Left Side Option key not working on Macbook Pro I recently bought a second hand 2010 MacBook Pro. Just discovered that the Left sided 'Option' key is not working. I have no comeback on this so trying to determine if I can either fix it myself or do I bite the bullet and go to a genius bar.

I have checked the Keyboard Viewer and when I press the 'Option' key it does not respond. Every other key and modifier key works.

So are there further tests I can do? My gut feeling its a hardware problem, can these keys be replaced one at a time or does the whole keyboard have to be replaced? I believe its a costly job to do. I know its hard to answer without looking a the machine itself, just someone might have been in a similar position and can share the outcome.

Any help or advice is much appreciated.

I answered a similar question several months ago, the answer is somewhat applicable here as well.

Try this...

Power on your Mac while holding the option key on your keyboard.  If done correctly, and assuming a firmware password is not set, you should see your internal hard drive show up on the display.  If you DO have a firmware password set then you will be prompted to enter the password before moving on.  This is just to verify what you should see.

If you don't see these screens then your key is likely failed at the hardware level. If this is the case then you have to replace the entire top case since the keyboard is built into this component.  If the key had popped off you could replace just the key but any sort of functional (non cosmetic) repair requires the keyboard be replaced. The repair for this isn't terribly difficult although it is somewhat involved since the top case is basically the chassis that everything bolts to, meaning you have to tear the MacBook Pro down completely in the process.  iFixit has a great guide (and possibly a replacement part) that shows the process.

If you see what I describe above then your key is functioning properly at the hardware level and the issue instead rests somewhere in your operating system. To narrow down the issue I would create a test user account (or just enable and login to the Guest user) to see if the issue persisted when logged in as the test user.  If the issue persists for the test user then it's a system wide issue, if it doesn't then it's something in your ~/Library folder. If that didn't do the trick I would use Disk Utility to repair permissions, verify and repair the disk.  If need be I would reinstall the operating system, without first erasing the disk assuming you have data you'd like to preserve.

Hopefully that puts you in the right direction, good luck!


AppleScript keystroke ignoring numbers A very simple AppleScript like this:

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "abc 123"
end tell

results in just “abc” being typed. Online resources suggest this should not be the case. Adding a delay between keystrokes didn't help.

What might be causing this or how can I determine what might be causing this?

Small side question: in AppleScript terminology, what is keystroke? A function, command, something else?

Have a look at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18136567/applescript-keystroke-not-behaving-as-expected  & the list of ANSI codes at
How do I automate a key press in AppleScript?

It appears you're not the only one with the issue. One solution on there was to use the key code instead...

tell application "System Events"
    key code {18} using {command down}

It may depend on what app you're trying to send the keystrokes to - I just tested with an already-open blank document in Text Edit using

tell application "TextEdit" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "abc 123"
end tell

& it worked as expected.

A keystroke is the scripted equivalent of actually pressing that/those keys[s]

How about...

tell application "TextEdit" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "abc"
    keystroke space
    keystroke "123"
end tell


How do I resize an ex-CoreStorage volume? I've got a Macbook Pro Retina (with the PCIe drive ‘blade’, instead of a traditional 2.5" laptop drive). I've recently upgraded the internal drive from 500GB to 1TB, and dd'd the old drive over the new one to retain my partition setup and Bootcamp partition.

Unfortunately, this didn't go well: for whatever reason, OS X wouldn't recognize, once I'd booted up on the new 1TB drive, that there was 500GB of new space available. It was showing up in Disk Utility as greyed-out space.

To aid in debugging this, I wiped out the Bootcamp partition entirely (I have backups. I intend to restore that later, once I've got the drive fixed up from within OS X.); and eventually, after getting fed up trying to get diskutil cs resizeStack to work, I diskutil cs revert'ed the boot volume entirely.

Now I have this situation:

> diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Fannie's HD             499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
> diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
> diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 limits
For device disk0s2 Fannie's HD:
        Current size:  499.4 GB (499418034176 Bytes)
        Minimum size:  330.0 GB (329959456768 Bytes)
        Maximum size:  499.4 GB (499418034176 Bytes)

After trying to drag the single partition in Disk Utility from 500GB up to 1TB, and then clicking ‘apply’, the process appears to proceed, and complete; but as soon as the completion message appears in the bottom-right, the partition map reverts to what you see in the screenshot. It never succeeds in re-sizing to 1TB. (Here's the verbose log, along with some other details obtained from the command-line.)

(Attempting to do the same from the recovery partition's Disk Utility gives an ‘Error: could not unmount disk.)

At this point, all I want in the world, is to re-size the single partition on my drive from 500GB to fill the available 1TB of space. Once I succeed with this, I'll be able to convert it to a CoreStorage volume, encrypt it, partition for Bootcamp and such.

Please help!

Edit: Other posts I've read through: Christian's, and Chrisii's summary of undocumented CoreStorage commands

I recommend you

backup your data before you running the command below
Repair disk via Disk Utility App in Recovery Mode if needed

and then run this command in terminal

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 0b


Resolve internet address (IP) as running apps see them currently (vs. external name server) Sometimes, I need to see the actual IPv4 address of web sites I open in Safari.

Now, there are two terminal commands, host and dig, which I could use for that.

But these commands are not always telling my the actual IP address that the Mac apps, such as Safari, use. Examples for when they show a different IP address:

I've added the address to the Mac's /etc/hosts file.
The IP address has recently changed and the Mac apps still use the previous one it has cached.

So, is there a tool that tells me the IP address that's currently known to OS X instead of the address the external name server reports?

It appears I made wrong assumptions about DNS caching. However, I was right on the /etc/hosts file, in that the host command ignores it, while apps running on the Mac do not ignore it by default.

So, I've made a very simple program that uses one of the Mac OS functions to resolve the host name into an IP address. This way, changes to the hosts file will be seen by this program, as they're seen by any other Mac app.

The program, including Xcode project, can be downloaded here.


Why can't I open FaceTime on my 4g iPod? I don't know how to get my FaceTime to work. It says "turn on FaceTime" when I open the app, then I click on it and it says "FaceTime Activation: An error occurred during activation. Try again." How do I get it to work?

Try rebooting your iPod Touch by holding down the power and home buttons until you see the Apple logo. (Keep holding them through the part where it says "slide to power off".)


Using Verizon iPhone 5s internationally I have a Verizon iPhone 5s and live in the US. It's not unlocked/jail broken. I'm traveling to Scotland next week for 7 days.

How can I use my phone primarily for calling back to the US and within Scotland? I would like some data but don't need that much.

Can I buy a pre-paid SIM card once I arrive in Scotland and easily put that in my iPhone to use? I prefer not to add any services to my VZW account as it's so expensive and dealing with them is more trouble than it's worth.

I already know to turn off data roaming to avoid a surprise bill - anything else I should turn off while traveling?

According to this thread from macosrumors (caveat emptor) at least as of the iPhone 5 it should be possible to use a Verizon iPhone in Scotland.


After Updating to High Sierra, my bluetooth headphones have terrible sound quality Also, I can no longer pause and play using the button on the headphones.

These are the Beats by Dre headphones that are included for students and educators. The quality is great when I plug in the wire connection.

Facing exactly the same problem, repairing/rebooting won't work.

But after I switched the mic setting back to Internal Microphone the standard audio quality is back. I guess the audio quality is degraded while the mic is active.


VP9/WEBM with Chrome for IOS If Chrome on OSX can play VP9 / webm videos, shouldn't Chrome for IOS also support playing VP9 / webm videos?

My 10.3.2 phone refuses to play even when the page browsed is as simple as:

<div style="width: 352px; >
    <video width="352" height="544" controls>
        <source src="/File/Video/18383"
                type="video/webm">
        Sorry, your web browser doesn't support playing these videos.
    </video>
</div>

Interestingly it doesn't display the message. Just the play symbol.

Every other browser I download from the App Store does the same thing, which makes me wonder if I am doing something wrong...

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39790639/webrtc-support-on-chrome-browser-in-iphone-ipad

According to this post, the answer is no. Because Apple don't allow Apps in their store that implement their own web rendering engines (aka browsers). Therefore every 'browser' currently available on the App store is just a skin on top of the built-in web render, which explicitly doesn't implement VP9 / webm support.


Using Airport Express connected via Ethernet to extend Airport Extreme wireless lan? I was wondering whether it's possible to use an Airport Express that is connected via Ethernet (using a powerlan/-line bridge-set inbetween) to extend an Airport Extreme network?

Basically the two places are a tad too far away from each other so connecting the Express to the Extreme via WLan hardly works reliably & I thought I read somewhere that the lan connected method should work, but after going through the Airport Utility Wizard that actually seems to offer this method & it restarted the Express, my Lan stops working.. for some reason.. heavy packet loss from my mac to the Extreme (via ethernet aswell) and all that... if I unplug the express from lan, it all of a sudden works again perfectly fine.

So basically the question is and if its doable, what do I have to do to make this work?

what you want to do is setup your express to be a "bridge" for your airport extreme network, you want to create a "new" wireless network (but if you use the same settings as your extreme, most macs should seamlessly work and switch as required)

make sure your airport express is configured not to do any NAT or give out IP's as that is maybe what is conflicting with your network currently, also make sure you give it an IP in the same subnet as your airport extreme and also that it does not conflict with any other machines


How can I sync my iPad apps onto a new iPhone? I've just got a new iPhone and I want to sync my iPad apps between the iPhone and the iPad.

However when I try to enable synchronization for apps for my iPad, it says that if I try to synchronize, all of my apps will be deleted.

Am I doing something wrong? I understand that I should first synchronize my iPad apps into iTunes and then enable app synchronization for the iPhone ... but I don't want to lose the apps that are installed on the iPad in the process.

