VLC update download gives an error "while extracting the archive" On a Mac Sierra, the VLC embedded update feature seems to work fine at first

Downloading update ... 42.1MB

and the download completes. However, just after, VLC gives an error

Update Error!
An error occurred while extracting the archive. Please try again later.

Is there any way to use a workaround (that VLC bug)?

Or does somebody know where VLC does download its update file? (not in ~Downloads) there is maybe an access rights problem.

(without having to reinstall VLC)

I had similar issues with multiple software updates, and it turned out Disk Arbitrator tool was causing them. Fix was to disabling it temporarily until finishing the update.


How do I stop purchased music appearing on my iPhone with iOS7? My Mac has everyone in the families music on it.  We have a playlist each that we sync to our various devices.

Since iOS7, all the music I've ever purchased from iTunes is now on my phone, not just my single playlist.

That wouldn't be so bad if the purchased music wasn't dominated by all the rubbish that I've bought for my kids.

I think it's just streaming, but it's still really annoying because my car shuffles between all the songs on the device by default.

Edit: Daryl's suggestion to turn off "Show All Music" in Settings got rid of all the purchased songs I hadn't played.  Ones I was foolish enough to play remain firmly stuck on the phone.

Furthermore, these songs cannot be deleted by swiping left to reveal a delete button.

I had the same exact problem. Ended up being that the song had not cpletely finished being downloaded to the phone, so it could be deleted. Go into settings and tell it to display all music again. Then go back to each song and click the cloud icon to download again. After each song downloads you will have the ability to swipe and delete, just like all of your other songs. I'm running ios7 too, so I'm sure this is your problem too.


Can a lost wifi iPad Air 2 connect to internet after set in lost mode I lost my iPad Air 2 with Find my iPad activated. I was able to track it once before its battery died. I set it in Lost Mode with a lock passcode. Ever since the device has always been offline.

Can anyone reset the device as new and use without me knowing? Can it connect to wifi while in Lost Mode?

The device is still linked to my iCloud account and has not been erased because I am still hoping to retrieve it one day.

A Wifi-only iPad will only connect to the Internet via known Wifi networks. If you had some public Wifi networks saved (either directly on the iPad, or through iCloud Keychain), then there’s a chance your iPad will connect to the Internet, if and when the person in possession of it comes within range of such a Wifi network.

The problem is many (most?) public Wifi networks use a “captive portal” (the confirmation page asking you to accept terms of use). The iPad can’t communicate with the Internet until after tapping through the captive portal. So there’s a great chance your iPad will never connect to the Internet. In addition, thieves often enable Airplane Mode or at least disable the cellular/Wifi radios, so it’s important to set Lost Mode as soon as the device is lost.

And just so we’re clear, if you only put your iPad in Lost Mode AFTER its battery died and it hasn’t reconnected to the Internet since, then it is NOT in Lost Mode. You may have informed iCloud that your iPad is lost; however until iCloud can communicate with your iPad, it will NOT be in Lost Mode. It all depends on when you activated Lost Mode.

However since you had Find my iPad turned on, Activation Lock will prevent any potential thief from activating it and associating your iPad with their Apple ID, even if they manage to wipe it.

The real danger is if they somehow crack your passcode. Then they can access whatever you had locally on your iPad, including photos, email, etc.

So I hope you had a passcode and that it was not easily guessable. Based on what you said however, that was not the case, so whoever has your iPad would also have access to all the data currently on the device.


iPhone 4S cannot send messages I recently unlocked my iPhone 4S from AU KDDI to one of the carriers here in my country. I can make calls, receive messages but i cannot send messages.
I checked the registered number under "Messages-> Send&Receive" and i have my old japanese number still being displayed, and greyed out( meaning i cannot change it).
I changed my personal details in my Apple store account but the number has not changed still. Please help me find a solution how i can change this number to display my current number.

Go to Settings > General > Phone (or Settings > Phone, depending on iOS version), and see what it says underMy number`. Chances are it still has your old number, if it does, change it to your new one.

Does your old Japanese number have a check mark next to it or is it just greyed out in Messages and FaceTime?

What does it say when you try and send a SMS? What error message are you getting?

Is this only for iMessage or ALL SMS?

Is your Data working?


How to pair with a bluetooth headset? I have a MacBook Pro and use an Apple Magic Mouse. I want to pair a wireless headset but have not been able, I cannot even see where to start.

Go to System Preferences > Bluetooth and make sure bluetooth is on (select Turn Bluetooth On if it isn't). Also make sure your headset is turned on. Wait for your headset to appear on the list on the right, select it and click Pair.

The actual pairing process might differ depending on the headset, e.g. whether it requires a PIN code or not. The possible PIN required should be found from the headset's user guide.


Where does Server.app log upgrade errors? I recently ran updates from the Mac App Store for Server app and once the download finishes, I got the typical services are stopped message since a new server is present in /Applications.

After starting the app and proceeding to upgrade the services, I received a vague error message:

Everything seems to be functional, all services that should run are green and I see that the System is at OS X 10.8.5 (Build 12F45) and Server 2.2.2 (Build 12T214) as expected.

Where do the Service Data errors or status get logged so I can check what errors occurred?

You may be able to find more information regarding OS X Server migration and upgrade errors in the file:/Library/Logs/ServerSetup.log


Should I enable TRIM with a third party (non-Apple) SSD? I have an Intel 320 Series 120 GB solid state drive installed in the optical drive bay of my 2012 MacBook Pro 13". I'm not sure whether to use TRIM Enabler to enable TRIM.

I did enable it before on my 2011 MacBook Pro, but I not sure whether I really needed to. I never had problems with it enabled.

I also doesn’t want to tinker with this, when I’m not entirely sure. Maybe I should use TRIM, but enable it with something other than TRIM Enabler. I don’t know.

I know what TRIM does. And if you buy a Mac with a SSD from Apple, it is enabled by default.

TRIM and Garbage Collection (GC) are not the same, and are both necessary to maintain performance after the drive has been used for a while. GC only takes place in the background when idle, or when the OS needs to write to a previously used block.

TRIM proactively zeros unused areas in the background. This is why you see a slight performance hit, but on an SSD this is negligible and is a lot faster than waiting for GC to work on demand after you've been using the SSD for a while.

Using the TRIM enabler app is not advised, but you can enable it via the terminal by following these steps.

Including the Steps below (as there seems to be a certificate issue with that particular link) :

  TRIM Enabler for OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks

  OK. Now that Lion’s out, people want their SSD TRIM support back. I
  have one thing to say:

  DO NOT USE TRIM ENABLER (VERSION 1.1 OR 1.2) TO ENABLE TRIM ON LION.

  After a little inspection of this application, I found that instead of
  patching the file, it replaces an entire kernel extension. This means
  that when you use TRIM Enabler with Lion, it replaces a critical
  kernel extension, with lots of dependencies, with an older one (from
  Snow Leopard 10.6.8). This is bad. Very bad. While TRIM does become
  enabled, the kernel extension you now have has the potential to cause
  a ton of problems. That means anything from kernel panics, to disk I/O
  delays…and the dreaded spinning beach ball.

  After confronting the developer, Oskar Groth (who I refuse to link
  to), via his blog’s commenting system, I was told that I was simply
  trolling and spreading fear (even though I offered the alternative I
  share here). Apparently, the next version of TRIM Enabler will
  correctly patch the file, instead of replacing it, but that hasn’t
  happened yet.

  So, here’s the proper way to enable TRIM support. Run these commands
  in Terminal:

  Backup the file we’re patching

  sudo cp
  /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage
  /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage.original

  If you’re using OS X Yosemite, disable KEXT signing

  sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"

  Patch the file to enable TRIM support

  FOR ML 10.8.5 AND MAVERICKS DP4+

  sudo perl -pi -e
  's|(\x52\x6F\x74\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E\x61\x6C\x00{1,20})[^\x00]{9}(\x00{1,20}\x54)|$1\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00$2|sg'
  /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

  Force a refresh of the system’s kernel extension cache

  sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions/

  Now Reboot!

  a) If in the future you want to disable TRIM support

  FOR ML 10.8.5 AND MAVERICKS DP4+

  sudo perl -pi -e
  's|(\x52\x6F\x74\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E\x61\x6C\x00).{9}(\x00\x54)|$1\x41\x50\x50\x4C\x45\x20\x53\x53\x44$2|sg'
  /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

  sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions/

  b) If something goes horribly wrong, restore the backup

  sudo cp
  /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage.original
  /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

  All this patch does is simply replace the string “APPLE SSD” in the
  file IOAHCIBlockStorage with zeros. This happens to bypass the
  restriction of only allowing Apple branded SSDs. The backup of the
  original file is saved in the same directory as the original file.

  To check if it worked, open up About This Mac, click the “More Info…”
  button then the “System Report” button. In the list on the left,
  choose “Serial-ATA”. Click on your SSD Drive and in the lower half of
  the screen you should now see “TRIM Support: Yes” instead of “No”.

  Remember, if you have an older generation SSD, the hardware itself may
  not support TRIM …and therefore this patch won’t help you. This patch
  bypasses the restriction put in place by Apple to restrict TRIM
  support to Apple branded SSD drives.

  You WILL need to re-apply this patch after each major update of OS X.
  That means for 10.7.1, 10.7.2, etc.

