Meaning of "Last Modified" date on files (installed from outside the AppStore)? I installed the MySQLWorkbench app, but had to get it from outside the official App Store. I am using MacOS Catalina (10.15.5). So, I had to override the "warning" from Catalina, using the root password, that said to not install apps gotten from outside the app store. The MySQLWorkbench installed fine and works great.
However, I noticed the metadata on the MySQLWorkbench executable file says it was "*last modified" on April 1st, 2020. And, today, the download / install date is July 11, 2020.
So, that's weird, right? I'm just assuming the workbench was built on April 1st. ok. But, I'd still expect the file metadata to say the last modified date, for me on my file system, is today. The day I downloaded and installed it, right? I've not installed from the app store in months, but the date metadata looks as I'd expect on the apps from the app store. The date I downloaded them is their "last modified date".
I'm baffled. The April 1st date can't be correct, right?
note: I did have an earlier MySQLWorkbench that was not compatible with Catalina, and it had to be uninstalled (by dragging into the Trash) today, and replaced. But that trashed MySqlClient was installed 1 year ago, definitely not this April.
Anyway, my database and workbench are all good. But, that date metadata on the workbench executable, and the fact I got it from outside the App Store have me confused.

If you copy a file from one folder to another, that does not update the creation or modification dates. Nor does making a copy in the same folder. Try it!
The same is true for 'copying' a file from a remote location, such as a network drive or downloading from the internet.
The modification date is only changed if the contents of the file are modified.
It is arguably more useful to know that 'this is a copy of the file that was created on Tuesday, and modified on Wednesday', rather than 'this is a brand new file that was made on Thursday', just because you moved it or duplicated it.
This way, you know that the file's contents are the same as other copies in other locations.


Geektool coding to remove image after a set time I'm trying to edit a 3rd party script written in AppleScript (OAS...I think) to dim the volume after showing changes. I've tried changing the opacity & switching to a transparent image using a repeat loop & current date without success.

set T1 to seconds of (current date)
set T2 to T1 + 5
repeat with T1 from T2 to T2
   set opacity to 0 (*or do shell script...)
end repeat

This should work I'm just struggling with implementation.

Use the delay command. It's very simple: it simply delays by the given time in seconds. Example: delay 5 would delay for 5 seconds.


How to backup files from black screened iPhone I dropped my iPhone 6 today; even though there is no noticeable harm on the outside, my phone screen is completely broken. Actually, the phone does not even vibrate when I turn it on. The only reason why I know that it turns on (I think), is that my iTunes say "iTunes could not connect to the iPhone 'my iPhone' ... because the passcode is not entered." I have tried holding home + power button for zillion seconds, and it does not do anything for me. I think the display is really gone.

Although it stinks to have my phone broken, I am more concerned about the data I have inside. I have many text messages with my girl-friend and voice memos that I do not want to lose. I have a program that can obtain these data, but because I cannot unlock the phone with my screen completely gone (I think touch is not working either), I do not know what to do.

Could you please help me?

Check any computer you connect the phone to see if it has a backup. Then check in iCloud.com to see your last backup. If you have paired a bluetooth keyboard, use that to unlock the device. Also - the screen could be out but the digitizer might still work. Can you put another iPhone 6 next to yours and go through the motions to enter the PIN by tapping where you know the touch areas are on the screen?

At that point, you'll need to make a decision based on cost and time you can be without the phone while it's repaired or the data recovered.

The data on the iPhone is almost certainly encrypted so you'll need to pay someone to make a forensic-type repair on the phone to replace the screen without damaging the storage. That costs more than a repair where you don't need to keep the data intact. Also, you can't pair the phone to a new computer without pairing a bluetooth keyboard or repairing the digitizer / screen.

Once you have quotes, you can make a decision based on the availability of reliable service where you live. If you took your phone to a skilled technician at the Huaqiangbei electronics market in Shenzhen - you might pay $50 for the repair and have your pick of 100 technicians in a 4 block radius. Other places, you might have to pay $5000 and ship your phone.

Paying someone to decrypt the contents is probably a factor of 10 more expensive on both the low end and high end unless you could tell them your passcode.

So:

spend half an hour assessing the availability of backups (and maybe time to go visit computers you could have synced to)
make a buy a new phone decision if you are going to shop around or ship your phone for repair to the cheapest shop you trust to make a custom repair. (you can then sell either the repaired phone or the new phone based on whichever recoups your investment in spare hardware to allow a cheaper repair).


Accessing Apple Hardware Tool on MacBook Air 2010 running Yosemite I charged my MacBook Air (Late 2010) up to 100% charge overnight however my battery died within 1 hour. Because of this I want to use the Apple Hardware Tool (AHT) to diagnose the issue.

My Mac is 4 years old and holds up to 70%-75% of its original capacity (6,700mAh).

I have tried holding the D key when booting my computer however it boots up normally.

How would I accesses the AHT?

Your AHT feature will have been lost when you upgraded to Yosemite.

You can restore it by inserting the Applications Install disc that was supplied with your computer and typing the following command, putting in the actual name of the disc where indicated...

sudo cp -R /Volumes/[name of disc]/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics /System/Library/CoreServices

You will of course be able to run the diagnostics directly from the install disc.

Actually read the question properly and of course your Air doesn't have an optical drive - did it come with any re-installation media? If not you now know where the actual test file should go, if anyone can supply you with the required file


Where do you get the tool they use at the Genius Bar to remove SIM cards? I was at the Genius Bar recently and the techs had a tiny tool on their loop of cables that looked like a pin with an oval-shaped loop at the top. Anyone know where to acquire this tool?

I know I could cut and bend a small paper clip, but this looked a bit thinner and sturdier. They used it to pop out the SIM card and clean out the Lightning port.

If you purchase an international or unlocked iPhone, it comes with this SIM ejection tool. They cannot be purchased from Apple, however they are sold on eBay/Amazon/etc.


Cannot reinstall MacOS I have erased my Mac Mini and now I am presented with the Recovery screen where I can use Disk Utility, Reinstall, etc.

Nothing works!

Disk Utility claims it cannot unmount the primary HDD, despite the "mount" option being greyed out, which suggests it's not mounted. Disk Info says "Writeable: No".

When I attempt to reinstall, I get to the HDD selection screen but the only option is to select the Recovery HDD, which is also greyed out LOL!

The Mac Mini came with no CD (ordered from Apple). Everything was preloaded. Apple website suggests downloading the MacOS to create a bootable USB... But you need a Mac to do so!!!

Don't know what else to do and would be really grateful if anyone could share what I can do.

You need to create a new partition using Disk Utility that you can use for installing macOS.

You'll need somewhere to store your system, and without a partition (besides the recovery partition), you'll have no such place. That's why you have no choices when you run the installer.


Setting up multiple O365 organisation accounts on iOS I was about to setup the mail account my customer provided me. Being a O365 Outlook account, I was approaching this with selecting Exchange as account type and signed in. This would have worked well, but the tennant asks for managing my device by the Intune Company Portal app. However, my device is already managed by the company I'm working for via Intune.

My fear is, when I allow Intune to manage my device, it'll probably kill the configurations made through my company's administrator.

Anybody having experience with such a setting and is willing to share what they know?

Going off the title question - Setting up multiple O365 organisation accounts on iOS and interpreting that to mean you want to have multiple Intune profiles on a single iOS device because you (or your customer) has multiple accounts managed by different Intune servers; unfortunately, the answer is no, this cannot be done.

  Intune only supports deploying app protection policies to only one user account per device.

Microsoft details this in their support document What to expect when your iOS app is managed by app protection policies.

  Read the following example scenario to learn how Intune handles
  multiple user accounts.

  User A works for two companies: Company X, and Company Y. User A has a
  work account for each company, and both use Intune to deploy app
  protection policies. Company X deploys app protection policies before
  Company Y. The account associated with Company X will get the app
  protection policy, but not the account associated with Company Y. To
  have the Company Y user account managed by the app protection
  policies, User A must remove the Company X user account.


Boot Camp Control Panel macOS partition doesn't show up Not sure why. I can access my macOS partition via hitting the option key. But the control panel doesn't seem to find it, And I want to set it as my default drive to boot into rather than Windows.

Below is the output from diskutil list.

Since High Sierra, the macOS partition is formatted APFS. Due to what I presume is an oversight by Apple, the Boot Camp Control Panel only looks for HFS+ partitions as suitable startup disks. Therefore macOS partition won’t show in Boot Camp Control Panel since High Sierra.

To set macOS as default, use the Startup Disk preference pane in macOS System Preferences, or hold control as you select the disk from Startup Manager (the alt boot menu).


How do I download links (to PDFs) with one click in Chrome for Mac OS X? Usually when I option-click a single page link, Chrome tries to download the page, but when I option-click on PDFs, Chrome doesn't respond. Is this the default behavior and is there some way to change this? Also do other browsers allow for this type of one-click download? (I know if I turn off in-browser PDF reading that all PDFs would be downloaded, but I don't want that as the default action.)

Go to Chrome settings > Advanced

Click on privacy settings > Content

Scroll down to Plug ins

Click on

  Disable Individual plug-ins

Disable the

  Chrome PDF Viewer

That will unfortunately disable it for all PDF preview.

But the good news is

now you have the simple one click on a PDF link and it will offer you to download the PDF file.


how to show what video files are on iPad I have an iPad and need to delete some files. Unfortunately, I can't tell where the videos are based upon this:

Everything appears to be purchased on iCloud. Is there a way I can click to see what actual files are on my iPad?

Go to the On my iPad tab at the top of iTunes. Here, the contents of your iPad is listed. Choose Movies to show all the movies on your iPad which are accounting for the space shown in your image.


iCloud Drive Bird Service always running I am having a problem with iCloud Drive. I managed to see progress thankfully with brctl log --wait --shorten (taken from here).

It seems like there is an error running every second or even more often.

[ERROR]  14.007 [2016-01-09 23:17:13.007] bird.scheduler.Uploader        fs.uploader               BRCFSUploader.m:732
Unable to copy thumbnail at '/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/6c131/com.apple.thumbnails/:501:QLThumbnailAdditionName/thumbnail.jpg' to upload stage: <NSError:0x7fec5e22a330(NSCocoaErrorDomain:260) - {
    NSFilePath = "/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/6c131/com.apple.thumbnails/:501:QLThumbnailAdditionName/thumbnail.jpg";
    NSUnderlyingError = "<NSError:0x7fec5e248200(NSPOSIXErrorDomain:2) - {\n}>";

The bird process in the Activity Monitor, which is responsible for the iCloud Drive syncing, is taking up 150 and more percent of the CPU all the time and doesn't stop.

