Partition Type: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF Macbook Pro I was trying to install Kali linux in a dual boot fashion when I accidentally ended up install a terminal only version of Debian as a second partition. So I decided to retry, which meant I needed to delete the Debian partition. When I tried to in Disk Utility, it gave me errors, so I booted into internet recovery mode and removed the partitions there. I then proceeded in clicking the Apple Logo and selecting the choose boot partition thing. It showed nothing. At first I panicked, thinking I had somehow deleted all of my data. I tried creating a second partition, so I could install Mac OS there and then fix my mac from there. I clicked on the create partition, waited 3ish hours while I went out, came back and it said preparing to partition. So I rebooted and saw that the partition type was: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFF. So I installed Mac OS X onto a painfully slow flash drive (15-20MB/s) and then looked up my problem. I found other solution people had created only they were specific to the exact case. I do not know what the partition type is supposed to be so here is my info: /dev/disk1 is the USB flash drive that is running MAC OS X so I can use my laptop.

sh-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI NO NAME                 209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF               450.1 GB   disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *31.4 GB    disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Fixer OS                30.5 GB    disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3

And here is some more:

sh-3.2# gpt -r show /dev/disk0
    start       size  index  contents
        0          1         PMBR
        1          1         Pri GPT header
        2         32         Pri GPT table
       34          6
       40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
   409640  879039128      2  GPT part - FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
879448768   97656259
977105027         32         Sec GPT table
977105059          1         Sec GPT header

How can I mount this partition again?
Which command should I use?

To add an answer exactly fitting to your case I slightly modified my answer in the linked "duplicate" and posted it here again.

The second partition of your internal disk got the wrong partition type, your data probably won't be lost.

A bootable OS X partition (except the Recovery HD) either has the GUID 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC for a standard OS X partition or the GUID 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC for a CoreStorage partition. The FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF is an unknown partition type (but not no partition like the 000000-0000-0000.... one).

The first block of a standard OS X partition doesn't contain non-zeros, the first block of a CoreStorage partition contains some non-zeros. To get the first 3 blocks of a partition enter sudo dd if=/dev/diskXsY count=3 | hexdump.

The GUID can be modified with gpt.

Boot to "Fixer OS"
Open Terminal
Get an overview with diskutil list
Get an overview of your internal disk with the disk identifier found in the previous command. Below I assume the disk identifier of your internal disk is disk0 (replace it with the one you have found in your environment)

sudo gpt -r show disk0

Unmount disk0 with diskutil umountDisk disk0
hexdump the first 3 blocks of the FFFF... partition:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0s2 count=3 | hexdump

The following result identfies it as a normal OS X partition:

0000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000400 48 2b 00 04 80 00 21 00 48 46 53 4a 00 00 01 ff
0000410 d3 8c 77 d3 d4 33 3c b0 00 00 00 00 d3 8c 5b b3
0000420 00 00 02 a8 00 00 00 25 00 00 10 00 00 fe b7 f6
0000430 00 fe 1e fa 00 ed 80 00 00 01 00 00 00 01 00 00
0000440 00 00 10 f2 00 00 5a 9d 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01
0000450 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000460 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 7d 9d b0 3a 02 31 62 f0
0000470 00 00 00 00 00 1f e0 00 00 1f e0 00 00 00 01 fe
0000480 00 00 00 01 00 00 01 fe 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000490 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
00004c0 00 00 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 00 06 00
00004d0 00 00 0a 00 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00004e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000510 00 00 00 00 03 10 00 00 03 10 00 00 00 00 31 00
0000520 00 03 ac 00 00 00 31 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000530 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000560 00 00 00 00 05 40 00 00 05 40 00 00 00 00 54 00
0000570 00 00 10 00 00 00 54 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000580 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000600

The first number is the byte count in hex: 0000000: 0; 0000600: 1536. The * denotes identical lines. This means: the first two blocks (0x000-0x3ff) are all zeros.

