Understanding the point of iTunes Match: Is it only a storage overflow concept? I am only now switching to using Apple's Ecosystem for my music, and don't completely seem to understand some concepts.

I have played around with using iTunes to bringing an existing CD collection onto iOS devices -- classical ripping to AAC seems to work fine. It is my understanding that I can also just import MP3 and AAC collections into my iTunes library and sync those to my iOS devices (essentially a one-way copying process).

Now, iTunes Match offers three main features:

Matching my local collection with Apple's, thus giving me (potentially) better encoding quality.
Making music available through the cloud, making it shareable with my family (which would otherwise be trivially replicated by putting music files into other peoples' iTunes collection).
Making storage management on iOS devices easier by pulling songs from the cloud only when needed.

So, do I understand this right? If so, is it fair to say that for a competent user (who knows how to create good-quality CD rips and how to copy files to another user's account), the only remaining selling point of iTunes Match is that an iOS device can automatically manage its music storage and save some space?

To simplify when using iTunes Match, your phone or other device, connected to the internet, can play "your" music from Apple's Servers. Apple scans your physical music Library and then "Matches" the songs to songs they already have.
This means that if Apple has a song on their server that "Matches" a song in your physical Hard Drive music library then it can stream if from the Apple server to your other devices instead of streaming it from your actual computer cuz that would be rot with issues unless setup properly.
The caveat is... that if you have songs not on Apple's servers i.e., mixtapes, live recordings, rare CD's etc. Then Apple will upload those songs to it's Servers to stream to your other devices but there is a limitation. (read the fine print)

Now, iTunes Match offers three main features:
Matching my local collection with Apple's, thus giving me (potentially) better encoding quality.

No. (or yes) The quality of streaming from Apple Server is 256kb. That's not good quality and has nothing to do with your physical song library. (or yes) if you have really bad quality rips that are below 256kb (yuck)

Making music available through the cloud, making it shareable with my family (which would otherwise be trivially replicated by putting music files into other peoples' iTunes collection).

Correct! (kinda) Your family will have to use your Account either in iTunes or "iTunes & App Stores" (read the update at end of post) If you have a song in your library and it "Matches" a song Apple has on it's server or Apple Music library then your family can listen to that song streamed from Apple's Servers. Be careful though because music on the other devices is not actually "yours" it's Apple's and when you cancel your subscription that music will be deleted from any device that was not the original database (your mac with the real physical files)

Making storage management on iOS devices easier by pulling songs from the cloud only when needed.

Correct (in a sense) You are streaming the song not downloading it unless you choose to download the song.
With an iTunes Match subscription, iTunes matches your library, uploads any unmatched tracks (limited upload) and makes your music available on multiple devices through the iCloud Music Library. If you have low-quality tracks, iTunes Match “upgrades” them, allowing you to download 256 kbps AAC files without DRM. You can also download your files to any computer linked to your iTunes Match account, and listen to your music on any linked iOS device. iTunes Match has a limit of 25,000 tracks, not including iTunes Store purchases.
However, there is one essential difference between iTunes Match and Apple Music. While iTunes Match lets you download your music files and then play them anywhere, Apple Music adds DRM to your files. This means that if you rip a CD, and it’s matched or uploaded to iCloud Music Library via Apple Music, and you download the files, say, on another Mac, you will only be able to play those files as long as your Apple Music subscription is active. If you delete your originals, or lose them, then you won’t be able to access files without DRM. As such, it is essential that you keep backups of your original files if you use Apple Music.
If you have both an iTunes Match subscription ($25 per year) and an Apple Music membership ($10 per month), then you get files without DRM.
The problem is that Apple is not making a distinction between Apple Music files that you download for offline listening—this is a key feature of Apple Music—and files that belong to you, which are matched or uploaded. In addition, there seem to be bugs right now, causing many previous matched files to show as Apple Music files, and to contain DRM when downloaded, even for users with iTunes Match subscriptions.
UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments below I wanted to add that iTunes Match cannot be shared to other Apple/iTunes/iCloud ID's.  Unlike a "Family" Apple music subscription iTunes Match can only be associated with one Account. This does not mean that your "family" or other devices you and your family own cannot take advantage of your iTunes Match.  Those devices would just need to put in your Account info into iTunes or in "iTunes and App Store" (iOS).  On a computer this is not so bad as you can have iCloud syncing/backup/App Store separate from iTunes (not sure about the new iTunes in Catilina though)
On a mobile device your App Store would be linked to the iTunes Match account unfortunately.  So purchases on those mobile devices done by your family would be on just one account. Maybe not so bad but it kinda negates the family sharing aspect of iCloud only in the sense that you won't have separate App store accounts so everything everyone purchases will show up on the other devices unless you deselect "Apps" in "iTunes & App Stores" which would turn off syncing across all devices.  That's not so bad but if you have multiple iOS devices (iPhone,iPad,iPad mini) then you'd need to go into the App store on the device that did not literally download the App and then go into purchases or search for the App to manually download it to that device.  How you set this up is up to your and your family.
The draw back being that if your "wife" made a playlist on her iPhone then you would see that on your device and visa versa. If you wanted to get tricky you could create separate itunes libraries (Computer only) by holding down the shift key when opening iTunes. Then if you wanted, your family members could have their own iTunes minus your iTunes Match songs and just need to hold down the "shift key" when opening iTunes to select the Library they want to use.  Not a perfect solution but I just wanted to give you some real world examples that I hope you can use. ;)


iMovie does not open anymore with error in Console: -10699 I used iMovie a lot in the past days (Mac Mini Late 2012 - Mac OS X 10.10) but now if I press the icon in the dock it just does nothing. With spotlight search the same and opening it from the Finder makes no change either. I looked at the Console and the error was the following:

18:51:18 Dock: LSOpenFromURLSpec(file://Applications/iMovie.app/) failed with -10699

In some other forum it said to deinstall and install the Adobe Flash but that did not work. Also I rebooted my Mac which made no change.

Has anyone got an idea how to fix it without reinstalling (if possible)?

Ok so I reinstalled iMovie which made it work again. (I didn't want to do it since I thought it would remove my project I was working on)


How to configure Xcode external build system to build and clean using standard short-cuts? [Xcode 10.1, MacOS 10.14.1]

I have a project that uses bmake (could be any make though) and the Makefile provides a number of targets.  I would like to use Xcode to build host and clean the build folder, but I'm having trouble working out how configure Xcode to allow me to this.

From the command line, I would build using bmake host and clean using bmake clean.  The reason I'm using Xcode for this is because I like to use an IDE for debugging.

In Project -> Info (External Build Tool Configuration), I have:

Build Tool  :  /usr/local/bin/bmake
Arguments   :  host
Directory   :  None     <- I'm using the current path

With these settings, Product -> Build builds my target, but Product -> Clean Build Folder does nothing even though Xcode reports that the clean succeeded.

In order to actually do a clean, I either need to define another target with the Arguments field set to clean and then switch between targets when building/cleaning, or, use a single target and change the argument field depending on whether I'm building or cleaning.  (A really clumsy way of going about it.)

If I leave Arguments with it's default value $(ACTION) all targets get built (except clean), and cleaning does nothing useful.

I've read https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15652316/setup-xcode-for-using-external-compiler but that question does not address this problem.

Is there a better way of doing this?

The approach we are using:

Run external build system (i.e. Make or CMake) via custom script from "External Build System" target or just as a "Run script" build phase.
At some point of custom script execution save a text file (say CMakeStatus.txt) to BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR, which will be used as a flag indicating that Xcode did clean.
In your custom script check that CMakeStatus.txt is present or not. If not, then rebuild your external build system.

Here is example of using Cmake and rebuilding it if Xcode did a clean.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w

require 'fileutils'

# system("printenv | sort")

AppProjectName = ENV['PROJECT_NAME']
AppBuildRootDir = ENV['AWL_CMAKE_BUILDS']
AppBuildDirPath = ENV['BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR']
AppPlatform = ENV['PLATFORM_NAME']
AppBuildConfig = ENV['CONFIGURATION']
AppTargetDeviceId = ENV['TARGET_DEVICE_IDENTIFIER']
if AppProjectName.nil?
   raise "❌ Variable \"PROJECT_NAME\" is not passed to script."
end
if AppBuildRootDir.nil?
   raise "❌ Variable \"AWL_CMAKE_BUILDS\" is not passed to script."
end
if AppBuildDirPath.nil?
   raise "❌ Variable \"BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR\" is not passed to script."
end
if AppPlatform.nil?
   raise "❌ Variable \"PLATFORM_NAME\" is not passed to script."
end
if AppBuildConfig.nil?
   raise "❌ Variable \"CONFIGURATION\" is not passed to script."
end

WhiteListedVars = ["PATH", "HOME"]
ENV.keys.each { |key|
   if !WhiteListedVars.include? key
      ENV[key] = nil
   end
}
AppNewEnvVars = `bash -l -c printenv`.strip.split("\n")
AppNewEnvVars.each { |var|
   components = var.split("=", 2)
   key = components[0]
   value = components[1]
   ENV[key] = value
}

# system("printenv | sort")

AppCmakeBuildDirPath = "#{AppBuildRootDir}/#{AppProjectName}"
AppCmakeCacheFilePath = "#{AppCmakeBuildDirPath}/CMakeCache.txt"
AppCmakeStatusFilePath = "#{AppBuildDirPath}/CMakeStatus.txt"

if !File.exist?(AppCmakeStatusFilePath) && Dir.exist?(AppCmakeBuildDirPath)
   puts "✅ Deleting previous build at \"#{AppCmakeBuildDirPath}\"..."
   FileUtils.rm_rf(AppCmakeBuildDirPath)
end

if !File.exist?(AppCmakeCacheFilePath)
   puts "✅ Generating Cmake for Platform \"#{AppPlatform}\"..."
   cmd = "cmake -G Xcode -B \"#{AppCmakeBuildDirPath}\" -DCMAKE_Swift_COMPILER_FORCED=true -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=#{AppBuildConfig} "
   if AppPlatform == "macosx"
      cmd += "-DCMAKE_OSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.13"
   elsif
      cmd += "-DCMAKE_OSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=11.0 -DCMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME=iOS"
   end
   puts cmd
   system cmd
   File.write(AppCmakeStatusFilePath, 'This file used just as a status flag to clean Cmake.')
end

puts "✅ Building Cmake for Platform \"#{AppPlatform}\" ..."

cmd = "set -euf -o pipefail && cd \"#{AppCmakeBuildDirPath}\" && cmake --build \"#{AppCmakeBuildDirPath}\" -- -quiet CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR=\"#{AppBuildDirPath}\" "
if AppPlatform == "macosx"
   cmd += "-destination 'platform=OS X,arch=x86_64'"
elsif AppPlatform == "iphonesimulator"
   if AppTargetDeviceId.nil?
      raise "❌ Variable \"TARGET_DEVICE_IDENTIFIER\" is not passed to script."
   end
   cmd += "-sdk iphonesimulator -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,id=#{AppTargetDeviceId}'"
else
   if AppTargetDeviceId.nil?
      cmd += "-sdk iphoneos -destination generic/platform=iOS"
   else
      cmd += "-sdk iphoneos -destination 'platform=iOS,id=#{AppTargetDeviceId}'"
   end
end

# cmd += " | xcpretty"
puts cmd
system(cmd) or exit 1


Getting per-user websites working on Mountain Lion server I followed the instructions at this question but I am getting 404s when trying to access http://localhost/~user.

