Inherit Time Machine backup after changing source hard drives I am using Time Machine to backup an external HDD (A) (2 TB) linked to my computer to an external 6 TB HDD drive.

I now had to shift the data from HDD (A) to a new 3 TB one (B). Is there a way to continue the backup of the data so that Time Machine doesn't think it has to start the backup of (B) from scratch? Does TM automatically detect that the data on the new hard drive (B) are the same as the ones previously backed up on the old hard drive (A)?

Given how flimsy HDD are, I thought this would be a common problem. But I didn't find anything in the questions.

When you plug in the new HDD, do you get a message saying

  Would you like this computer to inherit the backup history from xxx on the "xxx" backup disk?"

then an option to choose

  Don't Back Up Now, Create New Backup or Inherit Backup History?

If so, click Inherit Backup History. If not, follow the steps below:
Open Finder and navigate to your backup location

In terminal, type (but do not press return yet

sudo tmutil inheritbackup

Drag the backup location to the end of the terminal command, and press return for Terminal to navigate to the correct path.

If it was successful, it will ask you for your password. (It won't be shown in the Terminal window as you type.)

An alternate method would be to "Associate the OS X volume, which is:

sudo tmutil associatedisk -a /

You will drag (from the Backups.backupdb folder) the folder containing the backups from the old drive into the Terminal window for the path. Again, if prompted, enter the Admin password.


How to set custom m4a format audio file as alarm tone on iPhone How can a custom audio file (m4a format) be set as my alarm tone on an iPhone? I am using an iPhone 8 running iOS 12.3.

First you'll need to add the audio file as a custom ringtone to your iPhone. For doing so, follow the instructions in the linked answer:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/1885/279727

Once you have the custom ringtone into your iPhone (you can check the same by going to Settings app → Sounds & Haptics → Ringtone), you can also use it as an alarm tone in Clock app.


What's the difference between real memory and CPU, and what are there effects on the performance of my computer? In Activity Monitor, there are a couple fields: "PID", "Process Name", "User", "%CPU", "Threads", "Real Mem", and "Kind". I'm not familiar with the inner workings of computers and the related technical terms, but I've always thought the "%CPU" and "Real Mem" would be synonymous. However, when I look the running processes in Activity Monitor, I see this:

Evident from the image, "Real Mem" and "%CPU" are not synonymous.

What's the difference between real memory and CPU, and what are there effects on the performance of my computer?

CPU is the Central Processing Unit. It's an Intel microprocessor. It performs calculations (or more precisely, computations).

Memory is temporary data storage space used by active processes being executed by the CPU.

If we were talking about cars the CPU would be the engine and the memory would be the seats (or possibly the cup holder).


Which encrypted items show a hint? I encrypted some drives with Disk Utility and set a password hint. This hint does not show on a different computer. It's embarrassing because those were backup drives and losing the computer means also losing the key to the backup.

However, I found out by chance, when I was doing a boot from a live USB, that hints for startup disk encryption do show their password hints, as shown in this example:

Could anyone confirm that password hints for drives encrypted with Disk Utility are saved on the local computer and do not show on different drives, ideally with a reference?

And in which cases do encrypted drives store their hints, as in the startup disk example above?

Update: I am running macOS 10.14.6. Here is a screenshot of the drive encrypted with Disk Utility that does not show a hint:

I believe that I chose MacOS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) as the format in Disk Utility.app for the drives that do not show a hint. Here is the result of diskutil list with the two drives connected, one that shows a hint and is decrypted, the other that does not show a hint and is locked:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         121.1 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +121.1 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            105.0 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.5 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                510.4 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Time Machine Encryped   239.7 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3

Offline
                                 Logical Volume Time Machine Encryped on disk2s2
                                 2930C7CC-4EE4-43AB-B1FB-81756A1CC0E5
                                 Locked Encrypted

The password hints are not stored on the local computer as such.

Instead for APFS it is stored on the encrypted drive itself in the "volume passphrase hint" key bag. You can read the specifics here APFS File  System Reference.

For HFS+ it is stored in the "PassphraseHint" entry of the "CryptoUsers" structure in the "com.apple.corestorage.lvf.encryption.context" structure in the CoreStorage XML plist on the encrypted drive. You can read the specifics here FileVault Drive Encryption

Note that password hints are only stored for passphrase (i.e. password) protected drives.

Therefore I cannot confirm your assumption. This is always the case.

Note: In the answer from lx07 I see that he concludes that the hint is not stored on the drive after looking for it with a hexeditor. That is not correct. The PLIST is compressed using DEFLATE and the hint itself might be base64 encoded. You'll need to decompress the data before searching for the hint, if you want to find it manually that way.

In addition take note of section 7 of the reference FVDE document (The encryption context plist) - namely that depending on your setup the PLIST containing hint could be located outside the encrypted partition, and instead be stored on the "Recovery HD" partition on the same physical drive. It can be stored either in unencrypted or encrypted form. In case of encrypted form, the AES-XTS key is the volume identifier of the encrypted volume (i.e. the key is stored non-encrypted on the drive).


Understanding firmware.scap So, I recently acquired an old MacbookPro (v.5,4 mid 2009). I decided to create an Arch linux partition, and thus began my adventure... While installing rEFInd (the maintained fork of rEFIt), I ended up doing the following:

Mounted the EFI partition in /Volumes
Moved the necessary binaries into /Volumes/.../refind/
Messed up
Decided to quickly start over by removing refind
Hastily decided to rm -rf *, but did not realize I was not in /refind
Ended up deleting everything in /Volumes/EFI/*
...which included APPLE/EXTENSIONS/firmware.scap
Freaked out
Freaked out some more because I wasn't exactly sure what I just did...
Shutdown and rebooted, praying I wouldn't hit a brick wall
...and then...
...Everything worked find.

But I still do not have a EFI/APPLE/EXTENSIONS/firmware.scap, so my questions are:

What is the firmware.scap? Why isn't my computer freaking out?

I've skimmed some literature on the internet, but there doesn't seem to be that much definitive information, just people giving rote directions to flash EFI firmware for those of us who have deleted it. If someone could just point me in the right direction (to learn more precisely about firmware.scap), I would be very grateful.

This file is always at this location: /usr/standalone/i386/Firmware.scap


Mission Control Switching for windows Introduction

I am an avid user of Mission Control and use it to organize my work. Unlike most, however, I organize my work spaces by general topic, and not by application. For example I will frequently have Google Chrome open in 3 different workspaces at once (workspace 1 will be programming related, workspace 5 will be general work-related searches, and workspace 9 will have personal related windows).

My Quesion

For a specific application, how can I open a workspace that has a specific window of an application and move to the workspace at the same time? For example, if I am in workspace 3, and I look at the Dock that contains information about Google Chrome, it will look something like this:

In this example, Files: Nature Biotechnology: nature.com is in Workspace 5, while automate-save-page-as/save_page_as ... is in workspace one. However when I click on them and I am Workspace 3, it simply opens up the window without bringing me to the workspace. Is there a way to configure Mission Control to open the window and bring me to workspace the window is in?

Josh's answer here of adding workspaces-auto-swoosh = ":true";: solved the problem: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/225294/282507


Does the iPhone support TRIM for flash memory? I'm asking if TRIM is enabled on iOS because, ever since I ran out of memory on my iPhone (have since cleared a few GB back), it seems to be slower than it was before. My suspicion being that, with most flash memory "sectors" now partially used, every write operation now takes longer…

Relying heavily on flash memory, I wonder if the iPhone implements TRIM (or any "trim-like" feature) to maximize flash memory performance and specifically if that will let me troubleshoot a slow phone and/or know if I would want to jailbreak the device to enable TRIM or otherwise control storage more tightly than iOS is delivered.

Since I'm just a generic curious who can do some research on the web, I'll make here some assumptions so we can be on the same grounds:

TRIM is an SSD technology and, as such, can mean too many  different things.
iPhone uses MLC NAND memory, which is indeed a SSD.
We, people, (such as dhy8386 and maybe even Mr. Brian Klug) love to talk big about things we don't know deep enough. To know more, trust less.
Apple mostly does not disclose anything technically meaningful about their technology. And it does use many proprietary technologies nobody else does.
Even today, the iPhone will work way more flawlessly under deep stress (filled memory, many applications, etc) than any Android or Windows Phone. (yes, I've used them all and I currently own a S3)

If you follow every link above deep enough, you may realize it's just not that simple. Even Android's TRIM support probably isn't the same TRIM as a notebook uses on its SSD.

So, it doesn't matter if it supports TRIM or not. The whole point of going with an iPhone is trusting Apple and letting them do the hardcore tech work. And the whole point of jailbreaking is being able to do things Apple can't allow for any reason, such as unblocking carriers. Anything else on JB is doing it wrong (specially now we have android, even for iPhone) - and I'm saying that from my heavy experience using jailbreak from iPhone 3 to 4.

Now, to address your main and unannounced question, best thing you can do to test if your hardware is malfunctioning is to backup your iPhone and reset to factory. Then fill it up with music or pictures, since you suspect a full disk is causing the malfunctioning, and avoid installing  applications at all. You probably won't see any problem and, if you do, just send it to warranty. You can also send it to warranty directly, but you risk of it coming back and just losing few days there.


View reviews and ratings in App Store Connect I am logging on App Store Connect after a long time and I see that they have changed the layout and stuff for the website.
Where can I view the reviews and ratings, that people have posted for my app on App Store Connect?

App Store Connect (responsive redesign, June 2020)

Open Apps and select the app.
Choose App Store from the top.
Select Ratings and Reviews from the sidebar.


macOS 10.13: Windows 10 installation with Boot Camp I tried to install Windows 10 via Boot Camp, but got stuck at the creating a new partition part. The error states:

  An error occurred while partitioning the disk. Please run disk utility
  to check and fix the error.

Here's what I did:

Run first aid on my internal drive
Decrypted the internal drive
Start in Cmd + S mode and run the /sbin/fsck -fy command
Reinstall Mac OS High Sierra

After all this, I still get the same partitioning error as before.

