OS X Lion - How to configure website on Apache I'm on my first steps with OS X and I'm trying to setup Apache so I can develop a website. I configured a new alias on /etc/apache2/other with the following content, pointing to my project folder, like this:

Alias /mySite /Users/me/Documents/workspace/mySite
<Directory /Users/me/Documents/workspace/mySite>
  Options Indexes
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Directory>

However, accessing to localhost/mySite gives me a 403 forbidden. I have access to localhost (which I realize has its web folder at /Library/WebServer/Documents) and I have access to localhost/~me (which shows the content of ~/Sites). I also tried to deploy my site in that folders and I can have access to it, but my ideia was, at most (if configuring the site on Apache fails), to use a symbolic link there pointing to the real project location, but right now I'm also getting the same 403 with it. Can someone help me with this?

Thanks!

The default permissions on ~/Documents don't allow anyone but the owner access to it. Apache accesses the documents as the _www user, so if that user can't get to the web folder, you'll get a permissions error.

If this is the problem, there are a couple of possible solutions: you can either move the project folder outside of ~/Documents (e.g. /Users/me/workspace/mySite), or change the permissions on ~/Documents to allow Apache in (chmod +a "user:_www allow search" ~/Documents should do the trick).


Troubleshooting the USB ports and peripherals on a Thunderbolt display I use two Thunderbolt displays with my mid-2012 retina MacBook Pro. I keep my iPhone 5 in a dock hooked up to the left Thunderbolt display via USB. On Friday, I noticed that when I went to commute home, my battery was very low. Odd! Today, I noticed that sitting my phone in its dock didn't make the charging lightning bolt show up next to the battery indicator.

A few minutes of testing proved that all three USB ports on the left Thunderbolt monitor are failing to charge my phone. Using the same cable in the other Thunderbolt monitor, or in the laptop itself, behaves exactly as expected.

How do I go about troubleshooting these USB ports?

UPDATE: OS X (10.9.2) also does not see the camera on the left-hand Thunderbolt display, and won't send sound out through it, either. It's not just the USB ports, clearly. How do I troubleshoot, uh, everything-but-the-screen?

UPDATE 2: From a suggestion in the comments, here are the System Report details on USB, Cameras, and Audio:

I never figured out what the problem was, but it went away when I reset the SMC.


I rename a app folder on the iPhone 3GS using iTunes 10.1 on Mac; then sync causes it to revert I run iTunes on the Mac MBP (Snow Leopard). I have a folder of apps called New Folder.  I click on it to open it, rename it, then close it.  It shows the new name.  But then after sync it changes back to New Folder.

I do wonder if it is some name conflict. The new name was sushi, and there are sushi apps.  But what is weird is it does show up with the new name until I press sync.

EDIT 2/20/11:  It isn't a name conflict; I have seen this at other times.  Also it shows all the apps in alphabetical order, it appears.

You should just edit the folder name on the iPhone itself. Just tap and hold the folder until it wiggles then tap it again to open it, and tap the name to edit it. Unfortunately iTunes often has lots of unknown trouble syncing with iOS devices, much to my own dismay.


How to change the cmd-h command to cmd-e I would like to make Cmd+e do what Cmd+h does.

I can do this in keyboard config, but I have to do it for every single program, as the title in the menu is "hide safari" for safari, and fx. "hide photoshop" for Photoshop.

Therefore I seek a solution, so that Cmd+e and Cmd+h does the same thing in every single program.

You can do this with BetterTouch Tool (free) or Keyboard Maestro (paid).

In BetterTouchTool:

Choose the Keyboard tab
Create a new global action with shortcut ⌘E and action ⌘H


Number of recent items not working Applications like for example TextEdit show multiple entries in the Open Recent list despite that the number of recent items is set to none in the system preferences.

Is there another way to adjust the number of recent items? Or to automatically clear the lists of all applications on logout?

The number of Recent Items in TextEdit or other applications is independent from the general settings in the System Preferences.
The amount of entries and the entries itself are stored in *.LSSharedFileList.plist files.

Example:

PlistEdit Pro method
To change the number for TextEdit clear the menu in TextEdit, quit TextEdit, open com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist in ~/Library/Preferences/ with an appropriate application (e.g. PlistEdit Pro (free 14-day trial)) and enter 0 as MaxAmount.

You may have to create (if the file doesn't exist) and modify com.apple.TextEdit.plist afterwards:

touch ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist

to create the file com.apple.TextEdit.plist

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0

to change the preferences.

plutil and nano method

Quit TextEdit and open Terminal.app and enter:

touch ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist

to create the file com.apple.TextEdit.plist if it doesn't exist

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0

to change the preferences

plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist

to convert the file to XML.

Open the file with nano

nano ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist

and edit the value of MaxAmount, write out your edit to file with ctrlO and exit nano  ctrlX
and finally

plutil -convert binary1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist

to convert it back to the original binary format.

defaults method works with 10.7, 10.8 and obviously 10.9:

defaults delete com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments
touch ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist (if the file doesn't exist)
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments -dict-add MaxAmount 0
killall Dock


When ever i open the Messenger app or the Facebook app, it instantly crashes my iPhone. What can I do to fix this? (iOS 11.3) What can I do to fix this? I am using iOS 11.3.

If it immediately crashes your system there are a couple of things you could do, starting with just powering the phone off and on again.

Failing that I would delete the app, reboot and reinstall it.


Can I use a different email/calendar/address book provider for Mac OS X and iOS? I am afraid that the switch to iCloud will make life very complicated, particularly for Snow Leopard users like myself. I am also afraid that Apple will make life generally more complicated.

So I am wondering if I can theoretically switch to another provide for synced email configurations, address book data and calendars.

I don't mind paying for those services, I just need my address book, emails and calendars to be the same between my devices, ideally between Mac OS X and iOS and everything else (Linux, Windows, Solaris etc.).

Any ideas?

Googles Services

iOS

(Push) Email using the IMAP protocol

Push is not default. You have to set it up manually.

bi-directional contacts sync (Exchange supported)

If you do not sync contacts using the exchange protocol, you only sync via iTunes.

bi-directional calendars sync

I don't have good experiences with the bi-directional sync using the iOS calendar app. Luckily, there are plenty of third-party apps available which offer a tight integration of Google Calender. CCal has been quite an enhancement to my Google experience.

OSX

iCal, Address Book and Mail allow to integrate sync with Google's services in Preferences → Accounts.

Google Services on other platforms

Google's Services are more widely available than anything else I know. It allows to keep contacts/calendars/email in sync on OSX, iOS, Android and Linux. In Ubuntu I use Google's Services in Thunderbird and Google Calendar/Contacts extensions.


Monitor a folder for changes, and run a command when a change is detected Is there a simple way to automatically run a (Terminal) command every time a file is changed in a specific folder?

This should be possible via the command line, or a system built-in application, no third-party applications.

Any ideas?

entr(1) is a utility for running commands when files change. It reads a list of file on STDIN and uses kqueue(2) to avoid polling.

Example:

ls my_project/*.html | entr echo "file changed"


What is the normal operating temperature for the MacBook (2016 generation)? My MacBook sometimes becomes hot when I'm using it, and I want to make sure it is operating within normal temperature. What's the operating temperature for the MacBook that was released in May 2016 normally?

You can find your processor model by entering the following into a terminal:
sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string

which will return a string, for example, like this:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5287U CPU @ 2.90GHz

You can then search for your processor on the intel product specifications page, by pasting for example i5-5287U into the search box.
On the resulting page you will see something called TJUNCTION ...

This is the maximum temperature recommended for that processor. You can monitor this with htop.


Applescript Move current file to Folder I want to create a script that takes the current file selection and moves it to an already existing folder. I will then duplicate this code for 9 other folders and assign them all keyboard shortcuts.

My application is rather specific and unfortunately I need to use Finder to quickly monitor audio samples rather the Terminal. (I am wading thru thousands of audio samples, deleting and sorting them into sub folders).

The idea is very simple:

tell application "Finder"
    move selection to alias "Users:Jordan:Desktop:0"
end tell

This code works; however, it then proceeds to move the parent folder of the target file into the destination folder. This action makes the script counterproductive and useless. I tried the same idea in automator to no avail either.  I have made long scripts to try and stop the tell from moving the folder too, but nothing has worked.

It's beyond me why such a simple function can be so buggy and difficult and why no matter how many variables I employee to make the selection static, or how many conditionals or delays I add, the script still moves the file in folder A to folder B THEN the folder A into folder B.

How do I move file in folder A into folder B without moving folder A into it as well?

This might be a bit of a sledgehammer approach by Applescript compared to Automator's 'move' command, but as that's how the OP approaches it...

To do it as an Automator Service, so it's easy to hotkey it…

'Service receives selected 'files or folders' in 'Finder''.

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "Finder"
        set selected_items to selection
        set theFolder to ((((path to desktop folder) as text) & "test") as alias)
        repeat with x in selected_items
            move x to theFolder
        end repeat
    end tell

    return input
end run


Homebrew command-line to display a formula's homepage I can open the homepage for a Homebrew formula by running the following command-line:

brew home <formula>

and for a Homebrew Cask by running the following command-line:

brew cask home <cask>

However, running the above command-lines immediately open the homepage in the default Web-browser.

Is there a way (preferably via command-line) to only display the homepage for a formula or cask without opening it in a Web-browser?

Additionally, is there a way to configure the command-line such so as to open the link in a specific Web-browser?

The homepage URL is a part of the output of brew info FORMULA, so you can run:

brew info FORMULA | grep -E '^https?:'

to extract just the link to the homepage. This also allows to run:

open -a Firefox.app "$(brew info FORMULA | grep -E '^https?:')"

to open the link in Firefox.app.

