Are there any apps or tools that allow visualizing multitouch finger positions for iOS screencast/recording? I'd like to have a visual indicator of multitouch finger positions as I record the iOS screen of an iPad using AirPlay.

This seems like something that would require a jailbreak. Luckily I do have my iPad JB'd but my searches have not turned up anything.

I needed the same and searched a lot. In my opinion there are three solutions:

Live capture of the gestures one does on your iPad (not professional)
Using a PNG of a pointing arm (hand) in ScreenFlow (or Camtasia).

This works quite well. One can tweak the png a bit (X,Y,Z-coordinates) and with adding video actions it comes to live. It is elaborate though, but with some patience and expertise quite professional.
Buying a M4A or MOV of finger gestures.

Have a look at VideoHive's Touch Screen Finger Gestures for example.

You can purchase them with an alpha channel to incorporate in the screencast. Didn't try that one, but seems the most professional to me. Some costs involved though.


What is the cheapest way to get windows running on a Mac I want to get windows running alongside Mac OSX, just so I can run one program not available om Mac OSX. what is the cheapest way to get this set up?

If you just need one program, you could try running it using Wine. This is a compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows software on *nix systems, which includes Mac OS X. Here is a tutorial to help you get started.

Note that not every Windows programs will run using Wine - you might need to experiment first. Or head over to the Wine Application Database for user reviews on how well your program is supported.

Alternatively, you could use one of the many virtualization options out there. Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are excellent but paid options, while VirtualBox is free (and it works great too). However, you'd need a Windows license to legally run Windows in this way.


Why does iCal often say "The server responded: 403 to operation CalDAVSetPropertyQueueableOperation." This happens on both my MacBooks running 10.7.3 and has done at least since 10.7 and with iCloud. My calendar seems to work fine from my iPhone.

This popup says "Access to account “iCloud” is not permitted." and gives the option to "Go Offline" or "Ignore" and if I ignore is seems to be fine for a while and then it comes back after a few hours.

I also have an Exchange calendar and some subscriptions but this error always reports as being from my iCloud calendar.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

This problem appears to be caused by corrupted Calendar caches and it occurs in macOS 10.12.2 Sierra as well.

The easiest way to get rid of this problem is to:

Quit Calendar
Open Activity Viewer and Quit "CalendarAgent"

  note, using QuickLook on any calendar item in the Finder will
  relaunch CalendarAgent which needs to be not running at step 3

Delete ~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
Delete ~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache-shm
Delete ~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache-wal
Launch Calendar

Calendar will read the information from the surrounding data folders and files in ~/Library/Calendars/ and recreate the caches cleanly.

If for some reason the files listed to delete re-appear before you launch Calendar, it means something is triggering the system calendar operations.  Try quitting all of your applications and starting at step 2 or logging out with the "Reopen windows when logging back in" unchecked, then logging back in.


How can I get automator to select the correct already open document? I should start by mentioning that I have an app that opens on start-up which allows me to set customized shortcuts and gestures.
In my case:

command+alt+j maximizes the selected window.
command+alt+n maximizes the selected window on the left portion of the screen.
command+alt+m maximizes the selected window on the right portion of the screen.

The projects I work on have pdfs that need to be opened in groups.

So the automator would ideally perform all of this:

Desktop 1: pdf0 opened, maximized.
Create desktop 2, pdf1 opened and maximized to the left, pdf2 opened and maximized to the right.
etc...

The automator I have set up would work perfectly, except the bolded sections don't work as they should. Instead, pdf1 is opened and pushed to the left, then pdf2 is opened just fine, but the pdf1 is the one still "selected" and so pdf1 pushed from being maximized on the left to be maximized on the right... pdf2 still sits in the middle of nowhere, where it originally opened.

Is there anyway I can fix this?

Many thanks!

Nevermind, solved! Just added an applescript for switching windows using the shortcut "backtick"+command


Set SublimText 3 as default app for files without extension Files without extension always open in TextEdit ...
I want them to open in SublimText 3

I tried to change my com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist, but simply adding public.text did not work ...

The solution was doing it with public.data

1) Go to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices

2) Open com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist with Xcode

3) Add this :

4) Save & Reboot


Spanish to English dictionary on Mac's dictionary app? Is there a way to add Spanish to English dictionary in mac's dictionary app so I can see the definition of word by tapping on a word?

Apple has introduced Spanish to English dictionary in Yosemite.

You can enable the dictionary named "Gran Diccionario Oxford - Español-Inglés • Inglés-Español" by going to Preferences of Dictionary app.


A simple web page using significant amount of memory, can it be some security issue? I ran nothing in background, was just viewing stackoverflow questions, and the notifications says it is using significant of memory.

When I checked activity monitor it was using 2GB which is absolute nonsense.

Is it some security issue?

Usually it’s not a security issue. That warning usually comes up due to the programmers behind the page making a mistake, such as a memory leak, which makes the page use an ever increasing amount of memory. It might of course also be a page with an application that simply requires a lot of memory - that’s not usually the case on Stack Overflow though.

Another reason for the warning could be that you have a browser plugin or other software installed (such as antivirus programs) that manipulate the page to insert code, and they then have a bug that results in high memory use. In some countries it could also be an ISP inserting code into pages - but that would usually require you accepting/installing certificates on your computer in advance.

Finally it might of course be related to something with security. However there’s nothing that indicates that here. Usually programs that try to exploit your computer wouldn’t use huge amounts of memory to avoid rousing suspicion. The only way to tell would be to examine the actual page source of the page you’re currently viewing.


Can I still have several email addresses under one account? At one time I had several email addresses under one mac dot com account. Is that option still available? I cannot find the option anymore.

If you have an old account you can still choose to enable to work with old domains like mac.com or me.com in the diffrence settings as for example Messages or FaceTime.

If you want to use your old mail addresses in Mail.app, you have to enable them in:

  https://www.icloud.com/#mail/prefs-addresses

New created icloud.com addresses can only be used with that domain, and don't have access any longer to the me.com or mac.com domains.

Hope that helped you!


iPhone 7 screen is frozen on the shutdown screen my screen is frozen on the slide to power off screen and it won't let me get out of it. I've tried holding down the home button and the lock button for a long time and it hasn't worked. I've also tried using siri and haven't gotten anywhere. I plugged in my phone as well and that didn't do anything either. I have an iPhone 7

For iPhone 7 and 8, you need to hold down Lock and Volume Down at the same time to reboot. Older iPhones use Lock and Home button.

If you cannot restart the phone this way, you may have to use DFU mode.

(Note: These links are hosted by Verizon, but will work with any iPhone 7 or 8 on any carrier.)


How can I encrypt my home folder? I have a Macbook with several user accounts. Most of the accounts have administrator privileges. The computer's hard disk is encrypted using FileVault.

Is there a way to additionally encrypt each users' home directory so as to prevent other admin users from accessing the others' directories?

I'm (always) running the newest OS X (10.10.4 at the time of writing).

Encrypting the entire user folder will break OS X 10.10 since certain user processes get started before you log in.

You might have to re-evaluate your security levels for users if you can't trust administrators to not abuse their power. FileVault only protects you against non-users. Admin users are root and you can only hope they a) don't know that or b) refrain from bad behavior.

Look at a MDM solution like Casper from JAMF. It has a self-service tool that allows app updates and limited administrative tasks without needing end users to be admin. All users can easily be normal users whether you make tools to do the limited things they need or purchase a tool that has those policies already created.


Mail App Restarted Itself I closed mail an hour ago, when I opened mail back again 10 minutes ago the mail app at reseted itself, there are no accounts anymore, no mails, no nothing.

I was wondering if there was any fast and easy way to restore all that ?
Since I know that my mails are still somewhere in

~/Library/Mail/V2

And that all the accounts are still in keychain, and I'm not using any TimeMachine at the moment.

I created a new account and interestingly enough my mail seem now to be located at

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/data/Library/Mail/V2

By the way, no updates have been done, no modifications what so ever, I just closed Mail.

So basically, it seems that on OSX 10.8 mails are not longer stored in

~/Library/Mail

but in

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/data/Library/Mail/V2

If your mail app restart / restore itself unexpectedly simply copy the folder called "v2" from one location to the other and restart the Mail app.

Everything should be restored.


Simple tool to recover old version of overwritten file I accidentally overwrote a small text file. I have no selectable TimeMachine snapshots - the "up" buttons are greyed out (note; tried Ctrl + Shift + C to remount but it makes no difference). Which is not surprising, as I have no external drive setup (and cannot because of security reasons).

There are a plethora of bad & free recovery apps that don't seem to work.

I'm wondering if there is any free & simple option available?

Without a backup the chances of recovery are slim. And assuming that you have been using your Mac even after you deleted/overwrote the file the chances are even lower (because the freed space may have already been reused).


OS X keyboard shortcut precedence I'm new to Apple, and while the experience has largely been positive, I have been stymied trying to configure keyboard shortcuts to my specifications.  For example, I used a rather round-about process (via the "Automator") to assign a shortcut to open a new terminal.  But even now this this shortcut only seems to function if the focus is on a program which has not overwritten that particular key-combination with its own definition.

I'm looking for information on something like a hierarchy of protocols for how my Mac decides to use which key-combination definition in which context, or a philosophy on the best way to assign my preferred shortcuts.  Can I make a keyboard shortcut so high in priority that no application can take precedence?

I think the OS X Human Interface Guidelines are the place you're looking for. They state that there are Apple-reserved shortcuts (e.g. cmd ⌘+space) and also “expected behaviours” (e.g. cmd ⌘+c) one should respect.

While they don't explicitly state the priority, it suggests itself that the System always should have priority before the frontmost (active) and then background applications.

From my experience, you’re on the safe side with multiple modifier keys (i.e. cmd ⌘+ctrl+shift+…).

