Delete all calendars and contacts in iOS I'd like to delete all calendars and contacts on an iPod Touch with iOS 5.0.1 without affecting calendars and contacts in OS X.

I've read guides that instruct to disable calendars for accounts in order to delete calendars. In my case none of my accounts have ever had calendars enabled. Calendars have only been transferred by cable using iTunes.

Can this be done without a third party app? If not, what would be needed to accomplish it?

Delete an Existing Calendar :

In iPhone Calendar, tap on the Calendars button at the top-left of the iPhone Calendar display.
Tap on the Edit button at the top-left of the Calendars display.
Tap on the calendar you wish to delete.
Scroll to reveal the Delete Calendar button at the bottom of the Edit Calendar display and tap on it.
Confirm the deletion by tapping on Delete Calendar in the confirmation display.
Tap Done at the top-left of the Edit Calendars display.
Tap Done at the top-right of the Calendars display to return to the main display.

Delete a contact :

Select the contact's name.
Click on the "edit" button in the upper right hand corner.
Scroll down and select delete.

If you want to delete contacts in bulk you can use these apps :

Paid :

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/contactdel-delete-multiple/id399148990?mt=8
how to : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHn6ABEDk1o

Free :

Download the app 'Groups' by Qbix
Link : https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/groups/id407855546?mt=8
As soon as you open the groups app it has all your contacts.
You can tap multiple contacts (a red dot to the left of each one) and
then at the top on the right there is a little white arrow that says
"actions".
Tap on that & you can delete, copy, or e-mail all of the
selected contact at once.


Get a warning messages on system logs ? I started for some reason OSX's Log console and just found out someone was attacking me with ssh connexion's

I had over 500 of these messages (just the user name was chaging) in 5 minutes :

23/09/13 14:55:04,638 sshd[18830]: error: PAM: unknown user for illegal user crystal from 193.183.98.218 via 192.168.0.12

Do you know a way to get some kind of warning popup when a process sends a lot of logs like here ?

I do not know how to monitor the console for a specific message and send an alert.

However, there is a alternative approaches to monitoring or even block a specific ssh activity.

Without taking any credit (other than finding it), I would advice you to look up at some suggested solutions here that might apply to your situation.

Getting notified when someone logs into a server using SSH or Remote Desktop


2x Thunderbolt Display color issues I just got my 2 Thunderbolt displays for my MacBook Pro Retina.

I connected the 2 screens on one Thunderbolt port by using the Thunderbolt chain solution. (connecting screen 2 to screen 1 and screen 1 to the MBPR).

Those screens all work fine, but the color calibration is a big question mark.
While the screen 2 is showing a clear white, screen 1 is having this yellowish white which I dont really like. How can I fix that? Color profiles in the System Preferences → Displays seem to me that I can only calibrate screen 2…

I have fixed the problem. What I did is: under System Preference - > Displays go to Color Tab. I calibrated both the displays differently to match color with each other.


Migrate from HFS+ to APFS in-place Using macOS Sierra, how do I migrate/switch/transition/upgrade the boot volume/partition from HFS+ to APFS in-place?

Is this advisable, or perhaps already done by the Sierra installer?

As of Jun 2017 according to this link, during macOS High Sierra install, file system can be upgraded from HFS+ to APFS:

  How do I upgrade to Apple File System?

  The macOS 10.13 installer offers nondestructive in-place upgrades from
  HFS+ to APFS for bootable volumes. You can use Disk Utility to convert
  external volumes from HFS+ to APFS format.


iTunes keeps restoring deleted playlists Since I use iTunes Match, every few days iTunes restores some of my old playlists that I previously deleted. I think these are only the default playlists that iTunes comes with (Classical music, Music videos, Recently added, ...) but I'm not totally sure. At the same time, the "iTunes Match" link reappears in my sidebar, even though I can't do anything with it.

What triggers the reappearence of my old playlists? How can I prevent it and get rid of these playlists forever?

Try Store -> "Update iTunes Match" to make sure the changes are synchronized.


Tags - best practice for using tags to replace hierarchical folder structure I am interested in replacing my hierarchical folder structure with the tag system.

Are there any best practices (or do you have personal experience) of how to use tags as a replacement for the hierarchical file structure?

Experts recommend that you should set up the minimal hierarchical folder structure that is logical for you, and use tags for all other categories.
For example, Kerry Gleeson's classic book The Personal Efficiency Program (1994, 4th edition 2009) recommends the following three folders: 1. Working, 2. Reference, 3. Archives. "Working" would contain files related to projects you have not yet finished (organized into subfolders by project); "Archives" would contain finished projects (perhaps organized into subfolders by year or month); "Reference" would contain files that are unrelated to particular projects. David Allen's classic book Getting Things Done (2001) recommends similar categories.
But Gleeson and Allen's recommendations are just examples; use whatever folder structure seems right for you. That's one of the lessons of the book The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff (2016) by human–computer interaction researchers Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker. Bergman and Whittaker describe "the user-subjective approach to personal information management" which has three principles:

Organize stuff by project, just like Gleeson and Allen recommended, as I mentioned above (and in addition to creating a project folder in your folder hierarchy, you can also create a tag for the project, and create a Smart Folder to retrieve all items tagged with that project tag, including email and calendar events, as described below);
Organize stuff by its importance to you, which means that stuff you think is important should be highly visible and accessible, and stuff you think is less important should be less visible, so as not to distract you with clutter (part of the purpose of the "Archives" folder mentioned above is to make older, closed projects less visible, and hierarchical folders in general are great for hiding stuff that is less important);
Organize stuff by context, which means in connection to related attributes: internal context includes your thoughts while you were interacting with an item (these thoughts can be put into tags, as Brett Terpstra describes in a quotation below), external context includes the place where you were or the other items that you were using while you were using an item (these contexts can be put into tags or links); social context includes other people related to the item, such as other people who have edited the item; and temporal context includes when you last edited an item, why, and what state you left it in (this information is put in, for example, a file's date modified and date created, and in the file versioning system available in macOS since Lion (10.7), and more explicitly in the "commit" messages used in version control systems such as Git).

You can manage tags in many ways, which I will describe in detail below:

in the Finder,
in Spotlight searches and Smart Folders,
in third-party apps,
on the command line,
in scripts,
in Save dialog boxes, and
in many apps, by clicking on the title bar of a document window to see and edit a list of tags for that document.

In the Finder, make sure you have the Edit Tags button enabled in the toolbar of Finder windows (it is enabled by default, but if you disabled it you can enable it again from the Finder menu View > Customize Toolbar...) and the Tags list enabled in the sidebar of Finder windows (it too is enabled by default, but if you disabled it you can enable it again from the Finder menu Finder > Preferences... > Sidebar). You can customize the list of tags in the sidebar from the Finder menu Finder > Preferences... > Tags. In the Finder, you can select file(s) and then add or remove tags by using the Edit Tags button (add a keyboard shortcut in the Keyboard system preference pane if you wish) or the Get Info window (command + I) or the Inspector modal window (option + command + I).
You can search by tags in the search field in the toolbar of Finder windows: just start typing the name of a tag, and a menu will drop down with a list of tags: click on the desired tag to finish the search. (Then click on the Save button if you want to save the search as a Smart Folder.) You can search for tags in Spotlight searches by typing the prefix tag: and then the tag name. In both of these search fields, you can also search for multiple tags at once and use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT (or the minus sign –, which means NOT) to narrow search results: for example, tag:trip NOT tag:france is equivalent to tag:trip -tag:france. If you search your entire computer with Spotlight, you can also edit the tags of any email (from Mail.app), calendar events (from local or iCloud calendars in Calendar.app), or reminders (from Reminders.app) that appear in the search results; this is a great way to tag items from multiple apps for inclusion in a single tag search result or Smart Folder.
The Finder is not always the best way to browse by tags. Some people have called tags "Finder tags"—but this phrase is a misnomer because tags are an extended attribute in the filesystem and are not limited only to the Finder! You can also tag files and browse by tags in third-party apps such as Fresh and Leap from Ironic Software. I find Leap to be an especially excellent way to manage tags, thanks to its tag cloud and many ways of viewing files that are not available in the Finder. You can also index your files in the information-management app DEVONthink, which reads and writes standard tags but also allows you to organize tags into a hierarchy, which allows for what librarians call faceted classification.
The easiest way to use tags on the command line is to install James Berry's command-line tool tag, which can be installed with either of two package managers: Homebrew (brew install tag) or MacPorts (sudo port install tag). After installing tag, you can use it to search for tags and to tag files on the command line; for more information, consult tag --help or man tag. You can also use tag in scripts, either stand-alone shell scripts or as part of an Automator workflow.
Here is the tagging philosophy of software developer and tag enthusiast Brett Terpstra:

The beauty of tagging, as you may know, is that you can easily assign multiple categorizations and topics to each item, rather than just having them exist at one location which defines it as a type or part of a static collection. I still use the shallow hierarchy of folders that drill down to individual projects and topics, so it's not a "one pile" deal. I couldn't function like that; it's difficult to weed, and if metadata is lost, so is the file, essentially. I use folders to maintain filesystem sanity. I use tags and other metadata to maintain my sanity.
I also use tags on iCal events, emails, web sites and other elements of my system. They're easy to filter in searches and allow me to make a project "folder" that contains more types of data than Finder would normally make convenient.
[...]
The secret, which I've learned from a few years of doing this, is to tag intelligently, sparingly and consistently. Being liberal with tags like "important" or "flagged" just means more upkeep and reviews that have to be done to keep the tags relevant. While tags like "neat" or "supercool" seem silly to me, I use one "inspiration" tag on anything that I'm saving just because it's, well, inspirational. I have a Smart Folder in Finder that pulls up everything with that tag, and then I can filter the files based on date, type, etc. If I add additional tags, they are pretty general, such as "color," "webdesign," or "productivity." These are big buckets I can dive into when I need an idea, or a kick in the pants. The tags on project and research files tend to be more specific, and I can drill down to precise sets of files by typing a few words in Tags or HoudahSpot.
To keep the cruft down, I use tags which aren't already defined by other metadata like the creation or modified date, the filetype, the filename, etc. I do tag files with the name of their parent project or topic, even though it's often redundant to the folder hierarchy. This allows me to tie projects together across multiple folders, disks or even servers. Sometimes a file is more strongly tied to a topic than it is to an individual project. Say it's a general reference item or a stock photo that I gathered while working on a specific project, but that I know I'll need again. I put it into a reference folder or photo collection, and tag it with the related project. It's easy to view it in the context of the project with a tag search, but part of a larger collection of similar items at the same time.
When in doubt, I usually choose tags based on the first thought that pops into my head. Chances are, when I'm looking for it again in a year, I'll have the same thought. It doesn't always work, but I've had a pretty good success rate over the last couple of years. As often as possible I try to reuse tags; a tag that reveals one or two files is a useless tag. My "Yearly Review" includes weeding out tags that have very few associated files, or that could be merged into more common tags.