The respective command-lines for Homebrew Cask are:

brew cask info CASK | grep -E '^https?:'

and

open -a Firefox.app "$(brew cask info CASK | grep -E '^https?:')"


MacBook Pro 13" 2015 CPU and GPU temperatures I've noticed that my new MacBook Pro 13" 2015 (MF839) is getting hot while playing browser games or watching models at sketchfab.com. Both CPU and GPU temperatures rise to 100-105 degrees (Celsius) while playing agar.io or petridish.pw (for example) in Safari/Google Chrome. I've already reset SMC controller and cooler is working fine: about 3000 RPM, but I still believe that temperatures are very high for browser games.

Does anybody else have similar experience? Should I contact the Apple Center or it is a normal experience having such temperatures? I do not plan to use a MacBook for playing, just would like to know if it is a hardware problem, issue, etc.

Thanks in advance.

The high temps are mostly because of flash. Had a simmilar problem with my 15" macbook. I bought a fitting screw driver from amazon for 3€ opened and cleaned my mac and the temps went down by about 10°. Try it out it could help.


How can I pipe HTML content to Safari via the command line? I have a situation in which I'm getting HTML content via a pipe.  I'd like to display it in a browser window.  But the obvious step,

somethingThatProducesHTMLonStdout | open -f -a "Safari"

does not work: Safari displays the content, but as plain text; it does not render the HTML. I know for a fact that my HTML content is valid HTML content.  In fact, it is easy to demonstrate this problem with a trivial test case:

echo "foo" | open -f -a "Safari"

does the same thing – displays plain text, not rendered content.  I'm at a loss as to why Safari insists on doing this.  What is the secret to making it render the HTML?

Note: I know I can make this work by saving the content to a temporary file and then opening the temporary file.  I want to make it work without using a temporary file, if it is possible.

You can use something like

echo '
Hi, there!
foo' > /tmp/x.html && open -a "Safari" /tmp/x.html

I entered some HTML that contains an exclamation mark to show that you need to use single quotes for the shell, otherwise it will interpret this as a history recall. Yes, longer and you need a file name, but you can use your somethingThatProducesHTMLonStdout tool from your question.


Volume button bug ios7 I've run into a weird bug that either turns my volume up to max or turns it down to mute. Whenever I have my phone in my pocket and I want to change the volume, I kind of press the buttons on the side with a bit of luck.
However, it sometimes happens that I press both buttons very shortly (milliseconds) after each other, triggering this bug.

In some way, the phone turns the volume up or down continuously, no matter if you press a volume button, it will always go to max or mute again.

Now, I've figured out that restarting the phone fixes this, but I was wondering if someone else has noticed this and if there is a fix that doesn't need restarting. As far as I know, this only happens under iOS7, never noticed it before that.

Edit: Almost a year later and one iOS-version later, I am STILL noticing this bug once in a while. Still haven't found a way to replicate it.

Having just spent the last 2 minutes or so spamming my volume buttons in various ways and not been able to reproduce this, I'm pretty confident that it's not an iOS 7 bug, or at least not an iPad iOS 7 bug.

It might be extreme, but you could try backing up and restoring the device, which should fix iOS problems such as this.


Can I load and play audibooks on the iPod shuffle 2GB? Can I load and play audibooks on the iPod shuffle 2GB?

If so, how many standard novels can I fit on there, am I only allowed to download from the iTunes shop or can I also load from the library?

Yes you can load audiobooks onto the shuffle, The amount you load depends entirely on the size of the books. But to answer your question a 5 CD audio book uses about 120mb of data.

The formatted iPod Shuffle has in the region of 1966mb of free space. So using those numbers you will fit on average 16 full audiobooks on to the iPod Shuffle.

You can download audiobooks from anywhere iTunes, Audible or even Audio CD's you own, as they can be imported into iTunes.


Console reporting "Deprecated" in 10.8.x Not that i know what it is but would like to fix it anyway!

My Console shows this...but to my knowledge my MBA 10.8.4 is working fine ?

  6/23/13 11:35:31.952 AM System Preferences[3575]:

  * WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later.

  Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:]
  instead.

Honestly, I had to Google the word deprecated first to know what it means.

  Deprecation is a status applied to a computer software feature,
  characteristic, or practice indicating it should be avoided, typically
  because of being superseded.

OK, so how do I fix that problem.

It is not a problem for you. The code is working correctly.

"Deprecate" is what is used in development to tell the developer who uses a library that the next version of a library will not include the method that they are using. This allows the library writers to remove code and let developers using the code prepare to change how they called the library in the next version.


How does Apple perform a lossless in-place conversion from HFS+ to APFS? Since High Sierra, Apple has allowed users to do an in-place conversion of an existing HFS+ file systems to APFS without losing files. This can happen automatically during an OS upgrade or can be done by the user with Disk Utility.

My question is, how, technically, is this accomplished? I'm not asking how a user can do the conversion, I'm asking what actually happens on the disk during the conversion process. I've done some searches but have only found references to the fact that it can be done. This article provides some analogies, and I found some hints on how APFS allows easier resizing of partitions.

Does the software directly convert one file system to another on the fly? If APFS is basically an enhancement to HFS+ I can see this being easy, but my impression is that is not the case.

Does it create two partitions and slowly move content from one to the other, resizing as it goes, or create an image of the old system then restore it to the new system? It seems these would require a fair amount of free space, and could fail if the drive is full.

Something else?

It’s a four step process according to this article from The Ecletic Light Company

Read and convert the existing HFS+ metadata (files, directories, etc) to APFS format; writes it to free space on the drive
Verifies that the APFS data is correct
If no errors, it writes the volume super block in APFS format
It deletes the HFS+ meta data leaving just the APFS volume

It converts it a single piece at a time, updating the volume as it goes.  This is why you need sufficient free space prior to the conversion process begins.


250G Disk space has filled up, but DiskInventory only adds up to 60Gs? I cannot for the life of me figure out how my SD drive is filled up because I don't have any large files, especially enough to fill 250G.  I used DiskInventoryX to do a map of my drive and got this, a massive grey box full of "other" files, but they don't add up to 250G.  I ran Avast to see if there were any obvious trojans or malware of some sort: nothing.

What else could I do to figure out where this block is going wrong?  I have another user on the system, but its very similar... Definitely not enough to fill even 30G.

Thanks,
Jon

Hover your mouse over the large grey box and below it will show the path to that file.  Most likely it is your local TimeMachine backup data.

OS X will keep TimeMachine backups local to your system so that you can do faster restores or if your main TimeMachine system is not available.

From the Apple Menu, select System Info and then click the Storage tab.  You will see how much space "Backups" are using on your disk.

This space will be automatically cleared as you need more disk space.  It is not really considered used space from the user's perspective.  If you Get Info on your drive, the Used Space value will not include it.

For more details on this feature, see this Apple Support Document HT204015

If it isn't TM data or it is some other unnecessary cache file, and it is a file that you are sure you want to remove, right click on the grey box and select "Move to Trash".

And if you don't want local TimeMachine backups at all, open Terminal and type sudo tmutil disable.  If you need to re-enable them, type sudo tmutil enable

FOLLOWUP 2016-04-19:

The large grey box is "Space occupied by other files and folders" because you have the "Show Other Files" option enabled in the Preferences.  Those are system files that you don't have access to read, and/or files outside of the scanned folder. It appears you started at the top of the drive but it can't access the files/folders not owned by you (i.e. root).  You can see in the picture of the .Spotlight-V100 folder it has a red hyphen icon meaning you don't have access.

Since you can't [easily] run the app as root, here is another option but it will take more work.

Open the Terminal app and type the commands cd / then sudo du -hxs .[^.]* *. This will show the size of each directory tree. For example,

 68M    .DocumentRevisions-V100
  0B    .PKInstallSandboxManager
2.0G    .Spotlight-V100
  0B    .Trashes
  0B    .dbfseventsd
  0B    .file
 44M    .fseventsd
  0B    .vol
 21G    Applications
7.0G    Library
  0B    Network
8.2G    System
292G    Users
4.0K    Volumes
2.5M    bin
  0B    cores
4.5K    dev
4.0K    etc
  0B    home
  0B    net
5.4G    private
1.0M    sbin
4.0K    tmp
1.4G    usr
4.0K    var

You can then cd into each large dir and list the files with ls -alh or repeat the sudo command until you find the large files.

Do NOT delete any files unless you know exactly what you are doing.  All of the files/folders outside of the Users folder are for the system.  If you remove the wrong one, you will have a bad week!


How do I use AppleScript to reveal a file in Finder from its POSIX path? I'm trying to create an AppleScript snippet that locates the current random wallpaper and reveals it in Finder. I have the following snippet which finds the current wallpaper's POSIX path as a string:

set plistFolderPath to path to preferences folder from user domain as string
set plistPath to plistFolderPath & "com.apple.desktop.plist"
tell application "System Events"
    tell property list file plistPath
        tell contents
            set thePath to value of property list item "NewChangePath" of property list item "default" of property list item "Background" & "/" & value of property list item "LastName" of property list item "default" of property list item "Background"
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

thePath is now a string in the form:

  /Volumes/Archive/Widescreen wallpaper/12345_Name_2560x1440.jpg

(Note spaces)

I try to reveal this path in FInder, but everything I've tried results in an error:

tell application "Finder"
    reveal POSIX file of quoted form of thePath (* Error: "Can't get POSIX file of (blah)" *)
end tell

How do I reveal a pathname in Finder in AppleScript when all I have is its POSIX path?

I think your problem is that quoted form. Try something like this:

set thePath to POSIX file "/Volumes/Lion HD/Users/ngreenst/Desktop/image.jpg"
tell application "Finder" to reveal thePath

So, just reveal thePath


Can Applescript be multithreaded? I am writing an Applescript for Spotify that is supposed to do two things:

Log every new song played.
Every N seconds check what sound device is used.

