Mac Partition won't boot after Bootcamp Partition Resize I made a huge mistake. I resized my Bootcamp Windows Partition and messed up with my Mac partition; without any data, since my sister needed my backup hard drive for something urgent.

To recover the data, I tried to install a new Mac partition onto the Bootcamp partition.

Now I try to recover the original Mac partition.

These are the outputs:

Testdisk:

     Partition                  Start        End    Size in sectors

 1 P EFI System                    40     409639     409600 [EF]
 2 P Windows Recovery Env      409640  400800263  400390624 [Ma]
 3 P Mac HFS                400800264  488965175   88164912 [Apple_HFS_Untitled_2]
 4 P Mac Boot               488965176  490234711    1269536 [Recovery HD]

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2: DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC               205.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS BOOTCAMP                45.1 GB    disk0s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *252.9 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Ohne Titel              252.5 GB   disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *31.6 GB    disk2
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 UNTITLED                31.6 GB    disk2s1
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *21.0 MB    disk3
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk3s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS rEFIt                   20.9 MB    disk3s2

sudo gpt show disk0
Password:
      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  400390624      2  GPT part - DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC
  400800264   88164912      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488965176    1269536      4  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  490234712          7
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header
Thomass-MacBook-Pro:~ Thomas$

The partition GUID of disk0s2 (DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC) is probably wrong. It designates the partition as a Windows Recovery Environment, which is the ugly stepsibling of macOS' recovery partition. Changing the GUID of a partition doesn't modify the volume format! A wrong GUID usually renders a partition unbootable though.

It's rather unclear how and why the GUID has been modified.

Depending on your (former) macOS system version it should be either the GUID of an APFS, a CoreStorage or an HFS+ partition instead. To detect the proper GUID for disk0s2, use the method described here. If you remember the system version the steps to detect the partition type outlined there are usually not required.

Here, the system of the broken boot volume is known (macOS 10.5 Catalina). Catalina's boot partition type exclusively is APFS.

Then the standard procedure would be:

Boot to another boot device (either Internet Recovery/macOS Recovery (alt-cmd-R), another Mac (with the broken Mac attached in Target Disk Mode) or a thumb drive. Preferred system version: the same as the "broken" one. Below I assume you booted to Internet Recovery/macOS Recovery Catalina!
Open Terminal and enter:

diskutil list

to determine the disk number of the internal disk of the "broken" Mac (below I assume it's disk0 - apply accordingly)
Get the partition table with gpt:

gpt -r show /dev/disk0

Depending on the boot drive you have to prepend sudo and/or disable SIP here, if you want to execute gpt ...

sudo is required if you boot to another Mac/thumb drive (sw_vers < 10.15) and using an admin account. sudo & disable SIP is required booted to another Mac/thumb drive (sw_vers >= 10.15) and using an admin account. Booting to Internet Recovery 10.15 doesn't require additonal steps.
Unmount the broken Mac's internal drive/volumes

diskutil umount disk0s3
diskutil umountDisk disk0

Remove the second partition

gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0

Unmount the broken Mac's internal drive/volumes

diskutil umount disk0s3
diskutil umountDisk disk0

add the second partition with the proper GUID

gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 400390624 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

Verify the disk and the volume

diskutil list
diskutil verifyDisk disk0
diskutil verifyVolume diskXsY #use the proper diskXsY of the APFS volume in the diskutil list output


How can I access a 2012 Macbook Air storage when the display has failed? My daughter has a MacBook Air "Core i7" 2.0 13" (Mid-2012)  2.0 GHz Core i7 (I7-3667U)

She closed the MacBook to have lunch, and after it would not work - there was no display.
She tried resetting NVRAM (as advised by Apple) to no avail.
After dismissing repair options I purchased her a new MacBookAir, which arrived 2 days ago.

While waiting she used one of my old MacBooks.
I attempted to connect to the MacBook via ssh - I can see that it obtains an IP address, but cannot access it. I presume that remote log in, remote access and normal file sharing was not enabled.
The last backup was 6 months ago, and I would like to recover files if possible.
Most of her work is on the university server, so is still available, but it would be handy if I could recover others.
I thought of accessing the disk - I believe that there is feature (but can't recall), although the Firewire ports on the machines are different.
I would welcome any suggestions to enable access to the SSD. As a last resort I will remove it from the Mac.
What options exist to get at the files short of paying someone to do the repair or recover the data?

You can boot the old Mac up into 'Target Disk Mode', by holding T at startup.
You will need a cable that connects the two together: this is a bit complex, because the 2012 MBP has FireWire and Thundberbolt 1 and the new Mac has no FireWire and Thunderbolt 3. So'll you'll either need a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adaptor, or a Thunderbolt to FireWire adaptor.
When the Migration Assistant runs on the new Mac, you may be able to connect the other Mac via Ethernet (again with the relevant adaptor on the new Mac), to begin a transfer of the data. It's possible you might have to type in an admin password on the old Mac.
Removing the drive and connecting it via a USB-C to SATA cable is also possible.


Can't Get Files Off Of Old Hard Drive On New MacBook Pro Recently, I had to upgrade from my originaly MBP (2007) to a new, 15in MBP with Lion.  I was able to extract my old hard drive from my old computer and load it onto my new laptop, it reads the drive fine and acknowledges there are 110GBs of files on it but when I click in the folders nothing appears and everything is 0 bytes.

Is the problem the platform that each computer had, the old hd was OSX 10.6 and this one is Mountain Lion? Also, when I went to Disk Utility to try and Repair the disk it went through everything successfully but when it tried to unmount it at the end of the process it failed.  To Unmount it I had to Force Eject it, does any of this make sense?

Perhaps its the way you're wording it, but it probably would have been easier to connect the laptops together in target disk mode (hold T when turning on the old macbook), assuming you have the correct cables.  It should then appear as an external drive on the new macbook.

Anyway, Mtn Lion should read the drive without issue as 10.6 uses the same native mac filesystem as 10.7 and 10.8 (journaled hfs).  Are you able to use terminal to list files?  Perhaps it's an issue with Finder taking forever to list the directory.  I would try Disk Utility again or run fsck -fy on the volume to force a filesystem check if you know that the old drive is in good working order.


Safari homepage hijacked and I can't change back imac 2011 10.10.5

Safari had homepage hijacked and I can't change it back to google.com.  When I go to Safari preferences and try and change, it just immediately goes to www.rack-search.com/....

I tried deleting all the com.apple.safari.plists in library.

Can you help?

This answer is not for a malware hijack situation, but rather a bug in Safari 11.0 that does not allow you to change the homepage. If you try to change the homepage, as soon as you defocus from that field, it reverts back to the original.

The workaround is:

Enter the new homepage. Do not press tab/enter or leave the field.
Click on another tab in Preferences, such as the Advanced tab.

Now it should ask you to confirm to change your homepage.


Limited Read and Writes on MacBook Air SSD Just thought of a concern on the MacBook Air. Flash drives / SSDs have limited read and write capacity, right?

How do I know when I am reaching that? I don't want my data to be corrupted.

Thanks in advance.

Flash drives / SSDs have limited read and write capacity, right?

Yes, but it's a calculated value based on a number of factors including, but not limited to:

Duty cycle (how much the drive is being used)
What it's being used for (i.e. more writes than reads or vice versa)
The type of SSD SLC  (Single-Level Cells, used in enterprise applications) or MLC (Multi-Level Cells, used in consumer applications).

When will an SSD fail?

According to this SNIA article, hard drives see a Mean Time Between
Failure (MTBF) of 1 million hours, while SSDs show 2.1 million hours.
SanDisk® further rates its Lightning SAS SSDs at 2.5 million hours
MTBF. Thus, SSDs have more than twice the longevity than HDDs.1

They go on to further differentiate SSDs from HDDs...

SSDs are different in how they wear in comparison to hard drives. Due
to the characteristics of NAND flash, SSDs have a finite lifetime
dictated by the number of write operations known as program/erase
(P/E) cycles NAND flash can endure. The objective of SSD endurance
numbers is to capture this consumable nature of flash storage into a
quantifiable number to provide end users guidance on the anticipated
lifespan for the drive in operation.

Meaning:  It's a best guess number.  Your SSD is not going to stop functioning when it reaches that "theoretical" limit.  Chances are, you are going to outstrip the capacity of the drive with data long before you reach its wear limit; you'll buy a bigger one before it fails.
Just for grins and giggles, I used Intel's SSD Endurance Calculator to estimate the life of an SSD being used for Virtualization with a 100% duty cycle (worst case scenario).
It gave me a life of just under 6 years having written 62 petabytes (62,800 TB).

To put that into perspective2, you would need to

record 213 years, 6 months of full HD video
take 24,000 digital photos per day for the rest of your life

TL;DR
Yes, there's a limit, but you needn't worry about it.  You simply won't be able to perform enough read/write operations before you run out of capacity.
If you're concerned about data loss, you should be doing backups

1 SanDisk:  Speeds, Feeds and Needs – Understanding SSD Endurance January 2015
2 Lifewire:  Terabytes, Gigabytes, & Petabytes: How Big are They?


How to move existing reminders to iCloud in the reminder app? There is already a question on reordering of items in the reminder app, but I want to go one step further and move existing items from the device to iCloud. Is that possible at all?

Tap the item
Select "Show more..."
Tap "List"
Select the list where to move the item.


Location of the root's home directory in macOS All Unix-like operating systems I've seen use /root as the home directory for the root account. What's the reason it was moved to /var/root in macOS? Can I change it to the usual /root?
I need to run some scripts on macOS which hardcode /root as the root's home directory. Also, I thought that /var was for variable data (spool, log files, etc.).

I think the problem is that you haven't really seen that many Unix-like operating systems. Traditionally with Unix-like operating systems, you would actually have the root user's home directory at /.

If you have worked with Linux or perhaps FreeBSD, you would expect the root user's home directory to be at /root - but it's not really "God-given".

There's plenty examples of Unix-like operating systems that use varying locations. For example on HP-UX systems you wouldn't blink an eye to find the home directory at /homeroot. Similarly on macOS it is at /var/root.

Regarding your assumption on the use of the /var folder: Traditionally there hasn't been any kind of hard consensus on what each of the traditional system folders are used for (for example /etc, /usr, /usr/local, /lib, /etc.). This might vary from operating system to operating system.

