What exactly do I get when I purchase an older version of Mac OS X? I recently acquired an older iMac 5,1 with 3 GB RAM, currently running Mac OS X 10.6.8, and from what I can gather online it is able to run "Mac OS X 10.7.5 Lion". I found that it is available for purchase on Apple's website for $20, but I do not consider $20 worth fixing up this old machine.

However, if this purchase was tied to my Apple ID or something and worked on multiple machines, that would be nice since it would mean I could fix up any other vintage Mac computers with this version of Mac OS X by signing into my Apple ID?

So, if I purchased an old version of Mac OS X, such as 10.7.5 Lion, what do I get exactly? An upgrade for just one machine? A license tied to my Apple ID? An ISO file for installing Lion? Do they ship a physical disc? Also, am I able to do a clean install or is it just for upgrading?

In the past you could buy USB physical media for Lion but the item you linked to is a redemption code delivered by email. You then have the ability to associate that purchase with one Apple ID of your choosing so you can download and install.

Apple offers pre-sales support if you need more questions about this (or any product) and the end user license allows you to run Lion redeemed from the store on all of the machines you own and control but likely no virtualization or time-sharing allowed. Full details are online if you want to read through things before ordering or calling pre-sales support.

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/


"Before proceeding you must first launch Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and accept the End User License Agreement" What can I do with this on Mac?

The App Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is installed on mac, and when i launch that app, nothing pops up to accept any license.

It makes, I cannot open pdf file in browser:

This is screenshot of popover in my native polish language:

Trash the Adobe Reader app, go to /Library/Internet Plugins and remove ‘AdobePDFViewer.plugin’ and ‘AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin’, then re-download Adobe Reader and install it again.


How can I activate buttons with just the keyboard? Many user interface (UI) elements or dialog boxes have buttons. I would like to be able to activate a button with just the keyboard, without the mouse. How can I do this?

Enable Keyboard Control of the UI

System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts

Then select "All Controls" radio button at the bottom, rather than just "Text boxes and lists only".

Keyboard Shortcuts

⇥ (TAB) will move between buttons.
esc (ESC) is cancel.
space (SPACE) selects the active button (blue, outline).
↩ (RETURN) is OK or the default button (blue, pulsing, filled).
For some dialog boxes, ⌘+first_letter will select the button with a certain first letter in the text (as pointed out by @Griffo).


Does AirPlaying content from VPN protected laptop expose content beyond local network? If I AirPlay something from my laptop, which connects to the internet via VPN, to my Apple TV which connects to my wifi router which is NOT VPN protected, is the content I'm AirPlaying exposed beyond my local network?

No, the airplayed content won't leave your local network.

Your VPN only protects traffic that goes through your internet gateway which is usually your modem/router. (In the less common case that it is a split tunneling VPN, even only the traffic to the remote LAN is affected by the VPN.) However, Airplay connects your laptop with your AppleTV within the local network, so it is neither affected by the VPN, nor does it leave your local network.


How to remove blank icon from launchpad after uninstall app? I have uninstalled an app from Finder->Applications. But in launchpad, icon of the app still exists. How to remove it?

I've tried to restart Mac, no luck.

Screenshot:

You may need to force launchpad to rebuild it's databases. In the Terminal run

rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db; defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall Dock;

NOTE: this method will re-arrange all of your launchpad icons. – Martin Zhai


How to preserve Time Machine backups and start over with a new one? I make my Time Machine backups on an external hard drive. Recently I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks. Now I need the ability to freeze those old backups I've done with Mountain Lion in case I need to go back with the hole system.

What I tried so far:

Stop Time Machine and rename backup folder on the disk. On Mavericks the Time Machine folders can't be renamed or moved.
Remove the external drive from Time Machine preference pane and read the drive - Time Machine backups continue on same folder and in some time in the future overwrites old backups.

How can I achieve what I want?

The simplest way is for you to note the date and time of your last backup in Time Machine on OS X Mountain Lion. You can get back to it at any point in time in the future just by restoring to the backup with that date/time (this will remain on the disk as long as you have adequate space so that Time Machine does not delete these older versions).

You can easily find this date and time by navigating into the "Backups.backupdb" folder on the Time Machine disk and looking at the timestamp for the "Latest" folder (it is actually a link - so you can even open it to see the latest backup folder name with the date and time).

If you do not wish to note down the date and time of your last backup with OS X Mountain Lion, the next simplest way is to change the computer name either on the Mac on OS X Mavericks before you do your first Time Machine backup on it or on the Time Machine backup disk for the older backup.

In either case, this will make Time Machine create a new folder with the new machine name on the disk and it will do a full backup the first time (so you need adequate disk space to hold almost two copies of your Mac). This way, you can restore from the old or new backup in the future (if you rename the computer name on the Time Machine disk, then you would have to revert that to do a full restore of the old system).

To change your computer name, go to System Preferences > Sharing and edit the Computer Name: text.
OR
To rename the computer name on the Time Machine disk instead, use the following command in Terminal.app:

sudo /System/Library/Extensions/TMSafetyNet.kext/Contents/Helpers/bypass mv /Volumes/<TMDiskName>/Backups.backupdb/<ComputerName> /Volumes/<TMDiskName>/Backups.backupdb/<OSXMountainLionBackupComputerName>

Substitute the following in the above command before running it:

<TMDiskName> is the name of the Time Machine volume name
<ComputerName> is the current computer name (which you will continue using for OS X Mavericks)
<OSXMountainLionBackupComputerName> is the name of the snapshot for you to do a full restore from in the future (you would have to rename it back using a similar command as above before the full restore)


How to get the default compiler of c++ on Mac os x I am new in c++ on Mac os x and I need to know how to get some details:

How to get the default compiler c++/c?
How to change the default compiler?
How to set the compiler in a CMakelists.txt file when using CMake?

I don't think Mac come with a C/C++ compiler by default anymore. I recommend that you install XCode and XCode commandline tools from the App Store. That will give you the gcc compiler (and probably LLVM as well).

Without knowing your build process, I can't tell you how to set a default compiler. There will be an option in XCode as well as options with command-line build tools. IOW, Macs do not have a system-wide default compiler setting that I'm aware of.

Here's the official documentation on how to use a different compiler with CMake.
https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/community/wikis/FAQ#how-do-i-use-a-different-compiler


Mac App Store First Time Setup Pop Up? I Signed on Mac Store For First Time And Downloaded App.Pop-up came which says welcome to app store and it has new apple privacy icon with two man shaking hands and i clicked continue is that normal process or some adware ?

That's a new Privacy process just introduced by Apple.  There's a new popup window that will display when you log into your iCloud account for the first time after the upgrade.

You can read more about it here.

After installing the newly released iOS 11.3, macOS 10.13.4, and tvOS 11.3 software update, users will be met with a page that explains how a new icon, of two figures shaking hands, will appear “when an Apple feature asks to use your personal information”.
The idea is that when personal information is being collected on iTunes, the App Store or other Apple services, users can tap through the icon to read more information about what sort of data is being asked for and how it is being used. It’s pitched by the company as a way for it to increase transparency around how it handles user data, aligned with GDPR rules.


The scanner is in use by application '(null)' Until now I've always scanned through the Printers & Scanners part of options. It's far from great so now I want to try scanning through Preview. Now I get this error message: The scanner is in use by application '(null)'.

And I get it both from Preview as well as the stuff I used before.

Is there a good way to fix this? I.e. without rebooting.

I encountered the same question on my MacBook Pro.  I solved it by changing to another USB  port; I didn't have to restart.


Can't get WiFi Payloads to iPad using Apple Configurator I have 400 iPads I need to prep and am having a couple issues. I was hoping somebody could give me a bit of advice..

Question

How can I verify the WiFi payloads are copied to the iPad?

Background

Apple Configurator 1.5
I received a backup config from the customer
I also received their settings in case the restore didn’t work.
Of the settings I’m concentrating on two to verify the restore worked, or a manual config and prepare worked. Those are verifying an app was installed, and wifi payloads.
When I restore using the supplied *.iosdevicebackup file neither the app or the wifi settings are on the iPad
I configured iTunes for the customers account -> downloaded the app -> imported into the Apps tab of the Configurator program and now get that loaded, but I can’t confirm the wifi payloads.
have 3 wifi payloads configured in the setup tab -> wifi section. 2 are for the customers wifi and the 3rd is for our in-house wifi just for sanity’s sake. Each are configured with ssid and WPA / password, but when the IPad is restarted after the prepare I would assume I would see all 3 networks and the iPad would connect to our in-house network automatically as it's the only one available. But I only see a list of available networks, and I’m asked for a password when I try to connect to our in-house one. I thought that was what the payload was for.
I also tried making a profile and setting the wifi payloads up there, same result.
I’ve been speaking with the local apple store, and while polite and professional, not much help..
When I try to do a manual prepare my settings -> Restore value is Don't resort backup. If I have that set to the backup I received I get an error when trying to customize the device at the end of the update.
I also tried only 1 wifi payload, our in-house WiFi. Same results. I'm asked for a login / password when I try to connect.

The WiFi networks were mixed case which caused the confusion and problems.


Why does running the App Store push email to my iPad? I have noticed that - even with email push turned off, running the App Store on my iPad 2 would push any new mail on the Exchange server to me. This could have been the case previously but it is incredibly apparent now with the way iOS 5 handles notifications.

Is this happening for anyone else? Is this a bug or is this a feature which I can configure away somewhere?

At an educated guess, I would say the following is happening:

Exchange is designed to push - and the exchange server is no doubt pushing to Apple servers - regardless of whether you have push enabled on the iPad or not, it's just how it works.

When you connect to the Apple store, you connect to the Apple notification server (or renew your connection to it) and in doing so pick up any mail that hasn't been collected from the exchange server yet. I would imagine the same would happen with other push notifications as they pass to the Apple server whether they are enabled on your iPad or not.

What would be interesting to test is whether this happens with a conventionally configured Gmail account - which would probably shed more light on what is happening.


Finder: Error changing file association When trying to change the associated application that opens when double clicking a file, I'm seeing the error message:

You can’t change the item "<filename>" to always open in the selected application.
The item is either locked or damaged, or in a folder you don’t have permission to modify (error code -54).

