How do I write an AppleScript which auto reconnects to Wi-Fi? Sometimes I need to download very big files from the internet using torrents (I'm using Transmission) and the Wi-Fi always drops. I bought several routers and modems and none of them work. I've been having this issue a for a while (~10 years, with both Windows and Mac).

Now I decided to learn a bit, and write some AppleScript which reconnects automatically:

repeat
if (do shell script "curl --connect-timeout 1 <WIFI_IP>") = "curl: (7) couldn't connect to host" then
    do shell script "networksetup -setairportpower AirPort off"
    do shell script "networksetup -setairportpower AirPort on"
    do shell script "networksetup -setairportnetwork en1 <ROUTER_NAME> <ROUTER_PASS>"
end if
end repeat

the part after then works, it disconnects from Wi-Fi and reconnects it, but the problem is with the if part, because I don't know how to detect when the Wi-Fi connection is broken by the torrent. How should I do this?

Also, a repeat with an interval would be really nice, something like: repeat every 10 seconds.

Here's a simple Appplescript handler I wrote a while back to solve this exact problem. It pings the OpenDNS server (both of them for redundancy) to check if the internet connection is up. It returns true on success, false on failure. Just copy it into your script, and call it like:

set connected to checkInternetConnection

Then you can put whatever you want to do in an if statement like:

if connected then
    -- Do stuff here
end if

The handler:

on checkInternetConnection()
    -- Ping the primary OpenDNS server.
    try
        set pingResult1 to do shell script "ping -c 1 208.67.222.222"
    on error
        set pingResult1 to ""
    end try

    -- Check the results returned and return true or false.
    set p to number of paragraphs in pingResult1
    if p < 5 then
        -- Ping another Open DNS server for redundancy.
        try
            set pingResult2 to do shell script "ping -c 1 208.67.220.2220"
        on error
            set pingResult2 to ""
        end try

        set p to number of paragraphs in pingResult2
        if p < 5 then return false
    else
        return true
    end if
end checkInternetConnection


Yosemite: replace desktop with Launchpad Is there any way to replace the desktop with launchpad?

I would like to do this thing at this point

Kind of gives me the feeling of coming full circle, but ultimately my desktop is just an additional folder full of junk! or completely pristine and free. But I'm never looking at the desktop, ever. So I don't need it.

There is probably no way to switch Desktop and Launchpad like it's in iOS.

But you can at least remove all icons from the desktop. This way it looks clean and you can focus on the Launchpad.

To remove the icons, run this command in the Terminal.app (paste it then run it by hitting Enter):

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false; killall Finder

For more information, check out the source: http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/23/hide-all-desktop-icons-in-mac-os-x/


How make Safari open XML file instead of downloading it I'm on MacOS Sierra.  When I click on a link to XML file, Safari downloads it.  Instead I want to view the XML right in the browser.  Is there a way to accomplish this?

Safari does open XML files, unless the server specifically tells Safari to download the file.
It's currently not possible to override the server's instruction to download instead of view.


What's the best way to deal with wmv files on iPad I have bunch of training videos, mostly in .wmv format on my computer.
Well, I tried to find a player in appstore to watch those videos right away, without converting them - I couldn't find any good one. Anyway I thought that converting all that files would be a solution. Then I could watch them in default player.

For many reasons it's turned out not to be that straightforward and in reality is quite arduous task.

First of all folders hierarchy - itunes just ignore that. I needed to find a way to put all that files into one directory without loosing their order (remember it's training video lessons, so it's very important). I've managed to put all files into one folder and named them like 0001_lesson.wmv, 0002_lesson.wmv and so on.

Converter. I tried four different ones, I tried different settings, tried to convert into different formats. And still the folder that initially contained about 350Mb data after conversion grows into something huge with almost 1Gb data.

How come? I don't believe that wmv is so good, that it can be several times smaller than other video formats.

Maybe converters I'm trying aren't the good ones. Which one do you think the best? Is there any easier way to solve that problem? And please don't tell me to use streaming and airplay stuff. I watch those videos mostly when I'm in the subway.

Did you tried Oplayer ?

Didn't tried it with wmv but works perfectly for me on my iPad 1, with mkv and other formats, even with subtitles. I would love to try it on iPad 2 to see if the new CPU handles 720p videos :)

VLC for iOS was promising before it was removed... sigh. :/

Update 2018: VLC for Mobile is available in Apple Store.


Detect failed local login attempts I'm using macOS Sierra and when I try to view failed login attempts, grep doesn't return any results because the keyword has probably changed or I'm looking in the wrong place. Does anyone know where/how to find these?

I've looked at similar questions but they are all out of date. The most recent post I found suggested trying these but neither produced any results.

grep "Failed to authenticate user" /var/log/system.log
grep "authentication error for" /var/log/system.log

I found out the keyword to look for is AuthenticationAllowed.

Here is an example of a bad login:

2017-03-27 14:58:52.616248-0500  localhost com.apple.AccountPolicyHelper[226]: (78.701.2) AuthenticationAllowed completed: record "testuser", result: Success (0).
2017-03-27 14:58:52.616578-0500  localhost opendirectoryd[78]: Verify password result: 5000
2017-03-27 14:58:52.616620-0500  localhost opendirectoryd[78]: ODRecordVerifyPassword failed with error 'Invalid credentials' (5000)

And this is a good login:

2017-03-27 15:02:33.444367-0500  localhost com.apple.AccountPolicyHelper[226]: (78.702.2) AuthenticationAllowed completed: record “otheruser", result: Success (0).
2017-03-27 15:02:33.444540-0500  localhost opendirectoryd[78]: ODRecordAuthenticationAllowed completed

You can find these by using the log show —style syslog -last 5m command. This will show the last 5 minutes of messages.


Tools to pre-download iOS updates Is there a tool for OSX or Windows that will automatically download all the current iOS ipsw files?

I work at a school and when someone has a problem with an iPad and we need to restore it, we have to wait for iTunes or Apple Configurator to download the latest update.
It would be really handy if we could automatically pre download the IPSW files so that they were ready to go as soon as they were needed.
Any ideas?

You can always download the files from ipswdownloader.com.I agree it looks shady but I use it a lot for my development devices and i never have any problems with it.You can also find the ipsw files on your computer as described in this article, you might want to copy the files to another folder though because itunes will remove them automatically.


Reinstallation of Barclays Mobile Banking keeps previous installation's data, even after I completely remove app from iPhone I am trying to uninstall an application (Barclays application) I have installed using Apple Store and reinstall it again.

The problem is that even if I uninstall (by tapping on it and click 'X')it and redownload it from Apple Store, the app still keeps my user data and I don't want that. This happens for the first time, only with this application.

How can I specify in the apple store to forget I have ever installed this app? Can I remove this from my cloud or remove any cookies or cache memory or anything else?

I am using iPhone 6s, iOS 10.2 if that's any help.

In the Barclays app, go to Settings → Cancel my registration and follow the instructions.


How can I easily transfer videos from iPhone to iPad iPhone records nicer videos than iPad, but working with iMovie on iPad is more pleasant than on iPhone. How can I easily transfer recorded videos from iPhone to iPad, preferably without using a computer?

There are many ways to share photos easily like Photo Stream and direct device to device beaming using the iPhoto app, but these do not work (yet) for videos.

If you do not use iCloud and would like access on a PC or a web browser then you can use DropBox, this free app (sign up required) will allow you to save photos and videos to a folder in the cloud. You can access this folder on both iPhone, iPad and also your computer.

You also have to give Dropbox permission to access your photos from the iPhone app

In the app go to Uploads, (on the bottom)
Click the + button
Allow access to your photos
tap on the videos you wish to put onto your iPad
choose a folder to upload them into(you can create new folders here too.
Choose the folder and upload.
Wait a short time and navigate to the file using DropBox on the iPad. you can then save the video tyo your videos and open in iMovie.

The benefit of this over using iCloud is that you are instantly starting the process, iCloud and photostream can take a few minutes to start the sync process, you also have th eoption to be able to open the videos on a web browser, which you cannot do on iCloud.com


How do I remove extra extension when creating a PDF? Since upgrading to Mavericks, I've noticed that when creating a PDF from another file, such as Pages, the file extension is included in the file name. Is there any way to turn this off?

For example, let's say I create a Pages document called "Proposal.pages". When I'm ready to e-mail the proposal, I'll create a PDF of the document by selecting CMD+P and then "Save as PDF".

The default title that will be chosen is "Proposal.pages.pdf". Fairly simply thing to change, but when you generate PDFs all day, it becomes bothersome.

Does anyone know of a way that I can remove the ".pages" extension when creating the PDF file?

Looks like the "Save as PDF" option in the Print dialog just takes the document title (which is set to the document name by Pages) and adds a .pdf suffix to it. As the new Pages doesn't seem to offer an option to change the title within Pages you might be out of luck here.

Alternatively you could use the "Export to... PDF" menu entry to export to PDF directly.


Time machine stuck on cleaning up/ Error -47 I have been using time machine with the same disk for a year or so and until now it was fine. But since yesterday, it gets stuck at "cleaning up" and if I say "stop backing up" nothing happens. I tried repairing the disk with the disk utility and it seemed to be ok. I also tried a "full reset" (http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html), to no avail. Time machine buddy shows me the following:

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie 1/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 71.44 GB requested (including padding), 243.73 GB available
Stopping backup.
Error writing to backup log.  NSFileHandleOperationException:*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Resource busy
Error: (-47) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/blub/Downloads/Diablo-III-8370-enGB-Installer/Installer Tome 3.MPQE.part to /Volumes/LaCie 1/Backups.backupdb/aliscafo/2012-06-05-010535.inProgress/53345109-BD64-4FAB-990C-772890BF111A/Macintosh HD/Users/blub/Downloads/Diablo-III-8370-enGB-Installer
Error writing to backup log.  NSFileHandleOperationException:*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Resource busy
Error writing to backup log.  NSFileHandleOperationException:*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Resource busy
Copied 13200 files (12.1 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Error writing to backup log.  NSFileHandleOperationException:*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Resource busy
Copy stage failed with error:11
Error writing to backup log.  NSFileHandleOperationException:*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Resource busy
Error writing to backup log.  NSFileHandleOperationException:*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Resource busy
Error writing to backup log.  NSFileHandleOperationException:*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Resource busy
Error: (-47) Creating directory aliscafo 2
Error: (-47) Creating directory aliscafo 3
Error: (-47) Creating directory aliscafo 4
Error: (-47) Creating directory aliscafo 5
Error: (-47) Creating directory aliscafo 6
Error: (-47) Creating directory aliscafo 7

and so on... Does anyone know what Error: (-47) means? What can I do to fix this?

