Cannot use Disk Utility to create partition from free space on external USB drive I have a 3 TB Western Digital red disk in a USB hard drive dock.

The drive is GPT, and I have two volumes on it (one volume is "Microsoft Reserved", other volume is NTFS).

The other part of my drive is 1.5 TB of free space. I verified this on my Windows machine:

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          167 GB    20 GB
  Disk 1    Online          465 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 2    Online         2794 GB  1526 GB        *

DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list part

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Reserved           128 MB    17 KB
  Partition 2    Primary           1267 GB   129 MB

DiskPart shows 2 partitions - one 128 MB, and the other 1267 GB with 1526 MB of free space.

I took this drive over to my MacBook Pro running OS X El Capitan 10.11.3 and fired up Disk Utility, but for some reason it doesn't look like Disk Utility is seeing the free space, so I can't create a new volume.

Here are some screenshots:

… of the physical disk in Disk Utility (notice how there doesn't appear to be any unallocated space on the disk to create another volume:

… of the two volumes in Disk Utility. Notice how the plus sign is greyed out so that I cannot create another partition with the free space.

I want to put encrypted Time Machine backups on the second partition that I create from the free space. Does that mean that I need to create the new partition from a Mac?

I think Disk Utility misses a proper EFI partition at the beginning of the disk.

If you don't want to completely erase the drive you should be successful following the steps below:

Open Terminal and enter the following to get an overview:

diskutil list

The 3 TB disk is your external disk. In the next steps I assume the disk identifier of your external disk is disk1
Get the block size of the external disk:

diskutil info disk1 | grep "Device Block Size"

In the next steps I assume that the Device Block Size is 512 bytes. If you get another block size (i.e. 4096 bytes) leave a comment.
Get the partition table of the external disk:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1

The result is similar to the output below (your sizes are different though):

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34      262144      1  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
      262178        2014
      264192  2244603904      2  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  2244868096  2048002015
  4292870111          32         Sec GPT table
  4292870143           1         Sec GPT header

Unmount the external disk:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk1

Now add a third partition with

sudo gpt add -b 2244870110 -i 3 -s 1000000000 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk1

I left some unallocated space (2014 blocks) between partition 2 and 3.

The resulting partition table looks like this then:

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34      262144      1  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
      262178        2014
      264192  2244603904      2  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  2244868096        2014
  2244870110  1000000000      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  3244870110  1048000001
  4292870111          32         Sec GPT table
  4292870143           1         Sec GPT header

You should choose a bigger size than 1000000000 blocks. The number of blocks has to be dividable through 8. The max size in my case would have been 2048000000 (1000000000 + 1048000001).
Now format the new partition with a file system and name the volume (in the example below Backup):

sudo newfs_hfs -J -v "Backup" /dev/disk1s3

Mount the volume and verify it:

diskutil mount /dev/disk1s3
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk1s3


Airport Express very weak connection I have a very weak connection through my Airport Express. By this I mean not a single Spotify song can play without being interrupted.

My computer is located 6m from the Airport Express in a straight line, with no walls or other obstacles in the way. No DECT phones and no microwave turned on.

Wireless speedtest: download of 0.52Mb/s and upload of 0.07Mb/s

Wired speedtest: download of 23.34Mb/s and upload of 1.80Mb/s with a ping of 43ms.

iStumbler 6m away tells me signal between 35% - 45% and noise around 20%.
iStumbler right next to the Airport Express tells me a signal of around 55% - 60%.

Up until last week things were better, in the sense that Spotify played uninterrupted unless I visit heavy webpages or download big files.

It seems my wired connection is good enough but wireless is awful. How can I fix / debug this further?

Speedtest when I set to channel 3: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3297169246

I'm a big fan of Apple's Wireless Diagnostic tool on recent OS releases (find it with Spotlight as it's not in /Applications).

You can use the Utilities window to view real-time performance and also perform a wireless scan to map all close-by transmitters and see if a suggested channel is better than your current channel for your base station.

The one piece of information missing from your post is how your internet speed test compares to the transmit rate your WiFi adapter is communicating to your base station.

If your signal to noise ratio is below 15 or your transmit rate matches the speed test - then you can work on finding a better antenna / channel or affect thins by improving the radio performance.

If the transmit rate is low - that would reinforce your difference between the WiFi speeds and the wired speeds.

Here are a couple of the better threads to help as well:

What OS X signal strength test apps exist to measure Wi-Fi networking?
A utility for tuning your WiFi network?
Wifi channel selection
OS X status bar wifi icon - meaning of bars?

You can even see how this tool can be used in action in this answer - where I turned on a microwave to show that there was some interference from that device.

If you have an older OS, you can get similar information from the logs and wireless clients section of Airport Utility: (Image from the excellent Anand Tech article on Airport Extreme and Time Capsule - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th-gen-review-faster-wifi-/8)


Applescript string matching failed I want it so that if the current date matches the string, it will log "works!". However it doesn't seem to work.

set datesubmit to "27, May, 2016"
set trydate to {day, month, year} of (current date)
log (trydate)
log (datesubmit)
if trydate is equal to datesubmit then
    log ("works!")
end if

I tried to make sure they are both string type variables but I can't get it to equal. This was the output:

(*27, May, 2016*)
(*27, May, 2016*)

Can someone tell me where I'm wrong?

After some trying I come to the conclusion that a variable set to {day, month, year} of (current date) isn't a "string" with the form "day, month, year" but "daymonthyear".

So you may change the script to

set datesubmit to "27May2016"
set trydate to {day, month, year} of (current date)
log (datesubmit)
log (trydate)
if trydate as string is equal to datesubmit then
    log ("works!")
else
    log ("doesn't work!")
end if

which is not very elegant.

Alternatively you may choose:

set datesubmit to "Friday 27 May 2016"
set trydate to date string of (current date)
log (datesubmit)
log (trydate)
if trydate is equal to datesubmit then
    log ("works!")
else
    log ("doesn't work!")
end if

You always have to add the weekday in the first variable though.

The best proposal (made by the OP itself) is:

set datesubmit to "27, May, 2016"
set trydate to day of (current date) & ", " & month of (current date) & ", " & year of (current date) as string
log (datesubmit)
log (trydate)
if trydate is equal to datesubmit then
    log ("works!")
else
    log ("doesn't work!")
end if


My Files are all classified as "Other" In Finder, every single file on my disk is classified under the "Other" section.  However, when I go to "about this Mac", it shows only  a fraction of my disk is actually "Other".

How do I fix this?  And does this have any other harmful consequences?

I have tried clearing the NVRAM and PRAM. I've tried rebooting and deleting the Finder preferences. I've updated Mac OS X.  None of those fixed it.

Edit: this only happens with my account so it probably can't be anything wrong with CoreServices. Maybe a messed up setting?

Here's an example screenshot of how things look:

In this particular instance All My Files are being exclusively sorted by Tags. The problem here is that this is not exactly obvious or apparent. There are several ways to adjust how files are arranged or sorted in Finder. I find one of the easiest and most convenient ways is to:

  Control + Mouse Click within the window or heading.

(In this case control-clicking Show All in the right corner).

Control Mouse Clicking the inside the window or heading above the files should reveal a menu that shows the options View, Arrange By, and View Options. From there select whichever criteria you might prefer files Arrange By - (Name, Kind, Application, etc).

One thing to note is that within View Options you can choose to Sort By instead of Arrange By, or even both; this can lead to some confusion in itself (which is briefly touched upon here).

The Control and Option keys while mouse clicking within Finder windows can reveal options and menus that directly affect what appears — don't hesitate to discover what's there.


Mac Terminal: Get list of Chinese fonts from a given folder I have a personal folder with many fonts, and a small percentage are Chinese fonts. How can I list them with a terminal command in order to isolate them into another folder ?

I know fc-list but it will give me the list of Chinese fonts in the system folder:

fc-list :lang=zh

fc-scan -f "%{file}\t%{lang}\n" PATH | grep 'zh' | cut -f1 | sort | uniq

Replace PATH with the folder you want to scan. This spits out all filenames inside this directory which are at least of some language containing 'zh'.


Any particular reason Mac OS High Sierra won’t embed Zilla Slab font? I just tried to generate a PDF using the save to PDF option in the print dialog box but for some reason or another, the font won’t embed.

The font in question is Zilla Slab and so far, this issue doesn’t seem to impact other fonts on my system.

You have to install it on your Mac first.

brew tap bramstein/webfonttools
brew update
brew install ttfautohint
brew install bramstein/webfonttools/sfnt2woff
brew install bramstein/webfonttools/woff2


record AppleTV output with USB Type-C cable and Quicktime. Are there no restrictions? DRM? I followed the instructions here and was able to record the AppleTV output. Awesome feature. I tested Youtube, Periscope, a few games and some German Government TV channels.

I don't own pay apps (like Netflix) and couldn't test. Does this work always? Is there no DRM or other limitations? Can the developer of the app disallow recording? How does this work?

Netflix implements High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP). The article you cite specifically mentions that HDCP content won't be recorded.

For an explanation of HDCP - including various potential circumventions - see Wikipedia.


Is Mac Mini's Fusion drive useful if I mostly use windows 8 through Bootcamp? I am considering of buying a Mac Mini with a 1TB Fusion Drive. However I will rarely use OSX (except for iPhone application development) and will mostly be running Windows 8 through Bootcamp. In this setup, is it worth for me to spend extra 250$ on the Fusion Drive?

My understanding is if you want to use Bootcamp, you'll have each drive formatted and available to the software as a two-drive system and not as a one drive - fused hybrid item.

Boot Camp 5: Frequently asked questions - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5639

Out of the box, the BootCamp software will see if you have a CoreStorage fusion drive and just put the Windows partition on the spinning HD. There, it won't even get to see the SSD nor likely any of the data that exists on a core storage volume (which is a mix of files stored on the SSD and on the HDD).

I'd still get the fusion drive since you can always experiment with the BootCamp default situation, experiment with virtualization, and decide to partition both drives to be stand-alone and run BootCamp to install Windows on the SSD itself. Worst case, you don't like the experience and take advantage of Apple's 14 day return policy to get a different Mac if you don't like your Mini once you've tried it for a week or so.

