Why does the home button in the iPhones have dedicated terminals? If you open an iPhone you will notice that the digitizer panel is connected to the motherboard by means of several ribbon cables. However the home button shows tho dedicated contact terminals.

Why didn’t they include the button in the ribbon cables? Is there an electrical reason for that? Or do you think is just a matter of cable routing. But in the latter case, why is it so difficult to redirect the terminals into the ribbon or, conversely, why don’t they use contact terminals for everything? They seem much more practical and space efficient.

Speculation as none of us are Apple engineers and if we were, I doubt they could freely talk about it.

But the most likely reason is that allows for separation of parts, easier assembly and a lower replacement cost. Had the home button, which in the pictured 4G iPhone is a simple button and not the newer fingerprint camera, been using a fpc, it would require a connector at the top like the others. The top of the iPhone is pretty full as is. It would also add another failure point in assembly as the flex cable at the top is likely to get pinched. And it would have likely been made part of the display assembly meaning a broken button would mean replacing a 100 + display.


iPhone Email client includes wrong Original Message in body of reply I'm using an iPhone 6, running iOS 9.2.1. Recently, I experienced an issue with my iPhone email client. I hit "Reply All" on an Email A, composed my reply message, and hit "Send," but the email that was sent had some very incorrect information.

The subject line in my reply email was correct: "Re: Subject A," and the sent message included the reply text that I had composed, but the Original Message (the text that is automatically included below my signature when I reply to an email) that the email client included in the reply was NOT Email A. It was a bizarre combination of Email A and a separate message, Email B, which happened to be the most recent email I had received. To illustrate, here is what the situation looked like:

EMAIL A

From: Person A
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2016 12:00 PM (Date/Time A)
To: Me
Subject: Subject A

"Message Text A"

PERSON A's SIGNATURE

EMAIL B

(Completely unrelated to Email A)
From: Person B
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2016 12:10 PM (Date/Time B)
To: Me
Subject: Subject B

"Message Text B"

PERSON B's SIGNATURE

EMAIL C

(My email in reply to Email A—this should have only included data from Email A)
From: Me
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2016 12:15 PM (Date/Time C)
To: Person A
Subject: Re: Subject A
"Message Text C"
MY SIGNATURE
[Auto-populated reply header:] On Jun 1, 2016, at 12:10 PM (Date/Time B), Person A wrote:
"Message Text B"

I'm baffled by what could have caused this. As you can imagine, this caused some miscommunication, including some severe privacy concerns, and I cannot have this happen again.

It seems like when the email client was preparing Email C for me to enter my reply, it may have somehow linked Email B to Email A. Any ideas on what could have caused this, or what may have happened?

I had this same issue and it turned out to be related the the "threading" of conversations. Turns out it was grouping everything with the same subject and grabbing a random one to reply to. Turn off threading and conversation grouping in settings and this problem went away.


Compare Excel Spreadsheets I would like to compare two excel spreadsheets. I have found many Windows-based solution but nothing for Mac OS X.
Are you aware of

a build-in way to perform a diff (didn't find much in the help)
a standalone tool (for Mac)
an online tool (data is not sensitive, comparing in the cloud would be no problem)

At the moment the only solution I got is exporting to a comma separated file and compare with diff on the command line. I was thinking to write a small Perl script but before investing too much time I wanted to be sure I am not missing a simpler option.

Usually what I would do is copy the Excel spreadsheets into Word, then use Word's Merge Documents feature (might have been Merge/Compare or simply Compare Documents previously to 2011) to see the differences between them. Depending on how big your spreadsheet is, however, that might not work for you.


A security update locked OSX.GenieoDropper.A I need to launch an app but OSX recognise it as a malware.

While launching this app, OSX says "app will damage this computer. You should eject this disk image. It contain OSX.GenieoDropper.A".

Normally, to bypass this alert, the method was to right-click the icon and select open when pushing alt, but neither this seems working, so how can I bypass this alert?

Sorted: type in the terminal

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine

leave a space after "quarantine" and then drag & drop the .app file.

Then press Return...et voila'!

The -cr flag is for operating systems before (and including) Mavericks. For newer operating systems (Yosemite & El Capitan) you must specify the flag -d along with the attribute (com.apple.quarantine) you wish to remove.


ios offline reading list not working Safari has a built in feature called reading list, for a few years I used it as an alternative to bookmarks for articles. When I was looking at storage usage I saw that safari has 200mb+ for offline reading list, therefore the pages must have been chaeched. However, when I turn my phone into airplane mode and try to access any of the pages from reading list it prompts me an error 'The operation couldn;t be completed. Operation not permitted'
I tried to search the web for troubleshooting the reading list and the only suggestion I found was to make sure that enable downloading for reading list using cellular is on and it was on. I am not sure what I can do in order to fix it.

On my iPhone 6 I need to turn off wifi and cellular data to read my reading list offline. If I have an Internet connection it will try  to load the page from the Internet connection instead of the cached page.


Accessing Nokia N900 ssh via USB My MacBook Pro runs El Capitan. I have a Nokia N900 connected via USB. I am trying to access remotely its shell by the ssh protocol. How may I?

After some time, I have been able to solve my issue.

Installed OpenSSH (server) from Application Manager
Connected the N900 to the Mac via USB and selected PC-Suite Mode
On the N900, as root, issued ifup usb0 (activates USB)
On the N900, as root, issued /etc/init.d/ssh start (starts OpenSSH)
On the Mac, in Network Preferences (under System Preferences), selected the N900 and configured it manually to have the IP Address 192.168.2.14 and the Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0 (at this point the N900 appears as correctly connected)
On the Mac, in Terminal, issued ssh root@192.168.2.15

At this point a confirmation is requested and I am prompted for the root password. Connection is then established.

I post all this in the hope of being useful to somebody, maybe with a different device. To be honest I do not understand fully all the passages, especially where I set the IP Address for the N900 as ...14 on the Mac, while by issuing ifconfig on the N900 the reported Address is ...15, and this has to be used in the final ssh command.

If anybody has comments which may me help to understand better what I have been doing, I would appreciate that.


Changing color of folders, files, execs on iTerm2 on iTerm2 bash

If there any way to change the color when 'ls' so i can quickly know if it's a directory, a file, a script, exec?

Just like the Ubuntu terminal so you know a directory color for example its green

Thank you!

You can use the G option of ls, which takes its colours from LSCOLORS. To always use the G option with ls, add an alias to a sourced file.

alias ls="ls -G"


I am getting this message - Could not save as ... because write access was not granted I am getting this message in PS CC. I normally use a PC for all of my editing but my PC is down, so I am using a MAC. This is so foreign to me. I am trying to save a file that I imported in LR.

That sounds to me like a file permissions issue:

Check if the file you are trying to open in Photoshop is currently open anywhere else (ie. another program is using it, hence locking write access).
Right-click the file in Finder and check if your user account has full access privileges to manipulate the file, if not, add them

Hopefully those two hints may get you closer to your desired outcome. Let me know how you get on.


Use desktop as camera on Mountain Lion Hopefully this is not too difficult;

I have an Elgato Game Capture HD, which I am using to capture an HDMI signal. What I want to do is take either the onscreen capture window or the USB signal into the computer and use it as a camera on OS X Mountain Lion in ProPresenter 5.

I downloaded Desktop Presenter, but I do not know where the signal from the program is going to, nor do I know if this will even act as a camera.

Any suggestions? It needs to be recognized the same way the FaceTime Camera is recognized (as a camera).

What you're after is a virtual webcam software, such as ManyCam:

  Draw over your video window or screencast your desktop online with our software for your webcam


How can I get my own apps onto my jailbroken iPhone? I want to be able to test the apps I am creating on my jaikbroken iPhone 3Gs, and I want to know how I can get my apps from xCode onto my device without a developer account.

This article really helped me.

I'm not sure if it's still that relevant though. I remember just setting my xCode to "Don't code sign" or something similar. I can't really check it right now, I'll get back to this. Make sure you have appsync installed on your iPhone though, that is a must.

After that you might be able to run the app on the iPhone, but you won't be able to debug it live.


CCC reporting physical problem with a drive volume even though the drive is working I'm trying to create a read-only disk image archive of a High Sierra installation to later clone to other hard drives. I have tested the source drive and it is fine. No failed sectors or other indicators of a failing drive. I used DriveDx to perform these tests.

However, when I start the archive in CCC 3.5.7 on an early 2008 MacBook running Lion, I am greeted with

  CCC has detected a physical problem with one of your volumes.

  The backup task is still running, and CCC will copy as many files as possible. Please note:

  The first error occurred while trying to access:

  "/Volumes/Macintosh HD [Source]/.PKInstallSandboxManager-SystemSoftware/0A988266-8955-4100-BFD3-A3DA35DA92BB.sandbox/Root/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Info.plist"
  CCC will make two attempts to back up damaged files
  Physical errors may cause the backup task to take longer than normal.
  You can stop the backup task at any time. CCC will pick up where it left off the next time you run this task.

  Please click on the "?" button below to learn more about resolving media errors.

Why am I receiving this error? Will it affect future drive restores from this image archive?

In the end, I settled with Disk Utility. I know that CCC is typically faster since it copies in chunks but my goal was to create a one-time archive of an OS and then clone it to other drives whenever necessary so the benefit of CCC is less noticeable.

I found a forum post on Apple's forum about an issue that seemed similar or possibly the same. The accepted answer to that post suggested the older version of CCC was looking for mach_kernel files in the wrong place on the drive. Apparently, Yosemite and later now keep those files in a different location. Those particular kernel files are crucial to the boot process and the computer will not detect the clone partition as bootable unless those files are there. This explanation might explain my troubles since I'm using CCC 3.5.7 (unsupported) on Lion and the operating systems I was trying to image were High Sierra and El Capitan. Unfortunately, that forum post is lost in my browser history.

I never did try a new version of CCC because my early 2008 MacBook is incapable of running anything newer and I don't really have access to a newer Mac at the moment. I reverted to using disk utility which worked quite well. I created a read-only disk image and then, when I want to clone, mount the disk image and create a restore from the mounted image to the partition on the target hard disk.

