How do I create an app-specific password for iCloud? I'm trying to try out BusyCal, but it requires an app-specific password, and provides an outdated link to old information about how to do this.

The page refers to an "App Specific Passwords section" under the Security settings of the Apple ID site's account management page.  This section does not exist under Security, or anywhere else on that page.

There is almost certainly still a way to create app-specific passwords, but even Apple can't keep their help up-to-date, and even a company whose main product depends on users finding this information can't provide it, so Stack Exchange seemed like the best place to turn.

How (and where) do I create an app-specific password these days?

The missing information was provided by @GordonDavisson (and if he wants to post an answer I will accept his instead of mine):

  To generate and use app-specific passwords, your Apple ID must be protected with two-factor authentication.

This is actually on the Apple Help page, but oddly not included in the section "How to generate an app-specific password" (even though it was the missing step for exactly that question) but instead buried between an explanation of what an app-specific password is (which was of no value to me) and fine print about different OS versions.   I used the headers to skip right to the relevant information (which is what headers are generally for) and didn't guess that a critical piece of information would be placed elsewhere.


Switching original backup from Timemachine Im using the WD My Passport for Mac, and I recently formatted my entire computer. If I use this same harddrive to back up on time machine(with the old backups), will it mess anything up as it might recognize it as a different computer?

If you have completely formatted your computer then Time Machine will recognize your computer as a different one, and therefore the backups will be placed in a separate folder on your Time Machine hard drive.


Is there any program that can add titlebar functionality to the menubar panel? Looking to reproduce the Unity/Gnome3 (Linux desktops) feature set on a Mac:

specifically:

adding various window management buttons to the menu bar panel (close, maximize, maybe tile left/right)
drag from the top to drag a maximized window, just as you would drag from the top in Windows. On Gnome desktop you can just drag from the top to move a maximized window, even though there is a panel at the top of the screen just like on Mac. Really good use of Fitts law.
double-click on empty space in the menubar panel to maximize/unmaximize a window.

Are the any ready-made solutions to this? Are these features actually possible to implement on Mac?

Most of what you're asking is already there...

The top of every window has Close, Minimise to Dock & Fullscreen buttons.

Alt/click the fullscreen button will maximise instead.
Click & hold the fullscreen button then drag to the left or right of the screen will enable Split Screen.

Additional features can be added to the title bar - right click to Customise

You can resize any window except fullscreen by dragging any edge or any corner.

From edges...
Alt/drag will resize from 2 sides.
Shift/drag will resize from 3 sides.
Alt/Shift/drag will resize from all 4 sides.

From corners...
Alt/drag will resize by mirroring the faces.
Shift/drag will resize from one corner, preserving aspect ratio.
Alt/Shift/drag will resize from all 4 corners, preserving aspect ratio.

Cmd/drag will allow you to resize without bringing the window to the front.
Adding any of the other modifiers will do as above, without bringing it to the front.
Double click to maximise/minimise is an option in System Prefs > Dock


Is AFP (specifically Time Machine) encrypted on the wire? I've been hunting for the answer to this, but I have not found it.  When I back up my laptop using Time Machine to a remote Time Machine server (Time Capsule, or Mac Mini with an external drive), is the data on the network encrypted?

Note that I don't care about the encryption of the data on the hard drives at either end, just about the ethernet/wifi in the middle.

Short answer, no it's not. As with most of the file transfer protocols(SMB, FTP, NFS) it transfers data in plain text.


How can I download iCloud photos from previous/older devices? My iCloud is full and I checked what is in it. I have my current iPhone and I have two old broken iPhones and a broken iPad in there. I'm reluctant to delete them in case they have some of my much sought after photos on them. Is there any way I can access the photos and save them to my computer?

Yes. If on OS X, use Apple's Photos app and save the pictures locally. If on Windows, download iCloud for Windows.


Restore Mac from Time Machine while in Safe Mode. Password protected, not seen When I boot to safe mode and try to restore my Mac from Time Machine, OS X can't find my WD My Passport External Drive as it's password protected. Unless I unlock the drive, OS X won't be able to access my Time Machine Backup. So what do I do now?

Unlocking the WD My Passport External Drive probably neither works in Safe Mode nor in Recovery Mode because a custom 256-bit AES hardware encryption is used. The decryption/unlocking only works with WD Security for Mac or WD Drive Utilities for Mac installed.

You have to boot to Recovery Mode (hold cmdR while booting) erase your main OS X volume and reinstall OS X.

Now you can either migrate the data with the Migration Asssistant:

Make a temporary admin user (different short user name than your backup) and then install the WD Security software. Then you can run Migration Assistant to read the files from the now-unlocked drive.

Once your migration is complete, you can leave things as they are or decrypt the WD drive and instead use Apple's encryption. That is supported at boot time so you don't have to do a dance when you erase and reinstall.

If you do that, the steps will be simply reboot to Recovery Mode and restore the Time Machine backup.
or use Time Machine to completely restore the Time Machine backup:

Install the WD Security software and completely remove encryption of the WD My Passport. Then reboot to Recovery Mode and use Time Machine to restore the backup.


Stereo audio for screen recorder I tried quicktime and monosnap to make a video tutorials, but both produce a mono audio. What should I do to make it stereo?

nb: I'm using Steinberg CI2+ soundcard + ISK mic.

You may need to record the audio separately, then merge it with the screen capture. If nothing else, you can accomplish that in iMovie.


Can I boot Mac from an external hard drive (internal hard drive+hard drive closure) Model: Macbook Pro 2010 mid
OS: OS X 10.9
Hard Drive: WD5000BPKT 500GB

For some reason I need to change my perfectly working internal bootable drive to external bootable drive.

I took out my internal hard drive, put it into closure, and then connected it to mbp with USB. But my mac cannot even recognize my external hard drive. It displays a folder with a question mark with grey background, which means it cannot find executable boot drive. I tried pressing option key during startup and nothing showed. Also, I tried resetting  parameter RAM but still no luck. Any help will be appreciated.

Connect the external drive or device to the Mac
Reboot the Mac and after the startup chime hold down the OPTION key during boot until you see the boot selection menu
Click the external volume to boot from it

After this steps, you will find that external drives typically are shown with an orange icon, with their interface printed on the icon itself. Similarly, CD’s and DVD’s are shown with a disc icon. In this screen shot example, the right-most orange boot drive is a USB flash disk.

This works for quite literally any boot volume, whether it’s an external USB drive of any sort, a Thunderbolt hard drive, boot DVD, CD, the Recovery partition, even in dual-boot environments with other versions of OS X, or a Linux or a Windows partition with Boot Camp, if it’s bootable and connected to the Mac it will be visible at this boot manager.

Though boot DVD’s and CD’s will be visible through the aforementioned boot manager, you can also start the Mac directly to DVD or a connected disc by holding down the “D” key during restart after you hear the chime. This is fairly uncommon these days, but it was the primary method of accessing recovery partitions before OS X became a download from the App Store, and before USB installer drives became more common.

Additionally, Macs with recovery partitions can be start directly into Recovery HD by holding down Command+R during system start.

Though recovery and discs can be booted with their own commands, it’s ultimately easier to just remember the Option key method since it is a single key and because it’s universal. The only exception is with target disk mode, which requires a different sequence to use.


How to share internet with WPA/WPA2 security? I'm using a macmini with Mac OS X Snow Leopard to share a cable internet connection. Sharing works fine except that security is limited to 40/128 bit WEP that is insecure (can be hacked in minutes). Is it possible to share the connection via wifi with stronger WPA/WPA2 security? Maybe using some third-party internet sharing app?

Mac OS X Mountain Lion supports Internet Sharing using WPA/WPA2.  You will need to upgrade to get this functionality.  This article has a little more info.  And here is a screenshot of the new option for WPA2 in Mountain Lion (10.8):


yosemite on yosemite in virtualbox I would like to run yosemite in virtualbox on yosemite. I've tried many step-by-step guides, without success. While there is a lot of descriptions on how to install hacked OS X on windows, I want to stay legal and use unmodified OS X, only in a virtualized manner.

Tried:

create ISO from /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app (at least two different ways) and supply it as Bootable CD and
create bootable USB and attached it as virtual disk

but boot always get stuck with Missing Bluetooth Controller Transport! message. There is a youtube video on how to eliminate this issue, but I'm not sure on how to set boot flags in virtualbox (tried: VBoxManage setextradata osx "VBoxInternal2/EfiBootArgs"  "-s", then boot displayed bash prompt for a second, but couldn't type anything there). I've also tried to set cpuidset (was suggested in one article) via VBoxManage modifyvm osx --cpuidset 1 000206a7 02100800 1fbae3bf bfebfbff, but that made no difference, neither.

I need all this hassle, because I want to create a build environment setup script, therefore

I should be able to throw away my os state at any time and start fresh.

Also

I don't want to install every sort of dev tools, because I want to keep clean my machine for daily use and
I want to be able to have multiple dev environments with different setups (for work and for my sandbox projects)

I'm also new to mac community. I appreciate any help. Thank you in advance.

Download Install OS X Yosemite from the Mac App Store.
Use iesd to create a bootable dmg:

iesd -i "/Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app"/ -o yosemite.dmg -t BaseSystem

Install VirtualBox for Mac Hosts

Create a new VirtualBox guest. Choose Type: [Mac OS X] and Version: [Mac OS X (64-bit)]. Don't choose a specific OS version.

After you create the guest, choose it and click Settings->System->Motherboard->Chipset and choose PIIX3. If you leave the default ICH9 set, the system will never boot. You'll just see a black screen in your guest window.

Choose the yosemite.dmg you created earlier for your guest's optical disk.

Start your guest.

You'll see a wall of text and eventually the OS X Installer screen.

Use disk utility to partition your disk into a single partition. Disk Utility will have proper defaults.

Exit disk utility and run the installer.

You'll find some steps like these below in other places, but they didn't work for me. iesd worked.

