Not able to restore my 3TB fusion drive late 2013 iMac Last weekend my iMac started to act in a very strange way. While I was working, my Mac was very slow and the mouse and keyboard didn't respond very well.

So I decided to reboot because having two users and switching from time to time, the memory could be the problem. But when I rebooted the other user was gone, and the Mac still was very slow. I rebooted several times and nothing changed, so I decided to try to reinstall El Capitan which was the latest version that I have - originally the Mac came with Maverick.

Then everything went wrong, the system couldn't complete the installation, I tried to erase the disk, I tried to repair the disk and several errors occurred,
To make this story short, I finally succeeded installing Maverick, but then I realized that it was installed in the 122.33 GB Apple SSD because the 3TB Fusion drive couldn't be formatted. Trying several time, the disk was finally erased and I ran several verification and repair passes and everything looks OK according to Disk Utilities.

But Mavericks is still installed in the 122.33 GB Apple SSD and it looks like the 3TB Fusion drive can't be recognized, partitioned or deleted, so I am very desperate.

Here are the screenshots:

I already followed this instructions here, but they didn't work. I don't recall the message but it didn't work

I hope somebody can help me, I am not under warranty and I have two Times Capsules back ups, so I don't care about the information.

I would suggest following the steps in the answer posted here

Most importantly: diskutil cs create "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk1s2

Your diskutil output should look more like this with the "logical volume"

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         121.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.3 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *1.1 TB     disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2
                                 D11BC089-D75D-4239-AB60-4293803F5F6D
                                 Unencrypted Fusion Drive

And Core Storage list like this:

$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 56F5527E-528E-4FD2-A978-6BDB501423F5
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         1120333864960 B (1.1 TB)
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 1CA60BDE-CFCA-414B-A429-B838AD39EA82
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume D730D88C-C673-4284-9A91-1B8E705FA5F2
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     999345012736 B (999.3 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family B1CF5519-AC85-4259-9F1F-642EFD4D8B31
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume D11BC089-D75D-4239-AB60-4293803F5F6D
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          1111826382848 B (1.1 TB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS


iPhone won’t shut off My iPhone 5s just randomly stopped allowing me to shut it off with the power button. I don’t understand why but every single article online says that it’s a relatively common problem and the way to fix it is a hard reset. I’ve done a hard reset three times and it hasn’t started working again. Odd thing is, after it’s been hard reset it won’t turn back on unless it’s plugged into a charger (despite it being at 78%) it will just flash the white Apple logo every 5-10 seconds or so. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Try restore it through iTunes. First of ALL you should back it up using iTunes or iCloud. If you own an iMac , iTunes app is a built one.
If you don’t have a Mac download iTunes app to your computer and make an iTunes account.
Then connect your iPhone to your Mac/windows PC - login to your iTunes account - back it up - when backup is complete, Restore it (there is a RESTORE button ).
This way your issue will be resolved IMO. Cheers.


Smart Cover and Sim-tray I would like to know weather the smart cover on a 3G iPad covers the sim-tray completely partially or not at all. A photo would also be really helpful

Only a small portion of the sim tray is really covered by the smart cover.  Or, in other words, the smart cover attachment does not hide the sim tray.  However, the sim tray pops out straight, parallel to the display, so you cannot remove the sim without detaching the smart cover:


Dual monitor setup macbook 13'' pro retina 13'' macbook pro retina.

I want to connect two monitors that display different desktops (not the same desktop in stretch). At the moment I am using both the available thunderbolt ports (1 for a monitor and 1 for an ethernet cable). Thus at the moment I have only 1 hdmi, and 2 sub entries available to connect the additional monitor which has vga out.

How can you recommend setting up this dual monitor setup?

If I understand your configuration, you have:

a. macbook, plus two external displays

b. two thunderbolt ports, one for ethernet, one for display

c. one hdmi port for the other display

For the VGA display, you need a Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter.

And the HDMI display can be simply hooked to the HDMI port.

Now, to display different desktops:

Go System Preferences >> Mission Control
Tick the Displays have separate Spaces
Set the other checkboxes according to how you prefer to work.
After step (2), you will be able to set different desktop backgrounds (for each display; the background will be reused when you add Spaces to a given display).


Do I need NVRAM/SMC reset to restore a used MacBook Air to defaults? I've bought a used MacBook Air (Mid 2013) running Yosemite and I'd like to restore every setting to defaults, as in, start over with a fresh clean OS.

What are the things I have to run to make sure the system is good conditions before performing a reinstall?

Should I reset NVRAM and SMC to set stuff like volume and mouse speed to default, or a OS reinstall via recovery will take care of that?

Thanks!

Erasing a hard drive with Recovery HD (or better - a flash drive) will remove everything. You don't need to do a NVRAM/SMC reset (you can if you'd like)


iLife Slideshows screen saver not working after update to macOS High Sierra 13.13.3 My screen saver - that shuffles between a list of files in a folder - have stopped working after I updated to 13.13.3. When the screen saver starts it shows a black screen with the following message:

"You cannot use the iLife Slideshows screen saver with this version of macOS. Please contact the vendor to get a newer version of the screen saver."

Also my screen saver preference pane have stopped working - it simple does not switch to that screen when I click the "Desktop - Screen saver" button.

I have tried setting the screen saver using the terminal and the defaults command to update the plist file.

I ended up reinstalling my OS, so it's a solution, a bit drastic perhaps, but very effective.


How can I automate adding sender addresses to a Rule in macOS Mail? So I've created a Mail Rule "Bin Spam Messages" that will delete messages from a sender. What I can't figure out is how to automate adding new sender addresses to the rule. I'm guessing I could do this with AppleScript but I'm also trying to do it without opening the message. The goal is to automatically delete spam messages from my inbox and junk mail folders. I thought this was what the Apply Rules menu option was for but apparently not.
Any ideas?

Update: I have tried updating SyncedRules.plist using a Shell script (below) but (a) it doesn't show up in Mail preferences; and (b) SyncedRules is restored after relaunching Mail. Not sure where else Mail rules are stored.

#! /bin/zsh

# Generate 128-bit UUID
CRITERION_UNIQUE_ID="$(uuidgen)"

# Define Shell input variables
EXPRESSION="$1"
HEADER="$2"

# Define SyncedRules.plist file
FILENAME="/Users/tim/Library/Mail/V7/MailData/SyncedRules.plist"

# Run plutil
plutil -insert 0.Criteria.0 -xml "<dict><key>CriterionUniqueId</key><string>$CRITERION_UNIQUE_ID</string><key>Expression</key><string>$EXPRESSION</string><key>Header</key><string>$HEADER</string></dict>" $FILENAME

This script inserts a dictionary into the first items Criteria array containing a 128-bit UUID, sender email address and email header, but my issue is persistence. If I run the command with sudo, I can update the SyncedRules.plist but Mail doesn't recognise the changes and the .plist is restored when Mail relaunches, anyway.

Getting warmer...

More Updates: So I doubled back and had a look at the Mail library in Script Editor.. then discovered this answer https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/332482/34929 - there's a block there that I'm particularly interested in... something like make new rule with properties {header:"", expression:thisItem, rule type:from header, qualifier:equal to value} condition - I think this is where I'm heading now.

Mail remembers tabs in Preferences window, and the workflow is highly simplified using "edit rule" to add new senders and to add new actions or use the already specified ones for them. You'd anyway have to add a new sender's mail ID manually. For these reasons, I am not very keen over having a script or automator action.

However, I decided to put my comments into a partial answer.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3542826/applescript-editor-record-doesnt-work/18752770#18752770

This answer documents a way to use Automator to record the actions you perform in the mail app. Here's the workflow. Select all steps and copy paste in "Script Editor App" for getting the code. https://pastebin.com/RNSShvWK

Here are the details from Preferences Window of Mail app using "Accessibility Inspector". Hierarchy pane seems useful. The button that looks like a gun's aim can be used to inspect different applications.

You are encouraged to modify the script/workflow to your use and update the question if you get stuck.


How to open a specific pane in system preferences from dock? When I add the system preferences to the dock and click it, it opens in the common view.
How can I open a specific pane at once from the dock?

In Finder, open /System/Library/PreferencePanes on Lion for the system preference panes or /Library/PreferencePanes or ~/Library/PreferencePanes/ for user-added ones.
Drag the icon of your choice from the folder to the Dock. It will probably only go on the right side (the documents/folders/minimized windows/Trash side) of the divider.

Clicking the new icon will open System Preferences directly to that preference pane.


Upload video to iPod directly without sync-ing We have a number of iPods and a number of computers and the fact that they need to be matched one-to-one for iTunes sync'ing to work is really a pain.

Is there a way for me to upload a video directly onto an iPod Nano (a previous generation that can still play them back, not the current one), without having to switch the library it is connected with (which would erase all other content on there)?

Another option is to manually manage music and videos. Click on the iPod in iTunes, check Manually manage music and videos. It will allow you to connect your iPods with your various computers without worrying about wiping them.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1535


applescript - extract filename from posix path set p to "/Users/myAccount/Desktop/testfilename.txt"
set a to POSIX file p

I would like to extract "testfilename.txt" from the posix path above?  Anyone know how to go about to do that?

Try this:

set yourpath to ("/YOUR/PATH/HERE/file.ext") as POSIX file
do shell script "basename " & quoted form of POSIX path of yourpath

This should work for files and folders as well.
I used "basename " & quoted form of... because AppleScript and shell script handle spaces in directories quite in a different way, that should allow you to use also paths with spaces in it.


Karabiner quit working in Sierra. How do I map my menu/application key to be Command? I have a microsoft keyboard. When I upgraded to Sierra Karabiner quit working.  It was previously mapping my menu/application key to act as pressing the left Command key instead of doing nothing.  How can I repair this behavior.