Any idea what the problem is?

In my case, this issue was the file I was attempting to change was a remote server, mounted via sshfs.

If I copy the file I'd like to change the association with to my desktop and try again, it worked successfully and files on the remote server correctly open in the desired application.


How can I access my iCloud files on my Mac? When I save a file that I've written in TextEdit, it saves to iCloud by default. If I close the file, and close TextEdit, the only way for me to find that file is by searching it in Spotlight and opening it. I can't find a folder on my computer that contains those files. When I right click the file that shows up in Spotlight there is no option to open enclosing folder. I tried going on icloud.com and logging into my account but I couldn't just get a simple list of the files I had saved on the cloud.

Where are my iCloud files? And how I can I remove them from iCloud?

I've been looking online for about an hour at this point for an answer to this question and am stunned that I haven't found one/anyone else with the same problem. I'm sure I must be missing something very obvious.

The iCloud files are cached on your Mac, so you can access them even when you have no internet connection. They are stored in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/.

To make it even more accessible, you can add the folder in your sidebar.

There you'll see that each application has it's own folder with it's own documents. Files can be added or removed in this window.
To make sure you're working in your iCloud, you can try and delete a file. Your Mac will notify you, you're deleting the file in iCloud.


Hard drive enclosure for 2.5" Sata drive I am not an Apple user myself, but trying to solve a problem for a family member.

His Macbook Pro is damaged and not economical to repair, however he would like the data off the hard drive.

Do I need to find a specific type of external hard drive enclosure, or will any standard 2.5" SATA enclosure work?

Thank you!

MacBooks and other Apple computers that use 2.5" or 3.5" form factor drives are all standard SATA II or III, so any typical hard drive would work.


Unable to mount a SSD hard drive on macOS Catalina I attached a brand new Seagate USB SSD drive (Backup Plus Slim) to a MacBook Pro running 10.15.2. It mounted the first time, I could see it in Finder, and was able to run the Mac start up program on the drive. However this did not seem to work, so I disconnected the drive. I thought I ejected it properly but not absolutely sure.

Then when I plugged it in again, I could not see it in Finder.  I also tried on a Mac mini running 10.14.6 but could not see it in Finder either.  Back on the MacBook Pro, I tried Disk Utility. It found the disk, but it was greyed out and not mounted. When I tried to mount it, I saw the following error:

Could not mount “disk2s2”. (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930868.)

Doing a search on Google, I found this discussion, which indicates it is a Catalina problem. I could not see any useful answer.

I have tried waiting for hours for it to fix itself and rebooting my machine, but it appears that the disk has become damaged. How do I fix this?

Exactly my issue, but luckily, the solution was simple! Take a coffee and wait. Seems like Catalina does a thorough disk check whenever you try to mount some sort of disk. For example, my HDD had around 500GB of data and it took around 5 minutes before it was automatically mounted and working as expected. In the meantime, I was unable to mount and to eject the disk (the error was the same, the disk was in use by another process). Simply plug in the disk and let the OS do the check it needs (some other users might know more about what is going on in the background and feel free to edit my comment to extend the knowledge). Patience, it will mount itself automatically after it finished all the background checks :)


Copy & Paste photos between albums Is there a way to copy an entire photo (not just a shortcut to the photo) from your camera role to another photo album?  Now that we can edit photots on the iPhone I thought it might be useful to make a copy of a photo before messing with it.

After selecting a photo and hitting "copy", there doesn't appear to be a way to paste it into another album.  Selecting the "add to" option, and adding it to another album does appear to work; however, editing the photo in one album affects both the original photo, and the "copy" of it.

Is there any way to make a copy of the actual photo, and paste it in another album?

As you are asking for any way:

select photo you wish to duplicate
Press "Share" and "Email Photo"
Send email to yourself using actual size of picture
Once email is back select picture and save to Photo Roll

PS: I tried to just cancel the email first and keeping a copy in Drafts. But it seems you can't select a picture out of a mail in the Drafts folder.


sourcing .bash_profile from .bashrc breaks macvim shell I read Why doesn't .bashrc run automatically? about sourcing .bash_profile from .bashrc and adjusted my config to match this. I am using iTerm2 as my terminal.

Unfortunately, when I do this, my MacVim shell breaks - backspace doesn't work and I have strange characters all over the place. Note the characters?1034h before the prompt and the K that appears when hitting the backspace key.

My .bash_profile:

source ~/.bashrc

My .bashrc:

alias ll='ls -al'
# Set CLICOLOR if you want Ansi Colors in iTerm2
export CLICOLOR=1

# Set colors to match iTerm2 Terminal Colors
export TERM=xterm-256color

If copy the settings from .bashrc into .bash_profile and delete .bashrc then the shell in MacVim works fine.

Any idea why MacVim shell breaks sourcing .bash_profile from .bashrc?

According to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11676026/macvim-shell-sh-only-displays-character-codes-escape-sequences the initial ?1034h characters are the colour codes I've set up in my .bashrc.

When calling echo $TERM from macvim the result is dumb. It looks like the terminal is unable to interpret certain escape sequences.

Details on how to adjust the .bashrc to accommodate (taken from  https://stackoverflow.com/a/11676355/783836):

  If you would like to use a color prompt on the command line, but not
  in MacVim you can fix this in ~/.bashrc by setting PS1 differently
  when inside vim (from [here][1])

if [ $VIM ]; then
        export PS1='\h:\w\$ '
fi


Global keyboard shortcut to switch to an application (to use with Emacs/Aquamacs) Like in iTerm, I'd like to be able to set a keyboard shortcut to switch to an application, which in this case would be Aquamacs. This would be really useful to know in general. Would an Applescript or Automator let me do this?

I tried to use specifically Applescript/Automator to avoid 3rd party applications, but eventually I utilised capabilities of application called Alfred (I can not recall right now, but there is a chance you should buy Alfred Power Pack to use this feature)

In addition with the help of Karabiner.app I forced CapsLock button to act as Shift+Cmd+Ctrl+Opt and there is almost no need to use Opt+Tab to switch between apps since then.


Copy Omnikey shortcuts to another computer I use the Omnikey extension on Safari 11.1, and find it very useful.  It allows immediate access to the search function on various websites through Safari’s address bar, merely by typing a keyletter or two; the user can specify both the sites searched and the keyletters. This dispenses with the intermediate step of navigating to the website to be searched, or even typing out the whole website URL in the search bar: the search occurs immediately upon the user’s entry of the site-choosing keyletter, the search term, and the return key.

I’d like to duplicate my Omnikey list of websites and keyletters on another computer. The net returns no info, and I’m not a programmer so the Git Hub link doesn’t help. Searching on the mac for the URLs in the Omnikey shortcut had no results.

Can any of you tell me where the data is retained, and how I might accomplish this?

The Omnikey developer finally responded. Omnikey data is kept within the folder located at ~/Library/Safari/LocalStorage.


Does the video player truncate videos? The iPad screen has an aspect ratio of 4:3. 1080p video has an aspect ratio of 16:9.

I tried playing a 1080p video on the built-in player and got this:

|--------------|
|   |      |   |
|   | iPad |   |
|   |      |   |
|--------------|

where the outer border is the movie resolution (meaning, the video is getting chopped). I am a bit surprised that I couldn't find a mention of this anywhere online. Does the iPad really truncate 1080p videos by dropping pixels on the left/right of the frame?

This is simply an option to allow people to change between filling the screen or showing the black bars.

It can be switched by double-tapping the video, or tapping the two arrows button on the toolbar.


How to remove evasi0n 7 jailbreak on ip4 iOS 7.0.4? I jailbroke my iPhone 4 iOS 7.0.4 (11B554a) with evasi0n 7. And that's the worse I did with my phone. I am new to iPhone and was just curious about jailbreaking. But that jailbreak corrupted many of my apps including iOS own apps.

I am very very happy with iPhone in its default iOS. I want to restore back to 7.0.4.

P.S: I tried "Erase all data and settings restore" from iPhone settings but the process stucks at spinning wheel after restart.

#

Update::

Ok. I did that. I downloaded ipsw of iOS 7.0.4 and tried to install it through shift+restore method through iTunes. But it keeps giving me error 21 again and again. And don't know about it.

Attempting to reset your jailbroken phone from your phone will break everything. You'll need to put your device in DFU mode and restore it with iTunes. Connect your device to iTunes, then hold the power and home button until the Apple logo shows, then keep holding home and let go of power. iTunes should prompt you to restore iOS.


How can I chain a DVI display into a Thunderbolt display (and then into a MBP) I have a thunderbolt display that is connected to a retina MBP (13"). I would like to connect my Dell monitor (which has a gauntlet of inputs, most notably HDMI and DVI, but not DisplayPort or Thunderbolt) into my Thunderbolt display so that I don't have to plug two monitors into my laptop every time I sit down.

I have a VGA to Thunderbolt adapter, however when I plug the Dell into the Thunderbolt display the MBP doesn't detect the monitor. I'm willing to buy another adapter for DVI or HDMI but I need to know it will work first.

Note that plugging in the Dell via HDMI directly into the MBP, or via the VGA adapter to the MBP works fine, however it is very inconvenient.

Is there a solution that I can chain my Dell monitor into my Thunderbolt display?

The Thunderbolt Display can't daisy chain other non-Thunderbolt Displays. Per Apple Support article HT5219:

  Can I connect a Mini DisplayPort display to my Apple Thunderbolt Display for computers that support using more than one display?

  Mini DisplayPort displays will not function if connected to the Thunderbolt port of an Apple Thunderbolt Display. Displays connected via Mini DisplayPort video adapter or cable to the Thunderbolt port of an Apple Thunderbolt Display will not work.

You'll have to connect the second display to the second Thunderbolt port (or HDMI port) on your rMBP.


External ISO keyboards treated as ANSI since MacBook Pro upgraded to macOS Sierra 10.12 Since I upgraded my MacBook Pro to macOS Sierra, two keys seems to have been switched around in the keyboard when I use my external keyboard.

I use the Spanish ISO layout, and the "º" and "<" keys have been swapped. The laptop's keyboard works fine. I have not fiddled with the keyboard configuration, other than changing to my regional layout and swapping modifier keys (it's a windows keyboard).

