Is there a way to write rules for incoming calls? I'd like to write some rules for incoming calls on my iPhone.  For instance, if a call from a certain number comes in, I'd like it to go to voice-mail.  Or simply hang up and not answer at all.

Is there a way to do this natively on the iPhone or perhaps an app that does that?

Without jail breaking iOS - you can't get a phone call on any app but the Apple phone app (which doesn't support call screening as you asked).

Some carriers will let you set this up - but it's nothing to do with the iPhone.

Lastly, there are tons of services that require another phone number. Google Voice is one where you can program quiet hours, white list or black list and have exactly such control.

The downside to these other apps is that you'll need to have people call your alternate number, so it's not as easy - even with the ability to port an existing number to GV and then get a new number from your carrier.

Several iOS apps work with Google Voice like the official app and GV Mobile + and there are probably a hundred other VOIP solutions on the app store, but Google and Skype are the big players today.


Videos taken with an iPod Touch (or iPhone 4GS) play upside down on my Windows PC Anybody has an idea why videos taken with an iPod Touch (or iPhone 4S) play upside down on my Windows PC with Windows Media Player? However with QuickTime, videos are oriented correctly.

Windows Media Player is either ignoring or misinterpreting the orientation information in the video's metadata.

Since QuickTime better supports the format that your iPhone records in, it makes sense that it's doing a better job.

If you want to use Windows Media Player, your best bet is probably to convert the video into another format that WMP supports better. One app that allows you to do this is HandBrake.
Otherwise, you should be fine using QuickTime, iTunes, or a Mac.


VPN to OSX from windows machine? The environment i have setup consists of an OSX Server, running file sharing and VPN.

The file share is accessible from the local network on both windows or OSX machines, and OSX machines have no problem connecting to the server via VPN when on a remote network.

However, i can't seem be to able to set the VPN/File share up via a windows machine that is not on the local network, can anyone advise further as to how I would allow windows machines to connect to the osx servers file share/vpn from a remote network?

Thanks!

Add this to your registry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\PolicyAgent]
"AssumeUDPEncapsulationContextOnSendRule"=dword:00000002
Open secpol.msc (click start > search for secpol.msc)

Local Policies > Security Options
Network Security : LAN Manager Auth Level…
Set to: Send LM & NTLMv2 - UseNTLMv2…

And

Network Security : Minimum session security… clients
uncheck "Require 128-bit encryption"

Restart PC
Create VPN Connection on Windows 7

Host Name: (server IP or yourhost.name.com)
PPP Settings : Enable LCP (only)
Type: L2TP/IPSec
Pre-shared key : yoursharedsecret
Data encryption : Optional encryption
Allow CHAO and CHAPv2

Router on server-side must allow VPN Passthrough and forward ports: 50, 51, 500, 548, 1701, 1723, 4500 to the server box. Also, do not filter anonymous internet requests, multicast or NAT Redirection but enable SPI Firewall.


MacBook keyboard mod? Is it possible to mod the MacBook keyboard to be backlit? Is there any website or business that can help or would do it for me?

you can always try to find yourself from this FlickR Photos and set it up :)
Flickr SET
Flickr SET SlideShow

How I used the backlighting from a macbook air, to give my white macbook a backlit keyboard.
You couldn't just change the whole keyboard, they're not compatible, but the lighting sheet fits.
Then you have to get nearly 16 volts from a step-up-converter to power the 5 white LEDs and add some electronics for switching it on/off and regulate the keyboard-brightness by the screen-brightness.
If you wanna have a backlit keyboard and think about doing it on your own: forget it and buy a new macbook with integrated backlight.
You would almost destroy your macbook in the process...


Smart Mailbox filter "Message is not in mailbox" for iCloud mailboxes When I create or edit a Smart Mailbox and I want to add filter Message is not in mailbox it works fine for all my e-mail accounts except iCloud.

So, if I add such filter in some Smart Mailbox settings and would try to add some mailbox from my iCloud account, it will do that, but it will reset it after I press OK - when I open settings for this Smart Mailbox again, I see the following:

As you can see, instead of my chosen mailbox that I wanted to exclude there is No mailbox selected. And of course this filter doesn't work.

But again, if I add any mailbox from any other account beside iCloud to this filter, it works fine, so the issue is only with iCloud mailboxes.

Do you know, why is that and how to fix this?

I had the same problem and I found a solution here luckily after searching like crazy. The problem was, that I used my Gmail account as my Apple ID, so mail got confused. After I deactivated mail in my iCloud account settings, it was working fine. This is obviously only a solution if you don't use both accounts. Anyway, maybe it helps someone:

  And here's the solution, or rather the explanation for the problem: If
  you're using your gmail Adress as your apple-id (and therefore as your
  login credentials for your iCloud account) Apple Mail seems to get
  confused. Simply change your iCloud Username to something else and
  your good to go.


How to share existing PC docking-station-like setup with Macbook Pro I currently have an HP Elitebook laptop which I plugin into an HP proprietary docking station. When the HP is "plugged in", I have instant access to;

2 monitors connected through various display adapters (at the moment; 1 display port, and 1 vga port, but other options are available)
Several usb ports for peripherals, including a bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth mouse dongle
Power for the HP laptop
Ethernet Adapter

I just acquired a MacBookPro 14,3. I would love to be able to plug my MBP into this docking station and have instant access to all of the above. Obviously thats not possible (nor would the power supply be correct).

What is my next best option if;

At a minimum, I want to be able to quickly and easily switch between using the monitors, mouse and keyboard, between the PC and MBP

I've tried screen sharing from the MBP, but its laggy, and I dont see a way to do dual screen (I'm using VNC viewer). I would prefer to avoid using a switch, given all the additional wires, but I'm guessing thats my next best option?

At a minimum, I want to be able to quickly and easily switch between
  using the monitors, mouse and keyboard, between the PC and MBP

You can't if your peripherals/accessories are plugged into this docking station.

The dock connects to the HP notebook via a proprietary connector.  There's no way to connect anything but the supported notebooks to this dock.

The key here is to understand that the HP dock is not an "independent device."  It's designed for convenience when wanting to use desktop peripherals (mouse,monitor,keyboard, LAN, etc.) with your notebook; consider it part of your HP notebook when docked.

To share devices, you need "something" that interfaces with the peripherals that can be connected to both machines.

Your only options are to:

Ditch the dock and use a generic USB hub/dock and manually move the USB cable between computers
Get a Bluetooth mouse/keyboard (like the Logitech MK850) that supports multiple devices (won't support video switching)
Get a quality KVM switch that supports multiple monitors


Google Chrome caused Mac OS X to have High CPU I'm not sure if anyone else faced this issue also. My Mac Book running so hot. I'm on the latest OS BigSur, and on a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019). As you can this Mac is fairly new and fully loaded. It's kind of sad when it's hot over an app like Chrome, and Apple technician can't find anything wrong it while I brought it to the store twice.
I'm using the default charger that it came with the 16" (96W).
I reinstalled OS twice by me, and by Apple. I tried reset SMC so many times, and it still seems over heat back. I checked Activity Monitor, I saw a lot of Chrome extensions.

How can I make my Mac run like normal again and still able use my Chrome like others ?
I've tried disaled a lot of the extensions already, but how do we know which is the one that might have caused these high CPU consumption ? Is there a way to find out ?
Note

When I closed Chrome, my Mac is not hot or loud anymore, so Chrome seem to be the major caused in my case.

I had a similar problem. A new MacBook Pro was still (after a couple of weeks) running too damn hot. And Chrome was, seemingly, not using a lot of CPU or RAM. And still there were a number of articles and forum posts about how Chrome is still the root of all of this evil.
Being the skeptical type I left Chrome alone. But the heat issue was still there and nothing else was fixing the issue. So I followed some instructions on some web page, somewhere that had some detailed instructions for removing Chrome and all of its little background processes. Google it, you will find quite a few helpful places with detailed instructions.
In its place I installed Brave, which is based on Chrome but without all the tracking and auto updating and anything else Google could throw at it.
It worked.
So if you can do without Chrome itself and use Brave in its place you just may find that does the trick.


Will ipod 2nd generation support newer ios Will 2nd generation mod MB533C support newer ios ?
I have a much older ipod touch and would like to use imessage. Is this model capable of doing so?

As Arc676 comments:
A Generation 2 iPod Touch's latest possible firmware is iOS 4.2.1, which does not support iMessage.


Lion: Change Keyboard shortcut CMD + ALT + Left/Right Arrow for spaces OR Firefox's next/previous tab I'm using Firefox, where CMD + ALT + ← / → Arrow changes to the next / previous tab. This is an important feature to me.

Since Lion, this shortcut changes the active space to the next and previous space, with no way to customize this. And I want to use spaces, just no with the keybinding. Firefox also won't let me customize my shortcut. How can I change one of those?

(Hint: the Firefox extension "keyconfig" let's you do a lot of keybindings-changes, but not the previous and next tab ones).

You can change Mission Control's keyboard shorcut from System Preferences/Keyboard/Keyboard Shourtcuts window or bind specific shortcut key for Firefox in same window.


Is there a better way to search the menus? I have always used the help menu (command ⌘+shift ⇧+? /) to search the application menus for something that I don’t have a keyboard shortcut for (or don’t remember it).

It’s an awesome feature, but it is annoying that it

searches for other things too (help obviously).
requires you to press the down arrow to select the first option.
always shows up with the giant pointer thing pointing to the menu item.
is sometimes slow as it looks for (online) help topics.

Is there an app that can do this better, or a defaults write to make the Help menu work the way I want it to?

Sidenote—it would be nice if I could exclude certain things like Safari history.

You can do this with Alfred Powerpack and Key Clue workflow. This way you can search the command in the Spotlight like behavior (while providing you with all the visible shortcuts). In fact, you can use Command+<Number Key> to quickly choose the command from search result.

I’ve actually written the similar post before, but using another workflow called Menu Bar Search, these days I use Key Clue as my primary workflow to search menu bar items.