Found the solution here https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/tree/master/usage

Uninstalled existing Karabiner
Installed Karabiner-Elements according to instructions in the link.
Created ~/.karabiner.d/configuration/karabiner.json
With the following JSON inside

{
    "profiles": [
        {
            "name": "Default profile",
            "selected": true,
            "simple_modifications": {
                "application" : "right_command"
            }
        }
    ]
}


macbook pro to external monitor 1920px via hdmi? I just got macbook pro 13inch retina and the default resolution is 1280px width, and maximum is 1600px.

If I connect this laptop to an external monitor via HDMI which has 1920px resolution, will the resolution really be 1920, since laptop's max is 1600?

Yes, you will get 1920x1080 resolution.

The native resolution of a 13" Retina Macbook Pro is actually much higher. From Apples website:

  Retina display: 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2560-by-1600 resolution at 227 pixels per inch with support for millions of colors

  Native resolution: 2560 by 1600 pixels (Retina); scaled resolutions: 1680 by 1050, 1440 by 900, and 1024 by 640 pixels

The 13" retina MBP can also handle 1080P and higher resolutions through HDMI:

  HDMI video output

  Support for 1080p resolution at up to 60Hz

  Support for 3840-by-2160 resolution at 30Hz

  Support for 4096-by-2160 resolution at 24Hz

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/


Can I use AirportExpress model A1088 to connect to TimeCapsule for AirTunes only? I have a home wireless setup running on TimeCapsule (network on n). I would love to have AirTunes and it happens that a friend of mine can give me an old AirportExpress base station. However, this being an old b/g version (model A1088) I am not sure whether I can use it.

I don't need to extend my wireless, I can connect AiportExpress with TimeCapsule using the cable and I only want to use AE for AirTunes (to connect to my stereo), nothing else. Can I do it?

thanks!
yot

Simple and direct answer is yes if you plan to use the ethernet connection. Beware that you will need to download the old configuration utility here to change the settings on this model.


Is there an audio player with waveform seekbar? I'm looking for a player with seekbar that displays the waveform of the playing song, like http://foobar2000.org + http://foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_wave_seekbar

Specifically, a seekBar is an extension of ProgressBar that adds a draggable thumb and also provides a waveform preview of track in the background of the bar's on-screen area.

Its more of an audio editor than a player, so might not be exactly what you want, but Fission from Rogue Amoeba is an excellent tool that displays the waveform of the loaded audio file. You can zoom in and out of portions of the audio and drag the play point to wherever you wish.


web sharing for vhosts? I'd like to be able to share websites I'm developing with other users in my network using Web Sharing. I don't develop in my 'Sites' folder though, I have a separate folder for all my projects.

(Note: web sharing is working generally. If I visit http://[my-local-ip-address]/~[myusername] it shows the default local Site that I never touch.)

e.g. I use apache's httpd-vhosts.conf file and /etc/hosts to setup local domains that can be accessed by me like so:

http://mytestsite

So.. can I configure OS X Lion & apache to allow other to see them around the LAN like this?

http://[my-local-ip-address]/~mytestsite

Thanks!
Ben

Yes, you can configure Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion, to serve multiple web sites using URLs like http://[my-local-ip-address]/~mytestsite.

The format of URL you suggest can be achieved by creating a new user for each site, and storing the web pages in that user's Sites folder.

Alternatively, you could create subfolders within your site's folder:

http://[my-local-ip-address]/~[myusername]/site1
http://[my-local-ip-address]/~[myusername]/site2
http://[my-local-ip-address]/~[myusername]/site3

Going another step further, you can customise the Apache httpd 2 configuration files at /etc/apache2/users/[myusername] to tweak the set up to your exact needs.


Remove number from FaceTime On a recent visit to US I bought a pre-paid SIM for use during my visit.

On my iPad this number (which is now expired) is still shown in a number of places - in particular "You can be reached by FaceTime at".

How can I remove this number?

You can disassociate/remove the number from FaceTime/Messages by following the steps outlined in the Apple support document, Add or remove your phone number in Messages or FaceTime:

Remove your phone number
If you don't want calls or messages for your iPhone on your iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, you can remove your phone number. There are two ways to do this:

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Select your Apple ID and tap Sign Out. Then go to Settings > FaceTime, select your Apple ID and tap Sign Out.

If the phone number that you want to remove belongs to an iPhone that you can't access, change your Apple ID password. This removes all phone numbers from your iPad, iPod touch, and Mac. Calls or messages for the removed numbers won't appear on those devices anymore.


Hide sheets in Numbers? Is there any way to hide sheets in Numbers? (like in Excel) I have tried everything other than delete, since I may need to refer back to them.

Within Numbers there isn't such a function since you can only see one sheet at a time:

All the other sheets than the one displayed are hidden.
The function to switch from one sheet to another one is provided by clicking on the wanted one whithin the sheets column.


Big Sur Bootcamp stuck partitioning I have a 2016 MBP with Big Sur and 170GB of internal drive space free and when trying to use Bootcamp to partition the drive with an 80GB disc for Windows 10 and it is stuck in the partitioning phase at ~40%...

What can I do to complete the process?
Attempting to quit the app complains that the process hasn’t been completed so it can’t quit. My only choice has been to close the MBP until later.
Here is the output of diskutil list:
$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         500.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +500.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     313.4 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 292.7 MB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                611.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      6.4 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            15.1 GB    disk1s5
   6:              APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 15.1 GB    disk1s5s1

/dev/disk2 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-GB... +5.4 GB     disk2

After what amounts to 2.5hrs (the MBP was closed for about a day, but went to sleep and awoke just fine) I see "Your disk could not be partitioned":

I then ran the First Aid in Disk Utility which claimed to be successful:

However, upon running Bootcamp and going through the disk partitioning again, I had the same result as first seen above ("Your disk could not be partitioned.")

Can you give the response of the terminal command :
diskutil list

To see if there is something done by BootCamp
Edit :
All is good in your diskutil.
Thirst, it's better have a save Time Machine before doing the nexts steeps.
You can try 2 things :

List snapshots on your system :
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

and il you see "old" snapshots you can suppress them and retry BootCamp
tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 9999999999999 4

If no change, you can boot in Recovery Mode (cmd+r at boot time) and do a "First Aid" (as advised in the error window) on the System Container of the internal SSD. And then retry BootCamp after normal reboot.


What cheap option is there to use a Mac to produce quality 'Videosongs'? Some of you must be familiar with Videosongs, like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uolz7V12evc

The idea is:

What you see is what you hear. (No lip-syncing for instruments or voice)
If you hear it, at some point you see it. (No hidden sounds)

I want to know how can I use my MacBook Pro to create videos like those. Which software do I need? Can I do it only using the pre-installed applications in my Mac? If no, then which cheap software do I need?

I'm just a enthusiast so I know very little about producing music videos in a Mac.

Edit 2011-05-27

The difficulty I see in this particular case is how to be able to merge multiple video/audio channels so they are all synchronized. Mixing the audio of course is something that must be done in a specific audio/track software but then I have to sync it back to several small videos and eventually repeat some of the videos. So my question is which software for Mac would be a better fit to accomplish that? Which one for audio and which for video? Can it be done only using GarageBand and iMovie?

I can't see any difference to other home/amateur movies? What's so special about it? Have you tried iMovie? Comes with iLife, usually pre-installed on new Macs. Another option would be Final Cut, of course. But that takes some time to learn.


Keyboard shortcut to show hidden files on macOS Big Sur How do I toggle hidden files on/off?
In previous versions of OSX this was  ⌘ Command⇧ Shift.
It's not working anymore for me on macOS Big Sur.

⌘ Command⇧ Shift. still works. Check Keyboard Shortcuts to see if you have a shortcut overriding the toggle hidden files action
To permanently show hidden files, open terminal and type:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true; killall Finder


resolv.conf search domain not working on OS X I use network setup to modify my search domains which works fine so far, but it only does it per device. Once I VPN somewhere, it no longer uses those changes. Is there a way to set the search domains globally (ie. for every device: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and VPN) on Mac OS X Lion?

There was a similar issue in 2002 with OS X. I found a few articles about it and I've been able to address this issue by simply adding "local" to the Search Domains in the advanced network properties of my network interface. This has allowed those of connecting via VPN to resolve .local hosts.


I want install Windows 7 on my Macbook after I formated Snow Leopard I want install Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro after I formatted Snow Leopard.
The Macbook is now empty with no OS on it.

How can I install Windows 7 on my MBP that has a formatted hard drive?

You need to boot from the OS X install DVD which was bundled with your Mac (start the Mac with pressed C while the DVD is inserted). Launch "Disk Utility via "Utility" in the menu bar and create a partition which is "MS DOS FAT" formatted. If its done replace the DVD with the Windows install DVD and boot again with pressed C button. After the Windows install assistant has started, reformat the partition to NTFS and continue installing Windows.

Be aware that Windows OEM versions won't work. It must be a retail version.


How can I tell if my Mac mini is asleep? I'm have wake issues on my late 2012 Mac mini but one thing I've realised is I don't know when it is going to sleep, to diagnose if it always fails on sleep, or only sometimes.

During the day the screen will go off and it will wake but after a night, it often won't come back.

How can I tell my Mac has gone to sleep mode in the first place? I've wondered before when seeing the light on my USB mini-hub is still on and the blue light on the external HDD, if it is not sleeping when it should be, since USB power should cease when it's asleep?

I own the same model of Mac mini as you.  I use it without a monitor, so have become quite tuned in to observing when it's in sleep mode and when it's not, which determines whether or not I can connect remotely from my other machine across subnets.

The white light at the front is your indicator.

When the Mac mini is awake, it maintains constant, full brightness.

When the Mac mini is asleep, the white light begins to "breathe", as its intensity oscillates between dim and full brightness at about the rate of a person breathing at rest.  It's a gradual waxing and waning, but once you notice it, you'll be able to spot it easily.