Keep in mind that you may lose your tags if you transfer files to a filesystem that does not support tags, or if you use a version control system like Git that does not support tags. Some important reading on this topic includes:

Brett Terpstra's blog post "How to lose your tags"
The Ask Different question "Are tags portable, and if so how?"


Simplest way to transfer photos from PC to iPad (not sync-all)? I'd like to transfer selected photos from my PC to an iPad Air 2 running iOS 9.2. This thread shows how to transfer from iPad to PC (Use Windows Explorer and treat iPad as a camera), and this thread suggests using Dropbox.

Can I use Windows Explorer and have the photos show up in the camera roll on my iPad? If not, what's the easiest way of doing so without syncing?

Note: I can see and copy JPGs from the iPad to my PC with Windows Explorer. I am not able to copy from my PC to the iPad.

The easiest way to get photos from a PC to an iOS device would be backing up certain photos to a cloud service like Google Photos or Dropbox. There is no way to get photos from PC into the iOS Camera Roll that I am aware of. Check out Google Photos. It would be the most seamless solution.


For applications that do not store Quick Look information within the file, where does Lion (or a Server) store that information? Some applications can store Quick Look information (previews and thumbnails) within the file. Others can not.

Two aspects to this question

For a file that is local and without integral Quick Look information:

where does Lion store that information?

For a file that is remote, on an AFP server (Mac OS X Server (Leopard)/AFP 3.2+ or greater) and without integral Quick Look information:

does Server store the information remotely?

(An AFP client can cache some information locally, with limitations, but I strongly suspect that there must be a more permanent store.)

Initial guesses

Much Quick Look information is stored in the attributes B-tree.

If so, an attributes B-tree in a more modern version of Mac OS X Server may be potentially better (than older versions of Server) for AFP clients where bandwidth is limited.

Please, does anyone have more definite answers?

Reference and other items of interest

Quick Look — Wikipedia

Mac OS X v10.6 to v10.7 API Diffs: QuickLook Changes

Apple Filing Protocol Programming Guide: AFP Client Caching: File Metadata Caching

I don't know whether Quick Look-related information is classed as metadata for AFP client caching purposes.

Technical Note TN1150: HFS Plus Volume Format: Attributes File, in particular:

  IMPORTANT:
  The exact organization of the attributes B-tree has not been fully designed. Specifically:

  the structure of the keys in the attribute B-tree has not been finalized and is subject to change, and
  addition attribute's file data record types may be defined.

Quick Look Programming Guide: Quick Look Architecture

Quick Look Programming Guide: Saving Previews and Thumbnails in the Document

In Ask Different:

How do I prevent document preview over slow connections?

There are various other  Quick Look-related questions in Ask Different and Super User but at a glance, none of them answer this question. Examples:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/search?tab=relevance&pagesize=50&q=quicklook
https://superuser.com/search?tab=relevance&pagesize=50&q=quicklook

No significant amount of Quick Look-related information in application support or cache areas

[macbookpro08-centrim:~] gjp22% date
Fri  5 Aug 2011 08:33:02 BST
[macbookpro08-centrim:~] gjp22% uname -a
Darwin macbookpro08-centrim.home 11.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 11.0.0: Sat Jun 18 12:56:35 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1699.22.73~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
[macbookpro08-centrim:~] gjp22% du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.QuickLook/
4.0K    /Users/gjp22/Library/Application Support/com.apple.QuickLook/
[macbookpro08-centrim:~] gjp22% du -sh ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.quicklook.ui.helper/
 52K    /Users/gjp22/Library/Caches/com.apple.quicklook.ui.helper/
[macbookpro08-centrim:~] gjp22% du -sh ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon
 52K    /Users/gjp22/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon
[macbookpro08-centrim:~] gjp22% du -sh ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon32/
 52K    /Users/gjp22/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon32/

Meta

Quick Look (two words, in Finder and elsewhere) seems more proper than QuickLook.

Graham - quick look generate the data on the fly. The inspectors know to use the previews when present, but will do the heavy lifting when needed.

The virtual memory system of course caches these files so it feels faster after the first render until it swaps out or gets disposed if the pages are not marked for a swap to disk.


Restored iPhone 5s asks to set up as new iPhone or restore from backup I'm trying to restore my new iPhone 5s. I connected to iTunes and restored it. I enter the language, country and connected it to my Wi-Fi network. When I hit next it asks me if I want to Set up new iPhone or Restore from iTunes backup.

Any suggestions?

It depends whether you have a backup you want to restore from. If you don't have a backup to restore from, or don't want to restore from a backup, set it up as a new phone. If you want to restore a backup, select the option for the backup that you want to restore from (iTunes or iCloud).


Can I access the images from my iCloud account from my Asp.Net website I would like to access my photos in iCloud from a webiste running Asp.Net.

Is there a way to access them outside of the web interface?

You could access the public link of your shared photostream, parse the HTML, and get the pictures from the iCloud server. You would need to save this files to your server or database (as stream or blob datatype).


How can I remove a ding from the edge of the iPhone 5? I dropped my iPhone 5 and it left a dig on the shiny edge of the phone.  I was wondering what they best way to try to remove the ding would be.

Should I sand paper it with fine grain?  But I'm afraid it'll scratch it up more.

I could sand it with fine sandpaper, and then use a black sharpie to cover it up.  (I have a black iPhone 5.)

You will make it worse, especially if its the black model. Just live with it.


Finder doesn't show newly created files anymore unless restarted The title says it (I mean, when a new file is created in an other application). This started happening today, and I think this may be related to an error message which I got the first time in yesterday evening:

This is the link from screenshot: https://openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=1387401 — just in case you want to check it out.
And, of course, I did a reboot after that message.

The issue is not reproduced in 100% of the trials, but it's there…
I checked the disk with Disk Utility and it says it's OK.
What could it be?

Analysis

The output of df -ki:

Filesystem    1024-blocks      Used Available Capacity   iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1      487385240 443717640  43411600    92% 110993408 10852900   91%   /
devfs                 202       202         0   100%       703        0  100%   /dev
map -hosts              0         0         0   100%         0        0  100%   /net
map auto_home           0         0         0   100%         0        0  100%   /home

After deleting some trash:

Filesystem    1024-blocks      Used Available Capacity  iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1      487385240 391070420  96058820    81% 97831603 24014705   80%   /
devfs                 201       201         0   100%      698        0  100%   /dev
map -hosts              0         0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /net
map auto_home           0         0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /home

From the output of your df -ki command, two numbers are telling you are beyond the red frontier of safe disk use.

Look at the line terminating with / which is your main visible and used disk partition. When the columns Capacity and %iused display numbers above 90%, then any search for a new free space or free inode is a real nightmare.
To tell you the truth the internal algorithm used by the MacOS X file system switched mode and is already in fight for breath.

When these two numbers are below 50% you are in the green area, nothing to schedule, just work.
When they are between 50% and 90% you are in the red one, you should schedule your next disk or computer buy.
Between 90% and 100% you are in the black area. You are fighting against a system in survival mode. Your risk of crash is pretty high. You can't anymore trust the journaling function.
At 100% you are not anywhere.

What to do

Estimate correctly your disk need for the next three years and buy a new disk. Once installed a new disk should let you with at least these two numbers below 50%.

Or, if this is feasable, change your disk space use to suit reality:

identify and clean garbage,
make external archives.


How can I sort my Download folder without having to do it manually every time I want my download folder to be ordered in the following way:
Top left corner I want the last downloaded file and bottom right corner the oldest.
Right now, I always have to right-click inside my download folder and do the following:
Clean up by -> date created.
This is annoying - how can I have my download folder sorted in such way by default?

Use Sort By Date created rather than Clean up by.


How do I find out which Game Center account a game is tied to? I played Clash of Clans one year ago and I have many game center accounts.

My problem is that I forgot which game center account has my game progress. How do I know which registered account is linked with Clash of Clans?

The only way to find out is to login with every known account.  Gamecenter accounts are easily changeable and doing so doesn't affect the rest of your device because your Apple-ID/iCloud login is seperated from your Gamecenter account.

While Supercell, the developer of CoC is very helpful when you have account issues, it is impossible for them to look it up for you.  Gamecenter and other game related data is not stored under your Gamecenter email ID.  It is stored using a hashed number, visually unrelated with your real human readable login credentials.

If - perhaps long time ago - you contacted Supercell about any issues, they might have your hash-id in their archives.  If not, the only option you have is to manually try them all.


How can I force Lion to use iCloud? Here's my situation: I have the new iPhone 4S which is using iCloud beautifully. However, my MacBook is still using MobileMe. When I go into System Prefs > iCloud, it has a big button that says "Click here to move your MobileMe account to iCloud."

When I click that button, the browser goes to me.com/move, then I log in, and it immediately redirects to me.com/find and then a screen appears saying "Ok, you're all set, you may now start using iCloud."

Except... I'm not. When I go back to the System Preferences > iCloud, it still has the "you need to move from MobileMe" screen and the button to start the transition. And I am 99% sure that my contacts, calendar etc are not syncing with iCloud, so I can't get them on the phone (that's a problem).

So... the phone is all set on iCloud, but I need to tell Lion to use it. I assume the me.com/move web page someone would send a message back to Lion saying "ok, this user has made the transition, now you can show the 'real' iCloud preferences panel," but that hasn't happened.

