Installing Ubuntu 16.04 server on Mac Mini 2006 I have liberated an old 2006 Mac Mini (Model: A1176) from being thrown away and wanted to use it as a Time Capsule for my other Macs.

To do this, I want to install Ubuntu server 16.04 LTS to roll my own Time Capsule over my home network.

How can I do this? I have downloaded the ISO from Ubuntu's website but when I put it onto a CD-RW and selected it by holding down Option at boot, it then got stuck on the message 'Select CD-ROM Boot Type' with no way to select it (keyboard wasn't loaded).

Can someone please provide step-by-step on how to do this?

Update

To answer the comments. The Mac Mini currently has OS X 10.6.8 installed and has the 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo processor. It also has 1GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

The file I downloaded for Ubuntu was called ubuntu-16.04-server-amd64.iso

The screenshot for the screen showing after I select the CD on the EFI menu is as follows:

I can't select an option as I don't think the keyboard is loaded.

Alright, I see you've added some requisites to your answer. Here goes.

Part 1: Install Ubuntu 16.04 Server.

Download this. (Ubuntu Server 16.04 32-bit)

This is done the same way any other Linux install is done. You will insert the CD/DVD, run through the setup to take the entire partition of the Mac Mini, and once you reach a desktop, you're ready for part 2. [Excellent Basic Tutorial, 2012, but relevant]

Part 2: Getting Time Machine Working within Linux Host (Source)

a. Choose a Data Folder

First you need to pick a directory on your server for your Time Machine data and if it doesn't already exist, create it

I'll be using /data/timemachine/ for these instructions, if you prefer another location remember to change it in any of the following.

sudo mkdir -p /data/timemachine

b. Setup a User Account

You'll also need Time Machine user account on your server which you can log in with on your Mac. Create one and assign it the previously-created data folder as its home directory and assign ownership of that directory to this user.

I've chosen to create a user timemachine, but you can pick anything you like.

sudo adduser --home /data/timemachine timemachine

sudo chown -R timemachine:timemachine /data/timemachine

You'll also need to set the password for this user.

sudo passwd timemachine

c. Configure Netatalk

Next, you'll configure Netatalk. Open the existing afp.conf configuration file for editing that is stored in/etc/netatalk/. You can do it in the command line with:

sudo nano /etc/netatalk/afp.conf

You can copy my sample configuration exerpt below, editing it to suit your setup. You simply add it to the end ofafp.conf when finished (and save).

[TimeMachine]
# is this machine a time machine?
time machine = yes
# directory for time machine data on server
path = /data/timemachine
# the max size of the data folder (in Kb)
vol size limit = 980000
# users with access to time machine
valid users = timemachine

d. Enable Netatalk & Avahi

Next, using the venerable systemd, you can enable the netatalk and avahi-daemon services:

sudo systemctl enable netatalk.service

sudo systemctl start netatalk.service
sudo systemctl enable avahi-daemon.service
sudo systemctl start avahi-daemon.service

Okay, now switch over to your Mac.

Mac OS Setup

By default Mac OS doesn't show "unsupported" or non-Apple Time Machine network drives, but you can easily change that with one Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

If everything went well after all this, you should now be able to choose your server in the Time Machine preferences when selecting a disk.

(source: samuelhewitt.com)

You'll also get a login prompt when attempting to access it, just use the username and password for the Time Machine account you created on your server.

If everything has worked thus far, and you are able to perform backups then congrats! You now have a Linux-powered Time Machine.

Part 3: Getting the server to run headless on the Mini.

You will need a DVI to VGA adapter, as well as a VGA dummy to make the machine believe it is plugged into a monitor. The first time you do this, it will have a poor screen resolution. Please just remote into the box (Teamviewer, Logmein, etc) and change the resolution.

Part 4: Getting your files shared out of Linux Server (in this example below, it's Ubuntu, but instructions are relevant). Source

Installing Samba (cross platform ability to share files) in Ubuntu

Sambais a free software re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. Samba provides file and print services for various Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Domain Controller (DC) or as a domain member. So in this article we are using in Per-to-Per network between Windows clients and Linux Ubuntu clients. If you don’t like reading then watch the video tutorials at the end of this post.

To install Samba file server in Ubuntu Linux, run the terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Tkeys to open Linux terminal command line interface.

Now type the “sudo apt-get install Samba” in order to install Samba file server. Type the password to start the installation.

Installing App In Ubuntu Linux

Remember; your Ubuntu machine must be connected to internet. Because this apt-get install command will install software from Ubuntu online software repository.

2. Share File Between Ubuntu and Windows

Let’s do how to share a file in Ubuntu through file explorer? Open the File and create a folder in Home directory. I have created Netdata folder and required to be share it.

a. Right click the Netdata folder and click Local Network Share. Select Share this folder.

Share File Between Ubuntu and Windows

To allow modification to files and folder for users, select Allow others to create and delete files in this folder. Also select Guest access (for people without a user account) to access files from Windows without requiring user and password.

b. Click Add the Permissions automatically to apply the permission to shared folder.

Add the Permissions automatically

If you want to set a password for shared folder, you shout set a user for Samba file server with “sudo smbpasswd -a Shais” command then type the password twice.

Set a Password to Samba File Server

Now it ask you user and password when someone want to access the shared folders. The the file sharing from Ubuntu Linux has completed successfully. Let’s test it from Windows 10 client.

3. Access Shared folders from Windows 10

You can access the Linux shared folders from Windows 10 using Network section. To simply access the shared folders type the \IP address\Shared folders.

a. In Windows 10 type \192.168.0.104\NetData and press enter to open the shared files of Linux Ubuntu.

Access Network Shared Files

b. When prompt for network credential, type the user name and password. If you did not set a password for Samba files server, it will not ask the network credentials.

Network Credentials

c. It’s all the contents of shared folder. You can create and delete files or edit the files.

Network Shared Files

To access the shared files quickly, create a shortcut link to a shared folder in Windows 10.

Create A Shortcut Link

Right click on the desktop and click New then click Shortcut.

Create Shortcut Link

Type the network address of shared folder in Type the location of the item: and click Next.

Type a name for Shortcut Link – Share File between Ubuntu and Windows

Type a name for shortcut related to the shared folders contents and click Finish to create the shortcut.

Linux Shared Files

Here is the shortcut link to the NetData shared folder of Ubuntu Linux. Double click to open it from your desktop. You can create a network Map drive also.

And there you have it. You asked for it!  Sources included.


Does macOS keep a log of all access to the keychain? I want to see which applications accessed my keychain of my Mac. Do know which apps have access and how often they do. Does macOS keep a log of that somewhere ?

Yes, on MacOS Sierra or newer you can monitor every access to the Keychain, using the Unified Logging system in two operation modes:

Realtime
Query the database log to get past access events

Use this command on a Terminal window for Realtime monitoring:

log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.securityd" AND message CONTAINS[cd] "Keychain Access"' --info --debug --signpost --style compact

Here is the output of the above command, in realtime, while some keychain items were being accessed:

You can also query past events by specifying some date range, and changing stream to show. Like the example below:

log show --start "2019-08-11 14:21:45" --end "2019-08-11 14:22:00" --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.securityd" AND message CONTAINS[cd] "Keychain Access"' --info --debug --signpost --style compact

More detailed information can be obtained by modifying the command line and grouping other process interactions. See man log for more options, or just ask here :)


Apple TV doesn't play some youtube movies I put this Samsara movie into my youtube favourites.

There are two unexpected issues here.

If I try to play that movie either from iPad or iPhone and display it to my Apple TV my Apple TV said that it can't play this movie.
The other strange issue is that the above movie isn't shown amongst the favorites on my Apple TV. However the youtube web interface clearly shows that it is my favorite.

This version of Baraka which is not Full HD can be played, but still doesn't show amongst my favourites despite the fact that it is there on the web UI:

Any explanation?

The reason your favourites do not appear in the listing on the Apple TV is that the owner of the video has not allowed it to be viewed on a mobile device (which the youtube considers the apple TV to be). The Apple TV recognises this and removes it from the list so you do not try and play an unplayable video.

The owner of the video (or more probably the copyright owner of the soundtrack) can decide whether to allow mobile devices and Apple TV's to display videos.


YouTube keeps crashing on iPad Pro 13 inch I tried to watch unbox therapy’s new video: “The Worst Text You Could Ever Recieve” and the YouTube app keeps quitting. Furthermore, my screen just blacks out for a second before showing the home screen. This is only for one video, not others. Tried restarting, no effect. Running latest version of iOS.

It is about of symbol that is killing ios devices. I think they have added it in the description. Symbol instantly kills ios app that tried to open it.


Data recovery from Apple MacBook Pro with T1 and T2 & Customer Data Migration Tool (LifeBoat) There is a lot of fuzz since Apple introduced non-removable SSDs in 2016. If you are spilling water or dropping the notebook it might be a problem to recover the data, as the SSDs are proprietary (find the Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs here).

The T1 and T2 based models differ significantly on how data is recovered (see macrumors).

As i have a water-damaged 2016 MacBook Pro, i was wondering if anyone can direct me to a detailed way of how to extract the data from this model with a T1 chip.

This is the Customer Data Migration Tool connector as seen in the 2016 MacBook Pro. (Source: MacRumors)

There is an Apple part #076-00236 and it has been discussed on iFixit already. Apple Gazette has a deeper investigation and concludes, that "For A Tool That Apparently Does Not Exist, It Is Popular". There is an actual video of someone opening this apple tool.

It-tech.com.au has even more info on this matter, and more importantly, a circuit diagram for the "LifeBoat".

Anyone tried this successfully at home already? Can you point me to more information and give advice: i want to know if the data extraction is feasible and doable for a person with reasonable DIY and soldering skills.

If you have the Customer Data Migration Tool, it is actually very simple to use. It does not require any soldering or "DIY" skills. You basically just need a P5 pentalobe screw driver, andto  be able to remove the six screws that secures the the lower case.

Note that you say that you're thinking of using it on a water damaged computer. In that case you would want to use a multi-meter to first check that the power lines used by SSD power management IC (and the "Life boat" connector itself) haven't been shorted by the damage.


