How to enable "larger text" scaling slider on a 2k monitor? I have a Mac Mini (late 2014) connected to two Dell U2515H monitors, which have 2560x1440 resolution.

Problem: everything (macOS UI elements) is too small at this native resolution.

I was able to force "HiDPI" mode, using the command below.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool true

The result looks nice and sharp, BUT everything is too big when using the 1280x720 HiDPI resolution.

What I need is a scaling in between these 2 options (100% and 200%).

It seems that macOS has this option (several levels of scaling available) on their iMacs and MBPs:

Is there a trick to enable this slider with my monitors?

Search for ResolutionTab on the app store. It's only a couple of bucks and works well on my 2009 MacPro.


iCloud Photo Library on multiple devices: how to keep a centralized location for originals? Say you have 3 devices MacBook, iPhone & iPad.
You start storing all your original photos on the MacBook, as you want this to be the centralised location. iPad & iPhone are configured for "Optimised Storage".

As soon as you start shooting pictures with your phone, originals will be stored on phone and MacBook. Or images are uploaded from phone full quality and then downloaded to MacBook as unmodified originals and left on phone as smaller miniatures?

When you shoot something with the iPhone, it is full sized only if

It is recently clicked or opened.
It has not been uploaded to iCloud.

When iCloud gets the full size image, and iPhone gets low on storage, image is downsized.

When MacBook syncs the photos, it downloads the full size image and keeps it.

When iPad gets the photo, I don't know what happens in transition, but ultimately, it has only a thumbnail.


Get notes text with shortcuts app I need to create a "Choose from" script on my shortcut project. I have a list of values in the note for that purpose. How can I add this list to "Choose from" step? "Find Notes Where" gives a list of notes (criteria is set to find exact list of values). After that I tried to use Copy Item from List to clipboard and Choose from Clipboard. It gives only the header of the note. What method will help?

Given the following note text:

List of things
The first thing
Another thing
One final thing

You can get the list by splitting the content of the note by new lines, then omitting the first item from the list (to avoid the heading).

You can get this shortcut at https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/3822bfae808d4abca332d643250d160e


How to add custom extension for QuickLook? Does anybody know of a method of previewing .WebM files in QuickLook?
 I've searched on google but didn't find anything helpful.

You could try adding it via the .plist file.

This guide will explain how to do it.

To summarize the steps:

Go to the applications folder
Locate TextEdit.app
Show Package Contents
Edit the Info.plist file


Clear "Other Volumes" storage in Disk Utility I have around 7 GB of stuff labeled under Other Volumes in my disk. What is using the storage reported under Other Volumes in Disk Utility and how to remove it?

I am running macOS High Sierra.

No, you can't remove it.

Along with the startup volume on which the macOS is installed, there are additional volumes which are created and used by your Mac. These other volume(s) are hidden and some of them are not even mounted.

To list the volumes, run:

diskutil list

The occupied storage space of all such hidden volumes is aggregated and reported under Other Volumes in Disk Utility.


MacOs Numbers and tricks with braces Has anybody played around with using braces in a formula? Syntactically, they seem to define collections inline in a formula. It would be great if we could figure out how to define multi-row collections. My apologies for not making this inline code but I think the paste is clearer.

But to give an idea of what I am talking about, the following will produce 2.

MATCH(TRUE,{FALSE,TRUE,TRUE},0)

Well, thank you Solar Mike, looking at Excel documentation gave me the answer to my question about how to define an inline collection with rows and columns.

My mistake was trying to use C++ array initializer syntax. Instead you use a semicolon like so:

=ROWS({FALSE,4;TRUE,5;TRUE,6})
=COLUMNS({FALSE,4;TRUE,5;TRUE,6})
=VLOOKUP(TRUE,{FALSE,4;TRUE,5;TRUE,6},2,0)

The first statement produces 3, because the semicolons signify a new row. The second statement produces 2, because there are two comma-separated elements between each semicolon and commas signify a new column. And finally the VLOOKUP produces 5, the value of the element in the second column of the second row which is returned by VLOOKUP.

Et voilà!


MBP 2010 external monitor not waking Up until recently my MacBook Pro 2010 worked fine with an external samsung monitor, using a mini display to HDMI cable. At the time I was running Mountain Lion. Then a few months ago, still running mountain lion, the monitor started not waking up with the mac. The only solution now is to unplug the monitor and plug it back in. I have to do this 2 or 3 times now before it will work. Also, now it no longer works in target display mode: if i close the lid of the mac with an external keyboard and mouse, everything sleeps. Then when I open the lid, the monitor doesnt wake up.

Unplugging and plugging in the cable cannot be doing it or the socket many favours. Also I am ending up leaving my mac on all the time so I dont have to go through this routine (set to never sleep).

I dont see why, running the same OS, why this would just start happening. Perhaps Apple updated something that caused this problem?

Does any one have any ideas? this is highly annoying. I was thinking maybe a Mavericks upgrade might fix this issue, but then it might cause others. Ideally I don't want to do that. I have tried resetting the SMC and the NVRAM.

Based on your reply, first to check is the cable or connector.
Software does not randomly connect or disconnect and because you say it works after you plug-in and un-plug the cable a few times it works... the cable might be broken.

If you have a replacement, try it - else you could buy one (and return if it does not solve the problem). Based on your reply with VGA it works fine, I would definately buy a new cable/connector.


DIY fix for iPhone 5 sleep-wake button issue So I bought my iPhone 5 in the US and it recently developed the sleep/wake button issue that Apple is fixing for free. Unfortunately, I am not in the US and cannot avail the free repair since the warranty isn't international (although by the serial number alone, it qualifies for a free repair).

I was wondering, can I simply replace the sleep/wake button myself given I find the required parts online? Any other remedy for this issue?

PS: Mailing to someone in the US isn't an option for me. I'm ok voiding the warranty.

Apple's warranties are world wide however you may give up walk-in service by some authorized repair centers if they don't want to take that repair. You can arrange service in the US (since your original purchase was from the US) over the web or by phone. The mail in procedure is clearly explained at https://ssl.apple.com/support/iphone5-sleepwakebutton/

I've never heard of actual Apple stores not offering to help facilitate a US repair - even if it's helping you arrange a mail in service, but perhaps something new is up or it's a temporary delay due to parts shortage.

That being said, there's nothing preventing you from opening up the device and putting in a new sleep/wake button. For some, that "surgery" is way too hard for their skill level with tools and for others, it's a "piece of cake" since they are either trained or have the natural aptitude for repair of delicate electronics. If your device has the covered issue, it is caused by a mechanical failure and/or electrical failure of the switch itself.


Finder always opens as a small window on the top left corner of the screen Finder always opens as a small window on the top left corner of the screen. I adjust the window size, position, but after a while when I open the window again it opens as a small window on the top left corner by sticking to the menu.
This happens in any view mode: list, columns, etc. If I relaunch Finder it helps for a while, but then the problem comes back. It happens in Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur. This is terribly annoying.
Any ideas?

It may be that someone or something has changed the permissions on the .DS_Store file in that particular directory.  Changes you make to window geometry and such are stored in that file.  If you made changes while logged in as another account, then that account may be the owner of that file.
But if you type open /tmp in Terminal, and you get the same window geometry, it’s probably something different.


Rsync keeps copying the same file I have used rsync for many years between linux filesystems without any problem with a very deterministic behavior. Now I try to use it on mac and experience some problem that some files (a small proportion of my 600000 files) gets copied over and over.

Here is what I tried:

Moving from MacOS rsync 2.6.9 to rsync 3.1.3 (from brew) did not solve the problem.
Giving some large time interval in order to avoid possible clock skew did not resolve the problem.
I saw in some other answers that a possible problem is the utf-8 vs utf-8-mac characters. I understand that it can be a problem but I am ready to accept ascii filenames for the purpose of having linux and mac coexisting. The files in question have ASCII file names.

The weird think about it is that this unexpected behavior is completely deterministic. The same file ListDebug/ForDEBUG gets copied over and over. Yet the file ListDebug/ForDEBUG2 which is next to it was not copied over and over.

Any indication on the origin of this strange behavior would be much welcomed.

EDIT: I found some more info when copying only the directory ListDebug.
When I run rsync -vadi -e ssh remote:ListDebug . I get

mathieu@MacBook-Pro: rsync -vadi -e ssh remote:ListDebug .
>f.st......... ListDebug/ForDebug
mathieu@MacBook-Pro: rsync -vadi -e ssh remote:ListDebug .
>f.st......... ListDebug/ForDEBUG
mathieu@MacBook-Pro: rsync -vadi -e ssh remote:ListDebug .
>f.st......... ListDebug/ForDebug

Thus there is some oscillation between one print and another. That really sounds strange and a bug.

EDIT2: The file ListDebug/ForDebug gets copied but become named ListDebug/ForDEBUG and the file ForDEBUG never gets copied.

EDIT3: If I change the content of ForDebug/ForDEBUG to something standard like TEST1, TEST2 then the bug remains. On the other hand if I rename the files ForDebug/ForDEBUG to file1/file2 then the bug disappear. Ve

To summarize the comments: rsync does not handle the transfer of files between a case-sensitive filesystem (typically used on Unix/Linux), and a case-insensitive filesystem (typically used by Windows and MacOS).

When 2 different source paths (eg d/x and d/X) are the same after notional conversion to, say, lowercase, then rsync does not notice, and may transfer d/x, then overwrite the same destination file with d/X.
If the files do not contain the same data, and have the same timestamp, the files will always be updated on future rsync runs.

There does not seem to be any solution proposed by rsync. One can identify potential problems by going through the source files to list the ambiguities:

find . | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | LC_ALL=C sort | LC_ALL=C uniq -d

Alternatively, a case-sensitive destination can be created.


How to do voice chat with iChat by configuring Google account I have a Gmail account. I have configure it with my iChat. I can do normal chat, but I can not do voice chat with my other friends who have a Gmail account or are using Google Talk. So, how can I configure my iChat to do voice chat with them?

You need iChat as a client on both ends. After this it will be automatically available.


