Why do carriers sell the iPhone for so much cheaper than Apple? I've been looking at iPhone 4S prices. I'm not an US citizen but I've been wondering why does it cost only $199 with a Sprint/Verizon/AT&T contract and why does it cost $649 without those contracts?

What are the limitations if I was a US citizen and I was going to use one of those service providers?

In the US, carriers offer phones if you sign up for a 2-year contract at a heavily subsidized price.  The $649 is the price of the phone without that subsidy (retail price).  The subsidy also means these phones are carrier-locked, or bound to one carrier.  You can sometimes get the carrier to unlock these or hack it, but don't count on this.

Citizenship isn't so much a qualifier as having a US credit history and billing address. Presumably the carrier is on the hook to subsidize your hardware so they try hard to ensure you will honor your contract to maintain a stream of payments to them (or they can be fairly certain to collect the early termination fee). Having a US credit card (or cash) as well as having a Social Security or equivalent tracking number so the carriers can run a credit check against their US database of buyers increases your likelihood for being approved for a subsidized phone. If the carriers can't get a good credit check, you may be forced to pay the unlocked prices or buy on the grey market or a used handset.


‘Swap file "./.bash_profile.swp" already exists’ I'm trying to edit .bash_profile because I am installing the JDK on my Mac.

When trying to open up the file using vi ./.bash_profile, it shows an error because there was a swp file of bash. It also said there may be someone editing it or that a past session crashed. It gives me options to edit, recover or delete. So I recovered it and got this:

Swap file "./.bash_profile.swp" already exists! "./.bash_profile" 2L, 87C

What does that mean and how do I move forward? I need to edit the file and put in this command

export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ jdk1.8.0_91.jdk/Contents/Home/bin

Open the file with vi (vim):

vi .bash_profile

You will see a prompt like this:

[O]pen Read-Only, (E)dit anyway, (R)ecover, (D)elete it, (Q)uit, (A)bort:

Type the following at the prompt:

r

At the next prompt:

Press ENTER or type command to continue

Type:

:w savedfile

This will bring you into visual mode. Type:

:q!

to quit vim.

Now remove (unlink) the file .bash_profile.swp. You now can compare your original .bash_profile with savedfile and edit as necessary.


Minimal Xcode installation without iOS SDK I am in the progress of switching my MBP to run off an SSD, so I’ve been looking of ways to save harddisk space. Xcode with the iOS SDK weighs around 10GB, and since I don’t really use the iOS SDK for anything this seems like a good opportunity to save space.

Problem is that Apple seems to have removed all Xcode downloads that do not include the SDK. I have tried looking around the site and link-hacking, but nowwhere have I been able to find a minimal Xcode.

I don’t really care if it's Xcode4 or not, I just need it for Homebrew to work. Is it possible to find this somewhere?

(If not, is it safe to simply delete /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform and /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform)?

When you run the Install Xcode and iOS SDK installer, during the "Installation Type" step, you can uncheck the iOS SDK box, and leave the Xcode Toolset checked. This will skip the 8.35 GB iOS SDK install.


What are some ways to copy and paste more efficiently on iOS? If I am going to do some Google research on a question I have, I would like to copy a bunch of links I encounter and have them all go into some kind of list somewhere. Then, when I have gathered enough links, I can paste them in a document somewhere. That way, I don’t have to tediously switch back and forth between two apps, constantly.

Ideally, beyond just links, there would be the titles of the webpages, and some descriptions of them, too.

What are some ways to do this? The app Copied has some decent functionality related to this, but limited. Could it be pulled off with Shortcuts?

Are you using iPhone or iPad?

If you are using iPad, you should be able to do that. The iOS (or now called iPadOS) in iPad allows you to run 2 apps side by side at the same time. You can copy and paste the info between those 2 apps easily.

If you are using iPhone / iPod Touch, seems no workaround other than copy and paste the link one by one like what you are doing it now.

https://www.apple.com/ipados/
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ipados-tips-and-tricks/

Update: Maybe you can try this method? https://www.matthewcassinelli.com/ios-clipboard-shortcuts-copied/


Lightning EarPods + Mac Looking the Lightning Earpods, but can't seem to find a USB 3 or 2 to Female Lightning adapter. Anyone know anything or where I could find one?

Per the system requirements on the Lightning EarPods store page, an iPhone, iPod or iPad running iOS 10 or higher is required to use them. Even if you had a USB adapter it wouldn't work because there are no drivers in the OS for them.


How can I add a new application to the Open With menu? How can I add an application to the Open With menu (shown after right-clicking) for a given file type, without making that file always open with that application?

In this specific instance, I'd like to the option to open an Web site location (.URL) file with TextEdit, while still defaulting to Safari.

I'm running OS 10.7.4.

Add this to the CFBundleDocumentTypes array in /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/Info.plist:

<dict>
    <key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
    <array>
        <string>url</string>
    </array>
</dict>

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -f /Applications/TextEdit.app/
killall Finder
Change the default application back to Safari in Finder

If the application is signed, modifying an Info.plist invalidates the code signature. It also makes a few applications like TextEdit and WriteRoom crash on launch on 10.8.


Cannot type 'c' in Terminal - Restore Terminal to default settings I am new to terminal, learning how to code in Python.

I was trying to turn the autocomplete tab function on, using the code found in the link below.

https://timleland.com/how-to-enable-autocomplete-in-mac-terminal/

I can now not type 'c'. I am able to type 'C' and everything else. I believe I have changed the .bash settings, but I'm an amateur and don't know how to rectify this.

Is there a way to restore Terminal to its default settings?

Many thanks!

You can remove the broken inputrc file by opening your terminal and moving it to a different name:

mv ~/.inputrc ~/.input.broken

Then restarting your terminal session should restore it to normal.

In the above  you can copy/paste that in, or just hit tab to complete the first filename. ie. mv ~/.input(tab here) ~/.input.broken


How to losslessly rotate rotate jpeg images *without* a change to the last modified date? I'm looking for some convenient tool to handle such rotation without changing the file timestamps.

I'm not aware of any image tools that have this functionality built in, but you can use the built-in UNIX touch command to adjust the timestamps.

In Terminal, run touch -r photo.jpeg timestamp. That will create an empty file named timestamp with the timestamp of your image (replace photo.jpeg with the path to your file).
Edit your file however you want.
In Terminal, run touch -r timestamp photo.jpeg. That will copy the timestamp from the timestamp file back to your image file.
Remove the timestamp file: rm timestamp.


Which wireless controller is more compatible with Macs: Xbox 360 or PS3? I want to buy a gaming controller to play games like GTA3 from the App Store. Which controller will be most compatible with Mac OS X and games on Macs?

Especially it will be useful to know if you have any experience with setting up either PS3 or Xbox controller for Mac.

Update: I'm especially interested in correct functioning of the analog controls (joysticks).

Having tried both the Xbox controller and the PS3 controller on my Mac I can say: the PS3 controller is somewhat easier to get working with the Mac. It communicates via BlueTooth and pairing it is mostly painless. It's also wireless without requiring any other devices to be purchased. You can get the PS3 controller drivers from here.

The Xbox controller requires an additional USB dongle from Microsoft to get working if you want to use a wireless controller. Otherwise, you'll have to stick to using it as a wired controller. You can get the Xbox 360 controller drivers from here or here is an alternative driver.

I thought the drivers for the PS3 controller were a little more stable and that the stick response was snappier than the 360 controller. But I much prefer the 360 controllers layout, weight and overall tactile feel. Personal preference there really.


What is the impact of changing open files limit? To install Riak on OSX, Basho recommends to change the files limit on the system: Open File Limit.

But before doing that, I want to know the impact of changing that on the system. Should I expect slowing the system? More RAM usage?

There is no impact. You're simply changing the max number of open file descriptors a process can have. Without it, any software that needs to have more than 256 open file descriptors simply can not be used.

Almost any software that acts as a server is going to require this; a file descriptor is also required for sockets.

See: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/36841/why-is-number-of-open-files-limited-in-linux for more info on why the default is so low.

OSX went even further using 256 as the default. While I understand the OS is a desktop OS and perhaps they were thinking this somehow would protect users from themselves, it's a little ridiculous IMHO.


Macbook suddenly refusing password Mid-work at airport, Macbook pops login screen. All of a sudden stops accepting my password (which is same password used for all services).

After researching the issue and talking to Apple I was presented with the following options:

Reset with Apple ID. When I try this, I get "Unknown error occurred"
All options in Recovery OS
Unlock Volume HD

I never set up FileVault though. So currently Macbook is bricked, I'm in a country without a Genius Bar, and all my work is on the machine...

Anybody else experiencing these issues? Anything worked?

I haven’t come across this, but it may be worth trying to create an additional Admin account and logging into that to reset your password on your current account.

How to create an additional Admin account

You can do this by tricking your Mac into thinking it's being set up as new:

Boot into Single User Mode by restarting your Mac and pressing and holding ⌘ + S as soon as you hear the startup chime
Keep these keys down until you see a black screen with white text
Mount your drive by typing in /sbin/mount -uw / and then pressing the enter key
Remove the Apple Setup Done file by typing in
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and then pressing the enter key
Now reboot your Mac by typing in reboot and then pressing the enter key
Follow the prompts to complete the setup process and create a new admin account

Once you've done the above, try starting up and logging in as the new admin user. Assuming you can, then see if you can edit the password in your old account (just try changing it to your existing password).

[UPDATE]

Since we've established that even trying to boot into Single User Mode isn't working for you and that trying to do so results in the normal login screen appearing, I think we'd better investigate the possibility that your keyboard is faulty. This would explain your password not being accepted and the fact that pressing keys during startup may not have the desired result.

The best way to test this is to connect a USB keyboard and try using that. If you haven't got one, any cheap USB keyboard will do.


Using micro cd's in a MacBook Pro Is there a proper way to insert micro cd's so they are less likely to get stuck inside the cd slot on my MacBook pro?

Your MacBook Pro User Guide will state the following:

Slot-loading SuperDrive
This optical drive reads and writes standard-size CDs and DVDs.

By standard-size CDs and DVDs it means that the slot-loading drive is not designed to take mini/micro optical discs of any sort.