Can’t get MacBook a1181 to boot I have two MacBook a1181’s, a black one and a white one. I bought the first one (the black one) a while ago and haven’t had any problems with it. I installed Devuan on it and everything was good.

The second one (the white MacBook) arrived today and unfortunately I haven’t been able to get it to boot into anything. When I turn it on I get a flashing folder icon with a question mark. I read online that it’s either a bad hard drive or RAM so I tried swapping them both out with the parts from my black MacBook with no luck.

Then, after putting the original hard drive back something changed and the hard drive showed up but with the name Windows and when it would boot it would say no operating system.

I figured that if I got this drive to be identified I could install Linux on it from the black MacBook and then just put it in the white one and it would boot. I installed Linux and put the drive in and now it just sits at a white screen with a mouse cursor.

How can I proceed to to get this MacBook to boot into any OS?

Not all A1181's are the same. A list of the specs for various A1181's are given at this website. Other than some being black and others being white, here are some other differences.

Early models have "Core Duo" processors. These are 32 bit machines. These machines can only run 32 bit BIOS or EFI booting operating systems.
Middle models have "Core 2 Duo" processors. These are 64 bit machines, however the EFI is still 32 bit. These machines can run 32 bit or 64 bit BIOS booting operating systems, but only 32 bit EFI booting operating systems.
Later models have "Core 2 Duo" processors with 64 bit EFIs.  These machines can run 32 bit or 64 bit BIOS booting operating systems, but only 64 bit EFI booting operating systems.

It would be helpful if you could list the ID and/or family for both Macs.

According to the website, possible IDs and corresponding families for the A1181 are given below.

    ID                        Family
----------     -----------------------------------------
MacBook1,1     (13-inch)
MacBook2,1     (13-inch, Late 2006), (13-inch, Mid 2007)
MacBook3,1     (13-inch, Late 2007)
MacBook4,1     (13-inch, Early 2008)
MacBook5,2     (13-inch, Early 2009)

I should also note that some early Macs needed a firmware update before being able to run BIOS booting operating systems. See: About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers.

Note: BIOS booting normally does not require a MBR table. However, Intel Macs require a well formed MBR table in order to BIOS boot. This does not present a problem when using BIOS/MBR arrangement. Many BIOS booting Linux distributions use a BIOS/GPT arrangement. If you choose this arrangement, then you must hybrid partition the boot drive. This is a firmware requirement, even if the booting operating system will not use the values stored in the MBR table.


OSX won't boot after re-install Got the flashing folder of death.

Tried verifying, repairing the disk. No luck.

Restored from Time Machine. No luck.

Rebooted with Command-Option-P-R. No luck.

The drive as far as I can tell is working properly....

Reinstalled and it still won't boot off the hard drive. How can this be the install worked fine?

Even went as far as putting a bootable USB flash drive and it sees that.

I tried pressing the OPTION key on boot but it only sees the USB drive.

This is madness. How can OSX install on a drive BUT then fail to boot from it?

(I could understand if the drive was failing, but this makes no sense)

I can replace the drive but that seems silly and might not be the issue in the first place.

Sounds like the partitioning is damaged.  If you can boot from OS X on an external drive, use Disk Utility to "Repair Disk".  If that reports OK, the Repair the partition with the OS X installation.

The particular kind of Mac might be helpful, and the OS versions.

Also, for Intel Macs, the disk must be partitioned with GUID.  If its gotten to be Master Boot Record or Apple Partition, it won't see the disk as a boot source.


Folder-based photo management software for local use You'd think that there is more than enough photo management software out there. But for quite a while now, I have struggled to find Mac software suitable for my requirements.

The management software will be used on normal everyday pictures (holidays, landscapes and so on) as well as a large collection of documentary pictures with little artistic value from renovating protected old buildings. Working with those documentary pictures will require extensive tagging and search functions.

I don't strictly require built-in editing and raw conversion functions.

My requirements list:

Native Mac program (or at least very well ported interface from a different OS)
Pictures must be stored in a folder structure on disk, not a monolithic catalogue
This folder structure must follow changes made within the software, and any changes made in Finder must be tracked and represented in the photo manager
The manager must be able to write geotags, textual tags and timestamp corrections directly into the images (in order to make the metadata available to 3rd party apps -- sidecar files like those used by Darktable are useless there)
Geotags must be viewable on a map
Metadata and changes to the image catalogs must be easily syncable using classic, non-cloud tools like rsync, unison, Bittorrent Sync or SyncThing.

Bonus points for:

support of other operating system
hierarchical tags
user-definable integration of external editing tools

Apart from KDE's really great DigiKam, which suffers from a not-yet-perfect Mac port, I did not find any software fulfilling those rather simple requirements. Perhaps someone here can point out what I missed.

I evaluated the following programs:

Digikam. Great. It's just heavily using the KDE ecosystem, which makes building the port on a Mac hard. It's also badly integrated in the OSX desktop.
Aperture. That's what I'm currently using. Syncing catalogues between machines using rsync is not trivial. Managed libraries don't properly follow changes done in Finder. Tagging is unnecessarily complicated.
Lyn. Small, lean, Mac only. Rather rudimentary. Doesn't fulfil requirement 4.
Darktable. See no. 4 above -- sidecar approaches are impractical for me, and "darktable will never ever open source files for writing".
Capture One. Fails on point 3, and the support told me that syncing between machines should only be done through manual import/export of sessions.
Media Pro. Same as above.
Unbound. Very rudimentary. No external tools configurable. Needs Dropbox as sync backend.
Pixa. Seems to be developed only very slowly, which does not make me feel good about its longevity. Doesn't really seem like photo management, but rather more like digital asset management. No geotagging.
Apple Photos / Google Photos. Cloud based. Too rudimentary.

Edit: November 2019 additions

Skylum Luminar 4. Represents the folder-based structure on disk perfectly in its DAM component. Offers flexible plugin management. Can not handle geotags at all, however, and lacks a proper EXIF/ITPC editor.

So far, those are my test results. Is there anything I'm missing / got wrong? Is there any software available that would fulfill my requirements?

You basically have written the summary requirements for Photo Mechanic.

It's a folder based, workflow tool that is cross platform and highly optimized for managing images. Whatever changes it makes are stored in metadata in the images so you can edit them elsewhere as you please and it won't break import/export like library based workflows cannot do.


Macbook Pro can't wake up (resume) after the battery dies 2015 15" Macbook Pro, AMD Radeon graphics.

When the battery runs out and the macbook is reconnected to power, I press the power button and the screen turns on. It shows a corrupt, purple and green checkerboard pattern across the screen and does not respond to input. I have to hold the power button down to turn it off and then press again to turn it back on, which starts a fresh boot and obviously does not save the previous state (though previously opened windows get reopened as designed).

I also experience some occasional graphics flickering and screen shaking/tearing, both on battery and while connected to power, which could be related.

Are these known issues with the newer AMD Radeon-based Macbook Pros or is my graphics board dying?

Two unrelates hardware issues - sounds like a hardware repair might be the logical first assumption.

Also - tearing is a performance issue, so without sitting in front of three of the same hardware, it's hard to know if yours is different than the pack. It could be your expectations are higher than the hardware can perform or it could be a really bad glitch and something that's clearly defective. I've seen both in the past, so I'd focus on getting the hardware power logs and the start up chain / logging / issue and the rest might be a moot point if the SMC isn't starting the hardware reliably. Assuming a problem there, whatever repairs that will replace the GPU/CPU/SMC in all likelihood.

Lastly, portable Macs do not have an automatic "power on" after electricity comes back on, so you could test that the Mac is still functional after a low battery event by letting it run down and schedule a start up or wake for a time when you know you will have it plugged in to power after it shuts itself off. If you're close to an Apple store, have them do the service, but if you really want to triage this yourself, that's how I might start figuring what's up with the SMC and power state after a low voltage shut down and reconnect to power.


Macbook Display Screen Coating I've noticed a black color coat on my Macbook screen.
 It's a very  thin layer coating and whenever I tried to
 clean the display,  I got some carbon black dust sticking
 to the cleaning cloth.

I would like to know whether I can
 re-coat my screen since the layer has been deteriorating ever since.

PS: MacbookPro is 15inch 2013 late December model.

This is a known issue for Retina MacBooks and Apple is aware of this.
You can search for 'staingate' for more info.
There is a replacement program going on, you can read about that at MacRumors website.
You'll have to make an appointment at a genius bar where they will check if it is still covered.

Apple will replace Retina displays on affected MacBook or MacBook Pro models for free within three years from the date of original purchase, or one year from October 16, 2015, whichever is longer. Affected customers that have already incurred out-of-warranty costs may be eligible for a refund through AppleCare support.
Affected customers can book an appointment with a Genius Bar or visit an Apple Authorized Service Provider to determine if their MacBook is eligible for coverage. Apple does not currently plan on announcing the Quality Program publicly on its support website, according to sources, but may contact some customers directly.


Equivalent to Alt + dot on terminal On linux consoles I always use Alt + . to get the last argument of the previous command in history.

for example if I had

ls /tmp/test

as last command, and if I type

rm Alt -

this will result in

rm /tmp/test

On an Apple Terminal, this doesen't work, is there an alternative?

I found an answer here:

Equivalent to alt-. in terminal

  ESC + . inserts the last argument and is the direct
  equivalent to Alt + . on Linux

  see https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/85152/31470


Can I use AppleScript to paste a web text clip appended with source attribution and a timestamp, while maintaining embedded links? Complete newbie here so please let me know if I need to clarify or otherwise improve my question. I have searched multiple times using different keywords and have not been able to find a solution to my issue, or make the ones I hoped were a solution work for me.

I want to create a AppleScript script that when triggered will allow me to paste a web text clip appended with source attribution and a timestamp, without loosing any embedded links within the selected text.

Here is a screen shot of what I want to achieve:

Not knowing much of anything programming wise, I was able to cobble together the following AppleScript script after a few days of web searching.

