Enable right click Magic Mouse in Terminal I am trying to enable the right click on a Magic Mouse connected to an iMac running 10.6.8, but due to parental controls, I am unable to gain access to the Mouse System Preferences.

I know you can change other settings through Terminal, is it possible to change it to enable right click as well?

I saw this question, but the command

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseButtonMode TwoButton

did not make it work for me. If I do

defaults read com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse

then is confirms that the TwoButton string was set, but when I right click, nothing happens.

Never mind - logging in and out made it work!

Such an obvious fix.


Why can't I add artwork to my music in iTunes? I have a few songs that don't have artwork, and would like to manually add the cover art. I'm trying to use iTunes (Get Info > Artwork > Add Artwork). However, the 'Add Artwork' button is grayed out and cannot be clicked. Is there a way to fix this?

One reason the Add Artwork button can be grayed out when selecting a song in iTunes and then Get Info, is the file does not have write permissions set.

Select the song in iTunes and then right-click it, then select Show in Finder.

In Finder select the file and then right-click it, then select Get Info.

Under the Sharing & Permissions: does it show Read only for you?  If yes change the permissions so you have Read & Write permissions.

The image below shows Add Artwork grayed out when the file permissions are set to Read only.

The image below shows Add Artwork active when the file permissions are set to Read & Write.

If it shows Read only for you, then click the Lock icon on the Get Info sheet and enter your password and then click the arrow next to the permission for Your Name (Me) and select Read & Write, then click the Lock icon.

Another reason can be the file type is not one that supports manually embedding artwork, such as a .wav file. That said, artwork should be able to be added through the iTunes Store which will save it separately if it's not a file type that supports embedded art work.


OSX Yosemite - Mission Control stopped working Not sure how long this has been happening, but I just noticed it AFTER Yosemite update.

Mission control just does not work: using hot corners, keyboard shortcut, or even double clicking Mission Control.app, there is no way to make my Mac go to Mission Control/Exposé. By the way, I have hot corners for showing desktop and app windows exposé, neither of which work. Hot corners for dashboard and Notification center work as usual.

Any ideas why does it happen, how could I solve it?

Thanks a lot.

(This irritating bug seems to be biting me more often after updating to 10.10.4)

When this happens and I don't want to have to reboot, I only restart the "Dock" process and the problem is gone.  There's probably some GUI way to do it, but I just drop into Terminal and do:

killall Dock

But before that, run killall -s Dock to see what would be killed, to make sure it's only going to directly kill the one "Dock" process.

Once you run killall Dock, Dock will restart in a few seconds and then Mission Control is working again. You can verify that the restart happened by checking the Process ID of "Dock" after the restart.


logitech unifying software mac not detecting I am using logitech wireless keyboard K270 and Mouse M185 with my MACbook Air(currently OSX 10.10.5) for more than a year now. All of a sudden today after some time, my keyboard and mouse stopped working. I checked the batteries all seems to be OK. I connected the unifying receiver again after restart with Logitech Unifying software and got this message.

Has anyone faced this problem before, do I need to reinstall the Logitech unifying software again? I also can't even get this software download anywhere on net, the ones which are their are of windows. Not sure what to do :-(

Update: In the System reports I can see the following entries

The system information is showing that the hardware is not being detected. The drivers are probably fine but idle since they don’t see the USB hardware for Logitech.

You can confirm this by removing logitech, then plugging in another usb mouse or something and refreshing the System Information. You should see that device be listed and know your Mac and USB are fine.

Once you’re sure the Logitech dongle is not working, here is a DIY repair you could try if you can’t get a repair / replacement part:

The fix is to remove the black cover, remove the chip, insert a piece of paper that raises the metal connectors of the chip closer to your laptop's USB connector. Reassemble everything. Once the chip and the USB port are properly touching again you will see the receiver show up in the Mac Systems USB panel and in Logitech Control Center, as others pointed out. You can also look for a visual tutorial of this on youtube / google.

As these age, this is, sadly, a widespread problem with the Logitech receiver.


How to customize MacBooks' keyboard? I spilled a juice on my MacBook-Pro keyboard. Consequently, some keys like 2, esc and tab don't work anymore on my keyboard.

Is there anyway to change those disabled keys with combination of some other keys, like Fn,Ctrl, Option+ something, using an app or a command?

So since this is on the stackexchange network I am going to just link to it here.

Basically this is how you change the native keys.

To change the esc key you need this.


How to access my .ssh folder for Transmit or Cyberduck? I"m trying to connect to my linux server which uses public key authentication. By default, the .ssh folder is hidden on my mac (which I can access via the terminal). However, when I try to setup a connection using either Cyberduck or Transmit, the Finder popup that opens does not show the .ssh folder.

How do I select the key ?

One alternative would be to copy the key to a directory outside the .ssh folder. But i'd definitely like to hear other solutions. How are you doing it ?

In the find file window, press Command-Shift-G.  It'll ask you what folder to navigate to.  Enter ~/.ssh and press return.


Small black square in top right corner since I updated my Mac to Big Sur, just on one of my four Desktops, this little black square appeared. Does anyone know how to remove it?

I believe this is a bug with the menubar transparency in Big Sur.
I often get the same issue often when I switch between spaces with darker and lighter desktop images, as the transparency/font of the menubar adapts to your desktop image. For example, a darker desktop image shows the menubar with white font, but a lighter desktop image shows the menubar as black font.
If you don't care much about the menubar transparency, you could reduce transparency in System Preferences>Accessibility>Display and enable Reduce transparency. This will then keep the menubar as a solid grey menubar and hopefully stop the issue.
Another solution would be to click on one of the menubar options in the affected area or switch between different desktop spaces, and let the UI processes recalibrate.
You could also kill some UI processes in terminal to get it to reset, but I often find the terminal command killall Dock is a safe one and does the job fine.


MacBook retina 12 inch 2015: text garbled on URL bar of safari What can cause this?
The URL bar is behaving weirdly and cannot be edited

I have had the same issue  happen to me, once (I also have the same laptop)....I just rebooted and it never happened again.

I'm unsure if it's even a machine/OS X issue or a scripting error.

Hopefully that solves your same problem.


Where can I find gcc in Xcode 3.2.6? I have a Mac with OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. I'm trying very hard to learn the basics of programming in C, but I can't get my first simple program to run.
I read online to go to Xcode Preferences -> Downloads and check in there for gcc downloads, but Xcode 3.2.6 doesn't have a Downloads tab in the preferences. I've tried downloading gcc from the gcc.gnu website, but I didn't see anything specifically labeled gcc, and I still couldn't get my simple "Hello, World!" program to run in terminal.

It's very possible this is an easy solution, however I haven't been able to find anything pointing me in he right direction. It's definitely a little convoluted as a beginner, but I'm trying.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Just a hand to get Xcode and gcc working.

You can install the command line tools separately from here. You want the 10.6 download listed under "Option 1: Downloading Pre-Built Binaries".


Any app that attempts image or movie conversion locks up Last week I made the mistake of opening an old AVI file, which QuickTime automatically converted to m4v. Well it tried anyway; when it got to the end it locked up.

Since then I cannot do any sort of image or movie conversion. QT Player continues to die immediately after launch. Any other program that tries to convert anything also locks up (beach ball). For instance, I just tried to export an image from iPhoto - dead.

I assume that there's a file somewhere that lists which files QT was working on, and it keeps trying to open/convert them (I can see the windows open, then die). Does anyone know where this might be?

QuickTime in Mavericks saves it's application state to /Users/USERNAME/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX.savedState/. If you rename that last folder, then QuickTime should then essentially launch with a blank slate.


How can I turn an iPod touch into a functional mobile telephone? Considering that the iPhone is three times more expensive than the iPod touch and that the iPod touch is much thinner than the iPhone, it would be quite neat to use an iPod touch as to send and receive phone calls.

What would need to be done to enable an iPod Touch to send and receive phone calls (either Wi-Fi only or better interfacing to cellular data through an accessory)?

There are three steps that would need to be completed to enable an iPod Touch to act as a mobile telephone.

First, it would need to make phone calls. The answers to this question document how to place phone calls using an iPod Touch and VOIP. I personally have used Talkatone, and find that it does work, but has some substantial lags, particularly at the beginning of the conversation.

Second, it would need to receive phone calls. (Note that this is a key difference between using an iPod Touch as a mobile telephone, as asked in your title, and a calling device, as asked in the body of the first version of your question!) This is a much more difficult prospect, as presumably you would want the device to be able to receive calls at any time, and not just when a particular app is running. It would appear that the program Skype is available for the iPod Touch and could be used to make and receive phone calls.

Finally, unlike the iPhone, the iPod Touch can only communicate with the rest of the world when it is connected to a WiFi network. A mobile hotspot like the MiFi carried with you could give the iPod Touch steady access to a WiFi network.

All that said, you'll end up paying for Skype in and out on top of paying for the data plan for the MiFi. It might be simpler and not a whole lot more expensive to just go with an actual iPhone.

In other words, it can be done to make an iPod Touch more like an iPhone, but that doesn't mean you'd want to, besides as a proof of concept.


How to mask images in Keynote into circles? I have a bunch of photos that I need on a single slide, and I'd like them all to be shown as circles.

Can I do that out-of-the-box with Keynote?

Yes.

This works for any shape. Here's how:

Draw a shape.
Resize it to the desired size.
Position the shape over the image.
Select both by shift-clicking them.
Choose Format → Image → Mask with Shape from the menu (these menu items are from Keynote 6.5.2, might be different for your version)
Mask the image as you'd usually do (by dragging, resizing).
Click Done.


Sync contacts from iPhone to Gmail I cannot sync contacts from my iPhone to my Gmail account. I have a standard Google account setup in my Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings (Exchange is not available to me). Also, my Gmail is set as my default account.