The httpd error log shows the following message:

[Tue Jul 23 20:34:34 2013] [error] [client ::1] File does not exist: /Library/Server/Web/Data/Sites/Default/~user

The userdir module is being loaded, and the Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf line is not commented out.

If I put a deliberate error in /etc/apache2/users/user.conf, apachectl configtest will fail, so it is reading this file — which means /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf is fine as well.

Without the error, user.conf reads

<Directory "/Users/user/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymlinks
    AllowOverride AuthConfig Limit
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

and httpd-userdif.conf reads

# Settings for user home directories
#
# Required module: mod_userdir

#
# UserDir: The name of the directory that is appended onto a user's home
# directory if a ~user request is received.  Note that you must also set
# the default access control for these directories, as in the example below.
#
UserDir Sites

#
# Users might not be in /Users/*/Sites, so use user-specific config files.
#
Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf
<IfModule bonjour_module>
       RegisterUserSite customized-users
</IfModule>

Does anybody have any idea what could be going wrong here? (And also, why Apple didn't just leave well alone and have this working by default, like it did in earlier versions of OS X? :)

Edit: Interestingly, if I change Userdir Sites to Userdir /Users/*/STUFF I still get the same error message, with the original path — so Apache seems to be ignoring this line entirely. Sometimes I think we'd be better off with a slide rule.

I also had this problem, and (after only a few hours of head-to-desk impact) found the answer here on AD, from 16 months ago.

Apache 2 `UserDir` problem in OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) Server after upgrade from Lion (10.7)

If you look at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and your DocumentRoot is /Library/WebServer/Documents/, you might not notice that the error you're getting is about a DocumentRoot with a subtly different name.

/Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/httpd_server_app.conf refers to serving stuff out of /Library/Server/Web/Data/, which corresponds the server you seem to be running.

You (like me) may be a bit surprised about that. It would've been nice for the Server.app install to drop a helpful README in /etc/apache2.  You wisely tested that you had the correct config directory, but were thwarted -- httpd_server_app.conf #includes a bunch of files from /etc/apache2/extra/.


Windows 8 on the iPad? I was just watching the Windows 8 keynote and Steven Sinofsky said 8 will be able to run on ARM CPUs, which are also used in iDevices.

So I'm curious, would it be possible to run 8 on an iPad, similar to how iDroid works?

Yes it is possible but it will not be easy. You will probably need to jailbreak your iPad and follow similar procedures when installing Android.


Pinwheel problems on my Macbook Pro How do I get rid of the spinning wheel and the flashing question mark? I have tried utility disk repair. I was unable to use the repair button because it is not a highlighted option. I have tried using my Mac keeper to get rid of the spinning wheel but it keeps coming back. What can I do about this problem that I am having?

Try resetting your macs PRAM. See http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14222?viewlocale=en_US. If that doesn't work then hold cmd+r at startup to boot into recovery and then try choosing Macintosh HD as your startup disk.


Prevent OS X Mavericks from autoquitting applications for sleep OS X Mavericks is quitting applications when it 'sleeps' an account.  One of the applications (play on mac) doesn't support this.  Thus Chrome, TextEdit etc. are being quit and then it asks if I want to manually exit PlaysOnMac.  Thus the quit applications I lose what web pages I had opened, what text files I had opened etc. as they are not restored when this happens.

How do I disable this quitting behavior?

Go to System Preferences, choose "Security & Privacy" and click on the locker on the lower left. Insert your password and click on "Advanced" on lower right.
Uncheck "Log out after ... minutes of inactivity"


What's going wrong with context menu's Save Attachment in Apple email Apple email will Save Attachments to a folder of my choice, when I use File / Save Attachments from the menu at the top of its window.  However, if I use the context menu for the attachment icon (i.e. two fingered tap on the touchpad), and choose Save Attachment, the attachment will not be saved to a folder of my choice.  It is saved to some sort of temporary folder.

What's going wrong here?

For example, with a PDF file attachment I can use the context menu and do Save Attachment and try to save to e.g. ~/Documents/email attachments.  I will not be able to find it there with Finder.  But with Spotlight I can find the file and open it in Preview.  Then, in Preview, I can move the file to ~/Documents/email attachments (with File, Move To).

I'm using Mail.app Version 7.3 (1878.2) under OS X 10.9.3 (13D65) on a MacBook Air 13 (Mid 2013).

OS X 10.10.3, email 8.2 seem to have fixed the problem. If I go to the header of an email having attachments, I'm offered an iconized menu that allows me to save attachments to the folder of my choice. That seems to work.


Is it possible to configure Time Machine to encrypt network backups? Since NASes as usually 24/7 online, there is a certain risk of being hacked/compromised and it's not wise to rely solely on the drive's encryption inside of the NAS.
Is it possible to set up Time Machine to encrypt a backup on the MacBook and send encrypted data over to the NAS so that only by entering the passphrase on the MacBook can the backup be decrypted?
(I know this topic had been debated in the past but all threads are 5+ years old that's why I think it's worth reconsidering)

If you select Encrypt backups when setting up Time Machine, the backup data will be encrypted using the encryption password you enter. The password is stored in your keychain to allow its use by Time Machine.
The backup data cannot be decrypted by anyone else unless they have the password.
To further increase safety, you may want to consider setting up different users on the network drive and let each user use their own storage for their backup data.


SSD for Mac Book Pro 2012 optical disc drive I'm about to upgrade my MBP mid 2012 with two SSD drives instead of the stock HDD and optical disc drive. I read on different forums that the optical drive link with the motherboard is only SATA 2 and that this will eventually cause problems with a SATA 3 SSD.

I, however,  see lots of videos and articles where the optical disc drive is substituted for an SSD. Are those new SSDs SATA 2 or is this not an actual issue (with the bandwidth)?

Can I use a SATA 3 SSD instead of the optical drive? Can I "switch down" a SATA 3 drive to SATA 2? Or do I need to find a SATA 2 SSD to use in the optical drive?

Added

I specifically want to instal two Samsung EVO 850 500 GB in my old MBP.

SATA interfaces are backward compatible so you can use a SATA III drive on a SATA II/I port.

From the SanDisk Knowledgebase:

  SATA II specifications provide backward compatibility to function on
  SATA I ports. SATA III specifications provide backward compatibility
  to function on SATA I and SATA II ports. However, the maximum speed of
  the drive will be slower due to the lower speed limitations of the
  port.

I have actually done the upgrade you are describing (though with one SSD and a spinning drive in the optical bay).  There are no issues with SATA compatibility.


Outlook MEGA database I am the administrator of 10-15 computers, most of them Macs. One iMac Intel Dual Core, 3 GB of RAM (more than 3 y old) is running Outlook 2011 as an email client.

The problem is the Mac becomes unresponsive (beachball rolling and cannot do anything on computer) because the Outlook profile email database is 12 GB in size...

I know, I have clean the deleted-spam-send folder, deleted everything... the 12 gig is the result of a cleanup because before it was 20 gig, this is a lot of email...

All email must be keep for references... now what i do, the computer cannot be used with outlook open... any idea ?

Twelve GB isn't too massive for an Outlook:Mac 2011 database.  Personally, my Outlook database at work is 20GB.

Make sure that your colleague isn't running out of disk space.  Outlook can have issues if there isn't sufficient hard disk space.  My rule of thumb is that I should always have a bare minimum of 10% of my disk free.  I'll also assume that you're up-to-date with both OS and Outlook updates.

If your colleague's Outlook content is exclusively stored in Exchange, an easy potential solution is to start afresh:

Create a new user on their Mac.
Launch Outlook.
Enter their Exchange credentials.
Let Outlook download everything from Exchange.

Since your colleague's account is so large, I would start this on a wired connection at the end of the day.  If all goes well, everything will be downloaded by the following morning, and you can see if Outlook still has the same issues.

This will also work if your colleague's Outlook content is exclusively stored in IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV.  It won't work if your colleague has local content or if they are using POP.

If your colleague's Outlook content isn't exclusively stored in Exchange, try the following options:

Rebuild the Outlook database:

Quit all running applications.
Copy the existing Identity to the desktop (or any other location you prefer).
Hold down the Option key, and launch Outlook.
The Microsoft Database Utility will launch.  Select the Identity file and and click the "Rebuild" button.
Outlook will create a new Identity file.  The new file might be smaller than the old one, since rebuilding the database cleans up quite a lot of things.  Launch Outlook with the new database and see if you still have the same problem.

Create a new Outlook database:

Quit all running applications.
Copy the existing Identity to the desktop (or any other location you prefer).
Drag the folder ~/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/Main Identity/ to the trash, and empty the trash.
Relaunch Outlook.  The dialog will reference Time Machine, and ask if you want to rebuild your database.  Click "Rebuild".