-- clear the clipboard
tell application "Finder"
    set the clipboard to " "
    delay 0.1
end tell

-- copy selected text
tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Safari"
            keystroke "c" using {command down}
            delay 0.1
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

-- open and paste web clip into specified TextEdit file
tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    open "Macintosh HD:Users:Web:Documents:Web Text Clips:Web_Text_Clips.rtf"
    delay 0.2
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "TextEdit"
            keystroke "v" using {command down}
            delay 0.1
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

-- get, format and copy source info and timestamp
tell application "Safari"
    activate
    set theLongDate to current date
    set theWindowName to the name of the front window
    set theURL to the URL of the front document
    set writeString to "- - - - - " & return & "From: " & theURL & return & "Page Title: " & theWindowName & return & "Date: " & theLongDate
    set the clipboard to writeString
end tell

-- paste source info and timestamp into predefined position of the specified TextEdit file
tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "TextEdit"
            keystroke (ASCII character 31) using command down
            keystroke return
            keystroke return
            keystroke "v" using {command down}
            delay 0.1
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

-- copy content of specified TextEdit file
tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "TextEdit"
            keystroke "a" using {command down}
            keystroke "c" using {command down}
            delay 0.1
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

-- delete content of specified TextEdit file
tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "TextEdit"
            keystroke "a" using {command down}
            keystroke "x" using {command down}
            delay 0.1
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

-- save specified TextEdit file and quit TextEdit
tell application "TextEdit"
    save "Macintosh HD:Users:Web:Documents:Web Text Clips:Web_Text_Clips.rtf"
    quit
end tell

I was forced into this workaround because when I used the set command the embedded links got expunged from the selected web text.

While this script does work, it is quite cumbersome and slow. I have tried all sorts of different things, including some shell script commands, but so far nothing else has worked.

Can anyone help me in creating a more elegant and faster script that still maintains the embedded links in the selected web text?

I am running macOS Sierra 10.12.6.

I'm a bit confused by your script, it seems to copy and paste and delete and save, so if I misunderstood your intended use, I apologize. It seems to me like you want a file saved in that Web Clips folder that just contains what you had selected in Safari with the link, title, and date. I would write this as an HTM file rather than a text file, and here's the code I used with inline comments.

set myFolder to ((path to users folder) as text) & "Web:Documents:Web Text Clips:"
set myFile to myFolder & "Web_Text_Clips.htm"

tell application "Safari"
set theLongDate to current date
set theWindowName to the name of the front window
set selectedText to (do JavaScript "(''+getSelection())" in document 1) --use javascript to get what part of the page is selected
set theURL to the URL of the front document
end tell

set myFolder to POSIX path of (myFolder as alias) --convert to posix path for use in the command line
set myFile to quoted form of (myFolder & myFile) --append the file name to the end of the file path
do shell script "touch " & myFile --create the htm file

--Add content to the HTM document
newHTM(myFile) --Add the HTM doctype and opening tags.
addElement("p", "--------", myFile) --"p" is the htm tag for a paragraph, and we want this to be it's own paragraph.
addElement("p", "From: " & theURL & "", myFile) --a bit more complex, adding a paragraph with a link ( is the link tag)
addElement("p", "Page Title: " & theWindowName, myFile) --Adding a paragraph for the Page Title
addElement("p", "Date: " & theLongDate, myFile) --Adding a paragraph for the Date line.
closeHTM(myFile) --Add the closing HTML tags.

------------HANDLERS------------
on newHTM(filePath)
    do shell script "printf '<!doctype html>\n\n\n\t<title>Web Clips</title>\n\n\n\n\n\t' > " & filePath
end newHTM

on closeHTM(filePath)
    do shell script "printf '\n\t\n' >> " & filePath
end closeHTM

on addElement(elem, htm, filePath)
    set htm to "\t\t<" & elem & ">" & htm & "</" & elem & ">\n"
    do shell script "printf '" & htm & "' >> " & filePath
end addElement

This script preserves the link by using HTML to "embed" the link. It will open in your default browser. It appeared to me, from your script, that this file only contains the latest web clipping, so that's how I wrote it. If, however, you want this file to contain a list of web clippings, the script would need to be edited. Either way, I hope this gives you a good start. For readability, I put the adding of html code in handlers below the body of the code.


Issue with Siri suddenly misunderstanding what I say Siri used to be great for voice dictation on my iPhone. All worked well. One day, though, she started misunderstanding one specific sentence, namely "à la ligne" (new paragraph, in French). since then, she transcribes by writing "/" instead of actually starting a new paragraph.

I tried resetting her database (turning here on and off in setting, as well as "voice dictation"), but nothing works.

I'm using the latest iOS 9.01 on a non-jailbroken iPhone 6.

Any idea what's wrong, and how to fix this?

Thanks!

Try resetting her database again, but then force restart (hold lock button and home button together until an Apple logo appears) afterwards.


Investigating Apple Motion alternatives I'm using iMovie, but i'm looking to replace the cheesy standard leaders.

I've read that you can use Apple Motion as a standalone tool to generate leaders and tranparent animations, export them to 4444 format and include them in iMovie.

I realize some functionality is lost without final cut pro but i think i do not (yet) need FXP (plus, i'm saving for a rMBP)

Are there any alternative apps that i'm overlooking for creating custom leaders/trailers before i shell out $50 ?

Here is a list of alternatives to Apple Motion. It seems to me that most of the alternatives are 3D animation/modeling.

Adobe After Effects ($20/month, or $699)

  Adobe After Effects is a digital motion graphics, visual effects and compositing software package published by Adobe Systems, used in the post-production process of filmmaking and television production.

After Effects is your best alternative to Motion, in my opinion. However, it costs a lot more than Motion. Just stick with the $50 Apple Motion and you'll be fine. After Effects has great motion graphics, but there's also a whole lot more to After Effects than just motion graphics.


Changing keyboard input language on Mac OSX How do I change (switch) the input language in Mac OSX  (English->Russian->Hebrew).
In Windows it is done by pressing alt-shift.
What is the equivalent in OSX ?

Go to  > System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources.

Make sure an entry for each of 'English', 'Hebrew' and 'Russian' are checked. (I don't know which encoding you'll choose, e.g. 'Hebrew' or 'Hebrew - QWERTY'). Also ensure the uppermost box, 'Keyboard & Character Viewer' is checked.

Now you'll have something that looks like this:

You can select your language with the mouse or you can activate keyboard shortcuts, as seen below:

Both these keyboard shortcuts are already taken by other functions. These are functions that I use far more frequently than when I want to, in my case, shift between 'Australian' and 'Thai'. So in my case it's not worth making a keyboard shortcut to switch languages. This may be different for you however.

If you wish to activate, say, ⌘Space, you'll first need to disown that from whatever is currently using it. In my case ⌘Space opens a Spotlight search box and I use this all the time.


How to restrict the level of privileges of applications on jailbroken devices? This question is related to this other question.

After you have jailbroken your device, you have root access to your device and so do apps that you install.

Can you change the account that an application runs with after you have installed it? This would allow to use an account with less privileges.

If it's possible, then how do you grant/revoke access to data (address book, emails, settings) and APIs (install keyboard hooks, issue network request)?

Someone would have to write a sandbox for jailbroken programs, which would be extremely ironic, because the point of jailbreaking was to escape the sandbox. Normal apps still run under the mobile user when you're jailbroken, though, so there's nothing to worry about there. All jailbreak packages have full access to anything, and there's currently nothing you can do about that. Just play it safe, and only install trusted packages from reputable developers/repositories. A related question that I answered on the same subject can be found here.


How do I use two different desktops on two different monitors with Lion? So I want to use two different desktops on my two different monitors in Mac OS X Lion. The only options I can find are extended desktop and mirror desktop.

Is there any way to use two desktops simultaneously and pin one to each monitor? Either a native OS X functionality or (cheap) third-party solution?

The reasons for desiring this are essentially so I can have the two monitors functioning completely independently of each other. I would like two menu bars (the program SecondBar achieves this to a limited extent) and two docks (I haven't found a good program to do this). I would also like the ability to, for instance, play a game on one monitor while have the other free for browsing and typesetting.

(I have considered using a VM program like Parallels or VMware to create a second instance of OS X and pin the VM to my second monitor, but I would like something a little less memory intensive if at all possible.)

You wouldn't need two VMs running, merely one running while you use the host OS X would accomplish what you want.  It would be easier to give a suggestion based on a more detailed explanation of what you wish to do or accomplish.

If you want something to not disappear when changing spaces try using the "assign to all" option.

From comments below, option for multiple docks

dockit
dockshelf


How do I use tabs in Mac Mail on El Capitan? I want to use tabs when composing new emails in Apple Mail on my Mac. I searched here and read this question:

How can I use tabs in Mac Mail?

The thing is this question says it’s a new feature in macOS Sierra, but I am convinced that in the past I used tabs in Apple Mail. I know it wasn’t in Sierra because my Mac runs El Capitan and has never had Sierra installed.

Did I just imagine this? Was it a dream? Or is this actually possible in El Capitan too?

Yes, it’s possible. You just need to run Mail in full screen mode first. You do this by clicking on the green button at top left of Mail’s window.

Once in full screen mode, create a new mail message as usual. This opens the New Message window, but now whenever you do commandN it’ll add a tab to the existing New Message window for your other new message.


Does plugging in an iPhone/iPad make a difference to its battery lifespan? I've been led to believe there's a difference between how a MacBook and an iPhone/iPad consume power: when a MacBook with a fully charged battery is plugged in, its components draw power directly from the charger while when an iPhone/iPad with a fully charged battery is plugged in, its components still draw power from the battery which is frequently recharged to keep it at 100%. Hence, it doesn't make a difference to the battery's overall lifespan whether the iPhone/iPad is plugged in while you use the device.

Or in other words, if I'm using an iPhone/iPad and am not worried about battery life, there's no point in plugging it in anyway in the hope of prolonging battery lifespan?

Is this correct or have I been misinformed?

Deeper discharge/charge cycles shorten an Li-Ion battery's lifespan faster that shallow ones.  (e.g. One 100% cycle is more wearing that four 25% cycles, etc.)  Therefore, keeping an iPad or iPhone on a charger or always topped off between short uses will tend to lengthen the battery's total lifespan by reducing the number of deeper cycles per annum, all other thing being equal (such as total time of use).