P.S. Alfred has a built-in feature to search Safari bookmarks, but you can also develop the Key Clue workflow further to include Safari browsing history/bookmarks.


How to fix multiple errors when installing Homebrew on OSX Lion (mainly OSXFUSE and Mono related) I'm trying to install Homebrew but I'm getting multiple errors when brew doctor is run.

I'm a complete noob at this and I've tried uninstalling Homebrew and re-installing, but still not working.

Here's what it shows:

Warning: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework detected
This can be picked up by CMake's build system and likely cause the build to
fail. You may need to move this file out of the way to compile CMake.

Warning: Unbrewed dylibs were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected dylibs:
    /usr/local/lib/libmacfuse_i32.2.dylib
    /usr/local/lib/libmacfuse_i64.2.dylib
    /usr/local/lib/libmpg123.0.dylib
    /usr/local/lib/libosxfuse_i32.2.dylib
    /usr/local/lib/libosxfuse_i64.2.dylib

Warning: Unbrewed .la files were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected .la files:
    /usr/local/lib/libosxfuse_i32.la
    /usr/local/lib/libosxfuse_i64.la

Warning: Unbrewed .pc files were found in /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected .pc files:
    /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/osxfuse.pc

Could anyone help me? What is Mono? I don't remember installing it. How could I find out what programmes I use are using Mono? If they're not important, maybe I could un-install Mono? And it seems like a lot of other errors are based on OSXFUSE. Could I move those to another place? Is there another way other than un-installing it? Thanks a million.

Try this to fix the osxlibfuse warnings: https://gist.github.com/trinitronx/5437061

It should be compatible with Truecrypt which needs osxlibfuse.  If you have another program that needs them (doubtful) then this fix might mess it up.


Is there any way to change MAC-address of built-in Bluetooth adapter? I should change MAC-address of a built-in Bluetooth adapter. Is there any way to do it in Yosemite (10.10.4)?

Please note - the question is about Bluetooth, not about Wi-Fi. ifconfig doesn't see Bluetooth device.

I've already tried to update my bluetooth adapter address in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist (Root\PANInterfaces\Item 0):

# turn bluetooth off
cp /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist ~/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist
cp /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist ~/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist.backup
# edit ~/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist
sudo cp ~/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist
cd /Library/Preferences
sudo chown root:wheel com.apple.Bluetooth.plist
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist
# turn bluetooth on

But it doesn't help.

Look into SpoofMAC on GitHub which allows you to change ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth addresses and interfaces. There's all the instructions to get you started, on that page.


High Sierra's External Display bug heats Macbook's, damaged my Retina Screen, what can I do? After installing High Sierra, I noticed GPU related slowness, I initially sought help here: What could cause a cumulative slowness that manifests itself as high WindowServer CPU usage in High Sierra? - But later on stumbled onto this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8150105 and easily verified that the issue is related to external displays

Before an external display is connected, the GPU temp is around 55C under use, immediately after an external display is connected, the temperature jumps to 75-80C's (no apps used)

Very recently, I noticed this darkening on my Retina screen, I deduct it's a side effect of the constantly hot temperatures: https://imgur.com/a/Q6bnz

Ironically it's been 3 weeks since my warranty expired

On one hand, I want to solve the technical issue, preferably without re-installing the OS

On the other hand, the hardware damage is pretty saddening, but I'm guessing nothing can be done about it since the issue is assumably not widespread

The “stadium lighting” you show is usually a backlight issue where the voltage or lamps are not to spec.

It’s highly unlikely that a thermal situation would cause that, but I don’t want to say there’s no chance or you’re wrong unless I could examine the whole Mac.

100C on many internal parts is just fine, so your reported ranges don’t seem at all out of line - especially on 2016 and newer MacBook Pro.


Do you use more mobile data with Wi-Fi off than with Wi-Fi on (connected to Wi-Fi or not) Does using your mobile data while having Wi-Fi off when not connected burn data faster than using mobile data while having Wi-Fi on when not connected to Wi-Fi?

You can measure this yourself by going to settings app and using the reset option to then track data and watch how much you use over a set period and then again repeating the steps with Wi-Fi in the other state.

In general, you should leave Wi-Fi on so that it connects when it can if you are concerned with mobile data usage.

I can't see a situation where an app developer would notice that Wi-Fi was off and then send more data over mobile/cellular data, but it's something that a developer could in fact do.

You'd have to measure things to be 100% sure. My guess is even if there is a difference, it would be so small as to not matter, though.


Does applications movable to other iphones? I am fun of buying apps and not to jailbreak my iphone so all my apps are paid. Moreover, I am subscribed to deals websites, where I receive some newsletters with apps discounts or even paid apps to free for limited time.

My question is, all paid apps can be re-downloaded with no cost to a new device (e.g iPhone 6 when it will be out) ?
Moreover, those apps that was paid but was on free discount for limited time, are these apps free again to be sync to a new device?

Thank you in advance.

Once you have purchased an app from the App Store (even if it was free or discounted at the time) you can then redownload at no cost on your other devices so long as you log into the same Apple ID when you go to the store to download.  You can also sync from the same iTunes library, so long as the library is registered to the same Apple ID.


mac Book air shows abttery loaded 99 % but still needs to plug the chager hello Iread so many things. it seems no one faced my situation.
my mac book air battery is loaded at 99 % but if I disconnect the charger mac book closes

before that, it often happened that randomely mac book air closes and to restart again i need to plug with charger. when I check battery it was loaded generally around 50 %

who can help me ?
thank you

This is typical when a lithium battery fails. You could buy a new battery or take it in for service in the unlikely instance that the charging circuitry is what has broken. Batteries are designed to fail and are consumable. The circuitry is far less likely to fail, but you can't tell the difference without servicing the hardware.

You can learn more at http://www.apple.com/batteries/ and perhaps see what your full charge cycle and other batter information show - that would perhaps reinforce the notion that it's time to get a battery replacement.

The System Information app can show your your power measurements.


Help with an AppleScript - click a menu item which has a name which changes I'd like to make F5 be equivalent to clicking on the mail icon in the taskbar, and F6 equivalent to clicking minimise on the mail app main window (or the 'hide' action).  Is there a way to achieve this?
I'm following the method here.
Below is my script which almost works.
The problem is I'm clicking a menu item the name of which is not constant.
on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Mail"
            set frontmost to true
            -- "Inbox (8 Messages)" will only work when 8 messages!:
            click menu item "Inbox (8 Messages)" of menu "Window" of menu bar 1
        end tell
    end tell

    return input
end run

Object Specifiers
In AppleScript, the way an object is referred to is called the object specifier. In your code, you are using the name specifier.
Try a numeric value for the menu item, such as:
click (menu item 12) of menu "Window" of menu bar 1

Or a relative term, such as:
click the last menu item of menu "Window" of menu bar 1


How do I activate SNMP on Airport base stations Using Mountain Lion and the Airport utility I can't find a way to activate SNMP on any of the Airport base stations I have. Even the old ones which were configured to use it don't have the option anymore.

It is as if the options disappeared recently. What is the solution to enable SNMP?

SNMP appears to be on by default. I bought a new Airport Express recently (the white Apple TV looking version), and just ran this command against it: snmpwalk -v 2c -c public -O e 10.0.1.1 and it returned the huge list of OIDs/values I would have expected.

You are correct that the community cannot be changed with the 6.* version of the AirPort Utility app, but 5.6.1 is still compatible even with Mountain Lion. One Mr. Frank Tisellano created an Automator Workflow to install 5.6.1. After installing this, you'll have both versions of the Airport Utility side-by-side. Using 5.6.1 will allow you to customize the community string, and the other advanced options that were lost in version 6.

See this answer to install Airport Utility 5.6 on Mountain Lion.


Launch console application in iTerm on boot How can I launch some command (console application) in iTerm2 on system boot? There should be only one instance of this application.

Create a script which will run Your app. Something like:

#!/bin/bash
/path/to/executable

Save it, change this to be executable with chmod +x in Terminal or iTerm2 app. Right click on this file and choose Get Info, select the prefered app which will open it (in Your case iTerm2 app). Open Preferences.app, go to Users and Groups -> Login and add Your script there. With this once You login Your script will be opened in iTerm2 app.


Is something missing from my Macbook Air package? Should my brand new Macbook Air 13'' have come with a CD/DVD in that black booklet included in the package?

No. The mid 2011 air uses Internet recovery to network boot and reinstall lion.

You can use the recovery hd assistant to make your own USB media for booting if you don't expect to have Internet when you ever need to restore your air.


find what's producing inactive memory First of all i'd like to ask politely for all of those who feel the need to explain it to me how perfect apple's memory management is to ignore this thread.

A little background:

The theory goes that if you have lots of inactive memory - it's can be freed for applications that need it. It's like free memory according to apple and their blind followers. And i like the idea of it, but... in practice: when free memory hits low numbers and inactive hits high numbers - osx (at least snow leopard) slows down ... So even if the inactive memory is being freed - it is done very very slow and that's not acceptable.

But for some reason the problem has just gotten worse for me: i've just noticed that inactive memory keeps piling up faster than ever. I've done a couple of purges just to confirm my theory and ... the number gets high again very fast ...

So until apple fixes whatever is wrong with their memory management - i'd at least like to know which apps are producing the inactive memory.

Is there a way to somehow monitor processes and see how much memory they allocate and free during their lifetime?

Thanks for your thoughts

I have had some success using the terminal command top.  Much the same results as Activity Monitor, but I can slow down the update speed, and sort on any field.

In my experience, the problem is usually with individual programs that fail to free memory. You will see the memory for that process creep up.  See 'man top' for details about the various fields that top reports.  Firefox is notorious for this, and with 60 or so tabs requires a restart every few days

If you want to dig deeper, vmmap can give you the status of pages owned by a particular process.

Be warned:  sometimes slowdowns are CPU related.  Sometimes disk i/o related, althoth the latter is less common with current memory prices.