I had the same problem after I got a new iMac, did a transfer from Snow Leopard to Lion and it just go stuck. I did everything but to no avail.

If you are on the same boat as me, I fixed it upgrading to Mountain Lion.


Time Machine and work directory During my daily work, I tend to receive large files (up to a few hundred GB) which are only used for a few hours and then deleted.
I am not sure how Time Machine works, but I suppose that every file written on my drive will become a part of my backup history and that this could have an impact on TimeMachines operations and performance.
Would it be helpful, in this use case, to have a work directory that is excluded from TimeMachine's backup sources? What, on the other hand, would be the impact of allowing all those large files to become a part of the backup?

As you say with each little change in a file will mean it will be backed up again by Time Machine. Often this makes hardly any sense and will bloat the Time Machine backup drive unnecessarily.
I recommend excluding folders that contain large files and change often from Time Machine backups. To do so, go to System Preferences > Time Machine > Options > +. My exclusion list includes the following paths:

Download folder /Users/[me]/Downloads
My virtual machines (Parallels Windows, etc.) /Users/[me]/VMs
Caches, such as Spotify /Users/[me]/Library/Application Support/Spotify/PersistentCache
Dropbox folders /Users/[me]/Dropbox

Naturally you should decide for yourself what is meaningful to exclude on your machine and have another backup strategy for those files.
Alternatively, or on top of that you can use the free utility TimeMachineEditor to lower the time interval of backups (default is one hour). From the webpage:

TimeMachineEditor is a software for macOS that lets you change the default one-hour backup interval of Time Machine. You can change the interval or create other types of scheduling (see the screenshots below).
This is useful if you don’t need to backup every hour and don’t want the performance penalty. For example you might be frequently creating or modifying files which would cause long-running backup operations throughout the day.


How do I make use of the remote disc icon in the sidebar of Finder? I bought the new Mac Mini, which doesn't have a SuperDrive, and I noticed an icon in the sidebar of the Finder: Remote Disc.

To which device is referring?
When I clicked over the sidebar icon with the right button, to get information about the device, I got just genetic information that didn't help me to understand if it is referring to a specific device, and how I can "connect" such device to the Mac Mini.

Can I associate the "Remote Disc" with a MacBook's SuperDrive?

Remote Disc is a way for Macs without optical drives (Air, mini) to access another computers optical drive over a network. So you can put a disc in another Mac or Windows PC and read it on your mini.

Full details and instructions are reported here.

On the computer with the CD/DVD drive:

Go to the Preference panel, and click on "Sharing."

In Sharing, enable the "CD and DVD Sharing" service.

When a CD/DVD is inserted in the computer used to share the CD/DVD, its content will be show under "Remote Disc" on the Mac Mini.


How to make your iPhone beep every hour? Is it possible to have my iPhone making a sound every hour ? And preferably during day time, like 12 hours a day, and moreover only during weekdays only ?

Well – you can either set up returning alarms – but I suppose you already came up with that idea yourself. Or you can use one of those many many apps for hourly chimes. This overview claims to have a list of over 50 apps doing just that (and more) www.appcrawlr.com/ios-apps/best-apps-hourly-chimes

The first app I see in the list ("chime") seems to be doing exactly what you describe, available on the iTunes App Store at Chime


Is there a command-line BitTorrent client preinstalled on OS X? On a "bare" OS X 10.8 install, what is the easiest way to grab a largish torrent from the command line (MacTeX, 2.3 GB)? I can't use GUI-only clients, it's a headless system. If no such client is preinstalled, which one would be easiest to install and get running?

EDIT: To be more specific, I'm looking for a command similar to wget or curl that would get a torrent and serve only this torrent while running, then exiting when the download is complete.

No, not pre-installed as far as I know.

Try Deluge.

  It has been designed using the client server model with a daemon process that handles all the bittorrent activity. The Deluge daemon is able to run on headless machines with the user-interfaces being able to connect remotely from any platform.

Source: About Deluge

Alternatively, try rTorrent, aria2, or TorrentFlux.

For simple downloading of .torrent or magnet torrents, aria2 might be your best option.

Setting up aria2:

Install aria2 per the official install instructions.
aria2 can accept .torrent links and magnet links:

aria2c http://example.org/mylinux.torrent
aria2c 'magnet:?xt=urn:btih:248D0A1CD08284299DE78D5C1ED359BB46717D8C'

Setting up Deluge console access:

Install Deluge per the official install instructions.
Run the daemon and the console process, then connect locally.

deluged
deluge-console
connect 127.0.0.1:{{DELUGEDPORT}}

Add a torrent per this syntax:

add [-p <save-location>] <torrent-file> [<torrent-file> ...]

Use --help flag for more help on commands.

Setting up Deluge remote access:

Install Deluge per the official install instructions.
Create the configuration files by starting/stopping the daemon:

deluged
pill deluged

Add authentication with the syntax <username>:<password>:<level>:

echo "alice:MyC0mpL3xPass:10" >> ~/.config/deluge/auth

About authentication levels
Allow connections beyond localhost.

deluge-console "config -s allow_remote True"
deluge-console "config allow_remote"

Start the daemon.

deluged

Setting up rTorrent:

Install rTorrent per the official download & install instructions.
Run rtorrent to begin the interactive access.

Use -h flag for more info on using rTorrent.


Where is the Apple Air Port Utility 'Use dynamic global hostname' option? I just can't find the "Use dynamic global hostname" option in Apple Air Port Utility 6.1 (610.31). Where can I find this option now?

Apple seem to have removed/hidden some of the more advanced options from the Airport Utility interface in version 6 and this is likely one of them. Unless there's a workaround someone else can suggest to make such options visible again, on 10.7 (Lion), I've been getting around this by using the AirPort Utility 5.6 for Mac OS X Lion. You can find the Dynamic Global Hostname option by clicking Manual Setup > AirPort > Base Station tab > Edit - though I'm sure you already know that :)

Note that I have the AirPort Express 802.11n (2nd Generation) and the Airport Utility 5.6 does complain that

  This version of AirPort Utility doesn't support this AirPort wireless
  device and might improperly configure the device if you continue to
  use it

when you try to configure it. It seems to read all the information correctly but I would urge you to export your configuration first and/or not have anything you can't put back after a full reset, if things go wrong.


Clear iOS Safari icon cache? Is there a way to clear the favicon/apple-touch-icon cache for mobile Safari? The "delete all website data" button in settings doesn't do it.

(Safari appears to cache website icons aggressively for the "Add to Bookmarks"/"Add to Favorites" functions, but not for "Add to Home Screen". I'm interested in the former.)

I've managed to refresh it by loading ./apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png, but I only had apple-touch-icon.png in my main folder and had deleted the outdated precomposed one, so I believe you have to go to the original address that was stored in iOS Safari's cache.

It could be any of the following addresses, which are recommended by Apple Documentation on Web Applications:

apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png
apple-touch-icon.png
touch-icon-ipad-retina.png
touch-icon-ipad.png
touch-icon-iphone.png

And don't forget to compress your PNG to save bandwidth!


How to cause manual "Announce the time:" checkbox changes to take effect Edit: my original question, below, assumes there is a secret copy (a cache) of the system preferences settings.  I have since learned that is not the case.  However, my problem still needed a solution, which I have found and also posted, below.  No special Objective-C process is needed.  /edit.
I want to use the defaults write command to change a checkbox in System Preferences.  E.g:
defaults write ./com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs TimeAnnouncementPrefs -dict-add TimeAnnouncementsEnabled -bool YES

However, the OS caches the preference files, so the defaults command has no effect until the cache is updated.  The System Preferences app updates the cache after a change is made in its UI -- so it is possible.  Some people have suggested sudo killall cfprefsd but that does not work in Big Sur.
Elsewhere, user3439894 has posted a good AppleScript that manipulates the System Preferences UI.  But such UI manipulation does not work when the Screen Saver is running.
I'd like to figure out how the System Preferences app manages to update the preferences cache.  Doing strings of the System Preferences app (at /System/Applications/System\ Preferences.app/Contents/macOS/System\ Preferences) shows a method updateCacheFileWithPrefPane: that might do the job, but I don't know how to call that method.  The method, whatever it is, is private, but I only need this for myself (not a public app).
Is it possible to use dtrace or dtruss to figure out what the System Preferences app is doing to signal the OS to update its cache for a particular checkbox?   I want to write an Objective-C program to do the same thing, but I need a dtrace/dtruss expert to help me.

macOS uses NSUserDefaults to implement defaults. It offers an Objective-C interface and is part of the Foundation framework used by System Preferences and most applications to deal with preferences.
Caching of defaults is handled by the framework and the calling application is not expected to know about or manipulate the cache. See NSUserDefaultsDidChangeNotification and Key Value Observation (KVO) for how applications can track changes.
CFPreferencesSynchronize
NSUserDefaults itself is implemented with the C based CFPreferences set of functions, found in CoreFoundation framework.
In this layer, the documentation for the function CFPreferencesSynchronize reads:

This function is the primitive synchronize mechanism for the higher level preference function CFPreferencesAppSynchronize it writes updated preferences to permanent storage, and reads the latest preferences from permanent storage.
Only the exact domain specified is modified. Note that to modify “Any User” preferences requires root privileges (or Admin privileges prior to OS X v10.6)—see Authorization Services Programming Guide.
Do not use this function directly unless you have a specific need. All arguments must be non-NULL. Do not use arbitrary user and host names, instead pass the pre-defined constants.

macOS 11.2 is partly open source. Be sure to check if defaults is part of the open section. This may be useful in determining which domains and suites the preferences affect.


Time Machine file structure? I have a drive used only for Time Machine.

