Transferring file creation dates to an Asustor NAS I have just purchased a new Asustor 7004T network attached storage device, which I had hoped to use as an archive for the massive quantity of files I have spread across multiple computers and external hard drives. The problem is, I have many of these files meticulously organized by "date created", and recently learned, to my utter disbelief, that my device (and apparently NASes in general) does not preserve the creation date of any file transferred to it. For example, if I take three files dated 9/24/2008, 7/31/2011, and 1/6/2014, and simultaneously migrate them over to the NAS on 11/15/2015, they all end up with the timestamp of 11/15/2015. This is nothing short of a disaster for me, and I am flabbergasted (and frankly outraged) that a top-of-the-line, $1,000+ device expressly made for storing and backing up files was designed without a data storage capability possessed by any $5 2GB flash drive.

I am desperate for a way to circumvent this fatal (for me) flaw of the Asustor NAS. I would be eternally grateful to anyone who could recommend a means of copying files to an NAS that leaves the creation date intact, without potentially corrupting any data or otherwise compromising the security of my files.

Some key information: my computer is a 2012 MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.9.5. I am a 1988 model human being compatible with most Web Browsers and proficient with a handful of basic applications such as Microsoft Word, with the capacity to comprehend and follow simple step-by-step instructions as far as more technical tasks are concerned. In other words, if your solution is any more complex than downloading and installing an app, you should probably take a "for dummies" approach in explaining it to me. I would also appreciate any input from users of a particular method who found it to be buggy, ineffective, or otherwise problematic, for Murphy's Law is an ever-present specter in my life, and I would thank you to inform me of all the pros and cons of a particular solution before I risk implementing it.

Thank you in advance to all who contribute their help. I have not been able to find any other sites or forums where someone has asked about this issue in regard to a Mac or Asustor device, and hope that this thread will prove helpful to other users of those systems who share my predicament (I cannot imagine I am the only one).

The Problem lies not in your Asustor per se but in the file system (and subsequently the drive configuration) you use and the copy routine you use. In a nutshell: There are different methods to copy files (f.e. rsync) and different ways the file systems store data (f.e. creation date).

Without further Information regarding your NAS-Setup, File system (necessary) and RAID Level (not necessary, just to be complete), the possible solution at this point would be very general: One possibility would be to use rsync to transfer files from you Mac to the NAS - it should copy all data including creation date. It is a command line tool but there is Software with a GUI which should be more to your likeing. I suggest 'Carbon Copy Cloner', a commercial software but with a 30 day trial.

You should start with that and test it with a few files. If it does not work you should provide more information about the file systems used in the NAS and your external drives.


iPhone 5s calendar won't delete all events of the repeated event I added one of my classes to my phone calendar and repeated it to every week.

For some reason I think it synced with my iCloud or uni site or something so all the details such as what room the tutorial is in, my teacher, what subject it is, etc, is all filled out in that event.

I had no problem with this in fact found it convenient. But the time of my tutorial has changed to a different day and now it seems that each of those class events are individual and not repeated.

When I delete one it doesn't prompt me to delete all future events.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem and delete all of these events at the same time?

Delete them one by one. I don't think it would be possible to delete all those events at once, because they are now not linked as a recurring event.


Mac boots into log on screen quickly but takes long time to log into account I just replaced the stock OEM hard drive on my 2010 macbook pro 15 inch with a Samsung 840 Pro SSD 256GB and installed Yosemite on it from scratch with USB (the first time i am using Yosemite). Now when i boot my macbook pro up it takes about 5 seconds to get from powered off to the log on screen, but then when i enter my password it shows a loading bar that slowly fills and my user icon changes to an apple logo. Then after about 20 seconds it logs in. Moreoever the log on screen is gray with the user icons, which is not my background on my account. But if i log in and then log out it changes the log in screen to be my desktop background.

This is a big change from my old mavericks where it took longer to boot up but instantly logged me in. I thought SSDs had super quick boot and log in times.

Here is a video of what is occurring to me.

It shows the quick boot to log on screen with the strange gray background, me logging in and having my icon change to an apple with a loading bar under it, and then me going to a website, and logging out, notice that after i log out the log on screen changes to my desktop background. And then i log in again and it goes quickly unlike the first time.

Link to console messages from boot

After doing a restore via the net with cmd Option R it seems to be booting normally

Here is a link to the console messages now after i restored it.

This is normal behaviour for Yosemite for users with FileVault enabled (i.e. Your Mac's primary disk is encrypted).

The authentication process is done earlier because without authorisation from the user the OS cannot access the rest of the disk.

This is a good thing, and I think you are (mostly) mistaken that it takes longer to boot up — since now you are watching the screen and waiting after entering your login/password the result is that one fixates on the screen and the time it takes to present the OS X graphical user environment, and comparing it with your prior experience of how much time it took to go from authentication to the GU environment. But the total time from power up shouldn't be noticeably longer.

To disable this behaviour:

Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault

From there you can click on the 'Turn off FileVault', after which you will be asked to restart and you will have the normal boot up behaviour and the OS will start to decrypt your disk in the background.

EDIT: The 'extra long' boot time with FileVault occurs once only, at the first startup/restart after enabling FileVault as the OS is finishing the process required. After this, it should be as fast as normal. I double-checked this whole process by disabling FileVault and re-enabling it on one of my machines so I could be sure.

Nb. (if there is any slight increased length of time in booting up, it is more likely as a result of the disk encryption not because of your upgrade to Yosemite per se.)


How to open or convert .xwd image dump? I did the image dump of an X window by using /opt/X11/bin/xwd, e.g.:

xwd -root -silent > screen.xwd

Now, how do I open this file or convert into JPEG file?

Probably I could use pnmtojpeg, but it seems it is not available in Homebrew.

Alternatively use ImageMagick which support jpeg, png and other popular formats, example usage:

import -window root screen.jpeg

Install by brew install imagemagick --with-x11


Where and how can I upgrade my ipod 1st gen? How can I upgrade my ipod from version 1.1.5 (4B1), to a iOS5 on a 8gb pod?? I have no problem paying the $$ to have it upgraded.

You can't. Your model does not support iOS 5. No amount of money will help you here.


Terminal tool to join mp4 videos I would like to join mp4 videos like I join pdfs by pdfjoin.

Is there any default tool to join videos?

Yes, you can join multiple videos into one file using default terminal commands. Using a simple cat will do want you want.
cat video1.avi video2.avi videon.avi > output.avi

There is a big but here - this method will output the video1.avi header onto output.avi. Therefore, the header of output.avi is the same as video1.avi, so on most video players, it will look like video2.avi and videon.avi are lost - source 1, source 2.
To fix this, you need additional tools. There are many other terminal tools for joining movies that update the header as well. The most known video editing tools are mencoder (which is a part of MPlayer) and ffmpeg. Both have an enormous amount of options and settings and it is beyond this forum to go into much detail, but I will give the short commands below.
The use and installation of mencoder or ffmpeg can be intimidating, but the video editing capabilities are the most powerful I have encountered so far. As the installation from source can be a hassle for native OS X users, I advise you to use Homebrew.
To install these tools using Homebrew, run this one-liner in your terminal:
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

Homebrew is now installed, it is wise to follow the installer's suggestions after installation. Now we install ffmpeg and mencoder using brew.
brew install ffmpeg mplayer

Now we can use mencoder to merge the two videos:
mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -idx -o output.mp4 video1.mp4 video2.mp4 video3.mp4

Or we can use ffmpeg to merge the two videos:
ffmpeg -i concat:"video1.mp4|video2.mp4" -codec copy output.mp4

Note that you may need to escape the character "|" which is special for many shells, so
ffmpeg -i concat:video1.mp4\|video2.mp4

You specifically ask for .mp4 files. mp4 is a container format, it is possible that the default installation of ffmpeg or mencoder does not have the correct coding/decoding ('codecs') packages by default and that you need to install these separately. But that is beyond the scope of this topic.


How do I find which IP address softwareupdated daemon is downloading Mojave from? I have started downloading macOS Mojave and went to Activity Monitor to check the download speed and it is disappointingly low. Activity Monitor shows me that a process called softwareupdated is downloading the update and the PID is 410. However doing lsof -p 410 shows me nothing. How do I proceed?

lsof doesn't always show the root processes running. So sudo to be used.

sudo lsof -p PID | grep TCP

PID to be replaced with the PID(Activity Monitor is one source.). TCP can be replaced with other protocols too. For unfiltered results removed the | grep TCP part.


Zipping bundle via Automator I am looking for a way to zip a fcpx bundle with an Automator service. Automator won't accept a bundle as an input for a service (zip, rename and copy to two different locations for backup purposes), neither as a file or directory. Any ideas?

I believe you want to define a watched folder that selects all, compress (zip), rename the archive.zip file, copy for another locations and erase all to wait new files. If the automator action is not working properly you could try using applescript to use Finder commands. For instance open the folder using Finder and run the script:

set numberOfFiles to number of files in folder (((path to desktop folder) as text) & "YourFolder")
tell application "Finder"
    activate
end tell
tell application "system events"
    keystroke A using command down -- select all
    tell process "Finder"
          click menu item "Compress " & numberOfFiles & " Items" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
    end tell
end tell

After that carry on with your actions to rename, copy and delete.


How to connect to an AFP server from a Windows PC? I would like to connect to an AFP server from a windows PC (XP/Vista/7).

The AFP server is a Time Capsule with file sharing over WAN enabled. It seems from my research on internet that it is not possible to setup the Time Capsule to use SMB for the file sharing over WAN.

I know that windows don't support natively AFP. Is there any third party applications which would allow a windows PC to connect to an AFP server. Is installing Bonjour on the PC could help?

I already tried this : https://superuser.com/questions/119923/connect-a-pc-to-mac-os-x-server

Thanks for your help!

Benjamin

From : https://superuser.com/questions/196562/how-to-connect-to-an-afp-server-from-a-windows-pc
(I don't know how to migrate my question to here...)

Installing Bonjour (aka Zeroconf) doesn't help. Bonjour only announces existing services.

If the server only serves AFP the client needs to understand AFP. The only Windows AFP client I knew was PC MacLan (http://store.ca.com/miramar/miramar.aspx) which seems not to be sold any more. (I still have it installed on an XP box.)

