Keyboard shortcut to switch focus between monitors (from #1 to #2) in Yosemite I like having my IDE on left screen and browser on the right one. Whenever I want to refresh page in the browser, I need to move hand from keyboard to mouse. In my previous setup on Fedora I was able to setup a keyboard shortcuts ctrl+1 and  ctrl+2 to focus on the topmost window of appropriate monitor. I feel like this is a very basic task, but I didn't find any solutions. I even read this question:

Keyboard shorcut to switch focus between multiple displays on OS X 10.9.5 + (mavericks, el capitan, sierra)

but it proposes a workaround instead of an actual keyboard shortcut to switch focus. Is there any solution? I am able to buy an app from AppStore if there is one for this purpose, but I would like to avoid non-AppStore apps.

You can switch Applications by using ⌘ command+tab. Tabbing through the list of applications can be done by holding the ⌘ command key and continually hitting tab. This will automatically shift focus to the selected app no matter which screen or monitor on which it resides.

Therefore, swapping between IDE and browser is easily done without mapping new shortcuts.

The keyboard command for refreshing the browser is generally ⌘ command+R.

You can switch Windows of the same app by using ⌘ command+~.


Alternative for ADmitmac to access dfs shares? I can cmd+k to hidden shares if I remember the names, but normal access of dfs shares would be nicer. I want to get rid of admitmac since it makes my system unstable and slow.

The Samba version that powers all that functionality for Unix/Linux/OS X, supports Distributed FS “out of the box”; if I am not mistaken ADmitmac only provides a layer that handles configuration and automation of those tasks for you and adds a few services that might require a “server”. I have no experience with admitmac whatsoever so take this with a grain of salt.

With that said, OS X can join Active Directory networks created by either Samba servers or Windows 2003-2008. For more information check the Apple Business solutions, you might get away with what you need without having to use ADmitmac.

If your problem is that you have to type cmd+k every time you want to connect to a dfs share, you could always -once connected- drag that share to the right side of the dock, where it will create a direct access to the share. Next time you click on that, if the share is not connected, it will try to do that. This works for any type of connection (at least Windows Shares work too and I recall using nfs). That way you don’t have to type the name when you need the share.

Alternatively, you can “add” it to Favorites (I’m sure you’ve already seen this window):

Finally, here are a couple more resources you might want to check:

Apple’s free Seminar for Integrating OSX into Active Directory
MCS + dslocal
Using Managed Preferences in the DSLocal domain


Can MBP 16" ( Late 2019) retina screen can be replaced with non-retina non-Apple screen? I am getting some lines on one end of the screen I went to Aptronix (Apple retailer in India) customer care they are saying its pressure damage. I have never dropped the laptop nor hit the screen accidentally, but there some little scratches from normal usage. They mostly likely do not want to cover me under warranty so I am searching for alternate options. I wanted to replace my etina screen with a non-retina display like some UHD screen or any other screen.

No, that is not practically possible.
It is of course theoretically possible, but the costs involved for a one-off would be so high that you could buy a Retina display instead at lower cost.


How do proceed if I get "Verification failed" errors from iCloud? My iPhone 5S can't verify iCloud but it can log into the iTunes store. I don't know what has happened. Please help me understand how this happened and what I can do to fix the problem.

Did you try using this ID and password on any other device or sign into your iCloud from any computer. Also you can go to your iTunes connect your phone to the computer  go to the top menu and check how many computers or devices you have authorized on that ID as far as I know you can only authorize five devices on  One Apple ID if nothing works out for you then you should back up your phone with computer using iTunes latest version of iTunes and then remove everything on your phone I mean  reset or restore your phone then set it up all over as a new phone then restore it from the back up you just made you should be able to get everything back that you had on your phone and your problem should be solved.


iTunes - what playing now notifications Possible Duplicate:
  iTunes track notifications for Mountain Lion

I want to turn on iTunes notifications on Mountain Lion?
Anybody knows how I can do this?
Growl dosn't work :/

Enable iTunes track notifications in the Dock

In the terminal type

defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool true

Reference (with a lot of other great terminal commands):: nerdlogger.com


Erase MacBook hard drive without OSX disc I would like to erase everything on my Mac's hard drive as I'm going to recycle or sell it. Is there a way to do it without OSX disc?

Target Disk Mode

If the Mac you want to erase supports Target Disk Mode, and you have a second compatible Mac (you need to use either Firewire or Thunderbolt on both), you can use the second Mac to erase the target one. Boot up into Target Disk Mode (hold down T), and the target Mac will appear as an external drive on the second Mac. Then you can run Disk Utility to wipe the drives as per usual.

DBAN

If you can't use Target Disk Mode, you can download DBAN and burn it to a DVD. Boot up using the DVD and you'll be presented with a multitude of options for wiping the drive.

Extract the Hard Drive

The last resort is to open up the Mac and extract the hard drive. You can then use a SATA dock or enclosure to attach it to another computer and wipe it using the tools available (Disk Utility on the Mac, or other tools on Windows). With the exception of the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro, all MacBooks have standard 2.5" SATA drives, so any enclosure that takes SATA will be compatible.


Macbook Air 2013 OS X 10.8.2 acting funny I have a MacBook Air 2013. Suddenly, on startup it shows a  sign, then the apple and it goes to disk utility. There I have 4 options. Restore from time machine, reinstall OS X, Get help online and disk utility.
I would like to reinstall OS X but that requires broad band Internet connection which I don't have. Is there any other way of getting around this and recover my OS X? By the way, I seem to have a disk 1 OS X 10.8.2 base system...
Can anybody help?

The 10.8.2 wont help most probably you were on 10.9x

Start with Disk Utility and see if you can repair your disk.

While in disk utility look if you have hidden partition called recovery.

If yes use the cmd-r to try to repair your os.


Download Teach Tracks to iTunes I downloaded Teach Tracks to learn songs and I like to add them to playlists.  How do I add these to my Apple Music cloud library so that I can then add them to playlists in iTunes?

Assuming your 'teach tracks' are DRM free and not buy from iTunes you could add them to iTunes as long as their fileformat is compatible with iTunes. You don't need an Apple Cloud Library to create playlists, just create a playlist with these songs inside itunes. You can then transfer the songs and the playlist to an iPhone/iPod just by connecting it to your computer.
If you still want your songs in iCloud you must subscribe to iTunes Match from apple. Your songs will be match with iTunes catalog to be available in the cloud from your account, if a song doesn't match the itunes catalog it will be upload to the cloud in order to be available.

If your songs are bought from iTunes they are already available in the cloud.


Cannot connect to Wireless Keyboard I have an Apple Wireless Keyboard MC184LL/B which I use infrequently, but was using today (on a non-Apple machine).

I attempted to connect it to a new device, unsuccessfully, and now I cannot seem to use it on the original machine or on my MacBook Pro Early 2011 running OS X 10.11. (The MacBook Bluetooth is OK as I can connect to other devices.)

The MacBook sees it, and says "connecting" when I press the pair control, but always fails with Couldn't connect to the device.

I have always found this device frustrating; it came with almost no instructions and there seems to be no on-line manual, although there is a similar keyboard with 3 batteries rather than 2.

When I press the power the green light comes on for a few seconds then goes off.

I possible broke it by attempting to connect without pairing from the new device.

Is there anyway I can reset the keyboard to factory default.

That's actually a feature, albeit a very poorly documented one.

The Apple Wireless Keyboard refuses attempts to be overtaken by a different host without a deliberate disconnect, physical access by the user, a very long timeout or a manual reset.

Your keyboard model is that of "October 2009", the manual can be found here: https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1208/en_US/Apple_Wireless_Keyboard_2009_UG.pdf

Page 6 states that you should disconnect (not unpair) your keyboard before connecting (or pairing) it to another computer.

Once the keyboard is no longer in a 'connected' state, it will happily reconnect to any device it has previously been paired to.

So in order to resolve your problem, you should either take your keyboard back to the computer it believes to be connected to (and explicitly disconnect it there) or try the following in order to disconnect it manually:

open the "Keyboard" pane in "System Preferences" and choose "Set Up Bluetooth Keyboard..." (or search for devices via the "Bluetooth" pane as an alternative),
power off your keyboard by pressing and holding the power button (on its side),
release the power button after the indicator light goes out (your keyboard is now in standby mode),
press and hold the (same) power button for as long as it takes for your keyboard to be successfully connected by your target computer (the indicator light will blink during the course of this step).

In case you release the power button too early, i.e. without fully establishing a connection, the keyboard will simply fall back into the mode it was before – still connected to the other computer, safe from being overtaken. :)


What is filling up my hard drive so fast? Last night (Because my hard drive was almost full) I freed about 4GB. Then I came back to my Macbook about 3hrs later (I left it idle) and Its was full again.

Is something is eating my mac?

If I go to /About This Mac/Info/Storage then it says I have 90GB of "Other"

This worries me and I thought it was just me imagining things, but I think there IS something wrong with my mac as I believe that it was also happening when i had Mountain-Lion before Mavericks.

Edit: Activity Monitor

launchD 1.28GB Written

Kernel_task 764MB Written

mds 475MB Read

Now this a list of the user column (note I am the only user on this Mac):

root
_mdnsresponder
_spotlight
_softwareupdate
_locationd
_networkd myname

Here's the systematic way to find where the disk space went: Open a window in Terminal (you find this under Utilities), then type:

cd /
sudo du -sm *

This will give you the disk consumption, in megabytes, of every top level entry in the folder hierarchy.

You could then drill down further, but without a good idea of what things do, you might easily decide on a wrong culprit (in particular, don't go around deleting random files in /System; that is bound to end in tears).

However, since your system keeps filling up by itself, you can just let it sit for an hour, and then run the du command above again. The difference between the two sets of numbers will show you where the space went.

In particular, if logging is a problem, you might see the number for /private go up.


How do I prevent iTunes from syncing down Voice Memos from my iPhone? I've got an iPhone 4 (running iOS 4.3.5) and iTunes (v10.4.1) on a Mac running OS X (10.6.8).

