Internal microphone only works when Siri is activated - MacOS 10.13.2 https://imgur.com/a/jNpvW (video of the bug)

Internal microphone works only when Siri is activated.
I started noticing this after installing Boom 2 (I think), which I've uninstalled now and the problem still persists. I've tried restarting, creating a new user, resetting PRAM, and resetting SMC.
I've also tried messing around with the Audio MIDI Setup.

I've noticed something interesting there which might be relevant. I tried muting the microphone and activating Siri, the microphone is automatically unmuted when Siri is activated and re-muted when Siri is deactivated.

I could solve the issue by activating the dictation functionality. You can find it on "System Settings" > "Keyboard".


Use both Delete and Backspace in Macbook Delete key in my MacBook Pro works as backspace in other Windows keyboards and
Fn + Delete works as 'delete forward' as an ordinary delete key in Windows keyboard.

How can I change the keyboard setting so that I can use both 'delete forward' and 'delete backward' using only one key-in?

For example, Eject CD key is rarely used, so I'd like to use this key as 'delete forward' key and Fn+Eject CD for ejecting  CD. Can I do something like this?

You can use KeyRemap4MacBook to remap the eject key to forward delete.

Partway down this List of Prepared Settings are details under "Change Eject Key."


What is the cheapest way to upgrade from OS X10.4 to 10.6? I have been living in the past, and it is finally catching up to me.
What is the cheapest way to upgrade from Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.6?

Spend the 30 bucks to get the 10.6 DVD and then use it for a clean install.

There's no reason to buy 10.5 so you can "upgrade" to 10.6. The 10.6 DVD is exactly the same as all the other release DVDs.


How to disable "Sync Apps" and "Open iTunes when this iDevice is connected" without forcing a sync? I don't want to lose all the stuff on my device. Any way to stop my iPad from automatically syncing with iTunes when connected to the Mac? I turned these features on when I bought it, but in the long run it's not such a great idea.

If you go in to iTunes and go to Preferences -> Devices, and check the box that says Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically.


WD Passport Ultra can't mount on Mac, flashing lights, but can be read on Windows. What is broken? Update:

After about 3 weeks. I plugged in again into my MacBook and left it there. After more than an hour I came back and the drive showed up on my Mac again.  (So somehow the problem got fixed.)

I ran First Aid on Mac's Disk Utility. It says the drive appears to be OK. So I don't know what fixed it exactly.

Problem:

When I plug my WD Passport Ultra 4TB external hard drive WDBBKD0040BBK-0A (with 2TB of family photos) into my MacBook Pro it has fast flashing of light and can't be mounted. It can be read on a Windows laptop (after Windows automatically fixed an error).  I tried opening up Disk Utility on my Mac, but it just spins forever trying to mount the external hard drive. Nothing ever shows up on Disk Utility.

How it broke:

The WD Passport Ultra was plugged into my MacBook on battery. I was not actively reading or writing to the external hard drive, but it did have a list of directories open (no individual photo files, but just the directory names).  The battery ran out.

When I charged up my Mac again it says that the disk was not ejected properly. Ever since that my WD hard drive has the flashing problem and can't be mounted on my Mac.  I tried changing the Mac laptop, changing the USB cord, same problem.

I then plugged in my WD hard drive to a Windows laptop. It says that it detected an error and had the option of automatically fixing it. I clicked "Start" and let it ran, but it didn't have a progress bar and just had a "Cancel" button. After running for 3-5 minutes, my mom came in and unplugged the external hard drive forcefully (I yelled at her for doing that). We tried plugging it into the Windows laptop again, and my files and photos could be read!!  But it still can't be read on Mac and has the flashing problem.

Why is it like this? What is broken?  How can I test what is broken?

I'm asking because I have had accidentally unplugged other WD external hard drives without ejecting in the past while not writing data, like in this case, but the drives never broke. What is up in this case?

I'm curious if this is something that happens a lot or if it's just a less durable hard drive I got. Because I'm at a point where WD's warranty can give me a new drive to replace it, or I can fix this drive myself.  (I have copied the photos out to a new drive on a Windows machine.)  Because if it is something that happens with the same frequency in all drives, shouldn't I just fix it?

What is the best free software program on Windows that might potentially fix my problem?  Mac programs are good too if they can actually access it since my Mac can't even mount it.

This happens because OSX "forces" a disk check/repair in the background before mounting the drive (since it was ejected improperly), so it will simply appear to not be mounting until that completes.
It seems it was fixed for you when you let the check complete---
A quick way to "fix" this is to manually force quit the fsck process from activity monitor.


Lost audio while converting video files in OS X 10.7.4 I was using Lion's conversion feature to change .MPG video files to a compatible format (set by OS X). The files are now viewable in QuickTime and iMovie, but the audio is completely gone. Has anyone else come across a similar issue? Would I by chance be missing a codec required to convert .MPG files correctly? Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Sounds like an issue with muxed audio. See here. Also, you might try converting them with Mpeg Streamclip, which is free software.


How should I organise my plist? I'm creating a game where the player can unlock worlds, where they can unlock levels within those worlds, each levels has a highscore, and so on.

I was wondering in which way should I store this data?  I was originally thinking of making a number of separate plist files, but that seems like an approach which could end up spiralling out of control.

Has anyone approached this problem and come up with a decent solution?

Most apps like that store data in a SQLite3 database rather than property lists. I recommend this route instead—actual implementation/etc is off-topic here.


Sync playlist to iPod on other networked iMac I have a main iMac with an iTunes library that I share with Apple TV and an iMac my kids use. I want my kids to be able to plug in their iPod and sync it with a playlist I have set up, but the playlists don't appear as options on their computer, even though they can see and play them through the shared library. How am I supposed to accomplish this?

iPod/iPhone syncing only work with local files, meaning you have to copy your files to your kids computer or have them sync at yours (yes, it's a pain both ways).

Home Sharing somewhat helps here because it allows to copy purchased stuff automatically as explained in HT3819:

  You can also choose to have iTunes automatically import purchases you make on any of your Home Sharing computers to your own library. To do so, select the library and use the Settings button at the lower right of the iTunes window to check what you'd like copied.


iPhone 6 Photo stream deleting When I delete photos from my iPhone on My Photo Stream, will the same photos also be deleted on other devices connected to the same Apple ID automatically?

It depends - if the photo is out of the Photo Stream Window and your deletion included the message that "this photo will be deleted from all devices" then yes - one delete wipes it forever.

If not, you may need to clean things up using iCloud.com and/or wiping your entire photo stream once you have the photos you wish to keep stored outside photo stream.

You can review the basics on cleaning up Photo Stream here:

How do you erase pictures from the Photo Stream album on an iPhone running iOS 5?

Things have changed since then and you have more options:

If you have sensitive photos, you can add them all to a hidden album. That places them in a "no thumbnail" / no preview state. If that's not enough, look over your current Deleted Items online directly from the cloud using https://www.icloud.com/#photos

That way, you know you are working with the authoritative version of all photos stored in iCloud.

Delete anything you don't need from deleted items to make sure your account is working and make it easy to permanently delete the offending images you want really purged.
Delete the images you want - follow up with purging them from Deleted Items.
Check your devices to make sure they followed the cloud deletion and don't have any stragglers.

Pay attention to the message that arrives when you delete an item. If it says it will be deleted on all devices, you know that device is in sync. If not, you will have to patrol all devices. This is easier by going to Settings - https://www.icloud.com/#settings - and making a check list of all the devices that could have your Photos from the stream.


Replacing OS X with Windows/Linux on aging Mac I have an old 2008 13" Macbook4,1 model (not pro) running Snow Leopard with 4GB of RAM and 160GB of HDD. It is adequate for my needs at the moment but the OS is no longer being supported by Apple (NTP bug for example).

Thinking about the future, I am considering wiping OS X and dedicating the entire disk to Windows 7 or Linux. I've found here that Windows 7 runs well on it and Linux seemed to be ok on it when I used a recent LiveCD to test it.

So, my question is, are there any issues with removing OS X from the system completely? Will it break anything? Is it needed for anything?

EDIT: Upgrade to Lion is out too, according to wikipedia support just run out - Oct '14.

EDIT2: Apparently OS X is needed for firmware updates. But since this is a 2008 MacBook, it is extremely unlikely they will release new firmware for it.

Do you have the original install disks for Mac OS X? If so, there shouldn't be any issues with wiping the Mac partition completely off the hdd.

However, if you don't have those disks, I would strongly recommend keeping the Mac OS X install and creating a new partition (shrinking the Mac partition) for the new OS. Mainly because if something goes wrong (or if you don't like either alternative) it's much easier to recover a MacBook using the Mac OS. I think you can get away with 5-10GB for the Snow Leopard partition.

If you have the original install disks, you shouldn't have an issue with restoring it.

Linux will take some tinkering to get working properly. I had a particularly rough time getting wifi to work in Ubuntu 12.blah on an older MacBook Pro. Plus side: With a laptop that old, there should be a decent amount of documentation for making your hardware work with Linux. I'd stick with Ubuntu if you like fancy, or Linux Mint if you like simple. Windows 7 (if installed through Bootcamp) works pretty well without much hassle.


Is it possible to work with a Mac Pro through a MacBook? I've been thinking of getting a Mac Pro to do some serious graphics work.  However, I don't have the funds to get it along with a Retina display at the same time. The display, keyboard, speakers, etc. would have to wait a few months.

If I get the Mac Pro, can I run it through my MacBook Air? If so, would this also work for a Mac Mini, as I might end up with that instead?

I'm going to elaborate on the answers given so far (the answer + associated comments above) in case you or someone needs more details.

Screen Sharing is what Apple calls the VNC / remote desktop technology built into OS X for many years now. I'm assuming your machine is running 10.10 Yosemite. Instructions for earlier versions of OS X are similar.

Screen Sharing allows the Mac--in this case the Mac pro sans monitor--to display on another machine on the local network; for you, your Air. Screen Sharing is configured in the Sharing pane of System Preferences. System Preferences can be accessed from the Apple menu at the top left of the screen, for example.

You may need to borrow a monitor or get help at an Apple store near you. I'd be surprised if they didn't let you borrow one of their monitors to configure your Mac Pro for Screen Sharing.

