/private/var/log
/Volumes

  The /private/var/vm directory contains the swapfiles used by virtual memory. New ones are made as more data is swapped from RAM to the hard drive. The entire process of creating them begins at each reboot or restart; do not attempt to remove them yourself. Check the total size of all the swapfiles, right after you boot, and as the disk fills up. In Panther, the first two swapfiles are 64 MB, then each new one is twice the size of the preceeding one (128 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB) up to a maximum size of 1 GB. In Tiger, the first two swapfiles are 64 MB, the next one is 128 MB, and any additional swapfiles are 256 MB.

  If you do not run the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts (either by using a utility, or by running the commands sudo periodic daily, sudo periodic weekly, and sudo periodic monthly in Terminal), the logs on the startup volume can become too large. If an error is occurring frequently and is being logged, you can have a very large file at /private/var/log/system.log.

  The files in /Volumes should be aliases to your mounted volumes. Do not remove these aliases, because anything you do to them happens to the contents of the corresponding volumes. If you are not confident that you can explore this folder without mishap, before you begin, properly unmount any volume other than the startup volume, if the missing disk space problem affects only that volume. External FireWire drives can be disconnected after proper unmounting.

  Sometimes, backup programs that cannot find an intended destination (or target) volume for a backup create a folder with the same name as the destination, and put the folder into the /Volumes directory. There are cases in which the entire startup volume has been backed up on itself, in a folder inside /Volumes. If the amount of missing space is about the size of your user folder, such a backup is likely to be the explanation. If you use Carbon Copy Cloner or another backup or cloning utility and have its preferences configured to create a backup on a schedule, and the intended destination volume is not mounted or is sleeping at the scheduled time, the backup is created in the /Volumes directory.

  To check the size of the normally invisible /Volumes directory on the active startup volume, open a new Finder window. Select the startup volume in the list at the left, then choose column view (the one at the right of the three views). From the Finder’s Go menu, choose Go to Folder, and paste in:

/Volumes

  The /Volumes directory becomes visible in the Finder; find its size by selecting it and typing Command I. My /Volumes directory is reported to be 12K.

This other one is from Mac OS X Hints forums (not much more to see there):

  You may want to run a du in terminal to see what is all going on. This could take a few minutes to run.

  An example would be to open up terminal.app then run these commands:

sudo du -h -d 1 -c /

  Input your password when it prompts for it then let it go, it will take a few minutes to run so be paitent.

du stands for Disk Usage. There's also df. I like including the -x to the above command:

sudo du -cxhd 1 /

Adding to the command line option, you could use an automator service for opening any app. With this you will get different (and more complete) results on GUI.

Or, if you're on a Power PC, using Rosetta or anything before Snow Leopard, you can mix any of the before mentioned apps with Pseudo. It's a little app to open things as admin. Picture it like a GUI for sudo.

Finally, there's a complete newbie guide on "The X Lab" that I just won't quote here for it's too long.


ctrl key no longer working in OSX The ctrl key on my Macbook pro has stopped working at once! I have tested "Show keyboard viewer" from the languages, all keys are shown to be working correctly but not the ctrl key.

Could it be any software issue, or I should check the hardware?

Try this...

Power on your Mac while holding the option key on your keyboard.  If done correctly, and assuming a firmware password is not set, you should see your internal hard drive show up on the display.  This is just to verify what you should see.
Now, power on your Mac while holding the option + control keys.  Do you see the same screen that you did when you only held option?  If so then your physical control key (really the whole keyboard) is faulty.  The logical next step would be to replace the keyboard.  If not, your Mac booted normally without showing you the screen in the first step, then your control key is working properly.  Since option + control is not an actual modifier when booting it is ignored and the process continues normally, this would tell us that both keys are functional and recognized at the hardware level.  At this point you could try repairing or reinstalling your operating system.

Hope that helps narrow it down for you.


Why doesn't OS X require graphics card driver updates? I don't know how to update Nvidia graphic card drivers on MacBook Pro Retina.
I have been a Windows user and a gamer for a long time where we expect frequent driver updates.