When connected to iTunes, I've got the Music -> Sync Music -> Include voice memos option unchecked, but that seems to have no effect. Each time I sync the phone, all the new voice memos are pulled down to iTunes and dropped in my library.

So, the question is: How can I prevent iTunes from pulling down the voice memos and just leave them on my iPhone?

Currently, there doesn't seem to be a way to prevent iTunes from pulling in the voice memos. The closest I've been able to figure would be to have a script or launchd item that simply removes anything that it sees. Preferable copying them to another directory for storage.

Update: October, 2017

I've switched to using Just Press Record which is dedicated to voice memos. It's fast to start and also creates transcripts. They're pretty good most of the time, but sometimes they get pretty far off. It's a nice feature, regardless.

The app costs a few bucks, but it's well worth it. (And, I like to support developers so they can keep working on software I like.)


Install shuf on OS X? Ubuntu Linux has a great tool called shuf, which works like head except that it gives you ten random lines. I couldn't find it on Homebrew. What is the simplest way of installing it on OS X?

You can install coreutils with brew install coreutils.

shuf will be linked as gshuf. Read the caveats when you install coreutils.


Can we view or edit HostName value via macOS desktop UI? Here are two instances where I found that setting the computer name via System Preferences > Sharing > Computer Name does not really set the HostName attribute.

The macOS version is macOS High Sierra version 10.13.6 in both instances below.

Instance 1

I got a brand new MacBook Pro which had the following settings under System Preferences > Sharing.

Computer Name: Lone's MacBook Pro
Local Hostname: Lones-MacBook-Pro.local

The scutil and hostname output looked like this:

$ scutil --get ComputerName
Lone's MacBook Pro
$ scutil --get LocalHostName
Lones-MacBook-Pro
$ scutil --get HostName
HostName: not set
$ hostname
Lones-MacBook-Pro.local

Then I went to System Preferences > Sharing and set the Computer Name to luke. Now the output looked like this:

$ scutil --get ComputerName
luke
$ scutil --get LocalHostName
luke
$ scutil --get HostName
HostName: not set
$ hostname
luke.local

The HostName attribute is not set!

Instance 2

I was working on a friend's MacBook Pro who had some other HostName already set (perhaps someone else had configured it for him). He had the following settings under System Preferences > Sharing.

Computer Name: mmod
Local Hostname: mmod.local

The CLI output looked like this:

$ scutil --get ComputerName
mmod
$ scutil --get LocalHostName
mmod
$ scutil --get HostName
mmod
$ hostname
mmod

Now I went to System Preferences > Sharing and set Computer Name to luke. The output now is:

$ scutil --get ComputerName
luke
$ scutil --get LocalHostName
luke
$ scutil --get HostName
mmod
$ hostname
mmod

Again, HostName remains unaffected.

Question

I know that I can set the HostName attribute with the scutil --set HostName luke command.

My question is: Is there a macOS desktop UI element where I can view or edit this HostName attribute without having to run CLI commands?

There's no place in the GUI to change it, because it's typically set by an external source.
Your hostname is determined by the following (in order):

name supplied by DHCP/BOOTP server
name returned by a reverse DNS lookup
the localhost name (what was used to set LocalHostName value)
name acutal name localhost

Most routers now have the ability to "register" the DHCP lease in the DNS resolver cache.  So, what's happening is this...
At some point, your Mac didn't exist as a DHCP mapping or DNS entry on your router.  When it connected, it sent a request which included it's preferred hostname along with a request for an address.  That preferred hostname defaulted to your LocalHostName as the first two conditions would have returned nothing.  When you got the address, it "registered" that hostname with an IP.
Now, you want to change the name, but it keeps coming back to the original host - this is because the router now "knows" your machine has having that name and will overwrite it per DNS (which takes priority).
TL;DR
That name is coming from your DHCP Server and/or DNS chache.  If you want to clear that out and set a new one, you'll have to do it at the router.


How to increase the amount of time the wifi waits before timing out a connection? I'm currently traveling abroad.  Sometimes when connecting to a very old or a heavily used router, the connection will timeout after 2-3 seconds.  I think some of these routers just need more time to respond to my connection request, I would like to increase the wait time to 10-12 seconds before the wifi times out the connection.

Such things do not appear to be configurable through the networking GUI.  I'm quite handy with the terminal but not familiar enough with networking to know where to look.

I doubt there's anything you can do short of jailbreaking and re-flashing the code that drives the wireless chipset.

The things you can control are getting closer to the transmitter, potentiallly moving objects that could attenuate or reflect Wi-Fi signals or set up a repeater to sit within range of both the base station and the location where you wish to have network coverage.


Why doesn't the Mac App Store Twitter app (v. 2.0.2) work well with Spaces? It's something that drives me crazy. The current version (2.0.2) of the official Twitter app for Mac OS X doesn't behave well with Spaces. It moves from space to space when I select another application (switching with cmd TAB.)

Is there a way to fix this or do I have to wait for a new release?

If you want Twitter to stay in one Space, you can assign it to that Space in the Spaces PrefPane. The downside to this is that you have to remove and re-add that assignment every time you launch Twitter. Can't wait for this bug to be fixed.


How can I tell which apps are using up my graphics memory? Sometimes my Macbook grinds to a halt due to the GPU's onboard memory getting full. (I know this because the CPU use, RAM use and disk use are all low, and because closing things like Chrome tabs and large pdfs tends to resolve the issue.) To avoid this, I'd like to be able to monitor the use of my system's graphics memory.

There doesn't seem to be an option in Activity Monitor, but is there some other way I can tell (a) how much graphics memory is currently free, and if possible (b) which apps are currently using the greatest amount of it?

I'd much prefer a free solution over a paid one; a Terminal-based solution would be fine.

I am not saying you are wrong, but the GPU memory is normally used for rendering the current laptop 2D display, and then for the calculations for 3D display (games), and GPU acceleration (modern browsers).  I've used, programmed various computers for many years, and yet to see an issue related to an application using to much GPU memory.

But ISTRC MBP from 2010 onwards(?) have two GPU's the integrated (intel) and the discrete  (NVIDIA GeForce 320M in mine).  The MBP has good battery life due to when rendering text, images for the screen the low energy intel is used, but when game, videos are played and need more GPU processing is required the NVIDIA graphics chip is used.  Maybe you have an issue with the NVIDIA graphics?

It's maybe more likely that it could be a 'wait' caused by an issue with the filesystem, hard drive, or maybe elsewhere.  A failing hard drive will not report loads of activity when accessing a file that the hard drive controller takes extra long to read from.

It may help people to help you if you say how often it happens, whether the spinning beach ball appears, if it's a case of just taking a few moments to close windows, and then it wakes up again quickly or slowly?

Next time it happens try closing one application set of windows, say Chrome, and then wait (5 minutes) to see if that fixes it, and then the next try the other.  As it's likely to be only one application that is the main issue, and you'll do best in trying to narrow it down.

I've MacBook that getting a little slow occasionally but it's not gotten to the point where I need to correct it.

Good Luck!


After updating to macOS 10.13.5 it asked for iCloud account and password I Update To Mac Os 10.13.5 From High Sierra After Updating MacBook it again ask for icloud password and id is it normal?

Yes, that’s normal behaviour for a MacOS upgrade.


What is the last version of Skype that will run on OS X 10.5 for a PPC Mac? I've got a G4 Mac Mini that is running 10.5.8 and the latest version of Skype (v 5.3) will not install on my machine because it is Intel only. What is the last version that would work on PowerPC?

You're probably looking for Skype 2.8.0.866 (PPC), which you can find searching the OldApps website. It was released on 29 November, 2010.

  Supported Systems: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (PowerPC)


Apple Mail app search filter brings the same email hundred times Not sure where to address this issue, though, this Apple Mail (bug?) is incredibly annoying.

Searching for something brings the same email 100 times, +thousands of bin entries. Why this behavior? How to fix that? It simply makes impossible finding any emails.

After the last update, it became even more annoying. Now it shows "Deleted Messages" as well.

Those aren't even actually deleted messages. They are trash of autosave process.

When you create an email Mail.app saves a draft. When you type a few more letters Mail.app deletes the old draft and saves a new one.

If you have "store draft messages on the server" selected (Preferences -> Accounts -> (select account) -> Mailbox behaviours) then every time you make an edit Mail.app sends it to Google then deletes any old drafts. Unfortunately, Google doesn't really delete the old drafts. Instead it moves them to the Bin folder and when you search in Mail.app it finds these hundreds of old drafts.

To stop this occurring on future drafts uncheck "store draft messages on the server" for all my Gmail accounts.

To clear up your old drafts log into to Gmail directly and:
* Go to the All Mail folder and manually select and delete all the old drafts
* Go to the Bin folder and select "Empty Bin"


Solarized theme for Terminal I've installed the Solarized theme for Terminal.app and imported it. But my Terminal is all gray, I don't get color highlighting on anything. Not even running Python terminal generates any color. How can I get the color highlighting working properly?

In the Solarized themes the bright green, yellow, blue, and cyan foreground colors seem to be almost the same as the default foreground color.

Or if you were expecting it to add color to new places, it doesn't. Terminal setting files only change the settings that can also be changed from Terminal's preferences, like the values of ANSI colors.


Notes Application terminating on every startup I have been a heavy-user of the build in Notes Application on OS X for a couple of months now. I am running Yosemite 10.10.4. But suddenly the App crashed on every startup. This is the error message I get:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason:
'Got more than one folder with folderId AQMkADllODE4Yzg1LTM3MjktNGVlAGEtODRkZi1jZDdmMGViMWVjYjcALgAAA2uk2E33q9BMt5S6XXxtY3cBADMZ7DRFZNJAkM1D4wHoODQAAAMKAAAA'
    abort() called
    terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

As it is a build in App I can't simply reinstall it. Any advice on what I can do?

Ok, I found a solution: I had two Exchange Accounts connected and synchronised the notes from them. After removing them through the settings Notes is working again :)


How do I restore my lost Address Book entries on my iPhone? My mom just got a new iPhone 4S today, so she wanted me to transfer the contacts on her old iPhone 3G to the 4S. However, I screwed up.