Running Lion 10.7.5 on an early 2008 MacBook. CCC version 3.5.7.


Safari extensions have suddenly stopped working (10.13.4) All of a sudden this morning my extensions stopped working. The extensions preference pane is empty and says "No extensions".
All the extensions are left in ~/Library/Safari/Extensions, and if open one of them to install it says (roughly translated):

Safari can not install this extension
An error occured when the ”NinjaKit” extension was installed.

I tried restoring the entire ~/Library/Safari folder and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist from a backup from yesterday when everything was working fine, but that did not solve it.
The issue may stem from wrong permissions somewhere, since if I try to edit the Extensions.plist file manually it says "Unlocking failed for an unknown reason." when I try to save it. I tried sudo chmod -R 0777 ~/Library/Safari/Extensions but that did not solve the issue either. The file is not locked from the "Get Info" view in Finder.

The permissions issue ended up being the problem that prevented me from using extensions.

For some reason, it keeps the weird time machine permissions (you can't edit a time machine backup etc.) when I copy over the Safari folder through Finder. It shouldn't do this and never has for me before this.

But I solved it by instead copying it over through the terminal, using cp, which doesn't preserve any metadata unless I specify that it should do that. After doing that, I had to reinstall the extensions (and thus lost some extension data) but at least they work now.

EDIT: I was able to recover the lost data, from a backup of ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.Extensions.plist


Command Line Tools Difference? Is there a difference between the command line tools that come with xcode and the ones installed with xcode-select? If I install xcode and then run xcode-select --install will the ones installed with xcode be overwritten?

Xcode has command line tools embedded in its application bundle that are used by the Xcode IDE as needed and are separate and apart from the Command Line Tools for Xcode package, that can be downloaded by itself, which installs outside of the application bundle. The separate package can be installed and use without having the Xcode application installed.  As to versioning, I believe as each version of Xcode is available a corresponding version of the Command Line Tools for Xcode package is also made available and for what's included in common should be the same versions.  When installing the Command Line Tools for Xcode package with Xcode installed it does not overwrite the Xcode.app bundled command line tools, they are updated as Xcode is.


How to set the autocorrection and dictionary to the same language in Mac OS X Mavericks How can I change the system to stop making corrections like so:

Please notice that the two words on the left have the dotted red line indicating that they are spelled in the wrong way.

Then, if I click the option "Look up" on the contextual menu on the right, the dictionary says the word is like on the left, where it is marked with the red line indicating the wrong spelled word.

I would like to set my system to use the same dictionary on the "look up" option and auto correction options.

I also found this post that may be the solution to the problem, but it seems it only applies to Lion.

Assuming you are running OS X Mavericks you have to open System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Text, if you are looking for the settings shown in the link you provided. On the right there is a drop down menu, that let you configure the language priority like mentioned in blog post.


Calendar won't let me add new events on my iPhone Suddenly my iPhone won't let me add new events to my calendar. In the upper right hand corner of the 'month' calendar there are 3 symbols.

A rectangular box with 2 lines underneath.
A magnify glass.
A '+'
The first two are red and active
The third one is gray and inactive.

I've read solutions to problems from others, but nothing has helped.
I also have and iPad, and the calendar on it works fine. I have compared settings on both products, and they seem to be set the same way.

I had the same problem, went into the calendar, tapped on "Calendars" in the bottom center, here there were two calendars listed - holidays, and birthdays.  I pulled down on these items (like scrolling, the screen refreshed then showed 5 calendars.  From some reason I-cloud was not selected, I selected this and all the calendars listed became active.

I went back to the calendar view (by month) and am now able to add events.

BTW, none of the other options I have tried worked, only this method.  Under general settings both my iCloud and Yahoo calendars were active, but under the actual program they were not.  Don't waste your time in the general settings change it from the program.


Can I download a list of all apps I've PAID apple for? I've had an iPhone or iPod touch for years, and have bought tons of little apps, some free, some pay for.

I'd like to get a list of all the apps that I've paid for over the years, as there is one I'm trying to find, that I can't remember it's name!

When I browse my purchase history, it's got tons of free items listed as well, as I've installed tons of apps.

I'd like to download this list, and filter it to ignore things that were free. I only want to see things I've actually paid for.

Is this possible?

Note - I do not want to have to browse through my purchase history... I'd like to just install an app, or whatever I need to do to get a csv or spreadsheet of my purchases. It'd be nice if it included iTunes movie rentals as well ;-) Thanks!

Ok.  It can be done, but the way that I've discovered isn't easy.

I did try to get the info by intercepting iOS app store traffic but the data I got wasn't very clear.  Instead I intercepted traffic from an older version of iTunes that still has app store functionality in it.

Once you've fired up your fiddler (requires some setup to decode HTTPS traffic) or whatever intercepting proxy you're going to use, open the older version of iTunes you installed and navigate through the menu Account -> Purchased and then click Apps in the upper right-hand corner.

In your proxy monitor look for a request that starts with:

https://client-api.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStorePlatform.woa/wa/lookup?id=

There may be more than one of these requests, so make sure you grab the responses for all of them.  The response is issued in JSON format.  Luckily that JSON contains the data you're looking for...

Filtering JSON is beyond the scope of my answer right now.  It's getting late.  You might have an easier time using grep on some formatted JSON?  I'll see if I can give you the rest tomorrow.


My Notes app accidentally got deleted from my iPhone 4s and I cannot locate it in the app list in iTunes when I synch. Any ideas? I accidentally deleted the Notes app and cannot find it (although when I do a spotlight search it does come up).  Any ideas how I restore it to my screen?  Thanks!

It sounds like it's not deleted, but just off of the screen. I've had this happen to a few of my apps. What I always do to fix it is go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout. You'll get your Notes app back, but your Home Screen will be arranged into alphabetical order, and unless you're JailBroken, this is pretty much the only way to get it back without restoring.


Macbook Pro won't play any sound This was working earlier today, but suddenly didn't work when I tried to play music in iTunes.

I open iTunes, select a track, click play, the track doesn't play. The play button toggles between pause and play, but there is no sound and the position status bar does not move.

So I dropped a little lower level:

$ afplay audio.mp3
2011-12-13 12:28:51.446 afplay[30725:903] AQMEIO_Base::DoStartIO: error -536870184
2011-12-13 12:28:51.519 afplay[30725:903] AQMEDevice::StartIO: error -536870184
Error: AudioQueueStart failed (0xe00002d8)
[exited with 1]

Tried restarting the coreaudio daemon.

$ sudo kill -9 `ps ax|grep 'coreaudio[a-z]' |awk '{print $1}'`

Still nothing.

Failing applications:

Quick Look in Finder
Quick Time
Youtube content in Google Chrome

It would seem to be either some low-level issue, or hardware? Any way I can confirm?

meh. A reboot fixed it. What is this, Windows? I would still like to know what caused the problem, what other avenues I should have explored and how to resolve it without rebooting.


Applescript: Duplicate selection (folder) to desktop and moving the folder to a different location First of, i'm an applescript noob;-)  What I'm asking for is simple but nearly impossible for me to execute. See the script below.

tell application "Finder"
    set selected_items to selection
    set the defaultPath to path to desktop folder as alias
    duplicate selection to defaultPath

    --I want to take take selection variable that is duplicated to the desktop and move that folder icon to the bottom of my screen.
    set desktop position of selection to {1400, 1200}
end tell

Here is the error I get ----> error "Finder got an error: Can’t set desktop position of selection to {1400, 1200}." number -10006 from desktop position of selection

Any help is greatly appreciated

tell application "Finder"
    set desktop position of (selection as alias) to {200, 200}
end tell


Does FileVault 2 also encrypt my free disk space? Does FileVault 2 encrypt my free disk space as well as the deleted files that may linger on there? I ask this because I am selling my MacBook Pro and want to sell it but I'm not sure how to securely erase my free disk space. So I'm trying to encrypt my drive then reinstall Mac OS X over it (purposely forgetting my encryption key).

Yes, FileVault 2 encrypts the entire drive, including free space and trash.

To securely delete the entire drive, I find this info here:

While Apple removed secure-erase options from the Finder, Terminal commands still exist that can be used. The first is the classic “rm” file removal command, augmented with the “r” flags for recursive deletion of folders, and “P” to implement an overwrite of the removed files:

rm -rP /path/to/file-or-folder

For more thorough secure deletion, you can use the “srm” command (for secure rm) along with similar options to recurse (r), force confirmation (f), and then be verbose to show information about files being removed (v). The second flag (-s) is important for the type of secure erase to perform:

srm -rfv -s /path/to/file-or-folder

In this command, -s will perform a single-pass erase, but you can use -m for a seven-pass erase, or -z for overwriting with zeros. If you do not use this second flag, then the command will perform a 35-pass erase.

Erasing free space on a drive

In some cases, you might want to run an overwrite routine on the free space of a given drive, but unfortunately Apple has also removed options to erase free space in the new version of Disk Utility, which may leave you wondering how to do this. Granted on SSD devices, secure-erase can impact the life span of the drive, but it may still be useful for HDD devices.

To do this in El Capitan, you can again use Terminal commands:

diskutil secureErase freespace LEVEL /Volumes/DRIVENAME

In this command, change LEVEL to a number of 0 through 4, where 0 is a single-pass of zeros, 1 is a single-pass of random numbers, 2 is a 7-pass erase, 3 is a 35-pass erase, and 4 is a 3-pass erase (note all non single-pass options may take a while to complete). Change DRIVENAME to the name of the mounted drive (encase the name in quotes if it contains punctuation or spaces), and then press Enter to run the command.


