MacBook Pro, Mid-2014, Dead screen I recently updated my mid-2014 MacBook Pro running High Sierra, which was working perfectly to Mojave. As soon as I did this my screen went pixelated (just like if you added noise on photoshop) and the display started to jump around. I turned it off and back on and it seemed to be fine. Around a week later while running Android Studios, it happened again but much worse. Turned it off again, however, was unable to turn it back on.

The guys at the genius bar informed me that there is an issue with the display and they will need to replace the whole top of the Mac costing around $800 and take 10 working days. They told me that it works while being plugged into an external monitor, which it does but is incredibly slow.

Booting into safe mode doesn't help & running the Apple Hardware Test doesn't report any issues.

How could updating to the latest OS have caused this to have happened or could it just be a coincidence? I haven't tried reformatting it yet but could it help? Anyone else experienced this or something similar?

How could updating to the latest OS have caused this to have happened
  or could it just be a coincidence?

It's entirely a coincidence.  Many times, people incorrectly correlate an activity they are doing at the time with failure of an unrelated component.  You could have been doing a Time Machine backup, just the same, it it would have failed.

  I haven't tried reformatting it yet but could it help?

You don't need to.  You can boot into Internet Recovery which is the same as booting into a "fresh" install of macOS.  You can also install macOS onto a flash disk and boot from there to test.  There's no need to reinstall over your existing data to see if you can fix your display.

  The guys at the genius bar informed me that there is an issue with the
  display and they will need to replace the whole top of the Mac

Yes, you definitely have an issue with your display.  However, I'm not convinced that it's your screen as it could be your GPU, backlight or the LVDS connector/cable.  I would take it in to a different, reputable shop for a second opinion.  See this video for additional information.


SSH daemon listens on both IPv4 and IPv6, but I can connect only over v6 Ok, maybe I'm weird or something, but I can't figure this one out. MacOS Mojave, native IPv6 from my ISP.

As you can see, sshd is listening on both v4 and v6:

alluminium:~ root# netstat -an | grep 22 | grep LISTEN
tcp4       0      0  *.22                   *.*                    LISTEN
tcp6       0      0  *.22                   *.*                    LISTEN

Local connection on non-loopback interface over v4 works perfectly:

alluminium:~ root# nc -w1 -z -v 192.168.2.12 22
found 0 associations
found 1 connections:
     1: flags=82<CONNECTED,PREFERRED>
    outif lo0
    src 192.168.2.12 port 59078
    dst 192.168.2.12 port 22
    rank info not available
    TCP aux info available

Connection to 192.168.2.12 port 22 [tcp/ssh] succeeded!

Now, when I try remote, on v6 it works:

root@keeper:~# ssh alluminium -v
OpenSSH_7.4p1, OpenSSL 1.0.2r-fips  26 Feb 2019
debug1: Connecting to alluminium [2001:985:4xxxxxxx:d585] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'alluminium,2001:985:4xxxxxx:d585' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.

debug1: Next authentication method: keyboard-interactive
Password:

However, v4 just times out:

root@keeper:~# ssh 192.168.2.12 -v
OpenSSH_7.4p1, OpenSSL 1.0.2r-fips  26 Feb 2019
debug1: Connecting to 192.168.2.12 [192.168.2.12] port 22.

I have checkpoint endpoint security installed, thought it might get in the way, shut down all its components, PF rules don't show anything either.. Nothing.

I feel totally stupid now :) Any suggestions are much appreciated.

Right.. I finally figured it out.

It still was the damned Checkpoint Endpoint Security VPN client. Apparently it installs a kernel extension com.checkpoint.cpfw that the service com.checkpoint.epc.service controls according to organizational policy. In my case it was dropping all incoming connections. Shutting down service doesn't flush the rules enforced by the kernel extension.

Unloading the kernel extension helped.


Restoring Yosemite server after unloading launch daemons So, while trying to fix a corrupt open directory I came across a fix that said to enter this command...

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/

org.openldap.slapd.plist

From the formatting I thought these were two separate commands but in fact they were one. As you can imagine after I typed in the "first command" my Mac Mini server shut down and restarted but the loading bar won't get past half way when it tries to boot.

Is there any way to restore the launch daemons after unloading them all? Any and all help is appreciated.

The command sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ disables all launch daemons residing in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ by adding a key with the name of the launch daemon followed by true in the file /var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/disabled.plist. Even if the launch daemon had an entry set to false (like com.apple.emond in the examples below) in the file previously, it will be set to true. The disabled.plist overrides all settings in the individual plist files. The single launch daemon plist files in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ won't be altered.

Example before the above command was issued:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.AppleFileServer</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.hdiejectd</key>
    <false/>
    <key>com.apple.emond</key>
    <false/>

Example after the above command was issued:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.AppleFileServer</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.afpfs_checkafp</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.AirPlayXPCHelper</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.applessdstatistics</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.auditd</key>
    <true/>
    ...
    <key>com.apple.emond</key>
    <true/>
    ...

So essentially you have to remove /var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/disabled.plist on your main volume or replace it by a backup copy:

Replacing the file by a backup copy is preferred because it may already have some non-default entries for some launch daemons set to true or false.
If you don't have a backup copy of the file boot to Recovery or Internet Recovery Mode
Open Terminal
mount your main volume if it's not already mounted
enter cd /Volumes/[Name_Of_Your_Main_Volume]/var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/ to change to your main volume
enter pwd to be sure about your working directory
remove disabled.plist with rm disabled.plist
To rebuild the (hopefully) standard disabled.plist write or copy and paste the following using nano or vi into a new document at the same place after executing touch disabled.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.emond</key>
    <false/>
    <key>org.postfix.master</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.ftpd</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.usbmuxd</key>
    <false/>
    <key>com.apple.emlog</key>
    <false/>
    <key>com.apple.mrt</key>
    <false/>
    <key>com.apple.stackshot</key>
    <false/>
    <key>org.apache.httpd</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

You may do this later also, after rebooting to your main volume with:

sudo nano /var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/disabled.plist

After the reboot the file should have been rebuilt automatically (but almost empty) and you don't have to create it first.
Enter exit
Reboot to your main volume

This worked for me (explicitly not executing the command launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ as proposed by Graham). So your mileage may vary, because you executed the command earlier.


Remove Faces Permanently from Photos Library Is there a way to permanently remove a name from the faces in the new Photos app?

Example:
When you tag a face accidentally with "John" instead of "John Miller", you can delete the face associated with "John" and remove the "John" tag from all your photos, but "John" will still be suggested every time you tag a face and start with "J...".

I guess this is especially annoying when you type fast and tag a lot of faces, where you will end up with dozens of typo/etc. names that will be suggested to you every time you enter a name...

The iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 versions of Photos makes this significantly easier.

Select the face / person / name in question and then select:

Remove this person (from macOS)
Remove (from iOS)

That purges the name and face from ones it will select in the People Album. I do see that both platforms will find names from your contacts, so if you just removed "Mary" from your album and you have any contacts with Mary in them, you will still get prompted. Temporarily deleting the contacts (make a backup) or deleting the sync of cloud contacts like iCloud and Outlook.com (or the many other contact sync options) you can test that Photos doesn't have that name anymore to suggest to you.


Weird behaviour of cmd + tab on OS X after upgrade to El Capitan I have this weird problem, I often use cmd+tab to switch between opened applications. After upgrading my OS to El Capitan it started to behave weird. Sometimes it doesn't switch to last focused window but it switches to last application visible on that bar which is displayed after pressing this shortcut. It really freaks me out.

To explain this problem better I've recorded a video cmd+tab, when this bug occurs I stop for a while and point my cursor on the application item on that bar.

I have to mention than all this time I'm using cmd+tab only, without shift pressed.

Problem solved, actually it wasn't an OS version problem but keyboard settings which i've been changing via console, i've set defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int -1 and that was the reason of weird behaviour of cmd+tab.


Put iMac G3 in Target Disk mode Is it possible to put the iMac G3 in Target Disk mode, such that one could copy or image the HDD?

This particular G3 does not have a FireWire port, only two USB 1.1 ports. It's the tray loading model from 1999 (iMac,1), and is running OS 8.6.

Only FireWire and Thunderbolt support Target Disk Mode.
You have to remove the internal disk and put it in an external case with UltraATA interface.
Alternatively you may create a bootable thumb drive (MacOS 9.1 or better), boot from it and create an image of your HDD with Disk Copy and save it to a network share. Building a bootable thumb drive and booting from it may take a while though because of the low bandwidth of USB1.1 (12 MBit/sec ≈ max. 1MByte/s).
According to this article Mac OS X 10.3.9 - the latest Mac OS X which supports the G3 - unfortunately doesn't provide USB-booting:

Further refinement I just came across in my notes, on the system requirements to boot from Macintosh USB ports: OS 8.6 through 9.2.2, and OS 10.4.3 and later. OS 8.6 - 9.2.2 might need the last of whichever versions of the USB extensions that each of these System versions supports (for OS 9.1 through 9.2.2, USB 1.5.6 is the preferred version; OS 9.1 and later don't need the extension "USB Mass Storage Support", especially since it sometimes freezes Macs running OS 9.1 - 9.2.2 that are trying to boot from USB), though other details as to the proper combination and versions of USB extensions under OS 8.6 - 9.2.2 is screwy, and too lengthy to post here, especially since we're dealing with OS X anyway.
The first Macs to support USB booting, are the first slot-loading iMacs (including the 350 MHz model with no Firewire ports), and the Firewire Powerbook G3. I've even booted OS 10.4.11, from a USB 2.0 flash drive, on a Mirrored Drive Doors G4, from a USB 2.0 PCI slot card, with no special tricks, Open Firmware modifications, etc.


How do I save terminal output to a file? How do I save the output of a command to a file from terminal?

That is if my command gives some output and it is printed directly on terminal but I want it in some text file or may be other kind of file.

