Cannot update iPad 1 to iOS 4.3 or higher long time observer of answers first time asker of questions...

I don't post this here lightly and don't imagine that I haven't tried standard apple forums before coming here baffled.

I've been sent a build of an app in Test Flight but I can't install it on my iPad 1 because:

"Your device is running 4.2 GM which is less than the required version (4.3) for this build. Please upgrade your iOS install..."

I'm fine with that but when I 'Check for Update' on iTunes a helpful box comes up and tells me:

"This version of the iPad software (4.2) is the current version."

Things I have tried:

Restoring ipad to factory settings.
Ensuring I have the latest version of iTunes.
Deleting iPad back up (iTunes>Preferences>Devices) incase of corruption.

I have just downloaded version 4.3.5 from a third party and pressed 'Check for Update' (while holding down the Alt key), accessed the file and tried to upgrade that way...

iTunes now tells me:

"The Device "#### iPad 1" could not be updated. This device isn't eligible for the latest build."

Help...

It won't be possible to updated to iOS 4.3 unless you have a software image for iOS 4.3 handy.  This is because Apple wants to force you to install the latest version which is iOS 5.0.  The test app you have been sent should still run on iOS 5.0 though.
Since iTunes isn't being nice about letting you upgrade, what you can do is go download the iOS 5.0 software image from Apple and then you can force iTunes to update using the image.  Here's what you do.

Download iOS 5.0 for your iPad from the following link (please be aware that this link is not a direct download from Apple.  Apple doesn't offer the ability to download iOS outside of iTunes which is why I've provided this link)
http://www.ijailbreak.com/ipad/download-ios-5-firmware/

Plug your iPad into iTunes.  Hold down the Option key on your keyboard and click the "Check For Update" button in iTunes.  An Open File dialog box will open.  Select the software image you downloaded in step #1.

iTunes should upgrade your iPad.


How do I stop my 2013 Macbook Air from putting the computer to sleep? I've been fiddling with my new Haswell macbook air (with Mountain Lion), and there's a difference between the "energy saver" settings on my macbook vs my 2011 iMac. On my iMac, there's a "Computer Sleep" as well as a "Display Sleep" setting, but the macbook air only has "Display sleep":

When I don't use the computer for an hour or so, I want the display to go to sleep, but the computer should still be on, and shouldn't e.g. disconnect me from my chat sessions. How can I do this?

Thanks for your help.

knodi was close, but pmset sleep 180 does not mean "180 x display sleep time" it simply means 180 minutes.

Before you change any of your pmset settings, I would take note of your current settings. If you enter this line in Terminal.app:

sudo pmset -g live | tee -a ~/Desktop/original-pmset.txt

it will show you the current pmset settings and it will also save a copy to ~/Desktop/original-pmset.txt so you can keep it as a reference.

Manipulating computer sleep time with pmset

If I want my MacBook Air to go to skeep after 60 minutes of idle time when it is plugged into wall/AC power, I can set that using:

sudo pmset -c sleep 60

Similarly,

sudo pmset -c sleep 0

tells my MacBook Air not to put the computer to sleep, even if the display goes to sleep.

If I wanted that same setting for when the MacBook is on battery power (not AC/wall power), then I would use

sudo pmset -b sleep 0

I can also set different sleep times for disksleep and displaysleep

(You can read more about pmset at https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/pmset.1.html or man pmset in Terminal.)

I would be very interested to know if sudo pmset -c sleep 60 (or whatever value you choose) actually works for a Haswell-based MacBook Air.


How can growl be used with syslog? I have a shell script that logs messages to syslog using the 'logger' command. In my syslog.conf, I filter those messages to a specific log file. This is a portable solution that works across all unices. On OS X, I would also like to have these messages sent to growl. I have tried both of the following with no success:

*.*        |exec /usr/local/bin/growlnotify
*.*        @127.0.0.1:23052

According to man syslog.conf, Mac OS X's syslog.conf can handle messages only by writing to a file, sending to a remote host's syslog, and send them to users' consoles.

Your best option is probably to send to a file, and write a daemon or a periodically running script that consumes this file and calls growlnotify with what it reads from the file, something like the following:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
while read line
do
    /usr/local/bin/growlnotify "Your App" -m "$line"
done < /path/to/file
echo -n > /path/to/file

Either keep this running all the time by wrapping in a loop, or start it every few seconds using a launchd job and the StartInterval directive. man launchd and man launchd.plist can help you here.


Inheriting a backup on a server SO! I've spent 2 days doing this so far and I've gotten so close to accomplishing my goal but I'm on the last step.

I've attached my Time Machine HDD to my landlords Mac mini (So I didn't have to carry it everywhere to backup) and installed server, and enabled Time Machine server.

I put my backup I made when it was plugged in via USB (said 20 hours over the network, USB3 is much faster :P) on the drive in the sparse image for my MBP.

I'm now trying to get Time Machine to "inherit" the backup, which it's not doing even though I'm not getting any errors.

These are the commands I've ran through terminal:

1) sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/Backups

2) sudo tmutil associatedisk -a / /Volumes/WD\ My\ Passport/Backups.backupdb/Austen\'s\ MacBook\ Pro/2014-09-15-121229/Macintosh

3) sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/WD\ My\ Passport/Backups.backupdb/Austen\'s\ MacBook\ Pro

but yet this still occurs in the TM settings:

I really can't figure out what's going on, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks :)

Fixed it myself. Made a workflow that does the following:

and ran these commands:

1)sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Austen\'s\ MacBook\ Pro/

2)sudo tmutil associatedisk -a / /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Austen\'s\ MacBook\ Pro/2014-09-15-161252/Macintosh


I have Java 8. An app wants Java 6 (legacy one). Can I avoid that? My government made a Java app to submit tax documents.

That app, it's actually a very outdated version of Eclipse.

When I run this ugly mess, I get a dialog that prompts me to install Java SE 6 (Legacy) from Apple.

I'd like to avoid that, for security issues, and also because I don't want to mess my Java installation

How could I force it to run on my Java 8 jvm?

The app is this: https://telematici.agenziaentrate.gov.it/Main/Desktop.jsp

You most likely can not avoid this. The app you needs to use is built to run on the Java SE 6 framework. Java 8 is not backwards compatible, so you cannot "force" this app to run on Java 8. The only way to avoid installing the Java 6 SE components is if you can somehow avoid using this particular app.

You do not want to install using the Java installer found on the Oracle website. This will result in you having multiple copies of Java on your system, and it will be a mess.

Follow the link in the notice you get, (I think it's this https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1572?locale=en_US) it will take you to an Apple download of a very specific set of "Java SE 6 Legacy runtime components". This can exist alongside your Java 8 installation and is used by certain outdated software (I used to have to install this to use an older version of Adobe Creative Suite before I updated to the CC version).

** I admit I'm not 100% sure that the SE 6 Legacy components are compatible with Mojave, but I think that they are and that there was maybe a notice that Mojave would be the last compatible version of macOS.


odd behavior of pgrep in bash script I have a script to kill a process tree that works fine in linux but I am experiencing some odd behaviour on osx. It actually works fine with my unit tests and also when trying to run it manually on osx, but for some reason when it runs as a jenkins job it acts differently.

So this is the current bash function with a bit of debug echo and sleeps:

killtree() {
  local _pid=$1
  local _sig=${2:--TERM}
  echo "Stopping ${_pid}"
  sleep 1
  kill -stop ${_pid} # stop parent to avoid creation of new children
  children=`pgrep -P ${_pid}`
  echo "Children=$children"
  sleep 1
  for _child in $children; do
      killtree ${_child} ${_sig}
  done
  echo "Killing child ${_pid}"
  sleep 1
  kill -${_sig} ${_pid}
}

The call to pgrep that from a failing run can be pgrep -P 9651 prints out all processes on the machine, and the scripts hangs when it try to kill pid 0.

But why would it get all processes ? When the run is done process 9651 is still running and if I issue the command on the command line pgrep -P 9651 there is no output at all (which is expected since this process should have no children).

I added a debug call to print the process tree right before listing children:

+ pstree='-+= 00001 root /sbin/launchd
 \-+= 09774 root /usr/sbin/sshd -i
   \-+- 09777 jenkins /usr/sbin/sshd -i
     \-+= 09783 jenkins bash -c cd '\''/var/jenkins'\'' && java  -jar slave.jar
       \-+- 09784 jenkins /usr/bin/java -jar slave.jar
         \-+- 09807 jenkins /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_21.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/bin/java -classpath/
          \-+- 09817 jenkins /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_21.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/bin/java -
            \--- 09828 jenkins sleep 10'

Looks normal to me, the sleep 10 have no children.

Any ideas - I am a bit stuck after having tried to debug this for some hours ?

The process that is trying to be killed is in this case a simple sleep 10 that is used for testing.

Where are you getting your version of pgrep from?

The version I have from MacPorts is coded such that if you do not supply a pattern it will match all processes even if you have qualifiers such as the -P option.

When I issue pgrep -P<ppid> I get a full list of processes.  If add a pattern as in pgrep -P<ppid> \. then it works as expected only providing processes with the given ppid.

As to the behavior difference, maybe you have a couple versions of pgrep on your machine and the jenkins jobs have a different PATH so are finding a different version?

From terminal window you can look for multiple versions with:

mdfind -name pgrep

I also suggest you compare the PATH variable used in the job vs. interactive.

To view which file the shell will use, you can use type -p pgrep and type -a pgrep will show all places in the PATH where pgrep can be found.


Mac Finder: Getting the path of a directory or file as as string In Windows it is possible to right-click on a file. Then select "properties". In "properties" the file-system path is shown. Can then be copied by marking and storing (into the clipboard).

I couldn't figure out a way to do that in Mac.

Therefore my question:

Can I retrieve the file-system path of a directory or file via the GUI of the Mac Finder?

Ctrl-click (or two finger click) on the file you want the path from, then press Opt and select "Copy as path name" (or what it's called in english) from the context menu.

You can also just select the file and then press Opt-Cmd-C to copy the pathname to the clipboard.


Spotlight completely broken My spotlight index is completely broken. It can't find anything at all, every single thing I search for just returns 'no results'.
Here's what I've tried:

Re-indexing spotlight through System Preferences. I added the Applications folder to the Privacy filter and then deleted it, but it didn't seem to help. Same with other folders that I tried.
Fixing disk permissions. Permissions weren't broken, so there was nothing to fix.
Re-installing Sierra. I was ready to lose all my data, I've got it backed up, but it kept all the data I had when I re-installed the OS. And spotlight is still broken.

