Is it possible for two users to remotely log in to a Mac simultaneously? Can two users share a Mac remotely? What software would be used?

I'm wondering if this is a viable idea for two developers to share a Mac for app development.

Yes - Lion makes the distinction between sharing the current screen and letting a different user log in. This brings multiple login to Mac OS X in an official way.

When you connect from another Lion mac - this window shows how you can select either access method.

A few VNC client apps (Like Screens for iOS and Screens for Mac supported this when Lion was released. Several popular VNC clients didn't work initially due to this change (and may need updates to work with Lion's new screen sharing method).


macOS numbers formula range problem I can't seem to find the equivalent of:

H2:2

In macOS Numbers app. This statement in a formula tells that the formula should take the cells from H2 to the end of the row into consideration.

I can't set it to a constant value, since the rows are constantly increasing, so I need a dynamic value.

EDIT:
This is what I was using in Google Sheets:

=COUNTIF(I3:3, 0)

As of version version 4.1.1 (4338), unfortunately with Numbers one can define the entire row, but not from a specific column forward.

So, while COUNTIF(I3:3, 0) will resolve to an error, COUNTIF(3:3, 0) will work regardless of the row's length. (Increasing columns)

Example:

This would be a good feature suggestion for Apple.


Unable to upgrade recent 1Password through App Store in macOS Big Sur 11.2.3 (20D91) For the very first time I cannot upgrade the app through App Store. It fully downloads the upgrade, but when it comes to installation it fails because it cannot quit itself I assume.

I can force quit all 1Password-related processes except of the Extension Helper. When I try to do this via ps aux and kill -s TERM PID, it immediately spawns itself with another PID.
Any help? I'm on Big Sur 11.2.3 (20D91).

The official support gave me the answer.

Quit all browsers
Open main 1Password window
Press ⌃ + ⌥ + ⌘ + Q to quit and indeed it quits all processes.

Weird that the CLI approach didn't work.
Anyway - solved.


Delete a rented movie that is only partially downloaded I rented a movie and actually was able to watch it, but in iTunes it still shows up as a download in progress with an error and when I tap the icon it just says I don't have enough memory to continue the download (for the movie that I already watched and the rental time expired for). It is taking up a bunch of space and I want it gone!  Please help. I do not have a computer I can get onto at this time and don't want to lose my 100+songs currently stored on my iPhone.

Somewhat bizarrely it is not possible to delete downloads in the iPhone iTunes.

The only way to delete the download, is to contact Apple (the iTunes section) and they will delete it for you. (you can contact support through the desktop iTunes app, or here)


how to send scheduled mails with Mail? I would love to send mails in my apple mail scheduled!
What is the most comfortable way to do that?

only method i found: http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/Mail_Scripts.html
(but this is quite tricky + buggy)

Mail.app has no built-in function to send scheduled mails. You can use Automator to achieve the same result, though.

Open Automator and select "New iCal Alarm". Drag "New Mail Message" to the workflow. It will bring up a small composition window, just like in Mail.app.

Drag "Send Outgoing Messages" to the workflow. You can test it at this point to make sure that it's properly set up.

Save it. iCal should automatically open, and you can drag the event wherever/whenever you like. The message will be sent when the alarm is triggered.


System-wide sound effects on OS X? Is there an option in macOS which would allow a 3rd party to install a system-wide sound effect on an macOS machine? Something similar to Windows APO (Audio Processing Object) technology:
"Windows allows OEMs and third-party audio hardware manufacturers to include custom digital signal processing effects as part of their audio driver's value-added features. These effects are packaged as user-mode system effect Audio Processing Objects (APOs)."
The technology enables users to easily enable/disable system-wide sound enhancement algorithms (see screenshot).
From the system tray:

From the device settings:

You can add Audio Unit effects, which can be used by any AU-capable audio app. Example with Apple originals & third party additions…

Generally, you cannot plug these directly into the Mac's audio output, you need an app capable of accessing them. Apps such as SoundSource can do this for any app or all, at simple general consumer level, intercepting between app or system output & the intended hardware out.
There is, of course, already a large market for these effects as stand-alone processors, in the pro audio world. From free to expensive.
If you search "VST plugins" you'll find many of these that come in multi-format, VST, AU, etc. VST is a proprietary format from Steinberg, but the plugin API is available for developers. Once the effect is coded (waaay beyond my abilities) then they are often cross-ported to other formats.


CS5ServiceManager Java error shows up at startup of Mac Every time I start my computer a popup window shows up that says

"If you want to open CS5ServiceManager you have to install the older Java SE 6 Runtime"

Why does this show up, and how do I resolve the problem?

I have Mac OS 10.11.6

Here's another way, if you don't mind getting your feet wet in the Terminal:

launchctl remove com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager.plist

What this does is:

Removes the launchctl profile that starts CS5Manager at startup;
Deletes the plist file that re-creates that launchctl profile.

The second step is necessary or it will keep coming back.

Be careful when using sudo and rm, you don't want to remove anything important - just this plist file.

Credit: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1618590


iPhone stuck on boot screen My non-jailbroken iPhone 6S Plus (iOS 9.3.5) failed to boot up to the lock screen (stuck in apple logo) after the battery was depleted. Hoping to keep my data intact, I have tried several online suggested solutions such as booting it into safe mode (powering on by pressing the power button + volume up button and holding the only volume up button when the apple logo shows) but to no avail.

I looked at several other solutions such as creating a no erase ipsw but am unsure if this is a safe solution (eg. no malware, will not further damage the phone, bricking the phone).

Has anyone tried this solution or has any other solutions I could try? Really hoping to keep my data. Thanks in advance.

A "no-erase ipsw" is used when you want to go from a jailbroken device to iOS without losing data. In your case, you are already on iOS and seeing as how you have eliminated all of the potential software fixes, you most likely have a hardware issue.

Depending on the problem, the data may be recoverable but it would have to be looked at by a repair shop that specializes in iPhone data recovery.


Lots of inactive memory after watching HD/DVD movies I'm the owner of mid 2010 iMac (core i7) with 16GB memory installed.Normally, Mac OS X (SL and Lion) never uses swap (that is page ins/outs = 0), there are always 3-8GB of free memory. But after watching a few DVD/h264 movies, there are only 50-100*MB* of free memory and swap is used actively. Looks like video files are mapped into system memory, since the amount of inactive memory ~= size of files. The only workaround is to use purge utility.

I'm looking for a solution which is better than running purge every time I looked a movie.

uptime:

4:08  up 3 days,  7:35, 5 users, load averages: 0,71 0,76 0,71

vm_stat:

Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free:                         738409.
Pages active:                      1715722.
Pages inactive:                     536891.
Pages speculative:                  857329.
Pages wired down:                   344323.
"Translation faults":           1067897384.
Pages copy-on-write:               6068992.
Pages zero filled:               591232281.
Pages reactivated:                 1906255.
Pageins:                           5019598.
Pageouts:                           861857.
Object cache: 16 hits of 1354202 lookups (0% hit rate)

What you're seeing is normal, and desired behavior.

OS X, like Linux and BSD, has a disk cache. This means anything read from or written to disk is kept in memory. The "Inactive" memory includes this disk cache.

This answer on AskDifferent explains it, as does this post on macosxhints.com:

  However, X's underpinnings (ie the UN*X kernel) provide both these
  features without any inputs being needed by the user. It's called the
  file system buffer cache. The one most significant difference is that
  the size of this buffer cache is dynamic. It starts of with some small
  size and can grow and shrink as the i/o demands and Apps memory
  requirements vary over time.

  It's called a 'buffer cache' because it buffers the i/o data on its
  way to/from the disk. When an App writes data it first will be
  deposited into the Apps file buffer memory region and will
  subsequently be requested via library routines to have the kernel (the
  OS) copy it from the App's buffer to disk. The kernel will oblige and
  will copy it first to its buffer -- the file system buffer cache. If
  the kernel requires more room in its buffer cache it will obtain it
  from the free memory. When this happens the free memory value, in say
  the Terminal's top command, will immediately show a reduction of free
  memory. At some later point the kernel will copy this data (referred
  to has dirty buffers) to the appropriate disk location. I believe the
  frequency of this being done is 30 secs -- called sync-ing to disk.

Note that having memory paged out to disk is not always a bad thing. If memory pages are completely inactive, paging them out to disk can improve performance, because they are wasting RAM which could otherwise be used for disk cache. Once they are paged out and you stop watching movies, when needed they will be paged back in, automatically replacing the buffers and disk cache. You don't need to run purge each time. Just let OS X manage the disk cache as it was designed to do.

For more information on this, consult the wikipedia article on paging, and the article on the Page cache.

TL;DR information:

Here's an article describing how swap works under Linux. WHile not 100% applicable to OS X, the concept is the same. I'll quote the relevant part:

  When an application needs memory and all the RAM is fully occupied,
  the kernel has two ways to free some memory at its disposal: it can
  either reduce the disk cache in the RAM by eliminating the oldest data
  or it may swap some less used portions (pages) of programs out to the
  swap partition on disk. It is not easy to predict which method would
  be more efficient. The kernel makes a choice by roughly guessing the
  effectiveness of the two methods at a given instant, based on the
  recent history of activity

Since you're watching a DVD or a movie, the most recently active pages of memory are the disk cache, so OS X decides to keep that in RAM and swap out pages of memory which have been inactive from before you started accessing the video files. Once you stop accessing video files and access the programs using the memory pages which were swapped out, the reverse is true: OS X will discard the disk cache containing the video data and replace it with the memory pages which it swapped out. Then your swap usage will decrease.

Here's a bit more information, specific to FreeBSD (which is similar to Mac OS X):

  FreeBSD will use 'all of memory' for the disk cache. What this means
  is that the 'free' bucket typically contains only a few pages in it.
  If the system runs out, it can free up more pages from the cache
  bucket.