  Credit where credits due, unlike the other TRIM Enabler, I originally
  found this on the InsanelyMac forums by digital_dreamer

  As a note, the MD5 checksums for the original and patched file on
  10.7.0 are as follows:

  Original: 155b426c856c854e54936339fbc88d72

  Modified: 945944136009c9228fffb513ab5bf734

  If you have already used the other TRIM Enabler, you can do the
  following: a) Attempt to copy and replace the extension from another
  Mac running the same version. b) Attempt to copy and replace the
  extension from the Recovery partition (Open up Disk Utility and Mount
  Recovery HD) c) Reinstall Lion d) Wait it out till 10.7.1 and hope
  that the extension is replaced in the update (but it may not be), then
  re-patch the file

  UPDATE

  a) Applying this patch does NOTHING else other than enable TRIM for
  3rd party SSD drives. If you start seeing other problems, they’re not
  because of this.

  b) Using this patch has no effect on hard disk drives. Firstly,
  mechanical hard disk drives do not understand the TRIM command, so it
  is discarded. Secondly, the Apple driver isn’t stupid enough to send
  TRIM commands to your hard disk. It knows the difference between an
  SSD and a HDD.

  c) The wiping free space option is ALWAYS greyed out, even on Apple
  based SSDs. As reported here, you can try using fsck -ffy in Single
  User Mode, but personally I haven’t tested it. I’m sure there isn’t
  too much to worry about, especially if your drive has garbage
  collection.

  d) If TRIM isn’t enabled after patching either a) you didn’t follow
  the steps correctly or b) your drive doesn’t support TRIM. If your
  drive doesn’t support TRIM, there’s no need to revert the patch, it
  simply has no effect.

  e) The TRIM patch is NOT vendor/model specific. You can patch the
  driver for any damn SSD drive. Hell, you can apply the patch if you
  only use HDDs, but that’d be a little silly.

  f) Regarding RAID and SSDs on Mac. I’m not completely sure but…if
  you’re using Apple RAID then I assume TRIM will work as usual. If
  you’re using a hackintosh and using a RAID controller (i.e. Intel
  ICHR), then no, RAID will not work. In either case, you should use a
  drive with garbage collection.

  UPDATE 2

  Regarding SSD durability and comments by Hyram:

  The durability of SSDs has sweet fuck all to do with Mac OS X TRIM.
  It’s a fact, and always has been, that SSDs aren’t as durable as hard
  disks. This is simply due it it being a new technology. SSDs fail
  often due to the wear on the cells incurred by reads and writes.

  If you don’t know what TRIM is, you probably shouldn’t be using a 3rd
  party SSD drive. Many have reported these commands don’t work, but
  that simply isn’t true. It just shows that a lot of people here don’t
  know how to use Terminal, don’t know what Bash is, nor Perl. These
  aren’t the sort of people that should be messing around with this.
  Instead, buy a SSD drive that offers garbage collection….or a Mac with
  an Apple SSD.

  There has also been some confusion about garbage collection and TRIM.
  TRIM is ALWAYS preferred over Garbage Collection and will likely yield
  better results. If you have garbage collection, you don’t necessarily
  need TRIM, but it’ll probably offer better performance and there’s
  always a chance there’ll be a degradation of speed over time.
  Therefore, when using Garbage Collection, you may have to take the
  drive out and do a secure erase so that everything is re-marked as
  free space.

  A drive will never fail because you haven’t enabled TRIM, even if it
  doesn’t have garbage collection. They simply become slower and the
  speed is not restored until you perform a destructive erase on the
  drive. However, drives that support TRIM, but do not have GC, and do
  not have TRIM enabled (in the OS) may fail more quickly than without
  enabling TRIM. In a very basic sense, since the SSD is no longer told
  what data to free up, when writing new data it will also re-write the
  deleted data, essentially causing more write cycles and wearing down
  the durability of the drive. If TRIM were enabled, the new data would
  be written without the deleted data, and hence less write cycles and
  extended durability. This ONLY relates to the combination of a drive
  that supports TRIM with no GC, while TRIM is disabled in the OS

  Running garbage collection and TRIM at the same time is NOT a problem.
  They’re designed to work together. You can look at it like so: TRIM is
  called by your OS each time space is freed up. Garbage Collection is
  run by the drive’s firmware when idle and determines which parts of
  the drive can be cleaned up and rearranged. TRIM is obviously more
  efficient and obviously the drive’s firmware is aware of the TRIM
  commands and accounts for this.

  As for the statements by Hyram, I believe some of them to be
  completely false. While it’s true that using TRIM and garbage
  collection at the same time is essentially using two mechanisms to do
  the same thing, the firmware on your SSD drive is designed to handle
  these things. All SSD manufacturers, GC or not, recommend the use of
  TRIM.

  There is zero evidence that Apple has specific code to handle their
  specific SSD hardware for reading and writing. TRIM is a standardized
  ATA command. However, it IS likely that Apple has designed their
  integrated SSDs (particularly in the Air) to not overheat. Basically,
  your SSD is likely to fail just as much in your MacBook as if it were
  surrounded by the same temperature in any other laptop.

  Posted on November 17, 2011


What security vulnerabilities does macOS Sierra fix? I am still not sure If I wish to upgrade to macOS Sierra, If I will upgrade it will be caused only by the fact that macOS Sierra should fix some security vulnerabilities , therefore I would like to understand more deeply what type of security vulnerabilities does it fix?

All security fixes in Sierra 10.12.0 compared to the latest El Capitan release 10.11.6 are available here:

About the security content of macOS Sierra 10.12.

As far as I know most or all of the vulnerabilities are still unfixed in El Capitan and Yosemite. Usually a Security Update for the prior two systems is released at the same time as the new system comes out - not this time.

To get an impression of the severity of the vulnerability you can look up the CVE-number in different databases like CVE Details, National Vulnerability Database or Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures.

IMHO the former are more informative for laypersons because they provide a vulnerability scoring (CVSS3/CVSS2) (like a traffic light food labeling system) and vulnerability types. The first one also lists already available MetaSploit modules.

Example: apache_mod_php.so CVE-2016-6290

Explaining each vulnerability in detail is far beyond the scope of an answer here.


How to backup Time Machine's backup to a cloud? I want to make any possibility of losing files on my Mac completely obsolete.

Time Machine is awesome, but saving files to single physical hard drive is, well, not safe at all. So, I guess, what I need is to back up Time Machine's backup to a cloud and make sure that my files are being stored in more than one copy in different locations. Then possibility of losing files is too insignificant to bother ever.

And the second thing is encryption. Time Machine backups are not encrypted! Why, Apple? So, I need to encrypt it before saving to the cloud. This, probably, makes it even more complicated, as now i have one huge file instead of bunch of smaller independently synched files.

Are there ready-to-use solutions? This problem seems quite important, so probably it's solved already, right? Though, I haven't found anything.

Among possible solutions, i see this one:
Backup data to a Time Capsule and backup Time Capsule to Google Cloud Storage using Syncovery, as suggested here. Though, I'm not sure how easy it will be to setup backing up from Capsule to the cloud.

You should use multiple levels of backups, not a series of backups.

The difference being with a "series" of backups (backup of a backup of a backup etc.) you run the risk of backing up garbage if there is a failure making subsequent backups worthless (think of a failed bulb in a string of Christmas tree lights).

It's also important to note that backup is a strategy, not a product you buy.

Having multiple levels of backups works by taking different paths to securing your data.  The key here to recovery is to not get your system back up and running, but being able to get back working as quickly as possible.

To illustrate the difference and the usefulness of this strategy, think about what you would do if something catastrophic happened (your Mac physically blew up) and you couldn't get another Mac for a week, but had access to a PC.

Time Machine backup for the whole system
Documents & Data

Replicated to on site NAS
Synced with OneDrive cloud service

Application settings (Preferences, templates, etc.)

Synced to iCloud drive
Replicated to on site NAS
Synced with OneDrive cloud service

As for the NAS, (I personally) use one with a with RAID one for hard drive redundancy with multiple USB hard drives for backing that up.   How is this configured?

NAS with RAID HDDs

USB backup for whole system
USB backup for incremental daily backups
Synchronization with additional cloud service (OneDrive, DropBox)

What does all of this accomplish?

Let's take a look at a single document (maybe a payroll spreadsheet):

Document -> Time Machine
         -> Sync to OneDrive
         -> NAS -> RAID Array
                -> NAS backup to USB drive
                -> Selected volume backup to USB drive
                -> Selected volume sync to OneDrive

What this means is that your document is in many places with three different paths minimizing the chance of data loss if any one path fails. Also, by not depending on Time Machine as the only backup strategy, you can get back working if you are in a situation where you have no access to an equivalent or newer Mac.

Does this work?

Absolutely.  I run at least 3 VMs on my iMac and when the HDD crashed I had everything back up and running on a PC I had the garage running within 30 mins while I waited for the replacement parts to arrive.

Could I have used dedicated for pay services?  Certainly, but if you depend only on what's out of the box with these services and not strategically implement their services, you may end up with backups of data that are of no use.


Cannot connect to specific website since OSX Mountain Lion install I just installed Mountain Lion and everything is working pretty well except I can't connect to adobe.com.  I can not connect on any of the browsers (firefox, chrome, safari).  i can access the website on my other mac and my pc.

I've tried:
Adding a New Network Location & Renew DHCP.
Changing my MTU to 1453
Clearing my SystemConfiguration of Preference Files.

I don't know what to do. I can't install the adobe suite that i just bought because I can't access the website to authenticate it.

Please please help me, im desperate.

Some 'cracked' apps change the /etc/hosts files so apps cannot connect to their servers to verify the credential or serials.

It looks like that could be your case.

Can you check: sudo cat /etc/hosts from Terminal and check if any Adobe hostname is listed there?

If so, you have installed a cracked Adobe app.


Buy an iPad mini abroad I'm going to spend my holidays in New York and I would like to buy an iPad Mini 32GB Wi-Fi. (I'm from Italy)

However I talked with two guys at the Apple Store and they told me

The iPad is not going to work in Italy because of different processors. I don't believe it.
The iPad is going to work but the wireless device is different, hence you will have trouble in case of damage because the iPad bought in US is technically different from the one we sell in Italy.

Are 1 and/or 2 true?
Will I found problem with the warranty in case of need?

I've never heard of someone being refused AppleCare service at an Apple Retail store in Europe when the product was purchased in the US. Also, all 2012 mini Wi-Fi models are A1432 so you don't need to play a guessing game with LTE bands.

If you read the terms of the warranty, Apple is certainly in their rights to ask you to return the product to the country of sale for service since that is their standard practice. You are basically selecting the laws and customs that cover your warranty and perhaps giving up some rights since European law is different than US law in terms of consumer protection.

In reality, most countries that have Apple Retail presence have good coverage for US products whether you take it to a local authorized center or to Apple. You might have second thoughts if you lived somewhere where the local distributor expects to provide service to products it sold and not those you imported yourself.

As to the quotes - perhaps they were unfamiliar with WiFi bands and that Apple devices usually will reprogram the baseband for WiFi based on location and not point of purchase.