It worked flawlessly1 before the upgrade. I know very little of how to troubleshoot macOS, what should I do?

1 I just remembered that, no, it wasn't all that flawless; from time to time the keyboard would stop responding, and I'd have to unplug and plug again. Don't think it's related, but...

PD: It happens with all external Keyboards. Tried with a few. All of them where ISO, and it seems the problem is in macOS treating my ISO keyboards as ANSI; the laptop's internal keyboard is ISO though, and has no issue. I've done a clean install of Sierra, and it's still wrong.

I had the same problem with my keyboard and a German layout. Although I had "German" set up as "System Preferences/Keyboard/Input Source" most of my keys had the wrong mapping. E.g. the key right to the Left Shift Key on my keyboard is "<>" instead it was mapped to "^°".

The problem was that my keyboard was setup as an ANSI-type of keyboard (used in the US). Instead it should have been set up as a ISO-type (used in most european countries).

There are several possible solutions to this mapping problem as described by Tom Gewecke on his Blog.

  The fix for this is to run the Keyboard Setup Assistant again. Sometimes there is a button for "Change Keyboard Type" visible in "System Preferences/Keyboard".

  If not, you can try trashing the file
  /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist
  and restarting your machine.

  Another possibility may be to open Terminal and type:
  sudo open /System/Library/CoreServices/KeyboardSetupAssistant.app/Contents/MacOS/KeyboardSetupAssistant

When the Keyboard Setup Assistant appears again after reboot be sure to choose the right type of keyboard - ISO.

If none of that helps follow the above link to Toms post with further options.


Is chmod enough to change the permissions? My file needs sudo everytime I have file copied from an usb hard drive with a previous installation of os yosemite copied in it. Now I'm using Sierra.

The status of the file:

karim@doraemon:~/Downloads
$ ll Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf
-rw-r--r--@ 1 karim  staff   4.5M Jan  3 19:42 Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf

I have the same name user of my previous installation, maybe this could be a problem, but I'm not sure because from the finder, if I check permissions, I get 'Karim (Me)' as a owner.

karim@doraemon:~/Downloads
$ whoami
karim

I change the permissions:

karim@doraemon:~/Downloads
$ chmod 777 Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf

The file permissions are changed.

karim@doraemon:~/Downloads
$ ll Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 karim  staff   4.5M Jan  3 19:42 Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf

As you can see, I'can't modify the filename.

karim@doraemon:~/Downloads
$ mv Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf Python.recipes.handbooksaa.pdf
mv: rename Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf to Python.recipes.handbooksaa.pdf: Permission denied

I already checked on finder and the file is not locked.

As suggested I run this:

karim@d:~/Downloads
$ ls -leO@ Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 karim  staff  - 4758205 Jan  3 19:42 Python.recipes.handbooks.pdf
    com.apple.finder.copy.source.checksum#N       4
    com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineNewestSnapshot       50
    com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineOldestSnapshot       50
    com.dropbox.attributes       83
 0: group:everyone deny write,delete,append,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

The last line seems to explain what is happening on the file.

It looks like those files are coming from a Time Machine backup, and still have the don't-mess-up-the-backup access control ("group:everyone deny write,delete,append,writeattr,writeextattr,chown") attached. You can remove this with e.g.

chmod -N Python.recipies.handbooks.pdf

You might also want to remove the stray extended attributes with

xattr -c Python.recipies.handbooks.pdf


Installing hybrid drive in mid-2010 17-inch MacBook Pro I'm looking to expand my internal 500 GB 7200 RPM HDD that came with my 17" MacBook Pro (mid-2010) running OS X Lion.

I'm interested to hear from other MacBook Pro owners who've upgraded their HDD with hybrid (SSD + hard disk) drives, especially if they're using the Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5" Solid State Hybrid Drive ST750LX003.

I have a late 2011 15" 2.2 quad core i7 macbook pro, and after using it with a 7200 rpm hard drive for about 2 months I decided to upgrade it to the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid drive. I am a iOS programmer and I can't tell you what a big difference this hard drive made in my computer. I did a couple of tests before I changed out my old hard drive like boot up time and opening programs and such. With my 7200 RPM hard drive my boot up time was 31 sec. and with the hybrid drive my new boot up time is 20 sec. I strongly recommend the hybrid drives. Seagate also just updated there hybrid drives with twice the amount of solid state memory instead of 4 GB they now have 8 GB. I hope this helps!


Remember Kerberos tickets after reboot I need to use Kerberos to connect to my network at work. The built-in kinit and ssh in Lion work fine for me. However, I need to get a new ticket and re-enter my password every time I restart the computer. Is there a way to make it remember the ticket after reboots (until it actually expires)?

By default, the kerberos ticket cache is placed under /tmp, which is cleared out on reboot.  You can specify your own location for the ticket cache, in a location safer for long term storage, by passing the "-c" flag to kinit, and setting KRB5CCNAME to point to the same location, so ssh will use it.

$ kinit -c ~username/mykrbcache
$ export KRB5CCNAME=~username/mykrbcache
$ ssh kerberoshost
...
$ reboot
...
$ export KRB5CCNAME=~username/mykrbcache
$ ssh kerberoshost
...


Is it possible to force a specific program to remain in memory after closing it? Alfred is great, of course, and I use it all the time. However, if I haven't opened it for a little while it can take a few seconds to open the search-bar UI. Otherwise, it will open in less than a quarter of a second.

I believe this is to do with the fact that it is moved out of memory by the operating system, meaning it has to be copied back in next time I request it (note: I have a mechanical hard-drive, not an SSD, so that takes ages).

So my question is this: can I force macOS to leave an application in main memory even if I'm not using it?

MacOS's memory management is quite sophisticated, and it generally does try to keep as much stuff in memory as possible. If Alfred is still running, then it will be in memory.

If you have quit Alfred, then it might still be retained in memory, which is why it is faster to load next time. However, the OS will clear the quit app from memory, if the memory is needed for something else. So you might experience slowness somewhere else if you don't let the OS clear the quit app.

Recommendations for improving speed:

Leave Alfred running all the time. If it's slow to come to foreground sometimes, even when its been running in the background, then that's not a memory issue, but something else: possibly related the slowness of the HDD.
Get more RAM, if possible. You don't say what model of Mac and how much RAM.
Replace the HDD with an SSD.


Can I lock the functions on the touch bar? Is it possible to lock the touch bar to always display the default functions ("buttons")? I quite often use the buttons for sound and display brightness, but the touch bar almost never has them, since it changes according to my app on focus.

Basically, I want it to never change from what it would show as if it were physical buttons instead of a touch bar...

You can set “Touch Bar shows” to “Expanded Control Strip” in Settings - Keyboard - Keyboard.

You can alternatively leave it as “App Controls” and check the “Show Control Strip” box, which allows you to push the arrow on the right side of Touch Bar to show the expanded control strip.

Another alternative is to set “Press Fn Key” to “Expand Control Strip”, which will display the expanded control strip when you hold fn.


Can't connect to TimeCapsule Wifi network from Ubuntu I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I can't find my TimeCapsule Wifi network from a Ubuntu machine I want to share some files with. The name of the connection simply doesn't show up among the available networks. Any help appreciated.

On OMG Ubuntu is a blog post about how to set this up. I myself have been using this solution in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64-bit.

The blog post explains everything you have to do step-by-step.

How to connect to your Apple Time Capsule in Ubuntu

64-bit Ubuntu

Download the source code from here.
Make sure you have build-essential installed
In a new Terminal session enter and install:

sudo apt-get install libgcrypt11 libgcrypt11-dev libgmp3c2 libgmp3-dev readline-common libreadline6 libreadline6-dev libfuse2 libfuse-dev

In a terminal type the following commands one after another:

tar -xzf afpfs-ng*
cd afpfs-ng*
./configure –prefix=/usr
sudo make install

Now follow the 32-bit instructions, skipping the need to install the .deb

32-bit Ubuntu

Download the .deb from here.
Install by double clicking the .deb package.
On the Mac used to setup the Time Capsule, go to Airport Utility to find the IP of the Time Capsule.
Back in Ubuntu open up a Terminal and type:

mkdir ~/capsule

Followed by:

mount_afp afp://user:password@server_host_or_ip/Data ~/capsule

Filling in the user name you use to connect along with the password and the IP address you located earlier.
To unmount the drive use:

afp_client unmount ~/capsule


Macbook Pro Display Freezing Yesterday I started experiencing display hiccups in my new Macbook Pro

The issue is most noticeable when playing videos, though it really effects every animation: minimizing windows, switching screens, even typing is now choppy. The display has hiccups where it freezes for a split second, making it very choppy. I get lots of warning from WindowServer in my console (snippet here). I've tried several solutions so far:

Rebooting
Disabling automatic brightness
Resetting my user keychain
Disabling iCloud keychain
Removing all user LaunchAgents
Turning WiFi off and on again

but none of them have worked. I'd really like to avoid a full OS reinstallation and from what I can see, I'm not the only one experiencing this issue. It appears to be related to the 10.12.1 update.

Troubleshooting is basically a process of elimination and often requires patience. Below I have some steps for you to try and report back on.

1. Safe Mode

What happens when you run your computer in Safe Mode? To do this:

Fully shutdown your computer
Restart your computer and immediately hold down the Shift key
Once you're logged in, use the computer for long enough to establish if you still have the problem.
Fully shutdown your computer again
Restart your computer normally
Once you're logged in, use the computer for long enough to establish if you still have the problem.

Once you've done the above, report back on how your computer was in Safe Mode and how it was again when not in Safe Mode.

2. Reset your NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). It may be worth you also resetting this. Here’s how to:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. mouse speed, time and date/timezone, etc).

3. Reset the SMC

Your computer's System Management Controller (SMC) can also be reset. The instructions for doing this on your particular MacBook are:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After resetting both your NVRAM and SMC, use your computer and report back on how it's now going.