Usually you would say that the /var folder is for variable data - however that doesn't mean that it is limited to spool or log files, like you write. It means that the contents of the folder might change while using your system - in contrast to for example /bin, where traditionally you could assume that this folder could just be reinstalled from the original installation medium. In this sense the root user's home folders fits the description. You usually don't want it in /home or /Users as that could be a networked file system, and you traditionally wanted the root user to be able to always be able to login for system recovery.

On macOS you can change the location of the root user's home directory. For recovery purposes, change the location in /etc/passwd. For ordinary usage, change it in the Open Directory.

You can see the current settings with:

dscl . -read Users/root | grep NFSHomeDirectory

And change them with:

dscl . -change Users/root NFSHomeDirectory <old> <new>

where  and  are replaced with the relevant paths.


Has FileVault crashed? I've just enabled FileVault 2 on my mid-2012 MacBook Air and am worried it has crashed.

I've entered all the details and clicked "Restart" and now have a greyed out System Preference pane with a spinner.

If I try and manually restart from the Apple menu I'm told that System Preferences are stopping a restart.

How long should this stage take? Is it safe to hit the power button? I know the encryption occurs after a restart.

Well after no action after an hour I restarted and was presented with a non-bootable SSD.

Luckily the task immediately previous to enabling FileVault was to run a backup so that was restored overnight...


How can I disable the screenshot sound on iPad? How to get rid of the screenshot sound on iPad? (iOS 7)
I have tried muting the iPad but it doesn't work.

If your device is jailbroken you can rename the sound file.

mv /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/photoShutter.caf /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/photoShutter-off.caf

Note:

The file will be restored on an iOS update.
The same file is used for the camera shutter sound, so renaming it will remove the sound from the camera shutter.


How to hit "right-control" in VirtualBox on a remote Linux system over RDP via CoRD? I'm connecting using CoRD to a remote Linux system running xrdp.  On that Linux system, I'm running VirtualBox.  To escape from Virtualbox, I need to hit a "right control" key.  Trouble is... I don't know how.

Anyone have experience with this kind of arrangement?  Suggestions?

I was able to reprogram the VirtualBox Host Key.  It seems to think my right-command key is a left alt, but the end result is the same, it works now.


IMovie06' Not working anymore because of Yosemite I upgraded to Yosemite and now my Imovie 06' will not work.

I need to open and finish projects that are due in three weeks. What are my options?

You will have to upgrade your iMovie version through the App Store to the version supported by 10.10


How to check VT-x status on MacBook Pro I need to enable VT-x on my MacBook Pro, but I don't know whether it's enabled or not. Are there commands for checking the status of, enabling, or disabling VT-x?

Those are my device specifications:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)

OS: OS X El Capitan 10.11.2
CPU: 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
RAM: 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

According to Intel® Core™ i5-5257U Processor, it supports Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x).

You can also from Terminal use the following command:

sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu.features

If you see VMX in the output, then the CPU supports the Intel VT-x feature.

If you don't want to have to read through the output of CPU features and just see if VMX is there, then use: sysctl -a | grep -o VMX

From Intel-based Macs: Using VT-x virtualization technology:

  Intel VT-x technology is enabled on Intel-based Macs. Make sure your Intel-based Mac has all available EFI updates installed; also update any third-party virtualization software.

Therefore there is no reason to check the status.

As to enabling/disabling, there is no direct user interface for that.  Since it is enabled by default, the only way I can think of to disable it would be to hack the EFI Firmware. Which is not something I'd recommend doing!


Another device is using your IP address My MacBook Air (11 inch, early 2015) cannot connect to a wi-fi network.
When I first tried, it said that it could not connect to the network since another device with the same ip address was present on it (say the address is 192.168.1.24).

Scanning the network with another computer with arp -a (+ ifconfig | grep broadcast for the scanning computer) shows no device with the address 192.168.1.24. Pinging it gives no result either.

The default configuration for IP was "using DHCP",so I tried giving the MacBook Air a manual ip address (192.168.1.124, either with "DHCP with manual address" or "Manually") which makes it stop complaining about the ip address being in use, but it still cannot connect to the wifi. (the wifi icon is "searching", no exclamation point).

I restarted the router, and also deleted the network config files in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/:

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

NetworkInterfaces.plist

preferences.plist

But it is still doing the same thing.

The first step is to separate the networking configuration and IP address allocation from the WiFi connection itself.

Press option and then select the wireless icon in the menu bar (you should add it to the menu bar in network preferences while troubleshooting).
If you have BSSID / Channel / MCS and the bottom half of the details being reported, then the wireless link is up and working. If not - you have a wireless issue itself to sort out. Start the Wireless Diagnostics (option select the wireless icon in the menu bar) and work through the steps.
Once you're convinced the wireless connection is OK - then focus on the IP address / router / netmask with the goal of making the internet reachable. You might need to log in to the router as well as the wireless base station to determine correct / exact values of net mask, router and IP. Hard code those while you are testing to reduce another device spoofing your IP or squatting on your DHCP reservation as indicated by "another device is using your IP address" message. That basically means your network can't work reliably. If you need help there - use the Network Diagnostics (use spotlight to find and run it)

Basically - you don't need IP to connect to WiFi and if you're messing with IP when the WiFi isn't connected, you're chasing ghosts and not focusing on the narrow issue of the physical link in the network. For that, you might need to go within 5 feet of the device and both should get powered off for several minutes if you suspect the hardware radios are failing.


Export podcast subscriptions from iOS podcast app as OPML I want to EXPORT my podcast subscriptions from the iPhone/iPad Podcast app into another podcatcher. In order to be able to import I need an OPML-file with the subscriptions.

Can I create such a file or is there another way to get the subscriptions exported?

I've been looking for a way to do this, but can't find a way to do it directly. Here's a workaround.

If you sync with iTunes, then you can export the OPML files from iTunes:

In iTunes 11, open Podcasts and then choose File > Library > Export playlist, then select OPML format.

Or, right-click on the Podcasts entry in the side bar (if the sidebar is not showing, click View > Show Sidebar, select "Export...", then select OPML format.


MacBook Pro (Late 2011) sound issues in Windows 10 (no Bootcamp) I recently installed Windows 10 on my MacBook Pro (Late 2011). I installed the drivers I could find from the internet (I installed this package https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1721?locale=en_GB) and everything is working fine (kind of very bad performance) but the sound. I can't get it to work, the speaker in the menubar (in windows) shows a red cross and when I hover the mouse over it it says: No Audio output device installed. In Device Manager, the internal speaker appears but it displays an initialization error (code 10). I wiped macOS during installation so I have no access to it (or to recovery mode). Please Help.

If anyone is still interested I have found the solution for audio on MBP 2011 Windows 10 UEFI installs - it has taken me 4 years to figure out. I was given the answer from a tutorial only adjacently related -here:
https://egpu.io/forums/pc-setup/fix-dsdt-override-to-correct-error-12/
essentially what we knew was that windows didn't 'see' the correct audio devices when booted in pure efi-
The part that was frustrating to me was that many users like myself have lots of UEFI installs on their 2011 MBP and those OS's have no problem 'seeing' the HD audio controller -
So what was windows doing different?
I had messed around with mm commands in a UEFI shell (The shell provided in the rEFIt package) to no avail*
I had tried to pass SETPCI commands from grub into Windows 10- no luck*
A quote from the link above got my brain spinning
"A Windows system's DSDT table root bridge definition (ACPI PNP0A08 or PNP0A03) is usually confined to a reserved 32-bit space (under 4GB) budgeted to be large enough to host the notebook's PCIe devices. A watermark TOLUD value is then set and locked in the system firmware. Windows OS honors the root bridge definition and will allocate PCIe devices within it. macOS ignores the root bridge constraints as too does Linux when booted with the 'pci=noCRS' parameter. Neither of those OS require a DSDT override and can allocate freely in the huge 64-bit PCIe address space"
So Windows 'honors' the root bridge and OSX and linux disregard it --hmmm interesting.
As someone who also deals in hackintoshes I am very aware of DSDT's and how editing them can help get OSX running on home brew PC hardware- I had played around with installing Clover (the UEFI bootloader almost synonymous with Hackintoshes) on USB thumb drives and putting the DSDT from my MBP 2011 in the /Clover/ACPI/Windows folder - still nothing-- I thought that pointing windows to a DSDT would be enough.......
A side note is that there are people who have 'bricked' their real Macs when using clover, I have never had that issue personally  (a sub-link in the link above describes such a situation)*
If you follow the guide and make a modified DSDT (one that add 'qwords' to the dwords section) you can test it in two ways-

I used Maciasl to extract and edit my DSDT to add a 'Qword' section - I placed the DSDT in two locations /EFI/Clover/ACPI/Patched [not sure if that one matters] & /EFI/Clover/ACPI/Windows
holding ALT/option during bootup I selected "EFI Boot" from the USB clover and booted into Clover
for the exact Clover configuration send me a message
After booting into windows the sound card was immediately working (this was because I had installed the cirrus logic drivers from bootcamp 4) - the display audio driver in device manager had an exclamation point but I was able to install the display audio driver from intel's driver support for the i7 2470m CPU in this machine-

I also looked at device manager via 'by resources' and saw that a new entry 'Large memory with an address range appeared

And low and behold the address range for the 'large memory section' contained the range for the hd audio controller

I then wanted to see if the method described in the initial link posted above where you force that memory map into the registry and turn on 'test signing' worked --
it did, which allowed me to boot directly into windows without the help of clover --
*NOTE: when I tested the registry method I skipped the first few steps since I already had a modified DSDT- I did need to create the 'C:\dsdt folder and extract the windows binaries to that folder - but I did not use their acpi dump nor compiler (I check for errors and compiled my dsdt in Maciasl in OSX)
I would gladly go more in depth but I doubt there are many more who need this information- just glad to have figured it out without the BIOS emulation of bootcamp- going to test this method on other 'pre 2013' Macs with non complient UEFI bios'


Can I remove out-dated coloring from Apple Mail "Rules" settings? After experimentation with Apple Mail, Rules settings, I'm left with a rainbow-colored inbox, and I want to remove all of that coloring which is no longer specified by my Rules settings. I've tried using the "apply rules" command after selecting all messages, but all prior messages remain colored improperly.

