How do I get text to speech to pronounce git and github correctly? I'm using the OS X text to speech feature for some eLearning stuff. Some of the voices, in particular Lee and Tessa seems to be better quality. However, they mispronounce the words 'git' and 'GitHub'. The American voices pronounce 'git' correctly.

There's already a question regarding pronunciation of 'git' in case you're wondering. It is pronounced with a hard G followed by a short i.

I'm aware that I can modify the pronunciation in the speech settings. However, I have no idea how to set the pronunciation such that it is consistent across all the voices, in particular the non US english voices. Those languages always mispronounce the 'g' of 'git' or 'github'.

I'm running OS X 10.10.2.

I found through trial and error that using 2 'g's will make it pronounce the 'g' as a hard 'g'.  Example:

    say -v Daniel 'And as for the Cat — what an unbelievable ggit.'

The one that really confuses me though is this:

    say -v Daniel "gitt"

I have no idea why this is pronounced as "grit".  All I can say is, "Think different."


How to check the exit status of an application after using 'open' in shell I've looked all over for this and I'm not entirely sure how to do this.

I want to use a bash script to open an application using 'open' and then check the exit status of the application after it has finished.

As far as I am aware, open -W will exit with status 0 so long as the application did open, I'm not interested in this exit, I'm interested in the apps exit.

Currently I have the following script:

trap "echo manual abort; exit 1"  1 2 3 15;
while open -W /path/to/MyApp.app
    echo "all is well"
done

exit 0

Which opens the app and then waits, if the exit status is 0 it will re-open the app again after closing. This is intended however, what I want is to be able to stop this script if the app itself didn't exit 0 rather than the command 'open' successfully exiting.

So in short:

Open MyApp.app

if MyApp.app (not open) crashes, stop the script, otherwise, re-open MyApp.app

My answer is: you can't with open even with the -W flag.
Rather use a shell script repeat_run which might be built as follows:

cat >repeat_run.sh <<'__eof__'
#!/bin/sh
app_name=$1
bin_name=`defaults read /Applications/${app_name}.app/Contents/Info.plist CFBundleExecutable 2>/dev/null`
if [ "${bin_name}" = "" ] ; then
    echo "${app_name} not found" >&2
    exit 2
fi
bin_path=/Applications/${app_name}.app/Contents/MacOS/${bin_name}
trap "echo manual abort ; exit 1"  1 2 3 15
while : ; do
    ${bin_path}
    rc=$?
    case $rc in
        0)      echo "$1 terminated correctly" ;;
        *)      exit ${rc} ;;
    esac
done
__eof__
make repeat_run
./repeat_run Pages


How to synchronize new Notes from iPad to Mac I upgraded my iTune to iTune 11, and no longer find the option to synchronize note. I do not like to use iCloud (no WiFI or Cellular), but cannot figure a way to synchronize (or download) the note on my iPad to my Mac's Note.app.

According to Apple:

  You can sync with the Notes app using IMAP or iCloud. Syncing Notes using iTunes is no longer supported on OS X v10.8 and later.

There may be a possibility that it could still work, as it is specifically mentioned later in the article:

  If you want to sync notes with iTunes instead of using the over-the-air feature, disable Notes sync for the account using Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars or Settings > iCloud.

Though when I disabled Notes on the iPad, then synced to iTunes, the info pane never showed Notes as an option. I would perform the following steps to give it a fair shot:

On the iPad -> Settings -> iCloud - disable notes
On the iPad -> Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars - make sure no other service is using Notes
On the Mac -> Notes -> Accounts - make sure Notes is turned off in all accounts.

According to the documentation, this should force iTunes to recognize that no sync options are available and provide some option to sync Notes, but it didn't "just work" for me.


Transmit - Copy files instead of downloading I have files and directories on an FTP server that I want to copy to another directory. I select them, and option-release to copy into another directory on the same FTP server. However, Transmit starts "Downloading dir/" for the files, instead of just copying them.

How can I get Transmit to only copy the files? I don't want to download them all to my local server first and then re-upload them, since they are large files and my internet connection gets charged per mb.

I'm using Transmit 4.

There is no copy command among the list of basic FTP commands. You have get (pull a file from remote to local) and put (push a file from local to remote) and that's it. If you want to make a copy of something on an FTP server you first have to download it and then upload it to the new location.

There might be FTP servers with extended command sets, but detecting this and writing the necessary special cases for these servers in to Transmit is likely more time consuming than it's worth.

I don't know of any graphical, remote file access tool that will do what you're asking for: execute the copy completely on the remote host instead of copying them down and then pushing them back up. It's really very rare that a remote file access protocol has a copy command like that.

For at-remote copying like that it's best to use a shell. As Gerry mentioned: ssh is the way to go here. With a remote shell, copy commands can be executed and run completely in the remote environment. Saving you bandwidth and potentially a lot of time.

If you'd like to see if your remote FTP server has an extended set of commands, try connecting to it using the command line ftp program:

> ftp user@hostname

And then running:

ftp> help

At the FTP prompt to see a list of commands the remote server supports. It may support an extended set of commands with copy being one among them.


Using Maverick's tags on Mountain Lion I have multiple macs accessing same data on a common disk (a time-capsule shared disk). The problem is that one of those macs couldn't be upgraded do Mavericks (it's running Lion).

Is there any app that I could install on a non-Mavericks mac to use it's tag system?
In another way: Is it possible to "read" Mavericks tags from a lion mac using any kind of software?

UPDATE: Originally I mentioned Mountain Lion, but in fact, my older Mac is running 10.7.5 (Lion).

UPDATE(2): Support at Iconic software did mentioned that their tagging software (Leap - the paid version - not Taggit, the free one) is now compatible with Mavericks and that it will try to convert native tags to their format of tagging. Since this software (Iconic Leap) is compatible with OS 10.7+ and above, it would be a tool for sharing tags between OSes versions. Will try this out and post back the result for future reference.

Tags in Mavericks are actually partially backward compatible with labels in Mountain Lion, because they're implemented as sort of an extension (and renaming) of labels. The main issues are:

If you assign multiple tags to a file in Mavericks, Mountain Lion will only see the most recent tag (label)
Tag colors aren't preserved; e.g., if a red tag in Mavericks shares the same name as a blue label in Mountain Lion (say "Important"), it'll appear in blue on Mountain Lion

All that said, why can't you upgrade your Mountain Lion system to Mavericks? The system requirements didn't change, so any machine that can run Mountain Lion can be upgraded to Mavericks.


Is there any way to download and install ei capitan offline? Now i'm having yosemite in my mac and I've been trying to update my mac from yesterday.My wifi has some problem so it might be the problem to download ei capitan it disconnect each and every time when i resumed it.Finally it starts from beginning. So I'm planning to download it through offline. Please anyone shed some light on this question

Yes.

Download the installer you want and then disconnect from all networks.
Use that installer to make a USB drive that boots and installs the OS.


Does anyone have a Thunderbolt Display connected to a desktop PC? I am building a desktop designed to run Linux (Ubuntu). I want to save money by using the two Apple Thunderbolt Displays I already own. I have not had much success finding a straight forward answer to whether or not I can simply hook up the displays to a Thunderbolt expansion card on the motherboard. Anybody ever seen it work successfully?

Yes, it is possible.

Source video
Source Article


I have a few movies I purchased using iTunes. Is there a way to extract the m4v files out to my hard drive? I have a few movies on my iMac that I purchased using iTunes. They play fine using iTunes. Is there a way to extract the file from iTunes and save the m4v file to my external drive but also leaving it in iTunes.

You would need an application which is capable of breaking Apple's DRM on the file, which may be illegal in some areas.

NoteBurner M4V Converter Plus for Mac is one such option; however, it does not work on macOS 13 and later, nor on versions of iTunes after 12.8.

There are other such programs which claim to remove DRM from iTunes movies, but I have not used any of them and cannot say if or how well they work.

Also of note: iTunes does not allow downloading of 4K content, only streaming. As with the transition from DVD to Blu-Ray, the studios have taken the opportunity for higher quality to also be "protected" by much more restrictive DRM.

While Keeping the DRM Intact

jmh added:

  I'm not interested in breaking Apples DRM. Can't I copy a movie and play it on my iMac without using iTunes?

Ah, well that's something else. Sorry I misunderstood.

You can copy the movie out of iTunes, but then you'll have two copies of the file, which could take up 4GB, or maybe even more. However, once you have it outside of iTunes, you can play the file, but only in QuickTime (due to the DRM).

A better alternative might be to create an alias or link to the original file in the iTunes folder.

Assuming that it's located in the usual place (~/Music/) then you could do something like this:

find ~/Music/ -ipath '*/iTunes Media/Movies/*' -type f -iname \*.m4v -print \
| while read line
do

    ln -s "$line" "$HOME/Desktop"

done

That will create a link from each movie file inside the "Movies" folder inside the "iTunes Media" folder to the ~/Desktop/ and won't take up any more actual diskspace.

Once they are linked to the Desktop, you can move the links somewhere else, rename them, etc.

If you don't care about the disk space, you can copy them instead of linking them:

find ~/Music/ -ipath '*/iTunes Media/Movies/*' -type f -iname \*.m4v -print \
| while read line
do

    cp -vn "$line" "$HOME/Desktop"

done


DVD stuck in player, doesn't show in Finder or Desktop I've inserted a dvd into slot...doesn't show up in Finder,(DVD is checked in Finder Preferences), and won't eject! Tried to plastic card trick- no luck. Disk spinning in there but won't come out. I have tried holding the right click button upon restart, eject button and holding PC upside down. Disk still spinning but not ejecting!


Software recommendation for FAST entry of equations I'm looking for a package that does for algebra what word processing software did for writing:

When I learned to type, my writing improved greatly because my fingers were closer to keeping up with my mind.

Similarly I think that students will be more willing to enter intermediate steps in solving problems if they can type math faster than they write it.

The package should in addition have drawing ability to make simple diagrams, and have the text formatting/editing ability roughly equivalent to the common rich text JavaScript modules commonly seen on forums.

It should be possible to create equations either through mouse or keyboard.

I think I'm looking for something that is a subset of LaTeX.