Documents where the viewer can adjust features such as size colour font easily I'm currently working on an assignment for teaching and learning strategies for students with a very broad range of disabilities that can inhibit reading literacy abilities. I'm thinking of an interactive PDF with audio to accompany text. However, because of the nature of my content I would also like the document to be presented in a format where the viewer can easily adjust font size, background colour, typeface in order to best suit their own visual needs. but I have no idea how to do this? any advice?

It sounds like you want to create something in the EPUB format using iBooks Author, Pages, or another app.  You can see how these allow the kind of flexibility regarding typeface/color/font size that you seek by just viewing one in the iBooks app.


iPhone 4 Battery Leaked if I Don't Charge to 100% Related question here.

I find out that when I charge my iPhone, if I don't charge it to 100% before I pull out the charger, sometimes the battery will leak out very fast.

The leak manifested in these ways:

From the iPhone setting, I can see that the usage time since last full recharge is the same as the time now minus the time I pull out the charger. This means that the phone is effectively being in used right after I stop charging it, even though there is no one using it.
The iPhone battery decreases at the rate of 10% per hour, much more higher than the normal idle decreasing rate.
If I restart my phone, the battery % will still remain the same. So this means that the battery loss is for real.
If I restart my phone, the leak stops. The battery now decreases at normal idle rate ( which is about 2-4% in 8 hours time)

This problem is intermittent, and I can't reproduce it for sure but it happens from time to time.

Any idea how to fix this?

This sounds like it could be an issue with the your battery's fuel guage. Lithium Ion batteries have a problem with the meter that detects how much charge is left in your device. If you don't full cycle the phone every 30 days, the meter will get worse and worse.

Full cycling involves:

Charge the phone to 100%
Do not charge your phone again until all the battery is depleted (i.e. until the phone dies on it's own).

This is recommended both by Apple:

  Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).

... and by Battery University:

  Batteries with fuel gauge (laptops) should be calibrated by applying a deliberate full discharge once every 30 charges. Running the pack down in the equipment does this. If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate and in some cases cut off the device prematurely.


Zsh moves texts when the prompt is too long Steps to reproduce:

Resize the terminal to width 80 or less, making it easier for prompt
to wrap.
Temporarily rename /etc/zshrc in case it affects outcome. (Remember
to change it back afterwards!)
Create a really deep folder, like

mkdir -p /tmp/very-deep/directory/very-deep/directory/very-deep/directory/very-deep/directory/very-deep/directory

Run a clean Zsh with

/usr/bin/env -i ZDOTDIR=/tmp TERM=xterm-256color /bin/zsh

Set prompt with PROMPT='%~ '.
Change directory to that folder. The prompt should wrap.
Try auto-complete. For example, type dir then hit Tab key.

On my machine, after the last step the dir was moved one character left. There was a space between prompt and command before I trigger the completion, which was eliminated by dir moving left. In other words, before I hit Tab the line ends with directory dir, but completion makes it directorydir. This behavior was similar to Bash not properly wrapping ANSI escape code with \[ and \], except that in this case there should be no ANSI escape code in prompt.

I tried eliminating all possible variables, including environment variable, configuration files, terminal emulator. What else can possibly go wrong?

In case it matters, I’m using Catalina.

On Catalina 10.15.3 zsh is version zsh 5.7.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin19.0).

Compiling version 5.7.1 from upstream source shows the same error while version 5.8 does not.  As you can see below when setting PROMPT='%~X the X is deleted on pressing tab on dir in 5.7.1 but not 5.8.

The NEWS file supplied with 5.8 source says changes were made to completion functions which may explain this but in any case this bug appears to be fixed.

Several changes have been made to the way completion functions track
'precommands' (such as `command` and `env`) and determine whether the
command being completed for is a shell builtin. Developers of completion
functions may wish to familiarise themselves with `_normal -p` and
`_pick_variant -b`.

There is also this CVE included in version 5.8 so perhaps Apple will provide an update at some point if you don't wish to compile your own.

CVE-2019-20044: When unsetting the PRIVILEGED option, the shell sets its
effective user and group IDs to match their respective real IDs. On some
platforms (including Linux and macOS, but not FreeBSD), when the RUID and
EUID were both non-zero, it was possible to regain the shell's former
privileges


PDF reader that allows user to alternate between reading on PC and on Mac I have to read a lot of PDF files and am wondering whether there is an app out there that allows me to alternate between reading on Windows PC and on Macbook Air.  I am thinking about an app that syncs all the notes and markups between devices and opens with the last page I read.  Could anyone please help?

Papers App does most of that. It is used for academic papers and can be synced via DropBox, including all notes and annotations. It does not keep track of your last read spot though.


Automator: Get filename I'm creating a folder action to display a notification when a new file is downloaded and would like the notification to display the filename. I can't figure out how to extract the filename of the downloaded file and pass it on to the variable.

Try something like this:

Transcript:

Folder action receives files and folders to Downloads(default Folder Action script)
Run Applescript:

on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Finder"
        set filename to name of file input
    end tell
end run
Set value of Variable: fileName
Ask for Confirmation:
Title: Alert! The file fileName has been downloaded!
Body: A new file has downloaded

So if I add a file named "NewFile.png", I get:


How do I change the direction of a speech bubble in Preview? I'm using Preview to add some speech bubbles to a picture.  The default speech bubble assumes the speaker is below and to the left.  Can I change where the speech is coming from?

Just drag the cursor starting from the direction where you want the point to be.


iPhone repeatedly asks me to sign in with old family Apple ID The message shown comes up on my screen almost every time I use my phone. The Apple ID shown isn’t mine, but my father's. I am signed in with my own Apple ID everywhere on my iPhone, so I don’t know why it asks for my fathers password?

My father is no longer a part of my family plan, though he used to be. How can I get it to stop asking?

Each application installed remembers the account that purchased it. The likely cause of this is one or more apps needing to update or to run and validate the purchase receipt (even free apps are purchased and get receipts).

Once you delete those apps - you have to re-download apps from a device signed into the App Store account you do want to enter the password as opposed to the one that originally was involved in the purchase.

If you're not sure - you can make a solid backup (perhaps to iTunes as well as iCloud) and then delete apps you know you can get back from your purchase history - then focus on the remaining apps to figure out which you can discard entirely.

Now you're left with just the uncertain ones to troubleshoot. Once you know each - wipe and restore from your main backup to get everything back and then surgically remove the offenders.

Lots of work, but that's how I've solved this in the past. This is how it works on the Mac App, iTunes, iBooks and iOS stores...

App Store asks for old Apple ID when installing updates


"Í" on an american ipad keybord Is there a way to include a long í in the american keybord for an iPad or a shortcut for it?

I also have searched for a "0", but it will only work when transfering back to american keyboard and then back again.

Thank u!!!

Long press on the "i" key, it will pop up as an option. This is true for several other keys, including the "o".


Legality of iTunes sharing Are there any legal issues with iTunes sharing? I responded to this question on Super User, and if you look at the comments, the point was brought up that iTunes sharing may or may not be legal.

At least in the US agreement, Apple only authorizes people to use iTunes content for "personal, noncommercial use." Nothing I find in the agreement licenses the user to share their content with others at the workplace. So yes, there are potential legal issues.


Mechanical Keyboard Layout Not Recognized So I bought this keyboard. Armaggeddon Black Hornet MKA-3 mechanical gaming keyboard. Here's the link to it.

http://armaggeddon.net/gaming-keyboards/black-hornet-black/

They provide Windows drivers so my it works nice on my PC. I use both Linux and Mac OS at my workplace, it works great with my Linux without any configuration but surprisingly not functioning well with my Mac. Although I don't use mac very, I still want to be able to use my keyboard when I have to use Mac sometimes.

Here's what happened, I plugged in the USB, reboot to Mac, can't type password at the login screen, I plugged in my apple keyboard, and logged in. The system detected my new keyboard, asked me to press the key right to the left shift key, after I pressed it for several times, it says the keyboard is not recognised and I have to choose one manually.

So I chose US standard layout, but the key mappings are all messed up. I mean you have 8 when you type 1, and you see 's' when you press space.

All my other keyboards are working fine, I want to ask is there anyway in mac you can manually 'program' the key mappings, or what should I do to make it work.

Here's some a list of wrong key mappings.

1 = 8
2 = 9
3 = 0
4 = 'Enter'
5 = 'Not Sure'
6 = 'Back space'
'Backspace' = \
' = q
, = 4
. = n
p = f
a = d
i = b

Thanks for any help.

Perhaps Ukelele is what you're looking for? It's a nice front-end to make custom keyboard layouts for Mac.

Also the solution listed here at SO might be helpful if it's more of a problem with the non-letter keys.


Upgrading MacBook air from 10.6.8 to Sierra I have been given a MacBook air by a friend that needs it repaired. The device is running 10.6.8 and has no available recovery disks. I am going to re-image the device and update it to the newest macOS but I have run into a serious problem.

Sierra can only be upgraded to if the device is already running 10.7 Lion. It's not.
I can't access recovery mode through Command + R because that's not a feature on Snow Leopard either.
I don't have recovery disks and even if I did, it's an air and has no disk drive.

What in the world should I do?

I'm assuming that you have a Late 2010 MBA or later because an MBA prior to then won't support Sierra.  You will need El Capitan, instead.

I wouldn't recommend upgrading - I personally prefer doing a clean install and migrating over my Apps and Data using the Migration Assistant.

You should be able to download the Sierra Installer via the App Store since it was available to Snow Leopard Users.

Following are the steps you need to take to upgrade your MBA to macOS Sierra

Update (if needed) your MBA to the latest Firmware via a standalone installer.  This will help with the Internet Recovery.
Create a USB Installer of macOS Sierra
Backup your installation to Time Machine
Boot from USB and do a clean installation
Use Migration Assistant to move over your apps and data.


Mouse scroll and trackpad behaving differently I am using a dell mouse with my mac. Although in most context scrolling the mouse wheel produces the same effect as swiping down with two fingers, it sometimes happen that the mouse does not work. One example is with vim (terminal).

I press the shift key and scroll: nothing happens. I press the shift key and swipe down and the page shifts.

EDIT

I tried with Better touch tool but it is of no help.

Shift/scrollwheel is horizontal scroll, which will only work, of course, if there is somewhere to scroll to horizontally.