What I tried:

installed iCloudStatus, which shows which files are being synced...
but the file doesn't show up
killed the bird and the cloudd process... will just fire up again
deleted ~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs all my files were deleted and newly downloaded but I got the same error

What can I do to get rid of this? Thanks for any suggestions.

I got rid of the problem by removing the folder that contained the file over the terminal. Seems like there was something mixed up.
This is how I did it:

Identify the source of the problem using this command:
brctl log -w --shorten

I looked into it and saw there was one error always repeating and it always tried to upload it.

Because I couldn't find the file via the terminal (because it was never on my disk) I deleted the folder that should have contained the file. It did that using the command
sudo rm -rf name_of_the_folder

I hope that helps someone.


Problems recording screen using ffmpeg Since I do a lot of non-focused BS over the day I want to find out how much of it I actually do. Therefore I want to record my screen and finally or maybe directly make a time lapse of it. That's my X problem. My current Y problem is that I can't even record a simple screen cast without a time lapse on my MacBook with the recent macOS.

ffmpeg -f avfoundation -i 1 -framerate 10 -capture_cursor -capture_mouse_clicks -pixel_format 0rgb -t 60 ~/Desktop/screen.mp4

Complains:

ffmpeg version 4.2.2 Copyright (c) 2000-2019 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple clang version 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.32.59)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/4.2.2_3 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --enable-avresample --cc=clang

...Removed irrelevent bits

[AVFoundation input device @ 0x7fd835c15ec0] Configuration of video device failed, falling back to default.
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400] Selected pixel format (yuv420p) is not supported by the input device.
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400] Supported pixel formats:
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400]   uyvy422
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400]   yuyv422
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400]   nv12
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400]   0rgb
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400]   bgr0
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400] Overriding selected pixel format to use uyvy422 instead.
[avfoundation @ 0x7fd83600c400] Stream #0: not enough frames to estimate rate; consider increasing probesize
...
[mp4 @ 0x7fd837809200] Frame rate very high for a muxer not efficiently supporting it.
Please consider specifying a lower framerate, a different muxer or -vsync 2
[libx264 @ 0x7fd837819a00] MB rate (20340000000) > level limit (16711680)
...
      cpb: bitrate max/min/avg: 0/0/0 buffer size: 0 vbv_delay: -1
More than 1000 frames duplicated
^C^C^C
Received > 3 system signals, hard exiting

To me this looks like ffmpeg ignores the arguments in the command line. What is the problem?

To me this looks like ffmpeg ignores the arguments in the command line. What is the problem?

The flags capture_cursor and capture_mouse_clicks are boolean and defaulted to "0"; set them to "1" and put them before the first input.

The format that you want to use for ffmpeg goes like this:

% ffmpeg [input1 flags] -i input1 \
  [input2 flags] -i input2 \
  ...
  [inputN flags] -i inputN \
  [output1 flags] output1 \
  [output2 flags] output2

So, in this case, the -capture_cursor 1 and -capture_mouse_clicks 1 must come before the first input (-i).

As for the errors, The frame rate is too high for the muxer that you're using.  Just go with something simple:

% ffmpeg -capture_cursor 1 -capture_mouse_clicks 1 -f avfoundation -i "1" -r 10 -s 1280x720  -t 20 ~/Desktop/screen.mkv

The above will capture the screen at a 1280x720 resolution for 20 seconds and capture both the cursor and the mouse clicks.


Unkown process listening at port 8080 The problem: something is listening on port 8080

If I load the page with Safari I get a blank page (page is white but "Develop → Show Page Source" is greyed out)
If I telnet to port 8080 I get something answering

$ telnet 127.0.0.1 8080
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.

But

lsof does not show any process listening on port 8080

$ sudo lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -P -n | grep 8080
$

netstat does not show any process using port 8080

$ netstat -n  | grep 8080
$

I can open port 8080 programmatically (e.g., with a web server) without any error about the port being in use
nmap does not list the port as used

sudo nmap 127.0.0.1

Starting Nmap 6.01 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-10-03 16:16 CEST
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.000081s latency).
Not shown: 990 closed ports
PORT      STATE SERVICE
22/tcp    open  ssh
631/tcp   open  ipp
1023/tcp  open  netvenuechat
3283/tcp  open  netassistant
3306/tcp  open  mysql
3689/tcp  open  rendezvous
5001/tcp  open  commplex-link
5003/tcp  open  filemaker
5432/tcp  open  postgresql
50003/tcp open  unknown

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 10.92 seconds

The same happens for port 80 but not for other ports (e.g., 81 or 8081).

Question Which process is answering to this ports when no other process is opening them? Which is the purpose of this behavior?

Edit

if I open the port with a program the port can then be used normally. Once the port is closed the strange behavior reappears. Example:

access to port 8080 deliver a connection to an unknown process
I open the port with tomcat
accesses to port 8080 goes to tomcat and everything is OK
I close the port (quit tomcat)
the port is listed as not used (see above)
access to port 8080 deliver a connection to an unknown process

the firewall rules just show that the port is not blocked

$ sudo ipfw show
00001    926004   100891783 allow ip from me to any dst-port 80,8080,3128,5001,5003,443
65535 125057043 94341114828 allow ip from any to any

Edit 2

the listening program is not an HTTP server (i.e., does not react to a GET index.html  HTTP/1.0 request

I noticed this very problem on my Macbook. I was trying to use port 8080 for some testing and I received the error that another process was already listening on it. My invocation of nmap returned different results depending on whether I was using sudo or not. This did not make sense to me.

I was really concerned when I could not figure out what was processes were listening on these ports using sudo lsof -P -n -iTCP | grep LIST. This led me to believe that there was malicious software intentionally hiding itself.

I ended up removing files from /Library/LaunchDaemons/ until I narrowed it down to the culprit. The application responsible for all these opened ports was the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobile Client. Unfortunately, in order for this Cisco VPN client to work, it must have all these ports opened. Apparently, it is also responsible for the firewall rule addition that you reported with ipfw show.

It still boggles my mind why it does not show which process is responsible for the open ports when using lsof. No application should be able to avoid being listed using this method. Perhaps the reason for the process not being listed will be answered in another stackexchange question.


How to type ろ in Japanese kana mode on US-English keyboard? I tried the Japanese kana input method (prior to that I used romaji method) but it seems designed for Japanese hardware keyboard, which has one more key on the next to the right-shift key.

However on the US-English, there is no such redundant hardware key, making it impossible to type in ろ character.

So is there any way to type in ろ in US-English keyboard on macOS?

Using the Japanese Hiragana Input Source, with the preference for Typing Method set to "Kana", you should find ろ at Shift plus け (the key marked ' on the US keyboard), next to the return key, as shown below:

Keyboard Viewer is useful for solving such problems.


How to show italic in vim in iTerm2 The beloved Solarized colour scheme seems to apply an italic face for comments, but when I am using it in vim in iTerm2, it does not.

So, everything including comments are displayed in Roman (normal) face.
Even if I select the Menlo font, which has an italic face I can see in iTerm2's preferences window, the comments are rendered as Roman.

Together with the fact that comments are in light gray, and normal text in (not very bright) white, comments become rather difficult to distinguish from normal text.

To me this is a flaw in the otherwise great color scheme. I did some searching but the advice is old and do not solve the problem. I'm using OS X 10.6 Sierra on a MacBook Air.

You have to update your TERMINFO file.

Thanks to wincent's video and his github pages
Watch the video and look at his github pages, they're excellent.

I have the following note stored on my HD:

We can have italics in the terminal.

This works in iTerm as well as Terminal.

We have to adapt the terminfo database to tell it to display italics.

Create a plain text file which contains the following:

xterm-256color|xterm with 256 colors and italic,
  sitm=\E[3m, ritm=\E[23m,
  use=xterm-256color,

Save it as xterm-256color.terminfo.txt

Then execute the following command:

tic -o ~/.terminfo xterm-256color.terminfo.txt

This will create a ~/.terminfo/some_arbitrary_number/ directory, and inside that directory is a xterm-256color file.

What it does according to the manpage:

       The command tic translates a terminfo file from source format into com-
       piled  format.   The  compiled  format  is  necessary  for use with the
       library routines in ncurses(3X).

       The results are  normally  placed  in  the  system  terminfo  directory
       /usr/share/terminfo.  There are two ways to change this behavior.

       First, you may override the system default by setting the variable TER-
       MINFO in your shell environment to a valid (existing) directory name.

       Secondly, if tic cannot get access to /usr/share/terminfo or your  TER-
       MINFO  directory,  it  looks for the directory $HOME/.terminfo; if that
       directory exists, the entry is placed there.

       Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check for  a  TER-
       MINFO  directory first, look at $HOME/.terminfo if TERMINFO is not set,
       and finally look in /usr/share/terminfo.

       -o dir   Write  compiled  entries to given directory.  Overrides the TER-
                MINFO environment variable.

So with the given command we are writing a new terminfo entry in the hidden ~/.terminfo directory. It takes the capabilities of the existing xterm-256color entry (from /usr/share/terminfo/) and adds italics mode to it.

To check that the terminal does the right thing:

with fish:

echo (tput sitm)'italics' (tput ritm) (tput smso)'standout'(tput rmso)

with bash or zsh:

echo `tput sitm`italics`tput ritm` `tput smso`standout`tput rmso`

I guess at the moment most vim terminal colorschemes don't set italic as a style. To check this do:
:hi Comment if the reply contains cterm=italic you're done.
If not add highlight Comment cterm=italic to your vimrc (below setting your colorscheme).

Addendum for tmux

tmux uses its own terminfo files, they also need to be updated to use italics.

create a tmux.terminfo.txt file which contains

tmux|tmux terminal multiplexer,
  sitm=\E[3m, ritm=\E[23m,
  smso=\E[7m, rmso=\E[27m,
  use=screen,

create a tmux-256color.terminfo.txt file which contains

tmux-256color|tmux with 256 colors,
  sitm=\E[3m, ritm=\E[23m,
  smso=\E[7m, rmso=\E[27m,
  use=screen-256color,

and run the tic command.

tic -o ~/.terminfo tmux-256color.terminfo.txt
and
tic -o ~/.terminfo tmux.terminfo.txt


Increase amount of text copied in iterm2 When I select text in iTerm2, the text it copies cuts off at after a certain (seemingly arbitrary) point.  I did a few tests and its usually between 800 and 1500 bytes of input.