Note, my contacts are synced from Gmail to my iPhone, but not in reverse; meaning, any contact I add on my phone never makes in into my Gmail contacts. I'd like to not have to do this manually or through iTunes.

Check your default contacts account on your iPhone by tapping through Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Next, under the CONTACTS section, tap on "Default Account". Finally, tap your Gmail account from the list.

Now every new contact you create on the iPhone will automatically push to your Gmail account.


AppleScript choose file dialog box with default location not working So there goes four hours of my life that I will never get back.

I'm trying to do something seemingly simple...

I want to open a file select dialog box and specify the default location.

I actually got this to work using the following...

choose file with prompt "Please choose a file:" of type {"XLSX", "APPL"}
default location "/Users/lowken/Dropbox/"

This works and does exactly what I want (the file dialog opens up in the Dropbox folder).

However when I try to use a string variable it doesn't work...

set strPath to "/Users/lowken/Dropbox/"

choose file with prompt "Please choose a file:" of type {"XLSX", "APPL"}
default location strPath

Now the dialog box opens in the root directory of the hard drive :-(

It seems that the default location is being ignored however if the path is not correct Applescript does raise a error.

I've tried casting the value as a string. I even tried to use the POSIX format...

"Macintosh HD:Users:lowken:Dropbox"

This didn't format didn't work at all.

I'm running OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 on a mid 2012 MacBook Pro.

Can anyone help me?

Both scripts don't work for me. The problem is that the default location parameter needs to be of type alias. You can fix it by adding POSIX file in front of your path (the path does need to exist, otherwise you also get an error message):

set strPath to POSIX file "/Users/lowken/Dropbox/"

choose file with prompt "Please choose a file:" of type {"XLSX", "APPL"} ¬
    default location strPath

Or you could use the "old style" HFS format:

set strPath to alias "Macintosh HD:Users:lowken:Dropbox"

choose file with prompt "Please choose a file:" of type {"XLSX", "APPL"} ¬
    default location strPath


iOS Chrome search box changed to "new tab" button Google Chrome on my iPhone 8 Plus recently changed the search field at the bottom of the app interface to a "New Tab" button. (See screenshots below.) Does anyone know how to change it back? To be clear, I want the search field, not the plus-button.

I've tried deleting the app and then reinstalling it. Initially I got the search field at the bottom, but the plus-button reappears after a few uses.

If it helps, my iOS version is 13.3.1, and Google Chrome version is 80.0.3987.95.

Had this same issue and managed to figure out how to change it back.

Go to chrome://flags in a new tab, then search “new tab”. For the option “Enable new tab button in the bottom toolbar” select “Disable”.

Viola.


How to delete photos from MacBook Air I have a MacBook Air and run out of space so want to remove all my photos.

I have deleted all of them by going into photo and also searching for jpg but it still says I have 32 GB of photos but I can't find them anywhere.

I have deleted my trash - any ideas?

thank you

The bar chart that shows the occupied space the size of all images on your hard drive combined.

If you want to delete your "Photos Library" that's used by the Photos.app do this:

Open Finder
Press Cmd+Shift+G
Enter ~/Pictures
Find the "Photos Library" file, select and delete it
Empty your trash

Please let me know if this helps you.


My terminal background keep changing after each restart I have this in my ~/.bash_profile

export ANDROID_HOME=/Users/username/Library/Android/sdk
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$PATH
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$PATH
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)
export PS1="\w $: "
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=gxfxcxdxbxegedabagacad
#export LSCOLORS=exfxcxdxbxegedabagacad
#alias ls='ls -GFh'

and for some reason, whenever i restart the terminal it changes the color. I want to keep the background of my terminal in RGB 484848 ... but it changes to white and then silver and then bluish after each restart

I don't know what did i do.

I suspect that you are using the profile named Solid Colors in Terminal.  Each time the terminal opens, it cycles to a random background within /Library/Desktop\ Pictures/Solid\ Colors/ folder.  If you press Command-i, the inspector will open and you can change the settings of your current window.

Try clicking to "Pro" and then back to "Solid Colors" a few times.  You should get different a effect from Solid Colors nearly every time you come back to it.

I believe that you will have to make a new settings profile with the background color you want and then set that profile as the default.


Is there any way to permanently crop a PDF without decreasing its quality? I scanned a document and would like to crop out around half of the image.

I can crop using Preview or using Adobe Acrobat Pro. But neither program permanently crops the file. The file size never decreases.

I tried using "Remove Hidden Information" on Adobe Acrobat Pro which was able to permanently crop the file. After the process completed, I clicked Save which opened a new Save As prompt. So, I re-saved the document, but the file size grew tenfold. No idea why.
I tried exporting to Optimized PDF on Adobe Acrobat Pro and the PDF was still not permanently cropped.
I tried exporting to Reduced Size PDF on Adobe Acrobat Pro and the PDF was permanently cropped, but the image quality was decreased.

Are there seriously no options to remove the cropped area without exporting the file as TIFF and importing the TIFF files to create a new PDF file or ->Print->Save As PDF? I don't want to do these because the image quality will decrease.

And why is such a basic task so difficult?

Cropping (in Acrobat) is non-destructive, as you noted.

If you really want to permanently cut away parts of your scan, it would be better to open the file in an image processing software, do the cutting away (aka cropping) there and resave as PDF (or TIFF, and then bring back to Acrobat for a PDF).

If you do not change the image resolution, the image quality will remain.


European Time capsule in Canada Is it possible to use a (European/French)Time Capsule in Canada ?
If yes, is there any particular configuration to apply ?

Thank You.

Yes, from my experience you can do that. I lived in the UK and currently use mine in the US. No special configuration required, just configure it to your new router.


3rd party app to perform regex search on Spotlight index There is no native way to perform a regex search on the Spotlight index as discussed here:

Is regex search possible in spoltlight?

Is there a 3rd party tool that can do a regex search on the Spotlight index? Or is the Spotlight index designed such that there is no way to search it with regex using any 3rd party tool because the data structures of the index does not support fast regex search?

Proprietary and Private

Apple's Spotlight index is proprietary, not publicly documented, and subject to change without notice. Third party tools will rarely, if ever, use it as an index.

Spotlight is not designed to support PCRE style regular expressions.


Family member being asked to pay again for app I already purchased and shared with her? I set up family sharing, my family members are able to locate the apps in their iphones and download them, but if they are not FREE apps, and I already paid for them, they are being asked to subscribe and pay again?

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks

If Family Sharing is enabled, they should be able to re-download paid apps at no additional cost by tapping App Store > Purchased.

If they are on separate Apple ID's linked through Family Sharing they need to choose your account from the top right corner of the Purchased section in App Store. Then they should be able to download the paid app(s) at no additional cost.


Why does Preview lower image-quality I use photos from a digital camera and work with them in Photoshop/Lightroom. Today I again imported pictures from the camera into photos-app on my MacBook Pro, mid 2014, Yosemite 10.10.4/3 (I had the problem on both versions, stable and beta), and then, before I saw the export-option, copied the pictures and pasted them into Preview.

As a result, I noticed an extreme quality-loss, since the resolution always was 1024x768 by 72 pxi instead of 3072x1728 by 180 dpi (yes I know I stated different units pxi/dpi but that's the information I get from my software pix is preview, dpi is digital images, and I think there isn't much of a difference?).

I'm wondering where this comes from, also because exporting works fine, without quality-loss and I would like to know how I can see the dpi of an image with preview-app / information-option.

Thank you,

Gabriel/Gabkano

The Preview does not lower the image quality, but will fit it in the given parameters.

If you use Preview to open a original image: Example:

5.5 MB file size with Dimensions of 3648 × 2736 pixels

Now open the Preview Tools - Adjust Size to see the current settings.

The default resolution is set to 72 which is standard for web applications.

In that window you can set it to the original size/resolution.

Now if you are using a copy/paste to move the image to Preview, the resulting quality will depend on the copy/paste settings. That can be found in the application it self.


How much data can an app steal from my MacBook if I allow its system-wide execution? I'm interested in knowing how to monitor and possibly sandbox an app and its relative background processes in MacOS. Is there some internal utility hidden somewhere in the system tools (even CLI), or maybe some tool from the web? I cannot find anything about this. Furthermore, it looks like everyone still thinks Mac OS cannot get malware and it is not helping.

Let's say I want to install an Android Emulator to play android games on my MacBook. I know that the majority of the emulators are Chinese, therefore I will expect a significant amount of telemetry.
I decide to go with the app Mumu. During the installation, the app asks me to input my password to allow the creation of a new Helper (anyway, what is it and what does that even entail?). In order to do this and continue with the installation, I have to allow the (initially blocked) execution of a "system software", in Security & Privacy >> General (pic).

If I ever decided to play along, how could I monitor the effects of this choice? Can any app with these privileges access any other app data? In particular, I am interested in keeping these safe:

browser history (eg. chrome, firefox...)
KeyChain
files all around my disk (duh... )

What is safe and what is not?
How can I know (in real-time possibly) what a specific service/process/app with granted privileges is doing to my computer?

Thanks in advance

This is not an exact answer to what you are looking for, but it is ONE way that you can keep your system safe.

Basically it is an outbound firewall that I have been using for years (I hold no interest in the company, just a happy customer) and it is called Little Snitch.

Basically, once installed, it monitors ALL network traffic and throws up a warning when it sees any. Training it to respect your preferences can be a bit tedious as it presents a dialog on absolutely everything on the Mac that wants to talk to something on the internet.

But with a little perseverance and some intimate knowledge of what certain processes are you can essentially block anything that wants to initiate anything in the way of an outbound network connection. It's not free but worth every penny.

