iPad Air heats up and burns through battery after IOS update When all the apps failed, I was forced to update IOS to the latest two weeks ago.  All seemed fine until streaming Morning Joe burns through 80%+ of the battery and the device becomes hot.  Last month I could watch many hours on 80%

Is there a method (setting) to monitor clock speed and temperature?

Is there a setting to slow the clock speed?

Apple's diagnostics would capture some logs but you'd need Apple to tell you which apps are stuck or chewing through the battery / CPU / energy.

I would focus on checking your last backup and erase things selectively.

If you want to erase slowly:

reset all settings and then power cycle - that's quick but usually doesn't fix this
erase all content and settings - then connect to power and do light web apps Safari - don't sign into iCloud, don't restore the backup, don't install any (or many) apps.

Run with the stock OS that was causing the problem without your data or apps to convince yourself that it was your programs and data. If you still see the power drain, then restore the device from iTunes or Apple Configurator or have a technician do it.

TLDR:

If it's hardware - none of these will fix it.
If you had a corrupt iOS - the restore from USB will fix it
If you had programs crashing and data continually trying to update (software bugs or such) - the erase all content and settings will fix it.
If a trivial setting got stuck and you needed a minor fix - the reset settings will fix it.
The last thing it could be is simply a process that takes a long time to finish. Photos face recognition or upgrading from an old iCloud storage format to a new one can take three or more days to sync if you have 100 GB of photos with many people in them and your photos database has a lot of things to process. It might not even be something you need to fix and can connect to power and WiFi wait this out.


How to silent (vibrate only) alarms? When I use silent mode, I expect no sound and hence I expect alarms to be silent as well but they are not; ring/silent switch has no effect on alarms!
On iOS 5 this used to work and in silent mode alarms did just vibrate.
How can i put alarms in silent mode without reconfiguring each of them one by one when I need silent mode?
Thanks

Use a silent MP3
Here's the solution that worked for me:

Get silent audio clip. Search online (e.g. using Google) or create (using GarageBand, Audacity, etc.) a 20-25 second clip of silence.
Get clip into iTunes. Save it in your iTunes as a "song" (I just called it Silent Ringtone).
Get clip onto iPhone. Then sync your phone so it's now on your phone. (Make sure you check the Sync Music checkbox in iTunes.)
Use clip on iPhone. Now, when you create an alarm, use Pick a Song from your library, and select your "Ringtone" song.   If you have your settings elsewhere set to vibrate on silent or whatever, then you should now have a song that "plays" while your phone happily buzzes.

Hope that helps!
P.S. As someone who only recently switched to iPhone from a phone that could do the vibrate-only alarm thing easily, I would use these alarms to set myself private reminders for lots of things. Such as when I was in a lecture or meeting and needed to remember to leave 5 minutes early but didn't want to be watching the clock constantly. Or if I had to remember when to go back and put more money in the parking meter. Or basically a multitude of things to alert myself that I didn't need to whole world to know about! Just a simple buzz in the pocket was enough.
Further reading: HowToGeek has screenshots


Used Air Drop to move a folder with mp3 files in it to my phone. Where are they now? I moved some mp3s to my iPhone using AirDrop expecting they would be available in the Music app, but I can't seem to find them. Where can I find them on my phone?

There was no error or anything saying the files didn't go through. It appears as if they have been copied to my phone.

You can add a 3rd party app that supports mp3 playback to the iOS device and if they support AirDrop you will get a prompt after AirDrop of mp3 from computer to iOS device asking which program to open the mp3.  My prompts include iMovie, Evernote and Google Drive.  I use Evernote.  This does not put it in iOS iTunes.  But I'm not always near the computer that hosts my main iTunes and I use Evernote for the immediate need and then add to iTunes from Evernote on the iTunes main host when the opportunity arises.


El Capitan changes language input after reboot every time I restart my Mac (OS X El Capitan 10.11.3), the language input is set to "ABC Extended" instead of English or German. This causes me trouble when I want to type my password. Is there a way to set this back to English or German?

One workaround is to open System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Login Items and enable "Show input menu in login screen".

After enabling the checkbox you can choose between several input sources in the upper right corner.


What is the ideal charging behavior for a new Retina MacBook Pro? I've called Apple Support a bunch of times, but I got conflicting answers.

To my knowledge, new technology makes it okay to keep the charger plugged in non-stop, but I want to make sure I am properly caring the computer.

If you mean you may have to remove the charger when the battery is at 100%, even though (I don't actually know whether it does) mbp disallowed current input, i'd remove it anyway.
I hope I answered your question.


How do I make my cursor return to its normal size? Apparently because of either some BetterTouchTool shortcut or bug1 I have a gigantic mouse cursor, and I can't reverse it.  BetterTouchTool has the option to toggle the cursor size, but instead of going back and forth between normal and larger, it just gets larger and larger and larger.  This is driving me crazy and can only be fixed by rebooting, as far as I know.
I need some way of restoring the mouse cursor to its original dimensions.  How can I do this?

1 In the past I used BTT's ability to toggle mouse cursor size to visually signal that my shortcuts were working.  But now something is doing that without my knowledge or consent.
I've searched through all of my BetterTouchTool shortcuts and I can't find one causing the problem, so it may be a bug in the software itself, or it may be a result of a combination of lacking a good enough search engine and me somehow overlooking it.

Have you try: System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Display ->  Cursor -> Cursor size


Can I use an unlocked AT&T iPhone 4 with european sim cards? Moving to Austria in two weeks. AT&T is going to unlock my phone for me before I leave since my contract is in good standing with them.

Will I be able to use my iPhone 4 with European carrier sim cards once I get there?

iPhone 4 supports four GSM frequencies (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz). Phones like these are usually referred to as "quad-band" or "world-phones", because of these frequencies, most carriers around the world will support one or more of them.

Once unlocked, you should be able to use it pretty much anywhere that has a GSM network. You won't be able to use it on carriers that use CDMA networks as that's a different type of wireless radio entirely.

CDMA doesn't use SIM cards, so that's an easy way to tell them apart.

One other thing you should keep in mind is that iPhone 4 uses a micro-SIM. If your European provider doesn't provide micro-SIMs, you'll need to take a regular sized SIM and cut it to size.

Due to the popularity of the iPhone outside the US, even in countries where it's sold only on the gray market, it's pretty easy to find small cellphone vendors that can do this for you.


Seeing current permissions for a file? How can I see the permissions for a file (e.g. if I want to recreate those permissions for another file using chmod)?

For example after I run chmod 644 on foo.txt, what command, if any, can I run on foo.txt which returns 644?

If you type ls -l in terminal you get the permission for your file

drwxr-xr-x   7 ---  staff   238 Apr 14  2010 images
-rw-r--r--   1 ---  staff  2628 Aug 26  2009 index.html
drwxr-xr-x@ 11 ---  staff   374 Feb 28  2010 simplemvc

You can use table below to convert rwxr-xr-x to number and vice versa:

And get more detail here.


There's missing space in my partitions on my Macbook 2016 My Macbook is usually 250gb, and I'm looking to increase the main container disk1 to as close as that as possible. There's like 37GB of unaccounted space. Where is it? I can't tell if its being used or if its potentially something I can merge. Here's a screencap of my current disk list.

There's only 213.7GB of usable space. To give context this laptop is fairly new, but I may have messed up removing a partition or something. I don't have any data installed either.

Based on the information you have posted, the missing free space can be found to be between disk0s1 and disk0s2. The macOS operating system is stored in the APFS container partition (disk0s2). There is no command or application provided by macOS that can merger this free space back to this container.

     byte             byte
starting offset   ending offset    size in bytes   identifer
---------------  ---------------  ---------------  ----------
         24,576      314,597,375      314,572,800  disk0s1
    314,597,376   37,335,146,495   37,020,549,120  free space
 37,335,146,496  251,000,172,543  213,665,026,048  disk0s2


Activity Monitor and System Profiler won't report 32 bit apps I'm trying to check which apps I am going to lose when I upgrade to Big Sur. According to numerous websites I should be able to do this via Activity Monitor or System Profiler.
Activity monitor should have column on the CPU tab to show Kind, but it isn't there and the menu to add columns doesn't include it.
System Profiler should have a column for "64 big (intel)" but it doesn't and I can't see any options for adding/removing columns there.

OS X 10.15.7
MacBook Pro 15-inch 2018

Support for 32-bit apps was already removed in 10.15 Catalina.
It would make sense that Activity Monitor would no longer have that column since no such apps can run. It looks like that column was also removed from System Report.
So the good news is you probably don't have anything that broke, or at-least you haven't missed them if they did.
If you still want to check for any lingering 32-bit apps, you can probably still do so using mdfind in Terminal.


Why is sudo running so many times? I've just noticed that my mac has loads of sudo processes running – why? What is causing them?

The easiest way to determine what's going on here is to open a terminal and run

ps aux | grep sudo

On my machine there are many lines, all that include:

/usr/libexec/StartupItemContext /usr/bin/open -a /Library/Application Support/iStat Server/DiskTool.app

So, we know that it's from a start up item, specficially iStat Server.

As I don't use that app anymore, I'll uninstall it.


Getting music NOT purchased from iTunes to show up on my iPhone I have an iPhone but just recently bought an iPod. I want to put all my songs on the iPod and just have my favorites on my iPhone but all that seems to show up on my iPhone are the songs i bought from iTunes. How do i get the cd's i imported to show up on my iPhone? I can see them when the phone is plugged into the computer but once i unplug and look up the songs on the phone there are gone.

You need to select what music, for example, playlists, songs, artists or albums to sync to the iphone, please follow this apple support document

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201253


Sort trash files by date trashed One of the nice features of the recycle bin in Windows is the ability to sort it by the date an item was deleted. This way if you accidentally delete something, you can easily find it because it will be at the top of the list.

Is there any way to do something similar in Mac OS X's Trash folder?