How can I install Windows 10 properly with Boot Camp?

This question is possibly related to
  Disk Could Not Be Partitioned - First Aid not helping — I'm duplicating my
  answer here.

I had very similar problem. After contacting Apple Support and following their instructions, I've reinstalled macos (instructions here). This is not a wipeout reinstall, but do make a backup.

After the reinstall partitioning worked like a charm.

And so do Bootcamp installation.


MacBook Pro Late 2011 worth upgrading? I recently bought an MacBook Pro Late 2011 with an i7 2.2 GHz and 4 GB of RAM. I wanted to get started in some mobile development and learn how to work with macOS. So this was a good offer online.

Until now I am happy with this product. But of course 4 GB of RAM are not much when you develop.
I mainly want to work with React Native and eventually with libGDX.
My question is. Is it worth to upgrade to 8 or even 16 GB of RAM or is it a waste of money for this "old" MacBook? Can I expect it to hold a few more years?

I have a Late 2011 MacBook Pro (2.4 Ghz) bought in 2012. I have upgraded it with a SSD and 8GB RAM. I still run El Capitan as with Sierra the fans kick in often. I even tried High Sierra, but its slow. I use Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEs on it and they run well without any issues.

If you want to do mobile development (iOS), I believe you have to settle with Sierra as High Sierra may run very hot with XCode and iOS simulators. And if you are running multiple intensive tasks, then it will be laggy.

One more issue with Sierra I found is that CPU Kernel issue. Most of the time CPU Kernel will be busy with 300-500% CPU usage. You can upgrade the RAM to 16GB, but the development environment will be old as High Sierra could be the last compatible OS for this MBP.


MacBook  wireless router  cable modem Judging by the label in the Wi-Fi menu at the right of the top bar, my MacBook is connected just fine to the Siemens Gigaset SE567, which I'd like to use as a wireless router.

Judging by the lights on both the router and the cable modem (Motorola SB5101 Surfboard), that connection is also good.

But I am unable to ping anything outside. I'm also unable to ping the modem (if I connect to the cable modem directly by ethernet, pointing a browser to http://192.168.100.1 is all that's needed).

What's a good way to debug this problem? I "can't open the application TELUS High Speed Install Wizard" (the one that came with the modem) "because PowerPC applications are no longer supported" on Lion.

Edit

According to
http://www.networkoverload.com/forum/networking/turn_your_gigaset_se567_modem_wireless_switch_bridge_mode
one can indeed configure the SE567 as a wireless router, though I don't understand whether  more than one computer could then connect to the network.

After resetting the router, I was able to connect to its configuration at http://192.168.1.254/ (strangely, resetting did not wipe out the previous SSID name).

As the page above suggested, one needs to switch to the "bridge mode", but after doing so, I can no longer connect to http://192.168.1.254/

Since this is looking more and more like something that can be resolved by accessing the web servers on the two devices rather than by tinkering through System Preferences \ Network, it is not quite the right thing to ask on this forum. I will delete the question if it turns out the mac is incidental to the setup.

Most cable modems need to be reset after connecting a different device, as they only accept one computer host with a single MAC (Media Access Control) address. So try pulling the power plug.


Automator: extract PDF text and save in current directory I've made an Automator service for extracting PDF text and saving it in the current directory, and it works reasonably well.

It takes one or several PDF files, extracts the text, and saves it as separate .rtfs placed in the same directory as where the original PDFs was found.
Fine, excellent, except for one small rub: what is invariably also saved alongside the other .rtfs is an empty one (zero bytes), with the name of the current directory.

Looking at the workflow below, it seems like both variables ("PDF" and "Bane") are passed to the action "Hent ut PDF-tekst". Is my assumption reasonable, and in any case, how do I fix it?

The script in plain text:

on run {input, parameters}
 tell application "System Events"
 set thePath to POSIX path of (container of (item 1 of input))
 end tell
 return thePath
end run

As an aside, Automator automatically creates a PNG representation of your workflow when you save it, and it can be easily got at by revealing the package contents.
Genius me realized this only after a bit of faffing about with screen capture and GIMP.

Here is the issue I ran into with the translation of "Hent ut PDF-tekst" in Google Translate while translating from Norwegian to English, it translated as "Get the PDF text" so when I typed "Get" in the Actions Search Box it didn't show any PDF Actions with the "Get" Actions that did show.  Upon further examination I found Extract PDF Text and used it.

I was able to replicate the issue of a zero sized RTF file being created along with the one for the actual PDF file however I was not able to debug it as to why and I did try many different things. Through the Workflow it showed Bane as a Folder being the path to the selected PDF File but then converted it to the zero sized RTF along with the proper RTF file and to me it looks like a bug in Automator.

That said, I present a workaround that you can choose to use if no one else has an answer that resolves the issue without resorting to this workaround.

Add a Run Shell Script Action to the end of the list of Actions, setting Shell: /bin/bash and Pass input: as argument with the following code:

for f in "$@"; do
    if [ ! -s "$f" ]; then
        rm "$f"
    fi
done

Which translates to: If this file does not have a size greater than zero, then delete it.

BTW If you want to test the code first, you can temporarily replace rm "$f" with something like say deleting "$f" so you can hear what file it's going to delete. When satisfied it's going to delete the zero sized file, then put it back to rm "$f".

Here is an image of my Automator Service.


Magsafe to USB-C converter for charging Macbook Pro 2016 I have a few standard MagSafe 2 chargers left and want to use it with my new MacBook 12.

Are there any adapters I can use to convert these Magsafe chargers into USB-C chargers that work with the MacBook 12" or 2016 Macbook Pro?

Many marketers will ship and are shipping MagSafe to USB-C Adapter on the market:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-about-a-magsafe-to-usb-c-converter.1877907/

I bought two Magsafe to USB-C Adapter on Aliexpress but neither works.

The powering light on Magsafe-Connector is on and in the apple menu the battery loading symbol is active for a few seconds but the battery is actually not loading. The merchant gave me a refund after i showed him a video of the attempt.

Be sure you understand the return policy if you aren't willing to eat the cost for testing aftermarket chargers.


Ring fence CPU for a specific programme / process to stop it using to much I've just had an app run my CPU (as viewed in activity monitor) to 102% whilst it was running a compiling and installation task.

My machine was basically unusable as a result.

Is it possible to ring fence an amount of CPU for a task, so that
I could say that this application can utilize no more that 50% of CPU power? Presumably it would make the task around twice as long, but at least I would be able to do other stuff whilst the CPU-hungry app is running.

My computer is running macOS 10.12.

The figure in Activity Monitor is actually listed as 'percentage of one core' [which is why it can go over 100%] so this is going to depend really on how many cores you have.

I have found the simplest way to get the most out of a task like compiling whilst still being able to use the Mac as normal is to run a VM of your OS in something like Parallels - assigning it exactly your real core-count [ie half of your count including HyperThreading].
In practise, this will mean it uses one of each hyperthread on each core; giving maximum speed with maximum remaining potential.


Why am I not able to run a website which ‘requires javascript’ I am using an iPad mini 2. When I open this website in Google Chrome it says “This site requires JavaScript. Please enable Javascript to view the website.” Although I have enabled javascript, but still this website is not opening. Please help me.

The problem is that the web site is simply broken.

When your browser connects to a web site it sends along a so called "user agent"-string, which specifies which browser, browser version and operating system, you're using.

That specific web site uses that information to only show the real page to user agents that it allows. Others will be shown that incorrect page telling you to enable Javascript - which is misleading.

In order to access the web site from an iPad, you'll need to a use a browser that allows you to change your user agent. That is not possible with the standard Safari.

If you're on a Mac, you can enable the Developer menu in Safari system preferences. From the developer menu, you can choose "User Agent => Google Chrome - Windows", and then you get to the real page.


Sophos Threat "Adware or PUA" on Mac I was downloading a camera user manual on the Mac and Sophos threat manager indicated Generic PUA. I tried to automatically clean it up but the message came back that it required manual cleanup. What are the steps required to clean up the following location:

/Volumes/Installer/Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/AppYM

It's just a disk image containing Adware. Unmount it and delete the disk image, if you didn't open the app.


Why Is Mac Malware Less Frequent Than On Windows Systems? Whenever I ask friends, colleagues and acquaintances why they have bought an Apple Mac and switched from Windows, nine times out of ten the response I receive is:

"Macs don't get viruses"

Is it true that not one single virus has been identified on Macs ?

Is it also true that the majority of malware identified is in the form of trojans, of which the most famous one I recall was the Flashback trojan which created havoc this time last year (if I'm not mistaken) and was identified by the Russian company Dr.Web, which quickly brought out a removal tool, which was then followed by other Internet Security Companies who jumped on the bandwagon to say:

"See Macs do get Viruses"

Is the underlying reason that malware is supposedly less is because Windows still dominates in usage terms for most people, but eventually in a few more years, there will be just as much malware on a Mac as on a Windows PC ?

To answer your main question: malware is less common on Macs than Windows systems simply because people haven't written as much malware for Macs.

Any debates about which operating system is "more secure" than another one are not very meaningful. Neither OS X or Windows will ever be 100% free from security flaws, so there will always be potential vectors for malware -- not to mention trojans and social engineering. You need only look at the system updates to see that Apple is constantly patching security flaws in Mac OS X, just like everyone else.

If you were a malware author and wanted to get your malware onto as many systems as possible, wouldn't you target the OS with the largest user base? This is most likely why malware is much more common on Windows; so many more people have scrutinized it, looking for exploits.

  Is it true that not one single virus has been identified on Macs?

Assuming you mean "malware" in general, no, that's not true. In recent memory, the Flashback malware has been delivered by both a trojan installer (which tricks the user into giving it permission) and an exploit in Java (which doesn't require any user action).

  Is it also true that the majority of malware identified is in the form of trojans

I can't find any reliable data, but there have definitely been several trojans targeting Mac users in recent years.

  Is the underlying reason that malware is supposedly less is because Windows still dominates in usage terms for most people, but eventually in a few more years, there will be just as much malware on a Mac as on a Windows PC ?

