What is a locked hard drive, and how does it relate to encryption? When I mount a Mac hard drive on another computer, I often get prompted to "unlock" the drive. What does this mean? Is a locked hard drive different from an encrypted one, or is "unlocking" just decrypting the drive for one-time use (as opposed to permanently decrypting)? When I boot the drive in its normal computer I'm not prompted for a FileVault password, which is what's making me wonder if this is encryption-related or not.

A locked hard drive is a hard drive that is encrypted.

When you unlock the drive you are telling the system how to interpret the encrypted data. Unlike permanent decrypting, the data on the drive stays encrypted, you are just telling it how to read the encrypted data on the fly.

On its normal computer information will have been saved into the system's keychain allowing it to access the drive without prompting you for a code. If you open Keychain Access on that Mac and search for the name of the drive, or sort the list by "Kind", you should find an "encrypted volume password" entry. That is what the Mac is using to unlock the drive without prompting you.


How can I sync my google calendar with my work exchange calendar with my iphone calendar? Basically I'd like changes in all of these to be reflected on my iphone... but it would be cool to have all three completely synched.

Google Calendar:
- has multiple calendars (some public, some private)

Exchange Calendar:
- work calendar, access via my mac book pro

iphone Calendar:
- my portable calendar in case I need to add something on the fly/away from my desk... I'd like all my calendars reflected here

Any ideas?

The only way I've been able to do this (given that my employer will not allow my iPhone, etc. to connect to Exchange) is to have my primary calendar on my Google Calendar account be my work calendar, use the Google Calendar Sync application on my workstation at the office (always running) to sync from Outlook to Google (it supports only one calendar on Google's side, so whatever it chooses to sync with is your "primary" calendar and, thus, your work calendar), and sync my iPhone with my Google Calendars (see here).

It's not the most elegant solution, so I really hope someone posts something better that I can implement.  But so far it's working just fine syncing meetings from work to my phone (one way, I believe... never tried to schedule a meeting from the phone).


How to know the date of photo/video taken after downloaded from icloud website? I got problem downloading icloud for my PC, so I access my icloud from icloud.com (mozilla browser). I want to free up my cloud storage, so I need to download all my photos and videos from icloud.

Problem #1: I need to select one by one the file, cannot select all.

Problem #2: After downloaded, I don't know when the photos/videos is taken. All properties is showing today's date. (media created, date created, date taken, date modified).

Is there any solutions to avoiding a PC web browser from not respecting the file metadata (location / EXIF / date taken) stored in iCloud or a solution to read that metadata from the file itself and fix the filesystem dates that Windows provides?

Problem #1: You'll probably need to download iCloud. Apps are almost always more fully featured than websites, because of their capability to access your hardware, and their lack of web security limitations.

Problem #2: You may not be able to fix this. If you can't find the date anywhere on iCloud.com, or through the iCloud app, it may be data that doesn't exist.

Tips: Try using Chrome instead of Firefox. If you are on a Mac, use Safari.

Tips for getting iCloud app to work: Restart your computer. Turn off Windows Security Center and your firewall (temporarily). Don't forget to turn those back on when you have successfully installed and run iCloud.


Use AirPort as Time Machine whilst using internet I have an AirPort Time Capsule (model 802.11ac 2TB). I connect to the internet via my work's WiFi. I have managed to set up the AirPort as my Time Machine backup, and can connect to the device by switching my WiFi to the new WiFi network that the device creates. Although this allows me to perform backups, I cannot use the internet whilst I am connected to this WiFi device. Similarly, if I connect to my work's WiFi network, my MacBook cannot see the AirPort device and therefore cannot perform Time Machine backups.

How do I enable both use of the internet and background backups at the same time? Surely this must be possible.

Note that I have a spare ethernet socket nearby, which I could plug into the AirPort device if this helps. Or, if the AirPort device is capable of doing so, I could register the device on the network and connect it to the work WiFi as well.

You could connect your AirPort Time Capsule via Ethernet and turn off the box’s Wifi altogether. This way, it will become part of your existing (wireless?) network and you can back up and access the Internet at the same time.

Any Airport device can be set up in “bridge mode” and they will join a network like any other computer as opposed to making their own network and requiring correct routing setup.


Is there a faster app switcher than a keyboard shortcut linked to an Automator service? I want to switch apps faster than cmd-tab so I created an automator task to launch an app and linked to to a keyboard shortcut through the keyboard preferences. While this works okay without any third party software it is rather slow, not cmd-tab instant. Is there a fast way to switch to an app using a keyboard shortcut?

I ended up getting Alfred's power pack and setup a hotkey there. It's much much faster than the automator service.


How to turn on Youtube Subtitles in AppleTV? The youtube video is subtitled, how can I turn it on on my Apple TV?

I tried configuring languages and closed caption, but didn't work.

The Apple TV doesn't support YouTube closed captioning.
The closed captioning you've enabled is where video files have subtitles.
The same functionality was missing on the pre-iOS 6 YouTube app, so I'm not surprised that it doesn't exist on the Apple TV.

If you want to submit feedback to Apple about this, you can do so here.


Insert third partition in previous 2-partition setup I've read a few of the articles around, browsed the net for a while, but was unable to find a solution to my problem.

I have an MBP with 1TB Flash which is split by 50% into two partitions. One contains OS X, the other is used for raw data storage.

Now what i would like to do, is create a third partition from some of the remaining space on the 1st (OS X) partition. Essentially, i need to "fill in" a third partition in between the two existing, but without affecting the capacity of partition #2.

I remember that back in the days when i installed Bootcamp it seemed no problem to change my main partition size and add an extra partition, but for whatever reasons, i cannot do that. Disk Utility has completely greyed out all the controls:

I also tried rebooting from a Mavericks USB-Installer Stick and then going to Disk Utility in there, but the result is the same. I hoped it would work there because OS X was not in use - but no.

Why is that? Has it become impossible to repartition a drive in use? Or have i generally misunderstood something here?

(MBP Mid 2014 | 1TB | Yosemite OS X)

1 TB? I presume that's a Fusion drive. Fusion drive can at most have 2 partitions.


How do I get the Caffeine app working on macOS Mojave? The Caffeine app for preventing sleep/screen lock is not working on macOS Mojave.

Did I miss a setting to FAQ on making it work with macOS 10.14?

Caffeine is still working! However, Apple has upped its security and privacy model a bit and caffeine fell prey to that. What you have to do to get it working properly again is the following:

Open System Preferences
Click Security & Privacy
Click the Privacy tab
In the left column, select Accessibility
If needed, click the lock icon in the lower left and enter your password to unlock your settings
Click the + button and select your Caffeine app to allow it to control your Mac
Restart Caffeine


Correcting Pronunciation Errors in 'Say' Command in Terminal I'm having difficulty correcting the pronunciation in the 'say' command, using 10.9.

I tried to add new pronunciations through:

System Preferences > Dictation and Speech > Open Accessibility Preferences > Open VoiceOver Utility > Speech > Pronunciation > +

After I added a new entry I tried it in both Terminal and TextEdit and neither pronounced it correctly:

$ say -v "Samantha" -f filename.txt -o audiofile.aiff

Although it did not work in TextEdit (Edit > Speech > Start Speaking), I want to be able to accomplish this in Terminal.

Does anyone have any idea of how I can go about doing this?

According to this 2007 thread at discussions.apple.com the VoiceOver utility only fixes pronunciations in VoiceOver itself, not in text-to-speech.

So if you want to get say to correctly pronounce the words you should run a find and replace on the text file for each mis-pronounced word. There is probably a good way to do this in one step with a script, but if you just want to do it once you could:

Open the file in Text Edit (or any text editor you prefer, I like Text Wrangler)
Find (e.g.) "women" and replace all with "wimmen" (Located at Edit > Find > Find and Replace... in Text Edit)
Move to the next word you want to correct finding and replacing all until you've corrected all the mispronunciations.
Run say on the now incorrectly spelled text file.


How do I exit full screen in VMWare Fusion 7? How do I exit full screen in VMWare Fusion 7?

The menu bar that used to appear when the cursor was oushed to the top of the screen no longer appears.

To enter or exit Fullscreenmode of your VM you can press [Command]+[Control]+[F].


Installing Nikon Capture NX2 on 10.12 Sierra I bought Capture NX2 years ago. I love it for many reasons. Unfortunately, I cannot install it on macOS 10.12 (Sierra). Strangely, I had Capture NX2 on another mac, and it still works after upgrading to Sierra. The new install is the issue. I cannot install it on my new Mac.

It seems to me that it does work on Sierra, but is prevented from installing for some reason. I tried the newer version, Capture NXD, but it truly is a downgrade, for many reasons.

Any idea how to manually transfer the app from my old computer to the new one. I have tried several things, but no luck.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I had the same issue when I upgraded from Mavericks straight to Sierra. Capture NX2 broke. However, I had earlier installed Capture NX2 on my wife's computer running Yosemite. In desperation I copy pasted the program from her computer to mine and it is now working in Sierra. This was more by luck than design so I cannot guarantee the same results.