I see that there is a date modified field, but that is not updated when the file is deleted.

Update for OSX 10.9 Mavericks:

It appears that you can now sort by Date Added in OSX Mavericks. In Trash right click one of the columns and click to check the Date Added column. The click on the column header until the list of files is sorted by Date Added descending.

For OS X 10.7 Lion:

Go to the AppleScript Editor, paste in the following script and save it in /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
    repeat with this_item in added_items
        do shell script "find " & quoted form of POSIX path of this_item & " -exec touch {} \\;"
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

Then…

Right-click on any folder in Finder, go to Services and click Folder Actions Setup.
Cancel the dialog asking which script to attach.
Click the checkbox to Enable Folder Actions
Click the plus sign to choose the Trash.

Press ⌘ cmd + ⇧ shift + G and type in ~/.Trash, click Go or press ↩ return, and then click Open.
On the right side, click the plus sign to choose the AppleScript that you saved earlier.

Thanks to Graham for the link which pointed me in the right direction.


MacOS 10.14: Disable headphone volume key repeat (prevent continous volume increase) (Macbook Pro late 2013, 10.14.6)
The behavior I want to prevent: If I hold a headphone volume control button pressed, the volume continues to increase (decrease) all the way up (down). I'd like to restrict this action to one increment by press, even if it's a continuous press. Any known way for this?
Or maybe a way to disable volume key repeat for the keyboard? I could imagine it would also affect the headphone buttons in a desired way.

Key repeat can be turned off in the keyboard preference panel.  That's a global setting affecting all keys, if you want this behavior only on the volume controls then that's not going to help.


How to get rid of booby-trapped pop ups to update flash player? I'm coming across a malicious pop up to update my flash player. The message in the pop up:

Warning! Your Adobe Flash Player version is outdated. Security risks. Please update now.

I've seen this pop up across multiple browsers (chrome, safari, firefox) and occurs on all OSX machines on the local network. I've attempted to disable on plugins and extensions in chrome but the problem remains. Clicking ok takes me to a website that appears to be an official adobe website but the link to download the update is clearly wrong.

This problem just happened today across three machines simultaneously and I'm stumped as how to proceed. What's the best way to remove these pop ups?

When weird things happen on my clients' Macs, the first thing I do is run the free Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (MBAM, formerly AdwareMedic software to see if any of the known "bad guys" is active on the system. As often as not, they are.

Also, have a look at your /etc/hosts file through Terminal:

Open Utilities > Terminal (or use Spotlight)
more /etc/hosts (press space bar to scroll a screen at a time)

See if fplayer.adobe.com is listed there. If so, we'll discuss how to remove it.

Try that and report back. Then we'll try step two.


Did I get a lemon, or does the ipod touch g4 come with a crappy usb cable? Really, I mean you shell out $300 for this thing you'd think the usb cable would be able to sync after two months of use.

I ended up buying one from China that works just fine (as opposed to the one that came with it!)

I believe that all current generation Apple devices some with the same sync cable. From my experience (almost everyone I know is an apple fan) some people wear through them pretty quickly (usually girls who wind them up and put them in hand bags etc) and some last forever (such as mine which just sits on the desk and only gets used every few days. its the original cable that came with my first iPhone a few years back and still works fine).


What happens if you do not listen to an audio message an iPhone? I do not want to open an audio message that was sent to me via iMessage. How do I get it to go away without deleting the whole conversation?
Sidenote… I do not have my read receipts on, so if I open the conversation but do not listen to the audio message, can i delete it without being noticed by the sender?

In iOS 14.4.2, open Messages.app and scroll so the unwanted message appears. As an example, imagine the message "Fran and Bob are bringing flowers today" also includes an audio file (not shown in the attached screenshots):

Press and hold your finger on the message that contains the audio file; the audio file won't play. However, a contextual menu will appear:

Tap "More," and you'll see this:

The blue checkmark indicates the individual audio file (not the entire thread) has been selected. Touch the trash icon at the lower left, and the unwanted audio file will be deleted.
This action occurs only on your iPhone; the sender will not be notified that you have deleted the message or the file.


Is it safe to still use an iBook G4 on Wi-Fi? I have recently bought an iBook to run a specific software. The machine is still pretty good but I was chatting with someone and they recommended not connecting it to Wi-Fi.
Is there an issue with doing this? Is it unsafe for some reason?

What your friend is likely talking about is not connecting it to the Internet as the newest macOS that works on that Mac is OLD.
And that matters because it does not have the benefit of updated patches to macOS that make it more secure and more importantly it runs a badly outdated version of Safari that may not even connect to most modern websites due to standards changes in web publishing and the outdated security certificates built-into old versions of macOS.
Depending on which iBook you have you may be able to install a more modern browser. I have an old G4 tower with some older, never updated, apps on it that I use from time to time and use a version of Firefox called TenFourFox. It (as I have been told) supports G3 and G4 processors. So that particular browser would be safe to use due to its more modern foundations, if slow on modern websites.
I believe there are other, alternative, browsers for legacy versions of macOS, but I have no direct experience with them. Other folks here may be able to chime in and offer suggestions, but it would be good if you edited your original question and add the model of iBook you have and the version of macOS installed on it.
But without a more modern browser I would also suggest you avoid connecting to the Internet, merely for safety reasons. Wi-Fi, itself, is likely okay as long as you are only using it to transfer files between your local Macs and not going out onto the Internet.


Mojave plist error: Path had bad ownership/permissions I'm trying to mount a fileshare at boot.  I copied the plist from a 2012 mini (where it ran fine) to a 2018 mini, both running Mojave. On the new mini I'm getting the error:

 Path had bad ownership/permissions

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>local.mount.video</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/sbin/mount_smbfs</string>
        <string>smb://jeff:mypass@bignas1/video</string>
        <string>/Volumes/home/jeff/bignas1/video</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

The plist is user-owned (501) with permissions of 0600, same as on the 2012 mini. The directory where the share is mounted is 501-owned as well, with permissions of 0755. The plist is located at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

If I move the plist to /Library/LaunchAgents and exec it as root the share mounts as expected, but only root can access it.

What am I missing here?  Everything online points to a permission/ownership problem, but I don't see the issue here.

Solved. On the new Mac Mini my primary storage is a RAID array of SSDs in a Thunderbolt enclosure. This external storage was marked as ignore ownership.  So, even though it appeared to me to have correct ownership and permissions, when viewed as root everything was owner _unknown,  group _unknown.

When ignore owner was turned off and the proper ownership was applied everything was functional again.


1.93 GB for 133 photos? I have an iPhone SE and I wonder how my device uses 1.93 GB for only 133 stored photos? This is the information I get to the 'storage' part of my phone, where it shows how much storage each app is using. In addition, only 0.53 GB of iCloud storage is used. How is this possible?

p.s. I had live photos enabled but this should only be applied for at most half of the photos I've taken. Wish there was a way to turn it off for all photos in one click (I use Windows sadly)

Take a look at this article:

https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-6s-camera-filesizes-4k-live-photos-hdr/

The iPhone SE has a 12MP camera. In some conditions a single photo can result in four files - a still and a live photo, plus an HDR version of each.

1.93GB for 133 photos works out to about 14.5 MB per photo, which sounds a little high, but is within reason.


6GB of "System Storage" on iPhone 6 - Reset Doesn't Clear It I have had issues with my iPhone's System Storage category taking up anywhere from 6 to 9 GB of storage.  This is a huge problem for me, as I have a 16GB phone!

I have backed up and wiped my phone in every possible combination multiple times over the last year or so and nothing helps.  Plugging it into iTunes and letting it sit open for a few minutes will clear less than 500 MB, and eventually that gets racked back up again.

Any ideas on how to fix this, or is my phone just screwed?

This is completely normal.

You can try clear unused files by restoring your iPhone from a backup.

You can also store your other files on iCloud to not take up space on the device. Some cases also offer additional storage. See here on how to clear up storage space.

Additionally, see iPhone System taking up Storage space.


Keeping Lion-style synchronized desktop switching with multi-monitor on Mavericks Is there a way in Mavericks to get multi-monitor desktop switching behavior similar to (Mountain) Lion?

Example setup:
Thunderbolt monitor + Macbook. Each with three desktops. (1,2,3) & (4,5,6)

Lion:
When swithching desktop from either monitor, the other monitor always switches along to the 'matching' desktop, eg. 1 & 4, 2 & 5, 3 & 6.

Mavericks:
Each monitor's three desktops can switch separately and don't influence the other.

While I definitely see the value of Mavericks' style, I want the old style back. Does anyone know a way to do this?

In System Preferences > Mission Control, toggle off the "Displays have separate Spaces" setting. That'll switch the behavior back to Mountain Lion's.


Is Macintosh System Software 1.0 (Classic MacOS) Free? Since Macintosh System Softwsre 1.0 is extremely old, has Apple made it free to download? If so, is there a link to download it from?

I am just curious to try and run it in an hardware emulator and get a feel for the old operating system...

No, System 1.0 is not open source and not in the public domain. Apple provided it with the purchase of a Macintosh. The system software was not available for separate purchase.

History

With MacOS 1.0 you are probably referring to the first version of Apple's operating system.

In 1984, with the release of the first Macintosh (128K), the system was actually not called MacOS but was just Mac System Software.

Apple has called it MacOS since version 7.6.

You can read (and learn) a lot about it on Wikipedia.

Emulation

About an emulator of the first Mac system. There is one you can use : mini vMac

It will require a ROM to run vMac
and finally a disk image of the system

Unzip everything, start the mini vMac, it will load the ROM and you'll get a blinking floppy with a question mark because it couldn't find the system. To solve it just drag the system image over vMac and the system will start !


Removing old Apple ID When trying to update, or download apps from app store, my old Apple ID is being used. How do I remove it and use my new one?

Searching for "change apple id appstore iphone" I stumbled into this page which shows how to do this on an iPhone.