Just add right sided arrow after your command:

someCommand > someFile.txt

Or if you want to append data(will create file if it doesn't exist):

someCommand >> someFile.txt


Getting my iPhone 6 to trust a computer after selecting Don't Trust I accidentally hit "Don't Trust" on my iPhone and now my MacBook won't unlock my phone. Is there a way to reverse this?

Go to Settings → General → Reset → Reset Location & Privacy.

This will reset your trusted computers (along with all your other privacy settings), and next time you connect the device a computer, it will prompt you to trust it. The privacy settings this will reset are all the settings under Settings → Privacy.


Can IFTTT automate or control an iPhone? I am looking into IFTTT as a alternative to Tasker or Llama context-aware task automation.

Especially I am looking for controlling the various radio devices on an iPhone, like Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi or mobile data.

However, I am stuck at the IFTTT home page.

IFTTT seems to be able to control many things that have an API for it, but what about local stuff like the device settings (on an iPhone)? How to find out?

Note 1: I do not actually own an iPhone. I only want to buy if there is an automated way to control radio devices

Note 2: Feel free to move this question to another site, if more suitable.

IFTTT

IFTTT requires iOS devices that offer integration or an API that can be accessed. General remote access to iOS is not permitted.

The IFTTT iOS app makes the following claim for iOS support:

  Over 500 apps work with IFTTT including Twitter, Telegram, Google Drive, Twitch, Weather Underground, Instagram, Gmail, and devices like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Nest, Philips Hue, and your iPhone. The IFTTT app also integrates with the Health app, so you can easily track and maintain your habits.

Supporting apps could work with background push notifications and updates to perform actions. This would work over any user permitted data connection.

Search for IFTTT iOS app to find iOS apps claiming support and related recipes, such as:

How to Set Up and Use IFTTT on Your iPhone
9 essential IFTTT recipes for iOS users

Mobile Device Management

Automation of an iOS is limited compared to macOS. The best way to remotely manage settings on an iPhone is via a Mobile Device Management (MDM) tool.


Load earlier text messages I just got a new iPhone 6plus my text messages are only saving one screen full. I have no "load earlier messages" prompt. how do I view a message from a week ago?

Define "just got" - as in today? Or as before a week ago? It sounds like your new device was not restored from a backup and was instead set up as new, in which case your previous text messages are not available.


How to access an iPhone app's database and media files? How can I access the database of an iPhone app I have purchased to copy it to an Excel spreadsheet? And how can I access its media files to copy them to my hard drive?

If the data does not show in iTunes File Sharing, you can use iExplorer to read your iTunes backup for the app’s container.


Can not erase my Mac OS X base system My Mac won’t boot up it makes the noise but just has a grey screen. When i utility boot the system it does not work and when I internet boot to disc utility it won’t allow me to erase the Mac OS X base system! It’s as if I’m locked out. My MacBook is also making a strange loud clicking noise. Please help?
Thank you.

I agree with Steve Chambers. Your hard drive is likely dying or dead (google "click of death hard drive"). An authorized Apple repair center can swap it out for a new drive (get an SSD, it'll speed your machine up), or you can DIY. I don't know your exact computer model, but the most recent Mac laptops that shipped with spinning hard drives were around 2012, so here is an example of how to replace your hard drive with an SSD (assuming it's a 2012 Macbook Pro, for instance):
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Hard+Drive+Replacement/10378

It's actually quite easy to do yourself if you're careful and order one of the upgrade kits with the appropriate tools (small screwdriver and a T6 torx) along with the SSD.

Good luck! Cheers,
-joe


Are replacement iPhone 5's unlocked? I got a free replacement for my damaged iPhone 5 at my local Apple Store. I watched the clerk take a SIM card out of the old iPhone and pop it into the new one, which surprised me because I thought Sprint iPhones didn't use SIM cards.

Can my replacement phone be used with another carrier? What about a carrier that, like Sprint, uses CDMA, for example Verizon?

Even CDMA iPhones have a SIM slot. They aren't required for use on carriers that support the network protocol, but rather are used for roaming on other networks (GSM). Apple truly built a "worldphone."

To answer your questions, no, your phone is locked to the carrier it was purchased through. That applies to both the SIM (GSM) and the CMDA networks. Even though carriers like Sprint that don't operate on GSM still lock it down. And I assume they do sell SIM cards for roaming purposes.

Additionally, the replacement phone Apple gives you is indeed unlocked, which a twist. It locks itself to the first SIM card it detects. If you replaced your Sprint SIM card with one from AT&T and brought in your phone, the replacement they give you would then work (and only work) on that network as soon as the SIM was inserted as iOS had a chance to activate itself.

This makes sense as Apple wouldn't keep replacement stock for different carriers (that would be inefficient).

There's a monstrously long thread on MacRumors regarding this topic and ultimately, the conclusion was that the phones where indeed locked, just like their GSM brethren: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1246693


How to back up Boot Camp before upgrading my hard drive to an SSD? I have a Macbook Pro which has a 750GB HDD. I'm currently using Bootcamp to run Win 7. If I want to upgrade the HDD to a SSD but keep my stuff from both the OS X side and the Win 7 side what are the steps to backing it up?

Here's what I would do (haven't done it step by step, but I have fairly lot experience with swapping drives, making copies of partitions etc.):

Ensure you have the necessary parts and tools. You’ll need an external USB enclosure to copy between the old and new drives, plus a couple of different screwdrivers. For a 2012 MacBook Pro, see these instructions.

Exchange the drives (put the SSD inside)

Place your old drive in the external USB enclosure

First test: power on with the Alt key pressed when it chimes, select the external OSX and see if you can boot OS X from the external drive (this should work).
Note: you will not be able to boot your old Windows from the USB drive (booting Windows from USB is difficult/impossible and not covered here).

Boot into recovery mode. Access this by holding Command+R when turning on the machine until Apple logo appears.

Using Disk Utility, format your new drive. You may need to click View > Show All Devices to get the right drive/partition to show. Be sure to choose APFS for the file system if possible—this has much better support and performance for SSDs.

Install a fresh copy of OS X on the SSD.

Ideally you should aim to install High Sierra or later which has support for Apple’s APFS file system—this has improved support for SSDs—although if you have an older Mac, consider whether it has the power to run a newer OS.
Even though you have a copy of OS X on your old drive, it appears you need an internet connection for this to occur. It may require a download of 5-10GB, so be prepared for this.
If your clock got reset when you were installing the SSD, you may get an error when attempting the OS X installation. In this case, you can try opening a terminal window and typing ntpdate -u time.apple.com which will sync your machine to the correct time over the internet.
Allow 30-90mins for the setup files to download, then another 30ish mins to install.

If you have a time machine backup you can alternatively restore that through the installer (in which case you can skip some of the installation process and the copying/migration-assistant step below) but you might not get the benefits of upgrading to APFS if your previous OS X used the HFS+ file system.

Now boot OS X from the internal SSD drive. It may ask you if you’d like to migrate all your apps and documents from your old drive, and you can generally choose “Yes”. Apple’s Migration tool is very robust and effective. A recent migration of mine took 2 hours for about 135GB of data.

Once you’re successfully booting OS X, eject and disconnect the USB drive to make sure bootcamp or Windows will not mess with it.

Run Bootcamp Assistant to make a suitably sized partition for Windows—at least 100GB is recommended. Note that Bootcamp Assistant will only work on an internal drive where your OS X install is the only single partition (plus recovery partition from the install).

You can optionally proceed with making a clean Windows install if you’d like to start fresh, or simply just to check that it boots OK. Otherwise continue with the cloning process below.
The point of the above is to create a partition layout on the SSD that both MacOS and Windows recognize.  The central thing there is, that bootcamp assitant will only let you do this from an original OS X partition layout.
Now you should have an SSD with a fresh OS X and a partition for Windows.  Your other drive is still in the original state, so you can always put it back.
If you find that you are missing any apps or functionality from your previous OS X (this should be quite rare), then you can clone your OS X by booting from the external OS X again, then use SuperDuper (or a similar tool) to copy your current OS X to the SSD.  But in general, it’s best to boot the fresh OS X from the SSD and use the Migration Assistant and copy your setup from the external drive.
To clone your Windows partition from old to new drive:
For less-technical folks, consider using WinClone, which performs many of the following steps with less trouble (it could save you a couple hours, potentially), but it costs US$39.99.
Here’s how to do it with free software:

Download a copy of gparted. You can either get a copy that can be made into a bootable USB stick (recommended), or choose a i486 ISO and burn it on a CD.   This is a graphical tool which lets you modify/clone/resize partitions.

Boot from your newly created USB or CD (you can generally choose all the default menu options as it’s booting up) and run gparted.

Be very sure to identify which drive is your old and which is your new before proceeding. If you copy in the wrong direction you will permanently lose data.

Copy the old (external) Windows partition to the internal one. Select your external Windows partition, choose copy, then select SSD Windows partition, and choose paste, then click apply. This will perform a clone of the partition, copying only the parts of the partition containing data (it’s smart enough not to copy the empty space) and it will also automatically resize it to fit the size you specified in the Bootcamp Assistant earlier. This might take 30-60mins.
Something about using gparted or resizing the partition can cause issues with booting so if you cannot restart into Windows at this point, you may need to follow these additional steps to repair the Windows boot record. (Note: the following steps apply to Macs prior to 2014 that used the Legacy BIOS/MBR method of booting Windows. Since 2014, most Macs use a newer GPT/UEFI method, in which case the commands below might not apply.)

Disable Apple SIP by restarting into recovery mode (hold Command+R when restarting), open Terminal, and type:
csrutil disable

Reboot into OSX, install the gdisk command line tool, and use it to regenerate the hybrid GPT+MBR boot records. The instructions can get a bit long, so I suggest you read them here. If you are also booting Linux, you may need to ensure you include your Linux partition in the list of bootable partitions during the MBR creation step. (I’m only booting OSX + Windows so I cannot test this step with Linux.)