No, you're not. The iOS device is a consumption device - every time you toggle the app sync option it will try to "reset"/wipe the existing apps and re-transfer them. Either leave that option on or tweak it and set your sync to Manual.

To sync your apps to a new device, you have to transfer as to it as a new device. Existing folder structures you had on the iPad do not transfer to phones. You cannot restore configs between different devices.

New phone = new setup of apps and their folders. You sync between your iTunes library and device not device to device.


Can I oblige Mail.app to (ask to) send via BCC when sending to a large group? I just made the (classical) stupid mistake to not BCC-send a mailing to ± 100 people.
:(
Is there an extension or application or script for mail.app to prevent this failure and e.g. intelligently ask me how I want my mail to be send (normal, CC or BCC), when sending to, say, more than 5 people? :)

Mail is notoriously difficult to script effectively - particularly when it comes to outgoing messages not created by the running script.

tell application "Mail"
  set _title to name of front window
  set mList to messages of drafts mailbox whose subject is _title
  if length of mList = 1 then
    set _msg to item 1 of mList
    if length of (get _msg's to recipients) > 5 then
      beep
      error "Too many To-Recipients!  Do you want to send BCC?"
    else
      return "Send_Normal"
    end if
  end if
end tell

Something like this can be used in conjunction with Keyboard Maestro or a similar macro utility to have the utility select the send-menu-item.

While you can use System Events to do this I find that it sometimes takes 3 or more seconds to launch on my machine if it's not already running, and you start wondering why your macro isn't working when it finally takes off.

Other caveats to this approach are that the message must have been saved at least once to be detected.

So what you want to do is possible but very hackish.

-ccs


Install OS X Lion on a Mac mini I borrowed a Core 2 Duo Mac mini. I want to back up the HDD and wipe off the OS Leopard that it has so that I can later re-install it back. Then I want to upgrade to OS X Lion. Can this Mac mini run Lion? What steps should I take?
specs here:
mac mini 3.1
Intel core 2 duo 2.26ghz
4gb ram

1GB of RAM is insufficient for OS X 10.7 "Lion."  You'll need 2GB or more.:

OS X Lion - Technical Specifications
General requirements

Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or
Xeon processor
2GB of memory
OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
7GB of available space


Prevent deletion of specific icons from dock I regularly accidentally drag the Downloads folder from the dock to trash when trying to delete a recently downloaded file, removing it from he dock.

Is there any way to disable dragging and deleting icons from the dock? An equivalent of locking a file but for individual dock icons?

I don't want to lock the entire dock, just specific icons.

I don't think it is possible to lock specific icons.

To lock all the icons go to Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.Dock contents-immutable -bool yes

Press enter then type:

killall Dock


Prevent Xcode windows from exiting fullscreen after wake from sleep? Often, when I log out of my computer, I'll enable "Reopen windows when logging back in". One of the first things I'll do when I log back on, is swipe over to my fullscreen Xcode project.

The Xcode window immediately exits fullscreen mode and animates back onto my desktop. This is super annoying to me, because the animation wastes time as I try to jump back into my workflow.

Is there any way to prevent the window from shrinking upon becoming active, or at least speed up or disable the animation?

Disabling the animation
This part of your question has been covered earlier. Unfortunately without success of finding a fitting answer.

Unfortunately (at least as of 10.7.1) there does not appear to be a way to change any settings related to this animation.
I filled a bug for this with Apple. The Radar number is 10073864. I
would encourage you to also file the report at
https://bugreport.apple.com/. Note in your description that it is a
duplicate of the above bug report number to help the support staff
categorize and prioritize this bug.


Any way in OS X to use a keyboard shortcut to switch to a full screen application? OS X has a feature where you can create a keyboard shortcut for switching to a particular desktop / space. However, there isn't an obvious way to use a keyboard shortcut switch to directly a full screen application. Is there a way to do this?

A few other people have asked this, and there have been some suggestions, but I haven't found one that accomplishes what I'm asking:

One suggestion is to turn on "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application", and then switch to the application. I do not want to turn this feature on, as I frequently switch to applications without wanting to change spaces.
Another suggestion is to use Ctrl + arrow keys, which can be used to switch to a full screen application, but not directly to one. You have to be on an adjacently space. I want a keystroke that switches directly to the application.

I'm willing to use third party applications like BetterTouchTool to bind a script or application to a keyboard shortcut if it will allow me to do this.

To do this: push control and < or control and →.

You can slightly change the functionality if you have "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" checked or unchecked. (System Preferences > Mission Control)

There is no other way to do this that I know of. I have used a few third party apps. I am sure there exists some third party app somewhere that does it. I've heard that Witch makes the window switcher similar to Windows style, which might achieve the exact results you are looking for, but might not. It costs $15 as of today. It just doesn't mention fullscreen in its advertising, though it has a ton of options so it's possible it covers this.

Honestly, you can't expect much better from OS X. Look at what you're stuck with:

Switching between applications in OS X is command + tab and arranges apps by most recent. Switching between windows within an app is command + ` and arranges windows sequentially. With control + ←/→ and the "Auto rearrange Spaces..." unchecked, you can get the sequential switching similar to the way OS X handles window switching within an app, which is a poor way to do it, but at least there is some kind of precedent.

I have a lot of gripes about switching between applications in OS X. I don't like that there is one keyboard shortcut to switch between apps, one to switch between windows within an app, and one to switch between spaces, and they have different orderings. I want one to switch between everything. I also hate keyboard shortcuts that include an arrow key, like this one. That defeats the purpose of having a fast keyboard shortcut: I still have to move my hand, might as well use the mouse. I am strongly considering switching to Windows 10 this year now that it will include bash. I use keyboard shortcuts for almost everything and Windows does it better, not to mention that I honestly think Windows software looks better.


Flaky DNS/connection issues when using Wi-Fi in Japan. Fifty-percent of page/images load if lucky I'm living in Japan (if that's relevant) and often to go net- manga-cafés (or Starbucks) for my internet fix (too expensive to get it at home, ATM).

After connecting to a Wi-Fi network, however, I'm left with about fifty-percent of web pages loading, but usually the page fails to load completely (can't reach server error). Sometimes I get a 'spike' of access where everything seems to work for 5 minutes or so, then goes back to iffy/nothing.

Back in the USA with the same MBP + OS, I didn't have any issues downloading / loading pages so I'm not sure if it's my computer or OS or not.

I have ssh access to a friend's server in the USA which I often use as a secure proxy (or way-around government firewalls, etc.) when traveling but I can't even access that half of the time.

  (connect to host server.myfriendssite.org port 22: No route to host

I've setup BitTorrent to download large files since the connection is so flaky, but interestingly BitTorrent is the least affected. It seems to download relatively steadily even when I'm constantly getting "connection failed" pages.

Because of this I've assumed it's a DNS issue (BitTorrent isn't DNS affected???). I've tried adding various DNS servers in my network-settings (Google DNS, OpenDNS) but with the same flakey results.

While BT is downloading, I can't even ping google or trace route google, either. Then 10 minutes will go by, and Safari will auto-refresh and loads my tabs that have been sitting on their error page.

Some websites seem to load faster more steadily than others. Reddit (for example) loads relatively quickly and constantly, but occasionally hiccups. Sometimes I only get images, sometimes only the raw HTML (no CSS or images).

My only laptop is a MBP (Retina) so I've only tested with Mac OS X (El Capitan). I'll try to install Windows in BootCamp soon to see if it's something with my OS or hardware, perhaps. At the manga-cafés, the desktop PCs setup in the booths don't have these same loading issues: everything loads normally (as far as I can tell).

Any ideas or tricks or commands I can use to narrow down the causes of these severe hiccups and network blockages? While it'd be great to solve it, I really just want to find out the cause/source of what's going on. It's so strange. Thanks for any tips!

I should also add I've tried all browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera).

Try running Namebench to determine the best DNS entries for your connection.  The project hasn't been updated in awhile but runs fine even on OS X 10.11.2 betas.

If you are constantly switching wireless networks you may want to consider running this regularly to get a sense of what domain name servers are most often available from these different connections.


Does a force restart in iOS do anything different from a normal restart? I'm presenting a talk on troubleshooting OS X and iOS for a Mac user group next month, and I was surprised to hear that several members thought a "hard reset" or force restart of an iPhone or iPad is a useful troubleshooting procedure. They suggested that it does some sort of clearing of caches or resetting of [insert hand waving here] which is different from simply shutting the device off and turning it back on.

I've searched pretty deeply across Apple's support site, the Apple discussion forums, the popular Apple news websites, and sites offering Apple tech tips and I haven't found any corroboration.

To clarify the answer I'm seeking, I'm particularly looking for firsthand knowledge (i.e. "Apple told me a force restart does foo") or a published reference that confirms one way or the other.

A force restart is at the hardware level, not the software level. This means that even if iOS is completely frozen or in a different mode altogether (such as DFU Mode, Recovery Mode, or Restore Mode), you can still perform a force restart. It does nothing more than cut the power and turn the device back on again. This means that it doesn't clear any caches or reset anything. A regular restart actually does more than a force restart.


My macbook pro (2011) updated to OS X 10.10.5 and Photo was installed. Most of my older Photo events are missing When Photo app opened, it did show up a "iPhoto events" tab, but most of my latest photos were missing.

Tried the following:
1. I checked the Apple support communities and found that this was a common problem.
2. I connected my Time Machine backup and copied the iPhoto.app. When i try to install it, it says " In order to open iphoto.app, you need to update to the latest version" and says that the version of iPhoto is incompatible with OS X Yosemite.

Can somebody help please?

I can open iPhoto on my Mac with Yosemite, so it might be as simple as upgrading.  I have version 9.6.1.