HELP!

I found the answer: log out of MobileMe in the System Prefs panel, and then the iCloud panel will prompt you to log in (instead of offering the "Move to iCloud" button). Log in with your iCloud account and you should be all set. Worked perfectly for me.


Why am I not getting notifications from the App Store about available updates? I have an iPhone 7 (32GB) with iOS 10.3.3 and it seems like I'm not getting any notifications like "This App was updated" or "Some Updates are available" or any kind of Badges of available updates on App Store.

I have turned on All Notifications for App Store in Settings including Banners and Badges. I had my iPhone reset like 3-4 times (including Restore via iTunes) and it just didn't work. I have to manually go into the App Store every time and push it down to check for any available updates. Why can't it just happen automatically. I have seen updates badges on many other iPhones.

You can enable automatic updates in Settings → iTunes & App Stores: switch on Updates under Automatic Downloads.

When an app update is available, the App Store badge will be shown and the app downloaded at a later date. You won't get notifications for updates, pre- nor post-update. A blue dot will be shown next to app names for apps that have been updated.

Once settings are correct, restart your phone and consider resetting your network settings.

Next, check if an outage is happening: https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

Last step, use the contact us link at the bottom of Apple online system status if you have an issue that’s not reported.


AppleScript : write text on menu bar I wonder if AppleScript can print a variable in the top menu bar in OSX 10.11 ?

There is a simple way, using AppleScriptObjC as described here:

use framework "Foundation"
use framework "AppKit"
use scripting additions
property StatusItem : missing value
property newMenu : class "NSMenu"
-- myVariable derived from whatever code >>

set myVariable to ">>  " & "Output of script: value of variable." & "  <<"

set bar to current application's NSStatusBar's systemStatusBar
set StatusItem to bar's statusItemWithLength:-1.0
StatusItem's setTitle: myVariable
set newMenu to current application's NSMenu's alloc()'s initWithTitle:"Custom"
StatusItem's setMenu:newMenu

delay 5
current application's NSStatusBar's systemStatusBar()'s ¬
        removeStatusItem:StatusItem

On the original page I posted code that gets a display-dialog's return & puts it onto the menu bar.


Accept Macbook Touchbar typing suggestions with keyboard I mostly type using my external keyboard while my Macbook Pro is sitting on my desk, away from my hands. Sometimes I'd like to accept the Touchbar typing suggestions, but it's more work to get my fingers to the Touchbar and back than it is to finish typing the word, no matter how long or contrived.
Is there a way to accept suggestions with a keyboard shortcut? I didn't find such an option within MacOS preferences, I'm hoping I just missed it.

From Apple documentation:

Touch Bar typing suggestions
If your Mac has a Touch Bar, enable this option to display typing
suggestions in the Touch Bar as you type.
While typing, you can display a list of suggested words onscreen by
pressing F5 (you may need to also press the Fn key, depending on your
Mac model).


Sierra no sound in headphones after sleep If my headphones are plugged in, after going to sleep my Mac doesn't have any sound in headphones. After re-plugging, everything works well. Sometimes, changing the output in sys/Sound works, but not always.
I'm on MacBook Pro 2017, Sierra 10.12.6

Is there a solution to this? While working I need to put laptop to sleep frequently, and I don't want to mess with the headphones jack too much on daily basis. If any additional info needed, please let me know.

You can try:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext
sudo pkill coreaudiod

This means:

unload sound kernel module,
reload sound kernel module,
stop sound service, il will restart automatically.


iOS7 won't trust linux computer iPhone 4S  iOS7

Linux Mint

When I plug my phone into my Linux machine I get the following message "Trust this computer?"

No matter how many times I tap "Trust" the message comes up again.

I do not have this problem on my Win7 machine.

This seems to be a bug in how Ubuntu interacts with the iOS device. Currently this bug is unassigned, so it may take a while to have a fix.

The "Trust the currently connected computer" warning was developed by Apple to alert users of bogus USB chargers that could compromise the device.


Can Macbook Pro 13 drive Apple Cinema Display on full resolution? I have mid 2012 Macbook Pro with Core i7/HD4000 and 8GB RAM onboard (MD102 model). I am considering using an external display - to get better experience from graphics software (amateur Photoshop usage) and home entertainment (movies mostly).

Even though the Apple Cinema Display is quite expensive, it seems to fit my needs. But having read about issues with the Retina MacBooks displaying graphics properly, I'm worried if I could use a Cinema Display 27" with full resolution (same as Retina MacBook's) without additional issues?

Both the MBP and rMBP do 2560x1600 on an external monitor.  The 27" ACD only does 2560x1440 so it will not max out the full resolution capability of either laptop.


What APIs is the `security` cli using? in particular the execute-with-privileges subcommand, which uses fingerprint scanning GUI to authenticate and i'm curious whether those could be used if I build a cli.
Details
security is a standard binary that ships with OSX and:
security(1)               BSD General Commands Manual              security(1)

NAME
     security -- Command line interface to keychains and Security framework

SYNOPSIS
     security [-hilqv] [-p prompt] [command] [command_options] [command_args]

Any pointers or reference to documentation would help!
Thanks you!

AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges
security uses the deprecated AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges function to implement execute-with-privileges:
status = AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges(auth_ref,argv[0], 0, (argc > 1) ? &argv[1] : NULL, &communications_pipe);

The function needs an AuthorizationRef, which is the part that confirms who the user is. See the AuthorizationServices framework. Note that AuthorizationServices are not available to sandboxed applications on macOS.
Open Source
security is open source and available on https://opensource.apple.com
macOS 10.15.3's Security-59306.80.4 bundle contains the source code:

Security-59306.80.4/SecurityTool/macOS


How to download an App file from the App Store Using this app as an example:
https://apps.apple.com/app/deezer-music-podcast-player/id292738169
I would like to just download the file itself, is that possible? To better
explain, for example with an Android app, some different websites and programs
are available for this purpose:
https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/12330/how-can-i-download-an-apk-file-from-the-play-store
So I am wanting the same thing for Apple if possible. I would like to download
the app file, so that I can inspect the contents.

You can download .ipa files of iOS apps using iTunes 12.6.4. This is a special branch from Apple that can be installed alongside newer versions of iTunes. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208079
The Mac version is not compatible with macOS 10.14 Mojave or above. You may want to use the Windows version inside of a VM.
Once you have the .ipa file, you can peek inside further by changing the file extension to .zip and opening it with Archive Utility. Then, right click the .app file and select "show package contents". This is useful if e.g. you want to extract an icon or other asset.
I haven't used this myself but you can also download the .ipa files with iMazing, which is compatible with current macOS releases. However, this requires putting your Apple ID password into a third-party program.


Are photos still backed up in iCloud backup even if iCloud Photo Library is off? I have 50GB of iCloud storage and want to backup all my photos. If I make a regular iCloud backup it says the following:

So I assumed it was my backing up my photos until I stumbled upon this page a few days later.

Before I had iCloud Photo Library switched off and now I switched it on it says it is uploading 4000 photos.

I'm a little confused. Does iCloud not backup photos unless you switch on iCloud Photo Library? Or does it?

iOS does backup your photos as part of its normal backup process, unless you enable iCloud Photo Library, in which case:

  Photo Library is backed up separately as part of iCloud Photo Library.

Through the normal backup process (iCloud Photo Library disabled), your photos are backed up at most once every 24 hours along with the rest of your data, when your iPhone is on Wi-Fi, charged, and locked. Those photos can only be recovered by restoring your iPhone from your iCloud backup.

With iCloud Photo Library enabled, your photos get uploaded to iCloud every time you’re on Wi-Fi. This is a syncing process rather than a “backup” per se. However in the event that you lose your iPhone you will still be able to recover your photos from iCloud (even without restoring your new iPhone from backup). Therefore this option acts as a backup for your photos.

This distinction is a bit of a technicality, but the important part is you can consider your photos backed up to iCloud, no matter which option you choose. Since there is no need to backup your photos to iCloud twice, iOS only does one or the other.

What you’re seeing in that second screen is your photos being uploaded to your iCloud Photo Library specifically. It’s a different/separate method from the regular backup, which is why the photos need to be uploaded again. It doesn’t mean your photos never got backed up before.

If you have multiple Apple devices, I would advise you to keep using iCloud Photo Library, since that presents many advantages beyond a simple backup: quicker backup of your photos, synchronizing photos across devices, saving storage on your iPhone, allowing you to bring all your photos onto a new device, etc.


How do you disable opening Safari on macOS? I would like to disable opening Safari on my Mac. I don't want to delete or modify it in any way, I only want to prevent myself from opening the application itself (If I search for it, or try to open it, it shouldn't run).
I tried using Screen Time's Content Restrictions by going to the Content and Privacy Section > Apps > and unchecking Safari.
But Safari still opens when I am distracted and look for it.
Is there any way to stop Safari from opening?
I'm using macOS Catalina. Would updating to Big Sur / higher version help?

You could perhaps configure the Parental Controls to prevent browsing by limiting the websites you can view. (Big Sur may have slightly improved controls than Catalina.)
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl8490d51e/11.0/mac/11.0
Though of course, there's nothing to stop you from turning the controls off.
Ultimately, I would suggest that the best solution is a non-technical one.


My MacBook Pro has a flashing question mark in a folder against a grey background My MacBook Pro shows a grey screen with a flashing question mark in a folder.
I tried connecting it to an older MacBook using firewire cable. I restarted the Macbook Pro in Target Mode. Now I see Thunderbolt and Firewire icons flashing and moving in a grey background. There is a green power icon at the bottom as well.
I am not an expert even though I have been using Macs for ages.

How can I fix this issue so I can recover/backup things in the MacBook Pro hard drive?

Either the Mac OS X installation is corrupt and won't startup the computer or your hard drive is faulty, physically.

You could try to connect another Mac to your mac via Firewire or Thunderbolt in Target Disk mode to actually see something.
That's what the Target disk mode is made for.

You could also try booting from the original DVD/USB, then run Disk Utility. If you can see the hard drive in the list, try repairing the disk.


