SMC issues on a MacBook Pro Thunderbolt I've bought few months ago a MacBook Pro Thunderbolt 13'. As a Linux geek, I'm really happy with this computer, and it usually works fine.

Unfortunately, three days ago, I wasn't able to restart it. It stucked without booting when I pressed the power button. I look on Apple website, and there was a procedure that describes how to reset the SMC, and I did that.

My computer restarted (yeah), but unfortunately, I had problems with the display backlight (cf pic). So I stop the computer, and did the SMC reset thing one more time. I experienced problem to restart , but for the moment all the backlights issues seem to be solved.

I'm now a little bit afraid about the reliability of this computer, and I have lots of question about this SMC I can't answer.

Why does that thing need to be reset? What is it exactly? As a geek, I like to know how my computer works :)
Can we reset it often without problems, or is there a limit on the number of time you can do it without harming the computer? I read differents advises ont he web saying 'go, on do it every week' or 'do it in last resort'.
If the restart problem still occurs, should I send the computer to the customer service for a global checkup?

Thank you for your help :)

Romain

normally the SMC (system management controller) should not have to be reset at all. However it is sometimes necessary when troubleshooting so when people say "last resort" that, they are simply saying is an uncommon problem. The SMC controls things like the fan in your mac and power flow (the reason macs are so much quieter than most computers). If this is not working properly and needs to be reset is is probably because of a hardware issue. Reseting it also does not hurt your computer. It simply turns the controller off and then turns it back on without affecting your hard drive, memory, etc. Finally if the problem does continuously reoccur you should go into customer service because it is probably a hardware problem and it is best to let them look at it.


How setup macports package bash to be used from terminal.app I've made a bit of confusion trying to make terminal.app use /opt/local/bin/bash installed from macports as shell.
I've used:
chsh -s "/opt/local/bin/bash --rcfile ~/.profile -v"

trying also with -l option but still do not reads ~/.profile.
I've set also
/opt/local/bin/bash --rcfile ~/.profile -v -l

in terminal.app preferences.
Any suggestion to correctly set up terminal.app to use /opt/local/bin/bash and to load ~/.profile?
Thanks

From man chsh
The shell field is the command interpreter the user prefers.  If the shell field
is empty, the Bourne shell, /bin/sh, is assumed.  When altering a login shell, and
not the super-user, the user may not change from a non-standard shell or to a
non-standard shell.  Non-standard is defined as a shell not found in /etc/shells.

So to change your shell to /opt/local/bin/bash run
grep -q '^/opt/local/bin/bash' /etc/shells || sudo sh -c 'echo /opt/local/bin/bash >> /etc/shells'
chsh -s /opt/local/bin/bash

If you use bash as your login shell (which is what chsh and the default for Terminal.app do) then if you don't have ~/.bash_profile then bash will automatically read ~/.profile (but as you are using bash you should be using ~/.bash_profile)
Terminal.app by default runs login which runs the shell set by chsh and that should be loading macports bash and then ~/.profile


Restore iphone 5 with broken wake/sleep button I have forgotten my 4-digit iphone passcode and want to restore it but have a broken wake/sleep button and cannot find a way to do so online, any suggestions?

Follow Apple Support's guide for what to do if you forgot the passcode on your phone: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306

You shouldn't need the sleep/wake button for this. Once you get your iPhone unlocked with the help of that article, turn on "AssistiveTouch" in Settings->General->Accessability so you can sleep your phone again.


If I turn off Photo stream will I lose photos? I have an Apple laptop, iPhone 7 and older iPad. I synced their photos via iCloud but I don't like photo stream because if you delete a photo on one device you delete from all. And I've already lost things I didn't want to that way. so I want to just turn off iCloud for photos and sync manually. If I turn off photo stream, could I lose photos? I've also synced my devices manually, not just via photo stream. Does that make a difference?

Short answer: No, you won't lose your photos.

Solution: For free and complete syncing, the only way to go is to turn off iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream and stick with manual wired or WiFi syncing. It's very important to remember to turn off My Photo Stream as well if you're choosing this option. Otherwise your photos will duplicate.

Details:
Turning off photo stream will not make you lose your photos. It will only disable the Photo Stream function, which is mostly comprised of the following:

It sends optimized (device specific) versions of the photos you take to every Photo Stream enabled device.
It includes the last 1000 photos you've taken, or the last 30 days of photos, which ever is greater.
Data from Photo Stream is a one time push only, meaning it won't push again if you delete a photo from your Photo Stream.
It does not take up iCloud photo space (contrary to most people's opinion). It is a separate and completely free service within the iOS/Mac ecosystem.

When you say iPhone 7, I'm assuming you're talking about iOS 7. In iOS 8.3 and above, iCloud Photo Library (if turned on) replaces the need for Photo Stream, although Photo Stream is still available.

Using iCloud Photo Library is great if you have tons of space in the cloud, since it syncs your albums, edits, share activity... pretty much everything. SERIOUSLY, it's sweet as sugar. BUT, realistically, you will only have that kind of storage space if you pay for it; most likely, you'll run out of your free 5GB allotment since it backs everything up.

If you don't mind paying, it's a great solution. But you want to go completely free, stay away from it like the plague.

Here's a great article that explains iCloud Photo Library in excellent and digestible detail: https://tidbits.com/article/15584


Mac equivalent of PC 'minimise all' then open a single folder? I save a lot of things on desktop. Often I have lot of applications and windows open and I want to simply minimise all and then drag a newly saved file from the desktop into a folder.

On PC it's easy. I just click the 'minimise all' button in the bottom right, open the folder I wish to drag to (usually from the taskbar), then drag and drop.

How would I do this on Mac OS X?

Bring Finder to the front. Minimize all other apps with altcmdH. Then alt-click on the minus-button of one Finder window to minimize all windows to the dock.

Reopen the destination folder by clicking on the appropriate dock (Finder) window icon located near the trash can and move or copy the file on the desktop (tested with 10.7.5 Lion and 10.10.3 Yosemite).
If you've enabled "Minimize windows into application icon" in System Preferences -> Dock previously, right-click on the Finder icon in the Dock and choose the appropriate folder to open it (tested with 10.10.3 Yosemite).


running Numbers on Mojave Several months ago I updated the OS of my MBP (early 2015) from Yosemite to Mojave 10.14.6. Numbers does not work any more. Tried to reinstall it from the App store but they say I need OS 10.15. In some post here it is suggested updating from the "purchased" section of the App store. But Numbers does not show up there (Pages and Keynote do show up though).
Any suggestion (other then upgrading OS)?

The App Store needs to find that your AppleID has "purchased" Numbers.  There are two ways to do this and they have already been covered in some detail in Old version (macOS Sierra) for Pages, Keynote and Numbers, iWork
Just needs a little adjustment for Yosemite rather than Sierra.
The way covered in detail is to install a pre-App Store version of Numbers and then the App Store will let you upgrade.
This is also described here and this is for Yosemite.
The second method is to install the current Numbers on another Mac (with macOS 10.15 or 11) using your App ID.  Then the App Store will then let you go backwards to an older version on your Yosemite Mac.


Where can iPhoto '11 be downloaded? I just set up an old white Macbook (early 2008) with a fresh install of OS X 10.7.3, which I think is the most recent version that will run on it.  I was surprised to see the installer did not include a version of iPhoto, but I guess in those days the iLife suite was bundled separately, rather than built in to the standard install.  As far as I can tell there's no way to download iPhoto (any version!) from Apple.  Any suggestions?

...and, I'm answering my own question.  Apparently (this comes as a surprise) the entire iLife '11 DVD is available as an ISO from archive.org (https://archive.org/details/iLife_Install_DVD_Version_11_2Z691-6677-A_Apple_2010).  I'm not sure whether that's legal or not -- I would expect archive.org to be careful about clearing copyright before hosting uploaded disk images, but maybe not.  If this is considered software piracy then please feel free to delete this answer.


Double-click bash file -> pwd outputs my home directory instead of the current directory In my Downloads directory, I have an executable bash script :

#!/bin/bash
pwd

when I double-click on it, pwd outputs my home directory. But I want my script to run from the current directory from where it was clicked.

Scripts/commands are always run from your home directory (which may be inconvenient for scripts run both from Terminal and from Finder). To find the directory they are stored in you need to look at $0 (which contains the full path and name of the script):

#!/bin/bash
echo '$0:' $0
echo 'Script stored at:' ${0%/*}
cd "${0%/*}"
pwd


A better way to navigate my music collection In the Apple Music app, I like the Artist view, because it allows me to navigate to an artist quickly. But if I have a lot of albums from the selected Artist, I might have to scroll quite a bit to find a certain album. That's because for each album all songs are displayed next to the album. Is there a way to truncate the song list in the Artist view?
I kind of like the Album view too, its quite compact, but there doesn't seem to be a way to show albums only of a certain Artist. Ideally, I would like to select an Artist, and then have the Album view with albums only for that artist. Is there a way to customize either the Artist view or the Album view to do that?

Use the Songs view and use the column browser (in the View->Column Browser menu)
then you can choose the artist in one column, iTunes (now Apple Music) then just shows the albums for that one artist in another column (and only the songs from that artist) and from that last column choose the album.
For example:

In iTunes the songs view used to be the main view and I think allowed more control but Music has dumbed things down and you have to use the other views sometimes.


How to uninstall rEFInd (0.8.2) on Yosemite I'd like to remove rEFInd, since my laptop doesn't wake up from suspension (provided that the laptop is only powered by battery) anymore eversince I installed it (in neither of the operating systems: Mac OS and Ubuntu).