Here is what you need to do from your Mac Pro:

Run System Preferences.
Click on "Sharing" in the third row.
Click the check box next to "Screen Sharing".
Notice the green dot and "Screen Sharing: On" to the right of that check box. Underneath that note, it says: "Other users can access your computer's screen at vnc://x.x.x.x/ [though the x's will be replaced by numbers] or by looking for "[Your Mac's Name]" in the Finder sidebar."
Take note of your Mac Pro's Name. Note that you can change your Mac's name at the top of "Sharing" in System Preferences if you want to.
Make sure that both your Mac Pro and your MacBook Air are connected to your home network.
Move to your Air.
Go to the Finder (by clicking the smiling Finder guy on the Dock or by clicking on the Desktop background.
Press the COMMAND key + n to open a Finder window.
Look in the sidebar, the leftmost part of the window that shows a list of folders, disks, etc. Locate "Shared", a header that will only show up if a machine on your network is sharing files (and / nor Screen Sharing).
Under Shared, you should see the name of your Mac Pro. Click it. You should see a button near the upper-right corner of your Finder Window.
Click that button. That should launch the Screen Sharing application that will allow you to interact with your Mac Pro. Type in the username and password that you set up as your user account on your Mac Pro. Note that screen refresh will be slower than a real monitor and are dependent on the speed of your network.

Good luck! I hope this helps. I use VNC / Screen Sharing between my Mac and my iPad all the time. My Mac is usually in the basement, so if I need to look at something quick, it's often easiest just to use VNC (I use Remoter VNC) on the iPad. (For your case, might I humbly suggest that you consider buying a used monitor temporarily. You could probably get one for $50 or less and it would most likely be a better experience.)

Note: I put in a lot of detail. I am not trying to insult your intelligence. I just didn't want to skip over any steps that might cause confusion.


Can I charge a MacBook Air using the Thunderbolt 1 port? I have a 2013 MacBook Air that is not charging. I suspect that the problem is the MagSafe port (or, more likely, the I/O board). An iFixit Answer implies that it is possible to charge it using the Thunderbolt port. Is this true? And if so, what cables would I need to actually be able to plug it in?

No, Thunderbolt ports cannot be used to charge pre-USB-C MacBooks.

If this were possible, the Apple Thunderbolt Display would surely have shipped with only a single Thunderbolt cable rather than its Thunderbolt + MagSafe hydra:


ZSH started printed env on startup I started XTerm today and for some reason ZSH is printing what looks like env when my shell starts up. I am just wondering if there is a way to track down what is doing this so I can disable it. Below is the output when the shells starts

Last login: Wed Jul 11 19:22:03 on ttys000
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.G1oq8Ke9bW/Render
COLORFGBG='7;0'
COLORTERM=truecolor
DISPLAY=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.tY95B5y3iQ/org.macosforge.xquartz:0
GPG_TTY=/dev/ttys000
HOME=/Users/joshuastroup
ITERM_PROFILE=Default
ITERM_SESSION_ID=w0t0p0:AF741932-F358-4C2C-9A23-47134F004CE3
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LOGNAME=joshuastroup
OLDPWD=/Users/joshuastroup
PATH='/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/share/dotnet:/opt/X11/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands:/Applications/Wireshark.app/Contents/MacOS:/Applications/Xamarin Workbooks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/path-bin:/Users/joshuastroup/.nvm/versions/node/v8.9.3/bin:/usr/local/Cellar/php/7.2.6/bin:/Users/joshuastroup/bin:/Users/joshuastroup/binaries'
PWD=/Users/joshuastroup
SHELL=/bin/zsh
SHLVL=1
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.8a9z6UEe0q/Listeners
TERM=xterm-256color
TERM_PROGRAM=iTerm.app
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=3.1.7
TERM_SESSION_ID=w0t0p0:AF741932-F358-4C2C-9A23-47134F004CE3
TMPDIR=/var/folders/75/kd4myl4s32l596p9fqhxv_pr0000gn/T/
USER=joshuastroup
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x0:0:0

And below is the output of env

[~] env                                                                                19:23:54
TERM_SESSION_ID=w0t0p0:AF741932-F358-4C2C-9A23-47134F004CE3
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.8a9z6UEe0q/Listeners
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.G1oq8Ke9bW/Render
COLORFGBG=7;0
ITERM_PROFILE=Default
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
PWD=/Users/joshuastroup
SHELL=/bin/zsh
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=3.1.7
TERM_PROGRAM=iTerm.app
PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/php/7.2.6/bin:/Users/joshuastroup/bin:/usr/local/bin:/Users/joshuastroup/binaries:/usr/local/opt/go/libexec/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/share/dotnet:/opt/X11/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands:/Applications/Wireshark.app/Contents/MacOS:/Applications/Xamarin Workbooks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/path-bin:/Users/joshuastroup/.nvm/versions/node/v8.9.3/bin:/usr/local/Cellar/php/7.2.6/bin:/Users/joshuastroup/bin:/Users/joshuastroup/binaries
DISPLAY=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.tY95B5y3iQ/org.macosforge.xquartz:0
COLORTERM=truecolor
TERM=xterm-256color
HOME=/Users/joshuastroup
TMPDIR=/var/folders/75/kd4myl4s32l596p9fqhxv_pr0000gn/T/
USER=joshuastroup
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
LOGNAME=joshuastroup
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x0:0:0
ITERM_SESSION_ID=w0t0p0:AF741932-F358-4C2C-9A23-47134F004CE3
SHLVL=1
OLDPWD=/Users/joshuastroup
GPG_TTY=/dev/ttys000
ZSH=/Users/joshuastroup/.oh-my-zsh
PAGER=less
LESS=-R
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
LSCOLORS=Gxfxcxdxbxegedabagacad
NVM_DIR=/Users/joshuastroup/.nvm
NVM_CD_FLAGS=-q
NVM_BIN=/Users/joshuastroup/.nvm/versions/node/v8.9.3/bin
_=/usr/bin/env

I suggest you gather some more information.  For each of the login scripts (/etc/zshenv, /etc/zprofile, /etc/zshrc, /etc/zlogin, .zshenv, .zprofile, .zshrc, .zlogin), add a line at the beginning that prints to stdout something like ".zshenv starts" and a line at the end like ".zshenv ends".  Once you figure out which script is responsible, scatter some print statements to pin down the exact command.


Application for Scheduling Tweets There seem to be several Mac applications that will send tweets scheduled in advance, but I'm having a hard time figuring out which is good. The bulk of the Google results are more than a year old.

Does anyone have any firsthand experience, and can you recommend something?

Hoot suite for the iPad. But I'm not a heavy user.


Standard Function keys using External Keyboard on 2016 Macbook Pro (touch) I recently picked up a 2016 Macbook Pro (with Touch Bar). I use an external keyboard. There used to be a setting in the keyboard system preferences that "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys". That is no longer an option. Is there a way to get that back?

At least in Sierra 10.12.3, the Keyboard panel of System Preferences has a check box for that which says:

  Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys on external keyboards

  When this option is selected, press the Fn key to use the special features printed on each key


Pretend to be specific Mac OS X version when running app I've purchased a Mac OS X app (outside the App Store) that seems to have arbitrary limitations based on the Mac OS X version. It is fully functional on El Capitan, but has a few features that it simply won't allow on Mavericks. One of these features is pretty basic — reading / writing a preferences file — so I'm guessing the developer simply wanted to narrow down the range of testing scenarios when implementing it, rather than it actually requiring Yosemite / El Capitan functionality.

Question: Is there a way to start a Mac OS X app in a manipulated environment such that I can supply specific values of my own choosing when the application calls methods like [[NSProcessInfo processInfo] operatingSystemVersion] or isOperatingSystemAtLeastVersion or whatever?

I know for one app that had a similar problem with we were able to get it to work by modifying /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist

I would say that is NOT a recommended approach.  However, you may be able to do something tricky so that when your app environment reads that plist it gets a different version then the rest of the system.


Is it possible to remove the trash icon from the dock on macOS Catalina? I keep cleaning it once any file goes to it even though I have it set to clean automatically. I just deleted an important file thanks to this habit. I’d like to modify things so I can save myself from the practice of quickly emptying trash.

Is there a way to hide the trash can from the dock?

No.

Neither the Trash nor the Finder can be removed from the dock.


How to 'scroll down' when there's nothing more to show? (cause I like the blank space) When I'm working in a text document, I like to start typing at the top of the window or in the middle. I hate when the carat/cursor gets all the way to the bottom and there's no blank space left underneath where my typing will appear. It's especially annoying when I'm adding to the document by drag&drop of outside text - much easier when your target is half a page/screen, not a 5mm line.

So is there any way to push the 'last line' up the screen and create blank space? eg. in TextEdit or Textmate or Coda or a similar app.

There really isn't a neat way of doing this.  I normally hit Command + down arrow.  This will bring me to the end of the page, where I can then press enter a few times, or if using textmate, you can create a snippet to insert carriage returns for you.  With an application like textexpander you can program a keypress to add carriage returns for you.


Large UI on 4k Resolution I am using a Mac pro with MacOS Sierra 10.12.4
When using a Wacom Cintiq Pro 16 at 4k, the UI scale gets really large.

On 2k the ui looks as it should.

Is there any reason why the UI would become that large at 4k?
It's not possible to properly work like that.
How can I fix this issue?

I have a MacBook Pro early 2013 so I have to drive my Cintiq Pro 16 at 2k.

I think on 4k, Mac OS knows scales UI bigger, because otherwise it would be too small (imagine those 2k Interface Elements at about half the size).

Its probably an issue with the Wacom Driver, that makes it impossible to scale the Interface at 2k.

Do you have scaling options for the Cintiq on 4k? If you do, its probably a Wacom Driver issue.

I recommend to post a topic on the official Wacom Forum. The Wacom Staff answers really fast.
http://forum.wacom.eu (Wacom Forum Europe)


What is a combo update and how is it different than the regular update? What is a combo update and how is it different from a normal update?

When Apple releases a minor system version (e.g. 10.8.1 -> 10.8.2), they generally release the update in two forms:

A delta update containing all of the files that changed in the latest update, which therefore can only upgrade from the immediately previous version.

For example, in order to install the 10.8.2 delta update, your system must already be updated to 10.8.1.

A combo update containing all of the changes since the original release of that major version, and therefore can be used on anything from the same major version.

