How to access data from a Mac Contacts backup: a .abbu file After I back-up Mac Contacts to a .abbu file, is there a program that lets me get at the underlying data vs. just importing them? I.e., can I open them as a text file or .CSV. Thank you!

If you have iWorks/Numbers installed, check the tutorial:

How to Convert an Address Book ABBU File to CSV
ABBU is the native file type for the Mac OS X Address Book, which means that you can only open ABBU files using the Mac Address Book application. However, you can use the iWork Numbers application to import the ABBU file, and then export the data file to a Comma Separated Value, or CSV, file format, which is a generic text file format that you can import into any address book or database application, regardless of operating system.

Also you could try the tool:

AB2CSV
Also known as Address Book to CSV Exporter, this Mac OS X utility allows the user to export his own Address Book in a CSV or VCF file.

You did mention "vs just importing them", but if you can use the first method to export them to Numbers, you can then save as .CSV.


How can I set the time before the screen dims? I've got an iPad 3 on iOS 5.1. When reading occasionally my screen will dim before I interact with the screen; it doesn't turn off and lock but it dims.

How can I lengthen the timer for this? Is it the same option as the "Auto Lock" timeout in the Settings app?

It is determined by the Auto Lock time and cannot be set independently of it. The Auto Lock can be changed in Settings > General > Auto-Lock. The longer you set it to not auto-lock, the longer the display will maintain it's normal brightness.


Where is my Java SDK 7u7 installed? I downloaded and installed Java 1.7 from this site.

When I run the Java Control Panel, I could check I have it correctly installed.

However, when I checked the Java version from command line, the version that I use is Java 1.6.

java -version
java version "1.6.0_33"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_33-b03-424-11M3720)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.8-b03-424, mixed mode)

The system directory doesn't have the 1.7.

What's wrong with this?

Where is the Java 1.7 is installed?
How can I make the Java 1.7 as default Java?

I found Java 1.7 SDK in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_07.jdk, and all the binaries in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_07.jdk/Contents/Home/bin.

And by clicking the jdk file, I could arrange the order so that Java SE 7 is executed first.

java -version
java version "1.7.0_07"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_07-b10)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.3-b01, mixed mode)

And I could also bring up the app from /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences.app

For eclipse, I could add one line in /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse.ini to teach eclipse what Java it will use :

-vm
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home/bin/java


Sync apps from computer to iPhone using iTunes I am unable to transfer apps from my computer to iPhone 5 running 6.0.1. Whenever I click on the Install button the button changes to Will Install.

Similarly, as soon as I click on the Sync button. synchronization terminates without any error at the step Determining apps to sync.

Any ideas on how I can fix this?

Sounds like you might need to do a factory reset on the phone (AFTER DOING A BACKUP!).

Best to backup to your computer instead of to iCloud, since there are some things that are not backed up to iCloud.

Alternatively, just used the "purchased -> not on this phone" feature in the app store on the device. That will also let you install any app.


I have a MacBook Air 13" and I would like to upgrade to OS Sierra I only have 5 GB of storage and I have already installed the installer but how much storage do I need on the HD to install it on there?

15 gb of free space is my general rule for starting an upgrade. However, if you can free more, that’s always better. Since you have the installer, you can deduct that from my 15 gb figure.

Also, be sure you have a solid backup and maybe even test it before you install if you know you are potentially going to run out of working space as the installer runs, migrates all apps and settings and then cleans up old and temporary files.


Other than user error, what types of attacks would SIP prevent? On this site and throughout other Apple enthusiast communities, I often see people strongly advise against disabling System Integrity Protection. This has always struck me as somewhat odd, as SIP did not even exist until recently, and it prevents a lot of tweaks that used to be relatively commonplace, such as SIMBL and OSXFuse.

If I am an enthusiast user following basic security practices such as:

Using a strong, unique administrative password.
Only granting administrator permissions to applications I trust.
Only using sudo when necessary, and only for commands I understand.

What types of attacks am I opening myself up to by leaving SIP disabled?

Put another way, is a Mac computer without SIP more vulnerable than a comparable machine running a default configuration of Windows or a common flavor of Linux?

From Apple's page About System Integrity Protection on your Mac

  Before System Integrity Protection, the root user had no permission
  restrictions, so it could access any system folder or app on your Mac.
  Software obtained root-level access when you entered your
  administrator name and password to install the software. That allowed
  the software to modify or overwrite any system file or app.

So, based on the premise of your question, a good sys admin would have used strong passwords, admin permissions to only users/apps that you trust and only using sudo when necessary.

Ok...let's look at a hypothetical, but entirely plausible scenario:  Installing VirtualBox.

Assume for a moment, that the VirtalBox site got hacked and a malicious version of VB was uploaded and made available as genuine.  Since to install VB it requires root privileges, you would invariably use sudo to install it (this is why it asks you for your password).

Without SIP, it could write to any of the protected areas as root installing itself with full admin privileges to do whatever nefarious things it wanted to do.  It's important to note that the security practices you enumerated in your question never came into play.

It's just another layer of protection.

A Mac with SIP is no more or less safe than a Windows 10 machine with System Protection enabled.  "Linux" is too broad a topic to make a statement.  However, there is Oracle "Hardened" Linux (version of RedHat Enterprise) that has these features.


Equivalent of objcopy -0 binary for Mach-O object files in macOS? Equivalent of objcopy -O binary <FILE> <FILE>.bin for Mach-O object files in macOS?

I want to dump the executable code in the __TEXT segment to a flat binary file on macOS.

This can be accomplished on Linux as follows:

objcopy -O binary <FILE> <FILE>.bin, where <FILE> would be an ELF file.

However, since objcopy isn't available (or very poorly supported) on macOS (e.g. llvm-objcopy cannot handle Mach-O objects), how can I achieve the same result?

I do that using a small Python script, included below:

import sys
from macholib.MachO import MachO
m = MachO(sys.argv[1])
__TEXT = (cmd for load_cmd, cmd, data in m.headers[0].commands
          if getattr(cmd, 'segname', '').rstrip('\0') == '__TEXT').next()
print '__TEXT segment: offset %x size %x' % (__TEXT.fileoff, __TEXT.filesize)
f = open(sys.argv[1], 'rb')
f.seek(__TEXT.fileoff)
open('__TEXT.bin', 'wb').write(f.read(__TEXT.filesize))

Save that code to a file named "extract.py" and run it like this:

python extract.py AppName

where AppName is the name of the file that holds the application program.

The program will generate a file called __TEXT.bin that holds the contents of the __TEXT segment (i.e. the executable code).


E-detailing on the iPad - what are the options and pitfalls? Hiya, I need to present some options on e-detailing on the tablet format. I'm quite keen to use iPads (as they still carry the "wow" factor imo) but I'm not ruling out Android tablets if that solution ends up being the best.

E-detailing is where sales reps take in a tailored, flashy, presentation to specific clients, walk them through it and hopefully leave with a contract in their pocket. It's a key part of the sales process and quite a lot rides on it, so the presentation needs to be absolutely top notch.

So far I think I've come up with 3 solutions to being able to deliver this via a tablet:

1) Build an app
This would be best from the POV of being able to develop a really precise and slick presentation, but it would carry cost implications, and also one huge issue I forsee is that it'd have to go through the app store! I don't think I'd want my competitors downloading my app to have a look at my sales secrets... Is there some way of getting apps onto an iPad without having to go through the store? I know it's possible for Android.

2) Build a mobile site/app
Can still make things pretty slick, and the cost will come down, but I worry about sales reps being able to work this offline if their net connection drops. If they were without wifi or in a poor reception area this could be a disaster waiting to happen. Could it all be forced into the cache? Seems a messy solution...

3) Use Keynote or some other presentation tool
Very cheap, still quite slick but lacking in wow factor and some features? Can you embed video into presentations like this?

Does anyone have strong opinions on this or answers to the issues I've raised?

1) Yes, if you join the paid Apple developer program, you can install apps on your own devices without going through the app store. You won't need to release an app to be able to use it. (It's also possible to run self-signed apps on a jailbroken device without joining the program, but that's kind of a pain.)

2) You can cache web applications locally, but there is some extra work involved in doing that. However, it's probably not as steep a learning curve as learning Objective-C. Here's a little information about developing these apps, from the excellent Dive Into HTML5. Local web apps won't be as fast as native apps, and you won't have access to hardware features, like the camera. You can't even upload photos from Safari (which local web apps always run under).

3) Yes, you can add video to presentations in the iPad keynote app. If you go this route, you might also want to get an app that allows you to fill out and sign contracts on the device. There are several of these, but I don't have any experience with them, so I can't make any recommendations.


Recursive Apple ID password procedure? One of my friends has forgotten his Apple ID password and is attempting to reset it. I told him to go to Apple's password reset page, which he has done. He opted for email authentication/reset since he's also forgotten his security question/answer.

When he does this, he receives this email.

  Dear Xxxxx Xxxxxx,

  The password for your Apple ID xxx.xxx@xxx.co.uk has been
  successfully reset.

  If you believe you have received this email in error, or that an
  unauthorized person has accessed your account, please go to
  iforgot.apple.com to reset your password immediately. Then review and
  update your security settings at appleid.apple.com >

  Questions? There are lots of answers on our Apple ID support page >

  Thanks, Apple Customer Support

At no point was he prompted to enter a new password, so I don't see how it can have been successfully reset (and to what?). Going back to iforgot.apple.com results in the same email.

I've tried resetting my own password, and I receive an email that takes me a form to enter a new password, after which I then receive the email above - so it works perfectly. What is going on?

Edit:

I've just noticed that more than one email address can be associated with an Apple account. Is it possible that the email I received that took me to the password reset form is being sent to a secondary email (he doesn't know whether he set any up)? If that's the case, surely that must mean that somebody is reading his old email account and processing the reset request for him to receive the confirmation to his primary email address? All this seems a little odd.

First, just clearing my doubt, did he try checking the mail in a popular browser or any device? , just a guess, may be due to the browser agent, he might not be able to view the image or link.