The often cited Microsoft Services for Macintosh was just an AFP server for Windows NT Server.

I think there were efforts at some time to create a FUSE driver as an AFP client on Linux which could in principle be ported to OSX but I haven't heard of that in a long time.

I would love to hear of an AFP client solution though.


Where is the temp file created by Disk Utility during erasure of free space kept on a non-boot volume? I used Disk Utility to perform a secure erase of free space on an external non-boot drive, and ran into a problem and the process was aborted.

I see that the file is still there because the drive capacity has taken a big hit. So I need to know where the temporary file Disk Utility writes to is.

Whilst I don't know where its stored, it is at least able to be removed by running Repair Disk in Disk Utility freeing the space for a subsequent free space erase.


How to disable Xcode's '"ProjectName" is a project downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?' dialog? This is not a question on how to disable the warning when opening files or apps downloaded from the internet but instead it is about Xcode Projects.

New with Xcode 7.3 released yesterday whenever a project is opened for the first time that was downloaded from the internet a warning pops up asking

  “ProjectName” is a project downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure
  you want to open it?

How do I disable this warning from popping up?

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Path/ProjectName


Photo gallery app with time stamps In the default camera roll you can't see the time and date of your photos. Is there any app I can install to have my photos displayed like camera roll just with dates? It's quite annoying to search through over 2000 photos. A date selection or sorting would be nice.

PhotoCal and PhotoHistory both allow you to browse photos by date. PhotoCal will also scan your Photostream.


Create a remote only user in OS X? I'd like to create a user on OS X that has remote ssh login privileges where they can access a certain folder /path/to/the/goods/ and add/modify/delete files manually or via rsync while the rest of the Mac is off limits (outside their home directory).

Ideally the user should not have access to run any other programs other than rsync.

This user is just going to be used by a build server to login and deploy files to.  I want to use a public/private key pair so the build script doesn't require password input.

How can I accomplish this?

The best way to do this is to create a chroot jail for the user. I'll clean up the answer here when I get home but I posted the solution on my blog.

https://thefragens.com/chrootd-sftp-on-mac-os-x-server/

Below are most of the instruction from the above post.

First, you should create the new user in Workgroup Admin and either assign them access privileges for SSH via Server Admin or assign them to a group that has SSH access privileges. Further discussion is below.

From the Terminal, start off right.

sudo cp /etc/sshd_config /etc/sshd_config.bkup

sudo chown root /
sudo chmod 755 /
sudo mkdir -p /chroot/user/scratchpad
sudo chown -R root /chroot
sudo chown user /chroot/user/scratchpad
sudo chmod -R 755 /chroot

Every additional new user added will then be something along the lines of the following.

sudo mkdir -p /chroot/user2/scratchpad
sudo chown root /chroot/user2
sudo chown user2 /chroot/user2/scratchpad
sudo chmod -R 755 /chroot/user2

Every folder it the path to the chroot jail must be owned by root. I don't think it matters what group the folder is in. What I did above was to

backup /etc/sshd_config
change ownership of the root directory to root
change permissions of the root directory to 755
create a chroot folder
create a user folder inside the chroot folder
create a folder inside the user folder that user can modify
set ownership and permissions

Now to edit /etc/sshd_config to the following.

#Subsystem  sftp    /usr/libexec/sftp-server
Subsystem   sftp    internal-sftp

Match User user
    X11Forwarding no
    AllowTcpForwarding no
    ForceCommand internal-sftp
    ChrootDirectory /chroot/user

This creates a chroot jail that when the user logs in will drop them into the folder /chroot/user, in that folder is a folder they can add things to /chroot/user/scratchpad.

If you want to create a Group in Workgroup Admin for 'Chroot Users' then add the new users that you created in Workgroup Admin to the Group you won't have to keep editing the /etc/sshd_config file. Instead of the above, add the following. Make sure you add the 'Chroot Users' group to the SSH access ACL in Server Admin.

Match Group chrootusers
    X11Forwarding no
    AllowTcpForwarding no
    ForceCommand internal-sftp
    ChrootDirectory /chroot/%u

To test whether the above is working, issue the following from the terminal.

$ sftp user@domain.com
Password:
sftp>


iCloud sent mail (from Gmail web interface) not listed I trying to use the Gmail send mail as feature in which I use the iCloud mail credentials and smtp.mail.me.com.

It works, I was able to send mail from Gmail web interface while the sender was my iCloud account.

But when looking for that mail in the iCloud Sent folder it is not there. So it seems there is no log in the apple side of emails sent using Gmail send as feature. Or I'm missing something?

SMTP servers don’t always save a copy of outgoing messages in a Sent folder. Gmail’s SMTP server does, but iCloud’s leaves that behavior up to the mail client (in this case, Gmail's Send As feature).

When using an external SMTP server, it appears that Gmail does not instruct that SMTP server (in this case, iCloud) to store a copy of outgoing messages in its Sent folder; that is why you don’t see the record you’re looking for in iCloud.


I want to disable automatic brightness adjusting, but where is the setting? I'm basically trying trying to find this setting:

From this question, but can't find it on this Snow Leopard MacBook. My version of that settings window has the slider, plus a list of resolutions, but not the "auto brightness" checkbox.

Have you tried doing an SMC Reset to see if the option appears in the Display preference pane?

Also, some information about what operating system and model you're using would be helpful.

Edit: After further research, it appears that the model in question does not have an Ambient Light Sensor (ALS) which is required for the automatic brightness adjustment feature.


deleting a large group of photos in photos (like from a game cam) I am trying to delete about 1000 photos taken on a game camera and transferred to Photos.  .  Is their a quick way to do this or do I have to do it one at a time in Photos ?

You can shift select & delete all at one go, if you set the view correctly…

Enable the Sidebar  Cmd ⌘   Alt ⌥   S
Set the view to Albums > All Photos
Click the first in the series
Hold  Shift ⇧  & click the last
Either right click & choose "Delete nnn Photos" or hit  Delete ⌦  [with confirmation] or
 Cmd ⌘   Backspace ⇤  [with no confirmation]

If the pictures are not entirely sequential, you can creat more complex selections using  Shift ⇧  click &  Cmd ⌘  click.


Is there a default confidentiality url I can link to? I am updating my app on the App Store and I now have to give a url for confidentiality agreement.

Is there a default one I can link to, e.g a basic one that Apple would provide for small developers? Or do I have to write one from scratch and host it on my website?

You’ll want to host your metadata sites to avoid rejection in the review process. Something as simple as a GitHub static page should suffice if the content you post is correct and appropriate. Focus on getting the requirements satisfied and the hosting will sort itself out much easier.


Grub on Mac via EFI (Linux: /dev/sda1 Darwin: /dev/disk0s1) (MacBook Pro Early 2011 if it matters) I installed Debian Jessie 8.5 on my MacBook Pro over my old Bootcamp partition (Windows 8.1). I deleted the bootcamp partition with the partition manager in the Debian Installer and created two new partitions, rootfs and swap. I had my hard drive previously partitioned as listed below:

disk0s1: EFI (where GRUB is currently installed. I'll say more about this later)
disk0s2: OS X
disk0s3: Recovery HD
disk0s4: Windows 8.1 installed with Bootcamp Assistant, I deleted it later to install Debian.

My current partition layout:

disk0s1: Same as before, but with Grub installed at: (mount point)/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi
disk0s2: Same as before
disk0s3: Same as before
disk0s4: ext4 partition with Debian /
disk0s5: swap partition for Debian

I was able to get GRUB installed (I don't remember exactly what I did and I tried to reproduce it but did not succeed which is why I'm asking here).

It was working until I cleared NVRAM (don't ask why I cleared NVRAM, it was a very stupid action of me). Before I cleared nvram, I got the GRUB menu when I booted without holding Alt, but when I booted when holding Alt and chose the Debian main partition, it would say "Missing Operating System", same for choosing it from the Startup Disk prefrence, or setting it manually with bless (because GRUB is installed on the EFI partition, not the Debian root partition. Please correct me if I'm wrong).

So I presume that before I cleared NVRAM without holding Alt the system tried to boot from EFI, now it's trying to boot OS X from disk0s2 (there are no set variables that relate to the OS X root, so I guess the system automatically boots the first bootable HFS partition if there are no variables about booting). (To clarify, my problem is that the only way to boot Debian was to boot Grub, and the only way to boot Grub was if it was default startup disk when the system started, Grub can't be booted from the boot menu displayed when booting while holding Alt, and when I performed the stupid action of resetting NVRAM, the default startup disk went back to the OS X partition.)

So how do I change the startup disk back to EFI/Grub (disk0s1/efi/debian/grubx64.efi)?

I'm posting the solution that worked for me in case of anyone else that has this problem comes across this. I changed the path of the grub EFI executable from /efi/debian/grubx64.efi to /efi/boot/bootx64.efi. Now it is appearing as a boot device in the boot selector, but it still wasn't booting by default. So to make grub boot by default I ran the following command (from Linux, not OS X): efibootmgr -d /dev/DRIVE -p PARTITION NUMBER -c -L "Grub" -l /efi/boot/bootx64.efi, where "DRIVE" is my internal hard drive, with GRUB, OS X and Debian installed, and "PARTITION NUMBER" is the EFI partition ID, so for me it would be efibootmgr -d /dev/sda -p 1 -c -L "Grub" -l /efi/boot/bootx64.efi


Does Apple have administrative control over Developer program enrollment? I have tried for 2 weeks to complete enrollment in the Apple Developer Enterprise Program (US$ 299), but halfway through each attempt (10-12 by last count) the application switches from Enterprise to Developer (US$ 99).

Is there any administrative override for this program? I have re-applied 15-20 times by now.

Yes - Apple has very good administrative control and you deal with the sales organization (online web store) when you are purchasing any developer account. They aren’t going to know the in-and-out of why you were rejected a bunch of times but they are showing you clearly the way forward.

Pay the $99
Get your account going now
Upload your first two or three apps to TestFlight and get your testing going with hundreds of internal beta testers.