A way to disable the SMB signing mechanism at the Apple Time Capsule? Apple Time Capsule related technical question.
In short, - does there exist a way to disable at the Time Capsule the SMB signing feature?
Regarding the original SMB1 protocol, the signing mechanism is slowing down the overall performance extremely. For example, writing to the Time Capsule network share is over a Gigabit LAN connection at around 15 MB/s and goes down to around 2 - 3 MB/s when a lot of smaller files are transferred.
This behavior is SMB1 related and is therefore present on different operating systems and (older) NAS network devices. Newer SMB2+ versions have a different, more efficient, design which results in much reduced overhead in conjunction with the signing feature. I can confirm this for several older Windows 7 computers where their (SMB2 based) network shares can handle transfer speeds up to 100 MB/s.
The usual solution is to disable the SMB signing. This can be done on macOS (and other OS) quite easy: https://dpron.com/os-x-10-11-5-slow-smb/
In my case, however, it is somewhat more complex. Regarding the Time Capsule -- I had to do this at the "server side" which is effectively the Time Capsule. I have experimented to deactivate the signing at the client side (Mac OS, Windows 7) but it shows no effect. The SMB1 network share speed is always very slow because the SMB1 signing remains active.
So, my idea is to find a BSD command which deactivates the signing at the Time Capsule. The earlier Time Capsule models (up to the fourth generation) are NetBSD 4.0 based. The last model, the fifth generation, is based on NetBSD 6. There exists a non-official way to access the Time Capsule through SSH. ;-)
And finally, a switch to the Apple AFP protocol is not a real solution because the Time Capsule share is also used under Linux and Windows. AFP is therefore only a solution for macOS based systems. However, Apple itself regards AFP as deprecated. It is no longer supported with the new APFS file system. Apple uses for APFS based network shares newer SMB versions.

Okay, here follows a litte addition to my original question. This is not a final answer. It can be seen more as the first part of a "real" solution. ;-)
As mentioned in the comment section by user Gumminando, Apple is using at the Time Capsule a (modified?) Samba Server. According to the official doc the SMB1 "server signing" feature can be defined in the smb.conf file as follow:
(Source: https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/smb.conf.5.html)

server signing = default
server signing = auto
server signing = mandatory
server signing = disabled

Apple is using at their TC models most likely the mandatory parameter which enforces the SMB1 signing in any case.
It should be noted that all these options are only SMB1 related. The SMB2 signing (of newer Samba versions) cannot be disabled because it seems to be "in design" mandatory. Well, a SMB2 functionality is not present at any Apple Time Capsule model so that aspect can be ignored anyway.
So what would be now the final solution? In theory, you just have to log / hack into the TC and modify the smb.conf file with parameter server signing = disabled or server signing = auto. Unfortunately, it's not that easy in practice.
However, I can confirm that the slow SMB1 signing affects primary larger files. I have now tested this for a while and the overall behavior with smaller files like office documents is okay. Well, this may be true in our case because the original TC hard-disk drive was replaced with a Crucial MX500 2TB SSD. Yes, this works GREAT.
And finally, the idea to use also under Linux the AFP protocol to access the Time Capsule seems interesting. Unfortunately the current AFP Linux implementation is somewhat broken (and incomplete). The SMB1 implementation may be slow but it is definitely very stable and reliable. I would describe it as rock solid.


Uninstall Windows Virtual PC I was looking for Parallels in DreamSpark earlier on today and thought I would install 'Windows Virtual PC' since I found it. The only issue is I have installed it on Yosemite (2015 MBP) and Finder says 'You cannot use this application since PowerPC apps are no longer supported'.

I tried to use the uninstaller, the only issue is it has the same error (the uninstaller is a PowerPC app too)! How would I get rid of this application (I don't think I can just drag the application into the trash since the computer needed to reboot)?

One way to determine what an installer package is going to install (or installed) and where, is to look at the installer package with Pacifist as it will give you the hierarchal folder layout of files installed outside the application bundle as well.

This can be used to aide in a manual uninstall as necessary if AppCleaner does not do a complete job of uninstalling.


MacBook Air with Bootcamp, wanting removable Linux devices without rEFInd Most of the questions here similar to my question regard triple booting and using rEFInd, which I'm not trying to do.
My Mac drive is only 128GB, and I've cut into that with Bootcamp, so I'm looking to boot Linux distros via microSD. So far, I've only gotten a Chrome OS on a microSD workable from the Mac's boot menu, but I'm failing to get Ubuntu.
This mentions something similar: Linux on Macbook, dual-boot, without rEFind, but it's for Dual boot. I did try taking their advice of copying the ../ubuntu/grubx64.efi to ../boot/bootx64.efi, but the results were goofy. With the microSD inserted, the boot menu still only displayed MacBook and Windows, and when selecting Windows, I got the MokManager error, but it still booted into Ubuntu anyway after leaving it for about 30 seconds. When removing the microSD and booting to that volume, Windows boots to the Grub bash screen. The only way I've found to fix this is to replace bootx64.efi with the Windows version. Basically the same problem you run into after installing Linux to an external drive when Bootcamp is already using that EFI folder.
When I installed Ubuntu to the microSD (/dev/sdc), I also installed the grub bootloader to the sdc volume which I was installing Ubuntu on, so that the bootloader did not damage my Mac OS or Windows boot processes.
I have tried deleting the Secure Boot option (shimx64.efi) to deal with this, but that causes Ubuntu to fail to boot anymore from microSD. So does replacing the Windows/bootmgfw.efi -> boot/bootx64.efi, although that lets me boot Windows again.
Of course, I'm trying to get it so that a separate menu item that says "Ubuntu" (and all future distros) when inserted, as I'd like to make use of other microSDs and USBs for the same purpose.
How should I go about altering the EFI folder and items, without causing Bootcamp to fail? (I've already mucked up that boot several times when testing different options, so I keep restoring from a backup folder.)
Is there a file in the EFI folder I need to edit to add volumes to be added to the boot menu?

IMO, a micro SD is not designed for the amount of read/writes that would occur when an operating system such as Ubuntu is installed. However, other users have posted questions where this is what they have done. So, I assume do so is feasible.
The Ubuntu installer does allow selection of where to put the Grub boot files. However, my experience has been the installer ignores any such selection and installs the Grub boot files in the first EFI partition on /dev/sda. From the description of the problems you are having, I assume this is true for your installation. Perhaps you meant the rest of the Grub files were installed in the /boot folder on the micro SD card (/dev/sdc).

An answer explaining how to separate the Windows boot files from the Ubuntu (Grub) boot files has already been posted here at Ask Different.

I should point out the BOOTX64.EFI file provided by the Ubuntu installer is the file the Mac Startup Manager finds and causes an icon to be displayed. This file is not a duplicate of the grub boot file grubx64.efi, but is instead a duplicate of the shimx64.efi file. My experience has been booting by using this file works, but do so also makes Ubuntu the default startup operating system.
Changing the label for the icon displayed on the Mac Startup Manager boot menu from the default of EFI Boot can be accomplished by using the macOS bless command. See the question How can I change the title of a boot image?. In your case, you should specify the folder containing the BOOTX64.EFI file.
There is no file in the EFI folder that can be edited to add volumes to the Mac Startup Manager boot menu. Instead additional items can be added by creating additional EFI partitions. Newer Macs firmware has been extended to include any Microsoft Basic Data partition which has been FAT or ExFAT formatted. Each partition needs to contain a EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI file. I should also point out that there exists other configurations that will result in a icon being displayed on a Mac Startup Manager boot menu.
The icon displayed on a Mac Startup Manager boot menu can also be customized by adding a .VolumeIcon.icns file to the root folder of the volume contained by the EFI partition. Care must be taken to insure the .VolumeIcon.icns file is of a format compatible with the firmware on the Mac logic board. Prebuilt icon set (.icns) files can be downloaded from this site. Also, included is script for creating new icon set files.


Apple Push Notifications SSL Error The APNS worked fine for various month until few weeks. Every time we send Push Notifications the connection aborts with the following error:

  PHP Warning:  fwrite(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages:
  error:1409F07F:SSL routines:SSL3_WRITE_PENDING:bad write retry

If I reconnect and resend or only resend the message to the Apple server I get the same error. Sometimes I can send to all devices without any problem. But sometimes it aborts at the 900th device, or at the 2000th device. It's not the I-have-not-collected-the-devices-from-Feedback-service-and-set-all-the-devices-to-inactive-Error. I'm connecting to the Feedback Service at regular intervals. It's another kind of error I don't know. Something has changed with the SSL connection. Can it be that Apple changed something with the SSL connection? Apple said it doesn't. And they doesn't support PHP.

We use PHP 5.3.3-7+squeeze3 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: Jun 28 2011 08:24:40). This is the newest stable PHP version for Debian Linux Squeeze. This PHP version uses OpenSSL 0.9.8o (01 Jun 2010) on our server.

Please help.

Had a similar problem in python, I guess the underlying ssl libraries are the same so the solution might be similar.

SSL3_WRITE_PENDING seems to be caused when a socket write fails then you try to write again. In this case for whatever reason SSL_write requires you to retry the write with the exact same bytes as the original write or else it omits the SSL_WRITE_PENDING error.

The pattern of errors I was seeing was Connection Timeout, then lots of SSL_WRITE_PENDING errors. This was because first one of my writes failed (say with maybe a timeout error or connection closed error because I send a dodgy push request), then after that error I was continually trying to re-use the broken socket (and it was giving back the less-than-informative SSL_WRITE_PENDING error)

Are you sure that you're using a new socket connection when you 'reconnect and resend'? Because I wouldn't have thought you should get SSL_WRITE_PENDING on a fresh socket connection to the APNS server.

Another thing that could help is using the enhanced notification format, because then if you accidentally send a broken push to the Apple server, it will send you an error code back before closing the connection on you. If you're not already using enhanced then it would be good to do so because then you can make sure you're not making simple errors like wrong token or payload too long things.


How thorough is Migration Assistant? I'm a longtime Windows user, and I was given a Macbook Pro at work. I was recently given a new one, and I need to use Migration Assistant to move all my data from the old one to the new one.

I've got a lot of settings that I don't want to spend time on again, and I've got a Parallels VM on it. I want the new Mac to behave exactly the same as the old one, so nothing would be changed. I'm used to the Windows world where I would image a computer and then deploy that image on another computer.

Would Migration Assistant truly copy everything from the old Mac to the new? If there are things that Migration Assistant wouldn't copy, can you please tell me what they are?