Added bonus: The ability to do simple symbolic consistency checks: for example, in a solution requiring several steps is each line a valid restatement of the previous line.

I am willing to consider a Windows program or Linux program running in a virtual machine, but I would prefer a Mac or iOS application.

The key feature is speed.  A user must be able to get the same sort of speed increase using this software as learning to type overcomes the slowness of handwriting.

On Windows, there is the Math-o-mir software. It should be able to provide all you asked for (rapid math typing, keyboard and mouse entry, basic CAS), but it requires some learning time to achieve speeds comparable to pencil-and-paper.


How do I determine and shut off an alarm that goes off? I have an iPhone 7 Plus running 10.1.1. Everything works fine but I have a audible notice that goes off every morning at 8:00am. The problem is I don't know what it is from. I checked the clock app and I don't have any alarms set. I thought it was the Golden Days app, but even after removing it, the notice gots off. I have several items in OmniFocus that are due at 8:00am, but to my knowledge OmniFocus does not use audible notifications. I am stumped.

Any guidance on how to track down and shut off this daily notice would be appreciated.

My apologies to the community for the long delay in responding to this question. I finally figured out that it was the Reminders app that was going off each morning at 8:00am. Even though no reminders were showing up on the lock screen of my iPhone, the alarm went off dutifully.

The solution: turn off notification for Reminders in the Notification Center.


memory problem with iMac late 2015 I wanted to upgrade the memory on an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015), which had 2x4GB chips. I bought 4x4GB chips (I only needed 2, but bought so many to use in other machines).
None of the 4 chips worked - as in, swapping them out one by one, making sure they were well seated, the 2 original chips worked fine, but with the 4 new ones, the machine would not boot at all.
The original chips, made by "SK hynix", have a sticker that says:

4GB 1Rx8 PC3L - 14900S - 13 - 13 - B4
HMT451S6BFR8A - RD NA AA  1638

The new ones, made by "Komputer Bay", have a sticker that says:

4GB PC3-14900 DDR3
2RX8 NON ECC 1.35V

The seller (on Amazon) states these new chips are made for this model of iMac. Is the seller wrong? Or could I have been given 4 defective chips?
Here is the link to the Amazon page, which states "..for Apple iMac 275K (Late 2015)". Thanks to @monomeeth for that - it is possible I was sent the incorrect type.
Thanks!

Your model iMac uses 204-pin PC3L-14900 (1867 MHz) DDR3 SO-DIMM memory chips, so you need to ensure that any chips you use meet this criteria.

You can go for faster memory (so long as everything else matches), but note the Mac won't use it at those faster speeds. I mention it just in case you can't find compatible chips at the correct speeds. Also, there's no mention of voltage in the official specs, but the 1.35v is fine.

As an aside, your iMac can actually use up to 64GB RAM (not just the 32GB officially supported by Apple).


What is this strange process `qemu` connecting to minergate.com? I noticed this in Little Snitch:

qemu-system-x86_64
/usr/local/Cellar/qemu/3.0.0/bin/qemu-system-x86_64
Total: 444 B sent, 0 B received
    Outgoing to xmr.pool.minergate.com (78.46.23.253, 46.4.119.208), Port 45700, Protocol TCP (6), 222 B sent, 0 B received
    Outgoing to xmr.pool.minergate.com (78.46.23.253, 46.4.119.208), Port 45700, Protocol TCP (6), 222 B sent, 0 B received

I blocked it but couldn't stop it from reloading. I couldn't find it in LaunchControl. (I never installed qemu via Homebrew.)

Is this some kind of bitcoin mining malware? Any way to figure out where it came from?

For now I just deleted the binary.

Qemu is a virtual emulator. Minergate is mining software. As mentioned it is probably installed via something you installed by Homebrew.

I would recommend a AntiVirus


Find which Safari window is playing video? Safari 9.0.1 launches and restores previously open windows. The app has the rude default behavior of automatically restarting any open videos.

With many open windows and tabs, how can I find the window playing the video?

In Chrome, I can use Window > Task Manager to view a list of processes. The busy one has the video. Double-clicking brings that window to the front. Anything similar in Safari?

In Safari 9 (and probably later), a blue speaker icon appears in the URL bar of all windows whenever any window is playing audio. You can click on this to mute the current tab (if it's playing audio) or all other tabs (if the current one is playing audio).

This icon also has a hidden feature: If you click and hold on it, you will see a list of all the tabs that are currently playing sound. Click on one of those, and the corresponding window will be brought to the front. Then you can stop that particular video.


Is there a way to save money by disabling SMS and routing to IM? I.e., could I configure a client such as AIM, Jabber, Skype, etc. on my phone and completely switch off SMS altogether?

Would the sending party be alerted that their SMS won't go through?

I cancelled my SMS plan and use iMessage with people who have iPhones and Google Voice with people who don't. Both are free.

I can still receive SMS messages, but I get charged for them (but it's exceedingly rare that I get one). My wife opted to block all SMS messages. If someone sends one to her they do not get any notification that it is not received.


No Battery Available I have a MacBook Pro 15", early 2011. Earlier this week, I brought it home and plugged it in, and there was an X through the battery. Did an SMC reset, and it started charging again. The next day it stopped again, and the message in the menubar said "No Battery Available." I opened up System Information, and under Power it said there was no battery installed.

Did another SMC reset and System Information was unable to load information for Power. I recently did another SMC reset, upgraded to Yosemite, and am still getting the no battery available symbol. But now this is what's showing up in System Information:

Is my battery completely dead? Is there any way to recharge it, or do I need to replace it?

UPDATE: I forgot to note, I did an AHT on the machine a couple days ago, and it said there was nothing wrong with the hardware. If the battery was jostled loose, wouldn't AHT flag it?

You probably knocked the battery connector out. Here's a link to a repair guide to replacing the whole battery, which is more than you need. Do steps 1 and 2 to open your computer up, and then make sure the battery connector in Step 3 is 100% plugged in. If it's fully plugged in and it's still not working, the battery itself is probably shot.


Messages not delivered. No "send as text" option I am not able to send or receive messages on iphone.  I get "not delivered" then "try again" but no option to "send as text". Worked fine until two days ago. MMS and SMS are on.

Persistent Not delivered error usually is related to connectivity issues, so make sure you're connected to the internet, then double check your iCloud credentials by going to Settings and verify that you're logged in properly into your Apple ID account (you may also consider signing out and signing in again).


Macbook won't sleep with VGA monitor connected My macbook pro will not sleep with a VGA monitor connected, via a MiniDisplayport to VGA adapter. When I close the lid, all of the windows shift over to the second screen, and the light on the macbook continues to stay solid (rather than pulsing like it usually does when the monitor is not plugged in).

I can unplug it, but it is a nuisance and I'm wondering if there's a way to fix it.

I'm afraid that's the appropriate behaviour, and it's called Closed Clamshell or Closed Display mode.

Using the  Option+Command+Eject shortcut will  put the computer to sleep.

On the other hand, unplugging the Power Adapter from the MacBook and then closing the lid, will do the trick, too.


Missing “visit this website” bypass to “this connection is not private” warnings in Safari Attempting to follow the instructions in the previous question How do I bypass "this connection is not private" warnings in safari? shows that the "Show Details" → "visit this website" link is not there anymore.

You can still open the page in a private window.


Transfer a large folder of photos and videos to iCloud Photos I'd like to sync my Google Photos and iCloud photos, mainly because I use iCloud photos a lot more.
I have a large amount of photos on my Google Photos library that I can download as a ZIP folder. I'm just unsure on the way to store these photos in iCloud?
I've tried the iCloud website to upload said photos and videos and it seems very unstable (only allowing uploads of JPEG format, uploading photos and putting them in the wrong chronilogical order etc.).
I can't think of any other better solution than just to sync said photos and videos directly to my iPhone or just use my MacBook to directly upload them.

It's very annoying. Any Ideas?

The probably easiest way to get this done is to import the pictures into Photos.app on your Mac and let iCloud do the syncing.

Open System Preferences -> Apple ID / iCloud (depends on macOS versio)
Make sure "Photos" has a checkmark

Then start Photos and wait for the photo library you already have to sync to your Mac (may take a while depending on the load on Apples servers, your bandwith etc). Afterwards drag&drop your photos into the Photos window (or right-click on them and add them to Photos via the Sharing entry) and let the sync copy them into iCloud.
As you have already started to upload them directly to iCloud.com you may run into duplicates. Photos won't detect them, so either delete them first (in either iCloud.com or Photos) or don't reimport the photos already available in the library.


MS Office: Retrieve documents saved to "User Templates" Sometimes, seemingly at random, when I go to save a Word document I'm working on, the "Save As" defaults to "User Templates" instead of "Docs". Sometimes I don't notice its done that and I just hit "Save". Now I can't find those docs.

I found them once a while ago, but I don't recall how, and I need some of those docs for clients. How do I locate them?

Via CLI

I believe Microsoft Word stores these preferences in this file: ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist. You could use the plutil to view the contents or a text viewer CLI tool such as cat, more or less. .plist files are merely a variant of XML files.

$ plutil -p ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist

I'd look in this file for something related to "default" and "save".

Via GUI

If you prefer doing this through the GUI the official Microsoft Office docs show where you'd do this in this doc titled: Save a file in Office for Mac
.

References

My mac will not let me save word documents
Can I check my “plist” files in Mac OS X for problems?


Why is my Launchpad missing app icons? Sometimes my Launchpad just look like this without any app icons. What causes this problem and how can I solve it?

I am using 2011 11″ MacBook Air with OS X 10.9.1

This didn't work for me,
Finder did not respond, clicking on Apps gave this error

Could not obtain valid temporary directory for sandboxed app ...

I also had to open a terminal and run:

cd /var/folder
sudo rm -rf *

Searched for and opened Activity Monitor, stopped the com.apple.IconServicesAgent service and rebooted.

My icons came back in launchpad and dock.


Can I configure Messages for Mac to receive messages sent to my phone number? Is it possible to configure Messages for Mac in such a way that it receives text messages sent to my mobile phone number?

Currently on the Mac I can receive only messages sent to my Apple ID, but on my iPhone I can receive messages sent to both.

