Make F8 work as F8 on MacBook Pro I would like to make F8 key on my MacBook Pro to work as an F8 key, not Play/Pause key, without having to press fn key at the same button.

How do I configure Mac OS X (Mavericks) to work that way?

This function can be set up by going to System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard and enabling Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.


Do Apple TVs work only with Apple routers? Can one in principle get Apple TV to join/extend a wireless network even if that wireless network is from a non-Apple wifi router?

Edit:

By that I mean: Can one control an Apple TV from a Macbook if the network that the Macbook has joined is not broadcast by an Apple router?

The Apple TV is a client device, meaning it connects to the router. However, the current generation Apple TV does not have the capability to extend the network; i.e. act as a router.

Edit: To answer the question you edited in, yes, you can control the Apple TV from any Wi-fi network, as long as it is a 802.11a,b,g, or n network. Wi-fi is Wi-fi, no matter what device is broadcasting it.


Is it possible to create an own MacPorts (proxy)repository/server? Is it possible to deploy MacPorts server on an own server periodically updating it from global one (i.e. create MacPorts distribution/update proxy server)? So that all computers within organization could access this server to install software and not the global macports server?

Is it possible with Homebrew, Fink?

You could probably in theory patch Homebrew to point to your internal Git server.  But it would still download the source for all the packages from their normal upstream locations.  You could bottle everything, but that would be a lot of work.  It don't think it would work very well.


Default font size on the status bar What is the default font and size of the font on the status bar on El Capitan and Sierra?

My guess is: San Francisco size 14?

I'd guess at 11pt, SanFransisco.

Standard list views are 12pt, the headers are smaller, but not small enough to be 10.

You can test by eye...

Open any finder window
Hit  Cmd ⌘   J
Change the text size until it appears to match the status bar.
Zooming the screen might help comparison [ Opt ⌥  + scroll wheel by default]

This is a quick attempt at matching, artificially zoomed in Photoshop...


How to block pop-up ads On some sites, when I click on a button a pop-up appeared, taking me to another website. The original website is still there, just that a new tab with ad site is opened and that interrupted my workflow. I had both enabled Adblock Plus (no whitelists) and disallowed pop-ups and redirects in the website setting (Google Chrome), but  the pop-ups are not stopped. How can I prevent them?

System: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
Browser: Google Chrome 72.0.3626.119

The simplest solution is to press Command+W to close the pop-up tab and return to previous tab. I use uBlock Origin as ad-blocker for my browser, I would suggest to you to use it too. Other more complex solution is to learn how to use uMatrix for blocking these annoyances.


Can I simultaneously connect two pairs of AirPods to my Apple Watch? Is it possible to simultaneously connect two pairs of AirPods with my Apple Watch (series 3)? This would allow me and someone else to listen to the same music, podcast, Audible book, etc.

No this isn’t possible and is a limitation with Bluetooth.

  No. Unfortunately this is a limitation of the Bluetooth Standard.  Only one device of a specified type of connection can be used at a time through bluetooth.  So while you could use Airpods, an Apple watch and a Bt keyboard with an iPhone all at the same time you cannot use more than one of each at a time.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8070777


Safari for OS X displaying wrong favicon I am using Safari 9.0.3 on OS X 10.11.9 and have only recently noticed Safari displaying the wrong favicon for some websites.

In one instance, Safari uses the Facebook icon for Messenger despite the Messenger icon being used in the head section of the page source.

I tried deleting the WebpageIcons.db file from Safari's Library folder, and I have cleared Safari history and website data across all my devices.

The Facebook icon still loads.

Any ideas?

Edit: To clarify, the proper Messenger.com icon appears in the bookmarks menu and the bookmarks editor window. However, the Facebook.com icon is used in the Smart Search Field.

Screenshot of Safari using the wrong favicon:

Facebook's Messenger.com icon:

You aren't actually looking at the favicon, but rather the Touch Icon. You can find your Touch Icons in ~/Library/Safari/Touch Icons Cache/ and then look in the Images/ folder to find the actual image files.

Your choice here is you can replace the offending image with the one you want and restart Safari to have it load that, or just trash the whole Touch Icons Cache folder entirely.


MacBook Pro Retina (2015) only stays on with power key held down Really weird problem that started today: my MacBook Pro Retina 2015 won’t stay on unless I hold down the power key and keep it held down for the entire time I’m using it. It works perfectly as long as I keep it down but shuts off within a minute or so after I release it. I’ve reset the SMC and NVRAM, to no avail.

This is not just a power on/boot issue (Google hits are all about Macs not powering on unless the power key is held down for several seconds, but then stay on).

I don’t think it’s a software issue, but I installed the 10.15.3 update a few days ago.

The only clue I have is a very brief “Do you want to shut down/sleep” dialog that popped up once before the random shutdown but hasn’t since. I’m guessing this is some kind of hardware issue like a dirty power switch contact.

Any solutions?

My MacBook Pro Retina 2015 won’t stay on unless I hold down the power key and keep it held down for the entire time I’m using it.

Unfortunately, this is a hardware issue and not a software one.  This is very similar to the question/answer:  Keyboard key stuck or not being recognized; how to fix  but different in that we're dealing with the power button and not an individual key.

The keyboard is connected via USB and the power button functions through the USB as well.  If you disassemble your MBP and remove the top case assembly, you'll find there's only one cable connecting it to the logic board and that cable is a USB cable.

More than likely, it's a short and not a dirty contact because the power button isn't a latching switch; it's a momentary switch like your keyboard keys.  If the contact were dirty, you wouldn't be able to turn it on.  In this case, you can turn it on but you have to hold it because there's a short in the circuit somewhere.  How do we know this?

  The only clue I have is a very brief “Do you want to shut down/sleep” dialog that popped up once before the random shutdown but hasn’t since.

That pop up happens when you press the power button.  Thing is, it's happening too fast and acting like you're holding the power button for the "5 second power off no matter what."

We also know it's not a software issue because it happens from a powered off state.  The OS is not in the picture during the pre-boot process.


Look up in dictionary Is there a way to bind the chrome style look up in dictionary to a key binding? In case you don't know what function I'm talking about here's a screenshot:

The default keyboard shortcut for Define is⇧⌘D. This isn't a Google Chrome feature—rather, it's an OS X and iOS feature using Dictionary.app.


Macbook pro 13" (2018) compatible external monitor Can someone recommend a 27" or 24" monitor that works with MacBook Pro 13" (2018 with 4 thunderbolt ports) connected through HDMI or DisplayPort (not VGA). The budget is 250$ at most, purpose is mostly reading and coding and writing). I can only find USB-C like monitors which are too expensive.

I had eye on Dell P2719H but there have been several reports that it does not detect signal from mac over HDMI which seems to be prevalent for Dell brand (apparently, Dell has issues with compliance to HDMI standards).

I'm using the DELL U2414H since 2014 on different MBP and MBA, which is a 24" predecessor of the one you mentioned. I haven't had any connection or display issues, and would recommend Dell displays especially for their great value.

It works best with this USB-C to DP cable, because the screen is set to auto sleep when the macbook is locked. Connecting it via HDMI also works, but when you lock the MacBook you have to turn off the Monitor or wait till the monitor puts itself to sleep. I used to use the Apple Multiport Adapter.

I think you won't have connection problems when you use a high quality HDMI adapter or connect it via a USB-C to DP cable.


How to automate DropBox startup without logging in I'd like to have DropBox running under multiple user accounts on a Mac, even after a reboot. The Mac auto logs in as one user, not me. How to best achieve this?

You'll have to configure Dropbox identically for all users, at least to the extent of "start at login", and "save password/login information". But if you configure it for all the system users, it should work identically no matter who logs in.


How to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10 double bootcamp boot on Macbook late 2011 - MacOS High Sierra I am running from long time windows 7 on double boot with bootcamp on a Macbook late 2011 i5 with MacOS High Sierra 4Gb mem.
Due to discontinuation of win 7 support I wish to migrate to win 10.
I read some similar questions but I get confused and, therefore, I ask for HELP.
Thank a lot
Dino Vitale

As per my understanding, If you have a Macbook running a "genuine" copy of Windows 7/8/8.1 (properly licensed and activated), you can follow the same steps I did to upgrade it to Windows 10.

Boot your MacBook from your Windows 7 and carry the steps:

To get started, go to the Download Windows 10 webpage and click the Download tool now button. After the download completes, run the Media Creation Tool.

Choose the Upgrade this PC now option and be done with it.

Then just follow the prompts to complete the upgrade. You will not be asked for a product key, and when the upgrade is complete and you've connected to the Internet, you'll have a digital license to Windows 10, which you can confirm by going to Settings > Update & Security > Activation.

The digital license is associated with that specific device, which means you can reformat the disk and perform a clean installation of the same edition of Windows 10 anytime. You won't need a product key, and activation is automatic.


Wifi Automatically Turning ON after iOS 11 Update I'm facing this issue after updating iOS11 in my recently bought iPhone 7

I usually turn off wifi during the night and found it ON in the morning. It automatically turns ON resulting in unnecessary battery drains.

Would appreciate a fix !!

WiFi & Bluetooth under iOS 11 will both automatically switch back on at 5am.
The only way to completely disable either is from Settings.

If you want to completely disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for all networks and devices, follow these steps:

To turn off Wi-Fi, go to Settings > Wi-Fi and turn off Wi-Fi.

To turn off Bluetooth, go to Settings > Bluetooth and turn off Bluetooth.

Refs:

Apple KB - Use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in Control Center with iOS 11
Lifehacker - How to (Really) Turn Off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in iOS 11


Revert to El Capitan I'm having major 'disagreements' with Sierra, compatibility issues with software etc, & have decided to revert to El Capitan.

I have done this many times in the past, tested an OS then gone back to the earlier version. I make a clone of the old drive, then update; clone back after a few days & all is well. Most I lose is a few non-essential emails which doesn't bother me.
This time, I've left it too long to do that.
My clone is 2 weeks old, my POP email will only sync back one day. I have no real trace of what else may have changed in that period, but let's say with the best of intentions I'll miss something that I later discover I should have made a safety of.

I have Time Machine, up to date, but of course it's now syncing Sierra.
I also have Backblaze.
So ultimately I should have the resources to go back & find anything I may have missed.