Photos for me does not show a 'iphotos event' tab, rather, the images from iPhoto are simply in Photos.

If you think the iPhoto images did not get imported into Photos app, then do the following: Open the "Pictures" folder, and look for the old iPhoto Library icon. Right click and choose 'Show Package Contents'. Within this is a folder called 'Masters'. Open this and you will see all your photos.

Now, do the same with the new Photos Library. 'Show Package Content' on it, and you will see a 'Masters' folder. You will notice that this Masters folder contains the same images, including your old images. If it does not, something happened on the import during install.

You can simply select all the images within the iPhoto 'Masters' folder and drag them into Photos, which will add all those photos to Photos app. It will duplicate those images, which the Photos app install does not do.


How do I make my windows partition show up at boot time without holding option? How do I make my windows partition show up at boot time without holding option?

I had this setup on a Macbook pro way back when that was setup this way. I recently bought an iMac and would like to decide which partition I want to use at runtime without holding option. Is this still an available feature? Right now it automatically loads the windows partition.

Unfortunately there is no default boot loader option built-in to Macs. Your best bet is going with a custom bootloader like rEFInd (see http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ for download and instructions). Normally I don't just include a link and call it a day but obviously I'm not going to have an alternative download available for someone else's program... and if the program is still available to download, the instructions will be right there with it at the program's site.

If after downloading, reading the documentation, and attempting the setup for this you still have issues, I recommend putting up a fresh question specific to that.

Aside from that, there are no options without getting very low level into nvram settings that you do NOT want to mess with... or at the very least I will not help someone mess with.

Good luck!


Nokogiri gem fails to install in OS X Mavericks Install fails showing:

checking for iconv_open() in iconv.h... no
checking for iconv_open() in -liconv... no
checking for iconv_open() in -liconv... no
checking for libiconv_open() in iconv.h... no
checking for libiconv_open() in -liconv... no
checking for libiconv_open() in -liconv... no
libiconv is missing.

However, looking at nokogiri's mkmf.log, the following errors are shown:

ld: warning: ignoring file /usr/local/Cellar/libxslt/1.1.28/lib/libxslt.dylib, **file was built for x86_64 which is not the architecture being linked (i386)**: /usr/local/Cellar/libxslt/1.1.28/lib/libxslt.dylib

ld: warning: ignoring file /usr/local/Cellar/libxml2/2.9.1/lib/libxml2.dylib, **file was built for x86_64 which is not the architecture being linked (i386)**: /usr/local/Cellar/libxml2/2.9.1/lib/libxml2.dylib

ld: warning: ignoring file /usr/local/Cellar/libiconv/1.14/lib/libiconv.dylib, **file was built for x86_64 which is not the architecture being linked (i386)**: /usr/local/Cellar/libiconv/1.14/lib/libiconv.dylib

I have xcode and it's command tools installed.
My ~/.bash_profile has 64bit compiling forced by: export ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64"

I have libxml2, libxslt, and libiconv installed via Homebrew, and each is linked.
I've tried installing all of these without the ARCHFLAG in .bash_profile.

I've also brew install apple-gcc42 and linked, as per how tos I've found.

I've tried installing nokogiri by passing paths to libxml2, libxslt, and libiconv in /usr/local/Cellar/, but the install still fails, with same errors as above.

I've wasted at least a day on this - just trying to get one Ruby gem installed. I'd really like to get back to actually developing.

Can anyone please help?

You can't assume that the version of ruby built-into OS X is compatible with any gems you want to use. Do not try to remove the version of ruby that ships with OS X or update or upgrade it unless with App Store/Software Update/softwareupdate. Most rubiers will tell you don't even bother useing the ruby that ships with OS X. But you can install multiple versions of ruby, and you'll definately need a ruby version manager if you intend to use lots of gems.

ruby was once quite easy to use, but now, the number of versions that necessarily need to be supported are legion, and gem developers sometimes force you to install a new version of ruby at some other version when you already have a perfectly good ruby installation! Grr. ruby is really starting to chafe, because while the support information might be out there, it is looking more and more like a fishing reel that has birdnested. IMO, ruby is broken, someone's going to have to pull it out and get it neatly reeled in for it to be fixed, and I'm just not up to it. I'm not the guy. Not me.

brewinistas enthusiasm notwithstanding, the homebrew package manager has growing pains typical of an immature package management solution. I use MacPorts to manage... all my installations, but also the various versions of ruby installations that are necessary to use the gems I want. MacPorts requires an appropriate version of xcode; xcode_5.1.1.dmg is the most recent version for Mavericks. rvm uses MacPorts by default if it is installed.

It appears from your provided logs that you're missing stuff. That's what's nice about MacPorts (and any mature package manager); it takes care of the dependecies for you if they're not installed.

Install MacPorts

 curl -Ok https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2

 tar xf MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2

 cd MacPorts-2.2.1

 ./configure

 make

 sudo make install

 cd ..

 rm -rf Macports-*

 sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate

add MacPorts to your $PATH:

 export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH

take a look at what MacPorts has for ruby

 port search ruby |less

and/or just install nokogiri

 sudo port -vsk install ruby19 libxml2 libxslt

 sudo gem install nokogiri

 port -vfp clean ruby19 libxml2 libxslt

if there's trouble try

 sudo port upgrade outdated

MacPorts won't affect OS X version of anything, nor homebrew (except to make it superfluous) and keeps everything it installs in /opt making deinstallation a breeze (but this has nothing to do with where ruby keeps its gems, ~/.gem ). But you should really get to know and love MacPorts, it is your friend.

to completely uninstall MacPorts

 sudo port -dfp uninstall --follow-dependencies installed

 sudo port -dfp uninstall all

 sudo rm -rf /opt/local

 sudo rm -rf /Library/Tcl/macports*


PDF page manipulation, from 2 page per sheet to one page per sheet I have a PDF with following pattern:

I need to transform each page of this PDF into two distinct pages, as follows:

and

So, if I had a PDF with 12 pages (2 slides for each page) I will expect a new PDF with 24 pages (1 slide for each page).

How do I can do that?

Open your pdf in Preview.app. Click the toolbox icon. Click the Rectangular-Select icon. Select one of the pages. Copy it. Click File > New from clipboard. Save that file. Repeat. Now you have Untitled1 through Untitled24. Open Untitled1 in Preview. Click the menu just under the red x and choose "Thumbnails."  Drag all the files Untitled2-24 just under Untitled1 in the sidebar. Save as a pdf.


Transfering PDFs to ipad on windows? I got about 300 PDFs which I need to transfer to my iPad Mini 2 but when I press the add folder to library in iTunes on windows I am unable to get the PDF's on, I only get the .epub files up... Any idea's on how to do this without having to add them one by one? (Yes I am a book freak :P)

The solution was to press "Add file to library" and shift-click to select all the books... Weird that iTunes can't add PDFs with "Add folder to library".


Is Transmit Power Control technology implemented in iPads? Transmit Power Control (TPC) is a mechanism used by Wi-Fi emitters to lower signal power in order to reduce interference with other wireless networks (and, in mobile devices, save battery).

Is this algorithm implemented in any model of iPad?

This is a Broadcom question, and not an Apple question.  However, I wanted to provide some basic info on how the "low power mode" of the WLAN chip and iOS.

Lowering the transmit power is handled by the wireless chip, not by Apple itself.  For example, in the iPhone5 it uses the Broadcom BCM5334 chip which is capable of low power consumption (40-50% less than the previous generation) and "dramatically reduced standby power by 3 orders of magnitude."

Looking at the specs of the BCM4334, we find that it has "Programmable dynamic power management"  Going into the details we find that it the BCM4334 WLAN power states are described as follows:

  Active mode — All WLAN blocks in the BCM4334 are powered up and fully functional with active carrier sensing and frame transmission
  and receiving. All required regulators are enabled and put in the most
  efficient mode based on the load current. Clock speeds are dynamically
  adjusted by the PMU sequencer.
  Doze mode — The radio, analog domains, and most of the linear regulators are powered down. The rest of the BCM4334 remains powered
  up in an IDLE state. All main clocks (PLL, crystal oscillator or TCXO)
  are shut down to reduce active power to the minimum. The 32.768 kHz
  LPO clock is available only for the PMU sequencer. This condition is
  necessary to allow the PMU sequencer to wake up the chip and
  transition to Active mode. In Doze mode, the primary power consumed is
  due to leakage current.
  Deep-sleep mode — Most of the chip including both analog and digital domains and most of the regulators are powered off. Logic states in
  the digital core are saved and preserved into a retention memory in
  the always-ON domain before the digital core is powered off. Upon a
  wake-up event triggered by the PMU timers, an external interrupt or a
  host resume through the HSIC or SDIO bus, logic states in the digital
  core are restored to their pre-deep-sleep settings to avoid lengthy HW
  reinitialization.
  Power-down mode — The BCM4334 is effectively powered off by shutting down all internal regulators. The chip is brought out of this mode by
  external logic re-enabling the internal regulators.

The algorithm that is used to lower power consumption/output will be specific to Broadcom and unrelated to Apple.  iOS only puts the chip into power one of the power states; it doesn't manage the power states.

Now, for the main question...

  Is Transmit Power Control implemented in iPads?

If it uses this chip (iPad3), then YES.

  The BCM4334 also supports Transmit Power Control on the STA together
  with standard Bluetooth TPC to limit mutual interference and receiver
  desensitization. Preemption mechanisms are utilized to prevent AP
  transmissions from colliding with Bluetooth frames. Improved channel
  classification techniques have been implemented in Bluetooth for
  faster and more accurate detection and elimination of interferers
  (including non-WLAN 2.4 GHz interference).


