Two 4TB hard drives -- how can I create a RAID 1 with two 2TB partitions? I have been struggling with trying to get Disk Utility to allow me to divide a 4TB HD into two 2TB partitions, and then have a mirrored raid of that for redundancy.  Is this not possible?

It is not possible and even if it were it would be a very bad idea.
RAID 1 is to protect from hardware failure, and as described in the Apple document Create a disk set using Disk Utility on Mac mentioned by @user3439894 in comments, requires multiple disks (not partitions).

Mirrored (RAID 1) set: Protect your data against hardware failure with a mirrored RAID set. When you create a mirrored RAID set, your data is written to multiple disks so the information is stored redundantly.

Even if it were possible it would provide no protection against hardware failure (as both partitions are on the same disk) and in the case of a HDD would drastically reduce write performance as the disk arm would have to continuously jump back and forward between partitions.
While it may theoretically give some limited protection against bad blocks if you only have one disk you would be much better off making a a backup to another partition (which would protect you from accidental file deletion).  Backup to another to another disk would protect you from disk failure and file loss while RAID 1 is only designed to protect from hardware failure.


How can I stop my old broken phone getting my text messages? My iPhone cracked its screen and presently i cannot get past the locked access screen.  Got a new phone but the old phone continues to show me my new text messages.  I cannot get into old phone to change any settings.  Anything else I can do?

You can erase your older device.

Since you cannot access its settings, you can put it into recovery mode and restore it via iTunes.

That'll erase all the content off the iPhone and as long as you don't setup your Apple ID on the device, you shouldn't receive  iMessages anymore.


How can I have Finder mount an SMB share from ssh without confirmation? In a bigger piece of AppleScript, I need to mount an SMB share. This works:

tell application "Finder" to mount volume "smb://server/share"

That is, it works without asking questions, from the Script Editor or from a shell running in Terminal (ie. osascript <my script>).

But when I try to run the same script while connected to the Mac through ssh from another computer, Finder (I suppose) first asks for confirmation with a dialog on the GUI:

  You are attempting to connect to the server xxx. Click connect to
  contine.

How can I avoid this confirmation?

As mentioned by @klanomath, the confirmation can be disabled by following instructions on this page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207112

That is, from a terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization AllowUnknownServers -bool YES

And then, to undo this change (for better security):

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization AllowUnknownServers


One of the processes keeps sending a keystroke repeatedly in the background, how to identify the culprit? My system is a MacBook Pro late 2013 running macOS Sierra 10.12.6.

Symptoms:

Occasionally after the laptop wakes from sleep, the system would behave as if someone is repeatedly pressing a certain key on the keyboard.
If I click anything (Apple icon, File, Edit...etc) on the menu bar, the item whose name starts with A will be highlighted repeatedly, B if nothing starts with A, and so on. (Therefore, I assume the keystroke being sent is a number.)
If I press cmd+tab attempting to switch between apps, the focus will automatically scroll all the way to the right-most item.
This doesn't affect all apps. I am able to use Chrome as if there's nothing wrong.

My question:

Apparently one or more of the processes running on my system is doing this. To find out which process / app is sending the keystroke, I am looking for a way or a tool to monitor who is sending keystroke. Therefore next time this happens I can use this to determine the culprit.

Thanks!

It turned out that the culprit was Karabiner-elements, and the issue has been resolved in the latest update.

https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/issues/1828

https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/history.html


How to tell Google Chrome to use my Keychain Background:

Story: A colleague of mine told me about 1Password and it seems good to me. I am always trying to use tools which Mac OS X itself gives me, so I've given the Keychain a try. It seems satisfying, but I don't know how to tell Google Chrome to use my specific keychain. I need it to separate saved stuff for work and for private (syncing private to work, but separated from work data).

Stuff:

Google Chrome 21.0.1180.57 (Fully updated)
Mac OS X Lion (Fully updated)
OS X Mountain Lion (Fully updated)

Question:
How do I tell to Chrome to use a specific keychain and to save data from/to this keychain?

Since v. 45 of chrome passwords are not synced to the OSX keychain anymore, the support has been dropped completely.

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=466638

  Remove OS X Keychain integration for saved passwords

  Starting in OS X 10.9, Apple introduced the iCloud Keychain. This manifests itself as the “Local Items” keychain in Keychain Access. Items in this keychain are only accessible to applications with the keychain-access-groups entitlement [1][2]. This, like other iCloud entitlements, is “available only to apps submitted to the App Store or to the Mac App Store” [3].

  The effect of this is that on 10.9 and 10.10, passwords stored in Safari are not accessible to Chrome (but passwords originated in Chrome are still shared to Safari)

Later in the doc:

  All the changes hit the 45 release. The plan is to get rid of the complicated Keychain code, thereby improving the robustness of the Chrome Password manager.


How can I check how many times an iPhone or iPad has been charged? On my MacBook Pro, I can see in the About this Mac → System Report → Power link, how many times the laptop has been charged. It lists the condition (currently as "Normal") on my laptop. I've seen it say something like "Needs Attention" or "Service Battery" when the laptop has over 500 cycle counts.

Is there an app that shows me that same information on my iPhone or iPad?  I would like to know this information for the future if I buy a used iPhone or iPad. I don't want to buy one where there's over 1000 cycle counts and the battery doesn't hold a charge longer than 30 min.

I've tried a couple battery life apps on my phone but it doesn't tell me the cycle count. It just tells me the wear level and a percentage, which isn't exactly what I'm looking for.

I have installed coconutbattery app for macOS. It gives this information and more for all the Apple devices that you connect (by cable, or WiFi for Pro version) on your Mac, both about battery, OS and charger.

After installing the app, connect your iPad/iPhone, launch the app, click on the iOS Device tab and look for value corresponding to Cycle Count.

Image Source: https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/assets/img/coconutbattery_364_ios_highsierra-compressor.png


iOS: Green strip to return to numeric keypad much too small I'm finding it incredibly difficult to return to a call using the green stripe at the top of the screen after switching apps, It is even suggested by Apple that this is the way the function works.

For those of us who do not have thumbs the size of Barbie dolls, it is most arduous to get back to the numeric touch pad (like when trying to access phone menus).

Is there a way to make this green bar bigger, perhaps in Accessibility options? Also wondering if there might be plans to fix this annoyance in the future for iOS users.

Tapping the green colored status bar on iPhone takes you to the current call screen.

If you are finding it harder to tap it because of the smaller size of the hit-target, you can achieve the same result by an easier alternative approach. Open the iOS app switcher UI by either double clicking the Home button (for iPhones with Home button) or swiping up from the bottom (for iPhone without Home button). (Refer to the Apple support document, Switch apps on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch)

Now swipe left to access the front-most item in the app switcher UI. The frontmost app would correspond to the current call UI. You can tap on it to the same effect as tapping on the green color filled status bar shown at the top when a phone call is in progress.

Note that this approach works for a call made with either the Phone app (Cellular call) or Apple's built-in FaceTime app. For 3rd party apps, you'd have to tap on the corresponding app in the app switching UI.


Having trouble deleting old Time Machine back-ups after a restore Due to migrating several computers over time, my MacBook Pro was bogged down with lots (and lots!) of old apps, files, etc. that I wanted to get rid of. So, I backed up to Time Machine as usual, then wiped the HD and restored from Time Machine. Except I excluded the Applications folder so that I could pick only the ones I wanted to carry over to the newly restored HD.

Everything went fine. Except now when it tries to back up I get an error message:

This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires XXX.XX GB but only XX.XX GB are available.
Time Machine needs work space on the backup disk, in addition to the space required to store backups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files.

It seems that when I restored and then backed up, it treated that like a new computer and parsed out the HD space because when I open Time Machine I can only see the back-ups since I restored. But given that it's telling me there isn't enough room, I'm fairly certain they're still in there somewhere.

Can anyone tell me how I might access those old back-ups and in turn delete some of the older ones so I have enough space for my new ones? I have looked in the files and found the backups.backupbd file, but I'm concerned that is only for the newest one in there so I don't want to delete that one. Obviously, I no longer have "access" to the previous Mac as it's been overwritten.

Any suggestions?

To see these backups, you need the Browse Other Backup Disks by Alt/Option-clicking the Time Machine icon in your Menubar, or by control-clicking (right-clicking) the Time Machine icon in your Dock.


Change file creation date to modification date using terminal So I have a bunch of pictures that have incorrect creation dates but their real creation dates are the same as the current modification dates. Is it possible to correct this using some batch command in terminal? I've been messing around with the setFile + stat commands but it's not really working out since I'm terrible with terminal. Does anyone here now the correct way to do this?

Also is it possible to incorporate this into a find command? So that all pics with "IMG" in them get this treatment but no others?

Thanks in advance!

To use @user3439894's answer with find, use the -exec command {} + clause, and put the for loop into a sh script:

find some/path -iname \*.img -exec sh -c 'for f in "$@"; do m="$(GetFileInfo -m "$f")"; SetFile -m "$m" -d "$m" "$f"; done' sh {} +

The 2nd "sh" will become the $0 inside the spawned shell, and the .img filenames will be the positional parameters $1, $2, ...


Time machine was interrupted - how to make it resume? Time machine was running for the first time and it was NINE hours into the job, when it got stopped (I inadervently removed the usb connection).

Is there any way to get it to resume?

UPDATE  The issue was that the Time Machine icon was not in my Dock - so I did not have option to right click which is where the "Back up now" option lives.

To get the Time Machine icon in your menu bar (top of your screen), go into System Preferences, select Time Machine, and click the "Show Time Machine in menu bar" checkbox.

Click the icon that appears in your menu bar and select "Back Up Now".


Any details about the captive/public wifi login screen browser? Is it just controlled by Safari's data. cookies, etc. somehow?  I'd think not since that'd be a major security hole.

In any case, are there any tools for deleting the cookies from the browser used by the captive/public wifi login screen?

I use following to prevent Captive networks

Change: File Name

Captive network assistant

to

No More captive network assistant

in System/Library/CoreServices

Make note of this so you can change it back one day if you need to.