My worry is if I use a clean install & migrate from Time Machine, some old authorisations on the drive will be lost. Some cannot be retrieved if they break because the servers that authorised them no longer exist. [Old pro audio plugins etc, still working but no longer supported.] These survive a clone, but I don't know if they'd survive a migrate. [I didn't migrate from my old 3,1 to this 5,1, I just moved the boot drive from the old to the new machine.]

I have all old installers in my Purchase History, so obtaining El Capitan is not an issue.

I'm on a Mac Pro 5,1 so dropping in a spare drive is no problem, if that would help.
I've never tested whether this machine will boot from USB, my older 3,1 never would - I shall test that & update the question.
Edit I've tested, it will successfully boot from an El Capitan installer USB.
I've also made a clone of the boot drive as it is right now, belt & braces.

I see my options as...
1. Restore from the clone & try to find anything I missed.
2. Nuke & pave, then migrate Time Machine

Is there a 3rd option?

Some method to restore to my current backup, but sitting on El Capitan rather than Sierra?

Late Edit
Well, option 2 just went away. The installer simply refuses to migrate from a newer OS to an older one, whether from a mounted or remote drive, or Time Machine.

Restore Mavericks from Time Machine may help future Googlers too.

Next time I'll remember to set my POP3 server to keep mails for a month before I ever upgrade again :/

Simplest solution seems to have been to re-clone back from my two-week-old El Capitan clone - the one I made right before the upgrade.
That successfully took me back to El Capitan - but from 2 weeks ago.

That left me with having to remember/pick through what had been changed in the past two weeks.

Carbon Copy Cloner makes a Safety Net folder containing older versions - though in this case it was more useful for finding newer versions of apps I'd updated in the meantime.
Mainly what it had dumped in there was "Sierra".

My most important stuff was my photography folder, so I simply copied that in its entirety from a safety copy [yesterday's Sierra clone].

A Parallels VM I knew I had been working on I did the same.

Because Mail had changed its library structure I lost two weeks of relatively unimportant emails - I can live with that.  If I remember anything hugely important I can boot to my Sierra clone & forward it to myself.
Time Machine proved to be completely useless in that respect. It claimed to be able to restore missing emails, but as everything in the past two weeks was in a newer format, it couldn't actually find anything.

So, job done. It actually took about 45 mins in all; once I'd figured out the structure & the potential sacrifice.

The moral of the story... sometimes two clones & two complete backups still isn't enough to get back all data.

I'm still open to alternative suggestions.
I'm in a position to simply repeat the process, as I still have copies of all the 'originals'.


How can I access TextEdit documents saved in iCloud on a PC? I use TextEdit to store a number of notes for me, and now my Mac is in Apple repair, I can't access them.

How can I use a PC to access these notes?
Is it possible to use an iPad mini to access these notes?

What I've done so far

I logged into http://icloud.com and didn't see my documents under any available application.
I installed the iCloud app for PC and although I see the ability to sync "Mail, Contacts, Tasks with Outlook"  and sync "bookmarks" and "photo stream" ... none of them are "text files".

You can't.

TextEdit files can only be accessed from TextEdit (That's how iCloud storage is made). Therefore you'll need a Mac connected to your iCloud account.


Editing info.plist of .ipa files renders app unable to run I'm trying to edit some values of an info.plist file that is located in an .ipa file. First, I open the .ipa in Winrar and drag the info.plist to the desktop. Here, I edit the file using the Properly List Editor that's included on OS X. Finally, I drag the file back into the .ipa, but when I try to sync the file to my iPad, it says that there is an error. Any suggestions?

Your editing breaks the signature and iOS is designed not to run apps that have been modified. It’s a security feature. A nice explanation is here.


Treat MacBook screen as monitor even when closed? Background

I have a MacBook Pro running 10.8.3. I have one external monitor plugged in, and the MacBook is largely stationary because it is a work computer.

When I go home for the night, I lock the screen, turn off the monitor, and close the laptop (I often have things running into the evening or overnight, hence no sleep or shutdown). When I arrive in the morning, I open the laptop and turn on the monitor, and all the windows are gathered on the laptop screen.

I'm assuming what happens is that when I close the laptop, the OS decides that only the external monitor is an available display, makes it primary, and moves everything there, and then when the laptop opens it repositions everything to the "new" primary display.

What I Want

I want to be able to close the lid of my laptop, open it again, and have all of my windows be where I left them, all while leaving my external monitor plugged in. Is that possible?

I'm not sure that this is quite the solution that you're looking for, but the utility Stay does make sure that windows return to a set position when connecting an external display. I haven't had a chance to use it myself, but since purchasing a new external display, I must say it's tempted me.

You might also check out this related thread on .SX, which has more suggestions.

A quick search pulled up this article, which might also solve your question by disabling the sleep signal sent when you close the lid… Someone with stronger terminal-fu than myself might know some direct CLI commands to do this directly.


Messages.app only shows replies Mavericks (10.9.5) Messages app is only showing what other people are typing, and not what I am typing! Has anyone else seen/fixed this?

As Buscar noted above, I got an answer to my problem from a very helpful person on the Apple discussion board. You can see the discussion here.

Somehow, this problem is related to permissions, and ACLs. The answer involved checking permissions from the command-line to see if there was a problem, and then resetting the permissions using either the command line, or using the Recovery partition on your Mac.

Use the following command to see if permissions/ACLs are incorrect:

find ~ $TMPDIR.. \( -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 \) 2>&- | wc -l

If you get a number other than 0 back, then there might be a problem. Use the following to repair permissions/ACLs (make a backup first!):

sudo find ~ $TMPDIR.. -exec chflags -h nouchg,nouappnd,noschg,nosappnd {} + -exec chown -h $UID {} + -exec chmod +rw {} + -exec chmod -h -N {} + -type d -exec chmod -h +x {} + 2>&-

Alternatively, you can 'Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs' outlined in this Stackexchange post.

I hope this helps someone else out there!


can't install iCloud Drive on iPhone 7 I just got an iPhone 7 from my job. Being more of an Android/Linux guy, I am actually very impressed by this device. One thing is very strange though: I can't find/acces the iCloud Drive app! When I ask Siri, it says that it isn't installed, and suggests that I install it. When I click the linked provided, there is the little icon with an cloud, but it is "toned out" in the colors, and nothing happens when I click it. I don't understand what I'm suppose to do about this.

The reason I need iCloud in the first place is to backup my phone (also "toned out" in the Settings → iCloud menu) and to use the "Just Press Record" app, which requires iCloud, and when I start the app it tells me I need to enable iCloud Drive first. Which I can't do.

Update: Under settings, there is an iCloud settings, which informs me that I have 5 GB storage and that Photos is using a little bit of it.

Under "Restrictions", it doesn't have anything registrered (which is the only possible cause provided by Just Press Records support FAQ.

I am logged into my apple account. When I log onto icloud.com, and select drive, I get this:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w1jxbhpn5ebr8o4/icloudtroubles.png?dl=0

...which tells me I should open the iCloud Drive app on my iOS device. So, back to square one, haha. Ever read the book Catch-22? Well, this is a Catch-22.

Thank you for your time,
Emil

Typically, this is restricted via MDM profiles. To check, open the settings app and inspect your profiles.

Tap settings app
Tap general
Scroll content up if needed to see Profile (above Regulatory and below VPN)
Tap in to each profile you have and inspect what it restricts.

If you have no profiles, I believe the profile entry is hidden so you might need to look for another answer if you don’t have a profile restricting this.


OS will not mount the VM partition. Virtual memory must be forced to work Virtual memory was broken on my Mac (cMP 5.1) for several months, with Sierra, High Sierra, and Mojave. Apple support was useless.

I finally figured out that I was missing all the invisible partitions on the boot drive (vm, recovery, etc.). Probably a casualty of a Carbon Copy Cloner mistake. But CCC allowed me to restore the partitions from a backup.

Still, the system doesn't use the vm partition. I can get it to work manually with sudo diskutil mount -mountPoint /private/var/vm disk1s4, but it doesn't remember this after a restart.

Any ideas on a permanent fix?

Solved. Cobbled together a workaround with information from interwebs.

Created this plist named “local.mountdisk1s4.plist” containing:

             Label
             local.mountdisk1s4.plist
             ProgramArguments

                  /sbin/mount_apfs
                  disk1s4
                  /private/var/vm

             KeepAlive

            SuccessfulExit

Placed it in /Library/launchdaemons

Swapping now works as it should. Still not sure how this all broke in the first place, or if there's a more elegant solution.


How do I un-trust a computer that I have connected my iOS device to? When I'm at work, I connect my iPhone to my computer over USB to keep it charged during the day.

When I do so, the phone appears in iTunes. I don't remember my phone prompting me if I wanted to trust my work computer (or I don't remember choosing Yes), but I'd rather not have this connection. All I need is the precious, precious voltage.

Is there any way to remove or un-trust a particular computer?

(My specifics: iPhone 5, iOS 7.0.2, Windows 7, iTunes 11.1)

Here is how to do this on a Mac: Go to /var/db/lockdown in Terminal, as Apple instructs in http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5335 . You can remove everything in this folder, which will remove trust from every device -- you can then re-trust those devices you still want to trust. Or you can remove trust for the specific device; this is a little trickier:

First, find out the "Wi-Fi Address" of your device. For an iPhone/iPad, go to Settings->General->About, and scroll down. You'll see a set of numbers and letters that look like "D0:23:DB:6C:B9:13". You'll need this.

Now, on your Mac, fire up Terminal and type:

cd /var/db/lockdown

(Don't forget to press return.) Take that Wi-Fi Address you just found and very carefully search for it like this:

grep -i D0:23:DB:6C:B9:13 *

Instead of my example, use your Wi-Fi Address. You'll see something like this:

39c1082da11b4920c2298dca702ca3795efbf0cc.plist: <string>d0:23:db:6c:b9:13</string>

The long string of numbers and letters ending in .plist (not including the colon) is the file you need to remove! (If you don't see anything, check very carefully that you typed the Wi-Fi Address correctly. If you still don't see anything, then your device likely wasn't trusted in the first place. Be very careful to use zero and not the letter O when you type this string!)