For example, the 10.8.2 combo update can update from either 10.8.0 or 10.8.1; it can even be reinstalled on a system that's already running 10.8.2.
Similarly, the 10.7.5 combo update can be run on anything from 10.7.0 to 10.7.5.
(Note that for the first update to a major version, e.g. 10.8.1 or 10.7.1, there's no real distinction between delta and combo, so Apple only publishes a single update form.)
If you have a Mac that's running the next-to-latest version and want to update it, the delta is technically all you need. But some people (myself included) tend to prefer the combo, for a couple of reasons:

I update a lot of computers, so to save time I carry the latest updates on my tools HD. It's simplest to just carry the combo update and not worry about the deltas as well, since you can use the combo anyplace the delta would be appropriate.

If anything has gone wrong with any of the previous updates, running the combo will generally clean up the problem, while a delta might leave it broken. In fact, sometimes re-running the combo on an already-updated computer will fix problems like this, so it's a useful trick to have in your troubleshooting repertoire. (Mind you, the types of problems this solves are rare; but they tend to be ones that otherwise would've involved hours of troubleshooting and hair-tearing, so it's often worth a try.) (Also, you can't/shouldn't reinstall even a combo update after applying a supplemental or security update that came out after it; that'd be a downgrade, and might cause problems.)

UPDATE: There's a complication I left out, and some other things have changed and gotten messier since I originally wrote this. So I'm issuing a supplemental update.
One major recent change is that, starting with macOS Big Sur (aka macOS 11), Apple isn't releasing OS updates in downloadable format. Updates come via the Software Update mechanism, either in System Preferences or with the softwareupdate command. It automatically figures out what update(s) you need, so this question is a bit moot.
The complication I left out is that in addition to the delta and combo minor-version updates I describe above, there are also even-more-minor OS updates, called "supplemental updates" and "security updates" that don't change the version number, just the build number. For instance, the original release of Catalina 10.15.7 was build 19H2, but then Apple released a supplemental update which brought it up to build 19H15, and then security update 2020-001 brought it up to build 19H114, and then security update 2021-001 was build 19H512, and then... well, I'll get to that.
Note: in the build numbers, the first "19" corresponds to the major version (Catalina v10.15), the "H" corresponds to the minor version (".7"), and everything after that is the more specific sub-minor-version number.
Supplemental and security updates are usually combo-like within the release they apply to. For example, if you have 10.15.7 build 19H2 or 19H15, you can install security update 2021-001 without needing to install the intermediate updates first. But not always -- for some reason, security update 2020-006 for Mojave 10.14.6 required installing security update 2020-005 first (although neither 2020-005 nor 2020-007 required any earlier security updates).
Supplemental updates generally come out right after another update/release, as a quick fix for problems discovered in that update/release. Sometimes, the installers for that release get updated to roll in the supplementary update. For instance, if you download either the Mojave 10.6.4 delta or combo update, you'll get a package that includes the updates in the 10.14.6 supplemental update (actually, there were several 10.14.6 supplemental updates, but let's not talk about that).
The supplemental updates for Catalina 10.15.7 are even weirder. The first one wasn't rolled into either the 10.15.7 delta or combo updates. It was also released in two forms itself, a delta version that could only update from earlier builds of 10.15.7, and a "combo" version that -- if I'm reading its Distribution file right -- can only update from 10.15.6 (or be installed on top of itself), but cannot update from earlier builds of 10.15.7!
And then there's this month, February 2021. On Feb 1, Apple released macOS Big Sur 11.2, and also parallel security updates numbered 2021-001 for Mojave 10.14.6 and Catalina 10.15.7, both in the usual combo-within-version form. Normal so far. But almost immediately after that, on Feb 8, another round of security updates was released. For some reason, the Big Sur update got a new minor version number (11.2.1), for Mojave this was called Security Update 2021-002, and the Catalina update was called "macOS Catalina 10.15.7 Supplemental Update" (not to be confused with the "macOS 10.15.7 Supplemental Update (Delta)" and "macOS 10.15.7 Supplemental Combo Update" that came out earlier).
(The 10.15.7 update may've gotten a different name because, in addition to the security updates, it apparently also contains a fix for a battery charging problem.)
But the naming on this new Catalina 10.15.7 update is even more inconsitent than that. If you look at that download page for it, the title is "Security Update 2021-001 (Catalina)" (identical to the Feb 1 update), but the body text calls it "macOS Catalina 10.15.7 supplemental update". If you download the file, it's named "SecUpd2021-001Catalina.dmg" (again, identical to the earlier update's filename). Mounting it reveals a volume named "macOS Catalina 10.15.7 Supplemental Update" containing an installer package named "SecUpd2021-001Catalina.pkg" (again, identical to the earlier update's filename). Then, when you open the package in the Installer application, it calls itself "macOS Catalina 10.15.7 Supplemental Update".
Aaaaaaaa!
Maybe I'll just call it build 19H524 for the sake of my sanity. At least it's a proper combo-like update-any-earlier-build-of-10.15.7 updater.


Can I delete the video part of a Live Photo and just keep the photo? I want to shoot all my photos as Live Photos but only if I can quickly review and delete the video part of the Live Photo to save space. Is this possible?

Starting with iOS 9.3 and macOS El Capitan 10.11.4, Photos can strip the video portion of a Live Photo natively.

On your Mac, right-click the Live Photo, then Duplicate 1 Photo.
On iOS, open the Share Sheet from your Live Photo, then tap Duplicate.

Select Duplicate as Still Photo, and you are then free to delete the original Live Photo.

You can even select multiple Live Photos and process them as a batch this way. This can prove especially useful starting with iOS 10.3 and macOS Sierra 10.12.4, which provide a new built-in smart album containing all your Live Photos. Simply go into Albums view and scroll down to Live Photos right below Selfies.


How can I activate my Iphone 4 without sim and wi-fi? I have an old Iphone 4 with iOS 7.1.2 and I lost the carrier sim which it is locked,and the wi-fi  connection don't works at all, how can I activate it to use this like an Ipod?  (sorry for my bad english)

Get a sim don't activate it or use someone else's sim for a second. It's only locked to the provider so by a sim from that provider an no one else or borrow someone's who is with that provider or call that provider an ask them to unlock it


Where'd My iTunes Today Widget Go? The iTunes extensions has vanished as an optional widget for my Notification Center.

How do I get it to unvanish?

I tried the solution in this post, which was to run:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -seed

It did not reappear.

Poking around,

I eventually found what looks like it might be the right thing

,

but it doesn't seem to want to load:

What else can I try to get this widget back in action?

I'm not sure why, but your file icons, and other various things shown in the screenshots are not what I see on my system. I run a 10,1 model so perhaps its just my system being old and boring looking. If not, I feel like some configurations you've changed might be the issue.

I honestly suggest reinstalling. You don't need to wipe any data, just re-download the installer for macOS 10.13 High Sierra A (Or the most recent downloader for Sierra, you don't specify which OS you have) from the Mac App Store and start the installer. Installations and updates will re-write all System information when installed which should restore your notification center files completely.

I understand this is a cliche and over-suggested method of fixing macOS issues, but no one is going to be able to figure out exactly what went wrong without detailing everything.

If you don't want to do that, we can go through a whole series of commands to validate your system. Starting with codesign validation.

You can use the codesign command to check if system resources have been altered and are valid.

codesign -vvv --display /System/Library/CoreServices/NotificationCenter.app

Copy and paste into terminal for various Apple (or non-apple) applications, frameworks, etc, to check code signatures and for valid or broken resources.


What is the equivalent of ipconfig/displaydns (and flushdns) in OS X? I need to find how to display my DNS cache on the mac. I have tried
multi Google searches but failed to come up with a good solution.
The best I found was how to remove the cache with the command
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder which is great but I need to see the cache to see if the change works.

As @PrasseethaKR and @kjagiello point out, on High Siera mDNSResponer has moved from syslog to log function. In addition, your DNS lookups are now considered private and will show as such in both Console and log stream.

To view your DNS lookups in real time on High Sierra open an Terminal and run:

sudo log config --mode "private_data:on"
log stream --predicate 'process == "mDNSResponder"' --info

To go back to using private just run the following command.

sudo log config --mode "private_data:off"

AFAIK you cannot view the contents of old private messages, only messages logged with private_data:on can appear. To view your entire history use the show command  Because it can return a large amount of data I also use --last to limit the data, e.g. the last 2 hours would be...

log show --last 2h --predicate 'process == "mDNSResponder"' --info

Cheers!


How can I delete a certificate that got restored from a backup under iOS 10/11? With iOS, certificates are installed as part of profiles. Deleting a certificate means removing the profile.

When an iPhone with profiles is backed up, and then the backup is restored to a new device, the profiles are no longer visible under Settings > General > Profiles. So, they can't be deleted via the usual way.

The certificates however get restored to the device. One can see them e.g. under Settings > General > About > Certificate Trust Settings.

Hence my question: How can these certificates be deleted from the device?

I found a certificate in my iOS device's Certificate Trust Settings. And it was not be found in Profiles. Finally I remove it by add the cert file again, and then I can found and remove it in Profiles.

At first, I can't found the cert file, because this CA was installed years ago. So I did these things:

Backup iPhone to Mac, View backup file by some software (I used iMazing)
Find TrustStore.sqlite3 in Backup/KeychainDomain/ and export it to HOME DIR.
Use this project https://github.com/ADVTOOLS/ADVTrustStore to export certfile

./iosCertTrustManager.py -t ~/TrustStore.sqlite3 -e ~/foo.crt

Airdrop or Email this crt file to iOS device, and install it.
Find it in Settings > General > Profiles and Remove it.
It disappear in "Certificate Trust Settings"

Done.


Is dGPU disabler permanent on 2011 MBP? I've found this tool (http://dosdude1.com/gpudisable/) to disable dedicated GPU on my MBP late 2011 (I just bought it from eBay). The Mac has no problems right now but it's just preventive. I will only using it to browse the web and do some VM stuff, and I don't need extra GPU power.

Is it permanent (except when upgrading macOS) or semi permanent like some other solutions I've seen on the Internet (will the Mac reuse the dGPU after some reboot)?

That solution provided by dosdude1 is a combined package of software and hardware. The software part is of course reversible, and the hardware part of course not. Not easily at least.

With that hardware solution you will also have to take an extra step, as it will disable brightness control. That makes the hardware solution less desirable for a working MacBook.
If the MacBook will eventually fail, then that solution by dosdude1 is the second best option overall, right after replacing the chip itself with a working one from a line of known-good production.