 #!/bin/bash

 # Mount the installer image
 hdiutil attach /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_app

 # Convert the boot image to a sparse bundle
 hdiutil convert /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg -format UDSP -o /tmp/Yosemite

 # Increase the sparse bundle capacity to accommodate the packages
 hdiutil resize -size 8g /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage

 # Mount the sparse bundle for package addition
 hdiutil attach /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build

 # Remove Package link and replace with actual files
 rm /Volumes/install_build/System/Installation/Packages
 cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/Packages /Volumes/install_build/System/Installation/

 # Copy Base System
 cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/install_build/
 cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/install_build/

 # Unmount the installer image
 hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_app

 # Unmount the sparse bundle
 hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_build

 # Resize the partition in the sparse bundle to remove any free space
 hdiutil resize -size `hdiutil resize -limits /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage | tail -n 1 | awk '{ print $1 }'`b /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage

 # Convert the sparse bundle to ISO/CD master
 hdiutil convert /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage -format UDTO -o /tmp/Yosemite

 # Remove the sparse bundle
 rm /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage

 # Rename the ISO and move it to the desktop
 mv /tmp/Yosemite.cdr ~/Desktop/Yosemite.iso


My MacBook Pro freezes up when working with Parallels Desktop 11 This is the MacBook that I have: MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
For some reason it started to freeze up randomly forcing me to restart, I don't really know why this happens. Every time this happens I'm programming in Visual Studio 2013 in Parallels Desktop, the settings for the virtual machine aren't very challenging so it shouldn't be because of the heat.

How can I see what causes my MacBook to freeze up? Are there some log files that I could post to see what causes this weird issue?

I do have a valid license of Parallels Desktop 11 and have the latest version of the program and macOS.

Parallels desktop 11 does not support macOS Sierra.

Requirements According to their Knowledge Base:

  Software:

  OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 or later
  OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 or later
  OS X Mavericks 10.9.5 or later


iTerm2 : Adapting zshrc prompt to get the same one than with .bashrc I switched from bash shell to zsh. After sourcing a main part of my old .bashrc to .zshrc, I am faced a problem concerning the rendering of prompt with zsh (which works with bash) :

function ps1 {
        # PROMPT SECTION
        BLUE='\[\033[0;34m\]'
        LIGHT_CYAN='\[\033[1;36m\]'
        DEFAULT='\[\033[0m\]'
        PURPLE='\[\033[0;35m\]'
        LIGHT_PURPLE='\[\033[1;35m\]'
        LIGHT_GREEN='\[\033[0;32m\]'
        PINK='\[\033\[0;31m\]'

        # \! - History number of last command
        # $? - Exit value of last command
        # \t - Exit time of last command
        # \w - Current directory (relative)

PS1="$PURPLE|$DEFAULT$LIGHT_GREEN\u@$DEFAULT$LIGHT_CYAN\h$DEFAULT$PURPLE|$DEFAULT\t$PURPLE|$DEFAULT$LIGHT_PURPLE\w$DEFAULT$PURPLE|$DEFAULT "
}

ps1

Here a screen capture of my old bash prompt :

Now, I would like to have the same prompt but with zsh using exe zsh :

How to get with zsh the same prompt than with the bash prompt ? Which modifications have I to do ?

UPDATE 1:

I tried the following PS1 for zsh but the rendering is not the expected one :

autoload -U colors && colors
PS1="$fg[purple]|{$fg[green]%u@$fg[cyan]%m$fg[purple]|$fg[purple]%*$fg[purple]|$fg[purple]%~$fg[purple]| "

here's the capture :

Any idea to the same ?

Here you go:
# %F/%f: start/end Foreground color
# %F{m}/%F{g}/%F{c}: short for %F{magenta}/%F{green}%F{cyan}
# %B/%b: start/end Bold/Bright (depending on your terminal)
# %n: user Name
# %m: Machine name
# %*: 24h time w/ seconds
# %~: pwd, abbreviated
local I='%F{m}|%f'
PS1="$I%B%F{g}%n@%F{c}%m%b$I%*$I%B%F{m}%~%b$I "

This recreates the exact same prompt.
Documentation can be found at http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Prompt-Expansion.html


Shortcut to display storage information Obsessed with how much space left in Macbook Air 128GB SSD,  I find myself frequently checking the storage information by going to "About this mac" ==> "More info" ==> "storage".

Is there a shortcut to do that? keyboard shortcut or desktop shortcut for example.

The bottom of any Finder window if you toggle Show Status Bar from the View Menu...

Will then add this to the bottom of the window [It's selected on a per window basis, as far as I can tell]


downgrade from iOS 5.1 I've clicked "Erase all settings" on my iPhone 3GS and it went into a locked state where I couldn't get to the login screen in any way. I then decided to upgrade to 5.1 but forgot to save the SHSH.

Is there any way to downgrade to 4.2.1 or at least something different than 5.1?

Thanks!

You may actually have some SHSH blobs saved for your device, since Cydia automatically tries to save any available SHSH blobs every time you open Cydia. Also, I believe Apple is still signing iOS 4.1 for iPhone 3GS (I don't know why though).

You can use TinyUmbrella (a free tool compatible with OS X and Windows) to check your saved SHSH - plug your device into your computer, click the "Advanced" tab in TinyUmbrella, check "Request SHSH from Cydia", and then click "Save SHSH".

If you find that you have suitable SHSH saved for your device, you can use this guide to stitch the SHSH blobs into custom firmware (using redsn0w) and then restore with that firmware.


Macbook Pro high CPU temp I am currently using a macbook pro 16'' 2019 with intel i7.
I am doing some calculation about molecules geometry and wavefunctions with some chemical professional software.
They are very CPU intensive and can use up to 4 core during calculation with OPENMPI.
I've seen with Intel Power Gadget that the CPU temperature is in range 85-96 C degrees.
Is it normal?
Can theese temperatures damage my laptop or there is even the risk of a battery explosion?

Your MacBook Pro is a sophisticated product, with very capable power management and controls to prevent over-heating.
It is designed to be used, and to work hard if needed. You do not need to monitor the temperature, and you cannot damage your computer through use.
Intel CPUs can run over 100˚C quite normally. Your Mac has fans, which will speed up to increase cooling, and the OS will throttle the CPU if it gets too hot. In extremis, the CPU will shut off, rather than get so hot that damage might occur.
There is no way that Apple could, or would, sell a laptop whose battery was at risk of explosion as a consequence of high CPU usage. (Well, not without a recall or a lawsuit.)


Tab or Session Manager for Safari 12? Safari 12 improved the security of the browser by killing off the older API. Unfortunately in doing so it killed the very handy Sessions: https://sessions-extension.github.io/Sessions/

I can easily go find the tabs I had open when I upgraded.

My challenge - where do I find a robust tool that remembers all of your tabs even after a crash?

(Yes I know of the preference "reopen open all windows from last session" - past experience says that this doesn't work if the browser crashes).

I have had the same question and found no answer. So I myself developed a Safari extension named Tab Space which could handle this task for me. Try it if you want.


How do I get a clean version of a song in iTunes? I have a song in iTunes that is the unclean version with bad language in it and I'd like to be able to get the clean version without bad language in it. Does anyone know how to do this?

You have 2 choices, really.

Look for a clean version on the iTunes Store - one without the red E

Learn to edit your own music using something like Audacity to either duck the volume at the desired point, overdub a 'beep', or chop out that section entirely. There are plenty of tutorials on the Audacity site.


Simple Mac Photo Management app I don't want a digital asset manager but rather I'm looking for a Mac app that has similar features of iPhoto/Picasa but let's me work at the file level instead of a separate database. I tried iPhoto '11 with the "Copy items to the iPhoto Library" unchecked which takes me most of the way there but what I would like is that when I change a photo, I want that change applied to the photo file instead of on a duplicate.  And I don't want to Export to the file to see changes to my photos files.  I have 1000s of photos already on my drive organized the way that I prefer and I would I would like the photo files on my drive to be the master copy.   I was used the "Windows Live Photo Gallery" app which provided core photo management and editing capabilities.  Is there something similar on the Mac?

There's Lyn which definitely allows you to work at the file level within your existing folder structure. However, it's editing capabilities seem quite sparse compared to something like Picasa or iPhoto. There's a free trial, so it might be worth a look.


Can I print envelopes/address labels from Address Book? As Christmas approaches I'd like to send a letter to my friends and family. I currently have their contact information in Address Book. Is there a way to print envelopes with my contacts' mailing addresses from Address Book? If so, how would I do this? If not, is there a program that will interface with Address Book and do this? If it's not possible to do envelopes, would it possible to at least print labels?

Address Book has this functionality built in. First, create a group and drag the contacts you want to send mail to into that group:

Select the group, then go File -> Print. Under the Style menu, you will see that you have the option to print either envelopers or address labels. The Layout tab will let you configure what specific kind of labels or envelopes you have:


Is it possible to exclude bad memory? I have a MacBook Air 2012 (A1466) and it developed some memory errors.
It crashes every half hour and Apple Hardware Test says

  4MEM/9/40000000: 0x79eea590

Unfortunately, RAM is soldered on the motherboard and it is not replaceable.

I did some research and found that it is possible to tell the operating system to ignore wrong memory addresses if you use Linux: Ubuntu Forums: Exclude Bad Memory

Is is possible to somehow exclude faulty RAM addresses in Mac OS X?

I currently use Yosemite (10.10) but, I am willing to downgrade if necessary.

Your only option is to replace the offending hardware.  Unfortunatley, if you were able to hack a solution together, it would be removed after subsequent updates.  With El Capitan and later, SIP would prevent you from doing this.

You have two options:

Replace the logic board - very expensive  ($700 to $1000 USD)
Replace the RAM modules - less expensive ($300 to $500 USD)

There are shops that will do this type of repair like Rossman Group in NYC.  (Disclaimer:  I am not affiliated with this company in any way, I am just a satisfied client).  They can do board level repairs like this for half of what it would cost to replace the logic board.

That said, you may be able to find a functional (used) logic board on eBay as well.


Is it normal that External Hard Drives continue to be listed in Disk Utility / diskutil even after Eject? I have an USB External Hard Drive which has been behaving strangely lately. I'm concerned, amongst other things, that it doesn't seem to Eject properly1.