I'm really confused, not sure where to go from here.

For anyone who needs the solution, run

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo mdutil -i on /

This forces a reindex.


Python interactive mode not registering changes made to file on disk I am running Python 2.7 in interactive mode in Terminal. If I make changes to the Python source or data file while the same is open in Python prompt, it doesn't appear to see the change, and exhibits the same behavior as if no change had been made.

When I quit() Python and start it up again, then it registers the change.

Any ideas how do I achieve the desired? I also have Python 3.7 installed on my Mac. I am running macOS Sierra.

Use the execfile(...) built-in function, to reload the Python source file without quitting the interactive session.

  execfile(...)
      execfile(filename[, globals[, locals]])

  Read and execute a Python script from a file.
     The globals and locals are dictionaries, defaulting to the current
     globals and locals.  If only globals is given, locals defaults to it.


Performance comparison iOS 12 / iOS 11? After I upgraded to iOS 11 on an iPhone 6, I noticed different forms of performance loss:

lag to start some applications,
interface buttons which seems like on slow motion,
virtual keyboard starting to display the characters I typed after 3 to 4 of them,
lag in web browsing (but a part of the problem might come from the network interface in use and the load of the connection and the remote server,
etc…

Before switching to iOS 12 (which we can test to check), I would like to take advantage of this upgrade to make a correct performance measure of iOS 11 so as to be later able to compare it with the performance of iOS 12.

I would like to measure a number which is network independant and processor independant so as to be able to compare iOS version performance only. Of course an OS performance can’t be fully characterized by a uniq number. For example one OS might be faster on files manipulation, when the other might be faster in graphical interface rendering. But as unperfect as it is, it is always possible to compute a weighted average of performance along different key functions.

I had a look at some great benchmarks like Geekbench but most of them are focused on giving numbers which characterize the processor performance and not the OS one. For example, Geekbanch doesn't provide the iOS version on which the benchmark was run.

Which benchmark would provide a performance “indicator” to characterize the OS helping to compare iOS 11 and iOS 12 performance. Of course on same physical architecture, within the same networking environnment & with the same OS load?

To my knowledge, no such measure exists.

It is virtually impossible to say anything about the performance of an operating system that is fully independent on the processor and network. It really doesn't make much sense.

You can create benchmarks that measure the performance of "real life things", which includes stuff the operating system does - but you wouldn't be able to compare the OS performance across different processors and network devices.

It would make more sense to create a benchmark that tries to focus on operating system operations - trying to spend as much time in the OS as possible and as little in user code. Then you could compare that benchmark value to the same benchmark value on the same exact device (i.e. same processor, etc.) but with a different OS version.

This would tell you a little bit about the OS performance, but it would be very hard to create something that you gives you 1 abstract number that represents the OS performance in a meaningful way. It would depends very much on heuristics and how you want to weigh the performance of each of the many thousands things the particular OS does for you.

For example if iOS 11 is 20% faster at creating threads compared to iOS 12, but iOS 12 is 20% faster at compressing video - which one is the fastest?

If you never compress video, you might say iOS 11 is the fastest, but others might have a different opinion.


Right-click context menu appears slowly with two finger tap instead of two finger click In order to right-click or secondary-click I have elected to use a two-finger tap, like so:

The problem is that it always takes at least a second for the contextual menu to show up, sometimes slower. Is there a way to speed this up?

I have observed that if I perform a 2 finder click, the context menu appears fast against tapping with 2 fingers where it is slow to react.

Here are the specs on my machine:

A delayed reaction to a two-finger tap on a trackpad is caused by MacOS waiting to see if you are going to do a single two-finger tap or a double two-finger tap. Essentially, it thinks you might do another two-finger tap and it doesn't want to show the menu when you might be in the middle of a different gesture.

To speed it up, go to System Preferences > Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom and uncheck "Smart zoom." This will disable a feature that lets you zoom in on a specific thing (like a paragraph on a webpage) with a double two-finger tap.

Otherwise, if you want to keep Smart zoom enabled, you can wait the second for the context menu to appear with a two-finger tap, or you can do a two-finger click to make it faster.

As a side note, a similar thing happens on iOS devices. If you have an accessibility shortcut triggered by a triple-press of the home button, then double-pressing the home button is slower to bring up the app switcher. (This may be slightly different on the iPhone X which lacks a home button.)


How to upgrade a jailbreak iOS without loosing Cydia applications? How to upgrade a jailbreak iOS without loosing Cydia applications?

Are there any additional steps required in order to keep you configuration and applications between iOS upgrades?

itunes backup
itunes upgrade
jaibreak (probably using redsnow)
restore backup using itunes

You can use AptBackup or PkgBackup to backup your Cydia downloads before restoring, then reinstall after the restore and run again to reinstall all the Cydia stuff that you had.


Why won't my MacBook start normally? I have a 2009 MacBook showing world with exclamation when attempting recovery.

It would not start using regular startup.

This is your computer not having a proper bootable partition on your disk. In simple terms.. It doesn't know where your operating system files are to properly boot.

Sadly, you don't have the network recovery like newer macs do according to several posts like below.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4420972?start=0&tstart=0

Your only option is to visit an Apple Store, unless you have a bootable volume (backup, time machine) that you can hold down the left alt-option at boot-up, and then select your time machine. These are configured to have an EFI partitioned on the disk.

Complex version:

A disk has a top-level GPT partition stating where "partitions" are on the disk. A partition is a slice of separated files from other partitions.
Following the GPT map, is the partitions. There should be an EFI partition to tell the system that OS X # is located at xyz on the disk.
The OS X partition.
Then there is a 650mb recovery partition that you boot to to save your system.

One of these partitions is missing. You didnt say if it would boot normally, only that it wouldn't boot into recovery.


iMac Target Display Mode black screen I use an iMac with Target Display Mode from a Macbook Pro. Sometimes when I enable Target Display Mode, the iMac screen stays black, even if my Macbook Pro's display suggests that another monitor has been plugged in (apps move away from the screen).

How can I fix this?

On closer inspection, it looks like the display is not actually uniformly black. This led me to conclude that perhaps the backlight was just not turned on properly, and led me to discover the following workaround:

Log into the iMac
Change the brightness to a different level (e.g. up or down by one). The level seems to need to be different from the one previously used.
Enable Target Display Mode again, by pressing Command+F2


iPhone storage is full and stuck into a restart loop My iPhone XS's storage is full and I removed a couple of applications to free up space, but I thought that a restart could help to delete its cache files... And well, it entered into a reboot loop.
I tried to activate the recovery mode, with no success — is simply continues to reboot by itself and the MacBook does not detect it at all.
Is there any hope to recover the data I have?

First problem was that the battery was not charged completely and my MacBook Pro wasn't able to charge the phone's battery, hence the reboot loop.
I searched an original charger, connected the iPhone and let it charge. Once the battery was charged, the reboot loop stopped, but the Apple logo was still stuck on the screen.
Tried to force restart a couple of times, and enter in the DFU mode and eventually managed to activate the DFU mode.
Connected the iPhone to the MacBook. Initialized the update process, and while downloading the 6GB file, the MacBook disabled the USB accessories, therefore disconnecting the iPhone.
I connected to a fiber internet network, and repeated the steps above. The download was faster (6GB in 7 minutes) and the MacBook started the update installation process. It gave an unknown error at ~70%. I repeated the steps, it completed almost successfully, giving the same unknown error at 100%...
Tried again and got the same result.
Finally, I reset my iPhone and restored a recent backup.

Moral of the story: if the storage is full, you may want to delete applications and data you can get later anyways, rather than rebooting the device.


iOS app for exporting HomeKit data? I have bought an Elgato Eve HomeKit-compliant weather sensor. It works well enough but unfortunately its accompanying app does not support data export.

From what I understand about Apple HomeKit, other apps should be capable of accessing HomeKit data that is stored on the same device (as e.g. from the weather sensor), if I permit them to do so.

So is there a (perhaps generic) iOS app that would allow me to see all HomeKit data stored on my iPhone and to export it (e.g. send CSV file by e-mail, or similar).

UPDATE In terms of Apple's HomeKit framework temperatures seem accessible as HMCharacteristics e.g. of type HMCharacteristicTypeCurrentTemperature inside an HMService of type HMServiceTypeThermostat. I have not found yet whether the HomeKit framework natively supports the notion of historic data (e.g. past temperatures). Apple's HMCatalog sample app indicates that the specific device also maintains a number of private characteristics, some of which could (perhaps) be related to historic data. Alternatively it could also be that all temperatures arrive in Elegato Eve's app as notifications and that hence historic data is only supported on the level of this app.

I've been able to solve this as follows:

use iTunes to sync from iOS to Mac to create unencrypted iPhone backup
obtain and start iPhone Backup Extractor for OS X
select latest backup, then Expert Mode, then Application Domains, then com.elgato.eve, Documents, Elgato Systems##EveWeather##*sql (* stands for what looks like a device serial number) and extract SQL file to ~/Desktop/
sqlite3 ~/Desktop/Application\ Domains/com.elgato.eve/Documents/Elgato Systems##EveWeather##*sql reveals that the database contains 3 tables, one for humidity, temperature, and air pressure each
export tables e.g. to CSV files, then import e.g. into Excel


Can I create a shortcut to open a specific application on OS X? I want to create a keyboard shortcut to i.e. open Firefox while I am working in another application. I know I can use ⌘ CMD+T when I am in Firefox to open a new tab.

I haven't found a way to create that kind of shortcuts in System Preferences.

Any ideas?

Karabiner-Elements (10.12 and later)

Karabiner stopped working in 10.12 due to changes in the kernel architecture, and Karabiner was rewritten as Karabiner-Elements which uses a new JSON format for the configuration files.

