"usb device was drawing too much power" error message Ever since I upgraded to Lion, I've been getting this error message a lot. It seems to trigger(not every time though) when I plug in my iPhone to the usb port on my keyboard.

The only other USB device that's connected to my brand new 27" iMac is my printer. I'm using a Magic Mouse. I've never had this problem before prior to upgrading to Lion. What's causing it how do I make it go away?

If you plug your iPhone with your keyboard the total power requested by you keyboard (i.e. iphone + keyboard) is too high for the usb to handle. I suggest you plug your iphone directly to your iMac.


iMovie 11? The Appstore shows 10.0.5 I have iMovie 09. I'm thinking about upgrading, and thought iMovie 11 is the current version. But when I open the Appstore and search for iMovie, I find 10.0.5? What happened to 11?

Product name and actual software version are not always logically linked.

iMovie people are specialist in confusing the customers.

For some reason unknown to man kind they call they 10.0.5 software version the iMovie 11.

I have the latest as of August 2014 and it is actually software version 10.0.5 and nowhere it says 11. (and it is a 2.95 Gig file)


Ancient Apple Easter Egg Back in the mid '90s one of my Macintoshes had an easter egg, which I'm almost certain could only be accessed at boot time.

You saw an image of the headquarters, a flag pole, and the flag was flapping in the breeze.

You could control the direction of the wind by moving your mouse, and if you did it just right, you could rip the flag off the flagpole and then sail it to the ground.

I think it was on the Quadra 840av.

Can someone confirm this, or even better, post a screenshot?

Thanks!

You are mostly correct. In summary:

It wasn't specifically the Quadra 840AV, it was any PCI Power Mac with Mac OS System 7.5.5 to 7.6.1 installed.
It wasn't accessed at boot time either. All you had to do was launch any text application that supported drag and drop and then type the following text into it: secret about box (exactly as I've typed it here, no capitals, or punctuation marks! Then if you dragged the text to the desktop, you'd see the picture you're referring to (see below):

Yes, you could control the flag by moving the mouse around (i.e. you could use the mouse to control the wind direction, thereby changing the flag).
Yes, you could rip the flag off the flag pole by using your mouse to make the wind stronger. This was done by moving the mouse up and down quickly in just the right spot.

As an aside, the text below the iguana on the flag: "iguana iguana powersurgius" is a reference to the code name used for the PCI Power Macs (i.e. PowerSurge).


Transferring info from a new MacBook to an older one? I need to move all my data from a newer Macbook OS X 10.9.5 to and older one, OS X 10.6.8. I have tried using a thunderbolt cable and tried wirelessly through migration assistant but the computers cannot find one another?  Any thoughts?

Migration assistant doesn't like migrating to older systems so here's a quick and dirty way of doing most of what you want...

On both machines create a temporary account with admin privileges.
Start up the older machine in target disk mode and connect your Thunderbolt cable.
Log into the new temp account on the newer Mac, in Finder navigate to the Users folder and find the Home folder you wish to migrate across to the older Mac.
Copy your Home folder to the Users folder on the older Mac. You will most likely receive an error that certain items weren't copied, don't worry about this.
When finished eject the older Mac and restart it normally.
Log into temp account on older Mac and go to System Preferences>Users & Groups.
Create a user account (with admin privileges), using exactly the same name and password as the account you just copied over. You will be warned that a user folder with that name already exists, just continue on.
You will probably run into disk permission issues with your home folder, an easy fix is to download and run Onyx which will allow you to reset your home folder permissions (Disk Utility just checks system files and Apple apps).

Hopefully at this point you will be able to log into your user account and access your data, but you will have to copy over any applications over manually.

Another way would be to clone the Users folder using Carbon Copy Cloner, then follow step 7 above. The end result should be the same. I wouldn't copy the whole Applications folder over as there will be many version mismatches with the Apple software - just copy over the software you've installed where possible.

As I said at the start it's a Q&D method but really there's no easy "official" way to migrate to an older system.


Debugging MacBook Pro kernel panic few minutes after resuming from standby Few months ago my MBP (Early2011) started to give a kernel panics after resuming from standby.

This doesn't happen instantly, usually 1-10 minutes after resuming
kernel panics do not follow a clear pattern
I reinstalled the entire OS X 10.8.2
reset SMC and NVRAM
did run memtest
did run AHT

Hardware: Intel SSD 330 & HDD (removed the DVD),8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB.

Here are the last few panics: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uw325nsr3zfbw2v/_YYGyT50mg

What else it could be? At apple store they told me that they cannot service it without putting the DVD back as this is an usupported configuration. Also the MBP is out of warranty.

From the look of this line:

  panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff802947d5dd): "VM_PAGE_QUEUES_REMOVE: unmarked page on Q"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2050.18.24/osfmk/vm/vm_pageout.c:1924

And there's the word page all over the panic log, I suspect it's about your virtual memory.

Try disabling it for a few days and see if it happens again. You can find how to disable it here. You can disable it, delete those VM files, and then reenable it again. It might also be caused by corrupted VM images.

Also, it could be sleep-related, or about secure virtual memory.

You can check about secure virtual memory in System Profiler, under Software.

Try to rule out any possibilities. You can find guide to disable sleep here.

Well, disabling sleep is strongly discouraged, and I don't really think it's about secure VM, also, check your boot drive's format is Journaled HFS+.

Good luck!


Shortcut to select next item in a list On macOS, it is possible to select items such as checkboxes or even dropdown lists by pressing the spacebar when the item in question is highlighted (usually with a colored box around the item). The ability to highlight them (usually by default or by using the tab key) can be enabled with the Full Keyboard Access setting in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts (this feature can also be enabled by pressing ControlF7).

I went to this website and tried to check out all of the fonts, which is done by selecting the font from the dropdown list. I wanted to quickly cycle through all of the fonts. I tried using the down arrow key to select the next list item when the list was highlighted.

However, when you press the down arrow, the list "pops up"; you then need to press down and then press enter (or space) in order to select the next item. This effectively means that, to select the next item in the currently highlighted list, you need to perform three keyboard actions, which makes it extremely cumbersome to cycle through all of the items.

I tried pressing the down arrow key while holding shift, alt, command, control, etc. hoping one of those would be a secret shortcut to select the next list item without, but using these modifies did not change anything.

Is there a good shortcut to select the next list item?

If you look "closer" at the fonts/names in the dropdown list you'll find they are being handled by server:
"patorjk.com/software/taag/#p=display&f=Rectangles&t=Hello\ world!"

The option group's name (html) is "optgroup label="Featured FIGlet Fonts", one font e.g.:
<option value="Rectangles.flf">Rectangles</option>

Therefore I assume they are sent by/to script
<script type="text/javascript" src="./js/figlet.js"></script>

It is certainly possible to delve deep into JavaScript and trace whatever commands it takes to solve this.
Actually I "studied" this page, tried AppleScript with/and Karabiner, but the list's behaviour is so "nervous** " that in the end I settled for a pure Automator/AppleScript solution:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Safari"
    if name of front window of application "Safari" is "Text to ASCII Art Generator (TAAG)" then
        key code 125 --down…
        delay 0.1
        key code 125
        key code 36
    end if
end tell

Actually this "just-so-working" code presumes you have selected the list, then press the shortcut shortly, let go, press shortly, let go, ...
(** AS/Karabiner, via osascript, worked nicely & quickly – but only circled through fonts with same 1st letters … very irritating, possibly due to some settings in the js-script.)

Now if this particular page is really important to you, try this: open Automator, goto

File>New>Service / left window: Execute AppleScript / top lists L/R: No input / Safari (any browser).
Paste above code into window. Safe as "Fonts-down" (for "going up" replace "125" with "126").

Final step: open Sys-Press Keyboard Shortcuts Services (left) scroll-down to "Fonts-down", check and input your chosen shortcut (e.g.: Opt-D). It should now appear as (menu) Safari>Services>Fonts-down.
(Depending on your general settings you may have to ONCE "allow" this script in Sys-Prefs.)

Okay.
– This script will only work in the specified window (important)
– If you press too long (try it) fonts may be skipped
– Sadly you'll have to choose a multi-key combo in Sys-Prefs keyboard, like Opt-D (Opt-U for "up"?)
   (If you use Karabiner you may define a 1-key shortcut to call "Opt-D".)
– This page is difficult to handle as its displayed content is created server-side.


Partition one disk with 2 different filesystems Can I partition my portable 2.5 hard disk into 2 parts and then have one part as a Mac (ext journal) partition and the other as a NTFS filesystem?

Yes, but…

You can use Disk Utility to partition your portable HDD into two separate partitions. You can then format one in the Mac format of your choosing. You can format the other as FAT, but you cannot format it as NTFS from within Disk Utility.

However, take the same disk to a Windows computer, mount the FAT partition, and the use whatever program Windows uses for reformatting (sorry, I haven't really used Windows much since Windows 3.1/MS DOS 6.2), and you have what you are looking for.


Mac Pro booting to Kali Linux screen without HDD installed I'm in a bit of a predicament. Once upon a time, I installed rEFInd on my 2012 Mac Pro. I eventually removed it.

I believe I also once tried to install Kali Linux in a dual boot environment.

Fast forward and I have tried to follow the steps in this guide to make a Windows-bootable external drive.

My final (and fatal) step was selecting the Windows disk in "Startup Disk" in System Preferences like so:

...except it said "Untitled" instead of BOOTCAMP. Also not to confuse you, I am running 10.12.3 and did not install Bootcamp.

Upon restarting, my Mac Pro passes POST and chimes, but boots to a white/gray screen with NO logo, and then proceeds to run some sort of ISOLINUX bootloader that then presents me with the Kali Linux efi splash screen that does not respond to input:

That was very unexpected, so I shut it down, pulled all the hard drives, every last one, and rebooted. Same behavior.

I'm a little worried, because clearly something has been written to the NVRAM onboard, and it is not responding to my Cmd + Opt + P + R

Also the Mac bootloader is not showing up. It does not respond to any keyboard input. Holding Opt does nothing.

How do I get out of this?

Considering that you are only seeing a gray screen with no logo or symbol at all, I'd try some of these starts options, as well as macOS Recovery to repair your Macintosh HD volume if needed.