This will not delete cookies you already have but will stop getting more of them.


Changing password of admin account from inside the root (superadmin) account I forgot the password of my admin account on my MacBook, although I still remember the password of the root account. Is there a way to change the password of an admin account from within the root account?

I know about the option to directly reset the password through Recovery Mode, but this implies losing the passwords on the Keychain, which I want to avoid.

Any help would be very appreciated.

The password for an user account is stored separately from the keychain password. Usually both are the same password.

When you normally change your user password, you have to enter the old password and the new password. The software then uses these passwords to attempt to change the password for the keychain. This only succeeds when the old password for the user is the same as for the keychain.

If you reset the user password without entering the old password, then the keychain password will remain the same.

So, if you do not know the keychain password, the only way to gain access to the keychain is to reset the keychain password. Unfortunately, this will erase the keychain.


Bandwidth shaper or bandwidth controller application for Mac OS X I'm looking for a bandwidth/packet throttle/shaper program with the following features:

Similar to Windows-based Netlimiter.
GUI based and not terminal or command line.
Shows list of all applications communicating over network its connections, transfer rates and more.
Set download or upload transfer rate limits for applications, connections or groups of them.

For those on 10.7 or newer, the easiest solution to the bandwidth limiting part of the question is Apple's Network Link Conditioner (NLC), a free utility that was originally included with Xcode. Then Apple got all sandbox-happy, so now it's a separate download from Apple's developer web site, called the Hardware IO Tools for Xcode.
The important points going for NLC are that it's from Apple, it's got a very straightforward UI, and it works. Some of the other suggestions given in other answers fail some or all of these criteria, particularly in failing to work on newer OSes.
As for monitoring per-application bandwidth usage, I recommend iStat Menus.


Are "proof-of-concept" apps allowed in the App Store? My company deals with a specific technology and we're looking to submit a limited functionality proof-of-concept app to the App Store as a sort of advertisement of our experience and capabilities. Is an app like this likely to be rejected?

Edit: my original question above sounds a little subjective and opinion based, so to clarify: I'm looking for case history or documentation from apple that clarifies this scenario.

There are a great many apps which offer very little in terms of functionality, and essentially advertise a company and accessories (such as the Jabra and Plantronics apps) and some which just display information about select services of the company.

There are also many apps which require specific infrastructures to be in place for an organisation to even use the app which offer no functionality for the average user, such as Good for Enterprise, or Excitor DME.

As long as it complies with the submission guidelines, there's no reason Apple would reject it.


Unsubscribe from calendar in iOS calendar app I accidentally subscribed to a calendar I don't want on my iPhone and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. I can easily hide it in the Calendar app, but I can't find how to unsubscribe from it.

I searched online for how to unsubscribe, and it said that if I click on the "i" button on the right of the calendar, there would be a "delete calendar" button, but there isn't. I can find the "delete calendar" button for the "personal" and "work" calendars that are there by default, but not on the calendar I want to delete. All I can do when I click on the "i" button is rename the calendar, change its color and choose if I want to get notifications from it.

("Prenumererad" means "subscribed")

I also tried to delete the calendar online from http://icloud.com, but it didn't show up on iCloud. Since I use a Google account, I also tried to delete it online from Google calendar, but it wasn't there either.

I also tried deleting and reinstalling both the Calendar app and the app that installed the unwanted calendar, but it was still there after I reinstalled the app. The app which installed the calendar only has a "subscribe to calendar feed" button (which was the one I accidentally clicked on) and no "unsubscribe from calendar feed" button.

How do I unsubscribe from this calendar?

Local Subscriptions

Calendars you subscribe to locally can be removed under Settings > Passwords & Accounts > Subscribed Calendars > [the calendar in question] > Delete Account.
Sourced from MacRumors.

Cloud Accounts

Calendars you subscribe to via Google Calendar can be removed from the website.

Calendars you subscribe to through iCloud can be deleted from the info view.


Mac Mojave, how to remove Safari How do I remove Safari from my Mac, OS 10.14.3?  Is this at all possible?

I have tried to drag it to the trash bin and it does say Safari is required by the OS but I wondered whether there was a way round this at all.

I've also tried sudo rm -rf Safari.app/ but it says operation not permitted

The correct answer in this case is "Don't do that; you're asking for trouble." Safari is heavily integrated into the OS. Removing/disabling Safari is bound to eventually get you into a situation where an API malfunctions and you'll drive the poor person trying to help you insane.

I dare ask why you would want to remove Safari given that there is no advantage in doing so. You can remove IE from Windows or bash from a Linux distro, but the 26 MB you'll save won't be worth the anguish of having macOS eat its tail at some point down the road.


Change the keys for changing windows gone in Mavericks When I got my Mac-Mini, I've changed the cycle-through windows key from ⌘` to ⌘0 (since on the Hungarian keyboard layout I should press ⌘⌥ű, and never could remember which one is it from 5 other key.)

In Mountain Lion this option was still present, but now it is missing from Mavericks. I can't find it in the Keyboard & Input section anywhere. The entry for ⌘⇥ is also missing. This became problematic only now, because I only noticed now, that it clashes with a key combination in Microsoft Outlook. (I don't know if this problem come with the update, or had it before.)

Can anybody help how can I change this option or how to restore it?
I would like to set it to ⌥⌘⇥ and ⇧⌥⌘⇥ as I did it once before. (Or ⌃⌘⇥ should be more comfortable.)

On my installation of 10.9 the shortcut can still be changed from System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Keyboard > Move focus to next window:

I don't think it was ever possible to change command-tab to another shortcut though.


iPhone works fine with car bluetooth for Playing Music but not working for Phone Calls After upgrading to iOS 13.5, I am facing issue while connecting Bluetooth of my car. I am able to connect Bluetooth of car for music and phone calls but after 2-3 minutes Bluetooth for phone gets disconnected and only music is working. Please note I am able to play music continuously.
Please note this was working fine since last 1.5 years before upgrading iOS 13.5, I have upgraded to iOS 13.6 but I am still facing issue.
Also note that I haven’t upgraded car music since the beginning, so I suspect that the issue introduced by iOS upgrade.

Buried in the last couple of updates has been a little bug that does this. I think it is tied in with the odd MAC address changing Apple devices can do for security and hiding you from tracking.
The only fix I have found is to delete the pairing on both sides (phone and in-car) and then recreate it. You may get away with just deleying the connection on the Apple but I started in the car system first :-(
Solved exactly the same issue in my Renault after about a month of the phone randomly needing reconnecting even outside a call.


How can I rename an ordered list of files with an ordered list of file names? I have a series of files. I need to apply a series of file names.

So,

001.jpg -> apple.jpg
002.jpg -> banana.jpg
003.jpg -> orange.jpg
etc.

I will have to repeat this for each of 16 folders with 292 files per folder. The files will always be in the correct numbered order, but not always the same names (the first series will be 001.jpg-292.jpg, then 293.jpg-584.jpg, etc.). The supplied names will be the same for the files in all 16 folders.

I see that this is possible (and quite easy!) with apps like A Better Finder Rename, but I'm not keen on spending the $20 on all those features just to do one thing which I don't expect I'll ever have to do again :D

So, is there some kind of free option, like Automator, an Applescript, or a shell script?

I've found several shell scripts that repeat the same action for all files, but I don't know enough to edit them and supply a new name for each rename operation. :(

Even if I have to make a script that's 292+ lines long, hard-coding the name list into it, that would be easier than manually renaming them all in finder one-by-one!

For example save this file as filenames.txt:

apple
banana
orange

Then run:

a=($(<filenames.txt));for d in *;do i=0;for f in $d/*;do echo mv $f $d/${a[i++]}.jpg;done;done

Remove echo if the output looks right.

If the file names contain spaces, add IFS=$'\n'; to the start and add double quotes around the variables.


Viewing .VCE files on Mac, possible? How can I open .VCE files on Mac?

Is there a free software product I can download?

VCE Player Lite is a good app and is free:
VCE Player Lite
For the full version, VCE Player ($14.99) would have more features:
Full version VCE Player


Problem with installing Java: java: command not found I just installed Java 8.25 but I'm still not getting 'legacy' applications to work. I tried verifying the version in terminal:

manfred$ java --version
-bash: java: command not found

I think there's a conflict between two versions or something perhaps. How can I solve this?

Looks like Java is not in the path.  I do something like this in my ~/.bash_profile

# Get Java Home for the specific version
JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.8 2>/dev/null`
# Add Java to the path
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Quit terminal once you create or edit ~/.bash_profile.  FYI if you are creating ~/.bash_profile make sure you give it executable privileges.


iMessage shows the wrong name for a phone number My iPhone 4 with iOS 6 is playing up in iMessage.  For one person, it is showing their Facebook name (a pseudonym) instead of the name I entered in the contact list (their actual name.)

Additionally, when I type their name, it displays their home phone number as an option which is not stored anywhere in my phone anymore.

For example, say I type John into the To: field.  It offers:

  That Guy John
  mobile +61 4xx xxx xxx

  John Smith
  home 03 xxx xxxx

They're the same person on the same linked contact card.  I want it to use the name John Smith, but if I choose mobile, it uses That Guy John.  Additionally, I've previously deleted the home number from my phone, and it's not stored on Facebook, so I don't know how it's getting it.

Is there a caching issue?  How can I make iMessage display the correct contact names and phone numbers?

Try closing iMessage (Settings > Messaging > iMessage).
Turn off your phone and wait 5-10 minutes.
Tap Settings > Phone > My number and verify that your phone number is correct.
Finally, reopen iMessage (Settings > Messages), then go to Settings > Messaging > Send & Receive and see if the correct number is displayed under "Start a new session from".
Hope this helps you.


My Mac prompts to shut down randomly Somewhere between every one and ten minutes, my MacBook Pro prompts the shut down dialog box or even starts to sleep.

