USB Keyboard and Mouse not working in Bootcamp Windows 7 installation I installed Windows 7-64 bit on an iMac (27" late 2012). Mouse and Keyboard worked during the installation process. But now when I'll try to log in into windows, I am stuck on the login screen because my USB keyboard and mouse aren't working. It looked like during the windows installation process that my mac installed the bootcamp drivers correctly (Version 5.1.5621).

I tried to reinsert the USB mouse/keyboard. Boot without and then insert. Switch the USB ports etc. Any idea how to fix this?

How did you install it? Do what you did before but look for a repair option, or if you really want to, choose reinstall or install. I highly suggest to back up your data on your iMac before doing this just in case something does go wrong.


Where do files go when you AirDrop them on iOS? Where do AirDrop files go when I transfer them between an iPad, iPhone and iPod? I AirDropped some Google Docs from my iPad to my iPhone but nothing happened; where did my files go? The file was a list of tools.

On iOS, AirDropped files open immediately and automatically in the app registered to handle them via AirDrop. If no such app exists, those files simply disappear.

Typically, if you AirDrop a document using one app, you’ll want to have the same app installed on the receiving iOS device.

I Found them... check your downloads folder!


MAC OS Mojave: Why do the icon texts display unnormally (squeeze and crowd)? After I upgrade my MacBook Pro from 10.8 to 10.14, I found the icon texts display unnormally. They are too crowd. Anybody have any solution towards this problem?

There are likely a few things going on here. Firstly is that Apple's new default font is San Fransisco in Mojave (OS X 10.14.x) and I believe in 10.8 was Lucida Grande. So some of the text crowding you see could be caused by a different font with it's different kerning, etc.

It is also possible, and judging from the screencaps you posted that some of your desktop/folder defaults were changed or reset when you did the upgrade.

If you go to your desktop and select "Show view options" from the "View" menu a window will pop up allowing you to change a lot of the items that will effect what you see on your desktop. You can do the same in a Finder window but I'm sticking with the Desktop here for sake of simplicity.

The things you may want to fiddle with are the grid spacing and the text size.

The grid spacing will move icons closer together and farther apart. So if you have long-ish file names Finder will squish the text when the icons are closer together.

The text size will also affect how Finder shows file/folder names. Bigger fonts will cause the Finder to try and fit longer file names in smaller spaces (grid spacing) and squish the words/letters together. The trade-off here is that smaller font sizes can be harder to read.

In your particular case I would increase the grid spacing and decrease the font size substantially and then see if things are looking better.

Finally, I give up and install the new system MAC OS 14.3 from scratch.


Does the “Put hard disks to sleep when possible.” option in macOS have any affect on SSD drives? So, I completely understand the value of putting a hard disk (specifically) to sleep in some cases especially in the pre-SSD days of the past. It can save power, lower noise and such. But in the case of modern systems that are increasingly SSD-based, does this option have any value at all?

My MacBook Air (2018) running Mojave (10.14.1) has “Put hard disks to sleep when possible.” checked off by default (in System Preferences > Energy Saver), but this system uses an SSD.

Is this option only focused on hard disk drives and ignored by SSD drives?

I can’t imagine the internal SSD would ever “sleep” but correct me if I am wrong.

In short, does the “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” option have any affect on SSD drives in macOS?

According to Apple:

  Put hard disks to sleep when possible

  This setting powers down the hard drive motor when you aren't reading
  or writing files from the drive. Solid-state drives (SSDs) don’t have
  moving parts, so this setting doesn’t affect Mac computers that use
  only SSDs to store data.

  Consider deselecting this option if you have
  an internal or external non-SSD drive and you use apps—for example,
  pro audio or video editing software—that work better with continued
  read and write access to the hard disk.

Source: Apple: Use the Energy Saver settings on your Mac [Bold emphasis mine]

SSD vs HDD uses about 50% less of energy, so having the option turned on will help reduce overall power consumption.

ie - my MBP 15" 2011 has 95 Wh battery in it (when new, down to about 60-70 now), so in a hour with the option you will save some 1-2% of battery life with the option on, depending on use.

https://therevisionist.org/reviews/ssd-vs-hdd-power-consumption/
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/950687-hdd-vs-ssd-temps-power-consumption/


Is there a way to automatically upload photos from an iPhone to Google Drive With Dropbox, you have the option to upload all photos from your iPhone to Dropbox. Is there an equivalent for Google Drive? I.e. is there an app, that when I open it will upload all my photos from my iPhone to my Google Drive account?

I don't see a preference setting for this in the google drive app, and I have searched for 3rd party apps and nothing seems to do this.

You should use the app Photosync which let you choose where to download your pictures, including Dropbox, Google+/Picasa, Box, 500Px and Google Drive (!) to answer your question.

It sounds like you're looking for the Google Photos app.


Finder gets confused after using the mv command in the Dropbox folders I should mention I'm new to command lines.

I want to rename files using the mv command in the Terminal. I type:

mv oldFileName.pdf newFileName.pdf

Afterwards, I use the ls command to check whether things work as expected. The presented list shows me what I expected: The old file name does not appear, but the new one does.

However, when I use Finder and open the folder in which I renamed the file, it shows me two things: The old file name and the new file name. The file with the new file name is fine, but double-clicking the file with the old file name, I get the message

  "oldFileName.pdf" can't be found.

When I use Finder to delete oldFileName.pdf, then both the damaged / "missing" oldFileName.pdf and the file newFileName.pdf are moved to Trash (even though I only right-clicked oldFileName.pdf to delete it).

It looks to me as if there was something wrong. What's the problem? Should I not use mv to rename files?

As a test, I checked what happens when I use the mv command on folders. I created an empty folder named oldFolderName,

mkdir oldFolderName

and renamed it,

mv oldFolderName newFolderName

Again, the ls command shows me newFolderName but no oldFolderName. However, in Finder, I now see two folders with the same name newFolderName, which is a bit different to what happened when I copied .pdf files, but which is still an unexpected behaviour. Again, when I delete one of the two folders, both go into Trash.

What's wrong? What's the right way to rename files and folders via the command line?

Edit: I'm using OS X Yosemite, 10.10.2. I just made an observation: The problem I described arises in folders that are within my Dropbox. The problem doesn't seem to arise in folders outside my Dropbox. Could there be an issue with using the mv command in the Dropbox?

Edit 2: The problem only seems to arise in Dropbox folders that I share with other people, but not in folders which only I have access to (and the NSA).

Edit 3: Similar problems arise when I use the rm command in such folders. The deleted files are still shown in Finder, and trying to delete them in Finder results in the error message

  The operation can't be completed because one or more required items can't be found. (Error code -43)

command+opt/alt
+esc to force quit / relaunch Finder fixes the out-of-sync problem.
Not a great solution, but it does work.


Share link for a photo from icloud or photos app There used to be a way to get a direct link to a photo in iCloud and share it.

I was surprised to see this still isn't possible from the photos app so i went to the iCloud website and i still can't get a direct link to an image.

Is it possible to get a direct link to photo in iCloud that i can share with anyone?

You can create a public album and share the link to it to anyone, but not to a single image. One solution could be to create a album for each image.

iCloud: Create a shared album

You can also place the image file in iCloud drive, view the file in a browser and copy the link to it.


Apple Watch Sport Band Permanently Damaged See the bottom for an update on what the stain might have been caused by.

I'm disappointed to find that there's  nothing I can do (that I know of) to restore my Apple Watch Sport's white band to its formerly clean state. Somehow, it became slightly purple in one area. I'm not sure how things have added up, but I'll state the facts:

My watch arrived only less than a month ago on June 1, 2015.
Usually, I wash with water, toilet paper, and a microfiber cloth, and everything comes out just fine.
I wanted to wash it today. Here's what I used and what happened:

First, rubbing alcohol with a blue microfiber cloth => the back of the longer piece of the band started barely turning purple.
Next, water using my thumb under the faucet => the purplish hue came off, but the toilet paper I placed it on began to look very purple.
Next, toilet paper => that paper became purple as well while I rubbed the back of the band.
I flipped over the band, and the front had a purple stain.
I used water => it didn't go away.
I rubbed with toilet paper => a gray line appeared across the purple stain.
I used water and toilet paper and rubbed quite a bit => the streak left, but the stain remained.
I finally tried the blue cloth, my thumb, and even the alcohol => the stain remained.

I'm frankly concerned that this thing will never come off. I did research on Apple's policy on returning bands, etc., and though I need to confirm, it sounds like any discolored or warped bands will not be accepted for replacements.

Note that the texture of the stained part of the band now feels different from that of the rest of the band, almost like it's more rough. Also, the other half of the band, which was very dirty, washed off just fine with only water and a microfiber cloth.

Here are some pictures of the stain (see descriptions for more details):

The stained half of the band, with the purple stain circled in red.

The original photo of the stain edited for contrast. The purple stain is clearly visible here. (Note: The only editing done here was lighting and contrast changes that can be done in the Photos app on the iPhone. I did not Photoshop this or alter the stain itself, etc.)

Update: I just realized something that may help get the stain off. I never got the chance to follow bmike's advice; I will likely ultimately follow it, but for the time being, I was hoping that this might help find something that I can do myself to clean it.

Check out this photo:

I do a lot of handwriting. Yes, that is my pinky, covered in pen ink, which turns purple when there isn't a thick layer but a thin one over it. Coincidentally, my watch band was stained purple. It adds up to suggest that it's a pen ink stain, which I doubt is more temporary than permanent.

Thus, I suppose my question has changed:

Is it possible to remove pen ink stains (just a typical black ballpoint pen) from a white Apple Watch sport band without damaging it? If so, how? Or is it wiser to just take it in to Apple and see what they can do to help?

Apple's warranty policy allows them to not cover cosmetic damage to parts however, they may not choose to deny a warranty swap if you present the band for service and are reasonable. (I don't think you'll be angry, just that I've seen people totally ruin things by rude or boorish behavior when they are angry and seek service with aggressive language or worse).