Here's what you'll likely see when you get your Mac. The SSD will be disk0 and the DHH will be disk1 and the combination of disk0s2 and disk1s2 will be the raw space that fuses into Macintosh HD to be a logical:

MacMini:~ me$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         121.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.4 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk1s3

In system profiler under storage, you'll see something similar to this:

Macintosh HD:

  Available:    1 TB (1,000,499,220,480 bytes)
  Capacity: 1.11 TB (1,111,826,497,536 bytes)
  Mount Point:  /
  File System:  Journaled HFS+
  Writable: Yes
  Ignore Ownership: No
  BSD Name: disk2
  Volume UUID:  32F084C9-A737-34BE-9567-165721D02C07
  Logical Volume:
  Revertible:   No
  Encrypted:    No
  LV UUID:  CDBF5035-78F6-4302-B90E-2B9034324A26
  Logical Volume Group:
  Name: Macintosh HD
  Size: 1.12 TB (1,120,333,979,648 bytes)
  Free Space:   115 KB (114,688 bytes)
  LVG UUID: D0EFA715-18BE-408E-8149-838206F04AFB
  Physical Volumes:
disk0s2:
  Media Name:   APPLE SSD SM128E Media
  Size: 120.99 GB (120,988,852,224 bytes)
  Medium Type:  SSD
  Protocol: SATA
  Internal: Yes
  Partition Map Type:   GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  Status:   Online
  S.M.A.R.T. Status:    Verified
  PV UUID:  94835A4F-7029-4334-A9B9-A4F510A11157
disk1s2:
  Media Name:   APPLE HDD ST1000DM003 Media
  Size: 999.35 GB (999,345,127,424 bytes)
  Medium Type:  Rotational
  Protocol: SATA
  Internal: Yes
  Partition Map Type:   GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  Status:   Online
  S.M.A.R.T. Status:    Verified
  PV UUID:  06A43A8A-0F80-4A9F-9034-BD6486F3AA34


Will AirDrop work between an OS X virtual machine and an iPhone? I'm looking for an easy way to transfer files to my iPhone and I don't have a Mac.

I was going to use VirtualBox or VMware Workstation Player.

Is your question here really "How do I get files from a Windows computer onto an iPhone", and you're using an OSX VM to enable AirDrop to achieve that?

If so, you can look at several other ways of sharing files:

DropBox
iCloud for Windows

And most of the big file-sharing services have iPhone apps that will allow you to upload from the desktop side (OSX, Windows, Linux, etc), and access them on the phone.


What happens when importing a PST file in Outlook for Mac? I recently moved from PC to Mac, and have a legacy of PST archives which I'd like one day to access from the MacOS ecosystem.

The folder structure in Outlook for Mac significantly differs from the PC world, in that my standard folder structure is duplicated in "«account name»" (residing on the Exchange server) and "On My Computer" (not residing on the Exchange server).

If I import a PST file, where will the imported data items end up?

When you import a .PST Windows file into Office 2016 on the Mac the PST file is imported into a folder under the heading "On My Computer." The folder structure is maintained and nothing is uploaded to your exchange server that I could tell.

Also of note is that the data is actually imported, where on Windows the PST file is used as a read/write data store.

You also seem to have access to the calendar and contacts data if that was exported as well.


iMac beeps 3 times repeatedly when trying to boot up from a Mac OS X install DVD I have another issue with my iMac, the issue is that it beeps 3 times and they repeat when I start up from a Mac OS X install disc. Recently, I inserted a Mac OS X install disc into my computer, and used the Startup Manager to select the install disc and start/boot up from it. After a while at the grey Apple logo screen, the Mac played 3 tones, and then after 5 seconds, the tones played again/repeated, indicating a POSSIBLE hardware issue, and the startup procedure halted. Do you know what three tones, then a five second pause mean on a Mac? Might be an issue with the RAM. Do any of YOU know?

3 tones indicate a RAM failure, my recommendation is to remove all the RAM sticks and verify one by one; to identify which one is damaged.
If you need more information check this useful link:
About Mac startup tones


How do I clear disk space on Mac OS Catalina? diskutil shows

Container Total Space:     250.1 GB (250135076864 Bytes) (exactly 488545072 512-Byte-Units)
Container Free Space:      10.1 GB (10112528384 Bytes) (exactly 19751032 512-Byte-Units)

Finder says I have 48.56 GB available. Any suggestions for the 38 GB difference?

Catalina beta 4 won't download until I clear more space.

The difference is almost always TimeMachine snap shots.

For more info see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015


How can I add a new search engine to Safari without any 3rd party add-ons? I know add-ons such as Glims can do this, but I would rather stay away from them.  Any native (or more likely semi-native) way to do so?  If it matters, the engine I would like to add is duckduckgo.

No, the only options are Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

If it is of any help, DuckDuckGo have their own extension on the Apple website for Safari extensions.


OS X 10.11 CardDAV with self-signed certificate The CardDAV server I'm trying to connect to uses a self-signed certificate. Unfortunately I cannot do anything about it.

In previous OS X versions, when connecting to this server the system asked if I want to connect using this insecure certificate. I could accept and continue.

When trying the same thing in the current OS X version, this does not work. The Contacts.app only show a connection issue.

When looking into the logs in Console, I could find this error:

02/12/15 00:55:39,637 Contacts[39186]: [CardDAVPlugin-ERROR] -getPrincipalInfo:[_controller discoverServer https://user@host:port(null)]
    Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain
    Code=-1200
    "An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made."
    UserInfo={
        _kCFStreamErrorCodeKey=-9801,
        NSLocalizedRecoverySuggestion=Would you like to connect to the server anyway?
    }

No alert, no asking for proceeding anyways.

Now I thought I might be able to download the certificate, add it to the keychain and set the default trust to "Always Trust".

echo -n | openssl s_client -connect host:port | sed -ne '/-BEGIN CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p' > carddav.cer

Got the certificate, added it to the keychain, set the trust and tried again – bummer:
Same error again and still no confirmation dialog.

Now my question is: Is there any way to allow Contacts.app to connect to my server or to bring back the confirmation dialog?

EDIT

As requested, here are my SSL connection details:

CONNECTED(00000003)
depth=0 CN = , O = , OU = , ST = , C = , L = , emailAddress =
verify error:num=18:self signed certificate
verify return:1
depth=0 CN = , O = , OU = , ST = , C = , L = , emailAddress =
verify return:1
---
Certificate chain
 0 s:/CN=/O=/OU=/ST=/C=/L=/emailAddress=
   i:/CN=/O=/OU=/ST=/C=/L=/emailAddress=
---
Server certificate
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
subject=/CN=/O=/OU=/ST=/C=/L=/emailAddress=
issuer=/CN=/O=/OU=/ST=/C=/L=/emailAddress=
---
No client certificate CA names sent
---
SSL handshake has read 1198 bytes and written 658 bytes
---
New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is AES256-SHA
Server public key is 2048 bit
Secure Renegotiation IS supported
Compression: NONE
Expansion: NONE
No ALPN negotiated
SSL-Session:
    Protocol  : SSLv3
    Cipher    : AES256-SHA
    Session-ID:
    Session-ID-ctx:
    Master-Key:
    Key-Arg   : None
    PSK identity: None
    PSK identity hint: None
    SRP username: None
    Start Time: 1449069604
    Timeout   : 300 (sec)
    Verify return code: 18 (self signed certificate)
---
DONE

According to the Security Enhancements section of the OS X 10.11 pre-release notes on Apple's Developer web site

App Transport Security (ATS)
App Transport Security (ATS) enforces best practices in the secure connections between an app and its back end. ATS prevents accidental disclosure, provides secure default behavior, and is easy to adopt; it is also on by default in OS X v10.11 and iOS 9. You should adopt ATS as soon as possible, regardless of whether you’re creating a new app or updating an existing one.
If you’re developing a new app, you should use HTTPS exclusively. If you have an existing app, you should use HTTPS as much as you can right now, and create a plan for migrating the rest of your app as soon as possible. In addition, your communication through higher-level APIs needs to be encrypted using TLS version 1.2 with forward secrecy. If you try to make a connection that doesn't follow this requirement, an error is thrown. If your app needs to make a request to an insecure domain, you have to specify this domain in your app's Info.plist file.


How to create custom text format style and apply to hotkey in Pages? There are paragraph styles that you can create and tie to the function keys.
This is all great and dandy, but not if I wish to switch style in the middle of a paragraph and then revert to the one I used to begin with. The whole paragraph will change to the one I just selected.

Is there a way to do what I want, or do I have to manually apply the same font, size and colour every time?

I just noticed that there's a thing called "Character Styles" as well that allows me to do exactly what I want!

I created a new style based on a selection and tied it to the function key that I wish to use.
Perfect.


How to move iTunes’ Mobile Applications folder to an external hard drive I wanted to have more free space on my MacBook Air’s internal hard drive, so I moved drives iTunes media folders (i.e. Books, Mobile Applications, Movies, Podcasts and TV Shows) to my external hard drive. Then I used symlinks to link the old locations to the new ones.

Accessing my media is not a problem in any way, but when it comes to updates or new podcast episodes this will simply not work out.

Application updates and podcasts will be kept in the downloads folder within the iTunes Media directory on the internal hard drive. They won’t get moved to the right location and so iTunes still shows the apps as outdated (i.e. I could start the update again and the files will be stored in downloads once again)…

This may not be the answer you are looking for but if you simple want to move you entire itunes library contents onto an external harddrive the simplest, best way in my opinion, is to move your entire ~/Music/iTunes folder onto the external drive then point iTunes to open the library in that location. Its as simple as closing iTunes, moving the folder, and then while opening iTunes again hold the option key (shift key for windows). It will then prompt you to choose which library you want iTunes to open. What you're really selecting is the iTunes library.xml file, but you can select your itunes folder and it will find the file.

If you want to experiment you can do the same thing while opening itunes and create a new library in a new location to play with.