As an aside: regarding your specific example (assigning a shortcut to open a new terminal) there's also  excellent apps for that, TotalTerminal (Terminal.app extension) and iTerm 2 (Terminal.app replacement) come to mind


How can AirDrop be disabled? I want to disable AirDrop so that my users do not have access to it but I have not been able to find a place to disable this feature.

The closest thing i have found is this thread but I don't know where to disable it.

Could someone explain to me how to do this?

System-wide

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkBrowser DisableAirDrop -bool YES

User-specific (via preferences)

defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkBrowser DisableAirDrop -bool YES


iPad enter key on keyboard for joining WiFi network I just received an iPad from Apple. I have entered my password for joining the network, but cannot find the enter key. How does one access the enter key on the iPad keyboard?

You probably have a Join key on the right of the keyboard. That's the enter key for joining the network.

On touch keyboards, it's possible to re-label the keys in order to match better the behavior of the key to the specific application or context. When hitting enter in the WiFi connection panel it's synonymous to trying to join the WiFi network.


Hiding All Apple Music Features in iTunes (Apple Music Menus, Radio, Connect & Heart Column) I want to uninstall Apple Music from iTunes.
I don't really care of this so expensive new 'revolution' and it's taking too much place... :/

For example how to delete  'For you, New, Radio and Connect'

And the heart
By the way, all my music is on local and I don't need cloud, radio or anything else.
Can anyone help me ?

If you go into Preferences > General there's two things that you need to uncheck to disable Apple Music.

Show Apple Music
iCloud Music Library

For the Connect Menu, you can do this by going into Preferences > Parental and checking the Apple Music Connect tickbox.

Now I'm not entirely sure what ticking the Internet Radio box does in Preferences > Parental but it doesn't seem to hide the Apple Music Internet Radio button. I currently haven't found a way to hide this radio button.

Edit: Hiding the heart column in iTunes is simple enough. Just right click the heart column in iTunes and scroll down till you see the Love option that's ticked.


How to record audio over Powerpoint/OpenOffice slides? Many times I've seen videos of people talking while presenting their slides. How is that done on a Mac?

I know that I can do a screen recording with Quicktime, and I notice there are two options New Screen Recording and New Audio Recording.

But there is no New Screen+Audio Recording.

Thanks for any help.

You can actually record audio with a Screen Recording in Quicktime, you just need to set the proper option. Just open a new screen recording (⌃⌘N), then click the white triangle:

You'll get a popup menu with options to choose which sound input you want to record from:

Select the appropriate sound device, then start the recoding, and you'll be able to narrate as you record your screen.


Go to beginning of text field in Mac. What's the keyboard combination to use to go to the very beginning of a text field?

Tried Fn+Up and it scrolls the document up but doesn't move the cursor.

Command+Up or Command+Left will take you to the beginning of the text field, while Command+Down or Command+Right will take you to the end of it.


How to mount a disk image with automator or Applescript and without hdiutil? An Automator workflow that mounts a disk image on when I drag and drop the dmg file onto it is easy:

Instead of dragging and dropping the dmg file I want to double click the created workflow and have it mount a specific file. I've tried using "Set Value of Variable" to the path of the dmg, "Open Finder Items", and "Get Selected Folder Items", nothing works.

I can do it with the command line as:

hdiutil mount disk_image_name.dmg

I've also tried with the Applescript:

    on run {input, parameters}

        tell application "DiskImageMounter"
            open "path/disk_image_name.dmg"
        end tell
    end run

But after mounting the disk image as expected, Automator freezes for about 15 seconds and gives the below Syntax Error.

The reason I want to avoid using hdituil is the disk images are encrypted. When using the Automator mount tool the password is done in Apple's dialog box. Using hdiutil I end up passing the password as stdin.

printf '%s\0' "$PASSPHRASE" | hdiutil attach $LOCATION -stdinpass

I would use hdiutil ... instead of other methods but with an image protected by a certificate instead of a password. This is similar as to building an encrypted image with a password and a recovery key (based on a cert) - without password though:

Create a temporary cert folder and cd into it:

mkdir ~/certsecdmg
cd ~/certsecdmg

Create a root CA if you don't have one already:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out casecdmg.key 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -days 7300 -key casecdmg.key -out casecdmg.crt

Fill in all proposed fields.
Create a password protected certificate signing request:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out secdmgbuild.key 4096
openssl req -new -key secdmgbuild.key -out secdmgbuild.csr

Fill in all proposed fields.
Create the signed certificate in PEM format

openssl x509 -req -days 7300 -in secdmgbuild.csr -CA casecdmg.crt -CAkey casecdmg.key -set_serial 01 -out secdmgbuild.crt

Convert the signed certificate to DER format

openssl x509 -in secdmgbuild.crt -inform pem -out secdmgbuild.der -outform der

Bundle the PEM certificate and private key into a PKCS#12 package

openssl pkcs12 -export -in secdmgbuild.crt -inkey secdmgbuild.key -out secdmgbuild.p12

Use hdiutil with the -certificate options to create an encrypted volume (example only):

hdiutil create -type SPARSE -encryption aes-256 -certificate ~/certsecdmg/secdmgbuild.der -fs HFS+J -volname "SecureImage" -size 100m ~/Desktop/SecureImage

Import secdmgbuild.p12 in your keychain
Double-click SecureImage.sparseimage, enter: password of step 3/always allow to always allow access for diskimages-helper.
Create a new Automator workflow, adding a Run Shell Script action with the following command:

hdiutil mount ~/Desktop/SecureImage.sparseimage

 (please apply paths as needed)

This simple Automator workflow works as "workflow" and "app".
Add further actions as required.
Save the content of the folder certsecdmg at a secure place and remove it afterwards.


Is it safe to drill a hole in an Apple TV (3rd gen) remote? I'm not talking about the end where the buttons are, but rather the other side. This device gets lost several times a day by children who hold on to it and misplace it on a regular basis. What I want to do is attach a hub cap to it like gas stations do with bathroom keys.

Is there anything at the back end of these remotes? I just want to drill a 1/4" hole.

Have a look around the web for disassembly. From a quick look, it appears there is room to drill a hole below the battery for the silver remote.

The newer generation black remote is much more contained, but there is room in the bottom corners of the remote below the battery.

I'd recommend disassembling and removing adjacent parts before drilling.

Update: Very late reply but for the TV2 remote it should be an all-aluminum body below the battery. I drilled a 1/8" hole through the bottom left.


How to drain an iPhone battery? My phone froze last night and the battery still has not died. My lock and home button don't work, so I can't just hold the power button down and reset it. I'm on a friend's computer, so my phone isn't linked or whatever to this computer. Is there any other way to get my phone to turn off faster, since I need it for tomorrow.

It has done this before, but I had music playing and wasn't fully charged, but this time I was on my browser with a fully charged phone.

This happened over 26 hours ago.

If you happen to have Find My Phone enabled on the device, you could try logging into iCloud or using the App from any other iOS device. This way you could, firstly, know the exact battery level and, secondly, you could trigger the locating feature which will help with the battery drainage.


Using osadecompile to get plain text AppleScript runs certain actions from the script I've been using this solution to decompile AppleScript files before adding them to a Git repository. It basically creates a filter using osacompile and osadecompile to convert between plain text source and a compiled AppleScript.

I noticed however, that some applications referenced in the scripts are unexpectedly starting on git add and the culprit is osadecompile.

Example:

When I run osadecompile script.scpt against the following script, a Firefox starts up:

tell application "Firefox"
    open location "https://apple.stackexchange.com"
end tell

It doesn't open the location specified, however the Firefox process gets started and remains running.

Questions:

Is there anything I can do to avoid this?
What exactly is happening here? Does the script run in background (other actions  from the scripts - like say "something" do not seem to run)?

I am not sure what the technical reason for this is, but accessing the AppleScript dictionary of some applications seems to require opening them. When I try opening the AppleScript dictionary of Firefox through Script Editor, Firefox will also be opened. When I try opening the dictionary of Keynote v5.3 (iWork'09 version), the app is opened, while when I try this with Keynote v7.0.5, the app is not opened. As Script Editor exhibits the same behavior, I am not sure there's any way to avoid this with osadecompile.

I did not read the Apple Developer documentation on AppleScript in detail, but I noticed this sentence which also suggests some applications need to be opened to access their AppleScript dictionary while some don’t:

  An aete is useful in 10.4 and earlier, in both Carbon and Cocoa applications, to provide a dictionary that scripting languages can use without launching the application.


Accidentally deleted login.keychain file. No backups, but able to recover something I used "Data Rescue 3" to recover a folder full of files called login-00001.keychain (to 587). How do I join them?

Thanks!

The system will create a new login keychain the next time you log in. You will have to re-enter passwords for email accounts, wifi networks, etc., but in general loss of the keychain file isn't too traumatic assuming you have a list of your passwords stored securely elsewhere. This may not be so trivial if your keychain contained security certificates issued by your company or institution. If that may be the case, call IT.

FWIW, I suspect that the multiple recovered files reflect multiple copies (or portions of same) reflecting various versions of the keychain as it was modified. I don't believe they're disjointed fragments that need to be combined. If anything, I'd try renaming the latest file (by date) and if Keychain Access opens it, run Keychain Repair (First Aid?) against the file. But I personally wouldn't bother. (You can give the file a temporary name like "recovered" for testing purposes, then rename it if you decide to use it--or just copy its contents into a newly created login keychain.)


When Updating or Downloading an App on my iPod touch, it Only Appears as "Waiting" I have an iPod touch 4th gen and the software is all up to date. I've had it for about 14 months, but the other day I was updating quite a few apps (maybe 16 or so) because I hadn't used my iPod touch for awhile. I don't know if this has anything to do with it but at the same time I was downloading some podcasts from the iTunes Store (which was also having some minor problems).

I typed in the passcode then clicked "ok". It took a little longer then normal, but it closed the app store, went to home screen then the screen where all my apps are in files like usual.