I would print out or be very familiar with Apple's cleaning guide for the product. They may decide to take back some parts for quality control that wouldn't normally be exchanged since the product is so new.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204522

Do be aware that toilet paper is not lint free cloth and many brands may not even be non-abrasive. The only cleaning agent Apple recommends is water so be sure to understand if they charge for a replacement if you don't follow their recommendations. Better to take the dirty band in and ask if it's cleanable than to show up after you expanded the list of techniques.

Even if you did resort to harsh methods, asking for help is still worth its IMO.

The band has obviously come into contact with something it is chemically incompatible with. Based on the size and position maybe you leaned against something, or spilled some gas on it when filling the car?

Chemical damage can't be cleaned. Either live with it, or get a new band.


iTunes opens on my iMac automatically iMac with OS X 10.11.5.  iTunes opens with no prompting from me.  I can close it all day and it keeps re-opening.  I rarely want to use it.  How to stop this from happening.

Thanks for the advice.

None of the suggestions here had made any difference.  But, I kept looking and scouring the web and found (I don't remember where) what I thought, at first, was a half-assed suggestion that seems to have done the job.  The suggestion was that a "dirty" or misaligned speaker jack could be the issue.  Well, some days ago I removed the speaker plug from the iMac and, lo and behold, the constant opening of iTunes ceased.  I will eventually experiment to see if that was really the issue, but at least temporarily I'm satisfied with using the internal speakers.

We had the same issue. It turns out that it was the Apple TV controls that was causing it.


How do I disable hiding of the mouse pointer while typing text? I think I'm finally annoyed enough with my mouse pointer disappearing as I start typing to want to do something about it.

I want to move the mouse. I want to click. I want to start typing, but I want the mouse pointer to stay as is. I end up having to move the mouse just to figure out where the pointer is and I hate that.

How do I do this? Is this a switch I can toggle from within Mac OS or will I have to use a third-party app? I dug around System Preferences and Keyboard settings, but I didn't find anything relevant.

I'm running Mountain Lion 10.8.2 on an iMac. At this moment, it's a Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 1000 along with the regular Apple Wireless Keyboard.

This is the default global behavior and can't be changed through a system preference. (I can't find any third-party utilities to change this either.)

Apple's reasoning is probably that users (but not all users) don't want the mouse pointer to obscure the text while typing. A developer might work around this by using NSCursor with setHiddenUntilMouseMoves:NO or unhide, etc., but this would be considered bad form due to creating an inconsistent user experience compared to other apps.

There are several programs that will highlight where the mouse is on a given key press;  apart from Mouse Locator mathioned above there is OmniDazzle or Mouseposé


Why do these podcast episodes say they are temporarily unavailable even though they look like they have been downloaded? I am having an issue where certain podcasts in a location with no internet access (see "no service" on the upper left). It  looks like they have been downloaded based on the fact that:

There is no cloud to the right
The blue dot is on the left

but when I click to play then, they are not available.

As an example, in the image below, look at the podcast "Choosing a Javascript Framework . . ." as in the image below:

it looks like it has been downloaded (versus the second podcast below that clearly shows it needs to be downloaded)

but when i try to play that first podcast episode, I get the following error:

Saying that "this episode is temporarily unavailable . . ."

Does anyone know what could be wrong here.  Its happening to a significant number of different podcasts so I have eliminated the possibility that this is some "quirk" with a specific podcast that happened to have a corrupt download.

I am using an iPhone 5S with the most up to date iOS software (9.2.1 currently) and having the same error.

I called Apple Care to get an answer on this - as I'm having the same issue. Downloading podcasts then when trying to play them I get the error message "Episode temporarily unavailable", even ones I have downloaded and played previously. I also didn't think the approach of having to download a podcast twice is an appropriate solution - even this doesn't always work.

The main Apple Support person I spoke with contacted the Apple iTunes Support department. They provided the following comments:

It isn't the player that is causing the issue its the third party providing the podcast file. The issue is that with new software updates to the iPhone or iPod the podcast files must also be updated.

Apparently part of the podcast download file needs to be re-written in order to be compatible with the newest Apple software update.

This doesn't really make sense as music files don't need to be updated everytime there is a software update (that I'm aware of anyway).

I called them back in order to try and delve a bit deeper into this issue.

I got a Senior Advisor on the phone - they checked my IMEI number and software version which seemed to be fine.

I got them to download the same specific podcast that I was having the issue with and they were able to play the one that for me was "unavailable" even though it is downloaded locally.

We ended up resolving it by deleting all the podcasts from Storage (Settings>General>Storage & iCloud Usage>Storage>Manage Storage>Podcasts)
and also Reset>Reset All settings (this will mean you lose all your settings - this didn't really affect me - just meant I had to put in my wifi password back in, reset my wallpaper and my alarm clock).

Hopefully this works for you - I asked that the Apple Advisor I spoke to pass this information onto the team at Apple that works on the Podcast app - hopefully they will be able to push an update to the app that makes this resolution process obsolete.

Just tried many of these fixes and no luck. Finally, I downloaded another podcast app from a third party and it worked fine... even with the feed I couldn't play in Apple's app.


Trying to connect to iCloud but nothing happens I have a MacBook Pro mid-2012 13" non-retina display running macOS High Sierra. I am trying to connect to iCloud to retrieve some files saved on my iCloud
Drive.

When I try to connect to iCloud by entering my username and password, but nothing happens. I get no error message or anything. I tried using iCloud and Internet Accounts from the System Preferences panel and the only difference is that if I try to add it from Internet Accounts, it shows up for a few seconds and then disappears.

It all started because I could not select iCloud keychain under the stuff I wanted to synchronize so I signed out. When I try to sign back in this started happening.

I thought it may be due to a network issue but I have tried both wireless and wired connections but I cannot get past this step. I have checked the status of the Apple Services status page and they all show up as online for me.

I have tried the steps listed on this article but none has worked: http://osxdaily.com/2016/10/23/fix-icloud-unknown-error-cant-connect-problem-mac/

Any help will be appreciated.

I was tired of trying everything so i formatted the hard drive and re installed OSX. That fixed it.


Is it possible to Bootcamp Windows 8.1 using USB on Late 2011 MBP? I've been having a very difficult time trying to get Windows 8.1 running alongside OS X Yosemite and it's starting to become a real pain. I initially attempted to burn the Windows 8.1 ISO onto several DVDs, with all attempts falling short resulting in "Burn failed due to a medium write error".

So I read up on how to burn the ISO onto a USB via Bootcamp Assistant, and apparently this model doesn't allow for it. I tried to use some of the work arounds which only caused errors and the software failing to run. I then got the ISO burned via Rufus and installed rEFInd which showed the USB as a Windows disk. Selecting it just caused a "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" screen and now I'm completely out of ideas.

So, what can I do at this point? I've just used up the last DVD trying to burn with the same error.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Here are the steps I use to install Windows without needing to burn to a DVD or flash drive. Keep in mind that the final product will NOT be a virtual machine:

Install VirtualBox from http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.3.28/VirtualBox-4.3.28-100309-OSX.dmg. Make sure it installs the command line tools.
Once installed, open it and create a new VM by clicking "New" on the top left.
Select the type to be "Microsoft Windows", and select the version as "Windows 8.1 (64 bit)", then give it a name of your choosing. Click "Continue"
Click continue again (it won't matter how much RAM you give it for this process).
Select "Do not add a virtual hard drive". We will be creating one on our own for our purposes. Click "Create", then "Continue".
Now we have to open the Terminal. Type the following command: diskutil list. From the list of disks, make a note of the disk identifier in the last column that belongs to the 30GB partition you created for Windows. We will need this in the next step
Run the command sudo chown $USER /dev/disk#s#. Replace disk#s# with the identifier from earlier. Enter your password and push return. Also run sudo chown $USER /dev/disk#s1. Use the same identifier, but replace the last number with a 1. Also run sudo chown $USER /dev/disk# using the first half of your identifier (minus the s# part).
Unmount the disk by typing diskutil unmount /dev/disk#s# again, using your identifier.
Now we have to create the disk for the VM to use for installation. Run the command VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/RawWinDisk.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk# -partitions 1,#. Replace "disk#" with the appropriate first half of the identifier from earlier, and replace the second # sign with the last number in your identifier.
Unmount the disk again diskutil unmount /dev/disk#s#, using your identifier.
Now you should have a ".vmdk" file in your home folder. Go back into VirtualBox, select the VM you created, and click "Settings". Select the "Storage" tab, click on the "SATA" controller and click the second "+" sign directly to right of the controller (the hover text is "Add Hard Disk).
(Note: Due to a fairly old bug, you can't command+tab away from the selection window we're about to create without VirtualBox bugging out and requiring a restart of the app. Try to complete this in one step) Click "Choose existing disk", and navigate to the VMDK we just created, which should be in your home folder. Click it and select "Open". Now you should see the newly added disk just below the "SATA" controller.
Click on "Empty" just below the "IDE" controller, check "Live CD/DVD", and click the little CD icon next to "IDE Secondary".
(Note: The same bug applies here. Try to do this in one step.) Click "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file...", navigate to your ISO, and open it.
Start the VM and install windows on the 30G partition.
When the installation is done and you're logged in, shut down Windows and you should see the disk created by Windows appear on the desktop. You can get the Boot Camp drivers for your laptop from https://support.apple.com/downloads/DL1720/en_US/BootCamp5.1.5621.zip. Put this on a flash drive formatted as ExFAT or FAT so Windows can read it.
You should now be able to reboot into Windows by holding alt down, or selecting the disk in Startup Disk preferences.

This is a long process, but I believe I've covered all the steps involved... Let me know if anything goes wrong!

The guide provided by William T Froggard did not actually work for me.

I ran into several Problems which are too complicated to explain and after several days of research I still do not fully understand the reasons. (You can read my process over on my apple discussions post.)

If you are having problems getting Windows Bootcamp running without a USB-Stick I would highly recommend using this guide: Installing Windows 7 or 10 Pro 64 bit without DVD or Flash Drive.

I used that guide to install windows bootcamp on my early 2011 macbook pro 15" and it worked perfectly.

The guide appears more complicated than it actually is and is very well written.

For those who don't understand all the code, dont worry, you basically just have to copy & paste everything.