  System activity works like this: When a program actively references  a
  page in a file on the disk (etc...) the page is brought into the
  buffer cache via a physical I/O operation. It typically goes into  the
  'active' bucket. If a program stops referencing the page, the  page
  slowly migrates down into the inactive or cache buckets (depending  on
  whether it is dirty or not). Dirty pages are slowly 'cleaned' by
  writing them to their backing store and moved from inactive to cache,
  and cache pages are freed as necessary to maintain a minimum number of
  truely free pages in the free bucket. These pages can still be
  'cleaned' by allocating swap as their backing store, allowing them  to
  migrate through the buckets and eventually be reused.

  [...]

  The VM buffer cache caches everything the underlying storage so, for
  example, it will not only cache the data blocks associated with a file
  but it will cache the inode blocks and bitmap blocks as well. Most
  filesystem operations thus go very fast even for tripple-indirect
  block  lookups and such

  [...]

  FreeBSD has arguably some of the best swap code in existance. I
  personally  like it better then Linux's. Linux is lighter on swap, but
  doesn't  balance system memory resource utilization well under varying
  load  conditions. FreeBSD does.

  FreeBSD notes the uselessness of existing pages in memory, and decides
  that it might be advantageous to free memory (enabled by pushing pages
  to swap), so that it can be used for more active purposes (such as
  file  buffering, or more program space.) It is a terrible waste to
  keep unused  pages around, for the notion of saving (cheap) disk
  space. Since low  level SWAP I/O can be faster, with less CPU overhead
  than file I/O, it  is likely desireable to push such unused pages out
  so that they can be  freed for use by higher overhead mechanisms.
  (note 1)

(Emphasis mine, check that bolded part for specifically what you're asking about, that is, "Why is swap being used when I have inactive memory?)


How can I remove web phone links from opening in Google Hangouts? For whatever reason, Google Hangouts has taken over as my dialer whenever I click on a phone number on the web (either Chrome or Safari). I want to restore this to open in FaceTime, but no longer have that option. In the FaceTime settings, FaceTime is still listed as the default dialer.

Any idea where Chrome would have made this change and how I can revert it? Better yet, how can i remove all remnants of google hangouts from my life??

I'm not sure about removing hangouts completely (perhaps use a cleaning tool such as CleanMyMac, though many users dislike that type of app), but I have a suggesting for changing how telephone links are handled: try RCDefaultApp, a free prefpane which manages default apps for opening different types of files and URIs.

Using that prefpane, you could change the default setting for tel URLs to open using the FaceTime app.

More details on modifying the files that control these defaults are in this answer on SuperUser.


iTunes Gift Card vs. Family Sharing I am a member of a family sharing plan on iTunes. In order to not charge my partner when I make a purchase, I purchased an iTunes gift card and gave it to myself - $200. I was able to make two purchases against the gift card, but now every time I try to purchase music, even though I can see I have $180.02 balance, I get the pop-up box that says I need the family organizer to authorize. I don't seem to be able to access my own gift card to make my own purchases. Please help!

Contact Apple support. We had a similar issue on our family account recently and needed their help to assist. Nothing we were willing to try got the gift balance back in to the rotation.

It's supposed to charge the balance for most but not all purchases and my guess is a subscription or something that went to the card got the balance set aside.


Map Section sign (§) button to backtick(`) and tilde (~) without Karabiner The question how to change "§" (section symbol) key to write "`" (back quote) has a solution using Karabiner but I am looking for a non-Karabiner solution.

You can use Ukelele to make a custom layout for this.


How can I find removed apps? Is there any way that I can download apps that I removed last week? (I can't remember the names of them)

If you've downloaded them on the Mac App Store.
- You can find them again in the "Purchased" tab inside Mac App Store.

If you downloaded them outside of the Mac App Store.
- They might be in your specified "Downloads" folder, if you haven't deleted them from that.

If you downloaded them on your iPhone/iPad.
- You can find your previously purchased apps on these devices either on iTunes or in App Store on your device. Go to the "Updates" tab and choose "Purchased".


iPhone 4 camera - how does the HDR mode work? I recently got an iPhone 4. When I turn on HDR on my camera and take a picture, it takes 2 pictures, both of which look grainy.

One appears brighter than the other but I don't "see" any other difference.

Any idea why this happens or is this how it is supposed to be?

Thanks.

Here is an article that provides a really good run down on what HDR is and how it performs on the iPhone.

Basically it takes three photos at various exposure levels and combines them.  So you get a "normal" photo at regular exposure levels and the HDR version (1 photo composed of the three).   Results vary depending on light conditions etc.  I've had some really great results and some shockers.


Automator Javascript - see console.log output I'm trying to get all object properties and I use

console.log(object)

But I don't understand where to find output? Is there a special Automator function for logging?

UPD

Using script editor. Calling console.log(object) just output type of object. Is there a way to see list of all properties/values like in web inspector?

A simple solution that will work in most cases is to just use JSON.stringify(obj) to see the object as a string in the console.


El Capitan: (Text) Cursor moves during my typing Have you noticesor is all of the sudden in a different place that strange thing when you type cur...?

It's super annoying when writing longer text. Or even if not (wtf Apple?). I found some solutions but they are from 2011 and suggest things like replacing the battery or playing with "PRAM". There has to be something better, right?

Or, this looked good, uut it's no longer an option in Sys Preferences.

Thank you!

Even though Apple says ignore accidental trackpad input is enabled by default, this does not seem to be the case in Yosemite/El Capitan, as several users have pointed out on the Apple support forums.

To address this issue, I made a program that disables the trackpad for a short time when typing on the keyboard. Take a look here and let me know if it works for you (I've only tested it on El Capitan 10.11.6 so far): https://github.com/thesyntaxinator/TouchGuard


Can't boot on OS X partition after resizing Windows partition I initially had three bootable partitions:

OS X
Recovery for OS X
Bootcamp (Windows 8)

Now, on Windows, I decided to make my Windows partition smaller, reducing its size using the native Disk Manager. I did, leaving some unallocated space at the end of the disk. Then I restarted my macbook while holding 'alt' and I was surprised to find only one bootable partition:

Bootcamp (Windows 8)

Confused, I decided to revert my changes by re-expanding my Windows partition to its original size. The disk mapping looks just the same as before, except I still can't boot on OS X or Recovery for OS X, because they aren't displayed at all on Startup Manager of my macbook.

How to fix EFI (or whatever is causing the problem) and boot again on OS X?

[edit: small note, this issue was long time ago... I have reinstalled the whole computer since then]

Presumably Windows messed up with your OS X boot code.
You have to rebuild this code.
Since OS X tools can not handle a false flagged partition you have to set the correct partition flag and afterwards rebuild the boot code using OS X Disk Utility.

Since you can't boot from the now unaccessible recovery partition you have to have Linux-tools and a second Mac (accessing your messed up hard disk via target mode 2nd stage) or a OS X install DVD/USB-key by the hand.

Let's go:

Download the latest gParted iso file here: gParted

Burn the iso to a CD or transfer it using the tool of your choice to a USB drive.
For help to create a gParted Live-USB look here: Live-USB

Boot your Mac using gParted-Linux.

Go to the gParted-tool.
(First window will be opened automagically on the desk.)
Select the (probably your first) HFS+ partition and do the right click.
Be aware, this is not the first 200 MB EFI-partition!!!

Now edit the partition info.

Tick the square for the msft-type.
Remove the mark. Do not mark any of the available marks.
Write out the changes.

Leave the tool and reboot into a OS X-Install-DVD or prepared OS X install-USB-key (or as forementioned connect your dead Mac-HDD to the other Mac via Firewire or TB now accessing the disk in target mode)

Open OS X Disk Utility.

Tick on the Apple HDD, let Disk Utility repair the partition layout.
Check the OS X-partition too and reboot into your OS X again.

Hold the alt-key and choose the OS X boot volume.
Be happy.

for background stuff from the sources please check search for:

Apple tech notes
steelpangolin

or search for "apple tech notes tn2166" or "steelpangolin invalid-bs_jmpboot-in-boot-block-000000/"

Update:

this is for hdd that has NO hybrid partition only, sorry otherwise this is not for you
please be prepared prior to any further coming desaster

so

make a bootable copy of the stock or newly installed OSX (minimum space required ca. 10GB) to an external drive

or

create a bootable setup-stick of the setup-image (contained in any OSX Install.app)
This will speed up the recovery and makes you more independent from huge downloads  esp. over slow lines.


Formatting 'defaults domains' output on multiple lines Just a quick question here. I'm trying to format the output of the command:

defaults domains

so that it puts each domain on a new line, so I can use that parsed output in a different command.

I've tried:

defaults domains | sed 's/,/\n/g'

Which should take the output of default, find each comma, and replace with a new line correct? Instead it just removes the comma and keeps each item on the same line.

I thought, maybe it's something with the encoding of the dafaults command output, so I dumped to a file and tried parsing that, but no dice.

Anyone have any idea how I can achieve this?

Never mind. Not sure why sed didn't work the way I wanted it to, but I just used:

tr ',' '\n'

and it worked fine.


How do I stop Safari on my iPad from reloading tabs once they are already open? For instance, I like reading Quora. They regularly send me digests to my email. What I do is I click the link from the email that opens the digest in Safari tab. I usually prefer to leave those open tabs until later on (usually Sunday) when I go through many tabs at once and read through them all.

Well, this works really well on Chrome browser on my Windows desktop but on my iPad, when I open Safari (say after a week or so) it reloads the page instead of showing what was opened there originally (a week ago.) This results in the old digest being completely reloaded with some new stuff.

Is there any way to make Safari on my iPad stop reloading pages and just keep what was shown there originally? It is very annoying!

Probably not.  You need to think of the nature of the iPad.

It is RAM constrained (and battery constrained, but that probably doesn't affect this as much as RAM), so it often suspends apps so they can be "reconstituted".