Used Bootcamp to get Windows 10 on MacBook Pro (Mid-2012, Catalina) says "no bootable device - insert boot disk and press any key" My late 2012 MacBook Pro is running Catalina. I used the Bootcamp Assistant to format a blank flash drive, copy my Windows 10 ISO file (downloaded from the provided Bootcamp assistant link) onto the flash drive, download the latest Windows software support from Apple, and create a new Windows partition to install it on (in other words, I checked all three boxes on the bootcamp assistant menu). It took about 4 hours for the computer to finish it all, but after I confirmed my password a few times and it finally finished, my computer restarted automatically, booting to the windows partition by default. But, instead of any kind of Windows 10 install menu (even though it seems like the install should have already been completed by the bootcamp assistant), it just says "NO BOOTABLE DEVICE - INSERT BOOT DISK AND PRESS ANY KEY."
I restarted and booted back to OS X, removed the Windows partition using the bootcamp assistant, and then did it all again, even re-formatting and re-copying windows to the newly blank flash drive. Same result. Then, I tried it again using a different flash drive, with the same result. When I restart the computer and hold alt/opt, It only shows my OS X drive, as well as "Windows" and "EFI BOOT". When I boot onto "Windows", it takes me to what looks like the install menu for Windows 10 on a blank computer, but when the option comes up for which drive to install Windows on, and I try to click the 300GB partition that I created using Bootcamp, it says "Windows cannot be installed on this disk."
I'm not sure what's wrong with it. A few months ago, when I was running Mojave instead of Catalina, I installed Windows 10 in the exact same way, and it worked fine.

When installing Windows 10 on your model Mac, you should verify the Windows 10 USB installer sees Disk 0 as using the GPT scheme. When the first Windows 10 installer screen appears, press the key combination shift+F10. This will open a Command Prompt Window. Enter the command given below.
echo list disk | diskpart

Disk 0 row should show a * character in the Gpt column, as shown below.

To close the Command Prompt window, enter the command exit.
Also, when installing Windows 10 on your model Mac, you should EFI boot the Windows 10 USB installer. If you are using the Mac Startup Manager, then choose the EFI Boot label under an external drive icon. If you incorrectly BIOS boot from the Windows 10 USB installer, then you should get the error message Windows can't be installed on drive 0 partition N. (Show details), when choosing the partition where you want Windows installed. If you select (Show details), then you should get the popup window shown below.

To summarize, you need to EFI boot from the USB flash drive and Disk 0 needs to be using the GPT scheme. In other words, Disk 0 can not be hybrid partitioned.


External display resolution changes upon display sleep? I have a 15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display and a ShiMian QH270-IPSMS monitor (2560x1440).

The first pitfall I ran across when setting this up was that the HDMI port doesn't support my display's resolution. Instead, I am using a Monoprice Mini DisplayPort to DVI Dual Link adapter, which supports the display's full resolution at 60 Hz.

However, when my computer sleeps the displays to save power (or I press ⌃+⇧+⏏), and I reawaken it, suddenly my external monitor is at a very low resolution (640x480?) and the laptop's display is black. With full sleep (or ⌥+⌘+⏏) the problem usually does not occur, although I have seen it occur a couple times. Whenever it happens I can put the computer to sleep and wake it up again and it will most often return to the normal 2560x1440 resolution.

I thought it might be because the adapter is USB powered from my computer, but I plugged it into a powered external USB hub and that makes no difference.
I tried resetting PRAM and that didn't help either.
I previously installed SwitchResX when attempting to get the display's full resolution working via HDMI; this could perhaps affect what's going on, but I did fully uninstall it so I doubt it's causing problems.

Has anyone seen this behavior before, or might know what's going on or how to fix it?

I think it's expected behavior. The problem is that when the monitor sleeps, it is essentially being "unplugged" so the computer thinks it's gone. And when you reawaken it, the computer thinks a new monitor is being plugged in so it defaults to a supported resolution, but it's getting conflicting reports from the monitor and the DVI Link unit. Try to remove the DVI adapter and, instead, try to force your resolution using Display Maestroy (http://www.koingosw.com/products/displaymaestro.php)


How can I lock files with specific passwords on mac, ideally through terminal? I want to lock my /etc/hosts file so that you need a password in order to write. I know you can encrypt files with Disk Utility, but in this case the file needs to be read by the computer and the path/extension cannot change. I don't just want to lock the contents, I want to lock this file very specifically.

If I run sudo vim /etc/hosts I need to type my login password but can then do whatever I want.

I want a solution where if I run sudo vim /etc/hosts, I must type a customized/specific password to write to the file.

The /etc/hosts needs to be readable by other program in order to fulfill its purpose. If you encrypt the file in any way, those other programs will not be able to read the file - and it will stop working.

So in short, you cannot do this (i.e. encryption) in a meaningful manner.

However what you can do is ensure that others do not have passwords for administrative accounts on your Mac. If they do need more privileges for something, make it so that you assign access to that specific resource (for example via a sudo access limited to a specific program) - and ensure that you do not give out full administrative access.

An example of using sudo for giving access to edit a file is to use the "sudoedit" option in sudo. This allows you to give another person access to edit a file without letting their editor run as the privileged user (which is bound to let them "escape" and allow them to other things as the privileged user). It is achieved by copying the privileged file into a separate location, letting the user run their usual editor under their own user id to edit that file, and then copying its contents over the privileged file afterwards.

In sudoers you would specificy something like:

username  sudoedit /etc/hosts

By default this will allow "username" to edit that file, and requires him to enter his own login password before doing so.

If you want to the user to input a different password, that is not his login password, you have basically two ways of going about it.

One way is not to use "sudoedit": Instead create a custom program (can be a shell script) that simply inputs a string and checks that it matches the password you want, and then just mimics what sudoedit does. It can also be quite simple and just a "cp" command to copy over a specific path from the user's own home folder to /etc/hosts.

The alternative is to modify which passwords sudo will accept as valid. This is done by editing /etc/pam.d/sudo and uncommenting the standard lines beginning with "auth". Instead provide the authentication module and options you want to approve.

If you want to do something completely custom, you can compile your own PAM module that simply asks for a password and checks that it is a specific string. You can start with the source code for the default pam_opendirectory PAM module and simply rip out the OpenDirectory parts and replace it with a simple strcmp(). The source code for such a custom module is very few lines of code.

You can find the pam_opendirectory PAM module source code here:

https://opensource.apple.com/source/pam_modules/pam_modules-76/pam_opendirectory/pam_opendirectory.c.auto.html


How to disable Notification for Terminal app? When i am starting a new server from the Terminal app, and i have the window not active, the Dock icon "jumps" up and down, also called "notifies me".

I don't want this behaviour, i want a quiet Terminal. I know when i am starting and stopping sth.

  How can i do that?

I've already disabled the audio and visual bell, but still: Jumping.

System version: Mavericks.

Whilst it's not ideal, if it's that bad you could disable the app bounce notification completely for all apps:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE && killall -HUP Dock

To revert, replace TRUE with FALSE.

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding this at the following page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html


Is it safe to put ipad baseband 06.15.00 on iPhone 3G in order to unlock it when using iOS 4.2.1? I am asking this because I observed that there were some reports regarding problems with baseband 06.15.00 on iPhone 3G like no GMS connection or poor or no GPS functionality.

From my knowlege Redsn0w is the tool to do this.

I believe the iPhone 3G and the iPad 3G use very different baseband processors and putting the firmware from one on the other, if possible, would probably brick it. It's akin to trying to put the BIOS for a Toshiba computer onto a Dell.

Then again, I'm not entirely sure on this one.


How can I use my iPhone 7 to take photos remotely? I am using my iPhone 7 Plus for taking work photos and I am finding the timer option unsuitable and using wired earphones isn’t practical. So I’ve been experimenting with Bluetooth headphones to try taking photos with the volume controls, but can’t get this to work.

I did search via Google but all the results basically say that since the iPhone 5 people can use the volume controls of any wired and bluetooth earphones to take photos with the camera.

What am I doing wrong? I have tried 2 bluetooth headphones and 1 pair of bluetooth earphones and none of them work.

You can indeed use Bluetooth headphones for taking photos with the built-in iOS Camera app. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be headphones, so long as the device has volume controls.

However, here’s the catch:- The volume controls of the Bluetooth device have to control the iPhone’s built-in volume (i.e. they control the volume levels of their own speakers via the iPhone's built-in volume control rather than directly changing the volume of the speakers within the earphones/headphones). Unfortunately, many of them do not do this, and that's why any Bluetooth keyboard with volume controls will work as they don't have their own speakers, so can only control the volume at the iPhone end.

My recommendation is to use a dedicated remote for this purpose, such as the HISY Bluetooth Camera Remote. This device is designed specifically for this purpose and can be used for both taking photos and videos, and from a distance of up to about 27 metres (90 feet).

Note: I have no affiliation whatsoever with this product.


Is using my iPod touch always plugged in an OK thing to do? I recently added an iPod interface to my Accord: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001JT5G4G/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details

It has two connections: the regular Apple 30-pin iPod dock cable which plays back and charges and then an AUX 3.5 mm headphone connector.

I get the best sound when connected to the Apple connector, but it is also charging it at the same time. I really don't use it much outside of my commute to work ~1 hr. per day, so is it bad for the battery to be plugged in all the time? The car interface won't overcharge it; it stops when full. I just didn't know if I needed to actually use the Li-ion battery in the iPod to keep it useful when I do need to take it unplugged.

It'll probably be fine.

If it's always plugged in, you won't notice any battery decay because the device will always be charged (or pulling off mains power) when you need it.
Any battery decay will probably take long enough that it'll be time to buy a new iPod by the time you notice anything severe.

The easiest way to mitigate this I can think of is to unplug the device over the weekend, remove it from the car, and let it discharge on its own. Then, on Monday, plug it back in and go. This has the added advantage that it's not subjected to the temperature extremes the interior of a car can see over a period of extended non-use.


How to use /etc/paths.d to add executable files to my path? I am trying to use /etc/paths.d to add an executable to my path variable but I have no success so far.

The full path of the executable file is: /opt/ImageMagick/bin/convert

/etc/paths.d contains two files: 40-XQuartz and ImageMagick

The 40-XQuartz contains one line: /opt/X11/bin
The ImageMagick contains one line: /opt/ImageMagick/bin

My echo $PATH gives:

/Users/Administrator/.rbenv/shims:/Users/Administrator/.rbenv/bin:/Users/Administrator/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin

So it seems that only the first file (40-XQuartz) does its job.
The permissions of the two files (40-XQuartz and ImageMagick) are exactly the same so my question is why the first one works and the second one is not.