This is what I get in the console. It really looks as if I've pressed the hardware "off" button:

19/05/16 21:14:43.345 networkd[194]: -[NETProxyLookup pacLookupComplete:proxies:error:] PAC evaluation error: Error Domain=kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Code=2 "(null)" UserInfo={kCFGetAddrInfoFailureKey=8}
19/05/16 21:14:44.736 networkd[194]: -[NETProxyLookup pacLookupComplete:proxies:error:] PAC evaluation error: Error Domain=kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Code=2 "(null)" UserInfo={kCFGetAddrInfoFailureKey=8}
19/05/16 21:14:45.670 networkd[194]: -[NETProxyLookup pacLookupComplete:proxies:error:] PAC evaluation error: Error Domain=kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Code=2 "(null)" UserInfo={kCFGetAddrInfoFailureKey=8}
19/05/16 21:14:55.473 AirPlayUIAgent[324]: 2016-05-19 09:14:55.472717 PM [AirPlayUIAgent] BecomingInactive: NSWorkspaceWillSleepNotification
19/05/16 21:14:57.075 locationd[87]: Location icon should now be in state 'Inactive'
19/05/16 21:14:57.000 kernel[0]: PM response took 112 ms (56, powerd)
19/05/16 21:14:57.829 sharingd[321]: 21:14:57.828 : Starting AirDrop server for user 501 on wake
19/05/16 21:14:57.924 WindowServer[211]: device_generate_desktop_screenshot: authw 0x0(0), shield 0x0(0)
19/05/16 21:14:57.939 WindowServer[211]: device_generate_lock_screen_screenshot: authw 0x0(0)[inf, inf, 0, 0] shield 0x0(0), dev [1440,900]
19/05/16 21:14:57.940 WindowServer[211]: CGXDisplayDidWakeNotification [876819909845]: posting kCGSDisplayDidWake
19/05/16 21:14:57.941 WindowServer[211]: handle_will_sleep_auth_and_shield_windows: Deferring.
19/05/16 21:14:57.000 kernel[0]: en1: BSSID changed to 34:31:c4:8a:fd:2d
19/05/16 21:14:57.000 kernel[0]: en1: channel changed to 13
19/05/16 21:14:58.837 networkd[194]: -[NETProxyLookup url] invalid URL scheme '5223'

If I use this Mac in Target Disk Mode with another computer it works just fine. So it's certainly not an hard drive problem or a software problem.

The most likely cause is your keyboard is failing; specifically there is an issue with your power button where it intermittently causes it to stick.

The shutdown dialog box you are seeing is a result of the power management daemon intercepting the momentary press of the power butting thinking you want to sleep, restart, or shutdown.

  First I also taught it was the power off button but in this case It
  should also shutdown when I'm on target mode but it doesn't

The reason you are not seeing the power button have an effect is because power management must be loaded to intercept the signal.  Not only is power management not loaded, nothing of OS X is being loaded either.

Target Disk Mode is a firmware feature, not a feature of OS X.  What your Mac is doing is allowing the Firewire/Thunderbolt port to pass an external connection through to the internal drive so what you have is in fact, the most expensive Firewire or Thunderbolt external drive ever made.

Because it hasn't loaded any systems management services, a simple press of the power button isn't going to do anything; try it yourself.  However, to turn off your computer in TDM, you have to hold down the power button for 5 seconds - exactly the same way you would if your fully booted OS X Mac would if it stopped responding.

How to Verify...

This is a simple procedure to validate whether or not your power button is failing.  Since it's part of the keyboard assembly this requires disconnecting the keyboard and shorting the power pads to power on your logic board.  I recommend getting an external mouse/keyboard (USB) because when you disconnect your MBP keyboard, you will need something on which to type.

Once you remove the back cover and disconnect the keyboard/trackpad assembly from the logic board, you will need to turn on the MBP by "shorting" the two power pad connections.  Don't worry, this is exactly what a switch does - it shorts the connection.  You can use a paperclip, but my preference is to use a flat blade screwdriver wide enough to touch both contacts.

(The images below are from a 2010 MBP, if you give me your specific model, I will update the shots)

You won't be able to power on your MBP unless you open the lid, so you will have to gently have it upside down on your desk with the lid open as you perform this procedure. It helps if you put a towel of some sort of padding to protect it. Once it's powered on, just flip it back to its normal position (off the towel); you won't need to put the bottom cover back on.  Make sure your mouse and keyboard are connected.

If the problem goes away once you do this, then the problem is your keyboard - it's time for a replacement.


Can the SQLite databases that store iOS mail be exploited to back up messages? Being the technical dude of the family I'm confronted with the following problem:

An iPhone 3GS with iOS 3.1.2, the owner has a lot of old email messages stored on the device but has lost access to the original email server. Other copies of these messages were safely stored on a laptop but the hard disk died.

Forwarding each message manually from the device is not an option given the amount of work involved (about 2000 messages).

I'm fairly technical but without any experience with Macs or iPhones. Reading around a bit I learned the following:

There's no straightforward way to backup email messages (you can backup email account settings but not the actual content).
There's no way to mark all messages on the device and move them to an IMAP folder so they would sync up to a new mail server.
Messages are stored in a SQLite database file on the device. You cannot access this file and move it to your PC or mail it to yourself unless you jailbreak and unlock the device.

First of all, am I wrong and there is some magical way or utility to transfer messages from the device to a PC? Assuming there isn't, can someone point me to the right jailbreak and unlocking procedures that will not delete all data from the device and allow me to get that SQLite store safely?

I'd love to learn if it's possible to read these databases and make a backup of my Mail by accessing the backup files or the files directly on the device.

Is this possible?

I was searching for information on this myself because I needed to back up my email data from the device before doing a restore (it's just shameful that Apple doesn't consider your email messages to be important enough to include in its backups). The following information is valid for IOS 6, I hope it applies to your situation with IOS 3 as well.  On IOS 6 at least, you won't need to mess around with SQlite or anything, it's all plain text.

You need access to the filesystem on the device. There are various PC and Mac apps that will browse the files on the device -- Ifunbox is one that claims to allow access to the filesystem without jailbreaking.

Instructions for jailbreaking your specific device (if it turns out you need it) can be found at http://stateofjailbreak.com/guide/iphone-3gs/3-1-2/.

The emails are stored in User/Library/Mail (that's a symlink, the actual path seems to be var/mobile/library/mail).  Just copy the whole thing to your laptop.

Inside there, you'll find directories named after each email account set up on the device. There's a pretty self-explanatory folder structure within each account folder.  Once you drill down, the emails themselves are stored in individual plaintext *.emlx files, complete with all headers and uuencoded attachments (there's also sometimes an "attachments" folder which has the extracted version of the attachments).  On a PC, you'll want to rename them to *.eml files, and then you'll be able to import them into various email programs like Thunderbird or Outlook; with some you'll need a utility, with others the import function is built in.

I haven't gotten far enough to determine if copying a backup of these folders onto a device restored from itunes backup will restore your archive of emails or not.  Did I mention how annoying it is that Apple doesn't think your offline emails are worth saving when you do a backup of your device?


Is there a way to stop Mail auto CC'ing yourself, when replying all ? In OSX 10.11 mail app if you "Reply all" it automatically CC's yourself. This seems to only happen when using reply all, but not when using reply.

The setting under : mail > preferences > composing > automatically cc myself is disabled.

Is there a way to stop Mail auto CC'ing yourself, when replying all ?

The preference is to keep a copy of an e-mail you originate or reply to one person or forward.  I don't see the point, since a copy goes into a Sent folder anyway.

Reply All means All people on the message, not just some.  If you don't want to keep a copy, just erase your name before sending.  Of course, there will still be a copy in your sent folder anyway.


How to install uBlock Origin for Safari? Is there any way to install uBlock Origin on Safari?

I'm currently using macOS 10.11.2 with Safari 9.0.2 on a 2012 MacBook Pro.

Now there is, thanks to a new fork of uBlock Origin for Safari by el1t. As of writing, as it's still in alpha, you will need to download the extension from GitHub and then install it by clicking on the downloaded file.


How to sync mac mail app with only unarchived/recent gmail messages I recently purchased a Macbook Air and I wanted to use the default Mail app that came with it. When I add a gmail account to it, it tries to download all the mail I've ever received (~10 years worth of email).

In Gmail, I have a habit of archiving mail instead of deleting them. Is there anyway I can sync the mail app to only download mail that is in my inbox (unarchived mail) or the last ~50 mail that was sent to me?

You can't limit it to the last 50 messages, but you can limit it to the last 1000 messages in each "folder" (label).

Go to the Gmail website and click on the gear icon to the top-right side.
Click on Settings.
Click on the "Forwarding and IMAP/POP" tab across the top of the Settings area.
Towards the bottom of the IMAP section, change the "Folder Size Limit" setting to "Limit IMAP folders to contain no more than this many messages". By default 1000 is selected, though you can also choose 2000, 5000, or 10000.
Click Save Changes at the bottom.


Selling a Macbook Pro - removing personal information from it I have recently upgraded to a 2011 MBP, and I'm finally all set up on it.  It's time to sell my previous MBP.  I've already copied off all of the data I want to keep and deleted the obvious suspects.

What is the preferred approach to prepping a used Mac to be sold to an unknown third party that does not include a complete wipe and reinstall?
If possible, I'd like to leave the activated programs on it. (Perhaps, that is a horrible idea and contrary to prepping for resale.)
Is it enough to create a new user, log in as that user and delete the previous user?

I apologize for the basic question; I realize the nuclear option is probably the recommendation, but I'm thinking it would help my resell value to leave the activated software in place.

If you are really concerned with the next owner recovering your files, which can be done even if you emptied the Trash, then you should format the drive:
Open Disk utility, select the drive, select the erase tab and click on security options, then choose one othe following:

I don't know why the sale doesn't include a wipe and reinstall, but I don't see why it shouldn't as a mac always comes with a licensed OS, you just format the drive and reinstall MacOS and you're done.

You can't erase the drive you are currently booted to. You have to boot from an external drive with Mac OS X installed, or boot from the Install DVD.


Is it normal for LaunchD to write over 600 megs of data to /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64? My hard drive began writing a lot and I was having to wait a lot to launch apps.

The Activity Monitor told me that launchd had written over 600 megs to the drive.