Now if this is not working he has another option to use the secret question option. If he doesn't remember that , just ask him to mail apple support with his mail id and username ,and they can help you , they really do too..


OSX 10.9 RDP to Windows 8.1 on AD I am trying to use the default built in apple RDP client to RDP into my Windows 8.1 box but I keep getting the following problem:

Remote Desktop Connection for Mac OSX - cannot verify the identity of the computer

I've tried a combination of several ways but nothing.

Everything is fine windows to windows.

---not sure what I am doing wrong here.

I was not aware that Apple shipped a native RDP app, but regardless. I use the one from Microsoft and it works great:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-remote-desktop/id715768417?mt=12

There is an older one available for direct download from Microsoft but I've used both and prefer the new one. Never had a problem with it and it's FREE.


All my Time Machine windows are black That was supposed to be my finder window with my backups over time but I only see black screens. :(

Go to Finder and select your Time Capsule in the Shared list in the sidebar. Browse to the sparse bundle that contains your backups and mount it, then give it a few seconds and open Time Machine.


How can one save iTerm2 hotkey-window settings (size/dimensions, computer monitor/display, and relative display position)? How can one save iTerm2 hotkey-window settings (size/dimensions, computer monitor/display, and relative display position) so that the said hotkey window re-appears with the same (above) settings?

I'm looking for some sort of "saving current window settings" button/feature.

I'm finding the iTerm2 hotkey window also "auto changes" its dimensions undesirably when I move said window from one computer monitor/display to another, I'm guessing to match the Arrangement settings, or maybe something else.

I'm an iTerm2 newbie, and iTerm2 Arrangements and Profiles management do not yet behave in the way I want.

When I changed the iTerm2 preferences Hotkey Window -> Window -> Style = No Title Bar (see annotated screenshot below) it started doing what I want.

I believe the original setting was Full-Width [something...]. When I change the Style setting back to a Full-Width setting, it gets wonky again, namely it starts stretching the Hotkey Window to a full width of the screen. Makes sense.

What makes less sense to me is why Full-Width was set for this Hotkey-Window profile which I had not used previously. This suggests it might (?) be a default setting. If so, I'm not sure why the iTerm2 developers/managers want it this way, it seems like it would cause confusion for other newbies like me in the same scenario.


Unable to type Tibetan Monlam font in Pages and Microsoft Word 2019 I am not able to type with the Tibetan Monlam boyig Unicode 2 font in Pages on macOS and Microsoft Word 2019.

I try to change English keyboard to Tibetan by pressing control - shift in my macbook pro (Mojave latest updated) pages and word 2019 both. But when I start to type, keyboard turned into English and English fonts appears

However it works well with InDesign CC 2019.

I am using macOS Mojave. Is there any solution for this issue?

་I don't have any problem typing Tibetan characters in Pages with  Apple's Tibetan Qwerty Input Source and the font Monlam Uni Sans Serif, as shown below.  If you provide more info about your problem as requested in the comments, someone can probably help.


iMessage no longer able to reach a specific contact My friend H. is on assignment in Asia.  We iMessage a few times per week.

Last Thursday an iMessage I sent him got rejected:

This only happened when I iMessaged him, and he was still able to iMessage me.

We tried FaceTime and that didn't work either.

He fiddled with his settings and then when I tried to iMessage him I got the iPhone error message: "This person cannot be reached by iMessage at this time"

The reason it was broken: the specific contact had changed his AppleID password and had not updated it on his iPhone.

The solution that worked for us:

He reset his AppleID (c.f.: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5624)
He updated the password at iPhone (iOS7) >> Settings >> Messages
He updated the password at iPhone >> Settings >> FaceTime
I reset my network settings: my iPhone (iOS7) >> Settings >> General >> Reset >> Reset Network Settings

He didn't have to reset his network settings, and neither of us powered our iPhones off/on.


look up a word in Dictionary.app in Terminal Is there a bash or applescript to look up a word in /Applications/Dictionary.app from a Terminal window ?

open -a /Applications/Dictionary.app/ --args word

ignores --args, says "type a word to look up"

Mac Dictionary improvements suggests ⌃ Control ⌘ Command D however I'm looking to launch the full app, not just the small popover.

You can use...

open dict://my_word

...which will open the Dictionary application and lookup the string my_word. If you want to use multiple words use something like open dict://"Big Bang Theory".

There's no output in the Terminal though.


Can I safely delete the "Deleted Users" directory after an upgrade or a data transfer? I have just transferred data from my old MacBook Air to my new MacBook Pro. There is now a Deleted Users Directory in the /Users directory. Can this be safely deleted?

The Deleted Users directory contains the contents of Home folders of deleted users, usually in the form of disk images. So unless those users had some documents/pictures you want to keep, you can delete it. Your own programs never rely on data in the Home folders of other users - you don't even have access to it, except as an administrator.


How do add new proofing languages to Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac? How is possible to add new spellchecking languages to Office 2011 for Mac?

I am referring to languages that are not listed in the relatively small (~20) default list of languages.

It is impossible, but a good place to ask might be the forums run by MS for its products:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macword


Can you see notification messages again once you tapped on the messages? If you use messaging services like WeChat, you get messages notification when you receive it. Then if you tap on them, it would get you to the app where the received message is on the top screen page.

However, I would like to see messages on the notification center again that I already tapped on. This is because sometimes my friends in WeChat retract or delete the messages, and once I land on the app, I can't see what they write in their messages.

But as long as the messages are still in the notification center, I can read it. Is it possible to see these messages again in iPhone (iOS 10)?

Once a notification is removed from Notification Center, it is no longer available. Notifications are not stored historically elsewhere.


Why did the runtime on battery drop to 30-50% with a good battery, with no system updates to blame? I have a MacBook Pro 5,1 running Yosemite 10.10.5.

After replacing the battery, it has had excellent runtime on battery for about 6 months. Then the runtime had suddenly dropped by a factor of 2x-3x. The battery still has 95% capacity remaining as indicated by coconutBattery.

Nothing seems out of place in Activity Monitor, there are no apps using significant energy, yet the idle power consumption as indicated by coconutBattery is never below 15W.

The runtime reduction did not coincide with any Apple updates.

TL;DR:  If SystemUiServer causes about as many idle wakeups as kernel_task and you have iStatMenus, turn off all of iStat's widgets, then turn them back on. If you don't have iStatMenus, suspect other menubar widget applications. The SystemUiServer should have <10 idle wakeups.

I have another hardware-identical machine running El Capitan 10.11.6, and it doesn't suffer from excessive battery drain. When comparing the Activity Monitor CPU panes, ordered by Idle Wake Ups, the entries are similar, except that the SystemUiServer entry has very low wake-up counts on the El Capitan machine, and 100x higher counts on the problematic system - on par with kernel_task and in 300-500 range.

A search for issues related to SystemUiServer prompted investigation of widgets installed in the menu bar. On both machines, the additions over stock install are: iStatMenus 5.31, Caffeine 1.1.1 and OS X's Keychain lock.

Upon disabling all widgets from iStatMenus settings pane, the SystemUiServer became idle. Re-enabling the widgets doesn't bring the problem back. Further checks after a reboot and then after a shutdown-restart cycle show that the problem didn't come back.

The battery life is now normal. At idle, with screen at minimum brightness, and google.com open in Safari 10.0.3, coconutBattery 3.5.1 indicates a discharge rate of ~10W.


Change the nature of a project with iMovie I have created a Movie with iMovie. I have just realised now that in fact I should have created an AppPreview.

Is there a way to convert my Movie into an AppPreview?

Create a new AppPreview and then copy-paste your Movie project to it.


Location of OSX Lion Mail Server sent mail I had to restore a mac mini server I use for web and mail hosting. Since the restore was due to a software problem, I had to do from scratch instead of recovering from a disk clone. I copied from the old mini backup all the mail accounts directories under /Library/Server/Mail/Data/..., and I've got back all received mail for every account, but NOT the sent mail. I guess sent mail is stored in a different location, but can't figure out where.

Does anyone know what I have to copy to restore also sent mail?

Ok, I found my error. The sent messages folder is into the same directory of the inbox, under /Library/Server/Mail/Data/..., but it's hidden From Finder and ls as it is named with a . To start the folder name - .../.Sent Messages.

My mistake was to copy the contents of the backup folder to the newly created folder without checking the presence of hidden folders. My mistake is your answer if you fall into the same "trap".


Where are g++ stl libraries in Darwin I am trying to understand how some of the data structures are designed in stl. In ubuntu, I usually open the .h and .cpp files from /usr/local/include but in Darwin (kernel version 14.3.0) I am lost, google doesnt help much either, the file structure is different. So, could you please tell me where are those libraries' .h and .cpp files in mac?

P.S. I installed XCode but I didnt like it so I uninstalled it. The g++ stayed even after uninstall. Actually I never tried checking whether g++ was there before I installed Xcode. I dont have /Applications/Xcode.app so it must be someplace else.

OS X does not include c++ compilers.

You need to install Xcode and/or its command line tools to get clang (note not gcc)

The C++ standard libraries (which do not need to be actual files  but are in libc++ which is the Xcode default library) The include files are in /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/include/c++/v1/


What's the difference between the swedish and swedish - pro keyboard layouts? There seem to be two layouts for Swedish (not counting Sami) and I don't understand the difference.

As far as I can tell the only difference is that @ and ™ has switched places on the two layouts.

Screenshots from MacOS High Sierra (10.13.4)


Delted "Space" Time Machine Backup This could sound like a really dumb question as I don't even know what I did wrong.  Please help!

I have had this LaCie backup (500 GB) for years since my friend suggested few years ago.  I have been pluging it in my mac every few months and just let it do its thing.  Luckily, I never have to retrieve any info from it.

Recently, I started using some Adobe software and now have a lot of large files in my lapto.  When I tried to back up today, I thought to myself: "I do not need all the old backups, maybe I'll just delete it all and start fresh!"

So I plugged in the time machine and just grabbed the whole folder that labeled as my mac's backup to the trash.  Without much thinking, I typed my password when a window popped and ask for administrator's password.