And I don't have a single backup, so now, all I have is a copy of the contacts on her computer, and no real contacts.

Do any of you know how to fix this? Restore the old data?

Check if she's stored the contacts anywhere else, such as in Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.  You can pull them into the phone by linking an account in Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Add Account..., or you can synchronize with the PC by going through the iPhone options in iTunes.

Otherwise, start typing...


Where did these missing OS X application icons go? On my Mac mini, app icons have gone missing for some apps (Terminal, Chrome, Spotify, Skype) from the Dock and elsewhere.

See a screenshot of the Dock. When I hover over the empty spots, I can see the names of the apps and launch them normally.

And here's one of the app switcher (it was kind of challenging to take this with cmd-shift-3, btw):

I don't remember doing anything special to make OS X lose the icons.

At first I thought it was some temporary glitch, but logging out & back in didn't help, and neither did rebooting the machine.

Upgrade from 10.6.4 to 10.6.5 didn't improve the situation either. Anyone have ideas how I could fix this?

If restarting and all that doesn't help, here's how i fixed mine.

Open finder.
Go to /Applications.
Drag the offending application to the desktop to create a shortcut.
Shortcut should have the proper icon.
Right click shortcut and click on Get info.
Click on the icon on the top left of the info view. Example:

When icon is selected (blue highlight), hit Cmd+C to copy it. Example:

Delete shortcut (not necessary).
Go back to /Applications in finder.
Right click on the offending application.
Click Get info.
Notice the place where the icon should be Top left.
Click on that location to highlight it.
Press Cmd+V

You should now see your icon again.

Tip: This method can also be used to change any icon to something else and customise your Mac !


How to "Optimize for" an external monitor, downscale resolution but supersample for clear text? I posted question here but got no answers --
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8203211

ANSWER:

Add a custom scaled resolution that's twice the resolution you want (for HiDPI / macOS retina). This requires editing system files.

STEPS:

Shut down Mac. Turn on Mac, holding CMD+R during bootloader, Utilities -> Terminal -> csrutil disable; reboot

Login, download SwitchResX, install without helpers
Add a custom, scaled resolution 3200x1800 (looks good as 1600x900 HiDPI in 1440p)

Shut down Mac. Turn on Mac, holding CMD+R during bootloader, Utilities -> Terminal -> csrutil enable; reboot

I think you're misusing the term supersampling.

  Supersampling is a spatial anti-aliasing method, i.e. a method used to remove aliasing (jagged and pixelated edges, colloquially known as "jaggies") from images rendered in computer games or other computer programs that generate imagery.

macOS has always had support for TrueType, so any issues shouldn't be a result of poor antialiasing in any case.

What you really want to do is change the scaling of your external monitor while keeping the native resolution. You should be able to accomplish this using SwitchResX with a HiDPI profile.


Profile Manager: Enroll gives a error 500 I'm new to iOS and I'm trying to configure a server to use it as a MDM solution via Profile Manager.

So far I have:

Configured my OS X Server.
Added a signed SSL certificate.
Sent some invitations to end users.

BUT when the user reaches the https://mock_domain/mydevices/ and tries to enroll it (does a POST to https://mock_domain/devicemanagement/mdm/mdm_enroll) returns a **error 500.

After checking the error_log it looks like there is some security issues (probably related to the SSL certificate):

AH01630: client denied by server configuration

I dont know exactly what is happening but might be related to the SSL certificate.

My OpenDirectory service is configured with a self-signed certificate and the rest of services are configured to use the certificate that I bought.

I have tried to change the certificate of the OpenDirectory to explore that path but I can't and I dont know if it is really related to the error 500 issue.

Any advice??

Bit late to the party, but it seems to be resolved through opening Server, turning Off open directory, waiting a few seconds, then turning it back On. Repeat if necessary.

This has happened twice in the past month, both times were resolved by doing this. I'm now searching as to why this occurs, and if it happens again I'll test reinstalling the Server App.

Hopefully this helps someone.


iCloud not syncing with work machine I use an iMac at work and recently have been upgraded to Lion. I've used Lion at home since it came out.

I've switched iCloud on on the iMac, but none of the calendar events are visible on my other devices.

Is this because of some firewall or other security? What should I ask my IT dept. to fix this?

iCal is synced at work to my work email (Exchange) and at home to my personal GMail account

Many thanks.

In order for iCloud to work, you must be signed into that account on all devices that you wish to sync. For example, in your situation, you must be signed into your Google account on all your devices in order for iCloud to push those events to all devices. However, this must be explained more clearly, as that part can be confusing. All Apple devices handle multiple email accounts in a superb fashion, but you must be signed into each account to have it download those events/data onto that device.

Case in point: you sign into both Gmail, as well as Exchange on all your devices, and it will sync events over all devices. It should be noted that Exchange calendars are completely separate from iCloud and MS Exchange handles it's own events. When you have more then one email address in iCal or the Calendar iOS app, you have the option of which account to put it on, and it will sync that accordingly.

Probably the best for you would be to set up Exchange on your personal devices, and, if you don't want to receive mail, simply disable that, leaving the calendars synced. That way, when you create an event at work, it will show up on your other devices under the MS Exchange, but if you create it at home, it will show up as your Gmail (iCloud), unless you chose differently when creating the events.


Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed Due to a Hard Drive failure I have had to restore my mac from a backup. Following the Restore From Time Machine Backup procedure under recovery mode takes about 8 hours. Eventually the data is restored on the new hard drive, but the drive won't boot. It gets stuck at around 50% of the boot process with the apple logo.
I have tried the Reinstall macOS procedure under recovery mode, but at the end it prompts the message:

OS X could not be installed on your computer
Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed. Quit the installer to restart your computer

This happens for both Mavericks as for Sierra.
What can I do to fix this problem? After several, very long attempts, I am desperate to get my data and mac back.

I have fixed my problem. Before the crash of my hard drive, I was using Yosemite as OS. Apparently you cannot restore a backup made in Yosemite with a bootable USB of either Mavericks or Sierra or with the network restore of Lion.

I eventually made a bootable USB drive of Yosemite and reinstalled a new copy of Yosemite on my new HDD. After installation I used the Migration Assistant to retrieve my data. This took several hours, but afterwards I could normally reboot my computer. I had tried this same procedure with Lion, Mavericks and Sierra, but that didn't work and the computer wouldn't boot.

So if you find yourself having to restore a time machine backup, use a bootable macOS of the same macOS version you were running.


How to access virtual machine website in iMac? I have installed Windows Server 2012 in VirtualBox inside iMac. Now I need to access the website created in VirtualBox in iMac. can any one guide me please?

It is too easy. Firstly you just need to set the virtual machine to use bridged networking, so it will get an IP address on your network. This IP address will be accessible from your host machine.

According to the Chapter 6 of VirtualBox's manual:

With bridged networking, VirtualBox uses a device driver on your host system that filters data from your physical network adapter. This driver is therefore called a "net filter" driver. This allows VirtualBox to intercept data from the physical network and inject data into it, effectively creating a new network interface in software. When a guest is using such a new software interface, it looks to the host system as though the guest were physically connected to the interface using a network cable: the host can send data to the guest through that interface and receive data from it. This means that you can set up routing or bridging between the guest and the rest of your network.

You can also use the NAT networking mode, but you have to work a lot to set the port tinkering.


Capturing video on iOS device? How can I capture a video on an iOS device or the iOS emulator?

I saw some product pages that are using videos demonstrating that how their apps to be used. The video is also showing the touch and other gestures of the user. How can I create such video?

To do it in the Emulator, you can just use Quicktime, since the latest version supports Screen Recording. Keep in mind though that it captures the entire screen and not just a particular window.


Headphones makes noise when i touch the jack. (MacBook) I have a MacBook Pro 13" and have plugged the iphone 5 headphone into it. When I touch the jack they make some noise, I doesn't matter how gentle I touch they always make a noise. They seem to fit tight into the jack receiver. What could the problem be?

This noise (assuming it's a buzzing sound) is normal - not a problem. It is just because of the electricity flow you are causing with your finger. It is explained well here.


Homebrew doctor warnings requesting library deletions I got the following list of brew doctor warnings and was wondering if it's safe to  delete the libraries and .pc files listed. (I have no idea what they are used for!)

Warning: Unbrewed dylibs were found in /usr/local/lib. If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected dylibs:
/usr/local/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib
/usr/local/lib/libtk8.6.dylib

Warning: Unbrewed .pc files were found in /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig. If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected .pc files:
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/tcl.pc
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/tk.pc

Warning: Unbrewed static libraries were found in /usr/local/lib. If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected static libraries:
/usr/local/lib/libtclstub8.6.a
/usr/local/lib/libtkstub8.6.a

I got the same warnings, and worked it around with the following:

So first back up these files:

mv /usr/local/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib /usr/local/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib.bak
...

Then install tcl/tk with Homebrew:

brew tap homebrew/dupes
brew install tcl-tk --with-tk

Then link the files, so that R can find the tcl/tk installed by Homebrew:

ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/tcl-tk/8.6.1/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib /usr/local/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib
ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/tcl-tk/8.6.1/lib/libtk8.6.dylib /usr/local/lib/libtk8.6.dylib

Please double check that the linked location is where tcl-tk is installed.

Now both Homebrew and R are happy.

More details can be found on my blog. Hope this helps.


How does one make screen captures with a shadow? How to do beautiful print screens, with shadows on the border, like this image?

Is the shadows automatic? A Mac tool? Do I need to manipulate the image in other programs like Adobe Photoshop?

No, you do not need to. This feature is built into Mac OS X.

To do this, press ⌘+Shift+4 then press Space. The selector will then change into a camera icon, and you can take a screenshot of the selected window with a shadow.

(I couldn't capture the camera icon)

End result:


Access iCloud mail on iPad without setting up device How can I view iCloud.com/#mail on an ipad without setting it up on the device? I want to check my emails on an ipad that isn't mine. I can normally access it on a PC but don't have access to one of them right now. Whenever I go to the website it just shows me the setup icloud on this device screen.