So I ran this:

sudo lsof -p $(ps -U root | grep -w "/sbin/launchd" | head -1 | awk '{print $1}')

And got this:

COMMAND PID USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE  SIZE/OFF   NODE NAME
launchd   1 root  cwd    DIR                1,4      1088      2 /
launchd   1 root  txt    REG                1,4    339664 499523 /sbin/launchd
launchd   1 root  txt    REG                1,4    698896 499811 /usr/lib/dyld
launchd   1 root  txt    REG                1,4 669073408 912519 /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64

Is it normal for LaunchD to write over 600 megs of data to /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64?

Having come from linux where I knew what everything was doing and why it was doing it, I can't seem to find anything that explains this behavior.

Yes, it is normal.

On macOS the system stores a combination of the most recent (i.e. highest version numbers) dynamic libraries (frameworks, etc.) in this cache file in order to speed up the launching of processes later on.

When switching from another OS (like Linux) it is normal that you have to get reacquainted with how the system works. As you'll learn, there's a quite big overlap conceptually between macOS and Linux. Most everything in macOS has a Linux counterpart and vice versa.

In this case the dyld_shared_cache is somewhat similar to the /etc/ld.so.cache file on Linux. On Linux this cache contains the most recent shared libraries, which are essentially the same as dynamic libraries on macOS.


How to troubleshoot apps of which multiple instances can be launched I have been observing strange behavior with two dictionary apps from a French / Belgian developer. I can launch both of them multiple times -- i.e., multiple instances of the app will appear in the dock (and Activity Monitor) -- but this is true only for these apps. I'm running Mac OS 10.13.3 on a MBP mid-2015. I've reported this to the developer, but they can't reproduce the problem -- and state that no one else has reported this. If I create a test account, the problem still occurs. I've tried completely deleting and reinstalling these apps, to no avail. However, it turns out that I'm unable to launch more than one instance of these apps on a 2010 MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.11, and I don't know whether it's because of the hardware or the software.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot, if not how to resolve this problem?


Web Start application management? After the latest update Mac OS X Lion, I think that Apple disabled Java applications by default. When I try to run one, I get the following dialog:

If I choose to "Enable" it, how would I disable it later on? Is there any other way to enable this setting besides trying to launch a Java application (i.e. is there some place to manage this setting)?

Use the Java Preferences app (located in the Utilities folder) to manage Java settings (also see this reference).

General steps:

Go to your Utilities folder (either by going to the Applications folder or using the ⇧+⌘+U key combo from Finder)
Launch the Java Preferences application
Uncheck the box next to "Enable applet plug-in and Web Start applications"

Screenshot:


Reply to all cc'ed - Mail OSX When I receive an email which has been cc'ed to a few people, is there a way where  I can set the default reply mode to "reply to all", rather than "reply to just the sender"?

I guess you are using the Mail application by Apple.
In this case, you just need to press the "double arrow" button, rather than the "single arrow", to reply to all the senders, as you can see here:

Otherwise, you can use the shortcut Shift+Cmd+R to perform the same "reply to all" operation.


The new iMacs come with AMD HD 6770M or HD 6970M. How do they compare? the 27" versions of the new iMac come with either the AMD HD 6770M or HD 6970M GPU. How do they compare performancewise? Is it worth its money?

You can compare these graphic cards at Tom's Hardware


Samba is removed from Lion. How is the role of auto_master changed I used to use the /etc/auto_master file to load SMB shares in Snow leopard Mac OS X

Now that Samba is removed, I wonder what should be the correct way to auto mount windows shares.

Mac OS X never used Samba's SMB client. Mac OS X has always used an SMB client implementation based on Boris Popov's smbfs for FreeBSD. I don't think that's changing in Lion, so its relation to /etc/auto_master probably isn't changing.

As for the SMB server side, Samba is surely being replaced with a different SMB server software package.


Is it possible to add an HTML Snippet to Numbers on OS X? Is it possible to add an HTML Snippet to Numbers on OS X?

I would like to add some html code and have Numbers treat it as such, for example to use iframes embed websites into my document.

Would this be possible somehow?

Not currently.

Numbers does not have a Safari or WebKit rendering engine to translate HTML, CSS and JavaScript so as to render content marked up for the Web.  This functionality is currently not supported in Microsoft Excel or even Google Sheets either.

See this similar answer related to Google Sheets on WebApps Stack Exchange.  The user there explains:

  Google docs won't actually render HTML, or execute any code pasted
  into it.


Is possible modify the App Store purchased listing (delete or hide some/unhide other hidden apps)? I have an application listed in my bought applications. I prefer to not see or hide some apps I have purchased in the list of purchased apps. Is there a way to do this? Can I reverse this and unhide these hidden apps at a later date?

For example:

Not on any version of the Mac App Store and iTunes App store for iTunes versions older than 10.5

It appears you can now hide iOS App Store purchases in the recently released version of iTunes.

And you can see them once they're hidden as well as un-hide them if you wish.


How to install command line tools offline? I tried to find a solution but all of them are about trying to install cli-tools without Xcode. All of them eventually require the internet connection. My case is that I want to install cli-tools on a completely offline machine which was never connected to the Internet. Thus the only option is to install from files brought using USB flash.

You have to obtain the tools somehow. Officially you need to have access to the developer download pages at Apple. For the lowest point of entry a valid AppleID seems to suffice for that.

Then you go to the relevant download section on Apple's developer site and choose the appropriate version and download the DMG you need. That file can then be copied to your liking and for example transferred via flash drive.


MacBook Pro stuck on white screen after dual-boot adjustments I wanted to have dual-boot setup on my MacBook Pro. So after searching for a bit, I found a couple of sites that offered a step-by-step explanation on how to do it using rEFInd.

I successfully installed it - I got the rEFInd startup screen and everything. The problem is that when I selected the USB drive I wanted to install from. It always got stuck on a black screen saying

  No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

But that’s a different problem. After not being successful in booting from the USB drive, I had a “brilliant” idea.

I could take the same image I flashed onto the USB drive and try to do the same but on the partition I had prepared for Linux, so then maybe rEFInd will be able to boot if it’s on the hard drive. So I did the following:

sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m

With diskN being the partition on the hard drive, then restarted. And after that, the MacBook Pro never came back. It makes the chime sound, and that’s it. Also, I notice that Caps Lock and Eject keys don’t work, as I tried booting from a Linux CD and now I cannot eject it.

Startup key combinations don’t work, so using the recovery partition is not an option. It only turns on, makes the chime sound and get’s stuck on a white or grayish screen.

Any advice on how to solve this or ideas on what could have happened?

After reading the comments I would try to use Internet Recovery (Command + Option + R) and see if that works.


Prevent iPad from charging while connected to MacBook Pro I would like to know how to prevent an iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch from charging while connected to the USB port on a MacBook on battery power.

I don't think you can. USB includes 5v power, and I think it happens on a hardware level. As in, it can't be turned off without modifying the connectors or the hardware in some way. Not worth while.


Send mail from multiple accounts that are the same account but belongs to different domains I've a single email server that is the same server for the following domains:

myprivatedomain.com
mycompany.com

Say I've an account on that server, for example "me"

So I've two email addresses for the same account

me@myprivatedomain.com
me@mycompany.com

Both email addresses are "the same" and at the server side there is no distinction. It is physically the same income folder and this is the desired behavior.

In a typical situation, when I write an email I decide if the email "FROM" will be me@myprivatedomain.com or me@mycompany.com

In order to properly set up Mail.app in my mac I need to create two different email accounts. I cannot simply create one "inactive" and another "active" account as I do in Outlook. Mail app is connecting twice to the email server and displaying twice the same information.

How can I set up Mail.app in order to have only one connection to the server and have the possibility to decide the mail that will appear at the FROM field of the email?

Regards

Source: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH22279?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Create or change an alias

Choose Mail > Preferences, then click Accounts.

Select an account, then click Account Information.

Click the Alias pop-up menu, choose Edit Aliases, then do one of the following:

Send a message from an alias
In a new message, move the pointer over the From field, click the pop-up menu that appears, then choose an email alias.


Disable fn-keys for bluetooth keyboard I know that there's a setting to change this behaviour, but it doesn't work for my EasyAcc  bluetooth keyboard.
If this behaviour is known, does it apply to all not-built-in keyboards or all bluetooth keyboards?

EDIT:
The setting I'm referring to is:

  Use all F1, F2 etc keys as standard function keys

It doesn't have any effect on my bluetooth keyboard.
I also tried Palua which also only works on my built-in keyboard.

This appears to be a problem across any number of BlueTooth keyboards designed for iOS when you use them on a Mac. I tested three and all have the same problem.

Attempting to fix it is difficult if not impossible since some testing with my favourite key code tool, Key Codes, shows that the OS is intercepting the keypresses before it gets to the keyboard system.

It's not a BlueTooth problem as two different BlueTooth keyboards designed for a PC allowed the setting to work. For example, the Shintaro Mini I use with my Mini media centre works fine.


How to replace missing root and intermediate certificates in Mac OS X v10.8 Let me preface this with the fact that I know nothing about networking / security / etc.  Twice now, I've had issues with root certificates not working and throwing errors, even though they are still valid.

Here's the link to my last post that was was fixed after an update to the OS (at this point, I cannot update any further, as my system is frozen based on older software that requires it).

Safari can't verify the identity of the website errors

Now, the same issue happened again and I can't figure out what to do.  I've been worried that this is a MiTM attack, but didn't know what to do to fix it at this point. I deleted the key in question that had a red x next to it in Keychain and tried to reinstall the keys through Pacifist, but its still not working (also, I dont see the Key now after using the Pacifist method, so I'm not sure how to get it back, but the websites are still throwing errors.

If anyone has any suggestions to fix the issue (as I would like to safely get into some websites that requires this), or a solution to the overall problem, I would be EXTREMELY happy (I will be offering reputation points as soon as the option is open or will send directly, if its possible to do, if someone helps me to fix this sooner than that).

I'm on OS 10.8.5 currently.