Assuming one has installed rEFInd on the main hard drive, then according to rEFInd's page it should be enough to remove (important: also empty the trash) the following folder:

/EFI/refind

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html#uninstalling

Indeed my blessed folder is that one:

Mac:~ user$ bless --info
finderinfo[0]: XXXXXXXX => Blessed System Folder is /EFI/refind
finderinfo[1]: XXXXXXXX => Blessed System File is /EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi
finderinfo[2]:      0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]:      0 => No alternate OS blessed file/folder
finderinfo[4]:      0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]: XXXXXXXX => OS X blessed folder is /EFI/refind
64-bit VSDB volume id:  0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Mac:~ user$ bless --info --getBoot
/dev/disk0s2

Now my question is, do I have to remove just the refind folder, or also the EFI folder? Since my EFI folder also contains a tools folder. Here's the entire folder tree:

EFI
   - refind
       - icons
       - keys
       - refind_x64.efi
       - refind.conf
   - tools
       - gptsync_x63.efi

The gptsync_x64.efi program file was probably installed with rEFInd, but is a separate program. Leaving it in place should do no harm, but will also probably do no good, so it's a judgment call on your part. If you remove rEFInd, chances are the only thing that would run gptsync_x64.efi would be a subsequent install of rEFInd (or of its predecessor, rEFIt) or launching it manually from an EFI shell.


Hibernation mode shows incorrect value? I'm trying to follow the steps in this article to make it so the contents of my memory aren't written to disk every time the computer goes to sleep.

I'm having trouble in the "Check the current setup" step. Before changing these settings, I want to make sure I understand it 100% so that I can revert the changes. It says that I should have a setting of 3 if hibernate and sleep is enabled, or 7 if hibernate, sleep and secure virtual memory are all enabled.

I'm on a standard user account, but when I go to System Preferences > Security > General, I see that Use secure virtual memory is enabled.

The problem is that when I run pmset -g | grep hibernatemode, it returns 3 instead of 7.

Any idea why there is this discrepancy?

The article is outdated (it's from 2006). There is no hibernatemode = 7 in the pmset manual. If you dont want your macbook to write ram to disk, use hibernatemode = 0 (by issuing sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0).

When I want my computer to hibernate and power off I use this hibernate script.


Why doesn't my calendar alert me when events are upcoming? I have my Google Calendar synced up to my iPhone 4S and by all the settings I can find, it looks like I am supposed to recieve alerts 15 minutes before every event.  However, this has never happened.

How come there is no alert being displayed when an event is upcoming?  I can see it in Notification Centre, but there is no banner or alert.

Something that seems to work for Google calendars: on your phone, go to Settings => Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Scroll down to the Calendars block. Select Default alert times. You can then chose phone alerts by type of event.


Putting files outside the home folder on Catalina I have some large files in my home folder which are causing issues with Finder, and I need to store them elsewhere, but as of macOS Catalina, the root filesystem is Read-Only. I've seen some solutions involving using Recovery Mode to modify your root folder's permissions, but is there honestly no-where you're supposed to put stuff outside of ~/ without doing this?

One place that Apple recommends/allows is /Users/Shared.


What are the Time Capsule performance if used as a File Server for 3-4 clients? I plan to use time capsule as a file server into a production environment with 3-4 mac clients.

Can you give me some information about possible drawback with this choice? What are Time Capsule performance?

The drive is a nice, fast server grade drive but the controller is underpowered to be a NAS for professional video work.

That being said, even with two people reading / writing lots of small files, the Time Capsule works surprisingly well. At times when 3 or more people are hitting the drive at the same time for small IO, you will certainly see a slow down. Much more so than on a real NAS or server that has RAM to cache the filesystem and not be limited to the physical disk access.

So if the usage is low or you are on a tight budget, have at it!

Do be sure to have one of your clients be responsible for backing up all data stored on that volume since most backup solutions do not read from a Time Capsule directly. Using the built in clone tool is not at all optimal for production use, but is fine to make a snapshot over night or over a weekend when you have occasional cause to snapshot the data.


Forcing Intel HD Graphics 5000 on a 2013 MacBook Air to output 4K I have a late 2013 MacBook Air, running macOS Mojave connected to a 4K Monitor:

  Intel HD Graphics 5000:

  Chipset Model: Intel HD Graphics 5000
  Type: GPU
  Bus: Built-In
  VRAM (Dynamic, Max): 1536 MB
  Vendor: Intel
  Device ID: 0x0a26
  Revision ID: 0x0009
  Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v4
  Displays:
    LG Ultra HD:
      Resolution: 2560 x 1440 (QHD/WQHD - Wide Quad High Definition)
      UI Looks like: 2560 x 1440 @ 59 Hz
      Framebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
      Main Display: Yes
      Mirror: Off
      Online: Yes
      Rotation: Supported
      Automatically Adjust Brightness: No
      Connection Type: DisplayPort

I have read on several occasions that this chipset is able to output 4K, but macOS prevents it from doing so.

Is it possible to force my MacBook Air to output 4K?

No, your 2013 MacBook Air cannot drive a 4K display. MacBook Air 2013 comes with a Thunderbolt 1 controller which supports DisplayPort 1.1. DisplayPort 1.2 is needed to get 4K support.

MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013) - Technical Specifications

Graphics and Video Support

Intel HD Graphics 5000.
Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors.

Use 4K displays, 5K displays, and Ultra HD TVs with your Mac

You can use 4K displays and Ultra HD TVs with these Mac computers:

MacBook Air (Early 2015) and later.


How can I get Xcode to support tabs over the jump bar? I selected View -> Tab Bar to enable tabs in Xcode.

However, when I open a new file, it appears in the jump bar below the single existing tab and not as a new tab.

How do I get new files to appear as new tabs in Xcode? I've been spending some time trying different things out.

Double clicking your source files in the Navigator pane should make them appear in new tabs.


What's the license for OS X generic icons? Can anyone link me to a document or otherwise provide information about what the license is for the generic icons included in OS X (Lion)? I tried searching at developer.apple.com but nothing relevant came up.

To be specific, I'm wondering about GenericFolderIcon.icns. If I copy it and customize the look, would distribution be restricted somehow?

IANAL but I would guess that all the graphical assets in OS X are copyright Apple just like everything else in the OS.

Any assets that you are entitled to use are listed on the developer sites for which typically a licence must be signed.


How can I control the audio chain within macOS? I have an audio signal coming into the Mac from an audio interface. I want to be able to control the signal flow within the Mac, routing the signal through different applications, in the order I want it to, before going out from the Mac back into the audio interface.

Loopback from Rogue Amoeba (not free unfortunately) can do this by creating several virtual interfaces that take audio from what ever input or application you want.

You should be able to chain them together to achieve the desired effect

Loopback is not free however.

Another option would be Soundflower. I haven't used it, and have heard it is more difficult to setup but it has the advantage of being free.


Remove email integration from calendar in mountain lion? I've just got a new laptop with Mountain Lion. The calendar has the old color coded options of 'Work', 'Home' etc, however it also has my email address as an option. If I select 'Work' and create a new event it automatically changes to the email account, meaning that I get email alerts for events,  which I dont want.

How can I change this behaviour?

UPDATE - Actually I want to completely remove Google Calendar from my mac calendar so i dont get email alerts either. Thanks

To Remove the Calendar completely.

Go to the Mail, Contacts & Calendars Preference in System Preferences select the google mail account and uncheck the Calendars & Reminders

To Set the default Calendar for new events.

In Calendar the default calendar for new events is controlled in the Preferences.

You can set it to Selected Calender to make new events appear for the calendar you have selected

or choose a  particular calendar


Remove table from a pages document I have added accidentally a table to my pages document on iCloud web interface. Any idea how  can I remove. I tried several different shortcuts, remove columns, rows etc.

Select a cell within the table so that the column and row headers
appear.
Then click on the nine-dot square between in the top-left
corner between the column and row headers. The headers should
disappear and the table should be left with a faint blue selection
border.
Hit the Backspace/Delete ⌫ key on your keyboard.

The table should disappear.


Can only use custom keyboard layout in certain apps? I'm using a MacBook Pro with MacOS High Sierra version 10.13.2.

I used Ukelele to create a custom keyboard layout. I installed it (using the Ukelele installer), and it works fine in some apps, but not others. I can use it in Chrome and in the Terminal (and I am using it to type this description).

But when I open certain apps, like Mail, Notes, Microsoft Excel, and others, it does not work. When I try to select the layout from the drop-down menu like I would in the other apps, it appears like it does in the others, but when I select it, it does not change.

The keyboard layout I created does not have special characters, it is an english layout (abc...xyz) with most characters in different positions than on QWERTY. It is just an obscure layout, so I had to create it myself.

Any suggestions? I am not as familiar with MacOS, as I am coming over from Linux.

@Tom Gewecke suggested in the comments that I place the layout into /Library/Keyboard Layouts. I did this and restarted, then it worked as expected!

Disabling Siri and having its keyboard shortcut set to NONE (and restarting) did not seem to change it. And I did not have Chinese, Japanese, or Korean keyboards active.


Webcam Colored Lines - Hardware Issue? Has anyone seen this before? It's happening with any camera app (Skype, Photo Booth, Hangouts) so it doesn't appear to be software related. I'm assuming it's a hardware issue but I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this before.
Thanks!

Note that I am GUESSING here but that looks awfully like a damaged sensor. You occasionally see similar displays on LCD panels when they go bad so this might indeed be the hardware error you think it is.


Setting font weight in Terminal.app for El Capitan I've noticed that there's a subtle difference in the way fonts are rendered in the Terminal app in El Capitan (vs Yosemite). It seems like it used to be the case that the AppleFontSmoothing property in the plist could be adjusted which would affect how heavy or light the font would be rendered. This no longer seems to be the case. Is there another way to do this? I'd like to use my fonts but have them rendered more heavily.

Related question: Is there a way to make the terminal's font less blurry?

Starting in OS X El Capitan 10.11, Terminal's font smoothing is reduced for light-on-dark text, so that the overall weight is closer to the weight of dark-on-light text, improving readability by opening up counters (the open spaces inside glyphs like “e”), for example.

You should find that it matches Safari's text rendering for light-on-dark text. It addresses the issue referred to in the question you linked:  Is there a way to make the terminal's font less blurry?

This new behavior is automatic and doesn't read the AppleFontSmoothing preference.

If this is important to you, I recommend filing a bug report asking for either Terminal's new behavior to honor the AppleFontSmoothing preference or to add a Terminal-specific preference to control font smoothing.