How can I do this?

I can't somehow "factory reset" Apple Mail, our tech guy will not be happy if the settings of the mail server, etc is messed up.
I can't delete my message history, the old messages must be kept.

The simples to way to do that for the OSX 10.7.5 - Mail 5.3

I believe it is done in Fonts.


How can I use iCloud with 2 different apple ID's? My problem is that my dad has an iPad and I have an iPhone. He uses a different apple id for his own iPad and I use my own for my own iPhone. I do have home sharing and have them linked to the same homesharing id. But my problem is when I type a paper with pages or make something in keynote the iCloud doesn't work. If I make something on his iPad and save it, I want it to show up on my iPhone. I always have to email it to myself. Can anyone help me please? What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

You can use separate apple IDs for iCloud and iTunes.
 Homesharing, iTunes Match, along with iTunes/App Stores can all be associated with a shared iTunes account Apple ID.

SETTINGS>> iTunes and App stores>>

iCloud iMessage and FaceTime can be signed into with your own unique Apple IDs. A total of 2 Apple IDs are all that are needed between you and your dad.

Settings>> iCloud>> delete account off one device and keep info when prompted to keep or delete.

If personal info such as contacts, calendars, bookmarks etc, have been merged with Info from other device it would be wise to clean up these items before signing into the different Apple ID.


user and group account I created a new admin account after I lost access privilege to the one I had, the issue is that now there's two accounts ie standard account with all my data and the new admin account with literary nothing. I want to delete the standard account and remain with the admin account only but am afraid to lose my data on the standard account, i need help before I mess up.

It might be easier to reassign admin rights to the standard user.

Log out of the standard user account
Log into the admin account
Open System Preferences -> Users & Groups
Select the standard user
Tick „user is allowed to administer the computer“
logout
Login with the standard user account (which now has admin rights)
optionally: remove the admin account


Adding a new processor I've got a Mac Pro (Jan-2008) 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon with one processor. Do all the Mac Pro's have the two sockets motherboards even if it's purchased with one processor? If so can I purchase an equivalent Intel Xeon proc and install it to have the 8-core?

No, single processor Mac Pros ship with a single socket motherboard, and use Xeon 3000 series processors, not the more expensive Xeon 5000 series needed for dual socket support.


Can an iPhone use OS X Server's Calendar service without enabling iCloud calendars? There are iOS devices in my household which do not have iCloud calendar syncing enabled. However, I would like to have a shared calendar that is contained within my household and not replicated on the cloud (iCloud, Google or other).

It seems that OS X Server's calendar service allows you to have a shared calendar within your household and presumably syncs when those devices are on your home LAN/WiFi network. All well and good.

The question is, would you be able to use the Calendar service from OS X Server without enabling iCloud calendar syncing?

Yes, you can add an OS X Server calendar as a separate account through Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars → Add Account → Other → Add OS X Server Account.

This is a completely separate account to your iCloud account. You can allow sync outside of your LAN by forwarding the relevant ports.


How to keep BetterTouchTool alive? BetterTouchTool keeps exiting. How do I make sure that it reopens when it exits, and that duplicate processes aren't spawned?

Thanks

You could create a launch agent, that starts when you first log in and re-starts if exited. Although I’m sure the app has created one for it self, and some setting might not be set correctly. Create on is quite simple. Here is an example if BetterTouchTool was installed in /Applications folder, and had the executable in MacOS folder in the bundle. You’ll have to restart after creating and saving this plist file in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ folder.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
        <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>BetterTouchTool</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Applications/BetterTouchTool.app/Contents/MacOS/BetterTouchTool</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

If you don't wish to restart, you can run this to start the agent:

launchctl load <path to the newly created plist file>

You can change the value of program argument to what ever you like and read more about launch agents by typing man launchd.plist in the Terminal. This will tell you about all the available options. There are also GUI apps to create these plist files for you, my favourite is Lingon X.

Though I would recommend you contact support for the app first, because this can result is in unexpected behaviour and mess with it’s functions. Like even if you force quit it now it’ll automatically launch (it depends on the value of SuccessfulExit key).


What is a "standard" boot camp partition setup? I am trying to upgrade to 10.10(.4) - currently I am at 10.9.5.  I had previously done some "creative" :) partitioning of my rMBP SSD - everything was working fine, running Boot Camp as well.  However, the 10.10 installer didn't like my partitioning scheme (I did want to have a Recovery partition included), so I reduced the system back down to just the OS X (HFS+) partition and the Boot Camp (NTFS) partition.  However, in that re-partitioning, the "Recovery HD" partition become unhidden (everything still functions as it should).
Now when I attempt the upgrade, the installer is still giving me grief about the state of the HD with the message:

Some features of OS X 10.10 are not supported for the disk "Mac HD"
Features such as FileVault and Recovery Mode won't be available of you install 10.10 on this disk. To learn more, click More Info. To continue with the installation, click Continue.

I suppose it is likely I am getting this due to the fact that the Recovery HD is no longer hidden.  I would prefer to have the 10.10 recovery partition on the SSD if at all possible.
So - if I blow away the Recovery HD partition, will the installer Do the Right Thing and put a new Yosemite one in?  Maybe it will do so anyway?  Maybe do a reinstall of 10.9.5 so that (maybe?) hides the Recovery partition? Are there some flags I can set to manually hide the Recovery HD partition? (FBOW I am very familiar with GPartEd and gdisk.) Thanks for any suggestions.

Well I did a bit more searching and came across this page which gave me the correct commands to hide the recover partition:

%mount (find the partition of "Recovery HD")
%diskutil unmount <partition>  (in my case: /dev/disk0s3 )
%sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype Apple_Boot

After this, I verified I could boot into all OSes (I could), went back to Yosemite installer and it approved of my partition scheme.  Everything is working great in 10.10 now.


What is com.appstart.AppStart? Browsing my launch daemons/agents with LaunchControl today, I noticed this funny-looking user agent with the label "com.appstart.AppStart":

  "/Users/jstrout/Library/Application Support/AppPolicy/AppStart" -i -c
  216107 -isn 5CE1E809-EF23-41E1-B157-B429F09DCCFF

Looking at the executable, it is a 517264-byte executable in group wheel.

I've googled all over, but find very few mentions of this file, and none of them informative.  Is this malware?

Seems fishy enough to investigate. It's either some custom software like java applet or other software that isn't the normal CodeSigned or app store installation.

It's in the wrong location for apps to be typically
Uses generic sounding names
You're clearly not aware what it is or why it's there.

If you have Time Machine - you can do two things. Make a backup and then delete the file. Next, you can look in spotlight on the TimeMachine to see when it showed up and perhaps correlate it to other app installs. It could be a side app that does metrics or app updates - but I'd probably get rid of it or see what other files it has open or monitor where its talking with a tool like LittleSnitch. Malware Bytes anti malware is also very good and reputable product to scan for known adware, malware, scamware, etc...


Using iPad as a shared drawing board in a Skype meeting I use Skype daily for work meetings. My collaborators work in different places around the world and this is the only way to stay connected and work together with them. We are theoretical physicists.

Sometimes, we need to use a drawing board to explain some concept and discuss about mathematics. Does there exist a way to use our iPad Pro as a shared drawing board?

I am looking for a solution which allows me to live share my iPad screen while using Skype on my Mac, so that I can use any drawing app such as Notability. All my collaborators should be able to see what I write during the Skype call.

Any suggestion?

I am looking for a solution which allows me to live share my iPad screen while using Skype on my Mac.

Current Skype clients for macOS and iOS doesn't support this feature.

However, if you don't mind using a different app, Zoom meeting client is the app you are looking for. It includes a plethora of features such as audio, video conferencing, screen sharing with fine grained controls, remote control, shared drawing board, instant messaging etc.

Zoom app has native client app available for all major desktop and mobile operating systems. Zoom has the ability to share the screen of an iPad connected to your Mac. Zoom also comes with its own shared drawing board.

More information about the features can be found by visiting Zoom homepage here:

Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing - Zoom

To learn about the Zoom Whiteboard, visit this link:

Share a Whiteboard - Zoom Help Center

Zoom is a pretty popular and widely used online meeting app with majority of useful features available in the free plan (The free plan should cover all your requirements). For more details about the features, you can refer to the pricing page here:

Plans and Pricing - Zoom


"New File" feature for OS X? back in the day (2006-07), before the Intel Mac days, I used an application called NuFile which let me create a "new file" like Windows on the fly. Ever since i've been searching for alternative but have been unsuccessful.

Do you guys know of any new apps that will allow this?

Neu allows you to do this. It's shareware and is currently priced at $10. There is also a fully functional free demo you can use. You can purchase it from MAS or from within the demo version.
About Neu:

Neu is a simple application that makes it easier to create new documents in the Finder, without you having to open an application first.
It does this by adding "Create Document..." and "Create And Open Document..." menus to various places, including the main menubar, the Dock, and the Services menu that the Finder shows when you right-click on something. You can also trigger Neu from any application using a special key combination.
Neu lets you choose what to make from a list of templates, which are simply existing files. Once you've chosen a template, Neu creates a copy of it, brings the Finder to the front, and selects the new file.
Neu comes with some pre-defined templates, but you can add your own, so you can customise the types of new file available to suit your needs. It can make a blank text file, an empty letter, a shopping list, or anything else that you want. You can have one template, or a hundred - it's up to you.


How to sort by priority in iOS Reminders app? The ability to automatically sort items by priority on desktop is an useful feature. It keeps them on top in list view reminding that most urgent tasks are to be completed first. Therefore, lack of it on mobile is that much apparent.

iOS version: 11.2.6 (15D100)

As of today, the feature is not available.

You might want to try requesting it through Apple’s feedback site. For more details on how see "How should I submit bug reports and feature requests?" And make sure to read Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy prior to sharing any information.


Change MAC address in OS X Yosemite I usually changed my MAC address with the following commands:

# Get a New MAC Address
openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'
# Changing the MAC Address
sudo ifconfig en0 ether d4:33:a3:ed:f2:12

When I enter:

ifconfig en0 |grep ether

I still get the old MAC address :( - Who can help? I would love to have a script or system to automatically change it on system boot.