Once you've signed out you can either sign in or create a new Apple ID.

  Log in to another Apple account that already exists by entering the appropriate login details at that screen, OR
  Create a new Apple ID by tapping on the “Create New Apple ID” button, which automatically logs in with the new Apple ID when
  finished

References

How to Change the Apple ID on iPhone, iPad, & iPod Touch


How to install OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) on VirtualBox 4.3? I've seen a lot of variants of this question, but most are pretty old, and don't quite match my use case.

How the heck do you get 10.8 (Mountain Lion) running on the latest version of VirtualBox, e.g., under 10.9 (Mavericks)?  I need it for testing.

First, you need to buy Mountain Lion (if you haven't bought it already).  Go to Apple's web store (not the App Store app), and search for "Mountain Lion", and pay $20 for it.
Wait 3 days.  Even though they're just emailing you a PDF with a license code, it's done manually (so I'm told), so it really does take 1-3 business days to get to you.
In the App Store app, click "Redeem" (top right on the main page), and paste in the code.  Download the Mountain Lion Installer.  On OS X 10.9, you'll get a warning that you can't downgrade, which is fine.
Install VirtualBox 4.3.12, or whatever the latest version is.
Make a new VM image.  You can use either "Mac OS X (64 bit)" or the 10.8-specific one -- they both seem to work.  Turn the video memory up to 128 MB -- at the default of 10 MB, it'll boot but you won't be able to see anything.  (I also suggest giving it more than 2 GB of RAM, and more than 1 CPU.)
To SATA port 1 (the first free one), attach "InstallESD.dmg" from inside the Mountain Lion Installer package (right-click in the finder to show the package contents, and drag the .dmg to the file-picker dialog in VirtualBox).  VirtualBox 4 supports DMG files natively, and InstallESD.dmg is bootable.  Check "Live CD/DVD".
Boot the image.  When the first menu appears, open Disk Utility and "Erase" your virtual hard disk.  Quit Disk Utility.
Install OS X on the virtual hard disk.  (Note: don't bother entering your AppleID during the installation process -- it doesn't seem to accept it there.  But once you're done installing, you can run the App Store app and enter your AppleID to download your purchased apps just fine.)
Be sure to detach InstallESD.dmg before rebooting.  (Simply moving it lower than the hard disk in the boot order setting doesn't seem to do anything.)
To increase the screen resolution to 1440x900, this answer was very helpful.  (Setting <key>Graphics Mode</key> did not work for me.)


How to install certificates with Mono on Rootless El Capitan As follow up question for this post:

How do I install global certificates on a Rootless El Capitan for mono?

Mono uses the path /usr/share/.mono/certs, which isn't allowed anymore (see refered post).
Does someone knows where I could store those certificates other then ~/.config/.mono/certs?

It is not a problem for us to install the certificates in the config folder, but it is a minor annoyance, because all new users on those devices will have to run the installer, instead of only the first user.

Although this post is quite old, maybe an answer is still helpful.

Mono's new cert-sync might help:
http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/releases/3.12.0/#cert-sync

  Mono users on Linux no longer need to run mozroots to get SSL working. A new command, cert-sync, has been added to this release, which synchronizes the Mono SSL certificate store against your OS certificate store

  If you want to invoke the tool manually (e.g. you installed via make install, not packages) use
  cert-sync /path/to/ca-bundle.crt

  On Debian systems, that’s
  cert-sync /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

  and on Red Hat derivatives it’s
  cert-sync /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

  Your distribution might use a different path, if it’s not derived from one of those.


Remove or edit a synthetic.conf file in etc/ I have a Mac in which the user has placed a synthetic.conf file in etc/
The file contains an entry for home creating a synthetic link to some directory. This makes it unbootable. Normally the computer is running Catalina. I can boot it using a Mojave startup that was still on the drive. I have admin privileges.
I would like to delete or edit that file. I can't even find it. This problem is beyond me.

To edit or remove synthetic.conf when it is causing catalina not to boot or login to your user, you must first boot into Recovery mode (hold down CMD+R during he boot sound). Then from the Utilities menu open the Terminal.
If you have FileVault enabled you will need to unlock the boot drive (there are other questions with answers on how to do this from the terminal so I wont repeat those here).
Provided that you have unlocked the boot drive you should be able to use the ‘find’ utility to locate your synthetic.conf like this:
cd /
find / -name synthetic.conf

For me it was inside a ‘private’ folder.
Then you can delete it with ‘rm’ or edit it with ‘vi’ if you’re feeling brave; I just deleted mine. Turns out that if you put spaces in it, instead of tabs, it causes your system not to boot on Catalina - What a great feature Apple :-)


Is a clean Mac upgraded to Mavericks as good as one with it pre-installed? I've just bought a new Air, from my local Apple Store, only to find that it comes with Mountain Lion!

Should I return it for pre-installed one, or just let it upgrade?

You could do a clean install youself after formatting the disk.
You will end up with exact the same result after doing this.

Why the format, you ask?
You won't have any Mountain Lion files on your system.

Returning to the place you bought it from is as easy, you say?
Returning the device to the store does not make any difference except spending (more) time and probably pay gas for the car.

If you let them do the update, they will just click the icon in the AppStore resulting in the same result as doing it yourself. (This does not count for an official Apple Retail Store, but it does (at least in my country) for the premium resellers)

Official Apple Retail Store
If you have an official Apple Store, it comes as free service to get the OS X re-installed.

The only difference that would really help you out is getting a newer replacement from the store, with Mavericks pre-installed. I doubt they will replace it as the device isn't broken and cannot be returned for RMA.


Finder shows me filenames and folder in inverted order. Why? OS X is showing me some folder and filenames, per default in reverse alphabetical order. Why?

If you take a close look at your Finder bar, you'll see a little triangle that is to the right of "Name" (which is just above the file names).
Click it, Finder will order your files alphabetically and Finder will remember your choice. By so, it will display the list in alphabetic order next time you open a Finder window.


Drag & Drop vs mv - Any difference? Is there a difference between bulk-moving files with Drag & Drop vs mv?

Use case:

Volume External_Drive_A has about 8000 files totalling 9GB. External_Drive_B has 74GB of free space. The desired end result is to move all the files from A to B so that A can be wiped and put to use in another location.

Drag & Drop approach is to open one Finder window for A, another Finder window for B, highlight all the files on A, then command-click-drag them to B.

mv approach is to open a Terminal session and invoke

mkdir /Volumes/External_Drive_B/A_legacy
mv /Volumes/External_Drive_A/* /Volumes/External_Drive/B/A_legacy/

Does Drag & Drop do anything behind-the-scenes in addition to the copy and remove, or is it strictly a thing of Beauty?

Answered by jmlumpkin below:

They differ! Drag & Drop brings the metadata, mv does not. I tested this by adding a phrase to the Spotlight Comments section on a text file's Get Info dialog. When I dragged and dropped the file across volumes, the phrase was present when I invoked Get Info on the destination; but when it used mv, the phrase was missing when I invoked Get Info on the destination.

Do not use mv or drag&drop for moving data between volumes.

If anything bad happens during the operation, you will end up with half the data here and half the data there, and it will be hard to figure out where to restart. If this is done over the network, you may not even still have all the data on either volume.

Do a copy (command line or drag&drop), and after that succeeded, delete the source.


iMac sounds like it's starting up then shutting down immediately I have an iMac. Since yesterday, it has been making sounds where it seems like a hard drive is starting up then shutting down immediately. However, that can't be possible of course because the computer technically works fine—the sound occurs while I'm using the computer, and it doesn't lock up or anything like that. (Also, I thought it was an external HD but I put my ear to the back of the iMac and it is definitely coming from there.)

This started happening around the same time that I started watching high definition videos (720p h264) of a TV series. I had watched maybe ten episodes before the sounds started occurring. That would be perhaps ten hours over a 20 hour span. Also, the computer was up (hadn't shut down) for 72 hours straight.

I'm thinking it could be a fan problem perhaps, or a power supply problem?

These sounds have never happened before, even when doing stuff like playing high performance computer games.

I have also noticed that there is a high-pitched buzzing sound that occurs when this startup/shutdown sound happens. Also, the startup/shutdown sound seems to happen consistently when I start up my computer, so perhaps it IS a fan or power supply related problem?

Open it up, check for dust, reinstall the Mac OS X (fresh installation), Check whether the fan is functioning properly. If all these doesn't solve the issue, then probably you will need to get it examined by an Apple service guy.


Is it a problem if kernel_task is routinely above 130MB on mid 2007 white MacBook? In trying to get the best performance possible out of this old guy, I've been looking into Activity Monitor more and more. kernel_task is usually above 130MB (142.9MB right now). Is this abnormal? If so, what could I do to fix it?

Short answer:

Probably not, but without knowing more details about the machine I can't tell for sure.

Long answer:

The single largest block of ram in the kernel are the tables used for keeping track of memory permissions and VM mappings. For every 4KB of ram in your computer the kernel needs to keep at least 64 bytes of data to track what process is using it, etc. Consequently the amount of ram the kernel uses is directly proportional to the amount physical memory you have installed. On my Mac Pro with 48GB of ram the kernel routinely uses over a 1GB of ram, and that is entirely normal normal.

I am guessing you have ~2-4 GB of ram, which would require 32 to 64 MB for just the tables, and the rest is in the ballpark for what the kernel needs for memory buffers, mapped text and drivers, and basic operations.


can you set an application to come to the desktop you are on osx I know that you can lock an application to a certain desktop, and if you select that application(either through the dock or command+tab), then OSX will change your desktop to the one where the application is on.

Can you set it to pull the application to you?

IE the messages.app.  I dont care where it is, but when I switch to it, I want it to come to me.

Im running 10.8

If you assign an application to 'All Desktops', then it will follow you around as you switch desktops, and no matter which desktop you're in when you click the dock icon or select it with CMD-TAB, the application will come to the forefront on the desktop you're at.


