iPhone 3G set time automatically? I've noticed on an old iPhone 3G I keep around for testing that the Set Automatically option in Date & Time doesn't work. This iPhone has a SIM card, but it has been deactivated by the carrier after upgrading to a newer model which uses a different size card.

I assumed it would work using Network Time Protocol (NTP), which means it should be able to sync the time over WiFi. But I haven't find any documentation on this.

I keep this iPhone around for testing, so it only comes out of the drawer every few months. Keeping it fully charged isn't a realistic option.

This phone is running the final version available for it, iOS 4.2.1 (8C148).

My question, then: Can I make this work? Failing that, is there documentation available that says once and for all that it can't be made to work?

"Set Automatically" takes the time from the cellular network. If you remove the SIM card (or just keep the phone in airplane mode with Wi-Fi enable), the time will never get updated.
From the iPhone User Guide (available in iTunes):

If iPhone is set to update the time automatically, it gets the correct time over the cellular network and updates it for the time zone you’re in.
Some carriers don’t support network time in all areas. If you’re traveling, iPhone may not be able to automatically set the local time.


What is the difference between the "Local Network" and "Local Network and VPN" options in Server I'm trying to understand what the difference is between these three options, and more to the point, I'm trying to determine which one is right for me.

I'm aware that there is a difference in hostnames (.local vs .private), but I don't know what the implications of that are. Are there any other differences?

My Use case:

I have a Mac that I use as a server for Time Machine backups, file sharing, printer sharing, screen sharing, etc, but it is not a VPN server. I typically access this server over the LAN. I have a separate OpenVPN server running on my router, to which I can successfully connect. I would like to have this server accessible over LAN, over my VPN connection to my router.

"Local Network and VPN" would be my first choice, but I don't know if it pertains to any VPN connections, or those connected to specifically this Mac.

TL; DR:

What is the difference between these options, and which one is right for me?

.local vs .private doesn't really matter, they're just different names.. the implications of .local vs .private just have to do with how DNS zones are created.  You'll be more interested in the security implications, because my belief is that LAN-only restricts services access to the local, private network; LAN + VPN opens it up to not just the local LAN but also the VPN connection/network (they're considered separate networks, remember,) and 'Internet' opens services up to the WAN.  If I were you I'd actually stick with LAN because as far as your server is concerned, once you're connected in to the LAN through OpenVPN, it doesn't care whether you're in the same room or not, nor can it tell.

LAN + VPN wouldn't screw you up but would set up Server.app with firewall and service rules allowing for the VPN service and its related networks to also access the services running on the server.

Hope that answers your question.


Does MS Word on Apple has any command line interface? I wonder if  MS Word on Apple has any command line interface?

I tried the following:

$ "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word" --help

but no help.

If you want to do some stuff on Word using the CLI AppleScript is the way to do it.


How do I add space to my Bootcamp partition? I'm starting to program and use both Mac and Windows. I need to add space to my Windows Bootcamp partition, so I went into Disk Utility and shrank my Mac volume. But now my Bootcamp partition doesn't appear when restarting holding Option. I also can't create an image of my Windows partition using Disk Utility in Mac, says I don't have permission.

I read that you could just split the Mac partition, reboot into Windows and use Minitool Partition Wizard to add the split space into Bootcamp. How can I get this to work? Thank you for any help.

You could try this : with Disk Utility, restore you Mac volume to its original size (no free space left between the Mac volume and the Windows partition), then launch Boot Camp assistant from Mac OS (in /Applications/Utilities), and use the Boot Camp assistant for redistributing free space between Mac OS and Windows partitions.


Are my frequent Safari beach balls caused by my extensions? Every 2-10 minutes Safari pauses with a spinning beach ball for roughly 10-90 seconds, sometimes asking if I want to reload everything, making Safari almost unusable.

I've installed several safari extensions that mess with pages to prevent cross site attacks, scripting, cookies, etc.  In particular, my active extensions are : AdBlock, ClickToFlash, Ghostery, JavaScript Blocker, and JavaScript BlackList.  Anyone experienced conflicts amongst these before?

Additionally, I've installed but disabled Disconnect, NinjaKit, and WasteNoTime, but presumably disabled extensions cannot contribute to the problem.

I'll experiment with disabling these active scripts piecemeal, starting with JavaScript BlackList, who's role is presumably superseded by Ghostery and JavaScript Blocker.

I'm especially curious about whether Ghostery and JavaScript Blocker might be conflicting, given that they do very similar page editing.  I prefer JavaScript Blocker for being infinitely more aggressive than Ghostery, but Ghostery has a better curated block list, which helps me allow stuff through JavaScript Blocker.

I'd say it's definitely possible, if not likely.

For starters, turn off extensions altogether, to verify that they're causing the issues. Then I'd suggest disabling them one at a time (which sounds like you've tried partly), until you can isolate which one is causing the issues.

If that doesn't help (but all extensions off does), then try only one of your Javascript blockers at once, in the event that some conflict between them is causing problems.


How to open a app in fullscreen via terminal in bash code I would like to know how you would be able to open a app of your choice in fullscreen by using bash code in terminal.

Here's the AppleScript you can use to launch the app and then go to fullscreen mode.

on run argv
    if (count of argv) > 0 then
        set result to item 1 of argv
    else
        set result to text returned of (display dialog "Enter the name of the app to launch" default answer "")
    end if

    set appName to result

    tell application appName
        activate
        delay 3

        tell application "System Events" to tell process appName
            set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of window 1 to true
        end tell

    end tell
end run

Paste that to Script Editor.app, save it as a script (run only). Give osascript access to accessibility functions in Preferences->Privacy->Accessibility (click + and locate /usr/bin/osascript).

With that you can run something like osascript fullscreen.scpt Photos.


How do I plot two data streams in Numbers as a graph? I have two different streams of fractional values I want to visualize using Numbers for Mac.

They both have one value per line and both look would look something like this (with different values obviously):

0.04
0.1
0.05
0.0993
1.3
0.534
...

And I basically want it to have the index (so 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) as the x axis and the amount (in seconds) on the y axis, and have the two data streams. And I'd like to have it as a line graph or a bar graph.

I can't figure out how to do this however.

Add a chart, I used this one:

Then click [Add Chart Data] and select the columns for the data streams


Should I Do Anything Extra to Protect IPhone After Going to Beach? My friend told me that the salt in the air on the beach will reduce the lifespan of iPhone.

Is it true? If yes, is there anything I can do to "clean up" the salt in my iPhone?

I think your friend is confusing sea shanties with reality.  What old mariners call "salt air" is really just the smell of decaying seaweed and dead fish.

Salt, being a solid crystal, can't evaporate, so if there's any "salt in the air" it would be in the form of salt rocks flying around.  I imagine that's probably a lot less likely than "sand in the air", since there's typically not a lot of unsequestered salt at the beach.  Also, I put salt crystals in glass all the time (e.g., measuring cups), and have yet to see the salt scratch the glass at all, so I think the chances of this hypothetical "salt in the air" causing damage to an iPhone are practically nonexistent.

I would worry more about a seagull pooping on it.


Import existing data into iOS 8 Health Is it (or will it be) possible to import data already collected by other apps into the new health app in iOS 8?

We recently released a new app that is dedicated to importing data from CSV (comma separated value) data files which covers many formats of exported data from existing apps.  It will allow you to import data from apps that have an export feature, but are not yet integrated into HealthKit / Health App.

If this is a feature you are still curious about, please check it out on the App Store at:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/health-importer/id930943780?ls=1&mt=8


How to add app icon for iPad Pro in Xcode In Xcode 7.1 and 7.1.1 there is no slot for app icon for iPad Pro. I have no idea how to put in an app icon for iPad Pro.

How can it be done? Does the App Store make the scaled version of the iPad Air app icon onto iPad Pro?

You need Xcode 7.2 beta 3 or later to add iPad Pro app icons (167 × 167) to asset catalogs.

rdar://22915712


Reminders app not showing in Location Services My first iPhone is the XS, it’s up to date with the latest iOS 13. I want location based reminders (remind me when I get to work...) but I need to allow Reminders to access my location. However, Reminders doesn’t show up under the location services settings screen!

Attached is a snippet of my location settings. Any ideas what is wrong here? I have deleted and reinstalled the app.

I was trying to create reminders via Siri. I went to the Reminders app and created one there, I tapped onto the location and was again prompted that I needed to authorize the app to access my location. This time Reminders showed up!

So, I hope that if anyone else is having this issue they can solve it by attempting to create a reminder in the app itself, and not just through Siri.


How do I set up the Programmer Dvorak key layout on Mac OSX El Capitan? I looked up the instructions for Dvorak on https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21495, but they do not seem to apply to my case, as they only list a way to select the Dvorak layout, and not a way to install and select the Programmer Dvorak layout.

I also followed the variations of the instructions related to Mac OSX Mavericks at the following link, to no avail:

http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/macosx.html

After installing the layout driver package and following the instructions for "Adding Programmer Dvorak to the list of available layouts", even after a restart of the OS, and clearing of the layout cache by sudo rm -f /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.le* no Programmer Dvorak layout appeared.

I installed Mr. Kaufmann's package successfully, but it did not seem to change any of the listed keyboards.

Neither a search for "Dvorak" nor a search for "Programmer" gave me any good results for the Programmer Dvorak keyboard layout.

I can put screenshots, here, too, but I do not want to make this question too specific to my particular setup, as this is a general interest question and answer site.

I welcome specific answers as well as the usual steps for troubleshooting Programmer Dvorak Keyboard Layout installation on El Capitan.

Regardless, how do I set up Programmer Dvorak Keyboard Layout on El Capitan?