Quickly send pre-written response on Mac mail? I get a lot of emails from recruiters sending irrelevant jobs to me, so I have a standard response that I copy and paste into replies. At the moment I do this manually from a saved text file. Is there a quicker way of doing this?

I was imagining there would be some way to save a reply so 1 button or shortcut would send this reply.

Quickly insert a standard response on macOS

Prepare your response

Open TextEdit.
Create new empty document (CMD+N).
Type your desired response.
Select the text (CMD+A) and copy it to your clipboard (CMD+C).
Confirm by pressing return.

Teach macOS your response

Open System Preferences
Go to Keyboard > Text
Press the + button and enter a unique shorthand (e. g. rresponse1). It will be replaced by your standard response.
Press Tab to go to the next field and paste your response from your clipboard (CMD+V).

Use your response

Open your desired macOS application and click inside a text field.
Type your shorthand (rresponse1) and a space character.
macOS will expand the text for you automatically.

Does this answer your question?


Xcode not letting me open a specific project When i try to open a specific project in xcode (i can open my other projects just not the most important one) i get this error

I have gone in "Get Info" and made sure my account had complete access, but i still get this stupid error and i have no idea why. I am also the administrator for my computer and logged into my only account for this computer (i have not made multiple accounts) Can someone please help.
- Thanks

Open terminal and type

sudo chmod -R 777 /path/to/project_folder

NOTE: the capital R in the command above. Obviously change the path to your project folder to what it actually is.

If that command works without error,  but you still cannot open the project, then it isn't in fact a permissions problem but another bug in XCode.

You're not the first person to report this error however. Hopefully the above sorts it out for you.  Let me know.


How to install MacTeX 2015 successfully in El Capitan? I upgraded to El Capitan in my new Macbook Air. El Capitan does not allow to use /usr/texbin/ for storage so LaTeX community had to move their files to /Library/TeX.
MacTeX 2015 is not fully compatible with El Capitan.
There is at least some path reconfigurations which has to be done in individual programs described in the guide.
However, I have not succeeded in getting MacTeX fully working in El Capitan.

Fixing LaTeX in El Capitan

All stages went right but not the following with TeX Live Utility.
I am doing the step in the guide MacTEX-2015 and El Capitan (page 3)

  For previous versions of TEX Live Utility open TEX Live
  Utility→Preferences and click on the Choose. . . button as in Figure
  (4). That opens a file chooser. Type Shift-Cmd-G, enter /Library/TeX
  into the dialog box as shown in Figure (5) and then press Return.
  Finally DoubleClick on texbin.

I get

After Unsuccessful Setup-2015.pkg

I run rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.mactlmgr.tlu.plist to delete the changes made by the applicaiton Setup-2015.pkg proposed by hakaze, because of infinity loop when starting Tex-live with those changes.
I found the Library/TeX/texbin eventually.

How can you set up MacTeX 2015 successfully in El Capitan?

You are misreading the guide when defining the path for TeX programs in TeX Live Utility.

In TeX Live Utility, open Preferences
Click on "Choose"
Do one of the following

press Shift-Cmd-G, type /Libary/TeX, click on "Go", double-click on texbin and then click on "Choose"
press Shift-Cmd-G, type /Libary/TeX/texbin, click on "Go" and then click on "Choose"


"Add to Home Screen" saves wrong URL I saved a web application to my home screen, but the icon on the home screen opens a different URL. Somehow the URL of the bookmark that was saved to the home screen does not match the URL that was in the address bar.

Steps to reproduce

On an any iOS device... (I used an iPhone XR)
Browse to https://bc.thrive.health/covid19app/home
Press the Share  button
Choose "Add to Home Screen"
Notice that the URL in the pop-up prompt https://bc.thrive.health is different from the URL in the address bar.

What causes this? How does iOS determine what URL will be used when adding to the home screen, and in what circumstances can it be different from the URL in the address bar?

The way that iOS apps save/install to the homescreen is by checking something called the manifest. (see more)

The URL being referenced in the manifest.json at the specified URL is pointing to "/" meaning the root of the site which means it is working as expected.

There are two options to resolving it

Change the start_URL to match your destination i.e. "/covid19app/home" instead of "/"
Look into options to creating a relative URL per page based on the header URL if needed for multiple pages.

Your manifest.json file is located in the root directory. Alternately you can find resources to creating one for a web app.


Can I install dual-boot OS on the external USB drive? I have a MF839 MacBook with Mojave and I want to install Linux as my dual-boot system on the external USB drive.

I have one USB with 8GB and one with 64GB. On 8GB I will burn my .iso file with Debian-based Linux and then I am going to select my 64GB drive as place to install Linux.

Will it work?

It is not a question of whether this will work, but rather that this is not a wise idea. Basically, ordinary flash drives are not designed to withstand the amount of reads and writes that an operating system will require. Certain versions of linux provide a solution referred to a persistence. This is where the operation system creates a temporary drive in volatile RAM which can used be for read and writing. When you shutdown the operating system, the contents of this RAM drive is written to the flash drive. When you restart the operating system, the saved data is read from the flash drive into a new RAM drive.

  To be clear, most of the operating system is considered read only and resides on the flash drive. Only the files that may may change often reside on the RAM drive.

There are many utilities that can create a flash drive version of linux with persistence. However, the few I have tried would not boot on a Mac.


MacBook Pro black screens and shuts off after a few minutes' use I have a MacBook Pro 15" (mid 2014, running Sierra). Recently, it has started black screening and shutting off shortly after, after a few minutes' use—let's say 3 to 10 minutes. The screen will go black but the LCD backlight will remain on for about 5 seconds, then the laptop will completely shut off.

I have reset PRAM and the SMC. Things I have determined:

The built-in hardware test passes
Problem is not tied to my user account (occurs when I'm logged in to another freshly created user)
Problem is not tied to my OS installation (I wiped and re-installed)
Problem does not manifest itself in Safe Mode or when booted into Windows 10. (Also didn't manifest during OS X re-installation.)
Problem does not seem to be overheating: I can game with no issues on Windows, graphics performance and fans are fine.

This behaves like a classic overheating problem, but I'm stumped due to some of the weirdness of it not being an issue in safe mode or Win 10. Any thoughts?

As discussed on the MacRumors forums thread, Help! Updated to macOS 10.12.4, MBP randomly shuts off, it is likely that AppleThunderboltNHI.kext is the culprit:

  So if you disable (move out of /System/Library/Extensions) AppleThunderboltNHI.kext driver then reboot. Everything runs ok, you can connect external screens via Thunderbolt.

  The only drawback is that Ethernet via Thunderbolt will not work.


Can't find an option to lock my workstation I'm trying to lock my workstation but when I look for one or Google for any other buttons/keyboard shortcuts, either none of them work or they are not present on my screen.

I don't see any options besides logoff, shutdown, restart, standby. Resuming from standby does not lock the workstation either.

I've been Googling for like half an hour now and nothing works.

How can I lock my workstation without logging off completely?

In macOS High Sierra (10.13) there is a 'Lock Screen' option built in the Apple menu. And finally a shortcut ctrl + cmd + Q :-)

Old solution for me:

Or you can get a Keychain Lock in your menubar.

Open Keychain Access
Go to 'Preferences'
Activate 'Show keychain status in menubar'
There appears a lock in your menu bar.
Click on it and choose 'Lock Screen'.


After Zoom install: macOS forwards various requests to localhost right on the day since I installed (and uninstalled) Zoom, various URLs began to be forwarded to localhost. Like:
$ traceroute -I googleadservices.com

traceroute to googleadservices.com (127.0.0.1), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
 1  localhost (127.0.0.1)  0.525 ms  0.061 ms  0.054 ms

Other sites and services are affected, too, so I had to grab the IPs behind the domains and hardcode things in the /etc/hosts to be able to work, it looks like this now:
127.0.0.1   localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
# Added by Docker Desktop
# To allow the same kube context to work on the host and the container:
127.0.0.1 kubernetes.docker.internal
# End of section

#manual quickfixes:
140.82.113.3    github.com
140.82.118.4    gist.github.com
151.101.52.133  gist.githubusercontent.com
104.28.28.240   coronazaehler.de
172.217.2.106  firebasestorage.googleapis.com
104.26.1.95  myairbridge.com

157.240.18.19 cdn.fbsbx.com
# BEGIN section for OpenVPN Client SSL sites
127.94.0.1  client.openvpn.net
127.94.0.2  openvpn-client.vpn.leondrino.com
# END section for OpenVPN Client SSL sites

Using NordVPN doesn't change anything, but with TOR I can access everything.
What could be wrong ?

Unbelievable, after months of digging around cluelessly, I seem to have found it out. Apparently, the IPs
103.86.99.99
103.86.96.96

are part of some malicious part, they appear here:
$ scutil --dns
resolver #1
  search domain[0] :
  nameserver[0] : 192.168.178.1
  nameserver[1] : fd00::7eff:4dff:fe7e:56fa
  if_index : 5 (en0)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records, Request AAAA records
  reach    : 0x00020002 (Reachable,Directly Reachable Address)

resolver #2
  nameserver[0] : 103.86.99.99
  nameserver[1] : 103.86.96.96
  if_index : 14 (ipsec0)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000003 (Reachable,Transient Connection)

and this resolver #2 isn't shown in any DNS settings in the system config.
running $sudo scutil, I found these IPs in this entry:
>get State:/Network/Service/39118383-7AC1-4270-AA42-7F97B4505F57/DNS

>d.show

<dictionary> {

  ConfirmedServiceID : 39118383-7AC1-4270-AA42-7F97B4505F57

  ServerAddresses : <array> {
    0 : 103.86.99.99
    1 : 103.86.96.96
  }

The top answer here showed me how to replace this entry with a proper one. After that, I ran:
sudo rm /etc/resolv.conf

sudo ln -s /var/run/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

What kind of crap could that have been ?


Stop iPad from automatically using iPhone data? We have employees who are issued both an iPhone and an iPad.
The iPads are on Verizon and have unlimited data.

The iPhones are on AT&T and have limited data.