There are a few things you could do at startup.
First, you could hold Option on the keyboard immediately after powering on your Mac, and you should be presented with a screen with a list of volumes to boot you Mac from. Choose Macintosh HD from the list. Have a look at: How to set up and use an external Mac startup disk

Next, you could hold the X key immediately after powering on your Mac in order to force the machine to attempt to boot from the internal macOS volume.

Lastly, you could hold CommandR in order to access macOS Recovery. This would allow you to check your Mac's disk configuration and even repair the macOS volume if needed. In recovery mode, you can also change your startup disk:

  To quit macOS Recovery, choose Restart or Shut Down from the Apple () menu. If you want to choose a different startup disk before quitting, choose Startup Disk from the Apple menu.

Have a look at: About macOS Recovery

You can find more startup options here: Startup key combinations for Mac

UPDATE: I was able to find an answer that seems to address rEFInd allowing your Mac to boot into neither Recovery nor macOS: Kali Linux auto boot
I understand that you did remove rEFInd, but this may be worth looking into.


How do I check the download progress of Mountain Lion through the terminal? I am downloading Mountain Lion, I know I can monitor download progress through the Mac App Store purchases screen but I want to know if I can monitor progress through Terminal.app using a shell command.

Sure - the storeagent uses a folder deep within /private/var/folders to hold the download progress.

On my Mac it's downloading to this folder below - yours may change, but you should be able to search for the com.apple.appstore using mdfind and use du or ls to see the file size grow.

/private/var/folders/tv/xyw2rpln7hq4gw2m0prg_src0000gn/C/com.apple.appstore/497799835

The App Store has a nicer wrapper on the progress with a time estimate, but with bc and other tools, you could do the same in a short shell script exercise.

If you can't locate your folder, this find command might be of use to narrow down your search....

sudo find /var/folders -type d -name com.apple.appstore -print


What font does the macOS Character Viewer use? What font does the macOS Character Viewer use? By this I mean the Character Viewer which you access with control-command-space.

(This is useful to get characters which look exactly like the characters shown there.)

For any character you can see how different fonts display it in the Font Variation pane on the right side of the Character Viewer, and choose whatever seems closest.


Don't know Macbook login password Recently I bought a used Macbook air but it was locked.
The seller was not reached by phone or email.
So I tried to factory reset or re-install the OS but all failed due to various reasons.
I called Apple care, but they seem to misunderstand my question and tried to reset the password of 'my' Apple ID which is totally irrelevant. They said they cannot reset the seller's Apple password.
When I failed three times in a login window, they gave me the serial number (of the Macbook) and the record number. Can I reset the login password using this information? What can I do to use this laptop?

By the way, is the computer log-in password same as the seller's Apple ID password???

I don't believe a Mac can be locked to the point where you cannot even install a fresh OS. That would require a locking at firmware level, and I don't believe the MacBooks offer this option.

You should be able to restart, with the option (alt) key pressed, so that you get into the boot screen where you can choose to start up from the recovery system, and then re-install OS X from it, all without needing a password.

Oh, I see you also asked here: Resetting password for Macbook
There, you mention that you were able to get to the rescue screen with Cmd-R. So, why can't you re-install OS X then? It's offered as an option there, isn't it?


Is there room for two drives in the 27" 2012 iMac? I've looked around a bit, but can't find anybody saying whether there is room in the new slim iMac for an extra internal SSD. I used this tutorial about a year ago to add an additional SSD to my Mid 2010 iMac and would like to do it with my new one. Since the iMac ships with Fusion Drive as an option, might there be a second bay and connector (or at least space for them) inside the chassis?

Is there any documentation showing whether the 2012 iMacs have room for multiple drives?

It can be done, but I’m not sure which SKUs it applies to, or that it’s particularly advisable.
Both the 2.9 GHz and the 3.1 GHz 21.5″ iMacs have space for a second drive bay, and there’s an iFixit tutorial explaining how to install a second drive. (iFixit usually tear down new hardware within a day or so of release, and have a lot of tutorials for things like hardware upgrades and repairs).
Currently their page for the 27″ model doesn’t have such a tutorial. However, there’s a page on their forums where people are discussing associated teardowns and the possibility of such an upgrade. The poster ifixit611 writes:

The 27″ iMac holds one 3.5″ drive (unlike the 21″, which uses a 2.5″ drive), and one “blade” SSD like the new MacBook Pros use. Unlike the new 21″ iMac, you can upgrade the RAM on the 27″ w/o cutting the machine open (there’s an access hatch on the back).
Replacing the disk requires cutting open the display and removing the left speaker. You’ll need a proper mounting bracket (e.g., an Icy Dock) to mount a 2.5″ SSD in place of the 3.5″ drive. Adding/replacing the blade SSD requires pulling out the main logic board.

They conclude that they won’t be performing the upgrade before iFixit or OWC provide a proper “kit”.
So it sounds like, in theory, you could perform this upgrade on a 27″ iMac, and the instructions from iFixit for upgrading the 21″ would probably be helpful in this regard. That said, hardware is not my area of expertise and I generally get twitchy about opening up iMacs. Do at your own risk, etc.


How to remove obsolete contact groups? So with Mojave, Apple removed particularly LinkedIn and Facebook internet accounts and as a result my macOs contacts app now have LinkedIn group with hundreds of my LinkedIn contacts which I do not want to have in contacts app and I can't delete it.

Any way to remove LinkedIn group? (as well as Facebook group)

For account groups, you need to remove or disable in the preferences. In the "Contacts" app, go to the menu bar, "Contacts" then "Accounts..." those accounts should be listed. If so, you can remove or turn them off (uncheck the "Enable this account" box) there.


.DS_Store Removal permanent way of stopping it's creation on Mojave As a developer, I'm routinely making folders on my Mac running Mojave for testing purposes, my localhost server or for transfer to VPS or other hosting. In principal I'd rather not have .DS_Store altogether, but if the computer wants to have them, I don't mind.

However, is there a way to permanently stop them from being created in a particular dir and subdirs?

I'm aware you can configure no .DS_Store files across the board on network shares, but I need to be more selective than an all or none solution. Ideally I can suppress these both on local filesystems as well as remote, but if anyone can help with preventing some of these and allowing others, I would be grateful.

This question is to address Mojave and newer OS only and to address a more fine grained control or to confirm that this is impossible.

There's no built-in functionality in macOS to stop the creation of .DS_Store files in a specific folder and its subfolders. There's a setting to stop the creation on networked volumes (i.e. folders that really are network shares).

You can download a third party utility called "DeathToDSStore" from here:

https://github.com/snielsen/DeathToDSStore

This will stop the generation of .DS_Store files in general, but still not for a specific directory.

You mention that you are a developer - thus it might be possible for you to modify that utility to do exactly what you want. The utility is open source. You can find the specific place to override in the file source/FinderOverride.m.

In the comments you've mentioned needing to run on Mojave, which DeathToDSStore doesn't support yet. On Mojave you can run this fork of Asepsis that is compatible with Mojave:

https://github.com/JK3Y/asepsis


How do I cut-and-paste plain text from Notes to another iOS app? If I draft an email message in emacs and then cut-and-paste it to the gmail web app, the text looks fine. Only plain text gets copied.

But if I use iOS Notes to draft the message on an iPhone (what else do you use to draft?) and then cut-and-paste the message to the gmail iOS app (you agree it's more convenient then using the gmail web app on an iPhone, no?), then some kind of rich-text gets copied, with the result of sending text in a much larger font.

How do I cut-and-paste plain text from Notes to another iOS app?

Related:

The problem apparently occurs for those using Notes to draft on macOS.
Someone sought the opposite (pasting rich-text). I'm not sure why that was not the default for them.

To get rid of the formatting, copy the data to a coding app like iEditor from iEditor copy the data and paste to where you need it.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ieditor-text-code-editor/id562162723?mt=8

To avoid the double copy, work in iEditor. I do this all the time on macOS.

Copy and paste involves how the "copy" app and the "paste" app handling the text. The copy app may make several formats of the data available. One format must be a styled version. Another will likely be a text only version.  The "paste" app is free to select any of the formats.

What I do on macos, when the "copy" app is passing formatted data that I do not want, is to copy the data to a coding editor.  The coding edit will pick the data form without any styling information.  You end up with plan text.  I then copy and paste into the destination app.


How do I get rid of this pop up when I try to select text? I'm not sure if this is a macbook issue (My sister gave me a macbook with OS 10.9.1) or a google chrome issue.

When I'm using Google Chrome and want to select text (either by tapping three times over a word in a phrase, by double clicking then dragging, or by 3-finger dragging over a phrase) this pop up pops up over my screen with the words I selected showing up 1 by 1. It goes away when I click. But it's really annoying.

What is the point of it and how do I get rid of it???

Thanks

That looks like you have a Chrome plug-in that is a web site reader.

On your screen shot one can see the "250wpm" (words per minute)in bottom right corner, that would be an indication that you have a reader plug installed.

Remove it or fix it.


does anyone know how to login without credit card informations I have already made my Apple ID through Game center instead of doing it first on the App store. Now I want to download another app so I have to log in my apple ID to app store then when I have logged in something popped saying "This apple ID has not yet been used in the itunes store" then theres options Cancel or Review when i click the review one theres this terms and conditions then agree or back only. i chose agree then the credit card billing appear how can i login without entering credit card informations? And can i use the apple id i made at the game center? i think its just the same, isnt? Thanks!!

If you already have an Account (or Apple-ID, iTunes-Account, GameCenter-ID etc.) you have to login into iTunes using your credentials from a Computer (Mac or PC), there you have the Option to select "none" in the Billings-Settings.


Macbook 13" retina trackpad stuck My trackpad is stuck in the downer position, it doesn't "click up" again. I can still use my trackpad for tapping and it functions just like before but I cant click it so it goes down, it is stuck down there. Did anyone else have this problem, if so how did you fix it?

(To be clear, this is not the common software issue, this is pure hardware. The trackpad is stuck).

In case anyone else is having the same problem out there, this may not be the best solution but it worked for me.
My trackpad had been clicking just fine anywhere on it. Suddenly it would only press down in the left bottom corner.
I simply, closed the laptop,  flipped it over and slapped it hard in corresponding area where the trackpad is. I also lightly tapped it on all sides on a soft surface (my couch). Sure enough that did it. Been fine since for over a year now.
I guess something must have been stuck underneath it.