There are likely other things out there that might do the trick. I think there is a Docker project for the Mac, but I have no expertise or knowledge of it other than it (may) exist. But Little Snitch is a worthy addition to every Mac user's Mac who enjoys fiddling around with more than email, a web browser and a few apps & games.


Using quotes in SublimeText build system command I'd like to execute a simple AppleScript command as part of a Sublime Text build system. I created a sublime-build file where the command is

"cmd": ["osascript", "-e", """tell application "Preview" to activate"""]

but I can't seem to escape the quotes properly. I've tried using \", \', and a few other combinations, with no luck. Does anyone know what the proper syntax is? In the shell, I simply write

osascript -e 'tell application "Preview" to activate'

Thanks!

Apologies, I got it. The solution is simple and I must have missed it:

"cmd": ["osascript", "-e", "tell application \"Preview\" to activate"]


Are the latest iPod Nanos running iOS? The current version of the iPod Nano looks a lot like it is running the iOS. Is it actually running a scaled-down version of the software on the iPhones, or is it just a themed version of the classic iPod software?

According to this article, an Apple spokesman stated that the touch-screen iPod Nano does not run iOS.


Does high-availability VM for Mac OS X exist? I seek rock-stable, production-worthy virtual machines capability with macOS.
I'm relatively a noob when it comes to VMs. High availability clusters are all the rage, and I can see why. I took over as the sysadmin for an SMB and we have 7 Mac Mini's in the machine room; each one running one thing, each obviously underutilized, and each without redundancy.
If I ran Win services, a good strategy would be to deploy up to 7 instances on a pair of servers in a high availability configuration, active/passive failover, etc., correct? And until Apple changes their mind, that's an impossibility in OS X Land?

Yes, high-availability for macOS definitely exists.
As on Windows, you cannot just push some magical button and have any computer with whatever generic software suddenly run in a HA system, being it active/passive or active/active.
The way to setup a HA system depends on the services you want the system to offer. Is it a highly available network storage system you require? - is it a highly available build server? is it a highly available rendering system?
In some cases it is not optimal to use virtual machines at all, but rather use software running bare-metal to implement the highly available services.
In other cases, you can use VMs to have an easier way to implement for example an active/passive fail-over style high availability. This usually comes with some draw backs, but they are the same here as in an Windows environment.
One of the simplest setups here is to have the virtual machine disk itself be stored on a storage system shared by a pair of Mac Minis (or more). The storage system itself needs to be highly available as well. You would then replicate the configuration of the virtual machine between the two Mac Minis, implement a heart beat system and have the passive computer automatically take over when the heart beat stops. Typically this is a type of STONITH, which can be implemented in multiple ways.
A well known industry implementation of such a simple system is the VMware vSphere HA system, where you basically run ESXi on the Mac Minis and use vSphere with vSphere HA to do monitoring and automatic failover. The shared storage system can be implemented in many different ways (although most have drawbacks).


Is Apple Pay on Apple Watch safe if iPhone Jailbroken? When/if a Jailbreak becomes available for iOS 10.2, I am interested in installing it.

Since I use Apple Pay (on my watch only), I would like to know that my payment details are safe. Since you can see your credit card information in the Apple Watch app on iOS, this means that the data is synced across both devices.

Due to the data being  on the watch and  phone, would this make it possible for an hacker to get my card details? If so, would it just be the last four digits and my bank provider or all details?

[EDIT] - This edit revises my answer to:

more specifically answer the OP's question for their exact scenario
reduce ambiguity by making clearer the parts of my answer that were more general in nature

1. Answer to OP's exact question/scenario

Yes, your payment details are 100% safe, as you've already set up Apple Pay on your devices prior to doing a jailbreak in future. This is because your card information is not saved to the device. In other words, since the data isn't on the device to begin with, there's no risk of it being accessed from your iPhone, even after doing a jailbreak. The information simply isn't there to steal!

2. Apple's own words re encryption and data protection on jailbroken devices

According to Apple

  The secure boot chain, code signing, and runtime process security all
  help to ensure that only trusted code and apps can run on a device.
  iOS has additional encryption and data protection features to
  safeguard user data, even in cases where other parts of the security
  infrastructure have been compromised (for example, on a device with
  unauthorized modifications). This provides important benefits for both
  users and IT administrators, protecting personal and corporate
  information at all times and providing methods for instant and
  complete remote wipe in the case of device theft or loss.

Source: Apple's iOS Security White Paper, 2014, p8. NOTE: Bold emphasis mine, not Apple's.

As you can see, according to Apple, even jailbreaking a device will not result in non-trusted code or apps being able to access certain areas, such as the Secure Enclave.

More specifically, Apple states:

  The Secure Enclave is a coprocessor fabricated in the Apple A7 chip.
  It utilizes its own secure boot and personalized software update
  separate from the application processor. It also provides all
  cryptographic operations for Data Protection key management and
  maintains the integrity of Data Protection even if the kernel has
  been compromised.

Source: Apple's iOS Security White Paper, 2014, p5. NOTE: Bold emphasis mine, not Apple's.

The Secure Enclave is part of Apple's A7 and later processors. This enclave is documented in Apple Patent Application 20130308838 and also has its own OS called SEP OS.

So, according to Apple, your data is safe.

3. General info about Apple Pay and security

The best way to enter your card information when setting up Apple Pay is to use your iPhone's camera. This is because doing so means your card information is never saved to the device or stored to the photo library. In other words, since the data isn't on the device to begin with, there's no risk of it being accessed from your iPhone.

Once you've set up your device for Apple Pay, your bank (or financial institution) creates a Device Account Number (DAN) which is unique to your device and is encrypted and sent to Apple so they can add it to what's called the Secure Element on your device. This element is totally isolated from iOS and watchOS, is never stored on Apple's servers, nor backed up to iCloud.

It's important to also note that the DAN is never actually decrypted by Apple, they merely perform the action of placing it on your device in its encrypted form.

If you have to manually enter your card information (i.e instead of using your iPhone's camera), this information is also encrypted and sent to Apple servers. Since the information is stored on your iPhone prior to encryption it is theoretically possible that a 3rd party could log this, but the risk of this happening on a non-jailbroken device is 0% because the data (i.e. your card info):

is stored in encrypted memory
only stored for a very short period (a few seconds at most)
is protected by AES key wrapping with both sides providing a random key that establishes the session key and uses AES-CCM transport encryption.

In summary, I don't think it is possible to absolutely 100% guarantee that a hacker could never retrieve your card details, but in reality the risk of this happening is actually from a hacker breaching your bank's systems instead, not from your iPhone.

4. Further reading:

Apple Pay security.


How to identify and fix files with corrupted / inaccessible disk blocks I have a late 2011 Macbook Pro, running Mavericks 10.9.2. Its sole HDD is a 750GB drive, formatted with Bootcamp. It's still running reasonably well, but in running a defragment pass on it, I've identified that there are a bunch of files which are refusing to be moved by the defragmenter (iDefrag).

iDefrag reports a POSIX error code of 5 when accessing the files. Picking one at random and trying to copy the file to another location in the shell also reports an error, which makes me think the problem is real and with the disk / FS. Output of cp is:

cp: unity_nophysx.nexe: Input/output error

Error code 5 is 'access denied' as far as I'm aware, but the defrag process is running as administrator and running cp using sudo on the suspect file makes no difference.

Disk Utility, fsck and the Apple Hardware Test all claim the disk is fine. No SMART errors reported, and while there were some permissions errors, they weren't with the files iDefrag is complaining about, and Disk Utility claims to have fixed them without complaint.

There are maybe a hundred or more corrupted files, but still a very small fraction of the drive. As far as I can tell, no system files or crucial data are affected. While it would be nice to retrieve the data, I don't mind reinstalling or going to backups. At this point I don't know if it's really the drive dying, just some bad sectors due to the drive being moved while writing, or some other minor corruption that can be worked around. I'm assuming the worst case, and that most likely I'll have to get a slightly larger HDD and clone the existing drive to avoid having to rebuild the system.

My question is really how I go about marking those broken files as properly broken and fixing or purging them, so that a clone of the disk will succeed and not get hung up on files / blocks it can't access. Disk Utility isn't seeing the problem, and I don't know of any command line or third party tools which will do the job. I don't want to write off the entire disk and start from scratch, as the drive seems otherwise healthy, so I'm looking for repair / diagnostic tools.

If you are facing a healthy file system at the level of its structure and want to find files which have disk faulty blocks, here is how I would proceed:

Make a full backup of your disk with Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner

Check this backup.
Run the following heavy and risky (in case you do have bad blocks outside of your filesystem structure) command (make sure the {} is quoted so filenames containing spaces work):

find / -type f -print -exec dd if="{}" of=/dev/null bs=1m \;

This heavy find command will print for any plain file its name (thus not reading it, but just its directory entry) and then continue making a full and fast read of all its data blocks.

Upon hiting the first file containing bad blocks, this find will cause the kernel to log read error on /var/log/system.log, and it will either slow down or bring your system to a total halt.
This will mostly depend on the hard drive capacity to relocate the bad blocks found on its internal pool dedicated to this usual fix task.
This file containing bad blocks will be the last name printed by find.

Write down this file name on a piece of paper!
Let's say that this file name is:

/.DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ChunkStorage/0/0/0/9

At this point you may have the possibility to kill find quickly by hiting ctrl+C. If killing it nicely is failing, just crash your Mac.

Upon rebooting your Mac, directly check the file containing bad blocks:

dd if='/.DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ChunkStorage/0/0/0/9' of=/dev/null bs=1m

If the command terminate correctly, then the error was light enough for your disk to be able to read this file and reallocate the bad blocks.

If the command doesn't terminate, you won't be able to kill it
normally, your data is totally lost, and you will have to crash your Mac
once more.