If Windows will still not boot (at this point I was seeing a blue screen of death with an error about winload.exe), you need to repair the boot files by booting to an installation disc/USB of the Windows version you have, then choose repair Windows installation. If the automated “Start-up Repair” option doesn’t work, you can try running these commands from the Windows installer command line:
Note: first check that C:\ is actually the correct drive that you intend to perform the repair on. Otherwise replace c: in the commands below with the relevant drive letter.
bootsect /nt60 c: /mbr
attrib  -r  -h  -s  c:\boot\bcd
del c:\boot\bcd
bcdboot c:\windows /s c: /f BIOS

Source: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/333605/30551

After all that, you should have a functioning dual booting system. Remember to hold Option when turning on to choose your OS, or choose it from within OS X System Preferences > Startup Disk.


Always Open mp3 files with QuickTime Currently the default application for mp3 files on my Macbook Pro (10.6.8) is iTunes. I want to change it to QuickTime. So I right click on an mp3 file, select Other, check the Always open with box, scroll down to QuickTime select it, then click Open. The mp3 file plays with QuickTime. Bueno.

However, when I click another mp3 file, it plays with ITunes. I want all mp3 files to always play with QuickTime. How do I do this?

As detailed in this article, right-click on an MP3 file, click "Get Info" and open the "Open with" section. Choose QuickTime Player as the app OS X should use, and click "Change All...".


Is there an equivalent to ⌘ + D in the new save dialogs? In Snow Leopard and prior, when clsoing a window with unsaved changes, the system would suggest to either save, cancel or discard the changes from keyboard shortcuts. You could:

save return
cancel ⌘+.
discard the changes ⌘+D.

The Lion save dialog that gets summoned instead of the "Would you like to save?" dialog works differently:

⌘+. and return still work1, but ⌘+D has no effect.

Is there a new keyboard shortcut to discard?

1. I'm not in front of my Mac right now; IIRC they work, but maybe I'm wrong.

⌘+⌫

Pressing Command-Delete (or perhaps more commonly known as backspace) also does the same trick.

That's all there is to it!


Open PDF from terminal using command completion I'm used to the linux way of opening a PDF from the terminal. That is, via e.g. evince sample.pdf. Command completion makes this fairly fast. In particular when there are many files with the same name but different endings (like after pdflatex compilations). From macports I have the bash-completion, but it is ineffective for the open command in the sense that I have to cycle through all files until I get the PDF one. Is there another way of opening a PDF that allows to employ the bash-completion? Or a way to make open ignore certain file types?

open is a generic file-opener-thing so a generic completion for open must match anything open can open. One workaround is to invent a new command name, alias it to open, and then specify that the new command should complete PDF files.

bash-4.4$ alias viewpdf=open
bash-4.4$ complete -f -X '!*.@(pdf|PDF)' viewpdf

You could then use viewpdf to tab-complete-open PDF files. However this is rather incomplete as it only matches filenames unqualified with any directory path. With more complexity:

alias viewpdf=open
function _viewpdf()
{
   local word=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
   COMPREPLY=($(compgen -f -X "!*.@(pdf|PDF)" -- "${word}"))
}
complete -d -X '.[^./]*' -F _viewpdf viewpdf

Which should be saved into a bash rc file.

If you instead use the Z-Shell zsh the completion might look like

REVERT=$options[COMPLETE_ALIASES]
setopt COMPLETE_ALIASES
alias viewpdf=open
compdef '_files -g "*.(pdf|PDF)"' viewpdf
options[COMPLETE_ALIASES]=$REVERT
unset REVERT


Ability to automatically dim secondary monitor when focus on primary Is there a 3rd party app or combination of system settings and scripts that dims a secondary monitor until focus is brought to a window displayed on it? I like having multiple monitors but I would work better if there were a strong contrast between the two, where the contrast would invert based on which monitor had focus. (I can and do manually adjust the brightness when I know I won't need anything on the secondary monitor for awhile).

Running El Capitan with primary of a Thunderbolt display and secondary of a Macbook Pro.

I have looked at questions such as
Show a screensaver on a secondary display and
Adjust brightness of secondary display and have a sense that some of the tools might, with a additional scripting, get me close to what I'm looking for, but I am hoping someone has already solved this specific issue.

I started using the free app HazeOver which dims all windows other than the one with focus. The new beta version has a preference to dim all windows on a secondary monitor, and it gives me exactly the functionality I need. You can also opt to not dim windows that belong to the app in focus.  (I paid for it, which just removes messages encouraging you to purchase it).


MacBook Pro doesn't re-connect to Wi-Fi, iPhone does I have been wondering for long (and being troubled by this too), that why don't MacBook (like most other laptops), don't connect automatically to the available Wi-Fi like iPhone (and most other phones) do.

E.g. if my Wi-Fi router goes off for 1-2 minutes, both iPhone and MacBook Pro disconnect from it (obviously), however when the network is back, after a few seconds, iPhone is back on network, while MacBook isn't (even after long!).

So I want to know why is it so? And more importantly, how to change that behaviour and make it auto-connect?

You should check System Preferences > Network and click the Advanced... button to pull up the list of saved Preferred Networks. There is an option to drag networks in a preferred order. If your home network is not at the top of the list, drag it up. If your home network is the only network in this list, select it and hit the negative button to delete it, then recreate a new Wi-Fi connection.

Sidenote: If you are using iCloud Keychain, Wi-Fi networks you have connected to on any device also using iCloud Keychain will show up on your Mac and visa versa. This can cause a proliferation of Wi-Fi networks in this list.


After MacOS High Sierra install, localhost fails and apache has syntax errors After upgrading to MacOS High Sierra, I haven't been able to access my localhost. I tried restarting Apache, but it still didn't work. So I did apachectl configtest and got this error message:

  httpd: Syntax error on line 544 of /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:
  Syntax error on line 8 of /private/etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf:
  Cannot load /usr/local/php5/libphp5.so into server:
  dlopen(/usr/local/php5/libphp5.so, 10): Symbol not found: _environ\n
  Referenced from: /usr/local/php5/libphp5.so\n  Expected in:
  /usr/sbin/httpd\n

Line 544 of my httpd.conf file is
Include /private/etc/apache2/other/*.conf

The +php-osx.conf is an alias to entropy-php.conf, and line 8 of that file is
LoadModule php5_module        /usr/local/php5/libphp5.so

The remaining lines of entropy-php.conf are:
LoadModule php5_module /usr/local/php5/libphp5.so

<IfModule mod_php5.c>

    AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
    AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

    <IfModule mod_dir.c>
        DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
    </IfModule>

</IfModule>

I am using Apache/2.4.28 (Unix) and PHP 5.6.30.

Everything was working fine until the update. I have searched online for any solution this issue, but to no avail. Someone posted a similar question here a couple of years ago regarding the same syntax error, however, he didn't provide enough details or any follow-up regarding his setup, and no solution could be offered: Mac apache not working - apachectl configtest errors

Here an (old) 3rd party PHP probably from entropy.ch was installed to /local/usr/bin/. The Sierra httpd.conf was modified to work with the different PHP (and virtual hosts).

While updating to macOS to High Sierra, the Sierra httpd.conf was backed up to httpd.conf.sierra, a new High Sierra httpd.conf was installed and gained control, but won't work with the custom PHP5.

After backing up the High Sierra httpd.conf to httpd.conf.high_sierra:

sudo mv /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf.high_sierra

reactivating the httpd.conf.sierra:

sudo cp /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf.sierra /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

uncommenting the httpd.conf line

#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

and changing the version number from 5 to 7 so that it reads:

LoadModule php7_module libexec/apache2/libphp7.so

renaming the custom /local/usr/bin/php to php5:

sudo mv /local/usr/bin/php /local/usr/bin/php5

replacing the soft link /private/etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf (linking to /usr/local/php5/entropy-php.conf) with the High Sierra default /private/etc/apache2/other/php7.conf

and removing any reference to the custom PHP5, apachectl configtest was OK and Apache worked again - now with Apple's PHP7.


Lion Server DHCP randomly loses settings and reverts to defaults I’ve been trying to set up Lion Server on a Mac Pro with it acting as the router/gateway/firewall/DNS/NAT and DHCP. I’ve been trying to setup an internal-only network named mycompany.something. After having a lot of problems with that I switched to using mycompany.private (as recommended in Mac OS X Lion Server for Dummies).

When I was using mycompany.private and I turned on DHCP for the 192.168.2.x side of things it would distribute addresses and machines behind the server could get to the outside world.

I then noticed that every time I went back to the DHCP settings Subnets panel in Server Admin the subnets were either gone or different.

Looking at the logs it became apparent that the DHCP server was basically losing the settings file (which I assume is created/altered via Server Admin) and was putting a default one in its place.

Any idea what causes this to happen and how I can cajole the DHCP server into retaining my settings?

Just shooting a few ideas here: a router on your network that has a DHCP server activated. Permissions on the settings files are wrong. Deleting all settings and prefs and starting from scratch. Make sure the OS is up-to-date.

And you say the logs only show that the settings files disappeared? Nothing else?


OS X 10.8, unsigned application: reset open confirmation When I try to open an unsigned application by double clicking it in OS X 10.8's Finder, it rejects it. When I right-click the application and select Open, it shows a confirmation dialog. When confirming this with "Open", I can open the application the next time.

How I can reset this behavior, so OS X 10.8 will again reject to double-click this application?

I need this to test our application in a default environment without having to reinstall a backup.

You can add it using xattr from a command prompt, for example to indicate it was downloaded by Safari and have it quarantined as such, just do;

xattr -w com.apple.quarantine "0000;4b3a40d0;Safari;|com.apple.Safari" <path to file>;


Why is my iPad unable to determine location with some hotspots? If its connected through a connected chain looking hotspot, it can determine my location? What’s the reason? Also I’ve searched and found out that the connected chain looking hotspot is only created through apple or xiaomi device. Why is it so, and how can I create that kind of hotspot through other android device?

