How to detect from a script that a TimeMachine backup is running? Possible Duplicate:
  Is there a bash command to check to see if Time Machine has finished backing up?

To run some syncs to remote servers to have their data included in TimeMachine backups I used to use a script like the following to avoid syncing while TimeMachine runs and not get half synced backups.

The detection part of the script that waits until TimeMachine stopped working on 10.8 so I'm looking for a working replacement for it.

#!/bin/sh -x

while ps -e | grep backupd | grep -v grep; do
    echo "Time Machine is running, waiting ..."
    sleep 60
done

The above waits until a TimeMachine run thats already underway finishes.
This is the part that doesn't work on 10.8 anymore since backupd is shown allways in ps -e output.  So it will wait forever.

The rest of the script still works fine and is only put here for reference if anyone needs switching TimeMachine off during a script and then safely on again afterwards.

save=`defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup | sed -e 's/0/false/' | sed -e 's/1/true/'`

This is a fix for the fact that defaults read gives 0 and 1 for bools but defaults write only accepts true and false

echo "Saved Time Machine state: AutoBackup = $save"

trap "echo 'Restoring Time Machine state'; defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup -bool $save" EXIT HUP INT QUIT ABRT TERM

Here we restore the former time machine state when the script stops for whatever reasons -- don't want to accidentally turn time machine off and nobody notices.

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup -int 0

Switch TimeMachine off, not sure why -int 0 works here maybe the whole sed business is not really necessary anymore?  I think it changes the default to int which is ok for off (?)

# ... script that does some remote syncing with other machines while time machine is not running

There is a duplicate question covering this, but the answer is tmutil status will tell you any time a backup is in progress as well as details about the backup.

You can use tmutil then to turn off backups if desired or even read the list of backups so you can predict how many minutes to the next scheduled backup. We had something similar and then just decided to kick off a backup when the copy finishes so that whether or not a backup was in progress - we get a strong chance of a consistent backup at the end of the copy operation.


Apple ID Password requirements As you know, the Apple ID Password must meet some minimum requirements, such as having at least one lower case letter, one capital letter, one number, etc.

So, how come sometimes I see a customer putting in a password just 4 characters long?

I am thinking probably if it is a very old password, never changed before, it can be still used as a valid Apple ID Password? Or what?

There are two types of passwords, the device passcode and the appleid password.

The device passcode gives you access to unlock the device, and it can be as short as a 4 digit PIN.

The AppleID password must be 9 (I think. It's either says "8" or "more than 8") or more characters long, contain at least one capital, one lowercase, and use at least one number or special character.


How can I save SSH Bookmarks in Terminal? I've recently become infatuated with TotalTerminal and am tempted to switch from iTerm back to Terminal just so I can use it, except that I rely heavily on a half dozen SSH bookmarks in iTerm.

Is there a way, or extension, to save SSH bookmarks in OSX's Terminal? (or a way to use iTerm like TotalTerminal's quick visor

I'm not sure what SSH bookmarks are, but you might find the SSH config file useful. I would advocate it over the alias approach.

This option will work in all terminal emulators, and all shells (e.g. zsh instead of bash), and even other apps that use SSH (e.g. rsync, scp, git). Also, if you synchronise your dotfiles (e.g. via a github repository), your bookmarks/alias can be shared across machines.

You can store host specific settings (and aliases) in:

~/.ssh/config

Instead of doing:

ssh admin@mywebsite.com

You could type:

ssh mw

If you added the following to your SSH config:

Host mw
Hostname mywebsite.com
User admin

You could also setup passwordless SSH and add the location of your identify file here. A bit more secure than storing passwords, and quicker than typing it out.

For more info about SSH config do:

man ssh_config


Office 2011(mavericks). Attachments from outlook only open word & excel as read only Whenever I receive an email in Outlook that has either a word doc or excel attachment it only allows them to be opened as "read only" documents.  How can I have them open as regular documents as they did with Entourage 2008?  Thanks.

This is a feature of Office 2011 Outlook.  The behaviour is not limited to Mavericks or Word or Excel files.

When you double click an attachment to open it, a copy is saved under your Library folder (in ~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/Outlook Temp).  This folder is not generally visible or intended to be accessible to users hence the "Read Only" attribute of the file.

You can either

double-click the attachment in Outlook (to Open it in its default application) and then Save As... to, for example, your Documents folder before editing or
right-click and Save As... in Outlook itself, in which case the file will not be "read only".


Is it possible to put Windows 10 onto an external SSD and boot it through VirtualBox/VMware? I am getting a 13-inch Macbook Pro (possibly the 2019 model) on my birthday. I am wondering if I can put Windows 10 onto an External SSD and boot it with virtual machine software on my Mac (ex. VMware, VirtualBox)

In a word, yes. you can place the VM storage (EG the HD file) anywhere you want it.

Note that both programs have default locations to place the VM files so you will likely have to specify advanced setup and specify the location manually.


How to upgrade OSX on MacBook Pro I need to upgrade my MacBook Pro 15 inch (2012) OS X from 10.11.6 to 10.13.6 or later.
However, I have downloaded several updates for 10.13 all the way down to 10.12.6 and in every case it says I need to have a prior operation system such as 10.12 for 10.12.6 to be installed.

In other words I can't seem to find an OS X system that I can install because I don't have the latest system for the update. So are all these OS systems updates only that require a previous version? Apple's download website just shows updates.

Where can I find a complete new OS to download so I can apply updates?

Major releases aren‘t distributed as updates, they need to be downloaded from the Mac App Store:

Open the App Store application on your Mac
Search for „Mojave“
Install


MBP Mid 2010 crashes with single color on screen My laptop crashes and displays colourful screens:
Red, orange, purple, green, pink, white, black.

I then have to shut it down for a couple of hours for it to work a while more. Does anyone know what could be causing the issue and how to solve it? It's a MacBook Pro Mid 2010.

From looking at the pictures and combining this with the fact that the screen reverts back to normal after turning off the laptop for a few hours, I suspect a hardware problem. Which means that you need to get the laptop to the next Apple Store (or other Apple dealer) to have it fixed.


Is it true that iPhone 4S has battery issues? I'm considering getting a new iPod and a new mobile phone. iPhone 4S sounds like a really attractive option, but it looks that iPhone 4S has serious battery issues. Some people are charging their iPhone 4S twice a day, according to articles on the web.

Are those issues are real? I'm a heavy iPod user and if those issues are real, then I don't think that I'm going to get the 4S.

I charge my iPhone 4S overnight each night, but I could probably get through multiple days if I was careful.

Currently, I'm not careful about battery life. I listen to podcasts on the train to work, make calls, surf the Internet on 3G and WiFi, and listen to streaming radio on WiFi pretty much all day at work. With all that, I get ~16 hours of battery life, which is much better than either my old 4th gen iPod touch or my Palm Prē.

Batteries can vary by model; the people who wrote the articles you mention probably just got crappy batteries. They should take their iPhones in to an Apple Store and Apple'll probably replace them, as the batteries are clearly defective.


How to create a keybinding using the [fn] key as a modifier? The half-size arrow keys on my MacBook are a little small for me. The keys I'd prefer to use are:

fn +  J  to move left
fn +  K  to move down
fn +  L  to move right
fn +  I  to move up

I badly want to use the "fn" key for this, both for ergonomic and practical reasons (ie: avoid conflicts with other apps).

Is this possible? How?

I installed a third party utility to remap these keys on my MacBook Pro running OS X 10.8. Here are the steps I used:

(1) Download and install KeyRemap4MacBook.app

(2) Edit (or create) the following file in a text editor:

~/Library/Application Support/KeyRemap4MacBook/private.xml

...so that its content is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<item>
        <name>JKLI to Arrow Keys</name>
        <identifier>private.jkli_to_arrow_keys</identifier>
        <autogen>
            __KeyToKey__
            KeyCode::J, ModifierFlag::FN,
            KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT
        </autogen>
        <autogen>
        __KeyToKey__
            KeyCode::K, ModifierFlag::FN,
            KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN
        </autogen>
        <autogen>
        __KeyToKey__
            KeyCode::L, ModifierFlag::FN,
            KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT
        </autogen>
        <autogen>
        __KeyToKey__
            KeyCode::I, ModifierFlag::FN,
            KeyCode::CURSOR_UP
        </autogen>
</item>
</root>

(3) Select "Preferences" from the little KeyRemap4MacBook icon in the OS X MenuBar at the top of the screen.

(4) In KeyRemap4MacBook's "Change Key" tab, tick "JKLI to Arrow Keys". (if this option doesn't appear, you may need to click the "ReloadXML" button)

You should now be able to use the Function key with J|K|L|I to control the cursor, in addition to the Arrow keys.


How can I launch screensaver with a keyboard shortcut? I've looked around but can't seem to find any good answers. Would appreciate any pointers.

I don't believe there is a built-in, system wide Keyboard Shortcut. The quickest way to activating the screensaver via the keyboard is either via a "Start Screensaver" command using a launching applications such as Quicksilver, Alfred, or Launchbar.

The quickest way of starting the screensaver using your mouse is via Hot Corners. Open System Preferences, click "Desktop & Screen Saver", click over to the "Screen Saver" tab and click the "Hot Corners" button in the bottom left. There you can specify a corner to roll over in order to start the screensaver.

If you want to start the screensaver quickly, because you want an easy way to lock your computer, a possible answer is located in the high-view "Mac OS X Hidden Features Tips & Tricks" question that remains active.

And specifically, this answer.

  shift + control + eject    send display only to sleep (great for locking your computer instantly)


Why is my .ssh/config file not readable? I am trying to edit my ssh/config file, but when I type emacs ~/.ssh/config into Terminal, it says that the file is not readable and will not save my edits. When I try to overwrite, it says permission is denied. Why is this happening?

ls -la ~/.ssh/config returns

-rw------- 1 root staff 1141 Jul 17 14:30 /Users/firestarter/.ssh/config

It says permission denied when I try to cat it

Looks like your config file got copied by somebody else. Log in as an admin user if you ain't one already and run

sudo chown firestarter /Users/firestarter/.ssh /Users/firestarter/.ssh/*
sudo chmod 700 /Users/firestarter/.ssh


Solving a problem on a MacBook Pro 5,1 with an OCZ Agility 3 SSD I installed Mac OS X lion on an SSD (through USB) after checking the firmware was the latest version (2.15). When I transferred the SSD into the MacBook Pro (like i usually do after an install) but it displayed a folder with a question mark during boot.

