Making a full image of an installed system I'd like to know if is possible to make a full, bootable, and restorable image of an entire Yosemite installed system, (that is, with all installed apps and settings) without using a commercial software like Carbon Copy Cloner (which is no longer free, indeed).

I found those threads:
Creating a OS backup image for an easy restore on a new system
and
How do I make a bootable USB flash drive a Mac?

but both seem to propose recipes to create a bootable OS X thumb drive along with a set of basic tools, while I require a method to perform a full image of my installation.

Thanks a lot.

I think this is what you are meaning.

In terminal type in sudo dd if="/dev/disk0" of="/volumes/<volume>/image.img"

Warning

Entering this command wrong could render your computer useless.

Info

disk0 is the hard drive of your Mac and <volume> is the name of your external drive and image.img is the name of the file you will create

To restore go to internet recovery and swap the if and of arguments.

This will also backup any partitions you have on your computer. This means if you have boot camp setup it will also backup and restore windows too. Bonus!

Disclaimer
I am not responsible for any damage that you cause to your system when entering in this command. Research the use of the dd command if you are not sure how this works before proceeding.


Xcode update would not work, and now won't leave the App Store update queue Hello I am trying to remove this update.  It was not working and I ended up downloading the Xcode update directly from apple.developer, it gave me no problem.  This has been my spring cleaning project so now i am still update date with my Xcode but this resume update remains.  The update has actually also been updated to 6.3 as well.  Any advice or direction outside of third party solutions would be very helpful and appreciated.

Thank you,

I was able to fix this problem by correcting the permissions for Xcode. Run this from your Terminal:

sudo pkgutil --repair com.apple.pkg.Xcode

It actually installed as I was doing this. Many of the permissions reported as "should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x".


Change color of the Cmd+Tab app switcher on Yosemite? Is it possible to change the color (specifically, darken) the cmd+tab application switcher on yosemite?

It's hard to see, especially against a white background:

You can darken the the background of menu bars in Yosemite using "Dark mode".  To enable this go to System Preferences-->General, and check the box next to "Use dark menu bar and Dock".


How do I create a menu shortcut which involves the delete key? In Addressbook I want to create a keyboard shortcut for the Menu entry Delete Group using the key combination option-command-delete.

So I went to System Preferences --> Keyboard --> Keyboard Shortcuts and added an app-specific shortcut entry for "Delete Group". But when I tried to assign the key combination option-command-delete, my input wouldn't get accepted. (Combinations with letter like option-command-D work, though.)

How can I enter a shortcut combination involving the delete key?

You can edit the property list that stores the shortcuts directly. For example open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist with TextMate or TextWrangler, and add:

<key>NSUserKeyEquivalents</key>
<dict>
    <key>Delete Card</key>
    <string>~@&#x0008;</string>
</dict>

The shortcut strings are documented in http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System.html.


How may an Apple's USB port be used to control simple electronic devices e.g. LED(s)? How may an Apple's USB port be used to control simple electronic devices e.g. LED(s) ?

I'm happy for any workable answer, but hopefully someone may know of a link to a supplier of a cheap USB interface that can control a LED (light emitting diode) when plugged into an Apple, and some simple script/application is run to change the LED on/off.

Arduino ftw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino

You can get simpler than this, and just use the power from the usb port to power a breadboard LED device. You should really have a basic understanding of electronics, be able to read a schematic, etc., before you do this. Its not that you will electrocute yourself, but you may lose the use of the usb port.


Reasons for iOS system time jumping backwards on an iPad while being offline My team and I ran into a bug, which is probably caused by the iOS system time not incrementing monotonically, but jumping backwards. The measured time difference was about -50 milliseconds. (That's obviously no leap second or time zone issue.)

We understand that iOS devices synchronize their time with NTP servers while being online. But the negative time difference was observed while having no network connection at all.

Are there any reasons iOS would update the system time while offline?

Relevant posts:

We'll certainly need to follow this approach for measuring elapsed times. But nevertheless, we'd like to understand what was causing the jump.
This answer mentions reasons for such time jumps, but none of them seems to apply in my case.
This answer mentions significant time changes. But what are insignificant changes?

Update: After 2 hours in airplane mode we observed a time jump of 637 ms into the past with System.DateTime.Now on a iPad Mini 2, while CACurrentMediaTime kept increasing monotonically. It's still unclear why iOS should do such a significant jump after such a long time without NTP updates.

The RTC clock is "tweaked" periodically to correct its time (for example to account for clock drift) - this happens no matter if you're online or offline. This is standard on modern operating systems, not just iOS.

The bug is not in your operating system, but in your app. If you want a monotonically increasing clock, you should not be using System.DateTime.Now.

In order to select the correct timer/clock function for your app, you need to determine what you want to use the time for - and then select accordingly. I.e. it is a very different need to want the current time to display to the user in a "clock app" compared to needing time to run a timer that will fire every 50 ms periodically in a game.


Syncing Notes with Gmail & iCloud In the Mail, Contacts & Calendars Preference pane, you can have Notes synchronize with a Gmail account.
I've already got it setup to work nicely with iCloud, but..
Where do I go in Gmail to read these Notes? They don't appear under the "notes" label.

Your notes can synchronize with Gmail or iCloud, not both as far as I can tell.

To sync a note with Gmail do the following

Set up your account and check the notes box in the Mail, Contacts & Calendars preference pane.
Go to notes in Mountain Lion
Go to View -> Show Folders List -- or -- click the folders list icon in the bottom left side of the Notes window
From here you should be able to select your Gmail account instead of iCloud and create a new note
Within Gmail you should have a folder called "Notes" and your newly created note should be inside


How do I resize OS X main partition when I already have other BootCamp partitions? Short story: partition resizing using Disk Utility fails because MediaKit reports no such partition when I try to shrink it. I also tried the same while booting from the DVD, same result.

Details:

reFIT is installed and partition tables are in sync.

Current configuration:

refit
hfs+ - with OS X 10.6 on it
linux swap
linux ext4 - with Ubuntu on it

I can boot both, OS X and Ubuntu, via rEFIt boot menu but I want to shrink the OSX partition in order to add another NTFS partion where I want to install Windows 7 x64.

What should I do?

Here is my current solution:

boot from OS X DVD - mandatory!
open terminal
diskutil list
umount "/Volumes/Macintosh HD"
fsck -f /dev/disk0s2
diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk0s2 100G


Does iOS 6 turn-by-turn navigation work with satellite images? Without modifications, can a user turn on satellite images for iOS 6 turn-by-turn navigation use satellite images rather than just a simple interface and monochrome 3D buildings—although it may be distracting?

No, it doesn't seem to be possible.  If you are in satellite mode, it switches back to "standard" when you start the navigation.  It's a shame, that would be pretty cool.


How are the apps published on the App Store licensed to end-users? What license is used by apps published on the iOS and Mac App Store? I am assuming this information is a part of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

Does the individual/organization publishing the app has a choice of license? Are the individual apps licensed as a part of license for iOS (the system software) itself?

According to the Apple Licensed Application End User Agreement:

Your license to each App Store Product that you obtain through the App Store Services is subject to your prior acceptance of this Licensed Application End User License Agreement (“Standard EULA”), and you agree that the terms of this Standard EULA will apply to each App Store Product that you license through the App Store Service

The Standard EULA license applies to any product that you obtain through the App Store unless:

Unless that App Store Product is covered by a valid end user license agreement between you and the Application Provider of that App Store Product, in which case the terms of that separate end user license agreement will govern.

That will be the case unless you have a separate user license agreement between you and the application provider.
In the article, it mentions nothing about choosing your own license.


Mac Notebooks: What is the difference between Lock Screen, Turn Display Off, and Sleep mode states There are three different types of sleep states that a Mac Notebook (MacBook/MacBook Air/MacBook Pro) can go into:

Lock Screen: Triggered by pressing the Lock Screen button on the Touch Bar or selecting the Lock Screen command in Apple Menu. The screen turns off after a short time and programs and videos running in the background continue running in this mode, at least for a while. However, if I have a chat program running (e.g. Slack), sometimes my messages are not updated upon waking the computer and I need to manually refresh or wait for a while.
Turn Display Off: Triggered by leaving the portable idle for a set number of minutes (as configured in System Preferences → Energy Saver). Programs and videos running in the background seem to continue running in this mode.
Sleep Mode: Triggered by pressing the Sleep button on the Touch Bar, selecting the Sleep command in Apple Menu, or closing the lid. Programs and videos running in the background turn off when the machine enters this mode.

My question is, what are the differences between these three modes with regards to how often programs are allowed to update in the background? Is putting my machine in Lock Screen different from waiting for the display to turn off after set duration?

The three distinct operations do exactly as the name suggests. However, the observed behaviour may vary as these operations work in conjunction with other setting configured in System Preferences app → Energy Saver. Let's briefly survey them again, one by one:

Lock Screen: Locks the screen and shows the login prompt with the name of the logged-in user displayed along with the password field. Locking the screen keeps the computer and all the processes running with the display remaining on. Any running processes continue to run, and any audio/video playback remains in progress. Lock screen invokes display sleep after a few seconds as a possible optimization technique by macOS. However, the display sleep is not performed after lock screen if video playback is in progress by a desktop app.
Turn Display Off: Only the display (built-in as well as connected) is turned off. Other hardware components remain on and processes continue to run. If a video playback is currently in progress in a desktop app (QuickTime Player, VLC etc.) the setting is overridden and the display doesn't go to sleep.
Sleep: Puts the computer into low enrgy consumption mode. The computer remains on but consumes less power. The display and hard disk are turned off, running process are halted, and any audio/video playback is paused. The advantage of this mode is that it's quicker to wake from sleep that starting from a shut down. Closing the lid of a portable automatically puts it into sleep mode unless an external display is connected to it. Sleep mode behaviour may slightly vary in case of Macs which support Power Nap. (Power Nap allows your Mac to occasionally wake from sleep to perform tasks such as checking for new email or software updates. Display and other un-needed hardware components remain turned off. Mac goes back to sleep once it's done with the task.)

  What are the differences between these three modes with regards to how often programs are allowed to update in the background?