There are some additional Outlook database troubleshooting steps available in the (unofficial) Office for Mac Help site.  You could also try asking your question on the Outlook:Mac forums or the Mac Enterprise mailing list.  If you do post to another forum, you should include some additional information in your post, like OS version, Outlook version, and the email server that you're using.

After you have resolved this issue, it might be worthwhile to see if you can archive some mail.  If your colleague only needs to retain the emails in case they're needed, but doesn't actually refer to them very frequently, you could archive them.  I've seen a few different methods for this, such as creating an Identity per year.  This is outside the scope of your original question, so if this is something you're interested in, you can open another question and I'll answer there.


Why OS X says a low free space, despite having 25GB free? I've the following entry in log:

  24/08/2015 18:00:32.197 com.apple.mtmd[55]: attempting to thin because of low free space on Macintosh HD (/) by removing 2015-08-24 16:57:54 +0100, estimate 0 bytes to recover, 1 snapshot can be thinned

But I've over 25GB free:

$ df -h
Filesystem                         Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2                       466G  442G   24G  95% /

In top:

Load Avg: 2.39, 3.67, 3.70  CPU usage: 8.71% user, 6.5% sys, 85.22% idle  SharedLibs: 9592K resident, 9392K data, 0B linkedit. MemRegions: 223410 total, 6136M resident, 53M private, 798M shared. PhysMem: 11G used (5491M wired), 272M unused.
VM: 1131G vsize, 1066M framework vsize, 18083888(372) swapins, 21344621(0) swapouts. Networks: packets: 10086831/7650M in, 8482767/3357M out. Disks: 11688769/221G read, 9345680/217G written.

$ top -l 1 | head -n 10 | grep PhysMem
PhysMem: 11G used (5536M wired), 74M unused.

And vm_stat:

$ vm_stat 1
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
    free   active   specul inactive throttle    wired  prgable   faults     copy    0fill reactive   purged file-backed anonymous cmprssed cmprssor  dcomprs   comprs  pageins  pageout  swapins swapouts
   48498   739133     2327   684917        0  1405393    17258 1682134K 20168887 2191469K  339740K 14307441      170267   1256110  6862590  1312575  192808K  223457K  172163K  1539229 18095123 21344621
   48373   738368     2327   684917        0  1406527    17258     2018      226      627        0        0      170267   1255345  6862359  1312573      231        0        0        0        0        0
   47801   739664     2333   684909        0  1405395    17268     1576        0      922        0        0      170273   1256633  6862196  1312573      163        0        1        0        0        0

I believe this state of a low free space breaks few apps (like Chrome) which behaves weird.

Why OS X is saying it is out of free space (low free space) on / when it has a lot of it? Is it some kind of bug?

25GB is not alot of space on a nearly 500GB drive. It seems that OSX has a built-in alert for 5%.

Recall that the operating system needs to rely on the drive being available to manage conditions where there may not be enough memory to complete processes. This is what we call 'virtual memory'. OSX will swap older memory items to the hard drive if needed.

In addition, OSX wants enough space to provide the ability to write all of current memory to the hard drive in case of a power issue, so that you do not lose data due to battery issues. In this case, it needs at least enough space to ensure it can write 4GB/8GB/16GB depending on your RAM size.

All of these items are managed by the OS, and if it detects a condition where it may not be left with enough space on the hard drive to perform its functions, it will alert you the user.


Can't get past login screen I have a Mac that I bought from work during a hardware refresh, which was previously joined to a domain. Booted using cmd-R and reset the Admin password. Logged in, started deleting the old work account. Got some Keychain errors.

Came back a few minutes later and the screensaver was on and password protected. Tried to log in, and would get the spinning cursor in the password box for about 30 seconds, then nothing. Username and password box ready for text entry again.

So I restarted, tried to log in, same behavior. So I restarted into recovery, reset the password again, same behavior. Confirmed password is definitely correct - when an incorrect password is entered as a test it is rejected straight away.

Thinking about what I had changed, I booted into single user mode and disabled Wi-Fi service at startup. Same behavior.

Other things I have tried:

Reset password multiple times
Repaired permissions on disk / ran First Aid in recovery mode
Reinstalled OS X form recovery mode
Boot into Safe Mode
Ran a file system check in single user mode
Tried to force unbind using dsconfigad but got error 10002

Is there anything else I can try? I don't need access to any of the data so I'm happy to wipe the drive and start over. I don't have access to another Mac to create a recovery disc, is there a way I can do it from here, having access to recovery mode? Any other options?

The system may have been joined to an Active Directory (or other kind) of network authentication domain that would make changing the local admin password not work for long.

On general principles I would save nothing on a computer that I bought from somewhere else.

That said I would suggest:

Boot into Recovery Mode
Select Disk Utility
Reformat the hard drive (then quit Disk Utility)
Click on Reinstall MacOS

You will likely be asked to authenticate to your WiFi network and presented with the install screen of the macOS version that originally shipped with the Mac.

That should give you a clean slate from which to do as you please, including upgrading to a later version of macOS.


CMD-Z reopens last tab instead of undoing This is unbelievably annoying, since when I code online, there is no means of undoing, and thus retrieving the text I deleted.

Most online text editors which support keyboard shortcuts (like the Stack Exchange editor right here!) support ⌃Z (ctrl-Z) for undo too, which won't cause any system functions to be fired.

If you want to use ⌘Z, you can remap the Undo Close Tab function off ⌘Z to something else using System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → App Shortcuts. Set Application to Safari.app, Menu Title to Undo Close Tab and Keyboard Shortcut to something other than ⌘Z.


Only Transmission traffic through VPN I would like to use my favourite torrent client, Transmission, over a VPN service but at the same time I do not want to direct any other traffic therethrough. That is, I want to use my VPN service only for torrenting with the Transmission client.
I intend to use NordVPN service and I am coming across 2 problems:

NordVPN offers IKEv2 and OpenVPN protocols on Mac and I'm not sure
whether and how I can connect to this VPN so that NOT all traffic is
directed therethrough. As for the IKEv2 settings in Mac's Network
Preferences, there is no "Send all traffic over VPN connection"
option to keep unchecked, like it is for L2TP VPN protocol on Mac.
As for the OpenVPN protocol, I'm not sure if this is possible with
Tunnelblick for example or other client.
Let's say I solve the first
problem and I'm connected to the VPN service without sending all the
traffic therethrough. How can I now make Transmission to use
that specific network interface whereon I'm connected to the VPN?

I searched Google and I have found some procedures/methods but I am none the wiser thereon.
E.g.:

Transmission Interface Binder - this one seems outdated

docker-transmission-openvpn - could be working but I am totally lost
hereon.

For Ubuntu, but perhaps could be employed on Mac too but I
have no idea on what they talk about there

Ditto

I should appreciate
some advice from the more experienced or knowledgeable
hereabout.

Are you prepared to change VPN provider?
Private Internet Access (PIA) has a 'split tunnel' feature.  The settings have a preference pane to enable and configure split tunnel.  Here is how it should look to send just Transmission traffic via the VPN.

My own experience with PIA's split tunnel is that it has been difficult to implement for macOS 11 but is now working reliably.  I had system hangs with the first beta versions of PIA for macOS 11.  I have used PIA's split tunnel the other way round - sending most traffic via the VPN and just specific apps bypassing the VPN.


Using timed access control in airport express Have read Using timed access control in airport extreme base station but the fix described has not worked.

Clicking "+" reverts the times back to the default "09:00  to  17:00"?

Any suggestions?

You have to press Enter after changing the time fields (so the cursors jumps to the next one). It's kind of user-unfriendly, bites me a lot of times as well.


Where can I find this old app: Biorhythms by Andrew Regan The most recent version if possible. Maybe you have it ?

The developer's site has disappeared, here's the MacUpdate page.

You can download it right from MacUpdate, can't you?


Locked out of Mac OS X Lion, but keyboard and mouse are not connecting I'm at the lock screen of Mac OS X Lion (not login, but the quick lock screen), and I know my password, but the keyboard and mouse are not connecting.  I am using an iMac that did have Bluetooth on the last time I was working on it.  I know that restarting the computer will probably help, but I have unsaved work on Xcode 4!  Thanks in advance.

Edit: it seems that Bluetooth is off for some reason on the Mac, as I cannot find it in a list of discoverable devices on my iPod.  Is there a way to restart Bluetooth from a USB device?  I was wondering if hooking up my iPod would help, but the Mac is locked and won't do anything!  If I could click the Switch User button...

Try to remove the batteries and then put then back.
If not then try USB Keyboard or Remote Desktop/VNC


How do I recover deleted browser history on iPhone? I accidentely deleted the browser history in Safari on the iPhone, but would still need to re-access one link. How can I recover a deleted browser history?

Not endorsing this practice, but yes, there is a way that sometimes works...

Go to Settings, then Safari, then scroll to bottom and select 'Advanced' and then 'Website Data'. Selecting from there should show you history.


Limited FaceBook friends show up in Contacts app in Mavericks or Yosemite I configured my Facebook account in OS X (both Mavericks & Yosemite) using following article >> http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18993

I have 200+ friends on FB, but on Contacts app it just shows 38. Remaining are missing, I don't know what I have done wrong.

Moreover, I have allowed events and birthday calendar to sync as well, but not all birthday events are showing up in OS X calendar app.

Help much appreciated. Thanks.

p.s. I followed following article ( http://www.scrubly.com/blog/how-to-mac/how-to-set-up-social-media-accounts-in-mavericks-and-why/ ) as well, but result is same. Not all FB friends show up.

It is possible that only the contacts that have provided useful contact information to Facebook are showing up in your OS X Contacts app. This article suggests that Facebook would be no longer adding contacts with no contact info to to your address book: Facebook aims to declutter the iOS Contacts app by no longer syncing friends without useful contact info


Mac Pro video card recommendations I am looking for recommendations for a video card for my Mac Pro version 2,1 circa spring 2007. It currently has the ATI 512MB card that Apple sold as an option at the time.

Are there new cards on the market that would work with this machine? My main reason for asking is that the current card is overheating and crashing the machine.

There are very few video cards that will work with the Mac Pro 2,1. When Steam was released in early 2010 and I realized that the stock video card did not have enough power to run Steam games, I searched for a replacement. I ended up purchasing the nVidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Video Card from a vendor on eBay. It wasn't especially cheap; it cost me about $260.