Japanese language input erratic after move to High Sierra After installing High Sierra the Japanese input method has started to behave very oddly:

My keyboard shortcuts to switch input methods all work as expected but...
After switching to Japanese the output is not as expected:
Depending on the application I get either:

a. plain old roman letters, even with 'Live Conversion' activated, and the space bar (normally activating the conversion to kanji) produces a space.

b. roman letters, then hitting the space bar converts directly to kanji (no intervening kana) and the kanji (not the normal 'candidate' list) appears to the right of the original roman letters (it should replace them) It should also be noted that hitting the space bar (aimed at doing the conversion) produces a 'Japanese' space (U+3000).
Apple Apps that show behaviour (a) are search bars in:

Console
App Store
Activity Monitor
Calendar
Font Book
Pages, Text Edit (main text area)

Apple Apps that show behaviour (b) are:

Dictionary (search bar)
Safari (Search/Address bar)

All the non-Apple apps I've tried so far are in the (a) 'complete fail' category.

Re-installing the system had no effect. Likewise repairing permissions by running First Aid from Disk Utility.

There is no text replacement software installed, also no anti-virus software.

A new user account created on the same machine does not suffer from this problem.

Perhaps relatedly, my 'Region and Language' preference pane refuses to load and causes the System Preferences app to freeze when clicked. This does produce an error message in the Console, it reads (helpfully!) <private>.

If anybody has any suggestions as to a straightforward solution, or at least a strategy to identify the problem, I would be extremely grateful.

Cheers.

The most straightforward solution is to move everything to a working account.

It used to be you could usually fix these kinds of problems by trashing .plists and .cache files in Home/Library of the bad account, but it seems to be less successful and more tedious with the most recent versions of MacOS.


Can I wake up iPhone by double tapping the screen? Can I wake up an iPhone/iPad by double tapping the screen without hacking/installing Cydia?

You can't do this natively as part of the built-in functions of iOS.  There are a few apps that allows knocking, one is called MacID.  I've used it for a few years and the developer is very responsive to support issues.


iMessage Profile Picture So recently I took a  picture for my iMessage profile using the camera, I ended up really liking the picture so I was thinking if theres any way I can save it or find it

In iMessage - Double click the current pic to reveal the change panel.

It should open on Recents, showing you the current choice and any other pic that has been used in System Preferences > User and Groups > you account > Picture, and the Contacts App > My Card > your pic.

or

Messages Menu > Change my Picture!


Finding lost partitions I am resetting my sister's MBP late 2010 to factory defaults. It's all backed up. I'm reinstalling from the recovery partition currently. Before I started working on it today, it had the very descriptive problem: "wouldn't boot."

I previously had installed Ubuntu on this since she wanted to try it, and it was run as a dual boot system for about a year. Now, the disk space needs to be brought back into Mac, since the HDD was almost full. To top it off, Grub/rEFInd seem to have gotten lost at some point along the way during an upgrade, so Ubuntu is functionally gone anyway.

I did some research, took it into safemode, which did boot, backed up, and then booted into recovery (command + r), opened up disk utility, formatted, and clicked the - button on the three Linux partitions (boot, swap, and file system, I believe).

Now, when I look in Disk Utility, on my 320GB HDD I see a ~200GB Macintosh HD (which I have erased and formatted), a Recovery HD, and there's over 100GB missing. There's no other partitions, and I can't expand the Macintosh HD partition.

Immediately after removing the partitions, I had a Partition Table error when I ran Verify on the HDD. Repair kept failing, so I rebooted into recovery mode and ran repair. Now there's no error, but still no drives.

When click on the HDD and go to the Partition tab, I can choose 1 Partition, which does correctly show 320GB. Otherwise, I can't find the lost 100GB. I tried enabling debug mode (something like defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1) and checking making everything visible, but the partitions still are not visible.

My questions:

Is it possible to reinstall without the disks (not my machine, no idea where the disk is) if I change the drive to 1 partition and format it? Am I going to be able to do this from Recovery Tools?
Following Unable to increase partition size with subsequent blocking partition, I believe after reinstalling OSX I will be able to use a 3rd Party utility, probably gParted, to move stuff around on the drive. Can I use gParted from an Ubuntu live disk for this?
Is there a way to make the partitions reappear is disk utility so that I can at least format them?

After reinstall finished:

Edit: Per the comment, here's the output of sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  423215696      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  423625336    1269544      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  424894880    1269536      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  426164416  198977999
  625142415         32         Sec GPT table
  625142447          1         Sec GPT header

And a screenshot of DiskUtility's output. As you can see, my 320.07GB HDD has a partition just shy of 217GB Macintosh HD. The Recovery HD partition is 654MB, leaving 102GB lost.

As the gpt command reveals you have two recovery partitions (and a lot of unallocated disk space after partition 4):

partition 3 with a wrong size (1269544 blocks) and a correct partition type (426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC)
partition 4 with the correct size (1269536 blocks) and a wrong partition type & visibility

The second Recovery HD (slightly visible below the Macintosh HD in your screenshot) is blocking the expansion of the volume Macintosh HD. The easiest procedure to solve your problem is to boot to Internet Recovery Mode and completely reformat the internal drive and reinstall OS X:

According to this Apple support document your MacBook Pro (Mid 2010)* can be upgraded to use Internet Recovery after applying a firmware upgrade. Since the firmware upgrade was published in 2012 I assume that it was applied already.

So to answer the first part of your first question: After booting to Internet Recovery Mode you may install Mac OS X Lion. In Internet Recovery Mode usually the Mac OS X the Mac originally was shipped with will be installed. For Snow Leopard Macs like your MBP Mid 2010 Mac OS X Lion will be installed.

To initiate the Internet Recovery Mode restart your Mac and press alt cmd R.
The prerequisites for an Internet Recovery are listed here: Recovery/Internet Recovery.
In a few words you need the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated for a successful internet recovery.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into the Recovery Netboot image which is loaded from an Apple server.

After booting successfully open Disk Utility and repartition your disk to 1 JHFS+ partition with a GUID partition table. Quit Disk Utility and start 'Reinstall OS X'. Depending on your internet connection the reinstall will take some time.

The second part of question 1 as well as the questions 2 and 3 are obsolete after following the above instructions and successfully reinstalling Mac OS X Lion.

*: A MacBook Pro (Late 2010) never was produced/sold, so I assume it's a MacBook Pro (Mid 2010)


Changing Font back after copying and pasting item My daughter was typing work on her MacBook using Microsoft word. She copied and pasted an item and then deleted item. It changed her font and won't let her finish typing like she was. How can she change her font?

It tends to happen because the last space or 'new line' didn't get deleted too, so any further typing is already set to that new font. This can happen in any text app, it's not Word-specific.

The 'proper' way to fix it is to make sure everything was tidily deleted & that the font from the end of the current part is as it should be...
...which is a complete nuisance to bother with, so...

The 'clever' way to do it is just go back to before the last full stop [.] (period US Eng) & start typing from there instead.
That way you know that the font, at that point, was already set to what you were using.
You can forward delete that full stop if you wish, it tends to prevent auto-correct & spellcheck from working properly whilst it's there.

An alternative, but only if you haven't already spent some time doing specific formatting, is to select all  Cmd ⌘   A  then re-select your chosen font, which will set the entire document.


Can I configure the same gestures on Magic Mouse as Trackup? Is it possible to configure a Magic Mouse to have identical gestures to the trackpad?

The similarity of both a trackpad and magic mouse, but having the gestures not be the same, is very confusing. Two finger scroll? Pinch to zoom? Three finger mission control? Can I get all of these on the Magic Mouse?

BetterTouchTool lets you configure both devices.


Youtube videos will not play under OSX 10.6.8 I get a black rectangle with the "f" icon, but it won't play when I click on it.

Apple stopped updating OSX 10.6.8 so is its Flash too out of date to run?

I am going with your comment that says:

  Youtube says my version of Safari is no longer supported.

YouTube is (if they haven't finished already) migrating from Flash to HTML5.  If you can't view videos, this is the reason.

What you need to do, is get a browser that will support HTML5.  TenFourFox is the the browser that will solve this problem for you.  It is a port of a recent FireFox build to older versions of OS X

I personally have used this browser on an XServe G4 with 10.5 and I am able to view YouTube videos.


Access chat in Microsoft Teams after meeting Is there any way to access chats after a meeting in Microsoft Teams?
I have some kind of MS Teams app on my macbook. I use it to join a MS Teams meeting when I'm invited to one.
However, it is not the 'complete' Teams app which also has chat, filesharing and other stuff. I am not part of some company team with a Active Directory account, so i cannot 'log in' to Teams. The app just opens when i click 'Join Meeting' from an invite.
So after i wave goodbye and exit the meeting, where to the chats go?

Those chats are stored in the storage bucket belonging to the tenant that paid to host the meeting. As a guest to the meeting it’s up to the persons configuring teams server-side whether you get to participate in chat past the meeting time or just for the duration of the meeting.
I’ve found the in app help to be excellent, but we pay a lot for O365 and I believe our requests go into a priority queue. I would still recommend even free accounts try the help in app, nevertheless for this situation.
Your app is the same as everyone’s. Just like Office apps on macOS, it’s the same app for everyone, but the license you bring to it enables features based on which license Microsoft sees for your app/account. All you may need to do is pay more for your teams license if you need extra features.
In the paid version, the meeting chat is stored in the calendar, so as Microsoft adds features to the free tier, be sure to check in the calendar tab for past chats in case you do have access to them now or later.


How to reassociate Time Machine backup with the computer I was taking taking time machine backup on a network drive in a sparsebundle image. In order to use another usb HDD (exfat) to take backup I ran the commands explained here: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20140415132734925

Now the previous backup destination is deassociated with the Time Machine and when I appended this (network) destination again using follwoing command it starts backing up from the scratch (first backup)

sudo tmutil setdestination -a  '/Volumes/MacBook-Backup/'

Can anyone tell me how do I reassociate the network sparsebundle the the my Mac as it has latest backup.

sudo tmutil inheritbackup "/path/to/backup.sparsebundle"

  Machine directories and sparsebundles are owned by one computer at a time, and are tracked by unique identifiers rather than computer name, host name, or ethernet address. The inheritbackup verb reassigns the identity of the specified item, reconfiguring it so the current host recognizes it during backups. When inheriting a sparsebundle, the machine directory within will also be claimed.

This performs automatic inheritance of the computer and disk backups located within. This may not function correctly. If not, you may need to manually associate the disk within the backup with your current disk.

sudo tmutil associatedisk -a "/" "/Volumes/backupdisk/Backups.backupdb/computername/Latest/localdiskname"

  The -a option tells associatedisk to find all snapshot volumes in the same machine directory that match the identity of MyStuff, and then perform the association on all of them.