Switching from a Mac Mini HTPC to an Apple TV: what solution for watching these mkv files? I use a 2009 Mac Mini. I almost thought it had died but false alarm. Regardless, it got me thinking about the future. I currently use my Mac Mini to, in no particular order:

watch the occasional DVD (no longer Netflix but RedBox from time to tie)
stream TV shows from Hulu, Netflix
download stuff via torrent
watch said stuff via VLC (it's usually a mix of mp4 and mkv)
do some web browsing

Clearly if I move to the Apple TV, torrenting is off, but that can be done via another computer. DVD watching is not a big deal and could be replaced by iTunes or Amazon rental, and rip some of my own DVDs. The biggest problem is how to watch the stuff on the Apple TV. If I attach a drive to my Airport extreme, any chance I can stream at least the MP4 to the Apple TV? Any chance to Airplay from another computer using VLC? Will this be solved when Apple opens up the Apple TV to developers (VLC,Plex)? Can these be installed on a jailbroken ATV? It looks like it for Plex. Anyone has any experience with it?

I'd recommend the Plex approach, not the Airplay solution.  If you can handle the jailbreak (ATV2 only!), it's the best approach out there for non-iTunes movies on your ATV.  And, I hate to say it here, consider the Roku, which is really cheap, officially supports Plex, and should be able to play anything you throw at it.


MAMP html source folder Hi i'm a newbie to Apple products, I installed MAMP on my Mac and now have no idea where the default folder where all the html files are put go to. Also new to web development. Anyone help?

In the MAMP application, click on "Preferences..." then go on the "Apache" tab.
There you will be able to locate the default folder. You can create a new one and set it as default there too.


gifs in slideshow or screensaver Is there any way to show gif (animated) images in a slideshow or a screensaver? The screensaver app does not animate the gifs and the only way to view gifs is through Quick Look.

I made a tiny screensaver that can play GIF's and can run in background. It is free and I upload the source code to Github so that every one can look how it is done and participate in further development.

Here is the Github project page:
https://github.com/Waitsnake/AnimatedGif

And here a ZIP of the compiled screensaver can be found:
https://github.com/Waitsnake/AnimatedGif/releases/latest/


Why my mails sent using Apple Mail have blank body in Outlook? When I send emails using Apple Mail to my colleagues (they use Outlook on Windows, various versions), it often happens that the mail looks blank and its body is split into various attachments.

Even the signature and the signature's images are moved into attachments. How can I solve that?

Looks like I found a solution. In the options screen, select Composing. Then, under When quoting text in replies or forwards select Include all of the original.


Automator: Using Cmd F in a "watch me do" and trying to make decisions based on the results Using automator, I have navigated to a website that required a password, pulled up a page and need to search that page for a word.  Let's say the word is "flowmaster" for example.  I had Automator do a 'watch me do' and typed Cmd-F to search that page.  I type in flowmaster and it returns in the spotlight command line 0 matches.

Let's say I want it to keep re-searching the page and when the word 'flowmaster' comes up as a match, have it send an email to me to alert me that it is on the page.  When I have Automator 'get text from  webpage' or 'get contents of webpages' it just returns the title of the page or the opening page of the website.

To show you what I am trying to do, type "command F" now, then type in "flowmaster"  it should say to the left of the spotlight search 4 matches and the left/right arrow keys.  That is the data I am looking for.  Is there a way to have that 1 match information trigger an event?  Like, if there is 1 match, send email saying "one available".  The problem with the 'watch me do' is that there is nothing there for most of the time, but when the word pops up on the website, I need it to alert me.

Is this possible?

Automator's "Watch Me Do" functionality is pretty limited, as you've discovered. Additionally, imitating how a user might go about something isn't always the best way to automate things — for example, the computer doesn't need to open up a browser window and use the find panel to search the text of a webpage, it can just download the data and search it without need for any of the GUI niceties.

Automator Email Notifications for Matching Text on a Site

Add a Get Specified URLs action. Add to it the address of the page you want to check.
Add a Get Text from Webpage action and make sure the dropdown is set to plain text.
Add a Run Shell Script action, with the shell set to /bin/bash and the input setting to to stdin. Enter the following text, replacing search term with the text you want to match (be sure to keep the quotes if the string has spaces):

grep -o "search term" | wc -l | tr -d " "

Note that the search is case sensitive.
Add a Run AppleScript action, and insert the following text, replacing me@example.com as appropriate:

on run {input, parameters}
    if input > 0 then
        tell application "Mail"
            set theNewMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:"Found Matches", content:"Found " & input & " matches", visible:false}
            tell theNewMessage
                make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:"me@example.com"}
                send
            end tell
        end tell
    end if
end run

You can replace the subject and content, but be sure to properly format them as AppleScript strings (I'll leave this as an exercise to the reader, it's fairly easy to figure out, Google if necessary).

That will send an email if there are any matches for the string on the site. The AppleScript is used instead of Automator's email actions because Automator doesn't offer any conditional (i.e. if statements) means of performing actions, and we only want to send an email if a match was found. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.


Missing iCloud contacts on one device I synchronise my contacts over iCloud. On the web (iCloud.com) I have more than 1'000 contacts which are synchronised on my Mac Mini at home, on my iPhone and iPad.

I then have a MacBook pro where only ~200 of them are synchronised:

If I switch off "Contacts" in the iCloud preferences and I switch it on again, I re-get the same ~200 contacts
If I create a new one on the MacBook it is correctly synchronised on all the other deviced
If I crate a new contact on iCloud.com it gets synchronised on all the devices (even the MacBook)
If I modify a contact on iCloud.com it then gets synchronised on the MacBook (but only if modified)

How can I force a re-sync?

Edit

Although the problem is similar to Force contacts to sync with iCloud right now the solutions provided do not help:

Closing and reopeningdoes not solve the problem
Re-booting does not solve the problem
Disabling and re-enabling iCloud does not solve the problem (see above)
Adding a contact does not solve the problem (see examples above)
Signing in and out does not solve the problem (see above)
Dragging the contacts to the local store and back to iCloud clearly does not work as I don't have the contacts on my mac
All the other hints refer to iOS

Edit 2

I am not able to export/import (drag in/out) the contacts to solve the problem as in the proposed duplicate. I have only 200 contacts on my Mac. The full content is in iCloud.

Edit 3

I tried the suggestion in the comments and created a group on the Mac Mini with alle the contacts. The group is synchronised to iCloud but in the MacBook I get it with the same ~200 contacts that where previously synchronised.

Edit 4

I also exported all the contacts on the Mac Mini and re-imported them. Almost no effect (on the MacBook pro I habe now 219 contacts). A couple (?) more, but still far from the >1000.

Your MacBook Pro must have a corrupted Contacts database.

Signing out and back in to iCloud isn’t fixing anything because your MacBook Pro is reusing its local database, and thinking that everything is up to date. Updating a contact is what “rebuilds” its entry, allowing it to be displayed.

Try wiping your local cache to force your MacBook Pro to re-download all of your contacts from iCloud.

Sign out of iCloud.
Delete ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.
Delete ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.AddressBookSourceSync.
Delete ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.AddressBook.savedState.
Delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist.
Restart your MacBook Pro.
Sign back into iCloud.

Your contacts should all download fresh from iCloud.

(Note: Steps 2 & 3 are really the crucial ones, but the Contacts.app doesn’t have much in the way of preferences, so might as well be thorough.)


Open Terminal and Run command as different User to show status messages I am currently working on deploying software from our MDM to Mac's.  The software installs correctly but there is no user feedback during the install unless they know to manually go and find a specific log file and look in there.
What I would like to do is have a script open a Terminal window and the run the following command:
less +F /path/to/logFile.log
This way the user can see the status of progress.
Does anyone know a way that I could make this pop up automatically?
Edit
We are using Cisco Meraki for our MDM.  Meraki's Mac software capability are more limited then some other vendors so it would have to be run by a custom made script.
Basically what I would ideally like to achieve is similar to what Deploy Studio does when in their Net Boot set with the logs in the background:

You don't say which MDM software you are using. I am in a JAMF Pro shop and we use SplashBuddy for displaying status as software installs.


Trying to update macOS to Catalina 10.15.4 asks to restart again and again When I open Software Update, I have:

An update is available for your Mac

macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Update

When I click on "Update Now", I have a window with:

To update, you must restart your Mac.

If I click restart, I effectively restart but when I try to update it asks
to restart again.
I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) and 12.29GB available.

You need at least 20GB to install Catalina (macOS 10.15).  Updating this OS probably requires the same amount of space.

I’m guessing that your constant restarts are due to the installing not having enough free space so it’s swapping info from the disk to memory.

Try to free up as much disk space as you can, the more the better.  Once you get to 20GB, you should be ok.  This answer is based on my personal experience with updating many OS versions over the years.


How can I repair my Mac so Time Machine backup will work? I'm trying to backup my computer for the first time running Yosemite OS.  The time machine fails, despite trying with two different external USB 3 drives with this error partway into the Time Machine backup and then giving up on the whole backup:

  Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “Backup”.

    An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.

Using Disk Utility finds no errors to repair.

I tried to manually copy the files in /home/Username to the backup using the finder and it failed partway through on a .dng image of around 30 MB in size, for which I did not capture the full error message.

I then tried to do the folders it had not yet gotten to in the above failure and got a second error:

  The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8084).

According to this page, it would be due to a file over 4GB and my partition format not accepting that. However, the disk is partitioned using Mac OS Extended (Journaled).  Note the disk itself uses GUID Partition Map.

I'm guessing that the issue is not the USB drive, but something physically wrong with my MacBook Air from early 2011.  When I took it to Genius bar, they ran diagnostics and found nothing wrong with computer except need to replace the battery that showed as exhausted.  Other problems with Mac are the trackpad does not detect clicks most of the time, but tracks mouse moves and the wireless connection drops often despite a strong signal from the wireless access point.

How can I successfully backup my files?  Should I give up on this Mac and buy a replacement?  Would like to backup even if I go to a new computer, so looking for a solution to save the disk state.