Migration Assistant does truly copy all your user data from the old computer to the new - that includes Parallels virtual machines and your settings.

Migration Assistant does not copy over the actual operating system, as you already have that on the new computer (i.e. there would be no point in copying it over). Similarly Apple supplied standard programs (such as Safari) are not copied over - but you would already have those on the new computer. Settings, bookmarks, passwords, etc. for Safari are copied over.

In essence if you just want to copy over all your data and settings and continue working your new computer - Migration Assistant will work for you. However, if you want to downgrade your new computer to an old operating system and old versions of Safari or similar - then Migration Assistant alone cannot do that for you.

I have personally used Migration Assistant for 15+ years when moving from old to new computers, etc. - never had any problem with anything missing.

You can read Apple's guide on using Migration Assistant here:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204350


Tmux with iterm2 integration won't start when invoked with tmux -CC I'm using iterm2 Build 1.0.0.20130302 and would like to get tmux working.  I followed the instructions at:
https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration

Everything compiled and installed without incident.  When I run tmux -CC
I get the following:

** tmux mode started **

Command Menu
----------------------------
esc    Detach cleanly.
  X    Force-quit tmux mode.
  L    Toggle logging.
  C    Run tmux command.
Detached
$ control set-client-size 80,25
-bash: control: command not found
$ control set-value "affinities0=pty-8A4A5594-20D6-4AE2-A734-76075A248E63 pty-6CAAC2D6-70DB-44EF-9A14-7A50030731B4 0,pty-DD78FAE6-7E0A-49AE-BF49-67093639FEAB"
-bash: control: command not found
$ list-sessions -F "#{session_name}"
-bash: list-sessions: command not found

I'm not sure what to try next.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I installed tmux as part of homebrew and it works just fine.

Once you have homebrew installed

brew install tmux will install tmux for you.


What does the spinning circle next to the network indicators on iOS mean? I recently got an iPhone and at first I had problems connecting to the wifi. After a while, I got it to work. Now I noticed a small circle next to the wifi icon that spins when I am going down through a timeline on Facebook or Tumblr.

Does this indicator mean that it is just loading? Or is it using the cellular network?

The spinning circle icon is simply a means of indicating that some network activity is taking place, i.e. loading new data in Facebook or Tumblr. It could even be background data access like updating apps from the store or if you have background refresh enabled for some or all apps.

It has nothing to do with which network is being used — for that, check the cellular/Wi-Fi indicator. If the Wi-Fi icon is there, then it's the Wi-Fi network being used.

It's also worth noting that apps can turn on and off the indicator at will, so it's not a 100% reliable indicator that data is actually being transferred. If coded poorly, an app could activate the indicator, but neglect to deactivate it in certain circumstances.


How to divert (only) certain numbers to voicemail? Is it possible to set unconditional divert for some phone numbers/contacts, like on Android (like described here) ?

The only contact specific option is "Block", which is quite different.

As of iOS 11.0 it is (still) not possible to selectively forward specific phone numbers to voice mail.


Is there any way an iOS app can access the mic/camera without the user's knowledge? In iOS (14.3, as of today), in Settings→Privacy, you can see/control which apps access hardware on the iPhone, such as the microphone and camera. Is this The Exhaustive List of which apps do have access? Is there any way (short of an iOS bug) an app could access the mic/camera without it being listed here in the Microphone/Camera settings?

The first attempt by any app to access the microphone or camera will cause an OS-level confirmation dialog to grant permission. This adds the app to that list with the ability to grant/revoke the permission.
There are no exceptions to this; these are the only APIs that Apple makes available.
Also note that there is a ‘speech recognition’ category in Privacy which you may consider access to the microphone, albeit just what words are spoken as text if any. iOS does the speech recognition on behalf of the app; if the app does the recognition, that’s the generic Microphone category of access.


Workout sync from Watch to iPhone is unreliable since iOS 14 update Since updating to iOS 14, about 20% 50% of my workouts fail to sync from my Watch to my iPhone. I've restarted both Watch and iPhone, several times. Quit and relaunched the Activity app in iOS. All to no avail.
The information from missing workouts is also not present in Health. So basically Watch now no longer can be used for its primary function.
It's so bad, that I even get nonsense like this:

How do I restore the missing workouts and get sync working again, or is this another iOS 14 bug?

It’s official, Apple published an article that to me explains the update had some problems and our devices may not fix themselves. It also warns of future data loss. I got bitten by the GPS bug and was not successful in fixing it by unpairing the watch, but I will follow this sequence later today once I close my rings :-) Looking closer at noise data - that's off for me and my watch isn't unlocking my Macs anymore so I'll want to restore my iPhone and watch together (first unpairing the watch, then backing up the phone, then erasing the phone and restoring / repairing)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865

If you updated to iOS 14 and watchOS 7 and are missing Activity or Health data, learn what to do to prevent future data loss.
After updating to iOS 14.0 and watchOS 7.0, you might notice:

Your
workout route maps are missing in the Fitness app on iPhone for
previous GPS-enabled workouts from your Apple Watch.
The Activity,
Heart Rate, or other health-related apps fail to launch or load data
on your Apple Watch.
The Fitness app or Health app fail to launch or
load data on your iPhone.
The Health app or Fitness app is reporting
an inaccurate amount of data storage on your iPhone.
The Activity app
is reporting an inaccurate amount of data storage on your Apple Watch.
Your environmental sound levels data or headphone audio levels data
from Apple Watch is missing in the Health app on iPhone.
Increased
battery drain on your iPhone or Apple Watch.

If you experience two or more of the above issues, follow the steps below.

Old information for context before Apple acknowledged this issue.
I had this once in the past and needed to work with Apple Support to enable a support PIN so they could see my workouts sync to the cloud and diagnose the errors. In the past, they identified something the server code could clean up and all the workouts synced within 2 days of the fix.

They walked me through one additional quick fix you didn't mention - unpair the watch and re-pair it.

Unless this is a widespread bug, the sooner you start with support, the less likely you'll lose your workouts if that's your primary goal. For a data point, I've logged dozens of workouts since upgrading all my devices on the initial day updates were released. My account hasn't needed anything, but there was a sync error in the past that caused this precise error. (In hindsight, every one of the workouts that synced were missing GPS data - so my failure wasn't initially evident as I didn't review ALL the data after seeing the initial parts correct.)
They told me if I wanted to wipe and lose all activity from the watch, I could unpair it, then back up the iPhone to the cloud and then wipe the phone from Finder, then it would all download - but since I had a lot of photos, I declined that and waited out the fix for the sync error they identified based on looking at the logs on the device. The concern was the backup to the iPhone wasn't guaranteed based on the logs as that used the same sync code as the workout sync.


Recovering AppleID using my rescue email address My iPhone got stolen and I don't have my AppleID. It was previously set by the vendor who sold me the iPhone. AFAIK, I only have my Gmail set as my rescue email address for the AppleID. Is there anyway to recover the ID so that I can recover my backups?

Start at https://iforgot.apple.com and follow the instructions. If you don't know the Apple ID address used, choose ‘look it up’ and enter your name and email address.


Dual TIme Machine backups; "Delete all backups of a file" applies to only one drive? (Bug?) Asked at Apple Discussions but the silence is deafening...

I'm using two 2TB internal drives in tandem for Time Machine and deleted some files while in Time Machine. They deleted from drive A, but drive B still has the files. Is there a way to delete these? I tried unmounting drive A in Disk Utility but then I can't enter Time Machine.

I love the dual backups, but should I be able to do dual deletes of files/backups? I don't see a way to accomplishg this except to force Time Machine to do a backup, then delete the files again so it switches drives, but that seems a bit convoluted.

If one of you guru types has an answer I'd be most interested.

Thanks.

Mike

Mac Pro 3.1 8 Core ML.3

I don't know if it has any caveats or risks, but you can also use bypass to delete files on backups:

sudo /System/Library/Extensions/TMSafetyNet.kext/Helpers/bypass rm -rf /Volumes/*/Backups.backupdb/*/*/*/Users/$USER/Documents/folder


iPhone 4 App Store won't download apps I'm a user of an iPhone 4 with iOS 7.1.2.

When I want download an app, it tells me it need to update to iOS 8.4, but it's not supported for the iPhone 4!

Is this only a requirement for specific apps or it is a bug?

If you open the App Store page for an app and scroll to the bottom, there's a section titled "Compatibility" that will tell you what the minimum version of iOS is that the app requires.

(This is not a screenshot of the OP's problem app, but rather The Infinite Arcade, which was the first app I saw.)


How to enable mouse control (accessibility?) for Java WebStart application? We have an demo application that our salesman launches through Java WebStart.  It works fine, exception on Macs (running MoJave) for a section that uses AssertJ Swing to drive the mouse and the keyboard.

I read here (https://github.com/joel-costigliola/assertj-swing/issues/224) that Mac OS X won't let an application drive the mouse unless it is marked as an Accessibility application.  Unfortunately, the solution there is for Eclipse, which we aren't using.  We do not see Java, Java WebStart or our application in the list for things that can be marked as an Accessibility application.

So, how do we mark Java WebStart (or our Java WebStart application) as an Accessibility application?  Or is there another way to give our application control of the mouse?

Update 1

Java WebStart and AssertJ Swing work correctly under Sierra.

We set the Web Browser that was launching the Java WebStart application to be an Accessiblity Application and then it worked correctly!


Google Calendar will not WorK or sync with Calendar.app after Yosemite or IOS 8.1.2 Just in last 3 weeks:-

Have new computer 3 weeks ago, Yosemite. Had trouble with ical. Would open and load. After perhaps an update, realised the CPU was working hard, fan working hard, activity monitor put iCal 100% CPU usage. Have tried (with Apple support) correcting the library, ical plist; reinstalling software; apple then replaced the new computer. Enabled, disabled, deleted, installed gmail 'internet accounts' on all devices. Cannot deactivate on the phone as it crashes, can't even turn calendar off on the phone setting.

I got replacement computer. Clearly, Not a hardware problem as happening with new computer.

New Computer, 3 days ago and have now spent Spent 4.5 hours last night with iMac and then iPhone apple support again (1.5 week before). Apple remotely connected to the new computer, took stats and usage info activity monitor while running ical with google calendars.