Upon rebooting and entering the boot menu there were no drives displaying.
I restarted a few times after checking the cables and connectors but to no avail.

When starting from an USB boot drive the computer is extremely slow and the SSD apears to be sometimes missing in disk utility.

When it is present Disk utility fails to run any diagnostic.

I tried resetting the pram/nvram and Smc. No improvements.

When the SSD is installed in a Mac Mini it runs fine I can even boot to the system ant it runs blazing fast.

Is there something I can do to get it running?

I bought this SSD to replace my current hard drive which is behaving suspiciously, and now I am stuck between 2 problems.

After a lot of pain and testing the SSD works fine, but not in my Macbook Pro 5,1 (late 2008). After looking for an answer and pointers on the net I found the case of this unanswered post and this user with an Agility 3 120Gb not working either.

I'm returning it.


Names of voice memos wiped after iOS8 upgrade - can I get them back? I finally upgraded to iOS8.1.1 on my iPhone 5 a couple of days ago. Everything seemed to be fine, but when I went to record something this morning, I noticed that all of my voice memos were just dated, rather than showing the name/label I'd given them.

I record a lot of voice memos for songwriting, melody ideas, rehearsals, etc. and have recordings going back to 2010, so knowing what they actually are is incredibly important.

I double-checked and it looks like all of my voice memos are backed up to my PC via iTunes with the original names intact. Is there anyway to get them back into Voice Memos on my phone, with those names, or will they just revert back to the dates again?

You could try using the free software iBrowse to open your iPhone, then open the Recordings folder, and look for Recordings.db. This can be opened with SQLite Database Browser. Open the DB in SQLite Database Browser, then Browse Data and find your filenames and their titles.

If they are not there, you could try making a new Voice Memo, and repeat this procedure. Now see if you can manually edit the DB to make the rest of your files match the format used to name the new Voice Memo. Ultimately save your .DB and copy it back to your iPhone using iBrowse. Make sure to save backups in case your iPhone doesn't like your hand-edited database.


Mac OS X - network interface preference defined by host domain There are two network interfaces on my Macbook: an ethernet LAN and Wi-Fi, which are both DHCP-configured (albeit separately).

I only need to access a limited number of hosts through my Ethernet network, and want every other request to be routed through Wi-Fi. Those 'Ethernet' hosts can mostly be recognised by their domain mask which is *.foobar.com, but there are also a few exception which domain is different (but they can be identified by their exact IPs).

What would be the best way for me to organise it? I am thinking giving my Wi-Fi the top priority (by dragging it to the top in 'System Settings / Network' list), and then creating a routing rule like this:

route add -host 192.168.10.13 -interface en0

Is that a right approach? If so, what is the equivalent command that I can use to define en0 as a default route by domain mask (*.foobar.com) rather than by exact IP?

As has been pointed out in the comments, using DNS names for traffic distribution isn't possible (in your scenario). You need to provide local routing as desired and this needs to use IP addresses or subnets.

What you can do is set up the default gateway on the wi-fi NIC or lower the metric for wi-fi - if you want to stick to the all-DHCP setup you'll need to change this on the DHCP server. This takes care of using wi-fi as default network connection.

Then, you set up specific, local routes for the "Ethernet services'" IP addresses that have lower metrics for the Ethernet NIC with route add.


Service crashes when using AppleScript to click menu bar icon The following AppleScript code clicks the WiFi icon found in the menu bar (source):

tell application "System Events" to tell process "SystemUIServer" to tell (menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1) to click

Please complete the following steps to reproduce the bug:

In Automator.app, click File → New → Service.
Drag a Run AppleScript action to the workflow.
Paste the above line of code into the AppleScript body.
Save and title the Service.
Run the Service.

The WiFi icon is never clicked, and I am instead presented with the following (painfully ambiguous) error message:

Observations about this bug:

The code works properly when compiled and tested in Script Editor or Automator.
The Service works properly when the Service is triggered from within Automator (i.e., when the the frontmost application is Automator).
The bug persists no matter which menu bar icon is specified.
Adding administrator privileges does not solve the issue: do shell script "osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\" to tell process \"SystemUIServer\" to tell (menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1) to click'" password "thePassword" with administrator privileges

Do you know what might cause this conflict?

Does a workaround exist, so that a menu bar icon can indeed be clicked by an AppleScript Service?

OS X El Capitan, version 10.11.6.

This works for me on the latest version of macOS Sierra.

I followed your steps exactly.  However, this code you posted needed to be tweaked to work on my system correctly.   Here is the code I used and placed into an Automator run AppleScript action

tell application "System Events"
    click menu bar item 3 of menu bar 1 of application process "SystemUIServer"
end tell

I also did get the same error message you got when i tried to run the service from within Finder (after successfully running the script within Automator and ScriptEditor)

On a hunch, I added Finder app to the list of allowed apps to control my computer.

Then I went back to Finder services menu and attempted to run the service again.  Bingo! It worked.  I did the same thing with several other applications I had open and it did not produce the error message


No audio on the right channel I have 13" MacBook Pro (Late 2009) model that is refusing to play sound on the right audio-channel.

Without any speakers connected it still plays fine but once I connect earbuds or a headphone, I only have sound in my left ear. In my right ear I hear a very low white noise sound.

I've tried rebooting, fixing disk permissions (very long shot, I know), same problem if I play sound in a virtual windows machine. And off course I've verified that the sound balance is set to both left and right.

I've "looked" into the mini-jack output but can't see anything wrong with it...

Check your settings in System Preferences > Sound > Output.

I had the same problem and for some mysterious reason my left-right balance was completely screwed up.

No idea how it happened but once I adjusted it to center it now plays back perfectly (:


Is there a way to remotely restart Finder (or wake-up the desktop) from SSH? Over the last few months I've found my MacBook Pro is getting increasingly unwilling to wake-up if it's gone to sleep of it's own accord - not when I put it to sleep deliberately, but when the machine is left for a while and it eventually goes to sleep itself.

I usually run it with the lid down, with a mini-DVI-connected 'main' monitor and then a USB-connected 'second' monitor. Sometimes no amount of keypressing, gently tapping the power button, disconnecting the external displays and lifting the laptop lid, plugging in USB devices, inserting and ejecting CDs - no amount of any tricks I've tried will 'wake up' the display even though the machine is running (shares available over the network) and I can SSH in.

I can sudo shutdown -r now on the machine, though obviously that's a bit drastic!. It got me wondering if there was any other terminal command I could use to wake-up the Finder (I guess) - it certainly seems that the desktop has gone to sleep and can't be tricked into waking up.

Can the finder be restarted remotely via SSH? If not the finder, does anyone know of any other terminal means of forcing the machine to completely wake-up and return to it's previous state?

This quits the Finder by sending it the "quit" AppleEvent, which is the same signal the system sends when logging out or restarting via the GUI:

osascript -e 'quit application "Finder"'

I (also) don't think quitting the Finder will fix the wake-from-sleep issue, though.


How to shuffle all songs in iOS 8.4 music app In the old version of the music app you could shuffle all songs when songs were selected:

This feature seems to be absent in iOS 8.4 and the new music app:

What are the options for shuffling all my songs in the new version of the music app under iOS 8.4?

In the My Music tab under the Recently Added album artwork is a title which by default reads Artists it is a pink drop down menu.
Select Songs from the list.
Select any song to start playback.
Enable shuffle mode, disable repeat.


How to resize (grow) APFS partition that is at the end of the drive? [new info below post] -- I'm having trouble resizing an APFS partition on the 240Gb SSD in my Mac. I want to make all space available to the system partition "Macintosh SSD".

Output of diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         81.9 GB    disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +81.9 GB    disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s3
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh SSD           54.8 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 44.7 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                509.5 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      20.5 KB    disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Nieuw                   655.4 KB   disk1s5

I tried resizing the container, but this results in an error (see below). I believe due to the fact that the system partition is located at the end of the drive.

Mac-mini:~ admin$ diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1 239g
Started APFS operation
Aligning grow delta to 157.073.416.192 bytes and targeting a new physical store size of 238.999.998.464 bytes
Determined the maximum size for the targeted physical store of this APFS Container to be 81.926.582.272 bytes
Error: -69519: The target disk is too small for this operation, or a gap is required in your partition map which is missing or too small, which is often caused by an attempt to grow a partition beyond the beginning of another partition or beyond the end of partition map usable space

Can anyone help me how to add the free space to the "Macintosh SSD" partition?

Thanks,
Koen

Update 1: Thanks for the quick response! Though, I got replies that it may be a duplicate with this post. I think it is not, because:
- I have no disk0s3 "storage" volume that may be blocking the space; and
- Running the command in step 3 in that post results in this error:

sh-3.2# diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s3 0
Started APFS operation
Error: -69743: The new size must be different than the existing size

Thanks again for any help, it is much appreciated.

Update 2: Output of diskutil info disk0s3 | grep -e "Partition Offset" -e "Disk Size" as requested by David Anderson:

   Partition Offset:          158130806784 Bytes (308849232 512-Byte-Device-Blocks)
   Disk Size:                 81.9 GB (81926582272 Bytes) (exactly 160012856 512-Byte-Units)

The command you are using adds any significant amount of free space immediately after the APFS container partition. By adding the values posted in your Update 2, you can see the APFS partition container is already at the end of the drive. There is no significant amount of free space to add.

  158,130,806,784 B
 + 81,926,582,272 B
 ------------------
  240,057,389,056 B = 240.1 GB

Below, I computed that there is 81.7 GB of free space somewhere above the APFS container partition. The macOS operation system offers no command or application that would add any of this free space to the APFS container partition.