You can now add a rule like this to karabiner.json (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/json.html):

{
  "from": {
    "key_code": "t",
    "modifiers": {
      "mandatory": [
        "right_option"
      ]
    }
  },
  "to": [
    {
      "shell_command": "open -aterminal"
    }
  ],
  "type": "basic"
}

This makes a short press of the right command key open Emacs:

{
  "from": {
    "key_code": "right_command",
    "modifiers": {
      "optional": [
        "any"
      ]
    }
  },
  "to": [
    {
      "key_code": "right_command",
      "lazy": true
    }
  ],
  "to_if_alone": [
    {
      "shell_command": "open -aemacs"
    }
  ],
  "type": "basic"
}

Karabiner (10.11 and earlier)

Save a file like this as private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <vkopenurldef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_Safari</name>
    <url>file:///Applications/Safari.app</url>
  </vkopenurldef>
  <vkopenurldef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_iTunes</name>
    <url>file:///Applications/iTunes.app</url>
  </vkopenurldef>
  <vkopenurldef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_EMACS</name>
    <url>file:///Applications/Emacs.app</url>
  </vkopenurldef>
  <item>
    <name>custom</name>
    <identifier>custom</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F11, KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_Safari</autogen>

    <!-- change the right option key into an extra modifier key -->
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::OPTION_R, KeyCode::VK_MODIFIER_EXTRA1</autogen>

    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::I, ModifierFlag::EXTRA1, KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_iTunes</autogen>

    <!-- make a short press of the right command open Emacs -->
    <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_EMACS</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Alfred 2

If you have bought the Powerpack for Alfred 2, you can create a workflow like this:

Hotkeys have a short delay by default, but you can reduce the delay by changing the "Trigger behaviour" option from "Simulate modifier keys released" to "Pass through modifier keys (Fastest)":

Automator services

Open Automator, select "Service" as the type of the document, change "Service receives" from "text" to "no input", add a "Launch Application" action, and save the service. Then assign a keyboard shortcut for the service from "System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services".

I don't recommend this option, because at least on my system, there is at best a delay of around half a second before an application is focused by a keyboard shortcut created using this method, and the delay is often even longer. There has also been a bug since 10.7 where the keyboard shortcuts for Automator services don't always work until you hover over the services menu from the menu bar. (Edit: it's now 8 years after I wrote this answer and the bug still hasn't been fixed.) Also the keyboard shortcuts for services are not available in some applications like Emacs.


Installing ODBC via HomeBrew I installed freetds and unixodbc via Homebrew, more or less following the directions found in this sql server and odbc on Mac link.

I diverged from those directions when it came to the location for the driver and setup, instead using

Driver = /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/lib/libodbc.dylib
Setup = /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/lib/libodbc.dylib

in the file /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/etc/odbcinst.ini since this is where I found my ODBC dynamic libraries.

(I also made those changes because Macs do not use *.so files, that's a *nix nomenclature, which I admit made me nervous in following those directions, but they did seem to match advice at other sites, such as this one for installing RODBC on Mac and these great instructions for *nix.)

I have tried to run it, made changes, done a trace via dtruss, specifically doing this command:

dtruss isql -v odbc-test <my_user_id> <associated_password> 2> junk_to_sift_through.txt

No matter how I adjust things - without actively breaking them further - I keep getting the following error:

[IM004][unixODBC][Driver Manager]Driver's SQLAllocHandle on SQL_HANDLE_HENV failed
[ISQL]ERROR: Could not SQLConnect

The junk_to_sift_through.txt generated file with errors is fairly large, but below is the tail end of it, which should have the error hidden somewhere in it.  But I cannot seem to figure it out.

open_nocancel("/usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/etc/odbcinst.ini\0", 0x0, 0x1B6)       = 3 0
fstat64(0x3, 0x7FFF53378CB8, 0x1B6)      = 0 0
read_nocancel(0x3, "[ms-sql]\nDescription = TDS connection\nDriver = /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/lib/libodbc.2.dylib\nUsageCount = 1\nFileUsage = 1\nTrace = Yes\n\0", 0x1000)        = 143 0
read_nocancel(0x3, "\0", 0x1000)         = 0 0
close_nocancel(0x3)      = 0 0
open_nocancel("/Users/mike/.odbcinst.ini\0", 0x0, 0x1B6)         = 3 0
fstat64(0x3, 0x7FFF53378CB8, 0x1B6)      = 0 0
read_nocancel(0x3, "[ms-sql]\nDescription = TDS connection\nDriver = /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/lib/libodbc.2.dylib\nUsageCount = 1\nFileUsage = 1\nTrace = Yes\n\0", 0x1000)        = 143 0
read_nocancel(0x3, "\0", 0x1000)         = 0 0
close_nocancel(0x3)      = 0 0
fstat64(0x1, 0x7FFF5337CD08, 0x1000)         = 0 0
write_nocancel(0x2, "[ISQL]ERROR: Could not SQLConnect\n\0", 0x22)       = 34 0
write_nocancel(0x1, "[IM004][unixODBC][Driver Manager]Driver's SQLAllocHandle on SQL_HANDLE_HENV failed\n\0", 0x53)  = 83 0

Any ideas out there?

Thanks!

unixODBC

  Driver's SQLAllocHandle on SQL_HANDLE_ENV failed

Cause

  The new security features introduced in DB2® Universal Database™ (DB2 UDB) Version 8.2 prevent users from using the database unless they belong to the Windows® groups DB2ADMNS or DB2USERS.

Solution

  Add the userid (the one used to execute the application) to either the DB2ADMNS or DB2USERS group. Please refer to the link under "Related Information" (below) for instructions on how to accomplish this.

Related:

SQLSTATE IM004, SQLAllocHandle on SQL_HANDLE_ENV failed at IBM
Driver's SQLAllocHandle on SQL_HANDLE_HENV failed at Stack Overflow
How do I install RODBC on Mac with unixodbc and freetds?

ODBC Driver for SQL Server

Reinstall the packages using the recent version:

brew tap microsoft/msodbcsql https://github.com/Microsoft/homebrew-mssql-release
ACCEPT_EULA=y brew reinstall --no-sandbox msodbcsql mssql-tools

Note: If you hit multiple tap conflict, run: brew untap microsoft/mssql-preview && brew untap microsoft/msodbcsql.

Then test your SQL setup by: sqlcmd -S localhost or isql -v -k <connection-string>.

Related: SQL Server : Can't open lib 'ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server'.

See: Installing the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server on Linux and macOS.


Uses for an iPhone 2G that can't connect/sync to iTunes, but charges & works just fine I have an iPhone 2G (1st generation model) that works fine except that it does not connect to iTunes. I have tried to fix it but it seems permanently screwed (I'm not looking for  a solution to this).

My question is, what can I use this old (jailbroken) iPhone for, given its limitation of not being able to connect/sync with iTunes. Very few apps work on it as it runs iOS 3.1.3.

Can I store and run music and movies on it? Any other creative uses for it?

PS: I have an iPad and an Android phone as well. This phone is a spare.

If it's jailbroken, and you are looking to get movies and music to it, then can you scp them onto the device?

So first I would check I could ssh onto the device when it was on the same wireless network as my laptop.  Then (assuming scp works anywhere that ssh does, not sure there) I'd scp files I wanted to watch over (possibly converting them with Handbrake first) and then use iFile (from cydia) to navigate to the file and watch.

If iFile is not available because of the operating system, you might have to work a little harder to put the files into the correct place for the iphone native apps to find them.


My iPod Touch / iPhone is frozen! My iDevice is frozen on one screen and won't let me do anything. What can I do to fix it?

Hold the Home Button and Power/Sleep buttons together until it hard resets.


Scanner not recognised on Epson Printer after El Capitan update I've noticed that the scanner option has disappeared from the System Preferences (Printers & Scanners) control for the Epson AL CX21NF. I've tried installing the drivers from here and also using the System update from Apple (specific to Epson printers via the App Store). I have added the printer (using the IP address and LPD Line Daemon option) and can print to the device, but have no option to scan documents.

Has something changed in El Capitan or is this printer now just too old to be supported?

El Capitan has problems supporting scanners. After talking to Apple tecs, and Epson techs and getting the run around, my easy fix was to pay for and down load VueScan and my scanner works again.


Photos does not have the necessary permissions to create a library in the folder that you selected I'm attempting to create a new macOS Photos.app library on a secondary hard drive.
In the Choose Library window, when I select Create New... and select the external HDD, I get the error:

The library could not be created.
Photos does not have the necessary permissions to create a library in the folder that you selected.

Why can't I use the external hard drive for my Mac Photos Library?

My external HDD was in the HFS+ file format. The system's boot SSD was using the newer APFS.
I used Disk Utility to reformat the disk as APFS.
After switching to APFS I re-created the new Photos library and it worked fine.

We can move our Photos Libraries to an external drive, but the drive needs to be correctly formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS and locally mounted.

Pre-APFS file systems should work, but for some reason it wasn't working. Perhaps related to permissions, or the the file system itself. Switching to APFS fixed it for me.

I found a great resource for this question here:

Where is it safe to store a Photos Library? Requirements for the location of a Photos Library - 2019 version
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250000663


zsh stopped parsing ~/.zshrc I'm running the latest OSX on an MBP from '11.

I've installed the latest zsh from macports and all of a sudden it stopped parsing the .zsh. Whenever I login I need to source ~/.zshrc before any binaries installed through macports are available.

Has anyone seen the same?

This was caused by RVM. I uninstalled RVM and the problem disappeared.


Airtight User Account on Macbook Pro I'm looking to give my friend my macbook pro for a month. So how do I make it so there is no possible way that he can access my stuff. When I mean no possible way, I mean no way through terminal or any means like that. Will creating a standard new account satisfy, or something more is required?

The only way to avoid a user being able to access your data is to remove your data from the machine. This is due to the fact that a user could enable the root user via Single User mode on boot and can then have unfettered access to the system. You can put up blocks to hinder this as well, but that depends on your desire to keep all information secure.

A standard user account is the easiest option and is somewhat effective. However, your friend will not be able to do certain things on the machine since they won't have admin rights. The level of access necessary would hinge on how much the friend would need to do while they have the machine.


Can't see external HDD partition in Disk Utility I have a  TB external HDD divided in 2 partition:

First partition: 280 GB
Second partition: 1720 GB

Initially, both partitions were NTFS.

Then, I formatted the first partition to macOS Extended FS, and then to FAT32,
and the second partition vanished. I can't see it in Disk Utilities nor in Paragon NTFS 15.

