Publishing build uploaded to iTunes Connect before provisioning profile change (This is essentially a question about iTunes Connect but I'm not sure if it's more appropriate here or on SO)

Several weeks ago I uploaded an iOS build of our app to iTunes Connect for submission to Apple. Afterward, we started working on a newer version with added support for push notifications, which required us to create new provisioning profiles. I also uploaded a new build to TestFlight with a new minor version number.

I just found out that the person responsible for submitting the previous build for approval never did so, so it's still waiting for submission. Since the provisioning profile change, our last build on TestFlight can no longer be installed because the provisioning profile is no longer valid. Does that mean that the build waiting for submission to the review team is also no longer valid?

iTunes Connect generally forces you to increase your version number with each build. Since I already uploaded a version to TestFlight with an increased minor version number, there is no way to upload a new build with the previous minor version number?

We ended up submitting the build to Apple for approval and they approved it, so apparently the provisioning profile on the build waiting for review was still valid.


How to create an option in the Print menu with Automator been trawling the forums and online articles trying to figure this out but haven't managed. I'll be very grateful if someone can point me in the right direction!

Objective:
To create an option in the print menu that will output a PDF and open it immediately in a specified application. That's it.

I believe Automator should be able to do this by:

New Automator flow created - 'Print Plug-in' - This enable the option to come up in the Print menu (success!). And the description - Print Plugin receives PDF files from the print system sounds perfect - i.e. - It will input a PDF into the plug-in flow.
...? This is where I must be doing something wrong. Tried so far:

a. 'Set application for files - 'This action selects the application used to open the specified files.' - However, when I run the plug-in, nothing happens.

b. 'Launch application' - When I use this, the application I want to output the PDF to launches, but the actual PDF output doesn't open in it.

c. A combination of a and b - ie - Launch application then set it for files - This has a similar result to b.

I'm at a loss of what to do here. I suspect it must be something very simple! Would appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance!

Update with the how-to

Added as answer..

Solution
Kept playing around after asking and found the right set of actions to add to the workflow to get the result I want. In case anyone has a similar question/requirement in the future, the way to do this is:

Create new Automator flow and select 'print plug-in' - This will add the option to the bottom left button when in the print dialog.
(In Automator) - 'Open finder items' - There is a dropdown there to specify the application you wish to open the newly created PDF to. E.g. Evernote (which I used to test to make sure this flow is working) will create a new note with the output PDF within it.


Exporting Favorites from Character Viewer I would like to export the list of Favorites in Character Viewer (which can be launched by selecting "Show Emoji & Symbols" in the menu bar icon for the input source) and import it into a different Mac.  Where is this list of Favorites stored?

I am using macOS Mojave 10.14.2.

Favorites are stored in a plist specific to your user.  The file can be found at:

  /Users/{YOUR-USERNAME}/Library/Preferences/com.apple.CharacterPicker.plist

My current favorites are … and , and the file looks like this when opened in Xcode:

You may have to restart to see it change.


How to mitigate Bash risk while waiting for a patch (sans a recompile)? This is related to How do I recompile Bash to avoid the remote exploit CVE-2014-6271 and CVE-2014-7169?, Are Macs vulnerable to the Bash shellshock bug? and Are Bash, Bourne, and Korn shells compiled into one binary in OSX?.

Apple has not released a patch for 10.8.5, and there's no telling if/when they will patch the defective software.

I don't want to download and compile a version of Bash because version headaches. For example, I might place a new copy in /usr/local/bin, but other software may be hardwired for Bash in /usr. Or I might replace /bin/bash and some unintended consequence might arise, like Apple refusing to update my version of Bash.

How does one mitigate the vulnerable without compiling and patching?

There is a patch for Mountain Lion, see http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1768.


Why doesn't Apple ship and support FOSS drivers for NTFS write capabilities? Is there a reason Apple does not allow for NTFS write support, even when Linux (free, open source) solutions can? Why don't they just utilize those existing solutions to support read and write for NTFS or other alternative file systems?

I certainly don't speak for Apple, but to me a simple reason is that any code that Apple ships is installed across the globe and the code could have vulnerabilities, bugs or worse in it. Even perfect code has support costs associated with integration and end user support. Unless you want to pick a specific library, let's assume the popular OSS packages are no more or less buggy than OS X at this point to a first approximation.

There is a cost to even including the work even assuming no effort is made to test or support it. Apple provides free support to anyone at the genius bar, so there is a real business and opportunity cost for Apple shipping product that causes end users trouble. There also is a cost to train support personal to explain that OS X only ships with NTFS read support, but my estimate is that is trivial compared to what it would cost to even integrate the NTFS code let alone support it once it ships.

Apple doesn't go out of it's way to prevent users that want alternative filesystem code to run, but I can see many reasons why they don't incorporate even more open-source code then they do already on the ZFS/NTFS/extfs front.


How to make "python" command in terminal open python3 instead of python2.7 which comes with mac? Mac comes with Python2.7.

For a project, I need to use Python3.7.5. I installed it.

However, if I just type python in terminal, the 2.7 interpreter starts.

How do I make it so that when I type python, it opens 3.7.5 interpreter?

Type python3 and you will be running the new version. How you install can vary a bit, but on the current macOS you don’t need to install anything as the stub exists. On any older os I recommend installing https://brew.sh as it has a very friendly on boarding and helps you set your PATH properly to run the v3 of python.

A shell alias is an easy way to fix this permanently.

alias python=python3


how do I save the extra files that come in a dmg? After I download a DMG to my Mac and install the apps that come in it, where should I keep the miscellaneous other files (like Readme and license terms) that come in the DMG? I want to keep them, but where, and how do I keep them associated with their app? Keeping the entire DMG just for its little misc files seems wasteful of storage. What is the normal practice?

Personally, I create a folder within the Applications folder with the same name as the app installed from the DMG and put the extra files in that folder. That way, they're always side by side and I can easily find them.

That, of course, is just personal preference. There is no strictly correct way of doing that.


Batch removing part of filenames using Automator I'm trying to create an Automator script that removes portion of a filename after a delimeter while preserving the extension.

Files are usually called like 1-cropped_DSC5888.jpg, 2-cropped_Whatsapp75.png etc. I want to remove everything after _ and keep only the part with number and '-cropped' so like: 1-cropped.jpg

I tried it with this script

on run {input, parameters}
try
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"_"}
    set theFileNameList to {}
    repeat with thisItem in input
        set the end of theFileNameList to text item 2 of (thisItem as text)
    end repeat
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
    return theFileNameList
on error eStr number eNum
    display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} ¬
        default button 1 with icon caution
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
    return
end try

end run

But this removes the part I want to keep and keeps the part I want to delete. Also it gives me just an output, but doesn't rename the actual files. Any help with this, please?

All you are doing is returning a list of the last part of the names (if there is more than one delimiter character, the second part) to the next action.

Text item delimiters aren't really needed if you are just using the first occurrence of a character, so you can do something like:

on run {input, parameters}
    set output to {}
    repeat with anItem in input
        set {theFolder, oldName, extension} to getNamePieces from anItem
        try
            set here to offset of "_" in oldName
            set newName to text 1 thru (here - 1) of oldName
            tell application "Finder" to set name of anItem to (newName & extension)
            set end of output to (theFolder & newName & extension) as alias
        on error errmess -- don't rename if error (delimiter not found, duplicate file, etc)
            log errmess
            set end of output to anItem as alias
        end try
    end repeat
    return output -- for next action
end run

to getNamePieces from someItem
    tell application "System Events" to tell disk item (someItem as text)
        set |container| to path of container
        set {|name|, extension} to {name, name extension}
    end tell
    if extension is not "" then
        set |name| to text 1 thru -((count extension) + 2) of |name| -- just the name part
        set extension to "." & extension
    end if
    return {container, |name|, extension}
end getNamePieces


Display Issues for Early 2011 Macbook Pro I am currently experiencing an undocumented problem for my 15 inch Macbook Pro (Early 2011 Version), and was hoping to get some help diagnosing what the issue might be.

The problem is that whenever I am doing anything that is computationally expensive (i.e. streaming video or using parallel processing in MATLAB), my screen goes haywire and shows up noisy green lines on anything that is supposed to black. Similarly I get noisy light blue lines on anything that is supposed to be white. The problem is hard to describe, so here is a picture of my screen when this happens:

Changing the color profile does not change anything. Taking a screenshot does not change anything. Also, the issue seems to pop up regardless of whether or not I have the onboard graphics card enabled.I am fairly certain that is a hardware issue, but I would appreciate any input in regards to finding out what it may be. I have an appointment coming up at the local Mac store, but I'm almost dreading going in since I do not want to have to send the computer in for repair.

UPDATE: After running the tests you suggested, I was able to nail down the issue to the GFX card instead of the screen. In order to be sure, I downloaded the gfxCardStatus app from Macupdate and ran a quick experiment to see what happened when I I switch from the ATI Graphics Card to the Integrated Intel Graphics Card. As it turns out, the weird behavior only occurs when the ATI Graphics Card were in use, and switching to the Intel Graphics Card resolved the issue. I'm still headed to the Apple Store tomorrow, but I think this will help expedite the repair process :)

This is almost certainly a hardware problem.  To determine whether it's the screen or the graphics card/motherboard you can plug in an external monitor.  If you get the same problem on the external monitor then it's likely a fault with the graphics card/motherboard, if you don't get the same issue on the external screen then there's a problem with your MacBook's display.

Since it's an early 2011 model it should still be in warranty.  I'd bring it to an Apple store and have it checked out for repair or replacement.  On the plus side, you may get a brand new MacBook out of it.


Macbook Air power saving with Thunderbolt to Gigabit adapter I am considering buying a Thunderbolt to Gigabit adapter to save my MBA power consumption as I can shutdown the Wifi, assume it use a lot of power.

Anyone tried before and it works? How many % of power can be saved? e.g. increase the battery life by how many %?

I have no precise data; however, I do have a MacBook Air mid 2012 and I had to buy a Thunderbolt Gigabit adapter. What I can say is that it consumer substantially more than the WiFi chip. Fully charged, I can reach 5+ hours using the WiFi chip; when the Thunderbolt Gigabit adapter, it's enough if I get to 3.5 hours.