If your iPad doesn't have GPS hardware (available only with cellular models), iOS on it uses an online geolocation service to try determine the location.
One of the ways the geolocation services tries to do this is by trying to determine the location of the wifi you have connected to. This works well only if the location of wifi is already known - like cell phone towers, or public wifi hotspots, or wifi routers whose location is already known because of other devices (with GPS) that have connected to it etc. Generally, if you are connected to a cellular data, some cellular providers can also provide limited GPS data but this is also not consistent.
In other words, if your device doesn't have built-in hardware for GPS, trying to determine your position through other means are somewhat unreliable. And that is what you are experiencing.


Install Adblock on iPad I have an iPad 3 with iOS 8.3; I wonder if there is some software/tool that allows  to install Adblock and how to enable it on Safari (if I can of course).

There are apps which aren't content blockers, but which rather install a VPN on your device and route your traffic through this to block ads. This is still supported on devices which don't support content blockers.

 AdBlock
 AdGuard

For other devices which do support content blockers on iOS 9, there are many options available.

 Crystal
 AdBlock Plus
 Aqua
 AdBlock for Mobile

To add a content blocker, install it from the App Store, then choose Settings → Safari → Content Blockers and enable the content blocker. For apps which do not use content blockers, see the app itself for installation instructions.


ReadItLater-type app that saves web articles but also allows highlighting? I use Pocket and I love it as a way of saving articles to read them later, and how it allows me to browse, search, and read them easily.

However, when I read articles, I like to create highlights (in yellow) and add annotations. Pocket doesn't offer highlighting.

There's a great OSX app for PDFs, Skim, that highlights and annotates perfectly when I'm reading a PDF. But it would be so much better to not have to convert a web page to PDF in order to highlight and annotate it.

I would like to be able to create my own library of archived web articles (like Pocket allows me to do) that I can tag, search, and mark up.

Is there a "read it later" type app that will allow me to create my own library of archived web articles that I can then highlight and annotate?

A recent update of Instapaper (May 8, 2014) allows highlighting. Any highlights you create are saved into your saved version of the article and are visible online as well.


Apache 403 when accessing via IP I'm running a web server on Yosemite but have run into a bit of an issue. I can access web server via localhost, 127.0.0.1 and locally on other computer server.local.

But I can't access it via IP address i.e. 192.168.0.100 or by internet IP I get the following error message

Error code 403.
Message: Not Serving Client 82.15.XX.XXX.
Error code explanation: 403 = Request forbidden -- authorization will not help.

I just want to echo what @Gik said. I was having the same problem but didn't notice the answer because it was a comment. PlexConnect was causing the issue. To resolve, Run the PlexConnect script in Applications/PlexConnect-master/support/OSX uninstall.bash


Airport Express constantly can not stream music from any device My older Airport Express (b/g) was cutting off from being seen in iTunes and generally not performing well as a music server or a print server.

Purchased a new Express and still one or some of the computers will see it for an hour or so and then it goes away.

99% of the time I can not see it in Airport Utility when I am 5 feet from it.

Network setup:

EnGenius ESR-9752 with latest    firmware is the main AP.  This has    wired and wireless connections.

Both    Airports have static IPs and are on    the same subnet and all set to the    same channel (1) as the ESR-9752.  I    can see them all from the ESR-9752.    APXn (Maddie) has the latest    firmware, Airtunes turned on and is    connected to my new speakers.

I know Maddie is working, because I am also using the ethernet port to connect our BlueRay player to the internet through it's connection.
Maddie this morning was playing music.

I can not see Maddie from the Airport Utility or when I try to connect using her MAC.

APXb/g (Xena) is sitting in a room 45 feet away pretending to extend the network (bruno) but I think she just sits there with a green light to make me feel better.

We no not have any cordless phones in the apt.  We are a cell phone only apt.

My computer will sometimes see Maddie and play.  None of the others, nor will our iPhones see Maddie.

I accepted the fact that my 5 year old APX may be going and shelled out for a new one - but that does not seem to be the trick.

With 2 AP Expresses here - how can I reliably stream the music from iTunes on all of our devices to at least one of them?

I've seen that on a couple of them, and the problem seems to be tied to IPv6 support. Mine would drop connections randomly, sometimes requiring a reboot of the AirPort Express before it would return to the network.

Turning off IPv6 entirely in the Network Control panel of our Macs seems to have fixed it. I can stream music to it for hours now without problems, so give that a try.


Spotlight: Don't Index a Volume Is it possible to ask Spotlight to not index a volume ?

Yes, open the Spotlight prefpane and under the Confidentiality tab (not sure, but on my  French system it is called "Confidentialité"), you can add folders and volumes not to be indexed.


How to add link to Sublime Text? Just installed fresh copy of El Capitan and as usual started to install stuff... And suddenly faced strange problem. I'm using Sublime Text. It provides bin called subl, which allow to use it from console. So I added link to it like:

ln -s "/Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/local/bin/subl

But when I try tuo use it from console i get:

MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ subl
-bash: subl: command not found
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ ls /usr/loca/bin
ls: /usr/loca/bin: No such file or directory
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ ls /usr/local/bin
brew        mongo       mongodump   mongofiles  mongooplog  mongorestore    mongosniff  mongotop    npm
bsondump    mongod      mongoexport mongoimport mongoperf   mongos      mongostat   node        subl
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ ls /usr/local/bin/subl
/usr/local/bin/subl
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ ls -la /usr/local/bin/subl
lrwxr-xr-x  1   admin  63 Oct 28 19:42 /usr/local/bin/subl -> /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ mongo
MongoDB shell version: 3.0.7
connecting to: test
2015-10-28T20:22:18.219+0200 W NETWORK  Failed to connect to 127.0.0.1:27017, reason: errno:61 Connection refused
2015-10-28T20:22:18.221+0200 E QUERY    Error: couldn't connect to server 127.0.0.1:27017 (127.0.0.1), connection attempt failed
    at connect (src/mongo/shell/mongo.js:179:14)
    at (connect):1:6 at src/mongo/shell/mongo.js:179
exception: connect failed
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ which mongo
/usr/local/bin/mongo

As you can see other tuff from /usr/local/bin works fine. I also tried just for test create copy of nano and it worked fine...

MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ nano
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ which nano
/usr/bin/nano
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ ln -s /usr/bin/nano /usr/local/bin/nano_2
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ nano_2
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ rm /usr/local/bin/nano_2
MacBook-Pro-Kiril:~ $ nano_2
-bash: /usr/local/bin/nano_2: No such file or directory

Use one of the two forms shown below:

ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/subl

Or:

ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/local/bin/subl

But do not mix both using quotes and backslashes to escape spaces.


Doesn't Safari cache pages? Whenever I go back or forward in the Safari navigation history, it reloads the pages even when I just visited the page two seconds ago.

When navigating using back/forward buttons or swiping back and forth, the app always reloads the page from the internet.

Can I change anything to make Safari cache the pages I just visited more aggressively?

The answer is no, Safari doesn't cache pages - it does however cache elements that make up a page when the rules that the web server associates with each element allows caching.

You can see this on your specific pages by turning on the Develop menu in Safari Preferences:

As you can see from this picture, the page where your question is posted allows many items to be cached and the load time for those elements is in the 0.1-0.3ms range. The items that are not cached have longer load durations so perhaps the pages you are navigating either have few items with cache enabled or the overall page load time is dominated by non-cached layout and content.

If you want to cache content for offline reading, use the Reading List feature to store the page for offline use. That does more aggressively cache much of the most pages to allow reading of the page while totally offline at a later date. In your case, when Safari is online, it will check to see that the reading list version of the page is current, so it might not be exactly what you are seeking.


change focus between two views in split view Let's say that I have two apps running beside each other is splitview , How to change the focus from one to the other , e.g. if I am using two editors, If I am writing to editor 1, after the shortcut I will be writing in editor 2.
I know how to do it by the mouse but how to do it using only keyboard shortcuts?

Thanks in advance

I'm going to post a different question to see if there's a way to write an applescript/keyboard maestro macro to hack this together using system properties (since I'm sure OS X is storing somewhere variables that encode which apps are splitting which space, what the current space is, and what the current focus is). But this answer to the question Switch focus in split view makes it seem like there is no way to do this by default either across 2 different apps or within two instances of the same app.

In it they suggest using ⌘` for moving between two instances of the same app, and the closest by default would be ⌘⇥ for different apps.


pygame installed through homebrew does not work? I ran brew install pygame, it installed it together with all the dependencies. Python v2.7.10 / OS X version 10.11.2

Whenever I import pygame in a script it says this

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "~/Documents/test.py", line 1, in <module>
import pygame, random, sys
ImportError: No module named pygame

How do I fix this?

Have you checked which python are you running - the system python or the one you installed via homebrew?  I suspect the first.

As a test, try running

/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.10/bin/python

and typing

>> import pygame

If this works, you can make the brew version the default by using:

brew link python


How to remove an accidentally dropped file shortcut icon from Finder toolbar? I accidentally dropped a file in the Finder toolbar instead of the destination folder (the ZIP icon on the right of the screenshot):

How can I remove it from the toolbar?

Hold down ⌘ Command
Click file and drag it out


Change scrollbar speed (Mouse wheel acceleration) I just upgraded to El Capitan, and was wondering how do I make the scrollbar scroll more lines and always scroll that many lines with each tick of the mouse wheel? Right now, the scrollbar goes up/down depending on how fast you move the scroll wheel on the mouse.

Before I upgraded, USB Overdrive managed to fix this issue but now it seems like that app is not doing anything. I change the wheel up/down speed to 20 lines and it doesn't do anything.

I just downloaded USB Overdrive v3.1 this morning w/ El Capitan and it's working just fine. It was a fresh install of USB Overdrive as I did not have it on Yosemite. Maybe uninstall/reinstall?


How to fix stuck/'disabled' zooming on trackpad? I recently bought myself a new Trackpad, since my old Magic Trackpad broke. Ever since, however, zooming (two finger pinch) gets stuck/disabled/not working somehow and, besides rebooting, the only simple solution is go to preferences → Trackpad and disable & enable PinchToZoom`.

It's very annoying, but also strange that his occurs suddenly. This shouldn't be happening. I can't find anything on the web regarding for a permanent fix.