As long as the machine does work, I'd say leave it at that. Do not disable the dGPU preemptively.

Preventive mesasures to prolong its life would be to increase the fan speed and other measures to increase cooling. That would include not using Thunderbolt and especially not an external monitor. You may also use gfxCardStatus to avoid switching to the dGPU as far as possible.

If you insist on preemptively just disabling the dGPU you may also want to look at this option: GPU problem - Boot Hangs on Grey Screen


How can I access a computer behind internet sharing? On our router (which has WiFi), we have one ethernet port which is currently being used by my laptop. I need my raspberry pi model B rev. 2 connected to the network as well, but it doesn't use WiFi. (My laptop can, but i prefer ethernet.) I don't want to purchase a network switch, so what I've been doing is sharing our family Macbook Pro's WiFi connection using internet sharing, and connecting the pi to the Macbook over ethernet. The pi now has internet, but here's the catch: I want to run a web server on the pi, and be able to access it from my laptop. Is there a way to port forward over internet sharing?
P.S. If it helps, the web server will be running on port 8080.
To visualize the setup:
 Home Router --+-- WiFi  -- MBP* -- Ether -- Pi
               |
               +-- Ether -- Laptop

 * Internet Sharing

I got it! I wrote a node.js script, like so, to redirect requests on port 8080 of the macbook to port 8080 of the raspberry pi. the pi's ip is 192.168.2.7.
the script:
var net = require('net');
net.createServer(function(socket) {
  var raspberrypi = net.connect(8080, '192.168.2.7');
  raspberrypi.on('connect', function() {
    raspberrypi.on('data', function(data) {
      socket.write(data);
    });
    socket.on('data', function(data) {
      raspberrypi.write(data);
    });
  });
}).listen(8080);


Memory upgrade for 27" iMac, mid 2011 I recently upgraded the memory in my 27" iMac, mid 2011.  took out the two, 2 gig in the top slots & put in two 8 gig units.  For some reason I wasn't thinking about putting the 2 gig units in the bottom slots.  Is this ok? Will it help any?

Thanks

It will likely work, however many people will advice you to only use matching sticks of RAM.  In other words, if you're going to use 4 sticks, ensure they are all of the speed, capacity, brand, etc.

You wouldn't build a RAID array with mismatched drive manufacturers, speeds, and capacities, why do it with your RAM?


What's the easiest way to automate logging into a website? There's this website I need to access about every ten minutes. And apparently it was designed in 1993, by sadists. There is no "remember me on this computer" checkbox. And if you don't interact with it for a minute or two it logs you out.

I would like to somehow implement a keystroke that will bring my browser to the foreground, open a new tab, enter my username and password, and click "Login".

It isn't that I don't want to learn AppleScript. I'd love to. I enjoy learning programming languages. I already know several.

It's just that I have many other more pressing matters and time is short and it is seems like not the greatest idea to dig into AppleScript just to deal with this one problem.

What would be the fastest, simplest way to resolve this?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

There are commercial tools that do this very well. Each is a drop in the bucket if you depend on them, but are in the $25-35 range since they do many things other than just this one single task. 1Password might be better at a single key command to fill in both a username and password, but TextExpander is also very awesome at what it does and might be more useful in the long run if you don't need a password generation/wallet replacement.

1Password - from where I sit, the best tool for improving web form management securely. It integrates with just about every browser and it very actively being developed.
TextExpander for Mac - also, the best of class for taking short snippets and expanding them no matter what app you need the typing assistance.

They do different things and are both on the App Store. Check the developer web sites to see if they have free demo versions - especially if you don't feel you will need them or have concerns about buying without seeing them.


How to schedule running vlc on MacBook? I have created a m3u list file for some mp3 files.

How could I schedule the macbook to play it, e.g. tomorrow 6am?

Open Automator and do something like this.

Use Workflow + Drag New Calendar Event to the right. Choose the time+date. Choose what file to open.

Obviously set the date/time and choose the right file to Open.


How to disable Command + Control + Arrow Key shortcut in Mavericks I use Sublime Text and this shortcut (Edit > Line > Swap Line Up/Swap Line Down) allows me to move lines of code up and down in the file while shifting everything around it. On my new computer this command moves the window currently in focus to the next space.

I checked the keyboard shortcuts in Preferences but could not find it. Where else can I find the shortcut and disable it so that I can use it in Sublime?

As an alternative solution for Sublime Text (if you want to keep the new OS key mappings) you can add the following lines to your user key bindings file (in menu Subline Text 2 > Preferences > Key Bindings - User):

{ "keys": ["super+shift+up"], "command": "swap_line_up" },
{ "keys": ["super+shift+down"], "command": "swap_line_down" }

This will map ⌘+Shift+↑ or ↓ to the Swap Line Up/Down commands.

A similar issue exists with the batch selection commands usually mapped to Ctrl+Shift+↑ or ↓.

These can be remapped using the following settings:

{ "keys": ["ctrl+alt+shift+up"], "command": "select_lines", "args": {"forward": false} },
{ "keys": ["ctrl+alt+shift+down"], "command": "select_lines", "args": {"forward": true} }

This will map Ctrl+Alt+Shift+↑ or ↓ to the batch selection commands.

Obviously you can change the combinations to whatever you prefer, but these did not seem to be used for anything.


Connect iPhone to multiple output devices to play music How can I output music from an iPhone to a Bluetooth speaker and at the same time output to another sound appliance where the iPhone is jacked into? Like a Bose stereo device.

I don't know about how a Bluetooth device would work in this context, but you can achieve what you want using WiFi and cabled connections.

1) Use an Apple Airport Express with WiFi. Streaming music and audio to a stereo system is what it is designed for.

Go to an Apple Store or other authorized Apple dealer and explain what you want to do and they can show you how it works.

2) Alternately, wire the headphone output from the iPhone into a semi-professional mixer board which was then connected to more than one amplifier and speaker device. This is equipment used by musicians for recording, and it would require some expertise to learn to use.

Here is a link to a list of small, inexpensive mixers on sale at Guitar Center.

Go to a local music store and tell them what you want to do and they can explain how to do it.


What are the major advantages of the Late 2013 rMBP 15'' high-end model over custom configurations of its low-end counterpart? I mean other than what you can configure, like RAM and SSD capacity and CPU speed and the fact that the ME294 comes with NVDIA Graphics as well as the Iris is there anything else different? Like motherboard (logic board they call them?) features, or Chipsets on the board?

To put it differently, I usually see similar laptops on Apple online store, with one model starting at lower price and if you choose more RAM/CPU/HDD on the lower end option it looks like you get to the higher end model, both price-wise and spec-wise is there anything else other that what meets the eyes to be considered?

EDIT: So by the looks of it, it is not just a matter of difference in RAM, HDD, CPU speed, that separates the lower end models from higher end models, they are really different things, in some cases it may be just a small difference, but in some it may be significant, I think I got my answer. From the comments.
And for the reference the models are like ME293LL and ME294LL

A custom-built ME293 model with a 2.3 GHz CPU, 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of SSD, although costing the same as the stock ME294, is not the same hardware because it's missing the Nvidia GPU. I speak from experience as I have one of these (Intel GPU only), with the 2.6 GHz CPU upgrade. Other than that I'm fairly sure they're identical.


Is it possible to see the source code of a Safari Extension? If you install a Safari Extension, are you able to see its source code?
It is great to verify that the extension does not contain malware.
One can do it with Chrome as described in this blog

Source of information:

Locate the extension. It should be living in your library folder. Note this is a hidden folder so in the finder use Command+Shift+G to put in this location ~/Library/Safari/Extensions.  Here you’ll see the Safari extensions you have installed. They have a .safariext file extension, but this is really just a xar file.

To extract the extension’s files, use this command (replacing the '/path/to' with the correct path and the 'extension.safariextz' with the correct name) xar -xf /path/to/extension.safariextz The extension will be extracted into a folder, with the source and resources contained within.

If you want to change something and then package it back up for
reinstallation, you can xar the folder back into a single file using xar -c -f output.safariextz extensionFolder.

I'm running 10.15.6 and these steps worked for me.
Since Safari 13, all extensions must be downloaded from the App Store as .app bundles with .appex files inside them. Both of them are built in Xcode thus you only get the final executable. So if the extension is not open source, you cannot see what's in the binary
A simple way to understand how the app and extension interact, see the following. (Note that it's an Xcode extension, not Safari. )

https://github.com/mapbox/XcodeClangFormat/blob/master/XcodeClangFormat/AppDelegate.m

https://github.com/mapbox/XcodeClangFormat/blob/master/clang-format/ClangFormatCommand.mm


A process called sdmd is using huge amounts of resources...!? There's a process called sdmd running which reads gigabyte after gigabyte from disk and is slowing my computer to a crawl. What is that, and how can I get rid of it?

This may affect OS X El-Capitan or later installations running Server.app with active file sharing. sdmd is a service which produces indices and previews for iOS devices. In the process it parses everything in the share, which, depending on how large that shared folder is and where it's located, can take quite some time and resources.

I've seen this causing an issue with a relatively slow external RAID array, which another process was trying to write to; sdmd was causing so much I/O on the drive that the process couldn't write data fast enough, causing data to pile up in its memory, which saturated RAM, caused lots of swapping, and eventually caused OS X to suspend the process outright to keep the system from keeling over. Nice chain reaction...

To get rid of sdmd, disable iOS Access (next to AFP, SMB etc.) in the details of each individual shared folder in Server.app (or at least in the folders where it causes a problem).

Tip of the hat to https://osxbytes.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/server-app-5-0-4-sdmd-and-ios/ for this solution.


Best free application uninstaller on Mac Possible Duplicate:
  Any recommendations for a before&after software installation scanner/uninstaller?

What is the best free software "uninstaller" for OS X?

AppCleaner (free)

Delete applications using drag and drop. Protects system applications.

Smart Delete finds additional files when dropping a program to the trash.

You can also delete widgets and plug-ins using this tool.


Can't download any app from AppStore! I'm using iPhone 6s 16 GB. My storage isn't full but still I can't download anything. Every time I wanted to start a download it keeps telling:

app name* could not be download at this time

First I'd suggest you to try perhaps thru an alternate internet connection.
If that doesn't resolve the issue I'd suggest you the following since you're stating that this happens every time you try to download an app or an update then I assume that this happens by every app and resetting your iPhone doesn't either work then I'd suggest you to try signing out of the App Store then restart your iPhone and sign into the App Store and try again to download.