Can you recommend a numeracy iphone application where you 'write' answers on the screen? I'm trying to find a numeracy/maths/times-tables application for my children in which you have to 'write' the correct answer. There are lots of multiple-choice type times-tables applications but I'm looking for the equivalent of the various "Brain Academy" type applications available on Nintendo DS.

Age from 6 to 10.

Thanks for any help.

Unfortunately, the only app that contains everything you want so far seems to be MathBoard, which is iPad-only (it does however, look really well done). I didn't see anything for the iPhone that uses writing input rather than a number pad or buttons.


Textmate 2 and Latex How can I set the main file in Textmate 2 in order to make it compile my complete dissertation and not the file I am editing?

You need to tell your Latex editor where the main file of your dissertation is placed, in regard to the document you are editing. To define it, add this command to the header of the .tex file that you are editing:

%!TEX root = ../Main.tex

Just edit the path to your main file (in this example "../Main.tex") from the file you are editing. I usually have a file "main.tex" as master document and I link the chapters or sections of the document which are placed in sub-folder.

To try it out, open the menu Bundles -> Latex -> Project Management -> Open Master File
With this line in the head the main.tex file will open. Then you can compile it directly from the included .tex file with Bundles -> Latex -> Typeset and View


Is there a tool to simply join 2 pdf pages in one? It seems a hard to find an answer to such a simple request:
I have a pdf file with 16 pages A4 size. I would like to make a 'spreads' view of it, this means that page 1 and page 16 (cover and backcover) should remain A4 size while all the pages in between should become A3 size.

I tried the following:

Using Preview.app I can display the pdf the way I want but I can't
save it for use with any other pdf viewer.
Print to pdf the in between pages with the "multiple pages per sheet" option doesn't
work for me because page margins are inserted in between the a4
pages.

I know some a good pdf editor can do this but these tools are expensive and I don't need it for anything else. With Windows I used a simple freeware tool.

Do you know how to do it for Mac?

You can try PDFSam.  PDFSam stands for PDF Split and Merge. Its a free open source app. There is a Pro version you can buy but the basic version is free.


How do I route system audio to specific channel on audio interface? I have a multichannel audio interface connected to my MacBook Pro by USB. I set the interface as the output device in System Preferences > Audio, and the system audio is routed to outputs 1-2. I want to route the system audio to channels 11-12, how can I do this?
In Audio MIDI Setup there is an option to use the device for Sound Output, but there is no way to specify which channels on the device to use.
I am using a 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina 10.15.7. The interface is a Soundcraft Signature 12 MTK.

After selecting the device for sound output in System Preferences, you must configure the speaker settings for the device in Audio MIDI Setup:

Open Audio MIDI Setup
Right click on the audio device and select Configure Speakers...
Choose the configuration (e.g. stereo)
Choose the channel destination for each speaker (e.g. left, right)


Stronger speaker for iPhone 4, is it possible to buy? My speaker on my iPhone 4 is not as strong as I want it to be, I am not hearing it well when someone calls me - the ringtone is too quiet. It is set to maximum, but still too quiet for my taste. Is there a 3rd party seller that has a stronger speaker?

AFAIK, there is nothing like that available. While it is possible to make a louder speaker, I believe iOS sets the volume limit itself, though I couldn't be sure.

I would imagine if a mod like that were possible, the speaker would need to connect to the headphone jack internally in order to bypass iOS's limit.

It's really all just speculation, though.


Is it a good idea to enroll in Apple Developer Program now? I heard that Apple is going to make the Developer Program for building and distributing iOS apps free? Is that true? Is it a good idea to pay $99 now or should I just wait?

When iOS 9 releases, anyone will be able to build apps and deploy them on their devices without needing to join the developer program. However, you will not be able to distribute the app to the app store without joining the dev program.


Apple ID recovery mail going to wrong email address I tried the forgot Apple ID / password option available on the Apple's site and selected the Reset via Email option. But the recovery e-mail they are sending to has got domain part wrong. As in m*****@m*****.com instead of m*****@gmail.com.

What can be wrong here? Is this some kind of a bug?

If you are talking about iforgot, you must have entered the email address wrong in the page before the one in the screenshot. Please recheck.


macOS suddenly exhibits weird mouse acceleration after idling Not sure what changed in the system but I'm running 10.15.6 (19G2021) and suddenly it have the mouse acceleration really fast if the system is idle for a few minutes.
As soon as I move the mouse for 1 second, the acceleration does return to normal.
I have a custom acceleration set in this system like this
defaults read .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling 0.125

Not sure if that matters.
I also have a Logitech mouse that is controlled by their software GHub.

I've had similar issues with a Logitech MX2 & Logi Options.
My bet is the Logi controller that 'forgets' what it's doing.
Tests would include:-

uninstalling their drivers & see if the same happens without;
test a different mouse;
see if your G-series can be used fully with something like SteerMouse or USB Overdrive.


Lossless CD ripping for Mac OS 9 I've recently revived an original clamshell iBook which has something my modern MacbookPro lacks: a CD drive. This has given me an idea: ripping CD's with my iBook and bringing them over to my newer computer.

Is there a piece of free software for classic Mac OS which is capable of ripping lossless audio files from CD's for free ?

As far as I remember (AFAIR), no extra software is required to rip audio CDs lossless in Mac OS 9. You can simply open the CD and use the Finder to copy the music files to the hard disk.

The final data format is AIFF.

This probably won't work for copy protected audio CDs (non-Red Book).


iPhone Music Playing App That Uses Album Artist? I have a lot of compilation albums where each track is by a different artist, but I have the Album Artist tag set to "Various Artists" (or in the case of some soundtracks, the main artist's name).

However, when viewing my music by artist in the iPhone's iPod app, it lists all the track artists, creating a miasma of artist listings with only one or two songs under them.

Is there an iPhone app out there that lists by Album Artist instead, which would be a lot more manageable and frankly, makes a lot more sense?

Since there are no answers to this question yet, and all the discussion took place in comments, let's write a summary. And please, up vote the relevant author in their comments on the question itself. Please please please.

Per @ghoppe;

When using the iPod app in list view (list view = the view with selections for your chosen category), the "More …" category on the very bottom right hand side has a few additional options, name there is "Compilations" view.

This view is identical to Album view, except it only shows albums that have two or more unique artists in it.

If this is a view you use often, you could put it on the category bar so it's quick/easy to get to. Perhaps a customization like: "Artist - Compilations - Songs - Videos - More …"

This of course does nothing to prevent seeing compilations when in an Artist entry.

(More is required and cannot be replaced nor moved.)

My suggestion was to default your browsing habits to using Album view instead. Instead of picking a song by an artist, you will always see a track-ordered list of songs after picking an album.

There's also the search box you can use to type in an artist/album, and pick the relevant view you want from it (scroll to the top of any view, or if you're already at the top swipe down once more to pull the top down, and the search box will be revealed).


Browsing another disk in Time Machine just lets me browse my actual hard drive I'm clicking "Browse other backup disks..." in the Time Machine menu, then selecting a Time Machine disk. This puts me into the Time Machine interface, but I just see my home folder. Not my home folder from my old computer, but my current home folder. How can I browse my old backups to retrieve files?

To retrieve files from a Time Machine disk without using the Time Machine interface, open a new Finder window and open the volume from the sidebar. You should see a folder called Backups.db. Open this and the folder it contains for your computer.

Note: If you're using a Network Disk, such as a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme with a connected disk, you will not see Backups.db, you will instead see a .sparsebundle file. Open this and you should be able to continue these instructions.

You will now see a list of folders, named by their date/time. Open the folder you wish to retrieve the file from and navigate to the appropriate location.


Inaccurate click to open an app from Launchpad: closes Launchpad I'm surprised how much I use Launchpad after upgrading to Lion both to launch and switch to applications, to the extent that I rarely find myself showing the Dock anymore. I do have one problem, however:

In Launchpad, when one clicks on an application icon, the computer exits the Launchpad screen and launches or switches to the application. When one clicks near but not on an application icon, the computer exits the Launchpad screen and returns to the frontmost application before Launchpad was activated. These are two very different behaviors separated by a small space in terms of pixel targets.

Is there a way make a missed click in Launchpad result in remaining in Launchpad, or to expand the clickable target around the icons?

If the answer is no, that isn't possible, I'd be happy to accept that as correct; I just want to know if there's something I can do to make Launchpad more usable by reducing the wondering after I clicked whether I hit the target or not.

The behaviour is intentional, and works much the same within Expose and Mission Control etc.

It's the way out of Launchpad, and if clicking elsewhere other than on an icon doesn't exit you from it, then the only way would be to start a new program or use a keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture.

If you know the gesture or keyboard shortcut that starts it without having to use the dock, then you will likely know how to reverse the action.  But for the (possibly majority) users who happily enter it from the Dock icon this could be very confusing and frustrating as the Dock is removed while Launchpad is displayed, depriving the user of the chance to use it.  The fact that there is a new icon for it suggests that Apple expect people to learn about the feature, and at least start using it, via the dock.

If you find yourself regularly missing the icons, perhaps you could look into scaling them up, that may be a possibility, they are huge on my 24", but I'm not sure if this is user customisable.


Can you record Face and Screen Capture simultaneously as two different video files in iphone Is there an app that can allow me to record my face and screen capture my iphone simultaneously and have a two separate video files saved? I'm making a reaction video and I need the face reaction as well as the screen capture. I've tried 'Go Record', 'Record it!' apps that makes the face videos appear on the screen. I'm not looking for that kind of recording app nor using two separate devices to record.
So in short,

Is iphone able to record two videos simultaneously?
If so, is there an app to do so.

Thanks.

