New SSD can't be initialized I have an old Macbook Pro for which I bought a new SSD and replaced the HDD with the SSD. Can't go further, see below.

I really don't know what to do. I could

return the SSD which, finally, might be broken
use a Linux distrib and gparted or fdisk, but the partition table they generate are not OS X compatible, I heard...
Tell me which distrib I should put on my USB stick (GRML, Ubuntu,...)

Booted to both Recovery and El Capitan off a USB 64Gb Stick.
The computer sees the SSD: Disk Utility shows "Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB Media"

Only accessible button "Erase" (no Partition)
to:

OS X Extended (journaled), GUID Partition Map

gives

Erase process failed

details:

Unmounting Disk
Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing
failed.
Operation failed....

retrying it doesn't work again: the mbp pauses for 30" at 'Unmounting Disk' and then:

Unable to write to the last block of the device.
Operation failed...

MacBook Pro9,2 (13” Mid 2012) original Snow Leopard
2.9 GHz Intel Core i7
8GB 1600 MHz DDR 3
13,3 inch 1280x800.

Also initialized the NVRam (ex PRAM).

The error message may indicate that the SSD contains an MBR which can't be properly repartitioned to a GUID partition table.

I recommend to dd the partition table with zeros:

Boot to the thumb drive
Get the number of blocks of the drive with

#get the device node of the SSD (probably /dev/disk0)
diskutil list
#replace diskX by the device node you got in the last command
#below I assume the device node is /dev/disk0
gpt -r -v show /dev/disk0

Unmount the SSD

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Write zeros to the MBR

#Get the sector or device block size (either 512 or 4096!)
diskutil info /dev/disk0
#write zeros to the first blocks
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=4096 count=8
#write zeros to the last blocks
#if the logical block size or sectorsize is 4096
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=4096 count=8 seek=(number of blocks(4096)-8)
#or if the logical block size or sectorsize is 512
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=4096 count=8 seek=(number of blocks(512)-64)

Example: if you got

diskutil info disk0
...
Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
Device Block Size:        512 Bytes
...

or

gpt -r -v show disk0
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=121332826112; sectorsize=512; blocks=236978176
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
          ...

the last command would be:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=4096 count=8 seek=236978112

Now retry to partition your SSD.


mount NTFS for read/write failed, it worked before upgrading to 10.12.4 I was able to mount NTFS drives for both read and write in OS X 10.12.3. But in 10.12.4, it failed

In this example, I used the OS X native NTFS driver. (I used NTFS-3G on Mac before but it was too slow )

sudo mount -t ntfs -o rw,auto,nobrowse /dev/disk2s1 /Users/somebody/Desktop/tmp

Here's the error:

mount_ntfs: /dev/disk2s1 on /Users/somebody/Desktop/tmp: Read-only file system

But actually there is nothing in folder tmp

I don't know whether it's only me who has this error or everyone has the same issue after upgrading OS X to 10.12.4

Do you know how to enable it?

I have tried this on 10.12.5 beta 5 and works OK. Beta 4 did not for me


MacBook Pro is not displaying Wi-Fi networks Early 2010 MacBook Pro, with Yosemite is unable to lookup any Wi-Fi network all of a sudden.

Tried reseting SMC and NVRAM

It shows Wi-Fi: Looking for Networks... and then Wi-Fi: On. Does not list the available Wi-Fi Networks

Any pointer would be appreciated.

Sounds like it might be a bad Airport card, if you have the tools, open it up and then disconnect and reconnect the antennas connecting to the card. If that doesn't work, remove the card, clean the contacts with isopropyl alcohol on the card and then reinstall it. If that doesn't work, you'll need to buy a new card, specific for your model of MacBook.


How would a Pages document end up as a series of embedded PDFs? My grandfather has been writing a book as a Pages document, but he told me the other day that he suddenly wasn't able to edit the document. He thinks that this happened around the same time that he upgraded to the latest version of Pages.

When I went to take a look at the document, I saw something strange: the Pages document consisted of a series of embedded PDF documents containing the original text of the document. So the first page is a page-size embedded PDF with the file name "preview1.pdf", the second is "preview2.pdf" and each PDF has a page worth of text.

It's a very strange problem. He said this had happened to several of his documents and I opened a few to confirm it. Obviously, I could fix this for one document by copying the text in each PDF page and pasting them into a new Pages document.

But the bigger questions are: (1) how did this happen? and (2) is there a systematic way to fix this that doesn't require going through each document and copying each page's text manually?

The state of the file you see might be the result of the use of a new function introduced with version 5.2 of Pages: the view only mode.
See the official documentation here:

Share and edit a document with others.

The original file on the Mac of your grandfather is still fully editable. The view-only mode does only restrict modification upon the shared version on iCloud. If your grandfather want to make the shared version fully editable by others (sharing the iCloud version),
then he should modify this setting on the original file and afterward resend a link toward this document.

Try these 2 documented functions on a new empty document to avoid errors.


Can not connect mac mini to a 17inch screen I am trying to connect my mac mini MD387D/A to a 17 inch Samsung screen Sync Master 730 which has around 9 years and supports up to 1280*1024.

I have a VGA adapter from my mac mini which worked before with two other screens of 24 and 27 inches.

The monitor behaves as follows: when I start my mac mini, the apple starting screen appears with the apple in the middle and the load icon beneath it, after a couple of second, the monitor goes black and says that there is no signal.

Could someone guide me towards a solution, or do I need a new monitor?

EDIT: I found this specs that says: Screen Resolution  1920x1200 does this imply that it is what I should at least have?

There are few places you need to look

About this Mac-> displays (to see if it shows there under correct name)
In sys pref ->displays- does it show there as correct monitor

Select Mirroring in here

A console report from the time stamp when you plug it in


Allowing cookies from a specific site in Safari I'm a new Mac user and I have a financial site which says I must allow cookies...and I'm okay with that, I just don't know how to do that. I've looked in my settings and preferences but it appears I have to allow cookies for everyone or no one at all. Would someone be able to help me? I'd rather not add additional programs if I can avoid it... OS X must be able to do this, right?

Go to Safari's settings and from there you can allow certain sites to leave cookies.  There are several other settings worth investigating here too.

To get to settings, from the Menu click Safari > Preferences... and go to the Privacy tab.


MacBook Pro (Mac OS X Mavericks) not displaying full resolution on external Philips QHD monitor I know this question has been answered a few times before in relation to other monitors and Mac OS X versions, but due to my limited knowledge I am after specific help with my setup.

I have a 2012 MacBookPro running Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.5. I usually use a thunderbolt display with no problems, enjoying all resolutions on offer. I have just bought a Philips QuadHD 27" monitor (272B8QJEB/75), capable of 2560x1440, but am only getting max. 1920x1200. Yes, I have tried the option-click on the 'scale' drop down and I am using a 4K compatible cable. Is it possible to get the full resolution on this external display? I have seen fixes for other monitors and osx versions posted here.

Admittedly my knowledge is limited so a walkthrough would be greatly appreciated if there is a fix. I would prefer not to update to macOS Sierra as certain software I use will no longer work.

According to Apple, my MacBook Pro model will not support external monitors other than theirs. If I was to upgrade my MacBook I could use the screen I bought.


How to "Divorce" Macbook's original Apple ID? An MBA (Macbook Air) is configured with High-Sierra.  It was bought and configured with a relatives Apple ID.  I inherited the MBA: the iCloud account is set to my Apple ID. When trying install Apple updates, both Apple IDs do not work.  Why is this and what is the remedy?

I would like my Apple ID to be authoritative to enable updates from Apple. What would need to be done?

Update: no apps are downloaded from the Apple store.

Apple covers this expertly.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065

Once you have a backup, you can restore the documents and not the apps or restore the apps and delete only the ones with an embedded AppleID that’s wrong.

With this procedure you don’t need any access to any AppleID or any previous passwords.


Can't download previous purchases in iTunes I'm trying to download a specific episode of 24, that I have previously bought and I keep getting an error message that is completely out of place.
I have tried to download many previous purchases and all result in the same error:

However I am on my computer, and I am connected to Wifi.
I am able to download new purchases as usual, it is only previous purchases.

How can I get around this error which is blantantly incorrect?

You could rule out the possibility of a local problem by attempting to download purchases on another authorised device, and refine the diagnosis by trying it both on and off that same wireless network.

Or you could head straight for iTunes support - when I got corrupted characters in my pre-purchased copy of the Steve Jobs biography last year they had a fix to me within two hours. Based on the Q&A so far I think you're going to need to get Apple to look at your account.


Physical keyboard layout menu not showing when keyboard connected to iPhone / iPad (iOS 13/14) I am trying to use my Bluetooth keyboard (Mx Keys) with iPhone and iPad.
I can pair them successfully, but they behave as if they were in a different keyboard layout than I expect (I use Polish Programmer, but on iOS it sets to some other).
You can supposedly change that using the physical keyboard menu in Settings > General > Keyboards in iOS, but all I see there is the function key bindings and no option to change the actual keyboard layout.
I also tried to enable/disable various software keyboards with different languages and change iPhone language and locales, but it does not seem to affect the hardware keyboard layout.
Adding English as second language in iOS did make the menu with layouts appear, but setting Polish layout still does not give me polish diacritics.
Please help?

With the keyboard connected, go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Hardware Keyboard.  Then tap over at the right edge and you will get a list of layouts to select.  Do not select "Automatic", but the one you want to use.  I think you should be able to choose among at least "Polish, Polish Pro, and ABC Extended".
If a layout you want to use is not on the list, there is no way to fix that, as Apple has not yet provided a means to add custom hardware layouts in iOS.  But you can ask them of course, via their feedback.
If you do not see the Hardware Keyboard setting when the keyboard is connected, then there is some kind of compatibility problem.  I have not heard of this happening with other Bluetooth keyboards up to now.