// , The following worked, in my case, for setting up the Programmer Dvorak key layout on Mac OSX "El Capitan":

Adding Programmer Dvorak to the list of available layouts

These steps must be performed from a user account with administrator access. By default, the main user of the computer has this capability.
Open Safari and download the layout driver package. Safari will put this file into the ~/Downloads folder, unpack it and then start the installer.
If you are on Mavericks (or later), you must hold down the Control key while you click the package icon, and then confirm to Gatekeeper that you want to open the package.
Choose Continue to skip the introduction screen of the package installer.
Make sure that your main harddisk is selected as the target of the installation, and then click the Continue button.
Click on the Install button to start installation.
Enter your password to make a system modification, and then click on the OK button.
Click on the Close button to acknowledge a successful installation.
Alternatively you can do an automated, non-interactive installation of the layout using this command:

sudo installer -pkg "~/Downloads/Programmer Dvorak v1.2.pkg" -target /

10. In El Capitan, you must now clear the layout cache before new layouts are recognized:

sudo rm -f /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.le*

THEN restart your computer, check your list of available keyboard layouts, and clear the cache again. After another restart, your new keyboard layout should be available.

Setting up your account to use the Programmer Dvorak layout in El Capitan

Click on the Apple menu in the upper, left corner of the screen.
Choose System Preferences... from the menu that appears.
Click on the Keyboard icon in the second row in the window that
opens.
Select the Input Sources header.
Click the + button in the lower, left corner.
Select the English language at the top of the list on the left side.
Select the Programmer Dvorak layout at the top of the list on the
right side.
Click the Add button in the lower, right corner.
Tick the Show Input menu in menubar checkbox at the bottom of the
window.
Close the Keyboard window.
Click on the Input Menu icon (the little keyboard or flag) in the
upper-right corner of the screen.
Select Programmer Dvorak from the list that is displayed.


What is Mountain Lion (10.8.2) shutdown cause -81? My 15-inch, Mid 2009 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.8.2 mysteriously crashed while it should have been sleeping.  Nothing in the Console logs indicate that it was shutting down, and when it booted up it had a lot of (disk) journal logs to replay, so I'm assuming it just crashed.

The only clue as to why is a kernel log entry during boot up:
"Previous Shutdown Cause: -81".  Does anyone know what this is (and what to do about it)?

61% battery life left when I booted it up the next day, so it wasn't loss of power (and in the past it has hibernated when battery got low anyway).

In general a negative shutdown codes are related to the hardware issues. Unfortunately the precise meaning of the codes is not publicly documented, so the best is to back up your data and give it to the repair.


Create subdirectory in Finder tree view Currently, I am only able to create a subdirectory in Finder by double-clicking the parent dir so that it becomes the top level selected in the main panel and creating it there by right-clicking and then selecting New Folder.  However, I like to always view my directory structure from a very high level in the hierarchy, most often my home directory and would like to be able to create a subdirectory of a subdirectory without being in it, i.e. from the tree view.  When I right click it, I do not get an option to create a new folder, like I do when I actually have it selected in the main panel.  Is there any way to enable this feature without installing any plugins?

Not to my knowledge, but ⇧⌘N creates a new folder in the same manner.


Can you restrict Command + Tilde (CMD + ~) in El Capitan to switch between only windows on the same desktop? In Yosemite, I could use CMD + ~ to switch between windows of an application, but it switched only between windows on the same desktop/space. When I use the same keyboard shortcut in El Capitan, it switches to windows of the same application that are opened in other desktops. Is there a way to restrict its behavior to within the same desktop (the way it worked in Yosemite)? Thanks!

UPDATE:

As linkedlist suggested, I updated to 10.11.1, which fixed the issue when using Chrome. However, I find that PHPStorm's windows still behave as described above.

I think this behavior is fixed in the new update 10.11.1. I tried it on both explorer and chrome on the same desktop and it switches to the other windows as expected.


Custom Application Keyboard shortcut for Safari not always working I uninstalled Flash a little while back, and installed Chrome as a back-up for when I hit something in Safari and want to see the Flash. I have the "Show Develop in Menu Bar" preference set, and created an Application Keyboard Shortcut for Safari, to Develop>Open Page With>Google Chrome. The shortcut I created was ⌘ + K. And it works!

Well, kinda. It seems like every time I quit and restart Safari, the shortcut stops working. But once I navigate back to Develop>Open Page With (I can just cancel when I bring up the menu, I don't need to select anything), the shortcut works again.

Any way to make sure it always works?

This is a known “bug” which I don’t know if Apple will ever consider a bug.

The problem is that the list of browsers is generated “dynamically” each time you click on it (or at least the 1st time after Safari has been launched); the reasoning behind this is that different users will have a different set of browsers, so the list cannot be hardcoded. So given the above, the shortcut fails to work until the list has been “generated” by Safari. This occurs when you display the menu.

A possible solution would be to use Automator and create a service that opens the current safari page onto Chrome. But that’s beyond the scope of this answer.

TLDR version: There’s nothing you can do other than file a bug report at Apple if you want to stick with the same shortcut technique. Alternatives involve Automator.


Randomize MAC Address Using Platypus I am running the following script in Platypus but the MAC address does not change:

#!/bin/zsh

IF=en7

mac=`ifconfig $IF | awk '/ether/{print $2}'`
echo "$IF mac before change=$mac"
randmac=`openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'`
sudo ifconfig $IF ether $randmac
mac=`ifconfig $IF | awk '/ether/{print $2}'`
echo "$IF mac after change=$mac"

Not receiving errors anymore.  However, the MAC address is not changed by the script.  Commands work individually pasted into Terminal, but not executed as an application by Platypus.

Platypus screenshot:

Platypus

Use Platypus to create an application from your bash script. This approach avoids needing to use AppleScript.

  Platypus is a developer tool that creates native Mac applications from command line scripts such as shell scripts or Perl, Ruby and Python programs. This is done by wrapping the script in a macOS application bundle along with an executable binary that runs the script.

Other Approaches

Mathias Bynens has an article on How to create simple Mac apps from shell scripts.

Also worth reading is the related question How to make a Mac OS X .app with a shell script?


Facebook notifications do not open a browser window when clicked I am correctly getting notifications from Facebook in Mountain Lion's notification center, but when I click them expecting to be brought into the browser (Chrome is my default browser) to see the subject of the notification, nothing happens.
Instead, the notification just disappears from the notification center and I'm left there with no clue about what happened.

Is this normal behavior? If not, what should I do to correct it? I have also tried to change the default browser to Firefox but the result was the same.

I'm also having troubles with the native Facebook alerts.
They just don't work as advertised, that's why I was searching in the web and found this article http://lifehacker.com/5943851/glow-for-fb-stuffs-unobtrusive-facebook-notifications-in-your-menu-bar

That app did it for me :) you click the Notification Center popups and you'll be redirected to the corresponding subject, e.g. the photo, a comment or a message thread.


How do I disable "modern login items" (shared helper applications) which don't show up in system login items? Spotify auto-launches even if I tell it not to from within its own preferences.
It does not seem to be started through any of the "classic" means of auto starting a program - i.e. Login Items or user or global launch agents.
Is there any way to turn off this sort of 'modern login items' in general? (official name: shared helper applications)
Extra points for preventing auto-launching of any apps, especially after MacOS crashed.

There are several ways that programs can automatically start in macOS:
First check "Login Items" which are found in System Preferences after clicking the "Users & Groups" icons. I understand that you have already checked here and did not find Spotify.
Another possibility is that Spotify have been set to open at login from the dock. You can right-click the Spotify icon in the dock, and then in the Options menu make sure that "Open at login" is not enabled.
Similarly if you have left Spotify running when you power down the Mac then by default the app and open windows will be opened again after rebooting. You can avoid this by ensuring that you close Spotify before logging out or rebooting, or change the setting in general by clicking the "General" icon System Preferences and making sure there's a checkmark in "Close windows when quitting an app".
A third possibility is that it is possible to create configuration files for launchd that will automatically start programs at boot or login. You'll find these configurations files in:
~/Library/LaunchAgents/
/Library/LaunchAgents/
/Library/LaunchDaemons/

Note that the ~ characters means your user's home folder.
A final possiblity is that applications in macOS can come with a "shared helper application". Essentially this application would provide some background service to one or more actual applications from that developer. Some use that helper application to later launch their actual application.
The helper application is located within the application's bundle in the Contents/Library/LoginItems folder. For Spotify that is usually in the following location:
/Applications/Spotify.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/StartUpHelper.app

You can prevent that from autostarting Spotify by closing the helper app, or making sure that it cannot start (for example by removing the executable bit on the actual executable: /Applications/Spotify.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/StartUpHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/StartUpHelper)


Noise canceling headphones make strange sound when I touch my MacBook Pro I've got headphones plugged into my desktop, and a laptop nearby that I use for work as well.  Whenever I touch my MacBook Pro with the noise-canceling on my headphones turned on, it makes my headphones go nuts, creating a lot of buzzing, crackling, and popping.

I assume this has something to do with conduction between my hands and the computer, but is there any way to get around this?

It appears your wall socket is not properly grounded, which may cause electrical interference on your headphones when touching the MacBook Pro.

Have a look at this related answer on possible measures you can take to establish a proper electrical grounding.


Safari (5) or Mac OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard): Is past HTTP Post data stored? In either Safari 5 (history intact) or Snow Leopard, is there a way to view a sent HTTP Post request? A session expired and I am looking for the data that was posted (and lost).

No. Post data is deliberately never saved.

It's the most common way to send private data to a server, such as passwords every time you log in. It will never be saved unless the server writes it to a database somewhere.


One Mac can print to network printer, one cannot I have a mid-2010 Macbook Pro running El Capitan (IP: 192.168.1.65) and a newer Macbook Air (~2014) (IP: 192.168.1.71) running El Capitan. Both are connected wirelessly to the same network: a U-Verse router (IP: 192.168.1.254). I have an Okidata MC362W (IP: 192.168.1.78) wired to the U-Verse router. All on a subnet of 255.255.255.0. The Macbook Air can print using CUPS without issue. The Macbook Pro prints OK until it doesn't also using CUPS and the Internet Printing Protocol. Then it will stop seeing the IP address. If I reboot the U-Verse, which takes more than 5 minutes, the Macbook Pro can then usually see the printer again until the same issue comes around 4 or 5 days later.