A CoreStorage partition shows some non-zeros in the first block (0x000-0x1ff):

0000000 0c 73 a1 a9 ff ff ff ff 01 00 10 00 07 14 d7 01
0000010 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000030 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000040 00 20 c1 cc 0f 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000050 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 43 53 01 00 00 00 04 00
0000060 00 10 00 00 00 00 40 00 11 bc fc 00 00 00 00 00
0000070 11 c0 fc 00 00 00 00 00 11 c4 fc 00 00 00 00 00
0000080 11 c8 fc 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000090 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
00000b0 62 02 98 59 ee a9 ab 51 9b 49 23 90 2e f8 8b 43
00000c0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000130 e4 6e f8 f2 63 99 45 c1 b2 13 86 28 a5 18 46 6d
0000140 c4 51 c0 f6 32 f9 43 ab 8e 59 42 d2 1a ef f6 50
0000150 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000400 48 2b 00 04 80 00 21 00 48 46 53 4a 00 00 01 ff
0000410 d1 98 a4 93 d4 33 8b d5 00 00 00 00 d1 98 88 73
0000420 00 06 07 53 00 01 82 39 00 00 10 00 00 fb 6a 00
0000430 00 c5 1c 55 00 25 73 c7 00 01 00 00 00 01 00 00
0000440 00 0d e2 65 00 3e a2 fb 00 00 00 00 02 20 00 fb
0000450 00 00 00 31 00 06 b9 ef 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000460 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 31 fb 48 1e a0 6c 47 a2 9f
0000470 00 00 00 00 00 1f e0 00 00 1f e0 00 00 00 01 fe
0000480 00 00 00 01 00 00 01 fe 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000490 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
00004c0 00 00 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 00 06 00
00004d0 00 00 0a 00 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00004e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000510 00 00 00 00 0e 40 00 00 01 30 00 00 00 00 e4 00
0000520 00 00 10 00 00 00 e4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000530 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000560 00 00 00 00 11 d0 00 00 01 30 00 00 00 01 1d 00
0000570 00 02 80 00 00 00 72 00 00 13 30 97 00 00 13 00
0000580 00 15 c5 aa 00 00 13 00 00 18 2d 23 00 00 13 00
0000590 00 19 d8 fb 00 00 13 00 00 1b 76 cb 00 00 13 00
00005a0 00 1c 34 70 00 00 13 00 00 1d 0e 4d 00 00 13 00
00005b0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000600

The line starting with byte 0x130 shows the UUID of the Physical Volume, the line starting with byte 0x140 shows the UUID of the Logical Volume Group.

The string 48 46 53 4a (= "HFSJ") in the first 16 bytes of the third blocks identifies a Journaled HFS+ volume on both partition types.
Now remove the second partition:

diskutil umountDisk disk0
sudo gpt remove -i 2 disk0

re-add the partition with the proper type
either a normal OS X partition

sudo gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 879039128 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

or (if you have found a CoreStorage partition)

sudo gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 879039128 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

Finally verify/repair the disk with diskutil verifyDisk disk0 and/or diskutil verifyVolume disk0s2. If a repair is needed use repair (instead of verify) as prefix in the above commands but contact me before repairing it and send me the error message.

Sorry for my previous non-answer, reading fail on my part.

You can use gpt to change type UUIDs on partitions, by removing the GPT record and re-adding it with a different type. (gpt requires exclusive access to do it, so you must boot from another drive/internet recovery) You just need to copy verbatim the starting sector and size.

in your case, that would be:

gpt remove -i 2 disk0
gpt add -b 409640  -s 879039128 -t hfs disk0


Album covers getting mixed up on phone from iTunes I had this problem earlier but then knew how to fix it, it was when I sent songs to my iphone the cover art got messed up with art from songs I already have on my phone. I fixed this by uploading the covers on iTunes again but making them album covers then sending it to the iPhone but now I have the same problem but it wont let me fix it with the album art. It gets mixed with art from songs I already have on my phone. The art is correct on iTunes on my computer, but it's messed up on my phone, this has only happened with 3 of my songs and an album with 7 songs. I want to prevent it from doing it again. I have an iPhone 5s by the way, if that's needed.