Instead, you will need an external tray-loading optical drive or access to an older Mac with one. Of course, if it's some sort of promotional material, software, etc, then you may be able to view/download it from the internet.


Creating folders in the Applications folder I like to keep things neat in my computer, so when I started to have too many apps, I decided to create subfolders within my /Applications folder and move tings around.

Sometimes, I got asked to enter my password.

Sometimes, softwares upgrades won't work. Or sometimes they create duplicates. Sometimes things seem to get messed up.

I guess my question is, is it considered good to create folders there? What's the best way to handle this?

It's not really considered "bad" to put folders there, but (as you've seen) it can cause problems with some apps.

The reason the updates are failing: The installer/updater looks for an app in the /Applications folder and doesn't find it. So, it assumes the app is not yet installed and that you are trying to install the whole app from the update, so it fails.

Alternatively, the app could be duplicated because the updater doesn't find the app and decides to install a new copy.

To avoid this problem, here's what I recommend:

Create another "organized apps" folder somewhere.
Make folders in it as you have in your /Applications folder.
Open one Finder window to /Applications and one to your new one.

Select ten apps from your Applications folder. Right-click and choose Make Alias. Give it a second. Then, drag the aliases you've made into the new folder. Repeat this (ten apps at a time) with the rest of your /Applications folder.

Now, you've got 'links' to all your apps in your new folder. Organize them how you want. You can now double-click the aliases in that folder to launch the apps they correspond to. Feel free to re-name and reorganize these aliases as you want.

Note that, with this method, updates should work. You will, however, have to manually add each app you install to the other folder.


iPad doesn't ask for home sharing password I have set up homes sharing on both my iPad and macbook's iTunes. Originally I did not set a password and it worked. Now I have set a password in iTunes preferences and when accessing my shared library on the iPad the content from library is displayed without me having to enter the password.

I have tried removing my apple ID from the settings app and restarting iTunes as well as the iPod and video apps on my iPad. Still I can access my content without entering a password.

So why am I able to access my content without the password and how do I fix it, so that the password is required?

If you don't want to just turn off Home Sharing on your computer, then two things come to mind.

If you changed the Apple ID somewhere else than the iPod settings - then that would explain things. (I've accidentally cleared the store account when I meant to change this upon going to a friend's house)

I just tested on my iPad and deleting the home share as depicted above immediately disconnected from my Home Share - I didn't need to kill iTunes on the iPad or do any re-starting - the effect was immediate as soon as I exited the settings tab.

Assuming you got the place correct, then your iPad iTunes database is a little corrupt. Sometimes syncing the iPad with a different iTunes library (music only) will delete your music and settings and allow things to work again. It's not easy to poke in the files directly on the iPad - and you may have to restore the device and set it up as new if getting a new set of iTunes data doesn't resolve it.

Lastly - you could check troubleshooting steps with Apple - the express lane at the bottom is good if the steps listed don't resolve it for you. It's highly unlikely to be something on your account with them or the computer, but they will know the oddball causes if the obvious next steps don't work.


Music stopping on app close? I have had my iPad on iOS 5.0.1 for a while, and restored it a couple of months ago, wiping all the content. Today I put some music back on (this is iOS 5.1.1 now) and while the music player works, as soon as I close it the music stops (I say 'stops' rather than 'pauses' because using the play button in the multitasking tray starts the song from the beginning as if the Music app hadn't been running.

This does not happen when playing music from other apps such as Dropbox.

Any ideas?

Here are the things you will want to try:

Force the Music app to close.
Restart your device.
Update to the latest iOS version.

I do not recommend that you close every single app in the multitasking bar. Simply restarting will have the same effect on system resources and is much less inconvenient.


Is there a way to always ignore a particular wifi network on your iPhone There is a certain wifi network that am around a lot.  It is very slow and pretty much unusable.  I would rather just never see it.  As it is, it pops up every time asking me to join.  Is there a way that I can have that particular network only never ask again.

The only way to do this would be to set "Ask to Join Networks" [sic] to OFF in your iPhone wifi settings.

I find this to be preferable. The main consequence is that, when you are in some place new, you'll have to manually select an available wifi network. But once you HAVE joined a network, it'll automatically join it when next available. And (more germane to your question) it WON'T ever join a network that you haven't explicitly joined.


How to copy part of an image using Apple Pencil When I do a image search on google, for the resulting images, I would like to select parts of them using my Apple Pencil on iPad Pro, so that I can copy those image parts and paste them on OneNote, but did not find the way to do this, currently I can only copy full images. Anybody knows how to do this?

Here's what I did.

With the Google search result image you want to use on screen, swipe diagonally up from the bottom left corner of the iPad screen. This will take a screenshot.
You have to use your fingers for this bit, but crop your screenshot to just the part of the image you want to copy.
In the top right corner use the share icon (arrow pointing up from a square).
Select "Copy"
Switch to OneNote
Paste!

You can also add OneNote to the share menu to share directly. In this little video I've already added it to mine.
https://imgur.com/a/RDKzUJC


What cases exist for the new iPad (3rd generation) most similar to Apple's 1st generation case? I am looking for cases that fit the full size iPad with retina displays (3rd and 4th generation) and function similarly to the original black case from Apple for the first generation iPad.

The aspects most appealing from that original design were:

slim - visually and form fitting without adding the bulk of an Otterbox product.
wedge for two angles (yes the vertical placement wasn't the most stable)
no covers on the screen or the ports letting all charging cables and controls work well
light drop, scratch and bump protection
durable (having seen over 25 case designs wear over 6+ months - the Apple one is surprisingly durable)
reputable warranty service (you can call for an exchange without hassle if it starts tearing 6 months into use)

The closest case (that isn't shipping yet) I have seen is the incase Magazine Jacket. What cases meet any (or many) of the criteria listed above?

There is a new company launching on November 5th called domeoproducts.com. They are a company that makes iPad and iPad mini cases. I have seen a couple of pictures of them online, and they look awesome.


curl command can't be found, OSX utilities have been replaced by GNU coreutils... how to start from scratch? I recently installed homebrew and I was having a hard time because I could not install it as curl command couldn't be found, someone pointed me to use wget and that worked to install homebrew but now I am trying to figure out how to get the curl command back.  I was patching an android rom with openpdroid and ran into a problem and in the process I found out when working out the error with the developer of autopatcher that I somehow or another the bundled OSX/BSD utils were replaced with GNU coreutils.  I have no idea if the osx/bsdutils or GNU coreutils have anything to do with curl.

I tried

$ brew install curl
==> Installing curl dependency: pkg-config
==> Downloading https://downloads.sf.net/project/machomebrew/Bottles/pkg-config-0.28.mountain_lion.bo
Warning: Bottle installation failed: building from source.
==> Downloading http://pkgconfig.freedesktop.org/releases/pkg-config-0.28.tar.gz
Error: /usr/bin/curl is not executable

Keep in mind that I like a toddler just learning my first words when it comes to working with the terminal shell.

also so you know

$ curl --version
-bash: curl: command not found

Is there a way to get back to having OSX bundled utilities as default if that is what I need to install curl.

Something seems to have changed your curl binary. To fix it, run

sudo rm -f /usr/bin/curl-wrapper
sudo mv /usr/bin/curl.bin /usr/bin/curl


ubuntu style change workspace in osx mavericks is there any way to make osx (mavericks) change the between workspaces like ubuntu > 12.0

i mean the 4 window workspaces and switching by going up/down/right/left

the current change workspace in osx is only left/right

This was actually a feature in Mac OS X Leopard (v10.5) and Snow Leopard (v10.6), but was changed in Lion. The general Mac term is “spaces”.

TotalSpaces2 brings back a grid setup, like in Ubuntu and the older versions of OS X.


How to automount SMB share in OS X I am running OS X Lion.  I have the following line in my /etc/fstab:

//darren:q@acid/home   /acid   smbfs   nodev,nosuid,auto

If I run mount -a, the share mounts correctly, but if I just reboot the computer, the drive does not mount.

The drive in question is an Ubuntu SMB share.

Can anyone advise?

I ran across this today which is one way to do it.

In summary for Mountain Lion:

Edit the file /etc/auto_master
Within add /- auto_smb
Create /etc/auto_smb
Within add /Volumes/mount_point -fstype=smbfs,soft ://user:pass@smbserver/share

The author goes onto mention a second method using the vifs command, but I've never tried that one and it seems to do something of a pre-mount at bootup. You still have to touch the Volume for it to completely mount.

Lastly, the author states that "soft" should be used in step 4 above because failures to mount will cause the bootup to hang.


iTunes Store is unavailable Recently I am downloading movies from iTunes Store and books from iBooks Store. But one annoying thing that I've ran into these days are The Movie/iBooks store is unavailable. This is happening for a week now. I've checked the Apple's Service Availability Page but it says that everything is available. Here are screenshots:

This is happening on an iPhone 6s and iPad Pro if it does matter. My Apple ID country is China and my location is in China.

Thanks

China blocked the iTunes store and iBook store due to it's political issues with Apple.

[Update] VPN doesn't help, it's account based not location based.


Why do I have two Guest Users? I'm kind of worried about the macOS (10.13 High Sierra) installed on my computer. I restarted my computer because it was misbehaving with Reminders (I logged out and in to iCloud to see if Continuity would start working again and it caused some trouble). When the login window appeared I saw a Guest User which I had deactivated before. I then logged in and it was still disabled. I enabled it and restarted and now I have two Guest Users ... only the one on the left asks for a password. I might have been hacked, don't know though...

Some possibly connected information:

I installed macports (reinstalled to the latest version)
I installed gnupg using macports
I ran geth (Ethereum client) (no sudo)
I played with iCloud (log out and in)
My HD is encrypted so I get the login before booting

Edit 2017-10-06 14:23:36:

I turned off Firevault, I clicked the button and there was no turning around.
I installed update 'macOS High Sierra 10.13 (17A405)' (link)
I restarted and the multiple user login was gone
I turned on Find my Mac and restarted... the double, nay, triple (my own account + 2 other) login was there but what I see is a little bit different.