We determined iCal is working with iCloud.Can create appointments both ways and shows on different devices of different software and OS.
Google Calendar is working with iCal and with Mavericks fine.
Google calendar DOES NOT WORK Yosemite and IOS 8.1.2

ical and Google calendar are NOT working with Yosemite and with new iOS for iPhone and heard iPad.

I had also updated my iPhone few days ago. Noticed the timezone had changed on the calendar appointments. After working with Apple support last night, suggesting restoring phone to earlier back up when it worked. I did a restore last night, but still have the version 8.1.2. Big issues. Can't turn off google calendar. it freezes completely (when trying to turn off calendar). Calendar is blank then crashes.

So iCal on mac PC does not sync, if it loads, it is causing huge issues and is crashing.
Google calendar doesn't even load on the iPhone. It is crashing.

Apple are working on it their end. Have said it is not an Apple issue, have suggested it
more likely a Google, Calendar issue.

I was having the problem where a couple of events on Google Calendar simply did not show up on Mac Calendar.  I went into the event on Google Calendar and edited it - say, I changed the title slightly.  This somehow "flushed" the event through and it showed up in Mac Calendar.

I noticed this problem arose after I decided to re-link my Google account to my Mac since I was having issues with certain contacts not showing up when I wanted to compose a message in Mac Mail.  Per Google's instructions I re-introduced the Google account as a CardDAV account instead of simply as a Google account.  Not sure this has fixed the contacts problem but it did create the problem above with Calendar sync.

So for me editing the event in question fixed the problem.  But for the bigger problem described by @Michelle Wedd I do not necessarily have an answer.  Maybe she can provide an answer if she has been able to fix the problem.


MacBookAir 2014 MiniDP to DP 2560x1440 Does anyone know if I can use the full resolution 2560x1440 of this DELL U2711
http://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSharp-U2711-27-inch-Widescreen/dp/B0039648BO

With MacBookAir early 2014,

using MiniDisplayPort (on MacBookAir) to DisplayPort (on monitor)

using this Kogan MiniDisplayPort to DisplayPort Male to male cable?
https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/mini-displayport-displayport-cable-male-male-12m/

According to the answer here on stackexchange, I should be able to
What's the max resolution for mini DisplayPort connected to a 2013 MacBook Air?

??

Thanks

Yes. According to MacTracker.app:

External Resolution Up to 2560 by 1600 pixels.

Personally, I would connect the MBA to the Dell over HDMI, and get the highest quality MDP dongle. Apple used to sell its own, but now sells a Moshi Adaptor.

At my school, we use Belkin Adaptors sold  on Amazon (at this particular point in time) with a 66% discount price.


How do I tell Bedtime that I am awake? I use iOS Bedtime as my morning alarm to wake up.  Sometimes I wake up before the alarm goes off.  How do I tell Bedtime that I'm awake and that I don't need to be woken that morning?

The only method I've been able to come up with is to go into the alarm set up and turn the Bedtime alarm off.  However, this turns it off not only for today, but permanently for all future days as well, and I have to remember to re-enable it before the next morning.  It's easy to forget, so that's not good.  Is there a better way to do this, while using Bedtime?

If I don't turn the alarm off when I wake up early, then sometimes I go shower, and the alarm starts ringing while I'm in the shower and I don't notice until I'm out of the shower, which isn't good -- it disturbs others.

There's no way to get what you're looking for other than what you're already doing.

Bedtime is made-up of two parts: Bedtime and Wake Up.

These are very easy to use but also very limited.  It's not really designed, unfortunately, for one-off changes to the schedule.

I would recommend looking for a custom Shortcut that you can run to turn off the alarm when you wake up early.  You can try Routine Hub and the Reddit Shortcuts sub.


Any way to log off or close apps when time limits run out My kids use Steam to play games on the Mac. Each kid gets half an hour through parental controls time limit feature.  However, it just locks their account and leaves the apps running.  Steam can only have one instance running at a time on a single computer, so the second kid can't play on Steam after the first kid has got logged out, without me giving the first kids account some extra time, and then closing steam.

Is there a smarter way to do this?  If the account was logged out at the end of the alloted time, the apps would close and no longer impact on other user accounts.

You can log out an account after so many minutes via the Security and Privacy preference:

Apple Icon > System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Advanced button and then set the Log out after minutes of inactivity to a low number. This closes all the Apps on my Mac and logs me off completely for more security.


homebrew doesn't recognize --devel flag I am trying to install octave following these instructions.

brew tap dpo/openblas
brew tap-pin dpo/openblas
brew install dpo/openblas/octave --HEAD --with-qt --with-java

The last line tells me

==> Installing octave from dpo/openblas
Error: Option '--with-qt' requires '--DEVEL'.

So I try

brew install --devel dpo/openblas/octave --HEAD --with-qt --with-java
brew install --DEVEL dpo/openblas/octave --HEAD --with-qt --with-java

And get the same error messages. How can I install with '--DEVEL'?

For anyone looking for the solution, it is described here.

brew install dpo/openblas/octave --with-qt --devel

--with-java gives a warning that legacy JDK6 is required, but there is apparently a fix for that here if you want to install it.


How do I dual boot Windows 7 and OS X Mountain Lion on two separate drives? Is it possible to dual boot Windows 7 (on my internal disk) and OS X Mountain Lion using two different drives?

Windows on internal, OS X on external

Use Internet Recovery (boot with ⌘⌥R) to obtain an install media, then select your external disk as the install destination.

You can do a normal ⌥-boot and select your external disk as the boot drive, which will boot into OS X.

OS X on internal, Windows on external

You can't use Boot Camp with an external disk, per the official user guide:

  Your Mac’s disk must be an internal disk. You cannot use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows on an external disk.

Source: http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1583/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_10.7.pdf

However, you might succeed by creating a Boot Camp partition on the internal disk, then cloning the partition to an external drive. Once the clone is done, you can delete the Boot Camp partition from the internal disk and extend your OS X partition.


iCloud warning does not go away Apple keeps asking me to accept the new iCloud terms and conditions on my new iphone x. I have accepted the terms and conditions (many times) but the warning does not go away. Anyone that have a solution?

Open Settings, then tap on iCloud (where your name appears, above the option for Airplane Mode) and try signing back into your account.


How do you delete applications which are stored in your system preferences? I have these two programs "Fan Control" and "Shades" which I got from the Macupdate website. With other downloads it seems they can simply be dragged nd dropped from the applications folder into the trash and all their history is gone with them. However, Fan Control and Shades seem to be stored somewhere differently and I cannot seem to find a way to delete them. They are seen in the system perferences and no where else now. I deleted them from the download folder and the all files folder but the icon and its function are still there.

Please help
Thank you

You can check if its related files are still stored in your computer. Activate Finder, then click Go > Go To Folder, and type in /Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support, replacing yourusername with your username. From here, you will be able to remove your application's related files.

You can remove the application's Preference Pane from System Preferences by opening System Preferences and right-clicking the application's name, and click "Remove Preference Pane".


iPhone won't boot after installing higher capacity battery I wanted to upgrade my iPhone 5 to a higher capacity 2680mAh battery, but when I installed it the Apple flashes on and off and the phone will not turn on. I had to reinstall the old battery. Any solutions?

You should only use the battery that's for your phone. The phone is not meant to take a higher wattage battery, so it will malfunction.

To put that into context, it's like trying to put a V8 engine into a hairdryer. It won't work.


Route with /etc/hosts on computer to computer network Is it possible to change the /etc/hosts file so that the routing is used when a peer to peer network is created, for example, in my /etc/hosts file, I have thisismylaptop.com mapped to 127.0.0.1:

127.0.0.1         localhost
255.255.255.255   broadcasthost
::1               localhost
127.0.0.1         thisismylaptop.com

On that computer, if I traceroute thisismylaptop.com, I get the following result:

$ traceroute thisismylaptop.com
traceroute to thisismylaptop.com (127.0.0.1) 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1. localhost (127.0.0.1)  0.252 ms  0.031ms  0.025ms

I can then open a computer to computer network (in the wifi menu, by clicking "Create Network"), however, when I traceroute thisismylaptop.com on a seperate computer connected to the network, I get the following result:

$ traceroute thisismylaptop.com
traceroute: unknown host thisismylaptop.com

Do you know if it is possible to have thisismylaptop.com point to 127.0.0.1 or the computer hosting the network?

This is my first time asking a question here, so if you need any clarification or anything, please let me know. Thank you so much!

As stated, it's pretty difficult to do this. However, if you're willing to change the goal a little, and use a name ending in ".local" instead of ".com", it's trivial (in fact, it's already being done for you).

Let me start with a little networking theory. I think you're mixing up two different levels: name resolution and routing.

Name resolution is how network names (like "thisismylaptop.com") into numeric IP addresses (like 127.0.0.1 or ::1). To simplify a bit, when you put in a name, your computer looks for it in /etc/hosts, and if it finds it it uses that number; if it doesn't find it, it asks a DNS (Domain Name Service) server to look it up for you.

This is a problem in your scenario, because your computer's /etc/hosts file applies only to that one computer; the other computer has its own /etc/hosts file, and it doesn't have your custom entries in it. You could run a DNS server, but then you'd need to find a way to configure all of the computers to use that DNS service, which is a whole other can of worms.

Routing takes place after name resolution; it's the "ok, I have a numeric address, now where do I actually send the packets (data) to get it there?" phase. And there's another problem here, because 127.0.0.1 always refers to "this computer right here". That is, on your first computer, it sends packets to that first computer. On the second computer, it sends packets to the second computer. If you did manage to get all the computers to resolve "thisismylaptop.com" to 127.0.0.1, every computer would think that it was "thisismylaptop.com". Instead, you need to figure out what the IP address(es) attached to your computer's Wi-Fi interface is/are, and use that.

The good news is that wanting to do things like this is common, and so Apple worked out a solution long ago. Apple calls it Bonjour (the rest of the world calls it zeroconf), and it's been built into Mac OS X since 2002. The main limitation is that it requires names ending in ".local" as a hint to the computers involved that they shouldn't use a regular DNS lookup, but instead use multicast DNS, which basically consists of yelling over the local network: "Hey, is thisismylaptop.local out there? If so, send me your IP address(es), so we can talk."

