Which Bluetooth Headphones Switch Easily between 3 Devices? I am planning on buying bluetooth headphones that I would use alternatively with my iPad, iPhone and MacBook Pro. I saw the bose headphones allow to have 2 devices connected at the same time and that it is easy to switch from one to the other but it's only with two.

Which Bluetooth Headphones are able to switch easily between 3 different devices?

AirPods!

You can switch devices easily

Airplay in apps that support it
iPhone Control Center: Swipe Up, Swipe Right to Left, select AirPods in Airplay on bottom
iPhone Bluetooth: Force Touch "Settings", select Bluetooth, connect
Mac Bluetooth in Menu Bar (if not there, go to System Preferences → Bluetooth → "Show Bluetooth in Menu Bar"
Mac Sound in Menu Bar (System Preferences → Sound → "Show Volume in Menu Bar")

AirPods auto-pair to devices signed into the same Apple ID (no need to pair via Bluetooth). It connects to the last connected device automatically.
Sound quality/fit are essentially identical to traditional Earpods, but Airpods are truly wireless!


How does FeaturePoints.com distribute its iOS app to the public without the App Store On featurepoints.com, a free iOS app is offered for direct download.

The download link uses an itms-service URL. (itms-services:///?action=download-manifest&url=https%3A%2F%2Ffeaturepoints.com%2Fenroll%2FFeaturePoints.plist)

If you click on the download link, the app is downloaded and installed on your iDevice without using the App Store (the app is installed without entering the iTunes password even if you are logged out of your iTunes account).

Also a Provisioning Profile is installed named "TapGen InHouse" expiring 2014-06-30.

I wonder how this app is distributed to the public and to non-jailbroken iDevices effectively circumventing Apple's review process and the App Store?

The only way (I know of) to distribute an unlimited number of apps without the App Store is the iOS Enterprise Developer programm. However, this program limits distribution to "in-house iOS apps for internal deployment within the company", see Apple's FAQ and other discussions (which I can not link to since I have not enough reputation).

They probably use the iOS Enterprise Developer program you mentioned. This happened before, for example with GBA4iOS. When this comes to Apple's attention they usually do something about it though.

http://readwrite.com/2013/07/17/apple-slams-the-door-on-super-mario#awesm=~oyiYU7RMNByRFi


I have an iMac 11,2 and successfully installed the Mojave Patch However, I for some reason, after the installation ... my SIP is disabled.  I have been trying over and over again to put my computer into Recovery mode, but I keep getting the Prohibitory Symbol ... any suggestions of what I can do to reengage my SIP?

Boot the system in internet recovery mode to enable SIP. You can do that by holding down Option-Command-R while powering on the iMac. After booting, follow instructions similar to ordinary recovery mode to enable SIP. I.e. open a Terminal and execute:

csrutil enable

If you haven't got internet recovery on the iMac, you will need to install the updated firmware software that is available for your model first.


How can I generate iOS screenshots without using a simulator? I'm not too far off from releasing my first Cordova-based iOS / Android app. The final step is to upload screenshots of my app in various resolutions (e.g. one to show how it looks on iPhone 6 Plus, one for iPhone 4 etc.).

I have an iPhone 4, and a 2009 Macbook with 2gb of RAM in it (both second hand from eBay. I just needed the bare minimum for development purposes), so running a simulator is painfully slow and takes a long time to do most things

Is there a quick and easy way to prepare the 20 or so screenshots I need without having to own or get access to various sized iPhones, or struggle through the simulator? I'm looking for something I can use fairly often as I release new versions so I don't have to struggle every time.

A popular solution to this problem is  this  automation tool called snapshot. It is apart of a suite of tools made to automate iOS and Android developments.

For relatively small applications though, the simulator isn't too bad.


Securely erase deleted files? I was wondering if it's possible to make sure that some files I've deleted in the past on my mac are really gone?

I know about the option in Finder (Finder -> Secure Empty Trash...), but what if I already emptied Trash the standard way, and now want to make sure the files are fully wiped off?

Cheers.

You can erase free space using Disk Utility. (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app).

In the sidebar of Disk Utility, select “Macintosh HD” (or the drive where you’d originally stored the file). At the top of the window, select the “Erase” tab. Towards the lower left-hand corner of the window, there’s a button labelled Erase Free Space. This lets you overwrite all of the free space on the drive (which is where your deleted file currently resides). You can choose a one-pass, three-pass or seven-pass erase — hopefully that’s more than enough. And if not, I guess you can just do it multiple times.

As always with Disk Utility stuff, be a little careful. I did this a couple of years ago with a three-pass erase, something screwed up and I had to restore from a backup :(


Migration Assistant: target computer freezes mid-transfer (screen black, unresponsive) I am running Migration Assistant (over a network) to transfer an old Mac's setup to a new one. The process starts fine, but every time I try it the target computer freezes mid-transfer (at the moment the source computer has shown '9 hours 34 minutes' remaining for the transfer for hours). The target computer's screen is black, and it does not respond to keyboard or mouse input, but I can tell it's on from the fan whir. It does not respond when I press the power button as it would were it asleep or off. I have to hold this down to force it to shut down. I've restarted the whole process several times - what should I do?

Since this has failed more than once, it's likely you'll have to effect some repair or change tactics.

Here are a few that seem likely - you'll have to choose based on your specific situation:

Migrate from a backup copy of the data instead of the old source mac.
Remove the hard drive from the old mac and try again. This isolates the drive and your files from the mac and the controller board / cable.
Look over the failed logs (should be in /Library/Logs/SystemMigration.log) - you might see it hanging on the same step. If so - you could try deleting that data (or you could just delete as much of the data as you can afford to not transfer - especially if some of that data is stored elsewhere on a backup drive)
Run a repair or check tool on the source mac while it's in target mode. Disk Utility is one tool that could be used to verify the status of the files and disk.

Do note, that one possible cause of the freezing could be hard drive failure. If that's the cause, you want to get the important files off first and avoid 'fixing' anything. (Imagine a potential house on fire - you may not have time for everything, so prioritize and just get things out now - organize them later.)

All the other causes are not as dire and you may have time to try things again and again, just wanted to plant the idea that this might be a warning so you could get professional help if there are valuable or irreplaceable files on the freezing computer.


How much RAM does the 4th Gen iPod Touch have? How much RAM do these iPods ship with?

The iPhone 4 has 512MB, and older iPod Touch 3rd Gen have 256MB (same as the iPad).

Do the new iPod Touch have 512MB as the iPhone 4 (what I would expect) or 256MB?

According to iFixit, the 4th gen iPod Touch has 256MB, not 512MB like the iPhone 4.:

  Breaking news: the iPod Touch has only 256 MB RAM, same Samsung part markings as iPad.


Stop password characters from being shown When I type in a password in iOS 11.4.1, the last entered character is shown only for a split second.

For security reasons, I do not want the characters to get echoed. How do I disable this split second preview and show only the dots instead?

Short answer, it is not possible to do so.

This functionality is built into iOS and it is by design. Showing a character for split second lets the user visually verify that correct character is entered.

If you are concerned about someone watching over your shoulder, consider using a password manager. Apple's iCloud keychain can store and enter passwords for you. If you upgrade to iOS 12, built-in support for 3rd party password managers in included in iOS. You get an option to enter password via it in the keyboard toolbar area. When entering password using password manager, no character is echoed and only dots are shown.

While it is also possible to use password manager in iOS 11.4.1, you'll have to resort to manually copying and pasting the password where the characters aren't echoed.

Password Autofill in iOS 12 now works with 1Password, Dashlane, and LastPass


Upgrading from Parallels Desktop 5 to 6 caused DNS query resolution "slowness" at Mac OS X level Anybody else feeling this/have any idea how to fix it without reinstalling Snow Leopard?
This seems very similar to problems PD used to have back in 2008 (forum link)

FWIW, my current network interfaces are:

$ ifconfig -l
lo0 gif0 stf0 en0 en1 fw0 vnic0 vnic1 vmnet1 vmnet8

(And yes, as you can see from the NICs, I also run VMWare Fusion 3.1.1, but the issue started upon upgrading to PD6)

$ ifconfig
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
 inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
 inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
 inet6 fd18:d7ce:18ee:1e60:223:32ff:fea0:fade prefixlen 128
gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
 ether HH:II:DD:DD:EE:NN
 media: autoselect
 status: inactive
en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
 ether HH:II:DD:DD:EE:NN
 inet6 HH:II:DD:DD:EE:NN%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5
 inet 192.168.0.198 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
 media: <unknown subtype>
 status: active
fw0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 4078
 lladdr 90:84:0d:ff:fe:ba:6d:2a
 media: autoselect <full-duplex>
 status: inactive
vnic0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
 ether 00:1c:42:00:00:08
 inet 10.211.55.2 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.211.55.255
 inet6 fe80::21c:42ff:fe00:8%vnic0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x7
 inet6 ::1 prefixlen 64
 media: autoselect
 status: active
vnic1: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
 ether 00:1c:42:00:00:09
 inet 10.37.129.2 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.37.129.255
 inet6 fe80::21c:42ff:fe00:9%vnic1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x8
 inet6 ::1 prefixlen 64
 media: autoselect
 status: active
vmnet1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
 ether 00:50:56:c0:00:01
 inet 172.16.155.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.155.255
vmnet8: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
 ether 00:50:56:c0:00:08
 inet 192.168.102.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.102.255

$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 208.67.220.220
nameserver 208.67.222.222

Start by making some tests in your Terminal:

Use nslookup and try to lookup certain stuff (www.google.com, www.ibm.com, etc) See how it works from there.
Use ‘dig’ (another command) to do the same. Dig will be much more verbose and will show you more information about the Lookup per se.
Make sure your DNSs are correct in /etc/resolv.conf (try google’s 8.8.8.8 if unsure).
Check your Console for possible messages related to Network adapters or loops going on.