"Calibrating" has almost nothing to do with the battery lifespan.  It's mostly needed to help the battery gauge icon behave more accurately.  Once or twice a year is probably good enough for that purpose.


Photos not synching, macOS 'optimize storage' not working, and 175GB of photos downloaded for no reason Suddenly, my Mac stopped synching my photos:

I have tons of free space on iCloud, and optimize storage is turned on:

There's no way that photos should take up 170 GB of space when there's only 250 GB in total of photos on iCloud:

I have tried:

Turning this function on and off in Photos.app
Rebooting apps and the device
Using all available options in the 'manage storage' dialog
Turning off synching entirely: System Preferences > Internet Accounts > iCloud > Photos (uncheck) > Delete from my device

What else can I try to fix this bug?

Running the latest version of macOS.

Update: Super buggy. I tried turning off iCloud completely, and now get this — 170GB of undeletable "Other" photos stuck on my Mac:

I expected more paying for a premium MacBook Pro and $120 a year of iCloud synching. Do I need to take extreme measures and reinstall macOS completely?

There’s no reason to take extreme measures.

When was the last backup?
Set up Time Machine if you have no backup, exclude system files, it only backs up live data and not snapshots.
Make a new user account and give it admin.
Turn off automatic log in and reboot.

Now you can use the new admin account to examine if pruning local snapshots clears all the data. If not, delete your old user account (it’s safely backed up) and repeat cleaning snapshots. Only then would I consider an erase install if the storage allocation doesn’t make sense.

To get control of iCloud, you can restore your user account from backup while the internet is disabled, then disable cloud sync and learn why full automatic didn’t give you the results you expected. Nothing seems fundamentally wrong other than perhaps not considering APFS snapshots and needing to gather some info on how much photo data is actually reported as being in the cloud.


Is there a way to assign a keyboard shortcut Outlook 2011 to move email to a specified folder? In Microsoft Outlook 2011, I'd like to be able to quickly highlight an email and move it to a folder (e.g. "Processed") with a simple keyboard shortcut.

By default there isn't a shortcut to move an email to a specific folder. You can use SHIFT+⌘+M to choose the folder.

However, you can create an Applescript and then map that to a shortcut through System Preferences > Keyboard. Here is a sample script that will move emails to a folder named Processed (here is the original source if you would like to learn more).

You can save the file wherever you'd like, but the default Outlook scripts are saved in:

 ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Outlook Script Menu Items/

Note: as of Office 11 SP2, this location has been changed to:

 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Office/Outlook\ Script\ Menu\ Items/

To create the shortcut, open up the Keyboard Shortcuts panel, and under Application Shortcuts hit +. It will give you a list of applications to choose from (Outlook 2011), and then for the menu title make sure you choose the name of the name of the script as it appears in the menu.


How to check what is preventing MBP from graceful shutdown/restart and fix it? [Now with log entries] And hopefully really final edit: After upgrading to Mountain Lion, the issue seems fixed, hopefully permanently.

Final Edit: The problem doesn't happen all the time, sometimes I have to wait several days for it to occur. So it is hard to test under different conditions (i.e. safe mode or with some software disabled) and I've decided that it is not worth spending days truing different conditions in order to on fix this. Graham Perrin's suggestions were the most helpful for finding specific information about restart/reboot issues, not found in the general-purpose logs.

Some log entries are in Edit at the bottom:

Mid-2010 15in MacBook Pro, running OS X 10.7.4. Sometimes when trying to restart or shutdown the machine, it won't work -- the screen turns gray, the spinning wheel shows, but the machine doesn't power down so after several minutes I have to shut down the machine by pressing the power button.

It doesn't happen every time, and I can't relate any software used during the session with the problem. In fact, when testing this, sometimes this would happen when I try to shutdown the machine immediately after starting it.

How to check what is preventing the graceful shutdown/restart? I assume that I have to look in some log files, but I am not sure which ones and what to look for.

Edit: Added the verbose start/shutdown setting in the nvram as suggested by Graham Perrin,  and eventually the machine got stuck on reboot. I saw some verbose entries on the screen and after rebooting found them in in /var/log/launchd-shutdown.log. It appears that WindowServer may have something to do with it. Below is the end of that log file with the first 3 columns removed (the first had some increasing integer numbers, the second had entries of "1" and the third -- "com.apple.launchd"):

234 com.apple.WindowServer   Dispatching kevent callback.
234 com.apple.WindowServer   Job has not died after being killed 2 seconds ago. Simulating exit.
234 com.apple.WindowServer   Dispatching kevent callback.
234 com.apple.WindowServer   EVFILT_PROC event for job.
1 com.apple.launchd         KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x107827a90 data = 0x0 ident = 234 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags= 0x0 fflags = NOTE_EXIT
234 com.apple.WindowServer   Reaping
234 com.apple.WindowServer   Simulated exit: <rdar://problem/9359725>
234 com.apple.WindowServer   Exited 22.016701 seconds after the first signal was sent
0 com.apple.WindowServer     Exited while shutdown in progress. Processes remaining: 0/0
0 com.apple.WindowServer   Job was last to exit during shutdown of: System.
0 com.apple.WindowServer    Total rusage: utime 0.000000 stime 0.000000 maxrss 0 ixrss 0 idrss 0 isrss 0 minflt 0 majflt 0 nswap 0 inblock 0 oublock 0 msgsnd 0 msgrcv 0 nsignals 0 nvcsw 0 nivcsw 0
0 com.apple.WindowServer  Closing receive right for com.apple.windowserver.active
0 com.apple.WindowServer  Mach service deleted: com.apple.windowserver.active
0 com.apple.WindowServer  Closing receive right for com.apple.windowserver
0 com.apple.WindowServer   Mach service deleted: com.apple.windowserver
0 com.apple.WindowServer    Removed
1 com.apple.launchd      System: No submanagers left.
1 com.apple.launchd    System: Removing.
1 com.apple.launchd   System: Removing job manager.
1 com.apple.launchd    System: Userspace shutdown finished at: Wed Aug  1 08:53:12 2012
1 com.apple.launchd   System: Userspace shutdown took approximately 22 seconds.
1 com.apple.launchd   VM statistics (now - orig): Free: 28472 Active: -21833 Inactive: -1038 Reactivations: 0 PageIns: 25 PageOuts: 0 Faults: 1654 COW-Faults: 335 Purgeable: -849 Purges: 0
1 com.apple.launchd   System: Stray process at shutdown: PID 234 PPID 1 PGID 234 WindowServer
1 com.apple.launchd       System: About to call: reboot(RB_HALT).

Complementing other answers …

Observe verbose mode during restart or shut down

Mac OS X: How to start up in single-user or verbose mode

– if you start in verbose mode, then restart or shut down will be similarly verbose.

Hint: if things in verbose mode seem to not progress beyond a certain point, allow maybe five minutes before either:

forcing a restart (Command-Control-power); or
forcing a shutdown (press and hold the power key).

If a forced restart does not succeed, that could be another clue to the cause of the problem(s).

A related question, albeit not problem-oriented: Can anyone interpret verbose shutdown messages?

The problem-oriented case here should be easier to resolve for lupincho. Fewer tea leaves.

To start in verbose mode without keying Command-V

A preference can be stored in NVRAM. Enter the following command in Terminal, and be prepared to enter your admin password:

sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

The next start of the system will be verbose.

sysdiagnose

Before each restart or shutdown, in Terminal:

sudo sysdiagnose

It's time consuming, but you need not investigate the results of all runs. Pay attention only if a problems arises.

For a case such as lupincho's:

the run of sysdiagnose may reveal a problem before a restart or shut down
the end result of sysdiagnose may be of interest following a forced restart or shut down.

More specifically: if a run of sysdiagnose fails to progress beyond a certain point, knowing that point can help to gain a sense of the underlying problem.

During the run you can use the following key combination, repeatedly, to see whether things are progressing:

Control-T

For the allmemory part of the sysdiagnose routine, Apple's two minute estimate may be wildly inaccurate. Be patient.

If you suspect that sysdiagnose fails to progress beyond a certain point, then key:

Control-C

If repeated use of Control-C fails to abort sysdiagnose, then (in my experience with Mountain Lion) it's almost certain that an attempt to restart or shut down the operating system will fail.

Shutdown monitoring

In Finder, go to:

/private/var/log/shutdown_monitor.log

This file is typically empty, but may contain items of interest following a problematic shutdown. (I have little experience in this area.)

If the only stray process at shutdown is WindowServer

It's not unusual to have stray processes at shutdown. A stray can be problematic only if it is not killed.

If you suspect that WindowServer is not killed, and that this particular stray is contributory to shutdown failure: ask yourself whether any third party software makes nonstandard use of the WindowServer process.

Quick Look of a GrabFS view of WindowServer on Mountain Lion, with two displays:

If Lion is similar, then my gut feeling is that the cause of shutdown failures lies beyond WindowServer.

Guesswork, based upon results of launchctl

Whilst the machine is running normally, what response to the following command?

sudo launchctl list | grep  --invert-match com.apple

Wonder whether any non-Apple software is contributory to the problem. Anti-virus, anti-malware software?

Following an upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion

Aim for:

/private/var/log/com.apple.launchd/launchd-shutdown.system.log

It seems the default is one log per shut down, with a maximum of two so there's also:

/private/var/log/com.apple.launchd/launchd-shutdown.system.log.1

Following any forced restart or forced shut down, you might choose to set aside a copy of the most recent of the two. If force is required on any more than one occasion, you can compare files to see whether a pattern emerges.

Generally

Don't rule out the possibility of an issue with third party software, even release quality. Little Snitch may be well written and widely respected but:

when problems such as the one in this question become extended or too puzzling, any non-Apple kernel extension deserves attention.

I tested Build 12A269 of OS X 10.8 for around two weeks before it was released, with particular attention to shut down behaviours in difficult situations. Whilst I have not watched any videos from WWDC 2012, I do have a sense that Apple has worked very hard to prevent the need for force in all but the most difficult situations.