Does anyone else do?

All you need to do is go to system preferences > trackpad > scroll and zoom >  uncheck  Zoom in or out and then check it again.


Why does my terminal show a string like this? When I open my terminal it shows this:

wpa-2-602:~ david$

I just curious what the wpa-2-602 means? "david" is my user name, and sometimes it was something else. What makes it change?

That's based on the PS1 variable set in Bash's initialization. Yours appears to be the default, which is your computer's name, followed by a colon, then the current directory (in your example, that'd be the home directory for your computer [~]), then your username (david).

Here is an article about customizing your PS1, and there are plenty of questions both here and over at Super User about changing and fixing it.


How do I change the mouse's i-beam cursor in Xcode 7.3 There was a similar question to this on Stack Overflow regarding Xcode 5, however, the solution no longer works.

I would like to change my IBeam cursor in Xcode to use this cursor instead.

Question

How do I change my mouses Ibeam cursor in Xcode 7.3

Here's the solution that works for me thanks to a GitHub link provided by @aldryd:

https://github.com/egold/better-xcode-ibeam-cursor/issues/16

GitHub user sokobania provides the following steps:

Download ThemeEngine from: https://github.com/alexzielenski/ThemeEngine
Run ThemeEngine in Xcode and you may be presented with a few errors.

Failed to code sign "ThemeEngine".

Just click Fix Issue

Nullability specifier '_Nonnull' cannot be applied to non-pointer type 'NSString'; did you mean to apply the specifier to the pointer?

Allow Xcode to Resolve

We'll need to remove some derived data from Embedded Binaries. Click your root application > Targets > General > Embedded Binaries and remove the top item:

Run ThemeEngine and select "Open Document", you'll need to locate your Assets.car file in Xcode here:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/DVTKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Assets.car

Once loaded, find DVTIbeamCursor in the list and drag your IBeam of choice over Xcode's default Ibeam.

I like use the Ibeam provided by @TheTC:
dracoventions.com/images/external/TIbeam.tiff
Select "Save As..." and overwrite Xcode's Assets.car file with the new file. I had to save the copy to my desktop and then drag the new Assets.car file into the Xcode folder to overwrite.


iMac behaves inconsistently when waking from long periods of inactivity I have a late 2012 model iMac with OS X Mavericks installed. When I go to wake the iMac after a long period of inactivity (2 days for example) it behaves in one of two ways:

Sometimes the iMac wakes immediately, meaning the desktop shows up right away and all applications are snappy and ready to go.
Other times after waking, the desktop view is grayed out with a status bar at the bottom of the screen which takes a couple seconds to complete before un-graying the desktop. After the desktop is un-grayed, applications and other user-interactions are slow to respond, as if the computer is still "warming-up".

My Energy Saver preferences are set to put the display to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity, then the computer to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity.

Why this inconsistency in waking?

This would be explained if your iMac was sometimes in what Apple calls Safe Sleep and others (and Apple internally) call hibernation mode and is expected and intended by Apple to save energy.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1757

You should be able to disable this if needed by using pmset on the command line. Unless you are comfortable with the terminal, you might just leave things as Apple has configured since the hibernation should only engage for longer sleep periods to save more energy than if the machine was kept sleeping lightly the entire time.


Applescript to retrieve account and password using keychain scripting How can I use keychain scripting to write a script in Applescript that retrieves the login  and password of a website from the login keychain, given the website's URL?

If you know the exact name of the keychain item, you could use the following:

tell application "Keychain Scripting" to tell keychain "login.keychain" to get {account, password} of (first Internet key whose name is "www.google.com")

Thing is, Keychain Scripting is slow and quite buggy. For example, searching for a specific keychain item in the example above using name contains instead of name is does not work. You would have to use a repeat statement similar to what @Philip posted:

tell application "Keychain Scripting" to tell keychain "login.keychain"

    repeat with x from 1 to (count every Internet key)
        if name of Internet key x contains "Google" then
            return {account, password} of Internet key x
        end if

    end repeat
end tell

If you´re okay to use the command line and just want to look up stuff, I´d rather use:
security find-internet-password -g -s www.google.com and then grep what you want.


How fix MacOS Mail so Gmail labels appear? I recently bought a new MacBook Pro, and set up Mac Mail with my Gmail accounts.  At first, when the mail was being imported, the labels for my emails listed in the list preview section of the Inbox / message browser appeared.  Then, Mac ran an update for 10.15 (Catalina), and all of the labels for my emails listed in the list preview section of the Inbox / message browser disappeared.

I've ensured that the 'Show in IMAP' checkbox is ticked next to all of the labels I wish to see as folders in Apple Mail.  It shows the mailbox but not the labels for the messages listed in the list preview section of the Inbox / message browser.

Any ideas on how to fix this?  I've contacted Apple support, but they haven't provided any guidance.

This label (Inbox-Account) is only visible when you have more than one e-mail account enabled in Mail app (at least on Catalina 10.15.4).


Macbook 15 Retina Bootcamp Windows 7 64bit When I go through the bootcamp process, then get to the windows 7 setup screen.  I format the bootcamp partition like the instructions say, then click next with that highlighted and get the error:

Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition.  See the Setup log files for more information.

I'm on a 15" Macbook Retina.  I do NOT have any:
External Drives, other USB Drives plugged in.

The only thing I have plugged in is the USB with the Windows 7 Setup files.

I had this same issue when trying to install windows 7 via usb on my Desktop (moving to a SSD) but I was able to go around that issue by just installing from the current installation on the HD.  Obviously I can't do that here.

Do I need a specific kind of USB stick?  or what should I look for?

Update
Checking the logs from the command prompt I see a bunch of errors:
Couldn't find boot disk on the bios based computer

I believe since my USB stick is capped at 480mb/s (based on the sys info) I'm using a USB2 stick and I've swapped sides.

Lots of potential gotchas are mentioned here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3259726?start=0&tstart=0

Including the type of stick (USB 2.0 vs. USB 3.0), the port its plugged into, etc.


list box in applescript? I'm trying to have users pick a department from a list box. And then that choice is stored in a variable as string.

How can I do this?

I have code written like this:

set deptList to {"dept1", "dept2", "dept3", "dept4"}

set dept_name to {choose from my list deptList}

when I run the script, I get this error.

  " doesn't understand
  the "choose" message". number -1708 from

Am I writing this code wrong?

You were close you had an errant 'my' which you do not need.

set deptList to {"dept1", "dept2", "dept3", "dept4"}

    set dept_name to {choose from list deptList}

Also you should pay attention to the colour code of the text. this will give you a clue as what the Applescript thinks the syntax is you have typed


Is there a way to request iMessage history from Apple? Recently there was a famous case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute

I was wondering if a regular citizen (US or non-US based) can apply to Apple and request all the iMessage history since the creation of my AppleID?

(random thought: I should read T&C and privacy policy to learn who actually owns the right to my own messages)

Alternatively - is there a service that would retrieve all the history without any involvement from Apple?

Caveats:

I've been changing devices so not sure if that would work: How can I locate an iMessage from 1-2 months ago? Possible?
I'd would the material to be admissible in the court

Unless you store your iMessage data on iCloud (New feature introduced iOS 11.3), Apple does not directly store your iMessage data. There may be instances of iMessage data in iCloud Backup. This data can be extracted by various recovery programs, but not "requested" from Apple.

Even if you do store it on iCloud it is encrypted is not accessible in the fashion you are requesting it.

You can however request a copy of all the data Apple has.


Gap at the bottom of maximized windows How can i get rid of the gap at the bottom of the screen when i maximized a window? The gap is almost imperceptible but at the bottom of a maximized window a few pixel are not filled, there one can see the desktop. If i go into full screen mode with a window, the 5 - 10 pixels get filled.

My os version is OS X 10.9 Mavericks

To better see the issue I enlarged the part at the bottom:

Those 5 pixels are tied to the Dock. You can position the dock on either the left of right side instead, but the gap stays on the side of the Dock. I think this is something fairly low level with the Dock, as window managers (like Spectacle) will maximize windows and not use the gap.

My $0.02: If you have a lot of screen real estate, as it looks like you do, I say shrink some of your windows to a more appropriate size and/or fullscreen windows instead of maximizing them.


What advantages do Macs offer designers? I'll try to make this not be an opinion or a preference question. I am previously a PC owner and I am looking for a new computer. A school of thought around Macs being better for designers than Windows computers keeps coming up on various Internet sites.

I'm looking for some concrete technical evidence of this. Take Photoshop, for example. It runs on both systems and, looking at the Adobe web page I can't find any special features on the Mac version that aren't on the Windows, etc.

Is the idea that Macs are a better choice for designers a myth or are there concrete advantages?

From a functional standpoint, I'm not aware of any differences in the most commonly used software at all (Photoshop, etc). The only difference might be if you happen to prefer Mac OS vs Windows OS. Macs do come with some software such as iPhoto that may be seen as an advantage compared to a Windows PC. In regards to your question, this is probably irrelevant because serious design work is typically not done using the software that comes bundled with the OS.

Another reason that Macs could be preferred is that they tend to have better color reproduction than many Windows machines, particularly in laptops. That's not to say that they are necessarily better than Windows computers, just that Apple typically uses higher quality screens than Windows PC makers do and so for design that would definitely be an advantage. With a desktop this isn't as much of an issue because you can use whatever monitor you want, but with a laptop on-the-go you're obviously stuck with the screen it comes with. Here are some comparisons showing black/white levels, contrast, color accuracy and gamut of several Macbook models vs Windows laptops: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/5

I am both a Windows and Mac user and I find that I like both systems for different reasons. I have used Photoshop and Lightroom on both systems and have no preference either way.

Bottom line, there's nothing inherently better about Macs compared to Windows. Just differences that may cause you to like one system over the other. You pick what's best for you.