Would adding RAM to 2009 imac improve performance Since I upgraded to Mavericks from Snow Leopard, my 24 inch 2009 2.93 Ghz imac has been quite slow. It's slow to open up programs and slow in general.

Currently the imac only has the 4Gb of RAM that came as standard. Would upgrading to 8Gb be worth it? I can't afford a new machine at the moment.

Thanks for any advice - it's much appreciated.

PS. I regret (in some ways) not remaining on SL but I needed 10.9 to use an application.

To answer this question accurately, you will need to get some statistics on how much RAM you are currently using. But in general, more RAM is going to improve things, especially if you're still on 4GB.

On the other hand, the 2009 iMac is really reaching EoL at this point -- according to Mactracker, the support status for that machine is currently "Vintage". The biggest factor for this machine's performance in my opinion is the processor architecture -- Core 2 Duo had a good run, but the Core ix architectures are really in another class.

To put it another way -- one of my machines is a 2010 iMac 3.6 Ghz Core i5 with 16 GB of RAM, and it's still completely usable at this point. Despite it being only one year off from your model, the processor architecture difference is what's allowing my machine to stay usable while yours is showing its age. (I'm sure the 16GB RAM is helping too, but I think the processor architecture comparison is more relevant.)

Might be time for an upgrade! 6-year lifespan is nothing to sneeze at; I'd call that getting your money's worth.


Not a valid identifier upon terminal startup I am getting this line each time I open my terminal. Everything else seems to be working ok but I would like to get this fixed since I don't think it is a good sign.

Last login: Mon Feb 19 09:21:05 on ttys000
-bash: export: `Workbooks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/path-bin': not a
valid identifier
Rachels-MacBook-Pro:~ rachelromine$

I have checked out my bash_profile and this is what it looks like

eval export PATH="/Users/rachelromine/.rbenv/shims:${PATH}"
export RBENV_SHELL=bash
source
'/usr/local/Cellar/rbenv/1.0.0/libexec/../completions/rbenv.bash'
command rbenv rehash 2>/dev/null
rbenv() {
  local command
  command="$1"
  if [ "$#" -gt 0 ]; then
    shift
  fi

  case "$command" in
  rehash|shell)
    eval "$(rbenv "sh-$command" "$@")";;
  *)
    command rbenv "$command" "$@";;
  esac
}

# Setting PATH for Python 3.6
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

test -e "${HOME}/.iterm2_shell_integration.bash" && source
"${HOME}/.iterm2_shell_integration.bash"

I think I must have installed something that when awry. If you have any idea of what I installed that could have caused it that would be extremely helpful but mostly I want to correct the valid identifier issue that appears each time I open my terminal.

Solution (original in comments): remove eval from the first line. The problem could also have been in either of the scripts that're sourced (in the third and last lines), but that turned out not to be the case.

Explanation: eval makes the shell parse that command twice. Technically, it goes through all the usual steps when the shell parses a command line -- interpreting and removing quotes and escape characters, expanding variables, etc -- then passes the result to the eval command as arguments. The eval command (which is built into bash, not a separate executable) sticks those arguments back together as though that was a command, runs through all that parsing stuff again, and executes the result.

This is almost always a bad idea. Shell parsing is complicated and messy, and doing more of it just makes for more complication and mess. Unfortunately, people sometimes use it as a sort of "hit it with a bigger hammer" solution, and it works about as well as you'd expect beating things with a bigger hammer to work.

In this particular case, I think what's happening is that before this script runs, PATH is set to something like "/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/Applications/Something Workbooks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/path-bin" (where "Something" is a different word, but I don't know the specific app name). The shell takes this:

eval export PATH="/Users/rachelromine/.rbenv/shims:${PATH}"

Removes the quotes and expands ${PATH}, passes the result to eval, which executes:

export PATH=/Users/rachelromine/.rbenv/shims:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/Applications/Something Workbooks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/path-bin

Since the quotes got removed in the first parsing pass, that space in the middle of the app name is treated as a separator between arguments (rather than as part of a filename), so the export command sets PATH to "/Users/rachelromine/.rbenv/shims:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/Applications/Something", then in a totally unrelated operation tries to export a variable named "Workbooks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/path-bin"... which is not a valid variable name ("identifier").

Now, as for what that eval is doing there in the first place: I don't know. I can't see how it could possibly do any good here (though if it weren't for the space, it wouldn't have done any harm). I assume it was in some instructions you followed (or a prototype .bash_profile) for installing rbenv. What it was doing there, I have no idea.


Unlock keychain with Touch ID Is there a way to authenticate with Touch ID instead of password on Macbook Pro when I need to unlock the keychain?

Natively, I believe MacOS prohibits this in order to increase security (Touch ID is less secure than a standard passcode in most situations). However, I know there's and app called Unlox (http://unlox.it) that will let you unlock your Keychain using Touch ID on your iPhone. This leads me to believe it is possible to do this with a 3rd party application of some kind.


What's the accepted "abbreviation" for the original iPhone? I've got an original iPhone that I'm trying to find a case for online and searching is quite difficult. What's the accepted shorthand? I've seen 2G (which seems wrong, as that would mean 2nd Generation, which would be the iPhone 3G), and 1G, neither of which seem to yield good results.

Unlike the newer iPhone models, the first iPhone did not include UMTS/HSDPA - also referred to as 3G - but only GSM/GPRS/EDGE, which are referred to as 2G.

The terms 2G, 3G and 4G refer to the x'th generation of a cellular wireless standard.

Therefore, you can search for cases that refer to the iPhone 2G. If you want to be abosultely sure, use the model identifier number when searching: A1203.

Terms used for the first iPhone include:

original iPhone
iPhone 2G
iPhone EDGE
iPhone 1

Here's an overview of celluar standards from Wikipedia:


Mid-2015 MacBook Pro shuts off without warning when an Ethernet adapter is *not* plugged into a Thunderbolt port. Why? I have been dealing with random crashes all of the time on my MacBook Pro. The screen will go black (not off) for about 30 seconds while the fans spin up to max, then everything shuts off. When I boot back up there is no warning that my computer was shut off because of a problem like there is with a kernel panic. The crash occurs for all users of the computer, so it must be something that got installed for all users and not in my Home directory.

I tried many different things to resolve this (i.e. standard resetting NVRAM, reinstall the OS, safe mode, etc). The only thing that has "fixed" the problem was booting into Safe Mode, though I cannot easily tell what changed since there is not much to test there. The hardware diagnostics do not indicate any problems.

From what I can tell, nothing gets logged into the console when the computer shuts off. There is nothing that indicates power failure or overheating either, which is strange.

For troubleshooting, I tried a few things one at a time:

Erasing and rebuilding the Spotlight index (mdutil -Ea → mdutil -ia off → mdutil -ia on)
Uninstalling enterprise VPN software
Resetting network settings

None of these things seemed to work. However, I remembered that I do not have this issue when plugged into my Thunderbolt Displays, which led me to believe there could possibly be something related to the Thunderbolt port that causes this (quite the longshot, admittedly). I tried all of my Thunderbolt dongles one at a time:

HDMI
DisplayPort
Ethernet

And I stopped here. When the Ethernet adapter is plugged in (not necessarily attached to an actual Ethernet cable) the crashes simply do not happen. As soon as I unplug it, I get about 5 minutes and the laptop shuts off. Why on earth could this possibly be happening? The only difference when plugging in the adapter on ifconfig is:

en5: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=10b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,AV>
    ether a8:20:66:1b:92:2b
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect (none)
    status: inactive

There is a nice thread about it here: https://de.ifixit.com/Antworten/Ansehen/320496/Randomly+shuts+down+when+not+connected+to+an+external+display.

Turns out there maybe a few reasons why this happens:

Thermal paste
Thunderbolt-Ethernet-Driver
Magnetic sensor that indicates when lid is closed is damaged.

This is definitely a thread you want to read, several very useful info there.

I've been having this problem my self, right now testing your fix, having just an ethernet dongle connected.

Good luck


How to fix an iPad that froze on home screen? I have an iPad Air running iOS 7.1.2 and is not jailbroken, I opened an application yesterday and when I was finished with it I closed it by using the four finger gesture where you place your fingers around the edges of the screen and you then slide them all towards the middle of the screen.

This gesture is supposed to close my current opened application and then display the home screen with all my installed applications on the iPad. But what this gesture did was close the application and display my home screen picture and the iPad froze where I could not see or access any application on my iPad. I only had the display of my home screen with no application visible.

If I lock my iPad and then unlock it, the same home screen display would appear without showing me the lock screen, and I won't be able to access or see any application on my iPad. It's like I had a framed picture in my hand not an iPad. I could've even shutdown my iPad with only pressing the sleep/wake button, my iPad kept displaying the home screen display after pressing and holding the sleep/wake button for a several seconds.

The only way I could get my iPad functioning again is through the hard restart (press and hold the home button and the sleep/wake button for several seconds until the screen goes black and you see the apple logo) which I don't think is the best solution for this problem, becuase the problem could surely happen again. Any suggestions how to fix this?

Yes, this is a known bug. As the device is not jailbroken, the only solution in iOS 7 is to hard reset.


Performance of MacBook Air SSD Targeted from iMac I use a MacBook Air, but would like to put an iMac at my office for a performance boost. I don't want to switch between operating systems, so I'd like to target the Air's SSD (via Thunderbolt 2) when working from the iMac. Here are the devices:

2015 13" MacBook Air i7, 2.2GHZ, 8GB RAM, 512 SSD (Thunderbolt 2)
Retina iMac i7, 4GHZ Quad, 32GB RAM, (Thunderbolt 2)

My dream is that I'd be using the iMac's RAM & processor, and that Thunderbolt 2 would be fast enough that I wouldn't lose any SSD performance.

For me latency matters more than throughput, but I'm interested in both. Processing thousands of small files at once, not editing video.

Would this work? (theory, experience, benchmarks welcome)

UPDATE: I'm adding a bounty for anyone that can offer actual benchmarks of targeting a MacBook Air (or pro) SSD from a retina iMac (via thunderbolt 2).

To be totally clear - I'm only interested in "Target Disk Mode" performance. I want to run the Air's OS. I already know about file syncing, external drives, etc. Thanks everyone for the ideas though.