But now I can't backup my laptop as it says I have only 150 GB available and my it needs 300 some to backup.  Is it possible that I "accidentally" deleted my 300 some GB space from my LaCie??  I went to the trash folder trying to find "what exactly" I deleted but can't find anything and am very confused.  Please help?

Thank you very much.
Elsie

It could be that there are some files left on the time machine drive.  Try emptying the trash.  IF that doesnt work you can run Disk Utility in the Utilities folderin Applications.  Select the disk you want and partition it.  Then you should be able to do a full time machine backup.  Once that operation has completed select that drive as your time machine drive again.


Need a way to save multiple window layouts for multiple configurations of monitors When I work at my desk, my MBP is connected to two 27" displays, so I have 3 screens, and they're laid out very specifically, so my chat, mail, trello, etc. windows are all in their own spot.

I'm lucky enough to work somewhere that has a lovely cafe workspace. As such, I like to take my MacBook up there and work on a single task in the morning, which rearranges all my windows to accommodate a single screen, and that's fine.

But when I return to my external displays, I need the ability to make all my windows (at least if they're open) return where they belong. It only needs to associate an app with a location; I don't need it to remember locations of specific browser windows, etc.

Is there a setting in OSX or an app (I'm willing to pay for it) that will allow me to either associate a layout with a monitor setup, or even just to save multiple layouts that I can snap back to when I switch configurations?

There's an application call Stay that does this and works very nicely.


Disappearing folder on Macbook Air I have a few folders for uni projects in the documents section on my Mac.
One of the folder containing most of my work, powerpoints, word documents and JPEG's has disappeared randomly. The other folders are there it is just this one.

I have tried Spotlight search and everything but it doesn't show up. However if I go to open most recent files in PowerPoint they appear and when I go to save them it claims that the files still exist. I have recovered all the PowerPoint and Word documents and now backed my files to an external hard drive but I was wondering if there were any suggestions to recover the file or at least the JPEG items that I can't seem to find. They were originally Photoshop files but I didn't save them as a PSD only because they take up so much space and it was unnecessary for what I required.

Any help I can get would be amazing! Thank you!

To recover your lost files, you could try TestDisk, or PhotoRec, the dedicated picture recovery version.
There's also Disk Drill, which offers a freemium product (that seems fairly easy to use). I haven't tried it.

Keep in mind that to recover files the recommended procedure is to stop using the affected disk immediately, and ideally mounting it as an external drive on another system to do the recovery from there, as space marked as free on your hard drive gets overwritten randomly.

About files appearing on "Recent" menus: it is not an indicator that the file is still on your hard drive. It is usually a link to where the file was when you opened it.


How can I add shortcuts to Adobe Illustrator? If I try to add shortcuts to Adobe Illustrator, when I select the app (inside the folder /Applications/Adobe\ Illustrator CC 2017) I get the following message:

You cannot add keyboard shortcuts for the application
Adobe Illustrator CC 2017.app.

See image:

What can I do to add shortcuts?
I'm aware that you can do it from Illustrator, but can I do that from the Mac System Preferences?

Plainly & simply, Adobe don't want you to try fight their very comprehensive keyboard shortcut system from System Prefs. You can't even see Adobe apps in the shortcuts Applications list unless you select 'Other...'.

Presumably the reasoning is to prevent potential clashes.


iPhone SE problems on 11.0: apps freezing and voice call problems Right after update to 11.0.0 (and all further updates up to 11.0.3) my iPhone SE experience became quite painful. I have two different symptoms:

Many apps are freezing for several seconds at random moments often.
In few days after iPhone restart I can't hear my callers (and vice versa), when I restart my phone the problem is fixed for next few
days.

It's a 1 year old 64 GB iPhone SE MLM72RU/A which worked perfectly 1 month ago.

You should backup your iPhone SE with iCloud backup.
Then restore it to factory by using iTunes on a computer (Mac or PC/Windows). This will erase the entire phone (hence why a backup is recommended 1st) then it will install iOS 11 with a fresh install. Not with layers of patches, which is what you currently have). After the restore is done, and the iPhone says hello, then you can set up the iPhone and then restore from iCloud backup. That should help with the software problems.

As for the calling aspect, if it pops up again, remove and re-insert your SIM card tray into the iPhone (right hand side of the phone). If the issue persists afterwards, reset all settings.


Can one stream photos to Shared Photostream from Finder on a Mac? I know someone who is considering the possibility of setting up an iPad as a digital photo frame. Ideally, they would use Shared Photostreams to easily put pictures on the device. This is easy for any live-updating of the iPad photo frame, but the challenge comes in with the photo archives taken with a standard DSLR camera.

There are many photos, then, that they would like to easily stream from their Mac computer. Because they don't have a lot of extra space on their computer for a large iPhoto library, is it possible to:

Manage multiple small iPhoto libraries easily, and if so how would they do that?

Right now a number of the photos are on SDs cards. Could they basically convert each SD card to an iPhoto Library and then use that to stream?

Is it possible to post to a shared Photostream from a Mac Finder window?

This would absolutely be ideal. A 3rd party app would be fine. I picture something like the standard right-click -> Share.

You can use iPhoto to add to a Photostream from your Mac.

I have Aperture using mine so I cannot fully test it with iPhoto without switching it off in Aperture. But is should work the same way by importing the images into iPhoto which also allows you to organise them.

And then using the Share feature to share to iCloud. ( photostream )

The share with iCloud startup dialogue in iPhoto:

You can have multiple iPhoto libraries and open any of them as the Library to use by holding down the option/alt   ⌥  key when Launching iPhoto.

You should get a dialogue similar to this:

This means you should be able to import a SD card to it's own Library
Although it maybe easier to just organise within iPhoto and a singe Library

When selecting an image in Finder. The Share contextual menu does not offer up iCloud. So it looks like no with Finder at the moment


Recommendations for video editing + screen capturing software I'd like to make a video demo of my upcoming web application. Requirements include:

Being able to have a sound track (probably just an mp3)
Being able to 'film' screen work and chop it to bits and pieces to be embedded in the movie
Having text, photo effects, fade in-out, constant motion (similar to mac screen saver slide show) etc - nothing too fancy.
"Timeline" editor where I can combine all those elements and time them perfectly
HD output with formats I can export later to Vimeo or YouTube.

I you have recommendations to video editing/video screen capturing i'd be happy to hear those. I've never done that before, but I do have lots of graphics experience and a good eye. Should be an interesting attempt.

Try ScreenFlow ($99)

It's a little pricey, but very powerful screen capture utility. You can do the effects/transitions inside, or export and edit it Final Cut or iMovie.

This is an example clip I did a while ago with ScreenFlow and Final Cut.


Can I listen to just the audio of a movie on an iPhone? I downloaded a movie (live concert) to my iphone 4g and would like to listen to it thru my car stereo via the 3.5mm mini jack to aux port?  just want to hear the audio stream, not see the video stream

Since you can do it with headphones, you can output it to an AUX.


How big of a HDD can a Mid 2010 Mac Pro handle? I heard somewhere that the maximum HDD size that my Mid 2010 Mac Pro can handle is 4TB.  Is this correct?  If not, how big can I go?

It's not that they can't address a larger drive, it's that the screw holes don't fit the 'sleds' that the drives are mounted on.

OWC sell replacements - http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MPRODBKTLG6/ though I have no idea if they ship outside the US, or indeed if that would be worth it.

Standard sled - 4 mount points.

6TB compatible sled - 6 mount points

Pics from OWC [no affiliation]


Why are assigned PID numbers not sequential from 100? If you look at a list of open processes, either in the Activity Monitor, or in Terminal with the TOP command, why are the assigned PID numbers not all used sequentially.

For example, is this because some processes with certain PID numbers have run and since ceased running, leaving a gap in sequential PID assigned numbers of existing running processes, or are their unlisted processes not visible in the Terminal tops command, or some other reason?

My understanding that after initial start up with PID numbers 0, 1 and a few more are assigned, PID numbers are then allocated from 100. As presented by:
AD: What's the maximum pid for Mac OS X?
And Wikipedia: Process Identifier.

Process numbers are assigned sequentially, starting with 1. The kernel is sort-of considered to be process #0, but it's not really a process, so this is a special case. It does not skip ahead to 100; that's something different. The gaps you see in the sequence are indeed due to processes that have finished. Most processes are sort-lived; they start, do some specific task, and then when the task is finished they exit.

As for that "100" figure, that has to do with what happens after 99,998 processes have started. That's the maximum PID, so at that point the system has "run out of numbers" and starts re-using them starting at 100. But this'll occur only after your computer has been running for quite a while, not during initial startup. It can take months or even years without a reboot before you run out of PIDs and restart from 100.


Homebrew uninstalling fails I am trying to uninstall a cask using homebrew, but each time it fails due to (I believe) AppleScript failing to run. I believe this issue stems from my multiuser setup (I am a non admin).

Error: Failure while executing; `osascript -e tell\ application\ \"System\ Events\"\ to\ delete\ every\ login\ item\ whose\ name\ is\ \"CleanMyMac\ 4\ Menu\"` exited with 1. Here's the output:
36:93: execution error: System Events got an error: AppleEvent timed out. (-1712)

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I am just trying to remove a cask from my computer and not have homebrew still think it is installed and try to update it every blue moon. If I have to remove it manually and update homebrew manually, so be it.

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/issues/50413

The solution was described as going to:
/usr/local/Caskroom/CASKNAME/.metadata/CASKVERSION/WEIRDIDENTIFIER/Casks/CASKNAME.rb

And then from there I can remove the line that attempts to remove the login item. Then it uninstalls successfully and I can manually remove the login item.


Suspending VMWare Fusion instance that uses Boot Camp partition? I run my Windows 7 that's installed on Boot Camp via VMWare Fusion. I like keeping it open so that I don't need to wait 3 minutes until it starts up and so that I don't need to login every time I close the application. The only problem is that it uses up lot's of resources (e.g. 1GB ram) even when I'm not actively using it.