Why is this, and how can I change the settings in iTerm2 to allow me to copy all the text I highlight?

Note: I don't have this problem in the default "terminal" application, just in iterm.

It should copy all text you have selected.  You should check under Preferences>Profiles in the Terminal tab how big your scrollback buffer is.  However it is specified in lines not bytes.


How do I use an "intersection" symbol in word? I desperately need to use the intersection symbol for a stats assignment but kind figure out how to do it in word.

If you're using Office 2011 on a recent OS X system, then its relatively easy to get a host of characters available.

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard tab and check Show Keyboard and Character Viewers in menu bar.

This will put a little icon, usually next to the Date/Time, in the menu bar.

From the new Menu Bar icon, choose Show Character Viewer and then select Math Symbols from the picker:

A host of symbols. Put the insertion point in your Word document, then double-click the symbol you need.


How to see VPN connection statistics? I live in China, which requires me to use several VPN's to access the outside web.  Occasionally, some VPN's are either totally blocked or suffer from high packet loss.

In Windows, it is easy to see statistics such as the packets in/out, the compression ratio, and most importantly for me, the packet loss ratio.  Is there a way to see VPN connection quality information OS X?

Nothing as nice and easy as Windows provides, however you can get the info you require if you enable verbose logging on your PPTP connection:

Open System Preferences → Network.
Select your your VPN service from the list of services on the left.
Click Advanced….

Then tick Use verbose logging and click OK, then Apply.

In Terminal, run the following command:

tail -f /var/log/ppp.log


How does apple's EFI compare to the UEFI standard? Apple's EFI in macs were the first implementation of EFI by Intel but then Intel revised their work and made UEFI for PC's which is newer and possibly better. I wanted to know if Apple's EFI has been receiving updates through the years or is it outdated compared to UEFI ?

The Apple EFI firmwares are always automatically updated when you update the version of an OS or upgrade the OS. You can check it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201518.


iPhoto 11 on Mavericks suddenly can not open library anymore Suddenly my iPhoto can not open the library anymore. It says it does not have the required permissions to the library.

I read many article already, also the official of Apple.

However, nothing helps. Any idea how to fix this?

If you know how to use the info pane in Finder, you can select the iPhoto Library and make sure your user has read+write permissions.

An easy way to test this is to connect a USB or other drive and copy the file to that drive and then click on the library to have iPhoto open it. You might also hold the option key to be sure you select the correct copy of the library.

If that works, you can delete the broken library and copy the fixed one back. Also, if you have a backup, you could restore things from when it worked.

Feel free to comment or edit new info in the post if you have more details to share and this doesn't fix it.


Internet recovery broken on Macbook Pro. Error message given is " apple.com/support -3403F ". When I try to install mac os high sierra using internet recovery, i get a frozen black screen with an exclamation mark and a error message saying "apple.com/support -3403F". I have tried recovering from multiple locations using different wifi's as well as completely open firewall settings on my home router. My question is, what is causing this, how do i debug it, and how do I fix it?

Thanks!

That indicates your machine can’t reach the internet.

Troubleshooting this will be challenging unless you have network / wire shark capabilities and can make sure the packets from this machine are going unhindered to Apple’s servers.

In practice, this is far easier to diagnose by using a second Mac on this network to see if it can boot to recovery. If not - you know it’s the network. If the second can boot - you have a hardware failure or network card failure on the problem Mac.

Taking the suspect Mac to another network that is known to be good (or just taking it to 4 or 5 networks and assuming one of them has to be OK) can also help you isolate if the problem is the network or the hardware.

Lastly, setting up a caching server on your local network would let you see those logs and be sure the Mac in question was requesting the correct recovery image from the internet.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/manage-content-caching-on-mac-mchl3b6c3720/mac

Content caching is a super power move, since you only download one copy of each asset, then your local network accelerates all further installs and boots.


Asking QuickTime Player 7 to play MIDI files through GarageBand By just launching a MIDI file it will play by default using QuickTime Player 7, but the volume is rather low and the sound is far from polished.

How can I ask QuickTime player 7 (or any other application) to send the MIDI stream to GarageBand.

I have already done it from EarMaster to GarageBand and the difference is spectacular, but no option in QuickTime Player lets me select the IAC Driver.

I am hardly attached to QuickTime Player. If GarageBand will play MIDI files, please mention how.

If you have a blank Garage Band song open and you drag a Midi file in and drop it onto the timeline, it will import the tracks.


How to configure OS X for exhibitions I need to configure a Mac Mini and OS X for use in exhibitions so that it:

boots when power switches on (or wake on LAN)
starts Safari in full-screen mode
suppresses closing Safari and/or showing its menu (or only after password input)

How is this possible?

I'm not sure doing this with Safari is possible, but there is kiosk software out there that should fill your needs. They all seem to use WebKit, so the browsing experience will be similar to Safari.
Here's what I found:

eCrisper $79. Looks fairly configurable, it would allow you to display some branding or supplementary information in addition to the browser.
xStand $99.99. This looks like the most actively developed and supported option. Available on the Mac App Store.
Kiosk $4.99 This is the cheapest ($4.99), but also has the fewest features, and hasn't been updated since October 2011. Available on the Mac App Store.

eCrisper and xStand both have demos available.
Any of those should fulfill requirements 2 and 3. For the first one, I'm not aware of any way to boot up a Mac automatically when it gets plugged in. There is an option in Energy Saver Preferences to "Start up automatically after a power failure", which will restart automatically if the power gets disconnected, but for a cold start, you need to press the power button or use Wake on LAN.
However once the power goes on, you can put whatever kiosk software you decide on in the login items, and enable automatic login (probably for a user with limited privileges, as an added security measure). That will get it automatically booting into the locked down browser mode.


Difference between kinds of items in Keychain, e.g., "Web form password", "Internet password", "application password", etc What is the difference between kinds of items in Keychain, e.g.:

Web form password
Internet password
application password

How can I create a Keychain item of a specific kind?

Difference between different type of Password related to KeyChain

App-Specific Password:

App-specific passwords are passwords for your Apple ID that let you sign in to your account and securely access the information you store in iCloud from a third-party app. For example, use app-specific passwords with mail, contacts, and calendar services not provided by Apple. App-specific passwords maintain a high level of security and help ensure your Apple ID password won’t be collected or stored by any third-party apps you use.

Web form Password:

These are passwords set by the site you are visiting, such as a bank for instance. They make the rules for their own site. Some do not allow your browser to remember for safety/security reasons. Others do allow it so you can set your browser to auto-fill those.

Internet Password:

These are passwords provided by you to access the Internet while connecting through WiFi, configuring Proxy and others that is related to network on your system.

Keeping track of passwords is hard, especially if you follow the best practice of never using the same password twice and have multiple devices. iCloud Keychain keeps website and Wi-Fi passwords up to date across your Mac, iOS devices, and iPadOS devices. It also keeps account passwords and settings that you add to Internet Accounts preferences up to date on your Mac.

How can I create a Keychain item of a specific kind?

Apps and servers may automatically create a keychain with a password for you when you create your account or log in, or they may offer you the option to have Keychain Access remember the password. It is the same for Internet passwords too as it is added automatically by creating a key chain under an appropriate group.

You need to deep dive a bit on Keychain properties if you want to create for Web Form password for your own tool. It would provide a bit idea if you look on this query too.


Verify that entries in iTunes are actually on disk I have a ton and a half of songs in my iTunes (Windows 7). I recently consolidated my library from 3 different Hard Drives.

I also deleted some of the unwanted music folders on my C Drive (but I forgot to make a list so I could delete from iTunes).

I want to verify that all the songs in the library actually exist on disk.

It is physically impossible for me to just play each song one at a time to find out if it exists or not.

I know that I have to disconnect my HDDs (just keep C drive) to do this.

I know that I can export the library and purely check for the existence of file://D/ and file://E/, but that won't cover the music files blown away from the C drive.

How do I verify that all entries in iTunes have a physically valid file on my C drive?

Choose Edit > Select all.
Now choose File > New playlist from selection. Call the playlist "Exist". Only the listings that exist on disk will be added to this playlist.
Now create a smart playlist called "Do Not Exist" with the conditions: Playlist is not "Exist", and Media Kind is Music.

The smart playlist called "Do Not Exist" now contains all the audio listings that do not exist on disk. To remove these listings, select all of them and hold down Shift as you press Delete.


Paste into mail and keep format of pasted text but don't change to that format thereafter This annoyance occurs every time I paste something into an email I am editing in OS X Mail. Here is what happens every time:

I am composing my email in the default format.
I paste something in, which is in a different format, that I want to preserve. This occurs automatically, and is not a problem at this point.
The annoyance occurs when I resume typing after the pasting, and the format has now changed to that of the pasted text and I need to reset it.

I am hoping there is some simple solution to this annoyance which occurs for me many dozens of times per day.

This is what I do:

Write the first paragraph.
Write part of the the second paragraph.
Go back to the end of the first paragraph and press return or enter a couple of times.
Paste whatever will change the text style into the space you've just created.

Not very elegant but it does the job.


Why do duplicates keep showing up in my address book? I maintain a very clean address book (OSX), complete with photos and profile info of my contacts. Contacts are on iCloud and Exchange.

However, sometimes I'll get an email from a contact and the picture won't show up. In fact, an entirely new email-entry shows up in the address book even if that email is already associated with a contact.

Any advice on how I can make this stop happening? My Contacts is now full of duplicates.

This will most likely be from contacts duplicated on the two servers - turn off the contact service on one of the servers and you should see your dupes disappear. We had this same issue recently when migrating from an in-house Exchange server to Office 365. Various users had contacts set up on both and were complaining about having duplicates in their contacts lists. Our policy is to leave contacts stored on iCloud but you may have different priorities.


How to manually change orientation of iPad I feel ridiculous shaking my iPad and turning it many times before it finally orients itself to the proper landscape/portrait setting.