Honestly, this was an authentic shock to me, and I blamed the battery at first, thinking it was faulty and needed to be changed; however, using the WiFi, battery life gets back to 5+ hours, so I'm pretty sure this has to do with the Thunderbolt Gigabit adapter.

This is not a scientific test, but on average I use the Mac to surf on the internet, normal stuff. Anyway, I got this decrease in performance without changing my usage pattern.


How to resolve error: "Couldn't modify partition map because file system verification failed"? I upgraded to Lion and decided I no longer want 100 GB of my drive devoted to Boot Camp, I never boot into Windows, I just use it as a VM anyways. So I deleted the boot camp partition using disk utility and then attempted to expand the main partition to fill this now unallocated space. I also deleted the boot camp from inside VMWare Fusion. When I go to expand it, I get the error in the title of this question.

After searching this forum and Google, I found a lot of people with similar problems but none receiving this exact error with any resolution. I do not want to do a clean install if at all possible. I have enabled debug mode in Disk Utility and tried other stuff, but to no avail.

I've tried editing it in normal and in debug mode while running Lion, and I've tried in recovery mode.

Here are screenshots of the error and whatnot. Any ideas?

UPDATE: I verified my disk and got these errors. Attempting to repair but worried that my Snow Leopard disk will overwrite the Lion recovery partition....

OK, this isn't too bad. Reboot while holding Command ⌘-S to enter single user mode. When it gives you a prompt, type

fsck -fy

then press return. it will repair your disk. When it's done, type

reboot

and try partitioning again.


Why does Xcode still show up as an available update in App Store after being installed? I have installed the update shown from the App Store. I have since started and used XCode. Why does this update still show up in the updates list for App Store?

Is there some extra action I need to take to complete the update?

Link to screenshot: http://d.pr/i/dp3z

Was having the same problem after installing Xcode v4.6 on a system with Mountain Lion, had Xcode v4.5.2 & v4.4.1 (with different names) also installed in the Applications directory. Read on a different thread that Spotlight indices can sometimes cause problems, followed the steps outlined here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

This fixed my problem. (YMMV)


Command line to create a PDF document from a batch of images How to create a PDF document from a batch of images ?

===

Belowis what I tried before posting this question:

The ImageMagick way, but the PDF document generated is too big:

convert *.ppm book.pdf

The Preview tool way, the created document is much smaller but it creates margins.

The sips way, not working for some reason:

sips -s format pdf *.ppm --out 'book.pdf' 1>/dev/null 2>&1

There also img2pdf which looks good but I couldn't install it on mac (it's not in brew's list of packages).

Apple's own Automator action uses a python script to access Core Graphics. It works, but it's slow.
Here's a better python script which uses Apple's newer PDFKit framework.

You can use this from the Terminal with filenames as arguments, or you can stick it in an Automator Run Shell Script Action.

No installations or dependencies.

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8
#
# IMAGE2PDF v.2.0 : Convert image files to one PDF.
# by Ben Byram-Wigfield

import sys, os
import Quartz as Quartz
from LaunchServices import kUTTypePDF
from CoreFoundation import NSImage

def getFilename(filepath, basename):
    fullname = basename + ".pdf"
    i=0
    while os.path.exists(os.path.join(filepath, fullname)):
        i += 1
        fullname = basename + " %02d.pdf"%i
    return os.path.join(filepath, fullname)

def imageToPdf(argv):
    prefix = os.path.dirname(argv[0])
    filename = "Combined"
    pdfout = getFilename(prefix, filename)

    for index, eachFile in enumerate(argv):
        image = NSImage.alloc().initWithContentsOfFile_(eachFile)
        if image:
            page = Quartz.PDFPage.alloc().initWithImage_(image)
            if index == 0:
                pageData = page.dataRepresentation()
                pdf = Quartz.PDFDocument.alloc().initWithData_(pageData)
            else:
                pdf.insertPage_atIndex_(page, index)

    pdf.writeToFile_(pdfout)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    imageToPdf(sys.argv[1:])


Emacsify OSX throughout: word-forward (⌥ + F) and word-backward (⌥ + B) instead of 'special characters'? Yes, the OSX already supports ⌥+← and ⌥+→ for moving the cursor word-backward and word-forward, but reaching for arrow keys is annoying. So, why not rather have ⌥+B and ⌥+F do this? I mean, not once have I (intentionally) wrote the integral sign ∫ with ⌥+B (apart from now).

In short, I'd rather have Emacs-like behavior (not just, say, ^+F for character-forward) throughout the OSX.

Related question: Stop using Mac keyboard Option as a modifier to character

DefaultKeyBinding.dict

Create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save a property list like this as ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
  "^ " = setMark:;
  "^/" = undo:;
  "^l" = selectParagraph:;
  "^u" = deleteToBeginningOfParagraph:;
  "^w" = deleteToMark:;
  "^x" = {
    "^x" = swapWithMark:;
    "^m" = selectToMark:;
  };
  "^V" = pageDownAndModifySelection:;
  "~@" = selectWord:;
  "~b" = moveWordBackward:;
  "~c" = (capitalizeWord:, moveForward:, moveForward:);
  "~d" = deleteWordForward:;
  "~f" = moveWordForward:;
  "~l" = (lowercaseWord:, moveForward:, moveForward:);
  "~r" = centerSelectionInVisibleArea:;
  "~u" = (uppercaseWord:, moveForward:, moveForward:);
  "~v" = pageUp:;
  "~w" = (deleteToMark:, setMark:, yank:, swapWithMark:);
  "~B" = moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:;
  "~F" = moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:;
  "~V" = pageUpAndModifySelection:;
}

DefaultKeyBinding.dict doesn't work in some applications like Xcode or Firefox. Methods that use the kill ring remove formatting from rich text. Key combinations that enter dead key states (like option-u in the U.S. keyboard layout) cannot be reassigned.

See also http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/KeyBindings/Emacs%20Opt%20Bindings.dict. transposeWords: doesn't work in most applications. openDocument: and saveDocument: don't work in applications that use auto-save, and performClose: doesn't work everywhere either.

See http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html or http://osxnotes.net/keybindings.html for more information.

KeyRemap4MacBook

One option is to enable settings in the predefined Emacs mode group:

Another option is to save a file like this as ~/Library/Application Support/KeyRemap4MacBook/private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <appdef>
    <appname>EMACSMODEIGNORE</appname>
    <equal>com.gnu.Emacs</equal>
    <equal>com.apple.Terminal</equal>
    <equal>com.googlecode.iterm2</equal>
    <equal>com.vmware.fusion</equal>
    <prefix>com.vmware.proxyApp.</prefix>
  </appdef>
  <item>
    <name>emacs</name>
    <identifier>private.emacs</identifier>
    <not>EMACSMODEIGNORE</not>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::P, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_UP</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::N, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::B, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::P, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_UP, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::N, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::B, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::B, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::B, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::D, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::FORWARD_DELETE, VK_OPTION</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::V, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::PAGEUP</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::V, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::PAGEUP, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::V, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::PAGEDOWN, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::U, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::DELETE, VK_COMMAND</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then open the KeyRemap4MacBook application, press the ReloadXML button, and enable the setting.

Change the key codes if you use a keyboard layout like Dvorak or Colemak.

See https://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/xml.html.en or http://osxnotes.net/keyremap4macbook.html for more information.


USB wifi dongle with iPhone 4s? My iPhone 4s wifi has been disabled/grayed-out. It seems irreparable as I tried all methods on internet and got it checked on repair shop. Just thinking can I use wifi with iPhone by connecting it to any external wifi adapter or through OTG? Is there any external wifi adapter available in market for iPhone?

This is how you fix this particular problem

  A common problem in the iPhone 4S, sometimes the Wi-Fi button will be
  grayed out and unclickable. This problem seems to be related to
  thermal shock — the problem may be temporarily fixed by simply putting
  the phone in the refrigerator for 15 minutes, or under a lamp for 30
  minutes.

  If this is the case, then the necessary permanent solution is to
  reflow the Murata SW SS1830010 Wi-Fi chip on the logic board.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Fix+iPhone+4S+Wi-Fi+Grayed+Out/22167

Make sure you take it to a professional repair shop. Not a kiosk in a mall that does simple screen swaps. Not every repair shop is going to want to attempt this repair and some may try to rip you off and say that they can do it when they really can't and just take your money. Good luck!


Files such as com.apple.finder or com.apple.dock Just for my curiosity and knowledge, from a Software or Hardware stand point prospective,

Using Terminal, I discovered once in a while, files that are named for example com.apple.finder or com.apple.dock etc.

What does it mean? Why they are named com.apple.*

It's called ‘reverse domain name notation’ and is widely used for naming packages/etc.

  The suggested convention for generating unique package names is merely a way to piggyback a package naming convention on top of an existing, widely known unique name registry instead of having to create a separate registry for package names.

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-6.html
What is the significance of the reverse domain name for java package structure


Gmail App doesn't allow zooming in for Apple devices? This is what my Mom said. She is an Apple user and is the only Apple user in my immediate family. I can't help really help her because she is not very technoliterate, and she and I are in different countries.

She says she is using iPhone 6 plus and iPad Mini.

If so, how does one fix or get around this? Is there a setting to change? Is there an alternative app to use?

If not, did the iOS Gmail App have this problem before? Do old Apple devices have this problem on the iOS Gmail App?

Pinch-to-zoom on an email works in Gmail's latest iOS app (version 4.4) and Apple's native iOS Mail app (tested as far back as iOS 6).

Maybe she does not know how to pinch-to-zoom?


MBP connects to WiFi but not to internet This happens periodically, but I still don’t know why....very frustrating.
2011 MacBook Pro, High Sierra 10.13.5. 10 other devices in the house using WiFi no problem, between Galaxy S9, 3 iPads, an HP laptop and numerous smart TVs.... this has happened at home as well as on the road and I know that it is my MBP, but usually I manage to fix it- not this time. Have reset both SMC and PRAM. Have deleted WiFi service and re-added it. Have manually entered IPv4 addresses and DNS servers. Probably did some other things that I don’t remember anymore...