Edit: It all seems “normal”. Do you use Shared networking? Can you try disabling vnic0 and vnic1 (those are the parallels ones). I recall having slowness problems (back in parallels 3.x) which I fixed by using Bridged Networking instead of shared. I didn’t think the issue was still an issue a few years later!


How can I find the location of a Terminal command and how can I select a different version of it? If I type dart in my terminal, this will access my dart terminal app.  What does this point to and where can I change it?
My $PATH variable is as follows:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/[USERNAME]/installs/flutter/bin:/Users/[USERNAME]/installs/connectIqSDK/bin

You can find the path to a binary by using type:
$ type latex ruby dart
latex is /Library/TeX/texbin/latex
ruby is /usr/bin/ruby
-bash: type: dart: not found

To use a version of a binary stored somewhere else you can

use the full path when calling it:  ~/installs/flutter/bin/cache/dart-sdk/bin/dart
define an alias (won't work in scripts): alias dart=~/installs/flutter/bin/cache/dart-sdk/bin/dart
adjust PATH: PATH=~/installs/flutter/bin/cache/dart-sdk/bin:$PATH


Windows 10 install on mid 2010 Mac Pro - "EFI boot" is not in startup manager I have been working towards installing Windows 10 on my mid-2010 Mac Pro and have been using the following thread as a guide: said thread. I've formatted both my BOOTCAMP volume (where I plan on installing Windows), and the USB drive being used to boot from, to ExFat. As of now, the Windows 10 ISO and the Windows support software has been mounted and copied onto my BOOTCAMP volume, and I've modified the .xml filename as well as disabled the ability to EFI boot from the BOOTCAMP volume. I've also copied the same content (Windows 10 ISO, Windows support software), except here I didn't disable the ability to EFI boot. I've basically made it to step 10 in the thread I was following.

The problem occurs when I reboot my computer. I do so by holding down the option key during startup to access the Startup Manager. I expect to see EFI boot as an option to select and boot from, but my USB (EFI boot) is not there. The only options I have are my internal drives and the Recovery drive, but no USB or EFI boot option. I've gone back to the guide in order to ensure I've done everything right, but can't find a reason for why I can't boot from my USB drive - maybe the ExFat partitioning scheme is wrong for this process?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated as I've been working on this for a few days now and would love to find a solution.

Thank you so much in advance.

What can I say. If your Mac will not boot, then that is that. My 2011 iMac could boot Windows this way after a High Sierra installer update to the Mac's firmware. I assumed that all Macs would be able to boot this way after installing either High Sierra or Mojave. Either I am wrong or you made a mistake.

When I originally posted this answer, the instructions FAT32 formatted the drives. This was changed to ExFAT after the October 2018 release of Windows 10. This ISO contains a file that exceeds FAT32 formatted drive limit of 4 GB per file. The April 2018 update does not have this problem.

If you can not get Windows installed using the method in your linked thread, then consider trying one of the older more complex methods. For example, see Installing Windows 7 or 10 Pro 64 bit without DVD or Flash Drive.


Is there any way to use iBooks author like pages/numbers/keynote on icloud? I use iBook author for my school projects and need to collaborate with my group members. Is there any way we can do so like using icloud or google drive?
It will be very helpful if it can display who's typing what in real time like google drive/ icould.

Thanks

No. This is not yet possible.

Use dropbox or something similar instead.

You can ask for new features via:

http://www.apple.com/feedback


App For Fixing Broken Links in iTunes Using the technique described in this post:

http://paulmayne.org/blog/2007/11/how-to-remove-broken-or-dead-tracks-from-itunes/

I was able to get a list of all of my broken links in iTunes.  The vast majority of these files have just been moved to other directories on my hard drive.

Are there any apps available which will just check my hard drive for the missing files, and then update the links if and when they are found?

There is Super Remove Dead Tracks, but that's probably not exactly what you want. Then there is iTunes Track CPR which seems to be closer but still not what you need. Maybe contacting one of the authors (or extending the AppleScript code yourself) might help.


Why is Xcode 12.2 as large as macOS Big Sur? Just as the title says...

Xcode 12.2 is a 11.4 GB
MacOS Big Sur is a 12.18 GB

Xcode is just an application while Big Sur is a complete Operating System. How come a macOS application is as large as the OS itself?
Is Xcode bringing in components that are not part of the standard OS?

Xcode 12.2 unpacked is 16.8 GB, 13.2 GB of which are platform operating systems.

iPhoneOS.platform is 5.9 GB
AppleTVOS.platform is 3.6 GB
WatchOS.platform is 3.3 GB

In comparison, MacOSX.platform is only ~300 MB since most of the platform is already available in a normal installation of macOS. Xcode doesn't just build apps for macOS — it also builds apps for other operating systems and runs a simulator of each OS.


Booting an iMac using a Macbook Pro's internal disk Suppose I have an iMac and a Macbook Pro. My Macbook Pro is my primary workstation, and when I switch to the iMac I would like my environment to be exactly the same in order to facilitate switching between the two during the day.

I read somewhere that it's possible to make a Macbook Pro behave as a simple external disk and connect it to another device that can read it. This means it might be possible to connect the Macbook Pro to the iMac and let the iMac boot from the Macbook Pro's disk, effectively providing the same environment on both machines.

Is this sort of thing possible? Will the two devices operate well while trying to boot from the same startup disk?

Depending on your Macs you might use the FireWire/Thunderbolt target-disk mode.

Apple-KB:

  If you have two Mac computers with FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, you can connect them so that one of them appears as an external hard disk on the other. This is called “target disk mode.”
  1. Connect the two computers with a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable.
  2. Start up the computer to be used as a disk in target disk mode:
  - If the computer is off, start it up while holding down the T key.
  - If the computer is on, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Startup Disk, and then click Target Disk Mode.
  When the computer has started up, a disk icon appears on the desktop of the other computer.
  3. Transfer files by dragging them to and from the disk.
  4. Eject the disk by dragging its icon to the Trash.
  While you drag, the Trash icon changes to an Eject icon.
  5. On the computer you used as a disk, push the power button to shut it down, and then disconnect the cable.

The target-mode-Mac will act as an additional external harddrive. You may use that as a start volume though and consequently have the MacBook Pro environment with a bigger monitor and better sound assumed the target-mode-Mac is your MacBook Pro.

But the environments on the two internal drives still differ. Example: If you add a user in the above case you will add it to the MacBook Pro System and not to the iMac System.

The only way to have identical environments is to clone one to another.


iOS - Can I "white label" certain apps not to be auto-offloaded? I use the  "auto-offload app" feature of iOS that uninstalls unused apps on my phone to free up storage.
For the most part this is really useful, but there are some apps which I use infrequently, and if they get offloaded they need to be reconfigured to work. Example: CCTV viewer app, which needs to be re-paired with the CCTV hardware each time, which is quite a complex procedure.
Is there any way I can "white label" certain apps not to be offloaded even if they are infrequently used?

iPhone 8, iOS 13.3.x

I can find no option to whitelist individual apps, which is a great idea. It seems to be all or nothing. I've taken to removing a lot of apps I rarely use manually, foregoing this utility, unfortunately.
Apple's official wording states: Automatically remove unused apps, but keep all documents and data. Reinstalling the app will place back your data, if the app is still available from the App Store.
Perhaps you should write to the developer of CCTV Viewer if the setup/pairing data is not retained when the app is off-loaded and then re-installed.
You should also go to the Apple Feedback site for iPhone and make a feature request. You won't get any reply unless you provide your email address, and they have further questions, but at least it'll get on their (very long) list of enhancement requests.


Lock Screen Keyboard I just upgraded to iOS 8.0.2. Now there is a permanent keyboard on the lower half of my screen in locked mode and on home screen. The keyboard will pop up every time I receive a text message and it will cause the home screen to lock up.

How do I get rid of this?

Try going to Settings, then Password. Enter your lock screen password. Swipe down there are radio buttons under a heading that reads Allow access when locked. The last one is Reply with message. Try turning that one off.

If problem persists and you want an annoying non(long-term)solution, you can swipe right directly on the lock screen text to get a reply square. Selecting this will allow you to close out of the lock screen text and give you full access to the password entry screen so that you don't have to restart your phone.


2017 Macbook-Pro did not want to turn on? I bought my Macbook pro about a month ago and have been liking it ever since. But today i had something really wierd happen to me!

1 of the 4 USB-C ports were not letting me charge through it. After a while I wanted to restart the macbook because for some reason it was slow. After the macbook turned off, it didnt want to start up anymore, it said the battery was empty but when i restarted it it was 38%.

I managed to fix it by resetting SMC by holding shift-control-option and the power button for 10 seconds.

But i want to know what causes this to happen? For a new laptop its quite wierd for you to not be able to start it up. Especially a 3500 euro macbook.

Thanks in advance!

The System Management Controller is a subsystem responsible for power management as well as fan control. It is not unusual for it to get into an undefined state. Power spikes, i. e. can occur at any time and may influence the SMC.

So the question is not why or when it happens but how to resolve it. You have already posted the answer which is to perform a SMC reset. Therefore keep going with your MPB—there doesn’t appear to be any problem.


Error creating bootable USB For two days my Mac has been "dead"; the hard drive crashed, so I reformatted (twice). I wanted to reinstall Mavericks via Recovery, but at the end of the process it shows nearly 1 million minutes remaining and the process stops. I thought it was the hard drive that was dead but the Windows (BootCamp) part works very well.

I wanted to make a bootable USB of it (Using MacBook Air which is running OS X Mavericks GM), but when I tried to run the command for copying the files from .app to USB I got the following error:

Erasing Disk:
0%... 10%...
Error erasing disk error number (-69888, 0)
A error occurred erasing the disk.

The solution may be actually easier than you think!

If you get Error erasing disk error number (-69888, 0) A error occurred erasing the disk. message when trying to create a bootable USB, make sure the USB drive is not currently used by the system or your apps (think open Finder windows or current directory in Terminal).


