Which exact Windows 7 ISO is required for Boot Camp v6.1.0 on macOS High Sierra? Mid 2010 MBP Try as I may, I cannot get Boot Camp on macOS High Sierra to accept any Windows 7 installer DVD (or ISO) I have tried yet. Although Boot Camp seems to be able to accept a flash drive, when I try one I get the error:

The installer disc could not be found. Insert your Windows installer disc and wait a few seconds for the disc to be recognized.

So, since this is a Mid 2010 MacBook Pro (which has an optical drive) I've tried a legit Win7 SP1 retail DVD (checksum verified), but then I get this error:

Boot Camp only support installing Windows 7 on this Mac. Please insert a USB drive or DVD which contains a full version of Windows 7.

Does that mean "full" as in all editions of Win7, so Home, Pro, Ultimate, etc?? Documentation for this online is very sparse and lacking, I've found.

Steps to Install Windows 7 without Using the Boot Camp Assistant

Although a Windows 7 can be installed without using the both the Boot Camp Assistant and a Windows 7 installation DVD, the using a the DVD greatly simplifies the procedure. Since you have a working optical drive, I the steps given below will include using this drive.

  Note: According to Apple, you need a Windows 7 DVD with Service Pack 1 (SP1) included.

Create the Flash Drive with the Windows Support Software

Use the Disk Utility to erase a 8 GB or larger flash drive. For name, use WSS. For format, use MS-DOS (FAT). For scheme, use Master Boot Record.
Download the "Windows Support Software" for you Mac from the website Install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp.
Copy the "Windows Support Software" to the flash drive.
Under Safari preferences, select Advance. Make sure Show Develop menu in menu bar is checked off. See image below.

From a window opened in Safari, go to the website https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/. While at this website, select Develop->User Agent->Microsoft Edge from the menu bar, then click the Download button on the webpage.
From the downloaded files, copy gdisk64.exe to the root folder on the flash drive.
Either close the Safari window or select Develop->User Agent->Default from the menu bar.

Install Windows 7

  Note: If during the installation of Windows, the Mac restarts back to macOS, then open the "Startup Disk" pane of the "System Preferences" application and restart back to Windows. The installation of Windows will continue from where it left off.

Use the Disk Utility application to partition the internal drive.  Add a new partition named BOOTCAMP with the format MS-DOS (FAT).

  Note: after partitioning completes, you may have to quit and then open the Disk Utility application to see the correct results.

Insert the Windows 7 DVD in the optical drive.
Insert the Windows Support Software flash drive in a USB port.
Restart the Mac and immediately hold down the option key. Release the key when the Startup Manager icons appears. Select the icon labeled Windows.
When the window below appears, select Custom (advanced).

The BOOTCAMP partition should be either 3 or 4. Remember the number, you will need this later.
Press the shift+F10 key combination to open a Command Prompt window.
Enter the command shown below. Remember the drive letter (name) for the  WSS volume.

wmic logicaldisk get name,volumename

Enter the command below to execute gdisk. If drive letter (name) for the WSS volume is not D:, then make the appropriate substitution.

D:\gdisk64 \\.\PhysicalDrive0

Change the type of partitioning to hybrid. If the BOOTCAMP partition is number 3, then enter the commands given below.

r
h
2 3
y
ff
n
07
y
n
w
y

Otherwise, if the BOOTCAMP partition is number 4, then enter the commands given below.

  Note: If macOS is using encryption, the substitute ac for af below.

r
h
2 3 4
y
af
n
ab
n
07
y
w
y

Enter the exit command to close the Command Prompt window.
Click on the Refresh button.
Select the BOOTCAMP partition. Before clicking the Next button, you will have to format the partition by first clicking on Drive options (advanced), then clicking on the Format button.
After finishing installing Windows 7, execute the setup application on the Windows Support Software flash drive.


facebook birthdays does not sync with iOS calendar I did all the basic steps to sync the facebook with ios i.e.,add a account in settings and check the calendar to sync with iOS. After adding my account, It's not getting synced.

How can I sync facebook birthdays with my iOS Calendar?

I finally figured it out!! After following the steps that Bobby listed above, do the following:

Settings > Facebook > Enable "Contacts".
Open up the Calendar App > Select "Calendars" on the bottom > Select "Birthdays" under Facebook.

It took about 2 minutes for "Birthdays" to show up on my iPhone after enabling Contacts.


New Catalina 10.5 desk screen How does one change the new Catalina 10.5 desk screen/ wallpaper?  It is lonely, barren, ugly. Like a dragon.

Choose Apple menu   > System Preferences.
Click Desktop & Screen Saver.
From the Desktop pane, select a folder of images on the left, then click an image on the right to change your desktop picture.

In macOS Mojave or later, you can also choose from Dynamic Desktop images, which automatically change throughout the day based on the time of day in your location.


Use up the store credit I have 0.80$ credit and I need to use it in order to change my region, so I can buy more store credit, since my credit card is not from USA anymore I moved back

I need to find a way to use that amount, do you know any apps? how do I find an app in price order?

Since the Apple App Store has standardized price points ($0.99, $1.99, etc), you won't find an app that is $0.80 unfortunately.

There isn't any way to search by price in the app store, but services such as AppAdvice.com and others can help a bit.

My recommendation is that you choose an app that you want, figure out the price, including tax. Ask a friend in the US to purchase an App Store gift card via the App Store app, in the amount that is the difference between your app of choice, inlcuding tax, less your $0.80. This friend will email you the gift code, which will load into your gift card balance. Purchase your app, and you have zero balance.

Perhaps even easier: purchase an $0.80 gift certificate for a friend in the US, and email it to them.


Which characters can I use for complex passcodes? I need to know which characters I can use in a (complex) passcode for iOS
I'm not 100% sure, and couldn't find much online but I'm guessing something like:

Uppercase characters of European languages (A through Z, with diacritic marks, Greek and Cyrillic characters)
Lowercase characters of European languages (a through z, sharp-s, with diacritic marks, Greek and Cyrillic characters)
Base 10 digits (0 through 9)
Nonalphanumeric characters: ~!@#$%^&*_-+=`|(){}[]:;"'<>,.?/
Any Unicode character that is categorized as an alphabetic character but is not uppercase or lowercase. This includes Unicode characters from Asian languages.

Depending on the app/situation, the acceptable password characters will vary. For example, when entering an email password or an iTunes password, you can enter in any of the characters available to you within iOS.

For a phone lock passcode, you must use a 4-digit numerical code to lock the phone. It does not accept other options.

Various other programs, such as 1Password, also accept their own set of characters although this software applies to the first part, which is that it accepts whichever characters are available to you in iOS.


Constant external disk activity when MacBook is in sleep state I am using an external 2.5" hard drive (the original MacBook HD, which has been replaced by an SSD) in an Icy Box USB3 enclosure on my MacBook (running OSX Lion). When the MacBook goes to sleep, the activity led of the external hard disk gets on and you can hear a humming sound through the enclosure. This means there is some constant hard drive activity going on if the notebook is at sleep, which I find rather strange.

Does anyone experience a similar behaviour? Anyone know how I could fix this?

Maybe there are some people here that also use Icy Box enclosures for external drives, I'd be very interested if this is related to the enclosure?

Thanks for any hints.

A couple of questions that might shed some light on your subject:

By chance, did you clone your HDD onto the SSD?
If so, is your original OS X install still on the HDD?
Are any of your active data files located on the HDD?
Is the HDD activity constant or intermittent?

If (1&2) or 3 are true, the system on the SSD might be making calls to files on the HDD. This could be happening, especially if you didn't rename the HDD since your transplant. If 4 is constant, the activity cold be due to the USB 3 chipset attached via USB 2.

Here's a simple way to check:

SSD to HDD calls:

Launch a program on the dock
Does the external HDD activity light start flashing as the program launches or shortly thereafter?

Use your Mac "normally" for a while.

Close all obviously open data files.
Eject your external HDD by dragging the icon to the trash.
Does the OS show an error that it cannot eject the drive because files are open?

HDD dependency

Shut down your MacBook.
Disconnect your HHD.
Reboot your Mac.
Run programs you don't expect to need anything from the HDD and watch for errors or "missing" data that could be attributable to an older data file.

If any of the above conditions happen, your Mac has open files on the external drive.

Compared with "old" operating systems, recent editions of OS X are rather advanced operating systems, especially when compared with our "archaic" notions of how computers work. Power constraints, most noticeable in notebooks and tablets, are the new target for today's advancements. Newer hardware is often "asleep" when we are actively using the computer--not just powering down the processor or video subsystem when it can. Today's systems shut down motherboard-level systems, like the network connection, whenever it can... sometimes even while we're surfing the net!

Today's Macs have what Apple calls "power nap". This is a sleep state where the computer "wakes up" portions of the system to download updates, make back ups, and other necessary system maintenance. Even if your MacBook doesn't fully support power nap, your MacBook is probably making periodic updates to various system files.


Understanding Disk Utility: external drive returns I/O error but Disk Utility says it's OK Having recently purchased Backblaze, I'm currently backing up to the cloud my 4TB WD external drive (7 months old). The backup process can run without problems for a few hours (ranging between 4 and 10 or so), but will inevitably stall on I/O errors with the external drive. Running First Aid using Disk Utility returns that everything is fine. I've tried a different USB port and a different USB cable, all to no avail.

Obviously the process of backing up the entire drive is accessing sectors that I might otherwise not have accessed for a long time, and which might be corrupt. But why does Disk Utility say the drive is OK? Does it only scan the headers etc.? Might the problem actually be with Backblaze? Is the best solution here to exchange the external HD under warranty?

FWIW: As suggested by @Tetsujin, running a more 'aggressive' tool over the drive (in my case TechTool Pro) uncovered a number of bad blocks.


View last time an app was opened I'm new to Mac and I want to know the last time I opened an app on my Mac and what the app was. Like for example if I opened Sublime Text at 2:04 pm how would I see that?

Open /Applications in Finder in list view and show the Last Opened column by right-clicking the column titles and adding the column. This will show the last time an app was opened, and sorting by that column will order by most recently used.


