Does iWork support OpenOffice filetypes? I was thinking about getting iWork as a replacement for OpenOffice.
Since I usually saved my files to the OpenOffice format (OpenDocument), I was wondering if it's possible to read these files with iWork. Most important would be reading of .odt (Text) and .ods (Spreadsheets). The ability to write these files isn't that important.

Saving the files to MS-Office first isn't an option though.

I also noticed that Quick-Look displays .odt files on a system that doesn't have OpenOffice installed so there's probably already some OpenDocument support built into OS X?

I just created some test documents (.odt, .ods, .odf) in OpenOffice and I was unable to open them in iWork. I was able, however, to open the .odt in TextEdit, which probably accounts for the Quick Look compatibility you mentioned.


Updating to 10.14.6 giving internet connection error While trying to download the update for my Mac, I am getting an error which indicates there is a problem with my internet connection. My internet connection is working fine, however. Tried using the default Software Update and also using the command line. Command line error below.

MacOs Mojave 10.14.5

sudo softwareupdate -i -a

Password:
Software Update Tool

Finding available software

Downloading macOS 10.14.6 Update
Downloaded macOS 10.14.6 Update
Preparing macOS 10.14.6 Update
Error downloading macOS 10.14.6 Update: An Internet connection is required to install macOS.
Done.

Error downloading updates.

I'd download the full combo updater from a web browser - that way you should be OK through retries & you know that you have the entire file safely on your Mac before committing to the actual update.

Google can always find these easily, using 'combo update 10.14.6' & it will always be first hit.

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2010


Big Sur terminal sometimes 5-second lag, 16in macbook pro update 5 issue seems to still be happening for another user (see comment in answer below) under macOS 11.2.3.
update 4 Looks like this issue in terminal is no longer happening after updating to 11.2.3. However, there's now a similar issue in Google Chrome where having multiple tabs open and then clicking a tab does nothing, but then moving the cursor will go to that tab (the expected behavior is obviously to go the tab immediately upon clicking the tab). The "Battery" settings under System Preferences now has a checkbox to enable/disable discrete graphics switching (not sure if it was there before) but disabling switching causes the Chrome tab problem to go away.
update 3 This just happened to me again when my macbook was at 100% battery, and plugged in. Is it possible that it's not due to the graphics switching?
Update 2 Looks like this is a known bug with the hybrid graphics of my MBP, as the answer below points out. Here's another thread. Interestingly, I haven't noticed any issues in other apps like Chrome or Safari that much, just in Terminal.
Update I notice that the lag seems to happen only when running on battery. Additionally, I've observed in even when not pressing return, for example when using Vim and just navigating around with hjkl, sometimes a single keypress would seem to not register, but then the second press would "flush" of them, or alternatively waiting about 5 seconds will "flush" the first press.
original
I'm using the default terminal in Big Sur using 2019 16 inch macbook pro. I'm on a clean install, with no changed settings or installed programs. Default shell settings.
Sometimes (maybe once every 15 min or so) when I input a command in terminal (e.g. ls or cd ~/Documents), and when I hit Return on my keyboard, the terminal seems to do nothing. If I press any key again, then the Return "goes through", along with the second key I pressed. Alternatively, if I just wait 5 seconds, the Return "goes through", and everything is fine.
Has anyone else noticed this terminal lag?

Update: confirmed issue still happens as of macOS 11.2 RC3
Exact same behavior here on a 16" 2019 MBP, starting from when I updated to macOS 11.0 and still occurring as of 11.2 beta 2.
Able to reproduce "on demand" by typing "ls" repeatedly in both iTerm2 as well as the built in terminal.app.
Root cause seems to be the Intel graphics driver, as disabling graphics switching or connecting an external monitor (which forces discrete graphics) eliminates the issue at the cost of battery life.


Drag & Drop from email to desktop not landing at designated spot. Finder opening when dragging to desktop When I drag an item (i.e. a jpeg) from my email to the desktop, the icon for said item appears all the way to the right of the screen as opposed to where it dropped it on the desktop. This only started happening recently. Also, When I drag the photo to the desktop a finder folder now opens whereas this didnt used to happen. any ideas would be greatly appreciated! thanks!

Your "Show View Options" may have been changed recently to sort items by name or date or size or kind or label.

Click anywhere on the desktop (except on any file/folder)
Press Cmd+J (or use the mouse to go to the Finder's View > Show View Options menu)
In the Sort by: dropdown in the dialog, choose either None or Snap to Grid
Now you'll be able to drop files at specific locations on the desktop


Fine to keep macbook on power for unlimited time? I just got a used Macbook Pro (retina) 2012 running El Capitan. I am keeping it charged and on all the time. Is there any harmful effect from doing so on the battery in the long term?

Technically no, there is no damage done to it. But it is still smart to let it unplug and fully drain the power to keep it in tip-top shape.


Not seeing help content of Windows apps in Parallels Configuration: OS X 10.6.x, Parallels-desktop 6, Windows 7

When I press F1 or the help button in any windows app (f.e. MS Office 2010, Delphi 2007/2010), Microsoft Help Viewer or Microsoft Document Viewer try to download content. Accepting this, or canceling, will both result in empty documents, sometimes at least showing an outline of the help file, but no content at all.

How can this be fixed?

Show me offline help ... results in a file not found error message (German).

Help in Notepad works as expected, it's only products installed after Windows that show this behavior. And I do have access to the web, I can call any website from within firefox and retrieve any document from the company network.

Installation of version 6.0.11992, the newest release of parallels desktop, fixed the problem. Installing a new release also reinstalled the parallels desktop tool and relinked the shared folders.

It took about 5 days for the release to be visible for the parallels updater after it was available. But once it was, all worked like a charm.

My problem took place over Christmas, and I was helped wonderfully through these days. I want to thank the people of Parallels support team. (I have to blame myself for spending my time with this problem instead of taking time to worship the king.)

What the problem was never really became clear. But thanks for your help.


How old would a Macbook Pro need to be in order to have a non-64bit Intel processor? My friend has a MBP that was bought 2 or 3 years ago, and I need to help him prepare some software to run. What are the chances he won't be able to boot from a 64bit Linux live USB flash drive?

I'd recommend he check rather than assume based on age. Here are directions on How to tell if your Intel-based Mac has a 32-bit or 64-bit processor

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3696


Built-in or FOSS GUI application for generating a file hash I would like to know if there's a built-in GUI application in Mac OS X that can generate file hashes (Disk Utility?). If there isn't such a built-in application, does a FOSS alternative exist?  I can accept any application that can generate a file hash as CRC, MD5, or better in the SHA realm.

Additionally, showing how this is done in the application would be a bonus.

If you want to find a method of converting general CLI scripts to the GUI, take a look at Platypus. Using this application, you can create GUI wrappers around CLI utilities. It's fairly straightforward to make a shasum or md5 wrapper that can allow drag and drop.

However, there are existing applications available to show file hashes (see Allan's answer).


What is the maximum number of spaces on Sierra? My MacBook runs Sierra 10.12.4 and I have 16 spaces, but there appears to be no way to get more. I find 16 spaces too few. Is 16 the absolute maximum or can I get more? If so how?

Officially, 16 is the limit. A workaround to create more (which may be fixed later) is to enable ‘Displays have separate Spaces’ in Mission Control preference pane, then create spaces on an external display and disconnect the display, which moves the Spaces to the primary display.


Turn off WiFi if there is no user initiated network access I'd like to limit my exposure to the WiFi signal of my laptop while it is sitting on my belly or lower while being in bed.

Is there a way to auto-turn off the WiFi directly after a website has finished loading? And to only turn it back on when I click another link?

This is neither practical nor feasible.
Not practical.
So, in your scenario, the WiFi connection drops as soon as you load your webpage and theoretically, the computer is now waiting for you to click on something to reconnect.  Here are just two (off the top of my head) problems with that scenario:
Auto Refresh
A small piece of code embedded within the meta tags of the HTML code will auto refresh that page:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5" >

This is equivalent to hitting refresh.  How is the OS supposed to distinguish between a user generated refresh and one generated in meta?  That's a lot of keyboard trapping.
HTTP Sessions.  Depending on the website you visit, they may be employing the use of cookies that track user sessions - especially so if you log in.  Once you disconnect from the network, your session will expire requiring a new login.  There is no "trapping" on the client side for this because it's a server generated session/cookie.

Not feasible.
For all intents and purposes your network settings and your browser session are "sandboxed" from each other.  Could you imagine the chaos you could cause by having an app or (worse) a browser's extension with the ability to affect the state of hardware based on what you click?  This would be an attacker's dream scenario.
Additionally, WiFi (and Bluetooth) antennas are in the LCD enclosure, not the bottom of the laptop.  So, unless you are wearing shorts made of lead or lined with a highly reflective material (reflecting out, of course), you are fully exposed to WiFi signals since they are omni directional.


Extremely slow 'processing file' times for Apps in iTunes 10.6 Since installed iTunes 10.6 on my MacBook whenever I update an app, the download is speedy but it is taking between 4 and 8 minutes in the indeterminate 'processing file' state. I've never seen this behavior before. What could be causing this?

I too have seen this on multiple macs with multiple OS / iTunes versions in the last few days. No amount of client changes seem to resolve it (the downloads themselves don't need to be cleared, clearing them doesn't help, and the situation does resolve itself in time with no user intervention. Usually the wait is 5 to 15 minutes to clear in my experience.) It seems to happen at the same times when my iOS devices struggle to re-download past purchases from the store.

My guess is you are seeing a delay in the code signing checks which are being queued on the server side to wait for their turn. It's clear that the download is very rapid and the app is done downloading the app.

My guess is Apple now serves identical apps (unsigned to your account) to iTunes on your computer. Then your computer requests that that app get signed to run under your Apple ID and those requests are queued and that is why nothing is happening on iTunes while "processing" is taking place.

I have seen this come and go and presume it's a capacity issue on the Apple server side and not anything new or changed on our iTunes computers.

Anecdotally, there have been all sorts of errors and slowness in reaching the store lately. I would love to see the server logs for loads and error rates to know if this suspicion is correct. If my guess is correct, this will only happen when the download volume exceeds the servers that are running to do the signing. If so, it will be easy for Apple to spin up more signers as needed to meet demand in the future (as well as scale back to save costs when demand is lower than say iPad launch weekend).