Registering Excel on iPad, when iTunes and Microsoft account emails differ? I have an Office 365 Home Premium subscription, and so I wish to use the subscription-based features of Excel for iPad.

The problem is that I use different email addresses for my iTunes and Office 365 subscriptions.

This is the series of steps I've followed:

Install Excel for iPad
Run Excel for iPad
Select "Buy Office 365 Home"
Select the tiny "I Already Have a Subscription"
Enter my iTunes Store password, for my iTunes email address

I then get the error message:

  "No Subscription
   This Apple ID doesn't have a paid Office 365 subscription."

For my two different email addresses, the domain names are the same, but the account names are specific to the two products - as an anti-spam measure, and to make it easier to detect phishing messages.

I considered changing my Apple email address to be my Microsoft one, or my Microsoft email address to be my Apple one. But in both cases, I would have a large number of login details to change, on multiple programs on multiple devices.

Are there any other alternative solutions, such as adding a second email address to either my iTunes or Microsoft accounts?

After days of looking, I've found the answer, via
Having Problems Activating Office for iPad? Here’s a Simple Solution

Briefly:

Instead of saying “I already have a subscription”, choose the Read-only option
Then click on the Activate button at lower-left
Then you have an option to activate by using your Microsoft Office 365 account credentials

For me, doing this in Excel also activated my Word and PowerPoint iOS apps.


iCloud cannot enable Calendar and Reminders at the same time Recently to solve a problem I have been encountering related to iCloud, I had to sign out of iCloud and sign back in.

Normally I have all the options enabled except for mail. When I signed in I started enabling all of the features and came across a problem where if I were to attempt to enable Calendar while Reminders is enabled, Calendar would say the words "Setting Up" and a spinner would appear and the checkbox would be greyed in. After about 20 seconds the words, spinner and checkbox clear away leaving Calendar still disabled.

This works the other way around if Calendar is enabled first and I attempt to enable Reminders.

I have tried extremely basic things such as rebooting the system to clearing the cache files in the libraries but still nothing. Anyone got any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks!

It's your firewall...I have TCPBlock on my system and encountered the exact same thing. Make sure you're allowing any sync services and iCloud to communicate with the outside world.


How to disable Top Sites in Safari on macOS Lion How do I disable the auto-updating of the Top Sites in Safari?  I don't want to turn the feature off altogether, I just want to prevent auto-update.  I know this may seem like an attempt to defeat the purpose of Top Sites in the first place, but I find that if it auto-updates any of the Top Sites that are forum-based, all of the unread topics are marked as read.  So, an even better solution would be the ability to exclude the auto-update of certain URLs/domains, etc.  Does that functionality exist?

I found this somwhere else which may solve your problem:

Quit Safari
Open Terminal (Applications/Utilities) & paste:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy -int 2

then hit return & quit Terminal.

To reactivate:

defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy


How do I revert a change I made to a specific file type's default application? A few days ago, I was trying to play a .mkv video that was giving me a hard time. VLC wasn't agreeing with it for some reason, so I ended up shifting my efforts to a slick media player I found on GitHub (IINA), but the video still wasn't wanting to open. After troubleshooting and looking trough some forums, I found a potential resolution I wanted take a shot at. I ended up changing the default application within the 'get info' window; selecting the 'change all..' option so that all .mkv files would open with IINA. This solved the issue I was having with the .mkv, which was great, but I'm starting to think this may not have been the best idea.

I was looking through ~/Library/ earlier today, and I noticed that several .dat files have appeared as filetype 'IINA document'.

Here's some examples:

I don't know if this is even something to be concerned about, but it seemed strange to me. Is there any possible way to revert the change I made as if it never happened? I don't think there was any default application before I set one myself because I had to click 'other' and search through finder for an app that supported the original mkv.

I wouldn‘t be to worried about the .dat files. They are only 64 bytes in size, so there can‘t really be much inside of them that could cause harm. Have you tried to open it with a text editor and see what’s inside?

If you don‘t trust it, uninstall it and the .mkv apps should no longer have a default application to open with. Alternatively, just change the default app to QuickTimePlayer.

Another option is to use a third party app called RCDefaultApp. With it, in the Extensions tab, you can choose your file type and choose an application for it. With the „disable“ option you can set it to not having a standard application to open with (see screenshots on website).


Can't assign keyboard shortcut to service In OSX 10.8.2, I created a service using Automator and saved it in ~/Library/Services. The service receives selected messages in Mail.app. It shows up in the list of services when I click on the "Mail" menu. When I click on the service, it executes correctly. It also shows up in the list of services when I try to assign a keyboard shortcut to it in System Preferences. My keyboard shortcut doesn't appear to conflict with any other. To make sure of this I've tried assigning very improbable shortcuts involving 4 or 5 keys.

Somehow the shortcut never "registers", i.e., it doesn't appear next to the service name in the "Services" submenu of "Mail" and using the shortcut doesn't produce any result. What could be causing this?

One possible reason is that your user account has lost rights to change services preferences file (some buggy installers can cause that). Open Terminal and type

ls -la ~/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist

If you see that the owner is root, that is the problem:

-rw-------    1 root  wheel    1407 Jan 16 13:40 /Users/me/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist
                  ↑
                 incorrect!

In that case, you can fix the problem by typing this command (replace me with your user name; you will be asked for your password):

sudo chown me:staff ~/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist


How Can I Restart in Windows Using a Script? I'd like to be able to reboot into the Boot Camp partition without needing to go change the Startup Disk in System Preferences or holding down the Option key at startup.

After reading some stuff on the Internet, I tried these shell commands:

sudo bless --mount /Volumes/BOOTCAMP --setBoot
sudo shutdown -r now

When the system restarted, it sat on the blank gray screen for a while, then booted into Mac OS X.  If I go into System Preferences -> Startup Disk, it indicates that BOOTCAMP is the current startup disk.

So, it looks to me like the bless command I used isn't sufficient. Anybody know what I need to do to make this work, or an alternative way to use a shell script or AppleScript to do this?

This works just using applescript. replace login_password with your login password.
Also make sure the path to BOOTCAMP is correct (it should be). Save as an application and open it when you want to reboot into BootCamp. This is two lines of code...

do shell script "bless -mount /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/ -legacy -setBoot -nextonly" password "login_password" with administrator privileges

do shell script "shutdown -r now" password "login_password" with administrator privileges


New Magic Keyboard "feel" I currently use the Apple Wired Keyboard (Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad), MC110LL/B. It is fairly large on my desk. I never use the numeric keypad, and could live with small cursor keys. The MB869LL/A would be fine, but they no longer make it.

So, looking for something compact, I tried the older version of the wireless keyboard, MC184LL/B. I returned it. It had absolutely terrible key feel. My typo rate soared.

Can anyone with the new Magic Keyboard, MLA22LL/A, who has used the older wired keyboard comment on the keys feel in comparison? I am specifically asking about the "throw" of the key travel of the two, and the force. The throw on the wireless was fine compared to my wired, but the force was much greater than the wired.

Note: I am asking for quantitative comparisons, not opinions.

The current 2016 Bluetooth magic keyboard has larger keys so your press feels lighter even though I believe the stiffness is either the same absolutely or perhaps a bit stiffer if you were to calculate or measure the force.

Structurally, the scissors are more even and the keys don't wobble as much. If you hated the old one, the new one is sufficiently different that you should probably spend the time test driving one or buy from Apple with their 14 day, no questions asked return policy.

You may not love it, but you can type enough to let your initial impressions fade and them make a decision based on how your typing adjusts to the keyboard. Someone who likes a mechanical keyboard probably isn't going to like any of Apple's current keyboards.


Getting duplicate iOS notifications from IFTTT I use IFTTT to send me iOS notifications for some of my recipes, but for some reason, every time it sends me a notification, it sends it twice. So every notification I get from IFTTT is duplicated.

Anyone know why this happens, and how I can fix it?

I just fixed this. What I did was I deleted the iOS Notifications channel, then deleted the app from my iPhone, then re-installed the app, re-activated the channel, and re-created the recipe.


Bootcamp cannot be selected through option key after patitioning using recovery I have installed windows 10 on my Macbook late 2009 unibody and thus far have worked well.
I wanted to increase the capacity of my Bootcamp partition so I used recovery to reduce the size of Macos and allocate that space to windows 10, upon restarting the device I was unable to boot in Bootcamp and macos, Bootcamp does not show up when pressing the option key through resetting pram [
After resetting Pram I am able to boot into Macos but not into bootcamp1I was able to boot through macos and see that macos can still detect the Bootcamp partition2
But by Opening bootcamp through this way it shouwed "No bootable device, insert boot disk and press enter"
Results from diskutil list:
Apples-MacBook:~ apple$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                119.8 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data unti                    49.2 GB    disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                80.0 GB    disk0s5

Results From sudo fdisk /dev/disk0/ :
Apples-MacBook:~ apple$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Password:
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 30401/255/63 [488397168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  234038808] HFS+
 3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 234448448 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
 4: 0B 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 235717984 -   96168608] Win95 FAT-32

Results from gpt show:
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  234038808      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  234448448    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  235717984   96168608      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  331886592     262144
  332148736  156248064      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  488396800        335
  488397135         32         Sec GPT table
  488397167          1         Sec GPT header

The error message appears when there is no partition flagged as active in the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table. The sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 command prints out the contents of the MBR table. The active partition is indicated by an * character. This is absent in your posted output. If the fourth partition contains Windows, then you can use the fdisk command to flag the fourth partition as active. If the fifth partition contains windows, then you would need to first put the fifth partition in the MBR. Most users opt to download and use the gdisk command do this.
I should warn you that if you fix this problem, there still exists the possibility that Windows may interpret your repartitioning actions as an attempt to illegally clone Windows to a new machine. If this happens, then the easiest solution to this problem would be to rebuild the BCD.
The commands below can be entered to put the fifth partition back in the MBR partition table and make the partition active. Hopefully Windows will boot. You probably will need to enter the commands while booted to OS X Recovery. The sudo may not be needed. Note also that the fdisk command is interactive.
sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0
e 4
7
n
332148736
156248064
f 4
q
y

If entered correctly, then the MBR partition table should appear as shown below.
Apples-MacBook:~ apple$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Password:
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 30401/255/63 [488397168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  234038808] HFS+
 3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 234448448 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 332148736 -  156248064] HPFS/QNX/AUX

If the values in the cyl, hd or sec columns are different, don't worry. These values are no longer used.


