force sips command to write output to stdout I wrote a script that convert a icns file to png and then encode the png with base64.
I could do it in 2 steps:

sips -s format png test.icns -o test.png
base64 -w0 test.png

But since test.png is just an intermediary file, I'd like to pipe the output of the 1st command directly to base64, how do I do that?
Note that sips doesn't seem to support /dev/stdout as the argument of -o.

The sips utility does not support outputting to stdout unfortunately, so you cannot directly pipe the resulting file into another program. And as you have already tested, it also does not support using /dev/stdout or a named pipe or similar, as it will recreate the file when outputting.
However, you can use ordinary shell scripting "tricks" to make a "one-liner" for combining the commands if you wish to do so:
 sips -s format png test.icns -o __$$ && base64 __$$ && rm __$$

Note that this is for Bash, and that it will create and delete a temporary file named __.
Also note that I have removed the -w0 parameter in your question from the base64 command. That is a parameter you would use on for example the Linux version of the base64 command, but the macOS command does not have such a parameter. Indeed that wrapping behaviour you request with that parameter is already on by default on macOS.


Two possibly related issues with Mission Control in MacOS Sierra 10.12.3 I've run into an annoying issue with Sierra.  I typically run four or five desktops in Mission Control (and have since Lion) to group tasks on their own screen space.  This is on a late 2012 mini, which I installed a pair of SSDs into and then did a network-install and then upgrade to Sierra before loading any apps.

If I have a window in focus and pull up Mission Control, and select Dashboard, it switches to the dashboard, but then almost instantly switches back to the active window I was just in.  I have to minimize the active window to get the switch to stick.  This is not limited to just trying to use Dashboard, which I admit I almost never do, usually I'm trying to switch to a different desktop space to go looking for a file in Finder for a reference.  This leads me to another annoyance that is related.

Prior to Sierra, if I had minimized an application, and later used CMD-TAB to switch back to it, it would pull it back up to the desktop space it was minimized from, show the application and switch to it.  Now, it accepts the selection, but does not restore the window.  It does bring it up on the ribbon, but I usually end up going to the dock to restore the application to where I can see it.

Question is this, where are the settings for these behaviors?  Hopefully its a trick setting somewhere I can toy with, but so far I've not found anything that seems to tame these issues.  I'm about ready to nuke the drive from orbit and roll back to El Cap or Yosemite, as these two issues are fouling up several years of work flow habits.

I've seen several posts like this one on Finder loosing focus or this one about strange Mission Control behavior with the Dock that seem in the same neighborhood as my issues.  For that matter this one about auto-swoosh is close too.

I've had my issue strike with Firefox, PHPStorm, Atom (GitHub's text editor) and the GitHub app too, TextWrangler, iTunes (12.5.5.5), Facetime, Messaging, and Launchpad.  I wonder if its not a fouled system hook for the little magic bar thingie on the new MacBookPro.

This sounds like it is a MacOS issue. My 1st recommendation would normally be to update MacOS but I would recommend that you backup your Mac and then reinstall MacOS.


iPhone 4 iOS 7 with no iCloud backup. Is there way to access data? I recently lost my iPhone. I have no SIM and no backups (either local, or in iCloud).

Is there a way to recover the lost data? For example, the call history, messages, contacts etc.

Without any kind of backup there is no way to get the data unless you find the iPhone.

If you remember your Apple ID and password, you can login to appleid.apple.com and set the device as lost.  This should keep a thief or anyone who finds the phone from accessing your personal data.  Hopefully you have the iPhone set with a passcode to unlock.

From Apple Support using Lost Mode:

  If you can’t find your iOS device, Apple Watch, or Mac, use Lost Mode right away to lock it and keep track of its location. For more information, or if you can’t use Lost Mode because Find My iPhone wasn’t set up on your lost device, see the Apple Support article If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is lost or stolen.


Email setup on iPhone 4S deleted contacts, reminders, and calendar dates When I synced my phone to microsoft exchange account, all of my contacts, reminders, and calendar dates were erased.

This is what I did:

Settings
mail, contacts, calendars
add account
microsoft exchange
put in my school email

The settings were found and my email synced. I went to place a call and all of my contacts were deleted. I do not have a mac and nor did i do anything using my iTunes account.

How can I get all of my contacts, calendar dates, and reminders back and keep my email set up on my phone?

When you created the Exchange account, I think it ask you if you want to keep your contacts or replace them with the ones on the Exchange. And it surely works the same for calendar events and reminders.

It appears you asked your phone to replace your already existing contacts list with the empty one from Exchange.

Your best shot to get your contacts back is to restore a previous backup, and then, when re-setting your phone, be careful to what it's asking you.


Upgrade iPhone 5 from iOS 7.0.4 to iOS 7.1.2 I have an iPhone 5 that I use with Straight Talk (telecom provider) and I am trying to "upgrade" it from 7.0.4 to 7.1.2, or any release with the 7.x version for that matter.

I specifically do not want to upgrade to IOS 8 just yet.

I have the file "iPhone5,2_7.1.2_11D257_Restore.ipsw" but I get the error "The device isn't eligible for the requested build." I've also hashed out the gs.apple address in my hosts file.

I know you can't downgrade from 8 to 7, but in this case is there a way I can still upgrade to a later version of 7.x?

Apple have stopped signing any iOS 7 for any device that can run iOS 8.

As far as I am aware, you have no other choices than to stay on 7.0.4 or go to 8.0.2


Is "keyboard paint wear on screen" a real thing? I'm in the process of trying to sell my Macbook Pro (15-inch w/ touch bar, 2018). I found a buyer who gave me a decent offer. I sent the computer to them and upon inspection, said that, and I quote:

  "We have found keyboard paint wear on the screen. This occurs when the
  screen is still rather hot, and closed. When the keyboard and the
  screen meets, it causes the screen to wear/burn-in in the shape of the
  keyboard, thus, leaving a keyboard like imprint on the screen."

As a result, they want to drop the offering price by $150, which seems steep to me.

Now it's true that I've seen keyboard imprints appear on my screen sometimes after lots of use + travel, but I've always been able to wipe them off with some solution and a cloth. I've never heard of "keyboard paint wear", nor can I find anything about it anywhere online.

So I can consider if this an actual problem that they're describing, I’d like to ask: is “keyboard paint wear on a screen” a real thing?

I would say three things.

The most likely cause of any discoloration would be hand grease that transfers via physical contact. That can happen when you have it closed and something is weighted (book or hand) holding the screen glass on the keyboard. Backpacks and briefcases also are excellent ways to compress the gap between glass and keyboards.
Wear is more likely over many commute sessions than one time “hot” contact, but I probability wouldn’t tell Your buyer they’re “dead wrong” if you want them to negotiate.
There is an anti glare coating that will wear due to cleaning with solvents and not water as well as with wear over time.

Totally your call on if you cleaned it - some people can’t care less about minor scratches and imperfections - others feel they need a brand new machine when they buy used. I have seen this to be very excessive where the $150 is basically you splitting the $300 repair to get new glass installed and others where you can’t even tell this unless you have special lighting, look carefully from an off angle.

Taking good cell phone photos of the display when lit and black would be a good thing before you send out the mac for inspection if you think the buyer might care about this. Also, you might ask the buyer - hey, how hot do you think the glass got for this? The physics here has nothing to do with heat and all to do with bending and friction and wear patterns.


Is there a way to determine when an iOS upgrade was installed? Is there any way within iOS, or via iTunes on a computer, to see the date when a particular iOS upgrade was installed on my device (iPhone/iPad)? Not the date the upgrade was released, but the date that it was actually installed.

If you have updated iOS through iTunes, you can look in your iTunes data folder, on a Windows machine that will be:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates\

Then check out the timestamp on the iPhone..._Restore.ipsw file. That will be the date you upgraded (or downloaded) our latest iOS update.

If you updated it directly on the device, I don't think it is possible to retrieve its date.


"Keep" function in iMessages iOS 10 What's this "keep" function appearing next to each message in the new iOS 10 iMessages app? Where does it "save" messages (if it does) and how to get rid of the "saved" ones?

The keep function saves attachments. The attachments are saved in chat information. Tap the i in the top right of your conversation with someone. Then tap attachments and all the kept attachments are there. You can delete them by holding down on them and tapping delete.


Open iTunes applications in Mac I downloaded some apps off of iTunes and it shows up as downloaded in iTunes but doesn't show up in Launchpad or Finder. I tried opening them from iTunes or dragging them in Finder or desktop but they show up as files. How do I open and use these apps?

iTunes apps are for iOS devices: iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
If you want to install apps on OS X, download them from the Internet or the Mac App Store.


Red Button On Top Left Actually Quitting Apps Now? So yesterday, I noticed that when I click the top red button on the top left of my browser (Safari and Chrome), instead of simply hiding the window, it quits the browser and closes all my tabs. The dot under the browser icon is still visible, but when I click on it, it doesn't allow me to resume my prior browsing session and basically opens a new browsing session. My Mac is up to date (macOS Catalina 10.15.6). I'm really confused and was wondering if there's any issue with my MacBook or if anyone has been experiencing something similar?

No, the red dot acts as it always had. The dot under (or next to) the app icon in the Dock indicates the app is still running. You can verify this by doing several things:

Running Activity Monitor and looking for the app in the list of Process names (You'll see a lot of Google Chrome processes)
Use the Command - Tab app switcher, which will show the apps as active and available.
The app name should still be showing to the right of the Apple menu item in the menu bar.


Creating symlinks in "~/Library/Application Support/minecraft" that point to Dropbox, but "the original item for "[file]" can’t be found." The Background:
I use Dropbox to back up my minecraft worlds, configuration files, and various other folders (bin, launcher_profiles.json, mods, resourcepacks, saves, servers.dat, versions).
I put symbolic links in "~/Library/Application Support/minecraft" which point to the files and folders in Dropbox.

The Problem:
Ever since I upgraded to Yosemite, the symbolic links don't work anymore, giving the error "The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “[file]” can’t be found."
I can't think of any reason that the links wouldn't work anymore. Any help appreciated.