How do I find out which apple id's are authorized on my computer? This is an inverse of the 'which computers have I authorized'

iTunes is fussing and refused to put some 30 apps back on my phone (mac had a hard disk crash.  Restored from backup, but not clear that all the permissions are right.)  I reentered all 3 authorizations, and got 'Already authorized' for two of them.  This reduced the unloadable app count to 20.

Anyway, my wife and I between us have at least 3 apple IDs, one of which we have changed from the older 'arbitrary character string including spaces' to the 'use a valid email address' format.

The apps in question when I open iTunes go to apps, right click an app, and type 'get info' show the old format for the third id:  "firstname lastname" Not the user@gmail.com.

On her computer the id shows up as "firstname lastname (user@gmail.com)"

I have authorized user@gmail.com and got the 'already authorized' message.

Q1.  Where I can find out which apple id's are authorized on this computer?

Note I do NOT want to find out which comptuters this id is authorized on.

Didn't find a list, but the following strategy worked.

I logged out as me, logged in as the problem id, and attempted a sync.  This time it asked me to authorize the other two id's.

Before I had clicked Store, Authorize this computer, and entered the id and password.  I would have thought these two to be equivalent.


How do I stop FileVault's decryption? I accidentally turned off FileVault on my MacBook when trying to allow downloaded Canon driver software to be opened. FileVault is currently decrypting and I want to stop it as soon as possible. How do I stop FileVault decryption?

You have to let it finish FileVault decryption entirely before you can turn it back on. This can take hours or sometimes days, so you'll have to be patient. Encryption also takes nearly as long. There's nothing to do but wait for it to complete.

If you have a MacBook, be sure to keep it plugged in, as FileVault wont decrypt or encrypt while on battery power.

You should still be able to use your computer while it decrypts/encrypts.


Time Machine - An error occurred while restoring from the backup Having some trouble restoring a Time Machine backup. After some initial disk problems we had to reinstall OSX and this is what has been done thus far:

Booted into Internet Recovery Mode (Command (⌘) – Option (⌥) – R)
Reinstalled OSX
Rebooted and into Recovery Mode (Option (⌥) – R)
Selected to Restore from the Time Machine Backup
Restore goes fine for 6+ hours (91%) and then fails with the message, "An error occurred while restoring from the backup. Restart your computer, and then try again"
I tried an older backup from the same sparse bundle but having the same problem.

I have tried this three times but it fails in the same location each time. Any suggestions at this point would be Welcome.

Basically you have to explore what's going wrong and fix it manually.
Hope this helps:

Inspect the installer 'Log' and if you have a 'Critical failure' pertaining to a particular folder(s), proceed with these steps:

Connect your backup to a working Mac (or fresh install MacOS on the Mac you're trying to restore to)

Open Terminal and mount the Time Capsule's sparse bundle (if using a Capsule rather than a USB/network drive).

In Terminal, use TMSafetyNet.kext to remove the troublesome folders one by one.

Return to Recovery Mode on the target machine and restore with the fixed backup.

Source: my blogpost, updated as MacOS updates


Downgrade to older version of app while keeping app data? Is there a way to downgrade an app and keep the app data you have built up by using the newer version of the app (e.g. keep game scores, keep wifi test history, etc...)

If you have the app binary IPA cached and ready to install, yes you can try that by wiping the device, reload the data and only restore the app version you control.

This is not something that’s been easy or even possible for most people without prior setup work in the past few years as iTunes no longer manages local IPA downloads.

ground control might work if you’re already using that
Apple configurator might be able to help if you already use it

In almost all cases, the answer is no. Even if you’re a dedicated IT department, you will need to plan to prevent upgrades until you test things as opposed to have a roll back option.

App upgrade and installation is one way forward by very intentional design. Work with the vendor to fix your issue in the next build or choose to not use the app are the practical choices for the vast majority of cases.


"open or reload" html doc from command line? I have a program which generates some html documentation.  At the end of the script, I use the open command to automatically view the page in the browser.

generate-document > index.html
open index.html

However, after iterating on the code, I end up with numerous obsolete copies of index.html open in my browser.

Is there a way (either from the command line, or within the browser) to say something like "if index.html is already being viewed refresh it, otherwise load it."?

generate-document > index.html
open-or-reload index.html

Safari or Chrome specific methods are fine.

Check out LiveReload. It is an app that watches your HTML files and can automatically for reload the pages in your browser. LiveReload can also do other things like automatically recompile SASS files to CSS and then reload the browser.

In addition to the app at the link above, LiveReload is available on GitHub under a "Open Community Indie Software License" which is not quite open source, but does include a dead man clause to convert to MIT if no new binary updates come out for two years. https://github.com/livereload/LiveReload


How to send all the messages under a contact to an email I need to send all my messages under a contacts name to an email. Is there a way to select all and then send to a given email?

You can only hold one text bubble, then select what text you want and forward it via sms/imessage again, or you can just copy the text and then compose a new email and paste the text in there. :)


Can UEFI Secure Boot be achieved on Macs prior to T2 secure chip? A little bit more detail, what i'm curious about is if a Mac's firmware can be set up to validate a EFI binary's attached signature against a cert that's stored in the EFI variables by user.
If so, how does Mac toggle between normal mode and set up mode? (as in allowing/forbidding the certs in EFI variables to be modified)
The scenario i have in mind is to have a recent Intel Mac right before the T2 chip got added, say the Haswell generation around 2014 and 2015, and i hope to have the Mac's firmware to validate the integrity of the grub efi binary before booting it.
Thanks!

Apple only officially supports macOS and Windows for use on Macs. Therefore, the firmware does not support Secure Boot. A Mac with a T2 chip can be configured to only allow booting of macOS and Windows 10. A Mac's firmware can not validate the integrity of a grub efi binary. Having T2 chip does not change this.
As for a setup mode, basically a Mac with a T2 has the following window.

The instructions for configuring can be found at the Apple website About Startup Security Utility.


Can SteerMouse sensitivity be automated? I have to adjust the cursor sensitivity in SteerMouse every time I switch between my home mouse and my work mouse. Is there a way to do this programmatically?

You should check if SteerMouse supports applescript by opening applescript editor and then clicking File -> Open Dictionary. If it does, please reply back.

In the meantime, there is a indirect solution, which is to have two separate preferences files for work and home and switching between them.

First, set your home settings. You'll find the preferences file at ~/Library/Preferences/SteerMouse.prefs. Copy that and rename the copy to SteerMouse_home.prefs. Then adjust them for work and copy those preferences and name them SteerMouse_work.prefs.

Then, in applescript editor, copy this code and save it as an application.

property myLocation : ""

if myLocation is "" then
    set myLocation to "Home"
end if

if myLocation is "Home" then
    do shell script "mv -f ~/Library/Preferences/SteerMouse_home.prefs ~/Library/Preferences/SteerMouse.prefs"
    set myLocation to "Work"

else if myLocation is "Work" then
    do shell script "mv -f ~/Library/Preferences/SteerMouse_work.prefs ~/Library/Preferences/SteerMouse.prefs"
    set myLocation to "Home"
end if

#You'll only need this part if the app needs to be restarted for the changes to occur.
tell application "SteerMouse"
    quit
    activate
end tell


How do I identify if an email address is already used as an Apple ID? My wife needs her own Apple ID, so I went to this webapp, which Apple has designed to let you know if you already have an Apple ID associated with your email:

https://iforgot.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/DSiForgot.woa/wa/findYourAppleID

It said my wife's email address was not associated with an Apple ID.  Great!  So I went to this webapp to create her ID:

https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/103/wa/createAppleId/

But after I entered her email (and other info), it said this email was already in use or associated with an Apple ID.

So which is it?  Does she have an Apple ID or not?  If not, how can I find out how Apple is already using this email?

I suggest trying the forgot password link: https://iforgot.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/DSiForgot.woa/wa/iforgot?language=NZ-EN&app_id=93&s=523-523

If it doesn't work you should probably contact iTunes support


Two iTunes installs pointing at the same NAS share For many years, I have had a set of mp3 files on a NAS that I manually managed (I've been picky about artist/album/track naming). The two Macbooks in our house each have their own iTunes libraries (the itl and xml files) on their respective local drives at ~/Music/iTunes/. To add music, I just make sure the SMB or AFP share is mounted and then do "Add to Library" in iTunes, pointing it at the top of the music file tree on the mounted directory from the NAS. This has worked fine for years.

Now, I'm thinking I would like the entire iTunes folder (everything from ~/Music/iTunes and below) to live on the NAS and just let iTunes keep the music organized in a folder below this directory. But, I'd like still like to have both MacBooks keep their own library. We both manage syncing to iDevices by "sync only checked songs..." so we need our own version of what is checked and unchecked along with our own smart playlists.

Is what I'm trying to do possible? What if I play games with symlinks on the NAS (it's a Linux box running Samba and netatalk.)

My solution for that is having only one computer managing the library. First it was a PC running iTunes for Windows. Then, I moved to Ubuntu and started using Banshee for both managing the library and keeping my iPod updated. Finally, I have a Mac Book Pro and I have moved back to iTunes.

The Linux server, running both Samba and Netatalk, acts also as a mediacenter (with XBMC) that shares music also over uPNP, so I can access and play music from virtually any network device, even from the Internet.

In the past I've tried other schemas involving iTunes and network filesystems and it always turned into a headache.


How can I add CC and BCC fields in Gmail app? I wonder how to add CC and BCC fields in Gmail app. I use iOS 9.

Here is what I see:

Clicking on + didn't reveal anything exciting.

I have just noticed a very small arrow near top right. Click this to reveal cc and bcc.


Can I control an iPad with an Apple TV remote? Normally I watch TV and Movies using an Apple TV. I love being able to easily Pause and Skip Backward/Forward using the Apple TV's Siri Remote.

But in other places in the house I might watch on an iPad. Or even sometimes on an iPhone.

When I'm watching, I often prop the iPad up on a table or otherwise out of reach. So it's inconvenient to touch the screen. In the worst case, tapping the screen might tip over the iPad. I really just want to use a remote.