How to remove the file? Well, type:

sudo rm xx...xx.plist

where "xx...xx.plist" is the file that you want to remove ("39c1082da11b4920c2298dca702ca3795efbf0cc.plist" in the example). You can use copy and paste for the file name, or type the first few letters of the name and hit tab. You'll have to type your password (and you need to be set up as an administrator on your Mac), but this will nuke the file and untrust the device with that Wi-Fi address.

(My appologies to the CLI-adept at this long explanation, but even highly adept Mac users don't necessarily grok the Unix command line. And, yeah, I know what a MAC address is, but imagine the confusion!)


Is there anything (like iOS) that emulate force touch for older MacBook? In iOS, there are tweaks (available through Cydia) that enables force touch features (such as menus) on older iPhones by touching and holding an item to emulate force touch.

Are there any available on OS X ?

If that matters, I own a late-2013 MacBook Pro

If the sensor isn't there in the hardware, there is no way to enable the function.

It's the equivalent of trying to tun an old CRT television into a touch screen
[though that has actually been done, but not without some very expensive extra hardware]


Not enough free space on OS X Base System while installing El Capitan with VirtualBox I am getting an error while installing OS on Virtual Box machine, that there is not enough free space as shown in the image. I allocated 20GB while setting up virtual machine, and 8.8GB is what apple says that I need here

I went to disk Utility->Disk Utility of VirtualMachine and tried changing partitioning of the VM. It cant be done. It also shows the instructions I need to take, but the "Enable Journaling" command is greyed out. What could be the problem?

It also says I am using CD ROM media, but I am not. The El Capitan iso file, that was linked to VM in the Storage tab of setting up VM, is on Desktop.

These are the screenshots for better illustration.

By accident I tried to install OS X to the OS X Installer DVD iso file (mounted to the virtual VBOX CD-ROM device) itself.

Erasing/partitioning the VBOX HARDDISK disk (see images in question) and creating a new HFS+ Journaled formatted volume seems to work.


How to download Macaulay2 for MacBook Pro? I want to install Macaulay2, and first need to install Homebrew for this.
I was following https://brew.sh/ by putting
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

into my terminal but it asked for a password. I don't know where I would go for this?
Is there an easier way to get Macaulay2 for my computer? I have the macOS Big Sur version 11.1.

Homebrew needs your Mac password because installing most SW (including homebrew) requires permission from an admin user, which is given by you entering your password.  Just enter the same password you use when you log into your Mac, and homebrew should get installed.  Then, you can type brew install Macaulay2/tap/M2 to install it.
UPDATE: According to https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/Macaulay2/Downloads/MacOSX/index.html you can also download the SW on a disk image and just drag the Macaulay folder to the Applications shortcut in the disk image, like this:

Then follow the instructions in that ReadMe file to complete the configuration steps needed to use this SW.  This will allow you to use this SW on your Mac without any need for homebrew.


How can I restart on a schedule, if network users are connected? I want to schedule a nightly restart of my OSX media server, but I routinely have other machines in the house connected to this machine remotely (since it's also our TimeMachine system, iTunes library, etc.)

It's trivial to set a scheduled restart, but it always fails if other users are connected, which in my case they always are.

How can I schedule a nightly restart of this machine, that will automatically kick any connected users, quit all apps, and restart?

Also, what effect will this have on the formerly-connected applications like iTunes, TimeMachine, etc.?  Will they simply see the machine again after restart and resume operations?  Or will it cause them to get into a bad state?

You can use a third party tool like Power Manager to ensure the restart completes. The tool's web site includes has a recipe that shows how to schedule a restart.

Power Manager will ensure your Mac restarts, even if other processes or applications try and block the process:

  Power Manager is multiple user savvy and first deals with the logged
  in users. The following steps happen within each logged in user’s
  session:

  Running applications are sent a quit request.
  Running applications are given time to quit.
  If an application has not quit in time, the application is force quit.
  With all the applications quit, the user is logged out.

  Once all the users are logged out, Power Manager then asks Mac OS X to
  shut down. You can watch this sequence play out in the transcripts of
  the Mac’s system.log file.

With regard to formerly-connected applications like iTunes, and Time Machine; these applications will be quit and no data will be lost. Time Machine will resume backing up where it was stopped - it was designed to be interrupted.

After restarting, previously connected Macs will need to reconnect and be asked to resume playing any shared content. No harm will come to them.

If you are watching a streaming film while the media server restarts, the film will stop and you will probably need to resume the film playing. A smart player might seamlessly handle the dropped network connection but that is outside of the control of the media server.

Disclosure: I created Power Manager.


How can I open a port (not application) in the OS X 10.6 firewall? Let me preface this by saying:

I do not want to drop my firewall completely
Yes, I really do need particular ports rather than an application.

So I see that there is the option to allow particular applications through the firewall, but no equivalent way of opening ports.  It seems hard to believe that this is actually impossible.  How can I open a specific TCP port in OS X 10.6 while keeping the rest of the ports firewalled?

Worked for me.

I wanted to open traffic on port 70, so I entered the following:

sudo ipfw add 7000 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 70

The response from the command-prompt was:

07000 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 70

Yes, the 0 was automatically added to the rule #, so it is worth noting that any rule ID < 10,000 will be prefixed by one or more zeroes.


What the point of custom ANSI colors in Terminal Preferences? In the preferences of the Terminal App, you can set custom ANSI colors for blue, green, yellow, bright red, etc. but they don't actually change anything in the Shell. For example using ls -G still displays the default ANSI colors. I know that you can customize the text, cursor, and background colors but what effect does changing the ANSI colors do? I have tried changing the LSCOLORS in the bash_profile but that didn't work.

How can I make the ANSI colors in the shell match the set custom colors in the Terminal preferences.

To understand what effect changing those colors have, you'll need to understand how ANSI colors work.

In the early days of ANSI escape codes for coloring, the specification allowed programmers (or other users) to write codes for choosing between 8 colors (black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan and white). As a kind of defacto standard terminal makers also allowed for choosing brither versions of the same colors (i.e. bright black, bright red, etc.).

The actual color of "red" or "green" isn't standardized and vary between terminal software. These are the colors that Apple lets you redefine. I.e. if you want your "red" to be more or less red (or something else entirely), it will let you.

Later on work has been done to expand on these escape codes to allow a wider color range. In the ISO standard version of these escape codes it is possible for the programmer to select any 24-bit RGB color by issuing an escape code that specifies the amount of red, green and blue that goes into the specific color they want.

This means that if you run a program in the Terminal that is using the old set of escape codes that reference color "names" (i.e. red, green, cyan) - you can change what those color references mean in the preferences.

However, for programs that use the newer escape codes that reference specific color codes (i.e. rgb(123,74,101)) the programmer has already explicitly asked for a specific color - and you're not able as a user to change that from the Terminal preferences.


How to run bookmarklet in Safari on iOS With Chrome, the only way I can run a bookmarklet is by typing the bookmarklets name into the address bar and then clicking the suggested result. In Safari on iOS, it displays a result saying that JavaScript cannot be run from the address bar. I don't have access to an iPhone that I can continue to use to test the bookmarklets I write, but I attempted running it from the bookmarks menu in Safari and it didn't do anything.

How do I run bookmarklets on iOS in Safari?

Apart from opening Safari manually and selecting the bookmark from your favorites, you can also pin it to your homescreen were you can tap the icon and it'll open Safari for you and run the Javascript. Although for that you need to use a slightly different address.

data:text/html,<script>alert('test')</script>

Visit the above and after the page is loaded you can then tap share and select pin to homescreen. After that you can just tap the icon.

Those are the only two ways to run JS/HTML script.


Why can I no longer get an internet connection when using my old Macbook and AirPort Express? Up until recently I was using my 2007 MacBook perfectly fine with my old AirPort Express. A few days ago I purchased a used mid-2010 iMac which is now running OS X 10.8.3 (something I'm still not too sure I like). When I first brought the iMac home and connected to my network it did so just fine but the AirPort icon in the menu bar showed there was no internet connection, despite the signal being full. I then followed some step-by-step setup which rebooted the AirPort Express and all of a sudden I had internet! Great! …except since then my MacBook has the same problem my iMad had, i.e., it connects to the network just fine but the network icon shows no internet connection :(

I should mention that my MacBook is running OS X 10.6.8. I'm wondering if this is an OS compatibility issue or… Has anyone experienced something similar?

Setting the AirPort Express b/g to g-only mode solved this problem for me, though I don't understand why.


How to change lower case am/pm on the menu bar to uppercase? I find the time shown on the menu bar on mavericks a bit annoying. It's not perfect. The "AM/PM" is now shown in lowercase after upgrade to OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Back in the previous versions of OS X, it was displayed in uppercase.

Is there a way change the lowercase am/pm to uppercase?

Since my system is german, I'm not 100% sure, but try this:

go to 'Language & Region' in the System Preferences

open 'Advanced Options'

go to tab 'Time' and see if you can customize the way it's displayed


iPhone 5s won't turn on after water damage I just dropped my iPhone in the toilet bowl but took it out after about 3 seconds. It's now totally off and wont turn back on!

Aside from cleaning it and keeping it in rice, is there any other way to fix it? Or is it just gone?

It's out of warranty.

I answered a similar question (probably a duplicate?) here: iPhone 6 water damage dark screen issue

There is a good post about using various methods such as silica, Damp-Rid, kitty litter and other products that work much better than rice.

An excerpt from that answer: Try the rice thing for a few days, you have nothing to lose at this point. When I used to take calls for AppleCare I had several customers tell me this worked, the idea being the rice would suck the water out. I don't believe it's really a great idea but it can't hurt at this point.

Having said that, your phone is pretty much toast, per the other answer. When I was lent out to the Apple store, we saw Macbooks and phones come in where the customer said they had "dried it out" but "it wasn't working" a few weeks later.

Invariably we'd open the thing up and see some residual water in there.

Sorry to say, you are probably on the road to a new phone. :( Now if you try a third-party place to repair it, at least the last time I worked for Apple about a year ago, if you put third-party parts in there Apple will never touch it to do a repair. Unlike Macs where you don't "void the warranty," any third party parts in an iOS device precludes Apple from doing any repairs in the future.

So balance out free (rice) vs. third-party screen (cheaper) vs. shiny new iPhone 6S!!