Running:
Dropbox 3.0.3
Mac OS X v10.10.1
Minecraft Launcher 1.5.3
Minecraft 1.8.1

Correction: 'sudo' was not the problem. I was using a bash script to link all the files automatically, which for some reason ends up creating symlinks that point to where they are created ('source file' is ignored and substituted with 'target file').

Basically what you end up with is a file that points to itself.

This problem doesn't happen when you type the command into the Terminal manually for each file. You also have to specify the full path to the file you are linking, which I didn't think I needed to. Not sure why, might be a bug with bash or OS X or whatever.

So, instead of:

ln -s saves ~/Library/Application\ Support/minecraft/saves

type (manually in Terminal):

ln -s ~/Dropbox/path/to/saves ~/Library/Application\ Support/minecraft/saves

Hope this helps anyone who is having the same problem.


How do I recover my data/OS after accidentally writing over my main hard drive with an img file using dd? I accidentally wrote over main hard drive with an img file using dd.

This thread is the similar but my case is that I accidentally wrote my main hard drive.

I have a late 2013 MBP 13" Retina 256GB SSD 8GB RAM running Yosemite so I don't have a DVD drive. Due to the incident my OS won't boot at all.

I'm kinda worried about my old photos and movies of my fiance stored on my Hard Drive which is not yet backed up on an external drive.

I converted a 900+MB xubuntu.iso to an img and used dd command to write it out to a flash disk, but accidentally type disk1 instead of disk2. I just noticed it after the dd was executed already

    # command used in mac terminal
    sudo dd if=/path/to/xubuntu.img of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m

EDIT: I also tried single user mode but it throws in error because the OS was already overwritten :(

EDIT2: Corrected Laptop Model and added specs

If I was in the same or similar situation, this is what I'd try...

Using another Mac I'd download Yosemite from the App Store and then create a USB Installer.  Next I'd boot the Mac with the Yosemite USB Installer and install Yosemite to an External USB Drive, preferably a USB 3.0 HDD/SSD or even a large Thumb Drive.  Once the install to the External USB Drive is complete I'd boot the Mac from it and then download and install Ontrack EasyRecovery (on the external disk) then shutdown and move the External USB Drive to your MacBook Pro and boot from it. Then run Ontrack EasyRecovery and see what can be recovered.  If the trial shows promising results then purchase the product and recover as much of your User Data that you can.


iOS 8.4 Apple Music App: How to shuffle all songs by an artist? With the complete redesign featuring the new streaming mixin (which I don't use), it seems that when listening to music from my library (stored on my device) I can only shuffle songs within a single album for an artist.

This is not a dupe of this question, in that I'm not asking how to shuffle all songs in the library.

Instead of selecting the artist to display the albums and songs of the artist, tap the image of the artist and the artists songs will play shuffled.


Has the ability to manage password preferences for App Store purchases been removed in iOS 14? In iOS 13 and below, it was possible to change settings for App Store purchases by navigating to Settings/Account Name/iTunes & App Store - this can be confirmed by taking a look at the following Apple Support page:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204030
As of iOS 14, however, the "iTunes & App Store" page appears to have been replaced by "Media & Purchases". When tapping on this option, I'm immediately taken to what looks like the profile page for my Apple ID which doesn't give me any password preferences. Has the option to manage these settings now been removed?

Has the ability to manage password preferences for App Store purchases been removed in iOS 14?

No, it is located here:
Settings > Apple ID > Media & Purchases > Tap 'Account' Icon > Password Settings:

Always Require Password

Require after 15 mins

NOTE: The 'Account' icon is the little blue circle with a head, located top left.
This is also where the option to sign out of the App Store is located in iOS 14


How can I figure out why a MacBook Pro running Mojave causes network issues with our corporate Wi-Fi network? We have a been problems with new Macbook Pro and Cisco Wireless. We able to see that some time the Macbook assuming the IP Address of network default gateway.

Looking for mac address of the default gateway, we see the Macbook MAC Address, not the MAC Address from network default gateway.

This problem occurs and is solved without any configuration.

Has anyone seen similar issues or know how to resolve it?

Make sure your DHCP pool does not overlap with your default gateway.  Thats the most common problem with what you are describing.


iPad sending to iPhone via iMessage My iPad will not send an iMessage to 3 of my contacts.  I have been iMessaging with them for years, they are family and all have iPhones and haven't changed anything with their carriers, usage, etc.  All of a sudden I got the Not Delivered Message.  Can anyone help me figure this out?

It's hard to figure out what's the actual problem without more information or being at the scene. Some simple fixes you may try:

Restart your iPad.
Make sure you are not in airplane mode.
Make sure you have interact connection. You can test by browsing a webpage.
Go to 'Contact's and double check if their phone numbers (including country code) and/or apple id emails are correct.
Test whether you can message others. If so, it might be your family's side's issue.


How to mount raw disk images? I'd like to mount a raw dump of a disk, e. g. like those created by dd? Is there something like a loop device in OS X?

For those encountering the same problem:

hdiutil attach -imagekey diskimage-class=CRawDiskImage -nomount filename

then mount it as you like.

Source:
https://serverfault.com/questions/174909/mount-block-file-on-osx


How to restore motherboard firmware on an unresponsive MBP mid-2009? My EFI was version 1.7 and I downgraded it to 1.6 by following the instructions in the answer given on How to downgrade EFI firmware back to version 1.6. (I made it to the end of step 4 and heard the "angry beep".)

Now when I power on the laptop the sleep LED lights up, fade to a dim solid light for a few seconds then does several (I think eight) quick flashes before returning to a dim solid light, and then this pattern cycles continually. The screen is off, the keyboard is unresponsive (no caps lock light), the machine makes no beeps or chord sounds and the behaviour is identical with or without the hard drive and/or memory.

(This question is meant as a DIY resource for others that experience something similar in the future and so responses along the lines of "seek AppleCare" or "it can't be fixed" are discouraged. )

A search for fixing broken firmware suggested that you can use a "firmware restoration CD". These are some instructions for creating and using one (although I don't see your machine listed). If you can't find the right CD for your machine, maybe you can take it in to an Apple store; they should have all the tools necessary to fix firmware if it exists. If they fix it, see if you can find out how.


Cannot connect iPhone 4 to iMac after Lion upgrade I upgraded my 2009 model iMac to Lion yesterday. I can no longer connect my iPhone in order to synchronize with iTunes. Additionally, if I connect it to the USB port on my wired keyboard, it is also no longer charging the phone. The only way I can charge the phone now is if I use one of the USB ports at the back. Prior to the upgrade I had absolutely no issues using the keyboard USB port for this.

Can anyone offer any hints/tips to assist with troubleshooting this?

I manually downloaded and re-installed iTunes 10.4 from the Apple website, and this has appeared to have fixed the problem. iTunes is recognizing my iPhone, and I can once again use the USB port on my iMac's keyboard.


Push text files between my phone and my laptop using native OS/apps, not third party installs? I like to keep track of information with simple text files, and I'd like to push them back and forth (or synchronize them) with native iOS and macOS software.
Is there an easy way to do this?
Here's an example; I go to the library and on my laptop find many library book call numbers (each on a different tab in a browser).
I glob them together, sort the call numbers in order with Python then paste back into a text file.
Then I hold my phone up to the screen and photograph it!
Then I can go to the stacks and check the books without carrying around my laptop.
If there was a printer in the library nearby, I'd print it. If lists like this were shorter, I'd just copy them down by hand.
Question: How can I easily, painlessly push text files back and forth between my phone and my laptop?

AirDrop:

With AirDrop, you can wirelessly send documents, photos, videos,
websites, map locations, and more to a nearby Mac, iPhone, iPad, or
iPod touch.

You should be able to “share” the text file and select your iPhone under AirDrop.

Another option is to Copy and paste between devices:

With Universal Clipboard, you can copy text, images, photos, and
videos on one Apple device and then paste the content on another Apple
device. For example, you can copy a recipe from your Mac and paste it
into a note on your nearby iPhone.


Is there a way to have the touch bar set permanently on the function keys? I know that, using the keyboard settings preference pane, you can set "touch bar shows" to "Expanded Control Strip" to remove the per-app buttons. This mirrors the out-of-the-box configuration on non-touchbar models where the physical F-keys would execute special functions (setting brightness, sound levels, etc), and holding down fn would let you use the normal F1 F2 etc keys.

I'd like to set the opposite of this (answered in this question) - where the bar always shows the F-keys, and requires holding down fn to access the special functions.

Is there a way to configure the touchbar in this manner?

System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard → Touch Bar shows ‘F1, F2, etc. Keys’.

Also set ‘Press fn key to Show Control Strip’ to use the Fn key to complete the inverting of the Touch Bar.


MacBook Air OS X Lion will not update I am unable to download any writing apps because my MacBook Air OS X Lion is at 10.7.5 and isn't recognising that there is any other updates so i cannot update my MacBook to 10.11 to download any apps.

If it's a first generation MacBook Air, the latest OS it can run is 10.7.5

Source: EveryMac


How to mount the pc/iso partition of an iso file when it also contains an HFS partition? I have a disc image with the .iso file extension. Mounting this brings up contents that look much like I would expect from something 20 years ago on a pre-OSX Mac. When I do a mount command in Terminal, it shows this file as mounting with the HFS filesystem (confirming my suspicions). But this was not a Mac-only disc, it's an image of a hybrid disc (or so I believe).

Is there a way to mount this so that it looks like what a PC owner or Linux user would see? The manpage for hdiutil suggests absolutely nothing of use for the "attach" command. None of the options work.

And the mount command is problematic in that I cannot figure out what options will make it work (other than that I need -t iso_9660, the other requirements seem quite different from what they'd be on linux).