I've never used a trackpad, but I presume horizontal scroll on a trackpad can be quite specifically indicated by horizontal movement - it can't, of course, on a mouse-wheel.

As noted in comments by timothymh, SteerMouse ($20) can override this behaviour & set Page Up/Page Down to the shift/scroll action.


Verification failed An unknown error occured on sign in After update to Catalina, I got the following error message: "Verification Failed. An unknown error occurred".

Should I reset mac? v. 10.15.2

After removing macbook from list of iCloud devices I run this command in terminal and it resolved the issue:
sudo -v ; killall -9 accountsd com.apple.iCloudHelper ; defaults delete MobileMeAccounts ; mkdir ~/Library/Accounts/Backup ; mv ~/Library/Accounts/*.sqlite* ~/Library/Accounts/Backup/ ; killall -9 accountsd com.apple.iCloudHelper ; sudo reboot


Can't update apps in iOS App Store; can only Open On my iPhone, the App Store has a badge saying "2". When I open the App Store and go to the Updates page, there are two apps at the top, which for a split-second say "Update" and then immediately change to "Open". But the "2" badge remains. The apps are in the "Pending updates" section.

So I can't even update these apps if I wanted to, because either they have already updated or they are preventing me from updating.

I already tried hard resetting my device but no luck. I'd rather not take the extreme route of restoring my device if possible. Anyone know of any other solutions?

I had same problem and fixed it by closing the app down then reopening it, selecting the updates tab, then quickly press on 'update all' before the app updates revert back to 'open'.. You only have a split second to do this but it did work


iTunes store account can be transferred or not from one country to another Can an iTunes store account be transferred from one country to another if someone moves country,  with the same balance in it as it was before?

Before you change the country, note the following:

you must use any remaining store credit on your account
download all purchased content
ensure you have no current rentals(if you do, you'll have to wait for them to expire)
provide a new payment(such as a credit or debit card) associated with a valid billing address in the UK or an iTunes Gift Card purchased in the UK
content purchased from the iTunes Store is country-specific. If you wish to upgrade any of your iTunes Store content to iTunes Plus, you'll need to do this before you change countries. The content you purchased while your account was set to the previous country will not be eligible for upgrade once you've changed countries.
after you change countries, you will no longer receive application update notifications in iTunes for the apps you purchased in your original country. However, you'll still receive update notifications on your iOS device for any applications installed on it. In addition, you'll be able to download previously purchased applications again for free if they are available on your new country's store. You will not be charged and the download will not appear on your Purchased page. If a previously purchased application is not available in your new country, you will not be able to download it again for free.
If you have an iTunes Match subscription, you can't change countries until the subscription has expired.
If you have purchased a Season Pass, you cannot change the country associated with your account until that season is done airing and the last episode of the season has been added to the iTunes Store.

Taking the above into consideration, here's how to change your country:

Open iTunes and click Sign In.
Enter your iTunes Store account name and password, then click Account Info.
On the Apple Account Information page, click Change Country or Region.
Enter the updated information and save your changes.

OR: leave it as is and you would get a message like this, but your original account will still work regardless where you are.


Software to backup recently modified files in few directories I used to use this software which used to pick recently modified files from a configurable set of directories and back it up (into another synced folder inside Dropbox).

The purpose is to recover files which were not backed up into Time Machine.

My SSD crashed and I can no longer find the software. Is there a similar software that you are using to fulfil the purpose?

QuickSand was the software I was searching for.


why does find / rm tells me it doesn't find a folder after it found it? I'm trying to remove some folders recursively:
find . -name bin -type d -exec rm -r {} \;

when I run it, I get an output like this:
find: ./Services/BinanceConnector/bin: No such file or directory
find: ./Services/BinanceLeech/bin: No such file or directory
find: ./Services/BitmexConnector/bin: No such file or directory
...

but these are folders that do exist and will get removed.
when I run the command again and the bin folders do not exist, there is nothing printed on the console.
what causes this?

Edit:
ls -ld ./Services/BinanceConnector ./Services/BinanceConnector/bin
drwxr-xr-x  18 thomas  staff  576 Oct 12 21:46 ./Services/BinanceConnector
drwxr-xr-x   3 thomas  staff   96 Oct 12 21:46 ./Services/BinanceConnector/bin

You can see why this happens if you imagine that find works this way:

make a list of all folders in the current directory

for each one named "bin", run the given command

descend into each folder and start from step 1

In your case, the given command is to remove the folder. Thus when you reach step 3 and try to descend into the folder, it is already gone - giving you the "No such file or directory" warning.
In reality find works in a bit more complicated way, but the above is detailed enough to understand what happens here.
All in all the command will work like you want it to, but you'll get these extra warnings. You can make them go away by adding a -maxdepth 2 option to the command if you know that your directory structure always has the bin folder at that level, or you can use the -prune action to not ensure that the search does not descend into the bin folders.


How to automatically deliver /var/mail/USER to my Gmail? My cron jobs sometimes sends mail to /var/mail/USERNAME.  I normally read it by log on the Mac computer and run mail command to read and delete these mails.  But how to deliver/forward such mails to my Gmail automatically? I would like to  read such mails from different Mac computers in one Gmail account.

On my High Sierra (10.13.4) machine, mail honors the .forward file. Create a file in your home directory called ".forward" containing an email address. All your mail on the Mac system will be forwarded to this address.

It makes good sense to limit access to this file, with chmod.

For example (open Terminal in your home directory):

cube:~ borg$ cat > .forward
locutus@borg.org <return>
<ctrl-d>
cube:~ borg$ chmod 600 .forward

Then you can test by sending a mail to yourself, from the command line:

cube:~ borg$ mail borg
Subject: test
This is a test.
<ctrl-d>EOT
cube:~ borg$ mail
No mail for borg
cube:~ borg$

Note: this only works for forwarding MacOS system mail, not for forwarding from any of your cloud mail services. You can enter any valid e-mail address in the file.


How to perform FileVault authenticated restart when updating OSX from AppStore? I am aware of the authenticated restart when using FileVault 2 on OS X. Running the fdesetup authrestart command does however restart the system immediately.

Now, when running the OS X Update from the App Store (which often requires restarting the system) the update process reboots the system automatically at "its own convenience". It prompts about the restart requirement before starting the whole update process and there is no "you should reboot now"-point in time.

Is there any way to "combine" OS X Update from the App Store with authenticated restart so that a remote system with system drive would not require manual drive unlocking from the console?

It sounds like you want the next restart, whenever it might occur, to skip FileVault authorization. You can use the -delayminutes option with a value of -1 for this.
From the fdesetup man page:

authrestart [-inputplist] [-delayminutes number_of_minutes_to_delay] [-verbose]

If FileVault is enabled on the current volume, it restarts the system, bypassing the initial unlock.   The optional -delayminutes option can be used to delay the restart command for a set number of minutes.  A value of 0 represents 'immediately', and a value of -1 represents 'never'.  The command may not work on all systems.

Try running the following command before the system update:
sudo fdesetup authrestart -delayminutes -1


Trouble accessing the OS X Lion web server from other device I'm developing a web app for mobile phones. To easily get a feel of how it is to use, I simply copied the app into ~/Sites (after enabling web sharing in the System Preferences).

Navigating to http://localhost/~username/myapp.html works perfectly. But if I do an ifconfig to get my IP address and navigate to the URL from my iPhone (substituting localhost with the IP address), I get an Error 404. How can I troubleshoot and resolve this issue?

If you put it in the

~/Sites

Folder then you have to navigate to

192.168.0.1/~USERNAME

Where you substitute your IP address and the username that belongs to the ~/Sites folder you copied your web app to.

To get it to just recognize the IP address without the username subfolder put it here:

/Library/Webserver/Documents

EG NOT the library folder in your home folder but the library folder in the root of the hard drive.


in my website data for my iphone & ipad are those websites that only i have looked at? When I look at my website data I keep seeing websites showing up in there that I know for a fact I would of never pulled up or looked on.

For example: there was one for baby names, I can't have kids and have never pulled up sites for that.

Can it be that someone is hacking into my phone and ipad cause there's a lot of suspicious sites that aren't mine?

If you share an iCloud account with someone, or someone is signed into you iCloud account on another device, the history may sync to your personal devices.


Is it possible to use another video card into iMac 24" 2008? I have an iMac 2.8 from 2008, all works like a charm for now, but I'm lacking some GPU power from my ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro.

I checked on google and think it's a PCIe x16 card yet can't find anyone saying that upgrading this component is possible.

From the detailed info's, I can see that's plugged in by and PCIe x16, is it possible to upgrade this video card?

The 2008 iMac's use MXM Video cards. You could replace it but it's (very) expensive for not much more performances (High end models used a 8800M GTS (branded as a 8800GS).


twitter client for iPhone 3G and iOS 4.2.1 I am running iPhone 3G with iOS 4.2.1. The official client (version 4.3.1) crashes and tweetbot (version 2.4.2) does not work (http errors 4xx). Upgrade is not possible. Is there any way how to fix it or any other client? Note that I do not want to jail break my device.

I guess that it is caused by switching off of Twitter API 1.0 http://www.sitepoint.com/rip-twitter-api-1/

I can't help much with which app will work the way you want but I can direct you to list large list of compatible apps you can check out.
Support site for an app to find early apps, https://www.facebook.com/VintApps313
And VintApps421 is also coming soon.
Here is a more manual but free method,
https://sites.google.com/site/appleclubfhs/support/advice-and-articles/finding-apps-for-older-devices


iPhone-Android texting compatibility Text messages from my iPhone to my friend's Android phone do not stay in the 160 characters as sent. Sometimes they appear as two or three separate texts when they are received.

This is normal functionality and has been present on the original iPhone OS on the very first iPhone back in 2007.

What you are seeing is that the iPhone is allowing you to send messages that are longer than the SMS limit, and when you do that it automatically splits the message into the number of SMS messages required to send your message.

If your recipient has an iPhone, they just see the original un-split message as the iPhone puts it back together for the recipient.  Other devices, such as your friend's Android device, just show the discrete SMS messages in the order they were sent.


How do you enter numbers on a Mac when making a cellular voice call with iPhone? I just upgraded to Yosemite, and sometimes perform outbound cellular calls from my Mac using my iPhone. However, if I call a company that has a phone menu I have to enter specific numbers to choose from those menu options.

