Use different profile for a specific Terminal When logging into remote server with Terminal, I need to use different profile. Is there any way to make the Terminal displayed with different profile? Better still, is there a way to recognize the login access to display with different profile automatically?

By "Profile" I assume you mean the different profiles defined in the Terminal preferences under "Settings"?

If so, modify, duplicate, or create whatever profile you want to use when connecting to the remote server. Under the "Shell" tab of the profile, set the command to run to be whatever ssh command you give to log into the remote server. Uncheck the "Run inside shell". Now, whenever you open that profile under the "Shell" menu of Terminal, it will launch the remote connection. If you want even more automation, assign a keyboard shortcut for that profile in the Keyboard preferences of System Preferences.

If you are looking to have this happen when you type an ssh command, there are two alternatives:

Write a shell function to execute an osascript (AppleScript) prior to the ssh command (see this other answer).
Use something like tput setab <n>; clear in your remote .bashrc file. See background coloring for values to use for n. Note that this will not persist if you embed escape codes in your prompt that reset colors or if you do something else that resets terminal colors. This will also linger after logging out, but that can be fixed with similar escape codes. It's not really changing the "Profile", but you might get the effect you are looking for.


How to remove my Mac from the speaker choices? My Mac with macOS Mojave is setup to receive iMessages and that is all I want it to do.  However, since I set it up, the Mac appears on the list of speaker choices when I answer a phone call.

The "Allow Calls on Other Devices" setting is off:

So how do I remove "Jeff's Mac" from my speaker list?
P.S. I am on iOS 14.0.1
P.P.S.  I tried various things - the only thing that worked reliably was turning off Bluetooth on my mac.

First off, it's not a "speaker list," it's list of devices that can take or make phone calls.  If you paired a Bluetooth headset it would show up there as will your car's Bluetooth connection (if you have one and it's paired).  This is probably what's causing your confusion when trying to disable it.
So, to do so, you have to turn off WiFi calling on your "other" devices
Settings → Phone → Calls on Other Devices.  There will be a section called Allow Calls On.  Toggle off the device you don't want to allow access, in this case "Jeffs Mac."  Once you do that, it will no longer show up as a device to send the call to.
Below are screen grabs from my iPhone that's configured to use my Mac as an audio device for phone calls.  Upon disabling it in Calls on Other Devices it's removed as an audio option on the call screen.


How to replace the currently selected text in Applescript? How does Devontechnologies WordServices' do it? Devontechnologies offers a collection of services that let's the user perform some common tasks on text (upper case, lower case, ROT13 and so on). They do it without (as far as I can tell at least) using the clipboard (pbpaste/pbcopy).

I have googled a lot about this but the only solutions I have found are based on pbcopy/pbpaste and I want to avoid that. Any suggestions?

I am creating my own service similar to Devon's WordServices that takes an editable piece of text, manipulates it and finally replaces the original text.

You could use an Automator contextual workflow service.

Open Automator select Contextual Workflow

Enter the following settings

Workflow Receives: text
In: Any Applicaition
Check Output replaces selected text

Add the AppleScript Action

The selected text will be in the input variable. It will return the input variable at the end thus replacing the original text with the new text

The workflow can be accessed by selecting text, right clicking, and going to Services.


iPad doesn't rotate anymore My iPad won't rotate the screen anymore when I turn it. It just happend (like all problems of course) without any cause.

I've done everything I can think of.

Double tap on the Home button, swipe left and toggle the switch
Toggle the switch on the left side of the iPad with 'rotation lock' set to on
Reboot the iPad
Restore the iPad

I'm out of options... Anyone with more options? Or is it hardware to blame?

Since you've restored the iPad I would say that you've got some issue with the Hardware. If possible, Take it to an Apple Store for a Hardware test.

Using an app which requires the use of the Accelerometer may test it too.

EDITED: Its not the Gyroscope what tells the position of the device but the Accelerometer.


How to auto-archive mails after sent? Is it possible to auto-archive mails, after sending - or adding a separate "Send and archive" button?

I use the Inbox Zero approach, so now I need to manually archive conversations that have ended.

This is one of the many functions that are available in the Mail.app plugin Mailhub.


Trackpad and mouse require two taps/clicks to register first click I'm having a horribly frustrating issue that I can't seem to work out. Here are the steps to reproduce the problem, which happens with both an external Logitec VX mouse, the internal MacBook Pro Trackpad and the Magic Trackpad.

I move the pointer to a click location, and tap the trackpad. No click is registered.
I tap the trackpad again, and a click is registered.
I move the pointer to a new location, and tap the trackpad. The click is registered.
I let the pointer hold in a single location for some (as yet undetermined amount of time).
I move the pointer to a click location, and tap the trackpad. No click is registered. It again takes two clicks to "unstick" the click.

This happens all the time when I'm coding, and I'll click and drag something, go to my keyboard, and then go back to the mouse, and I'll have to double click to get a single click to register. If I let the mouse stand idle, I'll have the same issue.

I haven't been able to dig out why this happens. I have, on occasion, been able to restart my MacBook Pro and it would magically start working again, but then at some point it starts to once again misbehave.

Machine Specifications:

MacBook Pro 17-inc, Mid 2010
8GB RAM
OS X Lion 10.7.2

The issue was with jiTouch. Once I uninstalled jiTouch and restarted my computer, everything went back to normal. I'm now using BetterTouchTool, and it seems to be working perfectly.


Macbook Pro Upgrade - 16GB RAM or 128GB SSD I am asking myself which constellation is better: should I stock up my RAM up to 16GB (from 8GB), or should I buy a SSD with 128GB??

I really dont know :/

Cheers!

BTW: My macbook supports 16GB RAM, i already checked this ;)

RAM upgrade above 8GB if...

you do run Virtual Machines excessively because you need to allocate a lot of RAM to the virtual OS
Other than that, this will most likely not be necessary. Mac OS X operates very efficient with 8GB of RAM. If you do not run VMs, there will  be no increase in performance in most cases!

SSD upgrade if...

you want a snappier response throughout the system.
you run big programs such as Adobe or photo editing software that take long to load.
you need faster boot/shut down/sleep times.
if you carry your MBP around a lot. SSDs are very shock resistent. No mechanical parts move.
if you want a more quiet MBP.

SSDs also consume less power. But you won't notice it significantly.
Think of this:
In today's computers, the bottle-neck of processing is usually the hard drive. Processors generally need to wait for the hard drive's read/write operations which are a lot slower. Thus a faster hard drive is needed for a better overall performance in processing. RAM won't help if the needed amount is saturated.


ZIP files created with GUI have more bytes than ZIP files created in a shell I created two ZIP files of the same directory. One with the GUI, the other with:

$ zip -r alpha_cmd.zip Alpha

The Alpha directory is 33.640 MB with 164 items.

The ZIP file created by the GUI is 2,100 bytes larger than the ZIP file created on the command line.

Why is the ZIP file created with the GUI larger?

Note: Even though the ZIP files have different sizes, when unzipped, each's directory has the exact same number of bytes. Basically, I'm very wary of possible inconsistencies introduced by managing my file system with the GUI and with shell commands.

Zipping from the Finder adds a folder __MACOSX, invisible on Macs, that contains OS X resource forks like custom icons and such. From Wikipedia:

  The resource fork is a fork or section of a file on the Apple Mac OS operating system used to store structured data along with the unstructured data stored within the data fork. A resource fork stores information in a specific form, containing details such as icon bitmaps, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and application code (machine code). For example, a word processing file might store its text in the data fork, while storing any embedded images in the same file's resource fork. The resource fork is used mostly by executables, but every file is able to have a resource fork.


iPhone 4S iMessaging to a iPad and iPhone - compilation of message threads I have an iPhone 4s.
When I have conversations via iMessage to friends with an iPad a new message thread is created for the conversation, however when I iMessage their phone another message thread is created, resulting in having two conversations from the same people and as they are both iMessages it is hard to tell the difference!
I know one is iMessaging through a phone number and another through an email, but it there a way to compile the conversation thread? Or a way to put a note on the contact so I know which conversation is which?

please note: the contact has both the email and phone number on it, I realise I can make them separate but is that my only option?

I have seen people set up iMessage in two ways:

The default manner where you accept messages from all email, phone that you have attached to your Apple ID (and this implies that people can send you message to more than one "address" and that conversations will not be threaded).
By restricting the receiving addressed so that people can only send you messages to either one phone number or one email address so that threading of all messages is forced.

You can change your settings on each device - just go to iMessage and disable all but one email and/or phone number for receiving messages. On iOS 6, open the settings app, tap on Messages, tap on Send & Receive, and ensure that only one address for being reached at is selected.

The downside of the second method, is you have to get everyone to only send messages to one account. The default settings were probably designed to ensure that all messages get to you even if it means they don't get threaded and assembled into a unified view.


Will I be able to access my Time Machine backups after changing Hard Drive I have a 2010 MacBook Pro and I am planning on swapping out the Optical Drive for an SSD in the near future, and then re-installing OS X across the Hard Drive and SSD (in a Fusion Drive format).

I have about 2-3 years worth of backups on my Time Capsule. Will I still be able to access them once I've reinstalled OS X? I don't want to restore from Time Capsule (I want a clean install) but I need to be able to access my backups so I can get some data back. By this, I mean go into Time Machine, go back in time to a backup and select a folder to restore. If I can't, and I have to start my backups from scratch and stuff, I will just move some stuff over to a Hard Drive and then re-import it once OS X is reinstalled.

Yes, you can access the backups after changing the drives out. If you control-click or right-click on the Time Machine app icon, one of the items is "Browse other TIme Machine Disks..." from where you can select your Time Capsule backups. You can also re-associate your new drive to the old backups in Terminal with tmutil so that your backups will continue as if the drive change never happened. There's a good set of instructions here on how to use tmutil to accomplish that.

One of the other options you have is to do your clean install and then use Migration Assistant with your Time Machine backups to restore all your files and settings.