Depending on what you do in the week (a long time in app land) the pages would be suspended and removed from memory.  Reopen the browser (and this would be any browser on the iPad, not just Safari) it has to get the pages again to show.

So.. this is what iPads (and to some extent android devices) do.  It remembers where you were and re-gets the page.  Now you could do a Reading List, or even use Pocket (I think Pocket takes a snapshot in time, so may work better).  Those may bring you closer to where you want to be.  But the tabs will be reloaded, because they were gone way before you re-opened safari


How can I access Office 365 (Private) Groups using Apple Mail? My company just started using Office 365 Private Groups instead of distribution lists.  While distribution lists worked fine in Mail.app, I can't seem to find any way to access Private Groups without using the Office 365 web portal.

Is there a way to access my Office 365 Private Groups from within Mail.app?

I have not found a way for the IMAP sync to work. My staff are using either the teams iOS app or Outlook iOS app to get at those group assets like files and mails. It’s not the same experience as using Apple’s apps and it is something you’ll want to use Microsoft user voice or your company’s  Microsoft technical account manager to advocate that they enable normal IMAP sync for those folders.


Which Linux Distro installs on a MacBook (13-inch Early 2008) I have a MacBook (13-inch Early 2008) and need to stick with it for some more time, but Apple doesn't give support anymore to it, so I'd like to install an operating system to keep it alive and kicking with low memory usage.

What is your suggestion for a lightweight and compatible operational system for my old MacBook?

How to Test Multiple Linux Distributions

I recommend making a multi-boot USB stick. I used YUMI to create it, and put a number of Linux distros for testing on new machines. You just pick the one to test at boot time, and then you can run it from the USB memory for a while until you decide if it works well on the target machine.

Been a while, but my recollection is that all of the live images were ready to do an install, too. Also can't remember the cost, but I think I paid less than $10 for a large enough memory to hold half a dozen distros, plus state storage.

Recommendation: Ubuntu

My own preference has been Ubuntu these years, though I don't like some of the design decisions they've been making and some versions have been too heavy for my taste. I used one of the Puppy Linux versions for a while, and it was cute and surprisingly robust. Haven't really used Lubuntu that much, but some people recommend it for older and weaker machines.

Probably not relevant to your Mac situation, but I did find one machine that had a weird problem in booting from the USB stick. It was an old ThinkPad, and even though it said it supported USB booting, it didn't work as expected. The trick was to edit the device list to add the USB stick with the hard disk and then move the USB entry to the top of the list before starting. (Unfortunately, that machine was so old and flaky that no Linux was able to cure its WiFi problems... I found a weird WiFi workaround, but too far out of scope here.)


Can I unlock an iCloud ipod that I bought and no code i need to buy new ipod 5th gen. I keep seeing that many of them are iCloud locked. Can this lock be removed and how do I do it?

No, there is absolutely no way to bypass the iCloud lock. Usually the only reason it's on is because the iPod was stolen, that's really the whole point of iCloud lock---even if a thief stole your Apple product, he wouldn't be able to get your data off of it and he wouldn't be able to use it after stealing it.

DO NOT buy one as it would be about a useful as a brick to you.


I have a 50 GB storage plan for a previous phone that I still pay for. How do I make it cover my new phone? I had  an iPhone now I have a Samsung. I am still paying for my storage plan for the iPhone. How do I get my new phone covered with this plan?

It's assumed you mean an iCloud storage plan and not a storage plan sold/supported by your carrier (i.e. AT&T has Personal Cloud).
iCloud storage is tied to your Apple ID, not to the device itself.  So, all devices that you have signed into with your AppleID, will have access to that storage pool.  Once you sign out, the device will no longer have access to it.  Since you're using a Samsung (Android) device, the only way to access iCloud is via the iCloud Website (https://icloud.com).  If you no longer need this, you simply have to cancel it as there's no Android app for iCloud.
If it is a plan through your carrier, to move your service you would need to contact them for support.


iCal calendar for official holidays in Berlin city Where I can get an iCal calendar for official holidays in Berlin city? Any thing like that?

schulferien.org lists all german regional publich and school holidays in multiple format in your case, try the following:

  http://www.schulferien.org/iCal/Ferien/icals/Ferien_Berlin_2014.ics


osx corrupts usb (exFAT) on restart So  I have this problem with OS X, when I restart my system and it has the USB drive connected (I forgot to unplug it because I know what OS X causes), it corrupts the drive (i.e., on next restart it can't read/mount the USB drive), now my solutions is go to a friend computer with windows and use "repair tool"... but this time seems like it won't work again... so how apple pays for >500Gb of information? (well just kidding I know they will not), so my questions are

How I stop OS X from being badass with USB disk (i.e. not corrupting them so that I need to remember to unplug it first).
How I recover/repair my files, this time my friend Windows seems not able to recover it.

BY the way, this corruption also happened if I disconnect directly the USB (which work on windows AFAIK).

I've also posted your question 1 here. If your disk is HFS formatted, here's a rumour here that you can just kill the process fsck_hfs and the disk reappears immediately (FSCK=file system consistency check). Next time I have a scan, I'll be looking for a fsck_exfat equivalent process to kill. Disabling the write cache would reduce risk, but not prevent the scan - it doesn't on Windows, and there's still the risk the disk was disconnected during a non-cached write.

For your question 2, leave the disk connected to your Mac for a while. OS X runs the same repair process, it just does it silently. (Someone answered my identical question here.)

In my experience disconnection almost never actually causes corruption (Windows tells you if it finds an error, and I've never, ever seen it find one) - but a flag File System State is set on the drive prompting the repair scan. On Debian, Ubuntu or Linux Mint, this can be disabled in /etc/default/rcS, on CentOS, /etc/sysconfig/autofsck - we need the OS X version..anyone?

Update: klanomath answered question two here - I'll report back once tested.


Zsh vs Bash shell in Terminal Are there any advantages to using zsh vs bash shell in Terminal app? Also, can you use zsh from the terminal? My understanding of zsh is skewed.

The Z shell (Zsh) is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a command interpreter for shell scripting.
Zsh is an extended Bourne shell with a large number of improvements, including some features of Bash, ksh, and tcsh.

I may suggest you to install Zsh with framework for fancy managing your zsh environment and switch to iTerm2 for excellent terminal
replacement.

Install zsh using Homebrew:

brew install zsh

Switch current user from bash to zsh shell:

chsh -s $(which zsh)

Next install one of popular shell framework like Oh My Zsh or Prezto.

I like Oh My Zsh, so:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Download iTerm2 and after unpack .zip file, run it.


Weird sound when doing something forbidden MBP Mid 2012 on OSX 10.10.5

Since a couple of months I recogniz a weird sound on my computer. It appears whenever I do something "forbidden", i.e. using a key in a programm which has no functionality.

You can listen to the sound here. I "made" it through opening Quicktime with a video, stopping the video and repeatedly pushing the button "d" on my keyboard.
Any ideas? Is that the "your doing somthing 'forbidden' sound" which I did not recognize before?

You can customize this sound in your System Preferences Sound settings


Mac OS X 10.7 Window Shadow Params I would like to create some Mac OS X 10.7 Windows "simulations" in Photoshop.

I would like to learn about the window's shadow parameters, like size, spread and distance.

Could anybody help me with this???

For Mac OS X standard windows use drop shadow with folowing parameters: black #000000 color with opacity 60%, angle 90º, distance 25px, size 50px, spread 0px.


Why my application icons wiggle when I press ALT key in Launchpad? I tried Launchpad first time today and went through the common modifier keys & their combinations to see if some hidden options appear.

When I pressed ⌥ ALT all the apps started wiggling. What does it mean?

Wiggle is the edit mode. (so you can delete or uninstall the apps that came from the app store)

Holding alt is the quickest way to enter edit mode.


Installing GarageBand on OS X Mountain Lion? I've recently downgraded to 10.8.5 as I had been having trouble getting Mavericks to work with my TASCAM US-1641 audio interface. I tried to reinstall GarageBand and try out my interface again only to find that the version of GarageBand in the App Store is only for Mavericks. Is there any way to download an old version? Which version would I need for Mountain Lion? Any help would be appreciated!

I found another Macbook that already had GarageBand running on and copied GarageBand right out of the Applications folder and into the shared folder of my newer computer that needed it.  My new machine also runs Mountain Lion.  Once it's in the shared folder of the new computer, then move it to the Applications folder of the new computer.


OS 10.8 Active Directory Single User Issue I have seven 10.6 machines connected to active directory, all work great. We have a new 10.8 machine now connected to active directory which is working for all users except one (the main user of course). Everyone but him can login using AD credentials, which he can as well until they change...which leads me to believe that it's actually authenticating against a local account.

I have tried re-building his account multiple times by deleting his user directory and then logging in again. The one thing that I did when he first logged in was tell 10.8 to create a mobile account since he's on a laptop and he needs to be able to login away from the network. I've disabled automatic creation of mobile accounts upon login and rebuilt the account (as described above) but it still logs in locally.

I know it's logging in locally because if I disconnect the network I'm still able to login.

Does anyone know how I can remove the "mobile account" setting from this account or have any ideas of what else could be causing this problem?

Thank you for any assistance you can provide, I'm stumped.

Danny

I think Keychain Access is caching the old login info and causing problems each time the info changes. Try deleting the existing login keychain and creating a new one and see if that resolves the problem.
Everytime the AD login info changes the keychain needs to be manually updated to reflect those changes or this kind of problem will persist.


Require password to wake computer by specific condition I'd like to require password to wake my Macbook Air running Mavericks when it is not in my home.

So if it was not connected to my home wifi, then I'd like it to require password to wake from sleep or screen saver. And else, I'd like it to require password.

Can that be done?