When I

Press the Eject button in Finder;
Eject the Volume in Disk Utility;
Or diskutil unmountDisk in Terminal;

the drive continues to be listed in Disk Utility and diskutil list. It is however not visible in Finder. Adding to my concerns is that the drive make mechanical sounds even after Eject.

My question is if it's normal that the drive continues to be listed in Disk Utility and diskutil even after Eject? To me it seems strange, but perhaps it's intentional in the sense that the Volume has been unmounted but the drive is still USB-connected?

So, even after pressing Eject in Finder and Disk Utility, and doing this:

$ diskutil unmountDisk disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

I can still see it (WD My Book 25EE Media) listed, as in the screenshot below:

1What has raised my concerns about this is because the drive exhibits I/O errors when trying to backup my NAS to it. The drive is formatted in HFS+. Previously, the drive was formatted as exFAT, and the volume could then not be mounted by macOS, but Disk Utility and diskutil could list the device. At that time, the same Eject "issue" as described above occurred. It didn't feel as if it was properly ejected since I heard it making sounds, and once macOS even complained about not ejecting properly even after pressing the Eject button and seeing it become grayed in Finder.

This is completely normal and no issue to worry about.

When you unmount a volume you are just removing the read and write access to it but the computer knows that the HD is still conn cited to your computer you can always mount it again by clicking disk utility and click the volume and mount it to make the HD disappear from the list you have to physically remove it.


Error when trying to export a multipage document from Excel (2011) with both landscape and portrait pages as a PDF file We use Excel 2011 for OSX at work and we are consistently encountering the following problem. When we have a multi sheet(page) workbook(document), with both landscape and portrait pages, an error occurs when we try to go to export to a PDF file (file > print > pdf). Instead of generating a multipage PDF file Excel will generate each sheet as a pdf. We can of course combine these back into 1 PDF file once generated in Adobe Acrobat,but it's a fiddly work around for something thats pretty basic and works fine (generates a single PDF file with all pages) in the Windows version of Excel.

I've attached a sample excel file if you want to see the problem first hand. : - https://www.dropbox.com/s/enrgch3znd4z89n/sample%20excel.xlsx

This appears to be a limitation of the PDF generator within OSX itself. It appears as though the behavior has been present in OSX versions 10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion. According to posts within the Microsoft Excel 2011 support pages (here, here and here) when you initiate the print to PDF command from within Excel 2011 the program hands off the actual generation of said PDF to the operating system. On the surface it appears as though OSX is interpreting the page orientations differently and outputting as separate PDF files. I checked through the known issues with Microsoft Excel 2011 to see if there is an outstanding bug for this behavior but nothing seems readily apparent. The support pages contain references to different methodologies to get around the problem such as:

Automator workflows
VBA Scripts
Combing the resulting PDF documents within Preview
3rd party software to perform the actual generation (Adobe
Acrobat, PDFwriter, etc..)

The information available reports varying degrees of success depending on what solution you ultimately end up choosing. All the solutions seem to be more of the same shim type work arounds with no easy / native (within Excel 2011) solution.


Prevent App Nap is disabled An Application I have (IntelliJ Idea to be more specific) has Prevent App Nap checked but the checkbox is disabled and I can not disable Prevent App Nap.

How can I disable "Prevent App Nap" for this application?

If you can't uncheck it, the app doesn't support it. App Nap requires support from the developer in the app for it to be available. In this case, IDEA is a Java app which doesn't support App Nap.


Switch profile of current Terminal Is there a way to switch the profile of an already-opened Terminal window? Let's say I already have a Terminal window opened with Basic profile. Can I switch it to Grass profile?

I seem to only be able to change profiles if I open a new Terminal window.

You can change the profile of an active window by doing the following:

Right click in the open space of the Terminal window (or cmd+I)
Choose "Show Inspector"
Click on the "Settings" header in the Inspector window
Choose a new profile for the current window

EDIT:

In macOS 10.14.6 the Terminal.app Inspector profile-selection list looks like this:


Java application install requires root password? I am currently switching over from Linux to OS X, and in the process have found a few surprising differences between the two systems.

I am quite used to the concept of installing most applications into my user's home directory, as a general security practice. To my surprise, however, when installing an application that runs with JRE, I am immediately greeted with a message "java wants to make changes. type your password to do this". This prompt comes before even asking to which directory the files are to be installed (e.g. ~/Applications/). Needless to say, this is not something I am used to when installing similar Java-dependent applications in Linux.

My question: is this java prompt granting the whole process admin privileges? Is this prompt something that can be avoided by separating the root and user accounts completely, or is this just how Java works on OS X?

On OS X, the administrative password is required for any item that is installed outside of the local user. The reason being is that OS X has a differing file structure (and privilege arrangement) than Linux.

The root of OS X is installed to /System. This parent directory is untouched aside from system files (such as OS X updates).

Libraries, extensions, various plug-ins, and other miscellany used to power some applications are installed to /Library. Applications typically install their files to a folder names Application Support (however, this is not always the case). This parent folder houses files that can be modified by installers run by either the administrator or a user. Installed components affect the entire system (not just a particular user).

Lastly, Applications (which are in actuality folders with the .app suffix) are placed in /Applications. The Mac App Store (MAS) downloads to this directory and users can also drag and drop their applications here. The parent directory is owned by root (and so are applications installed via the MAS) but users do have write access.

The folders above (and their children) will require the administrative password to modify, copy, or delete.

With respect to MATLAB, the installer likely installs files to /Library (perhaps to Application Support), hence the administrative password requirement.

I can't speak for MATLAB specifically, but the option to view a packages file structure is available through the OS X's Installer. Simply launch the package (pkg) and then navigate to the menu. It is located under File > Show Files. Here you can see the contents of the VPN Update for Mavericks Server available on Apple's website.

The request for administrative credentials occurs before the actual need to write the files. It is simply the way a package is built on OS X. Think of it as simply a step in the install procedure rather than one that is bound to a specific event that occurs due to the need for it. During the construction of the installer, the developer would specify these requirements and once specified, it is OS X that delivers them in accordance with Apple's human interface guidelines.


No entry sign on 2017 Macbook Pro--will replacing the hard disk work? I received a broken 2017 MacBook Pro from a friend who had given up on it. On attempting to boot it up I saw the "no entry" sign, which as far as I understand means there's something wrong/corrupted in the hard drive. I managed to get to the internet recovery screen and attempted to reinstall the OS but couldn't. Running First Aid showed that the APFS file was corrupted in a way that I couldn't fix. I tried to delete the file and replace it with a new one and that didn't work either. For reference, I'm a software developer but I don't understand much about BIOS and such things, especially on Apple computers which I never use.

After a few deletion attempts, or maybe a successful one, I don't remember, I became unable to reach the recovery menu again. The Apple logo would appear with the loading bar, and the bar would fill a tiny amount over 10 seconds or so before I was sent to the black screen with the no entry sign again.

Due to my hacking (I'm guessing) I can no longer seem to access the Internet Recovery menu. Does anyone know a solution to this problem? I thought of maybe trying to boot from a Linux disk or USB or opening up the laptop and physically replacing the hard drive. Would either of these work?

Why not install a fresh copy of macOS on an external drive before you make any changes to the internal drive. This Mac supports internet recovery so you can boot to internet OS - use Disk Utility to erase / prepare the external drive (USB or Thunderbolt is fine) and then download the installer from the internet while in recovery boot.

Now you can boot to the external drive and make sure the system is healthy and see if you can wipe the internal or need a repair.

If you have nothing to lose on the Mac, follow Allan’s excellent answer for how to erase and install without pausing to work on an external drive.


Can you set a specific WiFi channel with an iOS/iPhone personal hotspot? Anytime when I using my iPhone as personal WiFi HotSpot (sharing 3G internet via WiFi) the iPhone selects channel #1 for this.

Is possible to use another channel number because the channel 1 is already used by another cable modem / WiFi router and turning on (and using) the hotspot on the iPhone causes noticeable degradation of the speed on the cable-WiFi router.

So the question: Is possible somewhat enforce another WiFi channel number for the hotspot on the iPhone? (e.g. 11 or soo)

No - the OS picks channels algorithmically so you get what iOS chooses each time you enable personal hot spot.  I've seen personal hotspot pick channels 1, 6 and 11 on iOS 7 when in moderately busy wireless environments like this one with 26 advertising base stations (and a few hidden ones as well).


Dual booting older (2011) MBP into Windows and Linux (not macOS) I was given a 8,2 15" MBP, and b/c its graphics won't allow me to install Mojave, I want to turn it into a dual booted Linux/Windows machine. (I'm a developer, and find myself needing to tread into both worlds more and more.)

I found this article to help with this... except I don't really need to keep a viable older macOS on this machine. Just Win7 (which I'm gonna quickly upgrade to Win10) and Ubuntu Desktop. How would you, after getting rEFInd installed, and Win/Linux installed, excise the macOS still there? Or is this even the wrong approach?

I read your this article. Follow the steps outlined in the article with these adjustments.  I'd set up three partitions instead of four: macOS, swap and Windows. I'd adjust the macOS partition to the size you want to for linux. I'd install linux over the top of the macOS partition.

I've set up a triple boot system before but I haven't tried this procedure. Good luck.


Can I direct the audio signal from Apple TV? I have the following equipment:

I have all my music files stored in iTunes on the pictured iMac.  When I play music it follows a path from the iMac through the Time Capsule to the Airport Express.  The Airport Express connects by hard wires to a stereo power amplifier (that has no volume controls, selector switch, or additional connections available) and from the amp to the stereo speakers.  I control all of this directly from the iMac using the iMac's volume control.  This all works great and sounds great.

As the diagram also shows, I have an Apple TV that connects to the TV.

In our house we predominantly watch Netflix or other content via the Apple TV.

I'd like to direct the audio signal from the Apple TV to the Airport Express and thus to the amp and speakers.

I know I could put in an additional device and hardwire the TV's audio outputs, stereo amplifier, Airport Express into it (essentially use it as a  switching device), but it just seems that I should already have everything one really needs already.

Any way to do this?

Follow up...