One possible problem is that randomly generated MACs will fail half the time. The first byte of a MAC address needs to be even (e.g. end in 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, A, C, E).

So, for example, 3b:92:22:cf:55:7e wouldn't work because '3b' is odd. See Wikipedia's MAC address article for the details (even = unicast, odd = multicast).

To avoid this problem, you can slightly edit your random-MAC sed command to force the second nibble to 0.

openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/./0/2; s/.$//'

Combining this with hrbrmstr's answer worked for me:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport --disassociate
sudo ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/./0/2; s/.$//')
networksetup -detectnewhardware


How to copy videos wireless from Mac to iPhone? (wireless) I'd like to add some videos to my iPhone (from my Mac or PC), but I don't want to be restricted in video players (Infuse, Nplayer, etc).

I think I need to copy them into the iPhone Video Library so all video players can access it, but how can I do this wirelessly?

If you don't regularly sync with your phone with your computer, the easiest way might be to use the Dropbox app. I'm copying my answer from a previous question:

  The easiest way is to use Dropbox (you have Dropbox right?). Put the photo in your Dropbox, go to the same folder using the Dropbox app on your phone, click on the video, click the little share button in bottom left, and then choose "Save Video."

Note that videos are generally pretty large in file size. You should probably be connected to wifi on the phone before attempting to do this.


Where in the file system are iPhoto pictures located? I have a friend who's hard drive died on their Mac Mini. I have removed the hard drive and placed it in external drive enclosure. I have a trick that may give me 5-10 good minutes with the drive before it spins it last spin, and I intend to use that time (if I can) to get a few files from the drive.

After talking with the friend, the most important data to them are photos that were stored in iPhotos in one of the profiles. Given that I will have at best only a few minutes with the drive, I want to know exactly where on the file system to look for this data.

iPhoto Photos Location

iPhoto stores photos and meta-data in the user's home folder:

~/Pictures/iPhoto Library

Within this folder, the original photos are stored at:

~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters

Bulk Copy with rsync

If the user name was friend, the rsync command to copy all the original photos to the local desktop would be:

rsync -ra '/Volumes/MacMini/Users/friend/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters' ~/Desktop


CVS on OS X Mavericks Apparently, Apple has removed CVS under the OS X 10.9 Mavericks devtools (and yes, it's really gone). For the uninitiated, CVS is the Concurrent Version System, a tool for keeping files up to date between different machines and users (developers).

I have some legacy projects that still require it (no, I cannot change it to use SVN, much less git).

Where is the best place to get a version that works under OS X Mavericks?

A unix-ish package manager is clearly the way to go. I have moved from fink and Macports to homebrew, which has a recipe for cvs:

brew install cvs

For historical completeness, you formerly had to use the
 (slightly hard to find) recipe for cvs: brew install homebrew/dupes/cvs.

After only very minimal testing, it seems to work.


Reverse SSH tunnel on the iPad Is is possible to set up a reverse SSH tunnel on an iPad?

I'd like to be to do basic nmap TCP scans and use some other tools that the iPad doesn't have on remote networks.  So my idea is after I've connected to the network, ssh to my home server.  Then from my home server ssh back onto my iPad.

Are there any apps out there that provide this functionality?  Is it possible without jailbreaking?  Or is there an even simpler solution that I'm missing?

So my idea is after I've connected to the network, ssh to my home server.

For SSH into a remote server you can use many apps available on the App Store. My favorite one is Prompt.

  Then from my home server ssh back onto my iPad.

You can't SSH into an iOS device without jailbreaking (unless you are an Apple engineer). You would need to jailbreak first and then install the OpenSSH package from Cydia.

  Or is there an even simpler solution that I'm missing?

Why do you need to SSH into your home server if you're just using it to get into the iPad?  Seems like a lot of trouble, and you might need to mess around with port forwarding on the iPad's network.

SSHing into the iPad by connecting to localhost should do the trick. I assume you've jailbroken and installed all the utilities you need onto the iPad. Shouldn't be too bad as it looks like they're all open-source programs and you can recompile them if you really need to.


Keyboard shortcut to turn off display not possible with MacBook Air Shift + Control + Eject will turn off a Mac's display.

I just bought a new MacBook Air. It has a power button instead of an Eject key:

Besides a hot corner or turning down the screen brightness, is there a keystroke that will sleep the display?

Just Shift + Control + Power works on my retina MBP, which also doesn't have an eject button.


My iPhone's wi-fi receptor is dead. Is there a way to connect to internet on phone via USB or bluetooth? My wi-fi connect button seems to have greyed out. Last time this happened the provider replaced the phone with a refurbished phone but it's not an option anymore as the phone is no longer under warranty.

Is there a way to have internet on my phone without using wi-fi?

What about this:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Fix+iPhone+4S+Wi-Fi+Grayed+Out/22167

I think you have to change the hardware. 'Cuz there's no way except Cellular Data.


How can I get my Mac to automatically connect to a given network whenever it becomes available? I take my Macbook out and about during the day and I'm often connected to my phone for internet access.  I'm always careful to not watch videos or start any large downloads until I get home for obvious reasons.  However, on numerous occasions I've got home, and started to use the internet freely, only to then realise I forgot to manually connect to my home (unlimited) network--that is to say I'm still connected to my mobile phone, blazing through my monthly allowance in no time.

Is there any way to get my Mac to automatically (or perhaps with a prompt) disconnect to whatever network is was connected to, and connect to the new, designated network, whenever it comes into range?

It sounds like you may have the phone-hotspot network prioritized over your home wireless network. You can change this in System Preferences -> Network pane -> Wi-Fi service -> Advanced button -> Wi-Fi tab -> Preferred Networks list. Just click and drag to put your home network above the phone hotspot, and when it sees both it'll automatically choose the home network.

Note that this will not trigger a change whenever the home network comes into range, so it's not quite what you asked for. But it will re-scan and re-choose whenever it wakes from sleep, so if you put it to sleep on your way home (i.e. close the lid), it'll re-scan and choose the home network when you wake it back up.


Fill in suggestion in search without triggering search On my iPhone I find that the google suggestion list has a large portion of my search term already and I'd like to use a suggestion without having to type it. Is it possible to select one of the suggestions and have it fill up my partially typed term but without triggering the search?

What happens now is it automatically executes the search when I choose a suggestion even though I want to add more to it first.

Without jailbreaking, this is not possible. If you jailbreak, you can install Platinum which adds an i button to the right of each suggestion which can be tapped to add the suggestion to the search without the search taking place.


Can you control brightness on two monitors simultaneously via the brightness key? I have two Thunderbolt monitors daisy chained together and when I press down on the brightness key (F1/F2) it only dims the brightness / ups it only on one monitor. Is there a way so that when the brightness hotkey is pressed it can control both the monitors without having to open settings to control the other monitor?

Thanks.

This will not allow you to change them simultaneously but you can use

F1 or F2 for the main display and
control+F1 or control+F2 for the secondary display

As an addition you can also modify the brightness in smaller steps (1/4) by pressing option+shift with both combinations.


ChunkWM suggests cding into directory that does not exist ~/Library/LaunchAgents When trying to install chunkwm, with MacPorts, I'm getting an instruction to,

  Symlink prepared agent and start it:

cd ~/Library/LaunchAgents
ln -s /opt/local/Library/LaunchAgents/com.koekeishiya.chunkwm.plist
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.koekeishiya.chunkwm.plist

However, I don't have a ~/Library/LaunchAgents. What do I do? I know I can create the directory with mkdir, but  I have no idea what that directory structure entails. My LaunchAgents in it /System/Library/LaunchAgents. The last time I put something in ~/ (Xcode) I found out much later that it needed to be in /Applications instead (and that it wasn't "installed" unless it was in /Applications. I'm wondering if this path was for an older version of MacOS?

Also, can I just launchctl from

launchctl load -w /opt/local/Library/LaunchAgents/com.koekeishiya.chunkwm.plist

Why does it want this to be in the home directory?

I checked in the MacPorts FAQ, and this isn't mentioned.

From man launchd:

FILES
 ~/Library/LaunchAgents         Per-user agents provided by the user.
 /Library/LaunchAgents          Per-user agents provided by the adminis-
                                trator.
 /Library/LaunchDaemons         System-wide daemons provided by the admin-
                                istrator.
 /System/Library/LaunchAgents   Per-user agents provided by Mac OS X.
 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons  System-wide daemons provided by Mac OS X.

So user-specific agents should be in ~/Library/LaunchAgents. If the directory doesn't exist it can be created with mkdir ~/Library/LaunchAgents.


What values Apple TV brings to Netflix experience? I have PS4 that I use it also for Netflix but I'm only wondering if Apple TV provides extra features to Netflix experience.

Really, the only difference is that the UI (User Interface) will be different between the Apple TV and the PS4. UI is the arrangement of any virtual objects that the user interacts with, so virtual buttons, menus, etc. will vary from platform to platform. Honestly, if you want to use it JUST for Netflix, what you have is probably fine, at least not worth spending an extra $69 over.

However, Apple is rumoured to unveil a new Apple TV very soon, which could have new features like a touchscreen remote, 4K support, a dedicated App Store, and more. So at least wait until Wednesday to make your final decision.

You can read all all the rumours about a new Apple TV here.

And watch the Keynote on Wednesday, September 9 at 12 PM CDT here.


How can I tell if a Wi-Fi hotspot is WPA or WPA2? I want to print out a QR code for a Wi-Fi hotspot, so other people can easily connect to it with their iPhones and such, and the QR-code-maker has me choose between "WPA" and "WPA2".

How do I find out whether a Wi-Fi hotspot, in my MacBook's Wi-Fi history, is WPA or WPA2?

In my Wi-Fi network list, it's listed as "WPA/WPA2 Personal".  I assume that means "try WPA2, and if that doesn't work, then try WPA".  Is there any way to tell if it actually used WPA2?

You can find this out by holding Option and clicking on the WiFi icon in the Menu bar.

It will open up a "menu" with additional options and details including the type of security you're using.

If you see your network say WPA/WPA2 Personal, it means it supports both. This is what the Access Point supports.  In my case, I disabled WPA (and thusly it doesn't show up).  You can choose either QR code and the client will be connected.


Will an iPhone only activate using the SIM card that it was originally activated with? I read this question and was wondering if I need to have a SIM card that has previously activated an iPhone in order to activate an iPhone.