You can check that the .iso file does indeed have an HFS/HFS+ volume on it with the file command (I can't remember if this is native or if I installed it via homebrew... might have to do that yourself):

file -k --mime path/to/something.iso

If it does have an HFS volume, then the output will be 3 lines (instead of 2).

something.iso: application/x-iso9660-image
- application/x-apple-diskimage
- application/octet-stream; charset=binary

To mount the PC portion, you have to do more than just doubleclick.

hdiutil attach -nomount something.iso

This will produce output something like this:

/dev/disk3              Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk3s1            Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk3s2            Apple_HFS

Keep in mind that depending on what else you might have mounted, the disk number can change. If so, amend the following command:

mount -t cd9660 /dev/disk3 ./path/where/contents/will/show

Also, you will need an empty directory, the path/where/contents/will/show. You can create it as you would any other way on OSX. It can be a relative path, or an absolute one. It won't automatically remove itself after you're done mounting this though.

Finally, when you are ready to get rid of this, there are several commands to undo all of this.

umount ./path/where/contents/will/show
hdiutil detach /dev/disk3

Doing this more than once or twice has the tendency to cause my iMac running Mojave to lock up and required a reboot (but I had done this with as many as half a dozen ISOs at that point).

I forget where I found this (didn't figure it out on my own), and I think it was on Stackoverflow. I apologize to whomever posted the answer there as I can no longer give credit. Answering it here though will make it easier for others to find.


Alfred and Spotlight don't detect VSCode even though I've it on shortcuts When I installed the VSCode I had added it to dock applications.

I am not able to find it/open it with Alfred or Spotlight. I tried to search for: code, VSCode, visual studio code, and nothing. It seems like if I remove VSCode from dock, I won't be able to start it again.

Any idea?

I had the same problem and just managed to fix it.

I went to System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results and then unchecked "Applications", then re-checked "Applications" and it instantly fixed the problem.


Install windows 10 on bootcamp fails Im trying to install windows 10 with bootcamp.
But what i`m trying it wil not work. I hope some one can help me.
When i create a bootable USB via bootcamp this all works wel.
than i delete the Bootcamp partition manually and create a new one (same size) and select the format option Free Space
When i restart the MBP with the option button hold i see the EFI USB drive.
When i start the installation process the, it is asking a few questions about the language and key, . also it is asking on which drive windows should be installed. I select the free space part and format it. Only then the next button lits-up. The install continues. When finalizing the installation im receiving an error Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration  I have no clue why this is happening.

Does anyone have the same problem?
Hope someone can help me, thank in advanced

OSx version 10.10.5

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)

Windows 10 pro x64 (ISO form MS site)

Supported sites:

How to Install Windows 8.1 on Haswell Mac?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6522350

http://www.123myit.com/2014/08/fix-gpt-error-windows-installed-disk/

Bootcamp - No ISO Option

Go to Applications - Utilities click Boot Camp Assistant follow the step by step instructions

Format the partitioned drive first
Give the partition at least 40GBs
Make sure you have a valid copy of windows

If you need more help here are a couple of videos with step by step instructions:

How to Install windows 10
Make a Bootable USB_Drive


Can a flashed Mac Pro 2009 (5,1) support macOS Mojave Can macOS Mojave be installed on a Mac Pro 2009 that has been flashed/upgraded to the 5,1 firmware (Mine already is) with a Metal supported GPU like a AMD RX 580?

Yes, got Mojave on my 2009 5,1 flashed with the High Sierra update this morning using the 6/18 Mojave download.

The Apple store wouldn't let me download Mojave directly to my 2009, had to download on another machine (a 10.13 Fusion VM) then create a bootable USB, boot my 2009 from the USB and install from there.


whats the amount of time that can be lft on a voice mail message how long will voice mail record a message?  what is the amont of time you can leave a message on voice mail?
I'm trying to find out how long of a message the I ohone can hold if there is a time limt then it cuts of ???? will it record for long periods of time

Most mobile (cellular) phone providers only allow a max of 3mins. I know T-mobile, AT&T and Verizon all adhere to this and that's basically 80% of the market in the USA. Pretty much the same for Europe. Landlines with hardware answering machines are all different and can be user set.


Restore the RAM pie chart dock icon which was removed in Mavericks? I configured Activity Monitor like this on all of my machines. I also set up my non-techie friends' Macs this way as well:

It was the best "health snapshot" for the Mac I'd figured out, and not hard to set up. I'd advise friends & clients to always make sure they "see green" when they're having system speed or responsiveness issues.

And then, this was a great signal that either a RAM upgrade is called for, or some app is out of control.

But now, this option was removed in Mavericks. And it's extra annoying because Mavericks promises to use memory better on some laptops. And I was looking forward to seeing how the pie chart compares.

Does anyone know a way to (1) simply display this same chart, or even (2) set the Activity Monitor's dock icon to it?

I have been using Menu Meters for a while and it works great with Mavericks:


How to send letters to all the recipients at once Apple Mail? I have 100 open emails in Apple Mail. There will be one recipient for each email. Such a requirement is very important to me and can't be changed.

How can I automate the process of sending these emails with one or two clicks? I prefer not having to press 'Send' 100 times.

The send shortcut is ⇧⌘D. Hold this down to send the emails.


publickey error using cvs I'm trying to get a copy of the repository for scrotwm using their cvs repository, but I'm having some trouble. I'm running the pull according to this example: http://onethingwell.org/post/5609933530/scrotwm-osx.

Sadly, when I run the cvs pull I get the following error message:

Permission denied (publickey).
cvs [checkout aborted]: end of file from server (consult above messages if any)

I haven't managed to get anything else working with cvs, but it looks like an ssh error of some kind. My github is working fine, and I know how to set up new ssh keys for github, but I haven't been able to find anything similar for cvs. Any ideas on places I should look?

It may be because scrotwm has been renamed to spectrwm and I'm guessing the old CVS repository has been removed.

As per the above link, you can clone the new git repository using either of the following:

    $ git clone git://opensource.conformal.com/spectrwm.git
    $ git clone https://opensource.conformal.com/git/spectrwm.git


Unable to directly paste a link from Twitter into web forms in Mobile Safari When I copy a t.co link (tap/hold > Copy link) from the Twitter app, I am unable to paste into any web forms in Mobile Safari. I can still paste into other objects (e.g. the address bar, the search bar, the Notes app, etc).

Is this a bug? How can I avoid having to first paste the link and then recopy (Select All > Copy) it as @iglvzx suggests in the comments?

I had the same problem. I closed Twitter out and re-opened, then I was able to paste again.


All Ports in Use after High Sierra Update I'm a developer and I have a project built with a task runner called Gulp, when I try to launch it via command line I get an error saying that the port is in use (3000). I then changed it to all other ports I could think off and still the same error.

Need to work on this project, anyone know how to fix this?

Ok solved it...

Not sure which one of these fixed it, but opened Xcode and accepted the agreement (or run sudo xcodebuild -license accept). I then ran brew update then brew upgrade node and then npm rebuild node-sass --force- to rebuild.

It still wasn't working so I finally changed the order in which I was putting tasks in Gulp and it is now fixed...


iPhone 4s Lock/Power Button Sticky I am using an old 4S and the Power Button is kind of half stuck down. Are there any hints or tricks out there to un-stuck it?

The only thing that I can think of is using Assistive Touch, which allows you to lock your device without ever actually touching the lock button.  Other than that, I would say just get the button replaced or buy a new phone - sorry!


Why can't I set a metadata content provider on Plex? There's no Set Content button when I add a media source in Plex (0.9.3.4) to select a metadata provider.

I've installed Plex on a Mac Mini running Lion and added a content source.  To add the source, I went to Video Plugins -> Add Source.  I added a folder called movies from my smb share by clicking Browse, selecting the folder, and clicking OK.

Now all tutorials and screenshots I've seen show a "Set Content" button on the Add Video Source menu, and this button allows you to set a metadata content provider.  I see all the buttons (Browse, Add, Remove, OK, Cancel) except Set Content.

How do I set a metadata provider for Plex if there's no Set Content button?

Plex comes with 2 components:  The browser and the media manager or media server.  The media manager is what manages your movie library.  If you just go into Video Plugins and select Add Source, then Plex just treats it as a random collection of videos, not movies, and you cannot assign a metadata provider.

To add movies with the metadata providers, you have to add them to the Media Manager.  You access the media manager by clicking on the small Plex icon up by your system clock.


How to stream my video files from the cloud? I use Dropbox to backup all my important files, but I'm running out of storage space on my computer.

Many of the files are video files that take up the majority of my storage, and it's not imperative that they're stored on my computer.

Is there a way to configure Dropbox so some selected files (in my case the videos) are stored in the cloud so I can stream the videos when I need to watch them, but otherwise they don't take up space on my local drive?

Or is there an alternative cloud service that provides this functionality?

You could try Jungle Disk. It's a pay service, but it gets you what you want - a locally mountable cloud drive. It can store data locally as well, like Dropbox, but you can configure it as an archive, with no local storage used. It uses Amazon S3 or Rackspace as the backend storage, so you pay a $3/month fee, plus an amount per GB per month.

I believe there are similar services out there, and you can just use S3 directly and get something like Panic's Transmit to mount the S3 storage as a local volume.


Download Entire iMessage History with One Person as Plain Text I am doing some archiving after a loss and would like to preserve a chat thread with one person in plaid text/pdf (not .HTML by date). The thread goes back 2.5years, so there is a lot. I have accessed the ~/Library/Messages folder but there is no good way to get the thread/messages into a format where i can make one large file of all of them. Any ideas?

The Messages app stores history in ~/Library/Messages/chat.db, which is a database in SQLite format. To open it and inspect it, you'll need to install the SQLite tools, which are available from the SQLite website or from Homebrew with brew install sqlite.
In a terminal, run sqlite3 ~/Library/Messages/chat.db, which will open the sqlite3 command line. Type SELECT * FROM handle; and search for the relevant conversation - its ID is the number in the first column.
Next, run .output filename.txt to set a path for the output to be saved, and
then run the following command, replacing 12345 with the ID of the conversation you're exporting.
SELECT handle_id, date, datetime(date / 1000000000,'unixepoch','31 years'), text
FROM message T1
INNER JOIN chat_message_join T2
    ON T2.chat_id=12345
    AND T1.ROWID=T2.message_id
ORDER BY T1.date;

You will now have a text file, filename.txt, containing this conversation in chronological order. You can run .schema message to see the full list of columns if you would like to save more data - simply add a comma and the name of the column onto the SELECT statement.