What I would really want is to have it running in the background, but not consuming any resources. Sort of like hibernating the virtual machine, such that when I start it up, ideally the same exact state is restored very quickly and doesn't require a login.

I thought that I might be able to do this with VMWare Fusion's Suspend command, but it's disabled on my version. Is suspend really the feature I'm looking for? If so, how can I enable this feature?

Update: According to the help, it seems that this is the feature I'm looking for, however it's not supported with boot camp partitions. Is there any similar feature, hack, or do you have any other suggestions which can produce similar results as VMWare's suspend feature for Boot Camp partitions?

I know that Parallels 6 can 'pause' the boot camp partition. It suspends the virtual machine and frees up system resources without actually suspending the machine i.e. hibernation, however I don't know of any hack/workaround for VMWare Fusion.

Also Parallels can suspend the machine very quickly (around 5 seconds) so you can quit the app freeing up resources. I use it quite a lot as my computing class requires Windows.

  Pausing a Virtual Machine
  Pausing a virtual machine releases the resources, such as RAM and CPU, currently used by this virtual machine. The released resources can then be used by the host computer and its applications or by other virtual machines running on the host computer.

Hope this helps.


How does iOS know if a web site is restricted? I don't add these web sites to the restricted list. Is the iPhone sending every page I visit to Apple? Random surfing will encounter a random  restricted site. In this case it renders this app broken because the 'allow' link doesn't work. Setting is currently set to limit adult content which allows me to use a white list and blacklist. I never added this site to blacklist. I only blacklist 3 sites.

How does iOS know that a website is restricted? Does it send it every page I visit to Apple?

How does iOS know if a website is restricted? Does it send it every page I visit to Apple?

See this is the BS I'm talking about:

iOS 10.1.1

Settings → Restrictions → Websites and select your preferred option for Allowed Websites.


Yosemite install app won't download after being corrupted I tried to download the Yosemite install app and make a bootable usb with Diskmaker X but it failed and told me the install file became corrupted. This caused an endless Finder crash loop that I could only fix by deleting the Install file from the bash prompt in single user mode.

Now the app store shows "an error has occurred" and I can't download the app at all:

I tried deleting the app store cache to no avail, now I'm stuck. Can anyone help me figure this out? Thanks

Well as it usually goes I figured it out shortly after posting. I previously hid it from my purchases and going into my account settings (Store > View My Account) and un-hiding it did the trick.


'Macintosh HD' not bootable anymore after installing Yosemite on a second disk So I installed a second HDD that I plan on eventually using as my main system disk and did a fresh install of Yosemite on it. The thing, is that I'd like to boot back into the original Macintosh HD so I can start going through what needs to be migrated. I can browse the disk through finder (at least the folders I have permission for), but I can't boot off of it anymore. When I go to Systems---> Settings--> Startup disk. Only the new drive is listed. Even if I reboot and hold down option, it's the same thing.

Did something happen to to the original Macintosh HD disk after installing Yosemite on a separate drive?

I'm just worried that even if I can't boot into it anymore, I'd still like to be able to pull stuff from my old home folder, but it's saying I don't have permission. What's the workaround for that? I'm using the same login credentials on the new installation that I was on the old one.

Open up Terminal.app, in /Applications/Utilities, and enter the following:

diskutil list

It should show both of your drives and give you information about partitions. You may also want to try:

diskutil cs list

On Yosemite, some of the volumes are defaulting to Core Storage, which can span multiple drives. I'm not saying you did this, in fact I rather doubt, or at least hope you didn't, was inadvertently convert both drives to a single, huge volume that's really two drives.

I use Scannerz and it comes with another drive management tool called Phoenix. In their release notes for the Yosemite version they said that some systems earlier than Mavericks may not fully be able to see or manipulate files on a Yosemite volume, but a Yosemite volume is supposed to see and be able to manipulate. In other words, if you boot from, say Mountain Lion, you may not be able to do what you want to on a Yosemite volume. I know this is true for stuff in the low level system directories, but I'm not sure it effects user volumes. Maybe they'll put something about this on their web site, but then again, maybe not. I'm not convinced this isn't a Yosemite bug of some sort.

If it looks like your volume is intact using diskutil, you might want to restart the system, and immediately hold down the alt key and keep holding it down. A list of bootable volumes should show up and with luck you should then be able to select it and boot from it. Be careful though trying to copy some stuff to the Yosemite volume because like I said the preceding paragraph, it may not work.


Syncing a music directory with a device when the device doesn't have enough space In my library I have a directory with several inteligent and fixed playlist, which I want to sync my device. The problem is that the size of the directory is too big for my device, but since I can't create a playlist of a playlist to limit the size of the directory, or limit the size of the directory itself, I'm trying to find a way to convince iTunes to fill the device with tracks of the playlist until the device is full, without throwing me several warnings. Is there a way?

When you create a smart playlist, you can select another playlist or folder as source, there you can personalize how would the selection of songs be done, etc.


"Paste and Match Style" OSX Notes Keyboard Shortcut Doesn't Work I feel like I'm taking crazy pills since nobody else seems to be having this issue. I really can't get the keyboard shortcut for Paste and Match Style to work in OSX Notes. I copy some rich formatted text, I have the caret at the point I'd like to enter the text, and I press and hold:

Option+Shift+Command+V

This is the keyboard shortcut listed under the Edit menu. When I do this, the Format menu flashes and nothing happens. The fact that the Format menu flashes implies to me that it's selecting a shortcut from that menu rather than the Edit one. The version of Notes is 3.3 (353) in OSX 10.10.5.

Manually clicking "Paste and Match Style" from the menu works properly.

What am I missing here?!

I had the same problem. It helped to switch the language (I was typing in Russian and the shortcut didn't work but when I switched to English it started working). It seems like a macOS bug, though.


Renewing iOS Developer Program with Lebanese credit card Since I emailed apple three times now and shockingly got no response at all, I am laying out my problem here.

I am trying to renew my developer program using a lebanese credit card that has a lebanese billing address. However Apple is obliging me to pay through the US store using a US credit card (US billing address!)

What am I supposed to do??

I had a case where i needed to add a credit card to the Hong Kong App Store, but i only had a Thai credit card. I called them and they said that i should just use the Thai credit card and the Thai address, even though the country was fixed to Hong Kong. I tried it and it worked. Have you tried this?


Flash Drive not mounted on macOS Mojave I have a flash drive which was formatted on Mac using the Disk Utility. But when I'm trying to replug the drive it shows up in disk utility but says Not Mounted.
I'm unable to erase as it says

Unmounting disk
Erasing
Couldn't open device.
Operation failed...

It is not visible in the finder.

I also have tried formatting it from terminal using

diskutil eraseDisk free EMPTY /dev/disk2

but this stops with following error:

Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Error: -69877: Couldn't open device

Also have tried this link but it also failed with error:

Started partitioning on disk2
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Error: -69877: Couldn't open device
(Is a disk in use by a storage system such as AppleRAID, CoreStorage, or APFS?)

After an exhausted online search and trials I'm posting here.

Thanks in Advance

I was able to fix this by changing the Micro SD adapter into another one and then unlocking the security switch in the sd adapter. That error occurs whenthere is a physical write protect switch on the drive, and it's locked in that position.


How to simulate middle-click You can simulate a right mouse-click with the magic mouse if you tap the right half of the mouse without touching the left half and THEN click.

But is it possible to achieve a middle-mouse-click with the magic mouse (on OSX 10.6)?

And How?

BetterTouchTool

With BetterTouchTool, you can create a Magic Mouse action to middle-click, such as this:

For trackpad users, BTT gives you the option to perform a 'special' middle click designed for CAD users (accessible through Advanced → Action Settings → Settings for Predefined Actions → Use special middle click mode).

  This allows people who work with CAD software etc. to perform a real middleclick using the trackpad. Use predefined action middleclick in combination with "three finger click" gesture. Click with 3 fingers then release two of them and move the remaining finger to drag the view around.


Thunderbolt Cinema Display to nonThunderbolt Macbook Pro 2010 I've been looking everywhere online to see whether my question can be answered and I still can't seem to find an answer.

I have a mid-2010 Macbook Pro with a Mini DisplayPort and I recently was given an Apple Cinema Display Thunderbolt 2 Screen at work however I believe that it's not possible to connect the screen to my laptop with the Thunderbolt 2 cable.

Is there any way to bypass this?

I don't want/need audio or anything, I just need my screen to be projected onto the screen. Is there an adapter from Thunderbolt 2 to USB so I can connect it through the USB port or to the FireWire 800 port?

Thanks!

Ultimately, the Thunderbolt Display will not work with a 2010 or earlier mac.

While Thunderbolt output ports are backwards compatible with Mini DisplayPort, the reverse is not true. So, if you had a 2011 or newer mac with a thunderbolt port, you could plug in an older Mini DisplayPort monitor, and it will work perfectly, but you cannot plug a newer thunderbolt monitor into an older Mini DisplayPort port.

Furthermore, the monitor cannot be connected through USB or FireWire, as they do not carry a display signal.

All that to say, I'm afraid the screen you were given at work is not going to function with your 2010 MacBook Pro.


How can I manage multiple Photos libraries on my iPhone (iOS) I'd like to have specific photos stored in my iPhone and specific ones stored only on iCloud, so I thought to have two different Photos libraries, one "optimised" and one not.
Is it possible? And how can I manage them from my iPhone? Or is it a way to do something like this?

It is not possible to have multiple libraries with the stock Photos app on iOS.

However, you could use the stock Photos app to hold all the photos that you want stored on iCloud, and a seperate, third-party photo app to hold the rest. The third-party app could be something like Google Photos, Flickr or Amazon Photos.


Unable to unlock login keychain on sierra in ssh I have a script which remotes ssh into a Mac.  The original script, which worked on El Capitan, would unlock the keychain with this:

security unlock-keychain -p mypassword

The above command gives on error on Sierra so I updated it to this:

security unlock-keychain -p mypassword ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain

The command above appears to work but then when I list keychains, the login keychain still isn't there and my script fails trying to sign my code because it can't get to the certificates.