Workarounds for "cp -p" not preserving nanoseconds on High Sierra with APFS? I don't know if this affects MacOS versions newer than High Sierra, but it seems that cp -p won't preserve timestamps with nanoseconds resolution.
Because of this, the shell can wrongly tell that a file is older than other even if it was copied by cp -p. This breaks build system dependencies when some files were installed by cp -p: they keep reinstalling and reinstalling again because the nanoseconds don't match.
Can you suggest some workaround for this? I thought compiling my own cp binary, but however cp is usually a shell builtin, and moreover I'm not aware of any nanosecond-preserving cp version out there.
Note: I know of a workaround, but it's not reasonable: Execute touch on the source file before executing cp -p. Because touch doesn't preserve nanoseconds either, it makes them zero on the source file, so the result after cp -p guarantees exactly the same timestamp. However, as I said, it's not reasonable, because I don't like to touch files just for this: you lose their real last saved date.

Good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks this is a problem. I ran into it while writing a Python script for monitoring parts of my macOS (10.15.7) filesystem, which also involved coping files. The script sometimes behaved erratic and produced unpredictable output. After some poking around I found out that the incapability of cp -p to preserve nanoseconds is the core of the problem.
One workaround for your problem (but not for mine) could be coreutils: gcp -p behaves as intended.


Why is it not possible to change username on an Exchange account of Mail.app? I'm trying to set up an Exchange server in Mail.app. The username in the preferences is incorrect, and I can't connect to the server because of that.

There's no explanation in the UI, or any help section to explain.

When I select the "User Name:" field nothing happens. The text is gray, and not editable. The same is true for "external server".

How can you edit this information?

Maybe this is because you are connected to that Exchange server.
You could try to disconnect from it by taking that account offline (Mailbox -> Online Status -> Take "YourAccountName" offline) and try to edit the account then.

If that does not help, try to delete that account and create it again with the corrected credentials.


Reconfiguring Ctrl on a MacBook Pro's keyboard to another key I have a problem with the left ⇧ and ctrl on my MacBook Pro (mid 2012).

I can use the right ⇧ but since there's only one ctrl, I was wondering because there are two ⌥ buttons and two ⌘ buttons, if I could reconfigure one of them to replace the control feature.

Is there a way to do this?

Install KeyRemap4MacBook, save a file like this as ~/Library/Application Support/KeyRemap4MacBook/private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::OPTION_R, KeyCode::CONTROL_R</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then open the KeyRemap4MacBook application, press the ReloadXML button, and enable the setting.


iPod classic 160gb showing NO music or any files at all I just finished making a Christmas playlist in iTunes when I moved my laptop and iTunes thinks I removed my iPod without ejecting it properly first. I think I'm using a crappy USB cord but that's besides the point.
So at this point I ejected it from "MY COMPUTER" on Windows and disconnect it from the USB cord and the iPod says "NO MUSIC" and shows none of my playlists etc; it looks like everything is gone on xmas EVE! :(

So now I plug it back into iTunes on my laptop and it says "iTunes cannot read the contents of your iPod. Go to summary tab in iPod preferences and click restore to restore this iPod back to factory settings."

But I know that will erase everything for sure and I definitely don't want to do that.

When I go into "MY COMPUTER" on windows it still shows that's there's 15GB of SOMETHING on my iPod (I had about that much music on my iPod) but iTunes cannot recognize it.

What can I do? I've spent hours in the past reorganizing, renaming files and making various playlists and I don't want to have to do all that again, especially not on Christmas eve.

When I go into "settings>about on my iPod, it says 133GB free" on a 160gb iPod so SOMETHING is there.

I'm on Windows 7 Home Premium.

It sounds like your database is corrupted. This has happened to me twice and I did this to fix it both times:

Plug your Ipod into your pc / mac
Find the Ipod in Windows Explorer / Finder
"Unhide" Hidden files & Folders in Windows (if you have Mac follow these instructions: http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/how-show-hidden-files-in-mac-os-x-finder-3520878/)
Go to: iPod_Controls > iTunes (the hidden folders).
Locate "itunesDB" and rename it: "itunesDB.old" (this is the newly corrupted database).
Locate "itunesDB.old_mlpmp" and rename it: "itunesDB" (no file extension). This will restore the automatic backup of your database.

If you added music since your last sync, you'll probably have to add the music again, but this is way better than restoring and syncing your entire library.


After restoring my iPhone from an iCloud backup, all my photos are greyed out. How can I get them back? The Problem

I got a new iPhone 6 a while ago, and after restoring from an iCloud backup over wifi, all of the photos/videos in my Photos app show up grey.

It's as if my phone knows the photos should be there, but doesn't have the actual data for them. It also seems to know which ones should be videos, and even has their duration, but no video data is actually present. Maybe it only has the meta-data?

The Photos app doesn't crash if I try to view them; they just show up grey. I've taken new photos since then, and they show up okay in the app, but the old photos remain grey.

Here are some screenshots of the Photos app from my iPhone:

Backstory

Here's some background information to give you some context around my problem.

It's Sept 27 and it's time to upgrade to a new iPhone. For whatever reason, I decided to backup my iPhone to iCloud over wifi, instead of connecting my phone to my computer and backing up via iTunes like I normally do. I'm not sure if it was running iOS 8.4 or 9 at the time I made the backup. I got my new iPhone, which I think was on iOS 9, and I restored it from my iCloud backup over wifi.

The restore seemed successful, but all of apps still said "Waiting...". My phone sat there for hours and hours but nothing changed. Maybe Apple's servers were just busy due to everyone upgrading to the newly released iPhone 6s.  Thinking something was wrong, I wiped it and tried to restore it again from iCloud backup, but the same thing happened.

Eventually over the next day or so my apps finally download. Everything seemed okay until I noticed my photos hadn't turned up yet: they were all grey as pictured above. Maybe they just didn't download yet? I waited a week: still nothing. Finally after about a month of procrastination, I decided to post a question here as you are reading now.

Current Situation

At this point I feel like I did something wrong and iCloud didn't backup my photos. The old iPhone has since been wiped, so no chance to get them back from that phone. At least I have a backup on my computer as recent as June 29, so if I restore from that I'll only have lost about 3 months of photos.

Now what made me decide to post this question instead of just restoring from that backup is the hope that there's something I can do to get them all back. Maybe I'm forgetting something and I can still get all the photo data from my backup.

I'm also curious to see if anyone knows if I did anything wrong when I tried to backup/restore via iCloud. Maybe I had an incorrect iCloud setting; I don't really know. When I made my iCloud backup, it said "Photos" was ON. Did I have to switch "iCloud Photo Library" ON too?

Here's some screenshots of my iCloud settings:

Summary

So at this point, is there any way to get all my photos back into my Camera Roll? Did I do something wrong when I backed up to iCloud?

Here's how I sit now:

My iPhone has about 300 greyed out photos/videos up until Sept 27, and then some "good" photos from then onward that I've taken since I did the backup/restore.
I have a June 29 backup on my computer I can restore to as a last resort if there's nothing I can do to get the greyed out photos working again. If I go this route, I'll lose 3 months of photos from June 29 - Sept 27.

Turns out I solved the issue by just wiping my phone and restoring it from that same Sept 27 iCloud backup again. It had the photos in the backup after all. As to why it didn't download them to my phone when I restored from that backup a month ago, I'll probably never know.

Before I actually wiped/restored, I wanted to make sure that the backup actually had the photos in it. Of course Apple doesn't let you see the data in your backups, so I had to download a 3rd party backup viewer on my mac to look at the pictures in the backup file. Once I saw the photos were really there in iCloud, I decided to just restore from that backup and see what happens. It ended up working. Weird.


How to block an airport device from connecting? So I have recently been noticing my neighbor's Apple TV has been showing up under my list of audio output options under "preferences."  I wanted to see if there was a way to remove it from from the menu.  I have a mac with Yosemite 10.10.1.  I don't really have any need for airplay, just need to be able to use wif.

Thank you so much in advance!

The reason this is showing up is that you're on the same network. If this is meant to be a shared network, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do about this, however if it is not supposed to be a shared network, your neighbor probably has your wifi password and you need to change it in your router's settings. The process for doing so varies from router to router, so you should look up these directions yourself.


List All Files in USB device from /Volumes Shell Script To clear things up I have setup folder actions on my mac for whenever a USB device is plugged into my mac it will run a shell script.

When I list all files in the Directory /Volumes i get

$ ls -a
.       ..      .DS_Store   MobileBackups   Storage     WED

What I want to do is list all folders and files located in WED or any USB that pops up, so therefore excluding the directories

.       ..      .DS_Store   MobileBackups   Storage

Leaving me with

WED

What i have for the script so far is:

GLOBIGNORE='/Volumes/MobileBackups*':'/Volumes/Storage*'
find '/Volumes' >> /Users/Brett/dev/USBLOGS/LogUSB.txt

I have tried multiple different ways but it still ends up listing every single file in the /Volumes directory.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Brett

Additionally, it is MAC OS X El Capitan

Since you only want find to act on USB block devices the following is an example of using information reported by System Profiler to get the Mount Point of any attached and mounted USB block device.  By doing it this way it doesn't matter what other mount points exist under /Volumes nor does it matter what the USB block device name is as it's ascertained from System Profiler not the ls command.

I've modified the code, once again, removing the compound command line as it not likely it would be run that way anyway and is easier to maintain in script form while adding the ability to handle spaces in the label name of the USB block device.

By temporarily changing the Internal Field Separator $IFS, adding IFS=$'\n' to the script will ignore the space(s) as a separator in the output of grep when passed to find.  So as not to mess with any code in the rest of your script I fist get the state of $IFS and then rest it afterwards.

