What color wallpaper makes page control dots on iPhone invisible? What color wallpaper do I need to use to make the page control dots invisible?

I know, you can't really hide them, as in remove from the screen (without iOS jailbreaking) but you can make them almost invisible if you select the right color of the wallpaper.

I have tried using two different wallpapers, while one makes them almost invisible the other does not, but the dots are over the same color on both wallpapers.

You can't make the dots completely invisible.

The iOS SpringBoard (or Home screen as it is generally called) is programmed such that the Page Controls (dots) which appear just above the Dock remain legible irrespective of the colour of the wallpaper in the background. This is done by assigning them colors which are in contrast to the colour of the background.

The logic ensures that at-least the colour of the dot representing the current page of Home screen is most clearly visible.

There is no publicly available official document to back this fact. The conclusion can be reached by performing a small experiment as described:

Set the background to solid #000000 or RGB: 0, 0, 0 (Black color).

Get the color code for the Page Control dots corresponding to non-current screens. Notice the colour code for the dots. The value is #727374 or RGB: 114, 115, 116.

Create a solid colored background image of resolution equal to that of iPhone's screen (640 x 1136 in my case, iPhone 5s), with the above noted color code and assign it as iPhone background. The color code was picked corresponding to non-current screen dots as they can have more than one instances.

Now once again, get the color code for the Page Control dots corresponding to non-current screens. It can be observed that the colour for the dots has changed.

Now, create a solid colored background image with colour code #FFFFFF or RGB: 255, 255, 255 (White colour). Once again, notice the color of the dots. The color corresponding to the current screen has changed from White in first image to Black in the current image.

P.S.: I have played around a lot with both macOS and iOS to minimise eye-candy by working through such tricks. Above conclusion is just an observation without any documented backing from Apple. The attached iPhone home screen screenshots have been scaled down to 50% of their original resolution.


Nordic keyboard " < " key switched to " ' " I started my mac today at work and I got a message saying the mac could not recognize my keyboard. I then had to do a short wizard by typing the key next to shift.

When I then tried to use the standard < key on my nordic extended mac keyboard, ' gets emitted. It seems like the two has switched places.

How can I make the keyboard behave as it is intended to?

This is the keyboard I have:

You can see this in the gif below; It starts out as how I want it to be, but if i press any key, the keyboard image in the settings page switch over to the strange layout.

I found this article suggesting me to delete a file

running the following command, then doing a reboot followed by running the assistant again fixed the issue!

sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist

This was also mentioned in the article @Tom Gewecke commented above, but I overlooked it when I did not find the mentioned file in finder. I suppose it might be a hidden file or something.


When on a call, the screen turns off; when I turn it back on to unmute I am not on the call screen and have to go back to it This is probably the most annoying thing I have to deal with on my iPhone 6s. I am often on conference calls for work. I mute myself so the background noise is not a problem, and I hit the power button to turn off the screen and put the phone in my pocket. However, when it is time for me to talk I turn back on the screen and it does not show me the call in progress, it takes me to the home screen. I just want to be able to unmute, but I have to navigate back to the call in progress screen to do that. Is there a way to make it stop doing this?

Putting your phone in your pocket triggers the proximity monitor. When the front of your phone gets close to an object during a phone call, the screen automatically shuts off to prevent accidental touch inputs from the phone being against your face. However, the phone is not actually off! When you take it out of your pocket and thus away from the nearby object (your leg) which it assumes is your face, the screen will turn back on automatically, without you having to press the power button. When the phone re-awakens after moving away from the nearby object, it will show you the last screen you were on: generally, and in your case, it will automatically open up the phone control screen where you can quickly unmute your microphone.

Here's what you're doing wrong

You're pressing the power button. This closes the phone screen and takes you back to your home screen. How you can fix your issue: Just don't press the power button before you put the phone into your pocket, and it still will automatically shut off the screen, and don't press the power button when you take the phone out of your pocket; it will automatically come right back on to your phone call control screen, where you can unmute the call very quickly.

Don't push the power button when you put your phone into your pocket, and don't push it when you take your phone back out.


Is it possible to add a symbol to the character palette? I guess everybody here knows about the character palette of Mac OS X.

Is it possible to create a new symbol, using an image or a vectorial shape made in Illustrator, and add it to the character palette? If so, a brief outline of how this would work would be ideal since I'd like to actually do this to extend my Mac's usable characters with some custom designs.

The character palette simply gives you access to the characters in the fonts on your system.  To add something to it, you need to create a font with that character in it or add the character to an existing font.  Common font creation tools for OS X are Fontlab and Fontforge.  There are also some online services that may work (use Google to find them).


How to install a virtual environment of Python in macOS First steps with Python, I am trying to run Python in a virtual environment in macOS.

I Googled "install virtual environment python mac" and got a link for this.
When I typed in Terminal:

$ pip install virtualenv

I got a "command not found".

Is there a simple, well-explained (meaning for dumb, GUI-raised people like me) way to install a virtual environment for Python on macOS somewhere online? I would love if I didn't feel helpless every step of the way (long-distance goal: being able to run this).

I would install another python as this will allow you to put new packages in  consistent places. Apple's python as you note is missing pip. (and does not put packages where your linked page says) (Although the web site you show does have a page telling you how to install pip)

I would also use python3 unless you have a good reason not to. Which again means install another python.

You can either install plain python from https://www.python.org/ This python includes pip but that needs to be upgraded as per pip's website This installation will have to be done under sudo.

Otherwise you can use a packaged solution e.g. Macports or Homebrew - which I would use if you want a lot of C libraries or like Anaconda which is just a python packager.

(I  would normally say that Anaconda is the best for new users as it includes more ) However CUDA is low level code and the USEAGE for the FastPhotoStyle does say that it has only been tested under OS: Ubuntu 16.04 So I would not expect it to run under MacOS.


Brother HL-1440 Disappears From Mavericks I'm using OS X 10.9.4 and I have a Brother HL-1440 that I've been using for years, even before I was using an iMac.  It's been a real workhorse and doesn't show signs of failure mechanically (it's still on just the 1st toner cartridge after the one included when I bought it).  I've never had an issue with this printer working with OS X until about two weeks ago.

It looked like it was online and I ran a program on the Terminal that sent output to it.  Nothing happened.  It kept showing up as "Offline," but I couldn't find anything to tell me why.  I finally looked around, found the Brother driver (probably the same as the one I had been using), downloaded and installed it, removed, power-cycled, then added the printer and it showed up again and I was able to use it.

A week later I was using it from the command line again and, again, it showed as "offline."  I tried re-installing the driver, power-cycling, and the rest of that line of thinking, but now it doesn't show up at all.

I grabbed a different USB printer cable, hooked it up, connecting it to a different hub, and the printer just does not appear now.  I can use either printer cable, but it's not there.  I've tried using CUPS directly, through localhost:631, but it doesn't see it either.

I know it's been around a while, but it would surprise me if the electronics (which don't move) would give out before the mechanical parts show any sign of failing.

What can make a printer disappear that I might be able to fix?  It seems like there's something flaky going on (and the USB info shows everything else shows up well, so it's not the port on the iMac).  If I have to junk it and replace it, I can do that, but if I can get it to behave again, that'd be great.

What can I look at and check to see why it isn't communicating?

I fixed my printer by installing a new driver after deleting the Old printer in System Preferences.(just hit the "-" button.)
Then Download and install this:

http://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadhowto.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hl1440_all&os=132&dlid=dlf006958_000&flang=4&type3=79

After that, go to System Preferences and add ("+" button) the printer. If it doesn't show up, check that it is plugged in and turned on, switch it off & on or take out the USB cable & put it back. Then it will appear. Remember to set it as the Default printer.


Can I install Mavericks if I upgrade my RAM? I have an early 2008 MacBook with 2GB of RAM and I would like to install OS X Mavericks onto it. However, I am not able to install the OS due to the age of my computer. If I upgrade my computer's RAM (to at least 4GB), will I then be able to upgrade to Mavericks?

Short answer....No
If your system is unsupported then you cannot install Mavericks no matter how much memory you have. The problem is with the EFI not the memory.


How can I remove an autocomplete suggestion from Safari's address bar? A site that I visit frequently used to be located at:

http://www.site.com/sub/dir

But now it's just located it:

http://www.site.com/sub

The problem is, I visited the original location so often that Safari suggests it as the Top Hit and autocompletes it, even though it no longer exists (it returns a 404). So I start typing http://www.site.com/sub... and Safari fills in the rest with the old URL that no longer works.

How can I remove the old URL so Safari no longer autocompletes it? I already went and found the URL in my history and deleted it, but it still suggests it as the Top Hit.

Open Safari.
From the “History” menu, choose “Show All History”.

keyboard shortcut: ⌘ Y

In the Search field in the top right corner, enter the web site you want to remove.
In the list of search results, click on the web site you want to remove.

To select multiple sites, hold the command ⌘ key while clicking on the sites you want to delete.  Or, to select a range, hold the shift key, click the first item to delete, then click the last item to delete.

Press the Delete key on your keyboard.


Can I install Windows 7 on iPad 2? I want to use Windows 7 on my iPad 2. Could this be done in a general case?

If it can not be installed, please let me know how I might get as close to having windows running on the iPad as I can get.

It cannot be installed on the iPad 2. The processor in the iPad is an ARM processor and Windows (up to and including Windows 7) can only run on x86 processors, such as those from Intel and AMD. (There are other reasons that running Windows would be impossible, but this is the most important reason.)


Restore deleted sidebar icons after moving user folder to another drive I moved my user directory to another hard drive, as I am using an HDD (for Data) beside my SSD (for system).
After that, all the sidebar icons in Finder got lost and now that are just folder icons.

I tried to drag&drop the icns-files from
/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/

in the informations-window of the corresponding folder. But that just change the appearance of the folders, not the sidebar icons.

How can I restore the icons? Maybe someone could upload empty folders with the right icons, so that I could copy&paste them in my folders?

This worked for me:

Go to your Finder Go menu hold the option key and choose Library. Then go to the Preferences folder and trash these files:

com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Then restart (You will have to reset a some finder prefs the way you like them).