It's hard to say for sure, obviously, because nobody can predict the future. Apple is obviously taking steps to try to keep Mac users as safe as possible (e.g., Gatekeeper), but again, OS X will never be 100% immune to security threats. It's just a fact.


Create bootable USB with multiple installers? I have a 64GB thumb drive and about a dozen or so installation ISOs I'd like to have on it.  I would like to be able to have a single partiton, so that if I boot to it I am given a GRUB-stle boot menu which will allow me to select which ISO to boot from. When I select an ISO, I want it to boot from that ISO on the thumb drive. Simple as that.

I have a 2011 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.12. What do I need to do to accomplish this task?

I'll answer each of your questions separately:

All on one partition

Not possible with the current state of technology. Apple's startup systems look for bootable partitions, not images. You'll have to partition your device if you want to put many systems on it.

GRUB-style boot menu and selecting ISO

Try using macOS' built-in Startup Manager by holding down Option on boot. This will show you a list of bootable partitions that you can boot your system from.

Installers

If you intend to put OS X/macOS installers on your partition, look into createinstallmedia. Provide the path to the installer under the option --applicationpath and the disk to put the installer on (and make bootable) under the option --volume. Example syntax as follows:

/Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app --volume /Volumes/somevolume


Can Mac App Store installs & upgrades be automated? How can I script installing or upgrading apps from the Mac App Store? I'd prefer command line tools, but AppleScript or some other API would suffice.

Relevant puzzle pieces:

installer: note especially the -store flag which is used to simulate App Store installs for package devs.
systemupdate: capable of handling updates to Apple apps, flags -i installs and -a tells it to install all available updates

Most people can just turn on automatic updates and let Apple manage all updates. If there’s a reason why you can’t or won’t do that, a command line tool does exist to automate App Store installs and updates.

One notable open source tool to replicate the Mac App Store from the command-line is mas:

https://github.com/argon/mas

To install:

brew install mas

Once it's in, you could update all the apps that are available with:

mas upgrade

If you don't want to trust third party software with your Apple ID, you could also automate your UI and can store the account name and password using keychain.

The Apple solution for non-App Store security patches and updates is to run the softwareupdate tool from the command line to update all software that Apple intends to be installed without user intervention or going through the App Store UI.

Currently on Lion and Mountain Lion - this means that the Mac will hit a local OS X server that is caching downloads for system updates and software installed outside the App store. If you don't have a local software update server, it will of course download files directly from Apple.

For Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and lower, - everything still comes through the App Store - so the Apple software like OS X updates is fully scriptable using this tool for updates and non-App Store updates only.

What isn't scriptable (yet or perhaps ever) are apps that are installed from the App Store like Xcode and Pages and third party applications. This means that you cannot just have one tool to update all the software without opening the App Store app and entering a password at the user interface screen.

What you can do is download the apps once and then copy the app to multiple macs as long as the Apple ID used to download the first copy of the app is also used on all of the Macs that will run the app.

I know of several institutions that buy one copy of each app for a lab of 20 computers to get a license for each seat, but then deploy one file to all the Macs so that once one update download is accomplished, a tool like Apple Remote Desktop or Caspar or a home made tool like scp or rsync is used to move the updated version of the app to all Macs in the lab.

If you go the route of individual Apple ID for each machine, you will not be able to script the installation of App updates since each will request the password for each account unless you are comfortable knowing all of the passwords and performing UI scripting where AppleScript can enter the correct username and password programatically and then click the button to begin the download process for each machine's updates. The way that app store apps are code signed makes it hard to just slide in an update without invalidating the package or somehow reverse engineering / jailbreaking the whole app store process and sidestepping the normal flow of letting the app installer do it's work.


Why is pip3 referencing Python 2 instead of 3? When I try to install Python pacakges using pip3 on macOS (Catalina) it searches Python 2 instead:
vger:~(61)+>- sudo -H pip3 install xattr
DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 reached the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Please upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 is no longer maintained. pip 21.0 will drop support for Python 2.7 in January 2021. More details about Python 2 support in pip can be found at https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/development/release-process/#python-2-support
Requirement already satisfied: xattr in /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python (0.6.4)
vger:~(62)+>- which pip3
/usr/bin/pip3
vger:~(63)+>- file /usr/bin/pip3
/usr/bin/pip3: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
vger:~(64)+>- which python3
/usr/bin/python3
vger:~(65)+>-

Which means of course that I can't install extra packages on Python 3.  Why is a utility dedicated to Python 3 accessing Python 2 paths?

Run
open /usr/bin/pip3 -a Textedit.app

Or general:
open $(which pip3) -a Textedit.app

The first line (shebang) would be point to python 2. Fix it by putting in the path to python 3 there.
I use conda environment, so for me it is:
#!/usr/local/opt/python@3.8/bin/python3.8

For you, it should be
#!/usr/bin/python3

or any other python executable that you want to use.

Alternate method is running pip by invoking python3.
python3 -m pip install xattr

https://stackoverflow.com/a/51055589/


Override the close button with hide instead One of my pet hates with OSX at the moment is that whenever I close an app (i.e. clicking the red button in the top left) then attempt to open it again using alt+tab I can't. I need to use my mouse or launch Alfred to open the app.

Ideally What I'd like todo is somehow override the close button with hide instead (hide as in cmd+h). By hiding an app, I can use alt+tab to retrieve it.

Any help would be great

There are two types of app in OS X.
Document-based apps can have multiple windows, and they only close the window when you click the close button (red cross). The other type of app has only one window; and when you click the close button it quits the app.

Cmd+tab in OS X doesn't behave in the way you are trying to use it; it is simply for switching between open apps in a similar way to alt+tab on Windows (but not identical). It doesn't open apps that have been closed.

It's not the answer you want to hear, but I'm afraid there isn't a way to override the close button globally; it is a part of OS X's AppKit and can't easily be overridden by third-party software.

An easier fix would be not to click close when you only want to hide an app. Try pressing Cmd+H instead, or perhaps minimising the window by clicking the yellow button instead of the red one.


Make Notification More Prominent Since I have a fairly large screen, I often miss appointments, even though Calendar showed a notification. But the notification is very tiny on the large screen and I ofter overlook it while being concentrated on my work.

Do you know any tricks or can you recommend any tools to better make me aware of Calendar notifications?

My ideas so far include a flicker of the whole screen — like some Terminal softwares do when encountering a bell signal (\b). Or maybe a fullscreen notification. Just about anything would do that catches my attention even if I'm extremely focused on what I'm currently doing.

(Edit: It seems someone else had this problem before: Create More Aggressive/Persistent Alerts)

I was hoping that the Accessibility preference combined with Notifications sounds would induce a screen flash but it does not...

However, have you looked at using Growl (for notifications) and OmniGrowl (specifically to enable iCal notifications)? This is good if you mainly want iCal notifications (doesn't work with a lot of other apps) and especially if you'd like to have a more notification-based desktop including other apps and want a more granular level of control over how your notifications appear to you. Growl has a lot of nifty other things it can do that can help with and it's super customizable.


In Mountain Lion why do remote shells via ssh do NOT inherit the environment of the launchd parent process? When logging in to my Mountain Lion Mac remotely via ssh I do not get the same PATH variable as when I open a shell locally: The local shell inherits its environment as expected from launchd and therefore has the PATH value I set in /etc/launchd.conf.

With the remote shell I hit a surprise: When I open a shell via ssh it does not inherit the environment variables set in /etc/launchd.conf although the related ssh processes all have launchd as their parents. Why???

A cut from a  ps -ef output shows:

UID   PID  PPID   C STIME   TTY           TIME CMD
  0     1     0   0 Mon01PM ??         9:07.07 /sbin/launchd
.
.
.
501   150     1   0 Mon01PM ??         0:17.99 /sbin/launchd
.
.
.
501 39994   150   0 Thu11AM ??         0:00.72 /usr/bin/ssh-agent -l
.
.
.
  0 74002     1   0  2:08PM ??         0:00.05 /usr/sbin/sshd -i
501 74005 74002   0  2:08PM ??         0:00.00 /usr/sbin/sshd -i
501 74000  9844   0  2:08PM ttys000    0:00.02 ssh bridge@bridgethegap.local

I can fix the issue by setting PATH e.g. in .bashrc, but I'm in search for a way to give the same PATH to all applications launched under Mountain Lion (see In Mountain Lion how do I set the PATH environment variable...).

So my question is: Why do remote shells via ssh do not inherit the launchd environment?

I've looked for an answer too and eventually found a related answer to this question, How to set system-wide environment variables on OS X Mavericks.

It is a security measure, particularly to ensure secure shell users with a disabled shell, where SHELL is set to /bin/false, cannot gain unsolicited access.

One workaround is settting PermitUserEnvironment in your ssh config; please read security caveats in above mentioned answer before doing this.


contact import/export I've got Verizon service with 3 devices, I've got an iTunes account. 2 of the devices are mine. I must keep the child on my iTunes account for 'find the iphone' app.
Is there a way to share my contact list from device to device within my account without it being accessed by the child?

Family Sharing, as suggested by @Tetsujin, is a perfect option for a child device.
It allows you to:

Share purchases
Set limits to purchases made by the child, or let they ask for purchases and approve remotely
Share Apple Music or music purchased from Apple
Share and see other family member's location on Messages or Find My Friends
Use Find My iPhone for all devices
Activate Restrictions on iOS and Parental control on macOS
Share calendars and Photos Albums

And it lets you fully sync your own data between your devices, because the accounts are independent.


How do Live Photos work technically? How do Live Photos work technically?

For example: what is the file extension for the captured photos? Is it a sidecar file? How many additional photos are captured before and after the main photo?

I would like some authoritative technical documentation as a reference.

According to 9to5mac:

  Details of the file format were tweeted by Daniel Matte after
  speaking with an iPhone product manager, and are consistent with a
  brief description in Apple’s iOS Developer Library.

The docs don't go into details, but it seems like it's just a set of files:

  The data of a Live Photo is exported as a set of files in a
  PHAssetResource object. The set of files must be preserved as a unit
  when you upload them to a server.