How to move the /Users to an encrypted ZFS drive? When setting up a ZFS pool on an encrypted CoreStorage volume, a manual typing of the password is required each time for mounting the volume (due to the problem of OS X thinking that the password is incorrect despite the volume mounting successfully, and hence refusing to save the password in the keychain).

If I want to move my entire /Users to the encrypted ZFS volume, is there any way to get that volume to mount properly early enough in the boot process so as to allow regular login?

I'm on 10.8.3, Zevo 1.1.1

With reference to the linked question (the comment there from the opening poster here) …

In brief:

Unlocking the Core Storage LV, importing the ZFS pool and mounting the ZFS file system

I know of no way to force Mountain Lion to use the Core Storage volume encryption key (VEK) in a way that will allow the ZFS pool and file system (based on the Core Storage logical volume (LV)) to import and mount – automatically – in a way that is comparable to the FileVault 2 experience.

In other words:

the current operating system seems to require manual intervention by a different user whose home does not use the combination of Core Storage and ZFS

… part of that bullet point might provoke, from someone else, a more thoughtful approach to intervention; a better answer to part of the question!

ZFS for /Users

With or without encryption:

if you plan to use ZFS for /Users you should first have an administrative user whose home is not in that area.

Consider at least:

safe boot of the operating system, which might be required when least expected/desired; and the related limitations of current implementations of ZFS for OS X (example: safe boot and ZEVO Community Edition 1.1.1).

ZFS for home directories with Mountain Lion, or words to that effect, could be a good separate question.


App Store Update stuck I've downloaded the "Pro Video Formats 2.0.1" update at least twice, but it keeps showing up in the Mac App Store. How do I fix this?

I had something like with with another update a few weeks ago. It is probably caused by their database records being slightly out-of-sync.

I ignored it for a couple days, and it went away.


How can I send an email to a google contact group on my iOS devices? I have groups in my Google Contacts for sending emails to sets of people via the web interface on a browser.

I sync Google mail and contacts onto a couple iOS devices via Microsoft Exchange.

How can I send an email to a google group from iOS? Neither the built in mail/contact apps have any reference to my groups, and I cannot acces them via the web browser (mobile version), nor the official gmail app (which seems to be a resigned web interface).

Unfortunately, there's not a way of doing it with the native iOS app. Try using the Gmail app (which I personally prefer). If not, there's this little workaround: http://red66.com/2009/07/how-to-send-group-emails-from-your-iphone/

The gist of the workaround is to make one contact for the group and add a comma separated list of emails to the singular email field for the "group contact"

This doesn't allow you to leverage arbitrary groups and does require some manual setup, but once that's done you can email limited group sizes from iOS without needing a computer.


Is it possible to change the system font to a monospaced font? Due to declining eyesight, monospaced fonts are way easier for me to read. Is there a way to switch the default font High Sierra uses out for one that's monospaced? If it's not supported natively, are there any 3rd party programs that can?

Unfortunately there is no built-in way to change the system default font, there are, however, a couple of utilities that let you change the default system font or at least some of the system fonts. How well this will work with a monospaced font like Courier is anyone's guess, and mine would be probably not very well.

You can change the font back to something many thought was more readable than the current font. By changing it to Lucida Grande.

There is another utility called TinkerTool that lets you change the font for some of the macOS. I don't believe it will change everything but it likely worth the try.

Those are all I know of, there may be others that work better but these should give you a good start.


Migration to new MacBook Pro I have upgraded to from a 2011 13" MacBook Pro to a 2012 13" MacBook Pro... found serious software slow down and wheel of death after installing Mountain Lion on 2011 MacBook Pro... Upgraded to 2012 MacBook Pro and used Migration assistant... dont have the huge slow down, but dont know if new machine is performing slower than its could.

Question: Is there any way that Migration assistance could copy problem software to new MacBook Pro or does it automatically honour newer software?

Usually when migrating to a new computer whether it is with migration assistent or other software, it will always cause your hard drive to be fragmented which will cause your computer to run slow. In some cases it can be very fragmented. I would recommend running DiskWarrior this utility is incredible how much faster it can make a computer, especially after migrating to a new computer. P.S. in the future I would recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner for all of your migrating, it is a lot easier and safer way to migrate.


How to limit messages from a certain sender on an iPhone? I want to limit the messages from a certain sender to 5 per day for example. I don't want to blacklist the sender because I sometimes need to coordinate. For reasons outside the scope of this question, asking the sender for more consideration has failed.

I have iPhone 6, iOS 12.4.4, and a local carrier (not a multinational).

How can I limit the number of text messages and iMessages from a sender?

This can't be done on any current, base version of iOS.

As you've found, you can either block or allow a user to send you a Message but that's about it.

Even Screen Time, which was enhanced in iOS 13, doesn't allow this type of granularity for Messages.  You can try to find a 3rd-party messaging app in the App Store but not aware of any that do what you're looking for.


How do I update my jailbroken Apple TV to 5.3? I have a jailbroken Apple TV (black), which has firecore's aTV flash black installed.

How do I get it to update to the latest ios so I can use HBOGo?

Settings > General > Update just says "You are up to date", yet it's on version 5.0.2.

aTV flash updated to 2.3 without issue.

If you are doing over the air(thru apple tv) update, you may have installed a hack that disables automatic updates so you won't lose the jailbreak.
Connect to your computer and do a DFU update or uninstall the hack that disables the update from within apple tv/nito or where ever it's installed and try updating again. Although I recommend DFU upgrade.


I can't access the Mac App Store, iTunes, or Software Update on Lion I updated from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to Lion. The OS update process was all right.

I can access the Internet by Firefox, but Safari.
I think my network is all right.

So, I can access the internet from Lion, but I can’t use the Mac App Store, the iTunes Store or update my system.

How can I fix these problems?

Are you running an actual Mac or are you running a Hackintosh?

This is a known Hackintosh issue
http://tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=135&t=23153&start=120


How can I display the SSID I am connected to in the Menu extensions area? I'd like to also display the SSID I am currently connected to next to the WiFi signal strength indicator.

Running El Capitan (10.11.4)

The best solution I use for adding the SSID to the menu bar is turning off Apple's menu item and using WiFi Signal app from Adrian Granados:

https://www.adriangranados.com/?q=apps/wifi-signal
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wifi-signal/id525912054?mt=12

It's much fuller featured than just displaying the SSID, but it does that job nicely. I am a very satisfied customer of all his Mac apps as they are powerful, well engineered and updated regularly.


Application specific do not disturb Is there a way on iOS to turn on the Do not Disturb feature on an app-per-app basis? I have some apps I only use for work related purposes, and I'd like them to go silent on non working hours (to try and recover from workaholism) but I'd still like to receive regular notifications from other apps.

If that's not possible, any suggested workarounds?

One workaround that I see a lot is to ask your workplace for a dedicated work phone - if they expect you to be reachable outside of office hours, then they've likely got some legal obligation to provide this.

When you're not working, turn it off.

On the other hand, if you can't just let go of work when you get home, that is a whole different problem and possible solutions I can think of are to keep yourself busier by getting a new pet, child or lover. This is especially true if you already have at least one of these.


Make Mac OS X "Option-Arrow" work like Windows "Ctrl-Arrow" I rely on the "Ctrl-→" command on Windows to navigate my way through text documents.

This useful key-combo will quickly bring me to the beginning of the next word. For example, the following sequence illustrates what would happen to the cursor location after successive presses of Ctrl-→ (the "^" will represent the cursor):

^The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The ^quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick ^brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick brown ^fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox ^jumped over the lazy dog
...

And, if I start pressing the ← instead, it will move the cursor to the exact same spots in the document, just going the other direction (which is ideal because the position of the cursor is predictable, which leads to me being faster at making my edits):

The quick brown fox ^jumped over the lazy dog
The quick brown ^fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick ^brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The ^quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
^The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
...

Mac OS X has a similar keyboard shortcut (Option-→ - I mapped "Ctrl" to "Option" specifically so I could get this same functionality in the way I've become accustomed to).

However, "Option-Arrow" brings me to the end of the current word when using the right arrow key, as illustrated here:

^The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The^ quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick^ brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick brown^ fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox^ jumped over the lazy dog
...

And, what's worse, going the other direction doesn't bring you back to the same spot as moving forward, it brings you to the start of the last word:

The quick brown fox^ jumped over the lazy dog
The quick brown ^fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick ^brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The ^quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
^The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
...

This is extremely frustrating for me, as I need to switch between Windows and Mac often, and very rarely do I want to go to the end of the current word (why would I want that, unless I'm holding "Shift" as well?). I always want to skip to the beginning of the next word.

I'm willing to go to some lengths to make the Mac version work the same way (purchase software, write a custom Applescript command tied to these keyboard shortcuts), so I'm looking for suggestions.

Are there any existing tools that will change this for me?

How would you suggest "fixing" it?

Thanks

EDIT

I was able to make a "Service" in Automator, and used the following AppleScript:

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "System Events" to key code 124 using {option down}
    tell application "System Events" to key code 124

end run

Then I tied this Service to the "Command-→" keystroke using the "Keyboard" settings in System Preferences.

However, for this to work I have to take my finger off the Command key.. which makes it sorta pointless. It's also slow, and don't seem to work in the application I most need it to work in (Xcode).

Here's how you can get ⌃ Control+arrow keys to work like you describe. Copy the following property list into ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict (you can create the directory if it doesn't already exist):

{
    "^\UF703" = ("moveWordForward:", "moveWordForward:", "moveWordBackward:");
    "^$\UF703" = ("moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:", "moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:", "moveWordBackwardAndModifySelection:");
}

This will set up ⌃ Control+arrow to navigate to the beginning of the next word (by using OS X's normal navigation three times: to the end of the current word, end of the next word, then back to the beginning of the next word). I also included a version that works with ⇧ Shift so you can select text as you go.

