How can an iPad in airplane mode detect iOS update? I have an iPad Air 2. It only has Wi-Fi capability and I keep it in airplane mode as I don't want it linking to my iPhone or other Apple accounts and disrupting any in progress memo recordings.

Well, the iPad has been in airplane mode for the last 1 week. This morning I saw on my iPhone that an update was available so I went ahead with that update. When I accessed my iPad to update and went into settings to turn off airplane mode I noticed that it had already detected that an update was available!

How is that even possible when it had been in airplane mode all week?

By default Airplane mode disables all wireless frequencies on your device so that you can comply with airline regulations. This means that any radio frequencies relating to cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are disabled.
However, when your device is in Airplane mode, it is actually possible to manually enable Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth. And, if you do, the next time you're in Airplane mode these settings remain.
So, the most likely answer is that at some point you activated Wi-Fi during Airplane mode (either intentionally or by accident) and that ever since your iPad has sill been connected via Wi-Fi whenever you've activated Airplane mode.
As per Apple:

Use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in Airplane Mode
If the airline allows it, you can use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth while in
Airplane mode. You just need to turn them on separately. On your
iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can turn on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth with
Control Center. Open Control Center from the Home screen and tap [the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth icon]. You can also go to Settings > Wi-Fi or Settings > Bluetooth. To use
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on your Apple Watch, just turn off Airplane Mode.
If you turn on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth while you're in Airplane mode, they
will be on the next time you use Airplane mode, unless you turn them
off while in Airplane mode.

Source: Use Airplane Mode on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch, Apple. [Bold emphasis mine, words in italics added for clarification]
The following screenshot is from an iPad in Airplane Mode and connected to Wi-Fi at the same time:

Related reading

Use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in Control Center with iOS 11 and later


How to bypass iMac 2015 Firmware Password? first of all, I apologize for my bad english
I have a question and I will be really happy if someone can help me.
A while ago I bought an imac from 2015 as used ( so I don`t have any invoice) but lately I miss some speed and because of this I decided to upgrade HDD to SSD. When I did it and wanted to do a clean install, I got a padlock on the screen, "So frimware password", and I don't have this one.
I tried to go to recovery mode via Command + R, but when I pressed that, it asks again for the password.
boot via USB failed.
NVRM reset failed
memory replacement, not helped
Does anyone have any idea about this ??

To my knowledge, you have no alternative to contacting the former owner in order to have the information or at least to recover an invoice to ask Apple to intervene.


Iphone 5s unlock to make all providers available I have seen that there has been a lot of questions asking how to unlock, but no question had an answer I was satisfied with. I want to unlock my phone at home using my Windows and/or ubuntu pc. How should I proceed? I have done this on my android devices but I am new to apple products, all google searches just tells me to pay my provider...

If your iPhone was purchased on a contract, you must contact your provider for them to release your iPhone from their network lock. This is generally put in place to ensure users on a contract do not switch carriers after paying only one or so instalment for the phone.

If you have finished your contract, purchased the phone outright, or come to an agreement with your carrier to unlock your device you'll need to backup (if needed) and restore your device through iTunes to apply the new unlocked carrier settings. You can contact Apple to see if your device will be unlocked after restoring if you're not sure.

There may be other ways around this unlocking process, however none are official or supported by Apple. Nor are they guaranteed to work.


Time Machine drive encryption going for 22 hours. Is it stalled? I set up Time Machine in Mountain Lion by plugging in a newly formatted 500GB USB drive, selecting that from the Time Machine dialog, and checking the box to encrypt my backups. A window appeared that said "Preparing disk [diskname] for encryption." The progress bar quickly filled to about 80% and then stalled there. It's been about 22 hours now with no sign of progress. I know encrypting a drive can take a while, but is this too long? Should I force quit or unplug the drive and start over?

Notes:

I checked the system log to verify that the computer's been up and working all night; it didn't go to sleep.
The drive is no longer showing up in the finder or Disk Utility. Is that normal when encryption is in progress?

22 hours is very long indeed. I have encrypted a 1TB drive in less time before.

The encryption is handled by a "live background process". "This
process continues seamlessly across reboots. The logical volume
remains usable at all times."
from man page > diskutil > encryptVolume

Maybe this daemon hangs or simply halted because the drive is not mounted (which is fine). So you should just re-mount it again.
Alternatively, I would try I restart the daemon by simply restarting the computer. Once the Time Machine backup is mounted again, the daemon will continue encrypting the drive.
Checking the encryption progress using diskutil
You can check the status of the encryption by using the command:
diskutil cs list

In the nested tree you will see a Logical Volume Family which is currently being encrypted. If you drive is being encrypted, you should see the entry Conversion Status:       Converting .
Encryption Status:           Unlocked
    Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
    Conversion Status:       Converting      //what does it say here?
    Conversion Direction:    forward
    Has Encrypted Extents:   Yes
    Fully Secure:            No
    Passphrase Required:     Yes


Migrate Mac to Mac with external iTunes & iPhoto I've got an iMac with 2 external hard drives.
One 1.5TB external hard drive for iTunes and iPhoto (750GB combined) and one 3TB external hard drive for Time Machine backups.

I want to migrate everything to my new MacBook Pro which has 512GB storage.

How can I do this? Migrate assistant won't work because there is not enough storage on my MacBook.

Or can I just plug the external hard drives into my MacBook and select them as my iTunes & iPhoto library?

Yes, you just plugin your external hard drives and start iTunes and iPhoto with the option key hold to select your library


Can't upgrade macports under Big Sur! I just upgraded to big Sur and the macports upgrade instructions don't work.
I keep getting this error:
Warning: The macOS 11.0 SDK does not appear to be installed. Ports may not build correctly.
Warning: You can install it as part of the Xcode Command Line Tools package by running `xcode-select --install'.

But I do have Xcode Command Line Tools installed:
% xcode-select --install
xcode-select: error: command line tools are already installed, use "Software Update" to install updates
%

What's up?

It turns out that the Big Sur's XCode command-line tools aren't good enough for MacPorts. You need to manually download Command Line Tools for Xcode 12.2 from https://developer.apple.com/download/more/?=command%20line%20tools


How seamlessly does the Magic Trackpad 2 pair with a Mac when plugged in? I've got an external monitor and keyboard, and I switch between two different MacBook Pros by plugging a USB and monitor cable into whichever one I need to use. I'm considering adding a Magic Trackpad 2 to the setup.

If I keep it plugged in, and switch it from one computer to another, will it instantly and automatically pair with whichever machine it's plugged into? Or will I have to open System Preferences every time or do something else to get the new computer to recognize the trackpad?

Again, what I'm imagining is keeping the Magic Trackpad plugged in to a USB hub at all times, and switching the hub from computer to computer.

You can consider use the Magic Trackpad 2 in wired mode. Do not pair it with your MacBook over Bluetooth.

You can switch the USB hub between MacBooks and the trackpad would get connected instantly in wired mode over USB.


Can't load contacts from iPhone to iCloud account I have an iPhone 5S and I cannot seem to get my contacts loaded from my iPhone to my iCloud account.

I have reset the iCloud and also deleted the account on my phone and reset etc. but nothing has happened.

On your iPhone be sure the following is set:

Go to Settings
Tap iCloud
Set the slider beside Contacts to green [on]


How to make "say" command speak AND output to the file at the same time When using the say command I can give it an option -o (file name) for it to record to a file. However, that suppresses the audio output.

Is there a way to make it do both in one command?

In one command with the built-in say command, no; in two built-in commands (say and afplay), yes:

$ say -o /tmp/output-file.aiff Hello
$ afplay /tmp/output-file.aiff

In my example, this introduces a very small delay:

$ time sh -c "say Hello"

real    0m0.778s
user    0m0.008s
sys 0m0.012s

$ time sh -c "say -o /tmp/output-file.aiff Hello && afplay /tmp/output-file.aiff"

real    0m1.048s
user    0m0.050s
sys 0m0.048s


iMessage - Why is someone prompted to pick one of my connected iMessage contact points? I have my phone/mail(s) connected in iMessage

The other user has all of this information in a single contact card for me

When they message me, they are prompted to pick one of the 3 methods - why is that?

This user's chats are showing up as multiple separate threads on my phone, really annoying!

How can I fix this?
I have rechecked that both my phone and the other user's contact info is correct

There are a few cases were this could be helpful, e.g. I change numbers frequently -say because of traveling- and because of that I prefer to connect my mail for iMessages.

But of course contacts can also regular-SMS me at my old number and so on.

To cover these cases (and probably make the logic behind them simpler) they have decided to create the (i)Message threads per phone or mail and not per contact.

As for you second question, there is not really something you can fix. Just ask the other person to contact you on a specific "endpoint" and delete the other threads. Use only that one to communicate.

I suggest you use your email for that purpose, unless you are using regular SMSs too.


Open shell script from Finder interactively I am running my manual backups with a shell script that asks me for a password. However, when I open the script from the Finder, it terminates immediately.

How can I get a script to run interactively when double clicking on it in Finder?

For a bash script to work from finder, it has to have the .command extension

For example, I created the following script to use sudo to ask for a password and then to output a welcome message, then "wait" to simulate execution time:

#!/bin/bash
sudo echo "Welcome to Ask Different"
sleep 10
exit 0

I saved it as test.command.  You also have to make it executable:  chmod +x test.command

Here's the result of clicking on the script:


Text messaging has stopped working on my iMac I have an iMac running High Sierra 10.13.6 and an iphone 6 running ios 12.2. For the past several years i've been texting a group of friends using either my iMac or my iphone!  Messages texted on one device would almost instaneously show up on the other. I encountered no real problems sending messages. Recently that changed. Now, for some reason, my iMac fails to deliver messages sent to my friends and the messages sent using my iphone no longer appear on my iMac.

When I send a message using my iMac i get the error message shown below.

If I send the message to the same person using my iphone the message is delivered without error.

Does anyone know why this is occuring? I've restarted the Messages app and rebooted my iMac. Still no luck.

After comments...