EDIT:
I installed it and it now says, under "InCommon RSA Standard Assurance Client CA" - This certificate was signed by an unknown authority." I also have 3 to 4 other login certificates that are showing errors, each one of them has some sort of message about the "InCommon RSA Standard Assurance Client CA."  Strangely, theres another certificate that is showing no errors that is signed by the InCommon RSA Standard Assurance CLient CA, but with a different expiration date.  I'm lost.  I can post photos of all the errors if necessary.

UPDATE:
Upgraded from 10.8.5 to 10.10.5.  Certificate issues still persist.

One should never delete a Root Certificate.

And you should never delete a Root Certificate that has been Marked as Invalid before its expiration Date has been reached.

There was a reason why it was marked as invalid.

Mostly because the Issuer of the Certificate mark it as invalid (this could have been done because he got hacked or whatever could have compromised his Root Certificate).

Now you/your Browser don't have the Root Certificate so you/your Browser aren't able to validate any Certificate which is trusted by this Root.

So it depends on the Browser and how it handles Certificates of a Root it doesn't know.

If the Browser acts correct he will show you each Certificate based on this Root as invalid but some Browsers (at least in Past) didn't handle this correct and would have shown Certificates without a Root they know as valid.


Converting PDF to Powerpoint, importing each slide as a singular picture I have the ability to export a PDF as a powerpoint slide through Adobe Acrobat, but the image quality and font selection suffers because it is trying to convert each component into a modifiable element.

All I want is to treat the entire page as an image and batch import each of the pictures into a powerpoint slide without sacrificing resolution.  I don't need to modify any of the content.

What is the best way to do this?

You could use web services such as Zamzar to convert your PDF to PPT directly, but the downside is lack of privacy and watermark on your PPT.

It is better to split the process into two steps:

Export PDF into images
Import images into PPT

Export PDF into JPG using Preview

macOS' Preview has built in functionality to export your PDF into PNGs. Once you have your PDF open in Preview,

Choose View > Thumbnails or press ⌘ + ⌥ + 1
Select all the pages you want to export, click on File > Export
Select JPG format and the appropriate quality

Use ImageMagick

If you have ImageMagick installed, use a similar command as

magick -density 200 -trim input.pdf -quality 100 -flatten output-%02d.jpg

assuming the PDF is created with 200 dpi. You can adjust the density and scaling accordingly to create the best quality image. See this StackOverflow answer.

Note: Imagemagick uses Ghostscript in the background. You can use Ghostscript directly but the syntax is not as user-friendly. For example:

gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=jpeg -r200 -dJPEGQ=100 -sOutputFile=output-%02d.jpg input.pdf -dBATCH

Import Images into Powerpoint

Open up a new Presentation in Powerpoint and click Insert > Photo Album

Select all the images and click Create

And now you the PDF content is imported into Powerpoint


Software to record videos on iphone that doesn't result on video sizes of tremendous sizes I often record videos with my phone that are 30 to 1hour 30 minutes long. However, the file sizes that result are ridiculously large. I want a way to still be able to record videos of that length and reduce the size a lot. If quality of the video has to be sacrificed, so be it.

The only way I could think of solving this is by downloading some kind of app that does that.

To tailor answer to my specific use case, consider a description of the type of things I record:

I will use it to record talks, presentations, lectures, etc. I don't need anything that is too crazy.

However, I do have some minimum requirements I expect from the app.

I want to be able to control the quality of the video. If I record 30 minutes to 1 hour 30 minute talks, I don't need it to be HD. Just enough so that I can record the slides or the whiteboard/blackboard. This requirement is to control the SIZE of the video. Videos that are 8 GBs of size or more than 5 GB of size are useless to me.
I need to be able to control how I zoom in and out of my videos. For example, if I can't control very granularly how I close my video is, then it might not be useful.
I also need to be able to send these videos to my actual macbook computer somehow. Connecting it and then downloading it to the macbook pro is a great option.

Using the built in app is terrible for me because the videos are of ridiculous sizes (ranging from 5 to 10 GB size). I just need them to be much smaller and still be able to save them on my computer (and potentially upload them to youtube).

I also downloaded the app VideoCamara+ and its great that it lets me control the quality, but it seems limited in its ability to zoom (it only has two modes of closeness as far as I know).

I have also tried moviePro8 but it seems that its low resolutions results in really bad videos (as far as I can tell). VideoCamara+ has the same setting for low resolutions and its videos are not as bad.

This is what I do.

I use the VLC player almost exclusively since it can play anything.

Since you want to save space and eventually download to youtube I would recommend a 2 step process.

First record it in high quality.

Then use a small app called Flv Crunch to convert "any" file format to flv type that is enormous size reduction and compatible with youtube.

It is very easy to use and control the settings.

Convert files between flv, mpeg 1/2/4, 3gp, mp3, m4a, wmv, wma, avi, mkv, aiff, and others.

Then delete the original (ok that was 3 steps :)

why do it this way?

I learned the hard way that once the event is over you are stuck with what ever quality you used to record. Thus I recommend you always record in high quality, since it is easy to reduce the file size to quality you want as end product.

For example you recorded something that needs to be magnified or altered for clarity, that would not be possible any more if recording in low quality.

About Flash Video Format:

  FLV files are videos that are encoded by Adobe Flash software. They
  can be played via the Adobe Flash Player, web browser plugins or one
  of several third party programs. Since virtually everyone has the
  player installed on their browsers, it has become the most common
  online video viewing platform used on the Web today. As almost all
  video sharing sites such as Youtube stream videos in Flash,
  practically all browsers support and are compatible with the Flash
  Video format and can play the video with ease. In addition to being an
  online video viewing format, the Flash Video format is also what many
  video-sharing sites convert videos to, from formats that were uploaded
  by their users in something other than Flash.

  This is because videos in the FLV format remain in high quality even
  after compression to a smaller file size, which means that the videos
  on the Web load quickly and won’t spend a lot of time using up
  bandwidth.

  Some notable users of the Flash Video are Youtube, Yahoo! Video, VEVO,
  Hulu and Myspace among many others.


Migration assistant destroyed battery life I got a new computer from work: Macbook Pro 2015. Opened it up and the expected battery life read 14 hours.

Used Migration Assistant to upload my old computer, a 2013 Macbook Air. Migration worked fine and the laptop was plugged in the entire time.

Now, a day later, with the laptop on idle and literally zero apps open and the screen on medium brightness and all that, the expected battery life is 4 hours.

How is this possible?

EDIT Added details.

The 14hrs of battery life the MBP reported initially was almost certainly an incorrect reading.

The first thing I would do is reset the System Management Controller (SMC) and see what readings you get then.

Reset the SMC

Shut down your MBP
Unplug the power cable and any other hardware (keyboards, mouse, drives, etc)
For 10 seconds, press and hold at the same time the shiftcontroloption keys (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button
After 10 seconds let go of all keys and the power button
Plug in the power cable
Turn your MBP back on with the power button.

Once you've done that see if you notice any wild fluctuations in what the system reports in terms of your battery life.

Run Apple Diagnostics

After resetting the SMC you can also follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics if you're still concerned:

Fully shut down your MBP
Restart your MBP
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.

Calibrate your MBP battery

If you're still concerned, you can always calibrate the battery. This isn't officially required on MacBook models with built-in batteries, but some users report an improvement after doing so.

Before following these steps, read over them fully as you will need to leave your MBP in a flat and powered off state for at least five hours, so you may want to time things to suit you (for example, so that it's in that state overnight while you're sleeping).

Follow these steps to do the calibration:

Fully charge your MBP - Since we're unsure about how the OS is reading the battery percentages, make sure you go by the charging indicator rather than the battery icon in the menu bar.
Now use the MBP for a minimum of two hours while it's still plugged into AC power. (Note: You don't have to actually use it, but have it logged in and running off AC power for two hours).
After a minimum of two hours has passed, unplug the MBP from AC power, but do not shut it down. Leave it logged in or use it as normal during this time.
Keep using your MBP (or just leave it running) until it automatically goes to sleep because it's diminished its safe power reserves. If you happen to be using it, you should see a warning that the battery is low. Ignore this.
Eventually your MBP will go to sleep. When it does, press the power button to shut it off fully.
Wait at least five hours and then plug it into AC power and give it a full charge. Once again, go by the charger to know when it's fully charged.


How do I add cover art to an .aiff on OSX from the commandline How do I add cover art to an .aif file on OSX from the commandline.

With ffmpeg this seems fairly easy for mp3 and other formats but i need aiff's with cover art.

Under OS X, I've used Kid3 to add cover art to AIFF files, from both the GUI and CLI with the latter in both direct and interactive modes. The CLI version is not for the faint of heart and you must read the documentation  The Kid3 Handbook (English version) to use the CLI, especially the CLI examples section as it shows something that's not shown elsewhere in the documentation or output of the internal help file of kid3-cli.

Which is the use of single quotes around the commands being used, e.g.:

kid3-cli -c 'select "/path/to/filename.aiff"' -c 'set picture:"/path/to/coverart.jpg" "Picture Description"' -c 'save'

Note that the example above is basic syntax for just setting cover art and /path/to/ can be omitted if everything is in the working directory and "Picture Description" can be "" if no description is wanted, but it has to be supplied one way or the other in this use case.

The kid3-cli executable is within the kid3.app application bundle, e.g. /Applications/kid3.app/Contents/MacOS/kid3-cli and to make it easier to use, you might want to set an alias for it in your bash profile file or set a symlink for it to a location that is within the PATH variable.

Example for your bash profile file:

alias kid3-cli='/Applications/kid3.app/Contents/MacOS/kid3-cli'

Example to create a symlink from Terminal:

sudo ln -s /Applications/kid3.app/Contents/MacOS/kid3-cli /usr/local/bin/kid3-cli

Then from the command line you could use: kid3-cli ...


I want to power off multiple Macs everyday at 23:30 (11:30 pm)? I have this problem in my office that multiple Macs always run 24/7 and my boss said that I need to make it stop. Now I don't have much experience with Macs, I'm more the Windows type.

I have one Mac who acts as a server and would like to run a script or something like that to orchestrate the power status of several computers if that helps.