Then engage the developer support team for free once they can see the sort of work you’re doing and when you have a specific need the basic account can’t meet. Now you’re a known partner they can work with - now you’re the guy keeping on banging on the sales door that was closed again and again. True enterprises are easy to verify and when Apple isn’t sure you are an enterprise, their job is to say no and reject the application so don’t get mad at the process or the people - just level up your goals and build your app now and work with developer support down the road - once they see your need, they will be your advocate so sales arrange an upgrade and/or pro-rated refund if you really need to get to enterprise features before the first year expires.

https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/enroll/

Since the test flight restrictions are so lenient now, you won’t need enterprise to distribute apps to hundreds of employees with the $99 program.

The enterprise account is really for people that start with a normal developer account and need added functionality. If you haven’t had one to two years of experience in the developer paid programs and are not actually an enterprise - I would strongly discourage you from going for the enterprise program out of the gate. You simply don’t need it to get going in my experience.

How to appeal rejection by Apple for Developer Enterprise Account?
I tried to enroll my company to Apple Enterprise program, but get message "Cannot enroll in Apple Developer program"


Watch iPhone videos without transfer to Mac How can I watch the videos I recorded on my iPhone without first transferring them to my drive, so that I can Shazam the music in them? I have no free disk space and iFunbox is not a great file explorer. To my knowledge, Shazam does not have a desktop version.

What software will let me watch the videos on my iPhone without resorting to the unusable Photos or Image Capture apps?

Actually, Shazam for Mac (opens Mac App Store) exists.

Features:

  Operates magically in the background, ready to name that tune at a moment’s notice.
  Instant, seamless access to all the music that makes up the world around you.
  One-click access to lyrics, music videos or to listen on Apple Music.
  Discover like never before, share like always.


Fix invisible cursor? Is there a fix for this bug that causes my cursor to randomly disappear? It happens every couple minutes and it's incredibly frustrating because I'm constantly trying to figure out where my cursor is.

I'm running High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G3025) on a 15 inch 2015 Macbook pro with two external monitors.

Some additional details:

The cursor stays invisible until I right click or press cmd-tab. It seems to happen with several apps including Chrome and Atom, but I've noticed it happens quite a bit more frequently when I mouse over a kitty terminal window.

If your mouse cursor has mysteriously disappeared in OS X, try the following tricks in descending order to bring it back:

Hit Command+Tab to switch back to the Finder or to another app, then switch back to the active app
Summon the Force Quit menu by hitting Command+Option+Escape, there is often no need to actually force quit anything as just summoning the menu is often enough to make the cursor return
Quit and relaunch the app, or quit all apps if the cursor is gone everywhere
Adjust the size of the cursor, found in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display to make it reappear

Reboot

Let me know if problem remains.


terminal.app eats SHIFT key when used with UP and DOWN arrows (but not left or right) Using cat in Terminal.app in order to view the raw codes, I get the following:
$ cat
^[[D    # LEFT
^[[1;2D # S-LEFT
^[[C    # RIGHT
^[[1;2C # S-RIGHT
^[[A    # UP
^[[A    # S-UP
^[[B    # DOWN
^[[B    # S-DOWN

where:

S is for the shift key
LEFT is for left arrow
RIGHT is for right arrow
UP is for up arrow
DOWN is for down arrow

Thus, the shift key is ignored in conjunction with the up and down arrows, but not with the left and right arrows.
I don't see anything under Terminal > Preferences > Profiles > keyboard that would explain this behaviour (following this answer, that is how I solved a similar problem).
I could probably use DefaultKeybinding.dict (see this other answer for example) but that doesn't explain the behaviour.

I'm not sure what there is to "explain".  If you want them to be recognized, define them in your terminal profile.
The canonical list of ANSI keycodes I usually use is here:
https://github.com/timothybasanov/terminal-app-function-keys
 ⇧↑ \033[1;2A
 ⇧↓ \033[1;2B


Capturing text with a bookmarklet in IOS7 Is it possible to capture text from Safari using a bookmarklet on an iPod Touch/iPhone when running iOS7?

In iOS6 I could select text, and then open a bookmarklet (like this one for example) which grabbed the text using window.getSelection().

However, it seems in iOS7, any action to invoke a bookmarklet deselects the text. Am I just missing something, or is this broken?

AFAIK it's no longer possible.

Tried looking at the contents of window.getSelection() by remote debugging my iPhone through Safari. Text is indeed deselected. But even visually, I'm able to see that text is deselected when you tap a link or open the bookmarks menu.

In regards to describing this as "broken", I suppose it's a matter of how you look at it. It could be argued that deselecting is the correct behavior and therefore I doubt it's something that'll get "fixed".


What Mac app has a red icon with right arrow? What Mac app does this icon belong to?

That would be Skitch, an app for marking up images.


LT: Is there any benefit to iOS 8 family sharing for couples without kids? Is there any benefit to iOS 8 Family Sharing for couples besides finding each other's lost devices and sharing purchases if you don’t have kids? For example there are features like calendar sharing that are possible to do through iCloud without family sharing.

yes, most likely.  it has single credit card app store purchases, and can...
"share purchases from iTunes, iBooks, and the App Store without sharing accounts"
pretty useful, i think


How do you prepare or secure your Mac for the possibility of being stolen? I'm using the great applicaton Prey which hopefully never has to get used, but just in case, I want to be prepared.
So basically I have a request for password after sleep/screensaver enabled, but that would propably lead the thief into the direction of re-installing the OS X, all my data would be gone and Prey would be useless.
Therefore I created some other users without a password, so the thief can use the Mac anyway and herewith send me some signals so I can receive his location and all that good stuff.
My problem basically is just that he still can see some Applications, which I can restrict, but the user will see them anyway and get the idea that they aren't full users, so the thief still might have the idea to reinstall. I basically want to make the thief as comfortably in my OS X as possible without giving anything away. What did you guys do? How do you prepare your Mac for the use with Prey ??

My preparation doesn't answer all of your concerns because my priorities are different. I place a higher value on data security than I do on the Macintosh itself. Tracking software doesn't assure the recovery of a stolen laptop. If you're concerned about the cost of hardware your best protection is an insurance rider specifically covering the theft of your computer gear.

So with that qualification, here's my list:

A reliable, robust backup system that works from any location that has an internet connection  and archives data to an offsite cloud server. I use Crashplan Central. When I'm at my desk, I also make daily system clones to a local drive using SuperDuper!
Set a firmware password for the Mac to prevent unauthorized booting from alternative startup drives. Warning: If you set this password, don't lose it.
Encrypt the hard drive using  FileVault (2).
Use a strong password for login.
Set  a short idle interval to lock the screen when computing in non-secure locations. I consider my home, office and most client sites to be secure and I use a longer interval. If I'm traveling or working in a public place I set the screensaver/lock to activate after one minute of idle time. . Regardless of location, I am in the habit of manually locking the screen from the Menubar when I walk away from the computer.
Activate Find My Macintosh via your iCloud account. Don't expect to get your computer back, but it can't hurt, and it will allow you to remotely erase the data from your computer if necessary. I've used this feature to locate a computer that I'd left in a client's server closet.
Develop a workflow that lends itself to getting back to work on a replacement computer quickly. I minimize the applications I use regularly so there are fewer to install and purchase apps from the Apple App Store when possible so they're easy to install from a single source, even from the road.  I use DropBox to store current projects. When needed, older projects are available to me remotely by logging into CrashPlan.

In addition, I carry a mini flash drive in my (real) wallet that has a recent copy of my Password Wallet file and a few other "key" data files. I keep this up-to-date using an Automator action that runs whenever that flash drive mounts on the system.  The current copy of the passwords file is also on my iPhone, iPad and on Dropbox..

Most of all, I try to maintain situational awareness to minimize the likelihood of theft. Even so, my laptop sits unguarded in hotel rooms and offices all the time, yet I rest easy because I've taken the necessary steps to secure my data and implemented plans for a rapid recovery.

One more thing… I have my contact information (phone number and email) displayed on the login screen of my MacBook Pro and the lock screens of my iPad and iPhone. Perhaps I'm naive, but I believe the greatest risk is loss, not theft.


AppleTV's Netflix browse menu is no longer accessible I bought a new Apple TV from the local Apple Store yesterday. I set it up last night and all was working well. I activated Netflix and was quite pleased with how easy it was to browse TV shows and movies within Netflix. The next evening I started Netflix and the interface had completely changed. The only way to find anything new was to use the Netflix search interface. In other words, the browse interface was gone.

Using the same Netflix account I activated my Sharp TV's Netflix app. It has the browse interface. The same is true for my iPad and from the web on my MacBook Pro; i.e. the browse interface is there.

Lastly, I updated my Apple TV last night but I don't remember if I updated it before or after I used the Netflix brows interface.

When using Netflix from my Apple TV, how do I get to the Netflix browse interface?

I use an Apple TV (Gen 3), model MD199LL/A, running Apple TV Software 5.2.1(6025)
Sharp Aquos 60" HDTV

By 'browse interface' do you mean the view where you have a grid of cover art thumbnails?

After you log in to Netflix, you can go to "Suggestions for you" from the menu, and you'd be presented with the grid, customised to your favourite genres and recommendations based on what you've watched and liked. The TV Genres and Movie Genres are similar but each row is a different genre.


How do I send multiple photos from my iPhone camera roll in a single email? I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but:

From the camera app, I can select a photo, and then hit the send button to create an email with that photo in it.
From mail, I can't find any way to add an enclosure without having started in the app that owns it.

I want to send multiple photos in a single email.

since software update 3.0 you can select multiple photos copy them and paste it as email body, in iOS you can SHARE it as email.


uninstalling adware bundled with adobe reader etc My wife recently needed to install Adobe Reader for some of her work (apparently there is some kind of interactive functionality that Preview doesn't support) and in the process managed to install some adware as well.

I am trying to uninstall it, but cannot figure out how.  All the guides I have found talk about how to uninstall it from various PC OS versions, but don't mention Mac.

At the moment there is one extension which shows up under Firefox on her account only: "Shopping Helper Pro 0.95.29", as well as a plug-in "Coupons Inc., Coupon Printing Plugin 1.1.0" which (for some reason) shows up both on her account and mine as well.