I am running OS X Mavericks.

Have you started a new login shell since adding the new file for ImageMagick? The setting of the path from paths.d entries is done in /etc/profile and /etc/csh.login, so you need to start a new shell for the new entries to take effect.

OS X uses path_helper to set the path based on the files in /etc/paths.d - you can always call it manually (assuming a Bourne-like shell here):

$ eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`


Force install Mavericks or newer on a A1181 In short, can it be done? and besides not getting updates whats the worst that can happen?

Its a 2006 model with coreduo

Yes it can be done. You would need the MLPostFactor that could also install Mountain Lion. But in Fact it is very unlikely, that this is gonna work out. The Intel GMA950 is not a 64Bit Graphics Chip and has only 64MB of VRAM.

So you would get Glitches and poor (veryp poor) graphics performance.
Even with the 2.4Ghz 2007 MacBook (Black Edition) with full RAM equipped, you won't have fun with it. It was unusable in Lion already.

The worst that can happen is having your MacBook in an unusable condition.


How do I access the Volumes directory in Macintosh HD? I am trying to get into the Volumes directory.

Hidden files are being shown.

However, the Volumes folder won't let me access it, it's "greyed out". How can I bypass this?

We need more specifics about what is going wrong. Do you have admin privileges on your computer?
Have you tried ⌘-⇧-G from the Finder and then typed /Volumes in that window?

You can also open a Terminal window, type cd /Volumes and then if that works type open . (a period).
If none of those work, then you need to set up that account with privileges to access root folders, but I think it should at least ask you to authorize when you try Go to Folder...

Edit: Just a guess, but from the Finder, click on the Home icon to get to your user menu. Then go to the View menu > Show View Options (or press Command-J). At the bottom, click to show Library folder. (If you don't see this option, you probably have the wrong folder selected.)


What displays are capable of displaying full resolution from the new MacBook Pro with retina display? What displays are capable of displaying 2880 by 1800 pixels from the new MacBook Pro with Retina display?

The current Apple Thunderbolt Display is only capable of 2560 by 1440 pixels.

There are all sorts of high end specialized displays that have this resolution for the medical, government imagery, and engineering markets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_display_resolutions

You can see any Hyper XGA display exceeds 2880 by 1800 (but are not shipping as single monitors yet) and most Quad XGA displays (shipping since 2001) exceed the "15 inch retina" in terms of sheer pixels on one display panel/monitor.


What is the minimum hardware needed to run Xcode 4? I understand from the Apple developer site that Xcode 4 requires an Intel Mac running Snow Leopard, but I can't see any advice on hardware spec (other than Intel).

I imagine it could run on an old Mac Mini with 1GB of Ram, but that perhaps I'd be pulling my hair out before too long.

What is the minimum sensible spec to run Xcode? This would be for developing iOS apps, so I'd be running the emulator too. It is only for home use and my own education, so I don't have a big budget, so I'm looking to buy off eBay or similar. As I already have spare keyboards, mice and monitors I'd probably get a Mac Mini.

1GB of RAM will kill you: frankly, I can't imagine that it would meaningfully run. I'm currently using a 2009 MacBook (not Pro) with 4GB of RAM, and for the first two or three hours Xcode runs pretty well.

After that, though, it gets slower and slower. On a pretty small project Xcode will be using multiple gigabytes of RAM with the OS swapping 2-3GB to disk. Before long I not only have to quit Xcode, I also have to restart the machine to get things back up to speed. (To head off potential commenters, no, it's not something else on my system, it's Xcode 4: no other piece of software, including Photoshop operating on a 20+ GB file, fails to clear up the swapping speed problem after quitting the app.)

I can safely say, both from my experience and from talking to others, that 2GB of RAM is the bare, bare minimum, and it's not going to be a good experience. I'll be replacing this system soon, but in the meantime I'm upgrading to 8GB because I'm losing too much time to only having 4.


How to join Clips in iMovie 10? I know there was a function in the context menu to join video clips together, but I can't find it in the newer version of iMovie 10. Is it still available?

There is still the Join Clips function here:


BootChamp no longer works on El Capitan, what's the fastest way to boot into Windows? Ever since OS X El Capitan, BootChamp, the utility that let you directly restart into Windows from the menu bar (without needing to hold the option key) no longer works. The developer's explanation can be found here.

How can I quickly boot into Windows, ideally from the menu bar?

Perhaps a way to package an AppleScript into a menu bar icon? I don't want to disable SIP just for BootChamp.

You could maybe try to disable System Integrity Protection that came with El Captain. If you want to do so (at your own risk) see Disable System Integrity Protection (rootless).

It's actually what they say on the link you've given :

  I believe this is from changes related to the new “rootless” or System Integrity Protection feature of El Capitan (more info). Whether it’s a bug or a feature is impossible to tell at this point. If it’s a bug, then that means Apple should be fixing it in a future point release, for example 10.11.1. If it’s a feature, they need to update their bless tool and remove the featureset entirely.

The rootless or System Integrity Protection is designed to deny app to edit system related files. The way that BootChamp works it that it uses the command bless to change the current booting disk. This doesn't work anymore with rootless enabled. Other softwares like Refind doesn't work anymore thanks to rootless. System Integrity Protection is there to prevent applications from damaging your computer. It's relatively safe to disable it, but make sure you know what apps are getting executed on your mac.


Using Oracle Java 7 without the plug-in I need Oracle Java 7 for software running on my Mac, but do not wish to have the plug-in available in my web browsers.

How can I accomplish this configuration and maintain it across Java upgrades?

I'd say just install java as normal. Afterwards go to

System Preferences → Java (bottom row) → Security

and uncheck "Enable Java content in the web browser".

That should do it, and I would very much expect it to remember the setting after an update.


How much space do "Shared Streams" take up on an iOS device? In iOS 6 and 7 there's a section in the Photos app that allows you to share photos with other people and other people to share photos with you.

When others share with me, are the photos copied to my harddrive? Or do they purely reside in the cloud?
If I add the same photo to two different streams, will it duplicate the amount of space used on my phone? Or does Apple intelligently make a reference link instead of a copy?

When others share with me, are the photos copied to my hard drive? Or do they purely reside in the cloud?

Photos shared with you (or photos you share) get copied to your (or others') devices through iCloud. They reside on iCloud for just 30 days to give adequate time for all devices to sync them from the cloud. See iCloud: My Photo Stream FAQ

  If I add the same photo to two different streams, will it duplicate the amount of space used on my phone? Or does Apple intelligently make a reference link instead of a copy?

It won't add another copy on your phone across your photo streams, but there will be a photo stream specific copy that's separate from the camera roll (and any other albums the photo may be part of).

The quality of the photos shared will also vary across devices. See iCloud Photo Stream and Image Quality

There are three groups you see under Settings > General > Usage > Photos & Camera:

Camera Roll - this is for photos you have taken on the device as well as photos you have saved to the Camera Roll from (others') photo streams you have subscribed to. If you have Photo Stream enabled, any photo you take with your camera will be added to the Camera Roll and Photo Stream (with Photo Stream being restricted to the recent 1000 photos on iOS devices; there are no restrictions on photo streams on computers).
Photo Library - this is for photos that have been synced from iTunes (the source of those usually being iPhoto or Aperture on OS X).
Photo Stream - this is for photos from your and others' photo streams. If you delete a photo from your photo stream, it will get deleted from all other devices that sync to the same iCloud account.


How do I make an external USB bootable? My main HD has 222GB in use, and is formated OS X 10.10 Yosemite (latest). I am marrried to 10.10, no time to upgrade.  I bought a 256GB (244 reported) USB stick (Sandisk midrange, their $56 midrange) and would like to image my whole hard drive to it, and be right up in my environment.

How do I make this bootable and clone my HD to it?

To not "XY the problem", I want to finish with a bootable USB stick that is a clone of my current operating environment and can boot any iMac of my same model.

Where I'm stuck, particularly, is "blessing" this USB stick to make it bootable. I.E. I don't know how to do MS-DOS 3.3's "format A: /S".

What I've tried

I only install software from the app store.

I tried booting up in 10.11 El Cap (external drive).  Its new Disk Utility "restore" blew an error "Not enough free space".  (300GB total, 222GB used, 244GB on USB).

Unable to boot in 10.10 Yosemite since only the internal HD has a 10.10 image, and that's the one I'm trying to copy!  10.10 disk utility won't "restore" from the boot drive.

Buying a 512GB stick is not an option.

Resources at my disposal:

App Store.  Not afraid of Terminal.

Noooo!  My copy of Install OS X Yosemite is  corrupted.  I store it as a tarball to keep it from exploding and self-deleting, and 'tar xzvf ' is giving a corrupted result.

I am fairly adept with rsync (as local backup) and do my regular disk-disk backups that way, works slick.

I also have a bootable 10.6 (Snow Leopard) volume.  Is it new enough to do this copy?

If you have previously downloaded earlier OS X installers via the App Store you can download them again (you will likely be warned that this version is older than the copy installed but you can continue with the download). Then you can use the appropriate commands to both erase and copy the installer files to your USB drive from https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201372


Which apps do these menu bar icons belong to? I've seen a few of these icons before, such as the cursive "L"; however, I can't figure out which applications they belong to.

From left to right…

RescueTime
Divvy
Clusters
LittleIpsum
LogMeIn
OS X Screen Sharing
OS X Messages/iChat


How to disable scrolling while clicking with the Magic Mouse? I want to disable one finger scrolling with my Magic Mouse while I click with it, because I don't like that it scrolls the content in apps if I click something. I also don't see any practical use of letting this thing enabled.

Video about my problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqCo3mEH51A

Very important, that I want to keep the scrolling on, which I generally love, so shrinking the scroll area with MagicPrefs or disabling scrolling fully is not a good workaround for me.

Are there any tools which let me disable any scroll events during the mouse button is down?

Since we've established that your Magic Mouse doesn't have this behaviour with another computer, I'd reset your NVRAM and also do a boot into Safe Mode.

Resetting the NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM).

Since you haven't specified what model of Mac you're using, below are some generic steps that will work with all models (including all Late-2016 MacBook Pro models):

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then immediately press the commandoptionPR keys.
Keep these keys pressed down for at least 20 seconds!
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Now test your Magic Mouse to determine if the issue is still present. If this doesn't resolve it for you, proceed to booting into Safe Mode.

Note 1: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to 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. test your Magic Mouse)
Now exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Again, take a note of what happens (i.e. test your Magic Mouse)

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

Trash Magic Mouse .plist files

Since your issue persists both in and out of Safe Mode, I would trash the relevant Magic Mouse preference files.

As you don't specify what version of macOS you're using, I'll assume you're running a version from Mountain Lion and above. Follow these steps:

Go to Finder
Press and hold the option key
While keeping the option key down, click on the Go menu and select Library from the list
This should open up your user's Library folder in a new Finder window
Locate and open the Preferences folder (it's within the Library folder)
Within this folder find the following two .plist files:

com.apple.AppleMultitouchMouse.plist
com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse.plist

Now Trash these files
Restart your Mac

Your Mac will now create a new set of default preference files for your Magic Mouse.

Note: You will need to go back to System Preferences and reconfigure your Magic Mouse settings. However, before doing that I would test the Magic Mouse first to see if the problem behaviour still persists.

Reset Bluetooth Device List and Bluetooth Controller

This is something I've had a number of users do to resolve issues with 3rd party Bluetooth devices (usually a keyboard and/or mouse, but also headphones etc).

Since you're using a genuine Apple Magic Mouse you my decide not to bother, but I think it's worth trying.

In a nutshell you need to reset both the macOS Bluetooth Device List and Bluetooth Controller. However, this will reset all connected Bluetooth devices, including your keyboard and mouse, so each Bluetooth device will need to be paired again.

I have some steps you can follow, but I strongly suggest you read all of the steps first before commencing (or perhaps print out the instructions / view them on another device).

Before starting, ensure you have the Bluetooth icon showing in the menu bar. If it is not there, open System Preferences > Bluetooth and enable the option Show Bluetooth in Menu Bar.

Also, since you're trying to resolve an issue with your Magic Mouse,  you will need to use another mouse to follow these steps:

Hold down both the Shift and Option keys and at the same time click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. Once the menu is showing, release the keys.
From the Bluetooth menu, choose Debug > Remove All Devices
Hold down both the Shift and Option keys again and at the same time click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar.
From the Bluetooth menu,  choose Debug > Reset the Bluetooth Module
Shutdown your Mac
Ensure your Magic Mouse is fully powered off
Restart your Mac
On your Mac, click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar
Select the Set Up Bluetooth Device option
On the mouse, turn the power on
Once the Setup Assistant finds the mouse, select it from the list and click on “Continue”.
Now pair your mouse
If you have any other Bluetooth devices, you can go ahead and pair them now (or you can do it later).

Let me know how you go.


How to store unused Macbook battery for long period of time? I'm going on a long backpacking trip and going to leave my Macbook at home unused. How should I store its battery to maximize the battery life?

Battery technology used by Apple is no different than other laptops. They're all Li-ion cells.

Apparently, the recommended practice for extended storage is to get the battery down to 40% and store it in a cool place, possibly the refrigerator.

Some relevant sources:

http://www.runpcrun.com/laptop-battery-use-and-storage-guidelines
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries


How do I a record a video on iPhone with the screen off? To save battery life I would like to be able to record video on my iPhone or other iOS devices with the screen off. Is there a way to do this?

Yes, it is possible.

This method works with at least iOS 9.

  Make sure your iPhone is locked
  Press the lock key on the top of your iPhone to brighten it, without unlocking it completely
  Slide the bottom right camera icon half way up, and don’t let go. Keep your finger in this way
  Slide the camera modes to video, again keeping your finger on the camera slider mode still half way up
  Tap the big red record button in the bottom middle of the screen; again, keeping your finger still on the camera slider mode still half
  way up. Don’t worry if it doesn’t show the recording happening.
  Double press the home button three times,
  Keep your finger still half way on the slider, until the iPhone automatically turns off its screen. This will take about 10 seconds
  regardless of what settings you’ve kept in the auto lock feature
  That’s it. With the screen off, your iPhone is recording a video.
  To end the recording and save the video, simply unlock the iPhone

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/277209


iPhone 7, iOS 10.1.1: Missing new wallpapers I just got the new iPhone 7 and the new wallpapers which I have seen on ads and Apple's website are missing.

How to get them on my iPhone?

Current OS: 10.1.1

I don't want to download them from the internet because of quality issue.
New wallpapers look like this.

These wallpapers are included with iOS 10.3, which is yet to be released publicly. Once this version of iOS is released to the public, you will be able to download it on your iPhone and select the wallpapers from the list in Settings.


Temporary files listed by lsof don't exist I like copying flash videos for offline viewing later. I used to do this by loading the video in the browser (Firefox or Google Chrome), then running this command to see where the flash file was being cached:

lsof | grep ^Google | grep folders

This will show all the temporary files Google Chrome has open at the moment, for example:

...
Google    311 mike   21u     REG       14,1    262148 17819373 /private/var/folders/zz/zzTLi2haPMrCYxEbpkwFmS+++TI/-Tmp-/.com.google.chrome.p22bCa
Google    311 mike   22u     REG       14,1      9974 17819369 /private/var/folders/zz/zzTLi2haPMrCYxEbpkwFmS+++TI/-Tmp-/.com.google.chrome.MUo4JT
Google    312 mike  txt      REG       14,1      9974 17819369 /private/var/folders/zz/zzTLi2haPMrCYxEbpkwFmS+++TI/-Tmp-/.com.google.chrome.MUo4JT
Google    312 mike  txt      REG       14,1    262148 17819373 /private/var/folders/zz/zzTLi2haPMrCYxEbpkwFmS+++TI/-Tmp-/.com.google.chrome.p22bCa
... etc

None of the files exist, though:

$ ls /private/var/folders/zz/zzTLi2haPMrCYxEbpkwFmS+++TI/-Tmp-/.com.google.chrome.p22bCa
ls: /private/var/folders/zz/zzTLi2haPMrCYxEbpkwFmS+++TI/-Tmp-/.com.google.chrome.p22bCa: No such file or directory

Listing the directory doesn't show any files or directories like this existing:

$ ls -lA /private/var/folders/zz/zzTLi2haPMrCYxEbpkwFmS+++TI/-Tmp-/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 mike  staff  102 Jul 24 18:14 TemporaryItems
srwxr-xr-x  1 mike  staff    0 Jul 24 12:10 com.apple.notify.206.32
srwxr-xr-x  1 mike  staff    0 Jul 24 12:10 com.apple.notify.206.33
drwxr-xr-x  2 mike  staff   68 Jul 24 18:25 hsperfdata_mike

What's going on here? Why can't I access the temporary files?

Since my goal is to copy the flash file for later viewing, is there anything else I can do?

On some unix variants, lsof shows files that have been deleted but are still open. More precisely, these files have a “link count” of 0, meaning that there is no directory entry (no link, i.e. no name) that leads to them, but the file data still exists. The file data will be deleted when the file is closed.

The ability of lsof to display files with a link count of 0 depends on the platform, and I can't find anything in the documentation regarding the situation on OS X. Try running lsof +L to see the files' link count, or lsof +L1 to list only files with a link count of 0.

I wouldn't be surprised if the flash plugin created the file and immediately deleted in, it's a simple technique for making the data harder to obtain from outside the application. In other words, it's what the plugin author would do precisely to make it hard to do what you're trying to do. If that's what going on, you could counter it with something like libtrash for OSX.


Very slow performance under Yosemite on Mac mini caused by systemstatsd I've got a late-2009 Mac mini that has begun to perform very poorly after some time on Yosemite. Safari takes about a minute to launch occasionally, as an example.

Granted, I've got a number of background tasks running (Dropbox, BitTorrent Sync, AirServer), but that's unchanged compared to before upgrading to Yosemite.

My main suspect is the very high network usage. The process kernel_task is using a lot of LAN bandwidth, occasionally downloading 60 MB (that's megabytes)/s for a few seconds before going down to zero, for no apparent reason. The total amount of bandwidth used has exceeded 14 terabytes (!) after a couple of weeks of uptime.

I've got a NAS that I use for sharing files and backups, but since the process using the bandwidth is kernel_task, I don't know what to think.

Update: As a temporary workaround I have setup a script to clear the systemstatsd files mentioned below regularly, but the root cause remains unresolved.

Today I noticed three things:

In three days, total downloaded data amounts to 3,300 GB.
Currently, approximately every 12 seconds there is a boost in network activity, where something maxes out the Ethernet interface for a couple of seconds.
Quitting the BitTorrent Sync app made item number 2 go away.

My theory is then: there's some bug in BitTorrent Sync that causes it to go nuts on the network, which in itself uses quite some system resources. This in turn causes systemstatsd to hiccup, which creates the final burden on the system.

The culprit was indeed systemstatsd. The way I understand it, that process both produces a number of system stats, dumps them into a file which it later analyzes. For some reason, that file never got reset, resulting in a giant stats file that took serious resources to analyze.

What I did was stop the analysis daemons,

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.systemstatsd
sudo launchctl stop com.apple.systemstatsd.analysis

remove the stats dump file (which was about 3 gigs in size at the time)

cd /private/var/db/systemstats/
sudo rm snapshots.db

relaunch the daemons

sudo launchctl start com.apple.systemstatsd
sudo launchctl start com.apple.systemstatsd.analysis

I never figured out why that dump file never got cleared, but suspect it'd something to do with the PRAM, so for good measure I finally reset it by rebooting and pressing CMD, ALT, P, R when the boot chime was heard until it was heard a second time.

The end result is a mac that is very much snappier than before. Here's hoping that zapping the PRAM did eliminate the root cause.

Further reading: What is the use of snapshot.db?


Launch Terminal using BetterTouchTool How would I open Terminal using BetterTouchTool? I tried using predefined action: open application, but I can't seem to find the Terminal app.

Use the action "Run Apple Script" for example as a keyboard shortcut and use the following code:

tell application "Terminal" to do script


Outlook for Mac 15.9 missing ribbon I have installed a fresh copy of Outlook for Mac v15.9 twice now and after a few days of use the ribbon disappears from all of the windows (main window, email window, etc). When I select View > Ribbon in hopes that it will turn it back on, nothing happens.

How can I get this crazy ribbon back so I am no longer using the menu to send and reply to emails?

I've had the same problem using the 2015 Outlook preview on a Mac.

Quitting (using the shift alt delete equivalent) and restarting the programme gets the ribbon back every time for me.


Problems with Apple's Security Update 2011-005 (Lion)? Possible Duplicate:
  Why folders keep shifting their positions?

Today I downloaded Apple Security Update 2011-005 for Lion (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1447). However, I got some issues here. After the update I noticed that some of the folders on my Desktop was rearranged. Moreover, my Mac started slowing down.

Does anybody else have same problems?

The update replaces 3 files, all pertaining to your system's keychain. They are as follows:

/System/Library/Keychains/EVRoots.plist
/System/Library/Keychains/SystemRootCertificates.keychain
/System/Library/Keychains/SystemTrustSettings.plist

It is impossible that the update has caused your problems. Look elsewhere.


How to toggle Target Display Mode on iMac using a non-mac wired keyboard? I have a new Late 2013 rMBP and a Mid 2011 iMac. I want to use the iMac in Target Display Mode so I can operate it as a second monitor for the laptop.

I have two questions:

I can easily turn on TDM on the iMac using ⌘ Cmd+F2, but cannot turn it off the same way. I have to unplug the Thunderbolt cable. Anyone know why?
I only have one Apple keyboard and mouse, and both are bluetooth wireless. Right now they are paired to the iMac. I will instead pair them to the laptop so I can use them on that, but I need a keyboard that can toggle TDM on the iMac. I tried using a Dell keyboard (which in my experience, Apple treats the ⊞ Win as the ⌘ Cmd key) and using ⊞ Win+F2, but it doesn't toggle it. Is there any hope to use a non-Apple keyboard to toggle TDM on the iMac?

To your 2nd question: I've not been able to toggle target display mode with a non-apple keyboard, however I was able to accomplish this using the app 1Keyboard. Basically I paired the computers via bluetooth, then used 1Keyboard to send command+F2. Sending command+F2 via Apple Remote Desktop did not work. I also tried sending command+F2 programmatically, but that didn't work either. Glad to have found a solution. Both computers were running Mavericks.


How to upgrade gnu make in OS X El Capitan Currently I am at:

mhoggan-C02S81PRG8WM:c_velodyne mhoggan$ make --version
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free
software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty;
not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for i386-apple-darwin11.3.0
mhoggan-C02S81PRG8WM:c_velodyne mhoggan$ make --version GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free
software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty;
not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for i386-apple-darwin11.3.0

Is there a way with Homebrew to upgrade to 4.1 or 4.2?

Yes, you can run:

brew install homebrew/core/make

on earlier systems this was:

brew install homebrew/dupes/make

This will install make 4.2.1.

Another option, if you want to retain the system installed make version, is to install remake instead.

brew install remake


Where is "All My Files" folder? I used to think "All My Files" is not a real folder but it turns out otherwise. I accidentally moved some of my files into "All My Files" folder and now they are disappeared! How can I locate "All My Files" folder?

Actually, All My Files is a folder, but not the way you'd expect it to be. It exists at the path /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries/myDocuments.cannedSearch. It is a special type of folder, called a bundle, that has an extension. You can usually access the inner part of these by right-clicking and choosing "Show Package Contents", but with All My Files you can't due to Finder's special treatment of it.

The bundle contains a file called search.savedSearch which is just a Smart Folder property list. This is a search for all files within your home directory.

In your case, this doesn't matter, because when you drag something into the All My Files folder, it goes to ~/Documents. The odd thing about this is it only happens for All My Files, and not other Smart Folders, which don't allow you to drag-and-drop files into them.


MacBook 12'' 2017 cpu speed: 1.4 GHz but Intel says it's 1.3 GHz The full spec for the 2017 12" MacBook is an i7 Kaby Lake cpu with 1.4 GHz base frequency and Turbo up to 3.6 GHz.

Various articles on the web state that the i7 used is specifically this model:

Intel i7-7Y75

Looking this up on Intel Ark shows the base frequency as 1.3 GHz.

Why is the stated base frequency on Apple's website higher than the one in Intel Ark? Does Apple use a factory overclock on the i7's in their MacBooks?

The key phrase that you alluded to was

  "...shows the base frequency as 1.3GHz"

(emphasis mine).

From the Intel Ark spec sheet link you provided

  Processor Base Frequency

  Processor Base Frequency describes the rate at which the processor's
  transistors open and close. The processor base frequency is the
  operating point where TDP is defined. Frequency is measured in
  gigahertz (GHz), or billion cycles per second.

(TDP is Thermal Design Power - or the wattage it dissipates with all cores running at normal operating frequency - the "baseline" if you will)

A little bit further in the Specs you will find the following values:

Configurable TDP-up Frequency           1.60 GHz
Configurable TDP-up                     7W
Configurable TDP-down Frequency         600 MHz
Configurable TDP-down                   3.5 W

What this is telling us is that the CPU can be configured up or down by tweaking the speed and TDP values.  It can go up to 1.6 GHz (1.4GHz is within this limit) or down to 600 MHz.  More speed, more heat, more power consumption; less speed, less heat, less power consumption.  It's up to the integrator to decide what makes most sense for them.

Apple made the decision to tweak it to 1.4 GHz.


Sound on OS X doesn't work after Soundflower install Because of missing native equalizer on OS-X (Snow Leopard) I had to use third party app Soundflower in combination with AU Lab. Everything was going right, but once I restarted OS X, the sound stopped working. When I changed the volume by the keys on Macbook I hear the system sound, but in iTunes, Vimeo, some videos on YouTube, Quicktime, etc., I hear nothing.

I tried to remove Soundflower and AU Lab and reboot, but without any change.

Does anybody know how to fix this problem?

If you follow this guide, you should be OK. You mentioned in the comments that you've already run the uninstall script, so perhaps you will be able to follow the guide to success. Before doing that, I would check the following:

Find the 'Audio MIDI Setup' utility (Applications / Audio MIDI Setup), and check all the master volume levels on your output devices.
If you are still passing audio through anything other than regular system audio, check all the levels and knobs and such to make sure that nothing else is turned down to 0.

NB: A common problem people have with Soundflower is the master volume being set to 0 by default.

If none of that is the issue, and you follow the guide, you could try my setup, which is like this:

• Go find AU Lab 2.3, and
• Update your Soundflower to 1.6.7 with this fix, available on Github. It has worked for me on Mavericks 10.9.4, it prevents an obnoxious clicking sound as well, and it gives you master faders for Soundflower outputs in the Soundflowerbed dropdown.

NB: If you are not on Mavericks you may not need the updated versions of everything.


How can I send the currently active window to the back? Is there a shortcut or such to send the currently active window to the back of the screen while still keeping it open (so that it ends up "beneath" all other open windows)?

Short answer: No, Apple does not provide an API that allows you to alter an application window index except by bringing a window to the front (index 1). There are no elegant solutions. But:

Long answer: Yes, You can use AppleScript to effectively move a window to the back of a stack of AppleScript-able windows by collecting a list of windows, then rapidly moving each one (except the frontmost) to the front, leaving the chosen window at the back.

Here is an example of an AppleScript which sends the frontmost Finder Window to the back.

tell application "Finder"
    set winList to every window whose visible is true
    if not winList = {} then
        repeat with oWin in (items 1 through -2 of reverse of winList)
            set index of oWin to 1
        end repeat
    end if
end tell

This script is based on a solution by JMichaelTX discussed on the KeyboardMaestro forum.

The reshuffling is incredibly fast, but in the Script Editor you can inspect how it works, leaving "506" on the bottom and popping "502-505" up in a way that preserves their order:

get every window whose visible = true
    --> {Finder window id 506, Finder window id 505, Finder window id 504, Finder window id 503, Finder window id 502}
set index of Finder window id 502 to 1
    --> 1
set index of Finder window id 503 to 1
    --> 1
set index of Finder window id 504 to 1
    --> 1
set index of Finder window id 505 to 1
    --> 1

You can map this AppleScript to a service or keyboard shortcut, either by a) putting the script into a Run AppleScript action inside an Automator service, or b) using a launcher (Alfred, Keyboard Maestro etc.). For details on Applescript keyboard assignment see: How do I assign a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript I wrote?

This may satisfy OPs needs -- it is unclear from the original post. This solution can also be extended to multiple AppleScript-able applications. I am not, however, aware of a solution to make it work effectively with a mix of scriptable and non-scriptable windows, due to the fact that in AppleScript, System Events addressable windows for non-scriptable applications do not have a set index verb/property. There exists an "AXRaise" action for some windows when assistive devices / accessibility is turned on, but this also does not apply to all windows. Elaborate hacks exist that involve walking through each active application and show/hiding or minimizing/restoring windows, but they are a mess.

Related discussions:

How to set a window's index to last (furthest back) in applescript
Applescript - Bring window to foreground
Is there a way to iterate over all open windows in Mac OS X?


Family members getting new phone - want to transfer apps, music, etc to a different Apple ID I don't really use Apple stuff so I'm a little clueless.

My cousin and my uncle currently use the same apple ID. This is problematic because their contacts are synced up, which they don't want.

The idea is for my cousin to get a new iPhone, which will have all of his old music, games, iCloud stuff, etc. but none of his father's contact info.

How is this done?

The big problem in your proposed "ask" is "have all his old iCloud stuff"

What you can do is use one Apple ID with iCloud on two devices. You can even have some of the categories not sync: for example - no contact data, but iCloud has not mechanism to clone or push some content to second account.

You have to manually do that by using two devices and then turning off iCloud on the second device and retain the data you wish on that device. Apple purchases always follow the account that purchased them, so you can possibly mix two "buy" accounts for a short time, but the next time an app update happens, you'll need both account passwords to update everything.

It might be time to make a second account and move forward with each person re-buying / controlling what is contained in each account.

The good news - is contacts is really easy to separate so start there and then you can decide how much work it was to separate those so that each device has their own contacts and then repeat for each "bin" of data that comes with iCloud/Apple ID.


Mouse and Keyboard on MacBook Air mid 2009 don't work partially My MacBook Air mid 2009 worked for 3 months without any problems on Yosemite.

Two days ago the built in mouse stopped working along with the built-in keyboard. Right after it woke up from sleep mode but the light is still on. After pressing the Power button, it asks me to shut it down, so the system did not crash.

At boot I'm able to clear the SMC and VFR (?) RAM. Both did not work. After I reboot, the machine won't respond to mouse or keyboard input. Also a USB mouse and keyboard won't work.

I always had to hard reboot the MacBook (holding power) After some time, it wouldn't boot (black screen). After leaving it off for ~5 mins, it would boot again, but I was faced with the same error. After some research, and the problems at startup, I think it might be an EFI specified problem. Reinstalling has only worked for half an day, then after wake up it wasn't responding.

The problem might be caused after the OS X 10.10.2 update. In the update log I couldn't find any EFI-specified updates (EFI and SMC is also up-to-date).

Anyone able to reproduce this error? I can't get it to work again (without reinstalling it).

I got a workaround to solve this error: Using CMD+R on Boot to access the Recovery Menu, i managed to check and solve Permissions on the SSD. There is one plist that says displayd should have 0 but has 244 (like that)

after solving, it seems to work... for half an hour again. Then i have to force-shutdown and boot into recovery again... The mac is virgin, theres nothing installed besides Firefox and Office '11.

that cant be it, anyone got a solution?


Allow find command to access my files I'm trying to use the find command to find a file on my Mac. However, when I used the command I accidentally denied my Mac permission to search my various folders, including documents and photos. How can I reverse this and give the terminal full permissions to search my computer?

The exact command I was using is:
find / -name "file_name".

There are two things you should do:

Enable full Terminal access by opening System Preferences, selecting the Security Tab, selecting the last tab there, selecting Full Disk Access on the left and adding Terminal.app

Run the command as

sudo find / -name "file_name"

Assuming the file you are looking for is within your home folder

find ~ -name "file_name"

should also work (and is significantly faster).


Is it possible to have my iPhone 5 on silent except for one specific person? I want to have the phone on silent (no vibrate) and have it ring only for one or two specific people. Is there any way to do this?

I know how to turn the phone on silent (the switch on the left side above the volume buttons), but I can't seem to create a "profile" for this (I recall this being possible with Blackberry's).

This is possible using Do Not Disturb:

Open Settings.app
Go to Notifications > Do Not Disturb
Select "Allow Calls From"
You have several options. Either create a group, or have only those few people in your Favorites. The best is probably to create a group as that allows you better flexibility. After you have created the group with only the people that you want to allow to reach you, select it from the list.
Now, to enable silent mode except for those two people turn on Do Not Disturb in Settings.app.

Creating/Editing Groups: This isn't as easy as it appears on iOS. See my question about it. As mentioned in the accepted answer, your best strategy for creating or editing groups is to go to iCloud.com on your computer. Quoting the answer:

  "No, there is no way to create or edit contact groups on iOS. I share your frustration! The best workaround is to use iCloud.com (or your primary Mac, if you have it with you)."

But you can add contacts to a particular group, (though it isn't straight-forward):

  In Contacts, tap the Groups button in the top left
  Tap "Hide All Contacts"
  Tap the group that you want to add the contact to (making it the only visible group)
  Tap Done in the top right
  Tap the Add button (+) in the top right

So, the easiest is to just use a Mac (if you have one) or iCloud.com to create and add people to a group. After this is done, the new group with the people that you want to reach you should appear on iPhone.


How to limit the volume of sound effects in Finder? Sometimes I have my mac on full volume (maybe because I am / was listening to a song). Then I move a file in finder, or put something in the trash; finder plays the "move file" sound at full volume and it breaks my eardrums :D

Is there a way to limit the volume of sound effects on finder?

In System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects ... set Alert volume to the level you want.

This will also control the volume of the event sounds played in Finder.

You can also uncheck [] Play user interface sound effects to not have them play at all.


Looking for stop watch alarm clock app similiar to one on iphone on OSX for macbookpro Can I install an app on my MacBook pro similar to the the stop-watch/alarm-clock app on iPhone?

Maybe you are looking for something similar to the app Awaken. It has a similar look, clock, alarms (with sounds, music via iTunes and even executing scripts or apps) and timer with sleep mode (needs the Awaken Helper, provided at its website as well). Many of us are waiting for a future version including also a stopwatch.


Should I reset my MacBook Pro after a major macOS update? I've already installed two major updates (Catalina and Big Sur) on my MacBook Pro 2019. Is it advisable to reset (format) my machine for it to work at its best, or would it not make much of a difference?

Unless you are experiencing serious issues (such as malware or other unexpected behavior), there's no need to ever reset/format a Mac. Even if you are having problems, it doesn't mean you need to format it. If you know the cause or are willing to troubleshoot the issue, you could fix most problems without formatting your Mac.
Macs have separate volumes for the OS and for user data.

If you reinstall macOS, it only makes changes to the OS volume, and you will not even realize macOS was reinstalled because it will reboot and everything will remain exactly where it was, even any windows you had open before reinstalling macOS.
If you format the data volume, you will lose all of your data, but the OS will remain functional.
If you format the whole drive, you will lose both volumes and have to reinstall macOS, after which it will ask if you want to restore your data from a Time Machine backup.

Personally, I've been updating macOS on my devices for several years without formatting, I guess ever since macOS Mavericks. When upgrading to another Mac I just restore my Time Machine data or use the Migration Assistant (both are built-in on macOS).
It's always advisable to have backups of your data. On a Mac, you can setup Time Machine and keep it running. Your Mac will create hourly backups for as long as the Time Machine drive is reachable. You can then restore all your data in case you upgrade to a new Mac or something unexpected happens.
You can also use cloud services to keep some of your files safe. iCloud Drive is built-in on macOS.
If you are having a specific issue, please search Ask Different for a solution and if you didn't find any, ask a new question.


Why does Airdrop on OS X only work in close proximity? We're all connected to the same WiFi but other computers only show up in the Finder when they are close by.

According to this Mac Basics article, you need to

have Wi-Fi turned on
select AirDrop in the Finder
be in close proximity (“AirDrop is designed to work within a range of approximately 30 feet.”)

(emphasis mine)

What's the technical explanation for this requirement?

It uses Bluetooth to look for nearby devices.
You can read more about it on AppleInsider:

It should be understood that AirDrop is a proximity-limited technology, meaning that it will only work when two or more users are near each other. This is illustrated by the requirement that a compatible device, which will be limited to the iPhone 5 or later, fourth-generation iPad, iPad mini, and fifth-generation iPod touch, have both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled.
When AirDrop is activated, it uses Bluetooth to scan for nearby devices that are advertising discoverability. User can elect to be seen by everyone, only by contact, or not at all if the feature is turned off.


Why not use 1080p cameras for both front and back cameras on an iPad? So a question that I've always been curious about are devices that contain two cameras (one for video chat, etc., and one for everything else). Of course, it wouldn't be such a big deal on devices with low-resolution displays, but because of the advent of the iPhone 4 and new iPad (/iPad 3rd Generation), those crummy VGA quality cameras really detract away from an ideal experience.

Using this article at PC Magazine, we can see that it could possibly be the price difference...

  ...The new camera is three times more costly than the earlier model...

Because looking at the teardown photo from iFixit really doesn't make it appear to be a physical size issue (not downplaying the cramped quarters of the real estate inside an iPad, but the VGA and HD cameras appear to be roughly the same size).

So at this point in the game, why not use the same higher quality camera for both sides of the iPad?

It's pretty much impossible to answer this without inside information, but it's likely some combination of size, cost and part availability constraints.

Size: it's hard to tell from the iFixit photos the depth of the components, but that's almost certainly the limiting factor. That's often cited as one reason the iPod Touch doesn't have a better camera (it's simply too thin). The iPad is obviously thicker, but it's still fairly limited in depth (which seems to be the most significant dimension of the camera modules).
Cost: I'd put less stock in this one, but iSuppli's estimates put the iPad 3's cameras at around $12, and the iPad 2's around $4. If we assume most of that difference is in the upgraded back camera, we can make a rough guess that it would cost about $8 more to put in a better front camera. Apple makes ~30% margins, which is about $150 on the 16 GB WiFi iPad 3. So an extra $8 would eat 5% of their margin (less on the more expensive models). I'd say that's unlikely to stop Apple from doing it if they felt it was a good idea, but enough that they wouldn't just stick it in there on a whim either.
Parts availability: Apple ships huge quantities of iPads (17 million last quarter alone, more than 84 million to date), and new models have been supply-constrained (i.e. they can't make enough to satisfy all orders) for months after launch. Requiring twice as many of a part could have detrimental effects on production (and therefore sales and profits).

I don't think any single factor is the reason why, but if I had to put money on it, I'd say it's mostly component size and availability.

One final thought: the front camera is mostly used for FaceTime and the odd self-portrait. FaceTime quality is mostly a function of the quality of your internet connection—adding a better camera wouldn't necessarily make an appreciable difference, based on my experience with FaceTime.


Continuous Scrolling Through Desktops on Lion I have a few desktops set up in mac and and browser with my calendar and mail in full screen mode.  In total I normally have 3 running.  I also have custom hotkey to quickly scroll through the desktops, but when I get to the last one how do can I make it cycle through to the beginning.

For example if I'm on the 3rd of three desktops, is there a way I can go the right to a 4th, but since it's not there it will go back to the 1st.

Thanks

Alas, this feature was removed along with some others when apple moved from Expose/Spaces to Mission Control.


Sync Outlook mails with iPad 2 via iTunes or any without Internet connection? I haven't found any way for syncing my Outlook mails via iTunes with USB cable to my iPad 2. Do you know any method or program for syncing your mails to read them later on the iPad without an Internet connection?