To use it, go open System Preferences on your Mac, select the Sharing preference pane, and look near the top, just below the computer name. It'll probably say something like "Computers on your local network can access your computer at: nywillbs-MacBook.local". If you don't like that name, click Edit to change it (or change the computer name; by default it's based on that). If your other computer is running macOS, you can just use that name directly. If it's running Windows, install iTunes on it, and that'll install Bonjour as well. (There's supposed to be a way to install just Bonjour without iTunes, but I'm not sure it's up to date.)


How much data has been written to my SSD over its lifetime? Is there a Terminal command which will show me how many GB has been written to my SSD through the whole lifetime of the disk? I'm asking because I want to find out how many cycles have been done. SSD are able to do about 1000–2000 cycles depending on type.

Read out the following S.M.A.R.T attributes of your SSD with an appropriate tool*:
241 - Total LBAs Written:   The total number of 512-byte sectors written during the entire lifetime of the device.
242 - Total LBAs Read:  The total number of 512-byte sectors read during the entire lifetime of the device.
A second set of attributes is:
174 - Host_Reads_MiB
175 - Host_Writes_MiB
But i don't know if the values found in the second set really make sense (at least for me with a 120 GB SSD as one part of a Fusion drive) because considerably more data is written to the SSD than the HDD though the SSD has only 1/25th of the size:
0xae Host_Reads_MiB          ----CK   100   100   000    -    12268569 (~12 TiB)
0xaf Host_Writes_MiB         ----CK   100   100   000    -    16481745 (~16 TiB)

compared to the 3 TB HDD (the second part of the Fusion drive):
0xf1 Total_LBAs_Written      ------   100   253   000    -    21361815408 (~10 TiB)
0xf2 Total_LBAs_Read         ------   100   253   000    -    23925221693 (~11 TiB)

After installing smartmontools the following commands give the written data in GB if the attribute "242 Total_LBAs_Written" exists:
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xf1 | awk '{ print $8/1953125 }'

or in TB:
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xf1 | awk '{ print $8/1953125000 }'

Replace "DiskIdentifier" with the identifier of your internal SSD found with diskutil list. Probably it's disk0.
The following command gives the written data in GB if the attribute "175 - Host_Writes_MiB" exists (treat the result with caution):
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xaf | awk '{ print $8/953.67 }'

For some SSDs, like the Sandisk Plus 120Gb, the $8 value is already in GB so you'll need to use division to calculate the value.
Like already mentioned earlier replace "DiskIdentifier" with the identifier of your internal SSD found with diskutil list. Probably it's disk0.
The smartctl commands above doesn't work very reliable (at least for me).
If you get an error like "Read SMART Data failed: Undefined error: 0", try smartctl -A /dev/disk0 first.
If you get an error like "SMART Disabled. Use option -s with argument 'on' to enable it.", try smartctl -s on -A /dev/disk0
Then retry the above commands to readout and calculate data written to disk.
*smartmontools


How to stream quality audio without latency I'm trying to stream a live music performance from my living room.
I play a piano (digital) and live electronics (Ableton) via a MOTU mk3 connected to my MacBook Pro (13 inch,late 2014, Sierra 10.12.6).

My music uses live effects, so I need to have Ableton's output in my speakers or my headphones, otherwise I don't know what I am playing, since its not just the sound of my piano.

For video, I am using OBS studio and Black Magic mini recorder connected to my Panasonic G7 DSLR camera.

OBS Studio does not allow any interfaces that has more than two outputs which is why Soundflower or something similar is necessary. My problem is latency and quality.

iShow or Soundflower results in latency to my ears, which means I can't play my pieces properly. Loopback offers a better alternative, because it patches the sound directly from Ableton, meaning that within Ableton I still use MOTU as input and output, therefore my headphones give me sound without latency.

But with Loopback there are 2 issues: 1. It is $100 USD, which is absolutely too much for that and also for my budget. Also, I used it in trial mode before it expired, and I recorded the video from OBS and the sound of it was actually quite bad, a bit compressed and gloomy, very very different from what the Ableton output sounds.

So, I'm a bit frustrated because I feel I have tried it all I know, and most of the info online is either very old, or made for Windows or gamers. There's also lots of info for people that stream simple things like a podcasts, but in my case you have to keep in mind I do need to hear myself from Ableton because my instrument is not producing the final sound outcome in my living room.

How can I solve this problem of combining several audio channels with OBS's limitation of only 2 while maintaining a quality sound?

Any ideas appreciated, thank you so much!

The problem is, you're tyring to do everything in software.

It's one thing to have separate output, but if OBS limits you to only two channels and your workaround is to use Soundflower to "mux" (multiplex) those channels together to conform to OBS, then you're inherently introducing latency.  The sound must be brought in on each separate channel, mixed together, then sent back out on another channel only to be read in by OBS then mixed in that, then output, you're using a tremendous amount of CPU cycles for something that should have been done "outside" the OS.

What you need is a mixer (it doesn't need to be fancy) so that you can combine the audio before bringing it into OBS.  You will get much more use and versatility out of the mixer than the software.


Apple TV how to download apps I am senior, just purchased and hooked up the Apple TV, was trying to download the German TV stations but found them but was not able to open them up, it keeps saying enter your I tune password...I thought having a password for Apple goes across all accounts and I finished my account information.  Do I need to pay for the German channels, willing to do that but I am confused my apple account should be my account information across and my apple id and password? I have no interest in music so why should I have a password for my Itune account?

There are two different German TV apps as far as I can see.
They are both available to download for free.

As for the Apple ID and iTunes account confusion; maybe this will help. I've taken a photo of my Apple ID for you:

Now I've censored the beginning of the email addresses, but you can see that I have more than one account associated with my Apple ID; one for iCloud, one for iTunes, and one for Game Centre.

Most people probably use the same account for everything. And you probably do too. So when it asks for your iTunes password, it's probably the exact same one that you've already provided.

Also; your iTunes account is not just for downloading music. It's also for downloading apps, movies & TV shows, and more (like virtual books and podcasts).

I hope this helps, and if you have any follow up questions, feel free to ask.


Keyboard response rate is too low, and character suggestion popups appear periodically I'm typing on my Retina MacBook Pro, and the response rate on the keyboard is terrible. It's like typing on an LCII that is trying to run Mac OS X. As I type, the computer seems to be thinking ridiculously hard about what it is doing. Periodically, these silly character suggestions will appear next to the cursor:

The response rate is so bad that I am literally typing this message one painstaking character at a time, and waiting for it to appear on the screen before typing the next. I estimate < 20 WPM. Keys are randomly repeating as well.

Any idea what this is or why it is happening? This is the second time  I've had this issue. I haven't been able to find any info in the Apple forums about it, I'm guessing because I don't know what this phenomenon is called.

The characters appear when a key is held down, it's the same as on an iPhone to make it easier to type accents and things. Those are alternative S characters.

You can turn it off using:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

in Terminal.

However, that doesn't explain the overall response rate, just the characters.

For the keyboard rate check Accessibility in System Prefs. You might have Slow Keys enabled in the Keyboard section. You might also want to check under options at the Acceptable Delay in that panel.


Macbook pro 16 inch 2019 noisy display in chrome after waking up from sleep I have this issue sometimes when my mac is waking up from sleep. Some applications like Google Chrome
A part or whole of the application is turning into a noise picture and until I restart the system, it won't fix.
In this screenshot I have opened inspect view of google chrome. In some websites, one part or whole of the website also, is being displayed like this.
I've updated to the latest version of Mac (Catalina 10.15.7) and chrome (86.0.4240.183 (Official Build) (x86_64)). Also this issue is happening when I use the main display or external display too. No differences.

This bug has been reported to the Chromium team since 06/04/2020.
Impacted Apps
This seems to affect all Chromium-based applications include Google Chrome, Brave, Electron, and probably others.
Symptoms
In my case it happens sometimes after sleep.
Cause
Chrome is saying its an Apple issue. Apple saying its an AMD issue.

29/01/2020: We're continuing to press this issue with Apple. They recently report that the bug has been reproduced and that AMD is investigating it.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1068170#c206
There also appears to be some drama between Apple and Google in terms of whose problem it is.
Workarounds
Kill Chromium GPU Helper process (activity monitor)
This method is advantageous as it doesn't require restarting your browser and potentially losing your tabs.

Open Activity Monitor
Search for (GPU)

All Chromium-based apps including Electron apps will have one or more GPU helper processes. E.g. Spotify Helper (GPU), Code Helper (GPU), Google Chrome Helper (GPU).

Force Kill the GPU process of the offending app. NOTE: You may have to do this multiple times.
You should see the page go white, and then the green bars should no longer be visible.

NOTE: This doesn't always work, see the Chromium bug thread below for more information.
Thanks to: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1068170#c188
Alternative: Use Terminal.app
An alternative to Activity Monitor is to use Terminal.app
killall "Google Chrome Helper (GPU)"

Disable Hardware Acceleration

Visit chrome://settings/system in the browser
Disable Use hardware acceleration when available.

Other alternatives

Restart the app
Restart your computer


How can I add external Interface to my OS X with a valid IP? I connect my Macbook pro to internet through Lan and if I type ifconfig in terminal my en0 interface get valid IP now I want add en1, en2 and en3 to my configuration and they all be able to get valid IPs, I don't want to add additional network card I just want to use my internal network card. I don't know if I must use bridging or nating or ... . please help find my solution.

In System Preferences -> Network click on the + to add a new interface, in the popup choose Ethernet.
This will not create an additional en1 or en2 interface, but add an additional address to your en0 interface.


Right clicking on hyperlink in chrome always behaves like left click (/open) Although right click in chrome is generally working - as shown in screenshot - it does not (with any kind of reliability at least..) on links.

Instead when right clicking on a link it just opens .. the same behavior as left clicking.

I really want the context menu to come up instead - in particular to use the Save As option.

Found a workaround:  Disable the Chrome PDF Viewer plugin

Now this is not a perfect solution - since it would be convenient to allow that plugin to run .. but I'll take it. This is a time savings.