Restoring mail from backup after hard disk died The hard disk on my iMac (Mac OS X 10.5.8) died, and after getting it replaced I have been trying to restore my files from backup.  The backup I have is just a copy of my user directory.  I copied the following files from backup to their corresponding location in my user directory before starting up Mail:

Library/Mail
Library/Mail Downloads
Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
Library/Preferences/comp.apple.mail.searchhistory.plist

Going into Mail, I see my email accounts, and I can look at the lists of email messages... but when I click on the message to see it, there's no message content.

The strange thing is that when I look in INBOX.mbox/Messages for the mail account, I can see the email message files (.emlx files), and opening any of these files I can verify that the message contents are there.  But Mail won't show the message contents.

Any ideas on how I can fix this?

UPDATE: Thanks, everyone, for the feedback. It appears that just before my hard drive died I got some files corrupted, and that was the source of the problem. I tried restoring from a backup taken one day earlier, and that worked perfectly.

The email index probably needs to be rebuilt.  Last option on the Mailbox Menu.

(And just in case, you do still have your backup, right?)  :)


How can I resize an image within a table in Pages After adding an image (jpeg) to a table cell, I cannot resize it. The table is not locked, all arrange options are greyed out. If I triple click the image, it gets a blue bounding box but has no resize handles. I cannot resize the table cell itself; dragging a handle has no effect.

You can reproduce the problem by creating a new document based on the invoice template, inserting an image from Insert -> Choose into a selected table cell.

Pages version is 8.2.1 on MacOS 10.15.2

This question does not help

You can reshape the image in a table by playing with its dimensions on the sidebar. After clicking on the image once, click on the "Format" icon on the toolbar at the top of Pages and play with the Width and the Height numbers in the "Size" option in the "Arrange" tab that appears on the sidebar. Reshaping is done more freely if the "Text Wrap" option in the same tab is set to "None".


Corrupted backup from iOS 8.3 to iOS 9 I just downloaded iOS 9, and I get a message from iTunes saying that my backup is corrupted or not compatible with my iPhone.

Do you guys know why I get this? I tried to restart my computer, upgrade Yosemite (I don't want to install El Capitan for now), and restart my iPhone.

Not sure about your corrupted backup. But you can downgrade to iOS 8.3; the same way you upgraded to iOS 9.
Your backup might show up if you do that. I upgraded to iOS 9. Couldn't find my backup. Downgraded to iOS 8 and it was there.

If you need help downgrading, this should have the steps you need. http://www.macworld.com/article/2687162/how-to-downgrade.html

Find the correct 8.3 build for your phone here: https://developer.apple.com/ios/download/

In iTunes with your phone plugged in, hold the option key and press restore. Navigate to your downloaded build of 8.3 and select that. Restore to iOS 8.3
During setup, you should see the option to choose an iCloud backup if you have one.


MacBook Pro won't boot from USB installer or go into recovery. Tried everything Hi I have a MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012) that won't boot using any method.

Around 6 months ago, the mac started making loud scratching sounds, but they stopped after a day or so. However, a few days later the mac suddenly froze and then shut down automatically. When attempting to boot, it would reach the Apple logo and fill the progress bar half-way before restarting. This would happen several times in a row before it would finally boot. Then the computer would function normally for a while before the whole process (but no sound this time) would happen again.

When it did turn off, the screen would sometimes fill with rainbow colored bands and any sounds playing would get stuck with one note playing over and over, sounding like a stuck vinyl record. Then when it would get to the half-way loaded point, it would suddenly shut down and restart. It would take luck to finally get to the password screen.

I wiped the hard drive and this solved the problem for a few months. No issues at all. But then back in December it started having the same problems (again, no more sound, just the sudden shut downs and difficulty booting). I was set to wipe the disk again, but this time it refused to boot entirely, no matter how many times I tried restarting and waiting.

It's been a few months since then and nothing has changed. I bought an external hard drive and a USB flash drive in an attempt to boot from a different source than the internal drive. Here is what I have tried and what the results are:

Reset the NVRAM and SMC. Successfully reset, but had no effect.
Try to use Recovery Mode and Internet Recovery Mode. The spinning globe appears, asks me to enter the wi-fi password, then the progress bar completes. The globe goes away and then the screen remains gray but hangs there indefinitely. The options for Disk Utility, Reinstall OS, etc never appear.
Install OS X Lion from a different Mac on to external hard drive and attempt to boot from there. The Apple logo appears, the progress bar fills up half-way, then the screen turns black, before it turns blank gray. It hangs there indefinitely.
Download OS X El Capitan installer on USB drive and use terminal to run createinstallmedia and attempt to go into recovery from there. Same result as above. Currently staring at the blank gray screen as I type this.
Boot from Recovery HD. Same result as above.
Boot as a Guest User in Safari-Only Mode. Same result as above.
Launch into Safe Mode. No error messages found.
Run Apple Hardware Test. I ran the extensive test, but no issues were found with the hardware.

So I've tried all of these methods and I can't even get to Disk Utility or any other options. I don't care if I lose all the data on the old hard drive, I just want to be able to boot from the external drives or at least get to the point where I can run Disk Utility. What could be wrong with the computer?

TL;DR : MacBook Pro 2012 can't boot into recovery from internet, USB drive, or external hard drive. Gets to Apple logo and then either shuts down or hangs on a blank gray screen indefinitely. Help!!!

Other Info: I don't have TimeMachine backups. All the methods I've listed work on the second mac so I'm not entering any commands wrong. When charging my iPhone, if I attempt to boot from the internal drive, the phone will stop charging for a few seconds as the progress bar fills up before resuming charging.

Thank you for any help you may have. It is really appreciated.

I would add this as a comment, but I don’t have enough reputation...

Did you use cmd+R for internet recovery?

The reason I ask is that I’m currently going through a similar problem with my 2011 MacBook Pro. My bootable USB installer failed when attempting a clean install. I tried internet recovery using cmd+R, but that failed too.

By using the advice in this post by boris42 to use cmd+opt+R, I was able to enter internet recovery mode and I am currently installing Lion (the only option available), and will upgrade further from there.


Force Mac window to become full-screen I am wondering how to make a window that can’t usually be opened in full-screen (i.e. TextEdit or Dictionary) able to be opened in full-screen by using the full-screen button. Is this possible?

Take a look at Maximizer. It should work for all apps but I haven't checked on it's support. You could also edit app preferences.


iPhone 3GS shuts down and cannot power on again Last night I was still using my iPhone 3GS to play Kart Rider Rush game. My iPhone was still on 80% battery. Then in the middle of my game, my iPhone gradually gets heated up a lot and then it automatically shuts down. I thought maybe the iPhone just needs to cool down and left it on my table.

This morning when I pick up my iPhone again, I realise I couldn't turn it on. When I plug in the iPhone into my computer to charge, it gets unusually hot. I attempt to do a reset by pressing and holding the sleep and home button but nothing happens. I'm so worried now.

What could have happened to my iPhone 3GS? Any other ways to get my iPhone working again?

I used to see this occasionally when I worked at the Apple Store. If it gets really hot while it's charging but there's nothing on the screen, it's most likely still alive. It could be hard locked up by a runaway process from the app you were using that can't quit .

For phones with a removable battery, you might just pull the battery for a few seconds and replace it and then restart the phone. You can't pull the battery on the iPhone, but sometimes attempting to restart it while it's on power will break it out of the black screen. Try plugging it into your computer and holding down both the sleep/wake button and home button (same as how you tried to reset it before) for at least 15-30 seconds and see if you get the Apple logo.

The other thing you might want to try is putting it in DFU mode and then rebooting it normally again. You can find the steps here. Don't try anything crazy, just boot it into DFU (screen should be black) and then restart it how the instructions say.

If it's still not restarting, take it off the charger and let it sit overnight to try and allow whatever charge is left on the battery to run down. Then, plug it in to a power source and attempt to restart it by holding the sleep/wake and home button. This is really tedious to wait on, but I had people bring me phones that could magically be rebooted after sitting all night until the battery ran out.

One last method, as a last resort: If you have a backup, you might want to attempt to put it in recovery mode and restore it. Sometimes it will go into recovery even if there's nothing happening on the screen. To do this, plug your cable into the computer, and then hold down the home button on the phone. Keep holding home and plug the other side of the cable into the phone. Continue holding down the home button until you see the message in iTunes that the phone is in recovery mode. RESTORING YOUR PHONE WILL ERASE ALL YOUR DATA so don't do this right off the bat if you don't have your stuff backed up. Try less the less destructive methods of troubleshooting first. You can also do a restore from DFU mode if iTunes will recognize the phone.

I'm pretty sure your phone isn't going to explode, but if you just can't get it going again, it might be a good idea to take it to an Apple store if you can get to one. There's never a charge to look at your phone and you're not under any obligation to have service done on the phone if there will be a fee. But if you want to, you can check the status of your warranty (a very few of the 3GS phones are under warranty still, especially if there's been AppleCare on the phone) at selfsolve.apple.com.

If the phone can be powered on eventually, they have a diagnostic tool called Behavior Scan that they can run at no charge that will tell you if your phone is overheating or what particular apps are hanging the phone up. However, keep in mind that if you've recently restored your phone it won't return much useful information.

It could be a poorly written app that's hanging your phone, or it might need a software update or a restore. If you can get it going again, it would be a good idea to check if you're running the latest software and that your apps don't need updates either. These things tend to be more software related than hardware, but if it keeps shutting off and a factory restore won't fix it, you might be looking at some bad memory in the phone or a logic board issue so keep that in mind.

I am assuming that the phone has not been wet or been subjected to physical damage. If it has been, that might be a factor as well. I'm also assuming the phone is not jailbroken. If it is, be careful with restoring it because you can end up bricking your phone if you're not paying attention.


How do I restore icons in Finder? So yesterday I tried opening one of my apps an the Dock just froze completely. I tried every tip I could find online like Command+Option+Escape and killall -KILL Dock, but nothing fixed it. I was finally forced to restart my MacBook Pro. Now, my Finder looks like this:

How do I fix Finder?