Carbon Copy reported this error when setting up backup:

  macOS is reporting read or write errors on "Macintosh HD"

    These errors indicate that there is a problem with this disk, such as media failure, a mechanical failure, an error in the disk's firmware, or a problem communicating with the disk. The severity of the problem is unknown, you can get more detail on the errors by clicking on the affected volume in CCC's sidebar. Read/write error statistics will be reset when you restart your computer.

And then proceeding with backup it gave:

  The "CCC Backup Task" task has encountered physical read errors

    Physical read errors may cause the backup task to take longer than normal. You can stop the backup task at any time. CCC will pick up where it left off the next time you run this task. Open CCC and click on the source volume in the sidebar for read error statistics.

It shows 20 Read Errors and 0 Write Errors in the sidebar.

Backup is proceeding.

I would suggest backing up your files using CCC (Carbon Copy Clone), which makes a bootable duplicate of your drive.

You can get the 30 day trial for CCC here, or here for the a paid version (I always suggest paying the people who made the apps though).

Also, I suggest reinstalling macOS from the recovery partition (reboot using cmd R).

Personally, using the time machine rarely works for me.


MBP: F1-F9 & Right Shift Not Responding MBP function keys f1 through f9 are not responding: brightness up/down, keyboard backlighting up/down, etc.

Seems to be a fairly common problem looking through forum posts online.

Seems to have something to do with windows - people are having problems with VMware / boot camp, etc. My problem is probably of the same variety.

Volume keys work (f10, f11, f12).

fn + function key also has no response.

Tried toggling the use fn key option is keyboard settings but that only seemed to make volume keys (f10, f11, f12) respond with random functions.

Any ideas?

edit; formatted the disk - reinstalled os - still the same.

Okay, it's a bit hard to try and troubleshoot this via lots of comments to and fro, so I will use this to try and get you sorted.

I'm assuming that since you've already tried formatting the disk and reinstalling OS X that you already have a recent backup. If not, do one now.

Try an external keyboard

As I mentioned in the comments, have you tried using an external keyboard? Any USB keyboard will suffice - give it a go and report back your findings. Basically, troubleshooting is a process of elimination. This simple test will greatly reduce the number of possibilities and help troubleshoot your issue.

Reset your PRAM/NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). Here’s how to reset your PRAM/NVRAM:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the command-option-p-r keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. mouse speed, time and date/timezone, etc).

Reset the SMC

Your computer's System Management Controller (SMC) can also be reset. The instructions for resetting your SMC depend on three things:

Does your device run from a built-in battery? (In your case, yes)
Does your device run from a removable battery?
Does your device just run off power from the wall?

Now, for the sake of others who may come here looking for answers to the same issue, I will provide the process for all three.

For MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, and MacBooks where you can’t remove the battery on your own (i.e. it's a built-in battery), here’s what you do:

Shut down your computer
Keep the MagSafe adapter (power cable) plugged in.
Press at the same time shift-option-control (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

For MacBook Pros, MacBooks etc that you can remove the battery from, here’s what you do:

Shut down your computer
Disconnect the MagSafe plug (power cable) from the computer
Remove the battery
Press the power button for 5 seconds and release
Put the battery back in
Reconnect the MagSafe cord (or power cable)
Turn your computer back on with the power button

For iMacs, Mac Pros, Mac Minis, etc that only run from a power point in the wall

Shut down your computer
Unplug it from the power
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds
Plug it back in and turn it on.

Hope this helps. Please report back and let us know.


iPhone8 vibrates in response to some interface - how to disable? I have an iPhone 8 for testing iOS apps. It has some weird feedback feature, where the phone vibrates mildly in response to actions, like flipping on/off switches in the settings app. It feels similar to when I press the fake home button.

How do I disable "vibrate in response" to interface on iPhone8?

You can turn them off in Preferences -> Sound and Haptics -> System Haptic feedback.

Note: I’m not sure about the English labels for those menus. Please edit an answer if I’m wrong.


Interrupt SMS notification sound On our on-call duty phone we receive SMSs from our server monitoring system. The notification tune is quite long and the phone is intentionally loud.

Is it possible to interrupt the tune once it starts playing on iOS 8?

On a previous version of iOS (I can't recall which version this was) it was possible by pushing the On/Off button on the top-right or the Volume Down button on the left.

Yes, using the mute switch for a moment, then put it back to non-muted mode. The volume did used to work, and will still silence calls, but I haven't tried on other alerts of late.

Could be a bug, or issue with your phone. I will try it next time mine goes off, and report back.


Automate daily saving of webarchive? Is it possible to automate the saving of a webpage (using the .webarchive format) using either Automator (in a background process) or using Terminal?

Yes is the simple answer with either.

I am on my iPad at the mo. But you can use unix command curl to download the webpage to and pipe it to the unix command textutil which can output it to a webarchive file.

If I get a chance I will post an example.

Here is a small example (quick ) of what I was thinking. Written in Applescript running do shell script commands.

  property agent : "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3"

property outPutFormat : "rtf"
property saveDIR : "/Users/USERNAME/Desktop/"
property fileName : "test2"

set theData to do shell script "curl " & " -A" & space & quoted form of agent & space & "http://weather.yahoo.com/france/auvergne/france-29332634/" as string

do shell script "echo " & quoted form of theData & "|textutil -format html -convert" & space & outPutFormat & space & "-stdin -output " & space & saveDIR & fileName & "." & outPutFormat

Although this works. I am not very happy with the results. This is due to curl and textutil only processing the html code but not resources.

So am working on something else that will save a webArchive in a much better way. 90% there but will take a little longer for me to write


Sort files according to kind in Office for Mac save dialog I would like to arrange my folders above files so that finding where I want to file project details becomes more straightforward.

I have been able to do this in Finder but when using Office for Mac applications like Word or Excel and trying to "save" a file, all the existing files and folders are mixed up according to name – not kind.

Can anyone help me "sort" this out?

The answer is covered in this microsoft forum discussion, but in essence what you need to do is

switch to list view in the file dialog
be sure "Kind" is one of the columns shown

if it isn't, hold "control" and click on the bar with column names
select "Kind" to show that row

then you can click on the "Kind" header to sort, and all folders will be together.

This doesn't put folders at the top though. If you really want to do that, you can read the solution someone devised there. The labelled every folder, then sort in list view not by kind, but by label.


How do I transfer podcasts to an iPod shuffle (2nd gen) in macOS Catalina? When I plug in an iPod shuffle (2nd generation), it appears in the sidebar under Devices in the new Music app, but not in the new Podcasts app. The iPod also appears as a location in Finder, but the "Podcasts" tab does not appear. How do I transfer Podcasts to the iPod?

My ipod shuffle would not show up in the finder when I plugged it in. Here's a workaround that worked for me:

Open Music App
Click on your iPod shuffle in the sidebar
You should see a Sync Settings button in the upper right
That will open the finder window where you can sync podcasts


How to make the "shake" commands easier? When I want to undo some typing on Notes or Pages, I have to shake my ipod-touch like a crazy (and afraid that it may throw from my hand).

Isn't there a way to configure the "shake sensitivity", or change this command for, say, a button?

As of iOS 5, there is no way in stock iOS to adjust the shake gesture sensitivity.


Admin authentication not working on Big Sur Anything that I am trying to do that requires admin user access is failing. Whether it be moving an app to the trash or making a change to settings (app settings or system settings) it isn't working. The normal window pops up that has me enter my password but when I hit return or select the OK box on the auth window everything just greys out and nothing happens. If I'm deleting an app another box pops up showing progress but it just hangs. There appears to be no way to close the Enter your password to allow this. windows so I have several hanging on my desktop.
Has anyone seen this yet/know why its happening?

I would make a second admin account, maybe something simple and insecure like me/me and then try to see if the problem is your account or if you can open it with the “me” admin.

First test when your old account is logged in, when the admin prompt arrives, change your user name to me and use the “me” password.
Then log out as you, and see if me can unlock their account.

This sort of thing is hard to guess from a far, but easy to corner and once you have a cornered you’ll know where the problem lies. Everything you mention is explained by a corrupt user preferences (or worse, failing filesystem) so be sure you back up all your critical files immediately and get a Time Machine or whole system backup sooner rather than later.


Which Macs cannot upgrade to Mountain Lion? As everyone already know, Mountain Lion was released today. I am eager to get my Mac ready for Mountain Lion, but I know that a number of Macs do not support Mountain Lion. Is there a list of Macs that won’t support OS X Mountain Lion?

Apple said the following Macs will run Mountain Lion:

iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)

So the complement of this list are not supported to run Mountain Lion (as far as I can tell; edit this list to add or subtract models as appropriate; you may be able to get it running on an unsupported machine):