It's often good to just go through the old "switch it off then back on again" routine, no matter how trite it may seem ;)

In this case - sign out [from Prefs > iMessage] & then sign back in again.


How to auto switch DNS settings while connect to different WiFi? I have totally different DNS settings when I am at work and when I am at home. I was wondering can I change my MacBook Pro's DNS settings automatically when I connect to different WiFi.
I did a lot of searches, I made a custom Location called Home in the network settings. And I set my Home DNS settings under this profile. And a default profile called Automatic I let the computer automatically get DNS settings.
After that, I can change my DNS settings through:
networksetup -switchtolocation Home

It is very close to my demand. But I hope I can find a smarter way, If I figure out a method If I connect to a WiFi called "Home", and then execute the command automatically, It will be excellent.
20200819 Update
I find an automation tool called Hammerspoon, so I can assign a shortcut to switch different Locations using the command.
Although I did not find a direct way, but Hammerspoon is great and powerful. I tried to watch Wifi change using Hammerspoon, but it remains a little problem, so I open an issue here

Keyboard Maestro can do this very easily:

Set the SSID and Location that you want, and that should do what you want.


Retina Nvidia Control Panel Settings for Gaming I've had a retina MBP for about a year now. I want to start using it for gaming. I have read that I need to change the Nvidia Panel Settings. Does anyone know specifics on what I should change to optimize gaming performance? thanks

FYI this is for Battlefield 3

Here are my settings for BF3 - I also have a rMBP (15"). You can modify these settings under Manage 3D Settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel:

I leave everything else to default, except I also turn off Anisotropic Filtering.

For the above settings to take effect, the following setting must also be set under Adjust Image Settings with Preview:

Also, don't forget about BF3's settings. I use Realmware BF3 Settings Editor to edit settings out of the game.


how to share disk with samba to Mac on another network (High Sierra) I'd like to share a disk to a Mac on the WAN using the smb protocol.  To share the same disk over afp, I simply forwarded port 548 to be available to the WAN.  For smb, I've tried forwarding every port that seems to be related, but am unable to mount the disk.

Please answer if you are able to forward access to your disk to another network, and the steps you took to do it.  Maybe it's more than forwarding ports.

Thank you

You need the following ports:

UDP 137/138
TCP 137/139/445

If you are attempting to expose your SMB shares over the Internet, it's not going to work.  The UDP ports are not routable over the public internet.

You either need to have a private link between the two sites or a VPN.  Even with this, it's a very inefficient method.  You are far better off with a cloud based solution.


Is there a way to set the disk caching behavior on macOS? I have an 8GB RAM MacBook Pro that struggles under my workload and I regularly have yellow memory pressure. I do notice that during these times, the disk caching (i.e. 'Cached Files') is taking up ~1GB of RAM. Though I am well aware that files in RAM is much faster than if it has to pull it off the disk, the machine DOES have a pretty fast SSD and I'd be willing to have less disk cache in favor of more application RAM.
Is there a way to set the amount of memory (or behavior rules) around how the OS utilizes disk caching? I'm a bit surprised that when memory pressure gets bad, it still insists on using a good chunk of my RAM to cache instead of at least cutting that in half.

Yellow memory pressure is not in itself an indication of any sort of "problem" with your system.
If that is the only "negative" indication in Activity Monitor, then getting rid of cached files from memory won't help performance of your system. Rather the opposite.
Take a look at "Swap used" in Activity Monitor - if this is "0 bytes", then the system has the RAM it needs, and getting rid of cached files won't mean that the now freed memory can be used for something that would somehow speed up your system.
However, if your "Swap used" is a significant amount, it might be that getting rid of cached files could speed up your system. It doesn't mean that in every case though. What matters is whether the swapped out data is something the system actually needs now. If that is the case, you can check the amount of data swapped in/out per second (or minute or similar) to see if the system is actively swapping in/out data while you are experiencing problems with your workload.
If you do indeed convince yourself that changing the disk caching behavior is necessary, you can use the sysctl command in the Terminal to do so.
You can list all the possible settings using sysctl -a - especially the ones that have "vm" in the name are be interesting here. I would take a look at the following settings:
  kern.vm_page_free_min
  kern.vm_page_free_target
  kern.vm_page_free_reserved
  kern.vm_page_speculative_percentage
  vm.vm_page_background_mode
  vm.vm_page_background_target

You can see their current setting like this:
sysctl kern.vm_page_free_min

And set a new value with:
sysctl kern.vm_page_free_min=250000

Note that the above is just a fictive example - you would need to supply your own value.


Only account is a locked "Guest" after upgrading to OS Lion My friend updated his 13" MacBook Pro to OS X Lion today. After upgrading he has been met with a login screen showing a single account, "Guest". This "Guest" account is password-protected and none of the existing passwords he used on the computer seem to work.

My friend had previously installed rEFIt on his computer, which apparently hasn't been updated for Lion yet.

I found this thread on MacRumors where a few other people are reporting the same problem.

Does anyone know of a solution?

An easier way is to:

Get a terminal/console somehow (e.g. start up in recovery mode by holding down option).
Delete the file /Volumes/<your root volume>/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist.
Reboot.

That's it.


Rules for filtering spam that comes written in russian alphabet, Mail 4.5, OS 10.6.8 I receive almost 99.99% e-mail spam in Russian.
I'm not sure why, but it makes it really easy for me to tell spam apart from real mail.

I use Apple mail 4.5 on MacOS 10.6.8, and I'd like to make a rule that somehow catches mails written mainly in Russian and marks them as junk.

So far I made rules that catch individual russian letters, but is there a more generic and efficient way of filtering it?

Actually I don't read Russian and don't receive any real e-mail in Russian.

From MacHints:

Select Mail -> Preferences -> Rules
Select Junk -> Edit
Select (+) to add a new rule.
Click on the "From" drop-down and select "Edit Header List..."
Add "Content-Class" by typing "Content-Class" in the "Header:" text box and then hit "Add Header" and "OK."
Set the first pop-up on your new rule to Content-Class, the second to Contains, and the third to charset="windows-1251".
Select (+) to add a new rule.
Set the pop-ups to Subject, Contains, and charset="windows-1251".
Select (+) to add a new rule.
Set the pop-ups to From, Contains, and charset="windows-1251".
Click the "OK" button to end the rule definition.


How to auto-import AVCHD video? I need a way to just auto-copy AVCHD from my memory card to the Mac.

The Image Capture and AutoImporter apps both work great for still photos and for MP4 video. Image Capture completely ignores AVCHD, while AutoImporter seems to hang when I plug in the memory card with some AVCHD clips:

When manually browsing the memory card, there is on its root level a package called "PRIVATE":

And only 3 levels down can I find the actual MTS files that should be copied... :

How can I get these videos to be auto-copied when I plug in the memory card?

Try the free AVCHD to MOV Lite on the App Store to convert it to MOV format, and then import to Photos. This will remux the video (convert it without reprocessing/converting the audio or video) losslessly.

(Hat tip to How can I convert .MTS file (AVCHD) to .mp4 by ffmpeg without re-encoding H264 video stream?
).


-bash: export: `Drive/Courses/Programming/nand2tetris/tools': not a valid identifier Every time I log in to the terminal, I get this error.

-bash: export: `Drive/Courses/Programming/nand2tetris/tools': not a valid identifier
-bash: export: `Drive/Courses/Programming/nand2tetris/tools': not a valid identifier
-bash: export: `Drive/Courses/Programming/nand2tetris/tools/:~/Users/nikhilagrawal/Google Drive/Courses/Programming/nand2tetris/tools/': not a valid identifier
-bash: export: `Drive/Courses/Programming/nand2tetris/tools/': not a valid identifier

It sounds like either your $PATH has been changed.

Here is a link to reset your $PATH: https://superuser.com/questions/121870/how-do-i-reset-the-path-variable-on-mac-os-x


Switch tab in Firefox with swipe left/swipe right gestures I have a MacBook and I'm using Firefox. Using the editor on the about:config page, I wish to modify the options of browser.gesture.swipe.left (or right) such that it will switch to the tab to the left (right) instead of going to previous/forward pages.
What should I write in the string value for that?
Thanks

Previous tab: Browser:PrevTab
Next tab: Browser:NextTab

Reference of available commands:

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/browser/base/content/browser-sets.inc


Protecting privacy on Apple devices Given the US government's rollback on internet users' privacy with ISPs, what is the best way to protect your privacy when using Apple devices online? Not just within macOS and iOS, but also when using third party apps online?

I've read some articles that suggest installing software on browsers, but that's only for computers. How can I protect my online activity from prying eyes regardless of whether it's in a browser or other app, or whether it's on a Mac or iDevice?

Your question may be considered as too broad or primarily opinion-based, and because of that could be closed. Protecting privacy can mean so many things to different people, but since your question specifically talks about internet privacy and ISPs, I will attempt a factually based generic answer that will give you what you need.

The most obvious way to protect your internet privacy is to disguise your IP address (and therefore a whole heap of other information about you, including your browsing habits). And the best way to do this is to use a VPN service.

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is totally legal (although some people use them for illegal purposes).

You can use your search engine of choice to research VPNs and decide whether this is for you and, if so, which one best suits you in terms of location, price, your needs, etc).

For example, if you're a heavy torrent user, some VPNs won't be suitable. Likewise, if you're trying to bypass geolocation restrictions to access media content, some VPNs will work for that and others won't. Regardless of the VPN they will provide instructions on how to use them for each of your devices.

On the other hand, if all you're concerned about is masking your internet usage on Apple Macs, iPhones and iPads, you can just use software such as Tunnelbear.

Regardless of the option you pick, a VPN basically disguises your location by making your IP address appear as though you are in another location (usually another country). And because all traffic is routed via the VPN, it doesn't matter whether you're just browsing the web, playing a game, or using any other app that sends/receives data online. All that traffic is routed via the VPN.

Note: If you intend to use an Apple TV you will need to connect it to another device that is routing all traffic through the VPN, as an Apple TV won't connect directly to a VPN.