In a bash script:

#!/bin/bash

_ifs="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n'
for p in $(system_profiler SPUSBDataType | grep -oE '/Volumes/.*$'); do
    if [ -n "$p" ]; then
        find "$p"/*
    fi
done >> filename.txt
IFS="$_ifs"

The system_profiler SPUSBDataType outputs info on the USB Bus and pipes it through grep to get /Volumes/$whatever e.g. /Volumes/USB Drive using -oE for the '/Volumes/.*$' which outputs /Volumes/ and everything after it to the end of the line, thus '/Volumes/.*$' will translate the fully qualified pathname of the mount point of any mounted USB block devices.  So whatever the USB block device is mounted as, it's assigned to $p (I picked "p" for path) and when used with find I added the /* after it so it would not output the dotfiles.  The if block is there to avoid any output if no USB block devices are mounted.


Is there any Mac OS software really supporting Windows RemoteApp? Is there any Mac OS software that supports properly Windows Terminal Server RemoteApp?  By Properly I mean with an experience comparable to Windows Remote Desktop, that is, the Remote App Window is resizeable, etc, as if it was just another application.

Most tools (RDC for Mac, CoRD) seem to simply open a desktop for the application, but it does not have a truly windowed behavior.

Not even the official Microsoft RDP Client for OS X supports this; in fact that product still cannot do Terminal Services Gateway connections that were introduced with Windows Server 2008

But the answer to your question is, yes there is at least one client that promotes full RemoteFX implemetation in their OS X client (and incidentally also TSG), and that's iTap Mobile RDP.  It is a commercial program however there is a trial version available from that page.  Update: it looks like iTap don't fully support RemoteApp

The only other client I can find is one by Thinomenon.  Their free client supports all versions of the RDP protocol up to 7 (RemoteApp requires 6.1 or greater)

Enjoy latest RDP features, including application publishing (RemoteApp or RAIL), even if your platform is not supported by Microsoft.

Product Features:
 - RDP 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1 and 7 -compatible,
 - Copy and Paste via clipboard,
 - Encryption for communication security,
 - Local audio.


How can I rename a folder in Lion's Launchpad? I created a folder by dropping one icon on top of another.

Now I want to rename that folder, since the default name, "Utility" isn't the one I want.

According to all advice I find on the internet, I should open the folder and then double-click the title in order to rename it.

But, when I double-click the title, nothing is happening. Is there a lock somewhere I have to turn off?

This is what I tried:

Double-Clicking
Right-Clicking
Ctrl-Clicking
Option-Clicking
Command-Clicking

What else?

Ok, I did a google search and came across a page where others are having the same problem.

The reply by etresoft - https://discussions.apple.com/message/15661045#15661045 - basically says to kill the Dock application and it should restart automatically, and then it should work.

I did that, started Activity Monitor, found Dock, and force-quit it, it started right up again, and afterwards renaming worked as expected.


Prevent text messages from being sent to recipient's email address Recently when I sent a message to an iPhone recipient, it was sent via SMS, presumably because one of us couldn't connect to iMessage. However, the strange thing is that my iPhone sent the text message to the recipient's email address, instead of their phone number:

(I was surprised to see this actually worked because Verizon evidently relays SMS-to-email from yourphonenumber@vzwpix.com, and when the recipient responds, it gets relayed back via SMS.)

The phone number and email address are in the correct fields in their Contacts card, but Messages chooses the email address instead of the phone number for Text Message:

I checked other contacts, and all of them have a phone number in the Text Message field in Messages, but a few have two Text Message fields, one with a phone number and one with an email address. This is the first time I have seen Messages send via email. Does anyone know of a fix?

The sender needs to attach their number to their iMessage "Send & Receive" list.

On the iPhone they can go to Settings -> Messages -> Send And Receive -> Add iPhone phone number along with their Apple ID email.

Then make sure the phone number has a check mark next to it.

Then try texting them again and see if it emails them the message, it shouldn't.


Can't switch from Calendar month view to day From the calendar month view, I can't select a date, and jump to the day view.

Running iOS 9.0.2 on iPhone 6

It depends on whether you have the 'overview' icon at the top of the screen on or off.

If it's On, your day view is underneath the Month...

If it's Off, then tapping a day will take you to the Day View

unless the same icon is also On in Day View, in which case it will go to Event List view


I was physically robbed and now can't manage my Apple ID... how can I extract my purchases? TL;DR

Since it seems obvious that at present Apple can do nothing to help me: I need some way of getting as much of my content (music/apps/contacts/etc) out of this account... what can I do? All of my music/apps/contacts since like 2004 are in this account!

The answer which gives me the most ways of extracting my purchases will get the answer vote and bounty.

If my password is ever stolen I will not be able to change it, I would have to have the account locked and I would lose thousands of dollars worth of purchases!

Ok so I had enabled Apple's two-step authentication in order to have more security. It told me to "save the recovery key in a safe place like your wallet" so I just took that suggestion.

Now, I was robbed. My wallet AND iPhone (my authorized device) were both stolen. Now I have no way of managing my iCloud account so I cannot:

change my password
purchase anything from an iPhone

If I want to purchase new apps I have created a new account, but if there is an app already purchased on my old account I have to switch back and download it... however they changed it so now I cannot switch accounts on my iPhone for 90 days!

The only thing I can think to do, is to try and extract as much as I can from that account (contacts, music, apps) and then store them somewhere...

I am kind of sad that I have lost functionality and Apple has made there literally be NO WAY to recover without at least 2 of the recovery options (my 2 were stolen).

So this is also now LESS secure, because if my password becomes compromised I have no way of changing it (can't manage account with only password now).

Any idea what steps I should take? One I can think of is to go to all my accounts that I had used my iCloud e-mail for and change that. But as for my app purchases and music purchases, I am pretty much hosed.

Will I be able to stop using the old account entirely (I guess have them lock it) but before I do that extract out my content for use? Music I can burn to MP3, but apps... I don't think I will be able to get updates for apps purchased under that account if I lock the account.

EDIT just realized my apple developer account is bound to this login as well, FML

The way this is supposed to work is to log in to https://appleid.apple.com and have several devices for authentication.

Have you double checked that you don't have SMS as one of your options? If so, you can just get another SMS capable cell phone from the carrier using your number and be able to log in to reissue a new recovery key.

To paraphrase the KB article - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5577

  If you lose permanently access to all of your trusted devices AND your recovery key, you will not be able to use that AppleID.

Hopefully you can either recover your phone or the wallet (police report and/or reward work in different situations) after a few days and add in some more items, regenerate your recovery key or disable the two-factor security on your account.

Also, you will want to make a phone call to developer support and ask if they have any way to assist you in enrolling another trusted device so that you can continue to do business with them. The developer program has far more ability to tell you from a random impersonator due to the legal forms and verification you may have filled out to enter the program and sell an app.

Also realize that Apple intentionally set this up knowing that some people would be in your situation and make sure you acknowledge that they don't have to help you out, but if they can find a way to, you would really appreciate it. However, since you have thousands of dollars at stake, I can't imagine you wouldn't be able to call into developer support and work with them to regain access as a one-time exception to the policy. Heck, Apple might be able to assist with a letter that corroborates a police report of the theft and open up options to claim this against insurance.

Lastly, check with your insurance since the cost to re-establish your accounts and purchases might just be covered. Your sure move is to get a new AppleID move on, securing it with more layers (and spread over more than one location) of verification devices. Hopefully, you can recover one of the items that was stolen and avoid the lengthy process of convincing either Apple or an insurance agent to help you out of this understandable but painful predicament.


disable versions on Mavericks I have been using this command to get back Save As... in Mountain Lion and it works great:

defaults write -g ApplePersistence -bool no

However, this doesn't seem to work anymore in Mavericks. Ut seems that it's just the older iWork '09 apps that can't use the Save As function.

All the other apps (textedit, preview, etc) are able to use Save As. So are the newer iWork apps (the ones just released). But I use the older iWork 09 apps the most. Is there anything I can do to bring the functionality back on those?

you might can use this hint: http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/27/enable-save-as-os-x-mountain-lion/ It worked for me.


iPhone often freezes nowadays Is there a reason why nowadays, even in warm conditions, my iPhone freezes and restarts?

By this I mean it freezes for a while and then restarts into a black screen for 10-20 secs followed by the Apple logo and then the Home screen. This can happen when taking pictures, starting an app, or just opening a link in Safari. It seems to be a software problem and only started this year.

I've tried:

Updating iOS to 11.2.2
Taking it in for checking - the battery was replaced and they said the logic board was ok.

It's an iPhone 5s running iOS 11.2.2.

The term "freezing" here should not be interpreted literally. Freezing simply means that the display stops updating, audio stops playing or similar (i.e. nothing is happening) - it doesn't have anything to do with hot or cold environments.
The behavior you're seeing sounds like a hardware defect.
You mentioned already having tried upgrading iOS. I would take a backup of the phone, and then do a complete restore of the iOS software - erasing all contents and settings on the phone. If it still freezes afterwards, it is most probably a hardware problem.


Keyboard extremely sluggish on iOS7 with iPhone 4s I've upgraded to iOS7 on my iPhone 4s.  The keyboard, regardless of what I am doing, either texting or entering email, is extremely sluggish - 5 second interval between keystrokes.

What are some ways to troubleshoot this problem?

Try Settings > General > Reset all settings.  I was having the same problem and that fixed it on my 4s.


Link pre-installed apps to Homebrew Cask I installed Slack by downloading the DMG from its website and copying the app bundle into /Applications directory. Alternatively, I could have used brew cask install slack.

Is there a way to make Homebrew aware of this drag-and-drop version of Slack ? Or do I need to remove it and install via brew cask in order for it to be detected by Homebrew?

I have found the best way to fix this issue is brew cask reinstall <cask>. Homebrew then removes the old version as if it installed it and the new version is now managed. That for me has been the cleanest solution.


Photos App: iPhone Photos not showing up when attempting to import I have my iPhone setup to open Photos app when I connect my iPhone to my Macbook Pro. I also have Dropbox automatically importing my photos when connected too.