Safari not displaying text I have a fresh Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) install, with every update available installed, on a iMac (2011). Safari (9.0) is acting up. Firefox is working just as it should.

I have tried the usual suspects, disk repair and deleting the cache to no avail. I have but a few apps installed, Logic X and a couple of other music apps, but the system is super fresh, it should not act up like this. Any ideas?

I would recommend clearing your font cache using OnyX and rebooting to clear things up.


Memory upgrade for MBP I'm looking to upgrade my 15'' 2011 MBP from 4 GB to 8 GB. The memory upgrade on the Apple Store is 200$, apparently it can be done for ~100 $ quite easily.

I've seen this 2x8GB kit from Crucial: Crucial 2x4GB memory kit.

Do you think it's a good choice ? Any better ideas ?

The Crucial kit is one of the better ones out there.  I've used their modules in the past.  However, on my new MBP, I decided to get the 8 GB from Apple.

I'd go with the Crucial if you want good quality and great value.

Here is a video showing installation
http://www.ramfor.com/ram-memory/apple-macbook-pro-early-2011-crucial-memory-upgrade/


numbers STOCKH function for historical stock prices The function STOCK("WTR") in numbers 6.2.1 works well, it returns as a value today 51.94US$ and it returns also an overview window.

However, when I use STOCKH("WTR",0,"29 Mar 2020") it returns "The requested historical date is invalid or is in the future".

a) I am assuming the abbreviation "WTR" is correct, as it works with the STOCK function. Is there a list of available options? -- I guess it is powered by yahoo, and there is a "WTR" in yahoo

b) Would "WTR.N" specify the stock exchange in New York City?

c) I've tried various flavours of the date string. However, it either tells me it's an invalid string or the above error message.

(d) for other stocks this works well, e.g., for "APC.F"

The chart data for WTR on Yahoo Finance – which is indeed the data source – stops at February 24th, 2020.

So, there indeed seems to be no historical data for WTR after this date.

If you use "Feb 24 2020" as the date, Numbers shows the closing price perfectly fine.

Edit:

(a) Please note that STOCK("WTR") returns the price from January 30th, 2020.

(d) As a sidenote, STOCKH("APC.F",0,"29 Mar 2020") returns an error for me, which is correct as there is no trading in Frankfurt on weekends.

The function browser description recommends error handling by using IFERROR in front of the STOCKH function.


Can you make Mac's Menu Bar hide? We all know you can simply click "turn hiding on" in Dock's Preferences, but can you do the same thing to Mac's Menu Bar?

As of OS X El Capitan (10.11), this functionality is built in to the operating system. Go to System Preferences > General  and turn on "Automatically hide and show the menu bar."

Here is how it works:


What input voltages does the 85W Magsafe 2 power adapter accept? I have an 85W Magsafe 2 (A1242, MD506LL) power adapter which has been happily driving my MacBook Pro from US and Canadian 110V AC power. I am about to take this power adapter to Europe. Will I be able to plug this adapter into a plug adapter (from North American type B socket to Europlug type C plug), which passes through mains voltage and frequency unchanged, and plug that into normal outlets in Italy, Austria, Croatia, and the UK (type G plug for the UK of course) and have it operate correctly?

What input voltages and frequencies does the 85W Magsafe 2 power adapter accept?

I have been unable to find definitive specs on the adapter itself or on Apple's website. I would hope the answer is "110-240V 50/60Hz", as it is for my cheap USB power bricks, but I'm not going to plug in my expensive MacBook Pro based on hope. I'd appreciate pointers to definitive information.

"Input: 100-240V~ 1.5A 50-60 Hz Output:20V [DC] 4.25A max"

The answer is in fact on the side of the adapter. There is text on the plug end and on one of the narrow sides of the adapter. The input information is on the narrow side, in low-contrast light-grey fine print on a white background (thank you, Apple). With a light and a magnifier, my old eyes were finally able to make it out.

"[DC]" refers to a symbol with a solid line next to a dashed line, meaning "direct current".


Watched screen recording but it's not saved to the desktop I was screen recording. After stopping the record, I watched it then exited. This usually automatically saves to desktop, but I can't find it anywhere.
I have looked for it in the autosave information and nothing was there. I also tried recording again and it did automatically save to desktop but somehow that first video didn't. Any thoughts on where it could be?

Check ~/Library/ScreenRecordings/ (the Library folder in your home directory).


Error installing lxml on Mac Snow Leopard I am getting what seems to be a common error when trying to install lxml on MacOS 10.6:

Building lxml version 2.3.
Building without Cython.
Using build configuration of libxslt 1.1.24
/usr/libexec/gcc/powerpc-apple-darwin10/4.2.1/as: assembler (/usr/bin/../libexec/gcc/darwin/ppc/as or /usr/bin/../local/libexec/gcc/darwin/ppc/as) for architecture ppc not installed
Installed assemblers are:
/usr/bin/../libexec/gcc/darwin/x86_64/as for architecture x86_64
/usr/bin/../libexec/gcc/darwin/i386/as for architecture i386
src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:161594: fatal error: error writing to -: Broken pipe
compilation terminated.
lipo: can't open input file: /var/tmp//cc7Ypl70.out (No such file or directory)
error: Setup script exited with error: command 'gcc-4.2' failed with exit status 1

I have tried several of the suggestions I could find (setting archflags, linking to gcc-4.0) but still get the same error every time. I have Xcode 4 installed. Any help appreciated.

RESOLVED with: sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64" easy_install lxml

No thanks to the question migration. It was beter suited for StackOverflow.

There is a workaround here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/lxml/+bug/790518

  export ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64"


How to play a sound from the command line AND direct the output I am aware of the afplay command to play an audio file. When I do that it plays through the current selected Sound Output. If I have my headphones in, it plays on the headphones. How can I specify that the sound plays over the Built-In Speakers?

In the Sounds System Preferences you can select the Alerts tab and direct the output of the Alert to a specific output. I am looking to do the same but with my own customs sounds triggered by the command line.

If you are looking for your computer to play sounds or words you can use the "say" command on the terminal. Just type

  say dog

and the computer responds with dog over whatever speakers you have chosen from the Sound selection under system preferences. Go to system preferences and choose the Sound icon. When that opens you can select options for what plays the sound on your computer. One option is the internal speakers.


On an iPhone, how can I tell when an accurate GPS position has been acquired? When taking photos I like having my pictures geo-tagged.

How can I tell when an accurate GPS location is available?

Launch the Maps app and wait for the blue orb to pulse which indicates a full GPS lock. No other way to do this from within the Camera app.


when it say "Built-in battery", then does it mean that "battery is not user-replacable"? Read this line in iPhone 2G specification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_2G

Built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery 3.7 V 1400 mAh

So, "Built-in battery" means "battery is not user-replacable"?

Is that true?

Or, "built-in" means "hard-welded" (ie fixed forever)
& "not user-replacable" means "user can replace if using special tool but Apple does not encourage user to do that"

I presume you mean the original iPhone, and the 2G is referring to the antenna capabilities, rather than the 2nd Generation iPhone (which was the 3G.... yeah, confusing)?

Either way, all iPhones have a built in battery.  The wording is there to suggest that it is not user replaceable via a simple swap in/out method by removing a panel or similar user appropriate action that does not require disassembly.  The iPhone 5 still uses broadly similar language "Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery".

You can swap it out, but it's not a simple job.  Just like cars have a built in engine, you can get that sucker out, but you need the tools, parts and skills for the job.  If I recall, there is a lot og glue involved in earlier iPhone models.  And sticky tape.  It's not just a case of unscrewing some stuff and swapping.  But even then, the glue can be removed, the tape replaced etc etc.  The phrasing user-replaceable or more commonly user-serviceable often means it's a supported solution, and there is no way that taking any iPhone to bits is covered under warranty.

So, in short, built in means it's not meant to be removed, but that doesn't mean you cannot do it if you tried hard enough.


What is the server URL thru which Apple updates occur? I would like to know what is the URL thru which Apple updates occur.

I need this to setup caching for my Squid Proxy server.

According to this Apple KB Document, ports 80 and 8088 are used for SUS.


Moving the current window to another desktop only with keyboard and mouse By desktop I don't mean like desktop on an external monitor, I just mean the virtual desktops that Mac provides
The mouse I am using is also a PC mouse, so not a Magic mouse or track pad.
The keyboard tho, it is the Apple keyboard.

So How Can I move the active window to another desktop ?

Grab the window at the top so you can move it around the screen. Then move your cursor, while still holding and dragging the window, against the side towards the desktop you want to move it to. After a short pause the desktop will change a the window is now on another desktop.

In something more succinct:

Grab the window in desktop 1 with cursor
Use cursor to drag the window over against the right side of the screen (so you can't move the cursor any further to the right)
After a short delay the desktop will change to Desktop 2
Release the window.


MBP works fine but not visible on network I have a strange problem, that for the life of me I can't seem to resolve.  I'm hardly a newbie to this type of stuff, which is making the lack of success even more frustrating/embarrassing :)

I have a pretty much pure-Apple setup:  two AirportExtreme routers (one acting as a range extender for the first), two MacbookPros, two iPhones, iPad etc.  Love my toys.

However my one MBP does not seem to be visible from the network.  I can ping anything from anything else, with the exception of this one MBP.  The machine is of course connected and working fine.  It can also ping everything on the network.

I've used a static IP so that I can be sure I'm pinging the right machine.  I've also checked that the firewall is (Preferences -> Security -> Firewall) turned off.

What else do I need to check to diagnose this?

So, Broken MBP can ping anywhere, including other machines in your network, but can it ping itself?  (You have to read that with the "Will it Blend?" sound)

The rest of the machines can ping each other, but not the Broken MBP.

Am I correct?

Does this only happen via Wi-Fi? Have you tried using a Cable?

