Mavericks update broke keyboard shortcut for switching Spaces I've upgraded to Mavericks from Mountain Lion. I've used the keyboard shortcut "Control" + "number" to switch between Spaces. The upgrade broke this. I've checked System Preferences and all the settings are the same as before. Is there a fix to restore this feature? Thanks

I actually figured out how to fix this on the fly.

I believe this state occurs when you inadvertently make a swipe gesture while a ctrl-key is held down. I can't be sure of that, but the fix is to do exactly that: hold down the ctrl-key, and then do the desktop-switching swipe gesture (for me it is 3-finger swipe left or right).

I don't know how to prevent it from happening, but it's so quick to fix that it has become a non-issue for me.


Can iOS 11 beta users update to stable iOS 11 when it’s released? I would like to know which of these two things would be required to get the stable release of ios-11:

Upgrade from the iOS 11 beta to stable iOS 11
Downgrade from the iOS 11 beta and upgrade to stable iOS 11

When the Golden Master version of iOS 11 is publicly released, you will not need to downgrade to iOS 10. The Golden Master version will be the same thing as the publicly released iOS version, give no new bugs are found.

Source: https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Golden_Master


Corrupted USB flash drive, cannot initialise or mount I have a USB flash drive which seems to be very corrupted. I didn't have any important files on it so I'm not trying to recover files, I just want to get the drive working again. First, whenever I insert the drive, I get this window.

I press initialize... and I go into Disk Utility.
However, Disk Utility says the USB drive is still unmounted.

As you can see I cannot press mount at all.
Erasing gives me this error.

Erase process has failed. Press Done to continue.

Unmounting disk
Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed.
Operation failed...

Help would be very appreciated. Is this drive broken or can I bring it back to life? :)

You could likely get a 3rd party disk repair utility (Diskwarrior, etc.) but you might be throwing good $ after bad, especially considering the cost of thumb drives these days.

If you have access to a PC you could try formatting it on that. If that fails, toss it.

But really it sounds like the drive is toast.


iPhone disappear from Find My iPhone My iphone6 (iOS8.3) was stolen in Vietnam during my holiday and I've activated lost mode half an hour later and erase iphone later on. The erased action was pending for about 36 hours and now the device is not showing on find my iphone at all (and I did not remove it from icloud).

I don't see it in find my iphone anymore, does it mean the thief(s) restored and remove my icloud from the device?
Or does it mean the phone has been wipe off? I didn't get the email notification saying my phone is erased though.

I don't think I would ever get back the phone, just wanted to make sure all the info on my phone is being erased completely.

I tried to look around for answers but can't seem to find it, if there is already similar article would be great if you could point me the link.

Thanks!

Basically you should be able to use Find My iPhone to locate your device and take additional actions that can help you recover it and keep your data secure. It is possible that the GPS locator has been disabled.


Pages: Change Body Style for Entire document I'm using Pages 5.5.3 on OS X 10.10.4. I can't figure out how to change the size of the Body style for the entire document. If I try to increase the size of the Body text it only changes the size of the text where my cursor was last - the rest of the document is unaffected.

Thank you in advance.

When you click on the font size selector, an Update button appears beside the style you have selected:

Click on it and the style is updated to the new parameters. Existing and new text with this paragraph style will adopt them.


Offline transfer contacts and text messages from Android to iPhone I would like to transfer text messages and contacts from an Android phone to an iPhone, but:

No jailbreaking
No online services (including iCloud or Google)
No third party apps (at least not GUI-based ones; terminal-based ones may be OK!)

I have at my disposal:

A Mac with iTunes
USB cables
Decent proficiency with Unix, SQLite, etc.
Official tools from Apple or Google (including subsidiaries such as Samsung).

Is this possible with the given limitations?

Apple publishes an app on the google play store that you could download to the android and then try running the transfer from a network that has nointernet connection to be sure it’s not using cloud based transfer.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201196

I suppose that’s third party software from Android point of view but it seems pretty first party of you are ok with macOS and iOS. In fact, one of the troubleshooting steps is to disable cellular network which makes me think it uses local network discovery and intentionally doesn’t want your data going anywhere except from one Android device to one iOS device. (That also follows Apple’s long time design to never send data out when you can keep it local.)

If you have closed WiFi, use that and you don’t need the Mac. The only case I see needing Mac in this scenario is if you want to use the WiFi hardware to make a local network for both mobile devices to talk to each other.


Using an external HD as my applications folder I need to install more applications - can I use my external HD (samsung T5) and add an additional applications folder? I have loads of space on it and it the speeds are great.

Yes, you can use an external drive to keep (install) apps.

You should be fine. You don't need to specifically create a folder named Applications on the external drive. Any name or directory hierarchy should be fine.

macOS apps are generally made available as bundles (.app extension) which is technically a directory appearing as a single file to the user (with a specialized structure). An app bundle could be placed anywhere on secondary storage and the app can be used without any difference.

By default, apps are installed in boot volume's /Applications directory and are automatically made available to all the users on macOS. Keeping an app bundle in a folder/drive only accessible to you limits the app available to you.

On a related note, it is worth mentioning for the macOS newcomers that installing/uninstalling an app in macOS is as simple affair as copying/trashing the app's .app file.


iPhotos eHDD Format Inquiry and Windows Compatibility? I have a Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB external hard disk drive that I'm using to store a lot of large files. I have files from both Mac and Windows (as I use Parallels). I was trying to create a new iPhoto library on my eHDD when it started to give me an error. I think that iPhotos requires Mac Extended (journaled) or maybe exFAT format for a library to be written to that volume but I'm not sure. Even if I did, would my windows files work without any issues on Mac Extended? Is there any way to create an iPhotos library on my eHDD hopefully without formatting it?

You can create a second NTFS partition on your windows machine, then reformat the new partition on your mac as Extended journaled as per Apple specs.


Importing vCards from a website into iOS’s Contacts.app I have a web page with tables full of people & their contact information. I started writing a pairing of php & javascript to automagically generate vCards (*.vcf) for each contact. Half way through this process I’ve discovered that iOS is none too cooperative with .vcf downloaded by Mobile Safari.

When a .vcf files is received via MMS or as an email attachment, iOS provides a very obvious & simple interface for adding it as a new contact. I expected Mobile Safari to exhibit similar behavior to Messages & Mail, but that is not the case.

With Dropbox installed, on my iPhone or iPad, things look like:

Mobile Safari “handles” a .vcf file http://mlkshk.com/r/66OX

Without Dropbox installed, Mobile Safari just throws up its hands and says it cannot download the file.

Anyone have a way forward on this one? Is there a way to coerce Mobile Safari into doing something meaningful with the .vcf file? Will this be supported in iOS 5? Wy on earth is it not supported now? Is there another way to markup the contact information so that Mobile Safari will allow for seamless creation of a new entry in Contacts? Microformats, serving the .vcf up with a MIME of text/plain, some markup & JavaScript bookmarklet (clumsy and awkward as they may be), etc. ?

N.B.

I want to know if this can be done on iOS using Mobile Safari. I’m
not looking for work arounds that involve syncing with a desktop
machine, using Dropbox, or some other 3rd party app.
Yes, I
understand that sending a user the .vcf file as an attachment via
email is an option (a terrible, time consuming, non-elegant option
which requires the user to enter their email address without typos
or otherwise bolloxing things up).
I also understand that phone can create a new contact with
a tap & hold (this too is a terrible, time consuming, non-elegant
option which requires the user to remember & then enter the
person’s name without typos, otherwise bolloxing things up, and then
forces them to tap, hold repeat, for each piece of info [phone,
email, address, home phone, home email, website, …])

I expect you found my solution on Stack Overflow but if not you can see the source code and full description at http://www.mobicontact.info or on Stack Overflow

BTW - it involves wrapping the VCARD (.vcf) file inside a Calendar appointment (.ics) which IS handled by mobile Safari.  All the required user agent sniffing and PHP to auto create the calendar appointement is included.  Feel free to use the code, post a comment or up vote on Stack Overflow to spread the word.  Enjoy and good luck.


How to run a sudo command on mac? .. problem with mysql server I 've installed mysql server with brew, and i need to run manually this command each time my computer start to make it work with an application that I can't edit.

sudo mkdir -p -- /var/run/mysqld/ ; sudo ln -s /tmp/mysql.sock /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

What I can do to call this automatically? I tried with Automator, but I don't want to enter my password each time, what is the right way to run this or to fix this? (may changing permissions and running this as normal user)

Mysql is running with my normal user, not root.

On OS X Yosemite you should add the script in:

/Library/LaunchDaemons

using this name for the script:

com.mysql.mysql.plist

and this content:

<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?-->
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
       <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
       <false/>
    </dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.mysql.mysqld</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe</string>
      <string>--user=mysql</string>
    </array>
  </dict>
</plist>

you will get MySQL started automatically every time you reboot the Mac.

be sure to set proper privileges to the script:

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysql.plist
sudo chmod 644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysql.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysql.plist

Just tested on OS X 10.10.2 while moving out of MAMP PRO and it works like a breeze :-)


Is there a way to power up a Mac Mini remotely? Is there ANY way to Power Up a Mac Mini remotely?
Just to be clear, I don´t mean wake up from sleep but boot up.

Depending on how your Mac Mini is connected to the internet (wifi, ethernet, firewall, age of the machine, NAT, …) it should be possible to do it using Wake On LAN.

You could, for example, use a GUI software like WakeOnLan.


Unknown MacBook Air error OSX Mavericks, MacAir11

My built-in keyboard suddenly does not work anymore. Even when I did not turn on caps lock it stills capitalize all letters for me. I relogged but does not work. After testing I found out that the Right Shift is glitched. This makes me unable to enter the password of my Mac correctly and leads to the second problem. I don't know if it's because the keys are malfunctioning or I get infected by a virus.

As I cannot log in into my Mac, I have to log in using the Guest User account. But this happens:

And it made an infinite loop.