Tagged items not appearing correctly in Mavericks? I'm running OS X 10.9.5. Recently, I used Handbrake 0.9.9 x86_64 (2013051800) to convert some WMVs to MP4s. There are roughly 150 videos, and I have attempted to tag them all. When in their respective folders, they look fairly normal, as this example demonstrates:

However, when I click on 'Blue' in the Finder sidebar, I see this for each video:

I am not having the same problem with any other files tagged with the same tag, and that includes seventeen other videos which I converted from AVIs to MP4s using the same Handbrake preset (there may have been a difference in the settings for picture size, but I don't think there was). This may mean it's completely unconnected to Handbrake, but it seems unlikely.

I tried running ls -l on the directory containing the affected videos and the directory containing the seventeen unaffected videos and they're all -rw-r--r--@. Both sets of files have the extended attribute com.apple.metadata:_kMDIItemUserTags.

Can anyone shed any light on what might be happening here?

After reindexing my drive with sudo mdutil -E /path/to/volume the files showed in the tag list correctly, so it was clearly an issue with the Spotlight index; hopefully this helps someone else in the future.


Finder does not launch from Dock unless I click on the icon and New Finder Window I am using a Mac mini 2010 with MacOS Sierra 10.12.6.

Today, I deleted and re-created my Finder preferences after the originals became corrupted.

Clicking on Finder (the blue smiley-face square) within the Dock did not work unless I went to Open New Finder Window.

The Desktop works, no issue there.

Is there a way within MacOS Sierra to get it to open automatically by clicking on the icon, like with other apps in Dock, such as Firefox or Terminal?

Any help is much appreciated.

Tick the second option listed in Mission Control Preferences. "When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application."


Keychain integration is broken in Safari My Safari isn't updating passwords anymore. It was working fine until recently. Safari is still populating the username and passwords. In the case where my password for the web app has changed I type my new password. Safari prompts me to update the password (in case it's a domain password it asks to update all).
Even though I confirm, the password change is not reflected. E.g. if I quit Safari and browse to the same website it's again the wrong (old) password and if I look in keychain the password is indeed not updated.

Here is what I see in the logs (Console). I wonder if it has something to do with it?

06/01/15 12:12:12,549 secd[374]:  securityd_xpc_dictionary_handler Safari[35819] copy_matching The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.security.cfder.error error -1 - Invalid date.)
06/01/15 12:12:12,549 Safari[35819]:  SecOSStatusWith error:[-26275] The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.security.cfder.error error -1 - Remote error : The operation couldn‚Äôt be completed. (com.apple.security.cfder.error error -1 - Invalid date.))

What would invalid date indicate here? My system has 'set date and time automatically' checked.

Keychain first aid didn't report any problems

I checked out these similar thread but they don't apply / didn't solve my issue:
Safari stopped using keychain
Broken login.keychain, what now?

The problem is solved. Unfortunately I've done so many things that I don't know what solved it.

Here are some things I did. These steps should be safe but in any case before starting either make sure your time backup is on and/or make a backup of your Keychains folder in ~/Library:

Remove / re-add the keychains
I disabled iCloud and re-enabled it again (and rebooted in the mean time) (I suspect this was part of the solution)
I cleared Safari history data (although I'm pretty sure this didn't have any effect)
I toggled the Safari preferences to remember passwords (for sure this was not the solution but might have helped in combination with iCloud reset)

Some things I did but where you should be a bit more cautious about:

In ~/Library/Keychains: I deleted a folder called F1090786-29BB-5136-A02B-7266FEF0DD9A (actually moved to tmp location) (found somewhere on the apple community sites)
I removed ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist (again: I actually moved it away)


Safari 7.0 Very Slow since move to Mavericks? Since Upgrading to Mavericks Safari 7.0 is extremely slow. Pages are slow to load, and there is a district Lag when typing into an internet page, you end up typing on the keyboard well ahead of whats actually appearing on the screen?

I use highlight and drag and copy paste within a web browser for work and this has become almost impossible to do without getting extremely frustrated in its low response time?

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a simple solution with reference to a plug-in or feature after upgrade?

After getting to really like Safari I am looking at moving to Firefox or Chrome after this update has rendered it useless and frustrating!

This seems to have helped me a lot.  Its still too early to say for sure, but initial results are very promising.  Just to be clear what I did, I have attached a screen grab...


Hide specific filetypes in finder SWIM works on a lot of different Ableton Live projects and has more than 25,000 '.asd'-files on their computer. On macOS dot-files are hidden by default in finder, does anyone know if it's possible to hide files in finder depending on their extension/filetype?

With a huge help from nohillside, here's a quick fix:

Remember to test run on a test folder.

find ~/Documents -name '*.asd' >> ~/Desktop/logHiddenASDfiles.txt
find ~/Documents -name '*.asd' -exec chflags hidden '{}' \;

First command uses >> to not to override existing logs, it always appends content to the file.

To undo the hidden flags,

find ~/Documents -name '*.asd' -exec chflags nohidden '{}' \;

The log file might not be of immediate use since you might move or delete some files. If you use the older file for unhiding the files, some of them might throw errors.


Is there a web viewer for photos stored on iCloud? Possible Duplicate:
  How do I view my iCloud Photo Stream online?

I am new to iCloud. When I open iCloud.com and login with my Apple ID, I couldn't find my photos there. Is it possible to view photos on iCloud.com itself?

Not at the moment. To view your Photo Stream you need to access it on an Apple device (Mac, iOS or Apple TV) that's signed in with your iCloud ID. iCloud.com doesn't offer any functionality to view the Photo Stream, and it seems unlikely to any time soon.


Mac App Store: Don't show updates for an uninstalled app I downloaded the free trial ('lite') version of an app on the Mac App Store. I didn't like the app, so I uninstalled it from my computer.

However, the App Store wants me to install updates for this app that I no longer even have.

Is it possible to tell the Mac App Store that I don't want to be notified about updates for a particular app?

Nathan - I made a mistake on a mac where I wasn't the main administrator.   I sure meant to delete the app and even dragged it into the trash, but a day later when the update bubble was still there, I found I didn't really delete the app (In my case it was installed on a different user on a multi user system and rather than move to the trash, it copied itself to the trash). Once I really moved the app to the trash with an admin user and rebooted, the update badge disappeared.


Normal Fan Speed for an early 2011 MacBook Pro I have an early 2011 Macbook Pro and I noticed today, strangely for the first time, that the fan(s) are always running and audible. I have to admit that I usually have some background noise when using that machine but I've noticed the fan noise now that it's quiet.

I checked the RPMs and they are both (left/right side) at 1995-2000 and CPU temperature is ~36℃ - which all seems like normal readings to me but just to make sure, the fans do run all the time, right and for an idle machine (10.9.2 on it with nothing else running) fans running at 2000 rpms is normal.. or not?

Laptop fans are very small compared to their desktop counterparts, and require a much higher speed to displace a sufficient amount of air.

2,000 RPM is the MINIMUM speed for MacBook fans, with the max being 6,200 RPM.
Typical operating temperature of a MacBook CPU is between 35℃ and 85℃


iPod failed during update I have just bought an iPod Touch second hand. I tried to update it's firmware to the latest version using iTunes. The update failed and now I cannot access the iPod either directly or in iTunes. Turning the iPod ON the screen shows a 'connect to iTunes' looking icon and does nothing else. Connecting the USB does nothing and the iPod does not show up in the iTunes side bar. The iPod turns itself OFF after a minute or two. What now?

You'll have to connect your iPod in recovery mode. Make sure the iPod is disconnected and turned OFF, so not on stand by, but completely off.

Then, while pressing and holding the Home button, reconnect the USB cable to the device. The device should turn on with the "Connect to iTunes" screen. When this screen appears you can release the Home button; your iPod should now be in recovery mode.

If not already open, open iTunes. iTunes should then display a warning that it has detected an iPod in recovery mode and will ask you to restore it.


Can you triple boot on Mac OS X Lion (twice) and Linux? I'd like to install two separate version of OS X Lion and a copy of Linux on my Mac.

How do I go about doing this?

Open Disk Utility & select the drive you want to install your OS on.
Open the Partitions tab & add 2 partitions by clicking on the
little "+", then arrange the partition size as required
Make sure to name your partitions so not to get mixed up later
Click apply and wait for your partitions to get created.

For Lion:

Run the installer & when it asks which disk you want to install; choose show all disks & pick the one you want

For Ubuntu:

You probably have a bootable disk to install ubuntu. Insert the disk & restart your computer while pressing down "c" this will boot from CD. (It might take a long while to boot from CD). Run the ubuntu installer & when you are sued to choose a drive to install on choose accordingly.


How does migration assistant work? I'm considering using Migration Assistant to transfer everything from an old backup of my system to my current system because there are files that went missing when I upgraded my old system to El Capitan.

If I use Migration Assistant to transfer my user accounts, applications, settings, and "other files", will it copy over similar files and make unnecessary duplicates, or will it merge folders to preserve the newest version of a file?

Put another way, say that I have files/folders A, B, and C.
On my old backup, I have A, B, and C.
On my upgraded system, I have A and B, but C was lost in the upgrade process.

If I use Migration Assistant, will it overwrite A and B and add C to my new system from my old system?
Or will Migration Assistant copy over A, B, and C to my new system from my old system, creating two A files, two B files, and one C file, the result of which are unnecessary duplicates?

Ideally, I'd like to merge folders, so that the newest version of a file is preserved.

Empirically - having done this once & had to pick apart the result - it will make a separate, new account.

You'll then have to merge across your missing files manually & delete the account when finished.


Combine Voice Memos in iOS Is there a way to combine two or more Voice Memos into one recording?

I would be willing to use some software.

I tried to duplicate the recording but found no way of combing the two toegether.

iOS 12 on iPhone.

The native Voice Memos.app doesn’t offer this. You will need to upload your recording to a computer and use a audio editing application like Audacity I’m not affiliated with the software.

  iTunes does not have a way to do that.  You can do it with an audio editor.  A free one that many people like, and which has Mac and Windows versions, is Audacity.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4707813


How to import photos from iPhone 3G to iPhoto in Mavericks? I have a still fully useable iPhone 3G (2008). I take snapshots daily, and used to put them into iPhoto on my 2008 white MacBook with OS X 10.5.8.

Recently, I started using a 2012 MacBook Pro (not Retina) with Mavericks installed, by now Mac OS X 10.9.4.