What happens if you turn ON the firewall and make sure that in "Advanced" the machine is not in Stealth Mode:

(Security -> Firewall -> Advanced)


What are api.smoot.apple.com and other hosts my iPhone is secretly talking to? Looking through some log files today I found something strange :

TCP_MISS/200 4931 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.253 -
TCP_MISS/200 4656 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.253 -
TCP_MISS/200 4656 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.253 -
TCP_MISS/200 4931 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.253 -
TCP_MISS/200 4629 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.253 -
TCP_MISS/200 4656 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.250 -
TCP_MISS/200 4930 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.250 -
TCP_MISS/200 4656 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.250 -
TCP_MISS/200 4931 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.250 -
TCP_MISS/200 4656 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.248 -
TCP_MISS/200 5206 CONNECT api.smoot.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.252.11.248 -
TCP_MISS/200 6959 CONNECT bookkeeper.itunes.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/23.217.226.217 -
TCP_MISS/200 6959 CONNECT bookkeeper.itunes.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/23.217.226.217 -
TCP_MISS/200 1041 CONNECT bookkeeper.itunes.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/23.217.226.217 -
TCP_MISS/200 6959 CONNECT bookkeeper.itunes.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/23.217.226.217 -
TCP_MISS/200 1057 CONNECT bookkeeper.itunes.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/23.217.226.217 -
TCP_MISS/200 22836 CONNECT init.itunes.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/23.217.226.217 -
TCP_MISS/200 22868 CONNECT init.itunes.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/23.217.226.217 -
TCP_MISS/200 5155 CONNECT xp.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.154.66.107 -
TCP_MISS/200 5155 CONNECT xp.apple.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/17.154.66.107 -

Apparently api.smoot.apple.com is used for Spotlight search suggestions in Yosemite, except during the timeframe the log was taken I didn't even pull down on my home screen to open the search, and the spotlight suggestions are disabled in the phone's search settings - for the other hosts they are linked to iTunes but no info on what they do exactly...

I did some testing and it seems like every time I unlock my phone after a bit of inactivity, or shortly after I lock it again a request to that host is fired and gets a response with an average size of 5kb...

All these URLs were called when the device was idle, freshly unlocked and on the home screen with no apps in background.

Can anyone shed some light on this ?

Regarding api.smoot.apple.com, from Hacker News. Note this is regarding Yosemite, but I would imagine it similarly applies to Mobile Safari on iOS, especially since the hostname is the same (emphasis mine):

There are two "Spotlight Suggestions":

"Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari
"Spotlight Suggestions" in Spotlight

Both query the same servers, both use the same name, and both return the same information.
A reasonable person might believe that, having followed Apple's instructions for disabling "Spotlight Suggestions" (the Spotlight kind), they'd disabled "Spotlight Suggestions" (the Safari kind) -- especially if you didn't actually see any suggestions appear in Safari (I didn't!).
Mark Rowe, Safari developer at Apple: "That’s probably a fair complaint." https://twitter.com/bdash/status/524005838743035904
...
The network query posted here is actually a search metrics POST, not a live search query, and it's used as metrics for local and remote search performance.


Increasing the size of all content I'm looking for something that works like "display size" on Android, "change the size of text, apps, and other items" on Windows or "zoom level" on Linux Mint.
"Text size" doesn't cut it because it leaves a lot of things unscaled and accessibility zoom - well, I'm sure it's nice for severely impaired people but I just want to scale up everything by something like 25 to 50% without having to need to pan around.
(I'm using an iPad Pro with iOS 14.4.2)

On your iPad go to settings. From settings go to Display and Brightness. Go to the page on the right and move to bottom of page. There you will see View. Tap on that header and you'll get a page called Display Zoom. Select if you want Standard or Zoomed display. After checking Zoomed hit the set button. You may have to restart ipad. This increases size of the displayed items but i don't know if its 20% or not. There may be other ways to fine tune this but I don't know how.


How to access katakana on the Japanese keyboard for the iPhone? I have the Japanese keyboard enabled and am able to input hiragana and kanji fine, but I can find no way to input katakana. How can this be done?

After keying the hiragana, You should always find the katakana somewhere in the suggestion bar above the keyboard.


Run script on login *as root* on Catalina In this question, a response details that com.apple.loginwindow login hooks can be used to run script as root on user login.

I have followed the instructions by using

  sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /Users/Shared/Test.sh

except nothing is executed on login. My script makes use of a small background process and nothing else and works by typing it into my terminal so I am lead to believe that it simply isn't possible anymore.

If this method (as it is already deprecated) no longer works, are there any method that currently work for running login scripts as root?

I recommend using crontab.

Open the root user crontab (this will create a new crontab file if you don't have it):

sudo crontab -e

Add you command, with the time you want it to run in front (if you want to do it at a specific time, you can use this handy tool):

@reboot /Users/Shared/Test.sh

Exit and save the file.

That's it! Your command should now run whenever your computer starts up. While this isn't technically the same as on login, it should be enough for almost all intents and purposes.


No bookmark icon next to bookmark item in Safari 8.0.7 (Yosemite 10.10.4) In Safari 8.0.7 (Yosemite 10.10.4) when I hit "⇧ ⌘ B" my Favorites Bar appears and I can see my bookmarks as well as all folders but one thing I'm really missing are favicon right before bookmarks.

As you can see, Safari is able to display them under "Edit Bookmarks" (⌥ ⌘ B). Is there a way to display them in the place I highlighted green dots on the screen above?

Am I missing something? Does it require additional extension?

Thanks for any hints.

I too miss that, I actually use Chrome at the moment, and it was one of the big things I missed.

Unfortunately there is no way to recover this behaviour, Safari is a much faster browser option on OS X than Chrome or Firefox at the moment.

I choose to use Chrome still, but you might just get used to it...


Limit - not disable - Remember joined Wi-Fi locations I'm building an entirely new corporate infrastructure - ATM I have ~200 macs expanding to over 600 in the next year.

I need to configure the Wi-Fi with two locations:
Corporate Network
Off - Site

I'd like the Corporate Network location to - not remember joined networks and the Off-site location to be able to remember if they're at home then roaming.

The reason is - when in the office - there are open access points at nearby buildings that the Macs sometimes pick up - therefore the system doesn't join the corporate Wi-Fi. The users find they're unable to route anywhere and open a ticket

They're all on 10.13.6

By default - the remember joined networks apply to any location.

Can I do this with a configuration profile?

If so - how? I haven't found the correct commands

Or - is there a - defaults write - statement to do such as thing

I use profiles to set the default WiFi networks, (with the help of an apple server)
This way, users don't have to add any networks, apart from their home WiFi.

I also have a little python script to re-order the WiFi so that "my" networks are always the top two ones. This scripts runs as a logout script also via a profile.
Script that I use:
https://gist.github.com/pudquick/fcbdd3924ee230592ab4

As far as I know, you can not prevent the Mac from joining "some" networks only,
but perhaps you can with a 3rd party tool.


Holding down backspace on iPhone Holding down backspace on iPhone deletes about six characters per second.

However, after about three consecutive seconds of holding down backspace, entire words start disappearing by the pair at a rate of about three pairs per second!

How can I disable the "feature" that starts chomping two words at a time a few times per second when holding down backspace on my iPhone?

iOS 7.1.2, iPhone 5s

There is no way to disable the fast delete. There is an undo command, however, for when you've deleted too much. When the keyboard is up, shake the phone. A popup asks if you want to undo.


How do I check how many RAM slots I have in use? I own a 2010 13" macbook, and I'd like to do a RAM update from 2gb to 4gb.
Before I buy brand new 2x2gb ram, I'd like to make sure that my macbook has 2x1gb or 1x2gb ram slots.  I mean, if both slots are used or if there's only 1 used.
Is there a command line to have that information?

The System Information app has this information (and a lot of other info about your computer). Access it by going to the Apple menu (top left of your screen), selecting About This Mac, and clicking the More Info button.

Fire up the app and click on the Memory tab. You'll get a visual representation of how much memory you have and how it's installed. There is a rectangle for each memory slot, and each rectangle will be labeled "Empty", or with the capacity of the chip inserted.

For even more info, go to File-> System Report.
In the new window that appears, click Memory in the list on the left. It will show you the number of slots and what's in each one. In the below screenshot, there is one empty bank. It's the one with the Size, Type, Speed, and Status as Empty.
If none of yours say empty, you've got something in every slot.

Note that if you have an older version of OS X than Lion, you won't have the visual representation. You can open System Profiler (/Applications/Utilities) and follow the directions from the second half of this answer.


Keynote version 8.3 how to alter image opacity.. only shows gallery/arrange and not style tab? Please can you help?  I want to fade out an image on a keynote presentation but in the version I have (which is 8.3) there isn't the style tab.  How can I change the opacity of the image?  Is there a tool elsewhere within keynote?
Thanks so much!

To fade an image in Keynote, use the Dissolve animation.

Steps:

Select the desired image
Go to Animations
Select Build Out
Choose the Dissolve animation
Set the desired timing and whether to animate on click or with another action

For more information on animations, check out the Animate Objects in the Help menu.


How to cut message "This computer has been scheduled to go to sleep automatically" and send it to sleep immediately? It's about a Mac mini connected to a touchscreen running at a public school, displaying a browser in kiosk mode. I want the Mac to go to scheduled sleep after school is over.

Energy Saving PrefPane lets me set up a sleeping schedule. When the time has come that scheduled sleep should start, a prompt is displayed with that message mentioned in the subject, counting from 10min to 0 plus allowing users to abort that process.

To prevent anyone from aborting that process I'ld like to cut that message and send the Mac to sleep immediately when the time has come.

Is there any possibility to leave that message out?

Or any other alternatives?

launchd (ref) is the preferred method for scheduling events in OS X, as opposed to using cron.

Here is a method for putting an OS X computer to sleep at a specified time using built in OS X tools without the override alert prompt. Waking the computer up can still be handled via System Preferences → Energy Saver → Schedule.

First create the following shell script in /usr/local/bin named sleepnow.sh:

#!/bin/sh
pmset sleepnow

Then create a launchd plist file for scheduling a script to be run daily. It would look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.myschoolname.sleep</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/sh</string>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/sleepnow.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>14</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>00</integer>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

You would probably want to put this in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ with the filename org.myschoolname.sleep.plist. Adjust the time and name as needed.

You can load the plist using the command sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.myschoolname.sleep.plist or reboot the computer and it should be loaded on system startup.

If you are not comfortable with using launchd files and command line tools then search for the paid OS X app named Lingon which handles the creation of the plist file and loaded it.