Downloaded Songs/Music Videos Stopped Playing After iOS 10.3.1 Update After upgrading to iOS 10.3.1, my iPad Air 2 is no longer playing music videos (TV icon), which I downloaded using Syncios. I can see that the music videos are there on my device, but they won’t play.

I have seen this problem mentioned with a few other third-party audio/video apps. The solution offered was to delete the local song, video or audiobook from your iPad, then re-download it. This is a bug caused by iOS 10.3.


Can I move applications downloaded from the App Store? I have way too many applications and sadly sometimes I forget if I have an application for a particular purpose.  So I thought I would like to organize /Applications into folders.  For example "Audio, Video, Development, Design, etc."

What will happen when an application updates from the app store?  Will it update the version that is in the folder or will it be downloaded to its original location in "/Applications"?

Yes, you can move the applications. Providing the destination remains in the Spotlight index, the Mac App Store will continue to update the app.


How can I automatically log out the guest account after a period of inactivity? As part of a kiosk system, I have set up a Guest account on a Mac OS X Snow Leopard computer. This account is cleared every time someone logs off the computer. However, plenty of people don't. Is there any way that I can automatically log out this guest account after a period of inactivity?

I tried using the security preferences pane, but that just causes the confirm logout dialog to show up.

I have hacked around the /System/Library/User Templates/ folder, so I can set the screensaver, desktop background, &c. If something like ScriptSaver can solve my problem, I will gladly use it.

Maybe you could consider using SleepWatcher instead of the Security.prefPane; it´s a unix utility you could use to force a logout (or anything else via AppleScript) after a certain period of inactivity.


Can't seem to redirect input in Terminal I'm having issues getting redirection to work in Terminal.  I'm in a C++ class where we have to create an application, then find that application in the Terminal and place a text file in the same folder. That text file then has to be used as the input to the Terminal application we created in C++.  So, after building my application and placing it and a .txt file in a folder, I open the Terminal, navigate to that directory, then use:

program < textfile

or more specifically in my case:

redirect < input.txt

but it doesn't work.  I keep getting: "-bash: redirect: command not found"

I'm using the method our teacher told us to use based on windows command line, but I'm betting its not the same format for Terminal on Mac. I've been googling the issue for about a week and still have not figured it out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT:

Added a photo:

EDIT2:

Far less can go wrong if you pipe the input:

cat words.5.txt | /path/to/redirect

In your case, ./program might be needed depending on where you are compiling things or omitting the path entirely. From your edit this should work too:

./redirect < words.5.txt

That bash error is due to the program not existing in $PATH

echo $PATH


Can't delete old Time Machine backups from Trash I was trying to delete some old Time Machine backups from my backup drive. I am running into a few issues.

I tried the method outlined in this article of simply moving them to the trash. After I moved old backup folders to the trash, I tried deleting them from the trash, but got the following error:

I clicked "Get Info" and tried to set permissions for everyone from "Read Only" to "Read and Write." However, when trying to delete the folders I get the same issue.

I tried writing rm -rf '/Volumes/MacBook Pro Backup/.Trashes/501/2020-07-03-051423' in the terminal, but I get permission denied issues for all files in the folder. I am afraid to use sudo in front of the command in case this is not the correct way to delete the backups.

I tried finding the "Put back" option when right clicking the backup folder to put the backups back into the original location, but the option was not there.

I tried dragging and dropping the folders from the trash to the original backup location, but I get the following error:

Is there any way I can restore the old backups or remove them completely, without having to format my TM drive?

I fixed this by using tmutil delete.
First, I changed directory into where all the trashed backups were being kept:
cd /Volumes/MacBook\ Pro\ Backup/.Trashes/501

Then, I checked all the files in the directory to make sure I knew what I was deleting. This showed me a list of folders named by date:
sudo ls

Afterwards, I was able to use tmutil delete to delete all the backups:
sudo tmutil delete *

From now on, whenever I want to delete old backups, I will use tmutil delete on the backup folder.


Why can't I update my iPad to iOS 6 or 7? This is my first iPad, I can't figure this out - when I go to settings>general>software update I get "iOS 5.1.1 Your software is up to date"

I have iOS 5.1.1, also I have ubuntu on my PC (I see some advice about using iTunes, but I don't have OS X or Windows on my PC)

Which version of the iPad do you have? Not every version is compatible with every version of iOS; in particular, the first-generation iPad cannot be upgraded to iOS 6+. If that's what you've got, 5.1.1 is the latest version your device supports.

See this table on EveryMac for details of which versions are compatible with which operating systems.


How to access Greek symbols on macOS from a basic keyboard without copy/paste? I write mathematical computer code.

I frequently need Greek letters such as ø

My current workflow is terrible: hold down OPT and run my finger across the three rows of the keyboard:

œ∑´®†¥¨^øπ“‘«
åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æ
Ω≈ç√∫~µ≤≥÷

... And see if I can find what I'm hunting for.

Failing that, typing 'alpha Unicode' into Google hope for some symbol I can copy and paste.

I discovered that in system settings -> keyboard -> keyboard, I can "show keyboard and character viewers in menubar".

The character viewer looks like it will come to the rescue, but ... no Greek symbols! ARGH!

What can I do?

In the top left-hand corner of the Character Viewer, there’s a gear icon. The first option is “Customise List…”.

This gives you a selectable list of all the character sets available in the sidebar. If you scroll down, you’ll find Greek as one of the options:

I don’t have a Mavericks machine to hand to check, but I’m fairly sure this feature existed before Yosemite.


autossh not forwarding, regular ssh tunnel does Starting autossh like so: autossh -M 5122 -N -R 5432:localhost:5432 <user>@<myhost>, I can't connect to localhost:5432. If I run ssh -f <user>@<myhost> -L 5432:localhost:5432 -N -v -v, I can.

The output from autossh:

debug1: Local connections to LOCALHOST:5122 forwarded to remote address 127.0.0.1:5122
debug1: Local forwarding listening on ::1 port 5122.
debug2: fd 6 setting O_NONBLOCK
debug1: channel 0: new [port listener]
debug1: Local forwarding listening on 127.0.0.1 port 5122.
debug2: fd 7 setting O_NONBLOCK
debug1: channel 1: new [port listener]
debug1: Remote connections from LOCALHOST:5122 forwarded to local address 127.0.0.1:5123
debug1: Remote connections from LOCALHOST:5432 forwarded to local address localhost:5432
debug1: Requesting no-more-sessions@openssh.com
debug1: Entering interactive session.
debug1: remote forward success for: listen 5122, connect 127.0.0.1:5123
debug1: remote forward success for: listen 5432, connect localhost:5432
debug1: All remote forwarding requests processed

And from ssh:

debug1: Local connections to LOCALHOST:5432 forwarded to remote address localhost:5432
debug1: Local forwarding listening on ::1 port 5432.
debug2: fd 6 setting O_NONBLOCK
debug1: channel 0: new [port listener]
debug1: Local forwarding listening on 127.0.0.1 port 5432.
debug2: fd 7 setting O_NONBLOCK
debug1: channel 1: new [port listener]
debug1: Requesting no-more-sessions@openssh.com
debug1: forking to background
debug1: Entering interactive session.

I've just recently started playing around with ssh tunneling and cannot figure out why autossh will only forward port 5122.

A bit late to answer, but maybe it still helps someone.

I had the same problem, turns out you need to use -L instead of -R:

autossh -M 5122 -L 5432:localhost:5432 <user>@<myhost>


Separate zsh histories after restart (iTerm2) I am running iTerm2 (v 3.2.9) and zsh (v 5.7.1). I normally have 3-4 iTerm tabs opened at the same time and each tab has its own history thanks to the following settings in my .zshrc file

SAVEHIST=10000 # Number of entries
HISTSIZE=10000
HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history

unsetopt inc_append_history
unsetopt share_history
setopt appendhistory

However, when I close and re-open iTerm2 all tabs share the same history (I suppose they are reading from the very same HISTFILE): for example, if I have two tabs (say A and B), where the last command from A is foo and the last command from B is bar, when I close and re-open iTerm2 both tabs see either bar or foo (depending on the latest command which has been run, regardless of A or B) as the last entered command (arrow up key).

My question is: it is possible to keep separate histories even after re-launching iTerm2?

I don't use iTerm, but I think this is a property of its Session Restoration feature: https://iterm2.com/documentation-restoration.html
Try turning it off and see if it makes any difference.
Besides, starting with macOS Big Sur, you don't even need this feature. macOS now comes with "Resume Support: Save/Restore Shell State", which is by default enabled for both Bash and Zsh, no matter what terminal you use, and which support per-session history. Read the file /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal for more info.


Unable to format internal drive as APFS on 2018 MacBook Pro I’ve recently ran a semi-routine clean install on my 2018 MacBook Pro. This involves the following steps (in the given order):

Creating a USB installer with the latest macOS Mojave 10.14.2.
Booting into the USB (Pressing Option key on boot).
Using the Disk Utility, erasing the Disk and formatting it as APFS with a GPT Partition scheme.
Using the Terminal, unmounting the disk diskutil unmountDisk disk0, where disk0 is the internal NVME drive.
Using the Terminal, running gpt destroy disk0 where disk0.
Using the Terminal, running diskutil zeroDisk disk0.
Once that process is complete, I use the Disk Utility application to reformat as APFS, and install macOS.

Nothing super crazy, maybe a little redundant in steps, maybe a little overkill, maybe a little unnecessary.

Recently, however, on the final step where I format it as a APFS drive, it fails in creating the APFS container and says Internal State Error. It appears to first format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) then create an APFS container, then add a APFS Volume. It fails when adding a Volume with An internal error occurred.