For some additional reading here are some points from both side of the fence arguing for PC vs Mac in design work: http://designfiles.net/blog/mac-pc-graphic-designers/


Apple Mail configured to use exchange but To and CC addresses coming from other sources How can I limit the recipients to just contacts from the Exchange directory? When I start typing in the "to" field, not only are my options people in my exchange directory, but also people in my GMail contacts list!  I only want people from my exchange directory to show up in To, CC and BCC.

The solution is to go to Window-> Previous Recipients and remove those you don't want.  This is discussed in the help page "Manage email addresses in the Previous Recipients list".


AirPods Pro on Mojave I am thinking of buying the new AirPods Pro but according to the support page, you “need” at least macOS Catalina 10.15.1 in order to use them. However this is surely misleadingly worded since AirPods work with any modern Bluetooth audio host (Windows, Android, etc.). My question is, since I rely on 32-bit apps on Mojave, what exactly does it mean to not have one of the new OSes?

AFAIK no definitive explanation exists, here are the possible differences I’ve gathered (I don’t know which are true):

You’ll have to (gasp) manually pair the AirPods to each device
You’ll need to set up button behavior, size test, etc. on one of the newer OSes but your settings should carry over to all devices
You’ll need to control noise canceling via the button on the AirPods themselves instead of... a nested menu of the volume button on the menu bar (does this include the Touch Bar?)
No audio sharing
Switching between devices might be affected somehow (how?)

Is this correct and is there anything else?

I'm have been using the AirPods Pro with Mojave, so it is definitely possible to use them together.

I didn't need to manually pair the AirPods Pro to the MacBook Pro running Mojave. It paired them with my iPhone, and it automatically synced to the MacBook Pro.

Squeezing the stem of the AirPods to enable/disable ANC, play/pause, forwards/backwards in tracks all works without problems.

There's no setting for ANC in Mojave, but I can control volume up/down like with the regular AirPods.

Switching between devices seem to work the same as with the AirPods. I.e. I can be listening to Spotify on my iPhone, and then on my Mojave Mac click the speaker icon in the status bar and select the AirPods - and I will be hearing sound from the Mac instead of the iPhone.

Mojave also supports displaying charge status of the AirPods Pro in that menu - similar to the AirPods.

As far as I know, Audio Sharing is an iOS-only feature - so that wouldn't be available with either Mojave or Catalina.


How to get iOS 6 podcast app to resume the last played podcast Ever since upgrading to iOS 6 if I stop in the middle of listening to a podcast and a few hours later start playing using the lock screen buttons, the double-home-and-scroll-left buttons or a physical play button that connects to the iPhone (that I use while driving) one of two things happen:

The podcast app starts playing a completely different podcast (always the same one, even if it's already played, I guess it's because it's the most recent podcast in the entire library)
The music app starts playing music

Is there any way to get the new smart dedicated podcast app to remember where it left off like the old music app that is obviously not suitable for podcasts because it always worked perfectly?

Alternatively, can anyone recommend a podcast app that just works?

If you run enough other apps for Podcasts to be unloaded from memory, resuming from the lock screen will start playing the Music app.  There's no way around it.  The only thing you can do for now is to delete the Podcasts app so you can play from Music again (after quitting and restarting it), and join the thousands of other people giving it 1 star in iTunes.


Safari Browser Bar - no longer functioning as expected Please help!
The search / address bar in Safari normally autocompletes my typing. So for example, I can type em and it will autocomplete for me. It has randomly stopped functioning and is now forcing me to type a complete web address before it will take me to a site.
Secondly, I can normally type a word and press return and it will fire up google (my preferred search engine) with a list of suggestions but it has just stopped.
I don't remember changing anything - any suggestions its incredibly frustrating!
thanks in advance

This is a bug in safari.

Currently the workaround is to open Safari > Preferences > Search and disable "Include Safari Suggestions".

http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/27/apple-safari-suggestions-bug/


Can I make a DIY Fusion Drive? I have a Mac Mini with two drives: a 256GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. From what I've read, the new Fusion Drive does all of it's magic in software, using the Core Storage APIs.

Can I get my setup to behave like a Fusion Drive? That is, I want the two drives to appear as a single logical volume, with the system automatically moving frequently accessed files to the SSD. I understand that we can easily stripe or extend or RAID drives, but the automatically managed tiered storage features of Fusion drive would be great to have without investing in new hardware.

Yes, you can create a fusion drive on older Macs, described in full length here:

You obviously need both an SSD and a HD. Let's assume they are known to the OS as disk1 and disk7. You can check disk id by diskutil list.
diskutil cs create bla disk1 disk7 to create it, where bla is the name you give to the fusion drive.
diskutil cs list and take note of the Logical Volume Group ID
diskutil cs createVolume <ID from above> jhfs+ blub 100%, where blub is the name you give to the volume.

Link to Apple instructions: Click Here

Note: These are instructions to fix a split fusion drive, but work also for making one.


Possible to upgrade RAM to 16 GB for mac mini mid 2011? Does anyone has experience with upgrading a mac mini mid 2011 to 16 GB RAM?

I know the official doc says the max is 8 GB RAM, but there are articles on the internet which claim it is possible.

The official doc: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202283
Article which claims it is possible: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3859325

Thanks

Everymac says it will take 16 - & they're pretty much always right in these things.

The machines from that time didn't have official 8GB RAM stick support, as they were pretty new at the time & I guess untested; but it later turned out all those older machines would take 8s, even though only qualified for 4s.

I've had several machines over the years with double the officially-supported RAM.


Default resizing Split View to not blur one window In OS X El Capitan, Apple introduced a feature called "Split View" that allows you to put two fullscreen apps side by side. Normally when you click and drag the middle dividing line one of the two apps will blur. If you hold Option while moving the divider neither window will blur.

How can I make this the default behavior, so I don't have to hold Option when resizing?

Resizing windows in split view no longer blurs one window as of macOS Catalina.


In activity monitor what time frame is the data sent / received data from? In the network tab in activity monitor there is a read out of data usage showing sent and received in GB. What this dosnt tell you is over what time period this is, is it from a day, a week and month ?

This is from OSX Yosemite.

For the top two figures, since last boot; for the bottom two, current.

After comments: It may be since launch of Activity Monitor - I have mine launch at boot & it stays open all the time, so I probably didn't notice the potential discrepancy.
The little graph is 'since switching to that tab', as it doesn't log more than about 5 minutes of data.

This machine's been up 9 days, this looks about right for my standard usage -

If I initiate a large download, the bottom figures become this [on a 150Mb/s line] -

The graph scale auto-zooms, so the earlier few KB/s vanishes into a flat line.

Once the file has finished downloading, the top figures show the increase of about 2GB & the bottom pair goes back to being relatively idle


Why can't I use the windows 10 boot stick I created for my MBP? I want to install Windows 10 on my MBP (early 2011, 15", high sierra). I followed instructions using BootCamp and got to successfully create a USB stick with Windows 10. At the end of the bootcamp procedure, nothing happens (according to the user guide I expected the Mac to restart.) When I restart, it boots into High Sierra. When I restart holding the Option key, I have a single choice for booting on my ssd, but the usb stick seems undetected.
Thanks for helping!
edit : output to command diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         499.9 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +499.9 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh SSD           388.6 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 21.6 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                512.1 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      4.3 GB     disk1s4

Apparently, you need a MacBook Pro introduced in 2012 or later. I assume it is a firmware compatibility issue, IIRC, UEFI started happening for Macs just around 2012.


Can I have my iPhone navigate through my car's stereo? Is there an iPhone navigation/GPS app that will announce the turn-by-turn directions through a car's stereo via bluetooth?

I already have my iPhone synced with my car via bluetooth for calls, so I'm wondering if any of the navigation apps can also take advantage of the connection?

I'd rather not have to buy a separate iPhone car kit or a FM transmitter.

Can your car accept the iPhone's music audio as an input to the stereo? On my care (Acura TL), the bluetooth profile lets me play iPod music through the stereo when the phone is paired. As a result of that, ALL of the phone's audio plays back through the stereo... including text alerts and any apps that play back voice sounds (navigation, etc).

It's probably too simple an answer, but it's worth checking to see if you can pair up using the audio profile for music -- in which case you'd get the phone's other audio as well.


Mac/PC: How to change the developer of an Apple Disk Image? I am trying to use a GD-0912-U Intuos Graphics Tablet in OS X El Capitan at a public hackerspace. They will let me install any programs on the iMac, barring that Gatekeeper believes it is from a trusted developer.

I have been able to get this tablet working in Windows 7 by installing older drivers that were found online. This tablet is obviously not going to work with current Intuos drivers.

I have managed to find drivers that will likely work, but I cannot install them unless the OS believes that the app is from a trusted developer. New drivers downloaded from the Wacom website install perfectly, and show that Wacom is the official developer. It seems that the old drivers were created before Gatekeeper existed; therefore, they do not have the proper developer information.

Is there a way to alter developer information on an Apple Disk Image?

Could I take information from recent Intuos drivers and copy it into the .dmg?

No. The developer certificate signs the application and any modification of the seal will make the validation fail.

Basically any trivial cut and paste won't work. You would need to:

sign up as a developer and sign your package
get permission from Apple to sign kernel extensions if that is the nature of the driver
work with the maintainers of the lab to find and install drivers for your hardware.


MacOS limit Spotlight results to .app files I have already limited Spotlight search to Applications inside System Preferences > Spotlight
However, this seems to actually just limit searches to the directory /Applications.
It means there are results from application files, configuration files, etc..
Is it possible to limit Spotlight search results to the .app file extension?
Using macOS Catalina (10.15.7).
Thanks
Craig

If you invoke Spotlight (⌘ + space) and enter search term followed by kind:app you will see only applications (and 'Related searches' block with 'Search the Web' and 'Search in Finder' options)

Refer to Apple support document Search by the type of items to find item types you can use to narrow Spotlight search results.


Why does Time Machine back up way too much data and how can I slim this down? I just noticed that Time Machine is backing up 15 GB (it's been running for a few hours; this means that Time Machine thinks that 15 GB of data changed in one hour which is absurd). I've only been doing some programming in the Terminal, and the usual web browsing/iTunes etc.

