During Dictionary Attack, how can I Capture the attempted usernames and passwords? I have several nefarious individuals attempting to gain access to my servers constantly with VNC, presumably using some kind of dictionary attack against the password.

Is there a way to get a log of the actual attempts being made inclusive of the VNC password or in this case the macOS username and password being attempted?

I can see the logged attempts at the connections in my firewall software... just not the actual data from the attempts by 45.115.39.125, 185.148.147.101... (the most persistent two).

I don't know an answer to the question you asked, but from an IT security best practices perspective:

Run VNC on a local interface only. Use a key-based vpn or ssh tunnel to access the local interface remotely.

Is there a reason you need to run VNC on a non-secure interface?


How to find the currently connected network service from the command line? I would like to find out which of the available network services (e.g. Ethernet or Wi-Fi) is currently active. In this screenshot from the Network Preferences, you can see that Wi-Fi is currently active (the green dot):

How can I get that information from the command line?

The networksetup command allows me to list the available network services:

$ networksetup -listallnetworkservices
An asterisk (*) denotes that a network service is disabled.
Ethernet
FireWire
Wi-Fi

It can also show some details on the service, like the device name:

$ networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder
An asterisk (*) denotes that a network service is disabled.
(1) Ethernet
(Hardware Port: Ethernet, Device: en0)

(2) FireWire
(Hardware Port: FireWire, Device: fw0)

(3) Wi-Fi
(Hardware Port: Wi-Fi, Device: en1)

Unfortunately, the info on which service is active (the green dot from the screenshot) is not available in this info. Is there another command that I could use to get this information?

Put it all together, I wrote a script to accomplish this task:
#!/bin/bash

while read -r line; do
    sname=$(echo "$line" | awk -F  "(, )|(: )|[)]" '{print $2}')
    sdev=$(echo "$line" | awk -F  "(, )|(: )|[)]" '{print $4}')
    #echo "Current service: $sname, $sdev, $currentservice"
    if [ -n "$sdev" ]; then
        ifout="$(ifconfig "$sdev" 2>/dev/null)"
        echo "$ifout" | grep 'status: active' > /dev/null 2>&1
        rc="$?"
        if [ "$rc" -eq 0 ]; then
            currentservice="$sname"
            currentdevice="$sdev"
            currentmac=$(echo "$ifout" | awk '/ether/{print $2}')

            # may have multiple active devices, so echo it here
            echo "$currentservice, $currentdevice, $currentmac"
        fi
    fi
done <<< "$(networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder | grep 'Hardware Port')"

if [ -z "$currentservice" ]; then
    >&2 echo "Could not find current service"
    exit 1
fi

The script first get a service list from networksetup command, then check if each service is in active status from ifconfig.
Name the script to networkservice.sh for example, then execute it to get the current network service you are on.
$ bash networkservice.sh
USB 10/100/1000 LAN, en4, 00:e0:4a:6b:4d:0c
Wi-Fi, en0, 8c:85:90:a0:4b:ec


New Lion MacBook Air Address Book deletes all entries from MobileMe Contacts on sync Start with a new MacBook Air running Lion. Configure it's address book to synchronize with MobileMe.  The MobileMe contacts list has 374 items, synched from another Mac running Snow Leopard.

After invoking Sync on the MBA, all items are deleted from the MobileMe Contacts, and the MBA Address Book has just two entries: Apple, and the MBA user account.

This behavior is the same whether the user chooses Merge or Replace Data on This Machine.

The desired result is for the MBA to be updated with the 374 items in MobileMe.

Any suggestions?

I have a similar issue here, but not involving MobileMe.
I
've been struggling to see any of my iPhone 4 (running iOS 5 beta4) contacts appear in Lion's Address Book. It's all empty, whatever I do through iTunes (10.5 beta 4) (either manual syncing of Contacts, or by using iCloud).

At least all my contacts are still on the iPhone...  but i'm stuck with a beautiful new Address Book on Lion which has 0 contacts... (or just that "Apple Inc" and "Me" contact cards)..


What happened to Preview's "Markup.appex"? There's a Markup app extension in Mojave--it's clearly installed, because I can use it. Where did it go, though? It used to be in /Applications/Preview.app/Contents/Plugins/ in past versions of macOS, but it's not there anymore.

Right-clicking on the Markup extension in System Preferences > Extensions offers a "show in Finder" option, which yields:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/PlaceholderMarkUp.appex


Is it possible to export safari's reading list on Safari 5.1? Subject sums it up. Just curious if there is a trick to be able to export your reading list from Safari, any format. Where on the HD is the info stored? bookmarks.plist?

You can convert it into XML in a Terminal/command window using:

cd ~/Library/Safari/
cp Bookmarks.plist Bookmarks.plist.xml
plutil -convert xml1 Bookmarks.plist.xml


MacBook Pro kernel panic after speaker change I have recently changed the speakers of my 13" retina MacBook Pro(Mid 2014, MacOS Sierra) and after few days my Macbook crashed while scanning a document using an HP printer which was connected via USB cable. It was not responding to the power button. I went to apple service center, there they removed the connection of battery from the motherboard. Afer that MacBook started responding to the power button. But it is not working as it used to. It is repeatedly restarting without any warning and display is flickering.

When I start MacBook in Safe Mode it works really well. So, I looked at panic logs. I can see after loading com.apple.driver.AudioAUUC while booting MacBook restarted. In safe mode the sound is not enabled and it is working well without any problem, so I think, and please correct me if I am wrong, the problem lies in AudioAUUC. Is there any way I force MacOS to not load these problematic drivers while booting normally? Any help is really appreciated.

Please find part of panic logs below:

Mac OS version:
16F73

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 16.6.0: Fri Apr 14 16:21:16 PDT 2017; root:xnu-3789.60.24~6/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: FB2170A8-257D-3C64-B14D-BC06CC94E34C
Kernel slide:     0x0000000012600000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff8012800000
__HIB  text base: 0xffffff8012700000
System model name: MacBookPro11,1 (Mac-189A3D4F975D5FFC)

System uptime in nanoseconds: 24172689777
last loaded kext at 12185909650: com.apple.driver.AudioAUUC 1.70 (addr 0xffffff7f956b8000, size 28672)
loaded kexts:
com.apple.driver.AudioAUUC  1.70
com.apple.filesystems.autofs    3.0
com.apple.driver.pmtelemetry    1
com.apple.iokit.IOUserEthernet  1.0.1
....

To solve this problem, I needed to find out a way to install drivers one by one to see what causes the display to flicker and OS to crash. I did not a find an easy way to do this in Mac OS. So I installed Windows 10 on MacBook Pro without using Bootcamp. I downloaded Bootcamp support software from Apple website. I did not install all drivers from this support software at once. Instead, I installed drivers one by one and verified if it is causing any problem. After hours of investigation, I found out that as soon as Intel Iris Device Driver is installed operating system crashes. To get MacBook working again, I had to find a way in which I could force operating system from loading these device drivers. Even if I do not install these drivers manually, windows would download drivers and install it for me. To make sure windows do not download these drivers, I did three things.

First, I made sure windows will not install drivers for the faulty hardware.
Second, I disabled automatic driver download and install.
Third, I changed my wifi connection to metered.

Now everything is working. But I am using Windows 10 instead of MacOS. Windows 10 saved me from replacing logic board on my MacBook Pro. Windows 10 supports bash, so I feel at home.


Connect two iMacs and an LED Cinema Display to MacBook Pro In my office I have a brand new Thunderbolt-equipped iMac, an older iMac (Mini DisplayPort), and an LED Cinema Display (Mini DisplayPort). I want to connect these three displays to my MacBook Pro with Retina display. Is there any way I can do that?

The office also has other iMacs and Cinema Displays of varying ages and technologies available for use. If there is no possibility of making my current setup work, is there any conceivable configuration that would make three displays possible?

The Retina MacBook Pro (13 and 15) both allow for two external monitors using either both Thunderbolt Ports (and correct adapters) or two external monitors (one using HDMI to correct adapter and the other Thunderbolt to adapter).

In both cases, three displays work - the retina display and two external monitors. To add a third display, you'll need a USB display card (there are many and some are cheaper than $30 with performance to match the price) or a software solution to drive the iMac over VNC or similar networked protocol.

Out of the box, the Retina MacBook Pro are not designed to run three external displays so you'll need something extra to make things work.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219#dispnum

See note 4 in the above article for RMBP details.


Suppress load screen when using rEFIt? I have rEFIt installed.  Is there any way to choose a default OS to launch which would in turn suppress the load screen from showing up when you start up the computer?

I'm looking for a way to make it more like the native boot loader of Mac OS X's. Where by default it will launch the last OS you ran without showing you the menu. The menu will only be shown if you hold down option while the computer starts up.

If there's no way to do this, is there a way to customize the time it automatically selects the OS to boot? That is, by default I believe you have 20 seconds to choose an OS. Failure to do so will cause the highlighted OS to launch. I would like to change this 20 second interval to something like 2 seconds.

At the moment there is no such option in rEFIt. It has been requested, but there has been no acknowledgement of implementing it.

You could always participate in developing the application and thus getting the feature implemented :)


OS X Kindle App: Where are the books located? I was expecting to find .epub or .prc files on my hard-disk, but didn't. Does anyone know: Where are the ebooks that the official Kindle App downloads located?

These files are now (October 2012) stored in:

~/Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/Data/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content/

If they move again you can find them by running the command:

find  . -name *.azw


How many CPUs can be assigned to a Parallels Desktop VM? I have an iMac with the quad core i7 CPU which shows up in Mac OS X as an eight core CPU (thanks to Hyper Threading, I think). Parallels Desktop allows me to assign 1-8 cores to the Windows VM that I'm running. How would changing that number affect the Host OS performance? Currently I have 2 cores assigned to the VM, but it is unclear how Parallels manages them. Are those the real cores or the virtual cores? I always see only 4 cores being used in Mac OS X, the remaining 4 (I guess those are the virtual ones) never show any activity.

For example - can I assign all 8 cores to the VM and still use Mac OS X? Say I'd like this for gaming (w/o going to Boot Camp), etc.

Or if I assign 3 cores, 5 cores - real processors always have either 1 or some even number of cores.

You have a lot of cores, and hyperthreading makes it appear to the system that you have twice as many. The reason you may not ever see activity on half your cores is because the system is not utilizing them. While the system may be multiprocessor aware, not necessarily will every application you run. Today's processors are very very fast, which means that most of your cores will sit idle most of the time unless you're doing something really really interesting.