In iOS 6, your phone number and your Apple ID will be unified, so when you'll receive a iMessage or a Facetime call, they will appear on all your devices (iOS and Mac OS).

More info here.

So I think you just need to wait until this fall to resolve your problem !


Health app double counts steps I am using an iPhone 6 with iOS 9.3.2. It happens that Health app doubles step count (and therefore also doubles distance). I know this beacause the amount is too high (about double, I should be running to have >6 km/hour walking speed) and I beacause I tested it (I know the walking distance to my work because of Google) I have checked on Privacy which apps can write walking distance and I switched them off, however everything remains the same.

In addition, I checked Data sources on the Step dashboard on Health following fbara's suggestion. However there are only two apps on Data Sources: my Phone and Health App. None of the can be unchecked nor removed nor dragged up and down. The data  supplied by them is very weird: Health App supplies little steps certain specifics days while my Phone source supplies everyday almost all steps. Its supply is already doubled.

It is worth noting that for a long time I didn't have problems

Thanks in advance!

Does some one know how to solve this?

It looks like the Health app is still (even after you turned things off) aggregating step data.  Instead of going to Privacy, go to the Health app.  Next go to the dashboard and tap on the Steps pane. Tap Share Data and then the Edit button on the top right.  Make sure only 1 app is supplying the step data, whichever app you want to use.

While still in Edit mode, go to the Data Sources section.  Drag that single source to the top so it's the first row.

Hopefully, this will prevent any other source from supplying step data.


Showing text with large font on iPhone I'm fine with the size of text on my iPhone. But sometimes I need to show a word or phrase to people whose eyesight isn't as good as mine.

I tried using the standard gesture for zooming in while using the "Notes" application, but it doesn't do anything.

How can I show a piece of text at a large size to someone else?

The approach needs to be able to handle non-alphabetic characters, especially Chinese characters.

Pretty simple, and it will zoom anything on the screen, not just text, so that's even better.

On your iPhone go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Zoom > Click to turn on.

See my attached screenshot for a few more commands while zoomed in.


If the battery is very old are there any disadvantages or danger to use notebook with power adapter only? Lets say the battery has over 5000 cycles and is almost dead or dead. If I will use this notebook always with power adapter - is at dangerous in any way?

I mean - is it possible that the old battery will explode etc.?

Its MacBook Pro 2015 so it cannot be removed.

Short answer:

No.

Medium answer:

There is always a risk of something failing in a fantastic way, but the chances of a deadly situation are slim to none if the user is taking good care of their hardware (no frayed cords, no liquids near electronics, etc.).

Long answer:

Simply put, batteries are arrays of cells that consist of sandwiches of two metals and a chemical between them.  The reaction draws electrons from the negatively charged side of the cell, through the electronic device's circuitry, through the positively charged metal into the chemical compound, which eventually becomes saturated as the first metal's electrons are drained.

Recharging reverses this process, but flaws develop in the first metal's surface, causing it to resist or refuse additional inbound electron flow.  Eventually, the battery becomes unable to accept a new charge and has nothing left to give.

The battery's circuitry and charging circuitry have failsafe mechanisms to prevent shorting the battery (which can result in an explosion if there's enough current stored), shorting--and subsequently frying--the charger's power supply, and all the fun stuff in between.  With all of that safety equipment in place, it essentially means your battery's nothing but a brick that the charger refuses to touch.

So no, it is highly unlikely to explode.

All that being said, I have had old batteries swell and expand...

Check ifixit.com for what it would take to replace your laptop's battery, when the time comes.


Mavericks downgrade to Mountain Lion - alert cannot be installed on this computer I purchased a second hand iMac with Mavericks Developer installed already, seen as I am not a developer and other things don't work, I purchased a copy of Mountain Lion but when tring to run the installer it gives me this message
"alert mac os x 10.7 cannot be installed on this computer"
I want to keep all user profiles and software intact so I don't want to wipe the hard drive (although many other posts say when you get that message wiping the hard drive still doesn't solve it)

any ideas?

Verify that your iMac can run the older version of Mac OS X. You can see what versions can be run by searching for your specific model of iMac at EveryMac

Sometimes I have seen that even if a Mac was shipped with an older version of Mac OS it is difficult to downgrade due to firmware upgrades that make the system incompatible with older releases. I haven't personally experienced this sort of issue in maybe 10 years.


How can I get "Automatically fill free space with songs" to reserve more space than a half gig On my iPhone 3GS (32GB) I want to keep more than .48GB free space when I tell iTunes to "Automatically fill free space with songs" for doing things like taking pictures/recording videos.

I don't want to create a playlist by hand to do the same thing. I like how it randomly comes up with new songs to put on there (and yes I'm aware of the "random"ness of iPods ;) )

Do I have any options?

Unfortunately no, the automatic filling takes place during sync, and only gets changed in size if you add/remove things that will also take place during sync.

If you want to limit it while also preserving some of that randomness, try creating a Smart Playlist that will select songs at random, and then tweak the "Limit to" feature until you have enough space free. It limits to number of tracks not size, so it won't be exact, but it will allow you to (roughly) tailor your size.

Edit: Actually I made a mistake, it is possible to limit to a GB amount

Create a Smart Playlist
Under "Match the following rule:", select something broad like "Media Kind", "is", "Music"
Tick the checkbox next to "Limit to"
Select "items" and change it to "GB" and enter your desired GB amount


How to install Xcode 6? I just got myself a MBA and I am wondering how do I install Xcode 6 on my MBA?

In the Mac App Store I can see Xcode 5.1.1 so I have started installing that on the MBA. But, I want to install Xcode 6 and more specifically Swift. How do I do that?

Xcode 6 currently requires an active iOS or Mac Developer Program membership, available from developer.apple.com/programs, as Xcode 6 and Swift is not publicly available yet.  Once Xcode 6 is out of beta / prerelease anyone should be able to download it from the MAS, but that is speculation based on past experience and not something Apple has announced.


How to suppress the "Run or quit" dialog when launching an applescript? I am having the same basic problem as in this question:

AppleScript app started prompting to run or quit. How can I disable this?

However, in my case the "Startup Screen" option is definitely NOT checked, and re-saving the script will not make any difference.

The issue here appears to be that I am launching my script via a keyboard shortcut of CTRL-SHIFT-I and it's having the Control key as part of the launching shortcut, that is the problem.

I can change the shortcut, but I have a whole system in place with how I launch things and this breaks that system.  I would really REALLY prefer not to have to change my shortcut for this one silly reason.

Is there any way to force-suppress this dialog in the applescript itself?  Or any other way to cause this dialog to not appear?

Holding control only shows those dialogs if a script is saved as an application. Couldn't you just save the script as scpt or applescript?


Running DiskWarrior from Boot Recovery Terminal for encrypted disks does not work The instructions that come with Disk Warrior state you should boot in Recovery Mode by:

Holding ⌘ Command R
Open Terminal
Run command /Volumes/DW/go

If you run this command you get an error saying that the directory cannot be found.

It would appear that the instructions for are somewhat lacking and there are some missed steps and incorrect ones. After some trial and error here's how I got it running.

Drive is not encrypted

You can either run the USB as a bootable drive by holding Alt on boot. Or if you really need to run it from the boot recovery terminal you can skip steps 5-7

If drive is encrypted using FileVault 2

Install DiskWarrior on a working Mac & enter key
Use the Bootable disk wizard to create a bootable USB
Rename the USB drive to DW & eject
Insert USB into mac that needs to be repaired and power up mac while holding Apple + R
Open Disk Utility
Select drive and then select 'Unlock' & enter password to unlock
Close Disk Utility
Open Terminal
Run command: /Volumes/DW/Applications/DiskWarrior.app/Contents/MacOS/DiskWarrior

DiskWarrior should now start and you can repair your drive.


New iMac unbelievably slow I have a new 2019 iMac with 8Gb of memory and a HDD (not an SSD). Yes it's the lowest-end 8Gb iMac from last year.
With no apps running, nothing in the apps to start on login, with a new virgin account created yesterday, with the latest MacOS installed, opening system preferences - just opening it - can take over 30 seconds. Every time. With a beachball wait cursor.
This is not just a little slow. This is unbelievably slow. This is slower than my 10 year old MacBook Pro.
I've run every test on it that I can think of. Checked for processes that are using CPU. Checked for free memory.
Does anyone have a clue?
Could it be misconfigured somehow that makes it truly unusable?
Update
If this performance is because of the hard disk then you are saying that Apple is selling a configuration of iMac (in early 2020) that is hopelessly misconfigured. It's as if they were selling a computer with a 128Meg disk or with 1Gig of memory. Can that actually be?

You are on the correct track to make specific benchmarks and time them.
So if you have “open system preferences” you can repeat it. If it takes 30 seconds to open 5 times in a row, you could run some tests to see if it’s network or disk or CPU that’s constraining it.
If it speeds up the second and third times, then it’s a different issue.
Can you reproduce this in a new user account on the Mac with no startup items?
Either way, using the first two Activity Monitor functions to end high CPU use processes and see overall energy use should out any apps causing a slowdown. Also, do you need more ram?

https://support.apple.com/guide/activity-monitor/welcome/mac


Why can't Finder be closed using command+q? command+q has no effect on Finder, which means there is no way of closing a whole Finder window using a keyboard shortcut. Instead, you have to use command+w to close all of its tabs one by one.

I understand that Finder is treated differently and that it is a special application, but it just seems awkward and inconsistent, because to me as a user, Finder is a file manager and I expect it to respond to command+q like any other program would. Why does Finder even appear in OS X's Application Switcher (command+tab), if it cannot be closed?

It seems to me that Finder is somewhat special because OS X does not distinguish the file manager from the whole desktop environment. From OS X's perspective, closing Finder would be closing the Desktop, the Bars, and even the Application Switcher, which is why it is blocked.

Now, my actual question:

How can I close a Finder window without closing each tab on its own?

You can close all windows of an application (including Finder) with ⌘+⌥+w.

You can add a quit option to the Finder by running:

defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool YES && killall Finder

Considering Finder is responsible for the desktop icons, quitting it rather pointless, but have it!