You can use ControlPlane:

Add a context named home from the contexts tab.
Enable the nearby WiFi network evidence source from the evidence sources tab.
Go to the rules tab and add a nearby WiFi network rule that sets the context to home.
Add two screen saver password actions from the actions tab:

Another option is to add a line like this to crontab:

* * * * * system_profiler SPAirPortDataType|grep -q 'network name'&&x=false||x=true;osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell security preferences to set require password to wake to '$x


How to disable command-Q for Quit? Is there any way to disable command+Q for quitting apps?

I tried adding this menuitem to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" preference pane (as suggested here), and remapping it to command+option+Q (slightly harder to hit), and the menu item changed to show this, but command+Q still causes the app to quit.

I'm using OS X 10.7, but I'd happily upgrade to 10.8 if it fixed this.

The app I really want this for is Firefox, but if there was a solution that disabled command+Q for every app, that would be fine, too.

Go to System Preferences, then Keyboard. Select Shortcuts. On the left pane, find Accessibility. Now on the right pane enable Invert colors and then click on the shortcut box to reassign the shortcut to Cmd+Q.

That's it. Now when you press Cmd+Q the colors of the screen will be inverted. Press it again to go back to normal colors. No more accidentally quitting applications (like closing over two hundred tabs on Firefox when trying to use Cmd+a or three dozen pdfs on Preview when trying to use Cmd+tab; last two things I did, never again.)

P.S. Whoever thought it was a good idea to use Cmd+Q to quit applications should go back to usability school.

There's also a nice plugin that you can use called Always Ask, which forces a prompt dialog before leaving Firefox.


4K video file exported from Final Cut Pro cannot be located in iTunes I use Final Cut Pro 10.4.5 on an iMac 5k.
I cannot locate the exported Apple 4k video file from Final Cut Pro X which is supposedly published in the iTunes library.

It will be in the "Home Videos" section of iTunes with the same name as the Project Name from iTunes.

Worth checking with FCPX where it believes it exported it:

Select your Project, and in the Inspector window click the "sharing" button (3-headed arrow, top row of the inspector, next to the "i" button).

If FCPX published it to the iTunes library, it will be confirmed there. If it published it somewhere else, it will show the location.


iPhone holiday calendar off by 1 day The built-in holiday calendar on my iPhone 8 running iOS 12.4.1 is off by one day. For example, it shows New Year's Eve on December 30 and not on December 31.
So far I tried to :

Enable automatic date & time in Settings > General > Date & Time > Set Automatically = "On"
Desable the time zone override in Settings > Calendar> Time Zone Override = "Off"
Reset the iPhone
Switching off automatic date & time and entering my time zone then switching back to automatic
Switching off Location Services and GPS in Settings > Privacy > Location Services. then switching back on

What could I do next ?
Note: My personal calendar doesn't have the issue nor my MBP's calendar ; but  I added another location holiday and it have the same issue...

What if you unsubscribe from the holiday calendar and then set the time zone on your phone to be exactly what you want.

Then power cycle it (to be sure all the apps know and can read the correct zone).

When you subscribe back to the calendar - pay attention if there are advanced options on time zone.

We might need to know the exact subscription URL you're using and which account backs this calendar. iOS calendars can be stores in Exchange, O365, google, iCloud or other third and first party solutions or not sync at all. Depending on your specific set up, the time zone settings might not even be on your phone if you're syncing down from a cloud service.


What is the Apple Watch to iphone pairing animation called? I need to build something similar for my own app and am heavily inspired by this animation.  I despise QR codes and would love something like this and am comfortable designing it from scratch.  Just don't know where to begin.

I don't think it has a public, catchy "name" as such. Apple seems to refer to it is as an "optical label", but that is a very generic term.

The technology can be thought of very much like an animated QR-code. The main principle of data encoding is very much like QR-codes, but obviously with the difference that as time goes forward, the displayed data changes as an animation.

In addition there seems to be the use of a neat trick with two different colors shown in quick alternation, which makes it possible for Apple to "hide" or make less obvious the clues that are used for the receiver of the data to synchronize with the signal (i.e. figure out where the boundaries of the encoded data is).

With a traditional QR code these sync markers are much more evident as they are big black square boxes with white borders that are set different places in the code to make it easy for the receiver to figure out what's encoded data, and what's not part of the code.

You can learn more from Apple's patent applications:

US Patent 9,022,291

US Patent 9,022,292


My iPhone 4S power button is no longer functioning properly As the title says, my iPhone 4S's power button has suddenly stopped "depressing", making it very hard to do push. I understand that Apple offers their own Limited Warranty for a year, but sadly (inevitably?) my phone is a few months beyond that.

As I live in the United Kingdom, I know every product has to have a six year warranty, even Apple's, and that's reflected on their website.

So, what are my options? Will Apple repair my phone for free? Do I need to go back to the company I bought my phone through? Is this sort of defect even covered by the two year warranty?

The first thing to do is to request service from Apple or an Apple Authorized service provider. They will diagnose exactly what's wrong, whether they can cover it and what the cost would be for an "Apple" repair, which for a home button means the device is swapped with a new/refurbished unit.
If they deny warranty service, you can clarify if it's due to time or some other reason. At that point, if it's purely a time issue - you might be able to request a consumer law exception here:

http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/statutoryrights.html

Just because Apple's warranty is one year, you are also covered any statutory time periods which in Europe is generally 2 years. It's important to present the device for service (online or in person) as soon as you can. Here are some pertinent footnotes from the page above:

In most EU member states, consumers may only claim for defects that were present on delivery.
The burden to prove that the defect (including latent defects) existed on delivery generally shifts to the consumer after the expiry of a period of 6 months from date of delivery.
In most EU member states, consumers may only claim consumer law rights against the seller from whom they purchased the product.

So if you didn't buy it from Apple, your consumer law claim would need to go to your vendor and not the manufacturer (since in that case they wouldn't be the same). Also, it's not an open-shut case since there could have been a latent defect present at manufacture, but it could also be a case where a physical switch failed due to normal use. I would presume Apple would take care of you if it were clear to them that there were a defect at assembly, but I don't know how they would procedurally come to that conclusion. I don't suppose each genius bar would open and look for a defect under the home button or if they would have a policy or if each case is handled as they arrive.
It's pretty easy to read up on this, but I would be interested in hearing how this actually went from someone in the UK to give you concrete advice.


Disabling sound output devices (e.g. Internal Speakers) in OS X Since my Cinema Display is both connected through mDP and USB, I can (stupidly enough) both choose “LED Cinema Display” or “Display Audio”.

Also, I never use the internal speakers since they sound extremely tinny.

How do I remove/delete/disable unwanted audio devices? It must be possible somehow!

kextunload is a formal interface for unloading kexts in the Darwin OS and in Mac OS X.

Unload the system audio driver:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext

Load it again:

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext

If not "AppleHDA.kext", another kernel extension in /System/Library/Extensions/ may be what you're looking for.


Which iOS devices support microphone input via the headphone jack? I want to use an iOS device as a field recorder for an XLR microphone. However, I need to buy an adapter to plug in the mic via the headphone port. Which iOS devices support mic input (with the third band on the jack) via the headphone port?

Here is a summary of what iOS devices support microphone in via the headphone jack. This information was acquired by looking at Compatibility of Apple wired headset models with iPhone, iPad, and iPod models

iOS Devices that support Microphone via the headphone jack

iPod touch (2nd generation and later)
iPhone (Original and later)
iPad (Original and later)

Note: iPod touch (2nd generation) software version 2.2 or later required to use remote and mic features.


How to install java.pkg (not unarchiver) When I try to launch MC it says I have to have the latest java (OSX Yosemite)
this is the day after I updated.

So I download it, open the dmg and then to find out that it is not a jar launcher file (btw I know where it is located and how to use jar launcher). It is a .pkg that opens with the unarchiver.

I have read a previous post where it says that you need to launch it with jar launcer... I tried that, but it was a fail.

It said it can't be opened with jar launcher and then I get a console error message. So if anyone has a solution any help would be nice.

The Java installer is a package which installs using Installer. If the package doesn't open by default with Installer then right-click it and choose Open With → Installer.


Multiple Apple devices under one Apple ID - iMessage issues We have three iPhones and an iPad all assigned to one Apple ID. Anytime I try to iMessage my mum on her phone (from my iPhone), it appears on my brother's iPhone. Then, when he replies (thinking the iMessage was to him), I receive the iMessage which is addressed from my mum - despite it being sent from his phone. I've deleted the Apple ID from received iMessages to see if that would fix it, but it has failed to give the desired outcome.

How do I need to configure iMessage on the iPhones so that each person is their own "entity" and prevent "crossing wires"?

iMessage isn't designed to work with just one Apple ID. Instead of having all the iPhones and iPad on one Apple ID, it will be necessary to set up additional Apple IDs for the different users.

When you setup an iOS device and put in your Apple ID, it provisions ALL such services to that Apple ID. Go into Settings on each device (under Messages and FaceTime) and remove the Apple ID. Replace the Apple ID with a new Apple ID unique to each user. Here is a guide on creating new iCloud accounts for this purpose.

Better yet, provision each account completely with its own Apple ID. If a person wants to download an already-purchased app or song from a different account, you can temporarily change accounts in iTunes or App Store.


How do I change containers from Matroska to MP4 without modifying the stream data? I want to take some Matroska (.mkv) movies I have (h.264/AAC with subtitle & chapter tracks) and change the container to the more iOS friendly MP4 container, but without re-encoding all of the media streams. What tool is suitable for doing this?

Other info: I'm using 10.5 PPC.

MP4Tools works for this. It does pass-thru of h.264 and audio streams, or you can convert as you see fit. It's free, but $5 to remove the nag screen that pops up any time you open a file, and to get batch operations. I haven't tested it with chapters and subs, but I think it can deal with them fine.

One word of caution: if you have files with AC3 audio that you want to leave in as a 2nd channel, it has an option to do pass-thru of that, and add a stereo AAC track, but it doesn't re-order them, which can cause issues with QuickTime X/iPad/AppleTV.