Macintosh 128K
Macintosh 512K
Macintosh 128K (revised)
Macintosh XL
Macintosh Plus
Macintosh 512Ke
Macintosh Plus (Platinum)
Macintosh SE
Macintosh II
Macintosh IIx
Macintosh SE/30
Macintosh IIcx
Macintosh SE FDHD
Macintosh IIci
Macintosh Portable
Macintosh IIfx
Macintosh LC
Macintosh Classic
Macintosh IIsi
Macintosh Portable (backlit screen)
Macintosh Classic II
Quadra 700
Quadra 900
PowerBook 100
PowerBook 140
PowerBook 170
Macintosh LC II
Quadra 950
PowerBook 145
Macintosh IIvi
Macintosh IIvx
PowerBook 160
PowerBook 180
PowerBook Duo 210
PowerBook Duo 230
Macintosh LC III / III+
Macintosh Color Classic
Centris 610
Centris 650
Quadra 800
PowerBook 165c
Workgroup Server 80
Workgroup Server 95
PowerBook 145b
PowerBook 180c
Macintosh LC 520
Workgroup Server 60
Centris / Quadra 660AV
Quadra 840AV
PowerBook 165
Macintosh Color Classic II
Macintosh TV
Quadra 605
Quadra 610
Quadra 650
PowerBook Duo 250
PowerBook Duo 270c
Macintosh LC 550
Macintosh LC 575
Power Macintosh 6100
Power Macintosh 7100
Power Macintosh 8100
Workgroup Server 6150
Workgroup Server 8150
Workgroup Server 9150
PowerBook 520/c
PowerBook 540/c
PowerBook 550
PowerBook Duo 280
PowerBook Duo 280c
Quadra 630
PowerBook 150
Power Macintosh 6200 / 6300
Macintosh LC 580
Performa 5200
Power Macintosh 9500
Power Macintosh 7200
Power Macintosh 7500
Power Macintosh 8500
PowerBook 190
PowerBook 5300
PowerBook Duo 2300c
Workgroup Server 7250
Workgroup Server 8550
Performa 5260 / 5300
Performa 5400
Power Macintosh 7600
Performa 6360
Performa 6400
Power Macintosh 4400
PowerBook 1400
Power Macintosh 5500
Power Macintosh 6500
Power Macintosh 7300
Power Macintosh 8600
Power Macintosh 9600
PowerBook 3400
Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
Workgroup Server 7350
Workgroup Server 9650
PowerBook 2400c
Power Macintosh G3 desktop
Power Macintosh G3 minitower
PowerBook G3
Power Macintosh G3 AIO
Macintosh Server G3
PowerBook G3 series
iMac G3
Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)
Macintosh Server G3 (Blue & White)
PowerBook G3 ("Lombard")
iBook
Macintosh Server G4
iMac (slot loading)
Power Mac G4 Graphite
PowerBook ("Pismo")
Power Mac G4 Cube
iBook (FireWire)
PowerBook G4 Titanium
iBook (white)
Power Mac G4 Quicksilver
Server G4 Quicksilver
iMac G4 15"
iBook (14")
eMac
Xserve
iMac G4 17"
Power Mac G4 MDD
Macintosh Server G4 MDD
PowerBook G4 Aluminum (12")
PowerBook G4 Aluminum (17")
Xserve slot loading
Xserve Cluster Node
Power Mac G5
PowerBook G4 Aluminum (15")
iBook G4 (12" / 14")
iMac G4 20"
Xserve G5
Xserve Cluster Node G5    Xserve
Power Mac G5 FX
iMac G5 17"
iMac G5 20"   iMac
Mac mini
Power Mac G5 dual core
iMac Core Duo
MacBook Pro (15")
Mac mini Core Solo
Mac mini Core Duo
MacBook Pro (17")
MacBook   (Late 2008 plastic)
Xserve (Intel) (Late 2006)
MacBook (Late 2006)
Mac mini Core 2 Duo
MacBook (Late 2007)
Xserve Harpertown
MacBook Penryn
1st generation MacBook Air  (early 2008)


Can Time Machine backup two HDDs to Time Capsule? I have two physical harddrives in my Mac.  One is an SSD with the OS and apps.  The other is a 1TB HDD for media. Can I setup time machine to backup both drives to time capsule?

Yes, by default Time Machine will backup all internal HDD's whether they are SSD or not. Just make sure your time capsule is big enough.


My Cinema Display blinks …3-4x during first the 5 minutes of use each day.  Is it dying?  A young 15" Macbook Pro drives it and I'm using latest Lion.

mDP?  Usually means hardware issue on the Pro - just replaced a user's 2009 MBP with a late 2011 and her otherwise-fine 27" LCD Display did the same thing.  AppleCare replaced the main logic board and no problem since.


Connecting to EC2 Amazon using iTerm and .pub-file How can I setup my iTerm to connect my amazon server using the .pem file I have been given.

When I try ssh PUBLIC-DNS it returns Permission denied (publickey)..

EDIT

I have now tried the following without log, including a debug log:

Marks-MacBook-Air:.ssh mark$ ssh -i s1.pem -v ubuntu@**********.amazonaws.com
OpenSSH_6.2p2, OSSLShim 0.9.8r 8 Dec 2011
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to ************.amazonaws.com [***.***.***.***] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file s1.pem type -1
debug1: identity file s1.pem-cert type -1
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.2
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu-2ubuntu2
debug1: match: OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu-2ubuntu2 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com none
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
debug1: Server host key: RSA **:**:**:**:**:**:**:**:**:**:**:**:**:**:**:**
debug1: Host '**************.amazonaws.com' is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /Users/mark/.ssh/known_hosts:2
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: Roaming not allowed by server
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering RSA public key: /Users/mark/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Trying private key: s1.pem
debug1: read PEM private key done: type RSA
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: No more authentication methods to try.
Permission denied (publickey).

Please note that I have removed the following informations SERVER IP, PUBLIC DNS and RSA KEY

ssh -i /path/to/keypair.pem user@host should do it.


Can dust build-up in Time Capsule (vertical model) be a fire risk (or other risk)? Saw dust built up at the bottom vent of the Time Capsule (vertical model). Blew air in it to extract the dust from the other side of the vent. However I then noticed that some went back inside the unit (had the TC upside down for this).
After some research to see how it's made inside, I saw that there is 2 areas, one for the wifi components and one with the fan unit attached to the power supply.

I can't open it to clean it (no tools, no expertise).

My question: If some dust patches went inside near the wifi board or near the fan/power supply area, is this a risk for fire or any other risk ? Or is general dust build up in a computing unit not a concern in general ?

In terms of being a fire risk, no, dust building up inside a Time Capsule is not a concern.

Depending on the hardware, dust can be a concern for other reasons. In the early days of computing when floppy disks were the main storage medium, we used to have a saying that getting dust onto the disk was like running into a brick wall - not good at all.

However, I have worked on countless computers over the past three decades and they're usually full of dust inside (well, in tower models at least). None of these machines have ever caught fire.

With regard to a Time Capsule, they do not generate a lot of heat - much less than a computer with multi-core processors doing some heavy processing tasks. So you can rest easy.


Photo Metadata Editing / Editor Are there any apps for OS X that can edit photos metadata (such as keywords, etc.) without all the bells and whistles of full stack photo management apps (such as Lightroom, iPhoto, etc.) with the option of embedding it in the file rather than keeping it in a separate place?

Some more info:

I want to retain my own folder structure with photos and don’t prefer programs organizing them in their own way and their own place.
I want to hard code all the metadata in the photos themselves so they are easily portable.
I want to be able to edit metadata in a batch when necessary
No command line tools, GUI apps only (thanks, @IconDaemon)

A few years ago, I pointed a photographer friend to ExifTool, a free, command-line based metadata editor. It looked pretty powerful and it did what she wanted. I haven't used it myself, so YMMV.


Will BigSur Beta update do a fresh install or upgrade Catalina? when you install the BigSur Beta, does it upgrade the current installation of Catalina (if there is one) or will it always to a fresh install?
Best


how can i stop the thief from using my iPhone? My i phone 5 was stolen and i'm freaking out because the thieves keep on using my i phone. i knew this because when i contacted my i phone it answered me.

i tried to locate it but it keep on showing offline then i remotely erase my phone but it seems that the thief is not connecting to the internet. i'm afraid because he has the freedom to access my contacts and pictures! please help me.

I believe in some country you can file a complain with your IMEI number and UDID (which you can have on your purchase proof or in iTunes in last device) and the police can then ask Apple to block the phone.

Anyway, the best practice here is to file the complain, you never know what happen with your data...

BTW, no need for internet connection because it's directly over GSM network


macOS native VPN can't cifs:// into file server on another network I have configured the macOS' native VPN to connect from location (a) to location (b), and now I would like to access the Thecus file storage server I have at location (b).

Accordingly, pressing cmdK in Finder and typing: cifs://192.168.x.x <-- server IP here.

to access the server I cannot connect, it just keeps trying to connect. Connecting from home it works, just not from one office to the other.

How can I get this to work? I have even tried afp://

Both endpoints are Mac devices if that helps.

Interestingly, both locations are on the same sub-net (192.168.X).

Is there a way to overcome this? I have a feeling that I may have to change the subnet of one of the offices.

Use smb:// for file shares and vnc:// for screen shares. I’ve not had good success with cifs:// and Finder.

If smb fails, check for open ports using network utility and look at the console on Mac and error log on the server/Linux/pc side. Network utility will show you if you have an ip / network conflict. The vpn possibly can’t route any traffic correctly if both non-routable networks conflict. Either the local or remote will have to change NAT range or move to IPv6.


MacBook Pro only Charging when Turned Off My MacBook Pro (2012, Retina) will suddenly not charge when it's turned on.

If I shut it down, it charges normally (orange led, goes green when full).

After I turn it on it keeps the green led on until OSX starts up, then the light goes off.

I haven't seen anything suspicious in the console. I also did a PRAM/SMC reset.

OSX 10.8.3

I had the same problem and have tried everything, with no result. Suddenly, I reset the SMC without turning off the MacBook Pro, i.e. with the MBP on and the charger plugged, I hit Shift+Ctrl+Alt+ON for ten seconds (the MBP switches off instantaneously). After restarting, the mac was charging properly.


Show hidden files on Mac OS X Mojave using Terminal To see my /etc folder I've tried this command in Terminal:

sudo chflags nohidden /etc

followed by:

sudo defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles true; killall Finder

also tried:

sudo defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES; killall Finder

Neither of them seemed to work.

Session

This keystroke toggles between show & hide the hidden files:

 Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   .  (that’s a FULL STOP, period character)

Press again to toggle back and forth.

When you reboot your Mac, the hidden files will be hidden. Press the keystroke again to show.

Persistent

In Terminal.app, paste:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true; killall Finder

This changes the default setting to show hidden files. And this causes the Finder to restart, so you can see the effect. This new setting persists even after rebooting your Mac.

To revert to hiding again the hidden files, change that true to a false and run again in Terminal.


Make iTunes song options stick on other devices? When I set certain options for a song, such as a Volume Adjustment or Start Time or Stop time, it would be nice if those options were kept when the song is played on another device, such as an iPad or iPhone.

For example, if I cut off the first several seconds of a song (say, to get rid of a spoken introduction), iTunes will do that and start the song proper, but the same tune played on the iPad will start at the beginning (including the spoke intro).

Is there some way to get iTunes to modify the actual file rather than some internal database (or whatever)?

While I'm not sure why the options aren't being kept between your device, there is no way to make iTunes edit the file itself. Nearly everything Apple makes revolves around the idea of revisions. iTunes, while not using revisions, only edits it's database to mark the in and out points of tracks.