Set iPhone ringtone for filtered email messages Is there a way on the iPhone that a certain subset of incoming emails (coming through Exchange) will ring a specific ringtone (a real one, not just a beep)?

In the Blackberry world, you would set an email filter that marks these emails as priority 1, and have a different ringtone for priority 1 messages. I'm hoping to accomplish the same thing with an iPhone.

Thanks

I don't believe there's a native way to do this, but you could set up server side rules (via Outlook Web Access, server side so they always process) to forward particular messages to a notification service, such as Boxcar (www.boxcar.io), then configure individual sounds using their iOS app.

Here's a page that shows how to setup forwarding rules in OWA (chosen randomly via Google):
http://programs.cocc.edu/OWA/FW/default.aspx

One catch with this is that, as far as I can tell, the Rules functionality is only available in Internet Explorer, at least with Exchange 2007. I tried this in Chrome and Safari on my Mac at home and the option isn't available.  I've heard non-IE browser support is better for Exchange 2010. If you don't have access to IE, Google a bit to see if you can find any tips for using IE 8 or 9 on OS X. I found one, but I'm not exactly sure of it's legitimacy, so I chose not to post a link.

How about https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mailtones-email-alerts-sounds/id329330329?mt=8

Has anyone used this before?


What's a good IE tester for Macs? I just moved to the Mac after years and permanently moved my PC out of my life at home. I am a graphic designer who builds web pages. I code pure XHTML pages with div layouts. But whenever you keep to web standards, you have to check out how it works on the most commonly-used browsers.

On the Mac, my default browser is Firefox (Chrome and Safari are also installed). But I cannot see the result of how my pages look in IE.

On a Mac, is there any way to test web designs on IE?

(IE for Mac is not supported by Microsoft any more, so I didn't download it. I've received several suggestions to use Boot Camp, but I don't want to install Windows.)

I understand you don't want to install Windows. However, thats what all Mac-users at our company do (with vmWare fusion).

You don't. No IE-testing suite is completely accurate, and several will raise errors which don't appear in production (wasting your time on false positives). Virtual machines aren't as reliable as people think - I've seen several VM-specific bugs whilst trying to run IE6 (I think IE6's rendering engine relies on the coordination of certain threads, which VMs can't quite manage properly).

If IE6/7 functionality matters to your organization, I


How to update PHP syntax file for vim? I notice the syntax file for PHP for vim is quite out-dated.
Does anyone know where is these syntax file located in Mac so I can do the upgrade?

Solved myself,
here are the steps :-

locate vim | grep php
turn up is this file /usr/share/vim/vim73/syntax/php.vim
sudo mv /usr/share/vim/vim73/syntax/php.vim /usr/share/vim/vim73/autoload/phpcomplete.vim.orig as backup
download latest php vim file from http://www.vim.org
untar the tarball
copy the php.vim to /usr/share/vim/vim73/syntax/php.vim

I think the proper solution is to install the updated syntax file locally, in your ~/.vim/syntax directory.
From your answer, you have installed the syntax file in /usr/share/vim, which is system class directory. This is not recommended since this can be erased on system or application update, and you don't know what your modification might conflict with. Instead, you should put all your vim configuration files under your home directory in ~/.vim.

(Sorry if it isn't a proper answer to your problem, but it seems I can't add comment to already posted answers)


bash-command not found; for every command == fear i could screwed up the path here is the output of echo $PATH

/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin

and when I gave cat /etc/paths this is the output

/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin

I am not sure whether that /usr/local/bin is creating the error (command not found)

Thank u for your suggestions

Commands you run in Terminal need to either in one of the directories included in $PATH or you need to call them with ./command if you are in the directory the command is stored in.

What concerns me is that you're getting duplicates in your path. Have you added something to your ~/.bash_profile? You want to be very careful that you're not duplicating any of those existing path declarations in whatever you're doing. It's fine to modify PATH, but you want to be careful with it. Here's an example:

PATH=$HOME/.rvm/usr/bin:$HOME/.rvm/bin:$PATH

Note that I add my own stuff and then tack on the system stuff at the back with $PATH.

Other things to check are making sure that you're not sourcing any unnecessary scripts during login that might muck with your environment. Be sure that if you're using a non-standard editor that you're saving in UNIX format. If you accidentally do things with DOS CRLFs, that can trigger command not found errors.

And just on the off chance that you've nuked your ~/.bash_profile, i.e., you absolutely don't have one anymore because you deleted it:

echo "" >> ~/.bash_profile

That is an odd one, but I've seen at least one guy claiming that command not found issues were fixed by creating a missing .bash_profile.

Finally, note that if you do not wish to give a full path to the executable that you're running, e.g., ~/Downloads/myScript.sh, you need to either place the executable somewhere in your existing path or you need to modify your path to point to the directory in which your executables are stored.


Green text "Profile" appears on login? (OSX Yosemite) Whenever I login to my machine some green text appears in the top left saying "Profile".
It has done this since OSX Mavericks too.

Here's a screenshot:

This happens because of Razr's mouse and keyboard software that allows you to designate profiles for key bindings. The profile that is being used is displayed in green text in the corner of the screen on when logging in.

That looks like it may be coming from your monitor and not Mac OS.  It's possible that when you login a change in the display settings is triggering your monitor to change "profiles".

I would look through your monitor settings using the buttons on the monitor itself.


Device manager and Postgresql error message loop I'm on MBP 7,1, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR3 Ram, 500GB hard drive with Lion. After the v10.7.3 update, the console has been putting a looping error message regarding Device manager and PostGre SQL (below). Can anyone help?

23/02/12 12:47:07.662 PM com.apple.launchd: (org.postgresql.postgres[1110]) Exited with code: 2
23/02/12 12:47:07.662 PM com.apple.launchd: (org.postgresql.postgres) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
23/02/12 12:47:13.834 PM com.apple.devicemanager: DEBUG: Initializing DeviceManagerDaemon with ports 3320,3321,3322,3323 (physmem = 4GB)
23/02/12 12:47:13.834 PM com.apple.devicemanager: DEBUG: Making sure Rails is configured properly
23/02/12 12:47:13.834 PM com.apple.devicemanager: DEBUG: Running rake command: /usr/bin/rake db:migrate
23/02/12 12:47:15.044 PM ruby: Unable to create ProfileManager log file at '/var/log/devicemgr/profilemanager.log' (No such file or directory)
23/02/12 12:47:15.044 PM ProfileManager: Unable to create ProfileManager log file at '/var/log/devicemgr/profilemanager.log' (No such file or directory)
23/02/12 12:47:15.045 PM com.apple.devicemanager: Feb 23 12:47:15 Computer.local ProfileManager[1116] <Error>: Unable to create ProfileManager log file at '/var/log/devicemgr/profilemanager.log' (No such file or directory)
23/02/12 12:47:16.449 PM com.apple.devicemanager: rake aborted!
23/02/12 12:47:16.449 PM com.apple.devicemanager: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
23/02/12 12:47:16.449 PM com.apple.devicemanager:           Is the server running locally and accepting
23/02/12 12:47:16.449 PM com.apple.devicemanager:           connections on Unix domain socket "/var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432"?
23/02/12 12:47:16.450 PM com.apple.devicemanager: (See full trace by running task with --trace)
23/02/12 12:47:16.461 PM com.apple.devicemanager: (in /usr/share/devicemgr/backend)
23/02/12 12:47:16.470 PM com.apple.devicemanager: /usr/share/devicemgr/backend/devicemgrd:109:in `rake': Rake command failed with 256 (RuntimeError)
23/02/12 12:47:16.470 PM com.apple.devicemanager:           from /usr/share/devicemgr/backend/devicemgrd:103:in `setupRails'
23/02/12 12:47:16.470 PM com.apple.devicemanager:           from /usr/share/devicemgr/backend/devicemgrd:33:in `run'
23/02/12 12:47:16.470 PM com.apple.devicemanager:           from /usr/share/devicemgr/backend/devicemgrd:131
23/02/12 12:47:16.470 PM com.apple.launchd: (com.apple.devicemanager[1114]) Exited with code: 1
23/02/12 12:47:16.470 PM com.apple.launchd: (com.apple.devicemanager) Throttling respawn: Will start in 8 seconds
23/02/12 12:47:17.682 PM org.postgresql.postgres: postgres_real cannot access the server configuration file "/var/pgsql/postgresql.conf": No such file or directory
23/02/12 12:47:17.682 PM com.apple.launchd: (org.postgresql.postgres[1117]) Exited with code: 2
23/02/12 12:47:17.682 PM com.apple.launchd: (org.postgresql.postgres) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
23/02/12 12:47:24.482 PM com.apple.devicemanager: DEBUG: Initializing DeviceManagerDaemon with ports 3320,3321,3322,3323 (physmem = 4GB)
23/02/12 12:47:24.483 PM com.apple.devicemanager: DEBUG: Making sure Rails is configured properly
23/02/12 12:47:24.483 PM com.apple.devicemanager: DEBUG: Running rake command: /usr/bin/rake db:migrate
23/02/12 12:47:25.718 PM ruby: Unable to create ProfileManager log file at '/var/log/devicemgr/profilemanager.log' (No such file or directory)
23/02/12 12:47:25.718 PM ProfileManager: Unable to create ProfileManager log file at '/var/log/devicemgr/profilemanager.log' (No such file or directory)
23/02/12 12:47:25.718 PM com.apple.devicemanager: Feb 23 12:47:25 Computer.local ProfileManager[1121] <Error>: Unable to create ProfileManager log file at '/var/log/devicemgr/profilemanager.log' (No such file or directory)

Thanks

OS X Server update 3.0.1 seems to have cleared this up for me.

Mac App Store

Your best bet is to do this:

sudo launchctl unload -w com.apple.devicemanager

in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons

WARNING this will kill profile manager,  but those services are mostly a waste of time anyway.


How can I get PDFs to open in-browser in Safari 5.1 Basically the exact opposite of this existing question How do I disable inline PDFs in Safari 5.1?.

I need to view my PDFs in-line, and with Safari 5.1 it's no longer working on either OSX 10.6 or 10.7.

