Reboot fails after failed disk erase when restoring from Time Machine I have an Early 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 15" with 512GB of SSD storage.

My update to Yosemite 10.5 failed for some reason and I was left with an unbootable system and severe file system errors that prevented the system from booting up (fsck_hfs -fy fails and fsck_hfs -ry complains about disk full, although there were about 8% of 500GB left. So I guess the file system is beyond repair.)

So I fired up the rescue system and started "Restore from Time Machine". This worked fine until it erased my disk, which took quite long (about five minutes) and made the fans spin up to full power. Then it displayed a message about it having failed and that I should reboot and try again.

After rebooting, the system does not start any more at all. Not into Recovery (Cmd-R), not into Internet Recovery (Cmd-Alt-R), not after resetting PRAM (Cmd-Alt-P-R) or SMC (Shift-Ctrl-Alt+Power) and surely not when not pressing any boot up keys. I can see the backlight of the screen power up, but that's it. I also now have the bootup chime back, which I turned off before, so I know at least the SMC reset worked.

After about ten seconds when powered on, the fans again spin up to full speed. Nothing else happens (I waited for about ten minutes several times).

Now what? I cannot boot even into rescue mode and I have no idea how to make the machine boot any more at all.

How do I get this machine running again?

It seems it was the SSD. (Or the SATA controller - I'm not quite sure yet.)

Removing the SSD from its plug caused the Mac to at least display a black and white folder icon with a "?" inside (like here: https://support.apple.com/HT204156) That gave me hope so I purchased a Transcend JetDrive 725 for Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 and inserted it. Wohoo, Cmd-Alt-R started Internet Recovery and "D" started Apple Hardware Test!

AHT said everything is fine, except the SATA controller has a problem ("4HDD/11/4000000: SATA(0,0)") but it seems to work fine so far. I'm not sure I need to worry because this error can also be a false positive according to Apple: https://support.apple.com/HT203648

I'll torture the new SSD with Disk Utility and by replaying my Time Machine Backup and then we'll see.

Oh: and plugging the Apple SSD into the USB3 enclosure supplied by Transcend and attaching this to a PC froze the PC before even displaying the BIOS screen. Connecting it to a running system does not create a new mount point and results in lots of errors in the system log. So this seems to confirm my suspicion that it was the SSD.


App made in Applescript Icon wont change The app's Icon wont change for me I tried copying in contents as "applet.icns" I tried Copy + Paste in get info nothing will work I found a article on the internet about this problem they say that you need to do -ls -la in Terminal but that wont work for me

Any help appreciated
Thank you

Add this to Your Info.plist file:
<key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
<string>filename</string>

where filename is Your .icns file inside Contents/Resources directory. Info form the Apple Documentation

CFBundleIconFile (String - iOS, OS X) identifies the file containing the icon for the bundle. The filename you specify does not need to include the extension, although it may. The system looks for the icon file in the main resources directory of the bundle.
If your Mac app uses a custom icon, you must specify this property. If you do not specify this property, the system (and other apps) display your bundle with a default icon.


Can gaming damage my MacBook Air in the long run? I noticed my new MacBook Air getting kinda hot and the fan spinning up when running a 3D game. I know this Laptop is not made for gaming but I like to run a less demanding game from time to time. Also I'm not crazy and wouldn't do this in a already hot environment but technically it should not degrade the Laptop in the long run am I right?

You've got nothing to worry about. They're designed to handle it. Heat in general does degrade computers, but the laptop will be very, very obsolete before the extra heat generated from gaming adds up enough to matter.


Resizing mac partition on a volume with boot-camp On my mac I have two partitions, and I want to create a new one. One partition has Mountain Lion and the other has Windows 7 (through Boot-Camp). I want to create a new mac partition, and for that I want to remove about 10Gb of space from the mac partition I already have and use that space for the new one.

I have searched quite a bit and I found so many different answers I can't really make up a plan on my mind, so I decided to post a question here explaining my situation in hopes of getting an answer tailored to my needs.

I know that resizing windows partitions can lead to big problems, but the thing is I don't want to resize the windows partition, just the mac partition. Does that still cause problems? If so, what would you advise (preferably something you have already tried)?

Lastly, I found out about GParted, which is recommended on various places, but I'm at a loss on how to use it (for example, how can I put it on my USB pen?).

For all my partitioning, I use and recommend iPartition.

With its intuitive yet powerful user interface, iPartition makes it easy to create, destroy, resize or format partitions on your hard disks, whether internal, external, fixed or removable.

iPartition even allows you to modify Boot Camp partitions without any problems. iPartition will reconfigure the Windows partitions automatically.

You can use iPartition on drives that contain Boot Camp volumes; in fact, you can even resize your Windows partitions, and let iPartition take care of reconfiguring the Windows boot process for you.


Can a MacBook Pro 13 (Mid-2010) battery be used in a 2009 unibody polycarbonate MacBook? I have one somewhere, I just don't have it on me. I'm just curious because my MacBook Pro died but has a new battery, and my 2009 MacBook has a dead battery. I'd rather not buy a new one if I don't have to.

No, the batteries used in these respective models are not compatible with each other.

If it helps, the battery for the Mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro is compatible with a number of 13" MacBook Pro models from Mid-2009 until Mid-2012.

As for the battery in the Late-2009 13" polycarbonate MacBook, this is compatible with the Mid-2010 13" MacBook.


I cant get into my iphone 5c, becuase the screen doesnt work, and i want to recover my photos my phone recently broke, and the screen when I touch it doesn't do anything. But other than that it works, I receive messages and what not and it shows up on the screen, and the buttons work too. I'm very concerned that I wont be able to save my photos. I tried syncing it to iTunes but it wont work unless I unlock it, which is not possible. And I'm positive I made an icloud that shares family stuff but I don't know to view it.

Tyson 's answer will probably work, but it would require that you enabled photo stream before your phone broke. If you didn't, you're kinda out of luck unless you've backed up your phone to your computer previously.

If you have backed it up before, you can use tools like iExplorer (free demo, $35) to read the iTunes backups. They do, however, make you purchase the software if you actually want to pull the photos out, but it may be worth it to some depending on how much they want their photos. Best of luck.


Nook Comics on iPad? I'm considering buying an iPad to read comics, so I am looking in to my options for purchasing digital comics.  I see Barnes and Noble sells "Nook Comics", and their site indicates these can be read on the color Nook tablets and the Nook app for Android.

Seems odd that they'd support reading the comics on the Nook app only for Android, not under iOS as well.  I was hoping someone who uses the Nook ecosystem and has an iPad could clarify if this is an oversight, or accurate.  Does the iPad Nook app really not support Nook Comics?

The newest release of NOOK for iPad and iPhone now supports comics and manga.


Can I charge my headphones with the MacBook 12" charger? Can I charge my headphones with the MacBook 12" charger or should I use it for charging the MacBook only?

The headphones are Plantronics BACKBEAT SENSE which have a USB-Micro charging port.

I believe I need to buy a cable USB-C to Micro-USB, if it would work.

A USB charger is universally compatible with devices that use the USB interface to recharge.  An Apple MacBook USB charger will charge any device including Android, Microsoft, or no-name type devices - including your Plantronics headset.

Apple provides you a USB-C port as shown in the image (below left) .  You just need a cable that's compatible with your device and in your case, a USB-C to USB micro cable (right)

As long as you have the right cable, you can recharge anything so long as you don't exceed the power rating on your adapter.

This means that if your headphones require only 5W to charge, then this adapter will work.  If your Android tablet requires 10W it will charge.  However, if your friend brings his shiny new MacBook Pro which requires 65W, it will either charge very slowly or not at all.

You can always use/charge devices that are less-than or equal to the wattage rating of the charger, but not vice versa.

As for picking adapters/cables, always buy a quality product.  You can rest assured that Apple is a quality brand (though expensive).  As for cables, stick with reputable manufacturers from reputable sellers.  Saving a few dollars on poorly made adapters can cost you dearly in the long run.  See this video for what happens.


Lost search function iPhone after upgrading to 4.3 Does anyone know how or why the search function in my text messaging is no longer working correctly after I upgraded to 4.3 on my 3G iPhone?

All was fine until I upgraded and now even tho I can see a name in a text for example I search for it and it comes back as "No results".

Searching SMS messages was disabled due to battery life and performance concerns for the 3G, you can see this in the iPhone: Which iOS 4 software features does my iPhone support? article on apple.com

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4204

  iPhone 3G does not support Spotlight search for SMS/MMS messages.


I put a magnet over my MacBook Pro 2011 I have put a magnet over my laptop and I got the error with the file with a ? on it.
I don't have a Time Machine backup or anything. I am not able to reset the Mac and I can't reinstall macOS as it doesn't recognize the HDD. I have tried internet recovery.
MacBook Pro 2011 early is my model.

If your drive is formatted with HFS+ and not APFS, you may be able to use DiskWarrior to repair your drive enough to use Target Disk Mode to extract your data through another Mac onto another disk. However, if the magnet damaged the partition table, or primary and alternate volume headers, or too much of the catalog & extents files, DiskWarrior may not be able to help. In that case you may have to use a professional recovery service like DriveSavers or face the music and start over.
In any of the above situations, once you've gotten your data recovered (or decided not to), you will need to do a full erase & install of macOS. You can do this by creating a bootable installer on another Mac.


Can I force Mac OS X not to complain when a volume is removed without first unmounting it? I have a USB flash drive that randomly disconnects itself from my Mac, and each time, I get a warning from Mac OS X (several computers, running 10.7-10.9) that it's been improperly removed.  I use it for portably storing Waves licenses, so I rarely write to it.  I'd like to suppress this message, as it's annoying and occasionally interferes with something I'm doing.  Can I get Mac OS X to shut up about this issue?  I tried using an NTFS filesystem on the drive to force it to mount read-only, but I still get a warning when it's disconnected.

If you don't mind losing notification center, you can disable it.

To disable NC, thus stopping the removal message, type in:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui KeepAlive -bool false

Then, type in

killall NotificationCenter

To re-enable it, type in:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui KeepAlive -bool true

Keep in mind, besides disabling this message, it will disable ALL messages.