Error message (god, it took me a long time!)

panic(cpu 1 caller 0xffffff80007bfe45): "Process 1 exec of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 2"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2782.1.97/bsd/kern/kern_exec.c:4068
Debugger called: <panic>
Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff809930bdf0 : 0xffffff800033a811
0xffffff809930be70 : 0xffffff80007bfe45
0xffffff809930bf40 : 0xffffff8000799368
0xffffff809930bf10 : 0xffffff80007dc2b1
0xffffff809930bf50 : 0xffffff8000336e46
0xffffff809930bf80 : 0xffffff800041eeae
0xffffff809930bfa0 : 0xffffff800043a40f

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: init
VM Swap Subsystem is ON
Boot args: -x

Mac OS version:
Not yet set

Kernel version
Darwin Kernel Version 14.0.0: Fri Sep 19 00:26:44 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2782.1.97-2/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 89E10306-BC78-3A38-955C-7C4922577E61
CoreStorageFsck: LVG on disk0s2 is damaged and mounted read-only
CoreStorage: fsck_cs has finished for group "43F1F1FD-3E8A-47D7-9253-288845A95E7C" with status 0x04
ARPT: 2.004733: srom rev:8
the 0xffffff800af214a8 LVG MLV is readonly because metadata is not writable
ARPT: 2.100222: BTCOEXIST off
ARPT: 2.100652: BRCM tunables:
ARPT: 2.100659:   pullmode[1] txringsize[  256] txsendqsize[1024] reapmin[   32] reapcount[  128]
ARPT: 2.101263: wl0: Broadcom BCM4353, vendorID[0x14e4] BAR0[0xa0400004]
7.15.124.12 (r497602)
__HIB  text base: 0xffffff8000100000
System model name: MacBookAir5,1 (Mac-66F35F19FE2A0D05)
CoreStorageFamily::unlockVEKs(C98CABEB-A027-4381-94EA-4705C08B70E5) VEK[?]unwrap failed. this is normal, except for the root volume.

System uptime in nanoseconds: 2133007077

See the error in action here.

I did not make any modifications to the OS itself.
Found out that the keyboard problem and the kernel problem is two different things.

Any suggestions why this is happening, and how can I fix this problem?

Problem solved.

  Keyboard

The Right Shift button is stuck as there is dust.

  Error code

Basically, there is an issue when my Mac is starting up -- one of the CPUs (in this case, CPU 1) is not working correctly.


Does a guest OS under Virtualbox need to install drivers for peripheral devices? I run a guest Ubuntu under Virtualbox in Mac OS X.

The host Mac OS X has been configured to print on a network printer by someone else.

Now I try to configure the guest Ubuntu to print on the same network printer. I have provided the ip address and  PPD file (extracted from the driver) of the printer during setup , but when I try to print a test page, it doesn't work.
Not sure what has been going wrong.

In general, when using a peripheral device on a guest OS, do I need to install its driver just as if the guest OS were a host OS?

Thanks.

The short answer here is "yes"

If it's a network printer, you should be able to access it over the network as if you were on a physical host.


How to mirror an application window in a second display? Is there any way to mirror an application window onto a second display?

Specific use case: I want to show a terminal window in a second screen (i.e. projector), while still working on that same window on my laptop display. Complete display mirror wouldn't work because I want to keep working with multiple apps opened but project only the terminal window.

You can use an application like tmux within which you can run your first terminal session (on first display), and then open a different terminal window on the second display and use tmux attach-session to mirror the session that is already running on the first display. This should allow you to run and view commands from both the displays.

Note that this technique is only useful for mirroring the terminal and no other GUI program.


Automatic numbers superscripting in OS X Maverick and Pages 5 Is there any way to setup automatic superscripting in OS X Mavericks and Pages 5 (i.e 1st => 1st.

Is there a 3th party plugin that implements that functionality?

Not yet.  I would recommend staying with Pages 4 if that feature is important.  A workaround might be to add what you need to the Text Substitution section of system prefences using Unicode superscripts, but it may not work or look that great.

ᵃ ᵇ ᶜ ᵈ ᵉ ᶠ ᵍ ʰ ⁱ ʲ ᵏ ˡ ᵐ ⁿ ᵒ ᵖ ʳ ˢ ᵗ ᵘ ᵛ ʷ ˣ ʸ ᶻ


Remove 2nd partition, reclaim space If I have a dual booting computer (os x 10.7 and Linux), and would like to remove the Linux partition and return it to one single large disk running os x, how is this done? Is there risk to messing up os x? Do I need to clone the os x side, repartition, and reclone, or is there a simpler method?

It's easily done, but for safety you should always backup your data as there is a small chance that things can go wrong.  Check your Time Machine or equivalent is up to date, then open the Disk Utility application.

Select the disk from the list of mounted drives on the left that corresponds to your internal disk.  If you look at it's partitions you should see 2 that correspond (roughly, this is the size of the partition, not the filesystem, so don't expect the figures to be 100% exact) to your Mac and Linux areas.  To remove the linux one, it should be as simple as selecting it, and hitting delete.  This will leave a linux shaped hole and leave your Mac partition as it stands.  Next, you can expand the Mac area by dragging it's size in the reference diagram, or manually changing it's size by clicking on it and changing the value in the box.

When you click Apply (sorry, I am not at a Mac and cannot recall the exact wording) it will make the changes which could take some time depending on the size of the partitions.

Turn off any disk intensive applications including Time Machine for the duration of the operation, and note that you should not reboot or do anything that you may think likely to cause a crash etc (if you use any unstable programs) until it is complete.

EDIT: An encrypted MAC partition cannot be resized, this is a backup, recreate, and restore scenario.


python2.7 cannot be opened because of a problem Running into an odd issue when my system starts up:

I have not been able to track the point of failure down yet. I assume that it is some application that is attempting to start at system startup, but I have not yet been able to isolate the application or daemon.  The actual problem report seems to be quite unhelpful in this case:

Process:               python2.7 [6982]
Path:                  /Users/USER/*/python2.7
Identifier:            python2.7
Version:               ???
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [6980]
Responsible:           python2.7 [6982]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2015-09-18 16:22:28.150 -0400
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.11 (15A282b)
Report Version:        11
Anonymous UUID:        032A40CC-C2C4-1235-F611-B0961DE616DB

Time Awake Since Boot: 5100 seconds

System Integrity Protection: disabled

Crashed Thread:        0

Exception Type:        EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: @executable_path/../.Python
  Referenced from: /Users/USER/*/python
  Reason: image not found

Binary Images:
    0x7fff67746000 -     0x7fff6777cf5f  dyld (360.14) <DF977301-4A63-32ED-9939-1EE3122D18D4> /usr/lib/dyld

I thought that perhaps it was an issue with Homebrew's python installation, but after removing and re-adding it, this does not appear to be the case.

Any thoughts?

Was fighting with this issue today, after I upgraded python using brew, the annoying pop up wouldn't let me work on my Mac! The only difference is that it was shouting for python3.4. After couple hours of digging I just decided to:

remove all python3 whatsoever, the one installed by brew and the one installed manually from dmg.
search for all remaining symlinks to python I've had on my development projects folder. After deactivating all the venv's and removing the symlinks the pop up was gone.

Then I found this post of jeremycade which explains the less aggressive approach.


How to recover a corrupted external drive encrypted by FileVault? I used Filevault to encrypt an external USB 2TB drive. Last week, I used the drive as usual, entering a password to unlock it to use.

Unfortunately, it didn't dismount properly. Since then I have not been able to use the drive: Disk Utility tried to repair it, but seems to have broken it even more, because now when I plug it in, Mac OS tells me that it can't recognise the drive, and prompts me to initialize / ignore / eject. Using terminal, the standard repair / verify commands I googled don't work. Please help?

Before all, you need to be sure that the drive is 100% healthy at hardware level.

The first thing I would do is checking the S.M.A.R.T values on a computer running Windows, using a tool like HD Sentinel or equivalent. This will give you a good estimation about in which condition the drive is.

You should test the drive connected in an external USB or eSATA dock as the original drive enclosure may also have problems, like weak electrical contact or so.

Then, I would low level clone the drive to another one.
Even if its condition is 100% Ok according to the S.M.A.R.T. values.
This step can reveal a few defective sectors, which were not referenced yet by the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring.

Even if your drive is 100% healthy, every serious data recovery professional will tell you than in a situation like the one you're encountering, we never work on the original drive, but always on a clone, especially when possibly dangerous commands like verify/repair ones are used.

The fact that your drive suggests that you should initialize it (-- don't to it ! --) if often an indicator or hardware issues, like corrupted firmware or damaged heads, requiring data recovery by a company that is specialized in data recovery (and not the first local computer shop you can find).


View Image Full Screen On occasion I need to look at an image at fullscreen so it doesn't have anything else around it to distract me. Is there a way to do that? I can't seem to find a way to do it with preview.

You can use View -> Slideshow to do this in Preview


How to get rid of an spyware on iPhone 8 called News? I've been suspecting my iPhone to be hacked for quite some times now. After setting the two-factor authentication system on it earlier this week, a connection attempt has been made by someone else (I've received an authentication code on my second phone when I clearly didn't try to connect in any way).

So i've started digging into my iPhone and this is what I've found in the Siri and search list of apps:

A supposed app without an icon. This was the one and only app from the list that has this behavior. So I've used the search bar to find this app:

and it seemed like its hidding in the system files when I taped on it led me to the iCloud interface.

So first of all is it a spyware?  If yes, then how can I prove it and get information about who installed it (like getting the IP address it is sending information to for example)?

And finally, how can I get rid of it?

P.S.: Note that the official News app from Apple is called 'Apple News' and has an icon: Apple News Homepage

The entry that you see corresponds to Apple's News app. The icon isn't displayed because you don't have the app installed on your iPhone.

  After setting the two-factor authentication system on it earlier this week, a connection attempt has been made by someone else (I've received an authentication code on my second phone when I clearly didn't try to connect in any way).

There is apparently no unintended connection attempt. You appear to have received the verification code from Apple on one of your "other" trusted device (which is expected behavior after turning on Two-factor authentication).

  So first of all is it a spyware?

No, it isn't a spyware.


Macbook Pro - External monitors and harddrive I have a Macbook Pro which only has 2 x Thunderbolt 3 ports. I want to allow the following

2 x external monitors, so the ability to have 3 different screens (includes the mac screen)

Power a Lacie Thunderbolt 3 external hard drive.

Charge the mac

Is this possible?