Ny iPhone and My Mac do not recognize each other. iPhoto does not open when connecting my iPhone. The iPhone is not seen as an external device in Finder.

How can I transfer the 5,000 photos on my iPhone to iPhoto on that Mac?

Photos Version 1.0.1 (215.65.0) seems to have no way to import from an attached device anymore.


Is there any free solution to remove unneeded architectures from Universal ppc/intel binaries? I am aware about an application that is able to remove unneeded architectures from Universal binaries - XSlimmer.

Still, I am looking for a free solution for this because I am not willing to pay for this kind of service.

All tools to manipulate architectures in binaries are covers over lipo the command line tool that Apple supplies as part of the Developer tools


Transferring bookmarks from Apple Maps to Google Maps Is there a way to transfer bookmarks from Apple Maps to Google Maps? I understand why I can't, but has anyone found a workaround?

There is no way to synchronize Maps with Maps (so to speak), but you can sync Earth with Maps, with Google Earth being on the iPhone. If you log in to Google Earth, it will synchronize your maps. Those can be added from Google Maps on the web. Unfortunately, there's still no way to add stuff from an iPhone, but there isn't no connectivity between them.

Because I think that was a really messy and hard-to-understand answer, here's a clearer synopsis:

In the Maps app on the iPhone, there's no way to see things you've added on a computer.
In the Google Earth app on the iPhone, you can see "maps" (collections of pins) that you've created in Google Maps on a computer.
There's no way to add pins on an iPhone in either of these apps to later see on a computer.

I'm sorry there's no way to do what you want in a native Google app!


How do I wirelessly stream my movies to my projector? I love using my Airport Express to wirelessly play my music.

I have a projector at home, and I would like to wirelessly play my movies, which were not downloaded with iTunes.

I was considering purchasing an AppleTV for this purpose. Do you think it is a good solution for my material which is not iTunes-related?

The streaming of music and video to Apple TV is quite remarkable in my book. Having Safari on the iPad, iPhone seeing the AppleTV as a target for many video types is still like magic to me.

Not everything streams, but if it's HTML5 video or something you don't mind placing under iTunes's purview - it's a great solution. As AirPlay gets more prevalent, the web sites that will allow this should grow over time. With media you control, it's ready to go with perhaps a re-encode if it's not something the Apple TV expects to play out of the gate.


How to increase Macintosh-HD main drive partition size? In my mac mini, It’s containt 500 GB HDD. It is a four partition and size described below. Please review below attached image.
    1.  Macintosh HD - 150 GB Main Drive
    2.  D-Drive - 125 GB
    3.  E-Drive - 125 GB
    4.  F-Drive - 98.6 GB.

Now, in this case i want to increase SIZE of main Macintosh HD drive if possible without formatting the the any drive. I want make it 200 GB+/-.

So, I have a extra free space in D-Drive and E-Drive. Can i merge these extra space in main Macintosh HD drive without data losses or formatting?

Please share your suggestion, tutorial and so on.

I have tried to do using Disk Utility but i am not succeed. Please help me.

Attachment:

Thank You!

First, boot from Recovery HD by pressing Cmd-R on startup. You will need to do this because modifications will be made to the startup drive (in this case, it's size).

Now, from Recovery, open Disk Utility and select your Drive D/E. I'm going to assume you've moved all the data on these drives off, and they are empty now. This process will delete all the data on the Drive D/E partitions.

Select the partition of Drive D/E and press the minus button beneath the pie chart to delete the partition. You'll have to do this twice as you have two partitions you'd like to merge with another.

Now, select Macintosh HD and drag the small circle over to fill up the space left behind by the now nonexistent Drive D/E partitions. Alternatively, just enter a really big value greater than all three partitions combined (900 will do) and Disk Utility will reduce it automatically to fill up whatever available space remains.

Click Apply and the above steps should be written to disk. After it's done you should see one big Macintosh HD partition spanning roughly 400GB. You can now reboot to your normal system.

(as all good advice goes, it's always strongly recommended to make a backup of your data in case something goes wrong. Time Machine or a disk image to an external drive will do.)


How does Apple achieve such an ultra fast boot up? I'm a recent Mac user (MBP) and the booting time really surprises me.

Within few seconds, from complete power down, the OS prompts you to log in, then the rest just flies!

And even faster recovery from sleep mode.

I believe Mac OS is based on Unix BSD, so I'm wondering why we havent see such thing on Unix/Linux with similar hardware?

There are many factors that go into booting speed (age of computer, processor, hard drive type and speed). The biggest factor is that Apple has a closed environment and it's OS knows what to expect in terms of hardware and is optimized for that hardware. With Linux and Windows, there are many factors that the OS has to take into account driver-wise in order to optimize itself.


Uninstalling old Mac OS apps in my Macbook Air I have these 2 applications sitting in my Macbook Air Applications folder. I am currently running High Sierra and not planning to upgrade to either of these 2 versions. Is it OK to uninstall them or will their removal cause issues? Its currently taking up 11 GB and I want to free up some space.

It is perfectly safe to delete unwanted macOS Installers - simply drag them to the trash [& empty it to recover the disk space], nothing further required.
You can always get them again if you need them.
Ordinarily, after a successful upgrade, the system would delete them itself.


Best practices for mounting Linux filesystems on OS X over the Internet Before I ask my question, an impassioned plea. Please don't let this devolve into a "use the command-line or GTFO" flamewar. Yes, I know about scp and friends.

I have a VPS running Ubuntu and I'd like to mount one of its filesystems on my Mac so I can use all my local tools and copy files via finder, etc.

I'm using Fuse/MacFusion now, and it's particularly slow.

Any better way?

First, set up a VPN connection between the VPS and your Mac. Something like OpenVPN is fine (the TunnelBlick Mac client works well, at least up through Snow Leopard).

Second, set up the VPS as an AFP server using the "netatalk" package.  Something like sudo apt-get install netatalk.  AFP is the native Mac network filesystem.  Configure it to your situation.

At this point, you can establish the VPN connection between the VPS and the Mac, and then find and mount the AFP volumes from the VPS in your Finder.

An alternative would be to use something like MacFUSE and SSHFS, but using AFP is more "native" and will show up better in Finder.


Does the latest Xcode iPhone emulator using iOS 9 allow for genuine iCloud restore? So I've been trying to find a Windows iOS 9 emulator and failed, but came across Xcode. I have a Windows laptop but I can use either visualbox or VMware to run macOS El Capitan.

I found out that Mac OS has Xcode which is basically an iOS emulator. I need that emulator for one reason only - to be able to use iCloud and restore. From Apple's site I saw a picture of that emulator and saw iCloud option in settings. However, is that emulator capable of something as complex as restoring from an actual active iCloud and copy all my files from my iPhone onto that emulator and show all the files I have on my iPhone on that emulator?

I really don't want to go through all the trouble of running Mac OS on Windows and then Xcode with a potential to mess something up to then realize the emulator cannot restore from iCloud. If any of you guys are aware or would test it and respond, I would be forever grateful. There's a reason I need it done that way so don't bother telling me it's kind of stupid.

Xcode is not an emulator. Xcode is an integrated development environment (IDE) for macOS and iOS software that happens to include an iOS simulator for the purposes of testing software that is in development.

No, you cannot restore an iCloud backup onto it. It can only be used to run software being developed in Xcode.


How can I choose a user an the login page without a mouse? As a old-school Unix junkie I don't like being forced to use a mouse when a simple keyboard shortcut would do. Today I found myself needing to login to an OSX machine just to launch an app, but the system's mouse had a dead battery. I tried about every key I could think of on the keyboard and could not figure out how to select a user  from the login screen. I could change the system volume and any number of other useless actions, but a keystroke that would change the input focus to the user selector was beyond my ability to guess.

Even more frustratingly, when I did finally hook up a mouse, merely moving it seemed to bring the login window into focus and the arrow buttons could be used to select a user.

On attempting to duplicate this later, it seems the initial login screen does have keyboard input focus and works on first bootup. However if you either wait a minute or two for the mouse connection dialog a dialog pops up wanting you to connect a mouse. This steals the input focus and never gives it back to the login screen. If you do not connect a mouse or if an almost-dead wireless one connects and disconnects, the login screen cannot be accessed from the keyboard.

Is there a key-binding I am missing that will re-focus the login page? Or is one just stranded at that point? Is there a keystroke that will reboot the system so you can catch it before the mouse connect dialoge pops up?

The clue was from activating the voice-over, which eventually tells you:

Ctrl + Option + Shift + Down Arrow simultaneously followed by left/right to choose user,

You don't need to activate voice over for this to work.

That is completely non-intuitive: a simple tab would solve this completely.


iCloud photos on MacBook Ive just bought a MacBook, turned it on and every single photo I've took since 2011 has saved onto it and has taken up 70GB of memory, is there a way I can shift all these off my laptop and keep them in iCloud?  I don't need them on my laptop, but unsure if I delete these off my laptop will they take them off my iCloud aswell?

Welcome to Ask Different!

You can keep your pictures and videos on iCloud but off your MacBook (MB) by changing the following settings (for macOS Catalina) as described. Before doing any of the below, however, I recommend that you take a backup of your MB including all of the downloaded photos using the Time Machine app.

The particular setting I would suggest would allow you to store and see only the recent pictures from iCloud on your MB. For that, open your Photos app and then go to Photos > Preferences menu and click on the iCloud tab. There tick off iCloud Photos option. Once you do that a My Photo Stream option should appear and I suggest you select that one. You can also select Shared Albums if you want to have any such albums on your MB.

Once the iCloud Photos option is deactivated in the Photos preferences, you can delete all of the photos you can reach through the Library > Photos option in the left sidebar of the Photos app to clean up for space on your MB. This will not delete them from iCloud as long as you have ticked off the iCloud Photos in the preferences of Photos app.

You can check if you have changed the settings correctly and things are working as they should by deleting only one or two photos initially on your MB and see if the photos are still preserved in iCloud after a little while by going to https://www.icloud.com/photos/

If you don't want any pictures downloaded to your MB at all, then do not enable either the My Photo Stream or Shared Albums options after disabling iCloud Photos within the Photos preferences.