I have tried many things, including:

Securely erasing the drive diskutil secureErase 0 disk0.
Simply zeroing the disk again diskutil zeroDisk disk0 (I’m not sure what the actual difference between these two are).
Reformatting the drive as other things, such as ExFAT / FAT / MacOS Journaled, then trying to format as APFS.
Reformatting the drive through the command line instead: diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ NAME disk0 → diskutil apfs createContainer /dev/disk0s2 → diskutil apfs addVolume disk0s2 APFS NAME (It fails here with Error starting APFS Container creation: The given disk is not an APFS Container Reference (-69630), even though I just made a container there. Also, trying to add a volume to where it actually made the container (i don't know what it does this) diskutil apfs addVolume disk24 APFS NAME also fails with Error: -69624: Unable to add a new APFS Volume to an APFS Container
Reformatting the drive using this: diskutil eraseDisk APFS NAME disk0
Restarting and trying these again.
Using a different installer than the USB (The one from Command + R, Command + Shift + R, and whatever the other combo is), and trying these again.

All end up at the same thing - the final step fails. I would expect especially after a secure wipe that the drive would be removed from whatever state it was put in, or that if it was a bug with the 10.14.2 installer, that it still wouldn’t happen again in the High Sierra installer. In Disk Utility, I’m left with the following structure:

- APPLE SSD AP(...) // “Container disk24” takes up all space

   - Container disk24 // or some other number. “Used” is 207.2MB and “Free” is 1TB.

Please note even though I can format as JHFS+, it won’t let me install the OS to such a formatted volume. The installer tells me this computer forces me to only install on APFS formatted volumes.

Any direction is greatly appreciated. I have never had such a silly problem before. Also, note that I have no Time Machine backup.

Below are three examples of how to erase the drive and create a APFS volume named MyVolume. You only need to follow one of the examples.

The commands given below create a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, then reformat to APFS.

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ dummy GPT disk0
diskutil apfs create disk0s2 MyVolume

The commands given below create a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, then convert to APFS.

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ myVolume GPT disk0
diskutil apfs convert disk0s2

The commands given below create a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, then convert to an empty APFS container. Finally an APFS volume is added to the container..

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ dummy GPT disk0
diskutil apfs createContainer disk0s2
Container=$(diskutil info disk0s2 | grep Container)
diskutil apfs addVolume "${Container##* }" APFS myVolume


How to turn old iPad on after not being used for years So I had bought an iPad about 5 years ago (iPad 1), and I found it lying on a shelf, and I thought: why not use it? But it doesn't turn on. I let it charge for 16 hours and it still does not turn on. Also, when it is plugged in, the screen turns on (it's just black but you can see its on) for less than a second and then turns back off. Can someone help me turn it on and get it working?

Please try the hints & tipps of the web page I added the link at the end of my answer.

I recommend starting with the "hard reset" as this might help if the iPad just got "stuck":
"perform a hard restart by pressing and holding both the HOME button AND the POWER/SLEEP/WAKE button until the Apple logo appears."

If it is sure that the iPad got charged and you don't see a symbol about "low power", and if the hard reset didn't help it might be necessary to connect the iPad to a Mac or PC with iTunes installed. Please continue with the instructions of the linked page.

If this is not the right direction for you it might be an alternative to just find help either by Apple Tech guys in an Apple Store or in some stores where Apple iOS/iPads is well known stuff...

Here's the link:
http://appletoolbox.com/2014/12/ipad-will-not-turn-fix-dead-device/

Good luck! Fingers crossed.


Minimising App Windows Into their Respective Icons On The Dock To Create Less Clutter? The Dock is a fundamental part of using OS X, however I have some frustrations with it:

As we know the Apps themselves are located on the left of the divide** separated from the "stacks" and trash can.

Whenever I minimise an App window, it always minimises itself to the right section of the dock (where the trash can and "stacks" are located). However if I have several App windows open, the dock becomes very cluttered and full looking in appearance.

Is there a way to minimise an App window such it becomes minimised into its own App icon on the dock rather than taking up space over on the right hand side and creating a clutter. Moreover once this has been achieved, in order to maximise the window again, you just click once on the App icon - hey presto - maximised. If i'm making sense ?

** I don't know if there are official terms for the division of the dock into where the Apps are situated on the left, "stacks" and trash can on the right.

I think you are looking for this feature:

(System Preferences => Dock)

I just tried it on my own system and it when you minimize, it minimizes on the icon. You can click the icon to make the minimized window appear again.

You didn't mention what version of OS X you are on; I'm on Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.4).


No iBook app on iPhone X; cannot find app in App Store I deleted the iBook app from my iPhone X. To get the app back, I assumed I could fetch it from the App Store. But when I searched the store for the app, the only hits I see for apps are for Audible and Amazon.

How can I get the iBook app back and working?

Notes

I use the app for audiobooks.
There is an audiobook on my phone.
When I'm plugged into iTunes (on a PC), then through iTunes I can see the tracks and listen to the book.
The iOS is 11.2.1 and uptodate.

Open this link on your iOS device, then install the app.

 iBooks by Apple on the App Store

When searching for built in apps on the App Store, ‘make sure that you use the exact name of the app’ per the Apple KB article Remove built-in Apple apps from the Home screen on your iOS 10 device or Apple Watch. The exact name is ‘iBooks’ so search for this word on the App Store and you should find the app. The first item may be an ad, but the first result below any ad should be the right app.


How to disable certain Apps & access to PIM data on iOS Anybody can describe how to disable certain apps on iOS and disable access to PIM (calendar, contacts, reminders, email) data? I've looked at the Restrictions feature and find that it limits access to apps by rating instead of disabling particular apps.

The reason being is that I'm prepping up for a trade show and will be handing over my personal iPad to a colleague (we're a tiny business) for use as an interactive display in the show. I'm OK if he use it to browse the web or even play some games, but I don't want him to go around looking at my e-mail, calendar, and financial records (hence, disabling PIM and some apps that owns critical data).

This event will last a couple of days and thus erasing my iPad just for this is a bit too much – I've had missing apps the last time I had to erase and restore due to an OS upgrade. Not to mention that we need some specific apps and data to be loaded on the device for use in the event (that is, a blank iPad won't be sufficient).

Thanks in advance

Sorry, under stock iOS there is no way to restrict apps except thru the parental controls you already mentioned.

Outside of the stock iOS however, there are multiple solutions to do this, my favourite of which is iUsers that enables multiple user accounts including guest accounts on iOS devices.


Buying apps with different AppleID than one used to buy OS X Lion Case: I bought a new Macbook pro and I got lion as free upgrade.

By mistake my friend's apple id was stored in the Mac App Store and I didn't notice the error when I entered my redemption code.

I already redeemed that lion upgrade using my friend's id on my machine.

The purchase, download and upgrade all happened on my machine. I intend to keep on using that Lion for my machine only.

I download new apps and everything using my apple id not my friend's apple Id. Will it work?
Or for my new upgrades or downloading new apps, do I need my friend's ID and password.

Moral: Lion has been downloaded with different ID and Now I want to use my apple id to install new apps.

It will work, although it will not be legal.

It will work, because OS X doesn't care what AppleID it was bought with and you can easily buy new apps using any other AppleID. I.e. if you have more than one AppleID you can use any to buy apps and they don't have to match the one you bought Lion with. It will slightly complicate the apps update process, but it will work without any problems.

It will not be legal, because you will be using OS X Lion bought with someone else's AppleID - not yours. So you are not legally allowed to use it.

In your initial question you ask whether you can transfer Lion purchase from one ID to another. No. Apple's policy does not allow transferring purchases between IDs.


How to delete all "Audio" files from my MacBook Through the disk utility, I can see I have over 10 GB of "Audio" files.
When I search on Finder for music files (kind "Music") no more than 10 MB comes.

What exactly is considered to be "Audio" files?
How can I free up those 10GB?

From within Finder, select the search box at the top right corner of the window and type Audio; a list will popup, near the bottom of which will be Kinds and Audio. Select that type, and then for the scope, select This Mac. This will show all the files on your Mac (at least within your Spotlight search's view) that OS X considers to be audio files.

You should be very cautious when deleting files shown this way, as you'll find many are embedded in applications, or used by other applications, including the OS, in various ways; deleting them may render an application dysfunctional.


Script OSX Color Picker to choose a specific color and exit Looking for a way to AppleScript the native (?) OSX Color Picker displayed in Evernote so that I can set a specific color and exit.

Use case: Would like to create scripts to mark selected text red, green, and black. I will use Automator or tool like Fastscripts or Keyboard Maestro to trigger these scripts via hotkeys. My goal is to quickly re-color selected text without having to use the mouse.

This script selects one of my favorite colors from the Color picker group:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Evernote"

        click menu item "Show Colors" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Format" of menu bar 1

        click color well 1 of list 1 of list "favorite swatches" of scroll area 1 of splitter group 1 of window 1
        click button 1 of window 1
    end tell
end tell


Change iMessage account on iPad My partner gave me his iPad mini but I cannot use iMessage as it is linked to his account and I cannot change accounts. Is there any way of doing this?

Go to Settings → Messages → Send & Receive, tap the Apple ID and choose Sign Out, then sign in with the Apple ID you wish to use.


How do I add tomcat to brew services? I have installed tomcat from brew. It works fine but whenever I need to start or stop tomcat I need to go to the tomcat folder with catalina and start and stop it from there. I know I could simply do this with "brew services start tomcat" but I get:

Error: Formula `tomcat` has not implemented #plist or installed a locatable .plist file

brew services list gives:

Warning: No services available to control with `brew services`

My question is: How do I add tomcat to brew services?

The tomcat formula is now able to start and stop tomcat with:

brew services start tomcat

and

brew services stop tomcat

Thanks to Maxime Faye and this commit.

Run:

brew upgrade

to obtain this new feature.