Send Photo as Mail attachment is Missing I have just had my phone rebuilt.

I used to send a photo by clicking on the box-with-arrow below it and an app would come up to attach it to mail.

This has now disappeared ?

When you are texting in the text box look to the left of the box and if you see anything there pull it to the right and it makes the camera icon visable. That is what my son showed me when I had the same question. I hope it works for you.


How does the Finder refresh in OS X Mountain Lion? I just batch edited some pictures with Preview and changed the name of one file in the Preview window.
Minutes later, Finder still didn't show the changed file sizes (not even when opening the Info dialog) and changed names. Switching from list view to icon view or so didn't fix it.
I restarted Finder and then the names changed.

How come, is there an update or refresh command? Thought it'd be in the View menu but it isn't.

Alt click and select "Get info." This will refresh the folder. I have this problem with ftp folders mounted as a drive via Transmit.


Is there a way to access my mac remotely by using browser only? I want to be able to browse/search my files, send email... nothing fancy like watch the movie and so on?

Yes you can use logmein https://secure.logmein.com/

After installing and setting things up you will just need your browser wherever you are.


Smb share - can't connect to local smb share from el capitan I have set up a samba share on my local network using a raspberry pi. I can mount the share from my Linux machine and ios devices (using Fileshare), but can't from my new macbook pro running el capitan. I use cmd+k in finder and type in the user credentials, but get an error message (in danish) saying something along the lines of 'there was a problem connecting to the server'. I have tried changing smb:// to cifs://. I get the dialogbox with the user credentials, but it now shakes, as if my password is wrong. It even gets more weird - I am able to use ssh from the terminal with no problems...

Does anyone know what's going on? And what to do?

If you are familiar with connecting via Linux via /etc/fstab, then you know there are a lot of possibilities of what could go wrong simply because there are SO many different options for connecting to different types of network shares, and it seems like every OS handles these options differently.

I have encountered issues similar to this before, and in my cases, it was always either an issue with ownership/permissions and/or the specific mount point (or a combination of the two):

For instance, I have a ZFS pool setup using FreeNAS, and the mount point is set to //x.x.x.x/share, and the login credentials are supposed to be for a specific user.  I have no trouble connecting to it in Windows, but the only way I can connect to it in OS X is to connect directly to the IP using the root credentials.  I know there is a way to fix it, but I haven't gotten around to looking into it yet.

So my first advice would be to try connecting directly to smb://x.x.x.x or smb://x.x.x.x/share, or any other variations that you can think of, using various sets of credentials that have access to that box.

It could also be a Samba version issue (which Samba is notorious for) that could be causing these 2 guys to not agree with each other.

Also, sometimes in OS X if I am trying to mount a share with one of the various mount commands in Terminal, I find that it tends to give me trouble sometimes if mounting with my normal user, so in certain circumstances, I need to use sudo in order to mount it as root.

If all else fails, I would try installing the Netatalk packages on your Raspberry Pi.  Netatalk is an open source version of the Apple Filesharing Protocol (AFP), which OS X obviously tends to handle much better than Samba (SMB).  If you enable the share to also use AFP, you can connect to it from Finder using afp://x.x.x.x/share, etc.

If you are running Raspbian, those packages should be available via apt-get.  I hope this helps!


Wifi network not showing up I have a weird problem, and internet isn't really helpful on that one.

I have a macbook pro and a wifi network. The macbook pro can see plenty of wifi network around, but very rarely mine.

The wifi network is configured properly as I have plenty of other device seeing it and using it successfully. The macbook pro seems to have issue with this network specifically, as it can connect successfully other network.

My network isn't completely invisible to the macbook pro, and, once connected it work fine. The signal strength is very good. But most of the time, it simply don't show up in network lists, possibly for hours.

MacBook Pro supports 802.11n wifi wireless networking. There are other wifi protocols like 802.11b and 802.11g. MacBook Pro is compatible with these (b and g) as well. Wifi issues prop up when your router supports other frequency and your laptop is trying to catch other frequency.

If your router supports 802.11b/g and compatible with n then it means some communication problem may arise between your wifi router and your laptop. Best thing that can be done here is to tell your router that it should send signal (broadcast) only on 802.11n.

Go to your wifi router settings (you need to connect your router to your laptop through cable for this. You can consult wifi router help book for this) and Fix channel as 11 (11 from 802.11 is called channel) and bandwidth as 150Mbps. n means it will run on 150Mbps. (generally b means 54 Mbps and g means 65 Mbps). Save your setting and you are hopefully ready to run without any hassle.

PS: You can do the same setting if your wifi is not visible or your MacBook Pro doesn't detect your home wifi.


CPU Die temperatures reaches 90° C, is that normal? My Macbook Air 13", Mid 2011, got heated and is slow in working. I noticed that CPU Die temperature reaches 90° C, is that normal?

I've changed my fan recently but still get this issue.

The MacBook Air 13", Mid 2011, comes with an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 (2557M, 2677M) ("Sandy Bridge") Processor and the maximum temperature allowed at the die is 100° C, per Intel's documentation on both processors.  (See TJUNCTION in the links provided.)

So while you have not yet max it out, nonetheless it shouldn't be running that hot except under considerable load. If you'er seeing that high of a temperature under an idle load then it is something to worry about.


Wrong letters when I'm typing with Macbook Pro My Mac is typing that symbols
œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ
 when I'm pressing buttons qwertyuiop

I am using a MacBook Pro 9,2 (2010) running El Capitan (10.11.3) with a Japanese keyboard and my language set to English.

When I'm using a USB Keyboard I don't have this problem

This unicode combination can be produced when holding down the alt/option key on your Mac's keyboard. If you google this issue, there is a thread from 2013/14 describing a solution to this issue.

Here are the summarised steps to revert they keyboard back to its intended use:

Open system preferences
Select accessibility
Select keyboard
Enable sticky keys
Press option twice quickly to enable sticky and once more to turn it off (option key must be enabled if you previously disabled it in modifier key controls)
Problem solved! - Turn sticky keys off again

I can verify that these steps are still valid for macOS High Sierra but do let me know how you get on.


How power efficient are Apple's bluetooth devices? I learned from this post that I can hold the power button long enough to turn off the bluetooth keyboard.

I used Apple's bluetooth mouse around 5 years ago, and I just threw it away as it was a battery killer. Since then, I never have used bluetooth devices. Ironically, I use Microsoft wireless mouse which lasts months without battery change with Mac.

How battery efficient are Apple's bluetooth devices? Normally, how long do you use Apple's bluetooth devices without battery change?
Do I have to turn off bluetooth keyboard/trackpad whenever I don't use them? Do I have  serious battery drainage if I don't turn them off?

I have a Magic Mouse and a Wireless keyboard, and I use rechargeable batteries. I charge them once a month, but I'm sure they'll last at least one more.

All the recent Apple wireless (Bluetooth) products are very smart about power usage and it really doesn't matter wether you turn them off or leave them on. I turn them off only when transporting them in my bag.

Note that the battery percentage reported for bluetooth devices is not accurate. It's based on the voltage of the cell, and since it's different in the Alkaline (1.5 V) and the Ni-MH rechargeable (1.3 V) batteries, it's virtually impossible to distinguish between the two. Not to mention the discharge curve of both.

Changes in 10.6.7 made it more accurate for devices, running on rechargeable batteries - It now treats charge around 1.3 V for 100%.


Which iPad app does encrypted note storage? I'm wondering whether there's an iPad notes app that either:

doesn't back up to "the cloud", or
backs up an encrypted version of the notes such that the notes are unreadable in the cloud (i.e., a Dropbox employee couldn't read the notes).

Is anyone familiar with an app that allows for encrypted notes?

1Password by Agile Bits may suit your needs and has just been updated to version 4. Sync your notes (and passwords) on the LAN to your other devices or via DropBox. (Only encrypted data is sent to Dropbox as per your requirement.)


Does resetting NVRAM reset EFI Boot Order? I've had a Macbook Pro for a year or so now and have experimented with quite a few Linux distributions which have added and changed things in the EFI Boot Order. I am looking to clean things up. The tool efibootmgr for Linux does let me make changes and cleanup as necessary. However will resetting NVRAM reset the EFI Boot Order for me?

NVRAM is a standalone chip on your logic board, backed up by small battery.

EFI resides on your SSD. (hard drive)

Showing battery for the PRAM (NVRAM)

So no, resetting NVRAM will not impact EFI.

To restore EFI, you have to reinstall the OS X.


[Sierra]: Mouse scroll Problem:
When using my mouse, a single scroll-click scrolls several pages.
I have read that this is due to scroll smoothing -
a single scroll actually issues multiple scroll commands:
tiny teeny 1-line teeny tiny
thus the appearance of a smooth scroll.

If this is the case, then when in single-page view,
each scroll moves a full-page increment.

Is there a way to disable this?
I requested help from Logitech,
but they have repeatedly only offered me a new mouse,
rather than a driver fix.

.

I have read several questions regarding mouse scrolling,
and have not found a consistent answer.

Background:

I purchased a Logitech M705 "Marathon" mouse.
It worked fine, except that
its auxiliary buttons are not accessible through the default macOS drivers.
To remedy this, I installed the Logitech drivers,
known as LCC (Logitech Control Center).

When I installed LCC,
the auxiliary buttons worked,
but scrolling became terrible.

Scrolling is choppy in most programs,
which is at least passable if clunky,
but there are a special case
where I cannot achieve acceptable usability:

Full Page View:

For several .pdf programs (Skim, Preview, Adobe),
I use Full Page (also known as Whole Page or Single Page) view.

In this view, the zoom is set such that one full page is shown.
If a scroll is commanded, the page does not move up or down,
such that one line of the current page disappears and
one line of an adjacent page appears.

Instead, a scroll command moves to the next page completely.
The whole page is always shown in full.

This is not to be confused with Single Page (Continuous) view,
which simply sets the zoom to the level needed to show the whole page,
but still allows partial views of two adjacent pages.

In system preferences, general, there is a setting where a single click in scroll bar will move forward or backward one page. The other setting moves to region signified by where you click in the scroll bar. This could be several or many pages depending on the size of the document.