How to set the default flag color in OS X Lion Mail.app Currently, when I use the Command+Shift+L keyboard shortcut to flag a message in Mail.app, it defaults to the first flag in the available list (Red). Instead, I would like the default to be one of the other flag options (Yellow, Purple, Grey, etc.).

Is there any way to do this?

This can be accomplished by customizing macOS keyboard shortcuts.

Open System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts, App Shortcuts.
Click the plus-sign (+) button below the central pane.
In the next dialog, select Mail.app from the Application dropdown.
Type Yellow (or whatever color) as the Menu Title.
In Keyboard Shortcut, press something you wouldn't accidentally press as the keyboard shortcut (I chose CommandControlOptionShiftR).
Click Add.
Repeat the process with Yellow (or whatever other color you want that is available) as the Menu Title and CommandShiftL as the keyboard shortcut.

Now when you use Mail, the new color will respond to CommandShiftL.


How can I transfer data from a G5 iMac to an i7 iMac? Today's my mother's birthday, and hey gift is a new iMac.

Her older iMac has a G5 processor, and is thus stuck on Leopard. She also has an older version of iLife.

What will be the best way to transfer the data? Does the migration assistant work well across OS versions and CPU architectures? (I know that for some programs I'll require Rosetta.)

Does the migration assistant work well across OS versions and CPU architectures?

Yes, this will work just fine. The best way to do it is to get a firewire cable to connect the two iMacs, boot the older iMac into Target Disk Mode, and let the installer on the new iMac perform the migration.

I believe that Rosetta isn't installed by default, but when you try to launch a Power PC app you will be prompted to install it.


What's the best memory upgrade option for a mid2007 macbook running 10.6? Possible Duplicate:
  Can an 2009 iMac have an odd total amount of RAM?

Yeah, I'm still trying to kick it old school.

I have a Macbook 2.1 (2.16 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB of Memory, 667 MHz Bus speed) that I recently installed 10.6 on (thanks to help from stack exchange). Unfortunately, between snow leopard and upgraded internet browser, I have about 20 MB of free memory just when checking my email. Lots of loading time and spinning wheel (aka Steve Jobs' eternal flame).

I've heard that since I have a dual core that I should always keep the two memory modules paired for best performance, which would make my best option two 1GB modules. But then I read on Crucial's website that the mid2007 macbook has a max of 3GB of memory, and that the an upaired set of 1GB and 2GB would be better than two 1 GB.

On a related note, will I notice a big difference with 3 GB vs. 2 GB of memory?

Thoughts? Answers?

You're not the first person to wonder about this. Yes, matched pairs are good for speed. More RAM is also good for speed. In my experience, and in what I've read, the speed boost from more RAM more than offset the penalty for mismatched pairs.


Help. Question about run application on IOS 5.1 I am using Xcode 4.2 with iOS 5 to develop an application. This application doesn't include any new features provided in iOS 5.1. So, if I submit this app to App Store, can the users download it and run it on their iOS device with iOS 5.1?

Any comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks a lot. :)

Every iOS version is backwards compatible, so yes.

But if you are not including any iOS 5 features, you should target a lower iOS version in Xcode , so users with old devices can run it too. Example: the iPhone 3G can only be updated to run iOS 4.2.


Remove missing pictures in iPhoto My iPhoto (iLife 11, version 9.1.5) committed sepuku. No fear, I have backups.

The backups I restored, instead of having 182GB of poorly taken pictures, ended up taking 276GB. Something failed with the restore procedure. The backup application I'm using is CrashPlan (and I do have an open support request about this with them and they are looking into it). I restored the whole directory of pictures (the iPhoto Library) into another directory and opened it with iPhoto (by starting it while pressing alt/option).

I restarted iPhoto in maintenance mode (by pressing alt and command when starting iPhoto) and selected all options but the restore from backups. After regenerating everything, it claimed there were 27000 new pictures in there somewhere. As expected. I was offered to import them. I selected yes. Asmost all the pictures were duplicates and they are being ignored.

Now, my concern is, those pics must still be laying around. Any ideas how to find them and delete them?

Update: in this screenshot you can see the differences in sizes between the original library, now broken, the recovered and fixed library and re-recovered, unfixed library:

This usually happens when someone imports one library to another Can you describe the exact steps you took to restore the Library. What app did you use to back it up? Remember that dropping a Library onto the iPhoto icon will cause it to import too.


How to remove SSL exception Safari I don't have enough rep to comment on this question which would probably be more appropriate than asking a new question: How do you remove SSL certificate exceptions on OS X?

I just tried this on OSX 10.12.5 with Safari 10.1.1 and it's not a solution for me.  I can't find the exception'ed certificate anywhere to delete or change it's permissions.  I've also chosen to show invisble items and expired items in the keychain and closed/reopened Safari.

Personally I think the browser itself should include an option to revoke the exception instead of jumping through the OS, if it makes it so easy to set it, it should be just as easy to remove it from the same place like other modern browsers allow for.

Back story: I visited a website I recently created and added the Cloudflare Universal Edge certificate however my domain is actually serving up my server's CloudFlare Origin certificate which is untrusted and should only be used for traffic between my server and Cloudflare.  I know this is NOT an OSx or Safari issue however...

In Safari, I accepted the exception because 1) I know my website is completely safe and 2) I needed to access it right away while CF helps me figure out the problem is of the wrong cert being provided.

However I need to remove this exception so I can test my site's SSL properly ensuring it's fixed.  I'm forced to use another machine.

The problem is the recently added exception is not listed anywhere in keychain access.  So what do I do?  I'm a web developer and if this is giving me this much headache how does Apple expect non technical folks to handle this?

I had this issue come up recently when traveling out of town, and having issues connecting to hotel WiFi, and in doing so did some IP sniffing, and trying to get onto a site via IP, which had a certificate mismatch, which I first added an exception to.

To get to the bottom of it, I first got info from the certificate in the browser, but nothing turned up in Keychain access looking for that. What I did to fix this was click on the lock icon in the URL bar, then clicked on Show Certificate. In that window, go to Trust > When using this certificate, and click on the ? icon to the right of the settings, which brings up a Mac Help window, which if you click on the link Open Keychain Access for me, where you can see the certificate highlighted in the Keychain Access listing. Tap the info button on the bottom of the screen, and from that window click to expand Trust, then change When using this certificate to Use System Defaults. Once this is done, flush your caches, close and restart the browser, and test to confirm.

Here's a screen capture with that first info button highlighted:


How do I reset the Display cached data? A week ago I noticed a weird Lion symptom, and posted a vague description of one this problem.

Today, after some tests, I came to a conclusion that this bug reproduces whenever a the computer is logged into while plugged to a certain display, and then being plugged to a different display.

The only thing I can think of is that the display data is saved, and a conflict occurs upon the plugging of a different display.

Any idea as to how I can delete or reset this data?

I am unable to reproduce the problem.

Maybe this will work: System Preferences > Displays > Detect Displays


Cannot exit fullscreen and cannot interact with fullscreen applications macOS Sierra 10.12.5 (16F2073)

On my Mac whenever any application (chrome, spotify, slack, etc...) enters full screen mode I cannot exit or interact with the application in any way.

option+F11 does not result in any change
option+F10 does not result in any change
option+F9 does not result in any change
option+F8 does not result in any change
command+F does not result in any change
command+shift+F does not result in any change
command+control+F does not result in any change
Mousing to the very top of the entire monitor reveals a menu bar which does not respond to being clicked
Window control buttons (red, yellow, green - top left corner of the window) do not respond to being clicked.
command+W does not result in the window closing
If an application supports multiple windows (eg: chrome may have multiple windows with tabs inside of them), I can move the window around but I cannot interact with anything regarding the application (all of the above also applies to this sort of window).

I can only close the application via things like pkill -9 '<process-name>' at the command line.

My question:- How can I troubleshoot this further as I'd love to be able to use full screen mode.

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires patience.

The first thing I would do is to test whether this behaviour is replicated in Safe Mode.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. is the issue still present, etc)
Now exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Once logged in again, test to see whether the behaviour continues

When you're finished let me know how you went and we'll go from there.

If you find that you don't have the problem in Safe Mode, but still do after logging in normally again, then it's time to investigate login items, fonts, and kernel extensions

Investigating login items, fonts, and kernel extensions

Let's start with Login Items:

Startup normally
Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups
Select the Login Items tab
Take a note of your Login Items
Now remove all of them by highlighting them and clicking on the - button below
Restart your computer

Now your Mac will boot up without those login items loading. Test this and see if the problem persists:

If the problem goes away you know one (or more) of the Login items were causing the problem. You can then add them back in one by one until you've identified the culprit. Problem solved.
If the problem does persist, it's either a problem with fonts you've installed yourself or with a 3rd party kernel extension. A little more info below:

Fonts:- You can remove any of the fonts you've installed yourself to see if this makes a difference.

Kernel Extensions:- You can open Terminal (found within your Utilites folder) and enter the following command:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

The above command will list 3rd party kernel extensions (you may need to stretch the Terminal window so it's easier to read). Look for anything you don't remember installing, or something that belongs to software you've removed, or just anything that looks out of place. Remember though, this is a list of 3rd party kernel extensions and therefore any of them could be causing the problem.


Would it be bad for Mac to use older printer drivers not meant for that OS? I have old printer and in Canon website, there are drivers, latest for OS Lion, not for El Capitan.

Would it be dangerous to try and install drivers meant for Lion? Or would the issue just be if it works or not?
I'm just wondering if there is more to dividing drivers by OS than incompatibility or would it cause security risk?

Or would the issue just be if it works or not?

Most-likely this. Since 10.7 was released, there have been some big changes to the rules for macOS drivers (kernel extensions, or kexts).

The two biggest changes are:

Kernel extensions must be signed (unless you disable the signature check, which is enforced by System Integrity Protection)
3rd-party extension now need to be in /Library/Extensions, rather than /System/Library/Extensions.

Most-likely System Integrity Protection will prevent you from installing the driver, and even if you put the Kext in the right place, it may not be signed properly or even compatible.

So it's probably not even possible.