Another way to disable downloading of any of your photos to your MB at all is to go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts and click on iCloud. Then on the right, a number of options should appear starting with iCloud Drive and below that Photos. Tick off Photos to prevent pictures to be downloaded to your MB. This should also change the preferences in the Photos app and prevent My Photo Stream from being maintained even if selected within the preferences of Photos.


Where does Applescript Event Log go when run under Launchd? Or, how to log from an AppleScript (saved as application) and/or view the Event Log?

None of the AppleScript's log statements can be found. I have tried adding the following to the launchd plist:

<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/tmp/theProgram.log</string>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/tmp/theProgram_error.log</string>

after which, the files were happily created, but remain empty. Nothing is in the system log for this application, which is confirmed running.

Are the event logs saved somewhere?

Is setting a launchctl log level necessary for this?

To bring the contents of Mateusz's comment here in an answer. Credit to Camelot for the steps.

The AppleScript log statement does not write to the StandardOutPath. Writing to a log file takes 3 steps. The second step may take 2 forms depending of wether you want to save previously written data.

-- Open the log file
set logFile to (open for access POSIX file "/var/tmp/myScript.log" with write permission)
-- Write some data to it (clearing the existing contents)
write "some data" & return to logFile
-- Or, write by appending, some data to the end of existing data
write "some data" & return to logFile starting at eof
-- Close the file
close access logFile

It may help to rewrite the 1st step as 2 statements:

set logFilePath to "/var/tmp/myScript.log"
set logFile to (open for access POSIX file logFilePath with write permission)

I am still searching for an answer regarding the log statements and event log. At this point, I think they go into deep space.


Ruby on OS X 10.9 Ignoring gems because extensions are not built Every few days this will happen when doing various things in Ruby CLI (notably, using the knife utility for Chef) on OS X (unable to replicate in other environments; Linux, FreeBSD, etc.):

Ignoring bcrypt-3.1.7 because its extensions are not built.  Try: gem pristine bcrypt-3.1.7
Ignoring bigdecimal-1.2.5 because its extensions are not built.  Try: gem pristine bigdecimal-1.2.5
Ignoring ffi-yajl-1.1.0 because its extensions are not built.  Try: gem pristine ffi-yajl-1.1.0
Ignoring gem-wrappers-1.2.5 because its extensions are not built.  Try: gem pristine gem-wrappers-1.2.5
Ignoring gem-wrappers-1.2.4 because its extensions are not built.  Try: gem pristine gem-wrappers-1.2.4
Ignoring pg-0.17.1 because its extensions are not built.  Try: gem pristine pg-0.17.1
Ignoring psych-2.0.6 because its extensions are not built.  Try: gem pristine psych-2.0.6
Ignoring sqlite3-1.3.9 because its extensions are not built.  Try: gem pristine sqlite3-1.3.9

And while it's a simple fix, it keeps happening. Has anyone come across this before?

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.3p484 (2013-11-22 revision 43786) [x86_64-darwin11.2.0]

In my case I start to see this errors after installing rvm

I resolve such problem with: gem pristine --all


Requirements for restoring a Time Machine backup from a sparsebundle? I have a Time Machine sparsebundle backup on an NTFS volume on a USB drive. When I wanted to restore from it I connected it and the volume was mounted as read-only, but  I was unable to mount the sparsebundle and migration assistant didn't offer it as a source to restore from.
After copying the sparsebundle to a read-write HFS+ volume (on a USB drive) I was offered the option to restore from it, leading to my question.
What are the requirements to be able to restore from a sparsebundle? Is it that the containing volume is writable, or something else?
Background
I'm doing my backups over SMB, so I want a file system that's journalled on Linux (i.e. I can't use HFS+) and from which I can restore when using it as a USB drive (so far not NTFS). I'm aware of paid drivers for NTFS on macOS, but I'm initially looking for a free solution for Mojave.
The ntfs-3g project seemed completely dead judging by its website, and the install/compile instructions seemed lacking and outdated (packages from 2015 as opposed to the latest release in 2017).

I have experienced problems using sparsebundles on APFS volumes, whereby writing ~50gb lead to a backup that had incorrect checksums (determined by running tmutil verifychecksums and seeing a failure).

I then switch to using sparsebundles on HFS+ volumes, and no more problems.

Worth mentioning that you are probably using sparsebundles that are themselves HFS+ formatted, if you are using them for Time Machine.

If I had to take a guess, I would say it probably has more to do with the filesystem that the sparsebundle lives on (not the filesystem internal to the sparsebundle)... and less to do with the read/write vs read-only issue.  You can test this simply...  try to mount your sparsebundle while it lives on a read-only HFS+ volume... does that work? (can you mount?)

Yes, I realize that the filesystem where the sparsebundle lives should not matter, but I have myself seen that sometimes it does.  One reason is quite simply that filesystems themselves have bugs.  APFS, NTFS, and HFS are no exception to this.

As some further detail, I noticed that verifying checksums for a sparsebundle on an APFS volume took significantly longer than performing the same operation on a similar sparsebundle on an HFS+ volume.


Framerate in command line usage of Compressor I use Apple compressor from the command line to generate video clips from sequences of images. Here
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/compressor/cpsr9be73312/mac
it looks like the command line command allows for control of the framerate of the output movie, but I can't get things to work. Does anyone know how to do this?

So
Compressor -jobpath file:///path_to_png_directory?frameRate=60

does the trick.


External Monitor not working on MacBook Pro 2015 with HDMI-VGA converter I have an HDMI to VGA connector and a Samsung LED screen. The screen is fine, the VGA cable is fine, the connector is fine (tried with different laptops running Ubuntu and Windows).

The Problem:
I'm plugging the HDMI-VGA connector in my Macbook Pro 2015 but the display doesn't show on the external screen.

What I've tried:
I went in Displays and tried all given options like extend screen and more. The window also shows the name of the screen "SMB2230" on my Macbook and when I plug-in the HDMI, the screen flickers for a second and dock (on the right) disappears from the built-in display and I can move my mouse to the right and it also disappears but the external monitor shows the message "Check signal cable". I have tried restarting it as well but no luck.

Note: The screen is working with other laptops running Windows and Ubuntu with the same connector and the same VGA cable.

Please don't tell me that I have to use MiniDisplay port/wire from Apple.

here is an image

Try a PRAM and SMC reset. Usually helps.

Also try replugging in the connectors on both ends


Some apps do not display on iPod I have installed 150 apps on my iPod Touch, but I have found that some apps do not display. Is there any limitation on the number of apps that can be displayed?

If you do not have iOS 4.0 or don't use folders, or if you are using an older version and do not have the jailbreak app Categories, the maximum amount of pages of apps it will display is 9 pages. 9 * 16 = 144 apps. You can still find the other apps in the search option, on the leftmost page, if you use iPhone OS 3.0 or newer.


Restructure iTunes Library File Hierarchy While my iTunes library works, I have a lot of dead files and a messed up iTunes Music directory.

Right now I have a hierarchy that looks something like this

|-&I
| `-&I's Music
|   |-This Day Aria.mp3
|   `-Until the Sun.mp3
|-Archie
| `-Archie's Music
|   |-Heart Attach.mp3
|   |-Kingdom.mp3
|   `-Roll The Dice.mp3
`-iTunes Music
  |-&I
  | `-&I's Music
  |   |-This Day Aria.mp3
  |   `-Until the Sun.mp3
  `-Archie
    `-Archie's Music
      |-5upernova.mp3
      |-Heart Attack.mp3
      |-Kingdom.mp3
      |-Leto.mp3
      `-Roll the Dice.mp3

As shown above, many tracks are present in both iTunes Music/ and out, but not all. Only one is linked into the iTunes Library. Usually the one that's linked is the one outside iTunes Music/, but sometimes it's the other way around. Also not all tracks are duplicated.

I want to consolidate all the duplicated tracks into one, without unlinking tracks from iTunes, and flattening out the iTunes Music/ directory.

Anyone know how to do this.

The library is completely backed up. I also have an iPod that I can put the library on. If possible, it'd be great to pull the library off the iPod, which I'm sure is properly structured.

Have used Itunes for about 10 years now.   Keep you backups, but switch to the setting "Keep Itunes media folder organised" in the Settings.  At the same time I always check "Copy Files to Itunes Media folder when adding to Library".

Itunes sorts music per artist by default.   right clicking on any item can take you to the physical spot in you library.  Get over the apprehension and just edit the metadata.

To get any music referenced by your library follow steps at http://support.apple.com/kb/ph1459.

After that all the your stuff should be in you ITunes library.


Driver/Kext Realtek 8191SE - Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 I want to develop for the iPhone and I have installed Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 on my laptop. However, I don't have any driver/kext for wireless with Realtek 8191SE that runs on this OS. I have tried to install drivers/kexts from this family but they will not run.

Maybe the kext is for 32 bit mode only and does not work when running in 64 bit mode. Boot your Mac in 32 bit mode and check whether is works then. (If your Mac uses the 64-bit kernel by default, you can start up with the 32-bit kernel by holding the 3 and 2 keys during startup.)


Automatically disabling the passcode when iPhone connected to home wifi Is this possibile? I have found an app for jailbroken iphones, is there something for non-jailbroken ones?

No, this is not possible on a non-jailbroken device. Due to sandboxing and other restrictions, it is not possible for an app on a non-jailbroken device to have control over a system-level passcode.


How Do I Restore the Default Settings in Lion? I love playing with new operating systems, and also love to experience the default behaviour that Those That Be have decreed are the New Best Thing. Up until now, I've always - be it Windows or Mac OS X - nuked my hard disk before installing, so it would be easy to see what the authors had in mind for my new desktop experience. Now I'm married, however, and my wife has an account, files and preferences set up it was too much of a hard sell.

But, from my point-of-view, I'd like to reset all the system preferences to what they would have been for a fresh install. Does anybody know an easy way to do this?

I would start with a new user - if you felt it was easier to start there - you could always make one good back up, delete both users (keeping a third one for admin purposes) and migrate in your wife's account from the backup. You could make a new account for you and then copy in the files you want quite easily from the backup.

Most things you need are Documents, Music, Pictures so it's trivial to copy them back from a backup.

It's nicer to do this rather than go mucking among all the preference files unless you want to learn that end of things.


How to remove iCloud account from used iPhone? I bought an iPhone 4s used and the previous owner did not clear their iCloud account. I need to reset phone, but can't turn off "Find my Phone" because of iCloud password!