Caveat: this will only work in Cocoa apps, but I think the normal ⌥ Option+arrow navigation does too. Also, make sure to relaunch your apps!


Lost space after removing bootcamp partition via bootcamp assistant please help
i lost 150gb space after deleting the partition via boot camp assistant and the disk utility won't recover it or partition it as one disk
i tried to recover by timemachine but the disk looked the same size and iam afraid the restore wont get the space back

Try to extend the size in the last shown screenshot by entering a new size in the field or dragging the white dot to the top in the chart on the left.

If this does not work, you need to manually resize the CoreStorage via the recovery system. Look here how to do it.


"Partition failed with error: Couldn't unmount drive" I am trying to create a new partition so I can install Windows through Boot Camp. I boot into recovery mode using my Recovery Assistant USB and no matter what I do, when I try to resize my drive and create a new partition, I get this error. What am I doing wrong?

Have you tried repartitioning with Boot Camp (just go through the Boot Camp process normally)? You shouldn't have to repartition manually in the first place.


How to export an email from Mail application? I would like to export one particular email to .eml , so I can save it on my disk and then manually attach to another message.

I am aware of those two options:

export whole mailbox
forward email as attachment

Neither of them meet my requirements, and this seems like really basic functionality.

Actually that functionality is beyond simple. Drag the email from the Mail.app window to the desktop. When you reach the desktop the pointer then contains acircular green "+"

Drop the email there and you now have a single message as an .eml file


Gamecenter for Clash of Clans I have 2 CoC accounts. One on my ipod 4th gen, the other on my ipad 2. I want to link the account from my ipod to my ipad. I signed into gc on my ipad and it started a new account. I read some posts earlier that said to make a new gc account then sign into hat one on the new device. I made a new apple id on my ipod; then made a new gc with that apple id. It doesnt seem to work though, it says "(null)". Do I need the same apple id on my ipad thats with the new gc??? Sorry if this is too complicated...

Unfortunately Supercell does not use Game Center to store progress or files of your CoC account. I recommend installing a program called Ifunbox and going into your iPod and copying all the files in the CoC app and paste them into your iPad's CoC app. If you don't understand how to do what I just told you ask for further instructions and ill make a youtube video to help.


How to prevent automount of a partition in El Capitan There are two boot partitions on my MacBook. A working, bootable, El Capitan is installed on both.

How can I prevent automounting partition2, when booting from partition1?

According to many pages I found via google this is done by editing fstab via vifs an adding the line

UUID=uuid_of_partition2_here       none    hfs     rw,noauto

But that doesn't work! The partition is mounted anyway!

Tetsujin and user3439894's comments and observations prompted some testing.

Turns out, there is more than one UUID when you look at drives and partitions and the 'diskutil list' command doesn't report the UUID that needs to be used in the vifs/fstab commands.

  root %> diskutil info disk1 | grep -e UUID

Shows that there are Volume, Disk / Partition, LV,LVF and LVG UUIDs ..
I'm only interested in the first two!

When I enter diskutil list I get the "Disk / Partition UUID", when I enter diskutil info disk1 I get both the "Disk / Partition UUID" and the "Volume UUID" (and more ..) I also get the "Volume Name" (the disk label)

Some tests I performed with the Volume - UUID and the disk label indicate:

the UUID in vifs/fstab is the "Volume UUID", don't use tabs!
the UUID command in vifs/fstab doesn't work with the "Disk / Partition UUID", tab/space makes no difference here
when using the "LABEL" syntax, don't use tabs!

Here are the two examples I got to work:

UUID=<Volume UUID><SPACE>none<space>rw,noauto

LABEL=<Volume Name><SPACE>none<space>rw,noauto

You can find the <Volume UUID> and the <Volume Name> of your internal disk by running

diskutil info disk1 | grep -e "Volume\ Name" -e "Volume\ UUID"

On my system the external disk-info shows up for disk2s1 and disk3s1


Snow Leopard Time Machine backups are not visible in Lion I upgraded to Lion recently.  I noticed tonight that backups performed on Snow Leopard do not show in the Time Machine interface so I cannot restore from them.  If I browse my backup volume I can see my backups exist right back to December 2009.  How do I get Time Machine in Lion to recognize my old backups?

Well, without doing anything apart from rebooting my Mac and my NAS drive the backups are now visible so I wasted 50 points on a bounty I didn't need.  Oh well...


Bookmarks not being synced from macOS to iOS I'm on High Sierra 10.13.6 on a MBP 13" 2015  and iOS 11.4.1 on an iPhone 7.
I have been using iCloud for several years and have never had any trouble with it.

However a few days ago, I noticed the Bookmarks and Favorites weren't syncing from my iPhone to my MBP, and when clicking on "edit" on iPhone's Safari Bookmarks I constantly got the message:

  Bookmarks are being synced. Please add the bookmarks once syncing has completed

I have tried setting off Safari iCloud sync on both devices, also deleted permanently bookmarks from both of them, deleted the file "Bookmarks.plist" from ~/Library/Safari and also deleted the file "com.apple.SafariCloudHistoryPushAgent.plist" from ~/Library/Preferences.

All that with no luck. The deleted bookmarks keep showing up on iOS Safari when turning back on Safari iCloud Sync on iPhone.

Found a solution in case anyone is interested:

On icloud.com on "Preferences" under "Advanced" there's a link to "Restore Bookmarks", after permanently deleting every bookmark on there, I got iOS and macOS Safaris to be in sync again.

Note that even after solving the issue, iOS is taking longer than ever to sync Safari Bookmarks, it used to be almost instant and now takes more than 5 minutes.


iMac slow and unresponsive after Mavericks There have been a few questions and answers about memory usage, whether one should pay attention to the Activity Monitor, that Memory Pressure is more indicative of a system being maxed out on RAM, etc.

Ever since Mavericks was installed, copying and pasting from Safari to Excel freezes the computer for a few minutes. I'm watching now as Memory Pressure increases after copying the data from Safari. If I try and paste the data into Excel, Excel won't take it. After several minutes and a very sluggish iMac, memory is freed up (subtracting memory used from Physical memory) and I can paste the data without a problem.

It looks as though the iMac is trying to shuffle memory around (the compression, I believe?) and until it shuffles it I can't do anything with the data I copied.

The iMac only has 4gb RAM, as the geniuses said that was more than enough. It always has been until Mavericks.

iMac is 27-inch, Mid 2011.

I was going to purchase more memory until coming across posts detailing sluggishness after installing Mavericks.

Now I'm not sure if the problem lies with Mavericks or memory. If I installed 16GB, would the same thing happen? Would the OS still use as much RAM as possible and need to "shuffle" memory around in order to free enough up to finish my copy and paste?

My recommendation would be install mavericks again. I upgraded both my Mac's and had problems with sluggish performance and app's not responding.


How to create a pasting macro I'm a big fan of the ANSI keyboard layout, but since I'm located in Denmark, the layout is missing the three letters 'Æ', 'Ø' and 'Å'.

I want to create three keyboard shortcuts that triggers a paste of one of these three letters into whatever text writing in.

From my research, it has to be a paste event that triggers the writing of one of the letters. Since the OS has registered an ANSI layout, it can't type 'Æ', 'Ø' and 'Å'.

I've made it 'sorta' work with Keyboard Maestro, but my trial has ended, and I've made AppleScripts in Automator, that rarely triggers. (Some issue Accessibility).

I've looked around a lot, and can't seem to find a solid and free/cheap solution. Can somebody help me out?

Thanks in advance!

Edit

The AppleScript I've tried to use with Automator.

on run {input, parameters)
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "Æ"
    end tell
end run

This requires me to enable it under System Preferences > Keyboard > Services and afterwards enable an application where it want to use it
 at System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Accessibility

After that's done, the script is really slow, and will often not register a tricker.

My keyboard:

I manage to find a solution from @Tetsujin's comment. Using the keyboard configurator for the WhiteFox keyboard, I created a layer of A, O and '. I then use a fn key together with alt/opt (+ shift for CAPS) to write Æ, Ø and Å.


What can other administrators access on my machine? I've been given a new MacBook Pro at work, and it has an administrator account which I assume the IT department has the credentials to. I have been created a local account which is also an administrator.

I'm just wondering, as another administrator, what of my data can they access and read? I have iCloud Drive and other services turned on, and I don't particularly like the idea that someone can go in and grab that stuff.

Short answer: Generally an administrator account can access and read any file on the computer. To protect files, either remove all untrusted admin accounts except for yours or encrypt the specific files you need protected with your admin password. Another admin can reset your password, but not see it to unlock things like your keychain. Of course a new password for encryption is ideal if you don’t trust another admin.

There are certain files within your account that are encrypted and can not be read without your password.

The main file I'm thinking of is the "Keychain" which may contain your iCloud password and any other passwords you've allowed Safari (or other apps) to remember.

As an IT system administrator myself I would recommend not to store personal data on your work computer that you don't want anyone else to see.

The computer may have backup software that's backing up all files on the computer - including your iCloud Drive.

Also remember that if you're fired, the computer may be taken away before you have a chance to remove your personal files.


iSight Camera in iPhone 5 , 5s, 5c: Is the image resolution 3264 x 2448 or 3284 x 2448? Apple said iPhone 5, 5s, 5c has 8MP iSight camera.

A website says

iSight of 5c & 5s: 3264 x 2448 Pixels  (7.99 MP)
http://www.devicespecifications.com/en/comparison/157b258a
http://www.devicespecifications.com/en/model/70af28ac

iSight of iPhone 5: 3284 x 2448 Pixels (8.4 MP)
http://www.devicespecifications.com/en/comparison/aba74df9

Don't the iSight of 5, 5c, 5s have the same resolution? Something seems inaccurate here. So what is the exact number?