Is this possible, and if so, how can I do this?

Yes, it is possible. Numbers can be entered using the keyboard. The correct tones will be produced and transmitted on your Yosemite Mac.


Is there any way to turn an iPad screen off? (and not put it to sleep) I specifically I want to turn the screen off but have it continue to run whatever app is running, in my case Duet, so that I don't have to restart the app every time I wake the iPad, which I what I currently need to do with the sleep button.

Any ideas would be great. Thanks

Is there any way to turn an iPad screen off? (and not put it to sleep)

No. The way iOS is architectured, turning off iPad screen transitions the app to an inactive state. Only if your app supports iOS Background mode execution, can it continue to run.

  I want to turn the screen off but have it continue to run whatever app is running.

Only the apps that support background execution, such as music playback or VoIP calling can continue execution with the screen sleeping.


Apple Mail freezes or crashes during IMAP sync with gmail I have this problem that's been bothering me for a few weeks now. In my Apple Mail on MacBook Pro I have 4 Mailboxes. One of them is Gmail synced via IMAP.

When I open the app everything works fine for about an hour, then an exclamation point next to my Gmail inbox appears saying "Too many simultaneous connections". This is nonsense because this is the only app accessing the e-mail. I know its creating more connections in background but...

The problem is that after this hour elapses, the whole Mail app is kind of frozen. Sending e-mails stops at 80% and won't finish (even all other mailboxes) and the app doesn't synchronize all the mailboxes at all. From time to time the whole app crashes completely.

Any ideas what could be wrong and Where to look for more details about this? Anyone with similar problems? Thank you!

check this link - gmail changed their authentication method without notice, so you have to make this change.  You will get a confirmation email from gmail that seems scary - but it isn't.  You haven't just opened your email to the world as they try to scare you to believe.  Unfortunately, as usual, they don't work in concert with major software developers and we are left to pick-up the pieces as best we can.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/lCjm9oim5Vo


How to block certain IP/MAC Address that access your WiFi Network ? I can see people access into my Wifi by going into AirportUtility
Here is a list of people that are connected to Wifi at the moment.

There're 2 of them in there that I'm not sure - how they get in there ?

Goals

I would like to both of them out.
I also want to block a certain MAC Address for future access.

What I have tried

I've been playing around with the AirPort Utility, and all I can do is restrict the time access to a certain MAC address.

I also came across an app called Little Snitch, but that not exactly what I want.

Is there any Mac App that let me block/allow a certain IP address ?

On your airport extreme you can block certain mac address for good with "No Access".

In your airports configuration go to the "Network" tab and check "Enable Access Control", then click on "Timed Access Control".

Then on the top add the mac address you want to prohibit and give it a description.  Towards the bottom, On the "Wireless Access Time" drop down select "No Access" and save.

Confirmed this works on a 5th generation airport running version 7.6.4


Can I designate a wireless network that always takes precedence, if available? I suspect there may not be a way to do this, but I thought I'd check with the experts. Here's the situation:

There is a wireless network at my work (Work), and at my home (Home). However, I do some work from home, and so I have an Aruba wireless box that means the Work network is also available in my house in order to give me access to my employer's VPN.

When I'm at work during the day, I use the network Work on my iPhone. When I come home, it will always automatically connect to my VPN enabled Work network at home, rather than my Home network. And I have to remember to switch it manually.

I've tried forgetting both networks, and re-adding them in the order Home, Work, but that hasn't helped. I suspect the phone is simply connecting to the network it saw most recently.

I realize this isn't the biggest problem in the world, as I can always change it manually. But is there a way to have the phone always connect to a designated network when it's available?

You are right. There is no way of setting preferred networks on iPhone's iOS 5.


How to get Apple TV to start an iPhoto slideshow in the middle? I have a photo album in iPhoto '11.  To stream it to my Apple TV (3rd gen), I open iTunes '11 and do File > Home Sharing > Choose Photos to Share with Apple TV.  I select my photo album from the list and click Sync.

Now on Apple TV, I choose Computers > Robert's Library > Photos > My Photo Album.

I see a screen of thumbnails, all photos in the album.  I go to the top of the screen, choose Slideshow > Start Slideshow, and the slideshow starts from the first photo.

My problem is, I was showing the slideshow to my family (216 photos), and half way through we got interrupted by dinner so I stopped the slideshow.  Later, we sat down again to watch the rest, but there doesn't appear to be a way to start the slideshow from where we left off.

I tried navigating the thumbnails to the last photo we saw, and select it, but that only provides for viewing individual photos and I have to manually next-next-next through the photos to watch them.

Is there any way to start the slideshow from a specific photo in the album?

Any info or suggestions are appreciated.  Thanks!

You can use third party apps now and those make it easier to create and show slideshows from the middle. One in particular that I like is Slidez but there are others such as Storehouse. Go to the App Store and do a search from your Apple TV. Good luck.


How critical are macOS Mojave compatibility requirements? As per Apple support document, How to upgrade to macOS Mojave:

  1. Check compatibility

  You can upgrade to macOS Mojave from OS X Mountain Lion or later on
  any of the following Mac models. Your Mac also needs at least 2GB of
  memory and 12.5GB of available storage space, or up to 18.5GB of
  storage space when upgrading from OS X Yosemite or earlier.

  MacBook introduced in early 2015 or later
  MacBook Air introduced in mid 2012 or later
  MacBook Pro introduced in mid 2012 or later
  Mac mini introduced in late 2012 or later
  iMac introduced in late 2012 or later
  iMac Pro (all models)
  Mac Pro introduced in late 2013, plus mid-2010 or mid-2012 models with a recommended Metal-capable graphics card.

I am currently running macOS High Sierra on my Early 2011 MacBook Pro.

What does Apple's requirements mean for my ability to install Mojave? Is it possible or worthwhile to do so?

For an unpatched installer the requirements set forth are final. Early 2011 MacBook Pros are not supported and the installer will not work.

That does not mean that it does not work at all.

Using dosdude1's Mojave patcher you can install it easily, but with quite a number of some caveats:

  Current Issues

  Graphics anomalies: Currently, pre-metal video cards used in Mojave will produce a weird darkish grey Menu Bar and Finder sidebar when using the light theme. In the dark theme, these anomalies are not present, while other, less obvious anomalies are present (window corners may not render properly, bottom part of dock menus may have artifacts). A workaround for graphics anomalies in light mode is to enable Reduce Transparency in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display (this might create additional side effects beside the obvious loss of transpareny as some systems with pre-metal AMD graphics render the dock in dark gray).
  AMD Radeon HD 5xxx/6xxx series GPU acceleration: Currently, it is not possible to get full graphics acceleration when running Mojave on a system with a Radeon HD 5xxx or 6xxx series GPU. Mojave will be almost UNUSABLE without graphics acceleration. This includes the 15" and 17" MacBook Pro systems (MacBookPro8,2 and 8,3). If you want to enable GPU acceleration on these machines, you'll need to disable the AMD GPU (This will work on MacBook Pro 8,2 and 8,3 systems ONLY. You CANNOT disable the AMD GPU in an iMac.) Weird colors will also be produced when running Mojave with one of these video cards installed/enabled. To disable the AMD GPU on a 2011 MacBook Pro 8,2 or 8,3, follow the guide found here.

Concerning the last sentence: "To disable the AMD GPU on a 2011 MacBook Pro 8,2 or 8,3, follow the guide found here", I might add: and here ;)

Notice that disabling AMD on that machine also means losing the ability to drive a second monitor. Bad for multi-monitor setups, doing presentations… –– Also note that while the integrated Intel HD3000 will provide you with some GUI acceleration,  (but nothing like the Metal-API, as noted in Nimesh's answer) it is known to be a bit buggy, and increasingly hardware acceleration gets blacklisted by applications like Firefox, Chrome and VLC…

So, curiously: a defective discrete GPU makes a hacked Mojave install in these machines more attractive than a working one, as with a toasted dGPU you will lose less in the process.

Whether the upgrade is worth it for his machine is another issue. In a comment you wrote that

  replaced the keyboard and the battery to get more life out of my MBP. I don't want to let go of my matt screen! And all my lovely ports!

This leaves it undetermined whether you upgraded from platter hard disk to SSD. The forced conversion to APFS renders this option undesirable on hard disks. On an SSD that might be not an issue, but I still don't like APFS and regard that filesystem as immature.

Then High Sierra and even Sierra are presumably still supported for some time regarding security updates or application compatibility. From that perspective there is no need to let go of that machine right now.

As this is totally unsupported by Apple: an early 2011 MBP might break at any time with a future update from Apple. Unless you really need a 10.14-only application –– or maybe die to get darkmode? – there is currently no compelling reason to do this if you want to work with that machine.

A final piece of opinion. If you love your machine with its matte screen, new battery, new keyboard and all those lovely ports: then experience tells me that any Mac lover is well advised to not upgrade immediately to an .0-OS-release from Apple. Do not upgrade now, wait a bit.

To accomodate the more general question title:

With a patched installer these are "the real" bare minimum requirements right now:

  Requirements:

  Early-2008 or newer Mac Pro, iMac, or MacBook Pro:
  MacPro3,1
  MacPro4,1
  iMac8,1
  iMac9,1
  iMac10,x
  iMac11,x (systems with AMD Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx series GPUs will be almost unusable when running Mojave. More details are located in the Known Issues section below.)
  iMac12,x (systems with AMD Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx series GPUs will be almost unusable when running Mojave. More details are located in the Known Issues section below.)
  MacBookPro4,1
  MacBookPro5,x
  MacBookPro6,x
  MacBookPro7,1
  MacBookPro8,x
  Late-2008 or newer MacBook Air or Aluminum Unibody MacBook:
  MacBookAir2,1
  MacBookAir3,x
  MacBookAir4,x
  MacBook5,1
  Early-2009 or newer Mac Mini or white MacBook:
  Macmini3,1
  Macmini4,1
  Macmini5,x
  MacBook5,2
  MacBook6,1
  MacBook7,1
  Early-2008 or newer Xserve:
  Xserve2,1
  Xserve3,1


Is there any reason why I shouldn't install Java? I know that you can improve performance and battery life by not having Flash on your Mac. Is there any similar advantage to not installing Java?

Installing java won't have much effect on battery life.

I don't think installing Flash will have much effect either.

Where the issue is is when you hit a website with badly written flash (and to a very much less extent Java) where the animation takes up CPU but you can just leave these sites - you will be no worse off than not installing.

Java is now rare on websites and not really used for parts of the web site the user does not need.

I think a better way is to install a plugin for your browser like ClickToFlash which stops Flash loading until you tell it.


iMac Intel 21.5" EMC 2428 - Possible GPU upgrade for Catalina (Bug Sur) Is anyone familiar with the possible options for GPU upgrades for this devise?
I want to upgrade to Catalina and if possible after official patch or release by Dosdude1 to Big Sur and when I browse its website I can see with the current GPU the mac will be unusable due to missing to graphic acceleration.
Do you think this will be possible by updating the GPU?
I'll be grateful for any input.

Unfortunately, there's no viable GPU upgrade for the 2011 iMac (EMC 2428).
That year was the last year that particular vintage had a separate GPU "card;" after that (2012) they were integrated onto the logic board.
Besides the missing GPU support, there's going to be a number of missing drivers that you'll have to manually install because there are a number of discontined/deprecated components between the 2011 vintage and the 2014+ iMac (the official min. spec required).  It might make a nice project to tinker with, but if you depend on this computer, I wouldn't invest the time as it would be the equivalent of getting a classic car to use as an Über driver - you'll spend more time "fixing" than working.


How to add readable subtitles in iMovie? I'm using iMovie 10.1.13 on 2015 macbook running OX 10.14.6 I'm trying to put some subtitles below the movie to make for my poor English pronunciation or to allow viewers to view without sound.
I'm using the title section, using the "third lower part", and I create a new section for every single line of subtitles.

I change the font size, color (My background is completely white so I want to settle with all black fonts). This works well for the first titles but after inserting a few sections, the space size between characters decrease and becomes less (when previewing and full export) readable and seems to double when editing the text:
Normal pictures:

This is quite readable

This is less readable

Edit the less readable

Is there a way to preserve the character space, and keep the subtitles readable?

And it is solved! I just installed version 10.1.14 and it looks very sharp: 15 subtitles in a sequence! Strangely enough the release notes did not mention this behaviour.


Watch Mac's iSight (webcam) on another Mac over LAN I have two Macs (A MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro).

Now, I'd like to view the live picture of the webcam of one MacBook on the other. (So, I'd like to stream my webcam or, equivalently use my iSight as an IP Cam).

A nasty restriction is: I do have a router (and hence a LAN), but it's not connected to the Internet. 3G (cellular network) too is practically non-existent.

I have tried:

VLC Player: The tutorials on the net are mostly outdated (pre 2012). I tried, but I could not receive the stream. VLC would keep on telling me that it could not open it.
FFMPEG: It could find the cam and presumably stream it using RTP, but I could not find a way to watch the stream on the other Mac. (Neither with QuickTime, nor with VLC)
AtHome Video Streamer: This app only sends the image, but there is no app to watch it on the Mac. This app is only available on hendheld devices.

I am not afraid of the command line interface and also prepared to pay a couple of Euro's (Dollars, for that matter) for an app.

Try IP Cam by Senstic available on the Mac App Store (no affiliation with the developer).

This app claims to work over a private network without needing active connection to the Internet. From the app description:

  INSTRUCTIONS:

  Start IP Cam on your mac.
  Take a note on the HTTP access address shown by IP Cam.
  For Wi-Fi remote viewing, enter the same HTTP address into the web browser from another computer or iOS device on the same Wi-Fi network.


iOS Siri: How to add multiple items to Reminders? Using Siri, adding items to a Reminders list can be done one-by-one by saying, "Hey Siri, add apples to the shopping list". Naively trying "Add apples and oranges to the shopping list" results in a single item, "apples and oranges", being added to the list.

Is it possible to add multiple items with a single command?

Siri can perform only one action at a time.

So to add five different items to a shopping list you need to activate Siri five times. The same is true for other actions like “wake me up at 6 and set a timer for five minutes”.


iPhone 6plus freezes and unresponsive I have an iPhone 6 plus 128 gb and it is running iOS 8.1.3. The phone was never broken.

I noticed after the latest firmware update that it hangs and becomes unresponsive. Whenever that happens a black tent of shade covers the screen. The home button doesn't work the lock of the screen doesn't work. I always have to restart the phone.

Has anyone else experienced the same?

I haven't experienced this, but I would highly recommend reinstalling the latest iOS (iOS 8.2) onto it, by using a computer with iTunes and hooking your phone to the computer with the USB data cable.

In iTunes, it should detect an update available and ask if you would like to update.  Go ahead and update it that way.  If that doesn't work, manually download the iOS 8.2 firmware update for your device from IPSW Downloads and then, with your phone plugged into the computer via the USB Data cable, and iTunes open, hold down the shift or control key while clicking on "Update" on iTunes.  This will open a file selection dialog/window, then just select the file you downloaded (iOS 8.2 Firmware file that you downloaded from ipsw.me), and it will flash your phone with the latest version.

Hopefully this will take care of the issue.

If not, you may have to take it to an Apple store and have them fix it/replace it.


Search spotlight for iTunes music? Can I play a song from spotlight?

Maybe not default Apple feature, but is there a flashlight plugin for this or something?

Yes, you can do this natively.

Just open Spotlight as you normally would (e.g. use the commandspace shortcut) and start entering the name of the song. Spotlight will find it and you can just press enter to play it.

Notes:

You don't need to have iTunes running at the time you conduct the Spotlight search, but you do have to have the song stored locally (i.e. not in iCloud), otherwise you'll get web search results etc instead of an iTunes result.
You also have to ensure you have Music selected in the Search Results tab within Apple > System Preferences > Spotlight


Free Excel alternative for Mac OS? I need free alternative of Excel in Mac Os. I know that there is Open Office, but I am not sure if it is even supported anymore.

Any ideas?

By adding a table to Numbers, you can use Apple's replacement instead of a third party's. Numbers is free for anyone with an App Store account (which may require registration and a payment card - but no charge whatsoever).

Numbers is supported and designed to replace Excel for the majority of Mac users.


How to specify what dictionaries should be used by click and press on trackpad? When I hover on some word and force touch on it then some popup appears and there is the meaning of the selected word. Here is this popup:

How I can specify what dictionaries should be used by this tool?

Open Dictionary.app from the Applications folder, choose Dictionary → Preferences and select and reorder the dictionaries as you desire.


Is there a way for iTunes video player to play/pause when it is in/out of focus? I'm following a video tutorial, it's tedious to command+tab,spacebar when I want to pause/play a video. Is there a way for iTunes to start the video when the focused application is iTunes and pause the video when (going back to Unity game editor) iTunes is out of focus.

It would be much better if I mouse hover the video iTunes plays the video, and pause the video when the mouse leaves iTunes.

That would depend on your keyboard type, which you did not disclose.

On my MacBook Air, I use the F8 to play/pause even if iTunes is in Background.


Laravel new [project] not working despite PHP, Composer, everything working I'm trying to install laravel, but keep getting the "The Zip PHP extension is not installed. Please install it and try again." warning.

Here's the thing: I've installed php7.3, entering 'composer' into the terminal works, and the composer is in PATH (at least, it shows up when I enter echo $PATH). Also, just entering laravel shows me what I should expect to see when Laravel is installed (ex. it says the 'new' keyword is available to me to make a new Laravel application).

I just have no idea where I'm going wrong, and I've been on this for nearly 2.5 hrs now. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

(Note: anything in bold font emphasized by me)

What my terminal looks like:

--:~ $
Laravel Installer 1.3.3

Usage:
  command [options] [arguments]

Options:
  -h, --help            Display this help message
  -q, --quiet           Do not output any message
  -V, --version         Display this application version
      --ansi            Force ANSI output
      --no-ansi         Disable ANSI output
  -n, --no-interaction  Do not ask any interactive question
  -v|vv|vvv, --verbose  Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug

Available commands:
  help  Displays help for a command
  list  Lists commands
  new   Create a new Laravel application.

Adityas-MacBook-Air:~ adityaiyengar$ laravel new AdPro

In NewCommand.php line 42:

        .      .

new [--dev] [--5.2] [--] [<name>]

Adityas-MacBook-Air:~ aditya$ brew install php@7.3
Updating Homebrew...
==> Auto-updated Homebrew!
Updated 1 tap (homebrew/core).
==> Updated Formulae
jenkins

: @. ..     --
To reinstall 7.3.17, run `brew reinstall php@7.3`

Adityas-MacBook-Air:~ aditya$ laravel new project

In NewCommand.php line 42:

  The Zip PHP extension is not installed. Please install it and try again.

new [--dev] [--5.2] [--] [<name>]

Adityas-MacBook-Air:~ aditya$ echo $PATH
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Library/TeX/texbin:/usr/local/share/dotnet:~/.dotnet/tools:/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands:/Users/aditya/./vendor/bin

If you install php@7.3 with brew it won't be symlinked to /usr/local/bin. Then the system's php still is in charge. Check this with which php!. The system's php misses the zip module. Check this with php -m.

To enable brew's php@7.3 add to your current PATH (probably in ~/.zshrc, ~/.zprofile or ~/.bash_profile):

export PATH="/usr/local/opt/php@7.3/bin:....

Relaunch the Terminal and check for the proper php bin with which php (should be /usr/local/opt/php@7.3/bin/php) and whether php -m lists the php zip module.

Then enter laravel new AdPro again.

Result:

user@host ~ % laravel new AdPro
Crafting application...
Loading composer repositories with package information
Installing dependencies (including require-dev) from lock file
Package operations: 92 installs, 0 updates, 0 removals
  - Installing doctrine/inflector (1.3.1): Downloading (100%)
...
...
> Illuminate\Foundation\ComposerScripts::postAutoloadDump
> @php artisan package:discover --ansi
Discovered Package: facade/ignition
Discovered Package: fideloper/proxy
Discovered Package: fruitcake/laravel-cors
Discovered Package: laravel/tinker
Discovered Package: nesbot/carbon
Discovered Package: nunomaduro/collision
Package manifest generated successfully.
Application ready! Build something amazing.