Dropbox has no problems importing my photos, but Photos does. I can see my iPhone connected, but I can't see any photos on my iPhone as you can see from this image: (The name "Hold Me, Touch Me" is a reference to movie "The Producers" with Zero Mostel.). As you can see, the name of my iPhone shows up, but not the 168 pictures on the phone.

I suspect there is some [i]security setting[/i] where I have to tell Photos it has permission to read my iPhone, but I can't seem to find it.

[]

When I plugged in my iPhone this morning, it asked me if I wanted to share my photos with this device (meaning my computer). I clicked on "Yes", and the problem was solved.

I thought the problem may be one where my iPhone didn't trust my computer to share the photos, but I couldn't find anything on the iPhone or my Mac. I checked iTunes too, but didn't see anything.

Once I gave my Mac permission to see my photos and everything is now fine.


PowerBook G4 PMU Reset Required I have to do a PMU reset to turn on my G4 PowerBook (1.25 GHz).  This occurs on every shutdown of the system.

What are potential causes of this?

I'm perfectly happy to troubleshoot, but on Google I'm hitting a lot of misinformation.

I notice that my battery also has 0 Remaining capacity (From System Profiler), even though it only has 125 cycles on it (i.e. not charging).  Not sure if this is important, but thought I would throw it in there.

More Info:

Did reset-nvram & reset-all from open firmware first
Sleep: light flashes on front, never wakes back up.  (Have to PMU reset)
Battery Removed: still have to reset PMU after each shutdown.
Removed PRAM Battery: still have to reset PMU after each shutdown.

Sounds as if your PRAM battery needs replacing... Assuming you have a A-1046 G4 Powerbook which does have a PRAM battery and you are losing the time setting I would try the PRAM battery first. It is a simple job and the cheapest quick check.


I cannot turn off iCloud Keychain, please help Apple's implementation of two-factor authentication is asking me to input my iPhone password on my Mac.

I feel that this is inappropriate, and I suspect that iCloud (which I have disabled) is attempting to enable iCloud Keychain when I have specifically NOT authorized this.

Compare this to when I login to apple.com. This sends me a one-time password to my device and I type it in. That is what I was expecting.

So, how I do make this dialog go away without providing my iPhone password to my computer or my computer password to my iPhone?

Also, I note that I can set reminders (synced to Apple) on my computer and retrieve them on my phone. So clearly my account sync is working. What additional feature is the computer actually trying to set up with this dialog?

This is not Apple's two-factor-authentication — this is iCloud keychain. To sync your keychain, you need to enter the password for the device asked. Other iCloud functionality will continue to work, since you've already passed 2FA.


Can I use a Time Capsule to share internet connection? My internet provider limits the number of connected devices to two. I would like to know whether I can use a Time Capsule to share my signal with all other devices in my house?

Yes, you can use either the Ethernet ports or WiFi (or both) to allow a Time Capsule to act as a router and share out your connection. Your ISP will, if you set it up in the default manner, have no way of knowing how many devices you have connected using the Time Capsule.

Internally a Time Capsule is actually an AirPort Base Station with a hard drive attached so it makes a great router and WiFi base station. Just connect the Time Capsule to your modem/router using the WAN port on the Time Capsule.


High Sierra iconserviceagent goes wild Nearly every time I mount an HFS+ volume on macOS High Sierra 10.13, a process called iconserviceagent reads all its files, sometimes hundreds of gigabytes. The system slows down to a crawl and the only solution is to wait or to unmount the disk.

Is this a known issue or bug or something I can configure or just fix straightaway?

Apple has fixed this issue with the release of macOS High Sierra 10.13.2.


How to hide an external drive from file sharing on local network The problem is, my office has multiple computers, and there is only one account (admin) on every machine, all with the same password. So if I bring a personal firewire drive and attach it to my machine, everyone on the network can access it. What I need is a way to STOP file sharing for this external drive without adjusting permissions, because there is only one set of permissions for this computer, and everyone on the network has access to that account.

The only way a drive would have it's sharing enabled is through the Sharing menu in system preferences.
Access the File Sharing menu inside there and remove your drive from the list.

That's the only thing I can come up with besides changing the drive permissions.

Hope it helps :)


GPS Tracklog from iPhone When bushwalking I use my Garmin GPS to record tracklogs, which I can later download.

I was wondering if the iPhone5 has a similar capability. This could be handy when travelling.

I have searched the web and the App Store. There seem to be many apps which will let you track someone else and display their location, but I have no desire to do this. I would like to be able just to log the location of my phone. There seem to be a couple of apps which seem to be geared at fitness and map display.

I don't need (or want) a Map display on the iPhone (because most of the places I would use it there is little or no mobile coverage).
In particular I want to be able to record locations in remote areas.

I use "GPS Kit" for this. It lets you record the movement of your iPhone for as long you want, and save them for later viewing. It even lets you broadcast your track so that others can view it as you move, if you want to do that for some reason. You can also cache offline maps, if you do want to be able to see where you are in remote locations. It doesn't need the maps to function though. It tracks your GPS coordinates the entire time, you just can't see where you are without data, but it sounds like that's okay with you.


Can XNA & Visual Studio be run in VMware Fusion on Mac OS X? Is it possible to run XNA & Visual Studio from a machine under VMware Fusion running on Mac OS X?

I have done the setup before. You won't get hardware acceleration but the setup does work and if your not doing any work that requires hardware acceleration it should be fine.

I previously did demos for Tech-Ed on gaming development using this setup without any problems.

For hardware acceleration you will need to use Boot Camp.


Cross button on iPhone app icon doesn't appear when trying to uninstall When I tap and hold on an app icon on my iPhone to uninstall it, the ⓧ button  do not appear for certain apps. As far as I recall, the apps in question were installed using a different Apple ID which I have since removed from my iPhone.

I also tried uninstalling by going to Settings app → General → iPhone Storage → App Name, but couldn't find the Delete App option even there.

This is a company owned iPhone 5s running iOS 12.3.1. The device remotely managed. The apps in question are not managed and were installed using a personal ID.

Screen Time settings were preventing the app from being uninstalled from my iPhone. The setting can be found by going to Settings app → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions → iTunes & App Store Purchases → Deleting Apps. The setting was set to Don't Allow.

As soon as the setting was changed to Allow (default value), I was able to uninstall apps normally and the ⓧ button appeared on the app icons when I tap and hold my finger.

When uninstalling an iPhone app, it doesn't matter if it was installed using the currently logged in Apple ID or using an Apple ID that has since been removed from the iPhone.


How do I inspect the power-regulator of a Mac? As a tangent to:
Can connecting 2 external monitors to a macbook pro damage it?
How does one get visibility into which power-source the Mac is running with? Are any detailed stats available underneath the hood?
Unrelated context: My MBP 16" 2020 is in the shop with a bad-battery. When my MBP chose the weaker power-source, combined with the failing battery, would cause OSX to go into preservation mode (fire the fans, dump ram to disk etc).  While I'd love to say that I've plugged things in the correct order, being able to verify cabling is also important.
Thank you

iStat Menus 3 can get the wattage readings from some sensor, along with volt and amp stats. This thread explains all options in detail.


What is the point with iMac + SSD? The newly released iMac can be built with an optional 256 GB SSD. To complement this, the new iMac's also contains the Intel Z68 chipset:

Z68 mproves performance by putting files
that are accessed often on the SSD.
Intel is coming out with a small SSD (20 GB), large
enough to hold the Windows 7 operating
system. This improves performance up
to 355% depending on the application.

It strikes me as odd that Apple uses a (very expensive) 256 GB drive when you only need about 20 GB to get the benefit.

My late-2011 MacBook Air (which has SSD) is incredible snappy and I wonder if an SSD-iMac would see the same improvement?
Why use the 256 GB drive when a much smaller and cheaper would do it?

The base model of 21" iMac only has one drive bay. So, a 20GB SSD wouldn't be very useful there. If you want an SSD, you have to get one big enough to hold all your data.

As for the 27" iMac and the upper model of the 21" (which have two drive bays):
Performance. Yes, you can fit the OS on a small SSD, but that's not the only thing that will benefit from being on a faster drive. Any operations that involve a lot of reading/writing will be faster if they're working with files on an SSD.
Convenience. Unless you set up your apps and Finder especially well, it will take a little more time to get to stuff on a secondary disk.
Quietness: SSDs don't chatter like HDDs. If you have both an HDD and SSD, you'll still hear the noise. Silent computers are nice, IMO.
Apple-ness: One of the things many people like about Apple computers is that things are mostly seamless ('Just Work'). Having one big, fast, quiet drive is more seamless and Apple-y than one small, fast, quiet drive and one big, slow, loud one.

One more reason Apple does it: Because they can: Add SSD. People buy SSD. Profit!


Open file/folder in Wine explorer in Finder I am using wine explorer via macOS terminal.

Once the Wine Explorer is open, can I select a file or folder and "open" it in Finder?

From the Mac Forums

  In Finder, push Shift-Command-G and enter the following:

~/.wine/drive_c/

  Navigate from there to find the name of the relevant folder.


Change date format in Numbers 3.2 I recently updated Numbers to 3.2.

I want to be able to put a date in a cell numerically (8-22-14) and then have it show up with the month name, day, and year (August 22, 2014) without having to do a formula. I do not need the time.

Click the Format button in the upper right
Select the "Cell" tab
Under Data Format select "Date & Time"
Under Date select your prefered format.

You should be able to enter a date in these newly formatted cells any format (like 8-22-14) and it should change to your selected format.


How do I get iTunes to take my security update info? Recently, when attempting to make a purchase (or free download) on the App Store iTunes was requesting I update my security info. This is not the 3 digit code on my credit card, but the 3 security questions and a backup email that help with account recovery; as referred to in: Is this "Security Info Required" prompt legitimate?

I tried entering new security answers and a backup email but repeatedly (across an iPad, iPhone and iTunes on a Mac) got the following error:

"Your request is temporarily unable to be processed."