Building upon David DelMonte's answer

At least on Mountain Lion, I see the load of Little Snitch 3.0 Preview 2 (3857) very early – before shutdown logging begins. If things relating to this KEXT are similarly late around shutdown time, then maybe an issue will be not evident in the usual log files on disk.

If ever you discover the cause of the problem – with either Lion or Mountain Lion – I'll be pleased to know.

In the meantime, with big thanks for the bounty, a closing thought:

kextstat -l | grep --invert-match com.apple


Spilt one huge PDF into separate .txt files I have a PDF file of 2 years worth of journal entries that were exported from MacJournal back in 2009. I now use Day One, which allows CLI to import .txt files.

My question is, is it possible to export a PDF of formatted entries (with date) into individual .txt files of each entry separated (with the file name of month/Day/Year.txt)?

Try to first use pdftotext or ebook-convert to convert the PDF to text:

brew install poppler;pdftotext file.pdf

/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert file.pdf file.txt

Then if for example the text file has a format like this:

2012-12-31
paragraph 1
paragraph 2

2013-01-01
paragraph 1
paragraph 2

Try running a command like this:

awk -v RS= -F'\n' '{print $0>($1".txt")}' file.txt

Or if the text file has a format like this:

2012-12-31

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

2013-01-01

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

Try running a command like this:

ruby -e '$<.read.split("\n\n\n").each{|s|title,content=s.split("\n\n",2)
File.open(title+".txt","w"){|f|f.puts content}}' input.txt


What is the best way to consolidate two iPhoto libraries into one library? On the family's iMac my wife and daughter have separate user accounts, each with their own iPhoto library. My wife has asked me to consolidate both libraries into a single library for convenience.

What is the best way to do this? Can it be done with the existing software and utilities that come with Snow Leopard or is there a 3rd party utility that facilitates the process?

Thanks in advance.

There's a third party application named iPhoto Library Manager which seems to have a good reputation for merging, splitting and generally managing your iPhoto Library:


Create MacOS style screenshots with drop shadow using Imagemagick How do I add the drop shadow to any image with imagemagick to create the same effect that the screenshot on MacOS adds to screenshots when screencapture shadow is true?

Before and after pictures are to clarify the effect I am seeking.

The following appears to work. I've done it twice -- once to show the shadow more explicitly, and then once to show the desired, finished output.

# adds the shadow
convert source.png \( +clone -background black -shadow 100x40+0+16 \) \
+swap -background none -layers merge +repage output.png

# adds the additional space like MacOSX
convert output.png -bordercolor none -border 32 target.png

Caveats:

The padding on should be 20px less on the top and 20px more on the bottom; this solution is not perfect in that regard.
The OSX screenshow draws a white border around the image, including the rounded corners. I could not duplicate that.
The shadow from osx screencapture looks more blurred but I don't know how to measure the blue and calibrate the solution to that.

Highlighted shadow to show shape and blurring


Is there a non-Rosetta app for Snow Leopard similar to Hotspot Shield? Is there any application similar to Hotspot Shield that I can use in Snow Leopard without requiring Rosetta?

For those who don't know, Hotspot Shield provides a VPN access so you can browse anonymously on the web.

It doesn't rely on the same system, but the Tor Project can provides you anonymity while connected to the internet.

It fully works under Snow Leopard without Rosetta.

WARNING :

  With this kind of softwares, the final node of the system (last Tor node or the VPN company) can, technically (understand "if it wants"), see all your data going through it !

  The system grants anonymity not secure connection !

  The connection is secured between you and the last node at the minimum, the rest depends on you.

  So, always use secure connections (SSH, SSL/TLS, …) when using these systems.

  By the way, the same principle apply with your ISP, you just have to choose someone to trust !


Presentation as iPad Application? I am thinking of making use of iPad to show customers a dynamic presentation.

Customers will have access to an iPad for it and I won't take part on it, so more than a presentation it will act like an iPad application. (internal links between screens...etc.)

Which would be the best way to do it?

I was thinking of using Keynote but I'm not sure if it would be the best option.
Any other idea?

Thanks.

I'd recommend iBooks Author. It's freely available on the Mac App Store.
The interface is pretty straight forward and you can drag/drop almost anything in it.

Check it out here: http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/


Revert archived files to specified locations like Downloads, Documents and Desktop I'm working on two projects, let's call them Project1 and Project2.
This week I'll be working on Project1.
The files of Project1 on which I'll be working are stored at different place on my PC - Downloads, Documents and Desktop.

The next week I'll be switching over to Project2, Project1 will be incomplete.
Now I don't want both projects to mess up so I want to do something like move the Project1 files to a different place under 3 different alias Downloads, Documents and Desktop.

Then when I finish my Project2, I want my Project1 files to move to their original locations with some shortcut keys or a single command.

Thanks in advance!

One way to do this is to use a separate user for each project.

Another way is to not use the standard settings and put all of one project under the same directory. This does mean that you need to treat Downloads as a temporary location, when you download you then move it to a directory you use.

If these do not suit your problem I think you need to expand how things could mess up - also how are they backed up - if you go through this in detail then I think you will see you need to change your working practice


How do I link text boxes in iBooks Author? I've been trying out iBooks author, and one thing i want to be able to do is to allow text overflow from one custom text box to another. In pages this is done either by clicking the blue little symbol in the lower-right part of a text box with too much text, and link it to another, or by going to the menu format->text box->add linked text box. In iBooks Author, however, this last option is greyed out for no apparent reason, and the blue link symbol never appears. Any suggestions?

Using the Botany sample, the text boxes seem to work as expected with the caveat that you have to intentionally click on one of the four corner handles of the text box to make the blue linking triangles appear.

I took a small video showing the controls reacting to mouse events.

From there, linking works as expected from the perspective of Pages.


Disconnecting external display without unplugging - turning off monitor doesn't work I run two external displays off my macbook pro 16" but when I'm not working, I much prefer disconnecting from them and using my MBP as my sole screen. Constantly disconnecting them from the ports is a pain in the butt (since i have one plugged into each side of the computer) and I fear it will wear on the jacks. I figured turning off the display's power would do the trick...but it does not. The displays go black (obviously) but the macbook still thinks its connected to them and I can still mouse off screen etc. What's the hack here?

One option is to use SwtichResX

  SwitchResX is the most advanced tool for Apple computers to take
  control of any screen connected to the Mac. No matter whether a
  MacBook Screen, an external monitor, a Retina display, a TV set or a
  beamer: SwitchResX can handle them all – if you want, straight from
  the menubar, a contextual menu or both. It's that easy!

It works as you need.


Removing old users with sudo in terminal Awhile ago, I removed a former staff account from a mac mini but kept the home folder in users, using the regular user management UI in system preferences. A virus scan came up with multiple threats from that directory so I opted to su to admin and then sudo remove the entire directory.

Is this wrong, to remove a user in this way?

When you removed the user account in System Preferences → Users & Groups, opting to leave the folder as is, the folder is completely disassociated with any account management system in macOS — at this point, it's just a folder. You can remove this folder, or perform any other actions to it, like you would any other folder on the system.


Escaped path in AppleScript adds leading / I have the following AppleScript that I am trying to debug:

tell application "System Events"

    set theResult to (do shell script "sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db \"SELECT data.value
FROM data WHERE data.ROWID = 2\"") & "/" & (do shell script "sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db \"SELECT data.value
FROM preferences JOIN data on preferences.key = 16 AND preferences.picture_id = 1 AND preferences.data_id=data.ROWID\"")

    do shell script "open -b \"com.adobe.Photoshop\" " & quoted form of theResult

end tell

Basically what this script does is it fetches the path of the currently displayed wallpaper on my computer and passes that as an argument to Photoshop.

The path that is fetched is in the form ~/PATH/TO/IMAGE.  This path has spaces in it which is why I used the quoted form of command to escape the string.  However, in doing so the path to the image changes to /~/PATH/TO/IMAGE and I'm very puzzled as to why it adds the extra "/" to the beginning of the string.  Because of this, the script does not run as expected.  How can I escape the path but keep it from adding the extra "/".  Is there a way to convert the path to a fully qualified path or a different way of escaping the string?

Updated version of script with correction:

tell application "System Events"

    set currentWallpaperPath to (do shell script "sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db \"SELECT data.value
FROM data WHERE data.ROWID = 2\"") & "/" & (do shell script "sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db \"SELECT data.value
FROM preferences JOIN data on preferences.key = 16 AND preferences.picture_id = 1 AND preferences.data_id=data.ROWID\"")

    if currentWallpaperPath starts with "~/" then set currentWallpaperPath to (system attribute "HOME") & text 2 thru -1 of currentWallpaperPath

    do shell script "open -b \"com.adobe.Photoshop\" " & quoted form of currentWallpaperPath

end tell

Also wanted to add that this script is only relevant to OS X Mavericks (10.9) as the wallpaper information has now moved to the database file rather than being referenced in the com.apple.Desktop.plist file as it was in previous versions of OS X.  Also, my computer is set to randomly display wallpaper from a specific folder on my machine.  The script may need to be tweaked depending on your computers configuration.

quoted form of also escapes the tilde. quoted form of "~/Pictures" returns '~/Pictures'. open interprets '~/Pictures/' as a relative path, and the default working directory for do shell script is /.

I couldn't get the sqlite commands to work, but try something like this:

path=$(sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db 'select data.value from data'|tail -n1);open -b com.adobe.Photoshop "${path/#~/$HOME}"

Or remove the tilde with AppleScript:

set p to "~/Pictures"
if p starts with "~/" then set p to (system attribute "HOME") & text 2 thru -1 of p

You can also get the desktop picture of the current space with System Events:

tell application "System Events" to picture of current desktop


Application created with Script Editor ignores the selected item on the 'tell current application' popup menu Consider the following AppleScript program:

tell the application "TextEdit" to make new document

I saved this script as an Application, and ran it successfully by double-clicking the application icon.

I then simplified the script by setting the 'tell current application' popup menu to 'TextEdit' and replacing the program with the following line:

make new document

I saved the script and ran it from within Script Editor. Everything worked OK. I then ran the application by double-clicking the application icon, but now the following error message appeared:

  Can't make class document
  Can't make class document. (-2710)

What is the reason for this behavior?