My expectations revolve around whether Nvidia releases graphic driver updates for Mac and how to check for pending updates.

Where can I see the versions of drivers on OS X?

Apple makes its own drivers & they are included in the OS updates.

The way to be up to date on drivers is to always be running the latest OS.

There is debate over whether Apple make the entire driver set themselves, or just take NVidia/AMD's core code & add their own hardware/OS-specific code to it. The latter seems more plausible to me, but either is just speculation.

The end result, though, is that there are rarely issues with Apple graphics drivers & regular software or games; again speculation, but for games I imagine they write to a pre-defined rule-set, rather than try to constantly be pushing the boundaries.

As noted elsewhere, NVidia themselves make OS X drivers for Quadro cards but these are aftermarket cards anyway, not supplied in any Mac build option available directly from Apple.

Apple provides core drivers, currently up to OpenGL 4.1 or 3.3 - depending on your card, of course - plus legacy drivers for OGL 2.1 compatibility. Which one you get to use in any particular game etc is up to the writers of that game.

Traditionally, if your card has full OpenGL support for the first monitor, it will also have it on the second, unlike many PC cards with 'clipped' performance on the 2nd monitor.

Link to OpenGL support by Mac model

After comments & other answers here…
NVidia do have their own release for certain Mac GPUs - this is the current driver as of December 2015
However, they are predominantly for the Quadro series of aftermarket cards rather than default cards supplied by Apple.
There is also support for some cards which have been legacied by Apple - namely the GeForce 680, 285, 120 & 8800
There is mention of beta support for some recent mobile cards, presumably as Apple are dropping legacy support on these in favour of AMD in the current lineup.


Share one calendar - keep other calendar local I would like to share a family calendar between my wife (Android phone) and me (iPhone) using a Google calendar.

Currently I don't store my personal calendar in the cloud but only locally on the iPhone. The family calender shall be a second calendar. Only this second calendar shall be synced through the cloud.

Now when adding the Google account at the iPhone it asks which data I want to sync (mail, notes, calendar). If I choose 'calendar' here will it also transfer my local iPhone calendar to the cloud (to Google)? Or will it only add the new Google calendar to my iPhone and sync only this calendar with my iPhone?

How can I ensure that my local iPhone calendar stays local and ONLY the family calendar gets synced?

Setting up Google to sync calendars will sync only Google calendars. Your local calendar on your iPhone remains local and is only synced if you choose to do so through iCloud.


Does setting a perspective wallpaper rather than still in iOS drain battery (significantly) faster? Thinking logically setting perspective wallpaper requires some constant recalculations of background position. When I hold my iPhone and move hand, I see that effect. It's nice and pleases the eye but I'm sure that it requires some CPU calculations and that triggers higher energy consumption since nothing's for free…

Question is - how much energy is consumed by this setting over still and can this have a significant impact on battery life in a longer time perspective?

Whilst it would reduce battery as its constantly using sensor data and updating the display it doesn't (in my experience) reduce the battery noticeably, however on older devices it does cause some FPS issue, in which case reduce motion is recommended as well as a still background image.


Delete dictionaries in iOS Is it possible to delete installed dictionaries (some or all of them) in iOS 9.2? There are dictionaries that I need not, but they take place, and some are even duplicated. As you can see from a screenshot, there is not cross button to delete them.

Select a word in a safari page, then tap Look Up

You will find a Manage button on the bottom left corner
A list with dictionaries will appear you can choose to delete (x symbol) or download new ones (cloud symbol)


iOS 7.1 update from a PC causes my phone dead I try to update my iphone 5S to iOS7.1 from a PC. The software update was downloaded and in the process of installing the update the internet connection was was disconnected for unknown reason. My phone's screen show an iTune symbol. I cannot use my phone any more. I want to know what happenep to my iphone. Can I use my phone again?

Hopefully you did a backup before updating? Right? ;-)

If you have a backup file you simply plugin the iPhone to your computer and follow the last step in this guide ("Restore from a backup").