Edit 2017-10-06 16:07:34:

I was able to hide the "Other..." login option by disabling the root login (System Preferences->Users & Groups->Unlock (bottom left)->Login Options->Join->Open Directory Utility->in Directory Utility Unlock (bottom left)->In Edit Menu, select Disable Root User)
When I enable Guest User, the root user gets enabled.
When using the Guest User and then login out, the computer freezes into a black screen with the pointer.

The one guest account with a proper picture is an OS account - you can remove it from the FileVault startup screen with this command.

Enter the following command in the Terminal:

sudo fdesetup remove -user Guest

That guest account is still around, but it’s not the one that comes from Find My Mac and FileVault - that’s the one with the shady silhouette - you can disable that by turning off Find My Mac or going to the user accounts preference pane in system preferences and electing the guest account configuration you prefer.


Keyboard layout for math I usually need to write math with LaTeX, and after seeing this question: Entering unicode math symbols. I came here with some small questions.

I find that not perfectly comfortable, and I was wondering if there is a way in which I could tell the system to differentiate between the left and right alt ⌥. So I could have much more symbols within one letter.

And, the another question is if there is a way I could turn the caps lock ⇪ into a different key (with the same use as alt ⌥, but the system should differentiate them). In this way I could use, for instance,

caps lock ⇪d to get the greek letters (in this case the letter delta δ), and
alt ⌥d to get some math symbol of my decision (in this case the partial differential symbol ∂).

This is not a great example, but more or less self explaining. Of course then caps lock ⇪ shouldn't be a turn on/turn off button. It should be turned on ONLY when pressed (exactly like alt ⌥).

I believe this is all possible. In my answer on TeX.SE, I give the MathUnicode.keylayout file that I made. Essentially, my advice is: go ahead and play around with this file.

A couple of thoughts:

The XML specification for .keylayout files is available from Apple.
On line 22 you can see that I refer to the anyOption modifier. This refers to the left or right option key. But you can also write option or rightOption if you wish to distinguish between the two.
I'm not sure whether caps can be treated as a "hold down" key, as you want it, rather than a "press on / press off" key.


Unable to remove a container disk on MacBook Pro SSD I am trying to remove a container disk and exFat partition on the GUID partitioned SSD on my Macbook Pro 13" 128GB early 2015. It got created by BOOT CAMP ASSISTANT. It is taking up 29GB of space on my disk. There is also a small exFat partition that I cannot remove. In disk utility the option to delete this partition and container disk is greyed out. When I press partition when I have selected my SSD and click on the 29GB container disk, the - button is greyed out, and in the bottom right corner it says "You cannot remove this volume because the previous volume cannot be resized". I have tried doing this when booted into Recovery mode 'Command + R'

Here are some screenshots:

EDIT: I formatted 'container disk 1' as 'untitled' and as exFAT out of curiosity and it deleted the container disk, but it added another volume called 'untitled' under the 'APPLE SSD SM0128...' which cannot be deleted (greyed out remove button).

In your screen shot I can see 2 additional containers just bellow disk1, these must be removed first. Start by removing the containers going clockwise from macOS. You will then be able to remove disk1 last.


Consequence of using both filevault and cloud encryption I am using a macbook pro with filevault turned on. I am planning to start using a zero-knowledge cloud service (sync.com) for all my files, to have a secure backup and as a way to share certain files with others. I was wondering if the two types of encryption will work alongside each other. If so, where in the process does the cloud encryption engage, and where does filevault take over? Will there be unnecessary redundancy in the two encryptions (perhaps with longer waiting times)?
Just trying to picture what will happen. Thanks!

On macOS, FileVault is encryption at rest so it’s designed to protect your files when the operating system isn’t operating. Just as you can see an email or text document once you log in and your password decrypts the drive, any apps can read clear versions of your files and send them to the cloud in the clear, print them in the clear.

Having FileVault doesn’t make things slower or faster, so you can pretty much exclude that from your worries and plans about whatever cloud sharing service and program you select.

That service will be fast or slow, secure or not on its own design and merits regardless of the status of FileVault.


keyboard keeps resetting itself to U.S I have a British keyboard which I have set in my keyboard preferences, however my mac keeps resetting itself back to U.S.

This annoying feature happens about 5 to 10 times a day.  How can I permanently set the language?

The default key command to switch Input Sources is  Cmd ⌘   space  which you may be triggering accidentally.
From comments, I understand the new default since El Capitan is  Ctrl ⌃   space , however it also appears it will remain at the old setting if you upgraded from an older OS.

To remove unwanted input sources go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources & remove all except the one you wish to keep.

Alternatively, if you want to keep the other sources but not trigger them accidentally, then remove the shortcuts in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Input Sources. [This option is only visible if you have more than one source in the previous pref pane.]

With the key command to change sources removed, you can change from the menu bar flag.

If you remove all except one source, the flag icon will disappear.


Pandora app won't play on Apple TV (4th Generation) I can't get Pandora to play music on my Apple TV (4th Gen). It just sits there at 0:00.

For some reason Pandora doesn't work with Reduce Loud Sounds enabled.

Disable it by going to the Settings app.

Settings > Audio and Video > Reduce loud sounds > off

EDIT: I just discovered you can ask Siri to "Turn Reduce loud sounds off" as well and it is much faster than navigating the settings of course.


How do I free up space on iCloud when I have already deleted many photos and turned off iCloud photos but not "my photo stream"? How do I free up space on iCloud when I have already deleted many photos and turned off iCloud photos but not "my photo stream"?

I want to be able to back up my iPhone with the iCloud but there are so many pictures taking up space in iCloud it won't back up now.

I have already downloaded all my cell phone pics to my computer; So I don't need the iCloud to back up pictures.

Please help.

To remove Photos (Photo Library) from iCloud backup:

Please open Settings/ your name iCloud
Open Storage/Manage Storage
Open Backups (iOS12) / select the backup for your iPhone
Switch off the Photo Library - this will exclude the Photo Library from the backup (you can do it while backup in progress)
Tap Turn Off & Delete (if already exists)


I've got one iPod touch, but two iTunes accounts on two separate computers When I first joined iTunes (just a month or two ago) I made a new Apple ID and iTunes account.  My sister had an Apple ID/iTunes account that my mother, sister, and brother used for their devices, but I, not ever having owned an iPod, figured that I could make my own iTunes account so that when I do purchase an iPod, I won't be pestering my sister (the first one in our house to have an iPod) for her Apple ID info.  (She's recently left for college and I didn't want to be dependent on her.)

So, I made an account and made use of $65 worth of gift cards that I had sitting around and put them onto my account. Now, my little sister wants some of the songs I've purchased.  But when I go to sync her device on my iTunes library, it tells me syncing will erase everything she has on her device and replace it with my library. I don't want that--I just want to share the songs from my iTunes account with her!

Is there any sort of solution or correction?

The issue isn't really iTunes accounts, but rather the syncing — you can only sync an iPod or iOS device with one library at a time.

The easiest solution now that iTunes songs are DRM-free is to copy your songs to her library, and then sync her device to her own library. To locate the actual files, select what you want in iTunes, right click and choose Reveal in Finder.


applications sometimes keeps bouncing, won't open and won't respond to force quit Most of the time my macbook air works fine. Only problem is that when I just turned on my pc and want to open some applications , often these applications won't open and force quit does not work. Currently, I just wait a couple of minutes and then everything works just fine, but actually I don't want to wait, so I was wondering how to solve this problem. Any suggestions?

Try nvram reset
If didnt help
Reinstall those apps
Worked for me


Merge container disks I want to merge the empty container disk3 to existing container disk2. How can I do it?

I think disk is both partitioned and has container inside partition Container disk2, which is in use. And second partition Container disk 3, which was created probably by accident:

So press Partition button when hard disk is selected (ST1000LM..) and choose Partition. Then select unused partition and click [-] (minus) sign.

Then select the main partition and increase its size to max:

Click apply and you are done.


Is it safe to use my Indian MacBook Pro charger in America using a simple adapter? I am using a local adapter to use my Indian MacBook charger in the US. I am wondering is it safe to use so.

Absolutely fine, so long as the original to adapter interface makes a good connection.

Alternatively, you could try to find a specific flat pin adapter to run directly from the charger - this is just a simple eBay UK search with similar plugs … http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/apple-us-plug


HDMI output not working on new MacBook Pro 2016 Touch Bar I am trying to get HDMI output working (both on tv and my normal HD screen) from my new mac. The device only has USB-C ports, so I bought two types of converters (not official from Apple, but didn't think that would matter):

This adapter, that I use with a regular hdmi cable.
This adapter with integrated cable.

None are recognised by the Mac. I've tried hitting the option key and detecting displays, but none show. I've also tried plugging in the usb cable that is attached to the last cable in the tv too, no luck. I see that the first adapter has a power slot too, I can try to plug in a usb power source there?

I've also just updated Sierra, no luck.

Any other suggestions? My vga / usb-c adapter works fine.

Is there any logfile or so that I could check to see if the device gets recognised?

Based on everything you have described, it sounds like the problem is between your MBP and the TV(s).  I am not a fan of no-name adapters like the one you linked in your question.

I have personally recommended this Anker USB-C to HDMI adapter to a family member with excellent results.

It's got high ratings, an 18 month warranty and supports 4K at 60Hz.  The adapters you referenced didn't support that level of resolution (1080p looked to be the max).


If I leave an Shared External HDD connected while MAC is locked will other users be able to access? I am dealing with a user that is going on vacation, the user has a external HDD hooked up to a Mac Pro that will be locked (not sleep) while the user is gone. This HDD is shared with a team that accesses it regularly.

Should we be able to leave the drive connected for a week without users losing the ability to see the drive on the network? The Mac Pro is currently set to not go to sleep. However, I don't know if locked for a period of time will sleep kick in. Is this not even really a concern if the sleep settings are disabled?

There are a few things I'd do to minimise the possibility of an interruption while your colleague is away. You may already have these done, but just to be sure I go into detail below.

Screensaver

Totally disable your screensaver so that it's set to Never.

Energy Saver

Ensure that both Display Sleep and Computer Sleep are also set to Never.