NOTE: Apple has an out of warranty replacement program but it's not a sure thing they'll apply it to a wet phone.


My colleague's iMac connects to my MacBook Pro via Bluetooth without my consent & messes things up! So, I'd be using my Magic TrackPad or listening to music via Bluetooth headphones and suddenly the mouse cursor would start jumping around or the Bluetooth audio would start breaking up, and that's when I know that my colleagues iMac has connected to my computer. I go to the Bluetooth menu and I disconnect it. After a little bit or awhile, it connects again...

No one knows how or why this happens.

Could someone please tell me what's going on and how to stop it?

Oh, I forgot to mention, another one of our colleagues also complains about this particular iMac connecting to his MacBook Pro.

Update: immediately after posting this, it happened and I took a screenshot. Here it is

Mahmoud's 27 iMac is the culprit.

Another update: Mahmoud's 27 iMac does not appear in the list of paired devices

I had the exact same issue and the culprit was an app I had installed called MacID, version 1.1. I deleted MacID and the problem went away but supposedly you can upgrade it and fix the issue as well

Reference: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6702053?tstart=0


Can't open example files in LyX (greyed out) I am trying to bring up LyX on a mac. One of the first things in the tutorial is to go look at the file named example_raw.lyx.

I know the file is on my machine because I found it using terminal, i.e., find / name "example_raw.lyx" -print 2> /dev/null reveals that the file is in /Applications/LyX.app/Contents/Resources/examples.

But, when I try to open it from the LyX GUI, there doesn't seem to be any way for me to navigate to the folder that contains the file -- everything inside /Applications is greyed out and denies any kind of clicking; I tried all thirty-two combinations of option, command, control, shift and double versus single clicking.

I suspect this is more of a general question concerning the open-dialog on Mac.  I am VERY NEW to the Macintosh GUI even though I know Unix well and Windows well.  I'll take any solution to this problem, either specific or general: a way just to keyboard in the path I want, or some way to click around that will let me get to my stuff, or some LyX-specific solution that gets me access to their examples.

All this user-friendliness is frustrating :)

If LyX utilizes the Open File dialog appropriately, you should be able to visit any path directly via the Finder shortcut ⇧⌘G.  Tab completion works in the resulting path dialog.

If LyX does not allow browsing via path, I would just copy the files to a temporary directory to bypass the difficulty.

Sidebar
Mac OS is full of very handy keyboard shortcuts that work fairly consistently.  See this link for a fairly comprehensive list. Since you're familiar with UNIX, it may help to note basic Emacs navigation also works in most text editing contexts--C-b, C-f,C-a,C-e, C-k, C-y.


Can I script my mac to reboot and login at a specified time? Can I use shell scripts, AppleScript, or some other form of scripting to get my mac to reboot and login at a specified time?
If so, how?

You can

use System Preferences/Energy Settings to define shutdown/restart times
run sudo shutdown -r 23:45 to automatically reboot every night
combine the second option with a cron/launchd job to reschedule the reboot daily (or just call shutdown -r now from cron/launchd)

You also can set one user to auto-login after reboot in System Preferences/Users & Groups. But at least use a password-protected screen saver in this case, otherwise anybody can walk up to your computer after a reboot and start using it.


Macbook Pro incredibly slow/laggy I have a Mid-2012 15" MacBook Pro running OS X (Yosemite) 10.10.2. It has a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB of RAM, and a 750GB HDD.

Over the past couple of weeks it has become incredibly slow, to the point that simple actions such as clicking on an icon in the dock have caused the spinning wheel to appear. As far as I can tell nothing significant changed around the time that this behaviour started.

There is nothing unusual shown in Activity Monitor: CPU usage is low and there is over 6 GB of free memory with no swap being used.

Some example of the degree of slowness are:

Scrolling down the page on an already loaded page in Chrome - Spinning wheel for 30 seconds
Clicking in text field on Github in Chrome - Nothing happens for 34 seconds
Refreshing a page in Opera - Spinning wheel for 27 seconds
Opening Calendar from the dock - 70 seconds for Calendar to open, no visual feedback
Clicking to focus open Pages document - Nothing happens for 21 seconds
Opening System Preferences and clicking Keyboard - Spinning wheel for 30 seconds
Clicking on the File menu in Finder - Spinning wheel for 23 seconds
Swiping up with three fingers on the trackpad (show Mission Control) - Nothing happens for 12 seconds
Moving cursor down a single line in vim - Spinning wheel for 12 seconds

I have tried the following:

Turning it off and on again
Making sure everything is up-to-date
Performing a disk repair
Resetting the SMC
Resetting the PRAM

Is there anything else I can try to fix this?

Edit: Unbelievably enough I somehow didn't think to check the logs. Doing so shows the following message occurring regularly. Does this mean that my hard disk is damaged, despite the fact that the disk repair claimed to have fixed any issues?

kernel: CoreStorageGroup::completeIORequest - error 0xe00002ca detected for LVG "Macintosh HD" (C9D97BC3-3A2E-405E-BE14-0E9B3FAD7A0D), pv 90103BF0-50B3-455D-947E-A020BC46F680, near LV byte offset = 161931108352.
kernel: disk1: I/O error.

Don't waste even a second because your HDD is for sure suffering from a few bad sectors. I had the same problem, after two days of dealing with a very slow Mac, it failed to boot and I had to regenerate bad sectors of HDD using software available on the market. Really time consuming and risky procedure in case your data on HDD is important.


Macbook pro Sierra. Slow finder open/save as dialog boxes Whenever I click file-open or file-save as in any program, the finder dialog box takes a tremendous amount of time to open (approx 2mins). I have tried all kinds of solutions throughout the web and none have worked, not even temporarily.  Most of the fixes I have seen say that good patches came after Mavericks, but I am running sierra.  I have had the problem even throughout El Capitan, but it was barely a problem. On El Capitan the longest delay was maybe 10 seconds.

A few things I have tried/noticed

The problem occurs in safe mode, but it does NOT occur on the guest accounts
Going into Safe Mode doesn't fix the problem
Deleting the Finder plist doesn't work
Deleting Icloud caches do not work

So after quite a few months of this problem going on.  I decided to sit down for a few hours and find the solution for myself.  Turns out, the solution was rather simple, but it might be a trouble point in other cases more than mine.  Ultimately, My problem was with Icloud.  After removing ICloud functionality from my mac, the problem instantly vanished.  Fortunately, I do not use ICloud at all and instead, opt for Google Drive.  For some, I say this might be a trouble point because it requires removing Icloud files.


How to get rid of a shared folder on Mac How to remove Shared folder with bsozasss files? I somehow got this from my second PC and have no idea how and what this is? How can I remove this and disable this kind of sharing? I am on El Capitan.

Here is the screenshoot:

Open a Finder window, then open preferences (Finder > Preferences...). Go to the 'Sidebar' tab and uncheck the options under 'Shared':

If you want to make sure your computer doesn't appear on other computers like this, go to System Preferences > Sharing and uncheck File Sharing:


I cannot login as root to my mac mini from a linux computer From my Linux desktop (Fedora), I am trying to log in as root to my Mac mini computer.

$ ssh root@my-mac-mini
Connection closed by 10.0.1.12

10.0.1.12 is the mac mini ip address.

In the log file /var/log/system.log, I see:

Apr 30 11:57:05 my-mac-mini.my-domain.com sshd[8903]: fatal: Access denied for user root by PAM account configuration [preauth]

With more verbose:

$ ssh -v root@my-mac-mini
OpenSSH_6.4, OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013
debug1: Reading configuration data /home/john/.ssh/config
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 51: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to my-mac-mini [10.0.1.12] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/john/.ssh/id_rsa type 1
debug1: identity file /home/john/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/john/.ssh/id_dsa type 2
debug1: identity file /home/john/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/john/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/john/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.4
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_6.2
debug1: match: OpenSSH_6.2 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com none
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<3072<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
debug1: Server host key: RSA 78:9b:06:12:bc:c8:15:56:de:38:a9:7b:45:07:c2:26
debug1: Host 'my-mac-mini' is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /home/john/.ssh/known_hosts:43
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: Roaming not allowed by server
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,keyboard-interactive
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering RSA public key: /home/john/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 279
debug1: read PEM private key done: type RSA
Connection closed by 10.0.1.12

In /etc/sshd_config, I have

PermitRootLogin yes

How can I fix this?

I had similar problem which is solved by following answer:

Check your Remote Login settings under System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login
Specifically, who is allowed to log in?


Adapter from USB C device to USB port Adapters for USB devices to the new USB C ports on MacBooks are well-known. But what about the reverse?

I am currently thinking about using a MacBook Pro 15", which has only USB ports. In case I had to use an USB C device, would it be possible for me to find anything to connect it to my USB ports?

You're looking for a USB-A to USB-C cable.

Example: 3.1 USB-A to USB-C™ Cable (Also Known as USB Type-C™)  from Belkin

It's $29.99 USD, however I'm sure you can use a search engine to find a better deal, e.g.:

Google search - 3.1 USB-A to USB-C cable
Google search - 2.0 USB-A to USB-C cable


Is it possible to extend the time i'm logged as administrator when enter sudo mode from the console? Is it possible to extend the time i'm logged as administrator when enter sudo mode from the console?
If yes, how?

Yes, it is possible.

Edit the sudoers file by typing the following at the command prompt:

sudo visudo

Find the section commented with # Defaults specification and look for a line like this:

Defaults  env_reset

Change that line to:

Defaults  env_reset,timestamp_timeout=10

Where you can replace 10 with whatever the number of minutes you'd like for the sudo password to live. Save the changes and you're done.

Edit: if you don't like to use vi you can tell visudo to use another editor. The editor must block until you're done with your edits. Just set the EDITOR environment variable before envoking visudo and it will use that editor instead:

EDITOR=/usr/bin/nano sudo visudo

would use nano to edit the file instead. I recommend you do not use a graphical editor like Sublime Text without knowing how to run the editor, from the command line, in blocking mode (for subl that means calling it with --wait).


Is there a way to stream what is on my Mac's screen to my TV? I want to buy a Mac App Store game, but I don't want to play it in an office chair: I want to sit in front of my TV! Is there a way to stream the video output of Mac, wirelessly, to my television? The TV is currently connected to a Playstation 3, Wii, and AppleTV, and if this is at all possible, I'd like to do it without having to "hack" any one of those devices. Is there anything I can do here?