Why is this happening? Is there a way to see which files does Time Machine think changed this much? How to stop this behavior?

Edit: It just occured to me that the two times it happened I was using a VMWare Virtual Machine. Is it possible that Apple made the terrible oversight of not having a working binary diff and it's backing up the Virtual Machine image in its entirety every time?

Yes, it is the whole virtual disk which gets saved, there is no binary diff.


Is JXA still supported? JavaScript for Automation was released some years ago, but I am having a hard time finding information about its current support status in macOS.  It is not encouraging that the JavaScript for Automation Release Notes page starts with the statement

Important: This document is no longer being updated. For the latest
information about Apple SDKs, visit the documentation website.

but if you click the link and search for "JXA" in the Apple Developer Documentation, you get 0 results.
Is JXA still supported by Apple? Does it have a future in macOS?

Is JXA still supported by Apple? Does it have a future in macOS?

JXA is still supported.  In macOS Catalina, JavaScript is still an option for automation.  It's also present in Big Sur.  More importantly, there's been no indication or statement regarding it being deprecated † or removed as a feature from Apple.
Does it have a future in macOS?
In all practicality, only Apple can answer this. However, IMHO, it's likely to continue for a long time.  JavaScript is a very popular and widespread language meaning there's lots of resources available.  According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey for 2020, it was the top in programming, scripting and markdown languages (eighth year in a row).  It would be short sighted to kill it from AppleScript.

Regarding the documentation, (again, IMHO), there's no need to update it.  What was linked there was an intro and nothing has changed since it's introduction.  Anything related to JavaScript is already well taken care of with the countless resources available.

† There's a distinction between being deprecated and dead.  Deprecated being "no further development but still supported" while "dead" means it's gone.


Can I continue to use a Mac while Carbon Copy Cloner is cloning its HDD? Carbon Copy Cloner is taking 2.5-3 hrs to work its mojo these days. I suspect this has something to do with the switch to Lion (the same process took 20 mins on SL.)

In any case, is it advisable to continue to use the Mac while CCC is backing up the drive? It's a one HDD iMac.

The Carbon Copy Cloner FAQ states:

Yes and no, it really depends. Performance will be affected during the clone (especially the first one) as CCC reads the entire source volume and writes to the destination volume. If your work is "disk bound" -- that is your applications are reading or writing to either the source or destination, then you'll notice a performance hit. If you're just reading email or writing a Pages document, then you probably won't notice the performance hit.
Affecting the accuracy of the backup task is something else that should be considered. Typically it's OK to work from the source volume while you're copying it, with the understanding that if CCC copied a file, then you open it, make changes, save it, then CCC completes the backup task, the modified version of your document is not backed up (this time around). Typically that's no big deal, the modifications will get backed up the next time the backup task runs. More importantly, though, if you're working with large files (mounted disk image, Entourage email database, VMWare/Parallels container) during the backup operation, it is possible that those large files could be modified while CCC is backing up that file. This won't affect the source file, but there's a good chance that the backup version of that file will be corrupt. For this reason it is a good idea to stop using applications that may be modifying large files.

TL;DR: there is performance hit depending on the intensity of file I/O you produce; files you work on will not be backed up; large files may get corrupted.


Mac book pro early 2011 won't boot my mac book pro 2011 started having weird instances where it would just cut off and shut down immediately. Then when I tried powering it on, the indicator light would light up for 1 or 2 seconds before completely cutting off as if it were a power failure.

Sometimes I managed to boot it up again after waitint for awhile and I managed to do an aht test on it, revealing no problems with memory or the logic board.

What could be causing all this?

Edit: sometimes I get about 5 minutes of usage before it shuts down completely again.

Here's a video of how my mac is trying to boot up.  https://youtu.be/wNEMUeyYfxY

The repairman said that it's a logic board failure. I sent it for repair and am currently waiting for news on what could be the cause. Anyway its gonna cost $350 sgd for the repairs.


Why is the iphone 6s battery inferior to the 7? https://www.cnet.com/reviews/apple-iphone-6s-review/

CNET 2018 indicates the 6s has:

  Inferior battery life, camera performance and processor speed compared
  to newer iPhones.

What exactly is the battery life inferior? Possible reasons comprise:

fewer mA-hours battery?
CPU voltage swing greater? (greater power consumption?
Display power efficiency?

I'm not entirely convinced the author of the article you referenced did his homework! I've heard that battery improvements from iPhone 6 to iPhone 7 have been incremental. That jibes with battery technology progress in general (i.e. slow progress), and a quick search found this article that seems to back up the "limited improvement" opinion:

  "... the battery capacity has changed little (iPhone 6 - 1810mAh, iPhone 7 - 1960mAh) and you’ll still struggle to get a full day out of it...

Those figures are repeated in this article - a compilation of battery capacities for all iPhone models from 2007 to 2017.  One interesting thing to note from the table is that "size matters" - for batteries at least. Notice that the jumbo phablets have significantly more battery capacity, but that's down to the batteries being larger. And of course a phablet will demand more power than a 'normal' phone due to the larger display.

For all these reasons, I'd tend to discount the claim that battery life is "inferior" for the 6S. I'm not saying that there's no improvement; I'm saying that the improvements are "evolutionary" instead of "revolutionary". "Inferior" suggests poor quality and/or significant differences, and the data simply do not bear that out. I think Apple will do what they have to do to remain competitive; that includes battery technology.


Control AppleTV 4K volume on monitor with speakers Equipment:

Apple TV 4K
iiyama ProLite E2273HDS LED monitor, with built-in speakers
iPad Pro
iPhone 6S

Connection:

HDMI, from Apple TV to monitor

I am temporaily using my Apple TV 4K with a computer monitor, instead of a conventional TV - connected via HDMI.

It's working great, except that the only way I've found to control the volume of the built-in speakers is via the very fiddly on-screen menu.

Is there an easy way via the Apple TV to control the sound volume on a computer monitor with built-in monitors, without using the monitor's on-screen menu?

Things I've tried:

Using the volume control on the Apple Tv's remote - it tells me to use the remove control for my TV, which doesn't exist
Use AirPlay or Screen Mirroring on iPhone and iPad to send to AppleTV - the iOS devices then don't allow the volume to be changed
Search online for inline HDMI devices to control volume - I didn't find anything

There's no easier way from the AppleTV or similar. In modern HDMI based systems the volume control always happens at the destination (for example the TV). When you send the audio digitally, the source (Apple TV) is not amplifying an analog signal and thus has no impact on the actual volume except for any external control signals it can.

Your computer monitor is probably not designed for use as a TV, and does not support receiving volume control signals anyway other than the on-screen menu. According to its manual, there doesn't seem to be any remote controls available or similar.


Extensive diacritics input in iOS/iPadOS MacOS has an input method known as "ABC - Extended", which allows inputting most diacritics with any Latin letters. With it, "Alt" + various keys give a diacritic waiting to be composed, and pressing a letter produces the letter with the specified diacritic. For example:

Alt + E gives acute (´), which can be used to produce é or ń

Alt + U gives diaeresis (¨), which can be used to produce ü or ÿ

Alt + C gives cedilla (¸), which can be used to produce ş or ķ

Alt + B  and Alt + V give breve (˘) and caron/háček (ˇ) respectively, which can be used to produce Romanian ă and Pinyin ǎ.

My question: is there a similar way to input various diacritics on iOS/iPadOS? All of the system keyboards seem just to offer a limited set of accented letters.

.

The best way to have full coverage of diacritics is to get a hardware keyboard to go with the iOS device.  Then you can just choose ABC Extended as your mapping.

Otherwise you have to search for a 3rd party keyboard (check the Keyman app) or use an app like Unicode Pad.


Apple Profiles - Apple Configurator 2 I've been looking for hours now on how to edit a profile on Apple Configurator but to no luck. There are some similar responses, but none of them were of too much help. I am trying to edit a profile that exists on a iPad Air, but not the mac. Can anyone help me?

It's not possible to edit a profile whilst only having the profile on a device. You must have the profile on your computer to edit it. Profiles can't be exported from a device to be edited in Configurator.


Automate Yosemite Upgrade I want to be able to launch the Yosemite Installer app from the Applications folder and install the upgrade with commands.

When I look inside the InstallESD.img there are many PKG files, I am unsure how to script al this.

I have a way to get the Installer app to the machine and way to launch it. Problem is navigating the options for choosing a volume to install on and the "Continue, restart and agreement" buttons that need clicking.

What automation or scripts exist to simplify this upgrade?

After a search, the open-source munki tool has the script I need.

https://github.com/munki/createOSXinstallPkg

This works perfectly for my needs. Also, you could do far worse than AutoDMG which does a similar task for restore based workflows.

https://github.com/MagerValp/AutoDMG


How to restore/re-create some folders from Time Machine backup of a different computer? I have Time Machine backup of computer A, a Macbook Pro mid-2010. I want to restore/re-create some folders backed up in that backup on a different computer, a Macbook Pro Retina mid-2014.  How to properly do this?


How to unlock iPhone 5 (iOS 7.0.2) after forgetting my Apple ID? I have an iPhone 5 (iOS 7.0.2) which is locked and I can't unlock it because I've forgotten my Apple ID.

Is there any solution?

It is currently not possible to bypass Activation Lock, since the activation lock data is stored remotely on Apple's servers.

You can attempt to recover your Apple ID by following the instructions at iforgot.apple.com.

You can read more about Activation Lock (and whether it can be bypassed) here:

How secure is Activation Lock on iOS 7 (and later)?


Running the memz virus on a parallels vm: safe? I have a copy of the memz virus, and have parallels windows vm. What I'm wondering, is if I run memz.exe/bin (not memz-clean.exe/bin), will I screw up the mac that I'm running the vm on?

Thanks

If your Parallels virtual machine is using a disk file for the guest operating system, and you haven't mapped your real hard drive into the vm - then no, in theory the Mac will not be screwed up.