Restarted numerous times. Don’t know what to do anymore... usually it comes back by now, but no such luck. What else can I try?  I have even been in Terminal running some commands to try to clear my caches etc...When I ping a DNS server in Terminal like Google’s, 8.8.8.8, I get responses, but I have to manually set my IPv4 address and subnet mask to 255.255.255.0. When everything is configured like normal, i.e. IPv4 using DHCP and IPv6 configured automatically, I do not have a self-assigned IP address, but it does show me having an IPv6 address, which is weird and don’t recall seeing that before, usually it is an IPv4 address. When I get my IP address in terminal, it is not a class C, starting in 192, but rather a class B starting with 169 and the subnet mask is then 255.255.0.0, which I never see.

I also cannot boot into Safe mode for some reason. When i get to the logo screen and the progress bar underneath, the progress bar gets halfway and then the screen goes dark and it powers off. I can boot into recovery mode and if I use the Get Help Online section and open Safari, I GET ON THE INTERNET JUST FINE.... so what the heck gives?? Doesn’t make any sense... Please help...
Thank you!

After talking in a chat with the OP. I suggested the following solution, which in the end solved the issue.

Follow these instructions to reinstall macOS:

  Start up from macOS Recovery

  macOS Recovery installs different versions of macOS depending on the key combination you use while starting up. Turn on or restart your
  Mac, then immediately hold down one of these combinations:

  2.Release the keys when you see the Apple logo or a spinning globe.

  Install macOS

  Choose Reinstall macOS (or Reinstall OS X) from the utilities window.
  Click Continue, then follow the onscreen instructions. You'll be asked to select your disk. If you don't see it, click Show All Disks.
  Click Install. Your Mac restarts after installation is complete.


How to connect a Facebook account to Adium? For some reason I can't get Adium to connect to Facebook. Facebook refuses to log me in every time I try.

I have the right email address and the right password... but it keeps asking for password.

Facebook updated its chat system, breaking Adium's support. You can still connect to Facebook but you need to setup the account as a Jabber account.

Your username will be Your_Facebook_Username@chat.facebook.com. The server is chat.facebook.com. The port is 5222 and you should not use SSL.


How to get all tunes downloaded to my iPhone from the cloud? I have tunes that show on iCloud but I can't get them on my iPhone. How do I restore these? These represent about half of my saved music. When I backup I only get the songs that are currently on my iPhone. This happened when I upgraded to the iPhone 6 from the iPhone 5.

If your songs are stored in icloud there are two ways you can able to restore.

Restore Music from iCloud with iTunes
Restore Music from iCloud Directly on Your Device.

Try using AnyTrans .. It's the best option to manage your iCloud backups. Besides this, it also supports transfer iOS contents to anywhere you like.


Outlook 2011 Meetings - how to add as an attachment? I'm trying to get Outlook for Mac to do what Outlook for Windows has done for a long time.

I want to create an email, attach a meeting to the email and send it - I don't want just the meeting details summarized as text (what seems to happen), I want the whole meeting to be added to my email as an attachment.

I loved this feature in Windows as I could send the meeting to a non-participant to keep them in the loop and not have to redact any details, but at the same time, it didn't pop up on the recipient's calendar the way a forwarded meeting does.

In your Outlook:Mac calendar, drag the meeting tile from your calendar to your desktop or a Finder window.  It will create a new file named MyMeetingTitle.ics.  You can then create your new email and attach this .ics file to it.  Your recipient will then be able to add this .ics file to their calendar.


MacOSX 10.8 and 32-bit perl modules I just upgraded from MacOSX 10.6 to 10.8.  Many of my projects depend on Mac::Glue, Mac::Carbon and their ilk.  Even though Mac::Glue comes bundled with MacOSX 10.8 perl, it doesn't seem to work:

[kw|~] perl -ce 'use Mac::Glue'
Can't load '/System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/MacPerl/MacPerl.bundle' for module MacPerl: dlopen(/System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/MacPerl/MacPerl.bundle, 1): no suitable image found.  Did find:
    /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/MacPerl/MacPerl.bundle: mach-o, but wrong architecture at /System/Library/Perl/5.12/darwin-thread-multi-2level/DynaLoader.pm line 204.
 at /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/Mac/Glue/Common.pm line 21
Compilation failed in require at /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/Mac/Glue/Common.pm line 21.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/Mac/Glue/Common.pm line 21.
Compilation failed in require at /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/Mac/Glue.pm line 7.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/Mac/Glue.pm line 7.
Compilation failed in require at -e line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at -e line 1.

Mac::Glue is 32-bit:

[kw|~] lipo -info /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/MacPerl/MacPerl.bundle
Non-fat file: /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.12/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/MacPerl/MacPerl.bundle is architecture: i386

/usr/bin/perl claims to be compatible with that architecture:

[kw|~] file /usr/bin/perl
/usr/bin/perl: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/usr/bin/perl (for architecture i386):  Mach-O executable i386
/usr/bin/perl (for architecture x86_64):    Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

I'm running MacOSX 10.8.2, perl 5.12.4.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this problem?  If MacOSX is 64-bit, does that prevent perl from being compatible with 32-bit modules, despite its claim to be compatible with two architectures?

I found a solution to the problem: use the MacOSX 'arch' command to force perl to run as 32-bit.  (See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2088569/how-do-i-force-python-to-be-32-bit-on-snow-leopard-and-other-32-bit-64-bit-quest .)

[kw|~] arch -32 perl5.12 -ce 'use Mac::Glue'
-e syntax OK

Note that one needs the explicit "perl5.12" and not simply "perl", since (on MacOSX 10.8) /usr/bin/perl is a shell script which delegates to either /usr/bin/perl5.12 or /usr/bin/perl5.10.


Disable Apple FaceTime Camera kernel module One day my FaceTime Camera stopped working, so I decided to reboot my MacBook. After waiting hours, MacOS didn't complete the boot process.

In verbose mode ⌘+V, I can see initialization hangs with what I assume to be loading of a kernel module:

AppleCamIn::init
AppleCamIn::probe
AppleCamIn::start

I took my Mac to an Apple store where hardware testing didn't show any issues (although I don't think the diagnostic tests check the camera) and they reinstalled Mojave. The problem still persists. I can still boot into single user mode ⌘+S to mount volumes, perform fsck, etc. and I have been using my Mac in "Safe Boot" for over a week now.

Several questions:

Has anyone seen this type of issue before?
How do I unload this specific kernel module?
If this doesn't fix my issue, how can I further diagnose the difference between being able to boot in "Safe Mode" versus a normal boot?

I have not seen this specific issue before, nor do I think it is common in any way.

What you really want is not to unload the kernel module (which is the term used to describe removing the kernel extension from memory after it has already been loaded and initialized) - instead you want to "disable" or "remove" it.

You can do this by opening the /System/Library/Extensions/ folder and then move away the AppleCameraInterface.kext file. Move it for example to a folder you have created in your user folder. I suggest moving instead of deleting as it is then easier to rollback this change. You can do the move using either Terminal or Finder.

You might need to boot in Recovery Mode in order to move the file, if you're not allowed to do so in Safe Boot.


As suggested by patrix you could do that in Emacs. To automate it, you should use QuickCursor (available in the Mac App Store), and a special build of Emacs, which you can do by checking out the latest source code from ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest and then using the patches available from ftp://ftp.math.s.chiba-u.ac.jp/emacs

Instruction on how to build are available in the archive containing the patch file. Once you've done that, editing between Emacs and Mail (or whatever else), should be extremely easy.


iPhone 4 operates only with WiFi connectivity abroad Can iPhone 4 operates using WiFi connectivity only when the cellular service is cancelled?

In short, yes, it should perform normally for you even when you don't have data enabled.

Your iPhone 4 can connect to a Wi-Fi network whenever Wi-Fi is turned on and there is a Wi-Fi network within the range of your device. Wi-Fi connectivity is independent from Cellular connectivity. You can turn Wi-Fi ON or OFF (in Settings.app -> Wifi) and you can also turn Cellular ON or OFF (Settings.app -> General -> Cellular -> Cellular Data) independently.

If you are internationally abroad and you want to keep your device from connecting to a Cellular network, turn off "Data Roaming" in Settings -> General -> Cellular.


Faster and more efficient alternative for Tunnelblick I have to use Tunnelblick (VPN) to be able to connect to a server, the problem is that Tunnelblick is very buggy and laggy and sometimes also causes wierd problems like overheating when the laptop is folded (it does not shut off). Or frequent crashes.

Now I was wondering if there was a better alternative for doing so.

Kind regards,

Robbert

I recently switched from Tunnelblick to Viscosity. Awesome, never gives me that laggy trouble, but it requires a license.

A pretty good free option is OpenVPN but I have had login issues with it sometimes. Once you're logged in it's solid though.


Editing System Preferences via Terminal Am looking to edit system preferences settings via the command line but cannot for the life of me find the correct names of variables.

  In Login Options under Users & Groups, I would like to be able to change the Display login window from list of users to 'name and password'.
  In Date & Time, I would like to know how I change the time to a server we use.
  Enable fields in Sharing
  Setup Energy Saver settings

It would be great if someone can help me out or point me in the right direction as I know you edit the preferences .plists but its knowing what to add or finding the preferred naming conventions.

Thanks.

First off, you can check out a website that lists a lot of these things: http://secrets.blacktree.com/

I, however, just took a brute-force solution:

Copy the Preferences folder

$ cp -r /Library/Preferences before

Launch System Preferences.
Make a change via the GUI.
Probably best to do one change at a time,
  e.g. I changed "Display Login Window as:"
       from "List of users"
       to   "Name and password".
Quit System Preferences.

Copy the Preferences folder again:

$ cp -r /Library/Preferences after

See which files changed:

$ diff -ur before after
Binary files before/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist and after/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist differ

Compare the two versions.
Since they are binary files, you'll need to convert them to XML for comparison.
I use an alias for this:

$ alias plist='plutil -convert xml1 -o /dev/stdout'
$ diff -u <(plist before/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist) <(plist after/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist)
--- /dev/fd/63  2013-01-23 18:20:29.000000000 +0200
+++ /dev/fd/62  2013-01-23 18:20:29.000000000 +0200
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
    <key>RetriesUntilHint</key>
    <integer>3</integer>
    <key>SHOWFULLNAME</key>
-   <false/>
+   <true/>
    <key>lastUser</key>
    <string>loggedIn</string>
    <key>lastUserName</key>

At this point we have located the setting.  Confirm we have it with defaults:

$ defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SHOWFULLNAME
1
$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SHOWFULLNAME -bool false
$ defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SHOWFULLNAME
0

Launch System Preferences and confirm it changed.