The drive is 3TB, with 1.75TB showing available, so TM actually has used only 1.25TB, yet the total reflects 50+ backups of 80GB each.

The question is - If I were to take one of these snapshots and copy it to another drive, will that file function as a TM backup? Or is that image a series of aliases and if the TM drive isn't there, this file will be useless?

Yes - copying any of the folders will use the hard link to make a full copy of that moment in time. The hard links only work on the same filesystem, so you can test things if you are copying to the same volume but most instances where I do this, I'm copying to another volume (compressed disk image or physical/logical volume).

In a nutshell - using Finder (or rsync/ditto) to make a copy of any of the folders will result in a functional full copy of the system at that point in time with all the files intact.


How to monitor the network usage of specific apps on iOS? I am currently helping someone who has experienced large amounts of data being transferred over her DSL connection. After long research (via IRC support) I found out that her iPhone is obviously sending lots of data, i.e. several hundred kbyte/s, as soon as she connects it to her home network. The iPhone itself seems to work fine.

To find the culprit responsible for these huge amounts of data I would probably need to find a way to measure how much data all connected applications are sending within a specific interval.

As I do not use an Apple mobile device myself I am not familiar with iOS. Are there any possibilities to get information about the network usage of specific apps, either natively or with the help of a third-party application that is for free or at least offers a free trial version?

You can do this with Onavo Count

Onavo Count monitors and analyzes all types of mobile data and phone use. This includes background, foreground, and Wi-Fi use.


Where can I find the latest release of Darwin? I want a disk image (for installation). I've checked here and the 'Darwin Technologies' link there but couldn't seem to find anything. I want the Darwin (not any derivatives) and would much rather it from an official Apple source, sorry I'm so picky.

Unfortunately, ISO files are no longer made available. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29#History:

  Up to Darwin 8.0.1, Apple released a binary installer (as an ISO
  image) after each major Mac OS X release that allowed one to install
  Darwin on PowerPC and Intel x86 computers as a standalone operating
  system. Minor updates were released as packages that were installed
  separately. Darwin is now only available as source code,[4] except for
  the ARM variant, which has not been released in any form separately
  from iOS. However, the older versions of Darwin are still available in
  binary form.

  [4] http://lists.apple.com/archives/Darwinos-users/2007/Oct/msg00006.html


Folders disappeared from iCloud Drive following path name change So that GNU Make could access my iCloud Drive folder, I removed the space in 'Mobile Documents'.

So I changed my iCloud Drive path from:

~/Library/Mobile Documents/

to

~/Library/MobileDocuments/

As far as I can tell, my Mac has automatically re-created ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ (ie, it has re-created my iCloud Drive folder).

On my Mac, the only folders that are now showing in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ are Preview, Numbers and Pages (ie osx and iOS apps).

On my iPhone, I can access my iCloud Drive folder in all apps, but the only apps in which files are syncing via iCloud are Preview, Numbers and Pages. In apps such as Textastic, which I only have installed on my iPhone, the files are no longer syncing via iCloud.

All my apps and their files that were previously in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ are present in ~/Library/MobileDocuments/. Therefore, I tried transfering apps and their files present in ~/Library/MobileDocuments/ to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/, but my Mac said the files are all present in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/, even though they are not showing.

Can anyone tell how I can revert my changes? Therefore, how can I have all apps and their files returned to iCloud Drive and syncing using iCloud?

Depending on the number of files you have, iCloud Drive can take a while to get itself situated.

I would move the files somewhere safe that is not part of iCloud and is easy to get to. Leaving them where they are should also work. Then, turn off iCloud Drive and follow all the prompts. It’ll want to “finish updating,” which you can skip. It’ll leave a folder in your home folder that’s an archive of some files it thought may not be uploaded yet.

Once everything is off, re-enable it. Wait until everything comes back. This can take a long time (hours) and it may look like nothing is happening. It will finish.

Once everything is back, make sure your data is all there and delete the old stuff.


update my imac OS X 10.9.5 to OS sierra i just installed macOS SIERRA which is 10.12

but nothing has changed it's still OS X 10.9.5

so how to upgrade to sierra

You first have to install El captain X
You might not can install the sierra if you ox system was made in the early part of 2009


Do iOS apps crash regularly? Is this normal? I've been having some trouble with one of the third-party apps on my iPod Touch 4gen, and realized that a lot of apps I use (which isn't many) have been spontaneously exiting, recently.  Safari and Youtube both did this a few times today.

Is this normal?  iOS apps tend to go back to what they were doing, so it's not that big a deal, but perhaps it's indicative of some hardware or software issue.

I'm using iOS 4.2.1.  I don't remember it being quite this bad on 4.1, but that could well just be my imagination.

I looked for crash logs on my computer, but there's been no crash logs created in over a week, even for apps which I know have crashed many times since then.  I don't know what that means, if anything.

Should I be concerned?  Is there anything I can do?  Is there some kind of "is my iPod completely &#@!ed?" diagnostic I should run?  I realize this is kind of a vague question.

It could be a low memory issue. iOS is supposed to manage memory automatically, but I've found that it's not always perfect. Try quitting every single app and restart the device (hold the power button down for several seconds, then slide to power off, then power on again) to see if that fixes it.


Finder displays Refresh and X symbols instead of Eject for external storage device? Typically, Finder displays the Eject symbol next to an external storage device, and an inverted version during mouseover, like this:

but today, Finder displayed a Refresh symbol, and an X during mouseover, like this:

The storage device was my Time Machine backup and was connected via USB. The device appeared normal in Disk Utility. I did not interact with the symbols, but ejected it using Disk Utility. After replugging the device, the unusual symbols did not reappear.

Can someone link me to documentation regarding the meaning of this (preferably on Apple's Support site)?

I can't find a support document that directly addresses your question, but I'm pretty sure that those icons represent a disk that is in use and can't be ejected.


Macbook webcam only shows black and green LED is always on I tried making a facetime call on my macbook and it shows the view of my camera to just be black. The green LED for the camera turned on when I opened facetime but now will not turn off, even after completely exiting all open programs on the macbook. The only way to get the LED to turn off if to restart the computer.

I also tried searching for "VDC" in utility and killing the "VDCAssistant" process to no avail.

Any ideas:

How to get the webcam to work? I.e. show an image rather than black
How to get the camera to "turn off". Stop the green led?

To my mind this seems like a hardware problem but I'd appreciate any advice.

Update:

The green LED is now on even after a restart. Facetime is reporting that no camera is available. Killing VDCAssistant does nothing.

Update 2
It seems a full shutdown, turn on turns the LED off, unlike a simple restart. Opening any app that uses the webcam reinstates the problem.

Update 3
After running Apple Hardware test, it has been confirmed that there is a hardware issue.  Will be taking it in to Apple to get serviced.

Based on the description and the comments, this sounds like a hardware failure, not malware.   The iSight camera and/or cable has most likely failed.  Replacing it should be a fairly simple task to a tech to accomplish

The first thing to do when having hardware difficulty of any type is to run Apple Hardware Test (AHT).  Simply hold down the D key while booting from a powered off state and the AC adapter connected.

Since AHT diagnosed an issue and you are under AppleCare, it's best that you take it in.


How to stop Mac from opening a new tab when I click a link Let's say i search up "pineapple" into google and click on the first link, it opens that link in a new tab and i find this annoying. I can't seem to fix this and I know that the command key is not stuck. How do i solve this?

Go to "Preferences..." under Safari -> click on "Tabs" (at the top menu) -> uncheck the checkbox called "When a new tab or window opens, make it active".


Missing Time Travel feature on Apple Watch in OS3? This was a feature I used frequently as I had my calendar on my watch, I would scroll a few hours ahead with the crown to see my next event easily without taking my phone out.

I looked quickly in the settings on the Watch app on the iPhone but could not see if it was buried in there.

Any one know if they removed this functionality completely?

There's a toggle for Time Travel (the name of the feature you're talking about) in the Watch app on your iPhone. Turn this on to enable the feature.


Mac often wouldn't sleep nor show screensaver If I manually ≪Menu → Sleep≫ or ≪Screensaver settings → Preview≫ it will work, but it wouldn't do sleep/screensaver with the set hotcorner nor automatically.

Every now and then I'll have this issue. How do I fix the problem or investigate what has went wrong?

(Its usual settings: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RcJH5.jpg)

(Refreshing the settings (eg by toggling ≪Enable power nap while plugged into a power adapter≫) would temporary fix the problem—until it comes again.)

Launch Terminal

pmset -g assertions

that will give you a clue as to what is stopping sleep


Remove duplicate smart playlists in iTunes Background: I relocated my music library to a different hard drive on my Mac.  In order to sync iTunes, I exported the playlist, edited all the file paths to the new location, and imported it back into iTunes.  It worked fine, except:

Now I have duplicate "most played", "most recently played", "classics" etc in the automatic playlists section in the left pane, both in iTunes and on my iPhone.  (My Mac is localized to Swedish, so these playlist names are my own off the cuff translations back to English.)

I have looked at the XML playlist file I imported and could not find any entries there which would have caused the duplication, so starting over does not seem like a viable approach.

I have added album art, play times etc to the songs in iTunes so I would rather not start over from an empty music library.  None of this is purchased via iTunes (and frankly I'd rather be without iTunes altogether); I have transferred my CDs to FLAC over the years and just converted them to MP4 for import into iTunes when I first got an iPod Touch a few years ago.

Forgive me if I'm mistaken but can't you just right/second click and hit delete?

and then set to sync with your iPod under the music tap of the connected iPod


Having 2 Application folders in macOS Catalina I just installed Macos Catalina. After the update I did a check on what's new and I found something new which is a double / redundant "Applications" folder. Usually the old Application folder is located in Disk / Users / Applications, but now there is also an Application folder in Disk / System / Volumes / Data / Applications.

My question is: can I deleted the old Application folder? Because it's consuming my hard disk. And if I delete the old application folder, can it disrupt the app's performance?

Can I delete the old Application folder?

No, you should not.

I looks like one (/Application) is virtual folder for another (/System/Volumes/Data/Applications).

To fix duplication in Alfred, just type reload in it.