Server.app "SSLProtocol: Illegal protocol 'TLSv1.2'" With following versions installed:

OS X 10.11.4 Beta (15E27e)
Server.app 5.0.19(15s5065c)
Apache/2.4.16 (Unix)
OpenSSL/0.9.8zg

I get:

  AH00526: Syntax error on line 581 of /Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/httpd_server_app.conf:
  server.app "SSLProtocol: Illegal protocol 'TLSv1.2'"

The website, wiki and so on suddenly don't work. And I upgraded Server.app to 5.0.19(15s5065c). Not working. I deleted all files related to Server.app (including /Library/Server/) and reinstalled it. Not working.

How to fit it? Does the openssl version in Server.app cause it? I installed the openssl/1.1.0-pre2, but I don't know how to make it work with Server.app (openssl/1.1.0 is already working on my Mac).

This looks like a mismatch between the version of Server, where the apache config resides, and the version of apache which is delivered by the OS.

Look at the .conf files in /Library/Server/Web/Config/Proxy/ and replace any instances of TLSv1.2 with TLSv1.

You may also need to do that with some of the other config files included by those files.

That said, since both pieces look to be prerelease, you should review your seeding agreement, it may have info on a better place to ask this sort of question.


How to change the language of the App Store to be able to see accurate star ratings? I have an iTunes account with an Italian billing address; because of this Apple assumes that I want the app store in Italian which is not the case.

Part of the UI is in Italian (other parts are in English, go figure), the app descriptions and their reviews are in Italian, even the "Top apps" are the top apps in Italy instead of worldwide.

The biggest problem of all is that there is no way to see the ratings for apps without logging out first. This is a big inconvenience as almost all applications show up as having "no ratings" (as only local ratings and reviews are shown, which are very few and almost non existent).

This of course severely hinders my capability of knowing whether an app is good or not. Even the most popular apps have either 0 ratings or less than 5.

As an example, YNAB which currently has 1574 ratings when viewed from the English store shows up as "No Ratings" while I am logged in.

Is there any way to change the language to English, and see worldwide ratings without having to log out first?

EDIT: 6 years later, there appears to be still no solution.

It seems to be possible for some countries, but most countries only have one (or few) native languages.
The table at the bottom of the above link lists which countries support which languages in iTunes.
Some oddities:

Belgium supports both English and French (but not Dutch, which is one of their native languages).
The Netherlands supports only Dutch (but not English).
Switzerland supports English, German and French (but not their native languages Italian, and Romansh).
Germany only supports German (but not English).

Go figure!

Note there have been many complaints about this on the apple forums already.

--jeroen


FileVault personal recovery key How is PRK generated/derived and what is being sent to Apple's servers if I choose "use this iCloud account to unlock and reset your password..." during FileVault setup? I wasn't able to find this in FileVault technical whitepaper. Is it just yet another DEK (Data Encryption Key)?

The personal recovery key is read from /dev/random and base32 encoded afterwards:

  ... When activating FileVault 2, the
  System Preferences application displays a randomly generated
  120 bit password, encoded with base32, to the end
  user and advises them to securely store the password for
  recovery (see figure 2). The recovery password is read
  from /dev/random (through libcsfde and SecCreateRecoveryPassword()
  in Security.framework).

Source: Infiltrate the Vault: Security Analysis and Decryption of Lion Full Disk Encryption, page 9


How to Create an image in DeployStudio I just installed DeployStudio v1.6.13 on OS X Server Yosemite.
Followed some directions to get everything installed and everything looks like it's working.
For example, another mac can boot into the network disk from the .nbi file i created.
I have a few issues however.

First, when I boot into Runtime, I get the error: "repository access error an error occured while mounting the repository share point"
I haven't found a real solution to that, and yes I set up the server as a network sharepoint for my repository. (I also put the the folder on file share available read and write to everyone and guests could access just to make sure that was not an issue)

Regardless, my workaround for now after trying so many things like checking my files are shared on the server etc, is to hit continue when I get the error then hit Command + R.

Now that I'm on Runtime how do I upload an image to this computer I just booted to the network with. Was the .nbi the image? Do I have to create something on the workflows? What is the process.

Please keep in mind that when I hit "Create a master from a volume" on any Mac it tells me that there is no volume available and then it has an arrow pointing to >>>>>>> Repository.
That's how I thought I would create the image but I can select a volume.
I hope that was enough info for someone to answer my question.

Please help and thank you in advance. :D

UPDATE: I resolved the repository issue (it was an issue with the url I provided for the network sharepoint).

Now I'm trying to create an image from an already set up computer with all applications I need. I booted from mini and it was able to create an image. I booted from a Pro, however, and the volume is grayed out. Any ideas?

The .nbi is the NetBoot set, it's the disk you are booting the Mac you want to image from that contains DeployStudio Runtime. From there you will run a workflow, that can incorporate an image if you want. The workflow is created in DeployStudio Admin.

To create images, I like to use AutoDMG: https://github.com/MagerValp/AutoDMG

Once you get your image, you'll want to make sure it's named with a .hfs.dmg (AutoDMG will take care of this for you).

You copy the image on to your DeployStudio repo, by mounting the file share and copying the file into a folder called Masters and a subfolder inside that called HFS (I'm doing this from memory so that name may be slightly off).

Once your Master is in place, you should be able to select it from the Imaging step in a new workflow you create in DeployStudio admin.

Make sure the fileshare and its contents are accessible by the user you setup for DeployStudio... that may be the issue.


Is it possible to have 2 different backup systems for different external hard drives? 1) I want to plug in an external hard drive and then download all of the photographs that I take in RAW format on my Canon 7D camera onto this external hard drive, and then backup these photos onto a second external hard drive. These photos would NOT be held on my MacBook Pro.
2) I then want to backup everything on my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive (but NOT the same external hard drive as the one the RAW photos will be held on).

So is it possible please to set up these two different systems? At the moment I use Time Machine to backup everything on my MacBook Pro - but I need to have two  different systems as I outlined above- can Time machine be setup for this or is there a different way to do it? Any help would be gratefully received. Thanks

Yes, Time Machine can do this. All you need to do is connect at least two hard drives to your Mac. One hard drive will be for you to download your raw photos on to manually as you wish. The other hard drive will be your TM hard drive. Because your first HD for your photos is connected to your Mac, it wil also be backed up whenever TM does a backup. Those TM backups will backup what's on your Mac and what's on your photos HD, but you also have the option to select anything you want to exclude from the backup by going into the Options on TM.


How to import from OneNote on Windows to the Mac edition of OneNote? I have been working on Windows 7 with Microsoft OneNote 2010. I have a huge amount of work store in OneNote.

I need to open those notebooks in OneNote running on OS X 10.9, Mavericks, which has been recently released. Is there a way to do so?

After successfully importing, I plan to continue working on the Mac edition of OneNote.

If OneNote on the Mac can not do this, are there any other applications on the Mac, like EverNote or Growly, which can import my work from Windows OneNote and let me continue on my Mac int the way I was doing in Windows?

Synchronising Notes Between OneNote Editions

Upgrade to the latest OneNote on your Windows computer. This edition is compatible with the Mac edition of OneNote.

Once upgraded, you will be able to synchronise your files through Microsoft's cloud services. This will allow you to work on your OneNote files on both Mac or Windows.

The latest OneNote is free on both Mac and Windows.

Mac Alternatives to OneNote

If you do not like OneNote on the Mac, a number of Mac apps exist that import OneNote files. This discussion, can i transfer microsoft onenote to macbook, suggests GrowlyBird.

If you want specific alternative recommendations, ask a new software recommendation question mentioning where the free Mac OneNote does not meet your needs. Others with more exposure to alternatives should then be better able to help.


What size SSD would suffice for basic software-development / productivity? My friend is selling me his old MacBook (Glossy white finish with rounded edges and corners) cheap for a Mobile Development course I'm taking, but he's keeping the hard drive. So I'm thinking of buying an SSD off of somebody, and I'm not sure what the minimum size I would need.

I will have to install:

Either keep Snow Leopard or Lion
Xcode
Whatever is needed to develop for Android and iOS
Possibly some form of productivity suite (MSO or LibreOffice)

I barely have any experiences with Macs so I'm not sure how much space all of this would take up? I need to have a feel for the smallest SSD I can get

A 128GB SSD would have enough room for what you list, with room to spare. A 256GB SSD, imho, would not cost that much more, and would give you more flexibility.

Be aware that the version of Xcode needed to develop for iOS 7 requires Mountain Lion, and ML may not support that machine. For learning or developing for iOS 6, Lion/Xcode 4 should be fine.


Folder locations for macOS app I am porting an application from Windows and Linux to macOS.

The application is written in Qt. It has a few dependent dylib (some built, some sdk). The exact same libraries and same Qt version are used for some other applications (which are not ready to be ported yet). It will not be distributed through the App Store.

The application can read, write, drag-and-drop, print custom type user files. It uses a sqlite3 database, provided - users should be able to browse to its location (since they should also have the ability to use a database from a different location). During print, it would be best to use the cups temporary folder to save temporary bitmap files.

I have tried to figure out the best way to install this type of app. Is the bundle packaging right for this type of app, or should I use the file system to place all required files in the most likely locations?

Creating a bundle so far, I have the dependencies (including Qt
frameworks) inside the Contents/Frameworks directory.

Where would I place the user created files... inside the bundle or inside the Users/MyCompany/MyProgram directory? I tried to save inside... can't browse inside the MyApp.app from inside the program.
Where would I place the sqlite3 database? If I place it inside the bundle (e.g. Contents/Resources), I cannot access it from inside the program.
Where would the entire bundle be installed? in /Applications/MyCompany/MyProduct is my guess?

Without a bundle: from what I read, the following may be good locations:

For the executable:  /Applications as above?
For the dependent libs: usr/share/MyCompany/MyProduct or
/Library/MyCompany/MyProduct ?
User files obviously
Users/MyCompany/MyProgram
Resource database ? I have no idea what a
good place is, accessible to all users, where to keep such a file
This setup would allow other applications to be installed and use the
same Qt framework and dependent dylibs... But I read something about
apps not working if the dylibs are modified ?