Spotlight shortcut (cmd+space) no longer working I commonly use the cmd-space shortcut to bring up the spotlight, but as of yesterday it no longer works. I did not knowingly update my software beforehand, I do not have any conflicts in the keyboard shortcuts (no yellow triangle), and I only have one input source.

I have done a pretty thorough search for solutions; here are some pages I have read: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6). Below are the common solutions that have not worked for me:

Restarted the machine. No change.
Restored the defaults on all keyboard shortcuts. No Change.
Changed the desktop resolution. No change.
Changed the shortcut. Spotlight works with essentially any other shortcut, but I am used to cmd-space.
Reset the spotlight index (sudo mdutil -E / or killall Dock). This temporarily enables the shortcut but the problem surfaces after either closing the laptop's lid or changing the application window.
Remove the HIToolbox.plist and restart (rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist). This enables the shortcut for a couple seconds immediately after startup but then the problem resumes.
Closing applications with potentially conflicting shortcuts. I can't say with 100% certainty that I have covered everything but I have combed through my app shortcuts and closed out of anything that might be the problem. To reiterate, this was working fine until yesterday.
First aid on the disk. No change. I assume this would fix permissions issues if there were any.

One last piece of odd behavior: I can change the shortcut from cmd+space to cmd+option+space (and everything works), but I cannot change it back to cmd+space without hitting "restore defaults". The shortcut window remains empty until I close it or hit another shortcut.

At my wits end here! Has anyone solved this before?

On MacOS Catalina, the issue may be caused by the SystemUIServer process hanging.

You can restart it by launching the command

killall SystemUIServer


How to gracefully import CSV files into Numbers.app v3? I have a process, which has worked faithfully for years in Numbers '09, whereby I download my Bank account data in CSV format, then drag that data directly into my Numbers sheet (after creating an appropriate number of blank rows).

This no longer works, and I can't find an option to import csv! A help search within numbers for 'csv' returns a single result which describes exporting.

I've tried the old method, no dice.  Also, the menu option: Insert > Choose… doesn't permit .csv to be selected.

At the moment, my workaround is:

drag the CSV onto the Numbers dock or task-switcher icon to create a temp sheet
select and copy the content
paste-and-match-format into my desired location
close don't save the temp file

Doe anyone know a better way? A hack or hidden flag I can toggle to get the old functionality back?

So the Apple thread recommended changing the txt to csv. This didn't work, my file was already csv, properly formated etc. No, changing to txt did the trick.
I'm finding it harder and harder to recommend switching from Microsoft to Apple. This sort thing just shouldn't be happening.


Choosing battery replacement for non-retina MacBook Pro Is there any objective comparison of third-party batteries for non-retina MacBook Pro (eg mid-2010)? Alternatively, what are the possible strategies to choose which manufacturer to buy from?

Apple officially stopped supplying spare parts for my MacBook Pro Mid 2010 to its authorized repairers, and AFAIK there is no way to buy genuine Apple parts on the market.

I would ensure that you purchase a battery from a reputable online store dealing with Apple products.

For example, the following are some well-regarded sites:

Mac Sales
Simply Mac
RAM City
Macfixit

By buying from a reputable store you'll be sure to get a battery fit for purpose, regardless of manufacturer. Being reputable means they're only going to sell something that works and they'll stand behind the product they sell, regardless of the brand.


How do I make Spotlight stop indexing my Backup drive? I have a 2TB external drive I use for Time Machine. At random intervals, it will decide to spin up and my entire UI freezes until it's finished. This is incredibly annoying.

It appears that this is due to Spotlight indexing. They suggest adding the Backup drive to Spotlight's blacklist, so I did:

Am I stuck having to live with constant beach ball attacks?

Update: I've already tried mdutil. It doesn't work.

$ sudo mdutil -E -i off /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/
Password:
/Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb:
    Indexing enabled.

If it's impossible to disable indexing, I would settle for making the backup drive never spin down.

Create an empty file on the root of that drive, named .metadata_never_index.  This Mac OS X Hints article says more.


How to disable Mojave’s desktop tinting (with reduce transparency)? Even with “Reduce transparency” enabled, Mojave’s desktop-tinting is quite horribly annoying, in both Light Mode and Dark Mode (regardless of accent color). Switching to a solid red desktop background, for example, results in this ugly appearance of the Dock, notifications, some popups, and the Finder sidebar:

An earlier answer claims that using Light Mode or using the Graphite accent disables desktop-tinting, but that’s untrue.

Is it possible to disable desktop-tinting with Reduce Transparency in macOS Mojave?

I reported this as bug #44861849 to Apple, and they closed it as a duplicate of bug #43428401 on 2018-10-19, which is open as of this writing. However, I encourage others to create bugs, as it may increase the priority if more users report.

This is still an issue with macOS 10.14.1.

Set your Desktop background color to pure white:

  System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop > Colors > Custom Color… > Color Palettes > White (double click)

Even in the “Reduce Transparency” mode, Mojave calculates background colors off the desktop wallpaper, so having white there ensures light backgrounds. The contrast with text is much better.

Also, the setting “Increase contrast” in Accessibility > Display gives the best contrast, but it adds black edges to UI elements.


Missing iTunes store app on iPhone The ITunes store app has gone from my phone. When i go to app store, the option open doesn't work.

Also it's not in icloud.

Go to Settings > General > Restrictions and confirm that restrictions are off. If restrictions are on, you'll need the restrictions passcode to turn it off.

Also, confirm that the top of settings doesn't have text mentioning "This phone is supervised and managed by..." at the top. If it does, talk to your company's IT specialist for more detail.

Lastly, on the home screen, pull down in the middle of the screen to reveal the search menu. Type "app store" and confirm that it doesn't show up there. If it does, it's likely in a folder or you simply missed it.


iPad and iPhone show one delivered iMessage but not on the other. Is message delivered? Sent message from iPad or iPhone and message does not say delivered. But when I look at other device it shows delivered. Is message delivered? Example message sent from iPhone no delivered status. Look at same message on IPad and shows delivered status.

I've experienced this when the sending device was the iPhone, and I knew the recipient was on holiday and not online - the iPhone did not show delivered, but the iPad did. Eventually, when the recipient came back online days later, the iMessage showed delivered on the iPhone too.

This is a likely an iMessage bug/anomaly (which I wish Apple would address!) I would take the true delivery notification to be the device from where the message was originally sent.


How do I use spell check in OSX with several languages? I often need to write emails in French that contain English technical words and it seems that the spell check in OSX can't understand that a document can contain both languages.

The result is either French or English words are red-underlined and this isn't pretty.

I've tried the trick on How to make Firefox to spellcheck in multiple languages simultaneously? that consists in merging several .dic and .aff files downloaded from titoBouzout/Dictionaries but the grammar check is less precise than the default OSX one.

Go to system preferences/keyboard/text/spelling and click on the window and go to the Setup item.  Then check the boxes for only the two languages you want and set it to Automatic.  Also set the dictionary to Automatic in Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar.

I suspect this works better for separate sentences or paragraphs in different languages than for different languages in one sentence.


How do I Eject USB Storage in iPadOS 13 I happily saw that I can use external USB storage with my iPad Pro (2018 3rd Gen) using iPadOS 13 either directly from a drive with USB-C or a Flash Drive using the Apple USB-C-to-USB adapter.  So far so good.

But how do you unmount the external USB storage from the iPad?!?!?

I thought: surely there must be a way to unmount the USB storage. It's counter-intuitive to just unplug a device without first unmounting it in any OS. I looked (and looked some more) in System Preferences and in Files but still thought: I'm missing something here...  Nope: Apple's guidance is just to unplug the USB device.

As of this writing (20191211) you just unplug it. I'd qualify that advice with the further suggestion to check the device's light to see it's not doing anything before ripping it out.

Figured there would be countless others thinking "Surely there must be a way to properly remove USB devices from my iPad...". Short answer: nope.


Xcode tools getting working without the Xcode CD or external drive? I would like to get the Xcode-developer things to my Macs. I noticed that Apple has started to offer some terminal things online, more here. I am still lazy to get the CDs, to get all Xcode-developer things, is there some easy way to do it online without the Xcode CD? Is there any way to get all Xcode things pre-installed so not to waste time for their installation?

Xcode hasn't come on physical media for a long time now. These days, you can download it directly from the Mac App Store:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12


Mac Photos app stuck on "Restoring from iCloud" I have about 110,000 photos and videos in my Photos library, synced to my Mac with iCloud with "download originals" turned on. Sync was working fine until a few days ago, about a week after installing Catalina.

I accidentally opened my Photos library from a networked Mac and closed it. It didn't appear to cause any problems, but the next time I opened Photos on the local Mac, it gave me a "repairing library" progress bar. That eventually completed and all my photos showed up. So far so good. But since then (five days ago), it has not downloaded any new photos from iCloud.

In "All Photos" view, at the bottom where it would normally say "Downloading x new items", instead it says "Restoring from iCloud...":

The numbers are wrong. When I first open Photos for just a second it shows slightly lower numbers, which are the numbers of photos and videos actually in the library. Then the "restoring" message comes up and it switches to a higher number, which is still lower than the number shown on my phone and other iCloud synced libraries. The photos missing from this library show up fine on those devices.

The iMac has been on and attached to a fast and reliable internet connection the whole time. I assumed it would resolve on its own, but it has now been 9 days and it's getting inconvenient to not have access to new photos.

When I posted this I was running macOS 10.15.1. I have since upgraded to 10.15.2, and the problem persists.

I've tried restarting and I've tried turning "Download originals to my Mac" off and back on, to no avail.

Last night (day 8) I opened Photos while holding command-option to rebuild the library. It took about 9 hours, after which it went right back to the same "Restoring from iCloud..." message.

Has anybody else run into this problem? Anything I can do to get it back to normal syncing?