None of the devices currently connected to your television can help you display audio and sound from your Mac without hacking. And even then, it's not likely you'll get them to work as a wireless display/sound bridge.

You could use something like the Atlona PC to HDTV Wireless Adapter to send your audio and video from your Mac to your TV (that one is Mac-compatible). Are you going to enjoy this experience? I'll admit I'm very skeptical that this wireless streaming approach is going to produce a 1080p frame rate that makes you happy and comfortable playing a game. And at $200 that seems like an expensive experiment to me.

Your best bet is to get a HDMI adaptor for your specific Mac (see the Apple Store for compatible adaptors) and run the HDMI cable to your television. You can run HDMI about 50' before you need to start worrying about a repeater to ensure signal fidelity.


How could my iPod Touch 4th Generation automatically update its clock when moving between time zones and not connecting to any Wi-Fi networks? I was just reminded of this incident, and was wondering if somebody could explain how this could be possible!

In 2012, I took a flight to America and used my iPod Touch 4th Generation throughout the trip - whilst Airplane Mode was enabled during the flight, when touching down and after collecting everything and exiting the airport terminal, I then disabled this feature so that Wi-Fi was once again enabled. It's important to note that at this point, I hadn't connected or done a search for any nearby Wi-Fi networks, and when checking the time on the iPod itself the device was still showing my local time - and not the new time of the state that I had flown to.

Several hours later, when arriving at my hotel, I once again checked my iPod and to my surprise found that whilst I still hadn't connected to any Wi-Fi networks, the iPod had updated its time to match that of my new location. How would this have been possible if no network connectivity had taken place - is this a known feature? I haven't seen this since (and I've gone to America since this particular trip took place).

I get the pop up message that Bluetooth can improve location acuracy or something like that; maybe you turned on Bluetooth somewhere in that time frame.

Also, referncing the fact that Google maps, and Tetsujin's comments below, Google maps seems to use something that acts like GPS, to tell me where I am while I have wifi turned off. So maybe a you connected using wifi of some sort to a satellite or something else to help your device locate its self.

Really interesting situation.


Which version of gcc is on Mountain Lion? I am looking forward to migrate my c++ code to C++11, which might requires at least g++ 4.6.
So what is the GCC installed on Mountain Lion?

Mountain Lion doesn't ship with any GCC, but you can install GCC 4.7 . I have done this on my machine.


I can't add an external tester in TestFlight because the Add button is greyed out I'm trying to add an external tester in TestFlight, but the Add button is greyed out:

Is this because the app hasn't yet been approved by Apple, or some other reasons?

I tried in both Chrome 58.0.3029.110 (64-bit) and Safari 10.1.1 (12603.2.4) on macOS 10.12.5.

This same person is beta-testing another of my apps, so I'm sure the problem is not regarding their account or mine, just the particular app I'm trying to add them as a tester to.

You pasted the email address in the "Last Name" field. Simply move the mail to the first textbox with the "Email" label above.


One of my start-up drives is missing I have a Mac Pro (Early 2009) in which I am running two OS's.
10.10 on a Mercury Accelsior SSD and Snow Leopard on a conventional drive. Before upgrading the SSD from Mavericks to Yosemite all was hunky-dory. I could restart between the two OS's using the start-up drive selector in the system folder. Now I have gone to 10.10.3; when I switch from Yosemite to SL and restart from the conventional drive I cannot see the SSD Yosemite Drive in system prefs only the Snow Leopard drive is visible (and the network option)
Restarting FROM SL and resetting the PRAM eventually brings me back to Yosemite.
OR
using the sudo bless command -mount /Volumes/"name of 10.10.3 start-up drive" -setboot
followed by a sudo shutdown -r now
also gets me back into 10.10.3
However I dont like doing this as it feels rather the same as pulling the plug; the Mac is not going through it's correct shut-down process.
A long conversation with Apple arrived at the suggestion I should re-install SL something I do not want to do - too drastic + I may not be able to get back to what I have.
So two questions:
1/. is there a 'gentle' way in terminal I can 'command' the mac to restart from the SSD
and
2/. Is there a way I can 'replace' the start-up info for SSD

Installing Yosemite converted your hard drive to a Core Storage logical volume, and CS was only introduced in Lion (Wikipedia), so it makes sense that Snow Leopard would have no idea what to do with it. Here's how you undo CoreStorage (source - this method worked for me). It should be non-destructive, but as always, take a backup first!

Also, note that any reinstall of Yosemite will re-Core Storage-ify your drive and require you to do this procedure again, and software updates might too. If the issue comes back after a reinstall or update, just go through this process again.

Boot into Recovery HD. If for any reason you don't have Recovery HD, then you'll have to make a bootable Yosemite drive and boot into that.
In the Menu Bar, select Utilities > Terminal.
Run diskutil cs list. You'll get an output that looks like this (credits to the Ask Different user in my source):

Select your Logical Volume ID (the one highlighted in the screenshot) and copy it to the clipboard.
Run the Terminal command diskutil cs revert Paste-Your-Logical-Volume-ID-Here.
Run diskutil cs list to verify that your computer can't find any CS volumes.
You're done! Now Snow Leopard should be able to recognize your SSD's potential as a startup drive again!


Notification window placement on Mavericks I would prefer my notifications to pup up in the middle of my screen so that I will be sure to notice them. Is there a Pref somewhere to do this? If not, is there an app equivalent to the previous iCal which will do this? Thanks.

There is no settings in Notification Preferences to do that.

However, you can switch to Alerts, they will stay until you dismiss them.

Go to system preferences and open Notifications.

For each application you care, switch the notification to Alerts, so now you wont miss them on your screen.


get rid of uninstalled app from updates in app store In the app store, I have a update for an app called "Nepenthes", by Wei Li, which claims to be "for enterprise solution".

However, I've never installed an app by that name, and I can't find it anywhere on the drive.

How do I get rid of it - in two parts:

1) How do I get rid of the update listing in the app store? (I've tried removing ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.commerce/updates.plist and rebooting.

2) How do I make sure it is not installed? (other than not finding it on the hard drive)

Thanks,
Russ

Turned out this is renamed SQLiteClient.app


Which FileVault 2 recovery option is more secure - storing the recovery key in iCloud, or saving it somewhere yourself? When setting up FileVault 2 on a computer, you're presented with 2 recovery options - storing the recovery key with your iCloud account / Apple ID, and displaying the recovery key (for you to write down / save somewhere yourself). However, after doing some research, I found some posts that claim to be able to extract FileVault recovery keys from users' iCloud accounts, which makes me wonder if storing the recovery key with iCloud is the best solution. For a point of reference, I also looked at Apple's whitepaper on FileVault, which explains that the recovery key is protected by a "wrapping" key generated by hashing the responses to 3 security questions. Still, if this exploit's legit, as far as I can tell this would only matter if someone had physical access to your computer.

Given these two recovery options, which would be more secure?

Store recovery key with iCloud
Store recovery key in a password manager, where it's synced to multiple devices via a service like Dropbox

I'm currently thinking option 2 would be, because there's the extra layer of the password manager vault even if the file syncing service were compromised, but that might be equivalent to the wrapping key hashing Apple adds.

Saving it somewhere yourself is more secure as long as that somewhere else is memorized in your own brain. Otherwise the answer to this isn't static.

iCloud can have vulnerabilities and so can Dropbox. Knowing about some vulnerabilities only informs you about those that have become public. Right now we might possibly know about a vulnerability in iCloud, but tomorrow that could be patched and 12 vulnerabilities in Dropbox could be revealed.

I would consider them to be basically equal if you aren't going to memorize the recovery key.

As an aside, I don't memorize my own keys, I keep them in Dropbox using 1Password


Notification Centre - What happened to Calculator widget? I only just noticed this today - Calculator is gone.

Is this an "improvement" with 10.13.5 which I installed just the other day, or did I break something?

I did notice Stocks appear in there as if by magic the other day - something I'm never ever going to need, but I hadn't spotted Calculator's disappearance until now.

Checked my partner's machine - same OS, very similar machine - lot & lots of widgets...

So, maybe the question becomes, 'where do they live & why can't my machine find them?'

Late edit:
I've found the calculator app, in
/System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/PlugIns/com.apple.ncplugin.calculator.appex
so now I need to figure out a way to get the Notification Centre to recognise it again.

Per comments...
defaults read com.apple.notificationcenterui
gives

{
    TodayView =     {
        NoContent =         (
            "com.apple.reminders.RemindersNC"
        );
        keyWidget = "com.apple.ncplugin.calculator";
        order =         (
            "com.apple.reminders.RemindersNC",
            "com.apple.iTunes.today.TodayExtension",
            "com.apple.iCal.CalendarNC",
            "com.apple.ncplugin.weather",
            "com.parallels.desktop.console.Resource-Monitor",
            "com.apple.ncplugin.stocks"
        );
        preferences =         {
            "com.apple.nc.disclosures" =             {
                enabled = 1;
            };
            "com.apple.nc.today.date" =             {
                enabled = 1;
            };
            "com.apple.nc.today.dnd" =             {
                enabled = 1;
            };
            "com.apple.nc.today.summary" =             {
                enabled = 1;
            };
            "com.apple.nc.tomorrow.summary" =             {
                enabled = 1;
            };
        };
    };
    bannerTime = 5;
    "last-messagetrace-stamp" = "551957496.077987";

so they're missing there. Does that mean there's a defaults write to put them back?

When it comes to troubleshooting Notification Centre widgets, there are a number of options you can try.

1. Use the Edit option within Notification Centre

This is really the first thing to try. Refer to Seamus' answer for the steps involved.