Looking at the suggestions offered and doing a bit more research on my own it seems like the easiest solution would look something like this:

This idea adds an analogue switch, which both the TV's analogue audio output and the Airport Express's analogue audio output (the Airport Express has a built in digital to analogue converter, DAC) run into.  The switch's output goes to the amplifier.

This solution depends on a few of things:

The TV's audio output has sufficient level to drive the amplifier.
The TV's volume control (from its remote) can adjust the level of its audio output enough that the speakers reach desirable listening levels -- both low enough and loud enough.
Nothing nasty happens switching between audio sources.

A remote control for the switch would be nice.

Any suggestions for such a device?

I don't believe it is possible to send your audio signal from the appleTV to the Airport Express. You will need to use the amp as your switcher.


Can I delete photo files from Mac desktop after import to Photo? I'm using Yosemite's Photos app (switching from iPhoto).

I had a bunch of image files (about 200) on my desktop which I imported with the new Photos app.

I want to clean up my desktop, as all the image files are still there. The issue is that I've always found it bit confusing as far as where the source image files are stored for the iPhoto and Photos app.

I assume that they'll be gone altogether if I delete the files from my desktop. Is this correct?

OS X (10.10) Yosemite's Photos app stores all photos in its own library.

You can find this library in your «Pictures» folder (/Users/USERNAME/Pictures/Photos Library).

So any image that is imported is stored in that library (unless you have specified otherwise in the Photos app's preferences).

 has made a nice «Get started» page you should take a look at. There it states:

  Photos stores your library in the Pictures folder on your Mac by
  default.

As a conclusion: You can safely delete any image files that has already been imported.

On a side note: You can also view the raw image files inside the Photos Library by right clicking, selecting Show Package Contents and navigating to the Masters folder.


How do I browse files in my `.backupbundle` backup? I am currently trying to access my Time Machine backups manually, because the Time Machine feature was a little to slow for me and I needed the finder search. Before Catalina this was possible with the .sparsebundle but since then not longer. Every time I double-click the .backupbundle it says "This resource is currently not available".

I wonder if there is a way to mount/open this file to browse my backups. I read that renaming it to .sparsebundle would work but I don't want to destroy my backups – we all know that macOS sometimes do things different from expected ^^.

My Backup is saved on an Airport Extreme by the way. Which still works pretty well!

Try right-clicking (or Ctrl-clicking) on the bundle in the Finder and choosing "Show Package Contents".


Access user folders via Terminal When I am using Terminal to go to different folders such as Documents, Downloads, Photos etc I get presented with a dialog requesting me to grant Terminal access to these folders such as below:

Is there anyway to bypass this by using Sudo rights in Terminal such as:
$ sudo cd ~/Downloads

Unfortunately doing the above still shows the dialog when I was expecting the password to be enough. Is there any way to grant permission via terminal?
My OS is Catalina

Yes. Open up security preferences.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210595

Add Terminal app to full disk access, same as described for the systemsetup command.


iOS application monetization Can developer monetize application like following:

Developer develops application -> rents that application to certain person which pays to the developer monthly/yearly for such service, that application is content updated.

User (that downloads the app) itself is not paying at all anything.

Is this against the Apple monetization guidelines?

You are free to do with the app as you wish. Apple just want a binary that you upload to iTunes Connect — your business model is unrelated.

Apple doesn't prevent you from selling the entire app either (they even have a tool for it) and renting the app is equally fine.


Yosemite keeps asking to install Java runtime, while it's installed I was prompted to install JRE version 8 after upgrading to Yosemite on the family 2010 21" iMac. After I installed it (and checked whether the correct version was installed on the site of Oracle) it prompted that it wasn't installed although it was. I tried just following the steps they gave me to install it, but to no avail. Yosemite still asks to install the JRE on restart.

Does anyone know where the problem is or how I could solve it?

Install the SDK instead of the JRE.

I had a similar issue: I installed the JRE and ran the webpage-based test that said I installed successfully. But my java-based app wouldn't run, and running java -version in the console said Java was not installed. On a whim I decided to install the full SDK and now it all works.


To concatenate with BSD Join I want to concatenate in BSD Join.

Data

Model Decreasing Constant Increasing
2025 75.5 82.5 89.5
2035 65.5 82.5 102
2050 49.5 82.5 112

and error configuration in ybar

Model Decreasing Constant Increasing
2025 2.5 2.5 2.5
2035 2.5 2.5 5
2050 7.5 7.5 7.5

which should be

2025 75.5 82.5 89.5 2.5 2.5 2.5
...

Unix variant join A B does work according to my friend.

Outputs from Head

$ head model1_ave.dat
Year Decreasing Constant Increasing
2025 75.5 82.5 89.5
2035 65.5 82.5 102
2050 49.5 82.5 112
$ head model1_ave_err.dat
Model Decreasing Constant Increasing
2025 2.5 2.5 2.5
2035 2.5 2.5 5
2050 7.5 7.5 7.5

How can you concatenate the two files in OSX Join i.e BSD?

join works for me here:

pse@Mithos:~/t$ join -1 1 -2 1 t1 t2
Model Decreasing Constant Increasing Decreasing Constant Increasing
2025 75.5 82.5 89.5 2.5 2.5 2.5
2035 65.5 82.5 102 2.5 2.5 5
2050 49.5 82.5 112 7.5 7.5 7.5

In case there are non-matching header lines in each file you need to get rid of them first, otherwise the joining will fail.

pse@Mithos:~/t$ join -1 1 -2 1 <(grep -v Year t1) <(grep -v Model t2)
2025 75.5 82.5 89.5 2.5 2.5 2.5
2035 65.5 82.5 102 2.5 2.5 5
2050 49.5 82.5 112 7.5 7.5 7.5


Early 2008 MacBook pro upgrades I have an early 2008 17 inch MacBook Pro, and I'm trying to upgrade it to run more like a modern laptop. What are the first things to upgrade and some top priorities. Also when would it cross the line where it would just be easier/less expensive to buy a somewhat new macbook. Thanks for any advice.

I'm guessing this might be closed as "opinion-based" but IMO, it's not really worth it.

New SSD, max out the RAM at 6GB, last supported OS El Capitan… it would still be OK for email & a bit  of light word processing, but not so much out in the interwebz, because it has no security updates any more.


How do I transcribe an AppleScript? I found an AppleScript example on a website that I want to use, and the example is rendered as text in the browser (vs., say, being a suitably formatted file to download).

To use this AppleScript, I'm assuming that I need to use Automator somehow to create a Workflow (or perhaps an Application), but I can't figure out the right way to paste the AppleScript (or otherwise enter free-form text) into Automator.

I tried dragging a Run AppleScript action into the workflow window and then pasting the the AppleScript there, and (after I cleaned-up the smart quotes) I was able to use the Run button to execute it from within Automator. Though it popped up a warning about not receiving input while running inside Automator, the AppleScript seemed to execute correctly (i.e., I ended up with the right result). But it seems like this might not be the correct/efficient way to do this transcription (and/or it will result in an inefficient AppleScript).

Is there some way to open a free-form text window in Automator to type in an AppleScript?  Or is there some other way (other than trying to figure out each Action to drag into the workflow window and modify accordingly) to transcribe an AppleScript?

Corroborating my suspicions of inefficiency, I see that the resulting Application bundle/directory has a file called Contents/document.wflow and within that is the free-form pasted text as an ActionParameters member of Run AppleScript -- and this presumably will need to be parsed at every runtime.

I'm using Automator 2.7 on MacOS 10.12.6

You might be making this more complicated than it needs to be. If you want the code from the other site in an applescript, that page provides guidance. You don't need Automator to simply run that script.

Copy the script text onto the clipboard. Launch the Script Editor. It should open a new and empty document. Paste the copied script. The text should appear as whatever your default is for new (or uncompiled) text, e.g. probably in a purple monospaced font.

Confirm that everything is hunky dory by compiling the script: Type Command-K (or from the menus: Script > Compile). It should take on the same appearance as what you saw on the other site, e.g. some words coloured or bolded (emboldened?). Depending upon whatever, you may find that the quotation marks have been altered and you get an error. They need to be straight double quotation marks, e.g. "" and not “”.

Then try it out. If it works as desired, save it somewhere easy to access, e.g. the Safari scripts folder. Then, if you have the Script menu enabled (check the box in the Script Editor General preferences), you will be able to run the script from the script icon that shows up on the right end of the menu bar (near the clock) whenever Safari is the active app.

/Users/username/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari

NB I'd suggest saving it as a script (as opposed to application) unless you have a specific need that requires that.


Seeing All Icons on the Menu Bar I currently have the following icons on the status bar. However, I have other applications running, specifically OneDrive, which I believe it is supposed to show an icon.

Does the status bar show all icons (of the apps running that would choose to have one) by default? If not, is there any way to either force it to show all icons or choose which ones to show?

I have tried re-running OneDrive and I confident it used to have one. I can see it running on my activity monitor, but I don't see the icon anymore (even after restarting the computer)

Finder has a relatively short app menu, so activating Finder is a quick way to see more menu bar icons.  (And the built-in Maps app has an even shorter app menu.)
Bartender collapses the menu bar items into a submenu, which will let you see more of them (without being hidden by app menus).


Cannot install OS X from OS X Utilities on early 2008 Macbook Air I recently acquired an early 2008 Macbook Air with a completely wiped hard drive, so there's no OS currently on the machine. It boots up into Recovery Mode I think it is, and a window comes up saying 'Mac OS X Utilities' and has the following options:

  Restore from Time Machine Backup
  Reinstall Mac OS X
  Get Help Online
  Disk Utility

Now I've purchased a copy of OS X Lion and it's attached to my iTunes account, and it was my understanding that going on the 'Reinstall Mac OS X' option would let me download Lion from my account onto the machine. However, when I click on it, I get a window saying:

  To download and restore Mac OS X, your computer's eligibility will be verified with Apple.

This seems reasonable enough, and I click 'Continue' but then after loading for a few seconds, I get the following error message:

  An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again.

And then it sends me back to the Mac OS X Utilities screen where I have the 4 options again.

Does anyone know how I can resolve this?