If you didn't make a backup, try to put your iPhone in DFU mode (guide here) and follow the iTunes instructions to restore the iPhone to default. (You will lose your stuff if you haven't backed it up earlier)


How to fix periodic ding sound on Mac Book An irritating ding sound keeps playing which is a kind of notification or alert with out any visual guidance to figure whats going wrong.
(The situation is almost like a pilot of Boeing 747 Max who doesn't know how to turn off anti stall system. :o) )

I found some solutions mentioned here However none worked for me.

Anyone has a clue?

After a trial and error I found Chrome is causing the irritating ding notification.


What is the source of the Earth and Moon wallpaper? What is the original source of this wallpaper, introduced in Mountain Lion? I'm guessing was taken on a Gemini or Apollo spaceflight, but I can't find it in any of NASA's albums, and the image has been re-uploaded so many times that Google Image Search isn't bearing any fruit either.

Photo from here.

It is clearly a Photoshop creation, as the shadows do not concur to the actual position of the celestial objects.


How to import X.509 certificates into MacOS? I have the file with X.509 certificates and the following preamble:

# This is a bundle of X.509 certificates of public Certificate
# Authorities.  It was generated from the Mozilla root CA list.
# These certificates are in the OpenSSL "TRUSTED CERTIFICATE"
# format and have trust bits set accordingly.
# An exception are auxiliary certificates, without positive or negative
# trust, but are used to assist in finding a preferred trust path.
# Those neutral certificates use the plain BEGIN CERTIFICATE format.

I tried to import it from command line but it fails:

$ sudo security add-trusted-cert -d -r trustRoot -k /Library/Keychains/System.keychain /Users/dzieciou/projects/mg/etc/pki/tls/certs/megabundle.crt

readFile: short read
***Error reading file /Users/dzieciou/projects/mg/etc/pki/tls/certs/
Error reading file /Users/dzieciou/projects/mg/etc/pki/tls/certs/megabundle.crt

I was able to import those certificates into Firefox on MacOS but Firefox does not use the system keychain.

Keychain Access

You can import a wide range of certificate formats with macOS's Keychain application.

Open Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access.app
Select the menu item: File > Import Items…

Default Keychain

The imported items will appear in the current default keychain. If this is not what you want, be sure to change the default before importing.


What is the content of the $CLASSPATH variable in El Capitan? I installed OS X El Capitan and, along with it, Oracle's Java 8 SDK.
I've already verified that, using java -version, java is correctly installed.
I need to add some user classes to the file path, but, when I use echo $CLASSPATH, I cannot see the actual path being used by OS X.
How can I know where should I install my user classes?

First, I found out that my Yosemite Installation has also no CLASSPATH set.
Second, when issueing

$ java -help

it directed me to the URL:

Java SE documentation

Klicking there led me to How Java Runtime finds classes and within there it is written:

  "[…] User classes are classes that are defined by developers and third parties and that do not take advantage of the extension mechanism. You identify the location of these classes with the -classpath option on the command line (preferred) or with the CLASSPATH environment variable. See Setting the Class Path.[…]"

Effectively it says "put your classes wherever you want and just run java -classpath <userclassdirectory>.

Just take time to read the complete document.


Wrong focus when CMD+Tab with multiscreen If I have:

2 Screens
Setting "Displays have separate spaces" ON
A Terminal window in each screen (Terminal is just an example, this happens with all apps)

Being focused on the Terminal window of my secondary screen I do Cmd+Tab to switch to another app and then back to Terminal, the focus goes to the primary screen rather than the one was focused before switching, this happens no matter which app I use, always the same.

Anyone knows what's the solution for this?

I don't think there's a solution besides turning off "Displays have separate spaces".

For more detail - I think if you start on one display and alt-tab to a different program, it'll focus on a window for that program on that same display if one exists; it'll focus on a window on a different display only if one doesn't exist on the starting display.


Logitech mouse scrolling weird after Sierra update; soggy inertia effect in native apps, choppy in third-party apps The update to macOS Sierra wrecked scrolling with my Logitech Mouse (which uses Logitech Control Center).