I do (1) by a simple loop that check how much of the track remains and then use that value in a delay statement in the loop (unnecessary to run the loop at full speed). However, N usually is much lower than the remaining time of the current track. Hence, I would like task (2) to run in a separate loop with N-0.5 as delay value. Basically I want to loops to run simultaneously from the same script. Is this possible?

(Of course I could use two separate scripts but I need to distribute this solution when it is done, therefore less visual complexity - i.e., two scripts running simultaneously taking up space in Dock, needing to be launched etc - is better.)

Not easily. The concept of processes and threads isn't contained in AppleScript.

You'll want another tool for that job. Swift might be a good one unless you're looking for python or something a bit more established.


Unable to double tap on the trackpad to highlight multiple words in macOS Mojave In previous versions of OS X, I was able to "double tap" on the trackpad and then move my finger to the side or down to highlight/select text/multiple text.

I'm unable to duplicate this in the new macOS Mojave.  Previously, I'd enable System Preferences > Trackpad > "Tap to click".  Any ideas?

Although not specific to Mojave, this link helped me out.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6295852

System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options > "Enable dragging" [without drag lock].


CLI Solution - Stripping File Attributes - LSOpenURLsWithRole() I am getting this error when trying to execute an unsigned application that was downloaded via the native web-browser; Safari.app.

LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810..

There used to be a solution to a similar question on AskDifferent that utilised the CLI to strip certain attributes from the file in question, allowing it to run. It was a good solution but it has since been deleted and now I've forgotten what it was.

Does anybody know the command('s?) that I'm referring to?

I believe it's xattr -rc app-name, but I could be completely wrong.


Disabling Preview's "sliding" animation The pages of my pdf presentation add incremental changes to the first page. The second page, for instance, consists of the diagram on the first page in addition to a few more lines. This way a complex figure can be introduced gradually.

But Preview now "slides" each page, which defeats the effect I am after (a few changes just appear). Instead the audience is treated to a distracting effect.

Is there a way to disable the fancy sliding and go back to replacing pages?

You can use ⌥ + ↓/↑ or ⌥ + ←/→ to navigate pages without the sliding effect.


To maximize long-term battery life, should I increase brightness during charging? My MacBook Pro can undergo 1000 charge cycles (using up the battery completely and charging it back to 100%) before the battery's life is reduced to 80% of what it originally was.

Obviously, using high brightness while the computer is plugged in speeds up the rate of battery discharge, causing you to plug in the computer sooner and thus use up charge cycles faster. However, if I were to increase the computer's brightness during charging, or up the energy usage in any other way, wouldn't the process of charging slow down, the time between charge cycles would increase, and thus the long-term battery life would increase?

In other words, does increasing energy usage during charging actually increase battery life?

The short answer is no, although this depends on what you mean by battery life.

You are correct that placing more of a burden on your computer while it's being charged (e.g. upping the brightness level, converting videos, etc) will result in a longer charging time (how much will differ on what your MBP is doing at the time).

However, this doesn't increase the life of the battery itself. Of course, in terms of a human measurement of time (in terms of hours/days/weeks etc) there may be a perceived difference in the life of the battery, but the battery itself isn't lasting any longer in terms of its actual usage.

Put another way, it's common that two users buying the exact same model MBP with the exact same specs will have a different experience in terms of how long it is before they need to replace the battery. But one user may use their MBP on the road etc every day, while the other only uses it a few hours every couple of days. Or one user spends a lot of time compressing video, while the other only does basic browsing and word processing. The fact that one of these users may need to replace their battery in a couple of years doesn't mean the battery life was less, just that its battery life was used up sooner than the other.

For further info you may want to read the entirety of what Apple says about their batteries here.


Time Capsule Interface List Per my other question on monitoring network throughput, I now have a series of graphs, some of which are distinctly non-obvious as to what they are.

Is there documentation on what every interface on a Time Capsule (in this case, current generation, 1TB Wireless N Base Station), pollable via SNMP are?

Here is the list that is available:

gec0
ath0
ath1
wlan0
wlan1
wlan2
wlan3
vlan1
rxq0

gec0 and vlan1 are the most important for monitoring overall traffic flow.

gec0 corresponds to the local traffic (behind the firewall) and vlan1 represents external traffic upstream to the internet. I haven't seen anything that makes sense what gec0 but on larger cisco switches they were internal routing queues where packets went to get headers constructed and routed across Vlans in the switching fabric. Perhaps it's the same on airport hardware.

athX are wireless vlans
wlanX are wired vlans

Apple used to publish MIBs for SNMP back when the first Airport Extremes were around but I don't know of anything better than using a generic MIB for the more recent hardware.

There used to be more information on these ports up at http://www.uname.nl/closer-look-airport-extreme/ but I can't find it anywhere (since archive.org respected it's robots.txt directive) - the best is a dated summary from http://gigo.com/archives/blog/monitoring-apples-80211n-airpo.html


Disassociating from an old Apple ID I recently change my Apple ID and password. However, now I an unable to use System Preference; each time I click on System Preference I am asked to input password for the old Apple ID which doesn't exist any longer. How can I disassociate my MacBook Pro from this old Apple ID which doesn't exist?

You didn't erase the old Apple ID, it still exists. Not using it doesn't make it go away.

All the apps installed on your machine, including the OS itself, are tied to that original ID.

The only way to be rid of it is to reformat the boot drive & start over; install a fresh OS, repurchase all App Store apps under the new ID.

The essential paradigm difference between Apple & Microsoft is that Microsoft ties a purchase to a machine.
Apple ties it to a user.
This makes changing machines easy, but changing users difficult.


Confusing reverse DNS IP replacement, ever since I edited /etc/hosts A while ago I was trying to set up convenient ssh to a server, so I added an entry to /etc/hosts (not real IP):

# Host Database
104.111.11.1    dokku.1

I've realized since then that using ~/.ssh/config is a better solution, so I removed the hosts entry. But ever since then, the IP seems to reverse-resolve to dokku.1 when I try to visit that IP in safari, it replaces it with dokku.1, then fails to resolve the hostname. Does anyone know where that resolving behavior is coming from, and how to stop it? I have rebooted the computer since I removed the entry.

macOS 10.12.6

Welp, turns out it's actually the server at the IP address returning an HTTP 301 redirect. It was just so fast I didn't notice.


Can an HFS+ formatted drive be shared with Windows I have a Mac Mini that I'm using as a media server. I just put together an external RAID enclosure and I'd like to format it as HFS+, primarily so I can use it for Time Machine backups. 75% of everything I do is with OS X or iOS, but I do have a Windows machine, and the majority of my friends and family use Windows. I'm not real clear on how network sharing protocols work. I know in order to share a volume with Windows (without installing some additional softare on windows) I have to set it up as an SMB share rather than AFP.

Will I be able to format the drive as HFS+ and create an SMB share for my Windows machines? Does the drive format matter in this case?

(The only reason I'm not just trying it is because the external drive is already formatted with an exFat partition and already has a fair amount of data on it. In order to reformat to HFS+ I would have to first sync all that data somewhere else, reformat, then sync it back - a task I'd rather not undertake if I won't be able to get the results I need.)

Attached to an OS X Server you can use the RAID-volume formatted to HFS+ or ExFAT to create shares for Windows clients.

After enabling the share it is accessible via AFP and SMB by default:

Example screenshot OS X Server 3.2.2 Mavericks:

Example screenshot OS X Server 5.0.15 El Capitan HFS+:

Example screenshot OS X Server 5.0.15 El Capitan ExFAT:

Both shares are accessible as usual (Data:HFS+ formatted/data2: ExFAT formatted):


Have the Retina MacBook Pro GPU Hangs been fixed? I have an early 2013 15-inch retina Macbook Pro running the latest stable version of Yosemite on which I've encountered the fabled GPU hang-ups, detailed in this question. I'm almost certain I have the same issue as described; I see similar messages on the console, and it seems to only happen when I open an intensive app like photoshop, thus causing the computer to switch between graphics devices.

In the way of possible fixes, I understand that one can disable graphics switching, but that decreases battery life, which I'd like to avoid. However, I haven't seen the issue in a few weeks anyway, which makes me wonder if it hasn't been fixed. The app store doesn't show any major system updates in the past 30 days. Was there an update I didn't notice that fixed this issue?

Bring it into your nearest Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider and they can run a VST (AST Video System Test). That specific MBPr model is eligible for a repair program right now, so you'll get a free Logic Board replacement if it fails the VST test. Here is the Apple Support page with the information.


Virtualization with Intel's GVT-d on Mid-2015 Macbook Pro I have a mid-2015 15" Macbook Pro. The iGPU is part of Intel's Iris Pro brand, which as I understand allows a VM to access the GPU directly with a native driver through GVT-d.

I would like to run a Linux guest OS in this manner, giving it native access to the iGPU so that it can run a native driver (and thus have OpenGL 4.3 support). I have no idea how to go about doing this, though. I've heard there are forks of QEMU/KVM with GVT included, but I have no idea how to go about setting up a VM with one of those.

Some further research has produced somewhat contrary answers. This forum thread seems to suggest that it's possible, but not for a Mac OS host. Conversely, here it's suggested that it's not possible to implement on a type-2 hypervisor like Virtualbox.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, except maybe to suspect that it's possible to time-share an Intel GPU across multiple VMs with this method, but not to time-share an Intel GPU across a host and a guest.

Either way, it seems the answer to this question would have to be No for the time being.


Why my memory usage is so high? (2.8GB out of 4GB immediately after wiping clean) I was worried by high memory use so I decided to wipe clean my laptop:

I made a bootable USB
Disk Utility to erase evething
Fresh install of latest OS

The problem is still there... I launched Safari to install Chrome and memory usage is already 2.8GB, now with all the Google Chrome Helper it's even higher.

I have disable all but one Chrome extension and added "click to play" on media files and yet high memory usage persist. Or maybe this is normal and I should expect it?

It looks pretty normal to me.