Any free way to transfer pictures from an iPhone X to any other PC via wifi I've attempted to do task of just downloading all of an iPhone's pictures to a PC over WiFi.
Is there a way to do this for free over WiFi without going through iTunes or at least with very lightweight software?
iTunes runs extremely slowly on my computer (borderline un-usable) and prior attempts at using it to transfer the files through USB had failed.
As a temporary stopgap measure, I've been sharing the photos via multiple emails, up 20MB at a time (Gmail's limit).

There are several ways to transfer files between an iOS device and a PC for free.

Cloud storage like iCloud, OneDrive, DropBox, etc.;  with these services, there  is a “free tier” where you have a specified amount of storage space, usually 5GB.

If it must be completely free, you can sync files 5GB a time.  Files are copied to the shared folder, sync’ed, between the cloud, the device and your PC, then moved from the  PC’s sync’ed folder to another one that’s s not synced.

If you are willing to spend $1 with Apple, you can do this at 50GB a time  For $2 with OneDrive you can do this at 100GB at a time.  Simply cancel the upgraded storage at then end of the month.

SMB file sharing.  You didn’t mention which OS you’re using on your PC, so assuming Windows, you can  use  file sharing to create a shared folder on the PC then with the native Files App, connect to that share and copy the files over.

Free file sync apps like GoodSync Explorer.  There are many different ones, I selected this particular one for the high ratings and the fact it can turn your iOS device into a “server” and you can access your files via a web browser. I’m not affiliated not have I used it personally (no need)

With a little creativity and patience, you can transfer your files via WiFi.  As for “free apps” like GoodSync, I’m not a fan because nothing is free; or more colloquially, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.   What are you giving up to in exchange for that developer creating a program?  Usually it’s your private data.  Personally, I would spend a few dollars to do this securely and conveniently.
Now all that said, how “overloaded” is this PC that iTunes won’t load but your willing to store your data on it?  I suggest attending to that PC first, then using iTunes, sync your filed via USB because it’s significantly faster and more reliable.  I say this, because it sounds like you’re not backing up your iPhone at all and you should be backing it up in some way.


How not to miss the elimination of Optical Audio Output from 3rd to 4th gen Apple TV I speculate that the audio signal at the Optical Audio Out of the 3rd generation Apple TV is always the same audio signal within the HDMI output.

I further speculate that that's the reason behind eliminating the Optical Audio Out connector in the 4th generation Apple TV.

Hence one does not need to worry about losing Optical-Out when replacing an ATV3 with an ATV4 provided that either:

the TV has Audio Return Channel (ARC), which would take the audio signal from HDMI and pass it onto the receiver. (Here I'm thinking of a user who never uses the audio amplifier on the TV and who always switches the receiver on, even when watching TV.) ARC is important since you wouldn't want to keep the TV on during all the time you're just listening to music.
the receiver has HDMI input (older receivers don't). If the receiver has HDMI input/output, then the ATV4's HDMI would connect to the receiver and from there to the TV. Hence, again, the TV can remain off while you're listening to music.

Is my understanding correct? Am I missing something?

Here is the setup I have in mind:

As you can see, there is no "return" involved here. So the feature that I'm looking for could more plausibly be called "audio pass-through". This audio pass-through works fine when a TV is on (by necessity!). The question then is what guarantees there are for it to continue working when a TV is off.

The understanding in the question is correct.

With a very recent somewhat-high-end LG TV, I have been unable to find or to activate a feature that functions like Active Return Channel, nor one that is called a synonym of ARC or "pass through".

The conclusion is that when Apple omitted Optical Audio Out on the most recent Apple TV 4, they were basically assuming that those using an ATV4 to listen to music will upgrade their receiver and buy one centered on HDMI connections. Given the expected lifetime (and price) of nicer receivers, this is not necessarily a good thing, and so you may be better off with an ATV3 than an ATV4, until you're ready to upgrade your receiver.

But there is one caveat. If you stream your lossless audio files through AirPlay to an Apple TV (either 3 or 4) from your iphone, iPad, or Mac, you are not listening to lossless files on your sound system. This is fairly easy to confirm by a listening test. Presumably Apple designed things that way to conserve bandwidth (strangely, since a quick calculation will reveal that there is more than enough WiFi bandwidth to spare to transmit an audio stream with no further compression). It may even be the case that mp3 (or other lossy) files go through a compression-decompression cycle when they are sent from iOS/OS X to an Apple TV. I haven't been able to confirm this conclusively one way or the other.

Hence if you do listen to Apple-lossless files, you would not want to use AirPlay anyway (and there is no other way to go through the Apple TV). You then need a (dedicated?) iOS/OS X device hooked-by-wire to your receiver, and then it's a moot point whether your TV has ARC. It's even a moot point whether you chose Apple TV over the competition. There is of course a (significant) advantage in using a Mac rather than an iPhone/iPad since Macs provide an optical digital signal out. Using an iOS device (which would anyway be scarce on storage and would introduce its own problems if you hook additional storage) would indeed send a lossless file, but you'd still be losing by using whichever D/A converter Apple uses in their iOS devices. Whether this would be perceptible will vary from one setup to another.

Sequel question: how are things like on the Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Google Chromecast? Do any of these make it possible to transmit/receive lossless files (perhaps in the non-Apple-centric FLAC) from some device (Android, Linux, Windows, or Mac) without going through a compress-decompress cycle?


How to have ctrl-left/ctrl-right move over words in Lion Had a quick question about having emacs-like word skipping in my terminal. I had set this up pre-upgrade to Lion and had ctrl-left & ctrl-right set to \033b & \033f respectively.  Unfortunately post-upgrade ctrl-left & ctrl-right don't seem to be working any more.

I have seen this solution which makes alt-left & alt-right behave as above, but I was hoping to get ctrl-left & ctrl-right working as before and I was wondering if folks here had any solutions.

PS: As an aside this behavior is not working correctly in my VNC client as well - which it did previously.

Turns out that Mission Control(in Lion) has the same key combination to Move left a space and Move right a space - which I particularly don't have use for. Disabling this in Settings -> Keyboard Shortcuts did the trick for me.


Spotlight conversion in UK units If I type '1 pint' into Spotlight, I am told that this is equivalent to 0.47l. This is true for US units, but I am in the UK, where a pint is 0.57l. Many other imperial units, such as the gallon, are different in the UK, so this isn't a problem exclusively with pints.

I frequently make quick conversions using Spotlight for cooking and brewing, but have only recently realised that the system is set to use US unit measurements.

As far as I know, all my regional settings are set to UK, but I must have missed something somewhere. How do I tell Spotlight to use British measurements?

1 pint varies by country and Spotlight clearly does not use language settings to determine the correct value for 1 pint. It is 473 ml in USA and a few other countries.  See Wikipedia.  In Australia it is 570 ml, in the UK 568 ml, in India 330 ml and the list goes on.
I have submitted a Feedback Report to Apple FB9020879 and will report in comments what response (if any) that I get.
US measurements derive from usage in Britain before the War of Independence. The units were defined in 1707.  Britain changed some definitions in 1824 to the current Imperial units whilst the USA kept to the earlier system.  A bit like spelling changes where Britain has changed since 1776 but the USA has remained more consistent with older usage.
Just to make it harder for Apple, here in Australia, a pint glass of beer is 570 ml, except in South Australia where it is 425 ml.
I trust you don't consider this history too irrelevant in a technical forum, but @CaptainProg has referred to his interest in brewing.


Peripherals with Great Mac Compatibility What peripherals do you use on your Mac that really work well? It seems like most things (especially mice and keyboards) don't work all that well, even if they claim compatibility. I'm looking for things that work as well on a Mac as they do on a PC.

So, community, what Mac peripherals do you use that 'just work', and work all the way?
Please post answers as wiki, as I'm not looking for a particular piece of hardware.

Razer Mice
Many of their mice are fully Mac-compatible (I use the Naga). Macro running and recording works perfectly, and they can be very complex (if you want). These are the only mice I've seen that work like this on a Mac.


Turn Off Calendar Alerts for Certain Calendars I have several calendars that I need to view an access, but I don't necessarily want the alerts coming in for all of them.

Is there a way to turn off all other notifications except my account (in green above)?  What about per calendar?

They are all Gmail accounts if that helps.

I have already tried this setting but it didn't make a difference.

I have also looked at the notification settings on each calendar in Gmail, which are showing No reminders set

Open Calendar on your Mac.
In the left column list of calendars, right click (or command-I) on the calendar in question and "Get Info"
Check the box labeled "Ignore alerts"
Hit "OK"


Synology Mac OS X startup mounting folders via NFS A couple of years or so ago, I modified a script, according to a forum message, which would (I assume) automount the folders found on my Synology server, ie web, video, public, music, photo at startup time. This would then show these folders in the Finder window. I no longer have the Synology server running so as a result, whenever I restart my IMac (OS X 10.7.5) there are messages that pop up for each folder: "There was a problem connecting to the server "192.168.xxx.xxx". Now I can't remember what script I changed so I can comment out these commands. Can anyone help me?

Have you checked your User Preferences to be sure these items are not checked in the "Mount at login" box?

If they are, it's a simple matter of deleting them from the list once you have authenticated to unlock the settings.


Photos app wants to upload my library to iCloud once again After I upgraded to OS X EL Capitan, I need to turn iCloud Photo Library once again on my Macbook Pro, but once I tap on iCloud Photo library checkbox the Photos a[[ wants to upload my images once again. But every image now exist in my iCloud Photo Library. I do not want to upload this once again.

I had 5GB, my library was 25GB, So I bought a new plan with 50GB for 1$ per month. Now It wants to upload 25GB once again, but there is not enough space, so it redirect me to upgrade my iCloud storage plan to 200GB. I do not want that. All I need is to turn iCloud Photo Library on my mac once again. Is it possible? How can I do that?

What does it mean?

Had same problem, steps to start syncing again:

open system preferences
iCloud
control...
locate your Media data and click delete
it will be marked as deleted and available for download during 30 days, free space will show all of your space
go to Photos
Settings...
click [x] iCloud
now it will turn on
go back to System preferences
iCloud
Control...
locate your Media data and click Cancel Delete
be happy
let me know if that helped ;)


iPhone turning off with plenty of battery remaining Lately my iPhone 4 has been getting to 19% battery and then dropping straight to 1% and shutting off. Once I plug it back in and start it up it immediately shows up at 19%. Is this a battery or software issue?