It's a bit disappointing, because they doesn't sound very interoperable or convenient.


"SafariBookmarksSyncAgent quit unexpectedly" Keeps Popping Up and Cannot Open Safari I updated safari to 11.1 yesterday and ever since it has been popping up the same message "SafariBookmarksSyncAgent quit unexpectedly" and it just continues to come back. I cant open Safari either because "Safari cannot be opened because of a problem".

I get following error in the log for both the Safari app and SafariBookmarksSyncAgent:

  Library not loaded:
  /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Safari.framework/Versions/A/Safari

  Referenced from:
  /System/Library/CoreServices/SafariSupport.bundle/Contents/MacOS/SafariBookmarksSyncAgent
  Reason: no suitable image found.

  Did find:
    /System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/Safari.framework/Versions/A/Safari:
  code signature invalid for
  '/System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/Safari.framework/Versions/A/Safari'

  /System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/Safari.framework/Versions/A/Safari:
  code signature invalid for
  '/System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/Safari.framework/Versions/A/Safari'

What ended up working for me was restarting the computer in safe mode.

Here's an explanation from an apple discussions post.

  Certain caches maintained by the system will be rebuilt.

  Safe mode is much slower to start up than normal. The next normal
  startup may also be somewhat slow.

  When the login screen appears, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and
  test. There's no need to log in while in safe mode.

  Note: If FileVault is enabled in OS X 10.9 or earlier, or if a
  firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a software RAID,
  you can’t start in safe mode. In that case, ask for instructions.

From: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7069199


iMac 4,1 does not have Boot Camp update I have found in Apple support that iMac 4,1 does not have Boot Camp drivers update.
I have installed Windows 7 Home Basic 32bit. So I will have to find an alternate solution for driver updating because it it necessary for good functioning.

Does anyone knows any solution?

What you have run into is a fairly common problem with any computer. Once they reach a certain age there stops being updates.

The problem is likely not just Apple. Consider that this Mac was released in 2006, going on thirteen years ago. I do PC/Windows support for a living and we have 5 year old computers with no driver updates available.

It is possible that if you find the make and model of the various components in your iMac (video, sound, network, bluetooth, WiFi, etc.) via Windows Device manager you may find some updates for drivers.

For example if you find that your iMac has a Broadcom L5105 (I made this number up for illustration purposes) chipset, then you would search for Windows 7 drivers for that particular chipset.

But I am betting that you are unlikely to find many (if any) driver updates for 13 year old hardware. Heck Windows 7 itself is end of life in just over a year and Microsoft won't provide any more updates to Windows itself after that.


How to restrict an iOS app to iPad Pro only? As a developer of iOS software, is it possible to restrict an App to only be available on the iPad Pro?

To be more precise, the App we are considering should be restricted to the Apple Pencil, which is currently limited to the iPad Pro.

Is there any way to restrict our App to those devices which support the Apple Pencil?

Within Xcode you can specify that an app is iPad only under the "Deployment Info" section of the target's General settings.

Beyond that the way to limit an app to certain devices is by specifying features in the Info.plist under the UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities key. You can see the options listed on Apple's developer website here: iOS Device Compatibility Reference

Unfortunately there does not seem to be an option that limits an app to iPad Pro devices only. You can specify "arm64" which will limit your app to iPad mini second generation and above, iPad Airs and iPad Pro devices. But I can't see an option that says devices that support Apple Pencil only.


Can Keynote on iOS play PowerPoint files with audio? I have a family member who's considering buying an iPad. The biggest needs she has is to see PowerPoint presentations with music/audio.

She currently has an iMac with Microsoft Office installed, and thus she can read 99% of the PowerPoint ppt/pptx file. I fear that the iPad might not be able to play any presentation's music.

How can this be done on the iPad? If this requires an app to be purchased, that's OK.

I have recently just put a presentation together which had music and a video and it played the same as on the computer using Keynote. There is another app (which I have not used) which might work better and be the first thing to try (it's free): Slide Shark.


Where can I find settings for app review requests? I recently updated to iOS 10.3 (14E5260b) and noticed one of the new features was a way for developers to request reviews from inside an app.

  Some App Store changes are coming in iOS 10.3, allowing developers to respond to customer reviews for the first time. iOS users are also able to label reviews in the App Store as "Helpful" or "Not Helpful" for surfacing more relevant review content, and Apple plans to limit the number of times developers can ask for a review. The update even adds a master switch that lets customers turn off app review request prompts all together.

(Source: MacRumors)

The last sentence about disabling these reviews is what interests me. However, both a search and Googling for this "master switch" has lead to no avail.

I've also looked manually through some menus. For example, I've searched these menus and sub menus:

iTunes & App Store
Privacy
Restrictions

Am I just missing something, or does this toggle not exist?

In iOS 10.3, this has been removed, though it was present in the beta.

However, there is hope!

Using the API (which will probably be the only allowed method for review requests going forward), developers can only schedule up to 3 review requests in a 365 day period.
Source: Apple Insider

This will lead to virtually no nagging, and it is rumored that Apple will stop accepting apps that ask for ratings using any other means shortly.

Though it is unfortunate that there is no switch to disable rating requests, this is definitely a step in the right direction, for both developers and users.


Screen protection for the iPad 3 Is it true a screen guard reduces the clarity of an iPad 3 retina display? I dont want to risk scratching such an expensive investment. Any recommendations on screen protectors which satisfy the following criteria?

Fingerprint resistant
Retains the clarity of the retina display
Anti-glare
Does not interfere with the screen sensitivity
Does not interfere with swiping (you know.. that resistance you get when you
swipe on plastic)

I had a matte protector on and it did points 1,3,4 and 5 really well. But I guess that's a given with matte screens. But it scattered the light too much that I took it off. Need recommendations on clear screens which meet all the above criteria.

There are several companies which offers you all 5 points.

I've got a lot of experience with the Zagg Invisible Shields. They offer great quality and lifetime guarantee. But they are a bit expensive though. Quality comes at his price.

Then there is BodyGuardz. A bit cheaper, lifetime replacements as well but I don't have any experience with it. And they don't seems to offer a specific protector for the new iPad, but the protector of the iPad 2 will fit.


Will running graphics/hardware intesive programs lower the "life span" of an iMac? Specifically, I just purchased a fully refurbished iMac G5 and I am interested in playing several old games on it (most likely Marble Blast Gold and Knights of the Old Republic). Although I know the games will run well on the computer, I am wondering if (generally) running graphics intensive programs will decrease the life expectancy of an iMac (specifically with regards to an iMac G5 Mid 2005 Model) in both the short and long run.

Will frequently running graphic/hardware intensive programs harm (in the long run) an older iMac?

Note- I am not looking for an opinion or subjective account, just some level of reasoning behind why it would or would not impact the computer (i.e. thermal paste wears down, processor runs to hot overtime, etc...)

I am still new at this so if my question is to vague or opinion based let me know and I can change it.

Mac hardware is designed to handle its maximum load without being compromised, so theoretically the answer is no.

In practice, as everything electronics or mechanical, if you push towards its limits you machine, every parts of its is subjected to major load and stress.
Wide variation in temperature can provide degradation to silicon properties and may cause failure or T-junction breakages if the hardware temperature watcher doesn't switch off CPU in time. The same is true for GPU.
From the point of view of HDD and SSD, they have a limited number of writes, and they are very sensible to temperature variation. In fact if you expose for long periods an SSD to temperature higher than 50 degrees, this can half is life.
Moreover, the more energy you hardware require the more fast you battery will drain, and the more often you have to reload the battery. Here you are contributing to increment the battery load cycles. Batteries have a limited lifetime before they lose their load capacity (it's around 900 cycles).


Why does Terminal swallow Ctrl+up/down keystrokes? In Terminal.app on Snow Leopard, the key combinations Ctrl+↑ and Ctrl+↓ don't get passed through correctly. Instead Terminal.app receives a single ↑ or ↓ key stroke.

I have verified this by running cat -v, which prints the code ^[[A for both Ctrl+↑ and ↑, and the code ^[[B for both Ctrl+↓ and ↓.

I have looked through the keyboard shortcut settings in System Preferences, but nothing is mapped to them. Furthermore, the keystrokes work in MacVim (I first noticed this issue when these keystrokes didn't work for me in vim in the terminal).

I'm also running iTerm2, which doesn't receive Ctrl+↑ or Ctrl+↓ at all (as tested with cat -v).

Where can I figure out what's eating my Ctrl+↑ and Ctrl+↓ keystrokes in Terminal.app and iTerm2?

In the Terminal preferences, go to Settings and select Keyboard in the panel. There you can set various key combinations to send whatever string you wish to the shell (or the program currently running).


How to install IFTOP the right way? I want to install IFTOP using Brew. However whenever I do it, I need to link it. The instructions given online doesn't work. It seems I need to type a PATH:(something here) every time before using IFTOP.

I'm using a 15-inch Retina Macbook Pro Late 2013. Can someone help me? I always keep my laptop updated to the latest. I don't use beta updates, if that helps.

Let me know how you can help me.

First instructions: http://macappstore.org/iftop/
Second instructions: Problem trying to install iftop via Homebrew

For the second instruction, export PATH=${PATH}:/usr/local/sbin
command has to be ran every time. Even saving to a document and linking it (as told in that link) does not make a difference.

/usr/local/sbin is not in your user's PATH variable. The most simple method is adding the path /usr/local/sbin to the file /private/etc/paths:

sudo nano /private/etc/paths

Modify:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

to

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/local/sbin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

and save the file to disk with ctrlO and  ctrlX. Then exit the shell or restart Terminal. This will change the PATH for all users.

If you want to restrict it to your user create and/or edit the file ~/.bash_profile with nano and add the line:

export PATH="/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"

Save the file to disk with ctrlO and  ctrlX. Then exit the shell or restart Terminal. This will change the PATH for your user only.

To install iftop with brew from scratch in High Sierra with prerequisites (Xcode | Xcode Command Line Tools) already installed , open Terminal.app and enter:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew analytics off #optional
brew doctor #optional
brew install iftop

and add the /usr/local/sbin to the PATH as described earlier.