If you install Adobe Reader when you open for the first time you will see this box, select yes.

If you already have it installed go to preferences and make sure "Display pdf in browser" is checked.

If you are saying that clicking on a PDF on your computer opens it in Safari, you can correct that behavior by selecting any PDF and clicking Command-I, or selecting Get Info under the Finder's File Menu.

In the information window that opens, you will see a drop down menu titled "Open With." Select Preview for PDFs, navigating to it in the Applications Folder if need be.

Then, beneath that, you will see "Use this application to open all documents like this"

Click on "Change All" and you're good to go—and this can be done to change any file's application binding.


Which options exist for a Macbook air (2010) SSD upgrade? I Know OCZ has released an SSD for the MBA, what other brands sell this kind of hardware?

Actually it's Other World Computing (OWC, also known as macsales.com) that offers 3rd party SSDs for the MacBook Air. They're based on the fairly widespread Sandforce controllers (also used by OCZ). You can find them here.

The only other option I've heard about is RunCore, which announced in May it was going to make a MBA compatible SSD, but as far as I can tell, nothing's been released yet, and it may only be compatible with 2011 and later models.

OWC has an upgrade available for all models of the MacBook Air; I've never used them for an Air, but have been very happy with their 2.5" SSDs in a variety of other Macs including MBPs and Pros.


latest command line tools available for macos mojave? as by subject -- I have lost track of what the latest CL Tools are available for Mojave (MacOs 10.14.x).  I have
pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables
package-id: com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables
version: 10.3.0.0.1.1562985497

Are these the latest (obvs for Mojave, the very latest require MacOS 11 to install)?  xcode-select seems to believe they are, but brew complains I could get newer tools (or, alternatively it is a bug in brew) so I am not sure which one to believe.

According to XCodereleases the last release of Xcode running in 10.14 is 11.3.1.


How do I transfer a photo in Preview to iPhoto? I have a Photo in Preview.  How do I move it to iPhoto?

There's numerous methods:

Drag the photo from Preview (press ⌥⌘2 to show thumbnails) to iPhoto's main window, or on the Dock.
Drag the photo from its location to iPhoto's main window, or on the Dock.
Go to iPhoto and select File → Import to Library and select the location of the photo.

I moved it to desk top and then dragged it to i photo.


Caller ID spoofing or change caller ID? Is there a subscription site or iPhone application for changing caller id or caller id spoofing? In other words I want to call someone, but I want to change my number (for example 000000 or 111111). How can I do this?

Most carriers support the *67-prefix when calling a phone number. This does not change caller ID but at least it hides it.

use "call recorder" for iphone. best app to change caller id of your choice.


How to switch input language with good old Cmd + Space in Sierra? It turns out that in macOS Sierra (10.12) by default you can switch between languages with Ctrl + Space while previously it was Cmd + Space which is faster to click because you can easily do it with just thumb.

My question is - is it possible to switch back to the Cmd + Space?

From what I see now it's not doable

⌘+␣ and ⌘+⌥+␣ are now used to "Show Spotlight Search" and "Show Finder search window" respectively.  You will have to change those shortcuts before you can change these.  Click on spotlight in the left pane, double click on the shortcut and key in your new combination to change it.

Here's proof that it can be done.

For the basic Apple instructions, see this help article.

I did it!

Select the row with option+space in keyboard settings and then hit ENTER


Safari update message on my Mac, why is it there for four days? When I click on Safari I get message telling me:

  "Safari is being updated... Safari can not be opened while it is being updated"

When will updating Safari be finished on my computer? I need to use it and it has been updating for four days now. What do I do now to use Safari?

This will work with any stuck update from the app store, btw, just change the names of the stuff to delete.

First thing to try: clear the app store updates folder at Macintosh HD/Library/Updates

Second thing to try: Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and paste this: open $TMPDIR../C and in there, delete anything that has the name com.apple.appstore then do the same in Terminal with this command: open $TMPDIR../T

Third thing to try: Open Disk Utility (Same place as Terminal), select your hard drive and run Fix Permissions.

One of those should do it.

It appears that the update died prematurely and didn't clean up, so the system thinks it's still being updated. After completing the update, the locks will be cleaned up and you'll be able to open Safari again.  From the Terminal, execute:

open /Library/Updates/*/ApplicationLoader.pkg

That should pop open a window with the usual installer.  Go through the motions to install the package.  Once it's done, you should be able to run Safari.

Here's where I got the solution myself.


Mavericks input source is set to US keyboard in login screen I'm from Belgium, and on my own user account, the input source is set to a Belgian (actually French) keyboard. The input sources menu is enabled in the menu bar, so I can switch it to the Belgian keyboard before entering my password, but how can I permanently change the input source used for login? I'm the system admin, and I know how to get root access if necessary.

It worked perfectly in Mountain Lion.

I always got the french layout instead of canadian french at logon screen.
Here's the solution that worked for me:

I found that Logon keyboard layout (i.e. french) correspond to:

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist
The desired keyboard layout (i.e. canadian french) is saved here:

defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist
(Notice the ~ !)
To resolve this I changed the logon keyboard to the desired one by overwriting the .plist file (after ensuring that the source plist doesn't contain any occurrence of the unwanted layout):

View the file with plutil -convert json ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist; vi ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist; plutil -convert binary1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist and ensure that there is no occurrence of the unwanted layout (even in the History).
sudo cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist /Library/Preferences/
sudo chmod 644 /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist

Log off and it's OK. :)

Why is everyone making it so complex. The easiest would be:

newton02:~ templahum$ sudo languagesetup

and then you get:

Password:

Entering password will show you this. Select your language and move hit Return. You are done!

 1. Use English for the main language
 2. Utiliser le français comme langue principale
 3. Deutsch als Standardsprache verwenden
 4. Some language
 5. Some other language
 6. Some some other language
 7. Usar español como idioma principal

 q) Quit? 1
 System Language set to: en


Is charging my iPhone all night harmful? I normally charge my iPhone all night to get 100% power. Does this harm my phone's battery?

Update [Oct 1, 2017]: Thanks for all your great answers. I noticed there is a related video which addressed my question well.

Technical
Lithium Polymer batteries, such as those used in the iPhone, are a very well understood battery chemistry and use specific chargers to manage their charging.
While the latest charging ICs Apple uses are proprietary (they work with Dialog for their power management ICs), it is unlikely that Apple performs a significantly different charging process than every other battery charging IC manufacturer.
This process charges the battery as quickly as reasonable while protecting the battery from damage or increased wear and tear. Please note that the charging IC - or Power Management IC - is located inside the iPhone.  So this applies regardless of the external USB powering device you use to charge it.
When the battery is full, the charger turns off the charging process.  The battery is left alone without current going into or out of it.  This is because most Lithium chemistry batteries don't like trickle charging (a process you may hear from others where a constant voltage and low current is applied to a battery all the time to keep it topped off).
Charging ICs therefore turn the current completely off and power the phone itself from the charger. This is the only time the battery isn't charging or discharging - when it's full and the phone is plugged in.
The battery isn't discharged and charged in some sort of cycle after charging is complete.  I'm not sure where this myth stems from, because it would actually place additional wear and tear on the battery.
Self Discharge
Every battery has a "self-discharge" rate.  This is the battery's natural capacity loss when not connected to anything.  For Lithium Polymer batteries, this is a low (compared to other rechargeable battery types) 5% per month.
The charging IC does check up on the battery and if it loses significant charge over time while plugged in, it will start another charging cycle.  But this would occur perhaps once every two weeks after several percent of the battery charge has been lost - certainly not overnight.  If you leave your phone plugged in for a month, it might start another charging cycle once or twice in that time.
Conclusion
The phone and its battery, therefore, will suffer absolutely no damage being plugged in for days at a time.
Long term storage
There is one caveat to this answer: Lithium chemistry batteries don't like to be stored with full charges.  They degrade more quickly if they aren't used and have a full charge.  If you are going to store your mobile device unused for more than a month, charge it up fully, then discharge it (watch videos over wifi or play video games) until it's 40-50% charged.  Then turn the device fully off.
Long term use
If you are using an older iPhone in a fixed installation (picture frame on the wall, data collection, baby monitor, etc) while turned on and in use with it plugged into a charger all the time, you should consider disconnecting the charger and discharging it fully once a month.  Similar issue to the above - the battery doesn't like being "stored" for long periods of time at full charge, and the charger will keep it near 100% the entire time - degrading the battery a bit more quickly than desired. Going through a discharge cycle will exercise it and help it to last longer.
Personal
While I use a newer phone now, I charged my iPhone 3GS every day for 8+ hours a day (ie, overnight) regardless of how much charge was left - and more often than not, I had used less than 20% on a given day. I used it for 4 years that way, and never replaced the battery -  it still lasted much longer than a day. Since then (3 years now), it's been essentially an iPod touch, being charged for days at a time when no one is using it, and being left in the car discharged for days (or weeks!) at a time when it's forgotten.  Battery is still going strong, and this is certainly more than 900 charging cycles for this device.
My iPhone 5 and iPad (3rd gen) were used the same way.  No negative impact from having them charge all night every night.
I'm now using the iPhone 6+ the same way.  This is an expected use case for a mobile device, and it's running just fine. I expect that to continue to be the case.
You can leave your iPhone plugged in all night and it will not be harmful to your iPhone.

If you use your phone while plugin

it's not good if you do it on regular basis it can hurt your battery life. I don't recommend that you should charge your phone all night. I read some suggestions that you should turn off your phone and then plugin all night.

I recommend Just charge it to 40-50% before going to sleep.


One month old Macbook Air does not power on I have an almost new Macbook Air. I started to use Time Machine for the first time with a brand new "My Passport" hard drive. I had to unplug it during the process and it was left unplugged for quite some time. Then it went to sleep probably or maybe not, but I plugged it. Then unplugged again (one charger was shared between two Macs).

Cannot turn it on now! The light on the plug cord is green as it is fully charged.
I changed the socket just in case. I tried with USB My Passport drive plugged in and not. Nothing happens.