See my answer in this post


Possible to rip a DVD as an iTunes film? Is there a way to rip DVDs so that iTunes plays the DVD exactly like as if you playing from a disc. I mean so that it has the menus, and extra features like audio, commentary, subtitles, and deleted scenes etc.

I would like to store my DVD collection on my iTunes server, but don't want to have the features as extra files or not at all.

I've downloaded movies from iTunes which have iTunes extras so it is possible, but is it possible to convert DVDs to these format?

You can rip a full disc as an ISO file or a folder structure. That will give you the exact contents of the disc that you can store on a hard drive (local or networked), but iTunes can't play those types of files. Other programs, such as VLC can play it back, with menus and all. You can rip to this format with RipIt, but there are others out there too.

Extras in downloaded iTunes movies (and the similar feature for music, iTunes LP) are built with a framework called TuneKit, for which Apple has posted some developer information. From what I can tell, it's basically all the media (videos, pictures, music) in iTunes-compatible format (i.e. H.264 m4v for video), tied together with some HTML and CSS for the "menus".

So if you're comfortable with web development, it looks like it's possible to create your own iTunes Extras to package the content from a DVD, but you'll need to recreate the menus on your own, they can't be ripped directly to this sort of format. Extra audio tracks, commentary, and subtitles can all be ripped by standard tools like Handbrake, and deleted scenes or other video features can be ripped as separate video files, then linked in via the menus you create. There are some tutorials from Gigaom and iTunesLP.net that apply to iTunes LP, but the format seems to be pretty similar, so they may help.

So all in all, it's possible to create a similar experience to a full DVD in iTunes, but it will take a lot of work on your part. Alternatively, if you use another application, you can get the full, bit-for-bit copy by ripping to ISO files.


Is there any way to open a recently closed tab in Safari in iOS? Is there a way to open a recently closed tab in the Safari browser in iOS? I am specifically looking for a solution that works on the iPad.

For reference, here is this question for the Mac.

Yes. Hold down on the + icon that you use to open a new tab in the upper right corner of Safari and you'll be presented with a list of recently closed tabs. Pick one to re-open.

As far as I know this is an iOS 5+ feature, iPad only.


MacBook taking long time to load the boot loader; rEFInd freezes I have a MacBook Pro 2015 and I am dual booting with Linux. I use rEFInd and since day 1 it has been working fine on most occasions. Sometimes it would take a long time to show its screen and then it would freeze, updating every 5-10 seconds (so if I press down on my keyboard twice, it would jump two entries down in a few seconds). In those cases I would clear the PRAM/NVRAM, re-bless rEFInd and it will be ok. Recently however it happened again and this time resetting PRAM/NVRAM does not help. Furthermore, under Linux no input devices work (neither internal, nor USB keyboard). lshw lists them as working and with a loaded kernel module for them... Internal keyboard works under OS X.

EDIT: The reason I think it may be a hardware problem Related to the issue is that loading the bootloader (whether it is rEFInd after I bless it, or the native Apple bootloader as soon as I clear PRAM) takes about 20 seconds after the start up chime, which is not normal. I noticed that after I reset PRAM, I hear the start up chime, only 3 seconds later I see the Apple logo (boot is fast) and on the very next reboot, it hangs somewhere, which now leads me to believe that maybe some of my OS X settings which also modify the PRAM are corrupted and corrupt the PRAM. Is there a way to prevent OS X from modifying the PRAM in ANY way?

I'd hate to take it to a service, since they'll tell me "20 seconds is not long and we don't deal with 3rd party loaders", but I know it never used to take more than 3 seconds to show the Apple logo, so something must have changed. Ideas?

P.S. I use Gentoo, whose kernel is perfectly capable of being booted directly from the UEFI firmware and there are instructions on how to do this using efibootmgr but they are not specifically for Macs and I've read in some places that efibootmgr may/will brick the firmware on Macs so I am reluctant to try...

I'm assuming you're dealing with a Retina MacBook Pro.
If your Mac is taking that long to find something to boot and then also taking forever to boot afterwards then you may potentially have faulty storage.

Yes they probably will baulk at the 3rd party boot loader but as long as you have a backup you'll be OK. The Apple Store will run hardware tests to confirm whether or not the storage is faulty as well as reload the current version of OS X after wiping your storage.
It's part of their testing so if they can't load OS X cleanly then it's definitely a hardware issue.

You can find your local contact number here: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201232

On that note, why not just try cleanly installing OS X yourself after erasing your storage?

See http://osxdaily.com/2014/12/14/reinstall-os-x-mac-internet-recovery/

If you can do that successfully then you're just looking at an issue with rEFInd and/or your Linux partition (by the way why not just get Linux booting natively through EFI without the extra boot loader? http://heeris.id.au/2014/ubuntu-plus-mac-pure-efi-boot-short-version/)


How do I know when my HD is under maintenance? I work with several large movie files, almost all with 150+ GB. And sometimes I experience a harsh slow down on my iMac's speed which is accompanied by a writing/reading HD noise. So I'm pretty sure the disc is defragging or doing some kind of maintenance. According to this article:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/how-defrag-mac-why-you-dont-need-3600241/

"That's not to say that a manual defrag is never needed; it's just rare. People (usually creatives) that have hundreds of films/audio/multimedia files larger than 1GB may need to defrag a Mac."

So I wonder if:

is there a method to find out if my HD is under maintenance?

Can I took control over this process? Like changing the schedule of the task, maybe using one of the listed tps of the article?

Further info

The problems you're experiencing are not due to this "automatic defragmention".

You question seem to indicate that you think of this defragmentation similar to for example the Windows defragmentation program, where you start a lengthy process and wait for minutes or hours where the disk is fully utilized, and then finally your disk is defragmented. This is simply not how it works here, so your questions do not make sense in that regard.

"Automatic defragmentation" on HFS+ happens in two ways: On-the-fly and Hot File Clustering.

On-the-fly means that whenever the system opens a file, it checks if the file is sufficiently small (<20 MB), is not busy, is not read-only, it has not been changed in the past minute and is sufficiently fragmented (>8 extents). If all those conditions are true, and the computer has been running for more than 3 minutes, then the file (and only that file) is defragmented on-the-fly.
Hot File Clustering means that the operating system keeps track of the most used files on your system - up to 5000 files. When such a new file is added to the top list, and the file is sufficiently small (<10 MB), then the file is moved to a specific hot zone on the disk. This implicitly defragments the file.

Therefore:

The hard drive is never "under maintenance". Automatic defragmentation is not something that is done for a full drive, and it is not something that hinders other accesses to the disk. Thus it doesn't make sense to try to figure out if your disk is "under maintenance".
You cannot take control of the processs. There's no lengthy process happening that is defragmentation your entire disk at once. Thus there's really not much to control in the process. The actual automatic defragmentation occurs over the course of a single second or less.
You cannot change the schedule of the process - because there isn't a schedule. This is not like for example Windows Defragmentation where some in the Windows 95-era would set up a scheduled task to defragment their hard disk every Monday evening. Automatic defragmentation here does not happen on a time based schedule. Instead it is simply based on which files you open - which cannot be predicted in advance.
Both types of "automatic defragmentation" only works on small files (<20 MB or <10 MB) - so they could never have been invoked for your 150+ GB large files.

The macOS system does not by default perform any other type of automatic, periodic "maintenance" of a hard drive without being requested specifically by the user.

Therefore you'll need to look for something "out of the ordinary", such as a hardware error, software bug or configuration issue. You can do this for example by:

Examining system Console logs and dmesg outputs for indications of I/O errors from the RAID-drive.
Examining administrative software for your OWC RAID-system to see if it has logs or indicators of errors or problems.
Use disk latency testing tools (such as for example fio) to check if your RAID-drive has latency issues in general, for example with high number of IOPS.
Use system monitoring tools such as Activity Monitor, top, filesys, etc. to check for resource exhaustion and/or programs hogging the disk bandwidth.


"No bootable device…” after unplanned empty battery shutdown The MacBook Pro has suddenly shutdown (battery went out) while I am doing Boot Camp to Windows besides macOS.

Now there's a big black and white message "No bootable device..."

I can't do anything, I don't know how to change to macOS I tried:

holding shift
and tried alt + shift but no hope, also tried d for
d diagnose but still no hope.

What can I do please to fix the problem?

Holding Opt [alt] at boot should show you all available boot drives.

The "No bootable device..." message is most likely to be the windows failed install.
If you're lucky, the Mac partition should be OK, but you'll probably have to do Boot Camp over from scratch.


All my iMessages were deleted My iPod Touch ran out of battery and died for a short time. When I plugged it back in and it turned back on, all of my conversations on iMessage had been deleted. I still have the contacts but all of my texts and messages were gone. Why did this happen and is there any way to get my messages back?

Reboot your phone.
I discovered a solution for this one accidentally, after I encountered this bug a couple of days ago. I turned my phone off for a time, and then back on again - when it was turned back on, the list of messages was fully restored. I think that this might be because only the listing of messages was made inaccessible, and the messages themselves weren't deleted - I noticed that when I was texted by someone who I'd received messages from in the past, the message history was properly displayed once I opened the text conversation with them.
It's possible that the simplicity of fixing this issue is why Apple hasn't patched the bug in the 5+ years it's been known about.


With a data transfer of 50 GB estimated 5 hours, are USB-C claimed speeds inaccurate or to blame? When I bought an 2017 MBP I was under the impression (from Apple and others) that USB-C was the superfast way to transfer data. It has not worked out that way and I am wondering if I misunderstood something.

I am downloading 50gb from the MBP to an external drive and it is showing a time of over 5+ hours left. Isn't this supposed to happen much more quickly???

"USB 3.1 Type-C cables offer a transfer rate of 10Gbps, which is double the transfer speed of USB 3.0 (5 Gbps)" is what one tech site states. Can someone explain what i am missing or doing wrong?

The bus speed you quote is a theoretical maximum and not that the bus somehow speeds up any and all storage connected to it.

An analogy would be quoting the vehicle capacity of a 10 lane highway that’s perfectly packed with cars, all of which drive themselves bumper to bumper in perfect coordination. With good buffering, ideal behavior, no hiccups you can hit the benchmark “specs” on the nose every time.