== Old answer

Here is the modified formula coming from the closed pull request mentioned in the comments. You can brew edit tomcat, replace the whole content and then brew upgrade tomcat. I've tested it and it works well. Hopefully, it will be soon merged in the master branch.

class Tomcat < Formula
  desc "Implementation of Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages"
  homepage "https://tomcat.apache.org/"
  revision 1

  stable do
    url "https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?path=tomcat/tomcat-8/v8.5.16/bin/apache-tomcat-8.5.16.tar.gz"
    mirror "https://archive.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-8/v8.5.16/bin/apache-tomcat-8.5.16.tar.gz"
    sha256 "939fb7c9fae3298dd0ccb4724b9c943c524e8af287531c8f3bbec0707e5780f1"

    depends_on :java => "1.7+"

    resource "fulldocs" do
      url "https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?path=/tomcat/tomcat-8/v8.5.16/bin/apache-tomcat-8.5.16-fulldocs.tar.gz"
      mirror "https://archive.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-8/v8.5.16/bin/apache-tomcat-8.5.16-fulldocs.tar.gz"
      sha256 "89fb481635834af7abc9cfefd67b530f1f3154c3bc2a820ceeb80e2e9c0d91c0"
    end
  end

  devel do
    url "https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?path=/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.0.M22/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22.tar.gz"
    mirror "https://archive.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.0.M22/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22.tar.gz"
    version "9.0.0.M22"
    sha256 "c1b359d52edae793dde83cb65ef47dc202e8394d7328c823a9a53c02d09f2742"

    depends_on :java => "1.8+"

    resource "fulldocs" do
      url "https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?path=/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.0.M22/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22-fulldocs.tar.gz"
      mirror "https://archive.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.0.M22/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22-fulldocs.tar.gz"
      version "9.0.0.M22"
      sha256 "57223a9dd8d1b164a492432f04fbcf02a390777e2aaa252b5574d5ed607acc60"
    end
  end

  bottle :unneeded

  option "with-fulldocs", "Install full documentation locally"

  def install
    # Remove Windows scripts
    rm_rf Dir["bin/*.bat"]

    # Install files
    prefix.install %w[NOTICE LICENSE RELEASE-NOTES RUNNING.txt]
    libexec.install Dir["*"]
    bin.install_symlink "#{libexec}/bin/catalina.sh" => "catalina"

    (share/"fulldocs").install resource("fulldocs") if build.with? "fulldocs"
  end

  plist_options :manual => "catalina run"

  def plist; <<-EOS.undent
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
    <plist version="1.0">
      <dict>
        <key>Disabled</key>
        <false/>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>#{plist_name}</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
          <string>#{opt_bin}/catalina</string>
          <string>run</string>
        </array>
        <key>KeepAlive</key>
        <true/>
      </dict>
    </plist>
    EOS
  end

  test do
    ENV["CATALINA_BASE"] = testpath
    cp_r Dir["#{libexec}/*"], testpath
    rm Dir["#{libexec}/logs/*"]

    pid = fork do
      exec bin/"catalina", "start"
    end
    sleep 3
    begin
      system bin/"catalina", "stop"
    ensure
      Process.wait pid
    end
    File.exist? testpath/"logs/catalina.out"
  end
end


How should I debug AFP issues? I'm having some problems connecting to a Time Capsule's shared drive from a Macbook Air running OS X 10.7.2 Lion.  I can connect to the share without problem from a Macbook Pro running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.  I do not have any other fileservers to attempt connecting against for comparison.

Disabling both the Macbook Air's inbound firewall and its outbound application firewall, Little Snitch, yields no improvement (no other firewall, such as ipfw, is in use).  However, it is possible that some other (perhaps overly paranoid) security configuration is interfering with AFP.

The Time Capsule appears in Finder's sidebar, but reads "Connection Failed" when selected.  Clicking "Connect As..." immediately brings up the following message:

  There was a problem connecting to the server "Time-Capsule".

  Check the server name or IP address, and then try again.  If you continue to have problems, contact your system administrator.

Neither Little Snitch's network monitor nor tcpdump show any network activity during the above interactions.

The same message appears (again, without network activity) after specifying "afp://1.2.3.4/share" (where 1.2.3.4 is the correct IP address of the Time Capsule and "share" is the correct name of the AFP share) in Finder's "Connect to Server..." dialog.

In syslog, the following entries appear:

  Dec  5 22:41:17 MacbookAir Finder[123]: SharePointBrowser::handleOpenCallBack returned 22

From the command line:

$ mount_afp afp://username:password@1.2.3.4/share /Volumes/mount_point
mount_afp: AFPMountURL returned error 22, errno is 22

I suspect that this is the error which resulted in the syslog entries from Finder, but I am unable to debug further.

I would welcome your thoughts and suggestions on how I might proceed!

It turns out that, as I suspected, a paranoid security configuration was preventing AFP from working.

In particular, the machine had been "hardened" per Apple's security configuration guide in which chapter 9 describes how to disable AFP by unloading the com.apple.afpfs_afpLoad dæmon (I had thought it was only required to serve files, not also to connect to an AFP server as a client).  Reenabling the dæmon resolved the issue.

I am nevertheless curious what tools are recommended for tracing file sharing problems in the future.


MacBook Air 2015; Login and recovery mode failed I’ve been having problems with my MacBook Air (Early 2015). Since installing an update to 10.13.6 (From 10.13.3, I believe) the computer freezes once the progress bar fills up on the login screen. Rebooting has not resolved the issue. I have tried to enter safe mode and recovery mode (Command-R); the result is the same, and the computer will not transition to the recovery mode interface.
Option-command-R and Shift-option-command-R generate error messages -5101 and -2003 respectively, which don’t seem to be often  cited on these forums. Similarly, a PRAM/NVRAM reset has been unhelpful.
Single user mode (Command-S) works fine, but I haven’t found any set of commands which has fixed my problem. Verbose mode is inconclusive, and the text stops updating after a minute or two, except for ‘busy timeout ‘IGPU’’ messages. I have also considered that this may be a hardware issue, but have never experienced problems with this laptop before.
Has anyone experienced something like this before or does anyone have a possible solution?
Cheers
Edit:  Attached are two images of the final screen before timeout messages start happening. The command line doesn’t seem entirely consistent each time I start it up: some additional messages appeared here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t let me post a video.

Note: the image at the bottom is of the latest state of the screen.
Regarding Target Disk mode, I don’t have a second computer on hand right now, but I’d be able to set that up in the near future. I don’t have an external display.)

UPDATE 2:

![enter image description here]
(https://i.stack.imgur.com/04dfs.jpg)

These are logs after entering the command ‘exit’. I got IGPU messages after this; this time though, the syntax is ‘kextd stall, (240s): ‘IGPU’. Hopefully this is helpful, but from what I understand it could mean any number of things. Presumably the AppleKeyStore messages are also useful?

I now have access to another computer. Since this mode is mostly used to get files from a Mac, what specifically should I be looking out for?

As I mentioned initially, ‘Option-Command-R’ and ‘Shift-Option-Command-R’ don’t work either: I have since tried them again, and ‘Option-Command-R’ returns error message -5101 (after typing in correct internet password). ‘Shift-Option-Command-R’ boots into Internet Recovery (with the spinning globe), but then seems to go back to the login screen, which is always a dead end.

So I guess I should be looking for any fix to this which doesn’t  require the login screen to take effect. I haven’t been able to find a solution allowing me to reinstall macOS and bypass recovery mode - is that possible?
EDIT: When the Mac is on, I also sporadically get the voiceover message ‘To choose English as your main language, press the ‘return’ key...’ I think this has something to do with recovery mode.

Can you provide screenshots/videos of the console text during verbose boot?
Do you have a second computer and a USB or Thunderbolt cable that you can use for booting your MacBook into Target Disk Mode (hold T during boot) to run Disk Utility on the hard drive?
(Unlikely to help but might be worth a shot if convenient.) Do you have an external display that you can attach to the MacBook and try booting while in clamshell mode? (Attach the display with the computer off, press the power key, and close the lid.) Trying to wiggle a GPU-related variable here, given your IGPU timeout messages.

Ultimately you may need a reinstall of macOS but let’s try to debug incrementally. The fact that single user mode works is a very important clue.
UPDATE 1:
With the additional data,
I can’t tell immediately from your boot logs what the root cause is, but it’s clear that your IGPU driver is unhappy. Single user mode works because it doesn’t require switching to accelerated graphics (but, then, neither should Safe Mode).
It may be interesting to capture logs from the point after you enter single user mode and then type exit. Make sure you’re entering verbose mode first (i.e., hold CommandV upon reboot and then immediately switch to CommandS once you see console text). I suspect we’ll stall at IGPU timeouts again.
Beyond this point, you can try two paths.

We can wait until you get a second computer available for Target Disk Mode and try to debug this incrementally.
We can try Internet Recovery and try either a newer or older OS via OptionCommandR or ShiftOptionCommandR, respectively. (How to Install macOS via Recovery Mode)

I would personally give #2 a try right now.
UPDATE 2:
It’s unusual for Recovery mode to fail to transition to graphics mode while single user mode works fine. The new logs didn’t reveal a root cause to me either, other than reconfirming that we aren’t able to enable accelerated graphics in the GPU and thus enter graphics mode.

I’m always reluctant to suspect a hardware failure until we’ve ruled out software issues, which are far more common, but I would encourage you to run Apple Diagnostics if you haven’t already: Hold D during boot.
If diags passes, use Target Disk Mode to run Disk Utility on your SSD through your second computer.
If the scan completes successfully and finds no corruption, I would take this opportunity to make a full backup of your drive, as it’s looking increasingly likely that you’ll need to do an erase-install as a workaround in lieu of root-causing this yourself.


Wireless keyboard/mouse problem with iMac during start-up I have an iMac 21.5" (late November 2010, OS X 10.6.8 with latest updates). I bought a wireless keyboard and mouse at same time. When I started up with ⇧ shift or ⌥ alt/option key down, the computer starts up from the internal drive. No SafeBoot or Startup options.

When I attached a USB keyboard and mouse and started up with the ⌥ alt/option key down, I was able to choose between the internal drive and backups on external drive. The wireless mouse was inactive at this time. When I selected a drive with the USB mouse, it asked me for a password. From that point forward, everything worked normally. The wireless mouse works to move the cursor to the text box and the wireless keyboard works to enter the password.

I replaced batteries in keyboard and mouse, installed OS X 10.7 Lion, reset NVRAM using USB keyboard - Still same issue.