How can I remove the "downloaded from the internet" security from all files in a directory? I have a bunch of files I copied from another computer and am unable to use them as I get various security and permission errors.

When I compile using Xamarin I get permission denied. When I try to open a file directly I get this error:

How can I remove the system attribute that causes this security dialog to appear?

(Yes, for some files I can use the following but this needs to apply to all files and folders)

You can get around this a few ways.

1. Easiest and Most Recommended: Select the file in Finder, right/control-click on the file and choose “Open”. You will be asked if you want to open the file, even if it is from an unknown developer.

2. Slightly More Complicated, but Sometimes Preferable: If you are not afraid of Terminal.app (found in the /Applications/Utilities folder of Finder), you can remove the “Quarantine” attribute using this command:

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/folder

For example, if all of the files are in ~/Downloads/ then you would use:

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/

or

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine "$HOME/Downloads/"

Type man xattr into Terminal.app for more information about the xattr command, but the short version is that -r means “recursive” and -d means “delete the following attribute”.


Add overlay text to App Store screenshot? I am looking for a way to add text to my App Store screenshots for iOS.  An example of what I'm looking for would be the Google app screenshots on iOS.  There are many ways to add a device border, such as mockuphone.com, but is there a simple and easy way to add text to those images, preferably not involving Photoshop?

You can always use the annotation tools in Preview.app. These include the ability to add text boxes which can be positioned above the screenshots or other output image from a service such as the one you mentioned. Alternatively, you can use an app such as Pages to create the images by exporting the pages as an image file.


Downgrading from iOS 6.0.1 to iOS 5.1.1? Possible Duplicate:
  How to downgrade from iOS 6 to iOS 5.1.1?

So i have an iPod Touch 4th Generation that is iOS 6.0.1 and i recently bought an Apple Peel 520 2nd Generation. I could be wrong but im pretty sure that the Apple Peel 520 2nd Generation doesn't support iOS 6.0.1 and if it doesn't which Apple Peel Device (or something similar) does? I looked up some stuff and so far what i found out is that the Apple Peel 520 2nd Generation supports iOS 5.1.1 but here's the catch. I bought my iPod Touch 4th Generation a few months ago at Walmart and it already had iOS 6.0 and a day or two later iOS 6.0.1 came out and i downloaded that. But that was BEFORE i found out about the Apple Peel 520 2nd Generation. So does that mean that i can't downgrade? And if i definately cannot downgrade, does anyone know of any other Apple Peel Device (or something similar) by Yosion or other similar companies that will?

You cannot downgrade your device. It is forever locked to iOS 6.0.1.

A downgrade for certain devices (those that run on the A4 processor, and yours does) is only possible should you have the SHSH blobs (using Redsnow). However, since you do not have them, there is no way to revert to any version prior to 6.0.1 (unless you saved the blobs for 6.0, then you could certainly revert to the prior version).


How to type monospaced numbers using system font in macOS? The San Francisco font uses proportionally spaced numbers by default, however it does support monospaced ones. As a developer I know how to make it use monospaced numbers when showing text in an app, but I have no idea how to type them while using text editors such as Notes.

Does anyone know how to do this?

I'm currently using Helvetica Neue for monospaced numbers as a workaround.

The standard way to do this would be Format > Font > Show Fonts, click on the gear wheel at top left, then on Typography, then select the right variation for numbers.


Black Screen Failure, requires forced reset restart Macbook Pro 15" I'm getting the Black Screen more & more often.  I didn't have it a few months ago & then it started once in a while in a week, now it happens a few times a day, everyday!

My machine is a Macbook Pro 15" from mid 2010 & Apple quarries on the Internet tell me that I can't get it fixed by Apple.

What's going on?

It seems that you are getting black screen when opening a GPU heavy app or Flash. I am sure that this is a GPU failure. You will also have difficulty at startup later. Try one thing. Download a software called gfxCardStatus. Install it and set the GPU to Intel only. Do not play any games or use Flash. You should be okay.


How to copy and paste lines in Nano on OSX I would like to copy and paste multiple lines in the command line text editor nano on OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.5

Alt-6 and Ctrl-U do not work as on other platforms.

The problem is that in Mac Terminal, the alt key doesn't work unless you change the Terminal Preferences to enable Use Option as Meta key. Then alt+6 will work properly to copy.

Another choice is to use the ESC key instead of alt. So do ESC+6.


How do I free up space on my Mac? I'm confused regarding what options I have to be able to keep working on my work computer.

According to DiskSweeper, this is how my 500GB disk space is used:

Besides from things that cannot be backed up (applications, library, system...) most of the data is my working files.

In my workflow as a designer, I often open old projects for insight or to reuse previous assets.

If I made a hard drive copy and then deleted it from my laptop, I'd have to plug the hard drive in every time I need to consult an old project or do a search, and I'd have to know exactly what I recently modified each time I want to do a backup.

If I made a Cloud copy and then deleted from my laptop, I'd often have to download very large files just to get previews of large files or videos (for example Backblaze doesn't offer file thumbnails).

If I used Time Machine, then got rid of the files on my HD, some of the oldest versions would disappear after a while when Time Machine runs out of space or notices I deleted them from my HD.

Are there other options out there that are not too complicated, and would allow me to have a full copy of my work as accessible as possible, but not hosted on my computer's HD?

First step would be to go through your files and get rid of things you no longer need.  An app like GrandPerspective can make it easy to locate files that are taking up a lot of space.

If you’ve cleaned your drive of all unwanted files and you still don’t have enough space, then you should consider replacing your internal drive with a larger capacity drive.  Just make sure to get one big enough that you won’t fill it up for quite a while.

If you don’t want to replace your internal drive, then the next best option is an external drive.  As for the caveats you mention, you could just leave the drive mounted all the time.  That way the files are always available to you when you need them.  And for keeping track of files that need to be backed up, just get a good backup app, like ChronoSync.  They are designed to keep track of modified files and back them up on whatever schedule you designate.


Chrome won't quit! (Mac Yosemite) I tried normal quit, and it closes and immediately re-opens.
I tried force quit, and it closes and immediately re-opens.
I tried force quit from the Activity Monitor, and it closes and immediately re-opens.
I tried to restart; this was not allowed because Chrome was open.
I turned off using the power button, and turned back on. Chrome opened (despite not being in my login list, and despite me specifying NOT to open the windows that were previously open)
I tried to delete Chrome; not allowed because it's open.
I tried to force quit then immediately delete, but it opens so fast I can't do that.
I used the terminal rm -rf method of deleting, and pages of text appeared, all saying essentially this but with different things between 'contents' and 'permission denied'. rm: /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources: Permission denied

Does anyone have a clue what's going on? I am out of ideas.

That other answer isn't good because you should not shut down your computer, and it is very unlikely that malware has anything to do with not being able to shut down an application. Do this

Type sudo killall Google\ Chrome on the Terminal.
If this does not work, do this:

pgrep -x "Google Chrome"

You will see a number, then type kill -9 numberhere where numberhere  is the number that the pgrep command returned.

And to instatly delete the app, no matter if it is open or not, do:

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app

Then type your password.

The reason you get a permission denied error is because you need root access do to this, just use sudo on the terminal for this.


How to prevent iPhone 12 Pro from overheating? My iPhone 12 Pro (Max) gets extremely hot (to the point the screen dims, and beyond) with regularity, usually several times per day with just regular use of fairly basic apps.
Others have reported the problem as well:

Is there anything that can be done to alleviate this?

If you have a cover or case for your phone, you should try removing them as they tend to hold in the heat. Keep you phone out of the sun and use it in a cool area. You can also turn your screen brightness down some and kill background apps you are not using. If that doesn't help turn off Location Sevices on your phone. Do this by going to settings-privacy-location services off.
These and other options are described here and here.


Some keys not working on Musical Typing? I can't play some keys, such as H when on Octave C1, H and D when on Octave C2 or J and K on Octave C3. When I press them, I get no sound. If I manually place the notes out and then listen to it with Musical Typing open, it visually plays them.

Anyone know how to fix this?

I had the same problem for over a year and I just fixed it! The fix was so simple, just press: Logic Pro X > Control Surfaces > Bypass All Control Surfaces.


Rotate PDF in Safari In Safari if I open a misoriented PDF is there a way to rotate it so that I can read it without having to rotate my head and end up dizzy?

If it's mis-oriented in Safari that means the original is formatted that way.  Safari only provides a "quick viewer" of sorts for PDF files and is only rendering what was provided.
What you need to do is open it in Preview.

Simply right click anywhere on the PDF in Safari and select "Open With Preview."  Once you're in Preview, you can rotate the PDF with ⌘ CommandL or ⌘ CommandR to rotate left and right respectively.


What happens if you run dd without any argument? I was working with Terminal then suddenly I thought of running dd without any arguments. Then it started doing something then I immediately started doing something. I got scared so I aborted it using ^C.

Output of dd:

$ dd
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes transferred in 2.556354 secs (0 bytes/sec)
$

dd is a "stream duplicator".

Using dd with no operands means it will be reading and writing to the standard input/output (keyboard and screen).

From the man page (man dd)

  The dd utility copies the standard input to the standard output.

So, issuing the command dd and then sending a break ControlC results in nothing being input, and nothing being written. Until you sent the break, dd was waiting for input.

Here are some examples (press ControlD to tell dd you are done entering text)

$ dd
Hello, World

results in

$ dd
Hello, World
Hello, World
0+1 records in
0+1 records out
13 bytes transferred in 6.140313 secs (2 bytes/sec)

To convert from regular to upper/lowercase:

$ dd conv=ucase
Hello, World
HELLO, WORLD

dd conv=lcase
Hello World
hello world


Applescript : generate a new list based on existing list my script is generating a list (random number of items) and for each item I like to add a colour.

I can do it manually :

> set myList to {{"demo", "#5cdf64"}, {"icloud.com", "#FFFF00"}, {"more
> random e.g", "#FF0000"}}

but how can I add a different colour automatically to the list and based on the number of item on the first list?