I'm inheriting my mother's old 3Gs to use as an iPod / for development purposes, and I was wondering if when I restore it to factory settings I'll need her old SIM card to activate it.

No - any valid SIM from the correct carrier will activate a phone that is locked to one carrier.

In the rarer case - iPhone 3G was sold or is now authorized unlocked in which case, you don't need any SIM to activate the device after a restore operation.

If the device is carrier locked (in the US - AT&T is the likely carrier), you can either buy a valid SIM from the correct carrier. A prepaid line or locating the SIM that was last used to activate the phone are good options for low expense.

Apple has articles that can guide you in this process:

Using an iPhone without a wireless service plan - This covers setting up an old iPhone like an iPod touch.
iOS: How to back up your data and set up as a new device - The end of this covers restore, set up as new and more explanation of carrier plans.
About swapping the SIM card
iPhone: Troubleshooting authorized unlock issues


Prefer cable over wifi in Mac on Mac for a specific IP Is it possible to set a MacBook Pro to use ethernet cable over the wifi when it tries to access a certain IP in .bashrc file or any other configuration file?

For example, you can set it not to use a proxy when it is routing on my private IP using the following command.

export NO_PROXY=192.168.0.1

Is there any way to ask my laptop to use the ethernet cable instead of the wifi connection for that specific IP?

There are two things you can do here.

If you want all your traffic to go via built-in Ethernet if both Ethernet and Wifi are up, you can make it more preferred in System Preferences:

System Preferences -> Network will show you the window with all Network connections defined. At the bottom of the left hand side panel (with the list of interfaces) you'll see three buttons: +, - and a cogwheel. Click the last one (the cogwheel) and you'll see the fourth option from the top - "Set Service Order". If you drag Ethernet above Wifi after you click that option, then if both are active, the Ethernet will be preferred.

If, however, you want to have selected traffic go via Ethernet while the default traffic to go via Wifi then it's a bit more complicated and would generally involve the use of Command Line and specifically the route
command.

There's a few scenarios here, so I'll ask a few questions now that might point you in the right direction, or could let me help with a better answer:

Are both the WIFI and the Ethernet interfaces on the same LAN? i.e. will they have an IP address from the same range? will they use the same default gateway?
Is the destination IP address in the same LAN that either the WIFI or the Ethernet are on? or is the destination IP address "somewhere on the Internet"?

For now I'll give you the answer for the easiest scenario, which is that the WIFI and Ethernet are on different LANs and that the destination IP is on the Internet.

Let's say the WIFI gets an IP address 192.168.0.10/24 and the default gateway to use to get to the Internet is 192.168.0.1. Let's also say that the Ethernet gets an IP address 192.168.1.10/24 and that the default gateway to use to get to the Internet out via the Ethernet is 192.168.1.1.

Let's also assume that you want to route all traffic via WIFI by default, but at the same time you want all traffic to a host with the IP 192.0.2.5 to go via Ethernet.

In that case, you need to go through the procedure I described at the start and make sure that the WIFI is ABOVE the Ethernet (therefore is more preferred).

Then open the Terminal and issue the following command:

sudo route add -host 192.0.2.5 192.168.1.1

You will need to enter your own password when asked by sudo command.

If you have more than one IP address to which you'd like to add routes via Ethernet, you can run more route commands.

Now, you need to be aware that each time you disconnect the Ethernet link, the routes will disappear and you'll have to manually enter them again in Terminal. If you'd like it automated, you can look at launchd - have a look through the manuals for route and launchd.plist - in Terminal just type man route and man launchd.plist. One of the variables you're interested in for launchd is NetworkState. Please note, I didn't have the need to do something like that automatically (however I did use it manually at times) and so don't have a ready solution. Some scripting, etc would be required, but at least this should get you going.


Restoring hidden apps to a home screen I used up all the space on my 11 home screens with apps, then installed another app (which can only be found through search as it's installed 'offscreen'). To make more space, I put a lot of different apps into folders.

How do I restore the hidden app back to a home screen?

If I reset the home screens then my folders are lost and an app will be off screen again, and I'd be back to square one.

Running iPhone 4, iOS 4.3.

You can rearrange your applications from within iTunes and then Sync.

Connect your iPhone and open iTunes, then click on your phone and then Apps:

Also, consider using folders to organize your apps.

  Organize apps into folders with drag-and-drop simplicity. Get faster access to your favorites and browse and manage thousands of apps.


how install postgres 9.6 and a corresponding PostGIS How do I install postgres 9.6 and a corresponding PostGIS on macOS Sierra using perhaps homebrew?

Postgres.app

The easiest way to use Postgres with PostGIS on a Mac is Postgres.app. This is a special build of Postgres wrapped to act like a normal Mac app, including launch with a double-click. The latest versions come with PostGIS built in.

Installer by EnterpriseDB.com

If you want to a run a Postgres installation on your Mac in a manner similar to that on other Unix-like platforms (BSD, Linux, etc.), I suggest downloading a graphical installer app provided by the EnterpriseDB.com company as a courtesy to the community. Follow the macOS links from the Postgres site to the EDB site’s download page. Note that EnterpriseDB makes their own editions of Postgres with added value, in addition to providing the "plain" Postgres.

Source code

The hard-core developer or DBA will download the Postgres source code and compile it herself.

I've not had the nerve to try that. You may be motivated to do so either for fun or because you want to tweak some of the internal Postgres settings that are modifiable only during compilation and not at runtime.

FYI: The core team creating Postgres provides only source code. Any app or installer you may obtain is the product of additional persons’ work.


How do I insert a row into numbers, in just one column How do I insert a row in one column only. By moving the current data down and inserting a row above it. I don't want to insert a row across the entire spreadsheet - just that column.

From Numbers help:

  Move rows and columns within a table Select one or more rows or
  columns.

  Do any of the following:

  Move rows: After selecting the rows, click and hold the row numbers
  until the rows appear to rise off the table, then drag them above or
  below another row.

  Move columns: After selecting the columns, click and hold the column
  letters until the columns appear to rise off the table, then drag them
  to the right or left of another column.

  Tip: If you drag rows or columns outside of an existing table, you
  create a new table with them.

This has plagued me for ages and I took to forums to unsuccessfully find the answer, till I finally used the help function found in Numbers.


Creating a bootable USB I am trying to restore a dead windows machine, all I have access to currently is an old mac. I am trying to accomplish this by downloading the Win 10 1809 iso and creating a bootable USB stick with it.

Most search and stackexchange results walk through doing this with Boot Camp assistant, however it appears this ability has been removed in OSX 10.14, as I get an error message when I try to launch boot camp with any usb devices plugged in.

Is there a workaround or other suggested way to do this? I have attempted downloading a few free tools which do not seem to work for various reasons, just wondering if I'm missing something obvious built into the OS before I start trying to dive into a specific tool to figure out what the problem is.

One way get a current 100% genuine Windows 10 USB flash drive would be to run the MediaCreationTool18.09.exe application. This would require Windows. To get Windows you would have to download the latest Windows 10 ISO file and install Windows a virtual machine. Oracle offers A free virtual machine called VirtualBox. I believe you will need to instal the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack after installing VirtualBox.

The link to get the MediaCreationTool18.09.exe application is given here. However, you can not access this link from macOS. You will need to click on the link while running a web browser under Windows. See this answer for an explanation.

A possible alternative would be to MS-DOS (FAT) format (using the Master Boot Record Scheme) a flash drive and copy all the files from the Windows 10 April 2018 Update ISO file to the flash drive. If you use the Windows 10 October 2018 Update ISO file, then the flash drive will need to be ExFAT formatted. These ISO files can be downloaded from this website.

  Note: The official Windows 10 USB installer is FAT32 formatted. There is no guarantee your PC can boot from a ExFAT formatted USB flash drive.


Thread crash when rendering out on evve blender 2.8 Process:               Blender [11080]
Path:                  /Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender
Identifier:            org.blenderfoundation.blender
Version:               2.81a (2.81a 2019-12-04)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Blender [11080]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2020-02-13 23:50:16.801 +0100
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.15 (19A603)
Report Version:        12
Bridge OS Version:     3.0 (14Y908)

Time Awake Since Boot: 16000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       1200 seconds

System Integrity Protection: disabled

Crashed Thread:        27

Total thread count: 43

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
abort() called

Application Specific Signatures:
Graphics kernel error: 0xfffffff9

Thread 27 Crashed:
0   libsystem_kernel.dylib         0x00007fff7441847a __pthread_kill + 10
1   libsystem_pthread.dylib       0x00007fff744d5707 pthread_kill + 384
2   libsystem_c.dylib             0x00007fff743a0aa2 __abort + 139
3   libsystem_c.dylib             0x00007fff743a0a17 abort + 135
4   libGPUSupportMercury.dylib     0x00007fff5d90b0a6 gpusGenerateCrashLog.cold.1 + 94
5   libGPUSupportMercury.dylib     0x00007fff5d9021e7 gpusGenerateCrashLog + 89
6   com.apple.AMDRadeonX4000GLDriver 0x000000011f561641 gpusKillClientExt + 9
7   libGPUSupportMercury.dylib     0x00007fff5d9035bc gpusSubmitDataBuffers + 164
8   com.apple.AMDRadeonX4000GLDriver 0x000000011f53bbfa glrATI_Hwl_SubmitPacketsWithToken + 110
9   com.apple.AMDRadeonX4000GLDriver 0x000000011f537b59 glrATI_Hwl_UpdateContextBufferState + 84
10  libGPUSupportMercury.dylib     0x00007fff5d905018 gldUpdateDrawFramebuffer + 114
11  GLEngine                       0x00007fff478f4a6b gleUpdateDrawFramebufferState + 527
12  GLEngine                       0x00007fff4782fcdc glClear_Exec + 205
13  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x00000001118f4204 EEVEE_shadows_draw_cubemap + 660
14  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x00000001118f282f EEVEE_shadows_draw + 271
15  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x00000001118ef2ce EEVEE_render_draw + 926
16  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x00000001118e2cd8 eevee_render_to_image + 88
17  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x00000001118c0e4c DRW_render_to_image + 828
18  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x000000010d886406 RE_engine_render + 1110
19  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x000000010d890c9a do_render_all_options + 378
20  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x000000010d893074 RE_RenderAnim + 2260
21  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x00000001132487f0 render_startjob + 96
22  org.blenderfoundation.blender 0x000000010da2f1e7 do_job_thread + 39
23  libsystem_pthread.dylib       0x00007fff744d5d76 _pthread_start + 125
24  libsystem_pthread.dylib       0x00007fff744d25d7 thread_start + 15

Please do these three things:

Run this command in Terminal :

/Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender --debug-all >> ~/Downloads/eevecrash.txt

Try to get the crash again now.
Open blender normally again and go to Window menu > Save system Info.
Window menu > File a bug report. Attach the files to the report made in the first two steps, plus the text you've posted here.