Update: As of macOS Sierra 10.12, this behavior has been tuned to not reduce the font smoothing as much for light-on-dark text, matching Safari/WebKit more closely, and it does not apply at all to Retina displays. In addition, it once again honors the AppleFontSmoothing preference, making the smoothing lighter relative to the AppleFontSmoothing value. The end result is that the weight of light-on-dark text should look as close as possible to the weight of dark-on-light text with the same AppleFontSmoothing value.


MacBook Pro 2012 Model A1278 Flashing questionmark file My Mac started off by giving me the spinning ball of death for an unreasonable amount of time so I caused a force shut down (I know, unwise) and tried to restart it. Came up with the file error. I know what it means so I tried to run disk utility to find the boot disk but their I wasn't even there. I have tried researching it for a while and tried to start it again, and this time it started up normally. So I frantically started removing valuable files, but before I could finish the it froze again. So I restarted it and was faced with the same problem. I ran disk utility, and the boot file was there! So I tried to run a disk repair and it crashed again while in the process.

I am completely stumped, ideas?

Sounds like the drive is dying.
Get it out of the machine & stop trying to boot from it.

Your best chance of recovery, assuming you don't have any backup, is to attach it to another machine in a USB enclosure & use a recovery utility to rescue it to a separate drive.

The more you mess with it, the smaller your chances get.


Can the Dock bar reserve it's horizontal space even if window is maximized? I don't want to have the dock bar auto-hiding/showing, so I have it always enabled.
When I maximize a window, two things happen:

either it goes fullscreen so it hides the dock
or I make it bigger (with any tool like snaptool etc) but it goes behind the dock , so I can't access some parts of windows (like in Chrome pages)

is it possible (is there any app) that makes the dock behave more like a windows taskbar?

If you try to make a window bigger than the size left by the Dock, by dragging the bottom of a window yourself, you will notice that you can't do it. This is because the Dock already behaves like a Windows Taskbar: you can move windows behind it but not resize windows beyond it.

The problem lies with the tool that you are using to resize the window-it is extending the window more than it should do. Try using a different tool to do the resizing or resize the windows yourself.


What files should I delete before giving my MacBook to someone else? I am giving my old MacBook to my daughter. I have changed all the names and passwords and so on, and renamed the computer when starting up, so everything seems fine except for the fact that the harddisk must still contain my stuff.

I have erased my self as a user, so I don't show up in finders front window anymore.
Where am I to be found so that I can erase all my files, photos, films and other documents?

Since you are not giving it to some unknown 3d person there is no need to completely erase the drive and reinstall operating system.

You can use the

mdfind in Terminal

for example mdfind user will list all files for the current user

It will even show the deleted files

mdfind user youroldusername

will show your files if any are left.


OS X: Change sharing-only account to 'normal' account Somehow, OS X changed my main user account to sharing-only. This means that all data in the user folder is still existent on the disk, I can't login to that user. Is there a way to revert a sharing-only user to a normal account.

Open the Users panel in Preferences
Unlock the panel (if necessary)
Right-click on your changed account, select "Advanced Options..."
Reassign a login shell and a home directory to the user if necessary
Click on your changed account
Enable Administrator option
Wait for the user type changing to Admin in the user list
Disable Administrator option again


Is there a way to view/edit Outlook for Mac's SQLite database to edit the signature file? I am looking to edit the file or reference that is used in the SQLite database that Outlook uses on the Mac. Instead of having to copy and paste an HTML signature in the Outlook program, I would like to paste the HTML code into the database.
What programs and or resources would I need to view and edit this portion of the database that Outlook uses?

Database File

Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile/Data/Outlook.sqlite

You can access it using the built-in SQLite program. In Terminal run the command “sqlite3” with the your Outlook.sqlite file as the parameter.

From there you can use SELECT commands to view data and UPDATE to change them. Check the SQLite home page for documentation, if you do not already know SQL.


Search files across folders and move recursively to new folder I need a way to search from a base folder, all the folders inside of that one recursively, and find all photos of JPG and PNG that were created before a certain date (01.Feb.2013) and then move them to a particular folder.

How would I go about this?

You could use find:

touch -t 201302010000 /tmp/a
find ~/directory \( -iname \*.jpg -o -iname \*.png \) -Bnewer /tmp/a \
    -exec mv {} ~/directory2 \;

touch -t normally changes only the modification and access times, but it also changes the creation time if the target time is before the original creation time or when you are creating a new file.

-Bnewer (for birth time / creation time) is not supported by GNU/Linux platforms which don't have metadata for the creation time.

The parentheses are needed because -a (and concatenating expressions without -a) has higher precedence than -o.


Changing sublime text 3 icon in dock on Yosemite I tried to change the Sublime Text 3 icon on the dock changing the Sublime Text.icns file in path /Applications/Sublime\

Now in the dock appears the default  app icon (the one for apps that doesn't have an icon).
How can I resolve it?
Also restoring the original Sublime Text 3 icon, and after restarting dock (with killall -KILL Dock) nothing happens.

Here is a easy way to change the icon.

Remove Sublime Text from your dock.

Open two finder windows. One with Applications and one in the folder with the new icon. Like so:

Then click on Sublime Text and press CMD + i, this will bring up the Info Window for the App (Sublime Text). Like so:

Now, it's as easy as this: Drag and drop the new icon onto the small icon to the left of the App name (Sublime Text) in the top left hand corner of the Info Window. You should see the icon for both the app and the preview change to the new icon you just dragged.

Then drag Sublime Text from the Applications window over to the dock, and it will appear with the new icon.

Like so:


Sync custom folder icon with Dropbox I have added custom folder icons to some of the folders in my Dropbox. I would like this to get synced across devices, but it seems that it does not. Is there a way to get custom icons to sync with Dropbox?

On Windows XP (if mind serves me right) I think I could use desktop.ini files in a folder to set some preferences. Perhaps there is something similar for Mac?

Your icon files are stored in the .DS_Store file located in each folder.  This file is what contains the metadata of the folder including the custom icon, the icon spacing, etc.

What is a .DS_Store file?

Drop Box, does not sync this particular file.  According to their help guide .DS_Store is ignored:

This means that your custom icon won't get synced.  You will have to create the custom icon manually.


What character is this possessive apostrophe: ’ In a recent answer I needed to include a a possessive apostrophe in a path name within Time Machine for a command line operation. I have it saved in a text file, but what the heck is it? I don't see it on my keyboard.

"/Volumes/Seagate Backup Plus Drive/Backups.backupdb/david914’s MacBook Air/2015-08-30-221221/Macintosh HD/Users/david914/"

I first tried to look at it with python, but no luck.

These I know:

things = ["'", '"', "`"]
names = ["single quote", "double quote", "backtick"]
ascii = [ord(thing) for thing in things]

for (a, b, c) in zip(things, ascii, names):
    print "  " + a  + "  " + str(b) + "  " + c

  '  39  single quote
  "  34  double quote
  `  96  backtick

but the apostrophe in question is: -->  ’  <--

and all I can get is:

>>> ord("’")
Unsupported characters in input

Then I used Excel:

=CODE("’")

and got:

Checking the opposite direction in Excel:

=CHAR(213)

Back to python:

>>> chr(213)
'\xd5'

Does this character appear normally on English MacBook Air keyboards? How else can I make them besides resorting to some kind of Office or Open Office product ?? What it is, anyway?

Section 6.2 of the Unicode Standard 7.0.0 states:

  U+2019 […] is preferred where the character is to represent a punctuation mark, as for contractions: “We’ve been here before.”

The character does not appear directly on any keyboard I own.

On an British or US English keyboard you can use Option+Shift+] to type the character: ’ == U+2019; thanks to @tom-gewecke for this key combination.

Emoji & Symbols Palette

In OS X 10.10, you can access this character from the menu item: Edit > Emoji & Symbols:

Control-Click on the character to copy additional information.

In earlier versions of OS X, this palette was called the Character Palette.

Smart Quotes

The character ’ is can be automatically substituted by OS X through the Smart Quotes feature of the default text system:

Unicode is Complex

Copying and pasting a few of the candidate character information to a text file results in:

' - APOSTROPHE, Unicode: U+0027, UTF-8: 27
ʼ - MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE, Unicode: U+02BC, UTF-8: CA BC
՚ - ARMENIAN APOSTROPHE, Unicode: U+055A, UTF-8: D5 9A
＇ - FULLWIDTH APOSTROPHE, Unicode: U+FF07, UTF-8: EF BC 87

Ted Clancy's article Which Unicode character should represent the English apostrophe? (And why the Unicode committee is very wrong.) reveals just how involved the unicode character set can become.


How can I show other people my Sites folder? I did my first website today using iWeb and I placed it inside the sites folder.  From what I understand, this should enable me to show other people my site with this address:

http://my.ip.here/~mynamehere/

But it doesn't work.  After some digging, I found out that I needed to go to the System Preferences to Sharing, and turn it on, which I did. I then even went on the internet to get my real IP address because apparently the one the computer gives me is only for people on the same network.

But it still doesn't work.  Any ideas on how to make this happen?

Thanks.

You need to make changes to the router that makes your internet connection.

Basically, there are 3 steps you need to complete:

Create your website - you have done this
Enable Sharing on the machine hosting it

At this point you have done all you can on your Mac

Get your external IP address, and configure your router to pass through port 80 (or whatever other port number you may use if you are not using the default) requests that come in from the internet to be passed directly to your machine.

This can be achieved in a myriad of ways, depending on your choice, your skill level, and how security conscious you are.  You can manually "port forward" a single port (80) to a single machine (your Mac), or you can forward everything to a single machine (this is known as putting your machine into the DMZ or De-Militarised Zone) which reduces complexity if you are doing multiple ports at the expense of security (all internet requests will be passed though to your machine, rather than just dropped if they are not specific replies to requests that originated from your machines)


Entering Unicode Characters with `ssh ... tmux -CC a -t mySession` on iTerm2 When I ssh into the server and then open tmux, I'm able to enter in Unicode characters. It seems that the problem is specifically with sshing directly with tmux -CC a -t mySession.