2. Check the Extensions preference pane

In summary:

Go to Apple > System Preferences... > Extensions
OPTIONAL: If you're having issues with 3rd party extensions, select the All option in the lefthand pane and then check the righthand side to enable any that aren't activated
Select the Today option in the lefthand pane
Now check the right-hand side list to confirm the widget(s) are enabled (if not, tick the relevant checkbox(es)
Exit System Preferences
Check your Notification Centre to see if the Widget(s) are active and/or functioning properly

3. Test another User account

Log in to another user account to test whether the Notification Centre (and any Widgets you're having problems with) are working properly. If you don't have another user account, you can log into the Guest account or create a new temporary account at Apple > System Preferences... > Users & Groups

If the Notification Centre / Widgets work fine in the other Account, then try 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 below
If the Notification Centre / Widgets do not work fine in the other Account, then use macOS Recovery to Reinstall macOS (NOTE: Ensure you have a full backup prior to doing this). Likewise, you can use macOS Recovery to restore from a Time Machine backup that was made prior to problems with Notification Centre (NOTE: Ensure you have a full current backup prior to doing this, so that you don't lose any recent documents, emails, photos, etc).

4. Use Widget Simulator to add it back again

Go to /System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/Resources/
Launch the Widget Simulator
Now go to /System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/PlugIns/
Drag and drop the com.apple.ncplugin.calculator.appex file onto the Widget Simulator icon in the Dock
This should open the widget in a Simulator window
Click on the green + button:

Now check to see if the Calculator widget is back in your Notification Centre (or available to add back again)

5. If present, delete any relevant .plist files

NOTE: If you've tested another User Account and the Notification Centre / Widget is not working fine in that account, then do not proceed with this option.

If macOS has created a .plist file for a specific Widget you're having problems with, then delete it. To check this you need to access the relevant Notification Centre Plugin container for the user account in question. Using the Calculator widget as an example, you would go to:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ncplugin.calculator/Data/Library/Preferences

If you see a .plist file for the specific widget (e.g. com.apple.ncplugin.calculator.plist and/or com.apple.calculator.plist), then delete it and restart your Mac.

6. Swap the specific widget .appex file

Grab a known good copy of your widget from a Time Machine backup or another computer. In this case (i.e. a macOS High Sierra installation), the Calculator widget can even be replaced with one from macOS Sierra.

To do this:

On another Mac or within a Time Machine backup, navigate to:
/System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/PlugIns/
Copy the com.apple.ncplugin.calculator.appex file representing the Calculator widget
Now past this into the problem Mac at the same location:
/System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/PlugIns/

NOTE: To do this you will need to temporarily disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) on the Mac you're having problems with.

7. Sign out of and then back into iCloud

I guess the heading says it all. Go to Apple > System Preferences... > iCloud and sign out. Once you're signed out, then sign back in again.

8. Force a Spotlight reindex

There are various ways to do this. The easiest way is to:

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Spotlight
Select the Privacy tab
Drag your boot volume into the window
Wait a few minutes
Remove your boot volume so that it's no longer listed in the window
Exit System Preferences

NOTE: Reindexing your boot volume can take a long time. How long depends on the size of your drive and how much data is stored on it.

9. Reset your password and create a new Keychain

Follow the steps here to reset your password first and then to create a new Keychain.

10. Create a new User account and migrate your data into that one

Obviously this will take a few hours, but this will definitely solve the problem (assuming that when you tested another user account at 3 above it worked fine). Essentially you're creating a new account and migrating all your data to that one instead.


mid-2012 Macbook Pro Retina 15" won't recognize new adapter I recently bought a new power adapter off Amazon, and it worked with my mid-2014 MBP at work and my colleague's mid-2014 MBP, but not my mid-2012 MBP Retina 15" (which, frustratingly, it was bought as a replacement for). The green light comes on, but doesn't switch to orange to indicate charging, nor does the machine detect it.

It's literally the exact same model number of the adapter that came with my machine. I figured the replacement was possibly defective, so returned it and got a replacement. Alas, it still doesn't work on my mid-2012 MBP, but does work on my partner's mid-2014 MBP.

I've tried resetting SMC, to no avail. Even more confusing, my work power adapter charges my mid-2012 MBP fine, and is what I'm using at the moment.

Any ideas?

Edit: As requested, here are some photos of the sides of the new adapter.

You have the wrong power adapter.

The Mid 2014 uses a 60W adapter and the Mid 2012 uses an 85W.

See this page Find the right power adapter and cord for your Mac notebook on Apples's website for details

You can always use a power adapter with a higher power rating on a machine that requires less, but you can't use an adapter with a lower power rating on a machine that requires more.  In other words a MBP with a 60W power requirement will work fine with an 85W adapter, but a MBP with an 85W power requirement will not work with a 60W power adapter.

This is the product you want.


Trackpad works for Diagnostic Test. Can I rule out it has a hardware problem? If a MacBook Pro trackpad is able click and scroll, swipe, move cursor, etc. during a during Diagnostic Test (when I  startup holding down the  D) then, am I able to rule out that it has a hardware problem?

The test results show I have no problem. Its just that during the the test my track pad works.

If a MacBook Pro track pad is able click and scroll, swipe, move
  cursor, etc during a during Diagnostic Test (when I startup holding
  down the D key) then am I able to rule out that it has a hardware
  problem?

For the most part, yes.  It's extremely rare/unlikely that hardware will work fine in one environment, then completely fail in another.  In cases like this, it tends to be a software issue (i.e. conflicts with other software, bad drivers/kexts, mis-configurations, etc.)

Your next step in diagnosing the problem will be to...

boot into Safe Mode
boot into Recovery mode
boot a clean and/or older version of macOS from a different volume (a 16 or 32GB Flash drive is more than sufficient)

The idea with any/all of the above is to get the OS as close to "factory" as possible for testing/diagnostics.  Safe mode isn't always "factory fresh", but Recovery and a clean install on a different volume is.  If you happen to have an older version of macOS you can install on an external volume, then you can evaluate whether it's your newest update that's causing the issue.


How to retrieve a deleted voice note from iPhone 5s? I recorded a 5 minute voice memo on my iPhone 5s and when I tapped "stop" I was prompted to give the memo a name. I named it and then I tapped "Delete" instead of "Save", and it disappeared! Noting that I was connected to my MacBook at the time of recording / naming the voice note.  Can I retrieve this recording?

Unless you have a backup, no. Once it's deleted, it's gone from your device. Check the time on the last iCloud backup — if it's after you recording the audio but before you deleted it, you can restore from your iCloud backup to get the voice memo back.


IPad 2 rollback to ios 5 from ios 6 I'd like to rollback to IOS 5 from IOS 6 for an iPad 2.

I don't mind jail breaking if necessary but instructions would be appreciated.

Short Answer: It's probably not possible to downgrade your iPad 2

Long Answer: It is technically possible, but not without having SHSH blobs for both iOS 4 and iOS 5, which means having been jailbroken in the past on both of those versions, and having saved the .shsh files.


How can I move Contacts from Exchange to the From My Mac groups? I have discovered that some personal contacts that I'd created (using the iPhone's built-in Contacts app) were created in the Exchange (business) group.  How can I move them over to the "From My Mac" contacts?  (Preferably into one of the Address Book Groups that I've created there.)

And how can I prevent this from happening in the future (perhaps by specifying which group to use when creating a contact)?

I have an iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1.  Jail-breaking is not an option.  The iPhone syncs to iTunes on a Macbook Air running OS X 10.5.8.

Unfortunately, iPhone Groups are not meant to be edited from within the iPhone Contacts app. You can try copy iPhone contacts from one group to the next using a third-party program designed to access your iPhone Contacts app from a PC.


How to use data connection on Apple Watch I just paired up  my Apple Watch with my iPhone 7.  I noticed that only phone calls work while my iPhone is turned off and data/messages do not work at all. Only way to use data on my watch is while my iPhone is turned on.

Reading the apple web site suggests that both (watch and phone) need to be connected to cellular network in order to use all features of my watch. For example if I leave my phone at home and go to the park with my watch, only way I will be able to send emails and messages from my watch is if my phone that I  left at home is turned on.

Can somebody explain me how this works and which preconditions need to be fulfilled for me to use data connections on my watch?

I noticed that only phone calls work while my iPhone is turned off and
  data/messages do not work at all.

This is expected behavior.  In order to use messaging features not only must your iPhone be be on, but it must be signed into iMessage (meaning connected to Wifi and/or cellular.  The phone doesn't not need to be with you, however.

  Only way to use data on my watch is while my iPhone is turned on.

Not exactly.  If an App requires data, it can use it even if your phone is not connected - the limitation is only for messaging apps (SMS, MMS, iMesage, etc.)

  Can somebody explain me how this works and which preconditions need to
  be fulfilled for me to use data connections on my watch?

To use data on your Apple Watch (Series 3 and 4), you just need to be connected to either a cellular network or a WiFi network.

Apple has an excellent support document How to use your Apple Watch without your iPhone nearby that goes into detail about what's required to use your Apple Watch with cellular.


How to change keyboard layout of macbook pro during first run registration? I'm running the registration after turning on my new macbook pro for the first time. I've chosen my national keyboard layout and now I can't write @ or + signs. I don't know how to change keyboard layout, some shortcuts like cmd space or cmd alt space don't work. Please notice that I also need to write national characters, so going back and choosing english keyboard layout won't work.

Assuming you use the czech keyboard:

normal

with shift key pressed

with option key pressed


How to get my screen responding again? My MacBook Pro is running, ssh works fine, but the screen does not respond anymore.

The screen is frozen like the ice of Antarctica. The mouse does not move on the screen. The time of the clock does not change.

The Caps Lock light of the keyboard is responding.

Can you help me to get my screen responding again, please?

What I need is simply having my screen responding, in order to use my Mac and to continue what I was doing.

Since you can ssh into the box, you can start killing processes one by one and eventually you will either reboot the box or free up the item that's holding the CPU / GUI frozen.

I would probably do these things in order of severity:

Start a time machine backup before killing anything tmutil startbackup --block --rotation
If I don't care to save work (since this kills all apps abruptly) - kill the loginwindow process and log back in.
If I do care to save some work, kill all user processes not belonging to the user that needs to save work.
Then kill all user processes that don't need work saved. (Apps and such)
Then use AppleScript to tell each app that needs to save work to quit. (assuming the GUI isn't responsive at this point)

  osascript -e 'quit app "Take Five" '

At this point, you'll either need to list the specific apps that you need to save work and ask if there are any ways to force a save (perhaps they use autosave and will recover all work anyhow) or just issue a restart / reboot command and get on with using the machine and recover what you can from your last backup.