Here's what I've done:

I've assigned a static IP to the printer. The Macbook Pro is not
using the same IP and it is not using the same IP of anything else on the network.
I've manually repaired permissions on the Macbook
Pro
I've reset the printer settings on the MBP to default
I updated the firmware on the OKIDATA
I've uninstalled and re-installed the printer multiple times
I've installed the most up-to-date drivers for the printer
I've tried to print using Airprint -- it can see the
printer, it cannot connect to the printer
I cannot ping the printer from the MBP nor can I access its IP through the browser.
To the best of my ability, the network setup on the Macbook Air and the MBP are
identical

Does anyone have any suggestions of something new to try? TIA.

I solved the problem on my Mac. It was McAfee's firewall. It was blocking Bonjour communications... hence no printer sharing, or finding on the network. Disabled McAfee's firewall, and poof! Everything works.


Dock/Expose not working, Desktop stuck with gray background (Lion) I am running Mac OS X 10.7.5 and the Dock/Mission Control/Desktop functionality is totally broken.  My dock is not present after startup so I have to start all applications from Spotlight.  I can't even alt-tab between them as the process that controls that function is also down.  My desktop is working but the background is permanently stuck on Gray no matter what I change it to.

killall Dock reports that there are no matching processes that belong to me.  I have removed the plist and db files for Dock and Desktop (com.apple.{whatever}.plist) in the Preferences folder and rebooted multiple times (both Safe Mode and regular) and nothing will change.  Does anyone know what might be wrong? Looking for a solution short of a full reinstall.

I had a similar issue, and running killall -KILL Dock in terminal worked for me.


Mobile-Safari stopped asking me to update passwords I use a wifi hotspot where, after I connect, I have to fill in my username and password in a loginscreen.
My username stays the same, but the password changes quite often.

Safari used to detect when I entered a different password, and offer me to update my saved password. Now not any more...

How do I enable this?

Go to Settings→Safari→'Passwords and AutoFill' and enable 'Name and Passwords'.


Can't Register for a Developer Account I'm trying to create a developer account at developer.apple.com, but every time I click "Register", it says the server at developercms.apple.com couldn't be found. Is this happening to anyone else? How can I get past this?

I have the same issue. The DNS name doesn't exist, so changing browsers is of no use.

Apple needs to either publish the domain name in DNS so that it resolves to an IP address or they need to update the HTML to use the correct name that does exist.

It appears that either Apple's DNS broke and they either haven't realised, don't care to fix it, or it is very difficult to fix and they haven't put a workaround in place (improbable IMFO).

Unless you know what the IP address should be and it's just a DNS issue, you could add a host entry as a workaround. However, if the IP address is unknown or if the server/infrastructure is down in addition to DNS then there is nothing we can do except wait for Apple and hope they fix it.


How can I lengthen the time text to speech pauses after it reaches a full stop ("period") Not permanently but longer than the usual default time that's say half a second. It would be nice if a string of symbols like ".", "..",  "..." or "....." lengthened the default pause time after a full stop  in proportion to the number of symbols. Personally I would find this very useful after a paragraph is completed and before the new paragraph starts - or perhaps there is already a way to get the program to distinguish between end of paragraph and end of sentence?

Use the following  after the word to tell your mac to take a break for 1000 milliseconds after that word:

  [[slnc 1000]]

"The silence command causes the synthesizer to generate silence for the specified number of milliseconds. You might want to insert extra silence between two sentences to allow listeners to fully absorb the meaning of the first one. Note that the precise timing of the silence will vary among synthesizers."

You can change the number of milliseconds.

Hopes this answers your question.
More information on https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/SpeechSynthesisProgrammingGuide/FineTuning/FineTuning.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40004365-CH5-SW11


Hide name of the user and computer name from terminal window title Before Catalina it was possible to hide username and computer name from terminal window title:

Yet now despite any combination of configuration I'm unable to hide those items from window title:

The reason for that is because you are running zsh shell. I'm running the bash shell and no name or directory shows up in terminal window name. You can run bash before running terminal and that should give you the window name you want.  If you type zsh the terminal name will change back.

I don't have Catalina but I've read its changed initial terminal setting to zsh.


iOS 9.3.2 - Siri Suggestions Shows Wrong Contacts I have iOS 9.3.2 but this bug has been bother me for a long time so I'm sure it was present before version 9.3.2.  When I'm on the first page of apps on my home screen I swipe to the right to access "Siri Suggestions".  I love this feature and use it heavily.  But the very first contact seems to be wrong most of the time.  It always shows a dude I NEVER communicate with.  I've looked through all my texts, e-mails, etc and I have received nothing from him.  I have even deleted him from my contacts, restarted my phone, and he still appears as the first suggestion.  This usually happens 90% of the time with this one guy but a couple other times another random person I never speak to shows up.  What gives?!?! I'm sick of seeing this damn dudes face :)

Finally figured it out!!! That person a long time ago had invited me to a Facebook event that last many many days in a row. I never declined or ignored the event and I also had my iOS calendar set to show Facebook events. I declined and ignored the event in Facebook, he still appeared, but I didn't wait long (maybe that takes a while to refresh). I was impatient so I just turned off showing my Facebook events in the calendar app all together. He finally disappeared.


After entering password Mac shuts down I am using MacBook Air 13" with macOS Sierra.

I am facing with this problem for the first time, never had any issues with my MacBook before for almost 3 years.

I turned on my MacBook, picked my user, entered password and progress bar started loading, it filled for about 3/4 and laptop shut down. This happens every time I try to login into my user. However, I am able to login as a Guest.

I turned it on with Cmd + S buttons and saw a message :
BuildError(): error building a user of type 0x20010008

Question:
I am hoping this is not a hardware issue. If it is a software issue I have no problems reinstalling my macOS, but how do I save all my data/files that I have? (I am not using TimeMachine)

Okay, so after some searching/googling I found that all problems that I had was because of FileVault bug that makes your OS pause/freeze at login.
This FileVault bug first was seen on Mac OS X Yosemite, I do not know why I faced with this issue on macOS Sierra, which must work perfectly, but nvm, here is my solution.

Solutions
(Works if your FileVault is turned ON, if not, it may be hardware issue)
When you supply a password for your account at login screen your OS starts to unlock the disk. Unfortunately in some cases this process seems to be hindered by some bug with FileVault 2 setups that prevents their systems from immediately unlocking and loading the OS, so their systems now take up to several minutes to log in, or fail to log in as in my case.
Solution 1 - If your OS loads for a long time
Ensure you have a full backup of your Mac using Time Machine.

Go to FileVault tab in the Security & Privacy system preferences and turn off FileVault.

When FileVault is disabled and your drive is decrypted, restart your Mac.

Hold the Command-R keys down at the boot chimes to load your Mac into Recovery Mode.

Open Disk Utility and use it to run a Repair Disk routine, available in the First Aid tab when you select your hard drive. Do this for both the hard drive device, and your boot volume.

Restart your Mac normally and log in.

Re-enable FileVault in the Security & Privacy system preferences.

Solution 2 - If you can't login and stuck watching progress bar loading forever
The above routine works for if you can eventually boot your Mac in the face of this bug, but if you cannot log in and see the system hang on the loading progress bar for hours with no ability to use your system, then you will have to use another procedure:

Reboot your system and hold the Command-R keys at the startup chimes to load into Recovery Mode.

Use Disk Utility to turn off encryption on your boot drive. If this gives you errors, then reboot in Target Disk Mode (hold the T key at the boot chimes) and use Disk Utility on another Mac via a Thunderbolt or Firewire cable to turn off encryption. Alternatively, you can try booting to Internet Recovery by holding Option-Command-R at the boot chimes, which will avoid using your internal drive for any boot purposes.

With your drive unlocked and decrypted, use Disk Utility to verify and repair your boot drive.

Restart your Mac normally.

Use the Security & Privacy system preferences to re-enable FileVault.


App Store won't update iTunes; inconsistent with iWork I have updated my (Late 2009) Mac Mini to Mavericks. "About This Mac" shows "OS X 10.9 (13A603).

However, I have not been able to update iTunes to version 11.1.2. The App Store shows that the update is available. It also shows several instances of it in my update history. After clicking "Update", the button quickly changes to "Installed". Closing and re-opening the App Store shows the update as available again. Checking within iTunes shows it is at version 11.1.1, so not actually updated. (Repeated several times)

The iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) have actually been updated, showing the correct versions. However, I occasionally one or more will also show up in the App Store as available as well; the behavior is similar to iTunes. If I scroll down, there are multiple instances in my update history as well.

Things I have tried:

Rebooting.
Selected "Store -> Check for Unfinished Downloads..." This appears to re-install the iWork apps, as evident by progress bars in Mission Control, even when they are not listed as needing an update. It does not seem to do anything for iTunes.
Delete iTunes and reinstall. OS X does not allow iTunes to be deleted. I have not yet tried this with iWork.
Selected "Debug -> Reset Application" (there is a hidden menu)
Selected "Debug -> Clear Cookies"
Selected "Debug -> Show Download Folder", and deleting the files there. A subsequent check for unfinished downloads puts them back.

These have had no effect, unless I described it above.

What can I do to get the updates properly installed?

Update: After letting the issue sit for a few days, the App Store no longer shows the iTunes update as available; but iTunes itself is still at 11.1.1.

I just solved this on my Macbook Pro 15" Retina (Intel Iris, late 2013) by downloading iTunes from Apple's website and installing 11.1.2 that way. Now the App Store shows everything as up to date.


How to enable telnet server on macOS 10.13.1? I wanted to add telnet server on my macbook pro(macOS 10.13.1) and followed steps in How to get BSD FTP and Telnet back in 10.13 (High Sierra)? to install telnetd with homebrew.