More context:

https://superuser.com/questions/1454743
https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/13121-duplicate-apps-in-results-1015-and-v4
https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/13760-after-upgraded-to-catalina-applications-show-from-systemvolumesdataapplications-instead-of-applications


Jailbroken iphone not charging - neither through USB nor through the A/C adapter! I use the first generation iphone. My warranty is up like two years ago and I have already jailbroken my phone. It was functioning just fine until one day suddenly my laptop stopped detecting my iphone. I reconnected the device to a PC and the same thing happened. I guess its my mistake that I ignored it!. Then one day while I was riding on my bike,to my absolute horror the phone suddenly slipped from my pants pocket and fell on the rough concrete. I ran and checked but except for a few scratches on the back, it looked just fine, it jus got switched off. I switched it back on and it was working just fine. A week went by while I ignored my phone's inability to connect to any PC whatsoever. It was then that the issue started, Now my phone is not charging at all!. Sometimes either through a stroke of luck or a vigorous shake from me, it resumes charging! Help me out Please!. What am I to do to get it back to normal?!

if you still have warranty on it :

  I would suggest you restoring the
  iphone to factory settings and taking
  it to the nearest Apple store.

else :

  I believe there is a hardware issue
  (loose connection). Since it is a 3G
  iPhone (warranty may have expired
  unless you got AppleCare), it is not
  difficult to open up and see whats
  going on inside.

Hope it helps!

p.s : When you say 'stroke of luck', things get interesting. You may put your iPhone in Restore mode and then see if iTunes is recognizing it (if you at least have any charge, only then will it be possible to try this!).


Mac mini 2011 memory I have a Mac mini Mid 2011 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5. I received as a gift an 8GB memory kit. The memory spec for my Mac says it needs PC3-10600 DDR3. The kit I have is PC3-8500 DDR3. In particular, the kit is Crucial part number CT2CP51264BC1067.

Will the memory I have work in my Mac?

PC3-10600 RAM runs at a clock speed of 1333Mhz. The older PC3-8500 runs at a speed of 1066Mhz. As long as there aren't any other physical or voltage requirement differences between the two types of memory (and there shouldn't be in your case, since both are DDR3 SO-DIMMS), your system should accept it.

Keep in mind that the system's memory bus will automatically adjust to suit the rated speed of the slowest memory module installed into it. So rather than running the memory at 1333Mhz, it will drop down to 1066Mhz and you'll lose some memory bandwidth.

If you want, you can look at this Wikipedia entry to start figuring out exactly how much. As for real world performance, it really depends on what you're doing. Increasing the amount of memory available while losing some bandwidth might be a good idea if you leave everything open all the time.

But if you have specific applications that require a high amount of memory I/O, like a big database for example, speed might be more important. For the average Mac user though, I'd say sheer volume would be preferential.


System asking for Apple ID login Recently my El Capitan has started asking me for my Apple ID credentials, out of the blue. It often happens after waking the system from sleep, but not always, and sometimes it happens during the middle of my work. So I guess some kind of timeout or some such is involved as well.

I don't want to get into the habit of entering my password without knowing what for. And I don't have my user account officially associated with my Apple ID, since I like to keep separate things separate. On the latest update I skipped the step asking me for my Apple ID, as I did when setting up the system. Not sure whether that's in any way relevant.

So what service exactly is asking for my ID? How can I find out?
Why is it asking for it? Is there any legitimate reason why it should do so?
Can I be sure that entering my password without knowing more won't be used to legitimize a paid purchase in some way?
How can I stop the system from pestering me with this? I want to enter my password only when installing (or updating) apps from the AppStore.
Am I the only one observing this, or is this a known issue?

Go to System Preferences and select App Store

There you can turn on/off automatic updates.  Also, you can adjust the Password Settings here.


Is anybody else experiencing disappearing source files when using Xcode 4? I've been having a weird problem on a MacBook Pro; My source files disappear. It can happen when the files are not open in any application (although they are referenced by active projects in Xcode and the compilers are reading them…). I can start a long build, walk away, and along the way the compiler complains that it cannot find an #include at some point in the build (the file's disappeared at that point). I then revert from git history. Fortunately, I've not lost any data (yet!), but it's quite an annoying issue. I do use git clients (specifically, SmartGit and SourceTree), but the problem appears unrelated to these clients because I can work with either for extended periods and the problem still arises. As far as I know, other files have not been disappearing from this machine, but I use it almost exclusively for development. And maybe it's not at all related to Xcode…

Has anybody else had a similar problem, or is this a confirmed issue? …and is there a solution?

I'm having the same issue.  At first I thought it was me doing something wrong, then it hit me again last night.

I am using a corporate macbook pro I7 (which seems to run slower than my personal 2009 macbook core-2 duo, but i regress...)  I was vpn'd into work with Cisco Any connect.

I got to a stopping point, went to commit the files, added my comment and before I hit the commit button, I lost the vpn.  No problem I thought as the commit is only to the local repository, but when I hit commit, I got an error saying this is not a git repository.  I flipped back to my project and half the files were gone.  Luckily the 4 files I had been working in were still there, but I had another project open at the same time, and I lost everything there but the project file.  Luckily I had pushed to our git server twice that day, but did lose a little work.

The computer is running McAffee AV.

I'm wondering if it's something to do with the mobile account on the mac.

None of the source code files are in the trash, they just vanish.

I'm storing my projects in ~/Projects/Mobile/Project1... but I have also lost source code in ~/Documents/Projects before.

Zip files in the ~/Projects/Mobile folder are unaffected.
All source code files in MOST all project folders disappear, even projects that were not open in XCode.


How can I set quiet hours for OS X time announcements? I like the built-in time announcement in OS X.  But my wife has forbidden it because it announces time at night too.  Is there any way to silence during certain hours or some other utility that will announce the time?

I am aware of Cuckoo, but it only does chimes.

I would use applescript and iCal to schedule enabling and disabling this feature. On OSX Lion you'll need to have 2 scripts one to enable it and one to disable it.

This is the script to enable save it somewhere in your home directory I called it time_announce_on.applescript :

do shell script "defaults write ./com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs TimeAnnouncementPrefs -dict TimeAnnouncementsEnabled -bool YES"

Then in iCal setup an appointment to recur every morning at the specified time you want to enable the announcements and have the alert 'run script' and load the above script.

Then all you need to do is have the disable script which I called time_announce_off.applescript :

do shell script "defaults write ./com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs TimeAnnouncementPrefs -dict TimeAnnouncementsEnabled -bool NO"

Then setup another appointment in iCal for the time of night that you want to disable this and have it run the time_announce_off script.

I tested this in Lion 10.7.3 and it works. For 10.6 I believe you just need to remove the ./ from the beginning of the com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs (but I haven't tested this).


Accessing a NAS device from Python code on Mac-OS I have a NAS device that appears in Finder under the Shared devices so I can read and write to it just like any folder on my OSX drive with no need to provide authentication.  How can I read and write to it from Python code?  I have tried manually accessing required folders on the drive so that they then appear in Volumes, but I still can't get at them.

If you want to mount the network volume (or make sure that it is mounted) from the python code, then you could use the shell command mount, from inside an os.system() call. See this answer.

Once mounted, you can access the contents of the drive like any other connected drive with a filepath under /Volumes.
It is likely to be something like:
/Volumes/My\ NAS/path/to/file (where "My NAS" is the name of your share.)

Note that whether the Finder shows the drive under "Devices" or "Shared" is irrelevant.

If you need to find the filepath for a given item on the NAS, use Command Alt C in the Finder to copy the filepath to the clipboard as text.

If the correct path still isn't working in your python, then we need to see your python code.


Dynamic Desktop wallpaper thumbnails I have downloaded various "Dynamic Desktop" wallpapers online, put them into a directory, and added this directory to my Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane.

The problem is, it does not correctly the thumbnails. They all appear to be the "Mojave" wallpaper, while in reality they each are different pictures.

On Mojave the system doesn't generate correct thumbnails. The only workaround is to place the wallpaper into /Library/Desktop Pictures/ and place its thumbnail into /Library/Desktop Pictures/.thumbnails/ folder. This requires administrator password and can only be performed from terminal.

sudo cp mywallpaper.heic /Library/Desktop\ Pictures/
sudo cp mywallpaper_thumbnail.heic /Library/Desktop\ Pictures/.thumbnails/mywallpaper.heic

Thumbnail has to have same name as wallpaper. macOS Catalina can create correct thumbnail. Custom thumbnails are only supported for wallpapers inside Desktop Pictures folder.


Question about Enterprise licensing and Apple Business Manager At the recent WWDC19 seminar, Apple made some drastic new changes to the Enterprise program, and Apple is making it now mandatory that all clients use the new Apple Business Manager process.

Without going into specifics, for about 80% our clients, we are using two umbrella Enterprise licenses to create provisioning profiles for our clients. Apple used to be relaxed about this and ... although not recomended ...noone really said anything, but now Apple is really cracking down on this. With this risk in mind, my dev team and I are trying get the respective clients to enroll themselves (with our guidance) with a new Enterprise license for themselves. The client would fully own the license themselves, and just add my Tech lead and myself as developers to the group. However, this process has not been successful.

I am just curious what others experience has been? Others in this forum that are mobile app contractors must be impacted by this as well, and proactively investigating contingency plans. Are you getting your clients to purchase their own Enterprise licenses, or are you going down this Apple Business Manager Path? As I mentioned above, we have tried getting one of our clients to enroll for an Enterprise license for their internal employees, but it seems the mere mention that a 3rd party contractor is building them an app, raises alarm bells for Apple and they instantly reject the client’s application. I suspect that this same negative result will come from all our client’s requests.

In short, I am curious how others are handling this dilemma, and what has your success has been moving clients to use Apple’s new Business Manager?

Apple did not make drastic changes to the Enterprise program at WWDC19. I don't know where you have that from. The only change I can think of is that they changed their terms to include that they can review internal apps - i.e. they want to be able to check your apps in case of suspicion of malware, bad practices, etc. This is a natural development when taking into account that there recently has been several public cases of companies misusing the enterprise program - breaking the rules - to install apps that are malicious or deceitful to customers.

You seem to be convinced that your situation is similar to the majority of other app developers out there - but that isn't the case. The majority of app developers, as far as I can tell, are playing by the rules.