Changed the mod for ~/.. directory by mistake, made it 744, can't boot anymore I ran the following command by mistake:

sudo chmod 744 ~/..

and I can't boot my macbook anymore, it freezes with the brown screen and ajax-style spin. What should I do to make it work normally again?

I tried:

a) Disk utility (repair permissions) - didn't help
b) resetpassword -> reset ACL and permissions for home directory - didn't help.

I booted in the recovery mode, opened the terminal and went to "/Volumes/Macintosh HD". Yes, this was the disk (or should I say "path") I changed the permissions for.

How do I restore them now? And what are they were?

UPDATE:

I was able to restore it by going to the terminal in recovery mode and performing:

chmod 777 "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/"

But I believe that 777 is too much. What's the default umask for ~/.. ?

UPDATE2:

I don't know why it worked since ~/.. means /Users, not /.

I would do two things to restore a Mac in this situation.

boot to recovery mode and run Disk Utility - repair the drive, the volume and then repair permissions.
Boot to recovery mode and run the installer. That should fix or log the exact directory that has improper ACL/permissions and re-create all basic mount points.

The installer log can be read in recovery mode boot if step 2 doesn't fix things and we can perhaps refine exactly what directory or directories are now messed up. There is a chance that you had a separate failure and your chmod was coincidental to the issue as opposed to causative.


Help choose a better upgrade for my MacBook5,2 I recently got a 2009 macbook 5,2 as a gift from my uncle. When I tried to install MAMP it says i need to upgrade my OS.
What will be best option for my mac.
I am very new to these mac things & I like it so much.
Configuration:
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier:   MacBook5,2
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:    2.13 GHz
Memory 2 GB
I am not sure is it enough to suggest an option, so please don't hesitate to contact me if you need more info.
I found this article in Apple Support forums.
But its not cleared my doubt.
Can anyone make a detailed answer for this?
like

how to get directly update to more newer OS?
how to get the    installation disk? can i get it free?
do i really need to purchase    one?
Will a used disk work with my etc?

Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion.  As da4 mentioned, you will need to find out the capabilities of your machine and look up the requirements of the operating systems I listed.


Safari / iCal scroll animation When I started using Lion, there was this "smooth scroll animation" in iCal and Safari, so when I swiped my finders left/right the next month/week or previous website showed up with a nice slide effect. Now Lion just shows that previous page instead of sliding it in. How can I turn on that feature again?

Go to System Preferences > Trackpad > More Gestures. Make sure that the first one is ticked and begins with "Scroll", rather than "Swipe". This should do it.


How to prevent sleep while a Time Machine backup is in progress? I'm one of those greatly suffering from the problem with TM in which the entire backup sparsebundle on a NAS gets corrupted if the Mac goes to sleep in middle of a backup operation. There's a long process for recovering the backup, but it would be far better to avoid the corruption in the first place.

Is there any way to hack the sleep function so that the Mac refuses to go to sleep if a TM backup is currently in progress? Or, if that's not possible, is there at least some way to show a confirmation dialog when manually choosing "sleep" from the apple menu, to prompt for a manual verification that no TM is currently running?

Clarification:
One of the situations I need to protect against, is my habit of manually choosing "sleep" from the apple menu. Hence, something like Caffeine which only prevents automatic sleep, isn't a solution for me.

I have solved this with a bash script. It involves caffeinate built-in command and NoSleepCtrl (prevents sleep on lid close).

In my setup, I have TimeMachine disabled and run it using this command. It should not be difficult to create a wrapper, which would execute it periodically and either ask user for confirmation or wake the computer up and do it automatically.

My experience and steps for TM backup corruption on QNAP.


Producing/archiving an overview of a directory structure I try to find a way to make an archive of my ~/ directory so that I can go back in case I've lost something. I've found several recommendations for this. The first being OS X Hints saying a simple ls -aR or re-writing a tree.
The problem these two solutions have is that the output doesn't help very much in terms of getting an overview where something was.

Is there anything that is able to produce a visual representation of a directory structure that allows to see what contents were in which directory? A Terminal command? A SVG generator?

EDIT: No GUI tools for the generation of the file please. Viewing the large outputs of find ~/ and ls ~/ is cumbersome. Or is it possible to make it easier to view a 70MB text file?

EDIT2: I should probably clarify what I'm trying to do. I recently had my hard disk crash. Fortunately I had an off-site and on-site backup. In the restore however I chose to set the machine up from scratch, which means I had to very specifically pick what to restore from where.
Now that I'm done with that, I'm investigating whether it's possible to save the directory structure in certain periods of time in my backup, so that restoring becomes a bit easier. (In case I ever lose a couple days of work, with two different backups at two different stages.)

Thanks in advance,
Zettt

Get TextWrangler. It’s free and awesome.
Drag (e.g. your home) folder into Text window:
Profit!


Can i change the default Mac App Store install folder? I prefer to have all applications installed per-user, to ~/Applications/ rather than globally. The default location for apps installed from the Mac App Store is the global applications folder located at /Applications/.

Is there a defaults write com.apple.AppStore command I can run in the terminal, or perhaps a .plist file I can edit manually, to change this default preference?

Regarding Mac OS X File System Overview, it seems Apple enforcing the standard compliance for developer to follow their rules on application folder which are within /Applications or ~/Applications. The concern is to comply the way Mac App Store deliver the updates.

if you not comfort enough to use default folder, yes you are still able to move the application which you had download from Mac App Store to another folder with two caveats:

You will be required to enter an administrative password to move the
app from the /Applications folder.
If an update appears in the MAS for an installed app that has been moved you will get an error message about having apps installed
    from another account. To update the app you will have to Delete
the
    app entirely and then install the updated app or Move the app back to the /Applications folder


case mismatch in Mail.app between raw and displayed from fields I notice that Mail.app (version 6.5) sometimes displays the from field of a message in a different case from how it is written in the raw message source. This seems to account for why some digitial certificates are listed as invalid ("Unable to verify message signature") by Mail. If the certificate lists the RFC 822 Name in lowercase, and the raw source of the message lists the email address in lowercase, but Mail is displaying it with initial capitals, then the certificate is listed as invalid.

I've anonymized the particular example I'm working with -- let's say the address is foo.goo@blah.com.

For example, I have a message in which the from line of the raw source -- and all other references to this email address in the message header and body -- are in lower case (foo.goo@blah.com), and yet Mail displays the from field with initial capitals (Foo.Goo@blah.com).  Not only that, but control-clicking on the from field also yields the capitalized version (Foo.Goo@blah.com).

So my question is: what is causing Mail to capitialize the email address?

I have smart addresses turned off in Mail viewing preferences. My address book only lists the person in question's email address in all lowercase.  And I don't have a certificate from the person in my keychain that's not in lowercase.

Clearly Mail is looking somewhere else, but where?.

Just a quick idea: have you checked Window > Previous Recipients?


Yosemite Retail DVD? I understand that Mac OS X is free to download and install however It would be nice to have a DVD backup printed and shipped by Apple just like older Mac OSX releases.

Is this still possible?

It seems that Apple doesn't supply OSX on a retail DVD anymore, since all modern Macs have a recovery partition, which contains the installer and is updateable. However, there are ways to create an installer USB drive, and here is Apple's own solution.

Before you're able to create a bootable OS X installer, you'll need to do the following first:

Download the OS X Installer app from the Mac App Store.

Mount the volume you want to convert into a bootable installer. This could be removable media such as a USB flash drive, or a secondary internal partition.

You can then use the createinstallmedia tool to convert the volume from step two into a bootable installer based off the installer app from step one. To learn how to use createinstallmedia, use the following command in Terminal:

OS X Yosemite
/Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia
OS X Mavericks
/Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia
Examples
For example, assuming you have a volume mounted at /Volumes/MyVolume and the OS X installer app is at /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app you could erase /Volumes/MyVolume and convert it into a bootable installer with this command:
OS X Yosemite
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app
OS X Mavericks
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app
Notes
You may need to adjust the path to the OS X installer app and/or your removable media device's name in the command. createinstallmedia is an advanced option for system administrators and as such, requires some knowledge of the command line in order to be used properly. It is only intended to be used with the version of the OS X Installer app it came with.


How to sort photos inside a shared album in the Photos app in macOS, iOS, or iPadOS? How to sort photos inside a shared album in the Photos app in macOS, iOS, or iPadOS?

After sharing multiple photos and videos in a shared album, each user with access to the shared album can independently sort the order of the media as they wish on their own device.
The procedure to sort the photos is slightly different between iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. See below
Sorting in iOS (similarly in iPadOS with the difference of how to navigate to the shared album)

Open the Photos app
Go to albums
Go to the shared album in question
Tap on the "More" icon on the top right corner. The icon is three horizontal dots
Tap Sort (up and down arrows icon)
Choose one of the three available sorting orders

Sorting in macOS

Launch the Photos app
Go to the shared album in question located on the left navigation bar
Choose view on the menu bar (bar above all applications starting usually with "File")
Go to Sort
Choose one of the three available sorting orders


Weird spotlight issue For whatever reason, when I launch spotlight, type in "1", "1", "2", spotlight closes automatically.  Does anyone else have this issue?

Running 10.12.6 (16G1510) on a 2015 Macbook Pro

I can not reproduce your problem and it is clearly not normal behavior.

