What is Soft DFU mode, and how do I exit it I was trying to restore my jalbroken Iphone 4 today, and after a couple fail attempts I got it to what redsn0w is calling 'soft dfu mode'. Any idea how to exit this mode? I tried holding down the home and power button for 2 mins but no luck.

To exit soft DFU:

Hold down the Home and Power button for 10 seconds.
Release.
Push Power button.
Your iPhone should boot up and work fine. (At least, it worked for my iPod touch 4G.)


Can Siri be told a ringtone when setting a timer? I normally use the iPhone timer to sleep the device after I've dozed off to some music or podcast. Unfortunately this means that when I ask Siri to set a timer for some cooking, Siri waits the allotted time and turns off the phone rather than notify me that the time is up. Any solutions to this?

Sorry, looks like Siri pulls whatever is set in the Clock app for its timers.  The only solution is to manually change it in Clock each time.


Running defaults command as root vs regular user I've used the defaults command to tweak my settings to some sane defaults, but I have been unsure if I should run them as root or as my regular user. Seems to work either way. It is possible to do both, so my question is: is there a difference?

Scripts like these that use defaults usually needs root, but I don't see why. Sometimes I have to reboot in order to see the change in effect.

Yes , it's different if you run as root or regular user. In the first case you have all permissions, the second you have the permission of the domain of the application. Not every time the permissions are the same.


How do I detect an iPhone user on my website? I want to forward my viewers on my site to a different place if they are using an iPhone. Is there a way to do that using iWeb?

Don't.

The only reasons to ever have a separate mobile site are cheapness and laziness.

The right approach is to have your visitors all get the same content; the only thing that should change how that content is styled—and doing that doesn't need a separate site, or even a special page.

If your next question is "Can iWeb do that?," the answer is that I doubt it, because iWeb just isn't meant to be a professional web development tool. If you're looking for an alternative, I recommend TextWrangler—it's both better and cheaper.

References:1

How to Make Your Website Mobile Today, InfoWorld, 20 September 2010
Mobilizing Your Web Site, Users Conference session at Macworld Expo 2011, 28 January 2011

1 Yes, they're both me.


Is there a difference between a 'mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable' and a 'mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort' cable for a MacBook Pro? I just bought a 4k monitor (AOC u2777pqu) for my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13 inch, Early 2015). The shop advised a mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable, which gives me 4k resolution but when I tried it only provided a refresh rate of 30Hz.

The Apple support guide ( https://support.apple.com/en-sg/HT206587 ) suggests that the Thunderbolt cable will allow this model to run 4k at 60Hz.

My question whether getting a 'pure DisplayPort' ( mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable - 4k certified) provide the 60Hz at 4k?

Officially, your model MacBook Pro will support up to 3840 by 2160 pixels at 30Hz or 4096 by 2160 pixels at 24Hz if using a HDMI connection, which explains your experience of 30Hz with your mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable.

Your model MacBook Pro also supports up to 3840 by 2160 pixels at 60Hz using a Thunderbolt connection. Since your display supports both a 60Hz refresh rate and a DisplayPort connection, then using a mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable of sufficient quality should achieve what you want.


using MacBook Pro as keyboad I was wanting to know if i could use my laptop as a keyboard, i am wanting to plug a device into my laptop's USB port and send keystrokes from the keyboard out of the USB port, the connected device would be things such as: raspberry pi, arduino, servers. The program will be similar to a keylogger,  I do have programing knowledge, please give me advice on how to make this project possible, or tell me if a solution has already been found. Thanks

There is Type2Phone, but it only works with Bluetooth and not USB.

The website says that it supports iPhone, iPad, and AppleTV, but it might also work with other devices according to the comments in this blog post.


How can quicktime record audio from two sources: mac and iphone? I use quicktime a lot to record screen sessions from my iphone.. I use this to share how my app behaves to my developers..

however right now i'm doing usability tests.. and what i would like to do is have someone sit in front of my mac, connect the iphone to my mac by usb.. and have quicktime record whatever they're doing on the iphone.. but i also want quicktime to record both the sound that's outputted from the iphone as well as their own voice when they speak (ie using the mac build in microphone).. how can i do that?

the problem is that by selecting the audio source from quicktime.. you can either select the iphone output OR the built in microphone.. it does not offer both

Update

in response to this answer:
this happens when i try to record more than one session at a time

Just setup two windows in QuickTime: one for iPhone video and audio, and the other for Mac audio and press record on both windows. If the Mac audio isn't synchronized perfectly with the iPhone audio and visual, then you can just use iMovie or Final Cut Pro X, if you have it, to edit them.

Make sure that "New Audio Recording", for your Mac's internal microphone, is selected FIRST, then create a new window by selecting "New Movie Recording", for iPhone video and audio. If you select "New Movie Recording" first, then "New Audio Recording" will be grayed out. I don't know why, seems pretty stupid.


According to System Information I have one processor and 2 cores, but when I open the 'CPU-usage' window in Activity Monitor I see 4 graphs What does this 4 graphs mean and how are they related to my 2 cores?
I have a MacBook Pro (13 inch medio 2012?

You have a multi-threaded CPU. Your computer has one processor, with two physical cores, and two virtual threads on each core. So to the computer it sees four cores/threads available. This makes it easier for load balancing and sharing of the CPU between processes. See this Wikipedia article.


Why does dragging a space in Spaces lag awfully? All of a sudden, dragging a space in spaces to switch it for another space lags and takes for ever.

Why? any solutions? It didn't happen before.

There are not many apps open, memory's fine, dragging windows in Spaces works great, switching into and out of spaces works fast too.

See: video example.

PS: Embedding videos here would be nice wouldn't it?

Spec: 13' MacBook, 10.6.6 OS, 2GB Ram, 2.226 Ghz Core 2 Duo

Mine is slow too. Note that it works with the mouse, not the graphic, so you can click, drag, release, and move out of Spaces, and the effect will have worked, even if the graphics didn't finish yet.

Also, dragging an empty space is, for me, much faster, so if I want to swap an active work space with an empty one, it is better to drag the empty to the active than the active to the empty.


Is it possible to install OS X on an assembled desktop? I've recently purchased an assembled desktop (it has an i5 processor, and a intel DH67CL motherboard). Is it possible for me to install OS X on a separate partition, just to understand the experience of working in OS X? I don't mind if its a trial installation (which won't work after X days), but I need to understand whether working on OS X would suit me. I'm 60+, and have used Windows all my life, hence the hesitation before buying a MacBook.

1) OS X doesn't have any of that licensing/trial bs you're probably used to. There is just 1 version of OS X that you run, and that's it.
2) OS X can't just run on regular hardware without being "tricked" into thinking it's a mac
3) What's you're trying to do is against Apple's EULA, but is possible. You should see the Hackintosh project, and the OS X 86 project.
4) Running OS X on standard hardware is a very common feat, which is well documented on the internet… all you need is a simple google search query.


Is there a gesture to drag and drop with Expose on Lion? I know it could be done by pressing F3 button while dragging an item but I really need the five-finger-gesture for that.

On Snow Leopard, I could drag an item with my thumb and then use the remaining four fingers to expose all the apps/windows to drop this item in any app/window in the current space or any other space.

Is there an equivalent in Lion?

I don't know when this has been re-enabled, but in OS X Lion 10.7.4 I am able to do the following:

Click drag and object in Window A and hold it with your thumb.
Initiate App Exposé/Mission Control using a four finger gesture. Do not release your thumb.
Drag the object to Window B using one of the remaining four fingers.

So, this is basically the same as you used to do.


Mountain Lion on MacMini 1,1 Possble? Is it possible to install Mountain Lion on a MacMini 1,1 (Mid 2007)?

Not without modifying the installer and dealing with any issues / drivers / recompiling some of the code as needed.

The list of Macs that Apple checks before installing is on the requirements page:

http://www.apple.com/osx/specs/

As that link could easily change within a year's time, here for posterity are the models listed as supported on Mountain Lion:

iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)


iMessage workflow for incoming texts from someone? Are there any ways to start any sort of workflow based on incoming iMessage texts?

When I'm at work, I usually have my iPhone on silent mode. But when my wife texts me, I'd like to figure out some way of making her texts more..."alerty". But I'm not even sure the first step (Identify when a text/iMessage comes in from her phone #) is even possible on a Mac using anything from Automator, Applescript, Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, anything.

Does anyone know of any way to do this?

You could activate the Emergency Bypass on you iPhone.
Unfortunately there is no possibility on the mac yet.
But it would be usable on the iPhone.

Launch Contacts from your Home screen and open the contact you want Emergency Bypass on.
Tap Edit.
Tap Ringtone.
Tap the Emergency Bypass switch. The switch should be green when it's enabled.
Tap
Done.
Tap Done again.


MacBook Pro 16" battery drains overnight I've had this Mac on Catalina 10.15.5 for a few weeks now and suddenly noticed this battery drain overnight. It went from 60% to 3% two nights ago and happening last night too. After doing some digging I noticed that com.apple.alarm.user-visible-com.apple.remindd.time-alarm seems to be waking up the Mac every few secs. Googling it says that it's related to scheduled reminders which I have a few of but disabling those hasn't helped either. I've attached a snippet of the pmset log below. Basically these set of lines repeat all night, even when the lid is shut. Can someone please help?
2020-06-26 13:30:24 +0530 Sleep                 Entering Sleep state due to 'Maintenance Sleep':TCPKeepAlive=active Using Batt (Charge:100%) 76 secs
2020-06-26 13:30:29 +0530 Wake Requests         [*process=mDNSResponder request=Maintenance deltaSecs=2562 wakeAt=2020-06-26 14:13:11] [process=powerd request=TCPKATurnOff deltaSecs=40962 wakeAt=2020-06-27 00:53:11] [process=powerd request=UserWake deltaSecs=19771 wakeAt=2020-06-26 19:00:00 info="com.apple.alarm.user-visible-com.apple.remindd.time-alarm,326"]
2020-06-26 13:30:29 +0530 PM Client Acks        Delays to Sleep notifications: [com.apple.apsd is slow(1965 ms)] [mDNSResponder is slow(5016 ms)]
2020-06-26 13:31:38 +0530 Kernel Client Acks    Delays to Sleep notifications: [powerd is slow(5020 ms)] [AppleUSBVHCIBCE driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(311 ms)] [AppleIntelFramebuffer driver is slow(msg: SetState to 0)(357 ms)] [ATY,Boa driver is slow(msg: SetState to 0)(353 ms)] [RP01 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 0)(1015 ms)]
2020-06-26 13:31:40 +0530 Kernel Client Acks    Delays to Wake notifications: [RP17 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(738 ms)] [UPSB driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(955 ms)] [UPSB driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(953 ms)] [PEG0 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(498 ms)]

I also noticed that certain scheduled tasks are listed multiple times in the System Information > Power > Next Scheduled Events?