As stated above, all the processes continue to run in the Lock Screen and Turn Display Off mode. However, depending on the configurations in System Preferences app -> Energy Saver, hard disks may be put to sleep (Hard drive motor is powered down when you aren't reading or writing files from the drive. Solid-state drives (SSDs) don’t have moving parts, so this setting doesn’t affect Mac computers that use only SSDs to store data.). Under both Lock Screen and Turn Display Off mode, all the programs continue to run and update normally.

  However, if I have a chat program running (e.g. Slack), sometimes my messages are not updated upon waking the computer and I need to manually refresh or wait for a while.

This may happen due to disruption in Internet connectivity. Display sleep and lock screen settings doesn't affect the normal operation of network applications.

  Is putting my machine in Lock Screen different from waiting for the display to turn off after set duration?

Yes. Lock Screen only restricts unauthorised access to the system and presents the logged-in users login prompt. Display turning off after a set duration doesn't automatically locks the screen or puts the system in sleep mode. A password authentication may still be required after waking the screen from display off mode if Required Password Immediately setting is enabled in System Preferences app → Security & Privacy → General.

The Apple support document, Use the Energy Saver settings on your Mac discusses the aforementioned items in further details.

The answer is written taking into account the settings and behaviour present in the current release of macOS, macOS High Sierra 10.13.6.


Built-in WebDAV client able to connect via HTTPS with client certificate? Using Mac OS 10.6.8, I'm trying to connect via HTTPS to a WebDAV server that requires client certificates. Without luck so far. The certificate is stored in the keychain.
Is this possible with the built-in WebDAV client?

Are there alternatives that integrate somewhat smoothly?

This question on the apple discussion board suggests that it is not possible through Finder, but works in Firefox.


Windows stop in the purple screen after Ubuntu installation I have an external hard drive where I installed Windows 10 to use on my MacBook when needed. It works great, I just need to toggle the boot disk.

But I had to install Linux. To do this I separated space from the HD and installed Linux through a pen drive. Now whenever I boot the computer with this HD it opens GRUB and asks me to select between UBUNTU and WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER.

Initializing the ubuntu is easy but when I try to boot Windows it gets stuck. I checked through Ubuntu and all Windows files are still there ...

Some information i get when i type fdisk -l in ubuntu:

Disk /dev/sda: 113 GiB, 121332826112 bytes, 236978176 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: AF2EB9E1-8E5E-41A3-82B6-16DAF94B546A

Device      Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1      40    409639    409600   200M EFI System
/dev/sda2  409640 236978135 236568496 112,8G unknown

Disk /dev/sdc: 298,1 GiB, 320072932352 bytes, 625142446 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 2BA05492-9337-401D-9BB9-33D96A7159A9

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sdc1         40    409639    409600   200M EFI System
/dev/sdc2     411648 331016191 330604544 157,7G Microsoft basic data **<- WINDOWS!?**
/dev/sdc3  331016192 338829311   7813120   3,7G Linux swap
/dev/sdc4  338829312 625141759 286312448 136,5G Linux filesystem

Whats ived tried:

sudo update-grub in ubuntu
Boot repair in ubuntu, he said "Please disable SecureBoot in the BIOS. Then try again.Do you want to continue?"

My Macbook is the Air (13-inch, Early 2014) using macOS Mojave with 1,4 GHz Intel Cor and 4GB of ram.

what should I do to fix it?

So far this is not a answer. To fully answer, I would need more information. Below is an explanation of what went wrong.

Both Ubuntu and Window place boot software in the /EFI/Boot folder in the EFI partition (sdc1). Most notably is the bootx64.efi file.

When you installed Ubuntu, the Windows EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi file was replace with an Ubuntu version. There is a backup copy of the overwritten file stored under the file name EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi. So repairing the broken Windows is fairly easy. You could just copy a file. However, this type of the repair would also break Ubuntu.

A possible solution would be to clone the EFI partition. You could then make the above repair to the clone. This would allow both Windows and Ubuntu to appear in the Mac Startup Manager. Below is an example of how to do this. Here, both Windows and Ubuntu were installed on a single drive in a VirtualBox virtual machine. This was done to verify the commands are correct.

While booted to Ubuntu, temporarily make Windows bootable. The steps are given below.

Open a Terminal windows. Enter the command below to become the root user.

sudo bash

Enter the command given below. This changes the folder to the EFI/Boot on the partition labeled EFI.

cd /boot/efi/EFI/Boot

Rename the Ubuntu file bootx64.efi to the temporary name bootx64u.efi.

mv bootx64.efi bootx64u.efi

Enter the command given below to copy the Windows file bootmgfw.efi to bootx64.efi.

cp ../Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi bootx64.efi

If you do not have a Microsoft folder, then you will need to reinstall the Windows boot files. See the Appendix end of this answer.
Enter the exit command twice to close the window.

exit
exit

The output produced when I entered these commands is shown below.

dma@dma-VirtualBox:~$ sudo bash
[sudo] password for dma:
root@dma-VirtualBox:/boot/efi/EFI# cd /boot/efi/EFI/Boot
root@dma-VirtualBox:/boot/efi/EFI/Boot# mv bootx64.efi bootx64u.efi
root@dma-VirtualBox:/boot/efi/EFI/Boot# cp ../Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi bootx64.efi
root@dma-VirtualBox:/boot/efi/EFI/Boot# exit
exit
dma@dma-VirtualBox:~$ exit

Next, reboot to Windows and clone the EFI partition. Cloning can not be accomplished while booted directly to Windows. Instead, you have to reboot to the Windows Recovery Environment (winRE) or from a Windows USB flash drive installer. The instructions for using the winRE are given at the Microsoft website Start your PC in safe mode in Windows 10.

  Note: The website explains how to reach "Startup Settings". You need to select "Command Prompt" instead of  "Startup Settings".

Execute the diskpart command and list the available drives.

diskpart
list disk

Select the correct disk. I selected disk 0. You will need to select the correct external drive from the drives listed.

select disk 0

List the partitions on the selected drive.

list partition

Windows should be partition 2. Enter the following commands to create a new 200 MB partition labeled EFI2 after the Windows partition.

select part 2
shrink desired=200
create partition efi
format fs=fat32 label=EFI2 quick
list partition

Assign the new partition the letter T: and the original EFI partition the letter S:.

assign letter=t
select partition 1
assign letter=s

Enter the exit command to exit the diskpart command.

exit

Copy all the files from the old partition to the new partition.

xcopy s:\* t:\ /e /h /q

Restore the Ubuntu bootx64.efi file.

del s:\EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi
ren s:\EFI\Boot\bootx64u.efi bootx64.efi

Enter the exit command twice to close the window.

exit

The output produced when I entered these commands is shown below.

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17763.107]
(c) 2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

X:\windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.17763.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MININT-PVCCLL9

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          300 GB      0 B        *

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    System             200 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            153 GB   201 MB
  Partition 3    Unknown           3815 MB   153 GB
  Partition 4    Unknown            142 GB   157 GB

DISKPART> select part 2

Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> shrink desired=200

DiskPart successfully shrunk the volume by:  200 MB

DISKPART> create partition efi

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> format fs=fat32 label=EFI2 quick

  100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

DISKPART> list partition
  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    System             200 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            153 GB   201 MB
* Partition 3    System             200 MB   153 GB
  Partition 4    Unknown           3815 MB   153 GB
  Partition 5    Unknown            142 GB   157 GB

DISKPART> assign letter=t

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

DISKPART> select partition 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> assign letter=s

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

X:\Windows\System32>xcopy s:\* t:\ /e /h /q
146 File(s) copied

X:\Windows\System32>del s:\EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi

X:\Windows\System32>ren s:\EFI\Boot\bootx64u.efi bootx64.efi

X:\Windows\System32>exit

  Note: When finish, you may find the Startup Manager's selections confusing. If so, consider adding a Windows and/or Ubuntu icon to the Startup Manager menu.

Appendix

How to reinstall the Windows EFI boot files.

Use the Boot Camp Assistant to create a Windows 10 USB flash drive installer. If you have problems do this, then see the question Boot Camp Assistant fails to create the USB installer from the Windows 10 October 2018 Update.
With the flash drive inserted in a USB port, start (or restart) the Mac and hold down the option key until the Startup Manager icons appears. Select to boot from the USB drive icon labeled "EFI Boot".
When the initial Windows 10 installation windows appears, press then shift+F10 key combination to open a Command Prompt window.
Execute the diskpart command and list the available drives.

diskpart
list disk

Select the correct disk. I selected disk 0. You will need to select the correct external drive from the drives listed.

select disk 0

Enter the command below to determine the drive letter assign to the Windows partition. In this example, I will assume the drive letter is C:.

list volume

Assign the EFI partition the letter S:.

select partition 1
assign letter=s

Enter the exit command to exit the diskpart command.

exit

Enter the following command to create the Windows EFI boot files. If you determined a different drive letter than C: in step 6, then make the appropriate substitution.

bcdboot C:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI

Enter the command below to close the Command Prompt Window.

exit

Click on the red X button and then select Yes button to restart the Mac.


Thunderbolt monitor goes dark I have a 2013 MacBook Pro being used with a Thunderbolt monitor.  It has been working fine.  But just recently, it has begun not mirroring the screen to the monitor when it is closed.  I am running El Capitan, but have been doing so for awhile.  This issue just started yesterday.  When I open up the MacBook, the monitor turns on and displays the mirrored desktop, then goes dark when I shut the MacBook.  Help please.

This is a known issue with that era of MacBookPros. You may be eligible for a the MacBook Pro Repair Extension Program: If you are, they will fix it for free even if you are out of warrantee (I had my mid 2012 repaired under this program.)

Apple has determined that a small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts. These MacBook Pro systems were sold between February 2011 and December 2013.

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/


On iOS, do "Automatic Downloads" (incl. Music, Apps, Books, Updates) download on public or slow WiFi networks? If I have "Automatic Downloads" enabled for some or all of the categories (Music, Apps, Books, Updates), then these items will download when available, while I'm connected to my home's WiFi network.

I enabled these settings recently, so I'm not quite sure on this yet, but if I'm connected to a public network, then will they still download? Because public WiFi networks are often quite slow, so I think the downloads might stall. Is it possible to instead keep these options enabled, but prevent downloads from taking place on WiFi networks that are not my home network?