Run x11 app from dock I have an app in /usr/local/bin directory and can not drag it onto the dock and have to open Terminal everytime I want to run this program.

Is it possible to run a macported/homebrewed application from the Dock?

You should be able to do this using AppleScript, saving the script you create as an application, then dragging it to the dock.

For example, if you start the Apple Script Editor (/Applications/Utilities/Apple Script Editor.app). Then type something like the following, replacing my trivial example of /bin/date with the command you want to run

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "/bin/date"
 end tell

or

do shell script "/bin/date"

Either script should work, but the first explicitly opens the Terminal - it just depends on the application you want to run and whether it sticks around.

Then save this script as an application (use the dropdown in the save dialog to change the "File Format" to "Application").

You should then be able to drag the .app file you created to the Dock and run it.


File extension shows in BASH but not in Finder I created a text file with a specific extension:

Vendor_0408_Product_3008.idc

It displays in finder link this:

and BASH like this:

-rw-r--r--@  1 raven  staff    1903 Feb 19 10:31 Vendor_0408_Product_3008.idc.rtf

with a .rtf extension.  In Finder, I went to preferences/advanced and made sure that "Show all filename extensions" is checked:

But it still does not display the extension?!

Please advise.

Be sure the file's own metadata is not set to hide the file extension. Right-click or control-click the file in Finder and check the setting in the "Name and Extension" area.


Image Viewer like Windows Image Viewer I want a good image viewer for mac. When I open any random image from a folder like this:

I want to be able to navigate to next/previous image with left and right arrow. Seems so simple but I downloaded 15 image viewers for mac and couldn't find the one I am looking for.

The default imageviewer for Windows does this perfectly. I want something like it: https://youtu.be/kWwjm-2U_mU?t=1m1s

You could try just using Quick Look, built into the OS.

Select any of the images, tap the Space Bar.
Navigate the way you normally would inside the folder, up/down/left/right arrows.
Tap Space again to close.

This works for more than just pictures, it can handle music, text files, movies etc. & is extendable with new plugins. There's a list here [I don't know how comprehensive] - http://www.quicklookplugins.com


Have two time capsules and use the one only as HDD and the other as router I have two Time Capsules and I want to use both simultaneously. One as a router and the other as a HDD only.

How can I do that?

Open the AirPort Utility and pick the AirPort accordingly:

HDD:

Select the Wireless tab
Network Mode: Off
Select the Disks tab
Tick: Enable file sharing

Router:

Select the Wireless tab
Network Mode: Create/Extend a wireless network
Select the Disks tab
Untick: Enable file sharing


How can I activate iPhone without a SIM card? I've just changed the screen on an iPhone 4S with iOS 6.0.1. Everything went fine until I noticed that the phone was not detecting any SIM card. It doesn't matter what you do with the SIM bay, the phone is always showing "No Sim" at the top.

I've tried to reboot several times with and without the SIM card inserted, different SIM cards, all that stuff with no luck.

After a few hours and with no exits, I've tried to restore the phone but still the same problem. And now, as the SIM is not detected, I can’t activate nor access the phone at all.

A friend of mine just told me today that he had a similar story but he fixed the problem setting the correct date and time manually. I can't try that now because Apple decided to make this stupid activation process but, as he said, is a common problem with iOS 6.x.x and iPhone 4S.

Now, do you have any ideas on how can I activate the phone or set the date and time to the correct one just to try if it helps?

You can activate a iPhone without a SIM card by jailbraking it.
Search YouTube for “jailbraik iPhone 8bitguy”
If you use  redsn0w, when it has a checklist of things it can do (like ”Install Cydia”), just uncheck them all and click continue.


Numbers: Count number of payments, SumIf, CountIf, Concatenate Date, change data types I am trying to create a spreadsheet that will figure out how much has been paid to date, from a list of payments in a separate row. I have tried many different options including using SumIF and CountIF. With both functions I am not receiving the desired result. I suspect that the date value in the expression is not being converted to a string. How can you change data types (date/value to string)? There are many functions that will turn a string into a date value but I don't know how to do the opposite and turn a date value into a string.

these are the formulas tried so far:

=SUMIF(2:2,CHAR(34)&"<="&B5&CHAR(34),Pmt)

where: CHAR(34)&"<="&B5&CHAR(34) = the expression = "<=5/1/16"

=COUNTIF(2:2,CHAR(34)&"<="&B5&CHAR(34))

I have tried moving the evaluation expression to a different cell and I have tried running the Expression (B5) through T() and Plaintext() to try to convert the date value to a string, with no success.

Please help,
Thank you for your time!

I found the solution:

=SUMIF(2:2,CLEAN("<="&DATEVALUE(B5)),Pmt)

The solution was the proper use of the Clean() function.

I'll Leave this up if anyone has a similar issue.


metasploit nmap VMware Fusion 5 Has anyone had success using nmap within msfconsole to target a specific host on a VM virtual network?

For example, the following command works from a Terminal prompt:

nmap -sT -A 172.16.187.128

However, the same command run from msfconsole results in
    dnet: Failed to open device vmnet

msf > nmap -sT -A 172.16.187.128
[*] exec: nmap -sT -A 172.16.187.128
Starting Nmap 6.25 ( http://nmap.orgz) at 2013-06-04 00:23 MDT
dnet: Failed to open device vmnet2
QUITTING!

I've seen some answers on the Internet suggesting the problem is the virtual network, but since the same nmap command works from Terminal I have doubts about the answers I've seen.

Thanks!

For what its worth I've seen the same issue with Fusion 6 and nmap.  I also saw tcpdump fail as well:

sudo tcpdump -i vmnet8
tcpdump: vmnet8: No such device exists
(BIOCSETIF failed: Device not configured)

After upgrading libpcap to 1.40 and this still not resolving the problem, I found the following outdated post:
https://communities.vmware.com/message/693833#693833

Specifically this quote is where the issue lies:
"No guarantees, but we can try to take a look at implementing BPF on Fusion's network interfaces in a future release."

This seems to point to the issue being a vmware problem, so I tried VirtualBox 4.3.0 and when using NAT at least, the issues do not occur (nmap also worked for me):

$ ifconfig
…
vboxnet0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether 0a:00:00:00:00:00
inet 192.168.56.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.56.255

$ sudo tcpdump -i vboxnet0
tcpdump: WARNING: vboxnet0: That device doesn't support promiscuous mode
(BIOCPROMISC: Operation not supported on socket)
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on vboxnet0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes


Remotely disable Macbook Air through network access My Macbook Air was stolen. The stolen Mac is showing up in Baku, Azerbajan.
I don't have the skill to do it myself, but I could imagine that there would be a way to do something nasty. Perhaps a script or some exploit. Something that would give some sort of notice or a flash dialog.

I know the computer still logs into gmail and dropbox by looking at the logs, so I've decided to not change those passwords as I have nothing worth protecting on those accounts as much as I'd want to get the Mac back or erased.

In case anyone has a solution I would appreciate any advice except "forget it!".

If you had logged in iCloud in your computer you can trace it with that by logging on iCloud.com and then in the find my iPhone tab there you can Do any of the three options,

Show a message on the screen,
Remotely lock the computer
Clear the data from the computer.

P.S. In any case there is rare chance you may get it back so at the end you have to "forget it"


Login from new device (not mine) I have a new iPhone 5s (my first Apple device) and an iPad both of which I've had for three or four weeks now. This morning I received a notification that I had been signed in on another device, an iMac called "macen" (or something like that). I do not have an iMac. I don't recall the exact wording of the message.

I have changed my password this morning, and turned on two factor authentication, but how do I know that this other device no longer is connected to my Apple account? I checked in "devices" but only see my iPhone, iPad and my Windows laptop (where I have also signed into iCloud) .

What can I do to ensure my account isn't compromised?

Just found an email from Apple with the details:

Log into www.appleid.apple.com and from here you will see all the devices currently logged into your Apple ID, you can also delete devices that you don't recognise.

Here's what it looks like from my account.


Mac kernel panic - memory problem I have a Early-2011 MacBook Pro base model. It has 4GB of RAM, and I use it for heavy development work.

It shows a pattern of continuously dumping into a black screen which asks me to restart (a kernel panic) almost once a week. It seems that I don't have enough RAM, as today I had Xcode, Eclipse and Firefox opened side by side (each of these apps are memory hogs), and when I opened iCal and Safari, I got a kernel panic.

I tried a free memory application available in the App Store, and it said that before opening these two applications I had 22 MB free memory and 1.1 GB inactive memory out of 4 GB total memory. It looks like inactive memory is not getting freed (my understanding is that inactive memory is what the OS uses for fast app switching), and the OS simply crashes. Safari only had one tab open.

Will additional RAM help or is there a different problem? I'm also using a Samsung 21.5" monitor through mini DisplayPort to VGA connector if it matters.

Update: this problem started occuring again: the system becomes slow then I get a kernel panic. Would upgrading RAM help? I have nearly 1GB of inactive memory.

Did you disable your swap file? As ghoppe, bmike, and I mention in the top answers to this question, this is a bad idea for exactly the problems you're having.

The other option is that you have bad RAM. Run a memory checker (like Memtest86) to see it you have a bad stick or two and remove and replace the offending modules.


DVD to iPod touch (iTunes)? I have a big pile of DVDs and DivX encoded files with animation shorts that I sometimes would like to watch on my iPod touch 4G while I am on the go. What would be a quick and easy way to transfer the movies to iTunes and then to my iPod touch? Sometimes the DVD has a menu that list all the shorts, I would like to have each short as a separate files (or "item" in iTunes).

Is there also a way to (automagically) optimize the movies for viewing on the iPod (i.e. adjust quality and resolution for the small iPod touch screen and for better battery life).
This would be ideal: iTunes is my main repository for all my movies in the best possible quality so they'd also work on the large screen. Once they are copied over to an iPod they get reencoded with lesser bitrate and resolution.

The best, or, most commonly used method for transcoding DVDs and DivX files to an iPod would be Handbrake.  Handbrake has presets for almost all current iDevices.  I'd start by reading the Handbrake Mac GUI Guide and selecting iPod Touch from the destination presets (image on Stage 2 from the guide) and adjusting select a target bit rate of 700ish for a device with that small of a screen.