Does Chrome consume more energy(battery) versus Safari? Does Chrome consume more energy(battery) versus Safari?

I've seen reviews denoting Chrome drains the battery more than Safari.

I'm comparing these browsers by myself to figure it out how much difference between them.

Doing Browser benchmarks and regular usage and so on.
Monitor Energy tab on the Activity Monitor.

After that, I don't think much difference between them as reviews saying.

How do you think about it?

Tell me your experience about browser energy consumptions.

Thanks in advance!

This question risks being closed because it's basically inviting people to share their opinions. Also, the reality is that the answer to this question may very well be different for different users.

For example, some users may only do basic browsing while others may use their browsers for more intensive work/play. It's quite feasible that one browser may be more efficient with some types of browsing, while the other is more efficient with other types of usage.

Also, different users will configure their browsers differently, and in some cases the hardware they have will also play a role. As an example, some users may have Chrome configured to use hardware acceleration when available (and it's availability will depend on their hardware).

The best way for you to answer this question is to do your own testing with your own hardware and using your browser as you typically would. And it seems from your question that you're already doing this.

Any responses from users (me included) who share their experiences with these browsers are not necessarily going to apply to your usage. And all answers will be equally valid, regardless of how different they may be.


How to sync multiple calendars (Exchange/Google) on a Mac? I have 2 calendars, connected to my Mac in iCal (but I am not wedded to that app);

Work provided Exchange calendar
My Google Calendar (also work, but provided by me)

I want to have both calendars in sync.. I like Google Calendar because I can use it over the web and I am just super happy and comfortable with it, I like the Exchange one to be in sync so everyone else can see my schedule.

I have another problem which I am trying to implicitly solve with this solution, and that is that invites no longer show up properly in GMail (they are plain text and I cannot "accept" them). They do show up however in my desktop mail app..

I would like to know if anyone have any ideas of an app for Mac/OSX (or even an online service) that can keep both calendars in sync (even with some restriction) with minimal ongoing manual work? I've Googled for a few hours with no result..

Thanks a lot in advance..

Daniel

Spanning Sync ($25/year) should do this. However, when I tried to use it I kept getting a crash (version 3.2/443).

BusySync ($39.99) should also do this [edit: I just got a note from BusySync support saying that this does not work for Exchange].

  You may now add and edit events, in iCal or Google, on any of the calendars you published or subscribed to, and the events will sync in both directions between iCal and Google.

However, when I set up my Exchange calendar to publish to Google, and modified the calendar inside the Google Calendar interface, the new modifications get clobbered the next time BusySync syncs. It does at least successfully publish the events on Google Calendar, though.


iTunes 11: Default Podcast settings I would like to change the default settings for all podcasts.

I know you can edit each one of them individually, but I would like to change the default for all to "Download All" and  keep "All episodes".

Right-click on any podcast and select Settings. Or if you are in list view, select the settings button in the lower-left corner:

In the Settings for: drop-down list, select Podcast Defaults, then select Download all and All episodes:

Make sure that all of your desired podcasts are using the new default settings by selecting each one from the drop-down list and checking that the  Use Default Settings checkbox is checked:

Update:
iTunes 11.1.2 adds a new dialog for changing podcast settings. Select Settings and select Defaults... to change the default podcast settings.

Update:
In iTunes 12.4.3.1 go to Podcasts, and click Defaults at the bottom of the list of your podcasts. Then you can set the default settings for all your podcasts (changed settings will also apply to existing ones if they're still set to default settings).


Macbook air 2011-mid keyboard keys Q W E R T Y U I O working sporadically I have an issue where only QWERTYUIO keys are working sporadically or just not working. I have to press them a lot of times to start working and they work for a while and stop again. I have tried reseting PRAM and SMC but with no luck. When I use the Keyboard viewer they keys are not even being registered when I press them.

Kind Regards

Had the same problem on my MBP13 mid 2012. After 2 months of research and almost spending $600 to replace the top case I found this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88cn_rtLo

I remove the top case of the key and gave a good clean and they start working again!!!

I know this reply is for an old post but I might help other having the same issue. If this doesn't work, it might be a hardware fault :/


Is Apple changing OS X branding to macOS retroactively? I have seen certain places where it is claimed that Apple is retroactively rebranding Mac OS X/OS X as macOS now that Sierra has launched. Some people disagree that this is occurring since as of now, not everything (not even the majority of material) reflects the change.

Is there solid evidence of this changeover?

Yes, there is proof of this change in several places.

First and foremost, it should be made clear that this change is not being applied to old OS releases in the sense that if you boot into an OS prior to 10.12 Sierra, and go to Apple menu > About This Mac, you will not see it suddenly say "macOS" instead of "Mac OS X" or "OS X". The change is in relation to documentation and references in updated software, such as the startup disk selection screen in Sierra.

Here is a screenshot to illustrate:

There are places on Apple's own website where the change can be seen (although, again, it is not nearly everywhere).

This developer page about Xcode states:

  Xcode 8 requires a Mac running macOS El Capitan version 10.11.4 or later.

In the description of a video from a session at WWDC 2016, there is this language:

  Launched last year with iOS 9 and macOS El Capitan, the new Transit feature ...

Found on this marketing page, in a footnote describing system requirements is this text:

  Some features require iOS 9 and macOS El Capitan.

There are a couple of Apple support articles, listed below, which refer to a number of OS versions in a row behind macOS.

If your web browser says that it's missing the Quicktime plug-in:

  This plug-in is no longer enabled in macOS Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite, and Mavericks.

Printer and scanner software for macOS Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite, and Mavericks. (This one is right there in the title.)

Other companies/projects are recognizing this, too, such as PostgreSQL:

  Apple has decided to rename Mac OS X to "macOS", and apparently is now retroactively referring to old releases that way too.


TouchBar keeps freezing The TouchBar in my new MacBookPro 2017 keeps freezing every time I use it to adjust the brightness of the screen. In order to circumvent this, I need to use the "Force Quit" command,  but is becoming really annoying.

Has this happened to anyone before? How should I fix the problem?

This is a known issue. The touch bar is quite finicky. Try these scripts in the terminal:

Kill touch bar - pkill "Touch Bar agent"

Refresh control strip - killall ControlStrip

Additionally, if the scripts didn't solve your issue and you are still under the 90 days of free Apple Care, I'd recommend taking it in. There are a number of things that could be wrong with it and it's really hard to diagnose + solve without a physical examination from an expert.


Is there an adapter / Dock / hub with 2 display outputs? Looking around I can only seem to find an adapter / dock that only has 1 hdmi output with usb,ethernet, etc.

Are there any adapters / Docks that have 2 display outputs? So then I can plug it into the macbook pro with thunderbolt 3 and output on 2 displays. without needing to buy 2 of these

Is it not possible because of the power consumption or speeds?

Thanks!

A lots of Thunderbolt 3 docks exists that will allow you to have 2 display outputs. Usually these are organized such that one display is connected to an HDMI or DisplayPort output on the dock, and the other is connected to the chained Thunderbolt 3 port on the dock which is used as a DisplayPort output.

For example you could use the Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Dock, the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock or the Caldigit Thuderbolt Station 3.

Note: Before you rush out and buy any of these make sure that you actually have got a Thunderbolt 3 enabled MacBook Pro or similar. Your question contains conflicting information as you claim to have a MacBook with Thunderbolt 3, which doesn't exist. The MacBook (2015, 2016 and 2017) have USB-C only.


Filtering out mailing lists on the server Apple Mail is good at filtering mailing-list email into my junk folder, and my iPhone is good at recognizing email from a list.  I'd like to move this capability to some server-side filter rules and unburden my phone. Unfortunately I don't know what it is that Apple Mail looks at to make its decision.

Can somebody please explain, in simple terms, what to look for?  I've tried 'from address contains' and 'subject contains' and 'mailing list contains' without much luck. Truthfully, I'm not sure what to put in 'mailing list contains' except that my email address isn't it. I am aware that I'll have to accept the lists I want before purging the ones I don't.

Looking for any help or advice on getting this set up.  My email server is Cox.

To implement server side rules, your server must support it.

There’s nothing in Apple Mail that can enable something on the server if the server doesn’t support that feature.

I searched Cox’s Support site for “server side rules” and found nothing.  Additionally, I found this message

  Cox Email is a free service that was included with all Cox High Speed Internet packages. As of August 15, 2019, Cox Email is no longer available to new users.

This pretty much means that while the service isn’t discontinued yet, there’s no further development.  So, if you’d like server side rules, you will need to find another provider.  I personally like Outlook.com as you get the Exchange like server features along with a OneDrive account and free online versions Office.


Can I use a foreign power cord to power my MacBook? I have a MacBook Pro computer and I will be traveling abroad to Hong Kong for studies. The electric sockets and voltage are different than here in the US so I would have to use a converter but it is a big hassle carrying around a power converter everywhere I go... I'm hoping to find another solution. If I purchase a HK MacBook Pro power cord will it work with my computer which I purchased in the US?

Yes, the MagSafe power adapters support dual voltage (100-240V).

According to the specs on Amazon for the 85W version:

  Input: AC 100V~240V 50/60Hz

So long as the local input provides power in that range, you'll be able to get a local MagSafe compatible cord and your US MBP will be fine.


Target Disk Mode & SMART This Question - Getting loads of Open error 5's when using Terminal to repair permissions - raises the question,

Does mounting a drive in Target Disk Mode bypass SMART, preventing any lockout if the disk is failing & you need to recover data?

In the past, I have always put suspected failing drives [often Windows NTFS drives] in a USB enclosure & attached to my Mac to scavenge/repair, as that way I am ignoring both SMART & any OS intervention from Windows etc.

For a Mac, would Target Disk Mode be just the same as an external USB for similar tasks, or could SMART potentially restrict operations?

Edit: Google would seem to think that SMART reporting cannot be carried over USB or Firewire, but that doesn't exclude the possibility of Thunderbolt. I cannot find any canonical answer even to the first two, though.