Yes, you can use a Thunderbolt 3 dock such as the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock or similar available from many different makers of docks.
That dock allows you to connect the two monitors and charge the Mac via one cable going from the Mac to the dock. The second port on the Mac is then used to power the external Thunderbolt 3 hard drive.
Alternatively you could connect one monitor and the Thunderbolt 3 hard drive to the dock, and connect those with one cable from the dock to the Mac. The second port on the Mac is then used to output a display signal to the second monitor.
Another option, if you haven't already got your monitors, is to buy Thunderbolt 3 monitors with daisy-chaining. These will allow you to connect both monitors and the external drive to a single Thunderbolt 3 chain that will use up only a single port on your Mac.
Note: Not all monitors support daisy-chaining. Also note that if you have a DisplayPort monitor that support daisy-chaining - it can be part of the chain, but it must be the last device in the chain.


How many external displays can I power with the 15" retina MacBook Pro? I have three 24" (1920x1200) Dells that I would like to use on a single setup. With the 15" retina MacBook Pro having two Thunderbolt ports and one HDMI connector, would it be possible to connect them all up in addition to the built-in display?

The Other World Computing Blog shows that the new MacBook Pro 15" with Retina Display Can Run 3 External Displays:

  image source: http://blog.macsales.com/

These resolutions were used:

Retina on laptop @ “best for Retina”
iMac used as a display @ 2560 x 1440 via Thunderbolt
iMac used as a display @ 2560 x 1440 via Thunderbolt/DisplayPort
LG monitor @ 1920 x 1200  via HDMI

Quote from the MacRumors news article on that:

  This makes the Retina MacBook Pro the first Mac -- other than a tower-based workstation like the Mac Pro -- to natively power four displays simultaneously.


How do you enable “bootable” on MacBook? 12” MacBook (Early 2016) Model: 1534 EMC 2991
I’m trying to use a USB to use a software on a MacBook that won’t boot. I’ve been doing everything from recovery mode.
Everything is fine with the USB it’s journaled, guid, writable, except one thing, and that’s bootable. It says “no” for it. How would I go about enabling this setting?
Is there a command in terminal to help me enable this setting?
Thanks.

Edit: and also for some reason when I hit “option” when I boot, I only see the option to boot into internet recovery mode it wont give me the choice to select my usb. Am I doing something wrong?
Edit #2: so when I try downloading something I get his message that my SSD is full and this could be the reason why it won’t mount. Does anyone know how to free up space on it? Erasing won’t work.

You cant make a drive bootable through terminal. You have made a mistake using the install so the drive is not bootable. Try again but use the installer directly from the app-store and it should work.


What are the iPad gestures for the new Chrome app? I cannot find the documentation for them anywhere.

Have found only these two:

switching through open tabs: swipe from the edge of the screen
change order of tabs: long press on tab and move left/right


How to resume normal iPhone volume after notification causes volume to get stuck in lower volume mode? iPhone 4, iOS 5.0.1

Strange problem I've had for a few months.  Sometimes when a notification causes the iPhone to temporarily lower the volume, the volume gets "stuck in quiet mode" and doesn't resume full volume.  As a result, music playback is approximately 25% quieter than normal.  Sometimes getting a subsequent notification is enough to kick back to full volume.

This is very annoying because I never know when the phone is going to ramp up the volume suddenly (if I get a text message for instance).

What could I do on the phone that would force it to kick back to full volume?  Something better than asking a friend to text me, or setting a 1 minute alarm, etc.

Yes, I too have had this problem many times. (I have been told it is a known bug in iOS having to do with playing MP3 files that are shorter than two second.) The easiest way to get your phone back to normal volume is to pause the music (or audio/video, as the case may be) and then resume it. The volume should be back to normal after that.


Reason why applications aren't stored in the Home-Folder? I wonder why Apple don't put all applications in an applications folder inside the Home-Folder. So they could offer a hole new mac for each user.

Every file is user specific, except for the applications. Is there a reason for this? Or just "too complicated" because every user want to have access to Safari and Third-Party Apps?

  Is it just Apple or is it a UNIX design decision?

Is there an explanation/documentation/ operation system design?

Apple's design is not at all a traditional or typical UNIX layout for user files, user preferences or application files and preferences so I would say this is just Apple.

They do document exactly how developers are supposed to design OS X apps to take advantage of the "canonical" locations where files and preferences should be stored so that each user can decide to install any application in one or several locations.

/Applications
/Another volume/Aplications
~/Applications
or anywhere else on the drive since on OS X - you don't need to place an application anywhere as long as the user can read from the folder - an app should run and store things in the proper pace (which is NOT in the application folder itself).

Here are three articles I would start with to learn more:

OS X File System Programming Guide
OS X File System Details
Apple OS File System Overview (iOS and OS X combined) Start Here and skip past the iOS part and go directly to Table 1-2 for OS X summary of important folders.


How can I monitor MacBook USB bandwidth? I have a late 2017 MacBook with the latest Catalina. Using two Anker USB extenders, I have devices in pretty much every port, including six large external hard drives, a webcam and an external SD card. I suspect that somehow I have maxed out my i/o on this machine which slows to a crawl 5 times a day.
What I need to know is whether there is some equivalent to lsblk or some utility I can use to monitor USB bandwidth in real time. How do I know whether or not I am maxing out my i/o and whether or not that is impacting other things?

It’s highly unlikely USB can slow down your mac since it has a minimum of 2x Thunderbolt 3 ports and likely 4 of them. The bandwidth there is way more than USB could saturate. It’s much more likely you need to look at the OS and apps running and rule out interference or USB cable / hub issues with some troubleshooting to note exactly what’s connected and do some timed measurements of whatever you care about when the response is normal and then when the response is slow.
A quick check of System Information should show you the USB speeds for each device and as long as they are the same when it’s fast and when it’s slow, you can know to look for things that change - and not worry USB is somehow intermittently slowing down.


Cisco IPSec forgets password (Mavericks) Cisco IPSec seems to have no way to store the password of the connection permanently. I have found on the web some solutions for the Mountain Lion release, but none for OS-X Mavericks.

Is it impossible, or has someone found an answer and didn't post it?

Per this question, it's not so much a problem with the OS as a problem with the configuration of the VPN on the server side.

One of the options your IT admins can do is force passwords to not be remembered for the VPN connection, and the OS X client will honor this setting. If you have the keychain open and are looking at the saved password when you connect, you can actually see the saved password disappear when you connect to the server.

I've searched for a way around this going so far as trying to applescript the login window, but they've blocked that avenue is well.


Erased hard drive, trying to Reinstall Lion OS X... HOW? My mac wasn't loading past the boot screen (white, apple logo, spinning gear).

So I CMND + R and went to disk utilities and ran Disk Repair. It could not repair. I tried everything. Even a an fsck (or somthing like that) command repair thing in Terminal and nothing worked.

I have everything on an external hard drive, so I just said @(*$ it and erased the drive and ran Disk Repair again and everything was fine. SMART is fine. Everything is fine.

So now I just have to Reinstall Lion OS X. I have a Macbook Pro 13" late 2009
I can only go into the Recovery HD via the ALT/Option command at boot.

When I go to Reinstall OS X Lion at the Recovery Utilities menu, and I enter my Apple ID it says I have never used my Apple ID in the App Store and to "Review" my account...

(P.S. I bought this mac used, so I don't have the origional Lion disk.. but from what I read, I don't need it for my version of OS X..)

Question(s):
 1) Do I need to BUY a new version of Lion in order to reinstall it?? ...If I do, how do I even access it if I can't get into the computers apps and stuff... Will it just automatically install if I buy it?

2) I downloaded Lion online from another site, to a USB, but there doesn't seem to be any way to actually install it using disk utilities... any advice??

3) Is there anything else I can do, or anything anyone else knows that I can do to Reinstall OS X... I feel like I have tried everything except buying a version from online...

--Thank you in advance for any help and sorry for my ignorance/lack of knowledge to Mac usage...

When it's telling you to review your account I think it's just telling you to go into the Apple account settings and confirm some of your account details. Probably just wants you to enter the three digital code from the back of your card, or something like that to confirm the payment details.


Terminal: map super/command key in stty I want to remap terminal shortcuts (In particular, I want to remap INTR from CTRL+C to Command+C) in Terminal.

So these are my current stty bindings

$ stty -a
speed 38400 baud; 38 rows; 179 columns;
lflags: icanon isig iexten echo echoe echok echoke -echonl echoctl
    -echoprt -altwerase -noflsh -tostop -flusho pendin -nokerninfo
    -extproc
iflags: -istrip icrnl -inlcr -igncr ixon -ixoff ixany imaxbel iutf8
    -ignbrk brkint -inpck -ignpar -parmrk
oflags: opost onlcr -oxtabs -onocr -onlret
cflags: cread cs8 -parenb -parodd hupcl -clocal -cstopb -crtscts -dsrflow
    -dtrflow -mdmbuf
cchars: discard = ^O; dsusp = ^Y; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>;
    eol2 = <undef>; erase = ^?; intr = ^C; kill = ^U; lnext = ^V;
    min = 1; quit = ^\; reprint = ^R; start = ^Q; status = ^T;
    stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; time = 0; werase = ^W;

And for example if you want to remap something it'd be like

stty intr \^c

Which maps SIGINT to CTRL+C

But I want to map SIGINT to COMMAND+C. Something like this (which is invalid):

stty intr ⌘c

Now I know that the terminal doesn't really recognize the Command key, but is there a creative way of doing it?

Note: I know it can be done with ITerm2 but am wondering if there's a way to do it with the vanilla Terminal.

Thanks

@Niklas I solved the problem, but not using stty. Instead, I've been using Karabiner-Elements to do custom configuration on the Terminal keys (without affecting the rest of my bindings).

Basically you install the Karabiner-Elements app and then write a "complex modifications" rule in the karabiner.json file to swap whatever you want. Here is a guide on how to configure the json config.

My karabiner.json looks something like this:

{
  "name" : "com.apple.Terminal",
  "simple_modifications" : {
    "left_option" : "left_control",
    "left_command" : "left_option",
    "right_control" : "right_command",
    "right_option" : "right_control",
    "right_command" : "right_option",
    "left_control" : "left_command"
  },
  "complex_modifications" : {
    "rules" : [
      {
        "manipulators" : [
          {
            "to" : [
              {
                "key_code" : "c",
                "modifiers" : [
                  "left_command"
                ]
              }
            ],
            "type" : "basic",
            "from" : {
              "key_code" : "c",
              "modifiers" : {
                "mandatory" : [
                  "left_control"
                ],
                "optional" : [
                  "any"
                ]
              }
           }
        ]
      },
      ... more rules for all the stty characters, etc
    ]
  }
}


Using iCloud on Leopard with iPhone 4 I am on Leopard 10.5.8 (my MacBook is too old to upgrade to Snow Leopard) on itunes 10.5, and on iPhone 4 (iOS 5.0).