Macbook Pro 2019 is unable to detect more than 1 monitor I have two Dell monitors and have bought Honeywell Dock to connect my MacBook to those two monitors

I connected one monitor to my Dock using VGA and another monitor to my dock using HDMI.

When I open up the Macbook Lid, it shows that it has detected only two monitors and it is treating both of my Dell monitors as one.

When I close up my Macbook Lid, the screen is seen in both of my Dell monitors and I am unable to stop the mirroring.

Need help

actually your Macbook Pro does not support more than 1 5k display. just check the resolution and get back to me.


Does Power Nap work for multiple users? My wife and I share a laptop at the house. Because iCloud works best when each individual has their own account (in particular reminders and photos), we each have our own iCloud accounts and therefor our own photo streams.

I love that Power Nap will automatically pull down photos from Photo Stream and then back them up to Time Machine. It basically means that only videos are the thing at risk if my phone happens to explode or get stolen. So far so good.

However, it is unclear (even when trying it!) if Power Nap will pull down photos for all users on the laptop, or if it'll only work for the logged in user. I've tried testing this myself and the results are inconclusive, so I'm guessing the answer is either "No" or "Yes, but it's very buggy". I'm hoping someone else has experience with this and can shed some light on what they've observed.

Will Power Nap work for multiple users?

Power Nap will receive user level data for any users that are logged in. If you have fast user switching enabled and both accounts are logged in when the Mac goes to sleep, both should get updates.

If there is a bug, it could be reported, but in the light testing I've done, everything seems to work well for users that have logged in.

If the user is not logged in, updates currently do not occur (OS X v10.8.2).


Will anything bad happen if I just delete my thumbnail cache? I keep data on a thumb drive and sometimes my laptop gets hot running quicklookd presumably trying to make thumbnails of all of the files on the thumb drive. The high runner file types are images, pdfs and JSONs. I am guessing if I kept them zipped I could avoid the thumbnail generation but that's a different question.

I've found index.sqlite and thumbnails.data in the private folder com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache. This answer may address my question indirectly but I don't really know what to do or what will happen.

If I just go and delete index.sqlite and thumbnails.data and then restart, will my computer blow up? Will it have to generate all thumbnails for files on my start-up HD again?

I have never used SQLite so I don't think I should try to modify this pair, even with a script, and I understand that next time I use the data quicklookd may fire up again. Still I'd like to know what would likely happen if I deleted this pair of files.

This is a bit of a guess, but I'm assuming if you switch off the icon preview & preview column, then the system would have no need to generate preview icons...

You might need to do this for all 3 view types, Column, Icon & List, from View menu  > Show View Options  Cmd ⌘   J
Example [using a RAMDisk, as it was just conveniently populated]...


Apple Pay on Apple Online Store How can I use Apple Pay to purchase something online from the Apple Store? I have the normal purchase options with credit card etc. I assume that Apple must support their own payment system?

Yes, Apple does use its own payment system.

Using the Apple Store app, find the product you would like to purchase and add it to the shopping bag.

When done tap on the shopping bag tab at the bottom. You'll see a list of the products you have selected. Press the big black button named "Buy with (apple)Pay" (the button contains a graphical version of the Apple logo where I wrote (apple)).

Now you'll get a confirmation dialog and by confirming you can pay with Apple Pay.


Why is my G5 running so slow and hot? We have an early 2005 Power Macintosh G5 2.0 DP (PCI). This tower has been having a lot of problems: freezing randomly, runs hot and slow, fans race intermittently, CDs/DVDs don't always load, won't go to sleep sometimes...
What is happening and how can I fix this??

Here are additional specs:

Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 Processor
2GB DDR SDRAM
Runs OS 10.5.8

This is the model info for this tower: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/stats/powermac_g5_2.0_dp_pci.html

Additional System Profiler info is here at:
http://inventaweb.net/matthew/sysprofiler.txt

I deleted the log files from the file because they are way too long, but everything else is there.

It may be time to get a new Mac Pro. The processing units in these machines often don't last forever.

Otherwise, I would suggest backing up as many of your valuable files as you can, clearing your machine and reloading your OS from scratch (i.e. Install DVD).


How do I boot my MacBook Air running Lion in safe mode? I follow the instructions in http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455 to boot in Safe Mode, but it appears something different happens with Lion.  After holding the shift key when hearing the startup tone, the icons for the two accounts I have configured come up as usual.  If I hold the shift key after logging in, the screen stays grey and a status bar appears with a "sunburst" waiting animation.  (I don't know what the canonical name for that is.)  After the status bar fills, the waiting animation continues and then my MBA reboots.

How do I boot my MacBook Air (running Mac OS X 10.7.1) in Safe Mode?

In my 2011 MacBook Air running Lion, when I select Restart... from the  menu, if I then hold the shift key through the restart process, the boot process is distinctly different than a normal reboot. There is a progress bar across the bottom of the screen, and then I am deposited at the login window, despite normally automatically logging in. I suspect that a Safe Boot has indeed been performed. The difference between this an Safe Boot in previous versions is that no "Safe Mode" text appears on the login screen for me.


Connect Mac to an external display My system is OS X Yosemite. When I connect MBP to a monitor, the monitor shows no signal error and the MacBook screen also becomes black. Disconnecting will not make the MacBook screen normal again. I have to force it to shut down and restart.
I also don't have the "detect display" option in system preference -> display. Does anyone have the same problem?

=======

MacBook Pro 13-inch, Mid 2012. Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5. Memory 4GB 1600 MHz DDR3. Graphics Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB. The cable is VGA-mini displayport (not Apple brand, but worked fine with projectors before). The monitor is AOC E2752VH (model #: 270LM00004)

Those specifications and those of the cable and monitor indicate that it should work.

You could try resetting the SMC on that Mac by shutting down the Mac holding down the Shift+Control+Option keys and the Power button at the same time. Wait 15 sec and then turn it back on.

Failing that you could start in Safe Mode by holding the shift key while booting (booting will take a lot longer) and try plugging in the monitor then.

Failing those I would try another adapter, preferably one with an all digital signal path like a Mini Displayport to HDMI or DVI-D


Replacing all white spaces with commas in a 46MB text file How long should replacing all white spaces with commas take in my 46MB text file using a simple text editor such as textmate on my Mac?

TextMate can sometimes be very slow with big files like this.

I recommend using a command line utility like sed.

sed 's/ /,/g' orig.txt > modified.txt

will do what you need extremely quickly.  Obviously replace the filenames with your actual filenames.


How to change lock screen wallpaper in macOS Catalina? Is it possible to change lock screen (not login screen, I mean the one triggered by Ctrl+Cmd+Q) wallpaper to different one than desktop wallpaper?

No, it isn't possible on macOS.
Extra info: It may be different if you have a screensaver running and then you open the login menu.


Are there any SSD drives not from Apple for which you can enable TRIM without hacking OS X's kernel? I would like to see if there is a way of getting TRIM support on SSD drives gotten from other manufacturers.

As far as I know, Apple does not produce SSD drives so if I get a similar drive not from them it should work? Or maybe they have custom firmware?

Enabling TRIM on third party SSDs
You can enable TRIM on third party SSDs by using a tool called Trim Enabler  which "works by patching a kernel extension, and also includes some SMART data to check the health of the SSD drive". [1]
I don't know if buying similar drive will get you TRIM to be auto-enabled in Lion. User @kukoo reports that he has bought an OEM-SSD which auto-enabled TRIM in Lion after installation. [2]
According to user @bmike, Apple usually uses custom firmware . [3]
Is enabling TRIM necessary?
User @cksum has covered this as a part of his answer to a post "Optimize MacBook Pro for internal SSD+HDD drives".


Is Firefox Private Network available in iOS From webpage https://private-network.firefox.com/, I know that Firefox Private Network  is available in Firefox windows client, is Firefox Private Network funation available in the Firefox App of iOS?

According to the webpage:

  This extension is currently available to US desktop users only.

This means that it is only available for desktop Firefox.

However, the extension is allegedly based on the same infrastructure as CloudFlare's Warp VPN service, which is currently being rolled out to the "1.1.1.1" app if you have it installed.

The Warp VPN appears to be available on iOS and in all countries.


My external harddisk is readonly on mac I am having a 1Tb external harddisk. Its working perfectly fine on ubuntu and windows. But On mac its read-only. How can I change this.

Your external drive is most probably formatted on Windows and is then in NTFS format.
Check this question which will give you the different possibilities you have.


Can I return my MacBook Pro? I just bought a new Mac from the Apple online store (six days ago) and it had a scratch on it when I got it. I would return it, but I needed my Mac for work, so I waited four days. And in the four days my Mac got another scratch.

Can I return it now?

In europe you can always return things bought online for 14 days. Your scratch will change that of course, best call Apple to ask about it.

I had a mac that had a dent on arrival once. I went to my local apple authorized repair center and they were apple changed the part for no charge.


What are the restrictions of ad-hoc code signing? It is possible to sign code or apps "ad-hoc" using codesign. The man page tells us the following about ad-hoc code signing:

  If identity is the single letter "-" (dash), ad-hoc signing is performed.  Ad-hoc signing does not use an identity at all, and identifies exactly one instance of code. Significant restrictions apply to the use of ad-hoc signed code; consult documentation before using this.

(Emphasis added by me)

I wanted to know more and tried to find said documentation, but I was unable to find any details. I have found a technical note called "macOS Code Signing In Depth", but it does not mention ad-hoc signing at all.

What are these "significant restrictions" and where are they documented?

Basically ad-hoc signing in this context means that the binary is signed without any cryptographic proof at all.

In essence normally binaries are signed by adding a so-called CMS (a cryptographic message) where the hash of the CodeDirectory is the message that is signed by the signing identity. This means that an outsider can verify that the code was indeed signed by someone holding the private key for that identity.

When running programs, the macOS system can verify that these signatures are valid, and that it trusts the signing identity - and if it does, run the program. This is the basics of the GateKeeper functionality.

Ad-hoc signed binaries are vastly different as they contain no such CMS. Instead it simply holds the SHA-1 hash value of the CodeDirectory without any cryptographic proof of its validity, and no path of certificates/identities to verify against.