  240.1 GB
    -.2 GB
    -.1 GB
 -158.1 GB
 ---------
   81.7 GB

The easiest solution would be to backup you files, erase the drive, reinstall macOS and reload your files.

Another more complex solution would be to create a new APFS container partition above the existing APFS container partition. You could then either:

Install macOS in the new APFS container partition, then use the Migration Assistant to copy all your files and applications. I have used this solution before.

OR

Attempt to clone the old APFS container partition to the new APFS container partition. I have never tried this solution. Maybe some else could comment or post an answer.

Afterwards, you could erase the old APFS container partition to create free space immediately after the new APFS container partition. You could then use the diskutil apfs resizeContainer command to add this new free space to the new APFS container partition

Creating new APFS container partition would involve several steps. Some of these steps would have to be preformed while booted to macOS Recovery. You should backup your files before attempting these steps. However, once you have a backup, you might as well just erase the entire drive and reinstall macOS. If want me to include the steps to create a new APFS container partition, then post a comment.


Booting Ubuntu (or any other Linux) from MacBook Pro 2020 As a new user in the world of Apple computers and laptops, I am trying to understand better why it is a pain in the ass to boot a flavor of Linux using an Apple MacBook. I know from what I have seen that it is possible in older models, so I gave it a shot myself.

My setup is a MacBook Pro 13 inch 2020 and Ubuntu is installed on an external SSD.

So what I tried was disabling secure boot and allowing to boot from an external device. I was able to boot into Ubuntu, but soon had to deal with the keyboard and mouse not working. Luckily my external keyboard did work. I have tinkered around a bit more and couldn't find the problem of why the internal keyboard and mouse pad were not working. Is it a problem of not having drivers or packages or is the problem different.

My question is twofold:

If it's possible, what drivers or packages am I missing?
If it is not possible, why exactly?

There is a Ubuntu Live USB distribution called LivelyLinux that boots from Mac. It costs $29.99 and is available in two editions: Ubuntu 20.10 and Ubuntu 20.04.1.
It works on Macbook Pro 2016 with WiFi, touchpad, etc. Probably should work on later models as well.


Can i plug a usb keyboard to my iphone while it's connected to my mac? I need to backup my iphone 5s but the screen is completely broken, it's all black and the touchscreen doesn't work so i need a way to control my phone from a keyboard to back it up from icloud that recognises it.

Is there anyway to do it?

Not a USB keyboard afaik, but this lightning keyboard has been reported to work with iPhones.

There's a thread on the apple discussion board by someone in the same situation as you that used the keyboard linked above as part of their backup process.


Disk Utility changing partition types on its own Whenever I do an operation in Disk Utility the last day it seems that I end up with my APFS partitions set to an unknown partition type (FFFF...)
This has happened three times now both after extending APFS partitions, and after splitting a HFS partition and creating a new APFS partition. Once it changed the partition type of an APFS partition that wasn't even involved in the resize operation.
Every time this happens I'm forced to manually change the partition type back using e.g. gdisk to make the system bootable again.
Is this a generally known bug in the community, or what's going on here? Why is it insistent on breaking the system partition after a resize?

It has happened with Disk Utility in macOS 10.14 Mojave and 10.15 Catalina
The resize operations were initiated by simply selecting trailing "free space" and removing it.

The OS X and macOS Disk Utility applications has never been bug free with respect to resizing partitions. The diskutil command has far more options than can be accessed by the Disk Utility application. Also, the diskutil command is less prone to failure. This makes the diskutil command far more versatile than the Disk Utility application. An Ask Different search for FFFF currently results in at least 150 posts, with yours being the latest. The first being posted on August 19, 2012. You refer encountering the problem with Mojave and Catalina, however the problem was first posted when Lion was in use.

Here at Ask Different, the FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF partition type is a known bug. I have no way of knowing for sure, but being this problem has existed for at least 8 years, I just assume the bug is known to Apple.

I best advice I can give you is that if the Disk Utility application is malfunctioning because of the procedure you are using, then you need to change the procedure. I would try to include an alternate procedure, however currently your question does not provide enough information about your current procedure and state of your Mac before applying such procedure.


How do I tag books in CloudReaders? I have the CloudReaders app on my iPad.  According to its release notes and other reviews of it, it supports tagging of books to allow for filtering.  However, for the life of me I can't figure out how to do it - only how to search based off tags?  Does anyone know how?

After another 30 minutes of playing, it turned out (competely illogically) the reply/share button leads to a tagging UI.


Changing the default iOS dictionary from New Oxford American Dictionary(NOAD) to Oxford English Dictionary(OED)? Anywhere in  the iPhone when you select a word the Define option pops up from the popup menu. Clicking on it brings up the definition for that word. The default dictionary it uses is the New Oxford American Dictionary(NOAD). I wonder if it can be changed to the Oxford English Dictionary(OED).

Image source: osxdaily.com

It looks like this is possible in iOS 7. When you click to define a word, in the bottom left there is a "Manage" button. Here, you can tap the X for a dictionary that you want to delete from your device and tap the cloud button to download a dictionary you want. So in your case, tap the X to delete the NOAD from your iPhone, and tap the cloud to download the OED to your iPhone.


Web clips on Dashboard not always updating correctly in OS X (Lion) I am having problems with Web Clips. Had the problem in OS X Leopard and now in Lion.

My problem is that I have clipped the "Major Stock Indexes" part of this page: http://online.wsj.com/mdc/page/marketsdata.html and sometimes it updates when I go to the dashboard, sometimes not (the timestamp in that section can be up to 24 hours old), which is frustrating. Going to the page in Safari shows me an updated page with a timestamp as of now, so it's not the page compatability with Safari that's the problem but I suspect something to do with web clips / the OS X dashboard functionality.

I have (of course) googled for a solution, but found none.

Any ideas of how I could solve it (or if not, how can one report a bug to Apple so they actually look at it/fix it)?

Thanks :-)

You can submit a bug report here. It requires having a free Developer account. You can also submit feedback here which doesn't require a Developer account. I would suggest reporting on both.


Can I buy a refurbished Macbook in the offline London Apple Store I'm about to travel to UK, and i'm wondering if I can buy a refurbished Macbook, straight from the Apple Store, not from the website.

I'm not a UK resident, and I would like to get a TAX refund, and it seems like the VAT TAX refund rules mention that the online sales are not eligible.

Is this possible?

In the United States you cannot buy a refurbished product and have it shipped for in-store pickup. Have you tried to see if you can do that through the UK online store?

In general the retail stores stock a subset of all of the standard models in some cases they even stock custom build versions that are popular in that specific location. Also, refurbished products are so limited compared to the normal production that it all gets held at central shipping locations and you can only buy it online. I have heard of businesses ordering tens or dozens of Macs when there's enough inventory for refurbished products, but you would then be working with a business specialist in that case to work up your quote and they could answer all of your questions during the pre-sales discussion.

You could try looking up the contact information for the specific store you intended to shop: http://www.apple.com/retail/storelist/

My understanding, is that the stores are staffed to handle the people that walk in physically as opposed to field phone calls and email messages from potential shoppers. That being said, a polite email or short call might be worth your time to gather information about refurbished products in that specific market.

Either way, you should go visit the stores in London for I hear they are amazing to witness in person.


Mail corruption in iPad My mail in iPad is acting terrible.  Many mails seem to have their contents and the header (sender, cc and subject) mixed up,  contents from one mail have the headers from another mail.  How do I fix it?

Often issues like this can be corrected by deleting the email account:

settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> [EMAIL ACCOUNT]

then scroll down and delete the account.

Then just re-add it. That usually works for me.


What are the differences between /usr/bin/login and /usr/bin/bash? Terminal.app has a setting to select which shell it uses, and the default setting is "Default login shell (/usr/bin/login)".
What are the differences between /usr/bin/login and /usr/bin/bash?

Griffo is correct. Now in your scenario, the difference boils down to the following:

if you pick /bin/login, then this program will check in the user database what your default shell is and run that shell as a login shell, thereby invoking the rc files that are run only when the shell is run as a login shell (in case of bash those are /etc/profile, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login and , and ~/.profile.
if you pick /bin/bash, that shell will be executed as a login shell, independently of what shell is set in the user database. This can come in useful when the shell in the user database does not work properly, or you want to be able to use different shells.

As per the comment by Chris Page, the shell is run as a login shell in both cases.

If you have not changed your login shell from the default, which is /bin/bash, and you have not changed the rc files of this shell, then the difference will not be noticeable.


MacBook 2016 randomly turns black every couple of minutes with external Display attached It seems like a reset and is happening a dozen times per hour. It happen via HDMI on my Dell U3415W and on a low resolution projector (1024x768px), i used the original Apple adapter but also the Minix.

Sometimes when it returns i have heavy artifacts on the display and have to unplug/plug the hdmi again for normal operation.

This issue was fixed with macOS Sierra 10.12.2 (16C679)


Transferring game progress from Iphone 4 to Iphone 6 I recently purchased a new iphone 6.  I went to the cloud and reloaded my apps from my old iphone 4 however all of my progress has been lost.  Can somebody please explain how I can recover that information.  I have backed up my 4 to the cloud and then backed up the 6 but still no luck.  I am not very computer savvy so any support would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Brink39

You have to create a backup of your iPhone 4 and then RESTORE the iPhone 6 from that backup. Depending on the game you might also need to sign in to either their service in-app or to iCloud (depending on where it saves your progress).


Outlook for Mac - archive single email with a keyboard shortcut In Thunderbird I can press the "A" key and archive the highlighted email to a folder named after the current year. In Outlook I've seen various ways to move to a folder via a keyboard shortcut and then select the folder to move to (a two step process); I could not find a way to move an email to a particular folder with a single keyboard shortcut.

Is there a way a to move an email to a designated folder with a single keyboard shortcut in Outlook 2016 for Mac?

Note: I had previously asked this question at personal productivity but my question was deemed "too specific".

This isn't exactly the question you asked, but Ctrl-e is the keyboard shortcut for archiving a message (at least as of Outlook for Mac version 15.36).