MP4Tools doesn't work for anything below 10.6, so MKVtools is a good alternative for 10.5. Same developer and basic functionality, it should work for your purposes fine.

The other option is doing it manually using command line tools, mkvtoolnix to extract the streams from the mkv, and MP4Box to repackage in an MP4. If you need to convert audio to AAC, ffmpeg is the a good starting point, but there are other options. Unless you need a degree of control that MP4Tools doesn't provide, I'd say stay away from the command line stuff. It's useful, but more hassle than it's worth if MP4Tools does what you need.

Another good tool is Subler, which is a nice tagging program. Unfortunately lacking a batch mode, but it's otherwise very good - much faster at writing the tags than other programs I've tried. And as long as the files have season & episode numbers, the tag auto-lookup works great.


How does HealthKit calculate activeEnergyBurned and other variables? I am investigating using HealthKit to supply some data for an application which will run on iOS. We are thinking about using Apple Watch to collect the data. I am especially interested in activeEnergyBurned and some related quantities, namely basalEnergyBurned, respiratoryRate, and vo2Max.

It appears that the sensors on the Apple Watch are just orientation, acceleration, and heart rate. So I guess that the activeEnergyBurned, etc., must be calculated from those items. Can anyone point me to any documentation or other info about how these items are calculated? In particular, any known limitations or constraints would be very helpful to know.

I wasn't able to locate any info about that with a web search. The only info I found that is at all related is this question: How to get Apple Watch 2 to calculate VO2 Max data? Also found this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8082402

Are there better articles or descriptions than the ones I cite above to learn how active energy is calculated?

Apple doesn't disclose the algorithms is uses to calculate these so you're going to need to reverse engineer it or hopefully find someone else who has reverse engineered it.

What is publicly known is that Apple has hired and contracted experts to make an entire team of research physiologists, cardiologists, dietitians, nurses as well as likely hundreds to thousands of people to workout with the Apple Watch and other sensors where they calibrate all sorts of measurements and correlate that data collection with metabolic carts (reportedly 50 in this gym alone). Also, this data collection has been going on since 2015 so I would expect Apple has revised the formula over time to make it better and better as they learn which types of activities and which body types and ages don't fit the last version of the algorithm.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608250/how-apples-ai-secretive-gym-is-shaping-its-activity-tracking-algorithms/
https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/01/apples-watch-oriented-fitness-lab-tops-66000-hours-of-data-10000-subjects
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/09/05/apple-fitness-lab
https://www.menshealth.com/technology-gear/a18923364/inside-apples-secret-performance-lab/

I would expect that Apple has severely restricted the code it uses as trade secrets as that high cost to invest in the team is clearly a competitive advantage for it to market and sell and satisfy people with good estimates of health activity. Perhaps they will disclose what you need, but I would guess you should just use the values Apple provides and build your app around the data stream Apple generates as opposed to compete with them unless your aim is to compete with Apple on generating better health data.

As a developer, you also should look into ResearchKit - https://www.apple.com/researchkit/ to get much more technical detail and API than the mainstream press (or even MIT's technology review) will cover in articles about Apple's efforts to make their health data accurate.


Mechanism of Screenshot Basically I with my team are figuring out a way to block screenshots taken on our corporation's computers (Mac mostly). I have searched it extensively and found that there is something called Screen buffer which is being accessed by any screenshot taking software (eg. Snipping Tool etc). I tried to find the exact mechanism and the actual implementation of such softwares but with no luck. Also I found out that Netflix uses some kind of technology which corrupts screenshot image and blackens it. I did not find any actual mechanism or implementation to study it further. I also came across something called Hardware overlays but did not understand it properly in order to use it for actual implementation. I have considered a way to edit scancode maps in registry but I am looking for a more general way. I read a few articles for apple's FPS though. Can somebody please guide me through this? Some good resources for the same would be highly appreciated. Any particular or relevant forums or subs to discuss this are also welcome

Sounds like you've been barking up the wrong tree for a little while. A screen buffer is a generic programming concept which does not describe the situation in macos well. Hardware overlay will likely only affect what appears on the monitor, not what appears in a screenshot. And Netflix's method is no more interesting that DVD Player's method.

Fortunately, this question has been asked and answered on the sister Stack Overflow site. Basically there is a private API that allows this, but being private you're best to talk directly to Apple about it via a DTS request.


Switch to Target Display Mode without keyboard Here's my setup:  MacBook --> Thunderbolt Display --> iMac 27"

The MacBook is the primary computer I want to use;  the iMac is the (external) display.

This all works just fine.  The problem is, when I disconnect and then reconnect the MacBook, I have to manually put the iMac in Target Display Mode using the keyboard.  This means I need to keep a keyboard attached to the iMac, and it clutters up my desk!

Is there any way to switch the iMac into TDM without using the keyboard?  Maybe by logging in remotely?

I found a few similar questions, but... no answers!

Is it possible to have an iMac maintain target display mode even through sleep/screensaver

Target Display Mode: how to automate and persist on closing laptop

Anyone?

I found a way to do it with an old, white apple keyboard, haven't tested with others but it might work.

I used a tool called Karabiner from https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/. When you install it, enable following options to get Command + F2 to work:

F1..F12 to Functional Keys (Brightness Adjust, Music Control, etc)
- F1,F2 to Brightness Adjust
--- F1 to Brightness Down
--- F2 to Brightness Up

After enabling this option, hit Command + F2 having previously connected your macbook using thunderbolt cable. If you're lucky you'll have a new external display working!


Educational Volume Purchase and B2B (iOS apps) Can the Educational Volume Purchase Program work with apps developed and distributed through the B2B program?  The WWDC session video on it mentioned education once, but it only talked specifically about distributing the apps through the regular Volume Purchase Program, which requires a DUNS number.

Answer from telephone support: yes.  The B2B program interfaces with the Educational Volume Purchase Program the same way the regular Volume Purchase Program does.


Difference between System and Global Daemons According to the Launchd Tutorial, there are two places where a daemon can be.

A global daemon located at /Library/LaunchDaemons
A system daemon located at /System/Library/LaunchDaemons

What is the difference between them? Both seem to do the same task, running a program at startup on behalf of root.

EDIT:

By difference, I mean difference in function. I know that the system daemon comes from apple, and global from vendors, but I want to know if there is a difference in function.

No Difference

Once running, there is no difference between the locations. The origin of the launchd job determines the authorisation needed to manage the job.

Both /Library and /System launchd jobs can run as any user. Per-user jobs are limited to their owner's user and group.

Editing of the /System launchd jobs is restricted by System Integrity Protection.

From man 5 launchd.plist:

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


How does AirTag calculate the relative position from an iPhone? When looking for an AirTag, the iPhone shows the angle and distance to where the AirTag is located.
The distance can be calculated from the signal strength. But how do they find out the angle in which the tag is located?
Screenshot taken from MKBHD's Youtube video

It is possible to determine the angle because the AirTag has a carefully designed antenna emitting a signal in essentially all directions. When the signal arrives at the iPhone, which is responsible for the angle calculation, the pulse amplitude will vary according to the angle in which the signal arrives at the iPhone antennas. Carefully created software can then use the measured amplitude values to calculate the angle.
Note that this is by no means a simple task, as it concern handling input at high speeds from two or more antennas and correlating information to determine when the same emitted signal is received by the antennas at different times. As far as I know, the AirTag also transmits at two different UWB frequencies at the same time - presumably to alleviate inaccuracies due to multi-pathing.
Note that the software also has to keep track of the phone’s own movement under use. I.e. if you rotate the phone, the angle shown to the user should be compensated for that. This is quite simple, and it is not in any way necessary for the user to move the phone around in circles in order to do the localization.
As for distance measurements, that is actually not calculated based on the signal strength itself as you speculate, but rather it is done by measuring time of arrival (i.e. Time Of Flight based localization).


Is cellular for Apple Watch ever available for a pre-paid phone plan? At least in Australia, all the cellular providers only provide cellular support for the Apple Watch if the iPhone is also on a post-paid plan, with no support for pre-paid plans.
Is this the same internationally? Is there any instance of cellular support for the Apple Watch enabled with a pre-paid phone plan?
I wonder if this is a contractual restraint, rather than a technical constraint.

There is no technical constraint preventing an Apple Watch cellular from being used with a pre-paid plan.
I have used an Apple Watch Cellular with pre-paid plan in India.


Is there a way to switch off the delay before icon and dropdown menu are shown next to filename in Preview.app? In Big Sur, the unified toolbar of Preview.app shows the file name, but not the icon and drop down menu next to it, unless I move the mouse onto it. This always creates a slight delay of about 200-300 ms and makes it really difficult to establish a good workflow when re-filing pdfs through drag and drop or renaming files, for example.
Is there any way to switch this off and see the file icon and dropdown menu all the time?
Here is an example of what I would like to see permanently and not only when I hover over the file name with the mouse:

The officially recommended solution is to press and hold shift key, which will cause it to appear instantly when you mouse over it.


Connect MBP 2015 to external monitor 2560 x 1080 resolution? I need to connect a MBP 15" to an external monitor with 2560 x 1080 resolution (this http://www.trustedreviews.com/lg-29ea93-review ).

I already tried HDMI to HDMI but the text looks very bad (sharp).

I guess I need to use Thunderbolt to Display Port but I don't know which cable adapter is the correct one.

Then my question is which is correct connection and what cable do I need to buy?

The MBP has:

Thunderbolt
USB 3
HDMI

The monitor has:

DisplayPort
DVI-D Dual Link
HDMI
USB 3.0

You can connect your monitor to a Thunderbolt port using a DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable like this one; other lengths are available if 3 Feet is not long enough for your purposes.