So suggest for you to:

Re-index Spotlight database. It is a long process, but in background, you can keep using your computer meanwhile.

From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
Click Spotlight.
Click the Privacy tab.
Drag a folder or an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list. If prompted for confirmation, click OK.
Remove the item or volume you just added to the list by clicking it and then clicking the minus (“-“) button.
Close Spotlight preferences.


Manually sync multiple devices through iCloud We have an iPad and iPhone that I know we can set up to sync through iCloud. We also have several iPods. Will setting up iCloud for the iPad and iPhone affect our ability to manually sync the iPods?

No, it won't affect your ability to manually sync the iPods.  Although you should clarify precisely what you m ean by "manually sync", as this could mean numerous things: an iTunes data backup of the device, music & media transfers, metadata syncing, purchase syncing, Contact syncing, etc.


Apple store question about installing new hard drive I plan to make a trip up to the apple store tomorrow. I need them to put in a new hard drive in my Macbook Pro mid-2010 15". Do I need to make an appointment with them? or can I just show up and drop it off with them?

Thanks

The generally accepted procedure for any Genius Bar visit is to use the store locator on the Apple site and then use the 'Concierge' web application to book an appointment. While Apple staff (at least in Japan) tend to be rather accommodating for walk-in client issues, having an appointment can ensure your waiting time is minimized. This is especially important at a busier location.


Can I (or should I) use a MacBook charger on my iPhone? I recently got a MacBook with the USB-C charger. It comes with a 29-watt power brick, and I was wondering if I should use this to charge my iPhone. I've heard that the iPad power brick (I think 10 watts) charges the phone faster. I don't expect to be able to charge the phone proportionally faster, but would the MacBook brick damage the phone? I would rather only have to carry around one charging brick around campus. Also, I have a USB to USB-C converter.

Unless there is some reason to the contrary that I'm not aware of, yes, you can use your MacBook charger with your iPhone. The power adapter will only convert as much power as is drawn, and the iPhone will only draw as much power as it needs.

(Note that it is not a good idea to charge your MacBook with an iPhone or iPad charger!)


Can't delete iCloud account from Mail, Contacts, Calendars When trying to log into iCloud from System Preferences, I'm told

  [appleid] is already signed in to iCloud

  To use this as your primary iCloud account, delete it from Mail, Contacts,
  and Calendars and sign in again.

However, I can't delete the account from Mail, Contacts and Calendars.  When I go to that preference pane, I'm prompted for my iCloud password, after which I'm told the account isn't verified.  Checking at http://appleid.apple.com shows that the account is verified. Requesting that another verification email be sent is met with the following error:

  Couldn't request a new verification email because of a server error.

Any ideas how to delete the account from Mail, Contacts and Calendars? I've deleted all other mail accounts. Removed the mail folders and plist files from ~/Library/. Rebooted.  Tried adding a different apple id.  Tried everything I could find from Google that looked even close.  No luck.  Help!

I had the same problem. Fixed it by turning off all sharing (the checkbox options on the right of the panel), THEN trying to delete again.


Bluetooth 4, how do we take advantage of its low energy features? I have a iPhone 4s, the last version of 17" macbook pro, mac mini 4.1 purchased in early 2010 I think, with multiple trackpads and multiple Apple BT keyboards.

When using a keyboard with the 4s (which I know is BT 4) my keyboard battery lasts for months, the same with my macbook using external keyboard and trackpad (I thought my macbook was BT v2.xx but cannot find the product page for some reason), my mini (which I use most often) the batteries last about a month or less.

From system report
My minis BT firmware is v41 c822, the macbook is v41 c821, not really my main question but have these machines been upgraded to BT 4 via firmware update?

So now to my real question, when looking for BT devices how does one know if the device will take advantage of BT 4s' low energy features.

Low Energy requires both ends to be updated. Apple has a knowledge base article explaining this at:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202880 - iOS and iBeacon requirements

For Mac, open System Information and select the Bluetooth section on the left. If you have the following line towards the top, you are equipped for Low Energy bluetooth:

  Bluetooth Low Energy Supported: Yes

Magic Mouse 2, Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad 2 all support low energy bluetooth as well.


Printing to a Cups Server without using the local CUPS doesn't work since OS X Lion With our new 21,5"-iMac, we bought the first Mac system for our Windows/Linux-oriented office. Hence we don’t have a lot of experience in using Mac OS X.

I started to set up everything and it ran quite well so far until I reached the configuration of our network printers.
In our company we use a Linux system running a CUPS-server. This server holds the configuration of all queues. All changes regarding settings or even additional printers are made there.

As we do not want to make changes on every client system if new printers join the infrastructure, we forward all print jobs to the remote CUPS print server.
This saves a lot of time instead of configuring printers via IPP or equivalent.

To make this work on Mac OS X, I found a link with the information I needed:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2004011920201534

The .cupsrc-file (hidden file) in the home directory containing the line

ServerName <myserver>

will instruct the local CUPS system to receive remote print queues from our print server.

After saving the file, the GUI configuration tool for printers in Mac OS X (System Preferences… -> Print & Fax) shows all remote queues running on the central CUPS server.

But after I upgraded to Mac OS X 1.7 “Lion”, the GUI doesn’t show the queues anymore.
I have no idea what to do and even Apple Support (registered owner of CUPS system) couldn’t help me out with that. They only pointed to the CUPS configuration file (/etc/cups/cupsd.conf), but I do not know the right setting there for printing to remote queues. Also, the web interface running on localhost:631 couldn’t help me… Any ideas?

The release notes for CUPS 1.5 mention that

  CUPS no longer supports the old ~/.cupsrc or ~/.lpoptions files from
  CUPS 1.1.x. The ~/.cups/client.conf and ~/.cups/lpoptions files that
  were introduced in CUPS 1.2 must now be used.

Have you tried putting the line

ServerName print-server

into ~/.cups/client.conf?


Sync Chrome passwords with Apple iCloud Keychain Is there a tool or a process where I can export/sync my Google Chrome saved passwords into iCloud Keychain?

I've created small tool to deliver your credentials from Chrome into macOS keychain. Here is a page on github https://github.com/nntarasov/csv2keychain

The program interacts with macOS command-line utility called security with option add-internet-password. First of all you have to manually export credetials from chrome into .csv file. There is such feature in Chrome. So, the idea is very simple - the list of credentials from file is being added into system keychain via security


How do I get rid of iCloud connection between iPhone, iMac and iPad? How do I get rid of the iCloud connection between my iPhone, iMac and iPad?

Since you have signed in all the devices with an account, you can only turn off iCloud for specific services you don’t want to continue syncing.
Logging out is one radical option but it renders several apps like app store unusable.

On iOS, go to Settings -> Apple ID (first thing in the list) -> iCloud. Then disable whatever iCloud service you do not want to use.

On MacOS, go to System Preferences-> iCloud and do the same.

You might want to keep some things in iCloud like iCloud Drive documents for which turning it on iMac would be helpful if you some day might want to access them remotely.


How to make macOS open RAR archive in Terminal using unrar on double-click? I want to make macOS open RAR files: On double-click macOS should open Terminal with command unrar x /path/filename.rar

Is there any way to do this?

Launch Automator.app and create a new Application.

Add the "Run Shell Script" action. As unrar seems to be a command installed in /usr/local/bin/, set the Shell type to /bin/bash, and Pass input to as arguments.

You'll be given a free bit of shell code, which you can easily modify:

for f in "$@"
do
    /usr/local/bin/unrar x "$f"
done

Save the app. Then select a .rar file, choose File > Get Info, and change the default handler for that type to your new app.

Alternatively, there are plenty of third-party apps that unwrap rar and other archive types, such as TheUnarchiver.


Adding New Contacts but they Disappear When I add a contact from my keypad screen and save it the contact doesn't show up in my contacts list.  But if they call or text me it recognizes the contact.  Why is it doing this and how do I fix it?

Try this:

Open Contacts.app
Press the Groups button in the top left corner.

Select Show All Contacts.


Wondering if there's a way to get rid of an error in Apple Script to mount server I was wondering if anyone could help me with this. Sorry for the noob question. I recently created a script to automatically mount a Time Machine image in a hard drive connected to my router. For the most part, the script works great. It attaches the drive when I turn on the computer and, if it disconnects for any reason, it reconnects and mounts the image again. Here's the script:

on idle
set mySSID to do shell script "/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I | awk '/ SSID/ {print substr($0, index($0, $2))}'"
set mountedDiskName to "Time Machine"
set diskIsMounted to false
if mySSID is "TALKTALK844E28" or mySSID is "TALKTALK844E285G" then
    tell application "System Events" to set diskNames to name of every disk
    if mountedDiskName is in diskNames then
        set diskIsMounted to true
    end if
    if mountedDiskName is not in diskNames then
        set diskIsMounted to false
    end if
    if diskIsMounted is false then
        mount volume "smb://192.168.1.1/"
        delay 30
        do shell script "hdiutil attach -mountpoint '/Volumes/Time Machine' /Volumes/Guille/TimeMachine.sparsebundle"
    end if
    if diskIsMounted is true then
    end if
end if
return 300
end idle

However, every once in a while, I get this error:

It doesn't really bother me because if I just click on OK it goes away and tries again 5 minutes later. However, I would like to know if there's a way to make sure these dialogs are automatically dismissed so they don't interrupt my workflow and Time Machine stays unobtrusively in the background until I accidentally send something to the trash :-)

I'm really only a beginner to scripting, but I'm wondering why you have so much code in your script.  I was able to accomplish the exact same results with using only a couple of commands.

mount volume "smb://192.168.2.66/"
do shell script "hdiutil attach -noverify '/Volumes/Data_Smokestack_ATC/James’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle'"

I have both of my Airport Time Capsules set with static IPv4 addresses, so their IP’s never change (so I always know how to connect to them if I need to)

The do shell script part of my code waits until the mount volume command completes, therefore, I did not need to insert a delay command. On my system using the latest version of macOS Sierra,  if I run this code again while the volume is already mounted, this script just quietly completes with no errors or messages.