Edit:
I'm trying to enter unicode characters from my keyboard into text files on my EC2 Ubuntu server with iTerm2 on my macbook using tmux. When I ssh directly into the server and attach to a tmux session, I'm able to enter in unicode characters. If, however, I ssh into tmux directly with the command ssh -i my.pem ubuntu@ec2_domain.com -t 'tmux -CC a -t mySession', I'm unable to enter Unicode characters.

Confirmed fixed w/ Iterm2 3.0.15 and tmux 2.5+ https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues/4664


Can I use my iPad as a Virtual CD Deck Is there is an app for iPad that will emulate basic CD deck functionality using iTunes tracks? All the DJ software I've seen (or bought) seems to include mixer/deck/additional features I don't require (I have a vinyl-based DJ set-up and just need an additional player for music I only have digital copies of).

To clarify - I'm looking for a software version of something like this. I just need basic cue/jog controls and a speed control.

Update: please see this video for an overview of the sort of thing I'm looking for (NB. basic bpm adjustment and cueing controls is really all I need - hotstarts and looping would be great but I can live without them.)

Let me see if I understand your concerns. You want an app with a single deck interface that takes up the entire screen, but all the DJ apps out there all use a split-screen dual-deck interface with no single deck option. Is that right?

How about this? It's the only DJ app with a single deck interface I can find so far. Got cue points, loops, effect, the whole shebang.

Mixmo-DJ/Pro

Homepage: http://www.mixmodj.com/

App Store links:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mixmo-dj/id483351955
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mixmo-dj-pro/id461366285

Youtube Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGeyVmkmdTE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvhHybAfJ9M

Here's a review from a trust source, Digital DJ Tips:

http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2011/12/review-mixmodj-for-ipad-iphone-ipod-touch/

IK Multimedia's DJ Rig also has a single deck interface but it's for iPhone, so it might not look great on iPad but it still does what you want..

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/djrigiphone/
http://itunes.apple.com/app/dj-rig/id478831717
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3QhZuHbAUY


Google Maps app crashes on open for iPad I'm traveling now and relying heavily on Google Maps on my iPad. with no warning, the app now crashes instantly when I click on it. no warning at all. I tap the icon, the default screen comes up, a second later the app closes.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? More imporrtantly, has anyone found a solution?

I tried restarting my iPad, as well as a hard reset. I do not have my laptop so I cannot sync. Since the app is one of the few default apps, I cannot delete and re-download it. I'm really at a loss here, so any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Deleting a downloaded app does two things:

Jettisons the data (like a reset for that app)
Allows for a clean copy of the app to be downloaded again

You could restore the entire device and test maps before restring your backup or you could back it up and erase all content and settings and then test.

Flip a coin if one of those two options does not seem better to you and feel free to ask a follow on question if you find some more details to add to the question and don't want to edit them into the existing question.


Carbon Copy Cloner and FileVault Volumes I am about to get my SSD back from an RMA process.

I currently have my backup HDD and I'm considering utilizing FileVault's full disk encryption. I'd like to minimize the number of writes before I get the SSD back in my machine.

Can I enable FileVault on both drives, then Carbon Copy Clone the HDD -> SSD?

I replied earlier with an answer without noticing you had tagged it as Lion related; take a look at this document, it should answer most of your questions.

From the Developer of CCC:

↘ link

  Is there any possibility to have the backup on my other second drive be encrypted?

  Yes, you can enable encryption on your backup volume, or reformat it
  as encrypted using Disk Utility:

  Full Disk Encryption (Lion only)

  CCC fully supports Lion's Full Disk Encryption.


HDD not recognized by MacBook My MacBook Pro 9,2 suddenly cannot boot anymore (I see a question mark). I started it in recovery mode and disk utility does not seem to see any HDD plugged in. I removed the HDD and I placed it inside a USB adapter, and it seems to be properly recognized by another Linux machine. Then I tried to boot the mac recovery system and the HDD is properly recognized from the same USB case.
Then I tried to install a SSD unit inside the macbook: recovery system can recognize the SSD properly.
Any idea why the macbook seems to suddenly be unable to detect a regular old original HDD when installed with the SATA connector while still being able to detect SATA SSD and to detect anything plugged via USB?
I also tried to reset NVRAM and PRAM, nothing changed.

A brief answer - more educated guess than absolute certainty...

The prime suspect would be a failing SATA cable - starting to go intermittent [which of course makes diagnosis harder] - but cheap enough to just replace & see.
It is a relatively common issue.


What does "DOE compliant" mean in Disk Utility? When erasing a drive with Disk Utility, you have a couple options. An insecure wipe, a single pass of zeroes, a "DOE-compliant" 3 pass, and a DOD (Department of Defense) 7 pass.

DOE doesn't stand for Department of Energy, does it? That sounds silly.

DOE is a method to wipe disks, developed by Department of Energy as part in their manual to ensure the confidentiality of Department of Energy information.

From macs.about.com :

  When Disk Utility uses the DOE-compliant 3-pass secure erase, it will write two passes of random data and then a single pass of a known data pattern. This will take anywhere from a day to a week or more, depending on the size of the drive. You can run this stress test in the background while you use your Mac for other activities.


Unable to install Windows via Boot Camp - Unable to Partition I am unable to proceed beyond the initial screens of Boot Camp in order to install Windows 10.  I am told the:

The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.

Upon checking I only have a single partition, my OS X partition, as per the screenshot below.

If I dismiss that prompt there is no way to proceed with an installation.  So, how do I install Windows 10?

Output of: sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 19457/255/63 [312581808 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  312581807] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

And output of sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  311909984      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  312319624     262151
  312581775         32         Sec GPT table
  312581807          1         Sec GPT header

Macbook model is: MacbookPro5,5

I guess you've solved it by now, but I had exactly the same problem with fresh new Macbook pro 2017 and I had to reinstall the system (MacOS). Then the installation of Windows 10 through bootcamp went fine.


How can I clean a MagSafe power port on my MacBook Air There appears to be a few small metallic fragments clinging to the magnet around the port where the MagSafe power connecter attaches to my MacBook Air. I can still get the cord to (mostly) seat, enough to charge the computer, but it's not as snug a fit as it used to be. How can I clean my MagSafe port?

Start with a pencil eraser or small wooden dowel / tool to gently dislodge the debris. As the magnets are very strong, you may need to use tape with a strong adhesive to grab the foreign material. Clear packing tape strikes a good balance between not leaving residue and getting the crud out. Duct tape also is nice, but a bit more sticky and may grab the plastic covering if it is wearing or the adhesive is warm from internal heat.

So:

Power off the mac
Let the connector cool
Be gentle - don't tear the magsafe covering
know you can get it serviced with a new connector if needed for approx $40 in labor and the part might run you between $10 and $40 depending on the model.

And I know Apple recommends a toothbrush and a cotton swab. The first will get off huge easily removed debris, but not staples and highly magnetic items that are small. The latter is actually quite nice in many cases as it will grab items with a sharp edge. Usually when things are gunked up enough to displace the adapter - you'll have many fine pieces accumulated and need tape or stronger tools than a q-tip.


Streaming vs. downloading podcasts on iPhone I know that on the iPhone, there's a 20 MB limit when downloading podcast episodes over 3G (if you try to download anything larger, it tells you to connect to a wifi network). However, when this happens, I noticed that it still permits you to stream the episode.

So is there a difference with streaming vs. downloading in terms of how much bandwidth is used? If not, why is streaming permitted when downloading isn't?

In both cases, you need to download the same number of bytes, but streaming takes them at a much slower rate, thus using less bandwidth (which is measured in terms of data divided by time).

When streaming a podcast, you need to download a minute's worth of audio every minute, plus slightly more for buffering.

Given that it doesn't take an hour to download an hour long podcast, you are getting far more data per minute when downloading than you are when streaming.

To put it differently, if you're streaming an hour-long podcast, you are guaranteed to be transferring only that one podcast over the network during the next hour -- and if you stop and move on to something else, you stop downloading that podcast.

If you're downloading an hour-long podcast, you might download several of them during a one hour period, putting much higher demand on the network.


The "python" CLI executable seems to ignore path hierarchy I have the following strange situation on my (freshly installed El Capitan, otherwise empty) Mac.

I noticed that /usr/bin/python defaults to python 2.7 (still), and the new SIP security system "protects" me from replacing it with a symlink to point to python3 (which I installed in /usr/local/bin). I noticed that /usr/local/bin shows up first on the path:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

So I thought great, I'll just add a symlink in /usr/local/bin called python and point it to python3.

$ ls -al /usr/local/bin
...
lrwxr-xr-x   ... python -> /usr/local/bin/python3
lrwxr-xr-x   ... python3 -> ../Cellar/python3/3.5.0/bin/python3

And this is reflected by which

$ which python
/usr/local/bin/python

But when I actually use it, it goes back to the native python2.7

$ python --version
Python 2.7.10

What gives? Is OS X tinkering with my $PATH and not telling me? What steps can I take to ensure I know what command is actually going to be run?

Try closing your terminal window, and making a new one. The shell only actually checks where commands are located on launch, and doesn't check again if it thinks it knows where the command is located. It's a performance boost in scripts, so generally a good idea.


Cut in CLI doesn't work as expected - returns full lines every time I'm running MacOS Mojave and I'm trying to get a list of owners of files in given path. I'm trying to do it like this but it doesn't work.

$ ls -l /usr | cut -f3
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  971 root  wheel  31072 23 sty 20:05 bin
drwxr-xr-x  304 root  wheel   9728 23 sty 20:05 lib
drwxr-xr-x  248 root  wheel   7936 23 sty 20:05 libexec
drwxr-xr-x   16 root  wheel    512  3 lis 10:50 local
drwxr-xr-x  239 root  wheel   7648 23 sty 20:05 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   46 root  wheel   1472  3 lis 10:41 share
drwxr-xr-x    5 root  wheel    160 21 wrz 06:06 standalone

Specifying delimiters seems to work but not for the TAB character (which should be default).

$ ls -l /usr | cut -f3 -d' '

971
304
248

239

I'm using ZSH with Oh my zsh and iTerm 2 if it matters.

