Mac Pro 2007 crashes repeatedly Yesterday my Mac Pro 1,1 (2007) running 10.7 started freezing up. It keeps on doing this after restart. Usually it will perform one task, but when asked to do a second, it freezes. The cursor will still move but I can only do a hard reboot to get out of the situation.

It is independent of which software I start up.

I have installed a SSD drive for the System OS;
upgraded memory to 14 Gb
installed a new graphics card.

DiskWarrior 4.3 will not deal with my drives because my OS is too new (although 4.3 should be compatible with Lion) but it did do a diagnosis of the drives and found nothing wrong with them (it did report a few files with problems).
Disk Utility also tested the drives and found no problems.

Should I test the memory? The added memory is about 5 weeks old, though (2x4Gb Kingston). Or could this still be a SSD failure?

That could be a lot of things. It could be the system, it could be the hard drive, it could be a drive cable...it could be lots of things. It sounds like it's a drive problem.

The following links are "how-to" links from the guys that make Scannerz. One is how to use activity monitor to try and isolate processes that are using too much CPU/Memory etc and the other is about bad hard drives. The Activity Monitor post says it's about Mountain Lion, and clearly some of the topics are Mountain Lion specific, but in general it shows how to use Activity Monitor and some tricks I never new about. Here are the links:

http://www.scsc-online.com/Activity%20Monitor.html

http://www.scsc-online.com/Bad%20Hard%20Drive%20Signs%20and%20Symptoms.html

Although you have an SSD, I was surprised to see a post on MacRumors where someone used Scannerz on a system that was having problems that sounded similar to yours. Scannerz found bad cells in the SSD. The owner is replacing the SSD under warranty. He also found his cable was bad. Talk about bad luck!

If I had a link to it, I'd post it but I don't. You could go to MacRumors and search their forums for "Scannerz" and I would think you would find it. Like some of the other posters in that thread, I though SSDs were supposed to automatically correct bad blocks, but apparently that applies only to sectors that have depleted their write ability.

Hope this helps.


sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 501, should be 0 To run programs as sudo without password, I edited /etc/sudoers with wrong content.

Then I re-edited it with Mac's default text editor(course sudo cannot be used when /etc/sudoers is wrong).

I tried to run sudo agin, and get this error:

sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 501, should be 0
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

What should I do? I cannot remember the root password (maybe I haven't ever set root password before).

You can boot into single user mode by pressing Cmd-S on startup (see OS X: How to start up in single-user or verbose mode for details) which should give you a root shell. Then run

mount -uw /
chown root:wheel /etc/sudoers
chmod 440 /etc/sudoers
reboot

to fix the problem and restart.


hosts file: does it pass the domain name? I'm always redirected to the main site configured on the host My NEW server IP address is 123.456.789.123.

Pointing my browser to 123.456.789.123 (http://123.456.789.123) the server serves me site alpha.

Now, on the same NEW server I've configured a second site: beta.

Site beta is still online served from my OLD server with IP 321.987.654.321.

So, to reinstall and reconfigure it on the NEW server, I edited my hosts file this way, so it calls the NEW server when I go to domain beta.com:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
123.456.789.123 beta.com www.beta.com

The problem is that when I point my browser to http://www.beta.com, I see alpha.com on the New server, the same site I see if I go to http://123.456.789.123 (this is the NEW server).

So, practically, the hosts file correctly points me to the NEW server, but instead of showing me the site beta.com, shows me always the site alpha.com.

On 123.456.789.123, I have two different vhosts file: one for alpha and one for beta.

This is the vhost for alpha:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName alpha.com
    ServerAlias www.alpha.com

    ServerAdmin my.email@gmail.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/alpha.com/public_html

    ErrorLog /var/www/alpha.com/log/error.log
    CustomLog /var/www/alpha.com/log/access.log combined

    <Directory /var/www/alpha.com>
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

This is the vhost for beta:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName beta.com
    ServerAlias www.beta.com

    ServerAdmin my.email@gmail.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/beta.com/public_html

    ErrorLog /var/www/beta.com/log/error.log
    CustomLog /var/www/beta.com/log/access.log combined

    <Directory /var/www/beta.com>
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Any ideas about how can I see the site beta when pointing my browser (and my hosts file) to the NEW server?

It seems that the hosts file simply calls 123.456.789.123, but without passing the domain I'm asking for and so the server responds with the default one and not with the site I'm asking for: beta.com.

Your reasoning about the hosts file is actually not how it works. The hosts file is only responsible for providing a mapping from the hostname (alpha.com) to an IP - it doesn't have any influence on which hostname the browser sends to the webserver for virtual hosting.

If you do actually end up on the new server, you have an error in your web server configuration so that virtual hosting is either not enabled or misconfigured. Depending on the version of Apache you're running, you might for example need to add a "NameVirtualHost *:80" line to the configuration. It could also be that you have a typo in the ServerName and/or ServerAlias lines. It is impossible to tell from your question, as you haven't provided the actual configuration.

If you instead end up on the old server, the problem is that your browser is not using the hosts file (i.e. it is not using the system default name resolver). An easy way to get around that is simply to use a different browser. You might also be running into caching if you have made a lot of changes and tests with the hosts file. A very easy manner of testing that is simply to reboot the Mac. You can also flush the cache, which you can find instructions on how to here on AskDifferent depending on your macOS version.


iTunes doesn't see my iDevices - OS X I have a desktop (Mac Pro 5,1) and a laptop computer (MBA 4,2). Both are running 10.10.1. I have an iPad3 and an iPhone 6.

Maybe there is a new method in iTunes, but I cannot see either device on either computer.

Anyone know what's going on? Let me know if I should provide more info. All my software is up to date.

Thanks

I found two solutions on Apple Support Communities. Apple's solution is first. That didn't work for me. The second method worked for me on two computers and three devices. And no side effects so far, i.e. Time Machine is fine. It is not Apple's recommended method.

Apple solution:

1.1 Terminal:
defaults delete com.apple.SyncServer SyncServicesResetWorldRunOnce

1.2 Reboot your computer.

1.3 Unplug and reconnect your device(s)

See this link for the article

Hatchet solution

2.1. Go to ~/Library/ApplicationSupport

2.2. Find the folder SyncServices

2.3. Delete it.

2.4. Reboot your computer

2.5. Unplug and reconnect your iOS device(s).

Hope this helps others.


Phone app using too much battery? So let me preface my image by saying I have made ~20 seconds of phone calls in the past 24 hours.

After heavily browsing the web in 1-2 bars of LTE coverage for a few hours, I looked at my battery usage statistics and saw the following.  What's the deal here? This is iOS 10.1.1 on an iPhone 7 on AT&T.

You're just interpreting the figures incorrectly.

The percentages are not % of the battery used, but % of the usage by each app contributing any usage in the past day or week.

Note it always adds up to 100%, no matter how much battery charge you have left, or when you last charged it.

It just happens to be, that of all the battery used since yesterday, your phone call used ⅓ of that usage - not ⅓ of a full charge.

Check the 7-day figure to see that also always adds up to 100.

It would be incredibly difficult to show the stats any other way.

Imagine... you used an app on a full charge, recharged when it was barely used, used another app for 2 hours, recharged it for 20 mins, then the phone rang, you spent an hour on the phone, then recharged but only halfway, after which you used another app...
...nothing could keep track of that in any meaningful way.


Can OS X apps access my contacts even if I don't give them permission? After I upgraded to Mountain Lion, I noticed that apps have started asking for permission to access my contacts.  Very cool.

When Skype initially asked for permission to access my contacts, I decided not to grant it.

However, when I loaded Skype this morning, I noticed that my Skype contacts screen was still getting populated from my Address Book.

I double-checked in the Security prefpane, and Skype still does not have permission to access my contacts.

How is Skype getting my contacts?  Can apps access my Address Book even if I have explicitly denied them permission?

As this was an upgrade install, you had used Skype already for quite a while, right? I assume that Skype is simply displaying its own database which it build-up before Mountain Lion.

I myself don't use Skype, so I just installed it and used my firewall to monitor what files Skype accesses:

During the setup I was also prompted by Mountain Lion if I wanted to grant access to my contacts. I denied access. If I had granted access to my Contacts, the firewall would have intercepted as a second barrier (I've set it up this way). But this was not necessary.

After several restarts Skype had written to ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/, but your contacts are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook. As you see in the first picture, Skype never gained access to my contacts.

And indeed, there are no entries in Skype's own address book:

So what you have probably achieved now in Mountain Lion is that Skype will not gain access to any new Contacts that you add to your address book. When Skype had access to your contacts in Lion, it copied them already and there's nothing you can do to undo that.


What app or program do I use to open a chat.db-wal file What program or app do I use to open a chat.db-wal file?

chat.db-wal (besides chat.db and chat.db-shm) is a part of the sqlite3 database managing all your messages sent and received by the app Messages.

So the main app using this database as a "client" is Messages.

The purpose of the file chat.db-wal is to provide atomicity and durability in database systems by write-ahead logging (WAL).

You can open the file explicitly by using any text editor (which I don't recommend) and implicitly by using a SQLite3 GUI like DB Browser for SQLite 3.9.0 or sqlitestudio 3.1.0.

Better create a copy of all database files and use these to tinker with them.


Does the Mac version of BitDefender detect Windows malware? I need to know if BitDefender scans incoming emails and external drives?

I emailed BitDefender's support after installing the trial but never received a reply.

I currently use Kaspersky Internet Security but would consider switching when my Kaspersky subscription runs, as long as BitDefender can at least scans incoming emails.

The BitDefender website does claim that the Mac version will remove Windows malware. I can't find anything specifically mentioning email or network drives, but it would be a significant and unlikely oversight.

It's worth pointing out that BitDefender contains (and has contained) security vulnerabilities that can be exploited in itself.


Can I lock iCloud System Preference pane? Here is the scenario. Say I have a Mac that I have to leave in a semi publicly accessible location and which I need to be awake at all times (i.e. it has to be accessible and not asleep/locked). I want to have this Mac logged in to my iCloud account, but only for the point of Find my Mac. So if it walks away, I can at least wipe/lock it, if not actually track it down.