To correct syncing, I can only suggest removing the song from iOS and adding it back (it doesn't rewrite data for tracks already on the device).

The get around this, you can always edit the file yourself in something like Audacity, if you wanted to go the permanent route.


Is it possibile .zshrc is not available in ~? I can’t find the file zshrc in my user home folder, is it possible it doesn’t exist and I have to create it as a new file? I use zsh as default shell on macOS 11.2.3

There is no .zshrc file unless you create one. You can create one with touch ~/.zshrc and edit it with any plain text editor you like.


Upload to business YouTube channel instead of personal channel I created a business channel with my Gmail account and then accidentally also created a personal Google+ account with the same Gmail address.
I can toggle back and forth between these two accounts, but I can't upload to my business channel anymore from my iPad.

Any suggestions? I don't want to delete either account.
I have tried signing in on my YouTube app and toggling to my business channel before uploading, but it still sends the videos to my personal page.

What you probably want to do is log out of both accounts, then log back in in the order of importance, in your case Business, then Personal. This should make the app default to business.


To play videos of Kindle reader in OSX? My kindle program says that the current Kindle Reader does not support videos.
Kindle fire plays them at least.
I am not sure if iPad does so.

Which devices are supported by the videos of Kindle?

Kindle for Mac is specifically for reading Kindle books, and doesn't handle any other media.  On iOS, the same is available through the Kindle app.

Amazon Cloud Player for Mac is for music purchased in the MP3 store.  Again, there is an Amazon Cloud Player app for iOS as well.

On your Mac, Amazon Instant Video is available through the Amazon website itself.  If you have video in your library, you can access it through Your Video Library.  In general, though, any video you have rights to view (e.g. with Prime Instant Video), you can access by finding it on Amazon's website.  On iOS devices, you can use the Amazon Instant Video app, which also supports AirPlay for playback on an Apple TV (though Amazon does not actually have native video support on Apple TV.)


unable to boot Mac OS after installing bootcamp Installed bootcamp Win7 on my MBPro with Yosemite a couple weeks ago and both OS's worked fine for some time, until recently the Mac OS suddenly decided it couldn't boot anymore. If I select the Mac partition at startup, the computer will get stuck at the Apple logo with the progress bar making somewhere near half way through. I don't think I've done much in the Mac partition under Windows at all over this period, much less possibly modifying the system files. I can get prepared for reinstalling it at any time, but nonetheless would like to know what most likely is the cause and if it is in any way possible to repair Mac OS under Windows at all.

Try using single user mode to repair your disk: http://osxdaily.com/2013/08/07/how-to-repair-a-mac-disk-with-fsck-from-single-user-mode/


Limit application launching to boot disk only Does anyone know of a way to restrict macOS (High Sierra) to only launch apps stored on the boot drive?
I have several alternate bootable drives on my system (different OS versions, bootable backups etc), but find that in almost every case, when I right click a document, and choose "open with" the system is preferentially launching apps on non-boot volumes, in preference to the ones in /Applications. Eg, right click on an mp4 file, choose Open With the one and only entry for Quicktime Player X, and instead of the version in my dock launching, a new icon appears in the dock for Quicktime, and if I right click and "show in finder", it's on one of my other bootable drives.
I've removed all the external drives from Spotlight, using the Spotlight privacy feature in System Preferences, and tried reloading Launch services (which results in needing to reboot the entire machine to get all my 3rd party share options back), nothing seems to work.
I have to assume macOS is supposed to preferentially open apps from /Applications, and I've got something else wrong, for which this is just a symptom, so if there's some other maintenance thing (eg in OnyX etc) I'm happy to hear about it.
Thanks.

I'd suspect you can only do this if each 'other' OS was set to never mount, via fstab - see Time Machine restore to new partition, different computer - & then clear the LaunchServices database [individually for each OS] using  Onyx


Key chords in Keyboard Maestro I'd like to define a Keyboard Maestro macro that I can trigger if I enter a certain key chord.

As a reminder, key chords are sequences of two hot key presses. Many editors like Emacs, Visual Studio etc. support them and they can vastly expand the set of possible hot key combinations one can use to manage any action.

For example, I could bind Cmd+S Cmd+N to the next song in Spotify (meaning, e.g. S =>  Spotify => N = Next Song).

Does Keyboard Maestro support chords?

I'd suggest posting this on the Keyboard Maestro Forum in the future – they're very responsive there:

I don't believe it's explicitly something you can do, but you basically can mimic the behavior. There's two ways. First, you can bind two different macros to the same shortcut. When you trigger it, a palette pops up and you just type the first letter of the macro you want to trigger (or more if they have names that begin with the same letters). For example, if I have two macros triggered by Cmd+S called "high" and "him" then you'd need to type "hig" to trigger the first.

Alternatively, you could use a  "Prompt with List" list and use switch/case. So you would have a list of keywords/letters that are used to set a variable. That variable would determine the path of your switch case. Like so:


Applescript to check for the existence of a file I record radio programs during the night and then run an applescript to rename the files.  I have the script working unless there is no file named that I am attempting to call and rename.  Here is my code that is working:

set Yesterday to (current date) - (24 * 60 * 60)
set myYesterday to (date string of Yesterday)
set y to year of date myYesterday
set m to month of date myYesterday
set d to day of date myYesterday

set newMyYesterday to m & " " & d & ", " & y as text

set newHourOne to "Recording1 - " & newMyYesterday & " - Hour 1.mp3"
set theFile to (POSIX file "/Users/Administrator/Recordings/Recording1.mp3") as alias

tell application "Finder"
    set the name of file theFile to newHourOne
end tell

set newHourTwo to "Recording2 - " & newMyYesterday & " - Hour 2.mp3"
set theFile to (POSIX file "/Users/Administrator/Recordings/Recording2.mp3") as alias

tell application "Finder"
    set the name of file theFile to newHourTwo
end tell

Can someone please show me how to check to see if the individual file ("Recording1.mp3" or "Recording2.mp3") exist before trying to rename the individual file?  Thanks!!

This should work:

if exists file theFile then
    # do stuff
else
    display dialog "File not found" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end if


How can I change the country of an iTunes account? When I first set up my iTunes account, I didn't have a credit card, so I set it up as a US account, as this was the only way I could create one without a card (and thus use my iPod Touch).

The downside of this is that now that I am trying to add a credit card to my iTunes account, I can't, because it insists on a state and zip code for part of the address, which my Irish credit card obviously doesn't have.

So how can I switch the country of my iTunes account?

To change stores you can do so on the iTunes Store:

Click on your Account in the iTunes Store to go to your Account Page.
Click "Change Country or Region".

Choose your Country or Region:

Another alternative is to use Apple's Manage your Apple ID site and change your address - next time you use iTunes it will ask you to change your region and verify your address details.


Does iPad 3 supports wireless charging? I am wondering if iPad 3 or any iPad version supports wireless charging?

Can I use samsung's w'less  charger for it?

Not natively no. There are no current Apple devices supporting wireless charging out of the box.

There are however adapters for some devices, mostly phones rather than tablets. Not sure how useful a wireless charging adapter would be for an iPad.


How can I hide **some** birthdays in iOS Calendar? I have entered the birthday for several of my Contacts, and these birthdays show up in Calendar. I know that I can enable or disable all birthdays by selecting or deslecting "Birthdays" from Show Calendars in the top corner of the Calendar app.  But I only want to see some of my contact's birthdays in the Calendar; for example, personal contacts but not ex-coworkers.

How can I prevent the display of certain birthdays?

You could edit out the birthdate information from those contacts you do not want to see in the Birthdays calendar.

Another way to accomplish this would be by manually adding the birthdays you do want to see to a new or existing calendar and then disable the Birthdays subscription.


Pair iMac and Android using Bluetooth I had my uninsured iPhone stolen and have bought a cheap Panasonic Eluga 500 as a makedo until I save up enough for another iPhone. Why can't I pair this phone with my iMac over Bluetooth. I have a truly ancient Nokia that pairs so why not this Panasonic? Are there certain brands that Apple doesn't like?

If you open Bluetooth to iMac and iPhone and also use the same Apple ID on both, these two device will “automatically” connect to each other.

But the usage of those connections are heavily limited. Here’s some example

Continuity
Personal Hotspot

and some few more that I tend to forget.


Create a PDF with a custom page size? (Mavericks) I'm trying to create a PDF with a custom page size.  Basically, I'm converting a set of JPEGs which are exactly 5:4 dimensions into a single PDF, so I wanted to set the paper size to 8x10, so as not to have "letterbox-type" borders on the top and bottom of the PDF pages. The purpose is for viewing on-screen, not for printing, and these are personal documents which I am not sharing, so there is no need to worry about printability.

I'm using a consumer-grade HP LaserJet printer (P1102W), whose driver apparently "does not support" custom paper sizes. This is evidenced by the fact that I am unable to choose the option to "manage custom sizes" in the paper size list - it is grayed out.

Researching around the Internet seems to reveal that only certain drivers actually will let you configure a custom page size. To experiment, in TextEdit (which does have the Page Setup option), I was able to configure a custom page size. However, Preview does not have a Page Setup option. I've also seen screenshots where certain HP drivers do enable this option, but I obviously don't know which ones, nor do I have the corresponding printer or driver on my system.

I tried installing a generic PostScript printer driver by entering a nonexistent IP into the network printer settings, but even then I was unable to set the custom page size.

Is there any solution I can use to accomplish this? Remember, the goal is to produce a PDF file with a custom page size to eliminate borders, and that PDF will never need to be printed. It seems silly to be limited by the printer driver when the goal is to produce a generic PDF...

Thanks!

EDIT: Ghostscript may be able to do this, but there's something wrong with either my installation or with the Ghostscript that Homebrew installed.

I created a PDF with Preview that had borders, and am now trying to use GS to change the page size. Here's the result:

Mac-mini:~ fmillion$ gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=612 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=720 -dFIXEDMEDIA -c "<</PageOffset [0 36]>> setpagedevice" -o test1.pdf test.pdf
GPL Ghostscript 9.14 (2014-03-26)
Copyright (C) 2014 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting.