Here is a good reference on pmset, which is the command line tool for managing power setting in OS X.

Although pmset can be used to set sleep and wake schedules, you'll still get that alert box on scheduled sleep. The pmset sleepnow command causes the computer to go to sleep immediately without an alert.


Using slower memory? Mac mini 2011 uses 1333 MHz 1.5v DDR3 memory. My "new" 2012 mini uses 1600 MHz 1.35v DDR3 memory.

I'd like to reuse the slower memory in the newer mini. I'm not adverse to trying this but I'm looking for some assurance that there's minimal risk of damage.

If it doesn't work I'll just go ahead and buy new memory, but if this could work (the processor might just tap it's foot waiting around a bit longer for memory access?) I'd rather save the $$.

Thanks,
Dave

Generally speaking, you cannot use memory in a system that is slower than the memory that the system is designed for. If you put faster memory into a slow memory slot, the memory is supposed to run a the slower speed (I have had mixed success with this), but putting slower memory into a fast memory slot will not work because the memory will not be able to get the information to the CPU as fast as it is expected.

In your particular case, the "old" machine uses DDR3-1333 memory and the "new" machine uses the faster, lower voltage DDR3L-1600 memory. A page at Dell explains that "DDR3L is a dual voltage capable memory SoDIMM, which supports operation at both 1.5V and 1.35V." So you could use DDR3L modules in places that ask for a DDR3 module, since it can operate at 1.5V, however "DDR3 is a single voltage capable memory SoDIMM, which supports 1.5V operation only."

http://www.dell.com/support/article/ca/en/cabsdt1/SLN153768/EN

The macmini5,1 machine uses an Intel Mobile Core i5 "Sandy Bridge" (I5-2415M) CPU and the macmini6,1 uses an Intel Mobile Core i5 "Ivy Bridge" (I5-3210M) processor

http://ark.intel.com/products/53449/Intel-Core-i5-2415M-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-2_90-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/67355/Intel-Core-i5-3210M-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz-rPGA

The Intel website does indicate that the newer 3210M CPU does have support for both DDR3 and DDR3L, but I cannot tell if Apple's other systems on the MacMini motherboard would support it.

A component designed for a higher voltage seems unlikely to cause any electrical damage if put into a lower voltage system (it will draw lower current at the lower voltage, which seems unlikely to cause any damage), but running it at the "wrong" voltagae, and at a higher speed than it is designed for, seems very unlikely to be workable.

If you do try it out, let us know how it works.


Mac mini can't connect to my corporate SMB server. Was working some days ago I'm at work, and my Mac mini has stopped being able to connect to the corporate SMB server shared folders.

If I try Finder > Connect to Server (using the URL stored there from previous successful connections), macOS Sierra complains with a more than useless "generic error".

In my Console logs I can't detect any error related with samba (where should I be looking into?)

There are clonic Mac mini machines on the same floor (my coworkers' ones) and they can connect to this server without any problem.

If I ping this machine from my command line, I can see it perfectly.

If I try this on the command line:

smbutil view smb://192.168.XXX.XXX/docs/

macOS Sierra yields this:

smbutil: server connection failed: No such file or directory

If I try that very exact command line onto a coworker machine, it just lists the shared resources hanging from that SMB server...

Any hint? Maybe it's something related to some service being disabled by mistake in my Mac mini?

I don't have access to my company Samba Server machine and configuration.

I've read and googled many pages around and I'm more than lost.

In case it might be useful, I use MacPorts. It might seem a random thing to add here, but maybe I'm not aware of some library I might have installed that might be known to be troublesome with the official OS X SAMBA client.

SUCCESS!!

After 2 months of (moderate) misery I've finally found the reason SMB didn't work with my Sierra Mac Mini.

TL;DR The reason was this installed kext:

com.intel.kext.intelhaxm (6.0.1) 8FF2C637-0A5E-367E-B007-5B08655B1E8A <7 5 4 3 1>

You can check if you have it installed with the following command from an ordinary Terminal:

  kextstat | grep -iv apple

In case you have it (and in case you're also suffering SMB connectivity problems) you can uninstall it typing the following command, again, from an ordinary Terminal (no need to boot in Single-User mode):

  sudo /Library/Extensions/intelhaxm.kext/Contents/Resources/uninstall.sh

Follow the on-screen instructions, REBOOT, and you're done :)

Doing that you'll lose hardware acceleration inside your Android emulators, but they will work in software-rendering mode. Not brilliant, but it's something. You can reinstall HAXM in case you really need Hardware Acceleration for Android emulators again (but be prepared to lose SMB connectivity again (?)).

Long answer:

If you use your Sierra Mac to develop Android stuff you'll probably have installed the typical random needed modules (Android SDK's, emulators, drivers, etc...)
The thing is, "Intel HAXM accelerator" is one of the typical drivers you install if you want proper hardware acceleration of your emulators for Android developing.
Well, apparently, and believe it or not, that driver is not compatible with using SMB under macOS Sierra, at least with my MAC.

Sierra SMB subsystem and HAXM are apparently unrelated pieces of software, but it seems they are somehow incompatible between them. In case you have SMB problems you'll have to decide which of the two you really need more:

SMB or proper fast emulators for Android development.

I chose SMB  :)

Thanks EVERYONE in this question, answering, commenting, etc... specially Brett who, after many weeks, put me after the correct lead.


Cusor won't react to hyperlinks when using Safari Problem Descriptions:

Normally when hovering the mouse cursor on a hyperlink, the cursor turns into a little hand, and the link will show the CSS hover effect. But a weird Safari bug kept this from happening.

It's been almost 4 months since I first encounter this issue. Finally I found the potential cause:

Enter Safari full-screen mode.
Click any website from Bookmarks (including Favorites).
In the opened website, turn on and off the Bookmark Sidebar once.
From now on, any website that opened from Bookmarks won't trigger hover effect.

Here's the same in action:

What I've tried to solve this:

Empty cache, clear history, remove all plugins, delete relevant plist file, quit all the other apps, but to no avail.
Installed latest Safari Technology Preview, repeat step 1, but to no avail.
Created another admin account, problem persists.
Repaired disk permission in Recovery Mode, didn't fix the issue.

I am using a MacBook Pro 15, 2018, running macOS Mojave 10.14.5 (18F203). Safari version 12.1.1.

There's nothing in the release notes that would indicate this has been fixed, so it's likely a new bug. I don't do Mac OS development, but for this to work, Safari has to tell the OS 'hey, change the mouse pointer when you're over this area.'

Some things you might try:

Reset NVRAM and/or PRAM
If you have multiple monitors, unplug all but the primary one, and restart the system.
Change the size of the mouse pointer; that might force the pointer system to reset.
Reinstall the OS (Bonus: this reinstalls Safari.)
Consider updating the firmware on the monitors you have. (Instructions and links will be manufacturer-specific.)

Update: Looks like it's settable via CSS, so you've probably got a mix of buggy javascript, CSS, and maybe a bug in Safari. Here's a JSFiddle that illustrates how it works.


Analyze the EQ curve for audio coming from the Lightning port of an iOS device I did some googling and was pretty surprised to find nothing out there on this subject.
I listen to music in my car via my iPhone plugged into my car's USB port.  I have always been able to tell that the EQ curve on the iOS audio output is lacking in certain frequencies, but now that I've added good speakers and an amp to my car, it's very apparent.
What's the best way to analyze the EQ curve coming out of the iPhone?  My amp has DSP built-in to it, and if I can see the EQ curve as it is, using some pink noise, I can make adjustments in the amp to try and flatten it out.
I have a Windows PC and Mac, but as of yet, I can not figure out how to plug the iPhone into the USB port of either computer and actually get it to play audio into the computer.  Else I would just use some RTA software and do it that way.

Firstly, I doubt it's the phone, unless you have a user EQ curve applied, so I wouldn't start by trying to measure the phone's output, I'd measure how the in-car is dealing with it.
Do you have a good, flat mic you could use on another device as a reference?
This is the kind of task, if I wanted accuracy, I'd just get the phone playing back some quantifiable white or pink noise as though it was an iTunes song on a loop, then measure the result on another device; tweak the EQ curve on either phone or in-car as you go.
tbh, though, it's the kind of task I would normally do just by ear [I'm a retired sound engineer so I'm not too bad at it;) especially for something like a car, where road noise is going to be a huge influence. I'd do the initial test & tweak stationary with engine off; again with engine on & re-balance, then drive a while & listen; park up & mod to suit the noise difference. Rinse & repeat until happy.
Watch out for if your in-car has any kind of 'loudness' control, where bass is emphasised at lower volumes. these can be tricky to fight against work with…. and flatten any EQ curve already applied, at least to start with.
I've never noticed any iPhone/Pod/Pad to be anything other than 'flat' or at least within decent tolerance so long as there's no EQ curve set by the user [& boy, have I seen some massive fails programmed in by users thinking they're 'improving' the sound]. It's usually the in-car that's the issue.
For a semi-related issue, see my answer on How to do speaker correction on a MacBook Pro Retina where I set out some dramatic curves to fix cheap computer speakers ;)


Reinstall mac os x 10.10 yosemite; never had mac os license assigned to my icloud account Recently I found an old MacBook, probably from 2009 at my company's storage place. My boss allowed me to take it and I really want to try it out.

The thing is, when I try to reinstall mac os with Recovery boot (command + R) I have to login into my iCloud account. After I do it, it says that the service is currently unavailable. The thing to mention is that I never had any mac os assigned to my iCloud account. I've read some forums, but I want to be sure.

Should I buy a license for some Mac OS on apple's site and then try to login again and then it would work?

Thank you.

It may be asking you for the iCloud account that was originally used on the machine.  Try to get the iCloud account/password that was originally used on the machine, if it was a company machine, and de-register it with that iCloud account so you can register it on yours.

There may be no need to buy a license.  If the current OS is Mavericks or higher, upgrading is free.  If it is older than you should buy a license.


How to prevent burst photos in camera timer? I can tap the upper-central "live photos" (short video) icon button to assure live mode is disabled.
I can assure I'm switched to "Photo" and not "Video" or "Square" or whatever.
I can tap HDR to "auto" or "off" ("on" is not available for front-facing lens).
I can set the timer to three seconds or ten seconds.
I can try rear-facing or front-facing lens.
I can try a short tap, long tap, or double-tap of the shutter button.