I tried to revert first partition to NTFS, but the second one is still not showing... What should I do?

here is the result of diskutil list

~ diskutil list
  /dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
     #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
     0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk0
     1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
     2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         249.8 GB   disk0s2

  /dev/disk1 (synthesized):
     #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
     0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +249.8 GB   disk1
                                   Physical Store disk0s2
     1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            119.9 GB   disk1s1
     2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 20.5 MB    disk1s2
     3:                APFS Volume Recovery                503.9 MB   disk1s3
     4:                APFS Volume VM                      5.4 GB     disk1s4

  /dev/disk2 (external, physical):
     #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
     0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
     1:               Windows_NTFS HDD1                    228.4 GB   disk2s1

Here is the result of sudo fdisk /dev/disk2

~ sudo fdisk /dev/disk2
    Disk: /dev/disk2    geometry: 243201/255/63 [3907029167 sectors]
    Signature: 0xAA55
             Starting       Ending
     #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    *1: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    206848 -  446126158] HPFS/QNX/AUX
     2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
     3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
     4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

EDIT:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk2 bs=512 skip=446333006 count=150000000 | grep -o -a -b "BOOTMGR"

71010552671:BOOTMGR
71010552692:BOOTMGR
150000000+0 records in
150000000+0 records out
76800000000 bytes transferred in 11355.441546 secs (6763277 bytes/sec)

David's answer already explains what probably happened to your drive. You accidentally partitioned the drive instead of erasing just a volume.

According to your statement your drive contained two partitions previously:

First partition: 280 GB
Second partition: 1720 GB

After repartitioning the drive only one partition is left:

First and only partition: 228.4 GB

This probably means that the second partition wasn't affected - only the entry in the MBR was removed.

You should be able to recover the partition by simply adding a second partition in the MBR.

To detect the former boundaries of the lost partition you have to search for specific strings on the disk which determine the first and last block of a (former) NTFS volume.

The specific strings are either NTFS or BOOTMGR/bootmgr.

The content of the block depends on your locale, so searching for "BOOTMGR is compressed" (found in an English NTFS Partition Boot Sector) is not necessarily successful. "BOOTMGR" (English/German) or "bootmgr" (Spanish/French?) should work though. I haven't tested non-latin Windows systems.

Examples

First block of a German NTFS volume:

Last block of a German NTFS volume:

This can be done by dd'ing the device to grep.

Example:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk2 bs=512 skip=2048 count=512 | grep -o -a -b "BOOTMGR"
421:BOOTMGR
512+0 records in
512+0 records out
262144 bytes transferred in 0.010566 secs (24810155 bytes/sec)

The explanation of the command:

Copy /dev/disk2 with a block size of 512 Byte to stdout, but skip the first 2048 blocks of disk2 and stop after (another) 512 blocks, pipe it to grep, treat the output as text, search for "BOOTMGR" and finally show the byte offset(s) of the matched pattern in front of the respective matched line.

In your case the result 71010552671:BOOTMGR of sudo dd if=/dev/disk2 bs=512 skip=446333006 count=150000000 | grep -o -a -b "BOOTMGR"means:

The byte offset is 71010552671 Byte after the last block (block 446333006) of the currently existing HDD1 volume on disk1. In blocks that's the relative block 138692486 or the absolute block (446333006 + 138692486) = 585025492.

This means two things:

Your previous partition 1 probably had a size of ~ 299 GB (= ~278 GiB) instead of 280 GB
Your partitions aren't aligned properly to 4k blocks because neither 446333006 nor 585025492 are divisible by 8

The last block of the vanished NTFS volume can be expected in the last 10,000 blocks of disk2. The appropriate command to search for it is then

sudo dd if=/dev/disk2 bs=512 skip=3907019167 count=10000 | grep -o -a -b "BOOTMGR"

With the result of the command you can determine the last block of the vanished partition 2.

With the first block and the last block you can add the lost partition with fdisk to the MBR.

To crosscheck the size you can extract the partition size in sectors in the partition boot sector at offset 0x028 and field length of 8 Bytes and the sector size at offset 0x0B and field length of 2 Bytes.

In the example screenshots above that's FF E7 DF E8 00 00 00 00 (= 3906988031+1) and 00 02 (= 512 Byte).

The diskutil info output for the example volume (visible in the screenshots) is:

...
Disk Size:                2.0 TB (2000377872384 Bytes) (exactly 3906988032 512-Byte-Units)
Device Block Size:        512 Bytes
...


My MBP's touch bar turns off every time I close the lid Every time I close the lid of my brand new MBP, the touch bar (including the Touch ID) turns off and stop working, and only turns back on the next time I restart the computer.

I can't use the Touch ID to approve administrative operations or to unlock the computer, and I can't use the F keys or the touch bar functions at all...

Assuming I understand your question correctly, your MBP is working fine except after it's been in sleep mode. That is, after waking it from sleep, both the Touch ID and Touch Bar no longer work.

The first thing I'd try is resetting both the NVRAM and SMC (in that order). Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Reset the NVRAM on your MBP as follows:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then immediately press the commandoptionPR keys.
Keep these keys pressed down for at least 20 seconds!
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note 1: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your MBP, I'd follow these steps:

Shut down your Mac
Unplug the power cable from your Mac
For 10 seconds, press and hold at the same time the shiftcontroloption keys (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button
After 10 seconds let go of all keys and the power button
Plug in the power cable
Turn your Mac back on with the power button.

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, use your computer to determine if the issue still persists. Let me know how you go.


How to remove annoying iCloud nagging in Catalina? How do I remove this very annoying thing under System preferences without signing in to iCloud? I do want to be signed in to the app store.

I do not want to use iCloud.

There are solutions posted here that I'm still a bit unsure about:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-dont-want-to-use-icloud-but-system-preferences-nags-me-to-start-using-it.2187969/

defaults delete com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs will remove the "1" notif, but there's still annoying imperatives left:

The red "1" was my biggest problem though, I'm not going to spend more effort right now - there are suggestions that involve booting into recovery and stuff like that which I just can't do right now. All ears for anything better!


Run my Mac command “chsh -s /usr/local/bin/false” and can't log in to my account again I really messed up! Since I ran my Mac with the command below

chsh -s /usr/local/bin/false

Several minutes later, I noticed my Mac logged out by itself. So, I tried to log back in by clicking 'change user' But I can't see my administer account there.

I guess 'false' is not a loggin-able shell, that's why my account is hidden.

I'm trying to change my shell with Terminal.app on recovery mode or single-user-mode (but both are read-only).

So right now, I want to know if there's any solutions that might be able to fix this problem.

OK - bummer situation, but probably pretty easy to get around.

Boot in single user mode, mount the drive as read&write by running /sbin/mount -uw /, remove the /var/db/.AppleSetupDone file and make a new admin account
Use that admin account to change back the shell for your user.
Log out and check your account.
Clean up the “temporary” admin account if you wish.

Nothing can go wrong, except for perhaps FileVault or no backup or a firmware password so if you can finish a backup or might have another admin account already - using that would be much better in case the above outline isn’t workable for you.

iMac is stuck in a login loop

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202860


generate password option not appearing in "manage apple id" I am trying to generate an app specific password, as I can not get Thunderbird on Ubuntu, to connect to the icloud server. I found a few posts on the web that infer, you now  have to generate an app specific password, using the manage your apple id site. the instructions at the apple site say to log into your account
and click on the edit button in the security section, and then to click on "generate password". When I do this, no option appears to "generate password"

Steps outlined by Apple:

Sign in to your Apple ID account page.
In the Security section, click Edit.
Click Generate Password and follow the steps on your screen.

It appears that app specific passwords are not needed to access icloud on Ubuntu, using Thunderbird. I refired up an old box, I had stashed away; and, it connected to icloud fine, on Ubuntu using Thunderbird. I set up this account nearly 2 years ago and it works, with no app specific password. However, I never was able to set an app specific password at the apple site. So, I am closing this as, I don't actually need one.


Securityd process uses 100% CPU when Mail app is open I have a Macbook Air mid 2011 with OS X Yosemite. For a couple of weeks, I have a process, called Securityd, that runs and uses 100% of my processor, making it hot and noisy.

After some time, I discovered that the process is launching when I open the (native) Mail application. However this is not always happening. I am not sure of what makes it run, but it stops instantly when I quit the Mail app.

Do you have any idea of why this process is running, and how to fix it?

The Console.app shows nothing when I filter it with "Security". However, without filtering, when the process launch, I have this, which is looping infinitely :

25/05/15 09:57:39,166 icbaccountsd[1816]:  SOSCCThisDeviceIsInCircle
SOSCCThisDeviceIsInCircle!! 418
25/05/15 09:57:39,531 icbaccountsd[1816]:  SOSCCThisDeviceIsInCircle SOSCCThisDeviceIsInCircle!! 419
25/05/15 09:57:39,846 accountsd[1807]: Enter ShareKitAccountEnabler  - didChangeWithType - type=2 for account myemail@address.com (E0AAB503-12B6-4E2D-B519-10A05E4C7A2A).
25/05/15 09:57:39,846 accountsd[1807]: AIDA Notification plugin running
25/05/15 09:57:39,972 accountsd[1807]: Enter ShareKitAccountEnabler  - didChangeWithType - type=2 for account myemail@address.com (E0AAB503-12B6-4E2D-B519-10A05E4C7A2A).
25/05/15 09:57:39,973 accountsd[1807]: AIDA Notification plugin running

Ok, my advice is that u should unlink your email accounts and iCloud accounts from your MacBook Air. These unlink operation are to be done on MBA's side. Here is how I reached this conclusion:

securityd handles cryptographic operations on OS X. All processes communicate with securityd through SecurityAgent. That fact that these two are not throwing error in system log means something talking to them is the culprit.
icbaccountsd has ur email/icloud authorization info stored. To see what I mean, terminal:

/usr/libexec/icbaccountsd raw

and you will see your addresses in the printout.

An error in the icbaccountsd doesn't necessarily mean a wrong password. It could also be a incorrect/corrupted public/private key. Or a formating error in the file (hence, the infinite loop).

So you should uncouple your emails from MBA and recouple them later. These are the measures you can take to do that, from safest to more drastic. You can do only one each time, add back your emails, and wait to see if it works. Or you can undertake all at once and add back. Needless to say, before re-adding, restart your laptop.

Deactivate all accounts under System Preferences -> iCloud and Internet Accounts. (This is probably too puny to work.)
Delete those accounts System Preferences -> iCloud and Internet Accounts.
Open Keychain app and delete any entry related to your email addresses and email servers. These entries can be passwords, keys, certificates, etc.
open ~/Library/ and back up files in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/ and ~/Library/Mail/. Delete the originals.

These would give you a machine free from any association with your emails. You many wonder if you should simply/also purge /usr/libexec/icbaccountsd. I won't recommend it til all else fails.


Can't login after migration assistant. No access to other account I was given a Mac with that had an administrator account and an account for myself (with full admin rights). Using the migration assistant, I copied everything from my old computer, however it ended up creating a new account, so I therefore deleted the new account.