In this last case, you have to consider replacing your disk and to work from your last backups. Some other files might also contain bad blocks and may have stayed undetected since a long time as long as you didn't read them.

The kernel won't fire a read error on a block you never read.


Changing Support URL in iTunesConnect Is it possible to change the Support URL for an App at any given time, even during App Review or after it has been approved without having to upload a new version or binary?

I saw this link, iTunes Connect App Properties, it says Editable: Unlocked for Support Url, not sure what that means though.  But I would assume it means I can change the Support URL at any given time.

Yes, you can change accompanying details of your app while waiting for review and after the review is complete.

Apple's documentation mentions the following, emphasis mine:

  iTunes Connect App Properties

  ...

  Many of the properties in the following sections are either locked or unlocked. Unlocked properties are always editable. Locked properties are only editable when your app is in an editable state. The tables in this section indicate whether a property is locked or unlocked. Changes you make to unlocked properties are posted immediately, but expect 24 hours for a full refresh of the change on the store.

Anecdotal stories suggest Apple do keep an eye on any changes you make but, as of now, no additional review is required.

Fields will be disabled and marked as Locked, if they can no longer be edited. Locked fields are deemed associated with a specific binary.


What's a good setup to back up macOS data and restore to Linux? Background
I have an old MBP which works fine right now.  I have no immediate plans to change it.
But it is getting old, the discrete GPU died, and I expect it could die at any time.  I would like to keep my option open to move to a Linux laptop when this machine dies.  Most of the software I use is either open source or runs on Linux as well and I rely heavily on Terminal/bash already. Considering that and not wanting to be tied to macOS due to not having a solid cross-platform backup, here's my current backup strategy to allow either a Mac or linux based OS to be my next computer for my current data.
modified backups

keep frequent backups, but, rather than relying only on Time Machine, backup /Users/ via rsync as well.  (what file system is my best bet here?)

run preliminary trials on restoring the rsync backups into a test Linux VM.

As you an see - I'm not decided what filesystem I should use to rsync as Time Machine backs up to HFS+ and since I haven't picked a Linux it's not clear if I want / can mount HFS+ to read the backup data.
What setup allows me to restore my data that is backed up with rsync to any Linux?

Use the cloud to store your data.
I actively use three different operating systems:  macOS, Windows, and BSD (I do use Linux from time to time, but generally avoid it).  To access my data on each of these platforms, I use the cloud (a hybrid cloud to be exact).
This can be as simple as having a OneDrive, DropBox, etc. account and a simple USB external drive to back up your data to a highly integrated hybrid cloud consisting of cloud storage, a local NAS with it's own cloud sync clients and external backup.
The point is:  separate your data from your "operations."  In other words, become platform agnostic.  Because, when you structure your data this way, regardless of what you move to, your data will be ready.
Simple Cloud
If you were to use OneDrive or DropBox, for example, you could store all of your documents to the cloud.  Both have clients for macOS and Linux so both could sync with no issue.
As for backups, both have native backup software (i.e. Time Machine) that allow you to efficiently back up your machine and data to an external USB or NAS device.
Hybrid Cloud
I am a huge fan of Synology NAS devices.  I store my data on cloud services (like OneDrive) and sync it via Synology's cloud sync software back to my Synology.  My Mac (and my Windows and BSD machines) all have external USB drives for backup and my NAS has it's own external drive(s) for backup (I have two).
Is it overkill?  Probably. However, I haven't lost data in over 15 years (I was doing this before cloud storage came out strictly with NAS - nfs, smb, afp, etc.)
Some notes

I use utilities like KeePass's (cross platform password database) data file on the cloud so all of my apps can access it from any device from anywhere

I use local incremental or snapshot backups so I can easily restore data should I type the incorrect rm command.

I keep my data and backups in multiple places - it's in the cloud, it's synced to three machines (where applicable) which are locally backed up, it's synced to a NAS which itself is locally backed up.

I back up my "settings" (i.e. .bash_profile, ./ssh/config, ./ssh/authorizedkeys etc.) the cloud.

TL;DR
Efficient use of cloud services and/or technologies will enable you to store you data in a centralized location making migration from one platform to another quite simple.


How to sync one or two labels only, from Gmail to Mail.app? As many are facing the problem of IMAP syncing all the mails of Gmail, I want to know how can one sync specific Gmail labels to Mail.app?

For example, if I have Friends, Family, Company1, Company2, and Bank labels, how can I only synchronize Friends and Family?

Also, It should not apply that setting uniformly to all my syncs.
For example, I want to sync all my mails to my Nexus 5, but only few labels with Mail.app.

You can specify the labels shown in your IMAP client in Google Mail settings via the checkbox on the right side.


Hiding ads on my own YouTube videos on Apple TV I'm going to set up an Apple TV at the office to show the company's own videos.

I thought about using YouTube, but I need to make 100% sure there are no ads are ever shown before nor after the video.

Is there a YouTube setting that controls whether ads are shown on my own videos? (For example, if I leave "Monetisation" disabled, am I 100% guaranteed that no ads will ever be shown?)

My alternative is Vimeo, where I pay a yearly fee, but I am guaranteed no ads.

If you disable monetisation and you have no third-party content in your YouTube video, then no ads will be shown on the video.

You can check if Content ID has identified third-party content in your videos by checking your My Videos page as a link will be shown next to the video if this is the case.


How do I turn off presidential alerts on my iPhone? I already have Settings > Notifications (bottom) > AMBER Alerts and Emergency Alerts turned off, yet I still get Presidential Alerts.

How can I turn off Presidential Alerts?

iPhone 5, iOS 10.3.3.

“The Communications Act of 1934 established the authority for the President to use certain private sector communications systems for priority communications, such as sending alert and warning messages to the public, during national emergencies,” FEMA wrote. “The Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act of 2006 prompted the Federal Communications Commission to adopt regulations enabling the wireless industry to participate in the distribution of public alerts and warnings also. The WARN Act further established that the wireless alerting service should allow wireless subscribers the capability of opting out of receiving WEA alerts, other than an alert issued by the President.”

Therefore, you are not able to opt out of the Presidential Alert.


What I got with Recovery Disk Assistant? Environment:

Mac Mini Mid 2010. Original OS is Snowleopard
Current OS is Yosemite
Tool. Recovery Disk Assistant which is downloaded from Apple website.

Purpose:

Make a recovery Yosemite disk on USB stick

Procedure:

Downloaded Recovery Disk Assistant fro Apple
executed Recovery Disk Assistant on Yosemite

Problem:
  The recovery disk assistant has fixed image and text. There is a Lion photo image, not Yosemite and it said successfully made Lion recovery disk.

So I am wondering whether I got Lion recovery or Yosemite recovery...

Yes, it is a Yosemite recovery USB flash drive. The application copies the hidden (internal disk) recovery partition to the flash drive. I believe Apple no longer recommends using a recovery flash drive, so I suppose they have not updated the Recovery Disk Assistant application. I believe Apple now wants you to keep a bootable copy of OS X on an external drive. Still, the recovery flash drive is good to have if you need to download and install a fresh copy of OS X (and your internal recovery partition is damaged). Some will argue you can just boot using internet recovery to reinstall OS X, but you will get the version of OS X that was shipped with the machine. If you keep your flash drive up to date, then you can download the current version of OS X (that you have installed).


Run zsh alias via automator? I am using zsh with oh-my-zsh in iTerm on macOS. There are some aliases defined in my .zshrc I use often, like this:

deploy(){
 cd ~/Path/To/My/Project;
 build ...;
 rsync ...;
}

To execute this, I have to switch over to iTerm and run the alias.
Now I'd like to be able to do that from anywhere via a hotkey.

I've read that automator is the tool of choice.

I created an action "run shell script" and chose `/bin/zsh/' from the list of available shells.

But running my alias returns zsh:1: command not found.

Am I on the wrong shell? But echo $0 in iTerm gives me -zsh.

How can I run my alias without being in the iTerm window? Any approach will do, Automator is just how I'm trying to accomplish it.

The solution is to source the file dependencies you need inside the automator script.

Example if you added all of your scripts to ~/.zshrc

source ~/.zshrc
deploy

You can debug things easier by doing which deploy to check to see if that script is accessible.


Why Apple watch Nike+ is in same price as normal watch? I am planning to buy an Apple Watch series 3 (GPS only) but confused between normal and Nike+ edition. If I purchase Nike+ edition, am I losing anything that is in Normal watch? If Nike+ edition is (Normal + Nike) then why Apple has kept price of both same?

The Apple Watch Series 3 and Nike+ Edition are exactly the same hardware, just different bands and some preloaded software (which you can manually install on a plain Apple Watch).  It's the same price because it's essentially the same hardware in the box

From Apple Insider:

  Last year's Nike+ Apple Watch Series 3 wasn't much different from the
  standard version making it a bit tough to choose between the two
  models.

What's different with Series 4....

Not available in Gold or Stainless Steel
Nike exclusive faces that immediately take you to "complications" in the Nike Training App
Nike specific bands (reflective) geared toward training (can't buy separately from Apple's website; off of eBay, well that a different story)


Safari address bar complete URL with keyboard shortcut Does Safari in OS X have a keyboard shortcut to complete a URL in the same fashion that Chrome does?

I'd like to be able to type in an incomplete address like askdifferent, press a key combo, and have Safari prefix it with www. and suffix with .com, and automatically navigate to that URL.

I've tried all various combination of fn, control, option,command, and return. Most of them will open your search in a new tab.

Does Safari support this, and what's the key combo?

Safari 8.0 does: Press and hold the Control key for a moment while you’re editing the location and you’ll see the search icon turn into an icon indicating that it’s interpreting the input as (part of) a URL instead of performing a search. The label “Search selected search engine” next to your text will change to “Go to Site” and the ‘Go to Site “your text”’ menu item in the completions list will be selected. Typing Control+Return will navigate there.