Keep pressing your power on button for 5 seconds.
The press it again for normal power-up.

You could also try this: Apple Support Page

Try this article very clearly Explain might help someone with mac issues

http://itrepairguide.com/apple-macbook-pro-not-power-on-no-sign-of-life/


Create backup iPhone with forgotten encryption password I'm trying to make a backup from my iPhone, however it's set to be password protected.
I do not know the password, as I've never set one. I've tried all the passwords I know, which I've ever used to make sure I didn't set it.

I've also tried the default 0000 and 1234 codes.

I want to uncheck the encryption checkbox in iTunes, but it requires me to type a password.
What else can I try?

I have no problems in removing all backups and start from the scratch somehow, however - I do not want to restore my phone as new and remove all those settings.

The short answer is no. The phone thinks you are a thief trying to steal the data and won't cooperate with attempts to initiate a second backup. Your best bet is if you have a computer that was syncing / backing up the device and follow the steps listed for a disabled device with a passcode:

iOS: Device disabled after entering wrong passcode

Once your iOS device is locked with a passcode, the data at rest is scrambled and the decryption key is only stored inside the iOS keychain or inside a backup of the device in iCloud or on a computer.

Even if you connected the device to a computer and got past the hardware telling the USB storage to not present itself - you would need to perform a decryption of whatever forensic image you retrieved.

Without knowing your situation (exact device, iOS version, whether it's an older device that doesn't have Data Protection, where else you may have backed up the device so that you could try restoring a backup onto an unlocked device (where you could then choose a different passcode) it's hard to guess what your best move is next.

You could:

edit more details into the question
ask a follow on question once you've explored your options
Contact Apple to do some troubleshooting / learn more options

if you have no problem deleting your backup this "problem" is a breeze! head over to iTunes, then open up the preferences, klick on devises, then select your phone, and delete the backup!

if you want an additional safety net, you can copy your backupfile, just in case its located in

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
for mac os

C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
for xp

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
for xp-7 (prob 8)

when backup deleted simply create a new backup from scratch :)


install Linux on iMac G5 Is there a Linux distribution, that runs on an old iMac G5 with a PowerPC processor? I would like to use the old iMac as computer for my mother, she would only need an up-to-date browser running, nothing more.

I found MintPPC, based on the Debian "testing" branch. Would that work?

I am installing mintPPC right now with this installation instruction. It seems to work fine.

Debian is probably your best choice. The problem is that the Flash Player situation would be worse on Linux than on Mac OS X. There is no official Flash Player for Linux PPC. There are some alternatives, though, described in this article. This page has an extremely detailed guide on installing Debian for PowerPC. Also, this page describes which macs are compatible with Debian PPC. Oh, and yes, MintPPC would work.

I have a Mac G5 as well. I have run Lubuntu on it for some time. It is a light weight version of Ubuntu.


What's a good program to batch resize 100,000 jpg images? The program should run in batch mode to resize all files in a folder and then save new files to different folder. An option for setting jpg quality would be great, too.

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned the easiest, cheapest, and least technical option:
Automator
First, open Automator, which is in your Applications folder.
Next, choose to create a new workflow:

Next, add the following steps to the workflow by dragging and dropping:

When you run this, Automator is going to:

pop up a window asking you to pick some files (as many as you want)
pop up another window asking where you want to save the resized copies
ask you how big you want the resized copies to be.  You'll be able to choose either a fixed size or a percentage.  All the images will be resized to either that size or by that percentage.

(The "show this action when the workflow runs" checkbox means that the workflow is going to pause, display the option, and allow you to change it then)
Once you do that, Automator is going to churn and burn, and when it's done it'll beep at you.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have an option to choose JPEG quality.  However, for the price (free), it's pretty dang convenient.

I use wine (and XQuartz) and IrfanView. Of course you could also use imagemagick from the command-line. For wine and imagemagick I would recommend Homebrew.


PDF rendering bug in OS X and iOS I received a PDF by e-mail which is unreadable on my Mac (Lion 10.7.3) and on my iPhone (iOS 5.1.1) but the same PDF renders perfectly on Windows. If I use Chrome on my Mac, (which has its own built in PDF renderer and doesn't use the OS X one), it renders correctly as well. So far it's the only PDF I've ever encountered with the problem, but others are having similar problems.

I've attached a screenshot of the rendering problem, which is best described as rendering most text as a series of grayscale stepped gradients. Note that the grayscale 'bars' don't correspond directly to the missing lines of text. There's much more text than that.

Anyone have any ideas?

The issue would appear to be the font used for the text, a font called "Corbel"; it is a Windows only font created by MS and included in all version of Windows Vista and above.

Normally, PDF's can be created with embedded fonts, in this case the font is not fully embedded, only a subset (e.g. those characters required for the docuemnt)

Further research shows that there are a lot of issues with Macs reading PDF's created with Word 2007

Note, Chrome includes a copy of those fonts as part of it's PDF rendering engine.

These PDFs usually contain non english words and in most cases are created using softwares other than adobe acrobat or print to pdf functionality of OS X.

However these could always be opened by acrobat reader for mac.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=1&platform=Mac


Window out of visible workspace range / unreachable I'm running OS X Lion on a MacBook Air 11", and when I unplug my secondary display, some windows (e.g., Finder) are overflowing at the edge of the screen.
This usually happens on the right-hand side of the [work]space, so I have access to their title bar to drag them back.

But this time, the MS Word 2011 window is overflowing out of visible workspace range in a way that makes it unreachable: it's like having a big negative offset on the vertical axis.

I can see the window in Exposé, tried moving it to another [work]space (and back), but the window position stays the same.
The three finger drag is enabled, but I cannot reach the window's title bar.

Researching through other questions, I saw that Afloat counts among it's features the ability to

  Move windows from anywhere, not just the title bar.

just like other window management apps.

But I'm primarily interested if there's any built-in solution within OS X Lion for this specific issue.

Is there a key combination to move a window from any active area?

Or how can this be solved w/o re-attaching the secondary display?

I was puzzled and annoyed by this problem too in Mac Snow Leopard. The application (MS Word) has a solution. Open file that is not visible. Go to menu Window-->Zoom Window, which then brings that file up front and center.

I had the same problem and literally, just, clicked two times in the icon for the app/program I wanted to use and it brought it right to the center of my screen.


No Batteries Available ?-How to Check battery health on MacBook Pro early 2011 A few days ago, I went on vacation and unplugged power cable from my MacBook Pro 13' early 2011 and then I got back home, the battery was not detected by OS and didn't charge.
I then understood that I had automatic startup configured and the laptop did power ON next morning then I was not at home. The battery was discharged completely.

I tried to restart, to power down and unplug power cable, I also tried to did SMC reset, but that didn't work.

What's the most reliable way to check the health status of the battery? - I want to replace it, but I want to be completely sure that this is the battery, and not something else.

Battery is about 3 years old and about 250 cycles.

The battery icon is the same as below:

UPD1:

I did run AHT and it returns the following error code:

4xxx/1/40000000: "Battery"

I plan to perform extended testing as well later today to see if any other errors appear, but it looks like the culprit of the issue is battery.

The battery Condition now is Replace Now.

The status changed after I unplugged power cable for a couple of days and then I plugged the cable and the laptop started, the battery status changed to Replace Now.

I will shortly check it with another battery and perhaps replace the old one.

UPD2:

I've tested my MacBook with similar working battery and it did detected the battery and worked fine and this is the good news.
On the other hand I now need to have the battery replaced.

UPD: Eventually, I now have replaced battery and it all looks OK.

The laptop is running smoothly either connected to AC power or on battery.

All the information you get from fancy 3d party is already in your system (that is where they get it from anyway).

Open your About This Mac, more info, system report and find Power:

It will tell you all about your battery.

It looks like this on my system:

Normally the Battery will keep a small reserve charge to be able to report its status to the computer. In your case somehow it was sucked dry completely :)

The good news is it is the battery, since your SMC is working and everything else is working based on the message "Replace battery". That same message was probably run all the time during your vacation, till the battery was exhausted to the level were the battery build in chip did not have enough power to talk to your OS. As for what caused that drain? did you leave your computer in a sleep mode ?

The MacBook battery doesn’t last long if you use it continuously. You should have a close look at its serviceability and its status to not find dead when you need it the most.
I had the same problem with me, I was searching on google and I found a really amazing guide about How to check battery health on MacBook You can see here.


Mavericks Finder Sidebar Bug? I think I noticed this in progress indicator getting misplaced from next to my Time Machine when I ejected a USB stick, but is that some sort of oddly placed AirDrop indicator? (the arrows are spinning)


How to export all elements in a iPhone WhatsApp chat? I need to export all contents in a WhatsApp chat, going back several months, including lots of audio and other media. This is for legal reasons, thus I absolutely need each and every element in the conversation. WhatsApp is running on a iPhone 5s, the phone is synchronized with iTunes on a Windows PC, and all elements in the chat have never been deleted.

I tried using WhatsApp's "email chat" function, but it skipped several media, probably due to message size limits (the email was exactly 10 MB); unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an option in WhatsApp to split the log into multiple emails.

I have an iTunes backup and I can perform an iCloud backup; however, I don't know how to extract WhatsApp data from them. There seem to be lots of apps out there for extracting this kind of data, but they are not free (and I also don't know if they work as promised); I'd prefer a free solution, but a paid one is ok if it can fulfill my requirements.

I already wrote to WhatsApp support, and I'm waiting for their reply; however, I'm also asking here, maybe someone can help.

CopyTrans Contacts is an application which can export WhatsApp chats in several formats, including HTML pages and Word documents with intenal links to attachments; this allows easy and comfortable reviewing of the exported chats.

CopyTrans Contacts is not free, but a limited trial is available; the trial allows up to 50 actions to be performed, and a full export of a WhatsApp chat counts as a single action; therefore, the trial version is more than enough for exporting the full contents of one or more chats.