It is impossible to download new apps until it works. What is the trick to make this pass successfully?

Eventually, I gave the same answers but left the backup email blank. That was accepted by iTunes and I was able to finish up and continue downloading new apps.

Next, I went to https://appleid.apple.com and chose "Password and Security" where I entered answers to 2 of the 3 questions I just generated. Then I was able to update all the 3 answers and add a "Rescue Email Address".

I'm not 100% sure if omitting the email was what got it to work or if it was just a matter of timing but I wanted to post this in case it helps anyone else get past the issue.


to be able to use 3G for internet while connected to wifi? I have a wifi without internet which my iphone connects for a media player only.
Meanwhile I would like to use my 3g connection for e-mail traffic etc.

I have seen the answers to select the static ip  solution ; (I have an iphone 6)

and yes it works if I connect to wifi at first , then change settings at the wifi connection to static ip and other things etc  , but I have to do it everytime I connect to this network,

is it possible to have a kind of setting to do this once as a set instead of doing it every connection. if not it seems I will buy a used iphone 4 / simple android tablet to do this for me.
Thanks and kind regards

You have a new option from iOS 9,

Settings -> Cellular -> Scroll to the bottom of the page -> Wifi-Assist

  Automatically use cellular data when WIFI connectivity is poor

You have some articles about that all around the web
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/10/14/apple-posts-ios-9-wi-fi-assist-guide-in-wake-of-complaints-about-excessive-data-use
http://www.macworld.com/article/2987233/smartphones/how-to-turn-off-ios-9s-wi-fi-assist-to-save-your-data-plan.html


Apple Watch can't send/receive SMS while using cellular plan I've been using Apple Watch Series 3 for a while.  I just upgraded to a Series 5 and while I love it for the most part, I have noticed that if the watch is on cellular and my phone is not nearby the watch will not send or receive SMS messages.  I can make/receive phone calls just fine and if I'm on WiFi it sends and receives SMS without issue.  It is only when I'm on the cellular plan.
I can always send/receive iMessages.
I have unpaired and repaired the watch, I've talked to Apple and I've talked to AT&T.  I know I remember sending and receiving SMS on the Series 3 LTE+GPS while away from my phone.  Both Apple and AT&T seem to understand that the watch should be able to send/receive SMS while on cellular so long as the iPhone is on and connected to the Internet (via WiFi or cellular itself) but that the phone should not have to be nearby.  Neither seems to know how to fix this issue.
I would really appreciate any assistance that anyone may have.  I find it difficult to believe that my Series 3 was capable of something that they left out of the Series 5.
I found this article on Apple's site which also confirmed the watch should be able to do it as long as it has a data connection and the phone is on and has a data connection.
Again, any help would be greatly appreciated.
When I send a message from an outside source to the phone/watch it shows up on the phone and in iMessage on the Macbook Pro / iPad Pro but does not show up on the watch.
EDIT #3:  More talking to AT&T who still cannot solve the issue, but it is now back to an inability to send or receive when using the cellular plan.

This isn't really a solution as much as an answer.  My girlfriend has a Series 4 LTE+GPS model on Verizon and a friend of mine has a Series 3 LTE+GPS model on Sprint.  I saw them over the last few days and they were kind enough to let me test things.
Both Apple Watches behaved in the same way.  Sending / receiving SMS while using a cellular connection was difficult and out of 10 tests per device, including mine, we only got them to send an SMS and receive a reply 4 times out of 30 tests.  Since 3 carriers and 3 different models had these same issues, I am personally concluding that it is some kind of software issue.  Since the devices are primarily designed to work with a cell phone within range, I expect that there is some as-yet-unknown issue in this specific though possibly rare use case.
We cannot packet sniff or do other advanced diagnostics on how the watch communicates with the cellular network to accomplish its tasks.  This fact combined with the fact that most tech support agents you can speak with on the phone at a carrier are simply running off of checklists without being knowledgeable in how their network actually works leads me to believe that this problem will have to wait for a carrier solution.
I believe the issue is with how it appears the watch sends and receives SMS while away from the phone.  The iPhone is required to be turned on and connected (I quote the article linked in my question):

Make sure that your Apple Watch can connect to your iPhone, cellular, or Wi-Fi. To send and receive SMS/MMS from cellular models of Apple Watch, your paired iPhone must be powered on and connected to Wi-Fi or cellular, but your iPhone doesn’t need to be nearby.
Even if your iPhone isn’t connected or powered on, you can send and receive iMessages on your Apple Watch when your Apple Watch is connected to Wi-Fi or cellular.

This indicates to me that the watch uses UMTS for phone calls but not for SMS.  Since phone calls with the watch under cellular can be completed without the assistance of the paired phone.  I tested this just to be sure and powered off my phone but could still make and receive calls on the watch perfectly.  It appears the watch intends to send it's SMS messages to its paired phone over iMessage to then be relayed through the phone's cellular connection.  Similarly the phone appears to receive an SMS first and then relay to the watch similarly.  I did delay testing using the watch connected to WiFi only and the phone only connected to cellular.  The phone would receive the SMS first and between 0.5 and 2 seconds later the watch and other iMessage devices would receive the message as well.  Likewise testing sending under the same conditions the watch would send a message, it would then hit the other iMessage devices in roughly about a second, then 3-4 seconds after showing up on iMessage devices connected to my iCloud account it would show up at the receiver.
If I turn off the phone sending and receiving SMS fails to work (as the Apple documents indicate) on any iMessage device (this includes my iPad which has its own cellular connection and my two MacBooks).
Given all of this, I am convinced that there is a relay problem due to network provisioning and connectivity issues for the SMS relay to take place while the watch is using cellular data.
This is backed up by an experience I had previously in testing the ability for a cellular device to run an internet service.  I had attempted to run a small web server on an Android device on my AT&T account and was unable to open a port on the Internet side of the connection.  The test was part of a University project and not part of this testing.  Technical support from AT&T indicated that they specifically make it difficult for devices on their cellular network to be directly accessed on the Internet unless the device has been specially provisioned.  It was also indicated that this was done in the name of security but in the same call such provisioning was possible under specific request for a business account holder and would cost extra to implement.
Given these factors I'm considering the issue closed.  I believe the watch uses iCloud to relay information to/from the phone for SMS (and possibly other) functionality and that cellular services make it extremely difficult to establish this kind of connection reliably for standard cellular clients.


"Enter/Return" with, or without "Fn" Does Mac OS X, and any Mac application, handles Fn+Enter differently from Enter?
As optional question, does any application handles Fn+Return differently from Return?

I guess since fn+return equals enter, the fn+enter-combination would equal fn+fn+return which does not make much sense, so my vote is: no, there is no app that can receive this combo.

To prove, you'll need to read the key codes sent from keyboard to the system when it´s pressed (ie. Full Key Codes could do this for you)  - since I don´t have a keyboard with a physical enter I unfortunately can´t do that.


How to quit multiple application on mac using an automator app? I made an application on Automator (app x) that launches few applications (app a,b,c). I was wondering instead of creating another application to quit the apps(app a,b,c), is there a way I can get Automator to quit those apps when I quit app x?

note: when I launch app x it doesn't have the dot underneath it that indicates an application is active.

An Automator app doesn't usually stay open after its run if all it's doing is opening a few apps. That said, since you want to open and close the same apps with a single app that stays open and then closes the target apps when you quit the app that opened them, I would choose to do this with a stay open AppleScript application.

The following example AppleScript code, shown below, will open the three apps in the theseApps list and then close them when you close the app made from this code.

In Script Editor, copy an paste the example AppleScript into a new untitled document.

property theseApps : {"Contacts", "Dictionary", "Notes"}

on run
    repeat with thisApp in theseApps
        activate application thisApp
    end repeat
end run
on quit
    repeat with thisApp in theseApps
        quit application thisApp
    end repeat
    continue quit
end quit

Obviously, change the names of the app in the example AppleScript code to meet your needs.

Now save the script as an AppleScript application while checking the Stay open after run handler check box.

The example AppleScript code, shown above and as is, when saved as a stay open AppleScript application, worked for me without issue on macOS High Sierra.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors.


Should I install firmware for Samsung SSD 850 EVO? I've a Mac Mini Late 2012 model that I've recently replaced the HDD to Samsung SSD 850 EVO. Everything works fine(except damaged IR Sensor) and my Mac startup speed is fast. I've been searching around Google about the Firmware particularly for 850 EVO but there's no firmware to download from the firmware download page , and seems like there are problems regarding the firmware download for 850 EVO PRO model.

Since the firmware is not found, is there a need to download and install the firmware? And since Samsung Magician is not supporting Mac OS, should I download a 3rd party TRIM enabler(like DiskSensei) or enable the TRIM support manually? Is TRIM necessary for every SSD?

As far as I can see there currently exists no firmware upgrade for the 850 PRO.

As for TRIM, it is generally recommended to enable it (OS X does on its stock SSDs). There is now a new tool in OS X that will allow you to easily enable TRIM on non-Apple SSDs:

sudo trimforce enable


If you temporarily unsubscribe from iTunes Match, will your track list be deleted? What happens if you (temporarily) unsubscribe from iTunes Match? Will your library (i.e. the list of all your tracks that Apple stores on their servers) be deleted, or will it only be disabled until you renew your subscription?

I can't find any description in writing saying that there is any grace period for you to access playlists or any other data after you end a subscription period in iTunes Match.

I do recall a warning when signing up for Match that quite explicitly said that I needed to be sure to download all playlists and music from the cloud before my subscription ended. This is in addition to the caution to keep a backup copy of all data (which in the case of playlists would be using iTunes to export the library to an XML file regularly in addition to backing up each track).