Macbook Pro 2017 Heating Issue while running Windows 10 on Bootcamp Im new to the Mac Environment.I have got the Macbook for some development purpose.I have completed my work on Xcode and moving on to windows.The main Platform for which i work is Windows,so i have installed windows on my Macbook pro using Bootcamp.
The bottom panel of the Macbook runs visibly hot when running Windows compared to running High Sierra.I have Visual Studio 2017 open and even in idle conditions the Macbook appears hot.
See the system temperature

I have reduced the CPU Performance and change the cooling to active in power options.

I have downloaded new software from apple using the Apple Update tool.
I have noticed that the AMD Gpu is being used to power windows on Bootcamp.
I was wondering if this kind of stuff is normal.Im worried if this is overheating and it might compromise the life of the Macbook for which i have spend a lot of money on.
Please advice

The needn't worry over the core temperatures you've shown in your screenshots (47-50 degC). And your system will always run hotter when you are using Windows in Bootcamp... I don't know all of the reasons for this, but it's just "the way it's always been" on my Macs.

As for your questions, "I was wondering if this kind of stuff is normal. I'm worried if this is overheating and it might compromise the life of the Macbook for which i have spend a lot of money on.":

It's a well-known fact that heat adversely affects the life of electronics. But again, for the temperatures you've recorded, I wouldn't worry. You may find that when Windows 10 performs some compute-intensive tasks that the temperature goes a bit higher. Apple has some guidelines on temperature management. And here's a Q&A that provides additional information.


Old iPad - how to install apps without other device? I recently got hold of an old iPad (gen 3, iOS 9.3.6) which works fine. The problem is that it refuses to install a sizable portion of apps, because the newest versions require higher iOS version. That's fine.

Two specific questions:

How do I tell if the app store still has the old version? (people say it's up to the developer to remove the old versions from the app store)
How do I install them if I do not own any other iOS device (iPhone or whatever). So the "App store | Purchased | Not on this iPad" trick won't work?

Would jailbreaking help?

Example apps I'd love to install: Spotify, Google Keep.

With an old version iTunes on a computer you can download the current version there.  Once you go back to you iPad you can download the older version.

How to get the version iTunes you need.
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/320415/44531

The process[ ignore the blurb at the top which says you cannot ]:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/144924/44531]2


iMac won't recognise .MTS videos on my hard drive, how can I play them? We just purchased an iMac yesterday to view our travel videos. The thing is, all the videos we have stored on our external Hard Drive are in the .MTS file format (AVCHD). The thing is, the Mac or QuickTime won't recognize them. Are there any good / free file converters so we can convert the video files to .MOV as that seems to be the common file format for Macs.

I read on-line that you can fool your computer into thinking that it is reading the video file straight from the Camcorder instead of from an external Hard Drive but you have to reorganize the storage or hierarchy of the videos. Apparently this can take up a lot of memory though - maybe up to 10 times the size of the original video file size? Is it a viable solution?

What's the best / most straight-forward / preferably free way to get the videos into a usable format?

Try VideoLan. It is free and should handle most kinds of video formats.

The method for recognising AVCHD format is with regard to Apple Video applications, and not QuickTime. Those applications have the reader for that format. But you're only interested in viewing them so I suggested VideoLan.

Also there is a QuickTime plugin which recognises many formats, but I have never tried it with AVCHD or MTS formats. It is called Perian. Please note that it is no longer supported in the form of updates but it is still offered on the official site.


iTunes downloading movie faster over WiFi For some reason iTunes will download a movie faster over wifi than with ethernet on my home network. When I do a speed test the ethernet connection appears to be a few mbps faster though... Why would it download slower on ethernet? (I turn wifi off when using ethernet via the thunderbolt adapter)

I know what your trying to ask here. When you do you speed test are you downloading the movie at the same time? If yes then the mbps will consistently change so when your over wifi and when your switching back to ethernet. If your were not downloading a movie when doing the speed test there is the difference already, when toe downloading something it using more data that means if more people are using the Internet as well then it will consistently change again.

To put it into a perspective, image your router has 20 (whatever of 20). Your wife logs on 20 goes to her then you log on splits 10 & 10 then you have let's say your friend over now it's uneven so your each getting 6.6 from the router. You see how it keeps getting smaller so there are so many factors that play in to make it better with Ethernet or better wirelessly.


Macbook late-2009 not displaying red color Yesterday I realized that that my late-2009 Macbook White (A1342) does not display red colors.
Sometimes it works correctly when I turn on the computer. Then, after a few seconds, red color starts flickering (in large rectangles and lines), then goes out completely.
The screen becomes bluish, and everything that should be red seems black.
I've attached a photo.

It's strange that sometimes it just starts working correctly again after some time, even if I don't touch it.

The computer was turned off for 2-3 days, because I've bought another computer and didn't need the old one. Before that, it was working fine and the display had never got any problem.

I've tried to format the disc and reinstall OS X Yosemite, but it didn't help.

Is this definitely a hardware problem?
Have you ever had the same issue?
Do you have any idea what is causing it?

Maybe, can I repair it by myself? (I'm not afraid of disassembling the machine if it's not hard to repair. E.g if a connector has just got disconnected or something like that.)

Thanks for any help and relevant information!

Update:
I've had it turned on for about ~1 hour and now it works again. Is it probably oxidation of the connector?

Update 2:
I've tried to knock, press, and move the lid in many ways, but couldn't reproduce the problem.

Update 3:
It suddenly happened again! Then I started a program which spins up CPU usage to 100%. Then the display started working fine again in less than a minute! Managed to get it working in this way twice.
Is it probably some kind of oxidation of the connector?

Let me summarize the troubleshooting steps.

Before disassembling:

1- Run the Apple Hardware test to see if it comes up with anything.

2- As far I know you have a NVIDIA graphics car. Run without it to test.

3- Connect a external monitor to test if the internal display is failing.

4- Open up the computer and unplug/plug the Video cable few times to clean the contacts. Or replace the Cable following the instructions here.


iCal invites sent to my Gmail address (which is also my Apple ID) get added to iCloud My Apple ID is my Gmail address. I also use Google Calendar as my main calendar. But, when someone sends me a calendar invite from their Apple Calendar app, I don't get an email in Gmail, and it there's no invite on my Google Calendar. Instead, it gets added to the built in iCloud Calendar that I never use. This causes me to miss events that I need to be added to.
I tested this on my own, and "invited" another Gmail account I have from the Apple Calendar app - it sent an email invite to that Gmail, which I could open, click add to calendar, and have on that calendar. This is what I want to happen when someone else with an iPhone and iCloud Calendar invites my main Gmail to a meeting.
This never used to be an issue for me in the past when I didn't utilize an iPhone (but still had the same Apple ID), but now I am unable to receive any invite from an Apple user to that specific Gmail. It appears as though Apple recognizes the email address when someone tries to invite me, and instead of sending the invite to the email, just adds it to the iCloud calendar.
Is there a way to turn off this iCloud calendar from accepting invites, so that these invites can be sent to my Gmail as a normal email invite?
Unfortunately, switching to using the iCloud calendar is not an option. I know I can subscribe to my Google Calendar in the Apple Calendar app, and to my iCloud Calendar on Google Calendar, but I need these events to actually populate on my Google Calendar itself, not just subscribe so that I can "see them all in once place".
Thank you!

If your Apple ID is a Gmail email address, and someone sends you an invitation from an Apple device, your Gmail account won't get the invitation, but it will be added automatically to your iCloud calendar.
Why? Because your Gmail email address is recognized as an Apple ID, and that takes precedence: the invitation is added to your iCloud calendar instead of being delivered per email.
That's the default behavior, but fortunately, it can be changed to behave the way you want, as explained in this thread on Apple Communities:

Log in to https://www.icloud.com with your Apple ID.

Open Calendar:

Select Preferences from the gear icon:

Select the Advanced tab and, under Invitations, check "Receive event invitations as: Email to <your Gmail address>":

Save the settings.

Now you should receive invites per email instead of being automatically added to your iCloud calendar.


copy the link of the current played video/stream in iOS Is it possible to copy the link of the current played video/stream in iOS in the Safari or another 3rd party Browser? Have a look at the screenshot below in the bottom left corner.

In OS X I'm able to do it with a right click on the video/stream and then Copy Video Address.

Does someone have an idea?

I wasn't able to copy the URL, however if you want to view the entire thing to transcribe it, start playing your video and then lock your iOS device.  The full URL should scroll by on your lock screen.


Mac runs as long as plugged in, but unpredictably shuts off otherwise - clock resets I have a MacBook Pro, as shown in the image below.  Also, as I think it might use a lot of power, I run Ubuntu on a vagrant machine to test website apps.

Recently (last 2-3 months), the battery would go down to about 10%, and the Mac would just shut down. Go black.  Total restart.  AND, the clock was reset to 6:00AM.  I would reset the clock and go on with life.

Then, I started noticing this would happen at say 23% power, or 45%.  Now, it's unpredictable when it will happen.  It's never happened when I'm plugged in.

How do I solve this problem?

Pretty sure it needs a new battery.

Get coconutBattery (freeware) & test.


Why does Finder give several different sizes in Get Info? I'm looking at the size of a folder in get info, and Finder is giving me two different sizes, differing by about 10 GB! I'm curious as to the reason and source of this size difference. In the image below, it appears to be giving both a size of 43.51 GB and 53.24 GB.

If this is useful, I'm running Catalina 10.15.7.
Thank you!

The size of a file is amount of data (in bytes) that it contains. The size of a folder is the total size of all its files.  But the space consumed on disk is nearly always a bit different and can be considerably different.
Some reasons for disk space being larger than file size:

Small files consume 4K (most obvious in programming project files);
file extended attributes.

Some reasons for disk space being smaller than file size:

File compression;
Sparse files which don't use disk for empty blocks.

Some reasons for disk space being smaller than folder size:

Duplicates of files within a folder, share the same space on disk;
Clones where parts of a file may share space with other files in the folder.

Most of the time we should not worry about the difference.
But clones and duplicates become an issue when copying files and folders between file systems as each file will now consume its full disk space on the destination.