Is there a way to manually change the orientation, by hitting a button or something?

Seems like you have issue with the gyroscope inside the iPad. He's the one detecting when the iPad is turned.

Your better chance would be to go to an Apple Store if it's still under guaranty, maybe they'll find a problem and change it for you.

To answer your question, no, there's no hardware button to change the orientation. But you can lock it, and here's the 2 possibilities. If under Settings • General • Use Side Switch to

Lock Rotation
Just flip the switch over the volume button to lock the iPad in it's current orientation.
Mute
Double-click the Home button, slide the apps to the right and click the button to the further left. It will lock the orientation.


Change Date Format to German (English) I accidentally changed my date format from "German (English)" to "German (Germany)". Now I can't seem to get it back.

I need that format. I changed a UK Format to my needs but having a predefined option would make me much happier.

Any suggestions on how to get it back?

(I'm running OSX 10.8.5)

You can change date format, decimal sign, etc. under:

system preferences > language & text > region (tab)

I believe if you set your region to english and then go to

system preferences > language & text > language (tab)

and select German there, you should have "German (English)" back.


Knowing which program runs a process at macos startup I would like to know if it is possible to know which program launches which process?
In my current case, I have the impression that my "nginx" is not controlled by "brew", because when I retrieve the list of brew services I have:

and when I run
brew services stop nginx
nginx is still running in the activity monitor.

It is most likely started by launchd.  But you can see it’s Parent Process ID (PPID) with ps -ef and follow the PID/PPID back.


Overriding the default resolution on external monitor I have an iMac 5K (mid-2017) and a USB-C to HDMI adapter. I used to have a standard 24" monitor (1920x1080) connected to the adapter, and it worked just fine; however, I have put a video capture device in between and while this device supports a 1080p resolution, macOS keeps on detecting it as running at 720p as its native resolution.

I am able to force macOS to run this external device at 1080p by selecting the "scaled" video modes (and it appears to output a correct 1080p signal); however, every time macOS has a video configuration change (from me e.g. switching between mirroring and extending the desktop), it always defaults back to 720p.

Essentially, it always defaults to "best for display," but thinks that this best setting is 720p rather than my preference of 1080p.

Is there any way to force macOS to change its default resolution for an external device, so I don't have to manually change the resolution every time?

It turns out this is one of the many things that SwitchResX can do.


Bootcamp Yosemite: How to Install windows 7 with DVD I was wondering is it possible to Install Windows7 with a bootable DVD?

On apple web site:

  When you purchase Windows, it either comes as a disk image file (ISO)
  or as an installation disc. If your copy of Windows came on a DVD, you
  should create a disk image of your installation disc.

Why should I make an ISO when I have an original windows dvd and my mac is also have an optical drive?

The answer really depends on the model of your Mac. Generally, if your Mac came with an internal optical drive, you probably should install using the DVD. Also, the Boot Camp Assistant is a good source to answer your question. If the option to create a Windows install USB flash drive is available, then you probably will need to create an iso file from your DVD. Start the Boot Camp Assistant application and continue through the windows until you get the "Select Tasks" window. Your answer will be based on the options that appear.


Alfred Terminal / Shell Command does not work In Alfred, if I type > ls must open iTerm2 with that command. Well, does not work for me.

In Application if I select Terminal instead of iTerm2, works.

If I select Application → Custom, it shows the applescript code you can see below and works.

If I select Application → Custom and modify the tell application line replacing Terminal with iTerm, does not work.

If I open Script Editor and type the following applescript code, does not work:

tell application "iTerm"
    activate
    do script "ls"
end tell

If I remove do script line open iTerm.

Any ideas of why do script line does not work with iTerm?

This is a working example that I derived from the example in https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/AppleScript

Check out the comment from stefan.v...@gmail.com

tell application "iTerm"
    activate

    try
        set _session to current session of current terminal
    on error
        set _term to (make new terminal)
        tell _term
            launch session "Default"
            set _session to current session
        end tell
    end try

    tell _session
        write text "ls"
    end tell
end tell


MacBook Pro 2012, HDD speed 80MB read/write normal? I have a MacBook Pro 13" (non-retina) from 2012 with a 512GB HDD. I've run some speed test with BlackMagic and those are around 75-80MB/sec for read/write. This seems slow, but maybe this is normal for this configuration.

Are these normal values?

Those kinds of speeds are to be expected from a MacBook HDD. For much higher speeds, consider upgrading the HDD to an SSD. (See Macbook Pro Hard drive speed)


Disable System Integrity Protection on OS X running on VMware I have an instance of OS X El Capitan running on VMWare Workstation 10. I need to make changes to /System and therefor have to disable System Integrity Protection. How do I access recovery mode on this VM so I can disable SIP?

I know this is an older question but I came across it looking for a solution to this problem so I figured I would submit an answer that contains all of the info I came across in one place.
Background
My environment
Host

Windows 10
VMWare Workstation 12 (patched to run macOS)

Guest

macOS High Sierra 10.13.4

I originally tried adding macosguest.forceRecoveryModeInstall = "TRUE" to my .vmx config. This allowed me to boot into recovery and could disable SIP but then I couldn't get the VM to boot normally, even after removing that line.
The solution to this problem I found was to just delete the .nvram file. Unfortunately, that's where the flag to disable SIP is stored so when my VM came back up SIP was enabled again.
My Solution

From the Terminal, run the following commands (thanks to G5tube for this suggestion)
 sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused"
 sudo reboot recovery

The second command will reboot your Mac instantly, so better save any unfinished work first.

Once the Mac has rebooted into the Recovery / Installer system (you may have to choose your language first): From the menu bar, click Utilities > Terminal

Run csrutil disable from the terminal, followed by reboot

Once your VM has rebooted normally you can verify that SIP was disabled by opening a terminal and running csrutil status

To turn SIP back on, follow the same steps as above but run csrutil enable at the recovery terminal instead.


What causes the retina Macbook Pro HDMI-DVI output to cut out on occasion? I got my retina Macbook Pro this week and have been waiting for my Thunderbolt to DVI adapters to get here so I can hook them up to my external displays. In the meantime, I am using an HDMI to DVI cable to hook up to my monitor.

I've noticed every once in a while, the monitor I am using will sometimes go blank for a second and then back. It doesn't happen very often, but I'm not sure if this has to do with the cable, monitor, or my retina Macbook Pro.

I've tried multiple cables, and have been using this monitor previously to the retina Macbook Pro, so I don't think the monitor is the issue.

Do you think this is an issue with the laptop? Something graphics card related? I can't seem to figure out why this randomly happens.

I was able to catch this happening on video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vGeDR48E8w

Try disabling Automatic Graphics Switching in the System Preferences-Energy Saver.  This may be working for me, though I haven't figured out how to reproduce the 1-2 second blanking, so only time will tell.

I'm running 10.8.2 on a new rMBP and have the same issue - The external display goes blank for 1-2 seconds when connected to a 1680 x 1050 display via the HDMI connector and the rMBP is closed and in a stand. There is no movement of the rMBP, the HDMI cable or monitor when this happens.

I have not experienced the same momentary blanking of the rMBP's display when using only the native display.

It doesn't happen often (2-3 times per day) so it's more of an irritation that I don't expect from a nearly $3,000 piece of hardware.


How to reset security questions if I forgot them I've forgotten security questions to my account and I want to reset them. I've logged into my Apple ID, went to security section, and went ahead and clicked the link which says "Reset security questions?" in case I've forgotten it, which is my case.

I've entered my password, and it is asking for the answers of the  very security questions that I'm trying to reset. What is the point of asking the answers after clicking the link to reset them in the case that I've forgotten it?

Am I doing something wrong?

The following is a way that - seemingly - not even Apple Support knows about, I've found it myself after I got told that my account's situation is hopeless and I cannot get it back.
I forgot the answers to all of my security questions and did not have a rescue email. There is no way to reset the questions in that scenario, your only option is to get rid of the questions altogether - and you can do that by enabling two-factor authentication. The catch is that you must answer some security questions to enable it from Settings.
And here is the interesting part: if you log in with your Apple ID on a device (I did it with an iPhone 5 running iOS 10, but any iOS 10+ device should work), log out and do that several times, you'll eventually get a popup to enable 2FA... and it will let you do that without answering a single security question! I got the popup after logging in and out just once, but your results may vary.

Others have confirmed that this method still works in March 2021:

I had a very old Apple ID with remaining credit that was only used for iTunes and not yet activated for iCloud. I had already changed the password via the email address some time ago. But resetting the security questions was not possible anymore, because I could not answer enough questions for that. And after several attempts even this form was blocked for the meantime.

On an old iPhone 4s (iOS 9.3.6) the Apple ID was still stored under iTunes & App Store (I don't know if it is required to use a device which was already linked to this Apple ID). I also entered the same Apple ID under iCloud to activate iCloud for this Apple ID. I then entered my phone number under iCloud > Apple ID > Contact information (confirmed by code from SMS). Entering an additional email adress was at this stage not possible. Thereafter, under iCloud > Apple ID > Password & Security, the two-factor authentication could be enabled for the same phone number (eventually an unlock code has to be set prior under Settings). I had to confirm the activation via the code sent by SMS. Logging in to icloud.com was then possible again and I was able to update all account information.


Can I create/edit contact groups in iOS? I have been successful in managing contact groups with OS X's Contacts.app and iCloud.com, but haven't found a way to do this as of iOS 9.

Is there a way to manage contact groups on iOS (iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch) ?

No, there is no way to create or edit contact groups on iOS. I share your frustration! The best workaround is to use iCloud.com (or your primary Mac, if you have it with you).

Also, there is a way to add contacts to a specific group on iOS, though it's not obvious:

In Contacts, tap the Groups button in the top left
Tap "Hide All Contacts"
Tap the group that you want to add the contact to (making it the only visible group)
Tap Done in the top right
Tap the Add button (+) in the top right

Now when you create and save the contact, it'll save it in that specific group. You can then go back to the Groups list and reenable all your groups.


What is the software different between Apple Lisa and first Macintosh? Lisa is released before Macintosh, but LOTS of books mention that the development of Macintosh involve a lot of effort and innovation. So, what are the Apple Lisa and Macintosh software major different? Also, is this the Lisa is the first Apple desktop using a mouse? Thanks.