Five minutes later I realize that nothing has happened (all the updating apps are on "waiting") so I go back to the App Store and update it again. The same thing happens three more times with no luck. I turned my iPod touch off then on again and try uploading. Still nothing.

A few days later I was trying to update again and then, after the tenth try and three restarts, it started updating.

Two days after that I try updating 3 more apps and it works fine after the second try.

Today I was trying to download Magic Piano from Smule (and I recently got the Glee app so it doesn't seem like there's something wrong with my iPod touch and Smule) and it won't download at all. I've tried restarting, pausing, deleting and re-downloading everything and nothing seems to be working. Right now I have some TV shows downloading onto my iPod touch, is that the problem? Help!

Requirements:

iExplorer (free) for both PC and Mac
You do not need a jailbroken device to do this

Steps:

Plug your iPod/iPhone/iPad into your computer. You don't need to let it sync
Open iExplore and let it load
Open the directory labeled "Downloads" (On jailbroken devices that should be "/var/mobile/Media/Downloads")
Delete all files in this folder*
Close iExplore and reboot your device


iPhone 6s display color profile differences between devices Comparing three iPhone 6s side by side, I noticed fairly significant differences in the appearance of colors between them. One in particular is much warmer looking, especially for whites. I have confirmed that nightshift is off and that no screen accessibility settings are enabled.

I tried to capture the difference in the image below with limited success.

In person, the one on the left is noticeable warmer looking, and the one on the right is redder than the one in the middle (or the middle one is greener than the one on the right).

Could any other setting be effecting the display colors? Or is this color variation just expected for three different devices with different histories?

Do you know the history of each of these iPhones?

This may not necessarily explain the difference in your case, but one factor that can result in this difference is the use of non-genuine parts. For example, I've seen this type of differentiation in iPhones that have had screens replaced with 3rd party screens.

Otherwise you could check that the following settings found in Settings > General > Accessibility are the same in all iPhones:

Display Accommodations > Colour Filters
Display Accommodations > Auto-Brightness
Display Accommodations > Reduce White Point
Increase Contrast > Reduce Transparency
Increase Contrast > Darken Colours


Turn off automatic preview in apple mail Is it possible to turn off automatic preview of attachments when composing an e-mail?

NOTE: Yes I know that I can manually ctr+select the attachment and disable preview, but I want this done automatically

In Terminal, type:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

If you want to turn it off again, use

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool no

You may need to restart Mail after running this to change the behavior.


What is the OS X equivalent to the free command to show buffer and cache memory? The free command displays the buffer and cache memory on Linux. What is the command to show the equivalent information for an OS X machine?

vm_stat may just show you what you need. As per the man page:

  vm_stat -- show Mach virtual memory statistics

It can show you the following:

Pages free
Pages active
Pages inactive
Pages speculative
Pages throttled
Pages wired down
Pages purgeable
"Translation faults"
Pages copy-on-write
Pages zero filled
Pages reactivated
Pages purged
File-backed pages
Anonymous pages
Pages stored in compressor
Pages occupied by compressor
Decompressions
Compressions
Pageins
Pageouts
Swapins
Swapouts


free alternative to DVDFab for OS X? so I'm wondering if there's a free alternative to DVDFab. I mainly want to make unencrypted backups (to ISO file) of my DVDs. and in some instances, I want to shrink the DVDs from DVD9 to DVD5 size.

Thanks :)

ps. I've looked around the net and no --recent-- discussion on this topic.

Handbrake is a great free utility for ripping DVDs. It does require the free libdvdcss but the first time you try and rip an encrypted DVD Handbrake will prompt you to download and install it. It's pretty easy.

That will get you a movie file of your choice but not an .iso. There are apps that will do that. iMovie, iDVD, Toast, etc. will all take a movie file and burn it to a DVD or .iso


Right-clicking PDF in Safari shows "Open with Safari.app" not "Open with Preview.app" Obligatory system info: I have a late-2013 retina MBP 15" running OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 and Safari 7.0.3, although I've had this bug for years (I think), even on my previous Mac, whose data was migrated to the new Mac mentioned above.

There is an option in the context menu that shows up when one right-clicks a PDF open inline in Safari, which is supposed to be "Open in Preview.app". For a while this displayed "Open in Skim.app" on my Mac (which is another PDF viewing app I have installed), and more recently it has changed to "Open in Safari.app". Regardless of whether it shows Skim.app or Safari.app, clicking on it opens the PDF in Preview, which is what I wanted it to do anyway, so this is not harmful to my workflow. Still, it bothers me that it shows the name of one app (and in the case of Safari.app, one that doesn't even make sense) while opening another.

I tried logging on with the guest user on my computer to see if it is a problem with my user account. There, the context menu says "Open in Safari", without the .app suffix at the end. When clicking on that option, the PDF is opened in Preview.

Also, I still have access to my old computer, whose drive was wiped and the OS reinstalled. I just tried opening a PDF in it, and the context menu says "Open in Preview" as expected. So it's probably some kind of setting that has been changed on my installation, and survived even when I migrated my data from the old to the new computer.

Any ideas what I can do so that the context menu shows "Open in Preview"?

You could install Mavericks again via the AppStore.
This does not affect your personal files, but it will replace the edits you've possibly made by factory default system files.


When does the Mac App Store produce notifications? According to Apple's page on Mountain Lion, the Mac App Store is supposed to send you notifications:

Mac App Store notifications
The Mac App Store notifies you when
updates are available for OS X or purchased apps.

This doesn't seem to be the case for me, as I have now opened the App Store twice to find updates (one for Day One, another to Xcode), having never received a notification for either. Does the App Store only notify about OS X updates, does this feature not actually function, or am I missing something?

You need to have it set to "Automatically download system updates" in the software update panel of system preferences. I got a notification about the xcode update today.


How do I get the weather widget in the Notifications Center of the iPad? This is driving me crazy because I see this in notification center in a lot of a screenshots for iOS reviews:

What is the app that adds weather to the notification center?

It's not available on iPad. It's an iPhone feature.


Never create a .DS_Store file again I'm tired of finder creating these .DS_Store metadata and finder view tracking files in all of my directories. How can I disable this in Finder?

As Fake Name pointed out, Total Finder comes with a kernel extension to redirect .DS_Store files which effectively prevents those pesky files from being created in your directories and without losing the function. What he/she didn't point out is that the kernel extension can be downloaded without Total Finder from github. You have to build it and drop it in your /System/Library/Extensions directory. Then you should restart your computer. It appears to be working for me so far.

Update: This is now a separate project from TotalFinder called Asepsis. There is now a lot more documentation on how it works and the installation process. The GitHub repo is now located here.


How to open the finder as root I'm back some twenty years after my last Mac. I've got a brand new iMac running Yosemite and I do need to access an external HD formatted on (Gnu/Linux) ext4 (a journaling file system). I downloaded a library (FUSE for OSX), which is able to read that file system and a complementary app (ext4fuse), which works as a client interface to FUSE. I can mount the disk and navigate it on the finder or on a terminal but, when it comes to actually copying files (either on a terminal [see * below, pls] or on the finder), I get an error such as "Cannot read the file" or even "File does not exist". I suspect that it has something to do with permissions, so I thought that doing the copying as root might help.

I'd appreciate any help. Thanks in advance!

Nacho

P.S. I've tried any number of searches to no avail. [*] Trying to do the job from the terminal issuing a cp command didn't get my any closer to achieve it. Apparently, btw, the cp command in OSX is kinda restricted (regarding to its available options and functionality) wrt its Linux counterpart and, to add the insult to the injury, its options don't work the same (see -R, for instance).

I fully accept the warnings other people have given here regarding running finder as root... but in a limited scenario it is very useful.

The OP had a problem using the:

  sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder

I suspect he/she may have also been using something like TotalFinder or XtraFinder

If so, then use the options in the custom menu for these add-ons to restart Finder.

Alternatively:

Run the command above (sudo Finder) in terminal
You will notice the hard drive icon overlayed on your desktop for root... but it is probably not clickable (hence the error message)
Then open a new tab in Terminal (so the sudo tab is still running) and kill the standard Finder (without using Sudo)   "killall Finder"
You should now be able to double click on the overlayed HardDrive desktop icon, or...
In the same non-Sudo tab of Terminal, just type "open ."

One other point to note... if you're wanting to browse as root, you probably also want to see hidden files. So before starting all this, type the command below into Terminal. This is a permanent setting, so you only need to do it once for the root user.

  sudo defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE


Where can I see modifications made to the PATH environment variable by the Go installer I've identified several changes to the PATH variable in Bash that aren't listed in e.g. /etc/profile, ~/.profile, .bash_profile, ~/.bashrc.

The following snippet from the Go installation page mentions that packages may change the environment.

How can I see changes to the environment made by packages?

https://golang.org/doc/install

  The package should put the /usr/local/go/bin directory in your PATH
  environment variable. You may need to restart any open Terminal
  sessions for the change to take effect.

The /etc/profile file, which Bash executes for login shells, includes the following content:

# System-wide .profile for sh(1)

if [ -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ]; then
    eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`
fi

if [ "${BASH-no}" != "no" ]; then
    [ -r /etc/bashrc ] && . /etc/bashrc
fi

It's the path_helper program that sets up the PATH environment variable.

man path_helper:

  The path_helper utility reads the contents of the files in the
  directories /etc/paths.d and /etc/manpaths.d and appends their
  contents to the PATH and MANPATH environment variables respectively.
  ...