Try to drop powernap first, sounds like a culprit to me. I mean try to cycle it off/on and rebooting if you really use it otherwise make sure it's off


Why does installing an app take so long? What exactly happens when you install an app from a .dmg image. My understanding was that it changes the inode and makes it executable (the specific application was GNU Scheme). But that can't be it since it takes about ~1m.

DMG is a disk image file format.

Disk image files behave like a physical disk. In so doing, the operating system interprets them in the same way as if you had just inserted a CD-ROM, USB drive, etc into the computer.

Therefore, how long an application takes to install depends almost entirely on the application itself (e.g. It's size, whether it needs an installer, etc) and other factors such as the speed of your drive.

For more info on DMG files you may want to read my answer here.


Can iTunes change metadata on the actual CD? I used iTunes to rip a CD of a homemade audio recording of a friend. iTunes thought it recognized the CD but was way off (it guessed a lecture series about ancient history).

However, when I looked at the actual CD's content via Finder, oddly enough, it was divided into arbitrary 5-minute tracks, and two of the tracks had names corresponding to what iTunes had guessed (about ancient history) and the others were generically named.

I have no idea if there were tracks or track titles before I imported it with iTunes. Having either of these doesn't make any sense as it's an hour-long speech without logical places for tracks let alone to name one of them "Byzantine Empire". (Also what's curious about this is that the actual speaker's first name is the same as the professor of ancient history that iTunes had guessed. I'm wondering if there was some metadata on the CD when I received it, which iTunes used to make this conclusion.)

So I have to ask: Is iTunes capable of changing the metadata on the actual CD to match what it thought it was? The CD is probably read-only (I don't have permission to change it to "Read & Write" in Get Info), but maybe iTunes has a work-around.

Audio CDs contain no metadata at all. They are also incapable of being written to.

The data, as @dwightk guessed, is stored locally after consulting the CDDB. If the 'album' in question has never correctly been reported to the CDDB, as is often the case for home recording or limited distributions, then it can make poor guesses.

It was certainly possible at one time to correctly report an album back to CDDB to give them the correct data, but I haven't done this in 10 years or more & no longer remember the procedure, sorry.
As far as I'm aware - again this is not something I can test right now, once iTunes has fetched the data from the CDDB, it then a)saves it to any converted MP3/AAC files it makes & b) saves the 'original data' with a fingerprint to recognise the same CD if inserted again, so it doesn't have to perform the lookup in future.
Deleting this will only make it find the same incorrect data a second time, so your 'fix' is to get the CDDB updated with correct information. I would guess the data is stored inside the iTunes Library.xml, which is not a structure you can readily edit. Perhaps deleting the "CD" whilst it is inserted would clear the data & make it consult the CDDB again, once their data has been corrected.

Late addition
I found this link which sets out how to send the data; it claims to work for iTunes but I cannot test it.
7 Steps To Add Your Songs To The CDDB Database

  Insert the CD (whether homemade, replicated or duplicated from a master image) in your computer CD drive
  Do not import the CD yet
  Select all the tracks, right click and select Get Info
  Click the Info tab and enter the album title, artist name, year and genre
  Right click in each song title fields (Track 1, Track 2, etc.) or double click to edit to  the individual track names. Double-check for
  typos and make sure you have the track order correct.
  When you are all done, click, OK.
  If you want other users to also be able to see the correct album title, artist information, and track titles, highlight all the tracks
  again, go up to the top menu bar, and click Advanced / Submit Track
  Names to upload them to the CDDB Database. That’s it.
  If you want the database update to happen a bit faster than a few days, repeat this process from another computer/iTunes account. This
  speeds the Gracenote “verification” process up because you are
  essentially “verifying” the database entry from another computer.


Can I install iOS 11 beta ipsw using iTunes without paying $99? I want to go for beta, but OTA updates are quite buggy, and on top of that, my phone doesn't see ota updates with beta profile installed.

So I found ipsw image about 2,4GB, that I can download. If I flash that rom via iTunes without enrollment of my Apple ID, will I be able to use that beta?

The free public beta program seems much safer and more reliable than trusting a download and/or needing to jailbreak.

https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/


Apps are not opening in Mac Google Chrome and other apps are not opening, they just bounce and then stop without giving me any error message.

I also re-downloaded Google Chrome and still not opening.

Recently I installed windows 8 via bootcamp and I had to delete lots of useless files I maybe deleted an important file by accident.

Here is a screenshot of the files that won't get deleted from my trash.(possibly important)

Please help me with this problem. And if it requires terminal I'm fine with it.
I'm running OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.1 MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012)

First step: don't delete "useless" files.

If the first step was not done properly, please continue to the second step.

Second step: Perform a recovery.
This will restore the OS to its original state but will leave your user data intact.


Few of my applications start I have a Macbook Pro 15 inch 2009 running OS X 10.10.2. I want to update the OS to El Capitan but the App Store won't open - nor will Safari, Contact, Calendars etc.
Chrome seems to be one of a handful of the apps that are opening fortunately.

I've already tried the following:

1 - Opened Library/Preferences/com.apple.appstore.plist and deleted it

2 - As above but for Safari because apparently Safari, App Store and iTunes share the same history and preferences?

3 - Created another user but encountered the exact same problem.

4 - Tried running this command on iTerm (because Terminal wouldn't run either)

softwareupdate -a -i

but this failed because I don't have the correct permissions. On this one I was logged in as an Admin and also tried starting a bash command with sudo -s but it didn't output anything.

5 - I attempted to start Mac OS Recovery but holding cmd+r on startup but it's asking for a password but none of the passwords for any of the admin accounts work.

What else can I possibly try short of ordering recovery disks or saying screw it and buying a new Macbook altogether (which I really don't want to do!)

Thanks

When you restart a Mac holding command R or just option to choose a different os, that indicates a firmware password lock is present.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204455
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203409

After reading the above, you might need a repair to regain control to wipe and reinstall or just boot to a working OS. Since your Mac is outside normal support by Apple, you might need to change the hardware yourself - perhaps removing one RAM stick per these threads:

How do Apple engineers reset EFI password on new MacBooks?
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/121801/5472

Once that's done, you can boot to Recovery HD and reinstall the OS or erase the drive as needed.


How to enable echo service for tcp or udp on well-known port 7 on Mac OS X 10.8 or above? I am learning TCP/IP protocol with a Mac, and need echo service (refer to [RFC 862], or Wiki) to test network. But it seems to OS X doesn't implement it or disable it.

I learned that launchd replaced inetd, you can create a launchd Property List File to launch daemons. In that way you can control some network service. So i edited telnet.plist (located in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons), set "Disabled" to "NO", and successfully enable telnet service. But I don't find echo.plist or something similar.

Or, I can create an echo.plist according to telnet.plist

But what ProgramArguments should be? Is there a built-in daemon for echo service of which name maybe echod?

Or, I have to compile inetd from source?

Thanks for any advice.

AFAIK the echo service isn't implemented in OS X. You may use either a Java echo client/server or CocoaEcho instead.

After unzipping the file check the folder .../build/Debug. I tested CocoaEcho server/client in 10.9.5 and it still works though it was built for 10.7. If you use a newer OS X version you may have to recompile it.


When you decline an airdrop, does it go to recently deleted? When you airdrop a photo,  does it go to your recently deleted photos? I was wondering for a purpose.

If you are the Airdrop recipient and you decline to share with someone, it doesn't get saved on your system.  It simply isn't transferred to you.

If you are the sender and the recipient declines your share, nothing happens; you still have the file and it stays in the same place.

If there's a file that you're seeing in the Trash (or as you mentioned it 'recently deleted'), that means the file was accepted and was then deleted.


iMessage issue when being sent to cell number A friend of mine has iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0. I can iMessage him using his apple id fine. However, when I try to use his cellphone number, I never get the light blue send button. It stays green all the time. This seems very strange to me. Any explanations?

iMessage sends a text message to get activated on the first boot of the phone. Maybe this text message didn't arrived at Apple, so that his iMessage is only activated for use with his Apple ID.

He could try to deactivate and reactive iMessage.


Is there an easy way to track quality of code in my xcode project for ios? I really need to confirm with independent tool very bad quality of code in one of ios projects written in swift.

Is there any tool for this?
how it works?

Swift-Clean

An OS X app that works with Xcode to keep your Swift code clean. Swift-Clean takes the answers you give to a short survey on Swift coding style and creates a configuration file. The Mac app then uses this to either fix errors automatically or create build warnings if it can't. Once you've completed the survey, you can not only download your own configuration file, but you can also choose from the average of all responses or the Stack Overflow results.

Taylor

A tool that aims to improve Swift code quality, by checking for conformance of code metrics. Unlike similar linting tools, Taylor focuses on more subjective code quality metric by providing warnings for rules such as excessive class or method length, too many overly complicated methods, excessive block depth or too many method parameters. It can be run independently from the command line on a single file or a complete project, or you can add a build phase to add warnings to Xcode.


MacBook Pro USB-C adapter and regular USB devices compatibility I got a new MacBook Pro from late 2016, MacOS Sierra, 2 thunderbolt 3 ports.