I had the same problem. Twice... You will most probably have to remove and then re-sync your music.

Attach your iPhone and go to the music section. Remove the check mark to sync music. Your selections will stay intact for later re-sync. Sync your phone. When finished all music should be gone from the phone. Now re-check the mark for syncing music and do the sync.

This fixed the messed up covers for me.

I resolved the situation for myself...
I quit Apple music and re-installed Spotify and it works like a charm!


How to send "delayed" sms? Instead of sending an SMS right now, I would like to send a "delayed" SMS. For example, delay it by 45 minutes, or 60 minutes, etc.

Is there any way to do it?

I have tried the apps txtot, FutureText, and SMS Scheduler, but they don't work. The default iPhone "Messages" app cannot receive SMSes sent by these apps.

Without jailbreak what you ask isn't possible. Third party Apps from the App Store can't access the SMS service.

With a jailbreak there seems to be apps on the Cydia Store that have this function. Like Future SMS.

Try Joopz.com, works great and you don't have to jail break your phone.


Gmail on iPad not working ..error message I'm seeing this problem all over the web and I'm asking the same thing. I am not very computer savvy and would appreciate an answer that is easy to understand.

When I try to access my Gmail account on my iPad by clicking on the mail icon that came with the device (meaning: I'm not using my browser to access my mail and not using any downloaded apps) I get this message:

The mail server "imap.gmail.com" is not responding. Verify that you have entered the correct account info in Mail settings.

And I have. And do. Everything is correct.
This started to be a problem before the new ios6 update.  And I can access my gmail account on my iPhone just fine.  This problem is just on my iPad 2.

Also. I do have another gmail account set up on my iPad and that email works fine. They both have been on my iPad for ever and both been fine until a few weeks ago. Just one account is messed up!  Why? And why hasn't this been fixed?

Try a couple things:

Delete the problem gmail account from your iPad, and then set it up again.  See if email works.
If #1 doesn't work, then it could be possible you have too many devices accessing that email account at the same time (ie., iMac/notebooks/etc with the Mail app left open).  Try closing the mail app on your other devices and see if that works.  I believe gmail has a limit of 10 devices that can access the same email account at a given time.  A mail app left open counts as one.
Lastly, make sure you've inputted the correct password.  You might want to change your password in gmail.com and then re-enter it in your iPad.

Hope this helps!

Restart your iphone or mac and try it again. Magic ;)


iPad won't do anything So I installed the iOS 8 upgrade, however now my iPad does nothing. It won't charge. It won't show anything but the Apple logo. I've tried soft and hard reboot. Nothing! I am furious!

This is a bit fiddly, but you should be able to restore your iPad using iTunes on a Mac or Windows computer.

Please be aware that both of these options will restore your iPad to factory settings, so if you don't have a backup you will lose your data.

First thing to do is make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed. Then connect your iPad to your computer and open iTunes.

If your iPad appears within iTunes then...

Select your iPad within iTunes and click the Restore button.
You'll be prompted to confirm that you want to restore to factory conditions. Click Restore to confirm you are okay with this, then iTunes will download a fresh copy of iOS and install it on your device. Click here for more info about this option.

However if it doesn't appear within iTunes then...

Unplug your iPad and turn it off completely. You should be able to do this by holding the power button on the top of the device until the display goes dark.
Then, with iTunes still open on your computer, hold in the home button on your iPad and reconnect it to your computer. Keep holding the home button on your iPad until the Connect to iTunes screen appears.
Once you see that screen you can release the home button and iTunes should tell you that it has detected a device in Recovery Mode that needs to be restored.
Select your device within iTunes and click the Restore button. As above you'll be asked to confirm you want to Restore your device, and if you confirm that, iTunes will download and install a fresh copy of iOS on your device. Click here for more info about this option.

Hope this helps.

Reset in itunes! With a ios7 version for example.