Some of my Google calendar contents just disappeared in Calendar.app macOS 10.14.6, Calendar.app 11.0 (2245.5.2)

Less than an hour ago, I brought Calendar.app to the foreground (I usually keep it running, hidden in the background), and most (8 out of 12) of my Google calendar contents were completely gone. All calendar names are still listed/checked in the Calendar List pane on the left side of the window.  I can't figure out why some are still there and some aren't. I rebooted, but still the same problem. If I view my calendars on the web at calendar.google.com, all contents are present & normal there. I use Mail.app to read my gmail account, and all email is present & acting normally. The Google Calendar IDs continue to match in Calendar.app and in the prefs at calendar.google.com. No errors are being shown to me in the UI, and I don't see any errors in Console.app. I have never had this happen before.

Very mysterious! Any suggestions?

Just received a notification that Google calendar was experiencing syncing problems with Apple calendar.  Reference MacRumors


Genymotion overheating MacBook Pro with Yosemite Every time I start a Genymotion (v2.5.2) device my CPU starts heating real fast and the fan speed goes from good to crazy really quick too.
Here's an output from iStats:

If I use GPS simulation this situation occours faster. When I turn off Genymotion everything comes down to normal as fast as it went up.
 I've found this How to deal with MacBook Pro and MacBook heat? from Apple Support Communities and this issue from askUbuntu but I haven't tried any approach yet.
Did anyone experienced something similar?
My Virtualbox version is 4.3.20 r96996 and I'm running Yosemite 10.10.4 in:

EDIT: Activity monitor print:

Thanks.

If an application uses only one core intensively instead of balancing the load to all cores, Intel's Turbo Boost kicks in. This causes the CPU to be overclocked to boost the performance of a single core (or even a few cores). This causes increased current and power consumption, and of course heat.

The heat can be avoided by dividing the same load to separate cores (but Genymotion doesn't support this) or by disabling Turbo Boost (for example, Turbo Boost Switcher, not personally tested).


Why can Mac OS X 32-bit access all 4GB of memory, while Windows 32-bit can't? I don't understand why Mac OS X 32-bit kernel can access all 4GB of memory (and even more) while Windows 32-bit can only work with ~ 3,3 GB, and for using more than 4GB you need 64-bit Windows. Even when 32-bit Windows runs on Mac hardware with > 4GB mem, it still doesn't use it all. Sorry for talking about Windows on this site :-), I would just like to understand the difference.

Recommended reading: Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard: 64-bits, Santa Rosa, and more (and the rest of Prince McLean's Road to Snow Leopard series).  If you don't want that much reading, I'll summarize:

First, you have to realize that OS X doesn't have a single 32/64-bit mode switch like Windows does; It'll happily run 64-bit apps under a 32-bit kernel, or vice versa, and both of those are independent of what the physical memory subsystem can support.  Mind you, the bitness of apps and kernel do impose memory limits: an app running in 32-bit mode can only address 4GB of virtual memory no matter how much is installed/supported in the machine (although a Mac with lots of RAM can run several fully-resident 4GB processes at once); and if the kernel is in 32-bit mode it can only allocate up to 4GB for its various data structures (page table, process table, open file table, etc).  This is already a bit different from the way Windows does it, as it shares address space between the kernel and the running process, so they each only get 2GB.  The advantage of the Windows method is that it doesn't require a cache flush to switch in and out of the kernel, making it faster.  But OS X only needs to flush the cache if both the program and kernel are in 32-bit mode; if either is 64-bit, they share space and avoid the speed penalty.

Now, on to the question you're asking about: physical RAM limits.  Many early Intel Macs actually have the same ~3GB memory limit that 32-bit Windows has, for the same reason: some of the 4GB physical address space is taken up by memory mapped I/O, especially the video card.  Some later Macs used the Santa Rosa support chipset, which allowed them to put the I/O in a separate address space, and use up to 4GB of physical RAM.  Higher-end (/even newer) Macs have PAE, which allows much more physical RAM.  Rumor is that Windows doesn't support PAE in most of their 32-bit OSes because of driver compatibility problems.  Apple controls most of the relevant drivers anyway, so they made it work; if the hardware supports it, the OS just uses it.


Can I change launchd program arguments based on calendar interval? I'm trying to run a script (zfssnap.sh) to automate snapshots, but one of the arguments needs to change based on which time entry triggers the script to start. With cron, I would just add a new line with the changed argument and set the time fields accordingly.

In reading the launchd and launchd.conf man pages, I'm not seeing any way to associate an argument with a specific StartCalendarInterval key entry. This seems like a significant limitation, so perhaps I'm missing something?

Is there a way change an argument based on the time the script is being run? Or, do I have to make a new plist for each of the situations I'm trying to satisfy?

The "standard" thing to do is make a new .plist for each different time/argument combo. This is essentially the equivalent of making multiple entries in the crontab, except that each "entry" is an entire file, not just a line.

There's a good example of this in macOS's launch daemon entries for the periodic maintenance program. /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-daily.plist runs /usr/libexec/periodic-wrapper with the argument "daily" and a 24-hour interval, ...periodic-weekly.plist runs it with the argument "weekly" and a 7-day interval, and ...periodic-monthly.plist runs it with the argument "monthly" and a 30.44-day interval.


Firefox: How to disable "delete-key goes back"? When I'm working in Firefox, I often accidentally close a tab go-back-in-history when I press the Delete key.

(For example, if I'm in Google Drive, and highlight a file, and then press Delete, the tab closes - instead of deleting the file!)

Is there a way to turn this off? I've dug through about:config and didn't see anything promising.

Update:
I made a mistake in my original question: Firefox is going back when I hit Delete, not closing the tab.

Now that I realized it was "go back" instead of "close tab" - the answer can be found here:

  You can set this pref to 2 on the about:config page to disable the
  backspace_action. browser.backspace_action = 2


Is CSS injection possible on iPad using Safari? There is a possibility to use a custom style sheet in Safari on Mac to inject CSS syntax that changes the rendered output of web pages.

I’m seeking a similar tool for iPad and iPadOS.

Is there any way to use CSS injection in Safari or other browsers on the iPad?

To inject a custom CSS into a webpage on iPad you can use the app Shortcuts. First, you need to create a new shortcut:

Open Shortcuts
Select Create Shortcut > Web > Run JavaScript on Web Page
Use the following JavaScript:

function addStyleString(str) {
    var node = document.createElement('style');
    node.innerHTML = str;
    document.body.appendChild(node);
}

addStyleString('body { color: red !important }');
addStyleString('body { background: silver !important }');
// This way allows you to add CSS in multiple passes

// Call completion to finish
completion();

Tap Next
Add the Shortcut Name

To apply a custom CSS you need to run the shortcut in Safari:

Open a web page in Safari
Tap on the share button
Scroll all the way down and tap on the newly created shortcut.

HINT: Use !important in CSS injections to override default rules.


Issue installing BasicTeX with Cask under OS X I followed the instructions (that I could understand) to install BasicTeX from Cask and this was the output I got:

basictex staged at '/opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom/basictex/latest' (107M)

I see this:

○ → ls -l /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom/basictex/latest/
total 219936
-rw-r--r--  1 sunitjoshi  admin  112605547 Jan 13 07:28 BasicTeX.pkg

And this under ~/Applications; i.e. no BasicText.app

○ → ls ~/Applications/
Chrome Apps.localized emacs                 test.js

Am I missing something here?

TLDR; Add /usr/local/texlive/2015basic/bin/universal-darwin to your PATH.

There is no BasicTeX.app. BasicTex is now installed at /usr/local/texlive/2015basic, wether you use Brew Cask or not (you can also find something files at /Library/Tex, but that's just a bunch of symlinks pointing to the actual installation directory). Just add the above path to your PATH and you should be fine.

Further reference:

BasicTeX installation guide
(non-Brew). aaa
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/163849/mavericks-upgrade-screwed-up-my-pdflatex-command-not-found
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22081991/rmarkdown-pandoc-pdflatex-not-found


iCloud Mail doesn't load, but all other iCloud services work fine I've been having this weird problem with iCloud for a while.

If I go to icloud.com, I can login just fine, and everything works (Contacts, Calendars, etc.), EXCEPT the Mail app. Whenever I click the Mail Icon, I get this error:

When I click "Report to Apple" it gives a more detailed log, ending with this message:

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 04:13:07 GMT:  ERROR: CoreMail handled error 13002 before exiting Mail

Anybody know how to fix this?

By the way, whenever I try to login to Mail in the Mac OS X Mail.app or the iPhone mail, I get The iCloud IMAP server “p06-imap.mail.me.com” rejected the password for user “myusernamehere”
, even though the password is correct.

It seems it was a temporary problem, as it now appears fixed.


OneNote for OS X, How to type a dash then a space without turning it into a list I am currently using OneNote for OS X to take notes at college.

I currently need to do maths when using OneNote. Whenever I type a - then a space OneNote automatically turns that into a list, when I disable the list it then removes the '-' which I made. This means I am unable to do what I want. Here are some examples on what I mean.

I want to do

  0111
- 0001
------
  0001

However OneNote turns it into a list like this

   0111
    -   0001

As you can see, this is rather annoying, I then remove the list buy chasing list style none however that removes the dash, if I was then to do a space at the beginning it would be turned back into a list. Is there a way I can prevent this from happening?

After it changes to a list, press ⌘+Z.

It's a common routine for things auto-corrected by apps if you don't want them to be auto-corrected, same with MS Office for Windows.


Xcode stopped detecting SVN repository changes after installing other version controlling apps Last week I installed Source Tree and Github for Dekstop version controlling apps on my Mac, prior to that I am also accessing our companies SVN repository server to contribute on our projects. While I have not installed other apps my SVN repo changes was detectable by Xcode meaning I can push/pull and commit directly from the Xcode.

But after installing those apps Xcode stopped detecting the changes and I feel lost with this.

System Configurations: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G65)
Xcode Version: 10.0

Any Apple Xcode's expert can help me with this?

If you look at the release notes for Xcode 10 you will see that it has dropped support for SVN repositories.  If you need SVN support then you will need to use a third-party SVN client.