Multiple non-thunderbolt monitors to MBP-r '12 Does anyone know if it's only possible to add 3 external monitors if at least one of these is a thunderbolt display?

I'm asking since I would love to hook up 3 Dell monitors to my macbook at work. Connection options are HDMI, DP VGA and DVI only.

Currently I have one connected with HDMI and one with VGA - works both with the built-in HDMI port and the minidp -> hdmi adapter.

I've managed to get my hands on some screens now, and even though Apple representatives said it wasn't possible, it indeed is.

I have now 2 (two) Dell U2515H connected and a Lenovo at the same time. On top of that, the screen on the macbook pro is actually on.

The setup is as following!

MiniDP (thunderbolt) --> Dell U2515 DisplayPort
MiniDP (thunderbolt) --> VGA adapter --> Lenovo VGA
HDMI --> Dell U2515 HDMI

It also works with thunderbolt --> DVI and thunderbolt --> HDMI

I've attached a photo to documentate this functionality! Happy multi-monitoring!

Picture proof


How to sync iCloud contacts with Google? I recently started using the Gmail app on my iOS devices because it has better search functionality than the native Mail app. However, that means that when I'm writing emails the app is using my Gmail contacts and not the local phone contacts, which is annoying. The solution is to keep my iCloud contacts, which currently sync between my Mac and my iOS devices, in sync with Google as well. What is the best way to do this? It appears that I can sync my computer's local contacts using Address Book, but that won't help with my contacts which are stored in iCloud.

I found it quick and easy to go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, & Calendars -> Add Account -> Other -> Add CardDAV Account (under Contacts). Type google.com as Server, then type your Google email as username, password and click Done.

I had to use the application specific-password because I have a 2-step verification security setting with google but apart from that it was the easiest and quickest way I have seen yet.


How do I install command line tools without installing Xcode? I would like to install command line tools without installing Xcode as it is more than 4GB and I don't want to waste that much space since all I need are the command line tools.
I have used xcode-select --install command but I still get an error message

active developer path ("/Applications/Xcode 2.app/Contents/Developer") does not exist, use `xcode-select --switch path/to/Xcode.app` to specify the Xcode that you wish to use for command line developer tools (or see `man xcode-select`)

Does anybody have an idea?

Go to Apple Developer, login with a valid Apple ID, search for "command line tools", download an appropriate version, open the dmg and finally install the tools.

Here is a direct link (which still requires an Apple ID!) to the latest non-beta version: Command Line Tools OS X 10.11 for Xcode 7.1


There is about 60GB of space being used on my HD that I cannot find Am I just bad at math? OmniDiskSweep isn't picking up what is using my space. I recently deleted a 60GB drive (not partition) that VMWare Fusion was using, and emptied the trash. Now it doesn't show up on any disk sweeper, but is still accounting as used space. I have restarted my computer.

It's probably still stored in a Time Machine local backup. Open Finder, browse to the original location of the drive you deleted, then open Time Machine. Go back in time to find the file, then right-click it and delete the backup of it. This will return the space.


Every application's file open/save dialogue asks for "Keystroke Receiving" permission Is this a normal thing or I have some kind of plugins or applications which makes my requesters require this permission?

I'm not sure why every application would want this. I have heard that apps using JavaFX trigger this permission, even though they don't explicitly want or need it.

It's therefore possible that it is an unintended effect rather than an actual case of apps needing or wanting to monitor the keyboard input.

Probably best to deny and then allow if problems occur with the specific apps involved.


Use mdfind to identify all encrypted dmg? Can someone suggest a clever way to identify all dmg that are encrypted?

My only idea is rather complicated. use mdfind '(kMDItemFSName=*.dmg)' and then test the response from hdiutil imageinfo and log the result of those that ask for a password. Thanks to the answer and comments, the following command runs all the dmg through hdiutil, but I can't figure out how to identify the ones that give an error. Any ideas?

mdfind -0 "kMDItemFSName=*.dmg" |xargs -0 -I{} -L 1 hdiutil imageinfo {}

Spotlight just doesn't have sufficient metadata to differentiate the filesystem choices stored inside a DMG. Put another way, it's like asking what Pages documents have French words in them just using mdls. The data to make that search isn't contained in metadata.

The proper command to check if a specific image file is encrypted is hdiutil isencrypted /path/to/dmg

Example:

host:~ user$ hdiutil isencrypted /Users/user/Downloads/test.dmg

Output:

encrypted: YES
blocksize: 512
uuid: DE78A7BE-2B64-4556-8EC9-93DFAC15A839
private-key-count: 0
passphrase-count: 1
max-key-count: 1
version: 2


How can I charge my MacBook Pro and not block one thunderbolt 3 port for other uses? I record high school bands when they go to contest using Sound Studio.  Each of three judges is also making digital recordings on hand held recorders.

While I am recording one band through a mixer onto my Macbook using a USB port, I download the judges comments from the previous band from the hand held recorders through another USB port. I then quickly edit all four files and then write them onto a thumb drive using a USB port.

Here is the problem. I need to upgrade my current laptop (it is four years old) and turn it into my backup.  The current crop of laptops only have two thunderbolt  ports.  How do I do this work while keeping the laptop charged?

Apple makes a USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter which you can use to connect a USB-A thumb-drive and power the computer simultaneously. Other manufacturers make similar devices, but Apple's offering is well-made.

All sorts of hubs exist so you can pick your price point, support, features and decide if a larger, more rugged device is less likely to disconnect while the event is happening.


What's the menu area near the clock called? What is the part of the menu bar called with the time machine, bluetooth, wifi, volume and battery icons called? (Near the clock)

I wanted to search how to remove unused icons from it (like timemachine)

Edit: How can I get rid of this icon in my menu bar? How can I put the icon back?

I'd still like to know what it's called, like the system tray on Windows.

These are called menu extras.

They are different from status bar items (which are usually used in other apps) in that you can hold command and drag them around.

Each of these can be turned on and off with a checkbox in System Preferences (the Bluetooth one can be toggled in Bluetooth preferences, etc.)


make, gcc and other developer tools unavailable after installing XCode on Lion I installed XCode after I upgraded to OS X Lion, I downloaded XCode from the App Store. gcc, make and such are still not found and I cannot compile anything from source because of this. I did a find / -name make and it looks like it found something:

/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project Templates/Framework & Library/JNI Library/make
/Developer/usr/bin/make

What's going on here? Is this normal?

Is /Developer/usr/bin in your PATH variable?

You could try ln -s /Developer/usr/bin/make /usr/bin/make


Is it normal to have a Macbook heat up when using a dual boot linux? After successfully dual-booting fedora on my Macbook Air, i have noticed that the Macbook tends to heat up a lot faster than when I am using Mac OS X.

Is this normal?

No, I don't think it's "normal". But as always, it depends. For me, this usually happens when I look at full screen flash video or am doing other computing intensive stuff. When I dualboot into my dev environment, I'm just surfing the web for informations which wouldn't lead to the heat up.

TL;DR: It's very likely that it's your behaviour that changes with the platform you boot into and that it's this causing the heatup.


OS X will not update past 10.11 I am currently enrolled in the public beta for OS X.

I have OS X El Capitan 10.11 beta (15A278b). When I sent my feedback through the Feedback Assistant, I could not even select this build in the dropdown (I could only choose between 15E65 and 15F18c).

I have not received any updates to the later versions of OS X. App Store currently has no updates for my machine (everything is apparently up to date).

I thought about opting out of the public beta, but the option does not appear in System Preference > App Store (the section with the "Change" button is missing).

I downloaded OS X 10.11.4 from Apple's web site, but it tells me "OS X El Capitan Update can't be installed on this disk. This volume does not meet the requirements for this update."

I did not find someone else with the same issue. I want to avoid having to restore my Mac.

I'm on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (late 2013).

Turns out I had the GM version installed. I downloaded the standard OS X from the App Store, installed it, and everything is fine now.


Environment Variables on Mavericks I am trying to set an environment variable that will be accessible from both a GUI application (Pycharm) as well as from the Terminal. This variable is called PYTHONPATH.

I have tried

Setting the system-wide PATH environment variable in Mavericks which doesn't help me because I have to set PYTHONPATH, not PATH
How to set system-wide environment variables on OS X Mavericks which gave me the idea to use launched.conf but adding

setenv PYTHONPATH ~/Documents/CrowdSurfer

doesn't seem to have the desired effect. Maybe I got the syntax wrong here?

Can anyone give me a step by step guide of how to do this correctly on Mavericks?

Check your current PYTHONPATH setting by opening /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and typing the following command and hit the return key:

  echo $PYTHONPATH

Try this alternate syntax in Terminal.app to see if it sets your PYTHONPATH correctly. Recheck the result with the above command again. If so, put the line in your ~/.bash_profile (although a file in /etc/paths.d/ with just the PATH, no commands, ought to set this system-wide).

  export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH\ : $USER/Documents/CrowdSurfer ; export PYTHONPATH


Has anyone zero'd the cells on an SSD? Has anyone zero'd the cells on an SSD?  I've read that this is possible essentially making your ssd "new again"—has anyone tried this method? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSD_memory_cell_clearing

SSDs degrade over time because the 'cells' they use to store memory can only be written to a certain number of times before they start degrading. As SSDs degrade, they start to become slower and eventually stop working all together (though the drive usually fails before all memory cells become non-functioning).

To help slow down the rate at which SSDs degrade, many SSDs implement a technique called wear levelling, which requires a bit of additional memory management. In some SSDs, this can cause writes to become slower because it has to examine more memory blocks before it finds an unused are to write to (As mentioned here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/8).