How to transfer photo sent as SMS to Photos/iPhoto.app Somebody sent me six images with SMS to my iPhone. I want to email these and get them on my Mac to use there. Short of copying them one by one into an email on my iPhone is there any way I can transfer these into Photos so that iPhoto will import them to my Mac?

If you visit the conversation in your iPhone/iPad in Messages, click on the 'Details' button in the upper right hand corner, scroll down to attachments, then press and hold one of the photos you'd like to transfer. Select "More" from the menu that appears.

You should then see Apple's 'Select' arrows appear in the bottom of each attachment. From there, select your photos, and share them however you'd like (email all 6 or save them to your photo app).

Hope that helps!


Launch app in foreground doesn't work from cron, but does from terminal I have the following:

* * * * * open -a /Applications/TextWrangler.app/  ~/notes.txt; open /Applications/Notes.app

Neither of the 2 apps brings focus to the foreground (though they do get launched in the background) so the whole job is a bit pointless (it's to remind me to make some notes at the end of each day at work).

It works if I copy and paste the commands into a terminal. So why does cron behave differently and can this be changed?

For me on macOS High Sierra, e.g.:

 * * * * * open -a TextWrangler ~/notes.txt; open -a Notes

works as is, both apps come to the front.

Try adding, e.g.:

; osascript -e 'tell app "TextWrangler" to activate' -e 'tell app "Notes" to activate'

to the end of your existing command and see if that makes any difference, e.g.:

* * * * * open -a TextWrangler ~/notes.txt; open -a Notes; osascript -e 'tell app "TextWrangler" to activate' -e 'tell app "Notes" to activate'


No one can hear me talking when I call people from my iPhone 5c unless I'm on speaker... How do I fix this? It was fine up until a couple of days ago and everything was working. Should I bring it into an Apple store?

This happens frequently to me, but turns out my phone is simply connected to a bluetooth device that I thought was turned off. Try turning off bluetooth just to eliminate this as an issue.


Keyboard shortcut to change tabs in terminal not working anymore in yosemite I've set up a custom shortcut for Terminal to change tabs: cmd+option+left/right (the same as in most browsers, for convenience).

I did this by going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts and adding it to Terminal as shortcuts for "Select Next Tab" and "Select Previous Tab". It worked perfectly.

Two days ago, I've upgraded to OS X Yosemite and now it's not working anymore. When I browse to the same location in System Preferences, it's configured. But it doesn't work.

How do I fix this, and more importantly, why is this happening?

The menu option Select Previous Tab is changed to Show Previous Tab and there is by default key shortcut for it

⌘ + ⇧ + }  Show Next Tab

⌘ + ⇧ + {  Show Previous Tab


Is there a way to reduce the opening tab of safari When opening a new tab or window in Safari, sometimes the address field is selected, and sometimes it isn't. If it's not, there's no way to tab to it. Is there a way to make the bar always selected by default?

There is no setting to do this but if you press Command+L the cursor will move to the address bar.


Can I use 45/60/85W MagSafe era MacBook chargers interchangeably? I have a 13" Macbook Pro that came with a 60W power adapter and a 15" Macbook Pro that came with a 85W power adapter. There seems to be disagreement in the Apple forums.
Can I use either adapter with any portable Mac?

There is a lot of misinformation in some answers. I will give some facts along with my reasoning.
All MagSafe adapters, when plugged into a mechanically matching receptacle on a MacBook/MacBook Pro, are designed to run safely. This is a given for the systems to receive safety certifications. So no, a 60W adapter won't overheat when connected to a machine that needs an 85W adapter. It will clearly run at full capacity for longer than a higher wattage adapter or even fail to keep up with the energy demands of a machine using more than 60w giving you a flat battery if you run a deficit of energy “while charging”.
The MacBook it's plugged into won't operate in a "brownout". It will operate safely, but the CPU performance will be diminshed. The below explains why.
A MacBook's power management works very simply: it maintains a balance of power between the power consumed by the loads and the power available from the sources. There are two sources of power:

power adapter,
battery as a power source.

There are two loads:

battery charger,
the machine (logic, drives, memory, screen, speakers, USB devices, etc.)

Both loads are adjustable and the power management's function is to adjust them as needed.
The battery as a power source is exclusive of the battery charger: a battery may operate as a power source, or the battery charger may operate, but never both at once.
The power management must maintain the following inequality balanced, in terms of power: (power adapter + battery as a power source) >= (battery charger + the machine). The loads are prioritized: the machine has priority over the battery charger. The power management system also knows the electronic nameplate of the power supply and thus its rated power.
Thus, given an available input power, the machine load is satisfied first, and any leftover power is provided to the battery charger. If there isn't enough power left for the charger, the battery is by definition discharging unless it has no charge left. This is important. Conversely, a fully charged battery will demand a zero charger load, and that's fine.
If there isn't enough power for the machine, the load shedding kicks in and throttles the CPU (and perhaps GPU - I don't recall offhand). The CPU load shedding will, by design, always manage to balance the power. The 60W supply, even if connected to a 17 inch MBP, will satisfy all internal and external loads (USB, FW, drives, screen), except for the CPU and GPU. So the latter will be throttled to maintain the power balance. That's why the performance will be poor with an inadequate power supply.
Since the machine load takes priority and doesn't shed until there's insufficient power available, the battery will be always discharging whenever the supply can't provide sufficient power to cover the machine's needs. This means that with a 60W charger, the battery will charge only during light CPU load. If you have both cores going full-throttle, the battery will be always discharging until it reaches a zero charge state.
The rate at which the battery charges will also depend on the machine load. The battery charger can consume up to ~30W or so. With an 85W adapter, that leaves about 55W for the machine, and it's insufficient to power a full machine load. Since the machine load takes precedence, the power available to the charger will vary depending on the entirety of the machine load: CPU/GPU, drives, USB/FireWire, screen, etc. With a very high machine load, the charger is left with very little power to use, even with an 85W supply, and will take very long to charge the battery. The longest I've seen was 20+ hours with everything going full blast (full CPU+GPU load, all USB and FireWire ports delivering full rated power, all drives spinning, screen at full brightness, speakers blaring).
Finally, the supply's electronic nameplate is stored in the chip residing in the MagSafe jack. If the MagSafe jack is damaged or doesn't have the nameplate chip, the power manager does two things:

Assumes a 60W power supply.

Disables the battery charger.


Is it possible to set up my phone to automatically be in DND mode during particular calendar events? I already have a recurring scheduled DND set for my phone for every evening through morning. However, I have calendar events that I would like to automatically trigger DND. For example, let's say I have a meeting with a co-worker, I'd like to be able to enter that into my calendar and select a "DND" option for that time. So, once the event is over, my phone is back to normal, and I don't have to worry about silencing it myself. Is this possible?

Short answer… No.

There is no public API that manages the "Do Not Disturb" feature. There are also no frameworks that can achieve this.

Googling would also say it's not the kind of sandbox breakout Apple would be likely to allow in the future, either.


Screen on Max Brightness Appears Slightly Dim After Sleeping, MacBook Pro 2015 The issue:
Screen appears about 2-3 dots dimmer on max brightness after waking from sleep for more than 30 minutes. I only noticed this a few months after upgrading to Catalina, it's been ongoing ever since.
My settings:
No auto-adjusted brightness, disabled screen temperature modifiers like NightShift/Flux, slightly higher gamma color profile for better contrast/brightness (it looks a bit faded otherwise).
My computer:
MacBook Pro 13" early 2015 mid-tier model with Catalina 10.15.4. (bought in 2017 used, no repairs or hardware issues the whole year. Great battery cycle life).
My Temporary solution:
Resetting the PRAM (cmd + opt + P + R). This fix lasts until I close my laptop and let it sleep overnight usually. Sometimes I've had success reducing the brightness before putting it to sleep. I am not completely sure if this is hardware or software related.
Edit:
There have been rare/infrequent occasions when my display would do weird things after waking from sleep. There was one incident of my display completely blanking out with a white pixelated screen for a moment (like an old static TV out of tune). A few other incidents where the display blinks black or totally freezes. It was at first a problem with video playback and hardware acceleration, but now I am beginning to believe it may be a hardware-related problem (though this Mac doesn't have a graphics card).
Thanks for your time and consideration!

Just figured this out for my case. I had already disabled the brightness from automatically adjusting. Every time my computer woke up from sleep however the brightness would still drop to around 50%.
Turns out I also needed uncheck the box to "Slightly dim the display while on battery power"
System Preferences > Battery > Slightly dim the display while on battery power
See the image below:


Paradox in understanding the "order of booting" of programs given by $PATH Background
This tutorial on how to "properly install git" on OSX 10.8.5, says:

To run the latest version you need to adjust your shell path so that
/usr/bin/git runs after /usr/local/bin
...
So add into the path [in my case: ~/.bash_profile] similar to the below and keep what you already
have in the path, each segment is separated by a colon:
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin/git:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"

                                   ^ Focus on this

So my understanding is this:

when I log in, BASH will give priority to whatever is appended further on the right-hand side of the export PATH=... line
$PATH is at the righter-most : delimited entry in the export PATH=... line
$PATH contains /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin

So... If my assumptions are correct, then surely the tutorial (quoted above) should have looked like:
export PATH="$PATH:/usr/bin/git"
Instead of:
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin/git:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"

My questions are:
Is the tutorial wrong? If not, then what of my assumptions are wrong? If my assumptions are not wrong AND the tutorial is not wrong, please explain why...

Note: I am aware this may not really be relevant to OSX 10.8.5, in which case please flag as off-topic to the appropriate Stack Exchange. But AFAIK, my Ubuntu machine has worked fine with ~/.bashrc having stuff like:
export PATH=$PATH:<myProgram1>:<myProgram2>:...
So it may be that BASH behaves differently in OSX? I don't know...

The tutorial is badly worded, one should never include a binary (like /usr/bin/git) into PATH, only directories. A better alternative would be to write

  To run the latest version you need to adjust your shell path so that /usr/local/bin is searched before /usr/bin

So if you set PATH to /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin the manually installed version of git will be picked from /usr/local/bin.

PS: Handling of PATH works the same for all Unix-based systems, the various directories are searched for the command from left to right.