How does FileVault work compared to LUKS I currently use LUKS to encrypt my the drive of my Linux computer.  I am planning to buy a Mac and want to enable full-disk encryption.  With LUKS you will be prompted for your password before the boot.

On macOS I heard you need to use your user password to unlock the disk.

How does this work in detail?
The login screen needs to be unencrypted, is it a separate partition then?
How does the login screen gets a list of the users while the disk is still encrypted?

You can find a setup guide for FileVault 2 here:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204837

When you enable FileVault 2 on your boot drive, an admin user will need to unlock the computer before it can be used. I.e. non-admin users will not be able to unlock and decrypt the drive.

When you turn on the computer, it boots from a separate, non-encrypted partition. That partition holds the decryption software as well as a list of admin users that can unlock the drive. This is done so that the bootup partition can display a startup image similar to a normal login screen with the names and avatars of the users that can unlock the drive.

Note that the unencrypted drive only holds the user names, not passwords, salted hashed passwords or anything like that. The user will need to enter a password that successfully decrypts the decryption key in order to unlock the computer.

In addition to the login password (which is used as a passphrase for one of the keys), you can also choose to enable either a recovery key, which is a 120-bit master password that can be used to decrypt the drive, or the option to allow an AppleID to unlock the drive. This means that you can unlock the drive by logging in to your AppleID which enables you to retrieve the key from Apple's servers. Some like this option for its ease of use, others prefer not to enable it for security reasons.

When you compare FileVault to LUKS, the systems are in principle very similar. However on a modern Mac with the T2 security chip, you'll find an additional security layer implemented with a Secure Enclave which tries to hinder brute forcing the pass phrase by adding delays, and protects against side-channels attacks on the main CPU as the encryption keys are never in memory on the Intel CPU. You can find further technical details here:

https://www.apple.com/mac/docs/Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overview.pdf


How to edit /etc/profile using emacs? I am using Emacs 24.3 on Mac OS X 10.9.4 and I am trying to edit /etc/profile with that. It obviously does not work when starting the GUI version, but for some reason, it also does not work when starting it with sudo from the command line. When I run

sudo emacs /etc/profile

from the terminal, Emacs still complains that the file is in read-only mode and it cannot write it:

Buffer is read-only: #<buffer profile>

What am I doing wrong?

/etc/profile is set to read-only for all users, so just using sudo won't help.

What you can do:

run sudo emacs /etc/profile
type C-x C-q to toggle readonly mode within Emacs
edit whatever you want
type C-x C-s to save it

Alternatively you can run

EDITOR=emacs sudo -e /etc/profile

which automatically creates a temporary copy of the file you want to edit (which makes it a bit safer in case you want to cancel the update).


iOS/Mac OS/Gmail 2-step verification broken Okay, so I've been struggling with this conflict for days now, and I can't figure out how to fix it.  Something happened with the way iOS, Mac OS, and GMail has set up 2-step verification and app-specific passwords that has broken my ability to access/read email across my devices.

The only solution I have been able to find is to disable 2-step verification on all my GMail accounts.  This is not ideal for obvious reasons.

Currently I am running:

iOS 8.4
MacOS 10.9.5
Apple Mail 7.3

The above version of iOS doesn't support app-specific passwords when I add my GMail account.  It redirects me to GMail's login and asks for my Google account password.  However, Apple Mail will not accept my Google account password and requires an app-specific password when 2-step verification is turned on.  I can generate such a password easily, and it works in Apple Mail.  But when I sync between my computer and phone, the result is a conflict where I can receive mail on one device but not the other, because the computer is expecting that the account has only ONE password associated with it.

The weird thing is that it has been working until only relatively recently--like last week, it just broke for reasons I can't figure out.

https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps

You probably need to enable access for less secure apps
Late answer I know but I had the same and it's taken hours to find the fix today


Mac Air -first no sound, now it won't charge First the sound went out on my macbook air.  I was in the airport and tried everything I knew, nothing worked.  Then I went to plug into an outlet I found, and realized it wasn't charging.  It does supply enough power to use the laptop, but there is no light on the maglite charger.  I tried SMC reset (pram as well), heating up the maglite unit, and a few other random things.  Anyone have any ideas?

Figured it out.  Opened up the laptop, and a wire was lose right by the fan. That seemed to be the charging issue.  Another wire was lose on the other side, may have been audio.  Everything works great now!

Prob bumped the air a little too harshly.


share purchased movies with friends Sometimes when I visit friends and don't have my Mac around I still would like to watch some of the movies I purchased on iTunes together with them. How do I do this? Can I share movies with others just as I can share Apps?

You can authorize up to five computers to use your iTunes account. If you have not used all five computers and you trust these friends, you could authorize their computer on your account, watch your movie, and then de-authorize the computer.


macOS Automator : is there an event for "iOS device connected"? I am wondering about the presence of an event "iOS / iPhone device connected" in macOS Sierra Automator.

I would like to launch an automatic import from photos, into specific folder on my mac. (Indeed, the AutoImporter.app function of the Image Transfer app does not work with me, it's a unresolved BUG, please note iCloud disabled don't resolve it).

Thanks for your help and knowledge in Automator

In order to import your iPhone's photos using Image Capture and AutoImporter you need to disable iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream.

How to disable iCloud Photo Library

On your iPhone

Go to Settings > Photos & Camera
Disable iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream.
Connect your iPhone to you laptop

Be aware that your photos won't be uploaded to iCloud any longer.

As long as your iPhone is unlocked you can import your photos from any computer that supports USB cameras.

Now you are able to import your photos with AutoImporter.app.


If AirPort Time Capsule is compromised, will it disclose contents of encrypted backups? I'm thinking about using an AirPort Time Capsule for my Time Machine backup. I would certainly use encryption, but I'm still concerned about sensitive backup data sitting on a networked routing device that could get compromised.

The Apple website has this to say on backup security:

  Don’t back up sensitive data to a network disk if you don’t trust the network administrators who control the disk. Instead, select a backup disk that’s under your own control, such as an external disk connected to your Mac.

This is a bit vague and it might simply refer to Time Capsules with multiple user accounts, so I'd like to know specifically: If there's some vulnerability in the AirPort Time Capsule and an attacker manages to compromise it and take over the Time Capsule by running arbitrary code on it, are my encryption key and the backup contents safe from them? I think this question breaks down into 2 parts:

Does OS X encrypt everything locally and only send encrypted data to the Time Capsule?
If an an attacker controlling my Time Capsule tries to trick OS X into doing an unencrypted backup, will OS X warn me first?

There are two ways of having backups encrypted.

First, Time Capsule allows for you to encrypt the disk. If you enable this, the disk can only be mounted by the device if you provide it with the password to do so. This encryption is local and thus doesn't address your concern. It does mean that if the disk somehow gets taken out of the TC, it can't be read.

Second, data stored on the Time Capsule as an encrypted volume. This is a setting in your computer and can be set on your Time Machine backups but also for any other volumes you store on the network drives (or anywhere else for that matter). This data can only be decrypted with the password. This data gets encrypted and decrypted on your computer, and although others might be able to see your backup volume, they won't be able to read it.


What are the main difficulties people face migrating from Linux to Mac OS? Coming from a Linux background what are the main difficulties I will face if I start to work on iMac?
I use to work on Linux with consoles and I know I have a huge apps repository (synaptics) for almost all I need. I'm programming Java and Ruby all day long, so what are the main differences?

Differences like UI and passionate things I already know, so please tell me only useful things. (otherwise we'll keep this question for years)

Have you faced this before? Is it a slightly migration?

I'd be thankful.

I did a switch from Linux just a week ago. I am using Linux for 15+ years. Lately, my Desktop distro of choice was Ubuntu.

Mac OS X is a BSD based system, so minor issues you will have to get used to is stuff like using ipfw instead of iptables.

As you will pretty soon realise Ubuntu (and other distros) simply mimic lots of Mac solutions when it comes to usability. You will find yourself being very familiar with a lot of GUI elements.

There is virtually no difference from a developer point of view. You can just install rvm and develop your Ruby apps as you used too. Main difference is, that now you can use the famous TextEdit! :D

As for the drawbacks:

Mac has worse package management and you might miss some fancy features of apt-get / dpkg (or yum / rpm). It's not groundbreaking however, and Homebrew will be sufficient in the end anyway.

There are various minor things like key shortcuts, window management which takes couple of hours to get used to. I for one can't get what's the idea behind how the window maximization works.

In the end, I must say that I don't miss a thing so far. I got everything I loved about Linux + beautiful system which can run StarCraft and Photoshop. :-)


How to activate iPhone with forgotten details I brought my uncles old iPhone 4S and I've reset it, but now it's asking for his Apple ID and password and he can't remember it and he has lost his passcode. How can I activate the phone without the passcode?

Well you would need to get the Apple ID first, then reset it with your Apple ID.

To recover your ID password: iForgot


A specific problem with altering the Mac command-key layout to behave like Windows I want to change Command+Space combination to change keyboard layout to a Windows like Alt+Shift but the Lion's keyboard settings does not react when I assign that particular combination. It allows me to change it to a other combinations, however. I assume this is because Alt+Shift is already being used by some other program, but which one? How can I tell that and what can I do to override that setting?

I don't think you can use alt + shift for anything by itself.  It is used for all kinds of special characters in combination with a letter key.

How Mac OS X lets you toggle between different international language keyboard layouts

How Mac OS X uses the "Option" key as a "dead key" to enable typing diacriticals for Western European languages in the US keyboard layout.

Here is where a conflict may arise.


Lost my phone, can't login Apple ID My phone number is changed, so now I can't log in my Apple ID as it sends the two-factor authentication code to the previous phone number. Also, I'm not logged in in any other Apple product.
I requested the "forgot password" change, and after a few weeks, I received an SMS to the new phone number, that now I can start the change process. But the recovery still asks for the previous phone number.
What can I do?

I would suggest following Apple's guide on recovering an Apple-ID:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204921
In particular you want to visit this web site to start the process:
https://iforgot.apple.com/
If these are the steps you've already taken, and you still cannot gain access even after waiting the given period of time - I would call Apple Support to ask if they can recover your account for you based on some other means of authentication.


iOS App Store screenshots iPhone Xs Max For screenshots of your app to be submitted on App Store Connect, do they need to include the four dots, clock, Wi-Fi, & battery level indicator on the top and the bar at the bottom?

Top 132 px:

Bottom 132 px:

If we do include these, should the clock be set to 12:00 or some other specific time? It isn't really clear in the specifications.

Here are the guidelines (as of this writing) for uploading app screenshots for App Store as per Apple document, Submitting iOS Apps to the App Store:

  Upload screenshots to App Store Connect. Upload screenshots for the new iPhone XS Max or the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation). Screenshots will be automatically resized for iPhone X and later, or for the 11-inch iPad Pro. Starting March 27, 2019, all app submissions for iPhone or iPad, including universal apps, will require screenshots for iPhone XS Max or the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation).

  Upload screenshots as they are, with no modifications. The rounded corners will be automatically applied after upload.
  If you add text descriptions to your screenshots, keep text away from the corners to avoid cropping.
  Leave the home indicator in the screenshot, if it’s visible.

There are no specific instructions about items shown in the status bar. You can leave whatever icons are visible as is. Also, some apps may choose to hide the status bar, so naturally it won't be visible in the screenshots.

There are no specific instructions on value and format of the time displayed (and whether or not it should be displayed) in the status bar.


Can't divide disk by using Disk Utility I have a portable external hard drive, and I want it to be the backup disk by using time machine.

But first I encounter a problem, I can't divide it.

In my Dish Utility, it display this.

The partition button is disable.

Before this action, I erased my disk and chosed the ExFat type.

The problem is you didn't select the disk properly. You see how you selected "WD"? You need to select the item above it, where it says "WD My Passport...". Then you'll be able to partition it.

Edit (from Tetsujin): You also need to make sure that the drive is formatted as Mac OS Journaled (also known as HFS+) with a GUID partition scheme.


macOS: Wrong Bonjour name stuck in hostname Due to a network problem, my iMac was renamed Theater-ATV-8.localname.  This is the name that appears when the Terminal hostname name is run.

Nothing I have tried will change this name permanently. I can change it with hostname [new name], but it reverts on reboot.

The name in the Sharing pane in System Preferences if KW-desk-iMAC.

The man page for hostname says:

  To keep the hostname between reboots, run `scutil --set HostName name-of-host'.

Also, the name in the Sharing prefs pane you mentioned, is that the name that isvisible right there when you open the pane, or the one you can edit when you click the "Edit..." (or similar - in German it's "Bearbeiten...") button?


SHA2 checksum for Sierra's InstallESD.dmg? Before making a bootable drive for Sierra's installer i want to make sure that the download was successful.

Run in Terminal: shasum -a 256 "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg"

Wait some minutes for the result to show up.

Mine is: 78a2701bb63a0dcb30862314d1a4598522cfe6a2dd2b096a4e30f256909a4446

A comprehensive list of sha1 checksums of the InstallESD.dmg (or similar files) in various OS X/macOS installer apps is available here: Mac OSX Installers SHA1 Checksums.

The sha2 checksum of the InstallESD.dmg of macOS Sierra 10.12.0 is indeed: 78a2701bb63a0dcb30862314d1a4598522cfe6a2dd2b096a4e30f256909a4446


On the ios inscript hindi devanagari keyboard how do I type a र् or "verama" character? As in the title this character half ra: र् is used in words in Nepali such as पर्‍यो

From what I read this is formed by typing "ra" र + "halant" ् + "zero width non joiner" + "ya" य

I do not know how to type a zero width non joiner character in iOS, I am using the standard iOS hindi keyboard.

Just hold down the र key and you should get a popup menu with the eyelash version to select.


Force unmount drive - Yosemite have a very stubborn Mac, it is a slightly older model but can run Yosemite. I have been trying all day to reformat the main drive in it, I have using the regular disk utility and terminal. I have tried for un-mounting and reformatting but nothing is working. I have narrowed it down to the recovery volume on the drive that refuses to unmount. Is there a way to run in recovery mode without using the hard drive? Because as of right now I have no way of reformatting the drive. As, ironically is seems that the recovery partition is blocking me from doing it. Any suggestions on how to get this sucker to comply?

I want to: Reformat the main drive completely It seems every partition but the recovery is complying

You can't completely reformat/erase/repartition the drive you are booting from (assuming you are booting from the recovery partition on your main disk drive).

So boot to a bootable DVD, a second (external) hard drive, a bootable thumb drive or boot to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing altcmdR while starting your Mac.

Then open Disk Utility and reformat the internal drive.


Vagrant/VirtualBox extremely slow despite 8GB-RAM/SSD-HD/2.53GHz Core2Duo My VM (Ubuntu Vagrant VM) is extremely slow. While my Windows co-workers have a maximum of 1 minute page load time, my page load takes up to 8 minutes.

I tried putting log files in non shared folders—no Effect. I tried fiddling with the VirtualBox settings, but I do not know what I am doing there.

It really got worse with the Mavericks Update.

Anyone any ideas?

My System:

MacBookPro 2.53GHz Core2Duo
8GB-RAM
512MB SSD

My VirtualBox (4.2.22) Settings:

CPU 1 Core
RAM 2048MB
Hardware Acceleration enabled (VT-x/AMD-V)
Nested Packaging enabled

Due to a shared Vagrant file, the Windows user have the same VirtualBox settings.

LATE UPDATE: The Improvements that worked so far

After i had switched Laptops, now i am back to working with a VM on my Mac so i got back to this Topic.

SFTP Sync via IDE instead of SMB or Shared Folders
I stopped using shared Folders and instead i let my IDE (PHP Storm) sync the Files to teh VM via SFTP. So i am working in a local directory and the VM get's the files via SFTP Sync.
This was a huge Improvement.

The Adjustment of the Cores helped a tiny bit
See Answer by @zigg.

Changed Drive Setting to SSD in VM wich helped a tiny bit
See Answer by @IljaPavkovic.

try enabling SSD on the virtual drive. This helped in my environment.

As I cannot answer to comments:

settings->storage
mark hard disk
click "Solid-State Drive"


Why is the System Preferences Dock icon showing a Badge? Today I noticed that the System Preferences icon in the Dock has a red badge (containing a white '1' digit).

I presume the app or the computer is trying to tell me something, but I can't figure out what that is.  I tried opening the System Preferences app in the hope that it might badge or highlight the preference pane icon concerned, but everything looks normal.

I've tried clicking on several of the preference panes, but the badge stayed.  I suppose I might try clicking on every single one of them and see if or when the badge might go away, but I wonder if you might have seen something like this.  Another thing I haven't tried yet is to look in Console.

I clicked the iCloud pane, and found it was suggesting I improve my security posture.  When I did something about that, the badge went away.

I did that only after I'd tried logging out and logging in again.  I guessed restarting the computer wouldn't change anything, so I didn't try it.


Is it ok to let Mac air run 24 full hours? I have a MacBook Air (11-inch, 2011) ,I am now downloading iTuneU courses 24 hours.There is only one app iTunes running,is it ok?

Yes of course. I had my MacBook running for a week once. And as long as you don't do any heavy tasks, such as rendering or video compression, you won't have any overheating issues.


ipod touch locked all the way cant get in at all I bought a ipod i tried contacting the owner i tried everything but there apple id and password is on the ipod i cant login or try to set it up for me becuase it says its linked to an apple id but the person i bought it from isnt answering my calls and i cant get in the ipod how do i get in it is there any other way????? any website ideas anything? i payed 200.oo i really need help geeting into the ipod a differnt way they basicly put find my iphone on the device

You can erase your iPod in recovery mode using iTunes. This process will wipe out everything on the iPod including passwords. Here's a link to Apple's instructions.

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204306

Scroll down to a little over half way to the heading: "Erase your device with recovery mode."

I had to do this with a used iPod I bought a few weeks ago.


Enable grep to exactly match the regular expression Enable command 'grep' the return the regular expression matched exactly.

Command grep will print a line when the line contains a string that matches an expression, which not handy to search specified content.
For instance, I have vocabulary files with formatting

    **word**
    1. Definition:
    2. Usage
    3. Others

I'd like to retrieve all the words to make a wordlist within files

    grep '\*\*[^*]*\*\*'

It return bulks of content.

How to enable grep to catch only the 'word' ?

Use awk.

This command will "extract" a bulk list of words assuming it's in the format you specified above:

awk '/\*\*/,/\*\*/ {print substr($0, 3, length($0)-4)}' <filename>

Example:

For this example, assume we have a text file called words.txt with the following content:

**test**
1. Definition:
2. Usage
3. Others

**foo**
1. Definition:
2. Usage
3. Others

**bar**
1. Definition:
2. Usage
3. Others

$ awk '/\*\*/,/\*\*/ {print substr($0, 3, length($0)-4)}' words.txt

test
foo
bar

What it's Doing

/\*\*/,/\*\*/ This is the pattern range.  I could have done this by looking for the first set of asterisks (/\*\*) and been done, but I used a full range for completeness.  One method is no more "right" than the other.
{print substr($0, 3, length($0)-4)}' This prints the subsring (of the string **word**) starting at the 3rd character, with a length of the whole string (length($0)) minus four characters (the four asterisks).
<filename> This is the input file to process the awk command


Facebook lost my account that I used for an iOS game, is there any way to hack the login to retrieve my account back? I used to play an iOS game called Battle Camp that was linked though Facebook, and I had an FB account only for that game. I stopped playing for about 3 years and went to start playing again, but because my FB was dormant that long I think it has been deleted. I reached out to the game's developers and they were no help. I then reached out to Facebook and they won't reply to any of my messages. I tried logging in through GameCenter and through email, but neither worked so I guess it was purely through FB. is there anyway possible to get my account back or to hack into my own account?

You’re at a dead end of the developers won’t release your account tied to validating against Facebook identity.