In particular, the Go installer creates a file called go in /etc/paths.d with the following content:

cat /etc/paths.d/go
/usr/local/go/bin


Logitech mouse and keyboard don't wake up my macbook pro 13" (2020) I have my macbook plugged into an external monitor, and when it goes to sleep I can't wake it back up with the keyboard or the mouse. They are both Logitech, MX keys and MX master 3. I can't figure it out for the life of me. As far as I can remember, the magic keyboard I had before was able to wake it up, but I'm not sure anymore.
I think this only happens when it goes to sleep automatically. If I send it to sleep, then I can wake it up with the keyboard or mouse.
thanks

I have to use the USB receiver for my Logitech devices to reliably wake my Mac. I'm not sure if I have a lot of 2.4 GHz interference or it just doesn't signal like Apple's devices. The Apple devices reliably work for me, third party devices, I love to connect them via USB to make them as reliable as Apple branded Bluetooth.


Cannot install 64-bit iTunes (v10.5) on Vista I've tried upgrading iTunes, un-installing and reinstalling. Removing all Apple software from my machine. Running the installer with administrative rights. Installing Quicktime independently of iTunes. I've searched everywhere I can about this error I'm experiencing and I still haven't resolved the issue. I've even been through Apple's support article.

Acording to the statistics found under my System in the Control Panel, I am in fact running on a 64-bit OS. Below is the error I'm faced with during installation. Clicking OK cancels the installation wizard.

Did some digging because I knew I have seen this error before. It looks like it is not a direct issue with iTunes but with your Microsoft Virtual C++ redistributable. I resolved it by following the steps in http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-windows_programs/microsoftvc80crtversion80507274053typewin32publick/c1359ee5-e18d-4512-8bff-890936db2810

You are clearly not the only one having this issue, and the steps can be generalized to:

Run windows update
Download and update your Microsoft C++ redistributable http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766a6af7-ec73-40ff-b072-9112bab119c2&displaylang=en#filelist

That has worked for me for a couple of different people's problems, and I hope it fixes yours.

There are additional steps in the thread such as some registry fixes for the windows installer service, however I would give these steps a try first, especially since they cant really cause any harm.


How do I move all recent photos from iPhone to PC, but keep my favourites on my iPhone? I regularly plug my iPhone into my Windows PC and 'Import photos and videos', and then delete them from the device, which is what I want.

But how can I select a few 'favourite' photos and keep those on the iPhone, without them getting removed when I do regular transfers to the PC of all my new photos?

Assuming you are using iTunes for syncing your phone, take a look at this article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4236?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

It describes how you can sync photos from your PC to your iPhone.   So, if (for example) you keep a folder on your PC called Favorite Photos, and have that folder selected to sync to your phone, it will always copy those photos to your phone, even after you remove all the pictures during an upload.


Is it possible to open and watch RatDVD Files on a Mac? Is it possible to watch movies in the format of RatDVD on a mac? If yes, how?

RatDVD is a proprietary format created by the program itself. The developer has no plans to make a Mac app, so if VLC wont play it you will either have to watch the files through a windows virtual machine or watch them through a windows partition.


Building a Xcode project downloaded from GitHub I am just starting to learn about code and programming apps.

I downloaded Xcode project source-code for a mac app that I wish to use from GitHub.

How can I turn that code into an executable application?

The repository readme states 3 steps to build the project. I am done with the first 2 steps, but I don't know how to complete the last one.

Can someone help me understand the difference between an archive build and a run/debug, and how to do them in Xcode?

The help menu works great in Xcode. If you search for each term listed in Step 3, the menu items you need will be shown to you in Xcode.

Running a Mac app is trivial - click the play button in the toolbar - you don’t need any simulator or certificates or setup or choosing a scheme like the image above indicates.

Since you are new, I would also spend time in the Xcode documentation on getting started.

http://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/9.0/#/devc8c2a6be1

You will get alerts in the activity area if anything fails - the project you are starting with has made hundreds of decisions in the project file, dozens of which would take me several weeks to digest (spending an hour a day on this alone) and understand at a cursory level. I’m not a full time developer, but I have been compiling and making Mac apps since the late 80s and I still need to read the documents, watch wwdc videos and ask questions online. Good luck and don’t worry if you have lots of work ahead to find and fix any compile errors or if you have start a new project to learn how Xcode works step by step.


Can you theme the iPod classic UI? Can  you theme the 80gb iPod classic so the menus or the music player have a different graphical user interface?

Ipodwizard claims to do what you want and claims to not do any permanent damage.


What does it mean Band or Non-band in an iPhone specs? NB30 stands for Non band 30, what is this?

The iPhone 6S exists in basically two versions:

Models A1687 and A1688 has support for LTE bands 1-5, 7-8, 12-13, 17-20 and 25-29

Models A1633 and A1634 has support for LTE bands 1-5, 7-8, 12-13, 17-20 and 26-30.

The extra band 30 is a special AT&T band. The iPhone supporting that band were sold by certain dealers in the US.

The NB30 on your iPhone description just means that you iPhone does not support LTE band 30.


iPhone X iOS upgrade failed, now in recovery mode Steps that lead to iPhone X being in recovery mode

Phone runs out of battery and dies
Phone put on charge and left alone
Presumably that automatical tried to update to 13.3.1
After some time (10-15 minutes) saw that it got stuck on apple logo with black screen
Did force restart
Got stuck at it again
Put in recovery mode
Connected to PC and attempted to update via iTunes
Through iTunes update started, saw on iPhone apple logo and bar indicating that it was loading
Around 15% of that bar iTunes shows error 14

Tried different tools, even bough one that SHOULD'VE fix it but did not.

Now attempting to update to iOS 13

Goal
Copy media files (image, videos) from iPhone (there are no backups) so that i could do factory reset.

Any tips ?

There is no way to restore if you have not made a backup.
If you only want to retrieve certain files, try this or one of these tools. They let you choose PHOTos and Vids to recover.

1


Is there a way to assign global hot keys to go to the next/previous album in iTunes? What is the easiest way to add ability to go to next and previous album (not track) using media keys with modifier key (like ⌥+F7/F8 or any of ⇧, ctrl, ⌥, ⌘ or fn)?

Is it possible without using additional applications?

From http://www.usingmac.com/2007/11/21/mac-os-x-leopard-200-productivity-booster-hotkeys

153 Option-Right Arrow  Select next album
154 Option-Left Arrow   Select previous album


Could not validate sizes – Operation not permitted. The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error 1.) I am following instructions for creating a Bootable drive (generously provided in this answer by a gentleman named David Anderson). I am using a 16GB SD card to try to create a Bootable drive from my MacBook running Catalina.

The instructions could be simplified by doing a Restore using the Disk Utility to the external drive (SD card or flash drive), with BaseSystem.dmg being the restore source.

The problem is that when I try this, I get the following error (also see screenshot)

  Could not validate sizes – Operation not permitted. The operation
  couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error 1.)

What does this mean? Is there a better way to fix this than the one given in David Anderson's answer. Or, can the asr command be made to work reliably, so the Disk Utility would not have to be used?

I think the "Operation is not permitted" may be caused by Disk Utility lacking the necessary admin privileges.

sudo /usr/sbin/asr restore --source BaseSystem.dmg --target /Volumes/MyVolume --erase

Should do the trick (terms and conditions apply)


Putting a folder in the dock Is this possible? How can I do it? I want to put applications in a folder in my dock.

You can't put a folder in the left side of your Dock where the programs are, but you can drag a folder to the right side of your Dock. In Leopard (10.5) or later, by default, the folder will appear as a stack, but starting in 10.5.2, you have options for how the folder or stack appears. In Lion (10.7), for instance, you can select whether you want the folder to appear as a folder, or as a stack.


How to reinstall Safari 8 without reinstalling OS X Yosemite Safari keeps on crashing or is unusable for some other reason and I have no possibility of reinstalling it without reinstalling the OS. What do I do?

First try to boot your computer into Safe Mode and open Safari. If it does open you can see if there are any extensions causing the crash and remove them.

You can also update to the Safari 8.0.1 beta from https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action# and see if that helps fix it.

If all else fails. Boot to the recovery partition and reinstall the OS (This will ONLY reinstall the core system and its Apps. Including Safari. No personal data will be lost)


How can I reduce the hard disk space occupied by "Other"? On my internal hard disk "Other" (as shown in "About this Mac") is using 167.99 GB of 251 GB.

I already used Daisy Disk and removed 30 GB (it was 200 GB before).
How can I further reduce it?

Here is an article explaining what the "Other" category of files is, from Apple support. Basically, the Other folder is anything that cannot be recognized as Audio, Video, Photos, Apps, and Backups. If you want to free up some space in here, you need to navigate to your home folder, and move any files to the Trash that you don't need. Then, empty the trash. If there are still files taking up a lot of space that you really need, you can compress them. (Create a folder, place the files in the folder, and click "Compress ." You can also transfer some files to an external drive.

Also, here is an iGeeksBlog article giving some more tips on how to remove things from the Other folder.


help weird icon on my menu bar This icon just appeared on my macbook menu bar. The command + drag does not work.

What is this icon for? How do I delete it?

Looks like the Sophos Antivirus 'update failed' icon.

Ref: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac menu bar shields


Are there keyboard shortcuts for Home, End, PageDown, and PageUp in OS X? How do I set keyboard shortcuts for Home, End, PageDown, and PageUp on a 13" MacBook Pro? Are there default keyboard shortcuts? Or can I do it with Automator (and if so, how)?

I want them to work the same way that Home and End do on all Windows apps.

I also want general solution I get that Kyle Cronin♦ was do the same in some apps, but what about others? is there any tricky solution?

You can do page up/down and home/end on a Macbook keyboard by using the fn and the arrow keys:

fn+↑ is PageUp
fn+↓ is PageDown
fn+← is Home
fn+→ is End


PDF reader that restores last viewed page Is there a (free) PDF reader that could restore last viewed page when opening a PDF in OS X 10.10?

Preview can do it. Just be sure that in your Preferences → PDF tab, you have checked the following option:


Is there a way to swipe down instead of up to launch Mission Control? To me it feels more natural to "pull" down the Desktop down to access Mission Control however System Preferences for the Magic Trackpad only allow for swiping up to access Mission Control.

Is there a hidden terminal preference or app that would enable swipe down to activate Mission Control?

