iPad E-Mail Attachments are destroyed on the Exchange account I have a problem with my ipad Air iOS 7.0.4. When I receive E-Mails on my Exchange account, which contain for example a .pdf, the pdf is destroyed an can't be opend. If I forward the attachment, the attachment is still destroyed on the other recipient. I also receive my exchange mails on my PC and there are the attachments fully functional.

On my iPad I have a second GMX Imap account, and if I send a attachment to this account, I also receive it fully functional.

I already tried to delete the Exchange account from  the iPad and added it newly.

I have exactly the same problem and deleted the Exchange account but this did not solve the problem. The Apple Store has never heard of this problem. Their suggestion was to restore to factory defaults.


Notes, Drive and Keychain not syncing to iCloud from Mojave This one is strange. I have one computer which is unable to fully sync with iCloud. What's odd is that some items do sync, including Calendar and Contacts. I suspect there's a corrupted / locked library file somewhere wreaking havoc, but I'm unsure of where to find it. The most telling fact is I've isolated the issue to user account level. None of the issues happen with a fresh user. Here's what I know:

Details:

Problematic computer is running 10.14.3 (Issue has persisted since 10.13)
In iCloud preference, Notes is checked on. So is iCloud Drive and just about everything except Keychain and Photos.
The affected computer does not display any notes created from other devices. And no notes created on the affected computer sync to my other devices.

When I attempt to enable Keychain on the affected computer, after entering my iCloud password I'm presented with an error saying "iCloud Keychain couldn’t be set up because there was a problem communicating with iCloud."
Other devices: iOS device running latest OS (no syncing issues), Mac running 10.13 (no syncing issues), Mac running 10.12 (no syncing issues)
Notes created on iCloud.com show up and sync as expected on all devices except the one Mac

Troubleshooting Steps (so far):

Signed out of iCloud, restarted, signed back in (about a dozen times)
Updated to latest version of Mojave
Attempted syncing on a new user account (and it WORKS!)
I've also reset user permissions on the home folder with diskutil resetuserpermissions / id -u

I don't know what combination of Containers, Application Support directories, and Preferences I'd need to target to resolve this, but I suspect if the correct set are deleted and regenerated the issue might go away. My goal is to get syncing to work in the current user account to avoid the headache of manually transferring over a fragile command line tools and preferences. But if I can't find any solutions soon I may have to just wave the white flag.

The Notes application for macOS has been very unreliable throughout MANY macOS's so including Mojave! Even in the time it was still written as Mac OS X. So even if you cure your Mac, which you could do and I explained in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251096810 it will most likely be temporary and at some point in time you will notice that the continuous spinning wheel in Notes will get back to nag you. And the non-syncing will be back again.

A better way is to start using Notes through the web interface, on www.icloud.com directly, and bookmark Notes for direct access.
Its interface is smooth and complete and will allow flawless syncing with all your other devices like you iPhone and iPad where you leave Notes on.

Notes on iOS and nowadays also iPadOS however is pretty stable. So if you you these in combination with the Notes web application through the icloud.com website your are fine.


Can I change "delete" to "archive" in the message control bezel in Mail.app? The version of Mail.app that comes with Mavericks has this cool message control bezel (below, in the orange box) under the email header in every message allowing you to delete, reply, reply-all, or forward the message when you hover on the line:

It's great, but I archive all my mail. Can I change the trash can button (pink arrow) to the archive box, like in my toolbar?

As stated by CMW, Delete2Archive can solve this issue:
http://akgungor.com/2013/11/11/delete2archive-archive-gmail-messages-using-delete-key-os-x-mavericks-mail/

I use it an can confirm that it works, also for your problem:

When I hit delete on the keyboard it is archived (i.e. it stays in Gmails "All Mail")
When I hit the button from your screenshot, this seems to apply as well (to my surprise). So therefore your issue should be solved as well :)
When I hit the delete button in the toolbar of Mail.app, it gets actually deleted to the trash. You can customize the toolbar to include an "Archive" button as well (right click on the toolbar and choose 'customize toolbar'), see screenshot. I put it left from the delete button:

Im actually using Mavericks. And YES, its configurable. In my case i touch the trash symbol with 2 fingers and i get the option to change or add the archive icon.


Why are email replies sent from iPhone not threaded in Gmail? I noticed that when replying to emails from my iPhone, they are no longer being grouped as a conversation in Gmail.

If I receive an email and reply via my iPhone email app, it will show up in my send folder on my desktop.  But not grouped in the conversation thread like it should.

Until recently, no matter where I replied from, the reply always ended up as a reply in the same conversation.

When I reply from my desktop, it does show properly as part of the conversation. Why?

Apparently, there's something wrong with the iPhone 6, its configuration is not fully compatible with Exchange settings.


App Store Updates does not renders correctly in High Sierra It has been around a week that my Updates tab in the App Store looks like this:

All the other tabs are looking normal.
The only thing I tried was a restart, the iMac does not have any other weird behaviour.
Here are my details, serial hidden for privacy:

Thank you.

I was getting the incompatible upgrade message for GarageBand until I upgraded to MacOS Big Sur.  After I upgraded to the new  OS that error went away for me.


iOS9: configure spotlight news suggestions When I swipe left from the first page of my home screen, iOS 9 brings me to the spotlight screen.

There I can see Siri suggestions and news.
Is there a way to configure which news are showed in this page?

Note: I do not have the news app, I suppose because it is not yet available in all the countries.

Edit: As of iOS 10 you can remove the news widget.

It is not possible in iOS 9. See this question for more information about turning all/news suggestions off. Removing news headlines from Spotlight Search in iOS 9

Go to Language and Region in General settings and set it to your region.


Open-source password manager for OS X I am looking for a password manager that works on iOS and OS X (and syncs passwords between those) that is open-source.

Currently, I use mSecure on my iPhone, but I would like to switch to an open-source option.

Most notably KeePassX (port of KeePass) is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

It doesn't have a direct port to iOS, but the database format is standard across KeePass-family and you can use another client for iOS, like MiniKeePass (also GNU General Public License).

Maybe you can use apple's iCloud KeyChain? it is available on both OS and makes everything by itself... You can manage all the passwords from the KeyChain Access Application in OSX...


What causes some Network Drives using SMB no longer connect to macOS Catalina? Running the release version of macOS Catalina some SMB shares will not connect when they did on Mojave. I noticed this first after updating to the Catalina 10.15 Beta (19A487l), I am no longer able to connect to my network drive via SMB.

This is the error:

  There was a problem connecting to the server "ServerName". The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again.

However, I am still able to connect to the network drive from a Windows 10 machine and a macOS Mojave machine.

Is anyone else having this issue? Is it an issue with Catalina or is there something else I can do to try to resolve this?

The solution is in Catalina release note

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos_release_notes/macos_catalina_10_15_beta_2_release_notes

NetBIOS is disabled in macOS 10.15 to speed up mounting, browsing, and connecting to SMB shares. Some older printers and file servers may require NetBIOS to connect. (51119111)

To enable NetBIOS, you can create or edit the /etc/nsmb.conf file. If your system doesn't already have an /etc/nsmb.conf file, use the following Terminal commands while logged in as an Administrator:

echo "[default]" | sudo tee -a /etc/nsmb.conf
echo "port445=both" | sudo tee -a /etc/nsmb.conf

To disable NetBIOS, you can safely delete the /etc/nsmb.conf file.

I have the same issue after updating to macOS Catalina Version 10.15 Beta (19A487m)

I have a network drive connected to a router using SMB:// Its a 8TB readyshare.

This has always connected automatically and is primarily used as a backup. Since the update this has been unavailable and if I try to connect I get the same error as above.

If I try to browse it shows the drive but will not connect. This is shared with a Windows 10 machine and another Mac that can both connect as normal.

I did wonder if it was the way the drive was formatted that was causing the issue.

Any help would be appreciated.


Can Airport Extreme be configured to work with a free dynamic DNS service? I have an Airport Extreme and wish to set up Dynamic DNS (DDNS) so that I can remotely access my home WiFi security cameras when I'm traveling.  I'm seeing certain things that say the built-in dynamic DNS client in the Airport, which I need to use since my Mac will be traveling with me, uses obscure protocols that aren't supported by many accounts.  Is there a free dynamic DNS provider I can use (or the one from Foscam) that will work with the Airport?

Apple's Airport Extreme doesn't have DDNS support built in so it can't update the service itself. But it also doesn't prevent any other client from talking to the DDNS service and updating the records to point to the Airport.

You don't need to be on the router to get your public IP address; you can get get it from any client anywhere on your network that has Internet access.

The basic way DDNS works is that

You set up a DDNS domain and account to which you will sync periodically to.
The DDNS client requests an update from the DDNS server; the client and server authenticate, and compare the IP address the client is sending with the IP address in the DNS record.
If the records are the same, nothing is done and you continue on.  If there is an update, the server updates its DNS record.
The DDNS DNS server propagates those changes throughout the Internet meaning GoDaddy's, Google's, etc. will accept the changes.
At some point, this change hits your ISP and their DNS servers so a nslookup of your IP address will return the correct domain name.

I had a router that didn't support DNS, so I created a script that ran via cron on my web dev server VM that updated it; it worked with no problem.  So, in reference to your "answer", it's your IP cameras that are doing the DDNS updates for you.

It is very simple to get dynamic dns working on your apple router with duiadns.net. Here's a blog post that might help you with that: https://www.duiadns.net/running-duiadns-on-apple-router


Office for Mac 2016, my Outlook can't connect with my company Exchange Server Installed Office for Mac 2016 last night, but after I've setup Outlook with my Exchange account, it did not work! Which previously in Office for Mac 2011 version, it works just fine, any ideas why?

It is very possible that your company is running an Exchange Server that is not compatible with Outlook for Mac 2016.

Check with your company's help desk to find out if this is indeed the issue and if so how you can reinstall Outlook 2011.

Microsoft has crippled the Exchange flexibility - you can no longer manually setup the connection.