Thanks

Not every mac is eligible for an internet recovery:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4904


How to enter boot menu without command key? My Macbook air has a keyboard issue, the Z key does not work except upon startup where it becomes stuck for several seconds.

This interferes with opening the boot menu on startup, because it detects the combination of Command + Z instead of just Command, so I can never enter the boot menu.

How do I get into the boot menu with my faulty keyboard?

EDIT: I have tried an external keyboard but the system still recognizes the faulty internal one.

You could try installing rEFIt, which will give you a boot menu every time you boot up.

http://refit.sourceforge.net


Why won't Apple Mail open after install of OS X El Capitan 10.11? Any ideas? I have installed the latest beta of OS X, El Capitan 10.11. The mail app said it needed to index mail. when it finished that process the mail app crashed. Now it refuses to open. Mail has been rendered unusable with this upgrade, for me.

Anyone have any ideas of things I could try to fix this?
Thanks.

I have to remove a PGP plug-in from /Library/Mail/Bundles to get the Mail App running again.

Just open Mail and immediately open Accounts, disable the accounts one by one to find out which one is causing the crash. Then delete this account completely and restart Mail. Then add the account all over again. It worked on my gmail account.


Uninstall rEFInd 0.8-3.7 on Yosemite I recently tried installing rEFInd on Yosemite using the command ./install.sh --alldrivers however it would not recognise the ubuntu 14.04 x64 for Mac disk I made and so I would like to uninstall rEFInd.

I have tried removing rEFInd from the EFI directory, however the EFI directory does not exist. How do I uninstall rEFInd 0.8-3.7 using OS X 10.10.3?

Edit
Here are my drives if this helps (found using diskutil list

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            235.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Linux                   15.0 GB    disk0s4

Ignore disk0s4 because I am going to remove it (that is where my Linux partition would have been)

Note: El Capitan (OS X 10.11) prevents users from selecting rEFInd and common Linux distributions from the Startup Disk pane. The new preferred method is to install rEFInd into the an EFI partition. My answer, to an unrelated question, outlines this new preferred method to start the rEFInd Boot Manager and Linux operating systems. The answer, given below, applies to Yosemite (OS X 10.10) and possibly earlier versions of OS X.

Personally, I installed rEFInd on my computer to its own partition. This prevents the problems you are encountering. Everything ./install.sh installed went to this partition. If I want to remove rEFInd, I can simply erase or remove the partition. Of course both are unnecessary, because I can turn rEFInd on and off at will. I just go to the Startup window in System Preferences select my boot partition. This computer has OS X, Windows, Fedora and rEFInd installed.

I also can select the boot partition under Windows by using BootCamp and by holding the Option key down at startup. The command diskutil list produces:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Marlin                  300.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Coelacanth              98.9 GB    disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS Linux HFS+ ESP          209.7 MB   disk0s5
   6: 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4               524.3 MB   disk0s6
   7:                  Linux LVM                         98.6 GB    disk0s7
   8:                  Apple_HFS rEFInd                  939.5 MB   disk0s8

Note, the rEFInd partition is ~ 1 GB in size. In fact, it can be as small as 100 MB. When I setup this computer, I used the Disk Utility application to create the rEFInd partition. If I would have used the gpt command, I could have created a smaller partition. Neither OS X, Windows, Fedora nor rEFInd use the EFI partition to boot the computer. In fact, there is nothing useful in the EFI partition.

Answer to your questions:

How do I uninstall rEFInd 0.8-3.7 using OS X 10.10.3? Read the ./install.sh file and undo whatever it did. I should of had you run the commands bless --info and bless --info  --getBoot. These would have told where the .efi file was stored. Note: Almost everyone installs rEFInd to the OS X boot partition.

How would I go and reinstall it using different options if I cannot remove it? The author of the software never said rEFInd could not be removed. I suggested you just install it again to its own partition. This might be a good place to mention the gpt command has to be run while either booted to an external recover partition or while booted to internet recovery.

Could I simply remove the EFI partition or would that corrupt my Mac? Do not remove the EFI partition! It is not used to boot OS X, but it is used by OS X for other things.


How can I give my sister my iPad 2 with the videos and music from my iTunes account intact? I want to give my sister my old iPad without deleting the videos and music I've put on the device. What do I need to do to deactivate it from my iTunes account without deleting the video and music content?

Once she decides to sync the device once, the contents will still be removed. Your sister won't be able to back up the videos and music or sync it to her iCloud, but it should keep playing all the media for months to come. If she erases it or syncs it with a new computer - she can return it to you for a reload or just start fresh with her songs at that point.

To remove your accounts, open the Settings App:

Remove the passcode (optional but nice to for her to choose one)
iCloud - tap Delete Account and delete all the content. Optionally delete your backup of this device in Storage & Backup if you don't care to keep that backup around and free up your cloud space.
Mail, Contacts, Calendars - delete all accounts and data here
Notes, Reinders, Messages, Facetime - same as above
Safari - clear cookies and history
iTunes & App Store - Sign out by tapping the account name for Apple ID
Music - Sign out of Home Sharing by tapping the Apple ID
Videos, Game Center - same as above

Sign out of social media - Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo

Privacy - Location Services - Turn Off - that deletes your information from Apple if you chose to share it. Optionally review the apps that have requested access to private data and turn them off / delete the app so she can choose what she shares.
Privacy - Advertising - Reset Advertising Identifier and optionally Limit Ad Tracking

She should be fine adding her Apple ID and just will want to watch for prompts that indicate if she will ever wipe your videos and music. Depending on what you choose, you might just erase all content and settings and copy the Music and Videos to a $50 hard drive or large USB drive so she can incorporate them in her iTunes library rather than have you surgically remove things. The out of box experience does guide a new user to understand what accounts and settings she can opt in and out of.


How do you send mail to Undisclosed Recipients? Not something I really ever need to do often, but just how do you send to Undisclosed Recipients in Mail.app

I've seen them arrive looking like this -

but never figured out how I might do it myself

Previously, I've sent to myself, then everybody else as BCC, but is that really the way to do it?

That's the way to do it, yes. You can even leave the To: part empty which then will result in Undisclosed recipients:.


Unable to send email I receive a msg "the recipient was rejected by the server because the user is unknown" when trying to send an email from me.com to icloud.com. Recipient is in Italy but I have no problem sending to hotmail.com in Italy

The error message you received is simple to understand.  The email address is invalid.


Is it possible to Move a bootcamp partition from one drive to another? When I got a new MacPro last year I formatted one of the additional (i.e. non-boot) drives with Bootcamp and installed Win 7 x64 on it. This set up has been working well these last 12+ months but I recently realised that the drive I've installed Windows on is a slow WD 'Green' eco-drive. Its rather slow at times as is only really designed for backups or storage rather than heavy use (I'm a .Net developer and use VMs extensively.

So what I'd like to now is move the Bootcamp partition onto the boot drive that came with the machine and keep everything running as it currently is. Is this going to be possible or am I looking at a day's work re-installing Windows and all my apps onto  a fresh Bootcamp partition on the main drive?

(Please say its possible) :-D

UPDATE August 2011:

I tried Winclone. Its no longer supported and fails everytime. Also not easily usable on OS X 10.7 Lion.

I've tried using the built-in Windows 7 backup functionality but this only seems to restore my files, not the OS environment.

Please help!

It's a pleasure to tell you that it is, possible. I've done it successfully using Winclone

You can start rebreathing ;)


MBR-partitioned HDD: How to encrypt Time Machine backup? I'm giving my external HDD to a friend tomorrow for a few days. It's partitioned via Master Boot Record and there are two partitions: a NTFS partition and my Time Machine partition. I don't want him to be able to access the latter, but I can't turn the encryption on because the disk would have to be partitioned with GUID.

Changing the partition scheme would require me to reformat the disk. I can't do this either, as I don't have another HDD to put my files on in the meantime.

Is there another way to encrypt the partition, other than the built-in option of OS X?
Or is there a way to prohibit access to the Time Machine partition without any encryption at all?

I think what you could do is creating a encrypted disk image on the external HDD and put your time maschine files in it for the timeframe your friend has the disk. To achieve this open the disk utility tool and choose File -> New -> Blank Disc Image (or Image From Folder).

BUT keep in mind that as long as this disk is not (re-)formatted properly it will be easy to recover unencrypted data which seems to be deleted or moved (using some fancy recovery tools).


Why would Preview "want to use" my (unused) login Keychain just to execute hotkeys? I've asked the related question in security SE: Why does not updating a MacOS keychain password cause applications to become troublesome? and the answer there explains that keychain is used by various applications to store "sensitive data such as credentials, certificates and the like... passwords..." and goes on to explain that a total list of all possibilities is beyond the scope of the question.

Background:

I changed my password by using recovery mode. I'd changed it yesterday, then it suddenly appeared to stop working.

As I continued, I received the message (photo of screen shown below):

  The system was unable to unlock your login keychain.

Since I don't use my keychain at all, and since I did not understand the implications of each choice, I just selected Continue Login.

Once I was using my computer again, I have a persisting sequence of dialogue boxes that will not go away. They seem to interfere strongly, rendering other applications unresponsive (beachballing) until I cycle through them once or twice by clicking Cancel three or six times. Preview is particularly difficult to use now.

For example, I have found that when I open multiple images in Preview, I can move easily between them through cursor operations on the sidebar, but as soon as I try to use the arrow keys preview freezes and beachballs until I click through the keychain dialogues again. Same for other menu items like close and save.

I have similar behavior for other apps. For example when TextEdit has an .rtf document that contains links, trying to use hotkeys to save will also trigger a dialogue box, but I'll ask primarily about Preview to keep it simple.

QUESTION: Why specifically would Preview access the keychain when I use keyboard shortcuts, but not cursor clicks or menu items for the same operations? Any thoughts why this (sometimes) happens with TextEdit as well?

Short answer: It doesn't.

Long answer: There are plenty of reasons why this may occur. I discuss a couple of scenarios below.

If you recently changed your password, I would recommend reading this support article from Apple.

  The password of your macOS user account might not match the password
  of your login keychain. Either create a new login keychain or update
  it with your new password.