Is it possible to disable Junk Mail filtering in mail.app? I'm using Mail.app to sync three email accounts on my Mac. I find that usually my Junk Email is usually filled with a lot of emails. It is possible to disable this tab entirely ?

If you simply want no filtering & wish to sort mail manually you can just disable Junk filtering altogether from Mail Prefs…

Note: That doesn't actually appear to delete the Junk folder - but it does stop it being populated at all.


XCode : How to use cmd + x to either cut the current line (if no text is selected) or cut the selected text Pressing cmd + x without selecting text in other IDEs, cuts the complete line. Same goes for cmd + c which copies, instead of cutting. Otherwise, if some text is selected, only that region is cut.

How do I do this in XCode?

I added the following in the IDETextKeyBindingSet.plist to add cutting line and copying line functionality :

<key>My Custom Commands</key>
<dict>
    <key>Cut Current Line</key>
    <string>selectLine:, cut:</string>
    <key>Copy Current Line</key>
    <string>selectLine:, copy:</string>
</dict>

But obviously binding these to cmd + x (or c) doesn't allow cutting/copying selected region. I understand I can set it to some other keybinding. But, as a force of habit, cmd + x (or c) suits better.

Is there any way to do this? Maybe an extension?

[PS I asked the same question on StackOverflow, but realised, this is more apt place]

That is correct. (Xcode 10)

Add the entry for cut line and copy line in the IDETextKeyBindingSet.plist file
Save the IDETextKeyBindingSet.plist
Restart Xcode
Set a key for the new command through xcode > preferences > key bindings > My Custom Commands
Resolve conflicts

Example: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Frameworks/IDEKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/IDETextKeyBindingSet.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Cut and Copy</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Cut Current Line</key>
        <string>selectLine:, cut:</string>
        <key>Copy Current Line</key>
        <string>selectLine:, copy:</string>
    </dict>
    <key>Duplication</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Duplicate Current Line</key>
        <string>moveToBeginningOfLine:, deleteToEndOfLine:, yank:, insertNewline:, moveToBeginningOfLine:, yank:</string>
        <key>Duplicate Lines</key>
        <string>selectLine:, copy:, moveToEndOfLine:, insertNewline:, paste:, deleteBackward:</string>
        <key>Delete Line</key>
        <string>selectLine:, deleteBackward:</string>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Xcode keybinding (Cut and Copy):

Xcode conflict resolve (Cut and Copy):


Block an Application for a certain amount of time Is there any application or any way to make me unable to open a software on my Mac for a determined amount of time (a self-imposed block)?

Why this? It's a poker software, and when things are going bad I want to exclude me from play for a certain amount of time (like 2 hours) to prevent the "tilt effect".

Thanks in advance!

Try self control. It blocks websites rather than apps, but if you know where the app resolves to (I presume its online play) then you can block its access.

Next best thing is willpower.


Why is /usr/include missing? I have Xcode and Command Line Tools installed (Mojave) I just upgraded to Mojave from High Sierra and installed Xcode plus its command line tools and additional tools. Nothing will compile from the terminal, everything says /usr/include is missing!

I checked and ALL the Dev related dirs under /usr are missing!

Any idea how to fix?

You have to run another step after installing the command line tools:

sudo installer -pkg /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_10.14.pkg -target /

Why? Apple have introduced a new build tool dance - system includes are now only kept under a specific SDK's path with Xcode 10 onwards:

  The Command Line Tools package installs the macOS system headers inside the macOS SDK. Software that compiles with the installed tools will search for headers within the macOS SDK [...] provided by either Xcode [...] or the Command Line Tools [...] depending on which is selected using xcode-select.

  [...]

  The command line tools will search the SDK for system headers by default. However, some software may fail to build correctly against the SDK and require macOS headers to be installed in the base system under /usr/include [emphasis added]. If you are the maintainer of such software, we encourage you to update your project to work with the SDK or file a bug report for issues that are preventing you from doing so.  As a workaround, an extra package is provided which will install the headers to the base system. In a future release, this package will no longer be provided. You can find this package at:
  /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_10.14.pkg

  To make sure that you're using the intended version of the command line tools, run xcode-select -s <path to Xcode> or xcode select -s /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools after installing.


How does Siri come up with contact suggestions? Are they recent from days, months?  How long ago?  Are they calls, text, FaceTime?

Relevant people

As Apple specified on its website page dedicated to iOS 9, with your Siri suggestions you can

  See the contacts you talk with most, those you talked to last, or even
  those you’re next scheduled to meet

I'd definitely suggest you to have a look to all that Siri suggestions include from here, in fact it doesn't just suggest you Contacts, but also

Places
Apps
News

Hope this helped you!


Is there any use for the Apple Wallet app in India? I can see the Apple Wallet app and the supported app list shows apps such as Paytm, Zomato, etc.

Is there anything that can be actually done with the Apple Wallet app for indian users?

I know India does not have Apple Pay support, at least can we use the Wallet app to safely store debit card credentials, etc?

Yes, you can safely and securely use the Wallet app to store your credit card information, even if you never use it for Apple Pay.


Mac: installing homebrew messed up .profile in terminal I was following this tutorial https://gorails.com/setup/osx/10.13-high-sierra to download Rails.

Upon completed this tutorial, I noticed that my terminal's color code, alias, display format when doing "ls" are all messed up.

My .profile worked before and it is rather simple.

  1 alias alias1="Somalis"
  2 alias mysql="mysql -u root -p"
  3 export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin
  4 alias py="python3"
  5
  6 export CLICOLOR=1;
  7 export LSCOLORS=exfxcxdxbxegedabagacad;
  8
  9 # Setting PATH for Python 3.6
 10 # The original version is saved in .profile.pysave
 11 PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:${PATH}"
 12 export PATH

My .bash_profile is rather simple as well:

 if which rbenv > /dev/null; then eval "$(rbenv init -)"; fi

But apparently nothing in my .profile works after the installation.

From the bash manual:

  When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-interactive shell with  the  --login option, it first reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.  After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that  order,  and reads  and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior."

As stated if you have the file ~/.bash_profile then the file ~/.profile will not be read.

To fix, just run

cat .bash_profile >> .profile
rm .bash_profile

and open a new Terminal tab.


Deleting a podcast off of an iPod Touch I downloaded a podcast directly to my iPod, decided I didn't want it, and now it will not go away. I can delete it from my iTunes library but the iPod just automatically copies it back in when I next sync it. I monkeyed with the podcast settings so only selected podcasts are synced on to the iPod, but it is still there (despite no longer appearing on the list in iTunes). Any ideas?

Try to delete it directly on your iPod.
It may be in the Podcasts app (Downloads tab) if the podcast's download is still not finished, or in the Music app (Podcasts tab). To delete a podcast, you just have to swipe left or right on it.

PS: Unfortunately, I don't know what iOS version do you have installed and I cannot comment to specify this, so I have written these tips for iOS 5.


Why do my iPad and iPhone send *two* notifications for every gmail I receive? Every time I get an email, I hear a ping and a vibration on my devices, followed by another about 3 seconds later.

I'm using gmail (through exchange) on both devices.  The only option I can find in settings is to turn 'new mail' notifications on or off.   I do not have other email accounts on the devices, so it's not auto-forwarding to two accounts or anything.

I'd like to get a single ping and or vibration for each message.

You get the notification sound with each push event that results in a new message to any mailbox.

Google likes to send mail to All Mail as well as Inbox, so that is the likely cause of the two push events. You could make a temporary rule to skip the inbox for all messages and test to confirm this is the root cause.  The phone sees them as two messages, because they are in reality two messages arriving at different times to different mailboxes. I don't know a way to mark the All Mail always read, but perhaps the google filters are powerful enough to make this happen on your account.

Until (or if) google changes things to push them all at once, you can enable control over folders/tags in the labels settings. By controlling the Show in IMAP... status,  you should be able to avoid the second ding.

You could also try setting up rules to avoid any one message from hitting more than one folder as an unread message. iOS doesn't ding on sync of read messages, just syncs that change the unread count on a folder.

Lastly, iOS has changed behavior of the mobile mail app in the past to work better with Google mail. It's a common complaint, and could also be fixed with a change to mail on iOS.


Safari does not load any site but there is Internet connection A friend of mine asked me to help with his MacBook as Safari didn't load any site.

I connected to his computer using TeamViewer (so internet is basically working), and then did a ping on Google.com, which worked. His Mac runs on OSX 10.6.x (Snow Leopard) with Safari 5.x.

I've tried a few things including:

PRAM reset
Delete cookies and browser cache
DNS flush
Delete cookies/cache/plist in Library
Delete and reinstall Safari.app

Non working. I tried downloading Firefox using curl but that seems also not to work.

Any idea what could be wrong?

edit:
No proxys active

I solved by making sure the network settings not picking any proxy options under Network > Advanced > Proxies.


What are "Popular Apps" on the Mac App Store? The Mac App Store features "Popular Apps".

The list even comprises apps with a rating of 2 or less.. which seems weird.
'Better' apps are not listed.. do we have any clue how this list is compiled and what's a "popular app" in terms of the Mac App Store?

Whilst apps on the top charts list are selected algorithmically, all the apps on the featured tab are hand-picked. There's no algorithm that directly chooses apps to be shown on the featured tab.


Is there a way to automatically reduce the rating of a song by X stars when you skip that song? For example, to reduce a song's rating by half a star when you skip it (and/or increase it by half when you don't?).

Not sure if this would involve creating a new application or if somehow there's an easy way to do it.

Thanks!

The iTunes application (iOS or OS X) alone does not have the built-in function or enablable feature for automatically reducing the rating of the songs because you skipped it.

I would say this is because there could be multiple reasons for skipping a song, not all of them being because you didn't like it.

I don't think that an Automator script can handle this task, either.


Is it possible to install Android using OpenIBoot on an iPhone with the limerain/greenp0ison jailbreak? What it says on the tin;  I have an iPhone 3GS jailbroken with limera1n, and I'd love to try Android on it. I've installed Bootlace from the OpenIBoot cydia repository, but it claims it can't run on my phone.

Is it possible to get Android running on my phone? If so, how?