You cannot create an AppleScript application that only contains the single line of code make new document as it will not execute within the same context it does in Script Editor having made a selection from the "tell" application menu.

As an AppleScript application you need to explicitly tell the appropriate application to make new document.

Example: tell application TextEdit to make new document

If you only code make new document and save it as, e.g. Code Test.app then make new document executes as tell current application to make new document or more literally in this case, tell application "Code Test" to make new document and the Code Test.app lacks the ability to create a new document and therefore errors out.

While in Script Editor, the "tell" application menu is a handy shortcut to avoid fully typing out tell application ... and is only for testing code. It is not translated to the literal code that you must be fully type so as to be fully functional within proper context to save as an application (or script for that matter).


Does removing an iPhone from my icloud account also erase the data? I lost my iPhone 6S recently. I think it fell off my car and was crushed because it has been offline (according to Find My iPhone) ever since. I want to erase the phone and remove it from my iCloud account since the phone is gone.

However, I can't erase the phone until it comes back online. I do have the option to remove the device from my iCloud account. If I remove the phone from my iCloud account, does that also erase the data? The phone has a password on it, will it continue to be locked in case someone finds it after I have removed it from my iCloud account?

The erase command can't be delivered until the device connects to the internet. The same with issuing a passcode lock.

The device will remain unlocked, unprotected, unearned until such time as it connects to Apple's servers.

That being said, a destroyed phone is unlikely to be unlocked or even work, but there's a chance your data is vulnerable if you cannot assure destruction by locating it and shredding it (or equivalent).


Is it possible to backup iOS devices to an external drive? I have a new Mac Pro with a small 256GB SSD. I have a larger 2TB drive that I run backups to.

My girlfriend has a MacBook Air with a tiny 128GB SSD.

Our problem is our iPhones have 50GB of music, pictures and apps, so backing them up on iTunes on our boot drives would be a suicide. Right now I have an old Mac Pro with plenty of disk space I use for my iPhone but I would like to use my primary computer.

Whats the best way to have everything with iTunes/iPhoto just go to an external drive? And is it possible for both of us use the same set of drives? Could we just use an Apple Time Capsule for both of our machines? And then couldn't we just figure out how to make iTunes and iPhoto to look for that network drive to work?

If I understand correctly, you want to backup your iOS devices to a drive other than your Mac's (because they have small SSDs). It is possible to backup multiple Macs to a single Time Capsule.

Sadly though, it seems that Time Capsule doesn't support backing up iOS devices (yet. I really do hope this becomes an option soon, and I'm not the only one). Here are ways you can make sure those 50GB in your iPhones don't end up in your Mac's SSDs though.

Photos

In terms of pictures, iOS8 should have you backed up with iCloud Photo Library. If enabled, all your pictures and video will automatically be stored in iCloud, which gives you 5GB of free storage (or 20GB for $1/mo, 200GB for $4/mo).

If that is not your jazz though, you can always sync to iPhoto, but move the iPhoto library to an external hard drive. iPhoto stores all your photos a single archive, the iPhoto Library on your Pictures folder, which you can move as you please. When iPhoto opens, it will automatically look for the iPhoto Library where it last saw it, but if it can't find it it will ask you were it is, and keep working as if nothing had happened.

Backups

iTunes backups might be a little more tricky, but it seems to be possible to move the folder where iTunes stores its backups to an external hard drive, and then trick iTunes into backing up there.

I haven't tried doing this myself, but here's a post that claims you can do it and outlines the steps to follow, both for Windows and OSX. The instructions for OSX aren't too bad, as long as you aren't too scared of using the Terminal application (Applications/Utilities/Terminal). In a nutshell:

Copy ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ to a new location,
say /Volumes/~Your External HDD~/MobileSync. This directory has a
folder called Backups, which is where iTunes stores backups for
mobile devices.

Note 1: ~/ is an alias computers use for your home folder.
Note 2: Your ~/Library folder is hidden by default. You can open it in Finder by opening Terminal typing in open ~/Library.

Remove/rename ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup. We won't need it anymore.
Create a symbolic link to the new location for Backups in your external hard drive. This is basically like an alias in the old location of Backups to its new location. To do so open Terminal and type in

ln -s /Volumes/**~Your External HDD~**/MobileSync/Backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

If you launch iTunes now it should follow the symbolic link and go on with business as usual, not knowing that in fact it's now working with a folder that's on an external hard drive.

You'll need to have the hard drive connected to backup,

Hope it helps!


Apple Replaced my Gmail Image I use Chrome on my Macbook to send an email through Gmail. While in Gmail, on the top right corner I can see my Google (g+) profile image, but when I hit reply button to reply to an email, then instead of my Google image, it's the default icon that came with my Macbook Admin account (a hawk) being used.

Here is a screenshot of the issue:

This is really, really annoying and looks totally unprofessional, which makes me wondering about Apple products. I have deleted my Gmail account from the Apple's Mail app and I have also disable it from the Messages app, but still Apple's image persists.

So, how can I get rid of Apple's image appearing on Gmail? Does anybody know how those two are being connected?

NOTE: Just to note that I've used my Gmail email address to register to Apple.

Apple did not change your Gmail profile picture. What is (likely) actually happening is the following:

When you add a Gmail account to Mail.app, you can choose to sync contacts with Google. (It might even do it by default. I am not sure because it has been years since I set it up.) If you do so, all of the contacts in Contacts (Address Book) on your Mac will be sent to Google, including the contact that represents you. If you did not set up a specific contact for yourself in Mac Contacts, Apple did so and for that contact, the picture would have been the one used for your Mac user account.

When the contacts synced to Google, the one with your name, email and the hawk picture was sent along with it. Google reads your contacts and displays the icon from your contacts, NOT your Gmail/Google+ profile picture, next to the Reply/Forward box.

To test this, confirm you have a contact in your Gmail account that has your email address in it, and that it has that picture. Delete that contact and the picture next to the Reply/Forward box should return to normal. You can prevent this going forward by changing the picture for your entry in Contacts on your Mac.


How useful is spotlight? Personally, I am happy with Spotlight in the sense I just use it for finding something. But, I'm also not happy with Spotlight, as I sometimes feel it slows down my Mac pretty much. Even, I can find all the files that I need to find using PathFinder, LaunchBar, and even with find command.

Is there some case that Spotlight shines over other search tools?
Is there a way to (safely) disable spotlight? I googled to find some tips, but they all require some system change. I prefer some turn on/off method to speed my computer up by turning it off, and make use of the tool by turning it on.

Very useful as a task launcher - I use it much more often than I use the dock.


How to join an Active Directory domain in Lion? where do I begin in joining an OS X Lion workstation to an existing AD Domain (Server 2008 R2)?

Looks to me like it's under System Preferences > Users & Groups > Click on 'Login Options' > then click 'Join' button next to where it says "Network Account Server".

Then the dialog box that comes down allows you to enter the AD domain server there. Click Ok.


Force Splotlight to search a subfolder Background:

I moved the Microsoft User Data from ~/Documents to ~/Library/Preferences because I didn't want Google Drive to sync my Office files. I can run Office products fine, but I can't search my mail because Spotlight can't search my .olk14Message files (under ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/hobbes3/Data Records/Messages/).

Here is the weird part:

If I'm in ~/Library/Preferences then I can use Spotlight to search for all my mail .olk14Message, but if I'm one folder up in ~/Library or higher then I can't search for my mail... And of course I can't search for my mail from Spotlight globally (which breaks my Outlook 2011 searching).

Mail searches show up in ~/Library/Preferences

But not in ~/Library???

I've tried the following and it didn't work:

Symlinking Microsoft User Data from ~/Documents to ~/Library/Preferences
Re-indexing my entire drive with sudo mdutil -E /
Adding and removing the Microsoft User Data to the Privacy tab in Spotlight in System Preferences

Interesting results:

hobbes3@hobbes3-splunk ~ % mdimport ~/Library
2014-12-22 14:56:32.121 mdimport[2106:22241] Error loading /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Office:  dlopen(/Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Office, 262): no suitable image found.  Did find:
    /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Office: mach-o, but wrong architecture
2014-12-22 14:56:32.121 mdimport[2106:22241] Cannot find function pointer OfficeImporterPluginFactory for factory BFA4E323-1889-11D9-82C8-000A959816BE in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x7fec4b063900 </Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter> (bundle, not loaded)
(Import.Error:711) Could not create instance for plugIn 'file:///Library/Spotlight/Microsoft%20Office.mdimporter/'
(Import.Error:867) BAD IMPORTER ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ file:///Library/Spotlight/Microsoft%20Office.mdimporter/

hobbes3@hobbes3-splunk ~ % sudo mdutil -E ~/Library
/Users/hobbes3/Library:
    Error: unknown indexing state.

Spotlight considers anything in Library (all of them: /System/Library, /Library, and ~/Library) to be a "System file". (Exception: Yosemite considers /System/Library/CoreServices to be an applications folder and not a system files folder.) By default, it won't find such files unless you start inside the Library folder or add "System files" "are included" to the search terms. (If you don't see "System files" as an option, select "Other". Scroll through the list to find "System files", or instead of scrolling start typing "System files" in the search field. Optionally, turn on the check mark to add "System files" to the menu so you won't have to look for it again.)

Anything whose name starts with a period (like .olk14Message in your case) is considered invisible. Spotlight won't find anything that's invisible or in an invisible folder unless you either start in the invisible folder or add a search term for "File visibility" that says to report invisible items.

mdimport won't help here. Spotlight has already indexed even System files and Invisible files. It just won't show them to you unless you specifically ask for them.

For mdutil -E ..., you need to specify a volume, not a folder. Thus, for example, mdutil -E / would erase (and probably rebuild) the Spotlight index for your entire boot volume. You can't select anything smaller than a volume.


My new 2020 MacBook Pro is getting very hot I got this laptop roughly a week ago and have not used it for anything too computationally extensive as of yet. Using it on Zoom has got my laptop incredibly hot, yet the use on my CPU doesn't peak about 20% according to activity monitor.
Is this a defective laptop, or is it just how they usually work?