The green light on keyboard comes on momentarily during startup, so the iMac must be communicating with the keyboard. After that, the light goes off and can be turned back on for a few seconds by pressing switch on right side of keyboard. By doing this repeatedly during startup as soon as the light went off, I got the startup options once.

I checked System Preferences → Bluetooth → Advanced. The first 3 checkboxes are checked. The 1st checkbox is "Open Bluetooth Setup Assistant at startup if no keyboard is detected". I never understood this, I assume it indicates that the keyboard is detected. The iMac can be awakened from sleep with keyboard and mouse.

Any clues?

At first I thought that maybe you had a firmware password enabled, but some of the stuff you mentioned doesn't line up (being able to reset the PRAM, and choose a startup disk at least some of the time).

Have you checked to make sure that you've got all the updates? Specifically, the keyboard firmware updates?


iTunes account balance to cash Can I Change my iTunes account credit to cash or used it for something so I can get money  ? So can someone help me on this because I load $400 on my iTunes account and in need it back now
Thanks

Take a look at this page on Apple's site.

Relevant portion is repeated here:

  You can't redeem or return iTunes or Apple Music Gift Cards or unused
  store credit balances for cash, except as required by law. If your
  jurisdiction allows for refund of redeemed gift balances, you can
  request a refund by contacting iTunes Store Support, selecting a
  support category and topic, and including the following information in
  your request detail:

  Your Apple ID.
  The store credit refund amount.
  Your current shipping address.


Recovery HD Is not showing up. Is it because of FileVault? I have a problem. On my mac, when i start and hold the ALT key, or the Command-R Key, then it doesn't boot into Recovery HD or even show it. I need it to repair, mount etc. my disk. I tried disk utility and repair disk, though that did say Recovery HD is fine. Is this because it is hidden, or because there is FileVault blocking it? And can i make FileVault enable it, or should I just disable FileVault?

Could ReFIND be a posibility to set it up for Recovery as well? Would ReFIND Still work on a double/triple boot?

diskutil says:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         239.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *238.9 GB   disk1
                             Logical Volume on disk0s2
                             0A1D5F20-BFE4-416E-A18F-DEC12BF0A35A
                             Unlocked Encrypted

and gpt says:

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  467182912      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  467592552    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  468862088          7
  468862095         32         Sec GPT table
  468862127          1         Sec GPT header

Short answer: yes, it's because of FileVault (well, actually Core Storage, but that's required for FileVault). It's normal for the startup manager (Option key at startup) to only show one volume in this mode, but Command-R should still work to start in recovery mode. If Command-R is not working, I'm not sure what the problem there is.

Long answer: starting OS X is a multistage process: the CPU firmware (aka Boot ROM) gets control first, it loads a "booter" program off disk, and that loads and kicks of the actual OS. Normally, the booter is loaded from the volume you're going to start the OS from ("Macintosh HD" in your case), but in some situations that's not possible.

If you're using FileVault, the main volume is encrypted, so nothing can be loaded from it until it's unlocked; and it's the booter that handles unlocking it. (That "pre-boot" authentication screen when you initially enter a password to unlock and start up? That's actually presented by the booter.) Since the booter can't be loaded from the encrypted main volume, OS X puts a duplicate on the Recovery HD volume, and "blesses" that as the default booter. The Recovery HD actually has two booters on it: one that's configured to unlock & start from the main volume, and another that's configured to load the recovery system from the Recovery HD volume.

Here's where the confusion comes in: when you start with the Option key held down, the firmware presents the startup manager, showing all of the bootable volumes it can find. That "Macintosh HD" volume it shows is actually the Recovery HD volume, with some volume label trickery to make it look like the main volume. The firmware doesn't notice that there's a second booter on that volume, so it only shows the one icon. As a result, the startup manager can't be used to start recovery mode in this configuration.

Command-R, on the other hand, should still work. There's some more trickery involved, but that should select the alternate booter and start you up into recovery mode. You can verify the alternate boot setup by mounting the Recovery HD volume and then using bless --info to see its selected booter(s):

$ diskutil mount disk0s3
Volume Recovery HD on disk0s3 mounted
$ bless --info /Volumes/Recovery\ HD
finderinfo[0]:    449 => Blessed System Folder is /Volumes/Recovery HD/System/Library/CoreServices
finderinfo[1]:    792 => Blessed System File is /Volumes/Recovery HD/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
finderinfo[2]:      0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]:    410 => Alternate OS blessed file/folder is /Volumes/Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot
finderinfo[4]:      0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]:    410 => OS X blessed folder is /Volumes/Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot
64-bit VSDB volume id:  0x7AB8C69807215B9A
$ more /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/System/Library/CoreServices/.disk_label.contentDetails
Macintosh HD
$ diskutil unmount /Volumes/Recovery\ HD
Volume Recovery HD on disk0s3 unmounted

Make sure your "Alternate OS blessed file/folder" is com.apple.recovery.boot, not boot.efi. If it's not... well, there may be a way to fix it with bless, but I the man page doesn't seem to be very clear on the subject. Also, make sure you're getting blessing info on the Recovery HD volume, not your main volume; the main volume will not generally have an alternate booter configured.


How iPad screen gameplay is captured? In some video such as

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csjXiu9HLrA

I see that it looks like the iPad video is captured... but it is also said that the Component cable for iPad only works for movies and photos, but not for apps...  so how can it be done?

It's likely the video was captured using the iOS development emulator rather than the actual iPad itself.


When I launch my macOS there running so many interfaces When my Mac started, I check my interfaces:
$ ifconfig
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
    options=1203<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,TXSTATUS,SW_TIMESTAMP>
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
XHC20: flags=0<> mtu 0
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=400<CHANNEL_IO>
    ether a0:99:9b:17:50:07
    inet6 fe80::cd8:2bd4:f767:a6ed%en0 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0x5
    inet 192.168.2.228 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect
    status: active
en1: flags=8963<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=460<TSO4,TSO6,CHANNEL_IO>
    ether 82:13:08:b0:ec:c0
    media: autoselect <full-duplex>
    status: inactive
en2: flags=8963<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=460<TSO4,TSO6,CHANNEL_IO>
    ether 82:13:08:b0:ec:c1
    media: autoselect <full-duplex>
    status: inactive
bridge0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=63<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,TSO4,TSO6>
    ether 82:13:08:b0:ec:c0
    Configuration:
        id 0:0:0:0:0:0 priority 0 hellotime 0 fwddelay 0
        maxage 0 holdcnt 0 proto stp maxaddr 100 timeout 1200
        root id 0:0:0:0:0:0 priority 0 ifcost 0 port 0
        ipfilter disabled flags 0x2
    member: en1 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
            ifmaxaddr 0 port 6 priority 0 path cost 0
    member: en2 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
            ifmaxaddr 0 port 7 priority 0 path cost 0
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: <unknown type>
    status: inactive
p2p0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 2304
    options=400<CHANNEL_IO>
    ether 02:99:9b:17:50:07
    media: autoselect
    status: inactive
awdl0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1484
    options=400<CHANNEL_IO>
    ether ba:2f:ce:01:6e:14
    inet6 fe80::b82f:ceff:fe01:6e14%awdl0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xa
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect
    status: active
llw0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=400<CHANNEL_IO>
    ether ba:2f:ce:01:6e:14
    inet6 fe80::b82f:ceff:fe01:6e14%llw0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xb
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect
    status: active
utun0: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1380
    inet6 fe80::5e2a:55ee:b7dc:1b30%utun0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xc
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
utun1: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 2000
    inet6 fe80::62d2:7e57:5727:90c8%utun1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xd
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>

in the beginning, I only use lo0, en0, maybe en1 and en2. I some times install the VMware Fusion and docker and other things. I don't know why there get some many interfaces out, when I launched my Mac there will start so many interfaces, this is a waste of the computing resources, how to delete them or stop them?

You do not want to get rid of your active interfaces, obviously, because they are active, meaning you are using them.
Inactive interfaces use up so little resources that it is not worth deleting them, especially since they will just have to be created again when you need them. They use a tiny bit of memory and that is it; they have no impact on performance.
Docker and VMware both create a lot of interfaces so they can use a separate, private, local network for their virtual machines, but they can get created by other software, too.


Remove Catalina update files form High Sierra I downloaded the Catalina (or perhaps Big Sur) update on my High Sierra system, during the install, it told me a couple of apps won't run on the new OS (I have some 32 bit apps that won't be updated to 64 bit until the summer). I need those apps to work for now, so I quit the install. But now every day I get a reminder to update, or be reminded again tomorrow. No way to opt out is given.
How can I remove the update files to avoid the pesky daily reminder?

Try doing a search for "Catalina" or "Big Sur" in Finder or delete the Install macOS [Catalina/Big Sur] from your ~/Applications folder.
Though that won't remove the reminder. That annoying little bit of Apple self promotion is near impossible to remove these days.


/etc/hosts entries blocking annoying game site (slither.io) in Chrome & Firefox, but not Safari My lower school-aged son is now home schooling due to the SF Bay Area's COVID-19 school closures. He uses a 2018 MacBook Air with Catalina to complete assignments in web-based learning tools, and I have him set up as a non-admin user.

The biggest problem we face is that every time we look away for a few minutes (we have two kids and two jobs), we'll find he's navigated Safari to one of various addictive HTML5 games he just can't resist right now.

I've edited the /etc/hosts file to effectively block the most tempting sites, and have been successful with one exception: http://slither.io . I've used the following lines:

127.0.0.1 slither.io
127.0.0.1 www.slither.io

This successfully blocks the site in Chrome & Firefox but not Safari. I've tried:

Clearing Safari history
Emptying caches in Safari Develop menu
Clearing DNS caches with Catalina-specific command
Logging my son's Mac user out and back in
Computer reset
Full computer shutdown and restart
Full Catalina operating system fresh reinstall, with re-application of the /etc/hosts changes
Using parental controls in Screen Time > Content & Privacy > Limit Adult Websites (adding slither URLs to blacklist there)

None of this has prevented slither.io from working in Safari, and Safari cannot be uninstalled. My temporary fix is to disable Javascript and Cookies on Safari and hide Safari from the dock so that Chrome seems like his only option, but this kid is smart and I feel these countermeasures will be overcome within a day or so.