Web pages each use memory & it soon adds up. Right now your Activity Monitor is showing some compressed, but no swap used; which means everything is still happy.
Having only 4GB of RAM these days means you've just always got to keep an eye on it, but so long as memory pressure stays out of the red, everything is nominally OK.

The modern paradigm is that empty memory is wasted memory, so the machine will fill the memory as it needs, to enable a faster response if any of that used memory is needed again. It is far faster to re-use memory than it is to empty it & refill it with the same data over & over, so it hangs onto used memory it thinks it is likely to need again.


Weird hidden folder and file on desktop as old as the computer, what for? I noticed a mysterious hidden folder on my desktop containing one hidden file. The folder's name starts with .E05268AB3AE5F72AF... and the file name starts with DF2CEE62032EFA2196B0B673...

The folder was created on July 19th 2014 and its file on October 22nd 2014

My mac is a "MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)" and I got it sometime in October 2014. So, my guess is that the folder is put on the computer when it's manufactured and the file created on the first boot.

But that's just a wild guess and doesn't explain their utility.

Do you have those on your desktop?

Do you know why they're there?

Opening the file with text edit I get this:

/MG›ÿ“.¥%Pü;Pó¸û-øa]J´âË…≠RÑ€ïÆÀ\ˇ_ÔÅJ•W›Ã†õ‘m
õ'Õ∂Ø≠{a3oP)%<U
6?ó≥$há ÄdY
¯8º◊
9ü”‘–pJÈt∞“≤L »óPØ}˝)YÄeÅôà(zk‹&>O◊>∂:

and then a little bit more of that, probably binary not meant for humans.

As requested, the output of ls -al is the following

Feldev-MBP:.E05268AB3AE5F72AF1E451 feldev$ ls -al
total 8
drwxrwxrwx@  3 feldev  staff   96 19 Jul  2014 .
drwx------+ 19 feldev  staff  608  3 Sep 21:07 ..
-rw-rw-rw-@  1 feldev  staff  242 22 Oct  2014 DF2CEE62032EFA2196B0B67336814E

and the output of file .E05268AB3AE5F72AF.../DF2CEE62032EFA2196B0B673... is data

They are for deleting. They don’t ship with the os and aren’t worth worrying about since they are machine generated and you’d need to use the command line or a hex editor to examine the binary file for clues.

If you’re super worried, set up Time Machine to back them up, then delete them.

Your home folder wasn’t created until after you received your Mac and chose your short name, so it came from a program or transfer you made soon after this mac was customized for you.


Cannot delete mail from storage in Usage section of IPhone In the usage section of IPhone 5 it says I have 349MB inn Mail.  However, I have deleted ALL inbox, sent, trash etc...there is nothing in the mail.  How do I get the Storage in the Usage section to empty this mail?  Thanks

Try rebooting the phone. Press and hold Home+Sleep until the Apple logo appears.

If that doesn't work, and the email account you are using with Mail is not connected using POP3, then try removing the email account and re-adding it. Go to Settings app > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > tap on the specific account > Delete Account. Confirm that you want to delete it, and reboot the phone - press and hold Home + Sleep until the Apple logo appears. Re-add the account by going to Settings app > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account.


top alternative for GPU usage and networking I want to get all the info from Activity Monitor in the terminal (because I am executing these commands in macOS app). It also has to terminate - e.g. for top I can write:

top -pid <somepid> -l3 -n30 > test ; tail -n42 ./test > ./test2 ; open ./test2

and this would get 3 recordings and terminate.

So far, I managed to run top command and get most of the metrics. However, there are many that top doesn't provide, such as GPU and networking.

I am familiar with systemstats but this is not on a per-process basis. I can grep some parts of systemstats, but there is not guarantee that my process is going to be in the list of GPU usage section.

Need to support 10.14 Mojave and 10.15 Catalina

Any other commands that I can use, or maybe ways I can tweak systemstats to work for my case?

netstat : This command shows network status
iostat : This command displays information about CPU usage, and I/O statistics
vm_stat : This command virtual memory statistics

To my knowledge, there is no command to get GPU usage on macOS.


Nested list in iOS Notes I might be missing something obvious, but I can't figure out how to create a nested list in iOS Notes. It's easy on a Mac (just use the tab key), and the iPhone renders a nested list fine, but there doesn't seem to be any way to indent a bullet to the second level of nesting while composing on iOS. Any way to do this?

Tap "Aa" symbol

Then tap this symbol (It acts an a Tab-right)


Why is there a command-1 on top of my terminal window? I had always noticed this on my Mac and was curious as to why it is there.  What does it mean?

This is defined in the profile settings:


Can't import automator workflow "document can't be opened" I found this "question" Convert Mac to Windows paths and visa-versa for sharing with colleagues
Which lead me over different detours to this github: https://github.com/marcoziti/mactoys
I downloaded the .workflow files, but unfortunately I can't open them.
When double clicking, nothing is happening. When I start automator and select the file to open it  has a popup: Document "XY" can't be opened (I translated the error from german).
Any idea why this happens? I thought I could just import the script.
I'm currently running BigSur 11.3.1

Those files are not Automator workflows, they are just raw text AppleScripts.
You'll need to create your own Automator workflow, and paste those scripts into the Run AppleScript action.
The last edit, 3 year ago, was to rename the scripts as .workflow, which is an error.


Apple iPad is not turning on and my home button is broken to force restart Three days ago when I tried to use my iPad it did not turn on (black screen). I fixed it to the charger and nothing happened. After one day of trying I decided to search online. And yes, there is a very popular solution, intact a whole Apple page dedicated to how to fix it (https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201412)

Holding the Sleep/Wake button along with the Home button for 10 seconds fixes this.

However the thing is, my home button is broken. Even though I still tried, knowing its broken for the past few days it gave me the expected result which is - didn't turn on.

Tried fixing to the laptop/iTunes. Nothing happens.

How can I fix this? Without the home button working

I do not have Apple care for this product as it is an old iPad (iPad 2)

I found some software that might let you put your iPad into recovery mode: (Source: [Apple Support Communities thread])1

RecBoot

TinyUmbrella


How to use the camera of an iPad connected to a Mac as a video camera? Is there a way to use the back camera of an iPad Mini as a video camera, so that I can use it from Screenflow as an input video device ?

I'm not aware of any software the directly captures the video from the camera, but like others have suggested you can capture the screen, which also works when the camera app is open, thus getting the camera video. After doing some research, it seems that you can record the screen right through Screenflow. Check out more about Screenflow screen recording here.

The next option, which is free, is to use the built in QuickTime application to record the screen of the iPhone. This can be done by

Open QuickTime
File -> New Movie Recording
Next to the record button, click the down arrow to the right
Select iPad Mini
Open the camera app and press record in QuickTime

The downside to these two options are that you won't get the native resolution from the camera, instead it is being downscaled to fit the screen size. For both Screenflow and QuickTime, you must plug in your phone, but this will provide better quality screen recording than doing it over WiFi. Best of luck!


Why is my partner's iphone safari history showing up on my macbook history? For some weird reason my partner's iphone safari history is showing up on my macbook's safari?
Only my phone is connected to my macbook (for imessages and icloud), so I can't understand how his history is showing up when mine isn't?
How is this possible?
He has used his phone as a hotspot before and logged into his icloud for itunes once but his history has been showing up way before then?
Please help clarify to stop this!

To check and control which devices are trusted on your mac or apple ID, go to System Preferences and click iCloud

Then via the Account Details button, select the devices tab, from here you can control which devices are trusted.


Harddisk exchange from one MacBook Pro to another MacBook Pro with same configuration and model with different serial no I am working as a system admin in a corporate company. Today I got one ticket from HR. HR is using MacBook Pro having a 100 GB harddisk. He needs to upgrade the harddisk from 100 to 500 GB. What I did at the moment is that I have the same MacBook Pro with 500 GB harddisk. I exchanged the harddisks for both the Mac in the live state that means on the state I didn't shut down both Macs.

After exchanging harddisks neither of the Mac boot. Is it possible to install new os for two Mac hard drives.

I'd suggest putting both the harddisks back into the devices they were originally in and try booting again. Make sure the laptops are plugged in when you do this. If that doesn't work, it's very possible you've damaged the disks by trying to pull them out while the laptops were running.

If it does work, then I'd use time machine to create a backup of the 100GB disk you're replacing on an external USB drive. Then, after that's complete, power off the laptop, replace the disk with a new one, then follow the steps here to "Restore from a Time Machine Backup".

To be clear, this is assuming these are older MacBook Pro's with removable harddisks, not the solid-state drives that are soldered onto the motherboards. Those cannot be removed or replaced, at least not without permanently destroying the entire machine.


click select IPv6 address in terminal When clicked on IPv4 address in terminal window, it gets selected as a whole, not a single octet. The same action does not work for IPv6 adress, it does not get selected.
I assume there is some setting for IPv4, in terminal settings. I could not figure it out, though.
Can I make click selection for IPv6 to work?

This isn't just a Terminal thing, this is an OS X selection thing. Anywhere in OS X where auto-range selection works, it will select an IPv4 in that way. As far as I am aware, there is no way to customize this as it is part of the OS.


Transferring Apple ID purchases to another Apple ID My old email along with my Apple ID were registered as aol accounts. When I switched to gmail I had to create a new Apple ID under the new gmail account. Is there anyway to transfer the purchases and information from my old Apple ID to my new one?

You didn't have to change the Apple ID, you needed only to change its associated email address.

The account "name" can be Fred@one.com, the associated email can be joe@two.com
The "name" is just that, a name. It doesn't actually even have to be a valid email address, other than for the initial setup.

All of which is leading to…
No, you cannot transfer purchases from one account to another, except if you set them both up as part of Family Sharing

From Apple KB -

  Change your Apple ID

  Learn how to change the email address that you use as your Apple ID.