Apple could be more generous about keeping non-subscriber data around for a grace period of a day or a week or a month, but why risk this when you can back up everything now and then update that backup with anything that changes a week before your subscription ends?


how to block udp ports I am more of linux and windows user, now forced to use mac as testing device, for testing a webrtc app, I want to block all the UDP ports in my macbook, how do I achieve it from commandline( or some tools)

This is a good tutorial for beginning with "pf", because system preferences do not allow you to enter manual rules.

http://krypted.com/mac-security/a-cheat-sheet-for-using-pf-in-os-x-lion-and-up/

I used to use the very good firewall fronted "HandsOff!" by metakine (but they sold it), where you can do what you like, but honestly I do not know whether there is a Yosemite update for that.

Update:
https://www.oneperiodic.com/products/handsoff/


MIgration Assistant from HFS+ (case sensitive) to APFS (case sensitive) I have a new 2018 MacBook Pro, OS X Mojave 10.14.2, hard drive formatted as AFPS (Case-sensitive) and an old 2009 MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite, hard drive formatted as HFS+ (Case-sensitive, Journaled).  I believe OS X on the old laptop cannot be upgraded any further.

I am attempting to use Migration Assistant to move the files over from the one user on the old laptop to the new one.  When I get to the "Transfer Information to This Mac" step of OS X install on the new laptop, I fire up Migration Assistant on the old, and see it appear on the new as a transfer source, but with a yellow caution icon.  Selecting that icon displays a pop-up with the message:

**The selected source cannot be used for migration.**
This source is not using a Case Sensitive filesystem, while your Mac is.

I have confirmed in Disk Utility and About This Mac that both hard disks are formatted case-sensitive.  There is a big difference in that the old drive is formatted HFS+, and the new AFPS.

Initially, I was able to use migration assistant to transfer the files, up until I discovered that the new drive was not formatted case-sensitive, which of course caused problems with filenames that differ only by case.  So I used command-r to boot the new system into recovery mode, formatted that drive as AFPS case-sensitive, and reinstalled OS X Mojave, only to run into this issue.

So, how do I get the user and all their files from the old laptop to the new?

I was able to restore from a time machine backup.  Just had to manually do a up-to-date backup on the old laptop.

Still don't know why I was unable to do a system-to-system (both with case-sensitive volumes) migration.


OS X 10.11.6 Missing over 200GB of disk space I have a problem with disk space - all programs report that I used up 470GB out of 512GB, but all my files take about 245GB. Storage tab in "About this Mac" reports this space as "other".
Where is the missing space?

This is a Mid 2014 MBP with built-in SSD running OS X 10.11.6.

I tried already without success:

Repair disk permissions
restarting :)
Cleaning Spotlight cache
Removing small files that resulted in many inodes
Checking SDD health (is ok)

Grand Perspecive shows this space in gray and describes it as "Miscellanous used space" - what is this?

Daisy Disk and Path Finder reports 470GB used, whereas the sum of all folders is 245.3GB:

And here is the output of df -h:

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity   iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1     465Gi  438Gi   26Gi    95% 114982849  6860861   94%   /
devfs          334Ki  334Ki    0Bi   100%      1156        0  100%   /dev
map -hosts       0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%         0        0  100%   /net
map auto_home    0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%         0        0  100%   /home
/dev/disk3     931Gi  605Gi  326Gi    66% 158652305 85363725   65%   /Volumes/Toshiba Backup

Maybe a related question: Missing hard disk space

Ok, I found it. Some time ago, I replaced my backup drive and the latest old backup from the previous drive seems to still reside on my disk. The old backup image was hiding under /Volumes/name-of-old-drive/. I could delete it safely with: sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/name-of-old-drive/Backups.backupdb/name-of-my-mac/YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS.

To make sure that you do not delete any current backup, I recommend to temporary eject the currently used backup drive.

That was not easy to find, so I hope some other people will find this answer if experiencing similar problems.


Billing Information Required for App Updates I'm trying to update 3 apps on my iPad and 3 things happen that never usually happen.

It asks me to sign in.
It asks for my billing information.
My card gets denied.

Now I know my card still works fine so that isn't the problem. The same thing happens when I try to install previously downloaded apps (that cloud button) or install new free apps.

I have no outstanding payments (is it even possible to have outstanding payments with Apple?) so why is this happening?

In case it's needed, I'm using an iPad Air running the latest version. 16GB Harddrive and Wi-Fi only.

I should also make it clear that "None" isn't an option for payment.

Officially, you should probably engage Apple's official App Store support to verify your account / get advice how to make things right.

https://support.apple.com/itunes
https://support.apple.com/contact

The former usually has a more direct link to App Store support and you can usually tap links on iOS as well or use the iOS support app which is a free download (but not likely to work if your account is locked)

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/apple-support/id1130498044?mt=8

Lastly, Twitter and Facebook have official Apple Support presence if you like social media to engage, but unless your situation is covered in a knowledge base, they will steer you to official support if you need personal attention and the FAQ aren't helping you fix your error condition with your account or setup.


Suddenly all my files have a null kMDItemDateAdded (Date Added) field Almost all my files now have a null kMDItemDateAdded field:

$ mdls -name kMDItemFSName -name kMDItemDateAdded 2014-01-14-1500595479_04-EVN.PDF
kMDItemDateAdded = (null)
kMDItemFSName    = "2014-01-14-1500595479_04-EVN.PDF"

How could it happen? What do I need to do to restore it?

I don't think its a bug. An update in Apples mdimport schema will cause this. I checked this file /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Resources/MetadataSchema.xsd on OSX 10.6.8 and OSX 10.9 and found kMDItemDateAdded only in 10.9.

When your mdworker will update your existing Meta Data using the new schema, it will fill kMDItemDateAdded with null, because PDF.mdimporter is not taking care of this attribute. How should the pdf know, when it is added?

If your mds is consuming lots of CPU time ou should re-index your Spotlight Database like mentioned here


How to add a quick-launch icon in my Dock for a program I've downloaded? I've downloaded jmeter and put it in my Applications folder.
I've made it executable.
I can cd to /Applications/apache-jmeter-2.11/bin and can run it in a terminal with

$ ./jmeter

or by double-clicking the icon from the finder.

How can I add the program as a shortcut (icon) on the main application icon launcher bar ('Dock') on a Mac, similar to programs such as browsers, MS Outlook, gitx, etc?

You can use AppleScript to make a .app file for this (That is the only file type that can go in the left side of the dock). It is in /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor and when you make a new file you can put in do shell script "/Applications/apache-jmeter-2.11/bin/jmeter". I do this all the time for shell scripts, so I can access them easily. Then you can save and choose "app" near the bottom of the Save sheet. This will create an app file that you can put in, say, the folder above bin which can be dragged into the Dock.

tell app "Terminal"
    activate
    do script "/Applications/apache-jmeter-2.11/bin/jmeter"
end

is what you will need if jmeter writes to the terminal.


iMac not turning on after power cut mid update I was updating my iMac 2019 27in (less than 4 months old) and we had a power cut.

I now cannot turn my iMac on.

It boots up, I can hear the fan. But nothing appears on the screen. No apple logo.

I have tried booting in safe mode but it doesn't work and I've tried resetting SMC.

Any help would be very appreciated.

You covered Apple’s triage steps nicely and I think you hit them all.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204267

Unless you can see something on an external monitor or the internal monitor booting with an option key held or internet recovery and see signs of life on screen, your next step is a repair shop to determine which component inside has failed.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204156

My hope is you can boot to internet recovery and choose to reinstall the OS. Since you were mid update, it likely left your data alone and the system totally needing a reinstall. If you weren’t updating, the hardware failure is more likely, but can’t be ruled out based on the symptoms.

You can also bring a bootable USB to that Mac and test operation / hardware without needing service help.


How to give custom name to Time Machine backup I have used Clonezilla when I was a windows and linux user. I really liked how Clonezilla allows you to rename your backup to anything. It is possible to do so during Time Machine backup? I want to name my backups so I might not flash something else that I don't want.

Time Machine does not allow to provide a name for a backup.  You can name the drive when directly attached, but not the backups within.

  I want to name my backups so I might not flash something else that I
  don't want.

Not entirely sure what you mean by that, but if you meant backing up items already backed up, then you will need to understand that Time Machine is an incremental backup system and does that for you automatically.

The following official document (and its links) may shed some light on this as well: Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac


How to quickly drain iPhone's charge to compare batteries I have two iPhone batteries, and I'm having doubts as to their apparent metrics regarding max charge capacity.

I want to compare their real life performance by putting a high load on them, but I want to do so in a reproducible way and in a way that lets me time the drainage without having to babysit the phone, in order to compare the results.

I have searched for benchmark apps and only found recommendations for Geekbench 3 and Batteryscore, neither which seem to be in my AppStore region. I found Geekbench 4 in my AppStore, but it makes no mention of any battery benchmarks in its description.

How do I go about doing a battery benchmark?

Update

Well my 3rd party battery died completely before I could do the experiment. Conclusion: It was garbage that somehow kept a decent charge until its failure.

Geekbench

I don't have Geekbench 4, but according to this Primate Labs support page (1 Feb 2017):

  We're hoping to re-release a battery test for iOS in the future but as of right now we don't have an exact timeline of when that will be available.

So you would need to double-check with them prior to download whether the battery test has been re-released yet (although based on the screenshots I think not).

In terms of the test itself, I do have Geekbench 3 installed on my iPhone and it includes a Run Battery Benchmark function.

This is a very lengthy battery test designed to totally discharge a fully charged battery (the app prompts you to plug it in and charge it to 100% before testing). That said, it is actually possible to run the test with only a partially charged battery.

The app also keeps a history of the benchmarks - so it'd be easy for you to keep a separate record of which battery was installed at the time of the benchmark.

My assumption is that when it is re-released, the same functions would be included.

coconutBattery

In case you haven't heard of coconutBattery, this is an awesome app that you can install on your Mac (if you have one). You can then connect your iPhone to your Mac and this app will show you the battery's current charge, its full charge capacity, and its design capacity (among other things). It also keeps a history, so it'd be easy for you to keep a separate record of which battery was installed at the time you connected your iPhone to your Mac.