Yes, the iPhone is able to record two videos simultaneously.
But no, I don't think there is an app that does what you want. As I understand it, you want to do screen capture of any app, and simultaneously record the front-facing camera using a different app, than the one being screen captured. That is not possible.
You can do screen recording of any app simply by using the built-in screen recording feature of iOS.
You can also record using the front-facing camera at the same time using the built-in Camera app, or any other app that offers video recording. You can probably get an app that will record without actually showing the video on screen.
However, you cannot then switch to a different app (for example a game) and have the camera keep recording in the background.
If you do not want to use two devices to be able to do this, a work-around could be to record the screen capture first, and then record the reactions after the fact and edit them into the video. This is how some Youtubers add small reactions to their content.


Tried to install gromacs 5.1.1 via homebrew, all commands are not found I've tried to install gromacs on my system (10.11.5) via homebrew.  The command I used was brew install gromacs and it appears to have worked fine; gromacs is in my usr/bin/Cellar, and shows up when I run brew list.

But, when I try to actually run any gromacs command, I just get a command not found error.  When I try to run man gromacs it tells me there is no manual entry for gromacs; I get man entries as normal for other brew packages I'm using.

brew doctor output is pasted below, but nothing in there means anything to me.  I'd appreciate your perspectives on how to make this work, or on what other information I might need to include.

I wonder if I need to modify my PATH, but if so I don't know how to do that or what to modify it to.

Cheers

brew doctor output after this

Warning: Unbrewed dylibs were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected dylibs:
    /usr/local/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib
    /usr/local/lib/libtk8.6.dylib

Warning: Unbrewed header files were found in /usr/local/include.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected header files:
    /usr/local/include/fakemysql.h
    /usr/local/include/fakepq.h
    /usr/local/include/fakesql.h
    /usr/local/include/itcl.h
    /usr/local/include/itcl2TclOO.h
    /usr/local/include/itclDecls.h
    /usr/local/include/itclInt.h
    /usr/local/include/itclIntDecls.h
    /usr/local/include/itclMigrate2TclCore.h
    /usr/local/include/itclTclIntStubsFcn.h
    /usr/local/include/mysqlStubs.h
    /usr/local/include/odbcStubs.h
    /usr/local/include/pqStubs.h
    /usr/local/include/tcl.h
    /usr/local/include/tclDecls.h
    /usr/local/include/tclOO.h
    /usr/local/include/tclOODecls.h
    /usr/local/include/tclPlatDecls.h
    /usr/local/include/tclThread.h
    /usr/local/include/tclTomMath.h
    /usr/local/include/tclTomMathDecls.h
    /usr/local/include/tdbc.h
    /usr/local/include/tdbcDecls.h
    /usr/local/include/tdbcInt.h
    /usr/local/include/tk.h
    /usr/local/include/tkDecls.h
    /usr/local/include/tkPlatDecls.h

Warning: Unbrewed .la files were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected .la files:
    /usr/local/lib/libfftw3f.la
    /usr/local/lib/libfftw3f_threads.la

Warning: Unbrewed .pc files were found in /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected .pc files:
    /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/tcl.pc
    /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/tk.pc

Warning: Unbrewed static libraries were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected static libraries:
    /usr/local/lib/libtclstub8.6.a
    /usr/local/lib/libtkstub8.6.a

I figured it out myself, so I'm posting the answer in case anyone else has this problem.

The answer was that gromacs has changed since the version I used most recently, and the commands I was used to no longer exist.  For example, the g_energy command now runs as gmx energy.

If you are also having this problem, gmx help commands should give you a list of what the commands are now.

Thanks for reading this!


After Yosemite, can't print; CUPS error_log: "/bin/bash: gs: command not found" My printer stopped working since I upgraded to Yosemite. The print queue window says only "Stopped - 'Filter' failed". From /var/log/cups/error_log:

...
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] PID 3334 (/usr/libexec/cups/filter/cgpdftops) exited with no errors.
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Wrote 1 pages...
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] PID 3335 (/usr/libexec/cups/filter/pstops) exited with no errors.
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Flushing FIFO.
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Starting renderer with command: "gs -dBATCH -dPARANOIDSAFER -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pxlmono -r600x600 -dMediaPosition=0 -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=612 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=792 -sOutputFile=/dev/fd/3 -_ 3>&1 1>&2"
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Starting process "kid3" (generation 1)
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Starting process "kid4" (generation 2)
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] JCL: -12345X@PJL
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] <job data>
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Starting process "renderer" (generation 2)
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] /bin/bash: gs: command not found
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] renderer exited with status 127
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Closing renderer
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] kid3 exited with status 1
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Process is dying with "Error closing renderer
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] ", exit stat 1
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Cleaning up...
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] PID 3336 (/usr/libexec/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 1.
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Hint: Try setting the LogLevel to "debug" to find out more.
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Sent 0 bytes...
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] STATE: +cups-waiting-for-job-completed
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] Waiting for read thread to exit...
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] PID 3337 (/usr/libexec/cups/backend/usb) exited with no errors.
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] End of messages
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] printer-state=3(idle)
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] printer-state-message="Filter failed"
D [28/Oct/2014:21:46:49 -0700] [Job 4] printer-state-reasons=none

/bin/bash: gs: command not found looks interesting, as does PID 3336 (/usr/libexec/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 1. I assume the first error led to the second.

GhostScript has long been installed. I just installed the latest (9.15). Running gs in Terminal launches the GhostScript command line tool. which gs tells me /usr/local/bin/gs.

I tried restarting CUPS (sudo launchctl [stop/start] org.cups.cupsd). I also symlinked gs to /usr/bin and /sbin.

Why can't it find gs when I actually try to print?

If you look in your console, you'll probably see a message about sandboxd preventing gs from running. Just add this line to the end of /etc/cups/cups-files.conf:

  Sandboxing Relaxed

then type:

sudo launchctl stop org.cups.cupsd


2007 Macbook Pro will not boot to HDD I have a 2007 MacBook Pro running Yosemite from an off the net upgrade from Snow Leopard and the graphics went crazy while trying to watch a TV program on my Slingbox app. I forced a shut down by holding the power button down and now it will not boot up to the hard drive. upon trying to start it up, the initial startup tone is sounded, the apple pops up on the screen and the progress bar begins to load. Upon reaching about half way on the progress bar it stops loading and eventually goes to a black screen with an arrow cursor. I tried reloading the OS with the original Snow Leopard OS disc but got a pop up stating that the OS was not compatible. I then went to utilities and ran a disc permissions test, a disc permissions repair , and then a disc test but the it said the disc appeared to be OK. It still will not boot and is still only loading about half of the loading start up bar. Anybody have any ideas? I think the hard drive may be toast but I really would love to load some of the pictures and desktop info on to an external drive but don't have a clue on how to proceed.

It appears that your drive is failing. Your best bet is to attempt to clone the drive to prevent data loss. If you're unsure how to proceed, your next best bet is to run fsck, which can, in some cases, fix any formatting issues on the drive (but NOT physical ones). This Apple support article will give you a good walk through of the troubleshooting steps, but again, best to try to rescue data if you don't have a back up before going forward.


Can I use 8GB 1666 MHz DDR3 on Macbook Pro Early 2011 15? I want to upgrade my RAM of Macbook Pro Early 2011 15 inch. On apple website it says to use 1333 Mhz, unfortunately I cant find it in my local market , they are offereing 1666 Mhz of 8GB and saying that it is backward compatible.
Can I use 1666Mhz in my Mac?

Thanks

Yes you can use.

They need to be SO-DIMM DDR3, if your CPU doesn't support 1666 MHz they will be clocked down to 1333 MHz.

About your model (Macbook Pro Early 2011 15 inch) looks like the 2.0 GHz CPU version supports only 1333 MHz, versions with 2.2 GHz or 2.3 GHz CPU support 1666 MHz


Weird output from ls command in Terminal I recently started customising my Mac terminal and adding Vim stuff. After some time I noticed that when executing ls command, I keep getting:

)<CR>?vnoremap <Space> zf??

along-with regular ls command output. For example:

$ ls
)<CR>?vnoremap <Space> zf?? Documents                   Movies                      Public
Applications                Downloads                   Music                       Workspace
Desktop                     Library                     Pictures

I have no idea where it is coming from. It happens only in ls command and it happens in both built-in Terminal.app and iTerm2 (zsh shell).

I have tried grep-ing <Space> pattern (etc.) in my Home directory, but there is no file with such string.

noremap - command from vim, so when saving file, the name has been assigned. A detailed ls would help or installing something like Midnight Commander, which runs with as simple mc command and helps to evaluate it visually.


Tool for lossless rotation of images As you might know, Preview has a lossy rotation feature.
Could you please recommend a tool that allows images rotation in a lossless way?

The only true lossless rotation for images would be a file format that allows you to save the image in its original format, and then specify what angle it will be rotated to when displayed on screen.

One program which can do this is InkScape. It will allow you to import (and embed) an image, and then rotate it. You can then rotate the image to any angle, as many times as you like without causing any loss of quality.


Bulk File Change from CSV in MacOS I'm trying to change about 50 file names using a CSV format. My CSV file is setup with Col A as Old Name and Col B as New Name. I'm running the following scripts in terminal:

I followed this guide: Renaming files/names in bulk, any smarter solution?

But it wasn't working for me. I kept getting the error:
mv: rename Screen Shot 2020-03-10 at 3.03.00 PM.png to Test 1.png: No such file or directory.

I was in the correct directory and the file was also in that directory, so I'm not sure why it couldn't find it.

Is there an alternative way of bulk renaming in MacOS?

Go to Finder and go to the directory with the file names you want to change, then select the files you want to change the name of. Then go to the gear icon in the top of the Finder window, or just right-click on the files you selected. There is a command to change x-number of file names. See the first image below.

When you click on the rename x items you get the following pane.

From here you can set up the new file names.


High load on OS X Server I'm running OS X Server (5.2 on 10.12.2) on a Mac Mini late 2014 with 8GB RAM and 2.6GHz i5.
The load is always around 3.5 - 6 even without any application running. Even in top as root, I cannot see any process that uses lots of CPU time.

The server runs some services in our office of 10 people.