Thus, if the entire device is wiped (i.e. all bits are 'zeroed') and the data is rewritten to it, the memory will be rewritten in the order it went in and all clump near one are, meaning new writes should become faster again because there's now all the blank pages are grouped together and nothing needs to be overwritten.

At least, that's the theory. Now for the reality.

In reality all SSDs have different methods of reducing wear so this will only work for some. That article was written ~5-6 years ago, SSDs have changed a lot since then, they've become much better at reducing wear and employ different techniques.

Finally, remember that in clearing the entire SSD (i.e. writing a zero to every address) and then rewriting all its old data back onto it, you are performing quite a few writes to various cells. Depending on how your SSD actually works, this could improve write-speeds, but it could also not improve write speeds. One thing is guaranteed though, it'll wear down the SSD a bit and it will die a tiny bit faster. If you were to do this every week for the entire time you owned the SSD, you'd probably waste a fair chunk of its write limit just wiping it and writing data back to it.

Long story short: don't bother trying to screw around with tricks like this, just trust that the people with years of experience researching and designing SSDs know how to do wear levelling better than a bunch of self-proclaimed 'hackers'. Ultimately if your SSD write speeds are slow enough to be noticeably bad, you're better off buying a new SSD anyway.


iPhone push notifications? I'm fairly new to the iPhone, so apologies if this is an obvious question.

Are the default programs on the bottom bar (Phone, Mail, Safari + iPod) the only applications that can show 'new' event counts? Is it to do with them being on the bottom bar?

No, the "default" apps on the bottom row aren't the only apps that can receive push notifications or display number badges.

There isn't necessarily a relationship between push notifications and number badges.  Apps can have number badges without push notifications (Mint comes to mind) and can have push notifications without number badges (MLB At Bat, for example).


Clone hard disk of old macbook to new macbook? I have a MacBook mid 2014 with Yosemite on it. If I buy a new MacBook, can I clone the disk from the old MacBook to the new one and have it boot up just like if it was the old one?

Yes.

You will need a thunderbolt cable, boot the new computer in target disk mode, and use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to do the job.

Copying via the recovery partition is also possible, but fiddlier.


How can I config my Mac to don't scape characters when I copy and paste some text on the console? Is there anyway to config my Mac to don't scape characters when I copy and paste some text on the console? Could anybody help me? It is driving me crazy to erase all \ characters inserted after a simple copy and paste on the console.

Many thanks,
Thiago

If you are asking about pasting into windows of the Terminal application (which is not the same as Console application; neither of which are the same as the actual “console”), then you can uncheck the Escape non-ASCII input option in the “settings set” that you are using.

With Terminal active, open the preferences: Press ⌘ + , or select the Terminal > Preferences… menu item.

Click the Settings icon in the tool bar of the preferences window.
From the list on the left side of the preferences window,
select the “settings set” that you want to modify.

The settings set of the previously active Terminal window will be initially selected.
Click the Advanced tab.
Uncheck the Escape non-ASCII input checkbox.


Can I recieve messages from someone not in my contacts? Am I able to recieve or send text messages from a android user if I don't save their number and my airdrop is turned on to "contacts only"?

AirDrop and text messages have nothing to do with each other.

AirDrop lets you use your iOS device to send or receive files from nearby users who also have iOS devices.

Text messages are just that - text messages. You use the Messages app to send or receive text messages to or from any cell phone number.


MacBook fans are running high even under normal load My MacBook (non-pro) Aluminum is a few years old. Lately I experience the problem that my fans are running high even with moderate usage and the body really heatens up.
It did this before, but only under heavy load (videos, flash or compiling of source files). Now it seems like a regular thing.
I also have the comparison to another MacBook Pro, which is definitely not showing this behaviour, so I am quite sure that I am not imagining things.

Also one night when I closed the lid of my macbook, fans would not stop running (it seems it did not go to sleep mode).

Any Ideas what might be the reason?

The only thing I can imagine is actually to open up the body and remove the dust from there with a spray duster.

You should first determine if your computer is actually working harder due to some process(es) using a lot of CPU when they historically have not.  Open the Activity Monitor app and check your CPU idle percentage.

If your system is using a lot of CPU, the higher fan speed is likely justified.

If you are consistently showing >90% idle, while your fans are racing, you likely have a 'mechanical' heat issue (such as dust/grime on heat sinks or some air blockage.)

If it IS a dust issue, I'd expect you would have noticed the fan gradually increasing its 'unloaded system' speed over time.

There are also products that will let you monitor various sensors in your computer.  Some will also let you control your minimum fan speed.  My favorite is iStat Menus which has lots of options for what you want to watch and how you want to see it.


How to encrypt outgoing connections from a local device? ISPs' throttle internet traffic, so some provide fast lanes for popular websites while all other websites are available to the user at lower internet speeds or bandwith.

I am on an iMac so my question is that is there any way by which I can encrypt outgoing connections from my iMac in-order to escape internet capping

You can get a VPN to automatically encrypt all your traffic, see The best VPNs for Mac OS in 2017 or other recommendation lists for options. It depends on the VPN provider though whether they allow all kind of traffic though, some of them block/throttle torrents for instance. A VPN also doesn't protect you from ISPs throttling all VPN traffic by default.


Multiple languages for dictionary Look up in Spotlight How can I handle several languages at the same time in Spotlight ?

When a word exists in several languages including english, Spotlight gives me results in english. I would like to have all the results.

For example, 'bras' means arm in french. But it's also the plural form of bra, an english noun. So I cannot find it with Spotlight unless I actually launch Dictionary from the Spotlight results and switch the language.

⌃⌘D or tapping with three fingers doesn't work for some reason, but you can show a look up popover from the context menu.


Is there a difference between factory unlocked and carrier unlocked? I just successfully unlocked an old AT&T iPhone 4 and 4S using AT&T's unlock process. They are not jailbroken. As I've gone online to sell the phones, the selling phrase is "Factory Unlocked." Is there any difference between factory unlocked and my successful "carrier unlock"? If so, what are the differences?

Good question.

Yes, there is a bit of a difference, though I largely agree with bmike. I guess I should add that while there might not be a difference in the outward functionality of the phone, there are differences between the phones provided by carriers, the procedure used to unlock those, and the unlocked iPhone sold by Apple.

This past July, I went through the same unlock procedure that you did when my wife's parents gave her an iPhone 4S that was sent to them by AT&T via an insurance policy that replaced a phone they believed was lost. Anyway, their phone was located right after the new one came in the mail, so they gave it to her. The problem was that we are on Verizon, so we couldn't use the phone. I wrongly believed it was the "world" iPhone that Apple sold, so I went through the process of getting AT&T to unlock it. Unfortunately for me, I didn't pay close enough attention to the rear of the packaging, which clearly indicated that this was a GSM-only phone. Undaunted, I called the nearest Apple Store to arrange an exchange for a CDMA phone - a simple enough thing, right? After all, it was still in the shrink wrap. I spoke with the store manager, gave her the serial number of the phone, and was shortly informed that this was not a phone stocked by Apple stores. The kind of phone I had was marked to be sold only by AT&T, either out of their retail establishments or shipping centers. I called AppleCare, and they informed me of the same thing. As it turned out, no one would even accept a brand-new, still-in-the-shrink-wrap, Apple iPhone 4S. Apple could not take it's own, brand new product in return for an essentially identical device. Only AT&T could accept it as a return, and they obviously didn't have any CDMA capable phones to send in exchange. Ultimately we sent the phone back to my in-laws, and ended up purchasing our iPhone 4S devices directly through Verizon.

To add to all this as sort of a general FYI, the unlocked iPhone sold by Apple is not the same thing as the "world" model, either. From Apple's Web Site regarding the unlocked iPhone:

  The unlocked iPhone includes all the features of iPhone but without a wireless contract commitment. You can activate and use iPhone on the supported GSM wireless network of your choice, such as AT&T in the United States. The unlocked iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 will not work with CDMA-based carriers such as Verizon Wireless or Sprint.

And here is the info for the "world" iPhone from the "tech specs" page:

  World phone
  UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz);
  GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
  802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)
  Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology

The reason for posting all of this is both as a response to your question and as a general information filter for prospective buyers.


How can I tell if my MacMini 2012 power supply is dead? I have a Mac Mini late-2012 A1347 that will not power on. I've tried the steps to reset the SMC (unplug-wait 30s-plug-wait 5s) and still nothing happens when I press the power button. No chime, no nothing.
How can I tell if it is something as simple as replacing the power supply with something like this:
https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/Mac-mini-A1347-Late-2012-Late-2014-Power-Supply/IF171-017?o=1
I'd rather not go to an Apple store or repair shop if I can avoid it.

I found this page:
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/571061/Complete+Dead+-+How+To+Check+Power+Supply+Vs+Logic+Board
There was a correct DC voltage on each of the pins, so I believe the problem is elsewhere...


Sync apple messages between devices I'm a novice user FYI. My messages used to be synced so that the conversation kept going on iMac iPhone and iPad mini. Then perhaps after a trip to Alaska it stopped doing that. I'm not 100% sure if that's when it stopped. I've noticed that my iBooks content syncs between phone and iPad but not iMessages. This is very inconvenient. All three, actually I have 2 iMacs so 4 devices are with same Apple ID. THANKS!

Check if you have the devices under settings/messages/text messages forwarding, and enable all the devices you want to recieve/send messages from. Even if you already enabled it previously, you might of renamed the device, just check if the device with exact name is enabled.


To sync Iphone apps with iTunes or not? As most people I'm sure, I'm using the more or less default setup with my iPhone 4S and iTunes (on a Mac).  I'm thinking of disabling the option to sync apps with iTunes.  I realize this will wipe them from my device, I'm willing to do this once.

What am I going to lose by this?  Right now it adds what I feel to be unnecessary time to syncing (I like to sync podcasts, music and have a backup on my Mac), and I often get apps restored to the phone that I want deleted!

Will restoring my device from backup still work as expected?  Or does that require syncing apps to iTunes?  I see little reason to have a copy of the apps on my computer.  Unless that is the only way to have a backup of the apps user data as well..