If you want to see your cores being utilized, try this google search, which returns multicore aware Mandelbrot set generators. Another suggestion is to try downloading HandBrake and installing and setting it to transcoding some large wmv9 files with deblock and denoise, set to maximum for good measure, but don't expect nice transcodes with those settings; its just something for your cores to chew on so you can watch in Activity Monitor that you can set processes that will use all cores. If you're not satisfied, run multiple instances of these applications. What I used to do to see the cores utilized is launch a ridiculous number of Chess.app instances and set them all to playing against the computer. If you want to try this, have /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app open, and open  /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and enter this line, hit return, hit the up arrow and repeat over and over until you think you have enough instances running to work your processors,:

 /Applications/Chess.app/Contents/MacOS/Chess &

Regarding Parallels, I searched the forums and the documentation. Interestingly, neither the User Guide, nor the Data Sheet, nor any list of features that I could find say anything about how many cores you can assign to each VM. I believe this may be to how things get created in parallel, and while there were issues with multicore in previous versions (if the number of forum posts regarding it are any indication), perhaps they decided to move forward with publishing documentation sans any mention of the abilities to utilize multiprocessor/multicore.

That being said, I found some other sources for you that answer your question

  How many CPUs can be assigned to a Parallels Desktop VM?

definitively:

according to a wikipedia page comparison between Fusion and Parallels:

  Up to 8 processors per VM & Multi Core

according to lowendmac

  In comparison, Fusion 5 and the current version of Parallels support up to 8 CPUs and 8 GB of RAM.

according to macworld

  Both Windows and Linux guest operating systems can be installed via an easy installer, and Parallels supports up to eight virtual CPUs, and 64-bit versions of Windows and Mac OS X Server.

Please bear in mind this last citation is for Parallels 5, which should be good news, as subsequent versions of Perallels will only increase the features and hopefully the robustness of the application.

FWIW, while I have switched to Open Source software for virtualization, I was an early adopter of Parallels and found their support to be excellent. They took good care of me and answered all of the many questions and problems I encountered in timely fashion. That was some time ago (~2005/6 during beta, and the release of 3.0), and I have heard complaints since then, but that was not my personal experience with their forums or their phone support. So I have encouraged others to register and seek help and answers to technical questions there. I would recommend you do this to hear from the source exactly what you want to know regarding how Parallels handles multiprocessing/multicore.

  can I assign all 8 cores to the VM and still use Mac OS X?

Yes, absolutely, OS X is very good at handling resources. It is possible you may not even notice much is happening. I have myself a rather anemic (by today's standards) core2duo, and with 15 instances of HandBrakeCLI running transcodes, and both my puny cores maxed out, I really couldn't notice anything from the desktop while I continued to surf and use other day to day applications. I did keep an eye on how much memory was being used, and I didn't even get close to maxing my 8GB of RAM, nor did I notice any swapping. But if you have a slow (4200 rpm) harddrive, I think you'll probably notice something.


Shortcut to the top in Terminal on macOS I want to check top line in the Terminal.app after working on it for all day long.

How to scroll back to top in a quick way?

On a MacBook or an Apple keyboard, press fn + ← to scroll to the top and fn + → to scroll to the bottom.


How do I use Applescript with Keynote? My first Problem: For some reason the Applescript Editor is not able to pick up events when recording from Keynote'09 (I already turned on the acessibility options). The Editor stays blank for all actions I perform. It works perfectly for things like Finder though.

The resulting problem: I still want to tell Keynote to export presentations so I made this Script:

set thisFile to "/Users/ks/Desktop/test.key"
tell application "System Events"
    tell application "Keynote"
        activate
        open thisFile
        set frontmost to true
        click menu item "Export&#8230;" of menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
    end tell
end tell

This script will choke on the last line (the one with "click menu item") when being saved saying: "expected end of line but found class name" and "menu item" will be highlighted. I don't know how to fix that. Any suggestions? I see code all over the web doing the exact same thing. Is this a version Issue because its Keynote '09?

The following works for me:

set thisFile to "/Users/danielbeck/Downloads/test.key"
tell application "System Events"
    tell application "Keynote"
        activate
        open thisFile
    end tell
    tell process "Keynote"
        click menu item "Export…" of menu of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
    end tell
end tell

Changes:

activate makes the application frontmost, AFAICT.
GUI scripting requires the process of application "System Events", not the application of the same name.
You need to enter the actual ellipsis character … (Opt-; on International layout) instead of the HTML entity.


Does the iPad draw more current when charging? I seem to be able to charge my iPhone 5 on a variety of USB chargers (car ones included). My iPad retina (iPad 4) seems to be very fussy about which chargers it will actually charge up on. (The charging icon will come on, but the charge won't increase even after two hours).

My question is, what causes this? Does the iPad draw more current when charging?

The recommended power for an iPad charger is 12W.
The power of the iPhone charger is 5W.

So you should get the iPad charger to charge your iPad.


Will OTA (Over-the-Air) updates download when tethered? I have a wifi-only iPad, and I understood (or, have heard) it will automatically download iOS system updates when connected to wifi.

Will iOS automatically download an OTA (Over-the-Air) update when it is tethered to an iPhone (via iPhone wifi or bluetooth)?

Yes, you can download the update while tethered to the iPhone via WiFi.  But to clarify, it won't ever automatically download the update without user intervention.

This article from OSXDaily details some further workarounds to this issue.


Can I play Blu-ray discs directly on a MacBook using an external drive? Is is possible to use an external drive to play Blu-ray discs on a MacBook? It has a Core2Duo processor and 9400m graphics.
does it need any software, either paid or free?

Yes it is possible. VLC will play Blu-ray discs once you have installed the necessary extras. Info and links to the files you need here...


How can I delete an app where no one realises I have downloaded it? Basically there are apps which I will download, like Instagram, and delete it when I’m done for the day. But when I go back to the app store there is a cloud and an arrow on it which means I have downloaded it before but I don’t want that therefore my children not to see it. Is there a way of me deleting the app without it showing that I have downloaded it before?

There is no way to hide the download. You can hide it from the purchased list but the cloud will still appear.

A solution:

Give your kids their own Apple ID’s, change your Apple ID password and device password.


Screen mirroring and image resize I have two questions about this topic.
1) Suppose my MBP is connected to the TV via HDMI (TV is 55 inch). Can I resize to, say 27 inch or anything less than the actual size of the TV?
2) I have two MBP (2012 and 2009). If MBP_1 is connected to the TV via HDMI, can I project the desktop of MBP_2 to the TV via MBP_1?

Q1: The screen resolution of an external monitor is independent from the internal monitor, when you open display preferences the display preference pane is shown on every monitor. If you set up screen mirroring the resolution is set to that of the smallest screen unless you make it smaller. Note: the size of the tv is relatively irrelevant, it's the resolution that matters (probably it's full hd 1920x1080). If you plan to view it via RDP you probably won't have any issues using a computer with an HD monitor.

Q2: To project the screen of MBP2 on TV through MBP1 all you have to do is set up screen sharing (on MPB2) from the sharing preference pane, connect through Finder and drag and drop the window displaying MBP2's screen to the TV.


iPhone 4 Email Reply Button Missing? I just got this phone yesterday and was checking my yahoo email account. I can read mail from individuals, but he reply/forward/trash buttons are missing from the page?  How can I restore them?

Missing from what page?

At the bottom of an email message, this little arrow is for Reply, Forward, Print.


iTunes cannot sync photos to the iPhone because your iPhoto library is not yet available How to fix this issue and sync iTunes to iPhone correctly?

OS X Yosemite, iPhoto 9.6.1, iTunes 12.4.3.1; iPhone 5, iOS 9.3.3

I imported my pictures to iPhoto then tried to sync some unrelated changes to the iPhone through iTunes and got this error message. Restarting iPhoto and iTunes didn't help this time.

Disclaimer: I found the solution to this specific issue and I'm using this space to share it with others. Other solutions may be valid on different situations. I remember fixing this once by restarting the Mac.

Here are some links related to this problem with some "heavy weight" solutions I didn't try this time:

http://osxdaily.com/2013/06/30/itunes-not-syncing-iphone-ipad-ipod-fix/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6831863
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7180697

After restarting both iPhoto and iTunes a few times and trying it again, eventually I decided to (1) delete the previously imported photos on iPhoto:

Since I didn't want to delete them, (2) I created a new album with them and, once back to iTunes, (3) checked the new album to be sync'ed back to the iPhone.

It worked!


omnigraffle Keyboard shortcuts missing I have been trying to adjust the keyboard shortcuts for omnigraffle and for some reason they are completely gone. I am really not sure how this happened but I can not get my zoom keys to work. This is driving me nuts. Any ideas how to fix this?

The docs at omnigraffle show they should be there.  Help?

From https://discourse.omnigroup.com/t/keyboard-shortcuts-missing/6295/2...

  Try using ⇧⌘< and ⇧⌘>. Some, but not all, keyboards require the use of the shift key to get the greater-than and less-than symbols.


What is Symantec Auto-Protect I found some 3rd-party preference-panes in my macOS 10.15.7 Catalina, one is 'NTFS for MAC OS X' but I know what it is, the thing I want to know is 'Symantec Auto-Protect':
'SymantecSAQuickMenu.prefPane'
'SymAutoProtect.prefPane'
I am wondering if someone know what they are, I can't open them because 'System Preferences' says that it will harm my computer (Avast didn't mind when I scanned), it doesn't give a way to allow from 'Security & Privacy.'
Any luck?

Symantec is the company who makes Norton Anti-Virus & also Symantec End-Point protection.
If you have another antivirus product on your Mac - Avast - then you should completely uninstall Norton &/or Symantec [Symantec may have been installed as part of a corporate package, in which case you'd need to check with the relevant IT department].
Having two live-scanning* antivirus products on one machine is bad - they can fight each other.
This doesn't include such as Malwarebytes Free, which does not live-scan.


Folders on top, on desktop Is it possible to get 'folders on top' on the desktop (too) by any plist file hack or third-party app?

My desktop (OS X Mavericks) is a bit cluttered and I've already sorted them on kind, but all .AI, .PSD, .INDD, .PNG, .JPG, .HTML files come first. I'm already able to sort them on top in Finder, via a third-party addon for Finder, but I need it even more on my desktop.