I have a MobileMe account.

My iPhone shows iCloud is available in the settings but I don't think I have signed up yet. Should I/can I move my MobileMe to iCloud and still be able to sync my phone to my mac? Or should I wait till I upgrade my mac to a newer version before next June.

If you migrate to iCloud now, you

get all the iCloud benefits on the iPhone
can still access your mail from your Mac (HT4864)
you should still be able to share calendars and contacts (see MacRumors but I haven't had a need to test this yet). This may actually be unsupported by Apple but if everything else fails you could always set up a Google Calendar for this.
will loose all the other MobileMe benefits (like bookmark, pref, keychain syncing, gallery, iDisk etc.)
will still be able to sync the content of your iPhone with your Mac


How to properly and for once reinstall PHP/Apache So I'm struggeling with this since a long time and I'd like to find a proper solution.

I have php5.4.. install and I want to upgrade to Php 7.

No matter how hard I'm trying to do it I can't seems to touch my goal.
I tried to remove php54 and other with homebrew, to remove it manually by command line, to overwrite it with new version nothing work. What ever Im doing when I type php -v I always end up with php5.4 :

Marjorie:~ Mawel$ php -v
PHP 5.4.45 (cli) (built: Sep  6 2015 20:56:23)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies

So I'm asking my self have I messed up with my php/apache conf ? Shall I try a clean-install of my system and would it be efficient ? I don't know ! I'm kinda lost and really need some help even for comprehension (is there a reason I can't get rid of old php version ?)

Anything would be helpful

Edit

So here is more information for answering the questions :

Output of brew tap

Marjorie:~ Mawel$ brew tap
homebrew/dupes
homebrew/php
homebrew/versions

As of what I've tried with home brew :
So here is step by step the idea :

brew remove php54
brew install php70
brew link php70
Warning: Already linked: /usr/local/Cellar/php70/7.0.4

Lets add this information :

Marjorie:~ Mawel$ sudo find ~/ -iname "php"
/Users/Mawel//Code/agencedevoyage/sos-partenaire/vendor/phpunit/php-code-coverage/tests/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Code/agencedevoyage/sos-partenaire/vendor/phpunit/phpunit/src/Util/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Code/agencedevoyage/vendor/phpunit/php-code-coverage/tests/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Code/agencedevoyage/vendor/phpunit/phpunit/src/Util/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Code/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Code/Site Perso/dev/vendor/phpunit/php-code-coverage/tests/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Code/Site Perso/dev/vendor/phpunit/phpunit/src/Util/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Documents/Cours/BTS SIO/Developpement/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Documents/Cours/BTS SIO/Developpement/web/php
/Users/Mawel//Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3/Cache/PHP
/Users/Mawel//Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/html/static/components/codemirror/mode/php

And finally, my bash profile :

Marjorie:~ Mawel$ vi ~/.bash_profile

alias composer="php /usr/local/bin/composer.phar"
PATH="/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
export PATH
export PATH=~/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH
export PATH="/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH"

source ~/.profile

The brew commands look ok. You have all the taps you need.
First of all since you're working with homebrew, I'd suggest the following two commands (let's start clean):

brew update && brew cleanup

So we're sure that we're using the latest homebrew release and we cleanup all old formulas and leftovers.

From your PATH it looks like usr/bin (which is the standard Mac OS X path for binaries and executables) comes before usr/local/bin (the path in which homebrew links the Cellar).
As you might know, Mac OS X when looking for binaries/executables scans the PATH from top to bottom so if both usr/bin and usr/local/bin have the php executables, since usr/bin comes first in PATH, then Mac OS X will use the php version in such folder, ignoring the version in usr/local/bin (which, as instead, is our target).

To make sure regarding which version Mac OS X is using, type in the Terminal

which php

and if the output is usr/bin, then Mac OS X is using its own version.

The core indeed now is to change the PATH order in bash_profile, and make sure that usr/local/bin comes before usr/bin (it is clear now that we're forcing Mac OS X to use the homebrew version).

Once the changes have been done, restart your Mac and type in the Terminal

echo $PATH

This will display the entire PATH list so you can make sure everything's in the right order.
Now, finally, you can check using either

which php

or

php -v

which is the running version.


How to type the matching character to « So option + '\' key types « but I can't figure out how to type the closing ». Can anyone point me in the right direction? Also what is the name of this symbol.

Opt ⌥   \  gives «

 Shift ⇧   Opt ⌥   \  gives »

Character viewer calls then "Left- & "Right-pointing double angle quotation mark".


App Store Updates staying in queue after installation? There definitely seems to be a bug here. I just installed these, possibly already more than once, but they're still "Available":

Normally restarting should fix that.

This could a problem of broken permissions that can be repaired in disk Utility.

If above did not work:

It also sounds like your problems are being caused by corrupted preference files. Located in ~/Library/Preferences/

com.apple.storeagent.plist
com.apple.appstore.plist

Quit all applications on your Mac, delete the two files above, and reboot your Mac.


Least annoying slideshow export format for iPhoto to iMovie When percolating slide shows from iPhoto '11 to iMovie '11, what is best format to choose for export to minimize wasted disk space and time, given that I do not want to carry any audio? I've been using QuickTime, on the theory that Apple's programs would behave best with Apple's format, but I'm beginning to wonder.

The H.264 codec that the QuickTime format uses is a part of MPEG-4.
To get the best results, tweak the options for MPEG4.

Go File → Export → Slideshow → Custom Export → Movie to MPEG-4 → Options….
Below is a screen cap of the options I recommend for you. You can adjust the resolution and bitrate depending on the quality you want (higher numbers = higher quality).


How to implement shortcut commands to the "Share > Email" under contextual menu? How to implement shortcut commands to the "Share > Email" under contextual menu in Mountain Lion?

The New Email With Selection service is basically the same, but it's available in more applications and views.


Permissions for new files in shared directory We just got a new iMac are using the /Users/Shared directory to store media assets (pictures, audio, video) that we want accessible to all users on the machine. After copying over all the files initially, we set the desired permissions and then applied the same permissions to all directory contents recursively. This is working fine, except then whenever someone creates a new file or directory, it does not have the same permissions and we have to repeat the whole permissions process before everyone can access it.

Is there a way that we can set permissions for all new files/directories created within that directory?

You can't do this with traditional POSIX-style permissions, but you can with inheritable access control entries.  To allow read+write access for the entire "staff" group to everything in /Users/Shared/reallyshared, you'd use:

sudo chmod -R +a "staff allow list,add_file,search,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" /Users/Shared/reallyshared

The file_inherit,directory_inherit part means that this access control entry will automatically be added to new files & folders created inside this folder, but it doesn't automatically apply to items already there (that's why I added the -R flag to chmod -- that applies it to everything currently within the folder), and it won't be applied to items created somewhere else and then moved into this folder (I don't know of a way around this, sorry).


How to share keyboard and mouse in Target Display Mode Recently I've discovered an excellent software for MacOS, which provides an opportunity, among other things, to share the wireless keyboard and mouse between different computers. It is called Teleport and it works pretty neat.

The thing is that I'm trying to use this feature with iMac as target display and each time I'm switching off to target display mode cursor is lost on my macbook, and I just don't know what to do with this issue.

The question is - how can I share my mouse and keyboard in Target Display mode By phrase  "in target display mode" I mean tha if cursors has been teleported to macbook before switching to Target Display mode then it remains there after changing mode). With Teleport (preferable, since it is already in my private ecosystem) or without it.

UPD: Currently I'm just switching bluetooth on one device and switching it on on the other one. The only problem with this solution is that all my input devices are wireless, and thus I can not switch of bluetooth (MacOS just refuses to do that). So only for that purposes I've plugged in an USB mouse.

I solved this issue using a Griffin PowerMate (basically, a USB-wired button) and some AppleScript to switch Bluetooth off on the iMac, freeing up the keyboard and mouse so my MacBook (connected via TDM) could take over.

It's very smooth (as smooth as can be for something non-standard). I just connect my MacBook to the iMac, hit cmd+F2 on the keyboard, then tap the button to disable Bluetooth and let the MacBook take charge. When I'm finished, I just unhook TDM, close the MacBook and tap the button again to reconnect the keyboard and mouse to the iMac's Bluetooth.

Details here - hope it's useful to someone else: http://jamesholland.com/post/80600076762/hacking-mac-os-x-to-toggle-bluetooth-for-better-target


Personal sorting system in the finder's windows Is there a way to use a personal sorting system in the finder's windows ? I don't want to sort the files and folders using the "Labels" (because of the colors). I just want to have the list ordered the way I want...

Is this possible ?

You could make a custom sort order using Spotlight Comments. Show the Comments column in your Finder window (View > Show View Options), then enter Spotlight Comments into your files (File > Get Info) so that they sort in the order you want. You could also use these comments for Spotlight searches and smart folders.

You can use Automator to add the same comment to a whole batch of files by creating an Automator Service (for contextual menu) or Application (for drag & drop) and using the "Set Spotlight Comments for Finder Items" action. Make sure to change "Service receives selected" to files or folders. To have Automator ask you what text to use for the comment, show the Options for the "Set Spotlight Comments" action and check Show this action when the workflow runs.


Invalid Root Certificate (Comodo RSA) Regularly, a duplicate certificate of COMODO RSA appears on my keychain (Google Chrome?) and when I browse on a website which use a COMODO certificate. Google Chrome blocks the website. (Normal). I muse delete it and restart Google Chrome to be able to open the website.

How is it possible to have this kind of duplicate certificate?

EDIT: A website using a Comodo RSA Certificate: https://www.graylog.org/

The COMODO RSA Certification Authority certificate (Serial Number 4C AA F9 CA DB 63 6F E0 1F F7 4E D8 5B 03 86 9D) is not a default trusted root in El Capitan. You can find the list of the trusted root certificates in El Capitan at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205204

That root became trusted in Sierra and later. You can find that list of the https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205204.

Either upgrade your macOS, or install the updated COMODO SHA-2 roots and intermediates from  https://support.comodo.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/71 and install them as X509 roots in Keychain.