(~)$ security list-keychains
"/Library/Keychains/System.keychain"
"/Library/Keychains/System.keychain"

This all works perfectly in a terminal window on the host but I need it to work remotely in SSH.

Thank you for any help or suggestions.

Update October 10, 2016:  I changed the ssh authentication from password to rsa key and it started working.  After I could access the login keychain, I started getting an error in the ssh shell: SecKey API returned: -25308 from codesign.  This turned out to be a permissions error.  When I tried it on the host in a terminal, a dialog from the keychain popped up asking me to allow access.

Your login keychain doesn't appear to be in the search list, i.e. when you checked it, it just shows the System keychain twice. No login keychain:

(~)$ security list-keychains
"/Library/Keychains/System.keychain"
"/Library/Keychains/System.keychain"
(~)$ security list-keychains -d user -s login.keychain
(~)$ security list-keychains
"/Users/USERNAME/Library/Keychains/login.keychain-db"
"/Library/Keychains/System.keychain"

You can use the security command to lookup the -25308 error code.
In this case, it says "User interaction not allowed".
This is typical if you're trying to sign your app via SSH (or via Jenkins).

security error -25308
Error: 0xFFFF9D24 -25308 User interaction is not allowed.

You need to do a security command to enable codesigning of your application through a non interactive shell:

security set-key-partition-list -S apple: -k <Password> -D <Identity> -t private <your.keychain>

Here is a "complete" Jenkins / SSH friendly script to signing your app:

MY_KEYCHAIN="temp.keychain"
MY_KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD="secret"
CERT="certificate.p12"
CERT_PASSWORD="certificate secret"

security create-keychain -p "$MY_KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD" "$MY_KEYCHAIN" # Create temp keychain
security list-keychains -d user -s "$MY_KEYCHAIN" $(security list-keychains -d user | sed s/\"//g) # Append temp keychain to the user domain
security set-keychain-settings "$MY_KEYCHAIN" # Remove relock timeout
security unlock-keychain -p "$MY_KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD" "$MY_KEYCHAIN" # Unlock keychain
security import $CERT -k "$MY_KEYCHAIN" -P "$CERT_PASSWORD" -T "/usr/bin/codesign" # Add certificate to keychain
CERT_IDENTITY=$(security find-identity -v -p codesigning "$MY_KEYCHAIN" | head -1 | grep '"' | sed -e 's/[^"]*"//' -e 's/".*//') # Programmatically derive the identity
CERT_UUID=$(security find-identity -v -p codesigning "$MY_KEYCHAIN" | head -1 | grep '"' | awk '{print $2}') # Handy to have UUID (just in case)
security set-key-partition-list -S apple-tool:,apple: -s -k $MY_KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD -D "$CERT_IDENTITY" -t private $MY_KEYCHAIN # Enable codesigning from a non user interactive shell
### INSERT BUILD COMMANDS HERE ###
security delete-keychain "$MY_KEYCHAIN" # Delete temporary keychain

Shout out to Bochun Bai for spending 3 weeks with Apple support to finding the solution to the -25308 issue and posting it to https://sinofool.net/blog/archives/322


How to setup a Mac (Mini 2015) without a monitor (or mouse or keyboard)? I would like to complete the initial setup of a Mac Mini (2015) without having to use an external monitor (or a mouse or keyboard).
I do have a MacBook Pro available in case this would help (and from which I would like to remotely setup the MacMini), but I thought that I would be able to just follow the procedure discussed by Apple here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202542
Basically, that article says you should be able to see the Mac in your shared computers section and just start ScreenSharing. However, this doesn't work and I am suspecting it only worked for MacMini Server models back when they sold them. Today, Apple only sells a "Server.app" from the Mac App store and the "helpful" comments on that help desk article say:

Adopting Server app
On the server, open the Mac App Store.
Sign in with your Apple ID. OS X Server should appear in your purchase history. This is for verification only.
On your administrator computer, open the Mac App Store.
Sign in with the same Apple ID as in step 2.
Go to the Purchases tab and install OS X Server.

Well, that clearly requires a Monitor, right ?
Is there no way at all to setup a Mac Mini (with the help of just a MacBook Pro)?
Current state: I can see the MacMini on the network - well I can PING it and confirmed the MAC Address - so I know its on the network, but I can't SSH or VNC into it ...
Ideas:
Target Disk Mode (TDM):
With the help of a keyboard I might be able to start the Mac Mini in TDM and somehow install whatever I want on it. I don't exactly see this solving my problem, though - unless I could do this from another Mac Mini. A MacBook Pro OS X installation will look different to the one performed through a Mac Mini, I believe, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

I contacted the Apple Support Hotline and got the expected answer: setting up a Mac Mini without an external monitor is not possible (unless you happen to know and correctly perform the exact order of keystrokes necessary to complete the setup with an attached keyboard).

This actually got me thinking: What if I could attach a pre-programmed keyboard that delivers the required input timed appropriately to the required wait-times, etc and generate a universal "Mac setup adapter"? I could imagine the "Teensyduino" being the prefect fit for this job. Unfortunately, though, I don't have one of those lying around at the moment, but it would be worth considering if one really had to do a larger scale setup of such machines.

Solution: In contrast to my initial concerns about using Target Disk Mode, apparently people have previously had success installing OS X onto another computer in this way. There are two different approaches here:

We can try to re-install OS X (onto the Mac Mini in TDM from the MBP), which in my view is not a very good solution.
We can run the initial setup only by booting into the Mac Mini OS X partition from the MBP (by starting the Mac Mini in TDM).

The secondary option appeals to me, but either solution does require a Thunderbolt (or FireWire) cable. The process would look something like this:

Shut down MBP and Mac Mini.
Start Mac Mini in TDM and connect the cable to the MBP.
Start the MBP while holding the OPTION key to select the Mac Mini hard drive as the boot partition.
Complete the initial setup and activate any remote access features you want.


Receiving an Unknown iOS Notification -- Audio Only I occasionally receive an iOS notification (an Apple push notification) that has sound only and no text.  Because it has no text, it does not appear in the notification center and I therefore cannot determine what app is causing this.  Kind of annoying.

Is there anyway to identify which app is sending an audio-only notification?

Yes, you can, you just have to do some digging around to find the particular one that is causing the noise. If you go into your Settings application on your iDevice, and go into the Notifications Options Tab and look for apps that have the sounds attribute available.  As seen the in the screen shot below highlighted in red.

Selecting that one will take you further into the customizations and see if the app is sending other notifications, as shown below, this one does sound and badge and can be seen in the lock screen.  Toggling those on and off will help you find the culprit.

You will be looking for an App that is only making noise, look for one that says noise only and everything else is turned off, that one will most likely be the problem.  You can then turn on other notifications so that it will be more helpful. If you find more than one app that is noise only, enable more notification types to help you narrow down which one it is. Once you find it, you can disable it or change the setting any which way you want.

I hope that this answer helps you narrow down the noisy notifier.


How to automatically pause a playing media on bluetooth disconnect I'm using Jabra Halo Smart bluetooth headphones on my MacBook Pro running OS X El Capitan 10.11. One annoying issue is that whenever I'm out of bluetooth connection range the music starts playing on internal speakers. Is there anyway to automatically pause the music on headset disconnect or change?

As per apple's policy , when you cross the bluetooth limit of your headset your system  will be automatically switch the audio output into the internal speakers.Mostly in platforms are like that.

But there are many third party apps like , Breakaway  is a utility that will pause/resume iTunes for you whenever you unplug and/or plug in your headphones. You can now walk away from your computer for a moment without missing a beat of your favorite song, or disturbing anyone with your speakers coming on.


Cleaning up birth years 2000 in my Address Book A few years ago (or actually, more likely, in 2000), for some reason, birthdays that didn't have a birth year (but did and do have correct month and day) were automatically given the birth year 2000 in my Address Book. There are hundreds of them (among thousands which are fine).

Is there a way to select these cards, perhaps by Smart Group or something similar, so that I may manually remove the birth year 2000?

NB: I just might also be able to run an AppleScript with a little help. :) OS X 10.8.5 installed.

Try:

set targetYear to "2000"
set targetGroup to {}

tell application "Address Book"
    set thePeople to every person whose birth date ≠ missing value
    repeat with aPerson in thePeople
        set birthYear to (aPerson's birth date)
        if my yearCheck(birthYear, targetYear) then set end of targetGroup to (contents of aPerson)
    end repeat
    if targetGroup ≠ {} then set selection to targetGroup
    activate
end tell

on yearCheck(theDate, theYear)
    if theYear = (year of theDate as text) then return true
    return false
end yearCheck

Added by the OP for novices like him. This works. What I did: Open Address Book, click All Contacts, close Address Book, close the Internet connection (just to be sure), copy-paste the above script into AppleScript Editor, press Compile, press Run, wait until "Running..." disappears. Address Book is now open with the cards with 2000 selected. Put those in a Group for further work...


Sync iTunes library with Dropbox without letting iTunes organize the folders and files I have an old MacBook on which I'm using iTunes to listen to my music. What is important to me is that I organize the folders and filenames of my music manually, i.e. I have the box "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" in the "Advanced" section of the iTunes Preferences unchecked.

(I know that at this point, many people will say "why don't you just let iTunes sort your music", but that's not an option for me. I don't want any software to handle the folder / file structure. Moreover, a sorting based on artist, album and track title is useless for sorting classical music, which is a very important part of my music collection.)

I just bought a new MacBook Air, but I will keep using my old MacBook. Now I want to have my music synced between the two Macs. I have all my music in a Dropbox folder, which will soon be completely downloaded to my new MacBook Air.

My question is: Is there a way to set things up such that I can manually add new music to the (Dropbox) music folder, with all tags set right, such that they will automatically be imported to both computers' libraries, but without "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" being checked? Or at least such that if I import it to iTunes once, it will automatically be imported to the iTunes library on the other computer?