You should also check if the following versions cause the crash:
https://builder.blender.org/download/


How to Change File Type Associations? How do I stop Numbers from being the default program when a financial file is downloaded or imported?

In Finder, choose File > Get Info (or ⌘ Command+I, or right-click on the file) to change the default application for a particular file:

And you can also change the association for all files of the same type:


How to backUp an iPhone with a black/blank screen? Recently I dropped my iPhone 4 and when I picked it up the screen was all black but the sensor was still on. I called Apple and basically they said they can try to repair it or just buy a new one. So, I'm buying a new phone.

As I want to still have all my information, I'm trying to make a backUp, but when trying an error prompts asking me to unlock the iPhone, which is something I can no longer do as I can't see the screen nor does the touch screen work.

So is there anyway to get around that or another way to unlock?

I think your best bet is to to run your iphone side by side with another iphone that is also set to lock.  Now, by using the two phones side by side, you should be able to enter your passcode 'blind' using the position of the keys on the working phone as a guide.


Successor for 360Controller to support wired XBox One Controller? I know, there's native support in Big Sur for bluetooth connected XBox One Controllers. However, two games published for MacOS by Feral Interactive (Thief and Deus Ex: Mankind Devided) required the controller to be connected with a cable. However, the only driver I found namend 360Controller does not support Big Sur and the developer won't continue work with that software.
https://github.com/360Controller/360Controller/issues/1128#issuecomment-736584705
Is there another way to connect my controller (with or without cable) to play both games?

I created a modified .plist-file for the games which worked like a charm.
The file needs to be put in
Steam/steamapps/common/$Game/$Game.app/Contents/Resources/InputDevices/Digital/

With the following content.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>CGPDeviceCategory</key>
    <string>GamePad</string>
    <key>CGPDeviceType</key>
    <string>Standard</string>
    <key>CGPDeviceImageType</key>
    <string>Xbox</string>
    <key>CGPDisplayNameOvr</key>
    <string>Xbox One Controller</string>
    <key>VendorID</key>
    <integer>1118</integer>
    <key>ProductID</key>
    <integer>765</integer>
    <key>LeftAxisX</key>
    <string>1:48</string>
    <key>LeftAxisX-Min</key>
    <string>0</string>
    <key>LeftAxisX-Max</key>
    <string>65535</string>
    <key>LeftAxisY</key>
    <string>1:49</string>
    <key>LeftAxisY-Min</key>
    <string>0</string>
    <key>LeftAxisY-Max</key>
    <string>65535</string>
    <key>LeftTrigger</key>
    <string>2:197</string>
    <key>LeftTrigger-Min</key>
    <string>0</string>
    <key>LeftTrigger-Max</key>
    <string>1023</string>
    <key>RightAxisX</key>
    <string>1:50</string>
    <key>RightAxisX-Min</key>
    <string>0</string>
    <key>RightAxisX-Max</key>
    <string>65535</string>
    <key>RightAxisY</key>
    <string>1:53</string>
    <key>RightAxisY-Min</key>
    <string>0</string>
    <key>RightAxisY-Max</key>
    <string>65535</string>
    <key>RightTrigger</key>
    <string>2:196</string>
    <key>RightTrigger-Min</key>
    <string>0</string>
    <key>RightTrigger-Max</key>
    <string>1023</string>
    <key>Hatswitch</key>
    <string>1:57</string>
    <key>HSValueRest</key>
    <integer>0</integer>
    <key>HSValueUp</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>HSValueUpRight</key>
    <integer>2</integer>
    <key>HSValueRight</key>
    <integer>3</integer>
    <key>HSValueDownRight</key>
    <integer>4</integer>
    <key>HSValueDown</key>
    <integer>5</integer>
    <key>HSValueDownLeft</key>
    <integer>6</integer>
    <key>HSValueLeft</key>
    <integer>7</integer>
    <key>HSValueUpLeft</key>
    <integer>8</integer>
    <key>ButtonDevice</key>
    <string>1:133</string>
    <key>ButtonA</key>
    <string>9:1</string>
    <key>ButtonB</key>
    <string>9:2</string>
    <key>ButtonX</key>
    <string>9:4</string>
    <key>ButtonY</key>
    <string>9:5</string>
    <key>LeftShoulder</key>
    <string>9:7</string>
    <key>RightShoulder</key>
    <string>9:8</string>
    <key>ButtonBack</key>
    <string>12:548</string>
    <key>ButtonStart</key>
    <string>9:12</string>
    <key>LeftThumb</key>
    <string>9:14</string>
    <key>RightThumb</key>
    <string>9:15</string>
</dict>
</plist>


Macbook5,1 Crashing Multiple Times Per Day My Macbook5,1 running El Capitan 10.11.6 has been crashing multiple times...

250GB SSD/94GB free
I have tried to 'clean up' hard drive by deleting some memory-intensive files and cleared Desktop.
Not able to run a Apple Hardware test due to age of machine but just passed a Power-On Self Test via Diagnostics.
I have unplugged all external items (keyboard, monitor, etc.)
Generally only running Chrome, Excel and Word when the crash occurs.

I've included the latest crash report below and thanks in advance for anything you can do to help ...

Anonymous UUID:       D7D433A6-6CD7-61AB-1444-2D6DE4CDA79B

Tue May 22 14:42:19 2018

*** Panic Report ***
panic(cpu 1 caller 0xffffff80141d0c0b): Kernel trap at 0xffffff80140f71b7, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x0000000080010033, CR2: 0xffffff801e6a3b78, CR3: 0x00000000073ed000, CR4: 0x00000000000026e0
RAX: 0x000000000000005d, RBX: 0xffffff8014905bc0, RCX: 0x0000000000000000, RDX: 0x0000000000000005
RSP: 0xffffff8074d2bcc0, RBP: 0xffffff8074d2bd00, RSI: 0xffffff801e6a3b68, RDI: 0xffffff8014905bc0
R8:  0xffffff8014905b78, R9:  0xffffff801e6a4690, R10: 0xffffff8014905b78, R11: 0x0000000000000000
R12: 0xffffff8014905bc0, R13: 0xffffff802002e000, R14: 0xffffff801e6a3b68, R15: 0xffffff801e6a3880
RFL: 0x0000000000010086, RIP: 0xffffff80140f71b7, CS:  0x0000000000000008, SS:  0x0000000000000010
Fault CR2: 0xffffff801e6a3b78, Error code: 0x0000000000000009, Fault CPU: 0x1, PL: 3

Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff8074d2b950 : 0xffffff80140dbb52
0xffffff8074d2b9d0 : 0xffffff80141d0c0b
0xffffff8074d2bbb0 : 0xffffff80141eca63
0xffffff8074d2bbd0 : 0xffffff80140f71b7
0xffffff8074d2bd00 : 0xffffff80140f7626
0xffffff8074d2bd70 : 0xffffff80140ef5af
0xffffff8074d2bdc0 : 0xffffff80140c7269
0xffffff8074d2be10 : 0xffffff80140c71c7
0xffffff8074d2be60 : 0xffffff80140c3983
0xffffff8074d2bea0 : 0xffffff80140d36a5
0xffffff8074d2bf10 : 0xffffff80141ba82a
0xffffff8074d2bfb0 : 0xffffff80141ed276

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: WindowServer

Mac OS version:
15G20015

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 15.6.0: Tue Jan 30 11:45:51 PST 2018; root:xnu-3248.73.8~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: ECB8B1A1-7E15-34CB-825F-C366E2635655
Kernel slide:     0x0000000013e00000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff8014000000
__HIB  text base: 0xffffff8013f00000
System model name: MacBook5,1 (Mac-F42D89C8)

Troubleshooting is often a process of elimination and does require patience, so you'll need to keep that in mind as you proceed.

The first thing I would do now is test your MBP in Safe Mode.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your MBP into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Now use your MBP in Safe Mode until it crashes again or until you're satisfied it's not going to crash (i.e. you may be at this step for some hours or even longer)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Once again, test to see if your MBP still crashes

If you find that your MBP works fine while in Safe Mode, but not when booted normally, then it's likely to be a login item, corrupted font, or kernel extension).

If you find that your MBP still crashes, then it's most likely a hardware problem (although, before investigating that further, you could boot up again and use Safari (or another browser) instead of Chrome just to see if Chrome is causing you some sort of conflict).

Investigating login items, fonts, and kernel extensions

Let's start with Login Items:

Startup normally
Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups
Select the Login Items tab
Take a note of your Login Items
Now remove all of them by highlighting them and clicking on the - button below
Restart your computer

Now your Mac will boot up without those login items loading. Test to see if you can use your Mac without it crashing:

If you can, you know one (or more) of the Login items were causing the problem. You can then add them back in one by one until you've identified the culprit. Problem solved.
If the problem does persist, it's either a problem with fonts you've installed yourself or with a 3rd party kernel extension. A little more info below:

Fonts:- You can remove any of the fonts you've installed yourself to see if this makes a difference.

Kernel Extensions:- You can open Terminal (found within your Utilites folder) and enter the following command:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

The above command will list 3rd party kernel extensions (you may need to stretch the Terminal window so it's easier to read). Look for anything you don't remember installing, or something that belongs to software you've removed, or just anything that looks out of place. Remember though, this is a list of 3rd party kernel extensions and therefore any of them could be causing the problem.


Copying and pasting text only pastes a hyphen character When I copy a block of text more than about twenty lines long to the clipboard, pasting only pastes a hyphen character.

Why is the clipboard buffer so small and how can I increase it?