Start with https://support.comodo.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/969/108/root-comodo-rsa-certification-authority-sha-2

Download the .crt file, click on it, and follow the instructions at https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_install_trusted_root_certificate_mac/

Alternatively, you can use Firefox, which maintains a certificate store independent of the one in your outdated Keychain.


Prevent Macbook from Charging past a certain level I've had a previous MBP (5,3) with battery swelling. Looking around the stackexchange it doesn't seem too unusual even on newer models.

A bit of reading I've seen tells me this can be caused by keeping devices charged at 100%. I've been using fruit juice to remind me to unplug regularly. As I already have a system to alert me of when the battery is at a certain charge level, this is not what I'm looking for.

I was wondering if there's anything I could do to charge the battery on my current MBP (11,3) to a safe level, eg. ~80% charged, and keep it at that level while plugged in to the charger?

In short, no. Well, at least not without changing the SMC Firmware.

The SMC (System Management Controller) is responsible for controlling a range of power-related functions (e.g. controlling fans, reading and responding to sensors, controlling temperature levels, the battery, etc). This is not something you want to mess with.

In terms of battery swelling, there are many factors that contribute to causing this and one of those factors is time. For example, I was responsible for a small fleet of MacBookPro5,1 models being used by five staff members, all of whom had two batteries (so they could hot swap them as required). All of these batteries swelled over time, despite the fact these laptops were used off AC Power for most of the day five days a week. The fact these devices were not kept at 100% charge made no difference whatsoever!

In a nutshell, if you're happy using FruitJuice then keep doing that. But trying to force the SMC (or circumvent its function) is likely to cause you more problems than its worth.


WindowServer[250]: _CGXGLDisplayContextForDisplayDevice: No matching context for device (0x7fcfcaf18220) - disabling OpenGL I'm getting vast amounts of these messages in my Console:

13/03/2015 16:02:20.924 WindowServer[250]: _CGXGLDisplayContextForDisplayDevice: No matching context for device (0x7fcfcaf18220) - disabling OpenGL

and WindowServer is consistently at around 16%. I'm using DisplayLink. Is there anything I can do about it?

Add this to /etc/asl.conf and then kill -hup syslog:

# WindowServer messages about display context (caused by DisplayLink driver)
? [= Sender WindowServer] [= Level Warning] [A= Message _CGXGLDisplayContextForDisplayDevice] claim only

More about this here: http://www.displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?t=62987&page=4

In case the explanation above is too cryptic:

Open Terminal
run SUDO_EDITOR=/usr/bin/nano sudo -e /etc/asl.conf
Use the arrow keys to scroll to the bottom of the file
Paste the text from above (the two lines starting with # and ?) into the Terminal window
Type Ctrl-X and confirm with Y
run sudo kill -hup syslog


How can I remove the Mojave download without installing it? I accidentally clicked the upgrade message, thinking I was upgrading something else, which downloaded Mojave.

I was then presented with a window to install Mojave.  I don't want to install Mojave. It appeared I could not close the window, only minimize it.  But once I did minimize it I was able to right-click and select Quit.

I would like to completely remove whatever was downloaded because I'm afraid it will install without my consent. Any solutions to remove the download?

It should be in Applications, as "Install macOS Mojave" - just in case you were looking for it under "M".
The installer is simply an app, so like any app, just put it in the trash and empty the trash.


MacOS - can I disable F12, Ctrl-Left Arrow, Ctrl-Right Arrow? I am using Microsoft Remote Desktop in my MacOS, the Windows is opened in full window so it has its own virtual desktop.

My Windows application heavily uses F12, Ctrl-Left Arrow and Ctrl-Right Arrow. But these shortcuts are associated with Mac to navigate virtual desktops.

Is there a way I can completely disable these keys from being intercepted by Mac?

Yes, you can disable those keyboard shortcuts:

Go to the Apple menu
Click System Preferences...
Click Keyboard
Click the Shortcuts tab
Click Mission Control in the left-hand column
Uncheck the keyboard shortcuts for Show Dashboard (F12), Move left a space (ctrl-left arrow) and Move right a space (ctrl-right arrow)


Can't find OXReserved on Disk Utiity I tried to delete OXReserved in order to delete Bootcamp using Disk Utility in Mojave, but I can't see OXReserved in Disk Utility. Is it the tiny slice on the pie chart next to the Bootcamp slice? Cuz I do have the option to "minus" Bootcamp, but the tiny slice next to it has "minus" greyed out. Thanks for your help. Larry

You no long have a OXReserved partition. The partition shown in you question is the Windows Recovery partition. This partition is created when Windows is installed using the Boot Camp Assistant. (Although, the partition can also be created when someone installs Windows without using the Boot Camp Assistant.) A correct installation of Windows should include a BOOTCAMP partition and a Windows Recovery partition.

To remove the Windows Recovery partition using the Disk Utility, you would first have to remove the BOOTCAMP partition.

  Note: Normally, the Boot Camp Assistant is used to remove Windows.


The Mac App Store won't let me update iMovie and iPhoto because it says i bought them under a different account I just bought this computer in August -- i have been the only one to use it, have only used it under my itunes/apple account. But ever since the first week or so that i've had it, i've had update available for iMovie and iPhoto that it won't let me use because it says i'm not signed into the account i bought them with.

Any fix to this problem?

Contact Apple billing support and/or the place you purchased the Mac to see if they can assist with resolving the server side issue. The OS updates are tied to the serial number, but the iLife apps go through a redeem process where the hardware identifier and your Apple ID get bond together, and the Apple servers apparently think a different account is set up for those apps on your Mac.

I'm assuming you have no idea and don't recognize the other Apple ID and it wasn't just a case of you accidentally redeeming the applications. I'm also assuming you can sign into the account you intended to redeem these apps. At worst, Apple or the seller should be able to gift you the apps to the correct account so you can get updates going forward if you (or someone else trying to be helpful) has made a mistake.

Here is what a Mac should look like before you have "accepted" the iLife apps by opening the App Store App and signing in and choosing Purchases (command-4) from the menu bar.


How do I delete an Apple ID? My husband passed away a few months ago and I need to delete his Apple ID. I am using his iPad as a family member but anytime I try to download an app it asks for HIS apple ID password.

Delete Apple ID from your iOS devices
Now you need to remove your Apple ID from all of your iOS devices. You’ll need to follow these steps for each Apple iOS device (iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch) using your Apple ID:

Tap Settings.

Open iCloud.

Tap Delete Account.

Open iTunes & App Store.

Tap the Apple ID and Sign Out.

Click Music.

Click your Apple ID under Home Sharing and tap Sign out.

Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars and Sign Out.

Open a Message in settings tap Send and Receive.

Tap Apple ID and Sign Out.

Tap Game Centre, choose Apple ID and Sign Out.

Tap FaceTime and Apple ID and Sign Out.

How to get Apple to delete your account
The answer seems to be that you currently can’t get Apple to delete your accounts (or at least there is no permanent and automated way to do this.

What you can do, however, is edit your personal information to make it a little less personal. Once you’ve removed your Apple ID from all your devices you can change your name, address and other personal details

Follow these steps to change your Apple ID information:
Visit https://appleid.apple.com.

Click Manage your Apple ID.

Enter your name and tap Sign In.

Tap Edit next to your name.

Change your name and tap Save.

Tap Addresses in the sidebar to the left.

Tap Edit, change your address and tap Save.

Tap Phone Number, enter a new area code and number and tap Save.

Tap Sign Out in the top right corner.

You should now have removed your Apple ID from all your devices, and changed all of your permanent information. That Apple ID is now toasted. Remember that you won’t be able to access or use any purchases or apps connected to that Apple ID without authorizing it on your devices again.

source: macworld.co.uk


Photoshop on mac "could not save [file] because write access was not granted" I've been seeing this error a lot lately:

  Could not save [file] because write access was not granted

I've checked all the standard reasons why permission to save a file might be denied:

The file is not open in any other application
The user does have access to the drive and directory
No other users on a network are accessing the file
The file is not read-only
No other save operations are happening
The connection to the drive is fine

I've seen this happen on Lion and Mavericks. I've only ever seen it on a Mac, and only ever with Photoshop, with .PSD files.

After some trial and error, I tracked it down to the file being selected in Finder.

It seems like when Finder is displaying a preview of a PSD, it locks the file.

It seems to only happen in this view mode:

Selecting another file in Finder, or switching view mode, or closing the finder window, all prevent this error.

So while Finder is like this, the file won't save:

Clicking off it frees it for saving:

As does switching to this view mode to one that doesn't show a preview:


Port Knocking on macOS Sierra Does anyone know how to get Port Knocking work on macOS Sierra. I couldn't find any useful information after a search.

It works now, thanks for all the help. @klanomath  @jksoegaard. Wish you all the best.

Here are the configurations:

Configuration: /usr/local/etc/ssh-access.txt is empty initially
Configuration: /etc/pf.conf

scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"
table <ssh-access> persist file "/usr/local/etc/ssh-access.txt"
pass in quick proto tcp from <ssh-access> to port 22

Configuration: /usr/local/etc/knockd.conf

[options]
        logfile = /var/log/knockd.log
[openSSH]
        sequence    = 7000,8000,9000
        seq_timeout = 5
        command     = echo %IP% > /usr/local/etc/ssh-access.txt
        tcpflags    = syn
[commitFW]
        sequence    = 9000,8000,7000
        seq_timeout = 5
        command     = pfctl -t ssh-access -T replace -f /usr/local/etc/ssh-access.txt
        tcpflags    = syn
[closeSSH]
        sequence    = 5000,4000,6000
        seq_timeout = 5
        command     = echo '' > /usr/local/etc/ssh-access.txt
        tcpflags    = syn