If you're interested in scripting out the process to save time Handbrake has a great CLI and guide that would streamline the process.

Another popular solution would be MacTheRipper.


Can I turn the display off without putting the computer to sleep? I use rMBP with the latest Mavericks 10.9.2.

I often download something in background, so I can't just press "poweroff" button, because these downloads stop working in sleep mode. However, I have checked "disable sleep mode when display is off" in energy saving settings.

How can I turn display off without putting system into sleep mode? I only found a way just to leave macbook and don't touch it, it turns off just as selected in energy saving settings.

You can use Hot Corners to put your display to sleep instantly. This article on OSXDaily walks through the steps, Quickly Sleep the Display in Mac OS X with a Hot Corner.

Launch System Preferences and click on “Mission Control”
Click on “Hot Corners…” in the lower left corner
Set the screen corners you want to use to “Put Display to Sleep”
Close out of System Preferences and test the Hot Corner by sliding your cursor into that screens corner


Image files made with Disk Utility creates parent folder I'm using OS X 10.5.8., updated from 10.5.2. which I installed from the two installation DVDs that came with my MB404 MacBook.

I recently found my original 10.5.2. installation DVDs, which I thought I had lost. So I want to save them as image files on my backup drive in .iso format (since I normally use Windows).

I created .iso files from the DVDs in Disk Utility (> New Image > Image Format DVD/CD master > Save, then later renamed the .cdr file to .iso).

When I create an image from my DVD "Mac OS X Install Disc 1", it (as expected) creates an image called "Mac OS X Install Disc 1.iso":

But when I inspect this .iso file with 7zip later, I notice that the image file contains a parent folder with the same name as the image file, i.e. a folder "Mac OS X Install Disc 1":

Inside this folder there are a range of folders and files pertaining to the installation of Mac OS:

This is not what I expected to find. I expected to see what you see in the third picture here directly when I looked inside the .iso file. But for all I know, that is how .dmg image files are and are supposed to be.

The reason I am asking is this: If I burn this .iso image file to a DVD, will it be bootable on a Mac computer?

EDIT:

I tried what Gordon suggested. It seems counterintuitive to me to burn an image of the DVD drive and not the DVD disc, but I gave it a try.

My resulting .cdr file now looks somewhat different from the .iso file discussed above - at first sight.

The file is now a MacOSX1052Disc1.cdr file:

Its content is different from the .iso file. The content looks like this:

I see that there is an Mac_OS_X.hfs file here. HFS is basically an Apple image format. Opening this file reveals the identical content of the .iso file discussed above:

In other words, my initial concern with the .iso file was that the content seemed to be inside the parent folder rather than at the top of the file hierarchy. Using Gordon's suggested approach, however, the content in question is buried even further down the hierarchy. I doubt, therefore, that this is the right approach to take here.

I'm pretty sure you created the image wrong. When you create the image in Disk Utility, it's very important that you specify the source correctly. I'm not certain I remember exactly right, so you should test this before you trust the results, but here's the process as I remember it:

In Disk Utility's sidebar, select the DVD's entry. IIRC, it'll actually list two entries in the sidebar: the DVD itself, and then indented under that the installer volume ("Mac OS X Install DVD" or something like that. You want the DVD entry, not the volume entry under it.
IIRC older versions of Disk Utility would actually list three entries: the DVD, a session under that, and the volume under that. In this case, I'm pretty sure it's the session (the middle entry) you want.

Under the File menu, choose "New" > "Image from disk2" (or whatever the disk ID is). This tells Disk Utility you want a raw device image, not just image the files contained in the disk.

In the save dialog, set the Image Format to "DVD/CD master"

I think that procedure will work, but to be sure it's best to rename the file from ".cdr" to ".iso", copy it to your Windows computer, burn it to a DVD-R, and actually try booting the Mac from it. Note that if you mount the .iso on Windows you will not see anything like what you expect -- IIRC the 10.5 install DVDs are actually in a hybrid format that contains a Windows-readable driver disk for Boot Camp, and a Mac-readable (& bootable) installer volume. So if you mount it on Windows, you'll see Windows drivers, not a Mac installer. (BTW, this is also true of the original DVD, so try mounting that on your Windows computer to check my memory.)


Unable to backup my iPhone using iTunes. Error: Insufficient space on my Mac I am trying to backup my old iPhone 7 to my Mac, so that I can restore it to the new iPhone XS. iTunes keeps giving me an error stating Unable to backup due to insufficient space on the computer. The iPhone that I am trying to back up is 128 GB capacity (with 70 GB free, and I have 128 GB free on my Mac.

What's the probable problem here? Software on all of my devices are up-to-date (macOS Mojave on my Mac and iOS 12.1 on the iPhones).

According to your information provided

You have 17 GB free space on the Disk.

You also have 128 GB of which 111 GB can be purged (freed).

To purge go to About this Mac > Storage > Manage

Decide what to do by following the instructions.


How do I temporarily enable package installation without any permission prompt Whenever I need to install an app using the package installer, there will be a prompt asking for admin user's name and password. How do I temporarily turn this feature off, so that any package can be installed automatically?

You'll want to go into your System Preferences, and into Security & Privacy

Then unlock - if needed - the lock on bottom left, and select "Anywhere".
The computer might ask you for your password.

When you're done, you should be able to open and install many .DMG installers without being prompted for a password.

When you are done, you can revert these settings as they are a good security to prevent third party apps from installing automatically on your computer.


Mobile app development using Xcode. Single Graphics vs Dual Graphics? I have decided to buy a pre-owned MacBook for mobile app development using Xcode, I have two options:

MacBook Pro (13", Early 2015)

Processor: 3.1 Ghz Intel Core i7, Integrated Graphics
16 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
Cost: 65K

MacBook Pro (15", Mid 2014)

Processor: 2.5Ghz Intel Iris Pro Graphics, Dual Graphics
16 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
Cost : 69K

Can any one please tell me which one is better for Xcode based on the year? Also what is the difference between single and dual graphics?

Mobile app development using Xcode. Single Graphics vs Dual Graphics?

A Mac with dual graphics (integrated + dedicated) is preferred when working on graphic intensive projects.

Generally speaking, a more recently introduced model is equipped with better internals (such as newer generation of processor and faster RAM/internal storage).

You should pay attention to the machine specifications and your use-case to choose an appropriate one as it can differ from person to person and task to task. You need to base your decision on criterion such as:

Processor generation, frequency and performance gain (year-over-year)
Amount and frequency of RAM
Amount of speed of internal storage
Screen size/real estate and supported resolutions
Ports, their speed and support for external display and accessories.

  Can any one please tell me which one is better for Xcode based on the year?

Depends on your specific use case (and budget) as discussed above. You can compare the detailed specs for the two mentioned models and base your decision on that. Check the following link:

Table of third generation MacBook Pro models.

  Also what is the difference between single and dual graphics?

A MacBook with dual graphics quite literally means that it is equipped with dual graphics card. The one with single graphics card comes equipped with Intel Integrated graphics (which is generally speaking fine for day to day usage). Dual graphics MacBook Pro includes a dedicated graphics card in addition to the Intel Integrated card, and the operating system includes the support for automatic switching between the two.

A dual graphics machine is preferred when you need good performance in graphics intensive tasks/projects, gaming, or have a project that needs to utilize GPU compute.


Trouble mounting High Sierra start up disk from OS X 10.9 I have a Mac mini late 2012/2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, with 2 disks, one SSD, and a HDD. The SSD has the most recent High Sierra and the second drive OS X 10.9.5.

After many attempts to force High Sierra to connect my Bluetooth keyboard, I decided to set Maverick as the boot drive and restart to check whether the keyboard is detected there.

In fact, it was, but now it does not mount the SSD with High Sierra and even in the terminal mode I get the message "unknown special file or file system."

Any ideas how to force it to mount again, besides upgrading the 10.9 to Sierra?

Your SSD is formatted to an APFS container with several APFS volumes including the High Sierra system volume.

Mavericks and all other OSs (except Sierra with "experimental support" and High Sierra) natively don't contain drivers to read from or write to APFS.
Paragon offers a read-only driver for 10.10-10.12.

Consequently you can't mount APFS in Mavericks.

You can backup your High Sierra volume, reformat the SSD to HFSJ+ or CoreStorage and restore HS there though, but this is not recommended.

So if you want to access files and folders on the High Sierra volume in Mavericks use a third volume (formatted to HFSJ+/CS) as a transitional volume (i.e. copy all required files from HS to this volume to access them from Mavericks).


Our iPad is asking for a 4 digit passcode that it never asked for before Our iPad is asking for a 4 digit code that it never asked for before. We updated several apps at one time. The iPad said it couldn't update them with 47% battery power, so we plugged it in and ran the updates again.  Now it asks for a 4 digit pin which it never asked for before. We didn't "accidentally" set a pin, and no one else has had access to the iPad.  We have tried several 4 digit codes that we "might" have set, none that work.  What do we do now?

Check that your iPad is not in lost mode by going here. If so, disable it by going to Find my iPhone on another iPad or iPhone or going to icloud.com on a computer and then go to Find my iPhone. Click on the device on Find my iPhone and click Lost Mode and then turn it off.

A more likely story is that someone could have enabled "Restrictions" on your iPad. There are some ways to find out this code, or to disable Restrictions all together.

Before you do any of this, just make sure that you have Restrictions enabled by going to Settings → General → Restrictions and then click on that and if you are prompted to enter a 4 digit code, just try once more at guessing the 4 digit code.

If it still does not work, plug in your iPad to a computer. Make a backup on iTunes with the current settings. Then follow this tutorial. This is for both Mac and PC.

Cheers and good luck!


iPad does not do automatic screen rotation I've a problem with my iPad. After I updated to the lastest version of iOS the automatic screen rotation doesn't work anymore. I tried to restart my iPad because I supposed that it was only a system bug but it was not like I thought. How can I fix this?

Is rotation lock on? Open Control Center by swiping from the top right of the screen (iOS 12+), then tap the rotation lock icon on the top row.

If you see  in the status bar, Orientation Lock is on. To turn it off, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the Control Center, then tap .
If you have an iPad with a Side Switch and don't see the Rotation Lock icon in Control Center, make sure that the Side Switch is off.

If the screen doesn‘t rotate on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch