4K refresh rate is terrible I have a LG 27UD68P 4K on my MacBook Pro 15" Mid-2015. I can't get it to run on 60 Hz. Its only 30 Hz.

According to this Apple page its possible to get 60Hz. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587

I have tried connecting two cables (Mini DisplayPort -> HDMI) but it still won't work.

What am I doing wrong? Any advice to get this thing at 60Hz would be amazing.

I got it to work with my MacBook Pro 15 Mid-2015 using a single cable: Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort.

The refresh rate is 60Hz - it looks and feels amazing. No jagged and delayed movements anymore.


Not sure if these are Dead or Stuck pixels on my Retina Macbook Pro? My laptop was fine just yesterday !! But today, I found this on my screen :

The unfocused image shows that the pixels are glowing in different colors. Shouldnt this indicate that there is some power going there and that it is not completely dead ?
I am not sure if this is a stuck or dead pixel. I tried JScreenFix and it didnt really work ... I tried pressuring/massaging the area with a cloth but that didnt do anything either.
Here is a video with different background colors :
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/695335/pixel.mov
You might want to pause at some frames to get whats going on.
What is this exactly ??
Is it a dead pixel ? Can I fix it ? I am in the middle of studies so I can't really send it back to Apple !! Plus I got modules installed for Python and it is a hassle to install them all again.

Update
Its a dead pixel, got it repaired at the Genius Bar :
Can I trust Apple Store's employees with my laptop?

Some general advice - finish your school work and get a good backup as your computer can wait for a week to get service. If you can, call Apple and get the incident on the record now - just in case your warranty expires in the next day or two it's a lot easier to get someone to bend the end date if you did your part in letting them know you want help and have a reasonable situation to not bring it in.

That being said - if you really need this and your Warranty is ending and you don't want to depend on the kindness of someone extending that deadline - get it in for service if that is the most important thing.

As to the problem itself - it's pretty clear that you have a large white spot the size of about 16 complete pixel elements. Since LCD panels have back lit white light and several layers to prevent that light from escaping, it looks like those layers have broken down or not been formed in the first place. Both manufacturing imperfections and failure can cause sub pixel bright spots and even rows of failures if the control wires fail - but for a round spot like this to fail, the cause is almost always a physical damage that cracks the several layers of polarizer and lets light through the LCD assembly despite the transistor signals calling for the pixels to be dark like the surrounding area.

I would expect warranty to cover that sort of thing on either very new equipment or when there is absolutely no sign of external force and the company was being very lenient in not presuming that this was physical damage. I just can't see most people not noticing that size of a defect in a LCD panel at the time of manufacture or when you first started up the mac and had a dark background showing.

I would arrange for service at your earliest convenience - and if it gets repaired under warranty, great. If not, you'll know what a paid repair will cost and you can decide what to do with your time and money. I would ask them to quite you the in-warranty and out of warranty costs if you need to send the Mac in and can't let a trained technician look at it first hand.

In the mean time, you can see more about how sub-pixels are arranged on iOS devices and perhaps that will help you relate to the picture you took of the larger pixel areas on your screen.

And certainly don't try to fix it unless you want to put in a new LCD as a DIY or repair by someone that does that sort of thing. There's a lot of nonsense about massaging pixels and this would get worse if you push on the display - not better.


Record Notability Notes with AirPods Pro to iPad Pro (and/or Mac)? I live in a studio apartment with my boyfriend who often works really late. He gets home at 3am and needs to get quality rest. The problem is I need to attend all of my online classes in-person at 8 am in the morning. I really want to be able to record the lectures on Notability (so that I can play them back later in a way the is connected the the timing of the note modifying) while using Notability on my iPad Pro.
I’m viewing the lecture on my MacBook, but if it makes the solution easier I can also enter the lecture (Zoom) on my iPad Pro.

Have you asked your lecturer to record the lectures so you might review them later?

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362473-Local-recording

If they won’t, perhaps they would let you record it on your MacBook. This might be easier than using iOS screen recording.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207935

We record town halls on the presenter side and it works great for playback later. No one needs to handle it on the attendance side.
Last option, macOS can record the screen and your voice easily from AirPods or any other speaker / microphone combination.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208721

You would need help if you wanted to loop the meeting audio into the recording.

https://www.rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/

There is an academic discount for Sound Source if you decide it helps you after testing the free trial to keep the sound low while you study and learn.


AppleScript: How to create a file that contains a forward slash in its filename? I have a Service that creates a new .txt or .rtf file. The Service saves this file to disk. The filename of this file is supplied by the user via an entry dialog. But, I have found that if the filename contains a forward slash (/), then the file will not be created.

Let's suppose that I would like to create a file entitled: This is my / file.txt.

I can create this file manually in Finder.app without error, which indicates that the OS allows forward slashes in filenames (unlike the colon, for example).

Here is some code (i.e., a snippet from my Service) to reproduce the error:

set theCustomFilename to text returned of (display dialog "Enter filename:
" default answer "This is my /file")

set thePath to "/Users/Me/Desktop/"
set theFileExtension to ".txt"
set theCustomFilePathname to thePath & theCustomFilename & theFileExtension

try
    set fileHandle to open for access theCustomFilePathname with write permission
    write "This is the document text." to fileHandle
    close access fileHandle
on error eStr number eNum
    display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with title "File I/O Error..." with icon caution
    try
        close access fileHandle
    end try
end try

If you run the above code, you will be given the error:

  File /Users/Me/Desktop/This is my / file.txt wasn’t found. number -43

You should never use the forward slash (/) in your filenames.

As an experiment, I opened TextEdit and saved a file with a forward slash in the name

Listing out the directory comments we get:

$ ls
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   3 areed  staff   102B May  9 02:02 .
drwx------+ 29 areed  staff   986B May  9 02:05 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 areed  staff   325B May  9 02:00 Test:this.rtf

It changes the forward slash out to a colon.

An interesting thing happens when you use bash's autocomplete function; hit tab more than once and instead of "stopping" when it has found the full match, it keeps going:

$ cat Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf

In the above example, I typed cat Tes and then pressed Tab 5 times.  Instead of beeping and stopping, it kept repeating as if stuck in a loop; this is not correct behavior.

Doing a search on this behavior, I stumbled across this article from C|Net:  Do not use "forward slash" in Mac OS X filenames, Distiller 6.0 example.  The article is quoted as saying:

  The forward slash should also never be used in the name of a drive or
  partition, or virtually in any other name field in Mac OS X. The
  reason behind this limitation stems from Mac OS X's UNIX underpinnings

  In prior versions of Mac OS the location of a file was noted using a
  path, with the colon ( :) separating objects. Mac OS X uses the
  forward slash ( /) in place of the colon.

It seems that this behavior/limitation is still present in macOS.  Bottom line, don't use the forward slash in your filename.


How can I open application's windows on dock separately like Windows 7? I'm new to OS X.

If I open multiple Excel workbooks, how can I see each workbook opened separately on the dock?

Any help?

Pretty sure this isn't possible as I don't see a way in settings, here are some workarounds:

Minimized windows will show up in dock if "minimize windows into application icon" isn't checked in dock preferences (right click on dock to pull them up).
If all windows are not minimized you can swipe up with three fingers to show all windows. You can also cycle through windows by pressing command + `
Right click the excel icon in dock to display all open workbooks.


Why is SSH key different for user@ipaddress vs user@devicename.local (same device) if i ssh into a device (linux) on my local network using user@ipaddress vs user@devicename.local it seems as though my computer (OSX) is treated as two different devices.

I have noticed some inconsistencies with how the firewall on the device (linux) treats my machine and i am just trying to understand the logic

I think you have it backwards - it is not your computer that is treated as two different devices, rather it is the Linux device that is treated as two different devices.

The first time you connect to 111.222.333.444, the SSH (host) key of the Linux device is saved on your computer (usually in the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file). This makes it possible for SSH to check that the key is the same the next time you connect - otherwise you'll get a warning that something is up.

Similarly, the first time you connect to devicename.local, the key is again saved. SSH doesn't know that 111.222.333.444 and devicename.local is actually the same computer, so the key will be saved twice under different names on your computer.

Therefore in the future if you update one key and not the other, you'll experience different behaviour regarding host key warnings when you connect via the IP address or the host name.

Regarding the inconsistencies with your firewall - it is not entirely clear, how you think that is related to your question about the SSH keys being different. In general, a firewall on the server has no way of knowing whether you have opened the connection by typing in the IP address or host name of the server. That information is simply not transferred over the network.

If you observe a difference, it is because the host name does not translate to the same IP address as the one, you're entering manually. This can happen if the server has multiple alias IP addresses, and you're using two of those - or if the server has both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address, and you're typing one and using a host name that is set to the other.


Launching a new instance of something instead opening existing one? Is it possible to have app launcher(Alfred or Spotlight)  to launch a new instance of an app(Finder, Terminal) instead of taking me to existing instance?

I know this question: How to make clicking on icon in dock == open new instance addressed an issue for the Dock, but is there a way to achieve the same with app launchers?

Windows of applications aren't normally called instances on OS X. You can open new instances with open -n, but there's no way to do that from the UI. Applications with multiple instances also have multiple Dock icons.

If you actually meant that, you could add an action for it in Alfred:

There's no standard way to open a new window with open or AppleScript though. You'd have to use different terminology for each application.

on alfred_script(q)
    tell application (q as text)
        activate
        if number of windows is 0 then
            reopen
        else
            if name is "TextEdit" then
                tell application "TextEdit" to make new document
            else if name is "Finder" then
                tell application "Finder" to make new Finder window
            else if name is "Safari" then
                tell application "Safari" to make new document at beginning with properties {URL:"about:blank"}
            end if
        end if
    end tell
end alfred_script


iPhone 6 counts 300 times more steps My iPhone with iOS 10.3 is counting more than 300 times more steps than usual. Sensor broken? Or what can I do?

Problem is solved after updating to iOS 11.


NTFS External drive issue in Mac 10.9 Earlier i was able to access the NTFS formatted External hard drive in my Mac 10.9 as read only device.

While trying to make the external NTFS drive writable i screwed up by unmouting it

this link

  diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s1

Later when i tried mounting it again it failed

  diskutil mount
  Volume on disk1s1 failed to mount

Following the unmount you should also eject the disc before unplugging it.

diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s2
diskutil eject /dev/disk1s2

Alternatively you could use the usual methods: eject via finder, via dragging the drive icon into the waste bin, or with third-party apps like Alfred or Launchbar.


Weather without location services, using just one fixed location I would like to see the current temperature on the first page (under Siri app suggestion) on iPad mini 2. But I don't like location services being on.

Is it possible just to set up one fixed location (the city I'm living in)?

It seems I cannot find such an option. But, still, I have a hope it is somewhere.

  Update: I do not have any weather app, but there is a weather widget on first page of the home screen. On the screenshot the weather widget is displayed, I templorary turned on Location Services to take a screenshot. Weather details display only when Always Allow Location Services for weather app is enabled.

First of all, open weather.app and tap the bulleted list in the bottom-right.

Then click the plus button and search for your location. This will then appear at the bottom of your list. Hold your finger on it and then slide it to the top of the page (underneath your current location).

Then go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Weather and click Never.

Then when you return to the weather.app the location should appear at the top and be the default.


iMessage delivery status different on iPhone and iPad? I sent today an iMessage through my iPhone, and on the iPhone there is still no "delivered" status, but when I checked on my iPad which is on the same AppleID there is status "delivered" indicated beneath the same iMessage... What is actually the right status??? How is this different status in the same iMessage possible???? Thnx Alen

I find that if you send an iMessage from iPhone/MacbookPro/iPad, it won't be status 'delivered ' on the sent device until the receiver got the message,but the status on the other devices with the same AppleID will show the status 'delivered' as soon as you sent the iMessage.


Using iPhone as iPod touch I am trying to use an old iPhone 3GS as an iPod touch.  I left in the old sim card and connected it to iTunes but it will not activate.

This should work, but might not be ideal - get a pay-as-you-go (i.e., non-contract) SIM with a small amount of credit on it (I suppose not everyone has them lying around) and activate it with that (it needs to be on the same network that the phone is locked to) and then disable all the 'phone' functions. It should then function just fine.


iPad Pro gaze detection to prevent display sleep Can/do the newly announced iPad Pros use the FaceID apparatus for gaze detection to prevent display sleep? This would be great to set the display sleep time to be after a certain period of non attention. Sometimes when I’m reading something I take my attention off the screen, then carry on reading, then suffer a spurt of non-attention, then the display turns off before I realise.

I’m wondering if FaceID is used to detect attention and prevent display sleep (and a cool bonus would be auto-dimming the screen when attention is not on the screen).

Unfortunately, Apple hasn't added this feature yet. They patented this in 2015, but for some reason haven't done any more. There is a chance if enough people request the feature(you can do so here), Apple might decide to include this feature.


Unable to update through App Store (OS X) I've been unable to update any of my Apple applications through the App Store. Other applications update just fine. I noticed this when I tried to update Xcode yesterday. Upon clicking the update button, it greys out without ever beginning the update process. This has left me unable to update my version of Xcode, OS X or iTunes.

I know that I can just download the DMG files from the developer library, but that seems like an unnecessary step.

Has anyone experienced anything like this in the past?

Give that this is an older question, I’m hoping that @wadda_wadda has solved his Mac OS X App Store update problem.

For those who might encounter this problem in the future, or need a way of forcing an app update here’s a method that will hopefully help.

If you want to see what updates your system already has on it for a specific app, or any app for that matter, check out this How to view Software Update history? Q&A here on Ask Different.

Because the Software Update app can occasionally get stuck in a strange update cycle. Here’s an alternative method to check for, and install Apple App Store app updates via the command line.

Make sure that the App Store app has been quit BEFORE you start this process.
Open Terminal.
Because some updates require Admin privileges to install. It is recommended by Apple that you start off by switching to Super User privileges. To do this type sudo -s in the terminal, then enter your system password. This will ONLY work if you are an Administer on the system.

Now that you are super, at the command prompt in terminal type the following command:softwareupdate --list

This should return a list of updates available for your system. Although it might come back with No new software available.This usually means that your system is up to date. BUT, if you know there are new updates available for software on your system. Then either the update isn’t currently available from the server that you’ve reach on Apple’s side (which can happen when a new update has just come out and the serves are super busy), OR it could be that your systems update .plist file isn’t happy (read the How to view Software Update history? to see where this is).
Because the command line check didn’t come back with anything doesn’t mean it hasn’t “magically” (yes I know it isn’t magic) fixed the .plist file. That’s why I recommend launching the standard App Store app again at this point (you did quit it back in step 1 right?), and hitting the update tab to check for updates. There's been more than one time that I’ve had this work, and was able to just run the newly found updates directly from within the App Store app without having to do anything more. If that is the case for you, then you can quit the Terminal app at this point, and you are done.

If however you still aren’t getting the app updates you know are available, or if command line DID find updates (back in step 5) but the App Store app still isn’t seeing them. You need to quit the App Store app again, and switch back to Terminal.
If the command line software update DID find updates, and you just want to install ALL of the updates, then type softwareupdate -iva at the command line, and let the magic happen.

IF you only want to install the "recommended updates” you can type softwareupdate -ivr at the command line instead.
OR you can also install just a specific update (or force and update) by typing softwareupdate -i NAME.OF.APP.#VERSION where NAME.OF.APP.#VERSION is the listed app name and version number found back in step 5. For example the image below would install the Pro Apps QuickTime Codecs update 1.0:

STILL NO JOY! - At this point you can force an install of an app update you know exist, BUT you need to know the package naming to run the command line install (like the example above). Finding the proper package name is much harder than it might sound, and seems to change with each release of the Mac OS unfortunately.  There is an open source package manager for Mac system admins that can be used to find the list of apps, but it’s not for novice or even intermediate users. So use at your own risk. https://github.com/munki/munki

Alternatively you can download several Apple updates directly from the Apple Support site or the developers site, but these are only for Apple products (which in the case of the original question would work). https://support.apple.com/downloads/

A final note.
If you are using a developer version of an app and/or install a beta version of an app from the Apple Developer site. The Apple App Store Update will most likely NOT work, and WON’T see any app updates on your system. In this case you need to completely uninstall the developer or beta version of the app in question, and download the released version of the app from the App Store. This has bitten many a developer and beta tester before with the Mac OS. So just be aware that if you choose to download a beta or developer version of an app, or even the Mac OS. You might have to take extra steps to get your system back to a point where normal App Store Updates work properly.


Dangers of getting replacing iPhone 6S screen replaced at third party store I'm considering having my 6S screen replaced at a non-apple shop. By shop, I mean one of a number of street shacks in Southeast Asia.

The price is less than half the cost of Apple doing it and I'm pretty sure it'll go fine. But I thought I'd check in with you first. What can I check for to see that nothing else has been replaced in the phone? For example, the battery or camera? What else? Is there a way to quickly verify that those things haven't been replaced?

If you are implying that the service guy stole or will steal your iPhone parts, they won't. Because the products they do replace it with is actually the real deal, so your parts is not more genuine than the parts you can buy from eBay or Alibaba. The iPhone is made in China, and these China factories sell these items themselves online. I bought a few products from China and compared with the broken items and they were identical.

Apple will obviously overcharge you for the same product and service, because it's Apple :P The guy on the street can't charge as much otherwise he won't get any customers, he needs to stay in the market. If he has a shop in a shopping mall, he can obviously charge more. But the products are the same, they just make more profit.

To answer your question, the only way to see if somethings been replaced is to see if the quality is the same. Check if the camera is just as good, battery lasts long, etc. Or open the phone and take before and after photos?

If you don't trust anyone, just buy the display from eBay or Alibaba (or iFixit) and fix it yourself with this guide on how to replace the display. It's really simple actually.. :)


How to install a arbitrary version of iOS on iPhone? I have to develop an app for a specific version of iOS (I am just a freelancer, doing what I am told).

How I install iOS 8.2, or below (8.1, 7.x are fine too) on an iPhone 4S?

There's no official way of installing an older iOS on a device that Apple has stopped signing the SHSH keys for.

Your best bet is either to get a hold of a device that still has an older iOS or just using a simulator when developing the app.


Outlook 2016 for Mac won't return "current messages" from main window In Outlook 2011 for Mac, I was able to use an AppleScript to move currently-selected messages from the main Outlook window. The script started like this:

tell application "/Applications/Microsoft Outlook.app"
    activate
    set myMessages to current messages
    ...

This worked regardless of whether there was a Reminder pop-up window currently on the screen or not.

Starting with the Outlook for Mac Preview, and continuing with the final 2016 version, this script now only works when the Reminder pop-up window is not on screen. If the Reminder window is on screen, the script treats whatever items currently appear in the pop-up window as the current messages, even if I first instruct Outlook to make the main mail window active. (I suspect this may have something to do with the fact that the Reminder window is always "on top" regardless of what you have selected.) As a result, the script fails when the Reminder pop-up is open (i.e., it indicates that no mail messages are currently selected).

Are there any suggestions for how I can force Outlook to return the set of messages selected in the main mail window rather than the Reminder pop-up?

Thanks.

EDIT

Building off of the answer below, to minimize the inconvenience of closing the Reminders window, you can add the following code before the call to "current messages":

--Workaround to fix Outlook 2016 Reminders window bug, part 1
set windowClosed to false
if "Reminder" is in (name of the front window) then
    set windowClosed to true
    close front window
end if

And then add this at the end of the script, to re-open the Reminders window if it was closed by the script:

--Workaround to fix Outlook 2016 Reminders window bug, part 2
if windowClosed is true then
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "9" using command down
end if

I'm an applescript novice, but I was able to add the following code to close the reminders window if it was up when the script ran:

-- close the reminders window if it is open
set winName to name of the front window
if "Reminders" is in winName then
    close front window
end if


Iphone 4 ios 6 has shared calendar with iphone 5 ios7.. Having issues syncing Iphone 4 ios 6 has shared calendar with iphone 5 ios7.. Having issues syncing.

I have logged on to Icloud and the calendar events are on both accounts. however it is not syncing with either phones... (this is only for the old events only) All new events are showing on both phones.

How do we get the previous events to reflect on calendars on our phones...?

Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts and Calender > Sync

Set it to always and the old events will be synced as well on both the devices.


Restoring a MacBook from backup I have a MacBook Pro that is just being ridiculous, so I'm planning on erasing the hard drive and restoring from a Time Machine backup. I hear that Time Machine will only restore from backups that have been made from the computer.

If I erase the hard drive in Disk Utilities will it think the Time Machine back up is a different computer?

Is it possible to perform a clean install and retrieve all my personal files back from the Time Machine? Rather than just reinstall around my personal files?

Or even better is it possible to do a clean install and then pull files manually from the Time Machine backup as and when I need them?

All of the above are possible.  Thought it is possible to restore from a Time Machine Backup on a Brand new Mac or Newly Installed Drive.

  If I erase the hard drive in Disk Utilities will it think the Time
  Machine back up is a different computer?

This won't matter at all because when you do a clean install and then boot, it will ask you if you want to restore from a Time Machine Backup, another computer, etc.  SO that is completely possible.

If you just want files, not preferences or user account information or applications, and you can access the drive on the Time Machine and find the backup folder it uses to do the Time Machine Backup, you can just copy over those files. You can very simply traverse through the folders, BUT DON'T MOVE OR DELETE ANYTHING IN THOSE FOLDERS OR ELSE!

Sorry to use all caps its just important that you don't. I have done this many times. Back up with Time Machine.  New OS comes out.  Erase and Install.  Reset up like a new machine.  Copy over my iTunes and iPhoto and Documents.  JUST DON'T DELETE OR MOVE ANYTHING ON THE TIME MACHINE DRIVE.

If you go the other route and do a restore from a Time Machine Backup, it will just make your computer exactly how it was since it last backed up.  I personally like clean installs but some people don't like setting up a computer from scratch every time and reinstalling things.

Which ever route you prefer.  I hope my answer helped.


iPhone 4s screen not working My iPhone 4s abruptly stopped working, and the display is now completely useless. The display shows small stripes when turned on. Can somebody help/explain why this happens?

Possible hardware issue with the device.  Try a force restart by holding the power and home buttons together for ~10 seconds until you see the Apple symbol appear on the screen.  If you don't see the Apple symbol or it reverts to the blank screen with vertical lines on it, then the next step would be to complete a recovery mode restore.

Recovery mode restore involves connecting the device to a computer with the latest version of iTunes on it and completing the same restart with the device connected via USB and iTunes open.  The steps can be found here:  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201263

If the issue continues after restoring the device to factory settings then you would want to look into hardware service for the device.


"Identical" DMGs: one installs, one does not We've got a DMG from a vendor that we put on our web server for download. After download, the file on my Mac (OSX 10.10.1) is identical to the original file (did a hex compare), and the DMG mounts fine... but the installer inside the DMG will not work after download.

To put it a different way, I have two seemingly identical DMG's, both of which mount, but only one of which will actually run the installer in the image, once mounted.

The permissions were slightly different between the two DMG's after download. Changed them so they are now identical.

We've tried this on three Macs with at least two versions of OSX, and the results are the same.

What else could be wrong? Is there anything in the OS security settings that could have saved some information about the file having come from the internet and blocking the installer somehow? If so, where?

There is information in extended attributes.

What is the setting in Preferences/Security & Privacy/General "Allow apps⋯"?

This needs to be set to an appropriate value to allow non-App Store apps to be opened.


Maximum number of apps icons & pages in folders & total pages on iPhone from iOS 7 thru till 9.0.2? Maximum number of apps icons & pages in folders & total pages on iPhone from iOS 7 thru till 9.0.2?

Maximum number of:

Total Pages on Springboard outside folders
Total App icons allowed in iOS folders

Pages of icons inside each folder
App icons per page of iOS folders

For each iOS version from 7 till now on 9.0.2

Please share.

PS: Only other such post I found is this for an iPad which does not cover the specific quantities & detailed numbers I am asking, nor is it asking for iPhone, nor the change/ shift of these numbers thru iOS versions.

An easy way to check this is to install Xcode for free from the App Store and look at each simulator for each device you care to catalog.

I suppose someone could make a reference table or Wikipedia article to document this over time, but I’m not convinced this would be useful for things other than a trivia question.


Any general method for iPad to output in 1080p when connected to TV by HDMI? Is there any way for an iPad Air to output to the resolution of a 1080p TV (via HDMI converter) that is not app-specific?
I'm currently using an iPad Air with an adaptor that looks like this:

From the comments,
I am using a 16:9 screen, while the iPad is more of a 4:3 display.
As a result, there are black bars to the left and right when output to the television.

From the comments and based on actual results,
the iPad Air model I have has an output resolution strictly limited to the resolution of the screen.
As this screen has a lower resolution than my TV (where the screen is < 1080p), this translates to black bars appearing to the left and the right of the display on the TV.
In addition, the output frame rate is noticeably worse with such an output adaptor shown in the original post, showing a 30 FPS video at around 20 FPS.
There is no known software fix to this as it is a limitation imposed by the hardware itself.
Alternatively, I can zoom in the TV to make use of the full screen, at the cost of even worse resolution with the lower output video frame rate even more noticeable.


How to easily type a template without copy paste? Several times a day I type the same URL (in text form) into website forms. I would like a simple script (or Automator action) that types the URL where I have a cursor placed.

You may find it easier to use text substitutions instead of using AppleScript or Automator.

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text and, in the Replace and With columns, assigned the text you want to type and what it will be replaced with.

For example, type url1 to have it replaced with https://www.google.com as shown in the image below.

When you do type the Replace text, a small pop-up will show with the With text, press the Spacebar key to have the substitution take place, or the Esc key to cancel the action.


What are the implications of how versions are stored? I haven't found good data about how the versions feature is implemented.  As I see it there are three ways it could be implemented:

The separate versions are all in one file (possibly as resource forks)
The version information is part of the filesystem
The version information is kept in a set of files and a library is need to put them together into one file

I want to know because I am worried about what will happen when you send a copy of a file to a third party.  Will the third party be able to see the history of the file (bad in some cases, desirable in others)?  What if the third party is using an earlier version of OS X, or a different OS completely?

You should read the big Siracusa's Lion review in Ars Technica.

The gist of it is, no, every time another program tries to access the file (e.g. you're trying to send it in Mail, upload it in safari) what the other program will get is the current version you're looking at. Nothing else.

See more at this particular section.


Mouse Keys randomly enabled. How can I prevent this? I'm running macOS 10.12 on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015).

Randomly, mouse keys was enabled when my hands were not touching the keyboard. I don't have a bluetooth keyboard (although I do have a bluetooth mouse which I was not using at the time). This is the second time it has happened.

This is either a software or hardware bug, but it seems oddly specific to be a hardware bug when I don't see other random keypresses.

How can I diagnose this? I can't find any mention of 'mouse' in system.log.
Is this a known bug? I can't seem to find any other mentions.
Can I prevent this from happening again?

Default trigger switch for Mouse Keys is to hit  Opt ⌥   5 times.

You will usually hear the little 'zipper' noise it makes as it switches.

Occasionally, you can trigger it accidentally with seemingly unrelated presses of  Opt ⌥ . To reverse it, just tap it 5 times again.

To disable it entirely, System Prefs > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Options... & uncheck


How to disable ad-blocker in Safari I am using Safari running in macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 for browsing the Web. I am trying to sign up to a website that requires reCAPTCHA identification. Safari has ad-blocker enabled and therefore blocks it.

How do I disable this? The web-page says:

(Captcha will load here (please disable Ad Blocker)

where the CAPTCHA is supposed to be.

There is no ad blocker built into Safari. You most likely have a 3rd party ad-blocker extension installed.

To disable it temporarily, open Safari → Preferences, go to Extensions tab and remove the check in front of the ad-blocker extension. (You may have a different ad-blocker extension installed than shown.)


Install Windows on MacBook Pro, without OS X I installed Linux Mint on my 2006 MBP 15" this weekend before hearing that the system will not enter a compatible firmware mode for Linux/Windows without rEFIt or rEFInd installed first.

Well, I do not have another Mac available, and I do not have an OS X install disk to recover from (not 10.5 anyway).

I can boot Linux by holding down CMD at boot, and launching the install from the Boot Manager, but this is much less than ideal, and while I imagine I can install Windows 7 much the same way I installed Mint, if I am still stuck with booting with CMD, my wide is not going to be happy (it is for her, and she is less than a Power User by any stretch).

Any helpful advice out there?

You're in luck! That machine will run Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, available from the Apple Store for $19.99. The Apple Store now has guaranteed next day delivery. Installing is very simple -- just insert the disk and hold down the c key on boot and follow the easy on screen instructions. Installation should only take 20-30 minutes. If you need help installing, you can take it to any of the Apple Retail Stores and they will install the System for you. But there is still plenty of online support from Apple and the web to get you back up and running quickly.