How can I shut down all of those 7-8 Macs remotely at 11:30pm?

As patrix has pointed out in a comment, you can set up any Mac to start up or wake up, and sleep or shut down at specific times, via the System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Schedule... settings.

You could also try using AppleScript, e.g. this code (edit it with Script Editor, then save as an Application):

tell application id "com.apple.systemevents" -- System Events.app
    shut down
end tell

And then use OSX's Launch Services to run this script at a given time. To set this up, you could use a free tool such as "Lingon X".

Besides, why shut them down like this? If all you care about is to preserve electrical power, why not instead set up the Macs to go to Sleep after being idle for, say, 30 minutes? That way, they will go to sleep much sooner usually, saving more power. If they do not go to sleep as expected, you can check with the Terminal command pmset -g what might prevent them from sleeping. Often it's a pending print task (which you may want to delete, then) or mounted server volumes.


Process was killed -- why? How can I find out? I have written a computer program in C++, compiled it and ran it within terminal using the command line. This program has run fine many times, but it appears that whenever its accumulated CPU time exceeds 60 minutes (which occurs after about 9 minutes as it runs at ~700% on eight threads) it is killed by the run-time system (at least that is suggested by monitoring it using top).

There is no error or other message, but merely the word "Killed" printed to the command line:

MacBook-Pro-8:~/directory> ./program_name options
Killed

Is there a limit on the accumulated CPU time for such processes? How can I find out what killed my process? How can I avoid this?

Following the suggestion to run this in a debugger, here is the result:

Process 90937 stopped
* thread #1, queue = 'com.apple.main-thread', stop reason = signal SIGKILL
frame #0: 0x000000010001fc50 captureISO`tbb::interface9::internal::start_for<WDutils::Parallel::details::blocked_range_terminating<unsigned long>, (anonymous namespace)::simulations::sampleSome(bool)::$_2, tbb::auto_partitioner const>::run_body(WDutils::Parallel::details::blocked_range_terminating<unsigned long>&) [inlined] tbb::concurrent_vector<(anonymous namespace)::simulations::initialCondition, tbb::cache_aligned_allocator<(anonymous namespace)::simulations::initialCondition> >::push_back(this=0x00007fff5fbfebd0)::simulations::initialCondition const&) at concurrent_vector.h:846 [opt]
   843      iterator push_back( const_reference item )
   844      {
   845          push_back_helper prolog(*this);
-> 846          new(prolog.internal_push_back_result()) T(item);
   847          return prolog.return_iterator_and_dismiss();
   848      }
   849

Thus, the error occurred within tbb_concurrent_vector.h in a call to placement new, suggesting a lack of memory. Though I'm still mystified why this should result in a kill signal. But this appears off topic here. I have asked on Stack Overflow.

In general there’s no limit on accumulated CPU time for processes on macOS.

It seems likely that your program stopped due to issues such as bugs in the program, lack of memory, or similar. In order to find out what happened, try starting your program in the debugger and look at the backtrace.

In addition you should replace the signal handler in the program with one, that prints out which signal it receives. You could potentially also change the program not to kill itself when receiving the signal, but instead do something - like for example freeing up memory. It depends on the signal you’re receiving whether or not it can be ignored.


Restoring selected iOS apps and data to my new iPhone I made a full backup of my old iPhone 4S (iOS 7.1) with iTunes. I'd like to restore only some of the apps and app data to my new 5s from the iTunes backup. Is this possible?

I don't need much of the apps figuring in the iTunes backup just a few games along with their scores which were saved off my old iphone. Thx in advance.

Update: apart from iCloud selective app backup which implies that you need to fully restore the new iphone, you can use this to back up and restore only selected apps and app preferences that go along.

Otherwise create another backup of your old iphone, this time via using iCloud. (Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage). From the options on the next screen, choose which and app data you want to back up exactly. Then hit "Back Up Now".

Upon restore to your new iphone only the app data you selected during the icloud backup will be restored.


Installation of Office 365 on 2008 Macbook with OS -X 10.6 failed I was installing Office 365 on 2008 Macbook with OS X 10.6  and about half way through the installation a pop-up said to close Safari to continue installation. When I did, I received another pop up that installation failed. Was I suppose to X out of Safari which is what I did?

You needed to quit Safari "⌘+Q", "X-ing" out of safari only closes the window, not the program.


What harm will denying ocsp.apple.com do? After the recent issue of trustd trying to connect to Apple's overloaded servers, and causing slowdowns to Macs around the world, one discussion page suggested a temporary fix:

This command in Terminal will edit your /etc/hosts file to block
connections to the problematic Apple server:
echo 0.0.0.0 ocsp.apple.com | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

It then said "you REALLY do not want to leave that line in /etc/hosts—it MUST come out later!".
Does anyone know what the consequences might be of obstructing trustd in this way long-term?

OCSP requests send a hash for every program you run, so that trustd can report the information (to a third-party CDN run by another company, Akamai).  The purpose is to effectively verify whether the app that is launching is notarized or not by attempting to validate any Apple-related cryptographic certificates.  With the release of macOS 11, we could no longer block certain Apple OS services with apps like Lulu and Little Snitch, as per the new restrictions to how third-party kernel extensions can function as well as to their scope of control.  This feature was then removed with the release of macOS 11.2.
If you always know what you're installing and you trust the processes running on your Mac, there might not be an immediate consequence of blocking the OCSP requests.  Since they require an internet connection, you could instead toggle your network connection to resolve any slow-downs the next time Apple's servers freeze up.  If you want to block the OCSP requests, your solution should work (at least for that address).  If you want to disable the service, you can try the following commands:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.revocation.plist OCSPStyle None
sudo defaults write com.apple.security.revocation.plist OCSPStyle None

I can't verify that it will make a difference, since Apple removed the conventional method to accomplish the equivalent in Keychain Access → Preferences years ago.


Can I set my Mac to auto-accept Bluetooth file-transfers from my phone? Transferring photos from my Android smartphone to my laptop via Bluetooth is really easy, but the laptop always pops up an "Incoming File" dialog asking if I want to accept the file-transfer. I can choose an "Accept all" checkbox, but that only seems to apply for the current connection -- not future connections.

Is there any way to set my Mac to trust my phone and automatically accept transfers?

Open up System Preferences > Sharing > Bluetooth

You should see the options you can set there; use the drop selection to what you prefer:


Selected application loses focus Since upgrading to Yosemite, the current application -- could be anything from Sublime Text to AppCode to Chrome -- will lose focus while I'm typing.

This happens with an external keyboard or an internal keyboard, with the computer lid closed (MBP Retina) and open.

Any advice or event hints?

The issue was due to a dockbar application grabbing the focus occasionally. One such culprit: older versions of Google Drive, as seen here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/drive/epLdP4Bny5w/gKQsxwDMoUAJ

However, any application can grab and keep focus.

Note: for me the problem was a very outdated version of Google Drive.


Late 2011 MacBook Pro Cannot format HDD I have a Late 2011 MacBook Pro with 750GB HDD.  I was running Yosemite 10.10.2.  I had about 250GB of partitioned HDD that i wanted to add to my main partition 'Macintosh HD'.  It let me remove the second partition but i couldn't do my normal drag and extend the 'Macintosh HD' partition to take full advantage of my HDD space.  After hours of searching i plunged into recovery using Disk Utility and Terminal tried to extend the cold source to use the whole HDD.  It still wasn't working so using my critical thinking skills i decided i would just use terminal to wipe the whole drive and start fresh just like i can do in Windows.  This failed miserably.  I can't do anything at this point.  Every time i try to do anything it gives me cannot unmount error and when i try to back up from time machine the only thing its see's is a DISK0S1 that's only 210MB.  It boots into recovery and that's about it. I would like to just get my MacBook running again and if possible using the full 750GB HDD.  Im not sure if thats possible at this point.  Also when i try to use Reinstall OS X it only see's DISK0S1.

We just has a similar issue last week at our office. Do you need to retrieve any of the data from the drive? If not:

1) Run Internet Recovery so the Macbook is not running off of the active drive (command+r at boot)
2) Open disk utility -> select drive -> partition -> 1 partition scheme, set format as appropriate, etc.
2.5) (if 2 fails) Go to Erase -> Name drive Macintosh HD and format as appropriate
3) Go to First Aid after creating partition and Repair Disk. Verify it comes back with no problems
4) Exit diskutil and run the OS installer. Will restore it back to factory shipped OS.

If you run into an issue using the Internet Recovery system due to a bad partition, use this article to create an external boot drive using IR: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202796


Transferring Apps from One iPod to another I had to have my daughter's iPod motherboard replaced, and in doing so have had to re-download all the apps she had.  That wasn't an issue until she tried playing one of the games, and it was like she had never played it before...when we tried connecting through her game center (it still showed she was on the level she should have been), it wouldn't work because she had an older version, and the new version requires her to connect through Facebook to save her progress...I refused to sign her up to Facebook (she's 7), so wondered if I could copy the app from my son's iPod (the version she had before the repair) and put it on her iPod?  Would it copy the older version so she can continue to play (and still have access to her friends through game center)?

You can't really transfer apps between two IOS devices with different Apple IDs, unless you are up for jailbreaking, then I cant help you.

If you want to get the version your son uses on your daughter's device you will need to sign into the App Store with the AppleID on his device. But that will give you all of his settings as well. As you can see, problematic.

However you mention an older version and the App Store will always download the most recent version compatible with your system. So you may end up with the same version you don't want.

Perhaps there is someone else who knows a trick or two that I am not aware of, but if not you may be out of luck.


Transfer Videos From iOS5 Device to Computer Wirelessly: Possible? It seems that the majority of my device's content can now sync wirelesslly to my computer either via wifi sync or iCloud photostream.  Notably, photostream does not encompass videos.

Is there a way to transfer videos from your iOS5 camera roll to your computer wirelessly, or does this still require a hard line, cable transfer?*

*I tried to get around this using Dropbox sync over wifi, but the 4S's HD videos were too large for the Dropbox app to handle.