I know how to count the primary list and do an action for each items :

set listSize to count of myList

set theList to {"demo", "demo1", "demo2", "demo2"}
repeat with a from 1 to length of theList
    set theCurrentListItem to item a of theList
    -- Process the current list item

end repeat

I think I'm nearly there the only thing is I'm not adding but replacing the items :

set theList to {"Demo", "ok", "blabla", "demo2"}
set ColortheList to {"5cdf64", "FFFF00", "FF0080", "FF1000"}
set myNewList to ""

repeat with a from 1 to length of theList
    set theCurrentListItem to item a of theList
    set myNewList to {item a of theList, item a of ColortheList}

end repeat

also tried

copy {item a of theList, item a of ColortheList} to myNewList

If you're wanting myNewList to return a list of lists I think you're trying to do:

set theList to {"Demo", "ok", "blabla", "demo2"}
set ColortheList to {"5cdf64", "FFFF00", "FF0080", "FF1000"}
set myNewList to {}

repeat with a from 1 to length of theList
    copy ({item a of theList, item a of ColortheList}) to the end of the |myNewList|
end repeat

return myNewList

A little fun with random number. You can modify the color selection and then randomly add to a list:

set theList to {"Demo", "ok", "blabla", "demo2", "foobar"}

set colorList to {"5cdf64", "FFFF00"}
set colorLength to length of colorList

set myNewList to {}

repeat with a from 1 to length of theList
    set colorPick to random number from 1 to colorLength
    copy ({item a of theList, item colorPick of colorList}) to the end of the |myNewList|
end repeat

return myNewList

If you're wanting a string approach try:

set theList to {"Demo", "ok", "blabla", "demo2"}
set ColortheList to {"5cdf64", "FFFF00", "FF0080", "FF1000"}
set myNewList to ""

repeat with a from 1 to length of theList
    set result to ({item a of theList, item a of ColortheList})
    set myNewList to myNewList & (result & " ")
end repeat

The above can be modified in the result. Let me know if I'm understanding you or if you're needing something different.


Can you lock the sorting order in Mail? (OSX 10.11) Just wondering if it's possible to lock the sorting order in Mail? My mom keeps accidentally clicking on the top bars "From, Date, Subject" and getting confused. I'd like to be able to lock it to only sort by date Descending but still display the "From, Date and Subject" tabs so she knows what she's looking at.

There doesn't appear to be an easy way to do this, so I wrote a Mail plugin for it. You can download it here, and the source code is available here. I wrote it for macOS Sierra, so if it doesn't work on your mom's computer please let me know.

To use it:
1. Open Mail and select the tab you want to lock.
2. Close Mail.
3. Copy the .mailbundle file to ~/Library/Mail/Bundles.
4. Reopen Mail. The header should now reject clicks.
5. To uninstall, remove ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/MailHeaderLock.mailbundle and restart Mail (and to change the tab, move the plugin to somewhere else, and follow these steps again).


Connect to Wi-Fi via command line that requires username and password I am trying to find the command to connect to a wireless access point that is WPA2, and requires both a username and password.

The command networksetup -setairportnetwork <iface> <ssid> <pwd> only works if I don't need a user name.

It does sound like you are trying to connect to an enterprise network and you have 802.11x authentication.

If this is NOT the case and you need to enter a username/password in a web page, then you may need to create an AppleScript/Automator function to handle that.

In any event, to connect to an 802.11x network with authentication, you need a network profile.  To create one, you either need OS X Server or you can use Apple Configurator.  It's a free application available from Apple.

While it is geared toward iOS, you can create wi-fi profiles then export them.  Once you have the xml file, you import it with networksetup.

Or...

You can edit the xml file directly which is not something trivial.


How do I view a song's composer on my iPod touch? Is there any way of viewing the composer of a particular song in the Ipod Touch? I know you can sort songs by composer, but what I want to do is while listening to a particular album (classical music), view the composers of the different songs.

There's a small app you can find here

Don't worry, it's all Japanese. But the app works really fine and reads all (!) ID3 tags of the current song playing.

Since I am listening preferably to classical music, too, I hate iTunes non-existent ability to show all relevant tag information.


Should I use an extension power cord instead? I have the following Apple MacBook Pro Power adapter:

  60W  MagSafe PV85 Ouptput 16.5v--3.65A ADP-60AD T

  Model No. A1344

Instead of buying a Power Adapter, is it ok to buy an Extension power cord (Found this on eBay)?

Will I be still be able to charge my MacBook with this?

The extension cord is the part on the right. One came with your power adapter, and it goes between the adapter and the wall. A new one would work fine with your current power adapter but won't do anything by itself.


unistalling el capitan and installing yosemite issue I have formatted a usb drive guid partition and installed Yosemite from another mac. When booting, the USB is showing as an option to install yosemite. When I select this and try to install I immediately get a prohibited sign. I also booted normally (el capitan) and selected the usb from the desktop and was given an error "the copy of the install os x application to old to be opened on this os x. Any ideas on how to erase el capitan and install yosemite??

Mac that I'm attempting install on..
-started with el capitan on it
-el capitan has been updated once

If the Mac in question shipped with OS X 10.11.x on it, it likely will not be able to run a previous version of OS X (like OS X Yosemite.) This is because as Apple updates hardware, they build the drivers for the new hardware into the OS that the Mac comes with and also into later versions of OS X.

A version of OS X which was released before that Mac model won't have the correct hardware drivers for that Mac. Apple's pretty upfront about it and states Avoid using versions of OS X that are older than what came with your Mac.

Apple maintains a knowledgebase article that shows which versions of OS X shipped with which hardware. It's available via the link below:

OS X versions and builds included with Mac computers

For more information on this issue, please see the link below:

Use the version of OS X that came with your Mac, or a compatible newer version


View .mkv in quicklook Is there any plugin (or other way), to add support for mkv files in quicklook? In my searches, the way I found of doing it involves installing perian, which I’d really prefer not to do for a number of reasons, one of them being that it’s no longer in development.

A quick search turned up QLVideo, which I've now installed. It provides limited functionality with mkv (as well as avi, flv, asf, and a few others) including preview screen shots in QuickLook and thumbnails in Finder's GetInfo window. Unfortunately it does not actually play the video.

https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo/releases/tag/rel-172

Sadly, Perian (a brilliant piece of software that I miss dearly) does not work with Apple's new replacement for the QuickTime infrastructure in MacOS.


How to rotate screens separately? Is there a way to rotate an external screen separately and keep the orientation of the inbuilt display fixed?

Using OS X 10.8.5

Yes, you should be able to orient each screen separately. In fact, here is a link of that very thing being done.

To access the screen rotation option in OS X:

Launch System Preferences.
Hold down ⌘ cmd + ⌥ alt/option and click Displays.

On the right side of the Display Preferences, look for the Rotation drop down menu.
Set the rotation you want.

Confirm the change and quit System Preferences.


iMac won't restart for Security Update 2016-001 10.11.6 I have been having problems when I go to install the above update. I click 'restart' to allow the computer to update but it never does. The dock and desktop wallpaper remain but the menu bar at the top and all icons on the desktop disappear.

I have the same problem exactly whenever I go to shut down the computer. I click shut down and again the dock and background stay but everything else vanishes. It is as if it has only partially gone through the process.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Your problem is in no way related to Security Update 2016-001.

When your Mac want to terminate a system update, it should go through
a normal Restart... as the one you see in  > Restart....
And to achieve this restart it must terminate correctly all the
processes actually running.

Your actual problem is caused by one process which refuse to exit correctly.

The first and easiest way to diagnose which process is the culprit
consists of using the combination to force quit any ill behaving
application:

command ⌘option ⌥esc

If my hypothesis is correct you might see a typical application
flagged as not responding. This mean that this process became deaf
stupid and won't hear the signal sent by the system to tell it to exit.
In this case, just kill it with the Force Quit button.


Why does my MacBook Air occasionally become extremely dim after being idle? Sometimes, I leave my MacBook Air on for thirty minutes. When I return, and move my mouse around, I see the cursor on the screen moving around, but the screen is extremely dim. In fact, I could barely recognize that the computer was on. I could still click on icons and interact with windows though.

Why did that happen?

With the information provided my Initial impression points to your "Energy Saver" preferences where the "Automatically reduce brightness before going to sleep" option is enabled. The dimming not occurring before 30 mins is likely due to the "Computer Sleep" settings your MacBook Air is set to.


Files in ISO DIsappear When Mounted Some time ago I downloaded a QuickLook plugin that allowed me to look at the files in an ISO called Suspicious Package. I used this to inspect the contents of an ISO and it displayed this:

And Finder says that the ISO is 428.1 MB. So the ISO definitely contains some files, but when I mount it by double-clicking on it, there's nothing in it; I get this:

I went into Disk Utility and clicked "Verify Disk" and I get this:

Verifying volume "PROSHOW DVD"
Checking file system
fsck_udf: Cannot read directory entry at offset 236: Undefined error: 0
fsck_udf: Directory Checking was bad!
** Checking Hierarchy
** Filesystem is dirty and non-repairable
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.

The "Repair Disk" button is grayed out though. My question is, how do I get at the files in the ISO?

ISO images typically contain more than one file system, the original ISO9660 file system for CD-ROMs (hence "ISO"), the "Joliet" extension to it for long filenames, and sometimes UDF or even a HFS+ file system. It's possible that one of them is corrupt, but the others are fine.

You could try explicitly mounting with the ISO9660 file system driver, as the UDF file system seems to be damaged. First, open a Terminal window. Attach the image without mounting:

hdiutil attach -nomount /path/to/image.iso

This should output the name of the disk device node, e.g.:

/dev/disk2

Create a mountpoint for the filesystem, e.g.

mkdir /Volumes/rescue

Then try mounting the device there, e.g.:

mount_cd9660 /dev/disk2 /Volumes/rescue

If it worked, it won't output anything, but the disk should be visible in Finder. (You can "eject" it via Finder when you're done)


Copy the 'explicit' or 'E' symbol from songs in the iOS Music app I have songs in my Music app that are marked as 'explicit'.
Is there a way to copy this 'explicit'/'E' symbol so I can use it somewhere else?

He is probably looking for the following unicode character : Negative Squared Latin Capital Letter E

The letter :

NB: The letter is not visible on my Windows. My iPhone displays it.