I think there is no ways, and I found this for u. http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/mac-outlook-help/some-outlook-items-aren-t-synchronizing-with-other-mac-applications-HA102928388.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA102928396


iPhone 3GS turning off randomly while being used While using the phone it randomly shuts down. And when I turn it back on battery drains by about 3 or 4 percent. Could this be a battery problem or a sign to another major problem? So the only way I use my phone nowadays is while its plugged in. Battery also drains like hell. While using 3G battery goes from 100 to 50 in an hour. Are the random shut downs related to the excessive battery drain? Just last month I changed my battery IC beacause it displayed the " charging is not supported with this accesory" warning.

It sounds like you need to backup your iPhone with iTunes and change your battery... but I'm a little confused by your post. You have tried to put a new battery in it already? If so your issue is probably related to other internal components of your phone and not the battery. The 3GS is quite old now. It may be time for an upgrade.


How to stop iTunes from automatically re-downloading? I have deleted my iTunes application (using a terminal command) several times already and it keeps popping back up. I have to delete it every time it downloads.

Is there a way to stop iTunes from automatically downloading?

To stop iTunes from automatically downloading, you should completely uninstall it from your computer. Simply follow the steps:

Open Activity Monitor on your Mac and kill the process "iTunes-Helper".
Open Terminal and type:
"sudo rm -r /Applications/iTunes.app".


Can one influence Mac OS X's / Darwin's filesystem caching behaviour? I have the following problem: When I run processes that consume a lot of memory, Mac OS X seems to refuse to release a large portion of the filesystem cache:

In fact, instead of letting go of the ~ 30 GB of inactive memory, it prefers to swap 45 GB (which were rising at the point in time captured in the picture).

Running purge freed a large portion of that memory, leading to ~ 15 GB of free memory and Mac OS X finally stopping to bug me with that really useless OOM dialog asking me to quit one of my GUI applications…

Is there any way the kernel can be instructed to be less insisting when it comes to caching file I/O?

It's hard to tell without access to your system or steps to reproduce your error, but in my experience, the OS is performing like any other UNIX when the swap device and root filesystem fills. The simplest way to avoid the dialog is ensure you have enough free space to make another swap file (they top out at 2 GB I believe on Mountain Lion).

Most people like to have 25% (or more) free space since the OS optimizes hot files and defragments on the fly and these self-disable when free space becomes low to avoid churning the IO when there isn't space to write or many free places on the drive to choose for faster file access.

One notable difference between OS X and other UNIX is that the Apple OS does late page allocation to swap, so you don't see large swap files when they are not needed. For this, you can either disable swap entirely or ensure your drive has sufficient free space to handle whatever amount of swap you see in practice.

I've not heard of anyone messing with the paging algorithm itself, but Apple has open sourced that part of the OS, so anyone who cares can make code level changes and run with it.

http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1082/

I would start with buying the next largest side storage drive and monitor your space usage to ensure you don't get less than 10 GB empty as a starter rule of thumb. If you're doing serious work, you might invest more in drive space to ensure you don't run out.


How to disable Developer and Web Searches in Spotlight? Yesterday I upgraded to Lion and it seems it got some additions on Spotlight - the Developer and Web Searches groups.

Sadly I couldn't find a way to disable them. There isn't an option in the Spotlight preferences and I couldn't find the right defaults option.

Any ideas on how to hide them? They are cluttering Spotlight FAR too much :)

Spotlight thinks you are a 'Developer', if you have Xcode installed, or happened to install it at any time in the past, and hence shows you search results that maybe relevant to a developer.

When Xcode is actually installed and present on the computer, a check-box called 'Developer' appears in the System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results panel giving us the option to disable 'Developer' results from appearing in our searches. When Xcode is not detected, the check-box disappears from the Preferences Panel, but Spotlight continues to show results from the 'Developer' category.

I am currently on Yosemite, and had installed and un-installed Xcode way back on Mountain-Lion or Lion, opting to use the 'Command Line Tools' instead. I also had Spotlight disabled until recently, and started getting hundreds of Search Results under the Developer category, once I re-enabled it. The clutter was making spotlight unusable.

Unable to find a solution anywhere on the Web, this is what I finally tried, and it worked:

I created an empty file called Xcode.app in the Applications folder, and the missing 'Developer' check-box showed up in Spotlight Preferences, which I could then un-check to solve my problem.

Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app then type and press Enter after each of the following lines to create the dummy Xcode app

cd /Applications
touch Xcode.app

then head to Spotlight Preferences and uncheck 'Developer' (you might need to restart the System Preferences app to see the missing check-box appear).

Notes:

You need to keep the dummy Xcode.app even after changing the
setting, deleting it will cause the setting to revert back.
Another solution would be to install Xcode itself


How can I stop OS X from switching Spaces when the mouse cursor is at the edge of the screen? Mac OS X Spaces change when I hold the mouse at the edge of the screen. Is there an application or 'defaults' command to disable this?

Warp looks like it might help, but hasn't changed the behavior for me, even though I tried turning it off, or setting a modifier key.

I found a solution. The following sets the delay to 1 minute.

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay -float 60 && killall Dock

source: Leopard: Lower the window drag delay between spaces


Problem with libxml2-2.8.0 version on OS X Lion I have installed OS X Lion and I was trying to resolve error libxml2 missing for Ruby programming purpose. I tried to install latest version of Libxml2 that is  libxml2-2.8.0

Because of incompatibility of this version Mac is throwing errors while opening XCode, Chrome and some other application with the error.

Dyld Error Message:
Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib
Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/AppKit
Reason: no suitable image found.  Did find:
   /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture
   /usr/local/lib/libxml2.2.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture
   /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture

What should I do ? How should I remove libxml2 2.8.0 version.?

Please reply

You can do either of

remove /usr/local/lib/libxml2.2.dylib, copy a working libxml2.2.dylib from another Mac with the same OS X version and recreate the symlinks to look like the directory listing below
reinstall OS X Lion on top of the existing installation and reapplying all the system updates.
get libxml2.2.dylib from your backup and apply option 1

PS: I managed to do the same thing with one of the more essential libraries a few months ago, leaving only option 2 (because nothing useful worked anymore). With hindsight I probably could have booted from DVD to apply option 1, but I would still have needed a trusted source for the library because the DVD was for 10.7.0.

pse@Fourecks:~$ ll /usr/lib/libxml2.*
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel       15 Feb 12 11:51 /usr/lib/libxml2.2.7.3.dylib@ -> libxml2.2.dylib
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  2321840 May 10 20:34 /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib*
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel       15 Feb 12 11:51 /usr/lib/libxml2.dylib@ -> libxml2.2.dylib


airportd keeps crashing I'm running a Macbook Pro retina 13 inches early 2015 with 16 Go of RAM and a 3,1 GHz intel core i7 on OS X El Captain 10.11.1

I keep having some problems with airportd that crashes really often. Sometimes, when I click on the wifi icon on the menu bar, I have the rainbow crash cursor showing up and the menu is not popping up. Then, my mac starts heating up a lot and slowing down and I can hear a loud fan noise. When I check on the activity monitor, the airportd process is taking a huge amount a RAM and 100 % of the processor (sometimes more !). Actually, blued is also taking almost 50 % of the processor...
I have to kill it manually with the activity monitor for it to get back to normal. But the problem is that happens every 20 minutes in average.
I don't know what to do, this is really annoying, I beg for your help !

I keep having this in my system.log :

Dec 13 15:30:21 3wxmr8aqljon9umcd airportd[79737]: SecTaskLoadEntitlements failed error=22

I have that after I kill airportd after a crash:

13/12/2015 16:28:20,755 airportd[79737]: SecTaskLoadEntitlements failed error=22
13/12/2015 16:29:35,668 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.airportd[79737]) Service exited due to signal: Killed: 9
13/12/2015 16:29:35,777 airportd[3201]: _ipv6Request: Unable to attach IPv6 on awdl0 (File exists)
13/12/2015 16:29:35,865 airportd[3201]: airportdProcessDLILEvent: en0 attached (up)
13/12/2015 16:29:36,141 airportd[3201]: _ipv6Request: Unable to attach IPv6 on awdl0 (File exists)
13/12/2015 16:29:37,229 airportd[3201]: _createP2PDeviceInterface: Failed to create P2P device interface for en0 (Operation already in progress)
13/12/2015 16:29:38,877 locationd[91]: wifi scan failed with error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "connection to service named com.apple.airportd" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.airportd}
13/12/2015 16:29:46,759 airportd[3201]: SecTaskLoadEntitlements failed error=22
13/12/2015 16:29:46,761 airportd[3201]: SecTaskLoadEntitlements failed error=22
13/12/2015 16:29:46,761 airportd[3201]: WARNING: AvStats (526) is not entitled for com.apple.wifi.scan, temporarily allowing request with background priority —— all entitlement requirements will be strictly enforced in a future release

Do the update to 10.11.2 first and see if that helps.


Dual Boot (Windows partition deleted) , but Still Appearing In my MacBook Air "El Capitan", the Windows 10 was installed using Boot Camp, but the Windows 10 installation was corrupted (crashing).

Then I removed (adding space to MAC installation) the Windows 10 partition using Disk Utility.

Now when I turn On my MAC still message windows is appearing (showing MAC and Windows start options), and the default OS was Windows (appearing blue screen...).

I want to remove Windows 10 option, but I don't know how to do it.

 sh-3.2# 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            120.5 GB   disk0s2
    3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
 /dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
    #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +120.1 GB   disk1
                                  Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                  22ACF9AD-58C6-401F-87D6-41696160E1FD
                                  Unencrypted
 sh-3.2#  gpt -r show /dev/disk0
       start       size  index  contents
           0          1         PMBR
           1          1         Pri GPT header
           2         32         Pri GPT table
          34          6
          40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  235298960      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   235708600    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   236978136          7
   236978143         32         Sec GPT table
   236978175          1         Sec GPT header
 sh-3.2#

The solution was follow:

Ghost partition, Windows BSOD

Open a Terminal window and enter the following command.

diskutil mount /dev/disk0s1

From a Finder window, open the EFI disk. Next open the EFI folder.
Remove the Boot and Microsoft folders.
When finished, enter the command below.

diskutil unmount /dev/disk0s1