Everything was OK and I can find telnetd under /usr/local/Cellar/telnetd/54.50.1/sbin. How can I enable telnet server as Daemon?

I tried command

  sudo launchctl load -w /Users/public/telnet.plist

No error occurred but didn't work.

This telnet.plist was copied from other macbook and just modified the telnetd path. Are there other options to get telnetd to run and listen for incoming connections?

Use ssh. Really - use ssh. But if you insist:

brew install telnetd

I'll leave this up since the typical homebrew services start script isn't implemented on the stable homebrew version. Once that's done, you can:

brew services start telnetd

The brew services needs a file like this in /usr/local/Cellar/telnetd/54.50.1/homebrew.mxcl.telnetd.plist and possibly the config file in /usr/local/etc/telnetd.conf or wherever.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>homebrew.mxcl.telnetd</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/sbin/telnetd</string>
    <string>--config</string>
    <string>/usr/local/etc/telnetd.conf</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>


How can I debug a user LaunchAgent that doesn't seem to start or load with launchctl? Problem Description
Running the following user LaunchAgent does not show a started job, nor does the job log an error or do anything detectable. The Vault commands embedded in the plist file work fine when run from a user crontab or the command line, though. I've run the following commands as a non-root user:
# returns exit status 3
launchctl start local.localhost.RenewVaultToken.plist
echo $?

# also returns exit status 3
launchctl enable gui/$UID/local.localhost.RenewVaultToken
launchctl start gui/$UID/local.localhost.RenewVaultToken
echo $?

# returns "Load failed: 5: Input/output error"
launchctl load gui/$UID/local.localhost.RenewVaultToken

# no results
launchctl list | fgrep -i vault

Tailing the system log doesn't show anything identifiable, nor are any log files created. As far as I can tell, the job can't/won't start or run, but I'm not sure how to effectively debug it further.
LaunchAgent File Contents
I have the following file stored in ~/Library/LaunchAgents with the filename local.localhost.RenewVaultToken.plist. The file is set to mode 0600.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple/DTD PLIST 1.0/EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<!-- ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.localhost.RenewVaultToken.plist -->
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>local.localhost.RenewVaultToken</string>

        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/usr/local/bin/vault</string>
            <string>token</string>
            <string>renew</string>
            <string>-increment=12h</string>
            <string>-address="https://vault.example.com"</string>
        </array>

        <key>StartInterval</key>
        <integer>14400</integer>

        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>

        <key>Debug</key>
        <true/>

        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/Users/foo/stdout.log</string>

        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
        <string>/Users/foo/stderr.log</string>
    </dict>
</plist>

I had this too, and I think I have a solution.
I read through the launchctl man pages and saw that load and start are now considered legacy subcommands.

Subcommands from the previous implementation of launchd are generally available, though some may be unimplemented.

I think the old behaviour can be achieved by the following two commands:
# Enable this plist
launchctl enable service-target

# Run this plist now
launchctl kickstart service-target

The service-target that worked for me was in the form gui/$UID/myPlistFilename
The plist filename didn't include the .plist on the end.
So, for the file at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/setUserKeyMapping.plist I ran:
launchctl enable gui/$UID/setUserKeyMapping
launchctl kickstart gui/$UID/setUserKeyMapping

If you pass -kp to the kickstart action, it will kill any running instance
and restart it, then print out the PID of the new instance.
launchctl kickstart -kp gui/$UID/setUserKeyMapping


Retina Macbook Pro BootCamp vs Parallells Performance I'm thinking of getting rid of my old gaming PC and just bootcamping / virtualizing on my Retina Macbook Pro.

I've tried using a VM (VMWare Fusion) and the performance there was pretty awful, has anyone tried both Virtualization (either VMWare or Parallels) and BootCamp?

How much better is BootCamp performance on the Retina Macbook Pro compared to VMWare or Parallels? Will it be able to handle most PC games?

Thanks.

BootCamp is usually between 3 and 4 times faster than either VMWare or Parallels. Bootcamp is the actual OS running on real hardware, where the other choices are running  inside the constraints of the host OS and must share resources (memory, cpu, etc...) with the host OS. BootCamp has full control of all of the system's resources.

It should be able to handle PC Games, although I'm not sure what screen resolution will be reported or what graphics card will be used. If the screen resolution is reported as the actual number of screen pixels, some of the in game text may be difficult to read.


Is there an application like OneNote for Mac/iOS? I'm looking for a notetaking app that is similar to Microsoft's OneNote. The main feature that I'm looking for is being able to tap/click anywhere on the document to add a text block, unlike most text editors. I'd like it to be more like handwritten notes, where you can write anywhere onscreen, rather than being forced to used tabs/spaces.
I am also looking for a Mac/iOS syncing experience, but I'm open to almost any suggestions.

Microsoft has released a version of OneNote for Mac. It is available in the App Store for users with OS X 10.9 or later.


Why is Icon List not appearing in Xcode? I am trying to add an icon into my iPhone application. To do this, I need to add an icon image via the Xcode interface into my plist option labeled "Icon List."

However, the "Icon List" option under my plist options is not appearing. Is Xcode hiding it somewhere?

The real key name you're looking for is CFBundleIconFiles. Xcode displays short human-readable names for several keys; this one should be called "Icon files", but you can enter the key directly.

See this Stack Overflow question for more discussion.


iTunes randomly freezes on startup on Windows 7 I'm running iTunes 11.4.0.18 (the latest available version) on Windows 7 x64; for reference, I've been having this problem for months, and even on the computer I had before this one, which I replaced in December 2013; thus, this doesn't seem a version-specific or system-specific issue. The only Apple devices I've connected to iTunes are iPhones: I started with a 4, then replaced it with a 5, now I have a 5s; this doesn't seem to have affected the issue in any way.

The problem is: sometimes, iTunes freezes upon launching. It displays the main window, but it's blank or almost blank, and it doesn't answer any click. This has no resolution, waiting is useless, and the only way out of it is by killing the iTunes.exe process from the Task Manager.

What is really strange is, when this happens, there actually are two iTunes.exe processes in the Task Manager; killing one of them kills them both, and after doing this, iTunes can be launched again, and it just works.

This happens randomly and not very often (about 1-2 out of 10 times), but it has been a nuisance for a while; there doesn't seem to be any reason for it, and the fix is always the same: kill iTunes.exe (of which there are two), launch it again and it works. Of course, I've reinstalled iTunes several times, there have been several updates in the meantime, and I'm also using a completely new computer instead of the one I had when I first started experiencing the problem; the OS has also received countless updates, although it's still the same one (I just can't stand Windows 8, sorry).

Has anyone encountered this problem? How can it be solved?

The following iTunes version seems to work (tested in Windows 7 x64): iTunes 12.1.1.4.


Why are some Mac apps not available on AppStore? One example is CheatSheet. I searched it on the AppStore but couldn't find it.

Business Reasons

On macOS, applications can be sold outside of Apple's Mac App Store.

Many developers choose to sell their software through Apple's store in order to access the audience Apple provide.

However, there are numerous business reasons a developer might choose to avoid the Apple operated stores. These include control over pricing, product, and direct customer access:

  If you only sell your software in an app store and the store controls the contract, market place, and customer relationship, what exactly is your business built upon? You have one customer; the store. You are left at the whim of that store's policies. Are you really building your own business? Or are you building someone else's?

It is possible to sell Mac software both through Apple's Mac App Store and directly to customers outside the store.

On iOS, apps must be sold through Apple's App Store.


Separating Apple IDs I linked my son's iPad mini to my Apple ID. The problem is that we both play the same games and I can no longer access mine as his ID is logged into Game Center. How do I create a separate Apple ID for him on his account without affecting my iPad and accounts and get a separate Game Center account for him?

Fill out the form to create an Apple ID using his information: https://appleid.apple.com/account
He will then start using his own ID and probably lose his old history, or you could get a new ID. Someone must start fresh I believe.


How to get iTunes to stop trying to download purchases I purchased a TV series season last year to watch on my Apple TV. My Macbook still tries to download all the episodes every time I launch iTunes.

I read online that you can delete everything in the itunes>media>downloads folder which I have, restarted, and still when I open iTunes a black download button pops up and when I click it, it tells me that I have all these pending downloads. When I click to see what they are, it automatically tries to download all the episodes.

I have purchased movies, but it never tries to make me download any of them. I watch movies and tv shows purchases generally on my Apple TV. And I like that I can view my iCloud purchases in iTunes, and decide to download something if I want to. But I do not like that it keeps trying to make me download all these episodes that I have no reason to want to store on my HD.

Is there a way to perminately tell iTunes to stop trying to download something?

Go to iTunes > Preferences > Store and then untick the 'Always check for available downloads'.

Tick the 'Shows iTunes in the Cloud purchases' too, if you purchased on your Apple TV.


Can I delete my audio collection after syncing it with iTunes Match? About a year ago I switched over from using iTunes to Rdio. It's been fantastic. Since everything is in the cloud, I can simply "add" albums to my collection rather than having to go through the painful process of downloading and syncing.

The only thing stopping me from using Rdio exclusively is the fact that they still don't have the rights to stream music from bands like Led Zeppelin, Metallica, and Tool (bands that no human being should have to live without). So I've still kept a huge mp3 collection on my local hard drive. I'd love to be able to just delete all those files if I can find an easy way to stream them online.

Is there a way that I can sync my local collection to the cloud using iTunes Match and then just delete all the local mp3 files? I've read countless articles about iTunes Match but it does tend to get a bit confusing, especially for someone like me who ideally just wants 0 bytes of music data stored locally.

I ended up signing up for iTunes Match over the weekend and I figured I'd share my experience to anyone who had the same questions I did...

After going through and organizing my collection I came up with about 250 artists and just over 10k songs in total. I signed up for iTunes Match and it did a fantastic job of collecting the metadata, matching available songs, and uploading remaining songs. There were a few small issues with some ineligible songs and duplicates, but nothing major. I'd say it took about 24 hours total to get everything synced up, but I'm sure experiences vary widely here.