Or at worst, if a download stalls and I can no longer connect to WiFi again, then is there a way to revert an update that only downloaded halfway? Would restarting my device do the trick?

Yes, they will download even in slow Wi-Fi connections. There is no option to choose an Wi-Fi connection to do the automatic downloads. You can only disable the downloads on Cellular Data on Settings / iTunes & App Store / Use Cellular Data.


How to install apps in App Store with a new Apple ID that was already signed in in my new iPad? I had buy a new iPad mini 2. The worker of the shop where I bought my iPad was already setting my iPad. He was also created an Apple ID for me. But whenever I want to install any apps, I must enter my password of my Apple ID although I already signed in. Why does this problem happen?

That is normal. Your Apple ID is different from the ID you use to sign in to your iPad. It will always ask for your Apple ID password before a new purchase to make sure that someone else is not purchasing from your account.

If you forgot your Apple ID password, you can reset it at: https://iforgot.apple.com/

Your can change it so that it will not ask you again if you made a purchase within 15 minutes: go to Settings, then 'iTunes & App Store' and then select 'Require After 15 Minutes'.


Is Mission Control an addition to Exposé & Spaces UI or a replacement? Lion has Mission Control that combines features from both Exposé and Spaces. Do the old Exposé and Spaces UIs still exist in Lion or does Mission Control replace them?

I've heard mixed rumors about whether Spaces/Exposé exists or not; and all the YouTube et al. videos/reports concentrate on featuring the Mission Control but won't tell straight if it is an addition or a replacement.

I understand, though, there are spaces—called desktops—on the top of the Mission Control UI.
There definitely are spaces, but is there Spaces?

Mission Control replaces them.

All the things that you used to be able to do in expose and spaces should be in Mission Control as well (Well... Not really, you can't have spaces arranged in two dimensional space anymore).

But no, there's no more Spaces or Expose anymore. Yes it's called desktop now.


MacBook Pro 16" runs about 10 degrees hotter when plugged in on idle, is this normal? The degrees delta has a noticable impact on fan noise and is making me consider returning the machine.

Is it normal for MacBook to be running so much hotter when plugged in? Idles at 60 degrees on a charger and just 50 on battery.

The new Macbook Pro 16" has problems with external displays connected to it, sometimes even just external hdd's or other thunderbolt devices.

Do you have external displays connected?

Basically the GPU will get pinned at 18watt+ and produce max heat on the right side of the laptop where it is located.
This will cause the laptop to go at 60 degrees C at idle and 3k~ rpm fans, and spike to 100+ degrees under CPU load.

Apple has not responded officially to this, even though I am in multiple forums that have people mentioning they contact Apple support that have them go trough random tests that does nothing.
Please call Apple and report this issue so we get as many people reporting it as possible.
I have scheduled calls with them, that they keep postponing.

If you want to see for yourself istat menus can show you the information, it should have a trial so you can see it.

Short video of me having laptop unplugged and plugged with istat menus open:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3vV1-CWMQg

I have installed Turbo Boost Switcher, and turned off Turbo Boost for the time being or my Macbook will go into thermal shutdown on intense cpu tasks.
Yay for getting an i9 cpu locked to 2.4Ghz the performance is terrible.
Hoping Apple will eventually let me return it for money back, I'm over my no questions asked return days.


ls command: What does the @ in file mode mean, and how to get rid of it? After I download files on OSX and then want to use them, they often have an @ appended on the file mode whenever I do a ls -l. Here is an example output, see the @ near the beginning of the line:

ls -l *.php
-rw-r--r--@ 1 username  staff  11179 Dec 17  2010 class.mysql.php
-rw-r--r--@ 1 username  staff     24 Nov  1  2010 info.php
-rw-r--r--@ 1 username  staff     61 Dec 23  2010 page.php
-rw-r--r--@ 1 username  staff   1157 Dec 17  2010 photo.php

I think it is some kind of locking meganism, is that right? And how do I get rid of it?

From the ls manual (man ls) section The Long Format

  If the file or directory has extended attributes, the permissions field printed by the -l option is followed by a '@' character.

You can then display the extended attributes with -@

  -@      Display extended attribute keys and sizes in long (-l) output.

To manipulate extended attributes you can use the xattr command. See for example How do I remove the extended attributes in Mac OS X or Dealing With Extended Attributes on OS X


How to choose the correct resolution for a 5K2K monitor on macOS? I just bought a LG 34wk95u, an ultra-wide 34” monitor with 5120x2160 native resolution (named 5K2K).
I connected my MBP 13” 2018 to it with thunderbolt.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the only way to have the maximum display quality on this kind of monitor, if to have :

1:1 resolution (5120x2160) -> native resolution
or 1:2 resolution (2560x1080) -> because every pixel is x2 horizontally and x2 vertically, so the scaling is perfect.

As soon as we try other resolution, scaling can not be perfect, and text will be a little more blurry (this can be verified running a 4K video on the monitor, pausing on some text). Plus, as stated in macOS display settings: "scaled resolution may affect performances"

The thing is, with 1:1 resolution, everything is way too small on screen, I can't read text. But with 1:2 resolution, everything is too big (et I don’t have enough space on my desktop, 34” becomes useless).

If I change font sizes, I can notice 2 issues:

I need to do it on every software (complicated).
If I take my mac with me to work in a coffee, or just in my bed, font sizes will be wrong on the MBP retina display.

I don’t know what to do.

Should I keep 5120x2160 res but increase font size is every software?

Should I use 2560x1080 res and decrease font size in every software?
Should I use 3360x1417 res, having a normal size for everything, but
accept that the display quality is lower that it should be? (at
1100€, it hurts…)

Should I change of monitor and take one with a lower native
resolution?

I'll use this monitor as a software developper who wants lots of real estate to display in the same time: code, terminal, web browser, debuguer.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Try the 3360 x 1417 scaling mode for a while. That's exactly why it was introduced to macOS as an option -- so that HiDPI displays can actually be made usable instead of having everything tiny. No it won't be perfect, but there's no perfect answer here. After doing your regular workflow for a few days, you'll know if this mode is acceptable to you.

For desktop use, most people are comfortable when the apparent display resolution is around 100 to 110 ppi. People with lower visual acuity tend to prefer a lower resolution around 80-90 ppi.

You purchased a display with a native ppi of 164 ppi, which is much too high to be comfortable. The most performant scaling mode is 2:1 which would give you a ppi of 82, which is too small to be comfortable for most people.

Next time you find yourself purchasing a display, try to find something around 200-220 ppi (looks like 100-110 ppi at 2:1 scaling). Because your laptop has a limit on how many pixels it can push, that means you're looking at a maximum diagonal size of around 29" (at 5K) to get the picture quality you're looking for.


Calendar alert sound on the iPodTouch isn't loud enough is there some "mobile" way to make it louder? Calendar alert sound on the iPodTouch isn't loud enough is there some "mobile" way to make it louder?

As far as "volume boost" or "overdrive" type features are concerned, I don't think there is one. You could always get a battery powered external speaker.

When I'm out driving I usually plug my iPhone into my car stereo and listen to music / Pandora. It quiets the music (but doesn't pause) to play notification sounds, so it's quite audible.


Automator - How to know what I can do with Automator in each app I'm new to AppleScript and Automator, I've reached to stop and play next and previous track in Spotify, here's what I use inside the AppleScript:

tell application "Spotify" to playpause

for play/pause^.

tell application "Spotify" to next track
tell application "Spotify" to previous track

for next and previous track^.

My question is, how can I know what else I can do with Spotify (or any other app) and automator, what any other word can I write instead "playpause", "next track" and "previous track". Thanks.

Automator and AppleScript are two very different things.

For Automator actions for a specific app, search for the name of the app in the Actions search bar.

For AppleScript, open the Script Editor, then open the dictionary of the app by pressing ⇧⌘O and selecting the app. Apps not in the list probably don't have an AppleScript dictionary.


How to prevent loading some LaunchDaemons? I just took a look into /Library/LaunchDaemons and was wondering how many different things I opened up there :)

Can I easily remove strange one? How can I disable them during system boot?

I see the next list

at.obdev.littlesnitchd.plist
com.adobe.fpsaud.plist
com.bresink.system.securityagent3.plist
com.google.keystone.daemon.plist

On boot all plist files in /Library/LaunchDaemons are scanned. The plist files which contain

    <key>Disabled</key>
<false/>

are loaded.

When you want them to not be loaded during next boot, change <false/> into <true/>.

For exemple with terminal command $ sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.google.keystone.daemon.plist

The built in command which prevents loading a daemon on next boot and immediately unloads (stops) the requested daemon is called like this:

$ sudo launchtl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.google.keystone.daemon.plist

The -w switch makes that  is being written into the plist.
The -w switch makes that the daemon is not loaded on next boot.

To verify that the daemon is unoaded with succes, issue:

$ launchtl list | grep com.google.keystone

Should return something like:

-   0   com.google.keystone.user.agent

When the output line starts with a "-" (minus sign) then the unload succeeded.

12132   0    com.google.keystone.user.agent

In case there is a number (the PID) at the first position than the unload failed.


Where can I download the versions of Safari that are newer than what Apple ships? I'm a web developer that makes webapps that work in all modern browsers. Amazingly enough, I use 100% valid HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Occasionally, I have to release interesting fixes, to say the least, because my webapps don't work in the latest versions for some reason.

Thus, I have the latest versions of all browsers as well as the betas. Firefox Aurora, Chrome Canary, IE10, and Opera Next 12.

I have but one missing: Safari. Of course I have the normal version of Safari, but can I get ahead of the curve before the launch of the next Safari update by Apple?

I'm looking for either the Mac or the Windows versions - both if possible.

Safari is Apple’s build of WebKit. Nightly WebKit builds are available at nightly.webkit.org.


Applescript error -1708 when calling a function I have written a script for Spotify with a subroutine

tell application "Spotify"
    ⋮
    silentVolume(tmpDur)
    ⋮
end tell

on silentVolume(tmpDur)
    tell application "Spotify"
        ⋮
        set tmpDur to ((duration of current track) / 1000)
        ⋮
    end tell
end silentVolume

Two problems with this

When I call silentVolume with a float I get an error -1708 and the error message (translated to English so this is an approximation) "Spotify encountered an error. Cannot continue silentVolume". Why?
silentVolume doesn't seem to inherit the context (tell application "Spotify") of the main function. Why?