How does apple's EFI compare to the UEFI standard? Apple's EFI in macs were the first implementation of EFI by Intel but then Intel revised their work and made UEFI for PC's which is newer and possibly better. I wanted to know if Apple's EFI has been receiving updates through the years or is it outdated compared to UEFI ?

The Apple EFI firmwares are always automatically updated when you update the version of an OS or upgrade the OS. You can check it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201518.


How can I find the files being used by System? (where is my disk space going?) If I go to About This Mac and click on the Storage tab, it tells me that I have 500 GB of Flash Storage and that 15.49 GB of 399.57 GB is free.

It will also tell me that 226 GB is for System, 130 GB is for Documents, and 25.8 GB is for Apps.

If I do: sudo du -hx -d 0 /*

 19G    Applications
2.5M    bin
 15K    dev
4.0K    etc
1.0K    home
1.9G    Library
1.0K    net
1.0K    Network
 16G    private
1.1M    sbin
6.6G    System
4.0K    tmp
157G    Users
848M    usr
4.0K    var
 36K    Volumes

Tools like OmniDiskSweeper or Disk Inventory X will report the same basic information. They will generally account for the space that the Storage tab says is being used by Documents and Applications, but I cannot seem to figure out where the 226 GB of files are that the "System" part is using. I had this situation come up once before and rebooting the machine cleared out the used space and I got a couple hundred GB back. I could do that again, but I would like to be able to track down what these files are.

Any suggestions?

My problem is related to the question What is the correct way to eject a APFS dmg from the command line?

What was going on is I was mounting APFS DMGs via hdiutil attach and only ejecting one of the disks. The disk left behind was taking up hard drive space. After I fully ejected the volume, my hard drive space came back.

The way I was able to spot this easily was by using Apple's Disk Utility application and saw a bunch of grayed out Disk Images.

I had a similar problem and it was turned out the the Library folder had almost 125 GB. there are 2 Library folders and I'm referring to the one in my home directory. Not the one you show thats on the same level as Applications and Users. In that Library folder there was a folder named Mobile Documents. That folder contained around 90 GB. I was using iCloud drive as a backup for my main drive and those files were also showing up in my /Library/Mobile Documents. I don't understand what was going on or how the files were stored but once I removed the files from the Icloud Drive, it freed up close to 90 gB on my disk drive.


Removing Reminders and Notes from the dock? After upgrading to Mountain Lion today, I'm noticing the Reminders and Notes apps now having been added to the dock.

Great way to discover those apps if you're not aware of them, but I'm not going to use them.

As such, I tried removing them, which seems to work (both dragging them off and right-click and remove from dock), but after logging out and back in, they're back.

What's the quick-tip to get rid of those from the dock permanently?

The only unremovable Dock icon is the Finder, removing anything else should result in it staying removed.  There is nothing special about Reminders and Notes, and it's always annoyed me that they put in icons for things like launchpad etc when they have system wide keystrokes or gestures for the same task.

One point to bear in mind tho, is that to prevent people accidentally removing items from the dock (accidental drags are apparently more common on Magic Mouse/Trackpad users) the distance you have to drag the icon away from the dock is significantly increased.  Try it, drag an icon away, and see how far it has to travel before you get the "puff of smoke" icon that indicates it will remove it.  Letting go before seeing this cursor change will just boomerang your icon back into the dock.

I had this problem too but just discovered if you right click on the icon on the dock and go to Options and click Remove from Dock it goes away!


Where can I find an Mavericks driver for my Alfa AWUS036H I have a MacBook Pro Intel Core i7 and have just installed OS X Mavericks (10.9.2) and now can not use my Alfa AWUS036H USB antenna. It seams there are no new drives for this model. Is there a workaround for this or can another model be recommend the runs on OS X Mavericks?

From the Alfa web site (no direct link to FAQ entry available):

Q: Does AWUS036H has driver for Mac Lion?
The AWUS036H works on 32-bit Mac only. If your Mac system is running on 32-bit CPU and you just upgrade the Mac OS to latest version then your AWUS036H is still compatible to it. However, if you just purchased Mac system with 10.6.8 or later version who is running on 64-bit Mac system then you have to boot your computer into 32-bit in order to run the application with device. And you can find the installation guide through our blog @ http://alfanetworkinc.blogspot.com/2011/08/install-awus036h-onto-mac-os-107.html
To identify whether your Mac system is running in 64-bit or not, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3770
If you like to use wifi adapter with default 64-bit Mac system then we’ll suggest following models -  AWUS036NH, AWUS036NEH, AWUS051NH, AWUS036NHR and AWUS036NHV.

Mavericks only runs in 64bit mode. You can run KISMAC in 32bit by setting the "Get Info" checkbox. However, the USB driver for the Alpha is only for 32bit mode. Looks like the Alpha USB driver will have to be re-written to support 64bit. If someone has a solution please chime in...


No sound via HDMI except in Kodi application Everything was working fine weeks ago and now I've started to experience the problem of having no sound. I'll give some background.

I don't have sound anywhere except for when I use Kodi. This means than when I play Spotify, Youtube, system sounds, the command say in terminal - no sound!

My output device in Preferences and in the upper menu and also in Audio Midi Setup is my receiver. It actually shows the correct device name and type as HDMI.

My setup is a Mac Mini, running Sierra 10.12.1 that is connected via HDMI to my receiver. The receiver has a HDMI connection to my TV and analog audio connection to my speakers. Video and sound have all been working but now I only get the video. So to reiterate, there is video in the TV but no sound from any of the speakers.

The weird thing here is that when I start up Kodi and play a movie I have sound.

The make it even more weird is that when I fire up Spotify and play a song I get no sound. If I now, while Spotify is playing startup Kodi and start playing a movie then the Spotify sound will also appear overlaid by the sounds/music from the movie. Once I quit Kodi I don't have Spotify sound anymore. I can see from the interface that the song is still playing.

If I change my output to Built-in internal speakers all sounds appear. Once I switch back to HDMI I have no sound.

Any ideas what is causing this? Any ideas how to debug this issue? I don't see any audio references in Console nor dmesg. Not sure how to continue debugging this situation.

Some things to note:

The volume bar is greyed out in the menu. Even when I run Kodi and I have sound and I cmd-tab and check the volume bar it is still at 0 and greyed out
Changing the volume from the commandline like recommended in this article has no effect.

Here are my Kodi settings

Try changing you output configuration to: "FIXED"


"Run First Aid from Recovery" while in Recovery I have a late-2013 Retina Macbook Pro running Sierra 10.12.5 with a myriad of issues that I've been trying to work out. Today's problem: First Aid says there are problems with the partition map that might prevent booting, and to fix them, I need to run First Aid from Recovery. Easy enough.

So I boot into Recovery and run First Aid and get the same message: run First Aid from Recovery, even though I'm already in Recovery. I get the same message in Internet Recovery and when running Disk Utility off an external macOS installer USB. How can I get First Aid to run in Recovery?

I think it means restart from Internet recovery. Because the disk containing the recovery partition you are running disk first aid from needs repair. So reboot while holding commandR. Give your ethernet or wifi password if needed.

This just happened to me.

edit to fix key sequence.

Restart your Mac in Recovery Mode by holding down Cmd+R immediately after the chime. You'll booth into Recovery Mode and you'll see Disk Utility as an option. Run Disk Utility, select Macintosh HD and run First Aid.

More details: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314


What is the `installd` process, and why is it eating my CPU? My MacBook is frying my lap, and the CPU monitor is going crazy: over 200% CPU being used by a process named installd.
What is it?  Can I kill it?

This is a daemon which is part of PackageKit framework and it's usually running as a background process for the "Software Update" GUI application.
For example, if you open the Software Update application and check for updates, take a look at the Activity Monitor--you'll see the "installd" process doing a bunch of work.

The reason it pegs your CPU is because it must compile the current list of software installed on your computer, and compare with the current version list received from Apple's servers.

You can set the frequency of Software Update checks in System Preferences and Software Update.

The default settings are both to "Check for updates" and "Download updates automatically".
You may adjust either setting, but I would not recommend turning it off altogether.

There's nothing wicked about this process - it's just set to download updates.

You can solve your CPU problem by lowering the priority of the process or by just killing the process in Activity Monitor.

Technical information:

The location in Lion OSX is in:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PackageKit.framework/Resources/installd

(if you have locate configured correctly, run: locate installd to find the right location).

Installd is a process run by Sophos anti virus. The process is called by InterCheck which is a process related to Sophos's active scanning.


Menu bar icon disappear A few days ago, when I start my OS X, I see that a few key icons are gone: including the clock, WIFI, battery and various other things.

I did the following:

Remove the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist
run killall SystemUIServer in the terminal.

The icons did come back. However after restart the icons are gone again.

Other symptoms include: whenever I connect to my WIFI, and then open any application, they will get shutdown immediately, giving error messages like:

  Please run the gather_files.sh command that's attached to the radar
  sudo gather_files.sh

These disappears after a day, but the icons are still gone. How can I get those icons back?

I am using OS X Mavericks 10.9.2

This worked for me:

Reboot and hold shift key to enter safe mode
Launch Safari
Reboot normally


How can I make my iPod Touch home button more responsive? I am finding that lately, quite often pushing my iPod Touch's home button doesn't generate any response - I have to push it again really hard. I'm not sure if it's an issue with the OS or with the hardware.

I haven't jailbroken, and my iPod touch is a new 4th Gen 8GB model bought in September 2011.

Any help is much appreciated.

The unresponsive iPhone/iPod Touch home button is a known problem. I had an iPhone which started with the same problem as yours. At first the home button worked with just a soft touch, and from any angle. Then it started to work only with a hard press and not at all from certain angles. Finally, it either completely ignored presses, or responded to a single press as if it had been pressed twice (multitasking bar appeared).

It was still inside the one-year warranty, but I bought AppleCare anyway, figuring that it might recur. I took it to an Apple Store and the guy played with it for a minute, told me I had a faulty device and gave me a brand new iPhone. The home button can't be replaced, so they just give you a new one.

My advice it to take it to an Apple Store if there's one nearby, or if not call Apple and report the problem. Most likely you'll get a new, working iPod Touch.