But alas, while I want this one iCloud feature, I don't want any others. I can leave them unchecked of course. But I want to prevent someone who might steal this computer, from being able to access my contacts, calendars and photo stream just by checkin a few checkboxes. But unfortunately there is no padlock on the bottom of the iCloud System Preferences pane.

Is there any solution to this?

A simple solution for this problem is to have a separate user account on your Mac. You log into iCloud with your Apple ID in that user account which you'll also be using for setting up and accessing Find My iPhone/Find My Mac.

Note: You need not be logged into the user account for Find My Mac to track your Mac.

Once setup, you can simply enable only Find My Mac for that account (or enable/disable whatever iCloud features you want).


Apple ID has been disable , how to enable and reset password? I'm struggling on how to enable Apple ID and reset password. I open itune and try to sign in and it pops up this message:

Whne i click Reset, it leads to a website where i put my apple id (email address which is my gmail) then click Next then there're 2 options which i chose to send to my email.
I've tried that so many times but never recieved any email from apple for me to reset the password.

Anyone please help! I've check the spams and everything but nothing at all from apple.

All you do is go to https://iforgot.apple.com and you can go through several paths to attempt to reset your password.


Sharing Notes on Catalina I have been using shared notes on my Mac and iOS devices for years now. Everything worked fine until iOS 13 / Catalina.

Now when I try to create a shared note it tells me either the server could not be reached or

When I go to iCloud.com I can create shared notes. Old shared notes, that I created before updating, also still work.

I tried logging out of iCloud and logging back in again, but that did not work. Are others having this problem too?

Does anyone know how I can solve this, or is this just something I have to hope get's solved in a coming update?

Thanks
- Joseph

Follow these steps if the issue occurred immediately after upgrading

Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
Type this command in Terminal:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -seed
Press Return and wait for the Terminal prompt—which ends in $—to reappear. It may take a few minutes.
Quit Terminal.

And later go to Apple menu > System Preferences, click Extensions, and make sure that the Markup and sharing features are turned on in the Actions and Share Menu sections too after running the above command.


2010 Mac Mini Downgrade I have a 2010 Mac Mini with no DVD drive and a 5,400 RPM hard drive. Of late, it's begun to get quite sluggish, and I'm fairly sure it's the slow HDD that's to blame.

I took a look at the means of upgrading it, but since it involves practically taking the entire thing apart to get to the hard drive, I decided it wasn't something I wanted to do myself.

My first option is to simply do a complete format of the machine (I only really use it for Plex media streaming), and see if that helps speed it up. This hasn't been done in the few years I've owned the Mini, I've just always kept it updated, and I guess it may have become bloated (though there's not much installed on it).

My second option is to attempt to downgrade the Yosemite install that's currently on it back down to something older (and presumably quicker). I can probably go back as far as Lion/Mountain Lion if need be, combined with the full format. So basically revert to stock Lion, re-install Plex, and away I go.

So, a couple of questions:

In this situation, is a complete format / re-install of Yosemite likely to help? If so, will the recovery partition handle this?
If not, what's the best means of downgrading back to an older OS such as Lion, and if I do this, am I likely to see speed increases purely because the older OS's are less demanding? Can I make an installer on a USB stick, since my Mini has no disc drive?

So I made a Mountain Lion boot stick, wiped it, reinstalled fresh, and it's blazing fast again. Either Yosemite / Mavericks beforehand had slowed it down, or the drive itself had just become very fragmented / clogged / heavy.

All good now, I'd forgotten how nippy the thing can be!


Dates in my iPhoto library are wrong Since some time the dates in my iPhoto library have all changed to the day my library was created. The pictures still appear chronologically in the events screen but they all show the creation date (of the library not the picture) under the event. If I try to change the date and time I can only change the time of the picture the date is fixed on January 5th, 2013.

Try using Repair Disk Permissions for the hard drive where your iPhoto library is. You can do this from the Disk Utility app.

This might (or might not) solve your problem about not being able to change the date of your current pictures. It will probably won't restore your original dates.


How do I copy all photos from Photos App to an external drive? After searching here, I'm still confused about how the Photos App library works. I'd like to copy (or simply move) all of my photos (10k+) from the Photos app to an external drive, so that I can then use Lightroom to manage them. I need to do this to free up space (approx. 26gb) on my hard drive.

I've found the Photos App library and have copied it over to an external drive, but now I'm wondering how I "open" this file so that I can then import these photos into Lightroom. Is there a way to view all the original, individual photos in a simple folder that I can then work more easily with?

FWIW, I do have iCloud and my photos are automatically backed up there. There are approximately 10K photos in the Photos library. Any advice on how to best proceed?

Is your Lightroom installation also on your Mac OS partition?

If you want to edit the files in Lightroom without having to "extract" them into a separate folder, you should:

Open the folder containing the Photos library in Finder.
Right-click the Photos Library and click "show package contents".
Open the Masters folder and right-click on a year folder and select "make alias".  (This is necessary, since the "make alias" option doesn't exist when you right-click on the Masters folder for no apparent reason.)
Command+I on the new alias and click "choose destination", then drag the Masters folder into the dialogue that opens.
Rename your alias and drag it wherever is best for you.


Where do I find the "Show Addresses" option in Yosemite Mail? I have just upgraded to OS X Yosemite.

In Apple Mail I normally send email to groups.

In my old version of Mail I would press the "Show Addresses" icon in the toolbar and select an email group, however I do not have this icon on the new version.

I've tried to customise the Toolbar, but "Show Addresses" is no longer an option.

What is the best way to resolve this?

Yosemite now has this feature built into the to field, at the end is a blue circle with a plus (+) symbol. Click this for a pop over with the Address Book.

I don't have groups so I presume this is what you need, but I can't confirm.


Keeping old version of Firefox while updating to new version On my OSx I want to be able to switch version of software I use.

Like right now I have Firefox 29, but I want to try firefox 32. is there a way I can download and install version 32 and keep the old one as well?

How such strategy can be implemented on all softwares ? This gives me leverage to switch to older version with ease..

Older versions of Firefox can be found here:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

There's Multifirefox app, which can help switching profiles for several versions.

Installation:

brew cask install multifirefox

  MultiFirefox is a small launcher utility that allows you to run multiple versions of Firefox side-by-side.  It helps you set up multiple profiles (one or more for each version of Firefox), remembers your last launch preferences for easy launching, has auto-updating built in for when we make improvements, and is 100% open source, MIT licensed.


Why is iTunes not shuffling songs but albums? I am currently running iTunes 12.0.1.26 on OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), and every time I try to play any set of songs randomly the songs get grouped by album. I have had this problem with previous versions of iTunes running on OS X Maverick. I would like to be able to shuffle the songs individually.

Controls → Shuffle → Choose your preference.

Screenshot:


Can MacBooks run without a battery? I have a MacBook Pro (2008). It is a secondary computer I rarely use, so it was easy to last that long with it.

Such a long lasting service turned me into an adept of Apple quality. I am looking forward to buy a new one except... nowadays the battery is harder to remove.

My concern is not "a replaceable battery", it is more of "a removable battery". As soon as the battery dies, I would like to keep using the laptop with a power cord. However I've seen all my batteries swelling and/or getting extremely hot. I might be paranoid, but in those cases I just wanted to remove the battery and keep using a good enough laptop.

Is this possible with new MacBooks? Can they work without a battery attached? Or can their batteries be ignored once they expire?

It is well-known that any MacBook with battery removed will run at significantly lower clock speed, typically around 1 GHz. The reason is that the power supply is good enough to supply plenty of power for the average usage, but not for bursts. If your hard drive spins up while the CD drive spins up while all cores and the GPU work full blast and you are charging two iPhones then the power supply won't have enough power for that, but it can take extra power from the battery.

With no battery, the MacBook will turn its power consumption down so that it can guarantee to always have enough power, because otherwise you would have instant crashes at the wrong times.

Another reason to not remove the battery is that dust will have a chance to get deeper inside your MacBook that would otherwise be blocked by the battery. So unless your battery is swollen, leave it in, even if it only has ten minutes charge left.


What does lsboxd process do on os x? My firewall asked me for a connection from lsboxd (module com.apple.ls.boxd, ) to one another computer in my network to the port tcp 548. What does it do? I found that it is a part of sandbox technology of a OS X, but what is it more specifically? I found it in my launchctl list output:

com.apple.LaunchServices.lsboxd

lsboxd is part of the OS X Sandbox.

It allows communication between sandboxed applications.

lsboxd is in the Launch Services API. It is the Launch Services Sandbox Daemon, which governs what apps can launch apps in the OS X sandbox. You can peruse the App Sandbox Guide for more information about sandboxing.

PDF: App Sandbox Design
Guide


Cannot restart, shutdown or log out I am on 10.14.4, the same thing was happening at least on 10.14.1.

Laptop: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

So the problem is if I open  "Apple Menu" in top left corner and click any of the following options:

Shut Down...
Restart...
Log out My Name

nothing happens.

sudo reboot works fine, holding the power button works fine, but that's not a graceful shutdown and I would like to avoid it, it also prevents updates from being applied if shut down this way.

Also when I go to Preferences > Software Updates > click Update Now then a dialog pops up with an option "Restart Now". Clicking it does nothing similar to Apple Menu.

What I tried:

I checked the Console application for logs (nothing relevant in there)
I checked /var/log/system.log, I checked /var/log/shutdown_monitor.log (nothing relevant in there)
SMC reset
NVRAM reset
Created new fresh user, to see if it's a problem with my user account (the issue persists)
I disabled all the login items and bunch of startup services (java updates, and bunch of similar non-system stuff)

This looks suspiciously like a problem with permissions. Open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and fix permissions on your drive then reboot and see if it works.

EDIT: After comment, repair permissions is not available anymore in newer macos releases.

Then you will have to reinstall macos, I am afraid.


RedQuits (or alternative) on Mac OS X 10.10 I have installed RedQuits on Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite).  Unfortunately, it is not working at all.

I have made sure that RedQuits has access to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, but it seems to not work.

Currently, the RedQuits website states it works with Mac OS X 10.6.