If this is not the scenario for you, or if that article does not solve your problem, there are other probable scenarios. Sometimes, after updates, the Keychain may become corrupted. Using Keychain Repair from the Keychain App, you can easily fix this problem. I would refer to this answer for more information.

I have been personally facing this issue since El Capitan, and only recently fixed this issue. When El Capitan was released, this bug was introduced to some users using FileVault. Disabling FileVault and re-enabling solves this problem as well.

For additional solutions, I would refer to other answers left in similar questions:

How to stop my machine asking for multiple passwords when I log in? by klanomath
OS X is repeatedly asking for login keychain password by Andrei Glotov


In-app purchases of an app downloaded from a different country A few months ago, I purchased a number of applications from iTunes US using a US-based credit card even though I'm not from the USA; from the PH, actually. (I used AmEx Virtual Pay offered by my local telco provider)

Now, I recently moved to Japan and upon seeing these iTunes cards on the convenience stores, I am really tempted to buy some. (I don't have a JP-based credit card and I cannot, should not, must not use my PH-based CC to do purchases).

Which brings me now to my problem, I want to do some in-app purchases on the apps I purchased on the iTunes US using (possibly) the iTunes card JP. Is this possible? Will changing just the country of my iTunes work? Since I'm thinking that even though the app was downloaded from a different country, after all, I'm still using the same account.

I understand that if I decide to download new paid apps, I could just change my country to Japan and use the iTunes card, but will this work with in-app purchases?

Let me know if my question's unclear. Thanks.

I think it won't work. From the Apple Support pages:

  After you change the country of your account, you won't see the items you purchased from the previous country’s store in the Purchased section.


Can't find an option to turn off cellular data for an application on iPhone (iOS 14) I'm trying to turn off cellular data for an application on iPhone running iOS 14, I know that you can go to Cellular section in Settings and there will be a list of applications including the options to turn the cellular data on or off, but I can't find my application in that list to turn it off. Can someone help me with this? Thanks for your help!

I can't stand this iPhone "feature", but for an app to appear in the list where you can turn cellular data on or off:

the app must be launched once with cellular data on;
sometimes it is not enough - you must not only launch the app, you must do something with it actively.

Though, it may be that for newer iPhones this is not longer the case.


Migrating parallels PVM from Mac to Windows I have a Linux image (Parallels v9 PVM file) on my MBP, which I would like to migrate to Windows (to clarify: so that the Linux image can be launched from Windows, instead of from Mac).

Is this possible?  Do I just need to install Parallels on the Windows PC and copy over the .PVM?  Or do I need to use a different tool for the migration?

To launch the PVM under Windows you need Parallels Workstation running on your Windows box. Unfortunately Parallels withdrew that product either later 2013 or early 2014 which is a shame.
I run the Windows product all the time with multiple VMs running (Windows desktop with lots of disk space) and then move the PVM to my MacBook Air (limited disk space)when I have to go to a customer site


Cannot Use the Disk Utility to Create Two Partitions on External HDD with High Sierra I just bought a new external hard disk and I want to create some partitions. I am using the Disk Utility app in an High Sierra OSX MacBookPro.

However, the "partition" option for my hard drive is greyed out, therefore I cannot go ahead with the partition operation.

Although, when issuing the command diskutil partitionDisk disk2 2 MBR fat32 "PART1" 80% fat32 "PART2" 20%, I am able to partition, I cannot directly operate through Disk Utility.

How can I do this using the Disk Utility application?

The Disk Utility application can partition the external drive, if you use GUID Partition Map scheme.

Below is an example using a 16 GB flash drive.

Erase the drive.

Partition the drive.

Erase the first partition.

The results are shown below.


Is there a way to make have Safari run some javascript load after each loaded page? I want to configure Safari to run a piece of javascript after each page I visit. The same peace of js should be run after any web page I visit is loaded. How can I configure Safari for this?

Yes, Greasemonkey or "User scripts" were the ones that popularized this.

For one option on Mac/Safari, please see http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/20718/greasekit


Virtualizing OSX currently installed As I explained here, I have an old MacBook and I am planning to replace OS X with either Windows 7 or Linux.

I was wondering if it is at all possible to virtualize the physical Snow Leopard partition. In Windows you can convert a physical machine to a virtual machine using VMWare products. Could I do something like this for my MacBook?

The idea is to wipe everything, install Windows or Linux and have the original OS X partition as a Virtual Machine in case I need something.

According to this source this should work:

Prerequsites:

– Mac OS X 10.6.8 Server or Mac OS X 10.7 or later as prospective Guest OS

Create a r/w image of your partition
Open Terminal an enter:

hdiutil imageinfo /path/to/image.dmg  | grep "Format"

Output should be:

Format: UDRW
Format Description: raw read/write

Create a diskname.vmdk file with an editor:

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
encoding="UTF-8"
CID=fffffffe
parentCID=ffffffff
isNativeSnapshot="no"
createType="monolithicFlat"

# Extent description
RW SIZE_OF_DMG_IN_SECTORS FLAT "Fully_Qualified_Pathname_of_DMG" 0

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
#ddb.geometry.cylinders is not used by Mac OS.
#ddb.geometry.heads is not used by Mac OS.
#ddb.geometry.sectors is not used by Mac OS.
#ddb.longContentID will be generated on the first write to the file.
#ddb.uuid is not used by Mac OS.
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "6"

customize SIZE_OF_DMG_IN_SECTORS (the size of your disk/512) and Fully_Qualified_Pathname_of_DMG in the above file
Open VMware Workstation and create a new machine and choose the above created vdmk file as hdd.image
There is a legal impediment to run Mac OS X on Non-Apple hardware. VMware Player & VMware Workstation therefore officially don't support the installation of Mac OS X on any hardware - not even on Macs.


How to get a one-key shortcut for full screening an Application (not just maximize) In Windows there is the ubiquitous F11 functionality which on the Mac is done by ctrl-cmd-F. As far as I found there is no universal way to get a one-key shortcut. It should be possible to do with Applescript and Alfred 3. Anybody well-versed in this to set it up? Or did I forget a simpler method?

System Preferences lets you change builtin menu shortcuts to almost anything you like.  This screen shot is from macOS 10.13 (High Sierra):

Here, you can see that I've created a shortcut under the All Applications heading, so any application that contains the particular menu item that takes its window to full screen will adopt the new shortcut.

The name of the menu item—which must be entered exactly, including capitalisation—is Enter Full Screen.  As you know, its default shortcut is ⌃⌘F, but here I've changed it to just the equals sign key, =.

If you try to establish a new shortcut to be a single key, you'll often be denied by Finder's beep, alerting you to an invalid command or value.  The trick to circumvent this when creating these shortcuts in System Preferences is to hold down Fn and press the desired key, which will then be accepted.

You'll want to create a second shortcut to take your application out of fullscreen and into normal mode again.  This menu item is called Exit Full Screen, and by default, shares the same shortcut as its cousin, therefore it makes sense that your new shortcut should be the same as the one you set to Enter Full Screen also.

With the setup in place as depicted by my screenshot, a single tap of my = key takes me fullscreen; and another tap takes me back out into normal view.  Cleverly, testing this in Safari, it doesn't respond to this shortcut whilst I'm typing in this text box, which is how I am still able to print an equals sign, =.  Once I leave the text box and the focus returns to a non-input element of the Safari window, the shortcut becomes active again.  I haven't tested to see whether this neat feature applies to other applications.  I suspect it will work for some, and won't for others.


Single user boot : remove read only My OS keeps rebooting since I installed photoshop.

Save mode didn't help.

Trying now too boot on single user, I have a UI to unlock my user account (the mac is encrypted) then I have the command line.

I'm trying to remove everything from Adobe on the launch agent but I can't

sudo rm -rf com.adobe.AAM.Uploader-1.0.plist returns "read only file system" and don't even ask for my password!

Am I good for a reinstall or anything I can do to remove theses files / or fix my boot issue

I'm running 10.11

Update: I forget I need to mount the HD first.  I'm trying now

Fsck followed by mount -uw / fixed my problem.


Apple Store Macbook Pro DVI and VGA Adapter questions - what is in the box? The company I work for recently ordered me a Macbook Pro and I received the shipping confirmation today. Among the machine configuration there is listed the following:

DVI Adapter 065-0106 None
VGA Adapter 065-0108 None

What do these lines mean? Does it mean that these adapters are not part of the configuration? If not is there still a way for me to hook up an external monitor that has a DVI or VGA input?

The video out on MacBook Pro uses a Displayport / Thunderbolt port. To hook up to a VGA or DVI cable, you need an adapter. Alternatively you could buy a cable which has Displayport on one end and DVI or VGA on the other. The adapters don't come as standard so you'll need to buy one in an Apple store, online or use a third-party cable.


Is it possible to set my Mac to hide all windows on waking up? Whenever I wake my Mac up, it shows my workspace exactly how I left it. If I closed the lid while browsing my library on iTunes, for example, it will show that screen upon waking up, after I input my password.

Is there a way to change this default behavior? Once I close the lid, when I come back and input my password, I'd like to view the desktop. The apps shouldn't be quit or anything like that, just the windows should be hidden. You know, to start fresh, uncluttered.

(Similar to what this user is asking, but upon waking up instead of a keyboard combination.)

Is it possible? Maybe with some Apple Script or command line magic?

You have two options, maybe more :

Automator:

Make an Application document
Add the following action:

  Library -> Utilities -> Hide All Applications

Save the App
Add it to your login items

  System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Choose your User -> Login Items

Voilà!, on next login all open apps will be hidden. Note that with this option, if the automator app have a window, that window will not hide, because this action is for Hide All Other apps

AppleScript: You can use this script, i found it on LiveJournal:

tell application "System Events" to set all_apps to the name of every process whose visible is true

repeat with a in all_apps
    tell application a to try
        repeat with w in (get every window)
            set miniaturized of w to true
        end repeat
    on error
        activate
        tell application "System Events" to repeat (count windows of process a) times
            keystroke "m" using command down
            delay 0.1
        end repeat
    end try
end repeat

Similarly you need to make this script runs on start of your session, maybe you could make an App with Automator but instead using "Hide All Application" Action, you add "Run AppleScript" Action.