You can sort your Desktop as you can do it with your Finder folder structure.

  Just sort by "Tags" and thats it:

In my tests, folders are showen before other files.
But of course, if you have Tags given, it gets sorted differently.

So three solutions:

Give specific Tags and sort by Tags
Give non Tags and sort by Tags
Give your folder names starting with "_" or "#" and sorty by Name


Can mount afp share via mount_afp but not via Autofs Current system, OSX 10.9.5

I've followed the instructions in this MacWorld hint and by reading the Apple doc for Autofs and several other places but I can't get autofs to automagically mount a remote AFP share on my NAS box:

$ sudo ls -l /private/etc | grep auto
-rw-r--r--   1 root   wheel     149 28 Jun 09:35 auto_home
-rw-r--r--   1 root   wheel     256 24 Oct 13:39 auto_master
-rw-r--r--@  1 root   wheel      97 24 Oct 13:39 auto_nas
-rw-r--r--   1 root   wheel    1935 28 Jun 09:35 autofs.conf

/etc/auto_master

#
# Automounter master map
#
/-                                  auto_nas    -nosuid  # this one is mine
+auto_master                        # Use directory service
/net                                -hosts      -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home                               auto_home   -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers                    -fstab
/-                                  -static

/etc/auto_nas

/Users/USER/Shares/Public   -fstype=afp afp://USER:PASSWORD@nasbox.local/Public

The permissions on the Shares directory:

$ ls -al /Users/USER | grep Shares
drwxr-xr-x    3 USER  staff     102 24 Oct 13:31 Shares

I've put nasbox.local in /etc/hosts and can ping it fine. I update the automount (I've also rebooted, no dice).

$ sudo automount -vc
automount: /net updated
automount: /home updated
automount: no unmounts

and…

$ cd /Users/USER/Shares/Public
cd:cd:13: no such file or directory: /Users/USER/Shares/Public

but, if I use mount_afp it mounts the directory fine:

$ mkdir /Users/USER/Shares/Public
$ mount_afp afp://USER:PASSWORD@nasbox.local/Public /Users/USER/Shares/Public

$ ls -l /Users/USER/Shares/Public
total 3718056
long list of file follows…

Would anyone know what part of the incantation I'm missing to get the magic to work? I've tried all the obvious stuff like making the Public directory prior to mount, and changing permissions to it and Shares, using direct maps, indirect maps, wildcards… I've still not got this to work :-/

Any help or insight will be much appreciated.

Please create a folder Share in the User folder and change your auto_master to

/etc/auto_master

#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master                        # Use directory service
/Users/User/Share           auto_nas
/net                                -hosts      -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home                               auto_home   -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers                    -fstab
/-                                  -static

and

/etc/auto_nas

Shared_Folder -fstype=afp afp://User:Password@ip/Shared_Folder

enter sudo automount -vc in Terminal with the output:

$ sudo automount -vc
automount: /Users/User/Share updated
automount: /net updated
automount: /home updated
automount: no unmounts

Please regard the additional output: automount: /Users/User/Share updated

Both files need a trailing empty line or it won't work and you'll get the following error:
automount[pid]: map /etc/auto_master: line too long (max 4095 chars) or
automount[pid]: map /etc/auto_nas: line too long (max 4095 chars)

(all tested and verified with a 10.9.5 client and 10.7.5 server)


Toggle the keyboard language by *holding* a button? On my Linux computer, my keyboard switches from English to Serbian when I hold the Caps Lock key. For example, to write č all I have to do is hold Caps Lock, and press the key where č is on the Serbian keyboard (in this case, they key is ; on the English keyboard). When I release Caps Lock, the keyboard  "switches back" to English, so that if I press ; I get ; as desired. Super useful.

Is there a way to replicate this behavior on OS X?

You can use KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <vkchangeinputsourcedef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_SERBIAN</name>
    <inputsourceid_equal>com.apple.keylayout.Serbian</inputsourceid_equal>
  </vkchangeinputsourcedef>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F1, KeyCode::VK_NONE, Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_SERBIAN, Option::KEYTOKEY_AFTER_KEYUP, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_ENGLISH</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_ENGLISH is defined in inputsourcedef.xml. You can see the IDs of input sources from EventViewer.app. Caps lock can be remapped to an F-key with PCKeyboardHack.


iPhone 4S with latest update now charges very slowly My iPhone 4S (iOS 6.1.x) dropped it's charge today.  It now is charging very slowly.  I deleted my iCloud account to see if that would improve battery life.  It still is charging slowly, and has taken about 3 hours to charge 37%.

Is there something I can do to "fix" this battery life problem?

Plug it in and then power it off.

The charging circuitry runs from the firmware and not the OS - so you will either get a full charge and have a chance to reboot it in 2 or 4 hours to check on the charge status or know where the failure lies.

It's most likely a temporary CPU hog draining charge as fast as it can accumulate and a simple reboot (hold the home button, slide to power off, restart once it shuts down normally) is generally going to clear this up.


Can I view my Xbox 360 Screen on my Mac by using an HDMI to minidisplay port adapter? Or can I not have input into the Macbook?

You cannot use the minidisplay port for input. Your best chance to get video input on your Mac is by using a video capture device (from Elgato for example).


How to use Internet Sharing AND File Sharing? My setup at office is:

Internet -> AirportExtreme --(wifi)--> AirportExpress --(eth1)--> MacPro1 --(eth2)--> MacPro2

MacPro1 has Internet Sharing enabled, allowing MacPro2 to be online.

But MacPro2 does NOT see any of the shared Macs on the network.

I tried changing the IP address manually on MacPro1, so it's the same subnet, but that didn't work.

I tried changing the DHCP server on AirportExtreme from default 10.0.1.x to 192.168.2.x (to match the IP that MacPro2 was getting from MacPro1), so then MacPro1 got a 192.168.2.x address on eth1; but then MacPro2 became 192.168.3.x !

How can I get MacPro2 visible on the local network? It can't "see" OR "be seen" by any of the Macs on the 192.168.2.x network.

However, if I MANUALLY connect from Finder to a 192.168.2.x address, then I can connect to other machines.

Thanks!

Internet sharing on MacPro1 is acting as a router and doing NAT. The protocol used for discovery of other Macs on the 192.168.2.x network probably doesn't cross routers, which is normally what you want on a local network. The best way to fix this is to put an Ethernet switch or hub between MacPro1 and AirportExpress. Then plug both MacPro1 and MacPro2 into the switch.

If you don't want to use additional hardware (the original question didn't mention this), you need some way to get bonjour (OSX's discovery protocol) across the NAT/Routing function of Internet Sharing. There a few of Bonjour proxy/forwarder-type applications and IIRC, the "Sharing" system preferences has a global mode. Finally you might look into implimenting your own DNS Service Discovery server.

Unfortunately, I don't have experience with any of these.  I guess this isn't really an answer, but maybe it'll point you in the right direction.


Set the hostname/computer name for macOS I have a local network at home. This network contains 5 laptops. One of the laptops is a Mac with macOS 10.8 on it. The other has a Linux installed, all others run Windows.
When trying to open my router and check "Connected devices", under the IP address of this Mac I see following:
Host Name - some IPV6 address
What I'd rather prefer to see is some meaningful name so that I can use that in the /etc/hosts file in Linux laptop. And also I'd like to check the computer name so that the /etc/hosts line was proper.

Setting the Mac hostname or computer name from the terminal

  Open a terminal.
  Type the following command to change the primary hostname of your Mac:
  This is your fully qualified hostname, for example myMac.domain.com

sudo scutil --set HostName <new host name>

  Type the following command to change the Bonjour hostname of your Mac:
  This is the name usable on the local network, for example myMac.local.

sudo scutil --set LocalHostName <new host name>

  If you also want to change the computer name, type the following command:
  This is the user-friendly computer name you see in Finder, for example myMac.

sudo scutil --set ComputerName <new name>

  Flush the DNS cache by typing:

dscacheutil -flushcache

  Restart your Mac.


iTunesConnect no longer allows tester gmail with plus sign? In the past, I used to use the same Gmail address for testing in-app purchasing (sandbox testing) by adding + sign to my email. For example, myemail+testapp@gmail.com

Now I am no longer able to create such user as I get the error:

  This email address is not available for use as an Apple ID. You may already have an Apple ID associated with this address. Please try again or sign in using your existing Apple ID.

I read that Google did not disable this as I can still us it on other places. But not any more on iTunesConnect Sandbox user page.

Can anyone confirm this?

Is there a way around this aside from creating a new Apple ID for each new tester?

I am seeing the same thing. It's weird because the title of the validation popup says that the password is the problem.

For what it's worth I'm using a temporary email provider and just generating a new email each time I need one.


iTunes Redownload Music I have purchased an album in iTunes, but it still shows the price in the store. Does this mean that the next time I want to redownload the music I'll need to pay for it again?

I have experienced purchased apps with iTunes, and I didn't need to repurchase the items. But for the music album, I'm not sure about the rules of purchase.

A while back (maybe two years ago), I ran into the same situation.  I had to e-mail apple support before I could re-download it.  They warned me, saying that I should make backups, and that next time I would have to purchase the music again.  As it turns out, I actually did lose the music a second time (because I was an idiot), and sure enough they wouldn't let me re-download it.

Perhaps their policy has changed now that cloud computing was so prevalent, but it may be worth a try e-mailing them.


Can iPhone 12 be used safely in pouring rain? After some googling, I see many articles on circumstances where an iPhone can be used, but none that say definitely that is perfectly okay to actually do so (or whether it's risky to do so). Also problematic is that most of the top google results come from news paper websites, which are not technical in nature, and therefore not the best sources of such specific questions, and often word sentences to avoid committing to any specifics (and worse, some are speculative i.e. written before the details were released by apple!).
Question: if it's pouring rain and you're going out into it, can you continue a phone conversation while walking in that rain?
Assumptions

That the device should be thoroughly dried afterward before charging or using any any peripherals

If your iPhone has been exposed to liquid, unplug all cables and do not charge your device until it’s completely dry ..  allow at least 5 hours

That the rain is falling like normal (i.e. it is not pressurised)

To prevent liquid damage, avoid .. pressurised water or high-velocity water, such as when showering, water skiing, wakeboarding, surfing, jet skiing and so on

According to the Technical Specifications of the iPhone 12, the splash, water, and dust resistance is rated as follows:

Rated IP68 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes) under IEC standard 60529

(I picked the minimum ratings - iPhone 12 as a baseline)
What does this mean?
IP68 ratings means the following:

The first digit, 6:  Protection from contact with harmful dust
The second digit, 8: Protected from immersion in water with a depth of more than 1 meter (manufacturer must specify exact depth)

For dirt and debris, this means that some dust that's kicked up from a gust of wind is fine.  Going through a sand storm in the desert is not.  As for water, this means you can safely submerge your phone in water about 18 feet deep (deep end of a pool) for about 30 mins (10 mins longer than the 20 required for you to stay out after you eat).
Can you go swimming with it? Not really. These ratings are for water and it doesn't cover chemicals like chlorine or the salinity of ocean water. Can you drop it in your tankard of ale? Nope. It's not certified for booze.
Can you use it in the shower? It depends, if it's just the standard (builder) shower head that you get "with the house" you're probably fine.  If it's a fancy massaging shower head that pressurizes the water with those oh, so pleasing pulsing jets of water, then no.
As for a rain storm, if you get wet while in a light to moderate shower, you should be fine. But if you're thinking of continuing your conversation in an all day downpour or while you report on a hurricane/tropical storm making landfall, then no, it won't survive. Remember, even submerged, there's a maximum amount of time it can stay submerged.
TL;DR
It's water resistant not water proof. Apple's technical specifications tells us exactly what the resistance levels to dust and water are. If you happen to get wet (in the rain) while using your phone, you should be fine. They tell you how to dry it off and how long to do so before charging because water conducts electricity. This is to prevent short circuits when connecting up to 20V to your phone.
Besides, talking in a heavy downpour is logistically next to impossible. It's loud - the person on the other end will have difficulty hearing you as you will with your caller. As a resident of Florida, I can attest that a severe downpour while sheltered is still very difficult to hold a conversation.
If you're using the phone in the shower....that's a whole different conversation for a different Stack Exchange site.


Want to add keyboard shortcut to open selected file with specific mac app I want to select a file and press a key combo to open the selected file with a specific application that's installed on my mac running Catalina. I don't want to always open this file type with this program so I can't create default settings.

Is there any way to map keyboard shortcut like the above? Please advise. Thanks!

I have seen similar mappings done in Karabiner - a more flexible system for mapping keys. It allows even funny mappings - like on the right shift key, or functions that happen if you hold a key.
But they require some scripting and while it's easy to get something that works on my machine only its hard to figure out something sharable. I will outline what I think needs to be done.

Karabiner a feature called "Complex modifications" that allows this. I find the documentation sparse but it's simple enough to figure out.

There is a number of pre-made mappings where the code can be inspected at comples_modifications (use the "show JSON" that reveals when you click the triangle next to "import").

Custom mappings can be just put under ~/.config/karabiner/assets/complex_modifications and can then be imported.

The launch app mappings all have a line like this:

"shell_command": "open '/Applications/TextEdit.app'"

All that's missing is the selected file.

oh-my-zsh has a function that does this.
It's rather short, here in full:

pfs () {
    osascript 2> /dev/null <<EOF
    set output to ""
    tell application "Finder" to set the_selection to selection
    set item_count to count the_selection
    repeat with item_index from 1 to count the_selection
      if item_index is less than item_count then set the_delimiter to "\n"
      if item_index is item_count then set the_delimiter to ""
      set output to output & ((item item_index of the_selection as alias)'s POSIX path) & the_delimiter
    end repeat
EOF

From the command line a command like this works:

open -a TextEdit $(pfs)

All that would be left is to figure out how to get the pfs definition into Karabiner...
I will leave that as exercise to the interested reader


iPod nano 7th generation app development What programming language does the iPod nano 7th generation use? I would like to develop an app for my own iPod nano 7th generation.

The iPod nano uses a custom OS for which Apple has not made any documentation available, nor is there any way to load apps onto a nano. Only apps developed by Apple are available on the nano.


Apple Watch: Can it be configured to only send outgoing calls? I would like to configure an Apple Watch so that it can only send outgoing phone calls. The Watch would be for my elderly mother, so the ability to call for help (especially if the Watch detects a fall) is invaluable. Naturally, I do not want any inbound calls to go to the Apple Watch and bother the wearer, as it would be tied to my TMO cellular service.

Can the cellular Apple Watch be configured to only send outgoing
calls?
Can the watch be configured to not "ring" when calls are received?
Can the watch be configured to not notify when SMS messages are received?

If you have a device and have configured it as said, please state this in your response.

I don't think the Apple Watch can be configured like this, but you might take a look at Use Emergency SOS on your Apple Watch.


How can I quickly type special characters on an iPhone/iPad using a bluetooth keyboard? I have an iPhone with a Bluetooth Logitech keyboard that also works with iPads. The solution works great for me in meetings etc. because it is a lightweight solution. The problem I face (and I am really there is no solution for it) is that I need special characters all the time.

I write text in Portuguese. In a Windows keyboard (I am a new iPhone user coming from the Windows platform) I can quickly type a character like ' followed by an a and get á. Or ` with an a to get à. Is it possible to quickly type letters with accents in an external iPhone/iPad keyboard and get accents to display quickly and easily?

The only methods and recommendations I have found so far are the ones like this. Is there a quicker/better/handier solution with an external keyboard? Thank you.

You can use the same keyboard combinations as on OS X to create accented characters. Here are the commands for each:

⌥+` then a=à
⌥+e then a=á
⌥+u then a=ä
⌥+i then a=â
⌥+n then a=ã

After you press the ⌥ (option/alt key) combination, the accent character will show up. Then, typing the next character will replace the accent with the accented character, if possible. If the character you type cannot have that accent, the accent will stay, followed by the character.


Adding Environment Variables I can't understand the 3rd line in these instructions, found here

Install dependency Ghostscript. On MacOSX: brew install ghostscript
Create a symbolic link if you want to run it everywhere in bash ln -s pdf_creator.py pdfc
Add in PATH environment variable On MacOSX: echo export=/absolute/path/of/the/folder/script/:$PATH >> ~/.bash_profile

What path are they talking about?  The path where the ghostcript is?  I don't know where that would be.  When I ran echo export=/absolute/path/of/the/folder/script/:$PATH in terminal, nothing happened to the bash profile.

Update

Placed the folder pdfc_master which contains the file pdf_compressor.py in  /users/bobsmith/codes/pdfc_master/pdf_compressor.py

Run ln -s /users/bobsmith/codes/pdfc_master/pdf_compressor.py pdfc

Run echo export=/users/bobsmith/codes/pdfc_master/pdf_compressor.py/:$PATH >> ~/.bash_profile

I now have the following syntax on my bash_profile
export=/users/bobsmith/codes/pdfc_master/pdf_compressor.py/:/Users/bobsmith/codes/venv/bin:/usr/local/opt/tcl-tk/bin:/Users/bobsmith/Applications/miniconda3/condabin:/Users/bobsmith/.pyenv/shims:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/bin:/applications/google-cloud-sdk/bin:/usr/local/opt/openssl/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:~/PycharmProjects/book/superlists/chromedriver:/opt/X11/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands

That looks wrong to me.
So I then ran in terminal:
pdfc /users/bobsmith/downloads/montale_eng3.pdf 0 /users/bobsmith/downloads/montale_eng2.pdf

And I got the error pdfc not found.  I would think that pdfc would have to be somewhere in my bash_profile but it is not.

No, it is the path where you have created the pdfc symbolic link.
The command you ran was incomplete - you need to first replace /absolute/path/of/the/folder/script/ with the actual path to the pdfc symbolink link. In addition you must use the full command including >> ~/.bash_profile in order to actually get something saved in the bash profile.
Also, the 3rd line you quote is just wrong (also in Github itself), it should be
echo 'export PATH="/absolute/path/of/the/folder/script/:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

As you have already run the wrong command you'll need to edit your .bash_profile manually (e.g. with nano) to fix the wrong definition. Either source .bash_profile afterwards or open a new Terminal tab/window to load the new value.


App crashes, dock icon remains, can't reboot, yet no process in ps aux to kill I've been encountering an extremely annoying problem since I upgraded to Yosemite.
FCPX (but I've been having reports of this problem on other computers with finder.app and safari.app) sometimes will crash on exit (with no detectable log trace) and its icon will remain in the dock with the usual "this application is not responding" menu warning.
Force quit won't work
Rebooting can only be done the hard way because the stuck app is preventing a soft one
yet no single process regarding FCPX is listed when in the activity monitor nor there is one in psaux.
No zombie processes to be found; computer performance is fine.
If I open an FCPX library, I'll get a dialog stating that "The application "Final Cut Pro" is not open anymore", which is quite irritating q:
I'm on a MBP Retina early 2013 15'
Does anybody have the slightest clue what's going on here?

(I know this is an old question but I think this might help somebody)

I had the same problem with NetBeans and this is what worked for me:

sudo killall launchservicesd
sudo killall Dock

I hope this helps.


How to make Google Chrome Helper not use as much CPU I've found solutions for this problem but they dont seem applicable now in 2017.

For some reason, Google Chrome Helper is using a lot of my CPU and fans are going full blast.  I found this link on Apple's site that seems to help everyone but I can't seem to find it on my version of Chrome.  I have a MBP running 10.9.5.

They mention to go to Chrome > preferences > settings > show advanced settings > content settings (under privacy).  Then click the 'click to play' button under the Plugins section.  However, there's no plugins section and so I can't do this to try to fix the problem.  I'm using Chrome version 56.0.2924.

I don't have many extensions installed on Chrome (just Webex, Google docs, Okta).  I have Flash installed too, which I think is taking some resources but there are times I'm not watching video or using anything with Flash and it's still using 150% CPU.

What workaround can I do with this version of Chrome to make Google Chrome helper from using > 150% CPU?

Invoke ⋮ Chrome Menu → Window → Task Manager to see what exactly consumes CPU. Because the helper is a black box from the OS' side of view. I personally found a mining extension that way.
Also watch for ad content and ad blockers in an escalating war, endless refresh and block cycles.


Use iCloud calendar and contacts with non-Apple devices A friend wants to sync his calendar (also his contacts if possible) with a non-iPhone device.

Is there a way to connect a device to iCloud via Exchange or CalDav. If so where could the specific parameters like servers and ports be found?

I have a way to do this that may help your friend.  My setup does what you're describing.