Put on drop of water on the home button and press it and move your finger in circles  ... If it's dust what made the problem .. It will go away .... If it doesn't response then you have to change your home button  ....
I fixed my home bottom using one drop of water
..... I hope It work for you too
Peace ....


How to install Windows 7 on a 2015 MacBook Pro? The SSD on my 2014 MBP cratered the other day. While it's off at the shop, my employer bought me a new one.

The problem: I need to dual-boot into Windows 7. Boot Camp Assistant in OS X El Capitan refuses to use anything older than Windows 8.

Notes:

I'm a developer. Some of the libraries we're using will not work under anything other than Windows 7. I'd love to update them - hell, I'd rather just use OS X all the time - but that isn't going to happen.
I cannot use a VM. Really.
Because 3D acceleration under any available VM - Fusion, Parallels, VirtualBox - sucks.
Yes, I actually need 3D acceleration to do my job.

I went ahead and flashed a USB stick with the Win7 ISO and installed rEFInd. rEFInd will not, so far, acknowledge any USB drive that I have. I've tried two different USB sticks (both USB 3), nothing.

Really, don't suggest a VM. It's not going to work for my application. At all. Seriously.

All things considered, I'd rather just downgrade this thing to Mavericks. Life was easier and it didn't have this ugly flat gray dock, amongst other things.

I would recommend just installing Windows 7 as you would with Windows 8 +.

Substitutes:

Hold down the option key while turning on your computer instead of using refind, this will give you a boot menu.

Uncheck all the options in boot camp, except the option to install drivers to a usb stick.

Go to disk utility, make a new partition, and set it to MSDOS FAT.

Start up your Mac, booting from the usb stick(hold down option key while turning on your computer). When prompted for an install disk, choose the partition you made. Go through the rest of the install process, and then plug in your driver usb. Find the setup.exe, and go through the it's install process.

Then you should be all set.


How do I wirelessly connect my iPad with iTunes? I want to connect my iPad wirelessly with iTunes. Can it be done?

If it can be done, please explain on how it can be done.

If you're looking for a way to stream music from iTunes to your iPad, you can use Home Sharing in the Music app:

If you're looking for a way to control iTunes from your iPad, you can use the Remote app, available from the App Store:

Finally, if you're looking for a way to wirelessly sync your iPad with iTunes, that is an announced feature of the next version of iOS, due out in the fall.

One way to sync the iPad with iTunes now, without having to wait for iOS 5 is the jailbreak and then buy the Cydia app Wi-Fi Sync. More information is available here: http://wifisyncapp.com/beta/


How to disable Mojave’s desktop tinting (with reduce transparency)? Even with “Reduce transparency” enabled, Mojave’s desktop-tinting is quite horribly annoying, in both Light Mode and Dark Mode (regardless of accent color). Switching to a solid red desktop background, for example, results in this ugly appearance of the Dock, notifications, some popups, and the Finder sidebar:

An earlier answer claims that using Light Mode or using the Graphite accent disables desktop-tinting, but that’s untrue.

Is it possible to disable desktop-tinting with Reduce Transparency in macOS Mojave?

I reported this as bug #44861849 to Apple, and they closed it as a duplicate of bug #43428401 on 2018-10-19, which is open as of this writing. However, I encourage others to create bugs, as it may increase the priority if more users report.

This is still an issue with macOS 10.14.1.

Set your Desktop background color to pure white:

  System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop > Colors > Custom Color… > Color Palettes > White (double click)

Even in the “Reduce Transparency” mode, Mojave calculates background colors off the desktop wallpaper, so having white there ensures light backgrounds. The contrast with text is much better.

Also, the setting “Increase contrast” in Accessibility > Display gives the best contrast, but it adds black edges to UI elements.

Try using the 'Reduce Transparency' option under Accessibility:

  System Preferences - Accessibility - Display - Reduce Transparency


Apple Hardware Test gives no issues, but MacBook 8,1 fails to load after login This MacBook fails to finish logging in after boot ... diagnosis was a "bad harddrive cable", but after replacing that, no change. For reference, an independent, Apple-certified repair center did a "long" diagnostic after the "Genius" (term used only due to branding) bar said the hard drive was bad.

The laptop boots to a login prompt. After successful login, a progress bar that looks like a firmware update or system check takes a long time to complete (>15 min), and then the computer shuts off. I'd like to reclaim the current OS install, and avoid reformatting/reinstalling.

How can I diagnose what is wrong, without being able to login? AHT "long" test shows no problems.

Bonus points: how can I run the same diagnostics the Apple-Certified repair center did, so I can see the error codes, etc...

Update:
Disk Utility in repair mode failed to verify or repair the disk.
Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map

Run Disk Utitiy from Recovery Mode. On Reboot, press Command (⌘) R. Open Disk Utility. Your partition map might be corrupt. Hit repair a couple of times.
Reset NVRAM/PRAM.  http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18761
Also run EtreCheck and post the report here. Free Download:
http://etresoft.com/etrecheck.

It may well be a disk failure. I would try "FirstAid" in DiskUtility on the disk first and then on the bootpartition.


Unable to symlink /Users in OS X El Capitan I#m running OS X El Capitan and want to symlink /Users to /home

sudo ln -sf /Users /home

fails with

  ln: home/Users: Operation not supported

Why does this fail?

Could this be related to other OS X restrictions? Such as when trying to write to /usr/share ...

  Operation not permitted

System Integrity Protection doesn't prevent you creating sym links in / because the root of the file system is not protected!

But the root of the OS X file system already contains an invisible volume/mount point home created by /etc/auto_master (and /etc/auto_home). Your intension to create an equally named sym link there conflicts with this and is therefore forbidden.

Network users who login to the local machine will have their home directories mounted in /home according to the details in /etc/auto_home.

Likely System Integrity Protection?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899

You can disable it and verify this I suppose.


What power is going in or out of a USB-C port? How do I tell how power is moving through my MacBook Pro's USB-C ports? My shiny new MacBook Pro (15", 2016), comes with four USB-C ports.

Sometimes power comes in through one of these ports, as when I charge the machine from Apple's included official 87 W power adapter, or another power adapter. Sometimes power goes out through these ports, as when I use them to power my iPhone or an external accessory like a hard drive.

Does macOS provide any tool that can tell me the net flow of power through every one of these ports? Or is there a third-party application which can do so? The benefit of this is it would let me manage my battery better, and also understand if cables, hubs, and power adapters are performing as intended.

The closest thing I can find is to go About This Mac / Overview / System Report / USB, where I see three fields: Current Available, Current Required, and Extra Operating Current. I don't quite understand what these fields mean. Also, they purport to describe current (in milliamps), rather than power (in watts). Without knowing the voltage I cannot know the flow of power, and my understanding is that voltage does indeed vary on USB-C power circuits.

Find at this article for more details regarding USB-C in MacBook.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204360


Why won't my Airport Extreme mount my USB 3.0 External Hard Drive? I just decided to upgrade to a USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure. I regularly use my Airport Extreme to share the hard drive using an older enclosure. I know that the Airport Extreme won't have USB 3.0, but I expected it to be backwards compatible. Am I wrong, or is something else amiss?

I'm using this Thermaltake Max 5G, and it mounts when I attach it to a MacBook Pro running Lion.

Per Thermaltake support:

  The Airport Extreme Base Station cannot provide the proper driver support for the docking unit. The docking station was designed to be directly connected to a computer's USB port.

Not a very satisfactory answer, but I guess it is the answer.  I expected it to simply function as USB 2.0 speeds, rather than not working at all.

Any drives harddrives connected to the usb port on Airport Extreme must be in FAT32 or HFS+. If you plug it directly into the Mac USB port then an NTFS or DOS, fat 16 etc can be recognized also but to see an external on a network plugged directly into usb port of an airport extreme, it must be in HFS+ or FAT32 in order to see it over a network.

The reason the Mac sees it is because of the Mac OS file system. If you plug it into the Airport Extreme you won't see it unless it's formatted correctly. This is a "limitation" of the AE.

Faslane


Do Macs need to be defragmented? I don't see any application to defragment my Mac (running OS X).

Is defragmenting not necessary for Mac OS X?  If so, why not?

It's not necessary. For more details than you could possibly want, read Fragmentation in HFS Plus Volumes by Amit Singh (author of  Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach).

osx obviously needs defragmenters when you need to shrink the partitions where it is installed, or when you use hfs+ somewhere else

an excellent example is when you, after only using osx for years and start to use a dual-boot there, like installing a second operating system like gnu/linux (exactly like i did this week), and it is known gnu/linux (like ubuntu) are getting mroe and more popular day by day, specially among osx users - in this context, and it is not as rare, it is totally counterproductive and nonsense having to backup all the information, reformat the partition after resizing it, reinstall osx back again when you just needed to defrag it before resizing it

so everyone, please don’t say no one need defrag tools on osx, or for hfs+ - saying such thing is just ludicrous, as i explained...


Chax with Mac OS X Lion? Has anybody tried Chax with Mac OS X Lion?

I got it to install perfectly, but I do not see a Chax tab in iChat preferences.

I've been in communication with the creator of Chax, and no, it doesn't work on Lion (it definitely works in Snow Leopard). He says he's working on it.

His site is here.

Addendum 9-11-11: The main awesomeness of Chax is the ability to auto-accept Screen Shares with certain people in your Buddy List... including yourself. For instance, if you travel with a laptop and suddenly need to get files from your Mac back home, you simply get a second iChat/AIM account for that laptop, set up Chax on the home Mac, set it up to autoaccept the laptop's account, and you can screen share automatically with your home Mac. I've come to completely rely on that weekly for the past couple years.

I Actually think that we lost Chax in Snow Leopard so it's possible that it just won't work in Lion either. Apple removed a few of the ways that Chax used to interact with iChat in Snow Leopard so unless the developer has found a way around them you're out of luck.


Slow Internet on Lion, but only for some sites and some browsers I've upgraded to Lion today and since then I am facing a very strange problem.

Gmail, Facebook, discussions.apple.com do not load at all, and IF they loaded, I get only text with no CSS or images.
support.apple.com, Google, apple.stackexchange.com work fine and astonishingly fast, as usual
The sites which do not load, do not load in Chrome and Safari, but if I used wget I do get immediately the HTML of the page.