The problem happens when they are using the iPads and lose service. The iPads automatically switch on the iPhones hotspot and start using it. This is causing the users to go over their AT&T data limit when using their iPads.

Is there any way to stop them from automatically switching over to the iPhones data?

The feature you are describing is called "Instant Hotspot," though you will not see that phrase in the UI of any of your devices.  Instant Hotspot allows Macs and iOS devices to use the "Personal Hotspot" feature of one an iOS device to provide internet connectivity to a Mac or another iOS device, without the need to switch on the Personal Hotspot feature on the host iOS device.

In order to use Instant Hotspot, each device must be signed into the same iCloud account.  That's it.  There is no switch to enable or disable.  Just sign into the same account.

It seems impractical to ask your users to use separate iCloud accounts for their phones and iPads... so your best solution may be to call up AT&T and ask that the Personal Hotspot feature be disabled on the phones... thus ensuring that the iPads will stick to their native data connections.


Convert a date string for date or systemsetup command I have a date in this format: 12 May 2017 09:04:26

I want to auto-update the time of my Mac from this string with a command line.

The first way I found is to use date command line, as explained in Apple's date manpage, the accepted format is [[[mm]dd]HH]MM[[cc]yy][.ss] (or {month}{day}{hours}{minutes}{century}{year}.{seconds}).

The second way I found is to use systemsetup command, with setdate or settime flags. Accepted formats are: mm:dd:yy (or {month}:{day}:{year}) for setdate and hh:mm:ss (or {hour}:{minutes}:{seconds}) for settime.

First question: what is the best solution to update time?

And how can I convert (with AppleScript or Bash Script or other method) the first string to a valid format for date or systemsetup?

The date manpage talking about strptime command but I don't know how can I use it.

Update (after @klanomath answer)

Here is the script I'm using to update my system time when it's wrong (in my case sometimes date go back to 2013). Script is checking some ntp servers with ntpdate and sntp commands and if not works, trying to get the date of google.com http header to set it with date and systemsetup commands.

#!/bin/bash

# Uncomment for debug
#set -x

# Check if bad year
is_2013() {
 YEAR=$(sudo /usr/sbin/systemsetup -getdate | cut -d '/' -f 3)
 if [ $YEAR == "2013" ]; then return 0; else return 1; fi
}

http_date_ud() {
 # First method, update system time with "date" command
 sudo date -f "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z" "$1"

 # Second method, update system time with "systemsetup" command
 if is_2013 $1; then
  NDATE=$(date -j -f "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z" "$1" "+%m:%d:%y")
  printf "$NDATE"
  NTIME=$(echo "$1" | cut -d' ' -f5)
  printf "$NTIME"
  sudo /usr/sbin/systemsetup -setusingnetworktime off
  sudo /usr/sbin/systemsetup -setdate $NDATE
  sudo /usr/sbin/systemsetup -settime $NTIME
  sudo /usr/sbin/systemsetup -setusingnetworktime on
 fi
}

# 1°/ Trying with ntpdate on Apple + NTP global time servers
if is_2013 $1; then ntpdate -t 4 -u time.apple.com; else exit 0; fi
if is_2013 $1; then ntpdate -t 4 -u pool.ntp.org; else exit 0; fi

# 2°/ Trying with sntp with Apple + NTP local time servers
if is_2013 $1; then sntp -s time.euro.apple.com; else exit 0; fi
if is_2013 $1; then sntp -s fr.pool.ntp.org; else exit 0; fi

# 3°/ Trying with HTTP header
HTTP_DATE=$(wget -qSO- --max-redirect=0 google.com 2>&1 | grep Date: | cut -d' ' -f4-9)
lc_tmp=$LC_ALL && LC_ALL=C
http_date_ud "$HTTP_DATE"
LC_ALL=lc_tmp

To properly set a more or less current system date and time with date and wget use:

sudo date -f "%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z" "$(wget -qSO- --max-redirect=0 google.com 2>&1 | grep Date: | cut -d' ' -f5-9)"

Using ... cut -d' ' -f5-8)" (see your comment) will omit the time zone and you would have to add 1 or 2 hours depending on the state of the day light saving time to adjust your local time.

The result of wget -qSO- --max-redirect=0 google.com 2>&1 | grep Date: | cut -d' ' -f5-9 is something like 12 May 2017 12:17:00 GMT.

So the date/time format of the date command to set date/time has to be %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z. Since May is the short as well as the long name of the month and we don't really know the format of the month's name in Google's reply, %b may have to be replaced by %B in June :-).

Due to retention and other deficiencies this is not very accurate and the ∂ is up to 3.5 seconds (usually 0.32 seconds here) compared to the time received via ntp.

To get rid of the sntp error mentioned in your comment, do the following:

sudo touch /var/db/ntp-kod
sudo chmod 666 /var/db/ntp-kod

Now sntp fr.pool.ntp.org and sudo sntp -s fr.pool.ntp.org should work.


How to connect to FTP from Finder with '@' in the credentials? I haven't been able to connect to an FTP server from Finder, if I use other client there is no problem.

The username I am using to connect is in the form user@domain. The domain part in the user name is not related to the ftp server I am trying to connect to, is just that the user name contains an '@'.

I found a similar issue where the password contains '@', in my case it is in the username.

  found that any password with an '@' symbol in it caused Finder to
  immediately display that error and not even try to send any traffic to
  the FTP server.

For real, is Finder unable to connect to FTP servers if there are '@' in the credentials?

Host is specified here

Then credentials are specified here

It is a common and very simple use case, so it is hard to believe that Finder, the default file explorer doesn't support it.

I personally am not surprised this is broken, but then again, I have larger faults with Finder's ftp implementation than this problem. From someone that's used to ftp on the command line, it's second nature to think of the @ as reserved to delineate the user part of the string with the host name part of the string, so perhaps that's a bug that the author of the code introduced.

Just as you're finding it hard to believe this is broken, I find it hard to believe Apple hasn't removed ftp from finder entirely and just pointed people to the Mac App store for a ftp client of their choosing at this point. Here's to hoping they do that for 10.9.

Assuming you are in need of a solution today, here are suggestions to work around it:

Try using ftp from the command line
Try to escape the @ with \ or otherwise trick the finder into getting past it as a delimiter
Use another program like Transmit that has more robust handling of any valid strings.
Searching the Mac App store in April 2013 yields no less than 56 choices for FTP.


Some podcasts missing from Smart Playlist Using the latest iTunes under Windows 10, I have created a Smart Playlist as follows, requiring that ALL conditions be met:

1. Media Kind is Podcast
2. Play Count = 0
3. Location is "this computer"
4. Rating is not equal to one star

I have selected only the "Live Updating" check-box.

The resulting playlist includes some/most of the podcasts I expect, but not all of them.

I checked the details of some of the missing podcasts, but could not determine why they are not included -- they match all of the conditions of the playlist. Why are they not included?

This appears to be a bug in iTunes 12.3.1.23.

I created a similar playlist to the one in my question, but I replaced the "Rating" condition with "is equal to one star".

This new playlist contained all the "missing" podcasts. However, the "Get Info" for many of these podcasts indicated that the rating was NOT one star. These podcasts showed in the playlist with a grey star. Podcasts, which were actually rated with one star, showed in the playlist with a black star.


Change the order of servers in "Connect to Server" window? Running Mavericks (OS X 10.9.4) is it possible to change the order that the "favorite servers" are displayed in?

Allow me to explain a little more the use case. In Finder if one presses Command-K or uses the "Go" menu to "Connect to Server..." a dialog box appears. In the top portion of the dialog is the current server you are about to connect to and below it the servers you have indicated are your favorites. These favorites are set by clicking the + button to the right of server line at the top. After clicking the plus button, servers are added to the top of the favorite. This results in the most recent addition being at the top.

The server I want at the top of my favorites list is the one I am accessing most often, not the one that was just added. Ideally I would like to be able to place them in order as things change.

To illustrate further, right now my list looks like this:

Server 3
Server 7
Server 5
Server 1
Server 2
Server 4
Server 6

I would like to make it look like this:

Server 1
Server 2
Server 3
Server 4
Server 5
Server 6
Server 7

Is there a way to accomplish this task?

This worked for me:

Open this file in XCode: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Look inside the favoriteservers container.  Drag the servers into your desired order.

Save the file.

Log out.

Log in.

Done.

Also!  It sure looks like you have a separate value for Name and URL there!  I haven't tried it but it certainly would be handy to have the list display human-readable values instead of stuff like afp://10.8.8.67


Is there a GUI viewer of databases created by Database Events? I wrote a simple AppleScript that saves data to a Database Events database. I see the database (DBEV file) in my ~/Documents/Databases folder, and I am wondering if there is a simple graphical utility that I can use to view its contents.

I ended up creating my own: https://github.com/dtrebbien/Songs-Database-Viewer

In my case, the database is a simple database of songs, where each record has "Artist Name" and "Song Title" fields, so my Songs Database Viewer just has two columns for those fields. Though, Songs Database Viewer is adaptable to other schemas by adding more table columns in Interface Builder and setting the identifiers of the table columns to the field names.

Alternatively, a Database Events database is based on SQLite3, so the DBEV file can be opened with the command line sqlite3 utility. On Lion, the two important tables are ZRECORD and ZFIELD. Each row in ZRECORD corresponds to a Database Events record and each row in ZFIELD corresponds to a Database Events field.


How (in)vulnerable is OS X to encryption ransomware? These days, malicious software seems to be infecting Windows computers, encrypting their data against their will, and asking for a Bitcoin ransom in exchange for the encryption key.

In order for such a software to run "successfully" on an OS X machine, would the user first have to run it and give the sudo password? Is such a threat conceivable on OS X without the user doing this?
Would FileVault protect against this? Could a ransomware program, if unwittingly installed by a user (who also confirmed with the sudo password), take your FileVault data hostage? Could it take hostage also your TimeMachine backups even if they are encrypted?
In general, how (in)vulnerable is OS X to encryption ransomware, and how careless/unsavvy do the actions of a user have to be in order to actually have his or hers data taken hostage?