My criteria were as follows:

Must provide more graphics power than the card it was replacing.
Must be a drop-in replacement for the stock card; I did not want to mess about with stuff like reflashing the ROM on a card that was intended for Windows machines, for example.
Not obscenely expensive. The card that I bought really pushed the limit; I had originally wanted to spend no more than $150.

The 8800 GT provided enough power to run Steam games, and also improved screen redraws for everyday work, including my light-duty work in Photoshop and InDesign. Though the 8800 GT is a couple of generations back in terms of the hard-core gamer crowd, it should serve well as a more-powerful replacement for the stock card.

I'm pleased with the result, as it has allowed me to extend the operational life of my Mac Pro.


MacBook Pro 2015 Keyboard and trackpad not detected once booted into operating system Ever since I updated my computer to macOS Mojave I’ve been experiencing issues. The issues all started at the same time and they include:

Computer crashing after opening lid(Computer Transitioning from Sleep State
Trackpad feedback(the click from the Taptic Engine) stops randomly while using the computer
Trackpad and keyboard not detected by OS after reboot.

In the past most of the issues I was having were simply fixed by resetting the SMC or by simply rebooting the computer. Unfortunately at this point no matter how many times I reset the SMC, or reboot the computer, the internal keyboard and trackpad are not responding, even though the trackpad still makes a “click” from the Taptic Engine when clicked.

I’ve attempted many things including rebooting the computer, SMC reset, PRAM/NVRAM reset(unsuccessful), system hardware test(unsuccessful), etc...

The reason certain resets and tests were unsuccessful is because the OS is unable to detect the keyboard, but others like the SMC do no require the OS to preform the reset so it functions.

Does anyone have any ideas on ways to solve this issue that doesn’t involve completely reinstalling macOS?

Computer:
MacBook Pro Mid 2015 13”

I had the same issue and was able to fix it. For everyone having this issue, try solution from here:
Press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the built-in keyboard, then press the power button at the same time. Hold these keys and the power button for 10 seconds. If you have a MacBook Pro with Touch ID, the Touch ID button is also the power button.


Finder window pops up every time Time Machine makes a backup I have configured a shiny new Time Capsule a few days ago. It runs firmware 7.7.1 and my Mac is on 10.8.4.

The Time Capsule works perfectly so far, except that every time Time Machine makes a backup, a Finder window showing the contents of the “Time Machine Backups” volume pops up (see screenshot). This gets especially annoying with hourly backups. I backed up with an external hard drive before and did not have that issue as far as i know. How can I stop Time Machine/Finder from opening up that window every time?

I solved it by running

sudo defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages auto-open-rw-root -bool false

Source: https://superuser.com/questions/584237/make-time-machine-stop-opening-a-new-window-when-backing-up


Where does Mac Messages store older Attachments? I'm looking for one specific photograph, a jpg taken on my iPhone, which I know was sent to my partner over Messages, towards the end of 2019. I don't have it in what used to be Camera Roll on the phone nor in Photos.app on phone or Mac, so I'm going to have to dig it out from Messages.
I thought this was going to be a few minutes' job. I started by scrolling back in Messages, but then realised it would be quicker to find their storage location & sort by date… neither was successful.
If I scroll back a Messages conversation, then for the past six months or so I can see all attachments, pictures etc in-line as normal.
Once I get past that then they've apparently been archived somewhere & I can't find where. I have never 'cleaned' this conversation manually. This appears to be some automatic action taken without my knowledge. I could imagine my phone would do that to save space, but I didn't expect it on the Mac.

If I click on any of those down arrows, the picture will reload. This, as you can imagine, is not the fastest way to find a specific photo :\
If I search in Finder, Kind: jpeg image inside the Attachments folder at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/Attachments I see only the same images as are already inlined. After I refetch an older one, it then appears at today's date.
 Click for full size
Searching the entire drive from Finder gives no other clues.
Using EasyFind to search hidden locations & packages etc for img_ reveals nothing more. BTW, I am not searching for _DSD files, they're from my "proper" photos.
My Messages are synced over iCloud between Mac & iPhone, though very little else is. I don't have my Photos on there, for instance. The only app I sync on iCloud Drive is Maps, nothing else. I sync things like Contacts, Calendars etc, not "multimedia" of any sort, so I don't expect the repository to be iCloud.

Are these images really held in iCloud, even though I haven't asked for them to be?
I am in no way short of data space, 1TB SSD boot drive, only half full & 12TB of other drives in this Mac.  I have none of the iCloud Storage Management options enabled.
macOS 10.14.6 (latest this Mac can run) on Mac Pro 5,1.

After comments
It does appear that these are shuffled off to iCloud, whether you want them to be or not.
From the Details button, top right, then scroll right down - rather blurred picture to demonstrate

Clicking that Download restores them to their correct location. How long before it decides to remove them again I've yet to discover.


Can I get mac notification when a Tab has new output in iTerm2? You know, iTerm2 will change the color of the tab to red or purple. But sometime when I run a long job in one tab, I have to check if it's done frequently. So.. can I get notification when there's new output in one tab? If so, how?

You can use Terminal Notifier. Once installed run a command like this:

long-running-command && terminal-notifier -message "Done" -title "Done"

When long-running-command finishes you will get a notification.


How can I tell if my iMac's hard drive is dying? A couple of days ago, my three-year-old iMac locked up.  When I rebooted it, it only displayed a folder icon with a flashing question mark.  After a couple more reboot attempts, it booted. I ran Disk Utility, which told me that the file system was corrupted and needed repair.

I booted with my Snow Leopard DVD, did a repair with Disk Utility, and now everything seems fine.

My questions: Should I be worried about my drive?  Should I go ahead and replace it now, or wait to see whether there are any more problems?

(FWIW, I've already purchased a replacement drive, and plan to replace it at some point. I'm really wondering whether I should do it as soon as possible, or whether it can wait until I have nothing better to do on a weekend.)

Short answers to your questions:

Some concern over the drive is good, noticing there may be an issue and proactively thinking about what could happen is a good place to start. If you don't already, I would make a backup/clone of the entire drive or at least a backup of all the files important to you. Think if the HD goes bad tomorrow and you could get nothing recovered from it, what would you say "I wish I had a copy of..."
If you have a backup and see no performance degradation I'd say use the drive until it dies. Unless the new drive is bigger and faster. Then, you are killing two birds with one stone. Getting rid of a potentially bad drive and upgrading.

Some background:

The folder with a question mark means that upon booting the iMac can't find an operating system. This can happen because the hard drive is going bad, is bad or it can't find a startup disc (HD or other). This can be related to physical hardware or software issues.

Had you done any recent system updates prior to the machine freezing up? Sometimes after an update, example 10.6.7>10.6.8 some corruption can occur. If not, it still does not 100% rule out some sort of OS/software issue.

Did you recently boot from an external HD, netboot or optical disk? Sometimes the OS cannot find the last disk it was booting from and you will quickly see the folder with question mark flash on the screen, but then the machine sees an operating system and boots from it. I would look in System Preferences>Startup Disk and make sure you select the drive you want to boot from. Most likely, Macintosh HD, unless you renamed your HD. Press the restart button and now it knows for sure to use that drive to start from.

Disk Utility is usually pretty good and seeing errors and then correcting them. This could be a simple directory issue that is now fixed and it won't happen again or it could be the early stages of a failing drive. You could purchase any one of many software disc checking tools to see if the drive is having hardware malfunctions or has bad blocks. Disk Warrior is excellent and so is Drive Genius. Unless you plan on using these utilities a lot, it may not make $ense to buy them and rather just use the replacement HD you purchased.


Can I untick all checklist items in an iOS Notes note? I've prepared a checklist for air travel with our two kids. Currently everything is ticked but I want to reset it for our next trip. Is there a way to untick everything in one go, or do I have to first go untick every item manually?

"Select all" text in the list/note.  Right-click and choose "mark as checked".  Click it again to "mark as unchecked".


Is there a way to access iCloud's Photo Stream from the Finder, similar to Windows? On Windows, Photo Stream works in a way that all the files are automatically copied to your 'My Pictures' folder or the like.

I currently have Photo Stream working in Aperture, but every once in a while I think it would be nice to have direct access to Photo Stream in the Finder, so I could possibly script something (i.e., copy photos to Dropbox, add automatically Evernote, etc).

Is there a way that I can reach this, outside of iPhoto or Aperture on the Mac? And do one of these apps have to 'trigger' a sync from iCloud? Or is Photo Stream syncing automatically somewhere on the file system?

This could be a direct path, a smart folder, etc.

After doing some research, I finally found where they were located, and then figured a quick way to get back to them.

The files themselves are stored in hashed folders under ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub.

I then created a Smart Folder using this path, and then selecting Kind as "Image". This then provides me with a directory with just the images in Photo Stream, outside of their folders.

I also verified that this was working on a machine where iPhoto didn't have Photo Stream enabled itself, the only Photo Stream part was enabled in System Preferences. Therefore, it was syncing on its own, and not with a relation to iPhoto having to launch to trigger it.

You can't cd into a smart folder, but it looks like I can use some actions with it it. I moreso wanted a direct folder, so I could copy stuff out quickly.


How does APFS manage snapshots? This page - Apple KB: Prepare for APFS in macOS High Sierra - says that APFS supports "snapshots" as one of its features.

Can someone explain how this works?

I get the basic concept of what snapshots are, but how does APFS actually achieve this? Apple’s page (linked above) doesn’t provide any explanation.

What are snapshots

The snapshot feature is used to ensure the reliability of your data and to make it possible to roll back the ﬁle system to an earlier point in time. In other words, if you ever need to return your Mac to a previous state, you can simply restore to that relevant snapshot.

How do snapshots work?

APFS keeps track of snapshots by keeping a single volume checkpoint for each snapshot that’s been created. This is done by ensuring that the contents of any files that are part of a snapshot are protected from deletion. APFS achieves this 'protection' by:

ensuring that if/when these files are deleted after a particular snapshot was created, the blocks containing the data from those files are not actually overwritten, even though the meta-data associated with those files is erased from the ﬁle system hierarchy
continuing to protect this data for as long as that particular snapshot exists

How are snapshots created?