You can reset OS X's icon cache with the following commands. Just copy and paste each into a Terminal window and then reboot your Mac.

 sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;
 sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;
 sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store

Source: Clearing the Icon Services cache in Yosemite


How to write on FAT32 and NTFS from Mountain Lion? What is the best free software for OS X Mountain Lion for enabling write support for FAT32 and NTFS?

At the moment, the only free way for NTFS write access without using abandoned software is using NTFS-3G along with FUSE for OS X. There's a guide for that in the FUSE for OS X wiki.

If you need NTFS writing a lot you might be better off using Tuxera or Paragon, both commercial but more faster and more bulletproof solutions.

As pointed out in the comments, there's no write restriction for FAT32 volumes in OS X.


How to change the location of user's download folder? I want to change the path for a download folder that's created as a default download folder on my mac, but I don't know how to do that.

My goal is to have a different path for the default Downloads folder so that all apps can still access it but on a different path.
Can this be done on a mac?

Delete the old folder and symlink the new download path to the old download path. Make sure to copy everything in the old download directory to the new directory

# set newdir to the new directory
NEWDIR=/path/to/new/download/path
# This path can also be relative to the user path (~/relative/to/user/path)

# copy all files in old directory to new directory
find "~/Downloads" -type f -exec cp {} "$NEWDIR"/ \;

# delete folder and contents in the default path
rm -rf -v ~/Downloads/

# symlink new path to old path
ln -s "$NEWDIR"/ ~/Downloads


Change default indent size in mail.app My mail.app seems to default to a barbaric 8-space indent-size.  Is there anyway to change this (e.g. is there a plist file somewhere that includes this specification)?
Thanks!

This is normal.
(It cannot be changed)
The standard tab size for an 80 column page (typewriter or console) is 8 spaces.
You also must remember, that email is for sending correspondence (letters)  and indentation here is "old fashioned."  In other words, you shouldn't be indenting in your letter writing.

What Is an Indented Letter Style?
How to Write a Letter

In the second link, you do indent, it should be 1" and that is approximately 8 characters.


Will my 14.5V USB-C charger destroy my 9.7 inch iPad Pro? The charger is the one for the MacBook (29W) and the iPad is the 9.7 inch Pro. Can they be used together without damaging the iPad battery?

This should be absolutely fine. I haven't tried it myself (yet) but Apple themselves state that you can use the 29W adaptor with the 12.9" iPad Pro, and other people have verified that it works (and doesn't cause damage).

This all came out before the 9.7" iPad Pro was released, and it doesn't look like Apple have updated the product page for their USB-C to Lightning cable, but I'm certain it will be fine. I've charged many an iPhone with an iPad charger without cause for complaint.

The device should only draw as much power as it needs/is safe.

Sources

Testing Apple’s 29W USB-C Power Adapter and iPad Pro Fast Charging – MacStories

https://www.macstories.net/ios/testing-apples-29w-usb-c-power-adapter-and-ipad-pro-fast-charging/

USB-C to Lightning Cable (1 m) - Apple

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-lightning-cable-1-m


How safe is it to replace the magsafe 2 connector with another one by simply connecting the wires? I have a problem with my magsafe 2 adaptor, it has been stopping to work occasionally for a while now. Until now I always managed to get it to work by yanking the cable (in order to unstuck the pins), however now this method is not working anymore. After the usual yanking, I decided to clean both the connector and power plug on my macbook with a toothbrush and cotton. For some reason after that it stopped working completely. I am able to unstuck the pins by softly tapping on the connector with my fingernails but it still doesn't work.

I have another non working magsafe 2, which has perfect pins and after cutting the cord now looks like this:

How dangerous would it be, to cut off the non working connector, expose the cables and connect them together by intertwining the stings?

Obviously I would isolate the two wires (copper and the other one) with tape and try to make a decent connection. I have done similar shenanigans with audio cables and it has always worked for a while.

I will buy another one, but need an urgent solution right now. However, I don't want to break the computer or start a fire over it.

This is the low voltage side of the transformer, so the risk is far less than working on the AC side. I haven’t heard of anything worse than scorch marks and safely melted plastic on the low voltage side when people shut these cables in a door or roll chairs over them, so I’d say you’re pretty safe if you make sure it works and doesn’t heat up and protect it electrically. The low voltage side has enough power and current to start a fire, that is certain so I’d say you are risking safety if you don’t do it well or there is hidden damage you don’t catch and fix.

Why doesn't a stripped/cracked MagSafe power cable shock?
Will the "cracked" wire of a MacBook charger eletrocute me
Out of warranty MBP ,Burned Magsafe port and frayed charger cable - repair option and cost?

So, if you know this and try a repair, worst case is you pay for new part or someone skilled at electrical work to do a repair if you’re not comfortable with your safety and whatever house you leave this plugged into going forward once you have learned if you can do the repair. The chances of breaking your Mac is low with this since it’s designed to not charge from damaged cords anyhow.

Since you probably should try this for science:

Are the silver wires inside the MagSafe cable necessary?
What are specs of this MagSafe wire, and what is its purpose?
What voltage readings should i get from my 60 watt magsafe
Specification of MagSafe power adapter coaxial cable?


Install Apache, PHP and MySQL on Mac w/o MacPorts? For some reason I can't use MacPorts. So the question is if it's possible to install Apache, PHP and MySQL on Snow Leopard w/o using MacPorts?

Please don't offer MAMP or other bundles.

Thanks in advance.

Yes, Apache and PHP already come by default with a Mac OS X installation, and you can download an installer for MySQL on their website.

For a configuration guide, have a look at this related answer:

How to turn Mac OS X Lion into a web server?

The linked answer also applies to Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Another popular (and imo superior) way of running development environments is running a Linux server with your preferred configuration in a VirtualBox virtual machine. Vagrant makes this workflow even easier. This is a very flexible solution, as you can easily add custom extensions and more specifically for one project, without messing with one centralized install.


How to change physical layout of the keyboard I bought my Mac in Spain. I cannot find change keyboard type in Keyboard preferences. I have set to English language but many keys are physically different.

How do I change the physical layout of the keyboard to standard British keyboard?

OS X includes an British keyboard layout that you can switch to under Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources. If you hit the + button and search for British it'll come up. That'll give you Apple's version of a British keyboard layout.

If you'd like British to match a PC's keyboard, there's a second Apple mapping named British - PC.  This'll put the @ and | symbols where they should be in that layout.

You might find that Apple's British - PC keyboard mapping isn't quite right, as because their British keyboards aren't laid out as a typical British (BS4822) keyboard is. There's a great solution for this with a custom keyboard mapping. The one I linked there works like a charm.


How can I get Nike+ to play songs from Spotify? Recently I've started using the Nike+ app on my iPhone to keep track of the distances and times when I go for a run in the park. I noticed that it has a power songs feature, which I haven't tried out as yet, I imagine it would allow me to specify particular songs that I can listen to while running.

When I try to use the power songs feature, it only lists the songs that I have in iTunes, I only have a small collection of itunes songs that I would care to listen to whilst running and would prefer to find a way of using the songs that I have on Spotify instead.

I have an unlimited Spotify account so I can store my playlists offline. I am not registered with Nike+.

I'm afraid there isn't a solution currently available for this.  I've been using Nike+ alongside Spotify for over a year now by starting my Spotify playlist then starting a run in Nike+ and selecting "no music". I used to use iTunes playlists which worked with the power song feature and while that was kinda cool it's really not something I miss.

You might email them through their support page (couldn't find a feedback form) and mention it as a feature for future revisions.

http://nikeplus.nike.com/plus/support/#contact


iOS 10/macOS Sierra: Merging Faces between iPhone and Mac I have iOS 10 installed on my iPhone and macOS Sierra installed on my iMac. I'm using the iCloud Photo library on both.

On my Mac, I've spent a lot of time tagging faces and have done so on many of my ~35,000 photos. However, they do not seem to sync onto the iPhone Photos app. There, I'm supposed to do the whole tagging again, which I certainly don't want to do, given all the effort.

From what I've read so far, it seems that Apple has somehow not included this feature yet. Is that correct? Is there anything I can do about it?

With their focus on privacy Apple have deliberately made the decision not to sync certain information between devices.

They have documented this in a Knowledge base article called Use Photos and iCloud Photo Library on multiple Mac computers.

  After you sign in, these items appear in the Photos app on all of your
  Mac computers:

  All original photos and videos
  All folders and albums
  Smart Albums
  Keywords
  Memories
  Key photo selections

  These items are available only on the Mac where you created them:

  Books, cards, and calendars
  Slideshows
  Keyword shortcuts
  Unused keywords
  Last imported album (this album contains photos you most recently imported on a specific Mac)
  Names and faces in the People album


How can I get v6.3 Command Line Developer tools to install? The App store is repeatedly wanting to update the same version of Command Line Tools (OS X 10.10) version 6.3. Is there a way to triage or diagnose this systematically? If not, does anyone know a janky trick to allow the installer check for this package to complete successfully?

In all cases, this somehow worked itself out after 36 hours or less for each Mac.

I'm stumped, but it appears something server side changed as opposed to needing a fix on the client side.


How to find out whether NVRAM was reset? I was having some issues with my mac so I reset NVRAM by holding ⌘+⌥+P+R.

The problem is that this laptop does not chime when NVRAM is reset, so I'm not sure if NVRAM was indeed reset.

How can I find out whether NVRAM was reset?

Is there some terminal command that shows when NVRAM was last reset?

Laptop: 2017 MacBook Pro
OS:MacOS High Sierra

Doesn't appear to be a direct way to do this. Part of the problem is that your changes to the NVRAM, if you were to clear it (nvram -c), will not take effect until after a reboot.

You could try this method which will perform a side-by-side diff of the contents of NVRAM prior to running a nvram -c.

For example:

$ sdiff <(nvram -xp) <(nvram -c &> /dev/null; nvram -xp) | less

If there's any changes you should see lines with vertical bars (|) which will denote lines that changed. Content on the left side will be your before and content on the right will be your after.