The process I followed was:

Disable SIP (system integrity protection). Please check online how to do this. It can be re-enabled later. This step may or may not be necessary but it was what I followed.
Uninstall everything Nikon related from Sierra first. Make sure you clean up any Nikon associated files from HD/Library/Application support and HD/Libraries/Preferences in Sierra. This will have to be done manually.
Then copy paste from a Yosemite computer running Capture NX2 2.4.7. The folders and files I copied were:

The NIKON software folder from Applications to Applications on new computer.
Copy the Nikon folder from /Library/Applications Support (It contains a Nikon sub folder which in turn contains a further six sub folders) to HD/Library/Application Support on the new computer. Subfolders in Nikon folder are listed below:

a Capture NX 2

b Common

c OptionalPictureControl

d Picture Control Utility

e Profiles

f Uninstaller
Copy all Nikon related files from /Library/Preferences to HD/Library/Preferences on the new computer. These files are listed below:

a Capture NX 2.plist

b jp.co.nikon.MCA.plist

c jp.co.nikon.MCA2.plist

d jp.co.nikon.Nikon Message Center 2.plist

e jp.co.nikon.UninstallCenter (This one is a folder)

Thats it. I was surprised it worked as it was a last ditch attempt. I had tried all the other methods I could find on the internet without success. I hope this works for you, but as I said earlier this was more by luck than intent.

I had read online that users who gradually updated their OS incrementally though the various iterations of OS X retained Capture NX2 functionality. Skipping iterations especially after Yosemite was the problem.

NOTE: It is crucial to have this working on Yosemite before upgrading to later versions of OS X.


Why is Time Machine over-stating the amount of data that needs to be backed up? I shuffled my home directory around and moved it back to my spinning platter drive in my MacBook. Ever since, Time Machine has been running my machine hot (the fan comes on when Time Machine starts up) and the backup data size estimates shown by Time Machine in the menu bar are huge. Many gigabytes.

But when I inspect the completed backups with BackupLoupe the actual backup size is very, very small.

This wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't for the fact that Time Machine runs my machine very hot when it runs, occupies a fair bit of CPU and takes a good 20-30 minutes to complete the hourly backup run now.

My complete exclusion list for Time Machine is currently:

~/Library/Application Support
~/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized
~/Virtual Machines

Update 1:

I excluded ~/Library/Application Support on a hunch that it might be time stamp issues on cache files that end up having no change in in their bits. But TM is still saying it's backing up >2 GB of data.

Update 2:

Ultimately I'd like to trim the amount of time Time Machine spends running on my machine. Currently it's spending upwards of 30 minutes every hour spinning on these backups.

Why is Time Machine's reported effort in the tool bar so much higher than the actual backup contents as reported by BackupLoupe? Is one of them wrong? Which one?

How can I help guide Time Machine in it's estimate of what needs to be backed up so it doesn't have to work so hard?

Time Machine uses FSEvents to determine what has changed, which is based on folders rather than files. Hence, I've always assumed† that the larger number indicates the total size of the folders it has to process. Next, within each folder it will evaluate each file. (In 2008, some wrote "Time Machine considers two files to be identical if their path and dates and size are the same", so some changes might even go unnoticed. But that's another story.)

If many files in a large folder have not changed, then the total number to actually back up is much lower, but Time Machine does not know until it has processed those. Note that files might have the extended attribute com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem set, or might be excluded by Apple's factory settings, implying they won't be put on the backup. See Does Apple's Time Machine app really copy everthing on Super User.

(So: I guess you need to find large source folders that are small on the backup. Tools like Disk Inventory X or GrandPerspective could indeed show large folders, like in /private/var. Might be easy to compare that to the few folders on the backup?)

† Now that I think of it years later: seeing the size of my Downloads folder, I doubt that it's (always) showing the folder size in the amount of data it's going to back up. Downloading another small file does NOT make Time Machine claim it needs to back up the full size of that Downloads folder. (And yes, that folder is on my backups.)


Can't see A1084 AirPort Express behind A1354 AirPort Extreme Can anyone please make any suggestions...? (Preferably, step by step instructions to resolve this issue).

I am using AirPort Utility 6.3.2 on a MacBook Pro running MacOS X 10.9.1 Mavericks.  AirPort Utility suddenly can't see my two A1084 AirPort Express base stations behind my A1354 AirPort Extreme (which is running Firmware version 7.6.4).  The Extreme is behind a CenturyLink Actiontec C1000A DSL modem, which is connected to the Internet.

If I use AirPort Utility set the Extreme to "DHCP and NAT," the utility shows that the Extreme has "Double NAT."

If I set the Extreme to "Bridge Mode," that issue resolves.

But, in neither case can I see the AirPort Express base stations.

There is a control to disable NAT in the Actiontec C1000A DSL modem's admin panel, but an attempt to make that change doesn't "take" when I click on "Apply").

Because the AirPort Express units are old, only the old AirPort Utility (v5.x) can be used to configure them - but, that old version does not run under Mavericks.

I cannot comment your post, but at least I have a suggestion: Download a copy of Airport Utility 5.6 working with Mavericks here.

Edit: it seems to me your network is working as always (at least before you began fiddling...:-)), but the thing is you updated Airport Utility to the newest version and therefore cannot see the Expresses? This is a "feature" of the newest Airport Utility.


What is "com.JWVD.cbcache.plist"? I'm trying to solve some problems and have run across a few things in Etrecheck of which I cannot determine the origin. One such item is the Launch Daemon "com.JWVD.cbcache.plist".

Does anyone know what this is? A Google Search reveals 3 previous posts of my own Etrecheck report containing this item and two German message board threads neither of which seem to be answering this particular question.

The content of the plist is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.JWVD.cbcache</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.JWVD.cbcache</string>
    </array>
    <key>ServiceIPC</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Listener</key>
        <dict>
            <key>SockPathMode</key>
            <integer>438</integer>
            <key>SockPathName</key>
            <string>/var/run/cbcache.socket</string>
        </dict>
    </dict>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/var/log/cbcache.err.log</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/var/log/cbcache.out.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Google reckons it's Notifyr - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/notifyr-receive-ios-notifications/id873639935?mt=8

JWVD is probably the app author's initials - https://twitter.com/JWVD


What is the AppArt process and why does it want to connect to application-stats.com? I use Little Snitch (https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html) to monitor background network traffic. When an application tries to connect to the internet for the first time, Little Snitch pops up a dialog box that asks me whether I want to allow the connection. Most of the time it's pretty obvious what the process is, and I either Allow or Deny network access. But I'm stumped by this process:

What is AppArt? What is application-stats.com? And why does the former want to connect to the latter?

Following @tubedogg's comment above, I think I've fixed this:

http://www.malwareurl.com/listing.php?domain=application-stats.com identifies the domain as Malware
Double-clicking the "AppStats" process in Activity Monitor and then clicking the "Open Files and Ports" tab reveals that something is running from /Users/jim/Library/Application Support/Spigot/AppStats
Searching "Spigot" then takes us here, which gives removal instructions: http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-spigot/
I didn't find any weird browser extensions in Firefox, Safari, or Chrome (the directory in Application Support included a file with a name that referenced a .xpi file, so I'm guessing the problem may have been something to do with an old Firefox extension) but I did remove the following directories and files: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.applicationstats.AppStats.plist, ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.appart.AppArt.plist, ~/Library/Application Support/Spigot/


LaTeX Editor for OS X I am looking for an easy to use LaTeX text editor for OS X.

It is meant to be used by a social science student, hence TextMate seems to difficult to use.

Basically I am looking for a LaTeX editor for dummies.

Just not to leave it unmentioned: one of the standard LaTeX editors/previewers for Mac OS X is TeXShop. Of course, one needs to be able to use LaTeX, but it streamlines the compilation, highlights syntax and generally helps. Of course, on tex.stackexchange.com, they'll be glad to help more.


For the life of me can't find where terminal alias's are stored So I have been playing around with aliases in bash and it is easy enough to add them.
alias lsl="ls -l"
My question is, where are they stored? I am using the bash shell, so I looked in the obvious places .bash_alias, .bashrc, etc... and these alias are nowhere to be found. Now, I guess if I had created a .bash_alias file they would have gone there, but since I never did, they must be stored somewhere else on my computer but I can't find them.
Can someone give me some ideas of where to look?

bash aliases you create by running the alias command are not stored anywhere, they are gone as soon as you exit the shell.
To make persistant aliases which will be available in all newly executed bash shells add the definition to ~/.bashrc. You can then also run source ~/.bashrc after adding new definitions to have them included in a running shell.


Retrieve lost iPhoto after replaced hard drive I replaced the hard drive on my MacBook Pro through Apple. I backed up files on my computer but not my Applications.

Is my iPhoto lost forever? I have thousands of pictures on there! I've signed in to iCloud and the iPhoto icon is not ticked. Is everything lost? Can I call Apple and retrieve my old hard drive somehow?

If you backed up all your files, then your library has been backed up and all you are missing is the iPhoto app. The iPhoto app has been replaced by Photos.app in Yosemite, so you can re-download iPhoto or Photos from the Mac App Store and your library will be automatically detected.

If you didn't back up all your files, then you need to rely on the last one thousand photos accessible in Photo Stream or Shared Photo Streams.


How does the Mac choose which connection to use when both Wifi and Ethernet are connected? When I'm connected to two networks with separate routers using Wifi and Ethernet, how does my Mac know what connection to use when I visit a website?

From the Apple Support database article regarding network connection priority:

  If you connect to the Internet or a network in several different ways
  (using Wi-Fi or Ethernet, for example), you can change the order of
  the network port configurations your computer tries when connecting to
  the Internet or network.

  If there are multiple active network port configurations when you try
  to connect, OS X tries the one at the top of the list first, and then
  tries the other port configurations in descending order.