If I do not include the "-c" option along with its parameter, the operation succeeds, but I end up with a page with a half inch at the bottom and the top half inch of the page cut off. The idea of the PageOffset command was to shift the entire page down by 36 points, thus eliminating the bottom border.

I'm using the Ghostscript provided by Homebrew, simply installed with "brew install ghostscript".

It is possible to convert images to PDFs without 'placing them on a default page', so that each page will be whatever size the image is.

There is a collection of python scripts and Automator Actions here, which include one to batch convert images to PDF in that way.

https://github.com/benwiggy/PDFsuite


Menu Bar- clock-Big Sur I am successfully using 'defaults write com.apple.menuextra.clock IsAnalog -bool true' to replace to a smaller icon the Apple clock in Big Sur.
Is there a code to revert to Apple's clock if ever required?

Deleting a key will set it back to its default value.
defaults delete com.apple.menuextra.clock IsAnalog

However, you don't even need to delve into defaults to make this change, to or from analog — it's in the UI: System Preferences → Dock & Menu Bar → Clock → Time Options.


Gatekeeper refuses validly signed application I am trying to publish a signed application, but when downloading it through internet, gatekeeper complains:

Furthermore, the help page says that the app has been tampered with:

Which is actually not true, here is my signing/packaging procedure:

codesign --deep --force --verify -s "Developer ID Application: Nanolive SA (GMLD8K8WH3)" Steve/Steve.app
hdiutil create -volname Steve -srcfolder Steve -ov -format UDZO Steve.dmg
codesign -s "Developer ID Application: Nanolive SA (GMLD8K8WH3)" Steve.dmg

The whole procedure works without a problem, and as you can see, I don't change the package between the signature and the creation of the dmg.

I went through this whole document and I think everything is correct: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2206/_index.html

Furthermore, I went through everything in the Checking Gatekeeper Conformance section:

Checking the dmg:

$ spctl -a -t open --context context:primary-signature -v Steve.dmg
Steve.dmg: accepted
source=Developer ID

Using codesign:

$ codesign --verify --deep --strict --verbose=2 Steve.app
--prepared:/Volumes/Steve/Steve.app/Contents/MacOS/ffmpeg
--validated:/Volumes/Steve/Steve.app/Contents/MacOS/ffmpeg

<snip a lot of validated libs>

--prepared:/Volumes/Steve/Steve.app/Contents/Frameworks/libvtkRenderingAnnotation-7.1.1.dylib
--validated:/Volumes/Steve/Steve.app/Contents/Frameworks/libvtkRenderingAnnotation-7.1.1.dylib
Steve.app: valid on disk
Steve.app: satisfies its Designated Requirement

using the check-signature tool:

$ /Volumes/Signature\ Check/check-signature Steve.app
(c) 2014 Apple Inc.  All rights reserved.
YES
$ /Volumes/Signature\ Check/check-signature Steve.app/Contents/Frameworks/*
(c) 2014 Apple Inc.  All rights reserved.
Steve.app/Contents/Frameworks/QtConcurrent.framework: YES

<snip a lot of YES>

Steve.app/Contents/Frameworks/qwt: YES

And lastly using spctl:

spctl -a -t exec -vv Steve.app
Steve.app: accepted
source=Developer ID
origin=Developer ID Application: Nanolive SA (GMLD8K8WH3)

The command line tells me everything is 100% correct, but I still can't launch the app from the user interface because I'm missing something, somewhere, that the command line won't tell me.

Please note that when I bypass the quarantine using the command line, the app launches properly, which implies that I don't have any missing library as far as I'm aware.

The build server runs OSX High Sierra 10.13.6

Thank you for your time and help!

An rpath Problem

I was able to solve the issue thanks to some external help.

When opening the Console application, I was seeing this message, which comes from the XProtectService, which is apparently the real reference in terms of GateKeeper

default    11:00:31.445713 +0200    XprotectService    File /Volumes/Steve 2/Steve.app/Contents/MacOS/Steve failed on rPathCmd /Users/example/tmp/buildSteve/QtConcurrent.framework/Versions/5/QtConcurrent

Which means that the issue was actually some bad rpath. The rpath is used to find and load frameworks needed by an application.

I wrote a python script to recursively fix the rpath, and now it works.

The script changes the executable's rpath using Apple's install_name_tool. This is not something user's should ever need to do and is exclusively something for an application's developer to fix before deployment.


MBA & VGA monitor, using strange reduction Thunderbolt-HDMI-DVI-VGA I have latest Macbook Air and I want try to use VGA monitor. I don't have MiniDisplayPort to VGA reduction, but this:

I know that DVI-VGA worked fine on with my old PC, so I don't understand, why doesn't work the HDMI-DVI?

EDIT:
 I tried the white adapter with HDMI cable and monitor and I doesn't work the same way. The MBA knows about monitor, but the monitor is without signal..

The Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter does not pass analog signal, only digital.  VGA is analog.


How to get a list of application windows only from the current desktop with applescript? Need to do something like the next

tell application "Safari"
activate
    set AllWindows to every window
    set WinCount to number of items in AllWindows

    repeat with i from 1 to WinCount
        set this_window to item i of AllWindows
        -- do something with the this_window
    end repeat
end tell

The abowe work ok, and getting ALL opened opened Safari window.

How can get the windows only from the curent desktop? So need somewhat change the line

    set AllWindows to every window

to something like

    set AllWindows to ONLY FROM THE CURRENT desktop windows :)

Any idea?

System Events only includes windows in the current space / desktop:

tell application "System Events" to windows of process "Safari"

I don't know any way to convert a System Events window object to a Safari window object though, apart from hacks like this:

tell application "System Events" to tell window 1 of process "Safari"
    set {x, y} to position
    set {w, h} to size
    set b to {x, y, x + w, y + h}
    set t to title
end tell
tell application "Safari"
    set found to missing value
    repeat with w in windows
        if bounds of w is b and name of w is t then
            set found to w
            exit repeat
        end if
    end repeat
    found
end tell

tell application "System Events" to value of attribute "AXIdentifier" of window 1 of process "Safari" does not correspond to tell application "Safari" to id of window 1.


iOS Sync Device Name I have set up Google sync on my all my devices as I use the iOS Chrome app. When using the Chrome app I click on 'other devices' and my iMac device name shows up as iMac-2. I was wondering if it's possible to somehow rename/change my iMac device name. I've tried unlinking my iMac and linking it back up again but nothing has worked so far. I know it's only a small issue but it's bugging me.

The other devices list on Chrome uses the name of the Mac given to it, or the DCHP if that fails. To change the name of the Mac, go to System Preferences → Sharing and enter your desired name in the box at the top. You may need to log out and back in for Chrome on OS X to update the name.


What is the difference between formatting a volume partition and a disk of which the volume partition is a part of? Ok suppose I am reinstalling macOS in recovery mode using a bootable usb stick so in recovery mode when I format macintoshHD should I format the volume partition I mean when you click on the downward arrow beside macintoshHD(The Disk) a second disk/volume partition appears below the name, should I erase that one or the disk itself what is the difference?

The question answers itself - one is formatting (erasing) the whole disk and the other is formatting just the partition. If you have more than one partition, the first will wipe them all, the second will only wipe the one you selected.


Can I use my iPhone4 without a sim card if i just updated to the lastest software? I have an iPhone 4 that I wanted to use for my daughter to play on. I updated it to the latest software iOS 6 and it's telling me to put a SIM card in to activate it. I don't want the iPhone activated. I have wifi in my house and I just want her to be able to play games on it. Is it possible?

No - if the device is waiting at the activate screen it won't run normally. Yes - once the activation is done, you can pull the SIM card.

Activate means that the OS becomes usable. Unless (and until) your phone gets jail broken or authorized unlocked (contact your carrier), by design you need a carrier SIM to activate the phone after each restore.

Major OS upgrades usually include a restore / activation step so you can check here before the next upgrade if you wish to avoid this in the future.

I've had good luck using an old SIM card that no longer is on an account to keep a proper SIM in the phone. Again, your carrier can help if reusing any old SIM you have doesn't work.


See remaining credits of iTunes account on Apple TV Where can I check remaining credits of my iTunes account on my TV? I use Apple TV.


Need some suggestions setting up a Mac Mini I recently got a Mac from a friend. All it has is a power cable and a cable to connect it to the monitor. On the back, it says Mac mini 2.0/2x512/120 so I'm guessing that's 1 GB RAM, and 120 GB hard drive.

I was wondering what all I can upgrade in this Mac mini. All I've heard about this model is that it is the older mini version and replacing the RAM will be tough. Any suggestions? I'm looking for RAM+HDD+Keyboard and a Mouse in the most economical margins.

Firstly, WELCOME to Apple world :)

Now, this is not that hard, and you should think it's quite easy.

if you never worked on a Mac before, you should invest some minutes to see some basic stuff, how it used to work on Windows and how it does now on Mac, for example, take some nice video tutorials from Apple website

go to Apple.com -> click on Mac -> down there there is several video tutorials, see some.

Regarding UPGRADING your Mac Mini, you should check what model you have and have a look on MacSales Videos on how to replace the hardware

you will find all models in the Mac Sales Tech Support page

About what hardware you should fit into your new Mac Mini, using Mac Sales you can order the memory, harddrive (or SSD) and any Optical drive as well, if you outside US, (though I'm in Denmark, I buy stuff from them time to time) you grab the model number of what you wanted, and "fly" to a near store and buy it :)

I hope it helps.

Warning

You are trying to buy 8Gb of Ram, and your mac only support up to 4Gb, in witch 3Gb is addressable.

Please read the specifications of your model before you buy anything!


Using Time Machine with a already used NTFS disk I have just updated to Mountain Lion 10.8.2; I have done a clean install.
Now after I have installed all my apps and configure them I would like to create a Time Machine backup; so I could have the image of a fresh clean mac :D

The problem here is that I have only one external HDD (1Tb, NTFS formatted and MacFuse installed, so there's no problem in read/write the volume) and half the disk is used with my docs, pics, music, etc.

Is it possible to create a Time Machine backup without erasing the previous contents ?

Will Time Machine save the backup just as easy as copying a disk image to the HDD without erasing my files? Or will it reformat the disk?