If you want a slightly more technical option to verify whether or not your Mac mini is awake or asleep, one option is to ping its IP address from another device on your local network.  This assumes that your Mac mini automatically connects to your network upon waking, which is usually the case, but if it doesn't manage to re-establish Wi-Fi networking for any reason, then a ping request will fail even when the machine is awake.  If you don't have another computer to send a ping, there are numerous networking apps available on Android and iOS devices that can do this, and some will even explicitly tell you when a device is awake or asleep by whether or not it registers a network presence.


Why my macbook sometimes plays a chime when booting/rebooting, sometimes it does not? I don't observe any specific pattern of this behaviour. Strangely, sometimes when my macbook reboots/boots, it plays a chime sound.

And often in other cases, no chime sound is played.

So what determines whether to play a chime sound?

It depends on the volume rate before you Restart or Shut Down your mac

so if your volume level is 0 (Mute), you will hear no chime sound on start-up,
just try it and make sure

I have Muted my mac speakers because i always use headset (as you know you can set headset volume separately when you connect it) so i never hear a chime sound,

i searched a lot and found this (muting) as a solution because i hated that voice (imagine restarting in the middle of the night!)

hope this helps


Strange user named "Other…" on 10.6 Recently, I tried logging out of my machine (rather than just shutting it down) and I noticed that a user with the name "Other ..." was present. I don't recall adding the user. I tried checking out System Preferences >> Accounts and it just lists a disabled "Guest" account and my main account.

Why is this?

"Other" is not a user. It just allows you to enter a username and password into textboxes instead of clicking on an icon.

It can be used to connect to a network domain user. It can also be used for special users, such as "Root" (which gives you unlimited control over all hidden and restricted files) and ">console" (which logs into your Mac in command-line-only mode.)


Accidentally deleted external SSD I accidentally deleted my external SSD using the delete function in Disk Utility, and now it does not show up using diskutils list in Terminal nor in Disk Utility. I have disconnected and reconnected the device and it does not show up in Finder. I have also attempted to restart my machine a couple of times.

The data on the disk is not really important I have other backups, but I would like to use my disk again.

How would one go about to access it?

I resolved this issue by changing the USB port the external drive was connected to. I then rebooted my computer and all of a sudden I could access my external drive again. I do not really have an explanation why this worked however.


Why won't transferred video files get detected in PlayerXtreme iPad app? I just bought an iPad. I have been Windows and Android user all my life.
In Android I could just transfer a video file to the device and any video player such as VLC or MXPlayer would automatically detect it.

I transferred a few video files to my iPad from my Windows PC using iTunes software's file sharing option. I installed PlayerXtreme on my iPad but I can't find any video files in it.

How do I make it work?

File transfer doesn't work in iOS like other desktop and mobile platforms. In fact, generally speaking, iOS doesn't treat filesystem as a user accessible entity separate from the installed apps (which is a norm in almost all platforms, even macOS).

The user experience in iOS is focused on apps which are responsible for managing their own data. Inter-app data sharing is done using a concept called extensions.

Each app generally manage it's own data in it's own segregated/sandboxed storage space (which could go up to a maximum of available storage space on device) which is not accessible to other apps. File sharing is a iOS feature using which you can transfer data for an app to and from your computer using iTunes (which is available for macOS and Windows).

However, for File Sharing to work, you'll have to have the app pre-installed on your iOS device before connecting it to your computer. It appears that based on your experience with other platforms, you have assumed File Sharing to work like connected storage device, and transferred the files to a different app which also happens to support File Sharing feature.

Do note that not all iOS apps support File Sharing. It is available only if some of the app features require it and the developer of the app has programmed it.

To remedy your situation, start by installing the app, PlayerXtreme Media Player in your case on the iPad. Once the app is installed, connect your iPad to your computer and launch iTunes. Click on the iPad button shown in the toolbar and then click on File Sharing in the sidebar on the left. All the apps supporting File Sharing are listed under Apps list as shown:

Notice that in the above screenshot, none of the apps listed under Apps list is selected. Now select the desired app (PlayerXtreme in your case) by clicking it. Once you have the app selected, drag and drop the video files from Finder under the area titled PlayerXtreme Documents.

Each app manages its documents separately. If you have accidentally added the videos to a different app, you can't move it between apps directly on iPad. You'll need to delete the videos from the wrong apps documents first and re-add them into the Documents for the desired app (PlayerXtreme in your case). Here, for example, I have added a video and the corresponding subtitle file to VLC app documents:

The video will be available only in VLC app on my iPad and not in PlayerXtreme app. To make it available in PlayerXtreme app, I'll have to copy the files using iTunes into it's PlayerXtreme's documents. You may wish to delete them from VLC app if you do not wish to watch them using VLC.

Also, an important thing to note is that neither iOS or iTunes check if a file type is supported by the app. It lets you transfer any file type into app documents as long as storage space is available on iPad.

Coming from a different platform, you may find this kind of workflow quite cumbersome, but this is by design on iOS and made so keeping user data privacy and security in mind.


Need help finding out why a file (test_find.pyc) opens at startup Like the title said, IDLE opens and runs  /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/ctypes/test/test_find.pyc every time I start my computer, but I can't figure out why. It's not normal behavior for other Macs, but that's the directory macOs uses for its internal python frameworks so I don't want to delete it.

The output it displays is usually garbage, i.e.:

Ñò
ﾟWFXc

And it takes almost a minute to run!

This behavior has persisted across multiple OS upgrades.

I'd like to try to track down what the heck is calling that file.

You could look in these locations if there is an alias to that. If not I would just delete the file.

/Library/StartupItems/
/Library/LaunchDaemons/
/Library/LaunchAgents/
~/Library/LaunchAgents/

For LaunchAgents there could be a plist file related.


Is there offline alternative to Workflowy? Is there any offline Workflowy alternative with breadcrumb navigation, click on bullet to "Zoom" and ability to paste image inside notes.

The closest I found was Taskpaper but it doesn't have breadcrumb navigation, "Zoom" into bullet and ability to paste image inside notes.

Workflowy has a desktop (electron) app with offline access as of October 2017 https://blog.workflowy.com/2017/10/19/the-workflowy-desktop-app-has-arrived/


Error when running security in Terminal I'm trying to export the keychains in Terminal. This is the code I used

security> export -k SystemCACertificates.keychain -t all -f openssl -o goodone.txt

And this is the error I got security: illegal option -- k. Can anyone fix it? :)

You probably copied/pasted the example listed in the man page, which actually is supposed to show how security can be run interactively. To fix, you can do one of the following:

Run in interactive mode by executing security -i in Terminal and then just entering export -k SystemCACertificates.keychain -t all -f openssl -o goodone.txt when you get the security> prompt
Run security export -k SystemCACertificates.keychain -t all -f openssl -o goodone.txt from the shell


Time machine: network hard drive vs Time Capsule I read that is possible to set up a Network Hard Disk in order to connect it to the router and perform wireless Time Machine backups on the Hard Disk.

What are the pros and cons of using a Network Hard Disk rather then Time Capsule?

I had my Buffallo NAS configurated as Time Machine Backup NAS. From one to the other TimeMachine told me that the Backup Volume was corrupt and could not be recovered.
Possible Reason for the corruption is the filesystem, which had not the full capability of ntfs or mac os extended.

Right now I try to use a Synology NAS which has a build in TimeMachine support.

But if you want to be on the save side with your backup I would advice you to buy a TimeCapsule which has the best compatability with the TimeMachine.


Is there any way to hamstring my system? I'm looking to temporarily reduce the amount of cores and RAM available to my system, as well as the processing power.

I've written a server that uses epoll (Linux) and I want to get a rough comparison of it's performance to a server I've witten using kqueue (BSD/Darwin).

My Mac Book Pro is way more powerful than the Linux machine I'll be using, so I want to reign it in a bit.

I was thinking about creating a virtual machine and giving it the resources that I don't want available to OSX, but I'm not certain about how resource sharing works with the VM, and if this will be a reliable way of hamstringing my system. Also, this will just reduce the number of cores, not alter the performance of the CPU.

Is there an easier and possibly more reliable way to do this? Please note that I'm a bit thick when it comes to hardware.

Pulling the RAM seems a reliable way to constrain that resource.

Running in virtualization should help if you can tell your preferred stack to allocate less threads or cores, but I would question your main assumption that these are the critical bottlenecks for making your simulations valuable.

Why not let the simulations run full speed and just measure where the bottlenecks on the Mac arise. You can measure VM paging, IO statistics and time to run each job on your mac and then run a similar test on the production hardware.

If the code is 2 to 1 faster on the Mac and you don't have paging or IO contention, that should scale quite well to the measurements on the Linux hardware. I totally get the wish to control this and eliminate variables, but since systems need to be balanced everywhere - what is a bottleneck on one system / architecture is often not the same bottleneck on another.


Where are the Thunderbolt components? I've been looking around for a few weeks now and still dont see any Thunderbolt adapters, like a SATA/eSATA adapter or anything similar, is it still too soon ? i just havent seen anything on Newegg or anywhere else.

Check out Apple Thunderbolt Display:

http://www.apple.com/displays/

It's a Thunderbolt - Firefwire, USB, Ethernet, and Thunderbolt adapter.


Deleting Terminal app using App cleaner I was experimenting how strong SIP is on Sierra. So I tried To delete Terminal.app using app cleaner but I can remove the contents then when I empty the trash it empties it. Then I open terminal App it works Fine.So is SIP that strong that you can't remove an OS X app using third Party apps?Is the only way to remove SIP protected apps using rm command?

Third party tools and rm can not delete System Integrity Protection (SIP) protected files.

To remove Terminal.app from your Mac, you would first need to disable SIP.

System Integrity Protection on your Mac means you can not delete or modify a range of important files and applications. See About System Integrity Protection on your Mac for what and how SIP protects you.