That said, my thought is wouldn't it just be more “code efficient” to run these two lines of code inside of a repeat loop at 15 minute intervals for 12 or 24 hours or something like that? Then to be saved as a stay open application?


How can I upgrade my iMac to Lion 10.7? I have a late 2006 iMac which I would like to upgrade to mac os x  10.7. What options are available to me, such as download or DVD, and where can I buy it from? Will the seller deliver it to my location in Amman, Jordan?

OSX 10.7 Lion was not sold on DVD, the first retail OSX version to do so. You can obtain it through three methods:

Update your system to 10.6.8 (combo update is best via Apple, or Software Update if you like) and then, using the Mac App Store, purchase a copy of Lion
Purchase Lion via the Apple Store website which will email you a download redemption code for Lion: http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion
Use eBay or another website to purchase an official Lion USB key, released for those who cannot download the product. Check with the various sellers to see if they deliver to your location.


Chrome Won't Go Away I was having some issues with chrome, where it would crash all the time for no reason. Then, recently, it crashed, but in my dock it says it's still running. I deleted it from my applications but it is still in my dock, and when I try to force quit it, nothing happens. I can't drag it out of my dock or do anything to move it.

I'm guessing you have what's known in Unix as a zombie process. Unlike the less friendly dead people, zombies in your computer won't eat your brains, and they also won't do much of anything else. They don't take up any resources. It's basically just going to sit there until you reboot, or you lop its head off. OS X doesn't seem to tend its fences when it comes to zombies. I can think of a game or two they should play which would help them out with this a bit...

For more info on Zombies, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_vs._Zombies

or, even more helpfully:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process


Wi-Fi keeps going down on MBP 2015 So a few days ago I just bought a new MacBook Pro Retina Early 2015 and at first it was all good. 2-3 days ago I noticed strange problem - Wi-Fi keeps going down like every 10-30 seconds or so and it's not router's problem, because on my other PCs the Wi-Fi is working perfectly fine. For example right now I was downloading 35MB file (500KB/s download speed) and the speed went to 0KB/s like 5 times or so, so I had to turn off Wi-Fi on MBP and turn it on again. Then the speed went to 0 and I had to do the same. Same problem occurs when I'm browsing - out of nowhere Safari stops loading pages and I need to wait for like 30 seconds until the wi-fi starts working again or I need to turn off and on wi-fi on MBP.

What I tried:

Turning off wi-fi and deleting these files:

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist

com.apple.network.identification.plist
com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist

NetworkInterfaces.plist

preferences.plist

from /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

It didn't help. I also tried to forget the network I was currently on and connect to it again, but that didn't work either. Atm I don't have a possibility to check how my MBP works on other Wi-Fi networks. I've installed the latest version of Yosemite.

Usually when the WiFi connection is still active but no data is flowing indicates Chanel crowding (to many devices/users on same channel).

If the WiFi is disconnecting that could be number of other reasons. But since you are talking about the speed going down...

When the MCS index is zero (0) then the channel crowding is a issue. The MCS needs to be at least 3 or more.

To see yours hold the "alt" key and click on the WiFi icon. (this is what I have)

Easiest test (fix) is to change the Chanel on the router.

You could also do a WiFi channel analysis to find out and then choose a less crowded Channel.

To change the Wifi channel on Pirelli DRG A125G router:


Spotlight not showing applications owned by root Somehow my spotlight is not working correct.

After each reboot it will show only dictionary items. Then when I do
    sudo mdutil -E /
it will find many items.
However applications shown are only which are owned by myself, applications owned by root will not show.

So basically I have two questions,

Why is spotlight not working properly at startup and must be reindexed always.

Should I take ownerships of all applications to myself?

Thanks

It sounds like your volume permissions are incorrect.  You don't say what version of OS X you're running, but the usual fix is to open Disk Utility, select the volume and Repair Permissions on it.

After that, reboot so that processes launch under the correct permissions and it should be working as expected.


My MBP won’t start up and I can’t recover it using Time Machine This morning I wanted to restart my MacBook, and while it was loading, all of a sudden it got shut down. I think that it was downloading updates and couldn't install those because there was not enough space. I tried reinstalling macOS but due to a memory shortage, this also didn’t work. When I try to use Time Machine it also didn't help. I have searched my issues on the internet multiple times already, but I don’t know what to do. I have tried CTRL + S option also but it also didn’t work.

Is the Time Machine backup on an external drive, a Time Capsule or NAS? Is it possible to inspect the state of the Time Machine backup at Finder level connected to another Mac? You should be able to see the date of the last successful backup and possibly an 'in progress' file which would signify the last backup failed to complete. Try delete this file, it might be the cause. Assuming the TC backups are accessible through the Finder, I would choose the 'Reinstall MacOS' option and install via Apple's servers, then do a restore via the Migration Assistant.


MBP 15" audio input very bad quality The audio input of my MBP 15" 2011 is pretty bad no matter if the ambient noise reduction is checked or not.

I've tried all kinds of sound adjustments from the control panel but I can't get it good.

In order to tell you what's the sound quality with words: If I make an audio call the other person doesn't hear me well and have to set an upper level to understand me. If I type something on the keyboard, then the callee become deaf instantly.

So the fan & keyboard sounds are very loud whereas my voice is quite low. How can I (try to) fix this?

My checklist would consist of ensuring that the mic is not covered by dust/particles, try to use audio-recording software to make sure it isn't a problem with your voice chat software, and use an external mic to make sure it isn't a problem with the system itself.  One issue with the 15" MBP 2011 is that the mic is actually near the left speaker grille, so if you're running more intensive software that will run your fan up, you may have issues with fan noise being audible on the voice chat.  Typing will also result in noise on the mic, moreso on the left side of the keyboard.  It's a specific design issue with the 2011 MBP 15", and is noted by users on numerous Apple forums.  Making sure that the mic/speaker grilles are clean can help with the audio clarity; however, typing will always be audible on the mic.


Replace Recovery HD with a “bootable drive” formatted partition? A while ago, I had the idea to use the bootable Mac OS X USB drive-making procedure on a hard drive partition, so that I could basically have a version of the “Recovery HD” that doesn’t need to download Mac OS X every time. Then I realized that since I have that partition, I have absolutely no use for the original “Recovery HD.”

I was wondering, is there a way to actually turn my new partition into the official “Recovery HD”? As in, invisible during normal computer use but boots when ⌘+R is held during startup?

If you've installed Yosemite it will automatically have created an invisible recovery partition and so you may as well delete the recovery partition you created. Keeping a copy of the Yosemite installer on a USB stick is definitely a good idea though in case your drive ever dies or you need to perform a clean install (on an SSD for example).

Alternatively, you can hide volumes/partitions using the Utilities>Visibility function in Onyx.


iPad Pro 9.7'' power charging I read that the USB-C charger (29W) can "power charge" the large iPad Pro, almost reducing the charging time by a factor 2.

Would the same work with the small iPad Pro?

The charger works and can charge the 9.7" iPad Pro. However, it won't do it any faster than the standard 12W charger.

To take advantage of the fast charging, you'll need the 12.9" iPad Pro.


Suddenly when I hold down arrow key it takes a moment for OSX to respond This is odd.

No recent system updates. Before when I would hold down an arrow key, my cursor would immediately start moving left/right/up/down but now when I hold it down there is almost a 2 second lag before it begins to move. To clarify, the cursor DOES move one space on keypress but it takes another 2 seconds before rapidly moving in the direction I am pressing.

I should note that this happens across all apps. It is a system-wide change.

I am running Yosemite 10.10.5

Check the System Preferences...:Keyboard, and see if "Delay Until Repeat" is set to Long. If so, set it shorter.


Mac App Store opens to blank screen; cannot switch between menu options Today I tried opening the App Store to update some software, but when it opens I am left with a blank screen:

Also, when I click on the menu items in the top bar, multiple items will highlight in blue (but the blank screen will not change):

Does anyone know why this is happening? I am using Mac OSX 9.1 (Mavericks).

I killed all store* processes in Activity Monitor. Then relaunched App Store and it started working.


Is there a shortcut to expand all folders in Finder's list view? I have my Finder window set up to display in "list" view so that it shows all folders with triangles on the left to click to expand. I have a number of levels of nested folders. Is there any way (keyboard shortcut, menu item, etc.) to expand all, so I don't have to click through each level to see the files contained?

Select the folder you want (or command + A to select all) and then press:

Command + right arrow

And the left arrow undoes what the right arrow did, should you want to close things back up again.


Mac Mini with Ubuntu how to restore MacOS I have a Mac Mini 2012 Server which has Ubuntu running on it. The issue I have is that I cannot seem to get it to boot from USB at this point in order to reinstall MacOS. Holding down Alt/Option seems to make a keyboard light blink and it waits until I let go. It then promptly boots Ubuntu again. I try Ctrl/Command+R and it boots to Ubuntu again. Same with CTRL+Shift+R.
I’m guessing the blinking light is the Mac saying it cannot find the recovery partition. Which I get... they were brand new drives right out of the box. The thing I’m confused about is that it is not giving me any option to boot from USB.
I still have the old drives where one has a 500+ mb EFI partition and the other has a 200+ mb EFI partition. I’m guessing the recovery software is in this partitions. I’m just looking for some guidance on the way to re-install MacOS from USB.
Another interesting thing was that I ran efibootmgr and there are references to a location from the Mac drive. One points to a file... the next points to the partition that file is in. Then there are two that are similar to MacOS but if not have that label. It’s my first time looking at this so I’m not sure if I should expect to see an option in the boot list for USB.
Any help is appreciated.

The keyboard light that was blinking helped. Searching for reason where that would happen said there was not enough power to the keyboard. The (non-Apple) keyboard was going through a KVM switch (which actually is powered). So I figured there is something it doesn't like about the keyboard.
After directly connecting an Apple keyboard to the Mac Mini I was able to start the recovery process.