The CodeDirectory is an object that describes a particular instance of static code by having hash values for various pieces of code that the application is made from. By ensuring that the CodeDirectory is untampered by verifying the cryptographic signature, and that the various code bits of the application match the hash values stored in the directory, you can ascertain that the code wasn't tampered with.

Without the cryptographic proof this "untampered" check cannot be performed in the normal way.

Instead ad-hoc signed binaries are checked by comparing the SHA-1 hash value against a list of "known good" hash values stored in the static trust cache inside the kernel.

In essence this means that the "significant restrictions" placed upon any application you ad-hoc sign yourself is that it won't pass any kind of verification anywhere. It basically be the same as a non-signed binary.

However, if you're Apple, you can create applications that aren't codesigned in the ordinary way, and are instead explicitly trusted by the kernel. I.e. if for example Apple wants to ensure that an application is untampered when run at an early stage in system startup where the full signing identity verification is not up and running (or is unavailable) they can use ad-hoc signing. These applications can always be verified by the static trust cache, no matter if your certificate repository is hosed or anything like that.

In practice creating ad-hoc signed binaries is only of practical value for Apple developers.

You can find minor documentation on ad-hoc signing in Apple's developer section. For example:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/seccodesignatureflags/kseccodesignatureadhoc

But you can also find snippets of documents in the source code for the codesign utility itself, and in the source code for libsecurity.


Syncing multiple iOS devices with the same iTunes installation on Windows 7 I have two iPhones and two iPads. They need to sync with the same iTunes. They have different e-mail, contacts, sync information, but use photos, audio, and video from the same multimedia library on my PC and NAS. How should I set that up? Currently I have problems with the iPod Photo cash and there might me more issues that I have not discovered yet?
Thanks.
Thomas.

There shouldn't be a problem with this at all. Simply connect the devices and set them up as normal. I have an iPod, iPad, and several iPhones that sync with my Mac and I have not encountered any problems.

As far as using different email, contact, and sync info, you can set up all of that on the actual device itself in "Settings" > "Mail, Contacts, Calendars".

Syncing with iCloud
If you will be syncing email, contacts, and calendars using iCloud on each device, be sure to uncheck the following in the "Info" tab in iTunes:

-"Sync Address Book Contacts"
-"Sync iCal Calendars"
-"Sync Mail Accounts"

Syncing without iCloud, Using Sync Data from Your Mac
If you will be syncing email, contacts, and calendars using the info that is on your Mac, check off the following in the "Info" tab in iTunes, and then select which email account, contact list, and calendars you want to sync:

-"Sync Address Book Contacts"
-"Sync iCal Calendars"
-"Sync Mail Accounts"

Syncing Content from the iTunes Store
As far as syncing audio and video that was purchased from the iTunes Store, you will need to enter the proper account information on each device. This can be done in "Settings" > "Store". Changing the Apple ID in the "Store" settings will not affect the Apple ID used for iCloud.


How can I reproduce the Finder sort order without asking Finder to sort for me? I work with a large collection of mostly-text files subdivided by series, periodically mirroring them from an upstream repository and repackaging them using a shell script from a slightly chaotic source organization into more orderly and compact forms. The sources are collected in directories of files for each series numbering from a handful to hundreds per set, with a semi-orderly human-oriented naming convention dating back to the 90's with this general pattern:

multi-word-series-name[-$subsetnumber]-$docnumber[.{txt,html,pdf}]

Where a series may or may not have subsets, subsets may be numbered with roman or arabic numerals, a series may start with numbered docs in no subset and later  get a subset labeled "II" or "2", and so on. These names work well for people using them from the Finder, which in most cases orders them in a human-sensible way and detects that name-II-1 comes later than name-6 and that name-2 does not come after name-19. Because my repackaging consists of assembling the latest version of each series into single files in their human-rational order, I use a simple bit of AppleScript that uses the Finder to sort the names of the items in a given directory. This yields correct results, but it is spectacularly inefficient for reasons I don't understand. The AppleScript is:

on run argv
    set op to ""
    set upath to POSIX file argv as string
    tell application "Finder"
        set foo to every item of folder upath
        set foo to sort foo by name
        repeat with curfile in foo
            set thisname to the name of curfile
            set op to op & " " & thisname as string
        end repeat
    end tell
    return op
end run

(And no, I don't recall why I did it that way. I wrote it circa 2008 and I mostly hate AppleScript...) This is compiled into a script named "flist.scpt" and run from my shell script with "osascript flist.scpt /path/to/series/folder/". The result of running that script with a directory that has 26 files in it is to peg the cpu for over 2 minutes. For comparison, 'ls' gives lexically sorted results on the same machine (a G5 iMac running Leopard... don't laugh, it's a utility machine) in 0.008s with the script chewing on the same directory in the background.

I'm looking to get rid of that AppleScript altogether, but I have not found a way to reproduce the Finder sort logic easily, i.e. by setting a locale or giving some complex arguments to 'sort' that will order the names correctly. My fallback solution if I can't find something canned to do this will be to reproduce the Finder logic myself in some evil mix of sort, sed, awk, and shell, but I'd really like to avoid that if possible. If there's something goofy about my AppleScript that is causing the horrid performance, fixing that would be almost as good as a magic incantation to 'ls' to make it sort like the Finder.

UPDATE: SOLVED!
I first tried the Perl Sort::Naturally module, but it sorted labeled-subset names  ahead of the implied subset "I" members, which isn't what I wanted. So I went ahead and dove into writing my first Ruby script, after hacking a fix into the Leopard Ruby config to make 'gem' work in the modern world and installing the naturalsort gem. The replacement Ruby script (called with a directory name as an argument) is:

#! /usr/bin/env ruby -rubygems -KU
# Largely cargo-culted from stackexchange response.
# I dunno what exactly the shebang line opts to ruby do. Probably pwn me.
# My first Ruby script ever. Don't laugh too hard.

require 'natural_sort' # gem install naturalsort

dname = ARGV[0]
input = Dir.entries(dname)
puts NaturalSort.naturalsort(input)

The minor differences in output are that this includes the . and .. entries and delimits entries by line rather than with spaces, but as this is being called from a shell script that already filters out some special names these are trivial to handle.

The exact sorting order used by Finder probably depends on the locale, but scripting languages like Ruby and Python have libraries for sorting strings naturally.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -rubygems -KU

require 'natural_sort' # gem install naturalsort

input = "name-II-1
name-6
name-2
name-19".lines
# input = Dir["#{ENV['HOME']}/Documents/*"]

puts NaturalSort.naturalsort(input)


The bottom of my iPhone won't accept touches. Can I fix that? My iPhone (1st Gen) is no longer able to recognize when I touch it at the very bottom of the screen.  The only way this effects me is when I have the keyboard up I cant hit the 123, spacebar, or send.

Is there some way I can fix this?  I've tried restoring but that didn't do the trick.  Is this something that I can take in and have fixed?

Turns the phone upside down and hope that the app you are using supports that orientation :)


Help with computer without mouse I have a Mac computer I'm not sure exactly what type and it's not updated. All I have is one of the magic mouses or whatever and it won't connect without updating. In order to update I need to hit agree but I can click on it without a mouse. What do I do to hit agree and update it? (I have a keyboard)

Connect a USB mouse and you should be able to get online and accept any updates.


Windows on BootCamp cannot start upon a fresh installation I have a Windows 7 .iso I always use for BootCamp installations. It works.

I have a MacBook Pro Retina 15" Mid-2014, and I have installed Windows 7 in it successfully in the past. Throughout the latest months, for a number of reasons I have uninstalled the partition, and installed Windows again, and uninstalled again, and so on.

Today I currently don't have Windows installed, and decided to do so. The installation was apparently successful as always: BootCamp partitioned around 40GB for Windows, downloaded the Support Software, booted from USB flashdrive, and then it restarted (as always).

But then, when my Mac tries to boot into Windows, it doesn't seem to work anymore. I am met with a black screen and the following text displays:

  Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be
  the cause. To fix the problem:

  Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.
  Choose your language settings, and then click "Next."
  Click "Repair your computer".

  If you do not have this disct, contact your system administrator or
  computer manufacturer for assistance.

  File: \windows\system32\drivers\AppleSSD.sys

  Status: 0xc0000428

  Info: Windows cannot verify the digital signature of this file.

Now, something different must have happened compared to all the many times I installed Windows on BootCamp... I do have an idea. The last installation was removed by deleting the partition using Disk Utility (instead of using BootCamp assistant). That's the only difference I can think of.

I have read that I could delete the AppleSSD file. And I did. But now many things seem to be wrong: for starters, the OS doesn't seem to be able to connect to my Wireless network (so it seems like the drivers were not properly installed).

What should I do? I deleted the partition and tried again, but the same occurs. A friend has another .iso I borrowed, but it didn't work either.

The problem can't be with my .iso - I've used it so many times before. It works fine. Something must be wrong somewhere else.

I am using OSX Yosemite.

Edit

As requested, I deleted the Windows partition and ran diskutil list:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            250.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s4

Then sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0:

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  488555536      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488965176    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  490234712          7
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header

And sudo fdisk /dev/disk0:

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 30515/255/63 [490234752 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  490234751] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

This basically is a repost of the following sites:
get "appleSSD.sys" error when installing windows 7 through bootcamp and
bootcamp - appleSSD.sys digital signature can not be verified

Looks like there are problems with Boot Camp Support Software (BCSS) being downloaded from Apple. Here is a solution:

Download an older version of the BCSS for your Mac. See
System requirements to install Windows 7 and earlier on your Mac
using Boot Camp. In your case, the software can be found at Boot
Camp Support Software 5.1.5621.
Using Boot Camp Assistant, prepare the USB flash drive. Select the
first two items and prepare the disk.
Quit Boot Camp Assistant.
Using the Finder, move the $WinPEDriver$ and BootCamp folders
from the USB flash drive to the Trash. Empty the Trash.
Using the Finder, copy the $WinPEDriver$ and BootCamp folder
from the BCSS to your flash drive.
Reopen Boot Camp Assistant and select only the third option, install
Windows.

An explanation regarding the purpose of these folders can be found at Limitations of $WinPeDriver$ when used in conjunction with other driver injection methods.