Apple 30" display and iMac 27" I have an iMac i7 27" 2012 and I want to use it with my 30" Apple display.

I have tried Apple's Mini Display Port to Dual-Link DVI Adapter, but that did not work. I have also tried Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter but that only displays the 30" screen at 1920x1200 - the native resolution of the Apple 30" display is 2560x1600 so the resolution isn't correct.

Is there any way I can get the 30" Apple display to show at it's native resolution?

Apple's tech spec page for the Late 2011 iMac and the new thin iMac say that they both support both the built in monitor and an external monitor at up to 2560X1600. It seems like the Mini display port to Dual Link DVI adapter should work. This conversation on Apple's support site concurs.

Double check all of your connections, try rebooting with the monitor plugged in and if you still can't get it to work try taking to to a genius bar if you have an Apple retail story nearby.


Nested IF statement in Numbers I am working on a table to tabulate mileage costs for my small business.  I have 3 destinations I go to on a regular basis.  I would like the address to automatically populate in the C cell if the expression is met in the B cell.

I have copied numerous equations from various websites, but have not been able to get any of the equations to work.  The latest is pasted below.

IF((B88="SHADY GROVE METRO","15903 SOMMERVILLE DR",IF((B88="POR TRAIN STATION","CLAY STREET",IF(B88="BWI","7062 ELM ROAD",""))))))

Am I even close?

It looks like you have a lot of extra parenthesis everywhere...    give this a try.

IF(B88="SHADY GROVE METRO","15903 SOMMERVILLE DR",IF(B88="POR TRAIN STATION","CLAY STREET",IF(B88="BWI","7062 ELM ROAD","")))

To provide a bit more detail, for every left paren (, you need a matching right paren ) to close the expression.    Counting what you've shown, you have 5 left parens, and 6 right parens.   This would likely cause an error due to the mismatch.

Additionally, each expression only needs one left paren to start it, not two.


Disabling default keyboard on iPad with iOS 4.2 I have enabled 3 languages and use their keyboards, but the default keyboard still insists on popping up. Bought in Bangkok, using in Europe.Can I disable this unnecessary keyboard or am I stuck with it??

Go into Settings -> General -> Keyboard
Tap Edit
Tap and hold the "handle" (it looks like three horizontal bars) on English and drag it to the bottom

Or you can disable it outright.


The phone number "is not registered with iMessage" Right now I can't seem to send some text messages from my OS X. Here is a list of things I have done that will have caused the error:

I fresh installed Yosemite about 2 days ago
I updated my iPhone to 8.1 this afternoon
I paired my device (I was able to send some texts from OS X)
I fresh installed iOS 8.1 on my iPhone
I can't send some text messages from my computer

When I start a new conversation on iMessage, the name of the person remains red. When I try to send a message I get a popup saying: " is not registered with iMessage". The handoff is well configured because I am able to see an icon appear in the dock when I use the notes app.

What can I do to make this functionality work again?

Thanks

You need to wait for the iOS 8.1 update in order to be able to do SMS from your computer / iPad. It should be available for you now or tomorrow if you go to "settings -> general -> software update"

EDIT: "iPhone Settings -> Messages -> Text Message Forwarding" then select your device that you want to send from and enable it :)

Restart messages on OSX if it's still not working.


Yosemite won't empty trash Re: Yosemite does not like emptying the trash

So I'm not tech savvy but am having this very same problem with the trash after upgrading to Yosemite. I typed lsof +D ~/.Trash and this is what I got

COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
UserEvent 699 romaabraham 11r DIR 1,2 68 35694329 /Users/romaabraham/.Trash

I am not sure what to do next.

I infrequently have an issue where something is locking whatever item is in the Trash.  I reboot, and 10 times out of 10, I'm able to empty it.

For example, I save a screenshot to my desktop, then send it as a Mail.app attachment.  Once the mail is sent, I try to Trash and empty the screenshot.  I am unabvle to do so until I quit Mail and empty Trash.


How can I create a USB installer of OS X - El Capitan on a computer that is running macOS Sierra? I've downloaded a copy of the OS X - El Capitan Installer, which I want to make a bootable USB of.

However, it requires you to run the installer on whatever machine you are running, and installs it as an app.

But I cannot run the installer (to create the app) because I am using the computer running macOS Sierra.

It just gives an error "this installer is too old to run on this computer."

You can use the createinstallmedia command. This link explains: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


Does the new iPod Touch (iOS 4.1 / 4 gen) require that you jail break it to use a Blue Tooth keyboard? I already have a BT keyboard and I don't really want to buy a new one, so my question is, will the BT keyboard I already have work with an ipod touch?

Or will I need to use a proprietary Apple solution for that?

A 4th generation iPod Touch (or an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4) running iOS 4.1 supports third-party bluetooth keyboards.


What is Macintosh HD - Data - Data? I just formatted my Macbook Pro. Using macOS Catalina 10.15.4

At boot, I pressed Cmd+R to enter recovery. I then used the disk utils to erase the "Machintosh HD - Data" partition.

I then went over to reinstall the OS and when prompted to choose between "Machintosh HD" and "Macintosh HD - Data", I chose "Macintosh HD". That gave me an error, saying basically that nothing could be installed to that partition. I then retried, but this time used the "Macintosh HD - Data" partition. All good, the OS installed and here I am now... just opened up Disk Utils and I see this mess:

What on earth happend? How can I fix this mess? Screenshots of each partition are above.

What you have done is upset the logical volume "Macintosh HD".

For security reasons macOS Catalina splits the logical boot volume, in your case "Macintosh HD" into two physical volumes, one for all the system files and another for the use data which has " - Data" put on the end of the name. You've erased half the logical volume, you should have erased either the whole disk or the whole container.

Since your drive is blank the easiest way to fix this is to erase the entire physical device.

To start click the pop up "View" in the top left corner and select "Show All Devices".

Here's what mine looks like.

You can see the disk has one APFS container with two physical volumes. The Mac shows these to you as one logical volume.

Now select the drive right at the top (in my case this is "Apple SSD SM1024L Media") and then Erase. Problem gone :)


How can I check the size of a OneNote notebook on iPad? I use OneNote to maintain notes on my iPad. I want to know how I can determine how much space each notebook is occupying so I know how much space is left. However, I have no way of doing this.

Also, how much free storage does Microsoft give for OneNote ?

Also, how can I link to another page in the notebook. This option seems to be missing for the iPad version ...

Any help would be very appreciated .

Thanks a lot !i

Hi if you've taken the path of least resistance and defaulted to using Microsoft's OneDrive for storing OneNote documents,

then you can follow this route:

First make sure that OneNote documents you are interested in are synced.

On the ipad's onenote screen the 2nd icon in on the purple ribbon is a notebook,
touch that and select 'sync this notebook'
This ensures a copy is with stored on the One Drive.

Now you need a separate Apps store app to look at the OneDrive, which handily is called OneDrive.
Download that from the app store,
login to your onedrive,

You'll now be able to see your OneNote document, and the size is shown by default.


How can I tell if one iPhone receiver works as well as another? My spouse and I were driving onI84/81 in Annville, PA.  Her iPhone 6S was in LTE mode. My iPhone SE was in Edge. We both have T-Mobile as a carrier.

Do the two iphones have the same radios on the same frequencies?
If so, why would I have Edge on one and she had LTE?
Is there something wrong with my iPhone 6S?
Is this something that can be tested in the T-Mobile store?

In a nutshell - what process can I use to get answers to these ideas I have as to why one phone isn't working as well as another?

You can do some work to narrow down performance, but you'll need carrier help if you find that there's an issue with one device.

Use Safari to do a speed test http://fast.com on both devices - even if you are using different devices, different cell towers (just because two phones are in the same place - they can negotiate different frequencies, different towers or get different levels of service from the same tower at the same frequency).

By focusing on measuring the flow of data - you can over time know if one device has hardware limitations or hardware issues.

Next, put each device in field test mode: Dial *3001#12345#* - if you can see in the menu bar a number like -76 then record those for each device and then call your cellular company to help determine if you have coverage issues or need to update your phone's settings or software.

_Note: not all carriers have a useful field test mode. See this and this and that for more details.
Basically, each cell tower is a time share. It juggles all the devices in range - tells some to be on LTE, others to be on 3G, others to be on EDGE. Unless your phones don't work at all - the cause of differential service is almost always a device that's stuck and needing reboot or a congestion issue on the carrier end. Apple can also run diagnostics if you believe the hardware is faulty - but that's usually a low chance of being the cause.


2009 Mac Pro running with fans at full speed after CPU tray upgrade The fans on my 2009 Mac Pro are running at full speed after upgrading the CPU tray to the tray from a 2012 12 core.  Temperature monitor reports that the CPU temperatures are steady 32° and 34°c, and all other temperatures are within that range, and other than the howling noise my Mac Pro is running perfectly normally.

The firmware has been upgraded as per this site http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,852.msg5004.html#msg5004 and the OS is Sierra.

I've currently dropped back to the factory fitted 2.66GHz quad, albeit with the same firmware, and all is quiet and peaceful again.

I can't run AHT or diagnostics because neither are installed on the machine - and I don't know what I've done with the installer disk. I have reset the SMC and NVRAM to be sure it's not a simple software / configuration fix.

Can anyone suggest a fix?  I'm at a loss because the temperatures report as being entirely healthy!

You must use the original tray from the 4,1.  Cannot put 4,1 tray in 5,1 or vice versa.   If you do, you cannot control the fans.

The firmware upgrade changes the Model from 4,1 to 5,1 but does not change the SMC System Version or the SMC Processor Tray version.  These must match. These should both be 1.39f5 with an original 4,1 or 1.39f11 with an
original 5,1.


Unable to remove website data in Safari In Safari --> Preferences --> Privacy --> Manage Website Data, I'm unable to remove the data that shows up as Databases. I'm able to remove Cookies and Cache data but not able to remove Databases. Please see the screenshot.