So I tried it out and wanted to share my findings. First off, the equipment I was using:

Early 2015 13" i7 MacBook Air, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD
Late 2015 27" i7 iMac 5K Retina, 16GB Ram, 1TB SSD

I restarted the Air in target disk mode & plugged it into the iMac via Thunderbolt 2. It wouldn't boot. After a few minute, it just showed a ban icon (circle with a line through it).

I ran some 5GB Blackmagic Speed Tests to gather transfer rates (in MB/S):

iMac against its SSD - 1817 Read, 1510 Write
Air against its SSD - 300 Read, 241 Write
iMac & Air against USB3 Flash Drive - 245 Read, 185 Write
iMac & Air against USB3 External Drive - 160 Read, 170 Write
iMac using Air via Thunderbolt 2 shared folder - 400 Read, 490 Write
iMac using Air in target disk mode - 79 Read, 107 Write

So obviously there's a big performance loss for target disk mode.

If you're wondering why I'd want to target the air, it's because I mainly work off my Air and don't want the hassle of an external drive, thumb drive, file syncing, etc. I love the idea of getting to my office and "docking into" a faster processor, more RAM, and a big screen.


How I can force Safari App to download a file in local machine? just wondering if in Safari 9.0.1 is possible force a file to download. With images is easy, right clock and "Save Image as..." but for files like svg, and other non visualizable files is hard to find a solution.

In the past a download window was always available, but now apparently not]1

You can hold Alt (Option) down and click on the link to download the linked file (this is similar to the functionality found in Chrome). This will generally use the file name as supplied by the website.

You can also use the context menu ("right click" or Ctrl click) and select the "Download  Linked File" or "Download Linked File As..." as required.


iMessage inquiry to ease my mind I have discovered that at certain times, my iMessages are delivered as SMS instead; which is perfectly ok with me, considering I have it set up to do so.  My question is, under what conditions are the messages sent as SMS with both myself and the recipient does not necessary been in a wifi area to receive or send iMessages...is it that when the recipient has their phone powered down that it is sent as SMS, and if that is the case...why is it that I receive messages sent as SMS instead of iMessages from the same recipient...what exactly does "...when iMessage is unavailable" mean??? Thanks in advance for any/all response(s)...

If the sending phone has no 3G or wifi coverage it will send as an SMS message. Otherwise it gets sent as an SMS. If the receiving phone doesn't acknowledge the message after 30 seconds (because it doesn't have 3G or wifi coverage, or it's turned off) the sending phone will give up on iMessage and send it as an SMS.

If the sending phone has turned off the setting to "Send as SMS" then it won't send as SMS unless the user manually does it.

EDIT: If the receiving user has Messages set up on their Mac running Mountain Lion or Mavericks, and the phone is out of data coverage, the message could be received by the Mac and not the phone.


Program to assign mouse button chords? Is there an app to assign actions (such as shortcut keys) to mouse button chords?

For example, button 1 + button 4 = Cmd+C, button 4 alone = Cmd+V, etc.

I have tried a few utilities, but none of them support assigning a custom action to two buttons pressed at the same time.

Better Touch Tool can do what you want, and can even be set up to do so on a per-app basis.


Mac is freezing. How to find the problem? I have Macbook Pro Retina (Late 2013) with installed El capitan.

Sometimes OSX just freezing and I can do nothing, but to reboot (by holding power button for a few seconds). All apps are continue running, for example media player or torrent client. But keyboard or trackpad doesn't respond.

I read lots of manuals, I tried reset different settings, clear user's cache. I even tried reinstall OSX (without formatting the drive). It's not helping.

I don't have much experience with OSX, so I don't know where to look for a problem. Any thoughts what should I do?

Try using Apple Diagnostics to check for hardware issues:
Restart your computer, then hold down the D key while the Mac restarts.

Check Apple knowledge base on this subject - https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21879

If you get an error-code, check this page for how to follow it up:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203747


Is it possible to change the face that represents each person on Photos.app on OS X 10.10? I'd like to change the thumbnail selected by Photo.app for some of the people on the Faces album, but I can't seem to find that option. Also, consolidating some of the suggested names –which I suppose are contacts in some of the cases– would be great.

Right-click on the Faces album you'd like modify, and click Get Info.
Double click the small round photo that appears on the fifth row of the info pop-up. All photos in that album will now appear behind this pop-up.
Right-click the photo you that you want to use as that Faces album thumbnail, and click Make Key Photo.


How can I make my iChat to connect again to chat server when I wake my Mac? Currently, my iChat does not recover my status when Mac is waken from sleeping. It keeps being offline. How can I make it connect to server automatically when my Mac waken?

What version of iChat do you have? When I close my computer (thus putting it to sleep), and then reopen it, after 15 seconds or so, it reconnects. I have v5.0.3.  Check to see if you have that version, or whatever the newest version is. If that doesn't help, try reinstalling the program.


Airport Time Capsule port forward magic packet (Wake-on-LAN) I have an Airport Time Capsule connected to my internet service provider and a Linux server wired to one of the LAN ports on my airport. I want to be able to use the Wake-on-LAN feature to wake my Linux box from sleep/suspend from anywhere -- not just from my local network.

First approach that partially works

I've gone into Airport Utility and set up a stable IP based on the MAC address of my Linux box's Ethernet controller. I then set up port forwarding for magic packets on public UDP port 29999 to private port 9 and the 10.0.1.x address I assigned to my linux box.

This works from both outside and inside my network, but only for about 15 minutes after the linux box sleeps. After that I guess the Airport loses track of it and doesn't know where to route the packet.

Second approach that seems like it would work

If I forward the magic packet to the broadcast IP for my network, 10.0.1.255, then the box does wake even after a long time has passed...at least that works from my local network where I can tell the wake program on my Mac or WOL app on my phone which address to send the packet to.

But I can't test it from outside my network because the Airport Utility won't let me forward to .255.

Fix for this

I found several posts (which I can't find again today) that say if you can't forward to the broadcast IP at 10.1.0.255 to set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.128 and then forward to 10.1.0.127, but Airport Utility doesn't have anywhere to set the subnet mask.

I found another post yesterday (which I can't find today) which suggested exporting the Airport Utility configuration file and editing the subnet mask in there and reuploading. I did that, but it didn't work.

TL;DR

I need to port forward a Wake-on-LAN magic packet from the Internet, through my Airport Time Capsule to the broadcast IP of my private local network.

The broadcast address is 10.0.1.255, but Wake-on-LAN won't let me enter 255.

How can I wake my Linux box from the Internet? Is there a way to send the packet to the broadcast IP? Is there some other solution that changing the subnet mask?
Is there some other solution that I should be thinking about?

The configurability of the Apple routers is (for some advanced use cases like the one you describe) perhaps a bit lacking. I hope someone else can provide a definitive answer as to whether it will be possible to actually broadcast that WOL packet using only the router!

I propose to you an alternative that is slightly more complex (and therefore not ideal), but to me feels like a robust approach that will work in all home network environments, so that you can avoid relying on any advanced capabilities of the network hardware.

The idea would be to set up a machine on the LAN (such as a $5 Raspberry Pi whose power draw will likely be comparable to that of your linux server in S3 suspend) that is always running and which you may access remotely. However this is done is entirely up to you, you may connect them via WiFi or Ethernet and with static or DHCP addressing, and this is what I mean by flexibility, you may have to do specific configuration to deal with the NAT traversal and security aspects. As it applies to your situation (similarly to you, I have an Apple router as well) you'd probably just assign this machine's MAC to a static IP and forward the ports needed for remote access, such as port 22 for SSH, port 3389 for Windows RDP, port 5900 for VNC, and that's about it. It's hard to beat something like using SSH with a private key for passwordless secure access.

The other piece that will be relevant is if you have residential service from your ISP, your router's IP will be dynamic, and a service should be set up to periodically check that this address has not changed. I implement this myself using a cronjob and a python script that sends emails to me, but you can readily find tools to handle that job. Indeed, this aspect of residential internet service is hard to address without a programmable client machine, although I'd imagine that highly configurable routers might offer equivalent functionality.

Once you set things up to allow you to reliably and securely access your machine from the wider internet, you can now use that to broadcast the WOL packet on the LAN, at which point you may connect to the woken-up host via the usual means (which may also require configuration).

I just like this approach because it's so powerful and you can administer many more aspects of your home remotely once you have this kind of setup.

I have more than enough raspberry pi's but I already have desktops (which happen to run Windows) that I keep running 24/7 at home, so when I need to send a WOL to my macbook (if it's at home, it will be sleeping) I can just use any of those machines to do the job since they're going to be up all the time.

But if you have a small and low power machine you can just set it and forget it on the network and it will just always be there for you, that peace of mind is really great.


How do I stop iTunes from automatically opening when I browse an app on apple.com? Like when I go to one of these pages iTunes automatically opens up. It's really annoying. How can I disable this?

https://gigaom.com/2010/03/15/how-to-stop-itunes-web-links-from-opening-itunes/

It looks like the browser you are using is chrome, so follow these steps

Go to chrome://settings/contentExceptions#javascript
add itunes.apple.com and mark "Block"

If you want to see the app without seeing the "Opening the iTunes Store." page, visit The iTunes Link Maker and see if you can find the app on there.

(that was my solution before, but it seems now iTunes preview shows the app with a "Opening the iTunes Store." banner. By disabling Javascript on that page, you won't see the banner)


MacBook Pro 13 (early 2015) with 4K Television: Can I get 60Hz? The TV has only HDMI inputs. I've found cables on the Internet that will connect Mini DisplayPort to HDMI: AmazonBasics Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Cable - 3 Feet

My question is, will I get 60Hz when doing Mini DisplayPort to HDMI? Currently I'm using the HDMI port on my MBP and I'm only getting 30Hz on this TV. I've heard that using the mini DisplayPort will get you 60Hz, but I'm not sure if that still holds true when the other end of the cable is HDMI.

The cable that you listed does not support 4K.  In fact, on the description page, it specifically states the following:

  Supports video resolutions up to up to 1920x1200 and 1080p (Full HD);
  easy-grip

If you are going to convert a signal from one to another (mDP to HDMI in this case) you need an active adapter like the Plugable Active Mini DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 Adapter


How to transfer images from macOS to the primary Photo Library on iOS? Is there any method for transferring photos from a folder directly into the Photo Library (main library, not an album) on iOS from macOS?