Initially this subroutine was part of the main function and then it worked fine but I needed a recursive solution, therefore I had to break it out into a separate method.

It was a problem with the scope. This question got me on the right way. I needed to change the call to the subroutine to

my silentVolume (tmpDur)

and then now works as expected. Leave it here as a future reference for anyone googling error -1708.


Open addresses in google maps instead of apple maps Street addresses in Messages, Calendar, etc appear as links to click.  But when I tap on these links, they open in Apple maps.  I prefer to use google maps (or citymapper, where available).

How can I configure my iPhone so that it's opening addresses in the maps application of my preference?

Unfortunately, you can't (unless you jailbreak your iPhone).
Anyway, from iOS 8, you are allowed to use your preferred navigator, once Maps has been opened:

Open an address (it will open with Apple Maps by default).
Tap the "car" button, as you do to get directions.
Tap the "share" button, then tap "Transport apps".
Choose the app navigator you prefer, among the installed ones (i.e., Google Maps). You will be redirected to the one you chose.

It's not as changing the default, but it's surely easier than typing an address manually in your preferred app.


Disabling hardware acceleration for Night Shift I'm noticing some artifacts when I watch full-screen videos on macOS with Night Shift enabled, and I suspect they are caused by hardware, because they disappear whenever an overlay appears over a full-screen video.

So, I was wondering, is there any way to disable hardware acceleration for Night Shift? And, if not, then is there any other application I can use that would perform the same function, but without taking advantage of hardware acceleration? (maybe an old version of f.lux or something else?)

Since the artifacts disappear whenever an overlay appears, I solved the issue by creating an app that displays a persistent, invisible overlay:

Created a new macOS Cocoa App in Xcode.
Edited the window properties in MainMenu.xib, in the attributes inspector, and unchecked "Title Bar", "Shadow", "Close", "Minimize" and "Resize", then in the size inspector I set content size width and height to 1, and initial position x and y to 0.
Edited Info.plist and added a new property "Application is agent (UIElement)" set to YES.
Edited AppDelegate.swift and changed applicationDidFinishLaunching to:

window.isOpaque = false
window.alphaValue = 0
window.ignoresMouseEvents = true
window.level = .floating
window.collectionBehavior = [.canJoinAllSpaces, .transient]

Compiled the app for production with Product  Archive  Distribute App  Copy App.

Now, whenever I want to watch full-screen videos with Night Shift turned on, I can start the application and there won't be any further artifacts. I can then close it from Activity Monitor. Another option would be to have it run at startup (System Preferences  Users & Groups  Login Items).


How much will macOS High Sierra upgrade cost me? I have a Mac running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5. unfortunately I am not very good at installing new programmes on my computer, and I want to update mine to the latest release macOS High Sierra.

What will it cost me if I go the the Mac shop at the Metro centre to have it installed?

First you'll need to check the compatibility of your Mac with the subsequently released version(s) of macOS. You can refer to the support document from Apple, Use the Mac operating system that came with your Mac, or a compatible newer version. This will help you in determining if your Mac can run macOS High Sierra (if not than what is the latest released supported by your Mac). Specifically, to check if your Mac can run macOS High Sierra, check if your model of Mac is listed under Can your Mac use High Sierra? section in the document, How to download macOS High Sierra.

As mentioned, you are already running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5. All the subsequent releases of OS X (later re-branded as macOS starting with macOS Sierra 10.12) are released by Apple free of cost and can be easily downloaded using the Mac App Store available on your Mac.

If you can visit an Apple Retail store, you should be able get assistance with upgradation to the latest supported release for free. If you do not have one in vicinity, you can also check with an authorised Apple retailer and check for the pricing. There are no costs from Apple whatsoever for upgradation (in your case).


How to determine what keeps causing my mouse cursor to stick or slow down a lot? Every once in a while, my mouse cursor will stop for a second, or move extremely slow, every half minute or so. I recently upgraded to High Sierra, but also noticed this occurring when running Sierra.

The only way to resolve it is to reboot my machine, which is a problem due to the type of work that I do where I need to keep my undo history.

I've tried restarting many of the apps that I use, but the problem persists. I've also looked at the CPU and Memory tabs in the Activity Monitor, but nothing jumps out as being the culprit.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to figure out what's causing this so I don't have to reboot to fix it?

All yesterday, my machine worked without any problems. This morning when I started working, I noticed the problem.

Here are my specs:

MacBook Pro 15-inch 2016
2.9 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB Memory
Radeon Pro 460 4 GB
3 TB External Thunderbolt 2 drive
Dual LG 27" UltraFine 5K IPS LED Montiors (thunderbolt 3)
Logitech MX Master (connected using USB receiver -- have used same mouse for years)

After removing the USB receiver, I connected my Logitech MX Master to my MacBook Pro via Bluetooth and am no longer experiencing issues with the mouse cursor sticking or slowing down.


Creating partition on USB drive I have been following directions to create a bootable USB drive from here:

http://borgstrom.ca/2010/10/14/os-x-bootable-usb.html

Here is the relevant screenshot:

However for my case on the USB Drive (a new 32GB Sandisk): the Disk Utility shows the Partition tab is disabled:

Hints on whether the procedure being followed were incorrect appreciated.

Apple declines to partition many more drives on 10.11 than it did in the past. Have you tried the "erase" command to blow away everything?

If that's no good, you could try the command line:

diskutil splitpartition

The help is a bit obtuse, but if you posted what layout you wanted, perhaps someone could get you the command for OS X.

  Split a pre-existing partition into multiple partitions.  All data on the split
  partition will be lost.  The first disk parameter is the one to split; the
  remaining parameters are as in the diskutil partitionDisk command.
  Ownership of the affected disk is required.

  Valid sizes are floating-point numbers with a suffix of B(ytes), S(512-byte-
  blocks), K(ilobytes), M(egabytes), G(igabytes), T(erabytes), P(etabytes),
  or (%)percentage of the total size of the whole disk.

Here's a lot of output from a command to make three partitions on a 64 GB drive:

$ diskutil splitpartition disk2s2 "MS-DOS FAT12" BOOT_ARMHF 1.0M ExFAT Linux 1.9G "Journaled HFS+" OSX 2G
Started partitioning on disk2s2 Untitled
Splitting
Unmounting disk
Waiting for the disks to reappear
Formatting disk2s2 as MS-DOS (FAT12) with name BOOT_ARMHF
512 bytes per physical sector
/dev/rdisk2s2: 1907 sectors in 1907 FAT12 clusters (512 bytes/cluster)
bps=512 spc=1 res=1 nft=2 rde=512 sec=1952 mid=0xf8 spf=6 spt=32 hds=16 hid=409640 drv=0x80
Mounting disk
Formatting disk2s3 as ExFAT with name Linux
Volume name      : Linux
Partition offset : 411648 sectors (210763776 bytes)
Volume size      : 3708928 sectors (1898971136 bytes)
Bytes per sector : 512
Bytes per cluster: 131072
FAT offset       : 16384 sectors (8388608 bytes)
# FAT sectors    : 16384
Number of FATs   : 1
Cluster offset   : 32768 sectors (16777216 bytes)
# Clusters       : 14360
Volume Serial #  : 56c61e6c
Bitmap start     : 2
Bitmap file size : 1795
Upcase start     : 3
Upcase file size : 5836
Root start       : 4
Mounting disk
Formatting disk2s4 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name OSX
Initialized /dev/rdisk2s4 as a 57 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk2s2 Untitled
/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *63.9 GB    disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOT_ARMHF              999.4 KB   disk2s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data Linux                   1.9 GB     disk2s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS OSX                     61.6 GB    disk2s4


Why does Users & Groups System Preference not display a user? There's a user from whom I inherited my work Mac who is listed under the /Users directory, however, this user doesn't appear in the Users & Groups system preference. I am an admin on the Mac so I don't think that it's a permissions issue. Does anybody know why this may be happening?

FYI: My ultimate goal is to delete this user to free up disk space.

Most likely, the user was deleted, but the user's home folder was retained (See the option Don't change the home folder below).

It can be deleted if you don't need it. An offline backup of the computer or /users folder can also free you to delete the files knowing you could go back if needed.


My Safari download button has disappeared For some odd reason, I am unable to witness my download button, even when i am downloading something. I am able to access the downloaded file(s) in Finder just fine, but theres no download button for me to access it, open, and/or drag and drop the file in Safari itself. Does anyone have a solution to this issue?

I think you accidentally removed the download button from the Toolbar.

Safari menu: View > Customise Toolbar
Add download button by dragging it to the Toolbar


Annoying prompt keeps popping up: 'The "cc" command requires the command line developer tools.' After 4 years of use, I decided to reset my Mac, cleaning up years of garbage in some folders. Surprisingly I was able to recover 20 GB of free space (which is a lot on a 128 GB SSD).

My workflow is quite simple, and I don't have a lot o apps installed. Besides the built-in and 1st party apps, I have, from the App Store: BBEdit and WhatsApp; and from other sources: Matlab, Skype, TeXShop, MacTeX, and OpenVPN.

I am not a developer, so I never installed Xcode, nor the Command Line Developer Tools (CLDT). So why would my two days old fresh installation keeps bugging me to install either the full Xcode or CLDT, when I'm sure I'm not running CC (or any other compilator, for that matter).

I doubt that among my handful of apps, one may be the culprit. But does any one know of any similar behavior.

P.S.: Just to make this point clear. I've made a clear from scratch installation. The only thing carried over was my iCloud content. No recovering from backups of any kind.

It may be BBEdit or something related to TeX.

It's a longshot, but if you run Console, you may get a clue by searching for whether anything is throwing an error regarding the "Command Line."


Cleaning Chromium based browser (Citrio) I'm currently trying to "clean" the Citrio browser of the extensions that are visible (maybe more that are hidden, but I'll investgate later).

These extensions cannot be deleted by simply clicking on the trashcan icon that is normally beside the extension. So I opted to delete the extension's files manually. I've gone as far as going into the Preference file and deleting any code related to the extension's ID.

I restart Citrio, and I get remnants of FILE_NOT_FOUND extensions across the Citrio browser.