Could you please let me know how can I remove for e.g 123greetings.com entry showing up as Databases?

I'm on Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6

go to ~Library/Safari/Databases/ and delete the database


Arpwatch for Yosemite? Any pointers to arpwatch or equivalent for OS X Yosemite?  I'd rather not have to  use Macports. Sledge hammers on gnats etc.  I found one, Mocha, but it requires a version of Java 6. Current Java version is 8, and I recall 6 having all sorts of security issues.

This arises as my MacBook Pro is detecting another device using it's IP address.

Command line version is fine.

You can simply right-click /Applications/Mocha.app/Contents/Resources/Java/mocha.jar and launch it with the Java Launcher. I don't know if the JRE version contains this "app" - at least the JDK does.

After modifying the innards (e.g the info.plist & JavaApplicationStub) it may also be possible to launch the app itself without installing Java6, but I didn't get this to work.


Stuck on Target Disk Mode due to Firmware Password The MacBook Pro 2014 (macOS High Sierra, A1502) I’m using has a firmware password set. I tried to boot into target disk mode and it asks for this password even after turning it off/on. I tried many key combinations, SMC reset, cmdoptionPR, etc, none of which worked.

I just want to boot from the main drive again so it works as usual. Is there anything I can do apart from waiting until Monday to resolve it at my school? I need this thing for the weekend.

You'll need your firmware password to boot into anything other than macOS (which is why it's called a firmware password). If you can't remember your firmware password your only real option is to take your computer to the Apple Store. I believe I read online somewhere they'll have a special key or something like that so you can go in and reset your firmware password or remove it, then you'll be able to boot into target disk mode.


How do I group similar emails (same subject) as a thread inside Mail 10.3 on macOS Sierra 10.12.5? In Yosemite, the Mac Mail app grouped emails with same subject into a thread. Not in this version.

Make sure View → Organise by Conversation is checked.


PDF form is missing information entered on a Windows PC I have a 3rd party form which has a lot of fields to be filled in. I started entering the information on a Windows PC and saved it to Dropbox. When I open the form in Apple Preview on my OS X Yosemite machine the fields that I filed in are all blank! If I open it in Adobe Reader instead the information is present but when I save the file and open it in Windows again all of the previously saved information from my initial Windows session has gone. Please tell me how I can stop this happening as I use these forms on a regular basis and I need to edit them in Windows 7 and Mac OS X Yosemite.

Adobe recommends:

  Mac users: don't use Preview

  For Macintosh system users: DO NOT use the Preview program to fill in
  the PDF form. Adobe Reader is the only program that will allow you to
  work with the form properly, and allow us to read the results once
  back on a Windows machine.

The fillable PDF forms are created with Adobe app. If opened with Preview it will completely mess-up that capability, so newer open it with Preview. Happy filling.


Using Rsync For Exact Copy I've used rsync before, on Linux, many times, but also many years ago and I also don't know if there are any differences or issues between using it on an iMac and on Linux.

I have a drive with a problem and now mounts read-only.  I replaced it with a good new drive and it's now connected via USB in a SATA case.

If I want to create a folder on the new drive, say, "/OldDrive", and copy all the files on my old drive over to it, preserving ownerships, permissions, and anything else macOS cares about, what are the command options and switches I need to use on rsync to do this?

Rsync isn't the best choice for Mac to Mac copies.

I'd use ditto or asr if you need a command line solution. Disk Utility calls asr internally and you could mirror the volume and then wipe and run Migration Assistant - that's far better than trying to boot from a damaged copy.

Do go ahead and make the full copy for your backup - then consider installing to a new OS.

In fact, you could install OS onto an external USB / Thunderbolt / FireWire drive first before even making a copy then migrate the data and accounts and apps from the internal drive to the external clean OS install.

That saves a step and you don't even need to worry about syntax of asr or ditto or rsync


Multiple email addresses in a single contact I have recently started a new job that involves sending before and after photographs of the repairs I carry out on reported faults in Social Housing properties, I have to send as many as 6 or 7 emails a day and I have to include the same 3 separate email addresses every time. Is there a way to call up all 3 email addresses using a single contact? This would save me searching for and selecting each individual every time I send an email.
Thank you in advance for any helpful direction provided by a sympathetic technology-savvy person, I am in your debt.
Yours gratefully
Sid

You can create email or contact based groups with those contacts using the stock Mail app. But you will need iCloud on the web to make those groups.

First of all, you need to make sure your contacts are being backed
up in iCloud. Go to Settings > 'Mail, Contacts, Calendars' and
select iCloud from the Account at the top. make sure Contacts has a
green slider next to it.
Now log into www.icloud.com using your Apple ID, and select Contacts.
You'll see all the contacts from your iPhone presented in a list. Click the + icon at the bottom of the lefthand pane. Select New Group.
The new group, called Untitled Group 1 for the time being, appears in the lefthand column below All Contacts. Name the group and click outside the box to save it. (If you change your mind and decide to delete a group, you need to make sure the group is highlighted and then click the cog icon at the bottom left and click Delete.)
Go back to the All Contacts group and decide who you want to add to your new group. You can add contacts individually by dragging-and-dropping their names on to the new group.
If you want to remove a name from a group, you need to be in the group, with the name of the group highlighted, and the name of the soon-to-be-removed contact highlighted too. Then click the cog and select Delete. This will just remove the name from the group (with no warning popup, incidentally), rather than deleting it from your contacts entirely. You'll know if you've got this wrong, because it you tell iCloud to delete a contact completely you will get a warning and have to select Delete a second time to confirm this.)
You can batch-add contacts to speed up the process. Click and hold the Command button (also known as the Apple button) and then click each contact you want to add, in turn. These will all be selected simultaneously. (If you get one wrong, click it again to remove it from the selection.) Now release Command and click-and-drag any one of the highlighted names on to the new group, and the other selected names will be brought along for the ride. For really fast adding, you can hold down Shift instead of Command, then click on two names. iCloud will select every contact that sits between the two alphabetically.
Close down the tab with iCloud in and open up your iPhone. Launch Contacts, and tap Groups at the top left of the screen. The new group will be listed under iCloud. By default all of the groups on the screen will be ticked, but if you tap the new group's name all the other groups will be untucked, leaving just the new one. Now tap done, and you'll see a list of contacts in the new group. (In our experience the new group appears almost instantaneously, provided you've got an internet connection. There's isn't a significant syncing delay.)
You can now send an email to the whole group very easily. Open Mail and create a new message. In the To field, start typing the name of the group, and iOS will offer it as a suggestion. Tap the group (labelled, in our experience, as just 'Group', rather than its full name) to insert all the email addresses as recipients. You can remove recipients individually if you want to send an email to most of the members of a group.

There is a way of creating an email group on the iPhone itself, but it's a bit of a fudge - effectively you're creating a new contact which has multiple email addresses crammed together.

Open the Contacts app.
Tap the Add (+) icon.
Enter the name of the group (such as "friends" or "work") in the Last field.
Scroll down to the Notes section. We're going to use this to write out the email addresses. You need to surround each mail address with greater than and less than symbols and place a comma between each one. For example , .
Tap and hold the names to bring up the contextual menu. Tap Select All and Copy.
Tap Add Email.
Tap and hold the Email field and tap Paste.

That now creates a contact with a single name but multiple email addresses. Open the Mail app and tap New. Now enter the name of the group into the To field. It will turn blue, indicating that it is a contact. When you send the email it will go to all the people whose email addresses you added to Contacts.

Source and images for both solutions: MacWorld


Changing The Administrator name and password I just bought a used iMac. Should arrive Friday morning. I just thought of something... This is a used computer, so how am I going to delete certain files if I don't know the Administrator name or password?

You can boot into Recovery (hold Command + R during startup) to change the password. Once booted from the recovery partition select Terminal from the Utilities menu and then enter resetpassword

Although, honestly, you might just want to erase the disk and install a new copy of OS X.


Mac App mysteriously remembers deleted settings After evaluating several its demo version, I decided to buy Linkinus from the Mac App Store.¹ As I had played with the settings a bit, I wanted to do a clean reset before seriously using it.

So I deleted all preference files and folders containing with the app's or its developers's name from my home directory, which were:

~/Library/Application Support/Linkinus 2
~/Library/Caches/net.conceited.Linkinus
~/Library/Preferences/net.conceited.Linkinus.plist
~/Library/Preferences/net.conceited.LinkinusSysInfoPlugIn.plist

To my surprise, Linkinus still remembered at least a part of its preferences after relaunch.

So I dug deeper, reinstalled the app and also deleted:

/private/var/db/BootCaches/XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX/app.net.conceited.Linkinus.playlist

As that didn't help as well, I tried to deactivate iCloud – also without success. I even used fseventer to take a look at the files read and written while using Linkinus, but that also didn't give any additional insights.

Can anybody solve that mystery?

¹ Yeah I know, the developers appear to have disappeared for a while, but I still like the app.

The app is pefectly innocent, this is an issue with preference caching on Mavericks.

What finally worked was running defaults delete $app_id, so in my case:

defaults delete net.conceited.Linkinus

Source: Deleting plist file does not reset app on Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks on StackOverflow


I want to install Adobe CS 6 on an external hard drive but can't select the install location My SSD is formatted case sensitive, so when I attempted to install I got this:

  Installation on case sensitive volumes isn't allowed. Please choose a case insensitive location.

But I can't select the install location.

Not the answer you want, but whatever.

Re-format your SSD to the default of HFS+ case-insensitive. Almost all Mac software is designed to run on a case-insensitive file system and you using case sensitivity is the problem.

Maybe you'll find a solution here.


How to stop Time Machine backing up log files inside application containers? Time Machine does not backup log files in ~/Library/Logs

But it does backup logs files within application containers.  For example, log files in the folder ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail.

My Mail and OneDrive logs are currently adding about 2 GB per backup.