Does anybody know how to get RedQuits working with Yosemite, or of any alternatives that will cause the close button to quit an application?

I just had this same accessibility issue using RedQuits 2.0 and was able to get it working with Yosemite (10.10).  Just follow the steps below.

Download RedQuits v2.0 RedQuits Download Link
Double click the downloaded package. (You will most likely get a warning telling you the software was not downloaded from the mac store)
Click the apple icon in the top left of your screen and navigate to [System Preferences] [Security and Privacy] [Privacy]
Click Accessibility menu item on the left panel.
Click the lock in the bottom left corner to make changes, then click the ReQuits checkbox in the right pane.
Launch the RedQuits app again, and check all three checkboxes when prompted.
Launch the terminal app (You can find this by searching for 'terminal' with the spotlight search in the upper right of your screen.
Paste the following code into the terminal and hit [Enter]

sudo sqlite3 /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db 'delete from access where client like "%RedQuits%"'
Restart your computer.
Once again navigate to [System Preferences] [Security and Privacy] [Privacy]
Click Accessibility, click the lock to make changes, check RedQuits.
It should now be working.  If not try restarting your computer once more.


Prevent Spam Downloads on Safari Background

A new spam page has started to appear throughout many "questionable" sites (movie sites, etc.). This new spam page fits in to the category of fake scans, MacKeeper, "YOU HAVE A VIRUS", etc. category.

Problem

The problem with this new page is that instead of just having a popup, the page actually initiates a download of a random 2kb (not harmful just contains random text) files repeatedly every ~1ms. The download folder fills up before you can close the window and you are left deleting 1000+ files. Unlike, a similar problem in which a page spam brings up the print dialog, there is very little time to react.

Failed Troubleshooting Attempts

I tried locking the download folder. While it prevented the downloads from...well...downloading it, a dialog box (see image) comes up. Usually, I could just dismiss this dialog box, but since the download is attempted every ~1ms, I a new dialog pops up every time I try to dismiss, preventing me from closing the window.
Force quitting Safari, which stops the download (after 1k's downloads) but then I loose all my other windows
Changing settings to ‘Ask for each download’ in Safari preferences. Doesn't work because 1k's of separate dialog boxes open prevent me from even closing the tab. Eventually crashing Safari.

Question

How can I prevent spam downloads in Safari?

UPDATE:

Heres the code causing the download (got it by disabling JavaScript and looking through code manually):

 function download(g, h, j) {
                var k = new Blob([g], {
                        type: j
                });
                if (window.navigator.msSaveOrOpenBlob) window.navigator.msSaveOrOpenBlob(k, h);
                else {
                        var l = document.createElement("a"),
                                m = URL.createObjectURL(k);
                        l.href = m, l.download = h, l.click(), setTimeout(function() {}, 0)
                }
        }
        function bomb_ch() {
                var g = Math.random().toString(36).substring(20),
                        h = Math.floor(50 * Math.random() + 25);
                while (true) download(h, g, g)
        }
        function ch_jam() {
                bomb_ch()
        }

Note: I had some issues running the JS on a custom page. It froze instead of downloaded. I was able to emulate the download by using a setInterval() function calling a the download function.

More info: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/malwarebytes-news/2018/02/tech-support-scammers-find-new-way-jam-google-chrome/

Wouldn't this be a good case for a Safari content blocker / javascript blocker that's selective?

Ghostery might be a good place to start on the Mac to see if you can use pre-built rules to quash cross-site scripting / ad injection of code into web pages. Of course, if the page is serving up that content directly you'll need to disable javascript on that page entirely or take note and just block those sites that crap up your experience intentionally or due to selling off ad injection to anyone with the means to afford this scare ware and scam ware.

If you wanted to be more precise - GreaseMonkey type user scrips could combat this with enough JS knowledge on your part (or finding someone that wrote the script to block today's iteration of this malware).

https://tampermonkey.net/?browser=safari
https://www.greasespot.net

  Edited By @JBis

  The following userscript was successfully in blocking the page.

     // ==UserScript==
     // @name         The Bomb Squad
     // @version      0.1
     // @description  Blocks the pages containing any function with the bomb_ch function detailed in https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/329594/prevent-spam-downloads-on-safari and https://blog.malwarebytes.com/malwarebytes-news/2018/02/tech-support-scammers-find-new-way-jam-google-chrome/
     // @author       Josh Brown (@JBis https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/263848/jbis)
     // @match        *
     // @grant        none

    // ==/UserScript==

   if (typeof bomb_ch === "function") {
     document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].innerHTML="
Page Defused by The Bomb Squad

Because it contatained the following
 function(s):
bomb_ch()

";
    }

  Note: Sp(c)ammers can easily bypass this by randomizing the bomb_ch() function.

Newer OS versions of Safari might help cut this down a bit, but there's money to be made by people that deliver this load of crap to your Mac so they'll likely adapt to any technologies that try to make it easy to block. Unless you're willing to spend more money supporting a business that maintains a library of settings that can "whack-a-mole" and adapt faster than the charlatans can cook up new code in their boiler room.

You'll also have to decide if the web sites that do this are also charlatans that are part of the con since they should know this is happening to you, one of the visitors they host.


Gather all windows of an app to one screen I have a two-monitor setup. I use one monitor as "primary" and other as "Reference" i.e I do active work using primary monitor and the secondary monitor has the windows that I refer to while doing my work. Over a period of time, multiple windows of the same app (Outlook, Excel, Word, PyCharm, etc.) end up distributed on different windows.
I need a shortcut/ third party app which on a keystroke or option from a menu that "gathers" all the windows that belong to the current active app into a single screen (primary screen or an option to select which screen).
Essentially I need the functionality of the "Gather Windows" option present in the Display Preference extended to all apps. I looked at this question: Trigger 'Gather Windows' programmatically (or other quick way) but that operates only on Display Preference window.
If not possible out of the box, third party apps are fine as well.

A utility that groups open windows in Mac OS X is called Mission Control. With it, you can also create separate Spaces and organize your open windows into Spaces by simply dragging them. The article below gives great visual examples.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204100


Find Files Responsible for Starting Process on Mac While running a local port scan for a troublesome process I discovered a few unknown open ports.

 Open TCP Port:     106         3com-tsmux
 Open TCP Port:     3001        redwood-broker

I believe I know what redwood-broker is for, but the other one not so much..

I began by looking up its PID with:

sudo lsof -i :106

Then killed it with

sudo kill [PID]

But it keeps popping up.

How can I find the path to the files responsible for starting this process?

If the process keeps reappearing then most likely it is started by launchd. Use launchctl to list jobs loaded to launchd:

sudo launchctl list
launchctl list

Job definitions for launchd in .plist files are stored in:

~/Library/LaunchAgents         Per-user agents provided by the user.
/Library/LaunchAgents          Per-user agents provided by the administrator.
/Library/LaunchDaemons         System-wide daemons provided by the administrator.
/System/Library/LaunchAgents   Per-user agents provided by Mac OS X.
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons  System-wide daemons provided by Mac OS X.

You might also grep the above files for actual path to executable.

For all processes you can check the output of ps -ef | grep <process_name> and check the parent process PPID.

  UID   PID  PPID   C STIME   TTY           TIME CMD
  501 17151  7357   0  9:35AM ttys000    0:00.00 grep grep

In this example grep process was spawned from process 7357. Later you can check ps -ef | grep 7357 to find out it was bash process that started grep.


VMware Fusion vs. Parallels Desktop vs. Boot Camp I've been wanting to get Windows on my retina MacBook Pro for a while now but there are so many softwares that I simply gave up. I recently found out that VMware Fusion, Parallels, and Boot Camp are the best ways to get Windows running well.

I want to use windows mainly for Steam related games, and some other applications not available on OS X.

The question is: which one is the best and most reliable? I really want something that is easy to use, install, and uninstall (if needed).

I'm running Mountain Lion, if it makes a difference.

I recommend Parallels 7. I have run any number of games (Both Steam-based and not) this way. Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3, Blacklight: Retribution, World of Tanks, Diablo III, World of Warcraft and others all run with no problems. It's not going to be as fast as running native code, but it's about as good as you can get. Run the VM in fullscreen (and make sure you're using the discrete graphics card if you're using gfxCardStatus!) for best results. Boot Camp obviously will give you the best performance, but I hate dual booting and refuse to do it. I have no experience with VMware Fusion.


Does Apple scan iCloud e-mail like Google does with Gmail? Does anyone know if Apple scans e-mail for marketing purposes like Google does with Gmail?

Or maybe the iCloud e-mail encrypted all the way from client to server/database such that Apple couldn't even read it?

With MobileMe, Apple did filter (and block) email:
http://www.cultofmac.com/103703/apple-may-be-invisibly-filtering-your-outgoing-mobileme-email-exclusive/
However, I tried the test mentioned in the article using iCloud email, and the email went through just fine.

EDIT:
Turns out they do, just not in the same way.
http://www.cultofmac.com/217557/apples-deleting-icloud-emails-that-contain-the-phrase-barely-legal-teens/


Where is "Contact" information stored within iOS4 I have a problem in iOS4.0.1 on my 3GS where not all contacts I have saved show up in the "Contacts" app or tab within "Phone". However, when I enter names in a new text message contact field, they automatically show up - the same happens when I manually dial a contact's number in the "Phone" app.

I'm wondering in which file/directory is this information stored within the filesystem so I can harvest it manually? I have jailbroken the phone and have access to the filesystem. I believe the data may be stored in a sqlite database, though I'm not certain.

Also, would anyone be able to shed some light on how the database may have corrupted itself and if there are any possible fixes.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I can't address the data corruption issue, but I can tell you where your PIM data is stored.

SSH into your phone and go to /private/var/mobile/Library/. There, you will find and AddressBook subfolder, along with SMS, Calendar, Notes, etc. The contents of these directories are the data that you need for each respective service.


What is the correct way to use an iPhone and iPhoto and PhotoStream? I'm rather confused about the 'proper' way to use Photo Stream and an iPhone and iPhoto.