To recover your chat history from an iCloud backup, first verify that an iCloud backup exists in WhatsApp Settings > Chats and Calls > Chat Backup. If you can see when the last backup was performed, delete and reinstall the app from the App Store. After verifying your phone number, follow the on-screen prompts to restore your chat history. The same iCloud backup requirements apply for iCloud restore. In addition, the phone number used for backing up and restoring must be the same. http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/iphone/20888066


What happens to an iOS app when a provisioning profile expires? Question.  What happens to an app when the provisioning profile used to build it expires?  Does the app still launch on the device? Dos the app ever "call home" every few days/weeks to Apple to see if it is still valid?

I would assume that it would not (once its installed, its there), but if the phone was ever lost, and needed to be restored from backup, I would assume that the app would no longer work in this case, as when it calls back to apple, it is deemed not valid.

Forgive my simple question, but is my assumption correct?

The Stack Overflow question "What happens when provision profile expires?" might be related this one.

The app will fail to launch due to the expired profile. The profile expires on its own, so I'd expect that the app does not "call home".

The same should be true when restoring from a backup.

If it's an enterprise in-house app, the app will fail to launch and crash because the app is on your company's or some other server (that's not Apple's servers) and Apple can't confirm your identity without the provisioning profile, so it will fail to launch.
vs.
If it's Apple's App Store app, then it will still launch because it went through the extensive review process by Apple before being uploaded to the App Store. So even if your provisioning profile expires, the app is still deemed credible because Apple has reviewed it before uploading to Apple's servers.


How to remove Java 10? Or revert to the previous version? The Java updater on my Mac installed an obscure version of Java 10.0.1 which I never heard before. The result is that ALL my java apps are not running anymore, which makes Java pointless.

The official instructions to remove Java are:

sudo rm -fr /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

Which is useless because I don't use Java on the browser (who is crazy enough to do it?)

sudo rm -fr /Library/PreferencePanes/JavaControlPanel.prefPane

Which is useless because it just removes the preference pane

sudo rm -fr ~/Library/Application\ Support/Java

Which is useless because this directory is already empty

The official instructions to remove Java on a Mac do absolutely nothing.

If I run my Java apps with java -jar from the terminal they work. From the terminal, I see this:

/usr/libexec/java_home -V
Matching Java Virtual Machines (3):
    1.8.0_131, x86_64:  "Java SE 8" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_131.jdk/Contents/Home
    1.6.0_65-b14-468, x86_64:   "Java SE 6" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
    1.6.0_65-b14-468, i386: "Java SE 6" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

So, from the terminal, the Java version is 1.8.0_131, which is my desired version. From the desktop, when I launch apps with JavaAppLauncher, the Java version is 10.0.1.

How can I revert this disaster that Oracle did with their automatic updater?

I believe the problem is navigating to the correct directory... Once you are where you are supposed to be you can run the sudo commands to remove whichever versions of java you want to remove.

First, run the command in the terminal to determine which version of Java you are running,

java -version

then you can navigate to pesky version of java that you intend to delete by using the following command:

cd /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines

then once you see are in the JavaVirtualMachines path, type in ls to see what versions of Java you have installed,

ls

and finally when you know which version or versions of Java you want to uninstall:

sudo rm -rf jdk-10.0.1.jdk #or whichever version you want to delete

I downloaded the old (working) version from java.com

In fact, Java 8.171 is the download that's shown by default. I dunno why it got automatically updated to 10.0.1 when it's beta quality.

Now, it won't install it, it says "Sorry, you have the newer and better 10.0.1 Java"

For installing, run the apparently useless commands mentioned in the question. Java will still work in the terminal, but then the installer will allow you to install the right version, 1.8_171

Now, disable the updates, if you don't want to break your apps again. Java is a security threat, it should be updated monthly, so make sure that it is disabled in your browser.

For some reason, if you run java -version you still get:

java version "1.8.0_131"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_131-b11)

Which is another wrong version. Anyway, the important is that now your Java apps are working, make sure the browser plugin is disabled for your security.


Schedule multiple wake up times for Mac? I have systems running Mac OS X 10.5.8 and 10.6.8 that I would like to schedule some cron jobs for with the Cronnix GUI application.

I prefer those computers be asleep until the scheduled jobs start. I know the Energy Saver System Preferences pane lets me schedule daily wake up times for the computer, but my cron jobs run at different times in the day.

Is there a way to set up more than one wake up time per day on these Macs? I prefer a GUI based approach but any ideas you have would be great, thanks!

Sorry, I only know command-line tools to do the job.

You can use pmset for that (like in pmset schedule wake "02/12/2012 12:42:00").

More explanations here and, of course, man pmset.

  Setting Multiple "Power On" & Power Off" Events

  Currently, it appears that pmset will NOT allow you to set more than  one pair of "power on" & "power off" events when using a repeating schedule.

  For example...

# pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 02:00:00 wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 06:45:00

  The above command would set a repeating schedule that would shutdown the Mac nightly at 2 AM in the morning and startup daily at 6:45 AM.

  But, if you want to set multiple "power on" & "power off" events, you could specify a specific date/time and with a little scripting you could setup a schedule for a month.

# pmset schedule wakeorpoweron "06/07/2007 07:00:00"
# pmset schedule shutdown "06/07/2007 22:00:00"
# pmset schedule wakeorpoweron "06/07/2007 00:00:00"
# pmset schedule shutdown "06/07/2007 01:00:00"

I think this is what you are looking for.
https://youtu.be/84fLayEY9Z4

Best wishes!


How can I make a script that opens terminal and runs my executable? My students and I are using gcc to compile programs which ask a series of questions then display a result.  Right now if we are running a program called "main" for example, we have to open a terminal window then type:
./Programs/main

We would like to be able to distribute these to other students who don't know how to use the terminal, so that they can just double-click on a file.

I have tried to create a .command or .sh file that does this, but they will do "exit;" before the program can get input.  I also tried to use Automator, but this also exits before the program can get input.

When you double-click a .command file, Terminal.app will open, and execute /path/to/file.command ; exit; which means it will execute the content of the file.command script, and THEN exit.

If your Terminal is exiting before your executable can receive input, that seems to indicate that either your .command is not calling your executable correctly, or your executable somehow doesn't wait to receive input before exiting.

To be able to help you further, you'd need to provide an example .c/.cpp file to compile, and the content of your .command file.

I myself tried with a .command file that contains only:

$HOME/Downloads/go.sh

And I was able to ask for input in go.sh (using read -p) before the Terminal exited.

Add a "sleep" command to pause the script's execution.

Sleep 5

Will pause for 5 seconds.


Using my own server instead of iCloud I am currently paying like a dollar a month for 20 GB iCloud storage, but I am just now building a new computer and am hoping to install an Amahi server on it so that I can have my own 'Dropbox' type of cloud access wherever I go.

Am I able to use a service like Amahi (or anything else) to redirect my iCloud backup from apple's servers to my own? Instead of paying $12 a year for 20 GB of storage, I could be paying no subscription for 3+ TB of space.

In a nutshell: No, you can't.

Apple uses proprietary protocols for iCloud access (both data and backup) so you can't just switch backends by redirecting some DNS entries. And as far as I know, nobody has reverse engineered the protocols yet (at least not the full set required to implement an alternative server-side solution).

You can take a look at iCloud DNS Bypass... it connects to a remote server instead in between.. its not backup thing, but thought it might help..


Boot Camp Assistant crashes when partitioning drive (exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS) I run Mountain Lion, a fresh install, brand new Macbook Pro. HD: Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB SSD.

When trying to go through Boot Camp Assistant / Setup it works fine until it wants to repartition my drive. It then quits unexpectedly and returns these errors:

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x000000000000003c

Everything else on this new machine works like a charm. I checked permissions, verified the disk - no issues whatsoever.

I tried running the Assistant as root - it also crashes when partitioning but then in the Terminal i get a

Segmentation fault: 11

Can anyone help me out with this?

Run Repair Disk on your boot partition. To accomplish this, reboot your Mac into the recovery partition, holding down ⌘R when you see the Apple logo. Select Disk Utility from the menu, then in the First Aid tab click Repair Disk. This may take some time. Partitioning trouble is usually a file system or disk hardware problem; this will solve the former, and a trip to the Apple store is usually needed to address the latter.

put windows 7 or later version dvd and then you will be able to make partition with BC :)


Mission Control not working after system upgrade to macOS Sierra Today I had changed my MacBook Pro early 2011 hard drive for a SSD, and did a clean installation of macOS Sierra. Everything is working like a charm, except for the Mission Control, when I try to execute it via Trackpad shortcut or App in the Launchpad, it restarts me the Dock. That is an unexpected issue, and I'm want to know if someone encountered this bug before!

I had a similar problem with a Mac Book Pro (late 2011). I did a clean installation of macOS Sierra and Mission Control and Launchpad were not working, but it did not restart the Dock when I tried to open any of them. I researched a bit I tried killall Dock on the Terminal, for restarting it manually and that worked for me.

Give it a try. Maybe doing it manually will make it work.

Not sure if you are using Duet but I found that this was preventing Mission Control. Disable it and regain control of your missions...


How do I stop my computer name from automatically, and incorrectly, changing? Ever since I upgraded my 2009 iMac to Mavericks, I often get a message stating 'The name of your computer "Foo" is already in use on this network. The name has been changed to "Foo (2)".'. The number at the end will continuously increment over time as the same error keeps happening.

It is trivial enough to rename the computer back, but is there a way to prevent this from happening in future? I had an old Macbook Pro (running Mountain Lion) that had the same issue, but my early 2013 MBP running Mavericks doesn't seem to be suffering from this issue.

Workaround

Like other users, I'm plagued by this annoyance but have found a semi-satisfactory workaround:

my_hostname='your-hostname-here'; for key in LocalHostName ComputerName  HostName  ; do sudo scutil --set $key $my_hostname; done

After running this command, you can check that all places where they store hostname are the same with this one-liner:

for key in LocalHostName ComputerName  HostName  ; do sudo scutil --get $key; done

If the Macbook keeps immediately renaming ComputerName back with a suffix, you may be able to make it stop by turning off Wake for Network Access.

System Preferences→Energy Saver→Wake for Wi-Fi network access → Unchecked

Once off, rename your machine using the commands above to finish.  You may also try forcing ComputerName back by using the System Preferences→Sharing→Computer Name text field preference.