I haven't tested it with videos, but I've had some decent results using PhotoSync. I think it's $2 or $3 on the app store, with a free Mac side client. Transfers photos and videos to/from your iOS library wirelessly without using iTunes. It also supports albums in iOS 5.


How can I tell if all USB-C ports on a 2020 M1 MacBook Pro are the same speed, or if one or more will be faster than others? I'm doing some heavy copying of files, and wish to do it via the fastest USB-C connection possible.
I tried holding option and clicking on the apple logo on the very top left, then going to System Information. From here on I'm guessing. I looked under 'Hardware' and see two areas of interest: 'Thunderbolt/USB4', and 'USB'. Does this automatically imply that one or more USB-C ports are faster than others?
Question
How exactly can I tell if one (or more) USB-C ports on a MacBook Pro offers faster speeds, and how can I easily know which that is?

Apple Menu, "About this Mac", "System Report", "Hardware", "USB" and you get a list of all USB devices connected with their speeds. If a device is not connected directly but through a hub, that will cause a little bit of time. If multiple devices are connected to the same hub, they will have to share the bandwidth - they will slow down if they are used simultaneously.
And one trap that might be misleading you: If a hub has only slow devices connected, then it will often report that it has the slow speed itself. So a USB 3 hub with only USB 2 devices plugged in may report that it is a USB 2 hub itself; plug in a USB 3 device and it changes to a USB 3 hub.


Is there a way to go back a few seconds in a movie on iTunes on a Mac? Such as going back 5 or 10 seconds. This is a function I needed most but don't find on iTunes.

P.S. the CmdOpt Left arrow doesn't work by the way.

Use Cmd+Option+Left Arrow to skip backwards five seconds.

Use Cmd+Option+Right Arrow to skip forward five seconds.

Hold the keys down and you'll keep skipping backwards or forwards with momentary pauses so you can keep up.


Time estimate to location in Today's view? I found an article (can't remember where) that there's an option to show time estimate of arrival at a location in the Today's view, with regards to traffic too.

How do I enable this option ?

I presume you are referring to the following section:

To enable, you need to go to Settings → Privacy → Location Services → System Services and turn Frequent Locations on. Then go to Settings → Notification Center and turn Next Destination on.


How to transfer video files from ipad air to macbook air There is no file explorer type utility in iOS just like we have it on Android system. So how can I copy files from/to my iPad from/to other computers (MacBook/Windows)?
Specifically I am interested in the video created by the iOS Camera app.

If you prefer not to sync the whole library with iTunes there are plenty of other things you can do, but most require network connection:

Apple's Photos app
Image Capture
Airdrop (as mentioned above)
Since you mention file system access, and non-wireless transfer that would only be possible with 3rd party utilities (iMazing, iExplorer, PhoneView and more...) I won’t post links here, sure you’ll be able to find yourself.

Disclosure: I work with the iMazing team.


Does iTunes put my iTunes account information in track files when I import CD albums? Does iTunes put my iTunes account information in track files when I import CD albums? I never shared any music because I prefer to buy original CDs but if someone stoles some files of mine can my account be traced back? I imported my CD collection last year.

Ripped/imported audio tracks do not get any account information embedded.

This does not apply to tracks matched via iTunes Match and replaced by the AAC version from the store. These tracks do contain your Apple ID


How do I make Finder snap to grid regardless of the number of items in the directory? Maybe I have a case of acute OCD, I don't know - but this issue irks me more than it really should.

I set up my Finder settings to display four files or directories horizontally, snapped to a grid in which everything's symmetrical and really nice looking. However, if I don't have more than four items in the directory, the folders don't snap to to the grid like they're supposed to.

Here's a quick fifteen second vid displaying the issue as well as the Finder settings I've used.

So my question is simple: how do I fix/enable snap to grid functionality for directories with four or less items in it?

If you select "Snap to Grid" from the "Sort by" menu and "None" from the "Arrange By" menu, it'll keep the same grid spacing regardless of the number of items in the folder.


How to get to compare one column between two sheets to tell info in one sheet that is not in the other in Numbers What we are trying to accomplish is:

1) We have a list (spreadsheet) of all of last years clients.

2) We have a list (spreadsheet) of this years clients.

3) We need numbers to subtract out all of this years clients from last years clients so we know who all is yet to have come.

How do we accomplish this on the current version of Numbers (6.2.1 I think) on MacOS 10.15.3?

I think one way you can do this is through a formula using if(), iferror(), and vlookup() functions and also, if you wish, the Filter feature in Numbers.

Assuming you have the names of this year's clients in a table called "Clients 2020" and those of last year in "Clients 2019", you can identify the names of those that are yet to come this year with the formula shown in the picture below:

Here is a text version of the same formula if you wish to copy & paste it from here:

= IF(IFERROR(VLOOKUP(B2,Clients 2020::B$2:B$21,1,0),0)=0,B2,0)

This formula lookups the name of the client in the cell on its left within the specified cells in the table called "Clients 2020". If the name is there, it returns "0". If not, it returns the name of the client. You may have to modify the formula a bit depending on the name of the table which has this year's clients and the exact cell addresses.

If you also wish to show only the yet-to-come (2019 only) clients as a list, you can then use Numbers' Filter feature. You can access this feature through the Organize option on the right in Numbers' toolbar at the top as shown in the picture below:

The filter shown in the picture above "filters" out any rows in the table "Clients 2019" whose "2019 only" column is equal to 0.

If you would like to copy part or all of the filtered table elsewhere for further processing for any reason, select all the names (and, for example, the No column or any additional column you may have if you like) and press Command ⌘+C. Then select a cell in a new table (in a new sheet or file in Numbers if you also like) and then press Shift ⇧+Command ⌘+V (keyboard shortcut for "Paste Formula Results" menu option). These commands, when applied to a filtered table, will only copy & paste the cells you selected from the filtered table.

Hope these help!


Mountain Lion : Password expiration for OS X that is currently bound to an Active Directory We have 10 MacBook Pro Mountain Lion  that is currently bound to an Active Directory. AD password expiration date time is 42 days.

My questions are :

1 - Is remind us our password is expiring like Windows OS? or is there any notification related to this?

2 - Let's say MAC users wants change their password. How to reset MAC user's expired passwords ?
is there any equivalent like CTRL+ALT+DELETE combination in windows?
Because when to changing my password in the System Preferences, but that did NOT change my AD password. Am I wrong or correct?

(1) The only notification on the newer Mac OS releases is a prompt at the login screen once you successfully authenticate.  As it starts to login it receives the notification from AD that your password is set to expire in X number of days.  For instance, if AD is set to remind users of their password expiration 10 days before it expires then the prompt will be along the lines of "Your password is set to expire in 10 days.  Click change password to change your password or continue to continue logging in."

If you click continue you will continue logging in and you can change your password later.  If you click change password you will be prompted to enter a new AD password.  This will update your mobile user accounts password as well, however it will NOT update your keychain password or other passwords stored within your account.  The Mac OS basically treats this like a password reset from outside of the system, just like it would if you reset the password from your recovery partition.  Once you've logged in you will need to update your login.keychain (and now with Mavericks, your local/iCloud.keychain) password to match the new password.  While you're in keychain it would be smart to update any of your saved entries for the old password as well.

(2) I don't think this is correct, although this could be the case if you were not connected to your office network.  Updating through System Preferences > Users & Groups > Change Password is actually my preferred method for our users to update their passwords. This process updates the AD password, the local/mobile account password as well as the keychain passwords.  The only thing our users have to do afterwards is update their Outlook and phone system password entries in their login.keychain and on their iPads & iPhones.  This process only works when you're connected to the network where your Active Directory resides.  When my users are outside of our network (away from the office) they can change their passwords using the option in Microsoft Outlook Web Access.  This is also the only place they'll receive the password expiring in X number of days warning when they're outside of the network.  When they come back to the office they will need to login while connected to the network in order to update the password, then update their keychain password.

So my recommended method for our users is this.

If you're in the office:

Click continue to login without changing your password
Put your iPad and/or iPhone into Airplane Mode (to prevent account lockout during the process)
Open System Preferences > Users & Groups, select your account and click Change Password
Open Keychain Access (Applications/Utilities) and find the entry for your Exchange account.  Double click it to open and change the stored password.  Repeat this for our phone system (it uses AD credentials) entry in keychain.
On your iPad and/or iPhone, go to Mail, Contacts & Calendars > Work Account > Account and enter your new password.  Disable Airplane Mode once you're finished.

If you're away from the office and it can't wait:

Put your iPad and/or iPhone into Airplane Mode (to prevent account lockout during the process)
Login to Outlook Web Access
Click on Options > Password, change your password
Open Keychain Access (Applications/Utilities) and find the entry for your Exchange account.  Double click it to open and change the stored password.  Repeat this for our phone system (it uses AD credentials) entry in keychain.
On your iPad and/or iPhone, go to Mail, Contacts & Calendars > Work Account > Account and enter your new password.  Disable Airplane Mode once you're finished.
Login to your user account when you're back in the office.
Update your keychain password once you've logged in by opening Keychain Access and clicking Edit > Change password for "login keychain"


Can I upgrade the SSD on late 2013 retina Mac Book Pro? Do the late 2013 models (13" - (ME864LL/A, ME865LL/A, ME866LL/A), 15" - (ME293LL/A, ME294LL/A)) support after market SSD upgrades? If so, is a drive that works with the late 2012/ early 2013 rMBPs compatible with the late 2013 models?

Although not officially supported - A couple sources (EveryMac, OWC) indicate the late 2012/ early 2013 rMBPs support after market SSD upgrades.

[Update]
ifixit posted a teardown here indicating in step 8 that:

  The proprietary SSD has changed to a PCIe format, but still isn't a standard
  2.5" drive. However, it is a separate daughtercard, and we’re hopeful we can
  offer an upgrade in the near future.

The current OWC PCIe SSD's for Macbook Pro Retina's 10,1/2 work for the 2012/early2013 models. Not the Late 2013 models (11,1 (13-inch models) & 11,2 (2.0 GHz 15-inch model) & 11,3 (2.3 GHz 15-inch model) ID#'s).