I noticed one thing: The library files of the iTunes on my old MacBook are placed in ".../Music/iTunes/iTunes Music". Even if I choose a new location for the iTunes library, as long as I leave "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" unchecked, it doesn't move the library files to that new location. Thus, I don't know how to move the location of the library files to the Dropbox. Even if I would know, I'm not sure whether things would work because the Dropbox folder does not have the same full location string on the two computers because, for example, the home folders have different names.

Any ideas?

You can put your entire iTunes library (not just the music files) into the Dropbox and create iTunes aliases in your ~/Music folder on both computers, as long as the paths are identical. This means you need to use the same user name on both machines. Ie., /Users/Username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. Then, when you add music to iTunes on one machine, when the library syncs over Dropbox, the music will be present on the other machine.


Generating and opening file with Automator I am new to Automator. What I am trying to do as first experiment is automating the process of decompiling a Java class file and immediately after open the decompiled file with its default editor.

Following these instructions I managed to decompile a Java class file using this shell script:

~/bin/jad -lnc -o -d `dirname $1` $1

This will decompile the file class currently selected in the finder. The tool I use (jad) will create in the same directory a file with the same name but a different extension. For example, if the original file was "MyClass.class", then the generated file will be "MyClass.jad".

My question is, how can instruct the Automator to open the generated jad file with its default editor after this being generated in the first action ?

I know I can use the open command in a console to open a file with its default editor, but I do not know how to pass it the right name from Automator.

Add open "${1%.*}".jad on a new line at the end of the script. If you want to open it in a specific application (not the default), change it to open -a "Some Application" "${1%.*}".jad

The $1 is the first argument passed to a script, which in this case is the file path. the ${1%.*} strips the extension (i.e. /Users/you/MyClass.class becomes /Users/you/MyClass), and then .jad is appended, so you get the full path of the new file.


As a developer, how to display notifications on MacOS I am trying to find out how to display a notification on a MacOS (macbook pro) machine.
I see this:

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/DisplayNotifications.html

(Ideally there would be a Node.js binding to a C library which could allow me to display notifications without launching a child process which then calls apple scripts).

Having trouble finding this info on the google:

is there some API or C / Objective-C library that I can call to display a notification on a MacOS machine?

If you are using Node.js and want to create notifications on multiple platforms including Apple, this library probably has what you want:

https://github.com/mikaelbr/node-notifier

disclaimer: I am not the author


command line ps has stopped working correctly after an update I use to be able to run this ps command from the terminal:

ps -u whoami -o pid,rss,command

But recently the RSS size returned are all 0!

ps -u `whoami` -o pid,rss,command
158      0 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock
159      0 /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/MacOS/SystemUIServer
160      0 /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
165      0 /usr/sbin/pboard

unless I run it with sudo

sudo ps -u `whoami` -o pid,rss,command
158  17556 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock
159  22488 /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/MacOS/SystemUIServer
160  82176 /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
165    840 /usr/sbin/pboard

Does anyone know how to fix this or how to get the original functionality back?

I have 10.6.7 and your

ps -u `whoami` -o pid,rss,command

producing

  PID    RSS COMMAND
  180    696 /sbin/launchd
  185  19108 /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/MacOS/SystemUIServer
  189     32 /usr/sbin/pboard
  .... etc ....

so, the problem is in your system. So, what return this:

ls -l /bin/ps

should this

-r-sr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  134816 12 okt  2010 /bin/ps

if your ps has other permissions, repair with:

sudo chown root /bin/ps
sudo chgrp wheel /bin/ps
sudo chmod 4555 /bin/ps


Applescript/Automator task to change default downloads folder I need to create an automation to make a new folder named by my selected text and then make that folder the new default Safari downloads folder. This would be the default folder when I click on a download file link from a webpage until I run the script again for a new selection.

edit: this may seem trivial but I have to click a URL to download 5-8 .pdf files (I have to click on each file separately) per order for about 30 orders a day and I have to make a folder named by the the order number to put the files in. I have done a lot of research and I'm not sure if this is something that can be done with AppleScript or if it also requires Shell script and is something I will have to pay for to be developed. I did post a freelancer post hoping someone could code it but I'm looking for an easier solution from someone smart in these boards. thank you so much for any help or guidance.

Open Automator and create a new service:

Choose: Service receives selected text in Safari like in the screenshot below.

Then add an item Run AppleScript with the content:

on run {input} -- create folder from text

    display dialog " —Create folder from chosen text—
This AppleScript will create  a folder from text you specify."
    set destination to (choose folder with prompt "Where would you like to make the folder?")

    tell application "Safari"
        activate
        if (input exists) then
            set folderName to input
            -- of text of document
        else
            beep
        end if
    end tell
    tell application "Finder"
        activate
        make folder in destination with properties {name:folderName}
        --select folder "untitled folder" in the destination
        --set the name of the selection to folderName
    end tell

    tell application "Safari"
        activate
    end tell

end run

Save the service as Create Folder from Text.

Then in Safari choose some text and right-click it -> Services -> Create Folder from Text.

If the destination folder already contains a folder with the same name the service fails without any further notice.

If you don't like the dialog "—Create folder from ..." add a # in front of it or remove the two lines.

If you replace:

        tell application "Safari"
            activate
        end tell

by

        tell application "Safari"
            activate
            set destination to (choose folder with prompt "Where would you like to save the new file(s)?")
        end tell

the Automator service will open the new folder and ask you to choose the new folder as new download folder. Simply hit Choose. If you then right-click the download link -> Download linked file as…, the file will be downloaded to the new folder.

The script may be improved further, because I didn't get it to work to set the new folder as new download destination automatically.


Is eBay app update bypassing Apple's app store screening? On iPad, the ebay app keeps popping up a screen asking me to update.  No updates have shown available in the app store for a long time.   Is this a way to get around Apple's vetting process and give me undocumented "features" that Apple won't allow?  Apparently, not, but why/how does IOS not show that an update is available?

iPad IOS is generally updated within a day or two of new release.  Currently at IOS 9.0.1, with update screen showing up-to-date.

Have never done a jail-break.

App Store "purchased" screen says version 3.6.0 for eBay.  App store update screen does not offer an update for ebay.  App store description (from search) shows version 4.0 available for download.  But IOS notifications do not show update available.

eBay app on launch always says "The new app is here" with an "update now" button in a large pop-up titled "Message from eBay"

Current version of the eBay app is 4.0 - requires iOS 7.0 or higher.

Unless your iPad is Jailbroken, all apps come from the iTunes app store.

If iTunes isn't offering the update, maybe either your iTunes or iOS is out of date?


How can I play music from my computer through my iPhone 5? I am using MacOSX Snow Leopard.How can I play music from my computer through my iPhone 5?

You can share your iTunes library and then access it from your iOS device, after connecting it to your library. To do so, check your settings in iTunes according to this:

On your iOS-device under Preferences→Music check the settings for Home-Sharing on the bottom of the page.


Using Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033 to install 64 bit Windows 7, 8 or 10 My computer is a iMac (20-inch, Mid 2007). The model identifier is iMac7,1. The processor name is Intel Core 2 Duo, which means I have a 64 bit machine. The Apple web site Boot Camp: System requirements for Microsoft Windows operating systems shows the only downloadable Boot Camp support software for my Mac is for the 32 bit version of Windows 7. I can successfully install the 64 bit DVD installation versions of Windows 7 and 8 on my machine. The problem I am having is with the Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033. When I follow the instructions and double click on setup.exe, I get the following popup.

How do I successfully install this support software and avoid this popup?

This has been tested for Windows 7, 8 and 10.

These are the instructions for a Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1 (64 bit) installation. Here, I assume the Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033 has been copied to a flash drive. The instructions were adapted from the originals given here.

Determine the drive letter of your flash drive, by inserting the
drive in a USB port on the Mac. Below is an example of the expected
popup. This image shows F: as the drive letter. Your drive letter my
be different. You can close this popup.

Open a Administrator Command Prompt window by left clicking the
Start  button, left clicking All Programs, left
clicking Accessories, right clicking Command Prompt, and then
left clicking Run as Administrator. When prompted to allow changes,
click on Yes. The window should appear as shown below.

Assuming F: is your flash drive, change your working directory by
entering the following command in the Administrator Command Prompt
window. Be sure to replace the letter before the : with the drive
letter of your flash drive.

cd  /d  F:\Drivers\Apple

In the Administrator Command Prompt window, enter the following
command to start installing the Boot Camp Support Software.

BootCamp64.msi

Follow the onscreen instructions.
Installation can take a few minutes. Don't interrupt the
installation process. When installation is complete, click Finish in
the dialog that appears.
A system restart dialog box appears. Click Yes to complete the
installation.


Usefulness of the Apple Watch Series 5 to a Cyclist: does it have electric sensors instead of, or in addition to, optical heart-rate sensors? Update: Motivation for the question

The motivation for the present question is to determine whether it is possible for a cyclist 1- to measure the heart rate without touching the crown, which would require holding the handlebar with just one hand for a few seconds, 2- to connect the Series 5 to a head unit—thus avoiding to look at the watch at all, and only glancing at the head unit, as well as 3- curiosity about how the Series 5 can measure the heart rate through electric sensors, given the understanding that there must be two electric sensors, quite far apart.

End Update

Cyclists and runners may want to keep track of their fitness level by confirming that their heart-rate remained below a certain threshold for a given activity. For that use case it's helpful to monitor the heart rate after a workout. But they may also want to ensure during a workout that they cross a heart rate threshold and remain there for some time.

A heart rate sensor that attaches through a chest band is a reliable solution, but it's far from being an unobtrusive one.

A good alternative, one that's much easier to tolerate, may be a wrist watch such as the Apple Watch Series 5.

Does the Apple Watch Series 5 have electric sensors instead of, or in addition to, optical heart-rate sensors?

The reason it matters is that electric sensors require the cyclist or the runner to stop and touch the crown with a finger from the alternate hand. (This produces an ECG, not just a heart rate, but the latter can obviously be derived from the former.) For continuous monitoring, IIUC, an optical sensor is still required.

I get far better readings from my watch during running and cycling than I did with either Garmin or Wahoo chest sensors. However, since 2017 I’ve not even tried a chest sensor, so perhaps they have improved faster than the Apple Watch sensor has.