If this did not help, try flushing your mDNS cache:

# El Capitan (10.11) and later
#   check if you have dscacheutil command with: which dscacheutil
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

# Yosemite (10.10) and ealier
#   check if you have discoveryutil command with: which discoveryutil
sudo discoveryutil mdnsflushcache
sudo discoveryutil mdnsrestartquestions
sudo discoveryutil mdnsrestartregistrations
sudo discoveryutil udnsflushcache
sudo discoveryutil udnsrestartquestions

After flushing mDNS cache, retry renaming your machine using the commands above.

If this still did not work, try killing the mDNSResponder service:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Then, retry again to reset your computer name using above scutil commands.

If you find that none of this is doing any good, there are some other reported solutions which include:

Ensure you have only one connection to the local network
Turn Bonjour off and back on

# Yosemite (10.10) (and other versions with discoveryd?)
# Check for discoveryd with:  ps auxww | grep -i discoveryd
sudo killall discoveryd
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist

# Mac OS versions without discoveryd
# Check for mDNSResponder with:  ps auxww | grep -i mDNSResponder
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Shut down and reset ALL networking hardware

Problem Discussion

In my experience, setting the hostname this way, or through the standard System Preferences→Sharing→Computer Name only lasts a short period of time.  This is usually < 24 hours, but sometimes the ComputerName even changes immediately to have a suffixed number in parentheses (N).  I've observed this number to immediately be set to either (4) or (5) recently after using the scutil --set commands above.

The cause of this behavior is due to some daemon code running in Mac OS which attempts to add a numbered suffix (N) any time that the same hostname is found on the network.  In ALL of my testing, the hostnames I've chosen have NEVER been used before on the network and additionally had NEVER been used for any Bluetooth devices as well.

The true cause of the "trigger" of this behavior is unknown and unverified.  That is to say: Through all my research online and testing I have not been able to determine definitively why Mac OS decides that the name is already in use when it clearly is NOT and never has been.

My theory is that somehow mDNS also known as Bonjour (Avahi to Linux users, or Zero-conf Networking to Windows users) may be partly to blame.  Somehow, the prior hostname of the Macbook or Apple device gets persisted somewhere in mDNS, or perhaps some form of ARP table + hostname information which is discovered and stored by the Macbook or Apple device.  This could be some kind of race condition.  Somehow the entry is seen as duplicate and triggers the Mac OS suffix renaming behavior.

The number suffixed hostnames are visible when using the Apple provided DNS Service Discovery utility dns-sd:

For example, using hostname my-mbp-hostname, it might show up like the following entries

dns-sd -Z _ssh._tcp
; To direct clients to browse a different domain, substitute that domain in place of '@'
lb._dns-sd._udp                                 PTR     @

; In the list of services below, the SRV records will typically reference dot-local Multicast DNS names.
; When transferring this zone file data to your unicast DNS server, you'll need to replace those dot-local
; names with the correct fully-qualified (unicast) domain name of the target host offering the service.

_ssh._tcp                                       PTR     my-mbp-hostname\032(5)._ssh._tcp
my-mbp-hostname\032(5)._ssh._tcp                           SRV     0 0 22 my-mbp-hostname.local. ; Replace with unicast FQDN of target host
my-mbp-hostname\032(5)._ssh._tcp                           TXT     ""

[...SNIP...]
[...OTHER SSH HOSTS HERE...]
[...SNIP...]

The theory of the true cause is unconfirmed as it's difficult to find and observe what is actually happening without access to internal Mac OS state & low level Apple OS debugging tools.  The interactions between mdnsd, mDNSResponder, and mDNSResponderHelper with other Mac OS services or even other Avahi daemons on the network are not well documented or easily observable.  The current state of some forms of network discovery can be viewed through dns-sd and arp -a or perhaps arp -a -n.  Other theories or potential places where this hostname information may be stored could be:

Bluetooth device names persisted by the OS somewhere
SMB (windows file share) info cached from network periodically by smbd (/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist)
AFP share info cached from network (also presumably by smbd?)
mDNS / Avahi reflector (or other type of re-broadcast of Bonjour / zero-conf packets on the network by a router or some other device)?

Could be cached by mDNSResponder or mdnsd (/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist)

Solution (placeholder)

As of October 6th 2017, there is still no full solution from Apple or remedy to prevent this problem from reoccurring.  I recommend filing a Bug Report with Apple describing this issue.  You may also wish to contact Apple Customer Support.

The more people that make noise about this annoying issue, the faster Apple Product Managers will prioritize so Engineers will be able to fix it.

Debugging / Future Lines of Investigation

This MacRumors Forum Discussion has some useful information as well as adding a theory that Wake for Wi-Fi Network Access and device Wake / Sleep has something to do with this issue.  Other theories presented have to do with using multiple network adapters (e.g.: WiFi + Thunderbolt Ethernet), routers that have multiple Access Points advertised on multiple bands such as on 802.11 b/g/n (2.4GHz) or 802.11 a/ac (5GHz).  These combinations may cause a "ghost" version of the Apple device to show up on the network somehow temporarily, triggering the renaming behavior.

There were no useful log lines in /var/log/system.log that appeared related to this renaming behavior being triggered.  Supposedly mDNSResponder can be configured to higher log levels:

Error - Error messages
Warning - Client-initiated operations
Notice - Sleep proxy operations
Info - Informational messages

How to set these debug levels other than perhaps through non-existent file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist was not clear.  I did not have a plist example config to use, so I was unable to get any extra logging info out of mDNSResponder.

Tools such as Wireshark could be useful to show mDNS packets being broadcast on the network along with other potentially relevant ARP packet info among other traffic.

On Mac OS, other tools such as dscacheutil may exist to view this information. It's not well documented or clear how to view the definitive cache of this information which is used by the hostname renaming code. When I tested this utility, it did not produce any useful output except when using query mode for the exact hostname (IPs scrubbed for privacy):

sudo dscacheutil -cachedump -entries host
Unable to get details from the cache node
sudo dscacheutil -cachedump
Unable to get details from the cache node
dscacheutil -cachedump
Unable to get details from the cache node
dscacheutil -cachedump -entries host
Unable to get details from the cache node

dscacheutil -q host -a name my-mbp-hostname.local
name: my-mbp-hostname.local
ipv6_address: fe80:4::1a:1234:abcd:ef01
ipv6_address: 2601:280:1b00:1234:567:abcd:ef01:1234

name: my-mbp-hostname.local
ip_address: 192.168.1.123

This is probably to do with the user who is active when you join the network and set up the machine for the first time. It is probable that when you are building these machines you are always doing so as the same user

If you create a user eg dave on, for example a MacBook Pro,the machine will auto-config the naming as follows:

Computer Name: dave's MacBook Pro

local hostname: daves-MacBook-Pro.local

and in Terminal, the hostname will show as: daves-mbp

Assuming the next machine you log into as 'dave' is also a MacBook Pro, it will set exactly the same details -  you connect to the network and you get the message about the duplicate name.

Where I work we change the name in Sharing then open a terminal and run the following command:
sudo scutil –-set HostName new_hostname

(where new_hostname is your chosen name)

Then exit and restart terminal and you will see the new hostname.

You will also get this issue when migrating users to new machines - the migration assistant/time Machine will rename the new machine

some typically weak info on names - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13790


Most suitable Mac OS X version for Power Mac G5? I have a Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8 with 3.5GB of ram running 10.5.8

The system feels so slow though.. :(

Taking in mind that this was a beast back then, which would be the best OS X version I could install on it, in order to make it breathe again?

You may want to give Mac OS X 10.4.11 a try.

Reference: http://lowendmac.com/ed/royal/08sr/tiger-or-leopard.html

as i  am typing i am usung a G5 with 8 gig of ram it runs like a drean
PS also consider ubuntu for powerpc will make your mac run at the speed of light


iCloud and AppleID 'married' to Macintosh When purchasing a used Macintosh, what does one need to know (i.e. what will adverse outcome) regarding the Hardware (serial #?) being tie to an ID?

Apple Products: Due to Apple removing the old website they had to check for iCloud or Apple ID accounts tied to devices we cannot be certain whether or not a device was tied to an account in the past. There is a possibility that a device may bring down a lock from a previous owner after we have already processed it. If a device does bring down a lock past our standard 30 day return policy it will not be accepted for return.

What can be done and what resources are available to mitigate this risk before buying the used hardware?

The tie of an AppleID to a device is associated with the "Find My" capability. On an iPad or iPhone, this tie to the given AppleID makes it so that new users of the device cannot wipe it or change the AppleID without providing the previous user's AppleID login credentials.

The good news is that the tie to an account is not as "strong" on an iMac.  For that device, you can merely reformat the drive and install the desired version of MacOS.


Forgot iCloud password I forgot my password for my icloud account. When I try to recover it form iforgot.apple.com it gives me 2 options:

1- Send an e-mail to my recover e-mail address.
2- Answer the security questions

The problem is:

2- Doesn't accept my birthday (I think I made a mistake while registering)
1- It says that the e-mail will be sent to my old me.com account, which doesn't exist anymore and redirects to icloud (because of iCloud update).

Please help me. Is there any other possibility except calling apple-support.

Get a new Apple ID,go to: Settings ICloud and then tap your Apple ID and then tap Sign Out then enter your new Apple ID

P.S. U can't use same Apple ID from the one that u don't remember password from.


How do I have Safari (v12) auto download PDF files On previous versions of Safari, I have been able to auto download PDF files by using the following code in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES

When I got a new MacBook Air running Safari 12, this option no longer works.  Does anyone know of a solution while still using Safari.  I run a lot of reports that I need to download and not just view.

The Acrobat/Reader plug-in for Apple Safari is based on Netscape Plug-In API (NPAPI), which is supported only till Safari version 11. In Safari 12, support for NPAPI plug-ins is removed, and hence the current Acrobat/Reader plug-in will not work. For detailed information, please refer to help articles Display PDF in browser Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat Reader

What’s New in Safari - Apple Developer

Source: Adobe.com


How can I stop unwanted notifications from Google Calendar on an iPhone? My wife finds that her iPhone constantly reminds her of google calendar events (accessed via the exchange trick). None of the google events have reminders enabled. The phone preferences don't ask for reminders. Yet reminders she gets.

This is actually a default setting by Google that can be changed.  To change this setting

Go to your Google Calendar settings found in the top right under the gear icon.
Select the Calendar tabs
Click the Shared: Edit settings link for the calendar you want to edit.
Select the Notifications tab
Click the remove link next to the reminders you don't want.

Please note that this will only fix events created from this point forward, you will still have to change all the notifications in events that were previously setup.

Go to Google on your iPhone (Google App), and the first story that has the hamburger menu (3 stacked dots), click it and choose Customize Google Now.  You can then turn off various things.  For example, I have no interest in Sports so I turn off these notifications.


Is there an OS X terminal program that can access serial ports? What programs can act as a terminal and access serial ports?

This is not for terminal access on an IP connection, this is so I can access a hardware device plugged into a USB/serial converter running at 9600/8/N/1.

You can use the terminal command screen to do this!!!

As seen on ServerFault:

  I love using [screen] for connecting to serial consoles, i.e.

screen /dev/ttyS0 19200

Or, if you prefer Mac OS X hints...

  I often have to do router configuration via a console port, so I use a
  Keyspan Serial Adapter to get access. Two problems then present
  themselves: ZTerm is a horrible Mac OS X app. It hasn't been updated
  in five years or so, and isn't a Universal Binary. The developer
  doesn't seem in any hurry to rectify the situation. It is not worth
  the shareware fee in its current form. Minicom requires installation
  of Fink or MacPorts and is overly complex. Solution: Use screen,
  Terminal, and a little AppleScripting.

  First, launch Script Editor and type/paste in the following code:

tell application "Terminal"
  do script with command "screen /dev/tty.KeySerial1"
  set number of rows of window 1 to 100
  set number of columns of window 1 to 80
  set background color of window 1 to "black"
  set normal text color of window 1 to "green"
  set custom title of window 1 to "SerialOut"
end tell

  Compile and save as an app from within Script Editor, and you have a
  double-clickable application to launch a serial Terminal session. You
  may want to customize this slightly -- you can change the screen
  colors or number of columns or rows. You may also need to customize
  the screen command with a different device name if you are using
  something other than the Keyspan Serial Adapter (do an ls tty* of the
  /dev/ directory to get the right name).

  screen uses Control-A to take commands directed to it. So type
  Control-A followed by Control-\ to exit your screen session. If you
  fail to do this and exit a Terminal session, you'll leave the screen
  session alive and the serial resource unavailable until you kill the
  screen session manually. man screen will show you further commands to
  send to a screen session.

  If anyone can reply with a link to a tutorial on how to wrap an
  interactive Unix App in Cocoa, that would be the next step -- it would
  be nice to do this without involving Terminal. If you prefer to use
  Minicom, you could still use the AppleScript to wrap it into a nice
  launchable app -- use this older hint to find the right command line
  commands.

Many USB-Serial adapters use the chip from FTDI. Install the "Virtual COM Port" driver and look for the proper TTY name in /dev. For example, on a PowerBook G4 it came up as /dev/tty.usbserial-FTALKY8I.

I use screen to connect to my router's serial port on my Mac.

After installing it- using either macports or homebrew depending on your preference- use the following syntax:

sudo screen /dev/(serialDevice) (baudRate) (TransmissionRate) (flowControl)

To connect to my MikroTik RB4011 router my screen command is:

sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 cs8 ixoff

"cs8" being the bit rate of router and "ixoff" specifying "No Flow Control". "115200" is the baud rate of router.  Alternate settings would be "cs7" for 7 instead of 8 bit and "ixon" if flow control supported by your serial device.  man screen

All the "HowTo's" for using screen to make a serial connection on the 'net I've found Googling omit these required parameters, so that's why you'll find screen has not worked if you've tried it just passing only the baud rate.

BTW, minicom -s (which would also need to be installed via macports or homebrew) also works great, but I prefer screen as I don't have to go through setup menus- I can just pass the serial connection parameters directly to the screen command.


Changing trackpad scroll direction with AppleScript in Yosemite I prefer "natural" scroll direction when using my MBAir trackpad, but "unnatural" when using the mouse. I frequently switch back and forth depending on where I'm working, so I've been using a bit of AppleScript to switch the setting. This script stopped working when I upgraded to Mac OS Yosemite. It still opens the Scroll & Zoom pane of the Trackpad preferences, but it doesn't click the checkbox. I've tried a few things but I can't get it to work.. I'm not an Apple Developer, so I don't have any debugging tools. Any tips?

try
    tell application "System Preferences"
        activate
        set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.trackpad"
    end tell

    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "System Preferences"
            click radio button "Scroll & Zoom" of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
            click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
        end tell
    end tell
end try

First, make sure Applescripts has permission to modify apps.
This can be done by opening System Preferences | Security & Privacy | Accessibility and checking Script Editor. This is a one time process and you shouldn't have to check it again.

I ran this same snippet @Bowen provided in his question on Mojave and noticed what he described. I fixed it by adding the delay mentioned by @Bowen in his answer. The box would either check or uncheck now that we have added a small delay.

Here is that example I ran directly from Script Editor:

try
tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.trackpad"
end tell
delay 2
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "System Preferences"
        click radio button "Scroll & Zoom" of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
        click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
        tell application "System Preferences" to quit
    end tell
end tell
end try

Also, In relation to this topic, I built something using ideas from this thread, since folks may want to automate it per their settings. The below script is "Automator ready", or can be exported as an application so you can run it at startup or however you want to execute it. You have to also allow access to the exported application as shown in the image above for "Scroll direction Clicker". This is specific to a Logitech mouse being found, but it can easily be modified to any other type of string/mouse type. It can also be used as a decent reference to build off of for scroll-direction. I for one got tired of flipping scroll-direction when going from mouse to trackpad, and that's how I found this thread.

Tailored to be exported as an Application from within Script Editor

try
    set logitech to "Logitech"
    try
        set scriptOutput to do shell script "system_profiler SPUSBDataType | grep -i logitech"
        if scriptOutput contains logitech then
            tell application "System Preferences"
                activate
                set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.trackpad"
            end tell
            delay 2
            tell application "System Events"
                tell process "System Preferences"
                    set checkBoxOne to checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
                    click radio button "Scroll & Zoom" of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
                    tell checkBoxOne to if value is 1 then click
                    tell application "System Preferences" to quit
                end tell
            end tell
        end if
    on error errMsg
        log errMsg
        tell application "System Preferences"
            activate
            set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.trackpad"
        end tell
        delay 2
        tell application "System Events"
            tell process "System Preferences"
                set checkBoxOne to checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
                click radio button "Scroll & Zoom" of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
                tell checkBoxOne to if value is 0 then click
                tell application "System Preferences" to quit
            end tell
        end tell
    end try
end try

I created a small Mac MenuBar-App to automate this behaviour (Scrolly). What is the difference - you may ask - to scrollreverser. The scrollreverser app is really nice but the downside to it is, that it doesn't actually change the settings (which my app does, thanks to you guys and the apple scripts everyone shared inside this thread).
If you want you can take a look in here and give it a try. Min. requirements are MacOS 11. As I wanted to test SwiftUI 2, I had to bump the min. version.


32gb of RAM on a 2011 or 2012 15/17-inch MacBook Pro using Crucial's 16gb single DIMMs As far as I can tell, that appears to be the correct RAM for the MBP, correct?
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Single-PC3L-12800-SODIMM-CT204864BF160B/dp/B0123BRIDK

Has anyone tried this 32gb option on their 2011 or 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro?
IIRC the two higher-tier Early 2011, Late 2011, and Mid 2012 Unibody 15-inch (and 2011 17-inch) models support 32gb theoretically.

For example, the processor specs suggest 32gb over two slots is possible, but I'm not sure if the logic board would pose a limit or not...Apple says 16gb is the max, but I think much of that material was created before a single 16gb DDR3l DIMM existed.
https://ark.intel.com/products/52227/Intel-Core-i7-2820QM-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz

I doubt it would work. Macs are picky about RAM, and the RAM you listed isn't what is specified by Apple. Apple requires DDR3 RAM. You have listed DDR3L RAM. It's an easy mistake to make. DDR3L is low-power RAM, requiring 1.35V instead of 1.5V. It is very possible that the RAM will not be compatible.

Also, officially, Apple says that the MBP only supports 8GB RAM. However, it is widely recognized that the MBP can support 16GB RAM.

Why wouldn't it support 32GB? Because while 16GB DDR3L RAM sticks are available, 16GB DDR3 RAM sticks don't exist. There is no such thing as a 16GB RAM stick that matches Apple's specifications (PC3-12800 DDR3 1600 MHz type 204-pin RAM).

Edit: Although crucial says that the 16 GB RAM stick can be used in place of DDR3, it says it is not compatible with the Mac:

It may accept the memory if you are running a 5th generation i5 or i7 processor, but no guarantee.

This thread has details on how to find out what generation processor you're running: Which Intel "generation" is my Mac's CPU?


Error: "sudo: command not found" when trying to use XAMPP I am trying to use XAMPP to create a server on my MacBook. I'm following the tutorial here:

https://www.webucator.com/how-to/how-install-start-test-xampp-on-mac-osx.cfm

and I'm stuck on the bit where I'm required to put the command

sudo /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp security

I get asked to input my password and then encounter the following error:

sudo: /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp: command not found

Any help here please?

Idea #1

The error could be because it's attempting to run this command:

$ sudo /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp

You may need to pass the entire command with single or double quotes to the sudo command like this:

$ sudo '/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp security'

Idea #2

If the above isn't your issue then I'd suggest changing directories and running the command directly from there:

$ cd /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles
$ sudo xampp security

Idea #3

If that still doesn't work, take a look at the contents of the xamppfiles directory using the ls command and verify that xampp is in fact a file in this subdirectory. It it's missing then one of your steps to install XAMPP was either skipped or failed.