You can squeeze the white spaces into a single white space in ls 's output then use cut.

ls -l /usr | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f3

but avoid parsing ls output. Here's an alternate solution.

stat -f'%Su' /usr/*


How to identify file type for a bulk lot of files and attach suitable extension to each I have just over a thousand (1000) files whose suffix/extension has been changed by a database engine all to the same thing (eg. fileName.abcd where .abcd is on every file regardless of whether it is a jpg, pdf, or whatever else).

The goal is to convert all the files to PDF but I first just want to sort the various file types into separate folders.

I use Mac OS X and figure that there must be a Terminal script that would:

Identify the file (Perhaps with 'File' command?) and then...
Append the appropriate extension which would then...
Allow me to manually sort and place them into seperate folders for further processing depending on their file type.

Using the Terminal 'File' command on a file with the database suffix, typical results are quite wordy like this, which at least shows the Mac can identify the file types even though they have the 'wrong' suffixes:

JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01
PDF document, version 1.3
Rich Text Format data, version 1, ANSI
etc.

So, I only need a script that would tag the files so I can use Automator to rename the files later with the appropriate suffix.

I note that if in Terminal I type 'File' and after that I drop or copy multiple files on to it, and hit return, then Terminal correctly identifies them all in the same order, but it isn't useful unless it at least tags each file type differently.

I figure this initial task is too difficult for Automator but would love to be proven wrong.

Any assistance in doing this would be appreciated. I have checked this board and elsewhere expecting someone else to have had a similar issue but found no such problem listed anywhere.

This is rather easy combining some standard tools:

file for looking up the mime type
tr to remove the slashes (otherwise, you'd have nested folders for different file groups)
well, some obvious mkdir and mv commands

for file in *
do
    mime=$(file --brief --mime-type "$file" | tr '/' '_')
    mkdir -p "$mime"
    mv "$file" "$mime/$file"
done

Alternatively, you could also directly list file extensions for each expected mime type and automatically rename them appropriately.

for file in *
do
    mime=$(file --brief --mime-type "$file")

    case "$mime" in
    "image/jpeg")
        extension="jpeg"
        ;;
    "text/plain")
        extension="txt"
        ;;
    "application/pdf")
        extension="pdf"
        ;;
    *)
        continue;
        ;;
    esac

    filename="${file%.*}"

    mv "$file" "$filename.$extension"
done

Be aware, that for sake of readability I did not take care of file names containing spaces. If you have them, you'll have to apply one of the patterns to deal with spaces in file names. As it rather seems you're not having them I left them out, as they make the scripts looking much more complicated as they are.


In MacOS, how can I group the processes based on apps? I want to know the resources used on the basis of applications. I found a duplicate, but the answer there has issues and since its over a year old, I decided to post a new one, instead of posting there.

The solution in the previous post was, Activity Monitor>View>"All Processes, Hierarchically". But that has an issue:

Did I do something wrong or is this a bug? Is there any other way of knowing it?

These Google Chrome Helper processes are sub-processes of the Google Chrome app. You'll notice that the highlighted sub-process is indeed at the top of all the other sub-processes in the list - the proper hierarchy. You did nothing wrong, nor is there a bug.


Can't connect Mac to Mac via Finder over LAN I'm having trouble getting one Mac on my home LAN to talk to another - let's call them Red and Blue. Red can't connect via Finder (under Shared) to Blue. But Red can open a Screen Sharing session to Blue. Blue can open a Screen Sharing session to Red, and connect to Red via Finder.
Both Red and Blue are using WiFi, connected to the same router. Both are running OSX Leopard, 10.5.8.

I have a third Mac I'll call Orange. Orange can connect via Screen Share or Finder to both Red and Blue.

What could be causing Red to have these issues connecting to Blue?

Lots of possible problems, from configuration issues on Blue to security filters in the router to other more obscure things.  Some more information will help pinpoint the problem.

Does Blue have File Sharing turned on?  If not, then that's the problem.
What happens when, on Red, using Finder->Go->Connect to Server... you try to connect to afp://Blue.local
What happens when, on Red, using Finder->Go->Connect to Server... you try to connect to smb://Blue.local
What version of OS X is Orange running?
Is Orange using a wired Ethernet connection to connect to the router or is it using WiFi as well?


Finder Connect to Server Opens into VLC I wanted to connect to an FTP Server using Finder's Go > Connect to Server option.
So I try to do so like this:

But, when I try to do so, it opens in VLC and then VLC crashes.

Anyone facing a similar problem? What can I do to open it in Finder itself? Do I need to change some defaults? If so, where?

I haven't used the "Connect to Server" menu command in years.  I go into Terminal and type either a command or open and a URL that does what I want.  In your case, since sftp is a command, try sftp bang.bong.boom.ac.in


Previously activated iPhone 3GS I've just upgraded to an iPhone 4S, and I want to use my old 3GS like an iPod touch. I have updated the software using iTunes and now on iTunes it says:

There is no SIM card installed in the iPhone you are attempting to activate.

How do I get around this?

Is there a SIM card in it?

If not, go to a store and pick one up for a couple of pounds/dollars/rupees/whatever, pop it in, activate it, and hey presto you have an iPod touch. You need to keep the SIM card in otherwise it will not function.


What is CalNCService and why does it run hot in macOS Sierra? Since the upgrade to macOS Sierra I occasionally see a service CalNCService running hot (i.e. on 100% CPU).  So going from the name, this seems to be some Calendar Service. I tried disabling Calendars in Internet Accounts Preferences, but this was no help.  One can kill the service or restart the computer, but the problem persists.  Usually, after a few hours or so it goes back to normal.

What is this daemon doing? How can I debug this issue?

Update: In the log console I find this when calNCService starts up:

warning: dynamic accessors failed to find @property implementation for 'serialNumber' for entity ABCDAddressBookSource while resolving selector 'serialNumber' on class 'ABCDAddressBookSource'.  Did you remember to declare it @dynamic or @synthesized in the @implementation ?

Update2: The Service is connected to syncing reminders.  Disabling reminder sync under Internet Accounts makes the service go back to normal, enabling it again makes it go back to 100%.  This seems independent of the server. I have a bunch of recurring reminders and first had this problem with my account on fruux.com. Then I migrated all to iCloud and now its the same there.

Update3: Still very present in 10.12.1. and no reply on Apple Support Communities.

Update4: Another morning, another calNCService.  I have also manually checked the exported .ics of the offending reminder list.  It looks totally harmless.  About 40 Reminders with nothing special in them.

Update 5: Still all the same in 10.12.2

Update 6: Confirmed in 10.12.4. Iterating: This seems to be some housekeeping task. When I activated the reminders after the upgrade the problem was not triggered for more than 24h. But now it is back. As before, it can be simply stopped by deactivating reminder sync under "Internet Accounts"

Update 7: The bug seems to be still present in MacOS 10.13 High Sierra, it is less severe, though. I have been letting the corresponding reminders account activated. During an uptime of 13 days CalNCService clocked in a CPU time of 1:07:01 (31h), way too much, but less than e.g. "kernel task" (7:16:16).

Update 8: Still present in 10.13.4. I have two machines with MacOS and it happens on both of them. It seems to be connected to reminders added via some API such when you add reminders via Launchbar.  The CPU time of calNCService seems to be correlated with how much I use Launchbar or Siri to enter reminders.

I had same problem (fans at full throttle, CalNCService at 122% of CPU) and have made 2 visits to Apple store and 3rd visit I checked in the Mac for a warranty repair (replaced both fans)...  Yet the problem continues.

I went into notifications > edit and disabled all notifications, badges, sounds, etc, except for iMessage, Slack and Outlook.

About 3 minutes later, I noticed.... silence.  Fans are normal.  I'll watch it for a while, but it seems this issue is definitely related to something in notifications.  I won't miss being pinged all day long.


Can I Use TestFlight Beta Testing for Apps Not Created Using Xcode? I just submitted my enrollment application to be an Apple Developer.

I have three Mac 3D Puzzle apps that were created using Unity 5.3.2 that I plan to sign and submit to the Mac App Store after I'm approved as an Apple Developer. I have .app executable files created, not Xcode projects.

I'm new to Xcode. I'm currently taking the iOS Development in Swift course by Plymouth University recommended by Apple. When you create a new Xcode project one of the options is OS X which I'm thinking is for creating Mac apps. I assume the course will cover uploading apps to the iTunes App Store.

On other platforms such as Amazon and the Windows App Store their websites specifically mention that apps submitted will be tested before they are approved. I did not find anything about submitted apps being tested other than the documentation on the What's Included link about the TestFlight Beta Testing program. The text on this link mentions testing for iOS and tvOS apps. When you click the Learn more link it mentions iOS, watchOS and tvOS, not Mac.

The documentation says on the page that displays after Clicking Learn more: "To get your app ready for testers, upload a beta build of your app from Xcode and add the names and email address of people that you’d like to test in iTunes Connect." Is the TestFlight Beta Testing program only for testing apps that are written using Xcode?

No, is not necessary. You can upload your app from both Xcode or Application Loader.

  Application Loader is a tool to help you upload your apps to iTunes
  Connect. It’s particularly helpful if your app includes In-App
  Purchase products that need to be configured for the app. Application
  Loader is explained in Using Application Loader. Application Loader is
  available from the Resources and Help section of iTunes Connect.

With that tool you will be able to upload your .ipa file. Once your app is upload, you can distribute that build over Test Flight.


PDF annotation tool for Mac OS What is the Mac OS application that provides most similar function as PDF annotator in Windows?

I just want a program that enables simple annotating functions in Mac OS.
Of course, freeware is preferred.

Add:
Thank you for recommending Preview.
But I need a little more advanced features than Preview.
Any recommendation?

You can use Preview to annotate PDFs, make circles, arrows, texts, and even sign it.

It comes with OS X.


Duplicate contacts in iPhone 4 with two Exchange accounts, one is Lotus Traveler I have two exchange accounts on my iPhone 4. One that connects to my gmail, the other connects to my work's Lotus Notes. There are no overlapping contacts in the two accounts. There are also no contacts saved locally on my phone.