Can anyone repro this issue, or offer any guidance on next steps?

It's a simple solution. You don't need to mess with /etc/hosts file. Just use openDNS, sign-up, sign-in then goto the "Web Content Filtering" on the settings and tick the "Games" box.

Don't forget to change the DNS server on your computer to openDNS:

1) Unencrypted DNS: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220

2) Encrypted DNS: https://doh.opendns.com/dns-query

Check whether you have setup the DNS correctly through:

https://welcome.opendns.com

Good luck!


How to stop my text messages from appearing on iPad My son is under 13 and shares my Apple ID I would like to stop my texts from appearing on his iPad does anyone know how to do that?

Create an independent Apple ID for him; as a minor he will have to be added m to your family group with Family Sharing, which will allow him to access most of what you have paid for and ask for permission to buy apps / media.
Apple IDs were never meant to be shared.

Changing an Apple ID has some implications of course:

If you change it in the Game Center, progress associated to the old Apple ID will be lost on some games.
Apps bought or downloaded with the old Apple ID will keep asking for its password to update. If you download them again with the new ID most should work under Family Sharing (i.e., you don't have to pay again; it's a per app setting defined by the developer)


Launchd - Run as if you're logged in as a user using sudo Is there a way to do this?

Basically I'm trying to run a script that needs to launch a program.

Putting the script in /Library/LaunchDaemons works fine, but everything gets run as if its the root user. This doesn't work because it needs to run as if its a real user, but using the sudo command.

So I moved the script to ~/Library/LaunchDaemons but now it won't launch the program, presumably because its getting run as the user and not with sudo permissions.

So I'm stuck. Logging in as the user and going to a terminal and running:

sudo my_command_which_launches_a_program

Works absolutely fine, and exactly how its meant to work. So I want to basically emulate that, but in a Launchd script, if possible.

Thanks

You put the plist into /Library/LaunchDaemons but edit it to say which user the script will run as

The key you need to add is UserName. For example I run a newserver as user _news

<key>UserName</key>
<string>_news</string>

Documented in Apple's launchd man page


How do the MacBook and the MacBook Pro compare performance-wise to an old model iMac? I'm thinking of purchasing either a MacBook (2015, 1,1 GHz) or a MacBook Pro (2015, 13-inch Retina, 2,7 GHz).

I'd like to know how they would compare performance-wise (say, speed on recalculating a huge spreadsheet file) with my current iMac (27-inch, Late 2009, 3.06 GHz).

I'm assuming it is not just about those GHzs, or is it??

Despite what Weird Al would have you believe, it is no longer "All about the Pentiums" (jury is out regarding whether the 'Benjamins' are still a relevant unit of currency).

The answer depends very heavily on the exact specs of each system, but I would expect you to notice better performance out of the laptops for a few reasons:

The Core i series all support hyperthreading, which will make the dual core processors act like they have 4 cores. I forget which versions of the Core 2s have that available, but neither of my Core 2 duo laptops support it, so I'll be spiteful and assume yours doesn't either (feel free to prove me wrong).

The next question is how big your large spreadsheet is. The larger cache on the Core i will mean that spreadsheets approaching the 5-megabyte range will process appreciably quicker.

To build on the theme of low-latency data access, I believe that all Core 2 CPUs use DDR2 memory, while the MacBooks will use DDR3, so you'll feel faster start up times and have an easier time using multiple applications or spreadsheets.

The last piece to consider is the longer instruction pipeline means that the Core i series can do much more with each "tick" of the processor.

All in, you'll likely feel an increase in speed and peppy-ness over your iMac with a newer MacBook (though the MacBooks won't quite keep up with a new iMac). That all being said, I'm just some random guy on the internet who copy/pasted some Wikipedia links. Go to an Apple Store and try one for yourself to see if it's actually worth the money to upgrade!

Edit:

For July of 2015, the relevant processors' passmark scores are:

2009 27" iMac (T7300) with 1201
2015 13" MacBook Pro (5257U) with 4608
2015 12" MacBook (5Y31) with 2484

To answer the original question, from a purely CPU-based perspective there is an appreciable increase in performance, though it may be worth noting the value-based scores passmark gives, where the MacBook with the 5257U trounces the other two options.


Spotlight's Privacy tab not backed up by Time Machine? I just did a full restore from Time Machine and noticed that my Spotlight Privacy tab was empty. Am I correct in assuming that this information is not backed up by Time Machine? I believe it's stored in /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Exclusions.plist, and therefore it shouldn't be backed up because Time Machine doesn't back up a lot of the hidden files, especially in the root directory (/.fseventd being the example that comes to mind).

So is it true that it isn't backed up? And why isn't it stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist then?

Default Time Machine exclusions are in the file /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

In 10.7.5 this file has a section named:
PathsExcluded
Which contains:
/.Spotlight-V100

So it is very likely that /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Exclusions.plist will not be backed up by Time Machine.

I don't know where the "Spotlight Privacy tab" preferences are stored.


Unable to download purchased apps because cloud symbol missing on some apps in itunes I am usually backing all apps which I purchase. Recently I purchased a bunch of new apps, which I would like to download. So I opened the iTunes (12.6.20) switched to purchases and right now I see that cloud icon for downloading the app in some apps is missing. See picture.

Do you know what is causing this problem? I would like to download all my purchased apps. Sign off/on doesn`t solve the problem.

Thanks for the help.

Some facts:

My local apps library is completely empty, so nothing is downloaded yet.
I am currently using 12.6.3.6 iTunes
If somebody else will sign into same iTunes on the same computer as I do he is able to download    all apps
I am a family organizer for family sharing
I tried to sign on different computers to iTunes and the apps which I can download where all same.
The solution that I can download the app by searching this app on iTunes doesn`t help because I would like to download a purchased app  which is currently not available. (Yes It can be, My brother has the same app purchased which is not available yet but through purchases, list can be downloaded)

Hi I would try downloading the apps onto your device with whoever a sign in shows all of them in there library and then log out of there sign in and sign back into your name and see if that helps I had a similar issue in the past and this seemed to solve the problem


MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013) not recoginizing keyboard and trackpad My girlfriend has a 13-inch Mid 2013 MacBook Air, OS X 10.9.5. Yesterday, the keyboard and the trackpad stopped working. I connected a USB keyboard which works.

I believe it's a software problem because:

The Power key still works (all the time)
I can boot up in verbose mode (press Command + V while booting)
I can do an SMC reset (Shift + Control + Option + Power Up)
I can do a PRAM reset (Option + Command + P + R + Power Up)

All these things seem to work with the built-in keyboard, but as soon as the login window appears, the keyboard does not work anymore (except the power button).

Are there any more things I could try?
Thanks for your suggestions!

Edit:
I just checked the system.log (why didn't I do that earlier?) and the log is FILLED (like 100 messages per second) with these entries:

kernel[0]: Error: AppleHSSPIController::InterruptOccurred Failed to transfer interrupt data with Err (0xe00002eb)
kernel[0]: Error: AppleHSSPIController::doSPITransfer NAK received from device
kernel[0]: Error: AppleHSSPIController::doSPITransfer CRC from device was invalid: computed 0xC03B, received 0x9F7D

Since someone tried to contact me about this issue (he was having the same problem), I will answer my own question.

In the end I took the MacBook to an Apple Shop where they replaced a ribbon cable which solved the problem. Seems like it was a hardware problem after all.


Time Machine backup size seems to be too small It is my understanding that Time Machine does not compress as it backs up and that it backs up everything (at least in default mode).

Why then is the space-used stat given by Finder re my external hard drive to which I backed up my iMac's (OS X 10.9.5) internal drive much lower/less than the same stat in re my internal drive from which I backed up. The difference is 354.39 GB on internal vs. 85.83 GB on external.

My first backup took only about 40 minutes, which surprises me - thought would be like 4 hours, so I am wondering if it was complete and successful.  However, all the files on my internal do seem to be on the external, and I got not messages indicating that there was a problem. It has been backing up hourly since that initial backup without any problems apparently.

Shouldn't those stats be the same?

Time-machine does not back up your entire Harddrive. It excludes most of the OS files and backups to your internal harddrive.
It is possible, that you didn't notice, that your data got accidentially backed up to your internal drive. You can check it as follows.

To see how much space those local Time Machine backups are consuming, click the Apple icon on the menu bar, click About This Mac, and click the Storage heading. The “Backups” category here represents your local snapshots.

You can disable that through the terminal:
sudo tmutil disablelocal

Edit: It will then automatically purge the already created local backups


bootcamp install error: "windows could not parse or process the unattend file for pass [specialize] I get the following error when installing windows on a new partition using bootcamp assistant. I'm using a 16gb usb 2.0/3.0 drive with Win10_1709_English_x64 ISO downloaded from the Microsoft website.

Install appears to run smoothly from the Mac side. Then at a certain point, I receive the error seen here

Then, when I select OK, the system displays the second error message which leads to a restart loop that stops at this second message. I am unable to complete the install. The first time this happened, I wiped the bootcamp partition and started over. Same thing happened again.

I read somewhere that the unattend.xmlmay be the culprit, so I backed it up and deleted it thinking the installer would recreate the file. It didn't and the install still fails.