Thanks!

The problem is that the page www.icloud.com recognizes Safari on iPad and iPhone as a mobile iOS browser and then presents the page with the setup message.
But you could try to access the page with Google's chrome. It has an option to open pages in a desktop version. That might help.


How do I share an existing album? I took a bunch of photos on vacation and saved them into an album in the Photos app on iOS 9.  I'd like to now share that album.  Is there a way to do this other than creating a new shared album and manually adding the individual pictures?

I've looked at the instructions here and they don't describe any way to share an already created album.  The photos are backed up on iCloud, and I can access them via iCloud.com, but there doesn't appear to be a way to even create a new shared album on iCloud.com.

You do have to create a new shared album, but you can create the album from the contents of the existing album so you don't need to find the images again manually.

Open the album.
Choose Select in the top right, then Select All in the top left.
Tap Share in the bottom left, then create a new iCloud Photo Sharing album as usual.

Once you've created the shared album, you can delete the old album.


Replacement Battery: How to evaluate quality? I replaced the battery on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), after over 2200 cycles, with a new one I bought off aliexpress. I made sure to buy the most expensive version, in order to avoid issues, I paid 75$ for a "NOHON" battery with good reviews.
While I was inside I extradited a ton of dust bunnies, with the result of the macbook now being very quite and seemingly faster. It now probably uses less electricity than before.
I checked coconut battery and it says that the battery is in good condition.
However, it seems to me, that the battery is losing a lot of charge very fast. Only minutes after unplugging with 100% the battery is already at 97%. About two hours cost me almost half the battery.
When I bought this notebook, it would basically go almost the whole day without recharge.
Since I know, that there frequently are issues with these replacement batteries, how can I check if the battery has any? Is there anything more I can do apart from checking the health, which only says "good"?
I didn't bother calibrating the battery, because from what I read, unibody batteries don't need that. I did however charge it fully and leave it plugged in for hours after it was charged.
The data I have access to now:

I would run the battery through 3 full cycles and then revisit your data collection. The fact that it works and the firmware on the Mac has accepted the battery and not thrown a “service battery” or fault is a great first step.
Only time will tell if they voltage curve and performance of this battery of cells performs for you.
I would quibble that calibration is needed for all batteries, but that for unibody Macs, that calibration happens as you use the battery over time, not that you have to force it by disconnecting the charger and doing the steps manually. I think it’s still valuable to repeat that old process with any suspect hardware. You won’t know how a system performs in all conditions without exposing it to all conditions. A snapshot of the health when topped off is just a snapshot whether the battery came from Apple’s supply chain and was tested before assembly or DIY like you did quite well from what you report. Great job learning how this all works and asking an excellently documented question.


Can't change media kind from music to podcast in iTunes 12 I've been downloading mp3s from a podcast's archives on their website (the archived episodes aren't available on iTunes). After adding these files to iTunes, I'm unable to do the logical thing, which is to change the media kind to Podcasts so it will show up under Podcasts and not Music. When I click Get Info > Options, Music is the only option in the dropdown.

It seems this solution used to work in previous versions of iTunes. Has anyone figured out a workaround? I really don't want to have to switch to the Music app to listen to these mp3s.

Note: Some people elsewhere seemed to think turning off iTunes Match would help, but I don't even have Match, so that's not a solution for me.

So I found that if I change the media type before iTunes "processes" the file I'm able to set it as podcast. After it's already been processed I'm not able to do it. So I just deleted my file from iTunes, re-added it, and was able to edit the media type.


Time machine migration has been preparing for 14 hours, is this normal? There's very little information on how long time machine migrations are supposed to take on Google. I have 200GB or so under my user and it has been stuck on "preparing to transfer user documents" for 14 hours.

What's a normal time? Can I see the progress somehow without interrupting it? Should I just cancel it?

It seems like it's because our time capsule is incredibly slow just generall, it takes 20 seconds - 1 minute to open a folder, "preparing" to copy a reasonable folder can take 10's of minutes. This is independently of me being plugged in directly to the time capsule or going over wireless.

There doesn't seem to be a solution except possibly to do a factory reset, but first I'm going to get a 2TB disk and use the airport disk archiving function to save what I have.

I've found a few threads where people similar issues, like this one:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5471457?tstart=0


How to use environment variables in applescript I'd like to use my environment variables, which were defined in my environment.plist file, in my applescript.

How do I do that, for instance:

log "Glassfish Home: " & AS_HOME

Where AS_HOME is my environment variable.

Try this:

log "Glassfish Home: " & (system attribute "AS_HOME")


Which graphics cards or integrated GPUs support metal? Apple announced metal for OS X.

Apple's website clearly states some features will not be available on all macs, which seems to refer to metal support.

But is there a list of already confirmed GPUs, most importantly are intel integrated GPUs supported?

This would help me choosing a future dev computer with metal support this summer.

We know Metal on iOS is linked to OpenGL ES 3.0 support. All devices which support OpenGL ES 3 also support Metal.

Is there a direct link between Metal support and a specific version of OpenGL (and maybe unrelated to graphics OpenCL)?

In the WWDC 2015 video "What's new in Metal, Part 1", Rav Dhiraj from the GPU software division states at 8'40"

Metal is supported by all Macs introduced since 2012. (Nvidia, AMD and Intel)

This means :

Intel HD Graphics 4000, Iris 5000 & 6000 family,
nVidia GT 600M, 700M family,
AMD R9 M family,


Is there a way to enable "Find my Mac" to locate your computer but not remotely wipe the drive? Find My Mac is a useful feature of iCloud to locate your computer. As recent events have shown, however, if bad guys gain control of one's iCloud account, they can wreak havoc, including remotely erasing the contents of your Mac.

Is there a way to enable "Find My Mac" to find one's computer but not to enable the remote wipe feature?

A good answer would point to some official Apple document about whether or not this is supported. A great answer would say no, this isn't supported, but you can modify this particular file on your computer to prevent remote wipe from happening.

In this Knowledge Base article, Apple write "With Find My iPhone set up on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch or Mac, you can locate, display a message, play a sound, remotely lock, or remotely wipe (erase) your device using the Find My iPhone app from another device (such as a friend's iPhone or iPad)."

This is the closest I have found to a direct statement that it's one package: if it's set up, you can locate, display a message, play a sound, lock, or erase. None of the documentation about configuration mentions options to enable these selectively; the control is off/on.

As far as disabling remote wipe, there seems to be a strong indication that the remote wipe involves rebooting to the Restore partition. Evidences for this include the fact that "Find my Mac" will not turn on (be greyed out) if there is no Restore partition present. Also, it would be very difficult for a running process to wipe its own boot drive. The Find my Mac remote wipe causes a reboot. It seems most likely that wherever the remote wipe lives, it's somewhere on the recovery partition.

So, Find my Mac won't turn on unless there is a recovery partition. Remote wipe most likely won't work if the Recovery partition isn't bootable. To enable Find My Mac but disable Remote Wipe, you need to have a recovery partition, and it needs to not successfully boot. Sabotage the recovery system somewhere so it can't boot and thus can't be used as the plaatform to wipe your main drive. Of course you will want to keep an external bootable recovery drive (USB stick?) available if you do this.


Why did changing from gmail to inbox.com delete contacts from an iPhone4s? Can I retrieve the contacts? I changed my email from gmail to inbox.com on an iPhone4s and discovered most of my contacts are gone. Only recent contacts and Facebook contacts remain. Of course I did not backup the contacts.

Try checking here - https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#contacts

If you contacts still exists, you can export them and then import them to where ever you like.


Issues with new Macs: Hardware makes them difficult for me to use. What options might be available in the future? At home and at work I have a MacBook Pro (2015) which is the last one before the following hardware changes :

Butterfly keyboard.
Overly large trackpad that causes palm-clicks.
Touchbar.

Each of those alone is a significant issue for me:

The existing MacBook is already not a good keyboard for me: I do need the tactile aspect of keys with 'travel'.  My typos on a MBPro keyboard are already much higher than on an external keyboard
I do work on the move so an external keyboard only is an option a fraction of the time.
I rest my palms on the laptop so the large trackpad will induce yet more typos
My fingers look for the specific function keys: the Touchbar does not work
I do not use smart phones more than just for typing (precariously) because of the lack of physical keyboard . This is after years of trying; it is not working for me. That carries over to the mac and its Touchbar.

If I could buy a non-Apple / non-Mac there would be no issue. But I must use a Mac: all teams that I have worked on for five years only use Macs: and we must use IT supported configurations. Pure linux would work fine (for home) but in the (larger) companies it is not supported (security apps, wifi, productivity apps etc)

I am also constantly in trouble with memory usage due to running heavy and large application codebases along with VMs, browsers, and productivity apps. The maximum 16GB on the older Macs will eventually simply not be sufficient.

The IT folks do not use new Macs and use the old ones. All co-workers that have been around long enough use the old Macs and also refuse to upgrade. So I have not run into anyone with solutions for this yet.

Does anyone have a plan for how to handle this?

Start a conversation with your IT department about using Linux (possibly alongside Macs, it doesn't have to be a replacement).  Don't just assume they can't/won't support it: go and actually put your case to them.  It sounds like you're not the only person in your company with these concerns.

(I know, this isn't likely to get a lot of votes on an Apple-centric site.  And I used to like my iMac a lot, but haven't tried the new machines that are bothering you.  But, given your constraints, I think this is the right answer to your question.)

  ...pure Linux would work fine (for home) but in the (larger) companies
  it is not supported (security apps, wifi, productivity apps etc)

Where do you get this idea from?  It simply isn't true: plenty of large companies have been using Linux for many years.