In the picture below there is no trash can icon, and with no image or data files to go on, all that's left is to remove the last empty shell of the extension's entry in the chrome://extensions

If anyone can provide a way to remove the entry, thanks in advance!

Source followed for removing code in the Preferences file.
http://www.kuijjer.com/post/1367862444/how-to-remove-a-google-chrome-extension-on-mac-os

Install the extensions: Extensions Manager (aka Switcher)

Removes one-click plug-ins :)


How to start slideshow I used the answers - how to start slideshow in Mac, but it does not work. I have iMac and may be somebody can help me. I open my pictures in the finder and then use one to start the slide show using the View and then  Slideshow.
Nothing work

To be clearer - if you actually open all the relevant images in the Preview app, the slideshow option inside the Preview app will work.

If instead you highlight the files in Mac OS Finder, and then click Option+Spacebar, you will Quick Look these inside Finder, which will include a slideshow option as well - this is the far faster approach in most cases.

Here are two screengrabs of the Quick Look function in Finder: one showing per-image-view, the other a grid view.

Notice that in both cases I have all the files highlighted in Mac OS Finder, and then click the Quick View keyboard shortcut:

As you can see in the screengrab, if I want to, I then have the option to open any one of these images in the Preview app, should I want to adjust colour curves, print, annotate or other such tasks.


Is a classical music friendly "Composer List" view possible in iTunes 11? The iTunes 11 redesign has pretty much ruined usability for those of us whose library consists primarily of classical music. Both iTunes 10 and 11 allow two values for Composers in addition to the normal Artist

Something similar to "Artist List" view would be extremely useful, but don't see any filtering/sorting options for that view. Is it possible to change the "pivot" field for that view to use composer instead of artist?

Hopefully someone can figure out How to get the Column Browser in iTunes 11 on the left side? and most of my usability concerns would be addressed, but I would like to be able to leverage the new Artist List view, but by composer. Has anyone found a good way to expose metadata fields like composer

Apple added the Composers view to iTunes 11.0.2.

You have to enable this setting under Preferences > General > "Show Composers".

Selecting the Composers tab will display a list similar to the Artists view.


LCD model number or disabling discrete GPU for MacBook Pro 15 Retina 2012-2013 While trying to replace the battery, I must have damaged certain connection to the discrete gpu. Whenever trying to use discrete gpu, the computer would freeze.
After trying to reset VRAM, it basically won't boot anymore. (There's a 5% chance of booting by juggling around reset VRAM and unplugging boards.)
I would love to fix it if possible, probably by permanently disabling the discrete gpu in some way, but not giving too much hope.
Rather I will probably just reuse my screen as external display.

So, do anyone know what's the lcd model number for it so I can get a controller board for it?
Thank you!

Unfortunately, you cannot get the LCD panel model number from the command line as it's not stored in firmware as part of the monitor's EDID.
For example, I had to replace the the LCD of my 27" iMac due to an unfortunate incident involving a disobedient child and a fidget spinner.  The model number for the panel was "LM270WQ1" where as the Apple PN# was "661-7169." Those numbers aren't present in any of the EDID data.  See below
Using the system_profiler command:
$ system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType
Displays:
    iMac:
      Display Type: LCD
      Resolution: 2560 x 1440 (QHD/WQHD - Wide Quad High Definition)
      UI Looks like: 2560 x 1440
      Framebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
      Main Display: Yes
      Mirror: Off
      Online: Yes
      Automatically Adjust Brightness: No
      Connection Type: Internal
    DELL U2312HM:
      Resolution: 1080 x 1920
      UI Looks like: 1080 x 1920 @ 60 Hz
      Framebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
      Display Serial Number: T9MJ318O630L
      Mirror: Off
      Online: Yes
      Rotation: 90
      Automatically Adjust Brightness: No
      Connection Type: Thunderbolt/DisplayPort

Using the ioreg command to get EDID
$ ioreg -lw0 -r -c "IODisplayConnect" -n "display0" -d 2 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6

s@L036"
q8-@X,E
T9MJ318O630L
DELL U2312HM

Neither have the actual panel info model because that's typically not put in by the display manufacturer.  For this, you need to (unfortunately) disassemble the display and get the LCD panel model off the back.  I recently replaced the LCD in a Mid-2007 MacBook (white) and it was imperative that I replace it with a compatible panel.  I was inadvertently sent a panel for a later MacBook (2008) and while it physically fit and the LVDS connectors were compatible, the panel simply didn't work.


How can I have TV shows I'm not currently watching not appear on the iPad? I recently upgraded from iOS 6 to 8. Previously, the show's icon did not appear in the video viewer if there were no shows uploaded to the iPad. Now, they all show, presumably so that you can download cloud versions at any time.

I would like to only have shows I'm currently watching show up on the iPad. The screen is cluttered with more and more shows, but I don't want to delete the downloaded tv files completely from my iTunes drive.

Is there a way to mark shows visible/not visible?

In the Settings application on your iPad go to the iTunes & App Store settings and turn the SHOW ALL Videos setting to Off. This show you only downloaded content, not all your purchased and iTunes Match content, in the Video app.


How to always keep a local copy of documents/folder in iCloud? I'm now using iCloud on OSX 10.12.

Many folders and files (for example on my Desktop, etc.) are no more physically present on my hard drive, they have been pushed to the cloud.

I have two questions.

1) Disabling iCloud and getting back all the uploaded files

How does it work if I disable iCloud on the Mac (if I "unsubscribe from iCloud" in a way)? Will all my file be downloaded back to the hard drive?

2) Disable this feature: I wan't my file on iCloud to always be present on my computer

Is it possible to still use iCloud on my Mac for instance but to ensure that all the files in my "iCloud folders" are always physically present on the hard drive?

If you sign out of iCloud, you will be given the option to keep a copy of your iCloud data on your Mac before signing out. Otherwise, the iCloud data will be removed from your Mac, but will still be available on other devices using iCloud.

The System Preferences has a iCloud pane. Next to the iCloud drive check box on this pane is an Options.. button. Clicking on the button produces a popup pane with an Optimize Mac Storage check box. If you uncheck Optimize Mac Storage, then all iCloud documents will be downloaded to your Mac. (Provided enough space is available.)

Normally, Optimize Mac Storage is checked off. This means the full contents of the iCloud drive will be stored on your Mac if you have enough space. Older Documents will be stored in iCloud when space is needed.


Shared data partition for Bootcamp no longer accessible I have my Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion setup with partitions as follows:
disk0s1 (unnamed) - EFI partition
disk0s2 ("Macintosh HD") - OSX partition
disk0s3 ("Recovery HD") - OSX recovery partition
disk0s4 ("BOOTCAMP") - Windows 7 partition created through Bootcamp
disk0s5 (currently unnamed, but should be "Data") - exFAT partition to be shared between OSX and Windows.

Up until yesterday everything was working fine, but now the Data partition is no longer accessible by OSX or Windows.  OSX simply won't mount the partition and Windows claims the disk needs to be formatted.  I believe this is due to a corrupt partition table and could use some help in figuring out how to resolve this.

Unfortunately, I can't remember exactly how I created the various partitions.  I would have thought I created the Bootcamp partition through the usual means and then shrunk the OSX partition to make room for the new partition, but the layout mentioned above seems to suggest otherwise.  I may have created a large Bootcamp partition and then manually shrunk that to make room for the Data partition.  Either way, I created a hybrid MBR partition using GPT fdisk.

Somewhat ironically, I think this debacle was caused by something I did while troubleshooting an external hard drive that is no longer readable (hardware failure).  In the course of troubleshooting the external drive I had used fdisk and the Disk Management utility in Windows 7, but shouldn't have done anything to my main drive.  I'm not sure, however, if just using these utilities attempts to "correct" and issues it deems necessary.

At first I thought that maybe the MBR table got corrupt so I recreated it using gdisk.  This solved nothing.  I had dumped out the table before and after using fdisk -d and the results were identical.  After more thought, I realized that OSX probably wouldn't be using the MBR anyway, so now I'm stumped.

I've tried googling for some clues, but most of the results I've found are about the Windows partition no longer working and usually it's because of a corrupt MBR.

Any thoughts on the next steps to take would be greatly appreciated.

After a lot of trial and error and research I came across this post that solved my issue:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19084645#19084645

Long story short, running fsck_exfat on the Data partition (disk0s5) indicated that the main boot region needed to be updated and it provided an option to update it.  Sure enough, this fixed it.

Prior to running fsck_exfat I tried the Verify Disk option on the partition in Disk Utility and it almost immediately failed saying "Invalid sector size: 0".  Clicking the Repair Disk option failed and said the disk needed to be reformatted.

After running fsck_exfat and updating the main boot region Disk Utility still showed the partition as "disk0s5" rather than "Data".  Clicking the Verify Disk option still gave there error saying the sector size was invalid, but the the partition name suddenly changed to "Data".  Then, clicking Verify Disk again said everything was fine.

Hopefully this will help someone else out there.  Or me, the next time I run into this...


How to stop my machine asking for multiple passwords when I log in? Ever since I changed my user account password, every time I log in to my machine I have to enter multiple passwords. First, I enter the new account password to actually log in. Once I'm at my desktop I get prompted to enter a few other passwords too. Namely the following:

My old password is required to successfully dismiss all of the above pop-ups. Is there some way of updating anything in my keychain that still uses the old password, to use the new password?

Any ideas what could have caused this? I can only imagine that the intended behaviour is for this update to happen automatically.

If you change your account's password using your Mac OS X Install disc (or if your network-based account password is changed due to a network admin forcing a password change), your default keychain password (which uses the same initial password as your user account) does not change.

Support Apple helps:

If you want your default keychain to be unlocked automatically when you log in, synchronize your Keychain Access and account login passwords by doing this:

Open Keychain Access (you can get to it by choosing Utilities from the Go menu in the Finder).
From the Edit menu, choose Change Password for Keychain "login."
Type the former password of the account that you are currently logged in to, then click OK.
If you entered the correct password, a new window appears; enter the original password again in the Current Password field.
In the New Password field, type the password that matches your current account password.
Re-enter the newer password in the Verify field, then click OK.

If you don't remember your original (former) account password

If you don't remember your original password, you'll need to delete the keychain. Deleting a keychain also deletes all the password data saved in that keychain.