By the way, you can use Control+N (next) and Control+P (previous) to navigate through the completions list using the keyboard. (These are emacs-style navigation key bindings.)


Two Airport Expresses extending the same network and a weekly password rotation? I just installed two Airport Express routers in a restaurant to improve their wifi coverage.  The first device (AE1) is connected to the restaurant's DSL router via ethernet, and the second device (AE2) extends the network created by AE1 via wireless.  This is set up and working perfectly.

The problem is, the restaurant is close to a lot of residential stuff, and they've had issues with people pirating their signal.  So, obviously, they would like to password protect their wifi, changing the password weekly, and providing it to customers upon request.  This would be simple enough with one device, but I'm confused as to how I can go about it with two devices.

Should I set up the WPA/WPA2 on AE2 first, then AE1?  Will AE2 even be able to extend AE1 if AE1's network is password protected?  I have many questions, but they all boil down to, is this even possible, and how can I do it?

If AE1 (plugged into the router) is setup as a wireless access point, then put a WPA/WPA2 password on that wireless network.

If AE2 is setup via Airport utility to "extend" the wireless network of AE1, then it will automatically inherit the password setup from the primary (in this case AE1).  Any password changes you make to AE1 will be transparent and update across both devices.

If you have setup AE2 to "join" a wireless network, this will not happen.

With "extend" the end user will only see one wireless network, with the same name, not two different devices.  Unless you have set your network up differently.


Is it possible to upgrade my Time Capsule hard disk and keep the backup(s) from the original? Can I upgrade my Time Capsule to a larger internal drive and keep my original backup(s)?

I'm aware you can drop in the new disk, the restore it as a new TC using AirPort Utility, and I'm also aware you can migrate backup(s) from an existing TimeMachine drive to a new one - but I want to do both: I want to replace the 500gb drive in my Time Capsule (2nd gen, 2009) to a 1tb drive, and I want to keep the existing backup(s) from the 500gb to the new drive, so everything is as it was, just with a larger internal drive.

I understand it's not as simple as swapping the drive, restoring it as a new TC and then using CCC to copy the data from the original drive, so is there a solution to what I want to achieve? Basically I want to upgrade the original TC drive to a larger one and not lose my previous backup(s).

This is achievable for sure.

First, you need to transfer files and then change your HDD.

This Apple tutorial shows how to transfer the Time Machine backups.
Transfer Time Machine backups from one backup disk to another

Here in this iFixit link, it's a how-to tutorial for the HDD Replacement.
Apple Time Capsule Model A1302 Hard Drive Replacement

I hope you get it done!


iPhone 4 Filters won't show up on Instagram When I take a photo with my camera and use a filter, I try to upload it to Instagram but it doesn't recognize the filter. It just shows the pic without the filter.

This is a known behaviour for pictures edited from camera or photos app on iOS. When you try to load the picture onto Instagram, It loads the original version of the picture (without any filter) that was taken.

If you want the picture with iOS Camera filters - Screenshot the picture once you apply the filter and load the screenshot-ed picture on Instagram.


In iTerm2 Command Click on URLS does not work when inside a tmux session When not inside a tmux session, Command-Click on URLs works flawlessly.

How can I make links clickable in iTerm2 when inside a tmux session?
When hitting Command the mouse pointer changes to the  icon, but when clicking on an URL, nothing happens.

Note I have the following settings inside my .tmux.conf

[...]
# Enable mouse mode
set -g mode-mouse on
set -g mouse-resize-pane on
set -g mouse-select-pane on
set -g mouse-select-window on

# Mouse pane switching
set-option -g mouse-select-pane on
[...]

Disabling them and then reloading .tmux.conf does not resolve the issue.

iTerm2 Version is Build 1.0.0.20140629
tmux -V 1.9a

To use the normal mouse behavior in tmux you have to keep alt pressed. So click on the link while pressing cmd+alt. The same applies when selecting text.


Finder on Yosemite misbehaves: doubled text, blank windows, lack of updates Since updating to Yosemite, Finder has been acting strangely. I can usually get it to show a normal-looking and -behaving window for a few operations, and then the window will either:

Be blank, showing no files or folders where I know it is pointing at a non-empty folder.
Show prior state, rather than the state I know to be true now. For instance, I could delete a folder, but it still shows as present, even after forcing Finder to refresh the view somehow.
Double the labels under the finder item:

The only third-party extensions showing in the "Extensions" system pref pane are Dropbox and PCalc.

I've read that old versions of Rogue Amoeba's "Instant On" feature can cause Yosemite problems, but I'm on the current version, 8.0.2.

I can fix it temporarily by dropping to the Terminal and saying killall Finder.

You have to make a PRAM reset.

To do that restart your Mac, and BEFORE the "Bong" press ALL the following keys, until you hear the "Bong" again : cmd + alt + P + R
After your can let your Mac start normally.

If the problem persist, redo the manipulation but stay your finger on the key until you have hear the "Bong" 5 times.


How can I stop the iPhone from buzzing when it is ringing? I finally found a nice ringtone for my iPhone but can barely hear it because the phone buzzes while ringing. How can I switch of the buzzing?

settings - sounds - and vibrate on ring to off!


How to remove a little "connection" between clips in 2 tracks in iMovie? This is the square I mean. I know what is it for. It means that two clips have strong connection in these particular places. But now I need to remove these relative connection:-) The question is HOW?

You can't. Audio tracks are attached to a specific video clip.

You can move them though: hold ⌥⌘ and click somewhere on the audio clip.


Does iPad 2 3G's GPS work without SIM card inserted? I own an iPad 2 with 3G but I've not inserted SIM card and I'm not planning to unless it's really necessary to get GPS working.

I was wondering if iPad 2 3G can navigate without SIM card (thru Navigon for example)?

Yes for products that have off-line maps (Navigon and Tom-Tom for example) you don't need a connection.

Some add-on services (e.g., Tom-Tom traffic) will need a connection.


What does Purgeable means in Storage under About This Mac section? I updated to macOS Sierra (16A319) and was checking my storage where I saw this extra division greyed out saying Purgeable.

What is the significance/meaning of Purgeable?

Purgeable is a distinct concept from the "Store infrequently used files on iCloud" functionality.  From Mac Help (available from the Help menu, search for "purgeable"):

  “purgeable space” — or space that macOS can free up when needed by  removing files from your computer. You can’t manually remove the files  that are designated purgeable, but macOS removes them as space is  required.

...

  "Purgeable: Contains locally stored files and documents that can be removed when space is needed, and then downloaded or generated again when the files are needed again by you or your Mac."

Effectively the OS has various caches, temp files, copies of things it downloaded, etc. that are being keeping around out of view of normal users, but they can be deleted if space is needed.

If you turn on the optimized storage feature (that stores infrequently used files from Documents and Desktop folders to iCloud), they may or may not be counted with along with the system purgeable files.  But even without turning on that feature, there are other purgeable files present.


Installation of bundled software failed on my MacBook Pro 10.6 I erased my drive and used the Mac OS X Install DVD and all went well. Then, I inserted the Applications Install DVD to install the bundled software but it failed. Here is what the message says:

The installation failed.
The Installer can't locate the data it needs to install the software. Check your install media or Internet connection and try again, or contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

I have Snow Leopard, 10.6.

I was having the same problem and I went to Apple Software Installer Update 1.0 (link).

It said:

  This update addresses an issue that may prevent certain Apple software from installing. This update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X 10.6.8.

Worked for me hope it works for you.


Dock icons disappear and/or go fuzzy Every now and then the icons in my Dock disappear completely after waking from sleep, except some of them go funny or fuzzy. See screenshot.

MacBook Pro Retina, 15", Mid 2014, i7, 16GB memory, often plugged into a Dell P2715Q 4K Display. El Capitan.

I've tried killall Dock in terminal to no avail, and rebooting doesn't do anything much.

Any thoughts on what's causing this, or how to force OS X to clear its cache of the icons or similar?

To clear the cache you need to delete the dock's plist.

Go to ~/Library/Preferences and delete com.apple.dock.plist.  Restart your Mac.  That should rebuild the icons.  I'm not sure why this is happening, maybe someone else here can help with that.


Can I modify the "move" calories for a pasta day? I have a streak of 333+ days of hitting my move goal and I'd like to keep it.  A few days ago, according to my iPhone today, I did only 418 instead of 420 calories -- so it says I didn't meet my goal. I'd like to fudge it since I could have easily spent two extra calories and, I'm pretty sure I exercised until it said I had completed my move and exercise goals, otherwise I would have kept going.

Is there any way to go back and add in the two extra calories so that my move streak will continue? I guess it's not a huge deal but I'm kinda bummed and feeling betrayed.

iOS is version 12.3.1, watchOS is version 5.2.1

If you move your time zones, you can extend “today” day to be longer at the expense of losing time “tomorrow”.
I take my fitness very seriously and I am obsessed with closing all the 3 rings for 5-6 days in a week and also with the awards. I challenge myself every month. This month I pushed myself a little harder and decided to aim for perfect month award. On March 30th, I was unable to close my move ring just by 1 calorie.
But I did something that worked to close my move ring for previous day. In my opinion this works only for people living in the eastern time zone. And can be done for only 1 previous day.
I went to settings on my phone, changed my time zone from New York to San Diego. Voila!! I gained additional 3 hours for the day, I closed my move ring with that one calorie I needed the most to get my perfect month award.
But you need to wait until 00:00 AM to change back your time zone. I tried to change back my time zone immediately after closing the ring but my watch got confused. So, I left my watch on charging and changed my time zone the next morning.
Yay!! I got my first perfect month award.
I seriously will not suggest anyone to do this on a regular basis. We need to be true to ourselves to achieve our goals. I was desperate for the perfect month award, I worked hard all month long for it and did not want to lose it by just 1 calorie.