If you want to run a Linux or Windows desktop, since the hardware supports virtualization, then I still recommend leaving Mac OS X intact on the hardware, and, unless you need it for gaming, run the other systems in a virtual machine. This way the systems you work in will fully support the hardware, and there will be no performace degradation. With virtualization software like Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac you can run virtual machines in full screen, and never even know that OS X is running. Also available for free is Virutal Box; here is a download link for a version that will work in Snow Leopard.

Once OS X is installed, you can also install Windows or Linux directly on the hardware using BootCamp, and have a dual+ booting machine.

In general, its a good idea to leave Mac OS X on the mac hardware, as removing it will reduce your options.


Why do I have duplicate iPad USB network devices? As you can see in the screenshot below, I have two network devices listed under Internet Sharing. Oddly enough, I do not however have two under the Network preference pane. Anyway, I was wondering a) why this might be, b) whether it is symptomatic of an underlying issue, c) if it can be resolved (easily).

This problem disappeared for me upon upgrading to macOS Mojave.


Dual displays detected as singular display via usb c dock issue (MBP 2017, Dell) Hardware

1 MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
2 Dell
U2517D
documentation
1 Hubee usb-c dock documentation

Expectation

Successfully connect and extend both of my Dell "U2517D" monitors using my "Hubee" usb-c dock to my MacBook Pro to render 3 separate windows(Mbp screen included).

Issue

The usb-c dock has a DP cable(connected to one of the dell monitors) and a HDMI cable(connected to one of the dell monitors) plugged into it picture, this allows both monitors to operate however they only seem to render a singular mirrored display output picture. In display preferences this is what I see picture. I have attempted to daisy chain both monitors together then doing a single DP connection to the dock but it didn't work. I have also tried pressing the detect monitors button in the display preferences but it has not worked.

What you ask is simply not possible with that hardware.

Due to the way the signal must be demultiplexed, you will need a Thunderbolt 3 dock instead of a USB-C dock to be able to drive the two external displays with separate content.

Alternatively you can connect one of the monitors directly to the MacBook Pro using a standard USB-C to DisplayPort cable.


How does one start a bash command that doesn't close on Terminal quit? I want to run a command, and not have it quit when Terminal closes.

For instance, if I run top & ; disown, top quits when I quit Terminal. I want to keep top alive.

I know this is possible since the command open can do this. (For example, open -e opens up TextEdit, and when you quit out of Terminal, TextEdit stays open.)

Thanks in advance.

Use screen:

To start a session and a process within run screen command (e.g. screen top). Detach from the session with ctrlActrlD.

Now you can close the Terminal session window or quit Terminal at all and the process started previously is still running.

After (re-)starting Terminal you can get a list of all detached sessions with screen -list.  Use the pid to reattach to a session: screen -R [pid]. To stop the reattached session's process use the common commands (e.g. ctrlC for top) and exit to stop the session.

If you want to start a process in a new immediately detached session use:
screen -d -m command (e.g. screen -d -m top). This will create a new screen session while you get a new prompt in your currently open shell session.

Please check man screen for a lengthy description, key bindings and customizations.


How to change the Mail “Archive” folder for email accounts in El Capitan I have set the Apple Mail "Archive" folder to something custom in the past with the help of this question.  However, the  folder that I was previously using is "stuck" as the Archive folder, and my efforts to set them to a new year (I use Archive/{year}) make no difference.

In El Capitan (10.11) it seems that they've changed how settings are stored so my changes to the ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist appear to be being ignored.  I've had a good dig around the new(?) ~/Library/Mail/V3/ and resulting ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/ folders, to no avail.

Unfortunately I'm poking around blindly, so I hoped that somebody here might help.

Under OS X El Capitan (tested with Mail 9.2), you can set it directly within the Mail application:

Select your new archive folder.
From the menu, choose Mailbox > Use This Mailbox As > Archive Mailbox

In German, it is Postfach > Dieses Postfach verwenden als > Postfach "Archiv".

Edit: Apparently at Apple they realized, that the menu location in El Capitan wasn't ideal and so they changed it again.

Under macOS Sierra (tested with Mail 10.1), you can still set it directly within the Mail application:

From the menu, choose Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Select your account on the left > Mailbox Behavior

In German, it is Mail > Einstellungen > Accounts > Links den betreffenden Account auswählen > Postfach-Verhalten.


How can one save a file as plain text in TextEdit? I'm not seeing an option to choose plain text encoding (.TXT extension) when saving a file in TextEdit.app in macOS. My documents seem to all be rtf - rich text format.

How can I change this?

With TextEdit in focus, select Format → Make Plain Text option in the Menu bar or use the keyboard shortcut Shift + Command + T to change the file encoding to plain text.

This will also set the extension of unsaved file to .TXT from the default .RTF.

Now, save the file normally by invoking File → Save... in the Menu bar, or using the keyboard shortcut Command + S to save the file as plain text .TXT file.


PDF annotation tools for the iPad Possible Duplicate:
  iPad PDF Reader with annotation support?

I'm considering purchasing a PDF annotation app for the iPad; mostly something that allows me to highlight, add handwritten and typed notes, comments, etc.

I have three closely-related questions:

Does anybody know of a recent review of PDF annotation tools for the iPad / iPad 2?
Alternatively, does anybody have/know of a list of pros-and-cons of the different PDF annotation tools for the iPad?
Does Adobe have any official application for the iPad? If not, is there are a reason why they don't?

Thanks!

I have just been using iAnnotate PDF it's very good for marking PDF's on the go. It's £6.99 in the UK app store. Not sure about the USA price.


Deleting .AppleSetupDone in /var/db/ will delete my iCloud account? I need to know that if I deleted the .AppleSetupDone file from my MacBook, is it going to delete my iCloud account too or is it only going to delete administration account?

The .AppleSetupDone file will not delete either the admin account or the iCloud account. See this article: "How to Re-Run the OS X Setup Assistant" This will just allow another admin account to be setup.


Force iPad to sync with only one Mac I have two Macs sitting on my desk: a MacBook Pro (work computer) and an iMac (personal). I sync my iPad 2 with the iMac where all of my media and other stuff lives. Since the advent of iOS 5 and OTA syncing, however, the iPad has taken to syncing with both Macs, choosing (seemingly) randomly between the two when powered on and plugged in within WiFi range. The trouble is, when it syncs with the MBP, it generates dozens of "error while syncing" dialogs (which take awhile to individually dismiss) on the iPad because (I'm assuming) none of my content, apps, etc. are on that machine.

Is there a way I can stop the MacBook Pro from syncing with the iPad?

Thanks!

In iTunes on your MacBook Pro go to Preferences, then Devices, and then select the checkbox that says "Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically"; that should solve your problem.


Degeneration of Macbook Pro trackpad performacne / janky cursor movement I have Macbook Pro 2009 model. I have been travelling with it in tropics and slowly trackpad performance has gotten worse and worse, to the point it is almost unusable.

The symptoms

Mouse pointer movement gets "janky" and it jumps around, not responding to movemements smoothly
The trackpad works ok after reboot, even if it was totally unusuable few seconds ago before the reboot, so the software must play its part in this issue

I suspect some kind of calibration issue related to humidy. Maybe trackpad recalibrates itself on every boot, but somehow gets slowly off sync from the calibration during usage?

Any ideas how to further debug the issues? Hardware failure?

It's a long shot, but have your tried to turn off your "accidental trackpad input"?


Macbook pro display is messed up, what could be the problem? I have had this happen to my to both my laptops within a week, first my Windows HP Laptop developed this problem which is far more worse btw and now my macbook pro 13 (2011 model). For my Windows laptop I figured it could be over heating that messed up the video card (there is also a noise coming from it also). I do not have enough proof thoug that it over heated. Usually if it lays on bed for longer period, it definitely overheats but we are careful about it. About my mac, it was totally cold. I use it last night (downloaded a torrent) and I shut it down completely. I know it was not overheated because it was in my lap. This morning I turned it on and I see this problem. Notice the edges around the window and colors are messed up to in places.

Anyone can think of what could be problem. I am outside US so can't really take it to Apple store. Thanks

I believe this might be a solution to your problem. Try resetting NVRAM / PRAM it may help solve the problem. Check this page for the steps and good luck: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379


30GB out of 32GB being used for wired memory? I have 32GB of memory and am downloading stuff over FTP using FileZilla. My memory usage is 31GB with 30GB of that being allocated for wired memory. Is this normal when downloading stuff over FTP?

UPDATE: after a bit more usage it looks like FileZilla was just a red herring. Kernel task is the one causing the ballooning Wired Mem usage. To be precise, here are the top three offenders and the wired memory usage.

  1732608 com.nvidia.web.NVDAGP100HalWeb
  6787072 com.nvidia.web.NVDAResmanWeb
  8089600 com.apple.driver.AirPort.BrcmNIC

this was obtained by running

kextstat | awk 'NR==1{ printf "%10s %s\n", $5, $6; } NR!=1{ printf "%10d %s\n", $5, $6; }' | sort -n

which i found here: Why does leaked memory appear malloced to kernel_task, and why can't OS X therefore garbage collect it

here are latest screenshots from activity monitor.

why would the wifi driver be using up 8GB of wired memory? why would nvidia webdriver use up 7GB of wired memory?

Most everything looks normal since the system reports it is able to fulfill all active memory requests (which is what green signifies), but we're not seeing the whole picture to understand the wired summary since your screen image doesn’t show all processes or wired allocations.

The job of virtual memory is to keep everything loaded in RAM and only have just enough to satisfy a burst of requests. It will free up space only when needed, so large wired alone is no worry.
You have no growth of swap space to speak of - so there's no runaway memory leak.
The pressure graph is green so the system knows it can toss all sorts of cached memory and objects if a program needs more RAM and no requests are being slowed or denied.
Wired isn't typically that high in my workloads, but more data is needed to know if that's causing any issues.