In that support article it is also described how you can change the priority order of network connections in System Preferences.


How long does it take for an initial charge with MBP? We unboxed a new 2017 MBP three hours ago. I wasn't expecting it to start by opening the lid. I then went through all the stuff you have to do when you startup (icloud, apple id, etc) It was at 34%. It has been charging for two hours. It's at 41%. The charger is in the port furtherest from the front. Is this normal? All of this? I have since shut down to charge (and of course have no idea what is going on now since there is no LED). How long does it take to do the full charge? And was it normal to start by lifting the lid? Brand new (well, brand new looking with wrap)

Power it off. The first 80% should charge in 2 hours. The last 20% should charge in the second 2 hours.

If the battery was deeply discharged I would repeat that test once you get the battery full and then drained.

Contact support either way to have them check the full charge capacity and review your powered down charge timings.

That protects you and gives Apple the data it needs if you feel it wasn’t a great battery. In the past, Apple would ship closer to full. Now with changed airline regulations and changed chemistry in the batteries, they ship mostly empty. I wouldn’t worry once you get your two tests in and contact support.

Everything you say seems perfectly normal, but for sure shut it down and do a controlled test - now is when you want to be sure it’s fully operational.


Why can't Preview Export 16-bit HEIC images? When I open a Nikon RAW .NRW file (16-bit image) with Preview, and select "File > Export...", when the Format setting is set to HEIC, the Depth option for "16 Bits/Channel" is grayed out.  Why? I can export as PNG or TIFF with 16-bit depth, so why not HEIC?
And, what software can I use to convert .NRW files into lossless 16-bit .heic files?
(I am using MacOS 11.3.1)

Apple doesn't appear to support 16-bit HEIC.
I can't find anything official on this, but I can find a whole lot of user complaints bemoaning it.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251072024
I'd be seriously tempted to try Nikon's own ViewNX-i [freeware] to do your conversions. Though as yet it doesn't support HEIF at all, it is far better at interpreting Nikon RAW files than any other app. Overall you will probably lose less information going NRW > ViewNX-i > PNG than you would via Preview, or even Photoshop.
BTW, NRW isn't 16-bit, it's 12-bit. Nikon's higher spec RAW file NEF is 12 or 14-bit.


Different partition configuration between gpt and fdisk After resizing my HFS partition (to solve a case sensitive/insensitive problem) I found out my BOOTCAMP partition was no longer accessible. As I navigate the web, I found out this is a common issue and there are several pages describing possible solutions.

Most of them begin by asking the user to analyse the output from the following commands:

sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

gpt show: disk0: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168
gpt show: disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1465149167
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  1063995800      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1064405440     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1065674976     1269536      4  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1066944512   398202880      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  1465147392        1743
  1465149135          32         Sec GPT table
  1465149167           1         Sec GPT header

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 - 1465149167] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

diskutil list

dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            544.8 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot                         650.0 MB   disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                203.9 GB   disk0s5

My question is, how can fdisk and gpt show different partition  configurations?

Also do you think my BOOTCAMP partition is recoverable?

My laptop is an early 2011 Macbook Pro (quad i7) running El Capitan and Windows 10 64bit in bootcamp (upgraded from windows 7).

The procedure that led to this state was:

Resize Macintosh HFS+ partition to half its size
Created a new HFS+ non case sensitive partition between the original and bootcamp.
Mirrored the original partition to the new one.
Formatted the original partition case insensitive.
Mirrored the new partition to the original one.
Deleted the new partition.
Resized the original HFS partition to occupy the whole space.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Update 1

This step will involve configuring Master Boot Record (MBR) of your physical internal drive. The MBR is stored on the first 512 bytes of this drive. This space is shared by boot code and the MBR partition table.

  This step can not be preformed under OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) with System Integrity Protection (SIP) turn on. (This is the default setting.) If you are using OS X 10.11, you must disable SIP, complete this step, then restore SIP. See the link: How do I disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA “rootless” on OS X 10.11, El Capitan?.

In a Terminal application window, enter the following commands. The first fdisk command flags the Windows partition as the active partition. The second fdisk command changes the Windows partition id to 7.

INPUT=$(printf  "f  4\nq\ny")
sudo  fdisk  -e  /dev/disk0  <<<"$INPUT"  &>/dev/null
INPUT=$(printf  "s  4\n7\nq\ny")
sudo  fdisk  -e  /dev/disk0  <<<"$INPUT"  &>/dev/null

You may need to restart your computer after completing this step.

Original Answer

The command fdisk displays the contents of the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table. This table can only contain 4 entries and is stored at address 0 of your disk. The command gpt displays the contents of the GUID partition table (GPT). This table can contain 120 entries and starts at address 1 of your disk. (A backup GPT is also stored at the end of the disk.) Legacy systems use a MBR scheme while more modern computers use a GPT scheme. Normally, OS X uses a GPT scheme. When the GPT is employed, the MBR table still exists, but is now called a Protective Master Boot Record (PMBR) table. This PMBR table contains a single entry with ID of EE. This fools any legacy applications, that only use a MBR scheme, into seeing the disk as occupied by a single partition.

Older Mac computers install Windows using the MBR scheme. It is my understanding this is also a requirement for Windows 7 installations. To accommodate both schemes simultaneously, Apple shrinks the EE partition in the MBR table to end at the same location as the first partition in the GPT. Usually, the next three partitions in the GPT match the last three partitions in the MBR table.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, if you enter the command given below in a Terminal application windows, your partitions should be fixed.

sudo diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" name /dev/disk0s4

While the above command should fix the partitioning, the 4th partition in the MBR partition table will not be marked as "active". So if you still can not boot to Windows, let me know and I will include steps to mark this partition as "active".


Will a Perl script still run after I log out of my user account? I have started a Perl script from the terminal that runs in the background:

>perl myScript.pl &

If I logout, will it stop my script from running?

Thanks!

In addition to @stuffe's answer, if you are logged in via ssh and run your command, it will die when you close the connection.  So, if you were at home and ssh'ed into your office workstation and executed your perl myScript.pl & command, it would die when you exit'ed from the ssh connection.

To avoid this problem, you'll want to use the nohup command, which dates back to the teletype days and stands for "no hangup" --- essentially it causes the command to ignore the POSIX HUP (hangup) signal.  It is used as:

nohup perl myScript.pl &

This will keep running on your office workstation even after you have disconnected/logged out from your home machine.


How can I make in-app purchases with a different Apple ID than the app was purchased with? I have three children with three iPods and recently gave them all their own Apple ID accounts so that their iTunes money would be separate. However, now they cannot buy apps to add on to their games because the games were bought on our original Apple account.

How can I get the purchase to go through?

Purchasing from one account and then using another for in-app purchase (IAP) isn't currently possible.

Since each application is digitally signed when you download it from the App Store - you are tied to using the same account for in-app purchases as for the initial purchase.

If it is a free app, you could back up the device to iCloud, delete the app, re-purchase the app under the correct account and then restore the device from the backup. If you are not worried about saving game state, you can skip the backup and the restore steps.

If the app is not free, then you are faced with deciding to buy the in-app purchase from the original account or re-buying the app on the correct account.


Is it possible to undo the last digit entered on my iPhone's calculator? I use Apple's Calculator iPhone app all the time. Being human, I regularly make mistakes (or maybe my fingers are too big) and end up entering the wrong digit. But the iPhone’s “undo” function doesn’t work with the Calculator app. Is there any way to undo the last digit I’ve entered? Or do I have to clear everything and start again?

Yes, there is an easy way to undo the last entry.

All you have to do is swipe the top of the calculator, in either direction. By ‘top’ I mean where the digits appear. This will clear the last digit you entered. If you swipe it again, then it’ll clear the next digit, and so on.

As a follow up, I agree there is some inconsistency here. I also agree with some of the comments below. Why it is I can shake my iPhone to undo something in other apps, but can’t do the same with the Calculator app, is beyond me. That said, I actually don’t like the whole shake function for undo. I’d much rather prefer a hard press on the screen (or some other input method) to be given the choice to undo. Basically I think it should be one of the options available in the same list as cut, cop, paste etc. If you happen to agree, you can submit feedback to Apple.


Associate "chrome-extension://" to Chrome browser? I have installed the Chrome SSH client in my Chrome browser.

How can I make the application association for "chrome-extension://" to the Chrome browser?

I would like to execute this command in Terminal to run application.

open chrome-extension://pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo/html/nassh.html

Here is my current workaround:

SSH_APP=chrome-extension://pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo/html/nassh.html
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome $SSH_APP

It's not possible, as the problem is not within Terminal, but rather in Chrome.app's URL scheme. Chrome does not outwardly expose the chrome:// and chrome-extension:// URL schemes, handling them internally (when you access chrome://history, chrome://settings, etc.).

For example, open chrome:// does not work in Terminal:

  The file /Users/user/chrome: does not exist.

Yet, typing open twitter:// in Terminal causes the Mac Twitter app to open on my machine.

However, you can use a bash alias to achieve a similar effect, with an even easier shortcut:

alias chrome_ssh="chrome-extension://pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo/html/nassh.html /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome"

Add the above to your ~/.bash_profile.


Apple App Store submission for an app that requires its users to be registered I'm building an app that requires users to have an account to log in.
There is no way to register an account through the mobile app. The users are hand picked and their username and password are emailed to them prior to downloading the app.

Is this something Apple will give me trouble about during submission to the app store?