Then after double-checking everything I just went ahead and deleted all my files in iTunes. I would click a given set of songs and then tap the delete key. When prompted, I would select NOT to delete from iCloud, but to move the local files to the trash.

After I was finished I had a clean local hard drive and all my music was available for streaming from the cloud... which is precisely what I wanted. When I enabled iTunes Match on my other computer (which had a blank iTunes Music section), it took all of five seconds to sync up perfectly with my collection in the cloud.

So I'm now able to stream music from iTunes on my Macbook Pro and iMac. Those who are looking to stream to iOS might be out of luck, because from what I've seen you have to download the songs from iCloud to your device (although the songs will play as they are downloading... and I suppose there is nothing to stop you from deleting the files afterward).

But this ended up being a perfect solution for me since I primarily use Rdio now anyway. I just wanted to delete the 100GB worth of local mp3 files that were cluttering my local hard drive and iTunes Match helped me to do that and still keep my collection out there in the cloud.

There still isn't a perfect solution in the music technology world just yet, but I can't say enough good things about services like Rdio and iTunes Match. They've worked great for me.


iPhone 4S unable to connect to TP-LINK 5 GHz Wi-Fi Router The iPhone 4S is unable to recognise the TP-LINK Router whereas the iPhone 6 has no problem.

Router model: TP-LINK 5ghz_61207b

What should I do?

the iPhone 4S doesn't have the 5GHz band, only the 2.4GHz
The first iPhone to support 5GHz was the iPhone 5.

I can't find an official Apple link that clearly states it, but Everymac covers all Apple models comprehensively -
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/specs/apple-iphone-4s-specs.html


Don’t recall password in iCloud on iPhone 6. Tell me how to get another password don’t recall what I used.
Thanks

Apple has an article stepping you through the password reset / forget procedure - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201487


Prevent Finder from opening all folders in list view every time I open finder in list view, it opens (twirls down) all subfolders; how can i stop this?

Delete the invisible .DS_Store file in that folder to reset the default views.
(You may need to turn on show invisible files or search invisible files in Finder help to see that control file.)

Finder should remember your changes, but once corrupt, sometimes you can't get changes to save to the store file.


Is it normal for a MacBook Pro battery to regenerate itself? Let me first give a quick background. I got the 2015 MBP 15" with Retina display second hand like a week ago. As every normal person who just switched from Windows to Mac I was doing this and that and testing the battery life. No external software was used for the battery tests, only normal usage. I also got few battery tools which show more detailed information about the current state.

Here it comes the question. My battery's max capacity seems to be..regenerating itself..

2 days ago this information was taken from one of the tools:

And here it comes the surprise. Today I took another look and had this shot taken:

As you can see the second picture shows that the Current max is higher, which I believe is strange ? Shouldn't it be going the other way - being lower with every cycle ?

The tools I've used show the same information, so it is not an issue there. They are Battery Health and CoconutBattery.

There are a lot of possible explanations.  The indicator that reads battery status isn't a perfect measure.  I've seen that kind of behavior on mobile phones (uneven discharge followed by a "full charge" don't necessarily give a perfect indication of actual battery capacity).  Given that the difference you observed is around 150 mAh (out of 8755?), the difference is pretty low (less than 2%), I'd expect that to be within a margin of error for the tool.

It's also possible that the tool you're using to check capacity might be measuring total capacity by the time it took to charge the battery from a "low" state to the current state, and extrapolated max capacity from there.  That's an indirect measurement, and could be off by as much as a percent or two.

You're right, though, a LiPo battery doesn't really "improve" with age.


OS X Disk Utility shows more data On OS X El Capitan Disk Utility shows me that I have 48 GB Movies, but I don't have this films really.

Where can I find these movies that shows Disk Utility?

Both Disk Utility and About This Mac use spotlight data to categorize the used space in terms of classes of data:

You can use Finder to search for items using the same classes:

Some notes:

type in the search box the text: kind:movie (as you type look for the hints as the system shows you possible values of kind)
choose list view (the four lines icon top left)
control click and add size so you can then click it and sort by size

You can save this "smart folder" or add a filter like size > whatever limit you want so you can review all large movie files or just all large files.


External hard drive does not eject Since I encrypted my external hard drive it does not stop running after I press eject. It disappears from the sidebar in Finder but it does not stop running. I have removed it and connected it again several times and the same thing happens every time. Can this be harmful for the drive or is it ok to remove it even though it is still running? Is there anyway to fix this so that it stops running when ejected? Or is there another safe way to remove it if eject does not work? I have a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.9.5.

As long as your volume is unmounted, whether or your drive is spinning doesn't matter.  The drive will usually spin down on its own depending on when it's set to "go to sleep."

When you eject, you have successfully unmounted the drive.

If you wish to confirm, in terminal, just issue the command mount.  If you don't see the volume name of the drive you had mounted previously, you can consider it unmounted.


How to reset app thumbnails in iOS On an iPhone, when you double-tap your home button, it brings up the app switcher, which shows you all the apps that are currently running.  But the thumbnail that is displayed when switching apps is not necessarily what those apps currently have showing.  Some are "live" and some are not, and I don't know how iOS decides what to display, nor how often it updates the thumbnail cache.

A while back, my girlfriend sent a pic of herself to my Gmail account, which is... umm... not exactly safe for work if you catch my drift.  Anyway, that was almost 6 months ago, but to this very day that's the picture that shows every time I bring up the app switcher if I don't close the Gmail app when I'm done using it.

While I certainly do appreciate the picture, this has led to several awkward moments when there are other people around.  She's not exactly fond of it either.  The thumbnail has survived two iOS updates and I've power-cycled the phone numerous times since then.  I even uninstalled/reinstalled the app.  I figured it would've updated the thumbnail cache on its own by now, but as I said before, here we are 6 months later and that picture is still stuck there.

Is there any way to get iOS to flush the thumbnail cache?

Uninstall app
Force restart iPhone
Reinstall app
Bingo bango


How can I find the owner of an obstinate iPhone? So, I have this iphone that my parents found. I need some advice on how to find the owner. It's a puzzler though.

It was dead and I'm an android user so I couldn't power it up to find the owners info. So, I took it to the Apple store assuming that since I thought Apple was all about service, they would just take care of it.

No such luck. They said they couldn't help me. They did let me charge it up though. Might I point out that it's really stupid how long you have to wait for usability when plugging in a dead iPhone.

Anyway, when it finally became usable (20 minutes of standing foolishly in the Apple store later), it immediately popped up a little message saying it had no sim installed and when touched it just displayed a lock screen. The store employee told me there was nothing that could be done with that except a wipe.

I doubt a carrier would be helpful since there is no sim. I was under the impression that the sim couldn't be removed from an iphone though. Is that inaccurate?

Anyway, it also said the date was December 31st and my parents just found it a little over a week ago so I'm assuming it was sitting in that location for quite some time, which isn't all that surprising considering where it was. I guess maybe the clock isn't updating due to the lack of a sim... Just a guess though.

So now the only thing I really have to link it to it's original owner is the background pic on the phone which isn't much to go on at all. ;) Especially since it's half covered by the missing sim message.

Any ideas? You would think in this connected world that this wouldn't be that hard. Unfortunately I think it might be.

Your best bet is to just place an ad on Craigslist and in the paper in the lost and found sections. If someone tries to claim the phone, have them identify the picture on the lock screen.

I used to work at an Apple Store Genius Bar. We were not allowed to give out any information from our system ever. If you're located in the US and the phone has a SIM, it probably has AT&T as a carrier. They will not be able to give you any info on the phone either.

Just to provide some insight as far as why Apple can't help you contact the whoever might be listed in their system, remember that a computer or iPhone is a transferrable device. We would frequently have customers bring in a device for repair that was purchased secondhand and the original owner's information was still in our system.

Let's say Tommy buys a MacBook Pro and registers it. Later, Tommy sells his MacBook Pro to Kate because he's broke. Kate purchases the MacBook Pro but does not update the registration. A month later, she leaves the computer in an airport and you find it. You take it to the Apple store and they say, "Oh, here is all of Tommy's info. We'll just call up Tommy and he can come get his MacBook back."

Tommy is not a very scrupulous person, and he fails to mention that he sold the MacBook Pro a month ago. He comes and picks it up and now he has Kate's money and his old computer back. Sweet deal, right? So you can see why this isn't something that Apple would be willing to do.

The Apple employee you talked to was not trying to be obstructive when he wouldn't help you out, but there's a lot of liability things at stake here. They were pretty committed to the idea of protecting customer data, sometimes to the point of idiocy when I worked there, so they're pretty much a dead end as far as returning the phone.


Time Capsule partly stops working after some hours I have a new TimeCapsule 2TB and use it as a wireless AP, router, and backup device. The TimeCapsule is directly connected to the DSL modem.

When I turn on the TimeCapsule, everything works fine. But after some hours (maybe 2-4), my MacBook Air no longer finds the TimeCapsule, so backups via TimeMachine fail.  Also, AirPort utility no longer finds the TimeCapsule. The strange thing is: the wireless internet connection on my MacBook Air is still perfectly working and I'm also able to mount the TimeCapsule's disk from a Linux machine via Samba. After switching the TimeCapsule off and on again, the AirPort utility finds the TimeCapsule without problems.

Any ideas how to solve or debug this problem? I'm using Mac OS Lion, AirPort utility 5.5.3 and firmware version 7.5.2 of the TimeCapsule.

Try restoring to default settings. This won't erase any data stored on the Time Capsule, it will reset the network configuration.

Open AirPort Utility (Applications > Utilities > AirPort Utility) and right click on your time capsule. Select Restore Default Settings...

Then wait for it to restart, and follow the setup instructions.


Xcode commit view: keyboard shortcut for jumping to the next change? When I commit my code from Xcode (File -> Source Control -> Commit), is there a command (that can be assigned a shortcut presumably) to jump to the next change in the commit view? This will allow to quickly go over the changes spanned across multiple files being committed. Otherwise there is some mouse work to do, which is not very productive.