In practice, there are lane changes, no cars waiting to enter the traffic pattern, or just everyone driving in the left lane. (Let alone spiking the breaks or cutting others off ...)

Back to computers, my advice is to open the Activity Monitor app and look at the Disk tab. Specifically the IOPS and data rates are different constraints.

IO is like getting all the vehicles on and off the highway so you’ll have low transfer rates when there are lots of small delays and metadata being read from slow storage. That's on the left side and in the chart when IO is selected.

Your graph shows an IO constrained transfer, the system is spending more time locating the next group of bits to transfer, it can’t likely fill up the max transfer of the drive. Most consumer drives can absorb 20 MBps to 60 MBps and most Macs can put out hundreds and NVMe ssd on recent Macs thousands of MBps and IOps.

Bandwidth is another constraint similar to the on ramps and off ramps - your sending and receiving device might be the bottleneck. That's the data read/sec on the right and shown above.

Without any specific data measurements, hopefully the high level description of what to look for and how to think of the bus speed helps you sort out if you brought too fast an expectation to devices that can’t deliver or if everything is capable of fast transfers and you have a configuration / software / hardware issue in hand to diagnose and optimize.

My hunch is the speed estimate is conservative, Finder is single threading the transfer and your bottleneck is a consumer grade external drive (HDD or slower flash storage) and you'd be able to get 60% of the max with a more efficient transfer and a fast Thunderbolt 3 type storage device attached: https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/06/thunderbolt-3-enclosures-with-single-dual-quad-m-2-nvme-ssds-for-esxi.html


Can not install xcode 7 from store, stuck on app intall I have a fresh OS X Yosemite, and when I went to the store to install Xcode 7 and hit the Install App button, it turned green and a loading icon appeared but after waiting a long time nothing happened. I successfully installed three apps from the store but I can not install Xcode. Please help!

You can also download an Xcode .dmg installer file directly from the apple developer site, downloads. Xcode 7.2 is no longer available, at time of writing Xcode 7.3 can be downloaded, it is compatible with OS X 10.11 up.

EDIT: Looks like the XCode 7 link now just redirects to the AppStore. Perhaps the stuck on app install issue has been fixed? Anyone still getting it.

EDIT2: There's one more way to download xcode package direcly: in the bottom of /download page there's a link see more downloads which points to the /download/more page where you can download all necessary files.


Any default microphone preference setting to change voice for anonymity? Is there any default microphone preference setting to change voice for anonymity?
If no what are the popular free app for Mac (Catalina)?

A Mac can change its own voice, like when it's reading a text file, but not your voice.  One free software package that does what you want is MorphVox Jr. It can change a man's voice to a woman's and woman's to man.  There are examples on the link I sent. This version is free. The full version is $40.

This link lists 5 top voice changing apps. They are Voxal Voice Changer, MorphVox, Voice Candy, Voice Changer Plus, and Voice Swap. You can read about them on the link.


Deploying a python application in OS X Server 2.0.23 (aka Mountain Lion Server) OS X Server 2.0.23 (aka Mountain Lion Server) already has python 2.7.3 and wsgi installed.  What is the procedure to install a python web application on that server to run under its own domain? Assume the web application has no other dependencies other than what is already installed.

I have searched the web, but almost all instructions I'm finding refers to manually installing WSGI, python and configuring apache. I'd like to understand how to use the tools provided to deploy the application.

Being more of a programming question, I asked it at Stackoverflow and got an reasonable answer to make it work.


osx split external hard drive partition I currently have a 640GB external HD that has 1 partition formatted as HSF+ Now I want to split some of the free space into a new FAT32 partition, without having to reformat the whole HD and losing all my data. I read that I'm supposed to be able to add new partitions in the Hard Disc Utility by clicking the "+" sign, without any loss of data. But in my case the "+" is not clickable and it says that this partition cannot be altered.

Can anyone tell me how to proceed. Or is it impossible without reformatting the whole disc?

I'm running OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.6

You should unmount the disk before you try to change the partitions.

That should work.


How do I delete podcasts in iTunes without deleting them from my iPod? I'm running into a sync behavior that I need to find a way around.  Here's how it worked before (in iTunes 10):

Using iTunes, I would download a podcast from the internet onto my computer.
In iTunes, I would transfer the podcast to my iPod.
In iTunes, I would delete the podcast from my computer.
Then I would unplug my iPod and listen to the podcast on my iPod.
If I replugged my iPod into my computer, the podcast would remain on my iPod.

Here's the problem I'm having now (in iTunes 11):

I download the podcast to my computer,
transfer the podcast to my iPod,
delete the podcast from my computer,
and it also deletes the podcast from my iPod.

How do I stop it from deleting things from my iPod when I delete things from iTunes on my computer?

It's supposed to be a cloud syncing feature - all devices kept in sync everywhere.

Curious why do you want to delete it from your computer before you're ready to delete it from your ipod. I wait until I've listened to the podcast, then resync to the computer, podcast becomes marked as "listened" then I know I can delete.


broken EFI / missing space after re-partitioning — using mavericks 10.9.5 I have a few problems with a 2012 era macbook air. the first problem, and i'm not sure how to go about fixing this, is an issue i'm dealing with re: EFI.
When i select the hard drive in disk utility and attempt to verify it, I get the following error:

"Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
Error: This disk doesn’t contain an EFI system partition. If you want to start up your computer with this disk or include it in a RAID set, back up your data and partition this disk."

the second problem is trying to reclaim a missing 20GB of space that went missing when i deleted a failed Windows partition. The space just vanished, poof! You can see it in the diskutil list below.

 diskutil list

returns

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
       1:       Microsoft Basic Data EFI                     208.7 MB   disk0s1
       2:                  Apple_HFS MacOS                   479.0 GB   disk0s2
       3:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

and running

gpt -r show /dev/disk0

shows

  start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34       2014
       2048     407552      1  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
     409600         40
     409640  935546880      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  935956520    1269544      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  937226064   39878963
  977105027         32         Sec GPT table
  977105059          1         Sec GPT header

EDIT:

I ran diskutil  resizevolume  disk0s2 limitson the two volumes (disk0s2 and disk0s3 respectively) and they returned as follows:

For device disk0s2 MacOS:
        Current size:  479.0 GB (479000002560 Bytes)
        Minimum size:  446.3 GB (446258642944 Bytes)
        Maximum size:  479.0 GB (479000002560 Bytes)

For device disk0s3 Recovery HD:
        Current size:  650.0 MB (650006528 Bytes)
        Minimum size:  650.0 MB (650006528 Bytes)
        Maximum size:  20.9 GB (20933816320 Bytes)

am i correct in reading this, that the missing 20 GB somehow ended up on the recovery HD?

so what's the first thing i should do? i want to keep my OS running on 10.9.5. I have a diskImage i downloaded from the internet, put onto a USB boot drive. I attempted to reinstall from this boot drive, to see if this would fix anything, but when i try to select the macOs, i get the error, "this disk cannot be used to start up your computer"

Besides this, the computer seems to operate fine, and has been working since april with this broken EFI and missing partition space.

any ideas?

THere's nothing actually wrong with your Air's EFI, what you are experiencing are the death-throws of a failing-and-fading-fast SSD module.

We tend to be rather blasé about solid-state drives these days, but seven years ago the technology was still maturing, and SSDs were still susceptible to sudden and inexplicable demise. When Jobs decided to start fitting SSDs into the first MacBook Airs, Apple did a lot of destructive data testing until the found a brand that they thought might last five years - Toshiba.

I'd look at getting a replacement SSD-stick - Transcend make a nice JetDrive replacement for your machine.


system_profiler applications inventory Running this:

system_profiler -detailLevel full

produces an inventory of applications, among other things.

How does they system "know" about these apps?

Spotlight? (e.g. every time a folder is created/renamed with the .app extension..)
searching the filesystem at the moment of invocation? (e.g. find -type d -name '*.app' ...)
scanning predefined paths?
other?

Would stopping the md service affect the output? Restoring from TimeMachine?

What I'd ultimately like to do is to query this "database", if it is a db and not some "just-in-time" query.

Useful queries:

Scan for outdated/insecure downloads of application X, if version >= Y
Is uTorrent present anywhere?
Does this system have PPC applications on it still?
etc.

I would suggest running opensnoop while running the system_profiler command.

I just did that, and with the full detail level as you have it there are over 25,000 files that are being read by system_profiler. It looks like it is reading plist files to get the output as well as reproducing various system logs.

If you stop md or restore from TimeMachine the output will change.


Keyboard shortcuts have gone screwy since Mavericks upgrade Something weird has happened to my keyboard shortcuts since I upgraded to OSX Mavericks.

Command-Option-V, which I was using before my upgrade to cut and paste (i.e. move) files in Finder, now blacks out the display and locks my screen, as well as performing its original function.

Command-Option-Eject, which before the upgrade was a very handy shortcut to lock the screen, now does nothing.

Can anybody tell me if these are known issues in Mavericks, and if there's anything I can do to get back to normal?

Other users have noticed then when using the wired full Mac keyboard, the eject button ejects a disk, but weirdly the eject symbol only appears on the screen and the disk pops out only after about a long delay, about a minute.

I've tried unplugging the keyboard and plugging it in a different port. I've restarted, closed down every running application I could find, reset keyboard shortcuts to defaults in System Preferences - still get no response from either Control-Shift-Eject or Command-Shift-Eject (which is supposed to put the machine to sleep). I'm able to lock my screen by setting a hot corner only.

Ahhh this is embarrassing. Seems like this is a hardware problem. I tried following the steps Apple support suggested, and when I do the keyboard input identification in System Preferences OSX tells me my keyboard isn't recognised. I've just remembered I scrubbed the keyboard with a cleaner cloth a few weeks ago to try and get rid of the yellow grease it had accumulated - I guess this must've messed it up. Sorry Mavericks! Thanks a lot for your help Asmus!

Lesson: wear gloves when using white keyboard.


Does privacy policy need to be in all languages an app supports when uploading to app store? It is mandatory for all apps submitted on the App Store to provide privacy policy.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#privacy

As I understand, a privacy policy link must be provided in all the languages an app is localized in.

However, can I provide privacy policy in English for all translations, or do I need to have it translated?

It is a big effort, as there aren't very many resources available in local languages for the "legalise".