Not sure if this is the right forum for this question either.

Thanks!

An app I made for my company also uses an external program to register users.
To avoid possible problems with apple I did the following:

Created a demo database that apple can use
In the "notes for reviewing" I explained the authorisation process
I said that if they want full access they should email us the authorisation code generated by the app and we will grant them access.

In the end the app was approved and I never got a request from apple for db access.
As long as you explain in detail how the app works, apple won't give you any trouble I expect


Screen shots shortcuts disabling themselves (Yosemite) I use screen shots all the time (Cmd+Shift+4 ftw). But suddenly, I'll go to take a screen shot and the shortcut doesn't work. I go into System Preferences > Keyboard and see that ALL the screen shot shortcuts are unchecked. I check the shortcuts on, but then a few seconds later, they will be unchecked. I click Restore Defaults to turn them on, but they still disable a few seconds later.

Has anyone else had this? What could be causing it?

Even if I want to take a screen shot during this, I don't have enough time after checking the box to press the shortcut before it turns back off.

Thank you in advance to anyone who offers assistance.

If the user preferences are not sticking or been changed there are 2 possibility.

1- You have a app that does that.

2-You Permissions need repair, using the Disk Utility.- usualy Start with this step first.


On iPhone, Gmail "new email" notifications keep appearing in lock screen? On my iPhone, for the Gmail app, I sometimes get "new email" notifications on my lock screen that were from hours ago even when I cleared them (I unlocked the device after they appeared).

Even when the lock screen is clear of notifications, then one of these from Gmail appears, it will have the timestamp from a few hours ago rather than from "now".

This sound weird per-se. I use the Gmail app for a long time now on my iPhone 5 and never have I received back-dated notification, especially if I removed it (via the x button) from the Notification screen.

I suppose this could occur if you leave your Gmail message unread in your inbox AND you restart your iPhone or the Gmail app.

Also, go to Settings > Notifications > Show > 1 Recent Item (instead of the default 5 recent Items).


How can I prevent external hard disk from sleeping when connected to Airport Extreme? I have a 1TB external hard disk from Seagate connected to the USB port of my Airport Extreme and everytime I need to access it I have to wait some time until it leaves the sleep mode.

Is there a way to prevent it from happening?

You can run Keep Drive Spinning on a Mac that's connected to your drive over the network. It continuously accesses a hidden file to keep the drive awake.

You can also set it up yourself per these instructions.


Is there any thunderbolt device which supports daisy chaining and costs less than £100? I'm trying to get two displays on my MBP 13" mid 2012, apparently it supports two daisy chained Apple TB displays, but i can't fork out £1600 for two Apple TB displays, so after a weekend of searching, here are my alternatives:

A mini dp to hdmi (first monitor) the usb to hdmi/vga/dvi (second monitor), problem here is the usb adapters for mac are just not good enough for me.
Using an adapter like the Matrox DualHead2Go Digital SE, to split the mini displayport to two outputs, problem here is the macbook sees both monitors as one big monitor, which isn't what I'm looking for.
Utilize the thunderbolt daisy chaining, using the Elgato thunderbolt dock (which has an hdmi port) connected to the MBP's TB port, you can connect an HDMI display, and then connect the Elgato Thunderbolt Dock to another Elgato Thunderbolt Dock via a Thunderbolt cable. Then, the second Elgato Thunderbolt Dock can connect to a display via Thunderbolt™, HDMI or DisplayPort. Basically using two TB Docks, so you have

MBP -> Elgato TB dock with hdmi (first monitor) -> second Elgato TB Dock with hdmi (second monitor)

The third option will do what I want, but I don't want to have to buy two docks. Hence, I've been trying to find a thunderbolt device that supports daisy chaining for a price range of less than £100, the closest I got was the Belkin thunderbolt dock but that goes for £154.

I don't really care what the device does I just want to be able to daisy chain my Thunderbolt port from my current dock and attach a second monitor to the chain, i.e. MBP -> TB Dock with hdmi (first monitor) -> a cheap daisy chainable device -> mini displayport to hdmi (second monitor).

I would also appreciate any other suggestions on achieving dual independent displays for  my MBP (just in case I've missed something).

I have recently run into a similar situation as yours. Both of the proposed solutions below do not use expensive gear like thunderbolt docks or monitors, and can achieve the same (or similar) desired end result.

This Thunderbolt-to-Dual-HDMI adapter allows your to connect two 1080p monitors to a single Thunderbolt port, and have both those monitors act independently from one another (ie. they are not mirrored). The adapter is also passive, which is nice.
Buy a Chromecast. This solution is sub-optimal, and is dependent on you having a decent internet connection, but with this $35 device, you can stream a browser tab, your desktop, audio, video, and more to an external monitor. The third monitor can then be added with a simple Thunderbolt-to-HDMI adapter.


How to reduce ambient noise when screen recording on MacBook? When using cmd + shift + 5 to screen record, there is only one option present for sound (Macbook Pro microphone). This captures the 'computer' audio, but it also records unwanted noise in the physical environment.
To reduce/remove the background noise, I've tried:

System Preferences -> Sound -> Input -> MacBook Pro Microphone -> Input volume to zero. This does indeed prevent background noise from the microphone being recorded, but also causes the screen recording to record without any audio, that is, it fails to capture the 'computer audio' (for lack of a better term)
Opening Audio MIDI Setup -> MacBook Pro Microphone -> 'Mute'. But this has the same effect as the previous attempt (no sound from the microphone, but also no sound from the computer).
As a temporary fix, searching for where the microphone is in the hope of placing something physical over it.

Is there any way to disable the microphone entirely so the 'computer' audio records but without any background noise?

Before you begin to record, go to System Preferences > Sound > Input. Make sure the input source selected is "Internal Microphone." Then move the slider ("Input Volume") to the left to reduce the input volume.


Can a thief know my Apple ID without my PIN code? I got my iPhone stolen recently with Activation Lock on. It's been off since it has been stolen according to iCloud.

I received a phishing email attempting to get my iCloud password and I was wondering, so they have my Apple ID email address. Does that mean that they have access to my phone's data?

Would it be possible for them to know my Apple ID even if the phone was locked and they didn't know the PIN?

Thanks.

Without your PIN, the thief should not be able to get any data from the phone. The ID in the phishing mail probably is just a wild guess, I got a few of those as well over the years.


Why are some pop up boxes (or "select" boxes) colored blue but others aren't in Mac OS X? I am fairly new to Mac OS X and I am wondering why some of these pop up boxes have a blue in them, but others do not. For example, on one website it looks like this (look at the little "Select site" box):

But then on another site, it looks like this (the "Show:" box):

Is there a different name for each of these? They both look like basic <select> elements but oddly it is blue on one site and not on others.

The blue style is the default "Aqua" style for drop downs, which is what you'll see in most applications. However, sites can customize the appearance of dropdowns using CSS, in which case browsers like Safari and Chrome switch from the default style to the other one you see.

Here's a little example where you can see the style change when you put your mouse on the dropdown.


Windows 7 on 2011 MBP's internal HDD, OS X on FW800 one I'm about to get my new 2011 MBP next week and it's coming with a 256gb internal SSD, but I was wondering if it's possible to use the disk entirely for Windows 7 (bootcamp'ed) & install Mac OS X on an external FW800 drive 'only'? Is this doable or are there any restrictions or limitations that require Mac OS X to be installed on the internal hdd? Basically my main work environment is Windows 7 but I need Mac OS X for other, fewer contracts aswell.

There is no reason why you can't do this up to and including Mac OS X 10.6.8 version of Boot Camp.

Do test command line booting control if you care about those things - but currently there is no restriction other than the Boot Camp volume must be on the internal drive. Mac OS X boots fine from other locations.


How do I fix "Battery is not charging" for 2012 macbook pro retina? I have a Macbook Pro, and it's battery is not charging.

If I switch off the power adapter, the computer instantly switches off. No shut down sequence. I have to plug in the power adapter to switch it on.

On each switch-on, I am presented with the screen showing Macintosh HD. And a network selection option at the bottom. On pressing the arrow under the HD icon, the macbook boots up. Takes quite long. About a couple of minutes. Before this problem started, it used to startup in a few seconds.

Mackbook details:

Battery remains at 0%

Battery status:
Battery appears normal and macbook detects it.

Things I tried:

Reboot.
Reset SMC.
Clean magsafe port.
Disconnected, and reconnected the battery plug by opening the back.

None of this worked.

I also tried to find the answer in other questions here, like
Macbook Pro (Mid 2012) Battery Not Charging
and
Macbook Pro Retina – "Battery Is Not Charging"

But nothing has changed the battery status.

How do I troubleshoot this?

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires patience.

In this situation, if you've already reset the SMC (and it may be worth doing again, ensuring you've followed the correct steps for your model), you'd normally want to isolate the different components by testing them separately (e.g. testing the battery in another 2012 MBP, testing the AC charger with another MBP, and so on).

Of course, when you're trying to do things yourself, that isn't so easy.

Even though you've reset the SMC, I'd do that again first and ensure you refer to How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac on Apple's website. Read through this page carefully as the instructions differ for different models of Mac.

Once you've done that, and assuming it has no effect, you'd want to run Apple Hardware Test.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Once you've done that, let me know what happens.

Your battery

Based on your question, your battery has only done 27 cycles, so I'm assuming you've only recently bought this battery. If so, I would be speaking to Apple (or the 3rd party vendor) from whom you bought the battery as it is possible it's an EEOL (Early End Of Life) situation. Any reputable retailer will be willing to test/replace the battery in this situation.