I had no issues until restarting the new computer; it now no longer presents me with the new user, only the administrator account (which I don't have access to).

Is there any way I can get access to either the old account or new one without the administrator password? I've seen that this may be an issue with file vault preferences, but I can't change them if I can't log in!

Or will I just have to wait until my IT support is able to do this for me?

I hope you have resolved this by now, but if not, you can first try booting into Recovery Mode (Command-R for local version or Command-Option-R for internet version).

Once you are in, select Utilities > Utilities which will open a very plain window with a command prompt.

Here, type in "resetpassword" and press enter.

You should now be presented with a more Mac-like window to help you set/reset the password for your available accounts.

If this doesn't work, just come back and we'll try other options.


Install application on external SSD and load from external SSD to RAM? I want to install some applications on an external SSD attached via a USB 3.0 interface.

As I know from the apple site, I can move my iTunes and photo library to an external drive. (support apple link)

I own the 128 GB version of the MacBook Pro series, so I would like to outsource some disk space-intensive applications on an external SSD like the libraries, too.

Can I install applications on an external drive?

If it is possible to install applications on an external SSD, will the OS load the data from there to the internal SSD to process or is it going to load the data directly to the RAM ?

Yes. Some applications won't allow you to install them on drives that don't contain an OS X installation, however there are often ways to do it manually post-installation if that is the configuration you wish.
Some applications will indeed do some writing to the internal SSD, since presumably that's where OS X is installed. The Library folders for example contain configuration settings and application data for most of the applications on your computer. Although you can trick an application into writing to your external SSD by moving its data/configuration directory onto your external drive, then making a symbolic link back to your Library folder. It's not guaranteed to work, but it generally works just fine.
An application whose data is entirely contained on the external SSD won't have any reason to access the internal one. The data would load directly into RAM, never once touching the internal SSD.


Unable to delete/resize partition with DiskUtility I have a 1TB external drive with two Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partitions that I would like to merge into just one single partition. They are called Backup HD and EXT HD (see pictures). I cannot resize, nor delete, the partition Backup HD, which is empty right now. How can I do it? Why can't this be done?
As you see from the first picture (1), the button with - is greyed out and I cannot remove it. However, I can remove the partition EXT HD. Should I first create a new partition Untitled on the left of Backup HD (see picture 2), copy there all data from EXT HD, delete EXT HD and then resize Backup HD?
Thanks!

The pie chart used by the Disk Utility application can give an user the impression that partitions are stored in some sort of circular fashion. Actually, partitions are store linearly. The output from the command diskutil list will shows this. Also, this output will show partitions that can be hidden when viewing the contents of a drive with the Disk Utility application. Most likely your drive is arranged with the Backup HD partition occurring before the EXT HD partition. In this case, macOS offers no effective way to merge the space from the Backup HD partition into the EXT HD partition. One solution would be to backup the data on the EXT HD partition, create one large partition, then restore from the backup.
There exists third party tools which can do what you are asking in your question, but before using such a tool, you should backup your data. However, once backed up there is no need to use the third party tool.


How do I boot to safe mode in Mac OSX 10.9.3? I followed the instructions here but it did not seem to work. How do I boot to safe mode? I am on Mavericks 10.9.3.

It turned out that I had to turn off my firmware password to be able to do this. Here are some steps to resetting the firmware password. Note that you will need to know your firmware password to be able to reset it!


Wrong contact synchronisation with 2 iPhones I bought an iPhone 6 and I gave my old iPhone (the 5c) to my niece. Had it done at the AT&T store. The sales rep changed her # to my old phone and my old # to my new phone. I jumped on the iCloud and was able to transfer all photos, messages, etc onto my new iPhone.

The first time my niece plugs in her iPhone 5c (which was my old iPhone), all of a sudden, all of her contacts replace mine on my iPhone 6 and now we both have the same contacts - hers.

I logged into the iCloud on my laptop and all that's there is her contacts. Mine aren't there. Did I lose all my contacts? Is there any way I can get them back?

All my text messages are still on my new phone, but the vast majority of them only list a phone # not a name. So maybe I can figure out (in most cases) who these texts were with but it's still a major chore to re-enter everyone's name - not to mention other things I kept in my contacts for my friends such as email address and street address (all of which I will have to ask for or remember).

Is there anything I can do?

You can try to see if your phone had saved a backup to your computer upon last sync. This would mean restoring the phone from backup, which isn't always ideal depending on the situation.

Unfortunately, it's not easy because iCloud was likely left enabled on the old phone, which synced them up to the cloud, and then down to your phone.

Else, here is a suggestion provided from the Apple discussion forums:

(BEFORE YOU BEGIN, MAKE SURE YOUR ICLOUD ACCOUNT IS SIGNED OUT OF THE OTHER PHONE!!!!)

Ensure the device is connected to your local network.
Start the restore from iCloud back up.
Allow the devices settings to restore (watch for the confirmation of completion).
As the apps begin to restore pull the connection to your router WAN port (the one that goes to the telephone point/cable modem).
Wait for the time out confirmation.
Navigate to settings > iCloud and turn off contact syncing (keep contacts when prompted).
Reconnect the router to the internet and let the restore process complete.
Delete any iCloud contacts from iCloud.com on a computer.
Navigate to settings > iCloud and turn on contact syncing (merge contacts when prompted).


Sound preference pane will not open in El Capitan My 2.7gHz core i7 mac mini running 10.11.6 will not open the Sound Preferences pane. Since upgrading to Yosemite I have had sound preferences problems.  I produce audio using Logic X and an Apogee ONE audio interface.

The only thing that works on my Mac with this problem is running in the console the following command:

sudo killall coreaudiod


External Hard Drive Won't Mount on my 2018 MacBook Pro I have a "G-Technology G-Drive USB External Hard Drive" (8 TB) that I'm using as a backup target for Time Machine. It uses an external brick power supply. I bought it a few years ago and it has never been knocked and sits on my desk in the same place. Periodically I plug it in to do a backup. Last time I used it, the backup completed without any problems or ugly noises.
However, this time the MacBook isn't seeing the external hard drive. I can see the light on the drive, so it's getting power from the external brick. This drive wasn't cheap so I don't want to spend yet more money on replacing it!

Short Answer:
I removed the HDMI Cables from the Thunderbolt ports and connected the 8TB external HD in isolation and it was then recognized and worked correctly.
Longer Answer:
After doing some basic diagnostics failed to yield any clues, I had an epiphany: I was now using dual HDMI monitors connected to my Thunderbolt ports- (1) HDMI cable connected into a Thunderbolt port on each side of my 2018 MacBook. Generally, I don't use these.  Was it affecting the power is some undefined way?
So I unplugged the monitors and just plugged the 8 TB external hard drive into a Thunderbolt port by itself. Bingo: it was recognized and sprang to life. Of course you can plug the MacBook's power cable into any free Thunderbolt port while the External drive is connected as the power cable is definitely going to be power-in and not drawing power FROM the MacBook.
To validate my understanding, I used a USB-C pass-through power meter and plugged the external HD into it. The arrow in the below picture revealed that although the external HD had its' own external power supply/brick, unbeknownst to me it was nonetheless drawing power FROM the MacBook. So with the HDMI cable connected to the other Thunderbolt port on the same side of the case, it appears that affected the available power to the external hard drive.
Although this solution deals with an external hard drive, I'd suggest when troubleshooting any device connected to the Thunderbolt ports which is presenting with issues to connect the device in isolation- unplug all other devices- while testing it.
Hope I saved somebody else from needlessly buying a replacement external hard drive!


Why is my codesigned app still quarantined by macOS? I have a .app that is quarantined. But I am super confused - how can my .app be properly codesigned and yet still be quarantined by Apple? I have an app called iTest.app that I downloaded from my server and made sure that it was codesigned correctly but yet it is still quarantined? I thought that having a valid code signature was the whole point of getting past Gatekeeper?

MyMac-7:Downloads user$ ls -l@ iTest.app
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 7 user staff  238 Apr 21 08:05 Contents
com.apple.quarantine     67

MyiMac-7:Downloads user$ codesign --verify --deep --strict -vvvvvvv
iTest.app
iTest.app: valid on disk
iTest.app: satisfies its Designated Requirement

MyiMac-7:Downloads user$ spctl -a -t exec -vvvvvvv iTest.app
iTest.app: accepted
source=Developer ID
origin=Developer ID Application: myID

The com.apple.quarantine is an OS X feature, this happens every time you download from the internet :
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Carbon/RN-LaunchServices/index.html


USB-C to lightning cable plugged into The iPhone 12 now ships with a USB-C to Lightning cable. Is it safe to plug this into a USB-C charger on one end and an old iPhone, like an iPhone 5, on the other end? Obviously the iPhone 5 would have no idea that something like USB-C exist. So would it cause damage, or would it charge at slow USB-A speed, or would it use the maximum charging power that the iPhone can handle?
Would it also be Ok if the charger is high powered, like a 90 Watt charger used to charge a MacBook?

All Apple USB-C chargers support USB-PD, the power delivery specification to select a safe voltage for the connected device.  The voltages supplied are 5V, 9V, 20V, and sometimes something in the middle somewhere like 14.5V.  The current supplied at each voltage will be somewhere between 2 an 3 amps at the lower voltages, the higher voltages come with higher current from 3 to 5 amps.
Here's some educated guesses and close approximations at what volts and amps the different Apple, and non-Apple, USB-C/USB-PD power supplies will provide.
12 watts: 5 volt @ 2.4 amps
18 or 20 watts: 5 volt @ 2.4 amps, 9 volt @ 2.x amps
27 watts: 5 volt @ 2.4 amps, 9 volt @ 3 amps
29 or 30 watts: 5 volt @ 2.4 amps, 9 volt @ 3 amps, 15.2 volt @ 1.x amps, 20.4 volt @ 1.x amps
45 to 61 watts: 5 volt @ 2.4 amps, 9 volt @ 3 amps, 15.2 volt @ 3 amps, 20.4 volts @ 2.x amps
82 to 96 watts: 5 volt @ 2.4 amps, 9 volt @ 3 amps, 15.2 volt @ 3 amps, 20.4 volts @ 4.x amps
The older iPhone might not know about USB-C but the charger knows that it will provide only 5 volts unless the iPhone asks for more.  Newer phones and laptops will ask for more, up to the maximum power it can take or the maximum the power supply can provide.
A pattern you may notice is that they wanted to keep the current between 2 and 3 amps, if more power was needed then step up the voltage first, and exceed 3 amps only once 20 volts is reached.  This was to keep cable costs low since a 5 amp cable had to use more material and be built to handle more heat.  There was also a preference for lower voltages as that kept the material costs low as well.