Here is the complete AutoUnattend.xml file found on the usb root.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
      <settings pass="windowsPE">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <UserData>
                <ProductKey>
                    <WillShowUI>Always</WillShowUI>
                </ProductKey>
            </UserData>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <DriverPaths>
                <PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="1" wcm:action="add">
                    <Path>$WinPEDriver$</Path>
                </PathAndCredentials>
            </DriverPaths>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="specialize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <RunSynchronous>
                <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <Order>1</Order>
                    <Path>cmd /c "FOR %i IN (X F E D C) DO (FOR /F "tokens=6" %t in ('vol %i:') do (IF /I %t NEQ "" (IF EXIST %i:\BootCamp\BootCamp.xml Reg ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment" /v AppsRoot /t REG_SZ /d %i /f )))"</Path>
                </RunSynchronousCommand>
            </RunSynchronous>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="oobeSystem">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <FirstLogonCommands>
              <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                  <Description>BootCamp setup</Description>
                  <CommandLine>%AppsRoot%:\BootCamp\setup.exe</CommandLine>
                  <Order>1</Order>
                  <RequiresUserInput>false</RequiresUserInput>
              </SynchronousCommand>
            </FirstLogonCommands>
        </component>
    </settings>
</unattend>

Hopefully, someone can help me make sense of this. Thanks everyone. LMK if you need any more info.

Just spoke with Apple Support. It appears that I'm using an upgrade-only ISO, not the full retail version. That is why it's failing. MS, in its infinite wisdom, always just assume everyone uses their OS. Big dummies.


Relocating /Users folder in MacOS 10.15 (Catalina)? In the past when we wanted to offload the /Users folder from the internal disk we simply created a symbolic link for /Users that pointed to /Volumes/External_Drive_Name/Users. The Mac in question is a server for two computer labs, hosting 60 Macs with a few terabytes of data spread out across 200~ user accounts. Hosting the Users folder on the internal drive is simply not a good option for us.

Symbolic links are no longer supported (for the root directory folders) in Catalina / 10.15, so this no longer works using the tried and true method. During the upgrade the symbolic link was simply removed and replaced with the standard Users folder.

I've read up on firm links by way of creating a synthetic.conf file via man synthetic.conf, but this method isn't working for the Users folder. I AM able to build a synthetic.conf file that creates a link for foo in the root directory that points to another volume, but attempting to redirect Users in the same manner breaks nearly all functionality.

I'm using the following syntax and placing synthetic.conf in /etc/synthetic.conf:

  Users  (tab character)  /Volumes/External_Drive_Name/Users

With that I'm able to fully boot (albeit slowly) and log in but Finder and Spotlight repeatedly crash, signaling to me that the system is unable to find/create a user folder for the current logged in user.

Has anyone found a way to do this yet?

Anyone know of any other tricks for redirecting MacOS to look for the Users folder on a different volume?

You have missed out on a hidden and not easily discoverable preference for moving your /Users/[USERNAME] folder to another location that has been built into macOS for (at least) a few years.

Open System Preferences
Go to Users & Groups
Click the padlock and authenticate
Right (or control) click on your username and select "Advanced Options.."
Click on the "Choose..." button and point it to where you want your home folder to be.

Once that is done all you need to do is copy your stuff from the old location to the new location and never deal with symlinks ever again.


How run a .py (python?)-script in Xcode? Hi I got the complete code, but I don't know how to run the script. The script is some plot of a function, can one run the script so that the plot is shown in xcode?

You don't need to use Xcode. Just open Terminal and run:
python /path/to/file.py

For making an Xcode project for a python script: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5276967/


Altimeter app that records I'm looking for a gps based altimeter app that records elevation to the phone. I will be out of cell range so it needs to store data on the phone.  Do you know of one?

Have a look at Gaia GPS app. It works offline and has a free version so you can do your test before buying.


How does iPhone's compass work? How exactly does iPhone's Compass app work? Is there some kind of chip sensitive to Earth's magnetic field or does it deduce the device's orientation from GPS and other location data? Or a combination of both?

If there are differences among different models of iPhone, of course I'd be interested in learning them. Is the iPhone 7 different in this regard?

The iPhone 5s Compass app reacts to a magnet.  This proves that it uses a magnetic sensor.


How do I get rid of the mirroring option icon when I don't have an apple TV (but continue seeing other mirroring options when available)? I just upgraded to Sierra from Mavericks and since I did, the mirroring options icon is always in the menu bar.  When I click on it, it says in grey: “AirPlay: Looking for AppleTV” then after a few seconds it will change to “AirPlay: Off”.  I went to display preferences and the part that says AirPlay Display only has Off in the dropdown (which it is set to).  I want that icon to go away, but I want it to appear if I plug in an HDMI cable or something so I don’t want to uncheck the box.
Will my Mac look for an AppleTV now and forever?

If you don't want to connect to AppleTVs at all, you can disable the service that is constantly looking for AppleTVs:

Disable macOS' System Integrity Protection (SIP):

Reboot your Mac and hold Command-R as soon as possible. Let go when you see the Apple logo. In the menu bar at the top go to Utilities > Terminal

Now we will disable macOS' SIP, disable AirPlay and re-enable SIP again so your Mac stays safe. Enter these commands

csrutil disable

sudo chmod 000 /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPlayUIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPlayUIAgent

csrutil disable

Click the Apple logo in the upper left and select "Restart"

Your Mac won't display the AirPlay Mirroring icon if an AppleTV is near you.

Let me know how this worked out for you.

edit:
To undo the changes use this command

sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPlayUIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPlayUIAgent


How to select a tab in iTerm2 via AppleScript I am quite a startet with iTerm2 and AppleScript, and can not find a way to let one of my 3 opened tabs get selected via an AppleScript. I have no problem to create a new tab and to select it, but I found nowhere a solution to activate/select an opened tab.
[iTerm2 Build 3.2.9]
Thanks a lot for the help.
Vincent

Yep, I could find online a way to do it. Perhaps there is a better solution, but this works perfectly for me.

tell current window
        set foundProfile to false
       repeat with aTab in tabs
            set profName to profile name of current session of aTab
            if profName is "XXXXX" then
                select aTab
                set foundProfile to true
                exit repeat
            end if
        end repeat
        if not foundProfile then
            create tab with profile "XXXXX"
        end if


Missing songs after 8.0 update and sync I did the iOS update a few months back and noticed that the songs I had downloaded in May and June 2014 were missing. Since the computer I used that had iTunes was stolen in July 2014, I had no way to access iTunes. Finally tonight I was able to plug in my phone to iTunes on the computer. The playlists showed up with the missing songs in them. I then selected sync hoping they would be moved to my iPhone 5, Instead my playlists are now empty. Is there a way to get my songs back?

Everything must first be on iTunes before it can be put on the iPhone. If the playlists and songs are not on iTunes on this new computer, it won't work, and syncing will only erase what you have on the iPhone, as it apparently has.

In this case, all you can do to recover is:

Restore from a backup previous to trying to sync music to this new computer, recovering the previous, imperfect iPhone state, or
Ideally, get the playlists and songs all loaded and working in iTunes first, then you can sync them to the iPhone.


Cannot pair my iPhone with Xcode I am running Xcode 10.3 and I have an iPhone 6s running iOS 12.4. I am unable to connect it to Xcode, which is running atop macOS Mojave running on a VMWare virtual machine.

I got "trust this device" in windows and i can see my device in iTunes in windows. But still cant see it in macos iTunes. Everything has latest versions and my firewall in macos mojave is not on.

In VMware you have to connect the iPhone as a USB device to the guest virtual machine.

This is usually done from the VMware menu item VM => Removable Devices, where you can select your iPhone. The actual naming of the menu depends on which version of VMware you're using (i.e. VMware Workstation on Windows, VMware Fusion on macOS, or whatever).


Is there a keyboard shortcut for the System Preferences lock? Is there a keyboard shortcut, or a way to create one, which does the equivalent of clicking the locked lock icon in the bottom left corner of locked System Preferences panes (which brings up the authentication dialogue)?

While there is no explicit keypress that will take you directly to the Lock icon that I know of, you can hit the Tab key repeatedly to select the tabs and checkboxes in a System Preferences window (I tested with the Security & Privacy window) and end up at the Lock icon, which is then selected.

Not selected:

Selected:

Hit the Space bar, and the lock opens to the credentials login.

You will need to have System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Full Keyboard Access > All controls radio button selected:

Thanks, Nimesh, for pointing out this radio button. I had it enabled, but did not realize it.


Is there a way to remove custom ringtones from an iPhone without using a Mac or PC? This question has good answers on how to remove ringtones that one may have installed using iTunes on a Mac or PC.

However, it appears to be possible for iPhone users who do not have a Mac or PC to create and install custom ringtones using the iOS Garageband app (see here and here).  Is it possible to remove those user-created custom ringtones from an iPhone (without having to find a Mac or PC with iTunes)?  If so, how?

Follow these steps:

Press Select.
Choose any of your recordings, it doesn’t matter.
Press the button of the box with an arrow pointing up in the bottom left corner.
Press the Ringtone button.
Press Your Ringtones.
Slide left the ringtone(s) you want to delete, and there should be a Delete button.


How exactly do I get Facebook to link my friends to iPhoto's Faces tags when sharing from iPhoto? I'm preparing to upload an iPhoto event to Facebook for the first time (I'm using iPhoto '11 and my Mac runs Mac OS X 10.7), except I can't quite get Facebook to turn iPhoto's Faces tags into links to my friends' profiles.

Basically, uploading causes the tags on Facebook to show up by themselves without linking to the right profiles. This also means photos of me show up as me... with myself! Like a stunt double, or a clone or something. Anyway, this renders them effectively useless in a sense, as I end up having to manually retag on my browser and remove the tags that came from iPhoto.

Every person's face in this event has been tagged, which is one thing, and I've also tried assigning their Facebook email addresses to their contact cards in iPhoto (which is mentioned in this Apple guided tour). I also found this Apple document that suggests signing into Facebook first, then naming faces using Facebook name suggestions. I tried it and then attempted to upload again, but with no luck either.

What exactly do I need to do to get this to work? Or (hopefully not) was anything changed in iPhoto or Facebook that means this integration will no longer work correctly?

I bit the bullet, and went with the following 4 Rs:

Removed all faces from iPhoto who were participating in the event
Removed my Facebook account
Reauthenticated my account
Restored (manually, one by one) the faces, making sure to use Facebook's name suggestions

And Facebook finally recognized and tagged my friends with links to their profiles correctly. Huzzah!