At the moment, it's relatively safe.  Most ransomware has targeted Windows users, and so far, the ransomware that has targeted Macs has been relatively crude.  The latest (very crude) Mac ransomware threat  did not destroy Time Machine backups, but was not stopped by FileVault.

In general, the steps you describe in part 2 of your question are unlikely to help protect you; encrypted data is not harder to re-encrypt than unencrypted data.

Vulnerabilities that don't require what you describe in part 1 of your question are rare, but are found from time to time.  Mac Ransomware that uses one has yet to be seen.  It's likely that Mac Ransomware will slowly get more sophisticated, and careful, savvy users are unlikely to lose their data to ransomware anytime soon.  But I can't predict the future.  This answer may live on for years and such ransomware is likely to turn up eventually.  But the meaning of "careful, savvy user" will likely change over time as well.

At present:

Ransomware will have a relatively hard time deleting or encrypting online Time Machine backups.  Even as root/superuser, it's hard to delete Time Machine backups:

sudo rm /Volumes/BK1/Backups.backupdb/Orion/2017-03-18-184155/BOOT/var/du--sortedALLk.13224.bak
Password:
override rw-r--r--  root/wheel for /Volumes/BK1/Backups.backupdb/Orion/2017-03-18-184155/BOOT/var/du--sortedALLk.13224.bak? y
rm: /Volumes/BK1/Backups.backupdb/Orion/2017-03-18-184155/BOOT/var/du--sortedALLk.13224.bak: Operation not permitted

But it's far from an insurmountable problem.  I think folks should assume that the additional step that the ransomware would have to go through (which I'm familiar with but choosing not to publicize - I'd rather not help script kiddies) to be able to delete or encrypt TM backups is something most Mac ransomware you're likely to become infected with will be programmed to take.

Time Machine users are encouraged to allow backups to run often, which makes them quite vulnerable to ransomware.

Therefore some backup drives should be connected less often and kept more secure - not fully accessible to the system - specifically to protect from ransomware.

Typically, victims realize they've been infected with ransomware only when the ransomware announces its presence.  So it's likely you won't be able to tell that a computer is infected with ransomware before it has a chance to encrypt the data on a frequently or continuously connected external drive. Assuming otherwise is far from a safe assumption. The ransomware threat makes better disaster preparedness, including having more numerous offline physical backups, more important.


Changing Sound Outputs w/Applescript (I seem to have misplaced my tab group) I'm starting with the disclaimer that this is my first time posting, so if I breach etiquette, I promise it's by accident; just let me know.

I'm trying to make an AppleScript to change the sound output on my Mac with a voice command (I hurt my arms recently and have been programming automations and tying them to dictation). And while I've been able to make a lot of things work, I've had trouble with this one.

The really frustrating thing is, I can, technically, get it to work. I have made the script as follows:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "output" of pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    tell table 1 of scroll area 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
        select (row 1 where value of text field 1 is "Andrea Comm USB-SA Headset")
    end tell
end tell

quit application "System Preferences"

I can run this, and it will change my sound output to my headset. The problem is that once that's done, I can't change it to anything else until I do it manually. I literally duplicated the script and replace the name of the headset with "headphones", but when I run it, it says it can't get tab one of group 1. I even made a completely identical copy, one that also switches the output to the headset, and had the same exact problem.

But, if I go and manually reset the output, I can run this same script to change to the headphones, and it will work. Then it's the other script that won't work until I've manually changed the output again.

I've looked all over, and I cannot find a solution to this problem. No one else seems to have this issue, but I've had it across multiple scripts. And while I'm normally all about being my own special little snowflake, in this case it's not helping me any.

Any help you can provide would be great. Thanks so much!

While the other answer does in fact work for me on my system running macOS High Sierra nonetheless, I have to post a KISS principle answer.

Simply add the following code to your existing code:

repeat until exists tab group 1 of window "Sound"
    delay 0.1
end repeat

So your code will now look like:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "output" of pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    repeat until exists tab group 1 of window "Sound"
        delay 0.1
    end repeat
    tell table 1 of scroll area 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
        select (row 1 where value of text field 1 is "Andrea Comm USB-SA Headset")
    end tell
end tell

quit application "System Preferences"

There most definitely is a level of sophistication to the other answer; however, I'd imagine it may be a bit difficult to understand for those who are new to AppleScript and why a KISS principle answer is being provided.


No package 'libffi' found in Homebrew Virtual Environment I'm using a homebrew installation of python and getting an error using pip within a virtualenvwrapper environment:

No package 'libffi' found
Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libffi.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable

Homebrew has a formula for libffi (brew install libffi), which seemed to be successful.

I can run

$ python-config --include

which yields:

-I/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/include/python2.7 -I/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/include/python2.7

So should I "add the directory containing `libffi.pc'"?

echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH yields an empty string.

[Someone on SO had recommended][3]:

Use -I /opt/local/include on the command line

or

C_INCLUDE_PATH=/opt/local/include in the environment.

Would I add the line:

C_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/include/python2.7

to the ~/.bash_profile?

or possibly export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/include/python2.7

Figured it out.

brew install libffi

locate libffi.pc

(in this case i also had to run the command to build the locate database, for which the code was included in the prompt from locate)

returned /usr/local/Cellar/libffi/3.0.13/lib/pkgconfig/libffi.pc

Then within the virtualenv ran export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/libffi/3.0.13/lib/pkgconfig/ (the path to libffi.pc).

Confirmed with echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH, which showed the path.

And pip "Successfully installed" the modules!

In case it's useful, this is how I got the virtualenvwrapper environment working:

I have added the following contents to the ~/.bash_profile as well as ~/.bashrc files:

export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV=/usr/local/bin/virtualenv
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

As per this tutorial.


Cannot delete contact from Address Book I have a particular contact I cannot delete from Address Book.

There was a birthday event in calendar for a person I didn't recognize, so I tried to delete it.  However, Calendar said that I needed to delete it from Contacts, so I opened Address Book and tried to delete the contact.  Right-clicking on the contact's name did not list the option to delete it, the delete card option was grayed out in the Edit menu, and command+delete just make the computer beep.

I found this page with the below command to try.

{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null

It looks like it goes through and changes the ownership of all your files to make sure they're actually yours.  Should I try this solution, or is there a better option to let me delete the unnecessary contact?

I'm running El Capitan, in case that makes the instructions any different.

I had the same problem and I noticed multiple birthdays that I didn't recognize or didn't really need to know.

When you're looking at the card, it should show where the information came from, in my case, the contact information came from LinkedIn. If that's the case, chances are there are more contacts you don't REALLY know, or if you do, you already have their birthday saved elsewhere.

I went into system preferences, Internet accounts, scrolled down to LinkedIn and click. It shows all my preferences for LinkedIn and I just unchecked Contacts. Closed and opened Calendar and Contacts and all those birthdays and Contacts were gone..

Hopefully that helps!


Tools to support maintenance jobs with Finder tags When OS X Mavericks was released in 2013 with tagging support built directly into Finder, I expected tagging on OS X to gather steam (at least among “power users”). However, the number of tools and solutions for using tags remains limited:

Homebrew’s tag
Leap
Yep

I am looking for tools to support maintenance jobs like merging tags, listing tags according to frequency, mass re-tagging.

Are there other tools to help with these jobs?

Vitag, a tool for batch tagging from the command line using your favorite editor, was released by Brett Terpstra yesterday.


How to sign in Messages app in Mac Mavericks from terminal Is it possible to sign in Message app from terminal ? When I search for it, I only see on how to send imessage from terminal. Thus, how can I do that ?

Messages supports AppleScript. You can view the Messages's AppleScript dictionary using the AppleScript Editor:

Applications > Utilities > AppleScript Editor.app

The AppleScript command log in suggests you can sign in programmatically:

  log in v : Log in to the specified service, or all services if none is specified. If the account password is not in the keychain the user will be prompted to enter one.

An example AppleScript to log in would be:

tell application "Messages"
    -- Log into every session
    log in
end tell

You can then use the osascript command line tool to issue AppleScript commands via the Terminal:

An example osascript command to log in would be:

osascript -e 'tell application "Messages" to log in'


Upgrade from Snow Leopard Can I upgrade on my MAC from Snow Leopard to Maverick or do I have to upgrade to Mountain Lion/Lion first? Also, which OS has less problems Mountain Lion or Maverick?

It'll become a little bit difficult to upgrade to Mavericks since it has been replaced by Yosemite now. You can in fact upgrade from Snow leopard directly to Yosemite. If you Mac supports Yosemite you'll have to upgrade to Yosemite or by using a DVD you might have a chance to make Mavericks working, but that is not supported or encouraged. And you'll need a DVD.

I encourage you to upgrade to Yosemite if you can. It's stable and works fine. If you still have software that doesn't support Yosemite than rather stay with Snow Leopard then upgrade to any new. But I see no reason to stay with Mavericks instead of Yosemite. Unless it's not supported anymore for your Mac.

In order to update to Mavericks first be sure the you're running on the most recent version of Snow leopard, 10.6.8 +. To check if you're Mac is still supported for Yosemite you can check it: https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/
It also states how to update :)

Good luck


Even as admin, I cannot edit DefaultFonts.plist for Notes.app. What am I doing wrong? I want to modify DefaultFonts.plist for the Notes application. I've tried a few different ways since what worked on old OS doesn't on 10.14 Mojave:

I've navigated to the file through finder, went to Get Info, unlocked the file (via the lock icon), and tried to change permissions.

I get the message "The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have the necessary permission."

I've tried this command:

chmod 777 /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/DefaultFonts.plist

I get the message: Operation note permitted

I've also tried:

sudo nano /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/DefaultFonts.plist

I'm able to get into the editor, but when I try to save I get message: "error writing /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/DefaultFonts.plist"

also, I cannot cd to /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj. (And I cannot see Notes.app when I'm in the Applications folder.)

The application is closed while I'm doing all this.

I have admin permissions on my computer. What in the world am I doing wrong here?