In this machine I need to plug in one external monitor via HDMI, and a few USB devices (mouse and keyboards). For this I bought an adapter that plugs in to the Mac's USB-C port, and supplies two USB 3.1 ports, one HDMI port and a power delivery for the USB-C power supply. The adapter is: Promate uniHub-C (https://www.promate.net/products/unihub-c)

The power supply works, when I plug in the power cable to the adapter, the computer charges.

The HDMI works with another monitor.

My external USB hard drive works, so the mouse/keyboard issue feels strange.

When I have a USB keyboard plugged in, and an external hard drive - the System Report > USB shows as follows. The keyboard and the hard drive are both plugged in to the uniHub-C.

In the finder I see the hard drive though, seems to work well.

Screenshot showing the System report

Screenshot showing that the finder can find the connected hard drive

Here is the problem: the USB slots doesn't seem to do much. When I plug in mouse and keyboard in the adapter, nothing happens. I was worried that perhaps I need another kind of USB-C => USB 3 adapter for regular USB devices to work, but I can't confirm that.

How can I verify I have an active connection in each USB slot?

It looks like this particular product (uniHub-C) has its own idea about compliance to USB specifications. The designers seem to cut off the USB 2.0 part of the VIA hub design. First sign is that their marketing blurb doesn't mention support for legacy (HS, FS, LS) devices, which is strange - in marketing, more is merrier. Second, the web page shows some goofy "USB Super-fast" logo, which in no way corresponds to the official USB-IF certification logo,

I suspect you fall for a wrong device.


Are my permissions for /usr/local/ correct? I’m using HomeBrew for my port needs (seems a bit “cleaner” than MacPorts).

I can install without sudoing (which is great), but the man linking step seems to require it (/usr/local/share/man/man3 is owned by root).
A guide I found suggests I recursively chown /usr/local by doing

sudo chown -R `whoami` /usr/local

Is this safe…or is it a Bad Idea™?

Also: are my permissions correct?

$ pwd
/usr/local/share/man
$ ls -lah
total 32
drwxrwxr-x    8 root  staff   272B  4 Set 11:02 .
drwxrwxr-x    9 root  staff   306B 10 Set 11:27 ..
drwxr-xr-x    3 root  wheel   102B  4 Ago  2009 de
drwxrwxr-x  163 root  staff   5,4K 10 Set 11:27 man1
drwxr-xr-x   11 root  wheel   374B 10 Set 11:27 man3
drwxr-xr-x    7 ago   staff   238B 10 Set 11:39 man5
drwxr-xr-x   11 ago   staff   374B 10 Set 11:39 man7
-rw-r--r--    1 root  staff    13K  4 Set 11:02 whatis

I use Homebrew too and can confirm it's totally safe. Quoting the Installation page on the official Homebrew FAQ:

  Do yourself a favour and pick /usr/local

  It’s easier
  /usr/local/bin is already in your PATH.
  It’s easier
  Tons of build scripts break if their dependencies aren’t in either /usr or /usr/local. We fix this for Homebrew formulas (although we don’t always test for it), but you’ll find that many RubyGems and Python setup scripts break which is something outside our control.
  It’s safe
  Apple has conformed to POSIX and left this directory for us. Which means there is no /usr/local directory by default, so there is no need to worry about messing up existing tools.

  If you plan to install gems that depend on brews then save yourself a bunch of hassle and install to /usr/local!

  It is not trivial to tell gem to look in non-standard directories for headers and dylibs. If you choose /usr/local, everything “just works!”

I'll just add that doing things as root is a very bad idea, so chowning /usr/local not only seems reasonable to me (it's not a system dir on OSX), but sane.

Your permissions are not correct (yet). Just run the command you listed and you're gonna be fine.

If you have other problems remember, the brew doctor can help you!


How to get screenshot only external monitor? I there any way to screenshot only external monitor screen?

do shell script "screencapture -x " & shot_path

Manually, you can always use Cmd + Shift + 4 and select the area you want.

OR

For Applescript, check out this post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8764072/screen-capture-with-applescript

  set imagePath to (path to desktop as text) & "screenCapture.png" do
  shell script "screencapture -mx -T0 " & quoted form of POSIX path of
  imagePath


MacOS 10.14 Mojave public beta public Wi-Fi problem I can not connect to a single public Wi-Fi hotspot that does not require a password but instead shows a pop-up window pointed to captive.apple.com

The pop-up opens blank with the error "The web page couldn't be loaded"

Any idea on how to fix this?

Found a solution!
If you get a similar problem like this one:

The solution is to visit the following URL directly from Safari:
http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html

You should be able to connect immediately.

For some reason, Mojave is not redirecting or opening that page properly, hence the error.


Offline furigana for iOS Is there any software to compute and display furigana completely offline?

It doesn't have to be integrated with any existing app.  A new standalone app I type into is fine.

You have several apps available on the App store now - just search for Furigana.

I have a friend that likes this one, but YMMV:

Furigana Reader - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/furigana-reader/id529433422?mt=8

It does not work offline, so it doesn't meet your requirements unless you fail to find any offline software and can relax that constraint.


Getting list of Apps instaleld on my iPad from iTunes Is there an easy way to get the screens of my apps and list of their names from the iTunes App management tab? I would like to post them on my website.

I assume you mean from the App tab for your iPad within iTunes desktop app, that allows you to select which apps to sync, and re-order your home screens in.

If this is the case, then no.  To start with, the sort options are only for Name/Kind/Category/Date/Size, so there is no way to separate between installed and not installed.  Even if there is, there is no way to cut that information in any way.

Third party tools like Phoneview and such may be able to provide a directory listing of installed apps which you can then manipulate to use on your website, but I don't use any so I will just throw it out in case it jogs anyone else's memory.

The only simple way to share, is to either take screen grabs of the iTunes windows to just screenshot (hold HOME and tap POWER) your whole iPad.  Or type them up...


External monitors show blank screen until restart MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) with 2 USB-C to HDMI adapters. The setup works great if I start up in that configuration.

If I connect the adapters while the machine is running or simply sleeping, one of the monitors will never get a signal and stay in low power mode. The OS sees the monitor, it shows in the display arrangement settings and I can move the mouse into it, but until I restart, I can't see anything on it.

Once I have restarted I can let the machine sleep or whatever, and the display still works unless I disconnect the adapter. As soon as I do that a restart is required to use it again.

Using MacOS Sierra (10.12.4)

Using this adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IUXA9YK/

The video signal on the  Thunderbolt connection on your MBP is actually Display Port so you are actually going from Display Port to HDMI.  I am not a fan of converting signals because it's flaky at best.

If you must connect to HDMI, try an active1 adapter like the TRENDnet USB-C to HDMI 4K.  They have two versions - one that does 30Hz and another that does 60Hz (it's the Power Delivery version).

What is preferable, is to go from USB-C to Display Port which is actually Display Port to Display Port, so no there's conversion involved.  No conversion means less points of failure.

jksoegaard's comments provides more evidence of this:

  Just to add a real-life experience: I'm using 2 USB-C to DisplayPort adapters (which are basically similar to the HDMI adapters) - and this works without any problems in that regard. Several times a week I plugin in both monitors after the MacBook Pro is booted (basically I never turn it off) - removing the cables again also never give problems

1 I wrote an answer on this very topic:  Passive vs. Active Adapter


Nano: how to obtain syntax highlighting? I have a default installation of nano under /usr/bin/, and I am trying to make nano highlight the bash scripting language code.

I have been searching around, but I had no success: I got always some errors, or simply doesn't work. For example, I have tried to download the following repository from Github github.com/nanorc/nanorc.git with the following command:

git clone https://github.com/nanorc/nanorc.git

and then follow the steps in this post, but I have had errors because some command inside the files are not recognised. In particular, if I add this line include ~/nanorc/shell.nanorc to my file ~/.nanorc, where the file shell.nanorccontains:

syntax "sh" "\.sh$" "\.bash$" "bashrc$" "bash_profile$"
header "^#!.*/(env +)?(ba|k|pdk)?sh[-0-9_]*( |$)"

FUNCTION: "^[A-Za-z0-9_+-]+[[:space:]]*\(\)"
KEYWORD:  "\<(case|do|done|elif|else|esac|fi|for|function|if)\>"
KEYWORD:  "\<(in|select|then|time|until|while)\>"
FUNCTION: "\<(echo|exit|export|let|local|read|return|set|shift|umask|unset)\>"
FUNCTION: "\<(source)\>"
OPERATOR: "[{}()<>!=&|;`$]|\\|\[|\]|-(eq|ne|gt|lt|ge|le|s|n|z)\>"
STRING:   ""(\\.|[^"])*""
VARIABLE: "\$\{?[A-Za-z0-9_!@#$*?-]+\}?|`[^`]*`"
STRING:   "'(\\.|[^'])*'"
ESCAPE:   "\\.?"
+HASHCOMMENT
+TODO
+LINT

It seems that these previous commands, such STRING, ESCAPE, etc, are not recognised.

How would you set syntax highlighting for nano, at least for bash?

Install the latest version of nano with homebrew:

Install homebrew: https://brew.sh/
Install nano: brew install nano
Add this line to ~/.nanorc. That directory has all the syntax highlighting definition files.

include "/usr/local/share/nano/*.nanorc"


iPhone XS Random Hard Reset I have an iPhone XS (on Verizon) that randomly does a hard reset. Sometimes a few days, sometime in hours. When it restarts it is like a brand new phone, starting the setup prompts again. Apple replaced the iPhone XS a few days ago and it is still resetting. Verizon has replaced the SIM and is still resetting. Verizon has said the IMEI is missing from the profile but fixed it and it is still resetting. Have used two different Apple IDs while re-setting up the iPhone.

Have done restores from iCloud, Verizon and SanDisk.

Any suggestions?

Replaced hardware (iPhone) has the same problem as the previous one.

That's is rare or improbable.

The chance are it is some malfunctioning app, that cripples the IOS.

Do not use restore (for now), use fresh install (clean install) to test for few days.

If nothing worked, take it back to the store.


Can I create something like a macro in Numbers? I have this long formula that is used in a lot of columns:

=SE(N17<60; DEF.NÚM.DEC(SOMA(60; −N17); 1); "✔ Aprovado")

So, when I need to change something in this formula, I need to edit each one of then. So to avoid this kind of duplication, can I create something like a macro, which will make me able to do something like that:

def myMacro($POS):
  return SE($POS<60; DEF.NÚM.DEC(SOMA(60; −$POS); 1); "✔ Aprovado")

And use it like:

=myMacro(N17)

Note: The formulas are in portuguese.

There is rich documentation and deep automation support for Numbers being automated with Automator and AppleScript. Here is a mid-tutorial link to where to save your scripts and shows the menu bar to trigger these scripts.

I could see you entering the formula or substituting / selecting the range for which to apply a function quite easily.

https://iworkautomation.com/numbers/script-menu.html

The nice thing about that site is that it has many tutorials as well to cover the scripting syntax / how to use the script editor and all the things you learn in Numbers are general to other apps that have scripting support on macOS - first party apps and third party apps.


How to know the hard disk capacity for sure and how to recover lost partitions? After I have played with boot camp, the disk became only 250 GB out of 500 GB.
disk utility, terminal, and system information are showing that disk capacity is 250 GB.
Although I am sure that the disk is originally 500 or to be precise I am sure that those same programs displayed 500 before, I'd like to know how can I know the real capacity for sure and of course is there any solutions to undo whatever I did that corrupted the disk.

Apple exposes the hardware size of the drive in several places.

About this Mac in the Apple Menu - click storage tab
System Information app (click System Report... in About this Mac - overview section)

there's a storage general category
there's specific storage details (firmware / bus position / bus speed) for the SATA / AHCI / NVMe section based on how your storage is physically connected to the hardware

Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities)

The undo is either finesse the partition table (there are hundreds of questions here on how to change gpt and diskutil or to backup your files, and erase install a new OS which basically boots to another recovery OS and runs Disk Utility to repartition / erase the drive.

Good luck with your choice of path to get the storage back and set.


Can I restore one partition of OS X El Capitan? I'm trying to install Windows 10 on El Capitan using Boot Camp, I could create the partition, but I need to remove this partition. When I try to enter in Boot Camp again, it shows next error:

You can not divide the boot disk partitions or restore a single partition.
To install Windows, the boot disk must be formatted as a single volume Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or be partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant.

If I access on terminal with diskutil:
MacBook-Pro-de-Javier:~ pecete$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            88.3 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Blank                   32.0 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh              +88.0 GB    disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 706C3648-CE21-42FE-9D06-17158DD26E5F
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *62.2 GB    disk2
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 PCT@HOME                62.2 GB    disk2s1

I need to remove the partition "Apple_HFS", so I want to link "Apple_HFS" with "Apple_CoreStorage".
More information:
+-- Logical Volume Group FACD278F-4F66-423F-B262-03E39BA793A7
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         88348913664 B (88.3 GB)
    Free Space:   94208 B (94.2 KB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 7E9E18B9-E2B8-4B99-95C5-CF17BB1BD988
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     88348913664 B (88.3 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family F9B1898F-B0B3-43AB-8E45-F16F85DF582A
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Conversion Status:       Converting
        Reversion State:         Pending
        High Level Queries:      Not Fully Secure
        |                        Has Visible Users
        |                        Has Volume Key
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 706C3648-CE21-42FE-9D06-17158DD26E5F
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          87996497920 B (88.0 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   Paused
            Revertible:            Yes (unlock and decryption required)
            LV Name:               Macintosh
            Volume Name:           Macintosh
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

I need to reach removing this partition of 32 GB.

Did you try removing the disk partition with Disk Utility?  Bootcamp can be difficult with these things once you've had a first attempt.

Did you know you don't need Bootcamp necessarily to install Windows?  You can create the partitions yourself and activate the install by booting from your USB stick image.  Just need to be sure that you have got the drivers for Windows 10 to hand from Bootcamp once Windows is installed.

All the best!


How to connect a flash drive to a VMware VM when the drive is 'not readable'? Introduction

I'm running:

High Sierra v10.13.6
VMware Fusion v11.5.1

I'm attempting to connect a flash drive (USB 3.0) to a virtual machine (Redhat). That virtual machine is a guest to my Mac host.

What I've Done So Far

In the VM Settings->USB & Bluetooth, I've set these options:

After connecting the flash drive to my mac, I see the following message:

The flash drive never shows up in the list of Connected USB devices.

Ignore and Mount

Seamus suggested the following in the comments:

  What happens if you "Ignore", and then mount the drive from your VM?

After ignoring the connected device, there seems to be no indication that the VM sees the flash drive:

Also, I did lsusb in the VM and got the following output:

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0e0f:000b VMware, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0e0f:0002 VMware, Inc. Virtual USB Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Question

How do I connect the flash drive up to my virtual machine?

Re-install VMWare. You may need to go to your Mac's System Preferences->Security & Privacy->General and allow VMWare permissions in the 'Allow apps downloaded from:' section.
For reference I updated to the following versions and I was able to get my flash drive to show up inside of my VM:

Catalina v10.15.5
VMWare Fusion v11.5.5


Minecraft crashing on Mac OS with Java 8 - any fixes? When I load or start a new game on Minecraft it crashes. It only happened after I installed Java 8.

Minecraft Version: 1.7.10
Operating System: Mac OS X (x86_64) version 10.9.4
Java Version: 1.6.0_65, Apple Inc.

The interesting thing is this started after install Java 8 that I downloaded from Oracle.
Any tips for fixing this?

The error says:
Description: Unexpected error

java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException
    at java.nio.Buffer.checkIndex(Buffer.java:512)
    at java.nio.DirectIntBufferU.get(DirectIntBufferU.java:248)
    at bma.a(SourceFile:271)
    at bma.a(SourceFile:220)
    at bao.a(SourceFile:1694)
    at bao.a(SourceFile:1652)
    at bjb.a(SourceFile:125)
    at hd.a(SourceFile:70)
    at hd.a(SourceFile:13)
    at ej.a(SourceFile:174)
    at bao.p(SourceFile:1585)
    at bao.ak(SourceFile:774)
    at bao.f(SourceFile:728)
    at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:148)

IIRC, Minecraft is hard coded to use Java 1.6 (or it might have been hard coded to only use Apple Java, can't 100% recall).

The way I have combatted this for some time is to launch Minecraft from Terminal.app using:

java -jar /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/Resources/Java/Bootstrap.jar

I think I recall Minecraft developer Dinnerbone suggesting that Minecraft 1.9 would not pose restrictions on Java version.


How do I connect a Macbook early 2011 to a Sony trv 340 via Firewire I have a Sony trv 340, and need to firewire from the cam to my Macbook, but have no idea what is need for the Mac. Do I need a male end or a female to go to the laptop? I have no idea what I’m looking at, and don't even know how to start searching.

Any help appreciated!

Assuming that your machine is indeed a MacBook Pro 2011, you need a Firewire 800 (9-pin) to MiniDV (4-pin Firewire or i.Link in Sony speak) cable. Something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/FireWire-i-link-IEEE-1394-Cable-Clear/dp/B002RB84P8

https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-FireWire-Hi-speed-F019-006/dp/B000AAZQM2


Sudden reboot and install screen on login I just logged in to my MacBook Pro (2015) running Catalina.
While entering my password my desktop background disappeared, leaving a white background.
On pressing enter, the machine suddenly rebooted.
During the phase with the white loading bar and Apple logo on a black background the loading bar filled up (rather slowly) twice, and then showed an installation dialog:

The text says:

Installing on “Macintosh HD
[loading bar]
27 minutes remaining

It didn’t say what was being installed. It didn’t remotely take 27 minutes.
After that it booted up again, with a very slow loading bar this time, slow enough for it to show a time estimate at around 8 minutes. I have to add that booting has always been lightning fast until today.
Just I logged in normally again, all my files still seem to be there, even my Safari tabs were restored.
I was hoping someone could tell me what happened (what was installed and why) and if there’s anything I should do or check now.

The simple explanation is a macOS installer was in your Applications folder (or elsewhere) and was run. 30 minutes to install isn’t out of line - especially on a machine with a bit of history or third party apps.

The logical place where running an installer happens is when you enroll / allow automatic updates in System Preferences and then in the Notification Center where options like restart now or update later are presented.
What next? Perhaps look in /var/log/install.log to see if you agree with the recent actions logged. Possibly boot to recovery and install a good clean download of the latest macOS on top of your install if you feel you can’t trace why the installer ran. Make a backup for sure, if your mac is compromised - an erase install and selective restore from backup might be needed. To me, there are very common reasons for this to happen and no particular signs you have any issues unless you can not determine why the installer ran via defaults or someone opening it manually.


AirPort Express: Extremely high latency I just installed a new AirPort Express today, and connected a MacBook Air and an HP EliteBook to it.

While browsing the web feels, to use an unscientific term, sluggish, I could verify serious latencies when pinging the computer from each other.

While sometimes the latency is as low as 2ms, most times it is around 300ms, spiking randomly even higher, and timing out from time to time.

This article suggest switching to 802.11n exclusively and setting the Multicast Rate to 2 Mbps.

While I tried changing the Radio Mode with no real success, I don't have an option to the the Multicast Rate on my device (Firmware 7.6.1).

When did this option disappear (or has it never been included in European models), and what other settings could help get the latency down?

Update: Using the trick from this question I got the response times down, and will now test how it helps with real usage:

sudo ping -i .2 192.168.1.1

Update 2:
Even using the ping trick, I sometimes get timeouts from the the Windows machine and single digit packet losses. Sadly the performance is still very inconsistent, and I couldn't yet nail the cause down.

The problem could be a huge amount of interferences produced by other Wi-Fi networks in the same band, 2.4Ghz band is shared by a lot of technologies (from DECT phones to Bluetooth and WiFi) and depending your area,neightbours and the way your building have been built, you can get a lot of issues like this.

In those situations i recommend switching to cable, it will always give you maximum performance if you are most of the time in the same place.

Another option will be to switch the band to 5GHz which is lot less crowded and much robust in terms of interferences, so if boh of your devices support that band give it a try! Your wifi will also reach some more distance


When woken up from sleep, some Chrome windows are blurry I have a 2nd monitor attached to my Retina MBP. I was on OS X Mavericks and had this problem, where sometimes the displays would go to sleep and when I wake them, many tabs within Chrome look blurry on my main Retina screen.

When I move the tabs over to the non-retina monitor, it actually fixed it. i.e. the solution is to temporarily move the tab to the non-retina monitor (drop it there) and then bring it back and all of a sudden it looks crispy clear again.

Obviously this is a non-scalable/sustainable strategy.

I assumed that by upgrading to Yosemite that would take care of that, but it didn't. I am still seeing it.

Not all tabs are blurry, and the only ones that seem to be blurry are my Chrome tabs. I haven't tried Safari or anything else yet.

Any ideas for what may be causing this?

Here is a screenshot of a Chrome tab looking blurry.

Not 100% sure, but It looks like the latest stable release (39.0.2171.71, released 11/25), may have fixed this.


What does iCloud *not* backup for iOS? So I know what iCloud does backup: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207428
But I couldn't find any source on what it doesn't backup
I accidentally bricked my phone and loaded my backup onto another phone (it's been a while), but I did notice a few things (I'll continue adding things to these lists as I use my phone, in case anybody wonders the same thing):
Things that did not backup/move over to new phone:

There was no call history, that didn't get backed up
Apps that were no longer available in the app store did not get backed up
Apps that I had developed and deployed to my phone were not backed up (icons still there, though)

Things that did backup/move over (somewhat surprisingly):

Apps that saved session tokens still persisted (was still logged in to a lot of apps)
Probably for the same reason the session tokens were backedup, my downloaded Spotify songs also came along
I would've guessed that only iMessages would've been backed up, but looks like all of my SMS texts to android friends also got backed up which is nice
It did backup my iOS settings, I had sleeping screen turned off, and it was brought over

Main reason I'm asking is because I wasn't sure if I should go through the effort of trying to revive the phone to get any obscure data off of it. In an ideal world I would get an exact copy. I'm OK just throwing it out otherwise
Not sure if anybody's ever kept track, if there's a resource somewhere out there that has a list, that would be great closure for me. Thanks!

You can find a full list of what apps are operating and backing up to iCloud under Apple ID > iCloud on an iOS device. Like Notes, Safari, Home, Health etc etc


How to Remove Attachments in the Mail app in 10.12 Sierra The Mail app in earlier versions of OS X had a usable Remove Attachments menu item in the Message menu in OS X's built-in Main app.  It allowed me to remove large photos (etc.), and shrink down the valuable SSD storage used by the Mail app.

But in macOS Sierra, the Remove Attachments menu item is sometimes grayed out.

So how do I remove attachment in received email, where I want to keep the text of the email, but not the (large photos, etc.) attachments?

Is there some Mail app setting needed?  Or do I need to do some Terminal command-line kung-fu to get rid of all those unwanted attachments taking up space on my SSD?

Added: The email is being downloaded from a POP email account, if that makes any difference.

Added: New info.  Some email messages shows a paperclip in both message browser and in the opened email window.  Those allow Remove Attachments.  However some email messages only show a paperclip in the center hover toolbar in the opened email viewer, not in the message browser.  Those ones have Remove Attachments greyed-out.  Is there a way to remove attachments (as shown by the paperclip toolbar) from those emails messages?  Why is there a difference between the two types of attachments?

The Messages > Remove Attachments selection is greyed-out unless you have selected (in the Mail message viewer) one or more emails which contain attachments. Select one or more emails which contain attachments and the selection will be available.


Cannot do updates in OSX app store I am at a loss.

I have upgrade to Mavericks and now when i go to my App store i see there are 6 new updates. When i click on Updates (showing Updates 6) i only get a grey bar and it does not show any of updates. I have tried everything. Including reinstalling mavericks. My next choice would to do a total clean install. Is there any way to fix this? I do have screen shots but having trouble uploading them.

I've encountered that before, particularly at times when Apple's update servers are under heavy load, as they are now (due to the new OS X release and accompanying software updates). As far as I can tell, it's typically a problem with the indicator itself, rather than updates being missing. I wouldn't worry too much about it, chances are it will fix itself in a few days.


Application Switcher is minimizing apps At some point when I reinstalled Mac OS X Lion, the application switcher started minimizing apps so that when I switch to one all others minimize.

This causes problems when working with my developer IDE and a browser. Many times throughout my day I want to look at two or more applications at once.

How can I fix this?

You probably enabled a hidden preference for the experimental single app mode. It can be undone with:

defaults delete com.apple.dock single-app
killall Dock


New WD External Drive Can't Eject & Files Won't Display on MacOS I cannot see the files or folders on this external hard drive and I am unable to eject the drive. I must not lose this footage.

The drive is a brand new WD My Passport 25E1 Media 2TB External Hard Drive. I'm using it to store large amounts of video footage. It's only a few days old. I've had no problem transferring and opening files on the hard drive until now.

When I first purchased the drive I formatted it for MacOS using Disk Utility. It is currently a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. It has never been plugged in to any other Mac or PC.

Current Problem

The hard drive is plugged in to my iMac.

When I view it in Finder non of the hundreds of gigs of footage display. No files, no folders.
I cannot eject the drive. If I attempt to eject the drive I get this message:

  The disk "My Passport" wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it. I have not tried to Force Eject.

There is valuable footage on this drive I cannot lose. If I view the drive in Disk Utility it shows 318.15 GBs used and 1.68 TB free. This indicates the files are on the drive but not visible.

Steps I've Done So Far

Attempted to Eject the Drive
Confirmed Storage is Used in Disk Utility
Closed All Open Applications & Attempted to Eject the Drive
Logged Out of my MacOS User Account & Attempted to Eject the Drive
Opened WD Drive Utilities and Clicked "Run Drive Status Check" and "Run Quick Drive Test" with No Effect, Results, or Message. It doesn't do anything.

Right now I'm seeking guidance because this footage is essential and cannot be lost.

How do I confirm the files are still on the drive?
Why does the drive not display the files or folders it should?
Why can I not eject the drive?
Should I attempt a "Force Eject", and if I do, do I risk
losing the files on the drive?
How do I identify what programs are
running that are preventing the drive from ejecting?
How can I eject the drive?

Help in this matter is immensely appreciated.

Restart your Mac

At the risk of stating the obvious (as you didn't say you've tried this), have you fully shutdown your Mac and then rebooted to see if the drive appears and functions okay then?

Use a different port

Shutdown your Mac and try connecting the drive to another port. What happens?

Safe Mode

If restarting your Mac and trying a different port makes no difference, can you restart your Mac in Safe Mode and let us know how that goes?

Follow these steps boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. could you boot your Mac okay, is the issue still present, etc)
To exit Safe Mode just restart your Mac as normal

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there.

BACKUP

Finally, you really should have a backup of your data. You've made it pretty clear you have valuable footage on this drive you can't risk losing, so you really should have a second drive for backup purposes.


Mail Preferences Dialog broken since TimeMachine re-installation I recently installed a SSD hard drive into my friends computer. I then set up the computer based on the TimeMachine backup.

We had to fix the permissions on the Library folder to get some of the applications working again.

Now in the native Mail.app when he opens the Settings ⌘ + ; he'll only see the empty signatures screen:

How can we get the regular settings dialog to work again?

Honestly a damaged install of macOS, regardless of the root cause, is often fixed by installing the latest Combo Update from Apple.

Google "Combo Update" and your macOS version and it should point you to a download page at support.apple.com. Quit out of all running apps and run the installer. It will take a while (depending on available disk space & speed) and then ask you to reboot.

If your install is still glitchy you may want to try one of the free OS cleaner programs out there. I use Onyx (there are others). Be sure to download the one designed for your version of the OS.


How to determine which app is running on the Touch Bar in MBP? Every time I unlock my 2018 15" MacBook Pro, the Touch Bar displays a x button and the Esc button, irrespective of whatever the Mac is running (it is not displaying the address toolbar on Chrome for example). I must always touch the x button to remove it, and display the current content for the Touch Bar.

I checked for running applications with system monitor, and nothing was wrong.

Is there a way to know what is currently controlling the Touch bBar? I want to delete this, and I cannot find it.

BetterTouchTool app could take control of your Touch bar.

Disable or remove it.


Recover data with file structure HFS+ on Mojave I'm desperate and trying almost everything. That's what happened. I was having problem with Time Machine. One file was not letting time machine finish the backup. But to discover this took me a while. Then I was just formatting the backup HDs to see if would fix it. But then I formatted my 8tb external HD with work photos and videos totalling around 4,5tb.

Usually I do things on my own, I don't know why I didn't searched beforehand an answer around google and recovery softwares. But since it was a simple formatting by disk utility I thought it would be simple. But anyway I went to a recovery specialist. Let the HD for 4 days for an estimate. It was too expensive so I denied and the next day got the drive back and tried another technician. This second guy got all my raw data back using PhotoRec. Then tried some softwares and could not get the file structure. After a while he quit and then I went to a third one. After a week he also could not recover with the file structure.

I tried Stellar data Recovery, R-Studio, Disk Drill and some others. None can see the last formatting. And getting many files corrupted specially video.

Is this normal? Is it so hard to recover 100% a Mac formatting? Because I can even see the original factory formatting with the bundled software. Why I can't see my file structure. Am I doing something wrong? Is there something I could try? Anything? I have a little suspicion that the first technician did something to the file structure so others could not repair it in full. Please help.

This sounds like an ad. It's not. Just timing - I just did this the other day (but on purpose). I've been erasing old drives for the last week or so. For kicks, I reformatted one (If I recall correctly, default security settings (no zeroing or writing random data), formate as HFS+ journaled/encrypted.
Then I decided to see what I could still get from the original drive.

I used Data Rescue 5. You can download a demo (this is what I used, as my old paid version doesn't work on Mojave). I did not delve in to file contents for more than a few sample files, but I did get what looked like the entire directory structure. The demo let's you recover a whopping total of 10 files. I recovered none, but opened a few for viewing. Paid version is $99. A tad painful, but beats the 2kish that the recovery company was probably going to charge.

It requires another blank (hfs+) drive to use for working space, and you might want another to recover to.


Fixing dead/stuck pixels on Apple Cinema Display I have a 23" Apple Cinema HD Display, and it has a couple of dead or stuck pixels (don't really know the difference). I am wondering if there is some way to fix these pixels, like some kind of software/app?

You can sometimes fix stuck pixels by running something like this:

http://www.flexcode.org/lcd2.html

Hit the fix my screen button and it can attempt to unstick the pixel.  If that doesn't work then the best things that you can do is to make an appointment at your local Apple Store Genius Bar:

http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/

and have the Geniuses look at it.  If it is under warranty still and it falls with in Apple's Guidelines for Pixel/Screen Replacement, they can replace the screen for you for free.

If it isn't under warranty there will be a parts and labor charge, but they will let you know this up front and you can decide if you want to go through with it.  That is one of the great things about Apple, free diagnostics even if you don't go through with the repair.  So technically you don't have anything to lose.  (Except your time, technically)


How to eject my external drive when my Mac refuses because of Spotlight? I have plugged an external disk to my Mac. Now, I want to eject it. But my Mac stubbornly refuses and says that an application may be using the disk.

I have not launched any app neither opened any file from the disk.

I have downloaded and installed the app What's Keeping Me? This app is quite nice. She tells me that the process mds is using my disk.

I have killed the process mds and several processes mdworker. These are for Spotlight. But such processes get spawned again.

How can I eject my disk from my Mac ?

I have Mac OS X 10.6.8.

Simply turn indexing off for the drive and erase the contents of the journal on the volume. To do so, open Terminal and enter the following command:

sudo mdutil -Ei off "/Volumes/Name_of_Drive"

You must run this procedure as an admin. Enter your password when prompted. A reboot may be required.

Alternatively, as suggested by Simon White, just shut down the machine and then unplug the drive. The caveat is that the drive will start indexing when connected again, however.


Bash problem Mac OS Terminal Hi when I pressed the up arrow to see the previous command, it rewrote the current command from half.

Example:

21 /usr/local/sphinx/etc >  /usr/local/sphinx/bin/search --config /usr/local/sphinx/etc/sphinx-blog.conf php

and when I press the up arrow, it shows:

21 /usr/local/sphinx/etc >  /usr/local/sudo /usr/local/sphinx/bin/indexer --config /usr/local/sphinx/etc/sphinx-blog.conf --all

and "/usr/local/" before SUDO is from previous command. Do you know where the problem would be? Here is my prompt setting:

PS1="\# \e[32;1m\w > \e[0m "

I tried around and finally managed to find the error: you need to use even more escape sequences in your PS1 - this should work:

export PS1="\# \[\e[32;1m\]\w > \[\e[0m\]"

note the additional \[ and \] that wrap the colour escape sequences.


Cannot boot from usb Recently I replaced the optical drive to SSD to make a fusion drive in my Macbook Pro 13 inch 2012. The hardware installation was successful and it is recognized in Disk Utility. I made a Sierra bootable drive on my 8GB USB drive with DiskMaker X.

The problem is I can't see the USB drive in the boot manager (press option when power up). I'm sure that the USB port in my mac is working. I can see my Time Machine drive in the boot manager and my USB drive after the boot from the original HDD with sierra.
I can't make a fusion drive when I can't boot from USB. What can I do?

Try creating the USB Installer via Terminal.app

Download Sierra from the Mac App Store and leave it in your Applications Folder
Reformat your USB stick to HFS+ Journaled and name it Untitled
From Terminal copy and paste this

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app

That's it!


Can I still set my account picture to an image from disk in OS X Mountain Lion? I can't seem to browse my hard disk for a custom image to use as my account picture anymore since installing OS X Mountain Lion.

The new popover shows that I can now only choose from the default set of pictures, pick something I've recently used, or take a new one with my Mac's iSight camera:

(I have no real inclination towards golf.)

There was always a Choose button in the panel dialog in previous versions of OS X, but now it's gone. Is there no way to browse my disk for a custom image anymore on Mountain Lion, or is there hopefully a defaults switch somewhere that I need to flip to enable it again?

You can drag in any picture from the Finder into the Preference Pane to change the custom image. Not as convenient as using the Open Dialog though...


What are Hot corners in macOS? I just got a new Mac and while addressing my screen saver I was prompted about hot corners. What are they and how should they be used?

Hot Corners is a feature of macOS that lets you assign instant actions for when you move the mouse pointer to any one of the four corners of your Desktop.

Hot Corners can lead you to pretty powerful workflows using just the mouse cursor, such as:

Instantly showing/hiding the Dashboard.
Putting the display to sleep
Showing the Desktop
Displaying notifications by opening Notification Center
Showing/hiding the Launchpad
Showing/hiding the Mission Control.

The flexibility of doing these tasks without moving your hand from the mouse/trackpad can lead to faster and easier workflows.

Hot Corners can be configured by going to System Preferences app → Desktop & Screen Saver → Hot Corners... or System Preferences app → Mission Control → Hot Corners....

For more details, go through the Macworld article, What’s hot about OS X’s Hot Corners.


imovie picture-in-picture remove bottom border I have a white movie clip that I am embedding inside a white background as picture-in-picture.  Although I have no border selected, the movie clip retains a small border on the bottom.  How do I ensure there is absolutely no border in the clip?

You will probably need to crop your source video, which is quite simple to do. Here is a screenshot showing approximately what you're working with:

To crop the clip, first select the clip in the timeline. Then, click the  icon above the video preview, select "Crop to Fill", and resize the rectangle as desired. To prevent it from snapping to the borders, hold the Command key as you drag. Below is an example of what this might look like—though I've cropped it much more than you will, most likely.

Finally, here's what it should look like (I've selected the picture-in-picture tool to demonstrate the bounding box of the clip):


Tablets and SSD degradation Does the iPad use any type of controller for drive wear leveling? It seems like Sandforce is the only player in the field.

Apple iPad does not use an SSD. It uses a flash based drive.

UPDATE: In response to the differences between SSD's and Flash Drives, here is the following excerpt explaining the difference.

‘Flash Drives’ are a generic term which used for anything from USB memory sticks to SSDs. An USB flash drive uses lower quality low performance NAND flash with just 1 or 2 channels. Its durable, cheap but slow. An SSD on the other hand uses high performance NAND with mutliple channels. ( 12 or 8 is not uncommon), and there is a  memory controller on a SSD which is much better and both can store data even if its not powered.
Flash drives (USB) are slow storage devices where as SSDs are high performance drives. They’re much faster than normal HDDs.

A USB flash drive uses USB, which is generally a slower interface than the Serial ATA interface. A USB flash drive is generally thought of as a removable device by the OS and is managed as such. A SSD is treated similarly to a hard drive, and is often recognized by your OS as a type of fixed disk.

USB flash drives and solid-state drives are both based on flash memory. Most of the flash memory use  NAND memory, which are available as single-level cells (SLC) and multi-level cells (MLC). Single-level cells store a single bit in a single memory cell, whereas multi-level cells store more than a single bit in a single memory cell. The MLC accomplishes this by allowing each memory cell to store multiple electrical states, therefore, allow one MLC cell to store more information than one SLC cell. For example, a MLC that uses 4-levels can store 2 bits of information.  MLC are cheaper, as they can store more information per memory cell than SLC. Cheap, large SSDs and USB flash memory use MLC disks, although not necessarily. MLCs sounds great in terms of storage density, but it does have a catch. MLCs are  slower than SLC. Therefore, the large capacity USB flash drives and SSDs tend to be slower. Solid-State Drives (SSDs) have no moving parts, high reliability and longer life-span than traditional hard drives

Taken from here


Enforce dedicated graphics on MBP 2010 My MBP (mid 2010) is suffering from the Intermittent black screen or loss of video issue. More specifically, it may happen that when switching from dedicated to integrated graphics, the screen goes black. Only a reboot helps in this case.

So I tried to disable the automatic graphics switching (via "System Preferences" -> "Energy Saver"). Nevertheless, graphics switching still occurs; I can't say when or what's causing that, though. It always appears to be the case after waking up from sleep / suspend-to-ram. As per gfxCardStatus, "Dynamic Switching" is enabled then, which is exactly what I seeked to prevent via the systems preferences.

Is there a way to permanently disable the dynamic graphics switching and only work with the discrete graphics? I wouldn't mind the shortened battery lifetime if that helped to prevent the black screen issue to occur.

Can you try and see if executing this in the terminal changes modes?

<route to app>/gfxCardStatus.app/Contents/MacOS/gfxCardStatus --discrete

Other available commands are --dynamic and --integrated. If that works, a workaround solution would be to automatically launch that command on wakeup.


Resetting application window size I would like to know how to reset a user set window size for an application to the one chosen by the developer. Are these settings usually stored in some plist file?

It depends on the Application, but mostly it's stored in the defaults database. You can check for example Mail.app with:

defaults read com.apple.mail DefaultWindowState

If You do not know the key just grep with "window" the output from defaults read BUNDLE_ID
where BUNDLE_ID is Your application bundle identifier which can be read like this:

APP_PATH="/Applications/Mail.app"
defaults read "$APP_PATH/Contents/Info.plist" CFBundleIdentifier

You can try to change keys in plists using defaults command or locate plist file in ~/Library/Preferences directory and change it manually.


Mac Application to defrag my Mac drive I work on media files as per my profession. I find my Mac (Mac Lion) going slower day by day. I think it will be beneficial to defrag the drive but didn't find any Apple tool for it. I want a an effective third party Mac defragmenter for my Mac drive.

Speed of access on HFS+ drives is not that affected by fragmentation unlike Windows file systems as OSX will do some defragmentation. A third party investigation is here.

You might be better off checking there is enough free space for new files.

There are some utilities to do defragmentation like iDefrag


Show application switcher on all connected displays Is there a way to see the application switcher (the one pops up when hitting ⌘+⇥ / CMD+TAB) on all connected displays?

To my knowledge, you can't make the default application switcher do that. 3rd party apps definitely can... but many don't seem to do it.

The only third party app I know that does this is:
Contexts (~$10), but it's also pretty different from the default app switcher.

Another one I wanted to mention is Witch (~$14), that is closer to looking like the native application switcher, but isn't able to show up in all of your screens. It can however be shown in the screen with the active window or in the same screen with your mouse pointer.

Both of these have trial versions available.

The big thing for me with these third party application switchers is that it is possible to hide applications from them.

For example... if you use Path Finder, you may want to hide Finder, so you don't accidentally open it. Or if an application just doesn't have the "hide dock icon" option, meaning that it will show up in the application switcher by default, you can hide it in the third party application switcher. Many reasons for why you'd want to hide an app from the application switcher.

I personally use Witch and Ubar, which is a Dock replacement that also can hide applications... Contexts comes with its own dock replacement (sort of). As a heavy Spaces user, I really like how the "Sidebar", as it's called in Contexts, can divide the open apps into groups by spaces. Makes it pretty nice and organized.

The thing I could never get used to with Contexts was the actual application switcher and its vertical list style (with no option to make it horizontal). I spent way more time looking at the list trying to find the right app compared to the native horizontal style, which is not available in Contexts.

As a bonus I just wanted to mention HyperSwitch, which mainly brings really good previews to either its own custom app switcher or extends the native app switcher to show a preview, but as far as this question goes, it will not extend the application switcher to multiple screens.


How to make Chrome trust self signed certificates? I have followed these instructions (available from Wayback Machine in case they disappear) to add the certificate of my Asus Router to the keychain but Chrome still refuses to trust it, with the error message "NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID". However, Safari accepts it.

I have spent a lot of time on Google looking for answers and there are a lot of articles about this but they seem inconclusive (and many are old).

So how do I make this work?

In case it matters, the router is available both at 192.168.1.1 and router.asus.com (in both cases I use the port 8443).

Bonus: How do I make this certificate work from the outside (both in the case of a FQDN as well as when connecting using the IP-number).

The web page you linked to is old and now incorrect.

Chrome does not use the MacOS keychain any more. Safari does use this so that is why it works.

For more details see this answer.


Secure delete an erased file using same file Okay, so I have a late 2013 model retina macbook pro. A couple a days ago i placed a sensitive file on the desktop, and later deleted it by emptying the trashcan. I then read that was not the way to get rid of a sensitive file. I still have a copy on the file stored, on my other computer, and I was wondering if putting the same file in the same place (the desktop) would overwrite the old file I had deleted which now is allocated as "free space". I can use disk utility because I have an SSD. Then I can do a secure delete in order to erase it completely.

There is no way to guarantee to put the data in the 'same place', no matter where in the filesystem you put it.

Hard drives just don't work that way. They will put specific data anywhere they like [or to an algorithm unfathomable to mere users]

To be reasonably certain of overwriting the data [with as much certainty as you can have without destroying the drive] you would use Erase Free Space - which you will have noticed you cannot do on an SSD - though the way SSDs use their storage is completely unlike a HD; they try to allocate writes all across their memory-space to even out the wear. This makes recovery of a deleted file a much more difficult task than with an HD, but not impossible.

As far as I'm aware [& nothing ever seems certain in these things] the best way to 'erase free space' on an SSD is to fill the drive with random data - anything, a movie file copied over & over til the disk is full, then delete it all again.

That will have written over the previous data at least.
Repeat ad nauseum for multiple pass erase [if that even really has any meaning for an SSD.


My spacebar is broken, want help remapping it to my Option key I recently broke my space-key I've copied the space and I paste it to get the space when I'm typing. Can I get help mapping my key with Karabiner for Mac or any other key-mapping software?

Using Karabiner is fairly simple if what you're trying to accomplish has a built-in remap option. You create a profile for the keyboard you want to remap (from the menu bar icon) and then open Karabiner’s Preferences page. From there go to the “Change Key” tab and select the remaps that you want to include.

If there are no built-in options to swap/remap the space bar to suit your preference (it's been a little while since I've had to use Karabiner so I can't remember the complete list of swaps) there is an extensive guide here which will show you how to create your own key-swap option by editing an .xml file:

https://www.keychatter.com/2014/08/04/how-to-remap-keys-in-osx-using-keyremap4macbook-now-karabiner/ -- (Scroll down to the "Advanced Remapping" Section)

(I included the link only as the full article steps are too long to post in a stackexchange answer)


Turning on/off Airplane mode on iPhone X from a desktop computer Is there a tool similar to the Android debug bridge (adb) for iOS? Specifically, if connected to a computer via USB, is it possible to turn on and off Airplane mode with some command, interface or tool?

I have tried libimobiledevice. However, they don't have support for Airplane mode toggling.

libimobiledevice (and technically, usbmuxd as well), like you mentioned, is the functional equivalent of adb in the iOS world, in the sense that it allows you to communicate with your iOS devices over USB.

libimobiledevice doesn't  provide any API that I know of which allows you to toggle Airplane mode.

However, what you can use is UI Automation on an iOS device. You can create a script which would simulate a user opening the Settings app and toggling Airplane Mode.

If your machine is a Mac, you can use Appium (a framework which builds on top of UI Automation). In Appium, you'll first have to create a test automation session, and then toggle Airplane mode. There is sample code on the Internet which explains how you can do this.

If your machine is not a Mac, you can still use Appium but with a twist - you can use commercial tools like Appium Studio, Quamotion WebDriver or xcuitrunner.


iTunes Match error 4010 when adding songs to iCloud I have been using iTunes Match for 6 months or so and have been reasonably happy with the service. However over the past 2-3 days I get an error when I try to add new songs to iCloud:

We could not complete your iTunes Store request.
An unknown error occurred (4010).

There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.

I have restarted iTunes, rebooted my Mac but it made no difference.

Researching online shows lots of people going through all kinds of steps such as blowing away their whole iTunes library to fix this - often without success.  As this is not a new problem I am hoping someone will know the proper fix for it.

Thanks in advance.

So what worked for me was to sign out of iTunes Store then sign back in.  This will disable iTunes Match. You then need to turn Match back on. It looks like it is starting completely from scratch (!) but it doesn't and instead adds all songs to iCloud that were missing.

I had 3 albums to add and I had to go through this process for each one.  I am assuming that something has changed or gone wrong on Apple's server side for it to start behaving this way when it previously worked fine.


My MacBook Air won't stay on unless it its plugged in My MacBook Air will not keep charge unless it is plugged in. However it started right after I spilled some water on it. Went in through the Trackpad and keyboard. I thought it was completely dead, but I then plugged it in and it turned on. But it does shut off when you unplug it. If I keep it plugged in, it will not run certain games as it will get too hot and shut off. Everything works fine, Except for the battery. It only charges up to 20% and the status of the battery is "Replace Now" I suspected that maybe it was just the battery and nothing else was wrong, but I went to the apple store and they did a quick check and they said that I am lucky it even still turns on because of all of the damages. They also said it will take as LITTLE as $800 to fix it. They claim it is more than the battery. But I suspect that battery replacement will fix it. Maybe not completely but at least to a point of it being semi functional. But what do you think? Is it just the battery? Or something more?

This is typical when the current isn’t enough to run the computer.

If you hadn’t had liquid damage, I’d recommend the following:

If you think of a battery storing electrons as a tank stores water - the current is how much volume can come out of the tap. The voltage is the pressure at which the water exits the tap. The battery being “full” or charged is simply the total volume in the tank being “full” regardless of how much pressure and/or volume can come out right now.

Take it in for service or plan to replace the battery would be the logical next steps when your computer doesn’t work with the battery it has.

Since you have liquid damage, I wouldn’t spend any money on the battery since corrosion is likely and you should either pay for a total rebuild of this Mac or keep a good backup until it no longer works at all and replace it.

No sound (speakers/jack) + microphone's dead after spilling water

Like the linked question - it’s not clear if your battery is the problem or your logic board is pulling too much current or has other problems. Liquid damage can do that - break all sorts of things or multiple sorts of things. The liquid also could be totally external and no damage whatsoever - you have to open and inspect all the parts to know and that’s about an hour of trained technician time in most cases to open / look / close everything.


Wiped my Macbook keyboard and trackpad with an antibacterial wipe. It's affected the cursor when there is load on the cpu. How can I fix this? I have turned the Macbook off and left it for 24 hours and turned it back on three (days) separate times. Using a USB mouse when the Macbook is turned on works well but as soon as a load is on the cpu the fluttering starts again and the computer is unusable.

Is my only resolve to leave the macbook for weeks and hope the remaining liquid evaporates?

Drying out is “hopefully” a good solution if it’s not coming into contact with electrical connections. However, this is rarely the case.

How to log in using external keyboard on MacBook Pro
I got Lysol in my headphone jack. How should I get it out?

The problem with whatever cleaner you used is not the water; it’s what’s in the water and gets left behind after it dries and what those chemicals do to electrical components (distilled water doesn’t conduct electricity).  Below is an image of the residue from liquid spill on a PCB. Many of the ingredients are not only corrosive but also conductive (i.e. potassium hydroxide found in Lysol).

This means not only can the liquid short out circuits as it comes into contact with them, it can eat away at the metal solder connections as well.

You may be able to get away with it and not have much or any real damage to your Mac.  However, if you’ve left it for quite some time and the problems still persist, you’ve got damage that can only be addressed by a pro.


how to fix permission on default apps in el capitan Tr

Trouble in permission How fix it? permission in group wheel = read only full permission = only system group

You cannot modify system files/applications in El Capitan due to System Integrity Protection (SIP): some system locations are completely locked unless you boot into recovery  and disable SIP through csrutil in the command line ('csrutil disable')

See http://arstechnica.co.uk/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-the-ars-technica-review/ for more.


How to get pictures from all sub folders in to 1 single folder? I copied everything from a camera and now I have hundreds of folders like this:

Backup 01/AHJSKNXIPD/001.jpg
Backup 01/AHJSKNXIPD/002.jpg
Backup 01/AHJSKNXIPD/003.jpg
Backup 01/NQOPSORHEN/001.jpg
Backup 01/QUOZNDBEJR/001.jpg
Backup 03/EIRNEKQLDK/001.jpg
Backup 02/RNEJDKSOWE/001.jpg

Just an example (there are actually 100's, maybe 1000's).

How can I get all pictures in to a single folder so that they're easier to go through and sort?

The following find command will do this for you:

find ./Backup*/ -type f -exec mv {} ./all \;

The ./Backup* says to look in all the directories that start with the word 'Backup'. The -type f says to look for all files; the -exec switch executes the following shell command, which moves the found files (represented by {}) to a directory you should create (in this example, I called it "all"; create this with mkdir all). Note the escaped semicolon at the end of the line -- this is essential to tell the find command that this is the end of the -exec option.


Automator Keeps Opening Multiple Untitled Files Exactly what the title says. Whenever I open Automator, by clicking on its icon, it keeps opening multiple files (Untitled, Untitled 2, Untitled 3). When I attempt to close them it asks me if I want to save changes for each one. This is incredibly annoying. Does anyone know how to stop this?

Delete the Saved State files.

Quit Automator.
Bring Finder to the front.
Hit  Cmd ⌘   N  for New Window, then  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   G  for Go To...
Copy/paste ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Automator.savedState
Delete the folder contents.


iOS 9 and iOS 8 size difference Wired reported today that the new iOS9 software will only be 1.3BG in size. A great deal smaller than the 4.6GB of iOS8.

My question is quite simple - how is this possible? Was there a great deal of redundant code in iOS8?

Source - http://www.wired.com/2015/06/ios-9-new-features/?mbid=social_fb

The space needed to download the first part of the installer was optimized. It's possible to engineer for any number of trade offs - in this case, work was done to reduce the footprint of the download.

I haven't reverse engineered the installer, but my hunch is that iOS 8 added new features to allow better cleaning and update hooks so this is more a feature of iOS 8 which runs the new installer than 9 being so much smaller. I'm sure 9 is somewhat smaller, but this is a big jump as you have noticed.


How to setup OS X Server to not to be accessed via localhost, but other different host? I have installed MAMP on my MacBook, and I use localhost to manage my website repositories. Previously once I installed OS X Server I was not able to manage my websites because there was OS X Server. Is it possible to configure OS X Server under the different name than localhost (example: osxhost)?

I think that the issue may be that both MAMP and OS X Apache (VIA the Server.app) are both listening on the default port 80. If you use SCUTIL to set the host name it will change the hostname for all servers on that Mac, I believe.

What I would do is check the settings in MAMP and make sure it is not listening on port 80 and if it is change it to something else. I believe if you restore defaults it will listen on a different port. Then you will have two independent web servers each listening on a different port. The server.app web server will listen on port 80 and MAMP on whatever port it is set to.

Now you can get to the MAMP site by adding a colon and the port number after localhost. Assuming MAMP is set to port 8080 it would look like this:

http://localhost:8080

and for the server.app server instance:

http://localhost

If you don't specify a port, it defaults to port 80.


Mac Excel Control Shift RIght Arrow It's been a while since I used Excel on a PC.

In Excel on a PC, I believe if you have a set of data and want to select all the cells in the same row from where the cursor is to the last cell below a set of data, you could use Ctrl - Shift - ←. On a Mac (Excel 2011) this selects all the cells until the end of the entire row.

Using Excel 2011 (Mac), how can I select all the empty cells in a row until beneath a set of data?

The reason for doing this is if I want to copy the current row and paste that to another row of data. I should be able to copy the current row, then hit down, then (I thought) Ctrl - Shift - ←, then paste and I would paste in another set of data.

I found it:  Fn + Shift + Option (Alt) + ←


i've deleted some Keychain certificates and now Internet browsing is almost impossible Background

A few months ago, for reasons I am unaware of, Safari started to ask me for a password when I first opened it, and then periodically after that (about once every 3 new tabs I opened). I found that to get rid of this message I could either enter the correct password or simply click "cancel" twice.

This problem is documented here (I'm not the OP on these):
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2537287?start=0&tstart=0 and here:
http://b.rthr.me/wp/?p=356

As one can imagine, this was very annoying and lead me to take action. I followed every piece of advice that I could (set date and time to automatic, reset Safari, try Chrome etc) and the problem still persisted.

However, I read somewhere that if I opened Keychain Access and deleted everything (!) then it would kind of 'reset' itself and work as normal again. Reluctantly, I tried this. It did not work... it made things worse.

The Problems I Have Now

Every webpage I go on, Safari brings down a notification saying "Safari can't identify the identity of the website website-name-here.com". If I click continue, I have to enter a password and the page loads (partially - see below). If I click cancel, the page will not load.
For some websites, some of the content is blocked. For example, on Google Maps, each and every 'map tile' just appears as a little blue square with a question mark in it. A question mark like this also appears, for example, where the 'user icon' should be (next to the username) of a user on this site (but not for every single user). This 'blocking effect' also means Netflix won't play anything that I've tried.

Additional Notes

I'm on a Macbook 3,1 (from 2007) with a broken superdrive and I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.8.
It seems as if I can't even upload images to help describe the problem. If I try to upload a screenshot, I get "security reasons, framing is not allowed".

Unfortunately, based on your comments, it looks like your only option is to start afresh.
* Backup everything first (use Time Machine or just clone it using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner)
* Do a fresh install of OS X Leopard. You can do it from an external SuperDrive or using another Mac that has a SuperDrive, with this one put in Target Disk Mode
* Run Software Update to bring the system up-to-date
* Use Migration Assistant (under the Applications->Utilities folder) to bring over your applications and data from the backup

Also see Reinstalling Mac OS X without a DVD Drive - Target Disk Mode


Can you set specific apps to NOT auto update on iOS? I have auto update on for apps on my iPhone iOS 9.3 but I'd like to set certain apps not to update. Is that possible?

No, it's not currently possible to set auto update for specific apps.  You have to turn Auto Update off at the App Store level then review each update notice you receive to determine if you want to update that app or not.


OS 10.10 not connecting through proxy specified by its Internet name My office proxy has always been specified with its IP address and everything worked fine. However, recently, the proxy was changed to use its Internet name, in the form xxxx-y.zzzz.com

Since then, I have been unable to connect. I keep getting infinite authentication dialog boxes, but still doesn't connect. I've opened /etc/hosts to add its Internet name and map it to its IP address. It is still failing.

However, if I change back to the legacy numeric iIP address, it connects fine. Problem is that the legacy IP address will soon be discontinued as it has issues.

The alphabetic xxxx-y.zzzz.com is a hostname, not an ip address, and hostnames almost always resolve to an ip address. You should try doing an nslookup in Terminal.app to confirm whether or not you've got the right information in your hosts file.

$ nslookup xxxx-y.zzzz.com

Non-authoritative answer:
xxxx-y.zzzz.com canonical name = p9p.geo.asbs.yahoodns.net.
Name:    p9p.geo.asbs.yahoodns.net
Address: 98.139.134.174

Then in /etc/hosts confirm you've got:

98.139.134.174   xxxx-y.zzzz.com

something tells me xxxx-y.zzzz.com is not your real hostname, but you get the idea.


Does Watch Series 5 work with iPhone SE? On Apple's fine print it says:

  Apple Watch Series 5 requires an iPhone 6s or later with iOS 13 or later.

So I'm not sure whether this implies iPhone SE as well.

Yes, the iPhone SE is supported by Apple Watch Series 5 as it was released after the iPhone 6s in March 2016, as long as the device is running iOS 13 or later.

I can confirm the device functions perfectly.


How do i add icon on .sh file using terminal I need to change .sh file icon only for the single file how can i do it with terminal

Easiest thing to do is is to wrap your script in an app. Platypus (https://sveinbjorn.org/platypus) is an easy to use app that can help you do this (and allow you run the script as an app).

Also worth mentioning you may want to look at iconutil (man iconutil) it will change a folder (normally with the extension of .iconset) of png images (icon_16x16.png, icon_16x16@2x.png, icon_32x32.png, icon_32x32@2x.png, icon_128x128.png, icon_128x128@2x.png, icon_256x256.png, icon_256x256@2x.png, icon_512x512.png, icon_512x512@2x.png) into a proper .icns bundle.


MacBook Pro locked using Find My Mac I bought a MacBook pro from a guy who I met in online . Everything looked perfect at the time of purchase.
But later, I  connected it to the Internet and all of sudden it got a locked screen over there. When I tried contacting the seller he seems off and gave no response. I feel suspicious now and planning to take it Apple store today for further actions. In the worst case if it’s stolen, they may help to find the owner. I am also leaving the country in one day.

Any other suggestions welcome to help me either unlock it or reach the owner.

Edit:  It seems like a stolen Mac only . My bad purchasing it. Is there any other way I could find owner myself so at least return to them since I have less than 24 hours for my travel?

Unfortunately, it seems that you purchased a system that had Find My Mac enabled. This leaves you at the mercy of the iCloud account owner to not lock the system. I doubt there is anything Apple can/will do to help you unlock it. They may be able to help locate the account owner.

Advice for next time: Always check System Preferences to ensure that Find My Mac is disabled before handing over any money. To be completely safe, boot to Recovery Mode by pressing Cmd+r at the startup chime. Enter Disk Utility and format the Macintosh HD. Following that, use internet recovery to reinstall macOS.

That might seem like a lot of work, but it ensures that there is no malware on the system left behind by earlier users of the system, whether intentionally or otherwise.