When I enable contacts in both accounts, I get two identical entries for each of the contacts in my gmail. If I disable the Notes exchange account, then there are no more duplicates. If I have Notes contacts enabled, and gmail contacts disabled then I have no contacts at all.

Does anyone know what is going on? Is this a problem with having multiple exchange accounts or is it a Lotus Traveler problem? (I tend to blame Notes for all the trouble in the world, but that is just my bias)

Thanks all.

The data stores can get confused. It's usually a server issue but you seem to have narrowed that out by the details you posted.

Giving the iPhone a totally fresh database then re-establishing sync often helps when the databases are failing to sync correctly.

Since there is no way to just start over for contacts only, you have a short dance of steps.

Disable all contact syncing over the air.
Power cycle the phone
Use a test account (i make a new user account on my mac with an empty address book) - syncing from iTunes to overwrite all contacts stored on the phone clears the data store well. You can have iTunes only overwrite the contacts and not affect any other data on the iPhone.
Sync back to your main iTunes if desired, then finally re-enable contact sync over the air.

Since the contact database gets restored from a backup, restoring the phone won't cure contact database errors. If you can re-set up the phone, you could restore and set it up as a new device also.


Google Hangouts on Mac Catalina I know that 32-bit apps will not work on MacOS Catalina. Unfortunately, I use Hangouts very often and the plugin requires the use of a 32-bit app.

As far as you know, is there the possibility to make Hangouts work on Catalina?

Thank you so much in advance.

As far as i remember (afair), there was native Ggl Hangouts app (with 32bit components) for older macOS, but Ggl discontinued to share those files. Even if it was obtained it will not run in Catalina.
So an option that regular or power users can do is, use Wine-project software, it is an emulator type of software, it allows to run Windows app in macOS/Linux/Unix, etc,

and afaik the project & project's users have began to collaborate+work on supporting 64bit-only macOS (Catalina, Big Sur, etc).
It is better for this case that Wine is installed by using a package-management type of software, (if Ggl Hangouts was available as stable option, and you were using 32bit supported macOS, then installing Wine directly w/o pkg-mngmt sw would've been fine).
See this answer here (Load Wine by using MacPorts).
( MacPorts is a package-management type of software )
( Homebrew (is also another package-management software, but it) violates Privacy-Rights and creates risks1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ..., so i will not suggest to use that, but you are free to choose whatever you want to use )

GH = Google-Hangouts.
There was also a native Ggl Hangouts 32bit app for Windows, but Ggl discontinued files for this too, but some caching/wayback site may/can be used, to obtain it, (if you have original file's hash/checksum code known).
And another option is, if GH standalone app was already installed on a PC/Windows computer & you have access to that computer, then you need to copy Hangouts exe (executables), DLLs (lib), etc files, into your macOS computer's one of the folder, & then you can use Wine app to run the exe file in macOS/Catalina.
I have shown many/Various ways to use Google-Hangouts(GH) web-service (aka: chat network, aka: IM network) on Catalina (and Mojave) in below linked answer's EXTRA-INFO section, if you have time & respect for different choice/preferences, then read this linked answer here:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/400885/133434
( as i have posted the link, i will not repeat info here again )


how will users be informed if an app is not running on their current iOS version? Let's look at the following scenario:
an app is not supporting iOS 8 anymore. how would iOS8 users know they have to update in order to get the latest app version?
is a badge still visible on the appstore icon informing the user that there is a new version of the app and when clicking on "upgrade" he will be informed that this app is not supported with this OS-version or how does it work?

When vieweing the update in the App Store it will tell the user it requires iOS 9 or above.


Parallels Desktop is using my home directory for a VMs home directory I have installed Windows Vista on a Parallels Desktop virtual machine on my MacBook Air.

But it seem that my Windows Vista home directory is stored in my Mac OS X home directory.

E.g. at my Mac OS X home directory /Users/jonas/ I also have my Vista folders:

Documents/
Applications/
Desktop/
Downloads/

I don't want to mix the environments like this. I want my Windows Vista files isolated to the virtual machine.

How can I keep my Windows Vista files to only exist within the virtual machine?

I am assuming you did an Express installation. There is a few places in Parallels where the settings can or need to be changed.

The first place is under Configure -> Options -> Sharing.

This controls where and how Parallels can see the folders, and where and if they get mounted. Shared Profile is most likely enabled which is why you are getting the current result.

Another place to check sharing options would be under Configure -> Options -> Applications.

This controls which applications are shared between the Mac and Windows Virtual Machine and how they interact with each.

Lastly to completely disable sharing between the VM and Mac look under Configure -> Options -> Security

This will completely isolate the Mac from the VM, and nothing can be shared between the two.


Python version different to Python Framework version When I ask for my system version in python interpreter, the answer is 2.7.10 :

Python 2.7.10 (default, Jul 30 2016, 18:31:42)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 8.0.0 (clang-800.0.34)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> print (sys.version)
2.7.10 (default, Jul 30 2016, 18:31:42)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 8.0.0 (clang-800.0.34)]

However, browsing /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions, I can only find 3.5, why?

It is possible to have multiple different python installations on macOS. And the user is able to choose where they are installed.

For example, I have the standard Python that comes with macOS, as well as one that came with Anaconda that I use for my Python development.

To make things easier, I linked my system Python to Anaconda's Python interpreter. However, this does not delete the Python version in my system's library, merely stops linking against it.

If you're ever confused which interpreter is being used to run your code in terminal, I find a simple way to find out is to simply type the Terminal command "which python". That will quickly output the location of the Python interpreter being used by your system by default. In my case it outputs "/anaconda/bin/python".


Is there any MacBook-supported filesystem that will not do a scan every time its underlying external HDD gets unplugged without eject? Currently, with ExFAT filesystem on an external HDD connected to a MacBook Pro I experience very long scan times (proportional to the size of the HDD, several TBs in this case; MacOS is used here) whenever I plug the drive after it was accidentally unplugged without ejecting the drive first.
While I understand the reason behind it, it is sometimes unacceptable to wait for hours before I can start using it again.
Therefore I am looking for filesystems that wouldn't render the drive unusable for hours whenever that happens.
Any suggestion is appreciated, the internet yields no immediate solutions/answers, and I would really like to avoid answering myself by testing filesystems - if this kind of info already exists somewhere out there.

When a file system is improperly disconnected, the is a likelihood that there are partially completed write operations. In the simplest cases this might just lead to the corruption of a single file.  But if the file system was in the middle of making a directory/folder change this would lead to the whole folder being corrupt.  In the worst case, it could make the file system unusable.
So it is a good thing that macOS makes sure that the file system on any improperly ejected file system is intact and in a consistent state.  You would be very unhappy if there were any problems with the file system that led to a loss of data.
For simple file systems the checking needs to be of the whole file system.  And that is slow, as you know!  But, worse, there is a good chance that the disk may become unusable if it was in the middle of multiple write operations.
More modern file systems keep a journal of changes so that after an improper ejection, the file system can be set back to a consistent state - undoing any partially completed operations. As well as being more sure, recovery is much quicker than for older file systems. This technology (and its theoretical basis) was developed for databases (in the 1970 and 80s) and later extended to whole file systems.
Both the HFS+ and APFS file systems are journaled and are the usual file systems for disks used only on Apple systems.  Windows NTFS is also journaled, but not so easily used with macOS.
So the short answer is to use APFS or HFS+.  Recovery will not be instantaneous (and macOS may complain about the mistreatment of the disk), but it will be quicker and more certain than when using exFAT. For better recovery use APFS rather than HFS+.
But, be aware that accidentally unplugging a disk (particularly an HDD) can lead to physical problems on the disk drive. So don't make a practice of improper ejection if you value your data!


Troubleshooting: Apple booting to Prohibitory Sign So my macbook pro (2012 Intel i5 6gb ram), has been starting up to the prohibitory sign. This sign will kinda sway back and forth between the apple symbol and the prohibitory sign. Every once in a while it will stick at the Apple Logo and turn on.

I have reinstalled the OS, reset the NVRAM, and pretty much everything else I could think to check, including hardware diagnostic checks.

I work as an IT and happened to have another Macbook pro of the same year and model laying around. When I switch the hard drives in the two computers both computers, both of them are able to boot up normally every time. (This confuses me).

Any idea on the problem or other things to try??

Thanks

Prohibitory symbol on a high level means the OS build you're trying to boot is not supported on the machine you're on. This can happen for many reasons, from an actual bad build being installed, to OS corruption, to bad HD.

Since you said when you swap HDs with another MacBook, both are able to boot, is it possible that they got swapped somehow in the first place? In other words the one giving you the prohibitory symbol actually belongs in the OTHER MacBook? So when you swap them and everything magically works, you're just putting the hard drives in their appropriate Macs.


iTunes U: How can I extract audio from video lectures? I download lots of lectures from iTunes U. The problem is, they usually come with video and there is no audio-only version for many.

How can I, using any software available for Snow Leopard, free or paid, extract the audio from a series of video files and end up with a series of audio files?

Any ideas?

I suggest using Max or ffmpegx, which is a GUI for ffmpeg.

You can also use ffmpeg from the shell:

for f in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c copy "${f%mp4}m4a"; done

-vn (video none) removes video streams and -c copy disables re-encoding the audio. You can install ffmpeg with brew install ffmpeg after installing Homebrew.


iPhone 4S OSX 7.1.2 Wifi switch greyed-out (disable) Apple sent a replacement 4S last month: I have used the wifi w/o problems until today.

I have tried:

1) Rebooting the device several

2) Bouncing airplane mode

Questions:

A) Are there any settings (other than airplane mode) that will disable wifi?

B) Are there any diagnostic procedure that can ID root cause of wifi disabled?

If the Wifi switch is being displayed as greyed out that means that there is a hardware problem with the Wifi modem in the device. I had faced this with my device and Apple replaced it under warranty, I would suggest take the device to an Apple store and they should replace the device as you get 3 months support on replaced devices even if it was a paid replacement.

P.S: Rebooting, Resetting or any other changes can not fix this issue as it is a hardware issue, the earlier you go to the Apple support the better.