I'm pretty sure Apple had a mouse for the Apple II line although I'm not sure if it overlapped with the Lisa and Mac.

The first Lisa had its own operating system which used an early version of Bill Atkinson's quickdraw routines, had overlapping windows, pull down menus although if memory serves it had a document model more like OpenDoc than what the Mac had a bit later.

After the Mac came out in 1984 the Lisa was rebranded "Macintosh XL" and it used an early version of the Macintosh OS until it was phased out.

In short, the Lisa was the bridge between the ideas that Jobs, Atkinson and others had seen at Xerox PARC and the Mac.

Here's an excellent history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_lisa


Have a separate password for Game Center Is it possible to have a separate password for Game Center - one that is not the same as I use for my Apple ID?

Yes and no :-)

If you use your Apple ID to log into Gamecenter, you must use the same password as for all the other places you use your Apple ID to log in.
You can create a new Apple ID on icloud.com though and use that one for Gamecenter


macOS Sierra Bluetooth is skipping As soon as I upgraded to macOS Sierra a few days ago, my Bluetooth playback has been so choppy/buggy that it is entirely unusable. Playback will be as normal for 2-10 seconds, then cut completely for a few seconds, then cut back in, and so on.

I am connected to a Sony Bluetooth speaker, to which I can confirm that other OS X (El Capitan) and Android/iPhone devices can stream audio to without incident.

I do not have any other Bluetooth speakers to test on, but I strongly feel it's the fault of the macOS Sierra machine, not the speaker.

I am not using any 3rd party or custom audio routing internally, it's literally just routing audio output to the Bluetooth speaker as normal. I've already reset SMC and PRAM, doesn't help whatsoever.

Has anyone else encountered this? If this is a genuine bug in macOS Sierra, it seems like a massive oversight.

As stated on a different answer, and I am not quite sure why it was downvoted, the first thing to look for is "bluetooth and 2.4 GHz interference". Make a simple test to switch to a 5GHz Wifi network, and try your Sony Bluetooth speaker once again.


How to use iPhone to Store and Organize Photos Outside of Photos Camera Roll The main issue I’m trying to solve is that when photos are transferred to the iPhone’s "Photos" via iTunes syncing, the picture gets transformed.

To verify that, sync a photo using iTunes to get it into the iPhone's "Photos"; and while iTunes is still running and the phone is connected, access the photo on the iPhone from the computer via USB and check the properties of the photo.  It's a transformed lower resolution photo.  Called Apple Support about this and they confirmed, that's what it does, works as designed, "to save space" was the reason.

Need a solution: to be able to use a photo organizer that does not rely on media being kept in iPhone "Photos" so I can use a photo organizer that does not transform any of my media.

Solution for that and as a side benefit, keep the "Camera Roll" as close to empty as possible (made a little compromise to accommodate keeping media original that has effects e.g. live, animated photos).

Need a photo organizer that:

a) stores photos/videos in it's on file space on the iPhone and can make albums from that source (so that it does not rely on "Photos").

b) is able to add photos/videos to that file space from the iPhone's "Photos" and be able to load photos/videos from any source so that everything is in one place (from which albums can be made).

To keep everything in original form, no transformations, here’s a strategy that will even work on an iPhone 5.

One compromise: to preserve the ability to play "live" photos or photos with effects, leave those in "Photos" so unfortunately, that means the Camera Roll would have some media in it.  Yes, one could compromise and let "live" photos get transformed into a .jpg and an accompanying .mov file but, the goal is to not transform anything and retain the exact characteristics of how the media plays so, if that’s important to you, leave it in "Photos".   fyi "Live Photos" and "Animated" photos are identified under "Media Types" in "Photos".

Photo organizers considered: Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor, Utiful.

Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor (free version does everything required).  Lightroom copies media into itself (it's own file space) and once it's there, you make albums that references media in that file space and therefore it will not be referencing media stored in "Photos".

To aid in getting media to the iPhone, install AirMore onto the iPhone (it's free).  AirMore serves two purposes: to transfer media to the phone, to serve as a single spot to copy media onto the iPhone which Lightroom can get at and copy the media to itself.

GETTING YOUR MEDIA ONTO YOUR iPhone.

1) Media that's on a camera.  Transfer it to a computer, use iTunes or AirMore to get it onto the iPhone.  Because AirMore's file space shows up in iTune's "File Sharing", you can copy files to that app without having to use iTune's sync.  Lightroom will be able access the file space in "AirMore" to copy the media into itself.

2) Media that's on a computer.  If you like iTunes and the computer has it installed, that's an option (copy the media to AirMore via "File Sharing).  If it isn't available, then use AirMore.  Regardless, both result in the media going to AirMore's file space where Lightroom can copy it into itself.

3) Media that's on an iPhone.  Use AirMore or Airdrop.  Airdrop is ideal for a specific scenario, for transferring "Live" photos or "Animated" photos from "Photos" because using Airdrop results in a direct transfer from one iPhones "Photos" to the other iPhones "Photos" and the media's effects are preserved.

Lightroom can now copy media into itself because it can access the files in AirMore.  Copy the media and delete it once it's copied. Lightroom can copy media from the "Photos" camera roll into itself.  Delete stuff that's been copied from "Photos".

Everything is original and in one place (except live/animated photos) in Lightroom.  The camera roll is as close to being empty as it can be.  Enjoy, get going on those albums!


My kid set a passcode on the iPad and doesn't know it. Now what? My 7-year-old daughter mistakenly set a 4-digit passcode on the iPad and doesn't remember what it is. Now it is locked and useless. What are my options to recover it (if any)?

The answers I have seen online all say to "connect it to the PC or Laptop that you usually synch with for iTunes". But I never used iTunes. I never synched it with a PC or Laptop. When I just connected it to my MacBook Pro, I got the following message:

Put your iPad into recovery mode by pressing home and power button simultaneously. When your iPad turns into recovery mode, connect it to your PC or laptop.  Then your iTunes will display  a dialogue box stating that your device is in recovery mode. Click OK.
Then you can restore your device via iTunes.


Can't connect to SMB share between two current 10.9.x machines not connected to the internet In two instances I have have a number of Mac Minis and iMacs that were not connected to the Internet but a local isolated LAN have their SMB:// shares refuse to connect, though they worked days or weeks before with no configuration changes.

After some testing I found that AFP:// and CIFS:// connections still worked using the same username and password as the non working SMB connections.

Since 10.9.x uses SMB by default now I wanted to figure out what was causing the issue instead of switching to AFP or CIFS as many have suggested.

Answering my own question since I had not seen this specific question answered.

After some log searching I finally found out that the issue was because the time on one of the machines was drifting causing it to become more than 5 minutes off from the computer it was connecting to and the server (computer connecting to) was displaying this log entry:

<date> <time> kdc[80]: Too large time skew, client time <time> is out by 356 > 300 seconds -- <user>@LKDC:<SHA1>

After finding this log entry I noticed and corrected the local time on the machines and the SMB connection via finder worked right away as expected.

The moral of this story is don't trust the Mac internal time without NTP backup; either via the Internet or a local NTP server.


How to choose which FaceTime number to call I have a friend with two iPhones, two different numbers.  When I call her with FaceTime audio, only phone A rings.  How can I call phone B?  The phones have two separate Apple ID addresses, but they are both set to receive Facetime calls on their 10 digit phone numbers.  I have both numbers listed in my contacts as 'Home' and 'Work' for the same person.

I'm not sure there is a standard way. It certainly isn't easy to find by using the Contacts or the Facetime app. But, it can be done:

Send a text message to the specific number you want to Facetime
call.
Open the conversation thread.
Click "Contact" in the top right.
Click the symbol for calling.
Choose "FaceTime Audio".


Logging into Guest user When i try to log in into the Guest user it appears like this. And if I restart and logging into it, it shows up only safari.

How can I log in normally to the Guest user account?

To disable this (I'm assuming that's what you want):

Open System Preferences
Security & Privacy
Advanced
The option you're looking for is: 'Disable restarting to Safari when screen is locked'

Some have reported that disabling Find my Mac from System Preferences will also fix your issue, but the solution above is preferable.


Compability of Brew Cask VirtualBox and Parallels? I have a Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac installed and for a Vagrantfile I need to have virtualbox that I could install with brew such that brew install caskroom/cask/virtualbox.

I tested Parallels Desktop 12 and VirtualBox from Brew Cask -- and so far they have worked side-by-side fine. The VirtualBox from Brew Cask apparently installs the Oracle VirtualBox.

Anyway with the future compability issues in mind,

What is the compability status of Parallels and Virtualbox and is it possible to have them side-by-side? Are there some potential pitfalls?

Yes, the brew cask virtualbox and Parallels Desktop 12 seem to be compatible. I tested them and they are working together.

Anyway if they become incompatible at some point, there are also other alternatives. As mentioned in the comments, other alternatives contain

Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac Pro Edition where you can use the free vagrant-parallels
also an experimental vagrant provider for xhyve > shave > Apple > Hypervisor.framework by this comment


Clean iPhone cache after iOS 8.3 I was a PhoneClean and PhoneExpander user but, after iOS 8.3 update, they (and similar apps) stopped working due to some modifications in iOS.

Now I start having too much cache on my phone but I don't want to remove and reinstall apps to clean their cache, is there a faster way to do that? (apps updated to support iOS 8.3 or iOS apps or other ways...)

I don't want to jailbreak.

In iOS 8.3, Apple revoked the user's ability to access a downloaded app's files (Documents & Data). Further, third party apps don’t natively provide a way to delete their "Documents & Data". It's an inconvenient feature in the OS, yet it exists, even from the beta stages.

However, in an attempt to defend Apple, this could have been an extra security measure to prevent users from hacking apps. Another possibility is that the cleaning apps you mentioned are simply not up-to-date with the new OS.

Sadly, you will have to delete the app off of your iDevice, and reinstall it, to remove any app data. You can do this either from the iDevice itself, or using iTunes on a computer.

You could jailbreak your iDevice which would give you access to multiple cleaning tools, but a jailbreak could be difficult to keep up with. You also don't want to accidentally mess with something serious.

It's a sad but certain truth that apps must be removed and reinstalled. Good luck!


Is there a simple way to enable/disable groups of fonts? I mostly works with Photoshop and Coda (programming app). I have installed many fonts and at the time I work with Photoshop I need all my fonts enabled.