Is it possible to control an an iPad with an Apple TV Siri Remote via Bluetooth?

Note: I'm not asking about controlling an Apple TV with the iOS "Remote" app. I want the the reverse.

There's no way to use the remote which comes with an Apple TV to control the iPad, but you can connect an Apple or third-party bluetooth keyboard to control your iPad.
Quoth Apple:

Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Keyboard compatibility with iOS devices
Apple Wireless Keyboard, Magic Keyboard, and many Bluetooth keyboards that use the Apple keyboard layout work with these iOS devices.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202041
Note: In addition to Apple keyboards, many third-party Bluetooth keyboards that use the Apple keyboard layout work with iOS devices. Check with the keyboard manufacturer for additional information.

After connecting a Bluetooth keyboard, Mac-like keyboard shortcuts will work to control video playback on the iPad. Spacebar to play/pause, arrow keys to skip forward and backward and to control the volume.


How to rm /Volumes/Free when it is really free? Short problem background

OS X version 10.10.5, running on an iMac with no problem (uptime = 101 days).
I had an USB key, named "Free" mounted on /Volumes/Free.
I wrote successfully a file on it, and verified it successfully with
Disk Utility.
Then I tried to eject it from the Finder. This operation fired the beach balloon but no message was written on /var/log/system.log.
After a while the Finder displayed me an error message telling me
my volume couldn't be ejected because in use.

Since I needed the USB slot to restart the copy operation on another
USB key, I ejected my USB key "Free".
And the Finder displayed me the usual error message because the volume
was unmounted incorrectly.

Problem seen actually

I have now a directory /Volumes/Free which stayed in place and which I can't easily remove.

••On_my_Mac••% ls -@del /Volumes/Free
d--x--x--x+ 2 root  admin  102 Jul 11 14:01 /Volumes/Free
 0: group:everyone inherited deny add_file,add_subdirectory,directory_inherit
••On_my_Mac••%

Neither Spotlight nor any other daemon stayed with this directory opened:

••On_my_Mac••% /usr/bin/sudo lsof /Volumes/Free
••On_my_Mac••%

Nonetheless I get the following error upon trying to remove it:

••On_my_Mac••% /usr/bin/sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Free
rm: /Volumes/Free/.autodiskmounted: Permission denied
rm: /Volumes/Free: Permission denied
••On_my_Mac••%

If I further try to analyze this filesystem problem, I get:

••On_my_Mac••% /usr/bin/sudo chmod u+rw /Volumes/Free
••On_my_Mac••% /usr/bin/sudo ls -@ael /Volumes/Free
ls: fts_read: Permission denied
••On_my_Mac••% /usr/bin/sudo ls -@del /Volumes/Free/.autodiskmounted
-rw-r--r--  1 root  admin  0 Jul 11 14:01 /Volumes/Free/.autodiskmounted
••On_my_Mac••%

I didn't try a reboot because this is not a short term an option on the server involved.

Which daemon is responsible of this situation?

How may I further analyze this problem?

You tried the command given below.

/usr/bin/sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Free

Try entering the following.

sudo sh
/System/Library/Extensions/TMSafetyNet.kext/Contents/Helpers/bypass rm -rf /Volumes/Free
exit


How to upgrade bash to v4.0+ properly? I'm on OS X 10.10.2 and

$ /bin/bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin14)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

How to upgrade bash to v4.0+ properly?

Update:

After installing bash with pkgsrc

 pkgin install bash

I got newer bash but it isn't default:

$ which bash
/bin/bash
$ /usr/pkg/bin/bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.3.30(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin13)
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin14)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

How to make the newer bash the default one?

I reccomend getting Homebrew. Then run brew install bash, it will install bash 4.3.33. It's the easiest and safest way.

Then add the path to the executable to /etc/shells. For example:

/usr/local/bin/bash


How long should my System password be? In the early versions of Mac OS X, only the first 8 characters of any password was used. Later Apple increased that number.

A proper password system stores a hash not the actual password. In that case, a longer password/passphrase is generally better so as to increase the chance of a generating a hash value not already pre-calculated. I assume Apple is using this hash technique for authenticating system login users.

It Mavericks, what is the maximum number of characters in a passphrase used by Apple's user account login?

I tested passwords up to 480 characters (in OS X version 10.8.5) and it used all of them; around 480 the passwd command had a little trouble setting passwords, but it was slightly inconsistent, so I'm not sure if that's a real limit. I didn't test with the System Prefs interface, because it doesn't allow pasting passwords, and there's no way I'm typing something that long (twice!). Basically, it'll use as much as you can stand to type.


Strategy for storage on Mac Pro with SSD I've switched my 2008 MacBook Pro to SSD, and love the speed increase.

I'm now keen to do the same on my 2007 Mac Pro desktop. I've currently got 1Tb + 2*500Gb disks installed.  My strategy is to go for a startup disk of about 128Gb, with the 'bare minimum' stored on it, then leave the rest of my data on the traditional hard disks.

So, if I'm mostly doing Java (Eclipse) development, plus a couple of VMWare Fusion Windows installations (used for testing), what is it most worth putting on the SSD?  And what shall I just leave on the magnetic disks.

My gut feeling is that it's worth putting my Java IDE plus sources on SSD, since in compilation there's lots of disk access.  The Fusion VMs can probably sit on Magnetic disks, I don't mind a penalty starting them up: it's just once per week or so.

Sugestions welcome...

I have been building out Mac Pros for a while with SSD for the boot, user accounts and all the apps that fit.

Placing the large user data that doesn't fit as well as large Apps on the magnetic storage has worked well as the system and user caches stay on the SSD. You absolutely want your code and build scratch / temp files / object files on SSD for speed reasons.

The simpler the better - I have been using software RAID to span the HDD so the users all see three volumes whether or not they have one drive partitioned, a mix of SSD/HDD or full SSD/HDD and external drives for data and/or TimeMachine.

Macintosh HD - SSD unless lower performance is OK.
Data - all the HDD striped (optional on non SSD macs)
Time Machine - internal if possible - external

On the fastest macs - we are thinking of striping 3 SSD as DATA - moving the Time Machine to external storage as buying large (teraByte) SSD is still a costly proposition.


Can iSight be used by more than 1 application at the same time? Just what the title says. Is it supported? If so - does this depend on application or on the system?

The simple answer is no - in general the one camera only sends data to one app.

The more complicated answer is that the API (application programming interface) that Apple publishes enforces this restriction. If a developer hooks into the hardware directly or there is a bug in the API, it is possible to share that stream.

So for most Apps made by someone other than Apple, once the iSight is in use by one application, it is unavailable to other applications until the application releases the use of it or the application closes. User Gentmatt rightly points out that this is not the case for Facetime and Photobooth, where Apple is either using an undocumented or private API or accessing the hardware directly so that both apps can share the camera feed.


How can I diagnose why I can no longer access certain sites on certain networks since I upgraded to Mountain Lion? Since upgrading to Mountain Lion, I can no longer see certain sites, when connected to certain networks.

I have a 2011 15" MacBook Pro (Quad-Core i7) which came with Lion (actually I think it came with Snow Leopard and a free upgrade to get Lion form the Mac App Store).

I work as a consultant on a client site. I connect my laptop to a WiFi network at the client.

I have recently upgraded to Mountain Lion, and since then when I am on the client's network, I can no longer visit certain sites. One of the sites affected is *.apple.com - including www.apple.com, the iTunes store, the App Store and developer.apple.com.

I used to be able to access all of these sites prior to upgrading.

I thought that maybe the client's IT services had blocked certain sites at the same time - maybe seeing a spike of traffic to the app store when people upgraded, but that is not the case. I can access the site from other devices on the same network. Also, apple.com is not the only one I cannot access.

I thought that maybe there was something wrong with my laptop, but I have no trouble connecting to these sites when I am connected to my own company's VPN (over the very same client's WiFi network).

As far as I can tell, it only happens for certain sites, when connected through this one network, only after I upgraded to Mountain Lion.

I suspect that it has something to do with DNS resolution, and possibly to do with sites that redirect in a certain way - for example apple.com redirects to edge networks like Akamai - and possibly something to do with how the client network is set up, and possibly to do with some change in the network stack in Mountain Lion (but none of these factors on its own - only in combination!)

Has anyone else experienced this?

What can I do to fix it?

Or at the very least to help diagnose it and report to the company's IT team and to Apple?

Update: I have noticed, since I posted this, that it only affects Safari, iTunes Store and Mac App Store (I imagine they all use the same underlying component), but not Firefox or Chrome.

UPDATE 2: Since the 10.8.2 update to Mountain Lion, this problem has gone away – Vihung Oct 8 '12

When I've had this issue in the past, like the two day period when I couldn't access Flickr from my laptop but I could from other machines, the solution was to flush the DNS Cache: essentially a small database on your machine that can help (or so my understanding) speed up network access.

According to the latest Apple Support document on this, the command is:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5343


Bootcamp and Macbook Pro and TrueCrypt I am using Bootcamp on my Macbook Pro and have Windows 7 installed.

Unfortunately, due to the changing nature of my work, I need to switch to full time Windows, and encrypt my laptop.  I'm going to delete my OSX partition, leaving only my Windows 7 partition, and install Truecrypt, but I get the message saying that the first 32 kB of my system drive needs to be free in order to use TrueCrypt.

With the Macbook Pro, it looks like there is a 200MB GPT partition at the beginning of the drive.  If I'm going to use Windows 7 exclusively on this MBP, can I delete that 200 MB partition, or will this cause me booting issues?

The first partition on an Apple Disk Utility drive is a 200MB EFI System Partition. OS X 10.8 and older do not need it for booting, but it is used for staging firmware updates. If it's removed, firmware updates won't be possible. Depending on exactly what TrueCrypt wants, you could resize the EFI System Partition, as 200MB isn't really required, by changing the start sector and then reformatting the EFI System partition (as FAT32).


Reversing some /usr/local damage I was following this tutorial - http://howtonode.org/introduction-to-npm - and set /usr/local to $USER, which I now realise was a huge mistake.

Does anyone know how I can revert these changes, but still allow Homebrew, Node, Ruby, etc to install without requiring sudo?

As for the first part of your question, you can't revert the changes, there's no ⌘
Z or undo command, but you can set the permissions to a good guess of what it was before. More on this in the first bullet below.