  In most cases, your Apple ID is also the primary email address of your Apple ID account. You can change your Apple ID to any other email address you control, as long as it's not already in use as an Apple ID. If your email address ends with @icloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com, it's already an Apple ID.

  Use these steps to reset your Apple ID:

  Sign out of iCloud, the iTunes Store, App Store, FaceTime, Find My Friends, Find My iPhone, and iMessage on each device that uses your current Apple ID for these services.
  Go to My Apple ID.
  Select Manage your Apple ID and sign in. Forgot your password?
  Select Edit next to Apple ID and Primary Email Address.
  Enter the email address that you want to use as your Apple ID, then select Save Changes. Apple will send a verification email to that address.
  Open the email from Apple, then click Verify Now. Didn't receive the email?
  When the My Apple ID page opens, sign in with your new Apple ID email address and password. When you see a message that verification is complete, you can start using your updated Apple ID.
  Update the features and services that you use with Apple ID, so that each one is using your updated Apple ID.

  If you need to change the Apple ID that's signed in to your iOS device, use these steps to sign out, then back in with a different Apple ID.


Mac Pro goes to sleep despite settings My Energy Saver system preferences look like this:

The thing is, I don’t want my Mac to ever go sleep — especially last night when I had Handbrake transcoding a ton of important files I was expecting to be done this morning. I woke up to discover Handbrake stopped sometime after I walked away from it last night, only to continue transcoding again after I logged back into my Mac this morning.

Why in the world did it put itself to sleep when it was so clearly busy? All 12 cores of the processor were going to town! How do I ensure my Mac Pro does NOT go to sleep, especially when it should be working hard?

Technical details, if needed:
Mac Pro 2013 (trash can edition)
12-Core Processor
64GB RAM
1TB SSD
macOS High Sierra 10.13.5

Had this issue with a server computer. The only reliable (I have used this for 6 months+ without a single issue) native solution I found was by using the caffeinate command.

The command I use to prevent sleep is caffeinate -s.  You can add a time limit with the -t [# of seconds] flag but since you want it never to go to sleep you don't need it.

Heres the man page:

CAFFEINATE(8)             BSD System Manager's Manual            CAFFEINATE(8)

NAME
     caffeinate -- prevent the system from sleeping on behalf of a utility

SYNOPSIS
     caffeinate [-disu] [-t timeout] [-w pid] [utility arguments...]

DESCRIPTION
     caffeinate creates assertions to alter system sleep behavior.  If no
     assertion flags are specified, caffeinate creates an assertion to prevent
     idle sleep.  If a utility is specified, caffeinate creates the assertions
     on the utility's behalf, and those assertions will persist for the dura-
     tion of the utility's execution. Otherwise, caffeinate creates the asser-
     tions directly, and those assertions will persist until caffeinate exits.

     Available options:

     -d      Create an assertion to prevent the display from sleeping.

     -i      Create an assertion to prevent the system from idle sleeping.

     -m      Create an assertion to prevent the disk from idle sleeping.

     -s      Create an assertion to prevent the system from sleeping. This
             assertion is valid only when system is running on AC power.

     -u      Create an assertion to declare that user is active. If the dis-
             play is off, this option turns the display on and prevents the
             display from going into idle sleep. If a timeout is not specified
             with '-t' option, then this assertion is taken with a default of
             5 second timeout.

     -t      Specifies the timeout value in seconds for which this assertion
             has to be valid. The assertion is dropped after the specified
             timeout. Timeout value is not used when an utility is invoked
             with this command.

     -w      Waits for the process with the specified pid to exit. Once the
             the process exits, the assertion is also released.  This option
             is ignored when used with utility option.

EXAMPLE
     caffeinate -i make
:


Create a new port for Macports I hate to wait for Macports to update the packages that I need. I would like to learn how to create a new port and submit it to Macports server. How do I do that?

An easier way probably does not exists "they would have it listed on the site if there was a fast track" you are going to have to read and understand many of the things listed under MacPorts Development. It is a complicated system, you have to take the time to understand how it works, and what the rules and guidelines are for using and working with it.

I am not currently a MacPorts developer but you could try asking / searching the archives for your question on MacPorts Mailing list, but I suspect if you do ask this question they are going to tell you the same thing I just did above. Either way if you want to get started developing ports for MacPorts getting started and having access to that Mailing list resource will help you go a long way.


Arrange by exact file type (not just by kind) in OS X Lion Currently .mp3, .aac, .m4r, etc. are all looked as "Music". So when I do an Arrange or Group By in the Lion Finder, all of these files get displayed under the heading "Music". Is there an option to make this arrange by Kind setting respect the exact file type?

It sounds like you want to "sort" your files rather than "arrange" them.

In Finder open up the folder you would like to sort by kind (file type).
Click the Action button (gear icon).
Choose Show View Options.
Set Arrange By to None.
Set Sort By to Kind.

Your files can be sorted more specifically now. There are also a few other tricks to such as holding down the option key while selecting what you would like to sort by, which overrides grouping.


How can I route traffic to different gateways by protocol Here's the situation:

I can connect to the world either through my phone connection in wi-fi hotspot mode, or through a satellite link, which has much higher latency.

My phone connection is limited to 6 GB/month.  The Sat link to several GB/day.

I would like to use the phone link for things requiring responsiveness, and use the sat link for things where I don't care.

Anyone know of a package that allows routing by protocol?  E.g. route dns via hotspot but bittorent via satellite?

AND it has to be smart enough to do the right thing when I grab the phone and go.  (That is, all routes fall back to satellite link.)

If you are prepare to do a lot of research and command line work then you should be able to do it using the built in routing and firewall software.

There is a good package IPNetRouterX which makes doing it a lot easier. They also claim to be faster since they operate at the kernel level. They offer a 21 day trial so you can see if it works well for you before paying the $100 they want for it. I have had some success with it for other uses in a couple of clients.


Forgotten iCloud email ID and password I am the owner of an iPhone 4s. One day I tried to put my SIM card into my iPhone and the next thing I saw on my phone was "Activation Required".

Unfortunately, I have forgotten my iCloud Apple ID and Password. I tried to find it with iForgot but it is not finding my name. I created the iCloud email. How can I find it and regain access to my iCloud account?

Most people start at https://iforgot.apple.com and work through apple support. Same as if you forgot your bank password or email - you go through the support organization and get your account returned to you. You would need to do that or go though support to reset the Activation lock presuming you can prove you're the original purchaser of the equipment.

See:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201441
How can I bypass Activation Lock?


Is the iPhone's "found this contact info in.." reliable? Got an SMS from a new contact I know, saying simply "hi it's Jane and peter"

I don't have any address book entry existing for this person but the phone suggested "maybe:Jane" - ok, I can see that conclusion

However, tapping the banner at the top of the message it said "contact info for Jane.. blah blah cellphone number 123 456 789.. found in Mail"

And then it showed a mail from my account manager at my insurance broker confirming a policy detail - entirely unrelated to this person, the trailing phone number digits are different, all names are different, they'll never have met or interacted etc.  I can't find anything they have in common - just wondered if it's reliable, how it matches, what data big brother is linking up to offer this assist etc?

Reliability is not a binary, black/white property. You'll find cases where this feature doesn't work at all, suggesting the wrong thing - and you'll find cases where it does work, suggesting the right thing.

I don't have any statistics on exactly what the hit/miss frequency is. I doubt if anyone does - perhaps Apple has some statistics. However, in my own experience it works fairly well. It can be a convenience that a phone call from an unknown number is instantly matched with the contact details from an email, you've received yesterday for example.

The matching is done by the Spotlight functionality on the phone. Basically an index is created of for example your emails inside Mail.app. When for example a call comes in, and the number is unknown, then iOS will automatically search your Spotlight index for emails to find e-mails mentioning that phone number. The contact information will then be derived from the mail using proprietary heuristics.

The implementation of this feature is entirely on the phone. It does not require a cloud service, nor does it send your data off for processing somewhere on the internet. So your question about "big brother" is that no "big brother" is involved.

If you want, you can disable this feature from Settings > Contacts > Siri & Search > Find Contacts in Other Apps.


How can I fix smart playlists with live updating to update again in itunes 11? I'm using iTunes 11.0.1 on 64-bit Windows 7, and occasionally my smart playlists (with live updating set to on) stop updating.

I've got a series of podcasts subscribed to via iTunes, and I have a smart playlist to collect all the newest ones I haven't yet heard, and play them in the order of publication ('Release date'). This has worked for me since iTunes 7 IIRC.

With the latest version of iTunes, occasionally this automatic updating stopped working.

I tried switching off and on the 'live updating', restarting iTunes in between. No luck.I copied the playlist, and the copy showed the same stale set of podcasts, not the newer ones I verified existed.I changed the filter settings for the smart playlist, but no change.

I have the same issue with a smart playlist for 'music' (in this case, podcasts downloaded as regular MP3s, where iTunes doesn't recognize them as podcasts but as music, where I filter-out 'songs' I've already heard at least once).

When I recreate the smart playlist from scratch, it has been working again, for a time, but my main playlist has stopped updating now for at least the fourth time since iTunes 11 came out. I'd not consider that acceptable.

Googling this issue has not brought any usable answer, most people seem to have a problem that the smart playlist in iTunes is not properly synced to their device.Syncing is not my problem, just that the synced playlist is just as stale as in iTunes.

Is there a way to get smart playlists with live updating to work again, or is this a bug for which I have to wait on Apple to fix it? Or might it be a problem with my Windows 7 installation?

As a workaround I found out the following: If I switch off 'live updating', then sync my iPod, terminate iTunes, disconnect my iPod, restart iTunes again, and switch playlists, I can switch on 'live updating' again, and it seems to work.

If then (after "fixing" one playlist) I go to a different 'live updating' playlist, I just disable, then enable the 'live updating', and the playlist seems to work again.

This is very tedious, but better than recreating the playlist from scratch every time.

I'd be very interested in hearing other experiences.