I connected my LG 25UM65 (2560x1080 native resolution) to my MacBookPro11,3 (mid 2014 15" Retina) three different ways, HDMI to HDMI, Thunderbolt to DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt to HDMI. The Thunderbolt to HDMI connection is not useful (the maximum resolution it offers is 1920x1080), but the other two connections both work at 2560x1080@60Hz, and the visual quality is comparable across the two connections (but both look blotchy compared to the Retina display). A UHD display (3840x2160) is a better choice than 2560x1080 to maximize the display quality of Thunderbolt 2 (DisplayPort 1.2).

It's possible that a better HDMI cable will improve the display quality (the one I'm using is labeled HDMI HIGH SPEED). You can determine (and change) the resolution and refresh rate from System Preferences (Display) by choosing Scaled rather than Default for display (using the Alt key while choosing Scaled can provide more choices on some displays). A 2015 Mac's HDMI port is capable of driving 2560x1080@60 Hz, provided the display has a suitable HDMI input (HDMI 1.3 is sufficient, but HDMI 1.2 probably isn't). If your display has multiple HDMI inputs, you might try all of them to see if that makes a difference.


What does 'automatically check for newly published albums'  in Aperture mean? I like using Aperture to upload to Facebook and Flickr, but I don't like how it syncs. For example:

What does this option actually do?
I can't stand all the lists of my sets on the left hand side of the application. It clutters the UI, and I won't be managing it through there anyways. Can I hide/remove these?

This searches your online Facebook and Flickr account for any images that have been uploaded since your last Aperture upload. If there are new images in your Facebook or Flikcr albums these will be catalogued into Aperture.


Get full path of script in PATH environment variable I was wondering if there is a built-in command in Bash (or even something OSX-specific) that would display the fully resolved path of a script that is in the current PATH environment variable.

For example, my PATH currently looks like this:

>: echo $PATH | tr ":" "\n"
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/opt/X11/bin
/Users/Josh/Dropbox/Scripts/Bash
/Users/Josh/Dropbox/Tools/WinRAR/OSX

And there's a script in Dropbox called get-azurelogs.sh. That path is in my PATH variable for convenience, but if I wanted to display the complete path to that script, assuming I wasn't sure where it was, is there an simple one-liner way to display the fully resolved path instead of testing it at each of the directories above?

You can use which.  From the man page:

  The which utility takes a list of command names and searches the path for each executable file that would be run had these commands actually been invoked


Photo printing from mac What is the best way to print photos from Mac and pick them up manually in a local shop? In iPhoto, only option seems to be to have the pics shipped. Is there any plugin that would allow pick from local shops like Walgreens, Kodak connect, etc.,

How about: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drag-drop-photo-prints/id784329763?mt=12

You can use the app to print to your local Walgreens and pick up there.


iTunes KERNELBASE.dll crash - Windows 7 Home Premium Since I have updated iTunes (11.1.3.8) on my home PC running Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 it constantly crashes after about using it for only a couple of minutes.

When I check the Application log on the Event Viewer, i see the following Error info:

  Log Name: Application
  Source: Application Error
  Event ID: 1000
  Level: Error
  Event Details:
  Faulting application name: iTunes.exe, version: 11.1.3.8, time stamp: 0x5274a87d
  Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.18229, time stamp: 0x51fb1116
  Exception code: 0x80000003
  Fault offset: 0x00013219
  Faulting process id: 0x2328
  Faulting application start time: 0x01cefe992ffab867
  Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe
  Faulting module path: C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll
  Report Id: d3dfd01c-6a8c-11e3-a1e4-0024e812336e

I do notice another error that accompanies this erro very shortly after this event others.  Here are those details:

  Log Name: Application Source: Bonjour Service Event ID:
  100 Level: Error Event Details: Client application
  bug: DNSServiceResolve(6F91E66928E4AC5D._appletv-v2._tcp.local.)
  active for over two minutes. This places considerable burden on the
  network.

After some additional research, it looks like this error is a result of my Apple TV trying to access my iTunes library via Home Sharing.  I have Apple TV Model MD199LL/A running version 6.0.2 (6646.81.1) of the software.  My AppleTv is connected to my router wirelessly and my computer has a wireless network card (D-Link DWA-552 XtremeN Desktop Adapter) to connect to internet and LAN.

The culprit might be Windows Firewall, but I am not exactly sure what firewall rules I should be looking at.

After some additional research, the culprit was iTunes Match.  When iTunes Match tried to upload the music file that was not available in the iTunes store to the iCloud, it would cause iTunes to crash and throw the KERNELBASE.dll error.  I removed the troublesome file from iTunes and it works like a charm.


remove all songs from iPhone that aren't in any playlists via iTunes Every time I remove a song from a playlist on PC, then sync to iPhone via iTunes, the playlist is updated (i.e. it doesn't include the removed song), but the song is still in the library. That adds up over time. Now a bunch of "rogue" songs have accumulated that aren't in any playlists that take up quite a bit of storage. Any way to get rid of them?

How about only syncing the playlists you want instead of the entire library in iTunes (or Finder if your computer is macOS based)?
If you are someone that learned to drive a car without an automatic transmission, your method is akin to manual shifting. You could also enable Apple Music or iTunes Match and then you no longer have to micro-manage which I played songs get removed as your device keeps track and cleans automatically when you run low on free space on device.


How to switch between Today and Notifications tabs in Notification Center on macOS Sierra? I want to be able to switch between the tabs (Today and Notifications tabs) in Notification Center using a keyboard shortcut. Any way of doing it on macOS Sierra?

I know it was possible on Yosemite, but I never had Yosemite so I couldn't verify that.

Edit: I want to be able to run an apple script, not use a keyboard shortcut. Using the apple script I can then place it in a third-party program to get my results.

Also, the code below worked partially. For starters, is it possible to place an if/else at the beginning so it works like this:

if Notification Center is already opened, then move onto the next thing (which would be switching between the Today and Notification buttons) but if it is not open then open it and switch the buttons.

I did a little googling and couldn't find a native keyboard shortcut other then to just open Notification Center, to whatever view it was last on, and this has to be User set in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control > Show Notification Center. This of course just open Notification Center to whatever view it was last on.

However if you go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts, there is "Full Keyboard Access: In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move keyboard focus between:" and two radio buttons, "Text boxes and lists only" (the default) and "All controls". If you select "All controls", then you might be able to use, e.g. tab, enter, arrow keys to navigate the Notification Center. I'm not able to test that at the moment and why I said "... might be able to use ...".

That leaves an AppleScript workaround to be used in either a third-part app that can use the script assigning a keyboard shortcut or an Automator service that a keyboard shortcut could be assigned to.

The AppleScript code below toggles the state of the two buttons in Notification Center.

try
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "SystemUIServer"
            click menu bar item "Notification Center" of menu bar 1
        end tell
        tell application "System Events"
            tell process "Notification Center"
                if value of radio button "Today" of radio group 1 of window "NotificationTableWindow" is equal to 1 then
                    click radio button "Notifications" of radio group 1 of window "NotificationTableWindow"
                else
                    click radio button "Today" of radio group 1 of window "NotificationTableWindow"
                end if
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end try

You can also modify the code to just act on just a given button if you want. It should be obvious how to modify it however fell free to ask if you need additional help.


Finder freezes when deleting files across a network I have my MacBook 5,2 hooked up to an Ubuntu 10.10 'server' via ethernet.

I've installed netatalk (AFP fileserver) and avahi-daemon (Bonjour for Linux) on the server. I've disallowed Spotlight from indexing the networked drives.

Everything works as it should, however, from time to time when I delete files that reside on the Ubuntu server from my MacBook, Finder will freeze. I can kill the Finder process. I then try to restart it from the Terminal in this way:

open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

but this doesn't work. The following error message is printed in the Terminal:

LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app.

The only solution I know of at present is to reboot the MacBook.

So I guess I need to know what my options are here. Is it better for me to use SMB? Or is there a config file I can alter? I have a feeling this bug may be linked to certain disallowed characters in file or pathnames.

Has anyone else experienced this bug?

Cheers.

What version of Mac OS X are you running?  If you're not on a relatively current Snow Leopard (10.6.x) consider upgrading.

Relevant log files may be found on your Mac OS X client in the /var/log directory.  These three may (or may not) contain relevant information (depending on what's actually happening):

system.log
kernel.log
secure.log

Consider also looking in the logs on your server, which may give you additional information.

You can restart the Finder (short of rebooting) in a few ways.
(1) log out, and log back in; or,

(2) restart the Finder in the GUI;

open the "Force Quit Applications" monitor window
select "Finder" in the list of running applications
click "Force Quit"
Finder will automatically respawn unless hypothetically something dreadfully broken on your system prevents that, in which case I imagine a reboot might be required (I've never seen that happen)

(3) Restart the Finder in a Terminal shell;
The command you describe would be expected to work, but it looks like the open command on your system is guessing wrong about the nature of the Finder.app path that you gave it. Consider launching Disk Utility and running the Repair Permissions.

Note, however, that the Finder should respawn automatically once it's been killed.  The simplest way to restart it in a shell is to:

$ killall Finder


Is it possible sync only iPad-optimized apps to my iPad? It is tedious to manually pick iPad-optimized apps from all the apps in iTunes when syncing with iPad. I just want

iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad Apps - apps designed for both iPhone and iPad, and
iPad Apps - apps designed for iPad only

on my iPad, but not

iPhone and iPod touch Apps - apps designed for iPhone only.

Under the Apps tab in iTunes (when your iPad is plugged in), you should be able to sort your applications by type, using the dropdown box above the list of apps. I believe you can then move down the list with your arrow keys and press the spacebar to check/uncheck the ones you don't want. It's not quite automatic, but I think this may be the fastest way to do it.

(I can't verify 100% the key presses here; I'm on a machine right now that doesn't have iTunes installed.)


How to register Outlook 2011 to send emails from iPhoto? I had Office 2008 for Mac (with Entourage) installed. I never used Entourage and didn't have any email accounts configured. Then I installed Office 2011 without 'uninstalling' 2008 and setup Outlook 2011.

However in iPhoto I only see Mail and Entourage as the options for sending mail.