Here's how I use iPhoto and my iPhone: (This workflow was as far as I can tell the correct way to operate before iCloud)

Getting photos into iPhoto:

Take photos on iPhone.
Every so often connect the phone to my mac and in iPhoto import any photos and videos from the phone's  camera roll into iPhoto (deleting those photos from the camera roll once they are imported.)
This means that iPhoto is the canonical store for my photos - the camera roll on the phone was just a temporary store until i could get them into iPhoto.

To get photos from iPhoto onto my iOS device:

in iTunes, select the device and in the Photos tab of the settings choose 'Sync photos from iPhoto' - only including events from the last two years (for limited phone storage reasons.)

This worked well until iCloud came about - now with photo stream every time I import into iPhoto it warns me of duplicates as the photos already exist in monthly photo stream events.  I end up with both monthly photo stream events and 'real' events which are groups of photos taken on the same day.

So - what is the correct workflow now that photo stream exists?

Do I not ever import from my iOS devices into iPhoto and just allow photo stream to do its stuff?

If so

Do I just let the camera roll on my iPhone get bigger and bigger and never empty it?  This seems wasteful as there would be duplication of photos between the camera roll and the photo stream events.
How do I import videos from the iOS devices?

Or is there a more correct workflow?

What strategies do you use?

Thanks

Photostream will store the previous 30 days worth of photos automatically. That means, every photo you take on your iOS devices will be sent to Photostream, but only the last 30 days worth of photos will be available there.

If you enable 'Automatic Import' of Photostream in iPhoto (Preferences > Photostream > Automatic Import) then when you launch iPhoto, it will automatically download a copy of any photos that are in your Photostream, and automatically create an Event titled: {MMM YYYY} Photo Stream (eg. "Jul 2012 Photo Stream")

This Event will be automatically kept up to date, as long as iPhoto is open long enough to sync everything required (depends on your connection).

In effect, as long as you open iPhoto once every 30 days and leave it open long enough for your Photostream to be imported, you should never have to manually import a photo from your iOS device at all.

As for removing items from your Camera Roll on your iOS device, as long as you see that they are present in Photostream (or in iPhoto), then it is safe to delete them from your device. (There is no way around this but to do it manually as far as I know.)

Currently, Photostream does not support videos. To import videos, connect your iOS device to iPhoto and import these manually.

As a side note, in order to keep some photos on the device, you can create a smart album in iPhoto along the lines of "Photos taken within the last 30 days" or "Photos rated 4 stars or more", and configure iTunes to sync these to your device. That way, you can be sure that no matter if you clear your Camera Roll on your device, or delete certain photos, you maintain some convenience.


Rebuilding Fusion Drive I have a Fusion Drive (10.9.1) with a 256GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. The 1TB HDD has started making noises and has reported SMART errors. It is apparent that it will fail any day. I have Time Machine Backups, and have also purchased a new 1 TB HDD.

My question is what is the best way to restore the drive? I know I need to swap the new HDD into the array, but if I clone the old drive onto the new drive, will Fusion continue working, or will I have to restore from Time Machine?

So I tried to clone the drive, but had an error part of the way through that I did not notice. My solution has now been to reinstall OSX onto a new Fusion drive then restore from Time Machine. The clone method should work as far as I can tell though!


Install Boot Camp gone bad -- installed windows on a wrong drive I tried to install Boot Camp to my iMac and I installed windows to the wrong drive.  Instead of Boot Camp partition, I installed it to OS X :(  So now I cannot repair the drive using disk utility because i grayed out.  The drive is now called "disk0".  I tried to reinstall OS X using the Mac OS X install disk but it cannot see the drive.  the drive is not even on the list.  How can I get it back, PLEASE HELP!!!

FWIW when I boot up my computer without the mac osx install DVD, it says "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key".  So it's obvious that the mac partition is overwritten by windows (read first post).  Here is the description info of the main drive and the partition display from bottom of page when i select them from disk utility.

298.1 GB hitachi HDT725032vla360
Disk description: Hitachi HDT7250...
Connection bus: serial ATA 2
Connection type: internal
Total capacity: 298.1 GB
Write status: read only
S.M.A.R.T status: verified
Partition map scheme: unformatted

Disk0 (where it used to be Macintosh HD)
Mount point: /volumes/untitled
Format: windows NT file system (NTFS)
Owners enabled: No
Number of folders: 0
Capacity: 298.1 GB
Available: 127 GB
Used: 489.4 MB
Bumber of files: 3232

As already stated by Mike, when you use Disk Utility from the install DVD, the "erase" and "delete" partition options should not going to be grayed out.

Look at the following image. Notice the important information, you have to select your DRIVE and not the partition. Then you have to select "Partition" in the tabs and finally click the little "minus" sign (which is Grayed out in the image).

Now when you boot with your Install DVD, you can open Disk Utility from the Menu during the initial stage of the install, when you're still being "welcomed" to OS X's install.

Try it from there and DiskUtility will launch (it will take a few seconds, since the DVD drive is not as fast as a Hard Drive) and try to remove the partition from there. Remember to "Apply" the changes.


How can I access cache files in chrome in IoS? In my iPhone 7plus, is there a way that I can access the pdf which I saw a few days ago on a website?

If the PDF is still available online, you can access your browsing history in Google Chrome and find it there (if not already deleted from the history).

If the PDF is no longer available online, but online stored in the offline disk cache on your phone, you cannot access it from within Google Chrome, or from other apps on your iPhone.

You can however get to the cache by connecting the phone to a computer and use a program that allows you to explore the file system. That could be for example iExplorer from Macroplant or dr.fone Transfer from Wondershare.


How can I log in again after downgrading a 1st-gen MacBook Air from Lion to Snow Leopard? I have a 1st-gen MacBook Air. It came with, if I remember correctly, Leopard. I subsequently upgraded to Snow Leopard and then to Lion.

However, I have found it to be very sluggish after upgrading to Lion, so I decided to downgrade it to Snow Leopard.

Since doing so, I can no longer log in.

Here's what I did

Use SuperDuper! to make a bootable backup of my MacBook Air hard drive on a partition on an external USB hard drive
Boot using the aforementioned partition on external USB hard drive as startup disk to verify the clone. Verified.
On another Mac (one with a DVD drive), use SuperDuper! to clone the Mac OS X Snow Leopard install DVD onto another partition onto the same external USB hard drive.
On the MacBook Air, boot into the Install partition on the external drive.
Use Disk Utility to re-partition the MacBook Air's internal hard drive.
Install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on the MacBook Air's hard drive
When asked as part of the installation, choose to migrate users, applications and data from the other partition on the same external hard drive that contained the previously backed up hard drive
Restart the MacBook Air on successful installation
Attempt to log in with the password I originally had.

The login screen simply shakes its head at me and does not let me log in.

With my limited knowledge, I imagine that something has gone awry with password hashing. Any ideas what I can do?

You may want to try the method described here under 'Reset Mac Password – without a CD'. This method resets the OS so that it thinks that it's the first time it's been run. This will kick off the Create New User Account wizard when the OS is rebooted, which allows you to create a new account with Administrator rights. You can then use this account to reset the password of the original account.

Extract from above article:

  Stage 1) Boot into Single User Mode and remove a setup file

  Restart the Mac holding down the Command+S keys, this will take you
  into Single User Mode and it’s Terminal interface
  You’ll need to check
  the filesystem first: fsck -fy
  Next, you must mount the root drive as writeable so that changes will
  save: mount -uw /
  Now, type the following command exactly, followed by the enter key: rm
  /var/db/.applesetupdone
  After removing the applesetupdone file, you need to reboot, type
  ‘reboot’ and hit enter.

  Stage 2) Create a New User Account upon System Boot

  You aren’t finished, but the hard part is now over – no more
  command lines, you’ll now be in the familiar Mac OS X GUI to finish
  the password reset process. In this step we just create a new user
  account as if you just got a new Mac:

  Upon reboot, you will be presented with the traditional “Welcome
  Wizard” startup screen just like when you first get a Mac
  Follow the
  welcome wizard and create a new user account – making the account name
  different from the account whose password you want to recover
  Continue on and boot into Mac OS X with this newly created user account, this
  new user account is an Administrator and has administrative access

  Stage 3) Reset the Forgot Password via System Preferences

  You are almost done, now you just need to reset the forgotten user account
  password using the Accounts control panel:

  Once you are booted into Mac OS X, click on the Apple logo and then
  navigate down to “System Preferences”
  Click on the “Accounts” icon in
  System Preferences
  Click on the Lock icon in the lower left corner of
  the “Accounts” preference window and enter the newly created user
  credentials, this enables you to change other user accounts and reset
  other users passwords
  On the left side user panel, select the user
  account containing the forgotten password
  With the user of the
  forgotten password account selected, click on the “Reset Password”
  button
  Enter a new password for that user, be sure to include a
  meaningful hint so you don’t forget it again!
  Close System Preferences
  and reboot the Mac
  You can now login to the previously inaccessible
  user account using the newly reset password! All user files and
  settings are maintained as before the password was forgotten


Command-F (search) in Finder As shown in the screenshot when I do a command-F (Find files ?) all of the files in the directory just do not show anymore (there are hundreds of files in the /shared directory)

Update Of course / naturally I typed in values to the search field. E.g pdf  I also used the dropdowns (type PDF). No change - i.e. nothing shows up.

So what is going on with the command-F.

BEFORE command-F

AFTER command-F  (nothing??)

You just have to specify what you want to search. As soon as you begin typing your query the results will appear.

From OS X: Keyboard shortcuts

  Command-F Find any matching Spotlight attribute

As long as nothing is entered there is no match.

If you just want to move the input focus to the search field without starting a search use command+option+F


Replacement for ASM's Classic Window Mode in Mavericks? Once upon a time there was a Menu Extra called ASM ( Application Switcher Menu) which automatically brought all of an application's windows to the front when any of its windows was clicked. In the Finder, clicking anywhere on the desktop brought all Finder windows to the front.

Is there a replacement app for this behavior on 10.8 or 10.9, or a preference setting? Thanks for any tips.


Is it possible to perform donation with In-App purchase for amount the user want to donate? With last update Apple rejected my app, because I have donation process with PayPal through Safari. They said to implement in app mechanism. But is it possible for users to donate with In-App with amount the user want? I would like to avoid creating Purchase Items for every amount I want to use.

No, in-app purchases can only have predefined prices set in iTunes Connect. You can charge the same in-app purchase multiple times, meaning you can calculate the donation to the nearest Tier 1 multiple and repeatedly charge it, but you can’t have custom tiers. Using Apple Pay to get around this is prohibited by App Store guidelines.

Here’s how PCalc shows the various donation levels:


How do I change the color depth of a monitor in Lion/10.7? How do I change the color depth of a monitor in Lion/10.7? I vague remember it being an option in the display prefs or the display menu bar in an older OSX version, but it seems gone in 10.7?

You're right in that Apple removed the option to switch between "Millions" and "Thousands" of colors from the Displays preference pane in OS X after Leopard (10.5).

I've not tried them, but something like Display Maestro or SwitchResX both appear to have the ability to change color depth and might help.


Profiling Time Machine on OS/X Mavericks I know that it's possible to end up wasting a lot of space in Time Machine with backing up huge files that have changed only a little (like a Parallels image that is not optimized for time machine) and it seems to me possible that there are also some cases in which one gets lots of little files that are constantly changing or coming and going, like a web cache would do if Time Machine weren't already configured to refrain from backing the cache up.

Apparently there is or was a bug in Chrome that causes such issues.

Is there a tool out there that can detect if I'm wasting a bunch of space somewhere? To detect big files it might tell me (Total space dedicated to versions of file X) - (space required for latest version of file X); there might be a more complicated analogue for directories.

The two best tools I have discovered are tmutil which is bundled with OS X and BackupLoupe which is excellent software for deeply inspecting your backups.

I would start with the graphical program BackupLoupe and try out a command like tmutil compare to see what Apple's tools provide to show you what will be part of the next backup interval.


Is there a way to change the organizer for Family Sharing? Once a family sharing plan is established is there anyway to change the "organizer" to another account?

Based on my research it looks like the only way to accomplish this is to disband the family sharing account and then recreate with a different account as an organizer. I am hesitant to do this as some people have reported getting locked out of family sharing after disabling it. Can anyone suggest any alternative means?

I ended up using the disband method and had no trouble recreating the family sharing group.

It's not ideal, but now it appears to be the only method.


How do I find out what serif font is being used in the Day One mac app? I use the Day One regularly and love it. I also write a lot (for work) and have found that Day One serif font and style making writing such a pleasure. I'd like to use the font in my other word processors (particularly Scrivener) and am willing to purchase it but can't figure out what it is. How would I go about finding out what it is?

I've emailed the app author but got no response from him.
I've poked around the Contents/Resources folder in the application but only found a fixed-with font.
Here is a screenshot (but I can't imagine that's very helpful).

I appreciate any leads.

This application on the web helped me out a couple of times:

http://www.whatfontis.com/

Just take a screenshot of some words which are typed with a particular font (preferably with a big size) and upload the screenshot.

I am not affiliated with the site in any way, I'm just a satisfied user. Give it a try. Otherwise you could try to mail the developers of Day One.


How to remove leading whitespace in a folder for OneDrive upload on mac os I am currently transitioning my files from local to a OneDrive folder on my mac and after I have copied all of the files in I have hundreds of Sync issues which relate to file names containing spaces at the front.
I am fairly new to coding / automator and looking around on the internet is fairly daunting!
Is there an easy way to just select the folder you want and then remove all leading whitespace inside of that folder? I have used automator before but dont understand any of the coding associated.
My OneDrive folder sits in Macintosh HD ▸ Users ▸ xxxxx directory so is there a way of setting the folder there and then running something to remove all leading spaces?
If possible, a laymans guide would help! haha
Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!

Here is a script that’s dedicated to fix this issue for OneDrive on the Mac.

https://github.com/soundsnw/mac-sysadmin-resources/blob/master/scripts/fix-onedrive-filenames-apfs.sh

It is quite sophisticated and very well documented.

If you don’t have JAMF - remove those from the end - they fill fail harmlessly I believe if you don’t have the JAMF framework installed.
It checks for APFS and makes a full backup of the existing files.
It notifies you what it’s doing.
It fixes folders first, then files.
It trims white space from the front and end of files and folders and also corrects illegal characters like /
It tries to catch errors, clean up, prevent sleep, avoid spotlight going ballistic while the files are being renamed, etc..
There’s nothing about this script I don’t like, to be honest.

It has no warranty, but please ask if you think you need help modifying it. I did not write it, but the community of mac administrators that makes and shares these are some of the best resources I know for great tools.


Auto delete previous / old events from iOS 7 Calendar? I don't like to keep old events (of previous week or month) in my iPhone calendar, but they keep up showing in my iOS Calendar, I want them gone automatically as the event passes. I don't want to delete each passed event manually. Is there any way that my events get deleted automatically as the new day or week begins ?

There are two things you can do about this, one on the device and one on iCloud.com:

On the device, you can setup to sync the calendar only for the events in the past two weeks (that's the shortest duration in the past you can set it to).

Do this by going to Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Under the Calendars section, go to the Sync submenu
Select Events 2 Weeks Back

Login to iCloud.com, go to Calendar and follow Apple's help on "Delete or hide events":

  To automatically hide past events, choose Preferences from the Action pop-up menu , click Advanced, select “Hide events n-days after they’ve passed,” then enter a number of days.

Set it to 1 day (that's the minimum allowed).


System hotkey to execute cmus-remote? I am a huge fan of the terminal-based music player cmus. It does everything I want from a music player and nothing I don't. I want to use it instead of iTunes on my Macbook. I installed it via homebrew and it's working great, except for one thing...

I'm trying to set up a system hotkey to play/pause cmus even if it's not focused. cmus provides a command-line program to help you do this.

cmus-remote --pause

Running that from anywhere will connect to the running cmus instance via a socket and issue the play/pause command.

So I'm trying to set up a system hotkey to run that command and play/pause cmus. As suggested in another answer, I've tried creating an Automator service workflow that runs the script. So hotkey starts the Automator service which runs the shell script which runs cmus-remote.

Now here's the real problem:

This Automator workflow works perfectly when I run it from the Automator edit interface, but it always fails when I try to run it as a service. The error message contains no useful information, just "The action “Run Shell Script” encountered an error."

I've attempted to put some debugging output into my script:

echo "AUTOMATION STARTED" >> ~/automation.txt
/usr/local/bin/cmus-remote --pause 2>&1 >> ~/automation.txt

When I read that file, all I see is:

AUTOMATION STARTED

Clearly the workflow is starting and running, and it's the cmus-remote command itself that is failing.

So...

Why this would cmus-remote work inside the Automator GUI, but die mysteriously outside of it?
Is there anyway to get more failure info out of cmus?
Are there open-source alternatives to Automator for binding system hotkeys to simple shell commands?

I think there is a security setting in Mavericks (and possibly Mountain Lion) that causes Automator not to allow system control. See this question

Open your Console and watch the logs when you run the service. In my case, it crashes when I try to run a shell script.

I tried adding Automator to the Security and Privacy preferences, but it did not solve the issue.

As a work around, you may have to use applescript to create and app, tie that to a service, and add the app to the Privacy tab of your Security and Privacy preference pane.


Disabling Login Shake Effect Is there any way to disable the login "shake" effect when an incorrect password is entered? All the results I found while googling were about an unrelated issue (how to disable the "shake mouse pointer to locate" accessibility feature). I'm running macOS High Sierra (10.13.6).

Shake animation is the visual indicator for letting the user know that the password was incorrectly entered. Therefore, if it could be disabled, there would be no way for the user to know that they entered the wrong password.

There is no way (either via System Preference or a hack) to disable the animation.


How to have sshd re-read its config file (without killing ssh connections)? How can I get the ssh server to re-read its configuration file (/etc/sshd_config), without killing existing ssh connections?

EDIT: If I run kill -HUP <SSHD_PID> I kill the connection.

sshd doesn't "re-read" it's configuration file, it restarts itself (refer to man sshd(8)), however, it shouldn't kill the child/connections if you sent the SIGHUP to the PARENT of them all. That is when you are talking about sshd that binds to port 22, as in the "usual" with Linux/FreeBSD/etc. [there are exceptions and sysadmin reasons why to follow the MacOSX type route]

HOWEVER MacOSX have launchd as the one that listens to and handles port 22 (from my 10.10.4 machine):

BlackYos:~ hvisage$ sudo lsof -i :22
Password:
COMMAND  PID    USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
launchd    1    root   57u  IPv4 0xdb59a664e4b34941      0t0  TCP blackyos:ssh->hvs:39093 (ESTABLISHED)
launchd    1    root   58u  IPv4 0xdb59a664e4b34941      0t0  TCP blackyos:ssh->hvs:39093 (ESTABLISHED)
launchd    1    root   62u  IPv6 0xdb59a664c78cd671      0t0  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
launchd    1    root   66u  IPv4 0xdb59a664c78d2e21      0t0  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
launchd    1    root   67u  IPv6 0xdb59a664c78cd671      0t0  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
launchd    1    root   68u  IPv4 0xdb59a664c78d2e21      0t0  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
ssh     1262 hvisage    3u  IPv4 0xdb59a664e59313b1      0t0  TCP blackyos:51628->hvs:ssh (ESTABLISHED)
sshd    1272    root    4u  IPv4 0xdb59a664e4b34941      0t0  TCP blackyos:ssh->hvs:39093 (ESTABLISHED)
sshd    1272    root    5u  IPv4 0xdb59a664e4b34941      0t0  TCP blackyos:ssh->hvs:39093 (ESTABLISHED)
sshd    1274 hvisage    4u  IPv4 0xdb59a664e4b34941      0t0  TCP blackyos:ssh->hvs:39093 (ESTABLISHED)
sshd    1274 hvisage    5u  IPv4 0xdb59a664e4b34941      0t0  TCP blackyos:ssh->hvs:39093 (ESTABLISHED)

It is launchd that might need to be "restarted" on macosx, or told about different ports to listen on for sshd, as launchd will spawn a new sshd for each port 22 connection that comes in.

check the following:

BlackYos:~ hvisage$ sudo ps -ef |grep -i ssh
  501  1263     1   0  6:46PM ??         0:00.06 /usr/bin/ssh-agent -l
    0  1272     1   0  6:46PM ??         0:00.40 sshd: hvisage [priv]
  501  1274  1272   0  6:46PM ??         0:00.03 sshd: hvisage@ttys004
  501  1262   570   0  6:46PM ttys001    0:00.05 ssh -v hvs
  501  1303  1275   0  6:50PM ttys004    0:00.00 grep -i ssh
BlackYos:~ hvisage$

I've ssh'd to my router and back to demonstrate the issue, and you'll notice that the two processes are already "owned" by me.
Compare this to a Linux system (my roouter) where you'll notice the third "real" sshd that is owned by root:

hvisage@hvs:~$ ps -ef |grep -i ssh
root      4053     1  0 Jul11 ?        00:04:22 /usr/sbin/sshguard -i /var/run/sshguard.pid -l /var/log/auth.log -w /etc/sshguard/whitelist -a 40 -p 420 -s 1200
root     16244 30219  0 18:46 ?        00:00:00 sshd: hvisage [priv]
hvisage  16249 16244  0 18:46 ?        00:00:00 sshd: hvisage@pts/0
hvisage  16563 16250  0 18:52 pts/0    00:00:00 grep -i ssh
root     30219     1  0 Aug09 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
hvisage@hvs:~$


Mac os Upgrade 10.13.4 Cannot Find Installer Resources when I try to upgrade my MacBook Pro to 10.13.4,it reported that it cannot find Installer resources. Anyone has solution to solve it?

Click Anywhere, then Apple -> Select Startup Disk -> Restart.

This is the same as this question.
High Sierra - The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged


How can I troubleshoot sharing problems from outside the LAN? I'm trying to connect with a server that is not on the same network as my mac, when I enter the ip address the connection doesn't go through. The ip is correct, the server is on, and remote access & login are allowed; I even tried sending the login name i.e afp://ipaddres/shortname. Is there something I am not doing or doing wrong?

You may need to set up port forwarding so that you can connect to your server even though it's behind NAT from your router.


iPhone having problems connecting to services I have an iPhone 7+ (NN4P2ZD/A) that has been having weird issues with connections which I’m attributing to DNS resolution problems. They only occur on home WiFi network and they only occur on this one device.

Often trying to browse with Safari I get “cannot fine server” issues. Applications load some images but not others (assuming they have several servers for them so some resolve, some not). Discord, for example, can’t send photos but messages go through.

If I drop out of WiFi to 4G all works. If I start a VPN connection everything works. If I connect to another WiFi network somewhere everything works. And after that the cached information makes all work on home WiFi until it later on breaks again (assuming removed from cache). If I change DNS manually to something else than my router it sometimes helps a bit, but doesn’t entirely fix the problem.

Note that this isn’t all addresses, and as I said, all other devices in the same network work. iPad 2, iPad Pro, laptops, Android devices, iPhone 5S... No issues. This device has had it always and with different iOS versions (currently on latest). There’s no clear connection between the addresses that won’t work, but Discord is one that often breaks. Twitter also often won’t load properly.

So far I haven’t tried to dump all network data to see what’s happening but I really can’t figure out what could be the issue.

There might be some weird network configuration on your iPhone. Try forgetting your network and reconnecting.

Go to Settings > Wi-Fi.
Tap the  next to your home WiFi settings.
Tap Forget This Network, then tap Forget to confirm.
Quit the  settings app from the app switcher, then reopen it to add your Wi-Fi network again.


Set image from iTunes Extras's gallery as desktop picture I just bought Mad Max: Fury Road from iTunes and wanted to set my desktop picture as one of the stills from the iTunes Extras's gallery.

How can I do that?

The easiest way would be to take a screenshot of the image. This is accomplished by pressing Cmd-Shift-4 and selecting the outline of the rectangle that you want to capture with the mouse.


Trying to understand how podcast syncing works in iOS 6 I noticed that in iOS6 I can't listen to podcasts in iTunes, but only in the new podcast app.
What is troubling me:

The play-count, played/unplayed status, or progress, of podcasts I
listen to via the podcast app don't update in iTunes.
I have subscribed to several podcasts inside of the podcast app with syncing turned on.
But I don't see these show up in the iTunes podcast section.

This must be a bug, or Apple has completely separated iTunes podcasts from podcasts on iOS6 devices. If that's the case, I'm not sure what the 'syncing' option in the podcast app settings is for.
How do I fix this?

Edit for clarification: I found that the only meta-data value that wasn't syncing was the "Last Played" date, which was caused a smart playlist dependent on that value not to work. So that may be a bug. Otherwise, I'm still don't understand why iTunes isn't syncing with the podcasts I subscribe to via the podcast app.

Same thing for me, this upgrade has brought nothing but headaches.

You can still open Podcasts in your Music App by doing a search for the podcast name.

Deleting the Podcasts app from your phone and killing the Music apps process (or reboot phone) will bring the Podcasts menu back to the Music app as well, hurrah!


How to delete a backup of /dev/fd? For extra safety, I recently decided to make a second backup of my Macbook's HD. Initially I did so with rsync, because I was already using Time Machine for my first backup. But then I realized Time Machine can handle backups to multiple disks and decided to use Time Machine for the second backup as well.
However, when I try to delete the rsync backup in Finder, I get the following error message:

The operation can't be completed because the item "fd" is in use.

A little investigation confirms that it is failing on the backup's /dev/fd folder. I understand that this folder contains file descriptors (although I'm hazy on what exactly that means). I think perhaps what may have happened is that the file descriptors in use at the time of the backup were copied over, and these are somehow marked as in use. In any case, I'm wondering if anyone knows how I can safely delete these items?
(FWIW, I tried closing all open applications before trying the delete, which made no difference.)

If this is an external drive, you can just clean it up from another host.
/dev/fd contains the file descriptors for the current running process, so they're kind of special - you may need to drop down to single-user mode (command-s at boot chime), or plug the device into another host to remove this.
You could also try mounting the volume 'nodev' (umount $BACKUP_VOLUME; mount -o nodev $BACKUP_VOLUME $BACKUP_MOUNTPOINT) and just cleaning it up that way.


Paragon-NTFS only let me save files into NTFS Drive from Finder Application I just upgraded my Mac OS into Lion. I use Paragon NTFS to apply ntfs write mode. While working using Microsoft office, i noticed that i couldn't save any file from outlook, word, excel into NTFS drive from my external drive.
From outlook, there is no error messages, but from word i got this pop up error:

Word Cannot save or create this file. the disk may full or write-protected
Try one or more following:

Free more memory
Make sure that the disk you want to save is not full, write-protected, or damaged.

Did anyone ever experiencing this kind error? Don't know yet whether Microsoft Office bugs or not, but i could write any file from finder to this ntfs drive.
thanks.
update1: after i check with other application, it still failed to save any file into my ntfs drive. looks like the problem comes from Paragon. anyway i changed the title

That error is not related to MS Office. It is a filesystem error related to writing to the NTFS disk. I'm guessing that the version of Paragon NTFS you have isn't compatible with Lion. Looking at Paragon's forum for Paragon they have v9.0 which should work better.

You can also check out the OSXFUSE project which provides similar support for writing to NTFS.


What workarounds are there for websites that block Safari Reader? I just opened Ars Technica's review of Lion intending to read it with Safari 5.1's Reader but it appears to somehow block Reader. I tried the following with no success:

changed the extension on the url from .ars to .html but that didn't work
Installed Readability's Safari extension but I couldn't get it to work to with any page so it might be broken in Safari 5.1
Saved it to Instapaper but it only saved the first page.

Apparently Ars Technica thinks Safari reader is a "evil genius" plan from Apple but I think this theAppleBlog post sums up the issue fairly well.

I understand that well written long form articles take more time to write but I don't think breaking an article up into multiple pages is the answer. I know I can pay Ars Technica $5 a month to remove ads but I only ever read their Apple software and hardware reviews and Apple doesn't release new hardware or software every month. I just want a free 'lean back' reading experience. How about add more ads for longer articles?

Anyways I know this isn't a discussion forum so:

Is there a way to use Safari Reader on blocked sites for free?
If not is there any other service that provides a free 'lean back' experience for these blocked sites?

I have heard that readitlater works to assemble the full article whether you have paid for it or not.

I just went to the Introduction page in Safari 5.1 and reader is already to page 15. I'm not going to let it finish, but it doesn't look like it's blocked to me. I haven't paid yet - so something might be up in terms of server overload if reader isn't working for you.

The author of Instapaper did mention this specifically in his last podcast that it was quite possible technically for instapaper to scrape the whole article. The gist I recall is he didn't want to cross the line of bypassing ARS' intent since ARS has clearly decided to offer single page view as a benefit to their subscribers.

He urged people to spend the $5 for a month's access if they wanted the whole article to load in instapaper for later reading.

My take is that many of the services actually made sure their tools would not parse the whole article out of respect for a journal as well as an author that penned 27,000 words.


My Mac is invisible to my iPhone on AirDrop I want to send a photo from my iPhone (iOS 8) to my Mac (Yosemite) via AirDrop.
Though my iPhone appears on my Mac,
Mac does not appear on iPhone.
How can I fix this?

On both devices, I've selected "Allow me to be discovered by: Everyone".

I find that when AirDrop stops working even when both devices are within bluetooth range and on the same Wi-Fi network, I often have to reboot both devices. There may be another way, but rebooting both has almost always fixed it. Also of note: if you have any firewall enabled, those settings can interfere as well.


Import multiple photos from Dropbox to iMovie? I have a lot of photos in Dropbox on my iPad mini that I would like to upload in one go to iMovie.  So far I can only figure out how to export to iPhoto, then I have to import to iMovie. Not very convenient or fast! Any suggestions appreciated.

If you have a PC/Mac and use iTunes, it would be a lot quicker to do this using the File Sharing feature for apps.