But then after I don't need all the font but only the default system fonts.

Problem is that these font are slowing down my machine.

Can I create groups of fonts and then enable/disable these groups?

You can create font collections in OS X's own Font Book. These collections are shown in the left column and can be activated and deactivated from the context menu (right click on a collection name).

Fonts can exist in multiple collections, so you could create one with all fonts to be deactivated after your Photoshop work, but also more differentiated and overlapping groups if needed.


In app purchase + redeem points as gift vouchers We are developing a multiplayer game in which user has to buy some credit point through in app purchase, then he can multiply those points by winning multiplayer challenges with friends. On reaching a certain level of points, he can reward himself by re-deeming gift vouchers (amazon, ebay, etc) through those points. Does apple allow this type of game structure? Please suggest.

Contact App Review

Only Apple's reviewers can answer your question authoritatively. Contact Apple App Review and ask them directly.

App Store Review Guidelines

You can get a feel for what Apple will accept, see Apple's App Store Review Guidelines. In particular read Section 3.2:

  3.2 Other Business Model Issues

  The lists below are not exhaustive, and your submission may trigger a change or update to our policies, but here are some additional do’s and don’ts to keep in mind:

  ...

  (iv) Wallet passes can be used to make or receive payments, transmit offers, or offer identification (such as movie tickets, coupons, and VIP credentials). Other uses may result in the rejection of the app and the revocation of Wallet credentials.

  ...


Cron job not exiting in Catalina; leaving zombie processes I just upgraded to catalina a few days ago. I'm still using bash which has been installed with homebrew.

The ps aux | grep bash command is showing a new bash process is forked every minute. After a few hours I'll have hundreds of bash processes running in the background. Each of these is accompanied by a cron process.

The cron job in crontab -e is:

* * * * * /Users/me/bin/sync_task

This task runs a bash script for syncing my taskwarrior projects:

#!/bin/bash
TASKRC=$HOME/.taskrc_uc_team
/usr/local/bin/task synchronize
unset TASKRC
/usr/local/bin/task synchronize

Does anyone know why the bash and cron processes might not be exiting?

This anser solved this problem for me (redirecting stdout/stderr to /dev/null).


Transfer files to iPad via USB from Android I'm sure this question has been asked many times but I find it surprisingly hard to find a clear answer on the internet by searching it.

Is it possible, yes or no, to transfer files to my iPad with a USB cable from an Android device?

I have a google pixel phone, I just got a 2018 iPad, and I would like to transfer big video files between the two using a USB-C to USB-C cable. My devices are not rooted or jailbroken.

I'm sure there are other solutions like using dropbox but they seem silly compared to a USB transfer.

This is currently not possible using a lightning/USB port.

Apple does provide an alternative though.

See the corresponding support article: Move from Android to iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch


There Are Screen Glitches on Normal Desktop Usage But not in Safe Mode I've a iMac Late 2009 model with latest version of MacOS High Sierra and there are screen glitches/flickering on normal desktop usage but not in safe mode.

Where is the problem?

Safe mode disables almost all GPU acceleration and fancy features, so you have a system where either the GPU itself has failed or the drivers / part of the system that run accelerated and fancy features is corrupt or broken or buggy. The one quick triage step is to see if making a new user account also shows the error.

Assuming that you can’t just live with the artifacts and hope that the software update will fix them and assuming that you have a full backup of all the data and programs you need to reinstall, I would triage this further:

Install a totally clean macOS to an extra hard drive as a quick test of the current updated system and the graphics hardware work all together. (Bonus points is you now have downloaded the installer and optionally run createinstallmedia for a bootable installer.)

Based on the results there, you might open a support ticket with the vendor or seek a repair if the issue persists on a totally new and updated install of the OS. Hopefully you can cure this in software, but the age of the GPU and the specifics of the failure could easily be what the beginning of what failing portions of the hardware looks like visually.


Is there an alternative dictionary for OS X? Is there any better English dictionary software available to replace the simple default dictionary app in mac?

I need some features like

one-click word lookup,
hotkey to open the program,
hotkey to lookup,
speech synthesis...

Cocoaspell is an open source dictionary. Cocoaspell is a MacOSX interface to Aspell.

  Aspell is an Open Source spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell. Its main feature is that it does a much better job of coming up with possible suggestions than Ispell does. In fact recent tests shows that it even does better than Microsoft Word 97's spell checker or just about any other spell checker I have seen. It also has support for checking (La)TeX and HTML files, and run time support for other non English language.


Dreamweaver CS6 for mac Dose any one know the shortcut key for opening a file from the "files" browser?

I tried Command+O but that open the location in finder instead of dreamweaver.

Or how to change it to the enter key?

Thanks

Ive look at the shortcuts tab and found nothing for the files window.

Cmd+O opens the finder file window, and lets you press enter there.
Im asking if there is a shortcut for the files sidebar window?

Thanks


Take a screenshot of the top-most window I want to have an AppleScript that takes a screenshot of the front most application. I have used this AppleScript:

tell application "System Events" -- get frontmost process
   set frontmostProcess to first process where it is frontmost -- this will be the script process
   set visible of frontmostProcess to false -- hide the script process
   repeat while (frontmostProcess is frontmost) -- wait until the script is hided
       delay 0.2
   end repeat
   set secondFrontmost to name of first process where it is frontmost -- get name of frontmost process (ignoring the script process)
   set frontmost of frontmostProcess to true -- unhide the script process
end tell
tell application secondFrontmost to set winID to id of window 1 -- get WindowID of frontmost window of frontmost process
do shell script "screencapture -c -x -l " & winID -- -c is used to store it in the clipboard. -x is used to mute the sound. -l is used to refer to the prefered windowid.

but it doesn't work for Snow Leopard. If anybody could give me some guidance as to what is the unsupported section of the code, I'd be happy to go and research myself.

I think Snow Leopard doesn't support the frontmost part but I can't get any information to back this assumption up...

Cmd+Shift+4 and Space and Click Window does work but I want an Applescript so I could replace the shortcut to open the Applescript - which will automatically take a picture of the active window.

This is so I don't have to click space and then click the windows I want.

I take screenshots a lot and constantly clicking space and clicking is getting annoying now.

The applescript, essentially, skips the space+click window

I just hacked together this little tool.

https://github.com/vorgos/QuickGrab

It is a command line tool that will capture the top most active window or any window you specify just like the -l option in the newer version of screencapture.

Hope that helped.


How can I search my entire drive for a file without getting recursively stuck in /Volumes? I'm looking for a txt file that contains a word.  However when I search my hard drive (or my TimeCapsule backup) I always get stuck in a recursive search of /Volumes/Hard Drive (etc).

The hardlink (or softlink, not sure) is causing me to never complete the search.

How can I search the entire harddrive (or backup drive) for a file without getting stuck in recursion?

Use locate, grep or find at the command line.

Open Applications>Utilities>Terminal and either use:

sudo locate -0 '*.txt' | xargs -0 grep WORD 2>/dev/null

Substitute WORD with the word you want to search for. This is by far the fastest method.

I'd recommend to recreate the locate database first to improve accuracy:

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

Note that on OS X, the locate database is created by user nobody. That means that files hidden to nobody won't be indexed. You can modify /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb and comment out (that is, prefix with #) this section:

if [ "$(id -u)" = "0" ]; then
     rc=0
     # 2013-03-08 jaume Correct mktemp
     export FCODES=`mktemp --tmpdir updatedbXXXX`
     chown nobody $FCODES
     tmpdb=`su -fm nobody -c "$0"` || rc=1
     if [ $rc = 0 ]; then
         install -m 0444 -o nobody -g wheel $FCODES /var/db/locate.database
     fi
     rm $FCODES
     exit $rc
 fi

so that it is indexed under user root (this applies to OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), on other OS X versions locate may index files differently).
sudo grep -R --exclude-dir '/Volumes/<OS volume>' --exclude-dir '/Volumes/MobileBackups' --exclude-dir '/.Spotlight*' --exclude-dir '/.MobileBackups' --exclude-dir '/.DocumentRevisions*' --include '*.txt' WORD / 2>/dev/null

Substitute WORD with the word you want to search for and <OS volume> with the name of your OS volume. The grep options used are:

-R: does a recursive search in the specified path, that is, in /. If you search your TimeCapsule backup, replace / with something like /Volumes/TimeCapsule.
--exclude-dir: excludes the specified folders. As you see, I exclude Spotlight, the Versions folder and local TimeMachine folders. If you want to search your local drive only while your TimeCapsule is mounted, add --exclude-dir /Volumes/TimeCapsule.
--include '*.txt': tells grep to search files which match *.txt.

Additionally:

2>/dev/null: sends errors to /dev/null so that you don't see them.

sudo find / ! -path '/.Spotlight*' ! -path '/Volumes/<OS volume>/*' ! -path '/Volumes/MobileBackups/*' ! -path '/.MobileBackups/*' ! -path '/.DocumentRevisions*' -name *.txt -type f -exec grep -H WORD {} + 2>/dev/null

Again, substitute WORD with the word you want to search for and <OS volume> with the name of your OS volume. As before, 2>/dev/null sends errors to /dev/null so that you don't see them, and if you search your TimeCapsule backup, replace / with something like /Volumes/TimeCapsule.

The find options used are:

! -path: exclude paths specified. If you want to search your local drive only while your TimeCapsule is mounted, add ! -path /Volumes/TimeCapsule/*.
-name *.txt: search files named *.txt. As you see, I exclude Spotlight, the Versions folder and local TimeMachine folders.
-type f: search only files, ignore symlinks, folders, etc.
grep -H WORD {}: grep file for WORD. -H forces grep to print the filename.

The output of any of the commands above looks like this:

filename: matched line

for example, when searching for 'GNU':

/usr/local/share/doc/p7zip/DOCS/readme.txt:7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL
/usr/local/share/doc/p7zip/DOCS/readme.txt:1) You can compile and use compiled files under GNU LGPL rules, since
/usr/local/share/doc/p7zip/DOCS/readme.txt:  copying.txt    - GNU LGPL license
/usr/local/share/doc/xz/history.txt:    Alexandre Sauvé helped converting the build system to use GNU

If you want to do a case insensitive search, replace grep with grep -i above.


How can I see which filetypes a given application can open? I have an app, it's refusing to open a file with a certain file extension. How do I check which file extensions it will open?