UPDATE: I'm now able to edit the file thanks to @bmike. However, changing the font size values in the file doesn't seem to affect the application. I think I have the correct file. (btw, not sure if I should be writing this follow-up here or just in comments...or creating a new post. Feedback welcome.) Created new post to address this: Notes.app reverts back to default font when using bulleted list

Several of Apple's bundled applications are protected by SIP (System Integrity Protection). As a result, they cannot be modified, even with root privileges. The -lO flag for ls will show you if a file or folder has restricted status:

ls -lO /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/DefaultFonts.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  restricted,compressed 538 Aug 20  2018 /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/DefaultFonts.plist

If you want to proceed, you'll have to disable SIP, make the modifications, and then consider re-enabling SIP. (I strongly recommend not leaving it off, as it provides valuable security for your Mac against malware and other issues like inadvertent destruction of system critical files.)

If you don't like Apple's procedure for disabling SIP, You'll find many webpages explaining how to disable SIP. Here's one.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899

However, it's possible that altering the app directly may compromise its code-signed status. (Again, a security feature designed to stop apps from running if they've been modified.) You may need to look for another way of changing the font in Notes.


Adjusting brightness on 27" iMac used as external DisplayPort monitor for PC I have a Windows7 64-bit machine attached to a 27" iMac as an external displayport monitor It's working well, except I cannot adjust the brightness.

I have attached a Mac keyboard both on the Mac & Windows side to gain access to the brightness controls, with no luck. As soon as I switch to display target mode, the screen jumps to full brightness, and cannot be controlled from the keyboard on either platform.

I have searched the web but have not found the answer:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3924
http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/using-target-display-mode.htm
https://superuser.com/questions/60145/how-do-i-use-a-new-27-imac-as-an-external-pc-monitor-with-full-2560x1440-resolu

I just had an issue with not being able to change the brightness on my 27inch iMac in Target Display Mode. It was at full brightness. And the brightness keys on the keyboard hooked up to the TDM Mac would not adjust it. But I found if I pressed and held Commond-F1 on that keyboard it slowly lowered the brightness. This probably won't help much if you have an issue with it defaulting to a low brightness though.

iMac 2009 High Sierra and iMac Pro Mojave.


How do I access files, copy them on an external hard drive, and see them on it? I'm trying to recover the password of an old iMac, couldn’t boot to Recovery though. So I went into single user mode to access the files, which worked. I have an external hard drive that is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to put the files I'm looking for on the iMac into the drive. I copied them and I went to my computer to access it. But now my drive isn't mounting!
When I did the copy I ran the command cp <file> /dev/disk1s2. When I try to mount it on the other computer to see the files, I tried mounting it through the command line with diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk2 and diskutil mount /dev/disk2s2. Both commands gave me an error saying that the disk failed to mount. I also tried mounting it through Disk Utility but nothing happens.
I need those files because it contains the password of the computer. How am I going to see the files?

I'd recommend using target disk mode to copy the files to a location that's available on your working computer, eg. a properly formatted & mounted external drive.


Is it possible to go from pre-installed Mavericks to Mountain Lion on my new Macbook Pro? I just brought a brand new MacBook Pro (mid-2012) and it came with Mavericks installed on it. The previous Mac I had before I got this one had Mountain Lion and it ran my pro tools sufficiently but now I have a better Mac and it's giving me problems: I can't go 2 minutes without it glitching, popping and distorting and having to restart it.

I need Mountain Lion again — is it possible to go from Mavericks to Mountain Lion?

According to Apple, you should not install previous versions of OS X than the version that came with your Mac. Since your Mac came with Mavericks, you should not install Mountain Lion. But if you want ML, then it may be possible with the following caveats.

  Both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs ship with a certain version of Mac OS X (or Mac OS X Server) on their installation disc(s). You should not install a version of Mac OS X earlier than that which came with your Mac.

  If you install an earlier (previous) version of the Mac OS X than what was included, your computer may exhibit unexpected behavior such as:

  The trackpad or mouse may not respond properly
  The computer may stop responding
  Sleep/wake issues may occur
  The display image may appear to "shrink" with black bars around it, may appear tinted, or have other issues
  Loss of built-in audio
  Loss of Bluetooth or AirPort functionality
  May not start up past the Apple logo

Source: Apple KB — Don't install a version of Mac OS X earlier than what came with your Mac


Open two views of the same PDF Is there a way to open two views of the same PDF in Preview (without creating two copies of the file), or perhaps split the window and show two different pages at the same time?

This is very useful when reading a paper which refers back to equations on previous pages.

Open the first one regularly and then use the open command with the -n option.

Open Terminal
Type open -n and drop the file into the Terminal window. The full path of the file will appear after what you've typed.
Hit enter.

The -n option opens a new instance of the application (in this case the default one, as no other is specified) even if one is already running.


How to run a nightly backup job on Snow Leopard Server via launchd I have been trying to configure a nightly backup job on my Mac Mini server, and after a lot of Googling and digging and man-page'ing, I figured out that launchd seemed to be the correct too, and tried setting up my own plist fil. I've come up with this (stored in /Library/LaunchDaemons/dk.revealit.NightlyRSyncBackup.plist):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>dk.revealit.NightlyRSyncBackup</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/var/root/run-rsync</string>
        </array>
        <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
        <true/>
        <key>Nice</key>
        <integer>1</integer>
        <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
        <string>/var/root</string>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <false/>
        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <dict>
                <key>Hour</key>
                <integer>3</integer>
                <key>Minute</key>
                <integer>15</integer>
        </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Problem is, it doesn't work. I can load it with launchctl, and it appears on launchctl list with exit status 0. But if I check my backup files, they are not updated.

Any clues as to what I'm doing wrong (assuming my backup script works as it should)?

Several things come to mind:

Did you wait overnight for it to run?  launchctl load won't make it run out of sequence -- if you want to make it run at some time other than 3:15 am, use sudo launchctl start dk.revealit.NightlyRSyncBackup after it's loaded.
Does the run-rsync script fire off any background processes, or does it do everything inline?  'Cause if the script exits and there are background processes still going, launchd thinks something has gone wrong and kills the background processes.  If you don't want it to do this, add <key>AbandonProcessGroup</key><true/> to the .plist.
Does the script depend on PATH including any nonstandard directories (e.g. /opt/local/bin or something like that)?

One useful debugging technique is to add something like:

<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/var/root/NightlyRSyncBackup.out</string>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/var/root/NightlyRSyncBackup.err</string>

to the .plist and see what shows up in those files.


Launch quicklook from the command line in full screen mode Is it possible to launch quicklook from the command line in full screen? qlmanage does not seem to have any option for that.

This is probably not what you meant, but you could reveal the file in Finder and emulate pressing option-space:

open -R .; osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to keystroke space using option down' -e 'tell app "Finder" to close window 1'


My macbook air mid 2011 no longer connects to 5g WiFi My Macbook Air 2011 could connect to a 5g wifi network before but now, my Macbook won't connect and it showed an error message that says could not join wifi network. The wifi network worked fine for other devices eg. my phone and my MacBook could connect to the same wifi before. My operating system is macOS 10.13.6. I would appreciate it if there would be a fix to that.

As you mentioned in your comment, it works sometimes. Then, I would recommend to flush DNS of your MacBook and try it again as a first step.

Flush the DNS cache by typing:

  dscacheutil -flushcache

Forget network and try to connect it back.

Other professional steps to know more on it:

Run Apple Diagnostics:

If you still haven't solved your Wi-Fi worries you could use Apple Diagnostics to check for Wi-Fi or network issues.

To do so follow these steps:

Disconnect all external devices (except the keyboard and screen).
Shut down the Mac, then turn it on while pressing and holding D.
When you see the screen asking you to choose your language do so, then watch as the progress bar indicates that your Mac is being assessed. This takes 2-3 minutes.

If problems are identified, Apple Diagnostics will suggest solutions.

Reset your SMC, PRAM or NVRAM

Reset the PRAM and the SMC (System Management Controller) is worth a try. This process is covered here: How to reset your Mac's NVRAM, PRAM, and SMC.

I suggest you try this step as a last option.

However, flushing DNS should work if your network is working sometime then.


How to find un-synced content on my iPhone iTunes is telling me there's updated iOS firmware available (4.3.5) for my iPhone 3GS.

I've synced the iPhone to iTunes already. Repeated the sync several times.

Regardless of this, every time I go to apply the firmware update I get the following warning from iTunes:

I'm uncertain how this can be as I've most definitely completed a successful sync. How can I figure out what remains un-synced from my iPhone to iTunes so I can resolve this and apply the firmware update?

Edit: I'm not interested in whether I can safely ignore this warning and apply the iOS upgrade. I want to know how I figure out what's triggering the warning. What content does iTunes identify as unsynced?

Try going to File -> Transfer Purchases.

That way you know for sure the purchases have been transferred over.


Where does scutil store its information? I don't usually dig around with the terminal, but I have been puzzled with the local host behavior on my Mac for a long time.  It works in some conditions and doesn't in others.  My question isn't about the localhost, but about scutil.
I tried this out scutil but it seems like a blackbox to me.  It sets and gets the data I ask it to, but where does it store the information?  What does scutil mean?

scutil talks to the System Configuration daemon, configd. Some of the info it deals with isn't stored anywhere (except in RAM), because it relates to the live state of the computer. The part that does get stored is (at least mostly) in the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ directory, especially the preferences.plist and NetworkInterfaces.plist files. man scutil and man configd both have relevant (if superficial) info.
The format of the information in the configuration database is rather cryptic, both when viewed directly in the files and via scutil. For most network configuration tasks, networksetup is much easier to work with. I don't really recommend using scutil except for its --set and --get options (which set and get the Mac's various network names). What are you actually trying to do?


Why does iCal always show days of the week and months of the year in English? I have iCal open in Italian, and for some reason the months and days of the week continue to show up in English. Is there some way to get it to run entirely in Italian?

Apparently the system preferences > language & text > region needs to be set to Italy before the months & days of the week show up in Italian. Fortunately this can be accomplished without changing the language of the entire computer.


Why is my MacBook Pro's screen going black for a second? I have a new MacBook Pro, when I'm using it the screen goes suddenly blank for a second and comes back, it feels like as if someone unplugged my screen and plugged it back immediately.. why does this happen?