Is it possible to enter letters in iPhone native calculator app? I found this wholesome meme image online that shows the native iPhone calculator app displaying the text ur cute.

When I saw this, I didn't think you could type or display actual letters or words in the calculator app, so I tried playing around with it on my phone. I used both the simplified and the scientific calculator.

I could not get any letters to appear. I also tried copy from the Notes app to the calculator app but I could only copy the text from the calculator, not paste (Note: I did this on my iPhone SE IOS v13.3.1).

Is it possible to enter words/letters into the native iPhone calculator application somehow?

Or was this a feature that was available at some point and removed or is this a  bug?

Or is it not possible and this image just photo-shopped?

No, you cannot enter letters into the calculator on the iPhone or iPad.  The image was most likely photo-shopped!  You can copy what appears in the calculator window but you can only paste digits back into display.


Apple Mail: move message to another account or local folder and delete from the original account When I move a message from one account to another (by dragging, or "Move to"), or to a local folder, I expect the message to be deleted on the original account. However, what Apple Mail does is archiving the original message. Is it possible to realize my desired behavior (e.g., via a rule or a script)?

It would only possibly work if the mail accounts were POP accounts and you had your server settings configured to delete messages from the server when read. Most mail accounts now use IMAP which use different behaviors for message storage, both on the server and in the email clients.

You could structure some Rules in Mail to accomplish what you're trying to do.


can i use migration assistant to migrate files to a secondary drive? new (old) mac, came with a 2tb drive for files and data, and a small 250gb SSD drive for only the OS.
i have installed new version of sierra into that drive, now using Migration Assistant from a Time Machine disk I want to copy over my applications and files, Apps can maybe go to the SSD but files and data i want on the other, big drive.
Unfortunately Migration Assistant wants to only install to the start up drive ( I assume) and so im getting a "Not enough space on target drive" message.

What can I try?

Not easily can you let migration assistant handle that task. Instead I would migrate everything but the user accounts to the new drive. Then do some reading on options and mechanics:

http://mattgemmell.com/using-os-x-with-an-ssd-plus-hdd-setup/
Optimize macbook pro for internal SSD+HDD drives
One mac, Two or more storage devices - how to divide things?

My guess is putting the user folders on the second drive is the easiest for you and best result. Start by making one admin account with the same short name as your preferred main account on the old Mac.

It will make /Users/whatever on the boot drive. Then you can copy all of users from the migration donor Mac to the large new drive. Use rsync or something that can run several passes or resume a broken transfer if you can, or be patient with finder if you can’t.

At the end, you’ll use advanced settings in the user preference pane to point the home folder(s) for each account needed to the second drive home folder.


How to manage newer Ruby installations in macOS without intervening with the default Ruby installations? macOS comes with some default ruby installations, more here, that I do not want to overwrite by running gems commands as sudo. I tried rbenv, instructed here, but I am getting a permission error in the last command gem update --system such that

brew update
brew install ruby
echo 'export PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.4.1_1/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile #bash
brew install rbenv ruby-build
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile  # bash
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bash_profile               # bash
rbenv install 2.4.1
rbenv local 2.4.1
rbenv global 2.4.1
rbenv rehash
gem update --system
Updating rubygems-update
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError) You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.0.0 directory.

I do not want to intervene with the default ruby installation in macOS, not to get the need for a fresh installation of the whole OS.

What is a proper way to install newer version of Ruby on macOS without intervening with the default ruby?

Further questions on Ruby in macOS

rbenv not overriding default Ruby version
How to install ruby gems without sudo
Which version(s) of Mac OS X have Ruby installed by default?

Looks like you only update PATH etc in the shell profiles, but not in the running shell. Try to run the commands from rbenv onwards in a newly spawned shell.


How many times can really I share a purchased app with other people I understand I can share apps with up to five other iOS devices of other people (with different apple IDs). But is this on a per-app base? I.e. can I only register five devices I want to share with once or can I share one app with 5 people and another app with 5 other people?

The limits are only enforced on the authorization level. The license terms of the app store are very confusing to me (I have to read them many times and I never know if I'm remembering some past wording or what it really says today). It also has all the various stores - each with different terms for rentals, movies, music, subscriptions, Mac Apps, iOS apps, business use and personal use.

http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html

One computer that is authorized to download apps can sync over USB to hundreds of devices. I have never heard of a hard limit to the max number of devices per computer.  Via USB, you can share any or all your apps with countless people. This is called out in the current license terms as follows:

  (i) You may download and sync an App Store Product for personal,
  noncommercial use on any iOS Device you own or control.

If you sync in manual mode, you have to designate this account as the "primary" account. That's it

There are further restrictions when you want transfer that app to another computer or update the app. You don't have to register the iOS device containing your app unless you want to update over the air ( OTA ) from the app store instead of from the computer you control.

Each device is said to have a 5 account limit ( according to the license wording - i've never tested it to see this happen in practice)

Your Apple ID likely has a 10 device limit - 5 of which can be computers. This limits your ability to share your Apple ID. ( but not the apps themselves )

I haven't poured over the store license so keep in mind that you might have more technical capability to share than your license permits. I am also not a lawyer - so I don't know if two people can be considered to "own or control" the same device. Just like you can drive without a license - you can operate software without a license. Be nice and know what you are getting in to.


How to restore game progress in OS 9.1 after reinstalling deleted app I reinstalled a deleted app (Angry Birds) from iCloud but the progress stored in Game Center was not updated. How do I get it back? I don't want to start over.

At the time of deleting the app there was a popup: "Remove Angry Birds from Game Center?  You will no longer be listed on leaderboards for Angry Birds.  Keep / Remove".

If you clicked "Remove", there is no possibly recovery for your game data in iCloud.


Apple restore problem I accidentally deleted a photo from the "Recently Deleted" album and I need it back. I have an iCloud back-up but every time I restore the back-up, the photo is not in the gallery and I know for sure that the back-up was made before I deleted the photo.

Is there any possibility that I can recover the photo?

If your using iCloud Photo Library your photos aren't part of your iCloud device backup, because the photos are stored in iCloud anyway.

The only chance to get it back is via a Mac, that downloaded the library via Photos.app and to check it's backups.


Downloading an old app released for an older version of iOS I am trying to download the YACHT & JET DESIGN app on an iOS device running iOS 11. I am unable to do so. The app was released during iOS 7.

How do I download it?

Honestly I do not believe it is possible. You may have to find yourself an iOS device that already has iOS 7 on it in order to download this app.

It is also likely that even if you could download it, it just would not run as iOS has changed a lot since iOS 7.

If you have an iOS device that supports iOS 7 you may be able to jailbreak it and install an earlier version of iOS (iOS 7) from unauthorized download locations. But that is way beyond the scope of what we discuss and support here. So you would have to go elsewhere for help with that.


2013 MacBook Pro crashed, won’t restart I was using Firefox when my MacBook Pro crashed.  I was not initially concerned, as it does this about once a month.  However, it no longer starts.  It had 80% battery when it crashed, and plugging it in does not help.  Before I take it to the shop or take it apart, I hope someone here can offer a solution.
It is a 2013 MacBook Pro running the latest version of Yosemite.

Edit:  The computer restarts after several hours, but crashes again later.  I sought professional advice and was informed that the logic board needed to be replaced, because the not-restarting bit is apparently symptomatic of an overheated logic board.  But the problem resumed two days after a new logic board was installed.

Have you ever tried to reset NVRAM or PRAM (older Mac)? With Mac turned off, power on the Mac, then press and hold CMD (⌘) + Option (⌥) + P + R until restart itself, this should take a couple of seconds. This could be find at Apple Support, Hope it helps


How can I restore an iCloud backup to a new device? I have a new iPad And am trying to restore it from the back up of my old iPad. iCloud storage shows 3 backups - my iPhone, my old iPad and the new iPad (empty).

How do I get the old iPad backup on to my new iPad?

I found the solution myself in the meantime.

Seems new ipad was using an older iOS than the old one was when i backed it up, which is why it couldn't find the iCloud backup and forced me to set it up as a new ipad and use iTunes. It is all better now!


Prevent OS X from switching my keyboard layout when password fields are focused Some months ago, I switched to the Colemak keyboard layout, which is mostly great. But, there is one annoyance that is imposed by OS X.

When the OS pops up a confirmation dialog to ask me to type my password in order to authorize an app for higher privileges, the OS switches my keyboard layout back to QWERTY whenever the password field of this dialog is focused. Not only that, but the OS prevents me from changing the layout back as long as that field has focus.

Now, I am perfectly able to type my password on the Colemak keyboard. In fact, I'm much better at it now than I am at typing it on QWERTY. I want this behavior to stop. Unfortunately, I can find no setting for this, neither in system preferences nor in a defaults read dump. But just because I can't find it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Does anyone know how to fix this?

I'm running OS X 10.7.2 on a MacBookPro 3,1.

Put the .keylayout in /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ instead of ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/.


Why is Safari displaying scrambled graphics? When I click on "new tab" in safari, I see this flicker often as a new tab is opening:

Any idea why this is? It seems to be a scrambled cache of my graphics card... (In case you're wondering, the sushi stuff is from my iOS game, Nippon.)

This isn't so much a Safari problem as it is an OS X / hardware one. I'm going to guess that you have Intel or Nvidia graphics on a MacBook (Pro).

It's well-documented; there are lots of people with these issues (including myself). As far as I've found, you can't fix it. Just restart or wait it out.

Sorry I can't be more useful.


OS X Mavericks wakes my Mac from sleep every hour or so Ever since upgrading to Mavericks, it looks like my Mac Mini wakes from sleep about once an hour or so. In the Console, I get the following message:

Oct 30 02:12:06 gary-mac WindowServer[93]: CGXDisplayDidWakeNotification [89885620192550]: posting kCGSDisplayDidWake
Oct 30 02:12:06 gary-mac WindowServer[93]: handle_will_sleep_auth_and_shield_windows: Deferring.