I could manually exclude each of ~/Library/Containers/*/Data/Library/Logs but that is a lot of exclusions and would be a list which needs addition whenever I install a new app.

The ~/Library/Containers/* folders were introduced to support sandboxing applications, but Time Machine seems to have not kept up with these changes.

Is there a better way of telling Time Machine to not backup the /Log folders within Containers?

I am using OS X Yosemite 10.10.1.

I had a similar need and using a combination of this answer and this answer I came up with the following solution.

Create a property list (e.g. ~/Library/LaunchAgents/excludeLogFiles.plist) which will be loaded with launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/excludeLogFiles.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>excludeLogFiles</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/bin/zsh</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>tmutil addexclusion /Users/user/Library/Containers/**/Data/Library/Logs</string>
  </array>
  <key>WatchPaths</key>
  <array>
    <string>/Users/user/Library/Containers</string>
  </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Instead of using EnableGlobbing, which hasn't been supported since OS X 10.10 (ref), the path gets expanded by the program calling /bin/zsh <args>.

A couple of things I found while experimenting:

The ** glob works with zsh but not bash
Using ~ should work in the path for ProgramArguments but I don't know if the same trick can be used for WatchPath. Hard-coding the user path might be necessary.


How can I get the Parallels Desktop Application Icons in Launchpad? I have the opposite problem of this one; I have Parallels Desktop 6 installed and while I do have the Applications folder in the dock, I don't have links to any of these applications in Launchpad.

How can I get these application icons in Launchpad? I'm aware that Parallels has the following knowledge base article which says that there is going to be a folder in Launchpad, but that's not what I want. I'm looking for a way to get all the applications icon to be visible in Launchpad, similar to this:

Note: I had Parallels installed on Snow Leopard (before I had Launchpad), and now I am using Lion.

To add an application to Launchpad, you can simply drag it to Launchpad in the Dock.

But be careful — currently there's no way to remove something from Launchpad that you've added.

(And if you have items in a folder in Launchpad, you can easily drag them out and organize them as you wish.)


What happens to applications if I sign in with a different account My brother gave me his iPhone and I downloaded a bunch of non-free apps he purchased. Now I want to create a new account for me and sign in with it. What will happen to non-free applications I have downloaded?

Those apps will still work while they remain installed on the phone, but you will need to sign in to your brother's account to download updates for them, or to redownload them.


What is the "Personal Photo Letter" intended for? Pages on the iPad has as one of its defaults the "Personal Photo Letter". What is the intent of this type of document?

As its name implies, the Personal Photo Letter, is a personal letter, that is, a letter written to a specific person, that also includes your photo along with your name.

It is like any traditional personal letter, only it has your photo in it.

There’s no real “intended for” situation where you must use that letter. Only when having your picture in it makes sense. I don’t know or I’m not aware of cases where using this type of letter is considered a requirement.

Sometimes when writing a resume you might want to include a presentation letter. Putting your picture there allows the reader to associate your face with the resume or CV. Other than that, I wouldn’t include a picture of me in a personal letter.


No + sign in Contacts app on iPhone 5 with iOS7. Now I cannot add any contacts at all and all my old contacts were lost, too I was trying to restore my iPhone 5 because I was running out of space and the other category was taking up too much space, so I decided to restore it. However, I don't know what glitch happened during the restore, I could not restore my phone using any of the old backups so I had to restore it as a new iPhone.

I got most of my data back on my phone after doing this, except for some apps, but I had most of my other stuff still on there so I was okay with this restore. However, all of my contacts disappeared! I had made a backup of all my contacts as a .vcf, so I had figured out a way to get them back on my phone but my problem is that the + sign that should appear on the Contacts app to add new contacts is missing. Thus, I can't add any of my old or new contacts on my phone! Apple online chat support asked me to do all this step one more time, i.e. restoring it as a new iPhone, but nothing changed. I've tried going to my messages and add contacts via that, but that doesn't work either. Any help would be much appreciated!

Your contacts may have been there all along.

First you need to go to groups and select at least one before the + button will show up.

If you have no groups or no groups selected then the contacts have nothing to add to, therefore no button.

Group selected

No group selected


Understand "Open in browser" vs "Open in Preview" for PDF files When I click on a link to a PDF file, sometimes the PDF document opens in the Safari browser window, and sometimes it opens a new window and opens the PDF document in the Preview application.

Is there a way to predict which will happen, before I click on the link?  If I want it to always open in Preview, or always open in the browser, is there a way to configure the browser to do so?

I'm using Safari on Mountain Lion, if that is relevant.

Something that I have found quite useful is getting info for one type of file and then setting it so that all files of that kind open in a specific application.

  • Right click (or control + click) on any PDF file and choose Get Info from the pop-up menu.
  • In the window that pops up, choose which application to open that file with. (choose Preview if you want to open PDF files in Preview).
  • Click Change All… to automatically open all PDF files in the selected application.


Is my Mac spying on me? Feel free to call me crazy or paranoid, but sometimes I feel like the camera LED turns on briefly (for approximately 0.1 seconds). Maybe it's just odd reflections, or me confusing the LED for the camera itself with my peripheral vision, but it piqued my curiosity; how would I find out if some utility is turning on and off the camera very quickly to snap a picture? Is it even possible to do it that quickly? How would I diagnose this? Does something like this actually exist?

Edit: Note, yes, I do know of the existence of trojans and so on. The point of my question is: as a sysadmin-level user (advanced), how can I perform this diagnostic, hard core? Also, the question about the timing is: when the camera is turned on by any utility, is it possible to turn it on, snap a picture, and turn it off in such a small amount of time? Does the driver allow you such a quick round trip?

If you've ever used Photo Booth, or any other app using your built-in camera as a source, you may know that there's no way anything less than 1 second is fast enough. There is a very obvious warm-up time in order for the camera to actually warm up and provide an image. Although the problem with timing Photo Booth is that it has to open the app, draw the window, then fire up the camera somewhere in there.

As a matter of testing, I opened up Quicktime Player (Quicktime X) and let it settle down, then I hit File -> New Movie Recording. Luckily for me, the image didn't fire up right away because the built-in camera for my laptop was chosen, but I have the lid closed using an external screen also with a built-in camera.

So I changed the input source to the external camera, and pressed start on my stopwatch as soon as the green LED lit up (which was pretty much immediately). The video started displaying at about 1.5 seconds in. That's still certainly within "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" territory, but only barely.

My answer is that I'm suggesting stray light may be reflecting off of area the LED resides in, invoking an "illuminated" feeling, but that nothing may be happening in reality.

However, I don't suggest that you do nothing. Commercial vendors such as Sophos offer Antivirus products of OS X, Lion-compatible and free too in Sophos' case, and I've also used ClamXAV as a one-off scan-on-demand utility when I've had similar feelings (or when I've wanted to check a file for a windows-using friend, etc.).

Note also that OS X does have built-in spyware protection named, "XProtect", that was born out of the "MacDefender" trojan scare. TUAW has many great articles on the subject under the security tag.


Terminal - how to restart session after inadvertently exiting? Sometimes I inadvertently exit from a Terminal session (usually because I think I'm connected to a remote system, when I'm not), so I get to this point:

How I can I restart the session at this point ? I don't want to close the window or tab because I have a bunch of tabs all set up for my normal workflow, so I just want to get the session in the current tab going again (i.e. get back to a bash prompt).

The only solution I've found so far is to quit Terminal completely and open it again, but that is far from ideal as it obviously interrupts anything else I'm doing in other Terminal windows/tabs.

At this point, there's no way to get the tab back. The terminal session is closed, and it no longer has a TTY. There's just no way to reference the tab in order to do anything clever. I'd suggest adding this function to your .bashrc or .profile so that you won't have the issue in the future:
exit() {
    read -t5 -n1 -p "Do you really wish to exit? [yN] " should_exit || should_exit=y
    case $should_exit in
        [Yy] ) builtin exit $1 ;;
        * ) printf "\n" ;;
    esac
}

or, for those of us who use the Z Shell (add it to your .zshrc):
exit() {
    if read -t5 -q "?Do you really wish to exit? [yN] "; then
        builtin exit $1
    fi
}

It's a nice little barrier between you and that annoying exit command! Lord knows I've done the same thing many times in the past.


Toggle between applications via four finger gesture? Currently, if you enable it, the four finger gesture popups a window that shows you the apps you can switch to, You can then select one of them using the mouse.

Is there any way to modify this gesture a bit to make it faster to use?

I would be fine with either of these implementations:

When you perform the gesture, a right swipe will immediately switch to the next window in the queue, while a left swipe will switch to the previous one. As a result, the queue should not be changed every time you switch windows, otherwise if you keep performing the right gesture, you will just be navigating back and forth between the same two windows.
When the gesture is performed, you see the popup window which displays the open application's icons as you normally do now; but you can keep the fingers down on the trackpad, and move them left or right to highlight a different icon. Once the application you want to switch to is highlighted, you release the trackpad and it switches to that application.

The best way to do this is with one of the more obscure settings in BetterTouchTool
It works like this:
 A three fingered right swipe brings up the application switcher. Lift one finger to covert it into a two finger swipe and slide to whichever application you want.

It becomes an incredible natural and fluid gesture The beauty of the gesture is that it works anywhere on the screen and you don't have to position the mouse over the icons.

In BTT assign the three finger swipe right to the application switcher.
In BTT Action Settings -> Stuff(App Switcher) -> Use special application switcher

This answers the problem that bisko and senseful had above and avoids the last click or the necessity to be over the icon.

Single best gesture in my 'gesture vocabulary' and I have gestures for everything!


The recovery server could not be contacted while installing Mojave Just needed a bit of help debugging.

This is a machine that came with Yosemite OS and I had updated to Mojave. So  I want to wipe and install a new Mojave on it because you can't install Yosemite on APFS.