How can delete iCloud without a password?

Take it back to the shop. Only the original owner can disable it, or Apple, if you can prove ownership & sale by its original owner [which is harder than you think].

See How can I bypass Activation Lock?

If you can contact the original owner, then point them to this Apple web page -
What to do before selling or giving away your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

…see about halfway down, how they can do it after they already sold the phone.
Once they have removed it from their iCloud account, it will unlock & you can set up as a new device.


How can I prevent my Mac from periodically whooshing at me? Seemingly randomly throughout the day, my mac will "whoosh" at me.  I set up Messages, but whenever I switch to Messages after the whoosh, I don't have any new messages and usually my buddies are set to Away status anyway.

Notification center is empty with "No new notifications."

I don't have the mail client set up or running, so it can't be that.  I do use Reminders and sometimes put things in the calendar, but I don't think those are whooshing at me.

What is whooshing at me and how do I make it stop?

Could it be the sound alerts Messages has configured by default? I'm particularly thinking about the sound when a contact comes online/goes offline, which sound like a "whoosh".

You can check and disable these sound alerts individually for each event in the Messages preferences.


Sorting of Spotlight's search results is disabled in Lion I can't sort Spotlight's search results - sorting by Name, Date Modified, et. al appears to be disabled.  Google seems to be useless in finding a resolution to this - although I suspect a previous installation of Quicksilver had something to do with this.

I have forced Spotlight to reindex, but it still doesn't work.

Finder otherwise functions normally.

Finder has two different sorting modes (the new Arrange By and the old Sort By) on Lion. If the Arrange By mode is set to something other than none, you can't sort columns in list view by clicking the list headers.

So just select View > Arrange By > None.


Automatically detect and maintain account settings I'm having problem with sending mail via SMTP where the error is username and password does not match, even though they are most certainly correct as the IMAP works.  My host wants me to try to uncheck "Automatically detect and maintain account settings" that I access through Mail > Preferences > Accounts, but that checkbox is greyed out and cannot be changed.  How can I enable this checkbox?

This is in Yosemite, my email host is Zoho.

Thanks!

My wife  and i have been fussing with this all week.
Here is her solution.
Fixing Mail Problems After Upgrade to Yosemite

Open System Preferences – Internet Accounts
a.  Highlight the mailbox you want to fix and click the minus button at the bottom of the page
Open Mail Preferences – Accounts
a.  Click the + sign to add an account
b.  Enter all the information according to what your ISP requires
After you hit Create to finish entering information and the account shows up in your Mail Preferences list, highlight the new account and:
a.  Go to the Advanced Tab and uncheck the box that says “Automatically detect and maintain account settings
b.  Go back to the Account Information tab – Outgoing Server (SMTP) box, click the down arrow and “edit smtp list”
c.  Delete the old smtp account (from when the account was originally set up)
d.  Find and highlight the new smtp server that you just entered and go to the Advanced Tab
e.  Uncheck the “Automatically detect and maintain account settings” and double check to make sure that the settings for your outgoing port, whether or not to use SSL and your authentication method are correct
f.  Go to the Account Information tab and enter the description you want for this smtp server
g.  Hit OK
On the Account Information tab for the mailbox you just set up, enter the description you want it to have in your mailbox list.  It defaults to the email address, but you can change that if you want.
Also double-check in the Advanced Tab to make sure the incoming port is set correctly.
Click to exit Accounts in Mail Preferences and click Save on the drop down box.
Go back to System Preferences – Internet Accounts and highlight the account you just set up.
a.  If you changed the description of the account in Mail Preferences, change the name of the account to match it.
b.  If you want to sync Notes as well as Mail, check that box.


How can I find out which iOS apps I've purchased were free? I know that I can see all my purchased apps in the App Store on my iPad but it doesn't give any indication of whether these are free apps or whether I paid for them.

I am in South Africa and have accounts in both the ZA and US stores. Before the ZA store had access to most apps I would buy them from the US store that I had loaded with vouchers. Unfortunately I left my iPad's store connected to the US store and "bought" many free apps there too. Now I keep the ZA store connected and apps purchased from the US store don't update unless I switch stores first.

So I want to uninstall all the free apps I purchased from the US store and re-purchase them from the ZA store, leaving only paid apps purchased from the US store installed. The problem is that once an app has been purchased the app info pages in the store no longer show the cost of the app; so how do I tell free and paid for apps apart? Not having bought the apps by credit card I have no email record of the purchases to refer to.

I rarely use the App Store functionality in iTunes (on Windows) so perhaps that holds some key to this and I will check, but in the meantime I'm hoping someone already has the answer to this.

Not something I've actually tried, but how about sign out on iTunes [store menu], then use the store as an anonymous customer? That might let you see the pricing.


Setting up my AirPort Express with no ethernet cable I have a MacBook Air, and an AirPort Express. Currently, I have my AirPort Express in a different room than my wireless router.

How do I connect to my Airport Express wirelessly from my MacBook? When I go to the AirPort Utility, it does not find my Airport Express, and the AirPort is flashing amber/orange.

Check what wireless networks are available. It is possible your Airport Express is broadcasting a secondary wifi network. If so, try connecting to that network and searching for base stations again.

As a last resort, you can perform a reset. Try a configuration reset first (hold the reset button down with the tip of a pencil for a few seconds, until the led flashes rapidly). If that doesn't work, try a factory reset, by unplugging and replugging it, holding down the reset button.


Anyone else have problems with "share my location" accuracy My iphone 5c (IOS 9.3) sent my location incorrectly. I "share my location" with my husband and on this particular day he checked my location and it showed I was about 1 to 1 1/2 miles away at a park (that I have never been to). I was home at the time and the wifi may have been down but I can't figure out why it was so far off.

If there is no wifi, wouldn't the cellular service ( I have Verizon) give the correct location? I even checked the Location History on my phone and it shows me home during that time period and does not show any history at that park location? What would cause it to be so far off?
Thanks.

Location accuracy uses (from best to worst) gps, wifi, and cellular triangulation.     Your question would take a lot of text and links to completely answer so I'm just going to try and give it a high-level approach.

Many things have to happen correctly for your husband to get your exact location: you need to have a clear signal from the gps satellite, the cell signal on your iPhone needs to be good with a low latency (delay) sending your coordinates, and if the gps signal isn't very good but there's wifi available to you, the wifi location lookups need to happen quickly (again, over the cell signal).  Now, if you move, this entire thing needs to start all over again.

Cell signals can only triangulate your approximate location between the 3 cell towers.  They can't get an exact location, like a gps signal.  If the cell towers are miles apart, like they usually are, it can report your location as far away from where you actually are.  If the cell signal is bad, it's guessing at your location (based on where you were in that triangle) from the last time it 'saw' you.

Like I said, this is very high-level and it's very easy to go into more detail (and really confuse you!) with a simple Google search.  Why it didn't report your exact location when you were at home, with wifi, I'm not sure.  Maybe it did report your exact location but your husband's cell or wifi signal was poor so he was sent a 'guess' based on the last time his iPhone saw your iPhone.

It's very difficult to troubleshoot these types of issues online.  If you notice this type of inaccuracy happening more often, it could be indicative of a deeper problem with your iPhone so a trip to Apple might help solve the problem.


Did Apple introduce a white list of hard drives (for MacBook Pro A1278)? I have here a very strange case...
I have a MacBook Pro 13" (A1278) from 2010. Inside it is a 1TB FireCuda SSHD (ST1000LX015) hybrid hard drive.
The MacBook was working perfectly until a recent system update.
Suddenly, the hard drive became totally undetected when within the MacBook: the system cannot boot and the hard drive is totally unvisible; it does not show when holding down the Alt key at start (just after powering the MacBook on).
However:

The hard drive is physically in perfect condition, with all SMART values checked OK.

The volume is in perfect condition. (checked with OS X disk utility)

The partition table is in perfect condition (checked with the disk utility from another MacBook, with the drive in an external enclosure)

The system loads perfectly if the hard drive is put in an external enclosure and the MacBook booted from there.

So, I first suspected the SATA cable (altough looked in perfect condition), but:

Some hard drives with the Apple logo are detected.

Other hard drives from all brands (Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Hitachi), but with non-Apple firmware, are not detected.
By "not detected" I mean that the drive is not listed when holding down the Alt button at start.

I tried several times to make sure that the problem was not coming from the cable.
The Apple Store told the problem was coming from the hard drive, but it is wrong as thus is in perfect condition.
Conclusion:

I suspect some white list of hard drives was introduced at BIOS level by some upgrade of the system, possibly to attract customers into Apple stores.

I don't know yet if there is a firmware white list or a hard drive model white list.

I would like to hear if some of you experience similar cases.

Apart from using Apple-branded hard drives, any solution to solve this issue is welcome.

Note: holding down Cmd + Alt + P + R did not solve anything.

No, there is no white list of acceptable replacements for storage disks held in firmware.
Apple doesn't make their own drives. Hard drives are made for Apple by Toshiba and Seagate, and the supplied drives are not 'custom built': they just meet a certain spec.
I've replaced the hard drive on hundreds of Macs and never had a problem of this sort.
You say that the SATA cable "looked in perfect condition" and you "tried to make sure that the problem was not the cable". You can't tell by looking at it if the cable is faulty. What did you do to test the cable?
I would definitely try replacing the SATA cable, as they are a well-known point of failure on those models. The fact that the drive works externally but not internally would suggest that.
(Though to be honest, I would recommend getting a 1TB SSD, as this would significantly improve your Mac's speed.)


Are my MacBook Pro 2015 (15-inch) fan parameters correct? Are the fans on MacBook Pro 15inch always on? If so should they be audible when ear against keyboard?

I am not sure but I think my fans were not audible before but now I can hear them if I put my ear there.

Using istats menu I can see them running at ~2100 rpm left fan, ~2000 right fan.

The computer temperature is between 35-45 degrees celsius.

All I am asking are the temperatures, fan speed and subtle noise normal?

Fans, which contain moving parts, will certainly make some audible noise, though it's usually rather quiet and unnoticeable. Normal speeds should range from 1800-2200 depending on your level of usage. Intensive processes see the fan speeds go up to 6200.