It has always been totally clear that enterprise distribution is for distributing apps to your own employees. Not to customers. You should have been aware of this for years - I cannot see that coming as a drastic change that surprised you.

Apple makes it perfectly clear that this is not for 3rd party developers on the front page of the Apple Developer Enterprise Program web site:

  Your proprietary app must be developed by you for use on Apple platforms.

The fact that you have broken the rules for a long period of time, and it wasn't discovered by Apple, doesn't mean that Apple have allowed you to do so and suddenly changed their mind.

For your purposes you should really be distributing your apps through the App Store (for public apps), or through Apple Business Manager (for private apps) - or possibly through Ad Hoc distribution, if it's a limited amount of devices.


Installing Xcode from App Store doesn't seem to work I'm having a rather odd problem.

I've installed Xcode from the App Store three times now. No errors are being presented to me, but after installing Xcode I can press Open (in the App Store) and nothing happens. Refresh the view in App Store and I can press Install again.

What's going on?

I'm on Sierra 10.12.4 if that matters.

Given Xcode.app appears in the /Applications and can be launched, the behaviour suggests Spotlight has yet to notice the newly installed application.

It is likely Apple's App Store application uses Spotlight to determine if applications are installed; thus the ability to Install Xcode.app re-appears on refresh.

I suspect the bug will vanish once Spotlight re-indexes your applications.

Consider telling Apple directly about this bug through their feedback form.


iPad: Login with two Apple ID like Windows users I just bought a new iPad Mini 5 64GB Wi-Fi. I am new to iPad and Apple ecosystem.

I logged in with my Apple ID created years ago for iTunes music on my Android device.

Can I log into iPad using two separate Apple IDs like a Windows user? Like you lock one user and log into other user, so both can not access others data, apps, folders, etc.

My intention is to hide certain installed apps. Is there another way to hide game apps?

Can I log into iPad using two separate Apple IDs like a Windows user? Like you lock one user and log into other user, so both can access others data, apps, folders, etc.

No. iOS, the operating system running on iPad doesn't support multi-user login and switching mechanism (a feature commonly available in desktop operating systems).

  My intention is to hide certain installed apps. Is there another way to hide game apps?

An installed app cannot be hidden from view from the users of iOS/iPad.


Disable system services to save data Is there any way I could disable the system services that use data when I am not connected to wifi?

Well, as long as your iDevice is not jailbroken, sadly there is no way to fully do that, but you can disable some of them here:

Settings > Privacy > Location Services > scroll all the way down to the bottom > System Services

(At least with the iOS versions up to 7)


Share internet connection from iPad to iPhone via bluetooth I can share my iPad's internet connection using Bluetooth to my Macbook Pro and my Android phone but my iPad and iPhone does not even seem to see each other when I try to pair them. I am abroad at the moment and have put a local SIM in my iPad and want to share the connection. Is this even possible? I can go iPad <-- BT --> some other device <-- WiFi --> iPhone but it feels stupid and is a waste of battery for no use at all!

personal hotspot without WiFi

Activate Personal Hotspot in Settings
Disable WiFi

iOS and OS X devices will use Bluetooth when possible over WiFi, so no need for the above.


Faulty or oversensitive temperature sensor on 15-inch Macbook Pro? I have a 2015 Retina MacBook Pro, 15-inch.

Whenever the CPU usage goes above ~30%, the reported temperature spikes and the fans kick in.  As if the temperature sensor was oversensitive. I've tried resetting SMC but no change. Is there something else I can try?

(An authorized service provider just sent it back to me after replacing one of the fans but that didn't fix the issue.)

I see two potential problems:

An "over sensitive" sensor as you described that is reporting the CPU temp as higher than what it's supposed to be

or....

A faulty CPU that has a temperature spike when you put it under load.  In this case, the sensor is working correctly.

The tech changing out the fan can do nothing to fix this problem - remember, the sensor is "reading" a temp change and telling the SMC to kick on the fans.  Changing the fan won't change how the sensor works.

What you need to do is diagnose whether or not the temp reading is accurate and whether the sensor is working or not.  You can start with Apple Hardware Test (AHT).  (Hold the D key while booting from a powered off state with the AC adapter connected) and then take it into Apple to have it diagnosed.


Moving Files From Dropbox App to Music App Recently my laptop was put out of commission. Since then I've downloaded some music into my iPad's Dropbox app. I would like to move this from Dropbox to the Music app, but I'm not sure of a way to do it without my laptop. Any help would be great.

The only ways to get music into Music.app is to sync with a computer, purchase from the App Store or use iTunes Match (which requires a computer to get set up). Unfortunately because of the way iOS is architected it is not possible to take music from third-party apps or websites and put them into Music.app.


How to keep the text selection in Terminal.app when typing In Terminal.app, when I select some text and start typing again, the text selection is gone. I personally find this very annoying. Is there a way to make Terminal.app keep the selection when I type?

So, I decided to give iTerm2 a spin after I hadn't looked at it in quite a few years. I have to admit that (with a little tweaking) it's actually a lot better than Terminal.app in many major and minor aspects. I have yet to find something that Terminal.app does better. So I guess that I'll just stick with iTerm2.


What does the mute switch on the iPad do? We got an iPad not long ago, and I noticed that the so-called "Mute" switch doesn't mute the sound for all apps. I am aware of the iPhone mute switch dilemma, but what exactly does the mute switch on the iPad do? Is it like the iPhone's mute switch or is it different?

The iPad mute switch is identical to the iPhone's mute switch except it can't control a ringer/vibration choice. Other than that, it's effect in-app will be identical.

Not all apps respect the 'mute' switch. Apps that have no purpose EXCEPT to be listened to (music apps, youtube, etc.) will not be any different in either switched mode.
Frequently, games or other apps with "ambient music" will silence the music and often the sound effects as well when the switch is set to mute.

It is due to this inconsistency that I choose to set the switch to control orientation lock, and just use the volume controls as needed.


What is the app which let user to find by finding application and files with key combinations? I am not a mac power user and when ever I need to find an application or file, I open Finder and look for it. Couple of weeks ago, I saw someone using some keyboard shortcut, which opened a dialog box, where as he enters the name, the application showed the files matching the word he is searching. Is this a mac power tool or is this a different app?

Thanks

Spotlight is a part of OS X. The default keyboard shortcut is, I think, Command-Space for the Spotlight menu entry and Option-Command-Space for the Spotlight field in a Finder window. (Clarified after Chris' answer.)

There is also a third party application named Quicksilver.


App from Mac app store not installing I am trying to reinstall an app I purchased some time ago. It is not installing. In the console I get the following message:

LaunchServices: Failed to create bundleProxy for bundle com.trankyman.aText

aText MAS version doesn't work El Capitan due to sandboxing. You can switch to non-MAS version for free, by downloading http://www.trankynam.com/atext/downloads/aText.dmg

Check their Facebook page

  I am sorry for the late responding. Unfortunately aText Mac App Store version does not work on OSX 10.11 El Capitan. This is not fixable.
  aText 'full' version (not sandboxed) still works with OSX 10.11 El Capitan.
  Please switch to non-MAS version for free, by downloading http://www.trankynam.com/atext/downloads/aText.dmg

You can also check their video link on their website.


i want to stop iMessages from being deleted I want to prevent my step daughter deleting message from iMessages so they can't be viewed (once you delete that using the more button you can't see it again)

Is there a way to prevent that (disable that function)?

There is no way to disable that function.
But you always can get another Apple device, such as mac or any of iOS family and login with her apple ID in iMessage section of settings.
Once you'll made it that will allow you get the copy of all the iMessage conversations.
Despite the reason of your idea, I just want mark it as not so fair activity. Check twice if you will be charged for that by the law of your country.


How to enable Maven autocomplete on Mac OS X command-line? When using Maven (mvn) on OS  X Terminal, how can I get tab-completion for Maven goals, plugin names, etc? Things like this:

mvn pa [TAB] -> mvn package

mvn je [TAB][TAB] -> mvn jetty:run

Maven doesn't ship with an auto-complete script, but there's a project on GitHub called Maven Bash Completetion.

Installation if you use Homebrew:

brew tap homebrew/completions
brew install maven-completion

Otherwise, use this command to download the latest script (to your home directory as ~/.maven-completion.bash):

wget https://raw.github.com/juven/maven-bash-completion/master/bash_completion.bash \
    -O ~/.maven-completion.bash

Then add this to your ~/.bash_profile:

if [ -f ~/.maven-completion.bash ]; then
  . ~/.maven-completion.bash
fi

You can also manually copy the file from the github repo to your home directory and edit your bash profile as above should the homebrew or wget options not work for you.

That's it. After you restart bash (e.g. open a new Terminal window), Maven autocomplete should work.


Yosemite upgrade–continuous slow screen redraw I recently upgraded to Yosemite, and now my laptop has the following issue:

Each and every window (the AppStore, Chrome, etc) seems to be continuously and very slowly redrawn, to the point where I can see the screen go white, and then slowly be drawn back in from the bottom to the top.

The only time when I every encountered a similar issue was when, on Ubuntu, I upgraded and lost support for my graphics card. However, I have no idea how to navigate this issue on OS X.

I had this problem and I solved it by resetting the PRAM/NVRAM, which is done via:

Shut down your Mac.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R.
Turn on your Mac.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys immediately after you hear the startup sound.
Hold these keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a second time.
Release the keys.


Mac Sounds are greyed off when headphones plugged in I have a problem with my mac.

When i am using internal speakers everything works fine however as soon as i insert headphones , the sounds icon is greyed out and there is no sounds to hear. Happening to all kind of headphones.

The preferences say " Digital out : The selected device has no output controls."

When you are using a digital out device, the Mac simply passes the digital signal to the receiving device where the settings should be adjusted, this is the correct behavior. Unless your Mac is mistaking the headphones as a digital device when they are really analog, then this isn't a Mac issue. To determine if it is a Mac issue I'd try plugging in another analog audio source (different pair of headphones) to see if the problem is repeatable, otherwise it could be something with the headphones (or even the headphone cable).


I cannot install the Tiled Map Editor on Mac OS X 10.6.8 I am attempting to install Tiled Map Editor, a cross-platform open-source application that uses the QT application framework. It is used in game design.