Is my iPhone hacked based on SysSecInfo anomalies? I installed an app SysSecInfo and it shows 'anomalies' and 'custom jailbreak'. It doesn't explain what is anomalis about it or what it means. How do I know if my iPhone is hacked or if the app is broken?

iPhone 5, iOS 10.2

The app hasn't been updated for iOS 10.2. It expects a previous system, so changes that have occurred as part of Apple's iOS updates are detected as anomalies. Everything looks normal in your screenshots. Furthermore, the AccessibilityBundles was always a known bug as that was shown even when they were expected.


vim arrow keys inserting strange character in iterm2 vim escape & arrow keys are inserting strange character (the letter q in my case) but works perfectly if launched in a tmux session or with terminal.app

Someone having the same problem?

Setting the Report Terminal Type to ansi or linux in my profile solved my problem.

When the terminal type of your sessions is set to one of those "xterm" types, iTerm handles the arrow keys, the home key, and the end key in a special way.


Text replacement problem in Calendar I am using Yosemite 10.10.5.

I am using a set of text replacement defined within:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Text

as follows (partial view focused on interesting cases):

.

The -> and => are working in TextEdit:

But within Calendar, -> is working and => is failing:

.

A test with a newly created account give the same abnormal behaviour.

What may cause this inconsistent text replacement behaviour?

How may I further analyze or debug this inconsistent behaviour?

I’ve experienced many issues using Text Replacements that start with certain symbols, like - = $ and many more (including punctuations). This even extends to replacements that start with numbers.

Those replacements themselves may work, but having them saved might block others from working. Such failures may be limited to specific apps, as you’ve noticed.

Here are my notes on what interacts with what…

The following prevent :) from triggering:

...
--
-_-
->
$)
401k
8B
8o

The following prevent ;) from triggering:

|(
|)
2d
3g
>)
>(
>=

The following didn’t work at all:

1/2
1/3
etc.

I've found that only using replacements that start with : ; ( ^ and letters makes the feature work very reliably.

This affects only macOS (up to and including Sierra 10.12.4). I haven't experienced issues with Text Replacements on iOS at all. However since they sync over iCloud I've had to remove all those “bad” strings.

I arrived at this conclusion by painstakingly removing text substitutions and checking if non-working substitutions suddenly started working. Sure enough, each time I removed all those that started with a given character, an entire class of previously non-working ones started working.

My guess is that macOS treats different characters as word boundaries, and that different applications may use their own rules as well. That would break how substitution strings are detected across macOS apps. For instance on iOS you often need to add a space to trigger a replacement, even one that ends with a ). On macOS the substitution typically occurs immediately.


How do I add a custom field to the login dialog? When the screensaver has been disturbed, or the computer wakes from sleep, my system asks for a password.  I would like to add to this dialog. Along with username and password, there would be a third field asking for user text input on what they would like to do at the computer. After a successful login, the Automator would take the user input and put it in a stickie note in the corner of the desktop.

This is for productivity purposes, as I always get distracted whenever I go to the computer and after a long time surfing the internet, I forget what I actually logged on for.

I have seen a lot of questions & answers on adding your own text message to the login window, but not any on adding a user input text field.  I have a vague idea of how this might work (which could be totally wrong), but here is what I think:

I need to edit the com.apple.loginwindow.plist and add a custom field that asks for user input? (is this possible?)
Use Automator to paste the user input into a Stickie.
Somehow run a shell script to have the Automator perform this action after every login. (or do I even need this b/c I can do that in the Automator?)

Also not sure: so I need to use AppleScript?

Thanks for any help.  I am on Snow Leopard by the way.

Probably not.
I would imagine that the lock screen is locked down fairly tight - imagine a piece of malware that did just that - except the Automator action sent the password to a server in Bangladesh.


El Capitan sluggish mouse scrolling I'm using a Logitech Performance Mouse MX.  Since upgrading to OS X 10.11 some apps responded sluggishly to mouse scrolling while others are fine.  For instance Safari responds like it used to but other apps like Xcode are very sluggish to scroll.  It feels like the top speed for scrolling has been capped for these apps when using the mouse.  Any idea what changed in OS X 10.11 that would cause this behavior?

Updating to the latest version of the Logitech Control Center fixed the issue.
http://support.logitech.com/software/logitech-control-center-for-macintosh-os-x


Waking the macbook from sleep How can make my macbook wake up from sleep mode automatically ? That is I will fix up a time for it to wake up and when the time will come it shall automatically wake up from sleep mode. Can this be done?


Macbook pro display problem: orange "smudge" appears near edge Recently there have been weird display problems on my Macbook Pro (late-2016 model with touchbar, MacOS Sierra, Intel HD graphics 530 1536 MB).

Problem

I have included two photos of my screen, the first one in original color and the second one I edited the photo to make color differences more obvious. Notice that the left edge of the screen is orange-ish. On the other hand, screenshots taken by say command+shift+4 are perfectly normal (which is why I had to take photos...sorry for the bad photo quality).

This orange-ish "smudge" only appears when I put my laptop in the upright position for more than an hour (like in my backpack or against the wall), and the smudge only appears near whichever edge at the bottom. If I keep the laptop on a flat surface (like on a table), the smudge slowly goes away. It almost feels like something is flowing through the screen to accumulate at a low point.

Question

Is this a display (hardware) problem as I thought? What is the underlying cause? Is it fixable/repairable? I have been bugged by this problem for some time and google was not helpful...any input is appreciated! Thank you so much!!

Looks like a display issue.

If you think it's defective, take it in to an Apple Store and you may be able to convince them to replace it for free and/or at a discount.

If it's accidental damage you don't have many options other than paying for a repair or living with it.


Installing Lion with duplicated installer I see many people asking how to save the Lion installer, and ofter the way to go is unpacking the installer and saving the disk image.

In my case, I saved the whole installer app (the same as downloaded) in an external disk before installing it in my iMac. Now, can I just copy the installer to my MacBook Pro and run it with no trouble? Or should I burn the disk? I don't really intend to burn it now, using the installer would be more practical.

There is no reason that running it from the installer won't work.  That's the way Apple intended the installation to run, so that is probably the safest way to perform the upgrade.


How can I script the keyboard backlight settings? I'm looking to change settings with a script, but I can't find where the plist data for the keyboard backlight settings is stored.

For example, in the System Preferences, I'd like to modify the preferences in the Keyboard section with a script. These ones:

Normally how I find a setting is

I run defaults read > before and defaults read -g > before-g
Then I change the setting in System Preferences
Then I run defaults read > after and defaults read -g > after-g
Then I compare the differences from the before files to the after files to see what changed.

But for some reason, this doesn't work with the keyboard backlight settings, and I see no difference from before files to after files when I've changed the keyboard backlight settings in between before/after.

How can I script the keyboard backlight settings?

Short answer, TLDR: No, a simple script will not suffice for what you are trying to do. But ...

You will have better luck using a third party like this one: https://github.com/pirate/mac-keyboard-brightness. His code can take user input and manipulate the keyboard for you. But I am not sure if this was tested in Mojave but you are welcome to try.

Long Answer, for the curious:

Certain system settings or running hardware tasks on a Mac are initiated and ran with kernel extensions and continue to run with the kextd daemon. What drivers are for Windows are how kernel extensions are for Mac OS. Without kernel extensions your Mac OS would not boot properly.

You can safely test with your sound on your Mac using information about removing kexts here, but be sure to back up your files: http://osxdaily.com/2012/05/30/how-to-completely-disable-audio-sound-in-mac-os-x/

Take a look the code written there by Pirate, in his code in keyboard-brightness.c he does a good job dissecting the Mac. You can see how a bit more complex your script would be if you tried to tackle this through code. A simple bash script would not suffice.

In Pirate's code you can see that he accesses the keyboard light with the Foundation framework and the IOKit framework, written in Objective C/C++. If you are comfortable with this language then you should try to dabble more with his code.

Why running defaults didn't catch anything?
The reason defaults doesn't show anything is because defaults is meant to edit plist files only.

How can I see my kernel extensions? You can see a full list of kernel extensions currently running in terminal with the following command:

kextstat

You can also see a list of all your installed kernel extensions under:

/System/Library/Extensions

In terminal you can see which keyboard kext file you have by running grep:

kextstat | grep "Keyboard"

I do not have a laptop, but I am safely assuming you will also have a keyboard kext file that will look similar to mine:

Where can I learn more about the IOFramework? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iokit?language=objc. On Pirate's git page you can see he also wrote his code in swift4, which might be easier to understand. You can switch back and forth from ObjC and Swift language types on the Apple Developer Page.

I hope this answer was useful to you.


iOS 7 themes - why is mine white? I thought with iOS 7 the theme was supposed to be based on the colour of the device. If this is the case why does my black iPad have the white theme.

If this is not the case how do I change it to a black theme?

Only the iPhone 5C has any theme support, in that they contain custom wallpaper to match the colour of the device which is selected as a default when first using the device.  This themeing does not extend into apps, and is simply a pre-chosen wallpaper.  It has no relevance for any other phone model, or iPad.


MBP boot stuck at 100% loading screen For a day now i can't boot my Mac El Capitan. It halts on this screen:

What I tried:

NVRAM reset
CommandR Disk Utility checked SSD, I can launch Terminal and browse the files on SSD
Reinstall OSX; reinstall finished, but when it restarted it gives same result as on pic above.
Apple Hardware Test app didn't find failure

Not sure if it's since an OSX software update. The loading bar goes fast as usual till ~70% then it slows down and goes to 100% in 2-3 minutes then nothing happens.

UPDATE: Verbose mode stuck at "pci pause: SDXC"

Any other fix to try? ty

The problem is unsupported .kext files and you need to remove them to get OS X to boot.  Just moving them to a different directy will have the same effect but will allow you to copy them back.  This article had the solution for me: OS X El Capitan 10.11.x Hanging on Boot

mount -rw /
cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Extensions/
mkdir Unsupported
mv *.kext Unsupported
reboot

After solving that issue, I ended up with a black screen where I could only see my cursor.  If that happens to you, try the solution found here:  Black Screen But Can See My Cursor


Disallow wiping via Profile Manager Is it possible to prevent end users from remotely wiping their iPad in Apple Profile Manager?
I work at a school and I can foresee kids managing to steal each others passwords and remote wiping their iPad.