Here are the steps to do this, taken from the Apple iMovie help documentation at "iMovie Help for iPad: Import from iTunes":

  Connect your device to your computer, then open iTunes on your computer.
  In your iTunes library, select the device near the top of the iTunes window.
  Click the Apps button.
  Select iMovie in the Apps list below File Sharing (you may need to scroll to see it).
  Do one of the following:

  Drag the file you want to add to the iMovie Documents pane.
  Click Add below the iMovie Documents pane, and in the window that appears, navigate to the file you want to add.

  To copy the file to your device, select the file, then click Open.
  The file appears in the iMovie Documents pane when copying is complete.


Xcode adds comment characters in the first column? Whenever I use the Xcode keyboard shortcut Command + / for commenting line(s) of code in a Swift/Objective-C source file, the // characters are always placed in the first column. I would much prefer it be at the current indentation.

I guess this is a personal preference, but does anyone know if there's config for it:

For e.g., If I have this code snippet:

    ...
    print("something")
    ...

and I invoke the keyboard shortcut Command + / with the caret positioned on the line containing print statement, I get:

    ...
//      print("something")
    ...

I'd prefer the following behavior instead:

    ...
    print("something")
    ...

I invoke the keyboard shortcut Command + / with the caret positioned on the line containing print statement, I should get:

    ...
    // print("something")
    ...

I guess this is a personal preference, but does anyone know if there's configuration for it?

You can use the Comment Here extension. After downloading:

Restart Xcode
Go to Xcode -> preferences -> key bindings
Search for "Comment Selection" and remove the key binding for it
Search for "Comment Here" and add the key binding "command /" for
the toggle comments option.
Your comments are now pretty :)


Daily agenda notification in calendar? I want to receive notification every morning with list of things (daily agenda) for the day in my Macbook. I could not find a way to set that up in Calendar, so is there another option or can I use AppleScript to accomplish this?

Maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but have a look at the "Today" view of the macOS Notification Center.

Personally, I use the calendar in iStat Menus.

You find further calendar options in this question.


El Capitan - Right Click Menu - Open Terminal Here I know this may have been asked several times, however I cannot find a valid method that will work for me.

On El Capitan - I want to add a option to the right click menu (not the services section) that allows me to open a file or directory directly in terminal from the right click option.

Would somebody be able to provide a working method?

As already mentioned in comments, using the built in service definitely works for folders. As for files, if you were to open them in finder, nothing would happen unless you can first established default editors in your .bash_profile.

If you're not dead set on using the right click menu, one way to open a folder location or file with terminal without downloading additional software would be to drag a file or folder onto your Terminal icon in the Dock. I do this often and it works great.


Will turning on two-factor auth require me to know my security question answers? (because I dont) Current status, signed in on several devices to iCloud services etc.

I was prompted about using two factor auth and thought it a good idea. I also want to change the email address it uses so I used the https://appleid.apple.com site via a browser in my laptop to sign in and sort out both but it asked me to answer the security questions I set up 15 or so years ago.

Knowing me the name of my best friend at school will either be something like My cat (I should've tried that), Lord Vader, or e1e7ec2204d600993d9c18a1ec675504.

Now the password settings via my phone are asking the questions.

I know I can ring Apple to try and reset it. What I want to know in the meantime (because I'm lazy so I won't get round to doing it soon) is:

Will I be automatically logged out sooner or later because I failed the questions?
Can I set up two factor auth without needing to answer the questions?
If I can, will the questions stop being asked? That would be a convenient way to solve the problem :)

So, in short, should I press the "Turn on" 2FA button in my phone just yet?

Turning on two-factor-authentication may require your security questions.

You might be asked to answer your Apple ID security questions.

https://support.apple.com/HT204915
Once 2FA is activated, your security questions are deleted.

Do I still need to remember any security questions?
No. With two-factor authentication, you don't need to remember any security questions. We verify your identity exclusively using your password and verification codes sent to your trusted devices and phone numbers. When you enroll in two-factor authentication, we keep your old security questions on file for two weeks in case you need to return your account to its previous security settings. After that, they're deleted.

https://support.apple.com/HT204915
Therefore, I suggest you attempt to set it up, since the use of ‘may’ in the first quote means there is potential that the security questions are not asked for, and it you are successful in setting up 2FA your security questions are removed. However, this is on the condition you have a trusted device to receive the authentication prompt, which requires you to be logged in to your Apple ID on the device.


Can I view system stats in the Terminal? The widget iStat Pro allows to monitor different system stats like

CPU usage
network bandwidth in/out
memory usage
...

How can I view such system stats in the Terminal?

Depending on what you want displayed there are several options available using Terminal:

top: real-time sorted display of running processes such as memory and CPU usage
iostat: I/O summary statistics for terminal, device and CPU operations
vm_stat: Mach virtual memory statistics
diskutil list: disk/volume capacity
df: used/free space on mounted partitions
fs_usage: real-time file activity for both disk and network
nettop: updated information about the network (a bit like top for net I/O)
w: who is logged in and what they are doing; plus a brief system load summary
ifconfig and ipconfig: network interface and IP protocol details

Most of these commands have a huge list of options.  It's probably best to consult the man pages for details.
I usually rely on:

top -u -s 10 to identify CPU-hogging processes;
fs_usage -f filesys or fs_usage -f network to identify processes generating a lot of disk/network load.


Apple Watch - Can third-party apps update the activity app's exercise ring? Third party apps usually have their own "record your exercise" button. Will the exercise ring be able to reflect data recorded by these apps, even if the automatic trigger for the Watch to consider something to be "exercise" is not tripped?


Time Machine: Is it possible to exclude 5000+ files via TMUTIL? Is there a limit to the number of files which can be excluded in TimeMachine?

I have 5000+ photos on an external drive along with their associated sidecar files.  The photos are large and never change (I back them up separately) but I need to backup the sidecar files.  The photos and sidecar files need to be located in the same directory

So, I thought I would just exclude the photos using TMUTIL.  I thought I could do it with one command for the whole directory structure.  That didn't work.  So I did it by year which worked at first but I seem to be reaching a limit (Around 1315) and when I try to  exclude just a few, i get the error:
Insufficient privileges to change exclusion setting.
(Although I don;t think it's anything to do with privileges).

Does anyone have any advice please…?

Many thanks, Karen

If there are hard limits, sorry, I don't know what they are however I have many exclusions set for Time Machine and one in particular has 294,691 files in it.  So instead of doing it folder by folder try setting the exclusion from Options... in Time Machine under System Preferences.

Plug in the external drive and then either drag and drop the parent folder containing the files you want to exclude or the drive icon into the Exclude these items from backups: list area or use the [+][-] buttons.


Macbook Pro: Hibernate vs Shutdown I'm using a Macbook Pro late 2011, it has been upgraded with a SSD and 8GB RAM.
I was curious as to whether putting my mac on hibernation would extend it's life or I should just shut it down every night like a regular person...

**Problem: **I have to use this for an another 4-5 years.
**Usage: ** for like 3-4 days of a week, it runs for about 10hrs each day, it is mostly sitting idle.

I have a lot of stuff opened up and I use "Reopen windows when logging back". I just feel like the whole shutting down and booting back up puts excess stress on my CPU.

The CPU usages all the way to the top for like 5 secs on booting up. Would it be better for my CPU's life if I just used hibernation instead?

I could use this command I figure:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

Interesting question. Computers have a measurement call MTBF or mean time between failure. The more parts something has, the shorter the period between failures. If the computer is off, then it cannot fail during that time. So you will extend the life of your computer by turning off the power when not in use. Hibernation is still on, and helps conserve battery power. Since your disk is not spinning media, shutting off power to it will extend its life. CPU failure will be due to overheating, so if the fan is not coming on when you boot, it is in no danger.


Photos app not visible A friend has a iPhone 6 iOS 10.x and we cannot find the photos app. She has activated iCloud storage for photos in settings but we cannot find how to see the albums. I am an Androd user and have zero iOS knowledge.

That’s not an app that’s designed to be removed, so it’s either hidden and you can use spotlight to search for which folder it moved to or the database that records where apps are visible is corrupted.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204221

For the former you want to be sure you have a good backup and then restart the device to see if Spotlight can rebuild. If there is no free space, remove some content and restart again.

For the latter, get a good backup and restore the device.


Homebrew issues error while calling 'brew update' I don't have much knowledge of all this so please forgive my incompetence. When I run brew update, it shows:

fatal: Unable to create '/usr/local/Library/Taps/homebrew-science/.git/index.lock': Permission denied
Error: Failed to update tap: homebrew/science
Already up-to-date.

But, when I do sudo brew update, it says:

bash-3.2$ sudo brew update
Password:
Already up-to-date.

Why does it flag the fatal warning when I run the command without sudo? FYI, to provide some context I am trying to install Octave regarding which I need to run brew tap homebrew/science.

Please let me know how should I fix this. If possible, kindly provide a link to a page/article where I can understand the reason for the warning.

The index.lock file which is located in a directory which might need root permission to modify it or its files. You can change the permission of a directory using the chmod command.

This is what you can do:
sudo chmod -R +w /path/to/directory

A good choice for directory in this case might be '/usr/local/Library/Taps/'

The -R option will recursively execute the command on sub directories and files.

The +w option will add write permission to the mentioned directory or file for everyone.

Good Luck. ;)


Automatic tracking of monitors in Health.app? Unless I am mistaken, HealthKit/Health.app will automatically track some BlueTooth sensors, like heart rate straps? Is that true?

Is it also true that other sensors do not work this way, and only work when a 3rd party app is running. Is that also true?

If so, is there a list of such "auto track" devices?

There are no "auto-track" devices per se. You have to go in and give certain apps or devices access to the Health data.

As detailed on Apple's website, you need to choose the fitness app or accessory you want to use, and this will connect it to your Health app.

When you connect apps as a source of data to your Health app, they should automatically push in the data, but you might have to open the app for it to trigger. On the other hand, there are many, many devices that support automatic synchronization, like the Garmin Forerunner 220.

Unfortunately there are too many devices supporting synchronization with an iOS device, but most apps or devices that are capable of synching with the Health app support auto-synchronization when in close proximity to the device.