How to rotate whole table in Pages document? Is there any way to rotate a table by 90 degree? I've got vertical document but one table is to wide so I would like to rotate it.

Rotate an image, shape, text box, line, arrow, or video Select the
  object, then in the Format  sidebar, click the Arrange tab.

  Drag the Rotate wheel, or enter a degree value in the adjacent field
  to specify the angle at which you want to rotate the object.

  Tip: You can also press the Command key while your pointer is over a
  white square on the object, then drag to rotate.

Source: Pages for Mac: Resize, rotate, and flip objects in a Pages document


How to change [option + key] international shortcut in OS X If in OSX text input field pressing Option+[  will render “, Option+' will render æ andOption+; will render ….

Can I remap these to render å, ä and ö instead?

Stumbled upon this post when trying to achieve the same mapping with Karabiner-Elements.
The old "Karabiner" does not work with Sierra and above and have been replaced with Karabiner-Elements.

I managed to achieve the behaviour desired by original poster in Karabinier-Elements by adding the configuration below to karabinier.conf so I posted this as reference for others that stumble in here for same reason.

It is based on the "standard" way to enter umlaut characters with a US keyboard, e.g.
option+u, a => ä
option+u, o => ö
and
option+a => å

(in section "complex_modification" -> "rules")
"rules": [
       {"description": "left_option ['; to åäö",
        "manipulators": [
            {"type": "basic",
            "from": {
                "key_code": "open_bracket",
                "modifiers": { "mandatory": [ "left_option" ] }
            },
            "to": [
                {"key_code": "a",
                 "modifiers" : [ "left_option" ]
                }]
            },
            {
            "type": "basic",
            "from": {
                "key_code": "open_bracket",
                "modifiers": {
                "mandatory": [
                    "left_option",
                    "left_shift"
                ]
                }
            },
            "to": [
                {"key_code": "a",
                 "modifiers" : [
                 "left_option",
                 "left_shift"
                 ]

                }
            ]
            },

            {
            "type": "basic",
            "from": {
                "key_code": "quote",
                "modifiers": {
                "mandatory": [
                    "left_option"
                ]
                }
            },
            "to": [
                {"key_code": "u",
                 "modifiers" : [
                 "left_option"
                 ]
                },
                {"key_code": "a"}
            ]
            },
            {
            "type": "basic",
            "from": {
                "key_code": "quote",
                "modifiers": {
                "mandatory": [
                    "left_option",
                    "left_shift"
                ]
                }
            },
            "to": [
                {"key_code": "u",
                 "modifiers" : [
                 "left_option"
                 ]
                },
                {"key_code": "a",
                 "modifiers" : [ "left_shift" ]}
            ]
            },

            {
            "type": "basic",
            "from": {
                "key_code": "semicolon",
                "modifiers": {
                "mandatory": [
                    "left_option"
                ]
                }
            },
            "to": [
                {"key_code": "u",
                 "modifiers" : [
                 "left_option"
                 ]
                },
                {"key_code": "o"}
            ]
            },

            {
            "type": "basic",
            "from": {
                "key_code": "semicolon",
                "modifiers": {
                "mandatory": [
                    "left_option",
                    "left_shift"
                ]
                }
            },
            "to": [
                {"key_code": "u",
                 "modifiers" : [
                 "left_option"
                 ]
                },
                {"key_code": "o",
                 "modifiers" : [ "left_shift" ]}
            ]
            }
        ]
        }] // end "rules"


Is it possible to make a folder look and behave like a file? I'm developing a desktop application which saves its projects to disk.  Projects contain multiple files, like json and jpg etc.

Current solution: zipped file

I'm "zipping" them all together into a single file.  Example:

filename.project            <- compressed zip
  manifest.json             <- compressed contents
  file1.jpg

Ideal solution: uncompressed folder

I'm wondering if it's possible to output the data, uncompressed, to a folder instead, and somehow configure my OS to treat that folder as a single file?  Example:

filename.project            <- folder, but it gets treated like a file
  manifest.json             <- uncompressed contents
  file1.jpg

Definition of "Treated as a single file":

Finder shows a custom icon
Double-clicking opens the file association
"Open" dialogs can select this file

Other examples

On my Mac, there are 2 examples where I see this happening:
 - All apps appear as .app files, but internally are folders that I can explore via Terminal
 - 1Password stores its password store in a .agilekeychain folder, which syncs to Dropbox as a folder, but appears in Finder as a single file.

Apple Developer info says yes, you can definitely make your own package or bundle. Seems as if you want a package.

Package vs. bundle is discussed here.

Basically - register your package with the system, so that folders with the extension are displayed as a package rather than as a folder (application info.plist must appropriately set key LSTypeIsPackage for each of the package filetypes you need to create). Then set your app to automatically (using NSFileWrapper) or manually create the package itself on save.


How can I run Spotify on a PowerPC Mac? Are there any version of Spotify that will run on a PowerPC Mac?

Which one(s)?

Where can I get one?

This site appears to have a link to the latest version that supports PPC.  I don't have a PPC Mac, so I can't verify it.

It also mentions that this will not last forever, as Spotify will update their servers at some point and not allow that version to connect any more.

You can also try Spotify-0.6.6.10.dmg from PowerPC Software Archive.


Time Machine Backup via another Mac? Since I have broken Permissions, which can't be fixed now, because my sudo is broken too, I want to create a Time Machine Backup. Now the problem: both of my USB-Ports are broken.

After some research I found out, you can use your Mac as a hard disk and you can boot a Mac from an external disk, so my idea is to connect the working Mac (Mac A) via FireWire with my broken Mac (Mac B), so I can use the hardware of Mac A with the software of Mac B and create a Time Machine Backup to an external drive.

Since I don't want to risk that Mac A breaks to, I'm asking here, what I need to do different or of this even possible.

Target disk mode turns your Mac with broken USB into a fancy hard drive.

You can do anything with that data that you could with any working hard drive. You could copy files from or to it, you could change permissions, you could install an os and you could include it in a backup.

It’s just data on a hard drive shaped like a Mac.


Can't install Find My iPhone app on iPhone 4 as it requires iOS 8 I reset my iPhone 4 as I gave it to a friend. I am unable to install Find My iPhone as prompt says I need iOS 8 to run this app. What can I do? I know iOS 8 is not available for iPhone 4, but apps should work for the last version of iOS released for the iPhone 4, iOS 7.1.2. What can I do to get this app downloaded or this is a lost cause?

When attempting to download an app that has been updated and no longer supports an older version of iOS, you will receive the following prompt:

Download an older version of this app?
The current version requires iOS 8.0 or later, but you can download the last compatible version.
Cancel | Download

Tapping Download will download the last version of the app compatible with the version of iOS you are running.


Multiple SMS, Marketing campaigns through iOS? I've got a little business with around 1000 customers and I like to take advantage of a mobile plan that lets me send a lot of SMS messages per month.

I've got my customers' emails and phone numbers on a spreadsheet. I'd like to export that phone list to the iPhone and create a "customers" group on my address book, and from there be able to send this group offers and news through SMS from my phone.

Is there some iOS app that would let me this, or maybe another parallel solution that combines my desktop PC on my iPhone to perform this task?

Although its not exactly what you were asking for, this App does exactly what you want. It seems a little expensive, though.

Answering your question, there are a couple of ways you could import the contacts to the iPhone. You could, for instance, do it by:

Saving the file as .cvs
In Outlook Express, choosing File / Import / Address Book, and opening the .cvs file.
Connecting your iPhone and in iTunes, tick the box next to Sync Contancts With: and choosing Outlook Express.

Afterwards you could use an App such as Group SMS, or Group Text! or even create your own group to send the SMSs. To do so, just:

Open the SMS App.
Tap the New Message icon, in the top right corner.
Add all the recipients you want to send the SMS to by tapping the + sign.
Compose and send the message.

A Conversation will appear in your Sent Messages list. Therefore, if you want to send a message to the same group, you'll just have to compose the message there and send. This will be a bit painful if the recipient's list is a thousand names long.


Recovering iPhone 3GS on iOS 6 My precious iPhone 3GS which I've treasured for four years has finally had its first "issue".

I decided yesterday to finally get rid of the update available indication (the "1" badge) that's been sitting next to the Settings.app icon and run the update on my iPhone 3GS (iOS 6.1.3).  It downloaded fine but unfortunately it came up with an error message when it tried to apply the update (direct to phone, not via PC/iTunes).

Inconvenient, but I can just recover it from the last restore, can't I? Unfortunately when I try to recover the phone it sits there for 15 minutes then gives an error message because it can't find 100 tracks (in fact it can't find any, but I presume that it stops keeping track after 100) then it pops up with another message saying it can't find the apps.

The music is definitely there - I played a few tracks via iTunes to check.  Am I doing something wrong?  Sure I can reinstall everything from scratch but will lose any progress/settings in apps and there is quite a lot to lose.

I'm running the latest iTunes on a PC and have all media on an external drive but it syncs fine with my iPad and plays media fine.

I've managed to fix my problem :)

The root cause of the problem is that my external drive (WD My Book Raid 1) has my library on it and had gone into hibernation while the phone was restoring the ios.  This meant that when iTunes had finished installing the operating system on the phone and tried to reinstall the content it could no longer see the external drive.  Why my drive is doing this is a different problem.  Details of what I did to fix the problem...