Can I move apps to home NAS and run its from NAS in my MBP 2017? I've just bought MBP 2017 with 128Gb and I'm new to macOS. I know that I can use external HDD or sd-card to store and run apps from it. But I want to buy home NAS. Question is can I configure and use NAS so powerfull and efficient as external HDD or even like 2nd local mount drive? I mean run apps or games from NAS or work with files not downloading to MBP ssd? When I am at home, my connection to NAS would be by ethernet to get the most speed, when I'm outside I have stable 4g-connection.

Yes and no.

Can you technically do it?  Yes, you can.  You can mount a volume on a NAS device in the same way you would an external storage device and offload your data and applications there.  They would even run from that volume.

Would you want to? No.

First, just comparing USB 3 with Ethernet, you're opting for a connection that's 1/5 that of USB 3 (Ethernet = 1Gbp/s; USB3 = 5Gbp/s).  Then, if you're intending to run this over 4G LTE, you'd be going from 5Gbp/s to 50Mbps - 1/10th the speed.  This is not practical in any sense.

Get a high quality external USB drive for supplemental storage and keep it with you; it's cheaper and more practical.


macOS Japanese Hiragana-only input On Windows's Japanese IME, when typing Hiragana, I can change the conversion mode to "No conversion", and then the romaji I type are entered as hiragana without having to press space or enter. Is there any way to do this on macOS (particularly High Sierra)?

For example, on Windows (with this setting), I can type "ひらが" into my search engine of choice and press enter to get the search. But on macOS, I have to press enter twice (once to accept the hiragana without conversion, and once to search).

Some kind of work-around would also be of interest. I type a lot of pure-hiragana when studying.

As a work around, try the alternative Japanese IM which some prefer:

https://www.google.co.jp/intl/ja/ime/


iPhone 4S fell into water and blacked out, with only CPU and mainboard burning. Is it possible to export the data from two years ago? In the fall of 2015, my previous iPhone 4S fell into water and blacked out. Afterwards, like now, when charging, the mainboard will get hot, but nothing will show up on the screen and the battery also have no reaction.

Is it possible to fix it? Do you think it's the screen's problem or the battery? If it's the battery, why would the mainboard heat up?

If it's the screen, does it mean after I get a new screen I could see my past data and information on the iPhone?

Or is it possible to save the RAM/CPU, for use in a functioning phone, for me to see the data?

Let’s assume you have valuable data to recover - a reasonable price is $300 to perform enough repairs and labor to get the data back. The repairs would be made by removing the corrosion with an ultrasonic cleaner. See a shop like: http://mendonipadrehab.com/price-list for details.

The videos explain how the device is taken apart, cleaned / and repaired with spare parts enough to get the data back. They literally will recreate enough of the system to power up and transfer data.

It is very possible, but not certain, that you won't get a phone that works long term, but it’s like someone on life support in an emergency room - life can be supported with the right tools in situations for limited time frames.

If you don’t want to pay - you could invest money in tools, high grade rubbing alcohol, and a toothbrush to clean the corrosion off yourself. Alternatively, select a less skilled shop - but the chances of success for water damage are far less the longer the time between the water and the repair.


Restore from iTunes does not restore app data? I just restored my iPhone from iTunes. At backup time a Bitcoin app was installed on iPhone, with an already created wallet with a balance. After restore, Copay in on iPhone, but when starting the wallet balance is not included in the app. Why?

Wallets and apps that store sensitive data usually store passwords/encryption keys in keychain. If the backup was not encrypted, unfortunately, only app developers may be able to help.

Also, some banking apps and wallets don't include this data in the backup and have another way of transferring accounts or passwords.

p.s. @Steve Chambers is right, you should always have an encrypted backup, even with an easy password like '12345', just to back up as mutch data as possible.


How to save contacts in iPhone so it can be used for transferring it to my HTC Desire? I want to transfer my contact from iPhone to HTC Desire so is there any way to do it. As I have more than 200 contacts in Contact list in iPhone and I don't want to enter it manually.

I am assuming that you sync your iPhone to iTunes on either Windows or Mac, and that these  contacts are then displayable in Apple Address Book or an equivalent program on Windows (Microsoft Outlook, etc.).

The procedure would be to sync all your contacts from the iPhone to the Mac or Windows program, then use that program to export the contacts in a database format that could then be imported into the HTC Desire software, or the software on Mac or Windows that you use to sync data with your HTC Desire.

Update:

Since you have indicated that you are using the iPhone to sync to iTunes on Windows, then this forum may not be the best place to ask this question. You will need to use programs that run on Windows to get the contact data reformatted into a format suitable for importing into the HTC Desire, and you will need to use Windows software to upload it into the HTC Desire as well.

People on this forum tend not to use Windows for these kinds of functions, so I suggest that you also post this question on a Windows-centric and Android-centric smart-phone support forum.


Can't control monitor volume with keyboard on 2018 Mac mini I just decommissioned my 2011 iMac and replaced it with a 2018 Mac mini and a new 27" monitor. The iMac is where I used to play audio and controlling from the keyboard (F10 - F12) was never a problem. I am now connecting to the new monitor via HDMI (v1.4). It will play audio, but I can't control it from the keyboard - I get this instead:

When I go to the Sound in System Preferences, this is what I see for output:

This leads me to believe that connecting via display port might possibly give me the ability to control via keyboard? I can't seem to get a USB-C to mDP cable to send a signal, so I'm guessing I need Thunderbolt 3 to mDP. Does anyone know if that will work before go and buy the cable?
Any other tips that may work for getting control of the audio on the keyboard when connected via HDMI v1.4?

I basically had the same issue when connecting my ViewSonic VA2265 monitor to my 2018 Mac mini using a HDMI cable. When selecting the VA2265 from the Sound pane of System Preferences, the volume was set to maximum and could not be adjusted. I can adjust the volume by using the controls on the monitor, but this was not desirable. Below is a screen shot.

The solution I used was to plug a stereo cable between the monitor and the Mac mini External Headphones jack. I then configured the monitor to select this jack for sound input. Below is a screen shot.

The volume can now be controlled from the keyboard.


Can I run apps on iPhone without paying to be a developer? I am new to ios development.

I am using Xcode 6.4 and iOS 8.4.1, when I'm trying to run my app on
my device I get this message from xcode:

  No valid signing identities (i.e. certificate and private key pair)
  matching the team ID “(null)” were found.

  Xcode can attempt to fix this issue.

And when clicking "Fix issue" it suggesting me to enrol Apple's dev program. I would rather not be a paid developer - is that the only way forward?

You need to make your apps in Xcode 7 to run on your iDevice without any developer program. You need to sign in with your Apple ID. For more details visit the Xcode 7 site. It's in beta 6 now.

https://developer.apple.com/xcode/

If you need Xcode 6 or lower, paying the fee is the only alternative.


iTerm2 - How to show alternate screen in iTerm2? In Terminal.app, there is a shortcut to Show Alternate Screen:

 Shift  +  Command  +  ↓

Is there a shortcut to do the same thing in iTerm2? If no, is there a way to assign one? How?

By searching the one page documentation of iTerm2 for each occurrence of the expression alternate screen, we can deduce that this feature is not yet implemented in iTerm2 3.2.0.

== EDIT ==

Here is a feature request on the Gitlab repository of iterm2.

== EDIT (2) ==

The feature has been implemented with commit 7b8d6a4b4. You can already test it in the nightly build in the Session > Terminal State menu.

According to George Nachman (the maintainer):

  There is no shortcut (I'm basically out of shortcuts) but you can always assign one in Prefs > Keys.

Thanks to him for this new feature!


Why can I not have the date and time in one cell I want to start at a date and at 12:00:00 am and I want each cell to increase by 1 hour. I put =a2+time(1,0,0) but I keep getting "The formula’s arguments can only include one date value." What am I doing wrong?

Welcome to Ask Different. To get both date and time in a column, click on the column you wany this in, as in A or B or... After that make sure the Format button in top right of the sheet is selected. Then go to the sidebar on the right and select CELL. Near the top of the sidebar is a pull-down under the label Data Format.  Select Date and Time from the pulldown menu. Once you've selected this a date and time appear in a single cell. See figure below from numbers. I entered the date as 2/5/20 1pm and i got the number displayed in the image.

To change the value in the next cell add 1. This changes the day by 1, + 365 changes the year by 1. Fractions change the time. The value 0.000012 will change the time by 1 sec. And 60 times that, or 0.000694, changes the time by 1 minute.


USB external harddrive not being recognised My WD 2 TB hard drive has suddenly stopped being recognized by my MacBook Pro, running OS X 10.11.3, but it's working on my ThinkPad, running Windows 7 and Linux Mint. The solution I found was to reformat the drive. However, I cannot do that as I do not have a place to copy all the files on the HD to.

I've had a similar issue before in Windows 7. I went to some part of the Registry and deleted the records pertaining to the USB drive and it worked fine after that.

Is there any similar solution like that in OS X?

The output for 'diskutil list':

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            250.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +249.8 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 3D4D9C68-75DA-41A9-BCF7-54D66F542074
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:               Windows_NTFS Elements                2.0 TB     disk2s1

Screenshot of "Get Info":

Have a look here on to enable native write support to NTFS.


Stopping iMessage from displaying texts and iMessages on my MacBook screen I want to still be able to use iMessages on my MacBook but I want to stop my messages from displaying on my screen (for privacy reasons). It seems you have to completely sign out from all of your iMessage accounts and turn off iMessage to make this happen, but is there a way to keep iMessages functional and just change the display options?

Have you tried the following from Apple's website:

  OS X Yosemite: Turn off notifications

  If you don’t want to see notifications in the top-right corner of your
  screen, you can turn them off. You can turn off notifications for
  certain apps, or turn off all notifications during specified times by
  setting Do Not Disturb. For example, you can turn off notifications
  sent from the Calendar app, or turn off all notifications for when
  you’re asleep.