Since I ran into the same issue, I had to research this as well. From what I found, this seems to be normal. After a library repair, each photo is being verified against the iCloud library copy.

This Apple support document 1 states:

  If you repair a library that's automatically updated with iCloud Photos, the entire contents of the library re-updates with iCloud after the repair ...

Just like a normal iCloud library upload, this can take a very long time. For my 20.000 photos, it's currently at 72 hours without an indication of being finished any time soon it took about 80 hours. Then, the Photos app showed Updating (only the word Updating without any additional information) for a few hours before now switching to Uploading 19,800 items.

It's re-uploading every single photo in my library. Due to my low upload bandwidth, this is a very slow process and it uploaded about 1,000 photos in the previous 4 days.

So for me the messages that showed up in the status bar were, in order:

Restoring from iCloud (for about 4 days)
Updating (for a few hours)
Uploading x items (very slow, will possibly take many weeks to finish)

UPDATE Jan/10: I took the laptop to work because we have a very fast upstream connection there. Over the weekend, it uploaded all photos, downloaded the new ones and is now back to its old Updated Just Now status.


No Ads: This app is not receiving ads. Your iAd Network Contract has expired. It must be renewed for this app to start receiving ads iAds stopped being served in my apps and I just got the dreaded "No Ads: This app is not receiving ads. Your iAd Network Contract has expired. It must be renewed for this app to start receiving ads" message.

No clear way to do this - the contract has vanished from the Dev connect portal.

I just followed up with Apple Dev Support so YOU don't have to :)

Answer: even though iAd isn't being officially mothballed until the end of June, Apple is not renewing iAd accounts should they lapse before then.  In my case, my Developer Connect contract ended in Feb and was promptly renewed, but without a renewed iAd contract, and no way to renew it.  Time to look for iAd alternatives if you count on ad revenue as part of your app income.


Safari doesn't show titles for click throughs on google search results… Sometime recently -- maybe in the last month or so -- a glitch came up with Google and Safari 6. I don't know if it happened when I upgraded to Safari 6 or if it's the result of encrypted search results on Google.

As you can see here, when I search for something on Google, the history show that search. But when I click on a result, the history shows a crazy Google URL and does not show the title of the site that I went to, which makes it impossible to go back to something I was looking at earlier without randomly trying a bunch of different search results.

Any idea why this is happening, and how I can disable it? This is relatively new behavior. Between this and the new web inspector, I can't stand Safari anymore.

You can use the Detox extension for Safari and Chrome, which fixes this on Google and Twitter.

This happens because Google switched to a client-side redirect for their tracking links (in JavaScript, I think) so the browser thinks the tracking page is the page you wanted. I'm not sure why. Twitter does the same thing, but it's so that they can grab the referer when you click on a t.co link from a client or another website.


How to auto select new screen when moving pointer from one monitor to another? I use Chrome browser on extended display, and its DevTools on built-in monitor. Both are using their own spaces in separate monitors.

My problem is when I move pointer from one monitor to other one I cannot click link immediately... I need first one click to select that screen/app and then secondary click is actually following the link.

Really annoying. So I'm looking how I could set up pointer when it moves from one display to another to automatically selects its current space.

If it's not possible from built in options, is it possible to be done through some script ?

Help appreciated.

This is one of those paradigm shifts that really irritates Windows users & Mac users usually are just so used to it they either forget it happens, or prefer it because it's never 'dangerous' in that the first click can't accidentally trigger an action, it just foregrounds the app.
Of course, the other way round, Mac users are constantly clicking & actioning things on Windows when all they wanted to do was simply foreground the app ;)

There is an override behaviour which you may be able to use on occasions, but I know of no way to permanently change what is core behaviour on macOS.

If you hold  Cmd ⌘  as you click in a backgrounded app, you should be able to act on a button or element without bringing the app to the front.
Of course, if you need more than a simple click action, you will have to foreground the app eventually.

On the upside, you never have to foreground an app to scroll a window; merely hovering the cursor over it is sufficient to focus the scroll action.


Have a Mac mini hooked up to two screens, but can't rotate one, only both of them Having a little problem with my Mac mini. I have two monitors set up with it, and they are working fine as a dual monitor setup. However I want to rotate one so it is in portrait mode but when I change one it alters both of them. The screens aren't being mirrored so I am a little stuck on whats happening?

Any help would be appreciated.

Connect only one display(the one to rotate) rotate it as desired then connect the other ! takes me time to figure that as well !!!


WoL Mac from power-off mode? is there a way to wake the Mac out of a complete power off? I normally don't use the sleep mode,but I also want to wake the Mac sometimes for various reasons (it's a part of my entertainment system).

Any way I can do this?

No, not with "standard Macs".

The feature you are looking for is called LOM (Lights Out Management). It enables you to start a machine even if it's powered off.

Apple sold Xserve servers that supported LOM, but with regular Macs it's not possible.


iMessage "delivered" I sent my friend an iMessage about 4 hours ago, and the blue bubble appeared, but delivered text never appeared below the message bubble. I assume this means that the recipient did not receive the message.
I just sent them another iMessage and this time it said delivered.

Does that mean that my friend was able to receive both the messages or just the most recent one? And is the first message lost in transit?

Your friend was able to receive both the messages.

The former message was not lost in transit.


Is there a way to set an Application Shortcut in the Keyboard Preference Pane via Terminal? I'd like to have a bootstrap for my custom keyboard shortcuts to use on multiple machines...

You could use the defaults command on ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist.

The file's structor seems a bit overly complex, but:*

  131072: Shift
   262144: Control
   524288: Option
   1048576: Command

  Add modifier values together in the 3rd parameter to combine them.

  { AppleSymbolicHotKeys = {

  # Move focus to the menu bar - Control, F2
   7 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 120, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Move focus to the Dock - Control, F3
   8 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 99, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Move focus to active or next window - Control, F4
   9 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 118, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Move focus to window toolbar - Control, F5
   10 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 96, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Move focus to floating window - Control, F6
   11 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 97, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # ??? - Control, F1
   12 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 122, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Change the way Tab moves focus - Control, F7
   13 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 98, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Turn zoom on or off - Command, Option, 8
   15 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 56, 28, 1572864 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Zoom in - Command, Option, =
   17 = { enabled = 0; value = { parameters = ( 61, 24, 1572864 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Zoom out - Command, Option, -
   19 = { enabled = 0; value = { parameters = ( 45, 27, 1572864 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Reverse Black and White - Command, Control, Option, 8
   21 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 56, 28, 1835008 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Turn image smoothing on or off - Command, Option, \
   23 = { enabled = 0; value = { parameters = ( 92, 42, 1572864 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Increase Contrast - Command, Control, Option, .
   25 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 46, 47, 1835008 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Decrease Contrast - Command, Control, Option, ','
   26 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 44, 43, 1835008 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Move focus to the next window in application - Command, backtic
   27 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 96, 50, 1048576 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Save picture of screen as file - Command, Shift, 3
   28 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 51, 20, 1179648 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Copy picture of screen to clipboard - Command, Control, Shift, 3
   29 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 51, 20, 1441792 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Save picture of selected area as file - Command, Shift, 4
   30 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 52, 21, 1179648 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Copy picture of selected area to clipboard - Command, Control, Shift, 4
   31 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 52, 21, 1441792 ); type = standard; }; };

  # All Windows - F9
   32 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 101, 0 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Application Windows - F10
   33 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 109, 0 ); type = standard; }; };

  # All Windows (Slow) - F9
   34 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 101, 131072 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Application Windows (Slow) - F10
   35 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 109, 131072 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Desktop - F11
   36 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 103, 0 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Desktop (Slow) - F11
   37 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 103, 131072 ); type = standard; }; };

  # ??? - Command, Option, T
   50 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 116, 17, 1572864 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Move focus to the window drawer - Command, Option, quote
   51 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 39, 50, 1572864 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Turn Dock Hiding On/Off - Command, Option, D
   52 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 100, 2, 1572864 ); type = standard; }; };

  # ??? - F14
   53 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 107, 0 ); type = standard; }; };

  # ??? - F15
   54 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 113, 0 ); type = standard; }; };

  # ??? - Option, F14
   55 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 107, 524288 ); type = standard; }; };

  # ??? - Option, F15
   56 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 113, 524288 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Move focus to the status menus - Control, F8
   57 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 100, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Turn VoiceOver on / off - Command, F5
   59 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 96, 1048576 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Select the previous input source - Command, Option, Space
   60 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 32, 49, 1572864 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Select the next source in the Input Menu - Command, Option, Shift, Space
   61 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 32, 49, 1703936 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Dashboard - F12
   62 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 111, 0 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Dashboard (Slow) - F12
   63 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 111, 131072 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Show Spotlight search field - Command, Shift, Space
   64 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 49, 1179648 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Show Spotlight window - Control, Shift, Space
   65 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 49, 393216 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Dictionary MouseOver - Command, Shift, E
   70 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 101, 2, 1179648 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Hide and show Front Row - Command, Esc
   73 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 53, 1048576 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Activate Spaces - F8
   75 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 100, 0 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Activate Spaces (Slow) - Shift, F8
   76 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 100, 131072 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Spaces Left - Control, Left
   79 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 123, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Spaces Right - Control, Right
   81 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 124, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Spaces Down - Control, Down
   83 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 125, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Spaces Up - Control, Up
   85 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 126, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Show Help Menu - Command, Shift, /
   91 = { enabled = 0; };
   92 = { enabled = 0; };
   98 = { enabled = 0; value = { parameters = ( 47, 44, 1179648 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Switch to Space 1 - Control, 1
   118 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 18, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Switch to Space 2 - Control, 2
   119 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 19, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Switch to Space 3 - Control, 3
   120 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 20, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  # Switch to Space 4 - Control, 4
   121 = { enabled = 1; value = { parameters = ( 65535, 21, 262144 ); type = standard; }; };

  122 = { enabled = 0; };
   123 = { enabled = 0; };
   124 = { enabled = 0; };
   125 = { enabled = 0; };
   126 = { enabled = 0; };
   127 = { enabled = 0; };
   128 = { enabled = 0; };
   129 = { enabled = 0; };
   130 = { enabled = 0; };
   131 = { enabled = 0; };
   132 = { enabled = 0; };
   133 = { enabled = 0; };
   134 = { enabled = 0; };
   135 = { enabled = 0; };
   136 = { enabled = 0; };
   137 = { enabled = 0; };
   138 = { enabled = 0; };
   139 = { enabled = 0; };
   140 = { enabled = 0; };
   141 = { enabled = 0; };
   142 = { enabled = 0; };
   143 = { enabled = 0; };
   144 = { enabled = 0; };
   145 = { enabled = 0; };
   146 = { enabled = 0; };
   147 = { enabled = 0; };
   148 = { enabled = 0; };
   149 = { enabled = 0; };
   }; }

Two decent sources:

http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=114785
http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/defaults-symbolichotkeys/

*this is a bit dated


Installing El Capitan on a new SSD So a week ago I was told on this website that if I wanted to make my Mac (MacBook Pro early 2011, 13") really faster, I should replace my HDD with an SSD. And I'm about to buy this Samsung SSD. But one question went threw my mind.