When I attempt to install it, I get this error message:

  You can't open the application Qt SDK Installer because it is not
  supported on this type of Mac

How can I resolve this problem? I am using Mac OS X 10.6.8.

Check to see if the application you are using is Intel supported. I don't know why a PPC application wouldn't run on an Intel, but try clicking on the application, go to File>Get Info, and under General>Kind, check to see what the application kind is.


How do I disable/restrict apps from updating automatically (Chrome iOS)? I'm having an issue where an older version of Chrome iOS 43 is being updated to do Chrome iOS 50. I think iOS is doing this automatically in the middle of the night. I hadn't touch the iPhone 6 since yesterday afternoon, but this morning I noticed Chrome iOS updated to the latest version. I need to use Chrome iOS 46 or older because Chrome iOS 47 and newer changed over to some different engine. The Data Saver feature is gone and I rely on it to keep my monthly bandwidth allotment in check. There must be a way to restrict updating apps automatically?

Turn off automatic updates: Settings app > iTunes & App Store > Toggle Updates to off.

You will have to manually choose to update apps in the future from App Store > Updates tab.

I'm not sure that Google got rid of Data Saver though. How to enable it on Chrome for iOS might be a different question you can ask.

Another couple things you might want to consider are using Safari with an ad-blocker. Adguard is the one I use and it prevents ads from loading in Safari, so browsing uses less data. And the other thing would be to get a data tracking app (I use smartapp) so you can have a better sense of how much data you have and are using.

And of course, use WiFI where available and make sure settings in other apps don't load as much content over cellular.


Can’t change phone time - set automatic time grayed out Currently traveling in Europe on a cruise with intermittent cell coverage. Having to change my phone and watch time frequently. Seems to be impossible to do manually. The set time toggle is locked in automatic.

Any idea what I am missing here?  Tried disabling location services for time zone.

There are a few reasons as to why this might be disabled.

Do you have an Exchange account connected to the phone? There might be a policy connected to it, disabling the option to change the timezone.
If you look in Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services (in the bottom), is the option "Setting Time Zone" disabled?
If you have Screen Time enabled with a pass code, that might also disable the option to change time zone. Try to disable Screen Time, restart, and then try again.

Hope that solves it for you.


How to run a keyboard macro with automator in a background application? I'm trying to figure out how I can automate a repeating key press within a specific application on automator. Essentially, I want it to run in the background while I'm free to do anything else on my computer.

I'm new to this, so I don't know if it (or anything for that matter) can do what I'm describing

It cannot be done, afaik.

Only the frontmost app will accept keypresses.

I don't have an absolute reference to confirm this, but there are discussion at Apple Communities, Stack Overflow & MacScripter that would appear to agree with my belief.


Error 3194 while restoring jailbroken iPod touch 4g I'm trying to restore my Jailbroken iPod touch from ipsw file, but at the end of restoring process, when itunes going to verify.

 The error 3194 occurs.

I've also took these steps which apple support recommends on the following link:
Error 3194, Error 17, or "This device isn't eligible for the requested build"
In addition, I'm doing this on my personal network at home which I have internet indeed and I can load apple website. I've tested it through Normal, VPN and Proxy connections too. But still no success.

PC OS: Windows 8
iTunes version: 11.1.5.5
iPod model: iPod Touch 4G 32GB
Jailbroken iOS version installed on iPod currently: 6.1 (10B144)
iOS version that I want to restore the iPod to: 6.0.1 (10A523) or 6.1.3 (10B329) or  6.0.1 (10A523) or 6.1.6 (10B500) (I've tested all ispw files).

Make sure that all Apple-related entries are removed from your hosts file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, then put the device in DFU mode and restore it.

Connect the device to your computer and turn it off.
Hold the power button and the home button together for 10 seconds, then release the power button but keep holding the home button.
Keep holding home further and a message should appear in iTunes telling you that the connected device must be restored.


What is killing my battery? I have an iPhone XS (bought brand-new, About section says limited warranty until 14 april 2020, the date I bought it) running iOS 13.2.3 When I took it out of the box it was running iOS 12 and I enrolled to iOS 13 on beta 6 and I kept updating betas when they came out. My battery is now on 90% of health which seems an excessive wear-off for 7 months. My charging habits are as follows:

One hour in the morning via CarPlay (after being left overnight a bit over 20%)
One hour in the afternoon via CarPlay (usually being between 30% and 70% due to the daily use)
Almost never left charging overnight (except one or two times but definitely not something repetitive)
Almost never left battery completely empty (as above, except one or two times)
For two or three months I used a wireless charger during the morning and I ocassionally do if I use the phone a bit more
I scarcely play games in the phone (say one or two times a month, while charging. The phone heats more than usual but it seems normal to me)
I use my phone for navigation, calls, social media, photography and messaging apps, with some apps doing background work to upload photos. iOS backup to iCloud is disabled (although I back up via iTunes weekly or more frequent)
I do not expose my phone to extreme temperature changes
The phone averages 30 hours of screen on per week
I use the original cable and two other ones that I bought from Amazon which claim to be "made for iPhone": one is Amazon basics and the other one is third party, the price made me think it is legit. However, I charge the phone the most while on CarPlay which is done with the original, shipped within the box. Those two cables are used almost exclusively on weekends.

I should mention that during a span of two weeks or so I updated to iOS 13.2.2 that shipped a bug which depleted the battery faster than normal (in adittion to the two charges, I had to add a third one in between because the phone dropped 30% overnight in airplane mode, which was fixed in iOS 13.2.3)

I do not believe this wear-off pattern is normal. Is there something in the listed above (which seems normal to me) killing my battery?

EDIT: adding battery info as reported by iBackupBot

No, there's nothing in that list which is "killing" your battery. The battery degrades during normal use - that's not preventable and to be expected.

Batteries are not all alike. Some degrade faster than others - you cannot say that the battery capacity shrinks x.xx% per year in general and expect that exact number on every phone.

Apple states that the battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles under normal conditions. You're still well above 80%.

Having 90% capacity after 222 charge cycles seems to be quite alright - i.e. it is likely that you’ll be at approx. 80% percent after 500 charge cycles.


I want to add the home directory to the favorites directories, how can I do it? I want to add the home directory to the favorites directories, how can I do it?

You can just drag the directory to the left sidebar:

First, you can new open a fonder, then Goto -> Goto Directory, write the /Users:

Then you can drag it:


Connecting MySQL DB to Apple iWork Numbers? I'd like to visualize some data from a MySQL database using a Mac, but it hasn't been easy finding a solution to this. I understand Excel has DB connectivity, but currently I only have Apple Numbers.

Is it possible to connect my data source to Numbers so I can start making some charts?

Thanks for the suggestions and information; I'm exploring using OOO Base and Calc instead

There is no way to make Numbers get data from a database. (It's more of a consumer tool.) https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1827581

A workaround: you can use Excel to grab the data, and import the XLS file to Numbers for prettier chart-making.


Why won't my USB drive power down on eject? I've just upgraded from High Sierra to Mojave. I have a Lacie Porsche USB-C drive that I use for Time Machine backups. In High Sierra when I ejected the drive, it would power off and I could safely unplug it. However, now it doesn't spin down and I can't safely unplug. All I can do is put my Mac to sleep which in turn powers down the drive.

I have tried excluding the drive from Spotlight indexing and even disabling indexing altogether but this hasn't helped.

Anyone else having this problem or have a solution?

Use this Terminal command  sudo lsof | grep DODO

to find out who is using the USB.

Wait for it to respond, it might take 10 seconds.

If no one is using it, it is safe to eject the disk (pull out).

I did not answer your question "Why it does not Power Down" ? I do not know, probably missing the handshake saying I am done.


Install Java JRE 6 (next to JRE 7) on OS X 10.10 Yosemite? I need to test a web application with JRE 6. I am using a Mac with OS X 10.10 and Java 7 for development. How can I install JRE 6 next to Java 7 on this Mac?

This previous answer does not yet account for the fact (also mentioned in a comment) that Apple's download link by now points to a .pkg (Java for OS X 2014-001) file. Without further knowledge I hasten to install it, for it may overwrite my current Java 7 setup (and may no longer contain JRE 6 in the first place).

JavaForOSX2014-001.dmg contains Java for Mac OS X (1.6.0_65-b14-462). It will be installed to /System/Library/Java and /System/Library/Frameworks while Oracle Java is located at /Library/Java. No file will be overwritten.
To avoid any trouble (especially with your $JAVA_HOME/$PATH) consider setting up a Mac OS X VM in VMWare, Parallels or VirtualBox with JRE6 only.


Live news feed for iPad? I have been leaving my iPad plugged into my dock and just keeping the Remote app running to display the album art.

Which leaves me wondering, is there some sort of 'live news feed' app that I can get for my iPad just to display my rss feeds in a glanceable manner which will automatically update my rss feed?

The best way I can think of to do this is to use Tweetdeck.  Tweetdeck scrolls tweets as they come in.

Create a new twitter account eg joshhnews
Add your RSS feeds to this TwitterFeed service (free), and link it to the new twitter account
In TweetDeck follow this new Twitter account.

You will then see the news stream through live with clickable links to the articles etc.

Hope this helps.


How do I change the global stylesheet of Safari from the command line on OS X? I am looking for a command line solution to change Safari default stylesheet.

This can be configured manually by going to Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Style sheets.

Still, I need this in order to be able to reconfigure a system or deploy the settings.

I've set a stylesheet in Safari and these are the changes that occurred in Safari's plist:

UserStyleSheetEnabled = 1;
UserStyleSheetLocationURLString = "~/Desktop/dsa.css";
WebKitUserStyleSheetEnabledPreferenceKey = 1;
WebKitUserStyleSheetLocationPreferenceKey = "~/Desktop/dsa.css";

Your command line would be:

defaults write com.apple.safari UserStyleSheetEnabled 1 && defaults write com.apple.safari UserStyleSheetLocationURLString "/path/to/css" && defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitUserStyleSheetEnabledPreferenceKey 1 && defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitUserStyleSheetLocationPreferenceKey "/path/to/css"


Microsoft Office 2011 no longer working with Yosemite 10.10.2? When trying to open either Word or Excel, I get an error saying

  Microsoft Word (or Excel) cannot be opened because of a problem. Check with the developer to make sure Microsoft Word works with this version of OS X. You may need to reinstall the application. Be sure to install any available updates for the application and OS X.