Which is the best way and in that case, which are the best folder locations?

Should I assume that the installation is made with sudo rights? Can the installation be done without admin rights?

The application bundle should go in /Applications. This application bundle should contain everything. Libraries, dependencies, everything that the app needs to run, so that should the application bundle be copied to another machine's /Applications directory, it should be able to run.

Installing in /Applications requires admin. Should admin not be available, the standard location for a single user application is ~/Applications. This directory should not be expected to exist.

If something needs to be 'installed' on the system for the app, such as the aforementioned 'resource database', the app should prompt to install it in:

/Library/Application Support/developername/appname/

Should something need to be 'installed' for the current user, it should go in the same path prefixed with their home directory. This doesn't require admin.

~/Library/Application Support/developername/appname/

User files should not be saved in the root of the user's home directory. The user should have the opportunity to save files wherever they please, preferably with a standard OS X save dialog.

Also…

Cache files should go in:

~/Library/Caches/developername/appname/

The users preferences should go in:

~/Library/Preferences/com.bundleidentifier.plist

If something more than a single property list needs to be saved…

~/Library/Preferences/developername/appname/


Sufficient ssd for Mac This is my first query , and also my first apple product, macbook pro retina.

Should I be buying 128 or 256 as I am really tight on budget.

I have 2 tb of external but I dont know I could make use of it.
I do some programming on Java and c and also python.

Thanks in advance

128Gb is plenty, with the condition it it is only plenty if you do not have much media (pictures, music, video). I have set up plenty of company laptops with 128Gb SSD drives, none are in any danger of running out of space.

If you have media, and can offload it to an external drive , then you are still fine. iTunes and Photos both allow the media library to go anywhere you want.


MacBook Air briefly wakes from sleep after 3 hours My MacBook Air (a few months old) randomly wakes from sleep roughly 3 hours after the lid is closed. The wake reason is given as EC.LidOpen, but in fact, the lid remains closed. The mac appears to go immediately back to sleep. I am not experiencing any negative consequences from this, but wanted to be sure I shouldn't be worried about malware.
For example (this occurs every night)

log show --style syslog | fgrep "Wake reason"
2017-03-18 01:33:44.916848+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) Wake reason: EC.SleepTimer (SleepTimer)
2017-03-18 04:33:58.836023+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) Wake reason: EC.LidOpen (User)

EDIT: using pmset -g log, I got more information on the mysterious wake-ups, which seem to be caused by mDNSResponder.

2017-04-14 10:23:12 +0200 Kernel Client Acks   Delays to Sleep notifications: [AppleBacklightDisplay driver is slow(msg: SetState to 0)(984 ms)] [powerd is slow(16830 ms)] [AppleThunderboltNHIType2 driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 2)(361 ms)] [RP03 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 0)(1277 ms)]
2017-04-14 10:23:12 +0200 Assertions            PID 173(mDNSResponder) Created MaintenanceWake "mDNSResponder:maintenance" 00:00:00  id:0x0xd0000806d [System: DeclUser kDisp]
2017-04-14 10:23:12 +0200 Assertions            PID 173(mDNSResponder) Released MaintenanceWake "mDNSResponder:maintenance" 00:00:00  id:0x0xd0000806d [System: DeclUser kDisp]
2017-04-14 10:23:12 +0200 DarkWake              DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] due to EC.SleepTimer/SleepTimer: Using BATT (Charge:81%) 0 secs
2017-04-14 10:23:12 +0200 HibernateStats        hibmode=3 standbydelay=10800                                                          741
2017-04-14 10:23:12 +0200 Kernel Client Acks    Delays to Wake notifications: [SSP3 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 3)(405 ms)] [SSP3 driver is slow(msg: DidChangeState to 3)(373 ms)]
2017-04-14 10:23:12 +0200 Sleep                 Entering Sleep state due to 'Maintenance Sleep': Using Batt (Charge:81%) 1189 secs
2017-04-14 10:23:40 +0200 PM Client Acks        Delays to Sleep notifications: [AirPort configd plug-in is slow(1835 ms)] [com.apple.apsd timed out(28012 ms)]

Edit:
 energy saver preferences on battery:
-turn display off after 15 minutes
-put hard disks to sleep when possible
-slightly dim the display when on battery power
-(power nap unchecked)

Power adapter:
-turn display off after 15 minutes
-prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off
-put hard disks to sleep when possible
-(wake for wi-fi network access unchecked)
-(power nap unchecked)

One more edit: Noticed the 10800 here is exactly 3 hours! Is that a coincidence? Does anybody know how to read/change these settings? This is in response to pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
 standbydelay         10800
 standby              1
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             0
 gpuswitch            2
 disksleep            10
 sleep                15 (sleep prevented by coreaudiod)
 autopoweroffdelay    28800
 hibernatemode        3
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         15
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

It may be worth resetting your System Management Controller (SMC) to see if this resolves this behaviour.

To do this on your MacBook Air follow these steps:

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

Let me know how you go.

Boot into Safe Mode

Since resetting the SMC didn't resolve this for you, I'd test to see if this still happens when booted into Safe Mode. To do this, follow these steps:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you
have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. Close the lid and check again to see if it still wakes up 3hrs later)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal

Run Apple Diagnostics

Now that we've established Safe Mode makes no difference and resetting the SMC didn't help, it's time to test your Apple hardware. Your model of MacBook Air uses Apple Diagnostics to do this. Follow these steps:

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

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

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

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

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


Suppress "Are you sure you want to delete..." dialogue when deleting items on SMB shares When connected to an SMB share in Finder and deleting files or folders, this dialogue comes up:

I believe that the reasoning behind this dialogue is because deleted files don't go to a Trash or .Trashes folder, and so I think it's a good dialogue to have for most users. But when managing a large number of files in SMB shares frequently it can become very tedious and time-consuming to keep having to confirm each deletion. Power users really only need to see this once (the first time they delete something).

I am aware of the cmd+d keyboard shortcut for performing the delete function on this dialogue, which shaves off some time, but ultimately I'd like a way to suppress this dialogue completely.

How could I suppress these dialogues and make it so that when I delete something the "Delete" action is performed?

You can use the Terminal command rm to bypass the Finder altogether and suppress the GUI notification.

Check out the available options by typing man rm.


Which setting in osx could block "ping localhost"? How can I detect which setting in the OS X could block ping localhost?
IPFW, LittleSnitch no such rules?

Update 1:

> cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1   localhost
255.255.255.255   broadcast

The obvious choice would be if stealth mode were on. That blocks pings to localhost on all my Mac OS systems. Go to System Preferences, Security & Privacy, Firewall, Firewall Options...

Also, if you have "Block all incoming connections" that might also affect things. I would certainly turn off LittleSnitch since it also can and will block that sort of traffic if you haven't allowed it.


Safari 8.0 on Yosemite doesn't kill closed tab processes, hogs memory I've just upgraded to Yosemite and started using the new Safari 8.0. For a while, everything seemed fine, but then all got ever so slightly slower and slower, especially when switching desktops.

After losing patience, I opened Activity Monitor and to my shock, I found around a dozen old Safari Web Content processes still running and using a lot of memory, despite the tabs having been closed already.

Anyone noticed a similar thing? Or knows a way to force Safari to kill the process after closing a tab?

(Macbook Pro, mid-2012, 13inch, 4GB RAM)

"Web Content Process" = "Tab" is a wrong assumption. A Web Content process can hold more than one tab. Depending on the implementation details of Safari, it might be possible that after closing the last Tab related to a particular Web Content Process, it does not automatically mean to close that Web Content Process. It might be feasible for Safari to keep that Process idle in the background ready to take a new tab when needed. I think Mavericks Safari behaves the same.

On your experience of "slower and slower": It might be that 4GB of RAM are insufficient for your normal workload. As a result, virtual memory is used. That means your HDD (or SSD) is used as an extension for your RAM, when more memory is needed to drive all open processes. Usage of HDD means a slowdown. An SSD is better in that respect.

I use Safari 7 on Mavericks, I will not test now what happens when closing a big enough number of tabs. But let me describe the normal situation on my MBP: At the moment, my Safari has 4 windows open, each contains 10 to 40 tabs, in sum ~100 tabs opened. In Activity Monitor, I can see 20 Web Content Processes, each 9 to 12 threads. In addition, I have 13 QTKitserver Web Content Processes, each 2 threads.
All web content processes have a 3-digit PID, which means they were started at the beginning after my last reboot, which is 3 days ago. So the Web Content Processes are reused by Safari. If they were new processes, they would have gotten a 4 or 5 digit PID. Though, I admit I did not open and close that many tabs since the last reboot. I have 8GB of RAM and an SSD on a late 2009 MBP.

You can read at some places that Yosemite needs a little more RAM than Mavericks. Maybe that's enough to slow down your 4GB system in comparison to Mavericks. Though it should not perform much worse than Mavericks. By the way, a nice read on memory management for 10.9 can be found here.

Bottom line: Consider installing 8GB RAM. It's dirt cheap for a non-Retina MBP.

And you can do it yourself. Just figure out before which RAM-Modules are for your MBP Model:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201165?viewlocale=en_US#1.

It seems that even 16GB are possible for even older MBPs if one is lucky. Beware, this 16GB topic needs more research: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1511196

But I do not know if that is needed in your case. In my humble opinion, 8GB are fine.


How to get rid of iOS 7.x (downloaded but not installed) from 6.x As I've pointed it out in the question title, my 16 GiB iPhone 4s is getting out of memory due to the fact that it has self-downloaded iOS 7(.1.2) without I'd never asked for.

As long as it weights several GiB, there's any way to get rid of it ?
I've tried to navigate the file system through an app (for OS X) called "iFunBox", but there's no way to locate it.

Thanks in advice!