  Turn off notifications for an app

  Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Notifications.
  Select the app on the left, then choose None below “[App] alert style” on the right.

  The app’s notifications won’t appear on your screen. If you also don’t
  want to see the app’s notifications listed in Notification Center,
  drag the app down, to the Not in Notification Center list on the left.


iCal failing to sync calendars with an Exchange 2010-based server - 'ical needs a valid email address' iCal (Version 5.0.1 (1547.4) - Mac OS X 10.7.2) is failing to sync calendar entries for an Exchange account setup via System Preferences.

While Mail and Address Book are able to send mail or sync to the server, the calendars show an exclamation mark next to the account name, which when clicked brings up the following dialogue sheet:

  "ical needs a valid email address to connect to the exchange account"

Entering the email address of the account has no effect, and clicking the exclamation mark again simply re-opens the dialogue sheet.

Have your Exchange Administrator check to make sure your account is on the GAL (Global Address List). There is an option to hide accounts that might be selected.


Suddenly can't access Mac Mini I'm posting this from Windows laptop, because I lost access to Mac Mini.

Yesterday, everything was fine. I did not upgrade or update. Though I remember Mac asking if I want to update right now and I pushed it further into future. It was either yesterday or few days before. Don't know if it updated when I shut it down.

Today when activating Mac, following happened:
- Tiny power light burns, showing Mac Mini is active.
- Philips 223V monitor blinks, showing monitor is active, but there is no connection between Mac and monitor.

After waiting long enough, disconnected power, shut Mac down, pushed CMD+R on keyboard, pushed Mac's power button again.

And nothing. Could not even get Recovery Mode.

So right now, I have NO access to Mac. I see it is working, but it seems to have zero connection with monitor. I can't access Recovery Mode, I can't do a thing.

I have no other monitors to attach there and it is Saturday so local Mac support center is also closed for 2 days.

Any ideas what this could be caused from?

While you're unable to see what's on the screen at present, you'd still be able to use the keyboard to reset the NVRAM and SMC, so I'd try doing that to see if it has any impact.

Reset the NVRAM

Your Mac mini uses Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM) to store various settings. You can reset this as follows:

Shut down your Mac mini.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work. (In your case, since you may not get to see the grey screen, all you need to do is press the keys immediately after powering up)
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again (i.e. a 2nd time) 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. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Resetting the SMC on a Mac mini

Your Mac mini's System Management Controller (SMC) can be reset by following these steps:

Shut down your Mac mini
Unplug it from power
Wait 15 seconds
Plug the power cord back in
Wait for an additional 5 seconds
Press the power button to turn it back on

Once you've reset the NVRAM and/or SMC, let me know how you go.


Is there any way to remotly access ios device from another ios device? I have Ipod touch which is connected to TV. Is there any app that allow this Ipod be controlled remotely using another IOS device like Ipad? (for sure without jail breaking)

Or more specifically, Is there any apps available that convert ipod touch into virtual apple tv?

No, this is not possible due to restrictions in place on iOS (namely sandboxing and multitasking).


How does one use different languages in Pages headers and footers? [EDIT]  I'm afraid this language feature is gone in Pages 5.*

How does one use different languages in Pages headers and footers?
I don't need spell checking but language switching (for headers and footers in an automatic language different from the system language)

Google (and forums) says:
"Inspector > Text > More > Language" and create custom style.

But... I have no "language" tab in Inspector -> Text -> More

When I select text I see:

(In OS X/Preferences I already selected multiple languages for spell checking)

System: El Capitan
Pages: 5.6.1

Pages 5 can no longer tag text according to language, to have this feature you must go back to using Pages 4.   For spellcheck, you select the dictionary via Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar.


Change the info iTunes displays for a song The majority of the songs I have are individually purchased or downloaded songs, not complete albums.

In the categories "Recently Added" and "Downloaded" iTunes shows under the album artwork the name of the album and the artist. It would be much more helpful, if the name of the song and the artist would be shown.

I cannot find a preference setting for changing this. Is there a way to change the info which is displayed by iTunes?

The iTunes version is 12.9.2.5

I can't answer your question fully or strictly within the bounds of you asking it, but I have a workaround that can at least give you what you want in some fashion: smart playlists.

Create a smart playlist (File -> New -> Smart Playlist…) with these settings:

Tweak the time period and number of items to taste.

A smart playlist defaults to Playlist view…

Switch to Songs view: highlight the new playlist, View -> View As… -> Songs.

(note: I took this screenshot with 25 items, not 9999)

…and finally tweak your columns to your liking by right-clicking and choosing your info:

You'll need to sort by Date Added (click the Date Added column to toggle sorting by ascending and descending) after all this to ensure you mimic the Recently Added feature in Library.

It's close, but not an exact match for what you want. The View -> View As… approach is not currently available for the Recently Added option in Library.


How to hide Terminal Window when a script is running I've built a script that sits in the users login items that runs each time a user logs in but I want to prevent the terminal window or terminal application from popping up. I don't mind the app icon showing up in the dock but I have some users who tend to want to close the terminal window which cancels what the script is doing.

I've been googling this and there doesn't seem to be a simple solution. Checking "Hidden" in the login items does not hide the window.

Thank you

You could run your script using the screen utility. This will detach the program from the terminal so even if it is closed the program execution will continue.

Screen will exit once the program running in it has finished but not before.


Which Transcend Jetdrive Lite fits into MB Pro 13" early 2011? I want to expand my MB Pro diskspace by a seamless SD-card. There are different Jetdrive Lite versions, but they're specified for the MB Pro 13" back to late 2012 only.

Any experiences with MB Pro 13" early 2011?

Bought a JetDrive Lite 130 and it fits seamlessly into the MB Pro 13" early 2011 card slot and is working fine.


Why there are two sleep modes? I am quite confused, I close the lid and then my mac book pro goes sleep and sometimes it seems to be in deep sleep and sometime it is not. I mean, sometimes when you open the lid, it will recover soon with a log-in window showing up quickly, sometimes it will show a white screen and a recovering progress bar at the bottom and then a few minutes later the log-in window.

What's the theory behind this? How can I prevent it from going to deep sleep mode? Thanks

The theory behind it is that it gets a lot more battery life when in deep sleep/hibernation than otherwise. Apple says after about an hour the computer should go into deep sleep.

See this question for further information and how to disable it. (The actual disabling instructions are in the question itself.)


'Wallet and Apple Pay' missing from Macbook Pro settings I have macbook following version.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), OS: Mac OS Sierra 10.13.2 (17C88)

I am using the following link to setup Apple pay for Mac.

https://www.imore.com/how-set-and-manage-apple-pay-mac

But i can't see the option of 'Wallet and Apple Pay' in the System Preference.

Only MacBook Pro with Touch ID have a ‘Wallet and Apple Pay’ preference pane, as these Macs are the only ones which have the necessary hardware support for storing cards for Apple Pay on device.

On older Macs, Apple Pay is still supported with a compatible iPhone. No configuration is available on the Mac, since the Mac delegates to the iPhone for Apple Pay.

To enable Apple Pay on your Mac using your iPhone, go to Settings → Wallet & Apple Pay and turn on ‘Allow Payments on Mac’.


Let a friend/child try a game on iOS? Is there currently (iOS 12) any way to let a friend or child try a game on an iOS device, starting from the tutorial, without losing my own progress?

In general, no. The game developer can store progress on the device locally, on an iCloud / Game Center log in basis (or both) or save data off on a private server / public cloud.

It really depends very specifically on how the game was programmed to behave and you’d need to contact each vendor / read their documentation or experiment to understand how or if game progress and data persist on iOS.

Even deleting an app won't remove some game data and some people love that and others, not so much.

Can I delete an iOS game and retain my progress?


How can I let two iTunes installation use same iTunes folder? I have two iTunes installation on PC.

First one is on Windows 7 which is my main iTunes for music podcast etc.
Second iTunes is installed in a VMware powered Windows 7

I connected first iTunes folder as network drive set this location for second iTunes library. I hope this does not sound confusing.

These two iTunes are now downloading podcasts individually, yes they download to same location but they don't recognise what is already downloaded. What am I doing wrong? or missing?

If you use one remote library location for iTunes on two machines [real or virtual] then even though the data location is shared, no other information is.

Each iTunes believes it is fully in charge of the library.
It is unaware that any other iTunes is changing data in the library & won't spot that a file already exists which it doesn't already have in its database.

In essence, iTunes is a write-only structure, it doesn't read the info from the library itself, only from its own Library.xml & .itl files. Dropping a new file into the Library by any method, including from another copy of iTunes, won't make the other iTunes notice it's there.

One workaround - which I'm not sure I'd actually recommend testing without solid backups - could be to symlink the .xml & .itl files together, across both machines.
There's a guide on symbolic links on HowToGeek
Essentially, linking the two sets of library files as one single structure, which either iTunes could read/write to.

Obvious downsides would be
a) there would be no lockfile protection, were both iTunes attempting to write at the same time.
b) the file hierarchies would have to be identical on each machine, as iTunes file references are absolute, not relative.


Defaults utility: how to get xcode project info I have found that utility defaults can get info from .plist file.
But how can I canonically pass as parameter to it path to .plist file ?

I read about <domain> parameter but still don't have enough understanding of it.
If I go to project directory where .plist file of projects is placed and input command

> defaults read ./Project.plist

I will see error that this domain

Domain ./Project.plist is not exists

I didn't know that the domain parameter is a full path to a file with .plist extension

So, the correct way to pass parameter domain which points to specific project is this:

> defaults read ~/FULLPATHTOPROJECT/Project.plist

But I will glad to see your answers of defaults-utility best practices


How to stop vibrating on new Mail using iOS 7? Whenever I get a new message in my mail, my phone vibrates. How do I turn off this behavior?