I have a situation where I need to use an app (Scanner Pro) on iOS to manipulate scanned images from macOS, however each time I push them to my iOS device via iTunes by selecting a folder to sync to iOS from my Mac, they are not showing up in the app supposedly because they're in an album on iOS and not in the main "Photo Library."

I always use AirDrop to transfer things between my macOS and iOS devices, and it works very well.


How to convert a batch of MP3's in Apple Music to AAC, then automatically delete the old MP3s? I would like to convert a large number of MP3's in my Apple Music library to AAC (to save disk space).
Using the Music app, I have tried it with all songs of an album. Now, I've got each track twice, once in MP3, and again in AAC. That's very cumbersome to go through all songs and find the old mp3's.

Is there an easier way?

(I have googled, but did not find anything really useful.)

I converted the tracks as follows: I went to the album, selected all tracks in it, went to File  / Convert / Create AAC Version, and let Apple Music do the conversion.
That worked, but, as I said, afterwards, each track was duplicate in the album.

There is a free app called Adapter that will do batch convert but I'm not sure about the deletes. Since it's free it's worth a try. If it doesn't do the deletes you can always sort the files by kind so that all mp3s will be listed together in the Finder window.  Adapter also converts images and movies as well as sound files.


Can iOS apps request updated permission to selected photos? Recently while using the iOS Twitter app (8.36.3), I chose to grant access only to selected photos. I selected one photo that I wanted to share. Later I wanted to share another photo. I was taken to a UI for selecting photos which showed just one photo—the one I had selected before. There was no way to change the selected photos. Only by navigating into the iOS Settings > Privacy > Photos > Twitter do I get an option for "Edit Selected Photos". That is a very burdensome way to grant an app access to additional photos.
Is this situation a limitation of the new iOS photos privacy SDK, or is Twitter not written to correctly re-request access to selected photos? Thanks.

It looks like this is a limitation of the Twitter app, not the SDK:

3) Showing the selection UI again
the recommended way is to manually request to show the selection UI again. Apple explains that if you have an app that requires full access to the photo library (e.g. some app whose main purpose is to let you browse and organize the photo library), you should add some kind of button in your UI that triggers the selection screen again.

https://mackuba.eu/2020/07/07/photo-library-changes-ios-14/

As further evidence that this is a limitation of the app, Facebook provides a dialog that allows me to select additional photos:


mirror iPhone 5 display to TV without AirPlay Is there any way I can make anything that is currently shown on the screen of an iPhone 5 to be displayed on a regular TV or projector that has the usual HDMI, composite video, DVI, DSub inputs via a simple cable or adapter and without Airplay/Apple TV?

At the moment, this is currently not possible as existing adapters are not compatible with the Lightning connector (even with current converters). See this link for more information.

At the Apple event on the 23rd October, two new adapters were announced VGA to Lightning and Lightning Digital AV (HDMI). If you read the details on the store page carefully, they both say they support mirroring (in the overview section).


Running terminal commands on startup/login How can I run terminal commands on startup or login? On FreeBSD I believe you can do this using rc.d - is there an equivalent for the Mac? I know how to set up Login Items, but these only work for GUI applications, and there must be an elegant way to make terminal commands run without wrapping them in a GUI executable? As clarified below, I sometimes need to sudo these commands.

OSX uses launchd to start Unix scripts and executables at boot or login.

New tasks are added via launchctl to update a plist

An easier way of doing this is to use the app Lingon now available on the Mac App Store or LaunchControl


AppleScript: How to open a file in TextEdit, without bringing the other TextEdit windows to front? I have the following AppleScript code that opens a specific file in TextEdit in a window with predetermined bounds:

set targetFilepath to "/Users/Me/Desktop/My Fruit Log.txt"
tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    open targetFilepath
    set bounds of front window to {279, 111, 1180, 719}
end tell

The problem with this code is that, if I have any other TextEdit files open, the code will also bring the other documents to the front as well. I would like, however, that only this one, specific text file is brought to the front.

The code will not bring a minimized TextEdit window to the front, but it will bring all hidden, non-minimized, TextEdit windows to the front.

When I remove the activate line from the code:

tell application "TextEdit"
    open targetFilepath
    set bounds of front window to {279, 111, 1180, 719}
end tell

the file is opened, but its window is not brought to the foreground.

OS X El Capitan, version 10.11.6.

Here is a visual representation of what I've described above. I had zero windows minimized on my computer when these screenshots were taken.

This is what my screen looks like before the AppleScript is triggered:

This is what I want my screen to look like after the AppleScript is triggered:

This is what my screen currently looks like after the AppleScript is triggered:

In the interest of full disclosure, my code also moves the TextEdit cursor location after opening the file. I don't know that this would affect a potential solution, but here is the additional code that follows the above passage (x is an integer that is assigned beforehand):

tell application "TextEdit" to activate
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "TextEdit"
        repeat x times
            key code 125
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell

I think the problem you're having is that you've misunderstood what is actually going on. Let me try to explain...

The first question to answer is why were the windows missing from your first screenshot not visible? Obviously, the My Fruit Log.txt file was not visible because it wasn't open yet (i.e. your script hadn't run yet). But what about the other windows? There's only three possibilities:

TextEdit wasn't actually running (therefore no windows exist). This would be obvious - so no more discussion needed.
TextEdit was running, but it was hidden (therefore all windows are hidden). This just means you hid TextEdit from view. Running your script simply makes it visible again (along with all its windows except for any that may be minimised).
TextEdit was running but all windows were minimised. This just means TextEdit is running but no windows are visible because they've been miminimed. Running your script makes the app itself visible and in the foreground again, but all minimised windows remain minimised.

In your scenario, it's almost certain that Option 2 applies.  So, while it's not what you want to hear, your script is actually working the way it's supposed to in macOS. The only way I can think of at present to achieve what you want in a practical way is to ensure that your script minimises all other windows except for the one it's just opened. For example, you could achieve this with the following code:

set targetFilepath to "/Users/Me/Desktop/My Fruit Log.txt"
tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    open targetFilepath
    tell (windows whose id is not (get id of front window) and visible is true)
        set miniaturized to true
    end tell
    set bounds of front window to {279, 111, 1180, 719}
end tell

As you can see, I've just added two lines of code. I think they're fairly self-explanatory - They just tell TextEdit to minimise any window that meets these two conditions (1. it's not the front window and 2. it is visible).

Hopefully this works for you - but if not maybe someone else comes up with a better solution.


Are there general or specific iOS6 performance issues on iPhone 4? I would like to upgrade my iPhone 4 to iOS6 but I'm wondering if I will get performance loss (as when I upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS4 : terrible).
Can someone confirm that it won't affect my day to day use?

I have been running iOS 6 since Friday night (I ran the Golden Master that became release) on my iPhone 4.

Safari feels snappier (and show improvement on SunSpider benchmarks).

I have not noticed any degradation like the 3G iOS 4 craziness that apple gave us (I went through that as well).

I am very happy and using it (everyday) and it feels a bit better in most things than 5.


What GUI tool can read maildir? I can use mutt to read maildir on Mac, but is there any graphical tool available?

mutt -f /path/to/maildir

Since mutt can't render HTML emails, I will need something else.

Any ideas?

EDIT for thunderbird

I've changed mail store to maildir format,

And selected a local folder,

The UI become like this, unexpected ..

Thunderbird can use maildir. https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Basics/Maildir-in-Thunderbird/ta-p/32138. Create a new account in thunderbird. Quit thunderbird. cd to the newly created maildir. rm -rf and then symlink to your existing maildir you used with mutt. Reopen thunderbird.


change url of a tab using apple script I am trying to set the url of Chrome tab using Apple Script. I am using this code. It successfully sets url string, but in order to change url, enter needs to be pressed. This last step makes my code unfunctional, since it doesn't change the current website I am visiting. What workaround do you recommend? Chrome is already open.

tell application "Google Chrome"

    tell application "System Events"
        tell application process "Google Chrome"
            set value of text field 1 of toolbar 1 of window 1 to "http://www.url.com/"

        end tell
    end tell
end tell

A way to do it with Chrome's built in scripting:

tell application "Google Chrome" to set URL of active tab of window 1 to "http://example.com"

And to expand your script to press return:

tell application "Google Chrome"
    tell application "System Events"
        tell application process "Google Chrome"
            set (text field 1 of toolbar 1 of window 1)'s focused to true
            set value of text field 1 of toolbar 1 of window 1 to "http://example.com/"
            keystroke return
        end tell
    end tell
end tell


Suppressing iPhone's native video player when playing HTML5 video on iPhone, when you have an HTML5 video tag on a web site and you click play it will open the iPhone's native video player and play the video there (unlike on the iPad where it will play the video in the on-site HTML5 video player).

Is there a way of suppressing the native player and play the video in the browser in the on-site HTML5 video player on iPhone?

Thanks

There isn't a way to do this, currently. The size of the video and the movie controls would be far too small if it didn't zoom to full-screen.


Is iTunes able to play H.265? I can't find out any info about if iTunes is able to play H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) format.

Do you know if this is posible?

Yosemite 10.10, iTunes version 12.1.

No, according to Apple on this list. It does not contain H.265.


open new terminal tab in the same directory with the active tab In GNOME Terminal of Ubuntu when you open a new tab the new shell will automatically start you in the current working directory of the active tab shell.

E.g. if in the active tab shell I am on ~/myproject and I open a new tab, the new shell will start on ~/myproject too.

As you can guess, this is very convenient when you work deep in the directory hierarchy.

Can I configure the OSX terminal to have this behaviour?

If not, is there any free (cocoa) terminal that does this?

You may use iTerm2 and just select in preferences to "reuse previous tab's directory"


How to tell if iPhone's SIM port is working even though it's locked? Is there any way to know if my phone's SIM port is working, even though it's locked to Sprint and I don't have access to a Sprint SIM? I tried using another one but it says "no sim" instead of "no service". Should I go on with the unlocking or there is something else causing it to say "no sim"?

This is what I did to solve the problem.