BetterTouchTool lets you assign arbitrary tap/swipe/click gestures to arbitrary commands.

It supports Lion.


Multiple Apple ID in Messages.app We use two independent Apple IDs in Messages.app, which I want to keep private. But if I log out of one and log in with the second one within Messages (not the computer itself, but the Apple ID in the Messages.app), the conversations from the previous account are still online, and the second person can see them. Is there a way to link the conversations to the account, so that they dont show up unless you are logged into the account that sent them?

I haven't found a way to share iCloud accounts for a different reason. Apple suggests keeping separate computer accounts to handle multiple users on a single computer and provides no support for your use case.

Each computer account can have it's own iCloud account associated without conflict. Using fast user switching to move between logins is the safest way. Using two different iCloud accounts with Messages (or any other service) at the same time on the same login is not supported. You can end up with undesirable behavior if you bounce between iCloud accounts as a single user.

iTunes store accounts seem more robust with respect to switching under a single login because Apple has been forced to deal with large number of users who use different accounts for the iTunes Music Store and iCloud and have purchases spanning both accounts and need to log in/log out to validate DRM.


Lilliput USB mini Monitor & Mac monitor limit I love the idea of the Lilliput 7" USB mini Monitor (found via the Stack Exchange API Contest).

However, I already have a 'normal' second monitor connected to my Macbook, would the Lilliput break the 2 monitor limit and not work? Or is USB different?

I also have a second monitor attached to my MB Pro (big 25" Cinema display), and there's no conflict between it and the Lilliput. However, the only Snow Leopard driver I've found so far is beta, and the Lilliput gets all sqwinched up in portrait mode. Also, haven't found a touch driver yet. :P

Otherwise, works great!


Is the MacBook Pro's internal microphone really stereo? My MacBook Pro's (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) internal microphone identifies as a stereo microphone (in the System Report as well as in Audio MIDI Setup),
However if I record some audio with it to a stereo channel in Logic, I get two completely identical channels. I verified by putting Logic's Gain effect, inverting the phase of one of the channels and summing them to mono, which results in complete silence -

Is the microphone indeed just mono? Why does it work as a fake stereo microphone? Is that so that if I connect a stereo mic to the line-in it will work as the same device?

Looking at the technical specifications of some random MacBook Pro computers, none say that there’s a “stereo microphone”. Instead, they reference “dual microphones” “or a “3 mic array”.  Personally, what I have found is that these microphones are not up to the task of anything beyond a quick voice recording, dictation, or the occasional FaceTime/Skype video chat session.  Even then, I’ve found it necessary to use a proper external microphone.  My feeling is that it’s not really a stereo mic, but mono microphones that are digitally made stereo.
Many years back I was tasked with coming up with a way to record a live presentation as it was streamed from a camera attached to a MacBook.  They were using the internal mic to pick up the sounds.  The loud speakers were in non-eqiadistant locations to the Mac so I was concerned with the how the sound would come out since one speaker was obviously closer to the Mac than the other.  Well, the sound was bad but it wasn’t stereo - both channels were identically bad.  What I found that in order to get a proper, quality stereo recording, I needed to utilize a mixer and obtain the audio directly from audio gear as opposed to letting the internal microphone do the work.
Bottom line, I would avoid using the internal mic if you can - it’s more for convenience than quality.  Use a USB mic or if using more professional gear, a USB mixer so you can manage and manipulate the sound levels properly.


IPhone 5 not charging when idling my phone behavior is very strange. If I plug the charger in and do not use the phone, it not charging. It only can be charged if I using it. I've reset but it's still the same. Do you have any idea about it.

Thank you.

This sounds like it may have something to do with the charger cable connection. Before I realized there was lint in my phone's charger port, I was able to sometimes get it to charge when pulling horizontally on the cable.

Check out the phone's lighting port and the laptop's usb ports with a flashlight to see if there is any lint in there blocking the connection


What's the ios app that gives you share options when you take a screenshot? I remember taking a screenshot on my iPhone and being given additional options to share that page from the app, i.e. the app knew that I took a screenshot and proactively gave me the option of sharing that page. Do you guys know what app that might be?

When you take a screenshot and the preview pops up in the bottom-left corner, just press and hold (for 1-2 seconds) on the preview. That will bring up the sharing panel right away.

Some additional details about screenshots if you're interested...

Any iOS app in the foreground can detect a screenshot and react however it wants. I guess you were using some app that offered helpful sharing when you took a screenshot of that app specifically, but I have no idea what that might have been.

There are no apps** that can change the system-wide behaviour of screenshots to reveal the sharing options when you take a screenshot. iOS apps can't interfere with the system that way.

**Actually that's not totally true. If you're trying pre-release versions of apps through TestFlight, any screenshots taken in the pre-release app are automatically converted to suggested feedback for the developer.


Can I output video to my TV using a MacBook Pro? How can I do this? I have the 13" model.

Yes. You just need the right video and audio adapters.

Apple sells two adapters to connect your MacBook's Mini DisplayPort to DVI or VGA. Neither of those will include audio, so you'll also need to get audio cables. Your TV likely includes either optical or composite (RCA) jacks for one or more of your DVI or VGA connections.

For HDMI, you'll need a third-party adapter like this one. Note that this one does not carry audio either. The most recent 13" MBP does put audio out over that port, but I'm not aware of any adapters that can use the audio yet. That same site also sells third-party VGA and DVI adapters that are much cheaper than Apple's.

I can't vouch for the quality of the third-party adapters, but I buy most of my cables there, and I've always had good results.


What is the purpose of the BSD pty/tty device files in /dev? I am on macOS Catalina.
As far as I can tell (reading man pty, man tty, parts of this wikipedia article, and this somewhat dated reference on ttys), these device files are no longer used.
Instead, when one opens up Terminal.app, /dev/ptmx (pseudo terminal master multiplexer) dynamically creates a /dev/ttys### slave for the user to type command inputs. This is what one  sees when calling who.
However, when I ls /dev, I see many pairs of these BSD style pseudoterminal files, that is, /dev/ttyXY and /dev/ptyXY where XY are a pair of characters. I believe there are 255 total pairs of these files.

Is there any specific reason besides backwards compatibility that these files are on new versions of macOS? Any modern use cases?
If possible, how could I open one of these BSD PTY files, instead of /dev/ptmx, for general terminal use or with screen? When I tried to screen \dev\ttyw0, nothing happened, and xterm created another \dev\ttys###.
Why was the new ptmx system adopted? Just so I can create more than 255 terminal sessions simultaneously?

Edit: related but different post.

Backwards compatibility is the reason that these files are on the newest version of macOS. It is there to ensure that programs that expect this way of handling pseudo terminals still work.
You can open the /dev/ptyX# files the same way you would open /dev/ttys### files. You seem to have reversed the slashes in your command - please ensure that you are using forward slashes like this:
screen /dev/ttyw0

Note that this in itself doesn't cause anything to happen. You have only connected to one end of the terminal pair. You would need to connect to other end as well to transfer some data.
As an example you could open one Terminal window and run the command above, and then open another Terminal window and run the command below:
screen /dev/ptyw0

Now if you type something in one window, it appears in the other (and vice versa).
The main factor in adopting the ptmx system was that the old system is very complex for programmers to use correct. It looks deceptively simple, but when you get into it, you'll find that it is actually not.
One of the main problems is in determining which of the /dev/ttyXX files to actually use. I.e. you want to use one that is not in use by others. If you're not very careful, two programs that want to open a new pseudo terminal at the same time could both mistakenly think that the same terminal is not in use by others, and then both start using it - causing all sorts of problems. The ptmx system solves this problem.


Invert scrolling on Windows Bootcamp It just irritates me a little bit that when I scroll in Windows, I have to scroll normally, but on Mac OS X, I have to change back to the other scrolling (Inverted), I prefer the Mac OS X way, is there a way to have this setting on Windows using Bootcamp settings or such?

From user3669959's linked answer:

Open the Mouse settings in the Control Panel
Click on the Hardware tab, "HID-compliant device", Properties
Click on the Details tab
Choose Device Instance Path in the Property drop down menu
Note the VID value
Run regedit
Edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\HID\VID_???\VID_???\Device Parameters, where the ??? is the VID value we just found
Edit FlipFlopWheel
Change the value from 0 to 1
Close all programs
Reboot

This worked for me on a Windows 7 64 bit PC, using the Boot Camp 5.1.5769 AppleWirelessTrackpad64.exe driver.

References:

http://tsentas.net/windows-bootcamp-reverse-scrolling/


Create a bookmark to a webpage through non safari browser? Is it possible to create a shortcut or bookmark to a webpage directly from an iPad's main page
which opens in a non-Safari browser.

i.e. Readledocs or GoodBooks?

As I know, now there is no way to do this


how to navigate and select multiple files using only keyboard I would like to select multiple files non sequentially as in the illustration below...

On Windows I could simply hold down the Ctrl Key, navigate with Up and Down keys and hit the Space key to select or deselect a file.

But on mac if I hold down the Command key and hit Down arrow, it opens up the file (tested on images).
and ctrl + down arrow does something weird with the windows..

Is there any way to select such thing without mouse (which is way slower of course..)?

Unlike Windows MacOSX is not well designed for keyboard only access. There is no built in method for doing this. Sorry you're stuck with using the mouse in these situations.


The headphone jack on my MacBook Pro just stopped working. How do I fix it? The headphone jack on my MacBook Pro stopped working. It was working fine, then just spontaneously stopped while I was using external speakers plugged into the output jack. Now, neither speakers nor 3 different headphones have sound. The internal speaker on my MacBook Pro still works.

I've had similar issues and restarting coreaudio work for me. Run this in a terminal (you might be prompted for your password).

sudo pkill coreaudiod

If your curious sudo is something used to run commands as administrator (SU-DO as in super user do) and pkill sends signals to processes based on name, in this case coreaudiod, which is the name of the coreaudio daemon process. When it gets a terminate signal sent by pkill it will terminate and then macOS will restart it again.