File Sharing for 1 NFS host
Calendar & Contacts
Profile Manager with VPP and DEP (MDM) for 10 phones and macs
VPN for the admins (so maybe once a week a login)
DNS for the local network with 1 zone
Open Directory for MDM and another backup NAS

Time Machine is backing up the server but other than that there is no software or service running.

I'm pretty sure it started with the latest Sierra and OS X Server update or at least I never saw it happen before.

system.log looks normal with some launchd messages from quicklook every 5 minutes but nothing unusual other than that.

All other logs look normal with no continuously repeating error message or something like that.

iostat looks normal:

iostat
           disk0               disk2       cpu    load average
KB/t   tps  MB/s     KB/t  tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
24.68   16  0.39     5.99    0  0.00   1  1 97  3.18 3.98 4.20

and last but not least the top line from top

Processes: 423 total, 2 running, 421 sleeping, 1223 threads                                                                                17:30:02
Load Avg: 4.23, 4.08, 4.16  CPU usage: 0.24% user, 1.21% sys, 98.53% idle  SharedLibs: 256M resident, 46M data, 60M linkedit. MemRegions: 43391 total, 3896M resident, 175M private, 585M shared. PhysMem: 7872M used (1886M wired), 318M unused.
VM: 1090G vsize, 621M framework vsize, 91454(0) swapins, 116522(0) swapouts. Networks: packets: 32147266/24G in, 47494932/42G out. Disks: 1354379/36G read, 1681454/35G written.

Any ideas where to look or what happens?

Edit: To clarify, there are no running processes explaining the high Load averages. And in my experience something like this could come from corrupt memory or hdd.

uptime
19:35  up 2 days,  6:19, 3 users, load averages: 5.17 4.96 4.54

Is there anything else to look than the logfiles?

All my linux based SMP servers run on loads of 0.xx and I'm a bit afraid that there is a bigger problem somewhere.

That load seems quite normal to me for server. 98.53% idle CPU seems quite excellent for a light server load. There's no point in direct numerical comparison the macOS load average of the Mach Kernel with linux, AIX, BSD or other UNIX since the underlying architecture is different here.

What does translate to traditional UNIX system is counting active threads and watching overall CPU utilization. With more than a thousand threads being actively run (maybe a third are inactive enough to be marked "sleeping"), I wouldn't try to tune or change anything if I saw that on any of my hundreds of production Mac and OS X servers.

If you're really curious, I would run top -u -s 60 and let the system reach neutral (in iostat the 15m average you show is higher than the 1m average, which means the CPU usage is trending lower - when the three values are about the same, that's a good neutral to measure). Also, run sysctl hw.logicalcpu so you can normalize the value you see to the cores that are available. Even when your load is higher than the CPU available, it might not be a problem if your constraints are for IO, network or elsewhere than the CPU.

What are the top 5 CPU using processes when you have a slow refresh on top? Those will be causing the most load in your situation in all likelihood.


Close Terminal using 'exit' when only one window is present, close window otherwise When I use the Terminal application I want to close it using the command exit if only one Terminal window is open. If more than one window is open, I want to close just the window that executed the exit command.

To achieve this behaviour I use the following function in my .bash_profile

function exit {
    if [ $(who | wc -l) -eq 2 ]; then
        osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to quit'
    else
        osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to close first window'
    fi
}

Everything works great but the usage of $(who | wc -l) -eq 2 seems to be a bit hacky. In particular this only works if the machine is used by a single user only. Are there any other ways to do the job?

Nice hack!

If you want to cover the edge case where there are multiple people logged in to the Mac and running Terminal then I suggest you change the if test to if [ $(ps | wc -l) -eq 3 ]; which would mean your user had only one process running, the bash shell you want to exit and quit Terminal.

Personally, I use iTerm2 which has a preference (under "General") for "Quit when all windows are closed" so the app takes care of it. If you have got this far with bash I highly recommend iTerm2.

By the way, your method breaks in iTerm2 as it only shows one log in with who no matter the number of windows you have open. My solution can sometimes fail to recognise only one window if you close them quickly in iTerm2 as it takes a couple of seconds for the app to shut down the window server instance.

If you have both Terminal and iTerm running then it breaks everything I could think of as well but you'd only be doing that if you were a constant iTerm2 user answering a question at AskDifferent about Terminal. :)


Instagram app narrow on iPad with iOS 12 update I updated my iPad mini 4 to iOS 12.  When I viewed my Instagram account it changed the size of the screen, made it narrow as though it is to be viewed on a phone. It's very annoying as I use this account a lot for my photographs. Can it be rectified, as when I contacted Apple they were unable to help, said they would notify the engineers at Apple. I reloaded Instagram and did a hard reset but to no avail.

The Instagram app still hasn't turned on iPad sizing, and in iOS 11 the Instagram app would use the aspect ratio of the iPhone 8 (whether actual size or ‘zoomed’) but with iOS 12 the app is now iPhone X aspect ratio, with black bars on the left and right.

It doesn't look like there is a way to return to the previous aspect ratio, similar to how one of the iOS upgrades changed the aspect ratio from iPhone 4s to iPhone 5 on iPad in the past.

As iOS 12 has only just been released, you can still restore back to iOS 11, but I don't think an aspect ratio change to a single app is worth staying on an old iOS forever for.


Two Macs signed into Google with same IP address I don't know if this goes here or somewhere else, but it's about my Mac, so I'll post it here.

I got an e-mail saying my Google account was signed into on a Mac. I looked at the location and IP of said Mac, and it matches the only Mac that I have. The strange thing is, it shows two separate devices for my Mac. The only difference between the devices is the browser: the one that it says I'm using is using Chrome 52.0, and the other one is using Chrome 35.0.

Is this a bug, or is something wrong? Is there a way to remove this "second" Mac from my devices?

Thanks in advance!

If you recently updated Google Chrome using the built-in updater (available from chrome://help/), that could cause Google to recognize two different browsers.  If you haven't updated Chrome, or just want to go through the process:

Click on the Google Account icon in the upper right-hand corner of your Gmail window and click on the My Account link.

From there, choose Sign-In & Security, scroll down to Recently Used Devices and click on Review devices (aka the Devices & Activity page as described in Google's Security support article).

Click on Secure Your Account and follow the various prompts; you'll be signed out of your Google account and required to re-enter your password or possibly authenticate via 2FA, if you already had that enabled.

After you have logged back in, return to the Recently Used Devices to verify only one browser.


How many fans does a 2.26 GHz 15" 2009 MacBook Pro 5,5 have? I have a 15" MacBook Pro 2.26 GHz purchased in late 2009, model "MacBookPro5,5".

The FanControl PrefPane reports

Right Fan: -1 RPM

Does this model only have one fan, or does it have two?

Two fans, unless it's a trick question and you consider them blowers :-)

See http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2009+Right+Fan/1710/1


Permanently disable Apple's OpenSSH? I have an older OS X 10.5 PowerMac (PowerPC) that needs to be online for testing software under the processor. It needs to be online because others want to use it for testing, too. I've updated OpenSSL and OpenSSH with new binaries placed in /usr/local. I also added a new Launchd plist at /System/LaunchDaemons to enable the new OpenSSH daemon on port 1522.

Now I want to permanently disable the existing Apple provided OpenSSH located at /usr/sbin/sshd. I don't want to delete it or replace it because that often causes more trouble than its worth. A search with http://www.google.com/search?q=apple+disable+sshd+site:apple.com appears to reveal no support documents on the subject. I found lots of discussions about updating OpenSSH and disabling it through the UI, but nothing about permanently disabling it.

I tried removing the execute bit, but that did not work. After reboot, Launchd still managed to start sshd. Other thoughts include a filesystem extended attribute to deny access to it.

How do I safely and permanently disable the existing OpenSSH daemon?

The most simple way to disable the Apple provided sshd without removing or replacing it is just renaming it:

sudo mv /usr/sbin/sshd /usr/sbin/sshd.old

Additionally you may add a symbolic link at /usr/sbin/ to the /usr/local/sbin/sshd with

sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/sshd /usr/sbin/sshd


What should I know about replacing my computer's battery? My early 2011 13" MBP has been telling me to "Replace Soon" the battery, and today it's finally getting its wish. I know the hardware procedure, courtesy of iFixit, but is there anything else I should know about it?

Specifically, I'm wondering: Will everything still be on the computer after I boot up again (I know my files will still be there, I'm just wondering about stuff like saved application states), and is there a specific charging procedure I should follow to "properly" break in the battery?

Here are some tips about the batteries that go inside Apple computers and devices.

lithium cells will catch on fire and burn with such intensity that they can ignite almost anything that is combustible if you damage during the replacement. To save space, Apple engineers designed the case of your MacBook to protect the battery - once you open the case, the battery is extremely vulnerable to physical damage or a short circuit. If you lose one tiny metal screw behind the battery and then shut your case it could easily squeeze, crush or puncture a battery cell - setting you up for disaster down the road.
that being said, assuming you power off your Mac before you start the replacement, you won't lose any data and you probably won't damage anything else as long as you are slow and careful. Pay attention to not damage the delicate cables or lose any parts. Be willing to take it to a trained technician if you can't be absolutely certain you did the replacement right.
dispose of the spent battery properly and insure it is safely protected and packaged so it doesn't get punctured and start a fire. Lithium batteries are considered hazardous waste in many places and should it catch on fire, release of very toxic gases will happen.
as long as the battery contains the proper parts, there is no break-in procedure whatsoever. You might be on your own if you select an aftermarket part have to do some research with the vendor to be sure you have the correct part.


Iphone ringing when husband receives a call Why is my phone ringing when someone calls my husbands phone? The number shows up on my phone and says "from your iPhone".

Both of your phones seem to be connected to the same iCloud account.

In iOS 8, one iOS device can answer another device's phone calls and vice versa. This feature is called Continuity.

Take a look here for more details: https://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/continuity/


How can messages be scripted whenever I open a specific application? Say I want to start Safari on my Mac. Can I create a pop up message that reads, "Use Chrome instead" or some other thing?