What virtualization solution should I use if I want to use real partitions? I prefer to install each OS on its own partition and be able to boot it without virtualization or to boot it virtualized while I am under OS X.

The question is what virtualization solution does support this. Please answer only if it worked for you and also include some guidances.

So for, I was able to boot Ubuntu VM using Parallels, but I was not able to add a real  partition to VM under VirtualBox or VMware Fusion.

I've used raw disk access under VMWare Fusion.  It's less than intuitive, but it works.  The helper app (and google-fodder) is /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmware-rawdiskCreator.

Important: Consider this a "from-memory, basic idea of what the process requires", rather than a howto - please do google for "fusion vmware-rawdiskcreator" to find a proper walkthrough if you choose to go this route.  I can't promise my memory is accurate enough to trust your partitions to.

The biggest catch is that it won't find the partition unless it's been previously booted with Boot Camp, or you've used rEFIt's partitioning tool to sync the MBR. vmware-rawdiskCreator reads the partition list from the MBR, which isn't otherwise kept in sync with the GPT  (bios partition tables vs EFI partition tables).

Try:

$ /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmware-rawdiskCreator print /dev/disk0
Nr      Start       Size Type Id System
-- ---------- ---------- ---- -- ------------------------
 1          1  976773167 BIOS EE Unknown

(disk0 is your first disk).  If you get similar results to mine (one big partition type'd BIOS), you don't have the MBR synced with GPT.  rEFIt (refit.sf.net) is my preferred way to do this, but bootcamp will do it for OSes it supports.

If you do get a list of usable partitions, you then need to create a vmdk (VMware's disk format) pointing to the right partition.  This is done with

$ sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk0 n Filename lsilogic

Where /dev/disk0 is the physical disk containing the partition, n is the partition number listed by the first command (print /dev/disk0), and Filename is what you want to call the resulting disk image.

You can then change ownership of the two files it creates (Filename.vmdk and Filename-pt.vmdk), and use them as existing disk images when creating a VM.

Not so straight-forward :) It does work though; I've used this method to install linux on a machine that has a dead optical drive.


Flash higher CPU usage under OS X than Ubuntu? I recently installed Ubuntu 13.10 on a 2011 late Macbook pro. With the same version chrome and pepper flash plugin and flashblock extension to block irrevalent flash. When I watch some flash video online, I found that CPU usage is much higher under OS X Mavericks than on Ubuntu. And the MBP gets hot and fan runs very quickly under OS X, while in Ubuntu it is very cool as normal when watching same flash video online. I find it unintuitive because OS X should have better drivers than linux on MBP, making it more power-efficient and usually cooler. What could be the reason?

Since you can't make any assumptions about how Flash for Mac or either Flash for Linux are implemented or how they utilize efficient APIs of their host OS you can't make any statements about why performance behaves so differently.

As long as graphics acceleration for video playback is available on both OS's it should be Flash's task to correctly use it.
You might want to check if Hardware Acceleration is enabled in Flash on Mac OS. To do this, right-click into a Flash-Applet and select "Settings...". Then, in the first tab (Display), you should be offered a Check-Button labeled "Enable Hardware Acceleration".

Performance is also dependent on the video codec of the media file. HD content from youtube for example only takes 10% CPU-time for me, whereas Flash content from other websites may also get my fans started.


How do you import AVI Files to iTunes? How do you import AVI Files to iTunes? I know there is a program that lets you do it and automatically names tv shows and stuff, but I cant think of the name, Does anyone know of a program that does it?

Handbrake to covert to a compatible format.  You can fix the metadata in iTunes once you've imported it.

There are programs that will set the metadata based on the file name but unless you are planning to do many files, it may not be worth the trouble.  Are you using OS X or Windows?


How do you rotate a cell in Numbers (3.2)? I want to rotate the header row by 45 degrees to look like this (from Excel).

How do you do this in Numbers?

This is currently not possible within cells.

As a workaround, you can change the angle of the text labels for the X axis on a chart and use this as the header for your table.

Alternatively, you can create text boxes and rotate these.

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding this on the following page:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/numbers.html


Fake Webcam / Webcam Emulator Mac Os 10.7.4 64Bit running as a Virtual Machine. I am looking for fake webcam solution for Mac OS 10.7.4 64bit running as a Virtual Machine.

What I tried:
ManyCam - only works with 32bit Browser and then not with all flash applications
CamCamX - crashes on startup
CamTwist - Crash

Is there any other solution out there?

OS X's Quartz Extreme video processing framework and services are not available under OS X 10.7.4 when running inside any kind of Virtual Machine.


How can I find a changelog of core utility versions in OS X? I often research what utilities are available on different POSIX-like operating systems in the interest of portability, but I haven't been able to find a stable listing of what versions of various utilities are included with different releases of OS X. I usually just keep the latest version of OS X on my own machine, so I can't simply read the manpages of older versions to see what features are available. Is there a listing or some other way to find out what UNIX features have changed between releases?

Apple documents the open source components for each release at the web page:

http://www.opensource.apple.com

Internally, they clearly do work before it's publicly documented as we have 10.9.2 out today but only 10.9 is listed publicly with the versions.


MacBook Pro 2015 Fan Issues I have a refurbished 2015 MacBook Pro 13", Intel i7 Processor, 16GB RAM and 512 SSD. When I first began using it I noticed it got unusually hot rather often, and so I downloaded Macs Fan Control to keep tabs on it. But whenever I do anything remotely resource intensive, for example playing music or using a virtual environment or using Xcode or VSCode, the CPU gets to temperatures over 100 degrees celsius. This is concerning and I believe it may have made the computer reboot a time or two, though that may have been something else. I am able to control it by keeping tabs on it but it is rather annoying and very worrying that the temperature gets that high. Are there any reasons why it does this?

Those temps are most likely fine.
MBP models usually range from about 40ºC (104ºF) to 100ºC (212ºF) depending on whether the CPU is idle or under load. CPU temps (just like ambient temperatures) typically have a bearing on GPU temps too, especially within the extremely confined spaces of a MacBook Pro.
If you'd like, you can refer to the Intel Mac Temperature Database to see the various temperature ranges reported by users. You can also filter the list by model etc.
If you're still concerned, you can reset the System Management Controller (SMC).
The SMC is basically a chip in Intel-based Macs that manages many of the physical aspects of your Mac. This includes power buttons, LED indicators, cooling fans, how your Mac works in its various sleep modes, and so on.
Because the SMC is a sub-system of your Mac, it is not dependent on an operating system being installed.
You may be interested in reading Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac for further info and instructions on how to reset it.


How to restore OS X on MacBook Air after installing Windows 8? After installing Windows 8 MacBook Air is not booting. I want to revert back to  OS X. I need help on how to do that.

press the Option key + R
select the disk that installed
Mac OSx.
maybe you're starting with
Windows.

Now if you want to
a new installation, you will
need access to another Mac,
to mount the flash drive installation.
follow these steps: http://osxdaily.com/2015/09/30/create-os-x-el-capitan-boot-install-drive/


Changing the Key Modifiers (CMDCTRL) affects VM I changed my ⌘CMD to behave like ⌃CTRL and ⌃CTRL to behave like a ⌘CMD, but this affects also my VirtualBox VM.

So I do ⌃CTRL+C for Copy in Mac, but I gotta do ⌘CMD+C to copy in Ubuntu...

That's pretty confusing, is there a way to go around this?

I saw that VMWare has this possibility, VirtualBox not.

I know use a headless VM (No GUI) so I use the OSX Terminal for all operations, behavior stays the same.


Preventing Chrome from signing me out from Gmail when browsing in icognito When using Google Chrome in incognito mode on iOS on iPhone, it signs me out from Gmail after one or tow hours: how can I prevent it?

If I'm correct, using incognito mode means it doesn't save cookies or other caching method to keep you signed in on your device.


How to create a user without a password in Catalina? I have a new computer and want to create a guest user whom's all data is not deleted every time it logs out. On my old computer I just created a user called guest and left the password field empty but now, in Catalina, the password field is required (although my other computer's guest account remain passwordless even after upgrading to Catalina).

Any workarounds? Or can the password somehow be deleted after the account is created?

Please note: the built-in guest account functionality doesn't fit my purpose.

I'm running macOS Catalina 10.15.2 and guest is a reserved name, so you cannot use it.

I also just created a new standard account without a password. Just didn't put in a password and followed through with the prompts appropriately.

Note: My Mac is not encrypted and does not have the T2 chip. Either or both of these may require a password to be assigned.

One thing you can try is in Terminal use the passwd command to change the password to a blank password. This worked for me on my system, however keep in mind the note above.


iPhone 6 water damage dark screen issue So yesterday I dropped my iPhone into the toilet, it was literally submerged for less than 15 seconds and after taking it out I left it in my airing cupboard overnight to dry. Today the phone seems to be completely functional other than a very dark screen (changing brightness won't help).

Was wondering what the best course of action would be and if this is fixable.

If you had been able to turn it off right away, and put it in a bag of rice, I have seen that work for some people, at least for a limited time. There are claims out there of various methods.

But if the screen is bad, at minimum you have to replace that, that's virtually certain. You don't say what model it is, so not sure whether that's possible or how much it might cost.

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

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

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

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

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

To clarify a statement above, with Mac products, if you add a third-party hard drive, for example, or memory, PROPERLY, without damaging anything in the process, you can still take your Mac to an Apple store for service and warranty.