S.M.A.R.T is a monitoring system for HDD and SSD implemented in the firmware of a drive using two different standards: ATA and SCSI.

SMART data is usually written to a special service part of the platter/flash storage unit.

All modern interface standards and the underlying protocols (SCSI, FireWire, USB – with USB-(S)ATA-Bridges, eSATA, Thunderbolt, SAS) are basically capable of transmitting SMART-data.

SMART data is not actively transmitted to hosts, but has to be queried by the host-OS, applications or drivers.

Depending on the OS, the SMART application, the drivers and the build-in hardware the success of those queries may vary broadly. BTW to retrieve SMART data from external USB/FireWire-drives attached to Macs use this kext driver (compatibility list).

As a result Target Disk Mode doesn't 'bypass' SMART at all, because SMART is implemented in the hard disk. It's hard to say in general if operating systems (or application and drivers) are locking out failing disks based on SMART data.

I doubt that at all because

SMART isn't very reliable
the implemented attributes varies between manufacturers and hard drive models
the meanings and interpretations of the attributes and their values varies between manufacturers

At least i don't know of any such OS or application.

It's rather the OS in conjunction with the firmware and the (failing) hard disk itself which 'lockout' a device.


Spotlight, please don't show mail, but still let me search in Mail app When I search for stuff, even constraining with name:whatIwant, the majority of results are old e-mail messages and Safari history items.
How can I get rid of these results, but still search my email from within the  Mail program? I have already added the History folder from Safari to the Privacy tab and put the Mail app in there too, but the results still show.
I am using Mountain Lion at the moment.
EDIT: It turns out I already had Messages and Web history un-selected in my Search Results tab (see second screengrab below), but I am still seeing the results from Web pages and from current (not just archived) Mail messages.

My Spotlight privacy tab:

My Spotlight check boxes...

Some results from my search window:

In System Preferences -> Spotlight, go to the Search Results tab, and uncheck Messages and Chats.

This will still allow you to index and search from within Mail, but the results will not show up when searching via Spotlight.


Hot iMac 50 degrees celsius! So i have a late 2009 21,5 iMac and whatever i do it's sooo hot!
Like right now just typing this or watching youtube it gets up to 50 degrees celsius... It does not get any hotter than that and i'm not running any specific programs that are big. I have SMC Fan control but just asking should it be that hot? I know the aluminum case works like a heatsink but really 50 celsius hot???

The 21.5-inch, Late 2009, iMac has either a E7600 or E8600 Intel Core 2 Duo with a TCASE (Case Temperature is the maximum temperature allowed at the processor Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS).) temperature of 74.1°C and 72.4°C respectively.  So if the CPU is reading only 50°C, then it's not running hot at all.


Macbook's Arabic keyboard layout mistakes and missing characters! I'm familiar enough with the Arabic language, but not sure if those points down below are considered to be mistakes from apple designers or not, also I've checked with the official layout of Apple's docs and my mac device! So I'm hopping for a clear answer or more information. Thank you in advance.

Missing characters in the keyboard layout.

Arabic decimal separator ٫ Shift+ن or K U+066B is not labeled!
Arabic thousands separator ٬ Shift+م or L U+066C is not labeled!
Apostrophe ' Shift+ظ or Z U+0027 is not labeled!

Incorrect layout

Guillemet/Angle quotes « »

The layout is reversed! (Not sure about this as Arabic is RTL)

Shift+ش or A and Shift+س or S U+00AB and U+00BB

Left-pointing double angle quotation mark « U+00AB when pressed it gives a ».
Right-pointing double angle quotation mark » U+00BB when pressed it gives a «.

This is correct in English language since it is LTR but in case of Arabic it makes some confusion!

Appreciate any help or a clarification.

If the purpose of your question is to recommend that the printing on Apple's hardware Arabic keyboard be changed, the best place to do that is via their Feedback Channel.


OSX equivalent for reset On linux machines I used to type reset on terminal.

It was like, closing and reopening the terminal!
It is very convenient, because in debugging you wont mix error messages from previous executions.

The command does exists on OSX, however when i scroll up, the previous output is there too!

As you mentioned, reset does work in OS X, however you can combine it with ⌘ cmd + ⌥ alt/option + K to 'Clear Scrollback'. This clears Terminal's history scrollback.

Alternatively, you can just use ⌘ cmd + K to 'Clear All'. This works similarly to how you use reset in Linux.


How do I reduce iPhone data usage on my cell phone plan I have an iphone 5 as does my daughter on the same family plan.  I keep getting a charge for added data space.  how can we reduce the amount of data so that I can reduce my bill.  If I clear out all pictures, videos, messages and emails..will that help?

To conserve data, you can turn off background app refresh on some of your apps (found under settings) or you can go onto everyone's phones and do the same. The feature was designed to update your Facebook, Twitter and other feeds while your not in the app.
See what apps are using the most data (found under Settings > Cellular, then scroll down to Cellular Data Usage) you will be able to see a breakdown of what uses the most data, so you can prevent this problem from occurring again.
Make sure iCloud Photo Library is off or has the function that only uploads photos on Wi-Fi.
The App Store has recently been given privileges to update apps automatically, and iTunes can download new content automatically. Turn this off for cell data via Settings > iTunes & App Store > Use Cellular Data.


How to see public IP address of outgoing internet traffic when connected via router? There is this nettop tool which shows the IP address but it doesn't show the public IP address when the Mac is connected via router - it shows the same address as we can see using System Preferences' Network option. Does anyone know how to see the public IP address of outgoing internet traffic leaving my computer?

Another quick service is curl ifconfig.me

Add an echo afterwards to complete the line:

curl ifconfig.me && echo


Cannot cmd-click or option-click code in Xcode and other applications with non-Apple keyboard I have recently acquired a mechanical keyboard Corsair K70 (non RGB model) and have successfully used it with macOS Sierra (10.12.6). Everything works as expected with the exception of certain keyboard shortcuts within Xcode. One of which is Cmd + Left Click on a function name, which brings up an action popup menu as shown in the image below:

.

The same goes for the function documentation Option + Left Click:

The shortcuts work as expected when using the built in keyboard on the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017), but they do not work when using the externally  connected (usb) keyboard. The layout is English ISO/European as shown in the image below:

When trying the shortcuts on the mechanical keyboard, it feels as if the UI is glitchy and not fully processing the shortcut.

I finally found the solution to the problem. Basically when using the external keyboard, I installed a tool called CKB which helps with re-mapping keys. I originally believed this was required. However, from macOS Sierra and above this remapping of modifier keys like Ctrl,Cmd and Shift is now available in the System Preferences under Keyboard > Modifier Keys.

So the solution was to uninstall CKB reboot and set the custom mapping in the System Preferences

For more info I've included the link where I found the answer: https://github.com/ccMSC/ckb/issues/473


Can apps see your Apple ID? Let's say I installed an app from the App Store, and my Apple ID is johndoe@gmail.com. Is it technically possible for the app developer (a random person, not an app developed by Apple) to see information such as:

App installed by johndoe@gmail.com 24 April 2015 at 12:05 PM
App uninstalled by johndoe@gmail.com 20 December 2016 at 2:08 PM
App reinstalled by johndoe@gmail.com 15 February 2017 at 5:53 PM

Or is gathering information on which Apple IDs installed your app blocked by iOS? (I use iOS 10.3.1 on iPhone 6).

Further, if I deleted an app (for example, a game), and reinstall it, will the app be able to infer that I had installed it before (assuming my dynamic IP has changed because I turned Airplane mode on and off (I use mobile internet), that I reset the Advertising ID under Settings-->Privacy-->Advertising, and no other apps by that developer are also installed on my device)?

Thanks!

PS - Sources for any answers you give would be much appreciated!

No, apps can't see your Apple ID unless you allow it. Pro Tip: use a unique email address for your Apple ID, that you use for no other purpose. Also use unique email addresses for each app or service that you don't completely trust (i.e., all of them).

  By default, developers don’t have access to your Apple ID, just a unique identifier. If you give your permission, developers can use your email to let others find you in their app. You’re always in control of these permissions and you can turn them on or off at any time. Your data isn’t shared with developers, unless you choose to share or post publicly.

Our Approach to Privacy

Yes, it is technically possible for apps to know that you previously had their app installed. This was the cause of the recent Uber controversy:

Uber responds to report that it tracked devices after its app was deleted

Unfortunately, it's very difficult for users to prevent this. At the least, from what I've been able to determine, you'd have to not use iCloud Keychain to share data across devices, and you'd have to factory wipe your phone and NOT restore it from a backup.

See also:

What unique fingerprinting information can an iOS 10 app collect?


Change mac id of usb-c to lan adapter I recently got a Macbook pro 13 inch and I bought this docking station for all the ports I need. The issue is that my university network requires registration of mac id to use internet in campus and it's a cumbersome process. I already have a windows laptop that is registered so I wanted to change the mac id to start using my macbook. I followed this article to change my mac id, but I noticed two interfaces en1 and bridge0 have the same mac id, and I can only change mac id for bridge0 interface. Although changing mac id of bridge0 interface changes the mac id displayed in the advanced properties of Thunderbolt Bridge service in Network Preferences I still can't access internet. I am quite new to Mac OS and changing these stuff were quite simple in Windows, is there any way I can achieve what I want??
Update 1
I had a portable Windows installation lying around and I used it to boot into Windows on my macbook and I can change mac id and access internet perfectly on Windows, so it can't be related to any faulty hardware.
Update 2
After again booting into mac os now the interface in properly recognized in Network Preference as USB 10/100/1000 LAN and new interface name en7. I guess I only had to reboot after intallation of drivers but mac os didn't prompt me to do so. I followed the same article I linked before and trying to change mac id results in an error with message:
ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCAIFADDR): Operation not supported on socket

Also, using spoofmac as suggested results in same error as spoof-mac uses the same method to change mac id.

macOS has always been "iffy" when it came to spoofing MAC addresses unlike other OSes so it's not a (faulty) hardware issue.  It's more of a "how Apple likes to do things" issue.
My advice is the following (in order):

Get that MAC address registered with the university.
Use SpoofMAC to, well, spoof your MAC address.