The scrolling behaviour is erratic because I'm actually assaulted by two issues:

In native macOS applications, like Apple Pages, there is an ”inertia-ish” effect that slows down the scroll and introduces some sort of acceleration-like movement akin to the worst nightmares from Windows 10.
In third-party applications, like Google Chrome, the scrolling is quite fast but not fluid; it's choppy and non-linear with sudden jumps and stops. Because of this, it feels like the computer is laggy when scrolling a page, but it's probably due to the way the software scrolls.

Sierra just came out, but I'm not that hopeful that Logitech are capable of tending to issues like these, so I'm afraid I will have to do something about it myself.

I have tried checking the settings of System Preferences > Mouse and System Preferences > Logitech Control Center > Vertical Scroll but came up with nothing except temporary band-aid tweaks to make it feel better.

Edit, Broken Mouse Buttons: Also related to this, is the issue that the Forward/Back buttons on some Logitech mice have stopped working. I was able to mitigate this issue by binding those buttons to keystrokes in Logitech Control Center, e.g. (⌘ + ←) and (⌘ + →) for Google Chrome. Possibly, something like BetterTouchTool, Steermouse, or USB Overdrive could be used to intercept the OS functions Forward/Back in case the keyboard shortcuts above aren't global for all applications. Regardless, with BetterTouchTool, you can set application-specific keystrokes and bind them to mouse buttons.

The 3.9.5 version, published on Sep 22, 2016 by Logitech solves most of the issues. The scroll is smooth again in Chrome. Unfortunately the inertia is still a bit high in native apps like XCode, but not as bad as before I guess.


On OS X Mavericks, why does it always say my memory used is like 99% of my total memory? I keep getting these results from Activity Monitor in Mavericks, where it seems like 99% of my memory is being used (where in the screenshot I have 10MB left). Am I just reading this wrong? How am I supposed to read it?

The screen grab is from Activity Monitor.
Most of the physical memory is used, if for nothing else, to cache data from the hard drive.

If you had included the right side of the table in the screen grab you would see entries like "File Cache" and "App Memory", etc. which add up to the number for "Memory Used" on the left side.


I have replaced my hard drive in mac book pro with SSD drive - Can I use that hard drive to replace the optical drive and have 2 disks? If I do the above will the drive need a caddy or will it just slot straight in ?

If you have a unibody (black keyboard) MacBook Pro, then yes, you can totally use the old hard drive to replace the optical drive. In fact, I'm writing this post on a MacBook Pro with that exact set up :)

You'll need a caddy indeed. I'm using an OptiBay, which works fine. You can find cheaper alternatives on eBay, but I'm not sure how well they fit. However non-unibody (silver keyboard) MacBook Pros use PATA for the optical bay, and thus this won't work unfortunately.


.pkg for installer hangs on verify I'm trying to install the Mono MDK, and downloaded the .pkg for 4.2.1 (about 200 MB), when I double click on the package, it opens a "verifying xxxxxMDKxxxxx.pkg" window, which does nothing for over an hour while the Installer icon bounces on the dock. Is there a way to bypass the verification or force it to verify?
Or, alternatively is there a way to install the Mono MDK using the command line?
I'm running a early 2011 Macbook Pro on OSX 10.11

Ran into this with some other software, but wanted to pass on a tip I picked up.

In finder, launch /System/Library/CoreServices/Installer.app. It will prompt you to locate a .pkg file to install. Navigate to the .dmg volume you've mounted, and select the xxxxxMDKxxxxx.pkg file.

Installation should proceed normally from there.


Is it possible to have per-app network/vpn/proxy settings I have a few different applications on my Mac that ideally I would like to run with different network settings.

One app for work I need to run over my work VPN, but at the same time, I have another app I need to run over a proxy for testing. Currently, I can only work with one app at a time with the required network setup. Stop working with it, then setup my other network config.

Is there an app, or a way to specify via settings that an application should use a particular networking setup?

There are two premium (paid) solutions that do this well.