You cannot. iFunbox (or equivalent) will not have access to the root filesystem. You will need to jailbreak the device for this, and none exist for iOS 8 at this time.

However, note that even if you do remove the update, iOS will still periodically check for it and redownload the firmware at a later date. You would need to prevent this and there does exist a tweak (read: hack) to accomplish this, but again, you would need to jailbreak the device.


how to set 'arrange by' for all the folders in the finder In finder, we can 'arrange by' for each folder separately, but how to set these settings for all folders.

NOTE: i have tried 'Use as defaults' in info dialog but of no use

To answer your first question, this isn't a script, but it is a procedure you can follow to make all Finder windows sorted by name. Open a Finder window. Select a regular folder; not a pseudo-folder (the Use as defaults button does not appear on Airdrop or Recents). Press Command-J. In the Sort By drop-down control, select Name. Click the Use as defaults button at the bottom of the window.

For the second, no, "sort by" sorts everything, including folders. If there are particular files or folders you want at the top of the list, you could start their name with a space, but don't do that to folders that applications or the system expect to have particular names. It does work for folders you create within your own Documents directory, however.


MS Office default window size for existing documents Where can I set (or reset) the default Window Size for an MS Office Document?

I'm on OSX High Sierra using Office 2016, and when I open a Word or Excel file from Finder, it opens on a small window, less than 25% of screen size. I can easily resize it, but if I close it and reopen, it opens small again.

I've found answers that involve editing the default template (.dot), but this seems to apply only to new documents. I want to change the windows size for any document.

Thanks!

Try this...open Word, open a new document, size it the way you want it, then Quit Word.  When you re-start Word, documents should open in the size you last set on Quit.


How can I transfer all data except photos to a different iPhone? I need to send my iPhone in for a screen repair, which quotes a 5-9 day turnaround time.  In the interim, I would like to use my previous, smaller storage capacity iPhone.  Ideally, I would want to be able to use all my apps with its app data.  I can't just do a transfer or a restore from backup, since my new phone has more storage capacity used than the old phone's max capacity.  If I were to do a transfer without the photographs, it would fit without a problem, and would be plenty acceptable.
Is there any way to transfer all data without images to the new phone, or barring that, at least the application data?  I have my data backed up on my local macOS computer.  I already own iExplorer, so a solution using that would be great.  However, another dedicated tool may be acceptable, depending on the price.
Assume I am on the latest iOS operating system on both phones.  I am using macOS 10.14 Mojave, though I would be willing to upgrade if necessary.

With iTunes & already having your master Photos library in the Photos.app, you can do this without any additional apps.
I've done this when my own phone went in for a new battery - for me it was the size of my iTunes music library, but it works the same for Photos…
First ensure the Photos.app has all your newest photos.
Connect your current (big) phone to iTunes, click its icon, then from the left column Photos deselect the Sync Photos option.
Run sync.
Run Backup (from the summary tab)
Disconnect your 'big' phone & connect your 'small' replacement.
From the Summary tab, select Restore iPhone.
Set it up as the 'same phone' as the one you just backed up.
You now have an identical copy (but with a different name), without photos.
Wipe your 'big' phone & release FindMy to send it in for repair.
When you get it back, repeat the same process in reverse order, sync, backup, set up as new, then once more switch on the Photo sync option on the 'big' phone & resync one more time.


Is it possible to use Thunderbolt networking and regular ethernet networking simultaneously? I'm considering purchasing a new iMac and recently learned that Thunderbolt 3 can be used to create a Thunderbolt network bridge between two Macs.  I assume that connection over Thunderbolt will be many times faster than an ethernet connection.

I also want both iMac's to be connected to my LAN via their ethernet adapters.  Is it possible for both of these connections to run independently, simultaneously, so that each Mac can still "talk" to the internet and other devices on the LAN, but "talk" to each other at Thunderbolt speeds?

Yes, that is definitely possible - indeed this is what happens if you hook them up like this.

Thunderbolt 3 enables transfer rates up to a theoretically high of 40 Gbps.

The relative speed depends on the type of Ethernet connection you're comparing it with. If you're using 10-gigabit ethernet - then you're probably not going to see any practical benefit from the Thunderbolt 3 connection (if you're not transferring stuff from disk, you might get huge benefits though). If you're using gigabit or slow ethernet, you're going to see a massive improvement in transfer speeds.


Which directories should I back up to save all of my data? Would backing up my home directory be enough or does OS X saves important files outside of it I should be aware of? This is not supposed to be a full OS backup, I only want my data. Applications' configuration details can be re-created and so on but other things such as bookmarks I do consider important.

Currently backing up:

/Users/Crocodile  (except for Trash & Library)
/Users/Crocodile/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles  (FF bookmarks)
/Users/Crocodile/Library/Fonts  (user-specific fonts)

I use CalDAV for calendar and IMAP for email so no need to backup Mail/Calendar directories, right?

[edit] Added the user-specific Fonts directory. The system-wide directory, located at /Library/Fonts, is not needed IMO since a OS reinstall will include (most of) them; plus these can easily be copied from another machine.

A lot of applications store critical information in ~/Library so you might be better off with backing up your whole user folder (with the exception of Trash of course). If you use incremental backups the size will not be too big after the first run. And you can at least exclude ~/Library/Caches anyway. You also may want to back up any registration codes for applications (by keeping them in separate file for instance) you've bought so you can reinstall them easily.

OTOH you might want to consider the time required to rebuild all your configurations and installations from scratch and compare this to the price of an external USB drive.


Use USB microphone (like a Snowball by Blue) to iPhone with Lightning cable How to use a USB microphone like the Snowball Ice by Blue with an iPhone with Lightning port (such as iPhone SE)?

You'll need the Lightning to USB Camera adapter from Apple and then connect your microphone there.

Depending on the microphone, you could require an external USB power source. This is normally done by adding in a powered USB hub.

Note that this might not work with your specific microphone. It works with some USB microphones, but it is not really supported hardware by Apple.


Cannot go back to MacOSX after using BootCamp to start Windows 7 After installing Windows 7 using BootCamp on a 2012 MacPro with HighSierra (Beta). I booted in Windows 7 and now cannot boot back in MacOSX as the BootCamp Utility on Windows isn’t working properly. I’ve tried using the Cmd and Option key combinations to launch in Boot Selector or Recovery Mod, but neither of them work as it seams that the keyboard isn’t being detected until Windows launches. I’ve also tried removing the HDD that Windows is installed on, but that only brings a black screen with a single flashing underscore in the top left corner.

Need urgent support to get back into MacOSX to access my Business Critical applications.

Try something for me, if it doesn't work, ask someone else.
Restart the computer.  Right after you hit the restart button, press and hold the option key until it either boots into one of your operating systems or pops up a screen in which you can switch between the two.  That's how I had to switch between windows and MacOSX on my mac.


Terminal Tab Title after SSH Session In Mac OS X (I'm on 10.6.8, though I believe other versions are the same) ssh'ing into a remote machine changes the title of the current tab in Terminal. Annoyingly, when I disconnect from the remote machine, either explicitly with exit or via a timeout, the title of the tab doesn't change back to what it was.

On an almost daily basis this nearly causes me to suffer a heart attack, when I'm typing away performing some command or other, only to see out of the corner of my eye that the tab is still named user@remotehost. I'm a cautious user that always tends to pwd etc to confirm my location before doing anything, yet it still catches me in a moment of panic when I'm doing DROP DATABASE x and I see the remote host name in the tab.

Long story short, is there a way to revert this title when disconnecting from a remote host, or do I have to stick with opening a new tab every time I disconnect, to reset the title?

Add a PROMPT_COMMAND to your  .bash_profile

export PROMPT_COMMAND="echo -ne '\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}\007';$PROMPT_COMMAND"

The PROMPT_COMMAND gets executed every time the prompt is displayed.

Please note that we include the existing PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable, such that we do not lose any existing settings (i.e. update_terminal_cwd).


Application for managing a pdf document library I'm looking for an application that can help manage a library of pdf documents.  I prefer open source (or just free beer), but that's not absolutely essential.

I am aware of calibre and use it often for my ebooks, including those in pdf format.  However, I'd like something for more general purpose use, especially PDFs that are largely - or entirely - graphics based, or contain small amounts of text (like keyboard shortcut reference cards and the like, research papers, and the like).

Easy management of metadata, search and filter, and easy access to the files from an application interface are the other main requirements.  I don't need any device-sync or transfer capabilities, all the documents in this library would reside only on my MBP.

Anything out there that would be useful in this context?

BibDesk (free)

is free, does everything you describe, and integrates well with LaTeX.


How to code-sign my python script / package packaged for mac using pyinstaller without using xcode? I have written a python script and bundled it using the PyInstaller.
The executable file inside the dist folder works fine on my Mac. But not on someone else's Mac even if they've set "App Store and identified developers".
So it seems I require Apple Developer ID and credentials. Please let me know how to create certificate for the same and code sign my package.
Can I do it without Xcode ?

You can code sign your distribution manually using the codesign tool. Apple's Code Signing Guide includes a section on manually signing code:

Signing Your Code Manually
… In the unusual case that you sign your code manually, or to interrogate an app for details about its signature, you use the codesign command line tool directly. See the codesign man page for a complete enumeration of the options this tool takes.

Depending on the complexity of the bundle being signed, the final command typically looks like:
codesign -s <identity> <absolute-bundle-path>

identity refers to the common name of the signing certificate. For distribution on computers you do not control, you will want to issue an Apple Developer ID using Apple's developer web site.
Notarizing
Once your bundle is code signed, you should ask Apple services to notarize it, see Notarizing macOS Software Before Distribution. This will remove the first run message from Apple warning about possible malware.
As with code signing, a command line approach exists using altool, see Customizing the Notarization Workflow.


Is this network blocking my VPN? I use a VPN from my Mac (OS X El Capitan).  It works fine everywhere... except for one particular guest Wifi network, where I simply cannot connect to the VPN: it shows "Connecting..." in the menubar for a few seconds, then fails. Verify the server address and try reconnecting.".  The VPN configuration seems fine, as it works fine from every other network.