Yes, I think you should just bite the bullet and register your MAC with the university.  Yes, it's a PITA, but the downside is simply too costly for the time you're attempting to save.  If they happen to catch you (and they can), you're going to face disciplinary action because in the end, you agreed to their terms of service whether you remember agreeing to them or not.
That said, there are genuine uses for spoofing your MAC address and to do so on a Mac, you can use SpoofMAC.  It's available via GitHub (see link above) or via Homebrew.
Once you have it installed, you simiply execute the following command with the actual MAC address and your network device as needed:
% spoof-mac.py set 00:00:00:00:00:00 en0

They also conveniently provide instructions for launching this at startup.


Headphones with inline mic mute button hangs up the call Any way to mute instead? I just have a cheap pair of wired headphones with an inline mic with a mute button. I'm using an old iPhone 5 since I just broke my Nexus 6 screen. In Android, this button was a very quick way to mute and un-mute calls, crucial during conference calls. I just tried this for the first time on the iPhone and it hung up the call instead. Is there anyway to change this behavior to mute instead?

No, there's no way to change this.  I really don't like that Apple has decided the single-click on the headphone switch will disconnect the call instead of muting the microphone.

You can do what I have and go here to provide iPhone feedback to Apple to make this change.


How to disable App from launching at startup (not in Login Items, ~/Lib/LaunchAgents, /Lib/LaunchAgents) I'm trying to prevent an app (Zoom) to stop launching automatically when I start the mac. Could someone suggest a way to prevent it from starting up? It's also not listed in ~/Library/LaunchAgents or /Library/LaunchAgents.

I solved it by disabling add Zoom to macOS menu bar in Zoom's settings.
The question now is why do apps have the right to launch themselves even when I didn't let them via any of the settings. Or why does adding to a menubar launch the app.


How to find a .peg file on iPhone? I found this problem showing up on El Capitan Photos.

Does anybody know how to find the .peg file?

Additionally, I think this error is related to why some of my photos are not being imported into Photos. Has anybody else experienced the same problem?

I think, but I am not sure that .PEG files on iPhone is the container for Google Snapseed when you save a modified image and want to preserve original to make modifications (non deterioring editing).


Vim Explorer "not an editor command" When I open MacVim (installed with homebrew) in the GUI, the Explorer works as expected.
But if I open "vim" in a terminal, I've got that message:

E492: Not an editor command: Explorer

But the netrw is installed. This is what return :scriptnames

4: /usr/local/Cellar/vim/7.4.712_1/share/vim/vim74/plugin/netrwPlugin.vim

vim --version

VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Aug 14 2015 16:38:12)
MacOS X (unix) version

brew info macvim

macvim: stable 7.4-81, HEAD
GUI for vim, made for OS X
https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim
/usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.4-77 (1905 files, 34M)
  Built from source
/usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.4-81 (1918 files, 35M) *
  Built from source
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/macvim.rb
==> Dependencies
Recommended: cscope ✔
Optional: lua ✔, luajit ✘
==> Options
--with-custom-icons
    Try to generate custom document icons
--with-lua
    Build with lua support
--with-luajit
    Build with luajit support
--with-override-system-vim
    Override system vim
--with-python3
    Build with python3 support
--without-cscope
    Build without cscope support
--without-python
    Build without python support
--HEAD
    Install HEAD version
==> Caveats
.app bundles were installed.
Run `brew linkapps macvim` to symlink these to /Applications.

I had no .vimrc yet, when I added a .vimrc file, the Explorer worked without any problem.

But even without .vimrc or .gvimrc, the Explorer worked correctly in MacVim.


Can different CPU on logic boards from the same overall A1369 MacBook Air work? I could get a Macbook Air (A1369, Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz, 4GB Ram) with a broken Logicboard very cheap and i have the idea to replace it with a A1369 1.7 GHz i5, 4GB Ram Logicboard (could get it also cheap)

So, I'm wondering how I would tell if the working i5 logic board would fit in the other chassis and work with the parts there?

There are 4 different CPU that fit that model A1369 according to iFixit:

http://www.ifixit.com/Info/ID-your-Mac/688

If you look at the battery removal step below for the two models you mention, you'll see the left side of the logic boards are physically different. Even in this remarkably similar case (everything else looks very, very close) I wouldn't spend more money than I was willing to lost on the second logic board.

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2010+Logic+Board+Replacement/4511/2#s20602
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2011+Logic+Board+Replacement/6368/3#s27426

You surely can find a replacement board for the Core 2 Duo logic board that will fit (and hopefully it will also be reasonable cost) so I'd say you might be best putting a 2010 logic board in with a 2010 Air and not mixing model years if you needed to be sure.


Problem activating TargetDisplay Mode for Mac Mini (2014) connected to iMac 21'' (mid-2010) I'm trying to use iMac 21''(mid-2010, Mavericks) as a display for newly purchased Mac Mini (late 2014) and I'm unable to activate TargetDisplay Mode. The devices are connected using MiniDisplay Cable and pressing Command-F2 or Command-Fn-F2 does nothing (tried in when logged off as well), the screen doesn't even blink.

Unfortunately, the Mid-2010 iMac 21" doesn't support Target Display mode. Only the 27" iMac from that generation does, which is why you are getting no response when you press CMD+F2. The Apple website offers more information here:


Safari mute tab while it isn't playing audio In Safari 14 on macOS Big Sur 11.2.1, How can I mute the current tab in Safari when it isn't playing audio right now?

I don't think you can.
Even if you add a key command, it simply doesn't respond & stays greyed-out unless there is actually audio playing. It doesn't even highlight if video is playing, if it has no sound.


"Vintage" Apple stickers Cleaning out my mother's basement, I found a "sticker album" that I kept as a child in the early 80s. A few pages of my sticker album contain these stickers -- maybe 12 in all -- all still attached to their backing and probably still "stickable":

Unfortunately, I don't remember where or when I got them.

I found it particularly unusual that the bottom "stripe" was so offset from the upper part of the apple and I'm not sure if that is a misprint or a deliberate evolution of the logo.

Can anyone tell me about these stickers and when they might have been released? It might have been before the Mac came out, but the same sticker album also contained a "Where's the Beef?" sticker which was the famous Wendy's ad campaign in 1984, the same year the Mac was released.
Do they have any value beyond nostalgia and hipsterism?

You're looking at the very first stickers and logos introduced by Apple Inc in 1975.
The font-face used here is called Motter Tektura and the WikiPedia info can be found here.

The logo itself is not a misprint, but as you can see on this image can be removed from the foil with a result a nice Apple (which is still used by Apple).

ps. can I have one? :-)


USB3 HDD on an USB2 port vs thunderbolt I need to buy a new HDD (>2To so no SSD solution, unless you know a very attractive offer) and I was wondering about performance knowing this :

MBP 2011 (2 usb 2.0 - 1 Thunderbolt);
7k2 HDD.

What would be the fastest solution : USB 3.0 on an USB 2.0 port or Thunderbolt (HDD speed is around 100MB/s) ?

A USB3 connected to a USB2 port will work as fast as a normal USB2.
With USB2 you'll get ~40Mo/s, with Thunderbolt you'll top the write speed of your HardDrive. So if you want speed, go Thunderbolt !


Increase KeyRepeat Speed in MacOS Big Sur It seems like the method to increase the key repeat speed further than
the settings allow as mentioned in this question no longer works in Big Sur:
How to increase keyboard key repeat rate on OS X?
Has anyone figured out a way to increase the Key Repeat speed in Big Sur?

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 1
defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 10

And turn off press and hold if you haven't: \
defaults write NSGlobalDomain ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

I can confirm they work because I am using these settings. Also make sure "slow keys" is disabled in System Preferences > Accessibility > Slow Keys.
Also, although it seems counterintuitive, I checked all my defaults for keyrepeat entries with defaults read | grep -i 'keyrepeat' and found that I had "KeyRepeatEnabled = 0;" in my com.apple.Accessibility defaults.
So maybe setting that to 1 would override the other above defaults and prevent fast key repeat.
To match my setting you can use the command:
defaults write com.apple.Accessibility KeyRepeatEnabled -bool 0

You need to restart your computer for all of these things to take effect! Logging off and on did not change anything for me.


How to mute a FaceTime iPhone call on OS X through a shortcut? When using FaceTime on OS X 10.10 to initiate a call using the iPhone, is there a shortcut that allows me to mute the call from the keyboard?

Is there a keyboard shortcut (or a way to setup a shortcut) to trigger the Mute function?

Yes you can! Here are the steps:

Open Automator and create an Automator Service, with a single Run AppleScript action, containing the following code:

High Sierra and later:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Notification Center"
    if checkbox "Mute" of window 1 exists then
        click checkbox "Mute" of window 1
    end if
end tell

Sierra and earlier:

tell application "System Events"
    if checkbox "Mute" of window 1 of application process "FaceTime" exists then
        click checkbox "Mute" of window 1 of application process "FaceTime"
    end if
end tell

Set the service to receive "no input" and to work in "any application", save it with a name of your choosing.
Now, go into the Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard preferences in System Preferences, and click on Services. The newly created service should be at the bottom, under the name you chose. Click on the service, then click on "add shortcut" to its right, and specify a shortcut to your liking.
You may have to grant Automator and/or FaceTime access in Accessibility in the Privacy tab of the Security and Privacy preferences.

That's it! You should now have a service set up, tied to the shortcut you chose that can be accessed from anywhere.


What does "each user must type in their password before they will be able to unlock the disk" mean? I am setting up File Vault 2 on my Macbook Pro under Yosemite and I see the following message,

  each user must type in their password before they will be able to
  unlock the disk

I don't actually have the password for the other account on the computer to verify the behavior to expect from the Admin account.

What exactly will this user see when they login? Will they be able to use the computer or will I have to unlock the disk for them and reconfigure FileVault?

Essentially all users not enabled won' t be capable of unlocking the disk.

If you hit Continue, your Mac will be restarted
All users not enabled previously will not appear at the first login screen and thus won't be able to unlock the disk.