In Keychain Access.app, choose Preferences from the Keychain Access menu.
If available, click the Reset My Default Keychain button. This will remove the login keychain and create a new one with the password provided.
If Reset My Default Keychain is not available, choose Keychain List from the Edit menu.
Delete the "login" keychain.

The next time you log in to the account, you can save your current password in a keychain.

If the above fails or doesn't fit:

Open Keychain Access.app
Select the "login" keychain from the keychains list
Click the lock at the top to lock the "login" keychain
Click the lock again to unlock the login
After entering your "login" keychain password you should be presented with a dialog
Clicking the reset button will re-sync your "login" keychain password with the iCloud keychain password.

Info: Discussions Apple

If everything from the above fails for whatever reason the last resort you can do is the following:

Quit all running Applications
In Finder Select Go > Go to folder (⇧⌘G)
In the window that appears, type the following: ~/Library/Keychains/
Click OK.
Look for a folder with a random name similar to this "A8F5E7B8-CEC1-4479-A7DF-F23CB076C8B8". Note: Each folder has a unique number.
Move this folder to the Trash.
Immediately choose Apple Menu () > Restart… to restart your Mac.

Info: Support Apple


How to use TeX Gyre fonts installed by TeX Live I've installed TeXLive on Mountain Lion. The TeX Live Utility says that the tex-gyre package is installed, however these fonts don't appear on my system and I actually get errors when trying to use them with XeLaTeX.
What do I need to do to get this working?

In my installation (MacTeX 2012) the fonts seem to be located into /usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/fonts/, especially into the "opentype" and "truetype" folders.
If you can't find them, you can try running:

locate tex-gyre

Once you have located the fonts, to install them just copy them into ~/Library/Fonts (user-specific) or /Library/Fonts (system-wide).


Why wont siri use wifi? Put your iphone in airplane mode and then turn on wifi.

Try to ask siri what one plus one is.

She will fail with the error voice dialing is unavaible during airplane mode

I can't reproduce your problem:

Maybe Siri thinks you're trying to voice dial.

Actually, maybe you don't have Siri on, as voice dialing appears to be enabled by default when you turn Siri Off.


App Store, iMacs and Macbook pros I made the mistake of using my personal app store account when setting up my school's computers.  Of course, there didn't seem to be a choice... now that I've done that, how do I permit the users of each of the computers to use their own app store accounts to run updates?

I would just sign out of your account and set up the correct account on each Mac. Open the App Store and see what updates are available. Any admin user can run normal updates and then you can see what purchases (if any) are on the wrong account.

You may have dodged a bullet if only system updates were done as they don't get tied as a permanent purchase. Even so, the cloning process means only one Mac registered for the iLife suite and you can wait for advice from Apple if that decision can be reversed if you'll just use one of the other accounts to update two machines going forward.

Ask a second question or edit this with more details once you've tried this on one test Mac to see what else needs fixing.


How to delay locking of my Mac when I am not using it Right now, it gets locked in 3-4 minutes. How do I delay the locking?
I am using snow leopard

In Lion, there's a setting in System Preferences under Security & Privacy asking how long after sleep or the screen saver begins is the password required.


iPads on Business account need to group message I have 10 iPads that we use for training.  I want to be able to text as a group as we are working on activities.  How do I set up the iPads to allow group messaging without facebook or phone numbers?  They all have the same Apple ID.

If you are using the same Apple ID to login to all the iPad, how will you identify who sent which message?

If the identity of sender and recipient are irrelevant, and you just need the message to be synced across all the iPads, an inelegant but simple approach is to send the message to yourself, i.e. the same Apple ID which is logged into iPad.

The downsides will be that the each message will appear twice, once for sender and once for receiver. Also, the message will be marked as read immediately.

The solution discussed above is not elegant and it is recommended that you register each iPad with unique Apple ID, and create an iMessage group conversation with all the recipients added.


QuickTime Player crashes on startup Suddenly I can't get QuickTime Player to work anymore because it crashes right after opening it. I do not know if this is the right error message from the log:

Application Specific Information:
Sandbox creation failed: Container object initialization failed.
NSCocoaErrorDomain:512

Does anyone know how to fix the problem or how to reinstall the application even if it's a system app?

As @Redarm suggested, you should remove the folder found at

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX

After that, quit and reopen QuickTime.


What iOS app displays ToDos/Reminders in the Notification Center? I need a tasklist/ToDo/Reminders app that lists out my current tasks in the notification center.

I know that Reminders will if I add a time or alarm (I won't want this).

I know Things can if I jailbreak (I don't want to).

I just want a list of things I need to remember to do, right there on the Notifications page.

Catch Notes or Memo Board are the only ones I know of that will stay after the alarm has passed.


All Siri Shortcuts result in "Sorry, there was a problem with the app." I'm trying Siri Shortcuts for the first time and they don't seem to work at all. I can create shortcuts in the Shortcuts app, and run them from within the app, but when I assign them a phrase and try to activate them from Siri, she always says "Sorry, there was a problem in the app."

This happens even with downloaded gallery shortcuts, and with absurdly simple test shortcuts, and it happens on my iPhone 5S as well as a nearby iPhone 6. I've restarted both phones.

I just installed the Shortcuts app today, so I'm not sure how I could have gone wrong so soon!

I have read that there is a known bug in the Shortcuts app relating to that and it is solved in version 2.1.1

You country try restart your phone and/or rentinstalling the shortcuts app. Bear in mind all your current shortcuts will be lost.

Alternatively you can wait till Apple pushes a fix out for it.


Messages on iPhone, iPad and Macbook. One persons messages not on iPad I have an iPhone, iPad and Macbook and have the messages set up for all and it works great and everything goes to all devices, except for messages from and to one contact. Messages to him and from him only show up on the iPhone and Macbook but don't show up on my iPad.

Did I do something weird or what can it be?

Thanks, Thomas

Messages syncing can be finicky. Go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and verify that your iPad is configured to use all the same addresses that your iPhone and Mac are using.

It is also helpful to make certain that all devices have the same "Start new conversations from" setting. I recommend setting them to start from your phone number, as that's where other are likely to message you. Otherwise you end up with multiple conversation threads with the same person.


Reinstalling Lion on a Wiped Disk I have MacBook that was running Lion.

On a journey into finding the perfect operating system for me, I installed Arch Linux. Whilst doing this I wiped the disk (/dev/sda1) and created some Linux partitions.

Now, for reasons beyond my control, I'm in need of some Mac OS capabilities.

Yet, I have no idea on how to reinstall Lion. (I wiped the recovery disk, so it doesn't show up when holding option whilst booting, but luckily option-booting does still work). Is there anywhere I can get a bootable ISO (preferably free), from which Lion can be installed (through the App Store perhaps?). I have an old Snow Leopard disk laying around but it won't boot because of hardware incompatabilities (CPU isn't working).

Or, am I left no choice but buying a bootable Lion USB stick? PS: no bashing on Lion here from me. I like Lion, I like Mac. I just dislike the GNU tools available are always slightly different from their Linux counterparts, making cooperation with my Linux-loving peers a nightmare.

PPS: I would consider doing something "dark" to get everything working again. Also, I wouldn't mind losing my Arch partition, since I can always get it back from a backup.

edit

The machine I'm talking about is a 13" macbook pro 8,2.

The only tool I have is another macbook pro, an older one, that ran OS X snow leopard, but is updated to Lion recently. (aha, this can serve my purpose).

What model Mac do you have? That will limit the recovery options. Internet recovery or putting your Mac into target mode and connecting it to another Mac to run the installer are two good places to start.

Also, you can install Lion onto any old USB drive and then bring that to your Mac to boot up and fix things. Remember you only need a Mac that runs 10.6.8 to get at Lion from the app store. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can download the lion installer and run it to install over your Mac. Assuming it has a FireWire port, you can run the install in target disk mode. If not, you'll need to install to an external USB drive then take that drive to your Mac to boot things up.


How can I change a defunct Apple ID email address? I never changed my student email account to which all app purchases have been made. I just upgraded to iOS 5, and it requires to authenticate the iCloud, by verifying an email sent to the now defunct email address. The problem is that I can't even change my email adress, because the system wants to verify my iCloud account first. It's a circular problem!

Can't change email because I haven't verified iCloud, and I can't verify iCloud because my old email is now defunct.

What can I do??

Perhaps you could try addressing the problem from the other side of the issue.  When I faced a similar problem with my now defunct student email address on another account, the solution turned out to be contacting the IT department of my old school and convincing them to temporarily re-instate my student email address.  Once I convinced them to do it, it turned out to be a really simple process.  I was able to change over and recover passwords from several services tied to the old email address, and once completed just had them deactivate it again.  Your milage may vary depending on your educational institution, but it's definitely worth a shot.


Why do the photos on my iPhone 7 seem to be losing quality? The photo quality is my iPhone 7 is very low. I found out that this may be because I switched on “iCloud Photo Library” a few months earlier, and “Optimize IPhone Store” was selected. Does doing so move all PREVIOUS photos to cloud, and replace them with low-res photos?

The answer is in the Optimize iPhone Storage setting.

When enabled, only thumbnails of photos are stored in local storage. By viewing a photo, you are downloading a compressed version from iCloud. There is no quality loss, since the original photos are still accessible by loading them one by one or turning this optimization off.

I believe that iCloud Photo Library uses some kind of lossy compression.


Why are cursor keys in Excel moving the viewport rather than the active cell? Excel for Mac (2011) should move the currently active cell when I use the cursor keys. Currently, it is moving the viewport in the document. Is there a way to switch this back to the default setting? I cannot find anything in Excel's preferences.

This sounds like Scroll Lock is somehow activated on your copy of Excel. IF you have a large keyboard with an F14 key, ShiftF14 can turn on and off Scroll Lock. If you don't have such a keyboard, or access to such a keyboard, it gets more complicated.

Microsoft support posted this article about the various methods of deactivating Scroll Lock. They either involve connecting a keyboard with a F14 key or removing your Excel preferences file.


Bluetooth audio choppy/skips on El Capitan I'm using the music receiver bluetooth TP-Link HA100 and when doing streaming from Spotify or iTunes the audio has clicks in and out and skips like a scratched CD. Simply unusable. I'm on MacBookPro late-2011 El Capitan 10.11.2

This is a known issue, I already tried these unofficial solutions:

http://lifehacker.com/fix-your-bluetooth-audio-in-yosemite-with-this-terminal-1670380974

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/179209/90762

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7263274?start=0&tstart=0

but they don't work.