Using any teleconferencing software (Zoom, Google Meet, Cisco WebEx) puts a heavy load on the CPU and the GPU processing the video stream. My 2019 MBA's fans ramp up and the Mac gets hot when participating in a Zoom with 10 people.
My iMac at home, with a dedicated GPU and a very fast Core i9 CPU, shakes it off and barely breaks a sweat, even in Zoom calls with many more participants.
Which 2020 MBP are you using? The 13" does not have a dedicated GPU, whilst the 16" has an additional AMD Radeon Pro GPU of various flavours, depending on the build.


Display turns black after a few seconds at the login screen before logging in When I boot into Windows via Boot Camp, everything works fine.

When I boot into safe mode by holding down shift on boot up, everything works fine.

When I boot with an external monitor hooked up, everything works fine (both the laptop screen and the external monitor work). If I unplug the external monitor, it stops working, and re-plugging in the external monitor doesn't help.

Originally I was running OSX El Capitan. I just upgraded to Sierra. Still doesn't work.

I've already attempted resetting the SMC and PRAM/NVRAM.

I've very quickly clicked on a user account before the login screen goes black, no dice there either.

I had been using a program called f.lux to make my screen dark at night. I went ahead and took it off of the startup programs for my user account, and deleted the color display profile corresponding to it. Perhaps it could still be messing with things even though it's not on my user's start up programs anymore.

This happened to me about a week ago. I reset the SMC back then too, and at that time, it seemed to fix it. But now it's back.

Also, one time only, my login screen was duplicated a bunch of times and had some distortion lines. It looked like this:

I spilled water on my computer forever ago and took it somewhere to get fixed. I guess this could partially be a hardware problem, but if so, it is weird that it works in many circumstances.

Even though upgrading from El Capitan to Sierra didn't fix my problem, I reinstalled Sierra and now it works. I booted in recovery mode and reinstalled without an external monitor hooked up, if that matters.


Updating Enterprise iOS apps remotely without Device Enrollment Program I have an Apple enterprise developer account with internal apps used on iPads that are only used by employees. Currently a manager sits and manually install each app on every website from an internal website. Searching for this brings up topics relating to the apple configurator and MerakiMDM, however it is unclear what these do and if they are the right solution.

It is also unclear to me if you actually need the Device Enrollment Program in order to set up a server and use MDM.

Is there a way to update and perhaps install enterprise apps on remote devices without the need for the Device Enrollment Program?

Since no one could answered this I tested it out and found a solution using OSX Server and no need for DEP.

I turned on my macbook pro and purchased OSX server in the app store. Once installed you should be able to go to your local ip or whatever the host name is that your server assigns you, something like markuss-macbook-pro.local. Depending on your settings and network setup you may need to add this in DHCP or DNS, personally I have an Airport Express and the .local domain worked for other Apple devices out of the box.

I was unable to find this online but OSX server comes with Tutorials under Help->Tutorials which shows you how to add devices and push remotely. See the image to see what it looks like

Basically you need to enable the profile manager in the top right corner of the profile manager page and configure Device Management. Once this is done you can go to your url, something like myserver.local/mydevices/ on your iPad or iPhone (make sure you use Safari). If you don't have a valid ssl you will need to accept the insecure connection.

After this was done I was able to manage my device, push apps, change settings and wipe it as long as it was connected to my local network. It seems that you will need a valid domain and SSL certificate that points to your OSX server in order to have this done from any connection but I have not tested this final part.


How can I fix the tiny type in iOS 10 Mail? The update to iOS 10 has made type in Mail messages often appear too tiny to read. How do I restore readable type in iOS 10 Mail?

This is not a question about how to globally adjust text size (the text is fine elsewhere) or about how to zoom (that really doesn't fix the problem), but about how to make text that appears unreadably small some mail messages appear as it did in iOS 9.

Try force quitting mail (double click the home button on your device to enter the task switcher and swipe the card for mail upwards). Then re-launch mail to see if the text is appropriately sized.


Airport Extreme Guest Network and Dual-band Does enabling the Guest Network on a 4th Generation Airport Extreme have any impact on Dual-Band performance?

I have multiple 802.11/g devices that I want to use the 2.4GHz spectrum, and only occasional need for Guests.  However, when Guest access is required, it is usually required suddenly, so it would be nice to have it always on.

Does enabling the Guest Network necessarily disable the dual-band, or do these capabilities co-exist?

Guest network is just a VLAN and doesn't otherwise affect the channels or the antennas.

So - the guests could use bandwidth because they are connected, so if you ignore those effects, the guest network just tags along with the main channels and settings which doesn't have any major effects on the system.


How to keep 2017 Macbook Pro / Mojave from slowing down when not on A/C power? All of the guides that I have found are out of date.

My model identifier is "MacBookPro14,3".

One such example of "slowing down" is that when the MacBook Pro am plugged in, the application iTerm, is very fast. Whereas, when unplugged, there is a noticeable delay for every character typed. This is partially due to the use of oh-my-zsh and it's various plugins. But, the difference is night and day when plugged in or not.

It looks like the specific issue that I was having in iTerm is solved by an option in the iTerm preferences to not use the GPU renderer when on battery. It can be manually turned off.


Checking for bad blocks without formatting My Mac tends to pause every now then when preforming simple tasks such as right clicking, opening menus and typing (It actually just froze when I started typing this question.).

I've read in a few places that this may be due to bad disk blocks, and that the best way to fix this is to format and overwrite the whole disk with zeroes. Obviously, this takes time and will destroy any data I have on the disk. Is there a way to check for bad blocks without formatting the drive, or even remap the disk to ignore those blocks (ultimately fixing it)?

My Mac is pretty recent (Mac Mini late 2011), so I doubt it has anything to do with low memory or swappage.

I'll answer the "bad blocks" tack and you can ask a follow on question if you still have slowness and you have concluded that it's not simply bad blocks. (Bad blocks is almost never a slow issue - since the system can remap blocks so rapidly, that you'd need rafts and rafts of them to actually impair I/O. If you do have bad blocks, they can corrupt some of the data on the drive and a reinstall not only fixes that, it forces writes to detect more bad blocks - kind of a win/win situation).

You need no extra tools to see the health of your drive.

Open Disk Utility and select the physical drive itself (not the Macintosh HD or whatever the partition/volume is) and select info.

If you record and watch the values under S.M.A.R.T. Status and see how they change over time, you can know pretty much anything that is detectable about storage degradation or partial failure.


QuickTime - Record internal audio and not external audio My goal is to record my screen with internal audio, but leaving out external audio. I tried solutions with Soundflower software, and it works for the first part.
I cannot mute my external audio. Do you have any suggestions?

There is a shareware/free software designed specifically for this task called BlackHole which I use on a weekly basis.  Here is the developer's website and here is his project on GitHub.


How to send a password to iBook buyers? I'm publishing a textbook on iTunes Connect that has facilitator sections as HTML widgets. I'd like to password protect them as sometimes they have answers to quizzes that ideally the student doesn't see. I've created the widget and have it password protected, but I'm not sure how to communicate a password to the iBook buyer.

Is there a way to get an email from iTunes Connect or something unique to the iBook?

You don't get an email address from the buyers of your book. iTunes Connect doesn't provide that kind of information.

What you could do is write a note next to the widget with an email address where the buyers can mail to. To get the password from you.

Or the note contains a link to a website where you can provide the password.


10.6.8. Can't connect to server via cmd+k or Finder menu or command line. How to connected? My biggest problem is: cmd ⌘K (Connect to Server…) just doesn't work (neither does it exist in the "Go" menu in Finder). When I hit cmd ⌘K in Finder it just gives me an error beep (sounds more like a "boup"). I want to connect to a Windows network and it works fine on my 10.8 iMac at work (with cmd ⌘K and then typing the correct adress) but doesn't on my home MacBook white with 10.6.8 running. Why does cmd ⌘K not work here? Though on both machines the VPN connection works fine. How do I get the option to connect to a server via cmd ⌘K back?

Next thing I tried was connecting via command line with
mount -t smbfs //username:password@server\folder and
mount -t smbfs //username:password@server/folder.

Both didn't seem to work, just gave me the message:

usage: mount [-dfruvw] [-o options] [-t ufs | external_type] special node
       mount [-adfruvw] [-t ufs | external_type]
       mount [-dfruvw] special | node

Can you help me to get connected to the server?

This question has some suggestions for enabling the missing menu option (that question is about 10.7, but worth a try).

I think the command line version isn't working because you need to provide a final argument, specifying where to mount the shared directory locally.  On my 10.6.8 machine, man mount_smbfs gives this example:

mount -t smbfs //username:userpass@myserver/PUBLIC /smb/public


Remove requirement of App Store password For some reason, I messed up my iPad and now when ever I try to download an app I already purchased, I have to type in my Apple ID password where before hand I could download it straightaway. I don't have this problem on my iPhone and they both use the same account.

Is there a way to fix this so updating an app or downloading a previously purchased app on iOS does not require a password?

Also I set it so that the password requirement is 15 minutes and free apps do not require a password, but they seem to have absolutely no effect (Settings>iTunes & AppStore>Password Settings)

I'm not too sure as to what caused the problem but all you need to do is go to:

Settings>General>Reset>Reset All Settings

This will result in losing all the wifi passwords you connected to but you can just retype them. Then just update or download something (that's free of course like an already purchased app or an update), type in the password, cancel (unless you actually want to download it) and now you don't need your password anymore.


IKEv2 VPN on macOs 10.12 Sierra When I try to configure an IKEv2 VPN on macOs Sierra the following errors occur:

nesessionmanager    Failed to find the VPN app for plugin type com.apple.neplugin.IKEv2
neagent Failed to process IKE SA Init packet

From the first line it seems it's not supported at all.

Have you experienced the same issue?

In my situation, setting server-side in ipsec.conf:

 leftsendcert=always

solved the problem.

From ipsec.conf documentation:

  left|rightsendcert = never | no | ifasked | always | yes

  Accepted values are never or no, always or yes, and ifasked, the
  latter meaning that  the peer must send a certificate request (CR)
  payload in order to get a certificate in return.