Enable the Start up automatically after power failure and the Restart automatically if the computer freezes options (although if the Mac Pro doesn't automatically login then someone would need to know the password in order to log in - see Users & Groups below).

NOTE:

You can use Terminal to confirm these settings by entering the:

sudo systemsetup -getrestartfreeze -getrestartpowerfailure command.

Users & Groups

If the user requires a password to login you will need to address the possibility that in the event of a freeze or power failure, no-one will be able to log in while they're away. One option would be to temporarily ensure that Automatic Login is not off so you don't hit any surprises on reboots.

To do this go to Login Options and enable Automatic Login.

IMPORTANT: If you're worried about security, it may be best to create another user on the Mac Pro for periods such as this and use that user account to share the HD etc. Then, when the user is away on vacation etc, all you need to do is set the machine to automatically log in for this user account instead. (Keep in mind this is just an added precaution in the event of a power failure or freeze.)

Also within Users & Groups is the option to have items automatically open upon logging in. So, if you require the Mac Pro to have any particular software running, then you'll want to ensure this is set as a login item. Again, this is just an added protection in the event the Mac Pro reboots for some reason.

To access login items, select the user and click on the Login Items tab. Use the plus + button to add items as necessary.

App Store

During the vacation period it would probably also be good to ensure that no software updates are automatically installed (as some require the computer to restart - hence causing the same issue as a power failure/freeze because of the subsequent reboot).

Go to System Preferences > App Store and uncheck the Automatically check for updates option.

Last resort

If all else fails and you run into problems during the vacation period, don't forget you can just shutdown the Mac Pro and then manually connect the external HDD to other computers for users to access as necessary.


Will Swype ever be available for iPhone? Swype has been rumored to one day become available for iPhone.  Does anyone know of any concrete plans?

Update 2019-09-20

iOS 13 now has swype-like support built in.

Pre iOS 13...

I have been following Swype for some time, and the only thing they have officially said was one little peep in Reuters back in June about looking towards iPhone development.  In the article they alluded towards a developer running Swype on his iPhone, however no releases or leaks are anywhere to be found.

My guess... just a guess... is that they are trying to work around the need to jailbreak your iPhone in order to run it.

If you follow the Engadget blog, you'll be among the first to know.


Not being able to verify apps I have an iPhone SE, running iOS 12. As part of a programming course I do, we made some apps. 4 in total.

Whenever I try to open one of these apps I get this message:

However when I go to settings and verify it tries to verify it as shown here:

But then it goes back to say not verified. How can I fix this?

EDIT: I am connected to WIFI and it works

You have apps installed as "enterprise apps" - i.e. it is not apps installed via the App Store, via TestFlight or directly from Xcode as a developer. Enterprise app installation is supposed to be used only by enterprises installing their own custom apps on their own devices - it is not intended for public distribution.

In order to verify these apps, you'll need to have a working internet connection, and especially you must have unhindered access to https://ppq.apple.com Apple Support

However, it is not enough to have a working internet connection. The enterprise distribution account with Apple that was used to sign these apps must still be valid (i.e. subscription paid) - and the enterprise must not have revoked these specific apps.


Upgrading Leopard Server from 10-client to Unlimited I need the lowest-impact way to allow more than 10 AFP sessions on my OS X Server running 10.5.8. If I buy a boxed retail copy of 10.5.4 Server Unlimited, will I just have to enter the new license key in Server Settings? Is it OK if the version numbers don't match up exactly on this type of upgrade?

The specific product I'm looking at is here on Amazon. Apple product ID MB605Z/A.

Success! I purchased an open-but-unused retail copy of OS X Server v10.5.4 RTL Unlim Client (product number MB605Z/A) and replaced the license key on my server from the 10-client version with the Unlimited key included in the new box. 30 seconds later I was up and running! So yes, it is simple to apply the new key and upgrade your access, and the exact version number does not need to match that which you already have installed.


Manually set iTunes play/pause button I'm using an old Apple USB keyboard(it came with the iMac G5) with my Mac.  I'd like to bind F16 to play/pause iTunes, like F8 key on the MacBooks.  Right now the key does nothing.

I'm OK with 3rd party software/plugins.

The best solution for this is Karabiner (formerly known as KeyRemap4MacBook).

It allows you to do all sorts of great remapping, including this one. It isn't the easiest thing in the world to set up though. Using it and writing your own custom keybindings file almost anything is possible.

For a commercial solution that also does a great deal more and is easier to deal with you could use Keyboard Maestro, which I consider almost essential on a Mac.


Client certificate authentication fails with iOS 13.4.1 (works with 13.2.2) I've previously posted this question and since then further investigated the issue.

The problem seems to be the latest iOS (13.4.1), which fails to send the client certificate upon authentication requests.

To test this, I've set up a webserver, requiring a client certificate for authentication. The client certificate is installed on the iPhone. If I navigate to the website, iOS states that a client certificate is required and asks to use the installed one. Once I press continue the connection fails as no certificate is presented to the server.

Exactly the same setup on iOS 13.2.2 works as expected. Client certificate is installed, website is accessed, iOS asks about sending the certificate, iOS does so and access works fine.

I've written a bug report to Apple but have yet to hear from them.

Update: iPadOS 13.3.1 also works as expected.

Update: iOS Beta 13.4.5 has the same issue.

Does anyone else experience this issue or is this an isolated case for me? I've even hard-reset the iPhone to check if it was a problem with my setup.

Requirements for trusted certificates in iOS 13 and macOS 10.15

Does the client certificate meet Apple's latest certificate requirements?

  All TLS server certificates must comply with these new security requirements in iOS 13 and macOS 10.15:

  TLS server certificates and issuing CAs using RSA keys must use key sizes greater than or equal to 2048 bits. Certificates using RSA key sizes smaller than 2048 bits are no longer trusted for TLS.
  TLS server certificates and issuing CAs must use a hash algorithm from the SHA-2 family in the signature algorithm. SHA-1 signed certificates are no longer trusted for TLS.
  TLS server certificates must present the DNS name of the server in the Subject Alternative Name extension of the certificate. DNS names in the CommonName of a certificate are no longer trusted.

While the document mentions server certificates, I suspect client certificates will also be rejected if they using SHA-1 or weak keys.

Debugging with openssl s_server

Try debugging the TLS connection with OpenSSL's test server, see Verify Incoming SSL Using OpenSSL S_Server for a related question.


Make animated GIF from a movie created in iMovie.app on Mac I made my first little 10-second movie in iMovie 10.1.x on macOS Mojave.

Is there a way to turn this movie into an animated GIF?

You can do it using the Keynote app which is preinstalled on every Mac:

Create a basic Keynote project
Remove all unnecessary text elements from the first slide
Drag and drop your video from the Finder into your first slide
If needed, edit Document's size to the required size of the final gif image
If needed, trim video in Format->Movie tab
Export Using File->Export to->Animated Gif

Here is the detailed instruction: https://macmost.com/create-an-animated-gif-from-video-on-a-mac.html


Is it possible to install a ringtone on an iPhone using Garageband? Can a custom ringtone be created or installed on an iPhone using the GarageBand app from Apple on the iPhone?  (and without using a Mac or PC, and without buying the ringtone using the Music App).

Open the Garageband app on the iPhone
Tap the [+] button to create a new song, select your instruments to use, and get ready to play around or just press buttons
When satisfied with your tone jingle idea, record the audio by tapping on the red Record button, then tapping it again to stop the recording
Tap the downward pointing arrow icon in the corner and choose “My Songs”
Select the song you just created and choose the Sharing icon in the corner, it looks like a box with an arrow pointing out of it
Choose “Ringtone” from the sharing options
Name the ringtone whatever you would like and assign the artist name, song name, etc (this is basically the metadata for the Garageband song, which will be embedded in the ringtone) then tap on “Export”
Choose one of three options depending on what you want to do with the newly created ringtone:

Standard Ringtone – this assigns the ringtone as your new default ringtone for all incoming calls
Standard Text Tone – this assigns the ringtone as the new default
text tone for all incoming text messages and iMessages
Assign to Contact – this assigns the ringtone specifically to a
designated contact in your address book only playing when that
individual contacts you

When finished, exit out of Garageband as usual and enjoy your newly created ringtone or text tone.

For images and further information, visit the source: OSXDaily


Get historical USB usage using terminal I need to see historical USB usage on my mac.
I've tried

system_profiler SPUSBDataType | grep "Serial Number" -B5

but this only shows current.
Is there a command that shows historical?

Unfortunately that type of data is not stored on the Mac by default.


Screenshot on my mac without permission? Sometimes I hear sound of making screenshot on my mac - what can it be? How can I check if there is any spyware which takes screenshots?

Type ps -ax in the Mac terminal to view all running processes. Find suspicious ones and abort them. You can abort the process by using the kill command followed by the process ID (PID).


Which iOS and Lion third-party apps support "Documents in the Cloud"? Which apps in iOS and Lion support the "Documents in the Cloud" feature from iCloud? I know that Apple's own iWork apps support this. But other than Apple's own apps, which third-party apps implement this?

It would be helpful to know the name of the app as well as how it uses "Documents in the Cloud". For instance:

Pages, it allows you to save your documents
Instacast, keep last listened to position in podcasts in sync.

One app per answer, please, to keep the results focused. Please check before you answer, duplicate answers will be deleted.

I use SigleText (website | App Store link | MAS link) to share notes between my iPhone and my Mac; it uses iCloud storage.
As far as I know, iTunes Movie Trailer app and Doodle Jump app use iCloud storage to sync your settings between iOS devices.
Worth to mention: Instacast. The last version sync your podcasts (played status, favorites, resume playing location) thanks to iCloud. The developer said is going to launch an iPad version, so this feature should be very handy in the future.


Moving Drives Between Macs I'm considering buying a new MacBook Pro after today's refresh, and I am wondering if OS X handles simply pulling a drive out of one MacBook Pro and putting it in another. I know that in the Windows world this is — most of the time — possible, but I have never tried it with OS X. Does the OS handle the sudden change in hardware, or does it 'sh*t bricks' and abort mission? In theory you'd think it could handle it, but anyone with definite experience would be good.