However, there are specific tools and a process to pin down exactly what process(es) have allocated wired memory as well as to watch real time the virtual memory statistics using vm_stat to validate my hunch / opinion (I don’t have enough data to be certain) that things are fine here.

In addition to my answer linked above - these threads are relevant for how wired memory used to work Lion and expecially 10.6 and older OS X. On the latest macOS, I’m not convinced excess wired is a problem anymore, but I’d love to help investigate if anyone can reproduce this case here with 90% or more of total memory being reported as Wired.

What is wired memory?
Why might more memory be wired in safe mode than in normal mode?
Why does free + active + inactive + speculative + wired not equal total RAM?


Does Bootcamp work for all users on a mac? I am in the process of installing Bootcamp to my Mac. A question has just crossed my mind

Can you only use windows from the account you set it up on, or does it work for all users on the mac?

For example, if I set up Bootcamp using Bootcamp Assitant on User X's account, can User Y use Bootcamp on the Mac without having to log in to user X's account?

Thanks.

The ability to boot into windows is not limited by what user installed it. That said everyone will need either their own Windows logon or have the windows password to the windows user you create.

The Windows users are totally unrelated to MacOS users.


iPhone 4s leaking weird substance, has 2 small shadow bumps on the side of screen, and is getting hot very quickly It is only a little more than a year old! On the bottom right of the screen, there are 2 small bumps of shadows, it has been heating up VERY quickly, and is leaking a very weird, clear, oil-like substance. I have shutting it off but it didn't work! Also in the middle right of the screen there is a patch of very white splotches!

Internal pressure is almost certainly a safety issue and battery failure mode. Same for anything leaking out. Even if the substance entered the phone and not something decomposing from the materials made into the phone, you don't want electrical shorts or anything leaving the case of an iPhone.

Think potential fire hazard if the battery is swelling or leaking and get the hardware to someone that is qualified to diagnose a failing battery and physical damage. Call Apple if you can't take it to someone for service. 1-800-APL-CARE

Do not charge it or connect to any USB - I would power it off immediately from the description you have listed.

You can also get safety information from: http://www.apple.com/us/search/iphone-safety?find=iphone+safety and select Support to narrow the results to specific hardware safety and manual download instructions.

Once you have some guidance, you might power it on one more time to perform a backup if you don't have a recent one. Again, don't leave it unattended until you're sure it's stable and working correctly. If you can't get it cooled, consider calling for help - local fire department if needed.


Live dashboard for presentations I run my school's theatre, and I'm looking for some kind of software that we can put on the projector screen before our school assembly. I want to have some elements update themselves automatically (for example; local weather forecast, time/date, news ticker), and some elements that I can edit myself (to insert school announcements, sports games results, etc).

Powerpoint/Keynote would be perfect because of their customizability, except neither of them allow you to insert live data (weather, news, etc) (Powerpoint Windows does, but not for mac).

Does anyone know of some (mac compatible) software or a website that has this functionality?

I use Dashing for this. It's a web framework, so you can view the dashboards on any web browser.


Delete file from folder via Dock? Is it possible to delete a file from a folder via the Dock? I know I can drag the file to the Trashcan but I'm curious if there is some key combination perhaps that I can use to click on a file via the Dock Grid and delete it quickly and without closing that Folder in the Dock.

I'm assuming you're taking about either the grid or fan-out folder on the doc (e.g. documents)? I don't believe you can use the keyboard to select files on the fan-out display (haven't tried it) and thus you'd be limited to the mouse drag method you mention.

For the grid display, you can select files with the arrow keys. However, I would imagine that if it was supported, it would be Command-Backspace (the delete key at the top right of the main keyboard region, not the individual one under the 'insert' key). At least, that would be consistent with the keyboard shortcut for the Finder.


Multiple apps from a developer account We have a developer account and a published app on the ios app store. We are now launching another ios app.

Since both the apps are entirely different in functionalities, should we use the same developer account or is it beneficial to create another developer account?

Thanks

If you keep the accounts separate, it's easier to transfer control of the app to another developer in the future.


Concurrent iOS Deployments I would have thought this would be an easy Google search, but I haven't found anything.

I have inherited an existing iPhone app which is currently deployed to the app store (V1.0). I am about to do a bug fix release, V1.1.

I understand that this will take Apple 'time' (a week or two?) to approve.

My question is, while V1.1 is still awaiting approval or rejection, am I allowed to submit V1.2 into a queue? 1.3? Is there a limit?

Thanks for your help!!

Yes, you can submit multiple version to iTunesConnect.  I often create my next 1 or 2 version 'placeholders' in iTC.  Just don't submit the placeholder versions for approval.

Your challenge, if you decide to do this, will be to keep all your versions and source code intact. Because of that, I don't upload the app package until I'm ready to have Apple review it.


Find all illegal Windows characters in a folder and subfolder I need an Automator script which finds all files with illegal Windows characters like <>:/\\|?* and replaces these characters with an underscore. The rest of the filename should remain unchanged.

As an alternative, I would use a terminal script. I know how to find them with find . -name "*[<>:/\\|?*]*", but I don't know how to change the names properly.

How do I do this?

I found a bash one-liner that finds each file and folder with invalid characters in the name and renames the file/folder, changing each invalid character to a dash:

find . -name "*[<>:\\|?*]*" -exec bash -c 'x="{}"; y=$(sed "s/[<>:\\|?*]\+/-/g" <<< "$x") && mv -n "$x" "$y" ' \;

It is possible that a file has an illegal name that would be corrected to the exact same legal name as another illegally named file (Example: two files named "fle"). The one-liner above will not change the name of the second (or further) illegally named file that would be corrected to the same name as the first. This means that you may still have some illegally named files after the one-liner runs. After you run this one-liner, run

find . -name "*[<>:\\|?*]*"

again to identify any illegally named files that still exist. One way to deal with this situation is to change the dash in the sed substitution to another character, e.g. underscore, and run the one-liner again.


Why does iTunes only play one song? So here's what my iTunes looks like right now:

Nothing on this screen does what I'd expect, which may or may not be a problem with my expectations.

Why does double clicking on a track play only that track and then stop, rather than playing the album from there?
Why does clicking the play button next to "Demon Days" do nothing? What is the button for?
Why does clicking the arrow icon to the right of "Demon Days" and then choosing "Add to Up Next" add nothing to Up Next?

Can't make head nor tail of iTunes these days. Am I just getting old?

For some reason your songs are greyed out. That's why it doesn't work a you expect it.

Try following : Select all these songs then under right mouse click => Check selection.


how many emails does my mac book air archive hold? I am saving emails in the archive option on my  macbook air.

What is the quantity limit??

I doubt you'll reach a limit.

HFS+ which stores the file limits you to 2.1 billion files in a folder so you could have a lot of emails stored to archive. When you go to archive them, that one file holding billions of messages could grow to a size of 8 EB (and one exabyte is one million terabytes) so there's really little chance Mail app will prevent you from archiving an absurdly silly number of messages.


MacBook Pro: Glitch/Copy of closed Window - Graphic card or monitor defect I have issues with my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro Retina 15.4" (16GB RAM, i7 2.6Ghz, 500GB Flash Drive, Dual Graphic: Intel + Nvidia GT 650M)

Whenever I open and close any of the application, it still stays on desktop for a few minutes - but with very low opacity (5% maybe - visible on pictures below). Is it some kind of glitch which is solvable or it maybe graphic card or screen is damaged?

I tried another macOS install, tried another Hard Disk, tried SMC Reset, Tried VRAM Reset. This is happening in macOS Sierra and macOS Catalina. After reboot it still stays over there for few minutes. I guess it is a screen/monitor defect?

What may be causing this? Is it possible to resolve it? And if yes, how?

The MacBook screen is experiencing what's called a burn in effect image persistence. This problem is an electric charge build up on the LCD. (Correction by @Allan)

It's a hardware issue and is generally resolved by screen replacement. There is no software fix for this issue.

(P.S.: Apparently, this issue was widely faced by a lot of Mid 2012 Retina MacBook Pro users. Related discussions here and here)


How to resolve "iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup was corrupt"? When I try to sync my iPhone with my computer, I get the following message:

  iTunes could not back up the iPhone "iPhone Name"
  because the backup was corrupt or not compatible
  with the iPhone.

  Delete the backup for this iPhone, then try again.

Yet, here is no option to delete the backup. Where are backups stored / how can I delete the backup?

This is iTunes version 10.5.3 running under  Mac OS X 10.6.8.

From within iTunes navigate to the menu iTunes > Preferences > Devices. Select the backup file, then hit the delete button:


After upgrading Mac mini to Mountain Lion, the display is not working I had my Mac mini connected to a TV using VGA (with the mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter) running fine. After upgrading to Mountain Lion it simply doesn't work anymore.

I wasn't using any software like screen res or so, just pure OS X. Any tips to get that back?

Try logging into the machine with your display hooked up with HDMI (just so you can login), then switch over to VGA. Then try CMD + F2 (brightness up) to force detect displays and see if it switches over.


Creating a Linux boot drive on a MAC for a Kangaroo Mobile pC install I was trying to use your method to create a USB on my Mac for a Linux boot USB to install linux on a Kangaroo mobile pc.  Here is my process:
I tried this with several iterations.  My results are below.  The final result has me stopped.  Any ideas?