Profile Manager has since been updated to allow the prevention of device wiping by users.


To stop a process in Matlab with Dvorak keyboard The keybing CMD-C and CMD-point work in Qwerty keybinding in OSX's Matlab, but not with Dvorak keybinding in OSX's Matlab.
There must be a bug in Matlab, which is causing this.

The problem is that when I push press play button for an algorithm in while loop.
Many times, I want to stop it before the while-loop end.

The code below is not a low-level code since it can be stopped with Qwerty keyboard layout.

  How can you stop process in OSX Matlab with Dvorak keyboard layout?

Example of the function that I am trying to stop

while 1;
     3
end

Matlab's hardcoded CTRL-C combo

It is not CMD-C, it is CTRL-C VISUALLY. So press CTRL-C as written on your keyboard, not the C on Dvorak layout or any other layout. Matlab has hardcoded the interruption command to a key, not a letter.

Debugging

The way I do it is to create breakpoint with the looping vars

for ii=1...10000
     if isequal(ii,2000)
         %Add here a breakpoint
     end
     ...
end

where the breakpoints make it possible to stop the execution. Also force-quiting Matlab is the other way. I know no other way to them.


Cannot Save/Edit to Mac Share Using Mountain Lion The problem: Under Mountain Lion (10.8.3) I cannot create new files or save changes to a particular share, which is running Lion (10.7).

I can connect to the shared Mac on my local network (in a business location). I am the administrator of both machines. The remote computer I'm connecting to has several shared drives, and these problems affect all of them.

What I cannot do on the shared drive

Create a new file
Save (re-save) an existing file I've opened

What I can do on the shared drive

Create a new folder
Delete folders and files
Rename folders and files
Move folders and files

Additionally, the following quirks apply:

I can view the full file system on the remote computer, including system files; in other words, I am successfully connecting as an administrator user
If I try to drag and drop a file from my computer to the remote computer, I get a dialog that says "Finder wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this." This is strange, nonstandard behavior for an already-autheticated admin user doing a simple copy operation to the remote machine.
If I type my password and continue, I get another dialog that says "A newer item named [file name] already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you're moving?" This is a bogus error, because a newer version of the file did not exist on the remote server. If I click "Keep Both", Finder seems to hang, but it actually begins to create tens of thousands of zero byte files on the remote server: file name-1.png, file name-2.png, etc., all the way up to file name-30000 or so if I don't stop it. However, if I click "Stop" instead of "Keep Both", it cancels. If I click "Replace" it creates a zero-byte file with the correct name, and then gives an error that says "The operation can't be completed because an item with the name "" already exists."
Console reports an error when I try to copy to the remote machine: Application App:"Finder" [ 0x0/0x25025]  @ 0x0x7fc4ea63e640 tried to be brought forward, but isn't in fPermittedFrontASNs ( ( ASN:0x0-0x4d04d:) ), so denying. I've also seen this error, but it doesn't happen every time: WindowServer[120]: [cps/setfront] Failed setting the front application to Finder, psn 0x0-0x25025, securitySessionID=0x186a5, err=-13066.

I have tried the above using a computer running Lion, and had no problems. This issue only affects my new iMac running Mountain Lion. In this case, Mountain Lion was factory installed. However, I imported my user settings from my old Mac Pro during the install process.

This problem is very similar to one reported by another user at Network share permissions problems in Mountain Lion, but there are some differences, so I asked a separate question. Among other things, there are no applications on my system that "ignore the problem" as in that user's case.

What I've tried/verified:

I routinely repair permissions on my iMac, so I'm sure that is not the issue.
I have verified that the files/folders have the correct sharing permissions.
Other uses, including a Mountain Lion user on another machine, can copy/save files to the remote computer.
Deleting the Finder preferences file (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist) did not help.
Logging is as the Guest user on my local machine, I could connect and copy files to the remote computer. This suggests the issue is limited to my local user account.
If I use Terminal to do the copy, I get an "Operation not permitted" error. It creates a zero KB file on the destination server, as before. However, I discovered by accident that if I immediately do the same command line copy operation again, without deleting the zero KB file, it successfully copies. I guess for now this will be my workaround.

After spending maybe 12 hours or more troubleshooting this issue over the past month or so, and realizing it was isolated to my user account, I decided to recreate my user account from scratch. This has solved the problem, and I am now able to connect to the remove server and add/edit files without difficulty.


Booting to Recovery Mode won't work anymore I have an upgraded MacPro 5.1. I recently installed Catalina and had to use a patch from dosdude.

I had to disable SIP using crsutil disable command. I successfully installed macOS Catalina and the system runs great.

Since I did this I am having problems getting back in to Recovery Mode using the usual boot shortcut ⌘ CommandR key combo.

I have an RTX 580 graphics card in though. I don’t see the full boot screen but I am pressing both keys as soon as I hear the boot chime. Can anyone offer any advice?

On Dosdudes's website, they make a note that if you use APFS, you will not have a bootable Recovery partition:

Select the disk or partition you want to install on, and erase it, ensuring to use either Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or APFS as the filesystem type. If formatting an entire drive, ensure GUID is selected.
-- Please note that if you use APFS, you will not have a bootable Recovery partition.

Emphasis mine
Granted, the install document is from the "High Sierra" page, but APFS implementation between High Sierra and Catalina isn't so different that Recovery will work in one and not the other.
As for your graphics card, I highly suggest flashing (IMO, this should have been done prior to installing your Catalina patch so you could diagnose issue if/when they arose).  See this answer for some links on how to do this procedure.
If you need a Recovery Partition, try Internet Recovery or boot from a USB installer.


Can I upgrade my 121 GB Flash Storage SSD? Is it possible to upgrade the 121 GB Flash Storage in my MacBook Pro 13" Retina? If so, can Apple do it for me or would I have to go to somewhere else to get it upgraded?

In the past, Apple doesn't upgrade any storage as a rule. This is HDD/SSD across the board. The only exceptions I've known are:

If you have several internal bays and you buy the part (Think Mac Pro with 4 SATA bays or Xserve / Xserve RAID)
You are paying for a service repair and they upgrade you for free to a larger drive. You don't ask for it, but Apple asks if you're OK with a better drive and no one refuses that offer.

You should ask them since it's free to ask and they might say yes one day.

That being said, there are many third party options to upgrade storage - but you need to hire someone else or DIY on that repair.

Everymac has a nice overview of the options and challenges as does OWC.


Suggestions on what to do with an old Power Mac G4? So I've had an old Power Mac G4 sitting around collecting dust.

Realistically, is there anything I can do to salvage this old, run down machine?

My thoughts were to turn it into a backup server but again realistically how much power will that run? I assume its a power hog.

I'm mainly, dare I say it, a Windows users but use my iMac just as much as my Windows PC.

Salvage for parts? Ideas? Just trash it?

My idea, you could try to run a server on it for back-up purposes or website hosting maybe? I don't know if you're interested in that part at all.. If it's a big power waste, you'd better get rid of it and buy a replacement instead of wasting the cash on power :)

Trashing it is the last option left IMO.


Can I disable Touch ID on MBP? I upgraded to High Sierra, asked for my password.  No problem.

It acts like it’s booting...the progress bar fills, then it says password is required to enable Touch ID... I cannot for the life of me get passed this.  It says it’s wrong everytime.  I have even reinstalled High Sierra and gotten the same message.

Any ideas?

It was an Active Directory issue. Simply taking Tim to the office and using their network was enough to fix the issue.


How do I build FFMpeg with non-default libraries when using Homebrew I am trying to build FFMpeg with libvpx so that I can encode a WebM video. How can I re-build FFMpeg with libvpx using Homebrew?

I tried encoding a video with FFMPEG and libvpx installed separately I get the error Encoder (codec vp8) not found for output stream #0:0

I don't consider this the answer, but I ended up just uninstalling FFMPEG and re-installing using brew install ffmpeg --with-libvpx


Convert a plain disk "legacy image" so that it can be mounted I have a plain disk image, created from using dd. When I try to mount it in Sierra (10.12.6), DiskImageMounter.app tells me:

  legacy image should be converted

How do I perform such a conversion?

I tried hdiutil but had no success:

$ hdiutil convert -format UDCO -o output.img input.dimg
hdiutil: convert failed - image not recognized

The trouble may come from the fact that this image contains the contents of the APFS container partition, so DU may not recognize it as any known format. Still, it should allow me to convert it into a plain disk image so that I can at least attach it, even if it won't mount.

Alternatively, how can I attempt to attach a plain disk image with some other command (not hdiutil) so that I could then use Disk Utility to make a new image from it? I mean the way I can use the loopback interface on Linux, for instance.

Note: The original Disk Utility (pre-10.11) was apparently still able to convert such an image, but the new one isn't.

This worked on High Sierra. This is from an ancient DC42 image format from a 512Ke system disk.

Todds-MBP-7:$ hdiutil convert Utilities1.image -format UDRO -o Converted
Preparing imaging engine…
Reading whole disk (Apple_HFS : 0)
.........................................................
(CRC32 $7335686D: whole disk (Apple_HFS : 0))
Adding resources
Elapsed Time:   2.822ms
File size: 729282 bytes, Checksum: CRC32 $E4490B5F
Sectors processed: 1600, 1417 copied
Speed: 245.2Mbytes/sec
Savings: 11.0%
created: /Users/WFN32919/Downloads/converted.dmg


imagent constantly sucking network bandwidth, won't die Since installing Mountain Lion and configuring Messages, I've noticed a trickle of network activity that is basically constant.

I installed Little Snitch and discovered that a process called "imagent" is connecting to my work Jabber server, pushing about 45Kb/s up and pulling about 75Kb/s down. Research seems to indicate that imagent has something to do with chat or Facetime availability.

Killing imagent stops it momentarily, but it relaunches itself almost immediately. Logging Messages out from the Jabber server stops it entirely.

I'd like this not to be doing this. Google doesn't seem to know anything about it, though it does show various other problems people have had regarding imagent being hoggish about memory and disk space. Activity Monitor does show it running between 9% and 12% of the CPU, which seems a bit much for a background process. No idea whether it's eating disk space too. A previous question here talks about memory usage by it, which I don't seem to have a problem with.