This may suggest (if anything at all) that the mechanism wget is using works fine but the mechanism Chrome and Safari are using is not fine. Does this make any sense to you ?

I've tried searching Google.com (since it loads fast enough), and I get to see the results only through Google cache (because accessing them directly won't work!), and what I found is that lots of people are having this speed problem (and other problems as well).

  However, apart from Apple, I am curios to to know why could wget access sites which Chrome and Safari can't ?

Edit: I confirm that Facebook works from Lynx (a terminal-based browser) but doesn't work on Chrome nor Safari.

Edit2: I can even load facebook quickly through a proxy, though I can't load it directly!

Edit3: apple.se loads on Chrome but doesn't load on Safari.

Try renaming /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration_Backup and restart your computer. I've had some really strange issues where the network .plists that are stored in SystemConfiguration have caused problems.

If it doesn't resolve the issue just delete the folder and set the SystemConfiguration_Backup back to its original name.

The folder houses config files for some system services, but when you restart it will create new copies of these files.

Try resetting the PRAM and NVRAM with the instructions here and let us know if that fixes that problem.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379


Import passwords from Safari to Chrome I am just switching from Safari to Chrome in my MacBookPro and first thing I did was to import bookmarks from Safari.
Now I would also like to import passwords from websites, logins etc.

In Chrome > Settings > Sign In > Advanced Sync Settings, I have already checked every available sync option, however just google account passwords have been imported, not Safari's.

I also tried Chrome>Import Bookmarks and Settings>From Safari>Import, but still no results.

Does anyone know how to import Safari/Keychain passwords to Chrome?

I Think these depend on you Gmail account or which account you used for Sync your passwords... so in chrome you just add you same Gmail or other account and you get your Sync password automatically.


Where does the Apple Workout app "save" completed workouts? The Apple Watch Workout app offers an option to "Save" a workout when it has been completed. Where are such saved workouts saved?

You can view all your past workouts (per day) on the iPhone Activity app! It gives you all the same information you see when you save the workout on your watch.

You can also view past workouts in the Health app (Workouts data in the Fitness section).

If you go to the Health app, and go to "Workouts" - you can click on that graph and go to "show all data" - and it will give you all the specifics on each of your watch workouts.


Sublime Text is autocorrecting “^” I use Sublime Text 3 for my LaTeX coding. Whenever I try to type something with a carat such as e^{x+2} it autocorrects it to e{{x+2}}. The autocorrect occurs right after typing the first curly brace and only occurs in math mode.
I've looked through my Key Binding settings but it all looks pretty foreign to me. This post here seems to refer to adding this autocorrection, but again is tough for me to understand what is going on.

I would suggest you try turning off spell check. Under the sublime text menu item go to preferences and click on "Settings Syntax specific". You get a file that shows setting for spell checking. If that is true, try to change it to false.


Is this Apple charger cable genuine? I recently bought online a charging cable for my iPhone. In the description of the item, the seller wrote "Apple Brand", which is what I was trying to purchase.

However, there are a couple of things that make me think this cable might not be made by Apple:

No Apple logo on the product

Cardboard holder

Oddly printed guide books

Disclaimer on the cable printed at approx. 4 inches from the USB port, seems to read "Designed by Apple in Califomia Assembled in China Fov 5222F2KA HW"

Detail of the USB

Detail of the Lightning

For me, the difference is trivial. But in order to properly give the seller a rating, I'd love to know if they sold me what they pretended to sell or not.

If Apple cables have a certified chip inside, it should be easy to know?

Edit: In editing this question after getting a lot of comments, I retook better pictures of the cable and ruled out possibilities of bad kerning on "Califomia". I genuinely couldn't see well the first time and thought other Apple cables could have gotten badly kerned as well. (Disclaimer: I worked for Apple in the past and live in "Califomia" lol).

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that imho, anything claiming to be designed in "Califomia" is not a genuine Apple product :3

Apple's official article -- Identify counterfeit or uncertified Lightning connector accessories -- may help you confirm my suspicions.

For those not liking hidden links the full address of the Apple article above is https://support.apple.com/ht204566

I think it's genuine. I live in Califomia. You guys don't know anything.


How To Let My MBP know that a USB is bootable? I have got Unetbootin and have put the files onto my drive which is properly formatted as MS-DOS(FAT) and GUID. I have several folders and files: [BOOT], boot, casper, dists, EFI, install, isolinux, md5sum.txt, pics, pool, preseed, README.deskdefines. When I go in Startup Disk in System Preferences, or press option in startup, it doesn't show the drive, when I go in Disk Utility, click on the drive, then info, the table shows Bootable: no. I do not know why this is happening, as I followed the legitimate steps. I would like still to install Ubuntu on my MacBook Pro 2018, thank you.

First of all, unetbootin or any other ubuntu usb flasher wont "break" your usb. If your usb is givving you an error when plugged into mac os saying"unrecognized drive",  then this is GOOD! Mac os cannot read a linux filesystem by default. It definitely cant read an ext4 filesystem. The only linux filesystems mac os can read are ext2 and maybe ext3, but even then, that is with the use of external software like Fuse. The linux filesystem is not native to Mac OS, therefore, the os cannot read the disk. However, the linux filesystem CAN be read by intel hardware (which all apple macs use now). Therefore, your mac will be able to read the flashed ubuntu usb and boot the ubuntu installer by you either holding the alt/option key on boot, or if that doesnt work, by installing refind boot manager and using that as a bootloader to boot your usb. If you are trying to dual boot mac and ubuntu, you will most likely need to download & install refind anyway, as that is how you should be selecting which os you want to use at boot. Lastly, because linux is not recognized by Mac OS, it is doubtful that there is a way to get your ubuntu partition (or usb for that matter) to show up in the system preferences boot profile. Once again, to boot your ubuntu partition you must hold the proper start up keys for disk selection at boot, or install refind.

The only possible way that these methods won't work or your bootable USB won't be bootable, is if you are using the following outdated hardware:

PowerPC based Mac
a much older 64 bit mac with a 32bit efi (such as the 2006 core 2 duo models)
An older mac that is 32bit using a 32bit efi.

It is highly doubftful that you are using of these types of macs as they are almost 20 years old. Therefore, if you are not able to boot your ubuntu install disk, it tells me that you are doing something wrong, as opposed to the USB stick being "Broken".

Did you run and install etcher?

https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-macos#3

Here's the manual way to make a bootable USB
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/How%20to%20install%20Ubuntu%20on%20MacBook%20using%20USB%20Stick


Combine files by name and zip How can I automatically ZIP files with same file names (different extensions) into one ZIP?

For example I have four files

king.jpg
king.txt
queen.jpg
queen.txt

which would led to

king.zip (containing king.jpg and king.txt)
queen.zip (containing queen.jpg and queen.txt)

You can easily do this with a short bash snippet.

p=SOME.CRAZY.STUFF
for i in *; do
    f="${i%.*}"
    if [[ "$p" != "$f" ]]; then
        zip "$f" "$f".*
    fi
    p="$f"
done

If you are not familiar with Terminal/bash and don't plan to use this too often, you can do the following to use it:

create a folder where you move all your kings and queens to (and nothing else)
open Terminal, type cd followed by a space, drag the folder you've just created into the Terminal window (release the mouse button once a green cross appears) and press Enter
type p=SOME.CRAZY.STUFF followed by Enter
type (or even better copy/paste)

for i in *; do f="${i%.*}"; if [[ "$p" != "$f" ]]; then zip "$f" "$f".*; fi; p="$f"; done

again followed by Enter
(assuming no error message etc was displayed) quit Terminal again

you can put both into one folder and zip that folder..

otherwise you need to use tar, which is a bit more complicated...


iPhone 4S unlock and/or jailbreak? I have seen there are several jailbreak and unlocks are available for earlier models.

Is there any trusted unlock and/or jailbreak available for iPhone 4S?

I am not sure about the iOS version as I don't have the phone in my hands now.

If your answer provides information which versions can be safely unlocked and/or jailbroken (with links to the instructions) and which are not would be amazing.

The Absinthe tools are really easy to use - jailbreaking has gotten much easier than it used to be. However, the dev teams are hard at work on getting their tools to work with the latest iOS version/chip version combinations so it's hit or miss with if you will actually be able to do it.

Absinthe is currently only compatible with 5.0.1 and 5.1.1 (you can see greenpois0n.com for a bit of info).

One thing to look out for is that it can be confusing but being that you have a 4S that narrows it down a bit - you will probably need to wait until they update Absinthe to jailbreak, unless you are fortunate enough to not have updated the firmware yet.

On the subject of unlocking, that's a different story - in case you're not sure of the difference, unlocking means being able to use different carrier SIM cards where as jailbreaking means being able to use non approved apps (it's a common mistake, so that's why I mention it here).

Unlocking can be done a few different ways (in the US, I'm unsure exactly the process in other countries). In the US, Sprint WorldWide customer service will unlock your phone if your account has been in good standing for 90 days (I've had 5 iPhones unlocked this way) and as long as there are no other holds on your account. AT&T will unlock a 4S that isn't on contract (I'm unsure if it has to be an AT&T phone originally) and I think Verizon Wireless has a similar policy (but I don't know for certain).

One thing you will want to watch out for are street vendors that say they can unlock your iPhone - they can't, don't waste your money.

iClarified actually has a pretty good walkthrough wizard for both unlocking and jailbreaking here:

http://iclarified.com/unlock/index.php (unlocking)

and

http://iclarified.com/jailbreak/index.php (jailbreaking)

Hope that helps.

Cheers!

In addition to software Jailbreak/Unlock solution, there are low-price hardware solutions also: The small chips that are put on the sim card and make any sim card to appear as the correct sim card to iPhone.

You can buy the suitable ones in eBay with names like GPP unlock sim card or something like this. The actual price varies between $5 to $20.


Is there a way to turn off autosave feature in Lion OS X? How can I turn off the autosave feature on all applications in lion?