How to find out the TeamID of installed apps in macOS High Sierra/Mojave Can someone tell me, how can I get the TeamID & bundleID of all installed apps in macOS.

I know how to get the bundleID of an app, I want both TeamID and bundleID of all the installed app.

Is there any shell script/command which can be used for this?

See this site and this one for some background.

If you’re trying to find out this info to create profiles for managed Macs to handle new security restrictions when installing kernel extensions, there are numerous discussions on JAMF and Meraki user and support fora.


huge Chrome Time Machine backups My 1TB Time Machine drive just filled up, apparently due a bug in Chrome. Since this issue has been open for a year and a half, I don't expect that Google will fix it any time soon.

Can anyone offer a work-around that will allow Time Machine to back up Chrome bookmarks, passwords etc, but exclude the ever-changing cache and history files?

Edit: I just noticed you want Time Machine to back things in Chrome up like Bookmarks and what not still. I've modified the answer so the exclusion path is more specific than what I use. Honestly though: just sync your Chrome settings to your Google Account and then you don't need Time Machine to do this for you and you can just blanket exclude everything under ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome.

Just exclude the offending directories under ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome from the Time Machine backups.

In more recent versions of Chrome/OS X, some of these folders may be located in:

/Users/$USER/Library/Caches/Google/

To do this...

Click on the Time Machine icon in your task bar and select Open Time Machine Preferences... or go to System Preferences -> Time Machine.

In the preferences pane click the Options... button.

Click the + button to the bottom right of the Exclude these items from backups: list.

In the Finder window that pops up navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default and then select the following for exclusion:

Application Cache
Archived History
Archived History-journal
databases
Extensions
History (wish there was a way to put a wildcard on this)
Local Storage
Sync Data

You might have repeat the exclude step for each of those. I'm not sure you can select multiple files for exclusion in the Finder window that pops up. Once you've selected something click the Exclude button. That path to the directory or file will now show up in the exclusions list and won't be included in Time Machine backups.

I have mine set up as follows:

If you have more that one user account on your system I suspect you'll have to repeat these steps for each user. I believe Time Machine exclusions are stored on a per-user basis. If there's a way to force Time Machine settings on to all users on a machine, I don't know it.

Edit: here is what Chrome will sync automatically for you if you enable it. Wrench Icon -> Preferences... -> Personal Stuff -> Customize


Is it possible to use old RAM on new MacBook? My current MacBook Pro, a early-2013 13" i5, is getting very slow and I therefore want to buy a new one. However, I want to wait until the next generation comes out. In the meantime I will change the RAM from 4GB to 16GB.

My questions is if the RAM for the early 2013 macbook will work in the new MacBook Pro?

I'll make it quick for you : MacBook Pro and MacBook Air have the ram now soldered to the main board.

You won't be able to upgrade the ram on the new MacBooks.


History of my iPhone apps Is there a way to know the last time I reinstalled a specific app?  Also, how many times I have reinstalled it?

Unfortunately not—there is no way to know that without jailbreaking.


Why does my iMac not boot sometimes? My iMac started to have a problem when booting. It begins to boot where you hear the optical drive and Mac sound goes off, but then it gets stuck on a black screen where it's not responsive. After 10 to 20 minutes it might turn on. Most of the time if I unplug the back power cable and wait for the Mac to cool down then plug it in, it starts normally. If I then restart the computer, it goes back to the same problem. Overall, the Mac works well when it's on.

One more thing: the iMac also sometimes boots with many white and black lines and dots moving all over the screen, with the Apple logo with the cursor appearing at the right side of the screen  instead of being in the middle. When I put the Mac to sleep, it turns on with a blue screen, but it is not responsive.

Does any one know what it might be?

The system has 3gb ram running osx 10.9

Was the mac shipped with 3gb ram? It is possibly not the reason but advice all the same, apple strongly recommends you run ram in identical pairs or individual modules, so a single 1, 2, 4 etc GB stick or 2 x 1, 2 x 2GB and so on, but not 1 x 1gb and 1 x 2gb.


Video/Image processing on Apple iPhone4 I know iPhone 4 supports H.264 and MPEG-4 as video codecs, and JPEG and M-JPEG as image codecs.

I'm looking to get some information on the iPhone 4's video and image codecs and processing chips/SoC parts.

Does anyone know which vendor provides the SoC's to enable image/video compression and processing on the iPhone 4?
Are the video/image codec solutions - 'Software codecs' on a specialized dsp-core/processor or hard-wired as in a FPGA/ASIC solution?

Any pointers would be useful.

I think you'll get the answer in the iPhone 4 teardown that the guys at iFixit did sometime ago:

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone-4-Teardown/3130/1

You will be able to see there what components are inside the iPhone 4, but I'd guess all the video compression/decompression is processed by the A4 processor (an ARM Cortex A8 core variant).

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple-A4-Teardown/2204/1


Changed DNS server, now can't connect to internet on Safari, Chrome or App Store I'm using Mac 10.7.5. Attempting to speed up my internet connection, I downloaded namebench and changed my DNS server per the suggestion given by namebench.

After restarting my computer, I can no longer connect to the internet on Safari, Firefox, or the App Store, although Chrome works just fine. Is there anything else I need to configure to enable internet browsing on these browsers?

Btw, namebench recommended I use the nameserver 205.171.2.65.

I always use OpenDNS when troubleshooting DNS issues, try using 208.67.222.222 and/or 208.67.220.220 as your DNS servers on your computer. Alternatively, try setting the network interface on your computer back to auto-obtaining DNS servers from your router via DHCP.

System Preferences > Network > [Network Adapter being used (WiFi or Ethernet usually)] > Advanced > DNS tab > delete any manual entries under "DNS Servers" and you should see a few entries in light grey (those are given to your computer via DHCP) Then click "apply" and you should be all set


WhatsApp with Mac Catalina After upgrade in Mac OS 10.15, WhatsApp would not open due to security check failure. In preference, the "Open Anyway" does not seem to work. Any workaround pls? Thanks

Actually I found it. Use terminal to temporarily disable the security with sudo spctl --master-disable. Then restore with -enable


My Internal SSD is Not Showing Up in Diskutil I ereased current MacOS system and tried to setup new version from scratch. But Macbook can't show internal SSD in diskutil anymore. I can't access my SSD in Macbook. Whan I tried until now and results:

1) I was have bootcamp in it and I tried to access to Windows on Macbook, I accessed, but Macbook's own firmware couldn't see it anyway.

2) I have tried SSD and tested everything on it (GTP opening, format settings etc.) everything works very fine for SSD.

3) I have tried install a MacOS to my flash disk from internet recover system, it worked.

4) I have booted 2 different USB sticks (3.0, 2.0) they both never seen as bootable but I can see them in disk utils.

5) I tried reset thing on Macbook (CMD + Option + R + P) didn't work for me.

6) I tried 4 different DMG files with 4 different versions of MacOS (by using TransMac) and I tried to boot all of them on Mac but never worked.

7) Everything was fine until I pressed to "Erase" button on Disk Utility in CMD + R at startup. I just wanted to reset everything and install a fresh setup but that locked my whole day.

I have tried everything what I can find on the internet but it never see any internal storage anyway.
(I mean OS never sees it but bootcamp was still working when even OS can't see it. Until I reset SSD on my Windows PC, I can access to Bootcamp Windows from Macbook Pro after Erasing MacOS Catalina.)

Thank you everyone...

I found the solution. I have an NVME SSD because of that Yosemite or El Capitan can't see it. I just created an High Sierra boot USB and that solved my problem.


Can Finder show dates including seconds? Can you make Finder show timestamps with hour:minutes:seconds?.  It seemed to be possible in old versions of OS X, judging by this post:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/show-date-created-down-to-seconds.569085/

Nothing has changed, except that the location within System Preference has had a name change.

You can do this as follows:

Got to Apple > System Preferences...
Select the Language & Region preference pane
Click the Advanced... button at bottom left
Select the Times tab
You'll see the Short format fields at top
Edit this field by dragging the 'Second' time element from the Time Elements area to the Short field (Note: You'll need to manually enter the colon (:) in between the mins and secs if you was it to be displayed as well)
Click on OK
Exit System Preferences

Now you'll have the seconds displayed in your Finder time stamps.


Disk encryption format for external drives that works on both macos and linux Is there any disk encryption scheme or format that can be used on both macos and linux?

Linux cannot read Apple's drive encryption format, and LUKS is not supported on MacOS.

I tried using VeraCrypt encrypted partitions in exFat format and it mounted successfully several times on MacOS but after a system update exFat mounting of veracrypt volumes does not work anymore (no issues on linux). Also, exFat does not seem to be a reliable file system, so I searched for alternatives, but apart from fat32, exFat and ntfs I don't see any viable alternatives for a reliable cross-platform file system.

All of these formats have issues: fat32 has file size limits, exfat veracrypt partitions are not mountable on macos, and ntfs is proprietary, linux support is not reliable, and veracrypt does not support it on linux/mac. hfsplus works fine on mac but is read-only on linux. I hoped to be able to use ext3/ext4 with veracrypt encryption but even though I have fuse with ext4fuse working in read-only mode working for unencrypted drives veracrypt is apparently not able to interoperate with fuse drivers.

Fat32 would be a great option since it works well with veracrypt on any OS, but the file size limitation and lack of symlinks is simply not acceptable.

Any other options I might have missed?

Veracrypt+exFat works on Mac/Linux/Windows. The problems with mounting on MacOS were caused by configuring veracrypt encryption for the entire disk rather than a single partition. As a result the partition table was encrypted too. While this worked fine on linux it caused problems on MacOS. Creating a normal unencrypted partition table with an exFat partition and then encrypting that partition with veracrypt works fine cross-platform.

The downside is that Apple's exFat driver does not always cleanly unmount the partition which in turn unconditionally triggers exfatfsck on the next mount attempt and that can take hours to finish for large size disks.