The problem is, I have disabled both of them in Firefox, but I cannot figure out how to actually install them.  Supposedly an extension should have a "Remove" button" to uninstall it, but no such button appears.  Plug-ins are said to have their own uninstallers, but I can't find one anywhere.

I am also concerned about whether these unwanted programs have confined themselves to just Firefox, or could be lurking in other places.

How can I completely remove all traces of both of these, or in general any kind of mistakenly installed (b)adware?  It doesn't seem to be as simple as uninstalling an application where I can just drag a folder to the trash.  Is there somewhere I can look (under System Preferences maybe, or another system application) to find and remark this junk?

Update: I discovered that the firefox config entry "plugin.expose_full_path=true" will let me see the full path to add-ons in about:plugins.  In my case I found the offending plug-in in /Library/Internet Plug-ins and trashed it.  However, I have not yet located the extension.  It was not found in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/[profile name]/extensions.

The best tool I know of for removing adware from a Mac is AdwareMedic:

http://www.adwaremedic.com/index.php


signpost_notificationd is flooding error log with błąd "0 is not a valid connection ID" I recently noticed that my error log is being literally flooded with "0 is not a valid connection ID" generated by signpost_notificationd process. The message is being logged few times per second.

How can I check what is causing this?

MacBookPro 2017 / MacBookPro14,3

I was getting this issue on reboot along with the high kernal_task usage. I went through the console killing of the noisiest processes and sure enough, signpost was one of them. Soon as I did, my kernal_task process dropped back to normal. It has been running at > 600%.

sudo ps aux | grep -E '^root.*signpost_notificationd' | awk '{system("sudo kill -9 " $2)}'


How can I tell if a particular directory is connected to a remote machine? I've found various ways to check if a particular directory is mounted under NFS (here, for example), but none of them seem to work on OS X. How can I check if a particular directory is an NFS directory in the shell on a Mac?

The command df will include a list of all NFS shares, and their mount points. If a directory's path includes an NFS mount point, it stored on that machine.


Connect New MacBook 2017 (USB-C) to Apple Cinema Display 30" (DVI) I have seen that the question has been already done, but all answers refer to 2016 MacBook Pro model, meanwhile I own a 2017.

picciano found a solution (see Connect New MacBook (USB-C) to Apple Cinema Display 30" (DVI)) but is working with this model? Has anybody tried it and had real experience?

Just wanted to pass on that today (Dec. 16, 2017) I successfully ran my 30" Cinema Display from my 2017 MacBook Pro at full 2560 resolution using a combination of these two adapters:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A493CNY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073ZZ46M9/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's very important to remember to plug the USB connector from the Dual Link DVI connector into a power source. Apparently that's what powers the adapter. It wasn't working until I made that connection.


App Store on High Sierra suggests Mojave-only updates I'm currently on macOS High Sierra (10.13.6) and I've just received three update notifications from the Mac App Store:

Keynote 8.2 update
Numbers 5.2 update, and
Pages 7.2 update

All of them are marked with Requires macOS Mojave and iOS 12 note - and when I try to Update any of them or all at once, nothing happens (I've tried to reboot the OS already). I want to stick to macOS High Sierra for now, and as far as I know, macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 will be supported for quite a long period of time, same as all previous macOS versions in the past.

Do these macOS Mojave only updates suggest that any further iWork office suite updates will support only the latest, upcoming macOS Mojave? How about security and other bug fixes then? What if one wants to stick to macOS High Sierra until its end-of-life but keep all their apps (including iWork) up-to-date (at least when it comes to bug fixes, not necessarily new features)?

Is is possible to mark these updates as ignored, but still receive any bug-fixing updates e.g. for Numbers 5.1? Does Apple even support its office suite for anything but their newest OS version?

The current latest version of the three iWork apps (as mentioned in the question), are supported on macOS High Sierra 10.13 and iOS 11. You are right, that the apps as well as the OS will be well supported into the future.

1. Pages

2. Keynote

3. Numbers

However, as mentioned in the release notes for the apps, certain features require the app to be running on macOS Mojave and Siri shortcuts requires iOS 12 which is the first iOS version to support this feature.

Pages for macOS
What's new in Version 7.2

  Support for Continuity Camera allows you to take a photo or scan a document with your iPhone and have it automatically appear in your document on your Mac. Requires macOS Mojave and iOS 12.

Pages for iOS
What's new in Version 4.2

  Support for Siri Shortcuts. Requires iOS 12.

Keynote for macOS
What's new in Version 8.2

  Support for Continuity Camera allows you to take a photo or scan a document with your iPhone and have it automatically appear in your presentation on your Mac. Requires macOS Mojave and iOS 12.

Keynote for iOS
What's new in Version 4.2

  Support for Siri Shortcuts. Requires iOS 12.

Numbers for macOS
What's new in Version 5.2

  Support for Continuity Camera allows you to take a photo or scan a document with your iPhone and have it automatically appear in your spreadsheet on your Mac. Requires macOS Mojave and iOS 12.

Numbers for iOS
What's new in Version 4.2

  Support for Siri Shortcuts. Requires iOS 12.


Mac not copying and pasting between applications Today, I found when I copy from one application into my clipboard, the clipboard cannot be pasted into another application.

The next application has its own clipboard.

If I paste into the first application I see what I just copied.

If I paste into the second application I see what I copied perhaps an hour ago.

So, clipboard copy and paste has become application specific.

How do I turn this off?

Thanks.

EDIT, I'm on Mac 10.13.6, and I could not copy between Firefox and Chrome. Rebooting cured the problem.

I had no helper applications installed.

Since upgrading to Mojave, this issue has not reoccured.


Is there a way to access the "Recent Items" list from the terminal? The Apple menu "Recent Items" entry is handy, but at times I would like to be able to access it via command line, e.g. to change to a directory I was just working in with a GUI app. Is there a way to get access to at least the last open file or folder from Desktop to terminal?

Failing that, is there a way to access a smart folder from the command line (for example, if I have one that consists of files modified in the past 2 days).

You can read the recent items plist file.

    defaults read $HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems

There's a lot of "noise" in the output. You can filter the "noise" with grep and list the last entry with tail which should be the last file opened (but not always the case).

    defaults read $HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems | grep "Name" | tail -n 1


Automatically convert images in Photos.app In Photos.app, I have a lot of large png files that I would like to convert to jpeg files. Can I somehow convert them all automatically and keep all the metadata in the process?

You can select all the png files in your photo and then under the File menu select Export. The top option will be to Export x items where x is the number of png files you selected. Select that option and a new pane appears where you can set the type as jpeg. See pane below.

I'm not positive this saves the metadata so I advise you to run this on one image and see if it works.


locate & updatedb - files not found I ran

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

then

locate Radium3

but it returns nothing!

but

$ ls ~/Library/Containers/com.catpigstudios.Radium3/
Container.plist Data

So why doesn't locate see all the files?

Am I using this command correctly on OS X?

Try:

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

And look config:

/etc/locate.rc           the configuration file

Edited:

Post here output:

echo $LOCATE_CONFIG

And:

cat /etc/locate.rc

And:

echo $0

Update:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man1/locate.1.html#//apple_ref/doc/man/1/locate

The locate program searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified pattern.  The data-base database
     base is recomputed periodically (usually weekly or daily), and contains the pathnames of all files
     which are publicly accessible.

Try mdfind instead locate

Updated2:

mdfind -name text which is more accurate. Just mdfind text gives you files that contain text as well. –  David Krmpotic

mdfind -name text


Messages on iPod touch 5 not working Before the messages app on my iPod 5 with iOS 9 was working fine, but yesterday I was signed out for some reason. When I tried to sign back in, it said that I needed to verify an email address and redirected me to the apple id site. I already had a verified email address, but it still would't let me sign in. I've tried re-verifying my email and verifying a new email address but I still get the same pop-up message. How can I sign in?

Problem solved. I just went to the apple id site and changed my apple id email to one that had been previously verified. Works now.


How do you test network speed without an app? The usual Internet speed test is written in Flash. Is there an HTML one that works with iPad and iPhone?

SpeedTest.net has an iPad/iPhone/iPod app.


Python 3 ImportError: cannot import name 'Config' when importing boto3 after installing with pip3 Currently trying to configure Python3 correctly with boto3 to utilize the AWS Dynamo Python SDK. I've used HomeBrew to install Python3 and then I've installed pip and pip3 for my python 2 and python 3 versions respectively.

I've also installed boto and boto3 for both Python2 and Python3.

workspace: python -c "import boto"
workspace: python -c "import boto3"
workspace: python3 -c "import boto"
workspace: python3 -c "import boto3"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/boto3/__init__.py", line 16, in <module>
    from boto3.session import Session
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/boto3/session.py", line 18, in <module>
    from botocore.client import Config
ImportError: cannot import name 'Config'

But it's Python 3 that's giving me the problem as you can see above. Here's my full setup:

workspace: which python
/usr/bin/python
workspace: which python3
/usr/local/bin/python3

workspace: brew list --versions python3
python3 3.6.0_1

workspace: sudo pip install boto; sudo pip install boto3;
Requirement already satisfied: boto in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages
Requirement already satisfied: boto3 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages
Requirement already satisfied: jmespath<1.0.0,>=0.7.1 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: s3transfer<0.2.0,>=0.1.10 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: botocore<1.6.0,>=1.5.0 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: futures<4.0.0,>=2.2.0; python_version == "2.6" or python_version == "2.7" in /    Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from s3transfer<0.2.0,>=0.1.10->boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: docutils>=0.10 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from botocore<1.6.0,>=1.5.0-    >boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: python-dateutil<3.0.0,>=2.1 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from     botocore<1.6.0,>=1.5.0->boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: six>=1.5 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from python-dateutil<3.0.0,>=2.1->    botocore<1.6.0,>=1.5.0->boto3)

workspace: pip3 install boto; pip3 install boto3;
Requirement already satisfied: boto in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages
Requirement already satisfied: boto3 in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages
Requirement already satisfied: botocore<1.6.0,>=1.5.0 in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: jmespath<1.0.0,>=0.7.1 in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: s3transfer<0.2.0,>=0.1.10 in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: docutils>=0.10 in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from botocore<1.6.0,>=1.5.0->boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: python-dateutil<3.0.0,>=2.1 in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from botocore<1.6.0,>=1.5.0->boto3)
Requirement already satisfied: six>=1.5 in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from python-dateutil<3.0.0,>=2.1->botocore<1.6.0,>=1.5.0->boto3)

The frustrating thing is that boto3 works totally fine on Python 2.7.10 which came with my macOS install. But I'd like to use Python 3 and can't seem to continue with it.