Unless they have a save file, you wouldn’t be able to reverse engineer it and would have to crack into Facebook or replicate their entire validation system and fool the app to thinking it’s talking to Facebook and is instead talking to your web application and API and you also get past the encryption the developer put in their app to check certificates.

This is all doable, but needs quite advanced skills. For a game, not worth the effort. For a career in security, this would make an excellent paper or project and could get you hired.

Just because your Facebook data is deleted, you could still recover and reactivate the account. I would start to get the account back if you can - https://www.facebook.com/login/identify/


Avoid Unwanted/Blank Text Annotations in Preview.app When opening a PDF in Yosemite's Preview.app, I can select text using the Text Selection tool from the Markup Toolbar.  However, if I don't click directly on the text, a blank text box will appear.  For some reason Preview thinks I want to add an annotation everywhere I click even though I have not selected the Text tool.

This is a problem in that it signals an edit to the document, thus changing the modification date and creating an auto-saved version with no meaningful changes.

In previous versions of OS X, I could have solved this problem by using: defaults write com.apple.Preview ApplePersistence -bool no.  Yet this does not seem to have an effect in Yosemite.

Any workarounds?

I might state the obvious. When it's the first (accidental) edit you make in a document, Undo/Command-Z will not only remove the involuntary text box, but will also revert the document state back to 'unchanged'.

After test addition: You may have to click on a 'safe' zone outside of the text box for Undo to function. Thus creating additional 'edits', you have to Undo-away. My experience is, that after two or three undos the 'edited' tag disappears behind the filename in the window title.

Just tried it and had one additional observation:
The only way I found to get the text box to appear was clicking on or near a line in the pdf. That's a feature not a bug: Preview assumes you want to fill out a form.

Hope this helps.

Eerk


Is there a URL scheme for the Music app that allows me to link to a playlist? I have started using Launch Center Pro and I'd like to create a shortcut for a playlist on Music. Is this possible using the URL scheme of the app? If so, how?

You can use the iTunes url and append &app=music.  it will look for the song or album on the iTunes catalog and start playing it locally:

https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/album/clair-de-lune/id319190952?i=319190960&mt=1&app=music

Note that this plays the first of nine songs in the query response this creates.


How can I alternate stopping the spinning disk and the fans? I have a little bit of noise that I'd like to eliminate. It only bothers me in the dead of night, but at that time complete silence is a true blessing.

My Macbook Pro has a spinning disk and two fans. I'd like to stop each (both fans and the disk) independently, even for just a few seconds, to determine which is producing what tone of sound.

With smcFanControl I can raise the fan speed. Is it dangerous to stop the fans for even 5 seconds if I'll be running absolutely nothing (besides the base OS)? Is there a command-line hack to force this to happen?

Under Energy Saver in the Preferences I already have "Put hard disks to sleep whenever possible" checked. But it doesn't seem that that sleep-mode ever kicks in. How can I nudge the disk to stop for a few seconds?

An experiment is to replace the spinning disk with an SSD, and I may be heading in that direction anyway, but I'd like to confirm whether the fans are the culprit and that another solution (putting the Macbook Pro in the printer drawer? Getting a fanless MacBook?) will remain anyway my target before just spending time and money on the experiment.

As mentioned in my comment, your best bet to reduce noise would be to migrate to a computer with an SSD drive or replace the drive in your existing computer. The noise from a standard hard drive is highly variable, while the noise from a fan set at a constant speed with fan control software would be white noise.

In regards to turning off the fan entirely, that would be risky as the Mac not only has tight tolerances that allow heat to build up quickly when the fan is off, but the OS on Macs has regular cron jobs that kick off in the middle of the night- jobs which can cause the CPU to spike in use and generate heat.

A better bet is to just keep the fan on a constant, but lower speed using fan control software. Say around 1500-2000 rpm.

That plus an SSD should allow you to have manageable sound levels, while retaining the performance of a full MacBook Pro, as opposed to the less powerful fanless MacBook or MacBook Air.

For the near term verification need, I'd recommend:

going to a local electronics store with a minimum 14 day return policy (Amazon would also work), purchasing an SSD drive and a hard drive enclosure
Then install the SSD drive in your computer and the old hard drive in the external enclosure
Then manually install Mac OS X to the new SSD and, using the external enclosure, restore your data to the new SSD drive from the old hard drive.
monitor the sounds levels over a week or so to see if they've improved.
If not, then you can swap the hard drives and use the external enclosure as a means to allow you to wipe the new SSD. Then you can return both of them to the store.

If you really want to risk your system's stability and potentially cause damage, you cannot use Mac OS X, as Apple has it locked down to prevent turning off the fans.

If you can dual boot with Windows or Linux with boot camp you can use the app called "speedfan" in Windows or a terminal command in Linux, "pwmconfig".  Both of those might allow you to turn off the fans completely, but at a risk of system damage.


How to change my caps lock key to work as a tab? My tab key has never worked and I want to switch it's function with the caps lock key since I never use caps lock anyways. I'm using OSX and they only way I've seen to change the function of the keys has been through Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys. But there's no tab option. Can anyone help me? I also tried using KeyRemap but it didn't work. Thanks for the help.

Try using Karabiner Elements. It's a free, open-source app that lets you remap keyboard keys. It's completely safe to use.


FaceTime Failed: Person Not Available Consider an iPad 2 using WiFi attepting to make FaceTime calls to users on an iPhone 4. Each contact has their phone number defined under the iPhone tag (as opposed to Mobile).

Whenever attempting a FaceTime connection, FaceTime attempts to connect, and fails with the error:

  FaceTime failed - 'Person' is not available for FaceTime.

Measures attempted:

close FaceTime from running apps.
disable & re-enable FaceTime from Settings.
confirmed the device's WiFi is active & enabled.

I've seen the 'solution' of "reset all settings", but suspect that's overkill, and likely won't work, as reported by lots of other users.

How can this error be avoided?

According to Apple, some of the symptoms are:

When you are calling someone on FaceTime, the number on their screen
is not your number.
People are unable to initiate a FaceTime call
with you.
After installing a new carrier settings update, FaceTime
does not activate.

How to fix:

In Settings > Phone, turn FaceTime OFF and turn it back ON again
Go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset all settings
Done


How specific/secure/selective is Touch ID? My new Macbook Pro has Touch ID, and I've trained it on one of my fingers so I can use it to unlock my machine, which is quite fun. I've been wondering, though, how secure it is really.

To be clear, since I must have already logged in using my password, and you have to be physically present before you can try using Touch ID, Apple doesn't have to guarantee that it will only respond to my finger; it just has to be very unlikely to respond to someone else's finger. That's why, from time to time, the OS will require that my full password be typed in. It's similar to ATM card PIN numbers; four digits makes it difficult enough for a card thief to guess that it's a good-enough confirmation measure, although it would NOT be good enough if the card weren't required.

So, here's my specific question: how likely is it that a random, non-trained finger would be recognized as matching my trained one? Are we talking a 1 in 1000 chance, 1 in 10000, or even less likely? (I doubt I'd get a clear answer from Apple were I to ask them...)

Apple, iOS Security, November 2018, p. 10

  The probability that a random person in the population could unlock
  your iPhone is 1 in 50,000 with Touch ID or 1 in 1,000,000 with Face ID. This probability increases with multiple enrolled fingerprints (up to 1 in 10,000 with five fingerprints) or appearances (up to 1 in 500,000 with two appearances). For additional protection, both Touch ID and Face ID allow only five unsuccessful match attempts before a passcode is required to obtain access to your device.


Mail.app does not sync Junk folder with Gmail I am running Mail.app on Yosemite with a few Gmail accounts on IMAP. Everything is syncing just fine, with the exception of the Junk folders: every time I use "Erase junk mail...", the emails are immediately deleted from the client, but they still show up in Gmail's spam folder.

This doesn't happen with the other folders (sent mail ecc): whenever I delete an item from one of these folders, the change is synced to the server. They are also configured in the same way in Mail.app:

How can I make sure that emptying the Junk folder in Mail.app deleted all spam from Gmail web as well?

In your IMAP folders, do you still have the junk folder inside the GMAIL folder ? If so, you should select it, and the choose "use as -> junk" in the mailbox folder.


Ext2 utility "e2cp" alternative for OS X In my linux machines, I use the command line utility e2cp to copy files from and to ext2 disk images. Unfortunately, OS X does not provide any ext2fs utility out of the box.
Is there a version of e2cp that is compatible to OS X, or a similar alternative? Notice that I don't need to mount or do anything advanced, I just have to copy files.

To the best of my knowledge, you've got two options to mount ext2/3 filesystems in OS X:

fuse-ext2 plugin for Fuse for OS X: open-source projects that appear to be fairly active.
ExtFS for Mac OS X by Paragon: Currently $20 with a free 10 day trial; their page is a little confusing referencing "ExtFS for Mac® 9", which appears to be the version 9 iteration of their product, not Mac OS 9.


Force Re-Download of El Capitan from the App Store? I'm trying to download the latest version of El Capitan (10.11.4) to build an updated flash drive installer. I fire up the App Store, click the OS X El Capitan link on the right, then click the Download button. A pop-up warning asking:

  Would you like to continue? OS X v10.11.4 is already installed on
  this computer. Use the Updates page to install the 10.11 update or if
  you would like to download the full OS X installer click Continue.

Since this is indeed what I'd like to do, I click the Continue button. The pop-up goes away and the spinner in the upper left keeps going. Eventually, I get tired waiting for the spinner to stop, so I'll go to a different desktop and do stuff or minimize the App Store window. When I return to it, the spinner is gone, nothing is downloaded, and I can no longer click the Download button. (The text appears slightly less dark.)

I can exit the App Store, restart it, go back to the El Capitan page and do the whole process again, but nothing seems to let me download the full, latest version of 10.11. Even if I use defaults to enable the debug menu on the App Store, bump the logging level up to 4, there's not a lot of info shown in Console.

Restart didn't change behavior. Disabling the Little Snitch network filter didn't affect anything.

Any suggestions for how I can d/l this version to build an updated install drive?