References

How to View & Clear the Mac NVRAM Contents from Terminal in Mac OS X


Global shortcut to have finder open my home directory New Mac/OSX user here. Thanks to google I've come up with this automator script:

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "Finder"
        activate
        make new Finder window to home
    end tell

    # return input
end run

I saved this as ~/Library/Services/New Finder Window Home.workflow.

In System Preferences/Keyboard/Shortcuts/Services/General/New Finder Window Home I assigned it a new shortcut key ALT+CMD+e. It's supposed to mimic Win+e key on Windows.

On every application I see this script in the top menu in <App name>/Services/New Finder Window Home and pressing that combination works.

Except in Finder itself

In Finder itself, this script does nothing. I would like to behave it the same way as everywhere else: just open me my home directory.

Solution thanks to Thomas

It seems I need to assigned this to the Service and as part of the App Shortcuts with the same shortcut (would be great if someone could explain that too).

Go in System Preferences/Keyboard/Shortcuts/AppShortcut then add a shortcut for finder with the desired menu name (Home I think) and put your keybidding alt+cmd+e and voilà


Can a Mac's model year be determined with a Terminal Command? Does anybody know a terminal command that gives me the model of my Mac?

For example -  "MacBook Pro, Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2013" or "MacBook Pro, Late 2009" or "Mac Mini, Early 2010".

That information does not exist in the SystemProfiler (/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPHardwareDataType), but in OS X 10.7 and OS X 10.8 you can see that information when you click "More Info..." in the "About This Mac" window.

You can indirectly get this information from a web page and the curl command. In the past this URL has been taken down and rate limited and put behind some sort of captcha to prevent this use, so you might need to resort to other avenues like https://checkcoverage.apple.com/ in that case.

Depending on if your serial numer is 11 or 12 characters long take the last 3 or 4 characters, respectively, and feed that to the following URL after the ?cc=XXXX part. If your serial number was 12 character and ended in DJWR, you would issue this command:

curl https://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=DJWR

To get your serial number, use the following command:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk '/Serial/ {print $4}'

Thus, you could have a complicated command to query the internet if you need a single command:

curl https://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=$(
  system_profiler SPHardwareDataType \
    | awk '/Serial/ {print $4}' \
    | cut -c 9-
)

and then run the output of that through sed to cut to the key part

curl -s https://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=$(
  system_profiler SPHardwareDataType \
    | awk '/Serial/ {print $4}' \
    | cut -c 9-
) | sed 's|.*<configCode>\(.*\)</configCode>.*|\1|'

There used to be a private library file with these mappings so you could consult it offline, but I noticed it was gone as of 10.8.3 (and perhaps earlier) so the above trick is the only one I know that works on the current OS without third party libraries.

Some nice third party libararies provide a look up of this:

python code https://github.com/MagerValp/MacModelShelf
JSON mapping https://github.com/krypted/swiftwarrantylookup/blob/master/src/swiftMacWarranty/model_snippets.json

Note that as of November 2017, Apple has forced the use of https over http for this service.


iPad fails to sync : unknown error 1140 Recently whenever I try to sync my iPad to my iMac I get the following error message:

27/04/2013 14:34:01.376 AppleMobileDeviceHelper[3815]: 3815:1917989248|AppleMobileDeviceHelper.m:_getDisabledDataClassNamesFromLockdownForTarget| ERROR: Could not find a device with the target identifier d0e43aec963246a826be357c29a086ce8a3c9365. Assuming there are no disabled data classes.

UPDATE
I tried restoring from backup, complete factory restore and re-installing iTunes, same error. I tried syncing with my macbook and it synced without problems

UPDATE
Turning off iPhoto syncing solved the syncing problem, which is a great improvement but I'd like to sync my photos.
Any ideas?

Connect iOS Device
Go to Photos tab in iTunes
Uncheck "Sync Photos from iPhoto" option
Press "Apply" and/or "Sync
Check "Sync Photos from iPhoto" option

Now everything should be as it was before and the error is gone :D


How to print result of some javascript execution in ScriptEditor? I want to test a piece of a very simple javascript and print out the result. The Script Editor however only prints out undefined in the Result pane.

What is the easiest way to print out the result?

The result pane displays the result of the evaluation so the easiest way to print the result is to execute:

Math.round(5.0/2)

Using console.log() does work from the command line:

osascript -l JavaScript -e 'console.log(Math.round(5.0/2))'


What is this square icon and square + triangle icon in Mac OS X bar? From left, second one(to the right to Evernote)

As well as the fourth one.

The second menulet from the left is Karabiner - a tool to customize keyboard and some mouse/trackpad settings.

Please note that some colors in the menubar are inverted


Why doesn't Lion recognize my drive as a supported permanent storage volume? Whenever I save a Pages (or other) document I'm greeted with this warning.

I really like the version feature and this warning basically says that it is disabled. Any ideas why my hard drive isn't supported? The machine is a mid 2010 13" MacBook Pro with a 1TB internal drive. The drive is formatted as HFS+ Journaled.

I ended up wiping the drive and just installing Lion from scratch. That seems to have fixed the issue.


Using a Bluetooth or USB remote to advance Keynote slides? What would it take technically for the iPad to be able to allow Keynote slides to be advanced by a remote (like this -  http://www.targus.com/us/productdetail.aspx?regionId=7&sku=AMP18US)?

Or how about via Bluetooth?

The 2Screens iPad app works with their iPhone remote app for Keynote, PowerPoint, and PDFs through wifi. Apple's Keynote Remote app on an iPhone also offers remote control through wifi.


Jaibroken iPhone sms.db file not updating right away (sms.db-wal) I am developing my own "back up sms system", so my sms.db is backed up few times in a day (whenever I use SBStoggle button to make a backup).

I've encountered a problem with sms.db-wal not passing data to sms.db right away, it stores newest SMS/iMessages for how long (? - assumed once per day or once in 30hrs) and after while it passes data to the sms.db file.

Is there any way to force this process?

I've found threads about this on MacForums but no answer there, I've looked in iphonewikipedia there is nothing to use either.

(I am looking for a command)

thanks for any comments or suggestions

Whenever connection to sms.db closes all data from sms.db-wal are synced to sms.db.

Easiest workaround is to copy all 3files
sms.db, sms.db-wal and sms.db-sch into "desired folder" an run any kind of action with sqlite3 command (output it into /dev/null) after this session closes data are synced into sms.db


Showing wrong name in terminal My Macbook's name is 'Suman'. But in terminal I have something different. How to solve it ?

Unless you've changed it, the default Bash prompt is

computer-name:directory username$

Therefore it's correct.

Suman:~ beautifulmind$

…means your computer is called Suman, you're in your home folder ~ and your account is beautifulmind.


Prompt command on MacBook I just broke a computer with Windows system and I bought a MacBook but I don't know how can I open prompt command in it?

The application "Terminal" can be found under /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.

You can also easily find and open files and applications using Spotlight:

Command + Space Bar (to open Spotlight search)
Start typing "Terminal"
Hit Enter when terminal is found

That is a really handy move I use to open almost everything.

Update:

Helpful links for Shell/Bash beginners can be found here.


iMac 2007 with accelerated graphics problems and kernel panics I have a mid-2007 iMac. It's been getting kernel panics and locking up. I noticed it does this immediately when needing to use accelerated graphics motions, such as running Launchpad, using a translucent dock, etc.

When I run in Safe Mode, the system seems to run alright, as accelerated graphics is off (as I understand it anyway).

I have a picture of a kernel panic (couldn't copy-paste, had frozen by then) if this helps.

I'm planning to open the machine (I have replaced the HD twice) and apply some new thermal glue to the GPU as I think it is overheating. Does anyone have advice on either the process of applying thermal glue here, or on what's going on?

I have tried:

Resetting power management
Resetting NVRAM / PRAM
Running Safe Mode and rebooting to normal

Try this ( http://blog.krzysztof-turek.com/apple-imac-8-1-freeze-problem-solution-en/ ) I had the same issues ; display frozen but pointer moving but no kernel panic on a mid 2007 imac 2.0 ghz and running osx 10.8 Mountain Lion. the kext swap worked for me . Good Luck


iPad Backup without iCloud or PC/Mac Are there apps or appliances available for iPad (or iPhone I suppose) that would allow me to backup the content (photos etc) of my iPad without a PC?

I was thinking of something like Carbonite/JungleDisk or the Apple Time Capsule.

You currently need to go either through iCloud or iTunes (PC/Mac) as per this kb article.

There are no other solutions that would allow you to do backups of the iPad.

Sorry.

I would strongly recommend you leave a feature request on the feedback page of the iPad and on the Time Capsule page. Apple read them and when they get enough request for a feature they get more incentive to implement it.


After uninstalling Boot Camp disk space did not restore It's been a pain for me to install windows 10 on my Mac. I failed and decided to use a different iso. I uninstalled windows via bootcamp - it said it restored the memory succesfully. However the 150GB I allocated to my Windows did not come back.

Any help? Attaching my diskutil list

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         848.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s3
   4:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s4
   5:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s5
   6:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s6

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +848.6 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh SSD - Data    685.3 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 84.8 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                528.1 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Macintosh SSD           11.0 GB    disk1s5

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:               Windows_NTFS WinInstall              500.1 GB   disk2s1

/dev/disk3 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US... +5.4 GB     disk3

/dev/disk4 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            Boot Camp              +2.8 GB     disk4

P.S. diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1 0g did not work for me

You need to first remove all those unneeded EFI partitions.

sudo diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s6
sudo diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s5
sudo diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s4
sudo diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s3
sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0


Can I use MacBook Pro's 61W power adapter to charge my iPhone 12 I have bought a new iPhone 12 64GB. But because now Apple has removed the charging adapter from the box, I need to buy a new one. I have a MacBook pro-2019, I want to know if I can use my MacBook's 61W power adapter to charge my iPhone. I just want to be sure that it won't damage my iPhone's battery.

Yes you can. Your iPhone will draw the appropriate amount of power from the MacBook USB-C charger.
For more information, such as which iPhone models and which Apple chargers can be used, refer to Fast charge your iPhone on Apple's website.