In general, this is a very safe, OS X boots other hardware in general situation.

However, when new hardware is released - often a special build is made and until the next revision or two of software, you can't boot that hardware so you'd need to take a hard drive from the specialized machine to an older one instead of the other way around.

It's far safer to migrate from a Time Machine or target mode or from running OS using file sharing / network. That way each machine has the correct OS and can flag apps or system files for non-transfer when there is a known problem migrating them.


Virtual Machine vs. Remote Desktop performance on 2012 MBPr MacBook specs:

i7 2.3ghz processor
256gb SSD
16gb RAM
Intel HD graphics 4000

I am trying to write, compile, and run c# windows form apps on my Mac, and I'm having little to no success. I've done mono and I get it to start and run, but the program doesn't completely load/render and it crashes every time I attempt to log in to my database. I've also tried Wine and I couldn't even get the app to start. I have visual studio installed on my MB and I've noticed that the Mac OS version of VS doesn't include the drag-and-drop form builder that is included in the Windows version, which I'm assuming is because you can't build a "windows" app on a Mac.

I'm wondering if it would be a better decision to Remote Desktop to a windows pc or run a VM on my MBP? I feel like the VM would be more convenient but storage is an issue with only 256gb SSD. Also, with an older processor + gpu I'm not sure what kind of perforce I can expect from VM as opposed to remoting into a windows desktop. I'm curious to hear what you do if you have experience in this matter, or if you have any particular advice.

Additional questions:

If storage is an issue, would running a VM from a usb 3.0 flash drive be acceptable?
Oracle Virtualbox, Fusion, Parallel comparison?
Does anyone have experience with the Windows Remote Desktop client for Mac? Am I better off with this or a 3rd party app?

I ended up going with a Remote Desktop client for storage and performance reasons. Storage is obvious - my MBP is very limited with a small SSD. Performance reasons for choosing Remote Desktop were because it is effectively two CPUs, GPUs, and Hard Drives - essentially doubling my specs. Here's the process I took:

I bought a Lenovo IdeaCentre 510a with my desired specs and replaced the optical drive with an SSD.
I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. This is crucial. To use Windows Remote Desktop, the computer you are remoting into needs to have Windows 10 Pro, Ultimate, or Enterprise.
I downloaded the Windows Remote Desktop client for Mac from the Mac OS app store and configured it with some help from this MSDN documentation.

Following those steps will giving you access to remote into your machine as long as you are on the same network. If you want to access your machine from an outside network (school, coffeeshop, hotel, etc.) then you will need to look into one of the following:

VPN
Port forwarding
RD Gateway
Azure VM (see comments below)


DVD drive connected wirelessly to iPad I watch a bunch of movies on DVD that I get from Netflix.  I'd really like to watch them from my iPad, but of course my iPad doesn't have a DVD drive.

Is there a way to have a DVD drive somewhere in my house, that can be connected wirelessly to my iPad?  In other words, some way to put the movie DVD into a separate DVD drive, start it playing, and have it beam the movie to my iPad, so I can watch it on my iPad?  Basically, read the movie from my DVD player and then stream it wirelessly to my iPad.  (I don't want something that would require my iPad to be connected via a wire to something else; that would leave me tethered, which is annoying.)

I know I could probably have a separate computer with a DVD drive and manually rip the movie and then somehow transfer it to my iPad, but that's a pain.  I'd prefer something more convenient: just put it into the player, press play, and watch on my iPad.  Is there a way to do it?

That is possible if:

You have a DVD drive with WiFi capability.

You could connect the DVD drive to your router and access it from your iPad.


iPhone is not discovering available devices in Bluetooth settings in iOS9 I have the following devices with me:
iPhone 6 (iOS 9.2),iPhone 6 Plus (iOS 9.2),iPhone 6s (iOS 9.2), iPhone  5c (iOS 9.0.2), iPod Touch (iOS 8.3), iPhone 6 (iOS 8.4.1), and MacBook Pro(OS X El Capitan 10.11.1).

I have turned on Bluetooth in all devices(including MacBook Pro) in parallel, none of them are showing the other devices except iPod Touch (iOS 8.3) is showing MacBook Pro and MacBook Pro is showing all other devices.

I expected every device should display all other devices in the bluetooth section in the following picture. It's not working for some reason, but it's showing some other unknown device.

Is it the expected behaviour of the iOS devices in the latest iOS versions? or Am I missing something? or Is it a bug in iOS9?.
I reset the settings in the all devices, rebooted and turned on & off bluetooth multiple times, but I found no result.

Is anyone facing the same scenario?
How it is working in your devices?
Please share your experience and thoughts.
Thanks.

If you follow central - peripheral concept, then one device should start advertise service and and another device should start scan for same service.
Then it will show as discovered.


Why does Dia interface look blurry on my Mac? I have installed the latest Dia and XQuartz (X11) on my Mac OS X 10.8.3 retina display. As seen in the screenshot below, why do the items and anything I draw look blurry and pixelly? What can I do about it? Thanks!

The issue stems from the way X11 handles pixels. There are some third party workarounds, but it would seem that one needs to wait until XQuartz is updated to deal with Retina scaling.

I have installed QuickResFree from the Mac App Store, which lets you have finer control over the resolution than the Mac display defaults. This makes it so I can use my X11 apps and decrease the apparent blurriness, but switch back to something more reasonable for Retina-compatible apps.

I will note that this solution is not optimal, and the problem still lies in the fact that many apps are not yet programmed to be able to deal with the pixel scaling and Retina.


Android Hotspot doesn't work on Macbook pro I'm completely new to the Mac world. I am trying to connect my Macbook Pro (13" 2020
with Catalina 10.15.6) to my Android Hotspot. This seems to work because my macbook can connect to the hotspot and it responds to the ping. But whenever I try to open a web page the result is the same as not connected. Is anyone else experiencing this problem?

Before I got a new iPhone, I experienced this with my Android sometimes. It may or may not work for you, but try a physical connection. I have found that this helped me.


How to combine two live video feeds with picture in picture Is it possible to combine the feeds from a USB webcam / IP video stream (iPad) and the built-in iSight camera on my MacBook Pro (early 2011) running Yosemite into one video feed for use in, for example, Skype, but also other applications. My use case is to record myself playing guitar from two angles simultaneously.

You can use Livestream app for OS X and iOS.

There are maybe standalone apps, but I figured out fairly simple way to do this.

The setup:

Your Mac will be handling the image processing using Livestream's Producer app
Your iPad will be just sending video to your Mac throught Livestream's App for iOS.
Start the stream on your iPad
Open your iPad's stream in browser on your Mac (and make it fullscreen and mute audio)
Start stream on your Mac.

You will have nice ability to choose source of video - Webcam or ScreenShare (in this case your iPad stream) or both using 2D or 3D effect as show on the image bellow.

P.S. You can probably do the same using Google Hangouts call, but you will not have control over the image.


How to copy a Mail setup with rules and signatures to some other mac I have a Mail setup with four mail accounts, quite some rules and signatures associated with my different accounts. Now I like to have the same Mail setup on another Mac. Both are running El Capitan.

In early OSX Days it was just a copy of ~/Library/Preferences/..mail..somethingand ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/Mail. This is no longer the case. Now my question: How do I copy a Mail setup to a different computer of which both are running El Capitan.

In the even more earlier days we even had mail account config synchronisation via iCloud on multiple macs. Apple pulled that feature and never re-introduced it.

I am answering my own question. I know it is possible to transfer user data from one mac to another by using the migration assistant. In my case this does not apply because I only want to copy my complex Mail setup and no other data and config.

After some experiments I found the following to be working:

On your destination Mac in SystemPreferences/Sharing activate File Sharing
Important: Log out of your user account on the destination mac.
Quit Mail on your source mac if it is running.
On your source mac mount your destination mac user folder.
Copy ~/Library/Mail to the same location in your destination user folder
Copy ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail to the same location in your destination user folder.
Copy ~/Library/Accounts to the same location in your destination user folder.
Restart your destination mac and log in to your User Account. When you start mail, all the accounts, signatures and rules should be present. But... Rule and signature assignments may be gone though. Check and re-assign if needed. Mail Accounts will start syncing. You may be prompted to enter your passwords again in SystemPreferences/Internet Accounts.

Update 15-07-2016

There may be a problem with smtp server definitions. In case of experiencing problems with sending email over a specific smtp server, just remove it and re-add it. The connection problem (in my case: unable to verify user or password) should be gone then.


How can I create a CD installer in ISO format for macOS High Sierra? For the last couple of macOS versions, it has been standard to upgrade the system from a downloaded package, or to create an installation USB drive. However, how can I make an installer that boots from a CD-ROM?

From my web page:

(Hat tip: User toru173 at MacRumors)

First, you must download the High Sierra package from the Mac App Store. This will create a directory called "Install macOS High Sierra" under Applications. On some systems, only a small stub of about 19MB is downloaded. It can appear random which systems that receive the full installation package and which only get the stub. If you got the stub, then you must run the program, accept the license and pick a target volume. Then it will start downloading the full version. When you get to the final screen, do NOT click the Reset button, but
rather select Quit from the application menu at the top of the screen.

The bulk of the downloaded files is put directly in an auxiliary directory in the root of the volume you selected in the installer. To create a bootable installer, these files must be available from within the installer directory, to be copied from there. This is best done by moving the files back into the required subdirectory. You should move the entire top directory instead of
copying the files underneath it, because there are locked files which you ordinary user cannot access.

mv "/macOS Install Data" "/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport"

Create an image file with sufficient space to hold the DVD, in a format that is writable and growable, and mount it. Please make sure that you don't have any other disks named Untitled currently in use.

hdiutil create -o /tmp/HighSierra -size 12800m -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J -type SPARSE
hdiutil attach /tmp/HighSierra.sparseimage -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/Untitled

Now create a bootable image from the mini-system that is embedded in the installer.

caffeinate asr restore -source "/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/BaseSystem.dmg" -target /Volumes/Untitled -noprompt -noverify -erase

This will change the name of the volume from Untitled to OS X Base System,
to reflect the setting in the source image.