How do I debug the cause of this?  Is this network blocking access to this VPN?  How would I tell?

Here are the log messages in /var/log/system.log:

racoon[40908]: accepted connection on vpn control socket.
racoon[40908]: IPSec connecting to server X.X.X.X
racoon[40908]: Connecting.
racoon[40908]: IPSec Phase 1 started (Initiated by me).
racoon[40908]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode message 1).
racoon[40908]: >>>>> phase change status = Phase 1 started by us
racoon[40908]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Phase 1 Retransmit).
--- last message repeated 2 times ---
racoon[40908]: IPSec connecting to server X.X.X.X
racoon[40908]: Connecting.
racoon[40908]: IPSec Phase 1 started (Initiated by me).
racoon[40908]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode message 1).
racoon[40908]: >>>>> phase change status = Phase 1 started by us
racoon[40908]: port 62465 expected, but 0
racoon[40908]: IKEv1 Phase 1 AUTH: success. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode Message 2).
racoon[40908]: >>>>> phase change status = Phase 1 started by peer
racoon[40908]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode message 2).
racoon[40908]: IKEv1 Phase 1 Initiator: success. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode).
racoon[40908]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode message 3).
racoon[40908]: IPSec Phase 1 established (Initiated by me).
racoon[40908]: IPSec disconnecting from server X.X.X.X
racoon[40908]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Information message).
racoon[40908]: IKEv1 Information-Notice: transmit success. (Delete ISAKMP-SA).
racoon[40908]: failed to send vpn_control message: Broken pipe
racoon[40908]: glob found no matches for path "/var/run/racoon/*.conf"
racoon[40908]: IPSec disconnecting from server X.X.X.X

There is a precisely 30-second gap between Phase 1 established and IPSec disconnecting.  I have full network connectivity from this guest Wifi network as long as I don't enable the VPN.  I am in the US, so it is unlikely this is government censorship, but it might be some kind of blocking by the maintainer of the guest network.  I can successfully ping the server IP address (anonymized to X.X.X.X in the logs above). Anything else to check?

It seems that the network you are on is blocking the port 62465 which your VPN server is using.


Using scutil to set DNS for specific domains I'm trying to resolve only example1.com and example2.com using a custom DNS server. I've read that scutil could come in handy, but after doing the following, the system-wide DNS is still used:

sudo scutil
> open
> d.init
> d.add ServerAddresses * 198.35.23.2 198.32.56.32
> d.add DomainName example1.com
> set State:/Network/Service/PRIMARY_SERVICE_ID/DNS
> quit

Am I missing something?

I would not recommend scutil for this -- it's hard to understand and hard to use (and I'm not sure what the commands you've done so far actually do, but I'm pretty sure it's not what you want).  The "standard" way to configure custom resolution policies for specific domains is to create a /etc/resolver directory, and then put file(s) in it named for the domain(s) you want the policies applied to. See man 5 resolver and this web page for more info.

In you case, this would mean creating both /etc/resolver/example1.com and /etc/resolver/example2.com, both containing this:

nameserver 198.35.23.2
nameserver 198.32.56.32

Note: I haven't tested this in a while, but I assume it still works. Also, note that changing /etc/resolv.conf does not change the system resolver's behavior; it's just there for compatibility with unix-heritage tools that depend on it.


On my iPad, how can I tell if a website is secure on Safari? Does the web address have to be in green, or is it secure if it's in black?

If the site is being accessed over HTTPS, then the lock icon is shown (in black).

If the HTTPS certificate has been verified, the lock icon is shown in green.

Both are secure, however the latter vouches for the authenticity of the site as well as the security of the connection.

For example:

https://www.icloud.com/ shows a green lock icon, having been verified as Apple Inc.

https://georgegarside.com/blog/ shows a black lock icon. Even though it's secure over HTTPS, it hasn't been verified.

You can visit the two links on your iPad to see the difference in lock icon.


Virus in Safari preventing it from launching? I think I got a virus in Safari because I was downloading an app and now Safari will not open. It keeps asking to reopen the last windows closed when opening and whether I click yes or no it doesn't matter. It then crashes and shows a "send a report or ignore" option because Safari will not open.

I already tried restarting my computer and updating Safari. There was a post somewhere else that said something about putting a "com.apple.safari..." item on my desktop out of the Library/Preferences folder, but I do not have that. Must be because of the new update or something.

REPORT: Crashed Thread: 16 Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000020
External Modification Warnings: Thread creation by external task.

Please help me.

The folder you mentioned is ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Safari.savedState

You can find it like this…

Switch to the Finder & hit ⌘ Command-N to generate a new window.
Hit ⌘ Command-⇧ Shift-G for Go To…
Copy/paste the following [including the tilde ~ sign]

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Safari.savedState
Click Go
Delete the entire contents of that folder; it should be just a few files called data.data, window_1.data and windows.plist

Try launching Safari again.


Running brew doctor shows I have 3 different python "config" scripts installed. How do I get rid of them so that I no longer receive this warning? I have been told that there is a default Python installed on OSX, and that deleting it will cause SEVERE system issues, however, I want to clear these warnings in brew doctor.

This is what the message says:

    Warning: "config" scripts exist outside your system or Homebrew directories.
`./configure` scripts often look for *-config scripts to determine if
software packages are installed, and what additional flags to use when
compiling and linking.

Having additional scripts in your path can confuse software installed via
Homebrew if the config script overrides a system or Homebrew provided
script of the same name. We found the following "config" scripts:
    /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python-config
    /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python2-config
    /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python2.7-config

Warning: Python is installed at /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework

Homebrew only supports building against the System-provided Python or a
brewed Python. In particular, Pythons installed to /Library can interfere
with other software installs.

How do I clear them and what happens if I just delete all three of those config scripts?

Those scripts refer to an official Apple installation of Python. You can uninstall those safely this way:

Open "Applications" in Mac Finder and drag Python to the trash bin.
Empty the trash bin

Note:

the MacOS system Python is /usr/bin/python
Homebrew Python(s) will be located in /usr/local/bin/
Pythons installed as an Apple application live in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/


iPhone 11 and iPad stopped inserting a period after double tapping space bar This started when phone updated to  IOS 13
It slows me down ... I have to shift to add the period

I have down a hard shutdown, reboot, checked all my settings.

You can edit this setting in „General“ -> „Keyboards“ -> “.“ Shortcut.


How can I get the Finder to show metadata? I am running MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 on an iMac. Sometime last July, the Finder started hiding the metadata of downloaded photos. Its behavior varied for a while, but now it seems to have settled down to the following.
I open a pic -- e.g., https://fs3.fotoload.ru/f/0220/1580572066/e367aaa0e2.jpg -- in a browser window and drag it to the Desktop. The Finder's Get Info shows this:

I open a Column-view Finder window for the Desktop, with all the Image Preview Options enabled, and select the pic. I get this:

I drag the pic to a folder, which is also in Column view. The metadata appears briefly (< 1 sec), then changes to this:

Get Info shows only this:

That's also what I get if I drag the pic directly from the browser to the destination folder.
If I open the pic in Preview, it shows the metadata. What can I do to get the Finder to act like it used to and always show the metadata? I have installed no Finder extensions or photo management software.

Under the View menu, there is an item "Preview Options". This allows you to specify what data will be shown in the Preview pane.
This item (and the various parameters it contains) may only be available when you the Preview panel is showing and you have an image file selected.
These are the defaults:


Issue while installing Windows 10 on an early 2011 MacBook Pro I try to install a bootcamp with :

OSX 10.11 El Capitan
Windows 10 Pro (from Dreamspark system, its a license for students)

I have succeeded in installing the Windows 10 .iso file on my USB stick.  I had to edit the plist file of the Boot Camp Assistant (the last version 6.0). I have succeeded in partitioning my SSD in two parts.
Now I boot on the USB stick by pushing ALT when booting. The install process asks me to enter the license key. I precise that the installation process looks like the old one, the Windows 7's one. After the license has been entered, I have an error :

tabtip.exe - Application error
The exception unknown software exception (some hexadecimal) occurred in the program at location (some hexadecimal)
Click on OK to terminate the program

After clicking OK, I can just cancel the installation.
I have tried to copy again Windows 10 on the USB stick. It doesn't change anything.
I have also tried to avoid entering my license key by using the "next" button of the window, but the error occurs just after.
I have tried to install Windows 8.1, it doesn't change anything.

don't try to force boot using EFI if you have MBP early 2011, I have and it succeeded but without sound. the only way to fix the sound problem is to re install it in BIOS boot not EFI


How to make menu-bar auto-hide/appear faster? There is a 0.5s delay and then the animation starts to roll the menu bar down. I know it doesn't sound a lot but in practice it gets annoying when I multitask and trying get tasks done fast.

Is there a way to remove the delay and trigger the animation instantaneously?
Also, is there way to make the animation faster, or perhaps disable it?

If by menu-bar you mean the dock, you can disable it.

Under System Preferences you'll find a submenu for Dock settings


Folder action with Automator file search Since a couple of years, I used the folder action successfully which is shown in the screenshot:

A file is added to "Downloads"
"Find Finder Items" with the shown criteria is executed
If the filename fulfils the criteria, the file is moved to another folder. If not, the file remains in folder "Downloads"

Since I bought a new iMac, this action moves every downloaded file to the specified folder (see picture). What is wrong?

The solution was to replace Find Filter Items with Filter Finder Items


Lost iPhone- how Find my Phone works? My son thinks he lost his iPhone whilst out cycling yesterday-he had no data til he got new months allowance which started today- this morning on find my phone it showed at house but we can’t find anywhere- does it show last place it was in when it had WiFi or is it still here now?- have ripped House apart! Thx

If your iPhone status is green (online), it's still connected to your home WIFI. If the status is gray, it's showing you the last visible location. You can even see the time and date of that last location.