How to change the location of an updated or newly downloaded App in iTunes? Backstory: iTunes 10.3.1.55 had been installed on Windows Vista 32 bit. It's main purpose is to allow me to move files to my iPod Touch 3rd Generation. Whenever I download an app, it get downloaded to the location "C:\Users\Thomas\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications".

Arc: Because my C: drive was getting full, I created two folders in my D: and moved all my apps from the one default folder in the C: drive to the two folders in the D:. Now, when an app gets updated by iTunes, the update still get saved to the default folder. I am left with both versions of the file; one in C: and the other in D:.

Question: How do I get an updated or a newly downloaded app from iTunes to save to my respective folders in D:?

On windows you can't redirect only these two folders (on OS X and Linux you can) - BUT you can move the whole "iTunes Media" folder to D: then all updates will go there.

In iTunes "Edit > Preferences...->Advanced Section" you can change the location of the media folder - the new folder on D: doesn't need to have the name "iTunes Media", it just need to have the same structure as it had on C:.


Connecting to Cisco AnyConnect VPN without stored certificate or shared secret Many people have discussed configuring the OS X built-in VPN client to connect to Cisco VPNs in place of the AnyConnect client. However, all discussion focuses on copying critical config information (shared secret or certificate, in particular) from a PCF or Profile.xml file included in a site-specific AnyConnect installer.

The AnyConnect installer where I am now (version 4.2.01035) seems not to deploy any profile information. /opt/cisco/anyconnect/profile contains only AnyConnectProfile.xsd (a standard schema definition, not anything specific to this configuration). There’s no sign of any profile XML or PCF files that I can find in /opt/cisco, /Library,  or $HOME/Library.

This matches the UI experience: there don’t seem to be any preconfigured profiles. Instead, on first launch I just get a blank VPN field in which I simply enter a hostname by hand (in this case, ucbvpn.berkeley.edu) and hit connect. This gives a login prompt including a group selection dropdown, and username and password fields. Simply entering a username and password initiates the connection in the mode specified by the given “group,” and everything works fine.

I cannot, however, figure out how this configuration can be fully transferred to the OS X native VPN client. Transferring a chosen group name from the list seemingly auto-discovered by the AnyConnect client, but the OS X VPN configuration seems to also require explicitly entering either a shared secret or a certificate.

My best guess is that the Cisco client is operating in a perhaps new mode where it can negotiate directly with the server to auto-discover any necessary configuration information, and that it’s not stored on disk anywhere. Does anyone have any experience with a setup like this, or have any suggestions of what else to try?

I believe that the AnyConnect client can be used to connect to a number of different types of VPN offered by Cisco.  The process you describe above leads me to believe that you are connecting to an SSL-VPN. SSL-VPN does not require the use of a shared secret for the first layer of encryption.  Instead the client and the server auto-negotiate that first layer encryption using SSL.  You are then asked for credentials and a group membership.  The remainder of your VPN session is uniquely encrypted following Authentication.

You could script the connection so that instead of having to enter your credentials each time, you can store them in your keychain, and simply initiate the connection from the shell, or other script.  I did so a few years ago here:  http://www.wellingtonnet.net/code/2014-02-04/cisco_anyconnect_client_mac.html

I have noticed that with each update of AnyConnect, I have had to tweak this script, so use it as an example and go from there.  It has been about a year since I last needed to connect via AnyConnect.


Is there a PoE (Power over Ethernet) kit available for the 802.11ac Airport Extreme? Is there a PoE (Power over Ethernet) kit available for the 802.11ac Airport Extreme? I.e., a kit that will allow me to power the Airport Extreme from PoE instead of from a wall outlet?

No - the power supply expects 100-240 VAC and lists the current draw as 1.5 A which seems quite high for the heat it puts out, but perhaps with several USB drives connected and max power it gets even half that usage in real life.

You certainly can take DC power from POE using a splitter, but those all seem to provide 1A at 12 VDC which is a far cry short of the wattage listed for the Airport Extreme. I doubt you'd find a DC to AC inverter that would generate enough AC to run the Airport though...


Clean install of Yosemite on 2008 MacBook Air I am trying to upgrade a 2008 MacBook Air from OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard) to 10.10 (Yosemite). I understand from the Apple web site that the minimum required version of OS X is 10.6.x (Snow Leopard) for an in-place upgrade. However, I am assuming —correct me if I'm wrong— that the pre-existing version requirement isn't relevant if doing a clean install from a USB boot disk or other media? In any case I have had trouble doing this, hence this post:

I have found several guides on how to create a bootable USB stick for Yosemite, and my colleague has kindly created one for me using her newer MacBook. The guide used is located at http://www.guidingtech.com/34311/clean-install-yosemite-os-x/. I have attempted the install using the stick, by pressing the alt key after power on and selecting the USB stick but I am then faced with a No entry sign and the Air shuts itself down.

I would like to know what the most appropriate approach would be to get Yosemite working (legally). I don't have a Snow Leopard disc, and ideally I'd like to do a clean install anyway.

What you're encountering is not related to the pre-existing version, but likely that your MacBook Air is not supported for Yosemite at all.  Apple lists the Late 2008 model as the earliest MacBook Air which can run Yosemite.

(Source) http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6412


How to Install Clang specifically While trying to run a MATLAB script, I am getting the following error:

Compiling minFunc files...
Building with 'Xcode with Clang'.
Error using mex
xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer), missing
xcrun at: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcrun

On searching further, I got the following solution to install command-line-tools using the command:

xcode-select --install

but it is giving me:

xcode-select: error: command line tools are already installed, use "Software Update" to install updates

On running brew config I got the following information:

HOMEBREW_VERSION: >=1.7.1 (shallow or no git repository)
ORIGIN: (none)
HEAD: (none)
Last commit: never
Core tap ORIGIN: (none)
Core tap HEAD: (none)
Core tap last commit: never
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /usr/local
HOMEBREW_LOGS: /Users/swastik/Library/Logs/Homebrew
HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS_THIS_RUN: 1
CPU: octa-core 64-bit haswell
Homebrew Ruby: 2.3.7 => /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.3/usr/bin/ruby
Clang: xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer), missing xcrun at: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcrun
N/A
Git: N/A
Curl: 7.54.0 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 10.13.6-x86_64
CLT: 10.1.0.0.1.1539992718
Xcode: dunno

How to solve this problem?

Do a software update.

Go to  Apple menu → System Preferences... → Software Update (on macOS Mojave) or Apple menu → App Store... → Updates (on earlier). Be sure to update Xcode. Then go back to Terminal and run

xcode-select --install


Two persons simultaneously using one MacBook Pro (working in two apps simultaneous ) Is it possible for such a setup as the following: Hooking one MacBook Pro up with two separate monitors, allowing two different persons to work independently on their monitors, sharing the computer's performance?

Perhaps this is a strange request, but it would actually be useful for me in certain situations. (I will be working in one monitor and in the another one my daughter will be playing.) I ask cause I do not know how focus will work in this situation.

Two people using the same graphical user session, with different input devices, is not possible on macOS.

Remote Session - VNC

However, you can remote log into a Mac and share the computer's performance. Remote log in will give you two graphical user sessions running on one Mac.

You could use an inexpensive computer, such as a Raspberry Pi, and have it remotely connect to your MacBook Pro. One user could then use the Mac directly and the other via the remote connection and a monitor.


Extract some IPA from iPhone to USB Memory without jailbroken/download from App Store without iOS Device How can I copy an IPA (iOS App Store Package) from my iPhone to a USB memory, using Linux, macOS, or Windows OS?
Alternatively, How to download IPA directly to my Laptop from App Store without iOS Device?

Apple stopped supporting local backup of iOS apps in iTunes several versions ago. However there are apps available that will back up your iOS device including the apps.
I got iMazing in a Mac app bundle a while back and found it works as advertised and is well supported from the developer. It will back up your iOS device including the apps on it and store it locally on your Mac.
No relation to or interest in iMazing, just a happy customer. There are other apps that do similar things as well.


iPad's Mail won't check for new messages in folders I have a number of folders and filtering rules on my various e-mail accounts (Gmail, personal email, company email, etc). The problem is that the Mail app only checks for e-mail on the "received messages" folder.

That folder is where unfiltered messages end up on, and the app does check that. The other structured folders, where the filtered messages go, are only checked when I enter them manually.

Is there any way to automate the checking of e-mails for all the folders on your e-mail accounts?

Short of getting a different mail client on your iPad I can get you more than half of the way there.

Set up gmail as Microsoft Exchange server (leave the domain blank, add user and password and let it try to connect. When it fails, use m.google.com for the server and you can choose mail, calendar, address data to use ActiveSync)

Once the first mail sync starts, you can then choose days to sync and which subfolders will have push enabled. The mail badge count still only reflects unread messages in the Inbox, but you will get the mail notification sound/vibration for any new push message arriving in your selected subfolders. Your iOS device will be ready to go when you tap into the folders that have new push messages.


What is the model number for product MP2F2LL/A I'd like to purchase a case at the same time as purchasing this iPad from Apple's website, but I can't seem to figure out what the actual model number is.  I can't find any reference to iPad's with A9/M9 processors.  First image is from their store page, second image is the relevant 'technical specifications' from the link at the bottom of the first image.

Thanks!

iPad (5th generation)

Year: 2017
Capacity: 32, 128 GB

Model number (on the back cover):
A1822 on the iPad (5th generation) Wi-Fi

A1823 on the iPad (5th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular


Internet dosn't work when connecting hdmi / usb hub I have bought a brand new MacBook Pro 15' and when I am connecting my screens, the wifi is still connected but the internet doesn't work.
when I am disconnecting the HDMI, the internet comes back.
I read that this is a known problem, but I didn't get any solution...

What should I do?

Try this, go to system preferences then network preferences. Select Thunderbolt Ethernet and "make service inactive" (click sprocket icon at the bottom)

This improved my WiFi connection speed.  My thought being that Thunderbolt is a multipurpose port also used for ethernet and may be taking priority when it is plugged into any device.  If you are using WiFi Thunderbolt ethernet is obviously not needed.