It's not possible to install iDroid on 3gs at this time, only 2g and 3g iphones. My 3g is runnin it great. Sorry bro.


Unreliable WiFi on MacBook: how can I measure how "unreliable" it is? My MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) has WiFi problems. It sometimes takes 30 seconds to connect, and even once connected the WiFi will occasionally lock up and have to reconnect. I've also seen hints that, even while apparently "connected", my connections will hiccup or slow way down.

I have AppleCare+, so I'll be calling them, but before I do I want to measure the extent of the problem. So: how can I measure the quality of a WiFi connection, preferably from the command line? (I'll set up a script to measure and log the results every 10 seconds.)

So, how can I measure the quality of a WiFi connection

Use Apple's built in WiFi Diagnostics

Hold the Option (Alt) key while clicking on the WiFi logo on the menu bar.  You'll be presented with two diagnostic options:

Create Diagnostic Report
Open Wireless Diagnostics

The Report is what you're going to want to submit to Apple.

There's an excellent support document, If your Mac doesn't connect to the Internet over Wi-Fi that goes into in depth detail.

You can also get signal quality information via the airport utility and measuring the SNR values via Terminal, but basically, you'll issue the command:

$ airport -I


How to see notifications when running full screen? I currently run XBMC/Kodi which runs in fullscreen so OS X notifications do not display on top. When the application is in windowed mode, notifications display as normal. I have looked through the settings and their seems to be no way to change this behavior.

Is anyone aware of a script/plugin/hack that will achieve my goal?

For anyone still having this issue:

Press the | key (that's the pipe key, it typically shares a key with \) to exit Kodi's full-screen mode. Then, use macOS' full-screen button (the green one) to enter native full-screen. You should now see notifications in full-screen.


How can I prevent OSX upgrade messing up my apache ant install I'm a developer that uses Apache Ant as part of my build environment, but every time I upgrade my Mac to a new version of the OS (such as Yosemite to El Capitan) it breaks the ant install it there a way I can prevent this.

OS X used to come with a version of Apache ant, but not since OS X 10.9.

I think that previously I must have installed into /usr/bin directly from the apache site but that is a bad idea because on upgrade anything Apple doesn't recognise in /usr/bin is removed (although a copy is moved to /Library/SystemMigration/History/Migratio**********/QuarantineRoot).

Instead I should have installed into /usr/local

I did this using homebrew, installation of homebrew and then ant with homebrew was easy and I did not have to manually setup any paths, however note if you need to install custom jars they need to be put into (i.e /usr/local/Cellar/ant/1.9.6/libexec/lib) libexec/lib which is non-standard, there is no libexec folder in the standard version of ant. Other than I have had no other issues with the homebrew version of ant.


How do I unlock my iPhone-4 so I can use it in Mexico with a Mexican carrier? I love my iPhone-4 and I am about to move to Mexico where AT&T and Verizon are not viable carrier options. What is the safest way to unlock my iPhone so I can continue to use my apps (and new ones I may acquire later) with a non-Apple approved carrier?

Do you mean to Jailbreak your phone, or to unlock it so you can use it on a different network?

Unlocks currently depend on your firmware version, which you can check by going to settings >> general >> about and looking at the version number. If you can confirm then we could find the right unlock for your phone, supposing it can be unlocked.


Is there the dark mode (inverted colors) in the 'Preview' Application for PDF reading? I am using the “Preview” application for reading a PDF file on a MacBook Pro. Is there any way in I can read it in dark mode?

You can do it in Adobe Acrobat Reader by changing background and text color, but can “Preview” do that too?

I had the same problem so I wrote simple and free app for Mac to read PDFs in negative. App offers two negative modes (colour inversion and colour inversion with sepia).

It is called  Negative and it is free on the Mac App Store


Is it time for a new battery? I have an iPhone SE, for just over a year. My battery health which I find in settings is decreasing quite rapidly.

Right now it is at 94%:

Recently it has been going down around 1% a month.

After December 31st, the battery replacement will be more expensive. When should a battery be replaced and do you think it is time to replace mine? Are my vlaues normal?

No, you do not need and should not get a new battery. 94% after a year is pretty good. Apple’s recommendation is a replacement if the battery gets below 80% of maximum capacity. The cost increase after the 31st isn’t so much that it’s worth replacing so early.

For context, my iPhone 6s, which I received the day it was released, is at 75% maximum capacity after pretty heavy usage for over 3 years, so you don’t have anything to worry about for a while. (I’m hopefully going to get the battery before the end of the year.)


How can I get Find My iPhone to work on a Jailbroken iPhone on iOS 5 with no data plan? I am using Find my iPhone on a Jailbroken iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1. My service does not have a data plan. It is T-mobile with only voice and SMS.

When trying to view the location in Find My iPhone, it shows my phone as "Offline" even though I am connected to an active Wi-Fi signal and have location services on. When viewing the Find My iPhone app in iOS, it displays my phone as "No location available".

I've tried all steps in Troubleshooting Find My iPhone under "'No location available' alert", but the issue persists.

Location on an iPhone requires a data plan. This is because your iPhone’s GPS downloads an “almanac” file to help locate itself. This can’t happen over Wi-Fi, as these files are not on the internet, but on the internal network of your carrier.

As for your iPhone not using the Wi-Fi to locate itself, that’s probably because the network is not yet in Apple’s database.

There’s must be something broken if the iPhone is not showing up as online. There can be two possibilities. Either Apple has configured Find My iPhone only to use GPS or some tweak or a bad jailbreak is not allowing the findmyiphoned (process responsible for responding to Find My iPhone requests) to work or launch properly. As there can many things that can cause this problem, I would suggest first booting up in safe mode (SBSettings can do that) and seeing if the problem is resolved. If it is, that means a tweak caused a problem. If it isn’t, that means you did a bad jailbreak. In the latter case, a restore is the only option.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS


iMac 14,1 won't Netboot from Deploy Studio server running OS 10.8 A little background, we have a lot of iMacs at my organization, different models.  We have about 5 different servers running Deploy Studio.

I have found that any of the 14,1 iMacs (late 2013) will only net boot to DS servers that are running OS 10.9+, if I attempt to net boot from a server running OS 10.8.5, using the same image that is hosted on the other servers, the unit will not net boot.  The unit stays at the Startup Manager for a few seconds, seemingly frozen, then Apple logo spinning gear, boots to login window of internal HD.

I have read that the TFTP protocol has changed, could this be the reason for the discrepancy of net booting from the same image on different Deploy Studio servers?

This was eventually resolved.  We discovered that with Mavericks we could not netboot across subnets, which we previously had no issues with, so it seems to be unrelated to Deploy Studio or model.
Also learned that the TFTP protocol change is only relevant during netboot if you get the prohibited sign during boot, which we did not get.


Export Documents and Data from iPad When I plug in my iPad to iTunes 12 on Windows, it shows Documents and Data occupies about 8 GB. I would like to export all these documents to my computer so I can delete them from Ipad.

I clicked on the Apps Section in iTunes and tried the File Sharing section. But it does not show all the documents. How do I go transferring them?

Thanks.

My recommendation would be to check what's taking up your data. To do this:

On your iPad go to Settings
Tap on General
Tap on Storage and iCloud Usage
Under the Storage options tap on Manage Storage
Wait a little while for all the apps to be populated
Once it stops updating, your apps will be listed in order of what's taking up most of the space
Tap on the apps in the list to view more details about what's taking up space

By following the above process you'll get a much better idea of what's taking up space and will be able to take steps to manage that.


How can I show typing keyboard in record screen When I record the screen on a Mac, how can I show keyboard typing in the same image (as shown below)?

Is there particular screen recording software or settings that will do this?

I also use Screenflow, but there are also a few standalone apps for that like Keycastr and Mouseposé.


Can I upgrade from iPhone 4 w/ iOS7 to iPhone SE and iTunes restore? Can I upgrade from iPhone 4 running old iOS7 to iPhone SE running iOS 9 and use iTunes backup restore functionality so that I don't have to reinstall everything?

Yes. You can always restore from and older to a newer iOS version, however you can't go from a newer iOS version and restore to an older version.


Is it still possible to track a stolen iPhone 6s Plus eventhough it has already been restored to its factory settings? My iPhone 6s plus got stolen from me last Monday evening and I have only started to track it down using Find My iPhone the following night. From then onwards, it only showed that my phone is offline and that Lost Mode is pending. Does it mean that the thief has already deactivated my Find My iPhone by resetting the handset? (I believe Find My iPhone is a default application in the newer version like iPhone 6s does it mean the application together with my iCloud account will be retained even after resetting? Is there any chances of getting my phone back?

Find my iPhone is a feature that cannot be disabled unless a user has the password to the iCloud account, and when the phone is in lost mode Activation Lock would kick in should someone restore the software on the device (rendering it unusable). The application being on the phone, however, does not necessarily mean that it was enabled for use. Consider the following scenarios for your phone:

The phone had Find my iPhone enabled and is powered off/no longer working
Find my iPhone was not enabled on the phone, and the thief was able to restore/wipe the device
Find my iPhone is enabled, but carrier service has already been suspended to the device, meaning it cannot get online to post its status and to check the lock/lost status

In any case, it is impossible for us to determine what chance you will have of retrieving your device. It is always recommended that you submit a police report with a high level of detail, including the phone serial number, so that it may be traced back to you should it be found. Also, should a user try to sell it to someone else or take it to a carrier for service, it's possible that they might see it is in Activation Lock and let Apple know about the device. Beyond that, it is generally considered a lost cause.


Connect MacBook Pro to HDTV I have a 2009 MacBook Pro 15". What would I need to buy in order to be able to use my LED HDTV with it, and which wireless keyboard works the best with it?

For connecting to the TV you would need this dongle or this dongle (with cable length).

As far as wireless keyboards go, why not Apple's own one?


Small Windows 7 on Bootcamp I am using MacBook Air 13".
I need to install Windows 7 on my MB to run some software.
I have about 30GB free space on my MB.
Is there any Windows 7 distribution that uses less space and works with Bootcamp?