Go to; Sounds -> New Mail -> Vibration (at the top) -> Select "None" (in the bottom)


Homepod is on same wifi network as my other devices but doesn't show up for airplay or personal requests I'm having odd behaviour with my Homepod.  It feels like a bug.  It has internet (plays music fine) and is definitely on the same wifi network as my iPhone and my other mac computer (I've verified this in my router admin area, and it is not on a guest network or anything that might have network isolation).  It shows up fine in the 'home' app of my iPhone.  However it randomly disappears as an airplay option (from any other device), and if I try and a do something that requires my iPhone like add a reminder I get the 'Before I can help with Personal Requests, the iOS device associated with this HomePod needs to be on the same Wi-Fi network.' message.

Note I'm on the latest firmware and iOS as of today (12.x)

Went to Apple today This is a fix it worked for me

The phone you use needs to be on the same wifi frequency 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz
Set the frequency in the router settings to restrict devices to only one frequency not set to dynamic which allows alternation depending on circumstances
you can check which devices are connected to the frequency's in connected devices in router settings

I found that my devices such as phones connected to 2.4G when a few rooms away form my router but connected to 5G when close to the room with the router

because my Home pods stay in the same place they connected to the same WIFI frequency's all the time

if your home pod is on 5G  and then your phone switches to 2.4G the Home pod does not work as predicted

KC


Multiple Time Machine backups, both encrypted and unencrypted I have an unencrypted Time Machine backup with a long history. I'm planning to add a brand new disk to the Time Machine, and use both to do backups simultaneously.

The new disk will be stored in an off-site location, so I would like to have it encrypted. Is it possible to encrypt only the second backup drive?

Specifically, I do not want to enable encryption on the original backup as well. In part because I understand that this requires Time Machine to make a new encrypted backup, potentially losing the history?

Yes, it's entirely possible to have a mix of encrypted and unencrypted TM backups of the same Mac. In fact, that's exactly what I use for my MacBook Pro: 3 backup drives, one unencrypted drive that stays home, and two encrypted drives that rotate being offsite.

When backing up to a directly-attached disk drive, the only difference between an encrypted and unencrypted backup is how the backup disk is formatted -- an unencrypted backup is in the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" format, and an encrypted one is in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)" format.

However, note that the encryption applies to the entire drive (or volume, if it's split into multiple partitions). That means that if you have two computers backing up to the same disk, they'll both be encrypted (with the same password). Similarly, any other files you happen to store on the backup disk (/volume) will be encrypted as well.

Just for completeness, if you're backing up to a network target (Time Capsule, file server, NAS device, etc), the encryption works quite a bit differently. For network targets, TM creates a disk image on the server and backs up into that, and can use either encrypted or unencrypted disk image formats. As a result, the encryption applies only to the backup itself, not to anything else stored on the server. But it's still possible to mix target types freely: you could have the same Mac backing up to an unencrypted local drive, and an encrypted local drive, and an encrypted network target, and an unencrypted network target. No problem.


External HDD (Apple_HFS) not recognised by Finder under Sierra 10.12.6 my external HDD (used for TM backups and some other stuff) suddenly stopped working with my MBP 2017 (Sierra 10.12.6). I can see it only through the Terminal (see screenshot 1)

DiskUtility won't load when this particular HDD is plugged. I have also tried several diskutil command lines:

verifyVolume & repairVolume

verifyDisk

repairDisk

Did not perform the last one, cause I really don't want to lose my data.
Tested on two Windows machines with Apple_HFS driver. Driver was found and data are just fine and readable.

Someone with an idea how to fix this without losing data? Any help will be appreciated!

The problem is solved. I gave it another try in Safe-Mode and voila - my external HDD was visible, so I made "First-Aid" and did a reboot into normal mode back again. Everything seems to be fine now.


I am not able to hide the "Split pane bar" in terminal This thing never exited before. All of a sudden it started showing up and I hate it. Can some one help me remove this please. I am running 10.11.5 OS X

Under the "View" menu select "Close Split Pane" or type shift-command-D.

You probably typed command-D by accident.


Can I restore data backed up from a newer version of iOS? I have a 3gs with iOS 5.1.  I backed up my data, and wanted to restore to my new iPhone 4, with iOS 5.0.1.  Somehow, I was not given an option to restore my backup.  Is it possible to restore backup to a device that has older firmware?

Unfortunately you cannot restore an iOS device to any backup that had been done from a newer version of iOS, using either iCloud or iTunes, due to the firmware.
iTunes will give an error and iCloud will not even show the backup as an option to restore from.

To be able to use the backup that you have, you must upgrade the iPhone 4 to the newest 5.1.1 update that was just released. It should go smooth from there.

I work at the Genius Bar at an Apple Store.


Pow conflict when pointing to my IP Some time ago I had installed Pow to run my sinatra apps.
Now today I wanted to use my Mac's built in web sharing to test an html file as rendered on my iPod Touch.

I browsed to 10.0.1.20/~francesco/ which is my personal site folder and recived a 404 error.

I think this error is because of the Pow installation. In fact if I point to 10.0.1.20 it tells me that Pow is running.

How can I tell Pow to run only if I point to my_app.dev or othermyapp.dev?
Is this a way to correct this issue?

Not really the solution you asked for, but here's one way to work round it without spending a lot of time messing with config's, it also has the advantage of being less prone to breaking after updates and upgrades.

2.1.3 The Default Virtual Host
If you attempt to access a domain that Pow doesn't understand, like http://localhost/, you'll see a page letting you know that Pow is installed and working correctly, with instructions on how to set up an application.

You can override this behavior to serve all requests for unhandled domains with a particular Rack application. Create a symlink in ~/.pow named default and point it to the application of your choice.

Add to that the information from here:

2.4 Serving Static Files
Pow automatically serves static files in the public directory of your application. It's possible to serve a completely static site without a config.ru file as long as it has a public directory.

And that should create a default Rack app that can serve up content based on IP address (no host headers)


Battery life decreased after upgraded to Lion Has anyone noticed any battery life decrease after upgrading to Lion?

I'm on MacBook Pro (mid-2010). Before, on Snow Leopard, when unplugged I had minimum 5hrs of life. Now, it's not much above 4hrs at best. Is this a common problem?

I notice the estimate battery life now fluctuates a lot more than before, too.

UPDATE

Battery life is definitely lower than before upgrading. I'm getting up to about 5hrs of work now while I was able to pull out 6-7 before.

Re RAM usage. I'm not a heavy RAM user tbh. I always have at least 0.5GB RAM completely free and most of the time it's around 1GB free at least so this can't be it.

Rather than looking at the estimated time remaining, use your machine to determine if there is an actual difference or if it's just a change in the battery-life-remaining algorithm


Does trustd leak information about users' software usage to Apple and/or third parties? When discussing a recent outage of Apple's OCSP server, people on various Twitter accounts (in the threads following this tweet) and "fefe's blog" claimed that the way trustd works on macOS would leak information about which software was used when to Apple and potentially to third parties as well. I always thought that trustd only sent hashes upstream and used OCSP stapling to prevent disclosing that sort of information.
Is there any reliable information out there about the privacy implications of trustd on macOS?

macOS (as implemented in November 2020) occasionally sends out “some opaque information about the developer certificate of apps” based on timeouts and if it detects the ability to connect to Apple servers to check for certificate revocation.
Apple has also announced some substantial improvements as a result of last week’s events. They also fixed what I termed a “rookie mistake” of inadequately documenting and committed publicly to addressing the architecture of this feature. Time will tell how fast these roll out and if the systems are more resilient without compromising agility to contain malware and react to revoked certificates.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491

Gatekeeper performs online checks to verify if an app contains known malware and whether the developer’s signing certificate is revoked. We have never combined data from these checks with information about Apple users or their devices. We do not use data from these checks to learn what individual users are launching or running on their devices.
These security checks have never included the user’s Apple ID or the identity of their device. To further protect privacy, we have stopped logging IP addresses associated with Developer ID certificate checks, and we will ensure that any collected IP addresses are removed from logs.
In addition, over the the next year we will introduce several changes to our security checks:

A new encrypted protocol for Developer ID certificate revocation checks
Strong protections against server failure
A new preference for users to opt out of these security protections

The best two technical write ups I have seen of what in hindsight looks like a rookie mistake by Apple about inadequate documentation on how trustd functions made a bad day much worse for Apple and people that support or use macOS.

https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/ (credit to Jacopo Jannone for the wording of “some opaque information”)
https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/ocsp.html

The best non-technical summary (but also based on technical analysis and background) is John Gruber’s summary.

Just an embarrassing bug for Apple on a high-profile launch day.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/11/14/macos-trustd-bug

The failed or congested OCSP service did cause a very widespread denial of service outage on macOS client computers November 12, 2020 for more than 90 minutes.

A crucial difference between OCSP and notarization is that the latter is only checked on first launch of the app. The notarization status is cached permanently and has no expiration, unlike OCSP. Thus, notarization only affects your ability to install new apps, it doesn't affect your ability to launch already installed apps.

I am certain that security researchers are probing these services heavily and some will publish think pieces whether or not Apple has made mistakes. If Apple has, I expect some to collect substantial bounty by responsibly reporting if user privacy is being actively compromised.

https://developer.apple.com/security-bounty/


Where does the Photos app store its files? How do I find out programmatically where the Photos app stores all the pictures?

Before answering that it's always

~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/

, please be aware that this is only true for English installations of Mac OS. For example, in French, the folder is called

~/Pictures/Phototèque.photoslibrary/

and in German,

~/Pictures/Fotos-Mediathek.photoslibrary/

It's not as simple as changing the path based on the locale. The Photos library could be renamed and moved anywhere. You can find the current library by extracting the IPXDefaultLibraryURLBookmark from the Photos plist.

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "print IPXDefaultLibraryURLBookmark" \
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Photos.plist

The IPXDefaultLibraryURLBookmark contains a CFURLRef. This will require deserialising.