Thanks.

iOS is a beautifully designed operating system. Part of what makes it so great is the troubleshooting protocol, which is basically: (1) power cycle the device or (2) restore from a backup. I have an iPad and iPhone 4S that have separate configurations but are linked to the same iTunes user ID. This means that while I effectively have all the same apps available to me, I don't have to have them installed on both devices. As an example, my wife and son went out of town last week. I removed all of my apps that had important data that syncs between everything (he's 14 months old, and has an uncanny knack for manipulating the iPad in only the most unfortunate of ways), added some new videos and infant-appropriate games, and so forth. Basically I configured it to be an entertainment device specific for him, for that trip. When they return I'll simply connect it to my Mac and restore it to the state it was in the moment before they left. Gorgeous, simple, and hassle-free.

The point is that Through iTunes, you have pretty granular control over what gets synced between your computer and the device. As far as backups go, see this article for detailed information about what does and doesn't get backed up to your computer. Of course, you can also backup information to iCloud. This is similar, but not identical to, the backup on your computer. This article lists what gets sent to iCloud. Having trouble deciding which service(s) to use? Apple even provides some pros and cons to consider in this article. As far as I know and can tell, stopping app syncing does not erase the apps, it merely stops backing them up beyond the current backup state. Deleting an app directly from your iPhone, however, "...will also delete all of it's data" (per the iOS warning message). That part is fairly transparent and self-explanatory.

If you don't want an application to be re-added to your iPhone, just use the "Apps" panel in iTunes and deselect the check boxes next to the apps that you've deleted from the device. You can also de/select the check box labelled "Automatically sync new apps." This will prevent them from showing up again. Rinse and repeat for the other panels (e.g., Music, Photos). If time is a factor when it comes to syncing podcasts (this is mostly what I sync, too), I would try to do it at a time of day when it's a non-issue, like when you're eating breakfast or engaged in some other routine. Let it sync when you won't be messing with it anyway, and it is immediately a non-issue.

Hope this helps with your question!


macOS: Does activating iCloud preserve "Pictures" folder structure? On macOS I have my photos manually organised into folders within the main "Pictures" folder; I don't use Photos or any kind of picture management app.

If I turn in iCloud storage for Photos will it preserve that folder structure in "Pictures"? Or does it all need to be managed by the Photos app in order to sync to iCloud?

It turns out that pictures on iCloud work with the Photos app; photos are "special" and you don't sync the Pictures folder in the same way items on iCloud drive are synced. In order to sync photos to iCloud you need to use the Photos app and copy when importing. If you import photos in-place from an unmanaged location they will not be synced to iCloud.


How to disable emoji I see sometimes while browsing? Some time ago I saw emoji in my Google Plus and thought, that it is another crappy update, but seems like is it Mac OS who place them instead of text.

How to turn them off?
Mac OS X 10.9.4

Or is it about Chrome 41.0?

Disabling/hiding emojis in content is just like hiding any other type of content you do not wish to see. In this instance, you cannot use a content blocker but rather you will need to use a user script to find and remove/replace all characters in the agreed Emoji ranges.

I use Safari Extension QuickScript with this script to remove all Emoji from the page after the page has finished loading:

document.body.innerHTML = document.body.innerHTML.replace(/(?:[\u2700-\u27bf]|(?:\ud83c[\udde6-\uddff]){2}|[\ud800-\udbff][\udc00-\udfff]|[\u0023-\u0039]\ufe0f?\u20e3|\u3299|\u3297|\u303d|\u3030|\u24c2|\ud83c[\udd70-\udd71]|\ud83c[\udd7e-\udd7f]|\ud83c\udd8e|\ud83c[\udd91-\udd9a]|\ud83c[\udde6-\uddff]|\ud83c[\ude01-\ude02]|\ud83c\ude1a|\ud83c\ude2f|\ud83c[\ude32-\ude3a]|\ud83c[\ude50-\ude51]|\u203c|\u2049|[\u25aa-\u25ab]|\u25b6|\u25c0|[\u25fb-\u25fe]|\u00a9|\u00ae|\u2122|\u2139|\ud83c\udc04|[\u2600-\u26FF]|\u2b05|\u2b06|\u2b07|\u2b1b|\u2b1c|\u2b50|\u2b55|\u231a|\u231b|\u2328|\u23cf|[\u23e9-\u23f3]|[\u23f8-\u23fa]|\ud83c\udccf|\u2934|\u2935|[\u2190-\u21ff])/g, '')

Testing on the following page results in no emoji being visible: http://www.unicode.org/Public/emoji/11.0/emoji-test.txt


Issue with "date" command in MacOS Mojave I think this is a "Full Disk Access" problem.

I have added "Terminal" and "cron" to Full Disk Access.

The problem is when I am trying to use the command below, it works from Terminal but not with cron.

cp -n LastSession.plist  /XYZ/LastSession.plist.$(date +%F).txt

It breaks in cron when I add $(date +%F). I tried researching this but no luck.

How can I get this command to run in cron using Mojave?

Figured it out.

You have to escape the % in cron, so should read like this:

* * * * * cp -n LastSession.plist  /XYZ/LastSession.plist.$(date +\%F).txt


"Cannot connect to server" Bot Xcode I have a Bot running for my app, with just a regular development account. I want to be able to download the Product that is created, but when I go to the Bot web page, I get an error "Cannot connect to ". I find this a little strange, because I can hit the server web page. Any ideas? Do you have to have an enterprise account to donwload the product?

The iPad has all the correct profiles etc.

Ok I figured it out, sort of. It has to do with the SSL certificate on the server. I ended up purchasing an SSL from GoDaddy because I could never get a self signed to work. I would recommend using some of the other methods, like storing your plist in DropBox if you don't want to pay for an SSL and can't get the self signed to work.

This was after reaching out to apple and reading a post in the developer forums. Apple hopefully will fix this in the future.


Update from Snow Leopard to El Capitan fails on Macbook pro (Mid 2010) I just installed a new ssd (samsung 250gb - 850 evo) and new RAM (8gb).

now for the problem... I installed snow leopard from the disc that came with the MAC, and then updated the software as much as i could (By searching for updates). Now, I wanted the get the most recent OS, sierra, but it turns out you have to upgrade to El capitan first... Anyway, i download the EL Capitan in the Appstore and procede. The installation seems fine, but in the end it said "Installation failed" and im left with the choice to reboot and try again. same result over and over.

Am i missing something? I formated the new ssd to OS x journaled and choose the GUID partition table.

[EDIT]
Here are links to some screenshots:

The installation fails due to a crash caused by the SystemMigrationUtils process while it tries to talk to the battery of your MacBook Pro:

Jan 27 11:29:21 […] Thread 8 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.root.default-qos
Jan 27 11:29:21 […] […] 0x000000011b3adff7 logBatteryState + 963

The fact that this fails is indicative of an issue with the battery of your MacBook Pro.

To fix this, first be sure that you are not only connected to the mains but also have a working battery actually attached to the logic board of your MacBook Pro. (Source: Apple Communities)

Second, reset your NVRAM by turning off your Mac, holding ⌥⌘PR and turning your Mac on again. Make sure to hold the buttons until you hear the startup chime for the second time.

Shut down your Mac one more time, then reset its SMC by pressing ⇧Ctrl⌥ and the Power button at the same time. Your Mac needs to be connected to a power supply during that entire process. Keep an eye on the little light on the MagSafe plug while you hold down the for keys. Release the keys at the same time. The MagSafe light should change colors for a second or so; if it doesn’t, retry until it does. Now try installing El Capitan again. (Source: Reset SMC of a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro Retina, or MacBook Pro’s with an internal non-removable battery)

If the installer still crashes during logBatteryState, try resetting the system management controller by physically removing the battery from the logic board. To do this, you’ll need to remove the screws from the bottom case, lift the case just like you did back when you installed the SSD. Locate the battery, then remove the three screws to detach it from the logic board (two screws are in plain sight and the third screw is hidden under a warning label.)

Now lift the battery a bit, remove the connector from the logic board, press the Power button and hold it down for 10 seconds with the battery still disconnected. Now reattach the battery and retry the El Capitan installation one more time. (Source: this comment on ifixit.com)

If you have followed all the steps and the crash still occurs during logBatteryState, you might want to get another battery of the same model that is confirmed to work, then install it in order to figure out whether there is an issue with your battery; if not, it might be an issue with the PMC on your logic board.


Why when I make a change to a project on xcode the previous project is affected? I recognize that I'm new in using Xcode but I noticed A very strange behavior from XCODE, when I clone a project and I make changes in the Localizable.strings. these changes are automatically reflected in the previous project that was cloned.
So i have each time to update it, and when I update it the new project is affected.
Do you have any clue to stop this behavior.

My guess is that it would be either user error, you keep opening the same file, or the clone is in the same directory as the original so it edits them both because Xcode doesn't know which one to actually edit.

What to try:

Make sure you are opening two separate files when you check.
Quit Xcode entirely and open the project again.
Move either the original file or the clone to a different folder. EX: Move it from desktop to downloads or documents
Change the name of the file


AppleScript: How to create a new Finder window for a folder that is already open? The problem, outside of AppleScript:

To witness the problem1, do the following:

Double-click on a folder that exists on the Desktop. Doing so will open this folder in Finder.app.
Return to the Desktop and double-click on that same folder again.
Instead of a second window being created, the previously created window will be brought to the foreground.

A workaround, outside of AppleScript:

So, what do you do if you want two Finder windows of the same folder?

A kluge exists:

Create a new Finder window by opening any other folder. From within this new window, now if you navigate to the desired folder, then you will successfully change this window to the desired folder, and have two windows of this folder.

To navigate to the desired folder within a new Finder window, any method will work:

Click on the folder, if it is bookmarked in the sidebar (if enabled, located at the left of the window).
Click on the folder, if it happens to exist in the path bar (if enabled, located at the bottom of the window).
Use the window's built-in search bar.
Or, simply navigate to the folder manually.

The problem, in AppleScript:

The following AppleScript code will open a folder in a new Finder window:

set targetFolder to POSIX file "/Users/Me/Desktop/MyFolder"

tell application "Finder"
    open targetFolder
    activate
end tell

In the exact same way that Finder behaves non-programatically (as defined above), if you run this code for a second time (without closing the previously created Finder window), then the previously created window will be brought to the foreground.