Make folder private so other users can't access I've just noticed that the contents of some new folders that I created under my users/[myname] folder, are visible to other users.  The original ones all have the 'no entry' sign.

How do I make these new folders private, i.e. to the [myname] user only?

There are a few different ways. Depending on your level of comfort with debugging permission errors, here they are ranked in terms of increasing risk. I'm not going to suggest you backup because you do that already, right?

Whenever you create a new folder, secondary-click on it and "Get Info", then remove read/execute permissions for other users and groups. That should give them the "denied" icon.

Make the above modification for your home directory, unless you have folders that you do want to give access to other users to.

Set a umask as described in Apple's KB HT2202 for user applications:

Create the file /etc/launchd-user.conf with the contents "umask nnn". Do not include the quotation marks and replace nnn with the desired umask value, such as 077.
This will set the user's umask for all applications they launch, such as Finder, TextEdit, or Final Cut Pro, and control the permissions set on new files created by any of these applications.

Note that this will affect all files and folders you create from that point on and may be difficult to debug. As per @Kent's comment below, this will affect all users of the computer, not just your own. You may also need to logout or reboot the computer.

In all of these cases, you may see errors from some applications unable to access some files/folders. It can be argued that these are poorly-designed applications, but if you need to use them you may have to relax the permissions. 1 may be the safest and easiest to revert when/as needed.


What Apps allow a user to join photos of arbitrary quantity and size? I was surprised this does not exist and am considering writing the App myself in response. How can you merge multiple photos into a new merged photo?

Like:

Input

200x300 "A.jpeg"
200x500 "B.jpeg"
200x100 "C.jpeg"

Merged Output

200x900 "A+B+C.jpeg"

Thoughts? Do I need to go write this myself :)?

Option "Stitch" in Photo Grid app allows you to merge multiple photos (up to 9).


How to verify account I have iPhone 5s. When I try to download any app in App Store, it shows you have not verify your Apple ID tap ok to review the instructions on how to verify your Apple ID, and when I click ok, then it shows that verification email has been sent to my email. I never received that email, so what can I do?

You should visit My Apple ID, login on Manage my Apple ID and modify your email settings there.


Undeletable directory with several subdirectories I have noticed a folder on / called "Previous System". After checking that it did not have anything I need, I moved it to the trash. However, when emptying the trash, I get a "file in use" error.

When I attempt to use rm in the Terminal to perform the delete, this happens:

# rm -rf .Trash/Previous\ System
rm: .Trash/Previous System/private/tmp/coreutils20150822-26525-1gnqu7f/coreutils-8.24/confdir-14B---/<SNIP>confdir-14B---: No space left on device
<several "no space left on device" errors removed>
rm: .Trash/Previous System/private/tmp/coreutils20150822-26525-1gnqu7f/coreutils-8.24/confdir-14B---<SNIP>/confdir-14B---: Directory not empty
rm: .Trash/Previous System/private/tmp/coreutils20150822-26525-1gnqu7f/coreutils-8.24/confdir-14B---: Directory not empty
rm: .Trash/Previous System: Directory not empty

The unedited output shows an error for each 'confdir-14B---' recursion. They are directories, not symbolic links.

Free space is not an issue, df -h reports I have 56 GiB available.

Found the solution here:
https://superuser.com/a/981772

Basically, cd to the start of the recursive folders, and repeatedly run

for FILE in $(ls); do mv $FILE a; cd a; done

This will rename the next folder to  "a" and cd into it. Eventually, this should reach the end of the recursion and/or allow deletion.


How to disable the MacBook screen when connected to TV via HDMI How can I disable the MacBook screen when it is connected to my TV via HDMI?B

You can use your MacBook in clamshell mode, which disables the internal display, by closing the lid when your Mac is connected to the display (and AC power is connected). You can then use an external keyboard and mouse to use the computer.

Opening the lid restores the internal display, however you can set it so that the display stays disabled after opening using the following boot argument, then reboot once to enable the new setting:

sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"

Reset using sudo nvram -d boot-args or by resetting NVRAM by booting with ⌘⌥PR.


How to make the Notification Center menu icon glow, (like Twitter does) when notifications are present? Notification Center is pretty great, however, it's very annoying that I have to click the menubar icon or make a gesture to actually open the notification pane.

How to make the Notification Center menu icon glow, (like Twitter does) when notifications are present, or something similar?

The only solution is jailbreak - which is not advised... In iOS 7 you don't get it either (I'm running the beta) and there is no hidden setting.


Disk utility has no option to expand HFS+ volume? I'm trying to expand my HFS+ volume (selected in picture) to use adjacent space, but there is no option to do it in disk utility (!)

I just resized my APFS partition in order to create the free space, so I know that this doesn't apply anymore:

Disk Utility won't touch things once you have a BOOTCAMP partition.

Disk utility in recovery mode as well as Gparted (Ubuntu 19.04) also seem unable to do it. What's going on?

Details

Macbook Air 2012, i.e. no UEFI boot for Windows
Bootcamp partition, i.e. hybrid MBR, i.e. creating another partition is out of the question
MacOS 10.14.4

If you successfully shrunk the APFS container partition to create free space, then macOS and Windows can not be used to add this free space to any other partition without destroying the contents of the other partition. Other solutions involve moving or copying other partitions.

You can only expand a partition downwards. You can not expand upwards. You shrunk the APFS container partition, therefore the free space resides directly below this partition. The only partition that can be expanded to claim this free space is the APFS partition itself.

You need to destroy the HFS+ partition and recreate it. First, you will need to backup any files you want to save. There is third party software which claims to be able move a HFS+ partition, but this usually take a long time to compete. Also, you should backup your important files before attempting. I should point out once you have made a backup, then could just destroy and recreate the HFS+ partition and avoid using third party software in any attempt to move the partition.

Just so you know, I download as bootable iso for Gparted and created a flash drive with an APFS, free space and JHFS+ partitions. I was able to boot from the iso in VirtualBox and move the JHFS+ partition on the flash drive. So, yes there is free third party tools that can move a JHFS+ partition. However, after moving the partition, I used the command diskutil verifyvolume on the JHFS+ volume. The verify failed with the messages given below.

$ diskutil verifyvolume disk1s3
Started file system verification on disk1s3 myhfs
Verifying file system
Volume was successfully unmounted
Performing fsck_hfs -fn -x /dev/rdisk1s3
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
Volume header needs minor repair
The volume myhfs was found corrupt and needs to be repaired
File system check exit code is 8
Restoring the original state found as mounted
Error: -69845: File system verify or repair failed
Underlying error: 8: Exec format error

I run diskutil repairvolume with the following results.

$ diskutil repairvolume disk1s3
Started file system repair on disk1s3 myhfs
Repairing file system
Volume was successfully unmounted
Performing fsck_hfs -fy -x /dev/rdisk1s3
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
Volume header needs minor repair
Repairing volume
Rechecking volume
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume myhfs was repaired successfully
File system check exit code is 0
Restoring the original state found as mounted
Finished file system repair on disk1s3 myhfs

After the repair, I was able to resize the JHFS+ formatted partition to reclaim the free space immediately after the partition.

  Note: If your Mac is using hybrid partitioning, then you probably want to temporarily remove this hybrid partitioning before using third party tools such as Gparted. Once you have finished you could restore the hybrid partitioning. A good third party tool to enable and disable hybrid partitioning is gdisk.


RAM upgrade for an iMac 27" 2017 used for video-editing, compression and audio recording I have a 27" iMac (2017) - 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7 - Radeon Pro 580 8 GB - 16GB DDR4 running macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

I do a lot of video editing, compression and record a lot of Live DJ Sets with a Pro DJ Suite.

At this point, the video editing and compression is going 'ok', but if it could be a little bit faster, I would not mind.

In light of this work, would upgrading the memory from 16GB to 32GB be useful?

In other words, if I add an extra 16GB to the system, will I have better results* when working on video files?

*Better results = faster completion.

I'm a big believer in having more RAM generally, but of course in many situations having more RAM isn't warranted. In your case, however, having more RAM is going to be useful because of the type of tasks you're using your iMac for.

The key spec missing from your question, however, is the type of storage you have. If your iMac has one of the Fusion drives, then you'll get more out of your extra RAM than you will if you have an internal SSD. This is because macOS will use your storage device for virtual memory when it doesn't have enough RAM available.

In summary, if your internal drive:

is a Hybrid/Fusion drive, then definitely upgrade your RAM.
is an SSD, then strongly consider upgrading your RAM


How to connect to my web app running on mac over WiFi? I have very recently switched to mac, so i am a bit lost here...

I am running a test web app (Spring Boot app) on my mac now and I need to connect to it over WiFi form another device.

Now, when the app was running on win I could connect on

https://192.168.0.106:8080

(the IP address of the new mac is 192.168.0.102) but if I go to  https://192.168.0.102:8080 I get only "This page is not available"....

Thanks for your help!

There could be a few reasons, but your security settings are probably the most likely candidates.

Temporarily turn Off the Firewall

The easiest way to test this is to (very) temporarily turn off your firewall:

System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Firewall > Turn Off Firewall

Retest your connectivity, if it works, turn your firewall back on and then allow the app through the firewall.


How to access previous support articles? I picked up an older G5 with a PowerPC for software testing. Its not booting, and I am experiencing the issues described at 3 Beep on Powermac G5 on the Apple Forums. Unfortunately, the links provided for support articles were broken by Apple's webmaster. For example, this was cited at least 5 times, and it appears to be the canonical reference for this issue on the G5:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302527

Now, here's the best part. On the new support site, there is no search box. So it appears I can't even search for it based on the previous article number.

How do I reference previous support articles on the redesigned site?

If you are lost on the Apple support globe and its new appearance and older forum links are leading to nowhere, the wayback machine may be helpful:

About the Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) diagnostic LEDs

This support article doesn't mention beeps but only flashes and colors.