I use Microsoft Exchange for work and Gmail for everything else.  I sync my iCal with Google calendar, Addressbook with Google contacts and use mail.app for all emails.  I use 4 devices and all of them have the same contacts and calendar information.

Since Addressbook and iCal have my current information, any non-iPhone device with access to Google calendar and contacts could use what I have on my Macs.  The non-iPhone device will need to be capable of syncing with Google calendar and contacts and most apps today have that functionality.

I also have a Comcast account that meshes fine with this setup since mail.app uses Addressbook and iCal instead of Comcast's contacts and calendar.  I sync everything by using the sync icon in the menu bar several times a week.  My setup includes an iPhone, iPad, Imac and MBP.

I'm researching iCloud to backup my Addressbook and contacts as well but I'm not in a rush since this setup performed reliably for the last 4 years.


How many backups does iCloud save for iPhones? I've noticed that after restoring or erasing an iPhone and setting it up, you're offered backups to restore from iCloud.

How many and how old are these backups.  I couldn't find any articles explaining this.

Per device, iCloud keeps the most recent backup, then 1–2 prior backups, regardless of age.


Mac Wifi Slow, Fine on Other Devices I've read through a similar sounding problem here: My MacBook pro Wi-Fi is slow, other devices are OK.

However, my MCS index, Transmit Rate(Tx), RSSI and Noise seem to be relatively acceptable. See screenshot here:

This all seems ok from what I've read, however, the Wi-Fi still runs very slowly on my Mac. When I run an internet speed test my download speed is consistently < 1Mbps when it's above 20 on all other devices.

After speaking to a friend I established that this problem is potentially due to the macOS Sierra update. I followed the first step in this link - removing existing Wi-Fi preferences. Which seems to have worked for now.


How do I prevent Lion Mail from marking a message as read after deleting/archiving another message? This is driving me nuts. I go through my mail in reverse chronological order. This means I look at the newest mails first and then go back from there. So this scenario happens dozens of times a day:

Check out message, decide to mark it as unread to review/act on later
Proceed to next, older, message
When I decide to delete/archive the current message, Mail will highlight the message from 1. and mark it as read (because it is selected)
This forces me to REmark this last message as unread before proceeding

Any ideas on how to solve this?

Press ⌥+backspace to delete the message. No other message will be highlighted.

Warning: This deletes the selected message(s) permanently.


iPad 2 crashes at usage I'm using an iPad 2 with 32 GB and SIM-Card-Slot. The sim-card-slot is not in use, so it's empty.
Installed is the latest iOS version (no updates available). I don't use any jailbreak (and didn't used it before). All my apps are installed out of the App Store, so it isn't a development device. There is no "pseudo-background-app" like a anti-virus-scan tool or something like this. The free space is round about 2,5 GB.

Since some weeks ago the iPad is crashing at several usages. I hear music streaming, after some songs it crashes. I write an eMail it crashes after x minutes. I use an app and it crashes after y minutes. The time is always different - sometimes it runs for 2 hours - sometimes it crashes after 2 minutes. If I hear music it crashes in "standby" / "background".

It does not depend on the energy. The effect is the same if it's loading at this moment or it has 100% or 15%.

A crash starts by a freeze. Nothing works, after 1-2 minutes the freeze changes to black background and an dark-grey apple. Then the apple changes to the "standard"-colored (brighter) apple. After some minutes the iPad has restarted. But this is no guarantee that it runs now without a new crash.

Hope anyone has an idea to solve this problem.

Have you tried restoring it? There could be something app or service running that you are not aware of, thats causing it.

I would try doing that.

Restore to new, and install a couple of app and test it for a day or two to see if it still crashes.

Before you do, take a full backup to your computer!

If that doesn't work, you probably need to have it looked at by a pro.


Fix touchpad behavior on Apple TV remote after wiping with alcohol? I wiped down my Apple TV remote for the Apple TV 4K (5th generation) ( a.k.a. Siri Remote) using 70 percent isopropyl alcohol as seemingly recommended by Apple on this Support page. Now the touch-sensitive surface on the remote is wonky, responding to my finger in all the wrong ways. The alcohol has dried, but the problem continues.

How can I fix this?

You need to restart the Apple TV device to fix this problem. The catch is: How to restart the device without the remote working properly?

I suppose you could just pull the power plug on the device. But no need.

Read menu items to Siri

You can drive the operation of the Apple TV by using Siri voice commands. Verbally read to Siri the menu items displayed on screen to restart the Apple TV: Settings > System > Restart.

Press the Menu or home button to return to list of app icons.
Tell Siri to open Settings.
Tell Siri “System”.
Tell Siri “Restart”.

After restart, your remote will function properly. This fix has worked for me several times.

Alternatively, according to this Apple Support page you can also restart the Apple TV this way:

  Hold down the Apple TV app/Home Home button and Menu buttons. Let go when the light on your device flashes.


How to downgrade to macOS Sierra without Time Machine I upgraded to High Sierra a week ago, my MacBook Pro 2016 (15 inch) is very slow now even in normal daily usage.

I wanted to downgrade back to Sierra, but even tho my MacBook came originally with Sierra, I cannot find it in "App Store > Purchases", there is only Mavericks which I bought on my previous MacBook.

Is there any way I can download Sierra from Apple? Is there any other trustable source?

Or maybe I would see Sierra in App Store if I re-install "OS X Mavericks" again?

I got it from this link.
IMPORTANT:
DO NOT downgrade using macOS Sierra (10.12 Installer) disk utility to Erase your disk, you HAVE TO use the Online Recovery tool (or High Sierra (10.13) Disk Utility) to Erase your disk from APFS back to HFS+ , then restart and use your macOS Sierra installer from USB.
If you use Sierra to Erase disk, you'll get stuck in a Reboot Loop which is what happened to me.


How to stop skype from automatically starting? After installing skype it will always start whenever I login.  I'd rather it didn't do that.

How do I stop Skype from automatically starting?

Alternate Method (for Snow Leopard and possibly * Lion):

Open System Preferences
Select "Accounts"
Select your user account
Select "Login Items" at the top
Remove "Skype"

Ta-da!


What is the default speaking rate for the speech synthesis program? I've been looking all over the internet, but I can't seem to find out the default speaking rate for the in-built speech synthesis program on Mac OS.

say "What to say" -r <rate>

As shown above there is a way to specify the speaking rate (wpm) but there is no where that specifies the default rate?

Anyone have an idea of what it is?

The default speaking rates can actually be changed from System Preferences:

The slider can be set to a different position for different voices. When I tried dragging the sliders for Alex and Mikko to the middle, the WPMs shown in the output below were 175 and 180.

$ defaults read com.apple.speech.voice.prefs VoiceRateDataArray
(
        (
        1835364215,
        201,
        175
    ),
        (
        1919902066,
        546,
        180
    )
)

The outputs of say -r 175 and say without an -r option were identical for Agnes, Alex, and Bruce, and almost identical for some other voices. But for example the default speaking rate of the "Bahh" voice is much slower.

$ say -v ? | sed 's/  .*//' | while read l; do say -v "$l" -r 175 {1..9} -o "$l 1.aif"; say -v "$l" {1..9} -o "$l 2.aif"; done
$ stat -f '%z %N' *
120136 Agnes 1.aif
120136 Agnes 2.aif
131692 Albert 1.aif
180260 Albert 2.aif
122968 Alex 1.aif
122968 Alex 2.aif
231596 Bad News 1.aif
231820 Bad News 2.aif
131692 Bahh 1.aif
180264 Bahh 2.aif
318508 Bells 1.aif
318488 Bells 2.aif
131692 Boing 1.aif
164368 Boing 2.aif
116514 Bruce 1.aif
116514 Bruce 2.aif
131692 Bubbles 1.aif
138860 Bubbles 2.aif
196652 Cellos 1.aif
197088 Cellos 2.aif
131692 Deranged 1.aif
150720 Deranged 2.aif
131692 Fred 1.aif
138860 Fred 2.aif
331052 Good News 1.aif
331492 Good News 2.aif
301932 Hysterical 1.aif
301916 Hysterical 2.aif
131692 Junior 1.aif
144676 Junior 2.aif
131692 Kathy 1.aif
144676 Kathy 2.aif
118196 Kyoko 1.aif
114440 Kyoko 2.aif
420970 Mikko 1.aif
408432 Mikko 2.aif
228012 Pipe Organ 1.aif
228448 Pipe Organ 2.aif
131692 Princess 1.aif
144676 Princess 2.aif
131692 Ralph 1.aif
144676 Ralph 2.aif
128810 Sin-Ji 1.aif
124834 Sin-Ji 2.aif
131692 Trinoids 1.aif
138860 Trinoids 2.aif
119410 Vicki 1.aif
116118 Vicki 2.aif
122742 Victoria 1.aif
119444 Victoria 2.aif
131692 Whisper 1.aif
150724 Whisper 2.aif
131692 Zarvox 1.aif
138860 Zarvox 2.aif


How can I get a list of programs installed on an iPad? I'm using a rental iPad2 this week and it came with a lot of cool pre-installed programs. When I get my iPad2 back next week I'm thinking of installing some of these programs.

Is there an app or tool I can use to export a list of the installed programs? I tried to do this via iTunes but it says

"this iPad is linked to another computer and if you want to connect it
to this iTunes it will erase a bunch of stuff off of it"

So other than writing them all down, is there an easy way to get a list?

The only things i can think of, and this probably isn't what you really want, is to go into the App Store on the iPad and hit the purchased button. It should give you a list of everything purchased on the iPad.

Second, and very basically, you could take a screenshot of the screen with all of the apps on it and email it to yourself.


How to install Windows 7 Bootcamp using iso file (without USB/DVD)? I have a MacBook Pro and I need to install Windows 7 besides Mac OS X so I can play games on it.

The problem is that I don't have a USB stick or DVD to copy the Win7 iso image like Bootcamp requires.

Can I install Win7 using an internal partition of my hard disk?

Here might be a solution :

Create a new partition (at least 8Gig)
Copy the iso on it
Try booting on it
If it works reboot and create a new Bootcamp partition
Try installing Windows on the bootcamp partition

If this don't work, You'll need a USB drive.


How do I mirror/copy/save a harddrive from an old macbook that has an account in a logged-in state? I have an old macbook that I wish to keep all the data from the drive as it currently exists - in the state that it is presently, exactly. Why does this matter? Because the laptop, when suspended and the battery drains, will retain that state upon restoration of power ... and the account is super old - and I don't know the password. I'd like to upgrade the laptop to newer RAM and maybe an SSD, but I have to keep the old hard drive with state and everything intact (to save session, login, etc.).