If your data plan renews today, it should setup automatically. That said, if the phone was lost whilst cycling and is still up and running, you could see the actual location (based on cellular data).

Based on this, I presume you can find it at home: Open Find My iPhone again, there is a button to make it ring.


What's the difference, in Apple parlance, between a Cursor and a Mouse Pointer? I tend to call it a "pointer", to distinguish it from the text cursor, and because it can be controlled without a mouse (e.g. trackpad). However, I would like to use the same kind of language Apple uses, especially when writing instructions or tutorials for others.

I looked at some settings in System Preferences and found this confusing bit, which seems like it might conflict:

Is there a difference here? Or is Apple just using two terms to mean the same thing?

Apple (and the computer industry as a whole)  is using the two terms to mean the same thing.
Going to the full extreme and setting the "cursor size" as large as you can, you can see that the pointer, even though it has changed to indicate I'm in a text box, is extremely large while the actual blinking cursor is still a "normal" size.

Definition of Cursor
Per Wikipedia:

In computer user interfaces, a cursor is an indicator used to show the
current position for user interaction on a computer monitor or other
display device that will respond to input from a text input or
pointing device. The mouse cursor is also called a pointer, owing
to its resemblance in usage to a pointing stick.


Creating a very large random file I wanted to create a 300GB file with random data so I used this command in terminal

dd if=/dev/urandom of=random.txt bs=300g count=1

But what I receive is

dd: /dev/urandom: Invalid argument
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes transferred in 0.000042 secs (0 bytes/sec)

I originally thought that is due to not writing bs=300G but capitalizing gives me dd: bs: illegal numeric value.

Thanks for the help in advance.

You can't read 300 gigabytes at once (in one block). Try

dd if=/dev/urandom of=random.bin bs=2g count=150

instead.


iPad malware warning I got a warning that I have a malware error 800 something and I need to contact a certain phone #. I know this is bogus but the warning pops up every time I log into safari and will not let me type anything in the search bar or anywhere else for that matter how can I get rid of this

I think @toni is just talking about a page that tries to stop you from navigating away.

Before you do anything else, double-tap the iPad's home button & close Safari.

You can then clear out all your open tabs:

In iOS 8 and later, Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data
In iOS 6 and earlier, Settings > Safari > Clear Cookies and Data

If you want to preserve your tabs & history:

Go to Settings > Safari > Advanced
Turn off JavaScript.
Open Safari & close the problem tab.
Turn JavaScript back on.


How can I obtain app energy impact data from the command line or applescript? Does anyone know how to access the "Energy Impact" data used to determine "Apps Using Significant Energy" displayed in the battery menu bar? I'd like to use it in a shell-script/applescript.

As far as I know, the raw data used for the Energy calculations can be obtained using the powermetrics CLI:

*** Running tasks ***

Name             PID    CPU ms/s  User%  Deadlines (<2 ms, 2-5 ms)  Wakeups (Intr, Pkg idle)
kernel_task      0      41.14     0.00   267.46  0.20               2290.48 1533.24
WindowServer     186    99.50     73.47  54.93   15.58              73.51   67.31
Terminal         53513  105.38    88.85  0.00    0.00               12.78   10.99


iPad mini - same in Australia as UK? I wonder if someone can shed some light on this.  I live in the UK but am travelling to Austalia for Christmas.  If I buy a cellular iPad mini in Australia, will that work when I bring it back to the UK?

Obviously I will need to put a UK SIM card in there, but apart from that, will there be any issues?

Many thanks in advance
Charlie

According the LTE page at Apple.com the model in UK and Australia should be compatible:

Model number:

  iPad mit Retina Display (4. Generation) Modell A1460

  iPad mini Modell A1455

LTE Band Support:

  1 (2100 MHz)
  3 (1800 MHz)
  5 (850 MHz)
  13 (700c MHz)
  25 (1900 MHz)

For both UK and Australia. You should be fine buying the iPad down under :)


iOS 13 WiFi Sync location Previously (before iOS 13) I was able to attempt to begin a WiFi sync from my phone by going to Settings > General > Wifi Sync

I no longer see that option. On my computer (currently on macOS 10.15) I'm at the mercy of the phone showing up in the Finder (just as I used to be at the mercy of it showing up in iTunes) whenever that strikes the phone or the computer's fancy (I'm unable to determine what makes it appear or not.)

Is there a way to tell the phone to begin a sync? (or alternatively tell Finder to look and show me the phone which is connected to the same WiFi network and ready to go if it would just show up ok Finder)

After iOS 13 and Mac OS Catalina, it seems that Apple needs to introduce a helper utility to pair the device.

I’m an iOS developer and we use Xcode’s built in utility to pair and unpair devices.

Sometimes the device doesn’t get automatically connected so we have to connect it via a fixed IP address.

Open Xcode (can be downloaded free)
Open devices and simulators
Connect via IP

More details can be found here.


MacBook dual drive is killing hard disks Towards the end of last year I decided to remove the CD drive on my late-2007 MacBook and replace it with a 2nd hard drive (using an aftermarket 'caddy').

Several months in, my 1 TB WD Blue (2nd) hard drive refused to open some files so I did a surface scan. This revealed the horror within! Hundreds of bad blocks, so I recovered as much data as I could and put the drive to one side. I replaced it with a different 1 TB Samsung drive. Last week the exact same problem has happened so I have removed the caddy and fitted the CD drive back in.

Is there something I have missed or does it look like the caddy is killing hard drives? It's either that or I have had major bad luck with hard drives.

Is there something I have done wrong? Or is it my laptop that is on its last legs? (this would worry me more). How can I tell?

Sorry if this sounds vague, but I'm quite worried. Please let me know if you need more information.

Try using one of the various temperature utilities to get the temperature of the hard drive. Perhaps the CD-ROM drive space isn't ventilated very well, and your hard drives have put out more heat than the original CD-ROM drive.


Is there a meaningful performance index to compare various MBP generations? Is there a simple but meaningful performance index for comparing various generations of MacBooks, and their different configurations, with a focus on everyday graphics and web development work?

I will eventually be looking for a successor to my current work MacBook. I feel like I need as much performance as possible, but the top of the line 15" MBP is too expensive so I'll have to look at a more lightly configured 15", a 13" model, or go one or two generations back.

I would like to find out how well those options would perform compared to my current 2011 model.

I have tweaked my current MBP with more RAM (8 instead of 4 GB) and an SSD, though, so I'd need an actual benchmark program as well as a results table for the various models, so I can measure my machine's actual performance with the tweaks installed.

Is there a benchmark/index that I can put to use?

My typical work day sees

Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign open, often with huge files
A fat but indispensable Web IDE (phpStorm, the main battery drain for some reason)
Chrome with loads of tabs, Safari/other browsers for testing purposes
Skype, Mail, Scrivener, Calendar almost always open
HDD and Network intensive helpers - a backup service, dropbox, FTP....

Well for benchmarking you can download GeekBench or check out the benchmark scores for Macs.

My story: I still have my i5-2.5Ghz Macbook MD313 (2011) and I upgraded to 2x 240gb 560mbps SSD in RAID 1 which get speeds up to 800mbps. Then I upgraded my RAM to 16gb. It only has 512mb integrated HD3000 GPU and this 2011 machine outruns my 2013 i5-3.2Ghz 27" iMac with 8gb RAM and without SSD.

My advice:

Get a 15" non-retina (around 2012-2014) that has at least a 1gb dedicated GPU (2gb would be awesome), eg. the AMD/nVidia series and not integrated Intel ones.
For having 10+ apps open at a time, I highly suggest you upgrade
your memory to 16gb, anything above late 2011 can handle 16gb RAM.
Make sure it can support SATA3 and get a SATA3 SSD with speeds around 550mbps read AND write. (upgrade is easy)

The GPU will help with your Adobe suite (enable 'Use Graphics Processor' in Preferences). The RAM will help with 10+ apps open and leave most stuff in memory for faster opening etc without clearing memory that often. This will also help with Adobe suite as you can set how much memory it should use, the more the merrier, right? And the SSD will obviously help with opening/closing applications and read/write to and from files faster.

Upgrading older devices with latest products helps me out financially significantly!


Convert .docx to .epub with apple pages using command line Pages has an File > Export To > ePub... option that I'm using to manually convert a Word document (which Pages can open directly) to ePub format.

I'm basically looking for the equivalent of:

/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert mybook.docx mybook.epub

For completeness, I want to use Pages instead of Calibre because it does something 'smarter' with one aspect of arabic text that I need: it tags all arabic blocks with dir="rtl".

If you're not married to using Pages and are familiar with the Terminal, you can use Calibre (free and open source) rather easily to do this using their command line interface through the terminal:

ebook-convert myfile.docx myfile.epub

The only slight challenge is finding the ebook-convert script after installing Calibre; typically it's here:

/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/console.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert


Unable to set DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH in shell on OSX 10.11.1 In shell scripts used for unit testing with dynamic libraries in a directory other than the typical @rpath, I have previously been able to set DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH to set the directory containing the libraries. Under 10.11.1, bash seems to ignore attempts to set this environment variable:

$ sh -x testscript.sh
+ DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/Users/something/testinglibs
+ export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH
+ exec printenv

and DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH is not present in printenv's output.

Is this a security-related hack in 10.11's shell? I haven't been able to find this change documented in man pages or online.

This is System Integrity Protection introduced in El Capitan

Documentation is in this from Apple

Basically any Apple supplied OS X executables are protected. and (from an earlier document)

  Spawning children processes of processes restricted by System Integrity Protection, such as by launching a helper process in a bundle with NSTask or calling the exec(2) command, resets the Mach special ports of that child process. Any dynamic linker (dyld) environment variables, such as DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, are purged when launching protected processes.

In this case sh is protected


Unexpected payload found for message 9, dataLen 0 I found the following in my wifi.log file after l connected to wifi:

  Unexpected payload found for message 9, dataLen 0

What does it mean?