I'm trying to install Mojave with internet recovery and there is currently no OS installed at all on the machine.

Things I've tried:
- changing the date in the utilities terminal. The way I did this was opened terminal and typed date 0605111117 and then cmd+q then selected Reinstall MacOS
- pinged google.com to verify a good internet connection
- tried to delete the Mojave installer in / but it requires root and I don't know how to do that as root in internet recovery mode

Simple fix, connect the ethernet cable directly to your laptop(use usb-ethernet adapter) or pc and reinstall mac OS from the internet recovery mode= restart and hold command-option-R.


Having to hold links and webpages to open them I'm having to hold and press links in Safari to open the pages - I used to just touch it and it would open. I prefer the latter but how do change it back? I can't find any info online (probably because I don't know the correct terminology to perform an effective search).

Have you checked your settings in General > Accessibilities? For most people, most of the options should be disabled (except for shaking the screen to undo an action which is by preference).

I have a possibility. Are General > Accessibility > Touch Accommodations > Touch Accommodations + Hold Duration both turned on? Because they make it so that you have to hold on the screen in order to register a touch. That seems to fit your context because they should be off in general.


How can I restore the El Capitan Messages notification sound (chime) to the old sound? I've noticed when I receive messages in the Messages app in El Capitan, it plays the "Chime" sound from iOS 9.

I recall that in the previous version of OSX, or perhaps the one before it, the incoming Messages notification sound was simply a different pitched variant of the "send" message sound.

How can I restore it to the original Messages sound from the older versions of OSX?

Prefs > General
Take your pick…

Mine's always just gone 'ping' so I don't know precisely which sound you mean


Mac OS X app for measuring time spent in apps Possible Duplicate:
  Is there an app that allows me to monitor time spent using an application?

Is there app which will tell me that for example, today I spent 30 minutes in Safari, 1 hour in XCode, etc...
Thanks

Take a look at Timesink by ManyTricks. I've used it for years and it's perfect for tracking where you spend your time on your mac.


iPhone - power button intermittent I recently updated my iPhone to iOS 6.1.2 and after the the update the top "power" button will not consistently lock the screen. Sometimes it needs to pressed 5 to 6 times before it will actually lock the phone.

There does not appear to be anything physically wrong with the button. It still has a nice click feel and sound to it.

I know the last update involved a bug fix for bypassing the lock the screen, so I thought others may be having this same issue.

My guess is it would be a software bug, not a hardware issue.

Other than restore the phone any suggestions?

This actually ended up being a hardware issue. I took my iPhone 5 into an apple store and they said they have seen this happen many times. When I pressed on the right side of the button vs. the left side it seemed to work always. Strange coincidence it just started happening after the software update.

Apple immediately replaced my iPhone 5, no fuss.

Now everything works fine.


Garage Band takes 46 GB? I recently got a new MacBook Pro and it only has 120 GB on it. On the system information page, I saw that garage band takes a whooping 46 GB on my Mac! I don't know how this has happened!

When I received this computer, I installed logic pro, and downloaded a ton of loops. Afterwards, I wanted to delete them for other stuff, so I deleted garageband and logic off my computer, and removed all files and audio loops from application support and elsewhere, however, it still shows that it takes 46 GB. How do I fix this?

It's not actually garageband taking up that space, but since it shares internal system locations and data, the space used gets categorized as "garageband". The actual space usage is probably due to the audio sample storage, which doesn't have anything to do with the apps but is merely a directory in one of the Library directories (i.e. Your local user Library or the system Library.


When setting up a new laptop, Setup Assistant doesn't see all the data I'm trying to set up a new Retina MacBook Pro, which is running OS X 10.10, by transferring data from my old MacBook, which is running OS X 10.8.6, via Thunderbolt.  My old laptop is in Target Disk Mode instead of using Migration Assistant due to the OS mismatch (the new machine wouldn't let me migrate with Migration Assistant).  As far as I can tell, this all matches what Apple says should work.  However, I have ~350 GB in my home folder, and my new laptop can only see ~50 GB.  What's going on, and is there any way to fix it?

A few things:

I tried copying my data once already, but almost nothing got copied (I think even less than the ~50 GB).
I can't update my OS on my old laptop, because I don't have enough space.
I could try restoring from a Time Machine backup – it seems to see everything that way – but I don't have the right cables, so (until I can get those) I'm looking for a laptop-to-laptop solution over Thunderbolt.  (I have too much data to use Wi-Fi.)

While preparing for one last Time Machine backup, I found myself restarting both my old and my new laptop – and some combination of these things fixed the problem.  I was able to restore from my old laptop overnight, and this answer is being posted from my new machine.  If anybody has any further insight, I'd welcome it, but my problem is solved!


Logitech Ultrathin mouse scroll behaviour on mac i am using a Logitech UltraThin T630 mouse with a macbook pro (2015, os 10.11.1) and i am having a strange scroll behaviour. I mean its working but its different to the mouse working on windows.

Let try to describe it:

Normally (and on windows) scrolling works directly. When i scroll on the mouse, the site (i.e. in a webbrowser) moves directly. But on mac this mouse starts scrolling as soon as i release the finger from the mouse. This leads to an indirect scrolling which is annoying.

Does anybody has the same issue and can deliver any solution to this?

Okay, in the case that anybody has the same problem:

Simply download 5.30.150 and use it. It works like a charm
http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Mice-and-Pointing-Devices/T651-Trackpad-and-Ultra-Thin-Touch-Mouse-issues-with-Logitech/m-p/1458806


Control-Command-Space opens Search When I use the  Cmd ⌘   Ctrl ⌃
 Space  , It does not open the Emoji viewer, but opens a 'Search My Mac' in the Finder.

You need to make sure that key combo hasn't been set up as a new command in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Spotlight

Default should be  Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   Space

You could also check it wasn't added as a specific menu command in App Shortcuts...

...which would then show in the Finder's File menu too [together with a new 'Find By Name' item] compared to the original using  Cmd ⌘   F


Where are the memory and kernel logs stored in macOS Catalina? I want to learn how to debug kernel crashes and am not at all familiar with macOS logging. Specifically the logs files that might reveal a system crash for example due to kernel panics.

Does Apple document this or do I need third party book or training?

The easiest thing to do is to bring up Console, then for each log you are interested in, simply right-click and choose 'Reveal in Finder'. Your logs may vary. (If you don't know where Console is, simply search for it in Spotlight.)

Apple has a unified log system now, so you don’t want to just look at files like traditional unix logging. The log stats command will parse all available logs and let you know the current volume of information, how long it lives before being discarded, what severity of messages are so you can craft log show commands to dump specific entries of interest. Major events like a kernel panic do drop structured text files with details, but the logs are the best source.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/kernel/debugging

For an intro to kernel debugging Apple does a great job. You can get Xcode for free and it has Instruments so you can inspect the system as it runs and also develop a kernel extension if you need to cause crashes or really get to low level.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/721/


Why won't Time Machine work with a drive connected to an Airport Extreme? Is there any technical limitation or engineering reason that could possibly be behind the inability to RELIABLY use a connected USB drive with Airport Extreme for Time Machine?

I have had this working fine, just by initialising a backup over local USB, then moving the drive to the AE, and selecting a the same drive over the network location.  All worked fine.


BootCamp Partition Error!! Help. Deleted EFI Partition During my Windows 7 installation (via BootCamp) I came to screen that looks similar to this picture.

I chose to delete and format the EFI partition (~200 MB) and and the other small partition (~629 MB). I was confused why I had those partitions in the first place so I just wanted to get rid of them. I did not delete my main Mac OS X partition though. Just the two small partitions, thinking nothing of it.

After the install of Windows 7, I realized I could no longer get back into Mac OS X. The only OS I could boot into (when I held the 'option key' at start-up) was Windows. My Mac OS X system had vanished!

I really need to save the files on my computer. I tried to research this issue with many other articles. Through many troubleshooting acts of desperation, I now can't even boot into my Windows installation.

It appears that the data should all be there. It's currently showing two partitions within my SSD. One is about 88 GB (would be my Mac OS) and the other is about 35 GB (would be my Windows OS).

Verify and Repairing the disk does not help... I have tried. I am currently accessing Terminal and Disk Utility thru the Apple Online Recovery feature.

In the Disk Utility image below, my Mac OS is 'disk0s2' and my Windows is 'disk0s4':

Additionally, here are some terminal pictures that showcase my disk:

I have been able to salvage at least the OS X partition by accessing the Mac remotely via TeamViewer and restoring the old CoreStorage Logical Volume Group.

Here are the steps to recover the OS X volume:

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
Attach a 16 GB thumb drive
Install a full system to the thumb drive. In Internet Recovery Mode the original system the Mac was delivered with is installed: Mountain Lion
After booting from the thumb drive and configuring an admin account the system was updated to El Capitan.
wxHexEditor (a raw disk editor) and TeamViewer (remote access) were installed.

After checking the disk with disktutil list, diskutil cs listand sudo gpt -r show disk0 the following picture emerged:

the disk had a MBR instead of a pMBR
a CoreStorage Volume was configured but the Physical Volume was corrupted - no Logical Volume Family and Logical were available.
No volume - neither OS X nor NTFS or recovery volume was working

To restore a GUID partition table the MBR had to be overwritten with

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=512 count=1

and a new GUID partition table had to be created:

sudo gpt destroy disk0
sudo gpt create -f disk0

added a new EFI partition:

sudo gpt -i 1 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk0

and copied the EFI of the thumb drive to disk0s1:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk1s1 of=/dev/disk0s1 bs=4m

Now I tried to determine if the main OS X partition was CoreStorage or non-CoreStorage with wxHexEditor:

In normal HFSJ volumes block 409640 and 409641 of the disk (=block one and two of the OS X partition) usually contain zeros and block 409642 the string "HFSJ" in the first 16 bytes. The first block of a CoreStorage contains some non-zeros - the next two blocks are equal to non-CoreStorage partitions.