Is this what you're looking for?

http://www.pubarticles.com/article-2-ways-to-disable-autosave-and-versions-on-mac-os-x-lion-1311670708.html

: Disable Autosave and Versions on Lion - Setting

  Go to System Preferences > General
  Untick "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps".
  Then reboot.


Is Intel Iris 1536 MB ‘better’ than Intel HD Graphics 4000? I'm looking at a game which gives 'Intel HD Graphics 4000' as one of its requirements. My Macbook Pro Retina mid-2014 has 'Intel Iris 1536 MB'; will that be OK?

There are 3 types of mid 2014, two with integrated graphics & one with a discrete card.

The integrated chip is Intel 5100 or 5200 so yes, well within spec, even if you don't have the dual-graphics version with a GeForce GT 750M.

Source: Everymac

No, it won’t work.
Iris by itself gives only video memory of 128MB.
Iris is basically more for graphic not gaming.
You need iris and Nvidia video card together to get the best  performance.


Where to find OpenSSL devel package - can't seem to find it in Brew I'm trying to install openssl-devel on OS X El Capitan, and I can't seem to find the package on Brew nor the source anywhere online. The application I'm installing (UnrealIRCd) requires both openssl and openssl-devel to install. Can anyone help me out? Thanks.

Just install openssl via Homebrew. It contains all you need.

EDIT: I tried building UnrealIRCd with openssl installed and it built successfully.

EDIT2: On a number of package managers, a software package is divided into runtime (used by other softwares to run) and development (used to build the other softwares) packages.
For instance, openssl is a runtime and openssl-devel is a development package on those package managers.
However, packages on Homebrew aren't separated in this manner but just contain both.
This is why just installing openssl is fine on Homebrew.


Does the performance increases when the memory increases in Apple products? I am planning to buy an iPad 3. My choices are,

iPad 3 - 32GB with wifi
iPad 3 - 16GB with wifi + 4G

I'm so confused to select my best choice.

Actually the problem is, some of my friends telling that, the performance and the OS update support depends on the memory size only. That is,
the higher memory capacity device has high performance with future OS update supports (Because, the new updates may eat more memory). So they are suggesting the iPad 3 - 32GB (wifi alone).

Is their answer right?

All 3rd generation iPads perform pretty much identically, because they have the same CPU, GPU and RAM (memory). Battery life varies between the Wifi and Wifi+4G models (with the 4G models getting a bit less battery life in exchange for a bit more connectivity).

The 16/32/64gb figure refers only to how much data (music, videos, books, apps and associated stuff) you can store on the device.

I suspect when apple drop OS support for the 1st generation iPad, they'll drop them all at once, no matter how much storage space they have.

The statement of your friends is incorrect. The OS is installed on a separate partition that is the same size on all iPads and makes no change in the speed of the device.


How to get Gmail Categories in macOS Mail app? I'm using the default Gmail inbox, where emails are magically filed under the proper tab: Primary, Social, Update and Forum.

In Mail on OS X Yosemite (10.10) however, all end up in the Inbox.

I can see my custom labels (I use several) under "Google" in the left panel. Under Mailboxes, I have of course the standard Inbox, Drafts, Outbox... But the Gmail tabs appear nowhere, not even as folders.

I could maybe create rules on Gmail that would match the tabs, e.g. if this is a "Social" email, then add a label "Social", but this seems clumsy.

Is there an easy/elegant way to enable it?

EDIT

You can follow the instructions from this page (too long to reproduce them here). It boils down to creating server filters for each category (=tab), in order to archive the email from your inbox and apply a label on it. Then, it will show nicely in OSX Mail. Some caveats though:

The search function in Mail does not work on all folders at once
You lose the small tab counter, telling you for instance you have 3 new emails in Social. The counter resets itself as soon as you hit the tab in Gmail. Not in OSX Mail

Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t expose its “Categories” to IMAP. I'm using Mail.app as my email client, and I had the same desire to have my mail categorized with Gmail’s bayesian-or-whatever classifiers, so I found a fix.

This workaround uses filters to automatically apply labels to categories. Once labeled the old fashioned way, they can then be exposed to IMAP.

Go to Gmail/Settings/Filters
Using a search operator enter category:[chosen category] in the “Has the words” field and click “Create filter with this search.“
Check “Apply the label:” and select or create new label
(optional) Check “Also apply filter to matching conversations.“
Create filter
Go to Gmail/Settings/Labels and show the label in IMAP
(optional) Hide the label from label and message lists

This will link up your Gmail categories to your Mail.app.

Go to the gear icon in the top-right → Configure inbox → Select tabs to enable → Save.


iPad application failed to install from iTunes on Windows I am trying to install an application on my iPad 2 from Windows. Whenever I do so, I am getting an alert on iPad: Application failed to install.

When I install the same application from iTunes on my MacBook, everything works fine and the application is successfully installed on the device. I am sure it is not the case of some provisioning profile error. There might be some issue with iTunes or the OS version, but I don't know.

I have iTunes 10.5.5.3 and Windows Vista. Can someone help me?

Thanks,

Nitish

Firstly, check to make sure that there is not a download in progress that has not been interrupted/paused.

Secondly, the file may be corrupt, my suggestion would be to remove the .ipa file from windows, and allow iTunes to re-download it.

right click the app within iTunes and click "Show in Windows Explorer"
find the .ipa file for your application and delete it.
re-download the app from your Purchased Apps page in iTunes.

May be you are trying to install older version of the app therefore apps will be failed to install try installing updated files (ipa)


Unlocking a disabled iPhone A friend asked me to help her with her old iPhone 4 (she has upgraded to a 7). When I turn it on, it says, "iPhone is disabled" and "connect to iTunes."

When I do so, iTunes reports that it is locked with a passcode, and that I need to type that in to continue. However, the iPhone does not display a keypad or allow any sort of input.

Apple suggests the only solution is a wipe, but this will lose all of her photos.

Can photos be retrieved (at a minimum) from a disabled iPhone 4?

This happens when the wrong passcode has been entered 10 times. The stages escalate from a 1-minute lock after 5 incorrect attempts, to a 60-minute lock after 9 incorrect attempts. After the 10th incorrect attempt, depending on the setting under Settings → Passcode, either the iPhone gets wiped, or you get the message you describe.

Since your friend is worried about losing all her photos with a wipe, it's safe to assume she did not have iCloud Backup enabled, or that she was running iOS 4? Because if she does have a backup in iCloud, you could simply wipe the phone and restore it.

According to OS X Daily, you need to plug the phone into iTunes on the computer it was previously synced with. Then you should be able to Sync it by entering the correct passcode directly into iTunes. This will trigger a new backup, after which you'll be able to Restore her iPhone from this backup.

If this doesn't work for you, then the only way to regain access to that iPhone is to wipe it. Because the contents of the phone are encrypted, not even Apple can recover the data for you.

Try to remove the passcode by restoring the iPhone 4S from iTunes or Find My iPhone in iCloud if you've enabled it before. But the issue here is that you will lose your data by following the above method, which you should be aware of it. Besides, if you have set up to automatically backup in iTunes before, your phone will be auto sync while connecting to iTunes. If no, then click to restore the data on your own.

Besides, I have tried another way to recover photos from locked iPhone before, which is using the Windows Media Gallery on my PC to import the photos. But provided you have clicked to trust PC on your iPhone before. Hope this would do a favor for you.


Where did this file come from I started up Disk Utility to mount an external HD and noticed an image file decryptedFile.dmg

Any idea where this file could have come from ls -l@ shows:-

-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  wheel  15643651 17 Feb 11:21 /var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/T/decryptedFile.dmg
    com.apple.diskimages.recentcksum          81

It appears the download was Flash Player. I never use this, but it is not my computer, and apparently Flash had automatic updates (and other undesirable privacy breaches) enabled. (I am very reluctant to open any .dmg I haven't actually downloaded.

Have you installed Flash Player recently? If so, it's just a harmless leftover. If not, it could be part of the Flashback Trojan.

Also keep in mind that programs like Google Chrome embed flash player, so you are correct to not trust dmg you don't really want to install. More digging might be needed if you don't want to make a backup and then just delete the files and see if/when they reappear.

I do not have that .dmg in my Mac and I have been doing Adobe Flash player update since years.

Here is a look in to my Folders:

The T folder is locked and unlocking it shows following:

Some say it is just a Adobe Flash Player left over ? Why would some Mac have it and others (like mine) not, it is not clear.

  Regarding decryptedFile.dmg, that appears in Disk Utility following an
  Adobe Flash Player update. It is not a Trojan.

Best would be to Open that ".dmg" with something like "Pacifist" to see what is inside, that would reveal if it is from Adobe (which I doubt since I do not have it) or something else.


Reduce transparency and Lock-screen Background I'm running El captain public beta but I think this also applies to macs running Yosemite. I really like the look of the reduce transparency + increase contrast in Yosemite/El Captain. Unfortunately those options also force the lock screen background to be a boring grey colour instead of the blurred version of my desktop background :(

I am aware that you can change the lock/login screen background by navigating to /Library/Caches and changing a file. I checked and the file is as it should be - the blurred version of my desktop background.

Is there a way to set the lock screen background to something other than the grey colour while still keeping reduce transparency and increase contrast on? Perhaps something to do with changing system files?

EDIT: I did some research and it seams like this behaviour is unique to El Captain. Yosemite has the desired behaviour of the lock screen being the blurred background even with reduce transparency and increased contrast turned on

I have had this question as well for a long time and my answer is — as far as I can tell and have tried and researched in other posts and fora — there is no way to do so. Hopefully that assertion will motivate someone to try and find an answer that proves me wrong.

As of 2017 the issue you are having is also present in MacOS Sierra — to respond to the claim that it is unique to El Capitan — making the issue still relevant. I have asked this question myself recently on apple.stackexchange but nobody has responded as of yet.


How do i sync an iPhone 4 (that has never been synced) to a computer without losing all of my pictures and data? I got my iPhone in may, and have never synced it to a computer. I would like to now so that I can out music from my CDs on it. But when my friend synced her iPhone 4 to a computer it erased all of her pictures. What can I do so that doesnt happen?