The watch is less likely to slip for me with the Velcro band than the elastomer band, but even the elastomer band is more accurate than I need for 6 hour cycling workouts on bumpy gravel roads in windy conditions. It also does more - so I’d rather skip the chest band entirely for convenience and comfort. I did love the chest bands since the early 90’s due to them being the best I could get for exercise data collection.

All three vendors I list are superlative in my experience, as is Suunto, if you need excellent data on your heart rate while exercising. The watch sensors are more than adequate for me so I wanted to chime in with my experience.


Customize toolbar of VLC On Windows/Linux, it's really easy and straightforward to customize the VLC toolbar by using the menu "Tools">"Customize Interface..." (See this help page.)

Somehow this menu doesn't seem to be available in macOS.

Is it just a missing Mac functionality, or is there a way to customize the buttons showing on the toolbar on macOS?

It is indeed missing functionality. You can add (but not change the positions of) some media play buttons like Previous, Next and Show Equalizer to the interface toolbar using Preferences... under the VLC Menu. Clicking the Show All button which appears at the lower-left corner of the Preferences... window will enable a great deal of additional customization, but it's challenging to anticipate or even recall which features are available in Basic, Show All, or both modes.

I'll alert you to a potential hazard: It's mandatory to save any changes you make to VLC's prefs before moving from one preference area to another, much less between Basic and Show All modes. Otherwise, your changes won't be retained--and there's no warning this is the case. Plus, annoyingly enough, the prefs window closes when you do save your changes, and re-opening it always opens in Basic mode. Furthermore, changing an item in one mode can cause changes to occur to seemingly unrelated items present the other, unseen mode--again, without warning.

Also, as far as I know (unless a recent nightly build has re-enabled the option), skins aren't customizable in MacOS and haven't been for years. Oh, here: Let me save you ten minutes of wandering around clicking disclosure triangles looking for the additional media buttons for the toolbar in the Playlist. They're here: Preferences ▸ Show All ▸ Interface ▸ Main Interface ▸ macosx ▸ Appearance

Mind you, if you're determined enough, the Main Interface section is also where you would go to run VLC on a homebuilt Lua or ncurses  interface--and put your buttons wherever you please.


Exclude Time Machine backup from "Open With" menu I have an external USB drive that I use for Time Machine backups. I've noticed that when I right-click on an item the Open With menu lists not only apps in my Applications folder, but also apps in the Applications folder on the Time Machine backup. Rebuilding the Launch Service Database will help clear out the list, but then it just grows back. I attempted to exclude the external drive from Spotlight indexing, but the external drive doesn't appear in the list of drives to exclude. Below is a screenshot of my Open With folder.

You should be able to exclude Spotlight from adding the apps on the Time machine drive to the "Open With..." menu by opening System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy. Then drag the icon of the Time Machine drive into the "Prevent spotlight..." window. This adds that drive to list of drives that Spotlight should ignore for searching operations.

Note that you can't prevent Spotlight from indexing that dive as Time Machine depends on Spotlight to keep a catalog of files, but if you do this and then rebuild the Spotlight index it should prevent Spotlight from adding apps on that drive to your "Open With..." menu.


Automating screenshot workflow I am looking for a way to launch Preview on my Mac automatically, whenever I take a screenshot to my clipboard. I use "cmd + shift + 4" most of the times, then open preview, then hit "cmd+n" which accomplishes what I'm after, but is just time-consuming.
I have looked around but haven't found an option to do this with Automator. I'm not sure if it's even possible that Automator 'monitors' the clipboard and whenever it receives a screenshot, could trigger Preview.

Any help is much appreciated!

If you open /System/Applications/Utilities/Screenshot.app, you will be given the option to choose where your screenshot goes.    You can select for the screenshot to automatically open in Preview.

Now anytime you use your keyboard shortcuts to take a screenshot,  the default action would be to open the screenshot in Preview.


iPhone 7 and 7 Plus wallpapers in iOS 10 On apple.com some variations of this wallpaper are shown on iPhone 7 and 7 Plus screens:

I can't find them on my iPhone 7 (iOS 10.0.2). Are they available exclusively for 7 Plus?

Here the same question: https://discussions.apple.com/message/30744677#30744677 (but no answer).

They are not available by default but you can find them online here.


How to have apple iBooks or Kindle synced between devices? There are books that I cannot obtain in the bookstore or amazon prime. For those books I'd like to be able to access them wherever I am (from all my devices, even if I get a new mac book). I also wish to be able to save all the notes in them and have that accessible. I assume one would new to sync in the cloud.
Is this possible?
I see the pdfs are in my computer's readers but I cannot have them sync between devices like, say, mendeley or evernote would.
kindle isn't important. What is important is that my pdfs are available everywhere. Ideally backup with annotations. That doesn't seem to work on either. Thats the crux of my question. Which app is mostly irrelevant.
Note that I strongly prefer to have have it work on 1) kindle or 2)iBooks in that order if possible but if it works on either that would be fantastic.

related:

Syncing non-Amazon purchased eBooks between Kindle, iPad, and iPhone

Put all you PDF in iCloud and they will sync everywhere.
Kindle doesn't play with iCloud or AppleID or iBooks in iOS 14 or earlier - nor on Mac.
Your best bet is to have kindle sync the content you got from them only and have Apple sync the content you choose to purchase and store in Books and iCloud. (Like PDF libraries and such)
There’s no technical reason Amazon doesn’t use Apple API. It’s just platform, business, privacy, control issues from what I can tell as a developer with access to the API and design docs on Apple side. As a consumer, I am steering more an more of my purchases away from Amazon since their walled garden doesn’t work for me as well as Apple’s walled garden. I love O’Reilly subscription as well so I’m mostly content to let Amazon be Amazon and use a physical kindle when I can’t get what I need elsewhere. I rarely use the kindle apps on Mac since they just make me sad and frustrated, tbh. I don’t blame them (Apple or Amazon), I just use the paper white kindle for what it’s great at and the iPad for what it’s great at.
All my PDF are in iCloud now and those I need a proper reader, I open in books or another third party app if I need to mark them up or organize them more rigorously than iBooks allows. Most I read out of the files app in practice. I never could get Kindle to work with my stuff. Perhaps someone else with years of trying has a better approach. Maybe I can learn a better way like you are asking.


what is ?client&channel=mac_bm Macbook Pro
-Safari, preferences, general, new window opens with - Favorites.
-File, new window.
I see Favorites, right click on the google icon, click on edit address.
What I see here is https:/www.google.com/?client&channel=mac_bm.
What is this?
Even when I edit the address it will go back to this one.
How is this extra part starting with the ? even added on in the first place?

It is just telling Google the type of "computer" you have.

The client is you and mac is the type of computer you have.


Map Navigation Application that Builds on Top of Google Maps Is there a map navigation application ( GPS app) that is built on top of google maps? Something like papago, but it is too expensive for my taste.

It would be better if that GPS can alert me on the current road condition ( whether there is a massive traffic jam ahead of current route) and suggest me alternative.

Edit: If GPS apps are not allowed to build on top of Google Maps, is there a GPS app that can check on traffic condition and suggest me alternative route?

I'm living in Malaysia, if that's important to answer the question.

Navigation implies turn-by-turn directions. When iOS 4 was announced, Apple stated that background navigation was one of the "poles in the tent" (one of the big 6 new features that made up the iOS 4 upgrade). However, per their licensing agreement, developers are NOT allowed to leverage Google Maps when building driving direction applications. They must build off their own data. That is why all the other apps you see (TomTom, Navigon, OpenStreetMap, etc.) all look unique, and have their own data.


Is it necessary to have a TimeMachine backup of the Backblaze Directory? Since I noticed TimeMachine continuously backing up large files, I had a look with tmutil compare to see where those files are located. Since I had not worked on my mac book air but used it to listen to music I suspected the iTunes library.

As it turns out TimeMachine is continuously backing up /Library/Backblaze.bzpkg/.

Do I really need a backup of this directory? I see the point that in case I have a hardware failure but my TimeMachine is still working I might need to re-upload everything to Backblaze again?

What would be arguments against putting /Library/Backblaze.bzpkg/ into the excluded items list of Time Machine?

This file is where Backblaze stores information about what is stored on their servers and copies of files being uploaded or about to be uploaded. I would exclude this from Time Machine backups, as it will often change and contains nothing you're not already backing up elsewhere.


Playing MP4 videos from a website in iPad vs. iPhone? Are there certain formatting requirements or minimum resolution requirements for a video to play in an iPad? I had presumed that any video that would play in an iPhone would also play in an iPad.

But I have a website that includes videos. For browsers, these videos are displayed using Flash Video. These videos are also converted into MP4 files for playback on mobile devices.

Users can view our videos just fine using the iPhone and iPod Touch, but when someone goes to view the same video using the iPad it won't play the video.

What gives?

Does the browser location actually end with ".mp4" and you get the Can't Play (play triangle with the slash through it) icon?

Who set up the site? It's possible that it is serving MP4s for "mobile" devices like the iPhone, but the full Flash site for the iPad.


Trouble with Macbook display -- brightness cuts out or gets wavy if I move the screen around Macbook Pro, 2008, 15 inch Running Mavericks 10.9.2

If I move the screen around at all while it's running the brightness will almost always reset to as if it was zero or it gets these wavy interference pattern-like regions of bright and dim. (Image similar to my situation: http://www.lavproductions.com/images/macbookpro_screen.jpg)

Now I'd say this was a hardware issue, but once it does this, I can just put the display to sleep and then it's always fine after that. The screen is back to normal. I don't move anything at all. If it was a loose connector then putting the display to sleep would presumably not help.

Here are some other sites describing the same issue:
http://www.geekinheels.com/2008/05/02/apple-replaced-my-macbook-pro-for-free.html
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1633312
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1627678?threadID=1627678&tstart=0

But they're fairly old and I have been going through them and I don't see anything definitive. Some say it's a bad connection, but then why would putting the screen to sleep fix it?