I have had similar issue comparing a different message code, here is Cisco's explanation of deauth reason code 9:

  9  Station requesting (re)association is not authenticated with responding station NOT SUPPORTED

From: 802.11 Association Status, 802.11 Deauth Reason codes

Not sure if that helps. Good luck.


Do Google Chrome and Safari keep sending my IP address to websites while in the background on iOS When you are not actively using Safari or Chrome, but if they are in the background still with open tabs of websites that were visited while in the foreground, do they keep refreshing and sending my IP address etc. to the websites?
(iOS)

Unless you have Background refresh turned on for Safari or Chrome, they don't.

Note that when you minimise a app, the app just stays in Stand-by mode. When you again use it, it refreshes the data by sending your information again.


Restore a lost partition from degraded software mirror RAID I used to store my valuable files on Apple software RAID (mirror). Recently one disk has failed and the mirror became degraded.

I rebuilt the mirror using new drive, following this guide, but seems like there are no partitions on it.

I believe the data on the healthy drive is not corrupted. What programs should I use at this point to retrieve if not the lost partition, but data?

You can try the following programs to retrieve your data from lost/damaged partitions: FileSalvage, Data Rescue, Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery, DiskWarrior. The good practice is to create an image of the actual partition and restore data from it.


Continue writing iPhone Mail on Mac without the account configured on Mac I have this very restrictive work e-mail account which I cannot add to my Mac (Airwatch), and I tried to write a long email with the iPhone screen shown via QuickTime and a bluetooth keyboard.

Suddenly the mail was available in the Mail app, and I was able to finish writing the mail on my Mac.

I have no idea how I made that happen (Altough I did insert an image into the mail on my phone).

Is this a feature I can activate intentionally ?

It's a feature called Handoff

OS X El Capitan: Pick up where you left off with Handoff
With Handoff, you can start something on one device (Mac, iOS, or Apple
Watch) and pick it up on another without losing focus on what you’re
doing. For example, you can start writing an email on your Mac, then
pick up where you left off in Mail on your iPhone. Or see a location
in Maps on Apple Watch, then explore the area in more detail in Maps
on your Mac.
You can use Handoff with many apps—Calendar, Contacts, Keynote, Mail,
Maps, Messages, Notes, Numbers, Pages, Reminders, and Safari. Some
third-party apps may also work with Handoff.

An app's Handoff icon at the left side of the Dock For Handoff to
work, you must use supported devices that are signed in to
iCloud using the same Apple ID and on the same Wi-Fi network.
The devices must be within Bluetooth range of one another (about 33
feet or 10 meters); make sure Bluetooth is on for your Mac (in System
Preferences) and iOS devices (in Settings).
Turn Handoff on or off   If you don’t see a Handoff option on your device, it doesn’t work with Handoff.
On your Mac: Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click General,
then select “Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices”
(below “Recent items”). To turn it off, deselect the option.
On iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch: Go to Settings > General > Handoff &
Suggested Apps, then tap to turn on Handoff. To turn it off, tap the
option.
On Apple Watch: Open the Watch app on iPhone, go to My Watch >
General, then tap to turn on Enable Handoff. To turn it off, tap the
option.
Hand off between devices   From your Mac to an iOS device: The Handoff icon of the app you’re using on your Mac appears on iPad,
iPhone, or iPod Touch in the bottom-left corner of the Lock screen.
Just swipe up to continue working in the app.
You can also double-click the Home button on the device to go to the
multitasking screen, then swipe right to see the Handoff icon.
From an iOS device or Apple Watch to your Mac: The Handoff icon of the
app you’re using on your iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, or Apple Watch
appears on your Mac at the left end of the Dock (or the top, depending
on the Dock position). Just click the icon to continue working in the
app.
You can also press Command-Tab to quickly switch to the app that
has the Handoff icon.


Can't share the boot drive root dir with authorization for "everyone" set to "no access"? If you add your boot drive to the network filesharing list of shares, the option to set the privileges for class "everyone" to "no access" is disabled.

Can anyone explain why? Or how to enable it?

According to this thread, authenticated users always have privileges to their home dirs, and authenticated admins always have privileges to the whole disk. So in some sense, adding the whole disk and disabling nonauthenticated users is redundant; you could just delete the share if that's the behavior you want. But what if you want more fine grained access for some groups, but still no read access for unauth'ed users? It seems impossible to accomplish this.

Also it seems rather arbitrary that the OS restricts that authorization option for network sharing, given the fact that the system will happily remove filesystem permissions from the boot disk, making the system unbootable. You'll let me wreck my boot disk making the entire disk unreadable to world, but you won't do the analogous but innocuous for network shares? Can anyone account for that?

It's not innocuous. The permissions you're seeing (and controlling) in the Sharing preference pane are the regular filesystem permissions, not some separate sharing-only permissions. Setting the permissions here to Everyone: No Access would deny all users (other than root) access to the entire volume, thus rendering your Mac unbootable. This seems like a good enough reason to prevent you from doing it.

You could ask why the Finder does allow you to do this, but I don't think there's any particularly deep answer. It's impossible to block all possible destructive actions, so inevitably Apple will have chosen some to block and not bothered with others.


How to check if a Firmware Password is enabled in OS X? I do not know how to check if Firmware Password which prevents changing the OS Startup Disk options is enabled on my Macbook Air 2013-mid with El Capitan 10.11.4.

How to check if Firmware Password is enabled from OS X and Mac Hardware?

Apple uses their own boot loader, which only boots OS X, so I am not entirely sure what you mean by secure boot.

However, I assume you are asking how you can tell if a Mac has been secured with a firmware password. To find out, simply try to boot the Mac into anything but the normal OS X boot process. Try using an external boot volume, recovery mode, single user mode, verbose mode, target disk mode, resetting the PRAM or any other alternative booting approach. They will all trigger the firmware password window.

Failing to enter the correct password won't do anything. The machine just wont boot. Even if failed, it will probably still boot into your normal OS X install, but I havent tried that.

Please note: The term "firmware password" on Macs can also be referred to as "Open Firmware" or "EFI passwords".


Can I trust the driver/software installer downloaded from https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1888?locale=en_GB? I am trying to install the printer driver for the printer HP LaserJet M1005 MFP on MacOS Big Sur.
I tried many ways and followed HP official website guide. But none of them works. (This may because the printer model is old. The provided driver does not install on Big Sur. New recommended way of using HP Easy Start.app and HP Smart.app don't work on this model too)
Now, I found out an installer file which may work at https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1888?locale=en_GB
The page does NOT have many information (the file's author etc) and I never use and download anything from https://support.apple.com/kb/. I don't know if anyone can upload files to https://support.apple.com/kb/ or not.
So basically, can I trust that installer from the above apple support link? Is that an official file uploaded by some apple employee officially?
Thanks a lot.

Yes, you can trust it. Only Apple can upload files to support.apple.com. Most of the software there is Apple-authored, although in a few cases I think there may be some third-party software that Apple has decided to supply via their server (but in those cases, I'm pretty sure Apple has checked them thoroughly). The kb page can also be found via https://support.apple.com/downloads/hp.
Also, if you download the the disk image, open it, and then open the installer package inside it, the Installer application will show a padlock in the top right of its window indicating that the package is signed. Click the padlock, and it'll show that it's signed with Apple's "Software Update" certificate. See the "Check Installer packages" section here for a similar screenshot (and lots more discussion about verifying code signatures).


MacBook turning off suddenly I have such MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), and I noticed such "feature": for example, I have 50 (it could be any number) percent of battery, charger cable does not connect. I can surf the browser and make some light work all nice, but if I try to open (for example) Video Editor or some development tools, something that requires more power from my laptop, so my Mac just suddenly turning off... Then if I try to turn it on again I see standard image(notification) like "You need to change your Mac". That's it.

Ok, then I connect the charger to Mac, wait a minute and successfully turning it on... And see that I still have like 50 percent of battery.

Firstiful I think, that I think that I need to change the battery (actually I have 600 cycles), but I am not sure, because as far as I know this battery can easily work up to 1000 cycles of charge, and secondly I tried to find something in google like "Mac turns off, battery issue" and similar questions, but nothing...

So, question is - how can I check if it is a battery issue or anything else?

Image from CoconutBattery app

Image from DaisyDisk

EDIT

I also tried to run the Apple Hardware Test as @Monomeeth suggested(turn on + hold D or Option D)

The first image that I saw was this one

Then I was asked to choose Wifi and fill in the password and after a few moments I got such message

Your MacBook Pro battery has a life expectancy at or around 1,000 cycles.  It's not uncommon for batteries to exceed or fall short of this number; as every user is different in terms of what they use their computers for and how/when they're using AC power etc. So the 1,000 cycles is just an estimation of how long it can last. At 658 cycles it's more than likely that your battery is still okay, but it's also not unheard of that it could be on its way out.

If I was you I'd try resetting the SMC.

Reset the SMC

To reset the System management Controller on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button and hold all these down for at least 10 seconds
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

Now use your computer to determine if the issue still persists. If it does you could run Apple Hardware Test.

Running Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test to test its hardware. You can do this as follows:

Fully shut down your MBP
Disconnect any external hardware connected to your MBP1
Restart your MBP
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Apple Hardware Test icon appear
When prompted, select your language and click on the right arrow
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete. Be aware that if you connect to the internet via an ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi, then keep this cable plugged in during the process.

1 If you need to use an external keyboard, mouse or display you can keep these connected. However, if you don't need to, then test your MBP without these being connected.


Is there a way to create new desktop spaces from keyboard only? We all know there is a way to to switch between desktops using keyboard shortcuts,
but can we create new ones using only the keyboard?

You can do it with some AppleScript. This will create a new desktop every time you run it:

tell application "System Events"
    do shell script "/Applications/Mission\\ Control.app/Contents/MacOS/Mission\\ Control"
    tell process "Dock"
        set countDesktops to count buttons of list 1 of group 1
        --new desktop
        click button 1 of group 1
        --switch to new desktop
        repeat until (count buttons of list 1 of group 1) = (countDesktops + 1)
        end repeat
        click button (countDesktops + 1) of list 1 of group 1
    end tell
end tell

You can save this as a Universal Service you can assign a globally-available shortcut key combination to call it.