I'm unsure of the version that this feature became available, but you can jump to the next and last change of the currently viewed file (Navigate -> Jump to Next/Previous Change). The shortcut is ^ \ for next and ^ | for previous.

This can be used on Standard and Assistant editor, but NOT Source Control Editor.

I can confirm that this feature is available in Xcode 10.1 and Xcode 10.2


Apple website animations do not work on Safari 11 I have a Late 2011 15" MBP with El Capitan(highest update). The animations on Apple website do not work on any browsers (Safari 11, Firefox 57, Chrome) even if the discrete GPU is being utilized. WebGL, CSS animation settings are turned on. The same animation works on other Windows PC with any browser. Is there any setting I can change?

'Block auto-playing videos' related? https://www.cultofmac.com/488858/safari-11/


Can I use DDR3 1600MHz RAM in a Mac instead of 1067MHz? I'm trying to get a 16 GB (2x of 8 GB) RAM to boost my computer, even though Apple says that it's only 8 GB on macs, but we know Apple is wrong on that. However, when I searched the online shopping place, they only have 1600 variants.

Can I use DDR3 1600 RAM sticks in a 1067 Mac? …and what are the consequences? and when you buy a RAM, does the PC3-8500 things matter or not?

Hardware Specifications:
MacBook Pro 13″ mid-2010 running OS X 10.9.1 Mavericks
Running on 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Currently have 4 GB installed (2x of 2 GB) that is DDR3 1067MHz PC3-8500

You could add the 1600 MHz memory for your MacBook Pro even though it's designed for a slower memory (1066 MHz) - it ought to work, but you'd be better off buying from a place that accepts returns. Here's some relevant information from Crucial on memory speeds (emphasis mine):

  Memory is designed to be backward-compatible, so generally speaking, you can safely add faster memory to a computer that was designed to run slower memory. However, your system will operate at the speed of the slowest memory module.

In "DDR3-1600 PC3-12800"

"DDR3" is the type (and must be the same as what your computer has)
"1600" is the data transfer rate per second specified in millions (the technical term is "clock frequency") - "1600" here means it supports up to 1600 million transfers per second - in your case, it will be slowed down to 1066 million transfers per second since that's what your Mac is designed for
"PC3-12800" is the name used in the memory industry - 12800 indicates a peak transfer rate of 12800 MB/s (of course, the actual performance in your case would be brought down to 8533 MB/s, matching PC3-8500).


Is there any possibility to auto login to sites via Facebook? When browsing Facebook via the iOS app one often browses websites through the app. Some websites need login and since the FB app doesn't support password handlers it's a difficult login process.

So any suggestion about how to handle this the easiest way?

I'd wish one could automatically open all sites in Safari at least if FB doesn't want to support password handlers.

This is a design decision by Facebook, and the best you can do is go into Settings → Safari → Passwords, where you can copy/paste your passwords into the Facebook browser to log into individual websites.

You can also specify a text replacement string for your email address under Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacements, so you can enter it more quickly into the Facebook app.


Cannot delete dataless localsnapshot in high sierra I use macOS high sierra 10.13.6. I have problem with freezing standby resume. I read that dataless localsnapshot may be the cause. So I proceed to delete the dataless localsnapshot.

$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-10-10-170247 (dataless)
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-10-17-201830

then

$ sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2019-10-10-170247
Deleted local snapshot '2019-10-10-170247'

However, the dataless is not removed.

$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-10-10-170247 (dataless)
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-10-17-201830

How do I force delete the snapshot? I have tried booting into safe mode, but same result.

Update:

I am turning FileVault on. Encryption is in progress..

After encryption has been finished, I can successfully delete the dataless local snapshot. I think local snapshots can't be modified while encryption is in progress.


Can I make Xcode app icon with 512x512 icon instead of recommended 1024x1024? I'm following this tutorial on making icons for a React Native app using Xcode. It recommends using Icon Set Creator to make the set of icons of various sizes for iOS, and Android Asset Studio for Android. In both of these, they instruct you to drag and drop your original icon, which the apps will convert into icons of the sizes you need. The problem is that they both say to use an original image of at least 1024x1024 pixels, but mine is 512x512.

One of the icons the apps generate is 1024x1024, so I know for this one the  image quality will suffer. What I want to know is, will this be a problem in practice? Does anyone know where that 1024x1024 image gets used, and will it be a problem that the image quality is cut in half for that icon?

Your app icon is displayed in many places, including in Finder, the Dock, Launchpad, and the App Store. To ensure that your app icon looks great everywhere people see it, provide it in the following sizes.

512px × 512px (512pt × 512pt @1x)
1024px × 1024px (512pt × 512pt @2x)

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/icons-and-images/app-icon/

Technical Q&A QA1686 lists the specific uses of each icon size in iOS, but I can't find an equivalent resource for macOS.
You should use an actual 1024px image if at all possible. An upscaled icon may be rejected by App Store Review.


"Google Chrome wants access to control Finder", should I be worried? When browsing using Google Chrome on OS X Catalina I out of nowhere got a system pop-up saying "Google Chrome wants access to control Finder" and asking me whether I want to allow that or not. Haven't found any good answers online. Is this normal or should I be worried about malware?

Is this normal or should I be worried about malware?

I'd say it's not unusual that apps ask for additional access to the file system or permissions to control other apps, and you shouldn't be worried about malware, but that doesn't mean you have to blindly accept such requests.
I recommend that you ponder carefully whether to grant them by answering these three questions:

Do you understand what is requested?
Was the request triggered by user interaction (like launching the app, saving a document to disk or starting an Automator Quick Action)?
Does the app require the requested access for normal or desired operation?

If you can't answer all questions with "yes", be wary of granting the permission. (Note that this is not a bullet-proof security checklist, but a rule of thumb that has helped me in the past, so I share it here).
Let me give you some real-life examples:

VMware Fusion, an app that let's you run virtual machines, asks at launch for access to the system's accessibility features, so I ask:

Do I understand what is requested?
Yes, by requesting access to accessibility features, the app can control my  Mac. That's quite a lot to ask, although VMware nicely documents why some of their apps need it.
Was the request triggered by user interaction?
Yes, when launching the app.
Does the app require the requested access for normal or desired operation?
After declining the request I don't notice any performance issues, so the answer is no and I won't grant access in future requests.

The Terminal app requests access to my Desktop folder when running a shell script, so I ask:

Do I understand what is requested?
Yes, if I let Terminal access my Desktop, it will be able to read all files and folders on my Desktop, including the script I'm about to run.
Was the request triggered by user interaction?
Yes, when running the script.
Does the app require the requested access for normal or desired operation?
Yes, because I trust the shell script and need it to process files on the Desktop, so I grant access.

As you see, there are no "right" answers, they depend on your use case, but  a healthy dose of mistrust doesn't harm.

Is there anything you would recommend to make sure my system is safe?

In the context of downloading and running apps, these three questions will help to keep your system safe:

Is the app made available on the Mac App Store or on the the developer's website of a reputable developer?
If a website asks you to download an app, is it simply providing a link to the developer's website?
Is the app supported?

If you can answer all questions with "yes", you are most probably on the safe side.
Again, let me give you a real-life example:

After clicking a link on an e-commerce website some days ago, I came across this page:

The page claims you need Adobe Flash Player to continue and insistently asks you to download from one of the offered links, so I ask:

Is the app made available on the Mac App Store or on the the developer's website?
No, it's not, this is not Adobe's Flash Player download page.
If a website asks you to download an app, is it simply providing a link to the developer's website?
No, the link provided doesn't point to Adobe.
Is the app supported?
A quick Google/DuckDuckGo search leads to this end-of-life information page on Adobe's website, which makes it clear the developer doesn't support it anymore so you don't download anything and remain safe.

(In case you're wondering, this is an actual phishing website which I reported to Amazon AWS with their report abuse form.)


How do I prevent document preview over slow connections? Once in a while I have to work over a 3G network, which is reasonable, until I mount a file system on the other side of the world.

When that happens OSX tries to show me "previews" of every single document in the finder, an operation which takes forever because it usually tries to download the entire document in order to generate the preview. After spending hours downloading a 5 MB file, it often decides, "oh gosh, I don't know how to show thumbnails of Word files. I'll just show you a Word icon." In the meantime Finder is in bouncing-ball-hell for hours.

Is there a way to prevent this specifically for network shares when I'm connected over a slow connection? Or, failing that, just prevent document preview for all network documents?

You can disable Icon preview in the view settings.
For example: right click the desktop and select "Show view option" and then uncheck the last box.


mail client for Mac with these characteristics? I'm looking for an email client for Mac, with these characteristics:

Must have:

One that doesn't automatically mark messages as read. Only marks a message as read when I press a certain key on the keyboard.
Preview emails without having to open them (like modern mail clients)
Fast and robust

Nice to have:

Support for Mac's native spelling autocorrect

Does anyone have any recommendation?

I know programming, so no problem if I'll have to configure it using code files and things like that.

I have tried Thunderbird, but it is slow and buggy.

I'm using macOS Sierra.

I would suggest taking a look at Nylas Mail. It's open source, has a wealth of plugins and themes on GitHub, and is relatively "fast and robust." As for your other criteria:

It allows for messages to only be marked as read manually, as can be seen below:

All shortcuts (including "mark as read") are completely customizable through JSON. For instance, one could have the r key mark messages as read by putting the following in one's keymap.json:

{
    "core:mark-as-read": "r"
}

Nylas supports a dual-pane mode (similar to Apple Mail), allowing one to preview a message without having to open it in a separate window.

Unfortunately, while Nylas does have built-in spell-check, it does not use Apple's native solution.

Nylas also boasts a host of other features, including read receipts, link tracking, message snoozing, and templated quick replies. There is a Pro version, but all of these features are in the free version (which I use).

For the record, I am not affiliated in any way with Nylas—I just like their mail client.