The reason I write "in theory" is that there are a few practical concerns. Mainly, if you happen to have your hands on something that is not the original memz virus, but something else, it might do something unexpected. If the virus contains an exploit for Parallels usable from within the guest, it could break the isolation and tamper with your macOS installation. It is not very probably though.


Why has Snow Leopard screwed up my Safari and my desktop's ability to stay organized Ever since I installed snow leopard I get multiple safari crashes per day. And my desktop refuses to stay organized (by date modified)?

Sounds like you did an upgrade, perhaps with the help Migration Assistant?

Best way to deal with it?  Back up your data, and either
i) create a new account, pulling your data back in, but with a fresh library and settings or, better yet,
ii) reformat, re-install OS and create your account again, from scratch.  Pull the data in manually.

Upgrading, and/or migration assistant, often doesn't go well when automated.  Just the nature of the beast. If you're not entirely comfortable doing this, get a pro to do it.  Trust me.


How to fix a file that's read-only despite showing correct permissions A file copied from a NTFS share has become read-only, other files in the same folder are OK.

Finder's Info says in the Sharing & Permissions:

You can only read
Name        Privilege
myname (Me) Read & Write
admin       Read only
everyone    Read only

ls -l@

total 142040
-rwxr-xr-x  1 myname admin  5388424 Sep 17  1998 Bad File
-rwxr-xr-x  1 myname admin  3534780 Feb  3 21:36 Good File

How to undo? chown/chmod didn't do anything...

Try ls -lO to see if any file flags are set.  If it's locked (uchg flag), you can unlock it in either the Finder's Get Info window, or with chflags nouchg "Bad File".  If some other flag is set, use chflags no<whatever> "Bad File" to clear it.

EDIT: The -O flag to la adds another column between the group and size of the files, listing file flags (if any).  Note that flags are entirely separate from extended attributes (what -@ displays).  Here's an example:

$ touch "Normal File" "Locked File" "Invisible, Append-only File"
$ chflags uchg "Locked File"
$ chflags uappnd,hidden "Invisible, Append-only File"
$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r--@ 1 gordon  wheel  0 Feb  4 07:24 Invisible, Append-only File
-rw-r--r--  1 gordon  wheel  0 Feb  4 07:24 Locked File
-rw-r--r--  1 gordon  wheel  0 Feb  4 07:24 Normal File
$ ls -lO
total 0
-rw-r--r--@ 1 gordon  wheel  uappnd,hidden 0 Feb  4 07:24 Invisible, Append-only File
-rw-r--r--  1 gordon  wheel  uchg          0 Feb  4 07:24 Locked File
-rw-r--r--  1 gordon  wheel  -             0 Feb  4 07:24 Normal File

The uchg flag is what gets set if you check the "Locked" box in a file's Get Info window.  BTW, the "hidden" flag only affects the Finder -- the only way to hide files from the command line is to put a . at the front of the filename.


Can I turn off 2G support on my iPhone? From the commotion in the last several days/weeks I understood that a fake cell tower intending to play man-in-the-middle uses a 2G connection to avoid the authentication requirement (of the network towards the phone) that's part of 3G and up.I would like to avoid such MITM attacks by turning off the 2G support altogether. I can live with it if my iPhone only uses 3G/4G, and refuses any service when only 2G is available.I am using an iPhone 5S with IOS7.Is there any setting or app I can use for that? (Preferably without jail-breaking my phone, but I know that might be a stretch.)

Johan

Very simple; No way Apple will allow you to do this


How to save list of open Safari Tabs in a text file? I open a lot of tabs which are important for me. Isn't there an easier way to install something that creates a TextEdit file on my desktop with all URLs open at the time?

In the past I used Eelee's SafariTabsListDs but this doesn't seem work anymore.

Can you help me with something that I can use to reopen the tabs I want after closing them?

The following example AppleScript code will write the URL of every tab of every window of Safari to a file named MyURLs.txt on your Desktop:

set myURLs to {}
tell application "Safari" to set myURLs to the URL of every tab of every window
set text item delimiters to linefeed
set myURLs to myURLs as text
set text item delimiters to {}
if not myURLs is equal to "" then
    do shell script "echo " & myURLs's quoted form & "> $HOME/Desktop/MyURLs.txt"
end if

To open the URLs in, e.g., MyURLs.txt you can use, e.g.,:

set myURLs to {}
try
    set myURLs to paragraphs of (do shell script "cat $HOME/Desktop/MyURLs.txt")
end try
if not myURLs is equal to {} then
    repeat with thisURL in myURLs
        open location thisURL
    end repeat
end if

The example AppleScript code above assumes Safari is your default web browser.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any additional error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors. Additionally, the use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


Empty favorites sidebar of third-party applications From my update to El Capitan (now at 10.11.3), I've some difficulties with sidebars.

My Finder's sidebar working very well and can be very complete :

But third-party applications (like Preview, Acrobat Reader, Sublime Text…) don't recovers Finder's sidebar in the window when, usually, you are opening a file :

I tried to add by drag'n'drop my favorites folders to the sidebar but each application has its own and if I quit and restart the application, I'm losing all my favorites, going back to the minimal sidebar (like second picture).

It seems this window is not an instance of Finder window, because as you can see in my 2 screenshots: Finder can shows my hidden files but not third-party applications.

Does anyone has a similar problem? Any idea to save definitively a sidebar for all applications?

I found this similar thread with different terms :

"File Open" dialog is missing sidebar items

For me, delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist and reboot worked well.


personal folder in outlook stored on network share available on iphone? I am looking to swap out a BlackBerry for an iPhone from Verizon. On the BlackBerry we use an older version of the desktop synchronization software and I can access personal folders (Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007) stored on a network share. Can you do that from an iPhone?

It appears that this works while using a VPN. The iPhone talks to the Exchange group policies, and can use all the mail folders (although, IMAP may be necessary for this). For more info, see this Apple doc (page 9).


How can I identify the cause of this SSL error in Safari 6? I was seeing an SSL error in Safari 6.1.6 (8537.78.2) on OSX 10.8.5 when visiting a website, and the debug information provided from the developer tools didn't indicate the source of the issue. The issue was reported by multiple users of OSX 10.8, and was resolved for those users by restoring TLSv1 in the server configuration (config change at bottom of question).

The error message in Safari developer tools was

  Failed to load resource: An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made.

In Safari, there was no additional information under the "Requests > Network" tab (which I saw referenced on other answers). The information there seemed to relate to loading the content of the error message rather than the original site.

What other methods, if any, could I have used to extract a "server lacks TLSv1 support" message from Safari 6 / OSX 10.8.x?

Additional background info: The change required to the nginx server configuration was this -

-ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
+ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;

Safari 6.1.6 supports only TLS 1.0 (which is increasingly being turned off by servers concerned about the BEAST attack), and there's no error message apart from that generic "SSL error has occurred" in the Console.  You'd need a newer version of macOS to carry on using Safari on those sites.  If upgrading the OS is not an option (for example if you still need the older version of Xcode) then you could try Firefox 45.9.0 ESR, which uses TLS 1.2 (confirmed with www.HowsMySSL.com); that version of Firefox passed its end-of-life in mid-2017 (and more recent versions require a newer OS), but at least it's an improvement over Safari 6.1.6.  However I'd be more comfortable installing a modern OS alongside the Lion / Mountain Lion, or at least using VirtualBox to run a modern version of GNU/Linux inside it, and using an up-to-date browser from there.


Can not run Xcode 7.0.1 on MacBook Pro I can not run Xcode 7.0.1 on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013, 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, 20+GB of free space, OSX 10.10.5). I downloaded the DMG file from Apple, and can run it on my Mac mini (Late 2012, 16GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, 200+GB of free space, OSX 10.10.5), but can not run it on my MacBook. The DMG file seems intact and I can browse the contents of Xcode.app; it is seamlessly copied to /Applications folder. There is no error code or whatsoever, except the phrase "The application "Xcode" can't be opened."

Xcode 6.0.1 runs perfectly on my MacBook.

Any thoughts?

UPDATE

I tail ed /var/system/system.log as patrix suggested and here's an interesting line:

kernel[0]: exec of /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/MaxOS/Xcode denied since it was quarantined by Microsoft\x20Remote\x20Desktop and created without user consent, qtn-flags was 0x00000006

WTH?

Something similar happened to me when I first downloaded Xcode 7 onto my MacBook Pro. My solution was to copy the app onto my external hard drive, delete the copy on my internal drive, run the app on the external drive, then copy it back over to the internal drive. I've never had any problems with Xcode 7 since.


Is it legal and "workable" to use a Mac Pro as a thin server for Mac OS? I have a software company and my developers each have their own preferences for an OS (Mac, Linux based or Windows).

For windows I know you can use remote desktop and stuff. I know it is possible in Mac as well. But is it viable to let the employees that prefer Mac work from 1 thin server on a powerfull Mac Pro? If yes: How many should I expect to be able to work simultaneously? Does TightVNC as client give good results or is it tedious (slow / bad graphics)?

I like to dream that everyone can use all the computers available on every workplace, because they work remote and don't have to use a specific computer each time to access their programs and files.

Yes I can create network shares, but sometime someone who doesn't prefere to work on Mac still has to develop on one because of XCode for example and we could buy Macs for these situations it's not ideal just for that instance.

Can you use VNC (or ARD or some other remote desktop software) to remote into a server to do development work?

Short answer is "yes."

However, it is a royal PITA. I use VNC to administer my OS X machines on my gigabit LAN and I can tell you that the lag is infuriating.  Trying to do development work, I can only imagine it being a nightmare.

What worked for my developers was that we had several MBPs that would float around the department depending on the project.  For "quick" tasks VNC worked, but when they needed to be heads down on a project, they would check out a MBP and use it for the duration of their task.

The main thing to keep in mind is that people like what they like - Mac/Linux/Win.  The "hotelling" concept is a nice goal, but not feasible for devs who spend their lives in front of a monitor.  Ensuring work is accessible anywhere is the reason we have a cloud and GitHub.  These are areas you should investigate thoroughly before you spend time trying to re-architect your infrastructure.