Macbook choses 169.254.x.x when the range is really 192.168.2.x We have a router/modem 2wire (with DHCP disabled) which we are just using as a modem now, wired to our Airport (with DHCP enabled). We have 5 other devices connected. One of the Macbooks is choosing an address in the 169.254.x.x range. The Airport is set to connect using DHCP and router mode: Off (bridge mode).

The Network utility says: Wi-Fi has the self-assigned IP address 169.254.104.148 and will not be able to connect to the Internet.

In the AirPort utility it says the IP address and LAN IP address of the airport is 169.254.213.128.

The wifi attempts to connect but never stops trying. The wifi bars just keep lighting up. In the network utility, it says "Self-Assigned IP"

The problem was I didn't have DCHP enabled on the Airport, but when I did, the internet wouldn't work at all on all devices, when with it disabled, it worked on some.

So I contacted both my ISP (Bell/2Wire) and Apple. I had to setup the Airport to use PPPoE and I received that information over a call with my ISP.

The quickest route was to just reset both, call my ISP for PPPoE and reconfigure both.


Is there a way that my iMessages can be going to a device that is not signed in to my Apple ID? I've been made aware that my iMessages have been going to an iPad that I lent to someone a while back. I do not want this particular person to have access to my messages for several reasons. They are refusing to return it to me so that I can fix this issue.

I tried to locate the iPad on 'Find my iPhone' so that I could remotely wipe it but it is not on my list of devices. I am fairly sure I had signed out of the Apple ID before lending it out. I have changed my AppleID password in the case that the iPad is still signed on. But beyond that, I am not sure why the iPad was receiving my messages or how else I can stop it. Is it possible the messages were going to my device without the AppleID? How can I stop the messages without having the device in my possession? Appreciate any feedback, thank you.

There are multiple places in which your AppleID can be used on a given device: iMessages, FaceTime, iCloud, App Store, etc. It sounds like what is going on is that the iPad is still logged into your AppleID for iMessages, but perhaps not for other items.

Perhaps the easiest way to handle this is to change your AppleID password. You can do this on Apple's site: https://appleid.apple.com. After that is done, you will then need to go through each of your devices and update the password that is used for the App Store and Messages/FaceTime.


Using Profile Manager or OS X Server to distribute apps to a group of Macs We have around 100 Macs on our network, soon to all be managed by OS X Server and Profile Manager.

The problem we're facing right now is pushing applications to all of them that are not found in the Mac App Store.

We make use of many third party apps, and to save time it would be useful to have a way of distributing them automatically as they become available.

Can this be done with OS X Server, or is there another way of doing it?

I have a similar setup as you are describing and use Apple's Remote Desktop (ARD) application for tasks like installing and updating apps.
For apps that are .app files, you can use the "copy" command and move them directly to the /Applications folder (or other location like /Library/Quicktime for codecs as an example).
If the installer is a .pkg file, you can use the "install" command in ARD to have it install properly on the remote machine.
However, for apps that have their own installer application (I'm looking at you Adobe, and your Flash updates!) you are not able to use ARD to help with this.
Now, although this is not "automatic", you CAN schedule the time of these installs. This way you can do your updating on off hours.
I hope this info is helpful.


Windows Dissapear in Mission Control (Mac OS Catalina 10.15.5) Windows will shrink/reduce to nothing while using the Mission Control feature. This applies to both the button and the three finger gesture. No other workspaces are open, and I have attempted to both restart the system and the dock, to no success. defaults read com.apple.dock only shows that showMissionControlGestureEnabled is enabled.
Unfortunately, I lost track of when this first appeared. If someone could nudge me in the right direction to diagnose the issue, I could tinker.

This is terrible, the issue resolved itself and I do not know what did it. My general usage and workflow did not change. No restart was done since posting this question, and I've attempted to recreate my previous usage.
Apologies to any who come across this issue expecting a satisfactory solution.


Laptop Rarely Detects Wireless Network Login/Redirect Pages I've been having trouble recently connecting to wireless networks with a login page - the kind you see with Gogo Inflight, many hotels, etc. where you connect to a network, launch a browser, and it redirects you to a login page.

Recently, while talking to tech support for one such network (they ended up just giving me access based on my MAC address), they suggested it was because I had fixed DNS servers, particularly 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

Does this make any sense and if so, is there another way those should be set up to allow the detection of redirects?

System Prefs > Network... set to automatic, using DHCP. If that's what you already have set, then go to Advanced > DNS, select each custom DNS server & hit the - key.

There is usually little point to using anything other than the DNS servers allocated by your ISP or any hotspot. Custom DNS is usually a short-term fix for local server issues, not a long-term alternative.


How to expand windows fully? When I click the green plus icon in any window, I would like it to expand to the full size of my monitor, instead of having to drag the corner of the screen.

I have seen paid ($10+) tools that do this.

Is there some sort of Terminal hack or free program that would do it?

In OS X Yosemite, just click the green plus (+) icon while holding Shift (⇧) + Option (⌥) keys.

Or double click on the window's title bar while holding Shift(⇧) key (this won't work if System Preferences > Dock > Double-click a window's title bar to minimize is checked).

UPDATE

Here are proofs for those who voted down my answer before even trying if it works:

http://www.raymondcamden.com/2015/03/22/osx-yosemite-tip-maximizing-windows

  If you Google for this, you’ll see lots of people recommending holding
  alt-shift before clicking the green button.

Make the green full screen window icon on Yosemite maximize windows

  In order to maximize the window so that it fills the visible window
  content, use:

  ⌥ + Click on green icon

  In order to maximize the window both in width and height to the
  current desktop for applications like Google Chrome use:

  ⌥ + ⇧ + Click on green icon

How to change the default behaviour of the fullscreen/maximize button?

  ...by doing:

  ⌥ + ⇧ + Click on green or outer right icon (plus
  icon)

  I can maximize a window in both width and height to the current
  screen.

I tried it and it works on my MacBook Pro 13" Retina with Mac OS X Yosemite.

SUMMARY

There is no need to buy or hack something to do the following things:

Fullscreen mode: click on green icon
Resize window to it's content: ⌥ + click on green icon
Maximize window to screen size: ⌥ + ⇧ + click on green icon


How to restart/delete game data on iPhone 6 IOS 11? I want to restart Clash of Clans from the beginning, but each time I delete the app and re-download it I pick up from where I left off. I tried going into settings into the game center section and couldn't find anything useful. I did the same with iCloud and had the same result. Any suggestions?

You cannot restart clash of clans even if you delete the app, the only way to restart it is to both delete the app and also log out of gamecenter and sign into gamecenter with a different Apple ID.


How do I get a backslash when in Japanese input mode in MacOS? I've run in Japanese input mode for 6 years now. I generally had no issues. Now with OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) I can no longer type a backslash. This means in order to use the Terminal I have to completely get out of Japanese input and switch it US input where as before Yosemite if I was in Romanji mode things just worked.

How can I either (a) get it to work like it did before or (b) how do I type a backslash while in Japanese Input mode?

Note: Backslash is used in the Terminal and when programming very often. I can't imagine there isn't some way to fix this otherwise Japanese programmers would be up in arms.

Turns out there's a setting in Keyboard Settings. Change "¥" key generates to \ (Backslash)

No idea why Yosemite changed that setting from whatever it used to be or if it didn't exist before why they felt the need to change the behavior.

Google's Japanese IME has a similar option


Does it make sense to use Aperture 3 in combination with iPhoto or can you drop iPhoto? I've just ordered my first mac and as an impatient hobby photographer I've already been reading up a lot on Aperture and iPhoto.

I've seen the iPhoto '11 presentation and was very impressed with the usability and cool features.

But I know that I will need Aperture eventually to work on my photos as I like to tweak a lot of things.

I currently work with Adobe Lightroom and while I like its advanced stuff, I don't like the basics much such as the organizing, sorting, etc. What I saw in the iPhoto demo certainly looked a lot better.

I'm still reading up on aperture but I think (this is only a guesstimate) that it will be less enjoyable and less easy to sort/browse/organize your photo's in it than iPhoto. I don't mind using something dumbed down, consumer grade to do this basic stuff, but I do like something more pro to do the actual editing.

So my question is..

What's the workflow that other hobby/pro photographers here use to organize/edit their photos? Do everything in aperture? Start in aperture and export to iPhoto? Start in iPhoto and switch to aperture to edit individual photo's?

You should consider Aperture to be a replacement for iPhoto. When you switch to Aperture, you will import your iPhoto DB of photos into Aperture and work with your photos exclusively in Aperture. The features that you are used to in iPhoto will be available in Aperture.

Aperture still have a 30-day free trial available from Apple.

What you can do is make a backup of your iphoto library (because backup are good, right), import the photos into Aperture and give it a try. Over the next 30 days, when you import new photos, import them into both Aperture and iPhoto. This way, if you don't like Aperture, you still have an up-to-date iPhoto library. If you are going to switch to Aperture, then you can delete your iPhoto library to get back that space.

I am a terrible photographer and I don't mind Aperture's way of organizing v. iPhoto. Trying to keep two applications in sync with photos, however, is not an ideal solution for long-term use, IMO.


Text to Speech shortcuts with two languages I use Mac's Text to Speech function a lot. Under Settings > Speech > Text to Speech I also have set a "Key" for quick access.

Since I also want Text to Speech to read German and OS Lion offers Voices for other languages, I would like to have a second shortcut for German.

Does anyone know where I can set this? Or is the only way to constantly change the System Voice before I want a German text to be read? (And then reset the voice to Alex for English texts)? And what about French text?

What options exist for this general problem?

Say as …

You can use the say command with OS X's other voices to get different languages. Use the Thomas voice to get French pronunciation or Yannick for German.

In this example, I will use Thomas and French as this is what I know but Yannick should work as well for German text.

Try the following command in Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app:

say -v Thomas  "Bonjour. Je m'appelle Thomas."

If this is acceptable, you can wrap the say command up in an Automator service; which we will do next.