Can't connect from macOS High Sierra to Windows 10 share on home network At wit's end.  Have MBP named newt running High Sierra.  Have Windows 10 machine named "Vader" that's always up & running with a physical drive (X:) shared as //Vader/x with permissions set to Everyone having full control.  Other Windows machines can access share just fine & read, write, etc.  Windows 10 box has user Adams with no password & automatically logs in at boot.

Prior to installing Sierra, had no problems accessing share.  Since Sierra (now on High Sierra, hoping it'd fix but didn't), I haven't been able to access at all, always with the following error with text There was a problem connecting to the server:

Windows 10 machine's workgroup is WORKGROUP, and so is MBP's:

Here's newt's DNS settings:

I've got a pretty simple Google WiFi setup (with 3 units) providing my home network.  All machines are on the wifi network (192.168.86.0/24).  Here's some terminal output from newt:

$ ping vader
PING vader.lan (192.168.86.86): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.86.86: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=2.208 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.86.86: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=5.940 ms
^C
--- vader.lan ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.208/4.074/5.940/1.866 ms
matthew@newt:/Volumes
$ smbutil lookup vader
Got response from 192.168.86.86
IP address of vader: 192.168.86.86
$ smbutil status 192.168.86.86
Using IP address of 192.168.86.86: 192.168.86.86
Workgroup: WORKGROUP
Server: VADER
$ smbutil identity -N //vader
smbutil: server connection failed: No such file or directory

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I don't know what else to try.  I've searched many docs, forums, StackExchange sites, etc.

For me the solution was to check if SMB server was active on windows pc (and it was not!!, just SMB client is active by default):

go in search field at the right of WINDOWS icon and type: WINDOWS FEATURES
scroll the list and find SMB support
make sure that SMB server is checked, if not check it and restart pc.

Go to the  Apple menu and choose ‘System Preferences‘ from the drop down menu. To enable File Sharing in macOS or Mac OS X, open the ‘Sharing‘ pane of ‘System Preferences‘ and select the option for ‘File Sharing‘. Windows computers and Macs can then see your computer on the local network. If you want to add an existing user for SMB file sharing open ‘Options…‘ for selecting and activating the user. For details see Apple’s support document.


Macbook Pro (Early 2011) running hot with OS X Lion I recently bought the baseline 13'' Macbook Pro with i5 CPU and Lion preinstalled.

I mostly work with Firefox (without Flash), NetBeans IDE and iTerm running and the machine tends to get really hot at the bottom and in the upper left area of the keyboard after few hours of work.

I checked the Activity Monitor and no process is above the 5% CPU usage.

My friend who has the same MBP with Snow Leopard started to have the same issue after he upgraded to Lion yesterday. Lots of threads on Apple.com support forums report the same issue, but without any working solution.

What should I do? Should I bring it back to the shop? Should I try to take some steps to prevent the overheating?

Because you have a base unit, your machine has an integrated GPU. So just looking at CPU cycles can be a red herring.

You can test this behaviour by turning on Cover Flow in iTunes and scrolling through your entire library for a minute or two. Since it is quite GPU intensive, after some time, your fans will ramp up to bring your chips temperature down. Bt if you consult your CPU usage, it will be quite minimal.

It could be the case (very likely) that Lion is working as intended. Lion introduced much more animations and graphically intensive processes, such as swipe animations when navigating websites using the trackpad, pop-up animations on dialogue boxes, swipe animations when sending mail, etc. Even moving or re-organizing icons in Finder now has an animation attached to it

You are certainly free to take into an Apple Store and talk to a Genius about your concerns, but I'm fairly certain they will test the unit and report that it is very much within "spec."

I have a Mac and I don't think I have this problem. I have the same device and OS you have and I hope this answer is able to solve your problem:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191543

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3268441?start=15&tstart=0

People mentioned AGService which causes 100% CPU consumption. I would recommend you to check that out.


Better way of using the iPhone with a Bluetooth speaker I got a Bluetooth wireless speaker and it is great in many ways.  I can listen to podcasts and music without wires to get in the way.