Copying must be done as the superuser since it contains locked files that the normal user does not have access to.

sudo rm -rf "/Volumes/OS X Base System/Install macOS High Sierra.app"
caffeinate sudo cp -a "/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app" "/Volumes/OS X Base System/"

Give the CD a proper icon.

cp "/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/InstallAssistant.icns" "/Volumes/OS X Base System/.VolumeIcon.icns"
SetFile -a C "/Volumes/OS X Base System/"

Rename the installer volume.

diskutil rename "OS X Base System" "Install macOS High Sierra"

We are done with putting files into the installer image. Unmount the
filesystem within so that we can start to work on the image file itself.

hdiutil detach "/Volumes/Install macOS High Sierra"

Shrink the image to the minimum size possible, and convert it into an
ISO format file that can be written to a physical disk.

hdiutil resize -size min /tmp/HighSierra.sparseimage
caffeinate hdiutil convert /tmp/HighSierra.sparseimage -format UDTO -o /tmp/HighSierra
mv /tmp/HighSierra.cdr /tmp/HighSierra.iso

Now the installation CD is ready, and can be burnt to a physical CD.

There is a a caveat when using this CD: You must boot from the CD first, then run through the installer. When the installer reboots, you must start from the CD again, but this time, don't run the installer but rather a start a Terminal from the Utilities menu at the top of the screen. Here we must supply the installation package that this version of the installer thinks is already copied to disk.

cp "/Volumes/Install macOS High Sierra/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESDDmg.pkg" "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/macOS Install Data/"

Finally, while you still have a functional version of the system booted, you should run a disk check. If this fails when the system reboots, you are effectively hosed, whereas at this point, being in the installer, you can still rescue files to an external disk. Assuming that your harddisk is called Macintosh HD and that this is the second partition (s2) on the first harddisk (rdisk0), the commands to run are:

hdiutil detach "/Volumes/Macintosh HD"
fsck_hfs -fy -x /dev/rdisk0s2


How do i remove this Guest User / greyed out remove button One day i got some malware on my mac. Finally removed it successfully, but this was somehow created when i first got the malware. All the forums i've found just say hit the "-" aka remove but it is grey'd out and i cannot do that.

You can not delete the Guest User.

What you are seeing is the correct behaviour for OS X; the minus button (-) is automatically disabled when the Guest User account is selected.

You appear to have disabled the Guest User account by unchecking all the options. This is enough to stop anyone logging in as guest on your Mac.


When I click on my terminal, strange characters appear The problem I have happens after a ssh connection has been ended by closing my MacBook (putting it in stand-by mode). I come back and it's written broken pipe.

When I click on the terminal window, a succession of characters appear. If I click several times, then the combination of these characters will appear the same number of times.

By moving my cursor, I can change the combination of letters...
Here, between every line, I moved my cursor somewhere else on my Desktop.

The content of my ~/.bash_profile is:

# Tell ls to be colourful
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=Exfxcxdxbxegedabagacad

# Tell grep to highlight matches
export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto'

export TERM="xterm-color"
PS1='\[\e[0;33m\]\u\[\e[0m\]@\[\e[0;32m\]\h\[\e[0m\]:\[\e[0;34m\]\w\[\e[0m\]\$ '

# Setting PATH for Python 3.6
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

# added by Anaconda3 5.2.0 installer
export PATH="/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"

Versions:

macOS High Sierra version 10.13.5

You have somehow activated the terminal's mouse tracking mode. This is usually used by terminal applications which accept mouse input (like vim), which can interpret these character sequences as mouse events. The shell does not support mouse input, so it displays these sequences directly.

You can turn off mouse tracking mode by running the reset command in the terminal.


File Sharing User Limit? Does non-Server macOS still have a file sharing user limit these days? The way they are abandoning the idea of running Mac Servers, it seems plausible they could have removed the file sharing limit from "client" macOS.

Also was the former (and maybe current) 10-user limit, a limit of the number of different file sharing users that could connect at once, OR a limit of the number of inbound filesharing connections?
In other words, if you created two file sharing users, could 15 people connect if 7 used account A and 8 used account B?

No - people will not connect due to slowness of the storage backing the share long before you'll hit a limit on connected users if there even is one.

I've got 55+ connections to a couple Mac Mini each running just normal sharing and server sharing of various flavors.

I recommend performance mode for any situation where you run a web app or server app or file sharing. The optimizations for single use that protect the system from runaway processes isn't the correct optimization for dozens of people consuming stable services that run as daemons.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202528


iPad language glitch How do I switch to Australian Store on my iPad, it appears to have gone to the French store and is telling me I can't update unless I switch to Australian store, I don't know what to do as I have checked in settings etc.

Go to Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> [your Apple ID] -> View Apple ID.

Change the Country/Region (below Payment Information).

Select your region, agree to terms, and you're done.


Is there any way to make Console prompt for authentication to logs the user isn't authorised to? If I try to access system.log from my non-admin account I get the message "Unable to read the file"

Is there any way to make Console.app prompt for administrator credentials to view logs the user isn't authorised to as happens elsewhere in the GUI?

Presumably the message is because I'm not authorised:

A1398% ls -la /private/var/log/system.log
-rw-r-----  1 root  admin  1807993 Jan 23 16:14 /private/var/log/system.log

I know sudo /Applications/Utilities/Console.app/Contents/MacOS/Console will open Console.app with sufficient rights but it is rather inconvenient.

Console.app is not designed to prompt for credentials.

If you don't want to type the command every time or you don't want to remember it you have two similar choices:

Create a simple bash script or a nice automation with Automator and then you can place it everywhere you want.


Can I download software update and apply them on another iMac I have the same iMac twice at two different locations. On one location I have a good internet connection but on the other one I have internet over satellite and it is limited to 3GB / month. I would like to know if there is a way to download software updates at one location and apply them at the other one? (I've already managed to download the mountain lion install package and copy it on an USB stick, but now I'd like to the same for the iPhoto update for example).

Yes. However instead of getting the update through Software Update look for the update web page. e,g, 10.7.4 update for Lion and iPhoto 9.2.3. I found the latter by google search site:apple.com iPhoto update


I placed Neovim in usr/local/bin but getting permission denied I'm not sure where to place the Neovim folder (after extracting it). Is the location usr/local/bin correct?
I get the following
zsh: permission denied: nvim

The location of an executable is much less important for it to be run from Terminal than its permissions.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/183994/understanding-unix-permissions-and-file-types/

Check them by running
ls -la /usr/local/bin/nvim

I'm not sure where to place the Neovim folder

You can place it anywhere you want as long as the shell can find it. Shell finds items using a variable named PATH.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_(variable)#Unix_and_Unix-like
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11530090/adding-a-new-entry-to-the-path-variable-in-zsh

Is the location [/]usr/local/bin correct?

It is correct only if this location is in PATH. Check it by running echo $PATH in your terminal. I personally like ~/Applications. If it is not in PATH: Open ~/.bash_profile/ ~/.zshenv in your text editor and add the following line to it
 PATH="/usr/local/bin":"$PATH"

ZSH: .zprofile, .zshrc, .zlogin - What goes where?

zsh: permission denied: nvim

You have two choices here:

Use Homebrew to install it and no longer worry about putting files in lib or share or bin folder.

Run
chmod u+x /usr/local/bin/nvim


Mail.app and accountsd are taking op all CPU Mac OS 10.15 I have suddenly (did not see when it is happening and when it is stopping) CPU peaks, which is coming from Mail.app and accountsd all together

i did a screenshot of the activity monitor as well as the console, where, when this spike is happening, it is creating +/- 3500 messages a second, all the same as the one on the Screenshot shows some of it.

Screenshot Activity Monitor : https://bazinga.lu/mail1.png
Screenshot Console : https://bazinga.lu/mail2.png

Most of the messages are like this one:

Connection error changed for account:

this for all mail accounts. Killing all the accounts and readding, or dis/enabling it did not help

Also another strange thing happening is, in the message list, some users (i found out they are in the contacts and have a different string in the contacts entry than in the one they provide in the mail header) will flash every second from one to the other name in this list. It is a flckering which is constant, let's say every second, a bit delayed the further down in the list the mail is.

Current "solution" is to stop the mail.app and restart it, it will be good for up to 10 minutes and it will happen again

any ideas ? It started when upgrading from 10.14 to 10.15

Latest Mac OS Version 10.15.1 (19B88)

Many Thanks

Tom

Same here, problem seems to be closed related to 10.15, since on Mojave I've never experienced something like that. Googling around, I found that the problem seems to be due to some "under-the-hood" logic behind account configuration.

Specifically I found that going to

Mail.app -> Settings -> Accounts -> (repeat for each account you have) -> Server Settings:

Disable the option: "Automatically Manage connection settings"

This seems to lower at 0.0 / 0.1 the CPU requirements for accountsd.


List the extensions installed in Safari for Mac OS X, and state whether each one is enabled I'd like a list, from which text can be copied.

(Not a screenshot of preferences.)

This information does not appear in any of the following:

Safari
System Profiler in Snow Leopard
System Information in Lion.

I wondered whether there exists an extension to list other extensions, but when I searched I could not find anything suitable.

If not a command or an extension, maybe there's an app, but again: I could not find anything suitable.

(I could instead have posted this opening question to Super User, where a command piping guru might step up, but I prefer Ask Different for the likelihood of someone knowing an extension or app.)

Background

With the extensions master switch off, the simple presence of installed extensions may cause some versions of Safari to take longer than expected to launch.

For that reason and others, it's sometimes necessary to have a comprehensive list of installed extensions, including those that are disabled.

It's primarily a matter of parsing the output of defaults read ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/extensions and formatting it in a user-friendly way. The result actually answers both of your questions:

defaults read ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/extensions | awk '
/Bundle Directory/ {
    split($0, t, /\"/);
    sub(".safariextension", "", t[4]);
    sub("-1", "", t[4]);
    bundle=t[4]
    e="disabled"
}
/Enabled/ {
    e="enabled";
}
/Hidden Bars/ {
    print bundle, "...", e
}' | sort --ignore-case

Creating a shell script out of it is left as an exercise to the reader.