Automator Service

To create the Automator Service:

Launch Automator.app
Create a new Quick Action (previously Service)
Add a Run AppleScript action
Copy and paste in the AppleScript below:

on run {input, parameters}
    do shell script "say -v Thomas " & (quoted form of (input as string))
    return input
end run

Save the service as Speak in French

To use the service:

Select text in TextEdit or Safari
Control + Click to reveal the Context Menu
Select Services > Speak in French

Et voilà ! Other languages and voices are available.

This Automator approach allows you to keep your computer default voice set to your preferred language. While allowing selected text to be read in the alternative voice.

Available Voices and Languages

You can list the available voices and their associated languages with the command:

say -v ?

The available voices can change between versions of macOS. On macOS 10.13, the command returns:

Alex                en_US    # Most people recognize me by my voice.
Alice               it_IT    # Salve, mi chiamo Alice e sono una voce italiana.
Alva                sv_SE    # Hej, jag heter Alva. Jag är en svensk röst.
Amelie              fr_CA    # Bonjour, je m’appelle Amelie. Je suis une voix canadienne.
Anna                de_DE    # Hallo, ich heiße Anna und ich bin eine deutsche Stimme.
Carmit              he_IL    # שלום. קוראים לי כרמית, ואני קול בשפה העברית.
Damayanti           id_ID    # Halo, nama saya Damayanti. Saya berbahasa Indonesia.
Daniel              en_GB    # Hello, my name is Daniel. I am a British-English voice.
Diego               es_AR    # Hola, me llamo Diego y soy una voz española.
Ellen               nl_BE    # Hallo, mijn naam is Ellen. Ik ben een Belgische stem.
Fiona               en-scotland # Hello, my name is Fiona. I am a Scottish-English voice.
Fred                en_US    # I sure like being inside this fancy computer
Ioana               ro_RO    # Bună, mă cheamă Ioana . Sunt o voce românească.
Joana               pt_PT    # Olá, chamo-me Joana e dou voz ao português falado em Portugal.
Jorge               es_ES    # Hola, me llamo Jorge y soy una voz española.
Juan                es_MX    # Hola, me llamo Juan y soy una voz mexicana.
Kanya               th_TH    # สวัสดีค่ะ ดิฉันชื่อKanya
Karen               en_AU    # Hello, my name is Karen. I am an Australian-English voice.
Kyoko               ja_JP    # こんにちは、私の名前はKyokoです。日本語の音声をお届けします。
Laura               sk_SK    # Ahoj. Volám sa Laura . Som hlas v slovenskom jazyku.
Lekha               hi_IN    # नमस्कार, मेरा नाम लेखा है. मैं हिन्दी में बोलने वाली आवाज़ हूँ.
Luca                it_IT    # Salve, mi chiamo Luca e sono una voce italiana.
Luciana             pt_BR    # Olá, o meu nome é Luciana e a minha voz corresponde ao português que é falado no Brasil
Maged               ar_SA    # مرحبًا اسمي Maged. أنا عربي من السعودية.
Mariska             hu_HU    # Üdvözlöm! Mariska vagyok. Én vagyok a magyar hang.
Mei-Jia             zh_TW    # 您好，我叫美佳。我說國語。
Melina              el_GR    # Γεια σας, ονομάζομαι Melina. Είμαι μια ελληνική φωνή.
Milena              ru_RU    # Здравствуйте, меня зовут Milena. Я – русский голос системы.
Moira               en_IE    # Hello, my name is Moira. I am an Irish-English voice.
Monica              es_ES    # Hola, me llamo Monica y soy una voz española.
Nora                nb_NO    # Hei, jeg heter Nora. Jeg er en norsk stemme.
Paulina             es_MX    # Hola, me llamo Paulina y soy una voz mexicana.
Samantha            en_US    # Hello, my name is Samantha. I am an American-English voice.
Sara                da_DK    # Hej, jeg hedder Sara. Jeg er en dansk stemme.
Satu                fi_FI    # Hei, minun nimeni on Satu. Olen suomalainen ääni.
Serena              en_GB    # Hello, my name is Serena. I am a British-English voice.
Sin-ji              zh_HK    # 您好，我叫 Sin-ji。我講廣東話。
Tessa               en_ZA    # Hello, my name is Tessa. I am a South African-English voice.
Thomas              fr_FR    # Bonjour, je m’appelle Thomas. Je suis une voix française.
Ting-Ting           zh_CN    # 您好，我叫Ting-Ting。我讲中文普通话。
Tom                 en_US    # Hello, my name is Tom. I am an American-English voice.
Veena               en_IN    # Hello, my name is Veena. I am an Indian-English voice.
Victoria            en_US    # Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?
Xander              nl_NL    # Hallo, mijn naam is Xander. Ik ben een Nederlandse stem.
Yelda               tr_TR    # Merhaba, benim adım Yelda. Ben Türkçe bir sesim.
Yuna                ko_KR    # 안녕하세요. 제 이름은 Yuna입니다. 저는 한국어 음성입니다.
Yuri                ru_RU    # Здравствуйте, меня зовут Yuri. Я – русский голос системы.
Zosia               pl_PL    # Witaj. Mam na imię Zosia, jestem głosem kobiecym dla języka polskiego.
Zuzana              cs_CZ    # Dobrý den, jmenuji se Zuzana. Jsem český hlas.


Can I use my iMac late 2015 non-retina display in Target Mode? I'm trying to connect my Macbook Air (early 2015) to my iMac (late 2015 non-Retina display). I know that the 2015 Retina display iMac can't be used in Target Display Mode, but does that mean non-Retina display iMacs can't be either?

Here are the iMacs that support Target Display Mode:

See more: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592


Captive Portal in Mavericks I connected to a public wifi hotspot with my MacBook AIr (Mavericks) and a login window appeared. I can't recall if I first tried to navigate to a website or not. I am familiar with logging into hotspots, where the login details appear in the browser itself. In this case, however, the login details appeared in a separate window (program?).

When I selected the browser, the global menu indicated "Firefox". When I selected the login window, the menu showed "Finder". Is this a (Apple?) captive portal program? It's the first time I've seen it on any OS platform.

It's something built in the system . Sometimes it's able to detect a captive portal and it displays it in a separate window.

As @George Garside pointed out, it's a separate program located at /System/Library/CoreServices/Captive Network Assistant.app.

Also, if you have a iDevice you'll see a similar feature.


Extremely slow write speed to encrypted external drive on Mavericks Writing to a fully encrypted USB flash drive on Mavericks is extremely slow.

The drive model I used for testing was a Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 (64 GB). I tested transfer speeds by reading/writing a large file from/to both an encrypted and an unencrypted drive. I tested on a current Macbook with Mavericks and on an older machine with Mountain Lion. I used Disk Utility to format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted).

MacBook Pro (2013) with USB 3.0 running OS X 10.9.2 (13C64)

Write: 86.16 MB/sec (encrypted:   0.62 MB/sec)
Read: 181.66 MB/sec (encrypted: 151.15 MB/sec)

MacBook Pro (2007) with USB 2.0 running OS X 10.8.5 (12F45)

Write: 23.57 MB/sec (encrypted:  5.04 MB/sec)
Read:  36.23 MB/sec (encrypted: 37.87 MB/sec)

As you can see on the older machine the write speed clearly decreases when writing to the encrypted volume but is still about ten times faster compared with the newer machine running Mavericks. Could this be some recently introduced issue in FileVault or CoreStorage?

Update (2014-06-28)

The USB drive seems to have had a hardware defect from the start. I got a replacement drive (same model) which still doesn't deliver the results I would expect but at least the encrypted write speed of the 2013 MBP is now on par with the 2007 MBP.

MacBook Pro (2013) with USB 3.0 running OS X 10.9.3 (13D65)

Write: 135.41 MB/sec (encrypted:   9.29 MB/sec)
Read:  196.22 MB/sec (encrypted: 187.04 MB/sec)

MacBook Pro (2007) with USB 2.0 running OS X 10.8.5 (12F45)

Write: - MB/sec (encrypted:  9.39 MB/sec)
Read:  - MB/sec (encrypted: 37.79 MB/sec)

This still leaves the question though why the encrypted write speed to the USB drive on the 2013 MBP is less then ten percent of the regular write speed. I also compared read/write speeds before and after activating FileVault on the internal SSD of the 2013 MBP and there I couldn't detect any slowdown at all.

I have the same problem, which I'm pretty sure is due to a combination of the way write operations work on flash memory and the way core storage (or any whole-volume) encryption works.

First, write behavior: unlike volatile memory (the stuff used in the memory of your computer) or hard disks, where any bit can be written to 0 or 1 at any time, flash memory has two main states: written and erased. Within "written" are 0 and 1. When you need to write to flash memory you must write an entire block that is currently in the erased state. File system software in the OS may know what blocks are free, but the controller and storage on a flash device don't. A special way for the OS to tell an SSD to make blocks available has been devised for "bus-connected" SSDs: it's called TRIM. USB protocol stacks don't, to my knowledge, support TRIM. So, basically, flash memory continues to fill up until there are no actual erased blocks, at which point the file system has to erase and rewrite blocks by reading them, merging in the new data, erasing, and writing them back out. That's why you see small-file write performance degrade on SSDs over time.

The special circumstances of encrypted volumes is interesting: depending on the way the encryption works, it may actually encrypt an entire volume, filling all the blocks with what appears to be random data even if the blocks are actually unused and would contain zeroes. So when you turn on FileVault (or otherwise enable core storage encryption), it basically consumes the entire volume, leaving no space for write operations. The file system has to constantly read, erase and rewrite blocks so that it can rewrite them with any encrypted data you want to put on it.

Now I will say right here that this is speculation based on a reasonable understanding of how things work, but there are people who actually know the details, who may correct or improve my explanation and I hope that they will do so.


Archive/set some photos in Photos.app not to be synced with iCloud Photo Library I want to use iCloud Photo Library just to get photos I take on my phone to my computer. My Photo Stream would work fine if it was reliable. Now I have more than 5GB of photos so I have to pay at least $1 a month just to sync photos unless there is a way to download only or archive some photos not to be synced with iCloud Photo Library (yet still viewable in the app).

You can export original photos out of Photos on the Mac and then delete them.

At that point, they go into the Recently Deleted album. You can then manage things so you don't exceed your 5 GB allowance.

Both iOS and Mac preferences allow you to measure and see the storage allocation.

Then you can have a second Photos database on the Mac to store all the "offline" photos. It won't be the "system library" and it won't receive photos automatically from the cloud. You'll have to import photos manually to that second (and all other) libraries.


How do I update my iPhone 5 ios? I can't download apps from the AppStore with my iPhone 5. I keep getting a pop-up message; "this app needs ios 6". How do I update my ios?