You should not hit the clipboard buffer limit in normal use, it is far bigger than a “block of text”. Depending on where you copy from, the source application might be transforming the buffer before storing it. Especially some websites have scripts for these kinds of interceptions in an attempt to prevent large-scale copying of copyrighted information – in these cases you can often work around using the Edit > Copy menu item instead of the Cmd-C shortcut, for example. Other applications might change the clipboard format after reaching a certain size, and might then have a bug when generating e.g. a Rich Text buffer versus a Plain Text buffer. Another thing you could try is pasting with the Paste and Match Style option, by choosing it from the Edit menu or pressing Ctrl-Shift-Cmd-V.


What is ksfetch process on Mac? Sometimes I see a ksfetch process on my Mac. After a little googling I found out that it is Google software updater. However, there is no detailed answer i.e. what is ksfetch process used for? Is it really required? Can I get rid of it?
Sometimes it uses my internet bandwidth so it frustrates me hence the query. Thanks.

Keystone Fetch / ksfetch

The ksfetch process on OS X is part of Google Chrome's update mechanism. The ks prefix is an abbreviation of Keystone. The process appears to be responsible for fetching updates to Google's products. It is this role that uses your bandwidth.

Using slick's answer you can disable the corresponding process that uses ksfetch.

Alternatively, it appears possible to adjust the frequency of update checks:

  Entering the following code into your terminal will make it check once a week rather than every few hours:

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 604800

To learn more about, follow the links below:

Little Snitch + Google Chrome = ksfetch issues
ksfetch, little-snitch, the escalation of mutually fooling …


Grow HFS+ partition at the end of harddrive without partition-manager-cd or moving to another drive I've got two HFS+ partitions and would like to grow the latter one but neither disk utility nor the commandline diskutil allow that.

I don't want copy the whole partition to another drive and then copy it back.
I also don't want to use some kind of Boot-CD because I'm really lazy.

So are there any other options.

iPartition

For all my partitioning, I use and recommend iPartition. It will allow you to resize partitions without deleting any data. It also works for Boot Camp volumes and other PC disks.

  With iPartition, resizing a partition is as simple as selecting it, grabbing the resize handle and dragging. Not only that, but if you have several operations to perform, iPartition lets you queue them up and run them one after another, so you can have a cup of coffee while iPartition works. This feature, coupled with iPartition’s ability to automatically rearrange your existing partitions when necessary, makes iPartition the easiest partitioning tool that you’ll ever use.


Applications Don't Show Up in Spotlight Spotlight has stopped showing any results for my Applications. I've tried reindexing and removing the index so it rebuilds it. No change. I've tried adding Applications to the Privacy tab and removing it, no change.  I tried repairing disk permissions and redoing the above, no change. I've tried removing everything from the index except Applications and then I just get nothing for any search at all (except dictionary entries).  I tried adding a symlink in my homedir to Applications and reindexing, but no change.

Any ideas on what to do?  I'm running Snow Leopard.  This is driving me crazy!

Update: I've noticed that when I start a reindex with sudo mdutil -E / and then immediately do a Spotlight search for an app that the app shows up temporarily until Spotlight gets disabled due to active indexing.  After the indexing is done, the app entries go away.

Loading the metadata plist worked for me:

Turn off spotlight:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

Unload it:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Load It:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Turn on spotlight again:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Now everything is being reindexed as expected.

In newer versions of macOS, just turning indexing off then back on again resolves the issue.


Why is Terminal.app corrupting my tcsh history? I've had an ongoing problem that appears to be specific to OS X and Terminal.app: periodically, I get garbage in my tcsh history that looks like this:

^[[1m^[[4mcomputername:~/Code/emacs-source ( 1827 ) $^[[0m^[[24m logout

Somehow my prompt (including markup control characters) is getting stored as part of the command history. In my .history file, the corrupt commands are repeated with the same command number:

#+1391563259
[1m[4mcomputername:~/Code/emacs-source ( 1827 ) $[0m[24m
#+1391563259
Use "logout" to logout.
#+1391563259
[1m[4mcomputername:~/Code/emacs-source ( 1827 ) $[0m[24m logout

This seems to be a result of closing Terminal.app windows and tabs, but I'm not sure why. To fix it -- since I have history merging enabled -- I've had to resort to closing all tcsh sessions and removing the corrupt commands from .history. Is there some way to prevent this from happening in the first place?

Are you cutting/pasting commands and picking up some of your prompt by accident?

It's not quite the answer you're looking for but throw sed -i.bak -e "s/\x1b[[0-9;]{1,5}m//g" .history into your .logout or cron it and you shouldn't have to clean it manually again.


`open http://foo.com` and specify the chrome user which is to be used Using the open command from terminal I would like to be able to specify the chrome the specific chrome user to open the url with?  Local Chrome users are outlined here.

Essentially I have a local chrome user which I use for testing but the user which the local Chrome user which link opens with is the user which has the last selected window and
jumping back and forth between chrome and the terminal often the link I am opening for testing end up opening in the chrome user which I use for practical purposes (not testing).

Have you tried open http://user@foo.com and edit the question based on what error or success results from this step?


Export from IMovie is very blurry I need to put some videos online (screencast) I am using screen flow and the output is a mp4 that looks great.

I import them into iMovie to add titles and footers and in preview it looks GREAT but if I do a share to youtube its so blurry on youtube and if I try the export its the same issue

It's not an iMovie problem.
It's a YouTube problem.
You say that you are exporting as an .mp4 file. You also state that the video looks great while previewing it on your local machine. This rules out any iMovie problem.
The only thing left is either

YouTube problem
Connection problem

I am reasonably sure it's a YouTube problem - I don't know much about YouTube. You might have to get some kind of 'Premium' account to upload high-quality stuff.
If you say it uploads fine to YouTube, that rules out a connection issue, unless YouTube does some kind of upload speed test to determine what quality to upload. Highly unlikely in my opinion.


process to reliably connect Mac Wi-Fi to iPhone personal hotspot? Is there a recommended process for reliably connecting a Mac to an iPhone Personal Hotspot network via Wi-Fi?

Here is the method that I have been trying:

turn on WiFi and Personal Hotspot on iPhone
turn on WiFi on Mac

This works maybe 25% of the time, and the other 75% of the time the Mac scans the Wi-Fi networks but does not see my iPhone hotstpot network.  I keep repeating the above process until it connects.

If I connect instead via "Join other Network..." and input my network name, security, and password, that sometimes works, and other times says "No network found."

If I connect via USB cable or Bluetooth, that reliably works every time.

I tried dropping the network and re-adding it on the Mac, but that didn't help:
    System Preferences > Network > Wi-Fi > Advanced > Wi-Fi (tab) > Preferred Networks > (select my hotspot network) > ("-")

Also, is there a way to force the Mac to rescan the Wi-Fi networks?

iPhone: iPhone 6
iOS: 8.3 (up to date as of 11 May 2015)

Mac: MacBook Pro Retina 15" (Mid 2012)
OS X: Mavericks 10.9.5 (13F1066) (kernel: Darwin 13.4.0)

@tubedogg's suggestion fixed my problem: make sure the iPhone has the Settings > Personal Hotspot screen visible when I attempt to connect with the Mac.   I've done that now the last 5 or so times and it's worked every time.


How to create nested folders in iCloud Documents? I can’t create more than one level of folders in iCloud Documents from iWork. I really want to move my Documents folder (which is all iWork documents) to the cloud. It’s neatly arranged in folders on my disk, but I can’t just drag the folder to cloudify it. Is there any workaround to this problem?

I'm afraid not. iCloud is designed for iOS devices without a user accessible file system. iCloud files are strictly associated with apps and only allow one level of folder nesting.

If you're not happy with this, you can send feedback to Apple about it here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

You could use Dropbox instead (https://www.dropbox.com/) which has more flexibility around file organisation. The downside is that you only get 2GB free but you can earn more free storage in various ways. Google Drive (https://drive.google.com/start#home) gives you 5GB free.


Time Machine exclusions added via tmutil do not appear in TM "Options" list I can successfully add Time Machine exclusions using tmutil addexclusion and I can verify exclusions successfully with tmutil isexcluded but if I then open up Time Machine's Preferences and click "Options..." none of the exclusions added via tmutil are listed.

Use of the -p option when using tmutil addexclusion seems to make no difference.
Restarting the OS makes no difference.
Re-indexing Spotlight makes no difference.

I've tested this on both Mac OS 10.9 and 10.11.

Is this expected behaviour?

Aaah, the following page seems to suggest that this is in fact expected behaviour:
http://pondini.org/TM/Works4.html

Exclusions Not Shown on the Preferences Window
Fixed Path Exclusions are set by the CSBackupSetItemExcluded API or sudo tmutil with the -p option, whether the item exists or not.
Sticky exclusions are set in an item's extended attributes, via the CSBackupSetItemExcluded API, xattr, or tmutil without the -p option.


How to log in with the native YouTube app? I created a new YouTube account to use functions like "watch later" on my iPhone4, my PC and my AppleTV2. But if I try to log in with this account on my iPhone and the native YouTube app, I always get the error message that the username and/or the password are wrong. I used as username the email address I used to create the YouTube/Google account and which I use to log in the web interface.

What I'm missing? I'm sure that the credentials I use are correct.

I had the same problem. Since I have signed up for 2-step verification I must use not my YouTube psw, but a application-specific password.

You can generate an application-specific password on your Authorizing applications and sites page using a desktop.

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=no&answer=184968

Remember to use your email address, not you username.

Worked for me. :)


Macbook Pro Retina OSX 10.8.3 - Itunes - Windows 7 PC I have been a PC guy for 35 years. I just recently got a MacBook Pro Retina. I have well over a terabyte of MP3's on several hard drives on my Windows 7 PC. All of the files are legal rips from my vast collection of CD's. Is it possible for ITunes to play my MP3's from my Win7 PC if I share the folders?

Thanks in advance!

I figured out how to share the PC folders and get ITunes on the Mac to play them. All is good!


External Display not displaying full OSD function tech said solution is HDMI Adapter? I would like to start off saying I have 0 tech knowledge and this staying at home period has forced me to learn alot!

So recently I bought a new 4k monitor to upgrade my work at home experience.  Previously, an employee at a store helped my set up my Macbook Air (13inch 2017) to an external display monitor via a cable that one end connects to thunderbolt and the other to DP.  Everything worked good.