How to sort/group notifications in iOS 10 Notification Center In the Notification Center in iOS 9 it was possible to group notifications per app or by time/day.  In iOS 10 I don't find the setting to change this behaviour.  Do someone know if it can be changed or is this setting not available any more?

I'm sorry if it doesn't answer your question. This is the first thing that I noticed as soon as I installed the new iOS 10 on my iPhone 6. I had words with the Apple support and they told me that it is no longer possible to group notifications by app with the new iOS 10. I’ve also submitted the feedback to Apple regarding this issue here: http://www.apple.com/feedback


Low CPU usage when performing big task in java I recently got mac mini and I'm new to OS X so maybe this is a trivial question.
I'm developing web application in java using Spring. I have another project to run IT tests which sets up the API and performs lots of testing.

Tests take ~6 minutes on Linux and Windows (and when this is first thing i do after restarting my mac).
When i run them on my mac they take very long time (~30 mins and go on)
I notice in Activity Monitor that CPU is 90% idle after the API has started and tests begin to execute. Java processes uses ~0.5% of CPU. There is still ~7 GB memory free.

Running this on other environments (e.g. Linux) usually takes most of available resources (almost 100% CPU usage and memory)

Can somebody help me resolve this issue? Does OS X have any limitation regarding CPU usage for java processes?

I can provide more informations but need to know where to look.

Is the console output slowing the application? Does the app use System.out or a logging framework like log4j?
I just solved a similar issue for a Java app and the behavior occurred after an update - the MySQL slow query log showed that the insert was taking 1 second but in reality a batch insert was being split into 1000 some inserts after the default behavior in the JDBC driver changed from auto commit being off for batch commits to having it on (which required me to manually turn off auto commits for batch inserts).


xcode-select --install not available on update server I'm trying to install the new command line tools in OS X 10.9, and I get this weird error from Apple.

  Can't install the software because it is currently available from the Software Update server.

xcode-select --install

  A workaround is to download the tools from here https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action –  nnyby

But that also returns an error.

Can anyone offer an alternative way to download this?

Xcode Command Line Tools can be downloaded directly from the Apple Developer site here as pointed out by this stackoverflow answer.
You could also just run my Xcode CLT install / bootstrap script if you're looking for a quick automated solution.


Bind a CTRL key to custom button One of my programs require CTRL key to used very frequently. But it is not very comfortable in my case and I would like to change it to 0 button on the right side of my keyboard.

I've been downloaded and try to use BetterTouchTool and Karabiner but unfortunately you can bind a key only for already pre-defined keys for you, but cannot add your custom there, like in my case I want on 0 click -> CTRL be pressed as well.

Could you please help me to make it possible? I am on Yosemite.

Thanks for any help!

The program Ukelele can be used to create custom keyboard layouts, including remapping control keys. It's not he simplest program to use, but it does give you more flexibility that what you have tried.


hdiutil convert not working and not telling me why I've been trying to create a bootable Ubuntu flash drive following instructions from multiple sites. I need to convert the .iso file to an .img using hdiutil. For starters, the syntax of the command is very unclear. The ubuntu site and the -help option of hdiutil say hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso but the man hdiutil says hdiutil convert ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img. I have tried both ways and neither has worked. I don't get any sort of error message, and I know my paths are correct (when I try with an incorrect path it says so). The only thing printed in the terminal is

Usage:  hdiutil convert -format <format> -o <outfile> [options] <image>
    hdiutil convert -help

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Use ETCG drivemaker file, much easier.

Heres the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQIaDO9nR6Y&t=421s


Leap Seconds in OS X A leap second was recently added on June 30, 2015 23:59:60 UTC.

How are leap seconds implemented on OS X (specifically Yosemite)?

OS X and iOS use ntp-like software daemons to poll for and periodically adjust internal clocks based on external time sources.

A leap second arrives as an external correction similar to how each hardware clock corrects minor (or major) skews and inaccuracies periodically.

OS X ships with perl modules to accurately determine if a leap second is coming or has come, but internally it's not handled like leap years where the system knows in advance and automatically adjusts it's internal clock without needing to be corrected from an external time keeping source.

https://developer.apple.com/search/?q=leap%20second
Perl module LeapSecond
time2posix man page


Mavericks mail.app to/cc header detail white color my mail.app suddenly stopped showing me to/cc header detail in all emails. I had a better look at it and those headers are there, but are displayed in white color. Details on image:

I tried changing color via Command + T, but it seems that it only changes email color, not text color. I also tried to remove file from ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist and restarting the Mail.app, but that didn't help either.

How should I restore to the default behaviour?

In case the system fonts got modified somehow I recommend to reset them.

To do this open the app called Font-book and under the File tab click on the "Restore standard Fonts".  Then, reboot the computer.

That should fix your problem.


Aperture .aplibrary file is 3X (!) larger than the photos it points to I'm experimenting with aperture, and it seems the preview and thumbs file is 3x (Three Times!!) larger than the actual photos in the album.

Basically, I have a folder with ~ 2.61 GB (~12,000 images) images in it, predominantly jpg files. It is on a network drive. The .aplibrary file is 7.52 GB.

I am importing it in-place, so as to enable other computers on my network to access the files as well, and in an apparently misguided attempt to prevent the local library from taking up too much space.

To clarify, the .aplibrary does not even contain the original images, as the images are imported without moving.

Looking inside the .aplibrary file, ~60% of the size is coming from the AP.thumbnails (4.9 GB) file, which seems strange as there are also thumbnails stored separately (In the /Previews/ folder).

I have changed the preview quality settings to 2 (out of 10) with little effect on the size of the aplibrary file.

This seems so ludicrous that I've actually completely deleted the local library, and re-run the import process several times, with no change. I can only think I'm doing something wrong, but I don't see any settings aside from the above mentioned preview quality which would affect this.

I'm on a mac-mini with a 320 GB HD, and am eventually hoping to import my full library, which is ~280 GB, so this is a serious deal breaker.

Further Info -
I decided to see what would happen if I manually removed the AP.thumbnails file. I opened the .aplibrary package, and simply removed it.
On restarting Aperture, everything seems to still work fine, though the thumbnails do load slightly slower.
This reduces the .aplibrary to 1.49 GB, which is at least smaller then the actual library files, but is still absurdly large.

What the heck is going on?

Given your 12,000 images are 2.61 GB in total, they're about 228 kB each — is this right? and is this typical of your entire 280 GB of photos?

By default, Aperture makes previews and thumbnails to speed things up, based on the assumption that your images are quite large (e.g. 2+ MB) and loading + displaying them will take a long time.

For low resolution cameras, Aperture wastes quite a bit of space (relatively speaking)... but you can improve it somewhat...

Disable/shrink previews

If this size is typical of your entire library, you should probably disable the automatic creation of previews since they'll be pretty redundant for 228 kB images:

In Aperture Preferences, go to the Previews tab and uncheck the box for automatic generation of previews for new projects
In the library, click on Photos (at least in 3.x, in older versions you may need to make a search for all photos?), select all, click "Delete Preview".

If you really want previews, but want them lower quality/size, then change the settings in Preferences and then make sure you select all photos, right click and "Update Preview". You might need to delete them first if it says they're already up to date.

Not much you can do about thumbnails

According to this apple article, Aperture thumbnails are 1024x768 resolution JPGs, and I know of no way of disabling their creation. For low resolution images, this is obviously pretty silly/redundant, since the speed-up will be minimal. Other than complaining to Apple (that "fixed size thumbnails even for low resolution images is stupid"), I'm not sure what you can do here. :(

I have a library of 34,000 photos which has produced 22 GB of thumbnails, an average of 680 kB per thumbnail. For your 12,000 photos 4.9 GB of thumbnails its about 430 kB per thumbnail. This overhead doesn't really bother me, because my 12 megapixel JPG images are 2-5 MB each (and RAWs are more like 20 MB), but for a library of smaller (say 2 to 5 megapixel) images, the thumbnails aren't that much smaller than the masters...

Just a warning, that according to posts like this one, Aperture will slowly regenerate your thumbnails, so while you can delete them to save space, they'll slowly come back.

If you've only tried with your smaller photos from an older camera, and your newer one has bigger files, then you'll see a big improvement in the amount of space "wasted" in thumbnails once you put the larger photos in. 280 GB of 288 kB photos seems unlikely (1.3 million photos?!) so I'm guessing you've got some much larger images in there... in which case it might be okay in the long run...

Should be easy enough to calculate the Aperture thumbnail waste from the total number of images multiplied by about 500 kB per thumb.


Apple Approval for Keychain After update on my iPhone 7, I was prompted to set up some sort of approval where I needed to approve my phone from another device. When I went to my second device it asked to verify from another device also. I go to my third and last device to approve both the iPhone and the iPad from my MacBook and it says my MacBook needs to be approved too!? How am i supposed to approve all my devices if they all need approved?

Apple has many security features within their iCloud Keychain. According to this support article, you do have some options:

You can use your iCloud security code that you set up when you started using iCloud Keychain. If you enter it too many times incorrectly, you will have to contact Apple support to try again. Too many incorrect tries will delete your security code from Apple's servers.
You can also verify your identity with a text message sent to the number used when first setting up iCloud Keychain. If you no longer have access to this number, you can also contact Apple support for more help.

Hope you can get this sorted out!


MacBook Pro trackpad click I am new to the MacBook Pro laptop. Why does the trackpad have to be pressed down to register a click, rather than just touching on the pad? Is there a way to change this? Please advise because it is very irritating to have to press hard on the trackpad.

You can enable "Tap-To-Click" in the System Preferences.