The iPhone 5 spec given is definitely wrong (2) and the 3 have the same resolution :  3284 * 2448 => 8.4 Mpx.


How can I use one machine to access keychains stored on extracted disk of different machine? I have two similar but not identical MacBook Pros (a 2012 13" i5 and a ~2011 15" i7).  The 15" died today with a video problem that has affected machines of that generation (possibly a solder problem; this is the second time the same thing has happened to this machine).

Anyway, I pulled the SSD out of the 15" before sending it in for service, and I have it connected to the 13" through a USB/SATA adapter.  The data is intact, and I can access everything that was on the 15" machine.

However, I have some passwords in the 15" login keychain that I would like to view somehow on the 13".  I can access the files that probably have the keychain data, but I don't know how to open those files using Keychain Access on the 13" system.  The passwords were automatically unlocked when I logged in on the 15". I don't know the details of that process.

Is it possible to open the 15" keychains somehow, given root access on the 13" and knowledge of the login password for the 15" system (whose disk is now sitting on my desk, connected to the 13")?

Other options I've considered:

Put 15" disk in main drive bay of 13" and try to boot it.
Make a new Parallels VM and attach it to the 15" disk as a physical drive.

I'm a bit nervous about those, because the machines are different, and I don't want the 13" to screw up the 15" drive.  (I do have a write-protect switch on my USB/SATA adapter, but I had to connect the 15" disk in writeable mode so that the journal could replay.  However, the filesystems were/are all intact, so I don't think any damage was done.)

You can just copy your old keychain to your new keychain:

Open Keychain Access from the Other folder in Launchpad.
Choose Add Keychain from the File menu.
Go to your drive > Users > Username > Library > Keychains (/Volumes/_DRIVE_NAME_/Users/USERNAME/Library/Keychains/).
Select the file named: login.keychain

Now you have your old keychain in your new one.


Enable flash player audio access in safari for a website permanently I get this request every time I try to use the microphone on the same web page. Is there anyway to set this so it stops asking for this domain. I understand the security ramifications; however I believe I can trust the site.

It would be nice to access this page without having to answer this on every entry on the page.

Flash has a control panel is system preferences that you can make these settings changes.

In my version (admittedly older) there is a tab for "Camera and Mic" where you can manage camera and microphone settings by site/


iTunes not playing all songs in a playlist I'm sure this has been asked before, but I can't seem to search for the right terms. I have a playlist in iTunes that has over 200 songs in it, yet when on Shuffle, iTunes plays the same 15-20 songs over and over. I created the playlist over a year ago and listen at work almost every day, and there are dozens of songs that have never been played unless I turn off shuffle and manually select them to play.

I know Shuffle is random, and that true mathematical randomness means it's just as likely that you'd hear the same song 10 times in a row as that you'd hear 10 different songs, but isn't there some way to force iTunes to play all the songs in a playlist when it's on Shuffle?

I'm currently running iTunes 10.4 on a Mac (Snow Leopard), but this is true on other versions and operating systems as well.

iTunes defines the random order of the tracks when you first specify set "Shuffle".  (This is so that the skip forward / backward buttons work in a reasonable manner.)  If you never turn Shuffle on or off, that order is never changed.  Just disable and then re-enable Shuffle to get a new random order of tracks.

For more detail, see Why isn't iTunes shuffle random?.


Remote Management and Verizon I recently bought a MacBook Pro from a third party brand new in the box. I go to set it up and I get to a screen that says "Remote Management"
It says Verizon can remotely install apps and erase my MacBook Pro... WTF?
Why am I seeing this message? Does this mean the MacBook is not new?

Very large organizations like Verizon likely have their devices enrolled from the factory, it could be new but it's likely stolen, innocently mixed up as a retail product for sale or liquidated to a 3rd party as "new old stock" (unlikely IMO).  However, generally speaking, when you see this screen, it's usually not “brand new in the box” as you describe.  The fact that it had MDM installed/enabled (manual process) means at a minimum, it was configured for use.  The moment that happens, it’s no longer "new" but "used" (pre-owned) or at the very least it's considered "Open Box."
The problem here is that you could have something that is legitimately sold from Verizon to the third party via liquidation and the MDM was innocently overlooked to it being a stolen device in which case, if you are in possession of it, you could have it confiscated by authorities without compensation back to you.
In this particular case, Verizon being a large company with a large bureaucracy, it will be a Herculean effort to validate its legitimacy  and to get MDM removed.  I would return this to the person you purchased this from for a full refund as it’s not as described - brand new. Let the vendor deal with removing the MDM - this is the "value add" he's supposed to provide.
This is not to say that buying from 3rd parties is to be discouraged; you just have to be more diligent. Here are some tips for dealing with 3rd parties:

Use a service that offers purchase protection like PayPal or eBay

Test it out; boot it up and test before closing the deal. If you run into this type of error, walk away.

Boot it from a completely off state.  If the machine is running and “waiting” for you, it could be a sign of trying to obfuscate issues. Shut it down completely and boot from off. For instance, they may have booted into Safe Mode, obscuring any issue that might occur during a normal boot

Test everything while on battery.

There are keyboard test sites (https://www.keyboardtester.com/)  or you can use Karabiner Elements (it has an event viewer) this will help you ensure the keyboard is good (You can also try xev but it requires XQuartz to be installed (both are free)
Memtest86 is free and you can boot it off a USB drive
DriveDx is free for diagnostics (pay for data recovery) and is an excellent tool to test out the storage

Check the battery stats.  You can do this from Terminal without extra software.  Issue the command:
$ system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep -i "charge information" -A 10

See the link for sample output.  If it's brand new it won't have a bunch of cycles (should be in the single digits) and the "max charge" and "charge remaining" shouldn't have much of a delta if the battery's fully charged.

(I can't stress this enough) If this is an in-person transaction, do this at a police station.  Some even offer a well lit, camera monitored space in the the front parking lot to do the exchange.  If your seller balks at this, you'll know something's not right and should walk from the deal.

Conclusion
Most of all, live by the philosophy caveat emptor or buyer beware. If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. If you not "strong" in tech, do what you'd do if buying a used car from a 3rd party - bring along a tech to give you the thumbs up/down on the purchase.


Power Mac G4 - AirPort card too big for slot I have an old Power Mac G4, for which I acquired an AirPort card, and tried to follow these simple instructions from YouTube but it turns out that the card does not physically fit into the slot. It's too wide.

I've attached 3 photos to show the comparative width of the card and the slot, and the nature of the slot it needs to fit into. As you can see, it's quite different from the hardware shown in the video tutorial.

What I'd like to know, is what kind or model of AirPort card does this Mac take? I assumed it was the type shown in the photos, but that's obviously wrong.

From Power Mac G4 MDD AirPort Card Replacement
It depends which Power Mac G4 you have.

  The Power Mac G4 Uses the standard PCMCIA AirPort card found in Macs from 1999-2004.

  The Firewire 800 Model uses an AirPort Extreme Card found in iBook G4's And 1Ghz+ iMac G4's.


Automatic call audio routing still asking for device I have recently purchased new airpods and they were working good, but yesterday I think I didn't pair them properly and tried to make a phone call. Since then everytime I try to make a phone call even with airpods disconnected, it prompts me to choose an output device, even though I have set my call audio routing to automatic. It has happened to me once before with friends JBL bluetooth speaker, but I don't remember how I solved it. I think the problem faded away after a couple of days, but I'm not sure if it was due to me clicking something in settings or not...

Has anyone encountered the same problem? If so, how did you solve it?

Ok, so it is a bit awkward, but I managed to solve my own problem. I went to:

Bluetooth settings -> MyAirPodsName -> forget this device

Then I paired my airpods again with my phone and tried to make a phone call. And sure it worked! Now when I have my airpods connected it chooses them automatically, if not, I can switch between "iPhone" and "speaker" as they are named in the list by tapping the speaker button.

I think it is some weird bug that prevents the call audio routing from selecting the device automatically so you have to select it explicitly everytime you call someone... It is a bit annoying, but it is easily fixable, so no big problem.


coreFoundationUnknownErr when creating an application with osacompile from an applescript I have the following applescript Spyder3.applescript :

on run
 do shell script "/usr/local/miniconda3/bin/spyder3"
end run

I want to compile it to an Application, so I type this command :

$ sudo osacompile -o /Application/Spyder3.app Spyder3.applescript

but I get this an coreFoundationUnknownErr error :

osacompile: couldn't write to file /Application/Spyder3.app: coreFoundationUnknownErr (-4960).

Can you help me ?

I was mistaken about the Applications directory name.

I wrote /Application/Spyder3.app instead of /Applications/Spyder3.app

I'm sorry


Will an 85W power adapter fry the MBP 13" Mid 2009? According to Apple, the 60W version of Magsafe is compatible with the MBP 13" Mid 2009. However, I've read that the 85W version is also compatible and leads to faster charge times. I'll keep this short and say, is that correct? Or will it fry my Mac?

P.S - I also read that the 'T style' and 'L style' cords are interchangeable. Could someone please second that?

Thanks

Yes, you can charge any MacBook with a MagSafe 1 charging port with any MagSafe 1 charger.

If the charger has a higher wattage than the one that shipped with your MacBook you can use it safely.

Your MacBook may charge faster with a charger that has a higher wattage, but it won't overcharge. The MacBook's power controller handles this on its own.

Charger-styles

Yes, you can use a T-shaped MagSafe 1 charger as well as an L-shaped MagSafe 1 charger with any MagSafe 1 compatible MacBook.


iPhone app to apply Instagram like filters to a photo and save to camera roll Is there such an iphone app which gives me multiple filters to apply to a photo and save it to photo library camera roll (syncs to iPhoto later).