BTW the Apple support site still features searches:

The result is not very helpful though, despite the fact that the article is still available in the archive. I haven't been able to find it in the 100 listed results.


Change the behaviour of Enter key in iMessage I keep sending iMessages from my mac before I have finished typing them by accidentally hitting the return key.  Is there a way to change the behaviour to send on Cmd-Enter instead?

I think its not possible to change behavior of Cmd-Enter Key you can use ALT + Enter/Return keys to create a New Line/paragraph in a text chat.


tmux hangs when re-attaching session after logout Since Yosemite, my tmux, which I installed via MacPorts, "hangs" when I re-attach it after my user has logged out and logged in again. I.e. it cannot start new processes, like a new command line. The logs in console do not show anything.

I do not even know how I start to figure out what's happening here.

I think the use of __DARWIN_VERS_1050 in the tmux Portfile may be causing this.

If you are able, try a clean compile from source (i.e. without that CPPFLAGS addition). Be sure to completely restart your tmux server using your fresh-built binary (the difference happens in the daemon(3) call made when the server first starts up—so using a “clean” binary to connect to a server started with the MacPorts-built binary would not help).

Tangentially, since you use tmux on OS X, you might also use my reattach-to-user-namespace wrapper program. It seems like the wrapper program may not actually be necessary on Yosemite for pasteboard access inside tmux. If you are using the wrapper (and you do not mind testing a bit), try removing it from your configuration on your Yosemite system. I would appreciate hearing whether things (continue) to work without use of the wrapper (or whether you still lose pasteboard access at some point).


How to backup and restore MBP hard drive before reinstalling OS X? My MBP Retina 13″ late 2012 is showing the stop sign and I know that I need to reinstall my OS. I have not got my hard drive backed up with Time Machine. Is there a way in which I can backup my hard drive to an external drive using Disk Utility and then restore it back once I have reinstalled the OS (I have to restore as for some reason I don't have enough space or something)?

Absolutely - this is a good plan in general - having a bootable backup in addition to a Time Machine interval backup.

I like to get a SD card / micro SD card and install an emergency boot OS with just enough tools to fix any situation.

How do I make a bootable USB flash drive a Mac?

I would do that before making any changes. Next, you will want to measure how large your drive is - open Apple Menu - about this Mac and look in storage:

For this Mac, you would need 185 GB of space.

Connect a USB drive and partition it to have one free partition that's at least 5 GB larger than the space needed. (I would go 15GB or more larger if you care about speed or ever booting from that partition)
Erase the partition you will be using and format it as OS X Extended and name it "target" or something unmistakable.
Shut down the Mac and hold R when booting to boot to Recovery HD
Use Disk Utility from Recovery to restore data from Macintosh HD to target
Wait - enjoy some tea or coffee or whatever
When things are done, power off and boot holding option - you should see two boot drives with different icons on the grey screen and can test booting from the clone.


If I set up Apple Mail, will it delete my emails? I was trying to set up Apple Mail on my Mac because someone emailed me a .eml file that I seem to need Apple Mail in order to open. When I tried setting up my Gmail account in Apple Mail, it asked me to give permission for the app to read, edit, and delete emails.
What I Want To Know: Under what circumstances would Apple Mail actually delete my emails from a Gmail account that I set up with it? Would it only be when I manually delete them in the Apple Mail app?

The .eml file is a mail file that is based on the MIME RFC 822 specification.  It's basically a text format that pretty much all Mail applications can open

Outlook (macOS, Windows, iOS, Android) / Outlook Express (Windows Only)
Microsoft Mail (Windows 10)
Apple Mail (macOS)
Mozilla Thunderbird

Regarding your question, you don't need to setup a Gmail acccount (or any account for that matter) to read a single .eml file.  If it asks you to set one up, just skip it.
You can also open a .eml in your browser.  Simply rename the file with an .mht extension.  Assuming the file is on your Desktop, using Terminal
% mv ~/Desktop/foobar.eml ~/Desktop/foobar.mht

Then open with your browser.  If it's only text, any browser will work, but if it has embedded images, Chrome or Microsoft Edge will natively display it (I prefer Edge over Chrome as it uses the same engine, but I distrust Microsoft less than I do Google).
Microsoft Word will natively open both a .eml and the .mht.  If you don't have Word, you can open it with the free web version of Word.  You just need to create a free Microsoft account.
As an example, I got an old .eml file (an Uber receipt) and tested.  It opens natively in

Outlook for macOS
Apple Mail
Microsoft Word
Edge/Chrome (as a text file)


how to tab text blocks in terminal input line $ I want to be able to tab from the start of one word to the next in this line, but how?

usually if I paste something in the input line then want to change something in the start or middle, I have to press  the left arrow for a long time, is there a faster way to do this?

Use option ⌥+→ and option ⌥+←. You will be able to step by one word.

Update:

You can also go to start of the line using control+A or to end of the line using control+E


Macbook Volume Control Not Working When I press the volume button (F11 and F12) nothing happens.  Also the mute button (F10) doesn't work.  I tried resetting my computer. Plugging in and out my headphones. Nothing worked.

This happens to me all the time.  I often switch audio device's for pro audio, but it also happens other times using different applications.

Open Terminal (Utilities)
Enter "killall coreaudiod"
Enter your user/admin password

Your volume controls should be working now.  I've reset my NVRAM and PRAM, as well as repaired disk permissions, yet still have to do this quite often.

** Running this command while playing audio/visual via web browser has caused the command not to work and/or the browser crashing, most of the time it doesn't though.


IPhone 5 Alarm sound question When you turn your ringer down during the day, so it only vibrates when someone calls, this also turns down your alarm. Is there a way to keep your alarm volume constant when you turn down your ringer?

Yes and no. The iPhone has a reasonably sophisticated, system-level, sound setup with the goal of making it easy for the user. It has several volume options divided up. (1) all alerts such as ringtones and Alarm.app alarms, (2) Siri, (3) content playback such as music or video.

Yes: What you can do to directly fix your problem is to use the vibrate/silence switch on the side of the phone instead of turning the ringer volume down. In the on position (orange is showing, a vibration is felt when the switch is initially turned on), phone calls, texts, and such will vibrate, but the alarm will still play at whatever the ringer volume was set to before turning the vibrate switch on.

One other thing you could do is leave the volume switch on and purchase, or create, a silent ringer - no music in it. Then you can select that ringer as your default ringer and calls will be "silenced". This method is generally not preferred because custom contact ringers will override this ringer.

No: The vibrate switch is actually the only way to separate the ringer volume from the alarm volume. If the vibrate switch is off (calls are heard), then the alarm volume will match the ringer volume.


What is the icon next to Spotlight in menu bar, and how to remove it? What is this icon
 in OS X menu bar and how do you remove it?

This is Notification Center icon. You can get rid of it using http://www.macbartender.com app.


Should I get the new MacBook? I'm a math phd student, who currently owns the mid 2009 13" MacBook Pro (2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 memory and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB graphics).

I use my laptop mainly for surfing the web and watching tv shows/movies, but also as a research tool (e.g. Solving differential equations numerically and plotting various functions using Mathematica and MATLAB)

I'm really excited for the upcoming MacBook. It seems to be an improvement to my current Mac on every aspect except for the processor: It reads "1.1 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor Turbo Boost up to 2.4 GHz/1.2 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor Turbo Boost up to 2.6 GHz"

My questions are:

Is this laptop suited for my needs?
How often does this Turbo Boost kick in? If it does so often, I'll definitely get this one.

Thank you!

For the quotidian tasks you mention, your computer is adequate, although I would immediately increase RAM to 4GB, a rather trivial expense.

Mathematica & MATLAB, and other CPU-heavy apps such as Strata Design 3DCX or FinalCut Pro X, have the ability to run multiple cores in parallel. In most cases, ordinary apps will run only one core of the CPU. Other apps, such as Photoshop will take advantage of multiple cores for a subset of its available operations which can benefit from parallel processing.

Mathematica, in particular, does not run most of its calculations on multiple cores, but offers operations which provide parallel computation.

If the MacBook is in OK shape, (i.e., you treated it decently,) the best options would be to increase the RAM, and if you choose to do so, install an internal SSD. At 6 years of age, the internal HD is closing in on its eventual demise.


How to upgrade MBP early 2015 SSD I am trying to look for a way to upgrade my 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina SSD because it's too small right now (only 128GB).

I found out that currently it seems only OWC Aura offers the upgrade SSD for this model; are there any other brands that you know offers upgrade for 2015 early MBP?

Note: I'm trying to install Windows with bootcamp, so external drives aren't really options for me.

Many thanks!

I've bought a number of OWC products include SSD's for older MBP and MBA models. Always been satisfied.

That said, I recall reading a review that said there was a problem installing Bootcamp on the latest upgrades so I'd check with OWC tech support before ordering.


Will data be lost in resetting macOS admin password? My GF recently started working with a Mac and while I'm a IT tech with Linux and Windows knowledge, I'm very much a noob with Macs.

The problem is she's working on a Mac that another user (the guy she replaced) set a admin password, now no one knows said password neither does he pick up the phone.

I've seen there’s a way to create a new admin account via this post:
How can I get admin access to a Mac without knowing the current password?

My question is will she loose any data from the old account? She has some projects and such (I know the keychain will be lost, but she has all the passwords she needs).

As you mentioned, credentials will be lost including the Keychain, but files will be preserved. You can either create a new account, log into it and change the permissions on the original account’s home folder to be able to access the files, or reset the password to the existing administrator account and log into that. The former will preserve the Keychain in case the password is recovered while still giving access to the files.


Replacing the Internal Time Capsule Hard Drive I'm trying to install a new hard drive in my TC after the original one died, but to no avail.

I bought a 1.0TB 3.5 WesternDigital SATA disk and formatted it for OS X using a SATA-USB connector. It worked and the disk is usable. BUT as soon as I plug it back in TC and power it up, TC displays its amber non-flashing light and its wifi stops working.

However if I remove the HD, the wifi gets back on its feet...

May some TC genius come to the rescue of my troubled soul.