You can see a list of HealthKit compatible devices here: http://www.applehealthkit.com/compatible-devices-apps/.


MacBook Pro goes black for a second or two and then comes back on My MacBook Pro (mid 2012) 15″ goes black for a second or two while I'm using it and then comes back on as soon as I touch the trackpad, or sometimes it comes back on its own. It's very sporadic. Why is this happening and how can I prevent it?

That actually sounds like an intermittent connection caused by a broken wire/conductor, or a bad solder joint. Essentially, you have two ends of a conductor that should be joined, but mild vibration is causing them to make/break contact, causing the symptoms you describe.

However, you should confirm that your screen saver settings aren't set to turn on after a very short duration.

System Preferences >> Desktop & Screen Saver >> Screen Saver tab.
At the bottom-left, try setting Start after = Never

BTW, if you want easy method to manually enable the screen saver, click Hot Corners and set a corner for Start Screen Saver.

It would be good news if just the screen saver is causing the blank screen.

Otherwise, you should send the macbook in for repairs (when you have a break from needing it).


No 3G but have wifi- have been on phone with apple and provider for 5+ hours total. Ideas? I have an iPhone 5 that does not take a sim card. It is programmed for StraightTalk which goes through Verizon towers. I've had it over 2 years- finally got the sleep/wake button fixed since that's been a problem and known issue. When I got my phone back, I could no longer access 3G (so no iMessages unless I'm on wifi, no group msgs or photo msgs ever, no web without wifi).

My iOS is up to date. I've called the sat programming repeatedly to update. I took it into a store to check settings. I've been on the phone 4 separate occasions with providers and Apple (who did a remote check through computer and there are no hardware issues- I was told wifi wouldn't work either if there was).  The provider walks me through the same basic steps each time checking dumb things like airplane mode. They always wind up, an hour later, telling me that everything is "fine on their end" and my account is "well provisioned" and it should be getting data. Well, it's not.  Sometimes, they say they'll transfer me to someone else to try to fix it and then they hang up.

This phone doesn't use a sim card, never has, and a card won't work in this type of phone. (I even tested this once with provider and it made nothing work instead of just no 3G.)

I have a friend who had the same issue with the same provider and they said eventually the ST people transferred them to Verizon and they reset something there. So far, I can't get anyone to listen to me to try this, and when I went into Verizon they said it wasn't their problem. The friend didn't have any other specifics as to what the issue was so I can't tell anyone what they did. :/

If anyone out there can help, I'd greatly appreciate it. Seems like a waste to have a smartphone where I can't ever check mail when I'm out (or use browser to look things up or find my way). It's really disheartening to get nowhere after so many hours on the phone with people who don't seem to really know their job other than what the screen prompts them to ask.

I'm not sure if you said where you got your phone fixed (I double checked, but I could be missing it), but who fixed it? Was it Apple, a friend, a repair shop? It sounds like something could have been either damaged or disconnected and not reconnected correctly in the repair process.

If you have done a full restore to the device (both from an iCloud/iTunes backup and set it up as a new device) then it is probably damaged physically. You need to contact whomever repaired the sleep/wake button.


Potential macbook convert - windows on mac? I'm in the market for a new laptop and so have a few queries. What I'm after is a high res screen (when I say high res I mean I want better than 1280x800) and good battery life. Obviously this tends to point me toward Apple.

Currently I have a dell xps and whilst it's powerful, it has a low res (1280x800) and REALLY bad battery life.

The main uses for me are general web browsing, visual studio development and really light gaming (football manager, maybe a small amount of terraria and minecraft).

Obviously I'd be looking to install Windows 7 via boot camp to facilitate these things (unless any of those games have mac versions) - but I'll definitely need it for Visual studio.

I've googled around a bit and I'm getting conflicting information regarding battery life when running windows 7. Does anyone have any sort of idea what you get for just web browsing on the latest macbook pro using windows 7? I listed Visual Studio above and I know development will eat battery but I tend to develop when plugged in as opposed to on the go.

How about general use? Are there any quirks or nuances?

I've never used OSX before so it'll be a learning curve but everyone has to start somewhere! I do already have apple products in the shape of an iPhone and so I know their products tend to be intuitive and simple to use.

Has anyone ever used visual studio etc on a macbook? What about development with the mac keyboard, good or a nuisance?

Is there anything I haven't thought of I'd need to consider?

Cheers!

I'm going to suggest that for development - as opposed to for gaming - you may want to consider setting up a Windows virtual machine using VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop.  Both of these will apparently let you run them from a Bootcamp Windows partition so that you can boot into Windows for gaming but use a VM for other tasks, all using the same Windows installation.  I have no personal experience with that, as I use a VM exclusively, mostly for Visual Studio as well.

The reason is that this will give you Visual Studio on your Mac desktop so that you can run Mac apps for everything else.

FAIR WARNING!  If you start using a Mac, you will find Windows increasingly limiting and badly designed compared to OS X.  I'm serious; I much prefer working in MacOS now, even though I spend most of my day in Win7.


iMac has weird startup chime and refuses to boot I have a mid-2011 27" iMac and have a weird startup problem at the moment. When I try to boot I get a startup chime as follows: 3 beeps followed by a 3 second break followed by 3 beeps and it just keeps looping in the same pattern.

I did check this Apple Support page about startup tones, but my situation is not listed. It is very similar to the RAM failure tone, except that it's 3 second pauses for me not 5 as described by Apple.

Should I assume that the 5 seconds is not literal and it is in fact a RAM problem?

No, you cannot assume that. This repeating startup chime with the three second pause between the three tones is an indicator that you are trying to boot your iMac from a non-supported operating system.

The 27" mid-2011 iMacs originally shipped with Mac OS X 10.6.6, and later shipped with Mac OS X 10.6.7. This iMac will not run from Mac OS X 10.6.5 or earlier. However, on the positive side, it will run all version since, including macOS Sierra.

As an aside, it is strange that Apple hasn't documented this on the page you referenced.

Hope this helps!


How can I disconnect bluetooth headphones from an Apple Watch without "forgetting device"? How can I disconnect a bluetooth device from an apple watch without having to forget the device?

Do I really have to re-pair things like headphones every time I want to disconnect them?

You can turn off the bluetooth feature on the device itself. If you want to continue to use that device nearby your apple watch then you'll have no other choice but to unpair it, unless you can pair it with the other bluetooth device first.

If you pair with multiple devices, then you dont have to disconnect them. But if you disconnect them and unpair, then yes you'll have to re-pair them.


I deleted iMovie by accident, how can I get it back? I accidentally deleted iMove from my MacBook Air. How can I get it back?

If you've registered your iLife with the Mac App Store, you can find it in the Purchased tab.

Alternatively, if you have a Time Machine backup or other backup of /Applications, you can restore the file through that.


How to disable screen time out for a specific iPad app? Is it possible to stop an iPad from going to sleep only when a specific app is open, even if nothing is being clicked/played?

Sorry, it is not possible with iOS settings.  You will have to goto settings and turn off auto-lock whenever you don't want the screen to turn off.

See here: Disable iPhone timed auto lock when an app is running?


What's the earliest model of the MacBook to support Wi-Fi networks over 5GHz? As the title suggests - what's the earliest model of the MacBook (both Pro/Air preferred if possible) to support Wi-Fi networks over the 5GHz band?

All MacBook models have shipped with support for 5GHz Wi-Fi networks since their first generation.

802.11a

MacBook (2006)
MacBook Pro (2006)

802.11n (including draft-n)

MacBook (Late 2006 thru Mid 2010)
MacBook Air (2008 thru Mid 2012)
MacBook Pro (Late 2006 thru Early 2013)

802.11ac

MacBook (Early 2015 thru Mid 2017)
MacBook Air (Mid 2013 thru Current)
MacBook Pro (Late 2013 thru Current)

802.11ax

(None yet)

Reference: https://everymac.com/systems/by_capability/macs-with-airport-airport-extreme.html


iPhone seems to disconnect the VPN as soon as it goes into auto-lock (sleep) My iPhone seems to disconnect the VPN as soon as it goes into sleep mode. I use OpenVPN connect for iOS.
iPhone 5s and 6, iOS 8.

Is this behaviour as designed or am I missing something?

as far as i know thats a result of a design.
if i am to assume you're using wifi while connected to vpn
iphones usually puts the wifi chip on sleep while the screen is locked. to preserve battery life if the module is not being used.

that being said, it might as well be due to your vpn, I've used different types of vpn some loose connection sporadicly after a while, and some stay connected for hours (on a mac)

try doing the same with/and/or a different vpn/leaving your screen on


Can not change country of apple ID It doesn't work when I change the country of my apple ID. I come to the page where I need to fill in my address and billing information, but when I press next I come back to settings and when I press view apple ID, the country has not changed.

What can I do?

Changing the country for an Apple ID is impossible. Unfortunately it has never been. It is most probably related to the fact that you are not expected to simply hop from one country to the next and change your payment information associated with your Apple ID (i.e. local credit card) with it.

However, it is possible to open multiple Apple Accounts each associated with a different country and if needed a credit-card issued in the respective country.


Control odd-even page pairing in Preview in two-page mode By default, Preview displays pages like this in two-page mode:

How can I get it to display them like this instead?

Acrobat does the latter but Acrobat is not nearly as responsive with this file as Preview is.

I recommend to add a blank page as the new first page:

Menu View->Contact Sheet
Click page 1
Menu Edit->Insert->Blank page
Move the new blank page to the first place
Now you can view it in 2-page mode.


Creating a wget OSX Service I want to create a service to copy the URL and subsequently download it via wget.

How would I go about creating an OSX service to wget arbitrary urls from a browser or system wide. I believe it'd be possible with Automator's Run Shell Script action.

I had it set up to use my default shell (bash) and run the command found at /opt/local/wget but for some reason I'm not getting it to pass along the url.

I have done something like this before, and what made my life easiest was pbcopy and pbpaste. They allow you to either read the current clipboard or write to it.

So you go to Safari, copy some text, run an automator action.
Action is run shell script
schell script is just basically just wget `pbcopy`