It is not mandatory to provide privacy policy translations for all the languages your app supports.

Additionally, as I can infer from your post, since your app's primary language is English, privacy policy text in English should suffice.

If you still have concerns or have specific questions, as a paid developer program member, you can seek help from Apple Developer Support and get answers for specific queries.


MacOS GPT Messed up File System ('FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF') I had tried dual booting Linux and macOS, and when I rebooted my computer the OS volume shows as type 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF'.

I tried following OS volume shows as type 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF' but I think I'm doing it wrong/making it worse. I did not have a recovery partition, I did have an empty bootcamp partition ~130gb, and I believe it was macOS Catalina on APFS.

I had played with the partitions a lot, this is what it looks like now.. Probably not correct.

How can I get back at least the data from my Mac partition?

The first partition (the EFI partition) is mislocated. It should start at block 40 and end at block 409639 (=moved by 6 blocks towards the end of the disk).

In Recovery Mode you can simply remove the first partition and add it again properly aligned:

gpt remove -i 1 /dev/disk0
gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk0

This apparently(?) solved the problem and the Mac booted again properly.

To verify the integrity of the APFS container afterwards enter:

diskutil list #to get the device number of the APFS container scheme device (probably disk1)
diskutil verifyVolume disk1

The result should be: Storage system check exit code is 0!


Mojave: Unable to resize APFS container On my macbook I had wanted to install Ubuntu so a while ago I had created a partition and installed it to half of my drive. I ended up not using the distro and wanted to reclaim the space. I tried following a few guides that suggested I run diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0 after deleting the other partition. But upon running the command i get this error.

Error: -69519: The target disk is too small for this operation, or a gap is required in your partition map which is missing or too small, which is often caused by an attempt to grow a partition beyond the beginning of another partition or beyond the end of partition map usable space

How would I get arround this error to resize my container.

Disk Utility and diskutil (which Disk Utility uses behind the scenes) are refusing to increase the size of your APFS container because your recovery partition, "Recovery HD", appears to be in the way (though, for whatever reason, Disk Utility is not making this apparent in its diagrams). This probably became the case due to a direct upgrade from a pre-APFS version of macOS (i.e. Sierra or earlier) to Mojave; if you do a fresh install of Mojave, an APFS volume called "Recovery" is created inside the same APFS container used for your macOS installation, rather than a distinct HFS partition called "Recovery HD".

From the info you've provided, your 250 GB disk appears to be partitioned as follows:

+------------+---------------------------+-------------+-------------------------+
| EFI System | APFS container            | Recovery HD | Free Space              |
| Partition  |                           |             |                         |
| (210 MB)   | (125 GB)                  | (650 MB)    | (125 GB)                |
+------------+---------------------------+-------------+-------------------------+

But let's confirm this is the case: please share the output of sudo gpt -r show disk0 to see the GUID partition table proper.

If this is the case, you'll need to move the "Recovery HD" partition to the end of the disk, and then you should be able to increase the size of the APFS container which contains the "mint" APFS volume where macOS is installed. I am unsure if this could render your recovery partition unbootable, but it seems highly unlikely.


Can I have different Apple IDs on my iPhone 4S? iCloud has an Apple ID:

Settings > iCloud

Messages has an Apple ID:

Settings > Message > Receive At

Store has an Apple ID:

Setting > Store

Do these all have to be the same ID?  If not, which ones can be different?

Or to ask this question a different way...

My wife and I both have a 4S.  Can we share the same ID for iCloud (calendar sync) and Store (app sync) but not for Messages (distinct text identity)?

TIA

Each place you mention is separate so you can use a unique Apple ID in each. Other than the App Store / Music Store where you can only enroll 10 devices in a 90 day period), you can use one account on many, many devices.

In addition, the iCloud account that is entered into iCloud does control Photo Stream, Documents and Backup for the entire device.

Your additional iCloud accounts can be entered into Mail, Contacts, Calendars to have additional:

Mail
Contacts
Calendars
Reminders
Bookmarks
Notes
Find My iPhone


How to prevent Safari from stopping downloads when sleeping? I am using macOS Server to host files on a website. I often need to download large files to the server to host them myself.  Because I do not usually have physical access to the server, I use the default Screen Sharing app In macOS from a different mac into the server (VNC). From there I open Safari (on the server) enter the url and start the download. The files range from 400MB to 2GB. They are downloaded to an external drive that is constantly plugged into the Mac.  Once the download starts it can take a while to complete so I often disconnect through the screen sharing. Unfortunately, a minute or two after I disconnect the download stops. When I check what happened by clicking on the download arrow in Safari it says that the download timed out. If I try to continue the download, it continues only to be stopped again when I quit the screen sharing. This is extremely frustrating as I am forced to keep the connection open while it is downloading.

My settings in the Energy Saving tab of System Preferences are as follows.

Computer Sleep: Never

Display Sleep: 5 Minutes

Put Hard Drives to Sleep when possible: Checked

Wake for Network Access: Checked

-

Schedule

Start up or wake: Every day at 6:30 AM

Sleep: Every Dat at 12:00 AM

Note: The downloads are NOT taking place between 12:00 AM and 6:30 AM

Thanks!

Could not figure out why this was happening but using the caffeinate command I was able to fix it.

https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/caffeinate.8.html

I ended up just created a LaunchDaeomon to run it at certain times.


Using iPad 1st gen to read PDF files offline I'd like to download and read PDFs files offline on a 1st generation iPad that's been reset to factory settings.

I'm unable to install any apps - they always say that I need to update to the latest version of iOS, even if the app is compatible with iOS 5.1.1. I went to the App Store and they say it's because the apps from the AppStore are all 64-bit and my iPad is a 32-bit device. As a result, the seemingly simple task of downloading PDFs, saving them on my device and reading them later seems impossible.

How do I get PDF files onto my iPad for offline viewing?

Here are the screenshots of what apps I already have, and what happens if I try to install iBooks.

You don't need to install any app from the App Store to read PDF files. The stock iBooks app is sufficient to store and read PDF files in offline mode.

You get the PDF files in iBooks, you can open the PDF file in Safari (if it is hosted on a web-server and accessible by a URL) and copy it to iBooks app. Alternatively, you can sync PDF files from your Mac via iTunes.

The iBooks app for iOS is no longer compatible with iOS 5.1.1 and it is no longer possible to install it on iPad 1st generation.

An alternate approach to get PDFs onto the iPad to read in offline mode is to iMessage it to the device. Step by step instructions as follows:

Set up iMessage on the iPad (by logging in with an Apple ID).
From another iOS/macOS device, iMessage the PDF file to the Apple ID setup on the iPad.
Once the message is received on the iPad, tap on the PDF thumbnail to download it. The PDF files gets downloaded and stored internally in the iMessage app. The same can now be accessed even without network.
To view the PDF, simply tap on the thumbnail to view it full screen.

The only glitch with this approach is that the last read page history is not preserved between launches. Neither are features like bookmarks and search available.


When in Fullscreen OSX Yosemite won't show the dock if "auto-hide-dock" is enabled. While my dock "auto-hide" is enabled when, in full-screen app, if I put the pointer to the very bottom, the dock won't show up.
Unless, and this might be a bug, I move my mouse horizontally and it reaches and already opened app. Sounds weird but I don't understand

I was a bit stumped by this, but actually I think there is an explicit procedure.

When in full-screen mode, move the cursor to the bottom of the screen; then drag down with one finger. The dock will then appear.

It appears it doesn't matter where you do this (which application icon you happen to hovering over) as far as I can see.


Is it possible to know the keywords used in AppStore for a given iPhone App? I would like to know if there is a way to find out the keywords used by an App when they submitted the app to the AppStore?

Unfortunately no: if you didn't submit it yourself there's no access to the keywords. They don't show up in the official RSS feeds nor in the scrape-able web pages. Searches in iTunes on a computer or mobile device are performed entirely on Apple's servers, so the keywords aren't exposed on the clients.


How do I disable Microsoft Outlook 2010 calendar notifications? I use "Mail" as my default mail client and "iCal" as my default calendar. However I have to use outlook when sending emails to work because their outlook for windows clients don't support inlining and display my images as attachments.

The only problem with this is that my calendar notifications appear twice, once for iCal and once for Outlook, even when outlook is closed. I could disable outlook mail notifications but not calendar ones, any ideas?

I believe this is what you are looking for:

Go to the menu item Outlook -> Turn Off Office Reminders


Homebrew running service shows error, how to debug this? When I run brew services list one of my services state shows err.
brew services restart elasticsearch@6 for example stops and restarts with no error output and shows:
brew services restart elasticsearch@6
Stopping `elasticsearch@6`... (might take a while)
==> Successfully stopped `elasticsearch@6` (label: homebrew.mxcl.elasticsearch@6)
==> Successfully started `elasticsearch@6` (label: homebrew.mxcl.elasticsearch@6)

But list still shows err. There's something wrong but Homebrew doesn't tell us what it is.  How to fix this problem?

Look at the log file in /usr/local/var/log/elasticsearch.log.
TL;DR
If you look at the formula definition with:
brew edit elasticsearch@6

You will find the content of the plist file used for this service, which define the output log as:
#{var}/log/elasticsearch.log

According to the documentation:

#var ⇒ Object
The directory where the formula's variable files should be installed. This directory is not inside the HOMEBREW_CELLAR so it persists across upgrades.

According to the source code:
def var
  HOMEBREW_PREFIX/"var"
end

You can find the HOMEBREW_PREFIX with:
brew --prefix

It is most likely /usr/local. So you will find your log file in /usr/local/var/log/elasticsearch.log.


Bluetooth audio is choppy / stuttering on Macbook Pro (Mojave) but not iPhone Audio playing from my Macbook Pro (Late 2016 15" w/ Touch Bar, OS v10.14.6) to my true wireless earbuds (Jabra Elite 75t) is often choppy / stuttering. The problem seems to be with the Macbook because audio playing from my iPhone 8 Plus to the Jabra earbuds never stutters. I can't upgrade from Mojave to Catalina because I use some legacy software.

Things I've tried:

Unpair/re-pair
Bluetooth menu -> Debug - Reset the bluetooth module
Reset PRAM
Disconnect wifi
Disconnect iPhone <-> Jabra connection
Change Sound settings for Input to Internal Microphone rather than Jabra
Set AirDrop to be discoverable by no one
Jump between wifi 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz and change channels
Jabra firmware upgrade
Play audio from different apps (Spotify, VLC, Youtube on Chrome, etc.)
Try these commands (in particular the ones under EDIT 3 and EDIT 4) for improving the power/bandwidth for the bluetooth module.
Try the "Force AptX" option here, that made my sound much worse.