I'm concerned that if I pull the hard drive, something will result in the drive getting corrupted, or the login state getting corrupted, and I'll lose everything. Ideally, I could clone the drive to an external hard drive, including power-state, and boot using target-disk mode. Copying the data will be an option eventually, but I have software on that computer that only runs on that computer. (If I were to upgrade, I'd have to re-buy licensing, etc.)

Again, this is important because I don't know the password - the laptop is from 2008 (I think), and I've lost data from old macs before (mini and iMac) when I did the 'change the password for this user' trick, which resulted in losing the keychain access (login keychain saved with different password), and loss of data access.

I'm not opposed to using John (the Ripper) to recover the password. (It's my laptop, after all, and I can let the recover run for days or even weeks without being concerned about it ... it would actually be quite nice, since then I could just change my password to something recent I'll actually remember!) But I've only ever heard of that program in passing, and I don't know how to prepare a mac for its use.

UPDATE:
After extracting the hard drive and attempting to boot with it as an externally-attached drive, I received a hardware-level error that I "must reboot the computer". This does not bode well. I'm hoping that by hard-powering-down the computer I haven't corrupted the hard drive image of the logged-in session. I'm now attempting to copy the disk info to another external disk using the Restore function in Disk Utility, as suggested by in a referred answer...

The real problem here is macOS isn’t designed to save run state to the hard drive in a persistent state. Hibernate mode doesn’t expect to be relocated on a different memory and does expect to power down completely and add RAM when the os is not suspended or hibernating.

What you ask is trivially possible if you were running in a hypervisor such as VMWare fusion and could suspend and change the hardware from under the os due to a layer of abstraction. You’ll need an admin password to move forward, so that’s well documented.

Make a new admin or follow the password reset procedure. Deal with lost keychain and make sure FileVault isn’t enabled before you decide to reset the password and move on is my advice. The OS isn’t designed to support what you contemplate.


Update of security update hangs for Mojave 10.14.6 I have a Mac mini (late 2014). I did install an SSD disk to increase its performance.
Current Mac Mojave version: 10.14.6
Update: Security update 2020-003 10.14.6
I did this:

Boot my mac using Verbose mode by pressing CMD + V after the booting chime
Choose install update in the update dialog

Please note that I had installed a new SSD drive which might be related to this problem.
What I tried so far:

Unplug all USB devices except the native apple Keyboard

Activate safemode and verbose mode which gave me an error:
  sudo nvram boot-args="-v -x"

When installing the update and booting in verbose mode I keep seeing the following line around 30 times:
Failed to send exception EXC_COPRPSE_NOTIFY. error code: 5 for pid 94
...
X68PlatformPlugin result 0

Etrecheck Report
Interestingly the Etrecheck report tells me that the update was installed:

Software Installs (past 30 days):
Install Date Name (Version)
....
2020-07-06 Sicherheitsupdate 2020-003 (10.14.6)

But the Update keeps showing up:

I did figure out the culprit was a piece of software that was loaded using LaunchDaemons that somehow prevented a clean shutdown or startup. After backing up and deleting the LaunchDaemon files the update could be installed without any problems.
I could find more infos on the website: https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/knowledgebase/75010/


Error: -69888: Couldn't unmount disk I'm on a Mac OS Catalina trying to wipe a drive via command line.

⚡  Desktop  diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         1.0 TB     disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.0 TB     disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            10.8 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     843.8 GB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Preboot                 80.6 MB    disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume Recovery                526.6 MB   disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume VM                      4.2 GB     disk1s5

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Lacie 1 TB              999.9 GB   disk2s2

⚡  Desktop  diskutil eraseDisk ExFAT NONAME /dev/disk2
Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
[   \   \   \   \   \   \   \   \   \   \   \   \   \   \ ]

I kept getting

⚡  Desktop  diskutil eraseDisk ExFAT NONAME /dev/disk2
Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Error: -69888: Couldn't unmount disk

Run

diskutil eject disk2s2

Repeat that and sudo fuser -c /dev/disk2s2 to kill or quit any processes that are blocking the eject.


Distribution Profile issue - Submitting to App Store I have an app that was built by vendors. They did everything including submitting the app to the App Store. So now I did slight modification to the app and want to update it in the app store. However, an error message pops up when we try to archive the app in Xcode. It first says that the team doesn't match, then prompts me to click fix it. I clicked fix it but finally it shows this message:

  Your account has a valid iOS distribution certificate but it is not installed locally.

What does this message mean and how to fix it?

I'm using Xcode 6.2. I have installed the Development and Distribution certificates on my Mac. Still getting the same error message.

This is my first hands-on experience in building iOS apps and deploying them to App Store.

How do I resolve this issue?

You have to go to https://developer.apple.com and enter in Member Center.

Then:

Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles.
Certificates.
Provisioning Profiles / Distribution.
Select the certificate you want to use and Download.
Doble click once downloaded to install it.

That should solve your problem.


Quick combination or text replacement for typing schwa I would like to configure a simple key combination to type a schwa (ǝ). I configured text replacement for the å character, but it won't work if it's inside a word i.e. "å" gets replaced correctly to "ǝ", but "andatå" doesn't become "andatǝ". Good solutions would be:

automatic text replacement for the å character
a way to assign ǝ to the option+a key combination

My keyboard has the Italian ISO layout.

You can't achieve the first, as you'd have to have one instance for each word in which it occurs. As you've discovered, the text replacer needs a space before & after.
The second idea could be done using Ukelele & designing your own replacement keyboard layout. It's not an app I'm terribly experienced with, but I have managed to make my own modified structure without too much learning curve.
you end up with a 'new' layout copied from your existing one…


Apple Macbook Pro Retina display turns off automatically I have a Macbook Pro (Early 2015 model with Retina Display) with macOS Sierra.

For past 5-6 days its display turns off randomly while I am actively working on it. The touchpad keeps working and keyboard backlights remains on. If I restart it using power button on the keyboard then it works fine for a while (3-4 hours). What can I do to fix this? I have already tries SMC reset.

First thing is to try to work out what is causing the screen to power down. Does the console give up any messages when the display shuts off?

If there's nothing showing, try going into the System Preferences, to the Energy Saver settings and disable the sleep mode for both the display and the laptop. It will complain when you do this, and you WILL want to be mindful of it not going to low-energy use esp. when you're on battery power - and see if it stops the issue. (This was a recurrent issue when I updated my first macbook to Snow Leopard, so it can be a glitched software install)

If it does, then you know it is a sleep-related issue that may best be solved with a reinstall of the OS. If not, then your best bet is to find a Certified Apple Service center and have them put a diagnostic test to the hardware.

Good luck!


What version of Windows can I install on a 2009 MacBook Pro? I would like to convert my old 2009 MacBook Pro into a Windows machine to use some apps that don’t run or do so extremely poorly on macOS.

This MBP supports El Capitan (10.11) as its last version.
What version of Windows can I install on it using Bootcamp?

Thank you very much

Unfortunately it looks like that Mac will only support Windows 7

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205016

Even your model does not look like it supports Windows 8

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201457

And Windows 7 is End of Life in mid January. It will still work but no more security (or other) updates after that. So it's do-able but not recommended.


Syncing old phone with new computer - what is this message? I have a new Mac but I'm using my iPhone. Previously I had "Notes" synced between my phone and the old Mac. Now I have notes on my phone that I don't want to lose, and I'm trying to set up the iCloud sync on the new Mac. When I go into the iCloud panel and mark Notes for sync, I get this weird screen:

I have no idea why it needs an iCloud email address, since I have already set up iCloud and OTHER iCloud services (like Contacts, Calendars & Reminders and Photo Stream) are already set up and syncing perfectly between the phone and the new computer.

My goal is to get Notes syncing without losing any of the important notes on my phone. And I don't want to create a new "iCloud email address" (?!)... please help. Thanks.

First things first: back up your phone data.

Then:

Open the Notes app on your "new Mac" (I assume you're using Mountain Lion).
In the menu bar, select Notes.
In the drop down pick list, select Default Account, and make sure iCloud is ticked.

If iCloud doesn't show up, click on Accounts and add it first.


Macbook Pro won't start after restart (red charger icon) So I just installed Flash and restarted my Mac, and now it won't start. It was working perfectly before that and I didn't drop it or anything.

The power cable works (tried it on another Mac) so it's not that.

When I press the power button I see the charger loading icon and it's red (like 2mm bar) then it takes 2 seconds and the screen is black. No sound what so ever. When I plug in the power cable I can see that it changes from no cable to cable plugged in, but it won't charge or start.

What can have happened and what to do? It's a 2 year old MacBook 15" retina.

Please help

It is unlikely that the installation of Flash did anything to your power system, it is likely just a coincidence.

How long have you left the charger plugged in to the Mac? I would give it an hour, minimum, overnight is best.

Failing that try resetting the SMC:

...Press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the built-in keyboard, then press the power button at the same time. Hold these keys and the power button for 10 seconds.

That is from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295 Their article on resetting the SMC.

If that doesn't work it is possible your battery is dead, time to take it into an Apple store or other Mac repair shop.


iOS 5 OTA sync went over 3G instead of wifi I upgraded my iPhone 4 to iO 5 last night, setup iCloud and went to sleep.

In the morning, I noticed that my fully charged phone had completely discharged and my Mac iTunes was showing a notice that sync had failed with the iPhone.

Later today, I got an email from AT&T saying that I have used my 200 MB plan by 90% and I should take care.(It was about 100MB yesterday)

Did the iCloud sync over 3G last night? (My iPhone and Mac were both on my home wifi network that did not break during the night)

I was playing with the iMessage feature and I sent an email to one of my other (non-AppleID) email IDs from it, just to check. The email came thru with the email ID being my_phone_number@mms.att.net
and this was when I got that 90% email from AT&T.

I don't use SMS so I've completely disabled it by calling the AT&T call center.

What caused my 3G plan to be over used? The MMS or iCloud?

Did the iCloud sync over 3G last night? (My iPhone and Mac were both on my home wifi network that did not break during the night)

No. iTunes can only sync over Wi-Fi. Any automated backup to iCloud can only be done via Wi-Fi as well. However you can initiate a backup via 3G but not a sync since iTunes can't "see" the device if it's not on the same network, and in most cases you will receive a warning that it will use your data plan.