Generate PDF with table of contents from Microsoft Word on Mac OS X I need to generate PDF documents with a PDF table of contents from Microsoft Word 2011.

The PDF table of contents can for example be viewed in Preview using View -> Table of Contents.

This works well on my Windows machine. I just:

Select Save As > PDF
Click Options
Check the Create Bookmarks using headings check box.

But on Mac OS X this option is not available.

This has been asked multiple times before, for example here on SuperUser, but the only solution is to use the Windows version of Word, or using online tools like doc2pdf.

Word:Mac uses OS X's built-in PDF creator.  Word for Windows either uses Adobe's PDF creator or its own (depending on which version of Word for Windows you're using), which is why the functionality is different between the two applications.  OS X's built-in PDF creator doesn't do what you want.

If you have a license for Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader, but the full Acrobat), you can use Adobe's PDF creator.

Another option which others have reported having success with (and which doesn't require an expensive Acrobat license) is this:

Save your Word document to your computer.
Upload your Word document to Google Drive. Do NOT convert it to another format when you upload.
Get the OpenAsPDF app. Its a Google Drive App.
Open your Word document with OpenAsPDF app.
Use the Save As dialogue to save back to your computer.
Before saving, change the extension to .pdf.


VPN Auto connect Notification I have implemented a VPN auto connect option via Applescript [see code]. It works like a charme there's only one problem. Every time when i open my MacBook I get this [see printscreen] notification. A few seconds later it reconnects as it should. How can I stop that notification from showing up? It's very annoying.

on idle
tell application "System Events"
    tell current location of network preferences
        set myConnection to the service "my vpn name"
        if myConnection is not null then
            if current configuration of myConnection is not connected then
                connect myConnection
            end if
        end if
    end tell
    return 120
end tell end idle

The problem comes because the VPN server is killing the connection sometime after the mac goes to sleep.

Try disconnecting the VPN before going to sleep, automatically, using sleepwatcher as described in this Q&A.


Breadboard Software? I am learning how to do some beginner work with electronics, so I am looking for a breadboard.  Now I know I can go down the local RadShack and pick one up, but in doing so, I'll spend $20 on a board, another $10 on wires, and possibly more on electronics I need to duplicate the entire practice they want me to do in the book.

All in all I'm not willing to shove $50 to $100 on a breadboard and it's toys just to learn something on my own just yet.

I am looking for a Breadboard software package for the Mac, either it be universal or not.  Is there such a thing as this or am I stuck spending $100 on a breadboard, electronics, and a case to keep it all organized?

iCircuit

iCircuit is the easy to use electronic circuit simulator and designer - the perfect tool for students, hobbyists, and engineers.
Its advanced simulation engine can handle both analog and digital circuits and features realtime always-on analysis. It is the perfect companion to students, hobbyists, and engineers.


Not getting video from GTX 970, Mac Pro 2008 (MacPro3,1) We had a hard drive crash with 10.10.5. I replaced the hard drive, reloaded 10.10 using my native ATI 2400 XT, ran all updates, installed latest web drivers, added the nvda_drv=1 boot argument, shut down, popped in the GTX 970, heard the chime for start-up but did not get to desktop. I am aware that the boot screen won't appear. I put the GTX 970 in a PC and got video. What could be the issue?

This was solved by:

making sure the PCIe cables were properly seated, on the Mac Pro motherboard.
clearing NVRAM by cmd + option + p + r.
installing Nvidia drivers (which adds the nvda_drv=1 flag as part of the installer).
place GTX 970 in slot 2, making sure PCIe connection is on tight.
system boots properly.
shutdown, then move card to slot 1, making sure PCIe power connection is on tight.
system boots properly.


iBooks storing books in iFile not with original file names but renamed to 16 length Hex character I store many books epub and pdf through direct downloads on my ipad into iBooks as well as copying over from iTunes. My problem is that when I view the books what I get a 16 char hex string instead of the file name using a file manager such as iFile. (Book names in the UI GUI does show correct) This is for books I copied to my ipad with iTunes where the file a moved from my PC had the correct name.

This makes locating a book hard (i have a very large book collection) if i want to us iFile and not iBooks itself to locate a book to copy and send via iFile to other devices.

Any idea how to translate those 16 char hex names displayed in iFile to the proper book name displayed in iBooks UI?

Download or open the file Books.plist in the root of books. This will give a list of book names with that  corresponding long string


Edited photos have reverted to originals on iphone I edited about 20 photos on my phone yesterday -- cropped, altered saturation and contrast etc. This morning, on my phone, those edits have all reverted to the original photos.

I use iCloud library. The photos had not completed uploading to iCloud library before I edited them. My phone uses ios 11.3

Can these edits be recovered now that iCloud sync up is complete and those edits are reverted to the original photos?

EDIT: given that there is no solution, and that others report the same problem (and that it happened again), I have filed a bug report at Apple:

https://bugreport.apple.com/web/?problemID=40326889

In general, no. Assuming you don't get any of the "long shots" below to work, you'll have to re-crop and re-edit the photos from the originals.

Photos keeps only two versions of an image by design - the original photo and the current edited version. Other apps like Aperture save undo and redo actions and perform non-destructive edits, but not Photos or the iCloud photo library.

Unless your phone still has those images cached and would upload them, you likely lost the edits.

Here are the "long shots" for looking:

Look in the Recently Deleted Album (online and on your device and optionally on another synced device if you should have them)
Look for upload paused on the iPhone (scroll to the bottom of the content on the All Photos Album
Check for iOS backups after you made the edits - you might be able to restore that backup and interrupt the iCloud download of the non-edited versions.


Permanently allow Chrome to access location Recently, Google Chrome keeps loosing the ability to detect my location. When I open Google Maps, it has the icon indicating This site has been blocked from accessing your location and when I click it, a dialog containing Location is turned off in Mac system preferences is shown:

So I have to go to Enable Location Services:

But I am sure that I have done this several times recently. It seems that this setting is lost regularly (maybe for every Chrome auto-update?). How can I make this setting permanent?

This is tracked here (I think.) Sounds like it's fixed and hopefully will be corrected in a coming chrome version.


Keyboard shortcut to show Tags... dialog In the Finder, you can select a file and choose Tags... from the File menu or contextual menu. It will show a little dialog that allows you to select or type tag names, and you can press Enter to apply them to the selected file.

Before Mac OS Mojave, I was able to assign a keyboard shortcut to this menu item (using a method like this, although I'm using Keyboard Maestro).

But with Mojave, Tags... is no longer a standard menu item, so it can't be accessed this way. Using an ellipsis character instead of three periods doesn't help. Is there a way to do this now? I tried scripting System Events, but couldn't get it working.

This no longer seems possible with Mac OS 10.14. My workaround has been to use Keyboard Maestro, with the following macro:

For Each Item in the Collection Execute Actions
    For Each FilePath in the Finder selection
Execute the Following Actions:
    Get Tags to Variable ‘Tags’
    From file: %Variable%FilePath%

Prompt for User Input ‘Tags’
    Prompt: Enter tag to toggle
Input the following variables:
    Tags (default to ‘%Variable%Tags%’)
Finish with the following buttons:
    OK
    Cancel (cancel macro)

For Each Item in the Collection Execute Actions
    For Each FilePath in the Finder selection
Execute the Following Actions:
    Set Tags to ‘%Variable%Tags%’
    File: %Variable%FilePath%

If you select some Finder items and run this macro, it will prompt you to enter tags. You can enter multiple tags separated by commas. Pressing OK will apply those tags to the selected items. The prompt will be pre-filled with the tags of the last item in the selection (this part of the macro isn't ideal).


trouble installing snow leopard My optical drive is no longer working and I'm having trouble updating from leopard to snow leopard I got this message when I tried to install

  "To install Mac OS X, use Disk utility to burn this disk image to a DVD and run this application again"

I've tried using disc utility to copy an image of the disk and mounting and to try to trick my mac to thinking its a disk, then tried rebooting the mac while holding down the option button but nothing but the hard drive comes up.

Does anybody else have any suggestions?

Is there some kind of command that can make my computer recognize it as a disk?

I have also tried using remote disk from my sisters macbook pro to install the software that had already had a disk image copied & burned to a disk.

You need to restore Snow Leopard image in Disk Utility to GUID partitioned drive or flash stick. Only after that it will be possible to boot from it.


How exactly does Cmd-shift-4+space work? Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   4  +  Space   behaves unexpectedly. For example, when I right-click on Chrome, the captured window does not include the right-click UI.

What exactly determines a unit in  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   4  +  Space   ?

How exactly does  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   4  +  Space    work?(Mac v10.12.5 here, though focused on generality.)

WindowServer

The unit being captured is a layer or window as determined by macOS's WindowServer process.

As a developer, this is accessed through CoreGraphic's CGWindowListCreateImage method:

CGImageRef CGWindowListCreateImage(CGRect screenBounds, CGWindowListOption listOption, CGWindowID windowID, CGWindowImageOption imageOption);

This call returns a composite image based on a dynamically generated list of windows.

Screen Captures with Layers

Tools like Acorn, ScreenShot PSD, and Ondesoft ScreenCapture can take screenshots capturing all the individual layers or windows. The resulting capture retains the layering, allowing you to select, hide, or edit windows as desired.


Will upgrading to 4GB RAM on a white MacBook work? I've seen discussions about upgrading memory but it was only for the MacBook Pro. I have a white 13" MacBook with 2GB memory, I'm considering about upgrading the memory to 4GB.

Is it possible to upgrade the memory from 2GB to 4GB with the white MacBook (late 2009)?

All white Macbooks can certainly be upgraded to 4 and -in some cases- 6GB of RAM.

Depending upon your model, you should check OWC's Memory Upgrades and go from there. I believe other vendors (Crucial, Newegg, etc.) will have similar pages with similar info (and similar prices). I've brought different memory upgrades from OWC and never had a single failure so far.

I have an old Macbook 4.1 White Core 2 Duo 2.4 and can go up to 6GB. So best thing to do is check your exact Macbook model and see what they offer.


How to make Airmail to open mailto: protocol link? I have searched for this but I can't find anything in search results answering this query.