Once the disk is unlocked, all users may be used though. Even the  previously not 'enabled' users are available by 'user switching' or a 'second' login screen.
After logging in with an enabled user your system will be encrypted.

You may enable users subsequently by clicking the lock and 'Enable User...'

Enter the user's password and click OK, then Done

All users enabled subsequently will reappear at the first login screen, may unlock the disk and log in as usual.


Battery on iPhone 6S Plus quickly diminishes and reboots every few seconds after being in cold weather. After my iPhone 6S Plus was in cold weather -8*C Skiing with the iPhone near my body, my iPhone loses battery very quickly, decreases by 1 percent per 15 seconds just on the home screen with no apps open. Every few seconds of use the iPhone screen will go black and a circular loading sign will appear (no Apple logo) and it will go to the password screen soon after. I know that cold weather increases the internal resistance of Li-ion batteries, but surely no permenant damage when it was not even being used?

you might wanna take this opportunity - Apple have sent a message to their customers offering $29 battery replacements for any and all iPhone 6 / iPhone 6s etc phones that are experiencing crashes/reboots and worse battery life. Hope it helps! The link is at
https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/
Here are the bits that might be of most use to you as information:

To address our customers’ concerns, to recognize their loyalty and to
regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions,
we’ve decided to take the following steps:
Apple is reducing the price
of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to
$29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be
replaced, available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be
provided soon on apple.com.
Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS
software update with new features that give users more visibility into
the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves
if its condition is affecting performance.
As always, our team is
working on ways to make the user experience even better, including
improving how we manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as
batteries age.


Option Shift word selection doesn't work in Visual Studio Code on Mac OS Big Sur I can't exectly say when this started, but from some version of Visual Studio Code Option + Shift + Right Arrow/Left Arrow selection stopped working. Currently I use macOS Big Sur, but I am almost sure that this started before upgrading to Big Sur. Can anyone help me to fix this?
UPDATE: I use macOS Big Sur 11.2.2 and VS Code 1.53.2.

UPDATE 2: OPTION + SHIFT + UP/DOWN Arrow works for me, actually this shortcut adds one more cursor to other line.

UPDATE 3: This is not shortcut probelm:

The fact that opt+shift+up/down work seems to suggest that this is an keybinding issue.
Under your VSCode keybindings, check to see if the keybinding cursorWordLeftSelect and the corresponding right select ones are active. If they are active, check to see if any other extensions override these shortcuts (by searching for the keybind: opt+shift+left).

Hopefully this fixes the issue.


RAM intermittently not recognized My MBP will sometimes drop 4 of the 8G of RAM I have after recovering from sleep or a reboot.  One (or more) restarts later I'll have all 8G again.  Is this a memory stick going bad?  Could it be something worse?

Yes it could easily easily be a bad connection on the ram chip or just bad connection of the RAM stick with connector on the motherboard. Try to clean RAM connectors with a gum eraser first.

To test memory under load you may also use Memtest86+ CD if your MBP is Core 2 Duo one or Apple Hardware Test from included CD if yours is "Core i" one.


Can't change my store back after adding prepaid credit card I went to Japan, changed my store to Japan and added a prepaid credit card to purchase apps. Now I am back in Dubai and I can't change the store to Dubai now. My WhatsApp is about to expire in 1 day.

you probably have money left on your Apple account which you created in Japan. the other possibility is that you may have some subscriptions to which you subscribed in Japan (for example, Apple Music, any news papers and so on).

so you would have to spend all that money or unsubscribe to be able to change the store


Build a second camera into an ipod My ipod has a selfie camera but not a second camera.

Can you actually build a camera into an iPod?

No, even if you managed to physically connect the camera to the device in that way, iOS would not interact with it as it is an iPod touch without such a camera.


iPhone doesn't show location in certain apps My iPhone 4 has several apps that I use location services on. But one set of 2 apps from the same developer will not show my location. They are enabled in Location Services, and show a grey arrow to show they have requested  location, but will not provide a location on their maps. I have a GPS Status app which reports at the correct location, as does google maps etc.

The apps have been removed and re-installed. reboots of the hardware have happened.
I'm wondering if there is a hardware fault, as the developer of the app reports no similar problems with iPhone users.

PS: iPhone 4 A1332 version 6.1.3 (10B329)

Very strange, by any chance do you have restrictions on under general settings? - would have left this as a comment but the arbitrary restriction due to "reputation"  means I have to leave it as an answer or not try to help at all. Well designed.


Mounting a remote SCP or SFTP share on Mac I use Fuse4X and ForkLift to mount a remote directory (a dev server). I use PHPStorm to open projects and source (/Volumes/dev/project_path), but sometimes it happens that Forklift freezes (in Activity Monitor 100 and more percent cpu). To solve this I have to kill Forklift, remount and reopen project.

Any idea or tip for better mounting?

Seems https://mountainduck.io is where it's at:

  Mountain Duck lets you mount server and cloud storage as a local disk in the Finder.app on Mac and the File Explorer on Windows. Open remote files with any application and work like on a local volume.

If you find other alternatives, add them at https://alternativeto.net/software/mountain-duck/


How do I get curl to work with SSL endpoints? I continue to get the following error when trying to curl an https:// endpoint:

curl: (1) Protocol "“https" not supported or disabled in libcurl

I've tried manually installing with --with-darwinssl:

wget https://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.58.0.zip
unzip curl-7.58.0.zip
cd curl-7.58.0
./configure --with-darwinssl
make
sudo make install

I think this is installing to /usr/bin/curl but I've tried this one as well as what's in /usr/local/bin/curl and continue to get the same result. From the -V details, it seems like SSL should be enabled:

/usr/bin/curl -V
curl 7.54.0 (x86_64-apple-darwin17.0) libcurl/7.54.0 LibreSSL/2.0.20 zlib/1.2.11 nghttp2/1.24.0
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: AsynchDNS IPv6 Largefile GSS-API Kerberos SPNEGO NTLM NTLM_WB SSL libz HTTP2 UnixSockets HTTPS-proxy

I've also tried:

brew uninstall --force curl
brew cleanup --force -s curl
brew prune
brew install curl --with-openssl

But no luck. I'm about out of ideas here, any help is appreciated

Protocol "“https" not supported
          ^

See that extra quotation mark? That's a curly quote, not a normal double quote. curl thinks the protocol is literally called “https.

I bet you copy/pasted a URL from a web page which included that symbol and curl is trying to interpret it as part of the protocol. Remove it, and curl should start working as expected.


Hotkeys don't work in zsh when $TERM is set to screen-256color As per various other discussions I bound opt+<- to 0x1b 0x62and opt+-> to 0x1b 0x66. This works great in zsh, but not in tmux.

In tmux opt+<- does jump backwords per word, but also seems to do some mode modification… when typing s afterwards, the character under the cursor will be deleted.

I also have issues with cmd+-> (0x05) and cmd+<- (0x01) – in zsh those keys navigate to the end and the start of the line, but this doesn't work at all in tmux.

I don't think there are any keybindings for these hex codes, so I assume something gets lost on the way from iTerm2 to tmux… Calling read in zsh directly and in tmux outputs the same codes for the opt bindings mentioned above, but it doesn't output anything for the cmd bindings in tmux.

Edit:

I experimented a little bit more and discovered that the bindings work fine when using /bin/bash in tmux and only break when using zsh in tmux. I even tested /bin/zsh without loading .zshrc to check if something is wrong with homebrews zsh, but the bindings are broken there too. It seems like this is actually an issue with zsh.

Edit:

More experiments! This seems to be connected to the $TERM environment variable that is set to "screen-256color" by my .tmux.conf – this seems to be correct to get the colors working, but as soon as zsh runs with this environment variable, the navigation stops working. Running TERM=screen-256color zsh reproduces the issue.

Seems like I finally found an answer! Or rather a workaround, since I'm still not sure what exactly is going wrong.

Explicitly configuring the key binds for word navigation fixed the issue for me:

bindkey "^[f" forward-word
bindkey "^[b" backward-word

Maybe zsh is using different keybindings based on $TERM.


How to compile with Command Line Tools for Xcode after deleting the Xcode.app application bundle? I first had Command Line Tools for Xcode installed and then installed the Xcode app. I have now deleted the Xcode.app application bundle but still have Command Line Tools for Xcode installed.

However, now when I try to compile via Terminal it says:

  xcrun: error: active developer path ("/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer") does not exist, use xcode-select --switch path/to/Xcode.app to specify the Xcode that you wish to use for command line developer tools (or see man xcode-select)

Before I had the Xcode.app installed, it compiled just fine via the Command Line Tools for Xcode. How can I again compile via Command Line Tools for Xcode now that I've deleted the Xcode application bundle?

If you now only have the Command Line Tools for Xcode installed and having deleted the Xcode.app application bundle, then you need to run the following command in Terminal to use the Command Line Tools for Xcode.

xcode-select -switch /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools


How can I try to boot a completely stuck Macbook Pro? I have a retina MBP that according to my mum was working last time she put it under charge (with 15% left). However, as of now, I get no reaction at all after pressing the boot key. The screen stays off and I hear no noise. The computer has been under charge for several hours, but the charge indicator is not turning to green.

The laptop is under (European) warranty for the next few months. However, I'm reluctant in trying that route because I think it would be denied (at a charge) and I don't have file vault enabled.

Is there something I can try myself? I'm the kind of guy with a oscilloscope on his workbench.

Edit: The MBP started to work again out of the blue today without any action from my side. See my comment here.

It could be something as simple as the MagSafe DC board or it could be the whole logic board. See below:

Normally, I wouldn't recommend that a user change out this part as Apple goes out of their way to make a complex assembly, but since you have an oscilloscope on your workbench....

The part is relatively inexpensive as compared to a logic board and I have fixed MacBooks where this component has failed.  Ifixit has excellent tear down instructions on how to get at this component.

You didn't specify which specific model, so I grabbed the 2013 model for reference.  The link is:  https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Early+2013+MagSafe+DC-In+Board+Replacement/17055.

If it isn't the right model, you can find the correct one on their site.  I hope this helps...