Credit where credit is due.


iPhone music is skipping Some of the music on my iPhone 4G 32Gig started skipping intermittently when I play it on the phone. These are mp3 files synch'd to the iPhone through iTunes from my Windows 7 laptop.

I have filled it to 28G.

The same song played back again at a later time does not skip but another one might.

What is going on here?

What do I do about this?

Definitely sounds like its fragmentation-related.

I found a few sources, take with a grain-of-salt but it seems to back up the hypothesis.

http://sites.google.com/site/tony72/ppc_frag
http://www.lagom.nl/misc/flash_fragmentation.html
http://www.springerlink.com/content/a2515t43pg067522/
http://www.diskeeper.com/blog/post/2007/06/22/The-Impact-of-Fragmentation-on-Flash-Drives-%28iPods-Jump-Drives-etc%29.aspx

My earlier post:

Edit: Thank you for the info.

Some additional info could help with this:

iPhone release (orig, 3g, 3gs etc...)
codec of audio: (mp3? apple lossless?
aiff?...)

Without the additional info, my first hypothesis would be that its a memory issue. You might try killing some other apps (yes, I know they shouldn't be running, but there may be some related processing happening in the background.)

To take it to another extreme for testing purposes, do you have video clips you could try? If so, test them out and come back if there's any useful information gathered.

One last thing, I doubt its related but, how full is the storage on the iPhone?


virtualbox running win7 64bit, too slow I have a MBP, i5 CPU and 4G ram.

I run win7 using virtualbox and I allocate 2G ram for win7, only to find my Mac acts too slowly.

What can I do for that? Am I allocating too much ram?

A Mac, especially one running Snow Leopard or Lion, requires at least 2 GB of RAM for decent system performance.

Even through the system requirements for Snow Leopard are 1 GB, it doesn't perform well with 1 GB. Lion requires 2 GB of RAM just to be able to run. If you plan on running a virtual machine setup and expect decent performance from both machines, I'd have 8 GB of RAM in my machine. You can get 8 GB of ram for less than $50 from OWC.

Also, If you're not doing anything major in Windows, I'd lose the 64 bit installation, bump it down to 1 GB of RAM and try again. I use 32 bit Win7 Enterprise for work through a Parallels VM and only allocate 1 GB of RAM for it and it runs great, especially in coherence mode.


Application stopped working -- claims it requires new OS X version, but it worked before After restarting my computer, running OS X 10.8.5, the old GitHub client suddenly stopped working with the following error message:

You can’t use this version of the application “GitHub Desktop” with this version of OS X.
You have OS X 10.8.5. The application requires OS X 10.9 or later.

However, the very same application had been working previously with no issues. Is any way I can restore it?
I have downloaded the same application again from this direct download link,
but now it is still blocked from starting with the same message, by what looks like only a system lock outside the application.
Is there any way to bypass that blocking setting and start the application?
Here is a screenshot of the message:

According to Updating GitHub Desktop the client updates itself automatically:

  GitHub Desktop automatically downloads updates and installs them when you restart. You can also manually check for updates.

It appears that Github has updated their build toolchain server to a newer version of Xcode not supporting Lion.

You need to stay on the old version.

You may want to contact Github to get the newest build you can still use.


Will the App Store reviewers allow scripts downloaded as text, if it is parsed via WebKit? According to Apple allows hot code push in mobile apps, by Alice Yu in October 2014, the App Store reviewers allow code to be downloaded and run as long as it is:

Not executable code, only interpreted.
Downloaded and run by Apple's Webkit.
A small change i.e doesn't change the purpose of the app.

These conditions have been used as a loophole by frameworks such as Meteor, Cordova/Phonegap & even the likes of Cocos2djs. While Meteor & Cordova are based on the iOS webview, they are downloaded and run via webkit, but Cocos2djs is based on spidermonkey and has the ability to update game content and scripts via Cocos2djs' "Asset Manager" i.e not webkit (webview).

So, what if code/scripts in languages other than javascript such as ruby, python or lua were sent as a "string" in a JSON file to be parsed WITHIN webkit (webview) and then passed to the interpreter to be executed?
Would apple allow this as it is,

Only interpreted code/scripts.
Downloaded and INITIALLY run by Apple's Webkit before being sent to an interpreter for further execution.
Making changes that do not change the purpose or intent of the app.

Apple's review team will reject your app if it looks capable of downloading executable code. They have erred on the side of rejecting apps that legitimately look like they will only even "interpret" the code since Apple stands far more to lose when third parties discover this path to executing code and inject the code between your web server and your app.

The stakes are too high - so you'll want to be very careful that you understand the risk to your app if you include this functionality.

The briefs app - which was submitted to the app store in Late 2009 I believe, was hung up in this "what is the difference between interpreted code, downloadable game data (think new levels for a game), executable code" review state until April 2013

http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/659211315/almost-on-the-app-store
http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/08/briefsapp.html
Wireframe iOS design apps for iPad?

Clearly, there are far more apps on the store that use interpreters so your path to approval is likely to be smoothed by the efforts and pain of the pioneers that got Apple used to the idea that they can ensure interpreted code and configuration doesn't turn into executables.


Using rsync to backup I currently back up the contents of an external hard drive A by (1) deleting everything in the destination external hard drive B and (2) copying everything from A to B (in Finder). The external hard drive only contains “basic data” (folders, images, videos, documents, etc.), nothing fancy/weird.
But with all the amazing free tools that exist out there I couldn't find a decent one to backup (suggestions accepted).
I want to automize this. After a few searches, it seems I can use rsync. I want then to automize this by using rsync to avoid copying files that are already on the destination hard drive (of course, if a change has been made, I want to update the file/folder; the same with deleted files/folders or new files/folders; the idea is to mimic what I usually do manually with Finder).
I got to this point
rsync -av --progress --delete /Volumes/A/ /Volumes/B

Now the log is full of files which name starts with . or ._ or even ._.. Are they necessary?
Question
How can I copy only the files that matter, leaving all those that don't matter behind. For example, if I have photo.png I would expect to copy photo.png, not ._photo.png or many files.
What --exclude or --exclude-from can be used safely on a Mac? May be a good rule is “just copy anything that Finder shows” which is what I would copy if I passed manually through all folders.
 Extra question
Is -av --progress --delete enough? Am I committing a crime or risking some data? What options would you use.
Please, back your answer with some arguments, I would appreciate it.
I'm looking for a way to automate rsync which seems quite powerful and free to use.

For Maximum Safety, Copy Everything

The safest option is to copy everything, including invisible meta-data files.

Files tend to exist for a reason and as software changes, so will the existence, purpose, and contents of these meta-data files. Copying everything will reduce the maintenance burden and offer ease of mind that nothing is being lost.

The log file created by rsync will be technically involved by the very nature of rsync being a command line tool. Consider presenting a tidied up, meta-data filtered, and maybe even coloured coded output for the user to check. You could do this with a wide range of scripting tools and languages. Please ask more questions here on Ask Different and on StackOverflow if you need help with this approach.

Delete Last & Copy OS X Resources

Regarding the rsync flags, take a look at the question Fastest and safest way to copy massive data from one external drive to another. In this question, a few additional flags are used and explained:

sudo rsync -vaE --progress --delete-after /Volumes/SourceName /Volumes/DestinationName

In this situation, the E will ensure resource forks and other Mac specific properties are copied.

You may want to consider --delete-after to avoid deleting until the copy has completed; please note that this approach will potentially require a destination drive twice the size of the source.

Possible Exclusions

An answer to a related question, How can I omit FCPX Render Files from a Time Machine backup?, provided a useful link of OS X files and folders that can be excluded from most back-ups. This link provides a practical list of file patterns, folders, and paths that you could exclude.

Include dot Files

There are good reasons to back up files beginning with dots, .* matching files.

Some software keeps preferences, settings, and other information of value in folders at the top of the user's folder in invisible dot prefixed folders. Running ls -la ~/ will reveal these folders and files.

If any user uses or has software that in turn uses version control software, be sure to back-up dot files. Software like subversion and git both store critical information within their dot folders. These hidden folders can be scattered across your file system, where ever a project is checked out.

Spotlight and Disk Access

Spotlight is OS X's search service. Spotlight uses the mdworker process to index and update the search catalogue. If you are concerned about possible disk corruption or slow copies, disabling mdworker while running rsync may help. Personally, I leave Spotlight running while running large rsync transfers.


How to restore Quick Look for plain text .txt files? I was recently installing/uninstalling/re-installing some third-party Quick Look extensions (brew cask install qlstephen among others).  When all the dust had settled everything worked well except Quick Look for .txt files no longer works (I get the default Dear Kate letter).  Quick Look for .rtf files works fine.

By the way, the qlstephen extension is working OK for files without file extensions.  I suspect that problem arose during the uninstalling/re-installing of everything.  I'm running High Sierra.

Any suggestions for getting Quick Look working for plain text .txt files?

To see what application can handle a Quick Look view try in the terminal: qlmanage -m plugins.

This will show a list in the form filetype -> provider, where filetype is in the form com.company-name.filetype like com.apple.mail.email.
The filetype-part shows the full path to the Quick Look plugin.

So in total it shows a line like

com.apple.mail.email -> /System/Library/QuickLook/Mail.qlgenerator (3445.5.20)

This shows that email is handled by the Mail.qlgenerator.

You can filter the long list down with grep:

text files: qlmanage -m plugins | grep -i "text"
plain text files: qlmanage -m plugins | grep -i "plain-text"

It is possible that more than one generator is available for a particular filetype.

According to qlmanage -h there is the -g option:

-g generator    Force the generator to use

The general usage of qlmanage is qlmanage [OPTIONS] path...

However I've never used this -g option.