Finder window opens scrolled down Nothing serious but a bit irritating :)

A removable USB storage, formatted as FAT32 (actually this is an Android tablet but it doesn't seem to matter), is used on several Macs, all running the same OS (Mavericks) at the same patch level.

On one of the Macs, and only that one, when the media is inserted and the FS mounted, the first opened window (the top of the file hierearchy), displayed as a list, start to be displayed wedged at the bottom of the list (as if the window has been fully scrolled down). On all the other Macs it opens wedged at the top.

Other removable medias don't exhibit that behaviour on the "different" Mac (they start listed from the begin, at the top, the opening window is not scrolled down).

Why? How?
How can we get rid of that?

All this has been ineffective:
- The window has been thoroughly scrolled up before ejecting the media.
- Changing and reverting the order and/or the sorting of the file list in the window before ejecting has no effect, switching to icon or column view and reverting is no more successful.
- The file hierarchy of the media has been cleaned (._* files, .Trashes/, .fseventsd/, etc. have been wiped).
The Finder Preferences seem to be the same across all the Macs.

Any trick or hint where this may be tweacked, cached, sticked?
On the Media? on "the" Mac? buried in the filesystem or in the preferences?

Thank you for your answers.

On the Mac showing the problem

edit com.apple.finder.plist in ~/Library/Preferences
set to 0 or remove scrollPositionY (and scroolPositionX) for the list view
save that preference file
restart the finder (option click in the dock).


Importing photos from iPhone to iMac. Can I get just edited, or just unedited and not both? I have an iPhone SE and a five year old iMac running El Cap. I use iPhoto on the iMac. Since the iOS 11 update, whenever I import photos I get both the edited and the unedited version of the photo on my computer. I used to just get one version. Here's an example of what I see now. I'm fine if it imports the unedited version since that is what I am used to. Is there a setting I need to change somewhere? Would prefer to do this without a 3rd party app since it's a fairly frequent workflow for me. Thank you!

Note: I do not use iCloud for photos (terrible upload speeds) so this is just coming in via connected cable.

I understand your frustration with this issue! When you edit a photo on iOS, it keeps the original and creates a text file with an .aae extension containing instructions of the changes/edits made to the original file. iOS renders the original file per .aae file which makes it look like it’s an additional image. The Photos & Lightroom MacOS applications do the same.

I use the native MacOS application Image Capture to import my media. You can click on your device, select the photos you want and drag and drop them to whichever directory. This method also exports the associated .aae file separately as a text file.  If you happen to export a live image, this method will also extract the cover image as an image and the motion of the Live Photo as a video file.

If you want to extract/save an edited file, just make sure you share, copy or upload the edited file somewhere like your mail or messages.


How can I get 256 colors on the default Terminal over SSH? Lots of similar questions, but I can't quite seem to find anything that is an exact match.

I am using the default Terminal (in Yosemite) to SSH into a VM. The VM's terminal is set up to use TERM=xterm-256color properly, and 256 colors works locally on the VM with the same terminal settings, but the colors will not make it over the SSH connection. Does anyone have any idea what it takes to get Terminal to just treat the output as normal 256 color sequences?

All I want here is to figure out why 256-color escape codes are ignored in Terminal.app when they come over an SSH connection. And, of course, to get it to stop ignoring the escape sequences.

Possibly excessive info:

The VM is running windows 7, shell is bash on cygwin, ssh server is bitvise.

I'm looking at 3 cases -- locally on native OSX bash in Terminal.app, locally in the VM bash in MinTTY, and in the VM via SSH in Terminal.app.

infocmp xterm-256color produces identical results in all three cases, and tput colors reports 256 in all cases.

(tput setaf 200 && echo pink) > pink produces the identical results in all three cases:

$ hexdump -C pink
00000000  1b 5b 33 38 3b 35 3b 32  30 30 6d 70 69 6e 6b 0a  |.[38;5;200mpink.|
00000010

cat pink either in Terminal.app (locally, not SSHed out anywhere) or in MinTTY on the VM prints out the expected pink text. cat pink in Terminal.app while SSHed out to the VM produces default light gray text.

The SSH connection is configured with EscapeChar none, so data should come though binary clean (changing this setting made no difference).

The preferences in Terminal.app are set to report as xterm-256color, though I don't think that should make any difference.

Any ideas on what is eating the escape sequence to fail? I'm not using anything other than plain ol bash for shells, no screen or tmux (unless Terminal.app uses it automatically/internally).

Bah... the party at fault was the SSH server. Don't know why and could not find a place to disable the behavior (except for going full dumb terminal which had its own issues), but plain old openssh gets the job done.


Printing to Windows Server shared printers from an iPad We have a VP who wants to print from his iPad. We have a few printers shared off our DC running Windows Server 2008 r2. All of the iPad apps that I've found have not worked very well. Has anyone had any success with getting iOS devices to print on a Windows network?

Ignore the offical advice from Apple, they just want you to splash yet more of your cash on a licensed AirPrint printer. Here's the good news. Even on iOS5 (and iOS6), most printers can be AirPrint enabled via Windows without buying a new printer. Here are two ways to get what you want.

Free solution (requires tinkering)

If you don't mind doing a bit of configuration legwork, get JasonHD's fantastic AirPrint Installer from the MacRumors forum: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1293865

AirPrint Installer is fully iOS5 and iOS6 compatible. The first post in the thread contains a link to download the software; the rest of the thread has tips for troubleshooting if you can't get it to work.

Paid solution (just works)

On the other hand, if you're a technophobe and don't mind a small outlay... get FingerPrint:
http://www.collobos.com/

Costs $19.99 and has a free trial so you can confirm it works with your printer.

Either way, you should be AirPrinting without a new a printer in no time...


Google Maps on iPhone wont update map orientation as I cycle Goole Maps on my iPhone have has stopped changing the orientation of the map in cycling mode.

The first image is a screengrab of Apple's maps. You can see the arrow is the same direction as the direction im going.

The second image is a screengrab of Google Maps. I cant get the map to update as I make turns so that the arrow is the same direction as me. Im talking about how car GPSs always work.

Tap the 'North Up' symbol, then the next view will go back to Head Up.
[I can't check 'live' as I'm sitting at my compy, but that works for static route lists.]


Macbook not detecting all USB keyboard keys I have a Macbook Pro 2019. I recently purchase the Corsair K68 RGB keyboard which has a common USB Type-A connector. I used OTG for USB A to USB C.
The first time mac detects the new device. Worked great.
When I disconnected and reconnected the keyboard it only detects keys from A-Z. Not even spacebar or num keys.
Tried going to keyboard settings >> Change Keyboard Type. It does not detect my keyboard.
It only starts to work again when I restarted my mac. Now every time if my keyboard unplugged accidentally, I have to restart my mac.
Is there any other way to do it without restarting macbook again and again everytime?

The problem appears to be that you're using an On-The-Go adapter.

USB OTG introduces the concept of a device performing both master and slave roles – whenever two USB devices are connected and one of them is a USB OTG device, they establish a communication link. The device controlling the link is called the master or host, while the other is called the slave or peripheral.

The OTG adapter is designed to allow your device to switch roles of being the host or peripheral; this is necessary to connect devices such as mobile phones to devices like flash drives and keyboards because your mobile device has to be both -  a host when you plug in a keyboard and a peripheral when you plug it into a computer.
There's no need for this swapping of roles when you plug things into your computer as it will always be the host and whatever you plug into it will always be the peripheral.  Even your phone won't be a host to a computer.  The computer will always see it as an external device; maybe a storage device or even a camera.
What you should be using is just a plain USB-C to USB-A adapter/converter - I like and have used Anker adapters due to their quality and warranty. (I have about a half dozen of these everywhere from my briefcase and my desk).  You don't need anything expensive, but make sure you get from a known brand (this is not the time to save a couple dollars).  When plugging in a sub $10 item into a $2,000+ computer, I tend err on the side of caution and go with reputable names.


My microphone doesn't work in iOS 7 Since the iOS 7 update, when I receive calls, the person on the other cannot hear me, although I can still hear them.  Also, when I try to give Siri a command, Siri cannot hear me.  Has anyone else had that problem too?

Once the alert is answered it wont pop up again. You have to go to: Settings -> Privacy -> Microphone Then check the state of your app.


How does HTML mouseover work on apple multitouch devices? I asked about this in connection with this network of websites, but it brings up a more general question that I don't know the answer to.

Is it a problem that mouse over events are not able to be invoked by apple touchscreen - especially in regard to website rollovers?

Is there a way around this?

Related:

http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/134/how-to-see-spoilers-on-touchscreen

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75656/cant-see-spoilers-on-touchscreen

The way around this is to use a mouseover handler on a "clickable element", as Apple explain in their Web Content Guide:

  Mouse events are delivered in the same
  order you'd expect in other web
  browsers [...]. If
  the user taps a nonclickable element,
  no events are generated. If the user
  taps a clickable element, events
  arrive in this order: mouseover,
  mousemove, mousedown, mouseup, and
  click. The mouseout event occurs only
  if the user taps on another clickable
  item. Also, if the contents of the
  page changes on the mousemove event,
  no subsequent events in the sequence
  are sent. This behavior allows the
  user to tap in the new content.

Tapping once on a clickable element that has mouseover/mousemove content displays that content.  Tapping a second time does mousedown/mouseup/click.

A "clickable element" is:

  a link, form element, image map area,
  or any other element with mousemove,
  mousedown, mouseup, or onclick
  handlers.

Therefore to fix the spoiler rollovers they would have to change using CSS to Javascript (i.e. use a mouseover handler on the blockquote, rather than a CSS class).

(Apple has patent applications for detecting hovering on touch interfaces, so this could go away in the future.  However, it's unlikely that will be soon).


Why the need to update MacOS for iOS 14.5 I just updated my iPhone to iOS 14.5... Then my Mac (an old Mac Pro running MacOS 10.14.6 Mojave) put up a dialog saying I needed an update for the Mac to work with the iPhone.  So I updated.
But what did that update do?