Powered the phone down.
I removed the SIM card.
Use a small paper clip and insert in the sim card hole and push firmly. Don't use a large paper clip. While they fit the hole, are too large to push on the mechansim that pops the card up.
I lightly cleaned the SIM card contacts with an alcohol prep swab (the kind they use when you get a shot). Just so you know, I did try dry cleaning the card with a soft cloth at first, but it didn't work for me. Try it, if you don't have the prep swab, it might work for you.
I then made sure the card was dry of the alcohol before I reinserted the card in the phone.

Restarted the phone.

This solved my problem. The phone booted up normally.
I hope it solves your problem too.


After hard shutdown, Audacity won't start Similar to this question (that one related to Ubuntu), but I'm asking about Mac.

When I try to run audacity I get the following error message:

  The system has detected that another copy of Audacity is running.
  Running two copies of Audacity simultaneously may cause data loss or
  cause your system to crash.Use the New or Open commands in the
  currently running Audacity process to open multiple projects
  simultaneously.

On Mac, this was really annoying.

Based on this link, do the following:

Go to /Users/Myname/Library/Application Support/audacity (replace Myname with yours of course)
Open file audacity.cfg in text editor
Under section [Directories], find TempDir, which may look like this: /Users/Myname/Library/Application Support/audacity/SessionData
Go to that folder, and delete file audacity-lock-Myname


mac pc setup using two external monitors I have MacBook Pro late 2013 and PC with Windows 10. Also, I have two Dell U2414H monitors.

My setup looks like this:

MacBook Pro is connected via DisplayPort with both monitors.
PC is connected via HDMI with just one monitor.

Problem is with mac when I want to run OS X and Windows simultaneously. When I switch input source on one monitor to HDMI (for Windows), macbook still "thinks" it's connected to both monitors and renders screen on both and it put some pressure on GPU… I guess it's because monitor is enabled and signal is going through DP cable to mac.

Is there anything I can do? Because right now I have to manualy disable cable every time and it's annoying as I need to do this few times a day.

So it turns out that the only solution is to use mirroring display. The signal is still sent but GPU is not overworking. MacBook doesn't heat up as with regular using two displays.


What are the different columns in this Terminal display? I am wondering what the different columns are in this attached screenshot of the Terminal window. The command line that I typed into Terminal is:
ls -l ~/Desktop

It is the command for the computer to bring up all of the files that are located on the Desktop. There is another column to the right with the file names. I left that out of the screenshot for privacy purposes.

From left to right, the columns are: permissions (e.g., read, write, execute), then the number of links, the owning user of the file, the owning group of the file, the file size (bytes for files, 512 byte blocks for directories), and the last time the file was accessed. The column you didn't show on the far right is the name of the file in question.
For future reference, you can always run man <command> to find information about a command. So in this case, man ls will provide the information you're looking for.


Does HTML5 offline webapp still work in Safari / iPad / iPhone? When I search Google about HTML5 offline features I can only find some answers dated 2010 / 2011. Nothing recent appears.

Besides the web app behaves erratic on iOS: sometimes it will work, even when navigating several times to cached pages, and then, all of a sudden, it "decides" it needs Internet connection and then, impossible to reload the home page from either the home screen icon, of from an URL in Safari. "Not connected!".

I'm using a manifest file called "example.appcache" and the related mime type is duly declared on my IIS 7 server.

Does someone have recent answers?

It is still supported. You better check your code again


Move an app to applications when it's installed itself elsewhere I installed SmartGit on my iMac, and it put itself in the Eric's iMac folder, adjacent to Macintosh HD.

When I open the SmartGit 18.1.2 folder, it has the following contents:

It would be nice if I could have SmartGit in the applications folder. What's a good way of doing this without screwing up the operation of the application? I could just dry moving/copying the .app file to the applications folder...

If it's easiest just to leave it there, I really don't mind.

tl;dr: drag SmartGit.app to your applications folder (or wherever you want to install it) and eject (remove) the img (drag this SmartGit 18.1.2 folder to trash bin)

You didn't install it yet, you only opened a disk image (hint, the format of the file you downloaded is probably .dmg) which contains the app itself (the .app file). You can now drag this app to your applications folder or wherever you want it. Usually these installers contain these steps, and a shortcut to default applications folder, so you just drag a few steps. But it's the exact same thing.


Why does the highlighted text color in Xcode's Project Navigator sometimes switch to white with a blue shadow? Normally a selected item in Xcode's Project Navigator is indicated by a blue bar behind the item. However, sometimes for no apparent reason this changes to white text with a kind of very light blue drop shadow and no background color change. Does anyone know why this occurs  or how to prevent it? To fix it I always just have to restart Xcode.

I'm using Xcode 7.2.1 (7C1002) on an OSX El Capitan 10.11.3 machine.

It's just a bug which happens sometimes in Xcode, still happening in 8.1.

You don't have to restart to fix it, you can just hide and show the navigator by clicking this button twice:


Screen goes black for a few seconds intermittently with Mac Mini 2018 I purchased a Mac Mini 2018 and connected it to my Dell 42" monitor via HDMI.
I works fine except that the screen goes black intermittently and comes back after 3 or 5 seconds.
The monitor and cable works well with other computers.
I also checked the connection and upgraded the OS to the latest one.
Nothing helps.

I unplugged the HDMI cable and plugged it into USB-C using an adapter.
It has no problem.
So I guess the HDMI port has an issue.

Do any of you have this problem?

Sam

I don't have the exact same problem, but the HDMI port does seem to behave a little oddly; the signal doesn't appear to be 100% perfect - during boot, wakeup, or after display mode changes, some of my displays will briefly show a distorted image. Either the colours are off, the image is shifted, the image is briefly simply noise, etc. but it seems to settle down OK after a few seconds on the displays I have and so far has not recurred once the image has "settled in".
I do have one screen (Acer XR341CK, 3440x1440 75Hz) which is detected but shows no image at all when connected via HDMI 2.0 and native resolution is selected (lower refresh rate or resolution works). (It is not detected at all by the 2018 Mac Mini when connected via a USB-C to DisplayPort cable, suggesting the GPU in this Mac somehow doesn't like this display. Update: At some point during the 10.14.x OS update cycle, the display started working without any troubles when connected via a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter.) The same display works as expected on other Macs and indeed when connected to an eGPU on this Mac Mini.
I believe the reason for this is that the Mac Mini 2018 uses an active HDMI 2.0 converter chip to produce an HDMI 2.0 signal from the GPU's native DisplayPort 1.2 output signal. Without this, the GPU would only be able to output HDMI 1.4 natively, which maxes out at 2560x1600 @ 60Hz or 4K @ 30Hz. Intel's GPUs are woefully out of date in this regard. (HDMI 2.0 supports 4K @ 60Hz)
The USB-C to HDMI cable is a fine solution if the above mode restrictions are OK for your display; otherwise, if your display has a DisplayPort input, I recommend trying a USB-C to DisplayPort cable. Apart from that Acer display, this is working fine on all other displays I've tried too, including those that have shown the brief image corruption I mentioned via HDMI.


App that caches Maps I've tried looking for an app that caches map data, so that it doesn't need an active Internet connection on the move.

The built-in one doesn't work well in that aspect. Caching the satellite maps turns out to be a nightmare because of the zoom levels involved. Only the road maps (the non-satellite ones) are somewhat easy to cache, depending on how large an area you want to cache.

Is there a way to cache areas in the Maps apps?
If not, is there a good app that caches satellite/hybrid map data? Paid apps will do.

I use the GaiaGPS App for my walks. This is free and does the job. You can save maps and use them once you're on the spot without any connexions. And you can zoom!


Is there a way to completely disable Dock? I want the Dock completely gone.  I haven't used it in the past three releases of OS X (10.5 to present).  I want it completely gone, and LaunchBar there instead.  Is there a way to kill the Dock so that it does not load or run?

This article from Lifehacker.com.au suggests setting the Dock autohide delay to 1000 seconds, like so:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 1000; killall Dock

To restore the default behavior:

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay; killall Dock

The author says he sets the delay to two seconds, so he can still get to the Dock in those rare cases when it's needed.


Need help with importing Camera Roll images from iPhone to Mac I’m trying to pull images off of my Camera Roll on my iPhone 6s with iOS 11.2 to my Mac locally and not using iCloud as I won’t sign up for that.

I would like to use the Image Capture program or iPhoto, but I've also tried using the Dr Fone programs too and all of them say that my iPhone has a password lock on it and they can’t access my iPhone when it's connected via USB cable. However, I have no password active on it.

The only thing that I can think of is that when I first bought the iPhone it asked me for a Passcode during the first initial set up and for some reason this main Passcode is preventing me from accessing the photos through my Mac.

Can this be correct? Or how else can I get access to empty my camera roll locally onto my Mac?

If I understand your question correctly, it sounds like your Mac is simply asking you to unlock your iPhone. With an iPhone 6s you would do that by entering your Passcode or using Touch ID.

In summary, to use Image Capture the typical process would be:

On your Mac launch the Image Capture app
Connect a USB/Lightning cable to your Mac
Plug the other end of the cable into your iPhone 6s
At this point you should be asked to unlock your iPhone and/or to Trust this Computer - enter your Passcode or use Touch ID and, if prompted, tap on the Trust button
Within Image Capture select your iPhone 6s from the Devices list
You should now see a list or thumbnails of the photos on your iPhone 6s
Select the images you want to import (or select nothing to import all photos not previously imported - this could be a large number)
Click on the Import to drop-down menu to select where you want the photos saved to

You can also set up Image Capture to automatically import photos from your iPhone 6s. For more information, refer to Image Capture Help: Transfer images.

As for iPhoto (or the Photos app), your Mac would still be asking you for the same thing - So the broad process described above will also work for those apps.

UPDATE due to additional info provided in comments

An iPhone 6s with iOS 11.x installed requires the following specs for syncing:

Mac: OS X 10.9.5 or later
PC: Windows 7 or later
iTunes 12.5 or later

Based on this, your 2011 MacBook Pro isn't capable of syncing in general with iTunes while it still has Snow Leopard installed and a version of iTunes earlier than v12.5.

However, you should still be able to import photos using Image Capture v6.0.1 (the version you'd have installed with OS X 10.6.8).

As a next step, I would try creating a new user and testing with that.