Any ideas how I can get Outlook 2011 to come up in the Entourage Mail options?

I am running Snow Leopard and iPhoto that came with my late 2009 MBP.

Thanks,
Sumit.

There is no built-in way to do this, but some poking around turned up this article, which basically involves modifying the Entourage script to use Outlook instead. The instructions are for iPhoto '09, but the comments indicate that it should work with iPhoto '11.


How to not sync apps to iTunes 11 Since iCloud now offers a way for me to download apps directly from the cloud and I only want to keep updating the apps I use on my iOS device and not all that I have, I wanted to keep all my apps only on my iPhone.

So I followed this page, but apparently on iTunes 11 I can't unsync my apps. If I want o sync with iTunes, I need to sync my apps (at least the ones that I have on my device).

The iTunes help pages, though, show a checkbox before Applications, under the Apps menu on my device section on iTunes. Is that a bug then? Or it is just a settings I can enable. I don't want to keep any apps on my Mac, but I don't want also my device to stop synching with it.

Update: I've got a bug report open since 19-Feb-2013 that got some updates from a Apple dev requesting info (which I provided), but still no further comments and fixes. Unfortunately there is not link for it, since bug reports from Apple are private, but the details are above:

Bug ID #: 13051820
Bug Title: Not being able to sync with iTunes without loading apps from iOS

I am not sure that is what you want but here is what I've done.

I keep my apps sync'ed and let iTunes download everything on my Mac.

However, as I do not want my main HDD to be filled by these apps, I moved them to an external backup drive.

To do this, I go to the 'Apps' section of my 'Bibliothèque' (I have a french version of iTunes, but you can find it in the listbox that is in the upper left corner of iTunes main window).

There, I choose an app, right click and 'display in Finder'.

Here you are in the directory where all apps. You can move them elsewhere or simply delete them. After that iTunes will just warn you it cannot find the app anymore, but at least the deleted apps will not be copied anymore to your Mac.

Of course, you will still have to wait that synchronization copies your newly installed apps to your Mac, but once you've deleted the app on your Mac, it will not be sync'ed anymore.


How to protect my Mac from reseting the admin password Yesterday I was studying and writing some texts in german. I closed my MBP and went watch some TV which made me forget about the german keyboard layout.

When I came back, my password wasn't being accepted at all. I double checked both shifts, caps lock, everything. (The keyboard layout wasn't being shown at the top)

I gave up and started looking online on ways to reset my password. I found out that anyone in possession of my Mac is able to easily reset my admin password even without knowing anything about me or my computer.

Is there a way to protect myself from this kind of "attack"?

Reference: Recover Admin password

FileVault crypts all data on the boot volume. Someone with a physical access to your Mac can boot from the recovery partition but has no easy access to your private data.

The drawback is that even you can't recover your data if you loose your credentials.

Another option is to set a firmware password. This doesn't encrypt the hard drive, but prevents users from booting into a special mode that can be used to reset or bypass a password (typically Single-User, Recovery, or Target Disk mode).

Setup FileVault
Setup Firmware Password


Mounting a disk as though it were an external disk Here's the setup:
We have a corporate Time Capsule (or series of them, rather) with encrypted backups in the server closet.  My Mac currently backs up to that.
I've just completed encrypting an internal disk using TrueCrypt, and set it up using a .sh executable that launches at login.  For the curious, it reads:
/Applications/TrueCrypt.app/Contents/MacOS/TrueCrypt --mount -v /dev/rdisk1s2 and rdisk1s2 is an internal disk on my mac, so as long as the password is correctly supplied, it should be available at all times.  So far so good.  When it mounts, it appears to the OS as though it were a .dmg.

And that's where things get hairy: I'd like to make sure my encrypted volume gets backed up to the Time Capsule.  However, because Time Machine doesn't 'like' mounted disk images (apparently because it wants to preserve some vital assumptions regarding the availability of this disk...) it doesn't recognize the disk to back up.

So the question at this point is: How does one go about 'tricking' Time Machine into thinking the disk is back-up-able?

Thus the title: How does one go about referencing a mounted disk to make it appear to the OS as though it was internal?

It looks like you're not the only person with this question.  As a workaround, could you use FileVault 2 for full-disk encryption instead?  That does play well with Time Machine.

More information about why this doesn't work at Backup mounted drive of an image in Time Machine.


Sugar Sync & menu bar icons I'm wondering if there's a way to stop SugarSync (or any app) putting itself in the OS X menu bar (top right) when launched.

Sugar Sync doesn't have this option in it's preferences.

I've managed to get Sugar Sync to appear in the Dock by going into the app's package contents and editing the property list.

But I can't figure out if a similar approach can be used to disable the menu bar item.

There is no way to do this for all apps.  If it's possible, it's something the app developer would've had to choose to allow and so would only be possible on an app-by-app basis.

free idea for those who want this bad enough to go make it themselves:

Create a library to inject into offending apps that makes -[NSStatusBar statusItemWithLength:] return nil.  That should probably be enough to prevent apps from making status items. (along with the usual disclaimer that modifying the behavior of programs and code that you do not control is usually a very bad idea)


How can I stream my desktop to another device so I have complete control over it? I have a desktop Mac and I would like to work with it in different rooms without moving the Mac around. I am currently collecting options, this is information I gathered so far:

AirPlay won't help me since it can't control the Mac.
The SteamLink software on a RaspPi would be able to stream the desktop, however I doubt very much it is able to transmit gestures from my Magic TrackPad.
Apple Remote Desktop could do it (I can run it on a MBP) but is targeted at sysadmins and not for regular, 8h/day work. I have no idea how responsive it is and I'm not entirely sure if it sends all TrackPad gestures to the remote Mac instead of acting locally on them. Also, the price tag is rather hefty.
Generic VNC does not seem to support gestures according to this question.

Are there any other options?

I'm working from home on an iMac, accessing two iMacs at our office through a VPN, and I'm using the "Screen Sharing" app that comes with Macs by default (at least up to Mojave) and is located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications (again in Mojave, I think they have moved it around depending on the version). I have my home computer with five Spaces, one work computer with four Spaces and a second work computer with just one Space.

It works pretty well, but any gestures that work with Mission Control or switch between applications are caught by the machine you are physically working on.

As a workaround, I've been putting the Mission Control application on each remote computer's dock, so I can bring it up manually and switch between Spaces, etc. on the remote computers. The keyboard ⌘ Command ⇨Tab does seem to work in that it switches between applications on the remote computer, so that might be a workaround for swiping between apps.


Espresso Libre theme for MacVim? I recently changed editors from TextMate to MacVim. Thanks in part to vimtutor, things are going pretty well. But I miss the Espresso Libre color scheme:

Is there a place where I can get Espresso Libre as a MacVim theme?

If you have the TextMate theme file, you can use this online converter to spit out a (Mac)Vim theme file for you: http://coloration.sickill.net/

It should do a pretty good job of converting it for you, as it did for the ones I've tried.


How can I change audio output device for applications already running? When I plug in a USB audio device, if no sounds are playing then my output automatically switches to that device. However, if a program is currently playing any audio then it does not switch. If I enter Audio/MIDI Setup and change it manually, [EDIT: or change it in System Preferences -> Sound, or by alt clicking on the volume control in the menu bar] then the running program still does not switch.

[EDIT: I most often encounter this situation with Chrome, VLC, and many video games.]

Is there a way I can switch the output for audio that's already playing, without restarting the program in question?

If you alt-click on the speaker icon in your toolbar you can select output and input devices.


How to get 1:1 scale in Keynote, Pages or Numbers? I was an early user of Mac last century; I remember Jobs telling about how the Plus had the only screen with square pixels and how important it was for developers a consistent info on pixel size so that they could give to the user an exact scale. That if an image was being shown 100% scale in the screen, one centimeter in the ruler should be a real centimeter.
I think that this consistency was a key to win the field of graphic design.
So, I got a new 21.5 iMac some months ago and yesterday I discovered that the images I was sketching at 100% size were not the size I was seen in the screen. I enabled the ruler and measured it. Whoops, I need to set zoom at 150% to get a correct size, and even then it is a bit, sort if one hundredth part, inaccurate.
To my amazement, Preview does the 100% size right when showing pdfs, so the info on pixel size is available to developers... My guess is that I am missing some setting, is it?
EDIT: LibreOffice also does the right scale, so it is something with the adjusts of AppleWorks applications. Er... iWorks.

If you select 'Actual Size' (Command 0) under the View > Zoom menu, then the page should display at ... actual size.
With this setting, an A4 page on the screen is the same size as an A4 piece of paper that I hold in front of the screen. This works for Retina displays and non-Retina displays.
Back in the old days, Mac screens had 72 pixels to the inch. So it was easy for 1 point on the page to equal 1 pixel on the screen. This ratio is what become 100% zoom.
Of course, screen pixel density has increased massively since then. Pre-Retina displays were around 109 dpi. Retina screens are twice that, but scale everything up by 2, giving the same perceived resolution.
109 dpi divided by 72 dpi gives you 151%, which is the zoom factor you get when you select 'Actual Size'.

Preview has a Preference to define 100% as either 1 point = 1 pixel, or 'size on screen equals size on printout', which presumably sets 100% to the Actual Size.


Why aren't some of my songs transferring to my new iPhone? I purchased a new iPhone a couple days ago. During the setup process, I restored from a backup of my old iPhone, from about two weeks ago (the old iPhone was stolen, so the backup was a bit old). When I restored, I got a warning that 21 items could not be synced, and to check iTunes for more details. iTunes did not give me any warnings or information at all.

I noticed that the 21 songs are all songs I had previously purchased from the iTunes Music Store. They are not on the iPhone; in the iPhone music list view (in iTunes), they all have a sync icon next to them:

I can't seem to get them transferred to my iPhone. I tried removing all the music from the iPhone and resyncing, but they still were not transferred. I then reauthorized all my computers, and re-authorized my computer, but the songs would still not sync.