Straight from Microsoft editions of Windows are all the same size, the feature sets are unlocked by what edition you've paid for.

professional
enterprise
home and business
student
ultimate

All of them take up the same amount of space, but some have limited access to features.

I would install the windows partition to an external drive.
You might be able to squeak by with 30GB if you have less than 4GB of windows files.


How to show hidden files and folders in Finder? I have a folder that starts with a dot . but am unable to display it in Finder.
How can I say that for folder x, Finder should also display hidden files/folders?

I don't think you can set this for individual folders. To set it globally, so that Finder always shows hidden files, run Terminal and enter the following two commands:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true
killall Finder

To switch back, do the same but substitute false for true.
This works all the way through macOS Catalina (and betas for Big Sur).


My iPhone's Lockscreen clock wont update without unlocking the phone I have an iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1.  It is Jailbroken, and the time on the lock screen won't update unless I unlock the phone.  My friend's phone is also Jailkroken (a 4S running 5.1.1) and she has the same problem.

Has anyone else with this problem found a solution to it?  It is actually very incontinent and even annoying.

I have ClockHide and AndroidLocXT installed.  I'm not sure if those have anything to do with the problem or not.

It's certainly to do with the modifications of the operating system. Either try uninstalling related mods or restore the device. This is not a problem you'd see with an unjailbroken iPhone.
And get that incontinence seen to :).


VMware Fusion 6.0.3: "reclaimable" stays zero for Windows 7 VM I have a Windows 7 x64 Update 1 guest VM on a host with OS X Mavericks (10.9.2) and VMware Fusion 6.0.3:

The Windows 7 guest has a sparse HDD of 30 gigabyte, with about 5 gigabyte free, and the latest VMware Tools running.
OS X indicates the full size of the VM directory is (32,2 GB on disk) for 655 items (most of the items are in the various caches, most of the size is in the VMDK files)

VMware claims that VMware Fusion can reclaim space, but in my situation VMware Fusion never shows it can consolidate.

I tried this again with a Windows 8.1 110 gigabyte HDD that has about 10 gigabyte free: same result.

This is what I tried to force VMware Fusion to recognize there is something to consolidate:

shutdown the VM
defrag the VM, then shutdown the VM
defrag the VM, then shutdown the VM and restart VMware Fusion
defrag the VM, run sdelete -c C: inside the VM, then shutdown the VM, then restart VMware Fusion

Still no luck: the reclaimable size stays zero (see image below).

What should I do to force reclaim of the disk?

For Windows 8.x, this works:

Defrag the C: drive with these commands to defrag the files, then the free space:

defrag /v /h /u C:
defrag /x /v /h /u C:
Reclaim the disk space in VMware Fusion 6.0.4:

Shut down the virtual machine.
Go to Virtual Machine > Settings > General.
Select Clean Up Virtual Machine.

Somehow this does not work for my Windows 7 VM. I even tried MyDefrag free space optimization without success.


Can viruses travel through pictures I took with my smartphone? I plan on uploading my photos/videos from my iPhone to my computer using a usb cable. I suspect that my iPhone may have a virus because I've been to questionable site on accident.

If I upload photos/videos I taken from my iPhone to my computer via usb cable is there a chance a virus can come through the connection?

Sure they could, but it's unlikely.

Speaking generally - it's statistically almost impossible your iOS device was compromised on the OS level. The most likely price for a vulnerability on iOS 10 or iOS 11 would be 5 to 15 million dollars. That means run of the mill viruses can't afford them and would profit far more selling to governments and spy agencies which generally design and deploy them to never spread so they don't get discovered.

Unless you work for atomic power / weapons research or intelligence or some very powerful company / people, the odds you have a virus on iOS is low.

That being said, if you have sketchy apps, downloaded files or jailbroken devices it's quite possible your files could be compromised with run of the mill PC viruses and much less likely Mac malware and least likely Mac virus.

The steps you take to protect your computer could be as simple as enabling GateKeeper, only running signed apps, updating your Mac. If you want windows protection advice - you might ask that on https://superuser.com or from Microsoft.


Converting between a Mac file path to a Windows file path I am working in an office that is dominated by PCs, but we are moving select designers to a Mac platform (testing). The biggest issue I have come across is sharing file paths to shared drives, and the formatting differences. Please tell me there is a simple answer.

I am looking for a way for our designers to write an email and link to a file on the drive, but convert the file path to windows formatting. And visa versa (getting an email with a windows file path, and converting it to a mac file path).

File path examples:
Mac formatting: /Volumes/Share/Main Folder/Folder1/Folder2/FinalFolder
Windows formatting: S:\Main Folder\Folder1\Folder2\FinalFolder

We have multiple shared drives, so it could be multiple letters, not just "S".

Stay with the Windows path style and install WinShortcutter 3.5 (Freeware) on the Mac side. Since you are using mapped drives on the Windows PCs: e.g. S:\Main Folder\Folder1... you have to configure the proper mappings e.g \\Share\pictures\ -> S:\ in the app on every Mac though.


Tool or trick to require doubleclicking to launch apps from dock? Is there a way to make it so that launching an app from the dock requires a double click instead of a single click?  I find myself accidentally launching apps and then needing to force-quit them.

I'm hoping for some OS hack or third-party app.  Yes, I already have the dock hidden.

thanks!

You can move the dock's location and size by going to System Preferences > Dock. Rather than keeping the dock at the bottom, where the mouse needs to be often, move it to either the right or left sides of the screen.

I auto-hide the dock on the left side of the screen (I'm on a 13" MacBook Air, so my vertical space is limited too). You could also use @VxJasonxV's suggestion of removing the apps from the dock. Most of the programs I launch are via  spotlight (the ⌘+Space shortcut is very useful). And the last trick I use is BetterTouchTool. I bound five-finger-click to ⌘+Q, which makes it very easy to quit applications, but not so easy that it accidentally quits applications I didn't mean to quit.


Change Finder window graphics back to the more visible Snow Leopard ones? When Apple moved from Snow Leopard to Lion, all the Finder window graphics became much duller.  The enabled states of buttons in the Finder, System Preferences, all over the GUI, became much harder to determine.

This has not been fixed in Mountain Lion.  Is there a way to make difference between the button states of enabled and disabled much more visible?

The ones of particular interest are the Forward/Back ones in Finder windows.

Short answer: Install Snow Leopard.

Long answer: The only way I can think of is a pain.

The images used in Finder's UI are stored in the Resources directory of the application package.

Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder/Contents/Resources/

You can find the offending graphics that don't suit your taste and edit them directly.

After modifications restart Finder using the following command in a Terminal window:

killall Finder


Can I use GNU ps on OS X? We can install GNU coreutils via brew. But there's no ps in the utils. Can we use gnu ps in OS X?

I'd like to use GNU ps as it has more options and features.

There is no portable ps program. The ps command available on linux is, as others have mentioned, from the "procps" package. The reason why this cannot be ported to OSX is because Linux and OSX kernels do not expose this information in the same way. Linux uses a pseudo-filesystem in /proc, whereas OSX uses the sysctl function. Other systems may use either mechanism but provide data in a different format, or may require programs like ps to read directly from the kernel's memory.

In general there is no standard for how process information is available to programs like ps and top; so the program has to be designed for a specific operating system. If there is a specific feature missing from the OSX ps, you'll have to find another program that can do it, or write one yourself (look at the sysctl manual, in particular KERN_PROC as a starting point), or modify the existing ps command to add the feature.

Alternately, if you can get what you need by parsing the output of the ps command itself, you may be able to write a portable program - the output with the -o option is reasonably reliable across platforms, particularly if you refer to the UNIX standard for the column names to use.


All older printers are not working in macOS v11 (Big Sur) Equipment: Brother MFC-8890DW and Brother MFC-9320CW
I suspect it will work on: All older printers with Big Sur!
On upgrade to Big Sur, I found that my 8-year old expensive Brother MFC printers would no longer work, and that Apple was recommending that we use AirPrint. I could install the printers using macOS v10.15 (Catalina) (or older) drivers, and my scanners would work, but not the printers! AirPrint would not work either.
I scoured the web for many hours and tried 1) Resetting the printer system - no go.  2) Reinstalling CUPS (with SIP disabled and Gatekeeper disabled - no go because of Apple's read-only /usr filesystem ... not getting into setting up remounting the root (/) filesystem because of FileVault problems.
I noticed that this was a problem that everyone was having regardless of their printer brand - indicating that it was a system problem.

What worked: I read the error logs on my printers. They pointed me to permission problems with /usr/libexec/cups. Perms should be 755.
To make this work:

System Integrity Protection should be disabled.
You must be a sudoer or have root permissions.

Instructions
Open a terminal.

cd to /usr/libexec
sudo chmod -R 755 cups

That's it! Printing with older drivers works now! AirPrint works. The scanners work. Apparently Apple screwed up the perms on the cups directory that makes printing work when they created their protected filesystem! Urrgghh! This should work with all older printers regardless of brand.
YMMV.


What impact can a dual monitor setup have in overall performance? I have a MacBook Pro late 2008 (2.4GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB memory) and am considering getting a second 24" monitor. I understand having a dual monitor setup may decrease performance, but how much would that be? How can I know if a 24" second monitor would in fact have significant impact on my MBP performance without having to go to a store and test it myself?

I have the same setup - a 24" iiyama Prolite and a Early-2010 Macbook Pro with 2.4ghz dual core and 8gb of RAM. Originally I had 4, but I upped to 8.

I've noticed almost no change in performance since adding the screen - even running heavy apps like Photoshop, there is very little to no lag - and for general web usage (Chrome, Spotify, Forklift and Textmate) there is absolutely no change and no lag.

I'm starting to think in hindsight that it was unnecessary to upgrade the RAM (although this was a £30 job from Crucial) - the only time where I notice the addition is in boot times.


Is there a way to turn off autosave feature in Lion OS X? How can I turn off the autosave feature on all applications in lion?

Is this what you're looking for?

http://www.pubarticles.com/article-2-ways-to-disable-autosave-and-versions-on-mac-os-x-lion-1311670708.html

: Disable Autosave and Versions on Lion - Setting

  Go to System Preferences > General
  Untick "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps".
  Then reboot.