In both options, maybe some applications will not be hidden because at the time this runs, not all windows are yet opened.


Safari 8 leftbound URL with favicon In version 8 of safari the URL of a webpage is displayed centered in the adress-field, and the favicon (or apple-touch-icon) is invisible.

Only when I click into the adress-field the URL moves to the left edge and the favicon becomes visible.

What must I do to always have the URL displayed leftbound with the favicon visible?

This is what I've got now, but don't like:

This is what I want:

How can I get it?

btw:
Is there a way to display favicons in the tabs? sometimes its hard to navigate through many open tabs when there is nothing but text. Favicons in the tabs would be very helpful.

Edit:

If this is impossible, it would be nice to read this in an informed answer, just to have clarity.

You can show the full URL in the address field by going to to Safari > Preferences > Advanced and check the box "Show full website address." This won't, however, show the website favicon, but it's better than nothing in my opinion.


Is there a way to get Mavericks to mount AFP URLs the old way, by mounting the share point, and not the enclosing folder? Before Mavericks, if I clicked this URL or pasted it into the Finder's Connect to Server dialog:

afp://server.example.com/Share/Path/To/Folder/File.txt

The server's "Share" share point would mount as a volume, and the Finder would open a window navigated to "Folder", with "File.txt" selected. We used this methodology to share file server URLs around the office all of the time.

After we installed Mavericks on the clients (keeping 10.8.x on the OS X Server), whenever a client uses such a URL to locate file, a new volume mounts, named after the enclosing folder, meaning a mount point names "Folder" mounts.

Unfortunately, this means for every URL referencing a different directory, new mount points and server connections are made.

Some have reported the issue and it's been declared as working as designed, but Apple hinted that there is now an option being set that changes this, but unfortunately not supplying how to change that option.

Has anyone by chance figured out a way?

I haven't found a way to configure Finder to behave the old way, so I wrote an Apple Script to mimic the old behavior. The script handles AFP URLs (as well as FTP and CIFS/SMB if you like), mounts the server under the share name and opens a Finder window at the indicated location.

You can set your browser and maybe other programs to open AFP URLs with this script. I don't know if you can convince the Finder though.

Basically the script decomposes the URL into protocol, server name, share name, path and target. It does some basic checks on the URL, mounts the resource under the share name and shows it in Finder.

I bundled it as an application, called URL Handler. You can download and try it out, whether it works for you. The source is included in the disk image, if you want to have a closer look.


Restoring from backup after jailbreak If I have a back up on iTunes from before I was jailbroken and I wanted to go back to stock IOS, can I restore to that back up from iTunes and be unjailbroken?

Yes. That would undo the jailbreak. All you need to do is start the iPhone into recovery mode and then click restore in the option when your iPhone is connected to your Mac or Windows in iTunes/Finder.


Notes disappeared from iPhone All notes have disappeared from my iphone and cannot be found on my computer or iCloud. Why am I backing up my computer? Are they hidden somewhere? They aren't in Mail, either.

What OS are you using? In newer versions notes has moved from mail to its own application "Notes". Though I don't know how they disappeared.


How can I get a timezone set automatically according to location service? My environment is 10.13.4 (High Sierra).

I turn on Set date and time automatically and  want to acquire the timezone.

I am aware of systemsetup -gettimezone which only can run with sudo, however, it returns the timezone set by TZ=foo/hoge in my rcscript.

I want to acquire the computer's current, automatically-set time zone via the command line.

Launch System Preferences. Select "Date & Time", then open the "Time Zone" panel. (If necessary, authenticate as Administrator to unlock.) Click in the checkbox to turn on "Set time zone automatically using current location"


What are equivalents of losetup and cryptsetup for Mac OS X? I use losetup and cryptsetup to create a loopback encrypted file system.  Is it possible to do the same on Mac OS X?  If so, how?

I had to Google what a loop device was before I understood the concept…

Would .dmg (Apple Disk Image) files not be an adequate substitute? They can be expandable & encrypted, using FileVault. Once mounted they behave like any other mounted volume.

From Wikipedia - Loop Device

  Mac OS X implements a native image mounting mechanism as part of its random access disk device abstraction. The devices appear in /dev as regular disk devices; reads from and writes to those devices are sent to a user-mode helper process, which reads the data from the file or writes it to the file. In the user interface it is automatically activated by opening the disk image. Mac OS X can handle disk (.dmg or .iso), CD-ROM or DVD images in various formats.


How to determine what type of SSD drive is supported for a Macbook? I am leaning towards getting a SSD for my MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009), since this is my first journey into SSD I was wondering if there was anything I needed to consider as far as drive specs when it comes to the mac. I am currently running Snow Leopard but will be upgrading to Lion shortly. As I understand Lion added Trim support, but I could not find a list of drives it supports Trim with.

So does Lion support Trim on all SSD?
Are there any other things I need to check to make sure the SSD I
purchase is compatible?

Jfw is right, until now apple only supports their official SSD. While there are some ways to open SSD trim support on 3rd party SSD, when I used these solutions I encountered some weird problems.

Besides the trim support problem, some capability problems can be solved by updating SSD's firmware.

I currently use an Intel 320 300g SSD and installed lion without trim support, it has been working wonderfully.

Before I bought the Intel SSD, I had considered OWC's products and I think their products are good on capability, however since I am live outside of the United States I didn't choose it.


Cannot erase ~500GB from startup disk tldr: how do I erase all of the information from my startup disk? Logging into recovery mode and selecting "erase" has no affect on my disk's "free" space.

While attempting to diagnose an issue I was experiencing, I decided to erase my iMac's startup disk and then restore from a time machine backup. So I log into recovery mode, open up disk utility, and select "erase". Somewhat surprisingly, I see that, while the disk's "used" space drops to almost zero, all of the data seems to be transferred to the "other volumes" category, and the amount of "free" space on the disk doesn't change.

I assumed that this was simply a labeling issue, and that the operating system had earmarked all of this "other volumes" information to be deleted asap. So I opened up time machine and restored from backup. After having completed the time machine restore, I logged into find that all of that "other volumes" data was still taking up hundreds of gigabytes of space, and I had only ~20GB free on the computer.

So I try logging into recovery mode again and selecting "erase." This time it does free up all the "used" space, but it still leaves ~500GB of "other volumes" data.

So how do I actually erase all of the information on my startup disk? Logging into recovery mode and selecting "erase" seems to have no affect. Thanks!!

This will clear all the data on your drive!

You can erase the whole volume by clicking the View button and choosing Show All Devices. Then select the top-level entry and click Erase. Set it to APFS and GUID and click Erase. Name it Macintosh HD (or whatever you prefer if that's not your preference). Then run the installer on your new Macintosh HD and you'll get a clean install with no data.


From the terminal, how can I disable iTunes from running when a device is connected? Using terminal, I want to disable the feature of iTunes that causes it to run whenever a device is plugged in, but I want to do this entirely from the terminal, so that it can be part of an OSX setup script.

You should be able to run this command in terminal, then restart iTunes:

defaults write com.apple.iTunesHelper ignore-devices 1


How to change the Subscription plan for third party app purchased through iTunes? I set the 30 day Premium subscription for LinkedIn through iTunes. I cancelled the subscription but i am not able to change the plan from premium to basic. I reached LinkedIn which advised me to get in touch with Apple. Apple Support is redirecting me to Linkedin.

https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/topics/6156/6157/49845/canceling-a-premium-subscription-purchased-on-your-apple-device?lang=en

How to change the Subscription plan for third party app purchased through iTunes?

With Apple subscriptions, you can either cancel them and let the balance play out or if it just renewed, sometimes you can undo the payment.

Apple took the money, so cancel with them. When that is sorted and you are outside the coverage of your last subscription, you will have a chance to start a new subscription type. There is no “change” lanes in my experience when one app has different tiers of subscriptions.

Assuming you cancelled, perhaps there is a period when it’s still active so a chat with Apple support about your specific purchase would be the next escalation if needed. My guess is linked in might only sell basic outside the store, so they might not want to say that directly. I don’t see the words Basic, but maybe the metadata is too long to easily navigate from the in app purchase summary page.


My MacBook Pro 15 2018 is too hot I bought a 15'' MacBook Pro a few days ago and it gets too hot under load. Idle temperatures are about 40-50 degrees light use 60 degrees but opening a light game like league of legends will set the CPU at 80-90 degrees.
I want to know if this is normal or not and if it will damage my battery.I still have time to return the laptop. Thank you.

I presume you mean 40-50 degrees C, not F.

Yes, that's pretty normal. I'm just browsing the web with Safari, and my laptop is at 111 degress F


Strange Issue with "Recent" Stacks in Mountain Lion After my recent upgrade to Mountain Lion I accidentally dragged the "Recent Applications" stack off the dock and it "poofed" away... not that big a deal, I just went into Terminal and used the following command

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'

followed by resetting the dock with

killall Dock
exit

Then emptied the trash, shut down, and reboot for good measure...
A space for the Recent Apps is now present on the dock, but it doesn't contain anything, no matter how many apps I open.  It is right clickable to get the context menu. The same is true no matter which kind of "Recent" stack is selected.  If selected the Favorite Volumes or Favorite Items stacks work normally.
Looking through the Library there is no recent items plist.
What's my next step?

Issue solved:  After the update the Recent Items selection in System Preferences>General was set to 0.


How to see a friend's reviews on the App Store? Recently my friend saw what I wrote as reviews on every application I downloaded.
Is it possible to see another friend's reviews & ratings? How?

When looking at reviews in iTunes for iOS apps, you can click on the username of the reviewer, which will bring up the reviewer's page and will show all the reviews that the user has left on apps. This does not work with the Mac App Store.

This is a random user's reviews I found by opening the reviews on the F1 2016 app. Clicking the username takes you to this page.

If you want to see all your own reviews instead of another user's, see Is there a single place I can see all the app reviews I've written in the iOS App Store?.


Getting home.dev to resolve to 127.0.0.1 In my hosts file I have:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1   localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
127.0.0.1 home.dev
fe80::1%lo0 home.dev

Yet, when I go to home.dev, I get the Google search page, and when I go to http://home.dev, I get a blank page.  How do I get it to actually go to the index page  that says "It works!" (I have index.php in the root directory of /Library/WebServer/Documents with just that).