Block 409640 had some non-zeros, so I assumed it was "corestoraged".

The end of a CoreStorage Volume Group can be determined by characteristic strings in plist-like invisible objects in the "administrative area" of the CoreStorage Volume Group.

The string "physicalVolumes" has four occurrences near the end of an LVG. The last occurrence is in the 8185th last block of the LVG. By searching for the strings with wxHexEditor the last block was determined.

With the example above that's 511246241792/512 + 8184 = block 998536000. The block number has to be divisable by eight for 512-disks.
With the last block of the LVG the second partition can be added with:

sudo gpt -i 2 409640 -s 998536000 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

The broken volume reappeared. The disk was then verified and repaired as well as the volumes. It took several attempts to repair all errors of the volume. I didn't try to recover the Windows 7 partition.

The main volume was fully bootable. All data was backed up and the drive was re-partitioned. A new system was installed and the backup data was transferred with the Migration Assistant.


How to get a clean install of Windows 10 to activate? I have Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit installed on my iMac (20-inch mid 2007). I have downloaded from Microsoft a free copy of Windows 10 Pro 64 bit. Microsoft did not ask me to do so. I decided since Window 10 is free, I would like to try it. I do not have a Product Key. During installation, I want to format my Windows partition and do a clean install of Windows 10. When finished, I what Windows 10 to be activated.

Update 1:

In response to bmike answer, I will add the following.

My Mac's firmware will not boot the 64 bit Windows DVD releases by Microsoft. I have to burn a special DVD where the EFI booting is removed. The procedure is given here. I also have problems installing the Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033. The solution to this problem is posted here. So when Apple posts, basically you have to have a 2012 or newer Mac to run Windows 10, I would not believe this to be true.

Microsoft has always incorporated the ability to use previous version drivers to run Windows. This goes all the way back to the days of OS/2.

According to Apple's Knowledge Base article, your iMac isn't supported directly in Boot Camp.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT204990

You should probably get VirtualBox or another VM solution to run the Windows 10 as that would bridge the driver gap better than trying to piece things together yourself. It might be possible, but I don't know where you'd start on it...


Shutting down 2009 MacBook Pro with new install of 10.7.5, results in restarting? I've just installed a new 500GB hard drive in a 2009 MacBook Pro and then cloned a clean install of OS X 10.7 on to the new drive.

I then updated to 10.7.5, and when I shut the MacBook Pro down the machine just restarts.

Any solutions anyone?

Based off the replies in the comments, this is what I suggest doing:
In terminal, type the following command:

cd /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
sudo rm com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
sudo rm com.apple.AutoWake.plist

(Do the "rm" commands separately). Note: com.apple.AutoWake.plist might not exist. Then, shut down your mac, if it re-starts, just shut it down again and hopefully everything will be ok.
I hope this works.
Source Details


How to set read-only dmg background picture in Mountain Lion? Until MacOS 10.7, I used to put a png file in a read/write dmg, then I set it as its background picture, then I hided it and converted the dmg to a read-only one. Everything just worked.

Now, in MacOS 10.8, if I do the exact same thing, when I open the read-only dmg it opens the read/write one too. It looks like it "knows" the original background picture is on the read/write dmg. Even if the read-only one has the same image in its contents.

How can this be prevented?

You're right. The original disk image is opened when opening a newly converted read-only image.  However, I found that if you delete the original read-write disk image, Finder (actually, DiskImageMounter) has no problem mounting the read-only image without its original.  DiskImageMounter itself is not really responsible for the behavior you are talking about; if you look at your read-only image's .DS_Store file in TextEdit, you'll see (amidst very obscure symbols) your original image's name and file path in many places.  This is just built-in behavior of Mountain Lion, I suppose.  Unfortunately, there are no workarounds except for deleting the original image (and emptying the Trash) because Disk Utility is ultimately responsible for the creation of the DS_Store file, and the image created is read-only.


How to revoke the Health App's permissions to Messages Under Privacy -> Health the App Messages is listed as an App accessing my Health data, and in the Health App, Massages is listed as a Source.

How do I revoke those permissions?

And is there a way to delete the Health App altogether?

You can't delete the health.app without jail breaking as it isn't listed in the list or delete able built in apps.

Open the Health app and tap the Sources tab.

Tap an app or device.

Then you can disable it as a source.


OS X Calendar - view shared Google calendars I've been able to add a Google Calendar (CalDAV) account to OS X Calendar (v6, Mountain Lion 10.8.5) without problem, and all my own calendars show up.

Is there a way of seeing calendars others have shared with me (these show up under 'Other Calendars' in the Google Calendar website settings)?

(Same situation on my iPhone.)

Yes, this question is answered by google here:

https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect

You can click on the link and select shared calendars you wanna sync with your device.


Which device uses "Mobile Safari UIWebView" as the browser name? In looking at the browser name from our internal web stats I see "Mobile Safari UIWebView".

What device does that represent?

We record "mobile safari" separately (and is used 5 or 6 times more).

It is not a specific device. It means that your web site was viewed using the UIWebView functionality on an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch).

The UIWebView is different from the ordinary Safari browser, as it is not a stand-alone browser, but merely browser functionality that is embedded in a third party app.


Convert bdf file to ttf I'm trying to convert HelveticaCY.dfont to a ttf font. The MacOS softs that I used didn't work well so I tried Fondu which gave me this files :
HelveticaCY-10.bdf
HelveticaCY-12.bdf
HelveticaCY.dfont
HelveticaCYBold-10.bdf
HelveticaCYBold-12.bdf
HelveticaCYBold.ttf
HelveticaCYBoldItalic-10.bdf
HelveticaCYBoldItalic-12.bdf
HelveticaCYBoldOblique.ttf
HelveticaCYItalic-10.bdf
HelveticaCYItalic-12.bdf
HelveticaCYOblique.ttf
HelveticaCYPlain.ttf

Unfortunately, the *.ttf files doesn't contain the special chars (such as é, è ...). My guess is that this chars are in the *.bdf files but I have no idea of how convert it to a ttf file...
EDIT
As suggested, I used the Helvetica.dfont file. Here's the result : on the left, when I open the ttf file, on the right, when I use quick preview...

No accent on both side...

For converting file types (fonts) from Macs (.dfont) to TrueTypeFont (.ttf) that then can be used with Windows I recommend to use the DfontSplitter.

  Convert Macintosh .dfont files into TTF format

However, converting file type will not add new characters, it will only convert the file type while the characters stay the same.

For Latin fonts the (special characters) and accents are keyboard feature and can be set in the keyboard system preferences.

I you have for example US keyboard and want to use the French accents like èé ÈÉ, set your keyboard to French.

But if you want to continue to the US keyboard and still need those characters, then use the:

1- Insert function from the (Characters viewer)

2- create a special function "Replace- With" in keyboard menu, then use a word to be replaced with the accent character. (now you just type the word and it will be replaced)

3- or another way is to use this method (while keeping your original keyboard layout:

: To get accented vowels on a Mac, hold down the Option key, and while holding it down, type the letter e; to get (é É) then release those keys and type the letter that you want the accent to appear on:

Press alt and e now release those keys and type the letter you want with accent.

4- Finally if you just hold the key pressed there should be a pop up allowing you to select the right accent for that letter.

So the choice is your what method suits you best.


Not receiving Messages on macOS I'm not receiving new messages in the Messages app on macOS (High Sierra). I do get notifications of new messages there (delayed many minutes from when I receive them on iOS). And I can send messages from macOS (which appear immediately on my iOS Messages and at the recipient). But no new Messages of any kind appear in Messages on macOS.

Is there a way to totally and completely reset Messages on macOS so that it works again?

(Note that despite failing to be of any use, Messages on macOS renders the machine unusable when running by maxing out CPU usage. So perhaps a clean resent of Messages in necessary to fix that as well?)

I’m not sure what steps you have taken to resolve the issue so I’ll go least invasive to most invasive.

-Restart your computer
-sign out of messages and sign back in
-if the issue persists set up a test user account and attempt to replicate the issue. Below is a link on how to do so.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25796?locale=en_US

-if the issue replicates in a test user than you have a system wide issue involving the messages app.Next steps would be to make sure your data is backed up and perform an in place install using the recovery partition (hold down command and r on start up and choose install high sierra).
Being that your CPU usage is high for this app, install may be the best step.


How to name a deskop in mission control? I have multiple desktops. I want to be able to name them. Is it possible out of the box?

Or at least does MacOS have API for that? I'd create an application.

You cannot rename desktops in Mission Control.
You can’t rearrange or rename Spaces, either.
You get Desktop 1, Desktop 2, and so on, and that’s it.
This Thread should give you more information.


Defer Sending Email using Mail.app I'm curious, does anybody have a decent solution for sending e-mails via Mail.app at some scheduled times? I'm badly in need of something like that :)

I believe that you don’t consider Deferrersender (web based) to be decent. It’s not, but it delivers.

UPDATE: An alternative, that doesn’t use Mail.app (but Thunderbird) would be to use SendLater. An extension that does exactly that. But it’s for Thunderbird. I couldn’t find a similar plug-in for Mail.app.


Apple Samsung 512 GB SSUBX SSD: Half as fast in MacBook Pro 15" 2015 than in MBPR 13" 2014? I have an Apple Samsung 256 GB SSUBX SSD which when installed in a 13" MacBook Pro Retina 2014 delivers 1,300-1,450 MB/s Read-Write, whereas when installed in newer 15" MacBook Pro Retina 2015 only provides 650-750 MB/s (both measured with Black Magic Design Disk Speed Test).

Makes somehow no sense to me... Ideas?

I should mention that I had no access to that 15" MBPR, but that that performance data was reported to me by the customer who bought this SSD from me. Looks however as if that MacBook had some serious repair damages, as the customer has now confessed. That said, I guess we can ignore my question.