Here's how I did it!
- Open Mac App Store
- Go to Purchased
- Look for El Capitan
- Hold the Option Key + Click Download, you should see the progress bar in front of it.

You're done!


Implement feature not available in Parental Controls? I would like to use (or write) a timer that I can setup to use with my kids on Mac OS X (Yosemite). The functionality which I would like, which I haven't found off the shelf is:

Set the timer for a period, T (e.g. 20 mins)
Print a warning to the screen at T-n (e.g 17 mins)
Lock the computer at 20 mins
Unlock with administrator access only

I've experimented with pmset schedule but it allows the user to override.

Parental controls as currently implemented don't work for this as we want to split their time into smaller units, and more than one kid uses the same login (and I've read that this feature is buggy under Yosemite)

This timer could be started via the command line or graphically.

I'm far too lazy to implement this, and I don't have kids so have no need, but it would seem imminently possible with a cute python or Terminal script set to start running at login. This post seems to go over pretty well the Terminal logout commands. Couple that with the system time, date, is what you'll want and choose whichever output works best for you. Past that, it's somewhat unclear if you should be able to log in as a user again (just put a password on that account with no admin privileges) or if you want to have an admin log a user with no password in. The latter is probably slightly more difficult to do, but assuredly not impossible.


Can I switch between multiple Macs connected to an iMac with Target Display Mode? I have a MacBook Pro that I use with a pre-Retina iMac in Target Display Mode, using Thunderbolt.

I'm thinking of also getting a Mac Mini, and I want to run it in TDM on my iMac.

Can I connect both the MBP and the Mac Mini with Thunderbolt cables to my iMac, and thus use ⌘ + F2 to rotate between all three desktops, so that I can switch to display any of these at any time:

The MBP
The Mac Mini
The iMac native display

As I understand it you want to alternate between using the iMac display to display a) itself b) a connected MBP c) a simultaneously connected Mac Mini

When you enter Target Display Mode, you do this on the target, i.e. the iMac. There is no option to tell the iMac which connected computer to display, if there are multiple connected.

According to Use your iMac as a display with Target Display Mode in the section Exit Target Display Mode it mentions,

  "Your iMac also exits Target Display Mode if you disconnect the cable
  that connects the two computers, or if you shut down or sleep either
  computer"

I have since tested with a Late 2012 iMac 27", Late 2013 15" Macbook Pro, and a Mid 2011, 13", Macbook Air, all running Yosemite.

a) I first connected the MBP and iMac via Thunderbolt cable, and pressed Command-F2 on the iMac. This caused the iMac to go into target display mode and displayed the MBP.

b) I connected the Macbook Air, via a second Thunderbolt cable and this caused the iMac to exit target display mode (as both the Macbook Air and the MBP were not sleeping).

c) I put the MBP to sleep (by closing the lid), and pressed Command-F2 on the iMac. This caused the iMac to go into target display mode and display the Macbook Air.

d) I then alternated target display mode by alternately putting the Macbook Air and the MBP to sleep and pressing Command-F2 on the iMac.

This all seemed to work ok, except one annoyance and that was the iMac seemed to have a dim display every time I entered target display mode. I had to manually adjust the brightness of the iMac display, using the display settings.

NB: From step b) that you cannot have the two computers connected to the iMac awake at the same time and have the iMac in Target Display Mode. At least one of the computers connected must be sleeping. The linked Apple support page fails to mention that.


Set the color profile of my external monitor I have bought an external monitor (ASUSP277) but I have noticed a difference in colours between the monitor and my Macbook Pro.

It's quite annoying, especially since I'm using it for web development. I'd like to have the same colour profile between my Macbook and my monitor, is this something feasible? I've tried to modify it in the system preferences and change the colour profile of the ASUS monitor but there is no profile that comes even close to the one on my MBP.

I'd be more than happy to have your expertise on this one,

How do you know which one is correct?

The answer is, you don't.
You can't unless you have an external reference.

The only way to ensure colour accuracy is to use a hardware colorimeter.
Entry level start at maybe 50 $£€ though a good one will be closer to 200, or more.
If you are making imagery that others will see, then knowing it was right when it left your machine is vital.


Display dialog from command line (like xmessage does) Background

I'd like to be able to display a notification window in OS X from within a script. The script will be running in background, so the notification should not go to the terminal but instead be displayed in a dialog window.

What I found so far

xmessage

On Linux I'd probably use xmessage or one of its variants for this. But on OS X, starting the bulky X server just for this task seems both overkill and too slow for my taste.

Finder dialog

I've found a similar question in this forum thread, where the “accepted” reply suggested this command:

osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to display dialog "Hey!"'

But on my OS X 10.7, the resulting dialog isn't displayed immediately. Instead, the Finder icon starts to bounce, and the dialog becomes visible only after I click on the icon. Too many mouse clicks, too disruptive.

Notifier

There is an answer on Super User which suggests a tool called terminal-notifier. Unfortunately that appears to only work for OS X 10.8, so it won't help in my case.

Question

So is there some tool, either included in OS X 10.7 or freely available, which allows displaying a small dialog to the user without too much overhead?

One option is to tell a background process like SystemUIServer to display the dialog:

osascript -e 'tell application "SystemUIServer"
display dialog "message"
end
activate application (path to frontmost application as text)'

You can also tell the frontmost application to display a dialog, but it's not shown immediately if the application is not responding. If MPlayer OS X is frontmost, text dialogs don't accept any keyboard input.

osascript -e 'tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
display dialog "message"
end'


Do apps placed in the background consume resources? I've heard that leaving open apps on an iPhone, affects the duration of the battery's charge. Is this true and documented, or some of an urban legend? And does it affects other apps' performance?

Third parties Apps which are placed on the background won't actively consume resources unless they provide either Location Services, Audio playback or VoIP. As stated on Apple's iOS App Programming Guide:

In iOS, only specific app types are allowed to run in the background:

Apps that play audible content to the user while in the background, such as a music player app.
Apps that keep users informed of their location at all times, such as a navigation app.
Apps that support Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
Newsstand apps that need to download and process new content.
Apps that receive regular updates from external accessories.

There are, tough, some Apple services which will, too, run on the background and consume resources, such as Photo Stream (upload / download), App Store downloads or even push notifications.
In the case you've got a lot of backgrounded Apps, and the currently open one is running out of resources, iOS will, automatically, close some Apps freeing memory. Extracted from the same Guide:

When a low-memory condition occurs, the system may purge suspended apps without notice to make more space for the foreground app.


Why does my iTunes 11 won't work on os x lion 10.7? When I open my iTunes it will say iTunes cannot open because of an item

Process:         iTunes [3382]
Path:            /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes
Identifier:      com.apple.iTunes
Version:         11.0 (11.0)
Build Info:      iTunes-1100099063000000~1
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [188]

Date/Time:       2012-12-06 01:31:03.118 +0800
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.7 (11A390)
Report Version:  8
Sleep/Wake UUID: CA52DB83-6721-402C-AD84-FEB26ABFEA59

Interval Since Last Report:          14029 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           10
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   9
Anonymous UUID:                      A8E41D02-37C7-4336-831E-E7F47E84DECF

Crashed Thread:  0

Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries
@executable_path/../Frameworks/iPodUpdater.framework/Versions/A/iPodUpdater

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: @executable_path/../Frameworks/iPodUpdater.framework/Versions/A/iPodUpdater
  Referenced from: /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes
  Reason: unsafe use of @executable_path in /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes with restricted binary

Binary Images:
       0x1055a4000 -        0x10696ffef  com.apple.iTunes (11.0 - 11.0) <B59F624F-D66C-374E-8036-5866262DC87F> /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes
    0x7fff651a4000 -     0x7fff651d91ff  dyld (195 - ???) <71093406-21CF-3DBE-A001-802259ED5300> /usr/lib/dyld

Model: MacBook7,1, BootROM MB71.0039.B0B, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz, 2 GB, SMC 1.60f5
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 320M, NVIDIA GeForce 320M, PCI, 256 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 1 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x80CE, 0x4D34373142323837334648532D4346382020
Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 1 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x80CE, 0x4D34373142323837334648532D4346382020
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x93), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 5.100.198.11 )
Bluetooth: Version 2.5.0b13, 2 service, 12 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: AirPort, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02, 250.06 GB
Serial ATA Device: MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-898
USB Device: Built-in iSight, apple_vendor_id, 0x8507, 0x24600000 / 2
USB Device: BRCM2070 Hub, 0x0a5c  (Broadcom Corp.), 0x4500, 0x06600000 / 3
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, apple_vendor_id, 0x8218, 0x06630000 / 6
USB Device: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad, apple_vendor_id, 0x0236, 0x06300000 / 2

If you're still seeing this problem, try downloading the standalone iTunes installer here. Run it, reboot for good measure, and see if that helps.


Selectively force Siri to send SMS instead of iMessage I carry an iPhone.  On occasion, I will use Siri to send a quick text message to a person, e.g. "Text Alice I'm on my way."

My problem is that Alice has a non-Apple phone and an iPad, and I've used both SMS to communicate with her phone and iMessage to communicate with her on her iPad.  If I'm using the Messages app directly, I can pick either the SMS conversation or the iMessage conversation, but if I say "Text Alice," it seems unpredictable which mode of communication Siri will select.

Annoyingly, even if I say "SMS Alice," Siri can choose iMessage.  Is there any way to specify which mode I wish to use?

For SMS, tell Siri "Text Alice on mobile I'll be right there."

Alternatively, you can set up two different contacts for Alice, one for SMS and one for iMessage and then tell Siri which one to use be citing the different names.


Can Homebrew be used to install AppleScript bundles? Can Homebrew be used to install AppleScript bundles?  If so, what sorts of conventions would the project need to follow?  Would it need to include a make.scpt file compile the .applescript files?  I'm assuming that it could reference Github projects.

** edit **

homebrew-cask is probably the right tool for this; I submitted an issue.

This should be possible to call Apple Script like this one for example since it is a command line tool: https://github.com/dronir/SpotifyControl/

After that I don't know if Apple Script are accepted on homebrew maintainer.