But I can't seem to stop the "burst photo" mode when using the timed photo option.

I don't want to have to choose between ten "burst" shots for every single timed snapshot I take.

I also looked in device Settings / Photos & Camera, and I don't see anything relevant there.

Am I missing something? Thank you.

iPhone SE

iOS 9.3.2

The only way to stop burst mode during timer photos is to turn the flash On.  When the flash is On the camera will only take 1 picture.

My recommendation is to provide feedback to Apple here and let them know how you feel about this limitation.


How can i get my iPhoto pictures back, when they are all deleted? So my computers been running really slowly the last couple of weeks, and been crashing down (or I have been forced to restart it alot)…
I came across my iPhoto (11) library, which wasn't working. When i opened it, it said something caused iPhoto not to work properly and it gave me a command (Hold down option and command and press on iPhoto), which gave me 4 options. They were something like 1) Rebuild Thumbnails 2) Repair database 3)Rebuild database and i don't remember the 4th one. None of the first 3 were working, iPhoto just crashed. So i choose the one called "Rebuild database", and it started doing that. When that was done, all my iPhoto pictures were gone. And i think i had about over 10.000 photos from many years… so its pretty annoying and extremely depressing, if i can't recover them. I never have figured out how to use "Time Machine", so i haven't backed it up on that i think….Do i have any other options? Can i in some way take my Macbook Pro back in time a couple of days and get my pictures back?
Would really help if you have an idea, or if you know that it's not possible, everything would help since I'm not the most technical girl when it comes Macbook Pro's and problems like this…
:))

First: Nothing is lost. Yet. It is only hidden from plain view.

Next, the file and menu names below might not be correct. I am doing this from a German OS, and I did not want to reboot just for the filenames.

iPhoto keeps your photos in a subfolder, named "iPhoto Library" of the "Pictures" folder in the user directory. You need to control-click that folder (it actually looks like a file, but it is a folder, trust me!)

Then you will see a popup menu, and the third entry from the top ("show database" or something like that) is what you need. It will open the folder and display its content. One of the subfolders is called "Database", another is called "Masters". The Masters folder contains more subfolders, one each for each year of photos. Inside you will find subfolders for the months and inside again for the days. There you will find all your unchanged photos. If you rotated, cropped or modified them in any way, those photos are in the Database folder. I can only encourage you to explore them and copy all what you want to preserve to an external drive, so it can be added to iPhoto again.

But please fix the cause of the slowness and the crashes first! If your hard drive is dying, make a full copy and work on that to recover your photos.


Is this launchd plist broken or is it just me? I was reading a post about using Bittorrent Sync on OS X that includes a launchd plist that's supposed to keep the app running in the event that it crashes. It doesn't seem to work, though, since I've had the app crash and not relaunch. I'm looking for help fixing the plist.

The plist looks like this:

<?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>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Crashed</key>
        <true/>
        <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>sync.com.tjluoma.bittorrentsync</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/open</string>
        <string>-W</string>
        <string>-a</string>
        <string>BitTorrent Sync</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

The "clever" bit is using /usr/bin/open to launch the app, with -W to make sure that open waits for the app to exit. But I think that's also why it doesn't actually work. If I'm reading this right, the app will only relaunch if /usr/bin/open crashes, not if Bittorrent Sync crashes. For the above approach to work, open would need to return error status if the app it opened had crashed (and this does not happen).

I know I could fix this by dropping open and instead hard coding the path to the executable as /Applications/BitTorrent Sync.app/Contents/MacOS/BitTorrent Sync. But is there an alternative that doesn't require hard-coding the full path? Using open would be elegant, if it worked.

It was as I expected. The version in the question doesn't re-launch the app, because /usr/bin/open doesn't return an error status when the app crashes. I wasn't able to find a better way than hard-coding the path to the executable, so I'm now using the following.

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>KeepAlive</key>
        <dict>
                <key>Crashed</key>
                <true/>
                <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
                <false/>
        </dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.getsync.bittorrentsync</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/Applications/BitTorrent Sync.app/Contents/MacOS/BitTorrent Sync</string>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

I've verified that this does successfully re-launch the app if it crashes.

A more easily downloadable version of this can be found at https://gist.github.com/atomicbird/ff2de46a594cdb5c8e69


How to list installed versions of the same program I have a program called PyMOL installed multiple times on my machine. One was installed by MacPorts, one was installed through the developers distribution channel and so on. One is in /opt/local/bin, the other is in /i/have/no/clue.

I know I can use "which pymol" to see, where the one that is executed is located, but how can I get the location of the other ones with the same name?

You have the right command and just need to set the proper option:

which -a pymol will show all instances of the executable pymol located within your PATH.

For example, on my laptop I have git installed in two places:

$ which git
/usr/local/bin/git

provides what will be run when I use the command git.

$ which -a git
/usr/local/bin/git
/usr/bin/git

provides every instance of the executable in my PATH.


Migrating Active Directory accounts from one Mac to another using Migration Assistant Is it possible to migrate Active Directory network accounts from one Mac to another with Migration assistant? They don't show up in Migration Assistant; only the local accounts do.

If you add mobile capability they show up.  But so far from what I've seen the account migrates over but not all of the files. The home directory is empty on the target Mac.


Connect to server - password syntax (symbols) confusing the expression I'd like to connect to my local server using the following expression in Finder/Go/Connect to server: afp://username:password@serverIP.local

My password is using characters which I'm pretty sure are confusing the readability of this expression (e.g. @, %, perhaps other characters) - and I know nothing about UNIX. Say if my password was p@s$w%rd, the expression would look as such afp://username:p@s$w%rd@serverIP.local but because there is an @ it will confuse its readability. However, I don't want to compromise on the server's security and would like to keep freedom of syntax for my login credentials.

Is there a way to isolate the password syntax in a way to tell my computer to read the password from a specific input to an output?

I wasn't sure whether this would work, but after comments it appears it does…

Use percent encoding like you see on web addresses, where potentially confusing symbols are replaced by a percentage sign followed by a hexadecimal number, as this table...

So the initial p@s$w%rd would become p%40s%24w%25rd


Can I recover deleted viber messages after my phone is erased? My device is Iphone 6, I had deleted some messages from my viber, then I erased my phone 2 days after that, then I noticed there was information I need. I don't have back up of any sort.

can I somehow recover those messages? if yes how likely?

No.  Unless you have friends at NSA AND Apple.


Is there a way to automatically delete old boarding passes in Passbook? Is there a way to make old boarding passes go away automatically from Passbook, instead of manually deleting them?

In this article, it says:

  "I'm surprised old boarding passes don't automatically delete from
  Passbook post departure. You have to manually delete them."

It doesn't look like it is possible yet.

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding this at the following page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html


Applescript to open javascript bookmark i have the following javascript that searches the current site (very handy)

javascript:Qr=prompt('Search%20Site%20for','');if(Qr)location.href='http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:'+encodeURIComponent(window.location.hostname)+'+'+escape(Qr)

I am a launchbar user, but launchbar will not open this javascript bookmark.

Can i create an applescript that runs the javascript bookmark (in chrome, which is my default browser)

Have tried:-

tell application "Google Chrome"
    execute javascript "javascript:Qr=prompt('Search%20Site%20for','');if(Qr)location.href='http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:'+encodeURIComponent(window.location.hostname)+'+'+escape(Qr"
end tell

but nothing happens...

There are three problems with the script you posted, and one of them may be just a problem that was caused when you pasted the code into your question.

Starting from the beginning: You need to tell Chrome where to do the JavaScript, like this:

tell application "Google Chrome" to tell active tab of front window to execute javascript "your script"

That will run the script in the current tab of the first window you opened (AFAIK, you can't yet get the active tab of the active window).

Next, you don't want that javascript: prefix; Chrome knows it's JavaScript.

Finally, you're missing a paren at the very end of your line. Again, I'm not sure if this is just a copy problem, but it's something to be aware of.

Making the above changes, I have this code:

tell application "Google Chrome" to tell active tab of front window to execute javascript "Qr=prompt('Search%20Site%20for','');if(Qr)location.href='http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:'+encodeURIComponent(window.location.hostname)+'+'+escape(Qr)"

...which works.


Does 4th gen iPod Shuffle comes with iPhone earphone that has mic and volume buttons? My iPhone earphone went bad today. I need an iPod shuffle too for jogging, so I wanted to buy one. I'm wondering if it actually comes with the same earphone as the one that iPhone comes with?

Bonus: What does this mean:

It certainly does't come with the same ones at the iPhone, which are characterised by the 3 button inline controls & mic

Checking with a touch I bought recently, it seems it came with just plain old earphones.

Previous models of the shuffle had the full inline controls on the headphones, but this was due to the lack of controls on the actual device.  They took some stick for that decision, and since reverting to the old shape they no longer do this, and as such I think they have also reverted to using standard headphones.

As for your picture, I think it means that the headphone connector, unlike on the iPhone/iPod touches/Airs etc, is a normal 3.5mm headphone only adapter, without the extra internal pinout to support a mic.  The mic is now actually located on the shuffle itself, thus not requiring you to need a headset to use the voiceover functions - check the tiny hole next to the headphone socket:

So it means that while the headphones will still work if you use iPhone headphones, or any of the other headset style ones with inline controls, the mic will not be used, and the one on the device will always be used, although it seems the remote functions for volume and next/back might be available.


Jailbreak iOS 6 without cydia How do I jailbreak iOS 6.1.2 without installing Cydia?

If you have a device that supports iOS 6 and is vulnerable to limera1n (iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, or iPod touch 4th generation), you can use redsn0w to jailbreak 6.1.2 tethered without installing Cydia (just uncheck the "install Cydia" box during the jailbreaking process).

redsn0w hasn't been updated to automatically support 6.1.2 though, so before clicking the "Jailbreak" button, you'll need to click "Extras", click "Select IPSW", and select a copy of the 6.0 IPSW for your device. You'll also have to do the "Select IPSW" process before booting tethered (in other words, when you want to boot your device, you'll have to click "Extras", "Select IPSW", select the 6.0 IPSW, and then go back and click "Just Boot").