I presume it may be possible with Applescript or something, but don't know where to start on teaching myself how to do this.

Run EDITOR=nano crontab -e and add a line like this:

* * * * * pgrep -xq Safari && terminal-notifier -title 'Click to quit Safari and open Chrome' -message '' -group cronsafari -activate com.google.Chrome -execute 'osascript -e "quit app \"Safari\""' > /dev/null

The command is run about once per minute, and the notifications are shown repeatedly as long as there is a process named Safari.

You can install terminal-notifier with sudo gem install terminal-notifier.


How to sync PDF bookmarks from MacOS Preview to iOS Apple Books? Apple Books on MacOS opens PDF files in Preview. Preview can bookmark texts using CMD-D. When I open the same book with Apple Books on iOS the bookmarks are not transferred over. I have cloud sync to enabled and the books are automatically made available in iOS books.

How do I keep my bookmarks in sync on MacOS and iOS?

There is a setting in Books.app Preferences to sync Bookmarks across devices, or not. Make sure that's on.


Default email signing with OS X Mail I have both a GPG key and an SSL certificate. I am able to sign emails by choosing OpenPGP or S/MIME in the upper right corner of the window:

I can then activate the signing by clicking the appropriate icon:

Now my question(s):

is it possible to sign by default? (always unless specified)
is it possible to sign by default only for a given account?

Edit 1

The ideal setup with three accounts would be

account 1 always signs with S/MIME (the address is in the S/MIME certificate)
account 2 always signs with GPG (the address is in the GPG certificate)
account 3 do not sign (the address is not present in any certificate)

Edit 2

The priority is the S/MIME certificate, I could also live without GPG where only account 1 is using the S/MIME certificate by default.

Edit 3

I was now able to set S/MIME as the default (see Define the security method to be used, in the GPGMail 2 hidden settings FAQ). When I then switch to account 2 (the one with the GPG key) the default falls back to GPG (as the address of account 2 is not present in the S/MIME certificate).

defaults write org.gpgtools.gpgmail DefaultSecurityMethod -int 2

So far so good, now I just have to find out how to sign by default with S/MIME (and not with GPG)

I have some email accounts that use S/MIME and some that use GPG. When I select to use the email address configured for GPG, GPG email signing is enabled by default. When I select to use the email address configured for S/MIME, the S/MIME email signing is enabled by default.

I had to enable some settings in the GPG preference section of Mail.app, but nothing else.


How do I remove the .local domain from sent mail? I am running OS X Server on Snow Leopard (10.6), but I believe this same issue affects newer versions as well. (If the problem can be resolved by switching to a newer version, that would be welcome information.)

My server identifies itself as xxx-com.local rather than xxx.com. For example:

This is the mail system at host xxx-com.local.

Although I have not had problems (other than the ugliness of this) in the past, I have recently had mail bounce because of this problem. For example:

Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554 5.7.1 <xxx-com.local>: Helo command
   rejected: ACCESS DENIED. Your email was rejected because the sending mail
   server does not identify itself correctly (.local)

I understand that this is the Bonjour name, but Bonjour is not applicable outside of my local network. How can I force my email server to identify itself correctly?

The solution is to edit the main.cf file in /etc/postfix, and change the myhostname = xxx-com.local line to myhostname = xxx.com. OS X Server appears to honor this change, and not attempt to change it back. However, in my opinion, OS X Server should not have chosen such an absurd default value.


iTunes library incomplete on iPhone/iPad I have about 16,000 songs in my iTunes library, but what shows on my iPhones and iPads in "My Music" is much less; not even all of my artists appear in the Library/My Music window.  I have the very latest updates on all devices, including iTunes.   Truly vexing....

You will need to go to Music, then select the drop down that says, "Songs" or "Albums" or whatever your current library view is. In the bottom of the drop down menu, switch off the option that says "Only downloaded music", then you can download the music that you're missing from there. If that fix doesn't work then you might have an iCloud syncing issue.


Apple MacBook Air display problem I have 2017  MacBook Air and it shows display problem           it did not fell but I dont know how this problem has come please help

Just to provide an answer...

The screen appears to have had an impact roughly where I've circled below. This could have been caused by a strike, but equally could be that something was on the keyboard when the lid was closed.

The initial impact has cracked the screen out in radial lines from the impact site, causing the circuitry in the screen to break along the lines - this is why there is no image above them; data cannot transmit across the broken circuit.


Camera app gone (not deactivated in restrictions) My camera app is missing on both my phone and my iPad and after trying all the suggested fixes found online to no avail I now feel the need to get help with my specific case.

The app is missing (can't be found in a search) and it's not deactivated in Restrictions, in fact, the camera and FaceTime options are grayed out/disabled when I go to Restrictions. - restrictions passcode not set

I have tried resetting home screen layout and then all settings when that didn't work. I had an update to install so I installed that update, to no avail.

I haven't tried resetting the entire device yet mainly due to I don't see that helping either as this is happening on multiple devices.

As my iPhone is the camera that I usually use, this is really frustrating and especially as I noticed this during my daughters very first football practice.. Does anyone have any ideas on that the problem is and how I can fix it?

Update 2013-05-31

As suggested by @bassplayer7 I reset one of my devices without restoring it from backup and that brought the camera app back. He suggested I reset it again after that and restored it from backup to se if that fixed the issue, however, I am keeping it this way. Having a freshly formatted phone was really great.

I am however going to look into the actual issue on my iPad and try to find a fix for everyone else having this issue. Resetting should not and can not be the only solution to this problem.

It can't be deleted it's one of the built-in apps. If you can't find it on any of your homescreens or app folders, and you can't find it via the spotlight search screen (swipe your first home screen to the right), then is it hidden by Settings > General > Restrictions > Camera being set 'off' ?

If not then have you tried a reset to see if you can find it after the iPad has restarted ? Press and hold both the sleep and home buttons for about 10 to 15 seconds (ignore the red slider), after which the Apple logo should appear - you won't lose any content, it's the iPad equivalent of a reboot.

If that doesn't find it then have you got an Exchange email account set up on the iPad ? If so then the account administrator might be hiding the Camera app - you could try removing the account and see if it re-appears.


How do I use the STIX Font in Mac OS X 10.7 I just found out that Mac OS X 10.7 ships with STIX fonts (Scientific and Technical Information Exchange format). Can someone explain me how I can make use of these fonts or where there is a tutorial on proper use of these fonts?

  The mission of the Scientific and Technical Information Exchange
  (STIX) font creation project is the preparation of a comprehensive set
  of fonts that serve the scientific and engineering community in the
  process from manuscript creation through final publication, both in
  electronic and print formats.

These fonts should get used automatically by standard marked-up text that calls for them.  Check this test site with FireFox 4 and up:

https://eyeasme.com/Joe/MathML/MathML_browser_test

Info on documentation of the fonts is at

http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/project/stixfonts/DocumentationOnly/STIXv1.0.0.pdf

Info on using STIX fonts with LaTeX is at

http://www.charlietanksley.net/philtex/the-unicode-math-package-for-xelatex-and-the-stix-fonts/


iTunes cannot convert Apple Lossless tracks to 128 kbps AAC files when sync'ing with iPhone I'm using the Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC option in iTunes when sync'ing music to my iPhone.

iTunes is complaining about three tracks from an album I recently ripped every time I sync my phone. It claims they can't be converted (I rip as Apple Lossless). Unfortunately there's not much in the way of detailed information in the error messages iTunes is giving me.

Does iTunes maintain a parallel, down-sampled, library on disk when I check this option? Could I downsample my Apple Lossless files myself, save them in this parallel library, and stop iTunes from trying to do the conversion on sync? I took a look in my iTunes Media folder for a parallel library but couldn't find anything.

Is the conversion done as the songs are transferred to my iPhone and the converted files live no other place than on my phone?

This is iTunes 10 on OS X 10.6 with an iPhone 3GS.

I had a similar problem with few of my tracks. The conversion is done live, while syncing. Basicly the problem is with the particular sound track, not the lossless codec (ALAC) itself. I used a third party utility to re-encode the original (keeping it to ALAC) and then iTunes managed to re-encode the track back to 128kBit AAC. Hope this helps.

  Does iTunes maintain a parallel, down-sampled, library on disk when I check this option?

No - re-encoding is done live, that's why it's so slow.


Double dot on spotlight calculator So I'm playing around with the Spotlight calculator, and came across a weird thing:

If I type

1..1, I receive 0.1
5..6, I receive 3
523..6.1, I receive 31.38

Does anybody know what mathematical function this is?

Edit: This works on macOS Sierra 10.12.2, as for people in the comments, it looks like three dots are required on macOS High Sierra.

What is happening, is the calculator splits the numbers and dots into the following:

5..6=3 turns into 5 * .6 = 3

As we know that . is another way of saying 'multiply' its simply, 5 multiplied by .6

As for 523..6.1=31.38, it turns into 523 * (.6 * .1) = 31.38


AppleScript to create spacing format like "S P A C I N G"? In order to format text documents in a more readable way it would be nice to format selected texts by an apple script executed via the context menu services in the following way:

select "text" with cursor
select context menu/services Spacing (to be created)
selected text is going to be formated to "T E X T"

Does anybody has the knowhow to program such a script?

AppleScript to Expand Text

The following AppleScript snippet adds a space between each character of a string. Copy and paste this code in Applications > Utilities > Script Editor to try it out:

set myText to "hello world"
set myResult to ""

repeat with c in every character in myText
    set myResult to myResult & " " & c
end repeat

display dialog myResult

Automator Service

Using this script, you can use Applications > Automator to create your context menu service.