After I physically install the SSD in the computer, how do I install the OS? I want to do a fresh install, but will there be a menu that asks me what I want to do with this new SSD, whether I want to import data from my old hard drive, or completely reinstall an OS?

I think I will need a USB stick with the El Capitan installer, but how will I proceed next?

If your HDD is still mounted you can download El Capitan from the Apple App Store and create a USB installer thumb drive:

Download the OS X installer from the Mac App Store. Quit the installer if it opens automatically after downloading. The installer will be in your Applications folder.
Mount your USB flash drive or other volume. You could also use a secondary internal partition. Partition the thumb drive with Disk Utility: one partition, Mac OS X Extended Journaled and GUID partition table and rename it (e.g. MyVolume).
Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
Use the createinstallmedia command in Terminal to create the bootable installer. Examples of this command are in the next section. For detailed usage instructions, make sure that the appropriate Install OS X app is in your Applications folder, then enter one of the following paths in Terminal:

#with MyVolume: the name of your USB thumb drive volume
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

Shutdown your Mac and replace the hard drive.
Boot your Mac - you may have to hold the alt/opt and choose the installer thumb drive as boot volume. Sometimes this doesn't work on the first attempt. Just reboot again!
Partition the SSD with Disk Utility which is included in the installer thumb drive(AFAIR in the menubar -> Utilities): one partition, Mac OS X Extended Journaled and GUID partition table and rename it (e.g. Macintosh HD). Quit Disk Utility and install El Capitan.

If you already attached the SSD you can use Internet Recovery Mode (hold cmdR or altcmdR while booting) to first partition the new internal drive and then restore the original system (10.7 Lion). Then - after configuring Lion - you can to upgrade to El Capitan. This is not recommended because it takes at least twice the time/download.


How can a Mac split a single backup to two independent, external drives I have been asked to perform an emergency backup of a device showing signs of HDD failure. I'm being provided with two individual external hard drives to accomplish this. Each drive is independently too small for the job, but together their space is sufficient. I can format them however I want and do anything I want with them.

Can Time Machine perform a single backup that is split across two devices, simply writing to one device until it runs out of space and then writing to the second? If not, can I create a RAID 0 array out of two independent external drives? What would recovery look like if I had to restore such a backup from scratch to a new HDD?

Time Machine can't partially backup to one drive, then when space runs out, continue to the next drive.

But you can concatenate several drives to look as one and then use Time Machine.
As you have said, you can create a RAID drive. This should work with Time Machine. Recovery would look normal. (See here). You can restore from Recovery, Migration Assistant, etc.)  Time Machine would detect it as a RAID drive and will mount it as one drive instead of two.

When restoring the entire of the drive I would always suggest booting to Recovery instead of migration assistant.

Just remember, using RAID always significantly increases chances of corruption or failure. RAID 0 is the worst because there are no failsafes: If one drive fails, corrupts, or dies they are both useless.

Your best bet would to purchase a single big enough drive to do the job.

Remember it always better to do it right, especially when it comes to peoples data.

If you are looking to purchase a drive, I would go with LaCie, and definitely not Seagate. 4/5 Seagate drives have failed without being moved within 6 months.  None of my LaCie drives have failed.

Note: I am not affiliated with Seagate or LaCie and will not gain in anyway (financially or otherwise) from the purchasing of their products.  Additionally, the suggestions above are form personal experience and do not in any way reflect proven published statistics.


I can't access my user on MacBook Pro eventhough I typed the correct password I turned on my MacBook Pro, typed my user  password, but it restarts instead of logging in. Now I'm stuck with the guest user and don't have a clue about what to do to access my user with all the files and everything I had saved. Someone please help me!

By coincidence I am writing a blog post about this. I am assuming that you know the password, but the machine doesn't log into your account properly.

The basics:

We assume your user folder and its contents are OK.
We will delete the USER (System Preferences/Users & Groups) but leave the user FOLDER untouched. When you are asked what to do with the Home folder you say "Don't Change the Home Folder." This leaves all of your stuff in place, in the Users folder.
Now you create a "new" user with the EXACT same name as the old one. There are three things to get right: the "Full Name," the "Account Name," and the Password. The full name is probably your own name. The account name is usually something shorter, no spaces. You know the password.

When you create a new user with the same full name, account name, and password as the old one, the system will ask you whether you want to use the existing folder or not. You DO.

After that, you should be able to log in normally. Let me know.

You may have to create a temporary user (with admin privileges) to give yourself a place to work from. You could make a user called "admin" with the password "admin" and then log into that, and from there "delete" (temporarily) your user. Just remember: leave the Home folder unchanged. Very, very important.


4 Ways to remove an IOS app: is there a preferred method? Per this article, there are 4 methods to remove an app:

tap and wiggle
from settings
from iTunes
when updating

Is there an advantage / preference to use one of these methods over another?

Nope, no advantages between them. In my opinion, just doing a tap-and-wiggle from the home screen is most efficient, but each of the four ways you mention just removes the app. Do whatever's easiest in the moment.


iPhoto not launching after upgrading to OS X 10.10, Yosemite Ever since I migrated to a new Macbook Pro Retina (MacBookPro11,2) and to OS X 10.10, iPhoto won't run.

I was running OS X 10.8 on a Macbook Pro (MacBookPro7,1) before. I have tried uninstalling iPhoto and reinstalling using the App Store.

The error I receive is this, full crash log:

Exception Type:        EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: /Library/Frameworks/NyxAudioAnalysis.framework/Versions/A/NyxAudioAnalysis
  Referenced from: /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Frameworks/iLifeSlideshow.framework/Versions/A/iLifeSlideshow
  Reason: image not found

From what I can tell, there are certain libraries that can't be loaded. Apparently, simply reinstalling iPhoto does not do the trick. Is there anything else I can do?

I found a proper solution to this problem:

I had used the Migration Assistant to migrate my old Mac System (10.8 or so) to a newly bought Mac Mini with 10.10 (Yosemite). After a few day I found out that iPhoto wasn’t starting — with the described symptoms.

Fortunately I still have the old system running, so I could compare them and copying the old NyxAudioAnalysis directory did the job.

Everything could be fine here, but I wondered why when reparing my access rights the disk utility kept telling me there was a problem with the directory. It said it was a directory, but was expected to be a symbolic link:

Abweichende Zugriffsrechte für „Library/Frameworks/NyxAudioAnalysis.framework“, Soll-Wert: lrwxr-xr-x , Ist-Wert: drwxr-xr-x .

(German version here, sorry.)

Since I have another box running under Yosemite I could compare the systems and I found out that Apple had moved the location of the NyxAudioAnalysis framework at some time. In 10.10 (Yosemite) it is located in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks, whereas in older systems it was in /Library/Frameworks. To ensure compatibility, Apple inserted a symlink at the old location: NyxAudioAnalysis.framework → /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/NyxAudioAnalysis.framework. The migration assistant seems to have messed that up somehow.

So to fix it you can use Terminal.app:

cd /Library/Frameworks
sudo mv NyxAudioAnalysis.framework NyxAudioAnalysis.framework.copy
sudo ln -s /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/NyxAudioAnalysis.framework NyxAudioAnalysis.framework

which does the job.

Conclusion: Copying the directory from some source is working, but it may not last. The potential problem with it is that if Apple should update their library some time you won’t get the changes. This could cause some problems with iPhoto (or other programs) any time in the future. Therefore I suggest to insert the original symbolic link.


How can I set caps lock to a more complex keystroke? In the Keyboard settings, it is possible to set Caps Lock to other modifier keys, but it doesn't allow to put in a custom keystroke.

Is it possible to set it to something like Ctrl + A?

I'm using OS X Lion 10.7.3 if that's of any relevance.

PCKeyboardHack
allows to change the caps lock key behavior. It's mac software, even tough the name may not suggest it :).

(pic from developer's website)


How to install and configure Tomcat for eclipse IDE in macOS? Yes I know there are various similar questions like.

  eclipse how to configure tomcat that install from package manager?

but not finding any solution to the problem I am facing.
What I am trying to do:

Install Eclipse on macOS
Install Tomcat 8/8.5 on same machine
Configure Tomcat to test Servlet developed in eclipse

What I have done so far:
1. Installed Eclipse
2. Installed tomcat using brew install tomcat@8 :nothing else done
3. Tried adding Server in Eclipse with path : /usr/local/Cellar/tomcat@8

Step 01 :Download Files Required

First Download the Version you Need for your project.
Make sure you download Core zip file from the link below:

Download Apache 7 Tomcat from this link.
Download Apache 8 Tomcat from this link.
Download Apache 9 Tomcat from this link.
Download Apache 10 (Alpha) Tomcat from this link.