Please note that this will most probably stop to work if Apple decides to change the format of ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/extensions


OCR on PDFs in OS X with free, open source tools After reading these blog posts:

Linux, OCR and PDF - Problem solved
Creating a searchable PDF with opensource tools ghostscript, hocr2pdf and tesseract-ocr
Using Tesseract OCR with PDF scans

and going through the snippet below (from this gist) for Linux, I think I found a method to OCR a multi-page PDF and get a PDF in the output that could also work in OS X. Most of the dependencies are available in homebrew (brew install tesseract and brew install imagemagick), except one, hocr2pdf.

I haven't been able to find a port of it for OS X. Is there one available? If not, how can one OCR a multi-page PDF and get the results back again in a multi-page PDF in OS X, using free, open source tools?

#!/bin/bash

# This is a script to transform a PDF containing a scanned book into a searchable PDF.
# Based on previous script and many good tips by Konrad Voelkel:
# http://blog.konradvoelkel.de/2010/01/linux-ocr-and-pdf-problem-solved/
# http://blog.konradvoelkel.de/2013/03/scan-to-pdfa/
# Depends on convert (ImageMagick), pdftk and hocr2pdf (ExactImage).
# $ sudo apt-get install imagemagick pdftk exactimage
# You also need at least one OCR software which can be either tesseract or cuneiform.
# $ sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr
# $ sudo apt-get install cuneiform
# To install languages into tesseract do (e.g. for Portuguese):
# $ sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr-por

echo "usage: ./pdfocr.sh document.pdf ocr-sfw split lang author title"
# where ocr-sfw is either tesseract or cuneiform
# split is either 0 (already single-paged) or 1 (2 book-pages per pdf-page)
# lang is a language as in "tesseract --list-langs" or "cuneiform -l".
# and author, title are used for the PDF metadata.
#
# usage example:
# ./pdfocr.sh SomeFile.pdf tesseract 1 por "Some Author" "Some Title"
pdftk "$1" burst dont_ask
for f in pg_*.pdf
do
if [ "1" == "$3" ]; then
convert -normalize -density 300 -depth 8 -crop 50%x100% +repage $f "$f.png"
else
convert -normalize -density 300 -depth 8 $f "$f.png"
fi
done
rm pg_*.pdf

for f in pg_*.png
do
if [ "tesseract" == "$2" ]; then
tesseract -l $4 -psm 1 $f $f hocr
elif [ "cuneiform" == "$2" ]; then
cuneiform -l $4 -f hocr -o "$f.html" $f
else
echo "$2 is not a valid OCR software."
fi
hocr2pdf -i $f -r 300 -s -o "$f.pdf" < "$f.html"
done

pdftk pg_*.pdf cat output merged.pdf

pdftk merged.pdf update_info_utf8 doc_data.txt output merged+data.pdf
echo "InfoBegin" > in.info
echo "InfoKey: Author" >> in.info
echo "InfoValue: $5" >> in.info
echo "InfoBegin" >> in.info
echo "InfoKey: Title" >> in.info
echo "InfoValue: $6" >> in.info
echo "InfoBegin" >> in.info
echo "InfoKey: Creator" >> in.info
echo "InfoValue: PDF OCR scan script" >> in.info
in_filename="${1%.*}"
pdftk merged+data.pdf update_info_utf8 in.info output "$in_filename-ocr.pdf"

rm -r doc_data.txt in.info merged* pg_*

Tesseract 3.03+ has built in support for PDF output. Which requires leptonica to be installed. You can use:
brew install tesseract --HEAD to get the latest version of tesseract. You will also need ghostscript installed but no need for hocr2pdf.

The following script uses ghostscript to split the PDF into JPEGs, tesseract to OCR the JPEGs and output single PDF pages, and finally ghostscript again to combine the pages back into one PDF.

#!/bin/sh

y="`pwd`/$1"
echo Will create a searchable PDF for $y

x=`basename "$y"`
name=${x%.*}

mkdir "$name"
cd "$name"

# splitting to individual pages
gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=jpeg -r300 -dTextAlphaBits=4 -o out_%04d.jpg -f "$y"

# process each page
for f in $( ls *.jpg ); do
  # extract text
  tesseract -l eng -psm 3 $f ${f%.*} pdf
  rm $f
done

# combine all pages back to a single file
gs -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile="../${name}_searchable.pdf" *.pdf

cd ..
rm -rf "${name}"

# Adapted from: http://www.morethantechnical.com/2013/11/21/creating-a-searchable-pdf-with-opensource-tools-ghostscript-hocr2pdf-and-tesseract-ocr/
# from http://www.ehow.com/how_6874571_merge-pdf-files-ghostscript.html
# bash tut: http://linuxconfig.org/bash-scripting-tutorial
# Linux PDF,OCR: http://blog.konradvoelkel.de/2013/03/scan-to-pdfa/


OS X 10.8.5: Can I move icons around in the dock and not have them stay there when the apps are closed? Whenever I drag an open application's icon in the dock to another place in the dock, it thinks that means I want it to stay in the dock even if the app closes.

Is it possible for me to change this behavior? I like to arrange my icons in a certain way, but I don't like icons in the dock whose apps are not open.

You can remove all closed apps from the Dock (even if they are set to 'Keep in Dock') with the following command:

defaults delete com.apple.dock static-only

You can assign a hotkey to run this, or set up a launch agent to run this regularly.


iPhone 6s iCloud defaults to old Apple ID. Can't delete iCloud account because it says Apple ID is wrong I can't delete iCloud account from the phone because it prompts you to enter an id that is associated with a wrong default hotmail Apple ID account. Can't retrieve old hotmail Apple Id account because it doesn't exist anymore rightly so.

The ID still exists, & in fact cannot be deleted - Apple apparently keep them 'forever'.

What you can do is change the primary email address attached to the ID - the ID itself doesn't need to be a valid email address, it's merely a sensible starting point.

  Change your Apple ID

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

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

  Use these steps to reset your Apple ID:

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

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

Ref: Apple KB - Change your Apple ID


Is it normal for iOS updates to fail or to take hours on launch day? After just accepting the iOS 7.0 upgrade dialog on my iPad, the gears spin for a moment and it looks like the download will start, but then the install fails.

Is this something I can fix?

This is quite expected for several hours (and sometimes even a day later at popular times like first thing in the morning) as Apple tunes the servers that host the download images. Usually, things smooth out several hours after the launch and if you have this issue for more than a day, I would contact support just in case it's your device that is having problems.

Even more important than the download servers are the activation servers that verify the software wasn't corrupted or tampered with as they seem to be preventing many people from updating even after the software is downloaded and installed on the device.

It's not unrealistic that thousands or even a million devices are all asking to download the files at the same time, and if you wish to get a good download here are some strategies:

Go to a network with an OS X Server Caching service so that the first person to download the package will cause it to be cached so that all the subsequent downloads are a local transaction
Use iTunes (or Safari) to download the update rather than perform an over the air (OTA) update as shown above.
Wait out the rush and get your update several hours or days later.

Hopefully, enough servers are available so that this isn't "normal", but even on a fast connection to the internet you might have some delays in upgrading on launch day.


Can't move items to Trash – resistant to usual fixes On an internal data-only SATA HD, the OS forces me to delete files immediately, just as for removable media, a mounted network volume, or any unwritable volume.

Already tried removing and recreating the .Trashes directory, etc.

The error message is familiar:

  Are you sure you want to delete “filename.ext”?
  This item will be deleted immediately. You can’t undo this action.

I am working in the 501 account, the primary admin.

From the volume root, the permissions settings I see are:

  drwxrwxrwx     root  admin    .Trashes

And for the Trash subdirectory belonging to the user account, it's also:

  drwxrwxrwx     root  admin     501

Writes are not getting denied by extended permissions (because there aren't any).

The drive is seen by the System as a generic internal journaled SATA HD that's writable, repairable, not ejectable, and not bootable. No problems found with file structures on the volume.  Already recreated the Finder's plist file for luck.

I can live with the behavior, but it interferes with file de-duplication apps among other things. What am I not thinking of?

Trash on the System disk works as expected. OS X El Capitan v. 10.11.6 (desktop OS, no OS X server).

Thanks for the pointer to https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/249328/trash-folder-not-a-directory-files-only-delete-immediately but I've got a different situation.

The earlier question was about a .Trash folder inside the users' Home directory on a startup volume. Other local volumes have a different file architecture, and the OS manages them differently by design.

The answers don't apply either, because the OP's temporary fix does not make a difference for me, and in my case the required attributes for the .Trashes and 501 directories are not getting removed. Those look fine on inspection, although the Trash folder on that volume doesn't function.

Filesystem errors that bedevil daily use... grrr... I had something similar to that and nothing I did: repairing the disk, using DiskWarrior and some of the tricks you tried, did a thing.

Finally I got fed up and backed up the drive, deleted the partition and recreated it and reformatted it. Problem went away. If you asked me what caused it I couldn't tell you, but backing up a drive that was basically an internal backup drive so I could re-partiton was almost as annoying as living with the problem.


Is there a way to find out when a USB flash drive has been last used (on any computer)? I have a USB flash drive and I believed someone else may have plugged it in their computer and copied some files.

Using my Mac, how do I know when was the last time my usb flash drive was plugged in?

The best evidence you could get is to inspect the last access time of the files in question, or perhaps the last access time of the top-level directory on the file system.

But first, a bit of background.  A USB flash drive would be treated by the computer much like a disk.  The drive (or, more precisely, the main partition within the drive) would be formatted as a filesystem.  Most flash media come formatted out of the box with a VFAT filesystem, which is a lowest-common-denominator solution that works with nearly all devices, including OS X, Windows, Linux, and digital cameras.  The next most likely alternatives to VFAT would be HFS+ (the native file system of OS X, which Windows doesn't support at all) or NTFS (the native file system of Windows, supported by any version of Windows released this century, but which has just read-only support in OS X, and is rarely supported on digital cameras).

That background is relevant because different filesystems store the last access time differently.  I'm going to work with the assumption that your USB stick is formatted with VFAT.  This is important because VFAT filesystems only store the  last access date, not the time of day.  That would be the best evidence you could hope to collect, assuming that everything else goes right.