When I click on mailto link given in a mail inside Airmail,it opens Mail.app window instead of opening it inside Airmail. On setting gmail account on Mail.app, starts downloading 2GB sized inbox.

I use RCDefaultApp to tweak this type of setting and many other.  Note that while this is an older app nonetheless it still works with OS X 10.11.x too.

It's a Preferences Pane style app and it's freeware. You can read more about it and see screenshots at the web site (linked above).


Default c++ compiler version I need to compile some small cpp files so I'd like to do that through the terminal. I'm using Catalina 10.15.5. I found out that macOS has a built-in clang compiler and I can use commands like c++ or g++. It's version:

Apple clang version 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.32.29)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin19.5.0
Thread model: posix

But I need to know which c++ version it uses (e.g. c++17, c++11 or even less version). It's really important for my files.

I know I can specify the version like c++ --std=gnu++17 but the question is how to make the compiler to use it by default (without aliases, there must be a command to change it). Or at least how to find out which version does it use right now?

You can find the default version by looking in the manual:

man clang

It states:

  The default C++ language standard is gnu++14.

This is basically the same as C++14, but with some GNU specific extensions.

The way to change the default setting when used "standalone" (i.e. without an Xcode project, Makefile or similar) is actually to make a shell alias. There's no clang configuration file where you can change the default - you'll need to recompile the compiler to change it.


Diagnosing macos locking up when external displayport monitor connected Whenever I connect my MBP to an external monitor via a DisplayPort cable the OS pretty much locks up.

I have a new 2020 13" MBP running Catalina 10.15.5 (19F101). I'm trying to connect it to an external monitor via a Caldigit USB-C Pro dock and a 6ft DisplayPort <-> DisplayPort cable. When I connect the cable to the external monitor the laptop freezes for about 10-20 seconds, then the display updates momentarily, then freezes for another 10-20 seconds, then updates, and so on. The external monitor says it's not getting a signal. If I unplug the DisplayPort cable (either at the dock or at the monitor) then the laptop goes back to normal after a few seconds.

What can I do to diagnose this issue further? I've tried running Activity Monitor and I don't see any noticeable spikes in resource utilization.

I thought maybe the issue was with the cable - perhaps I need an "active" cable rather than a "passive" - but the Caldigit documentation only says that's necessary for an adapter (i.e. DisplayPort to HDMI).

The dock has two DisplayPort ports, which are not present in the USB-C cable, so the hub must have some extra hardware providing this.

This may require drivers.  I have a Thinkpad USB-C dock home from work these days (corona) which require a DisplayLink driver installed on my Mac to provide video output from the dock.  It might be something similar here.

I would suggest reconsidering your Hub choice.  A simple solution may be the USB-C Digital AV Multiport-adapter (https://www.apple.com/dk/shop/product/MUF82ZM).


Garageband - Unable to complete In-App Purchase I would like to buy more instruments, loops and so on in the new Garageband. The problem is that if I choose

  Garageband → Purchase more sounds

click Continue when it told me what I'm going to buy. I enter my Apple ID then click Buy when the App Store ask me if want to buy this In App Purchase.

Then App Store tells me to renter my Apple ID password because it will ask me a security question. If I then enter my Apple ID I get redirected to an empty page (in Mac App Store)

I tried with reloading this page. I've restarted the Mac, logged out logged in in Mac App Store, I've read this article http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5275 (What accept button?). I have no more idea what to do.

Edit

Okay. I started looking closer and found some intressting logs. storeagent is logging normal things (requests) but then it suddenly logs

Dock[201]: LaunchPad: __53-[LPAppManager(StoreSupport) _acceptStoreConnection:]_block_invoke app store xpc message error: Connection invalid

What does connection invalid mean? I don't know. I tried with using another internet access. No luck.

You won't be able to purchase IAPs for GarageBand unless the Mac App Store is logged in to the same account that 'accepted' the iLife apps.

Make sure you're logged in to the desired account, then open App Store → Purchases. If the iLife apps show as unaccepted, click Accept.


How can I disable iMessage suggestions in iOS 13’s share menu? In iOS 13, when I try to share something, the first row is all suggestions about who I should text whatever I’m reading to. How can I disable this “feature” so that it stops taking up space in the share menu?

The only workaround I have found so far is by deleting the conversations with all the suggested contacts.

If you use Signal/Whatsapp to communicate anyway, it is not a big deal. But it is unbelievable that Apple does not allow you to disable this.


How to troubleshoot stuttering iTunes video playback while downloading on Mac OS X 10.7.2? Observations: Recently, not sure when it happened, with upgrade to Lion or before, but I have not been able to cleanly watch a video of any type in iTunes while something [movie, tv show, app, podcast, etc.] is downloading from the iTunes store. This is particularly annoying when renting a movie, and trying to start watching before the movie is downloaded. There have been no hardware changes, and playback used to work perfectly during download. There have been a lot of recent changes to iTunes, Mac OS, and I would like to fault isolate. How can I determine which software might be causing this problem, or if something is interfering with playback?

Problem: iTunes video playback is choppy only while downloading anything from the iTunes store. Video is choppy at all sizes, e.g. actual size, full screen.

System Setup: iMac 20-inch, Early 2008, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 128 MB, Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2; iTunes 10.5.2; iTunes library stored on external Firewire HDD, HDD approx. 50% full; All software up to date.

Solutions already tried: iTunes reinstalled; Quicktime reinstalled; reboot; All other apps closed; iDevices ejected from iTunes panel;

I'm not sure how this was resolved, but the latest version of iTunes now works fine.


Errors in installing OpenMPI on El Capitan I'm following this guide to install OpenMPI on my Mac. I think everything is going well, but now I'm at the step where I have to make all. When I try, I get the error Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please re-run as root via sudo., so I can't go further.

EDIT: looking at the downvoted answer here I tried to run Xcode and say ok to license agreement.
Now, when I enter make all I get the error in the following figure

Indeed, I see there's no file named makefile (only Makefile.* files are present).

I don't know why but a second ./configure --prefix=/usr/local solved the problem of make all, which is currently in execution. Maybe the license agreement should have been done before this step.

I find the solution to my problem. The the license agreement was required to be completed before ./configure --prefix=/usr/local (as I suspected and @klanomath confirmed). If not so, the command make all can't be run.


How to do raw device access with VirtualBox? So I am trying to set up raw device access w/ VirtualBox to use a ext4/linux disk as a guest OS within Mac OS X, but haven't succeeded yet.

Following the VirtualBox docs, Chapter 9.9.1.1, https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#rawdisk will Mac OS X allow raw disk access for VMs? How do I set this up?

Things done so far: (don't try this at home)

Created a raw vmdk file:

$ sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /Users/me/VirtualBoxVMs/Xub_raw_disk.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0
RAW host disk access VMDK file /Users/me/VirtualBoxVMs/Xub_raw_disk.vmdk created successfully.

make me the owner:

$ sudo chown me /Users/me/VirtualBoxVMs/Xub_raw_disk.vmdk

see if VirtualBox can see anything on the Xub_raw_disk.vmdk file:

$ VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk /Users/me/VirtualBoxVMs/Xub_raw_disk.vmdk
Number  Type   StartCHS       EndCHS      Size (MiB)  Start (Sect)

Since nothing shows up here for sectors or partitions, this must be a symptom of the problem...

Problem is when I try to add the .vmdk file from the GUI or with the command below, I get an error:

$ VBoxManage storageattach "Xub_raw_testing" --storagectl "SATA" --port 0 --type hdd --medium /Users/me/VirtualBoxVMs/Xub_raw_disk.vmdk
VBoxManage: error: Could not find file for the medium '/Users/me/VirtualBoxVMs/Xub_raw_disk.vmdk' (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80bb0004), component Medium, interface IMedium, callee nsISupports
VBoxManage: error: Context: "OpenMedium(Bstr(pszFilenameOrUuid).raw(), enmDevType, enmAccessMode, fForceNewUuidOnOpen, pMedium.asOutParam())" at line 178 of file VBoxManageDisk.cpp
VBoxManage: error: Invalid UUID or filename "/Users/me/VirtualBoxVMs/Xub_raw_disk.vmdk"

UPDATE:
Here, disk0 is the dedicated linux drive. disk1 (not used) is for Mac OS X.
Making myself the owner of the /dev/disk0 and /dev/disk0s2 with

$ chown $USER /dev/disk0
$ chown $USER /dev/disk0s2

per the Froggard howto made it so I could add the image to a VM. Also, /dev/disk0 is now readable from VBoxManage:

$ VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk /dev/disk0
Number  Type   StartCHS       EndCHS      Size (MiB)  Start (Sect)
1       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0            976         2048
2       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0         227959      2000896

Now, when I start the linux guest OS, I get the FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted. message. Any ideas what's wrong?

I had a need to do this today and I saw your question, so here is a protocol of the steps I took.
Find the Device Number
diskutil list
e.g. 2, as in /dev/disk2
Assuming 2 for the rest of the instructions.
Create the Virtual Machine VMDK
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "$HOME/dev-disk2.vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/disk2
Eject the device before this step, otherwise you will get an error: VERR_RESOURCE_BUSY. You may want to add an entry in fstab with the added parameters noauto to prevent the OS from remounting the drive.
I use rdisk-disk2.vmdk for the name, because this virtual machine is just a pointer to this device. After reboot, the situation could change e.g. a device might be assigned a different number especially if you unplug things and move things around.
Start Virtual Box Manager with Root Privileges
sudo /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VirtualBox
Because devices are all owned by root, you need to start VirtualBox with root privileges. This has consequences. Your home context (home folder and preferences) will be changed to root. Your other virtual machines will not be visible. If you open a file browser, you will see the root's home folder by default.
Another option is to change the permissions of the device (not recommended) as you have done.
To confirm permissions of devices, you can run ls -l /dev/disk*

Add New Machine, provide name: /dev/disk2, type: linux, version: arch linux (64-bit)
Give it some memory (whatever you can)
Select existing drive using VMDK created above. (IMPORTANT ensure the drive has not been remounted, otherwise you will get VERR_RESOURCE_BUSY, NS_ERROR_FAILURE)

Install a Fresh System
Add an optical disk file (e.g. a bootable linux ISO of your liking) and turn on the Live CD/DVD optional so that you boot from it.
Make System Bootable in VirtualBox
This is not so obvious, especially if you use an EFI setup. If using grub-mkconfig, the name of the efi file is grubx64.efi (assuming 64 bits). VirtualBox is finicky about where it looks for a boot file. The default will not do.
Rename grubx64.efi to bootx64.efi
/boot/EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi

Notes

tip: get yourself iterm 2
This is super useful for Macbooks when installing Arch Linux, because the default ISO does not load the wlan card drivers.