  I was playing with the iMessage feature and I sent an email to one of my other (non-AppleID) email IDs from it, just to check. The email came thru with the email ID being my_phone_number@mms.att.net and this was when I got that 90% email from AT&T.

Highly unlikely. Messages sent via iMessage, unless they contain huge images, are even smaller then most emails. The system also sends it as one single message and is not considered email actually.

  What caused my 3G plan to be over used? The MMS or iCloud?

If you manually started a sync with iCloud then that would be the case, however, your iPhone will always use the Wi-Fi first, and it is something I specifically tested during beta, if the iPhone can't find a Wi-Fi connection to automatically sync or backup it won't initiate the processes at all.

If you sent a massive message with images via iMessage, probably, but iMessage is not considered email, and it is sent via the Apple servers.

I would suggest you look at other areas of your phone, or most probably and app that is abusing your bandwidth. One thing it could possibly be is automatic iTunes Store downloads where you have an option to turn on Mobile Data for downloads. You can find this under Settings -> Store.


Which alternatives to OpenSSL do I have to calculate a SHA-256 hash? How to calculate SHA-2 hash on a file to generate a 256-bit result (SHA-256)?

In the old days we used the openssl tool. I have heard that after terrible security vulnerabilities with openssl, the world has moved on to alternative tools. Does macOS Sierra ship with alternatives to openssl? What is the modern approach to running a SHA-256 hash?

shasum

You can just use shasum:

shasum -a 256 FILE.txt

The shasum is the name of the command.
The -a option means algorithm.
The 256 specifies use of the 256-bit algorithm.


Remove .plist from /LaunchAgents Before I go to the issue, I did find a similar thread, but it's quite outdated and I'm not sure if it suits for me.

Around two years ago when I got my Mac, I decided to install Seagate Media Sync for my GoFlex device. Now, 3 years after purchase of the drive, I'd like to get rid of it and uninstall Media Sync from my computer. I got rid of the app but theres a 2nd app inside it's application support folder which keeps launch itself even if I quit the process.

I saw that one can run a specific terminal command to remove it, but I just wanted to make sure I have the correct instructions. The file is located inside the /Libary/LaunchAgents folder and named "com.seagate.mediasync.plist", some say it's just sufficient to remove the .plist file from there, but won't OS X constantly give a error because it has instructions to launch it? If it's better to just do it through terminal, I'd rather do that but I'm not certain which command that fits.. According to this article(also a bit outdated), you'll just need to run launchctl remove com.anoying.service, but it doesn't say anything about .plist files and more like folders..

Thank you in advance!

Run the command you mentioned, then delete the plist. That's all there is to it.


How can I get Apple Remote working with the BT Home Hub? I've got both an iPhone 3GS and an iPod Touch 2G which used to both be able to control my computers iTunes library using the Apple Remote app. However since I've started using a BT Home Hub 2 (A & B) the Remote app has not worked.

I've tried everything to get it going from un-installing iTunes and Bonjour and re-installing, to checking both the software and hardware firewalls. Even with all firewalls off there is no connection.

Has anyone else found a solution to this problem?

May seem like a silly question, but did you changed SSID names when you switched to the new router? If so, make sure you connect both iDevices to the new network's name and reconfigure the Remote app.

Hope this helps!
Thomas

Edit: Are you able to connect to a website from your devices on the new network? And do you still have the old router broadcasting? I ask because maybe your devices are still connected to the old network, but your PC is on the new one. If you haven't already, try going to Settings >> Wi-Fi, and verifying that the network you're connected to is the same that your PC is on. If so, and it's still not working, reset your network settings and see if that helps


Why do Chinese EarPods not work with German MacBook Pro? I own this MacBook Pro, which was bought in Germany, and I am currently residing in China, where I accidentally switched headphones with a Chinese friend. Both are official Apple EarPods, mine came with my iPhone 5, which I also bought in Germany, and hers came with her iPhone 6, bought in China.

At first I did not notice our headphones had been switched, because they look the same. However, when plugged into my MacBook, the sound was just not right, as if the trebles had been removed from the music, resulting in songs without singers. When I tried with my iPhone and my other friend’s MacBook Air (bought in China), there was no problem whatsoever. I was worried that the headphone jack hardware itself had been damaged, but other headphones worked, so I concluded that both headphone jack as well as EarPods themselves were usable, just not together.

Later I asked the Chinese friend if I could see her EarPods and tested them with my MacBook—again, no problem whatsoever. I then inspected the headphones closely: They sure do look the same, but the insulating plastic rings between the conducting rings at the plug itself are white on my German EarBuds but black on the Chinese ones. This is the only difference I could spot, even though I felt like the Chinese ones just did not fit 100% into the socket, thus resulting in some wrongly connected conductors leading to the strange sound.

So why do the Chinese EarPods not work with my German MacBook even though it is supposed to be the same standard?

According to this post from Apple's official Chinese-language discussion forum, the EarPods that come bundled with iPhones sold in China comply with the OMTP standard which uses black rings, which is the official standard for 3.5mm earphones in the country whereas those from other countries and the standalone EarPods sold in China use the CTIA standard, with the white rings.

The channels used by the two standards are different: the order of the rings on the OMTP standard are :Left audio, right audio, microphone, and ground; whereas  the CTIA standard have the ground and microphone sockets switched over, so, given that information, we can safely conclude a German MacBook Pro is incompatible with the OMTP standard, however all Apple 3.5mm EarPods should be compatible with all iPhones, as indicated by the question and the linked forum thread.


Android JPG images not opening in Photoshop I have problems opening JPG files sent by Android smartphones. In Photoshop it says that i's impossibile to open the image since it lacks SOFn, DQT or DHT marker before JPEG SOS marker.

In Lightroom these images are grayed out as not readable.

With Preview I can open these images.

Why not with Adobe apps? Any indication to solve the problem easily?
Thanks !

Mac OS 10.14 / Photoshop CC

I now understand that the problem lies in how Whatsapp saves JPG files, with a custom JPG format that is really a HEIC format.
If you change the extension from JPG to HEIC, even Photoshop will read the file.
I did a small Mac OS Automator app to change the file extension, that's useful if you have multiple "Whatsapp corrupted" JPG files.


OSX app to paste and save HTML content? In Gmail, I can go to a web page, highlight web content, compose a Gmail message, and paste the HTML content into the email message. It works in Mail.app as well.

But what app can I use to just paste the HTML content and then save it as an HTML file?

Microsoft Word will accept pasted HTML content, but I don't want to save as gross weird Microsoft Word HTML markup. Is there an OSX app where I can easily paste and save copied HTML content from web pages?

Although this is an old question, it's still relevant, and here is the answer:

pbpaste -Prefer rtf | textutil -stdin -convert html -output outputfile.html

This uses the built-in OS X pbpaste utility to pipe the contents of the clipboard to stdout (-Prefer rtf is probably unnecessary but doesn't hurt), then runs it through the built-in textutil program. The -stdin argument makes textutil take its input from pbpaste; -convert html tells it to turn the input into HTML; and -output outputfile.html tells it to write the output to a file called outputfile.html.

If you find that the output has some unnecessary elements, you can exclude them with -excludedelements; for example, -excludedelements '(span, font, head, xml)'. Note that you need to have the single quotes because your shell will try to interpret the parentheses as a special shell expression.


Can't remove file from trash I'm having trouble emptying the trash on Catalina.  FileVault is enabled.  Trying to empty from Finder warns X11R6 can't be modified or deleted because it's required by macOS.  It's a link to /opt/X11 which is a regular directory.

OK let's try in Terminal:

fifteen:.Trash elliott$ pwd; ls -al
/Users/elliott/.Trash
total 272
drwx------    4 elliott  staff     128 Nov 11 21:44 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 125 elliott  staff    4000 Nov 10 22:23 ..
-rw-r--r--@   1 elliott  staff  135172 Nov 11 21:44 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     wheel      96 Nov 11 21:42 Security

fifteen:.Trash elliott$ sudo rm -rf Security/
Password:
rm: Security//usr/X11R6: Operation not permitted
rm: Security//usr: Directory not empty
rm: Security/: Directory not empty

fifteen:.Trash elliott$ ls -l Security/usr/
total 0
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  8 May 19 11:37 X11R6 -> /opt/X11

I have already given Terminal full disk access in System Preferences.

Checking the rm command with dtruss I see it fails here:

unlink(".Trash/Security/usr/X11R6\0", 0x0, 0x0)      = -1 Err#1
write_nocancel(0x2, "rm: \0", 0x4)       = 4 0
getrlimit(0x1008, 0x7FFEED8FA680, 0x0)       = 0 0
write_nocancel(0x2, ".Trash/Security/usr/X11R6\0", 0x19)         = 25 0
write_nocancel(0x2, ": \0", 0x2)         = 2 0
write_nocancel(0x2, "Operation not permitted\n\0", 0x18)         = 24 0

I also verified that this file is on the read-write Data partition:

sh-3.2# ls -l /System/Volumes/Data/Users/elliott/.Trash/Security/usr/
total 0
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  8 May 19 11:37 X11R6 -> /opt/X11

This is a known issue that has impacted a number of users following an upgrade to Catalina1.

The best way to resolve this is to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP), delete the files/empty the trash, then re-enable SIP.

Full instructions provided below for the benefit of users unfamiliar with the process of disabling/enabling SIP:

Startup (or restart) your Mac
Immediately hold down the commandR keys to boot into recovery
Click the Utilities menu and select Terminal
Type csrutil disable and press return
Close the Terminal app
Restart your Mac
Delete the files and/or empty the trash
Restart your Mac
Immediately hold down the commandR keys to boot into recovery
Click the Utilities menu and select Terminal
Type csrutil enable and press return
Close the Terminal app
Restart your Mac

1. In most cases, the affected users had XQuartz installed prior to the Catalina upgrade and during the upgrade process XQuartz isn't uninstalled properly.


What is installed with Java 7? Inspired by this question on Stackoverflow, I noticed that my Java control panel reports that I have the latest version of Java installed (and I know that, because Safari is not blocking the plugin any longer), while the command line version seems to be different.

From Terminal:

$ java -version
java version "1.7.0_06-ea"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_06-ea-b20)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.2-b09, mixed mode)

Java 1.7.0_06 is not the latest version, as far as I know.

Hence my question:

If I install Java 1.7 from Oracle's web site and then rely on the "automatic" updating that it provides, will the command line version be stuck with the old version? A bit confused here.