Either iPhoto or Image Capture will let you pull all your photos off the phone to get the safely onto the computer. From there you can store them wherever you want.

DropBox also has a camera upload function now so you can upload straight to DropBox from the phone, or from the computer when you plug your phone in.

Just make sure you use iPhoto or Image Capture first when you plug in your phone.

If you plug the phone into your computer and set it up with iTunes it might prompt you to reset it to automatically sync with that computer. You can do that after you've removed the photos using iPhoto.

If you do sync with iPhoto it'll give you the option to remove the photos from your phone after syncing - that's your choice.

Finally, if you're worried about losing photos, you can configure iPhoto on your computer to use Photo Stream, and on your iPhone too in the iCloud settings. That'll copy the photos to the cloud, and then iPhoto automatically, so you don't need to plug in your phone to sync each time.

Most of this assumes you have a Mac computer, btw, you don't make clear whether you're syncing to a Mac or PC.

You can use iCloud to sync your data to your PC.Before this, you must set up your iCloud in case it erase your data on your iPhone.


I want to sync my previously never synced iPhone to a Mac. Is there a risk of data loss? I want to sync my previously never synced iPhone (filled with 2 years of pics & music) to my mother's Mac. Is there any risk of data loss?
It has never been linked to a computer. I have many pictures & videos of my baby & don't want to lose them!

Yes - there always is a risk of data loss even though the software (iTunes and iOS) are designed to let you make a backup and transfer all data before it erases anything.

Best to go online / call apple or visit a store and research how to prevent an automatic sync for your version of iTunes and the steps to back up / transfer that content before you start.

Without knowing your iOS version and iTunes version it's hard to be more specific. It should go fine, but best to be prepared beforehand.

You can transfer all music and pictures on to her Mac.

Open finder and navigate to the iPhone, you can then extract all the images as you would with a digital camera.

To take the music files you will need to use a piece of software such as Xilisoft you cannot manually take the audio from an iPhone as it appears as a camera unlike an iPod which appears as a harddrive.


Restart Screen Sharing Service on Mac mini Server I'm running Mac OS X (think it's Snow Leopard - 10.6.7) on a Mac mini. I'm trying to connect remotely from an iMac (this has been working fine in the past, for some time). When I click "Share Screen..." in finder on the iMac, I (eventually) see the server's desktop, but it appears to be frozen. However, I've managed to determine (from closing the window and sharing screen again, on repeat) that it IS actually receiving input, just not updating the display.

I can ssh into the server, but how can I restart the screen sharing service?

I had the same trouble, and to a headless Mini also. This is what I found that worked…

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.screensharing.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.screensharing.plist

I had the opportunity to install an SSD in my Mini, and did a clean install of Lion at that time, and the issue persisted.

I made an alias

alias fixscreen='sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.screensharing.plist &&  sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.screensharing.plist'

Rather than restart just the screen sharing service, I would suggest remote restarting the Mac Mini. You can do this via SSH by typing in:

sudo shutdown -r now

This will not only restart the screen sharing service, but may also resolve the issue that caused it to act up in the first place.


How can I disable animation when switching desktops in Lion? I would very much like to disable the sliding animation that occurs when switching desktops via ctrl+→/← or ctrl+[number] in Lion.   This was previously accomplished in previous versions with this command:

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock

This new animation is even more slow than in Snow Leopard - nearly 1 second to switch - a real productivity killer.

Any help greatly appreciated!

I posted a bug on Radar#28495374 and here is the response from Apple:

Fixed in 10.12.  Go to Accessibility and Turn on Reduce Motion…
Please let us know whether the issue is resolved for you by updating your bug report.

I noticed that it is possible to control the speed of the space-change animation when you use the Swipe gesture in OS X Lion.  You can make the spaces change as fast, if not faster, than they did in Snow Leopard by doing a quick three-finger or four-finger swipe to the left or the right.  Of course, it's definitely something to get accostomed to if you've always used ⌘+→/←.

This did get me thinking.  Since it seems that changing spaces via arrow keys, number keys, and gestures all perform the same type of animation, there is likely a single system command that all three of these actions map to.  Additionally, since they all perform the animation at a different speed, there must be a parameter that controls the animation speed.  I'm not an OS X developer, so hopefully someone else with a better knowledge of the underlying functionality of OS X would be able to determine what system commands are actually running when the user performs a certain action.


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.

Click on "not secure" icon on address bar and block JavaScript.


Ctrl + Alt + Delete: Mac Equivalent? Ctrl + Alt + Delete on Windows provides a variety of functions, the main one of interest being the Task Manager. Is there an equivalent keyboard shortcut & indeed Task Manager for carrying out such tasks as quitting an application that maybe "hanging" (amongst other things) for Apple Macs, or indeed anything similar ?

The keyboard shortcut you’re looking for is ⌘ + ⌥ + ⎋, alternatively known as command + option + escape. This will bring up the Force Quit Applications window (see screenshot below).

Ctrl + Alt + Delete in Windows is equivalent to
Command + fn + delete in Mac OS X


How to download old version of Mac OS X that I own and App Store lists, but App Store refuses on newer Mac I own old versions of Mac OS X, Mountain Lion in particular. The old versions are listed in the "Purchases" list within App Store app on my Mac.

But when I hit the "Download" button a message appears refusing to start the download because my MacBook Pro is too new and does not support that OS.

Other Questions are similar to this but not quite the same.

Others say to use the App Store to download, but no mention of the App Store refusal that I encounter.
Others suggest using developer.apple.com, but even with a paid membership that download page no longer offers old versions. The Download page offers only 2 versions: the current version (Yosemite) and the future beta (El Capitan).

My goal is to install Mac OS X on a virtual machine, Parallels.

If you go to developer.apple.com/downloads you will find all downloads that Apple has available.  Limit your search to the "OS X" category and you'll see downloads for all versions of OS X from version 10.3 to 10.6.

I'm guessing that 10.7 and up are missing because starting with 10.7, the OS was only available via the App store. Unfortunately, that means that you'll only be able to get the installer from the App store, and the only way I know of getting older version from the App store is if you have previously "purchased" that version and wish to download it again.

FOUND IT!

Hope this is what you were looking for -- er, a year later. Better late than never.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Mountain_Lion  (can also do same with other OSX versions)

Scroll down to a chart that has the diff updates/combo updates, and on the far right column, there are links to download the each one.

Hope this helps someone!


Time Machine Full, But Only One Backup (or, what are .RecoverySets and why do they take up so much space?) Something crazy is going on with Time Machine. I upgraded to Mavericks yesterday with no issues. After performing a final backup on Mountain Lion, I disconnected my backup drive out of an abundance of caution, just in case I wanted to use it to roll back to 10.8. I plugged it back in today and let it do its thing, and got an out of space warning. I wasn't too worried about this, since I had been getting these previously (in the past, TM didn't do the best job estimating the space required and removing old backups).

Upon investigation, I discovered that only the most recent backup (from before the upgrade) was available. I double checked this in Finder and Terminal to confirm, and it appears correct. The Time Machine preferences showed the last backup as October 6, which seemed a bit more reasonable, but I saw no evidence of those files actually existing. The only sure thing I could determine was that something was taking up a lot of my backup volume — out of a ~750 GB volume, only 50 GB was free (Time Machine is estimating 154 GB needed, although only ~140 GB are used on my boot drive).

After further digging, I discovered what was taking up all the space. The hidden .RecoverySets folder, within the Backups.backupdb folder on my Time Machine volume. In it are more than 1,200 sequentially numbered folders, each with a com.apple.recovery.boot subfolder, containing a 419 MB BaseSystem.dmg file. Based on the md5 hashes, these dmg files are all identical, and in total add up to nearly 600 GB (or, the vast majority of the space on my Time Machine volume).

tl;dr

Missing Time Machine backups after 10.9 upgrade. Don't appear in Finder or Terminal.
Lots of folders in Backups.backupdb/.RecoverySets taking up the majority of space on my TM drive.

Additional Info

2012 iMac running 10.9 (release build, no developer previews), upgraded from 10.8 via standard App Store install.
Time Machine drive is an encrypted volume, with another volume on the same drive used by SuperDuper (which appears to be unaffected).

Questions

Are my old backups completely gone? (I'm thinking yes.)
What are the folders within the .RecoverySets folder, why have they been gobbling up space, and what can I do to prevent it in the future?
What do you suggest I do now for Time Machine backups? I'm leaning towards scrapping it altogether and starting fresh, but I am concerned about running into this issue again.

I'm not terribly concerned about the data loss at the moment — I have two other separate backups — but I do want to ensure the integrity of my backups in the future. Any info you can provide would be appreciated.

Okay, so I can't fully answer this issue but I'll share what I've found out:

Yes. Unfortunately Time Machine has deleted these, so anything unique that was in the past backups is gone for good.
The contents of .RecoverySets are copies of your Recovery HD. Ordinarily Time Machine shouldn't have more than one of these but, like you, I found the folder contained nearly a thousand identical sets. My best guess is that there is something wrong with my recovery partition that is causing Time Machine to think it has been changed, but that doesn't explain why Time Machine is creating so many copies without discarding any. I've filed a bug report with Apple, and I suggest anyone who encounters the same error does the same.
You can workaround this issue with a bit of light Terminal work:

First type cd /Volumes/{Time Machine Backup}/Backups.backupdb, replacing the part in brackets with the name of your backup volume before hitting return.
Next type sudo rm -fr .RecoverySets and hit return, you'll be asked for your password so that the command can delete your existing recovery sets.
Now run a Time Machine backup as normal using the menubar menu or by entering tmutil startbackup in Terminal and hitting return again. Wait till the backup is finished, as this will recreate your .RecoverySets folder.
Now type sudo chflags simmutable .RecoverySets and hit return, entering your password again if prompted. This will lock the folder (though it may not show this in the Finder), preventing Time Machine from creating any duplicate recovery sets in future.

The above workaround has a few caveats; firstly you won't gain any new recovery sets, but that's unlikely to be an issue, but if you're worried your set may be outdated you can unlock the folder using sudo chflags nosimmutable .RecoverySets (after cd'ing to your backup volume), delete your recovery sets, run a Time Machine backup, then re-lock it again.
You may also notice errors in your console to the effect of "Could not backup OS X Recovery to…", but that's to be expected as you locked the target folder, it just means this workaround is doing the trick, so you can safely ignore these.