Anyone know why it's doing this?

Usually when the computer wakes from sleep, whether manually or automatically, there is a "Wake Reason" line, but in this case there isn't one. My guess is that this is because since Mavericks, "Sleep" doesn't actually put the Mini to sleep. It seems to be more "on" than it used to be. Is there a way to revert the behavior to how it was before Mavericks?

Turns out it was because I had "File sharing" enabled in my "Sharing" System Preferences pane. I've always had this setting enabled, and I could sleep my Mac just fine before Mavericks. However starting with Mavericks, if I sleep my Mac with "File sharing" enabled, then the Mac won't sleep.


Does the HomePod offer 3rd-party apps? Does the Apple HomePod speaker system support additional functionality through third-party apps? For example, will I be able to stream services such as SomaFM through a HomePod unit?

Actually the answer to your specific question is no. Apple will support some (limited) domains (Messaging, Lists, and Notes). Music streaming is not one of them.

SiriKit on HomePod
With the intelligence of Siri, users control HomePod through natural voice interaction and can conveniently access iOS apps that support SiriKit Messaging, Lists, and Notes. Siri recognizes SiriKit requests made on HomePod and sends those requests to the user’s iOS device for processing. To prepare your app, make sure that your SiriKit integration is up to date and that you’ve adopted all of the appropriate intents.
Test the voice-only experience by using Siri through headphones connected to your iOS device with iOS 11.2 or later.

https://developer.apple.com/sirikit/


Can I make an iPhone ring on cue without making an actual call? The theater company I work with is doing a show this fall in which a key plot point is an iPhone ringing while it's in someone's purse. They really want to make an iPhone ring and not just use a sound cue. But cell reception inside the theater is spotty at best. Is there some way to get an iPhone to ring without making a call to it?

You can connect Your iPhone to WiFi (so that it has access to the internet) and ring via FaceTime.

To change FaceTime ringtone go to Preferences -> Notifications -> FaceTime.


iWork Numbers increase column size for sum If I have columns that sum at the bottom, how can I have the sum function automatically include a newly inserted row.

    a
  +---+
1 | 1 |
2 | 1 |
3 | 1 |
4 | 1 |
  +---+
  |=sum(a1:a4)|

Then when I add row 5 the sum function should be

=sum(a1:a5)

This functionality is embedded and its default behaviour. Of course if adding a row will be done using this option:


Plugged in new iPhone - iTunes is now using a foreign language I just got a new iPhone. I plugged it into my computer (iTunes was already installed). After clicking through the registration windows, iTunes displayed the screen below to me.

Does anyone know how to get this back to English? (So far, I haven't been game to press either the white or the blue button)

I live in Australia.

A similar case to what you are experiencing can be found here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3303287?start=0&tstart=0

Pretty weird stuff, but apart from restarting the computer you can try purchasing a free app (I assume through iTunes on the computer), another suggestion that I have read resolved this was to unplug the iPhone and do a reset (hold down the home and lock buttons until the apple logo appears) and then plug it back in when prompted.


Use Profile Manager (or other methods?) for Network Mounts/Favorites We have a few Macs in the office and a server running macOS Mojave 10.14.6 + Server 5.8.

Profile Manager is set up and working, and company-owned Macs are enrolled. Mostly we use it for volume app distribution at this time.

Right now, people in the office have a few locations set as Favorites in Finder's Go > Connect to Server… and some of them have taken the subsequent step of dragging one or more network folders into their sidebar. I am in the process of reorganizing how documents are share and stored. In Windows, I would probably use Group Policy to add or adjust drive mappings.

Is there a way to accomplish any/all of the following:

Add or adjust favorites in Finder's Connect to Server…
Add or adjust shortcuts in Finder's sidebar?

Using Profile Manager payloads or via some bash script that I could distribute via Profile Manager?

The files which store Finder favorites and server lists are located in

~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist

The file formats in this directory are sfl2 which is ultimately a form of BookmarkData internally, stored within the plist format encoded as base64. The sfl2 format cannot be modified with current command line tools on macOS 10.14+, although in earlier versions of macOS this was possible using the command line program sfltool.

However if you copy these files from an account already set up with your desired favorites e.g from another machine (this can be done once and repeated on many devices) then kill the process sharedfilelistd the list(s) update within Finder.

The file which stores the server list is called com.apple.LSSharedFileList.FavoriteServers.sfl2 and the sidebar list is com.apple.LSSharedFileList.FavoriteItems.sfl2

I have personally tested this with the server list, however I'm unsure of the implications of updating the sidebar list without user account path conflicts.


How to change time zone on iPod touch 4? How can I change the time zone on my iPod touch?  Presently it shows Eastern time zone, but I am on the west coast for a bit and it still shows East coast time.

Go into the Settings app.
Enter the General pane and select Date & Time.
Set your time zone.


How on earth do I get iTunes to play an album? I tried the old right click and select play on the drop down menu trick. Which didn't work.

Now I'm fresh out of ideas.

I'm using Vista Home and iTunes 12.0.1.26.

On iTunes set to Music, on the top-right corner, select "Albums".

Choose the album you want to play.
Press the "play" button on the screen it will open. This will reproduce the entire album's songs.


Changing swipe direction on iBooks (MacBook) When I swipe from left-to-right on my Trackpad, iBook goes to the next page. When I swipe from right-to-left, it goes to the previous page.

Is there a way to reverse the order for this?

You'll need to set scroll direction to Natural under System Preferences app → Trackpad → Scroll & Zoom as shown in the screenshot:


Remove email attachments from iPhone After having clicked on an attachment in an email to download and see/read it... is there a way to remove it again? I don't want to delete the email or the attachment from the email server, I just don't want it to take up space on the iPhone.

And also, is there a way to remove all downloaded attachments, so I don't have to go through each email and find which I have downloaded earlier?

The attachments will not remain on the phone past the point that the email itself is in the default number downloaded by Mail (on my iPhone it's 50 most recent messages). Once the message falls out of that, and/or is deleted, its attachments should be removed from the phone memory.

The other way to be entirely sure they are gone is to disable 'Mail' in settings for the account you are using, wait a couple of seconds (let it do its thing) and re-enable. This will purge everything related to that mail account and let you redownload just the messages. If you download a lot of attachments versus the amount of mail you receive, it might be worth doing this on a weekly-or-so basis.


iCloud alternative for a calender sync I am looking for an alternative to iCloud's calender sync between my Mac and my iPhone. Like many others, I really didn't appreciate the fact that you're now forced to use iCloud to sync your calender...

So I'm looking for an alternative to either locally via USB sync my calendar with my iPhone, are to get a server on my MacBook for this purpose, which would only accept connections from my LAN. Or a totally different application for both Mac OS and iOS, syncing over USB. What I don't want is uploading my data to a server that I don't own: iCloud, Google...

I have read this alternative: sync calendar and contacts without iCloud in Mavericks but the reviews are not really good for this app... erasing instead of sync is not an option for me!

Then I was thinking about something like Radicale, i.e. setting up a server but I'm a bit worried about all the problems arising from security issues etc.

What would you suggest? Is there even something like this out there?

Update: According to developers/macrumors local sync is back in the latest beta of iTunes, and will hopefully be back in the next release as well.

Like you already said - being worried about security issues when you run the server locally is reasonable. You probably will never get your local server as safe as apple has made their iCloud Server.
I honestly don't think your calender is so interesting that anybody would want to hack it, bur that's your decision after all.

I currently don't know of any app that syncs via usb. Sync mate doesn't work under mavericks, but they said an update would come in "winter" this year.

If you want to go local, I'd recommend using OS X server.


Viewing Logs on Startup volume that freezes I have a MacBook Pro (Computer A) which freezes / restarts during startup.
To investigate the problem, I purchased a brand new internal disk and did a basic installation (10.13 - the latest this model supports) on a working MacBook Pro (Computer B). This clean install boots on at least 4 Macs I have at my disposal.
But, on Computer A, it will startup, the progress bar will advance to about 60% and then it will restart and do the same thing. Or it will freeze the second time.
When I booted in Verbose mode, the last lines I got were:
DSMOS has arrived
Unsupported CPU
Unsupported CPU
Unsupported PCH
AppleHDAEngineOutput::performFormatChange (<ptr>, <ptr>, 0)
en2: promiscuous mode enable succeeded
IOConsoleUsers: time(0) 0->0, lll 0, llk1,
IOConsoleUsers: gIOScreenLockState 3, hs 0, bs 0, now 0, sm 0x0

at which point it hung.
I booted Computer B in verbose mode and was able to look at the logs and follow those error messages, but there are many additional lines there that aren't displayed on the screen during verbose mode startup.
If I boot Computer A in Target Disk mode, I can mount its disk on Computer B, so I don't believe the SATA cable is the problem.
Ultimately, I'd like to determine what the root of the problem is, but an interim step is to compare the log files from the disks in Computers A and B.
Is it possible to look at the log file from Computer A while accessing its disk as an external disk on Computer B?
(If you have an idea why it might be restarting/hanging, I'd welcome help on that, too.)

I'm having the exact same problem with a client's 12,1 iMac.  I think it's hopeless for the iMac, but you might be able to put your MBP into relatively working condition if it has two graphics cards (you didn't mention what model you have).  If it does, then only one of them is busted (the AMD Radeon HD 6750M has come unsoldered), so you have to prevent the machine from trying to use it.  If you have an Intel HD Graphics 3000 card in there as well, you might be able to work off it.  Here's the GitHub guide:
https://gist.github.com/cdleon/d1eff7246a25193304284ecec40445b0
Here's the annoying (but insightful) YouTube video that led me to this discovery:
https://youtu.be/iLft4N54zvU
Check out both, give it a try, and please let me know how it goes.