Please note that these instructions are specific to my issue of an iPhone 3GS running IOS 6 with iTunes on a PC and the library on an external drive.  It worked for me but proceed at your own risk.

Set iTunes to play content from the library so it is constantly accessing the drive and stopping it hibernating.

Make sure the iPhone is disconnected and turn it off ( to turn off press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until the red "slide to power off" slider   appears, and then slide the slider).

In iTunes go to (menu bar) Edit, click preferences then devices in the top of the popup window.

In the device backups box is a list of the backups stored on your computer for your device with a device name and date.  In my case the several failed attempts to restore the phone had left a few backups that are newer than when the phone was last working.  I highlighted and deleted all backups FOR THAT DEVICE created since the phone was working.  NOTE - YOU WILL LOOSE ALL CONTACTS, TEXTS, LOCALLY STORED CALENDAR ENTRY'S ETC. CREATED SINCE THAT BACKUP

Once you've deleted any unwanted backups click OK to exit.

Connect the iPhone to your PC

Put the iPhone into DFU (recovery) mode.  There are various videos / guides online just search or try this one which is MAC specific but identical for a PC.

iTtunes will then guide you through recovering the phone.

For me, once the phone operating system had loaded (15 mins ish) this initially came up with an error message (100+ tracks couldn't be found...) but it did back up everything fine (took several hours).  I even got back all scores on games etc. so am very happy.  Of cause all progress, changes etc. made since the last backup were lost, but I'd rather loose a couple of weeks information than everything.

Note to self - backup more often!  (and did someone mention iCloud.....?)

Good luck.


How do I completely uninstall Virtualbox from macOS? I want to know how to uninstall virtual box correctly. I tried removing it from /Applications, but lots of things were left behind. I don’t want to use an app cleaner tool and would like a complete uninstall process if possible.

How can I remove the app and reverse the changes it makes when installed?

The correct method to uninstall Virtualbox is to use the official uninstall script that is included on the installation image.  If you don't have the installation image anymore, you can re-download it. Since the program installs many helper scripts outside the /Applications folder, you need to clean those up with the included uninstall tool and not just trash the main app.

This information is available directly from the project page as well:
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch02.html#install-mac-uninstall


Mac App Store shows pending update for update that was done I'm asking this question here because I am looking outside the box for some solution. I do some back-end things for Macs at our company, and usually answer helpdesk questions when they get stumped. Well, this is stumping me.

We have a user who is running El Capitain on his system. He is a developer, so he does do a lot of things to change his machine, so we anticipate some things may not make sense. He installed a recent security update, which I believe is this one: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222

His App Store is still showing that the update is pending. He can't hide it, and he can't run it again. I'm trying to see what this might be.
He is the only user of the machine. The other accounts on it are two local IT tech accounts, and macports. The machine is bound to Windows AD (with his profile as a mobile profile) and is managed by JSS.

We manage configuration policies through JSS, and they are closely monitored. I don't see anything different about his configurations than anyone else's.

I've gone through what I would think would normally flush this out. First I had him remove the com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist from the Library. That didn't do it.

Then the following removals,

rm -r ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore
rm -r ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.storeagent
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.appstore.plist
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.storeagent.plist
rm ~/Library/Cookies/com.apple.appstore.plist

Also had him re-index Spotlight, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716
None of these items have remedied the issue.

With a pending Sierra update we'll be pushing out to users, we reckon that might fix it, too. But I'm wondering if there is something here that we've missed.

Here is what we found. And it's not a completely satisfactory answer, I'm afraid. We had installed some software called PowerBroker, to give individual users the ability to do tasks they would normally need admin permissions to do. (This would allow limited tasks, such as updating Acrobat or their printers, etc.)

This user, being a developer, was testing this out. We had actually uninstalled PowerBroker, but something was left behind that continued to cause problems.

We actually "fixed" this by installing PowerBroker 1.3.1. Even after we had removed it earlier, and even though it was not doing privilege elevation, this installation fixed the issue. We did a deep into the OS, and none of the logs were specific about this. Very frustrating. We do have cases open with PowerBroker about this as well.


How to fix sandbox violations by airportd? I keep seeing a lot of errors like this in the console which seem to be causing beachballs:

SandboxViolation: airportd(81) deny(1) file-read-metadata /Users

I have a MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012) and I'm running version 10.12.4.

Those sandbox violations aren't ever something that causes a beachball in my experience. They may be logged at the same time, but are coincidence and will happen when the beach ball isn't in progress.

To dig in to the beachball - which app is spinning or are all?
Can you run a sysdiagnose (in activity monitor) on the app?


How can I keep restore for apps in Lion without having session restore when I log in? I want to have my apps start with their previous state (windows/tabs/documents), but I do not want to have all the apps I was running before logging out/rebooting/shutting down restart automatically. I see the option:

System Preferences -> General -> Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps

but I want to have the apps keep their state. I tend to open a lot of apps over time and I don't want to put the load on the system or wait while all those apps start when I log in. It may be that Lion cheats and the apps are only really loaded on demand, so there is not the overhead I'm worried about, but the one restart I've done since installing Lion seems to indicate otherwise.

You can simply uncheck Reopen windows when logging back in when rebooting ( -> Restart):

Sadly there doesn't seem to be a preference to make this change permanent. The best solution found so far are a few AppleScripts that let you restart with the option unchecked.


Where is the air inlet on a Mac mini (2018) for the cooling fan? On the Mac mini (2018), where is the air inlet for cooling the innards of this computer?

I have looked at the iFixit teardown. It shows the fan blowing out the broad outlet across the back of the Mac mini, below the USB-C ports. I certainly can feel the warm air exiting this outlet.

➥ Where does the air enter the Mac mini?

The bottom is either solid metal or covered by the non-slip rubber. I see no other inlets on the backside. So I am left puzzled.

I am concerned about not blocking the air inlet, to maximize cooling efficiency.

The air inlet on the Mac Mini (2018) is located on the bottom. If you look closely at the circular plastic disc, you'll see that there's a gap between that and the metal part of the computer. This is the air inlet!

The electromagnetic shielding beneath the plastic disc is perforated, allowing air to move. As shown on iFixit:


Hidden folders in home directory Launching a simple ls -a from Terminal in my home directory I found out that there are a couple of hidden folders I was not aware of: .cups and .jssc.

I don't really know what those things are and I don't like them to be in my home folder. Anyone knows what are these related to (and maybe what program usually create them) and whether it is safe to remove them?

I'm using Mac OS 10.8.5 if it can be useful.

.cups is used by Common Unix Printing System, as the name insinuates, this is used by the printing system.

I believe that the .jssc is created by the java simple serial connector library. My bet is you have some java application that uses this library. I wouldn't worry about it.


How can I encrypt my VirtualBox VM? Is there a way for me to use a virtual machine (VirtualBox) on my MacBook Air with encryption protection? I want to install a VM of Ubuntu, and if my employer calls back the hardware I don't want them to be able to access what's on there…

Yes. You can put the VM in an encrypted sparse bundle. This way, the virtual machine can only be run if the image is mounted, and that requires a password.

Open Disk Utility (found in /Applications/Utilities/).
Select File → New → Disk Image from Folder… or press ⌘ cmd+⇧ shift+N.
Select the folder that contains your virtual machine and press Image.
Choose sparsebundle as the Image Format, and choose the level of encryption you require.

Choose a password to encrypt the image. Make sure to uncheck the Remember password in my Keychain box if you believe that they could access your Keychain.
Click OK. Disk Utility will create a sparse bundle to hold the VM.

The sparse bundle should auto-mount (and request for your password if you didn't store it in your Keychain) when you try to perform any action that would require access to your VM.


Round displayed value in Numbers for iOS to 2 decimals Say I have the value 2.3638383 in a cell in Numbers for iOS (iPhone). Can I format the numbers so only 2 decimal places are shown (rounded to nearest decimal)? So 2.3638383 would be displayed as 2.36?

Yes - it's a built in formatting command so you don't have too mess with formulas like FLOOR or ROUND.

Here are the steps:

1) Select the cell containing the number
2) Select the paint brush from top bar (4th from right)
3) Then select Format Tab (rightmost)
4) From dropdown select Number
5) Tap the i to the right of Number
6) From Number tab and under Decimals select 2 from dropdown


Macbook pro with windows 10 audio driver install Have installed windows 10 from ISO on macbook pro, but can't get audio drivers to work from boot camp - no MacOS installed.
Downloaded following bootcamp versions and extracted audio drivers without success.
Device manager shows "High def audio controller" - device cannot start.
Everything else is fine.

Mac:
Macbook pro core i5 13" Mid-2012

Bootcamps tried:

5.1.5621

5.1.5722

5.1.5769 (latest)

Am new to Macs so any advice welcome TQ

I had the same problem, I fixed it using the drivers from boot camp 4.xxxx.


Include Images with Reply in Mail? In Mail (connected to my work Exchange server, if that matters), when I forward an email which contains inline images they are preserved.  However, if I reply to the email then they are not preserved.  They are instead replaced with something like this:

<image001.jpg>

Is there a way to preserve the images in a reply?

In Mail.app go to the Edit menu, go down to Attachments, then select Include Original Attachments with Reply.