What's wrong? Is there a way to sync these previous purchases to my iPhone? I should note that this is not happening with all of my songs; some purchased songs were transferred successfully.

After trying a series of troubleshooting moves, including restoring my iPhone from an iCloud backup, the only thing that worked was restoring my iPhone from an iTunes backup, as described in this article.


Prevent Finder from truncating tag names In Finder (Sierra) if you select "All Tags..." in the Finder sidebar, it presents a list of tags. These tags, if they are above a certain length are truncated. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

If I understood your question correctly, you need to increase the width of the column. You can increase the width of the column by dragging the on the right border of the column:


terminal custom commands source every time After following this comment I added all my startup/alias commands to ~/.bashrc file and in ~/.bash_profile I added source ~/.bashrc

But still my aliases are not working. I have to manually source ~/.bash_profile overtime (with source ~/.bash_profile).

My .bashrc file:

alias km='cd /Users/apple/Desktop/km'

and my .bash_profile file

if which rbenv > /dev/null; then eval "$(rbenv init -)"; fi
source ~/.bashrc

In my user directory I only have following files:

My iterm2 profile:

UPDATE:
For me this solution actually worked

So after all struggle the only solution which worked for me is by executing source ~/.bashrc every time when I open my terminal.


How to wait until internet connection, before launching "login item" My Slack and a few other apps will automatically launch at login on my Macbook, since they are listed under "login items". However, some, like Slack, will launch before the internet is connected, and that causes them to flail. Is there some way to delay launching those apps until the internet is connected?

With systemd/systemctl, you can wait until "network.target" is made before running background process. I wonder if launchctl can do that.

According to the Daemons and Services Programming Guide this is not directly possible via launchd.

  Network Availability

  If your daemon depends on the network being available, this cannot be handled with dependencies because network interfaces can come and go at any time in OS X. To solve this problem, you should use the network reachability functionality or the dynamic store functionality in the System Configuration framework. This is documented in System Configuration Programming Guidelines and System Configuration Framework Reference. For more information about network reachability, see Determining Reachability and Getting Connected in System Configuration Programming Guidelines.

Apps should really work when network is unavailable rather than just failing but if you want to do it yourself you could remove their startup items and make your own Launch Agent call a script that waits for a connection like this:

create a script such as ~/.local/bin/launch_my_programs

#!/bin/bash
while ! ping -c1 -W1 1.1.1.1 &> /dev/null ; do
    sleep 1
done
open /Applications/BBEdit.app # or whatever apps you want

create a .plist such as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.startup.plist and include full path of your script

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>my.startup</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Users/hali/.local/bin/launch_my_programs</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
  </dict>
</plist>

chmod +x ~/.local/bin/launch_my_programs to make your script executable.
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.startup.plist to load agent.


Record click action and replay via command line? Every few minutes I need to click a button on Yosemite's menu bar and select an option. I'd like to automate this task by somehow recording this action and scheduling it to execute via cron / command line.

I've tried creating an Automator workflow using the "Watch Me Do" feature, but although it executes fine inside Automator, when I run automator myclicks.workflow in the Terminal, it gives me this cryptic error message:

The action encountered an error.

How can I get automator action to work?

So this might be an Accessibility issue. I was able to resolve it by going to System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Accessibility and then making sure Terminal had a check in the checkbox under Privacy.

This link does a great job of explaining it. Automator in Terminal

And by the way console can be very useful in getting meaningful error messages.

Hope this helped.


Not getting OS X El Capitan Public Beta updates I'm registered for getting Public Beta updates, but in the last 4-5 months, I'm not receiving any updates in the Mac App Store.

I'm currently on 10.11 Beta (15A278b).

Go to System Preferences → App Store and ensure ‘your computer is set to receive beta updates’.


Ordering prints from iPhoto and having them shipped to a different country? As far as I can tell, it's not possible to order prints through iPhoto, and have the prints shipped to a different country than the one you chose when you setup your print account.

In the account setup page, you can only choose to setup new shipping addresses which are in the same country as the account you're using (I think).

What I would like to do is to order some prints through my Canadian iPhoto account (and make the payment with a Canadian credit card), and have them shipped to an address in Japan as a gift.

Does anyone know if it's possible to do this somehow?

We found a "solution" (more like a workaround) which worked for us. Thought I'd post it, in case someone else is in the same situation.

Go to iTunes and change the address of your Apple account and the credit card to the country you want to order the pictures to (I think you can also do this online from Apple's website)
Restart iPhoto; you should now be able to ship prints to another country
When you're done, switch back to the country where you're living

It's rather inconvenient, but it works.


Minimizing the use of APFS in Mojave by putting Users and Applications on HFS+ I'm wondering if it would be possible in Mojave to move the Users and Applications folders to separate HFS+ partitions without breakage? E.g. doing this or something similar:

Symlinking an app folder on a HFS+ volume directly to /Applications or to a subfolder of it
Symlinking a Users folder on a HFS+ volume directly to /Users
...or just specify users' folders individually in system settings, pointing to a HFS+ volume

The goal is to minimize the surface area of APFS, which has proven to be too unreliable for me after I was forced to do two complete reinstalls of the OS in one week when APFS got corrupted -- twice -- and did not repair itself.
Reinstalling the OS is relatively quick compared to restoring from a time machine backup and redownloading lots of large apps, so I thought that if I could isolate most of my data onto HFS+ I would save time if for some reason I decide to upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave again. The next time APFS decides to make the entire volume inaccessible and the OS unbootable I would then only have to reinstall Mojave and link in the existing directories.
Related questions

Can I move Applications to another partition?
How to make the Users Directory a different partition in Snow Leopard?

Why is this question not a duplicate? This deals with Mojave, which is known to be unnecessarily picky about file systems.

Consider that if APFS reports checksum errors, and you reformat and reinstall, and the same thing happens again after a short while - then you could very well have a failing storage medium.

Instead of relocating various folders to a partition formatted with HFS+, it would be wise to thoroughly check your drive for errors and possibly replace the drive.


Can't download any apps on iPad 1 I have an iPad 1 with iOS 5.1.1 that won't download any apps or update its OS. It was donated to my school so it was totally wiped before we got it.

I've tried the work around previously mentioned of downloading the apps in iTunes then dragging them over to my device that is also connected to iTunes. When I do this, a dialogue box comes up saying it was unable to install the app because the app requires a newer version of iOS. I'm really hoping Apple didn't make it so a perfectly good piece of tech is obsolete by not making iOS upgrades or apps compatible with their older technology.

The iPad 1 is literally almost 7 years old, which is an eternity in computers, but even more so in mobile devices. You won't be able to upgrade your device past iOS 5.1.1. Even if it can be argued that maybe it could've gotten one or two more updates, that Apple stopped updating it prematurely, at some point the hardware is literally incapable of running the software. The iPad 1 has long since passed that point. (It received OS updates for two years after release.)

Most apps (at least commonly-used and updated ones) have long since abandoned iOS 5.x as a supported platform. Even Facebook, which has a vested interest in ensuring that the reach of its app is as wide as possible, requires iOS v8 or above. Instagram requires iOS v8 or above. Google Maps requires iOS v7 or above. The list goes on. The hardware simply isn't capable of running modern apps.

Apple has a track record of supporting hardware far longer than its competitors. Most iOS devices receive four years of updates, compared to competitors who ship devices with versions of Android that are outdated at the time the phone is released, and then maybe get one update if it's a particularly well-selling model.


Monitoring users connected to FTP I have set up shared folders on my Mac OS X Yosemite , users can connect to the folders using FTP. Is there a way to monitor which users are connected to the FTP server?

Thank you

If you are using the server.app from Apple to turn on FTP sharing the log can be found in /var/log/ftp.log or if you prefer in the console.app (in /Applications/Utilities).

If you have turned on FTP manually using terminal (shell) commands you will need to configure logging in the FTP daemon. Info on that can be found by typing "man ftpd" in any terminal window.


Lock Screen MacBook Pro 2015 How Can I Lock my MacBook Pro 2015 screen?

In MacBook Pro 2014 it works with ControlCommandQ, but it doesn't work in MacBook Pro 2015.

The Apple () menu provides a way for you to lock your MacBook’s screen.


Kindle books on IPad I have got some ebooks that I want to load onto my iPad in the Kindle App. I don't know how to do this and was wondering if anyone out there has any suggestions

Assuming you have a recent version of the Kindle app, the simplest way is through the iTunes file sharing:  http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4094 has details on how to do it.

You can also mail books to your kindle address (if you choose the settings icon in the kindle app, you can see your "Send-to-Kindle Email Address"), and then it will sync to Amazon's cloud.

(edit)
Note that the book needs to be compatible with the Kindle app, and not DRM protected etc.


Listing all files installed by some MacPorts package How to list all files that was installed   by some MacPorts package?

For example in Funtoo (or in Gentoo) I can achieve the same with a command:

equery b [package name]


50GB of disk space missing On a 120GB SSD hard drive in a MacBook only 70GB are available. The missing 50GB are not even shown as free space.

Here is what the output of Disk Utility looks like:

As you can see on the first screenshot the disk has 120GB. However, the partition chart on the same screenshot only shows 70GB. Also the other two screenshots show that only 70GB out of 120GB seem to be available.

The command diskutil list shows that the physical disk0 is 120GB big, but the synthesized disk1 only 70GB:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         70.0 GB    disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +70.0 GB    disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            60.2 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 21.7 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                509.9 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

You previously installed Windows (or another OS) and deleted it afterwards - except an orphaned Apple_BOOT or 2nd EFI partition (disk0s3 - 134.2 MB).

The 50 GB are simply unallocated disk space.

To expand your APFS container you have to remove the third partition and resize the container:

First convert the third partition to free space:

sudo diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" %noformat% /dev/disk0s3

Then expand your APFS container to the max (0 is a magic size here):

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0