It's probably less fuss to just jailbreak with evasi0n, open up Cydia, let it prepare the filesystem, install OpenSSH, and then look for the "Cydia Installer" package and uninstall it.


Lost iPhone not connected to Find My iPhone! Lost my iPhone and it wasn't connected to Find My iPhone, how can I find it?

Unless you explicitly turned Find My iPhone off, it was on. Try this anyway: go to iCloud.com/find and sign into your iCloud account using your Apple ID. Click Find my iPhone. Choose Locate an iOS device. If it is turned on, and the phone is still online, it will show you on a map. If it does not, then either you did turn off Find my iPhone or it is offline. If either of those is the case, it's time to visit the Apple Store and buy a new iPhone.


iphone 4s - communications My phone Verizon (iphone 4s) is off contract/unlocked and I
do not need voice.
However, I would like to use it to communicate over WiFi.
Is this possible (options) without a monthly phone bill..?
John

you can use certain apps to do this, things like google voice will provide you a virtual phone number which can do voice and sms.  as long as you have wifi, they do a decent job.

there's also a log of voip or messenger programs that do voice, but that's not so transparently behaving like phone number.


Spotlight search result for contact does not open found contact in Address Book When I search for a contact in Spotlight (Cmd-Space), the correct contacts show.

When I select a contact (Enter), Address Book opens, but it has no contact selected. I have to look for the same contact again, this time in Address Book.

I use this all the time and am certain it used to work. Have tried rebuilding Spotlight index by removing Address Book from Spotlight and re-adding it.

Anyone else have this issue? Any suggestions for a fix?

I resolved it by brute force.

Open Spotlight in System Preferences.
Remove everything except PDF.
Add my home folder to excluded items in Privacy tab.
Reboot.
Open Spotlight.
Remove my home folder from excluded items in Privacy tab.
Add Contacts to items indexed by Spotlight.

Presto, it's working again. I hope it keeps working.


Internet recovery mode: Always restart after download complete Please help :(. I have a problem with my macbook pro md101 2012 when i work with it then my mac is suddenly die by itself. When i turn it on it show a kernel panic, and when i log in it just stuck in apple logo with progress bar then restart again, i tried everything like clear nvram, get into safe mode, get into recovery mode, and internet recovery mode but no luck, it just suddenly restart when loading progress. Now my hard drive has been formatted, and im trying to get into internet recovery mode but same result. Is there a problem with the harddrive?

I had MBP 2012 mid and it showed a similar pattern (infinite rebooting). I took it to the Apple service center and the source of the problem was in the mainboard. I suggest take it to the Apple service center.


Keep wi-fi connection while asleep? Right now my MacBook Pro is set to go to sleep after 1 hour and then when I wake it back up, I have to wait for it to find/connect to Wi-Fi again.

How can I maintain the Wi-Fi connection so when I wake the computer, it's already connected?

I'm running OS X 10.9.1 on a Retina MacBook Pro.

Here are my Energy Saver preferences:

If your Mac enters its full sleep state, then your network connections will be disconnected. Your Mac can not be connected to a WiFi network and be asleep at the same time.

You can avoid full sleep by setting your Computer Sleep to Never. Your MacBook will then sleep all the sub-systems possible when idle, but will remain awake enough to maintain a WiFi network connection.

PowerNap is not the same as full sleep. This is a special state controlled by Apple and, for now, available only to Apple's chosen processes.


Battery warning ''Service battery" Battery warning "Service battery". This warning have appeared in my MacBook Pro (2008) with Snow Leopard. Is there a way to find out what a reason of this warning, without apply to service centre?

This means your battery is at the end of its life. This happens to all batteries, sooner or later, depending on your type of usage and most importantly on the amount of cycles (i.e. full recharges).

Your battery will probably not last longer than one hour at this stage. You can of course try to train it by letting it drain the battery until the MacBook sleeps and then recharge it up to 100%, leave it recharged for at least a few hours, and then repeat this process a few times. By doing this, you sort of "reset" the battery and can get a few minutes more out of it. It helped me get at least 20 minutes more.

If OS X tells you to service battery, it means that you will need to buy a new battery if you want full capacity back. There is no warranty that would cover worn out batteries. I had had the same problem, but unless your battery has less than 200 cycles, this is absolutely normal and you should buy a new battery. Again, Apple will not replace your battery unless it's almost unused.


Mac HDD very slow running xcode and iOS Simulator We have a 500GB HDD on a iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2014):

1.4 GHz Intel Core i5
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB
224GB / 498GB available

We have spoken to Apple who said we cannot upgrade it to an SSD Drive, because it could break the motherboard.

We cannot afford a new Mac at the moment so I am looking for a solution to make these programs run faster.

Anyone have an tips/tricks to make it run faster?
Possibly install them all on an external Thunderbolt drive?

Unfortunately, the choice of internal storage for your model iMac was the worst possible, in that the 500GB hard drive you have installed was a 5400rpm model. These iMacs also came with a 1TB Fusion (or Hybrid) drive option as well as a 256GB SSD option, both of which are significantly faster (especially the SSD).

Storage

So, to answer your question as asked, you can in fact replace the hard drive in your model iMac if you want, although Apple does not 'officially' consider the storage (i.e. HDD/SSD) in any of the Tapered Edge aluminum iMacs to be upgradable. However, to be fair to Apple, upgrading this is extremely difficult and I would not recommend anyone having a go at it unless they're experienced or are very technically competent.

Based on your specs, your iMac has the model identifier iMac14,4 (you can double-check this via the About This Mac option under the Apple Menu - click the System Report button). Instructions on upgrading your storage, along with videos, are available here.

Remember though, this is not easy!

RAM

Your particular model iMac only came with 8GB RAM and this was soldered onto the Logic Board, so cannnot be removed and replaced. There are no additional memory slots. In other words, this cannot be upgraded whatsoever.

External Storage

In terms of external storage, the fastest option would be to use an SSD in an external enclosure connected to one of your Thunderbolt ports. Here are some example options. However, you'd have to factor in the cost of the SSD and enclosure and decide whether that money would be better put towards a different Mac? The fact is that your model iMac is not really suited to heavy work as it's throttled by a lack of both processing power and RAM.

Comparison test

Also, as a test, I used a mid-2010 iMac with a 500GB hard drive installed and launched Xcode and compiled a few builds to the simulator and in all instances these were a lot quicker than the 15 mins you talk about. Of course, without compiling the same code this is not a fair comparison. However, this iMac did have 12GB of RAM installed and that is a 50% boost compared to what you will ever have for yours.

My recommendations

I would bite the bullet and start saving for another Mac.
Upgrading the internal hard drive is very difficult and I assume beyond your competency (no offense intended)!
In the meantime, I would ensure you keep your simulator running after first launch to significantly reduce subsequent builds etc.
You could also run an Apple Diagnostics Test to check your hardware to ensure there isn't some other undiagnsed problem. To do this, restart your iMac and immediately hold down the D key. When prompted, run the tests. If you get the option to run an extended test, select this as well. Note this may take some time to run!

Any problems/questions, let me know.


Access to apple id account I know my apple id (and the email associated with it) but I don't remember the password. This is complicated by the fact that I don't have the phone # associated with account nor do I remember the number.
What can I do?

If you need access to your account, and you don't know the former number nor do you have access to any Apple devices that your Apple ID is signed into (iPhone, iPad, iPod, or Mac) then you cannot recover your account. Account recovery requires no less than the associated Apple ID email and the phone number associated with the account & devices that had access to the account.

Apple's automated ID system can only verify your account with passwords, devices & phone numbers. Emails arent a secure way of identification so they no longer use them to verify you with two-factor identification.

What I would do is backtrack the previous carriers or phone numbers you've used lately. Start with your current carrier and work backwards. If you've ever had your phone number ported over from one carrier to another you need to call the carrier that brought over your number and have them provide you with it.

If you can at least find the phone number, but don't have access to it, then you can go through what's called Account Recovery. Just go to iforgot.apple.com and enter your Apple ID email address then the phone number on the next page and it will make you go through a waiting process to verify your accounts security (checking for active devices, breaches, etc.)

If you manage to find the number. Comment here because I can explain the recovery process in detail since most people end up waiting longer than expected.


iPad iOS 7 bug? Three-liner text in push notifications overlap the pull-down indicator I've noticed this on my iPad Mini (Retina), and I've tried to search for this "bug" elsewhere but found nothing which makes me suspect I'm the only one who's experiencing this? Whenever the push notification text is >= 3-lines, it overlaps with the "pull-down" indicator for the Notification Center. This is not a problem on my iPhone (same iOS version).

Any help or insights on why this is happening would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

This bug also occurs on my iPhone 4 running iOS 7.1.2. I think it's a common bug.

I speculate in iOS 7, developers weren't able to send more than 2-line push notifications but in iOS 8 the feature was added iOS 7 devices also got these bigger notifications, resulting in unexpectedly large pushes (Apple stopped development of iOS 7 several years ago).


What charging mechanism to be used to maximise the battery life? So I got my first Apple laptop, a Retina MacBook Pro. Since macbook pro retina's battery are no longer easily switchable I'm concerned about it's life and would like to maximize it. I have few questions below.

How long it should be kept in A/C power? Is it okay to keep the laptop connected to A/C power more than 24 hours? Will it not be good for the battery if I keep it in A/C power more than 24 hours?

Is it okay to charge the laptop when the battery reach 75% or should I wait till it goes to 50% or 10%? What's is optimal %?

What's the best charging practices should I follow?

The batteries on all 2012 models self regulate, self calibrate and don't care when you charge them.

You might reduce their total lifespan if you never ever ever take it off charge. Ideally drain it past 20% remaining (better to run it all the way down) once every few months.

These days, portable batteries are like sealed car batteries. Maybe go in to the shop once a year to have it checked, but otherwise you can forget "caring" for it other than avoiding excessive heat (90 degrees F and up).

Any time you want, Apple can run extensive diagnostics on your battery (for free at the Genius Bar and also complimentary if you pay for AppleCare.)


Troubleshot rebooting Mac mini server I have a Mac mini running 10.13.6 as a server.

Time Machine
homebridge
File Server
Content caching
Netinstall
Xcode
running VMware Fusion with Linux guest system

Since a few weeks, the whole system starts at  random moments.

What would be a way to troubleshot this?