Russells-MacBook-Air:~ russellduggan$ sudo dd if=~/Desktop/linuxmint.iso of=/dev/sdx oflag=direct bs=1048576
Password:
dd: unknown operand oflag
Russells-MacBook-Air:~ russellduggan$ terminal>
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'
Russells-MacBook-Air:~ russellduggan$ cd terminal
-bash: cd: terminal: No such file or directory
Russells-MacBook-Air:~ russellduggan$
Russells-MacBook-Air:~ russellduggan$ terminal
-bash: terminal: command not found
Russells-MacBook-Air:~ russellduggan$ sudo dd if=~/Desktop/linuxmint.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=1048576
Password:
dd: /Users/russellduggan/Desktop/linuxmint.iso: No such file or directory
Russells-MacBook-Air:~ russellduggan$ sudo dd if=~/Desktop/linuxmint-18.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=1048576
dd: /dev/sdx: Operation not permitted
Russells-MacBook-Air:~ russellduggan$

As you can see I kind of reached an impasse at the last.  Any suggestions you might have I would appreciate.

In your dd command,

sudo dd if=~/Desktop/linuxmint.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=1048576

/dev/sdx for the output is incorrect.

This is a Linux convention, not macOS; use /dev/diskX.
X is the specific disk identifier.  If you are using instructions from a Linux site, they are most likely providing the instructions for doing this on Linux (not macOS) using X as a variable for the specific identifier since the identifier can be different for each user and/or instance as the device is removable.

In Linux it's /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc.  In macOS/BSD is /dev/disk1, /dev/disk2, etc.

Also (thanks to user3439894 via comments) you need to make sure you disk is unmonted but not ejected.  Do this by issuing the command diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX where X is the number of your disk identifier.


How many installs of Emacs do I have? At the zsh, I enter which emacs and get /usr/local/bin/emacs.

In my /Applications folder, I have an application called Emacs.  When I click get info it says that it resides at /Applications.

So that all makes me think I have two different installs.

But then I moved the one in /Applications to the Trash and then tried running emacs and /usr/local/bin/emacs from the command line.  Both times, I was met with zsh: command not found: emacs.

So that makes it seem like there is only one install.

What am I missing here?

If you install Emacs via homebrew it installs both to /usr/local/bin and to /Applications.

$ ll -d /usr/local/bin/emacs /Applications/Emacs.app
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root     admin  34 Jan 12  2019 /Applications/Emacs.app@ -> /usr/local/opt/emacs-mac/Emacs.app
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  50 Mar 27 20:02 /usr/local/bin/emacs@ -> ../Cellar/emacs-mac/emacs-26.3-z-mac-7.9/bin/emacs


85W MagSafe adapter has stopped working Yesterday I noticed that my 85W MagSafe adapter had stopped working.

I usually leave it plugged in constantly to my MacBook Pro (but not constantly on at the switch).

The LED on the plug that connects to the MacBook Pro no longer lights up (I don't get any colour light whatsoever).

Apple are sending a replacement adapter out in the post but that will take 3 days so I was wondering if there are any secrets that could get it back working in the meantime?

So far I've tried leaving it unplugged and then using another plug as per a post I read online about some sort of 'automatic protection' but that didn't work either.

Unless the pins of the MagSafe that carry the power were physically stuck, the fault isn't something you could or should fix. Hopefully Apple's diagnosis is correct and you don't need a repair of the Mac instead of a repair of the adapter.

You'll discover that in three days time unless you can test with another MagSafe adapter in the mean time.


What software can turn off Wi-Fi automatically when closing lid? I want to turn off my MacBook's Wi-Fi automatically when closing its lid.
Is there any software can do this?

I have a battery drain problem.  When Wi-Fi is enabled and I close the lid, my MacBook will periodically wake overnight, draining battery.

I have done ton of research and tried many methods.  Turning off the Wi-Fi before closing the lid is the only way to guarantee that my MacBook will not wake.  But, well, it is annoying to disable Wi-Fi every time.  So I need a script or other software to do this job.

You could combine DFGKApps's script for turning off Wifi and DssW's Power Manager to run the script on sleep.

The Terminal.app command to disable WiFi appears to be:

 networksetup -setairportpower en1 off

To re-enable WiFi use:

networksetup -setairportpower en1 on

Be sure to test these commands using Terminal.app, as I suspect they may require tweaking depending on your network set up.

Be aware that running a script on sleep does come with limitations. The time available for the script is short and can not be extended.

I am a software engineer involved with Power Manager, so feel free to ask technical questions about how to use it.


AppleScript: Watching a folder I need an AppleScript application on the desktop to watch a folder, also on the desktop, for files that have been moved to it.

So far, I have:

global folderSpool
tell application "Finder" to set folderSpool to folder "Spool" of desktop

on adding folder items to folderSpool after receiving the_files
    repeat with each_file in the_files
        set theDialogText to "File is: " & (each_file) & "."
        display dialog theDialogText
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

When I export the script as an application, I set it to: "Stay open after run handler." I then open the application and keep it running.

However, when I move files to the "Spool" folder, nothing happens.

I tried the on idle option, but it kept creating dialogue after dialogue, rather than doing so when files were moved to the folder.

Any ideas?

The command you're using, "on adding folder item", is specific to folder actions, so it won't work in a non-folder action script. I agree with the others that a folder action is the best way to handle it, but if you really want to do it without, you can create a stay open application that queries the contents of the folder and compares it to the last time it ran, and displays the different files. Change the runInterval property to run at your preferred frequency.

Note: For simplicity, I only wrote it to check for files added to the spool folder. You can tweak it to also check for removed files by duplicating the second section in the code below, and looping through spoolFiles and seeing if they are in currentFiles.

AppleScript Code, as a stay-open application, below:

property spoolFiles : {}
property currentFiles : {}
property runInterval : 5 -- interval is in seconds
global folderSpool

on idle
    tell application "Finder"
        set folderSpool to folder "Spool" of desktop
        if (count of spoolFiles) is 0 then set spoolFiles to name of every file of folderSpool
        set currentFiles to name of every file of folderSpool
    end tell

    set changedFiles to {}--Reverse and repeat this section to check for missing files
    repeat with i from 1 to count of currentFiles
        if currentFiles's item i is not in spoolFiles then
            set changedFiles's end to currentFiles's item i
        end if
    end repeat

    repeat with each_file in changedFiles
        set theDialogText to "File is: " & (each_file) & "."
        display dialog theDialogText
    end repeat
    set spoolFiles to currentFiles --important to update the spoolFiles so only new files will get displayed going forward.
    return runInterval
end idle


My ex-girlfriend uses my Apple ID to log in to her iPad. Do I have to give her my Apple ID password to reset it? She asked me to give her my Apple ID password to log out. But I don't want to share my password. She said she need that password to log out the iPad.

Do I have to give her my password?  What else can she do?

Don’t just give the password - that gives full access to your account - she could change the password on you... Make it that you enter the password and reset... Either meet or she sends you the iPad...


Does Apple change OS X operating systems between the GM and the final release? For instance, I've found quite a few bugs while working with the Mountain Lion Golden Master. Is there any chance Apple might fix these in the public release?

Thanks!

There's a first time for everything but, but basically: no.

Unless you have found the mother of all security bugs, so humiliating that it would overshadow Apple's entire Mountain Lion release, the bug to end all bugs and live on in infamy, it just is not going to happen.

Not to mention, fixing and testing bugs generally takes time. The fastest Apple bug fix ever, to my knowledge, took two days but that's very unusual for a company its size. In general it takes weeks, in many cases months, even years.


A new macOS version exists, no update available from the App Store I recently reinstalled macOS on my MacBook Pro which is now on macOS 10.13.5, which isn't the latest version because I used an old macOS High Sierra installer. However, when I opened the Mac App Store to update to 10.13.6, it didn't show any updates. I thought it was an issue at Apple's side, so I downloaded the macOS 10.13.6 Combo Updater, but that didn't work either. It gave an error: "This volume doesn't meet the requirements for this update". Is my installation corrupted? If not, how can I fix it without another reinstall?

This is a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015). I have enabled FileVault after installing macOS and it is still encrypting (about 13 hours left).

Apparently macOS doesn't allow you to install macOS Updates while FileVault is encrypting, so it blocks every possible way of installing software updates. However, it is still possible to install macOS updates from an external flash drive since there is no encryption going on when you boot from an external device, thus allowing you to install the update. You will need to follow Apple's instructions on how to create and boot from an external macOS Install USB. The only thing you need to do different is before starting the macOS installer, open Disk Utility, select your disk and mount it. You will be prompted for your disk's password since it uses FileVault. After that, simply start the Installer and install macOS onto your main partition. It will not overwrite your existing installation. It will only replace essential system files with fresh ones, thus updating your system.


Mac Recovery Mode Corrupted? When I try to boot my Mac in recovery mode by holding alt+R, the progress bar shows up as if it is loading the disk. However, when it finishes loading, it switches to a screen that has horizontal lines across it, which resemble white noise on a television. You can vaguely make out the Apple logo with small cross sections of it in the horizontal strips.

It eventually switches to another screen where you can make out the image of the recovery mode options, but, again, with the screen broken up into small horizontal strips with pieces of the image, but not lining up vertically. I can move the mouse around, so the computer isn't just completely frozen, but I can't interact with anything.

Is my recovery disk corrupted? How can I fix this issue?

My Mac is on macOS Sierra Version 10.12.6.

If you suspect that your recovery partition has corrupted data, you can use Internet Recovery (hold OptionCommandR or ShiftOptionCommandR, which will download the Recovery partition from Apple servers and see if you have same issues. See: HT201314.

However, I think that it is more likely that your Mac has a problem with the video chip, RAM or screen. I suggest you boot your Mac in Diagnostic mode (hold D or OptionD at startup) and run the battery of tests which may reveal a hardware problem, if it exists. See: HT201257


Chinese and Japanese characters are not shown properly on iOS I use Chinese, Korean and Japanese keyboards on my iPhone, but I found out that some of Chinese and Japanese characters are not shown properly. For example, when I tried to type in (せいしん or jingshen), the conversion candidate on the top of the keyboards showed 精神, not the correct Chinese characters.