Greetings and thanks for the help :D

Time Machine requires an HFS+ partition on the drive, it can't use an NTFS formatted one, even with MacFUSE installed. The way to do this would be to shrink the NTFS partition, then make a new HFS+ formatted partition to use with Time Machine (you can do this with Disk Utility). Unfortunately OS X can't resize NTFS partitions, you'll need to use a Windows machine to do it, then use OS X to create a new HFS+ partition.


How does the iPhone Auto Focus work? How does the auto focus in the iPhone work?  Is there a something mechanical in there to adjust the lens or is it completely software?

Google provides this article which suggests some camera phones do have mechanical focus mechanisms.  I couldn't find anything specific to the iPhone however.

Autofocus on the iPhone is done via an electrical motor, moving the front lens backward and forward, and software that captures and analyses the image for best sharpness, which usually is the "sweet" spot. Recent versions of iOS probably offload the analysis to the image signal processor available since the Apple A5 chip.


How to turn off Auto-show sidebar in fullscreen Safari 9 In the new El Capitan version of OS X, in safari 9, in fullscreen if you move your cursor to the left, it shows the sidebar.

Is there a way to disable it ?

Simply copy and paste one or both into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.safari ShowSidebarInTopSites bool=FALSE
defaults write com.apple.safari ShowSidebarInNewWindows bool=FALSE

If you don't want to copy two commands, then you can do both at the same time:

defaults write com.apple.safari ShowSidebarInTopSites bool=FALSE; defaults write com.apple.safari ShowSidebarInNewWindows bool=FALSE


Macintosh HD partition missing from startup options I tried to shrink my Windows Bootcamp partition using third-party software which led to my Macintosh HD partition missing from startup options. Unfortunately I don't have a recent backup for the whole drive to restore from. If I try to reinstall macOS from scratch it doesn't see the partition either.

Disk utility sees it but it's greyed out and is being shown as Unmounted without the option to mount it back.

Is there a way to fix this without wiping out the whole drive and reinstalling everything from scratch?

The second image you posted shows a partition type of DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC. This is for a Windows Recovery Environment type partition.

From Windows, you can open a Command Prompt window as an Administrator. Next, you could enter the commands given below to change disk0s2 to an Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+) type partition.

diskpart
select disk 0
select partition 2
set id=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC override
gpt attributes=0x0000000000000000
exit

  Note: This answer assumes you are not using Core Storage.

A more comprehensive solution is given as the accepted answer to the question: OS volume shows as type 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF'. Despite the fact that your partition type is DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC and the linked question partition type is FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF, the accepted answer provides a solution that would work in your case.


Restoring a Snow Leopard time capsule using Leopard DVD boot? possible? So I have a time capsule of a few machines.
The one i did last (Snow Leopard) doesn't seem to be showing in the list.
I don't have a snow leopard DVD boot handy only Leopard.
Is this why this isn't in the list?

Yes - I'm afraid this is the case. You will need to find a Snow Leopard DVD or Lion recovery HD/USB to restore your files.

Since this DVD used to come with all Macs, you should be able to find a friend who has one. Otherwise, try the Apple store or AppleCare to order a replacement Snow Leopard DVD.


os 10.11.6 pip install permission error I am a CS beginner taking udemy python course and trying to install pip in order to use matplotlib, pandas and so on in pylab.

I use IDLE 3.4.2 and latest version Pycharm

Tried
1. "pip installed pylab"

version not satisfies the requirement pylab,no matching distribution found for pylab;

2.same result with sudo before the first one;

3.sudo easy_install matplotlib

succeeded in terminal, but still no matplotlib module in shell)

4.brew install python 3

succeeded , but still no matplotlib module in shell, and every command looks like still for 2.7)

5.Anaconda Package based on preinstalling Macports

same result as 3

6.On cloud9.io

still can't import matplotlib

7.virtualenv/virtualenvwrapper

Both [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/virtualenv.py'

Then tried to uninstall both 2 and 3 python then install

8.brew rm -rf/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7

error:no keg argument

Downloaded Xcode

but "block compressed payload operation failed"

Result of "brew doctor": Warning: "config" scripts exist outside your system or Homebrew directories.

Having additional scripts in your path can confuse software installed via Homebrew if the config script overrides a system or Homebrew provided script of the same name. We found the following "config" scripts: /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin/python3-config /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin/python3.4-config /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin/python3.4m-config

Warning: Python is installed at /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework

Warning: You have MacPorts or Fink installed: /opt/local/bin/port

Warning: You have unlinked kegs in your Cellar

Warning: /usr/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin

Thanks for reading!

Answer in detailed direction will be appreciated as I am just a beginner having tons of stuff to learn from you.

Really frustrated by now.

Do NOT remove your Apple system provided python version found at this path:
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7

In fact - you should never mess with any Frameworks under /Library/... unless you know what you are doing.  Your OS may have tools that depend on this version of Python that it ships.

After installing brew - did you run

  brew doctor

It should tell you if you have any issues.

Also - be sure your brew install python3 (note there is not a space - 'python 3')

After installing your new Python - brew should put it under /usr/local/ not /Library/...

I suggest you use either Homebrew or Macports - NOT both.  Make sure you follow the directions on their webpages and set your PATH in your .bashrc or .bash_profile properly.

After you set your PATH in those files, don't forget to "source" the files - or simply close and reopen terminal to "refresh" your environment to the new settings.

Good Luck!


How to do transfer data via iTunes from iPhone 4S to 6S I'm trying to transfer data from a 4S backup via iTunes to a new iPhone 6S, but being told that I need a newer version of iTunes despite having just downloaded iTunes in my MacBook Pro 10.6.8.

You will need iTunes 12, which can only be run on newer versions of OS X. From the Mac App Store, download the free upgrade of OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Then, update iTunes. From there, you can just plug in your 4s, back it up, and then plug in the 6s and restore from that backup. Make sure you choose Encrypt iPhone Backup so you won't have to sign in to every app again after the restore.


Desktop Search - with more features than Spotlight? I am looking for a 'desktop search' solution for the mac. I like the look of HoudahSpot (built on top of Spotlight) but it doesn't quite do everything I would like.

My ideal search solution would do all of the following:

Index all content of all MS Word documents on an individual computer (and preferably other formats as well, but MS Word is the key one), with ability to exclude certain files, documents and folders
Ability to have several custom document indexes ie. can ideally set up some content indexes to only contain a smaller subset of documents related to a certain project - not everything on my computer. Or alternatively have 'saved searches'.
When you do a search for a phrase or term, a list of MS Word documents that contains the search term/phrase is returned.
An extract with the search term highlighted is displayed for each document returned in the search results list, including some indication if the phrase appears in a document more than once. Viewing the extract within which a term or phrase appears helps context it and give a better idea of if this is the occurrence you are looking for.
When you click on an item in the search results window that document is opened in its native application ie. MS Word, AND
All occurrences of the term or phrase are highlighted in the open document, with the first occurrence selected. Ideally have ability to quickly move forward and back between multiple occurrences of the phrase/term within one document.
An added bonus would be the ability to do 'boolean', 'proximity' and other more advanced searches.
Tag documents with metadata, and this metadata can be searched on
Can index and search across multiple locations eg. servers as well as local computer

As mentioned, the closest I can find on the mac is the 'HoudahSpot' product, but I think it only does 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8?

The other solution that does everything I want is Adobe Acrobat's PDF search functionality, however its only for PDFs. If I could find similar functionality for MS Word documents I'd be really happy!

My other option is to move to a full document management solution, but I would probably still need to employ a developer to customize the search functionality to meet all my above needs? I'm not sure what document management system has good search? Also possibly there are limits to Spotlight's underlying design that stops me meeting all of the above requirements through products such as HoudahSpot? Maybe things like hit highlighting within MS Word could just use Word's inbuilt Find function, with the search term being passed to MS Word when the MS Word document is opened?

Any ideas or advice from anyone would be much appreciated.

I don't know of a third party solution, but I do know that Spotlight can do all of those things, except for #6, but that's more of a function of Word than Spotlight.


Boot camp can’t find the iso partition when I am in windows I installed Windows 10 64 system on my MacBook Pro 16 / 13 Retina
I used to switch simply by clicking on boot camp and clicking on the partition I want to use.

But since today I can’t see the Windows partition anymore

I looked only and I tried to restart my Laptop and press and hold the Option key but when I do that, after my PC starts I reach a black screen with a locked sign as you see in the picture I uploaded.

I have to hold the power again to lose this screen and it restarts to my Windows again

Any help to how I can access my Mac iso again
I have a lot of important files there

Your computer has a firmware password set and you won’t be able to boot into any other OS unless you know/remember the password. If you do not remember setting that password, you have a few options:

1) If you bought your computer directly from Apple, they can remove the firmware lock for you.

In this case, you can go to the nearest Apple Store or Apple Authorized Support center and they can remove the firmware key. Before you do that, it’s a good idea to backup your data from both macOS and Windows partitions. You can use TransMac to access macOS partitions from Windows. You will also need to provide proof of ownership of the Mac which has a locked firmware password in order for them to unlock the computer.

2) If you bought it online from someone else (i.e from Amazon)

You will have to contact the seller and ask him/her the firmware password. He/She can tell it to you and you can then remove the firmware password from Recovery Mode.

Way to boot into macOS without firmware password (Requires macOS Sierra or earlier)

Go into Bootcamp Helper control panel and there should be an option to select between OS X and Windows. Select OS X and press Reboot (or save and restart).

Source: http://osxdaily.com/2015/01/28/forgot-mac-firmware-password-what-now/


How to change the 9AM default for all-day Calendar events Apple Calendar allows setting a default alert for events, including all-day events.  But with all-day events there is no obvious way to control the time of the alert.

All options displayed in the UI are for 9AM.

This is mind-bogglingly restrictive.  If I want to be alerted the day before an event, or two days before an event, I would never want to be alerted at 9AM—that's when I'm either sleeping or thinking about what I need to do that day.

How can I change this?  Can I get more granular control somehow with defaults write?  Or is there some other way?  (A background process that detects new events added to my calendar and fixes their bad defaults?)

This question is for previous macOS version.