To install software in /usr/local you must have write permissions in the directory (and its subdirectories). There are several ways to achieve this:

Set the owner to yourself. That's what you did with sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local. My Linux sysadmin background tells me this is not the standard way, because /usr/local is outside your home directory and shouldn't be owned by you. But I wouldn't say you damaged anything irreparably.
Use sudo, but you don't want to be required to use it.

(From my point of view the best solution. Why? sudo protects you from yourself. You think twice if you need to type sudo (unless you are following a tutorial from http://howtonode.org :-) ).)
Set ACLs. Nice way to separate the original permissions from your added permissions. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_control_list for more info on ACLs.)
Configure groups. Add yourself to the group that owned /usr/local  and change permissions to g+rwx/g+rw. Cumbersome. Don't do that.

You did 1. and want to revert the changes, 2. you don't want, and I don't recommend 4., so I'll explain 3.:

Let's first "revert" the changes you made. /usr/local was probably owned by user root, group wheel. You can set it as follows:

$ cd /usr/local
$ sudo chown -R root:wheel .

Set the ACLs so that you have all permissions:

$ cd /usr/local
$ sudo chmod -R +a "$USER allow delete,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,list,search,add_file,add_subdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directory_inherit" .

(see man chmod, section ACL MANIPULATION OPTIONS for details.)
You will see that all files have a + appended, ls -e shows the ACLs:

$ cd /usr/local
$ ls -la .
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+ 11 root  wheel   374 Oct 10 21:57 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 12 root  wheel   442 Sep 22 13:44 ..
drwxr-xr-x+  3 root  wheel  3774 Oct 10 21:57 bin
-rw-r--r--+  1 jaume wheel    0  Oct 25 14:53 myACLtestfile
drwxr-xr-x+  3 root  wheel   136 Jul 26 18:55 include
drwxr-xr-x+  4 root  wheel   442 Jul 26 18:55 lib
(...)
$ ls -led bin
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 root  wheel  3774 Oct 10 21:57 bin
 0: user:jaume allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,file_inherit,directory_inherit
$ ls -le myACLtestfile
-rw-r--r--+ 1 jaume  wheel  0 Oct 25 14:53 myACLtestfile
 0: user:jaume inherited allow read,write,execute,delete,append,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown

(I've tested the commands above, but I may have made a typo. As best practice I recommend that you run the commands above in a test directory. You could do mkdir ~/tmpacl. Then cd ~/tmpacl and sudo rsync -av /usr/local/ . to copy the contents of /usr/local to ~/tmpacl. Then skip cd /usr/local in every section above to apply the commands to ~/tmpacl. When you are done, rm -rf ~/tmpacl.)

Now you can install software (or do anything, for that matter) in /usr/local without sudo.

Notice that any file you create in /usr/local will belong to you (as myACLtestfile in the listing above), so you will see that some files are owned by root and others by you.

(If you change your mind and want to go back to the wonderful world of sudo, delete the ACLs as follows:

sudo chmod -R -N /usr/local

and set permissions to root:wheel:

sudo chown -R root:wheel /usr/local

)

** EDIT **

If the setup routine of the software you want to install uses /usr/bin/install this may be a much simpler solution. Add:

alias install="sudo /usr/bin/install"

to ~/.bashrc. Then do . ~/.bashrc for changes to take effect.

Then edit /etc/sudoers with command sudo visudo, add:

<your username> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/install

and save and close the file with :x.

(If you use other install command elsewhere in the filesystem, like GNU install, change the path above appropriately.)

For this to work the software must use /usr/bin/install. This is usually the case with make install.

** /EDIT **


How to access to the '.config' folder on mac? I need to access to '/Users/marienfarge/.config/NuGet' for a problem with virtual studio but i can't open the folder. (I have a red '-' on the folder)
When I tried to open it : 'Impossible to open the folder '.config' because you don't have the necessary authorization to display his content.' (translate form french so it's maybe not exactly this message for english user)
So I tried to modify the access in the info panel and I give the read & write access for everyone but I still can't open the folder.
Someone told me to wrote this in the terminal : ls -leO@d /Users/marienfarge/.config/NuGet
And this is the answer : ls: /Users/marienfarge/.config/NuGet: Permission denied
I'm the only user of the mac and I have the last os version.
ls -leO@d /Users/marienfarge/.config provides the result
drwx---rwx  3 root  staff  - 96  9 nov 15:47 /Users/marienfarge/.config

You don't have access rights for this directory. Run
sudo chown marienfarge ~marienfarge/.config
chmod 711 ~marienfarge/.config


Parallels cant access SSD partitions I have 4 partitions

MAC
Shared 1 exFAT
Windows
Shared 2 exFAT

I can see the partitions when Windows natively but when I am booting Windows through Parallels I cant access any other partitions but Windows

Is there any ways I can fix that?

Was trying this solution http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?88709-Creating-custom-Boot-Camp-configurations-in-Parallels-Desktop-4 but not working in the Parrallels 9

In VM configuration, did you check the Options>Sharing settings are OK ?

SmartMount should be checked.

And verify that all the volumes are mounted by MacOS.


Does turning iMessage off remove previous iMessages and text messages? Does turning iMessage off remove previous iMessages and text messages that were saved on the device?

No. Your messages are tied to the device specifically, not necessarily the account.

If you wanted to delete the messages, you could delete whole conversations by swiping left in the messages list or individually deleting messages by double tapping on the message.


How can I isolate macOS 10.14.6 Mojave freezing 1-2 seconds every few minutes except for sound and the mouse? Since a week or two I am experiencing a very strange problem on my MacBook Pro running macOS 10.14.6 Mojave. (Build 18G103)
No matter what I'm doing, typing something in a browser or text editor or other application, watching a video on youtube or in VLC, every few minutes the whole system become non-responsive for like 1 or 2 seconds.
When the machine is "stunned":

The keyboard does not respond to typing in any app

video playback stops no matter which app or browser

mouse clicks don't register

cursor movement does work and respond

any sound that is playing, keeps on playing normally.
When I was typing something, the letters don't appear, but after 1-2 sec when the system continues, the letters still appear as if they were cached somehow.

This persists across reboots, activity monitor shows no fancy stuff taking CPU in the background. I did not recently install any particular new software myself, other than just updates. It makes no difference if I have multiple apps running or only the one I'm using.
Is there any way to find out what application or process is causing these short freezes, and preferably get rid of them?

I've seen precisely this problem on many, many versions of macOS, both release and beta. Usually the delay is caused by some Apple process. For me, diagnosing is not the problem, the problem is fixing it.

You didn't say how much memory your computer has. A few years ago, Apple introduced compression on virtual memory. This is especially important in SSD-based computers: it decreases wear on the SSD to just compress memory, rather than sending it out to mass storage. But more and more programs are using more and more memory. So most of the freezes I've seen are related to long-running processes, typically Apple's processes used for things like curating photographs or background indexing of the SSD, waking up, having lots of memory decompressed, making the program you are using have its memory compressed, and then the scheduler changing its mine and giving your program memory.  One of the related problems is that the Mach process scheduler doesn't seem to be as memory and swapping aware as it should be.

Your question is about how to diagnose this, so here's what I do:

First thing I do is set my system clock to count every second so I can always look up at the menu bar and see if the computer has crashed.
Next, I set up a program that does a ps aux every second and stores the result in another file.
I use the computer until it freezes.
Then I look at the relevant ps aux to see which process was taking up the most memory or the most CPU.

If you are pretty sure you have identified the process, you can STOP it without killing it. See if this makes the problem go away.

Once you've identified the culprit, you have a problem. It's typically an Apple process, not your own, not a third-party driver, not anything that you have control over. Here are some of the things I've tried:

Create a new user on your computer and try using it without copying over all of your files. Does the problem go away? If so, it's either that your profile is corrupted or, more likely, a file in your profile is causing the problem. Now you can slowly copy things into the new profile until you have identified the problem.
Sometimes I've found individual files that causes the full-text indexing program to blow up the amount of memory it needs or to crash. I delete those files and the problem goes away.
Sometimes I just wipe the computer and restore my files. That works.

Good luck. This is annoying and it's almost certainly apple's fault.


Installing a SSD, should I or should I not disconnect the battery (MacBook Pro)? I'm about to switch my hard drive for an SSD. I checked for instructions online and found tutorials that instruct to disconnect the battery as a first step but I also found some forum posts from people saying it fried their logic board.
A person also said a genius said disconnecting the battery could fry a logic board.

The mac I want to install the SSD into is a MacBook Pro 13" late 2011.

Should I disconnect the battery ?
Thanks !

You don't need to disconnect the battery, but it's a good idea.

The only reason you disconnect they battery is to ensure that there is no power on any of the circuits which could inadvertently be shorted.

If people fry their logic board while disconnecting the battery, it's most likely they used a metallic tool (like a screw driver) to pry up the battery connector; use a plastic spudger tool.


Creating charging switch on iPhone charger I am attempting to create a switch on my iPhone charging wire so that I can use my device to test iOS applications I'm creating on my Mac without actually charging the device. When I'm working on an app my devices are often charged to 100% and have to be kept charging while I'm working, often for days on end.

So, in an effort to preserve my devices battery, I've split open one of my old iPhone chargers, and after looking up the USB wiring diagram put a toggle switch on the red +5V wire. (not the D+ or D- wires or ground)

Now, the switch works just fine, but the problem is that when the switch is in the off state, not only does the iPhone stop charging (as it should) but the computer also detects that the device has been disconnected, which isn't very useful to me.

Anybody have any thoughts on what could be done to make this work? I'm more of a software guy so I'm not all that familiar with what hardware wise would need to be modified to make this work. Or better yet, if theres anything that can be changed programmatically to make my Mac detect a device that isn't charing that would be awesome! Thanks for any input on this!

There are these devices, but I'm not sure where you'll find one now. You could also use a non-powered USB hub.

But in all honesty, iPhone lithium ion batteries won't be too damaged by continual charging, it's not like to old days of NiCad (Nickel Cadmium) batteries.


Is it possible to create sub-menus for Services? If I have several OS X Services set up for "Text," is it possible to organize them within custom-titled menus, within my systemwide selected-text context menu?