I think the problem might be that I use Korean as the main language. But then is there any way to type in the correct word on Chinese and Japanese keyboards?

If you are talking about the form of the characters not being correct, so you are seeing the Korean character variants instead of the Chinese ones, these are in fact by default determined by which language is highest on the list in Settings > General > Language.  You would have to make Chinese higher than Korean in that list to get the Chinese forms displayed.

Below are some images of those characters Japanese, Chinese, and Korean forms (Korean at the bottom).

While you may be seeing Korean forms on your device, people you send text to will see the forms dictated by the settings on their own machine.  So a recipient of your email or text who is using a Chinese system will see the Chinese forms.

Of course if you are using an app where you can choose the font independently of the system, such as Pages, then you can make sure you choose a Chinese or Japanese font instead of a Korean one to get the forms you want.


Mac Mini 2011: Dual Display setup and HDMI Switching I have following setup:

A Mac mini 2011 with two displays - one on HDMI and on in Displayport. The HDMI display is connected to an HDMI Switcher which I use to connect different input devices to the HDMI display, like a RPi.

Every time I switch the input devices through the switcher away from the Mac mini, macOS deactivates dual display mode - all windows move to the DisplayPort display. When I switch back input to the Mac mini dual display support is re-activated and all windows move back.

Is there any way to change this behavior? I would like to keep dual display mode going on even after switching the display input. Is this possible?

The behavior  you are seeing is because the switch you are using is completely disconnecting the signal from the Mac so macOS assumes (rightly so) that they monitor is gone and it needs to consolidate the windows.

It would be as if you physically removed the cable from the Mac mini and plugged it into your other device.

To get around this, you need an active device like a KVM (keyboard video mouse switcher) which will maintain the signal(s).

Though a KVM might be complete overkill if all you really want/need to change video inputs.  What may be the best solution is get a monitor with multiple inputs and you just change it on the monitor itself.


Can't backup iphone to icloud My iphone hasn't backed up to icloud in over 19 weeks. I have deleted hundreds of pictures, turned off Mail, Reminders, Safari, Notes, and Passbook and still it says there is no room.  The only thing that is on to backup is calendar and contacts.  Can this be right?

Please check the iCloud tab on your iPhone, you can see the details there and remove stuff you don't want anymore.

Settings
iCloud
Just above Delete account click storage and backup (this is probably named different)
Click manage storage
You can manage your data here and check what's taking up the space.


How do I triage errors from the AppStore? Where are the log files? Am getting an error message when trying to reinstall TextWrangler from the App Store. The message given is An unknown error occurred. This is not terribly helpful. Where can I look to get more information about this error? Does the App Store application have a log file?

You have to enable debugging first before logs show up in the console.

To activate the Debug menu, open the OS X Terminal utility and run the following command:
defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Debug Logging options
The App Store has various levels of debug logging that can be used, which simply increase the verbosity of the store's logging functions and output more information as the log level is increased. If you are finding the store to be unresponsive or behaving oddly, then you can increase the log level and try your actions again to hopefully capture a cause for the problem in the App Store's log file. This file can be accessed by opening the Console utility and then opening the section called "~/Library/Logs" in the Files section of the sidebar.
The file should be called "appstore.log." The standard debugging levels will log the program's functions such as which URLs it is connecting to and what tasks it is running, but in addition if you are seeing visual or behavioral oddities on various product pages you can enable JavaScript logging to see if any JavaScript-based errors are contributing factors in these problems.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57538104-263/make-use-of-the-mac-app-store-debug-menu/


A free metronome app that vibrates the phone I'm looking for an app to facilitate piano practice. Currently, most free metronome apps only provide sound or light indication of the beat, which is understandable because they want to sell hardware or software to make money.
But what if I just want to attach my iphone to my arms and let the vibration guide my playing?

I've tried multiple apps and only found "Pulse" works, although not great (it vibrates too lightly).

Does anyone know any app that vibrates properly as a metronome?

The only free vibrating metronome app for iPhone I have found so far is Soundcorset.

https://soundcorset.com/


Kali not showing in Kali-OSX dual boot on Macbook Pro Some context:

I have a Macbook Pro with OSX Mojave
I installed Kali Linux
Boot defaulted to Kali
If I wanted to boot OSX I had to hold down the option key on boot.
When selecting boot drives, Kali never showed up; only OSX.
Today boot defaulted to OSX
Kali still doesn't appear even though it's installed.

My question: How can I boot Kali now that boot defaults to OSX?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks to this blog post, I was able to solve this issue using rEFInd.

Basically, rEFInd is a tool that allows you to select what operating system you want to boot with.

You can download rEFInd here: link
Full rEFInd documentation here: link


How can I make my Mac a DLNA server and/or client? How can I make my Mac be a DLNA server and/or client?

There are several choices based on the fact that any UPnP server should also be DLNA compliant :

Free ones :

XBMC
MythTV
TvMobili
Kinsky
Plex
uShare (easier to install with MacPorts)

Paid ones :

EyeConnect
PlayBack
SongBook

The bold ones are directly mentioned to be DLNA servers.


Creating a Distributed Account System with MacOS We have tens of Mac computers and hundreds of students in our lab. Each student will have a G Suite education account.

We somehow want to achieve a solution so that:

Each student will have a private account (email, password)
Each student will be able to login from any MacOS with that account.

How close we can get to this scenario?

I'm ready to install supportive servers if there is a way to distribute accounts across lab computers.

UPDATE

What we want is to provide 1GB of disk space for each user. So I started to think like this:

I can set a central server which has a volume for each student. Is this a good idea?

I found an answer after long research.

There's a project called OpenLDAP, which also runs on Docker. When you configure mac authentication to listen to the ldap server, users can log in to any Mac any time.

https://github.com/osixia/docker-openldap

There's only one "con", you can't limit disk quotas, which is OK. This is the best closest solution. I plan to add cloud options (e.g: owncloud) for users; which will help us as extra disk space.


List of factory apps that come with the iPhone5c What's the list of factory apps that come with the iPhone 5c my neice was playing with it and I realized it's missing a few but idk what ones because I never use most of them.

Messages
Calendar
Photos
Camera
Weather
Clock
Maps
Videos
Notes
Reminders
Stocks
Game Center
Newsstand
iTunes Store
App Store
Passbook
Compass
Settings
Phone
Mail
Safari
Music
Contacts
Calculator
FaceTime


How to install dmg files that offer no drag option I am trying to install SmartGit on Mac. I download their dmg file and double click on it and instead of giving me an option to drag the app to the Applications folder, it opens up a folder with the app and also related folders.

How do I install this particular application?

Drag them all into your home folder and then run the app?

That works well if you can't find any support from the vendor. Once you have things running, you can decide to put things in /Applications or ~/Applications or elsewhere.


How to jailbreak 2nd gen iPod Touch without losing data? I have an 8GB iPod Touch 2nd Generation that runs iOS 4.2.1, and currently it is not jailbroken.

I want to jailbreak it using redsn0w version 0.9.6b4. I have found these instructions, but I will lose data if I follow them. I have backed my data up using iTunes. How can I jailbreak it without losing my data? Or can I restore the backed up data without removing the jailbreak?

I've used redsn0w on iPod touch 2nd Gen. You will not lose any data.


Part of display not working, changing display region for macbook pro Recently, something went wrong with my Macbook Pro 13" 2019 model's display. About 1.5 inches (in length) of my display went completely black and there are some vertical lines on the edges of this black portion. It appears to be a hardware issue.

I was wondering if I can do something so that my entire screen appears in only the part to the right of this black portion, until I can find the time to give my laptop for repair. I know I can just rescale my window each time, but I don't want to keep doing that every time I open a new window.
Can I use software to remap the entire display area to a smaller section of a physical display?

I was wondering if I can do something so that my entire screen appears in only the part to the right of this black portion,

No, this cannot be done.
Your screen is physically damaged, but as far as your GPU is concerned, it's working fine.  The dimensions that get reported back (for example 2650x1400) are still reported back.  It has no idea it's now only (making up a resolution here) 2300x1400.  And even if you were able to tell the driver that was your resolution, it would be centered, not shifted left/right.
Your best bet is, if you must use the machine until you can take it in, to get an external monitor.  They're inexpensive and fairly reliable. Also, an iPad, iPhone, Windows, Unix or Mac computer can screen share very well using several apps.
There’s no harm in running a Mac with this display damage and using another display - especially if it’s stationary or running closed clamshell.


What are the networking requirements for AirPrint? I'm trying to get AirPrint setup at work.  I've used it at home with AirPrint Activator with no problems.  But it doesn't seem to work on my work network.

I suspect our network is too locked down to allow this.  But I haven't been able to find any documentation that specifically outlines the requirements for AirPrint in terms of ports required, etc.  I need to be able to give my network admin something concrete in terms of what he needs to do to open this up for me.

Does such a document exist?  Or can someone at least give me pointers on what needs to be opened up?

AirPrint only works with AirPrint compatible printers, unless you have special software to connect to the printer running on a machine the printer is locally connected to. A great solution for a work environment is the xPrintServer. It's a network adapter that attaches via ethernet to your network and is supposed to make any printer on the network it's attached to AirPrint compatible. It's available for preorder now. I'd partner with your network administrator to see if this is something that is right for your workplace.