Create another user

In Snow Leopard (i.e. OS X 10.6.8) you can create a new user in Apple > System Preferences > Accounts and then log into that user to see if the problem persists.

You can also try testing to see if you can import photos via booted into Safe Mode.

As a troubleshooting step I would boot your Mac into Safe Mode.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. try using Image Capture)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Log in and test Image Capture again

Let me know how you go.


Navigate within texts without using arrow keys I'm an addicted vim user so I'm finding a way to navigate within texts without using arrow keys. Is there any app or hack to do this ?

I share your preference for keeping the hands in the touch typing position.

I have a post where I describe my current approach to achieve greater prevalence of vi-style controls on OSX.

To summarise the key points.

Simultaneous vi mode in keyremap4macbook works really well once you get used to it. When you simultaneously press S and D keys vi mode is activated which makes H, J, K, and L function as left, down, up, and right. Holding Down S, D, and F keys makes them function like their function key equivalents. If you are dextrous, you can also pull in the pinky to press shift, and the thumb to press Cmd or Alt. This becomes really useful if you hate having to move your hands from the touch typing position. In the post I also describe a number of other Vim-style keyboard hacks in keyremap4macbook which I tried but ultimately did not persist with given the conflicts with existing keys.
For Chrome there is the Vimium plugin which brings a lot of Vim style keys to the browser.
In my post I also describe the configuration of Vim style text editing for the command-line.


Grayed-out tracks in iTunes library In my iTunes library there are many tracks that have the cloud with embedded arrow (indicating that I need to download them from the cloud), but which are grayed-out, so that I can't download them, play them, or do anything. Can you tell me what is wrong?

You have probably already looked into this, but it sounds like "iCloud Status" is enabled in iTunes, but "iCloud Download" might not be. Go to

  View > View Options

and make sure that "iCloud Download" is checked off.


iOS: block ads in Apps without Jailbreak and VPN tunnel (normal 3G/4G network) For example in RT app there are annoying ads. There is no way to pay subscription without ads.

Howto block ads in Apps (in Mobile Safari I block them all)? I found only apps that offer a VPN tunnel (you need 100% to trust them) and solutions for iPhones with Jailbreak. Are there other possibilities?

No, because apps aren't able to inject themselves into other apps without jailbreaking, they are only able to use Safari Content Blockers in Safari or routing network traffic through a VPN.


Why aren't my photos synchronizing? They stopped syncing recently.  I called Apple support and they had me update both my iPhone 6 and my Macbook Air which I did.

I verified that the settings are correct.

I also verified that both devices are connected to the internet.

What else can I check?

At the bottom of the iPhone photos app, in photos tab, see if the photos has been synced. Also in iCloud.com, Please check and confirm if the photos has been uploaded.

Maybe other uploads are jamming the networks. As mentioned in the comments, Quicktime files are doing so


Where is the Safari's History.plist file in iOS 7 I need my Safari history from the backed up file in iTunes.  I was able to extract the backup data but in iOS 7 there is only Bookmarks.db in the directory.

It not in here anymore?

  /Library/Safari/History.plist

Safari history file from iOS backup can be found as ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/[DEVICE GUID]/ed50eadf14505ef0b433e0c4a380526ad6656d3a .
Copy it, rename it as [something].plist and open it with plist viewer.

Also Bookmarks.db is d1f062e2da26192a6625d968274bfda8d07821e4 in the backup folder, RecentSearches.plist is 37d957bda6d8be85555e7c0a7d30c5a8bc1b5cce.


Running windows on iMac updates system settings When I boot my iMac onto windows partition and then reboot into Snow Leopard my system time is updated (reverted on hour back).
This occurs even though I have 'locked' the system time on Snow Leopard.

I'm not sure if related but my connection to wi-fi is also affected. By this I mean I lose my internet connection and to re-connect to my internet wi-fi.

Time issue

It is a known issue that is due to the fact that OS X and Windows both store the time in the hardware, but OS X does in GMT while Windows stores local time.

There are at least two distinct ways to fix it:

Set Windows time zone to GMT and remove the daylight savings time offset and also turn off network time sync. (Source)
Use a startup batch script.


Automator: Take screenshot > Prompt rename > Add date and time to name This is what I need to achieve:

I take a screenshot
Automator watches my Screenshot folder for a new file
A prompt appears for me to rename the file
Date & Time are added after the name I give it

So the result would be: NewName on 02/04/20 at 3:49:44 PM.png

How could I set this up?

I've managed to set up a folder action through automator so that it watched my Screenshots folder, prompts me to rename new files, and add the date/time, but I don't like the time format Automator uses.

Is there a combination of folder action/script that would provide the result shown above?

Thank you!

Renaming and moving files with other actions in Automator usually involves saving the list of file items to restore later, then adding the other actions using the Ignore Input option as needed to keep from mixing up the various results.

If you are using a destination folder for the final result, you can use a workflow something like:

Folder Action receives files and folders added to { targetFolder }
Move Finder Items { To: destinationFolder } (to keep from triggering
the folder action again)
Set Value of Variable { Variable: fileItems }
Ask For Text (Ignore Input) (This will be text for the new name)
Set Value of Variable { Variable: newName }
Get Value of Variable { Variable: fileItems } (Ignore Input)
Rename Finder Items { Replace Text, Find: (the text "Screen Shot")
in basename only, Replace: (drag newName variable) }


OmniFocus adds note when capturing reminder I have OmniFocus set up to capture reminders created in Reminders.app on my iPhone 6 running iOS 9. Starting with iOS 9, the following text is added to the task's notes field: "Original task available in the 'Captured by OmniFocus' list in Reminders." This text is unnecessary. In fact, it's annoying, because it adds cruft to OmniFocus. How can I stop OmniFocus from adding this note?

From Omnifocus Support

  In addition, as of OmniFocus 2.7 (our update for iOS 9) the app now leaves captured reminders in Reminders on a special list. This way, any reminders with extra information unavailable to OmniFocus are still accessible.

  A reminder captured under this scheme will have a special blurb of text appended to its note:
  "Original task available in the 'Captured by OmniFocus' list in Reminders."

From the OmniFocus forums

  Is there any way to turn off or rename "Captured by OmniFocus" to avoid this confusion?

  If you'd rather not deal with the Captured by OmniFocus list at all, and you're sure you won't use the deep links functionality in reminders to be captured, you can revert to the old behavior of deleting captured reminders with a preference URL:

  omnifocus:///change-preference?RemindersCaptureDeletesReminders=1

  Any reminders captured after opening this URL will be deleted out of Reminders entirely, instead of being moved to Captured by OmniFocus. Once you change that setting, you can delete the Captured by OmniFocus list. (If you ever want to use the new way again, reopen the above URL, replacing the 1 with a 0; OmniFocus will recreate the Captured list as necessary.)


Very small resolution on external monitor Windows 7 with Macbook Pro Retina I have a Macbook Pro Retina 13", and I run both OSX and Windows 7. My Windows 7 is run in Parallels.

I work with OSX on the screen of the Macbook, and Windows on an external monitor (with the typical 1900x1080 resolution).

Problem is the Windows screen has very bad dimensions. Some things are very small, others are normal size. Screenshot:

When I go into my screen resolution it says 3840x2160, which seems very high. However, when I go lower, for instance to 1920x1080, I get the following which looks totally bad on my monitor (extremely big icons / other things):

Any idea how to get a normal resolution of my Windows screen?

I got it fixed, by selecting "Scaled" in the options in Parallels. Then I could change the screen resolution, and I had no problems in Windows 7. Success!


Does the TouchBar have its own GPU, CPU, or Ram? I want to know if the touch bar uses a miniature iOS-style CPU and processor, or does it share CPU, GPU, and other aspects with the main computer?

Can I (in theory) offload tasks (GPU/CPU,etc) to the touch bar?

This answer may not get to the crux of what you're wanting to do, but I offer it because I think your question is one that will interest a lot of people.

Apple’s Touch Bar MBP models actually use an Apple designed T1 chip that helps power both the Touch Bar and the Touch ID sensor. I say helps because this works in conjunction with the Intel CPU at the core of the MBPs. This T1 chip is actually the same that sits within the S2 in the current Series 2 Apple Watch models (it's being used as the processor and the Secure Enclave1).

During Apple's keynote it was revealed that in addition to being used for the Touch Bar, the T1 also handles security for the Touch ID sensor, the camera, and the keychain.

In terms of the Touch Bar, while the T1 does the sending of pixels to it, the main Intel processor is what actually renders the content that the T1 sends across.

In terms of security, the T1 is responsible for rendering any Apple Pay dialogs (because it's able to leverage off the Secure Enclave) while the actual transmission of any Apple Pay data is actioned by the main Intel processor.

In terms of what you want to do (i.e. offloading tasks to the T1), I'm not sure if/how this would work as I've only done iOS development. However, I do know that developing anything for the Touch Bar requires a Mac running macOS Sierra and Xcode 8.1 or above. Below are some resources that may be of interest:

Human Interface Guidelines for the Touch Bar
NSTouchBar
NSTouchBar Catalog: Creating and Customizing NSTouchBar

1. The Secure Enclave is a segregated portion of the chip used for personal information - the same process used in iOS and Apple Watch devices. You can read more about this in the iOS Security Guide.


Choppy Audio with Plantronics USB headset after software update My MacBook Pro Retina updated last night (10-APR-17).  Now the audio with my Plantronics USB headset is choppy ... it sounds like someone is talking through a fan.  The built-in speakers sound fine. I called Apple support and they think it is a hardware issue, but the headset was working just fine before the update.

Also Apple support suggested that I reinstall the OS :( does anyone have any other suggestions?

This was a problem with MacOS Sierra 10.12.4. It was fixed in the latest update to MacOS Sierra 10.12.5, which was released today (May 15, 2017). Update to the latest release of MacOS!
From the release notes:

This update:

Fixes an issue where audio may stutter when played through USB headphones.

Enhances compatibility of the Mac App Store with future software updates.

Adds support for media-free installation of Windows 10 Creators Update using Boot Camp.

...


How can I re-download all the apps I bought on another store account? I have moved to another country, which comes along with the joy of moving apple store accounts. This would be easier, however, if there were a trivial automated way to re-download all of my free apps under the new ID.