Can't resize partition: "You can't perform this resize unless it has a booter" I have an external 1TB disk that I use for Time Machine backups that I temporarily added a second 100GB partition to. After deleting the partition, though, I can't reclaim the free space. Disk Utility won't let me drag the partition button onto it:

I tried the resizeStack command, but got an error:

******:~ ******$ diskutil cs resizeStack 389D8763-4C1B-4D77-A734-C507DBD567C1 0g
The Core Storage Logical Volume UUID is 389D8763-4C1B-4D77-A734-C507DBD567C1
Started CoreStorage operation
Error: -69722: You can't perform this resize unless it has a booter (target partition is probably too small)

What's this business about a 'booter'? How can I reclaim my lost 100GB?

EDIT:

Output from diskutil list:

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Time Machine            900.0 GB   disk3s2

... and from diskutil cs  list:

+-- Logical Volume Group 7DBE7E68-7EB4-4208-9BBF-1ED08259754F
    =========================================================
    Name:         Time Machine
    Status:       Online
    Size:         899995127808 B (900.0 GB)
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 38259B44-99D7-4F3C-973D-2510408E8E72
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk3s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     899995127808 B (900.0 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 76E4A480-E849-47D0-96D8-D07940EAB3C7
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Conversion Status:       Complete
        High Level Queries:      Fully Secure
        |                        Passphrase Required
        |                        Accepts New Users
        |                        Has Visible Users
        |                        Has Volume Key
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 389D8763-4C1B-4D77-A734-C507DBD567C1
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk4
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          899642802176 B (899.6 GB)
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Time Machine
            Volume Name:           Time Machine
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

Note: This answer assumes your drive is not hybrid partitioned. In other words, I assume your drive is using a GUID partitioning scheme and the Master Boot Record (MBR) table is fully protected. Also, I assume the sector size is 512 bytes.

I will use an approximately 500 GB spare image file to illustrate your problem and my solution. The output from diskutil disk1 and diskutil disk2 for my drive is shown below. Here, there is almost no free space.

/dev/disk1 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +500.0 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macbook HD              499.1 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macbook HD             +498.8 GB   disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk1s2
                                 06A8BD94-5D42-4A7A-A8DF-2FAB7A268153
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

Normally, a Apple_CoreStorage partition is followed by a Apple_Boot partition. Your drive is missing this Apple_Boot partition.

  Note: Other Core Storage configurations will use a different name and size for this Apple_Boot partition. For example, the partition may appear with the name Boot OS X and a size of 134.2 MB.

Below is output from the same commands, but this time my drive has approximately 50 GB of free space. Furthermore, the Apple_Boot partition is missing.

/dev/disk1 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +500.0 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macbook HD              449.9 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3

/dev/disk2 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macbook HD             +449.5 GB   disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk1s2
                                 06A8BD94-5D42-4A7A-A8DF-2FAB7A268153
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

Below are instructions for recreating the Apple_Boot partition and recovering the free space. When required, make the appropriate adjustments to these commands. These instructions will not recreate any important files that were stored in this partition. In your case, there may not have been any important files. If needed, prepend a sudo to any of these commands.

Use the third part tool gdisk to create the missing Apple_Boot partition. Enter the text given below to invoke this interactive command.

gdisk /dev/disk1

Below are the interactive gdisk commands. The blank line indicates the default was selected. You should expect your default value to be different from mine.

n
3

+1269536
AB00
w
y

Below is the output from when I used the gdisk /dev/disk1 command.

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): n
Partition number (3-128, default 3): 3
First sector (34-976562506, default = 879053752) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (879053752-976562506, default = 976562506) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +1269536
Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): AB00
Changed type of partition to 'Recovery HD'

Command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk1.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.

Use the command below to format the newly created partition.

newfs_hfs  -J  -v  "Recovery HD"  /dev/disk1s3

Use the command below to recover the free space. Note: I already substituted your logical volume UUID.

diskutil  cs  resizestack  389D8763-4C1B-4D77-A734-C507DBD567C1  0

Final note:

The gpt command can be used instead of the third party gdisk command. You would need to enter the gpt command shown below to partially dump the contents of the GUID Partition Table (GPT).

gpt  -r  show  /dev/disk1

For my drive, the output is shown below.

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  878644112      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  879053752   97508755
  976562507         32         Sec GPT table
  976562539          1         Sec GPT header

From this output, determine the start of the free space after the Apple_CoreStorage (53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC) partition. For my drive this would be sector 879053752.

  Note: In the gpt command given below, replace my value of 879053752 with your own value.

The gpt command shown below adds a new Apple_Boot partition do the drive. Set the -b option to the start of the free space value. This command must be immediately preceded by the diskutil command shown below.

  Note: If necessary, the -b option needs rounded up to a value evenly divisible by 8.

diskutil  umountdisk  disk1
gpt  add  -i  3  -b  879053752  -s  1269536  -t  426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC  /dev/disk1

Next, proceed to step 2.


Apple sells toys in their store? I was thinking what intresting in their website and when i looked for everything i found toys! Heres a picture i noticed

Why would apple sell toys if they just are tech company

These are tech-enabled toys made by Disney as part of their Disney Infinity line. These toys can interact with specific apps on Apple devices.   This is similar to Apple selling drones that can be controlled via iPhones.

Disney has recently announced they're discontinuing this line of toys so Apple is probably trying to sell them all and reduce their stock.


Help writing AppleScript with Mail rule to keep most recent I've created a rule to move mail from specified senders to a new mailbox called "News."  I'd like my AppleScript to go through the "News" folder and only keep the most recent emaisa from those senders, deleting prior messages. (This is like one of the Sweep functions on MSLive/Outlook.) I've tried writing a script as follows, which is invoked by the rule:

using terms from application "Mail"
    on perform mail action with messages these_messages for rule this_rule
        tell application "Mail"
            set dateToday to current date
            set TargetInbox to mailbox "News" of account "iCloud"
            set EveryMessage to every message of TargetInbox
            repeat with eachMessage in these_messages
                repeat with this_message in EveryMessage
                    set eachSender to the sender of eachMessage
                    set this_sender to the sender of this_message
                    set messageDate to date received of EveryMessage
                    if messageDate < dateToday and eachSender = this_sender then
                        delete this_message
                    end if
                end repeat
            end repeat
        end tell
    end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from

I see that the script is called by the rule, because of the spinning gear on the menu bar, but none of the desired deleting occurs, and the script seems to hang in some kind of loop.

I'm an AppleScript n00b, do much better with JavaScript.  I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks,
Betalantz

macos 10.13.5 | Mail 11.4 | AppleScript 2.7

I don't use Mail.app and haven't much experience implementing Mail actions, so am not in the position to test your script.  However, reading through it, there are places in it of potential concern that I would wish to look to first when debugging.
How large is your "News" mailbox ?
There are two features in your script that threaten it to hang or timeout:
1. set EveryMessage to every message of TargetInbox
If that mailbox has thousands or even hundreds of emails in it, retrieving every message as a list of individually referenced message objects (which is what this statement is doing) could take some time.  It's almost always way more efficient and less intensive on processor and memory usage to store a reference to the every message object (collection):
set EveryMessage to a reference to every message of the TargetInbox

It has another beneficial feature that I'll address later.
2. Potentially demanding nested repeat loops
Nested loops are a necessary evil sometimes, but the query about the mailbox size is, again, a source of anxiety for me, especially since its called upon in at the heart of the nest where the bulk of the operations are done.  This means that, for each new message that triggers the script, every single message in the mailbox has to be checked and compared to the trigger message.
These are two branches of one issue, really, because if your mailbox only has 5 messages in it, none of this is particularly bothersome.  Otherwise, you're first getting AppleScript to retrieve every message in the mailbox and store them in a variable; then cycling through this potentially heavy load and comparing each item to another.
If you had no choice but to use a repeat loop whilst knowing that it would have to iterate through a lot of list items (once you exceed about 500 of anything, AppleScript can begin to buckle) it can help, once again, to pass AppleScript a reference to the list of items instead of the actual list.  Passing any reference through a script object (which is what a reference to essentially does), is much, much faster than making AppleScript access an object by other means.  Here's an excellent explanation and demonstration of these principles.
Simple changes and error corrections
After addressing the heavy issue above, which could turn out to be of little relevance to your particular case, here are one or two de facto elements that are easily changed to either improve the efficiency of the script, or prevent it throwing an error:
1. Placement of variable declarations
set eachSender to the sender of eachMessage

This line is currently declared inside the inner repeat loop, which also happens to be the the meatier of the two, in general hypothetical terms.  However, what this is doing is setting the value of the variable eachSender to the same value for as many messages you have in your mailbox.  That's a lot of wasted operations for AppleScript (a total of the number of these_messages multplied by the number of EveryMessage).
Instead, move it to here:
repeat with eachMessage in these_messages
    set eachSender to the sender of eachMessage  # ...now it's here
    repeat with this_message in EveryMessage
        # It was here...
        .
        .
        .
    end repeat
end repeat

Now AppleScript only has to set the variable once for eachMessage in these_message.  That's an efficiency improvement of polynomial time down to linear time!
2. set messageDate to date received of EveryMessage
Initially, I thought you were trying to access the EveryMessage object as a reference to the collection I spoke of earlier, and simply didn't realise you couldn't do that in the way you declared EveryMessage.
But, I now realise it was most likely just your hands typing faster than your thoughts, and introducing an irksome typo.  EveryMessage here ought to bethis_message, i.e.:
set messageDate to date received of this_message