Output when Launch knockd:

config: new section: 'options'
config: log file: /var/log/knockd.log
config: new section: 'openSSH'
config: openSSH: sequence: 7000:tcp,8000:tcp,9000:tcp
config: openSSH: seq_timeout: 5
config: openSSH: start_command: echo %IP% > /usr/local/etc/ssh-access.txt
config: tcp flag: SYN
config: new section: 'commitFW'
config: commitFW: sequence: 9000:tcp,8000:tcp,7000:tcp
config: commitFW: seq_timeout: 5
config: commitFW: start_command: pfctl -t ssh-access -T replace -f /usr/local/etc/ssh-access.txt
config: tcp flag: SYN
config: new section: 'closeSSH'
config: closeSSH: sequence: 5000:tcp,4000:tcp,6000:tcp
config: closeSSH: seq_timeout: 5
config: closeSSH: start_command: echo '' > /usr/local/etc/ssh-access.txt
config: tcp flag: SYN
ethernet interface detected
Local IP: 192.168.8.101
Adding pcap expression for door 'openSSH': (dst host 192.168.8.101 and (((tcp dst port 7000 or 8000 or 9000) and tcp[tcpflags] & tcp-syn != 0)))
Adding pcap expression for door 'commitFW': (dst host 192.168.8.101 and (((tcp dst port 9000 or 8000 or 7000) and tcp[tcpflags] & tcp-syn != 0)))
Adding pcap expression for door 'closeSSH': (dst host 192.168.8.101 and (((tcp dst port 5000 or 4000 or 6000) and tcp[tcpflags] & tcp-syn != 0)))

Knock from client Mac

192:~ vincent-st$ knock -v 192.168.8.101 7000,8000,9000
hitting tcp 192.168.8.101:7000
192:~ vincent-st$ knock -v 192.168.8.101 9000,8000,7000
hitting tcp 192.168.8.101:9000
192:~ vincent-st$ ssh vincent-st@192.168.8.101
ssh: connect to host  port 22: connection refused

After using the proper knock command ssh works:

Knock from client Mac

192:~ vincent-st$ knock -v 192.168.8.101 7000 8000 9000
hitting tcp 192.168.8.101:7000
hitting tcp 192.168.8.101:8000
hitting tcp 192.168.8.101:9000

192:~ vincent-st$ knock -v 192.168.8.101 9000 8000 7000
hitting tcp 192.168.8.101:9000
hitting tcp 192.168.8.101:8000
hitting tcp 192.168.8.101:7000

192:~ vincent-st$ ssh vincent-st@192.168.8.101
The authenticity of host '192.168.8.101 (192.168.8.101)' can't be established.

RSA key fingerprint is SHA256:6AlMpQmxODOueRS+faoODOueRS+ODOueRS+fa.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.8.101' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

Password:

Last login: Tue Jul 11 01:14:56 2017 `

If you need to get port knocking working as a client (i.e. you want to access a remote service that is protected by port knocking) - then install the knock program from Homebrew like this:

brew install knock

You'll need to have Homebrew installed in advance.

Then you can use the program from Terminal.app like this:

knock myserver 1234 5678 9012

where the numbers are the ports to knock.

If you need to get port knocking working as a server (i.e. you want to protect a local resource so that remote access is limited to those in-the-know by port knocking) - then similarly install knock from Homebrew.

After installation you'll need to create a knockd.conf configuration customized to your requirements (i.e. which type of service you want to protect, the ports to use, etc.) - and finally start knockd using launchd.

You can find an example of how to do this here:

Example knockd setup


Error -36 while copying .pkg from ftp server I obtain an error

  Some data can't be read or written (error code -36)

while copying a .pkg file from an ftp server in Finder. I have read this related question. I have contacted the owner of the ftp server about this issue. Is there anything I can do myself?

You may want to try a dedicated FTP application, they tend to do a better job (in my experience) than using Finder for FTP copy. Also if you are comfortable in the command line you can do FTP there as well.


Time machine not deleting Mobile Backups after backing up on external harddrive This is a followup question to Can't find 68GB local backup folder (regular backups on an external hard drive)
I found out that this folder, now 75GB, is my Mobile Backup folder from Time Machine.

From my understanding the local Backups should be removed after making an external backup. However that's not happening anymore. I've used Time Machine since 2007 and never had that problem.

I did a backup yesterday (27.Feb.) but I still have local backups from the 22.Feb. 24. Feb and 25. Feb. And the folder from the 22nd is 60 GB.

I'm still using El Capitan and backup at least once a week.

Has anyone encountered something similar?
Is it save to just delete these folders after an external backup?

Yes. It is safe to delete these backups after Time Machine has finished backing up the external hard drive. You can also disable local backups completely by executing the Terminal command sudo tmutil disablelocal.

I have done this on my laptop because all the content I use is stored in the cloud (Google Drive & DropBox) and on remote private servers independently backed up.


Setting up an "Old" MacBook in an "Old" way What I want:

A MacBook or MacBook pro running Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with Windows XP (or 7) in Bootcamp.

(Just like I used to have.. which was fine!!)

What I have:

A 13", Late 2009 MacBook (White) 2.26 GHz Core-2-duo/8GB DDR3 RAM/250GB HDD storage running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

I have a DMG of Mac OS X Snow Leopard and an ISO of Win XP.

Is it possible to get the desired setup on the MacBook I have?

The steps are fairly straight forward.

Boot from the Snow Leopard DVD. If you have a soft copy of Snow Leopard, then burn this to a DVD.
Use the Disk Utility to erase the entire internal drive.
Install Snow Leopard
In necessary, install the OS X 10.6.8 combo update. You may find this difficult to download using Snow Leopard. If you currently have High Sierra, you may want to download this update to a flash drive before erasing the internal drive.
Use the Boot Camp Assistant application to install XP. If you have a soft copy of XP then burn this to a DVD. I assume XP is 32 bit and contains Service Pack 2 (SP2). Some users have posted that XP did not have to have SP2, but the Apple documentation says it does. If SP2 is required and your XP does not have this, then it is possible to add SP2 by slipstreaming, but this is probably more work than you want to tackle. The Boot Camp Assistant will probably require only Snow Leopard be installed before allowing Windows to be installed.
After installing XP, insert the Snow Leopard DVD to install the Window Support Software. You may be able to substitute the software from the Install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp website.
Install SP3 for XP. Apparently, SP3 is the first link on this page.

If any of these steps are not possible. Post a reason and maybe I will have an alternative.


Mojave accents on Polish keyboard How to turn on accents menu while holding key i or u for Polish keyboard?

This feature works well on others keys (o, a, n etc.) and other keyboards.

I use macOS Mojave.

Apple has never included popup accent menus for i and u on the Polish input sources as far as I know.  To add them you would have to customize that system.


Can a 3.7 Watt LiPo battery trigger the charging symbol on an iPhone? I am trying to use a 3.7 Volt 1 Amp (so it's 3.7 Watts) Lithium Polymer battery to charge or at least trigger the charging symbol on an iPhone 5. I have charged the battery fully using the Lithium Polymer Battery charger. I plan on connecting the black and red wires on the battery with the black and red wires inside a lightning cable. Then, I will plug this lightning cable into the phone. I do not care how fast or how long it takes to charge the phone. I would just like to know if it will at least trigger the charging battery symbol on the iPhone. From what I heard, 2.5 Watts to 5 Watts with 1 Amp is enough to charge an iPhone 5, but I cannot find anywhere whether the iPhone detects this charging. I know my USB port in my older 2006 PC which only gives off 2.5 Volts can trigger it, so I believe a newer battery can easily do it.
All help is appreciated.

It will not work. iPhones use USB and require 5 volts. They do have a margin of error and I have measured as low as 4.6 Volts being recognized, but 3.7 is too low.


Can I change the behavior of the Home and End keys on an Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad? I just bought an "Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad", then I connected it to my Macbook Pro running Lion.

But the home and end key under the F14 key doesn't work as I expected. Say in "Pages", the home key doesn't bring the cursor to the beginning of the line, while the end key takes you to the bottom of the page.

Does anyone know how to re-map the home/end key?

One option is to create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save a property list like this as ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
  "\UF729"  = moveToBeginningOfLine:;
  "\UF72B"  = moveToEndOfLine:;
  "$\UF729" = moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:;
  "$\UF72B" = moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:;
}

Quit and reopen applications to apply the changes. Note that DefaultKeyBinding.dict is not supported by some applications like Xcode or Firefox.

In Terminal you can assign home (↖) to control-a and end (↘) to control-e from Preferences > Settings > Keyboard. That will leave you with no key combinations to scroll to the top or bottom of a window though.

It might be easier to just use the default keybindings. In most native text views:

control-A or option-up goes to the beginning of a paragraph
control-E or option-up goes to the end of a paragraph
command-left goes to the beginning of a line
command-right goes to the end of a line


How to port this *nix-shell script to OS X? I've got a unix-shell script that's supposed to work on nix machines. This doesn't run on OS X however, due to "cp" command not defined. Changing it to "copy" didn't help.

git log -1 --pretty=format:"%h" | xargs -I %id% git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r %id% | xargs -I % cp --parents % upd/

The script should make a copy of files changed in last git commit.

Have a look at this SO thread: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11246070/cp-parents-option-on-mac

cp is available on OS X, but it does not support the --parents option, as I guessed. Instead of using cp --parents, replace it with ditto as mentioned in the SO answer.


"Too many open files" - how can I set the ulimit -n value for emacs on Lion? I've seen other questions covering the topic of how to set the file limit on Leopard/Lion.

For example:

  How to properly increase ulimit -n on Lion?
  Too Many Open Files

But after  reading through those I'm still not clear on how I would set the open file limit for my instance of emacs.  Can anyone explain that to me?

It seems to me that ulimit -n sets the limit for the current shell.  That won't work for emacs, because emacs is not a shell. Also, apparently launching emacs from the shell would allow the ulimit -n value for the shell to apply to emacs. But I would like to not invoke emacs from a  shell; I'd like to just click the pretty icon.

Also there are some other ways to modify the open file limit but I am not clear  on exactly where those limits apply. At least one of the limits applies to "all open files on the operating system" and for my purposes that is much too broad a brush.

I want to know how to set the file limit for a specific app.  Chrome, Emacs, or whatever. In my particular case, I am interested in emacs but I guess it would be a generic solution.

Thanks.

[I tried tagging this with ulimit but could not, because I am at 101 rep right now]

Before

Edit:

sudo vi /etc/launchd.conf

Append:

limit maxproc   100000  200000
limit maxfiles  100000  200000

Reboot


How can I recover lost secure notes in Keychain? I have been having problems is Messages.  One post suggested chucking your login.keychain.  This caused my secure notes to vanish.

Restoring this file from time machine (~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain) did not help.

In answer to comment below:

Quit Keychain Access
Renamed login.keychain
Restored from the 7:31 backup this morning.
Restored ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple/keychainaccess.plist

Restarted Keychain Access

No secure notes.

Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite

Stupid, silly me.

The left column has a pane for Keychains and a pane for categories.