There is no API to perform this currently.

Items in the Services Menu

The items in the Services menu are commands categorized by what type of data they operate on. The application icon of the application providing a service appears to the left of the service’s name in the menu. If two or more applications provide a service with an identical name, the name of the application providing each one is appended in parentheses after the name of the service in the menu.
The Services menu is populated when the menu is opened.

I suppose you could hack the OS (assuming SIP is not enabled) to add that functionality, but it's not something that's publicly available or documented widely that a private API exists to do what you ask.


How do you delete apps from Lion's Launchpad? When pressing alt/option in Lion's Launchpad, only some icons get the delete X overlay to remove them.  How do you delete the others?  I've read that control-option-command should do this, but it simply launches the app for me.

Launchpad-Control is what you are looking for my friend. It's a free preference pane app that lets you uncheck what you want to hide. It even backs up for safety :)

Alternatively, you could enter the following into Terminal:

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db "DELETE from apps WHERE title='APP_NAME';" && killall Dock

Replace the "APP_NAME" with the name of the app as it's displayed in Launchpad.

To display it in Launchpad again, simply move it from Applications folder and then put it back.


Set emergency bypass on macOS? iOS has a great Emergency Bypass feature for allowing certain contacts to ring through to you even when in Do Not Disturb mode.  But on macOS, DND prevents any alerts on incoming text messages, even from those set as EB in iOS.  This has caused me to miss urgent texts from my other half many, many times when my mac is in DND mode and my phone is not within earshot.

Is there any way to set specific contacts as EB on macOS?

To be clear, this is not an iOS question.  This is specifically and only a question about setting EB for contacts on macOS.  I'm running High Sierra on my MBP but if a newer version of macOS had this feature, I'd consider upgrading for it.

So the correct answer is... there is no such option in macOS.  Bummer!


Replacing AZERTY keyboard by a QWERTY keyboard Is it possible to replace the top case with the  AZERTY keyboard of a 15" MB Pro late 2012 (usb 3.0) by the top case with QWERTY keyboard of a 15" MB Pro Mid-2010. Do they have exactly the same dimensions?

At one time it was possible to make the change and in the end it became impossible in the official Apple network.
The only solution I could offer you is to buy and replace the keys. I had done it one 2011. ok it's long but I changed the keyboard for 5€... then just change the layout of the language in the keyboard preferences.


How to connect a USB-C-based MacBook to a Thunderbolt display? Given the new 12" Retina MacBook doesn't have a Thunderbolt and only has a USB-C port, how do I connect it to an existing Thunderbolt display?

As @Kevin McKenzie already said, and just to expand on it.

At present there is no adapter for the USB-C to Thunderbolt.

Here is quote from http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/09/apples-12-macbook-gets-new-usb-c-power-vga-usb-and-hdmi-adapters/

  Thunderbolt Gen 1 and 2 don’t support USB 3.1, Type C or even 3.0 for
  that matter. An adapter wouldn’t have fixed this problem. However,
  Apple is releasing Thunderbolt 3 later in 2015. It’s not ready yet,
  because it’s developed with Intel and now Gen 3’s functionality is
  tied to Skylake chips – which will replace Broadwell shortly. I know.
  You’re thinking “But Broadwell just came out!” That’s true, but only
  because of delays. Now, you may wonder how a new MacBook without a
  Thunderbolt port or a Skylake chip will support a Thunderbolt Display.

  Well, in short it won’t. That is unless Apple releases a firmware
  update for their Thunderbolt cables. Which they won’t. So it probably
  won’t support it. Considering the last time they updated it, I think
  we’ll see an update at WWDC, with a USB C port on the display itself.


cd to a directory by typing its name? For example if a directory 'blob' exists and I just type 'blob[return]' then the system cds into the blob directory for me.

In Linux (Ubuntu) I can add shopt -s autocd to my .bashrc file, but on OS X this gives an error: -bash: shopt: autocd: invalid shell option name

autocd was added in bash 4.0. You can install a newer version of bash with Homebrew and then change the default login shell with chsh:

brew install bash;echo /usr/local/bin/bash|sudo tee -a /etc/shells;chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

After you open a new login shell (or a tab by default in Terminal or iTerm 2), echo $BASH_VERSION should print something like 4.2.45(2)-release.

Terminal and iTerm 2 open new shells as login shells by default, so bash reads ~/.bash_profile but not ~/.bashrc. If you don't source ~/.bashrc from ~/.bash_profile or anything, add shopt -s autocd to ~/.bash_profile instead of ~/.bashrc.


Is there a shortcut for opening a second buffer with a vertical split in Aquamacs? I'd like to have two buffers open side by side in Aquamacs. Is there a shortcut for doing this?

I know that C-x 2 opens them in a vertical stack, I'd like to have them arranged horizontally though.

You are looking for split-window-horizontally which is bound to C-x 3.


How do I change the action for Force Click on a Force Touch trackpad? I have a new MacBook Pro Retina 13 Early 2015 with the Force Touch trackpad.

It's described to have the following feature:

  Click and continue to press on the trackpad to enable new capabilities, like looking up a word's definition, previewing a file in the Finder, or creating a new Calendar event when you Force click a date in the text of an email.

Generally: How can I change, tweak, tune, enhance the 'capability' of this force click?

Particularly: I'd love to have it do translation in Safari and Terminal much more frequently than I want it to do dictionary lookup.

I found this tool called BetterTouchTool
http://www.boastr.net/

  BetterTouchTool is a great, feature packed app that allows you to
  configure many gestures for your Magic Mouse, Macbook Trackpad and
  Magic Trackpad and also Mouse Gestures for normal mice. It also allows
  you to configure actions for keyboard shortcuts, normal mice buttons
  and the Apple Remote. In addition to this it has an iOS companion App
  (BTT Remote) which can also be configured to control your Mac the way
  you want.

It allows me to set a HUGE variety of actions for TONS of mouse gestures.

I am able to create actions for FORCE click on specific areas of the trackpad, and even multifinger force click.  It is exactly what I've been looking for.

It is extremely useful.


Ctrl + Alt + Delete: Mac Equivalent? Ctrl + Alt + Delete on Windows provides a variety of functions, the main one of interest being the Task Manager. Is there an equivalent keyboard shortcut & indeed Task Manager for carrying out such tasks as quitting an application that maybe "hanging" (amongst other things) for Apple Macs, or indeed anything similar ?

The keyboard shortcut you’re looking for is ⌘ + ⌥ + ⎋, alternatively known as command + option + escape. This will bring up the Force Quit Applications window (see screenshot below).


Error when trying to install Homebrew? I have a MacBook Air 11 (mid 2013), with OS X 10.8.5, and I want to install Homebrew, so I go to the site and copy and paste the following code in my terminal:

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

The thing is, I get the following error:

Question: What can I do to fix it?

homebrew requires additional installs before you can proceed: either Xcode or Xcode Command Line Tools.

You can download Xcode (2.1 GB) via App Store.app or the Command Line Tools at developer.apple.com. Both require a valid Apple ID.

The latest CLT release is: Command Line Tools (OS X Mountain Lion) for Xcode April 2014 direct link (~115 MB).

In later system versions you can open Terminal.app and enter xcode-select --install or just gcc to install the necessary tools. You will be asked to either Get Xcode or Install. Choosing Install will download and install the command line tools only.


How do I connect power to a NVIDIA GTX 1070 Founders Edition in a 2009 Mac Pro? I am installing an NVIDIA GTX 1070 in a 2009 Mac Pro. I have seen all kinds of cables selling on Amazon and eBay to power GPUs in a Mac Pro so I want to make sure I get the right one.

Looking at the NVIDIA GTX 1070 manual, it looks like I will need an 8 pin connector on the graphics card side:

But there are cables that have this 8 pin connector with either one or two 6 pin connectors that will connect to the Mac Pro main board.

The cable I ended up ordering has 2 x 6 pins and 1 x 8 pin connectors:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0749DQ3VX

Will this cable properly power the GPU and should I connect both 6 pin connectors?

You will need a Y cable with 2 x male mini 6 pins at one end and 1 x male 8 pin on the other end.

You will have to connect both mini 6 pin ends to the motherboard. 1 x 6 pin will not provide enough power. Only both 6 pin ends will be able to provide the power your GPU needs under full stress.


Sort items in folder by date...only for that folder! Normally I have all my Finder sorted alphabetically but, for some folders, order by date would be better but changing order in those folder will change order for all Finder...

Is there a way to sort items in a different way only for that folder?

You can only specify the sort order for the top-most folder in any given view.
If you want to sort a folder in a folder to a different view, you would need to open it in a new window…

Main folder sorted by Name, sub folder by Date…


Can the 1m Apple USB C cable charge the 13 inch MacBook Pro at full speed? I'm wondering if the 1m Apple USB C cable can charge the 13 inch MacBook Pro safely at full speed (i.e. 60W). From my knowledge, all certified USB C cables support 60W charging, which means it should. However, it's really hard to tell if that's actually the case from the website, because the only thing it says on that site is that it's "recommended for use with the iPad Pro and the 18W power adapter."
I know that the 2m Apple USB C cable is able to provide up to 100W of power; however, I am interested specifically in the 1m cable which comes by default with iPads.
I have been looking at Apple support articles and none of them mention anything about this cable—they only talk about the 2m cable.

Yes.1

1 In practice, my experience is yes. Every single iPad cable has not been an issue for charging any iPad and 13 Inch MacBook Pro and MacBook One.


can't download apps after "authorizing computer" I recently synced my iPod touch(4th gen) for the first time and it asked me if I wanted to "authorize the computer"- I chose "yes" but now, I can't download apps(neither from my ipod nor from the computer). It asks for credit card info. but since I don't have a credit card, now I can't download apps(free ones) at all.

Deauthorizing doesn't seem to help either.

Try this procedure to create an iTunes App Store account without a credit card.


How do I download a video from icloud? I have a video on my icloud that I want to download to macbookpro and save. I can  see the video in icloud on  my iphone. The video is deleted from iphoto on my iphone and I can't download the video back to my iphone (I can select the video but the icon on bottom left the box with the arrow will not light up). When I log into icloud on macbookpro I can't see any photos or shared streams. Can anyone help?