Before going any further, I know that I'll have to re-purchase any in-app purchases, and that no process is going to get me my apps back free. It sucks, but there it is.

I've written a small tool to list each app in my library and identify it by owner, price, and store URL. The thing is, I want to take the one extra step: Re-purchase the app from the store, under the new account, and replace the old one. Right now, this process is painfully manual:

Delete the existing app
Open the store URL in my browser. This opens iTunes to the app
Buy the app
repeat ad nauseam

I've got almost 150 apps to do this with. It'll take forever.

Is there an easier way to bulk delete/redownload apps in iTunes?

Check my story:

Do I need to repurchase apps if I moved countries?

In short - you can't. You have to stick to your old account for updates of the software you bought and create a new AppleID for purchases in new country.

Unless of course you are willing to pay for all applications (and in-app purchases) again. Then there's no need to have another AppleID, you just switch store country, but there's no automation for re-buying them unfortunately.


Is there an alternate way to get receipts from the Mac App Store I purchased an app (Divvy) from the Mac App Store ten days ago and still have not received an email receipt for the purchase. The e-mail address in the App Store Account Settings is correct and it's not in the Spam folder. The same account gets receipts fine when I make purchases in the iTunes Store.

Is there a way to either:

View old receipts somewhere, or
Get receipts emailed again?

The reason I need the receipt itself is so I can turn in an expense report. In the case of Divvy, it's not that expensive, but if I can't get receipts, I'm certainly not going to make further purchases.

While going off of the recommendation from @Mark to contact Apple Support I found a way to (kind of) get a receipt by following the directions on this page which shows you how to get order numbers.

Basically, in iTunes, you click on your username/email-address and then log in. This will bring up your Account Information window where you can select the "See All" under the "Purchase History" section. This will take you to a list of transactions.

Unfortunately, you can't print these out directly, but you can take a screen grab of the receipt (Cmd+Shift+3 or Cmd+Shift+4) and then print the resulting graphic.

A little bit of a hack, but it gets you there.


Accessing Russian App store My mother is Russian, she lives with me but does not speak a word of English. I'm considering buying her an iPad for her birthday, but I have concerns since Russian apps would be hard to find in US app store. Is there a way I could access the Russian app store?

I tried a few online app search websites but as it is now, most of the games she would be interested in come in multiple languages and as soon as I open them in iTunes they switch to English.

Any suggestions?

To use the Russian App Store you need to create an account there using whatever payment method is available. Apple matches credit cards to country so you'll need a card issued in Russia to buy any apps
Multi-lingual apps use the language configured on the phone. So even if you buy an app in the US store it will switch to Russian if running on such an iPhone (at least as long as the developers translated it to Russian in the first place)


Does Mavericks support OpenCL? I installed the new OS X Mavericks and new Xcode on the "mid 2011" Macbook air.

I run the code from this question, trying to test if the GPU supports OpenCL. But It seems to behave the same it behaved on Mountain Lion. It seems Mavericks doesn't support OpenCL yet.

Mavericks supports OpenCL but your GPU is not compatible (there are no OpenCL drivers for it).

Try running the example with CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CPU, Simply set the variable gpu to 0;

int gpu = 0;

This paper says OpenCL Support on Sandy Bridge is limited:

  3rd Generation Intel® Core™ Processors with the Intel® HD Graphics 4000/2500

Your Macbook Air is equipped with HD Graphics 3000.


Mavericks 10.9.1 - Copies fail *after* the data has been actually moved I'm suddenly having a very strange problem on Mavericks.

When copying large files around my system, between local disks or to and from my NAS server, I randomly get a failure stating "The file ... could not be copied because it is in use."

The problem is that this error message appears after the data has actually copied. Suppose I copy a 1GB file. The progress bar moves, network activity occurs (if transferring to the NAS), and so on... The error appears as soon as the file copy should finish.

A reboot does not solve this. This is becoming almost reliably reproducible as well. I have no unusual system extensions installed and this behavior started to appear suddenly and seems to have progressively worsened. Initially when it occurred a second copy often would work, but now a second or even third copy often fails and it takes sometimes upwards of four copies to make it work.

I can successfully copy anything at the terminal using cp, but this isn't really a solution - this is such a simple operation and there is no reason it should be causing errors like this.

As i said, the most interesting part is that it is occurring after the data has actually been moved. When the copy fails, it then deletes the corresponding destination file.

It's worth pointing out that this does not occur if copying to the same drive. For example, hitting ⌘ Cmd+D to duplicate a file and make a copy on the same disk never fails. Even moving around the same disk works as it should.

(No, I'm not trying to move, but rather simply copy a file.)

Anyone seen this before?

Mavericks uses SMB2 as default, which still is a little bit buggy and might be causing this problem. You can force Mavericks to use SMB again by entering this in Terminal:

echo "[default]" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf; echo "smb_neg=smb1_only" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf

and restore SMB2 default by:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf

Source: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20131122083837447


How to setup a MacBook Pro with DHCP Server over USB WiFi dongle I have a MacBook Pro running OSX Yosemite 10.10.5 and I'm trying to set it up as a server. I have a Realtek USB WiFi dongle (RTL8188cus) plugged in with the drivers installed, showing up as interface en6.  I also have the built-in AirPort on interface en0. I don't care which interface is used, I'm just providing options.

Goal

The goal is to allow users to connect to my MBP via WiFi and get an IP address via DHCP.  The reason being is that I am running a website on my MBP that I want to share only with people connecting to my MBP directly (via WiFi).

Bonus

A huge bonus would be having a way that I could assign a hostname to my MBP so that people could visit the website without having to type in the IP address of the gateway (my macbook).

Note

This is not internet sharing!  I'm not interesting in forwarding any data or connections.

To get that working you have to be able to create an ad-hoc network with one of the two Wi-Fi interfaces. It works at least with Airport but only without any Wi-Fi security like WEP/WPA/WPA2. I don't have access to a RTL8188cus, so I don't know if its driver allows a "safer" wireless networking.

Additionally you have to install a lightweight DNS/DHCP service like dnsmasq.

Open Terminal.app
Install homebrew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

doctor homebrew:

brew doctor

install dnsmasq:

brew install dnsmasq

copy config and plist files:

cp /usr/local/opt/dnsmasq/dnsmasq.conf.example /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf
sudo cp -fv /usr/local/opt/dnsmasq/*.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons
sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq.plist

create some additional config files and folders:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/etc/hosts
sudo touch /usr/local/etc/hosts/hosts.conf
sudo mkdir /var/lib/misc
sudo touch /var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases

Create an ad-hoc network with your Airport Wi-Fi interface including a name.
Open System Preferences -> Network -> Airport Interface and configure an IP-address, a netmask and a DNS-server manually:

IP-address: 192.168.2.10
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
DNS-server: 127.0.0.1

Modify /usr/local/etc/hosts/hosts.conf with nano:

sudo nano /usr/local/etc/hosts/hosts.conf

Content (append a trailing empty new line):

127.0.0.1       localhost
192.168.2.10    host.foo.bar www.foo.bar

Modify /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf with nano:

sudo nano /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf

Content:

...
# Add other name servers here, with domain specs if they are for
# non-public domains.
server=/foo.bar/127.0.0.1
addn-hosts=/usr/local/etc/hosts/hosts.conf
...
# If you want dnsmasq to listen for DHCP and DNS requests only on
# specified interfaces (and the loopback) give the name of the
# interface (eg eth0) here.
# Repeat the line for more than one interface.
interface=en0 #modify the interface name if necessary
...
# 3) Provides the domain part for "expand-hosts"
domain=foo.bar
...
# Uncomment this to enable the integrated DHCP server, you need
# to supply the range of addresses available for lease and optionally
# a lease time. If you have more than one network, you will need to
# repeat this for each network on which you want to supply DHCP
# service.
dhcp-range=192.168.2.50,192.168.2.100,12h
...

If you need further settings/options read the comments in the config file.
load the dnsmasq daemon:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq.plist

Configure your web-server properly.
Start your web-server.

Connect the client hosts to your ad-hoc Wi-Fi network.
The clients have to get their IP-addresses on the Wi-Fi interface via DHCP. It usually doesn't work with manually configured IP-addresses (without changing them or only by accident!).
Open a browser on the client hosts and enter www.foo.bar.


Find all executable files within a folder in terminal I have a folder myfolder that contains a huge hierarchy of files/folders.
How to find all executable files within this folder?

On Ubuntu this works: find . -executable -type f

But Mac OS X Mavericks (which also uses bash) fails to get it:

find: -executable: unknown primary or operator

This will find all files (not symlinks) with the executable bit set:

find . -perm +111 -type f

This will also find symlinks (which are often equally important)

find . -perm +111 -type f -or -type l

Here's how the command works if its not obvious:

find is obviously the find program (:
. refers to the directory to start finding in (. = current directory)
-perm +111 = with any of the executable bits set (+ means "any of these bits", 111 is the octal for the executable bit on owner, group and anybody)
-type f means the type is a file
-or boolean OR
-type l means the type is a symbolic link


When do iTunes Connect Stats update? I've read in quite a few places that sales trend reports update anywhere between 3AM - 5AM Cupertino time once a day.

But what about other stats?

When do app ratings update?
When do customer reviews update?

Both of those usually update almost instantly. Sometimes it may take a few minutes, but I've experienced instant results from people posting ratings and reviews.
Thanks!


Can the new 2016 MacBook Pro 13" without Touch Bar drive a 4K display? I currently have an old MacBook Pro 15" Retina from 2012, driving two monitors, a 24" 4K monitor and a 21.5" 1080p monitor.

This setup works, except for one catch - the 4k monitor refreshes at 30Hz, which makes it a bit laggy.

I was thinking of getting the new MacBook Pro 13" base model with 2 Thunderbolt/USB-C ports. Since I have 2 external monitors I figure I need the USB-C to Power + USB + USB-C adapter too.

Given I get these, will I be able to now drive my primary 4K display at 60Hz?

From the Video Support section of the Tech Specs for the 2016 13" MacBook Pro:

  Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at millions of colors and:

  One display with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion
  colors

  Up to two displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at over a
  billion colors

  Thunderbolt 3 digital video output

  Native DisplayPort output over USB‑C

  VGA, HDMI, and Thunderbolt 2 output supported using adapters (sold
  separately)