Launch Automator.app
Create a new workflow, select Service
Add a Run AppleScript action
Copy and paste in the script:

on run {input, parameters}

    set myText to input as string
    set myResult to ""

    repeat with c in every character in myText
        set myResult to ((myResult & " " & c) as string)
    end repeat

    -- Convert to upper case using `tr`
    set myResult to do shell script "echo " & quoted form of (myResult) & " | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]"

    return myResult
end run

Select Output replaces selected text
Save and test your new service


Health App under ios 8.3 I just updated to ios 8.3 on an iPhone5S. I notice that since the upgrade I no longer see the minimum and maximum number of steps or distance i have walked in the health app. It only shows an upper and lower line, not an exact number. It still reads the average over the period but i want my minimum and maximum back. Any ideas on how to do this?

Unfortunately, not possible, afaik.

I think they likely made the change to make the scale easier to read, but the side effect is you have less info at hand.


Can I run a virtual machine from my iPad? I have a Windows virtual machine that I want to open it from my iPad using VirtualBox, Vmware client, or any free App that allows me to open a virtual machine file (I assume it is local to my iPad).
I tried to find a solution but I could not find. There are some advanced, non-free solutions by vmware for accessing virtual machines over the cloud (VirtualHorizon).
Anyone have any clue about Apps that allow me open a virtual machine file from my iPad?
P.S. this is not a question for me exactly. I am trying to help someone who can not afford a PC to use Windows/Office for some homework in their iPad.

Running a virtual machine on an iPad requires a kernel and sufficient CPU support, which is not available on iPads at this time.
I would recommend having a virtualbox system running somewhere else with VNC-server enabled for that virtual host, which you can then connect to from the iPad and see/use the graphical Windows UI.


How do I enable logging for ssh log in attempts? I have enabled remote logins via SSH on my Mac. But how do I enable logging of all log in attempts? And where is the log?

My /etc/sshd_config has this content:

# Logging
SyslogFacility AUTHPRIV

Login attempts are logged in /var/log/system.log

You'll be able to browse and filter for them through the Console.


Automator action to adjust volume on audio files I am looking for an Automator action (or an app with Automator support) that can adjust the volume on audio files (something like set to 150% of input file volume), preferably free.

How about something like SoX (free/donationware). It's features page lists wide variety of volume/level effects, including:

  Volume/level effects

  ...
  ...
  vol: Adjust audio volume

According to the SoX documentation, the following should double the volume of input.wav and write it to output.wav (the value after the -v flag is a multiplier)

sox -v 2.0 input.wav output.wav

You should be able to use this in an Automator workflow using the "Run Shell Script" action.


Trackpad Issues - Should I let them prevent me from upgrading to Yosemite? My MacBook (Retina, Mid 2012) currently has issues with its trackpad based on water damage earlier in the year - from time to time, the mouse pointer flicks around uncontrollably (although at other times, it's fine). I know I can probably get it fixed, that's another long story outside the scope of this question - assume it's unfixable for now.

Currently I have 10.9 (Mavericks) installed. I use an external USB mouse on a day-to-day basis, with the "Ignore built-in trackpad when mouse or wireless trackpad is present" option ticked, which prevents the flicking mouse pointer behaviour.

I am considering upgrading to 10.10 (Yosemite), but I've been putting it off for sometime, because I'm concerned there may be a phase during the install where USB devices are disabled and/or my external mouse might be unavailable. As well as being unable to use the mouse, this might unintentionally mean that I "click" the mouse pointer and press something with a serious impact.

Are my fears founded? Are there phases of the upgrade where I can't use a USB mouse?

Your fears are unfounded, although kudos to you for being so conscientious about the unique circumstances of your machine before attempting to upgrade. In any case, consider an iMac or Mac Pro which must have an external mouse, there is no internal pointing device. You'll be fine as far as a USB pointing device goes as long as the mouse you're using did not require any special drivers when you first began using it.


How to enter in the apple symbol not in a web browser? How can I enter in the enter in the Apple symbol () in an application such as text edit?

IIRC, Safari automatically converts this symbol when it sees the text &apple;.

Update: Does it exist in the Edit > Special Characters... list?

Neil's ⇧ + ⌥ + K might work in (presumably) the US, but the exact combination is keyboard layout specific. In addition, some keyboard layouts — Thai, for example — might not even have the symbol available.

E.g. I'm using a Finnish keyboard layout and  is typed simply by ⌥ + A.

To find this and other symbol shortcuts, you can enable the keyboard & symbol menulet from Preferences → Keyboard and use the menulet to open a virtual keyboard. Pressing any modifier key, or modifier key combination, will change the keys on the virtual keyboard accordingly. For example, here is how the virtual keyboard looks with Finnish layout while option/alt is being pressed:

To find the  from Special characters menu the fastest way is to type f8ff to the search box (this is its unicode-code; the  hasn't any other name assigned).

Other way is to change the view to glyphs or to code tables[1] from the drop-down list and browse the for the symbol manually — but this is not exactly user-friendly or fast, unless you know where to look for.

[1]: I don't know for sure if these are exact translations as my UI is also in Finnish. However, the items are (respectively) last and third-last in the list.


Macbook Pro 2015 continuously powered on I have a Macbook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015).

As it is slowly aging, I'm starting to consider leaving it continuously powered on.

Currently it stays most of the day powered on, for about the past six months.

Recently I noticed that its bottom is slightly bent. I have used it carefully through all of its life, taking good care not to over expose it to high temperatures.

Does leaving it continuously powered on entail any risk of catastrophic explosion, or further bending?

This is in almost all cases caused by the battery swelling up and thus "bending" the case. The case expansion cannot in itself be caused by "overuse of fans".

You need to have your battery checked and replaced - don't wait with it. It is caused by a defective battery that swells up, and potentially could lead to a dangerous situation (such as causing a fire) if left unattended. This can happen not only when the computer is plugged in and powered - but also when the computer is turned off and not powered by an external power source!

Remember that the battery is a wearing part, and yours is probably 4+ years by now.


Extract HFS+/HFSX volume from dmg file Dmg file contains a volume with identifier Apple_HFS, which is compressed with various methods (zlib, bz2, etc.), how can I extract a raw, uncompressed HFS volume from DMG file?

Right now, it cannot be done with Catacombae - HFSExplorer, due to unknown block type, with the 0x80000007 identifier, which is probably LZFSE compression method, 7z also won't do a good job.

Command line tool would be nice. I can't mount it and extract files because I want exactly, let say Apple_HFS.hfs file.

Solution,
mount dmg file on mac, dump it to img file and extract HFS volume

open [path/to/dmg]
dd if="/dev/disk[number]" of="/extract/path/file.img"

and then on linux I looked up sector size and where HFS volume starts, by:

fdisk -l file.img

Example output:

Disk test.img: 1.3 GiB, 1391718400 bytes, 2718200 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Device      Start     End Sectors   Size Type
test.img1      40  409639  409600   200M EFI System
test.img2  409640 2456015 2046376 999.2M Apple HFS/HFS+

in this example, sector size is 512 bytes and hfs volume starts at 409640th sector and is 2046376 sectors long.

Now extract volume

dd if="path/to/file.img" bs=sector_size skip=sectors count=sectors >> output.hfs


iOS app is rejected as "Spam" I have similar apps with different design & color theme as per my different client. But Apple is now rejected my latest app as spam
Apple message:

Guideline 4.3 - Design - Spam
We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps
you've submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or
language, which is considered a form of spam.
Next Steps
When creating multiple apps where content is the only varying element,
you should offer a single app to deliver differing content to
customers. Alternatively, you may consider creating a web app, which
looks and behaves similar to a native app when the customer adds it to
their Home screen. Refer to the Configuring Web Applications section
of the Safari Web Content Guide for more information.
You will experience a delayed review process if you deliberately
disregard the App Store Review Guidelines, ignore previous rejection
feedback in future app submissions, or use your app to mislead or
deceive users.
Important Information
As a result of violating this guideline, your app’s review has been
delayed. Future submissions of this app, and other apps associated
with your Apple Developer account, will also experience a delayed
review. Deliberate disregard of the App Store Review Guidelines and
attempts to deceive users or undermine the review process are
unacceptable and is a direct violation Section 3.2(f) of the Apple
Developer Program License Agreement. Continuing to violate the Terms &
Conditions of the Apple Developer Program will result in the
termination of your account, as well as any related or linked
accounts, and the removal of all your associated apps from the App
Store.
We want to provide a safe experience for users to get apps and a fair
environment for all developers to be successful. If you believe we
have misunderstood or misinterpreted the intent of your app, you may
submit an appeal for consideration or provide additional clarification
by responding directly to this message in Resolution Center in iTunes
Connect.
For app design information, check out the following videos: "Best
Practices for Great iOS UI Design" and "Designing Intuitive User
Experiences," available on the Apple Developer website.
You may also want to review the iOS Human Interface Guidelines for
more information on how to create a great user experience in your app.

How can I resolve this?

The guidance is really quite straightforward. You need to do what is listed under "Next steps" and/or communicate with the Apple review team to solve the issue, primarily

  When creating multiple apps where content is the only varying element, you should offer a single app to deliver differing content to customers

Basically you're in violation of the guidelines as having multiple identical apps with only color theme variations is not allowed. You could instead create a single app where the user can select the color theme they wish if you agree with the characterization of multiple similar apps.

If you don’t agree then a chat with Dev support or a formal appeal would be your next step.


Is there a way to access Mac OS default wallpaper with resolution for portrait mode monitor? I'm currently using a secondary 24" monitor (widescreen) in portrait mode (rotated 90 degrees to be vertical). Is there a way to have the default Mac OS wallpaper adjust to maintain the image resolution quality?

Those pictures are located in

/Library/Desktop Pictures

Meaning not in your user's library folder but the one at the root of the Mac hard drive.

I would Option-drag the ones you like out onto the desktop and then put them in your Pictures folder. Then you will have to rotate them manually in a graphic editing app (Preview.app will do this).

Rotate them the direction you want to by 90 degrees and then save them back to where you copied them to.

You should now be able to select a "portrait mode" Apple-default desktop picture. I imagine some will look odd on their side but then they were designed for landscape mode.