For temperatures, idle activity should have temperatures at 40-50 ºC (CPU PECI die) and 30 ºC for air flow proximity.

If your fans get really loud and noisy, it may be a sign that your fans are malfunctioning or there could be some form of obstruction that causes noise when air runs over it. I'd check for dust and clean out any foreign objects found.


Perform restore without update? I want to restore my iPad to factory settings. Its an iPad 2,1 running iOS 8.1:

However, when I connect to iTunes and click Restore iPad..., I get the message:

I'm not interested in 8.1.3, which is what a Restore and Update would result. In fact, I need to keep the iPad at 8.1.2 or lower due to operational requirements. So iOS 8.1 is fine by me.

How do I perform a restore without updating?

If you still have the .ipsw file, press the Option key, then click Restore iPad. Navigate to the file and select it, and iTunes will use that for the restore.


How to prevent open tracking in Gmail app on iOS Google's documentation says:

  Images will always appear in the Gmail app on your iPhone or iPad.

(This is different from opening Gmail in a browser on a computer, where I see settings that provide a choice: either "Always show images" or "Ask before showing images".)

How can I read Gmail messages on my iOS devices if I want to ensure that my opens can't be tracked?

P.S. The page linked above interestingly does not say:

  "Sometimes, senders may know whether you've opened an email that has an image."

even though the "Computer" tab on that page does. I can't tell whether this implies that Gmail opens are NOT trackable in iOS.

As of Sep 3, 2019, version: 6.0.190811, you can Choose to be asked before external images are displayed automatically.

  To enable this for new incoming messages, go to Settings > specific account > Images and select Ask before displaying external images.

Gmail App - Account Settings - General


OSX Yosemite full screen menu bar Is there a way to always keep the menu bar visible in full screen mode?

When developing I like having certain applications take up the full screen but I find the delay in bringing down the menu bar slightly annoying. I'd like the menu bar to be always visible. I followed the answers from this post but changing the LSUIPresentationMode did not do anything.

If anyone has a working solution I'd be happy to try it out!

Thanks!

Like @james_fuller said auto-hiding the doc and maximizing the app window (use the alt key when clicking maximize) will have the requested result. Some apps (Google Chrome) have custom behavior for the maximize button so Shiftit.app can be used to maximize those apps with a simple key command.


How to download only recent mails in Apple Mail.app on El Capitan? I have an account at Hotmail/Outlook.com and I have lots of mails there since 2006 (dozens of GB). I am using IMAP and I don't want Mail.app to download them all, also because I have really slow connection (and I dont care about my emails from 2006.)

Is there a way to make Mail.app download only mails more recent than, for example, 10 or 30 days ago?

This doesn't seem possible in Mail.app.

As a workaround your e-mail provider may allow you to limit the amount of e-mails available over IMAP.


Upgrade to mountain lion from dual-boot ubuntu configuration I have a Lion installation dual-booted with Ubuntu using refit.  Upon trying to upgrade to Mountain Lion, I reboot into the mountain lion installer, and get a message about OS X not being able to be installed on this disk since it can't be booted.

How can I recover from this situation?  My machine is not having a problem being booted (I can work around that).

Basically, I ran into the issue discussed on the apple message board.  One of the partitions had been altered (probably by rEFIt), and I had to "fix it".  I'll list the steps I went through while troubleshooting.  I guess it goes without saying you should have good backups before you do this.  Not an issue for me.

I'm running a MBA 2011, one internal disk, 6 partitions on it in total.
I repaired the disk with disk utility, reboot (not sure that this did anything).
I tried to use fdisk -u /dev/disk0, reboot (not sure that this did anything).
I tried an article about resizing a partition with disk utility, it didn't work.  Some error about wrong partition type, even though it was an HFS+ partition.
I installed gptfdisk -- installed using brew brew install gptfdisk.  I'm sure you can get it another way.

once installed, you run with sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
find your "Recovery Partition", for me that was partition 3 i <CR> 3 <CR>
Change the type t <CR> 3 <CR> to Apple Boot
Write the table w <CR>
Reboot

Upon reboot I could successfully upgrade to mountain lion

To get Ubuntu back booting I had to do a combination of fixing up the MBR, and re-installing grub to /dev/disk0 (/dev/sda in ubuntu) which should be familiar to most people.  For my case (Macbook air 4-2), I had to follow ubuntu's instructions (skipping things associated with installing the OS of course), especially the part about the bios_grub partition.  This must be something that was done for me in the past, since this is the first I remember seeing it.


Prevent dock stacking First of all, I'm quite new to mac so sorry if this question is too obvious. I'm coming straight from Arch Linux, so this is still a bit confusing for me ;-)

I have problems with the dock. It seem to group windows but always shows the most on top icon. Is there a way I can have mac simply show all available windows?
I.e I have the Mail Application open, and it seems there are 3 windows: 1 Message composition, one detailed view of a message and 1 message overview window. I seem to be able to see them only if I swipe up with 3 fingers and then I get a overview where the 3 ones are on top of each other with every one overlapping a little bit. Also with cmd-tab I can just open to most recent window.
What is the standard way to navigate between these windows?

You can use  Cmd ⌘   `   (the key under escape) to switch between the windows of an application.


Late 2010 iMac getting quarter way in booting then turning off Late 2010 iMac getting quarter way through booting then turning off

Ok - first things first, apologies for a long post - I have lots of details about this issue.

Context:

As far as I can remember, about a couple of weeks ago I was working on my iMac (Late 2010, I believe running High Sierra) and it got stuck and froze (the spinning rainbow wheel of doom).
I waited for about 5 minutes then force shut down the iMac using the Power button. From there, the iMac simply refused to start up. It would get halfway through a very slow boot up - i.e. loading bar gets halfway - then simply turn off and die.
Here is what I have tried, and the various results for each:

My attempts:

Safe Mode - I attempted to boot into Safe Mode by holding  shift  when I turned the computer on. Unfortunately it simply doesn't get to Safe Mode, the iMac turns off half way.

Recovery Mode - I attempted to boot into Recovery Mode by holding  Cmd  +  R and succeeded, but when I attempted to perform first-aid on the drive, I got this:

Booting into a different drive - I only have the recovery drive separate, so same result as (2).

Performed Apple Diagnostics (on my iMac known as Apple Hardware Test) by holding  D  on startup. I ended up with error code -3403D.

Reset NVRAM multiple times by pressing Option  + Cmd  + P  +  R - no change.

Reset SMC multiple times by unplugging. No change.

Booted into Verbose Mode - everything went smoothly until it got to checking the Catalog File, where it stopped, before spewing an error message and shutting down after 3 seconds.

Booted into Single Boot Mode by holding  Cmd + S on startup and typing fsck -fy. I repeated this over and over but it didn't say anything different, just that the drive couldn't be verified completely.

Question:

I'm aware there may be ways to fix this by reinstalling MacOS. I'm also aware that this could be a hard drive issue, however, I'd like to exhaust all other options before I consider that. Are there any other ways anybody knows hot to fix this?

Note:

I'd like to note that now, a few weeks after the initial issue the iMac only makes it quarter way through the boot before turning off.
I'd also like to note that I have seen these websites:
https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/solved-macbook-pro-booting-stuck-halfway/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8464773
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8381789
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7051661
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/218110/Why+does+my+iMac+shutdown+halfway+through+loading+on+startup
iMac gets stuck halfway through boot
But nothing has worked. Can the Apple Stack Exchange Community help me better?

Thanks!

I've seen this issue quite a few times before. For me, I booted into Single Boot Mode by holding Cmd + S on startup and typing fsck -fy. Let that process run and keep repeating it over and over until it says the volume is ok.


FileVault decryption process stuck + iCloud login fail + regular shutdown impossible. What is the problem? so I am assuming the following problems are all connected as they all appeared more or less at the same time, so please allow me to quickly recap: I have a Macbook mid 2012, 10.13.6 High Sierra.

Half a year ago my Macbook wouldn't start ("prohibitory"-signal). Went to repair shop. Told me it was the internal hard drive cable, which after some time can get too hot, apparently a common issue for this model. Changed it, everything runs fine again.

Some months later (this week): Macbook is starting to behave slowly, gets stuck, with a spinning wait cursor which I can still move but it would not react when clicking on stuff. Then, after a while it would allow me to do something again, before going back into spinning wait cursor. Silly me was thinking, mh, let's restart, but hey, there is anyhow this system update waiting! So in one moment of control, I clicked to update: it downloaded and restarted. After restarting the update would be stuck after like half a centimeter progress. I waited more than half a hour. No progress, so I forced a shutdown. After restart, new problem: it would simply freeze when I enter my login information and not start the system.

Again, I went to the repair shop. Eventually he would try again replacing the internal hard drive cable. That solved the issue again. I told him that the one cable I got recently was not old. He said, it's because FileVault can cause this which he recommended me to deactivate. Back at home I try exactly that.

Problem 1: Filevault decryption is stuck and wouldn't progress, it always says "two hours remaining". Also after "restart" (see 2.), it stays the same saying two hours remaining.

Problem 2: A clean restart is impossible. When trying to shut down or restart, it would stay forever at this black screen where you only see this rotating loading icon. So, I always have to force shutdown, then start again.

Problem 3: Another thing which is new, that suddenly I cannot login to my iCloud sometimes (weirdly it worked in the Appstore, but never in Mail)

Problem 4: also appeared just now. When I am in the university using their Wlan, I have to re-enter my login information every time after the macbook was in standby mode. This seems unrelated, but it never happened before.

Problem 5: Maybe also unrelated, but only occurred now, so probably not. A program (ableton) would suddenly not start anymore and simply say that it cannot be opened. I also cannot find it under applications anymore which never happened before.

Disk Utility says it could not deactivate starting volume but found errors that would have to be repaired by disk utility in recovery mode.
Other than that it said (excerpt):

"

...

Checking the APFS suberblock.

Checking the object map.

warning: omap (oid 0x9a2c3): invalid om_flags (0x4)

error: om: btn: invalid o_oid (0x8f422)

Object map is invalid.

The volume /dev/rdisk1s1 could not be verified completely.

...

"

One thing that kinda bothers me is, I am still not sure if the beforementioned update was installed after all. In the app store it does not show up under "recently installed updates", it is simply gone.