How do I stop this crazy thing?

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.imagent.plist

.. this WILL break your ichat/messages application though, so to put it back do:

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.imagent.plist


Do we need FUSE apps in Mavericks? I just heard from my friend that all those FUSE apps are not needed anymore in Mavericks. Is that true? I have, from the previous version of OS X: MacFUSE, FUSE for OS X, fuse-ext2, NTFS-3G. Do I still need them? If not, how to remove them completely?

MacFUSE is no longer being developed, and there's many bugs with it in Mavericks. FUSE for OS X was the continuation of this development and still works well in Mavericks. I recommend that you uninstall MacFUSE and instead use FUSE for OS X.

ntfs-3g in Mavericks requires this install procedure:

Write in NTFS using Mavericks

You should know if you need FUSE — if you don't need it, there are official removal instructions:

https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/wiki/FAQ#23-how-can-i-uninstall-fuse-for-os-x


delete ibooks and podcast app from ipad air2 I am trying to free up space and want to delete the podcast and ibooks apps.  I went into settings-restrictions and lifted restrictions for these apps but still can't delete them. How is it possible to delete these apps?

No, the stock/standard Apple apps can't be deleted.  You can delete individual podcasts or iBooks, but not the apps themselves.  Hopefully, Apple will allow this in a future iOS release.


use mdfind to get list of matches with context? I want to search a folder of PDFs to find a particular string and get back a list of matches with a little of the surrounding context.

Using:

mdfind -onlyin ~/Dropbox/PDFs 'term' >> ~/Dropbox/searches/term.txt

I can get a list of files that contain a match, but I would like to see a little of the surrounding context so that I can tell a little bit more about the match. Ideally, with the filename prepended.

Something like:

~/Dropbox/PDFs/file1.pdf: here is the term you were searching
~/Dropbox/PDFs/file1.pdf: with term limits
~/Dropbox/PDFs/file2.pdf: the German term for a
~/Dropbox/PDFs/file3.pdf: come up with a term for
etc...

mdfind will only ever return filenames, it doesn't display any content, nor does it possess the ability to do so in looking at its man page.

So instead of using mdutil, I'd suggest using a pdfgrep instead. This tool is available via brew:

$ brew install pdfgrep

Once installed it works like this:

$ pwd
/Users/user1/pdf

$ pdfgrep website -r
./docs/misc/Web-Shells-rev2.pdf:Say I run into the following website:
./docs/misc/Web-Shells-rev2.pdf:home directory of a website for shared host web servers:
./docs/misc/Web-Shells-rev2.pdf:Many websites with upload capabilities still rely on client side validation (javascript). These are
./docs/misc/Web-Shells-rev2.pdf:reverse shell I've hosted the file on one of my websites. Just remember to rename the extension
./docs/misc/Web-Shells-rev2.pdf:the output file, we could overwrite IIS log files or even deface websites. Elements the user can

pdfgrep has the normal compliment of switches to do recursive -r as well as ignore case -i, or even do regex searches.


Edit Font Metadata so FontBook will put it in English smart collection? Some of my third party fonts don't show up in Yosemite Preview's font menu in the toolbox. I'm pretty sure that the only fonts available for Preview to use in annotation have to be in FontBook's default smart collection called "English," which cannot be edited. When I compare the information of fonts that appear in "English" vs. those that don't, the common thread is that English appears in the "Language" metadata field (under "information") in fonts that show up in the English smart collection. I've used several free font editors looking for a way to add language metadata to fonts I'd like to have available in Preview, but I can't figure out how to do what I want. Can anyone help?

With the help of Rob from Fontstruct.com, I figured it out.

The English smart collection depends on having a certain set of characters.

There are various "official" standards that tell people what characters have to be included in a font for what kind of language support, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1, but there's no single standard that absolutely every font foundry and font-vending website uses. I read a complaint that two foundries producing two fonts with the same set of glyphs can claim wildly different language support.

But there didn't seem to be an easy way (like a spreadsheet) of finding out the minimum number of characters needed for English support.

There are websites like FontDrop! https://fontdrop.info/  and tools built into font-designing software into which you can drop a font file and see what languages are supported, but you have to drill down to find out how those tools are determining language support. FontBook is more lax than FontDrop! about when it thinks there's English support, i.e., some fonts that don't show English support at Fontdrop! are listed by FontBook as having English language support.

Anyway, what I did is find one of my 3rd party fonts that FontBook included in its English smart collection that also had relatively few glyphs. This font has all the characters in Unicode's "Basic Latin" set plus Ä, Å, ä, å, Ö, ö and ¨ (that's A/a with a diaresis and circle, O/o with a diaresis, plus the diaresis itself). On fontdrop.info, this font shows as having only Zulu language support, but in FontBook it has more, including Cornish, English, Indonesian, Malay, Somali, Swahili and a bunch of others I've never heard of (Asu, Bemba, Bena, Chiga, Congo Swahili, Gusii, Kalenjin, Kinyarwanda, Luo, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Nyankole, Oromo, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sangu, Shambala, Shona, Soga,Taita, Teso, Vunjo).

I took one of my own custom fonts, which is meant to have only a few glyphs, and added dummy glyphs as needed for everything in Basic Latin + the diaresis (figuring that the other characters might not be needed if I had the diaresis) and voilà - the font appears in FontBook's English smart collection and can be used to annotate things in Preview.

To make life complicated, I've got another 3rd party font that FontBook put into the English smart collection that has only the 26 letters (caps and lowercase), numbers and an asterisk, but if you make a custom font that has everything in Basic Latin and nothing else (so the letters, numbers and an asterisk plus a bunch of other stuff), FontBook says the only language supported is Zulu - go figure.

I made a test font that had just upper and lower case letters, numbers and an asterisk and FontBook put my test font into the English smart collection - but as I said, a test font with everything in Basic Latin, which actually has more characters, didn't go into the smart collection.

Of course, Apple could make life simpler and make Preview able to "show all fonts" the way every other Mac app can, but...

BTW, if anyone knows of a site that shows what characters are needed for what language support, I'd love to know about it.


how to get iBooks on Iphone4 I want to use iBooks to read the pdf I have synchronized on my old Iphone 4 (iOS7). I can't install it from the appstore on my phone because the latest version of iBooks require iOS 10.

It says "This app needs iOS 10.0 or later"

But according to this link, I can install it through iTunes and then synch it with my phone to get an older version.

Except for the fact that in iTunes (latest version) on my 2 computers (Win10) I can't click on the "get it" button, it is grayed out like shown on the capture :

But I can download any other app without any problem.

So how can I get iBooks on an Iphone 4 OR any free app wich allow me to read pdf (not from links or mail, but the one I've synch with my phone) ?

As the above comment states, you do not need iOS 10 to download iBooks. However, given the info in your screenshot, it is possible that iBooks is not available in your country.

EDIT: iOS 10 is not out. I have no idea why it would require you have it.

Please review the following article and make sure your device is compatible.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201478

SEE ADDITIONAL EDIT BELOW

I just looked at the App Store, and it DOES appear you need iOS 10!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks/id364709193?mt=8


How do I show All Files under the current folder? When I go to search and don't enter any limiting criteria, nothing shows up.  How do I show all files including in sub-folders under the current directory in the Finder?  The end goal is to sort all my files by date and be able to manipulate them in the Finder.

I tried entering "*" in the search box.  The first time I did this it somehow got turned into search for a name containing "*" which showed nothing.  A second time I managed to just get "*" by itself, but only about 20,000 of 500,000 files were displayed.

(note:  i rounded, the actual number of files shown/total are close to the above numbers but are not these exact round numbers)

MacOS used to come with a feature called "All My Files", which did indeed show you ... all your files. But it was removed in High Sierra -- quite probably because showing you 500,000 files (as the result of a live search query) in one window would cause significant slow down.

All My Files was replace with "Recent", which shows you all the files created or modified within 1 day. You can modify this search, or create your own Smart Folder.

Create a New Smart Folder in Finder's File menu.
Add criteria for "Created Date" and "Content Modified", both to be within some all-inclusive value, like "within the last 35 years".

You can then display the results in a list and sort by date.


Comprehensive Clean out and migration of specific folders in Apple iTunes? These are the Folders and Disk space being occupied by the Data held on by Apple iTunes as laid out below:

I have written down some current thoughts & steps/ direction as well for each. There are lots of duplicates in the Backups & VoiceMemos (determined via a Duplicate File Finder).

Please help / guide me in organizing and doing a comprehensive clean out of things in these folders.

Items in Italics represent key questions on how to go about a certain part of this process?

Here is the Folder Tree, Space they occupy and Observations & Thoughts.

  C:\Users\Alex\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer

    ..\Logs\CrashReporter – 300 M

  C:\Users\Alex\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync

    ..\Backups – 24.5 GB

      Clean iPhone 4 Backup

      How to Eliminate Duplicates in iphone 5 Backup? (Search Again)

      Migrate?? iPad Backup? (What Size is it?)

  C:\Users\Alex\Music\iTunes – 39 GB

    Cache – 327 MB How to clear?

    iTunes Media – 28 GB

      Mobile Applications – 26 GB

      Voice Memos – 1.3 GB

        .m4a files: 20100618 – 20150319 (Maybe some overlaps??)

      Downloads – 700 M

        .TMP Downloads - DELETE

    iTunes Music – 10.8 GB

      Podcasts – 5.9 GB - >> Migrate / Export? How?

      Mobile Applications – 4.4 GB – How to consolidate to single MA folder?

      Older Applications – TaiChi – Economist World in 2012

        How to check if any/ which apps are being USED or SYNCHED?

        Some are being used.. and Synched

        Others are ancient.. Eliminate/ Migrateable

        Maybe Migrate all and then Sync back from Phone.. See what remains?