You might be better served searching for portrait desktop pictures on your favorite search engine as you will find a lot out there, probably at least some of which you might like a lot.


How did a user manage to get my multi-window app to run in "Tabbed Windows Mode"? Today one of my users sent me some screenshots showing my application running in "Tabbed Windows" mode, i.e. with all the usually-separate windows showing up as tabs inside a single window, like this:

This is very cool, especially since I never actually programmed in any support for a "tabbed windows mode" in an application.  :)

Unfortunately the user doesn't know how he got the application into this mode, and I can't figure out how to do it either.

When I Google the subject, I find articles like this one describing how this mode was added to some of Apple's own apps, and how MacOS/X will automatically added to any third-party apps that are "document-based"; for those apps, some additional menu items (like "Merge All Windows" and "Show Previous/Next Tab" and "Move Tab To New Window") will get automatically inserted into the Window menu.

However, my app isn't "document-based" AFAIK (it's a cross-platform app based on Qt5.4.1), and it doesn't have any menu named "Window".  (It does have a menu named "Windows", but those menu items do not show up in that menu)

Does anyone know how my user pulled off this trick?

Just wondering what version of macOS you're running? The other user must be using macOS Sierra, what about you?

In macOS Sierra tabs are supported in any application where it’s possible to have multiple windows open. Based on your description, your app supports multiple simultaneous windows.

Assuming you have macOS Sierra installed, you can activate this in the way you found through your Google search. But if you haven't, then you won't be able to get tabbed windows to work.

If you do have the latest version of macOS Sierra installed, update your question and let me know. I'll see what I can dig up.


OS X Yosemite focuses automatically Lately I started experiencing that - 'issue' / 'bug' / 'feature' on my MacBook Air with OS X Yosemite.

Whenever I open a new window (of any app) something gets focused immediately (getting that selection frame around it, usually blue).
That happens in notification center as well. That's really annoying.

Anyone knows how to get rid of it?

Here's an example, look at the segment control:

This is because Full Keyboard Access is turned on. To turn it off, go to
System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts tab, and select Text boxes and lists only at the bottom.

Alternatively, Control-F7 will toggle this.


Problem with exporting with gimp I usually export images through gimp. This time, I was on my new OS X Mavericks, as I tried to change the name of the image which was "LOST", was not working. I observed the toolbox going to another tool as I typed the letters. I knew that I was pressing a shortcut but when I tried to press another letter like "y", the letter showed at the name of the image. How am I suppose to name the image when I export it?

This is known issue with Gimp and Mavericks. Current workaround is to turn off all keyboard shortcuts (Preferences/Interface/Remove All Keyboard Shortcuts).


How to backup and restore iPad apps locally on a Windows machine? (without re-downloading from internet) (also resume app downloads) Apple has recently removed the functionality from Windows iTunes to backup apps locally. The only way they offer now is via internet - iCloud. I often have limited internet access so that option is not suitable. Also I feel much better when I can easily and reliably restore the iPad to when everything was functioning perfectly. For example, update an app to find out there's a bug or some new functionality that makes things worse in some way. With a local backup it would be easy to go back and forth between the versions, and you don't have to depend on anything.

The solution would most likely involve jail breaking and that's fine, but I couldn't find actual information on whether it is in fact possible on a jailboken iPad and if so how. Bunch of sites recommend third party software and when you go on their respective sites they say things like "manage apps, backup app data, images etc" iTunes already does all of this.

Thanks!

This article from OSXDaily Get iTunes 12.6.3 with App Store for Mac and Windows suggests to download the special 12.6.3 version, which restores the previous lost functionality.
Do not know if works without internet in your case.

Also, the newest version 12.7, when connecting the first time a device, asks if you like to restore the old feature - this was the behaviour in my case.

Direct link to this version of iTunes download page: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208079


Apple Extended Keyboard 2 - Caps lock key doesn't work in macOS High Sierra? I have an Apple Extended Keyboard 2, which is almost 28 years old by now but it still works great. To use this old keyboard, I use a Belkin ADB USB Adaptor.

I have a 2014 MacBook Pro and a PC. On the PC, the keyboard works great. My MacBook Pro has two partitions, one with OS X Mavericks 10.9.5 and other with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 installed. The keyboard works great in OS X Mavericks, but not on macOS High sierra.

Everything except the Caps lock key works. When clicking (or holding) the Caps lock key nothing happens. The Caps lock light does not glow and the Mac doesn't type uppercase letters. Please note that caps lock key works on both OS X Mavericks and PC. Since the keyboard and the adaptor work elsewhere, I deduce they are fully functioning.

Caps lock is working on other keyboards and no installation was needed for neither OS X Mavericks nor the PC to make the keyboard work. The PC is running Windows 10.

This is what I have tried which failed:

Reseting the Modifier keys in System preferences → Keyboard to defaults and same as on the other Mac.
Re-ran the Keyboard Setup Assistant multiple times.
Moving the plist located at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist to macOS High Sierra from OS X Mavericks. (Reverted after failed attempt).

How can I make the Caps lock key work on the old keyboard in macOS High Sierra?

I found a solution:

  Go to System Preferences > Accessibility

  When the accessibility window is open — on the left part of the window
  – click Keyboard

  Then there will be the 2 options — for sticky keys, and for slow keys
  — click the box next to slow keys to enable it — then click the
  Options... button – a new window will come up with a slider to change
  the acceptance delay — by default this is in the middle. Slide the
  button all the way to the left, so that it is the shortest time
  possible.

It comes from How to remove caps lock delay on Apple MacBook Pro aluminum keyboard when booted to Linux which also may contains why it did not work from the beginning.

Thanks to @MattSephton who provided the link in a comment.


Formatting HTML signature in Mail (Lion) I have created an HTML signature with a local image. I have formatted the signature using a Table.

I have tried to add my signature to mail using the method described here, i.e. open the sig in a browser, Cmd+A on the browser and Cmv+V on the mail signature pane.

This appears to work, but when I go to use the signature the image formatting went bananas on me. Like shown on the pic bellow (mail on top and safari on bottom).

I am not very knowledgable of HTML. But here is my code in case I have something wrong there.

        Tiago Veloso
          / Junior Software Engineer

          t:
             [+XYZ] 555-555-123

          e:
         mail@example.com

        adding possibilities

          w:
               www.website.com

If your code is copied and pasted, the first thing I realize is the following:

  / Junior Software Engineer

which means, the end tag

is missing. This might be the problem due to different renderings between mail and Safari.
It's worth a try.


iChat + facebook disconnection Previously in SL I had chax to make sure iChat was always signed in.

Now on Lion I constantly find that iChat is disconnected from Facebook chat (jabber).

Does anyone have a clever idea to keep it connected?

Facebook will actively terminate your connection if you log-in from any other client like the Facebook web, or your mobile phone.

Even with just one client logged in, you should expect Facebook to close the connection anyway. This happens with everything I've tried, libpurple based clients (Admium, Pidgin on Linux...) gets disconnected now and then. Those clients do silently reconnect. For iChat, as you suggested, chax can accept the dialog for you.

IMHO, It seems to me that Facebook is still struggling to make their chat service stable.

EDIT:
IF you want to reconnect without using chad, you can edit your crontab (using crontab -e) and add:

*/5 * * * * osascript -e ‘tell application “System Events” to if (processes whose name is “Messages”) exists then tell application “Messages” to log in’

This will make sure iChat stays connected, telling it to reconnect every five minutes.


Mark phone number as 'cannot receive iMessages' iOS 8 & 7, iPhone 5S
I have one phone number my iPhone insists ought to be iMessage-capable. The system is actually an automated response-counter I need for work to confirm I have received job details, & has never been associated with any Apple device.
I don't know that device's specifics & probably will never be able to find that information, so all I have to go on is "it never was a number associated with any Apple device or service".

At least in iOS 7 I could switch to Airplane mode, send my text, wait for the immediate error, then switch off Airplane mode, Send Again & it would go as 'green' SMS. In iOS 8 this no longer happens - instead it sends again as 'blue' iMessage which never arrives.

So, the question, to which I'm sure the answer is "can't be done" is
How do I stop my iPhone sending iMessages to that number?

Late Edit:
Though nothing appears to have changed in my setup, in recent weeks [perhaps since iOS 8.1.1], though these messages still send "in blue" they are actually now successfully arriving at their intended destination.

Very late edit:
The reason it now works in blue is because they now actually have an iCloud account associated with the number.

See if you can opt that SMS number out of iMessage entirely at https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage as explained in more detail at How do I disable iMessage for a contact who no longer has an iPhone

If that doesn't work, contacting AppleCare to enlist the support of an engineer might be needed. In the short term, you can disable iMessage entirely and SMS functionality should be restored for all SMS eligible costacts, but you lose iMessage for everything else as well.


Tried to update to El Capitan, now I can't boot at all After trying to install El Capitan and getting several notices that it can't be installed, now when I boot the computer it seems to be stuck in a login loop or something.

Every time I restart the computer now I see the grey progress bar start as though it's doing something (with Apple logo), it goes for a bit and then shuts the machine off.

I have tried holding Shift while powering on into safe mode, but it has no effect. I cant even boot now, just a loop.

I have also tried using Cmd+R to reinstall OSX 10.8.5 but it says the disk is locked. I chose reboot from 10.8.5 disk, but it simply goes back to the loading progress bar loop.

Was upgrading from 10.8.5. OSX on Intel MacBook Pro

You'll want to use the erase and install steps from:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Hopefully it's not a hardware error and you can just fix this with a clean erase.


Moving photos from iPad to hard drive How do I move photos I loaded onto my iPad 2 from a SD card to an external hard drive using a connection kit with an USB port?  Can this be done?  Had no problem downloading photos from the SD card but can't figure out how to download from the iPad to the external hard drive.

This is not possible.  You will have to offload the pictures using a PC or Mac and then copy those pictures to the hard drive.  FWIW, I don't think it's even possible to put pics back onto an SD card.