Similar Mac & OS, just saw the same notification - being prepared for it i followed through the Learn More… link to Apple KB - If you see "Software update is required to connect to your iOS device" on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch

When you connect your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to a Mac with macOS 10.11 or later, you might need to update the software on your Mac in order for it to recognise your iOS device. Learn what to do.
If your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch has a newer version of iOS than is supported by your Mac, you may see this alert: "A software update is required to connect to your iOS device. Would you like to download and install this update now?"

Click Install to download and install the software so your Mac can update or sync your iOS device. If you continue to see this alert, make sure that your software on your Mac and iTunes are up-to-date.

From comments - softwareupdate --history | head  may help figure out what was updated.
I tried it on mine, though I'd also run the new security & Safari updates. There was one other item shown as updated with a timestamp that matches my iOS update, though to version 1.0.0.0 which doesn't seem greatly helpful.
macOS Mojave Security Update 2021-003      10.14.6    27/04/2021, 7:53:05 pm
Safari                                     14.1       27/04/2021, 7:53:05 pm
Mobile Device                              1.0.0.0    27/04/2021, 4:46:37 pm


Switching to Straight Talk From T-Mobile on an iPhone 5 I am at my wit's end trying to get my wife's iPhone 5 switched from T-Mobile to straight talk.

Just about a month ago my wife's old cellphone was reaching a breaking point, so she decided to get an unlocked gsm iphone 5 16GB from the Apple store. We took it to T-Mobile where they popped in a sim and everything worked perfectly. Well, there's no 1900mhz HSPA+ in our area yet, and she had to edit the APN to get MMS messages working, but perfect apart from those things.

Our contract is up now and she wants 3G speeds so we decided to switch her over to Straight Talk. What I've done so far is port her number over, and texts (non-MMS) and calls work perfectly.

But data won't work whatsoever. It gives the message:

  "not subscribed to a cellular data service"

I've tried calling Straight Talk tech support but they try to walk me through editing the APN but now the Settings > General > Network entry no longer shows up! I think it depends on what SIM you have inserted, but the T-Mobile sim we had is long trashed at this point.

What I've learned so far is that if the Settings > General > Network entry does not show up that means your phone is locked (?), but she specifically bought an unlocked phone so now I'm just confused.

Some advice I've googled has said to restore the phone in iTunes, but she had never synced it before switching to StraightTalk. Anyway, I backed up and restored it, but I didn't get the:

  "Congratulations your phone is unlocked."

message I guess I should be seeing.

I've also read advice telling me to contact AT&T about unlocking the phone, but you have to fax something? And it takes 5-7 days? Ugh.

I guess I'm just asking how do I get the Settings > General > Network entry to show up so I can continue with Straight Talk tech support and try to get the data problem solved?

Try using http://www.unlockit.co.nz to set the APN to StraightTalk.


Saving space by thinning universal intel/arm binaries I have no ARM CPUs on any of my laptops or desktops.  If ever I get a computer new enough, it will already have all the binaries it needs or will get them from updates.  So there is no justification for them to consume 90 GB¹ on my internal drive.
I can reclaim that space by disabling SIP, using ditto to thin them while copying to somewhere else, copying them back where they belong, and re-enabling SIP.  Pretty clumsy to have to do after every software update.  Is there a better way?
¹assuming an ARM binary is about the same size as an Intel.

That's just how other tools do it, like CleanMyMac does with Universal apps (not sure if it's been updated for Universal 2 yet). There doesn't appear to be a better solution than manually removing the other architecture from each app, which can be done with some tools (see Is there any free solution to remove unneeded architectures from Universal binaries?) and these can be made to loop over a given folder of applications.
There are more steps required than just disabling SIP to do this with Big Sur's own applications now that Big Sur boots from a sealed APFS snapshot. Can I mount the root (system) filesystem as writable in Big Sur? goes into the steps required to make a modification to the bootable snapshot, but the modification you make to remove the other architecture is the same.


Network Drive for backup (and archive and iTunes)? I have several Macs (10.6) on a wireless home network and want to add a network HDD, primarily as a drive for Time Machine to back up to. Having heard bad things about Apple's Time Capsule, I'm currently looking at buying a Western Digital 1TB NAS and connecting it via ethernet cable to a wireless router on the network. I have no experience using Time Machine, although it looks pretty straightforward.

Before trying this, I'd like to know:

1) Will this actually work? WD claim their drive is 'Time Machine ready', but how should it be formatted/partitioned? Has anyone had experience doing this? Is there a better make of drive for around the same price?

2) Assuming it's ok for backups, can I also use part of the drive to store my iTunes library (and take the pressure off my iMac's little 80Gb HDD)? If so can I use the same partition as the backup? Ditto for manual archiving of some old movie files...

Thanks.

Edit: I've just seen this other post, which has some good things to say about the Western Digital MyBook World Edition...

I don't have a WD but my LaCie D2 Network 2 also has Time Machine support, and it works well.  You don't partition or format it, you just flag a share as needing to support Time Machine and the device takes care of everything for you.

As for sharing a partition between backup and iTunes, that's not a good idea because Time Machine will eventually use all available drive space for backups, using any extra space to increase the number of versions of files it can keep.  The LaCie drive deals with this by letting you create as many shares as you want, and putting a quota on the share available to Time Machine so that it won't take over the rest of the disk.  I'm nowhere near my quota so I don't know how well it works though.  Presumably WD has done something similar.


How do I remove a username from the username drop down list on Chrome on Mac OS X? Googling suggests that I highlight the name with my mouse and hit delete - this doesn't work (the name stays in the dropdown list, I instead end up deleting a letter from the name textfield)

A Mac specific suggestion is to hold down the "fn" button when I click delete. Trying that seems to have no effect - nothing changes, that I can see.

How do I remove a specific username from the username drop down on Google Chrome on Mac?

To all the answers suggesting Control ⌃+Shift ⇧+Delete ⌫ It is an editor shortcut for "quick delete entire line". So it only looks like it works.

It does not add/modify/delete names from the list of login names that are suggested for autofill.

Please test your answer before posting - make sure that the auto-fill list is actually different after you've deleted a name.

Was actually having the same trouble and decided to try a combination of fn + shift + delete


How do I know where is a specific contact stored by Apple Contacts.app? I am using multiple contact storages, like Gmail or Exchange and I want to know where a contact is stored, so I can remove the right duplicate.

Also I would like to know how can I move a contact from one addressbook to another: from example moving from Exchange to Gmail.

Note: this question applies to OS X 10.9.1

The Contacts database is stored in a single SQLite3 database per source. You can find a list of databases by running the following command:

find ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/ -name "AddressBook-v22.abcddb"

These databases can be exported using

sqlite3 /path/to/AddressBook-v22.abcddb .dump > ~/Desktop/export

The export can be searched using a text editor or Numbers.

I wouldn't recommend editing the SQLite database directly though.


nfs and nfsd are not available in Mavericks I find that there is no nfs and nfsd available on Mavericks. Does Apple remove it ?

P/S: I am trying to mount shared nfs drive in vagrant.

> which nfs
nfs not found
> which nfsd
nfsd not found

nfsd is in /sbin which won't be on the default path


FaceTime launches on my Macbook when I have incoming phone calls, even though I'm not logged into iCloud I have an iPhone and a work Macbook.  Despite not being logged into iCloud with FaceTime, whenever I get a call on my phone, FaceTime launches on my macbook.

I've tried logging into FaceTime, disabling wifi calling and then logging back out. Still happens.

Interestingly, there's no way to answer the incoming call.  FaceTime launches in a logged out state.

Disable Calls on nearby devices on iPhone too. Settings > phone > Calls on nearby devices.


How can I create a Mac Address Book plug-in that also appears in Spotlight? I've installed a great little app called PushDialer for my Mac that is letting my initiate iPhone calls to contacts remotely from my Mac.

It seems to work by installing an Address Book plug-in, so that when I click on a phone number in the Contacts app, 'Dial with iPhone' appears as a choice on the context menu.

However, if I search for a contact using Spotlight, then when I click the phone number on Spotlight's 'quick look' window, this context menu item is not visible.  Instead, only the three default OS X items are there - 'Show in large type', 'Send message' and 'FaceTime'.

Is it possible to add a Spotlight context menu item for Contacts in the same way?  I'd much prefer to make my calls without having to open the Contacts app.

It appears Spotlight does not make use of Address Book plug-ins.

Extra menu items added by Skype also fail to appear in the Spotlight preview.

It is worth providing feedback to Apple asking for this functionality to be added. It would greatly improve Spotlight.

Context Menu in Contacts.app:

Context Menu of Contact in Spotlight:


OSX software update download stuck forever Every time there is an update in OSX 10.14, I am facing this issue. Software update download starts and hangs in between. After that, it never recovers. See pics:

Tried command line options as well as mentioned in other threads here but no luck:

Anujs-MacBook-Pro:~ anujaggarwal$ sudo softwareupdate -i -a
Password:
Software Update Tool

Finding available software

Downloading macOS 10.14.6 Update
Error downloading macOS 10.14.6 Update: The request timed out.
Done.

Error downloading updates.
Anujs-MacBook-Pro:~ anujaggarwal$ sudo softwareupdate --install --all --verbose
Software Update Tool

Finding available software

Downloading macOS 10.14.6 Update

Anujs-MacBook-Pro:~ anujaggarwal$ softwareupdate --list
Software Update Tool

Finding available software
Software Update found the following new or updated software:
   * macOS 10.14.6 Update-
    macOS 10.14.6 Update ( ), 2582488K [recommended] [restart]
Anujs-MacBook-Pro:~ anujaggarwal$

I am currently on Mojave 10.14.5 and trying to update to 10.14.6

Thanks for your help.

Manual update just worked for me. Downloaded the update manually from:
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2010. Mounted macOSUpdCombo10.14.6.dmg and installed the update from the package.