Assuming you have macOS High Sierra (or above) installed and that your boot volume is formatted as APFS, your Mac will automatically create a snapshot before installing any operating system updates.

You can also create snapshots manually as follows:

Open the Terminal app (by default it’s located in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder)
Now copy and paste the following command into Terminal:

tmutil snapshot
Press Enter
A confirmation message will appear within Terminal

NOTE: At present snapshots older than 24 hours are automatically deleted. As a result, manually creating a snapshot as per the steps above is an excellent strategy when you're about to install any major new software/hardware or if you're about to undertake some testing. Having a snapshot gives you a  "get out of jail free" card, albeit only valid for 24hrs!

For more info on how you can restore from a snapshot, refer to the following:

About Time Machine local snapshots
Restoring from a snapshot with APFS


Wifi Tx rate in airport and speedtest cli upload/download speeds are drastically different When I run airport -I or opt click my wifi icon, it says my wifi Tx rate is around 700 Mbps, but when I run the speedtest-cli command, it says my upload speed is 20 Mbit/s and download speed is 30 Mbit/s. Shouldn't the upload speed and Tx rate be the same thing? What is the difference?

Tx rate is the speed of connection between your computer and the WiFi; this is not the same as the speed of your network connection provided by your ISP. So you might have a high speed in your local network, but accessing the internet has lower speed limited by your internet plan (which is what speedtest-cli tests for as it establishes a connection with a server somewhere else).
If you want to test LAN speed, use iperf on local devices.


Macbook Pro function buttons not working following changed battery I have changed by Macbook Pro's (Early 2015 running El Capitan) battery, following which the function buttons (brightness control, mission control, skip, next, volume up, volume down...etc) have stopped working.

I can confirm that the buttons are working as if the FN button is pressed, i.e. F1, F2...etc.

I can also confirm that the FN button works using the Keyboard Viewer (it is not visible but the backspace, return and arrow keys change).

I can confirm setting are correct and that Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys is unchecked.

I have tried:

PRAM reset
SMC reset
Safe Mode
Run Apple Diagnostics (no issues found)

I would start with the following:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Select the Keyboard preferences pane
Ensure you have the Keyboard tab selected
Double-check your settings and change if necessary

Let me know how you go.

[EDIT 1]

Okay, now that we know your settings are fine, let's see whether booting into Safe Mode makes a difference, either during or afterwards.

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. what happens when you press the function keys, etc)
Exit Safe Mode by restart your Mac as normal
Again, take a note of what happens (i.e. what happens when you press the function keys, etc)

Let me know how you went and we'll go from there.

[EDIT 2]

Let's test your hardware. We can do this by running Apple Diagnostics.

Run Apple Diagnostics

Follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.

[EDIT 3]

Ok, here are a couple more tests you can try to isolate things further:

Try connecting an external keyboard (any cheap USB keyboard will do) and testing the Function key behaviour on that.
Try booting up from another drive (if you can) and test things.

Let me know the results of either or both tests.


How do I prevent my iPhone from wrongly auto-correcting a specific word? When I'm writing text in Danish, the iPhone always auto-corrects foto into FOTO which is immensely annoying. How can I prevent that specific suggestion from ever showing up again?
This is iOS version 4.2.1.

First I thought that it was matching it with an entry in my address book, but there is no contact with "FOTO" in any of the name fields. I'm using several languages, and the bad replacement only shows in Danish and not in German and not in English. I haven't tested other languages.

Because my PC with iTunes is not working well, I'd appreciate suggestions different from "try upgrading iOS it might help" unless that is a proven fix. I don't want to have to upgrade the phone unless really, really necessary.

Update:

As noted in an answer's comment, I don't want to turn off the autocorrect -- I just want it to work right. Thanks.
Resetting the keyboard dictionary didn't help.

Go into the keyboard settings and add a shortcut for the corrected spelling of the word.  I had to do this with my daughter's name, as every time I spelled it, it would come out in capitals.  You can just use a part of the word and it can auto spell the word for you, or you can spell it with a different capitalization and save the corrected version the other way.

If you need to use the first part of the word it may not work.  Don't really know, but it worked for me ;-)


My Macbook storage is full even after deleting all my photos So I only got my MacBook Air last year and I am travelling so am taking a lot o photos but I have a 1TB hard drive that I transfer the photos over to every now and then, my time machine also backs up to here. Recently I got a message pop up saying my start up disk was nearly full so I transferred all the photos over to my hard drive and deleted them all. It was still saying full even after I emptied my recycling bin and went through recently deleted photos and emptied that. Still no luck so I went through the steps to go onto my finder and computer and find the size of all the files to see where it was all being taken up and theres 49GB in my photo library and there is literally NOTHING in there! Its so frustrating because its now going slow and it gets super hot if I'm charging it whilst using it because its just too full. Please can anyone help?

Thanks

You may find your answer here.

To summarize there is no empty trash like there was in iPhoto. Deleted pictures are moved to a recently deleted album and then automatically deleted permanently after 30 days. They can be manually removed or recovered at any time during these 30 days.


Record long webcam video / avoid re-encoding / save video-capture instantly I want to record a very long video, approximately three hours, over an external webcam.

Short videos work very fine with QuickTime and its built-in "New Movie Recording" function. As long as they are short, you can choose to save the file "unchanged". Apple calls this to save the file "[…] in the same format as the original".

The option "save a movie file that contains media in the same format as the original movie" mentioned above strangely disappears at my three hours video.

My webcam needs 180 MB disk space per minute in 1080p, so a three hour video roughly weights 30 GB.

This export takes a quite, quite long time and I do not want to re-encode it and also want to save it in the same format as the original movie.

Another question is if there is a possibility to save the file instantly while recording? I am afraid of losing my video if my Mac crashes somehow. Also iMovie is not capable of this. Requirement is that I want to save the file "as it is" in 1080p, or how Apple calls this "in the same format as the original movie" and not down scaled or anything like that.

I appreciate every help concerning QuickTime or iMovie and also suggesting of any other applications.

Here are some screenshots. The second and third one are triggered either by closing the file or choosing "export" from the file menu. The option is ONLY available for small videos. For my large video there are options like "audio only", "Mac and PC", "480p", "720p", "1080p" and so on.

Quicktime can't encode and capture at the same time that's why the files produced are so big.

Adobe provide Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder free.
You should try with it.

Be aware that encoding live 1080p take a lot of ressources.


MacBook Air: Playing 1080p vs 720p videos I  have a MacBook Air 13-inch 2013 model and I was wondering if it is worth downloading 1080p movies if I have the option for 720p?

I know 1080p is much more crisp on my TV, but does the MacBook Air have enough resolution to even see the difference?

Your MacBook Air supports the following resolutions at 16:10 aspect ratio:

1440 x 900 (native)
1280 x 800
1152 x 720
1024 x 640

It also supports the following at 4:3 aspect ratio:

1024 x 768
800 x 600

Since 1080p is technically a resolution of 1920 x 1080 your MacBook Air isn't going to display a 1080p movie at its best on its built in display. However, your MacBook Air does support an external resolution of up to 2560 x 1600 pixels, so you'd be able to take advantage of 1080p in that scenario.

Finally, whether you download 1080p or 720p movies also gets down to personal preference. Most people I know with true HD TVs still only download 720p versions because the difference to them (especially while watching most movies) is negligible. Basically, do you notice the extra pixels during a high speed chase in an action movie or not? Many people don't, some people do.

In summary, if you're downloading movies only to watch on your MacBook Air via it's built in display, there's no real advantage to downloading the 1080p version.


Moving Home Folder Back to Macintosh HD I moved my Home folder to a separate partition called 'Data HD' and would like to move it back to /Macintosh HD.

One of the main reasons is that with the home folder in 'Data HD' some apps would treat it as '/Volumes/Data HD/Users/UserName'. The space character between Data and HD can sometimes cause issues. I've also encountered issues where 'Data HD' becomes 'Data HD 1' after a forced reboot.

I would like to ask about the best method to

Backup existing items in '/Volumes/Data HD'
Repartition the hard drive so there's only one single partition left
Copy '/Volumes/Data HD/Users' back into 'Macintosh HD'

If I need to do this via single-user mode, what are the proper commands?

I'm running OS X Mavericks. Currently, there's a symlink on 'Macintosh HD' pointing to /Users on 'Data HD'.

Here's what I would do:

Backup your full disk (all partitions) to an external disk using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.
Copy your home folder back to the main partition (to /Users) using "Paste Exactly": in Finder, go to your home folder on /Volumes/Data HD, select Edit → Copy from the menu, go to /Users (still in Finder), open the Edit menu, hold down the Command, Option and Shift modifier keys, and select "Paste Exactly".
Go to System Preferences and open the "Users & Groups" preferences
Unlock using the lock-icon in the bottom left
Right-click the user account of which you're moving the home folder
Choose "Advanced Options…"
Change the user's home directory using the "Choose…" button and point it to the copy you just made in /Users
Reboot your computer

Extra check:

Rename old the user folder in /Volumes/Data HD so that you are sure OS X cannot find it anymore
Reboot your computer
Make sure that everything still works

If everything still works, you can go to Disk Utility, delete the partition corresponding to /Volumes/Data HD, and then resize the main partition to use the entire harddisk. All this is done by selecting the disk on the left-hand side in Disk Utility (so the main entry that is listed above the two partitions, not the partition itself), and then selecting the "Partition" tab. Select the partition you want to delete, click the 'minus' button, click Apply. Then resize the first partition by dragging its bottom border down to cover the entire drive and click Apply again.

For more information and/or alternatives, please refer to this post: https://discussions.apple.com/message/23510349#23510349.


How to go back to "All Artists" in iTunes In iTunes, in Artists view, after I've used Command+L to go to the track currently playing, how do I exit and go back to showing All Artists? I currently have to scroll to the top of the Artists list (on the sidebar) and click "All Artists" every time. Is there an easier way?