This leads me quite nicely onto my final point, which I hinted at earlier, regarding the other benefit of declaring a variable to an object collection as a reference.
Had you done this:
set EveryMessage to a reference to every message of the TargetInbox

then this:
set messageDate to date received of EveryMessage

would be a perfectly valid piece of AppleScript, which allows you to access the property of every single item in a list IFF done so through a reference to that list before any sort of dereferencing has taken place.  Once it's dereferenced, list is evaluated into individual object references, and it will no longer give you the means to enumerate through its properties in that manner.
What you get if done correctly is list containing the values of the date received property of every message of the TargetInbox, all through a single line of AppleScript.
Currently, as this wasn't how you implemented it, the declaration for set messageDate will definitely throw an error.
This explains why none of the deletions are occurring, because your script will never successfully reach that part.  However, the error would occur immediately, so my feeling is the script isn't even reaching that line either, not even once.  Therefore, the problem must originate from a point in the script before it ever successfully enters the inner repeat loop.  And you already know my hunch about that.
Now for a potential solution
I'm sorry that I can't actually test my script to verify that this will definitely work first time without any tweaks, so tell me how you get on with this:
    using terms from application "Mail"
        on perform mail action with messages these_messages
            tell application "Mail"
                set everyMessage to a reference to messages in mailbox "News" of account "iCloud"
                repeat with eachMessage in these_messages
                    delete (everyMessage where ¬
                        the date received is not the (current date) ¬
                        and its sender is the sender of eachMessage)
                end repeat
            end tell
        end perform mail action with messages
    end using terms from

As you can see, I've done away completely with the inner most repeat loop thanks to the use of the a reference to operator.  As I declared everyMessage in that manner, I am (hopefully) able to enumerate the properties of all the items the list contains in one go, which should be approximately infinity times faster than having to check the property for each item individually.


Run OS X 10.8 virtual machine on OS X 10.6 with Virtualbox I have a roommate with a mid-2010 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.6.8. I would like to experiment with OS X 10.8, but don’t want to make them upgrade their Mac since 10.6 is still receiving security updates and they subscribe to the "if it isn’t broke don’t fix it" computer philosophy. Is it technically possible to run OS X 10.8 in Virtualbox with 10.6 as the host OS? If so how do you do this, and what is the legality of doing so?

I haven't seen people have good luck using non-server versions of OS X on Virtual Box since they explicitly do not support Lion or Mountain Lion by intention and design.

Here is the forum post I refer to when I can't remember which OS virtual box has done the work to make the install go smoothly.

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=31104

The relevant section reads "the new Mac OS X as Guest feature is only available to users with Apple/Mac hardware, and only for "Mac OS X Server" installations as a guest OS."

It goes on to explain that they do not welcome any discussions on this topic on their site as it could be construed as bypassing Apple Software License Agreement (SLA).

This is quite problematic since the obvious way I would get to Lion Server or Mountain Lion Server would be to start from the 10.6 Retail DVD and then use the App Store to upgrade. Furthermore the FAQ in their forum are from 2007 and 2010 and are marked as "outdated - do not use these" for the most part. I apologize for the wordy non-answer but despite some time working on this, it's not at all clear what set of steps are needed to get going. I'll revise this if I get things working using VB but at some point will switch to Parallels or VMWare as I've heard they make it easier to get going.


sync multiple ipads to one computer The NPO I work for has been given 20 ipads for students to use in the classroom. To simplify things I was wanting to set it up so that all ipads could sync to the same PC.

Is this a legal issue with syncing purchased apps to more than one ipad? Would I need to purchase apps x 20? (Music won't be used on these)

Does iTunes have anything built into it to help with this? I'm thinking this has to come up often. Schools purchase iOS devices and want them to be identical.

Any other issues I should know/think about?

Thank you.

There are no legal issues in syncing purchased apps to more than one iPad as long as you are the owner, which in this case is the school. All you will need to do is to verify in each iPad your iTunes account so that you can sync the apps to each iPad. It has to be same account on all the iPads.


How to disable smart quotes in Outlook 2016 Same question, different version. Outlook 2016 doesn't have the Edit > Substitutions menu item, and it ignores the setting in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text > Use smart quotes.

Edit > Preferences > AutoCorrect > AutoFormat > "Straight quotation marks" with “smart quotaton marks”


Triggering Folder action with size check I'm trying to set up a folder action that triggers only when a new file is less than a certain size. With my limited understanding I haven't been able to figure out a way to do this. Can anyone help?

Here's a run-down of my problem and my current approach: I'm doing some 3D rendering in Blender through the command line in Terminal, but having a persistent error. Blender renders each frame's image, but after usually 3 or 4 frames of animation rendering, the GPU bombs out and all the subsequent frames render black with a size of 28kB.

My brute force method of remedying this so I can render unattended:

Blender is set to not overwrite existing files as it creates new frame renders
Automator Folder Action whenever a new frame is saved:

on run {input, parameters}

-- ignoring application responses
tell application "Keyboard Maestro Engine"
    do script "BA8776AB-5030-4753-85FB-0032D396B9B1"
    -- or: do script "renderhack"
end tell
-- end ignoring

return input

end run
This triggers a Keyboard Maestro macro which does the following:

3a. Activates Terminal Window

3b. Types Ctrl-C keystroke to kill Blender process (it's already started rendering next frame)

3c. Executes a shell script to delete any small files i.e.
find  -name "*.png" -size -1M -delete
(this is unnecessary for now but would be if I could solve my problem)

3d. Reactivates Terminal Window

3e. Types Up-arrow key, Return to relaunch blender in the Terminal.

So this does work, but I would love to find a more elegant solution, which would save a few more seconds every frame. If the folder action could work conditionally somehow, to only trigger the next script/macro if the most recent file is a certain size.

I hope this makes sense. Unfortunately just moving small files out of the folder doesn't work, since Blender will keep rendering black frames. I need to trigger the above steps (or something like it that also includes killing Blender) when a small file appears in the folder.

You can use Automator to create a folder action which filters Finder items like this:

Choose "Folder Action" in the start screen of Automator and create a workflow similar to this one:

Save it. The folder action will move all files smaller than 100 KB received in the folder "sort" to the Desktop folder.


How do I prevent keyboard shortcuts being synced from my iPhone to my Mac? I use some keyboard shortcuts on my iPhone. This helps a lot, e.g. when typing gn which is replaced by Good night!. These shortcuts are synchronised to my Mac via iCloud.  On my Mac I use TextExpander as a sophisticated keyboard shortcut tool and don’t need these iOS shortcuts, as I have hundreds of Mac abbreviations and don’t need shortcuts that work on a phone but not elsewhere.

The answer to my question is pretty obvious: All I have to do is to unable System Preferences → iCloud → Documents & Data. However, a lot of apps rely on this setting being enabled.

What else can I do to prevent the synchronization/use of these abbreviations on my Mac?

You have answered your own question, the syncing is included with lots of other things and granular settings are not available.  The only way around it is to use just text expander on both iOS and OSX, or just the default text substitution tools, but not a mix.  Sorry!


error: There was a problem with the editor 'vi' when using it with git I have this strange problem with using vi as the editor for git commit -a.

Normal flow is: I type git commit -a, vi appears, I enter my commit message, and then :wq to save & exit from vi.

This works fine. However, sometimes I make a typo and instead of :wq I type :Wq (because I use the shift for :). Then, when I correct myself and type :wq again, git gives the following error:

error: There was a problem with the editor 'vi'.
Please supply the message using either -m or -F option.

How can I fix this?

As answered here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22699614/git-commit-messages-lost-by-vi

The real solution is to

git config --global core.editor vim -f

According to vim documentation - -f option should be used when Vim is executed by a program that will wait for the edit session to finish


iPod Touch (4gen) camera: video same resolution as still camera? I want to take a photo of something (an arm injury!), and I  think it'll be hard to hold the camera in just the right place while I hit the touchscreen-shutter.  But I could put it in video mode, and then pick out a good frame later.

Does the video taken by the iPod Touch have the same resolution/quality as a still frame captured by its camera?

It's a bit crazy, but on the 4th gen iPod touch the video is actually higher resolution than the still pictures:

Cameras, photos, and video

Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still photos (960 x 720) with back camera

720p video is 1280x720, whereas the photos taken are only 960x720.


How to move mouse with 2 fingers on trackpad? How can I change the default behaviour for the two-fingers gesture from scrolling to mouse movement?

That is to say:

When I put two fingers on my trackpad, and move them, I want the mouse pointer on-screen to move. I do not want the window to scroll.

There are a couple of apps that I know of that does this kind of thing:

BetterTouchTool
MagicPrefs

Screenshots from BTT (left) and MP (right)

Disclaimer:  These are not tools I use personally (no need) so I cannot vouch for them. However, BTT has a trial and MP is free.  So, your risk is minimal if you want to test either of these out.


How to delete text from an edited picture in preview? I recently edited a picture in preview by adding text to it. I then saved it, not realizing that the original would not be saved (without the text). When I went in to the picture later to delete the text, it was not possible. Is there a way I can either recover the original photo or delete the text I already saved?

There is a way to remove text from a picture that you have added with Apple's Preview application.

Open the picture with Preview, try to find as area where the background is the same as where the text is.

Select an area with the mouse, and copy it and paste it into the picture.
It will pop up in the center of the picture.
Use the mouse to move it over the text.
You can paste it several times as needed.
Save and quit the application.
Re-open Preview and Open Previous.

Select the picture you just edited and the text will be gone.