It will work if you specifically install Python 3.5, not sure if they have updated it for 3.6 yet, but recently it was incompatible with it.


Mac Pro ATI 5770 with 3 monitors - what active adapters needed? I just bought a Mac Pro 2010 with an ATI5770 that has 2 x Mini Display Port (DP) and 1 x DVI.

The current configuration is as follows:

Mini DP A > passive HDMI adapter > 1920 LCD
Mini DP B > passive HDMI adapter > 1920 LCD
DVI > passive DVI to HDMI adapter > 1920 LCD

In this configuration, only two out of the three monitors will work at any given time.  From reading up on the topic, I understand that I'll need at least one active adapter in order to get all three monitors going together.

What is the minimal number of active adapters I need? i.e. do I need one or two, and on which port(s)? If that matters.

A recommendation for suitable non-Apple adapters would also be appreciated.

Confirmed: for this to work you need two (not just one) active adapters on the Mini DisplayPorts.  When shopping around, the adapters may also be referred to as Eyefinity compatible.  You don't have to buy genuine adapters - I am using two of the cheaper ones.


Permissions of User directory are wrong after manual restore I manually restored the files in my User directory running cp from the Mac OS X Mountain Lion restore disk. Now I can not access my files anymore, and ls -l prints this:

drwx------   2 root    admin    68 17 Okt 21:29 Applications
drwx------   5 root    admin   170 17 Okt 21:29 Desktop
drwx------  11 root    admin   374 17 Okt 21:37 Documents
drwx------   3 fabian  admin   102 19 Okt 08:57 Downloads
drwx------  46 root    admin  1564 18 Okt 20:32 Library
drwx------  14 root    admin   476 18 Okt 20:44 Movies
drwx------   5 root    admin   170 18 Okt 20:56 Music
drwx------  17 root    admin   578 18 Okt 22:31 Pictures
drwx------   4 fabian  admin   136 19 Okt 08:57 Public

From what I understand, it should say fabian instead of root everywhere, but I can't seem to figure out the right command to change this. So, does anyone know how to fix this?

The right command for changing the owner is chown

$ chown owner:[group] file_name

you can type the following line for retrieving more information

$ man chown

You can also try to run Disk Utility, wihch provide a tool for fixing the wrong Disk Permissions.

Open Disk Utility
Select your HD
Click Verify Disk Permissions
After looking at the result you can run Repair Disk Permissions


What is a good replacement for the 'df' command that is broken on macOS Mojave? The 'df' has been my tool of choice to investigate how much free space I have on my disk. But with APFS, TimeMachine local snapshots and all that, it has become unreliable.

I.e. after removing a lot of files and folders, thus freeing up 100GB, it is of course not yet freed up as it is still part of TimeMachine's local snapshots (I really wish Apple would return to us the possibility to turn local snapshots off, it plays havoc with your control over storage use and it comes with risks). Commands like tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2019-11-23-180038 seem not to delete anything, as the local snapshot keeps being listed.

Only Storage of System Information now says there is 100GB extra free space. df still reports the space is not free, so Storage of System Information apparently has access to underlying info that makes it report 'virtual free space'.

Deleting local snapshots doesn't do a thing, it seems:

bash-3.2# tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates
Snapshot dates for all disks:
2019-11-23-180038
2019-11-23-192007
2019-11-23-210050
2019-11-23-220637
2019-11-24-100307
2019-11-24-110637
2019-11-24-122648
2019-11-24-165006
bash-3.2# tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2019-11-23-180038
Deleted local snapshot '2019-11-23-180038'
bash-3.2# tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates
Snapshot dates for all disks:
2019-11-23-180038
2019-11-23-192007
2019-11-23-210050
2019-11-23-220637
2019-11-24-100307
2019-11-24-110637
2019-11-24-122648
2019-11-24-165006

To be honest, I just want to be able to simply free up space and really have it freed up, not linger around in local snapshots. Is that at all possible? Why does Apple makes this simple task so incredibly hard?

The new command to purge snapshots is seriously faster and more well engineered than the previous local store.

It does require a new syntax, so you’re correct, Apple has forced us to learn more and change.

Joshua was in your situation as well and has a very detailed explanation:

How to thin your local Time Machine Snapshots on macOS High Sierra

Apple tools take a while to classify what’s purgeable, but that is getting better.

macOS not showing the actual free space
Why do system information and du show drastically different numbers

If you don’t see immediate clearing of space, it’s a sign your disk has accounting issues and you need to boot to internet recovery or plain recovery on an external drive and repair the wrapper and container.

APFS/High Sierra - `tmutil deletelocalsnapshots` not deleting snapshots


How to avoid external displays limit in iMac 4K? last month I asked about how many monitors an iMac 21.5 4k can handle.

So as suggested I went and checked in apple support page, turns out this iMac only supports up to two additional displays and I currently have 3 displays so 1 of them is totally inactive.

I have the adapters but when I connect the 3 displays at the same time it randomly selects 2 of them.

Is there a way to enable 3 display config? Thanks

Yes, you can enable a 3 display config in roughly three ways:

1) Using an eGPU. This is a real, full powered external GPU connected to the iMac over the relatively fast Thunderbolt 3 bus. You can buy different eGPUs at various speeds, but will generally enable you to do everything on your third monitor that you can do on the first two.

This is how an eGPU is used: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208544

An example of an eGPU where you bring your own GPU (299$): https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-core-x

Another example with pre-installed GPU (399$): https://www.sonnettech.com/product/egfx-breakaway-puck.html

2) Using a DisplayLink adapter. This is essentially a kind of "light weight" external GPU that is connected to the iMac over a relatively slow USB device - enabling an extra display suitable for "light weight" jobs. I.e. it is going to be just fine when working with Excel, but if you're going to be playing 3D games, it's probably going to be overworked. Note that there seem to be some complaints about driver instability or upgrade problems, so it might not be a perfect solution.

You can find a list of DisplayLink products here: https://www.displaylink.com/products

An example of a product: https://www.startech.com/uk/Cards-Adapters/Laptop-docking-stations/usb-3-docking-station~DK30A2DH

Another example product: https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-usb-c-a-universal-dock-g2

Note that not all of these are necessarily compatible with your Mac.

3) Using an external computer to control a third display communicating with it over either WiFi or wired ethernet. This can be everything from an iPad connected with Sidecar to a complete computer running various remoting software.

The three options are listed in order according to performance. However, note also that the eGPU is usually the most expensive option (if you consider option 3 as using spare hardware that you have lying around anyways).


How do I get rid of the clock in the menu-bar in Mac OSX? I want to get rid of the clock menu display in Mac OSX. How can this be done?

Hold ⌘ and drag it out of the menu. If date and weekday are shown, they will also be removed.

Alternatively, you can disable and customize the clock in: System Preferences → Date & Time → Clock.


What is preventing an OTA update to iOS 6 on an iPod touch 4th gen? I have iPod Touch 8GB 4th generation version. I got a notification that iOS 6 is available for the iPod. I have downloaded new iOS 6 but it's not getting installed.

When I select Software Update -> Install now, it shows "Verifying update" and then it shows me "Software Update Unavailable, Software Update is not available at this time. Try again later".

I don't understand why its shows me such message though the update is already downloaded.

To avoid rendering your device unusable due to a bad upgrade file, iOS does some verification of the download before installing (likely some type of checksum to ensure the download wasn't corrupted and it's for the right device, etc.). Given that your install process fails during the verification process, it's likely that you either got a bad download (possible, although it should try to re-download if that's the case), or the authentication and verification servers that the installer needs to check against are having some problems (not unlikely, given the load they've had since iOS 6 came out).

Best advice is to just wait it out and try later. However if you're impatient, you can directly download the update to your computer and update via iTunes (although if the servers are experiencing issues, it might affect this method as well).

Steps for a direct update

Go to this page and download the proper file for your device.
With your device connected in iTunes, open the device page, hold down option (shift on Windows) and click the Update button.
An Open File dialog should appear. Browse to the .ipsw file you downloaded in step 1 and open it.
Your software update should begin normally.


Can iOS 5 Wi-fi sync be used over VPN? With iTunes Wi-fi sync in iOS 5, it seems that the host iTunes machine and the iOS device have to be on the same LAN. Is it possible to circumvent that requirement by accessing the user's LAN (with the host iTunes machine) via the iOS VPN? What steps would you take to set this up?

--UPDATE--

I've been researching this for nearly another hour, and the sticking point seems to be Bonjour. The clearest description of the difficulties I've seen being in this Apple support discussion:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1549218?start=0&tstart=0

Obviously there are ways around this with various third-party VPN solutions, but as far as I can tell, all of those require some sort of software on the client side, whereas on iOS devices, built-in support is limited to L2TP, PPTP and IPSec, none of which seem able to pass Bonjour packets.

Is there some way around this? Ideally, a solution would only require modifications on the home end of things, so you'd only need an iOS device on the remote end to make it work, but if you have a creative solution that involves a MacBook on the remote end and connecting the iOS device through that, I'd certainly be open to the idea.

Not a full answer but as you seem to primarily look for hints and pointers:

According to this MacOSXHints article from three years ago it seems to be possible to route Bonjour over VPN using OpenVPN or LogMeIn. This should (with some hacking and routing magic probably) at least allow WiFi syncing as long as you have computers (not iDevices) on both end of the VPN (and connect the iDevice to one of them).


Finder windows show up in all my Spaces When I open multiple Finder windows in Mountain Lion, I find that, no matter what virtual desktop I go to in Spaces, all the Finder windows remain where they are. However, when I open, say, Skype, for example, the window only stays in one of my virtual desktops, as expected. When I 4 finger swipe to another Space, the Skype window disappears. Why doesn't Finder do this? It's really bugging me.