The only way I know short of scrolling with the mouse is, after having pressed Command-L, you can press the following key sequence to get to All Artists: Tab, Tab, A, ↑, ↑

This assumes you have an artist's name starting with the letter A. If not, then substitute A with the first character of the artist's name that's directly under Compilations in the sidebar.

In other words, after having pressed Command-L, pressing Tab twice sets focus to the now playing artist in the sidebar. If it's not the artist directly under Compilations then pressing the appropriate key to get there plus ↑ twice takes you back to All Artists.


How do I change how an Airport Express extends a network? My original setup:

Coax from Cable company into house
Cable split in two, one for TVs, other for Internet/phone modem
Ethernet cable from modem to Time Capsule (latest one w/ 802.11ac)
Used to use wireless connections to everything.
But I heard that wired is faster, and I have several fixed devices (latest AppleTV, the TV set, and a PS3) in the living room. So I got an Ethernet switch for the room and ran a cable across the house to connect to the Time Capsule.
In the basement, I have a eMac and some printers. I connected them to an Airport Express (the latest one that looks like a white AppleTV). The Express connects to the Time Capsule via WiFi.

I heard extending a WiFi with another but using wireless communication for the connection between the primary and secondary device slows everything down. So I thought to buy another long Ethernet cable and connect the Express to the switch.

At first I just connect the Express to the switch without powering off anything. My MacBook Air didn't like the connection. The Airport Connection Utility on the Air still had the dashed line indicating a wireless connection. I unplugged the Express, then the Time Capsule, and replugged them in reverse order. Now the utility shows a solid line (wired connection), but trying to actually use the new WiFi connection is super slow. I unplugged the Express for now.

Is there some sort of setting I need to re-do to get the Express to extend the Time Capsule's network, but using the wired connection between them? Should I do some sort of reset on the Express (or both)?

I just did a factory-default reset on the AirPort Express. Then my MacBook Air saw the Express as a virgin unit, opened the AirPort Utility, and let me use automatic setup to extend the Time Capsule's WiFi network, this time via Ethernet.


Can I control the order of keyboard layouts in the system menu? I have a few keyboard layouts or "input sources" as the system calls them. The system also lets you define a keyboard shortcut for "Select next source in Input menu".

I had muscle memory of how many times to hit that key combo to go between various keyboards. Then after a reboot they are now in different order. Is there a way to set the order so it doesn't change?

Since you're using more than two input sources you'd be better off configuring a specific shortcut for each input source.

Without knowing the exact version of macOS you're running, there are a number of tools you could use to achieve this:

IMEShortcuts
MLSwitcher2
Karabiner

My suggestion would be to create the same shortcut and use digits (i.e. 1, 2, 3, and 4) to differentiate them.


How to add e.g. Chrome permanently to Guest account's dock? When I log in as "Guest", the dock looks like this:

Any changes made to the dock are lost upon logout, when the guest user's home directory gets deleted.

How can I change the default dock settings for guest account so that it will automatically include a custom application of my choice, such as Google Chrome?

The easiest way would be the following:

Download, install and update the free Server Admin Tools from Apple.
If you´re currently logged into the Guest User Account, log out. Open /Applications/Server/Workgroup Manager and connect to Address: localhost with the username and password of your admin user
Ignore the warning message about working on a local configuration, then go into the menu "View" and select "Show System Records".
On the left hand side, select the Guest-User and in the window titlebar click on "Preferences"
Click Dock on the right side. Select "Manage Always" at the top of the window and then add and remove the Dock items you want in your customized Dock. Uncheck the checkbox  "Merge With User's Dock" at the bottom of the window. Click on "Apply Now" and log in as the Guest User to see it in effect.


Finder remounts DMG files that I opened previously When I mount a .dmg file or open files in my drive (using text editor or other app), the Finder will automatically remount all .dmg images that I used before.

For example, I do something in DMG A, and unmount it and this will succeed.
However, when I open DMG B or open files in my drive (no matter what type of file), the Finder will remount the DMG A, so I have to unmount both DMG A and DMG B.

What kind of problem this is? and how can I resolve it?

Note: I installed TotalFinder on my machine—is this the cause of the problem?

This is strange behavior, but you might try checking Disk Utility. Load Disk Utility and look in the left sidebar. See if any DMG files are listed there. If they are, even if unmounted, click the DMG file and then the Eject button in the toolbar. If Eject is unavailable simply select the image and press the forward Delete key (Fn-Backspace on laptops). This should cause OS X to "forget" about that particular DMG file - at least until you mount it next.

If this is happening regularly - DMGs are always persistently remounting - then some extension is most likely causing it. If you removed this "TotalFinder" app by just dragging an .app file to the trash, it may not remove any extensions it installs into the OS that do those sorts of things. Look on the Internet - ideally on the software publisher's website - for instructions on completely removing the application, including all support and system files. Many apps that do install stuff deep into the system will come with an uninstaller or at least a shell script that will perform the necessary uninstallation commands for you.


How do I delete specific photos from my photo-stream on the Mac or iPhone? Possible Duplicate:
  How do you erase pictures from the Photo Stream album on an iPhone running iOS 5?

After enabling the new photo-stream feature on my mac and iphone, I found that there does not seem to be a way to delete individual photos from the stream.  I like the convenience of having the photos automatically show up everywhere, but it would be nice to be able to weed out the bad ones.  I have the option to delete everything in the stream, but this was not what I was looking for.  So, is there a way on the Mac or iPhone to delete individual photos in the photo-stream?

In recent (2017) versions of Photos.app, individual images can be selected and deleted from "My Photo Stream". These photos may also be removed from the local library on the device (depending on exactly how they were deleted: delete key; menu items; contextual menu; etc.), but not on other devices that have imported the images into their local library (which happens automatically with Photos.app on the Mac). Photos that were removed from the local library can be recovered from the "Recently Deleted" folder on the device, and are not added back to "My Photo Stream". Note that the photos visible in "My Photo Stream" can differ between different devices, perhaps due to time lag between local caches and server updates.

In earlier software## Heading ##, it seems that the only way to do this is to turn off Photo Stream, delete the photos from your devices, and turn Photo Stream back on.

From the relevant Apple support page:

To Reset your Photo Stream, follow these instructions:

    From a computer browser, go to icloud.com and sign in.
    Click on your name on the iCloud home page (this is the page that shows all the app icons). If you do not see your name, click the cloud icon in the top left of the page.
    Click Advanced.
    Here you will see the Reset Photo Stream button. Clicking this button will remove all your Photo Stream photos from iCloud. Once removed, they cannot be recovered, but you can re-upload any photos you'd like to restore to your Photo Stream from a Mac or PC.

After resetting your Photo Stream, you can also remove any photos that have been downloaded to your device or computers. To do this, follow the directions below:

    On your iOS device, you can remove photos from the Photo Stream view by turning off Photo Stream and then optionally turning it back on. You can do this at Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream.
    If you added any Photo Stream photos to other albums or the Camera Roll on your iOS device, you can locate and delete these photos manually, if desired.

    On your Mac, you can clear cached photos from the Photo Stream view in iPhoto or Aperture by turning off Photo Stream and then optionally turning it back on. You can do this in each application by visiting Preferences > Photo Stream.
    If you had Automatic Import enabled in your Photo Stream settings, your Photo Stream photos were also imported to your iPhoto or Aperture Library, and will remain after you disable Photo Stream. If you would like to delete any of these photos from your library, you can to do so manually any time you like.

    On your PC, you can remove Photo Stream photos by deleting them from your designated Photo Stream Download Folder. By default, this folder is located at C:\Users\Apple\Pictures\Photo Stream\My Photo Stream.


Conditional IF DATE function I am working to create a function that keeps the data in a cell dynamic until the date is beyond that of the date column. In other words, there is a column of dates, i.e. 9/5 9/6 9/7... and the other columns are tracking data from other fields. If the row date is older than the current date, then the data in the field stops updating and remains at the last known value. Is this possible in Numbers or should I look for another solution?

Thank you!
Mike

This may or may not be what you are after.

This Assumes you know which cells you will be referencing. And remember this is only an example..

IF(A2<TODAY(),D2,INDEX(D,COUNTA(D) + 1))

Using the IF function.

IF(if-expression,if-true,if-false)

First Compare date value in A2 with Todays date TODAY() as the if-expression

A2<TODAY()

We use the less than symbol < to return a true or false for the expression.

If the expression  returns True, then we  fill the cell with The cell data in D2

If the expression  returns False, then we fill the cell with the last with data in column D

  The INDEX function returns the value in the cell located at the
  intersection of the specified row and column within a collection of
  cells or from an array returned by an array function.

.

  The COUNTA function returns the number of its arguments that are not
  empty.

It is bets you look up in the Functions panel for a fuller explanation on all the functions.

Once you have set up the first row use the drag handle to drag the formula cell down to the other rows you want it on.

They will auto adjust to the correct cell references.

Notes:

At time of this posting the date was 6 September 2014
You will need to find a way of dealing with Blank cells in the data column. If a blank cell is found it will throw the results. You should find a resolve with a google search. It will be the  COUNTA  function that you need to look at.


Switching between windows doesn't work in some apps (using OSX 10.6.4 if that matters)

I know about the Cmd-`, but it doesn't work everywhere, namely Chrome and Firefox don't seem to react to it. It works in, for example, Finder and OpenOffice.

Any solution to this problem?

Places to check for things intercepting the keystroke:

Browser Extensions: Perhaps the same extension on both browsers
Macro App: TextExpander or Keyboard Maestro, for example
Services Shortcut: In the Chrome or Firefox menu choose Services then Services Preferences.... Scroll to the Internet section and see if anything is set up to use the Cmd` shortcut.
Application Shortcuts: In that same dialog (or choose Keyboard in the System Preferences click Application Shortcuts in the left pane and see if there are any custom shortcuts for Chrome and Firefox that use that combination.


I'm Unable to Boot into Mac OS Partition, partition type FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF I've seen similar answered questions like this.

I'm unable to boot into my MacOS partition.

Long story short, I had Windows BootCamp, removed it and then later installed Ubuntu Linux, then tried to delete the Linux partition and I think I ended up deleting the Boot recovery partition. And then tried to run repair, and now my main mac partition now shows FFFFFFF something.