I will probably try to do as disk utility says, and repair from recovery mode, however I am a bit hesitant as I am new to Macbooks, and not familiar with these recovery routines, what it entails, whether data loss is possible etc. So before I wanted to ask if it's maybe a known issue.

Last thing: I have a TimeMachine backup basically from one day before this whole mess (before the thing with the update happened). Does this help? I feel the issue is somehow deeper.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance

I think you have received some bad advice from the repair shop, unfortunately.

It is correct that the 13" MacBook Pro 2012 model have issues with the internal hard drive cable. It hasn't got anything to do with overheating though. It is also incorrect that FileVault have anything at all to do with the cable problem.

The cable problems comes from the fact that the original cable was designed slightly too thin, while the inside of the casing is not completely smooth. Over time the friction between the two can cause the cable to fail.

You can replace the cable with another cable of the same type, which you indicate the repair shop did. The problem will just occur again.

The permanent way to fix it is to replace the cable with a new type of cable that is slightly thicker. This is what Apple does if you take the computer to them. Another way to fix it is simply to add a piece of smooth tape to the case where the cable runs, so that friction is reduced.

You can find detailed instructions on how to apply the tape here:

https://beetstech.com/blog/prevent-a1278-mid-2012-hard-drive-cable-failure

You currently have issues with the file system on disk. This could be caused by problems with that cable - but it could also be the disk itself failing.

I would recommend fixing the cable issue as described above, and then restoring the known good backup you have. Make sure to do disk checks to make sure the disk is OK - if you get disk errors again, it's reasonable to assume the disk is broken and needs replacement.


Do games need antialiasing on the Retina MacBook Pro? Since the pixels in the new display are dense enough that they're imperceptible at a normal distance, doesn't that obviate antialiasing?

(Assuming that the game is running at full 2880x1800 resolution, of course.)

Antialiasing could still play a part in making the rendered scenes look their best, but, yes, the retina display probably obviates most of that.

As with AA on a non-retina display, it's a tradeoff between the processing resources used and how much better it looks, and that's something only you can judge for yourself. You may find that some AA looks good, but that more-intensive AA isn't necessary.


I'm getting lots of Samba "too many open files" errors. How can I troubleshoot? I'm using Mac OS X Snow Leapord. My iMac's hard drive has been getting unexpectedly full, and I finally tracked the problem down to a huge file: private/var/log/samba/log.smbd.old, weighing in at 400GB.

I just ran tail -100 log.smbd.old to see the last 100 lines of that log file. What I see is a ton of "too many open files" errors.

This is a work machine. I do share files with other Mac users, and also access a shared Windows drive via Samba.

How can I troubleshoot these errors so the log file doesn't get filled with them?

Now I'm no kernel expert, but I think that you might be running into the fact that the default value for the maxflies kernel parameter is 256.  You can show your current value for this parameter like this:

[dwayne | ~] $ launchctl limit maxfiles
    maxfiles    256            unlimited

I think if you put a line similar to this in a file /etc/launchd.conf (you might have to create the file if it doesn't already exist):

limit maxfiles 2048 unlimited

and reboot, you will see the new value, and hopefully avoid the situation you're running into.

Dwayne


Can iOS 4 connect automatically to a closed network with a hidden SSID? Problem: (stressing the "automatically" in the question title).

I add the hidden network by selecting "other" and entering the SSID. There is no security right now in order to simplify troubleshooting. When the iPod 4 sleeps, goes out of range or the wifi radio is turned off and then on, the iPod will not re-connect to the hidden SSID once within range again. Strange, considering I reset the network configurations before setting up the 1 and only network the iPod 'knows' as well as having installed a configuration profile on the iPod with the wi-fi settings for this hidden SSID. Nothing i try seems to get the iPod to connect automatically. The hidden SSID does appear in the list of networks when I go into wireless settings, but thats not good enough - the iPod needs to connect to the hidden network without any user intervention.

I should mention the router is a cisco aironet 1100 series AP. The AP has 2 SSIDs: the hidden network and a "Guest" network, and it is broadcasting the Guest network. The Subnets are different, in case anyone was wondering. Also, No, i cannot broadcast the hidden SSID; I'm not looking to change the network settings.

The iPod is running iOS 4.1(8B117) and is a 4g model.

Thanks,

Austin

Note -- I haven't tested this or worked with a similar configuration *

It isn't clear from your description -- does the iPod auto connect to the "Guest" network?

If it does, in the Wi-Fi settings I would (in the WiFi settings) turn "Ask to Join Networks" off then tell the machine to forget the "Guest" network, then connect to the hidden network again and then sleep the device and see if it reconnects to the hidden network.

Or -- Go to Settings then General then Reset and then Reset Network Settings, then power off and power on the device, then reconnect to the hidden network.

Or -- you could also try Apple's iPhone Configuration Utility, which allows you to set profiles for iOS devices. I haven't messed with this at all, but some folks have mentioned it as a fix.


Use security to get a list of Keys in Keychain based on type? I'm successfully using security to fetch keys from my Keychain via their label, e.g.:

security find-generic-password -l "PDF Encryption"

However, I'm trying to build a UI that offers me a CHOICE of keys to decrypt. Specifically, I'm only interested in the keys that I MANUALLY ADDED via Keychain Access. These show the Kind: Application Password when viewed in Keychain Access:

Unfortunately, I can't seem to come up with any command/filter/search to come up with this list. When I specifically call one out via label, or use dump keychain, I see the following data for each key:

keychain: "/Users/jay/Library/Keychains/vault.keychain-db"
version: 512
class: "genp"
attributes:
    0x00000007 <blob>="PDF Encryption"
    0x00000008 <blob>=<NULL>
    "acct"<blob>="PDF Encryption"
    "cdat"<timedate>=0x32303137313030323032333433385A00  "20171002023438Z\000"
    "crtr"<uint32>=<NULL>
    "cusi"<sint32>=<NULL>
    "desc"<blob>=<NULL>
    "gena"<blob>=<NULL>
    "icmt"<blob>=<NULL>
    "invi"<sint32>=<NULL>
    "mdat"<timedate>=0x32303137313030323032333433385A00  "20171002023438Z\000"
    "nega"<sint32>=<NULL>
    "prot"<blob>=<NULL>
    "scrp"<sint32>=<NULL>
    "svce"<blob>="PDF Encryption"
    "type"<uint32>=<NULL>

Unfortunately, it looks like every bit of data except for account and service are set to NULL. But, I don't seem to be able to search via NULL.

Is there any direct way to get a list of these keys?

It looks like the answer here is as close as I can get, which is to use dump-keychain and filter by 0x00000007:

security dump-keychain | awk -F= '/0x00000007/ {print $2}'

It includes more than just Application Passwords, but it's definitely a more workable subset, and I can filter out a blacklist with grep -v.


Creating a Installpackage for mac I have a lot of Programms that i always need to install to a new mac. I wanted to simplify this process through an installpackage. I allready tried Iceberg with some success but have a specific error. What i want to do with iceberg is to unpack all the packages and start a script to install it and delete the packages after. I can make a package that unpacks the packages in my destination but the iceberg Programm wont execute the script i add in postinstall. the script itself works fine when i use it through terminal. the Script i am using is

##!/usr/bin/env bash
sudo installer -pkg /Library/Virtualbox.pkg -target /

iceberg packs the script in the programm but never uses it.

There is an error in the postinstall script. The first line should contain only one hash (#):

#!/usr/bin/env bash

If the .pkg works with installer and Installer.app, then it is a correct package. All other tools are made by third parties and may not support the latest pkg formats and features.

Lacking Permission?

Using sudo in your package script may cause the script to pause forever or instantly fail. How will the sudo command interact with the user to get the super user's credentials?

Remove sudo and make your script test for permission to install before continuing, otherwise print an error and exit:

if [[ $EUID -ne 0 ]]; then
  echo "You must be a root to run this script" 2>&1
  exit 1
fi

It is the responsibility of installer to gain the appropriate authorisation rights and run the package's scripts using those rights. Within your package, specify that it needs administrator rights to ensure this happens.

Logs and Errors

Use the verbose flag with installer to see each step of the installation process and to see errors:

sudo installer -verbose -pkg /Library/Virtualbox.pkg -target /

Apple Package Tools

Installer packages on OS X are typically built with the tools pkgbuild and productbuild. These two Apple tools support pre and post scripts; see the --scripts flag.

AutoPkg

Mac system administrators often use the open source autopkg tool to create packages:

  AutoPkg is an automation framework for OS X software packaging and distribution, oriented towards the tasks one would normally perform manually to prepare third-party software for mass deployment to managed clients.

You may find AutoPkg is a better approach to simplifying the setting up of new Macs.


Restoring a new iPhone via iCloud post-setup? I am trying to restore my new iPhone with the data from my old iPhone via iCloud. I have tried to follow this tutorial, but unfortunately I cannot connect to wifi during the setup process (my wifi requires me to activate each device via safari/some other mobile browser).

Is there any way to restore my old data (i.e. photos, texts, etc.) after the setup process?

Since this appears to be a defect in Apple's software with no non-hacky solution, I thought I would share how I worked around this issue to achieve semi-restoration:

Photos: I first imported my photos from my iCloud photostream to iPhoto using this tutorial. Then I went to iTunes --> iPhone --> Photos and checked "Sync Photos from iPhoto." Further, oddly enough, after linking iCloud to my iPhone again post-setup, a photo stream was synced with my phone, albeit missing a lot of photos. But iPhoto was able to load them all, so it didn't really matter.
Contacts: Luckily I had my contacts already synced with my Mac Contacts app. So to add my existing contacts all I had to do was go to iTunes --> iPhone --> Info and check "Sync Contacts."
Calendar: I use Google calendar, so this was as simple as setting up my email again. However, even if you relied on your iPhone calendar, I believe this issue can be resolved by going to iTunes --> iPhone --> Info and selecting "Sync Calendar."
Notes: Once I linked my iCloud to my phone post-setup, these notes automatically synced from the Notes Mac app.

What I was unable to sync:

Messages. Unfortunate but not really that important.
Applications. But these can easily be re-downloaded.


Time Machine couldn't complete backup I keep getting this message:

￼

I understood that when T M filled the target disc, it would delete the oldest backups to make space for later backups. This is fine with me, and I would be quite happy if it just did that. But it keeps warning me with this screen. I can not find a way to stop this so I have to click OK very time, sometime 20  times a day.