MacProxy ($30USD)
Proxifier ($40USD)
TSocks is an open source solution, requires some command-line foo.


How do you remove the time from the menu bar in Big Sur In Big Sur the notification toggle in the menu bar is now the clock.
I am currently using iStat Menu to display the clock in the menu bar, so it looks bad having two times in the bar.
Example:

Is there way to set Big Sur notification back to the Catalina icon as before?

In terminal, write:
defaults write com.apple.menuextra.clock IsAnalog -bool true

Not what you want but close enough as it makes it a single clock icon


Found a socket called "chaos_control" in my home directory, what is it? I did an ls in my home directory and along with my normal folders it listed a file called chaos_control. It does not show up in Finder even when I show hidden files.

I ran file chaos_control and it returned that the file is a socket. What does this mean and should I be worried? I did not notice it before today. It is not related to the productivity app "Chaos Control" I found on Google; I have never had that installed on my system.

If I run open -e chaos_control I get this error:

mdls returns chaos_control: could not find chaos_control.

ls -l returns this:

srwxr-xr-x  1 chris  staff  0 Jan 24  2016 chaos_control

Opening the file in vim yields "chaos_control" [Permission Denied], even with sudo.

Running lsof on this socket does nothing, no processes are using it.

If you look at the output from "ls -l" you see that the first letter is an "s". This means that the file is not really a physical file on disk, but is instead a "socket link".

A "socket link" is not the socket itself, but as the name suggest merely a link. It is used when two processes running on your computer want to communicate. In order to "find each other" they use the socket link in the file system. Both programs open that and they can exchange messages.

You cannot use the "open" command to open a socket link, as it is not really a disk file and it doesn't make any sense to open it in for example TextEdit.app. Similarly opening it with "vim" does not make any sense either.

Having a socket link is in itself not a "bad thing", if this is your worry. It doesn't really take up much space on disk - and it's only a link, not a socket in itself. So if you close the communicating processes (or for example reboot the Mac) - the socket will automatically be closed.

Any (non-sandboxed) program could potentially create a socket link named chaos_control. So it is not possible conclusively to say which program created it by looking at the file name.

As it has been created a year and a half ago, it is plausible that you did some action that caused this file to be created. For example when using a new program that you aren't using anymore.

You can just delete the socket link (use the "rm" command) and it is gone. However there's no real risk or disadvantage in having it around except that it shows up in folder listings.


How to drag file to the running, but minimized (or in second desktop) app on OS X's dock? I am trying to switch from Windows to the OS X, but I have one problem.

How can I drag file to the running application on dock?

For example, I have running Chrome which is on full-screen mode (on another desktop) but I want to drag file to imgur.com for upload.

In Windows I just simply drag file to the app on taskbar and app shows and I can drag file to the browser.

Specifically for full-screen windows, grab the file with the mouse, and without letting go of it, use Command+Tab to switch to the application you want to drop it onto. Once the application window appears, you can drop the file where you want. The reason it has to be done this way is full-screen applications are given their own desktop ("Space") that doesn't interact the same way as windows in all other Spaces do.

If the window isn't full-screen, it's easier as detailed below.

For a minimized application window, drag it onto that window's icon (which will be on the right side of the Dock near the trash) and continue holding for a couple of seconds while the window un-minimizes itself. For Chrome specifically, you can then drag it into the address bar or some target on the page.

For an icon on the left side of the Dock, do the same thing except when you hold the file over the application's icon, it will display all windows from that application (including those on other Spaces). Drag the file over the appropriate window, again holding for a couple seconds, and that window will come to the front.

You can show all open windows on the currently visible Space(s) by pressing F3 (if you have the System Preferences > Keyboard > "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" setting enabled, you'll have to press Fn+F3) and do the same thing as you would above with the individual windows.

If the file is on the desktop itself, it's actually even easier: press F11 (or Fn+F11 as noted above), then grab the icon, and while still holding it, press F11 again. Whatever window(s) was/were previously present will again appear, and you can drop the file where you want it.