The desired AppleScript solution:

Here is the desired behavior:

If targetFolder already exists in any open Finder window (including any minimized Finder window), I would like the AppleScript to create a new window for the same targetFolder (i.e., a duplicate window).

Ideally, I would like the duplicate window to be created, without having to resort to the "trick" that I delineated above (i.e., opening an arbitrary other folder first, before opening the desired folder). However, I will understand if this is not possible (i.e., if the programmatic method must replicate the manual method).

1. I understand that this behavior is in no way a bug or a "real" problem. Apple clearly programmed this action deliberately; they probably determined that most people do not need or want redundant Finder windows.

OS X El Capitan, version 10.11.6.

Simple way to make a New Finder Window to the Desktop.

set myTarget to ((path to desktop) as text)

tell application "Finder" to make new Finder window to folder myTarget

From https://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=36300


Macbook Pro Display - Green Flicker only when Photoshop etc is open I have a 2011 Macbook Pro and I've suddenly been having this recurring problem of black pixels appearing green and flickering...

Firstly, if I have no software open and "Automatic Graphics Switching" ticked, in the Energy Saver preferences, it stops the flickering and the display is fine. If I untick it, the flickering green appears again.

Unfortunately the moment I open any software, like Photoshop, Buildbox, SketchUp etc, the green flickering starts and displays, even if the "Automatic Graphics Switching" is ticked or not.
The moment I close the software, and if the "Automatic Graphics Switching" is still ticked, the display is normal.

What's even WEIRDER, is that if I mirror my screen onto a Monitor, and open Photoshop of example, the Macbook Pro display/black pixels still flicker green but the monitor renders/displays everything perfectly fine.
If I close the software, the flickering stops an displays normal.

So... What's going on?

Is it the display or the graphics card?
Surely if its the graphics card, the mirrored monitor would display flickering pixels too?

Also, I did a Hardware diagnostics and the only error was the Battery (which I bought off Amazon 6 months ago).
My mac is fully up to date with El Capitan.

Help me please
Thank you so much.

Sounds like the beginnings of a GPU failure - there is an active repair program that runs through the end of the year for the 2011 MBP, so get your machine to the Apple Genius Bar and ask for a VST test.  Good luck!

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/


How to find empty folders using smart folder I need to find all empty folders using smart folder.

Is there a way to do so?

Just select options in the image below and you will get all empty folders.


Where is opendirectory/accounts/login information stored on macos I have encountered this problem of slow login (How can I debug an extremely slow login?), and have not found a solution. However, this phenomenon does not exist if I boot up into a fresh system. Since I have a backup of the system sometime ago that was working, I think that if I copy all the system files from that backup over, and then reinstall the system, the issue should be resolved. However, I don't want to copy all system files, because some of them can be outdated, some of them can be databases that are regularly updated, etc. Hence, I wonder if I can just copy over the opendirectory folders over and see if things get better (I have backups so I'm not afraid of breaking the system), but I don't know where is that information stored on disk. Where is the data files stored for opendirectory?

It is stored in /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes.


How to return a list of all text editors via terminal? Is there a way to return a list of all the installed text editors via the command line?
I think (I can't test to confirm) this answer inadvertently gives the equivalent for ubuntu:
sudo update-alternatives --config editor

  Selection    Path                Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /bin/nano            40        auto mode
  1            /bin/ed             -100       manual mode
  2            /bin/nano            40        manual mode
  3            /usr/bin/vim.basic   30        manual mode
  4            /usr/bin/vim.tiny    10        manual mode

I gave that a try on mac, but command not found.

No, there's no such command or list available in the Terminal.
The command you've found for Ubuntu is part of the so called alternatives system that is found mostly in Debian-based Linux distributions. It's not available on all Linux systems, it's not available on BSD based systems and definitely not available on macOS.
Also the update-alternatives command does not necessarily list all text editors on the system (you see your own list is pretty small). It is only lists those that are registered with the alternatives system, which is not all of them. Commonly GUI-based editors are not listed here for example.
Instead of alternatives, macOS has the concept of file associations or "preferred applications". As far as I recall, this predates alternatives. Application bundles on macOS contain information about the file types that the application is willing to support. The user can choose which application is by default used to open a specific file type - this means that you can associate for example JPEG files with the photo editing software of your own choice. However, this is for GUI programs - not command line utilities as such.
An easy way to list and manipulate file associations via the command line is to use the third party utility SwiftDefaultApps. It can be installed from HomeBrew Casks using this command:
brew cask install swiftdefaultappsprefpane

After installation you'll have a command available named swda. You can run it like this to get a list of file associations:
swda getUTIs


Symlinking /User/SpecialFolder to different drive creates Folder in Folder Just finished re-installing macOS Sierra on my MBP and am trying to move the ~/Downloads and other folders to a different drive so they end up in /Volumes/Data/ instead.

I created a /Volumes/Data/Downloads folder and symlinked from one to the other like so:

sudo ln -s /Volumes/Data/Downloads Downloads

This works more or less, but it creates another Downloads folder inside the /Volumes/Data/Downloads folder so the full path would be

/Volumes/Data/Downloads/Downloads

Any Idea what I'm doing wrong?
So it looks like this:

This occurred because you already had something in your home directory called "Downloads" - the ln command is smart enough not to write over it, so instead created the symlink within it.

If you're starting from scratch you can mv ~/Downloads ~/Volumes/Data/; if you've already successfully copied your Downloads directory you can simply delete the old one in your home directory: rm -Rf ~/Downloads.

After that your original ln command should work. You shouldn't need to prefix it with sudo:

ln -s /Volumes/Data/Downloads ~/Downloads

Or, as fd0 suggested, instead of using rm you could use ln -s -f option to unlink the directory. Thus creating the desired results:

ln -s -f /Volumes/Data/Downloads ~/Downloads


mobi reader for iphone I came to know that iBook does not support mobi files. So I was searched for some mobi reader but could not able to recofnize any top mobi reader. I searched for kindle, Moon readers, etc but unfortunately they are available only in android versions. So Iwould like to knpw if there are any good applications for reading mobi files.

Kindle App Store linkDid you try the official Kindle app? It is a universal app (for iPhone and iPad)


Proper backup procedure for upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion I'm rarely an early adopter of new software, but I'm taking the plunge today and buying Mountain Lion. I don't know if it will break anything important (I run a few rather obscure programs on my mid-2011 Macbook Air), nor if I will like it. I have a current Time Machine backup, but no bootable clone. I can afford to be without the use of my computer for a few hours should things go horribly wrong and I need to restore it.

I'm considering charging ahead and installing Mountain Lion with just a Time Machine backup (in part so I can get up and answering ML questions on this site!). Is this a reasonable course of action or incredibly stupid, and if so, what should I be doing instead?

Here are the things you'll want in case things don't go well with the install over your internal drive with your apps, settings and files:

An external USB drive with a Recovery HD (4 GB is plenty for this)
Time (Downloads could be slow and error prone today)

Dive in is my advice given your recent hardware, speed of the machine and storage and the framing of your question (you've asked the right details to be aware of the potential downsides).

Do try booting to the recovery USB drive once and see that it shows your Time Machine drive as a valid place to restore Lion. I have had people find one USB port was dead when they tried to use both - I know this is paranoid, but update time is when most people find out about issues (software corruption and hardware problems) since it changes things at a very low level. Machines can be infirm enough to keep running and fail when faced with a re-install or migration of data that a major OS upgrade entails.

If you were paranoid, you could also add another external drive with 20GB free to your list of things needed. Just installing a clean version of Mountain Lion is always safer than installing onto a system with data and settings. By migrating the contents over to be sure all your third party apps are ready for the new OS. This is a nice alternative to making a bootable backup.

Re-doing the installer a few days later on your internal drive is easy work (or using Disk Utility to erase the internal drive and "restore" the external image to the internal drive doesn't take that long for Air sized images.


How to set system-wide environment variables on OS X Mavericks We used to use /etc/environment to set system-wide environment variables on Mountain Lion. However, it seems this file is no longer read.
Ideally the solution should apply to all users, and we need it to work with ssh console sessions. So we need this to work
ssh user@mavericks-machine 'echo $MY_ENV_VAR'

So far we've tried:

/etc/launchd.conf
Works for all users, but only applies to 'windowed' applications, i.e. works in Terminal, but not in an ssh session.

~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile etc.
Only applies to shells

Any suggestions?

The correct file, prior to Mavericks, was ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist. This is no longer supported.

In Darwin, and therefore in Mac OS X, the proper place to set these is in /etc/launchd.conf to apply to all processes; if relating to user shells specifically, use the appropriate shell files instead, depending on the shell in question. See the launchd.conf and launchctl man pages for more.

That said...

If you're goal is specifically to see these applied for ssh sessions then you need to be aware that ssh, for security reasons, doesn't apply environment variables in this manner. In fact a ssh session normally receives a much more restrictive set of environment variables from the OS as it's not what is known as a "login" or "interactive" shell, it's classified as an "non-interactive" shell. (See man bash for more on shell types.) The way ssh handles environment variables is well covered in the ssh/sshd docs and man pages.

For ssh -- which is it's own shell, akin to bash -- environment variables for the session are stored in ~/.ssh/environment as the per-user equivalent of setting these for bash or csh, etc in their relevant launch files. This is probably where you want to set your ENV variables for your user ssh sessions, though you don't detail why you're looking to assign ENVs globally in your original post, which would have been helpful in providing a solution. I'd suggest you set them explicitly on a user per user basis to maintain proper security based on each respective account following the least restrictive privilege/attribute best practice.

If for some reason you wish to ignore he security implications of this, then set PermitUserEnvironment in your ssh configs. Note that this is disabled if UseLogin is enabled. IMPORTANT: Realize that this means that user accounts set to use /bin/false as their shell - the typical method for disabling a user account -  can now potentially get around this restriction and could now become active, which is dangerous. Many accounts are set to use /bin/false as their shell as a security expectation.

Bottom line is you shouldn't be doing this globally and expecting ssh to propagate ENV for security reasons. Your question is, effectively, purposely asking how to defeat several mechanisms that exist for security reasons.