I have a 1T HDD with 300Gb free and a 1T backup disc.

Is there a way to stop this warning appearing?

When Time Machine begins a backup, it first 'prepares' the backup. It's at this point that the space requirements are calculated. If there's not enough space, it will delete old backups, and tell you so, including the date of the last backup that's left on the drive.

However, your error is that it's run out of space unexpectedly. This is much more rare.

Try repairing your drive with Disk Utility

There might be a problem with the disk and/or partition, where directories are smaller than they might first appear. Try repairing it.
Another process is writing to the drive

Make sure that nothing else is being saved to the partition at the same time. If another process writes a big file to the partition, then the space requirements won't match, and you'll get this error.


Beats1 on Mac doesn’t start unless I logout Every time I try to listen to Beats1 in iTunes on Mac, I have to log out and log back in, otherwise it doesn’t start. It has absolutely no problem starting if I’m freshly logged in, but if I quit iTunes and then I try to listen again, it doesn’t start unless I do the log out/log in dance. How can I overcome this situation?

I should mention that I’m not an Apple Music subscriber, nor do I want to become one.

I’m on the latest version of Mavericks, if that matters.

I know this situation. Even if you use the correct Apple ID to authorize music playback, you may still see a repeat request for authorization. This can happen if you're logged in to your Mac using a simple user account, which doesn't have the correct privileges to allow iTunes to update its internal files with the authorization information.
    The solution is to log out and then log back in using an administrator account. Once you're logged in with an administrator account, launch iTunes, select "Authorize This Computer" from the Store menu, and provide the appropriate Apple ID and password.
    Log out, then log back in with your basic user account. iTunes should now be able to play the song.


A1208 2006 Intel iMac Power Supply "Power Good" voltage? This might be a bit specific, but I am trying to test a trashed A1208 Intel iMac (Late 2006 17" Model). The power supply is dead (Fuse was blown, bypassed with a wire and bang poof a resistor and ic blew), but everything else (logic board, DC/DC Board, LCD) looks good.

I will be connecting a PC power supply (for testing) for the 12V and Ground, but I do not know what voltage is present on the Power Good signal.

Pictured is the Power Supply (Top) and the DC/DC board (Bottom). The Power Good cable is the gold/brown cable, which can be measured at the switcher board rightmost pin (With Ground as the two next to it).

Can anyone help me out? Most models around the same time have the same type of power supply (Mains to High Current 12V, with 5 Pins, 2x 12V, 2x Gnd, PG)

Solved this on my own. For reference this is the information needed. The Power Supply is a 12V 15.5A Power Supply, with an Inverted Power Good Signal.
Logic Low (Or Floating) = Good, Logic High = Bad (I don't know what voltage level), tells the computer to shut itself down.

This forum post from 2013 had a similar issue (weak power supply).

Left to Right, when plugged into the DC/DC board (Part 820-1934).

12V (Grey)
12V (Grey)
Gnd (Black)
Gnd (Black)
PG [Power Good] (Gold or Brown, Varies)

The 6x2 connector on the DC/DC board goes out to the Logic Board and SATA Harddrive. All outputs look to be on when the connector is unplugged.

PG (Power Good, Direct from Power Supply Connector)
GND (To LB and HD)
12V (To LB and HD) Switchable with P_ON
GND (To LB and HD)
5V (To LB and HD) Switchable with P_ON
3.3V Switchable with P_ON
?P_ON/Power_ON?
12V Always On
12V Always On
5V Always On
GND
3.3V Always On

Pin 7 on the 6x2 connector that I labeled Power_On, Connects to transistor pair most likely controlling the IRF7424 P-Channel 10A mosfet. Logic Low (Or Floating) turns ON the DC/DC converter's Lower Outputs, Logic High (3.3V) disables it. The Motherboard pulls this High when the computer is OFF. The Harddrive Power is connected to the Lower Outputs.

The setup is fairly common. Some newer iMacs skip the DC/DC board and have that all built into the logic board, but still take 12V input.

I connected an old ATX power supply, with a 12V 7.5A rail, half the current of than the original. It's also out of spec (10V instead of 12V ±5%), so the hard drive wouldn't spin up. I left the Power_Good FLOATING. But the computer booted. Now that I know the majority of the iMac is working, I can order a replacement power supply without worrying about wasting my money.


What does "'Copy Job' would like to control this computer using accessibility features" mean? Since installing OS X 10.9, I periodically get a message that

'Copy Job' would like to control this computer using accessibility features

I believe the source is SuperDuper! (2.7.1), but am unsure what it is asking for, whether to allow it, and what the consequences of denying would be.

There is a post on Dave Nanian's (the author of SuperDuper!) blog at http://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/comments/mavericks/ which explains this issue:

As you may know, our scheduling feature runs a little application called "Copy Job" behind the scenes...
For some reason, in Mavericks, this check (and a second one that checks whether Growl is running) now generates a scary security warning...
We've found a way around this prompt, but it requires that you delete and recreate your existing schedules...


How to pair a Boxanne Bluetooth speaker I was given a Boxanne bluetooth speaker as a present and have been trying to pair it with my Mac but have so far been unable to.

I just get a message saying:

  Couldn't connect to the device

Is there another way to do this? I'm running 10.12.6 Sierra.

No - there isn’t another way to pair.

I would keep notes on what steps you see when you click Pair.

Does it ask for a passcode? If so, do you enter 0000 or something else?

Can you unpair other devices and re-pair them. Sometimes if there’s a lot of bluetooth devices or a microwave oven or lots of WiFi right where you are, you could get interference.

You can control for that by shutting off all other transmitters - all bluetooth, all WiFi including the router and access points and trying to pair just that mac and just that device. Then you restart both devices - full power down, wait 15 to 30 seconds and power up and repeat.

At that point, if the Mac can’t pair with anything - seek Apple service. If that device can’t pair and others can, seek vendor support.


Installing cocoapods on macOS Mojave I have looked through  a lot of these questions and none seem to apply. I am trying to install cocoapods and run pod init in my xcode project. When I run sudo gem install cocoa podsI get right the end and see this:
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing cocoapods:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

current directory: /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.3.0/gems/ffi-1.12.2/ext/ffi_c
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.3/usr/bin/ruby -I /Library/Ruby/Site/2.3.0 -r ./siteconf20200314-453-8td9mi.rb extconf.rb
mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.3/usr/lib/ruby/include/ruby.h

extconf failed, exit code 1

Gem files will remain installed in /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.3.0/gems/ffi-1.12.2 for inspection.

And of course when I run pod init inside my Xcode project I get:
-bash: pod: command not found

It looks like CocoaPods 1.9.0, the latest version as of this writing, depends on a newer version of Ruby than 2.3.7. But macOS Mojave only includes Ruby 2.3.7, so you have a few different options.

Upgrade to macOS Catalina and get Ruby 2.6.3
Use Ruby Version Manager to install a newer version of Ruby
Install an older version of CocoaPods
sudo gem install cocoapods -v 1.8.4

Sources

Other people have trouble with CocoaPods 1.9.0 on Mojave. 1 2 3 4 5

Some people got it working by upgrading to Ruby 2.6 or newer. 1 2


What is the recommended partition scheme for mac os x? I did a clean install of yosemite on my MacBook Pro. I have not partitioned my hard drive and have left everything by default.
I would however like to use the recommended schematic for Linux systems (Partition for the OS (root directory), Partition for /Home and one for my data).
Is there a way to do this with mac? I am not aware that i could have done this during the installation process especially choosing a partition for the OS. Furthermore I wonder if it would be possible to partition the HD after the installation and move all the data later. I'm looking for some kind of guidance how I can do that clean.

As mentioned by the other comments, Apple's default partition scheme is to have everything on ONE partition.  While not recommended (potentially due to not being easy to do), it is possible to move a home folder to a different partition.

Here is how:

Create a partition to use for the home folder (Disk Utility is the built-in choice to do so)
enable the root user

open System Preferences
click on Users & Groups
click on Login Options
open the padlock on the lower left-hand corner
click on "Join" next to Network Account Server
click on "Directory Utility"
from the menu "Edit" click "Enable Root Account" and supply a password for that account

log out of the current to-be-moved user
choose "Other" at the login screen
type in root into the username field and supply the password you just gave it
navigate to your other partition and create a base home folder (to use Apple's naming convention, create a folder named "Users")
navigate to the system's Users folder and copy the user's home folder over to the other partition.
open System Preferences > Users & Groups
open the padlock on the lower left-hand corner
right-click (or Ctrl+click) the user you want to move and choose "Advanced Options"
for the field "Home directory", either click the button "Choose" (if it is there) and select the new path or type in the new path.

If you type it in, the path starts with /Volumes/<volume_name>
Important: Use the proper capitalization as depicted on your system or you may run into problems
Do NOT change anything else on that form (e.g. user ID) or you may end up not be able to log in or use the system with the other user

click on "OK"
restart your computer holding down the Alt key until you see boot options on the screen
choose the recovery option (e.g. "Recovery HD-10.10")
choose the language when asked
from the menu "Utilities" choose Terminal
type in resetpassword and hit Enter
choose the hard drive you normally use to boot from
choose your user
Click on "Reset" at the bottom of that window to reset permissions
reboot your system normally and try to log in to your user

If this is working for you as expected, here is the clean-up:

remove your user account folder from the system drive (to save disk space on your system drive)
disable the root user again to improve system security (follow the same steps as outlined above and choose "Disable Root User") this time

In case it is not working (though I would understand that it will), you can use root to log in and move the home directory back to where it was using System Preferences > Users & Groups > Advanced Options (right-click on that user).

I hope this guide helps.


How can Apple Script open a shell script with options in a Terminal window? I’m trying to use Apple Script to execute a shell script file in a new Terminal window, while sending it options. How do I do that?

It seems as if Terminal only interprets the path to the script, and ignores what comes next.

I'd like to use something like that:

do shell script "/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal " & pathToScript & " -option"

The script runs but it doesn't get -option.

Note: I need a Terminal window for user interaction. Running the script directly executes it in the background.

The following AppleScript works for me:

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "~/testscript" & " -arg1" & " -arg2"
end tell