If you have a MacBook of some sort it'll give you a whole heap of info relating to your MacBook battery too.

Other iOS Battery apps

There are countless iOS battery apps available, most of which I think aren't worth the download.

However, Battery Life is one of the best (make sure it's the one by Robert Tkotzyk - as there have been a couple of copies that essentially look exactly the same). I have found this app's Run Times to be more accurate than many others. By Run Times I mean it provides an estimate of the remaining runtime for various functions (e.g. talk time, browsing, video, etc).

Do your own 'real life' testing

Doing some real life testing provides the advantage of determining the exact battery life for your exact scenario (iPhone model, battery, installed apps, etc).

For one possible way you could do this, refer to my answer here. As you can see, it's quite involved if you want to ensure accuracy, and it will take some time.

Summary

My recommendation would be to contact Primate Labs to seek the current status of again including a battery benchmark test on their iOS app. I think this will do exactly what you want without all the mucking around.

Beyond that, I would try coconutBattery out (it's free to download) and give Battery Life a go too.

NOTE: - I have no affiliation whatsoever with any of the products described in this answer.


list of os x processes by name and function? Main machine is os x 10.9.5

Is there a canonical list of all os x processes by name? For instance TransportClient is always at the top of my Activity Monitor - Network list. Would like to find out about basic functionality etc. Also I'm the default tech for a teens' macbook and want to be able to identify rogue processes by name whenever possible. I've already had to remove adware and, despite security lectures, there will be more issues.

Thanks for any info.

There is no canonical list of all macOS processes by name.

Third party developers are free to name their processes without restriction and Apple's background processes are often undocumented.

Manual Pages

For many core macOS processes there are manual pages. You can read these technical manual pages using the included Terminal application and the command line tool man.


My computer is still showing remnants of the old Apple ID I used to have an Apple ID that I shared with my family, but it was becoming more and more obvious that I would end up needing my own. So I got myself an Apple ID, got family sharing set up, and switched everything out on my iPad. When I got to my computer, things got more complex. First, I logged out of iCloud and logged into my Apple ID instead. Then, I switched iMessage, FaceTime, Game Center, and a few other things. The problem is, my computer is still showing remnants of the old Apple ID. Is there a way to completely switch Apple IDs with one login on an iMac? Or do I just have to switch everything as I go along?

(Edit:) It would be too inconvenient to create a new user account because I have a lot of settings to applications adjusted and my computer too rigged up.

Apple does have several places for id - I have for historic reasons 2 different ids and so note some of the differences.

There are actually separate places that have logins.

iCloud/Mail login
iTunes login for music/vides etc
iPad/iPhone app store
MacOS store
Apple developer (I have several different ids here)

I have one id for 1 and another for the rest and others for 5. But I think the Mac Appstore could be set as a different id.

2 and 3 might  be the same (although that could be historic as iOS apps were updated via iTunes)

This does mean that you will need to change id separately for 1,2,4 and 5 (I think 2 and 3 are covered by one change)


What's the terminal command to see how network shares are connected? I would like to see how certain volume shares are connected to my Mac. I'm on a Windows network and need to know if shares are connected over smb2 or cifs or afp protocol... etc... Do I need to restart my Mac each time to get an accurate reading? (cache)

For a more detailed listing of samba connections including the protocol in use, try:

smbutil statshares -a


Camera is being used by another application -- which one? I was using FaceTime this morning, and during the call, the "Camera is being used by another application" screen appeared.
I've searched and I found https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250893855, which says "Quit all applications that are using the FaceTime camera".
But I don't have another application using the camera -- FaceTime was using it, so how did some other application steal the camera from it? If it can be stolen, how do I find out which application that was? If it can't be stolen, why did FaceTime suddenly decide, mid-call, to do this?
Note that I've also looked under Privacy / Camera; there are no applications listed as having  permission to use the camera (not even FaceTime).
(iPad mini, 5th gen, iOS 13.5.1)

MicroSnitch or OverSight might help. See https://tidbits.com/2020/07/22/feeling-paranoid-micro-snitch-tells-you-if-your-mac-is-spying-on-you/
EDIT: these are for macOS, not iPadOS.  My apologies.  I'm leaving it here in case these references are useful to others though.


iPhone 6, iOS 11.1.2: Messages app closing right after I open it I think I know when it appeared to be happening.  I had recieved some SMS text message from my bank regarding transaction item. And there was some special weird symbol, which looks like vise versa question mark.

I had something with macOS Notes, when I opened it and it just crashed.  So I just cleaned all content in Notes in iCloud web.  And was able to use macOS Notes again.

Is there any way I can clean all text messages in Messages app on iPhone?

I have removed everything, it seems in Settings -> iPhone Storage -> Messages:

But it keeps closing in right after I open it to write someone a reply. So basically I just can view notification previews and can't send a reply to anyone.

I have in mind some ways of fixing it. Like restore/refresh or wait for next iOS version to fix it or refresh it somehow.

Though, I don't want to restore the phone, settings or whatever. Might just probably wait when it cleans messages older than 30days of new iOS version will come up.

iOS 11.2 did it. But what was the issue itself, who knows.


Where does this "delayed send" capability in Mail come from? My only plugins as far as I know are Mail Act-On and MailTags. Does this functionality comes from them? I could not find anything on their website. Any other idea?

It looks like you must be using the Mail Act-On 3 Mavericks beta.

They have a link on their page to it and some what's new info.

  What is new in Mail Act-On 3

  Mavericks Support Mail Act-On 3 now supports OS X 10.8 and 10.9 New
  interface Reply Templates Composer options including setting delivery
  times specifying outbox rules to apply specifying archive mailbox for
  sent mail


How to attach files to emails on iPhone running iOS 8? Here is my dilemma/situation:

I download a PDF (or any other type) file from somewhere (i.e Safari, Email, Google Drive, etc.) into an application that can open it (i.e. Documents by Readdle)
I make some adjustments/edit the file using the app (i.e Documents by Readdle).
I go to the Email app and open an email that I want to reply to. I type up my message.
The problem: Now I want to attach that file I just edited in the app (i.e. Documents by Readdle) into this email reply that I am typing up.

How do I do this?

Documents by Readdle lets you send any arbitrary file over email. Select the file in Documents, tap Actions, then Mail to. This composes a new email with the file attached.

Upgrade to iOS 9 and you can attach arbitrary files from Apple's mail client. Documents can export files to iCloud drive for easy attachment or you can just save the file to iCloud drive from the get go and skip the Documents unless it ads value to your workflow.


How to reinitialize i-mac 2007 OS X 10.4 i am trying to reset the i-mac from 2007 OS X 10.4. with command plus R or alt.  These commands are not working, the computer restarts and do let me get to disc utility.  Is there something i can do ?  Is there anyone out there that knows and is willing to share their knowledge about doing this with command plus S mode ?
Thanks in advance.

Internet Recovery isn't going to be programmed into that old of a Mac. Similarly the recovery HD isn't available with OS older than Lion.

You need to boot from the 10.4 installer or bring another bootable volume with MacOS on it to that Mac to work on it.

I suppose what "intiailize" means to you will govern if single user mode is of any help at all.


Password Protect AirPrint I was recently hired as an IT supporter on a school for kids with autism and other development issues. They utilize iPads and I have no experience with Apple products.

Now, today a teacher came to me asking if I could block access to the printers from the kids iPads. They are printing some rather unfortunate things, and from a brief googling, I couldn't seem to find any option to do so, apart from setting up a seperate network (not a possibility (the teachers use iPads as well, and they need to be able to print. All tablets are connected to the same network.))

Is there a way to do it from the iPad, or do I have to setup passwords on the printers?

You have multiple ways of blocking the kids from accessing the printers:

Depending on the make and model of the printer, you could setup authentication on the printer. This way users will have to enter the username and password for the printer the first time they AirPrint something. This has to be done on the printer.

Depending on the make and model of your network equipment, you can set up a seperate network for the kids's iPads that is not allowed to AirPrint (i.e. has no network access to the printers). Even though the teachers are also using iPads, this can work, as you would still have the ordinary WIFi where the teacher's iPad can connect to access the printers.

Finally, as you indicate you prefer a solution where the restriction is done from the iPad, you can change the setup of the kids' iPads so that they're not allowed to AirPrint at all.

This can be done from a MDM setup, if you have one already. You can then specifically select a number of iPads, and then restrict access to AirPrint.

If you haven't got MDM, you can install "Apple Configurator 2" (free download from the App Store) on a Mac, and connect each iPad to set them up as supervised and block access to AirPrint. Note that usually iPads will be wiped when adding them as supervised devices.

You can find the user guide for "Apple Configurator 2" here:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/apple-configurator-2/welcome/mac


Clean shutdown/restart from terminal in 10.7+ I have a headless system that is controlled remotely that I need to shutdown/restart in an automated way (without the use of VNC or local keyboard/mouse).

Using various commands via SSH or via my daemon work as expected and restart the machine:

sudo shutdown -r now or osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to restart'

However these commands cause the OS to reopen windows of any running applications even though the following are all true:

When logging out normally Reopen windows when logging back in is unchecked
Only the item I want to start with the login is listed in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items.
defaults write -g ApplePersistence -bool no is set
System Preferences > General > Ask to keep changes when closing documents is checked or unchecked
System Preferences > General > Close windows when quitting an app is checked or unchecked
Recent Items is set to any value (has no effect)
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist contains TALLogoutSavesSate set to NO

In my case I can't actually use the applescript since 10.7+(?) warns when another machine is network shared with AFP or SMBed causing the shutdown to fail. The shutdown command forces the restart without popping up a dialog which is exactly what I need. However when the machine starts up I want exactly one application to start at login, and it is listed in Login items.