Might be a battery calibration aka battery hardware to software communication issue where the iPhone's thinks there is more power than the battery can provide. When was the last time (before the iPhone started to just shut down at 19% battery) that you did a battery calibration as recommended by Apple.

  Use iPhone Regularly

  For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).

If you don't then what you are describing above may happen where the phone just shuts down with a random non 0% battery percentage left. If the problem still persists after doing a couple of battery calibrations then it may be that the battery or other hardware is failing, and that the iPhone should be taken to a Authorized Services provider / Apple for more attention.


Load SMS messages in vmsg format to new iphone on linux I have a backup of SMSs from an old phone in vmsg format.

What would be necessary in order to lead them on the iPhone? I am new to apple products. Can I not make a backup  of the phone and download it to my linux computer? How? If so, it would be a matter of converting the messages to other format. I take it sqlite from a bit of googling around. I am a computer programmer, this is not a problem for me. What's confusing me is the whole backup and restore policies.

Or ideally, is there a way to restore only the sms.db?

Or any other way of leading SMSs in any other format? Writing a script to convert them would not be a problem.

You really have multiple questions in one, but I'll assume the question marked in bold is your primary question:

Yes, you can make a backup of your phone and download it to your Linux computer.

From your wording it is hard to know whether you by "download" mean that the Linux computer is seperate from the computer that makes the backup, or not. In both cases this is possible:

Scenario A:

Use iTunes on your Mac to create a local backup of your iPhone.
  Afterwards use any file copying program to copy ~/Bibliotek/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ to your Linux PC.

You can copy over the network, via a USB disk, or any other ordinary way of copying files.

Scenario B:

Install libimobiledevice on your Linux PC. Depending on Linux distribution, this is normally available in your package manager.
  Use the idevicebackup tool to create a backup.

If libimobiledevice is not available in your package manager, you can download it from:

http://www.libimobiledevice.org

When you do have the backup, your SMS messages are stored in a file originally named "sms.db", which is really a SQLite3 database containing the messages.

There's no built-in support for the vmsg format in libimobiledevice. However, you could create your own tool, as you describe, to convert from vmsg into SQL statements, that you could execute to add the messages to the SQLite database. Then you can restore the backup again to transfer the messages back to the phone.


Screen dims then gets bright randomly on Mac Pro Mavericks The trouble is that both displays randomly dim to black then fade back up to normal.  The intensity, pattern, and frequency of these events are all random.

I've read comments on how to turn off "auto-adjust brightness", but I don't have that setting in preferences.  This only started since I added an adapter for converting the video to composite on the secondary controller.  I suspect that the O/S doesn't know how to handle this adapter, and is attempting to use auto-adjust brightness due to this.

Is there a way to MANUALLY turn off "auto-adjust brightness"?
(i.e. a file I can edit to make the change)

Does anyone have any other idea as to what would cause this?

There's Brightness - freeware - but I don't know if it will work on a Mac Pro, which doesn't have any brightness control built-in, like the laptops & iMacs do.

There is no adjustment at all on a Mac Pro Display Control Panel...

vs.


Weird message when I hit Send/recieve on Outlook on Mac Now this message has just had me confused for couple of days lately. I have an outlook on Mac and It does work fine for the most part(Sending and receiving the messages successfully without any problems).

However, there is a butting called Send/receive which I am used to pressing when I wan to update my inbox explicitly rather than relying on automatic updates. Now, when I do this, it pops with a message that looks like below:

I am not too sure how to get rid of this message. I am also failing to understand why does this message even exist since I clearly do have the correct credentials in the system. Any ideas?

You likely have an email stuck in the Outbox.

Outlook is nowhere near the horror show it used to be but it is a complicated beast that wouldn't know an understandable error message if it bit it.

So look down the left hand side of your Outlook window in the folders. There is likely one there called Outbox and it is in bold possibly with a "(1)" next to it.

Open the outbox and the email in it and verify that the email address is correct and any attachments are not too big for your mail service and click on the send button.

Failing that you could copy the email into a NEW message and try sending it again.

If you are otherwise sending and receiving email then you are not in offline mode and it is most likely it is an email stuck in the Outbox.


"open with" default app not working Mac OS 10.14.3 [Mojave]:

QuickTime Player is set as the default app for Finder's "open with" for .mp4 files on my Mac.  This is what I want.  But when I double-click an mp4 file, the kid3 app [a tag editor] launches instead of Quicktime Player!?

Why and how is kid3 invisibly hijacking the default app for "open with" for mp4 files? I found nothing related to this in kid3's preferences.

I sadly cannot explain this phenomenon. However, here is a hacky workaround that should resolve the issue:

Right click the app you do not want to open mp4 files, and select Show Package Contents.
Navigate to the Contents folder and locate the Info.plist file. Make a backup copy of this file, then open the original in TextEdit (or a similar program).†
Locate the section which resembles the below, and delete it. Save and close the file, and reboot your computer with "Reopen windows when logging back in" disabled.‡

<key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
<array>
    <string>mp4</string>
</array>

Replace mp4 with whatever file extension you don't want the program to open.

I've never used kid3, but this successfully prevented Fission from opening mp3 files by default, as opposed to QuickTime.

(I think you might need to bypass Gatekeeper the next time you open the app? Not sure.)

† If the file looks like gobblygook: close TextEdit, open the Terminal, type "plutil -convert xml1 " (without the quotes, but with a space at the end), drag Info.plist into the terminal window, and press enter. Info.plist should now appear correctly in TextEdit.

‡ A reboot is not strictly necessary, but serves as a quick and definite way to force macOS to recognize the change. If you don't reboot, you will have to wait some (undeterminable) amount of time for your change to take effect.


Can I configure Mission Control so any space can be summoned on any monitor? I'm new to Mac and trying to get dual display spaces to behave like my previous system.

It seems like my choices are to have up to ten dual display spaces. Or I can separate the spaces, and get five on each screen.

I'd like to have ten independent spaces that aren't bound to a particular screen. e.g. Spotify usually lives on the right because it's secondary but I like to glance at it. If I'm working on a playlist, I'd like to bring its space to the left monitor. Can I do this without moving spotify to a different space?

System Preferences → Mission Control and enable Displays have separate Spaces.

Mission Control will show different Spaces on each monitor. To move a space between monitors with this enabled, open Mission Control and drag the space to your desired monitor.


How to use Notification Center widgets on Desktop? Many times when I am working, I reference stuff from Notification center, (calculator, stocks, calendar, 3rd party, etc.). But as soon as I click on anything outside of notification center, Notification Center disappears. Is there anyway to get the widgets on the Desktop. Even better would be a window where I could movie it around.

Specs:

macOS High Sierra

You can use the Widget Simulator to use widgets in a separate window. However, this isn't available in the Applications folder or via Spotlight searches.

Using the Calculator widget as an example:

Within Finder navigate to: /System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/Resources/
Find and launch the Widget Simulator app
Now go to /System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/PlugIns/
Drag and drop the com.apple.ncplugin.calculator.appex file onto the Widget Simulator icon in the Dock
This should open the Calculator widget in a Simulator window

Now you can use the Calculator widget as you normally would and it remains open within the Simulator until you close it. This allows you to return to it after using other apps. It also allows you to use multiple Widgets simultaneously (see below screenshot showing both the Calculator and World Clock widgets open together):

Accessing Widgets

Not all Widgets are located in the same location. By default the Calculator, World Clock and Find My Friends widgets are located in:

/System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/Resources/

However, other widgets such as Stocks, Weather etc are located in:

/System/Library/CoreServices

In some cases you will need to show package contents to access them. Using Stocks as an example:

In Finder navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/
Right-click on the Stocks application and select the Show Package Contents option
In the window that appears, navigate to /Contents/PlugIns/
Now drag the Stocks extension to the Widget Simulator window (or just double-click on it)

NOTE: In the case of 3rd party widgets, these will usually be installed within the package contents of the application. That is, if you download XYZ application it'll be installed in your Applications folder. You would right-click on the XYZ application and select the Show Package Contents option and then navigate to the  /Contents/PlugIns/ folder to access the widget you can run in the Widget Simulator.


Is there a way to open files from Transmit in Sublime Text 2 as new tab, not new window? I use Transmit as FTP-client and Sublime Text 2 as text editor. When I open file from Transmit to edit it in Sublime Text 2 it opens in new window. It's pretty awkward. Is there a way to open files from Transmit in Sublime Text 2 as new tab of same editor window, not as new window at all?

You have to add the following line to your Preferences → User Settings:

"open_files_in_new_window": false


How to use a MacBook always wired like a desktop/MacMini? I have MacBook Pro 2013 (MacOS Catalina) which may no longer receive any software updates few years from now. It is not even practical to keep on buying new batteries to this old Laptop as batteries are becoming scarce too.
We know we can use the MacBook without battery but with throttled CPU speed.
I would like to use this old MacBook always wired similar to the Mac mini,But without speed throttle.
if anyone have been in a similar situation Please let me know where to start.

Sell it for parts and buy a new or used Mac mini. Or do some research and testing so see if you can live with throttling after you suss out today’s upgrade costs.
The system has to detect a healthy battery since the power supply can not provide enough power to run without throttling. Apple doesn’t do this to be mean spirited, the battery is needed for electrical reasons. You would need a different power supply and to reprogram the controller chips. A cool project, but it’s cheaper to sell the laptop for parts to someone that wants to put a battery in it. That’s a great Mac for the price of a battery. Also, as parts age or you disable the safety and management code on temperature, the risk of a melt down or premature failure goes up. Removing the battery makes a possible fire much less risky so that’s the only plus to having no battery in a portable. It might even restore stability to your setup.
Same as the drama about iPhone throttling. All CPU can over draw their battery or power supply or overheat if the laws of physics are not obeyed.
Throttling is there to maintain required voltages and temperatures, not some marketing stunt or planned obsolescence nonsense. You can measure this in a lab if you don’t trust “the man”. (And no one should blindly trust “the man”, be they Apple or Dell or Intel or some young engineer making their first chipset / home repair.)
Also, don’t overlook alternate OS. We’re starting to load unix or even “Windows” on some old Mac where we can’t run Catalina. Reuse before resell before recycle if you can.