The Java Control panel in System Preferences refers to the Java Applet Plugin (JRE) that is made available to Safari and other browsers.

If you use the Help>Installed Plugins you should see a version signature if it is enabled The latest JRE reports

application/x-java-applet;jpi-version=1.7.0_13

The java you are looking at with java -version is the one installed with the full JDK. You  need to download the installer for that separately now from Oracle
When installed java -version should report

java version "1.7.0_13"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_13-b20)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.7-b01, mixed mode)


Pages templates for Resumes I'm looking for some Pages templates for Resume (software developer CV).
Do you have any suggestions?

There are built-in resume templates in Pages. Select File > New from Template Chooser


Is there any way to automatically set outgoing email address based on recipient's email or domain in mail.app? I'd like mail to be automatically be sent from an account based on domain the domain of the recipient.
Details:
I've set up multiple email accounts in mail.app, both personal and work.  I find myself frequently annoyed, because I forget to set the "from" address, and thus email work from my personal account.  What I'd like to have happen, is if the email recipient is boss@serious.biz, then use my account with derek@serious.biz, otherwise use derek@clownpants.com, or something to that effect.
A related question, but in my case I'd like it to be dependent on the recipient.
MBP late 2011, OSX 10.7.4

Unfortunately, there is no way to do this in Apple Mail. It only works for messages which you are replying to (they automatically use the same outgoing address which received the original message). There is no hook in AppleScript, nor an option in Automator by which to make this happen. If it were possible, as of right now, it would still require a third-party plugin, which I have not been able to find either. So unfortunately, the answer is now.

Note: Also, if you select the inbox of the account from which you want to send the message, then compose, Mail will automatically use that account's email address for sending, unless you change it. Not quite as helpful as what you were hoping for, but at least something worth considering.

Good luck and happy mailing!


How can I save a file to a specific "keyed" location? In Finder to go to a specific location I can do Cmd-Shift-G

But what if I want to save to a specific location? That is, I don't want to click through a folder hierarchy in the save dialogue box.

For example I would like to save the current file to ~/.ssh

The Where drop down allows you to select a location, but I want to be able to enter the location using the keyboard.

You can use Command -> Shift -> G in the save dialogue box too, just like in Finder.

Default Folder X is great for saving some as favorites or specific defaults for certain apps. IT does way more than just keyboard shortcuts, but that is one of its super-powers.

https://www.apple.com/accessibility/mac/mobility/

Accessibility lets you use keyboard commands to select graphical elements and then tab / type / navigate to whatever folders you prefer.

Control F7 allows tab to select more items and move around using your keyboard in the save dialog.


Unable to flip a clip horizontally in iMovie 10.1.6 I'm running iMovie 10.1.6 on MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 on a brand new, 2017 MacBook Air.

I have a clip which I want to flip/invert horizontally so that writing which currently appears with writing in reverse, so it is unreadable.

I've read up a lot online and everything I find says I should select the clip, click on the icon above the clip preview which is like 3 overlapping circles and then select Video Effect and choose Flipped.

However, when I click on the 3 circles icon, there is no Video Effects option shown, only Clip Filter and Audio Effect, so I don't know how to get this done.

I'm tearing my hair out at this and would really appreciate some help from anyone who can solve my problem. I know I don't have much rep here - I wish I could put a big bounty on this question because it's driving me nuts!

If I understand your question correctly, you can do what you want as follows:

Select the clip
Click on the icon you called the 3 overlapping circles
Click on the Clip Filter option
In the Choose Clip Filter window that appears, select the Flipped filter
This will now film your clip horizontally

I've created a visual diagram of steps 2 - 4  below:


Us of the ZSH shell "prompt" command I'm new to MacOS command line/UNIX and trying to learn about it and the zsh shell. I have a book on Zsh shell and in an early section it describes use of the "prompt" command. However, my system does not seem to have this command. Any help as to how I can move forward would be appreciated.

The macOS Catalina change the default Unix shell to zsh (pronounced zee...shell).
The .zshrc is the place that is similar to .bash_profile and .bashrc in the bash shell.

Before we start this, make sure your terminal is in zsh, otherwise change to zsh with chsh -s /bin/zsh command.

In your default directory

# nano .zshrc

Type the following:

PROMPT="%d"

Then run the profile

# source .zshrc

Here you go, got your prompt with only the current directory in your zsh prompt.

Here is my setup : PROMPT="%d: %h-->"
Which put a current directory and command history with --> in prompt.

Here is an in-depth description of how to customize your prompt:
https://scriptingosx.com/2019/07/moving-to-zsh-06-customizing-the-zsh-prompt/

To learn the difference of bash shell and zsh:
https://sunlightmedia.org/bash-vs-zsh/

A cool zsh prompt generation tool:
https://zsh-prompt-generator.site/


iPhone Safari formatting In previous versions of Mobile Safari, when I used Google Reader on my iPhone and clicked through to open an article on the New York Times or another news site, it would open in a mobile-optimized format. This made articles really easy to read on my iPhone, since I didn't have all the junk on the Times website competing for screen space with the actual article.

Because the format appeared to be universal, it was clearly being done within Safari (or by the mobile version of Google Reader) and not by all these sites. But for a while (perhaps since iOS 4.x) articles are opened in in their normal formats, without being modified at all for mobile browsers.

Is anyone familiar with this change and what might have caused it? Something in the mobile version of Safari or of Google Reader?

It's a Google Reader setting. Scroll to the bottom of the Google Reader mobile page. Select "Settings". There's a checkbox you can tick that says "Reformat linked web pages for mobile browsers".

If you're using Google Reader a lot on your mobile phone, you may like a dedicated app. Reeder is great.


Music ratings on iOS 10 I used to be able to change the rating of a music track on my phone, and they would get downloaded to iTunes when I synched my phone to my MacBook.

They seemed to have changed this in the new iOS, and there's only the heart button, but nothing else.

How I set the rating stars 0 to 5 with the iOS 10 update?

Update (for iOS 10.3+)
Since iOS 10.3 star ratings can be enabled as follows:
Settings > Music > Show Star Ratings (enable)
-
Important: Apple Music songs can not be rated with stars. It works only for music that

was added manually to iTunes (MP3s, M4A, AAC)

is available in your iTunes Match library and/or

was bought in the iTunes Music Store (iTMS)

Show/change an active song's rating:

Open Music.app
Show the currently playing song. You may need to tap the Mini Player near the bottom.
Tap the ellipsis (...) in the lower right.
The song popover appears. Find "Rate Song...". It's located below "Share Song" or "Create Station".
Tap "Rate Song..."
In the new popover change the star rating.
Confirm your changes by tapping "Done".

Show/change a song's rating in a list view (iPhone 6s/6s Plus/7/7 Plus or newer):

Open Music.app
In any standard list (playlist, album view) force press on a song
The song popover appears. Find "Rate Song...". It's located below "Share Song" or "Create Station".
Tap "Rate Song..."
In the new popover change the star rating.
Confirm your changes by tapping "Done".

Original answer
Yes, this is the feature I miss the most in iOS 10.
Currently there are these options

Use Siri to rate songs: "Rate this song five stars". You cannot see a rating, however.
Please send a feedback to Apple. Please, do it. Apple actually reads feedback.

Feel free to use my text:
.
Subject:

Music.app: display/set song rating with stars is missing

Feedback Type:

Bug Report

Comments:

Dear iOS team,
please bring back the Music.app feature to see and set star ratings for songs.
Since installing iOS 10 I cannot see or set my song ratings for my music with stars (0-5 stars). I used this feature very often until now.
With Siri I can only set a rating, but I'm not able to see it. However, this does not work when I'm offline.
Is there another way to see/set a song's star rating in iOS 10?
Thank you


Deleting Wifidiagnostics file and others under private/var/temp and /folder on Catalina Is it safe to delete the Wifidiagnostics file even though its in private/var/tmp?
My understanding was that it's better to leave those folders alone in Catalina but I'm not that experienced a user.
In the same folder there's also: configd-pattern.plist, configd-state, configd-store.plist.
Are those part of that diagnostic test and therefore can/should be deleted as well or are they network configurations? I found conflicting informantions but they were created at the same time of the other one so it seems to me like its related to that log..but it's mostly the log I'd like to delete, its 350mb, its not a lot but it's also not insignificant.

And one more thing, I read that deleting from private/var/folders is supposedly safe compared to the rest, less so /zz (true??)but still. Now I'm not sure that that info is up to date with Catalina, so could it be unsafe as well?
I'm asking about /folders because I want to delete some remnants from Zoom Rooms, terrible app I uninstalled(which seems to have left quite the leftovers..on a sidenote, if you have suggestions whether there's files related to it that would be better deleted I'd appreciate it, but it's a bit OP tbh)

It's under folders/y6/lettersandnumbers/c/us.zoom.ZoomPresence/com.apple.metal which contains 3902 and Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630
212kb as a whole..def not worth any risks but it feels like useless deletable clutter.

Thank you everybody:)

I would say no at this point, don’t mess with /private and instead open a support case if you catch the system not keeping it under 10 GB for a 250 GB disk. Other than swap files which can be controlled by choosing software that’s efficient or periodic restarts, the rest self clean quite well in my experience.

Unless you’re quite experienced, the risk/reward here has been high risk / low reward.

For instance, partial download and staged installers will be cached here, so if you find them and remove them, the system could have issues patching itself as it’s primed to install at restart after confirming a good download. Other things are placed here that speed up the mac greatly - so you just slow down the system as it has to recreate the files you just trashed.


Can iPad be hacked if password's security is questionable? Is it possible for a "family member" that knows my passwords and has had access to my iPad to control my iPad from a different location? ....Camera or even turn off my iPad completely?  Recently my iPad screen had been completely locked out without my knowledge. The timing of this event was after an argument with this family member. I had to take it back to store to activate it.  Can the iPad be controled from a different location?

Assuming you have the Find my iPad enabled, one can use that feature (from another device while knowing your password) to lock it remotely.

  Activation Lock.

  Activation Lock is designed to prevent anyone from using your iPhone,
  iPad, or iPod touch if you ever lose your device. It starts working
  the moment you turn on Find My iPhone. From then on, your Apple ID and
  password will be required before anyone can turn off Find My iPhone,
  erase your device, or reactivate it. This can help you keep your
  device secure, even if it’s in the wrong hands.