It appears the photos are stored inside the Instagram app only when they get uploaded to the Instragram servers.

I read the description of Hipstamatic on iTunes but I'm hesitant to buy it as it doesn't seem to have the option I want.

Better yet, is there someway to save the instagram photos to photo library apart from mailing them one by one. (Too many questions I know)

In Settings > Instagram you can specify that you want to save the original picture and the picture modified in the photo library.

If you don't want to upload your files in Instagram's server, try Camera+. It's a great app and really worth the 99 cents.

NB: there's also a free Camera Plus app, it's not the same as Camera+ and I haven't tried it.


T2 Mac with empty internal storage won't boot from install USB Every year or so I like to do a fresh install of Mac OS on my machines. The method I've always used is to download the OS from the App Store, create an installable USB with Terminal, boot into the USB, format the internal storage and then install.
This has not worked on my most recent Mac, which is a 2018 Intel Mac mini (the only one I have with a T2 chip). It first wouldn't let me boot into the USB due to a security restriction, so I rebooted into recovery mode and formatted the internal storage there. Before restarting I attempted to restart to the USB with Target Disk Mode, but it wouldn't pick up my USB within about a minute of waiting (maybe I should've waited longer) so I just restarted it normally and tried once again to boot to the USB on startup.
Every time I select the USB device on startup, it falls back to internet recovery mode. The yellow USB drive icon just instantly turns into the globe and prompts me to connect to WiFi. I've tried this method a few times but it sounds like any blip in the connection causes it to give up, and this has happened to me 4 times now. Is there any reason why a T2 Mac with no OS would not boot to a USB device? Is there anything else I can do besides retry internet recovery until it finally downloads everything in one go?
Thanks!
UPDATE: I did eventually get Internet Recovery working. See my answer below

I did eventually get Internet Recovery working. I was getting various errors (-1008F, -2106F and perhaps others) after long periods of time spent waiting for the boot to complete. While some of these may have been down to a shoddy internet connection, it seemed as if it would just error immediately after the bar had reached 100%.
After doing a bit of digging I removed the Mac from my iCloud account via appleid.apple.com as well as perform all steps on this guide to restore a Mac with Apple Configurator 2 (I found about that on this thread). You will need an additional Mac on hand to do the latter.
After doing that, then booting with Internet Recovery and then reinstalling from the recovery menu I still needed to log in using my iCloud credentials as well as my old local account. Fortunately for me that wasn't a problem at all, but bare that in mind if anyone reading is in a similar situation!


How do I add a line from the end of a sentence to the edge of the paper in Pages? If I have some text like:

Work Experience
Taco Bell
Apple Store
Disneyland

and I want a line drawn from the end of “Work Experience” to the right side of the page (to the end of the page margin, that is), is there a way to do that?

The easy way to do this is to select the first line - change the text style to be underline and add tabs after the “e” in experience.

This way, the underline goes as far right as you please.

Adding a horizontal line is fine as well if you can accept a line break under the heading and before the list starts.

Both of these work on iOS pages, web app pages as well.


What can I do to stop imessage from engaging on a certain contact without an iphone? I have a friend who used to have an iphone but has since gotten another phone. When I go to text him it automatically does an imessage which fails. I've deleted him and re-added him. I've turned imessage off and it will work for a bit but eventually reverts back to imessage. What do I do to fix this?

Nothing. If your friend hasn't deactivated iMessage before he sold/lost his iPhone, then Apple still thinks that he has an iPhone and is using iMessage.

He has to deactivate iMessage. Here is the Apple Support site for this.

  Bun in short: He has to contact Apple Support to do this.

Or, when he/she still has his/her iPhone, then go to Settings > Messages and switch off iMessage.


com.bird.apple files, How to open it? I saw this post: What is com.apple.bird? Why does it grow so big? where they inform that the files in the directory com.apple.bird (session) is related to iCloud backup.
I have some huge files (140Gb total) and I wanna check what is inside before I decide to delete them or to save them.
Is there any software or script that can open those files and show me all the contents?

Thank you for the attention.

Follow these steps:

Go to Finder
Press and hold the option key while you click on the Go menu
Select Library
You can let go of the option key now
Within the Library folder open the Caches folder
Now you'll see a com.apple.bird folder

You can browse within this folder to determine what's taking up space.

You may also want to read
my answer to this question


Image Renaming, Mac's PREVIEW app: When typing a new name into name field at very top of Toolbar, how can I execute the rename with ENTER KEY? I've been wanting to figure this out for years. When trying to rename an open PREVIEW image file by typing a new filename directly into the name field at the very top of the Toolbar's Name field, the only way I can execute that name change is by hitting TAB KEY vs the ENTER key.  If I hit TAB, the new name sticks. If I hit ENTER, the filename is not changed.

Same behavior for opened TEXT DOCs as well.

I understand that "a solution" is to simply remember to use the TAB key vs the ENTER key, however, in my 25+ years using Macs and Preview, that "solution" has never stuck behaviorally, because my muscle memory is far stronger and more deeply reinforced by an exponentially larger number of Finder file list rename operations where one types the new name and hits ENTER to execute the rename.

My question is:  Is there any Terminal code or other solution that would enable me to override using Mac's default TAB KEY and instead allow me to hit ENTER, which for me is far more intuitive to my workflow?

It drove me nuts and I found the answer just here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/can-no-longer-rename-files-in-preview.2035115/post-24469396

The cause turned out to be a hidden setting in
~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist If
NSAutomaticWindowAnimationEnabled is set to NO, then the problem
occurs. If I turn it back to YES or delete that setting, renaming
files in Preview works again.
For those of you using something like TinkerToll or Onyx, the hidden
setting is in the General area and is called "Animate opening
windows".


Spotlight menu shows results, but Finder window doesn't When I type anything into the Spotlight menu in the top right corner, I get the normal list of top results. But if I then click "Show All", or if I just go to the Finder and initiate a search there, it returns no results. The status bar says "Searching This Mac…" and I get the spinner in the corner, but it never goes away and never shows any results.

I have had Spotlight reindex my entire hard drive twice, and it doesn't help. Rebooting doesn't help either.

Help?

It turns out that the problem was that I had the Finder window list set to sort by the Kind column. Spotlight apparently does not like that arrangement, and refuses to display results. I had to sort by Name, close the window, and reopen it. Now Spotlight works perfectly.

This problem was originally with Snow Leopard, and persisted on Lion 10.7.0, but seems to have been fixed at some point before Mountain Lion 10.8.4.


SIM required after iOS update I have just updated iPhone to latest iOS. I do not have a phone contract and do not have a sim. I get an error message stating SIM required. How do I bypass this step.

Another method to activate your iPhone is using the iTunes application. Follow the steps below to activate your iPhone without a SIM Card.

Download and install the latest version of iTunes from Apple on to your computer.
Using an iPhone compatible USB data cable connect your non-activated iPhone to the computer.
Run iTunes on your computer and follow the instructions which show up on the screen to activate the iPhone.

That’s all now you can use your iPhone without a SIM card.


What is this little "pay phone" icon in the status bar? A new icon appeared between the screen orientation lock and the bluetooth icons in my status bar. it looks like a phone over a keyboard. It appeared today after changing SIM cards, I switched to a new carrier.

It looks like this (the blue icon on the grey bar) :

My phone is not SIM locked and it is not jailbroken either.

No new applications have been installed and I made absolutely no change in the settings appart from the APN for Cellular data, MMS and tethering.

I'm not really worried, but simply surprised and I would like to remove it as it seems to serve no purpose.

Its the TTY icon, according to this Apple KB. You can go to Settings -> Phone to turn it off.

TTY, Teletype (or various other names for it) is a special device you can use on a phone to help those that are deaf or hard of hearing communicate. Not sure why it would be enabled with the new SIM, unless there was something on the account on the new SIM that enabled this, and Apple did something to read this setting and configure their own setting.

You can safely turn it off if you are not using one of these machines.


Can't unlock Macbook after sleep until powering off and on The problem occurs after closing the lid of the laptop and it goes to sleep. When I open the lid, I am prompted for the password for my user as usual. When I press enter, there is no reaction.

Now the only action I can do that gets a reaction is to push the power button twice to turn the screen off and then on. At this point, I am again able to enter the password, but this time when I push enter the masked password gets selected (the field doesn't shake). Same results for correct or incorrect passwords. Pushing the cancel or switch user button has no effect.

To log in again I cycle the power off and on. The problem recurs sometimes often (many times a day) and infrequently at other times.