I think the go-to app is still RCDefaultApp (freeware). Hasn't been updated since 2009... still works in Mojave.

It can list & optionally reassign any app, UTI, extension etc.


Is there a way via the command line to cause .icloud files to download? Under iCloud in the Settings app, I have "Optimize Mac Storage" checked and "Desktop & Documents Folders" checked under "Apps that store documents and data in iCloud will appear here:"

This will cause some files in my "Documents" folder to be offloaded and replaced with a small file ending in ".icloud". I can download them by clicking on the cloud icon in the detail view in the Finder. I can also use "find" from the command line to show which files have been offloaded, eg "find . -name *.icloud | more".

Is there a command line way to cause these files to be downloaded, either by file or directory?

Scott Garret and Allan’s answer above is very close.

In the terminal, however, each *.icloud file is prefixed with a . when NOT downloaded.

For example, a directory called foo with optimised (i.e., offloaded to icloud) files a.txt and b.txt will look like this

$ cd foo
$ find . -name '.*icloud’
./.a.txt.icloud
./.b.txt.icloud

To resolve (i.e., download) the files from icloud, you need to pass the path to the resulting path to /usr/bin/brctl.

Thus, the following works.

find . -name '.*icloud' | perl -pe 's|(.*)/.(.*).icloud|$1/$2|s' | while read file; do brctl download "$file"; done

You can monitor the download activity as per this answer as follows :

brctl log --wait --shorten


Error message "iPod is disabled. Try again in 22,236,924 minutes." I think my son was trying to guess the passcode! What do I do?

I can't wait 42 years!

No harm done, that is if you have a backup on iTunes.
The Apple Support pages tell you can reset the block by restoring it within iTunes.

  If you cannot remember the passcode, you will need to restore your
  device using the computer with which you last synced it. This allows
  you to reset your passcode and resync the data from the device (or
  restore from a backup). If you restore on a different computer that
  was never synced with the device, you will be able to unlock the
  device for use and remove the passcode, but your data will not be
  present. Refer to Updating and restoring iPhone, iPad and iPod touch
  software.


Upgrade RAM MacBook Pro MD101 I have a MacBook Pro MD101 with 2 x 2GB RAM. I want to upgrade to 2 x 4GB but, I don't know where to buy it from? All online shops I've found only sell Corsair PC10666.

I think I want to upgrade my MacBook Pro to 2 x 8GB with PC12800 (1600 Mhz) so I tried to get Corsaire with PC12800. Can my MacBook Pro support this configuration? I read that officially Apple MD101 only supports a maximum of 4 GB RAM for 1 slot.

I assume by Macbook Pro MD101 you mean a Mid-2012 13" MacBook Pro (MacBookPro9,2) model?

If so, while Apple only officially supports a maximum of 8GB RAM, real world tests have proven this model is capable of using 16GB of RAM (and many many people run it with 16GB with no issues). To do this you would install an 8GB chip in each slot.

Now, as you seem to know, this model has two memory slots and takes 204-pin PC3-12800 (1600 MHz) DDR3 SO-DIMM memory chips.

Depending on your location, you can purchase RAM for this model from:

MacSales (United States)
Flexx (United Kingdom)
RAM City (Australia)
Simply Mac (Asia)

If your MacBook Pro is not the Mid-2012 13" MacBook Pro (MacBookPro9,2) model, please ensure you use the various websites above to identify the memory you need!


Move items on the Safari reading list Can I move items in the Reading List like I can in the Bookmarks section?

There seems to be no direct way, but I could export them using Google Chrome:

From the Customize and Control Google Chrome menu, choose Bookmarks > Import Bookmarks and Settings.
In that window, select Safari and make sure that the Favorites/Bookmarks option is checked, then click Import.
Now, in Chrome Bookmarks menu, you should find a new folder called Imported from Safari with a subfolder called com.apple.ReadingList that include your Reading List items.
If you want, you can export them using Chrome's Bookmark Manager as usual.


Should I format my iMac? I have an iMac 27inch from 2009 running El Capitain at work. It was used by other people before I came in working for this company. It seems a bit on the slow side comparing to my home PC. Would formatting it help? (it has a bunch of applications)

If you are new to Mac, the first thing is prepare:

Make a Time Machine full backup to a drive over USB locally.
See if the Mac boots to recovery - hold Command + R when it starts

Assuming you have both the above, you can wipe and see what a clean Mac looks like. The internet download of the installer is 5 GB or so and the wipe / install should take less than 30 minutes once the download is done.

At that point you can see if you are missing apps and worst case - restore from the backup as if you didn't wipe in the first place - only using time.

You probably don't need to wipe to analyze the performance, but it could help clean up any oddball installations like third party flash / malware / odd browsers and old software you don't need running. A clean start is great to time the things you care about and then see if the system slows down over time.


Is there a way to create a custom keyboard shortcut in OSX? I'd like to press a custom set of keys (i.e. CTRL+`) to instead act like I am pressing a different set of keys (i.e. CTRL+]).

How can I accomplish this? In the keyboard shortcuts menu I'm only seeing ways to set keyboard keys to launch applications or change how the modifier keys work.

This may be a viable solution, you'll have to give it a try and see:

This answer uses Safari as the browser, change as needed.
The Service1  was named Collaborator Keystroke, change as wanted.
The keyboard shortcut assigned to the Service is ^`, change as wanted.

For the Automator Service1:

Use the image below for the settings.

ApplesScript code:

tell application "System Events" to keystroke "]" using command down

For System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services:

Note: Sometimes with an Automator Service1 and assigning a keyboard shortcut, you may first have to trigger it from the target App's Services menu one time. From then on the keyboard shortcut should work normally.

1 In macOS Mojave an Automator Service is called a Quick Action.


Instagram does not load stories iPhone 8: Instagram has problems loading stories. The circle appears and it is loading dozens of seconds each video or freezing at loading.
What I have done so far:

tested on Wi-Fi
tested on cellular data
turned on/off assistant (to smart switch between Wi-Fi and cellular data)
reinstalled instagram app
rebooted phone

Other apps are working ok, the problem exists only in instagram.
EDIT: Seems like from 2020-12-18 the problem is gone on iOS 14.2. I suspect Instagram app update has resolved the problem. iOS 14.3 seems fine also.

I see that you have already tried a lot of things. Do you happen to have iOS 14.1 ? I heard that this problem happens on it. Perhaps one of these methods will help you:

Clear your Instagram App Cache
Update your Instagram to the Latest
Turn Off Power Saving Mode
Turn off/on airplane mode
Try to log out/log in


Speeding up switching between multiple desktops (speed up or remove transition) Possible Duplicate:
  How can I disable animation when switching desktops in Lion?

I am a PC user who switches between many applications and now I use many full screen apps on the Mac (aka multiple desktops) I find the "three finger swipe" animation very distracting.

Actually I've been switching so often between desktops I feel a bit nauseous. (no joke)  I'm sure this effect is exaggerated since I am using a 1680x1050 resolution on a 15 inch Retina display on a Macbook Pro.

My short-term solution is to use windowed mode for now, but I really want to use all my screen real estate.

I think that speeding up the transition animation, or making it act like a "jump cut" would  help a ton.

There's a solution here!  OS X Daily: Speed up Mission Control Animations

EDIT: For the lazy ;): defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1; killall Dock  Change 0.1 to 0 to remove the animation entirely.


Is regular charge cycling important to maintain battery health? I read about a full charge cycle at least once per month - how is this done? Just purchased this wonderful machine, brand new, want to keep it as perfect as possible, and am not sure how to do a full charge cycle of the battery.

FWIW, Apple's own advice no longer says cycling is recommended (but it used to) -- it now just focuses on things like turning off battery hogs like WiFi when not required, and storing the device half-charged if you're not going to be using it for a while.


Are older versions of iWorks available? Can I download a version of iWorks from Apple that will work with 10.6.8 before I upgrade to 10.7 or above.  I have a lot of Appleworks files I want to convert before I upgrade the system.

As is not available on Apple websites, I found this that seems to work.

Visit this Softpedia link to download a free trial of iWork ’09.
Click Download, and then click External Mirror 1.
Double-click on the downloaded file. This will open up a window with a couple of files inside.
Double-click Install iWork ’09 Trial and follow the installation instructions.
After installation, close out the install windows and wait a few minutes for your Mac to recognize the newly-installed apps.
Next, open up the App Store app and click on the Updates tab at the top. You should see updates for Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
If you don’t see updates for these apps yet, close out of the App Store and wait a few minutes before opening it back up.


How do I fix my camera on my iphone 4? My camera on my iPhone 4 is showing nothing but a black screen. Front and rear camera and it happens in all camera related apps as well. When I reset my phone it fixes it, but the problem keeps reoccurring. How do I permanently fix the problem?

Is the phone jailbroken? If so, try running it not jailbroken for a while to see if the problem reoccurs.

Other than that, try an OS restore - just make sure you do a backup first.


A turning gear appears when I run this workflow, why? I am running the following script (called Restart AppleTV) using automator :
on run {input, parameters}

  do shell script "sudo killall coreaudiod" with administrator privileges

  return input
end run

However, I get the following in the statusbar :

The terminal code DOES run, but the gear never disappears unless I manually click the x button .. How can I get rid of this automatically or prevent it from appearing in the first place ?
--Note : This only happens when I run it by double clicking the exported .app file, but not when I run the code through automator.

Try:

on run {input, parameters}
    set myPassword to "My Password"

    ignoring application responses
        do shell script "sudo killall coreaudiod" password myPassword with administrator privileges
    end ignoring
end run

OR

on run {input, parameters}
    set myPassword to "My Password"

    ignoring application responses
        do shell script "sudo killall coreaudiod &>/dev/null &" password myPassword with administrator privileges
    end ignoring
end run


Restore Spotlight Indexing I deleted existing Spotlight Indexing on my MacBook Pro running macOS Mojave by executing:

sudo rm -rfv /.Spotlight-V100

Now I don’t see anything - no apps, downloads, trash, nada. How do I undo this? I tried adding folders to Privacy tab in System Preferences > Spotlight, and then removing them, but it didn’t help.

It looks like you disabled Spotlight indexing via Terminal commands, then tried to restore the default behaviour via graphical user tools (System Preferences).

That may fail as some guides for the Terminal are really 'thorough'.