The keychain pane has

login
local items
System
System Roots.

The Category pane has

All Items
Passwords
Secure Notes
My Certificates
Keys
Certificates.

These two are in essence multipied together.  That is, ANY of the keychains can have any of the categories.

In my wanderings I was somehow clicked into local items instead of login.  I had not created a local items secure note, so of course secure notes was blank.

Embarrassing as it is, I'm leaving this up for future klutzes.


iCal shows an event that the Google Calendar doesn't have? I subscribed to a google calendar and all was going well until today that I saw an event on iCal and when checking on the web the event isn't there.

I synced with ⌘+R and ⌘+⇧+R and the event is still showing, the event is a repeating one on google calendar that in the date it shows on iCal was deleted on Google.

iCal version 5.0.2

I've seen this same problem when I use ical for Outlook synching.  Drives me crazy.  Today I figured out a solution.  Go to your Google calendar and "Search" for the offending meeting (just use some key word).  In my case, it found the meetings.  I simply expanded the meeting info in the search results and it allowed me to delete the meeting.  Then, give Outlook some time to resynch and it will be gone.


Hard Drive Issues with MacBook Pro 13-inch mid-2012 I'm trapped in a HDD nightmare with my MacBook Pro mid-2012.

I updated to Yosemite 10.10.3. A couple of days after the update, I was watching a movie on my TV screen via HDMI. In the middle of the movie I removed the HDMI cable from the MacBook Pro and everything freezes. I forced shut down (Note: My HDD was encrypted). After I forced shut down, I tried to turn on and the loading screen would never stop loading - like, 14 hours stuck with the progress bar. Since I have backups, I decided to access DU and format my HDD. I tried everything. For real. Every command line I could type on Terminal to format, repair, erase and/or partition. I read almost every issue-related questions on the forums and stack exchange groups for a week (even posted my issue here: Erasing and Partitioning Hard Drive from Internet Recovery).

So, I decided that it was a HDD failure and bought a new one.

I bought the Seagate 1TB SSHD Hybrid  - ST1000LM014. Installed the new fresh disk and guess what? All those same problems again. I´m not able to restore from Time Machine because it doesn't recognize the disk in the restore page. But the disk is recognized in the DU. When I try to erase or partition the new SSHD, the same old errors: File system formatter failed. Yes, I tired GUID Partition Table, all of the security options, etc.

Please. Any light that you can throw at this issue, I'll be very grateful for. BTW, the new SSHD is recognized and the SMART Status says: Verified.

Any ideas on WTF is going on?

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro, i7, 8GB RAM, mid-2012, 13-inch.

So, after buying a new SSHD and SATA cable, spending 3 weeks reading and writing command lines on Terminal.... this is what fixed my problem, believe it or not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amg5w0rlwDo&spfreload=10

This video shows how an electric tape can isolate the sata cable and prevent it to touch the aluminium surface, which will cause you some problems.

I mean, seriously Apple? The design of the SATA cable path is so prone to failure....it's obvious!


Can't run go file with go run (filename) I just started getting into Golang and wanted to run a file in the terminal with go run and then the file name which is main.go

I configured the GOPATH like so:

export GOROOT="/usr/local/go"
export GOPATH="/Users/myUsername/Desktop/gocode/"
export PATH="/Users/myUsername/Desktop/gocode/bin:$PATH"

I created a folder on my desktop named gocode, placed three folders inside named src, pkg and bin.

And code is stored in src and when I want to run the code I get the following message.
my command was go run main.go
the output I received was  stat main.go: no such file or directory

I have no clue why it won't find the directory...

To run the .go file and not the compiled binary, you need to give go run the relative source file path. Try:

go run src/main.go

To compile the go program into a binary executable, use:

go build src/main.go

This will work if...

go can be found; test this with the command which go. Does it return a path to go?
Your GOPATH environment is set appropriately; test this with echo $GOPATH. Does it return the project directory? See go wiki page on GOPATH for advice.

Break Down the Problem

Open a new Terminal.app window. This will discard previous export commands that may be causing confusion.

Test go can be found. Use which go to ensure the binary is available. If not, fix this with an export command.

Check the directory structure of your project. Make sure no names are mispelt and your .go files have the correct suffix. The Finder may be hiding the true suffix. Does ls -lR list the contents you expect?

Check you are in the right directory. The go commands need to be executed from within the project directory. Use pwd to see what directory you are in? Is it the project directory gocode/? If not, use a cd command to fix this.

Project Layout

Let's assume your file structure follows the minimal go convention:

gocode/
gocode/bin/
gocode/src/
gocode/src/main.go

The three separate commands to run main.go would be:

cd gocode
export GOPATH=$PWD
go run src/main.go

This will run the main function within main.go. To build an executable suitable for distribution, use the command go build src/main.go.

Managing GOPATH Directories

With regard to managing gopaths and projects, I have had success with Herbert Fischer's Manage multiple GOPATH dirs with ease approach.


How to resize a photo in TextEdit? When I add photos to TextEdit, they sometimes  appear too big, and I want to make them smaller.

How can I resize or modify photos in TextEdit?

TextEdit has no direct image editing options.

You can, though, once you've added an image into the document, double click it to open it with Preview.

Through Preview you'll be able to perform some basic image editing such as size adjustment (Tools / Adjust Size) or adding figures or text (View / Show Edit Toolbar).


Is there a Remote Desktop Connection manager for mac that will connect to Windows machines? I am managing 4 Windows VM's on a network for running tests. I would like a Remote Desktop Connection manager that makes it easy to connect and switch between network machines.

I am due for a hardware upgrade, and would like to switch to a Mac for a variety of reasons, but being able to manage my RDP sessions easily is a must.

Free software is a plus.

Microsoft Remote Desktop from the Mac App Store may work for you. Lots of VNC client/servers out there too. RealVNC for example. You can use Apple's built-in Screen Sharing app to connect to 3rd party VNC servers running on your Windows PC. Just do a Command-K to connect to server and enter vnc://address.


Using VMware Fusion on Yosemite, how can I prevent crashes with sleep wake failure? I am using VMware Fusion 7.1.0 on Mac OS 10.10.1 Yosemite. Every evening, I send my iMac to sleep. The next morning the mac usually sits in login mask - so it has rebooted. After login, I get "sleep wake failure".

How can I mitigate this? Are there any known workarounds?

I had this problem before with Mac OS 10.9 and VMware Fusion 6 but found no workaround. It seems, that with one of the updates of 10.9 the problem went away or was way more seldom.

After talking to VMware support, there are two possible solutions to this problem:

Open your Mac's system preferences, go to Energy Saver and disable the option "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". With that option deactivated, I had no sleep wake failures.
Pause or suspend your virtual machines prior to sending your Mac to sleep.


MacBook Pro strange white screen upon rebooting mouse and trackpad not working My MacBook Pro 2016 keyboard and trackpad is not working but the Touch Bar is works fine.

The below images show what’s showing up when starting:

The only similar problem that I found on the net is found at the below fixit post:
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/237198/MacBook+Air+boots+to+strange+screen+-+What+should+I+do

It was working fine yesterday. but then I went to school in the morning and when I opened it the mouse and keyboard wasn’t working and it had a screen talking about connecting or setting up an external keyboard or mouse.

I rebooted it thinking that would get it working and am now stuck here at the screens seen in the images above.

How can I resolve this?

The first thing I would do is reset the NVRAM.

Resetting the NVRAM

Your Mac uses Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). To reset the NVRAM on your MacBook Pro model follow these steps:

Fully shut down your machine.
Press the power button and then immediately press the commandoptionpr keys.
Keep these keys pressed down for at least 20 seconds!
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note:**Assuming this resolves the issue and you can log back in fine, you ***may* need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

If you still have problems after doing this, let me know.


How to restore iPhone 5 from iOS 5 backup? I had an iPhone 4 with iOS 5 which I regularly backed up using iTunes. Then I used a Android device for a little over a year. Now I'm back on iOS with an iPhone 5. So I'm trying to setup it with the Restore from iTunes backup option. But I get the following error:

Is there any way to fix this? I would really like to get my pictures and messages restored.

Update: Some more information. I used to have another computer, have not upgraded MacBook -> MacBook Pro, so I copied the ~/Library/Application Suppor/MobileSync/Backup folder to the new computer before the restore process. Restoring on the original MacBook yields the same result.

I have restored plenty of iOS 5 backups onto iOS 6 devices so the problem here is almost certainly that the backup is now (and may have been all along) corrupt.

Before throwing that backup away and restoring the iTunes files from a backup of the computer where it was stored (hopefully you have that), you could try restoring the backup onto another device such as a borrowed iPad or iPod touch (or iPhone) to be sure it's not the phone you are restoring the backup to.

The article iTunes: About iOS backups will help you locate where your computer stored this backup set as well as general info to support the idea that you can back up an older OS onto a newer OS (but not the other way around).


Mac App Store has become dog slow after 10.6.7 update on latest MacBook Pro Ever since rolling out the 10.6.7 update on my latest MacBook Pro (15", i7), I have found that Mac App Store has become awfully slow. Starting it alone takes anywhere from two to four minutes for the application to become functional and start responding. During that time, the application seems to get lost into the 'not responding state', with the spinning beach ball showing up.

I looked into the output of Console.app, hoping to find any clues as to what's going on. I found a series of entries to the effect of:

5/6/11 1:55:58 PM   [0x0-0x95c95c].com.apple.appstore[16533]    Fri May  6 13:55:58 mbp App Store[16533] <Error>: CGBitmapContextGetBitsPerComponent: invalid context 0x100610e10
5/6/11 1:55:58 PM   [0x0-0x95c95c].com.apple.appstore[16533]    This isn't a bitmap context. Forcing destination format to ARGB_8 for CGContext.

What is strange is that I have a late-2009 white MacBook model which is booting the same version of OS X: 10.6.7. Mac App Store loads quickly on that machine. However, in the output of Console.app on that machine, I also see similar errors. I am wondering whether these errors have anything to do with the sluggish behaviour of Mac App Store application on my MacBook Pro (clearly, it works fine from the sluggish point of view on my slower, older white MacBook).

If you require any specific, particular information, I'd be more than happy to provide it. I'm looking for any insights, clues as to what is going on, and what I can possibly do to fix it.

Many thanks.

Did you by any change change the Certificate settings in Keychain Access?