  Select .Zip from above section
  Once you have downloaded it, unzip it to a location

Step 02 :Setting up Server in Eclipse

Open Eclipse Environment
Click on Servers Tab
Click on No servers are available. Click this link to create a new server...
Click Tomcat v(your downloaded version) Server and Next
Choose the extracted folder as path and runtime.
DONE!


Brew bash autocompletion I just installed bash 4.4.19 through brew on my mac and configured Terminal.app to use it as the default shell. All of that works.

Now when I type ln -s $HOME/+TAB it gets autocompleted to ln -s \$HOME/. The default bash that comes with macOS 10.13 would instead auto-complete that to ln -s /Users/lars/.

How can I get the old behavior back so that $HOME auto-completes to my home directory?

I solved this by adding the following to my .bash_profile

shopt -s direxpand
complete -r cd


Font Used in OS X 'Yosemite' Version of Terminal's Icon? What font is used for the prompt ('>_') in Terminal's icon in OS X 10.10.x 'Yosemite?'

The font used in the version of Terminal's icon included with OS X 10.10.0 'Yosemite' has been identified here on WhatTheFont! as 'Menlo,' the same font used by default in Terminal's own shells.


Apache keeps saying: You configured HTTP(80) on the standard HTTPS(443) port! I have configured an SSL web site using the macOS Server app (version 5.3). When I examine the Apache log, I see this message (twice):

 [ssl:warn] [pid 4120] AH01916: Init: (mydomain.net:443) You configured HTTP(80) on the standard HTTPS(443) port!

I have not made any manual modifications to the Apache config file. I tried deleting the site, then stopping and restarting the web server, and finally re-adding the site from scratch, but the warning continues to show up in the log.

What is wrong and should I care?

Check the configuration file of your website for "SSLEngine off". In my case, this setting had been changed by the upgrading process. Changing that line to "SSLEngine on" solved the issue.


Are there any settings on my laptop that will tell my browser "I speak English"? I was using the Chrome browser which suddenly adds this annoying offer to translate, written in Chinese because I'm accessing the internet from Taiwan. The problem is that GoogaChrome is shooting itself in the foot by covering its own message about moving to the English version of the site with it's offer to translate in situ.

Are there any settings in macOS that are somehow read by Chrome that will convince it to just go ahead and take me to the English version of the site, or am I completely misunderstanding how the internet works?

That may not be your best option as websites will often use your public IP address to assume your location, and that process is independent of both your browser and operating system.

If this is something that annoys you often enough you may be better to use a VPN service to make it appear as you're in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, etc (as they're natively English speaking locations).

If a VPN is not an option, then you could use something like the Opera browser instead which also includes its own VPN functionality. Of course, that is limited to Opera itself, and not your entire Mac (which may be either good or bad, depending on your requirements).

If you're bedded to using Google Chrome, then you could try and use the full macOS version of TunnelBear which will camouflage all your internet traffic, or opt just for the TunnelBear Chrome extension which only acts within Chrome itself. Either of these options will allow you to pick a geographical location that is predominantly English speaking.

If you opt for the Opera browser, it's entirely free. If you use either of the TunnelBear options, you get 500MB per month for free.

NOTE: I am not affiliated in any way with the Opera browser or TunnelBear.


Metallic ticking noise from the MBP I have an early 2011 MBP and opened it's back more than once, to replace RAM, HDD and 2 weeks ago I installed an SSD. For some time already I hear a faint ticking noise from the body when the laptop is running, laying on a flat surface. First I thought it's the HDD's head hitting an end position, that was part of the reason I replaced it. Now with the SSD I still hear the noise sometimes.

I could not figure out what it depends on, sometime it comes and I hear 1 tick in irregular intervals form 1 to 5 secs, sometimes I hear a lot short after each other, and some other times the noise is not audible at all for hours.

I have the impression that the noise comes from somewhere below the trackpad, around the place of the HDD, now SSD.

Any idea what that could be?

It's certainly inside the MacBook Pro. You should check this out : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2387469?start=15&tstart=0

This should fix it, helped a lot of people. Click Here

So it happens when you have to apply conductive grease. It's certainly a problem with the CPU I think. After following the steps, your machine shouldn't make any sound.


Erased /usr/bin/env on accident. How can I restore it? I accidentally deleted /usr/bin/env and it causing issues when I want to run

brew install python

I am getting the following error:

brew install python3
/usr/local/bin/brew: line 91: /usr/bin/env: No such file or directory
/usr/local/bin/brew: line 91: exec: /usr/bin/env: cannot execute: No such file or directory

I know this was a mistake, can anyone help me get this file back?

Running brew install coreutils should install the GNU version of env.


Open new Terminal tab in current working directory doesn't work In the Terminal preferences you can find an option to open new windows and tabs in the current working directory. Yet there's a message that says that programs notify Terminal about the current working directory using scape sequences, which I don't know what it means. But the Terminal itself is not doing this, as I would like to create a new tab when I press ⌘+T to open at the same working directory (not ~/). I found this post but it doesn't address this. Here you have a figure with the options:

So I found the problem with the Terminal and I'm posting the answer hoping it can help others. The problem was in the definition of the PROMPT_COMMAND environmental variable. I changed its definition from

export PROMPT_COMMAND='history -n;'

to

export PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND ;} history -n"

appending at the end of the existing PROMPT_COMMAND instead and this solved the problem.


I broke sudo - how do I fix it? Apparently I can't sudo on my Mac any more.

Piers-MacBook-Air:~ piersb$ sudo ls
Password:
Sorry, user piersb is not allowed to execute '/bin/ls' as root on Piers-MacBook-Air.local.
Piers-MacBook-Air:~ piersb$

It worked before the most recent El Capitan update (the upgrade to 10.11.4), and I'm on a mid-2013 MacBook Air. The account is an admin account, and I was able to sudo before then. My first thought was to add myself into /etc/sudoers but, haha, of course you need sudo for that.

Piers-MacBook-Air:~ piersb$ ls -al /etc/sudoers
-r--r-----  1 root  wheel  272  5 Apr 11:15 /etc/sudoers
Piers-MacBook-Air:~ piersb$ groups
staff com.apple.sharepoint.group.1 everyone localaccounts _appserverusr admin _appserveradm _lpadmin _appstore _lpoperator _developer com.apple.access_ftp com.apple.access_screensharing com.apple.access_ssh

I'm able to create a new admin user, but that user has the same problem.

Piers-MacBook-Air:~ testuser$ sudo ls

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.

Password:
Sorry, user testuser is not allowed to execute '/bin/ls' as root on
Piers-MacBook-Air.local.

So. How do I give myself access to sudo again? And is this a common problem?

Looks like it only co-incidentally appeared at the 10.11.4 update; the problem was actually when I installed vagrant. Somewhere along the line either I or a script I used overwrote /etc/sudoers with the following rather than appending it:

Cmnd_Alias VAGRANT_EXPORTS_ADD = /usr/bin/tee -a /etc/exports
Cmnd_Alias VAGRANT_NFSD = /sbin/nfsd restart
Cmnd_Alias VAGRANT_EXPORTS_REMOVE = /usr/bin/sed -E -e /*/ d -ibak /etc/exports
%admin ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: VAGRANT_EXPORTS_ADD, VAGRANT_NFSD, VAGRANT_EXPORTS_REMOVE

So /etc/sudoers was toast. Here's how to fix it if this happens to you.

Go to System Preferences
Go to Users & Groups
Click on the lock
Authenticate with an admin account
Choose Network Account Server: Join...
Click Open Directory Utility
Click on the lock
Authenticate with an admin account
Choose Edit / Enable Root User
Choose a root password
Open a Terminal
Type su
Type your root password and hit return
Type visudo

You should now be safely editing /etc/sudoers. Or at least as safely you as you can do anything while logged in as root.

Replace whatever nonsense you have in there with a properly safe file. Here's the one I used:

#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
# Failure to use 'visudo' may result in syntax or file permission errors
# that prevent sudo from running.
#
# See the sudoers man page for the details on how to write a sudoers file.
#

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# Defaults specification
Defaults    env_reset
Defaults    env_keep += "BLOCKSIZE"
Defaults    env_keep += "COLORFGBG COLORTERM"
Defaults    env_keep += "__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING"
Defaults    env_keep += "CHARSET LANG LANGUAGE LC_ALL LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_MESSAGES LC_MONETARY LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME"
Defaults    env_keep += "LINES COLUMNS"
Defaults    env_keep += "LSCOLORS"
Defaults    env_keep += "SSH_AUTH_SOCK"
Defaults    env_keep += "TZ"
Defaults    env_keep += "DISPLAY XAUTHORIZATION XAUTHORITY"
Defaults    env_keep += "EDITOR VISUAL"
Defaults    env_keep += "HOME MAIL"

# Runas alias specification

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands
# %wheel    ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Same thing without a password
# %wheel    ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

# Samples
# %users  ALL=/sbin/mount /cdrom,/sbin/umount /cdrom
# %users  localhost=/sbin/shutdown -h now

Hit ESC, then type :wq! to save and quit the file
type exit to get out of the root shell
Go back to Directory Utilities
Choose Edit/Disable Root User

And - huzzah! - your sudo command should be back up-and-running again.


Can the formula bar font in Excel 2011 be changed? Is it possible to change the font, specifically the size of the font, in the formula bar of Excel 2011?

I've found a number of resources to do this in the Windows version but none of those instructions seem to apply to the Mac version...

http://www.excelforum.com/excel-general/837994-formula-bar-text-size.html

Seems like "no" for 2011.  Grr.. very frustrating!