I can't turn off my apps cellular data on my iphone, Help! I try to disable the cellular data for my apps in my iphone 4 running ios 7.1.2, then i did it, but when i push the back button from cellular setting page and reopen it, the apps cellular data was turning back on, please help if there are any solutution for this

I had this same problem. The apps that I didn't want to use for cellular and every time I would close out of settings or disable cellular data the apps would re-enable again, but I managed to restore my iPhone I had to set it up as a new iPhone. I advise if you are having a problem like this to write down all your apps or contacts or important stuff down, So you can use for reference. Or you can backup important stuff via iTunes and iCloud. But by me restoring my iPhone and setting it as a new phone resolved the problem. I hope this helps.


Will 'Internet Recovery' necessarily erase my hard drive? My Mac is booting to the 'question mark' folder. I option-booted to 'Internet Recovery'. Before I proceed, I would like to know: Will 'Internet Recovery' necessarily erase my hard drive? Can anyone confirm this (maybe even provide a source link)?

No, doing an Internet Recovery will not erase your hard drive (unless you explicitly choose do to that using Disk Utility). It will only reinstall the OS for you. You should get your drive checked to see if it's just data corruption or a deeper hardware issue that has resulted in the question mark folder icon being shown.

Also, this question has been answered on superuser - see "Does Internet Recovery erase everything on my Mac?"


Is .profile or .bashrc backed up anywhere automatically? There are hidden files that are fairly important if you use terminal a lot at ~/.profile and ~/.bashrc, etc. Are these files backed up anywhere by default? sometimes I append to environment variables to .profile via command line, e.g. echo 'export foo=bar' >> ~.profile and realized that I could be in big trouble if I accidentally left out one of the > characters.

No, there is no special handling of .profile, .bashrc or any other config file within OS X. So unless you are running a regular backup (e.g. using Time Machine), these files will be lost if you type > instead of >>.

Some of-the-top-of-the-head ideas to overcome this

run a regular backup (there are probably files on your computer which are more important than .profile so you should be doing this anyway)
change habits and use the text editor of your choice to update shell profiles
create a shell function to do the append operation, e.g. something like this (untested)

add_to_profile() {
    echo >> ~/.profile
    echo '# ' Added on $(date) >> ~/.profile
    echo $* >> ~/.profile
}

and use it like add_to_profile 'export foo=bar'.
use Hazel (or Folder Actions) to backup .profile and .bashrc automatically after each change
put those files under version control (either locally or on Github)


What are the Visor alternatives? Visor is a plugin for Terminal.app that allows usage of quake-console-style terminal access. Are there any alternatives to this Terminal.app plugin?

Try TotalTerminal (http://totalterminal.binaryage.com/). It's by the author of Visor, but doesn't require SIMBL to function. And it works flawlessly on Lion.


How to mass delete photos on iOS after backing them up manually (no iCloud)? I have an iPhone 11 Pro that I back-up regularly both to macOS and manually to windows (by copying the ###APPLE folders).
This phone is now full and I must delete older photos. Ideally I'd just delete the older ###APPLE folders but I believe this will mess the phone up.
I don't use iCloud since Google Photos is free and I also backup there for a worst case cloud scenario.
So how do I mass delete photos from the phone without messing it up to free up some space?

On macOS, you can use ImageCapture to select as many photos on the iPhone as you want and delete them. You can also import these photos to macOS with ImageCapture. Using Image capture is good since it cleans up thumbnails, database entries as well as the full resolution images.
Accessing the exposed DCIM folder isn’t the same as actually deleting the referenced photos via USB and software Apple makes.


How can I eliminate this repeated Java Runtime Environment (JRE) pop-up window? This window has been popping up repeatedly:

I was sure that I already had the latest version of Java installed, but to verify I went here: https://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp

And sure enough I have the latest JRE.

Then I went and followed the directions here to find the JRE via my command line:
https://www.java.com/en/download/help/version_manual.xml#cmdline
which says to enter:

  $ /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/bin/java -version

and the terminal output was:

  java version "1.8.0_25"
  Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_25-b17)
  Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.25-b02, mixed mode)`

Can anyone help me identify what I'm doing wrong here?  I definitely have Java.

I installed the Java Developer Kit and that fixed the problem. I'm not sure why that was needed.


No backlight on Late 2007 MacBook I have an old Late 2007 MacBook, it has been working until few days ago. Suddenly the backlighting of the display stopped working.

Basically I turn on the computer and the screen is almost dark.

If I point a lamp in front of the display, I can see the interface behind, however even at maximum brightness it's still dark.

I've contacted Apple support but they told me that there are no replacements of a machine that old.

I'm quite comfortable at opening it and try to fix by myself but I don't know what parts i need. What could be the issue?

I'm not sure about only the backlight, but it is possible to replace the entire display assembly. With this computer, it is however a very difficult replacement. Read this guide and follow it carefully, being sure to allot several hours for the replacement.

With that said, given the age of this MacBook, it may not be worth fixing it up depending how much it costs.


Sharing a Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse sequentially between two Macs I work out of my house where I have two computers: a mid-2010 Macbook Pro (for my day job) and a mid-2010 iMac (personal). During the workday, my iMac acts as a second display for my Macbook Pro via Mini Displayport.

Currently, I use a USB keyboard and mouse for my work computer and a Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad for use with my personal computer. I'd like to get rid of the wired keyboard and mouse and just use the Bluetooth stuff for both machines (but never simultaneously).

Is it possible to easily share the single set of input devices without having to repeatedly break and reestablish the pairing of the input device to the correct computer? I'm not opposed to buying some type of additional hardware to accomplish this, provided it's not prohibitively costly or cumbersome to use or configure.

It's not clear to me how I would tell the MacBook Pro to leave the devices alone so the iMac can have them for the evening. I want to avoid de-pairing and re-pairing the devices each time I want to shift them back or forth.

Basically is there software or hardware that works as a Bluetooth KVM switch?

I, too, was looking for an answer to this very question. Here is the solution that I came up with:

Go to System Preferences -> Bluetooth
Click 'Advanced'
Make sure that 'Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer' is
unchecked
Click 'OK'

Now, when I want to switch from my main computer to my MacBook Pro, I put the main computer to sleep and wake up the second one. The bluetooth keyboard and mouse both switch over to the laptop and away I go. When I want to return to the main computer, I put the laptop to sleep and wake the Mac Mini using its power button.


Embed live camera in Keynote presentation In these times where we give plenty of presentations from home over video conference, by sharing our screens, I am looking for a way to embed a view of my live FaceTime camera in my Keynote presentation.
I vaguely remember being able to make a Quicktime movie with a live camera feed using Quartz Composer, but I have not been able to replicate that, nor have I found any info about that, so do I misremember?
The best I have found so far is to open PhotoBooth side by side with Keynote, and to move from slide to slide like this. People watching my screen then see both my slide and me. But I can't go into presentation mode, because then the live video feed is hidden.
Perhaps if I could have a floating window with a live camera view?
Any better suggestion to achieve this effect of having the speaker face live on the shared screen while going through slides?

You can play your presentation in a window. This Keynote window can then go full screen with Photo Booth in split screen to one side, or as a normal window as you've been doing with Keynote in editing view.

To play your presentation in a window, choose Play > Play Slideshow in Window (from the Play menu at the top of your screen).

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/keynote/tana4da2681/mac


Using same Snow Leopard CD on two MacBooks Are there any kind of troubles that I could get into if I use the same install CD on two laptops? I've just received a laptop from my workplace, but apparently they lost the install CD, and I want to use my own to "clean up" the laptop.

In writing this answer, I'm assuming that you're speaking the truth when you say your workplace lost the install CD for the laptop--that is, you have the legal right to install it, but not the physical medium with which to do it. I'm not in any way encouraging you to pirate software.

That said, when you install Snow Leopard, it won't ask you for a serial number. If the installation disc came with a computer, it will likely only install on computers that are the same model as the one the disc came with--so, for example, the installation disc that came with an iMac won't work on a MacBook Pro. The retail version of the OS, however, will install on the laptop, run normally, and download and install updates without a problem. It will do all of this even if you've used the same disc to install the OS on another computer, because there is no protection scheme in the OS to prevent this.

Edit: As Samantha Catania says in another answer, the discs that come with a computer are machine-specific, in the sense that they will only install on a very specific model of computer. If your work laptop is a different model than the model the disc came with, it just won't install at all. It'll stop before it does any damage, though, so (again, repeating what Samantha already said) it wouldn't hurt to try. Most likely, though, you'll need either an installation disc for the exact same model you're trying to install on, or a retail disc.


How to delete iCloud Backups? I'm not able to clear off the backups on my iCloud account. I had deleted icloud sync from my old iPhone and iPad. It's no longer shows in the iCloud section on both the devices regarding any backup.

Is there any way to delete it off ?

I checked it out on iCloud.com and It only says backup.

If you press that "Manage" button to the right in your first screenshot, do you see a Backups category in the left column?

I've seen some backups not show up on the iPhone/iPad, but show up on the Mac in this Manage pane. If the backups show up here, click on one and then click delete at the bottom of the list.


macOS methods for applications autostarting It is known to me that application autostart is based on different methods:

Login elements in the System Preferences
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Users/username/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/System/Library/LaunchAgents

but the Spotify application autostarts without involving any of the above folders.
Its daemon is included inside the application bundle, but how does the application tell macOS to start or not this com.spotify.client.startuphelper daemon?

I can disable the starting through Spotify preferences, but it is not clear to me the method used to autostart.

Spotify uses a so-called Modern Login Item (in contrary to the deprecated Login Item).

The Modern Login Item doesn't require a classical daemon|agent.plist or a Login Item in System Preferences > Users & Groups > $USER.

Apple dev guidelines require the apps using such modern login items to provide a setting in the preferences of the app itself to disable autostart though.

AFAIU the autostart is managed with a separate autostart app in the app itself and Apple's ServiceManagement.framework. In Spotify the app is: /Applications/Spotify.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/StartUpHelper.app

Further reading and an example app with source code (compiling requires Xcode): Modern Login Item