Early 2015 MacBook Pro battery not charging My MacBook Pro battery is not charging for days. It only stops at 8% (not increase or decrease) when I plug in.

In addition, the light at the end of charger does not turn on.

What is the problem of it? How to fix it?

The detail of my MacBook Pro is as follows:

The lack of a charging indicator light is not a good sign, as it implies a hardware problem of some sort (i.e. cable, charger and/or MBP).

However, one thing you could do is reset the System Management Controller (SMC) to see if that resolves the issue.

Shut down your Mac
Unplug the power cable from your Mac
For 10 seconds, press and hold at the same time the shiftcontroloption keys (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button
After 10 seconds let go of all keys and the power button
Plug in the power cable
Turn your Mac back on with the power button.

If the problem still persists after doing this, an easy test to do is to see what happens if you use another charger/cable. If the problem still persists with another charger/cable, then you really should run Apple Diagnostics (you can also run diagnostics in the meantime if you haven't got access to another charger/cable).

Run Apple Diagnostics

Follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

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

Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.


How do I uninstall Korg audio drivers from a Mac I'm trying to get Korg's DS DAC 100m working on my son's Mac Book. Our first try was to just plug it in, but the Mac did not recognise it as a sound device. Then we downloaded the driver software from http://www.korg.com/us/support/download/software/0/529/2584/ and ran the driver installer. Now when we plug in the DAC to his Mac the Mac hangs for a few seconds and then reboots. I know how to uninstall drivers on a PC, and I know how to uninstall apps on a Mac, but I cannot see how to uninstall a failing sound driver from a Mac. How do I do that?

Typical - no sooner have I posted the question than we realise that the download also contains an uninstaller.

But, according to Korg's 2015.11.09 news

  We can inform you today that DS-DAC-100 and DS-DAC-100m are not compatible with El Capitan and advise you not to update your operating system until compatible versions has been released.

So we're stuffed anyway.


How do i connect 4 DVI monitors to my MacBook Pro 15 inch early 2013? I have 4 Dell 1708FPT monitors (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0065638JS) which use either DVI or VGA to connect.

I am wondering what adapters I would need to get all 4 monitors powered by my MacBook Pro 15 inch early 2013 laptop running macOS Sierra?

Hmmm, this is an interesting question because the monitors you want to connect to are only capable of a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024.

Apple's official stance

Officially these MBPs can support up to one HDMI display (at 1920x1080 pixels) while simultaneously connected to a Thunderbolt display (at 2560x1600 pixels), OR being connected to two Thunderbolt displays (both at 2560x1600 pixels).

Unofficial real-life scenarios

However, unofficially you can exceed this. I'm not aware of anyone who has tried connecting these MBPs to four displays at a lower resolution. What I have seen instead are the following scenarios with the mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro which uses the exact same setup (NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M and Intel HD Graphics 4000):

safely connecting two 27" Thunderbolt displays each at 2560x1600 pixels while also using the built-in display. Doing this results in about a 23% increase in the MBP's fan speed, but with no long-term damage/problems.
safely using a single Thunderbolt display at higher resolutions (e.g. 3440x1440) with the MBP in clamshell mode without any problems whatsoever.
safely using two 27" iMacs in Target Display Mode (one using a Thunderbolt connection and the other a Thunderbolt/DisplayPort connection) without any problems (both in and out of clamshell mode).
safely using a single Thunderbolt display at higher resolutions (e.g. 3440x1440) while also using the built-in display. This seems to work okay, although the fans do spin about 30% faster. This is probably the limit of how much I'd recommend pushing things at these resolutions.

I've also seen users connect three external displays while in clamshell mode. However, this resulted in the MBP's fans spinning at more than double their usual speed when watching videos etc. Not something I would recommend.

Your unique scenario

It's not clear from your question whether you were wanting to use the MBP in clamshell mode. If I assume you do, then you're in a situation where you want to use four external displays with a total of 5,242,880 pixels which is less than the official combinations supported by Apple. So the only problem you're likely to face is how you'd physically do this?

I see the following solutions for connecting four of these particular displays:

Option 1 - Use a combination of two Thunderbolt > DVI adapters, one HDMI > DVI adapter, one USB > DVI adapter.
Option 2 - Use a combination of two Thunderbolt > VGA adapters, one HDMI > VGA adapter, one USB > VGA adapter.
Option 3 - A combination of options 1 & 2 above (i.e. you could use one Thunderbolt > DVI adapter and one Thunderbolt > VGA adapter, and either of the HDMI or USB adapter options.
Option 4 - Utilise two USB adapters and two Thunderbolt adapters.
Option 5 - Utilise two USB adapters and one Thunderbolt adapter and one HDMI adapter.

Personally I would not recommend Option 4 or Option 5. Not only do these options use up your USB ports, they also double up on using an adapter that will have limitations. By limitations I mean the bandwidth provided by your USB ports will not work well with many games or anything that is graphics intensive. However, if you're just using MS Office or doing some basic web browsing, you should be fine.

Below are some links that may be useful:

Thunderbolt to DVI
Thunderbolt to VGA
HDMI to DVI
HDMI to VGA
NewerTech USB 3.0/2.0 to DVI, VGA, HDMI
Kensington Usb Multi Display Video Adapter

Finally, you may find the Matrox TripleHead2Go DP worth considering.


Applescript to disable screen saver through sending keystroke I'm trying to write an applescript that will disable the screen saver through sending a keystroke.  Something like sending a "shift key" pressed every 30 seconds.

I don't want to have the applescript actually disable the screen saver through system preferences.

Check out the dictionary for the System Events app that's included with Applescript. You can access it from the AppleScript Editor:

  File > Open Dictionary... > System Events.app

There's a class called "screen saver preferences object" in there that should do what you need without having to script the GUI.

EDIT: Try setting the property "delay interval" of the object to 0 to disable the screensaver.


Does iOS Health app send your health data to Apple? I am wondering if the biometric information collected by Apple's Health app stays local on my iPhone, or if it's being sent to Apple?

Unless you choose to backup your data to iCloud, none of your data will be sent to Apple. Even if you do choose to backup your data to iCloud, that data is encrypted - meaning only you can access it.

Apple’s privacy policy is here and you can request Apple send you all the data they have and inspect the health data yourself to know how / when / what was collected based on how you set up your accounts and sync options combined with how iOS is programmed.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ (Read about policies and related links)
http://privacy.apple.com/ (Sign in and get your data)

However, you also decide what 3rd party apps, if any, you want to have access to your health data. These can be set via the Health app directly or via Settings > Privacy > Health. So make sure you check their privacy policy if this concerns you!

To quote Apple directly:

  The Health app lets you keep all your health and fitness information under your control and in one place on your device. You decide which information is placed in Health and which apps can access your data through the Health app. When your phone is locked with a passcode or Touch ID, all of your health and fitness data in the Health app — other than what you’ve added to your Medical ID emergency card — is encrypted with your passcode. You can back up data stored in the Health app to iCloud, where it is encrypted while in transit and at rest. Apps that access HealthKit are required to have a privacy policy, so make sure you review these policies before providing apps with access to your health and fitness data.

Source: Apple

In a nutshell, only you (or anyone who knows your passcode or has a fingerprint set on your iPhone) have control of your health data.


What is best way to get and play Age of Mythology on Mac? I have a 15 inch 1st gen MacBook Pro retina with windows 7 installed using boot camp and I would like to get the game Age of Mythology (with expansion) which I never had. What would be the best way to get the game and play it? For example, would it be best/possible to buy the windows version and play it on the 64 bit window 7 portion of my computer.

Note: Not sure if this question is better in Ask Different or Arqade. Will move question if prompted.

Thanks ahead of time for any advice.

UPDATE

I would like to get the game at a reduced price since it is so old so paying the full price for the OS X version is not preferred but will be considered.

UPDATE

And I would like the Titans expansion too.

I would try PlayOnMac, it's an easy-to-use wrapper for a program called WINE which basically replicates all the Windows code a normal win32 application needs to run. They have a database on their website of games that work on it, you might try there.


Which Apple Developer program Should I enroll to create Passbook passes I am reading this documentation:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/PassKit_PG/Chapters/YourFirst.html

In order to register a pass type identifier, I need to be an Apple developer.
My pass will be available on a web page (not an iOS app).

Which of the developer programs should I enroll to: iOS/Mac/Safari?

You need to enroll in the iOS developer program since Pass Type Identifiers are not available to Mac developers and no identifiers are available to Safari developers.


Mail.app removes text after inline attachment Whenever I send an e-mail from Mail.app to someone with Outlook, they can't read any text that is placed beneath an inline attachment.

When I send an e-mail to myself from Mail.app any text that is placed beneath an inline attachment is attached as text-files.

This is very annoying, does anyone know how to fix this problem?

Under Edit > Attachments, check Always send Windows-friend attachments.

That way, the text beneath the attachment won't be cut off.

Alternatively, you can do that on a per-message basis in the attachment file selector window, like so:


Iphone lost photos and videos when jailbreak I need your urgent help. When I opened the photos app and I saw all of my albumns are gone but all the videos and photos are still in my phone. The problem started to happens when I use the jailbreak software called redsn0w as I'm trying to install cydia on my iphone to get the iblacklist software, but it didn't do anything so I decided to stop running the software so that is how it have happens that my abulmns are gone.

I have backed up on my computer and on icloud, but I want to get the albums back that I have created important photos and videos to show to the urology when I see him on Monday.

Any advice will be much appreciate.

What you need to do is restore your iPhone from the latest backup you made. In order to do that, follow these steps:

As you can see, this is from apple's website, so those are the directions.

If you did not create a backup before jail breaking, it is going to take a more complicated route to find your photos and videos, if it's even possible at that point.

Hope this helps!


Mac Mail -- synchronize IMAP sent boxes I use Mac Mail on Lion with two IMAP accounts.

The main (local?) inbox works great; all received messages are synchronized.  The main sent box only shows messages that have been sent from this computer.