One further note; after deleting your .RecoverySets folder, you may not immediately see any extra free space in the Finder. The easiest way to do so is to open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app, unmount your backup volume and then mount it again, and you should see the correct free-space value, or you can just ignore it, as the free space should be there. In my case I freed up a massive 750gb by deleting my recovery sets folder, as I had over a thousand completely identical copies of my recovery partition in there (no wonder I only had 483kb of free space left!).

You may also want to investigate methods of repairing your recovery partition, but I'm not certain of the best way to do this; it couldn't hurt to at least try Disk Utility's first aid repair command.

Your TM backup disk should be at least the 3x size of the disk you want to backup.
And make more than one TM Backup on different external drives !!!


Prevent text messages from being sent to recipient's email address Recently when I sent a message to an iPhone recipient, it was sent via SMS, presumably because one of us couldn't connect to iMessage. However, the strange thing is that my iPhone sent the text message to the recipient's email address, instead of their phone number:

(I was surprised to see this actually worked because Verizon evidently relays SMS-to-email from yourphonenumber@vzwpix.com, and when the recipient responds, it gets relayed back via SMS.)

The phone number and email address are in the correct fields in their Contacts card, but Messages chooses the email address instead of the phone number for Text Message:

I checked other contacts, and all of them have a phone number in the Text Message field in Messages, but a few have two Text Message fields, one with a phone number and one with an email address. This is the first time I have seen Messages send via email. Does anyone know of a fix?

The sender needs to attach their number to their iMessage "Send & Receive" list.

On the iPhone they can go to Settings -> Messages -> Send And Receive -> Add iPhone phone number along with their Apple ID email.

Then make sure the phone number has a check mark next to it.

Then try texting them again and see if it emails them the message, it shouldn't.

You could remove the email address from your contacts, or you could just wait until the message gets sent.


Upgrade iMac late 2009 with SSD I've thinking to upgrade my iMac late 2009 with an SSD. Its has a SATA II port and now uses a HD Hitachi 7200rpm. In your opinions, if I'll upgrade, I can see an increase of performance or not?
In my project i've thinking to put SSD (250GB) in HD slot and buy an external case for HD in order to store photos and other big files.

Surfing online I've found some forums talk about temperature sensor on HD. I didn't understand  which problem there are with this component. Can you explain me if there are problems?

Here are some points from my Upgrade of my old iMac (late 2009, Model 10,1, #A1312)

You can expect a significant Performance increase when starting Apps or saving Data, but overall-performance is depends on you RAM size too. If you are  working with Photoshop f.e. you should def. have more than 8GB (on 10.10) - the more the better.
You will encounter Problems with the Heat-Sensor. Apple uses a non-standard 3-Pin on the Hitachi HD to access the Heat-Sensor build into the Drive. Other HD or SSD will not have that, so you cannot connect the Heat-Sensor to the Mainboard. The result: the OS will turn up the Fan speed to a maximum, which is annoyingly loud. You can counter that effect with an additional Software to control the Fan speed, f.e. 'HDD-Fan Control' or 'iStat-Menu‘ and others.
In order to fasten the SSD, usually in a 2,5" Format, into the internal 3,5-Slot of the iMac you need a Frame for the SSD. Annoyingly some of the Frames have Screw-Slots in which the Apple Srews do not fit. You should read the excellent visual Tutorial from iFixit for replacing the HDD (Link is for my Model, check your Model before attempting to follow it).

Conclusion: even though it's a PITA, i never regretted doing it.

your idea is charming, but does not work with your system.
What you can do is to add a ssd and merge it with the hd into a fusion drive using Apples on-board tool residing within the disk utility.
If you are running Yosemite it will be o. k to just start. if you are running Mavericks and willing to upgrade to Yosemite, DO THIS PRIOR ANY HARDWARE CONFIGURATION CHANGE. Built up the Fusion Drive afterwards!
There are two options. 1. Add the ssd atop the hd using a dedicated interface OR 2. Substitute the optical drive with a ssd.
(Blame one if I am wrong, but a substitution of the hd a primary boot disk is possible with newer iMacs)
I did it the second way because the optical drive was gone on my Mavericks ran mind-blasting fast with the fusion drive. After upgrading to Yosemite it now is slowed somewhat especially while shutting down. I did not had the time to rebuilt the fusion drive directly upon Yosemite but will do it!
The best description, including the spare parts and everything else you need, you can find at ifixit.com

Hope that helps
tom


How much space is SMS taking up? When I plug my iPhone into the PC and iTunes comes up, the "Other" is taking up about 40% of the bar.  I suspect most of it is SMS/iMessage, since I am a heavy user (with photos and sometimes videos).

Questions:

How do I actually see how much space SMS is taking up?
Is there a way to delete everything prior to a certain date?

Yes, you can see how much storage your Messages are taking up directly on your iOS device by going to: Settings > General > Usage
No, you cannot mass delete from a specific period of time.

If you are sending lots of images and videos, that 40% probably is your Messages database which includes pictures and videos.

The 40% of the bar is usually made of the iphone's own operating system. If you update to new operating frequently a lot of space would be taken especially if yours is only 16gb.

You cannot actually check how much space SMS are taking, but they only take a very small percentage.

You also cannot remove only some of the SMSs if not manually. If yours is jailbroken, a new tweak could be made in the future.


Upgrading my Mac Pro 1,1 to run on El Capitan I have the Mac Pro "Quad Core" 2.66 (Original):

Model identifier: 1,1
Ram: 32 GB
Graphics Card: GeForce 7300 GT
Hard Drive: 750GB HDD Seagate

I have the Mac Pro currently running Mac OS X Lion and would like to update this to Mac OS X Yosemite or Mac OS X El Capitan if possible. I was wondering what kind of upgrades I would need to do to make this possible and the best way to do it for as low cost as possible.

Since this thread came up near the top of a google search, and since I've done it before, I thought I would chime in just in case someone else looking for info sees it.

My Pro 1,1 with 32GB RAM, an SSD, and an ATI 5770 runs El Cap absolutely great.  The only big issue is that it uses quite a lot of power compared to a modern machine.  No, it's not as fast as a new mac, but it's totally capable of being a daily driver for most uses.

You can NOT brick your machine doing this.  All you are doing is booting from a slightly modified El Cap install.  There is no need to upgrade your EFI to the 2,1 roms unless you will be upgrading your CPUs.  There is no need to flash your video card's ROM to a mac version.  You will need a more recent video card--I use a 5770.

The process is simple.  Install El Cap on an SSD/HD using another mac that does support El Cap, disable csr, and then change the boot.efi file to an alternate ( https://github.com/Piker-Alpha/macosxbootloader ) optionally using a script to make things easier ( https://github.com/ryanmaclean/Mac-Pro-1-1-El-Capitan-Upgrades ).

If your video card isn't a mac version, your screen will be blank (no boot logo) until your desktop comes up, but that's never been an issue.  You may need to fix the boot.efi file after an update, but I don't imagine that happens much any more.

Other than that, enjoy!

EDIT:

Both my ati 5770 and my nvidia 660ti work on my pro 1,1 with ElCap.  While it is true that older cards wont let you boot and only suffer a few seconds of blank screen, it is not due to a lack of EFI bios on the cards. There isn't an EFI bios available for any 5770 afaik, and Zotac was not kind enough to provide an EFI update for my particular 660ti.  I am sure of this due to working through these issues getting PCI passthrough to work with KVM/qemu with these cards on another box and having to substitute an EFI rom via a file.   But, yes, if you have a pc/win card older than 2012 or so, you might need to flash for mac or find a more recent card.

What you want to do is not an easy task. I'm not saying it's impossible, but you do risk bricking your machine. I assume you have some software that requires Yosemite or El Capitan, so only you can decide whether the risk is worth it.

The trick is not as much about the hardware as it is about convincing your old Mac Pro to run in 64-bit mode. That's because your Mac can't natively boot OS X Yosemite or El Capitan without a different boot loader.

I have seen a number of approaches used to get these machines to work with newer OS versions, so it's too hard to try and summarise these here. Below are some links for you to check out:

2006/2007 Mac Pro (1,1/2,1) and OS X Yosemite
How To Resurrect A 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 So It Can Run OSX Yosemite
How to: Easiest Install of Yosemite on Unsupported Mac 2006/2007

NOTES:

The above solutions are not without risk - including the potential to brick your machine!
If you proceed, ensure you have a full backup of your data.
Personally, I would not bother - your machine originally launched with Mac OS X 10.4.7 and only officially supports up to Mac OS X 10.7.5 - so you can imagine how well the hardware will run Mac OS X 10.10.x or Mac OS X 10.11.x.


How many photos will fit on a 16 GB  iPad? I am interested about an iPad for my mom and can't decide whether to go for 16GB or 32GB. Assuming no movies on it, and minimal amount of apps (she will use it mainly for browsing and skype) how many photos can fit on a 16GB?

Short answer: 16GB should be fine for photos.

Long Answer: Your question is hard to answer with any accuracy as photos come in a variety of sizes depending on resolution, subject matter etc. For example, a photo taken on your 3GS iphone will be smaller than one taken on your 4GS iphone, which will also be smaller than one taken on your nikon DSLR digital camera. And as you could also reduce the image size based on how you want the photos to appear on your ipad, it becomes a bit more complicated to answer.

However, some math might give you a better idea at least.

1GB = 1024 MB so 16GB is 16384MB. Assuming you lose say 4GB for the in built apps and skype etc. we could say you might be left with 12GB or 12288MB.

Let's assume your mother isn't a professional photographer with a 30 megapixel dslr camera, but for the sake of being conservative we'll say all of her photos are taken on a hi definition camera, like the iPhone 4s. Depending on a variety of factors the photo size will range from about 1.5mb to 3mb at full size (bearing in mind these are still HUGE photos at full res.) If we say 2.25 is an average photo size, you're still left with roughly 5,500 photos on your spare 12GB of space.