Note 1: the audio lags/skips seems to increase everytime I do something on Mac (that is, open an app, scrolling a page in Chrome, ...).

Note 2: no one of the above issues on iPhone and iPad

Note 3: while streaming from iPhone/iPad if I just enable bluetooth (not stream) on MBP the audio begins to lag!

It's a lot frustrating and I can't believe bluetooth con OSX is so much crappy and there's no bugfixes on the horizon! Someone can help me?

I have found yet another unofficial solution! it worked for me and i hope the same to you. i believe the macbook utilizes bluetooth in the background for handoff and FaceTime. i believe it searches occasionally for data or cues that are sent from secondary devices or stays quietly paired with a device you may already have (causing gaps in bluetooth connectivity). i signed out of FaceTime (disabling it) and disabled handoff. i have an iphone, and it seemed to create some kind of bluetooth interference. try this and see if it doesnt help or solve the issue


Can iPad/Safari Pretend to be a Different Browser to Avoid Nag Screens? I'm doing more and more of my web browsing on my iPad these days. One of the downsides is that many of the sites I frequent force me to click through a "please install our iPad app" nag screen before allowing me to visit the site. At first it was just a few sites. Now it's becoming almost intolerable.

Apps have their place. I love Pinball, Words with Friends, Pages, Mail, Angry Birds, and Sling Player as much as the next guy. But if I have to install an app for every site I visit on a regular basis, I'm going to have to install like a dozen apps. Is there a way to get the iPad version of Safari to hide the fact that it's an iPad when communicating with web servers so as to prevent these nag screens from showing? If not, I'm going to have to revert back to doing all (most) my browsing on my laptop and iMac.

Try the Atomic Web browser, it's UI is a little shoddy and not iPad3 retina ready, but the features are great. It can change the user agent to pretend to be other browsers, download files and then save them to Dropbox, and has a full screen mode.

You might also try Google Chrome for iOS, but I'm not sure if what User Agent that sends, I know it uses Webkit for rendering.


Xcode stops running when I don't watch it for a while. What's wrong? I am (trying to be) running Xcode 4.3.2. on Lion 10.7.3

I noticed that when I stop watching Xcode and walk away from the computer for a while (like half an hour or so), Xcode in the mean time stopped running and has to be started again.

I read a lot about Xcode on Lion being unstable. Is that what is happening to me? Is it that unstable?

This may be the built in "undocumented" to non-developers feature of Lion called Automatic Termination that is causing Xcode to quit when you don't want it to.

As noted in "Lion Is a Quitter"

  Lion will quit your running applications behind your back if it decides it needs the resources, and if you don’t appear to be using them. The heuristic for determining whether an application is “in use” is very conservative: it must not be the active application, it must have no visible, non-minimized windows — and, of course, it must explicitly support Automatic Termination.


iPhone automatically deletes every single email on Yahoo server? I have been using the same yahoo mail account for about 9 years and all the emails I received were stored there perfectly. My 2009 Macbook stored every email as well. After setting up my email account on a new iPhone on the Mail app in 2014, the app only displayed emails which I received in the past month or so. My Macbook was still storing every single email.
I recently (2016) bought a new Macbook, and I noticed that only the emails which I can see on my iPhone are shown in the Mail app on the new Macbook. Checking my mail account via browser, I saw that every mail has been deleted except for the mails on my Phone and new Macbook. All the mails are still in the inbox of my old Macbook.

In short: New iPhone deletes emails on the email server permanently so that my new Macbook cannot access them. Old Macbook still stores old emails (even those not on the server) in the inbox and just adds new emails to the old ones.

My thoughts so far: I think that it must be something wrong either in the mail preferences on the iPhone or in the yahoo server. I don't know why the old Macbook still syncs with the server and keeps the old mails.

What I have found so far: According to yahoo, they had similar cases in which apps accessing the mail account deleted old emails. And I have read that some Mac-users have experienced the same problem.

Is there some way to stop the iPhone from deleting emails? Can I maybe re-insert my old mails from my old computer into the server?

EDIT: The account uses IMAP.

All the devices were using the same email account. But every device except the old Macbook accessed it with IMAP, the old Macbook used POP. (I realised this very late.) This caused that the old Macbook downloaded all the emails and deleted them from the server, and that's why the other devices couldn't see the emails.

SOLUTION: Created new IMAP account in Mail, then copying all the emails from the POP account to the IMAP account. The other devices were then automatically able to access all the emails.

(For someone not knowing anything about IMAP or POP, just google the difference between them.)


Unlock an encrypted DMG on login How can I unlock an encrypted DMG on login?

Something graphical to hdiutil mount ~/Desktop/secure.dmg

Add the disk image to System Preferences→Users & Groups→Login Items.
Put the password in your keychain.
Accept that you've just thrown away part of the value of encrypting the disk image.

There is some remaining value. An intruder can't open the disk image with only your disk or the disk image or a copy thereof to work with. But they can open it if they can get control of your computer while you're logged in.

At the least, disable automatic login, and enable "requires password to wake from sleep or screen saver".


Web sharing : Images won't load - 403 Forbidden I've recently "activated" the web sharing in OSX 1.8 « Mountain Lion ». It works well with PHP & HTML. But I stuck with 403 errors with images (jpg, png).

Do you have any idea why ?

Thx

So as I said in the comments above, the problem was that only the owner of the file did have the rights to read the file.

A simple chmod +r on the file solved my problem.


A way to open a new Finder window when double-clicking anywhere on the Desktop? Is there an existing utility app or pref pane to accomplish this?

I was able to do this with Better Touch Tool, as Anonymous mentioned. As a test, I set "Single Finger Tap Top Right" of the Trackpad to the pre-defined action "Open Finder." Presto, new Finder window.


User login password not working for sudo My user login password not working for executing sudo in terminal and I cannot unlock Users & Groups preferences. I tried to write password in editor and paste it but no success on macOS 10.13.3

What's a path to get an admin account so I can fix things up?

The trust chain can be broken in thousands of ways, so picking apart the specific failure might need some back and forth.

The good news - you can easily reset a password or make a new admin account so you can su to that account, then sudo or just enter the other user/password combination to unlock system preferences since any account can be used in addition to the logged in account to authenticate in macOS

Here's the reset one, two official article and article here on just making a new admin account by re-running the out of box setup process:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202860
Reset the password for a user when Snow Leopard is running as a VM?

Also, use locale specific keys or emoji password with caution. You might retain one admin account and password with a long but boring standard locale typable password.


Prevent display from turning off with certain applications I have a MacBook Pro, and during media presentations, my screen automatically turns off according to the settings app (which of course is operation as usual, to be expected).

I'm looking for an Applescript, setting, app, commandline command, etc. that could disable the auto screen shutoff per app rather than constantly having to change the setting globally. I've already looked for a setting within the app itself (ProPresenter, in this case) with no luck. I'm also okay if the solution bases its action on the presence or absence of a second display.

Caffeine is a small free app that can be used to temporarily override Mac settings such as sleep, screen dimming, and screen savers. The app lives in your menu dock, where you can click to turn it on (fill up the coffee cup) before your presentation, and then turn it back off (empty the coffee cup) after your presentation to set your settings back to normal.


Xcode appears to be installed but xcodebuild is unusable I was had to reinstall Xcode 4 and now I'm getting message Xcode appears to be installed but xcodebuild is unusable; and xcodebuild exists but failed to execute all the time when I try to install anything using ports:

ash-3.2$ sudo port install wget
Password:
Warning: xcodebuild exists but failed to execute
Warning: configured user/group adm does not exist, will build as root
Warning: Xcode appears to be installed but xcodebuild is unusable; some ports will likely fail to build.
Warning: You may need to run `sudo xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app`
--->  Computing dependencies for wget

xcodebuild exists but it wants to another one xcodebuild or it just wants to be in /Developer folder?

$ which xcodebuild
/usr/bin/xcodebuild

$ /usr/bin/xcodebuild
error: can't exec '/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild' (No such file or directory)

What's wrong with this utility? How can I fix it (I've already reinstalled Xcode)?

Update:
port worked fine even without xcodebuild, I think MacPorts uses make and it showed this message just to make me know that I may have a problems with Xcode.

That's interesting. I've tried … xcode-select … but for some reason it newer worked even after reboot, but today it worked :|. It asked me if I want to accept the license agreement and after I accepted it xcodebuild become functional. So now I can accept answer and thank everybody.

Did you run sudo xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app? This message: error: can't exec '/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild' is telling you that your system is looking for xcodebuild in `/Developer/usr/bin/' but as of Xcode 4.3 (the one that's installed from the App Store) it's located in the Xcode.app bundle which is in /Applications.

Edit

In a comment to your question you say you've run sudo xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app. Now run xcode-select -print-path and make sure it says "/Applications/Xcode.app".

Also, you may need to download the command line tools separately. (I don't know from first-hand experience because I'm stuck on Snow Leopard for the moment so I haven't installed Xcode 4.3.)


Does apple associate apple ids with the device? I made 2 different accounts with my ipad, one for my son and one for my daughter. Does apple somehow associate those accounts with some sort of serial number unique to each device (my ipad in this case)?

Apple will not link the Apple ID with the device unless you use the ID. Turning on services such as Find My iPhone will result in linking the device and the Apple ID so you can find it. This means that if you lose it, go to icloud.com, and report it as lost, the device will lock itself and ONLY the password of the linked ID can unlock the device (also known as "bricking up"). I'm not sure if you can use an account for App Store and a different one for iCloud.


Put the display to sleep without putting the whole computer to sleep? I like to use vnc on my ipad on my bed. I want the mac to go to a black screen so I can fall asleep while using the ipad, and not have to get up to shut down the mac afterwards. Is there anyway to turn off the imac screen without sleeping?

I'm open to anything that minimizes the light - so if the backlight is off, that would meet the needs even if the screen is still drawing content.

From a semantics standpoint, let's assume the following:

When the system sleeps, the display sleeps or a screensaver engages are all distinct states. The display is asleep when the backlight is off and the GPU doesn't bother drawing any signal to that display but continues to run. This is different than system sleep where everything except the RAM and network interfaces1 are shut off.