Possibly related, but probably not, is sometimes the trackpad cuts out completely, and other times the keyboard cuts out as well. Putting the computer completely to sleep usually fix the former, but not the latter, so when the keyboard cuts out it would
And for long periods of time I won't have any problems. Went nearly a month without either the trackpad or the keyboard locking up. I can't say for sure, but I think it only started after Mavericks, and I don't think the firmware updates to fix the issues people were complaining about covered my model.

I realize it's an old Mac, but I'm very confused by these problems as they seem to be both hardware and software related...

Thanks for your help!

As a former Apple technician in a retail store, I can tell you that if an SMC reset didn't fix the "stage lighting" display issue, we replaced the display assembly.  Probably not possible through Apple anymore since a 2008 MacBook Pro would be considered vintage...

For the keyboard/trackpad issue, you might try reseating the flex cables underneath the top case.  iFixit.com has great guides for opening up your Mac. You open your computer at your own risk. :)  If that doesn't change anything, could be a bad top case.  The keyboard assembly and top case are separate on the 2008, non-unibody MacBook Pro, so then it's up to component isolation.

Summary: Don't spend any money fixing this computer (unless you reeeeeally want to).  Like an older car, it can be difficult to find parts for older computers, but there are places that have them.  My advice would be to use it until 'till you lose it, then purchase a new computer.


Is FaceTime free (including internationally)? From what I've read so far, it seems like VIDEO FaceTime will be free for both parties, other than:

If the party is using WiFi, whatever they have to pay their ISP for internet access. This is usually a flat rate, though some people have data caps.
If the party is using cellular service (e.g. 4G), whatever they have to pay their carrier for internet access. This may be "unlimited" or charged per GB.

If you change to audio-only then it may become a regular phone call for both parties, which will typically be free within the same country but extremely expensive between two different countries.

Is the above correct? I want to FaceTime my friend in China but I was worried about paying a huge rate. However if the above is correct then we should be OK as long as we are using video. See The Telegraph's Why did my FaceTime calls to Switzerland cost £144? suggests downgrading to audio can hurt, but I am not sure if the article is accurate.

Both FaceTime and FaceTime Audio are data and never go through the phone network as a regular phone call. You will be charged in the same way as using the internet for other purposes on your phone, over Wi-Fi or mobile data depending on your scenario.

FaceTime Audio calls don't ‘become’ regular calls. I'm almost certain the case from the linked article must be describing user error, calling someone not through FaceTime Audio but a normal phone call, and the user mistook the buttons they were pressing on their phone.

Besides any network fees, Apple does not charge a toll or fee to make or receive any calls. The license to the software and iCloud infrastructure is included with the cost of the Apple hardware.

There are certain countries that prohibit FaceTime services such as Saudi Arabia and UAE so you would not be able to make FaceTime or FaceTime Audio calls to these locations, but this would not cause a switch to normal calls. Net neutrality is evolving in several countries and there is no technical reason why FaceTime audio or video couldn’t be charged for above and beyond other forms of data.


iPhone 7 has a cellular bug. Apple will repair - if i pay $$$ to have screen fixed too. Help! iPhone 7 has a known bug that causes cellular service to sometimes fail - so the phone no longer works as a phone.
Took phone with this bug into Genius bar, and was told they'd repair it for free - if I also agreed to have them repair a teeny crack in the screen for $150. They would not fix the cellular issue without the screen repair.
Any ways around this?  Any way to get Apple to fix their bug for free?

As alluded to in the comments, many hardware repairs require removing the screen. If the screen is damaged (no matter how minor) there's a very high risk of it shattering during the repair process, and that is why Apple (and many others) won't do a repair unless you're also getting the screen replaced at the same time.

As for your question on how to get around this, the only other option is to get the screen replaced somewhere else, or to try replacing it yourself. Then, once the screen is okay, Apple will perform the other repair as per normal.

However, please note that not all screens are created equally and that the money you save on a non-genuine screen may not be worth it in the long run. I've seen many cases of iPhones and iPads with non-genuine screens work just fine for a couple of months and then start to glitch like crazy.


Installing 2 x 16Gb and 2 x 32Gb on an iMac 27" Got a 2019 iMac 27" with 4 RAM slots. I have 2 x 16Gb and 2 x 32Gb RAM modules. This is how they are installed right now. Is this the most optimal way to install them, or the sequence does not matter?

In general, for any Mac that’s not core 2 duo, it is hard to benchmark any speed difference no matter how you choose to install ram. (Let alone see it in practice)
Apple publishes manuals for each specific Mac, so let’s see what if your hardware has any recommendations:

https://support.apple.com/manuals
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201191 (Memory specific info)
How should different sized RAM be added to iMac?

The 2019 model doesn’t say anything about order like the 2020 iMac does which says to add up the A channel and B channel and minimize the difference between the two.


Can OS X be installed on the ssd part of the fusion drive? I am looking at purchasing a mac mini and need to decide on a storage option.
I want either an ssd or the fusion drive however I am not sure whether OS X can be installed on the SSD part of the fusion drive which is one of the main reasons that i want an SSD.

Yes, there's a way to install OS X on the SSD. It's called "install OS X on the Fusion Drive."

The Fusion Drive automatically puts the most frequently-used files on the SSD. When there are vital system files that your hard drive needs to access in its every waking moment, there's really no reason why the Fusion Drive would ever demote it to the HDD.


finding the time stamp on phot's that have been emailed to me I'm having a dispute with a landlord, garden not done, so she's charging me. Anyway, the agency has sent me her photos. is there anyway I can see when they were taken. I check the properties of the photos and yet they only give todays date, but they do tell me longitude and latitude and that they were taken with and iPhone 4 plus f number if there was a flash etc but not the date taken.

Do is there a way for me to extract this information if the photos were emailed to me?

Open it in Preview.

Hit  Cmd ⌘    i   for Inspector, then the 2nd tab (info, i in a circle) & then Exif - should give full info, unless the originator was clever enough to remove it.

It is possible that the sender has set iOS to strip these fields from the photos and it's also possible that they are stripped if the image size is reduced. You can also use tools to manipulate / falsify the data, but in most cases people don't mess with changing the defaults.


Disabling Mission Control (OR making plist changes take effect immediately) EDIT: I have just realized that what I'm talking about isn't a default feature in Lion. I probably added the commands via an article like this (scroll down to "Gestures and keyboard shortcuts"). So this question is more about how to make plist changes take effect immediately from Terminal.

I have spent about 4 hours looking for and developing a solution for a quick way to disable / enable Mission Control. My present line of thinking is:

I can disable the shortcuts to Mission Control, which would give me the same effect.

Oh look, I can disable the shortcuts via ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist! Let's see how I can modify that...

Darn it, the defaults command doesn't let me go deep enough into the sub-dictionaries to do what I want. But wait, I found /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy! Now to write a script...

The script works (it changes the settings in the .plist file), but the changes aren't taking effect.

My questions:

Is there a better way to do this?
What command can I add to my script to make my changes take effect immediately? You can see I have killall Dock in the script, and I've tried killall Finder and killall SystemUIServer, but none of those seem to work.

Hopefully this is the best place to ask this... I know this is OS-X-specific, but it's also highly technical.

No, there isn't really a better way to force a process to reload its preferences other than killing it.  Be careful: a process may flush its preferences when it is killed, so your change may get overwritten.


No packages were eligible for install I have an older, MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009) that I intend to give as a gift.

For security reasons, I decided that I was a good to format the drive and reinstall OS X El Capitan.

My first effort was thwarted by an error:

  This item is temporarily unavailable.Try again later.

After reading Wiped drive, now can’t reinstall El Capitan from Recovery because the “item is temporarily unavailable”, I supplied a different set of icloud credentials, and the process continued.

Eventually, however, the installation failed with a different message:

  No packages were eligible for install. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.  Quit the installed to restart your computer and try again.

I tried using "Internet Recovery" (Option+Command+R) and a bootable USB drive that contained El Capitan, both of which ultimately failed with the same message.

Is there a way to get this to work?

To create a bootable USB drive, I needed the Install OS X El Capitan.app package.

Using my MBP 16", I used the Download OS X El Capitan link on Apple's support site to get the installer.

Unfortunately, running the InstallMacOSX.pkg package in the DMG failed:

  This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer.

I 'found' a Install OS X El Capitan.app package and was able to create the bootable media.

The accepted answer to the question (How can I download an older version of OS X/macOS?) that @nohillside suggested contained the ultimate solution--essentially the computer's date needed to be within a year of the OS' release.

Wikipedia's article on OS X El Capitan indicated that:

  OS X El Capitan was released to end users on September 30, 2015, as a free upgrade through the Mac App Store.

Based on this knowledge, I changed the computer's system date to 2/1/2016 12:00:00 @ UTC using Terminal:

$ date -u 020100002016

Once the system's date was changed, the installation completed as desired.


Can't download Mavericks - I got a Mountain Lion CD, what to do? This is the most silly question I'll ever ask, and I'm sorry for this.

But doing the following:

Step 1: https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/os-x-mavericks/id675248567
Step 2: http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

I assumed there would be at least ONE way of downloading Mavericks, since.. It's free.. But aparently Apple assumes that 2014 was the year of removing download buttons?

I have a blank Mac Book Pro 2010.
This in turn has a OS X 10.8 DVD with it.

All I need, is to reinstall the machine!
I do not have a friend with a mac. I do not have a Apple store near by. I don't have Itunes (and can't install it either).
I do however have a DVD burner, a extremely fast internet and I don't mind fiddling in the command promt.

Any ideas what I could do? Again, sorry for this shitty question, been reinstalling Machines for over 15 years but never have a machine been this much of a headache.

Update:

This is what the site looks to like me...

For those who don't understand the dilemma of me having a 10.8 DVD.
According to their own forums, they've discontinued 10.8 as a installation option from the app store. They referr you to the Mavericks installation which should be a two press installation.. Assuming you have Another apple Product near by.

"This item is temporarily unavailable. - Please try again later"

image http://www.technobuffalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mountainlion-issue.jpeg

Here you go with the screen shot of download button.