In the screenshot above you have the commands:

Prevent indexing:

sudo touch /Volumes/YourVolumeHere/.metadata_never_index

Disable indexing and searching:

sudo mdutil -i off -d  /Volumes/YourVolumeHere/

Delete existing index:

sudo rm -rfv /.Spotlight-V100

To reverse these steps

sudo rm -i /.metadata_never_index
sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/YourVolumeHere/

To remove the file that tells Spotlight to 'never index here' and turn on again the indexing and search on the drive.

The Spotlight folder should be recreated as needed. It may take a while and a reboot won't hurt.


Is it true that any external hard drive made for the PC, can be used by a Mac running Lion? It seems like Lion supports NTFS (by plugging in a USB Flash drive which is NTFS).  So for hard drives such as the WD Passport or Toshiba 1TB, which are made for the PC (running Windows XP/Vista/7), they can be used on the Mac running Mac OS X Lion as well?

2 things:

1) They are not "made for" PCs, they may simply come pre-formatted.  If they are USB, they will almost certainly work with any OS known to man that supports USB

2) NTFS support is read only, you cannot write (without 3rd party software) but you can format as Fat 32 or EXFAT etc and have the drive be read/write by almost any OS including Windows/Mac/Linux etc/


Is it good for performance to sleep a Mac rather than shut it down? OSX Mountain Lion, Mid 2012 13" MacBook Pro.

I'd like to know what is the best practices about closing the Macbook Pro lid (sleeping) verses shutting it down?

I often simply close it during the night, leading to long uptimes (4 days right now).

Sometimes I feel it's not as snappy as it is when I rebooted it a few minutes ago.

Should I shut it down when I don't use it for 3+ hours for example? Will it help it lasting longer or am I being paranoid?

A long uptime is four days? My MBP has uptimes of weeks. Not as snappy? I guess you're running out of memory or something else is wrong.

I've never had this issue where the machine is not as responsive after closing the lid as opposed to rebooting. I generally only reboot because of WiFi connection problems or software updates.

To answer your question - just close the lid. Only reboot when necessary.
When closing the lid it goes into a sleep state which I think is very nice because when you open the lid it is almost instantly awake and ready to be used. While if you power it off it will take some moments to be booted.

You could leave the lid open as well if you like. The fist thing that is probably is gonna fail is the battery. To keep that in good condition make sure you keep your battery charged (there are other topics about this how to do this and what is the best).

In the end, the machine is built to be used and you should just enjoy using it without thinking to much about what is best. Apple already has that done for you :).


Can't copy files from one hard drive to another (same sizes) I have two external hard drives, both 2TB. I've been using one as a time machine drive and have filled up about half of it. The other drive isn't being used as a time machine, but rather I got it to save larger files; I've taken up very little space on it so far (only a few megabytes).

I want to give the time machine drive to my dad so I'm trying to copy all of it's files into the other drive. When I drag the Backups folder from the TM drive onto the destination drive, it partially copies everything over and then says the drive is full. Sure enough, I checked and it has somehow filled up all 2TB despite the source drive only having about 1TB of data.

Does anyone know why this is happening? Neither drive is encrypted and they are both using a Journaled file system.

Time machine uses Unix hard links. This is confusing the copy software which results in the same file having multiple copies.

Here is how to make the copy according to Apple.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202380

So, give your father the other drive.  I read somewhere where it's not best to mix in non-time machine files on a time machine partition. Seems reasonable to me.


Why does iTunes re-open after I quit the app? Whenever I quit iTunes, it restarts itself. I have iTunes 10.1.12 (the newest one) installed on my Mac.  I don't remember exactly when it started—with either version 10 or 10.1.

Is there any solution to this?

ADDED

It was caused by the GimmeSomeTune, after reinstalling it, everything seems to working fine.

I used to have this problem when I had SRS iWow installed in iTunes. Is that the case for you?

If not, do you have any other plugins installed?


I do not want my text messages to sync between two iPhones My text messages are also appearing on my husband's iPhone.  How do I get them to not sync?

Make sure you sign out of your iCloud or Apple ID on his phone. If he is receiving your texts in iMessage, this means that both phones are sharing the same iCloud account (or apple ID)


Can you run Disk Utility from bootable lion disk? I've made a bootable lion disk by extracting the InstallESD.dmg from the lion installer app's package contents. - (Contents>SharedSupport>InstallESD.dmg)

When booting from this disk, can you run disk utility or any other utilities from the menu bar (like you could in the SL install)?

Thanks

Yes, you can.  plug in the disk, boot up in it by holding down option, select the disk, and and then run disk utility from the main window.

Why do this however, when you have the Restore partition available to do this without a disk?


USB Directories not visible with Mac I recently had some virus on my USB. After cleaning (with PC antivirus), i got all my files back, but the directories on my USB are not shown when connected to my Mac (Lion) computer.
What can I do to access them with my Mac?
Thank you.

I think the MacOS does not show folders if they have the "x" flag missing.  Try going to a Terminal window, then changedir to the folder

cd /Volumes
ls
cd name-of-folder-with-stick

And there try

ls
chmod 755 foldername

or even (for all files and folders there)

chmod 755 *


Can't take Apple Watch out of power saving mode I still can’t get my Apple Watch Series 3 out of power saving mode and I have held down the side buttons, and held down both buttons for at least 6 seconds. What do I do?

Seek repair if your device doesn’t charge or operate normally.

How do you get the Apple Watch out of Power Reserve mode?
Why does my Apple Watch keep entering Power Reserve mode?


Use Fn Keys, but keep Playback Keys I'm a programmer, so it'd be useful for me to have access to F1, F2, etc.  while working on my laptop (a 2013 Macbook Air).  That said, I'm not really willing to give up the music or volume control keys.

Is there a way to bind F7-F11 to their respective OS X specific features?

If you just flip the function?

Enable F keys.

Now use fn + Volume keys.


Script to toggle internet sharing using Alfred I tried many methods to toggle internet sharing with Alfred but its not working!  Its driving me crazy!

Can anyone please help me with an AppleScript which I can paste in Alfred and assign a hot key to perform this function?

ps: I don't have much knowledge with scripts. Ill just copy paste the script from here if I get an answer from someone!

You could try this (tested on OSX 10.9.5 but it may depends on the version of you OS) :

tell application "System Preferences"
-- display system preferences window
activate
-- wait to see the window
delay 1.5
-- try again
activate
-- Open sharing tab (or pane)
set current pane to pane "com.apple.preferences.sharing"
-- we want to see it
delay 1.5

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "System Preferences"

        -- click the checkbox to enable internet sharing
        tell window 1 to click checkbox 1 of row 8 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1
    end tell
end tell
-- wait to see the result
delay 1.5
--quit -- we can quit system preferences
end tell


Applescript: move all files with a certain extension to the trash This is very straightforward; it moves myfile.WMA to the trash:
tell application "Finder"
    move POSIX file "/Volumes/DS_30/myfolder/myfile.WMA" to trash
end tell

But how would I move all files in myfolder with a extension of .WMA to the trash?

Using your example volume and folder name:
tell application "Finder" to ¬
    move (every item of ¬
        container (alias "DS_30:myfolder") of ¬
        application "Finder" whose name extension = "WMA") to trash


How to change computer name so terminal displays it in Mac OS X Mountain Lion? When I setup my computer I named it "Scott's MacBook Pro". And so when I go to System preferences->Sharing, it says Scott's MacBook Pro there as my computer name. However, opening up a terminal gives me this prompt:

Last login: Sun Oct  7 11:02:49 on ttys003
new-host-4:~ scott$

When I login to Backblaze, they list my computer as "new‑host‑4_2012_10_07". Did I not fully set my computer name? Should I use the traditional hostname command?

If you use:
sudo scutil --set HostName name-you-want

it will work a bit better. From the scutil(8) man page:

--get pref
    Retrieves the specified preference.  The current value will be
    reported on standard output.

    Supported preferences include:
          ComputerName   The user-friendly name for the system.
          LocalHostName  The local (Bonjour) host name.
          HostName       The name associated with hostname(1) and gethostname(3).

--set pref [newval]
    Updates the specified preference with the new value.  If the new value is not
    specified on the command line then it will be read from standard input.

    Supported preferences include: ComputerName LocalHostName HostName

    The --set option requires super-user access.


Force Repair/Unmount External Hard Drive? I was backing up my Mac today (Time Machine) when I think I jostled the USB cable.  The hard drive disappeared from the finder window and progress on backing up in the Time Machine window disappeared.

I've tried unplugging/replugging the HD and restarting the computer, but it doesn't show up in finder or Time Machine anymore.  The light on the hard drive is blinking, indicating it thinks its being accessed, but I don't think it's actually doing anything.

The HD DOES show up in the Disk Utility Program.  However if I try to repair the Time Machine partition, it says "Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."  If I attempt to erase the partition, it says "Volume Erase failed with the error:  Couldn’t open disk."  And if I attempt to erase the Disk (one level up from the partition in the Disk Utility), it says "Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn’t unmount disk."

I tried force unmounting the disk using the Terminal command, but the disk doesn't actually show up in /Volumes/, so it didn't work.

Any ideas on this one?  Is the disk completely totalled or is there another way to get it to reset so I can re-back things up?

You can use the device id as well as the mount path for diskutil. Get the device id using diskutil list (disk3 in my example) and then force unmount it:

diskutil unmountDisk force disk3

And then erase the disk (HFS+ with GUID Partitioning Table):

diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ Untitled GPT disk3


Italian language dictionary for Safari Is there a way I can add the italian language to Safari's built in spelling support?

Safari will use the language(s) that you have installed when you installed you operating system and it will try to automatically determine the language you’re typing in (provided a dictionary exists). Since you’ve mentioned Safari, I assume you are having a lot of red underlines when typing in forms in Italian.

Make sure you have Italian in your system (do you use the operating system in italian?) Do your applications open in Italian?

If you right click on a textbox in Safari and open the Spelling and Grammar palette:

You will get this:

Notice the “Automatic by Language”. I have italian there, and in fact, that list is ordered by the order of the languages in Language & Text preference pane.

Now if what you want to do is modify the built in Dictionary app to support other languages, I’ve done that in Leopard (added spanish) and I haven’t tried to do it again in Snow Leopard, but here is a very nice tutorial on how to do it.