Initially I thought it was only happening when I'm running on battery, but happens even when I'm connected too.

This is very sporadic.

Clearly, something isn't right. I highly suggest you make an appointment at your nearest Apple Certified repair location or a Genius Bar.


Can't get iPad mini into recovery mode Good day,

After several failed attempts, my iPad Mini is locked and the error iPad is disabled - Try again in 13,568 is appearing.

Now, I do not have anything important on the device and I am totally okay if I lose everything in there.

However, I am not able to get it to work in recovery mode using the following technique

turn the device off.
open itunes
hold home button for couple of seconds.
insert the USB cable

After doing this steps, the device boots normally and gets stuck on the disabled page again.

What can I do to bypass this?

If you try too many times to login with the wrong passoword, iOS will force you to wait longer and longer after each failed attempt. Your ipad is telling you that you now must wait 13,568 minutes before you can attempt another login.

If you have a beckup in itunes, you can plug the ipad into your laptop and Restore from Backup in iTunes. However, you will still need the correct password to login after restore.

If this does not work, your only options are to wipe the iPad and start over as if new.

You can plug in the iPad into iTunes, and hold down power and home buttons until you get a screen prompting you to plug in your iPad into iTunes. You should get a dialog box asking if you wish to Restore or Update, and you should select Restore.
You can also log into icloud.com and force a remote wipe on your iPad.

For details, see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306


Invalid Argument using ditto I'm using a backup script on my server that uses ditto and I keep getting the following error:

ditto: /Volumes/BKP/Daily_bkp.051114/VM Share/Machine/Backups/backup_copies.cmd: Invalid argument

This is my code

/usr/bin/ditto -V --rsrc "$VMSHARE"  "$DLY_BKP/VM Share" > $DLOG 2> $TMPLOG
err=$?

I'm using double quotes to deal with the spaces in the directory name and this file is the only one ditto is having an issue with. I checked the backup and it actually backed up the file no problem, so I'm stumped as to why I keep getting this error. The file doesn't ever change and I've made sure nothing is using it at the time of the backup.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

I solved it, the file in question had extended metadata on it and that is what caused the problem. I attempted using the --norsrc and --noextattr flags, but this didn't work. I removed the extended metadata and it is now working without any errors. I don't know if there is a better approach, but to get rid of the metadata I did

cat backup_copies.cmd > tmp
rm backup_copies.cmd
mv tmp backup_copies.cmd


Free PDF reader for iPad with 2 pages side-by-side layout (like a book) I just bought a 12.9" iPad Pro. I was surprised to realise that I couldn't read my PDFs in 2 page, side-by-side layout in landscape orientation with iBooks.

Is there any free PDF reader app that provides this feature?

Adobe Reader, Foxit Mobile PDF, & Bookari does that really well.

Adobe has a great looking interface and offers some of the basic necessities you need for PDF viewing. While Foxit Mobile PDF is very technical and straight forward. Foxit Mobile PDF offers more tools than Adobe does for free (Adobe charges for annotation features such as writing on PDFs and other things). Either of the two will work. Bookari is an honorable mention as well).


Change Spaces on all connected displays at once Just a simple question - my day-to-day setup is a MacBook Pro with 2 connected external displays. I want to try to organize my different "tasks" (writing code, testing/web browsing, and notes) into different Spaces. The keyboard shortcuts to change Spaces only take effect on my currently-selected screen.

Is there a way to change Spaces across all displays at once? If not with a built-in function, maybe a third-party app?

There's a System preference for this, but then it makes fullscreen apps occupy only one screen at a time and the rest of the screens are black. To activate it:

Preferences -> Mission Control -> uncheck Displays have separate Spaces

reference: Apple site


Why does iPods need password when installing an app When I try to install an app it said I my passwords wrong and I forgot it but it still wouldn't let me install

It always needs a Password for all Installs to protect you, or in case of App Store to identify you and your account.

You could change that settings but I would not advice that.

If it is your Apple ID then you can recover the password using the

https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid

It will send you a email to the account you used allowing you to reset the password or you can answer the questions to which you provided the answer when registering.


Macbook Pro stopped syncing photos to and from iCloud suddenly I know there is a similar question but nothing suggested there worked, unfortunately...

I have an iMac (OS v10.13.6) which has the original photos and it syncs flawlessly with an iPhone X, iCloud.com, with iPad mini and, until recently with my MBP (OSv 10.13.6) . The latter, all of a sudden, stopped syncing while the others are in sync!
I have tried:
1. unchecking "iCloud photos" and rechecking.
2. Repaing the photo library
3. Unchecking iCloud photos >> Repair >> Recheck
4. Unchecking iCloud photo >> New library >> Recheck
5. Numerous restarts of the OS in between...

Nothing seems to help!
Any ideas?
Thank you in advance!

Here are some solutions found on this Link

  1) Check the Internet connection on your devices, As you may know, a
  stable network connection on your iOS device and Mac is required to
  upload photos to iCloud. Thus, you need to make sure the Wi-Fi network
  connection works properly on your Mac and your iPhone (or other iOS
  devices). If you find Wi-Fi not working on your devices, learn how to
  fix it from the related article.

  This is the first solution you should try when iCloud photos do not
  sync to Mac or photos are not downloading from iCloud to Mac.

  2) Check your Apple ID To sync photos across your Mac and iOS devices,
  you have to sign in to iCloud on these devices with the same Apple ID.
  When you find iCloud photos not syncing to your Mac, go to check your
  Apple ID and see whether it’s the cause of the issue.

  3) Turn on iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream To access photos
  your photos and videos from all your devices, you need to turn on
  iCloud Photo Library/My Photo Stream on both your iOS device and
  computer. If iCloud photos are not syncing to your Mac, you should
  also check whether the options are set up correctly.

  On iPhone/iPad: Go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Photos and
  then switch on iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream. On Mac: Go to
  System Preferences > iCloud, make sure Photos is selected and click
  Options next to it. Then turn on iCloud Photo Library and My Photo
  Stream.

  4) Check your iCloud Storage Apple provides 5GB of iCloud space for
  free. But 5GB is generally not enough for you to store your iPhone
  photos and videos. It's possible that iCloud Photos Not Syncing to Mac
  is due to insufficient storage in iCloud. If that’s the case, you can
  either buy more iCloud storage or go to Apple Menu > System
  Preferences > iCloud to manage iCloud space on your Mac.

I hope this helped fix your macbook pro.


OS X: Memory usage freaking me out I know, OS X 10.10 memory management knows what it does, it is good, you shouldn't question it. But this, I do not understand. I have 16 GB of RAM, 6 GB used, plus 2.5 GB app-cache, 1 GB file-cache and 1.5 GB reserved is a total of 11 GB used memory. But for some reason, I have 1 GB of compressed memory and about .5 GB of used swap. Whenever the system starts to use swap, it get's noticeably laggy. Because of this, I have to reboot about once a day.

What do I miss here? Why swap? Why compressed memory? Why lag?

Maybe there are some clevererer people than me around here. Any answer as to WHY is greatly appreciated.

Here is a screenshot of the memory tab of Activity Monitor:

The values in your image look fine. Since the system is lagging, why not measure things over time:

vm_stat 60

You can let that run in a terminal to get an aggregate feel for when swapping happens and at what rate. It's highly likely that some other thing is the bottleneck like CPU or storage, but without seeing things change over time, it's hard to say what's causing the lag. I've never seen a system lag due to RAM without the memory pressure being yellow or worse, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to have.

That coupled with the fact that your system still has 10 GB of free RAM makes it even less likely it's contention for memory/swap causing slowness. Feel free to ping me if I miss an edit to the question with more data to go on.


How to stop can't connect to iCloud message from popping up In this century I thought pop-up windows were dying out. But no, the following...

This Mac can't connect to iCould because a problem with "aa@bb.com"

...window keeps popping up. How can I stop it? Even though I've already pressed "Later", after 1 or 2 seconds it comes out again! I am struggling for minutes to do things, and it is really annoying.

I'm running macOS 10.11.5.

Thanks!

Preferences > Internet Accounts: Remove your iCloud account.


Any way to force download from AFP as opposed to streaming? I have a Yosemite file server that I use to host video files I've taken on my GoPro to various friends and family who want them. Unfortunately, asking "please download them (aka drag them to your machine from the mounted server volume) instead of just double-clicking them (aka opening them in Quicktime directly from the server)" has not stopped people from streaming them and asking why it's very slow to open 720p/1080p video in their choice media players.

Is there any way to prevent this "streaming" using OS X Server and to instead force people to pull down the file to their local file system? If not, what are some other suggestions (the more native, the better) to enforce this?

I would suggest you zip the files and give your friends read-only access to the volume. So when they double click a ZIP file, they will be asked where to extract the file to (as they cannot just extract to your share), which usually by default is their home folder or desktop folder.


Is Disk Utility's "Repair Disk" a viable TRIM solution for Mac OS X Yosemite? I'm upgrading a 2010 Macbook with an Intel 730 SSD.  Since Trim Enabler is still available but more risk, I'm trying to get by with just Disk Utility.

My question was prompted by this hint which seems to imply that "Disk Repair" will perform a one-time TRIM.  Using either a reminder or an automated script, I could run Repair Disk once a week or once a month to get the benefits of TRIM.

There is a similar question at Creative solutions to work around kext signing issue in Yosemite? that does not answer my question.

Did you notice that the interesting bits in the discussion seem to point to Disk Repair having performed a TRIM because Trim Enabler was installed?
User jimsander says:

  My guess is it's a result of the 3rd party TRIM enabler - just did Disk Utility --> Repair on my machine (MacBook 2008 w/ Lion + Crucial SSD) and it didn't say it did a TRIM.

It would not make much sense if Disk Repair made a TRIM happen without Trim Enabler, because what is lacking by default for non-Apple SSDs (and that Trim Enabler provides) is driver support for TRIM. Disk Repair accesses the hardrives through the same driver that the filesystem implementation uses in normal operation, so it won't do the one-time TRIM without the same driver support that would allow the filesystem implementation to trim immediately.