Setting anacron on Mac - Shell Scripting I set cron to run script every day using env EDITOR=nano crontab -e where I wrote something like this @daily path/to/sript.script.

Now I want to use anacron to be sure that script is going to be run when I log in if I was logged off at the time when it was scheduled. But I am not sure where to specify that.

I tried something like env EDITOR=nano anacron -e but that didn't work. Also, strange is that man anacron doesn't provide anything. I get this: "No manual entry for anacron"


How do I make automator only perform an operation on one file at a time? I have with 'Folder Action' that automatically runs a Photoshop script on each file that is added to the folder.

The folder action has two steps:

Open this file with Adobe Photoshop CC
Run the following AppleScript:

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC"
        do action "frame for print" from "Zak's actions"
    end tell

    return input
end run

This folder action works fine when only one item is added to the folder at a time, but if multiple items are added, the folder action fires on each of the new files almost instantaneously so they all open in Photoshop but the Photoshop action only runs on the most recently opened file. (I'm assuming that is because each time the Photoshop action is started it halts the execution of the previous instance)

I tried adding a pause after the AppleScript hoping that Automator was just thinking that the folder action was done after the AppleScript fired without waiting for it to finish, but even with the pause the folder action was activated for all new files at the same time.

Is there a way to make sure my folder action only runs on one file at a time and waits for the AppleScript to execute before moving onto the next file?

You can do this multilpe ways, one is to use applescript to do a 'for each' loop.

Take this applescript code snippet as an example and work it out from there.

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
   repeat with an_item in these_items
       tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC"
           activate
           open an_item
           do action "frame for print" from "Zak's actions"
       end tell
   end repeat
end adding folder items to


Keep Finder On-Top While Dragging Links From Safari URL Bar In the previous version of OS X, Mavericks, I used to be able to have a browser window open and a finder window open, I used to then be able to drag a link from the URL into the finder window to drop links.

If the window was like this:

Where the finder is on top of the browser you were able to drag the URL link from the URL bar without the safari window jumping up on top. Now when you do it the finder window will get placed under the safari window.

Is there any way to get this property back? Being able to have finder windows on top of the safari window makes it so much easier to drag links from the URL bar to the folder.

You can just drag the link to the Finder icon in the Dock, and hold for a couple of seconds. That’s show you all the available windows of Finder, then you can select the one you want to drag the web-loc to. As @Phoenix mentioned in comment, you can aways ⌘+Tab to switch between open apps. Another way would be to use Mission Control, the shortcut of which is F4, or ⌃+↑ (configurable in Keyboard Pref Pane).

It should be expected behaviour to switch to the app you clicked on so Finder has to lose focus, for Safari to respond.


Retrieve hard drive information from dead Macbook Pro I have spilled a little bit of water around my Macbook Pro and some if obviously got into the computer because it won't turn on anymore -- force booting it gives me the flashing "? folder" thing.

So what I was wondering/hoping/praying is that someone knew a way that I can retrieve the info from a 2015 15' Macbook Pro's hard drive in any way. I know there have been ways in the past such as taking out the hard drive and basically buying a piece that converts it into an external hard drive. Not sure this is still an option?

I am a college student and have little money, so the cheapest option that works is what I am shooting for -- not the $300 option where I send it to Apple or the $1300 option where Apple fixes it.

Please help!!

Depending on how/why yours is broken - If you know someone with another Mac with Thunderbolt you can connect the two together and use your hard-drive to boot his laptop. Apple's instructions are here: https://support.apple.com/kb/ph10725?locale=en_US It's the same procedure across all recent OS versions.

Otherwise, you need something like this to pull our the M2 SSD, and turn it into a standard desktop external drive: https://www.amazon.com/ZTC-Enclosure-Adapter-SuperSpeed-ZTC-EN004-BK/dp/B00KQ4LNJC or https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-M-2-SATA-External-Enclosure/dp/B00T8F298Y

Goes without saying though, if the drive is broken, doesn't what you or how you plug it in - it's broken.

Further reading: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-retina-display-faq/macbook-pro-retina-display-how-to-upgrade-ssd-storage.html


What happens if I click "delete backup", do I still have my photos on the camera roll? I'm running out of space in iCloud, so I decided to turn off all the backups and delete them.

What happens if I click "delete backup" at the bottom of the manage store page?

Do I still have my photos in the camera roll?

Yes! It will only delete your backup. Not your photos that are in the camera roll.

If you delete the iCloud backup for your iOS device, iCloud stops automatically backing up the device. You can also back up your device using iTunes.


how to make each display a separate space, yet have a keyboard shortcut to move both screens at the same time? In OS X Mavericks, each display (ie monitor) has it's own space. There are many advantages to that.
But then there are also advantages to the old way of doing it; i.e i want both my  [monitor 1  - space 1] & [monitor 2 - space 1] to be for my Xcode app. And the [monitor 1 - space 2] [monitor 2 space 2] for my chrome  and so on so forth.
The Preferences offers you the option of going either the old way or new way via the Display have separate spaces option:

However I want the best of both worlds: I want each screen to have its own space.. but then I also want a keyboard shorcut where I can move both screens at the same time. How is that possible?

I wanted to do something similar. While I'm not sure it's possible to make the "Move left" and "Move right" shortcuts behave like you want (at least not without a third-party tool), you can get pretty close with the "Switch to Desktop [n]" shortcuts. Here's what I did:

In Mission Control, add or remove desktops from both displays so you have the same number on both. I was using 5 in Mountain Lion, so when I first booted into Mavericks, I had 5 on my primary display and only one ("Desktop 6") on my secondary display. I simply added 4 new desktops to my secondary display, so now I have 10 in total. The result looks something like this:

Primary display with Desktops 1-5

Secondary display with Desktops 6-10

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and select the Mission Control category.
Set one shortcut for each "pair" of desktops, like so:

(Of course, this will result in some conflicting shortcuts, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. One shortcut still fires both actions.)

Use ctrl-1 through ctrl-5 (or whatever set of shortcuts you chose) to switch between each pair: ctrl+1 for Desktop 1 on the primary display and Desktop 6 on the secondary, ctrl+2 for Desktop 2 and Desktop 7, and so on.

Seems like a bit of a hack I know, but at least it matches the behavior that I was used to in Mountain Lion while maintaining the benefits of the improved multiple monitor support in Mavericks.

EDIT: I just noticed that this can cause some odd behavior when switching desktop pairs. For one, after you land on a desktop, the menu bar flashes erratically and eventually focuses on one display or another, seemingly randomly. It also seems to mess with the application-switching, in that it doesn't always focus on the application or window that you would expect it to. (Perhaps there's a conflict there between the most recently used application globally and the most recently used on that particular desktop? I'm not sure.) I'll keep playing around with it, but that could be a dealbreaker for me. Luckily, I still have the option of switching back to pre-Mavericks behavior if necessary.


iPhone Camera Roll has created .XMP files causing photo import crashes in Windows Somehow, my iPhone 5 (iOS 6.1.2) has created .XMP files for some images on my Camera Roll, and these .XMP files are causing import errors in both Picasa 3.9 and Windows XP Scanner and Camera Wizard.

I have determined that this seems related to a set of 4 iPhone screenshots I took which I then used the Photos app to Edit > Rotate the orientation of these screenshots since for some reason they came out wrong.

Here you can see the 4 tan-background images of a gas mileage app I use:

But for some reason, in Windows XP Scanner and Camera Wizard (Advanced Mode), you can see they show up as duplicate-named .XMP files of 323 bytes each:

They only show up as blank images when in Thumbnails view of Scanner and Camera Wizard (Advanced Mode):

In regular wizard mode, they show up as the correct image, but only every other image:

Google Picasa 3.9 interrupts the import process from the iPhone, as soon as it hits these particular files:

But clearly the files are not exactly duplicate named .XMP files - because the Camera Roll itself shows the correct images (which are obivously larger than the 323 bytes they are claiming to be in Scanner and Camera Wizard), and because you can also see the thumbnails in the regular wizard mode of S.C.W.

What is causing this and how can I best proceed?

As "TJ Luoma" points out in the comment, the XMP files are used to allow non-destructive editing. It's a great idea but it's a very new standard (?) from Adobe and is therefore not adopted properly by everyone yet.

http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp.html

The new Apple Photos app (due to come out in USA Spring 2015) syncs changes between devices using this XMP concept. That software should be able to read the files and edits properly.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac-software/release-date-for-mac-os-x-photos-app-3586301/

In the mean time, there's not much you can do. Perhaps Adobe have an open source solution. In my experience, the XMP files are not sent from the device (iPhone 5s tested). Therefore, iPhoto 9.6, "Image Capture" on the mac and Google Picasa all failed to read the photos properly.


Changed iCloud password, now Messages, Facetime, and Keychain don't work After changing my iCloud account password, which I also use to log in to macOS, I can no longer sign in to Messages which means I can't use iMessage or SMS messages on my MacBook. Every time I enter my iCloud account email and password I get an alert, "This Mac can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with [my email address]." The dialog has a link to iCloud Preferences and if I proceed to sign in there, I then get an error message that my username or password was incorrect (even though I know it's correct). This happens every time I try, the same thing happens with Facetime.

I also can no longer use the iCloud Keychain. I'm frequently (i.e. several times each hour) prompted with "accountsd wants to use the Local Items keychain." which as far as I can tell doesn't exist, so if I cancel that a few times it changes to "accountsd wants to use the iCloud keychain." Entering my iCloud password here doesn't work, I have no idea what the password could be and I don't see any way to set one in Keychain Access.