To see last access dates in the Finder,

Switch to List view (View → as List (⌘2))
Show the View Options dialog (View → Show View Options (⌘J))
Select "Date Last Opened"

Alternatively, instead of using the Finder, you could use the Terminal to run

stat -x /Volumes/USB-Stick-Name/Path/To/File

to see the Access time of a particular file.

There are some important caveats, though!

First, the act of plugging in the media on your Mac will cause it to be automatically mounted, thus altering the last access time of the top-level directory (and perhaps destroying even more evidence than that).  A forensic analysis should require precautions such as mounting the media in read-only mode.  Therefore, you would have to suppress the auto-mounting behaviour of OS X, which is not that easy.

Second, your suspected coworker / spy could have taken a similar countermeasure of mounting the media read-only, thus leaving no timestamp as evidence.  (There is also no guarantee that the computer that the spy used had its clock set accurately, which would cast doubt on the validity of any timestamp.)

The moral of the story is, if you have any sensitive information to be stored on removable media, encrypt it!  The easiest solution would be to use FileVault 2.  Note, however, that such encryption would make the USB stick unreadable on any machine other than a Mac.


FaceTime Photos must be enabled on both devices to use this feature When I'm on a FaceTime video call, there's a camera button.

When I press the FaceTime camera button to take a photo, I get the message:

  FaceTime Photos must be enabled on both devices to use this feature.

What is FaceTime Photos? How can I enable this feature?

This camera button is the FaceTime Live Photos feature.

When you’re on a FaceTime video call with one or more people, you can take a Live Photo to capture a moment from the call. Both of you receive a notification that the photo was taken, and the Live Photo goes right into your Photos library.
The other person on the call may need to set their FaceTime preferences to allow a Live Photo before you can take one.

iOS > Settings > FaceTime > FaceTime Live Photos
In addition to the Settings toggle, there is a minimum OS requirement. I got the same error message when FaceTiming with an older macOS computer.

Note: To capture a Live Photo in a one-on-one call, both you and the other person on the call must be using the latest version of either macOS 10.13.6 or macOS Mojave 10.14.4 or later, iOS 12.1.4 or later, or iPadOS. To capture a Live Photo of a person in a group call, both you and the other person on the call must be using macOS Catalina or later, iOS 13 or later, or iPadOS.
https://support.apple.com/guide/facetime/take-a-live-photo-fctm0ce5cbbe/mac


MacBook pro internal speakers mute my internal speakers on my macbook pro just stopped working, they have disappeared from the sounds preferences control panel. the only option is 'optical digital outport'

the headphones still work, but there's a red light coming out of the headphone jack

help?

Before doing this you'll need to disable kext signing. Do it by following this guide.

Had this issue for years. If you tried to reset PRAM/SMC, reinstalled OS X, tried to fix audio port with Q-tip (don't try to if you didn't as you can damage it) and you are sure about hardware problem, there are two possible solutions.

First one:
1) Plug headphones in.
2) System preferences -> Sound -> Change Internal Speakers to an Input
If this doesn't work, try different headphones (with or without mic). I had broken ones, cut them and have been using them like this

But yesterday I discovered this method:

1) Download latest VoodooHDA Kext and Kext Utility (google it).

2) Run Kext Utility and after it finishes repairing permissions, drag VoodooHDA file right there, wait for it and restart.

After restart audio possibly will be a little low, or won't mute or won't lower, so you will need to enable the Voodoo HDA Audio fixes as needed here:

Go to /System/Library/Extensions/VoodooHDA.kext/Contents directory, change it's permissions to read/write. Do the same with Info.plist placed there.

Open Info.plist and look for "VoodooHDAEnableHalfVolumeFix" and change it's value from "false" to "true". Apply this to needed fixes and save the file. Run Kext Utility again to fix permissions again and reboot.

Hope it helps!


Thunderbolt, Mini Display Port and HDMI I got MDP-HDMI connector that does not work with iMac Mid 2011 with thunderbolt. I do not understand if it should (not) work or it is damaged.

Here is answer
 that link article  that tells that iMac with thunderbolt should work with Mini Display Port devices.

Here is another answer  that tells that thunderbolt port requires thunderbolt cable they do not say it will not work with mini display port device. I understand that cable is not device.

It does not make situation more clear. If my MDP-HDMI convertor is damaged or not and I should by another version of connector or my iMac has some problem or I should turn something on to make connector working.

MDP-HDMI convertor has not separate cable. It just plugs in.

Thunderbolt ports allow connectivity to Mini DisplayPort. Since your converter just plugs in and then an HDMI cable (of any length that you supply) is then plugged into your converter and into a display, it should work just fine provided there is no damage to either the HDMI cable or the converter itself. If the Mac isn't recognizing the display, check the HDMI cable or the display first. Try to test the converter on another Mac with Thunderbolt before you deem it dead but Thunderbolt does indeed work with Mini DisplayPort.


iTunes Search for a Song X Many Minutes Long Can I search for a song in my music library that is between x and y start and end times, respectively?

This is only possible by creating a smart playlist.

Below the playlist sidebar click on the plus-button and choose to add a new smart playlist. You can set it something like this:


If swipe down on iOS7 gives Notification Centre, where's Spotlight? I just upgraded to iOS 7 on an iPhone 4S. When I swipe down on any screen, I get Notification Center, not Spotlight. Anyone know which setting is wrong?

My Google search results are riddled with "Spotlight does work, you just swipe down!" articles, so no luck there. Control Center works just fine, if that helps. Disabling Notification Center explicitly on the lock screen also works, such that nothing happens on a swipe down on the lock screen if it's disabled. But Spotlight isn't showing up on a swipe down from regular screens.

To get to Spotlight, just swipe down somewhere in the middle of the screen, not from the top (on any home screen, not in an app and not while locked).


Accused of using company phone whereas a personal iPad was used My boss is going to sack me tomorrow, because he says I used my company phone whilst driving the company van. I definitely didn't use my phone.  Sometimes I might audio FaceTime my girlfriend on my iPad (which has a different SIM card and is not a company iPad.). And she may phone me back but even though it rings on my phone it also rings on my iPad. How does this happen?

Facetime will ring on any device you have registered your email address for the Facetime.app on that device.
There is an explanation here on imore.com which goes into some  details on how it works and how to register, enable and disable an email address on a device.

How to enable or disable phone numbers and email address for FaceTime
If you don't want your iPad or iPod touch to receive FaceTime calls
sent to your iPhone phone number, or don't want your work iPhone or
Mac to receive FaceTime calls sent to your personal email address, you
can easily disable -- or enable -- them on a per-device, and
per-address/number basis.
1, Launch the Settings app from the Home screen of your iPhone, iPad, or
iPod touch.
2,Tap FaceTime.
3,Tap on the checkmark to the left of any
number or address you want to turn off (prevent from calling FaceTime
on that device).
To enable or re-enable numbers or addresses, simply
reverse the process and tap the empty space to the left to number or
address to add a checkmark.

If you always carry both devices then there is no need to set up personal accounts on company equipment.
If the boss's entire case is based on a mobile call during a driving period (rather weak, you could have been parked / stopped etc.) then the whole situation is probably for another reason and this is just an excuse that will pass the labour board.


Can I prevent some iPhone apps from needing to be reloaded? Recently some iPhone apps which are already installed are not available when clicked.

I noticed recently some apps I don’t use often need to be reloaded. I assume this is some kind of memory reallocation innovation to make room for all of my favorite podcasts.

It happens like this, I click on an icon, and a clock-like loading animation covers the icon and it’s unavailable until it’s “reloaded”. Ok. But this necessitates WiFi, and near impossible to reload while on the train, for example.

Today I was not able to use my gmail app, and more importantly Transit app were unavailable when I needed them. I absolutely can’t have Transit app ever unavailable or requiring download  as I rely it to find alternate routes home during my NYC commute to work and home.

Is there a way to prevent certain critical third-party apps from unloading?

Your apps are being offloaded. You can easily turn this off by going to settings > iTunes & App Store > Offload Unused Apps.


Company mail configuration in iPad? I need to configure my company email to iPad. Following is screen shot of the manual for mail configuration which company mailed to me. I tried giving incoming mail server as specified but it didn't work . Where will i add port no? i didn't come across it while configuring. Whenever i try they send me an error "would you like to configure with out using SSL?" Any method for knowing incoming and outgoing server?

Screen shot :

7.Give Incoming server as 10.0.4.24 and Port as 50110

8.Give Login ID(if different from e-mil address)as SR NO

9.Give Outgoing server as 10.0.4.24 and Port as 25
Click Next

The configuration totally depends on the email server details. If your admin has emailed you these settings trust that they will be complete. The settings you have in the screenshot above would be meant for an office computer residing inside the company office.

The problem why you cannot connect to the email server would be because the IP addresses are internal (10.0.0.x). This means that you need to be connected to the company network to access the email server with these details. This leaves you with a few different solutions:

On an iPad this would mean that you would need to be connected to the company wifi whilst attempting to fetch your email. You would need to sit inside your office and connect.
Ask your admin for VPN access, and through your iPad iOS settings enable the VPN access. This creates a virtual tunnel over the internet wherever you are directly to the company internal network, making the iPad believe that it is accessing the company network directly. You can then use the email settings as per your screenshot to connect.
Ask your admin for the public IP addresses to the email server and use them for your email seetings instead. (example: 212.120.243.xxx)

Hope you find the solution you need. Good luck!


Configure iTunes to equalize based on "Genre" tag? Is there a way to configure iTunes to configure the equalizer based on "Genre" tag of a given song?

The first method that comes to mind :

Click on Genre column header to
sort your songs based on genre
Select all songs belonging to a
given genre.
Option+I to bring information dialog, go to Options tab
Select Equalizer Preset that corresponds to the genre

Repeat steps 2 to 4 for each genre.


Finder Tags not working for any SMB files I'm having an issue with Finder Tags and SMB share? I can tag a file with a colour. But when I go view in the tags it does not show for any SMB shared files? I have tried everything. Finder is creating a DS file. I have opened up the permissions etc. Just refuses to show the coloured tags? Anyone know why? If this does work for you please could you share you config.