I believe the two applications update in the background occasionally, but they were working fine until mid-last week.

I've tried myself and can confirm that Office 2011 works for OS X 10.10.2. I would recommend that you uninstall Office and then install it from your installation disc or redownloading it from Microsoft if you bought it as an online download.


Is there a way to dynamically manipulate the spellcheck dictionary? I would like to have a way to dynamically add and remove words from the system-wide dictionary in Mountain Lion. The use-case is:

I'm working on a piece of fiction that has a lot of odd names in it that I would like spell-checked -- hit some key-combination that loads those odd name into the dictionary list of known words
I'm done working on the fiction and I no longer want those words polluting my dictionary -- hit some key-combo to unload those words from the dictionary

I could be working on two separate pieces of fiction and would want to load and unload each list separately. I'm not looking for an app with a custom spell-checker; I'm definitely looking for something that works with the built-in, system-wide spell checking sub-system.

All solutions considered: open source, paid applications, AppleScript, Automator, shell scripts -- anything and everything.

When you press the Learn button, the word is added to ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary if the language is set to automatic or to ~/Library/Spelling/en if the language is set to U.S. English. en_GB is used for British English and en is used only for U.S. English.

If you edit the files in ~/Library/Spelling/ directly, you can apply the changes by terminating the AppleSpell process.

So try to assign a shortcut to a script like this:

cd ~/Library/Spelling
if [[ -e fiction ]]; then
  mv en normal; mv fiction en; d=fiction
else
  mv en fiction; mv normal en; d=normal
fi
killall AppleSpell
terminal-notifier -title "Using dictionary $d" -message '' -group spellingdictionary
sleep 3
terminal-notifier -remove spellingdictionary

If for example you use the British English dictionary, change en to en_GB.

You can install terminal-notifier with sudo /usr/bin/gem install terminal-notifier.


Read-only on Mac and PC I need to give out a USB pen drive with my music on it to a load of editors, but I want the drive to be read-only on both Mac and PC so that no one can inadvertently delete the originals.

Is that possible? I was thinking formatting it on a PC as NTFS read-only and then Macs will only be able to read from it, is that the best way?

Assuming you have not already bought a suite of USB drives for this task, there are USB drives with hardware write-protect switches. It doesn't prevent anyone from flipping the switch back, but it sounds like you're not concerned about malicious intent, just making sure the editor(s) don't do something foolish.

This question has also been asked and answered on Super User. The accepted answer suggests that you should just set the contents of the drive Read Only. You could do this on one master drive, and then use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to replicate the data with the read only bits intact to multiple other devices.


Remove or delete a review from my iTunes app? How can I remove a customer review from my App in iTunes?

I sent a message via Report a Concern and nothing happened.

Reporting a concern is the only way to attempt to remove a review. The process is not instant and requires manual approval. If you've only just sent the form, wait a bit. If it's been a while and the review is still there, it probably means that someone has reviewed your complaint and declined it.


Extract target of alias from Terminal In my Finder windows I have many aliases that target other folders or documents. At the shell prompt in Terminal, these aliases show up as regular files. How can I get the target of an alias so that, for example, I can "cd" to it or perform other command-line operations on the alias target?

To enable cd'ing into an Folder Alias I've found the following at Mac OS X Hints. Don't know if it still works.

  Here is the bash function I include in .bashrc. Note that the second elif       requires double brackets for the test, because it include the logical operator     or (||):

function cd {
  if [ ${#1} == 0 ]; then
    builtin cd
  elif [ -d "${1}" ]; then
    builtin cd "${1}"
  elif [[ -f "${1}" || -L "${1}" ]]; then
    path=$(getTrueName "$1")
    builtin cd "$path"
  else
    builtin cd "${1}"
  fi
}

  And here's the C source code for getTrueName.

A similar approach is available at superuser.com


Unable to unlock System Preferences in High Sierra As the title says I can't unlock System Preferences in High Sierra, however my password works for login, for authenticating app installs, and my account is an Admin when I open the Users and Groups panel. I've tried resetting my password, however it doesn't fix the issue. Every article I've seen about a similar issue the fixes don't work either as it's typically that the account isn't admin or the reset fixed it.

I found a working solution to this on this Apple support community thread, Can't install programs and unlock settings:

  OSX apparently needs to regenerate a fresh auth.db from /System/Library/Security/authorization.plist.

  This can be triggered in terminal with the following command: sudo mv /var/db/auth.db /var/db/auth.db.old

  After rebooting the system everything works as it should be.


Why is are the keys on my MacBook Air so stiff? I've bought an 11" MacBook Air a month ago. The 9 came out from the keyboard after few hours and I couldn't believe it. They gave me a new MacBook Air. One month later I'm using it and today the T is too strong to press and I can hardly type it.

I had another Mac before, and it lasted for years and I had no issues with the keyboard. This laptop never hit the floor; nothing's happened to it.

I can't believe I have to come back to the Apple Store and tell them the keyboard is broken again. What do you think about it? Is a line defect?

I doubt it, it's the first I've heard of any keyboard issues on any MacBook that I recall—the keyboards are traditionally highly regarded for quality.

I think sadly you've probably just had some bad luck. No matter how well designed it is, something as complicated and mass-produced as a MacBook Air is going to have some bad units.

You may want to try blowing some compressed air under that key though, it's possible that something is physically stuck under there, impeding the movement. Someone (ahem, possibly me) once ate a poppyseed bagel near my keyboard and a loose poppyseed caused some issues for a while before it got knocked loose.


How do I tap on bottom right to trigger a secondary click? Similar to Tap with two fingers for a "right-click" or secondary click but I want tap bottom right for secondary click?
They only have the option for Click

What you need is BetterTouchTool. I use it to define actions for taps in corners of my trackpad, but it knows abut middle of top and bottom of trackpad. It can do taps, swipes and gestures with up to 5 fingers.  It is so configurable that what it does is only limited by your imagination or your ability to remember what you have configured.
This was also the answer to Triple finger tap for middle click.


Can I power on my old MacBook with a no-lights battery? I've let my MacBook's battery go far too long past its life because it lives at a desk and never moves. It's a MacBook Pro 4,1.
On MacBook Pro 3, i was always able to boot without battery, but this one will not boot after SMC reset with or without battery installed.

Pressing the battery's charge checker button does not light up any LEDs now. Previously it would rapidly blink the first LED , indicating it needs replacement.

Is there any way to boot? (I'm aware it will run at lower clock speed)

Normally you should be able to, and even Apple says so, by providing a warning and a CPU clock speed reduction.

If it does not work on your computer.....

You might be having a problem with the MagSafe adapter or SMC.

Your machine should turn on normally whether or not the battery is in it.

The only problem you'll have with the battery removed is that machine will run slower - but that's by design.

When you get the new battery, make sure you try another MagSafe adapter to be safe.

Try another SMC reset by Holding the power button for 5 or 10 seconds.


AppleScript to add files to an iOS app under iTunes I know it's possible to write an AppleScript to add music and video files to the iTunes library. Is it also possible to write AppleScript to add files to iOS apps that use file sharing?

For example, I have an iPad app called Comic Zeal, and I normally add files to it by dragging files into iTunes. I would like to write a script to add files to Comic Zeal from the command line.

As far as I can see in iTunes' AppleScript dictionary, there's no support for scripting anything relating to iOS applications. Sorry.

A possible workaround:

If the app, and your Mac, support iCloud, set it up on both and look inside "~/Library/Mobile Documents/" on your Mac.

In there should be a folder corresponding to each app you have iCloud enabled for. You might have to look around the sub-folder structure to see exactly where the files you want to add need to go, but once you figure that out, you can write your script to target that location.

When your script adds a file to that location, it will sync via iCloud. I use this trick all the time to get files into my GoodReader app.

Beware that iOS apps don't always sync to iCloud in the background. In the case of GoodReader I need to open it for the changes to update.


Where to buy the Logitech crayon for educational iPad use? I bought the new 2018 iPad for my son and I want to buy the crayon as well.

Except that it's not available anywhere I’ve searched (Apple and Amazon) and the blogs say its only available via schools:

https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/logitech-crayon-ipad-stylus-17-05-2018/

It’s not clear to me how can I buy this beautiful gadget. So should I send a note to my son's elementary school?

After September 12 the crayon for iPad will be for sale to the general public.

https://news.logitech.com/press-release/consumer-products/unleash-creativity-logitech-crayon-exclusively-new-97-inch-ipad

Until then it’s still available in the initially exclusive education channel at Apple. That means someone in education needs to purchase it - not that you’d interact with the retail stores, retail app or any online channel as someone shopping the B2C or B2B sales channels.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/crayon

  LOGITECH CRAYON All sales and samples are handled through the Apple
  Education channel.

  • Contact your Apple Education rep for additional details
  • Don’t know your rep? Call 1(800) 800 APPLE or find more info at
  www.apple.com/education/purchasing

More information is available on pricing and dates where other retailers are expected to start carrying this accessory.


Handbrake CLI Transcoded Video not Playable in Quicktime and Itunes i am transcoding a bunch of videos with handbrake CLI. Therfore i use this presets:

    for i in `seq 0 10`; do f=$(($i-1)); HandBrakeCLI -i /Videofolder/ -t $i -O
-f av_mp4 -e x264 -q 19 --h264-profile high --h264-level 4.1
--x264-preset medium --decomb -q 19 -a 1,3 -s "1,3"
-E copy:ac3 -o ~/Desktop/Video$(($f+1)).m4v; done

The Problem is  the result is not playable, not in Itunes neither in Quicktime. VLC does just fine. Quicktime starts trancoding this Video and after about 20 secs its playing it back. Has anyone got a hint for me whats my mistake?

Greenings and a big thank you :)

Did you set a flash drive as the destination for the finished video file? If the selected drive runs out of space while Handbrake is copying something, you’ll end up with an unreadable file.