In System Preferences for Networks, DNS, I have "192.168.1.1" and "home" which are greyed out.  If I try to use "+" to add 127.0.0.1, the previous entry gets wiped out.

How do I get this working properly?  I've tried different solutions over the years but never got this to work properly.  I'm using 10.8 but will be upgrading to Yosemite after it comes out.

You could try to connect to http://home.dev./ (note the single dot at the end of the URL; also, when typing the URL, make sure to type the http:// part into your browser address field too). The reason you're not getting luck is with the somewhat irritating web browser behaviour, which is to try to add some common words to the server address part of the URL if it doesn't look "normal" (i.e. you'll notice quite often the browser try to be smart and add www or .com to the beginning or the end of the server address in your URL).

The DNS settings window, screenshot of which you attached, is used to configure DNS servers rather than static host to IP mappings like you do in /etc/hosts. When you add 127.0.0.1 entry, all you're doing is telling the system to ignore the DNS settings and the search domain it acquired via DHCP and instead use 127.0.0.1 as the DNS server - i.e. the system will try to send DNS queries to 127.0.0.1 expecting a DNS service to run there and respond to those. The default entries are greyed out to indicate they were put there automatically for you by the DHCP client.

One way to see what the system resolver is trying to do, bypassing the nonsense of the browser trying to be too smart behaviour, is to open the Terminal.app and type ping home.dev in there and see if you get any responses, and which IP address they come back from. If that works, it means that the resolver is working fine and that the issue is with your browser.


I can only get a capital P with caps lock on, mid-2014 Macbook Pro So, when I hold the Shift key and hit p,nothing happens. If I select Caps Lock and then p, I get a capital "P".

What gives?  I've looked in System Preferences and don't see that key combination as a shortcut.

Any ideas?

My first suggestion would be to reset both your SMC and NVRAM.

[Reset NVRAM]

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

[Reset SMC]

To reset the SMC on a Mid-2014 MBP follow these steps:

Shut down your computer

Keep the MagSafe adapter (power cable) plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.


Trick mac into thinking battery is connected (if I unplugged it)? I'm running Sierra 10.12.6 on a 2015 MacBook Pro and I was wondering if anyone knew a way to trick the OS into thinking the battery is connected when it's actually unplugged.

I'm sure you guys will want to know why in the first place...I keep my mac plugged for long periods of time and it's messed up my battery capacity ( down to 70% in just 300+ cycles).

Your question assumes that something is wrong on the basis of your battery health only being at 70%. It's not clear how you're getting this figure, but a battery health of 70% after 300 cycles sounds perfectly reasonable to me if what you're measuring is the number of cycles remaining. Otherwise Battery Health is not usually represented by a percentage value, but in terms of Normal, Replace Soon, Replace Now, and Service Battery.

While it used to be in years gone by that Apple recommended allowing your battery to drain somewhat on a regular basis, this is no longer the case. In other words, keeping your MacBook Pro plugged into an AC power source for prolonged periods will not mess up your battery.

You may want to refer to what Apple has to say about their batteries for more information.

In summary:

Apple lithium-ion batteries use fast charging to reach 80% of their capacity and then switch to slower trickle charging to complete the charge.
Charge your MacBook Pro whenever you want. Many people believe you need to let them discharge 100% before recharging. This is not true.
Ambient temperature is one of the biggest factors in battery health/life. MacBooks are designed to work at their best when ambient temperatures are between 16° to 22° C (62° to 72° F).
It’s important to avoid exposing your MacBook to ambient temperatures higher than 35° C (95° F)
If you're ever going to store your MacBook for long-term without usage, it is best to store it totally powered down and at only about half charge.

Also, some of the latest research suggests that one of the most important determinants of what ruins a battery is time, and that's not something you can do anything about.

Finally, there is no way of safely tricking your Mac into thinking that your battery is connected when it's not. It will cause other issues for your MacBook and, in the event of a power failure, you have no built in uninterruptible power supply.


Putting iPad in my name I bought my husband an iPad and put 50.00 on it. He doesn't want the iPad so I would like to use. How do I get everything including the credit into my name?

As far as I am aware, you can't do this easily, at least not through the iPad. I suspect that those $50 are tied to an account in your husband's name? If so, you may wish to contact Apple to see if you can gift that to another account in your name.


Dual identical monitors swap settings after displays turn off I have dual LG 4k monitors on a 2015 macbook pro on High Sierra. One is connected via a belkin thunderbolt 2 hub. They both work at 4k 60Hz no problem (via displayports, not HDMI, that is).

The system itself is set to never sleep with Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off in Energy Saver, in System Preferences, and I have Turn display off after 3hrs rather than never.

When I return after more than 3 hrs and wake, i.e. cause the screens to switch on again (the system I believe should not have actually been in sleep due to power connection remaining on the laptop) the two screens consistently swap their settings with each other, such that the one I have at 270 rotation for vertical aspect swaps with the one I have at normal rotation, and I have to manually swap them back again.

Strange and annoying. Not quite sure what to do.

This is the combination of:

macOS not caring about serial numbers
a race condition.

See my detailed answer in Primary display randomly changes


SSD in a 2012 17" causing GPU failures? Just got my MBP back from Apple after taking it in with GPU overheating glitches. Apparently this model (2012) are prone to it and it's been exhibiting all the symptoms. Blue screens, grey screens, weird graphics, boots failures etc.

However and too my surprise, Apple have blamed the Samsung EVO 1 TB SSD I had put in a few weeks prior to the glitches starting. They say its the power drain of the SSD that is causing the glitches.

SO I've now put the original HDD back and and am seeing if the problems return. It took a few boots (SMC, PRAM resets) with failures after reinstalling it before I could get a fresh install of OS X in and now I'll waiting to see if it starts up again.

Would like to know if anyone else has had a SSD installed which has then interfered with the GPU? or is Apple feeding me a line?

All resolved. MBP started playing up again without a few hours. GPU overheating and corrupting the display.

Took it back to Apple again and this time they replace the logic board. MBP is now running noticeably cooler with no issues. Have reinstalled the SSD without any problems.


sshdfilter and ipfw - why are my rules flushed so often? I have sshdfilter setup to maintain ipfw rules when someone is un invitedly trying to login my system. This has been working quite a while. Since a while - beginning to suspect the last lion upgrade (10.7.2) - I see sshdfilter adding rules and, when I check, I don't see the rules in ipfw using 'ipfw show'. When I add them manually, they show but again, after a while they are gone.
What I found in /var/log/system.log are messages like:

Nov  6 21:53:12 mac servermgrd[31448]: servermgr_ipfilter:ipfw config:Notice:Flushed IPv4 rules
Nov  6 21:53:12 mac servermgrd[31448]: servermgr_ipfilter:ipfw config:Notice:Flushed IPv6 rules

and I assume that after such a flush, my rules are in bit heaven.
How can I prevent my blocks are flushed?
My setup looks very familiar to sshdfilter improvements

edit: In the meantime I changed sshdfilterrc to add the rules to /etc/ipfilter/ipfw.conf. This file is imported when the flush is executed. Disadvantage is that this file has to be maintained....

Change /etc/sshdfilterrc to add the rules to /etc/ipfilter/ipfw.conf. This file is imported when the flush is executed. Disadvantage is that this file has to be maintained....

This prevents the blocks staying in bit heaven when the flush comes along because this file is read after the flush is executed.

edit: on request added changes I made in /etc/sshdfilterrc

firewalladd='/sbin/ipfw add $idx deny all from $ip to any in; echo add $idx deny all from $ip to any in >> /etc/ipfilter/ipfw.conf;echo +`date` $ip >>/etc/ipfilter/sshdfilter_block.log'
firewalldel='/sbin/ipfw del $idx deny all from $ip to any in;grep -v " $ip ">/tmp/ipfw.conf;mv /tmp/ipfw.conf /etc/ipfilter/ipfw.conf;echo -`date` $ip >>/etc/ipfilter/sshdfilter_block.log'

this takes care of the block and the block Cancel actions, including some block.log to see when and how long an ip has been blocked.


Tech Specs of Built-in iSight Camera of MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) What are the tech specs of the Built-in iSight Camera of the MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)?

Especially: What is the focal length?

Does anybody happen to now, if there is something online, where all the technical specifications of my camera are listed?

EDIT: I wrote a program which detects markers of a certain size. After detection I need to calculate the 3D coordinates of those markers, therefore I need the focal length of my camera as this is an input value of the program.

What is recommended is doing a camera calibration yourself, using OpenCV for instance, to get reliable figures.
http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/doc/tutorials/calib3d/camera_calibration/camera_calibration.html

It is not very complicated, just print out the chessboard pattern, tweak the xml file which has input data for information about the test pattern and also the xml for input images(if you plan on using images, instead of live video through your webcam, I recommend the latter)
Run the sample as it is, following the instructions for keyboard prompts (hold up pattern, press 'g' to start calibration once you see detected lines, esc to exit).


iPhone - Whats the matter with the Passcode? I'm just thinking about the passcode to unlock the iPhone. You have to retype the passcode regularly. Winter is coming - so wearing touch-gloves are fine for using the iPhone. To unlock the iPhone, Touch ID doesn't work with gloves, so you have to type the passcode again. Some other situations e.g. you got sweaty fingers, Touch ID doesn't work, passcode again.

I guess the passcode is part of the encryption. So I believe you should use a strong passcode instead of 4 easy digits. Besides the fact that passcode can always be used to unlock the phone, it's obvious you should use a strong passcode.

I couldn't find a lot of information about the passcode on the Internet. So I'd like to ask here. Does anyone know more about it? Are my guesses correct, or does it simply make no change to use a less strong passcode?

Update: My passcode is probably pretty strong. So typing the passcode is hardscrable for me.

A strong passcode is harder to brute-force. The code itself it not used directly as an encryption key but rather used as an input to derive a real key from. So regarding the crypto behind the scenes, it doesn’t make much of a difference, but mostly works against attacks from the interface.