You just need to ctrl + click on the Finder Icon in the Dock. Go to the Options, and choose how the finder windows show in Desktops

All Desktops

All Window show in Desktop Spaces

This Desktop

All Window show Only in the current Desktop Space.
When your are in another desktop space it will jump to the one for finder when you open folders into windows or switch to the finder.

None

Each finder windows will stick to the desktop space you open them in.


My OS X Mac Mini server crashed - How can I restore it? I have a 2011 Mac Mini Server. It is the unibody model that has two hard drives and no optical drive. I got this second hand so I don't have anything other than the machine itself.

The way I understand these things to be set up is that one drive is the primary drive and the second drive does time-machine backups.

The primary drive is starting to go bad, I connected it via USB to another Mac and ran Disk Utility which tells me:

  Verifying volume “Server HD”
  Checking file systemError: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
  Verify and Repair volume “Server HD”
  Checking file systemVolume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
  Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.

It looks like the secondary drive (Time Machine backups) is fine.

I believe the operating system is OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Server.

What do I do?

Replace the primary hard disk and try to boot it?
Connect the time machine volume and a new (blank) HDD drive to another mac and try and run Disk Utility / Time Machine?
Replace the primary hard disk in the Mac Mini Server and then Boot up an OS X install via a USB Drive?

If number 3, do I need to get a copy of OS X Snow Leopard Server server that I can boot from - or can I just use the Mountain Lion USB boot stick that I already have?

I am unfamiliar with the two disk Mac Mini Server.  I have, however, had a Time Capsule for several years.

First of all:

Your file system is damaged beyond what Apple themselves can fix.  Take the warnings very serious - you may loose data.  I do not think that the hard disk is physically damaged, though.
You may risk accidentially loosing your internal Time Machine backups by accident.

At this point in time, I would suggest that you first create an extra backup of your Time Machine data (this most likely require an extra external drive the size of your Time Machine harddisk) which for the Time Capsule can be triggered from inside Airport Tool - I do not know how to do it for your hardware.

That done, get a copy of your installation media as suggested by soxman.  After ordering with AppleCare - due to the severeness of this problem - you may want to consider downloading a torrent with the dvd images so you can get started before you loose data.

When you have it fixed, consider upgrading to Mountain Lion Server (if possible on your machine).    I do not know if the installer can reformat the file system and restore the time machine backup, but it might be a shortcut to the 10.6 start.

A final note:  I would recommend against using third party file system tools for anything else than salvaging files before reformatting the partition.  File systems are so important that I would only trust Apple itself for OS X file systems.


Can I share HBO Now or Netflix while using iCloud Family Sharing? If two people use the same Apple ID for logging into "iTunes & App Store" on iOS, then they can share app purchases, including the purchase of in-app subscriptions like HBO Now (or Netflix).

If two people use separate Apple IDs for logging into "iTunes & App Store", but link the Apple IDs via iCloud Family Sharing, then they can still share app purchases. However, they cannot share in-app purchases.

HBO Now (and Netflix) are in-app subscription purchases. So does this mean that, if I use iCloud Family Sharing, there is be no way to share a single subscription to HBO Now so that it can be used by everyone in my family?

Is there a way around this, that allows the family to use iCloud Family Sharing but still allows everyone to be able to use HBO now from their devices?

HBO-Now and Netflix are Internet services.

Once you have a account you can log in from everywhere and from any device that supports it. You do not have to be in the same geographical location to share.

No need for Apple ID, iCloud.

The maximum number of simultaneous connections is 3 for Netflix and HBO. If you need more connections (sharing) you can get it for small fee.


How do I do an "or" orperation for a search in Apple Mail? Can I do a search in Apple Mail that does an "or" on supplied criteria?

For example, someone has two email addresses. I want to search for all emails from that person, so I'd like to say "one email address or the other" in my search query.

You can use Boolean operators:

Use Boolean searches:
Use Boolean operators such as AND, OR, and NOT. For example, to search for messages that contain “yosemite” and “yellowstone” but not “teton,” type “yosemite AND yellowstone NOT teton” or “yosemite AND yellowstone -teton.” You must type Boolean operators in uppercase.

Souce: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14902


Why is the % saved only displayed for some refurbished products? I was browsing the listing for the refurbished iMacs and noticed that some of the items explicitly state how much is being saved while others do not.  While it is easy to calculate the savings yourself, I wondered if there was some underlying reason for this.

I believe those entries for which percentages are not shown are build-to-order models. Of course there was an original retail price so there's no reason why the percentage saving isn't shown, but Apple has decided not to display it for some reason.


Can I tell whether "Erase data" is enabled from the lock screen? iOS has an option to erase all data after 10 failed passcode attempts. Is it somehow displayed on the lock screen?

Are any warnings about this options shown while the wrong codes are being entered?
Is any notification or progress bar shown while the data is being erased?
Is it possible to tell whether the data were erased when the phone shows "iPhone is disabled - connect to iTunes" screen?

Are any warnings about this options shown while the wrong codes are being entered?

No, there is no way to tell. The reason being for this is so that thieves treat all iPhones as if they might wipe themselves after 10 tries.

Is any notification or progress bar shown while the data is being erased?

Yes, while data is being erased, the iPhone will switch into the Apple Logo with the progress bar. If Find My iPhone is enabled and you are on iOS 7+, you will not be able to use the iPhone until the owner enters his or her Apple ID and password due to activation lock.
Here's a picture of the screen I'm talking about:

Is it possible to tell whether the data were erased when the phone shows "iPhone is disabled - connect to iTunes" screen?

When an iPhone is erased due to incorrect passcode entries (iOS 7+ at least), the device will revert to the "Hello" screen and will prompt you to set it up again. Most users have Find My iPhone enabled so in order to use the device you will have to enter the owner's Apple ID and password.
Here's the activation lock interface for those of you not familiar with it:


AppleScript, set the position of the frontmost window, even if not AppleScriptable I am trying to write a script to center the frontmost window of the active app, when I select this AppleScript from the Script menu in the menu bar. It should work with any app, including non-scriptable apps.

When I run this from Script Editor, it works fine. whether I select the current app or another app from the “tell” application menu in Script Editor, it still sees that the Script Editor is the frontmost app, and moves that window accordingly. (I have also debugged by manually assigning the name of another app to currentApplication, including a non-scriptable app, and that also works fine.)

The trouble seems to be when the script is run from the Script menu item. I have debugged by displaying a notification with the text of currentApplication, and every time it displays the name of the frontmost application, as expected. However, it does not move the position of the window. What gives?

-- Get name of the current application and its front window
tell application "System Events"
    set activeApps to name of application processes whose frontmost is true
    set currentApplication to item 1 of activeApps
    -- DEBUG -- currentApplication seems to be the correct application
    -- display notification currentApplication
    -- activate currentApplication
    -- Get the front window and its measurements
    set frontWindow to the first window of application process currentApplication
    set windowSize to size of frontWindow
    set windowPosition to position of frontWindow
end tell

-- Get the bounds of the screen
tell application "Finder"
    set screenBounds to bounds of window of desktop
end tell

--calculate the center of the current window
set windowSizeX to item 1 of windowSize
set windowSizeY to item 2 of windowSize
set windowCenterX to windowSizeX / 2
set windowCenterY to windowSizeY / 2

-- calculate the center of the screen
set screenCenterX to (item 3 of screenBounds) / 2
set screenCenterY to (item 4 of screenBounds) / 2

--calculate the new window position
set newWindowPositionX to screenCenterX - windowCenterX
set newWindowPositionY to screenCenterY - windowCenterY

-- set the new window position
tell application "System Events"
    set position of frontWindow to {newWindowPositionX, newWindowPositionY}
end tell

The answer was to allow SystemUIServer.app to control the computer, in the Security > Privacy > Accessibility preferences. I had so many Finder windows open, I can only assume that the warning dialogue was popping up behind them. Once the permission is granted, it works fine.


Apple Mail not working properly Since installing Catalina on both my laptop and desktop I can only receive emails on the laptop - what do I have to do to overcome this problem?

Apple Mail has a wonderful connection doctor.

I would open it and see what specific error it finds and then work to solve it from the wizard steps and help that the connection doctor provides for your specific setup and mail provider.

Once you've done that or if you can't solve it - then you can ask a follow on question or reach out to that mail vendor's support with a very specific error condition and not just "mail doesn't work"

Click the Window menu
Click the Connection Doctor item
Follow the results for any light that's not green


Deleting windows font which were copied from my bootcamp partition I recently wiped my os x partition to reinstall a fresh mountain lion. I already had windows xp installed as a bootcamp partition, and it seems os x copied windows font (tahoma, verdana, surely others...) to /Library/Fonts/

They now appear in webpages, and for example Tahoma does not look that good, and I'd like to this not happening.

Is it safe to just delete them ? Do I need to rebuild the font cache after this ?

I once remember that just after installing bootcamp + os x, os x asked me if it could copy those font, but it just did without asking me first.

You can turn them off in Font Book without deleting. Open the Font Book app in your applications, scroll down until you find the troublesome font and right click/secondary click on it and select "disable font".

Alternatively, problems can often arise if you have duplicate fonts like where osx has installed both the windows fonts and it's own fonts. In this case you could also try right clicking and selecting "resolve duplicates".


HTC software for mac As I understand there is no official software to work with HTC phone on the mac.
So how can I manage my phone contacts, create backups of my phone and so on?

A few links for you (unfortunately, there aren't any free options out there)
The Missing Sync ($29.95)
By Mark/Space, this software allows you to do just what you described to manage your phone contacts (with Address Book), calendars, text messages, music, video, notes, etc.
But as far as their website goes, they don't support backups.

My Backup Pro ($4.99)
My Backup Pro is not a Mac application; it can be found on Google Play.  Quite simply, it is backup software that allows you to backup online or to your local SD Card.  Note that it looks like they have a free version for rooted devices.

Note that you can always try doing the tasks these paid applications do yourself by connecting your phone as a filesystem to Mac:

On the phone, go to Settings > Applications > Development > ...and check USB Debugging.
Connect your phone and tap USB Connected > USB Debugging Connected > Mount > ...and tap Mount as Disk Drive > Done


Why can't you see what you downloaded today for attachments? I upgraded to Mail 6.2 and noticed they appeared to do away with the "Today" option when I am searching to place an attachment with an email?

Is there something I have to check to make this appear again?

This is still possible. When composing a new email, after clicking the "Attach" icon in the upper right corner, select "All my Files". This will show you a list of all you recent files.

You can change even this view somewhat by changing the display configuration icons in the upper right corner of the attachment window. There are 4 options including: thumbnail view (which sorts files by type), and list view (which makes it easy to see meta information on the files, as well as two other views.


Charger cable vs Lighting to USB Camera Adapter My iPad came with the normal Lightning -> USB Type A Male charger cable.
I want to connect it to my Roland piano and the piano's manual mentions the need for a camera connection kit - so apparently I need this: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD821ZM/A/lightning-to-usb-camera-adapter

Now these cables (charger and the above adapter) look very similar to me (both have USB Type A at one end, although one is male and the other is female).

Do they have different wiring/chips?

I use an apple camera connection kit adaptor to connect my iPad to both my RolandRD800 & Kurzweil Forte keyboards. My iPad runs the Unrealbook app which contains all my set lists & songs, and behind each song PDF is a midi HEX string which is sent to both keyboards automatically when I select a song, and this midi HEX string selects the correct patches on each keyboard I require to play the song.

Here is exactly how I set up my connections:

My iPad has the iPad camera connection adaptor plugged directly into it
Plugged into the other end of the iPad camera connection adaptor is a mini-USB 4 port HUB
Into the mini-USB hub I blug two standard printer cables (usb type 'a' to usb type 'b')
Then I plug the other ends 'usb type b' into the keyboards computer ports (one into the Roland and one into the Kurzweil)

There you go. All good. Works a treat. You should now be connected.

NOTE: Your iPad will not charge from your Roland. There is no voltage at the Roland computer port connection to provide a charge. Also the iPad camera connection adaptor is not configured to provide charge to your iPad. It is made purely to connect to a camera and transfer photos.


Books doesn't have a 'Show in Finder'? Books 2.2 on Catalina 10.5.2

There appears to be no more 'show in finder' option! How do I know where my books actually are on my hard drive?

Turns out that Books on Catalina is a disaster. It moves all of your data from wherever you had it in iTunes (in my case an external drive) and puts it onto your internal drive. There is no interface to change the location (you can do it with a symbolic link created in terminal I believe).

mv ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/ /Volumes/SomeDrive/Books
ln -s /Volumes/SomeDrive/Books ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/

I have a new November 2019 MacBookPro, so I can't download to Mojave.

For more reading and complaining check the following link:

https://macmost.com/forum/how-do-i-manage-my-audiobook-library-in-macos-catalina.html


Why will my iPhone 5 not connect to the Internet through 4g but will on wifi My iPhone 5 will not connect to the Internet via mobile data but will on wifi ? I have rebooted it several times, the first time worked but a few weeks later it has happened again and now won't clear. Help please ?

Go to your Settings app, then Cellular. Make sure that Cellular Data is on, then go to Cellular Data Options and make sure that all settings (except Data Roaming) are enabled.


MacBook not recognizing Wireless N USB Adapter I have an aluminum unibody (2008). I recently upgraded RAM & downloaded all software to get my baby up to date. THEN the wifi card died. I tried to fix that myself but thanks to Apple's almost spot-welded screws, I had to change directions. I got the usb adapter's drivers installed & when I inserted the adapter, I got nothing. NOTHING. Can someone please help this old lady? I just paid $35 to the local computer guy to remove a stripped screw. I'm trying really hard to not have to see him ever again. All I want is to use my MacBook again & throw this PC back in the corner.

HELP!!

It might be an alteration in the USB ports. Try checking them out first.


Mail.App, Rules, Regular Expression or content search, Base64 Will the Mail.App (on Mojave) search within the base64 encoded parts of a message with mail rules? It looks like it only searches the text.

I'm not looking for it to decode the base64, rather just search for some raw base64 snippets provided by my rule within the base64 encoded sections.

My goal is to test whether some specific words have been included inside a base64 encoded html email.

It looks like Mail.app skips base64 encoded sections when searching emails via the rules.

Mail and spotlight use the same process to construct and search the same metadata database. If you can’t search in spotlight, mail can’t search as well.

To enhance the function of both, add a custom spotlight indexer to add that pattern to the indexing.

The default spotlight won’t find that content in spotlight in general or mail in specific.

If you’re of a mind to program your own extension here are two developer links to get started:

overview - https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/system-capabilities/search-and-spotlight/
details on the importer - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/SpotlightCoreData/Articles/recordLevel.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008065-CH101-SW1


How do you set the selection in iTunes in an AppleScript I'm writing a script in iTunes, part of which changes the selected playlist. When I'm all done, I want to restore the playlist and the selected tracks. I was able to do the first, but haven't found a way to do the last (and I'd really rather not use UI scripting and keyboard automation to achieve it). Here's what I've got that's working:

tell application "iTunes"
    -- Save the original playlist and selection
    set originalPlaylist to view of front window
    set originalSelection to selection

    -- go on and select some other playlist
    delay 5

    set view of front window to originalPlaylist
    -- something like this, which doesn't work:
    -- set selection to originalSelection
end tell

Try:

tell application "iTunes"
    set originalSelection to first item of selection
    delay 5
    reveal originalSelection
end tell


Applescript Won't Invoke Shortcut Command I have a long TextEdit document I frequently open (via a keystroke, thanks to Alfred). It contains many non-standard spellings, so I de-select "Check Spelling While Typing" (though I want  spell checking to be default on with other TextEdit documents). Note that I've created the shortcut "Command/Option/Control - S" (in Prefs/Keyboard/Shortcuts) to toggle that command.

To save myself a step, I want to create an applescript to open the document and trigger that command. But I just can't make it work.

The document opens, but  "Check Spelling While Typing" won't toggle off.

tell application "Finder"
activate
open document file "reference.rtf" of folder "Documents" of folder "MYSTUFF" of folder "Users" of startup disk
end tell

tell application "TextEdit" to activate
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "s" using {command down, option down, control down}
end tell

==============

EDIT:

I've inserted "Delay", but that doesn't help; the spellings are highlighted.

Is it possible Applescripts for some reason can't invoke custom shortcuts within applications (that have been rigged up via Prefs/Keyboard/Shortcuts)?

Is there another way to invoke the "Check Spelling While Typing" command? It doesn't seem to be one of TextEdit's scriptable commands.

I suspect it wasn't accepting the custom shortcut because the shortcut's solely used in TextEdit, whereas the script was sending it to System Events.

Whether that's true or not, the following script works. It chooses the menu item rather than triggering it via shortcut:

tell application "Finder"
activate
open document file "reference.rtf" of folder "Documents" of folder "MYSTUFF" of folder "Users" of startup disk
end tell
delay 1
activate application "TextEdit"
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
tell process "TextEdit"

click menu item "Check Spelling While Typing" of menu 1 of menu item "Spelling and Grammar" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Edit" of menu bar 1

end tell
end tell


How to forget wifi in version 12.1.2 I changed the password of my school account, so I can't connect to the school wifi anymore. Normally, there would be an option to forget wifi, but that doesn't seem to exist in iOS 12.1.2. Selecting the school wifi does not prompt me to re-enter my password but simply says "unable to connect". I am aware that I can reset all my network settings, but I don't want to deal with remembering the passwords of other wifi I typically connect to. How can I solve this issue?

Settings -> Wi-Fi -> Click the info button to the right of the network you want to forget. There's a "Forget this Network" choice at the top.


How to differentiate between applications with the same name in applescripts I'm trying to use tell application "Google Chrome" in order to script the OS X Chrome app, but this keeps being interpreted as referring to a virtual application with the same name which refers to the windows "Google Chrome" inside a parallels desktop virtual machine. (Parallels Desktop automatically creates dummy OS X applications corresponding to all of the windows programs, so that they can appear running in the OS X dock etc.)

How could I differentiate between applications of the same name in such tell statements, based on the application path or some other attribute?

You can use direct path to the application inside Your Apple Script.
This will looke like:

set p to "/Applications/Safari.app"
tell application p to activate

Here's the link about AppleScript and POSIX paths


How to use multiple pasteboards in OS X? I have a situation where I need 2 or 3 different pasteboards so that I can issue a command-c/v for the traditional copy/paste and then be able to use option-command-c/v for a secondary pasteboard copy and paste and then a third one as well if possible.

The usecase is such that I need to rapidly be able to copy and paste different patterns in a dynamic manner.

I own PTHPasteboard Pro which seems to work again nicely in 10.11, but I have not been able to find a way to copy into additional pasteboards that you can create with it... only paste out from it.

Any ideas on how to either use this app or another option to implement additional pasteboards?

PTHPasteboard and OS X 10.10+

The PTH web site suggests PTHPasteboard Pro does not work on OS X 10.10 or later:

  PTHPasteboard is not currently available for sale, due to incompatibility with Mac OS X 10.10.

Thus it is probable there is no way to copy into additional pasteboards PTHPasteboard creates on OS X 10.11.

Alternatives

Alternatives listed on PTHPasteboard Pro's MacUpdate page include:

ClipMenu
Clipboard Evolved

Regrettably, the alternatives above do not mention OS X 10.11 support. Comments on MacUpdate suggest they may still work on the latest OS X.


Mail.app Never finishes "Downloading Messages" On MacOS mail (Catalina, but also on 10.14), I've noticed that the client never finished downloading mail from my cPanel/WHM-based server (which has support for Apple Push for iOS, for what it is worth). The mail will come in and be readable, but it will keep saying "Downloading Messages" in the status area and the Activity window (the activity window will show it downloading, say, "Message 12 of 12."). Because it gets stuck like this, I never receive notifications when messages come in -- unless the Internet goes down and then suddenly I get a rush of notifications for everything that came in recently. I've noticed this problem on multiple different computers (a 2015 15" MacBook Pro and now a 2019 16" MacBook Pro) and on multiple networks.

With this, I am almost always seeing Mail listed as drawing significant power on the little menu bar icon for the battery.

I'm using POP3 and found that clicking 'Remove now' in Preferences, Accounts cleared this up for me (suspect there was a corrupted message on the server).


Can I make iCloud Preferences forget an old AppleID (mac OS SIerra)? I successfully logged out of iCloud on mac OS Sierra, but now every time I go to iCloud in Preferences, it shows the old AppleID. Is there any way to get iCloud to completely forget the AppleID and behave as if I had never logged in before?

A quick check shows that quitting System Preferences and deleting the folder...
~/Library/Accounts/
...followed by subsequent log out and log in, gets rid of the pre-filled Apple ID.
After that a new sign-in request from iMessage/FaceTime appears.

Other than that there seems to be an abundance of account types listed in the database within the "Accounts" folder, so logging into those might be required again.
To see a list of account types held in the database, run this command in Terminal (to be found in /Applications/Utilities, or via Spotlight):

echo 'SELECT ZACCOUNTTYPEDESCRIPTION FROM ZACCOUNTTYPE;' | sqlite3 ~/Library/Accounts/Accounts4.sqlite

...and press enter

This has not been tested for any long term side effects.


How do I escape a bad VPN sign on request I get stuck and have to wait until the request times out when I enter a bad VPN request. I would like to cancel the request and enter a different VPN address. I tried control break like on Windows but it doesn't work.

I am using Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client version 3.1.05170.
I use the company's default. Depending on how I am connected the VPN client doesn't recognise the .com address and I need to go to terminal mode and "ping" the site to get the IP address. Then cut and paste that to the VPN address bar.

Does anyone have better ideas?

You could try with the native option in your mac to use a different way to connect to your VPN, try this:

Go to System reference > Network > add a new connection (the plus sign on the down left corner) on interface select "VPN" on vpn type select "Cisco VPN" change the name (if you like), Add your company's values and try it to connect, I used this option and my VPN works like a charm.


A jabber chat client that displays a list of rooms? I'm on OS X 10.6.6, and I've tried Adium and iChat, but neither are iChat isn't capable of showing a list of available rooms anywhere on our company chat server. Does anyone know of a Jabber chat client that can? Thanks!

Update: See my answer at the bottom of the page ;)

Yes Adium can!

So the answer to my question is to use Adium. A lucky discovery: I was about to disconnect my chat account using the File menu, but when I moused over the text "Disconnect: ...", a context menu appeared as one might expect. However, I had never clicked the item labeled Discovery Browser. Under the server's "Public Chatrooms" I found a list with the JID of all the active chat rooms.


Disable Mail.app "special" text replacements (i.e., ... –> …) that are not present in global settings Most notably my Mail.app and Notes.app perform text replacements of .... to …, which I do not want.

I do have text replacements globally enabled and want to keep it that way, but I have deleted a previously existing replacement rule of these ellipses a while ago and rebooted since then. Elsewhere this replacement does also no occur, e.g., while the specified replacements work fine in this input here, the ellipses replacement does – also correctly – not happen.

How can I convince Mail.app (and Notes.app) to not perform this substitution?

This is on Catalina (10.15.4).

I'm able to get the behavior you want by disabling Edit > Substitutions > Smart Dashes per app.  It appears ellipses are grouped with dashes.

If you want to use N and M dashes, they can be typed with ⌥- and ⌥⌘- , respectively.


Does Time Machine backup iCloud Drive files that are not stored locally? Does time machine make a backup of files which are stored in iCloud, but not stored on your local hard disk (i.e. files which have been removed from your local hard disk when the 'optimise mac storage' feature is enabled)?

No, these files are not backed up by Time Machine.

iCloud has its own deleted file recovery, available from iCloud.com Settings → Restore Files, but this isn't a substitute for backups since modified files are not stored, only those deleted completely.


How do I put all of the music in my iTunes library (12.2) onto my iPhone 6? Really frustrated with iTunes -- How the heck do I add the music in my iTunes library to my iPhone?

I'm a power user and I've been using iTunes and iPods since the beginning.

I'm going on a road trip tomorrow morning and I want to sync my iPhone 6 with my iTunes library -- just put all 15 GB of music on my iPhone so I can listen to it in the car.

Last week I installed iTunes 12.2 and I signed up for Apple Music.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to sync my 15 GB iTunes library to my iPhone so I can use it like an iPod.  I don't want to stream music from Apple Music while I'm on the road, that requires the cellular network which is unreliable and also costs me tons of money in data fees.

Please help!!

I am assuming that you have your 'entire Music Library' downloaded on your Mac. This seems like a simple case.

Plug your iPhone into your Mac.
Open iTunes
Tap the iPhone icon
Under the "Settings" section header, click "Music"
Click the checkboxes "Sync Music" and "Sync Entire music library"


What happens if I cancel/downgrade my iCloud storage plan? I have more media that can possibly be stored on my iPhone, so I assume that most of it is stored in iCloud and downloaded when required (when I view it).

What happens if I cancel/downgrade my iCloud storage plan?

How do they decide what media is going to be deleted, so that the amount falls within the free plan?

Is there a time period where I can cancel and then sign back up and it'll be as if nothing has happened?

You will be able to access and clean up your iCloud storage, but some services will be unavailable for you.

  If you downgrade your storage plan and your content exceeds the
  storage you have available, new photos and videos won't upload to
  iCloud Photo Library and your devices stop backing up to iCloud.
  iCloud Drive and the other apps that you use with iCloud won’t update
  across your devices. You can't send or receive messages with your
  iCloud email address. Learn how to manage your storage by deleting
  backups, documents, photos, and email messages that you don't need
  anymore. If you cancel your plan or you don't renew it, you'll
  automatically go back to 5GB of free storage.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201318


Final Cut Pro X on MacBook Air what is your experience running Final Cut Pro X on a MacBook Air?

thanks, udo

I have a 13-inch MacBook Air with a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM.

In my experience, it's just too slow to use productively. Screen size is also a concern once you start really using it. I haven't tried it in clamshell mode when hooked up to a Cinema Display, though.

It seems like you'd want a faster CPU as most of the rendering happens in the background, which can really slow the whole machine down when you're trying to edit.

It would be interesting to hear from someone with a new i5 or i7 MacBook Air, but either way, you'd want a larger screen if you were planning on using it without an external display.


Mission control shortcuts stopped working, how do I restart it? I have the mouse gestures such as four finger swipe up shows mission control, or four finger swipe down shows current application's windows.

Occasionally after the computer has been on for a while, the shortcuts just stop working. Is there a way I can fix it without having to restart my entire computer?

You can restart Mission Control using the following command in Terminal:

killall Dock

This will usually fix the mouse gesture shortcuts.


How do I jump to a line number in Safari 6 Web Inspector? So I'm working on some javascript and I want to set a breakpoint on the line that I'm working on. It seems reasonable that I should be able to go into the Javascript debugger and jump to that line number without having to scroll to it manually.

I have read the documentation and have tried a few logical guesses but there doesn't appear to be a keyboard shortcut to jump to a line number. I can't believe that this would have been missed. Is there a way to jump to a line number?

The keyboard shortcut for this is ⌃G in recent versions of Safari. You can find a list of keyboard shortcuts here: https://webkit.org/web-inspector/keyboard-shortcuts/.


Can I use my enterprise developer account to sign Passbooks that will be used externally? Can I use my enterprise developer account to sign Passbooks that will be used to download tickets from a public facing website?

The reason I ask this is because in the enterprise developer program it states that I cannot have apps in the normal app store but only sign apps that would be distributed internally.

Yes - if the enterprise entity is the one distributing the pass to end users, then you should be fine using that certificate to sign Passbook items. Any Apple generated code signing certificate should be sufficient to fulfill the requirements. If you are concerned after reading this, a quick call to developer support might help alleviate any concerns you have.

Apple documents this at https://developer.apple.com/passbook/Getting_Started_with_Passbook.pdf and the version 1.1 of this document states:

Use of Apple-issued Certificates

All passes need to be signed with an Apple-issued certificate to be recognized by Passbook. Passes should only be signed by the entity that will be distributing the pass under its own name, trademark, or brand, and that entity’s information should match the information on the back of the pass.


How to enable Autoboot for old MacBook Air? MacBooks released in and after 2016 have a feature that enables them to boot as soon as the lid is opened. I wanted to replicate the feature on my 2013 MacBook Air (MacOS Catalina Public Beta 5), so I read through this article: http://osxdaily.com/2017/01/19/disable-boot-on-open-lid-macbook-pro/
and entered the following command

sudo nvram AutoBoot=%03

But it doesn't seem to work.
Is there any alternative?

As you stated in your post, this is a feature of various 2016 (and later) MacBook models, it is not supported on your 2013 MacBook Air.

I suppose you could get into the habit of putting your MBA to sleep instead of shutting it down, as this would mean it'd start fairly quickly upon opening the lid, but of course that's not the same as auto boot.


How can I preserve BCC information from iOS Mail? I just discovered that iOS Mail does not preserve BCC information when you're sending a mail, which is obviously atrocious…

How can I get it do that?

This also occurs with other mail clients on Gmail account.

After a bit of googling, it appears the issue has existed for years, and is likely related to Gmail behaviour with SMTP and IMAP. My guess is that Google create the “Sent Messages” entry from what the SMTP server gets in its DATA command, and discard anything a mail client may want to save through IMAP. Doesn’t seem it will be changed anytime soon.

If this is a rare occurrence, you may want to log into gmail.com when you need to send a message with BCC. If this happens more often, you may want to use the Gmail app or another Gmail specific client.


Purchased music lost due to lack of space for iOS 7 update? A few days ago I wanted to upgrade my iOS to version 7, but before I could do this I had to make room by deleting programs that didn't help so much.

So I was forced to delete my music library on my iPhone. And not really thinking about my new purchased music that hasn't been synchronized with iCloud or iTunes. So I lost my new music.

How do I get the music back without buying the music twice? I did a small test by buying one of the songs and Apple charged me again.

On your iOS 7 device:

Launch iTunes
Go to the "Other" tab
Go to Purchased

There you have the songs you bought. You can download them without Apple charging you again.

If Apple charged you again, it's either:

You bought another version of the song
You bought it with another iTunes account