Then I bought this new monitor that has more options such as blue screen filter, change contrast etc etc (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/lit_files/152620.pdf).  Following what I had done before I connected the two but discovered I am missing the full display option to change this blue light filter and others.  Google didn't give me an answer so I called the tech department of the store and they said this (https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/insignia-insignia-mini-displayport-to-hdmi-adapter-ns-pd94592-c-ns-pd94592-c/10294299) is the magic solution to everything?

Is this true?  I know next to nothing about DP and HDMI and my question is as I only have 1 thunderbold if I buy this adapter does it mean there is no need then for my current thunderbolt to DP cable?

If what the store employee said is true would someone be so kind to link/explain why this would solve my problem, and if not what is the solution to my problem.

Thank you and have a great day :)

Your cable has nothing to do with the features of the monitor.   What the store employee told you was utter nonsense.

It simply can’t influence the OSD functionality of the monitor as there’s no logic in a cable that will enable it.  What does influence the OSD is the “mode” that the display is in and that’s dependent on how you have things configured.

In fact, speaking of configurations, the (cable) configuration you had previously, going from mini DisplayPort to Display port (mDP to DP) was better than going from mDP to HDMI as there’s no conversion of the signal.  You’ll get a more stable and reliable connection.

That aside, the monitor’s features are dependent on what “mode” you have it in.

For instance on page 3-2 it states the following:

  In the Racing Mode, the Saturation, SkinTone, Sharpness, and ASCR functions are not user-configurable.
  In the sRGB, the Saturation, Color Temp., SkinTone, Sharpness, Brightness, Contrast and ASCR functions are not user-configurable.

Then on page 3-3 specifically about the Blue Light Filter it states

  When Blue Light Filter is activated,the default settings of Racing Mode will be automatically imported.

Based on what you’re describing, that “blue light filter” may be one of the options that get disabled when selecting a certain mode.


New iPhone 4S using 10 times faster battery than old 4, why? iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 have the same settings but the new iPhone 4S uses 10 times more battery in standby than old iPhone 4. Why?

It can be for a variety of reasons these include:

• Location Services in regular use, like Siri geofencing in reminders or a GPS app using it a lot. Check Settings > Privacy > Location services (in iOS 6) to see what's using it.

• A mail account that's not set up properly or had stopped working correctly from a restored back up, for example the outgoing mail server password not being entered on an IMAP or Exchnage account.

• Push mail being switched on. Settings > Mail > Fetch, to see how it's set up.

• An app that's misbehaving and using a lot of CPU time (you may notice the phone warm up a little). Check your logs in Settings > General > About > Diags and usage > Diags and usage data, for anything unusual. Also check Settings > Usage - Time Since Last Full Charge to see if the time used makes sense, have you been using the phone for as long as it says? If the Standby time and in Use time are the same then something is running in the background.

• Using the phone in a poor reception area will dramatically lower battery life, even in its on standby.

• A corrupt restore from back up.

Things to do to try and resolve the issue:

• Power cycle the phone

• Reset user preferences. Settings > General > Reset > Reset all Settings.

• Restore phone in iTunes and set up as new. (Most invasive option, but will sort the issue).


Cannot access iPhone files using my macbook via Bluetooth I turned on bluetooth on my Macbook Air 13" (Early 2015, 8 GB RAM) and on my iPhone SE.

I'm trying to access the files from iPhone using my macbook. When trying to connect to my iPhone, it shows an error: "There was an error connecting to the device".

However, if I start a personal hotspot on iPhone I can successfully connect via bluetooth and get internet from my phone.

Using my macbook I can successfully connect to my old Samsung S3100 phone and browse the files via bluetooth.

Also, I can use my iPhone to connect via bluetooth to my piano and get/send midi data from/to it.

I feel like just the communication between my mac and iPhone is kinda broken—it could be the cause why AirDrop is not working too.

How to fix/debug this?

iPhone does not support browsing files over Bluetooth.

Edit: Apple lists three methods for transferring data between a Mac and an iPhone.

AirDrop
Handoff
iCloud Drive

On that same page, Apple lists the built-in Mac browser for Bluetooth as an option for "other Bluetooth devices" and I think it is appropriate to infer that they thereby exclude the iPhone from that capability.


Stop default application per file type changing I'm now on High Sierra but have had this problem previously on El Capitan.

Sometimes, even directly after a reboot, files like .png or .jpg open, instead of in Preview, which is what I want, in some ancient canon photo util programs I still have on my system (which I should probably delete).

I'd like to know what could be happening here and to investigate - can anyone advise how to precisely control filetype associations and what are the common causes of this getting messed up?

Following other questions on this topic, if I do:

cat  ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist

I just get:

bplist00?

Then if I view this file in vim, I get some unreadable characters. It turns out (after a quick search for bplist), that this is a binary format, so not editable in a text editor.  Is my only option to delete it?  Will it be regenerated?  Is there a way to view what all associations are currently and pinpoint all sources which may change them? Thanks.

A bplist is likely a "binary plist" file, which is why you see junk when you open that file in vim. Try opening the file with either something like BBEdit or if you have the developer tools installed, there should be a command line program called plutil that you can use to convert to and from a binary plist.


What file systems does Apple use in iPhones? HFS

WWDC 2012 Session 709, ￼What’s New in the File System, presented by Deric Horn included the following observation: Journaled HFS+ everywhere.

In the iOS Developer Library, NSDictionary Class Reference contains references to HFS.

Do iPhones use HFS Plus?

Journaled or not journaled?

I'd like an authoritative reference. Thanks.

Types of HFS Plus

iOS and iPhone aside for a moment … Apple's hdiutil(1) Mac OS X Manual Page lists four HFS filesystem types for creation purposes:

HFS+
HFS+J (JHFS+)
HFSX
JHFS+X

Postscript

Beyond the accepted answer … as Apple sometimes distinguishes between JHFS+X (journaled, case sensitive) and HFSX, so:

extra kudos to anyone who can verify whether, in an iPhone, both HFSX slices are journaled

… I do have fileXray, but I don't foresee myself making an ssh connection to my first generation iPhone ;-)

According to iOS Forensic Analysis, the main filesystem is HFSX.

HSFX
All Apple mobile devices use HFSX as the file system. HFSX is a variation of HFS+ with one major difference. HFSX is case sensitive.

HFSX is reported by Apple as Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Case-Sensitive).
There are two main partitions of HFSX: the OS and the user data. Prior to these partitions is the usual MBR partition (around 100 MB).

SSHing into my jailbroken iOS 6 device seems to support this, since I can create case-sensitive directories. Creating the following directories was no problem:
$ mkdir test
$ mkdir Test
$ mkdir TEST


iMessage sent to me by spouse shows receivers name (mine). When I send her an iMessage there’s no problem, but on my receiving end from her, my name appears as if I sent message to myself. How may I stop this recent twist?

There are several possibilities:

As @jksoegaard has indicated, you and your spouse are sharing an AppleID
You and your spouse are sharing an iPad or Mac
You or your spouse have gotten a contact mis-labeled
You and your spouse are doing research for a new comedy show

If none of those address your issue, you could Google iMessage from spouse says it's from me, and start reading through the responses. In any case, the number of hits from this search should give you some comfort as you'll learn you're not alone.


Install oracle 12c database in OS X Yosemite without Virtual Machine Can we install Oracle 12c Database without using any Virtual Machine ? Currently I have installed it in VMWare Fusion but it is consuming a lot of power.

Oracle Database 12c doesn't run on OS X, so I guess you'll have to stick to a VM running a supported OS (see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/index.html):


Mac mini turns off automatically by itself Ive got a mid 2012 mac mini which i have used constantly without issue for about 5 years. Today it seems to have developed a weird fault were it powers off by itself. I powered it back on just after lunch as it was off and when i came back it had turned itself off again.

At first i thought it might be a loose connection with the power cable or extension cord, but i checked them all and they are in tightly with plenty of slack on the cable.

As per suggestion in comments ive opened up the shutdown cause log and it seems to be caused by

localhost kernel[0]: Preview shutdown cause: -62 There are a couple of 5 listings also.

It sounds like you might have an issue with the OS or an application that's crashing the OS.

A shutdown cause of 5 is a normal shutdown and nothing to worry about.  It's saying that it "shutdown correctly."
Shutdown of -62 is generally due to an unresponsive application.

You should start with booting into Safe Mode to see if it's something being loaded.

Other options would be to wipe the drive with a clean OS (also a good time to upgrade the drive if you're still using an old spinning one).

Personally, I would start with booting from an external drive, a clean copy of macOS to see if the problem goes away before embarking on swapping out hardware.


Can I add a password hint to an encrypted disk image? I've got an encrypted dmg. Can I set a password hint for it?

No, this is not possible currently. You can put such information in the Spotlight comments accessible from Get Info in Finder.


Day-O clock not starting by itself on restarting Mac I am using  Day-O as the clock on the menu bar in place of the default clock. After installation I have checked "Launch Day-O at login" but whenever I restart my mac Day-O does not start by itself. I have to manually double click it to start.

I have also added Day-O under Login Items under "System Preferences". But still no luck.

Can you let me know how can I make Day-O to start at Login.

Environment

Mac OS - 10.12.6
Day-O - Version 2.0 (21)

Go to system preferences and click on Users and Groups. Then click on box login items. This brings up a list of apps to start up when you login. You can add your app to this list but be sure to unlock the page. Click the padlock icon in lower left of window. You can add an app without unlocking but it won't take effect unless you unlock that option.


How can I make AirFoil detect the speaker without rebooting the Mac? When my Mac goes to sleep, and I awake it, AirFoil no longer detects my Airport Expert speakers.

I always need to restart OS X to make AirFoil detect it; restarting AirFoil doesn't fix it.

Do you know how could I avoid this?

I am not sure, but does Airfoil have a Helper application running in the background? Maybe you have to quit that one as well instead of just restarting AirFoil?

Also, do you have the latest version? I have just checked and the Release Notes on the Rogue Amoeba website have a bugfix in the latest release 4.6.2 from a few weeks ago that seems to match your problem:

http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/releasenotes.php

  Airfoil now disconnects from remote speakers upon sleeping, to prevent error messages on waking.

Maybe that update can solve your problem?