Bearing in mind this is still pretty conservative the answer is that your mum can store literally thousands of photos in her 16GB iPad. If you weren't using a really hi def camera like the 4s iPhone, your photo sizes could be as small as 100 or 200 kb's each and the number is more like 50,000 photos.

Hope that's helped.

It will probably be able to hold a couple hundered pictures, because on my 16gb iPad, I have 125 photos, but it still keeps saying "storage almost full." Still, I am taking pictures, which means I can still keep taking as many pictures as I want to until my iPad gets up to 16gb's.


Can't login in Mac App Store or iCloud - login loading forever After updating to latest developer release for OS X El Capitan, I can't login in Mac App Store or OS X iCloud settings. If I try incorrect password, a message is shown that the password is not correct. When I try my real password, the loading icon just spins forever.

I already tried to remove Network settings plist file and some other things found on forums. System log file shows a lot of these few messages, especially when doing something with iCloud login.

SOSAccountThisDeviceCanSyncWithCircle sync with device failure: Error Domain=com.apple.security.sos.error Code=1035 "Account identity not set"

and

01/10/15 00:11:52,599 storeaccountd[591]: XPC error for connection com.apple.backupd.sandbox.xpc: Connection invalid

and

01/10/15 00:11:52,931 sandboxd[226]: ([591]) storeaccountd(591) deny mach-lookup com.apple.backupd.sandbox.xpc

Unfortunately I do not have backup of my previous installation. Also I can't update to latest El Capitan version, because App Store login is not working.

NOTE: This solution is primarily meant for users of physical Apple devices, such as MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pros, etc. While I will mention a link to a solution for virtual machine users as well, that is not the primary objective of this post. As such, that will not be posted here, for succinctness.

Also, while NVRAM (non-volatile RAM) does save certain settings and parameters for long-term, iCloud settings don't appear to be among the settings saved in NVRAM.

The solution will sound simple - but it's not. The full-out solution is a three-step process, which will force OS X to do the following:

Wipe the existing, problematic settings file(s), and force OS X to reproduce valid ones in there place.
(Re)Start the iCloud service and/or its required related Daemons.
Validate/rewrite (hardware) machine details if required.

We’ll start by deleting the following file (admin permission required):
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd.plist

We’ll then ensure that the proper LaunchDaemons are running - in this case, Push Notifications. iCloud needs this running to operate. Enter the following into Terminal:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.apsd.plist

Finally, please check to make sure that your OS X device has a (valid) Serial Number. Whether it’s real or virtual machine, the Serial must be less than 12 chars - otherwise, iCloud -based services like FaceTime and iMessage won’t be able to sign in (or will ‘hang-up’ at sign in attempt). Check this in your Mac’s ‘About’ section. If you have either a NULL or invalid Serial Number, please do one of the following:

Either use your Apple Care/Warranty to contact Apple. Have them set your hardware Serial Number, seeing that they were supposed to do this when they were done servicing your machine.

OR

Use the following application to change this (if you can't go to Apple for any reason, and aren't worried about voiding the device's warranty). Please do NOT use this tool if you have Apple Care or would like to preserve your Apple Warranty:

Blank Board Serializer -
Downloadable from here:

http://rogersm.net/icloud-problems-mountain-lion-serial-number

Now, for those of you using a virtual machine, please go here to complete the third step (Serial Number reset). You'll need to generate a valid, new Serial Number that is NOT currently in-use:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/292170-how-to-spoof-real-mac-in-vmware/

That should fix any issues with iCloud sign in and use of its related services for El Capitan. Works for most physical Mac OS X devices and VMware Workstation installations.

I found the solution

I hope work on your mac

https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht204063

Bye


Purchased music keeps appearing (iPhone 5, iOS 7.1) I have downloaded music directly from iTunes onto my iPhone from the app. The problem is some of the songs I don't want on my iPhone and I just do not have the space for it, and I would like to add different music to my iPhone. The problem is I have "show all music" unchecked, I also have "automatically download music" unchecked, as well as pretty much every answer that has been given online to resolve this problem. I don't use iCloud or iTunes match.

I even closed the music by going to general > usage > music and deleting all of the data. That still didn't work. I even factory reset my phone, and once I sync my phone the purchased music will completely sync back onto my phone. I know it is only the purchased music, but seeing as I only have a 16GB iPhone, I absolutely NEED more space, and it is killing me that the only way to get rid of it is to manually delete each of the 500 individual songs by swiping left on the iPhone.

If anyone can help me I would really really appreciate it. I've spent countless hours being frustrated by my phone trying to get this music off in order to have space to add new music.

Any songs I had in a playlist called "purchased" kept reappearing (Even after I deleted all music from the usage setting). Once I deleted that playlist they did not.

It seems odd that it's downloading the purchased music even though you have automatic downloads turned off.

However, try connecting the phone to your computer and configuring the songs manually in iTunes. You can select only certain songs to sync, ask iTunes to "only sync checked song and videos" (this means if their checked in your Library, not in the sync window) and also "manually manage music and videos". Anything not selected, included the wanted purchased songs, will not be synced and should be removed from the device if their not specified to sync also. Have you tried this?

Hope this helps.


How can I restart an iPhone 4S with a broken lock button and frozen springboard? My springboard has frozen and the lock button is broken (two months out of warranty and it's not classed as a hardware failure).

How do I restart the phone given that I can't access any apps or settings?

Waiting for the battery to drain will take days, so that's not an option. Is there a way through iTunes to force a reboot or is there a program I can download to force a reboot?

Go to settings general then accessibility. Turn bold text on and it will reboot your iPhone and fix a springboard crash. I was having the same problem and lucked out and found this!

or gust press the home button and the power / lock button the same time until it reload.
its easy guys!


How do i delete an untitled folder in Albums iPhone 5 PHOTOS app iPhone 5, iOS 8.3, PHOTOS

How do I delete an untitled folder in Albums iPhone 5 PHOTOS app?

Once again I am stumped, I can't delete a folder in Albums in the Photos app on my iPhone 5, 8.3.
From my camera roll I can select Albums. there is an album called untitled folder,
I select the EDIT BUTTON ON THE TOP RIGHT expecting to be able to delete it, but no.

I tap to the left looking for a red delete button, none, I pull to the right looking for delete, no, I tap the album nothing.
The only thing that happens is when I hit DONE, it goes back and becomes part the camera roll ext,

Delete photos and video synced from iTunes when you can’t access the originals.

You can delete photos you synced from iTunes by syncing them with a new folder.

These steps will remove all of the previously synced photos from the device.

To delete photos that have been synced from a computer that's no longer accessible:

Create a folder on the computer that you now sync with, and add a single photo to that folder.
In the Photos tab in iTunes, click the box next to "Sync Photos From."
In the pop-up menu next to "Sync Photos From," choose the folder you created in step 1.
Apply the change.
Uncheck "Sync Photos From."
Apply the change again.

Your synced photos will now be removed from the device.


MySQL - installation from source failed on ./configure I'm following this How-to on installing MySQL on Snow Leopard but instead of using MySQL 5.1 I'm downloading the source for MySQL 5.5.11

so when I go into the source directory and run:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --with-extra-charsets=complex \
--enable-thread-safe-client --enable-local-infile --enable-shared \
--with-plugins=innobase

I get:

-bash: ./configure: No such file or directory

What am I missing? what am I doing wrong?

Why don't you install MySQL from the DMG image - it works.

BUT - I'm not able to start v5.5.11 after the install, so I'm back on v5.1.56. It should only be a problem when installed on Snow Leopard.

You've downloaded the binary version, not the source.

This is the reason that you're getting the config error.

:)


Can the iPad Mail app show the message list full screen? I just got an iPad (not an iPad 2) and I would like to see the list of messages in the Mail app full screen and not just in the side bar, like they are now. Is this possible?

Sorry no, Mail.app on iPad only has two views.

In Portrait mode, the message list slides in from the left.  You can swipe left and right to change the view to account and folder list and back again, however you cannot resize the pane, although it feels like you should be able to in this view.

In Landscape mode, the message list is permanently fixed in position and width; you can no longer swipe to change the content.

No that is incorrect, at this time it cannot be swiped away or hidden or resized etc. however I did find a patchwork solution for the moment that accomplishes full page reading until Google execs use their own app & see the glaring design flaw & do an easy code fix. Here it is: simply tap on forward or reply & then when the email opens full screen for sensible reading, just tap the lowest right iPad keyboard key that closes the keyboard & when thru reading your email full page just hit cancel & delete the "draft" message you created. Just a few seconds really & one feels slightly foolish in this techno age & with Google to have to do this at all, however it works great....


Concatenate not working in Numbers Sample numbers file

B4 contains CONCATENATE(B2,B3)

In the file above, I am getting syntax error on B4, despite the formula seems correct. Can anyone reproduce the problem? How can I solve it?

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Numbers version: 3.6.1 (2566)

Some locales use semicolon as a separator for parameters in formulae, such as Turkey. You can check this by using a comma after the first parameter, then clicking a cell. If you see a semicolon being inserted alongside the comma you should use a semicolon as a delimiter.

This feels like a bug. Copy-pasting the cell shows the syntax error, but copy-pasting the contents of the cell (the formula itself) works fine, alongside me retyping the formula. You can provide feedback to Apple here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/numbers.html

I had better luck using "string1" & "string2".


How can I remove Skype 8's icon from the menu bar? Skype 8 does not allow to remove its icon from the menu bar in their settings anymore. How can this be done?

Since Skype 8 is an Electron app you can modify its source code. Run this command in Terminal:

LC_ALL=C sed -i '' -e "s/this._tray =/\\/\\/is._tray =/" -e "s/this._trayBaseToolTip =/return;\\/\\/yBaseToolTip =/" /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar

It will prevent the menu bar icon from being created.

You could try to press and hold down your cmd key, click the icon and with your mouse button pressed down move the cursor to some part of your screen outside of the menubar. There you can drop it (release the mouse button). It should become a cloud of dust and disappear.
I personally do not use Skype, but it works with every icon I have in my menubar except for notifications.