Go to System Preferences from the  menu, and click on Trackpad. (near the middle of the screen)

There should be a screen that looks like this:


What is connectme.apple.com? I've noticed a few sessions on my website with the referer of connectme.apple.com, however the server does not appear to exist on the internet. More specifically, this is the URL of the referer:

https://connectme.apple.com/docs/DOC-781239 (Could not resolve host)

The most notable session from this referer was the following flow:

Shutdown Causes
Blog
back then forward
OS X - Blog
back
iOS - Blog
OS X El Capitan Hidden Features
back 3x

The sheer length of this session is intriguing given that I rarely break 3 pages per session!

The /docs/DOC-… section of the URL is similar to that which is used by Apple Support Communities docs (https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-••••), but this is the only similarity I could find. Furthermore, the DOC number is far greater than any DOC number on ASC.

What is this domain for? What ‘docs’ are on this site? Can it be accessed outside of Apple?

Connect me is an intranet portal used by Apple. Used for internal communication and collaboration. Someone probably posted a link to your site for reference or info. Source: former contractor.


ITunes Match will not match all songs In step 2 of iTunes Match, all of my songs except one are matched (3937 of 3938) and it is stuck at step 2. Is there a way to force the final match? I'm missing artwork on my iPhone and iPad.

Just wait. Sometime it can take awhile, due to the hundreds of people doing the same thing right now. Or you can restart it, if nothing else works.


How to disable the next song key? I'd like to disable the next/previous song keys, because I rarely need them but often press by accident when pausing/playing. Keyboard shortcuts doesn't seem to provide a solution, and neither does googling around.

My OS X version is 10.7.1, in case it matters.

Thanks!

You should take a look at Function Flip. It can selectively toggle function keys between being regular function keys or the special hardware keys, including the media keys (F7, F8, and F9). Essentially, it does the same thing as "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" setting (System Preferences > Keyboard), except only to individual function keys instead of all of them.


Can't restore closed Safari tabs on Catalina! I have a big problem with Safari.  I had about 30 tabs opened and I restarted my computer.

Safari opens itself empty, without restoring any tabs and the "restore all tabs from previous session" is disabled.

I searched the solution for hours.  The fix seems to be restoring an older version of the file LastSession.plist from the Library folder with Time Machine.  However, this isn't working on Catalina as Time Machine isn't working with this folder and its files.

Anyone know a workaround? I had really important tabs

At the top of the Safari page is a History Menu item. When you open that it should list the most recent sites you have visited. You may be able to recover them one at a time by clicking on each site. If no sites are listed I'd look for the plist file and edit it to see what is in it. I think TextEdit will open plist files. If not try Xcode.


Do I have to / is it possible to update to iOS 8.0 if I preinstalled device with a 8.0 beta? I am a developer, and my beta iOS is really unstable, is it possible to update it to the real iOS8 that coming out today?

Do you know is iOS8 available for download in Settings yet?

Yes, It will be possible to update to the iOS 8 public when Apple releases to the public. The update could be done via iTunes or OTA.


Installing glassfish on Mountain Lion I downloaded glassfish-3.1.2.2-unix.sh from glassfish.java.net. To install I did

chmod +x glassfish-3.1.2.2-unix.sh

then i tried to run it :

$ ./glassfish-3.1.2.2-unix.sh
This program requires DISPLAY environment variable to be set.
Please re-run after assigning an appropriate value to DISPLAY.

Any idea ?

Thanks

The DISPLAY variable tells the X11 libraries where the X11 server is located.

Try

 export DISPLAY=:0

I do not believe the Unix installer supports installing OS X services, so unless you have very explicit needs at this time you can get along just with the zip-distribution of Glassfish.  Unzip it and run asadmin start-domain.


Is it possible to hide the bottom tab in Chrome on OS X using keyboard? When you use Google Chrome on OS X and download some stuff while web-surfing, a tab shows up on the bottom on which the downloaded contents and its progress status will be displayed.

However, I don't like to bother to closing the tab after the download is successfully done by moving the cursor and tapping on the x icon.

Is it possible to close the tab via a shortcut? Or ideally, is it possible to automatically close the tab once the download has been done?

You'll want to take a look at this post on our sister site...
https://superuser.com/questions/111675/google-chrome-auto-close-download-bar/325787

There are multiple methods given, including an extension that can do this automatically, as well as an Applescript that can run as a service and be activated with a keyboard shortcut.


Which Time Machine backup destination over Wi-Fi to choose: old computer running Ubuntu or Time Capsule? Here is my situation. I live in a shared house where there is already a wireless router that other people use. I have a Macbook Air that has 128GB of hard drive. I want to use Time Machine for automatic backups. I'm considering one of the following options:

1) I have a spare 320 GB USB drive and spare old Thinkpad that I basically use as a Desktop running Ubuntu. Its on 24/7 and connected to the wireless network. If I connect my hard drive via USB cable to my Thinkpad, is it possible to configure it to be used with Time Machine on my Macbook Air? If so, can I also access the drive from "outside world"?

2) I can get a Time Capsule. I do not have the option to use it as the router (other guys won't like messing with the router). I can connect it via Ethernet to the router but since the router is not in my room, I'd rather not. Is it possible to connect it wirelessly to the router for backups? If so can I access it from the outside network?

Which of the two options is more feasible?

Both are feasible. I use the first myself, and my sister had the second set up at one point.

1) On the laptop, you can install netatalk which handles AFP file sharing. Time Machine requires some special AFP features but those are supported by the version of netatalk that comes with Ubuntu 12.04 (just do sudo apt-get install netatalk).

Here's a decent guide for that, although with current versions you shouldn't actually need avahi-daemon, netatalk can handle Bonjour by itself now. You may actually just be able to get away with adding a line like:

/home/username/backup    "Time Machine"  allow:username   options:tm,noadouble

to /etc/init.d/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default, which is all I had to do on one machine running 12.04 (I don't remember having to do the other stuff, but YMMV).

Note that you should NOT ever need to use the "EnableUnsupportedVolumes" hack as netatalk meets Apple's spec and should appear as a backup destination automatically. Using this hack causes Time Machine to ignore problems that can cause loss of your backups.

2) A Time Capsule can indeed be connected to a wireless network as a client to share the hard drive (it can also share a printer connected via USB). I think the setup wizard makes it pretty easy, you're basically just looking to set it up as a wireless client and not a router. You might want to hook it up by ethernet if the signal isn't so great, though.

If 320GB is enough space (which I imagine it is, unless your Air has a 512GB SSD), I'd go with the netatalk solution unless money is no object.


Weird logging behavior in Unix mail I use Unix mail (Berkeley mail, /usr/bin/mail) on my iMac.  It has just started  behaving in strange ways.  If I type ~v, to open an editor, I get [LogLevel VERBOSE] or sometimes [LogLevel DEBUG] and the editor doesn't open.  I get the same behaviour running heirloom mailx.

Any idea why this might be happening and how I can stop it?  (I'm not a power user and know little about logging.)

Somewhat mysteriously, this new behavior coincided exactly with an upgrade to Mavericks, not on the machine running Unix mail, but on the machine from which I remotely ssh to that machine.  The machine running Unix mail hasn't been upgraded and uname -v yields:

Darwin Kernel Version 11.4.0: Mon Apr  9 19:32:15 PDT 2012; root:xnu-1699.26.8~1/RELEASE_X86_64

OK, I figured it out.  It's a new escape sequence ("~v" for changing the logging level) in the latest version of ssh.  I fixed it by changing the escape character.


Automator sequential file rename with variable padding I want to rename selected files in the finder sequentially. To do this I have created an Automator workflow.

In the Automator workflow you can specify how many digits long you want the rename to be I.e. 3 = 001, 002 etc...

I would like this number to be inferred from the number of files selected.

Is this possible?

Thanks for any help!

Ben

This is not possible with Automator. You can only specify the number of digits manually.


How do you get a clickable path to a file or folder? I already saw a lot of questions and answers about how to copy the path of a file or folder using Automator.

I personally like to use the copy option under the action menu on top of your finder because this will give you a path which can be used as a link:

You can paste this link in your e-mail. It's clickable so the receiver can click it and the exact location of the file will be opened.

But... does anybody know if there is a way to copy this path automatically in an e-mail message using Automator?
I know how to create an e-mail in Automator but I can only copy the 'readable' path in it, which can't be clicked...

You might want to consider using a scripting language to do this. I've created a simple JavaScript for Automation program that can do the job (it can also be fairly easily replicated in AppleScript):

finder = Application('Finder')
finder.includeStandardAdditions = true
file = finder.chooseFile()
path = String(file).replace(' ', '%20')

You could then use the path variable to create a new OutgoingMessage in Mail.

Alternatively, you could use this as a "Run Javascript" block in Automator, then use its result in a New Mail Message (in which case you would need to append return path to then end of the script).


Restored from Time Machine, no boot I restored from a Time Machine backup onto a new HDD, this was using a disc with OS X Lion

Upon boot, in verbose mode, the text hangs after initpool: offset = 0x08000000 size = 0x0800000.

I would be inclined to point to it being a RAM problem, but when another drive is hooked up, it goes on to list the partitions and then hangs. So it's most likely whatever sequence that happens right after the initpool function which is hanging

Why can't I get it to boot up? Also, I see something about the program Little Snitch starting, in case a third party program might be known to cause trouble.

A restore of Time Machine back to the drive will not restore it to a bootable state. You must install the OS onto the drive from the install download (Lion) or install disk (pre-Lion).

To do what you expected you need to make a clone of your boot drive. Use a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner. It makes an exact copy of your drive. If that drive happens to be your boot drive, then the clone is bootable.

Time Machine is great for recovering lost or earlier versions of your documents/data; Carbon Copy Cloner is great for keeping a current snapshot of your entire hard drive that is bootable. Use Both; I do.


Problematic performance of Adobe CS5.5 suite on OSX (Snow Leopard) We are running some 17 iMacs ranging from 2008 models to 2010 models, all with 4gb ram. Most are on 10.5, the newest one on 10.6

We upgraded from CS 4 to CS 5.5 last month. We also upgraded from suitcase fusion 2 to 3 because of this. Both apps with the latest updates.