Why is my Mac constantly trying to connect to another server? After logging on, I see this dialog box pop up. Whenever I dismiss it, it reappears 30 seconds later. (Stealing focus at the same time! Grrrr!)

"Slate" is my old iMac, which is sitting on the desk next to me, turned off. How can I stop my new Mac from constantly trying to connect to my old one? Both are running 10.7.1.

Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items to see if there is a disk that is supposed to mount when you login. Make sure you check all of the user accounts.


How do I get my windows (UK Layout) keyboard to work on Mac? How do I get my windows keyboard to work on my Mac? I want to be able to bind the keys so it's like I'm using a windows computer, i.e. ctrl maps to command, but I've tried everything to no avail. Also, how would I map the symbols to the correct places, for instance \ is where ` should be, etc.

To change the modifier keys, go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard and choose Modifier Keys….

To map the keys to the correct places, go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Input Sources, click the + and choose British PC.
To ensure that your keyboard is identified correctly, go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Change Keyboard Type and follow the instructions to allow OS X to identify the keyboard.


Google Chrome empty Finder window Today without (yet) no evident change in my working Mac running Mountain Lion (10.8.5) I saw at least 10 times an empty window pop up on top of my working environnment..

At each of these events, I noticed that the window in which I was typing lost the focus and consequently what I was typing.

After a few quick investigation I found that this empty window is a Finder window and is clearly related to error messages within:

~/Library/Logs/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.log

as this typical one:

2014-09-25 12:16:23.302 GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[24197/0xb0289000] [lvl=3] KSDiskImageHDIUtilRun() KSDiskImage hdiutil execution (status: 1): "/tmp/KSDownloadAction.sQtnQHG3Yu/com.google.Chrome.dmg"
        STDOUT:

        STDERR:
                hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable file systems

I don't use the Chrome web browser.
I installed it one year ago to test it from time to time.
I didn't use it recently.

What may be causing these Google Chrome empty Finder windows?
Did someone noticed the same spyware-like behaviour?
Does someone see any way to investigate this suspicious behaviour?

Here is the way I removed this automatic upgrade which never explained me
what was going on.

The best information I found about this automatic update, and its removal is here:
how to remove Google’s secret update software from your mac.

Check the presence of GoogleSoftwareUpdate

defaults read com.google.Keystone.Agent

gives a lot of info confirming me that the GoogleSoftwareUpdate is active and configured.

Stop the agent

cd /Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl unload com.google.keystone.agent.plist

Uninstall GoogleSoftwareUpdate

cd ~/Library/Google
python GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/Resources/install.py --uninstall

defaults read com.google.Keystone.Agent

outputs:

Domain com.google.Keystone.Agent does not exist

which confirms that the GoogleSoftwareUpdate doesn't have any more
any default configured.

Clean up

cd ~/Library/Google
rm -rf GoogleSoftwareUpdate

cd ~/Library/Logs
rm GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.log

cd /Library/LaunchAgents
/usr/bin/sudo rm com.google.keystone.agent.plist

cd /Library/Google
/usr/bin/sudo rm -rf GoogleSoftwareUpdate


Is it bad or unhealthy to put my Mac to sleep? I am wondering if it is bad or unhealthy to always put my Mac to sleep or should I shut it down instead? What I mean by putting it to sleep is that the display and hard drive are sleeping.

The reason for asking this question is I have heard from several computer literate people that sleeping the hard drive is not good for it.

Anecdotally, the drives of 5 to 15 years ago would run longer if you never spun them down. When I managed servers - the drives failed less rapidly than the inexpensive hard drives that were in workstations (which typically spun down). It's not clear if we would have seen similar failure rates if we placed the higher priced (and presumably better built for the long run) drives in the workstations.

I have seen no credible studies that show any drive from the last 5 years lasting longer by disabling sleep. It's hard to imagine a case where you wouldn't want to have a computer sleep even if it were going to decrease the useful life of an inexpensive storage drive due to other components failing over time and the waste of energy.

We don't yet have good data on SSD wearing out either as OEM parts ordered from Apple or aftermarket SSD, but it will be interesting to see how they wear out due to write failures and if sleep writing of large RAM images will add up to enough writes to shorten the life of an SSD that otherwise would be healthy in the absence of storing sleep images.


Why aren't my profile and bashrc files hidden? I've been following tutorials to edit .profile, .bashrc and .bash_profile and I discovered that my computer has profile, bashrc and .bash_profile files instead.
i.e. Only the .bash_profile file is hidden.

However, I've been able to follow these tutorials just fine, I just edit my profile file instead of .profile, and bashrc instead of .bashrc.

Is there a reason why these files are not hidden for me? And does it actually matter?

The thing I am confused about is that .profile and profile are two different files (from my understanding - e.g. I can use the touch command to create .profile and profile, then when I use the ls command to view these files, they are separate files.

So shouldn't there be an error from the terminal/bash initialisation program that's looking for .profile and .bashrc, since I only have profile and bashrc?

However, I've been able to follow these tutorials just fine, I just
  edit my profile file instead of .profile, and bashrc instead of
  .bashrc.

  Is there a reason why these files are not hidden for me? And does it
  actually matter?

Yes to both questions.

Basically .bashrc ≠ bashrc

(same hold true for the other files mentioned as well)

A Unix dot-file (.filename) is treated as a hidden file.  The dot preceding the filename is actually part of the filename itself; it's just interpreted by the system to be hidden.

To look at it another way, it's as if you used any other character at the beginning of the filename (a dash for example).  -filename is a very different file from filename.

So, when you say you've edited your profile, your actually editing the wrong file, you need to edit your .profile.

There's an excellent post on StackOverflow that explains when to use .bashrc and  .bash_profile

  So shouldn't there be an error from the terminal/bash initialisation
  program that's looking for .profile and .bashrc, since I only have
  profile and bashrc?

You're not getting an error message because there's no error

these files are optional
.profile and .bashrc don't exist (see above)


Is there a 30-pin LVDS cable extension for Macbook Pro display panel? I'm trying to convert my old 13" unibody MacBook Pro (mid-2012) display into an external monitor. I purchased a controller board from eBay that supports the display panel of MacBook Pro. I am wondering how to connect LVDS cable from MBP to the controller board. Controller board already has it's own LVDS cable. I'm wondering if there is any kind of extension available that can be used to connect these two cables. I'm not sure what would be the right terminology but I guess 30-pin LVDS female to 30-pin LVDS female port? Not sure. Below are the images of both.

Please note that there is no way for me to connect Controller board's LVDS cable directly to display panel of MacBook Pro since this laptop has display glass infused to the display panel. I would really like to not go through the procedure of temporarily removing display glass using hair dryer heat. Also I don't want to take display panel off the Apple casing that it comes in originally.

Thanks for the help in advance.

IMHO I think it will be hard to make it work without disassembling the whole screen. The main reason for this is that the pinout of the connector coming out from the screen you attached in pic (whether 30 or 40 pins) is customised by Apple and may not correspond to the 30 (or 40) pins pinout of the connector soldered on the screen. For example, on some model I have seen that the producer puts display, camera and mic all together.
Even thought you will be able to find an hypothetical female-female adapter, then, it is not 100% sure that will be pin correspondence.

One think you could do, if you want to proceed in finding an 1-1 adapter, is finding the schematics of the Apple LVSD cable that comes out of the screen and check for pin compatibility.If positive, then look for a female-female adapter.

Or, in case you have money to spend into a new adapter (or build one yourself) have a look here<: http://dp2mbpr.rozsnyo.com/ or here https://hackaday.com/2013/07/05/macbook-pro-retina-display-with-a-normal-computer/

Ciao!


Upgrade from Mountain Lion to Mavericks and my iMac got slower I imagine I am not the first one to notice this problem, but unfortunately the update of Mavericks so far have not even addressed this issue.

I have a late 2011 iMac, and while the transition from Lion to Mountain Lion was smooth,  introduction of Mavericks made it gradually, not just too slow, but stack.

Should I go back to Mountain Lion?

That is a matter of personal choice.

If your Mac is not running the way you expect and this is affecting your work and the use of your computer, I would go back to an OS which served your needs.

On the other hand you may want to persist and find out why your computer is running slowly.

Certainly there are people out there who have issues with OS X 10.9 however I have it running on three different Macs without too many issues and I quite like it.

For the users of this forum to help you will need to provide more information about what slow means.  What symptoms are you experiencing?  What is the configuration of your iMac - which one is it? Processor, memory etc.


iPhone 4 and Cisco WRT320N connection issues I've recently acquired an iPhone 4 (iOS 4.0.1) and hooked it up to my Cisco WRT320N wireless router.

For whatever reason, my iPhone drops of the network constantly.  Sometimes before I can even load a single page in Safari.  When it does work, its quite slow.

This behavior is independent of distance from the router, and the iPhone is showing full bars for the network when its connected.

The router is configured as follows:

Wireless Band: 2.4 GHz
Network Mode: Wireless-G only
Channel: Auto
Security Mode: WPA Personal
Firmware Version: v1.0.03  (which seems to be the lastest)

There's no MAC filtering or the like going on.  A laptop was recently used to connect to this configuration - without issue - so I'm fairly certain this is an iPhone-specific problem.

So, any ideas on how to fix this?

Try resetting your network settings. That usually works for me when I have any connectivity issues (WiFi/ 3G/ ....tethering (hee hee))

Hope this helps!


Terminal: Adding logic to 'find' directories containing either [criteria A] or [criteria B] I have inherited a vast media archive without a unifying organizational scheme. Its contents date back at least 10 years. I have been asked to find a needle in this hay stack, and I have some guesses as to that needle's name. But I don't know its name for certain. I want to use a single find command in the Terminal to search for alternate names. And I want to include a second set: possible file extensions. In pseudocode, here's what I mean: find [in a given directory] [files and folders whose name matches (*guess1* OR *guess2*) AND whose name matches (*.extension1 OR *.extension2)]. How should I express this in the Terminal?

You can do this using ls and grep with regular expressions

ls | grep -E "(guess1|guess2)(\.extension1|\.extension2)"

Or if you need to recursively look into folders:

ls -R | grep -E "(guess1|guess2)(\.extension1|\.extension2)"