When I open Console.app and filter for faults or errors plus the term "bluetooth," all I see is the error message "CoreBluetooth isn't advertising for this client type" from process "wirelessproxd"; not sure what that's about, maybe something to do with AirDrop.

What else should I try?

Many thanks

Looking at support documents at Jabra, the earbuds aren't designed for use with a computer:

No, we do not recommend you pair your Jabra Bluetooth device directly with a computer. Jabra Bluetooth headsets are optimized to be used with other Bluetooth devices, such as, smartphones or tablets. They are not optimized to be used directly with a computer. We cannot guarantee device performance or provide support for performance problems that may result from this.
If you choose to pair your Jabra Bluetooth device with a computer, it could work for audio streaming, but not for call control, which is not supported by many computers. Also, audio quality could vary depending on the model of the computer.


Application Firewall is not enabling pfctl I have a development environment that uses the Pow webserver. When I initially set it up, it automatically reconfigured the firewall to allow me to connect to my_project_name.dev urls.

Last time I upgraded to macOS Sierra, that stopped working. Every time my MacBook reconnects to the network, I have to run sudo pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf before the firewall rules allow me to access the .dev urls that Pow configured. From what I've read, macOS's Application Firewall is supposed to start pfctl automatically. Why isn't this working? Where should I start looking to troubleshoot this?

A workaround which worked for me:

System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Firewall -> Firewall options -> Check "Enable stealth mode"
Reboot
Check if pfctl is enabled now, in a Terminal:

sudo pfctl -s info | egrep -i --color=auto 'enabled|disabled'


Synchronize two working external drives over network We have two designers both using iMacs, running macOS Sierra; each have their own 4TB USB hdd. The designers have to transfer files to each other frequently over AirDrop but this is tedious.

What would be the best way to have the drives automatically sync files on both drives?

We've done some searching but most of the scenarios are only one working drive syncing to a back up. In our case both drives are being used and files are being created and edited on each.  Essentially I would like something like a synchronized ftp or a remote source control, something that automatically updates files that are changed on either drive and creates/deletes files.  Bonus points for adding a third external into the mix that is used just to have a offline backup of all files.

This ServerFault entry asks a similar question. The answers there are rsync and a product called Unison. It sounds like either solution fits the problem you have in front of you.

For rsync, something like the following recipe would likely work (I haven't run this, so the syntax may need some fiddling):

# sync drive.2 to drive.1
rsync -av --stats <user>@computer.2:/path/to/drive.2 /path/to/drive.1/

# sync drive.1 to drive.2
rsync -av --stats <user>@computer.1:/path/to/drive.1 /path/to/drive.2/

And Unison, the other option from the ServerFault entry, looks like it's a software package designed specifically to solve your type of synchronization problem.


I cannot maintain Bluetooth connection between old MacBook and new iPhone, because standard has changed so much in 8 years? I have a 2012 MacBook running Catalina and an iPhone 12. MacBook requesting to connect never works. iPhone making the request works. But, the MB then disconnects after a several seconds or minutes. Some Bluetooth speakers can connect and be used by both with no problems. An Apple Watch connects to the iPhone but the MB does not see it.
So, there is nothing I can do to reliably connect the new iPhone to the old MB? The standards have changed too much?

Like Wayfanning Stranger said in comments, I'm going to try a (usb to bluetooth) extender. I had really given-up. I am sure I'll get the correct extender to work. What a break through. Thanks so much.


How to disable face detection in Photos for OS X I don't like the feature that automatically detects faces in Photos for OS X because of the unnecessary CPU and disk space consumption. A photo library of 360 MB generated 50 MB of face detection data inside the Photos Library.

Is there any way to disable this feature in Photos for OS X?

Apparently you can stop face recognition by quitting iPhotos,  opening a terminal and typing the following (and press enter):

defaults write com.apple.iPhoto PKFaceDetectionEnabled 0

I guess you'll then need to manually delete all the faces it's recognised thus far.

As for the new "Photos" app, I don't think you can disable the face detection.


Music on iPhone isn't visible in Google Play Music app On my old Android device, I used Google Play Music. It would sync the music that was on my Android device (music app) into Google Play Music.

I synced MP3s using iTunes from my computer to my iPhone, but they don't show up in Google Play Music.

I don't enjoy switching from app to app just to listen to different music. Help?

I feel like what was actually happening on Android is that it was uploading files from your library to the cloud and then making them available in Google Play Music (one of its major features). It also could have been reading the music library on the device directly. I'm not completely sure, to be honest, but for purposes of this answer, it's mostly irrelevant.

For iOS, though, you will need to upload the music to Google Play Music using the Google Play Music Manager on your computer. Once that's done it will be available on Google Play Music on your iOS device (and Android, for that matter).

Otherwise, you would need to use the iPhone Music app to listen to the MP3s you synced onto your iPhone, or another app that supports directly using those MP3s.


How to erase and reformat SD card to ext3 on my macbook to prepare it for my raspberry pi I'm trying to reformat my 32G SD card to prepare it for my raspberry pi. My GUI program on my mac does not allow me to format it to ext3 which is what i'm told to reformat it to for my raspberry pi.

How do I reformat this SD card to ext3. I've researched some links on how to do it from the command line but i'm having a hard time understanding the procedures. Is there a GUI program out there that will do this for me or will i need to do it from the command line.

I've tried using fdisk but i can't figure out what commands I need to add on to erase and format to ext3. I know the path and name of my SD card which is /dev/disk1s1 so that is no problem.

I've also tried using the GUI program SDFormatter which is located here (https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4). But I doubt this will reformat it to the format I want which is ext3.

It takes some time to write a Linux distro to my SD card so I would like to get this right. Otherwise I wait for 2 hours for the writing process to complete plug in the SD card and then start up my pi and notice it doesn't work. I would like to stay away from making this time consuming mistake another time.

Install e2fsprogs brew install e2fsprogs
Format disk sudo $(brew --prefix e2fsprogs)/sbin/mkfs.ext3 /dev/diskN


Why do I need tuntap for HideMyAss? I want to install HideMyAss VPN software, but after login they suggest to me to install the tuntap driver.

The software worked before, but lately they want to install extra kernel extensions?

  My question is: With UNIX under the hood, why do I need such a kernel
  extension to make VPN work?

You don't need any kernel extensions. OS X has VPN configurability built in as well as all the UNIX tuneless and networking code and commands you could possibly need for securing the network. (It's BSD under the hood, after all).

Why that one package needs a .kext could be innocent and performance tuning or to prevent needing a password to change things later or it could be nefarious for any number of reasons.


Screenshots won't be saved after System language change I have changed the language from my MacOS system and now it won't save the screenshots anymore. Is there a way to fix it?

Thanks.

I fixed this issue updating the output folder with the following commands on the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop
killall SystemUIServer


How do I forward a meeting request from my iPhone? I have synced my mail and calender to our company's MS Exchange 2003 server using Outlook Web Access(OWA). I have received a meeting request that I wish to forward to someone. How do I do this using the default mail app? (iOS 4.3.1)

There is an app for that.  It is called "Forward My Meeting."


erased HD, did clean install, no iLife -- can I get iLife off from MacBook DVD? My MacBook came with Snow Leopard installed and it came with "recovery" DVDs, I upgraded to Lion via the App Store.  I had a problem with my MacBook -- the Apple Genius concluded I needed to do a full clean reinstall of Lion.

I erased the HD and reinstalled Lion. Everything's good now, except I don't have the iLife apps.

How do I get iLife?

For example, can I get the iLife apps off of the (Snow Leopard) DVDs that came with my MacBook?

Thanks,
Rob

For pre-mid-2011 machines, yes, the recovery DVD is the way to reinstall iLife. For machines that ship with Lion, your account at the App Store should be credited with the iLife programs in the Purchased tab; go there, sign in, and you can redownload them.


Install and import site-packages for Python 2 and 3 on Mac I installed brew and then

brew install python
brew install python3

Install flask with pip

pip install flask

Try

python -c 'import flask'

But I got exception

ImportError: No module named flask

Set and export PYTHONPATH

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages

So far so good. But when I tried to install a package with pip3 for Python 3, I got error message

Your PYTHONPATH points to a site-packages dir for Python 2.x but you are running Python 3.x!
     PYTHONPATH is currently: ":/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages"
     You should `unset PYTHONPATH` to fix this.

How to use site-packages without the PYTHONPATH trick to make both pip and pip3 usable and both Python 2 and Python 3 able to import site-packages?

You should consider install pyenv for this.

  pyenv lets you easily switch between multiple versions of Python. It's simple, unobtrusive, and follows the UNIX tradition of single-purpose tools that do one thing well.

To install, just type:

$ brew install pyenv

Add this to your .bash_profile:

echo 'export PYENV_ROOT="$HOME/.pyenv"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'eval "$(pyenv init -)"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Once installed use pyenv to install python versions you need:

$ pyenv install -l/--list --> List all available versions
$ pyenv install 2.7.6
$ pyenv install 3.3.3

Run this command after you install a python version:

$ pyenv rehash

You can specify multiple versions via PYENV_VERSION at once. Let's say if you have two versions of 2.7.6 and 3.3.3. If you prefer 2.7.6 over 3.3.3,

$ pyenv shell 2.7.6 3.3.3
$ pyenv versions
  system
* 2.7.6 (set by PYENV_VERSION environment variable)
* 3.3.3 (set by PYENV_VERSION environment variable)
$ python --version
Python 2.7.6
$ python2.7 --version
Python 2.7.6
$ python3.3 --version
Python 3.3.3


Screenshot Save Destination I am constantly using the command-shift-4 command to take a screenshot, since it is so easy, but it will always save to my Desktop, and I like having my Desktop clean. It is becoming a hassle to constantly move all my screenshots into a separate folder. Is there a way to change the save destination of the screenshots automatically? I would really like it to be able to save in a folder.

Yes, you can change the default screenshot location with the following Terminal command where <path> is the location you want them to be saved:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location <path>

Then relaunch SystemUIServer for it to take effect:

killall SystemUIServer