Does any OS X hardware contain on chip h.264 encoding/decoding? I know that iOS devices have the h.264 instruction set on chip, which helps to dramatically reduce processing (and thus, power, battery drain, etc.) when watching native video.

Has this been added to Intel CPUs, or ATI/nVidia GPUs, in Apple's Desktop/Laptop hardware?

Apple's own apps on OSX has video acceleration support for years, provided by the GPU. h.264 hardware video acceleration is available to 3rd-party apps via the Video Decode Acceleration Framework since OSX 10.6.3. See:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2267/_index.html

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2008/10/digging-into-new-macbooks-support-of-gpu-accelerated-h-264/

http://xbmc.org/davilla/2010/05/03/osx-gets-h-264-accelleration/


Replacing hard drive in Macbook late 2009 what do I do about osx? I'm replacing the hard drive in my 2009 macbook (13" unibody). How do I go about installing OSX and can I go straight to Yosemite or do I have to install Mavericks and then upgrade?
It's my first attempt at replacing a hard drive so I've no idea what to expect.
Thanks all!

You can use the drivers CD present in the MacBook box at the time of acquisition. Following the steps you can instal an old version and then update to the last one. Otherwise there should be the possibility of start a recovery and directly download (using a WiFi connection) the last versione of the OS.

An other option is to use Time Machine, if and only if, you have previously made a backup of the entire system before the swap of HD.


What is `tic` and what can I do about it using 100% CPU? I have a process named tic that occasionally shows its ugly face in htop or Activity Monitor, consuming around 100% CPU.  I couldn't find any good info on it last time I tried.  What is it for, what would make it suck up my processor cycles, and what can be done about it.

I'm on the latest sub-version of Mojave: 10.14.3 (18D42).

Update: this happened again, and about 80% of the lines displayed by sudo lsof -p PID were related in some way to Visual Studio Code.  I don't know if that's a useful clue for anyone about the cause... but I'll put it out there...

man tic says:

  tic - the terminfo entry-description compiler

You can use it to enable features in you terminal (like italics) that Apple didn't include in the terminfo database.
See: How to show italic in vim in iTerm2

tic is a one-shot program and should not run in the background.
Open Activity Monitor, select tic & do ⌘-I, the first line  says Parent proces: followed by a (blue) name which is a link. This tells you what launched tic, you can click that link to dive deeper in the launchers (Parent Proces)  until you end up on kernel_task.

If the Parent process says launchd you may have an entry in either

/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
~/Library/LaunchAgents/

Here there live .plist files which control the running of background processes.

You can use LaunchControl to see all such daemons or agents.


Free solution to converting PostScript type 1 font to ttf? Is there any software out there that can convert PostScript type 1 font to ttf?

Yes. You can try FontForge.

  An outline font editor that lets you create [or edit] your own
  postscript, truetype,  [... ] fonts. Also lets you convert one
  format to another.

It may be a bit intimidating to install and use at first, but it’s very powerful and should be able to do the job. One way to install FontForge: use Homebrew (brew install fontforge)


Is it possible to automatically turn vibrate mode off at night? I usually have my iPhone in "vibrate mode" (ringtone off, vibrate on). However, I'd like to additionally have it turn vibrate mode off automatically between for example 11 PM and 7 AM because I don't want to be awakened (or have my wife woken up) by some spam mail that arrives at 2 AM.

Some apps allow to define periods where notifications are suppressed, but it seems the Notification center (or at least the Mail app) does not. Is there any way to achieve this (on a non-jailbroken iPhone)?

I know I can turn it off manually in Preferences, but that's cumbersome, and I'm going to forget either to turn it off or to turn it back on.

EDIT:
This is a feature in iOS 6. You can schedule notification suppression by opening the Settings app > Notifications > Do not disturb.
Original Post:
Unfortunately, there is no native way to do that in iOS 5.
Like you thought, the notification center, currently does not allow customization in that way. I think Apple could have added features similar to that one, but have chosen not to, either because they haven't wanted to take the time (but that hasn't seemed to stop them in the past), or because they have a big focus on keeping things simple.