If so, that's the source of your problem. Go back to Keychain Access > Preferences > Certificates and turn Certificate Revocation List: off.

The Mac App Store should be snappy again after that.


Fresh Install of OS but what about the apps? I currently have OS X El Capitan installed on my iMac

I have backed up the whole HD to my 3TB NAS using "Timemachine".
I have formatted a USB flash with the El CApitan installer on it ready to install a fresh copy of the OS.

The questions I have are:

Can I pull the applications as .app files and just drop them back into the /applications folder

Will this the way also allow me to get Microsoft Office 2011 back on after Ive reinstalled the OS or will i need my licence (when i find it?)

Yes, dragging an .app file to the Applications folder of a different Mac will work. It may be easier for you to just sign in with your Apple ID on the Mac App Store and download the apps you have purchased from there (if you find it easier).

You will be able to move Microsoft Office 2011 apps to the Applications folder but upon opening them you will be presented with a registration page where you will have to input your serial number.

As detailed in Microsoft's Office page, you will obtain your serial number either from the orange sticker on your installation DVD, or from the email you got if you purchased it online.


Best way to View Powerpoint Presentations on Ipad I'm not a big ipad user, but I need ot know how to view powerpoint presentations on an ipad. I have noticed alot of people mentioned to convert it to a video, pdf slides or image slides. But I have also noticed that KeyNote seems to do alot of the same stuff as powerpoint.

Is KeyNote the best way and will it allow editing too? What drawbacks are there? What is your suggestion for powerpoint on ipad?

If you are looking just to view, you can convert your slides to PDF and use iBooks.  If you also want editing capabilities, Keynote is indeed the best way to view and edit slideshows on the iPad. it carries the advantage of being tailored for your device. Keynote is Apple's version of PowerPoint, so it can edit and view slideshows. Just so you know, you won't achieve 100% compatibility with PowerPoint, but it will be pretty good. I use Keynote and I'm continually surprised by it's abilities and it's depth. I say, go with keynote.


Can't seem to sync albums that weren't purchased from the itunes store to my IPhone 5c I recently got a new iPhone 5c. When I tried to sync my music from iTunes to my phone, it only synced songs and albums that I had bought from the iTunes store. All of the music that I had uploaded from my own albums does not seem to sync. Can anyone tell me why and how to fix it.

P.S. Besides my iPod, this is my first Apple product, so I don't know anything about it.

In iTunes on your computer, you will need to select what music you want to sync. When the phone is plugged into iTunes and the phone is selected in the sidebar (you may need to select the menu item "View" -> "Show Sidebar"), one of the options beside the "Summary" of the phone is for "Music" where you can set exactly which playlists, artists, albums, and genres get synced. I find it convenient to have at least one playlist called something like "for-my-iphone" that I can conveniently add any individual tracks that I want synced to the phone, in addition to any of the other possible selection methods.

Incidentally, on the "Summary" page, it is probably worthwhile selecting the "convert higher bitrate songs to 128 kbps" in order to save a lot of room on your iDevice. With most headphones and listening environments it is almost impossible to notice the different sound quality. Checking this box might make the first sync a lot longer if the system needs to do a bunch of music conversion, but subsequent syncs will not be noticeably slower in my experience.


Dual boot macOS Catalina 10.15 beta and macOS Mojave 10.14 I wish to keep my fully working MacBook Pro running macOS Mojave 10.14, but I also want to install macOS Catalina 10.15 beta on another drive, so I can choose which OS to use when booting.

I've installed the macOS Catalina beta profile from [Apple Developer Downloads].

Now the Software Update section of System Preferences lets me update to macOS Catalina 10.15. But before completing a 6 GB download, is this going to give me the option to install 10.15 beta on a separate partition or is this going to blindly update my existing 10.14 installation?

Your existing installation won't be blindly updated. The macOS 10.15 Catalina beta installer will launch as soon as it is downloaded.

You can create a bootable USB installer by plugging in a USB flash drive and running the following in Terminal:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ 10.15\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/DRIVE

where DRIVE in the name of your external USB drive

You can choose to install macOS Catalina on an external drive, if you don't wish to interfere with your current installation.


Is there any way I can update macOS to Catalina after I used ignore command in terminal I used this command

sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina"

Now, it is not showing any update, nor downloading from app store. How can I fix this issue to update to macOS catalina.

You can undo the command with

sudo softwareupdate --reset-ignored

You should also be able to use

sudo softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer

to get the Catalina installer.

See also https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/15/catalina-software-update-can-download-old-installers/


How to create a global date entry shortcut/hotkey? Excel and Google Sheets both allow you to enter the current date (and time) with a single keystroke.  I would love to be able to do this in other applications too but can't find any way to do this without resorting to 3rd party apps that also do a whole lot more that I don't need.

Using Automator/Services won't work because the main application I want to use this with is a Java app called Tradewonk, and services appear to not be available to a java application (there is no "Services" option in the "Java" menu that appears when the app is running).

So any other suggestions for how I can generate the current date/time with a keystroke?  I'm on macOS Sierra.

Well I'll be damned... I had a solution the whole time.  I use BetterTouchTool for various gestures on my trackpad, but had forgotten that it could trigger text sequences as well, including current date/time.  Mapped them to shortcuts and voila, works great even in a Java app!  Admittedly it uses a 3rd party app but it's one I was already using (and woefully underutilizing its features, clearly!)


Where to download OS X Mavericks out from Mac App Store? Can I download OS X Mavericks not from App Store? Considering that my internet speed is very slow, so I prefer to download the OS from my other laptop, rather than leaving the download from Mac App Store in my MacBook.

The only way to obtain Mavericks legally is through the App Store, sorry.


Image Capture and CanoScan 8800F I have discovered, through personal experience and checking online forums, that the software for my 10-year old, CanoScan 8800f, film and negative scanner is no longer supported for High Sierra users.  Users of this particular scanner, a wonderful workhorse, are furious.  I know that one solution is to purchase VueScan software for about $50.  I have seen that another solution would be to find an open-source driver.
As I continued my search for an answer, someone noted that scanners should work with Image Capture, but Image Capture does not recognize this scanner.  Further searching revealed (and I hope I have this right) that Image Capture does not "see" this scanner because the scanner is not TWAIN-compliant. Is there some way I can make this scanner TWAIN-compliant?

I have been using VueScan with my Epson slide scanner, with better results than the rather ropey SW that came with it.
50 bucks isn’t much, and you can try it first for free to at least see if it will work with your scanner at all.
Otherwise, I can only wish you luck (I’m no HW or SW expert…).


traveling computer in hot car I am going on a road trip through the national parks in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada. I need to take my laptop with me for work. How do I keep it safe in the heat of the car as we drive?

How do I keep it safe in the heat of the car as we drive?

If you're ok being in the heat of your car as you drive then your laptop should be more than fine.

Now, assuming that you leave your MacBook in a hot car while parked, short term, you aren't going to do much in the way of damage.  If it's on, it will turn itself off if the thermal limit is reached.  If you try to use it while hot, keep in mind you will be bringing it near to to it's thermal limit very quickly.

Prolonged exposure is another thing altogether.  Keeping your MacBook stored in a hot environment won't really damage the components (logic board, keyboard, etc.) but it will shorten the life of the battery.


Airdrop is not working with my Mac I have a Macbook air 11 inch early 2014 with Mac os X 10.11.5 installed. I can't send or receive from my mac to any other iOS device. If I want to send something to my iPhone, the iPhone never scans and shows up on my mac, and If I want to send something from my iPhone, like a photo, the mac doesn't show up on my iPhone. I have followed a lot of fixes on apple discussions and other websites but non seem to work. I'd be very grateful if anyone would help me.

For the record, Airdrop only works if you have one of these Macs, and a supported iOS device:

"To send items to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, or to receive items from those devices, you need a 2012 or later Mac model with OS X Yosemite or later, excluding the Mac Pro (Mid 2012)."

iOS

iPhone 5 or later
iPad Pro
iPad (4th generation) or later
iPad mini or later
iPod touch (5th generation) or later

On the iPhone, you need to set Airdrop in Control Center, I recommend 'Everyone' just to be sure. Both wifi and bluetooth need to be on.


What are the differences between LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons? On macOS 10.12.5, I only see LaunchAgents in the Users Library directory. Are the agents only invoked if a user is logged in?

/Library/LaunchAgents/
/Library/LaunchDaemons/
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/
/User/username/Library/LaunchAgents/

Yes, LaunchAgents are only invoked when the user logs into a graphical session.

LaunchDaemons are typically launched when the system boots and are run outside of a specific user session.

The launchd manual page lists these folders with short descriptions:

  Files

  ~/Library/LaunchAgents Per-user agents provided by the user.
  /Library/LaunchAgents Per-user agents provided by the administrator.
  /Library/LaunchDaemons System-wide daemons provided by the administrator.
  /System/Library/LaunchAgents Per-user agents provided by Mac OS X.
  /System/Library/LaunchDaemons System-wide daemons provided by Mac OS X.


Can I use iPhone 4 3G services outside of my native country? I have an iPhone 4, bought at my home country and I have a data plan with a local telco carrier. My phone has never being unlocked. See, I am such a nice citizen in Apple's walled, seclusive and closed Kingdom!

Now, I want to travel overseas and I am prepared to get a local sim card with 3G data plan wherever I go. My question is, can I use iPhone 4 with 3G services? What should I do to do so? Do I have to unlock my phone first? Will that render my warranty invalid?

The UK uses the GSM 900 / GSM 1800 MHz bands. These are, among others, supported by the GSM iPhone 4.

From the iPhone 4 - Technical Specifications page:

  GSM model: UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

These bands should give you coverage in most of the world, providing that you get a simcard from a GSM provider:

GSM World Coverage


Reset Uniform Type Identifiers on Mac OS X A colleague of mine has developed a Mac OS X application that creates files with a relatively common file extension in my research field (.fits, an official image format for professional astronomical data). The problem is that these files have nothing to do with the official FITS format, and his application declares a uniform type identifier (UTI) associated with his .fits extension!

Now the metadata of official FITS files, obtained with the mdls command, associate his UTI to these files, which screws up some other tools that I have that normally support official FITS files (a quicklook plugin, a viewing application). I erased his application, but the metadata still list his UTI for official FITS files...

Is there any way to reset the UTIs that are "known" on my system? Or the association between UTIs and applications?

Not sure, but try /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -seed