I can find the individual IMAP sent boxes, with all sent messages from anywhere, in the file tree under 'Show.'  Is there a way to synchronize the main sent box with all sent messages on both IMAP servers?  I'd like to do this so I can search through all sent messages in one action.
Thanks

First, check in the Mail.app preferences:

Accounts -> Your account
"Mailbox behaviors" tab
the "Store sent messages on the server" checkbox. If checked, the sent messages are stored in the server, if not, theyre stored locally.

If you storing sent messages on the server, probably: your IMAP-server account uses different mailbox for Sent emails as Mail.app uses by default. Therefore:

you should find the correct mailbox by checking all available mailboxes in the IMAP-server account in the sidebar "Show" (usually some names with "Sent", or "sent-mail" or like).
click on the folder
In the menu: "Mailbox" -> "Use This Mailbox" and select "Sent"
Now, your Mail.app will use this mailbox for the Sent items.

If the above not helps (and probably won't because, as you write, you "can't browse the server mailboxes) you should ASK your IMAP-server admin what IMAP-server "PATH prefix" is used by server. Probably the admin setup some unusual configuration, you probably will need enter something like "/" or "INBOX"...

Warning: Don't experiment with different IMAP PATH settings because you can mess-up you current local mail cache. If you still want experiment (what i strongly don't recommending) you at least should first select "Don't keep copies of any messages", what will delete you local mail cache). When you will have the correct setting you should enable again the local chache and the Mail.app, click Synchornize and the Mail will reload all messages again from server. (hopefully). You've been warned - don't blame me if you loose all your mails. ;)


Dual hard drive setup in early 2011 MacBook Pro 17" (replacing optical drive with HDD) I have an early-2011 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.10.2 (also Windows 7 Professional on a Boot Camp partition), and recently upgraded my hard drive to a 500GB SSD (Crucial MX100). The speed is amazing, but I don't want to load too much data onto the drive since TRIM cannot be enabled in Yosemite without disabling kext signatures (I'm utilizing the disk garbage collection and do not wish to enable TRIM; the more disk space available, the better the garbage collection firmware works on the SSD).

That being said, I am considering swapping out my SuperDrive for a second hard drive - keeping the OS and programs installed and running from the SSD, and saving documents and files on the HDD. However, I am aware that in some 2011 MacBook Pros, the optical bay can use either a SATA II or SATA III connection. I checked in System Profiler, and it shows that the optical drive's link speed at 6 gigabits, with negotiated link speed at 1.5 gigabits; therefore I'm guessing it's a SATA III capable connection that's simply throttled to the speed of the optical drive. However, reading here would suggest that the 17-inch early-2011 MacBook Pro may not support a 6.0 gigabit connection.

Am I wrong anywhere here? And is there a maximum capacity HDD that is supported in my model MBP as a second hard drive?

UPDATE: I purchased a dual hard drive adapter for swapping with the optical bay, and installed it in my machine with the original 500GB SATA III that Apple shipped with the laptop. So far everything is working just fine, and I have two working hard drives in the machine (triple booting Lion, Yosemite, and Windows 7 via Boot Camp). The second HDD is displaying 6.0 Gb/s link speed, with a 3.0 Gb/s negotiated link speed. I understand that even though the HDD is SATA III, it's dropping down to SATA II speed; but so far there aren't any problems with the disk running, and I can boot Lion from it without any issues. Will post any further developments.


FTP Issues on MacOS, can't write on the disk I'm developing a website for a client, but some space of the server we will be used to transfer large files of softwares like Maya Autodesk (my client working with 3D modeling). I'm trying to configure the filezilla on MacOS of my client which did not work correctly. It is possible to upload files, but I can not download anything from server. I checked if it was the firewall that was blocking Filezilla, but it wasn't.

The error message that appears is below:

Status:         Resolving address of sl1064.web.hostpoint.ch
Status:         Connecting to 217.26.61.24:21...
Status:         Connection established, waiting for welcome message...
Status:         Initializing TLS...
Status:         Verifying certificate...
Status:         TLS connection established.
Status:         Server does not support non-ASCII characters.
Status:         Connected
Status:         Retrieving directory listing...
Status:         Directory listing of "/" successful
Status:         Retrieving directory listing of "/3d_files"...
Status:         Directory listing of "/3d_files" successful
Status:         Resolving address of sl1064.web.hostpoint.ch
Status:         Connecting to 217.26.61.24:21...
Status:         Connection established, waiting for welcome message...
Status:         Initializing TLS...
Status:         Verifying certificate...
Status:         TLS connection established.
Status:         Server does not support non-ASCII characters.
Status:         Connected
Status:         Starting download of /3d_files/Gallop_2.mov
Command:    CWD /3d_files
Response:   250 OK. Current directory is /3d_files
Command:    PWD
Response:   257 "/3d_files" is your current location
Error:          Failed to open "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Gallop_2.mov" for writing
Error:          File transfer failed
Status:         Starting download of /3d_files/Gallop_2.mov
Error:          Failed to open "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Gallop_2.mov" for writing
Error:          File transfer failed
Status:         Starting download of /3d_files/Gallop_2.mov
Error:          Failed to open "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Gallop_2.mov" for writing
Error:          File transfer failed
Status:         Disconnected from server

Thanks guys

FTP is less used than it was due to security concerns. Do you have/ can you get access to the logs from the host? those will give more information about why the transfers are failing.

If you want a GUI you can connect as a specific user and use Screen Sharing to copy things off and on from that account as long as the host is configured to allow another computer to connect and use apple events. It can be something as simple as a guest account as long as it has a public drop box your client can drop whatever you need in there
press ⌘K to open the network connection.

If you don't care about the gui and are comfortable with the terminal:

try using ftp from the terminal -ftp will run in verbose mode giving you more information
try using ssh to connect to the host and use ftp on the host to send you the files


How can I edit a file without altering its modif date? How can I edit a file without altering its modification date ? In command line. Is vi able to that ?

The only way I can think of is to store it's modification date before altering it and then to set it back again.

I'm not aware of any CLI tool that would allow you to do that, however years ago I've written something in C that I used to set the modification date on a file to arbitrary value. I know this is not the answer that you're looking for, but I would do this the following way:

get the original access time and the modification time for a file, before you alter it. For this, you can just use stat() system call (read more about it by issuing man 2 stat).
alter the file, using vi or any other editor you like
set the modification time back to what it was. This can be done using the utimes() call (again, you can read more by issuing man 2 utimes command). Please note, utimes() sets both the access time and the modification time.

Edit

Actually it seems like there's already a CLI tool that can do that. According to this answer: How to change the creation (st_birthtime) date/time of a file in Lion?, you can use touch command to change those times: touch -m changes the modification time and touch -a changes the access time (you can use both options in one call). All you'd need to do then is use the stat command line on the file before you modify it and display its access and modification times. Then do the edit and after that, use touch to set the access/modification times back to their values from before the edit.


How to get iTunes to copy music you import to a safe/internal folder When I drag music into iTunes from the downloads folder, and then empty my downloads folder, the music is obviously no longer in iTunes because the source file was in my downloads folder.

This is on Windows 7, but I don't think that's relevant. I think it's an iTunes setting/preference.

How do I set it up so when I drag music into iTunes, it copies the music file to another folder, so I can empty my downloads folder?

Launch iTunes then open Preferences, either from the Edit menu or by holding  Ctrl ⌃   ,

In the Advanced tab, check 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder...'

This may prompt iTunes to ask if you want to Consolidate existing files. If it does, say Yes.
If not, then do it manually afterwards, from File > Library > Organise Library.

This will grab all existing files from all locations except the iTunes Library & copy them there.


Why do macOS/iOS upgrades take so long? Even on an iMac Pro, it still takes some time (maybe 15 minutes) to upgrade the OS (after everything is downloaded). During this time, I can't use the computer.

Why is that? What is it actually doing? Why is this process not a simple reboot?

Please note I'm not asking why a reboot is required. As a software developer, I'm fully aware of why a reboot is required.

Also note A clear reason why an upgrade could take a while is a filesystem migration (such as the HFS+ → APFS migration). Apple did some test migrations, even, before rolling out the final thing. However, most OS upgrades don't involve changes to the filesystem AFAIK.

This is a question is similar to Why does the OS X Software Update check take so long? about another upgrade process taking a while. There are specifics of macOS and iOS that are worth considering in answering this question. For example: both ship with drivers necessary for all supported systems.

Why is this process not a simple reboot?

The overall answer here is it depends.  It depends greatly on what needs to be done.  An update that you do to your system may be vastly different than I do on mine.  The update in question may only need a service restarted or it may need updates to the actual kernel.

  Why is that [I can't use the computer]?

Generally, for the same reason you can't use an app (Word, Excel, Numbers, iTerm, Adobe Photoshop, etc.) that is in the process of being upgraded. The files must be closed, read, analyzed, the appropriate patches/updates copied over and the app restarted.

When an OS is upgraded, the same thing must happen and this is typically done (when it comes to kernel level upgrades especially) in single user mode.

Typically, you'll see updates downloaded, the system will begin a shutdown, updates applied, a reboot, and a "finalization" of the updates followed by a normal boot.  You can't use the computer during any of this.

  What is it actually doing?

It depends.  It could be anything from patching a config file to flashing firmware of some type.

  If the system is in /System, why isn't an OS upgrade simply creating a
  /NewSystem

First off, /System is protected by SIP so to disable it, you actually need to boot from a different mount point.*  Secondly, the way you're looking at this is analogous to doing a home renovation by dumping a new house next to the old one and telling the people to just move in.  It's not the way it works.

Many things have to happen, least of which is restore points created (in case the backup fails).  So this means a copy of the working system is created, the update applied, the update checked, and (if all good) the restore point deleted.

In the case of firmware updates, images have to be verified (i.e. you don't want a Mac mini firmware on your Mac Pro), checksums validated, images backed up, applied, verified, old ones removed and the system reinitialized.  Again, none can be done with you logged in and none of it done by simply "dumping" files in a directory.

An upgrade is a process and all of this takes time.

* SIP is designed to protect the system by preventing changes to the OS.  Allowing the OS to change the system "on-the-fly" would negate the security it's trying to achieve.