You need to let the TC format the drive. If you can't make that happen using a reset + reconfigure from the AirPort utility, you might have an incompatible drive (i.e. Needs more power or cannot be used due to incompatible features).

It's not going to work like an external drive that happens to be built in, the TC OS needs to manage the disk. OS X can read such disks, so it might seem like any normal formatted disk if you hooked up the old one.

If you still have the old drive, you might have more luck cloning it to the new one prior to installing it.

Also, if wifi doesn't work, ethernet might still work, especially if the Time Capsule needs a reset.


AirPlay turns my secondary monitor into a mirroring device I just replaced a BenQ monitor by an LG Ultrawide one as a secondary device to my 2017 Macbook Pro. When using AirPlay to my Apple TV (AirPlaying the Macbook screen), I used to be able to keep using my secondary monitor as if nothing was happening.

However, since I changed my secondary screen, turning on AirPlay automatically turns on this secondary screen into mirroring mode (with a terrible stretch due to the aspect ratio differences).

Any idea how to fix that?

I solved the problem by clicking on Use as Separate Display and going back to Mirroring Retina Display. Sometimes the windows get a little messed up, but it's much better now!


Blank temperature in iOS 8 Weather app (showing just underscores) Since upgrading to iOS 8 on iPhone, the Weather app will occasionally show a "blank" temperature (using an underscore: _ for each empty digit, so two underscores: __). The blank temperature also appears in Notification Center.

It is like this about 40% of the time. I imagine this doesn't affect everyone, but that it is instead affecting only temperature data for certain cities? Has anyone else experienced this and know how to fix it?

It's been like this ever since iOS 8 first came out on September 17, 2014, and since then I have tried killing the Weather app, restarting my device, etc. and none of those worked.

If the blank temperature is associated with a page that also has a blank city, then the problem might be that you have not allowed the Weather app to "always" access location data.

You can check the setting by going to "Settings" --> "Privacy" --> "Location Services".


Recover iPhone backup file from SSD my MacBook Pro crashed I pulled out my 128G SSD and was able to connect and read it with my HD reader, I would like to locate the iPhone backup created previously I would like to locate it since I'm a PC user I'm not familiar with Mac OS I have both Mac & PC available to use
Thanks in advance
Joe
Hi, and thanks for the repay I was able to follow the steps provided but now it's telling me the folder "Library" can't be opened because you don't have permission to see its contents. Thanks in advance –

Assuming you can see the contents on the file system, the backups are located at /Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ in relation to the root of the drive.

Heads up that the Library folder located in your user's directory is hidden. You can use shortcut Shift + Command + G in Finder to bring up the 'Go To' dialog so you can copy + paste that location to get to the file. Just be aware that if you're mounting the drive, you will need to append /Volumes/DriveNameHere to the beginning of the path.


How can I reduce the size of iCal files? I've exported one of my Google Calendars – 336kb
I then imported it into iCal and exported it without modification – 1.7mb

Is there a problem that would the file size increase so much?

Is there any way to trim the fat?

-- Mac OS 10.7.2

Not sure how you are measuring the size of the iCal information but when you exported the events from Google Calendars you got the bare event information in a transport form (.ics)

When this gets imported into iCal the data formats for that application must be created together with any linking and additional data. I would suspect if you were to be privy to the internal storage format of the Google Calendar it would also take up more than 336KB.

It's a fact of life with software that the data storage formats will take more space than the bare contained data as the software needs to add more than just your data to provide functionality.

As an example create yourself a TextEdit document and type a single space save then look at the size of the file.

If you save as plain text it's 1 byte, save as RTF and it's 328 bytes, and save as Word(docx)it's 3528 bytes.


How to make right click using keyboard only on a Mac? Is there way to set a keyboard shortcut or key to simulate a mouse right click but without touching trackpad or mouse?

E.g. Imagine you have a list of files in Finder. You move your selection by going up and down with keyboard arrows. When you are happy with selection, you "press a button" and it simulates as if you did a secondary click on the file you selected earlier with the keyboard. The context menu should not open where the mouse pointer is, otherwise I'd have to move it over selection first, which ruins the keyboard-only workflow.

On Mac currently, all current right click options need me to touch trackpad or mouse:

Two finger single tap
CTRL+click
Tap in right area of trackpad if enabled in Trackpad Settings.

Similar to following windows option key.

I don't know any way to show a context menu for items selected with the keyboard like what the menu key does in Windows.

To assign a keyboard shortcut for performing a secondary click at the current coordinates of the pointer, you can either:

Use a private.xml like this with Karabiner:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Right Mousebutton</name>
    <identifier>rightMouseButton</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::OPTION_R, PointingButton::RIGHT</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Use BetterTouchTool:

Use Keyboard Maestro:

Download MouseTools and assign a shortcut to MouseTools -rightClick.


Conflicting Disc Utility Details - Failing Drive 2010 MacPro Yosemite

A TimeMachine backup attempt gave me an error message of a bad backup drive. Disk Utility shows -

  This drive has a hardware problem that can't be repaired. Back up as much of the data as possible and replace the disk. See an authorized Apple dealer for more information.

Now, the back up drive was one partition of a larger drive. This is the alert when on the full drive. Each partition passes the disc verify test. The latest backup occured this morning despite the alert from TimeMachine, and the current status from Disc Utility.

Question - Does this problem alert from Disc Utility make sense, that a drive fails S.M.A.R.T. Status but its 2 partitions look fine?

Disc Utility isn't always the best tool for something like this.
I would probably throw something like this at TechTool Pro, Paragon Hard Disk Manager or DiskWarrior* for a good 'second opinion'.

I would also be careful & make sure I had a good clone of it first - Carbon Copy Cloner

*DiskWarrior is extremely good with Time Machine drives, as they're always HFS+, but can't handle APFS & doesn't deal with the entire drive like the others, only partitions.
I've had TTP fix things DW couldn't & HDM fix drives containing Windows partitions that the others couldn't - so there is no clear 'winner' between these three.
TTP contains SMART monitoring software too.

If I could only have 2 of the 3, I'd go TTP & DW, probably in that running order.


How to switch to the day calendar with iOS 7 I recently switched an iPhone from iOS 6 to iOS 7.1.2.
Within iOS 6 I was using Calendar on the day display and week display mode continuously. It was easy to a point I can't even recall how I did this switching (we should take notes when we see an interface which is working nicely).

With iOS 7.1.2 I have a serious interface problem.

Within Calendar I am able to switch from an annual view to a month view with the month name topleft red button. I discovered that I can also switch back to the month view by clicking on the month name red header.
But I can't see any way to switch to a day or week view.
On the bottom left corner I have a Today red button, but it doesn't do anything.

What is the intelligent method to access the actual day calendar?

To toggle from month to week view, turn the phone sideways.

Day view is dependant on whether or not you have the list view on or off [highlighted in blue] If that's on, the day's events appear underneath the month. If it's off, tapping a day will take you to that day's view.

Once in Day view, the same button will then toggle between single day & list of upcoming events view.

Month view

Week view

Day view

Event list


What does the Auto Hotspot setting do on the Apple Watch? When taking a look at the Apple Support article that explains how to manually connect an Apple Watch to Wi-Fi (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209071), the page makes a mention to a setting entitled "Auto Hotspot". I haven't been able to find any other references to this setting - would somebody be able to explain what it does?

A hot spot is when another device with cellular data broadcasts Wi-Fi connectivity.

This setting allows you to automatically join those Wi-Fi, prompt you to join them or disables joining them.


create custom links in OSX dock I have a program that runs from the command line but not correctly from the icon in the applications menu. While I would like to figure that out, all I want right now is  way to create a link in the dock where I can click that link, and run the command that lauches the program correctly.

I use the platypus tool/framework to roll scripts into apps all the time:

http://sveinbjorn.org/platypus/

The code for it is available and it's a free download with a request to donate financial support if you can/care.


PC laptop + VNC + Mac Mini server for iOS development. Is it practical? [orignally posted to stackoverflow.com - it was suggested that this would be a better place for it]

I'd like to start experimenting with iOS development, but to coin an (awful) phrase: "I'm a PC".  I love my Windows 7 laptop and don't want to move wholesale to a MacBook Pro.  Instead what I'd like to do is buy a Mac Mini and use it as a server.  I've read that:

A Mac Mini is suitable for iOS development.  Add more RAM for a better experience.
MAC OS does support VNC.

I use VNC daily to access Linux machines, but I've never used a Mac.  By "never" I literally mean I have never put my hands on a Mac keyboard - and I've been a programmer for 25 years.

What I specifically don't know - and would like an answer to - is whether using a VNC client from Windows will give me the full Mac OS desktop, sufficient to fully administer the machine and then run the iOS development suite at full fidelity.  And if not VNC, then what?

Thanks.

Yes, VNC will give you access to the full Mac desktop and to Xcode for iOS SDK development, if the Mac is so configured.  Apple sells remote admin tools that use this protocol.

The problem with using VNC for iOS development is that you will also need access to the Mac's USB port to do any direct app loading and debugging on an iOS device.

If you can do without needing to connect a debugger, you can transfer Ad Hoc iOS app builds and provision files from the Mac to your PC and use iTunes to install your apps for testing.

If you want to try it out, there are reported to be services that will rent you VNC access to a Mac in a data center somewhere.  You will need admin/root access to install the iOS SDK tools.

If you prefer RDP to VNC, iRAPP is a commercial RDP terminal server available for use on Mac OS X.


Firmware Update 1.0 for MacBook Air 2012 Not Installing The firmware update 1.0 for my MacBook Air (2012) is not installing. I do not have the disk encrypted and I have tried an SMC reset. I also let the mac sit for a minute after shutting down before turning it back on just as the update suggest. Every time I boot my air back up it tells me in the App Store that there is still an update that needs to be taken.

Any suggestions?

Do you happen to have FileVault enabled? If so, you cannot update the firmware on the drive at this state.

The firmware update happens before the OS decrypts/unlocks the drive, thus at FW update time, the drive is not accessible.

The only solution I know is a bit of a pain:

turn off FileVault
run the update
turn FileVault back on