From the Settings on your iPhone 5 you can check for updates:

Select Settings [The app that looks like gears]
Tap General
Tap Software Update and follow the instructions.

Alternatively, and preferably, you should use iTunes on your Mac or PC to first back up your iPhone then install the updates.

Plug your iPhone into your Mac or PC using the USB Cable that came with your iPhone.  This is the cable you use to charge your iPhone with.
Follow the instructions presented in iTunes.


Delete videos on OS X I have videos taken with Photo on my iPhone

How do I delete them on OS X

I followed this question Deleting photos

Imported to Photos.app, highlight them all and chose delete. I then get a prompt saying they will be deleted from all my devices and confirmed. They are deleted from my Mac but they come back every time I attach my iPhone again i.e. they are not deleted from the device even though OS X says they should be.

Relevant section from the manual: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21294?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Summary: you can delete photos/videos through Photos/iCloud (https://icloud.com), but they are not removed immediately. They are moved into a Recently Deleted album (like the Trash on your Mac) and deleted automatically later. (They are kept for 40 days so it tales a long time for them to disappear)

Note in Photos.app this is not a normal album but accessible by File->Show Recently Deleted.

You can open the Recently Deleted album and delete the videos/photos from there to remove them from the device permanently. Make sure that you have a backup, because you can not undo this operation.


MacBook late 2016 does not recognize internal SSD. I can boot up from an external SSD that has macOS installed I have a MacBook that will boot up from an external SSD that has macOS Sierra installed.
However once I boot into macOS and see my disks using diskutil list, no physical internal drive
is found.  Only the external SSD as disk0.

The internal SSD on a MacBook from 2016 is soldered onto the logic board, and after opening the MacBook, there was no corrosion found, and no liquid was ever spilled onto it.
So I don't think that the SSD died.

Is it possible that if the SSD is alive and well, that it then wouldn't be listed as a useable drive?
I had deleted all the partitions like "Macintosh HD" and "Recovery disk" by mistake, and maybe now the drive is not accessible by the MacBook?

Also, its worth knowing, the MacBook came with OSX - El Capitan, but still boots with macOS Sierra.

Thanks for your help in advance.

first you should go into macOS Recovery and go to Disk Utility. Select Macintosh HD and then Info. See if the disk is listed as bootable by Disk Utility. If it doesn't say bootable, then try running first aid. If the Disk is not recognized, then see if it is recognized when booting macOS Sierra from the external drive. By doesn't boot up, if you mean it is stuck on the Apple logo, then you can try resetting the SMC and NVRAM/PRAM. Also, try using power-on self diagnostic (you must disable Firmware Password). If none of those work, then try using Single user mode (reboot then Command + S). After that, run fsck_apfs. I am aware that this probably won't work if the MBP won't boot but if you can access macOS Recovery, then you can rest assured that this is not an issue with your SSD being dead. Good luck!


Cannot install hiera by brew I am on macOS High Sierra

The first command (http://macappstore.org/hiera/)

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

looks OK

The 2nd command results in the error:

brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask

However, as I understand it is not needed now.

The 3rd command results in the error:

brew cask install hiera
==> Satisfying dependencies
==> Downloading https://downloads.puppetlabs.com/mac/hiera-1.3.4.dmg
Already downloaded: /Users/anarinsky/Library/Caches/Homebrew/Cask/hiera--1.3.4.dmg
==> Verifying checksum for Cask hiera
==> Installing Cask hiera
==> Running installer for hiera; your password may be necessary.
==> Package installers may write to any location; options such as --
appdir are ignored.
Password:
==> installer: Package name is hiera-1.3.4
==> installer: Installing at base path /
==> installer: The install failed (The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.)
==> Purging files for version 1.3.4 of Cask hiera
Error: Command failed to execute!
==> Failed command:
/usr/bin/sudo -E -- /usr/sbin/installer -pkg
/usr/local/Caskroom/hiera/1.3.4/hiera-1.3.4.pkg -target /

==> Standard Output of failed command:
installer: Package name is hiera-1.3.4
installer: Installing at base path /
installer: The install failed (The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.)
==> Standard Error of failed command:
==> Exit status of failed command:
#<Process::Status: pid 10228 exit 1>

I suspect that installing at the base path /  does not work.

Short answer

Please try brew cask install puppet-agent. Hiera is included.

More details

I tried installing the https://downloads.puppetlabs.com/mac/hiera-1.3.4.dmg file that the cask recipe install manually and got the following warning:

  This package is incompatible with this version of OS X and may fail to >install.

  Installing this package may damage your system, and the installation may >fail. To stop the program and the installation, click “Cancel >Installation”.

I did some googling and found that 1.3.4 is very old.

from: https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/HI-533

  Hiera 1.3.4 is old (> 2 years). Much older than OSx 10.11.6. There are >later releases of hiera,"

from: https://docs.puppet.com/hiera/3.1/

  To get started with Hiera, you’ll need to do all of the following:

  Make sure it’s installed. Hiera ships with Puppet agent, so install the >puppet-agent package if you haven’t already. (Linux, Windows, OS X.)


To-Do List App with Sync, Repeating To-Dos for daily food tracking I'm on a diet plan and I'm looking for a simple repeating  To-Do checklist application for food tracking with the following features:

Sync to a cloud or web-based service where changes can be made
Able to repeat to-dos list
Notes
Groups / Filters / Folders for various food groups such as fruits, vegetables,

Can anyone recommend a to-do app with this functionality?

Check the out "Things". Things is a great to-do app that has cloud sync, repeating to-dos, and notes. For organization, a "to-do item" can be tagged, placed in a project (like a folder), or in an Area Of Responsibility (like a tag). Things is very flexible and would probably work for your diet plan.

You can try the app for free, but the Mac version is $49.99, and iPhone version is $9.99. Unfortunately, there is no web-app.

https://culturedcode.com/things/


"Not Enough Storage" message preventing me from using iphone 4S I am using an iPhone 4S. This morning, the "Not Enough Storage" message popped up on my screen and refused to go away. This means that while I can open apps using siri, the message "blocks" me from using the touchscreen. So I can't even switch the phone off to reset it as I cannot slide the power bar off.

Another way to switch the phone off will be to just let the battery drain but at 85% charge, it is going to take a long time! Anyone knows how I can get rid of this message that will not go away?

Hold the home button and power button at the same time until the phone restarts. Connect it to your computer and delete some stuff :D


How can I delete duplicate rows in Microsoft Excel 2011? Every 2nd Thursday our team has to produce reports from data provided to us in a Excel spreadsheet. Typically this data has about 23,000 rows of data. The problem is that since June these spreadsheets now have duplicated rows, due to a problem in the data warehouse they’re produced in.

I don’t understand anything about that side of thing, but what I do know is that we need to find an easy way to delete every second row. At present we are splitting the data into 3 spreadsheets and I have 3 staff members deleting every 2nd row in their respective spreadsheet. When they’re all finished we merge them back into one spreadsheet to produce our reports. This is a big time waster (it still takes hours to do), creates a lot of stress due to other work getting delayed, and ruins morale in the team.

We’re using Excel 2011 on iMacs running El Capitan, so I was thinking that a macro could do this, right? Can someone confirm if this is the case and if yes how we would go about it?

This answer assumes:

you have a header row and, because of that, the first row containing your data is Row 2.

Solution

Open the Excel spreadsheet in its original state (i.e. All duplicate rows are adjacent to each other)
Go to Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor
This will bring up a Project window with the name of your first sheet highlighted - Double-click on the sheet name
In the code window that appears, enter the code below (you should be able to just copy & paste it)

Sub DeleteEverySecondRow()
    For i = Cells(Rows.Count, "a").End(xlUp).Row To 2 Step -2
        Rows(i).Delete
    Next i
End Sub

Close the window and return back to your spreadsheet
Now go to Tools > Macro > Macros…
In the Macro window that appears, select the DeleteEverySecondRow macro and click on the Run button
Now wait a while for the macro to finish (how long it takes depends on how many rows you have - but it should take no more than a few minutes at most)
After it’s finished every second row will be deleted

Any problems, please let me know.

NOTE

I've answered this question on the basis of the original title and the requirement you've specified (i.e. to delete every second row). However, keep in mind that if you've sorted the data in such a way that you're duplicate rows are no longer adjacent to each other, then this macro will not achieve what you actually need.


How can I select the arrow on image capture on mojave? I usually monosnap to add annotations (such as arrows etc) to screenshots. With the Mojave update, mac now has its own screen capture default tool.

I would like to use it, but I cannot select the arrow tool for some reason. How can I select it?

Also is there a tool to obscure sensitive areas in the screenshot?

finally what is this tool called? Once launched it doens't show an application name on the toolbar, and so I cannot find much references for it.

Those arrow "formats" are tied to actual forms to be uses, not free-form lines created by the pen and marker tools.

If you add a form from the menu behind the square/circle icon and have it selected the arrow menu items become active (as a matter of fact the form menu already offers an arrow as a template).

The yellow annotations are my "comments" here, the red ones are the results I added in a previous round of annotating. :)

Here I added a line first, now the arrow menu items are selectable. I chose one and the red line to the right turned into the arrow you see. You can also add an arrow directly from the form menu (not shown).

Oh, and btw, the added lines/arrows don't just have end points but also a middle "curving" point already, so it's easy to curve them.


Your account is temporarily unavailable. Try again later When try to download an app from the AppStore I receive this error message. Is there anything I can do besides waiting?

  Your account is temporarily unavailable. Try again later.

First, open the App Store app and swipe all the way to the bottom of the page. Tap the "Apple ID" button (It should show your Apple ID in the button).

Next, tap "View Apple ID" and log in using your App Store password. If something is wrong, you'll be notified to rectify it at this point. Sometimes it's an expired credit card, missing code, etc.

You can also go to "http://appleid.apple.com" with the email address and password you use for the App Store and ensure there are no issues there. If there are, you'll be prompted once you successfully log in.


How to Fix Generic File Icons in macOS Catalina? How to restore file icons when they have gone generic in Mac OS Catalina ?

Rebuild the LaunchServices Cache using this terminal command (Tested and works on macOS Catalina 10.15.2):

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

DropBox Note:
If you have Dropbox running, you may have to: 1) restart the mac. 2) Pause Syncing and wait for a minute or two. 3) Resume syncing. This should force DropBox to rescan the shares and re-attribute the files and folders.