Moreover, I had to add to the Keychain the root certificate and trust it in order to validate the certificate sent by the server and I read that if you have intermediate certificates you have to trust them too.


Netflow data from Apple Airport? I am interested in getting netflow data from an apple airport. Netflow is a Cisco and internet standard that is used in network monitoring. My airport extreme supports SNMP and I use that for monitoring ,but netflow would give me a list of hosts. Any idea how to get this information?

Whilst an AirPort Extreme does support SNMP as you mentioned, they do not export Netflow data (unless something has changed recently).


Dock doesn't disappear before reboot Every time when I'm trying to reboot my mac(macbook pro retina|el capitan), everything disappear except dock so the process stops and thats how my desktop looks:

Have you tried removing some of the items from your dock?  You can always add them back later. Also go under your Apple Icon in the top left corner to the force quit option and see if there is a application open somewhere you're not aware and force quit it.  Finally, look in your system preferences for the Dock. You can choose to hide the Dock to only appear when your cursor goes to the bottom of the screen. I doubt that would solve your problem though.  I have my Dock on the left side of my screen and it is hidden, that way I can see the entire screen and only access the Dock when I need to open an application.  Good luck.


How to prevent screen lock when MacBook AC adapter is unplugged? I use my MacBook connected to an external monitor via HDMI with the lid closed, and plugged in to AC power (in closed clamshell mode). If I disconnect the power cord (usually happens accidentally), the external monitor will lose signal, USB devices become disconnected and I need to enter my password and unlock the screen. Is there any way to prevent my Mac from stopping HDMI input when the power is unplugged in closed clamshell mode?

I'm aware of NoSleep and InsomniaX, they work fine for preventing sleep when the lid is closed but they don't prevent screen lock when AC becomes unplugged (with closed clamshell mode).

Just in case you weren't aware of these options, or haven't already tried this, you could change the Battery settings under Energy Saver.

Your question doesn't specify what version of macOS you're using, but here are some generic steps:

Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver
Select the Battery tab
Set Computer Sleep to Never
Set Display Sleep to Never
Set Graphics to Higher Performance
Make sure Slightly dim the display when using this power source is unchecked
Make sure Automatically reduce brightness before display goes to sleep is unchecked
Exit System Preferences

Let us know how you go.


System Preferences freezes when I go to "Security & Privacy" I'm in the process of migrating from Mojave (on the internal HDD) to Catalina (on an external SSD).

Under Catalina, if I try to go to "Security & Privacy" in System Preferences, it hangs, and becomes unresponsive until I Force-Quit it.

I've seen suggestions specific to other System Preferences panes hanging, under different macOS releases, but not specific to Catalina or to "Security & Privacy."

NEW 4/28/2020

I finally found the time to try a "safe mode" boot on the Catalina side today. At least, I think it was a safe mode boot -- it didn't say anything about safe mode, the way it does for recovery mode. I held the shift key while the switchover was in progress, up to the point where it asked for my password (both load-source drives, i.e., both the internal HDD and the external SSD, are encrypted), and then held it for quite a while after giving it my password.

It asked for my password a second time, just before the desktop came up, and the secondary screen did not come up (thereby dumping a s---load of icons onto the main screen desktop).

Attempting to go to "security and privacy" in System Preferences still threw up a pinwheel mouse-pointer. While it was doing that, I tried Disk First Aid. It was then that I realized that whatever was locking up System Preferences was also eating up lots of CPU time: performance was extremely sluggish just navigating to Disk Utilities. Once Disk Utilities came up, it showed both "SanDisk SSD" and "SanDisk SSD - Data"; I ran Disk First Aid on both of them. It appears to have found nothing.

A symptom I failed to mention before, but which may be related

When shutting down on the Catalina side (and this has been happening for about as long as the System Preferences lockup, again only on the Catalina side), Firefox will refuse to shut down unless forced. In fact, as I recall, if I'm on the Catalina side, Firefox will come up without my explicitly launching it. Even if I explicitly closed it before shutting down. Could this be a piece of the puzzle?

First, try booting Safe Mode. This allows your Mac to check itself for issues. The way to do this is reboot and press Shift.

If that doesn't work, try running First Aid in Disk Utility.

If that doesn't work, try reinstalling macOS from the Recovery partition.

What do you mean by migrating? You can just install macOS Catalina on the USB drive and then use Migration Assistant to transfer data from your Mac to the USB with macOS Catalina. Since you are running macOS Mojave, you will need to first install macOS Mojave on the USB. Then, you can update to Catalina.

Good luck!


Why is Illustrator throttled to 2% speed when it's in the background? I regularly run a .jsx script in Adobe Illustrator that saves a bunch of files in a particular format.

while Illustrator is the active app, running the script on 5 files takes 23 seconds.
When Illustrator is not the foremost app, running the script on 5 files takes more than 5 minutes.
According to Activity Monitor, Illustrator is using around 75% of the CPU when in the foreground but is throttled to less than 2% when in the background.
According to Activity Monitor, App Nap is not being used.

Why is this happening, and is there a way to change it?

I would like to be able to do other tasks while waiting for Illustrator. As it stands, I am obliged to keep Illustrator in the foreground.

Some things I have tried: I knew that

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

worked to accelerate Time Machine backups, so I though it might help in this case. It had no effect.

I also tried disabling App Nap:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES

It had no effect.

I tried TinkerTool, but I believe that it's just a GUI to change the lowpri_throttle_enabled setting. It had no effect.

This appears to be be an Adobe issue; specifically, the code-base for AI is not multi-threaded.

I was able to find a discussion in the Adobe forums that addresses your exact issue - Make Illustrator multi threaded on CPU

  Illustrator performance is awful, its slow and lumbering at all but the most basic operations. It is bound to only a single cpu thread which is ridiculous now in an age of multi core and multi thread CPU's and it has been this way for many years. It cannot handle background tasks and is completely out of parity in function and performance with other Adobe software such as Photoshop and inDesign.

Emphasis mine

Unfortunately, if the code cannot support background CPU operations, there's nothing you can do from your Mac's perspective to speed things up.  As the users in the forum all (begrudgingly) accept, the only solution is to wait for an update from Adobe.

Why this is so

Generally speaking, applications in the background are "paused" - technically, they are given low priority.  What this means is that execution stops until the CPU has an opportunity to execute some more commands; usually during an IO fetch operation.  Managing this process is called "CPU Scheduling" and is something the hardware handles for you - the application just has to allow it (relinquish control).

A common misconception of multi-threading is that things execute faster.  This is not the case, it's just more things happen simultaneously making better use of the CPU resources.  It's like having a single taxi (people carrier) shuttling people between an airport and a conference center versus four doing the shuttling.  They're all going the same speed, it's just now you're moving more.

The application being "multi-thread capable" allows the hardware to manage and schedule CPU time and being that there's more CPU that can be allocated, the background jobs get more resources to get the job done.


Automatically close non-responsive app How can I automatically close an application that is listed as Not Responding in Activity Monitor?
I have one application in particular that I'd like to be killed if it goes non-responsive. I'm thinking I could schedule a script with cron, but I'm not sure what the script would need to be.
macOS 10.7

Tap on the Stop button in the upper-left side of the Activity Monitor window (or use the Touch Bar). Select one of the following options: Quit: This is the same as choosing File > Quit within an app. The process quits when it's safe to do so.


Developer ID Installer certificate "unusable" on another iMac I asked our Team Agent to produce a Developer ID Installer certificate in order to sign our Mac OSX installer. He sent me the developerID_installer.cer file via e-mail and I added it to my Keychain. However, when I try to sign the installer I get the "productsign: error: Could not find appropriate signing identity for [common name]" error.

productsign does not complain when I sign with a 3rd Party Mac Installer certificate that I requested (which of course is not the Developer ID required by Gatekeeper), while it does complain with another 3rd Party Mac Installercertificate requested by another member and freely available for download.
Therefore I figure it has something to do with the private key of my Team Agent missing, but I don't like one bit the idea that my Team Agent has to share HIS PERSONAL PRIVATE KEY with any developer wanting to sign a Mac Installer. Is it alright to ask my Team Agent his private key? Will it solve the problem?
Can someone confirm this is the right way to do things?

[EDIT] I thougth right now that maybe the right way is to ask my Team Agent to generate a new Developer ID Installer with a .csr (CertSignignRequest) file coming from my Keychain. If my intuition is correct the .csr file contains the private key so that the resulting .cer is valid for that particular user. Is it so?

Yes, I guess that each Developer ID Installer is related to the public / private key  with which the CSR was generated.


Macbook Air M1 Display Issue Any idea what's the problem??
it was working absolutely fine suddenly became like this.

Ouch!
That's a smashed screen, I'm afraid.
You can see the impact point & the cracks radiating outwards…

Quite often these are caused by closing the lid with something trapped inside, rather than actually being struck by something when the lid is open.


Cellular (SIM card) stopped working on iPhone 5s I have an iPhone 5s whose iOS was updated to the 9.1 version yesterday night. Then, from today morning up to now something strange happened: the cellular signal seems to be completely off. The carrier text is replaced with 'Searching...' and (therefore) no calls can be made or 3G/4G access is available.

I tried to troubleshoot the problem by inserting my SIM card into another iPhone 5s, and it is working okay in there. I also tried to put another SIM card in my iPhone and it is not being detected as well.

I also tried a hard reset (=holding power + home button during 10 seconds until reboot) in the device and had no success.

After those tests it seems that the problem is with the iPhone itself and not with the SIM card.

Question is: what I can further try to do to troubleshoot it? Any hope?

Reset your Network Settings. Tap Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. This also resets Wi-Fi networks and passwords, cellular settings, and VPN and APN settings that you've used before.


How to activate voice dictation on ipad 3? There is no option like that on the Keyboard option. How can I start it, I thought it was an inbuilt feature and reading other pages they have it. The iOS version is 7.1.2

This isn't a keyboard feature, it's an accessibility feature.

So go to Settings -> General -> Accessibility

Under vision you will see there is a button called Speak Selection, just press that and turn it on. When you select text you then have an option to let it read for you.

If this doesn't help, let us know, thanks. :)