The first thing is to get into the console app / system log and trace the shutdown cause and timing of the restarts. Then you would look to see if there are hangs or crashes in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports prior to those events.

The reason for Previous shutdown cause: -128
Shutdown cause: -104

Depending on your interest in scripting shell to collect matches from log files, here’s an example of using those log files to find events like needles in a very large, long and confusing haystack.

Improvement to 'grep -h "BSD process name" /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/* | sort | uniq -c'

Most likely, you will see a pattern (or see there is no pattern once you get 25 restarts logged and cataloged) and can remove the hardware, software or look into what is the logged reason.


Can one app read data from clipboard copied in another app Let's say I'm working in application A and copy some sensitive data to clipboard. Can application B which is opened at the moment catch the information I've copied?

Does OS X protect from such vulnerabilities?

Update:
To be more specific what if I copy a password from a password manager, is the pass accessible for all the apps while it is in clipboard? If so how password managers protect a user in this case?

This is not a vulnerability per se.

The clipboard is accessible system wide which is why you can copy something from application A and paste it to application B.

It's not meant nor does it function as a secure holing area.

If an application has sensitive data fields, it is up to the developers to block clipboard access to the data.   For all intents and purposes, once info is in the clipboard, it's accessible.

As a test and demo, copy your password from your password manager.  Open terminal and type the command pbpaste.  It will output the password that's residing in your clipboard.


How to group table and caption in Word 2011? I'm trying to create a load of tables with captions in Mac Word 2011, interspersed with figures, text, ect. With all the insertions, there's a lot of adjusting of where things go. But when I move the tables around, the captions stay put, and I don't see any way to group tables to keep their captions with them. Is there a way to make sure a table and its caption move together in Word 2011?

Just to be clear, I'm not asking how to make sure they stay together over a page break - I'd like to be able to move the table myself and have the caption come with it.

I had a really difficult time with this. The only thing I found that was easy to do and effective was to add another row under the table, merge the columns of that row and format colour, lines accordingly, and then write the text I wanted as though it were a caption. Good luck.


Files are not showed in Finder Recently, I noticed that on the files on my external hard drive are not shown in Finder. All folders can still be navigated, but the files are not visible. When I check the contents of these folders in terminal, I can see the files are still on those locations and can also be opened with VLC for example.

Does anybody know what the issue could be? I only found one similar question, where they suggested that the com.apple.IconServices was causing the problem, however the proposed solution did not help in my case.

I am working on OSX 10.8.5.

I realised that the only volume I was having issues with was a NTFS-formatted volume, for which I use Paragons software to write to the volume. I searched for a solution to my problem and found someone having the same problem:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1280829

It turns out Paragon writes the files with read, write flags, AND also the execute flag, which causes the files to not be recognised by the Finder. To solve this, you simply have to put the flags to read and write using chmod 644.

Thanks for all the help!


Xcode 5.1.1 update error persists I'm running OS X Lion in VirtualBox on Windows 8 (I know, that's cheating, sorry :) to be able to use Xcode. Everything worked fine, until Apple decided that they don't accept apps to the App Store from Xcode lower that 5.1.1. But it just won't update.

After two days of unsuccessful attempts to update Xcode, I finally know what the problem is, but it's very strange. I followed some advice here, enabled debug menu in App Store, set 2nd debug level, and install.log file finally revealed the issue. Turns out, there's not enough space for Xcode to update.

When I check free space in Finder (right click -> Get Info), it says there's 4 GB free (was 6 GB before I tried to update). But here's the strange part, when I check with Disk Utility, it says that the partition is completely full (no white space). I tried to expand the partition with Disk utility and gParted live cd, and it does not want to expand. But there should be that 4-6 GB of free space, I don't know what is going on, it downloads all 2 GB of Xcode just fine, error occurs during installation. I really need some help here, I can't release an update to App Store because of it.

Here's the last entry from install.log:

Jun 29 09:51:06 localhost installd[229]: PackageKit: Install Failed: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=640 "You can't save the file "MainPartition" because the volume "MainPartition" is out of space." UserInfo=0x7fdde5a5ddd0{NSFilePath=/} {
    NSFilePath = "/";
}

Solved by manually downloading latest Xcode from developer.apple.com/downloads/. Everything updated just fine.


How can I send a mail message later? On Mountain Lion I want to compose a message, but rather than clicking "Send", I want to schedule a future delivery date and have the mail sent then without my taking action as long as the computer is still running.

I'm currently using Apple mail with Google apps configured using IMAP syncing.

The answers here using Mail Scripts by Andreas Amann no longer works on Lion or Mountain Lion. Can something be done on 10.8 or later to automate sending Apple mail?

If you're using Gmail and are willing to use the (I think very awesome) web interface, check out Boomerang for Gmail. It does everything you're asking for.

EDIT:

You can also use Automator to schedule (by delaying) when your message is sent.

The Pause function is very helpful, and Apple has a whole section for Mail in the library. I would save it as an application and then run it with Spotlight or Alfred or Launchbar whenever you need it.


Remove autocomplete to base URL - want full path! Safari always tries to autocomplete websites to only be the host, with no path (nothing after the ".com/" part).

That is, when I type "ever"...
the first option is "evernote.com", when the only site I ever actually visit is "evernote.com/Home.action".  I want it to go directly to that one.  I don't want to have to press "down" once.

Chrome does this the way I want, but I'm trying to move from chrome to safari (chrome eats battery).

This is a brand new MacBook Pro, and I have no bookmarks, deleted all history, iCloud is disabled (I haven't even signed in with an appleID yet), etc.  I can get the "evernote" recommendation to disappear when I delete everything, but as soon as I visit ONLY "evernote.com/Home.action", the base url will start appearing above the action I actually want.

Similar problems ~9 years ago here, can't seem to find a solution. I've been looking for hours now:
http://ask.metafilter.com/76691/How-to-turn-off-Safaris-improved-autocomplete

Perhaps showing full website address can solve your issue:

Safari->Preferences->Advanced->Smart Search Field: Show full website address [check]


How to fix "512 bytes per sector" to "4096 bytes per sector" for an "Advanced Format" 4K sector USB hard drive? Mac OS X 10.7.4 has a Sharkoon Quickdeck Pro USB enclosure attached. That USB enclosure contains a 4TB Advanced Format hard drive which has 4096 bytes (4K) sector size. The drive is GPT/GUID partitioned.

When listing the properties os the drive, it is being seen as "512 bytes per sector":

$ diskutil info W | grep -E 'Total Size:|Volume Free Space:|Device Block Size:'
   Total Size:               4.0 TB (4000787022336 Bytes) (exactly 7814037153 512-Byte-Blocks)
   Volume Free Space:        4.0 TB (4000772390912 Bytes) (exactly 7814008576 512-Byte-Blocks)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

Or when formatting the disk with newfs_hfs the drive is being seen as "512b sector size".

$ sudo newfs_hfs -N -J /dev/disk3s1
7814037153 sectors (512 bytes per sector)
HFS Plus format parameters:
    volume name: "untitled"
    block-size: 8192
    total blocks: 488377322
    journal-size: 311296k
    first free catalog node id: 16
    catalog b-tree node size: 8192
    initial catalog file size: 354418688
    extents b-tree node size: 4096
    initial extents file size: 16777216
    attributes b-tree node size: 8192
    initial attributes file size: 354418688
    initial allocation file size: 61054976 (7453 blocks)
    data fork clump size: 65536
    resource fork clump size: 65536

How to make/force OS X to recognize Advanced Format 4K sector size drives as 4096 bytes per sector using command line tools

or

which USB drive/enclosure natively supports 4K sectors on OS X?

PS When reading the source code of newfs_hfs the sectorSize value seems to be derived from this function call ioctl(fso, DKIOCBLKSIZE, &dip.sectorSize)

I had this same issue.  I finally resolved it by connecting to the drive using eSATA instead of USB or Firewire.  My USB/FW enclosure has an eSATA port on the back, and I connected to that instead of USB.  Bypassing the USB circuit in the external enclosure allowed Mac Disk Utility to directly recognize the WD30EZRX 3.0 TB drive, and to partition it correctly to that size.

Luckily I have an older Macbook Pro with and Express/34 slot and an eSATA adapter for that.  I don't know how we are going fix this with newer MacBooks.  Perhaps newer USB interfaces can correctly represent the Advanced Format sector info.


iMac longevity for iOS development My budget is low, so I want to buy a used iMac for learning and developing iOS apps. I am wondering which year model I should buy because the older the cheaper.

So, my question is:
How can I evaluate how long an  iMac or (any Mac for that matter) can be supported for iOS development?.

Is there a written support policy and/or how has things been handled in the past so we can attempt to "forecast" today?

...Because the older the cheaper

This goes without saying!

  How long a 2012 iMac can be used for iOS development? Or in more general sense, how long an iMac can be used for iOS development?

Nobody can really answer this because nobody can know for sure when any particular model Mac will no longer be supported.  In fact, this article goes into detail, but their very first words are "Apple has no written policy"

IMO, the 2012 is probably not the best choice because it's at the "cutoff" for supported iMacs on the macOS Catalina release.

Will it...

be supported by the next version?  Nobody knows.
still receive updates?  Most likely.
run the version of XCode required to develop on the latest iDevices?  That's the kicker.  It may or may not.

Being that your at the very end of the line, I'd look for something about 3 years "younger."  This will buy you some time before you get a more modern, well supported machine.


Macbook Air not waking up from Suspend/Sleep with rEFInd boot manager installed Having installed both rEFInd 0.6.10 (updated to 0.6.11) via its install.sh and Ubuntu 13.04 on another partition I can now choose on a MacBook Air to boot either MacOS or Linux.

When running MacOS and closing and soon re-opening the lid, everything is fine, but after a longer time of closed lid, the machine is not waking/starting up. Instead I have to long-press the power button and then press it again to boot the machine.

I had the same exact issue with my MacBook Pro and I have rEFInd installed as well. I resolved the problem disabling the autopoweroff option with pmset. See this answer.


How to reset Mac App Store (to factory defaults)? On Mavericks the Mac App Store started to hang right after start (when accesing menu, to be exact). How to reset it? I.e. remove some configuration files that drive the store into improper state?