On your mobile device you open the icloud photo stream by its title, tap on "people", turn on "public website"  then tap "share" and send  the stream to your own email. In your email you will get a link to your photo stream under the title of the stream . When you click on the link from your laptop or desktop you will find a webpage with all items in that stream including your videos. Get a video web downloader add on extension for your browser and you can download the video once you've clicked on it to start. From there you can import it to iphoto and sync it with your iphone photos


How can I fix an Install Failed error while installing Lion? I downloaded the new OS X Lion from the App store. I am running the latest Snow Leopard on my 2010 15" Macbook Pro. During the download, it somehow stopped while I was away from the keyboard. When I returned, I resumed it again, and after download completion, began to install it.
When it rebooted, it began to install Lion, and when it was at the 33 minute mark, it failed.
See pictures below:

I got the error message:

Install Failed
Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer
Mac OS X couldn't be installed, because the disk Macintosh HD is damaged and can't be repaired.

I read somewhere that I should put in the original install DVD, and run the Disk Utility to try to verify and repair.
I put the disc in, booted it, and clicked through past the language selection, but made sure to wait for the top menu bar to appear to get to Disk Utility. I clicked on Verify Disk, and got this error message after it ran:

Invalid node structure
The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.

After clicking Repair Disk, I got this error message:

Disk Utility stopped repairing "Macintosh HD"
Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed up files.

I'm also running Bootcamp, with Windows 7 installed in it's own partition. I don't know if that has anything to do with why I'm getting these error messages or not, or if that's why it thinks the hard drive is damaged.
How do I fix this?
I am unable to get back into Snow Leopard. Every restart leads back into the Lion install, which results in these errors. I think many others are having this issue as well.
I do have my files backed up (not in Time Machine, but manually on an external USB drive).  I don't mind wiping everything (including Bootcamp), but I rather that be a last resort.
Reference:

Install Failed - Disk is damaged on Apple Discussions site.

I ended up bringing my Macbook Pro into the Apple store. The genius there attached the store's OS X Snow Leopard via USB, and booted from it, and ran the Repair Disk, which gave the same error of an invalid node structure. Since it was still under Apple Care, I got my hard drive replaced and was able to keep the old one.

With the new hard drive, it had Snow Leopard on it, and I simply upgraded it to Lion without a problem. I was able to attach the old hard drive via USB, and restore all my files.

Thanks everyone for their help. +1 to everyone.


Dead pixel with but with inverted color in rMBP I have a mac book pro retina since a few weeks (bought in april 2013). There is a pixel in the middle of the screen that has the opposite color of what it should have:

If background is white, pixel is black
If background is black, pixel is white

So it's not technically a dead pixel, but similar. (just more annoying because it see it on black backgrounds...)

How can I diagnose if this is a software or hardware problem ? Are there any standard test that I can run ?

Dead pixels aren't necessarily "black pixels". Although it's common that the dead pixel stays black, they also come in different colors and, as in your case, they can change colors too.

The way to tell if it's a software problem is to check if the pixel appears dead right after turning on the machine. If that is the case, it must be a hardware problem because the software has not been loaded yet at this point.

Check this, and if it's a hardware problem, my guess is a failing graphics card or display. Time to take it to an Apple Store :(


Boolean logic to query tags? I want to search for files that have certain tags, and don't have other tags. Right now, when I use finder I can list the tags I want (e.g. searching for files that have tag1 AND tag2 AND tag) but I don't know how to query for for files that e.g. have tag1 AND NOT tag2. Is there currently a way to do this?

Start a new find (command-f).
Under the main "Search" heading select the first pop-up and select "Other..." From the list of search terms, select "Tags".
In the second pop-up select "contains", and in the next field, enter a term. e.g. "Orange".
Over to the right, click the "+" button to search an additional term. In the new first pop-up, select "Tags". Select "is not" from the second pop-up, and enter the term e.g. "red".

This will select all files tagged "Orange", but not files tagged "Orange" and "Red"


Is it safe to upgrade Bash via Homebrew? I'm new to OS X. I'm running OS X Lion on a MacBook Pro. Is it safe to upgrade the bash shell using Homebrew:

$ brew install bash

If safe, how do I make it the default instance of the shell I run through Terminal?

Thanks!

Binaries in /{,usr/}{,s}bin/ should not usually be replaced with other files. Other programs expect them to be the versions that came with OS X, and they are replaced by OS upgrades.

After running brew install bash, you can change the default shell safely by:

Adding /usr/local/bin/bash to /etc/shells
Running chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash.

Settings in Terminal or iTerm 2 don't normally have to be changed. Both of them default to opening new windows with a login shell of the default shell.

The default shell can also be changed from System Preferences or with dscl, but all three options just modify /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/$USER.plist.


Battery Not Charging and Light Not Showing Up Again I just have got a Macbook Pro Retina 2014. The charger is new and 85 Watt.
I have two issues. When I first connected the charger, there was 54% charge on the laptop and for only 1 second the green light of the magsafe turned on. I have seen no more light [orange/green] after that ever.

And, the pc is not receiving any charge when the power cable is connected.  I have different brightness set for battery/power. When I connect the adapter, the brightness changes, the charging sign in the battery shows. But, no change in percentage and It says, "Battery Is Not Charging".

I have tried all the other answers to the similar questions including SMC reset but nothing worked. It seems to me the connection is okay [as brightness changes]. But somehow laptop doesnt take the charge. Not sure what to do. And, do not know why the green light turned only once and never again in the MagSafe.

The first thing you should do is examine and clean the MagSafe connector, both on the cord and on the machine. MagSafe's have five spring loaded pins; if one of the pins is stuck, or grime is blocking a connection, that can cut the power output of the cord, meaning the computer will run but the battery won't charge. Apple says:

  To clean the MagSafe connector and pin area, disconnect the adapter
  from the wall outlet and from the computer. Remove debris gently with
  a cotton swab or a soft bristle toothbrush. Be careful not to get any
  cotton fibers stuck in the pin receptacle and to not bend or otherwise
  damage any of the pins. (see: MagSafe Troubleshooting)

Failing that, this likely needs repair.

The MagSafe board is inexpensive and relatively quick to replace. Next is the battery and all cables, most expensive and difficult to exchange is the logic board.

You would want to replace parts one by one until the hardware issue is resolved.

Resetting the SMC is a once every 6 months thing, if you do that more often it’s hardware repair that’s needed.


How to automatically mount NFS shares on OS X I have a NFS server set up on my local LAN running on Arch Linux that I can connect to using OS X Mavericks by issuing the following command in the terminal:

mount -t nfs -o resvport host:/srv/nfs4/users /mnt/host

As the NFS client is a MacBook Pro, I would like for it to automatically connect to the NFS server whenever I am home (and do nothing otherwise).  Adding the following line in /etc/auto_master did not work:

/mnt/host -fstype=nfs4,resvport host:/srv/nfs4/users

More specifically, running automount -vc yields the following:

automount: /net updated
automount: /home updated
automount: /mnt/host nmounted
automount: no unmounts

...but /mnt/host is an empty directory even when I cd into it.

Can anybody help me out?  Thanks in advance and let me know if I omitted important details.

If you try default /etc/auto_master file, you can see line

/net            -hosts      -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid

Then you can cd /net/host/exported/path and found that mac tries to mount this exported path.


Signed but still can't open A colleague of mine signed an application we're working on. Trying to open it from finder, I get an error message

  “‹Name›” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer

(or the local translation of this). On console I read

CoreServicesUIAgent[‹pid›]: Error -60005 creating authorization

But if I run codesign on the code, it seems to check out just fine:

$ codesign -vv .
.: valid on disk
.: satisfies its Designated Requirement

So it seems the bundle got signed correctly. To get more details:

$ codesign -dvv .
Executable=…
Identifier=…
Format=app bundle with Mach-O universal (i386 x86_64)
CodeDirectory v=20200 size=440 flags=0x0(none) hashes=8+3 location=embedded
Signature size=4731
Authority=3rd Party Mac Developer Application: ‹Name› (‹TeamID›)
Authority=Apple Worldwide Developer Relations Certification Authority
Authority=Apple Root CA
Signed Time=21.07.2016, ‹Time›
Info.plist entries=25
TeamIdentifier=‹TeamID›
Sealed Resources version=2 rules=12 files=1164
Internal requirements count=1 size=208

So from the Authority= lines I'd conclude that the certificate chain could be verified as well, and it does lead back to Apple. How is that “unidentified”?

From this post I learned about spctl, but it doesn't provide much information either:

$ spctl --assess -vvvv .
.: rejected
origin=3rd Party Mac Developer Application: ‹Name› (‹TeamID›)

How can I get more information as to why exactly the app fails to load?

While formulating the question, I tried various combinations of keywords and eventually found Difference between “Mac Developer” and “3rd Party Mac Developer Application” on Stack Overflow, which led to developer documentation on Maintaining Certificates which in turn writes this:

  Type: Mac App Distribution:
  Name: 3rd Party Mac Developer Application: Team Name
  Description: Used to sign a Mac app before submitting it to the Mac App Store.
  Type: Developer ID Application:
  Name: Developer ID Application: Team Name
  Description: Used to sign a Mac app before distributing it outside the Mac App Store.

So apparently this form of code signing is suitable only for submission for the App Store, but not for stand-alone distribution. That took quite a while to work out, so I hope this Q&A will help others avoid that time.


How to recycle some magnetic disk of System on Mac OS? The system use 94GB disk. how to recycle some magnetic disk?

in there I can not click it.
my version is 10.14 (18A391).

Your system storage space is more than usual.

Cache files can take up a lot of space.

How to remove them:

From Mac Paw

  Open a Finder window and select Go in the  menu bar.

  Click on “Go to Folder…”

  Type in ~/Library/Caches. Delete the files/ folders that are taking
  up the most space.

  Now click on “Go to Folder…”

  Type in /Library/Caches (simply lose the ~  symbol) And, again, delete
  the folders that  take up the most space.

Another thing that could help is starting in safe mode.

From this Apple Discussion:

  Try this...

  Start your mac in Safe mode by holding the shift key before the power
  key

  Check your storage About This Mac/Storage etc. (In safe mode, mine
  showed accurate usage)

  Restart in normal mode

  Repeat step #2.