The machine is set to automatically log in so this application can run but if any other windows were open (Terminal or TextEdit with unsaved changes) want my shutdown/restart script to force close any open applications without saving and NOT open on next login. I also would rather not for-loop through all the user processes sending each a SIGTERM or SIGKILL manually before sending the shutdown command.

I am fully aware this may cause data loss (if the user did not save their document) but this this is typically an unattended machine that I want a restart to take the machine to a known state, not the state it was left in.

AFAICT none of these work to cleanly shutdown/restart the machine in 3.7+.

While writing up this question I made a discovery that might help others to almost fully solve this issue:

  ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist contains TALLogoutSavesSate set to NO

While this is true, there is another file located at ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow.*.plist that contains an array called TALAppsToRelaunchAtLogin. That array contains a list of app windows currently open.

Deleting this array, or in a more blunt way the whole file, and immediately restarting almost completely fixed the issue.

The remaining issue is when the machine starts up any open Finder windows are restored and if you had one or more terminal windows and actually ran the shutdown command from that window it causes it to be restored when Terminal is started again, but via SSH or a daemon seems to work fine.

I don't really think this a suitable solution in the long run but so far in my little testing it does seem to work.

upon further research it seems you can hook a script into login so it always deletes the file:
defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /usr/bin/loginfix.sh

:edit, along the same lines as the terminal window it looks like each individual app is saving it's state, so for example if you open TextEdit, make some changes and then restart the machine using the above method when the you log back in and start TextEdit you end up with the document you had open. Looking in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.TextEdit explains everything


Are there any good technical forums where jailbreak app authors hang out? Most of the forums I have seen are really lame pirate-oriented sites. I am interested in joining in a discussion with programmers about building iOS software that breaks the rules, but not illegal stuff.

A number of developers are on IRC on Saurik's IRC network: irc.saurik.com (port 6697 for SSL). Channels include #cycript, #cydia, #iPhone, #iphonedev, and #theos (for tweak development).

Also note you will probably get better answers to jailbreak questions at Jailbreak QA. No questionable questions are allowed there. And you will not get a good response if you have questionable repositories in your Cydia configuration. Just how things are.

Most forums I have found regarding iOS hacking usually involve piracy at some level (whether that be getting apps or in-app purchases for free).


Applications in Dock not showing 'open application' indicators Since up grading to High Sierra 10.13.6 I've had all sorts of issues, one of them is:

Being unable to tell which apps are open in the dock on my MacBook Pro. The black tags/arrow heads showing which apps are in use are gone!

How can you tell which Apps are open in the Dock now? Really really annoying problem and I can't see a fix anywhere.

System Preferences > Dock

Is ‘Show indicators for open applications’ checked?

Checking that should fix your problem with the Dock.


Where can I find the "restorecount" value macOS uses to track open windows and reset it? In System Preferences uncheck `General > Close windows when quitting an app
Open TextEdit.app
Press Cmd+N for a New file
Quit TextEdit.app
In Finder go to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.TextEdit/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.TextEdit.savedState/ we'll be looking for a file here shortly
Open TextEdit.app
Quickly, open the file restorecount.plist that has appeared in Finder
Look at the end value

Currently, on my macOS installation, end has a value of 570214618 which, as I understand it, means that since whatever epoch — a long time ago in an operating system far, far away — there have been over 570 million "windows" opened on my Mac. The value is shared across all user accounts. 10 months ago, that number was 544 million on my system according to this old question of mine: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/320967/15281

The effect of this is that, for some apps, there is a noticeable (4 to 5 seconds) delay whilst they do something before their restored windows appear. My workaround, see the above linked question, is to turn off window saving for those specific apps. But I'd rather not have to do that.

So, I'd like to reset the restorecount value at its source. Does anybody know where it is stored and/or how can I reset it?

The end value is not the number of windows you have opened, it is a Cocoa timestamp. 570214618 corresponds to January 26, 2019 4:56:58 PM GMT. As far as I can tell, the purpose of restorecount.plist is just to track how long it takes to restore the windows.

For apps that are taking a long time to start, you can try cleaning out their saved application state and see if that helps, but there are lots of other reasons an app might take a long time to start. The most common reason an app takes a long time to start is that it needs a lot of memory and you are already using all the available RAM so some memory needs to be compressed or written to disk in order to free up memory for the app. You can get a sense of this by looking at the "memory pressure" in the Activity Monitor.

You can also look at the amount of Swap Used (also in Activity Monitor). If that number goes up when you launch an app, then not having enough free memory is definitely a source of delay.


The piece under key hinge –– that looks like a nipple –– came loose. What to do? The left arrow key on my 2014 model Mac Air has been acting weird, so I took off the key cap and hinge to see what was going on and I discovered that the tiny piece that looks like a nipple (or a suction cup, if you will) is not attached to anything. I took off another small key to see how it should be. The nipples under other keys are firmly attached to either side of the key hole, but this one is kinda loose.

As a result, the key works but you have to push really hard on it.

How can I fix this? Can I just superglue it in place or do I need to get a new nipple-thingy?

thanks.

The piece is the "dome" - it sits under the key cap (see here). Underside of it has a conductive surface, so pushing it down closes the contact to trigger a key press. You may be able to fix this with some very small bits of double-sided adhesive tape; not sure I'd superglue it, because failure to fix could mean you're looking at a total keyboard replacement, depending on where the glue gets.


Cannot get Python perspective with Eclipse IDE I installed PyDev for Eclipse, but after doing so, I do not see PyDev in the list of perspectives. If I try to reinstall, it says it is already installed.

Running Mac OSX 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) and tried both Kepler and Juno releases of Eclipse (installed from www.eclipse.org), and PyDev latest from www.pydev.org, using the same procedures I use under Ubuntu (adding the site under "Install New Software").

I'm running Java runtime 1.6.0_65-b14-462-11M4609.

Any idea as to how I can get this working, so that I can get to a Python perspective in Eclipse?

Found out from someone at work...

Turns out that PyDev 3.x needs Java 7. Since I have Java 6, I need PyDev 2.x. I uninstalled, and then re-installed (unchecking the box that shows only the latest version) and now the PyDev perspective appears.


MacBook not sleeping when I close the lid My MacBook has never slept when I close the lid. I´ve tried all the remedies listed here in the forum from resets to experimenting with pmset settings.

Should my MacBook sleep as soon as I close the lid just like pressing alt+cmd+eject or does it sleep according to the power settings? I.e. after 10 minutes if so set?

Here is the output of pmset -g

Active Profiles:
Battery Power       -1*
AC Power        -1
Currently in use:
 standbydelay         4200
 standby              0
 halfdim              1
 sms                  1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 disksleep            10
 sleep                10
 hibernatemode        3
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         1
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

Using syslog | grep -i "wake reason" gives no results?

I have reviewed my sharing settings and deactivated everything, checked that there is no print queue and bluetooth is off.

Can anyone help me get my MacBook to sleep when I close the lid?

First thing - if "Internet sharing" is on and you are connected to power your Macbook won't sleep, though it does turn the display off.

To start can we make sure that the computer will actually sleep.

Select "Sleep" in the Apple menu. Now wake the computer. Note the time. Do the same thing again ten minutes later but this time sleep the computer, close the lid, wait a couple of minutes then open it. Note the time again. Does this wake the computer?

I like to open Console rather than use the syslog so run Console and select "All Messages" under "System Log Queries". Now we can search in the log easily for both "wake" and "sleep".

When looking at the results for "wake" you should see some kernel messages that tell you either it waked due to a lid open "EC.LidOpen" or you touched the keyboard which will log a kernel message "The USB device Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad (Port 2 of Hub at 0xfa100000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (3)"

When looking for "sleep" the most interesting lines are those that log the AirPort power change as they mark actual system sleeps. If you have "Power Nap" turned on the  you will also see kernel messages logged by RTC for "Maintenance" and "SleepService" which tells you that at time the computer was asleep but partially woke up for RTC to do it's thing.

For sleep though the best to look for is a message from WindowServer "handle_will_sleep_auth_and_shield_windows: Deferring" which it logs at sleep time.

What does 'pmset -g assertions' give you? Are there any lines set to '1'?

Given all that what do you learn about how your computer is sleeping and waking?

If it doesn't wake on a lid open perhaps you have a hardware problem?


How do I clean up the simple finder for a parental controlled account? We gave our son a parental controlled account on the iMac (Snow Leopard) and while we were able to limit the apps, we don't even want him to see the restricted apps.  Plus, he is using the "Simple Finder".

For example, Aperture is restricted but he sees the Aperture icon in his "Applications" folder.  When he opens it, it tells him that the program is denied.  But I prefer out of sight, out of mind.

Any tips appreciated.

Thank you.

As you've confessed your developing skills, I'll just limit myself to tell you that, as far as I know, it's not possible to hide applications from a user that has Parental Controlled accounts, even with simple Finder. I believe Apple considered that it was too much trouble.

What I'd do is move your son's applications to his /User/son/Applications and restrict access to /Applications for him.

You may be wondering: "but wouldn't that mean I'd have to duplicate apps I also want to use?". And you'd be right.

:)


How to add GPS data to photos? When I make photos with iPhone, these show GPS latitude + longitude in many software.

My normal camera has no GPS. How to add GPS info to these photos?

Try HoudahGeo. Full disclosure: I am the developer of HoudahGeo

HoudahGeo offers several ways for geotagging photos. My favorite is automatic geocoding using a GPS track log. Such a track log can come from an iPhone app or a GPS track logger. It has your exact position recorded every second or so. HoudahGeo matches the times on your photos to the timestamps in the track log.

Using a track log has the added benefit of you being able to retrace how you got from one point to the next. With HoudahGeo you can create a KML file that lets you visualize your travels in Google Earth with photos pinned at the locations where these were taken.

If you use both your iPhone and your digital camera to take photos at the same locations, HoudahGeo's "Geocode from reference photos" can copy GPS information form the iPhone photos to other photos taken at about the same time.