Why do I have a .subversion folder hidden in my home folder on mac OS? Why do I have a .subversion folder hidden in my home folder on mac OS? I don't remember installing subversion. Inside the .subversion folder is see the following:

my-iMac:.subversion my-imac$ ls
README.txt  auth        config      homebrew    servers

How do i figure out how this folder was installed? Once I do, how do I uninstall subversion and homebrew? Why is homebrew even on my mac? How do i uninstall the programs that originally installed these?

Why not make a Time Machine backup and delete it? It’s a common code control tool and any number of packages could use it to manage the software changes in your home directory without even going into if it’s not actually subversion and instead malware.

You would figure out how it was created by looking at snapshots of backups and also using the mdls tool to examine all the date related metadata and origin of each file in that folder. The modification and creation dates of the files will clue you in to how recent the files are and help you see if it’s something currently running or perhaps just migrated in from a long time ago on an old computer.


Media Function Keys Randomly Disabled Every now and then, my media keys (F7, F8, and F9) keep randomly stop working with Spotify. I don't have any other media apps open, like iTunes or anything, just Spotify. A program restart doesn't solve the problem, forcing me to restart the entire computer for it to work. How do I fix this?

Seems like we were able to find the problem through the comments. Chrome sometimes "hijacks" your media buttons for its own functions. A quick google search yielded the following result:

  You can set to the keyboard shortcuts to work only when Chrome is in focus:

  Open the Chrome app menu

  Select Tools > Extensions
  Click the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ link at the bottom of the page
  Find the Google Play Music section
  Change any specified media key options from ‘Global’ to ‘In Chrome’
  Fix Media Key Hijacking in Chrome

  Or you can disable/remove the app/extension from Chrome entirely:

  Open the Chrome app menu
  Select Tools > Extensions
  Find ‘Google Play Music’
  Uncheck the ‘Enabled’ box OR click the trash can to remove

Source: OMGChrome


Who installed this Emacs? I have:

$ /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs --version
GNU Emacs 24.3.1
$ /usr/bin/emacs --version
GNU Emacs 22.1.1

How do I get rid of the second installation of Emacs?

The second emacs came with OS X.  For files that are logged in the package database, you can use pkgutil:

$ pkgutil --file-info /usr/bin/emacs
volume: /
path: /usr/bin/emacs

pkgid: com.apple.pkg.BSD
pkg-version: 10.9.0.1.1.1306847324
install-time: 1382483268
uid: 0
gid: 0
mode: 555

A list of packages can be obtained via pkgutil --packages.  However, note that—again—this only covers items in the package database.

You should not modify items that are part of the core operating system.  If you prefer a locally-installed program to override one that came with the operating system, you should adjust your PATH to prefer that program before system paths such as /usr/bin are checked.

One way to do this is to have /usr/local/bin be first in your path and link your /Applications version of emacs to /usr/local/bin so that it will be called first unless a program explicitly calls /usr/bin/emacs


Recovery HD mounts on startup Recently I was messing around with Backtrack 4r2, and created a USB "live CD" and started from it. I normally run the live CD in a VM, but wanted to see if I could install it on the USB as a separate HDD. Normally, I experiment on VMs as well, but decided to go against my better judgement. This corrupted my startup disk, and for a little bit I had the folder with the question mark. The internal SSD was there untouched, but the starting sequenced was affected. I tried using rEFIt to get back into it, but the system did not recognize the SSD. Finally, I went in with GParted on the live CD, and made the Mac Book Air boot from the "Recovery HD". I used the terminal in the "Recovery HD" to correct my permission, and made the correct area of the SSD my boot disk. I am running Lion 10.7.1, so trying to build a "Recovery USB" was impossible since the app store would only let me access Lion 10.7. Onto the question:
Lion now mounts the "Recovery HD" upon start up, and it didn't before. How can I make it to where it doesn't? As stated, I tried repairing the install, but the App Store only has 10.7, so Lion blocks it as an "older" version.

this hint suggests

asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype "Apple_Boot"

P.S. use diskutil list to confirm that your "Recovery HD" is disk0s3: it should show like this:

$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3


Deleting files for freeing the disk space My MBA (OS 10.9.5) is showing messages of full disk. So I checked the big files in the system. However I don't want to mess with system files as I don't know anything about them. So asking the fellow gentlemen, if it is safe to delete any of the following files:

snapshots.db 2.1 GB '/private/var/db/systemstats/snapshots.database'
swapfile1    1.1 GB '/private/var/vm/swapfile1'
sleepimage   1.1 GB '/private/var/vm/sleepimage'
general.svc 488 MB '/System/Library/Speech/Recognizers/SpeechRecognitionCoreLanguages/en_US.SpeechRecognition/Contents/Resources/lm/combined/general.svc'
dyld_shared_cache_x86_64 , dyld_shared_cache_i386 386 & 274 MB '/private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64'
safebrowsing.db '/private/var/folders/s2/_szqd_q13kq9lyl32lv0jz7h0000gn/C/com.apple.Safari/SafeBrowsing.database'

It's not about the memory(RAM), it's about the hard disk space.

Also I'll be glad if someone can point me to which other junk files I can delete from the mac. I prefer to delete files manually rather than using any app but if there's any simple no frills utility app which works, I'll happily use that.

Honestly delete nothing in those directories manually. You'll likely crash your system if it even lets you delete them. Stick with files in "userland." which would be at the path /Users/[YOURUSERNAME]/."

If you are running out of disk space (which is completely different from running out of memory) I would use a gui tool like Grand Perspective and then delete the files that you no longer need that occupy locations in your user directory.

I'm sure there are shell commands to list, recursively, files in specific directories in order of file size, but I don't know how to do that, preferring GUI tools that do the same thing.

If you are running out of memory in your MBA then the only choice you have (as all MBA memory is non-upgradable) is to see if you have a bunch of things running at startup (system preferences > users > [YOUR USERNAME] > login items) and remove some of them or just run fewer apps at the same time.


Is it possible to enable TRIM for an external SSD? I have an iMac from 2011, Mac OS X 10.6.8, and an SDD in a FW800/USB3 case.
Which interface can let me enable TRIM: USB2, USB3, FW800 or Thunderbolt ?

I realize this question is over 4 years old, but I'm adding a comment because this page was the first hit for a Google search on the subject and some of the comments are outdated whereas others were plain wrong.

Apple added native TRIM support in OS X 10.6.8 but only for Apple OEM SSDs. To get around that restriction, software such as Cindori's TRIM Enabler allowed TRIM to be used on 3rd party SSDs. Later, OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) introduced a security requirement called kext signing which prevented TRIM Enabler from working without completely turning off kext signing. Then in OS X 10.10.4, Apple introduced a “trimforce” command which enabled TRIM on 3rd party SSDs without turning off kext signing. (I have sources but Stack Exchange won't let me post more than 2 links)

Contrary to many of the comments here, the interface DOES matter. The vast majority of USB enclosures do not support TRIM, but allegedly there are some that support it such as the JMS 578 USB bridge controller (source: http://bbs.pceva.com.cn/thread-125643-1-1.html). All five of the USB 3 enclosures / docks I have support it. Firewire supposedly supports TRIM, but I haven't tested it. Most Thunderbolt enclosures should support TRIM, and I currently have TRIM enabled on a SanDisk Extreme SSD in an Akitio Thunderbolt 2 enclosure. I used the trimforce command in terminal to enable it.

In order to check if your enclosure supports TRIM, you’ll want to go to Apple > About This Mac > System Report > Hardware > SATA/SATA Express > and look for “TRIM Support” under the enclosure specs. If TRIM Support is not listed, your enclosure most likely does not support TRIM. If it is listed but says “No”, you can try turning TRIM on by using the trimforce command in terminal. Just open Terminal and type “sudo trimforce enable”. Once your computer restarts, check System Report again to see if TRIM Support changed to Yes.

Finally, TRIM does matter, even for modern SSDs with sophisticated garbage collection. I experienced this firsthand when my SanDisk SSD started slowing down as it got older before enabling TRIM on it. There’s a good, but somewhat outdated article about it here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/ask-ars-my-ssd-does-garbage-collection-so-i-dont-need-trim-right/


How to prevent holding fn key from downloading Enhanced Dictation? I use my Macbook Pro with an external keyboard when coding, so I can use function keys as normal function keys for use with and IDE when coding. This means in order to adjust brightness and volume I need to hold down the "fn" key. So I'm hitting this fairly frequently. If you hit it twice though, (or sometimes it seems to be if you hold it down, maybe) this dialog shows up:

It's super annoying and I seem to cause it several times a day. I never want this, can't dismiss it with a keystroke, and can't find where to kill it in Keyboard Preferences. Any ideas? Thanks.

Turn off Dictation in System Preferences or change shortcut key to something else.


I have been facing a strange problem with my MACBOOK Pro SSD When booting my Macbook Pro, a question mark inside of a folder is displayed.

I try to go to recovery mode (which happens to be online) and I don't see my Machintosh HD in disk utility.

After certain force restarting and shutdown, my mac boots up properly.

PS: If I do an heavy task and then shutdown, this problem reoccurs.

This definitely sounds like a hardware problem.

You'll want to take the MacBook Pro back to the place you bought it, or contact Apple, to arrange for repairs.

Remember to check your original invoice to see if it might still be under warranty.


How can I enable keyboard shortcut preference after modifying it through `defaults write com.apple.symbolichotkeys AppleSymbolicHotKeys`? I modify keyboard shortcut by defaults command.
For example,
# Disable "Search word in terminal man page index"
defaults write com.apple.symbolichotkeys AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 124 "<dict><key>enabled</key><false/><key>value</key><dict><key>parameters</key><array><integer>65535</integer><integer>26</integer><integer>262144</integer></array><key>type</key><string>standard</string></dict></dict>"

# Change "Move focus to next window" shortcut to Alt + Tab
defaults write com.apple.symbolichotkeys AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 27 "<dict><key>enabled</key><true/><key>value</key><dict><key>parameters</key><array><integer>65535</integer><integer>48</integer><integer>524288</integer></array><key>type</key><string>standard</string></dict></dict>"

How can I enable to work them without restart OS?
I expect there are some Input Service and need to restart it.
ex. killall SomeInputService

On macos Big Sur 11.2.1 I have been able to resolve this problem. This solution applies to com.apple.symbolichotkeys plist for OS wide shortcuts as well as trackpad related plists.
After running the default write ... commands, run the following command.
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SystemAdministration.framework/Resources/activateSettings -u

From my experience, it will read the plists and force them to take effect.
You may need to ensure the System Preferences app is not running before you run the command.
Some log output will be available if you run this before:
defaults write com.apple.activatesettings log true

However there is no output about parsing the com.apple.symbolichotkeys plist although it seems to read that plist.