My Macbook is this one https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i5-2.6-13-mid-2014-retina-display-specs.html#macspecs1

I'm guessing my Macbook got updated to Mojave 10.14 before this happened but I'm not 100% sure of it, it may be on High Sierra but I'm guessing.

I'm booting into Internet Recovery and this is what I've pulled up in the pictures below.

I would like to be able to boot into my regular Mac OS partition.

I'm unable to figure out if the partition is a OS X Standard Partition or CoreStorage or APFS or etc.
Is my recovery boot system too old if I need to use gpt to set it to an APFS argument?
Should I check if the EFI partition and the Recovery HD partition are corrupted
Would the 650 MB boot/recovery partion always be the last 650 MB of the disk
Does the partition table contains an MBR instead of an PMBR and would the MBR need to be replaced by a PMBR?
Previously the main MacOS partition was resized by me, how and when would be the best time and way for me to resize it to occupy the entire free space like stock?

Please Help.

It default boots into this.

If type exit, I get this.

Holding Option on boot shows

This is rest of the stuff I pulled from internet recovery

Please Help!

Based on klanomath's answer to the question OS volume shows as type 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF', it would appear you are missing a APFS type partition.

I believe you should enter the following commands while booted to Recovery Mode. See klanomath's answer for an explanation.

diskutil unmountdisk disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
diskutil unmountdisk disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 168232920 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0


Show exposé/"All Application Windows" from the dock Is there anyway to show all the windows for one application (aka Exposé) from the window icon on the launcher? I know it is possible by right-clicking on the icon and then "Show All Windows", but I wanted a more direct way, for example:

Long pressing on the app icon to show exposé;
or
Double-clicking the icon;
or
Shift/Command/... + click;
or
If the application is already on focus, clicking its icon on the dock will show exposé.

Is this possible?

Found a way to (sort of) do it: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/76103/38367

The following command will enable the mouse scroll-up on an app icon to open exposé:

defaults write com.apple.Dock scroll-to-open -bool true
killall Dock

More info on: http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/30/enable-hidden-stack-gestures-mac-os-x-lion/


DNS lookup painfully slow on only one network? I've got a MacBook Air 2013 running 10.14, and loading all pages either stalls for multiple seconds on "Resolving host" and only loads after a painful delay or it completely fails and Chrome shows me a "Could not resolve DNS error." This is consistent across browsers, so I'm inclined to believe this is an OS issue.

What's throwing me for a loop is: this only happens on one network! The router has a 2.4Ghz and a 5Ghz network, and they both have this problem. The only way I can use the internet without tearing my hair out is to tether to my phone.

Any ideas? Maybe I have a forgotten DNS setup that only fails on this router/ISP combo and I need to reset my DNS settings?

Thanks for all the suggestions. I verified that this is indeed only a problem on this machine, so I figured it must be something misconfigured.

I found that I had Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 (and associated backup and IPV6 addresses) as manually-set DNS servers for only this network. When I removed these addresses, my lookups became blazingly fast.

The mystery is now: why is 1.1.1.1 so slow? I set these as my DNS servers on my iPhone and it's nice and fast. I'll mark this question as solved because my original question has been resolved, but it have generated another bigger question.


Is there a way to use Live Photos in iMovie? Is there a way to use Live Photos in iMovie on macos or ios? Or do we have to wait until Apple updates iMovie to make it so?

Yes.  You don't have to buy any software.  Here's the procedure for transferring a "Live" photo taken on an iPhone 6 on to a Mac and then into iMovie or Photos as a movie file:

Connect your iPhone to your Mac using a USB cable
Open "Photos" on the Mac.
Select your phone icon should be under a grey "Import" title in the sidebar.
Select the "Live" photo(s) and import them.
In "Photos" select the "Live" photo you want to convert to a movie.
In "Photos" in the "File" menu select "Export"=>"Export unmodified original..."
Select a location to save your movie (container) file.  It exports the file as a .mov file.
You can open and play this file in Quicktime.  But...you're not done yet.
Right click on the .mov file.  At the bottom of the menu select "Encode selected video files".  IT takes a few seconds.
Now you can choose 480p, 720p or 1080p.
Save your file (it is .m4v format)
Now you can import this file back into "Photos" and share it as a movie or you can drag it to iMovie and select frames, edit etc..


Locking down all apps except the phone/call app on the iPhone 4 running iOS6? Is there a way to lock out all apps except just the phone app in order to make calls?

I understand "Guided Access" isolates you to a particular app and not let you move out.
This works fine but is annoying as you cannot lock the phone (in other words "The hardware buttons are always off") when its on. Is there a way for me to enable just the lock button?

Please advise.

You can turn on Restrictions in iOS Settings (in the General section), which allows you to disable all non-standard apps, as well as some of the built-in ones (such as Safari, Camera, FaceTime, iTunes and Siri). Unfortunately, I believe a few built-in apps remain, such as Messages, Calendar and Maps, I'm not aware of a way to disable them completely.

A word of caution if you're testing this out—disabling apps, then re-enabling them will destroy your home screen organization.


How to use selected text in apple script? I want to add text before and after it Idea: I select text, and it gets replaced with <sometag>selected text</sometag>.

Code:

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "System Events" to keystroke "<tag>[what should go here]</tag>"

    return input
end run

Briefly, have your workflow accept Text from Any Application and check the box that is labelled something like Output Replaces Selection.

Then, all you need is a single Execute AppleScript action, in which you should replace any example code with this:

on run {input as text}
    return ["<sometag>", input, "</sometag>"] as text
end run

which can also be written like this:

on run {input as text}
    return "<sometag>" & input & "</sometag>"
end run

The workflow would need to be saved as a Service or Quick Action, and then be activated in System Preferences where other "Services" are listed.


CRT TV as second monitor I want to play some 8-bit style games - via an emulator or as web games in a browser. I find that these look much better on a CRT TV. I thought of using a TV as a second monitor for my iMac (24" early 2008). It seems I need an "Apple Mini-DVI to RCA adapter" to do this.

I've tried using second monitors before but not such a lo-res TV screen. Will I be able to set a resolution and send apps/windows to this screen successfully? What is the performance/response time like? I know that plugging composite devices like Wii into digital displays can be laggy due to conversion.

That adapter will work fine. I have used the regular DVI → Composite/S-Video adapter (M9267G) many times on many different Macs.

Contrary to what has been mentioned in the comments, it is not an active adapter; it requires no external power, and PAL/NTSC resolution can be output from the iMac's graphics card. It behaves exactly as any other second screen would behave, just at rather low resolution. Performance/response time will not be an issue; there is no lag.

Regarding resolution you'll get the option to run at native 720×576 / 640×480 (depending on whether it's a PAL or NTSC TV) or a bunch of other higher resolutions, up to 1024×768 (as far as I recall). Note that these higher resolutions will be scaled to the TV's native resolution, so don't expect to be able to read 10pt text in the 1024×768 setting.

You'll also get a fun option called "overscan" which switches between scaling the image on the display so you can see a black edge around it (like a CRT computer monitor) or so the image "overscans" and runs off the edge of the display (like a CRT TV picture).

There is a thread on mac-forums.com: the first screenshot shows the resolution options you'll see.


How I can activate the iPhone which is asking for credentials I don't remember? I was going to sell my iPhone tomorrow, and I thought I'd reset it so that none of my things were on there. I had already made an iTunes and AppleID for the buyer and was going to set up the phone for them.

When one resets a phone it asks for the AppleID password. I entered that and then the iPhone was reset.

When it came to activating the phone again, it is asking for an iCloud account email and password which I can't remember. I know the password its just the email, so I went to reset my iCloud email and it won't let me - only my AppleID which isn't the same.

Can anyone suggest how I can activate the iPhone?

Don't set it up for the next owner, let them do it themselves. Otherwise the account is yours, not theirs.
What to do before selling or giving away your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

  If you still have your iOS device
  Before you sell or give away your iOS device, make sure that you've removed all of your personal information. Follow these steps to protect your data and get your device to its factory default state for the new owner:

  Back up your device.
  Sign out of iCloud:

  Tap Settings > iCloud, scroll down, and tap Sign Out. In iOS 7 or earlier, tap Delete Account.
  Tap Sign Out again, tap Delete from My iPhone, then enter your password.

  Go to Settings > General > Reset, then tap Erase All Content and Settings.

  This will completely erase your device, including any credit or debit cards you added for Apple Pay and any photos, contacts, music, or apps. It will also turn off iCloud, iMessage, FaceTime, Game Center, and other services.
  If you're using iOS 7 or later and have Find My iPhone turned on, your Apple ID and password will be required. After you provide your password, the device will be erased and removed from your account so that the next owner can activate it.
  Your content won't be deleted from iCloud when you erase your device.

  Contact your carrier for guidance on transferring service to the new owner. If you aren't using a SIM-card with your device, you can contact them to get help transferring service to the new owner.

  When the new owner turns on the device for the first time, Setup Assistant will guide them through the setup process.

  Important: Don't manually delete contacts, calendars, reminders, documents, photo streams, or any other iCloud data while signed in to your iCloud account, or the content will also be deleted from the iCloud servers and all of your devices that are signed in to iCloud.


Siri on my Apple Watch doesn't stop listening when I stop talking. Why? I've had my Apple Watch for about a week and I use Siri constantly. For the first few days it worked like a dream: I'd raise my wrist, talk, and Siri would do what I asked. For the past few days, however, it sits there still listening after I finish talking. It'll remain in this state for upwards of 30 seconds - long enough that I have to tap the screen to stop it going to sleep and losing what I'd said - before finally deciding I have stopped speaking, and successfully doing what I'd asked.

It's not background noise that's causing this: I'm using it in the same environment that I'd used it in before, and it works perfectly on my phone.

Switch-it-off-and-on-again FTW!

Whilst typing the above question, I thought maybe I ought to at least try switching it off and on again, so I did: I held both buttons in for a few seconds to force a restart, and after that I found it worked perfectly again.

Hope this helps someone else!


Restoring trackpad to original I messed up with my trackpad settings. I am also using bettertouchtool.

The problem is three finger drag has completely stopped working. None of trackpad settings in system preferences or options under accessibility are helping.