Flashing folder icon with question mark on startup of MacBook Pro This is about a MacBook Pro Retina 2014 with Catalina.
I tried to do a factory reset of the MacBook. Having backed up everything I needed (not using Time Machine, just copying photos etc. onto an external drive) I went on to boot the mac in recovery mode (cmd + R). However, the keyboard on this mac is not working properly (liquid in the keyboard) and neither using the on-board keyboard, a wireless or a USB-keyboard I was able to boot in recovery mode. Neither could I boot in safe mode (shift) or any other "special" boot. Finally I found a terminal solution using a sudo command to boot in recovery mode, and I went into Disk Utility to erase the HD. I thought I knew what I was doing and went on to erase "Macintosh HD" and "Macintosh HD - data". Having done this sucessfully, I quit Disk Utility and started "Reinstall MacOS" on "Macintosh HD".
After approx. 1.5 hour (3 min left) an error occured. The computer language was in Danish, but the message was about not being able to reach the desired HD. I did some googleing and realized that I should've erased the physical disk and not the partitions. I tried this in Disk Utility but kept getting an error: -69877. Couldn't open device. I thought maybe I should reopen the computer and turn off FileVault or something. UFF! I should not have tried to turn on the mac from recovery mode, cause now it is stuck on this flashing folder icon. And recovery, safe or any other boot using the keyboard has no effect whatsoever, when I turn on the computer and hold down any key combination it is just grey for 10 seconds and then returns to the flashing folder. Is there any chance that I can boot from USB or an external DVD drive if I can find an old istall DVD even though I cannot acces Recovery mode or safe mode or the "option"-boot thing? Or any other ideas?
Thank you in advance,
Leo

If you have an external drive or flash drive and access to another Mac, you can create your own installer.


MacBook Air Mid 2013 Wi-Fi MAC Address If I change my network interface card on my MacBook Air 2013, which I assume to be my AirPort/Bluetooth card, will it change my laptop's MAC Address?

Yes, that is correct; it will change.

Your MAC (Media Access Control) address is assigned to network interfaces, not to the computer.  For example, on this WiFi adapter from a Macbook Pro, you can see the MAC address imprinted on the chip (circled in red)

You can even lookup the manufacturer of the WiFi adapter by entering the first six characters into a lookup tool like this one.  In this case, "58b035" comes back as "Apple, Inc"


How to install local .dmg files via homebrew? I´m wondering whether there is a possibility to install local .dmg files previously downloaded. I figured out that homebrewmay use archive file (gzip, bz2, tar, etc.) when putting them into the right path aka /Library/Caches/Homebrewand rerun brew install. However, dont know how to install .dmgfiles.

I think there are a couple of issues here. Homebrew is a package manager for command line utilities. Homebrew packages are not in .dmg files.

There is a a related project called homebrew-cask (HBC) that functions as a package manager for GUI apps, the likes of which may indeed be distributed via .dmg file.

Presuming that you are trying to use cask to install a GUI app distributed in a dmg file, you must understand that the point of a package manager like homebrew-cask (HBC) is that you create or are provided with a script that informs the package manager how to install and manage the software. All DMGs are not innately compatible with HBC.

You can learn about how this works from the guide on contributing to HBC: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

The short version is that in order to manage a package with HBC, you need to write a "cask", which is a ruby file that gives the package manager a concept of what the package is.

That said, presume that you are trying to install an existing cask, but use a local .dmg file to avoid having to redownload it? I believe Cask will maintain its own download cache, and so theoretically, if your dmg file matches the sha256 hash contained in the cask and you place that dmg in the cache location, cask should be able to install from it without redownloading.

That's as far as I can go right now, so hopefully this helps.


Where are drivers installed on the Mac Where are USB serial drivers installed on the Mac? How can I check which drivers are installed, and how do I remove a driver?

Hardware Drivers in OS X are typically in the form of Kernel Extensions and the primary location is /System/Library/Extensions/ however they can also be within an Application Bundle. You can use kextunload to unload a Kernel extension.  To see what Kernel extensions are loaded use the kextstat command in a Terminal.

Have a look at the manual page KEXTUNLOAD(8) and also the Unloading a Kernel Extension with kextunload section in How to Load & Unload Kernel Extensions in OS X, excerpt show below.

  Unloading a Kernel Extension with kextunload

  Unloading a kernel extension from OS X is basically the exact same as
  loading a kext, except you’ll use the kextunload utility with sudo as
  follows:

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.ExampleBundle

  Or by pointing directly to the kernel extensions path:

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

  Again, you can confirm the kernel extension has been unloaded by using
  kextstat and grep, where it should return nothing.


Can I make Chrome the default web browser in iOS? With Google Chrome available for iOS now I'd like to know if it's possible to make Chrome the default browser? I find "open in browser" type options from other iOS apps still take me to Safari.

Not interested in jailbreaking. Looking for a solution that works without having to do that.

No, this is not possible unless Apple allows this in a future iOS update.


Running Time Mechine Backup from Recovery HD My MacBook seems to be getting kernel panics when booting up. I've decided to create a backup, reinstall OS X, and restore from the backup. But I can't create a Time Machine backup because I unable to boot into the main partition.

My question is: how do I run Time Machine from the Recovery HD, you can only restore. I've also tried tmutil, but the terminal does not want to run anything from the other partition.

The Recovery HD doesn't have the ability to make a backup other than using Disk Utility or the terminal app to copy files.

If you have a spare HD available or don't want to risk reinstalling the OS (which isn't designed to delete any user files - but could if there is directory damage) I would say go buy a USB external drive and reformat it as GUID/Mac and use Disk Utility to "restore" the boot drive to the external drive. Then you can run the OS installer from Recovery or erase and install.

Reinstall Mac OS X Mountain Lion before selling a Mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


OpenVPN JSON error after upgrading to El Capitan After upgrading to El Captian, OpenVPN displays the following error when attempting a connection: "JSONDialog: Error running jsondialog".

I'm using OpenVPN version 2.0.9.201.

How do I get OpenVPN to work without disabling SIP?

Short answer, you can't.

However, at work we had this issue.  Some machines that previously had OpenVPN installed prior to upgrading to El Capitan had no problem.

Others required that we run the uninstall script for OpenVPN.  Then disable SIP, install OpenVPN, then re-enable SIP when you are done.  Annoying, and a bit time consuming, but the end result is that you have OpenVPN installed and SIP is enabled.

This has worked on multiple Mac's at our office.

The other alternative was to use Viscosity which does not require SIP to be disabled, but has a small licensing fee.  I have heard that Tunnelblick also works, but have not personally tried it.


How do I download Yosemite on my imac? I have an iMac (newer than 2007),and I need to run this year's version of Turbo Tax.  I am getting a message indicating that my current OS X, which is 10.6.8, is not sufficient to run this year's Turbo Tax (premier version).

I have tried to download Yosemite and have been unsuccessful.  I assume that once I download a new OS, that it will appear in place of the 10.6.8 when I click on the Apple icon at the top left side of my screen and ten click on about this mac. How can I download Yosemite?

Check your iMac model and the date.
In About this Mac (here is mine)

Yosemite requires iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
Log in App Store and get it from there. The download process can take very long time, a hour or more (it is > 5 Gig file), depending on your Internet speed.
Once it is done, find the file called "Install OS X Yosemite.app" and click on it.
If Yosemite does not work for you then get the 10.7.5 (minimum required) for TurboTax 2014.


Does RAM Disk Improve OS X Performance? I stumbled this article explaining how mounting RAM disk can improve OS X performance up to 40× which of course is just a a hyperbole.

My question is whether the suggestion made by them valid for modern MacBook that has been powered with SSD and an adequate 4 GB RAM? Does creating RAM disk actually prolong the SSD life?

Personally, I think OS X has done a great job managing the resources, but I would like hear more from experienced user who actually know how RAM disk works and affect OS X performance.

Yes - anything you do to reduce the number of writes to an SSD will prolong "the life of the drive". Also yes - the memory (RAM disk) is an order of magnitude faster (between 10 to 1000 times as fast based on what exact workload you want to measure) than just the SSD.

Whether you ever get to a point where your SSD fails due to write exhaustion or if something else breaks first (or you sell the device) is hard to estimate even for a statistical group of 1000 machines used in a proscribed manner.

I wouldn't worry about trying to extend my SSD life and instead worry about making the Mac you have work well for the specific tasks you need. The OS already caches much of the filesystem to RAM, so you'll need a very specific workload to do a better job at caching than the OS already does for free. Also, a repair part is not that expensive should you actually wear out that one part before you're done with that computer. Yes, try not to have un-necessary writes and thrashing an SSD, but since Apple designs the SSD to be covered under AppleCare for three years - it's not in their interest to have lots of SSD needing replacement due to them picking a part that won't last long enough in practice.


Automatically restore my window locations when I reconnect my external monitor? Possible Duplicate:
  How do I make windows save their position on screen after re-attaching a display?

I'll often move around in the course of a work day, from my basement office where I have a second external monitor, to the patio and so on. When I unplug my external monitor, any windows I have on it gather on my MacBook Pro's screen -- this is great.

But when I plug my external monitor back in the windows cluster up on the external monitor (I have the external set to be primary when it's present).

Is there an app that can save window states and restore them when ever I plug my external monitor back in? Bonus points if it can also handle putting windows on separate spaces when I unplug my external monitor and lose screen real estate.


Difference between old and new LG UltraFine 5K(4K) Displays The Apple Store shows the LG UltraFine 5K Display and LG UltraFine 4K display marked as "new".

I have found reviews on YouTube of the same two displays dated 2 years ago.

Does this mean that there are both an old and new version of the displays with the same names?

If so, what is the difference between the old and the new versions?

27" Models

27MD5KL

current (as of 2020) revision updated in 2019
added: usb-c compatibility
changed: contrast - 1100:1
changed: charging - 94w
changed: thunderbolt controller: Titan Ridge (EDID id: 5b74)

27MD5KB

previous
contrast - 1200:1
charging - 85w
thunderbolt controller: Alpine Ridge (EDID id: 5b11)

27MD5KA

original version
WARNING: this model caused interference issues
sold for a short time only at Apple stores before being removed from shelves