You can delete appstore cache files : ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore
This may not solve the entire issue you should look in your /private/var/folders and delete the com.apple.appstore forlder for me it's in /private/var/folders/08/366wf94902jf_hy69t1d_92r0000gn/C/com.apple.appstore It's gonna be different for you .


Creating a bootable Sierra image on Catalina I received a MacBook7,1 a few days ago and wanted to use dosdude1's Catalina patcher to install it on my system. The first attempt actually yielded a result that constantly showcased weirdness. When I looked at the page again, I noticed that he recommended having upgraded the BootROM through Sierra. Now, the MacBook did indeed come with Sierra but I had already flattened the SSD to put Catalina on it instead. And now, I am well stuck.

Trying to use createinstallmedia from the Sierra installer app's resources folder does spawn an uncountable amount of processes, but does not actually ever ask me to erase the drive and tell me that it's copying files over. And any other createinstallmedia that I had available to try just outright did the same or refused to accept the application image.

Then I thought of booting up a Sierra VM. After all, I did have the image already, so installing it into a VM and using the createinstallmedia tool from within there should yield me a usable result. But no - just dropping macOS into a VM won't work at all, even if the host is a macOS either.

I have tried several methods, but I am quite out of ideas by now. I may also have a failing harddrive, but using the latest GParted Live DVD to load the Smart Monitor GUI only had me tell me that everything was fine with it. Weird.

How can I create a Sierra image on macOS Catalina (my other, 2014 MacBook Pro) that I can boot off on my MacBook7,1? Alternatively, I have a Windows 10 PC available, so if there is a method to make such image on Windows, this would also help.

Small bonus: Do you happen to know why createinstallmedia just basically throws out so many other createinstallmedia processes?

The 2014 MacBook Pro should be able to download and run the Sierra Installer.

Current Version is: OS X el Capitan 10.11.6 What's Next?

The answer to that question is the process you can / should follow to download the installer and then run the create script.

What specific error message do you get following the process here?

You might need to post a screen shot of exactly what the terminal window shows in case you've got a syntax error we can spot. Also, the diskutil list command showing the USB drive you target might help.


Script opens two terminal windows I coded this little AppleScript using Automator:

tell application "Terminal"
do script "myscript"
end tell

This perfectly works but has a side effect: when I close the window, there's always the Terminal window to close, so there are two windows, the one that executes the script and the Terminal.

Is there any way to have just one window running?

Try:

tell application "Terminal"
    if not (exists window 1) then reopen
    activate
    do script "echo hi" in window 1
end tell


How do I get old apps like Photoshop CS5 to work on macOS Mojave On the weekend I upgraded my MacBook Pro to macOS Mojave. Things are mostly ok but I have some apps that no longer work. The one I’m most stressed about is Adobe Photoshop CS5. When I try to run it it refuses to open.

I've tried resetting NVRAM and running Disk Utility, but this didn’t resolve the issue.

Before I take the plunge to revert back to macOS High Sierra I thought I’d try my luck here.

Do any of you folks have any other suggestions for me to try first?

The first thing I would try is changing the security and privacy settings in System Preferences. You can do this as follows:

Go to Apple > System Preferences…
Click on Security & Privacy
Select the Privacy tab at top right
In the lefthand pane select the Accessibility option
At bottom left of the window make sure the padlock is unlocked (if not, select it and enter your password)
In the list of apps on the right-hand side, make sure Photoshop and any of the other apps you’re having problems with are ticked
OPTIONAL: If any apps you’re having problems with are not listed, click on the + button under the list and navigate to the apps to select and add them to your list. Once done, then repeat Step 6
Make sure you lock the padlock again that you unlocked at Step 5
Quit and restart any apps you’ve just allowed to control your Mac (i.e. if they were already open)

Now try running Photoshop etc again to see if they work.


How to make macOS archive RAR and unRAR files in Finder with automator and shell script? I have rar and unrar installed in /usr/local/bin/. I need:

In Finder: to archive selected files and folders with .rar extension to the same folder. Is it possible to make it through right click and context menu? Or with automator services?
In Finder: Unrar selected archives to the same folder in Finder with context menu.

Is it possible with automator and shell script?

The example shell script code used in this answer was tested under macOS Catalina 10.15.4.

As coded the location the RAR archive is to be created/extracted to must be readable/writable to you with normal privileges, otherwise the RAR archive is created/extracted on your Desktop. If a selected file/folder to be archived is not readable it will throw an error message and an incomplete RAR archive may be created.

The two Automator Quick Actions work as advertised with the settings as shown in the images of the workflows, further below, so use the same settings!

Workflow receives current [files or folders] in [Finder]
Run Shell Script action:

Shell: [/bin/bash]     Pass input: [as arguments]

NOTE: In order for these workflows to work, Finder must be given Full Disk Access in: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy
NOTE: If rar and unrar are not properly signed it will throw an error message. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General, click the lock to make changes, enter your credentials, click the Allow button. You will still have to grant the permission the next time they run, but not there after.

Create RAR Archive

Using how by default in Finder a ZIP archive is created in macOS, only recursing the relative path from within the PWD, the same applies to the example shell script code used in the first Run Shell Script action of the Automator Quick Action shown below.

In this first Automator Quick Action, as coded, the example shell script code will:

Define RAR variables.
Change directory to the location of the selected file(s)/folder(s) within the same parent folder of the selected file(s)/folder(s).
Build an array of just the basenames of the selected file(s)/folder(s).
Verify the PWD is writable and if true, create the RAR archive in the PWD, else create it on your Desktop.
Create a RAR archive, named e.g.:

Archive 2020-04-25 at 10.56.00 PM.rar Containing the selected file(s)/folder(s).

rar_exe="/usr/local/bin/rar"
rar_args="a -r -idq"
rar_archive="Archive $(date '+%Y-%m-%d at %I.%M.%S %p').rar"

cd "$(dirname "$1")" || exit

declare -a my_files
for f in "$@"; do
    my_files+=( "$(basename "$f")" )
done

if [ -w "${PWD}" ]; then
    $("${rar_exe}" ${rar_args} "${rar_archive}" "${my_files[@]}")
else
    $("${rar_exe}" ${rar_args} "${HOME}/Desktop/${rar_archive}" "${my_files[@]}")
fi

Extract RAR Archive

Unlike how by default in Finder a ZIP archive is extracted in macOS, incrementing the name of the folder the archive is extracted to if it previously exists, the example shell script code used in this second Run Shell Script action of the Automator Quick Action shown below does not do that! If the folder named for the extracted RAR archive already exists, then it is not extracted a second time.

In you need to extract it again, rename or delete the existing extracted RAR archive, or copy the RAR archive to an alternate location, then extract it.

In this second Automator Quick Action, as coded, the example shell script code will:

Define UNRAR variables.
Change directory to the location of the selected RAR archive(s).
Verify the file extension of the selected file(s) is rar.
Verify the PWD is writable and if true, extract the RAR archive in the PWD, else extract it on your Desktop.
Verify a folder of the same name does not already exist, and if not, then extract the contents of the selected RAR archive(s) in a folder the name of the selected RAR archive(s).

unrar_exe="/usr/local/bin/unrar"
unrar_args="x -ad -idq"

cd "$(dirname "$1")" || exit

for f in "$@"; do
    [ "${f##*.}" == "rar" ] || continue
    d="${f##*/}"
    if [ -w "${PWD}" ]; then
        [ ! -d "${d%.*}" ] || continue
        $("${unrar_exe}" ${unrar_args} "$f")
    else
        cd "${HOME}/Desktop" || exit
        [ ! -d "${d%.*}" ] || continue
        $("${unrar_exe}" ${unrar_args} "$f")
    fi
done

Note: The example shell script code is just that and, sans existing error handling, 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.


Why did my Command + V (to paste) suddenly stop working? Maybe I should be weary every time I do one of these shady Apple updates on my 3-year old Mac running 10.11.5.

Suddenly, the shortcut to paste, ⌘ Command V, stopped working for me. But all other shortcuts using the ⌘ Command key still work, such as Copy, Cut, Find, Minimize, etc. Paste still works if I do it manually with the mouse by going up to Edit and clicking Paste.

Even when I log into another user, same problem.  And when I am in Recovery Mode, same problem.  And I don't think I have any recent add-ons, as far as I can tell.

I restarted several times and reset my Keyboard in System Preferences. I even tried a few random code stuff in Monitor that I found on other forums. Nothing has worked.

I had the same issue in Mac Excel 2011 I am still using.

-Right click on the Paste icon in toolbar, choose Properties...
-Next screen, click Keyboard... on right hand side
-In "Press new shortcut key", add command+v.

That worked, even though command+v was already in list of current keyboard keys for Paste function. Hope this helps


Cannot extend partition after failed bootcamp install I got an error while trying to install Windows 10 on my Mid 2014 Macbook Pro via Bootcamp Assistant.

The error occurred whilst partitioning the disk: Your disk could not be partitioned. An error occurred while partioning the disk.

I'd set the partitions to be equal sizes, 250GB each.

I followed a fix that involves restarting into single user mode and running /sbin/fsck -fy but that didn't do anything to help.

I'm now left with a mac partition that's 250GB and free space that's 250GB, but cannot extend the main partition into the free space:

If I click partition and remove the freespace and extend the Macintosh HD volume I get this error: The provided Core Storage logical volume has an incorrect size.

I'm happy to give up on bootcamp and installing Windows 10, but I'd like my harddisk back!!!

Apple's Bootcamp is intended to be the beginning and end for where you handle partitioning. You can try opening Bootcamp Assistant and see if they will let you recover your space from here. I know I have done this before.

I've also run into the same problem with Disk Utility when it comes to Bootcamp partitions.


Boot camp assistant: Size of winddows support software download My boot camp assistant has been downloading "windows support software" for a long time. There is no speed indicator, or total download size.

I have tracked the network activity in activity monitor and it has so far downloaded 2.5GB and counting.

Does anyone have any idea how big this download is? It is unbelievable for them to have such a huge download without an estimate of time remaining or progress... what an absolute joke.

Update: The mac is a mac mini late 2012 running yosemite, trying to install Windows 8.1 retail.

The eventual download size was 2.8GB.

It seems that something else must be wrong because the Bootcamp Support Software should be less than 1GB if I remember correctly.