Again this was a year ago, the last time I dealt with it, but if an Apple Specialist or Genius opens up an iOS product and sees a third-party screen or battery, etc, they immediately stop working on it, in most all cases. You'd be amazed how fine an eye these Geniuses have for sniffing out third-party screens -- so I'd only go third-party (non-Apple) parts on something that's out of warranty.


Game crashes to desktop in Windows 10 Boot Camp MacBook Air 2015 11" (Intel HD 6000) I installed windows 10 on my MBA 2015 11" with Boot Camp, did everything, installed the drivers using the support software. But, whenever i tried to open a game ( far cry 2) it crashed.

Things I've done:

Installed direct x 9 . Didnt work
Installed every required .NET library and VC redistribution. Didn't work.

How do I fix this?

Just a little bit of research on Far Cry 2 we get the following:

System Requirements:

2GB RAM
256MB VRAM
Windows XP 32bit

Your MacBook Air came with either 4 or 8GB of RAM.  Regardless, if you are running Boot Camp with a 32bit version of Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, whatever), the most RAM you are going to be able to access is 3.5GB

Integrated Graphics:
Intel HD 6000 uses up to 1.5GB of shared memory.  From Apple's website:

  Apple computers using newer versions of Intel HD Graphics as the
  primary GPU dynamically allocate up to 1.5 GB of system memory.

So, you are at a max of 2GB RAM.  Win10 requires a minimum of 1GB of RAM with 2GB recommended.  You're at the very edge of what the system calls for.  Additionally, it specifies Windows XP 32bit.  If you are running a 64bit OS, there's no telling how this will function, if at all and there's no compatibility statement that I could find with respect to Windows 10.

However, from a discussion forum there's this little quote (re:  FC2 on MBA w/ HD3000):

  I can say with 100% certianty that a vid card like yours being intel
  onboard junk will NOT run the game in any way. Infact i suggest
  against buying anything made in the last 5 years and trying to play.

and

  I highly doubt that. The only way to be sure is to try, but I think
  you'd be wasting time and money.

So, you may get it to work in Boot Camp under Windows XP 32bit but because of the architecture of the MBA, it may not be worth the effort.


Is an iPhone 5C suitable for Development in 2017? I am working on a Unity game, and I cannot afford to buy both an iPhone 7, and my main phone that I am upgrading to (Galaxy S8), nor can I afford to buy a Mac right now. Would developing on a Virtual Machine running on a Windows Laptop, along with using an iPhone 5C to test and debug on be a good idea? I have heard some problems with developing with the 5C due to the 32 bit processor, but I do not know if that would also apply to games.

"Virtual Machine running on a Windows Laptop"

Good luck with that one. There is basically no 3D acceleration in any VM for Windows running macOS currently available. Linux is able to achieve this in some cases (KVM + spare macOS-supported PCIe GPU), but it has its own set of different limitations that may break the deal for you. And it's also banned by macOS's EULA.

"along with using an iPhone 5C to test and debug"

iOS 11 will make the 5C obsolete, as well as any and all 32-bit apps, so you won't be able to do much with a 5C. (Unless you're developing for less than 3 months ;) )

"I do not know if that would also apply to games."

It would, and even more so. There are many technical limitations with 32-bit apps that 64-bit OSes do not have, notably the restriction to no more than 4GB of RAM. It is relatively safe to assume that Apple ended 32-bit app support because the iPad Pros push right into that 4GB limit, and there can only be more and more RAM installed into iOS devices.

What would I do?

If you're going solo, make your current laptop a Hackintosh (it breaks the EULA but it's your best option for now) and run all your apps in the Simulator or on friends' devices. I say this for two reasons:

If you don't make enough money to buy a Mac (~$1000+), you likely aren't a very big company and Apple will never bother to sue you.
If you are a big enough company that Apple notices that you are using a Hackintosh, you probably have enough money for a few Macs by now, so you can buy one.

Better yet, go develop for a company that has money for you. Then you can earn money to buy your own devices for your own projects and future jobs. Besides, you can probably ask for company funding for a Mac (probably a MacBook Pro 13 Fn, but it's better than nothing) straight-away.


Is it possible to create a bootable installation partition for a PowerPC mac using an Intel-based Mac? I had a hard drive failure on my old PowerPC G4 Mac. I need that old Mac to be able to run OS X and OS 9, because I can't retrieve and convert some of the files from the secondary hard drive unless I can run the old programs on the old OS (Like the old Hypercard stacks).
I've been trying to load an image of the installation disk (.dmg) onto an external firewire drive.
I did it using Terminal and the "sudo asr" command, copied that .dmg file, and the partition on my hard drive looks like and behaves like an installation disk (formatted the Hard Drive with Mac OS Extended, Journaled, Apple Partition map format, not GUID).
When I hook it up to the firewire port and boot the G4 holding the "Option" key down, it doesn't bring up anything on the screen where you would select which drive/volume you want to boot from.
Is this an issue with trying to build this from an Intel-based Mac? I'd love to just run the installer and put it onto that hard drive on a partition, but I can't run that installer on an Intel-based Mac.
EDIT: PLEASE DO NOT SUGGEST THE OTHER SIMILARLY TITLED QUESTION, IT IS NOTHING CLOSE TO THE SAME.
I need to do the following -
USING AN EXTERNAL HD with a FireWire port -

Have a bootable installation partition with the OS X 10.4 (or 10.5)
on it.

Be able to build that partition using an Intel Mac.

Have that external HD be recognized by the G4 PowerMac when I boot
it up and hold down the Option key.

I then want to be able to run the installer and load OS 10.4 or
10.5, and OS 9 onto other partitions on that external HD with FireWire and designate it as the startup volume for that machine.

If no one has any insight, I'm considering the possibility that the firmware for the external drive case FireWire port is somehow not readable by 2001 or so G4 PowerMac. I know that an older Intel-based MacBook Pro running OS 10.6 won't format or partition that when hooked up via USB, and indications are that the error has to do with the USB interface. I'm going to get a couple SATA to IDE converter cards, load the installer disk onto one of these SSD SATA drives, plug it into the internal drive interface and install onto a second, empty one.

Maybe this link helps to accomplish what you described:
Installing OSX onto PPC using Intel Mac and Firewire
If it works, let us know.


Yosemite Spotlight Calculator suddenly stopped working I use Spotlight's Calculator feature occasionally, but I've noticed that it has stopped working recently.  Instead I get a  "No Results" message:

I've verified that Calculator is enabled in Spotlight System Preferences.  Restarting the computer does not help.  I also tried disabling and re-enabling the Calculator setting in Spotlight.

Any other ideas?

Delete the spotlight preferences file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist

And then reboot. I was having the same problem and that fixed it for me.


Can I retrieve my activation and deactivation history? I turned off my find my iphone in my settings about a year ago. My friend said that he swore it was on a couple of months ago and I swore that it wasn't because I just turned it back on today. Is there a way to check a history of that? We tried the email search but my email wasn't much help. Is there anything I can do to prove that its been off this whole time?

No, no actual history or log of either activation of deactivation exists.

Apple, though, sends to your iCloud account an email whenever your device gets the Find My Phone feature deactivated.


loosing vi mode in terminal My favorite text editor beeing VIM made me add the follwing line to my ~/.bashrc

set -o vi

As expected, hitting escape lets me execute a vi command, BUT ONLY ONE ?!?
For example if I do this:

escape, b, b

it jumps to the beginning of the word and then types "b" to the line instead of jumping another word back.

This happens on all my osx boxes (10.6 and 10.7) and non of the linuxes I use.

Anyone else experiencing this? Or is this expected?

You can use C-xC-e to go into editor mode. This will use vim if your $EDITOR is set to vim. Also, if you switch to zsh there are options to have a psuedo-normal mode on the command line. See this blog post describing it: http://www.civet.ws/?p=165


How to block an app's access to a specific website using the hosts file? I want to block an app from connecting to a specific website using the hosts file. How can I do that?

Is something like this possible:

127.0.0.1     foo.com:spotify

The hosts file is used by the system and can't be used to restrict access for specific apps.

See I'm trying to block game "X" from accessing the internet including updating for alternative software which is able to block specific apps from accessing specific sites.


Can't encrypt external hard drive I'm trying to encrypt an external drive of mine using Apple's built in drive encryption tool into OS X through Finder.

The drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended(Journaled) and I'm plugging the drive through USB 2.0. Also I'm running Mavericks with all the latest updates.

Even though after a restart or switching to another Mac, I'm getting the following error:

  Unable to create a new Core Storage logical volume group.

Any suggestions?

OK, I'm running El Capitan OS X 10.11. The Apple app "Disk Utility" is useless to create encryption, as it typically returns

  Operation Failed with status 28

So the fix is to use a little terminal magic.  After adding your USB drive to the Mac, run terminal
At the command-line prompt, enter:

diskutil list

You will see your main (internal) disk listed, as well as your USB:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +499.1 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 B0B7A5AA-7D8D-41E3-8565-82E4E1D685D5
                                 Unlocked Encrypted
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *31.5 GB    disk2
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 KINGSTON                31.5 GB    disk2s1

You can spot your external drive by its size -- mine is 32 GB, which, after overhead is around 31.5.  In other words, its name is KINGSTON at drive identifier disk2s1.
Now, using your USB drive's device identifier in place of disk2s1, pick a suitable name for your new drive.  I like thing2:

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ thing2 /dev/disk2

About 30 seconds of progress later, you should get:

Finished erase on disk2

Now, open a Finder window, and right click your newly named disk.  Pick the option encrypt .  In my case, the USB 3.0 encryption took about 12 minutes of effort for 32 GB (45MB/s write).  You will know you are done, when the drive activity light goes out.


iTunes Connect: What happens on devices when I delete an app? We've got an application that we're overhauling and putting a new skin on.  Marketing within our company has made the decision to cut ties with the previous application and try to market this new application instead.  Because of this, we have to delete the current application on iTunes Connect.  This I can do.  What is being asked is what kinds of ramifications are there to deleting the application?  What will happen on a customer's device that has already downloaded the app?  Obviously, if they never connect to the internet, it can continue to work as before.  But does Apple do anything special when a cert is canceled or removed or an application is deleted?  Do they wipe away the application if you try and sync the device to iTunes?