The time can be changed in macOS 10.14.3 Mojave:


Is there a timeline for Siri location features to be brought to Canada? Currently, the location features for Siri don't work in Canada. Is there a timeline for that being rolled out, or is there any way to get around it?

Apple announced that Siri location services will come to Canada and several other countries when iOS 6 is released in the fall.

You can see the full list of supported languages and locations here.


How to check total call duration in ios 7? In call log list there is option to check duration of each call. is there is any option to check total call duration of my iphone ?

Yes you can see this by clicking:

Settings
Cellular
You can see total duration on this page including since last reset


Opensource software versions by OS X distribution Have anyone or know anyone any pointer to some table, where is summarised what versions of some major opensource software was included in different OS X versions?

Like in mavericsk is perl 5.16.2 (relatively new), bash only 3.2.51 (very outdated and really wondering about yosemite version ) and such.

Exists something like distrowatch.com(Linux) for OS X too?

Apple lists all open-source files grouped by OS version on their site: http://opensource.apple.com


AppleScript to display the VPN status bar area icon I am trying to write an AppleScript to connect to a VPN service. Once connected to the VPN, I want to display the VPN icon in the status area of the menu bar.

I've gotten as far as

connecting to VPN
displaying the Network section of System Preferences

but I am unable to select the Service. How do I do that?

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.network"
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences" to tell window "Network"
        -- code to select the VPN Service "XYZ" and click the "Show VPN Status in menu"
    end tell
end tell

The answer to your question can be split in two parts:

connecting to a VPN is not a task that needs GUI scripting (i.e. open the network preferences pane and simulate a click on an item), as that functionality is part of the Network Preferences Suite of System Events since Leopard (I think). All you need is

tell application "System Events"
    tell current location of network preferences
        connect service "<name of your VPN>"
    end tell
end tell

displaying the VPN status bar item however, is not part of the Network Preferences Suite. If you cannot live with the icon being present permanently in your status bar area, you will have to use GUI scripting to enable it on demand:

property vpnToUse : "<name of your VPN>"
tell application "System Events"
    -- first activate the network pane, wait for it to load
    -- also might want to make sure this does not interrupt user interaction
    <your code here>
    -- get the index of the VPN in the service list
    tell current location of network preferences
        repeat with i from 1 to (count of every service)
            if name of (service i) is vpnToUse then
                set listIndex to i
                exit repeat
            end if
        end repeat
    end tell
    -- select the VPN item in the service list and activate status bar item
    tell process (name of application id "com.apple.systempreferences")
        tell window 1
            select row listIndex of table 1 of scroll area 1
            tell checkbox 1 of group 1
                -- only click if not already activated
                if value is 0 then click it
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

note this part, as always in GUI scripting, is potentially highly disruptive: it steals focus from the user, in the worst case even canceling whatever she was doing if she happened to be using System Preferences (there is an excellent discussion on the pros and cons of GUI scripting to manipulate System Settings predating the Preferences Suites at MacScripter). It’s also brittle (as it is subject to the specific UI layout of the preferences pane), although if you follow the model I show above, using indexes and process name retrieval via the application ID, it will at least not be affected by localization issues.


Unable to connect to iMac via Apple Remote Desktop 3 I have an office environment with 2 iMac's. We are using an Windows 2008 R2 server in workgroup mode for simple file sharing, DNS requests, and to run an application that requires Windows. I am trying to use Apple Remote Desktop 3.6 (470.93) from iMac1 to connect to second (iMac2).

When I enter an IP address for the second iMac and leave the DNS Name blank it will save the connection but upon trying to connect via the "control" option ARD fails to find the target system. If I enter just the DNS name (as indicated on target iMac under sharing and not the IP address, ARD save the connection with the DNS but without the IP address and it fails. iMac1 is running OS X 10.7.4 and iMac2 is running OS X 10.6.8 and ARD 3.5.3.:

I have verified that both machines have REMOTE Management enabled
under sharing in preferences.
We have both forward and reverse lookup zones on the server and I
have verified that they are working properly.
I have determined that our hardware firewall is not an issue as well.
Both machines are on LAN and I can ping either machine from Windows
server
Both iMac's are physically cabled via ethernet
Both machines are on same subnets
Ethernet switch has been power cycled
Both iMac's have been rebooted

iMac1 was as some point in the past able to connect to iMac2 with no issues according to internal users with this configuration. Looking for suggestions for possible place to continue to trouble shoot. I can also provide additional information as requested.

Try using the "kickstart" command on iMac2:

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -configure -users USERNAME -access -on -privs -all -clientopts -setmenuextra -menuextra yes -restart -agent -menu -console

(Obviously change USERNAME to whatever local account you wish to use to control via ARD).

Remote Desktop is still a really finicky, crashy beast (even on 3.6).


How to calibrate a superdrive's laser for CD and DVD burning? Since I bought my Macbook Pro 5.1 two and a half years ago I could barely burn DVDs and CDs. I have read some discussions on the Apple forums that pointed a potential solution that didn't work for me: blowing compressed air into the superdrive.

The only thing that actually worked for me was to go to the nearest Apple reseller and ask them to run a special calibration DVD on my Mac. After that I can burn CDs and DVDs for a few months, but then again I have to go back to the Apple reseller (which is now closed) and ask them to recalibrate my superdrive laser.

Is there any other way of calibrating my superdrive's laser for CD and DVD burning?

There is no calibration procedure. Perhaps they cleaned the inside of the mac to reduce dust, but the superdrive units are replaced as a whole by Apple technicians - you get a new drive - not something that is "tuned up".

The only calibration DVD are for running reference sound or visual patterns to help you calibrate a display system for video to ensure dim grey are differentiated visually from black, to focus a projection system, or to check channels or sound levels on an audio system.

Of course there are many cleaning DVD on the market, but I would be loathe to subject my SuperDrive slot loading mechanism to one of those. It could easily get stuck and do far more damage to the drive.


If I store my iTunes library in iCloud, can I listen without wifi on my iPhone? I'm looking for a solution here, since my computer's hard drive is pretty well full.

I want to be able to store my music library in iCloud (or some other cloud if it's more suitable).

However, if I do this, will it still allow me to store some of that music content (select playlists or albums) on my iPhone, so that I can listen to them without streaming through the iCloud?

Thanks for any answers you can give!

You can tell iOS to store a playlist, an album, an artist or a specific title offline. It will then download the tracks directly to your device and allow you listening to them without any internet connection.

This works with Apple Music as well as iTunes Match.


How to highlight errors and warnings on iTerm terminal output? I am looking for a solution that would allow me to use color highlighting to a set of important output messages inside iTerm terminal application.

Things to highlight:

application logs file warnings, errors and fatals (apache, nginx, tomcat)
compiler output
other similar errors/warnings

iTerm supports coloring of console output based on a set of regular expressions. You can set them up in Preferences > Profiles > Advanced > Triggers > Edit.

Here is my current set of regexes:

(?i:.*error.*)                     // Yellow on Black
(?i:.*(warning|warn).*)            // Orange on Black
(?i:.*FATAL.*)                     // White on Red

You are welcome to improve it :)


.HFS+ Private Directory Data? On my file exchange partition that both Mac and Ubuntu should have access to, I cannot manage to get access from Ubuntu.

This partition was created with the Disk Utility in Lion.

Unlike before, there is a file or directory called .HFS+ Private Directory  Data? (including the questions mark!) This was not there the last time I create such a partition. I cannot delete this file/directory.

What is this? Why can't I copy/delete files onto this partition from Ubuntu? It worked the last time I created such a partition. This partition has journaling disabled.

This .HFS+ Private Directory Data? cannot be seen with ls -la in the Terminal of Mac OS!

Oh dear. If you're seeing the .HFS+ Private* directories, you're likely using a very old version of your HFS+ driver on Ubuntu. I would stop using this immediately and update to something more current.

Basically, the purpose for that directory is that HFS+ doesn't support hard links—not really—and UNIX, upon which OS X/macOS is based, requires them. So what they did was to use a really obnoxious duct-tape kludge to simulate hard links; any file that has more than one link is moved into one of those invisible directories as an "inode"; the actual hard links are really just aliases to the "inode" file with a special flag set in its metadata. There's also a second HFS+ Private Data folder that holds something else; I can't remember what it is anymore, but it's another thing like this that really should be a file-system-level feature, but isn't.

So basically, if you're using an HFS+ driver that shows those folders, you're basically dealing with an older version of the spec. If you interact with files in that directory, you can mess up your drive but good. And if you delete it—well—just don't. Find a newer version of the driver that supports the latest version of the spec, or better yet, upgrade to APFS, which is implemented in a much more sensible manner (or so we assume; they still haven't published the specification on the thing AFAIK).


Screeching, distorting and oversensitive AirPods Pro I'm not sure this is the right place to ask, but after googling hours and trying out ideas without any vein I'm here.
A few weeks ago my Airpod Pro upgraded to the newest firmware. After the upgrade the right airpod had some screeching voice, as if there were certain frequencies it overamplifies. I kind of could live with it. I put it away for almost a week due to vacation.
When I came back from vacation the right side worked perfectly, but the left side got way worst than the right side ever been. Now, when I put the left one in my left ear it amplifies how my vein beats in my ear. It seems it amplifies even the smallest movement in my ear while I'm talking. It distorts everything.
I know putting aside these Airpods for 2 weeks might provide some solution, as it happened first time. :) But, I'm not a Roman and Airpods are not cabbage.
I haven't found any guide how to reinstall firmware.
Beside call Apple support I don't know what to do. Calling them doesn't seem good solution because it is, seemingly, software problem.
I would appreciate any help or thoughts.

I've had what sounds like this problem before, on a previous firmware, and I resolved it by placing them in the case (on charge, I don't know if that made a difference) for at least 5 minutes.
You can't reinstall or downgrade the firmware, but you can try resetting your AirPods Pro.

Place AirPods Pro in the case and close the lid.
Wait a couple of seconds, then open the lid.
Hold the button on the case. The light on the front will start flashing white.
Keep holding the button on the case. The light will go orange. Let go of the button.
Move iPhone near AirPods and tap to Connect.