I couldn't identify anything interesting in the logs; this is the leadup to me cycling the power in the system.log:

Apr 11 18:00:27 dresnick-mbp kernel[0]: kauth external resolver timed out (1 timeout(s) of 60 seconds).
Apr 11 18:00:31 dresnick-mbp.local identityservicesd[500]: <IMMacNotificationCenterManager: 0x7f8153215230>: notification observer: com.apple.iChat   notification: __CFNotification 0x7f8151611240 {name = _NSDoNotDisturbEnabledNotification}
Apr 11 18:00:32 dresnick-mbp.local WindowServer[132]: CGError post_notification(const CGSNotificationType, void *const, const size_t, const bool, const CGSRealTimeDelta, const int, const CGSConnectionID *const, const pid_t): Timed out 1.000 second wait for reply from "Firefox" for synchronous notification type 102 (kCGSDisplayWillSleep) (CID 0xa56b, PID 804)
Apr 11 18:00:32 dresnick-mbp.local WindowServer[132]: CGError post_notification(const CGSNotificationType, void *const, const size_t, const bool, const CGSRealTimeDelta, const int, const CGSConnectionID *const, const pid_t): Timed out 1.000 second wait for reply from "Microsoft Outlook" for synchronous notification type 102 (kCGSDisplayWillSleep) (CID 0xfa03, PID 465)
Apr 11 18:00:32 dresnick-mbp.local WindowServer[132]: CGError post_notification(const CGSNotificationType, void *const, const size_t, const bool, const CGSRealTimeDelta, const int, const CGSConnectionID *const, const pid_t): Timed out 1.000 second wait for reply from "Microsoft Lync" for synchronous notification type 102 (kCGSDisplayWillSleep) (CID 0x59a3, PID 477)
Apr 11 18:00:32 dresnick-mbp.local WindowServer[132]: device_generate_desktop_screenshot: authw 0x7f91f48773e0(2004), shield 0x7f91ed304810(2001)
Apr 11 18:00:32 dresnick-mbp.local WindowServer[132]: device_generate_lock_screen_screenshot: authw 0x7f91f48773e0(2004)[0, 0, 1440, 900] shield 0x7f91ed304810(2001), dev [1440,900]
Apr 11 18:00:42 dresnick-mbp.local loginwindow[74]: ERROR | -[LWBuiltInScreenLockAuthLion askForPasswordBuiltIn:] | Attempted to add an observer when already observing
Apr 11 18:00:42 dresnick-mbp.local WindowServer[132]: CGXDisplayDidWakeNotification [13749210101618]: posting kCGSDisplayDidWake
Apr 11 18:00:42 dresnick-mbp.local WindowServer[132]: handle_will_sleep_auth_and_shield_windows: Deferring.
Apr 11 18:00:46 dresnick-mbp.local identityservicesd[500]: <IMMacNotificationCenterManager: 0x7f8153215230>:    NC Disabled: NO

I'm running a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), OS X 10.10.2

This was happening to me as well with very similar error message. When I saw it was saying it couldn't find a display I tried plugging in an external display.. sure enough it turned on. I think this happens if the screen goes to sleep while plugged into an external display. Pretty awful bug. Note that I am testing it by plugging in the identical display.. not sure if another display would fix it.


How to set default number formatting in Numbers? In Numbers, I've seen how to change the default cell colour and font, based on table styles.

But how can one change the default number formatting? The default "American" formatting for dates, for example, drives me nuts, and it's often the first thing I change in every new spreadsheet I create!

I would like dates to automagically take on YYYY-MM-DD format — especially if I enter them that way! But currently, they revert to DD mon YY format.

You do not change it in Numbers.

You change the the system date format from the Language & input system Prefpane. Change the Region to United Kingdom.

Next time you launch Numbers the format will be as you want.

You can use the Custmize buttons to set the look of the dates


My old MBPs motherboard has a faulty HDD connector, are there any other places on the motherboard I could connect storage to? Right now I'm making a persistent Linux usb stick. I don't like the idea having the USB stick plugged in all the time and possibly losing my work if it gets jostled. Is there a work around that will allow me to place a USB stick inside my macbook where the HDD would go?

Or, could the OS X recovery partition be used as a persistent OS?

No - the HDD interface is SATA/AHCI and not USB. I suppose if you were really skilled, you could somehow solder on to the USB inside or re-route one of the connectors / ports.

Have you looked at the extremely tiny USB sticks that barely take much space outside the connector?

Something like SanDisk Cruzer Fit or similar low profile model: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Low-Profile-Drive-SDCZ33-016G-B35/dp/B005FYNSZA


macOS equivalent of `cmdtool` I recently saw someone on a Unix system run the command

cmdtool <some_log_file.log>

and the terminal showed a logging window that live-updated as text was entered into the log file. (I'm probably missing some arguments there.)

Is there a Mac OS equivalent to get this behavior?

See cmdtool on Ubuntu man pages.

You can use the tail command to see live output of a textual log file:

tail -f <some_log_file.log

tail does not open a new Terminal.app window, but this could be achieved with AppleScript or Automator.


OSX Server Cannot Find itself Everything was working perfectly last week when I left it and no-one (accessible by only 4 people in our IT department) has touched it.

Okay, we use OS X server and Deploy Studio to manage our apple devices. Today, however, deploy Studio was not reachable. I could Netboot a Macbook to the Deploy Studio Assistant, but upon logging in the server and repository could not be reached.

Now I then went to check in settings and open the URL of the repository but, again, server cannot be found. I restarted the service and it would not finish config. Restarted and had the same issue (also said repository cannot be found).

Then I tested Profile Manager. I opened the link on the server itself and 'Safari Can't Find the Server'.

Does anyone know what might cause this? I did renew push certificates last week but everything was running smoothly and no other changes have been made.

Thank you!

Seems someone had been fiddling with the DNS server :) All good now!


Can’t set iPad Auto-Lock to never My auto-lock was set to “never” which is what I wanted, but yesterday it reduced itself to “5 minutes”; when I go to the Auto-Lock settings I now only get 2 options: “2 minutes” and “5 minutes”.

Can anyone assist with this problem?

Look to see if there is a profile attached.

Settings>General>Profile>Name of profile.

If there is then someone or some app has provided the security provision.


iOS 8 Safari verify server identity error We have a site running on https in production. In QA we run it on https but we don't have a valid SSL cert for it. So on iOS Safari 8, we get a error message saying that "Server identity cannot be verified". The error appearing is fine, but the problem how do I add an exception so what Safari allows it for my domain.

You can email your certificate to the ios device and add it in profiles as a server certificate. After doing so, Safari will recognize and trust the server.


Bootcamp and wireless usb keyboard: How to boot with Mac os I have a Mac mini. I installed windows 7 with bootcamp and now windows 7 is the default OS.

My problem is that it doens't seem to recognize my keypress during the boot (I have a logitech usb wireless keyboard/mouse)

I was wondering if I can achieve to start in Mac OS with this keyboard.

I know its enough to press option on boot to get the selection window. But i tried with ctrl, windows, shift, alt, alt+gr and none of them will prompt the selector.

Any ideas? (maybe a bootable usb?)

-EDIT-

I've heard of http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/

but it doesn't seem to be possible to set it up from windows..

Boot into windows and use the Bootcanp control panel to set the next boot to be Mac OS X.

From http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5639 :

  Startup questions
  How do I choose which operating system will start up my Mac?
  After running Boot Camp Assistant and installing
  Microsoft Windows and Boot Camp drivers, press and hold the Option
  (Alt) key while you start up your Mac to switch between Microsoft
  Windows and OS X.

  Use the Startup Disk Control Panel in Windows or OS X Startup Disk
  System Preferences to set the default operating system to use each
  time the computer starts up.

Or you can get any old USB keyboard and hold the option key.


Mavericks - terminal change default printer paper size I've been using the following terminal command to set the current default printer paper size to a custom paper size

defaults write com.apple.print.PrintingPrefs DefaultPaperID -string 154x216

Unfortunately looking in preferences panel this is not setting the paper size, please does anyone know where this default paper is now set in Mavericks

The setting in System Preferences changes the DefaultPaperID key in ~/Library/Preferences/org.cups.PrintingPrefs.plist. Try to change that key instead:

defaults write org.cups.PrintingPrefs DefaultPaperID 154x216

Quit and reopen applications to apply the changes.

defaults read com.apple.print.custompapers shows the IDs of custom paper sizes.


Retrieve file from iPhone 4s in recovery mode (No backup) I have an iPhone 4s that was updated without being backed up first and that contains a voice memo file for a school project that is due tomorrow. The update failed, although the cause isn't known. It was over wifi and the wifi signal was strong and consistent. Maybe the actual internet service cut out. I don't know. Now, the phone has been replaced, so it no longer has cell service either. I've been asked to retrieve the file off of it.

I've tried hooking it up with iExplorer and it won't discover in there. I've also thought of jailbreaking it, but I'm not sure if that requires deletion of all the drive contents. I'm also open to breaking the thing open and somehow mounting the drive on another computer, but I'm not sure if there are adapters available for that or how possible it is. Maybe there's a way to restore and then recover the deleted files? Again, I don't know. I'm not typically an Apple user, although I do have access to Windows, Mac, and Linux OS's if need be.

You could try out software like phoneview, but I'm asuming you're out of luck if it doesn't boot.
The memory is on the iPhones mainboard, so no way of external mounting.


iPhone 5S wallpaper zooming when set through MDM despite being correct resolution I have some devices managed through MDM (JAMF) and a 640 x 1136 wallpaper that I want to set through the MDM interface as the home/lock screen background. Unfortunately, pretty much every time I set it it comes out zoomed in.

I have set up the restrictions on the configuration such that the user cannot change the wallpapers.

This may be relevant: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/featureRequest.html?id=3232

Doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off properly, but perhaps if I set the resolution of the wallpaper image to something bigger than my target, it will show up properly. Rather than figure this out by trial and error, perhaps someone will know an appropriate resolution to use?

I have used an mdm like JAMF and facing same issue like you, i have use this link : http://iosres.com to find my resolution.

You will find all right resolution for all iOS devices.

Hope it will help you.
Br


getting some information from activity monitor in mac pro I am running a code in Ampl I want to make sure my code is running still ,( I can not see it from software). in activity monitor the %cpu for this software is 99.6 .

Is this mean the code is running?

isn't it too much for cpu? 99.6?

The CPU% value shows how much CPU load a process generates. A value of 100% means that the process uses one CPU core fully. As all modern Macs use multi-core CPUs you can even see processes with more than 100% CPU load sometimes (requires the process to be written in a way to make use of several cores at once of course).

So in your case the process is running happily. What Activity Monitor doesn't show you though is whether the process just runs in an endless loop or whether it actually processes its data as you expect.