They claim they will release compatible upgrades "for next year". So, I guess, not until 2014. Could be sooner, I don't know the history of their estimates->outcomes of SSD releases for pre-announced/expected products.


Can I set up one Parallels VM to start automatically while leaving the rest off? I set up a Windows 7 VM using parallels (uses boot camp partition - wow its very fast), and another VM running WinXP (for legacy stuff).

What I need is to automatically fire up that Windows 7 VM when I log into MacOS, but NOT run the WinXP VM.

I see I can right-click on Parallels icon and choose Options > Open at Login, but I am thinking that will either (1) not actually start up my Win7 machine or (2) will run both of them - neither is my desired result.

Under the account settings, there is a list of items that run on start up, per user.

Place a shortcut to the Windows 7 VM in there, that should do the trick.


How to skip iOS 9.3 update? Is there a way to skip this (or any future) updates?  I'm using an iPhone 5s.

Option 1: Delete the update from your iOS device.

Go to Settings from your Home screen
Select Storage and iCloud Usage
Go to "Manage Storage"
Find the iOS update that is bothering you and select it
Tap on "Delete Update" and confirm

However, you'll have to stay off of Wi-fi, otherwise it'll re-download.

Option 2: Block Software Update domains on your router / gateway

You'll have to figure this one out on your own, since all routers are different, but the domains you'll want to block are:

appldnld.apple.com
mesu.apple.com

Option 3: Just update

You can also give in and submit to the installation. This will bring you up to the latest, most reliable and up-to-date version of iOS, but if you don't want to, that's definitely fine.


Time control for specific applications on OS X Is there a simple way to limit the use of a specific application to a certain amount of time (for instance one hour per day)?

To be more specific, I use a Macbook with OS X 10.10, on which there are several accounts, one for me and one for my daughter, who is a Parental Controls account.

Apparently, it is possible with the Apple's Parental Controls system to put time limits on the use on the computer, and also to block specific applications, but not to combine those two applications, blocking one application at certain time or for certain duration. So how would I do this?

The only program I could find with this capability is Watcher, but it has very poor reviews from users.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/9037/watcher


Why is my iOS Reminders app slow and unstable when invoked by Siri? I am a longtime user of the iOs "Reminders" app. And I most commonly create new reminders through Siri, for example by saying "Remind me to pay the rent at 6pm."

These Siri requests started taking a slow, long time to actually create the reminder.

I would make the Siri request, and then Siri would say things like "I'm on it," "Wait a moment," etc.
A very long delay would pass. It would take up to 15 seconds before it would act.
Then, it would actually even fail about 15 percent of the time, saying "Sorry, there was a problem with the app."
A side issue that is truly a bug but not the point of this post is that, after the Reminders app was approved in iOS13, my default reminder list appeared totally blank when viewed in the web-based iCloud reminders app. (It was OK (after an initial delay of several days) in actual mobile devices and in the macOS app.)

What caused this slowness problem, and how to fix?

The fix to this problem is due to the fact that the reminders list that it was attempting to add to (... which is the one that was configured in iOS as the "Default reminders list") was a very old and very full list.   It was not super full of un-completed reminders, but the number of past COMPLETED reminders was over 8,000.

So, to fix the slowness, I simply created a new reminders list in my iPhone. Then I configured this new reminders list to be the "Default reminders list."

After that point in time, Siri commands to create new reminders work smoothly and quickly.  (AND, related to that final bullet, this new reminders list was fully visible, not empty, in the iCloud web app.)


Is there an app on Cydia that will let me turn off dock audio? I have an iPhone 4 with some slight water damage.  The only issue is that when I am listening on headphones, occasionally it thinks that it is docked (which silences the headphones), then half a second to 10 seconds later, it thinks it has been removed from the dock that it was never connected to and thus pauses the audio.  Since all this happens in the OS while it monitors the status of the headphone jack and the media dock, it would be very easy to write a program to tell it to stop polling the media dock, and thus the faulty dock detection switch would be ignored.  So, has someone already written an iPhone app that is on Cydia that would let me turn off the dock detector switch?

Unfortunately, this would require some very specific code that goes beyond anything I've seen on Cydia. That's not to say that a solution does not (or will not by the time I finish this post) exist. However, through my research and experience, this is handled by code much deeper in iOS than most Cydia apps care to touch. I wish I could offer a solution, but unfortunately, I think the only "real" solution is repair or replacement. Sorry. :(

Good luck and happy listening!


Date format for file's "Modified" and "Last opened" is different than other files I have a few files in the same folder and I noticed that the format for the Modified and Last opened metadata fields are the "short" format for most files and the "medium" format for just a few. Why is this and how is this set for a given file?

Example of "short" format date:

Example of "medium" format date:

Just FYI, here's where the date formats are set in System Preferences:

The date "presentation" of a file info in column view in the preview column is determined by the column width! The wider the column the more detailed the date!

You can easily check this by either alt-holding and moving the column handle which increases/decreases all columns at once or just moving the "preview" handle. The handles are the two small parallel lines near the bottom of a window.

very short (all examples are german date formats):

middle:

full:


hyperlink to another worksheet in Numbers 09 Is it possible to hyperlink to another sheet in the same workbook in Numbers '09? I want to have a link so I can jump back and fourth between sheets. Excel has this feature but I can't find anything about it in Numbers. It appears that Numbers only allows hyperlinks to webpages or to send an email.

The short (and sad) answer is: No, unfortunately it is not possible.


Is it worth getting a 4k monitor for a late-2012 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display? I know my 13" 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina display won't support 4k (because it uses the Intel HD4000 for graphics), but I need a new monitor.

I just want a monitor that will look good at 2560x1440 (or 2560x1600?) ideally similar performance to the current thunderbolt display.

Will a 4k display (eg. the PB287Q) perform just as well as a 2560x1440 display (eg. the PB278Q) with my MacBook Pro? If so, I may as well get one so that I'm 4k ready whenever I upgrade the macbook.

Update, Details about my usage: I don't care about gaming, I just want something for programming and internet. I intend to just drive this external screen only and leave the MacBook closed. I occasionally dip into Lightroom for photo editing, so image quality is a bonus. It wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to review images on the laptop screen though.

What's officially "supported" and what's possible don't match. I managed to get 4K out of it at 30Hz.

I took a screenshot as proof:

Just a normal mini-displayport<->displayport cable was used.

More details in my answer here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/147765/39878

or on this blog post: http://www.mattburns.co.uk/blog/2014/09/30/running-the-4k-aoc-u2868pqu-and-intel-hd4000-graphics/

2560x1440 works ok but because it isn't HiDPI it still feels like a step backwards. I flip between running 1080p (HiDPI) and full 4k (with the text being tiny).


Import Albums "From my Mac" to my iPhone albums and keep them synced I don't use iCloud Photos. I wanted to import my iPhone photo albums to my Mac but it seems that without iCloud Photos it is not possible without any third party software according to my searches.
But I've found that I can create albums on Photos on my Mac and then sync with my iPhone. So I took time to recreate albums on my Mac. I factory reset my iPhone and then sync with my Mac. All the photos are back, even the albums, great.
BUT, the albums on my iPhone are "hidden" in the "From my Mac" section. Not in "My Albums". And I can't add photos to these albums on my iPhone. I could select all the photos and add them on a newly created album on my iPhone with the same name but.. I guess it will be out of sync.
Is it possible to keep the albums between my Mac and iPhone synced AND have the possibility to add photos to these albums on my iPhone ? Without iCloud Photos.
I've searched for a solution for the past two days and I don't know what to do anymore.
It is supposed to be simple.. isn't it ? :(
Thanks

Ok technically I've found the answer : no.
It seems that due to iOS limitations, you can't edit album that are created outside the iPhone.
So I'll try to achieve my goal by managing photos manually.
The problem is : Photos crashes during the export. I'll ask another question for that.


Display on an HP 23fi monitor with a MacBook Pro I've recently started using a Mac. I've been on Debian + Thinkpads exclusively till now.

I have an HP Pavillion 23fi monitor which I've been using with my old Thinkpad X201 via the VGA port. It drives the monitor at 1920x1080 (60.0 Hz) and everything looks sharp and nice.

Now that I have the retina MacbookPro, I've connected it to the monitor using a Belkin HDMI to HDMI cable. It looks symmetric. I've put one end into the macbooks HDMI port and the other end into the monitors HDMI port. The MacBook detects it fine (understands that it's is a HP 23fi) and I can see stuff on the screen.

Now, the problems start. I want the laptop retina screen to be turned off and the external HP monitor to be driver at 1920x1080 (60.0 Hz). If both the laptops are plugged in, I can simply change the input terminal on the monitor and use them both conveniently. With Debian, I run this on the terminal and everything works fine.

xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1920x1080

which basically tells the external monitor (VGA1) to run at 1920x1080. After that, I usually run

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off

which shuts off my laptop screen.

I want to do something like this with the mac but have hit some problems. I can set the built-in retina display to say "Best for HP 23fi" under system preferences. With the HP23fi, I set "Resolution" to "Best for HP 23fi", Rotation to "standard" , Refresh rate to "60 Hz (NTSC)" and underscan to "more" (without which, I can't see the entire screen).

This "works" but the fonts on the screen are blurry and I can't really use anything. I'm not familiar with how the retina display affects things but I'd like the external monitor to be driven at top resolution and get output similar what I'm getting with the Debian laptop. How exactly do I do this?

There might be bits of relevant information I'm missing since I'm not familiar with the platform.

I just bought one and had the same problem - blurry fonts on 2014 RMBP & had to adjust the underscan to fit the image on the screen.

Fixed by

turning off Overscan in the monitor menu Image Control > Custom Scaling > Overscan > Off and
turning off Underscan in the System Preferences > Display menu.


Where is Passbook for the iPad? I installed iOS 6 on my iPad and went looking for Passbook and didn't find it. I checked the AppStore and no results are found for Passbook.

Where is it?

Passbook
is only for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The following is taken from the official description:

...you can scan your iPhone or iPod touch to check in for a flight, get into a movie, and redeem a coupon....