No matter if you delete it on your developer account, the users will continue with that app until they will update or delete it. No more options here.


Google Calendar Notification not making any sound on iPhone 6 I am on iOS 12.1.2

I would like to use only ONE app for all my reminders and task management.

I think Google Calendar fits the bill nicely. Beautiful web-interface, pretty app, reminders, events etc.

However, there is one problem. Two actually.

I can't configure a sound for it like I can for Apples Calendar app.
Even if I allow sounds in Settings > Notifications on iPhone, and set notifications for events in the app itself. I get the notification alright, but no sound.

Ideally, I would like to hear a sound and be able to configure it.

Try either turning your sound all the way up or actually turning on your ringer for your phone.

If that doesn't work, go into your settings and make sure that the ringers sound is all the way up and see if that works.


Receive iMessage on my lowtech phone I use iMessage on my mac so now many of my friend and coworker uses it like if it was SMS.

I would like to know if there is a way to redirect my iMessage on my generic mobile device (not apple nor android)?

You might wanna try iMessage on Android which provide a nice soft


Triple boot macOS High Sierra, Linux Mint, and Windows with rEFInd I have a MacBook 2015 running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4,I installed Windows 10 using Boot Camp. After that I created two partitions swap,root   to do installed Linux Mint. Finally I installed rEFInd to manage the three OS's,  but where reboot I can't access Windows. It's show message error "rEFInd - Booting OS Starting bootmgfw.efi Using load option '' BlInitializeLibrary failed 0xc00000bb ", How to fix it?

I will formalize @luctp's answer seeing as the user is gone and I have (sort of) confirmed that the instructions work:

So here's how the error looks like, when trying to boot Windows from rEFInd:

The steps below will make the error 0xc00000bb effectively disappear and, for @luctp, seemed to be enough to fix the triple boot. However, in my case, more work had to be done as I explain at the end of the answer.

To get rid of the 0xc00000bb:

Download and install gdisk.
Disable SIP, otherwise you get error the following error when running gdisk: Problem opening /dev/disk0 for reading! Error is 1.
Create a new Protective MBR for your disk using gdisk, start by running on the terminal: sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
(Optional) Choose "p" to have a look at your current GPT partitions, and potentially create a backup of them. Also look here for better ways of backing up the partition table.
Choose option "x", then option "n" to request the creation of a fresh Protective MBR, then option "w" to write the requested changes to the disk, confirm with Y and exit the tool with "q".

After the steps above, Windows 10 should indeed start booting (whereas before it would simply get stuck in rEFInd).

In my case, however, the Windows 10 EFI boot splash would show on the screen for a few seconds and then suddenly reboot.

What ended up being the solution for having a working triple-boot in my Mac was following David's Alternative Second Answer, specifically the "The First Way". Now, I can boot to any of the three OSs. Not only that, but I can boot them from either rEFInd directly or through GRUB (for Ubuntu/Windows) after rEFInd or after pressing the Option key on boot.


I need help, even t in my account i can't buy individually because my family sharing keeps asking for Credit Card of the manager! I want to rent movie worth $4.99, and i have $7.39 but it still asks me for Credit Card security code from manager!

This would occur if the credit card the family manager set up was declined the last time it was tried, and/or there is a balance owing to Apple for a prior purchase that did not go through. In any case, the family manager will have to resolve the issue.


Is there a way to limit Mail to only keep the last 50 mails? Is there a way to limit Mail to keep only the last 50 emails and delete the older ones? I am using gmail, and most of the stuff are kept there, I do not need to have everything downloaded to the Mail client. Trying to save some HDD space, as I used to have a few gigs of mail stored in /library/mail

Using OS X Lion.

Thanks.

Mail can do something sorta like what you want.

Mail > Preferences
Accounts tab
Mailbox Behaviors tab
Trash section

On the line that says "Permanently erase deleted messages when", you can select one month old or one week or even one day.  That will help get rid of old email and save you some space.


Extract Chrome browser bookmarks in Mavericks, as Chrome is EOL Model ID: MacBookPro6,1

Chrome browser is no longer supported running in Mavericks. see this article
The report said one can use Firefox or Safari instead.  However, I had html links saved within the Chrome browser.  How can I extract the html links in it? Which directory should I start looking?

UPDATED: Thanks for everyone who help me to find the books, I ended up finding it using terminal application.  It is in the directory /Users/$USER/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Profile 1
/Bookmarks

Another way to look for the bookmarks is if you had sync the bookmarks to google, one can go to the www.google.com/bookmarks to retrieve the bookmark.

Just to be clear... When you say "I had html links saved within the Chrome browser.", by that do you mean that you had bookmarked various web pages by using the Chrome > Bookmarks > Bookmark This Page...  or Bookmark All Tabs...? If yes, then the file you want is the

/Users/$USER/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Bookmarks

file, and I believe it's in JSON format.

However, you'll need to use the Bookmark Manager in Firefox to import the data.

In Firefox, click Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks or just press: Shift-Command-B

From the Library window that opens, in the Toolbar, the last icon on the right click and select: Import Data from Another Browser...

Then walk through the Import Wizard making the appropriate selections along the way.


How should I restore my Library folder from backup archive? My 6 year old Macbook accidentally got soaked with water and I just bought a new one to replace it.  Everything was backed up with Crashplan online so I restored my data using their instructions but instead of overwriting my new user folder, it just put the restored user folder inside of the new user folder.

After everything downloaded from their server, I moved all my documents and pictures to the proper folders but I am not sure what I should do about the library folder.  I am thinking I should try to restore just the Library folder and direct the software to overwrite any duplicate files.

Is there any harm in just leaving the second library folder where it is?

Edit:  I should also note that some of my installed applications were not reinstalled with the restore
 but I'm not too worried about those because there weren't that many to begin with and I plan to just reinstall them.

I like to make an admin user - new short name and then restore the files from CrashPlan to /Users before I create the Mac log in account. That way, you fix any permissions and user ID conflicts.

When you make a new account with a specific short name and the folder with that short name exists - macOS will then ask you if you want to reuse that folder and it proceeds to use / fix / upgrade any settings you have restored and then makes the new user active.

The harm in leaving the new folder in the wrong place is you don't get the files and settings used and your system will make up new settings and files in the proper location as you launch each app.

Code42 support for CrashPlan is also very good if you get stuck with restoring things and you want some individual help or have back and forth type questions that don't work well here.


Games from iPad to iPhone? Is there a way to start one game on the iPhone and continue it going on to your iPad?

This is dependent on how the game's developer has coded it. In principle it is possible that the developer saves the state somewhere on the internet but my guess is this is only normally done for games with a network or social component. It may even be possible to do a sync via iTunes on a desktop computer shared by the iPhone and iPad (i.e. sync the iPhone with the computer then plug the iPad into the computer). However, all of this depends on how the game was coded and as far as I know there is no general way of doing this.


Can the text message field in iOS 10 Messages be moved to be more friendly to left-handed users? I have noticed that with iOS 10 Messages that the text message field is in a very inconvenient place for left-handed users.

As you can see, the lesser-used photo, gestures, and store button are in easy reach of the left-handed user's dominant thumb while the frequently-used text message field is far away from it. The inverse is true for right-handed users.

Is there any way to changed this so that the text message field is under a left-handed user's thumb? Perhaps as an accessibility option?

No, there's no documentation from Apple that indicates whether or not the buttons in Messages can be moved to the opposite site.  This is actually a good opportunity for the app development or jailbreak tweaking community.

I would recommend contacting Apple and giving them your feedback.


How can I make Time Machine work with my Netgear WNDR3700 router? The story is this:

I just upgraded to Mac OS Lion and as it turns out it won't work with my Samba share in the way Snow Leopard used to, for TimeMachine backups. After a bit of Googling I found that this is because TimeMachine now requires NetTalk 2.2 and AFP. So my question is this: How do I get an AFP share to work on my router? I currently use DD-WRT but I've had no luck installing custom software to it, recall it having something to do with there not being a package manager for the architecture used in the router I have.

I don't mind reflashing the router to either original firmware, if anyone can confirm that works, or some other firmware such as Tomato.

Look at http://netatalk-ddwrt.blogspot.com/

Try the builds mentioned and install them on your router with the following commands:

ipkg install libdb_4.7.25-3_mipsel.ipk
ipkg install netatalk_2.2.0-2_mipsel.ipk

make sure that you use

ipkg install libdb_4.7.25-3_mipsel.ipk -force-downgrade

in case your libdb version is newer than 4.7.24.

Best regards,
 nGoot


History commands render incorrect on Bash Vi mode I'm having this werid and really annoying issue in bash vi-mode.
Env:
Mac 10.9.2, iTerm 2 1.0 or Terminal.app, $TERM={screen-256color|xterm-256color|xterm|vt}
Repro steps:

Run some long commands (like 'some_long_commands_long_long')
Press Esc and then press k.

The issue is:

I do see "some_long_commands_long_long" on my command line. But the cursor is not located at the beginning, instead it's on the 12nd char, see screenshot

If I press A to append some other text, the cursor will go beyond the command, which means the REAL command is start from where the cursor is located at the first place, the rendering is wrong.

I searched on google but ended up with nothing..... Anyone has a better idea about this? Thanks a lot...

After debugging for quite a while I finally figured it out. It's an issue caused by PS1. Basically I forgot to wrap my colored ">" with "\[" and "\]".