This is extremely frustrating, I've tried Apple Support but they were unable to solve it, I have an open ticket but nothing has happened for over a week. Has anyone else had a similar issue?

I finally went in to the Apple Store and had a "genius" go through it with me. Here's what eventually worked:

rm -rf ~/Library/Keychains ~/Library/Messages ~/Library/IdentityServices
sudo rm /var/db/crls/crlcache2.db

We did like 20 other things before that and got nowhere, I'm not excluding the possibility that resolution was a result of the compounded effect but removing the files listed above definitely was the turning point for me.


How do I prevent iTunes from syncing 400 apps to my new iPad? I just got my new iPad and installed the apps I wanted without first syncing it with my computer. When I connect it to my computer and choose to sync apps, iTunes wants to add all my 400+ purchased iPad apps to the iPad, and I don't want that.

Is there an easy way to deselect these 400 apps that I don't want from within iTunes? They are arranged on the last screens after the apps that I actually want.

Unfortunately iTunes doesn't support selecting multiple applications, apart from manually selecting each one. The best option would be to disable syncing of Applications on iTunes.

For iTunes sync to work correctly you either need to use it to manage your applications, or only use the iPad and download all the applications you want directly to the iPad using the App Store on the iPad.


Exiting apps when sleeping Strange, when I'm leaving my Retina Macbook Pro alone, and it starts going to sleep (despite my setting it to not sleep), it tries to close all the apps that I have open.

Why would it do this and is it possible to fix it?

It sounds like you have "Log out after 60 minutes of inactivity" selected in the "Advanced…" pane of "Security & Privacy" settings enabled.


Automator app stopped working after updating to macOS Mojave Today I updated to Mojave because the notifications were killing me.

A script I have in automator to launch apache server on startup stopped working after the update.

This is all this automator app is doing

echo mypassphrase | sudo -S apachectl restart

Strangely, this exact same line works fine if I run it from the terminal

I tried using the following AppleScripts that some people recommend online:

do shell script "echo mypassphrase | sudo -S apachectl restart" with administrator privileges
do shell script "sudo -S apachectl restart" with administrator privileges
do shell script "sudo apachectl restart" with administrator privileges
do shell script "apachectl restart" with administrator privileges

None of them work. Launching the app manually doesn't work either. The script only works if I'm running it from Terminal.app

I've also given this app (autostartapache.app) the permission to control my computer on System Preferences > Security and Privacy. I have also restarted the machine. The app runs on startup but doesn't start apache, running the app manually won't work either, running from Automator doesn't start apache either.

Thinking of downgrading to High Sierra that was working fine, I don't really like this update anyway and there really isn't anything new to the user other than the few apps they added (news, stock, etc). My sister also told me that her Wacom device to do digital art is not working well after the update. This issue seems to be related to the changes they did to security (everything needing permissions now).

The issue seems to be related to running custom PHP + Apache versions on Mojave, there are a lot of issues open on Github regarding problems with PHP, Apache and Mojave on Github, and the solutions wouldn't work for me.

Since what I really wanted to do was to keep having a PHP server to automatically run on startup to later test PHP scripts and websites locally, I decided to fire up the local server using PHP's built-in server command instead of Apache.

I used this bash script on the Automator app, it uses Mojave's preinstalled PHP version (7.1.19) and it authenticates just fine using the same sudo trick:

echo mypassphrase | sudo -S php -S localhost:80 -t <directory to serve from>
killAll ScriptMonitor

The last line killAll ScriptMonitor just gets rid of the spinning cog in the menu bar as soon as the server is created, this won't affect PHP from running in the background and PHP will keep acting as a server until terminated via command line or Activity Monitor or system shut down.


Good Linux distribution for Macbook Air and VirtualBox I have seen many Linux distributions tried to be used in Macbook Air, for instance.
One custom made of Redhat Linux is one successful port in VirtualBox but it is not public.
However, I would like to know how well other public Linux distributions work with Macbook Air in VirtualBox.

I am thinking these distros

Fedora Linux (Torvalds may use but dislike Gnome3)
Debian Linux (used by many of my Science friends)
OpenSUSE (rejected by Torvalds)
...

Which Linux distributions have adequate support for Macbook Air and VirtualBox?

Ubuntu or Mint are the distros I'd recommend. They're both well-supported. Also, don't pay much attention to Torvalds. The man has an opinion on everything, and he isn't always right... I mean, he made the Linux kernel into a Monolithic kernel, and that has its issues.


Change icons on macOS Big Sur I wanted to change the icons on Big Sur and ran into the same problems. I tried to follow the steps here (https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/395509/387852) but on step 6:
sudo mount -o nobrowse -t apfs DISK_PATH MOUNT_PATH

I ran into this issue
mount_apfs: volume could not be mounted: Resource busy
mount: /Users/timrupp/newicons failed with 75

I really am no programmer or have any real clue how to use Terminal. I'd appreciate any help.

diskutil unmountDisk force DISK_PATH (or whatever your disk is)


How to run Say "something" in background in AppleScript I would like to have AppleScript code like this:

row 1
say "some long text here"
row 3

When it starts to speak text, it same time continues to row 3.

I create my scripts in AppleScript Editor and i don't know enough about process control on OS X to understand backgrounding yet.

Like this

say "some long text here" without waiting until completion


Potential causes of trackpad problems on retina display macbook I have a 2012 MBP retina display.  Over the past few days I've noticed that my trackpad has started to become finicky: it's hard to pinch, the cursor occasionally "jumps" and sometimes gets stuck so badly that it can only move on one axis (e.g., can only move left or right).  After restarting and resetting VRAM things seem to momentarily be fixed: but I don't know if this is strictly power of suggestion.  The fact that the cursor is stuck and that restarting helps fix the problem implies to me that the problem may be in part software related.

I've seen previous threads that suggest replacing the cable and that this was a frequent problem in previous generations of the MBP.  My mac is still under warranty, but I wondered if there may be any software causes that I should investigate.

If things don't pan out, I can always take it to a store.

Does it act the same on battery power?  Or, can you switch the powersupply plug to the long bulky power cord?

If being on battery clears up this problem, then you may have a ground problem (at least, I have identified this mouse-jerk issue on one mbp).  This is also the cause of the 'tingling' that is sometimes felt when you stroke the aluminium case.

A lack/failure to ground occurs under many conditions.  E.g., power supply uses the direct plug rather than the heavy power cord as the direct plastic power plugs don't transmit ground.  Or, there is a ground problem further upstream (dodgy power board or UPS, dodgy electrics in building).  Or, something metal being touched is actually charged (scary).  Or, some combination of effects.

If not grounded, the voltage inside the Mac "floats" away from ground, leading to weird effects when you touch the machine, as you are effectively a different ground competing for a different level.  And, touching is exactly what you do when using the trackpad.


Does iChat block content in China? It's relatively common knowledge that the Chinese government blocks certain content in China. Most of this won't affect Chinese users. But does iChat censor messages with said content in them?

This Yahoo Answers question says that the content won't be blocked unless it's pornographic or politically extremist. However, I'm not sure if Apple lets China access their messages, so I'm not sure if the Chinese government could do this.

Unfortunately, I don't have a way to test this myself. I've done some research, and I haven't been able to find a definitive answer, thanks to the fact that I can't read Chinese.

Example: I send a message to person 1 in China saying 'Down with the government! Tank Man! Tibet! Liu Xiaobo! Tiananmen Square protests of 1989!' Does Person 1 get the message or not?

No - iChat has no provision for blocking or filtering what you do.

It does rely on DNS and thus is easily blocked by any network operator that chooses to do so. It is vulnerable to blocking of the major chat servers that let people know who else is online.


OS X (Yosemite) offline password manager I am fairly new Mac user, so sorry for a newbie question.
I work as a webdev and i have hundreds of login credentials for websites/FTPs/cPanels for different clients and so far i used a text document to store and manage them all (what can i do, Mac newbie lol).

Since it has become to hard to keep track of that, i am looking for the best and most secure offline password manager so i can keep track of them on a single place.
I dont need any fancy features like multiple devices sync (only thing i need is an autofill) and to be honest, since the iCloud leak this year, i dont trust any company to hold that sensitive data.

Can anybody suggest me any solution, doesnt matter is it paid or free as long as it does the job.

Thanks a bunch!

I am also a web developer and couldn't recommend 1Password more highly: https://agilebits.com/onepassword/mac

Honestly, the price has by and far been worth it for me. I believe I have ~300 login items in there and nearly all of them have different, very secure passwords. You can store nearly any data in the there and it is extremely flexible. The keyboard shortcut Command + \ automatically fills out logins and makes that part extremely easy (as long as there is a URL with that). Note that as of 1Password 5.0 it does not support auto-filling HTTP Basic Authentication. You can still copy/paste those credentials, though.

It is also possible to tag and organize items. There are many types of items including logins, servers, credit cards, identities (for filling out your name/address/email/etc.) and notes which also create a natural organization.

Edit: I also like the fact that since the URL can be (and is) saved in 1Password for the login it will not automatically fill in a form that is not the correct URL. For example if a scammer sends you an phishing email with a link to login to your bank, 1Password won't recognize the site and hence will not automatically fill the form when you hit the keyboard shortcut.

I will also note that 1Password offers excellent multi-device syncing.

I have tried SplashID and my brother (who also does web development) has tried LastPass, I believe, several years ago but we both are on 1Password and love it.

I am not affiliated with 1Password.


My 6S screen has gone black. What do I do? My 6S screen has gone black.

How do I reset the display functionally?

If the screen stays black after a reboot it's most likely a hardware issue. If you still have warranty or Apple Care reach out to Apple to have it fixed. Otherwise you can try an independent repair center.


Git vs rsync when resource fork must be preserved I have some ancient files that I need to share between Macs. There are over 100,000 of them. I need to keep the directory containing these files in sync. I thought Git would be a good solution, and it was, until I discovered that Git has stripped the resource fork off of every file on the remote machine(s).

So now I'm looking for another solution. Considering rsync but thought I'd ask here to see if anyone has experience with old Mac OS Classic files in a modern Mac OS X environment.

You want to use rsync -E.

$ rsync --help
...
-E, --extended-attributes   copy extended attributes
...