Now I've got some annoyed designers on my hands ;) The performance is abominable. Just moving a shape sends the CPU into overdrive.

Only one the two cores goes to 100% CPU. Memory is available, no swapping. Disk almost empty. No extreme disk io.

We have implemented all illustrator and indesign performance settings we found on the fora of adobe. This improved the situation somewhat but it's not really workable.

Maybe related, an illustrator file, using only shapes, no fonts, with terrible performance when moving the shape. We tried saving as PDF, from local disk to local disk, 8mb PDF, 1 minute. Opened from our server (Windows, but with AFP sharing via Extreme-Z IP) the PDF is 37mb and it takes 10 minutes.

I'm at a loss so I hope there is some kind of magic bullet :)

By now we found the problem. Our Filewave deployment system kept overwriting the .pref files. We removed them from the deployment and the issue was fixed. So far for saving time deploying through Filewave :)


Can I view iPad screen from Mac? There are several questions that ask whether you can control an iPad from a Mac (like this one). But is it possible to view your iPad screen from a Mac when it's plugged in via USB or wirelessly without jailbreaking it?

I can remote login to my Mac at work and my iPad is connected so I can debug on it via XCode, but I can't see the results.

You can with Yosemite & iOS 8

Launch Quicktime player & select File > New Movie Recording [Cmd/opt/N]
Click on the small downward-facing triangle next to the record button. This lets you select an alternate recording source, which now includes your iPhone or iPad.


On Mac OS X, why would a network folder appear dimmed, and not be accessible? I have a user who is using a Mac to connect to our corporate network.  He is attaching to a DFS share on a Windows Server 2003 machine using the IP address.  He created a folder a few weeks ago that has 800+ MBs of data in it.  Now, whenever he selects the folder, he cannot see the contents of the folder, instead he sees a "Preview" pane showing the name of the folder, the size of the folder, etc.

Any idea how to allow him to see the contents of the folder?  I've already checked that he has NTFS perfmissions on the folder, and I (and other users) can see the contents of the folder using standard domain user accounts.

Since I could not find any way to resolve this, I simply made a copy of the folder, then used Cut-and-Paste to move the contents over to the new folder. I then renamed the old folder as 'Old Folder', and renamed the new folder 'Images New Website' (the name of the original folder).


How can I iPhone restore in iTunes without upgrading iOS? I am trying to restore a set of my iPhone5C backups I made in iTunes to my iPhone4S. My iPhone4S is still running on iOS 7.0.4. I don't want to upgrade it because iOS8 on iPhone4S will almost be unusable (the current iOS7 is bad enough on iPhone4S).

I have tried doing this directly in iTunes using its restore function, but when I do so, iTunes forces me to update my iOS to 8.3. If I refuse to upgrade, the restore function will abort and I cannot continue with my restore from there.

How can I perform the restore in iTunes without having to upgrade my iOS?

You can't.

Restoring from another device's backup will update to the latest iOS the restored device can use.

The only way would be to restore from a backup initially made from that same device, using that iOS.


Flash Player breaks Safari! As of a few days ago, some Safari webpages (the first and most frequently-occurring of which was Facebook's News Feed) would start loading but then freeze up. I went into Activity Monitor, and while it did say that Safari Web Content wasn't responding, it also said that Flash Player (Safari web plugin) wasn't responding. Force Quitting the Safari Web Content didn't do anything; the page just reloaded and froze up again, but when I forced Flash Player to quit, the misbehaving webpage refreshed and worked perfectly. After several more instances of the problem I uninstalled and reinstalled Flash Player, and the problem happened again.

I've currently got Flash Player uninstalled for stability's sake, but I can't live a Flashless life forever. How can I fix the problem?

UPDATE: It just happened again after I attempted a reinstall. This time, I checked my Flash version.

OS X 10.10.2, Safari 8.0.3, Flash "NPAPI Plug-in version 16.0.0.305 is installed."

Google's Chrome browser includes a built-in flash plugin. I uninstalled Flash on my system too but I use Chrome for loading up sites which require flash.

Another tack you might try is to install Click to Plugin. I was going to recommend Click to Flash, but apparently that isn't under development anymore and the developer recommends Click to Plugin.


Unlink iMessages between devices How do I disable iMessage syncing between my iPhone and iPad? In other words, I do not want messages sent to my phone to display on my iPad and likewise. I don't want messages sent to my email to display on my iPhone.

Is there a way to unlink my phone number from iMessages on the iPad?

On your iphone go to Settings > Messages and turn off "text message forwarding".  Then scroll down and look for "Send and Receive" where you can control what addresses or phone numbers messages can be received using.

You may or may not want to turn Settings > Messages on the iPad off, I think the above two changes will handle what you are looking to accomplish.


How do I import from a mini DV camera without using the tape? I want to set up a multicamera interview situation and direct stream the content from cameras to hard drives, without running mini DV tapes .

I am running Mavericks 10.9.3 on a Mac Pro and 10.9.4 on a MacBook Pro. My cameras are a Canon ZR800 and a ZR20.

iMovie 8.0.6 will capture from the camera  without having to engage the camera transport but the later version doesn't and neither does FCPX. Both iMovie and FCPX show the cameras in their import dialog and seem ready to roll the 'tape' in the camera but they show the 'camera not controllable' dialog and do not seem to save the footage.

Is there an app which will accept my firewire DV camera and record its output?

Try Quicktime Player -  Cmd/Opt/N for new movie recording.

That's how I have to get live video into FCPX, though with a different camera.


When installing some apps, I get an "Extras" folder, where do I put this? I'm new to Macs. I understand how to install Apps by dragging and dropping into the Applications folder and then opening the App, but sometimes installations come with an "Extras" folder (for instance, Diff Merge - http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/).

Is there a common place to put things like this, or are these just tools I need to copy to various locations like my PATH?

An "Extras" folder inside a DMG file has no particular significance, it is just a subfolder distributed with the disk image and could just as well go by any other name. Therefor there is no generic answer to your question.

In the case of your example DiffMerge, the "Extras" folder contains a Readme.txt with suggested instructions on how to install these additional utilities.

 sudo cp Extras/diffmerge.sh /usr/bin/diffmerge
 sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/diffmerge
 sudo cp Extras/diffmerge.1 /usr/share/man/man1/diffmerge.1
 sudo chmod 644 /usr/share/man/man1/diffmerge.1


Windows Word License for Mac Windows Will my Office for windows license work for office on mac? I don't think it will, but I was just checking.

No, your Windows license for Office will not work with the Mac version of Office. According to this post on a Microsoft support forum:

  Mac Office (2011) is licensed as a completely separate product & is produced specifically for the Mac OS. If you choose to use it you will have to purchase it outright - there is no 'transfer' of a license from one OS to another.


Set the result of command to variable in Terminal post execution How can you set the output of a command run in terminal to a variable after it has run?

Background

(You can skip of you don't need the background) I run VirtualBox VM and do a lot from the command line, especially when I am remote.  VBoxManage requires either a UUID or the name of the virtual machine in order to interact with it.  For instance, if I wanted to power off a VM, the syntax would be (I have an alias set for VBoxManage as vbm):

vbm controlvm <vmname>|<UUID> poweroff

This is pretty easy if you have VM names that don't have spaces or special characters in them like "Client X Web Dev Server".  I do this so I can take advantage of descriptive names.  So, the tradeoff is that I use the UUID.  To do this, I created another alias that will `cut' the output down to just the UUID.  For example, if I am looking for my "Fred Web Dev Server" (I am a fan of the Flintstones), I execute the command:

vbm list vms

My output is as follows (shortened list):

"Fred - FreeBSD 10.2" {f93c17ca-ab1b-4ba2-95e5-a1b0c8d70d2a}
"FreeBSD 10.2 Master" {ae2a2d61-25e5-4b5e-b455-1b2f60b49157}
"Windows 7 Pro VL" {62bfbca1-9fb4-4758-aeac-2777f2614ffd}
"Windows 10 Pro" {46b285c3-cabd-4fbb-92fe-c7940e0c6a3f}

So, to interact with "Fred" I just issue the command:

vbm list vms | grep Fred

and as expected, I get:

"Fred - FreeBSD 10.2" {f93c17ca-ab1b-4ba2-95e5-a1b0c8d70d2a}

I then pipe it to another alias, vmc, that issues a "nested" cut command: cut -f 2 -d { | cut -f 1 -d }.  My result is just the UUID without brackets

$ vbm list vms | grep Fred | vmc
f93c17ca-ab1b-4ba2-95e5-a1b0c8d70d2a

What I would like to do is set that result to a variable.  What I have been doing is re-executing the command, but editing it first to add a variable set instruction at the beginning like this:

$ set vm=`vbm list vms | grep Fred | vmc`

Then I can reuse vm in my commands easily:

$ vbm control $vm poweroff

I like having the option of not setting the variable because there are times I don't need to use it, just see it.  I can redirect it, but that goes to a file.  I have tried to pipe it, but that requires another command.  Does anyone know how to do this?

Update (5/20/16):

I got much more out of this question than I expect to so thanks to @user3439894, @fd0 and @Mateusz Szlosek for their excellent suggestion.

I selected @user3439894' solution of using

vm=`!!`

because it was simple and elegant.  I assigned it to a shortcut key for when I needed it for even easier use.  However just reading the other answers, I now have some others solutions I can use for different scripting challenges I have run into the past.

What if you used a function defined in one of your bash startup file?

getvmid () {
/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxManage list vms | grep $1 | cut -f 2 -d { | cut -f 1 -d }
}

The $1 is the first parameter of the function. It also limits the scope of the variable.

getvmid Fred

Setting the variable:

vm=$(getvmid Fred)

Untested but this should also work:

vbm control "$(getvmid Fred)" poweroff