      Voice Memos – 240 M - How? Consolidate to Single VM folder

        .m4a files: 1/26/2011, 19040101, 20100703 – 20120506

      Music – 100 M

        Yoga/ Rave – (Poor titling and Tagging) – 45.6 M – Check & Delete

        Few Singles – 50 M – Migrate and Clear

      Books – 68.9 M – ePubs

      Downloads - .TMP - DELETE

Safe to do this…

  C:\Users\Alex\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer

    ..\Logs\CrashReporter – 300 M

Delete contents of  - \Logs & \CrashReporter but to be on the safe side, preserve the folder hierarchy, just in case it wouldn't auto-recreate if needed.

  C:\Users\Alex\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync

    ..\Backups – 24.5 GB

Make a new one, delete all older.

      Clean iPhone 4 Backup

      How to Eliminate Duplicates in iphone 5 Backup? (Search Again)

      Migrate?? iPad Backup? (What Size is it?)

not sure about this section, could you clarify in your question & I'll change this answer

  C:\Users\Alex\Music\iTunes – 39 GB

    Cache – 327 MB How to clear?

    iTunes Media – 28 GB

      Mobile Applications – 26 GB

You can actually clear all mobile apps from here if you really need to save space. They're all purchased & can be re-downloaded if needed.

      Voice Memos – 1.3 GB

        .m4a files: 20100618 – 20150319 (Maybe some overlaps??)

These you would have to chase manually.
You'd have to find an app that will play them without duplicating to another location, which iTunes would do by default. [unless they already show in iTunes, in which case you can audition from there & delete as necessary.]

      Downloads – 700 M

        .TMP Downloads - DELETE

Always safe to delete temp files.

    iTunes Music – 10.8 GB

      Podcasts – 5.9 GB - >> Migrate / Export? How?

Migrate by simply copying to another location.
I'm not fully familiar with how iTunes deals with podcasts it thinks it ought to have but can't find. Might need to experiment.

      Mobile Applications – 4.4 GB – How to consolidate to single MA folder?

I wouldn't try to move apps, as you might just end up with duplicates. I'd either leave, or if space is at an absolute premium, delete.

      Voice Memos – 240 M - How? Consolidate to Single VM folder

Manually, as above.

        .m4a files: 1/26/2011, 19040101, 20100703 – 20120506

      Music – 100 M

        Yoga/ Rave – (Poor titling and Tagging) – 45.6 M – Check & Delete

        Few Singles – 50 M – Migrate and Clear

All music would need to be handled manually, from within iTunes.
The exception would be anything you already threw out of iTunes, but didn't tell it to Trash - those would be an afternoon of guesswork & comparison, I'm afraid.

      Books – 68.9 M – ePubs

Again, manually, as music above

      Downloads - .TMP - DELETE

Delete.


gfortran compilation error (installing Quantum ESPRESSO) I'm trying to install Quantum ESPRESSO, but I keep getting an error when I'm configuring the make files (this installation procedure is addressed on page 8 of the manual).

In particular, I invoke sudo ./configure in my terminal, and I get the following error:

checking build system type... x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0
checking ARCH... mac686
checking setting AR... ... ar
checking setting ARFLAGS... ... ruv
checking for ifort... no
checking for gfortran... gfortran
checking for Fortran compiler default output file name...
configure: error: in '/Users/malxmusician212/Downloads/qe-6.1':
configure: error: Fortran compiler cannot create executables
See 'config.log' for more details.

My config.log is posted here.

The problem is that you're giving arguments to the "as" (assembler) command, that it doesn't understand.

This is usually caused by you having installed more than one type of "as", and calling the wrong one.

In this case you're actually calling "as" in the /opt/local/ subtree, which is not the system default "as".

Try removing /opt/local/bin/ from your path, and doing a reconfigure - or manually using configure arguments force the compilation to use a different "as" command.


What Mac apps are capable of managing SQL Server databases? I'm looking for a Mac app that has capabilities similar to Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

The app should be capable of the following:

Create and administer SQL Server databases, objects, logins, users,
and permissions
Define and execute SQL Server administrative tasks
Design and test SQL statements, batches, and scripts

Is an app like that available today?

Navicat offers a few products that can connect and manager a MSSQL Server. Their apps are available on the Mac App Store as well.

I have used their MySQL edition, as well as their lowest-cost option, Essentials (I think they used to have a free version).

While I haven't used it for all of the items you have below, it was great for some simple table management tasks.


Downgrading from 10.9.5 to 10.9.4 New to the forum.

I wonder if it's possible to downgrade OSX to 10.9.4. I have a time machine backup running regularly and have also downloaded the previous version from apple website http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1755. I did not clone my disk before upgrading to 10.9.5 and don't have another installers apart from the one downloaded from apple website. There is mixed information available on this topic, some suggesting it's not possible at all to revert back to previous version at all. I would be grateful for detailed instructions on how to do this. Thank you

I have learned my lesson now not to upgrade so quickly and wait for other users to beta test for me.

Thank you in advance for looking into this.

First of all, what you downloaded was only the service pack and not a full installation of 10.9.4. This means that you have no means of installing it directly. That said, even if you do manage to get 10.9.4 installed, you will not be able to migrate your profile from your Time Machine backup because the Migration Assistant can only migrate from older or equal OS versions. Which means you can go laterally or from older to newer, but not from newer to older.

If you have an up-to-10.9.4-specific Time Machine backup that you've archived, you may be able to use that to do a complete system restore, including your profile and applications, but you would then be looking at the likelihood of losing changes to your profile in the meantime. It may be possible to manually copy things to mitigate the damage, but I'm not sure how successful that would be.

You will probably get more mileage out of asking questions on how to fix problems that were brought about by installing 10.9.5 rather than try to revert to 10.9.4. YMMV, of course, but that would be my approach.


Entire "Users" folder is missing when booted into Recovery Mode I posted this in the Apple Discussions forums, but have yet to get an answer that applies to the depth of which this situation currently exists.

My Mac's hard drive (running Mojave) suffered some corruption recently, and I found myself unable to boot into the system. I am able to boot into Recovery Mode, and my intent was to rescue the important data sitting in /Users/(my username), but to my surprise, the entire /Users/ folder is just not there when I try to access it via Terminal.

Steps taken:

Boot into Recovery Mode.
Open up Terminal.
Navigate to /Volumes/(my OS drive name)/
Type ls to see directory tree. I see every other folder I am expecting to see (I think), except for /Users/. It simply is not there.

What I have tried:

Navigating to literally every partition and folder I can think of to find where /Users/ might be instead.
Doing "chflags nohidden" on the drive does nothing.
I don't believe I have FileVault on, so I don't think anything in that category would apply to my situation.

I can only come up with two possible conclusions:

The hard drive corruption annihilated ONLY the /Users/ directory (unlikely, I assume???)
Recovery Mode is hiding /Users/ in a way that I cannot figure out, and this is apparently not documented anywhere on the internet. I have seen other sites/posts talking about /Users/ being hidden, but they were not referring to situations similar to mine, and were resolved with simple (somewhat obvious) steps. They were not like what I am experiencing.

In the meantime, preparing for the worst, I have ordered an external drive enclosure so that I can pull the drive out of my computer and view its contents on another computer.

I am very hesitant to reinstall MacOS right now, because IF /Users/ has been compromised in the corruption, I don't want to do anything further that will prevent it from being recovered somehow. In other words, I am trying not to write any new data to the drive at all.

Thanks for any help or suggestions in advance.

This is normal.  When you boot in to Recovery, whether it be from your local drive or via the Internet, you’re booting a completely different instance of macOS.

If you want to view the /Users directory, you’ll first have to mount the internal drive to a directory (i.e. /Volumes) then you can navigate to it.

As for corruption of your drive, it is better to get an enclosure or a USB to SATA adapter, mount it on a “full blown” version of macOS so you can make an image of the drive and work off of that rather than risk further data loss.


What are some iOS5-only and/or iPhone 4S-only Hidden Tips/Tricks? Possible Duplicate:
  What tiny thing in iOS 5 makes you smile, or has caught you off guard?

Be sure to specify if your tip or trick is for all iOS5 devices, or if it is restricted to the iPhone 4S only.

iOS5 Camera Tip: To keep your auto exposure & focus fixed at where you want it, just tap the screen & hold it until the box pulses.

via @Photojojo


Apple mail with multiple accounts, sender not correct I have multiple accounts set-up on my iMac.  I'm running the latest OS X Sierra.

When I draft an email I select the account and this updates the sender email address, all is good.

However when I send the email, the email is sent not from the sender that was displayed whilst drafting the email but from the first account in my list.

Why?  Can I fix this or is it a bug?

I posted this same question to the Apple community and yesterday I got an answer which has solved the problem.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7956716


How to investigate fragmentation of one file? I'd like to see if one of my file is "all over the place", ie fragmented in little pieces at different locations on my hard drive.

I'm not looking for a software like iDefrag but rather a command line utility. I know nothing of file systems, nodes, etc. Does such a CL tool exist? More generally, how do you know where files physically are?

The file I want to investigate is ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History indexes, but that's more of a general question.

HFSDebug was a decent tool on older version of OSX, however I do not beleive it is Lion compliant.

http://www.osxbook.com/software/hfsdebug/

The original maker of HFSDebug recommends File Xray, a commercial program to do the same tasks and more - check it out here

http://filexray.com/


Upgrading Windows 8 to 8.1 Pro via Windows Store Currently I'm running Windows 8 in Boot Camp (MacBook Pro Retina Mid-2012) and get a free update to Windows 8.1 Pro from Windows Store. My question is...

Should I change the startup disk to Windows in Boot Camp Control Panel before upgrading to 8.1?
Can I just download and install it from the store and then just reinstall the Boot Camp Drivers to the newest (5.1.5621).

Thank you. :)

I would set Windows to be the default boot until the update is finished, to prevent it being interrupted by unexpectedly booting to Mac.
I don't think it would hurt anything if it did, as the Windows install would simply wait until next time it was booted.

I would definitely update Bootcamp before Windows, in case there is something about the existing drivers that may prevent you booting/finishing/accessing the Windows install if you did it the other way round.

I would, of course, also have a backup of everything before I started.