1: Network interfaces that support wake on lan (WOL) only do so when power not from a battery is available.

You can turn off your iMac (and your macbook) screen without sleeping via the following keyboard shortcut:

 ⌃  +  ⇧  +  ⏏

(Control +SHIFT + EJECT)

Machines like the Air and newer MacBook Pro with no optical drives have the power button in the same place as the eject key and it works similarly for display sleeping shortcuts.


"Command not found" lines on terminal startup Whenever I open my terminal, these lines are displayed:
/Users/USERNAME/.zprofile:2: command not found: bin
/Users/USERNAME/.zprofile:4: command not found: bin
/Users/USERNAME/.zprofile:6: command not found: bin
/Users/USERNAME/.zprofile:8: command not found: bin
/Users/USERNAME/.zprofile:10: command not found: bin
/Users/USERNAME/.zprofile:12: command not found: bin

These are the first 12 lines of my /.zprofile:
alias gtkwave=open -a /Applications/gtkwave.app/Contents/MacOS/gtkwave-
bin source /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile
alias gtkwave=open -a /Applications/gtkwave.app/Contents/MacOS/gtkwave-
bin source /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile
alias gtkwave=open -a /Applications/gtkwave.app/Contents/MacOS/gtkwave-
bin source /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile
alias gtkwave=open -a /Applications/gtkwave.app/Contents/MacOS/gtkwave-
bin source /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile
alias gtkwave=open -a /Applications/gtkwave.app/Contents/MacOS/gtkwave-
bin source /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile
alias gtkwave=open -a /Applications/gtkwave.app/Contents/MacOS/gtkwave-
bin source /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile

Judging by the nature of the output, I'm assuming that something is wrong with my /.zprofile file, but I haven't been able to find the correct way to go in and edit it.
Here's the output that I receive when I type the echo $PATH command:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/Library/Apple/usr/bin

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

There are a couple of things wrong in your ~/.zprofile:

You have hard-wrapped (i.e., inserted newline characters inside) the alias lines, causing bin to start its own separate line. You need to keep everything on one line.
Shell aliases that include whitespace need to be enclosed in quotes.
You have multiple identical lines, which is generally not useful.
The invocation source ~/.zprofile is recursive and was probably intended as a shell command for you to manually enter after editing ~/.zprofile.

I suspect that ~/.zprofile should simply read:
alias gtkwave="open -a /Applications/gtkwave.app/Contents/MacOS/gtkwave-bin"

EDIT:
Here is a straightforward way to replace the contents of ~/.zprofile:
echo 'alias gtkwave="open -a /Applications/gtkwave.app/Contents/MacOS/gtkwave-bin"' > ~/.zprofile

Note that if there are any other directives that you want to keep (you should examine all of the contents first, e.g., cat ~/.zprofile) then you need to edit instead of overwrite it. You can use any text editor you like. E.g.,
open -e ~/.zprofile

or
vi ~/.zprofile


Search Bear notes using `grep` command With grep, I can search through the content of all the files in a directory, for an instance:

grep 'program' *.md

searches for the pattern program within the content of all .md files in the current directory.

How do I search the Bear notes in Terminal using thegrep command?

You can use the same grep command as mentioned in the question, to search through the contents of .md files exported by Bear. For instance, use

grep pattern *.md

to search for pattern in .md files in the current directory. You can use -i option to ignore case or -n to print line number in file.


Using gnuplot terminal on OSX I just installed gnuplot and I am trying to set the default terminal view.  On the wikipedia page for gnuplot, there is an image with a graph:

Which terminal view is shown in the image at the link?

Your image looks more like qt than X11, so you could reinstall gnu plot to call the qt graphics library:

brew reinstall gnuplot --with-qt5

That's much simpler than getting XQuartz and X11 running since homebrew installs everything you need.

If you wanted to go X11 for reasons, then here is a nice tutorial and links to the visualization tools that should work on recent OS X versions.

https://github.com/rdp/ruby_gnuplot

It uses X11 for the visualization and should help you get your graph on.

http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/ Install the package that gets downloaded, then
brew rm gnuplot && brew install gnuplot --with-x11

Then start XQuartz, make a new xterm and run a script like this in the xterm window running gnuplot:

set terminal x11
set title "Some Math Functions"
set xrange [-10:10]
set yrange [-2:2]
set zeroaxis
plot (x/4)**2, sin(x), 1/x

Skip the "set terminal" line if you are using qt as it gets set for you when gnuplot starts. If you need monochrome, you can also set terminal xterm.


Unexpected error when installing OS update in OS X I have gotten this error every time I have upgraded my OS since Mountain Lion (10.8 -> 10.8.1, 10.8.1 -> 10.8.2).

However after clicking the restart button on the error dialog and the computer has restarted, I have the newest version of the OS.

I can see this in the "About this Mac" dialog and that the App Store doesn't show any updates.

What is causing this and is there an error log where I can find details about this unexpected error?

Edit: Here is the errors I could find in install.log:

Oct  6 22:53:12 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: kextcache: Link failed (error code 5).
Oct  6 22:53:12 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: kextcache: Prelink failed for com.sierrawireless.driver.SierraDIPSupport; aborting prelink.
Oct  6 22:53:12 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: kextcache: Failed to generate prelinked kernel.
Oct  6 22:53:12 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: kextcache: Child process /usr/sbin/kextcache[83973] exited with status 71.
Oct  6 22:53:12 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: kextcache: Error 107 rebuilding /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/kernelcache.
Oct  6 22:53:12 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: PackageKit: releasing Spotlight indexing
Oct  6 22:53:12 tyilos-macbook.home install_monitor[83968]: Re-included: /Applications, /Library, /System, /bin, /private, /sbin, /usr
Oct  6 22:53:13 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: PackageKit: releasing backupd
Oct  6 22:53:13 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: PackageKit: allow user idle system sleep
Oct  6 22:53:13 tyilos-macbook.home installd[83951]: PackageKit: Install Failed: Error Domain=PKInstallErrorDomain Code=121 "An error occurred while updating system extension information." UserInfo=0x7fdc921d6c20 {NSUnderlyingError=0x7fdc90eb20f0 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (kextcache error 71.)", NSLocalizedDescription=An error occurred while updating system extension information., arguments=(
        "-update-volume",
        "/",
        "-Installer"
    )} {
        NSLocalizedDescription = "An error occurred while updating system extension information.";
        NSUnderlyingError = "Error Domain=kextcache Code=71 \"The operation couldn\U2019t be completed. (kextcache error 71.)\"";
        arguments =     (
            "-update-volume",
            "/",
            "-Installer"
        );
    }

Oct  6 22:53:13 tyilos-macbook.home Software Update[83950]: Error: An error occurred while updating system extension information. (PKInstallErrorDomain code 121)

Edit 2: Result of doing kextstat -kl | awk ' !/apple/ { print $6 $7 } ':

com.parallels.kext.prl_usb_connect(7.0
com.globaldelight.driver.BoomDevice(1.1)
com.manycamllc.driver.ManyCamDriver(0.0.9)
com.Cycling74.driver.Soundflower(1.6.2)
com.logmein.hamachi(1.0)
com.parallels.kext.prl_hypervisor(7.0
com.parallels.kext.prl_hid_hook(7.0
com.parallels.kext.prl_netbridge(7.0
com.parallels.kext.prl_vnic(7.0
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv(4.1.18)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB(4.1.18)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt(4.1.18)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp(4.1.18)

The Console.app found in the Application -> Utilities folder (or Other folder in Launchpad)  gives you access to the logs for the machine.

Under /var/log, the file named install.log (and any variants named install.log.x.bz2) will give you the information about the last install.

Note the files named install.log.x.bz2  are older versions of the same file created duting a process called rolled over when the file size of the current install.log file reaches 1000K

You need to search your install.log for the string "OSXUpd10.8.2Supp.pkg" which will give you an idea of what happened during your install.

Update: From your log file, it would appear that your have a Kernel Extension that is causing this issue.  Either it has a permissions problem, or is somehow causing this annoying issue.

can you paste this line into Terminal, and post the results?

kextstat -kl | awk ' !/apple/ { print $6 $7 } '

Update 2: This would appear to be at least a trial and error solution. There are multiple threads on the Apple Support forums, from installing 10.8.2 to installing Xcode.  Each one has different people each having issues with different kernel extensions that when removed resolved their issues.

I'm afraid I don't have any way to determine which of your kernel extensions is the cause; someone else may be able to shed more light.  I would however expect the Virtual Box and Parallels extensions to be fine, not the least since I have them both also, but that this issue would be more widespread if they were the issue.

Finally: the manual for kextcache advises that using the touch command on /System/Library/Extensions/ forces the kext cache to be rebuilt.  You could use this as a method to determine which kext is causing the issue by uninstaling each in turn, performing the cache update and checking the logs to see if the cache was updated successfully.


Hide the menu bar in Yosemite Is it possible to completely hide the menu bar on an external monitor? I'm using my laptop with a projector, and while I can set the desktop background to completely black, the menu bar is still there. Even in dark mode there is still text. I would like to avoid showing any desktop UI if the presentation (Keynote) exits.

I think it's possibly 'Displays have separate Spaces' in System Prefs > Mission Control.
I've had that switched off since it was added to prefs, & only have a menu bar on my main monitor.

I don't want to switch it back to test, it messes things up ;-)


Create El Capitan installer thumb drive from Catalina I recently got a 2019 MacBook Pro from work, and a couple of mid 2009 MacBook Pros from a yard sale. I have mostly been using Windows and Linux for the past 20 years.

I'd like to make a El Capitan installer thumb drive, from the 2019 laptop, for the 2009 laptops. I've been following the instructions at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

When I open the InstallMacOSX.dmg I see the InstallMacOSX.pkg, but when I launch that, I'm told

  This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer.

I had previously tried creating the thumb drive from the one working 2009 laptop but got a similar error.

What could I be doing wrong? What else should I try?

Honsestly I find the easiest way to make a bootable macOS installer is using DiskmakerX.

It is a GUI interface to create pretty much all recent versions of macOS. Just look for the one specifically for the version you want to create.