Is there any way I can reset trackpad settings to original, the way it came with factory. I tried resetting PRAM, not helped. Any way to get back the default trackpad settings.

this is what I did:

uninstalled BTT
entered in Terminal mdfind -name bettertouchtool
entered in Terminal sudo rm -rf /whatever

went to /Library/Preferences

removed .GlobalPreferences.plist

went to ~/Library/Preferences

removed .GlobalPreferences.plist
removed com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad.plist
removed com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad.plist

Finally I did a PRAM reset (Reboot, immediately hold alt/opt+cmd+P+R and hold these keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a second time]

Frankly I got this by hit & trial, I didn't knew what to do, so I did all at once.  After it restarted my trackpad was back like again. Maybe someone can edit this answer to make it perfect. Thanks :)


Keeping both files when moving them to a different folder? When I'm moving files to a folder with another set of files named the same, it doesn't give me the "keep both"-option. However when I move the files one by one, I get this option.
Any tips on how I can move large amounts of files and still get the "keep both"-option?

If you hold option, the skip button should turn to keep both at least in 10.8.2.


Bose QuietComfort 20 not working after Yosemite upgrade I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro Retina, and am using QuietComfort20 headphones that previously used to work.

Now, after a clean install of OS X Yosemite, I'm unable to use the headphones, no audio comes through them at all.

When I adjust the volume use F11 or F12 I get the following

Seems that the Audio Output selector was "Parallels Access Audio".  When I used parallels access apparently the default output was changed, and not reverted.


How can I transfer photos from iPhone to Samsung Galaxy phone with location information? I'm trying to transfer photos from iphone to my new samsung galaxy note 20, but the smart switch does not work for me somehow (It asks me to retry after I input my iCloud password, but my friend's iphone works on the same cable). I wonder if there's any other way that I could use to transfer photos, if the location and time information could be kept with photos, that would be great. Thanks.

At the end, I found I could transfer all my data by iCloud. By default, it shows transfer data of "last 30 days" only, but there's a small gray arrow at right, by clicking this you could choose "all data", and which works perfectly.


Fresh Install OSX on new hard drive without the .dmg (iso) file Today is the day my hard drive failed.

My issue now is to install OSX (Mavericks) I have purchased to the new HDD.

I have neither a DVD installer nor an iso file nor another Mac Device (but I could ask friends)

How can I proceed to reinstall OS X?

Downloading an iso from the net could solve this? Or should I need my specific iso downloaded from the App Store?

To re-install Lion (10.7) or later versions of OS X (including Mavericks), you can use Internet Recovery. Just boot your MacBook Pro while holding down ⌘R, until the Apple logo appears. You'll see an option for internet recovery (you may need to connect to your Wi-Fi first). Click that and follow the instructions and you'll have a fresh install in a while (it may take some time as it downloads the full installer).


Is it possible to upload iPhone apps to iPhone on an expired dev certificate? As the title says, is it possible to upload iPhone apps to iPhone on an expired dev certificate? Do we need to extend our dev certificate once it's expired and pay another 99$?

You will need to renew your dev certificate and your provisions to upload apps from Xcode to stock iOS devices.


I just installed Garageband on my mac but I don't know if it charged my card So, I wanted to use an app to edit some audio for a project. I have a mac but it does not have an in-built GB app, so when I looked for it online, it said that I had to pay $4.99. I did not want to buy the app for I let it be. But I was on App Store just now and it asked me to install the app (it did not say purchase), so I installed it. Now, how do I know if it was charged or did it download for free because I have a mac?

There is an easy way to check this. Go into iTunes and click the Store tab. Once it has loaded, scroll to the very bottom of the page, and under Manage you will see a link to your Account. Click there and sign into your Apple ID if prompted, then under Purchase History click See All. This will give you a list of all the apps you have downloaded from the App Store, iTunes store, and other Apple services. Find GarageBand in the list, and if the price is labeled as $0.00, you will not be charged for the app. But if it is labeled otherwise, you will be charged for the app.


Is there an iPad/iPhone app that can handle editing large (~10000 line) text files? I'm looking for an iPad/iPhone app that can handle editing large (~10000 line) text files. I would like this app to be able to access a particular Dropbox file quickly, and after editing have the file be updated on Dropbox.

Finally, I would be happy if it only allows me to edit the first few lines, or to add to the top of a particular file. (I currently have a cronjob which does this -- I edit a particular blank text file, and the cronjob adds it to the top of the larger file, but would like a more direct solution.)

If adding to the front of a file is OK then I use Drafts for this.

It allows you to type some text and have it added to the front ("prepended") of a file in Dropbox. It can even automatically add the date.

I'm not sure if it has a limit to the length of the file, mine are only a hundred or so lines.

Drafts allows you to type some test and quickly perform any number of actions with it. One of my highly recommended iOS applications.


Feasible font size on the Retina MacBook Pro I'm interested in the amount of text that can be fit into for example code editor windows such that it is still comfortably readable to someone with good vision (i.e. not needing glasses or using glasses that are well adjusted).

The new sharpness in this display is a great thing and one of the benefits is incredibly sharp text rendering. I've seen that on one of these new MacBook Pros.
However, having very good eyes myself, I was wondering how small one could set the font size in an editor. I quickly tried this in TextEdit, simply loading some big text file and changing all the text to a font size of 4pt, which was too small to be comfortable, then 5pt which was already much better (remember, this equals the amount of pixels of a 10pt font size on a non-HiDPI setup).
This of course is not the way to go, since these font sizes stay with the document and would look just as small on any other display, even though it might not be one with enough resolution to show it in a readable way.
Now, code editor windows are another thing entirely. They don't store the font size, as the code is not something that is for print. Its just letters in a file and the font size is a preference in the editor and set up to accustom the user. So this would be an excellent way to really leverage the incredible resolution and just reduce the font size, in for example Xcode, to get a huge amount of lines of text out of the 15" display.
I'm not talking about the 1920x1200 scaled resolution that Mac OS X offers, as I've seen that already, it looks ok, but still not really sharp. To achive this scaling the screen gets rendered at 1920x1200 HiDPI mode, equal to 3840x2400 pixels and then downscaled to 2880x1800 pixels, making it quite slow.

So, I'd like someone with the Retina MacBook Pro to take a screenshot of Xcode or Coda or any other Retina aware Editor that is focused on writing text or code that is not intended as Rich Text. And to do so like I imagined, reducing the font size for the main text/code editing component. Be sure to also show enough text to sufficiently fill it up with text, in order to be able to judge the gain.
In Xcode you can do this like follows:

Open Xcode
Go to Preferences --> Fonts
Duplicate "Default" theme
Change all the Source Editor font options (you can use Cmd+A) on the right to Menlo 6pt or 7pt.

Additionally I'd also like a screenshot of the same Application with normal font sizes but using the full 2880x1800 resolution. You can turn that on using SetResX from http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/vi9yf/set_your_retina_macbook_pros_resolution_to/
Post full sized screenshots, please.

It is impossible to deliver an "answer" to this question. You are asking for something that is purely opinion-based. I have friends who use super small fonts and it's very comfortable for them. I also have friends who use larger fonts, and that works best for them. I personally use a variety of font sizes depending on what Mac I am on and what App I'm using. Your best best is to work with whatever font size suits you, despite what anybody else tells you.

There is no "one-size-fits-all" answer to your question.


Updates for different user on work mac My office is the only one in my place of business that uses macs (I guess I just lucked out with a boss who insisted on macs), so I.T. has no idea what to do for this situation.

The person who I replaced used her personal account on the app store. There are updates for built-in apps such as iPhoto, iMovie, etc. for which I keep getting reminders. I can't hide the updates because I can't log into her account. Likewise, I can't install those updates.

Any idea how to either allow me to install the updates or hide the reminders?

I had a similar issue, I uninstalled them and reinstalled which didn't really matter as they were all free apps.


All possible updates to Mac OS X? So I've discovered there are a number of things to be kept up to date in OS X:

built-in Software Update, obviously
Individual programs, which typically check for updates automatically and the 'update' option can usually be found under the program's menu (to the right of the Apple menu in the menu bar).
Gem, which comes preinstalled in OS X (correct me if I'm wrong), should be periodically updated with sudo gem update --system and then the gems updated with sudo gem update - see Greg's answer for why you should not update Ruby.
MacPorts, if installed, should be periodically updated with sudo port selfupdate and then sudo port upgrade outdated

Are there any other update processes I'm missing? I've only been using OS X for a few weeks so I want to make sure to keep everything up to date in my system and already I feel like most Mac users don't even know about all of the above (especially the Gem update command).

Am I somehow wrong in thinking I need to do all of the above?

It might be good to not upgrade the system Ruby installed by Apple. Apple installs /usr/lib/podcastproducer, which uses that Ruby, and changing the files could cause it to break if there are version sensitive gems being referenced. In addition, other developers can write code knowing the Ruby is there.

Use locate *.rb | grep ^/usr | xargs grep require for a file list and the requires.

I prefer to install a new Ruby, either in /usr/local/bin, or by using RVM to install into a sandbox in ~/.rvm and leave my system version alone.

Similarly, Apple's Python and Perl installations are also used by some apps. There's a reason the languages are on there and it's not entirely for our convenience.


How to disable iTunes for one user I've searched both here and in all of the iTunes' preferences tabs. I wish there was a way to disable it from autostarting for one user.

I need to be sharing my wife's iMac for a while, but each time she connects her iPhone to charge, I get iTunes and iPhoto starting and wanting to import and sync.

How can I disable iTunes to autostart on one user account (but not others) on the latest OS X?

(Bonus question is how to do the same with iPhoto :))

Under System Preferences >  Users & Groups >  Login Items   Find iTunesHelper and remove it from the list of items that will open when you log in, this is the daemon that runs in the background checking for iOS devices connected.

If you want to disable it for only one device instead of one user, connect the device, open iTunes and uncheck "Automatically sync when device is connected".

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3927

For iPhoto I believe you can have another application open when connecting digital camera, not sure if it can be disabled.  Its a setting in iPhoto preferences, under General.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2500?viewlocale=en_US