Syncing my iPhone 4 deleted all my music I have an iPhone 4 and just just downloaded iTunes on my computer.
I wanted to save all my music to my iTunes so i could later transfer it but i synced it and all my music was deleted. Is there any way i could get it back?

I have all my music on another iTunes on another computer but that computer is now broken.

No, it's too late. You can't recover music from iPhone...


macOS Catalina still uses bash as the default shell I'm on the latest public beta of macOS Catalina and it's supposed to use zsh as the default shell and it even shows that it is pointing to zsh in the users settings but whenever I open a new terminal window it says:

and even when I run that specified command, it says: no changes made

What do I do?

Turns out the terminal app has its own settings for which shell to use.
I had to go to terminal preferences and change the option for Shells open with to Default login shell:


How to get iTunes to keep playlist created on iPhone I am running iTunes 10.5.2 (11) on Lion 10.7.2 and I have an iPhone 4.  Several times now I have created a playlist on my phone and the next time I sync to my mbp, itunes blows away the playlist on the phone.  I had expected that iTunes would copy the playlist to the computer.  Is there a way that I can prevent these playlists from being deleted?

It sounds like you have 'playlists' ticked in your syncing preferences and that iTunes is overwriting your playlists with no playlists as it syncs from the computer.

First thing to do is to check that Playlists are not being synced under the device in iTunes and Music. Uncheck "sync playlists" and try again.


macOS: How to read the file system of a disc image is there terminal command that shows/reads the file system(s) (and versions) of a .iso or .dmg image?
E.g. Udf 2.50/Joliet/hfs+

Yes - you can read the details from ISO and DMG from the command line using OS provided tools.
The primary command line tool to manipulate disk images is hdiutil and you may need to attach / authenticate / mount them and use diskutil to determine file systems contained within a dmg or iso if the wrapper doesn't contain the information you require.
The option I use is hdiutil imageinfo but also hdiutil fsinfo has exceptional details on these containers that may be useful to you.
% hdiutil imageinfo foo.dmg
Format Description: UDIF read-only compressed (zlib)
Class Name: CUDIFDiskImage
Checksum Type: CRC32
Size Information:
        CUDIFEncoding-bytes-total: 1015091
        Total Empty Bytes: 13726208
        Sector Count: 30730
        Total Bytes: 15733760
        CUDIFEncoding-bytes-wasted: 0
        Total Non-Empty Bytes: 2007552
        Compressed Ratio: 0.50548329507778633
        CUDIFEncoding-bytes-in-use: 1015091
        Compressed Bytes: 1015091
Checksum Value: $81F7C3A0
Segments:
        0: /Users/me/foo.dmg
Partition Information:
        1:
                Name: disk image (Apple_HFS : 2)
                Partition Number: 1
                Checksum Type: CRC32
                Checksum Value: $AAEEB101
        -1:
                Name: Driver Descriptor Map (DDM : 0)
                Partition Number: -1
                Checksum Type: CRC32
                Checksum Value: $77150592
        2:
                Name:  (Apple_Free : 3)
                Partition Number: 2
                Checksum Type: CRC32
                Checksum Value: $00000000
        0:
                Name: Apple (Apple_partition_map : 1)
                Partition Number: 0
                Checksum Type: CRC32
                Checksum Value: $5AC9B785
Format: UDZO

There are dozens of verbs to send to the tool, so I suppose the one you need may vary based on your specific query against the data contained within the packaged file.


Why "Settings" needs Cellular in iOS? I'm getting a similar warning as this one:

Whenever I get to Settings in iOS. I have deactivated Cellular connections for everything (including Settings) but Chrome Browser.

I'm wondering if anyone know why Settings needs a Cellular connection?

As seen on this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6567893

Not to start a Greek chorus here but I checked on my iPhone 5 with the latest IOS (8.1.1) wth wifie and cellular data off and I do not get that message either.

I am thinking that possibly ajkblue is correct and it may be trying to contact Apple's software update servers or your carriers servers for a carrier update. there is likely a timer that forces a check every week or so.


Is there a tool for Monitoring IP addresses and network activity on MAC OS - similiar to resource monitor on windows 10 On windows 10, there is a program called Resource Monitor. Under the network tab, if I select an application, I can see all the external IP addresses that application is connected to.

Is there something similar to this on MAC OS?

It could be a command line tool or an application.

I recommend Wireshark, if you want detailed information about your network traffic. It works on Windows and MacOS and is even more detailed than Windows Resource Monitor.

If you just want to temporarily monitor the amount of network traffic for a process, the build in MacOS Activity Monitor is sufficient. Though, Activity Monitor does not show which IP each process is connected to and only logs when it is opened.


Facebook Video Chat plugin no longer works on Mavericks After upgrading my Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, I've encountered a minor problem. The video chat plugin of Facebook no longer works. On the Facebook chat box, the video chat icon is no longer visible. I've tried uninstalling the plugin by removing the contents of ~/Library/Application Support/Facebook but I still haven't seen the video chat icon.

I have installed/setup the video chat plugin of Facebook before and it was working well before the upgrade. I already installed Java on my system since it prompts to be installed after the upgrade.

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_65"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_65-b14-462-11M4609)

So, any workaround for this? This is the first issue I've encountered on OS X Mavericks.

Perhaps you accidentally blocked a required plugin through Safari's new "power-saving" feature?

Go to Safari Preferences -> Security -> Check "Allow Plug-ins" and click "Manage Website Settings..." -> Make sure www.facebook.com is not blocked from any of the listed plugins.


Where can I find iTunes 9 for Tiger (possibly in my language)? I've an issue on a old Mac with Tiger.

I cannot upgrade iTunes to version 9. (I cannot find version 9, and I'm actually looking for the Italian version).

iTunes suggests to upgrade to 10, but this version doesn't work on Tiger. So it is suggesting an impossible update.

thanks

Apple maintains lists of download links of the older versions of their software from the Support section of their website. Sometimes they come up in Google searches, but they are hard to find no matter what. I've grabbed versions of iTunes for Mac OS 10.4 from their site recently, so start digging around their Support section.

UPDATE: Here is the page I was thinking of: http://support.apple.com/downloads/ Just search for the software you're looking for, it shouldn't be too hard to find there


Trying to securely erase hard drive, but Security Options not available (Mavericks) Recently got a new Macbook Pro 13″ and I'm preparing my old Macbook Air for sale. I'm following steps in the Apple Support article on this topic (as well as other similar articles I've found).

I'm currently at the stage of Erasing the startup disk. I've booted my machine with ⌘R and am running Disk Utility. Initially I was able to set Security Options to Most Secure (7 pass zeros), but after I clicked Erase there was some error and it said it could not be completed.

Now Security Options is grayed out (unavailable), however Erase is still available.

The error occurred after only seconds, so I'm assuming it did not actually complete a 7 pass erase and rewrite before stopping. Guessing that means my data is still there and relatively accessible.

Is there anyway to re-access the Security Options and get this thing to securely wipe from this point?

Yes, it is possible to re-enable secure erase. All you need to do is to format the partition once again. Just make sure you select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)", with any password that you will remember (just in case). Once formatted, the "Security Options" button will be available again, and you can securely wipe out the partition!


Can Time Machine backups become corrupted when backing up to a NAS? Short question : When backing up you mac to via Time machine to a 3rd party NAS (non time capsule, but instead something like a Synology or Drobo NAS). Can the time machine backups become corrupted and unusable, either due to the laptop / computer being turned off, disconnected from the network or for some other reason.

Long question : Im evaluating using Time Machine vs Carbon Copy Cloner as a backup solution. When speaking to Carbon Copy Cloner they mentioned that backing up to a NAS as opposed to a direct HDD wasnt the best idea as the backup could become corrupted, im going to ask them why this might be, but i also wanted some impartial input, any ideas why this might be and would Time Machine suffer the same issues ?

Time Machine really wants an HFS- formatted volume. Try creating a sparse disk image on the NAS and backing up to the image.


I'm using git+notational velocity and want to know how to commit after I exit the program What I'm looking to accomplish is have something trigger a git add *.txt and git commit -m "Automated Commit `date`' when I close Notational Velocity. I'm guessing I could probably accomplish this with an AppleScript but I don't know the language well enough. I looked into creating a launchd plist that would watch the main database file and that didn't seem to cause it to trigger a commit at all. Does anyone know of a good way to accomplish this?

You can use Keyboard Maestro to completely automate the task. Here's a screenshot of a macro doing just that :

You should adapt the bash script to suit your needs, I'm not sure how to include the date in the commit message (in addition, I forgot to put the git add command).


Company Device Management on Separate User? I am doing an event with a company that wants to give me a corporate email. They want to set it up using a device management profile on my personal mac.
Is there a way to protect and keep my personal files/data/"personal email" separate without using a 2nd laptop?

Would creating a separate user account on my laptop silo the two enough that my personal files are not at risk of being read or wiped?

Unfortunately you can't because it would be a massive security hole.

It's called mobile device management, not mobile user management and this is for a reason - how secure would it be if all the user had to do to bypass corporate security policies was create a new user?

If you want to keep your personal data on your personal Mac secure from corporate entities and their MDM software, use a different Mac.  It's probably very feasible that the company can provide you a loaner Mac for this event.


Modify "Move to Trash" shortcut in Apple Numeric keyboard I recently purchased Apple wired USB keyboard with Numeric Keypad for my Mac Mini (best decision I ever made, keyboard is freaking awesome with two USB ports on its sides!).

I noticed that there is a delete key under F13 key. My wish is to modify the "Move to Trash" command's shortcut inside the File menu of Finder and map to this key, just like how it is done in Windows. There was a problem with Home and End keys, but I searched and got the fix (by creating and editing DefaultKeyBindings.dict) file. If something needs to be added to this file, can someone please let me know? or if there is any other method, kindly share the same.

You can modify the NSUserKeyEquivalents dictionary in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist:

defaults write com.apple.finder NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add 'Move to Trash' '\U007F'
killall Finder

It also makes ⌦ move items to trash in rename mode, and it makes ⌘⌫ do nothing.

Forward delete is \U007F and delete is \b or \U0008, even though in DefaultKeyBinding.dict delete is \U007F and forward delete is \UF728. The shortcut string format is described in the Cocoa Text System article.