How to install Python 3.7 via homebrew on OS X I need to rollback my homebrew-managed python 3.8 to 3.7.
I have tried the approach from Homebrew: Rollback from Python 3.7 to Python 3.6.5.x? - Ask Different. So I unlinked 3.8, but my python.rb URL for 3.7 seems to be wrong. I used:
brew install --ignore-dependencies https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/eb6d8719c1880dd7c5d03a49c45ab40509fc2927/Formula/python.rb

and with this I get the following error:
"Calling Non-checksummed download of python formula file from an arbitrary URL is disabled."
What is the correct command to install Python 3.7 via homebrew?

The easiest way to install python 3.7 is from Homebrew using the following command: brew install python@3.7


what does it mean if my macbook loaded in safe mode? My MacBook just booted in safe mode. Is it possible that somehow I made it to do so, or can it automatically load in case of a malfunctioning? What does it mean if it did so automatically?

If you have hold down the shift key during startup it can go to safe mode.
Sometime due to disk issue and new software installation it may go to safe mode.
Try restarting normally and it should be back to normal mode. If you have installed anything new try removing them in safe mode.


How can I disable the random/auto keeping of apps in the Dock? Sometimes the Dock will keep an icon app in the Dock, even though I haven't set it as such, even though I've previously de-kept it in Dock after the first time it kept it 'for me'.

Is there a way to turn this off it's a bit annoying?

go to "system preferences", then choose "Dock" and uncheck the "show recent applications in dock" radio button.


MacBookAir 11" - WiFi not connecting in Europe I just recently bought my MacBook Air 11" this summer and it is currently running on OS X Mountain Lion. I purchased it in the United States and had very minimal problems with it. I bought it for the purpose of using it for my work in France for the next 8 months. I just arrived this week and have been unable to connect to any WiFi networks whatsoever. I have not set up a personal connection at my apartment but it continues not to work when I bring my laptop to the school I work which has a very strong unsecured WiFi connection.

Is there something I'm missing here? I have never had WiFi problems before but upon moving to France, my US-bought MacBook Air just doesn't want to connect. I keep receiving "A connection timeout occured". I want to believe it's just the signal but I see no reason why it shouldn't connect to a strong signal-- and I would hate to assume that's the case only to set up my own WiFi at home and find it still doesn't work weeks later. The location is set to Automatic at the moment.

Any step-by-step qdvice would help. I am extremely new to Apple products and not great with the lingo or navigation quite yet so thorough directions of how to approach the diqgnostic would be very helpful. Thank you!

Given you are using 2.4 GHz Wifi, there are 2 channels (namely 12 and 13) available in Europe, that are not allowed in the US and are therefore not supported by US-bought WIFI adapters. See Wi-Fi Channel availability

As far as I know Apple uses different Wifi-modules for european and US-models, so there's little hope to fix that in software.

Ask a fellow student to look up on which channel he is connected. If it's 12 or 13 you won't be able to connect.


"Set time zone automatically using current location" is not working. Why? Although I keep my system time & date in check using time.asia.apple.com, I can't "Set time zone automatically using current location". I get the error message, "Unable to determine current location at this time" every time I try this.

Does anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks.

Apple uses one or more databases (I don't know how many) to map your ISP internet connection to a location in the world.

If you use the network utility to traceroute to that time server, you will see all the routers between you and that apple server. This software does the same thing and reports the hops - if Apple knows where any of the routers close to your mac are located, it will update the location. What it's telling you is it can't pin down where you are based on this information only.

If you can try connecting to a different network or a public network it might be more likely to know where you are. Many business internet connections pool the public internet access and the database is told to ignore that since the traffic isn't coming to apple close to your physical location.

Are you on a home network? Can you call your ISP to see if they allow or prevent location of their customers? It's a problem with the people supplying you with internet and not anything on your computer, so you can't do anything directly to correct it other than change your ISP or figure out how to get it mapped.


Can I use iTunes credit to help subsidise buy hardware in Apple online store? I am thinking about buying an iPad Pro or MacBook Air (Skylake), as a first time buyer of Apple hardware.

I was wondering if I can use iTunes credit balance to help subsidise/buy this hardware in Apple Online store?

Unfortunately, no. One can only use iTunes credit to buy iTunes Store content and apps, not hardware. I think that it says that on the card itself in fine print, but I could be wrong.

I couldn't find an official statement from Apple, but here's something from the Apple support community: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2592711?start=0&tstart=0


What is the VPN icon in the menu bar? I have long wondered what the significance of the VPN icon in the menu bar is:

Anyone know?

Edit:

I think people are misunderstanding my question.  It is the icon for the built-in OSX VPN.  I use it regularly.  My question is what the icon itself represents.  A padlock?  A tunnel? A spaceship?

There's a few people think it's an RSA SecurID tag:

http://osx.tribe.net/thread/1ba4a52c-807c-4c6f-bf73-5561bcc208ed

http://www.mactalk.com.au/11/58913-what-does-vpn-menubar-icon-mean.html

Don't know if I buy it though.


Safari wants to access my keychain doesn't offer "always deny"... How can I implement this? The only choice Safari asks me w.r.t keychain access is "deny" or "allow" or "always allow".

Why doesn't Safari offer me an "always deny" option in Safari?  How can I make the system "always deny"?

Will the "always allow" or always deny apply to the computer or to a specific website?

There is not an always deny functionality in keychain. Put another way, there is a white list but not a black list.

A somewhat elegant workaround is to turn off AutoFill of passwords in Safari's preferences and you won't even get the request to access the keychain in the first place.


Hide toggle Apple bug reporter? While checking out my bugs in Radar on my iPhone, I discovered a "hide" toggle that appears when you hit the arrow at the bottom right if the screen. It is set to hide by default - what is it? How should it be set?

This is just a guess but perhaps it is to allow you to start documenting a bug but only make it visible when you have completed documenting it.

All Apple seemed to say about it is: "Hidden: these reports are hidden from view".

https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/using-bug-reporter/


Is there a service that allows distributing iOS builds per git branches? All the beta services I've looked into (TestFlight, HockeyApp, Fabric beta, Test, DeloyGate, ...) seem to only allow one "active" build per app, or one per version (the actual x.x.x version and nothing else).

For QA purposes, I would like to be able to publish builds per branch of my github repo. Ideally, testers would have an interface where they could install the last build of branch feature/money or feature/coins, with everything else that is already offered by regular services (push notifications, UDID handling if not using enterprise certificates, ...)

Does this exist?

This might not work for your use case, but because we try to merge to master frequently and not leave branches around for very long, we have had really good luck with this methodology.

We are using Azure DevOps as our build tool, and pushing builds into AppCenter.ms as our distribution tool for non-release builds. For release builds we push to the App Store directly.

AppCenter.ms allows you to create "Distribution Groups", which are basically a list of the email addresses you want to receive notifications when a new build is uploaded that "targets" that group. Each group has a unique GUID and if you use Azure DevOps and their .azure-pipelines.yml (or manually configure a build through the UI, though that is a very laborious process), you can  use the AppCenter task with a condition that checks the branch name and deploys to specific group IDs based on the branch being built.

One of the things that makes this easier for us is we are using "enterprise distribution certificates", since these don't require individual device enrollment like ad hoc or developer certificates do. The other piece that could be important, if a user may install versions of the app from different groups you MUST have a different Bundle ID (and therefore another provisioning profile) for each version, otherwise they will clobber each other on the user's device. This is an Apple requirement (but Android has a similar unique bundle naming requirement).

In our case because these live in our Enterprise (not public AppStore) account, we have com.company.appname.test and com.company.appname.prodtest which for our purposes execute the same code, but they target different backend environments(URLs) for our APIs.


How to reproduce Windows Chrome BAT files setup in macOS 10.15 On Windows, Chrome is my primary browser.
I've developed a series of *.bat files on Windows that each open a series of tabs with specific URLs in Chrome:

@echo off
set BROWSER=chrome.exe
set WAIT_TIME=2
cd %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\bat
start %BROWSER% -new-window "https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r/month"
@ping 127.0.00.1 -n %WAIT_TIME% -w 1000 > nul
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://contacts.google.com/"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://voice.google.com/"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://hangouts.google.com"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://drive.google.com"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://maps.google.com"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://www.youtube.com"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://news.google.com"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://photos.google.com"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://one.google.com"
start %BROWSER% -new-tab "https://classroom.google.com"

How would I reproduce this functionality in macOS 10.15 using AppleScript?

As a shell script or directly in Terminal it can be done with

#!/bin/sh

open -a "Google Chrome" --args \
    https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r/month \
    https://contacts.google.com/ \
    https://voice.google.com/ \
    https://hangouts.google.com \
    https://drive.google.com \
    https://maps.google.com \
    https://www.youtube.com \
    https://news.google.com \
    https://photos.google.com \
    https://one.google.com \
    https://classroom.google.com

In AppleScript you can use

tell application "Google Chrome"
    open location "https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r/month"
    open location "https://contacts.google.com/"
    open location "https://voice.google.com/"
    open location "https://hangouts.google.com"
    open location "https://drive.google.com"
    open location "https://maps.google.com"
    open location "https://www.youtube.com"
    open location "https://news.google.com"
    open location "https://photos.google.com"
    open location "https://one.google.com"
    open location "https://classroom.google.com"
end tell


Can automator run when Macbook lid is closed? If i set an automator scrip to run each evening at 23:00 but my Macbook / Macbook Pro is closed (not off, but the lid has been closed) will / can the automator script still run ?

No, the Automator workflow will not run when your MacBook's lid is closed.

This is because your Mac is asleep and not actively running user applications and processes. You can prevent your Mac from sleeping when the lid is closed. Be aware that this is not recommended by Apple.