I have one small first-world problem.  If i want to type up a quick text message, it lags because it seems that for each character typed it has to play the sound on the bluetooth speaker.  It probably takes time to send each audio snippet.  This is not horrible, but oh well.

The problem is much worse when I use speech recognition to "type" a message.  It insists on using the microphone on the bluetooth speaker and seeing how it is not right in front of me - the speech recognition fails almost always.  Or comes up with unbelievably hilarious renderings of what I said.

Siri has a workaround for this: when I bring it up, it has a small bluetooth icon in the bottom left where I can select the audio source.  But the speech recognition applet on the keyboard does not.

Or am I missing something simple here?

P.S.  I looked at the bluetooth references for the device - the only thing there is to "Forget the Device".

I figured out my own answer, so hopefully this helps whomever runs into this problem.

Bring up Siri by holding down the Home button.  It will come up and on the bottom left you'll see Audio source indicator, pictured below (and highlighted in yellow).

As you can see, it has a grey background.  Tap on it and you'll get a menu of audio sources (typically your phone and the Bluetooth device).  Select your phone.  The icon will get a white background indicate that you successfully changed the audio source.

Now switch back to your Text Messaging application and the tap the microphone button on the keyboard and it will now use the phone microphone instead of the one on the Bluetooth device.

Flick your phone on silent. Seems to stop the issue with iPhone 5 and Nixon Blaster.


How to uninstall completely "Blackberry Device Manager"? I've uninstalled the blackberry software from my mac using the original uninstaller utility. This software did not work properly, so it left a login item called called "Blackberry Device Manager" appearing on the "Users & Groups" tab at "System Preferences" with a yellow triangle signaling an error.

How can I delete this faulted login item?

Update
Here is a deeper Blackberry component cleansing procedure

You may want to try getting rid of the related files in /Library/LaunchDaemons and /Library/LaunchAgents.

Those will all start with com.rim.*, so you can run:

sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rim.*
sudo rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.rim.*

I updated my macbook to Mountain Lion. Then I disabled any kind of privilege for all existing accounts and finally I deleted the entry with the minus button...


Mavericks won't update. Crash on boot software update I believe the update process was interrupted once. My computer works fine but the SoftwareUpdateLauncher fails to do anything on shutdown when I am logged out. I can see that it is in the application SoftwareUpdateLauncher but nothing happens, I've let it sit for over an hour before.

OS X 10.9.1

Photos:

http://see.kirkstrobeck.com/UGoR
http://see.kirkstrobeck.com/UGra
http://see.kirkstrobeck.com/UH6o

Try deleting the software update caches at

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate
/Library/Caches/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate

Delete the entire folder you find.

Dead easy. On the grey screen with softwareupdatelauncher just hit enter.


Where is the OS X Volume Change Feedback Sound File located? I upgraded Yosemite, and turns out they changed the "pop" sound that plays when you change the volume. I have another Mac, which is on Mavericks, and I would like to get the old sound back.

I saw Where are the Mac OS X alert sound files located?, and it is NOT there in Macintosh HD ▸ System ▸ Library ▸ Sounds

Any help would be appreciated.

The volume up/down feedback audio file is called volume.aiff and is located in:

/System/Library/LoginPlugins/BezelServices.loginPlugin/Contents/Resources/

I use FindAnyFile from the app store to find any file anywhere on my Mac. I've had it for ages and couldn't live without it...


Anti-virus comparison for Mac OS X This is not a "I use OS X, do I need Anti-Virus?" question.

I am looking at comparison and user opinion of existing AV products.
I know I can avoid most (if not all) threats by being careful on the sites I visit, and the emails I download. But I need an anti-virus, for a variety of reasons - mostly to prevent my Mac as a carrier for viruses. (Many friends' USB drives turn out to be infected).

I was looking for the "Best" of the anti virus software out there.

I am looking prominently at anti-virus. "Internet Security" and the like are not important, and would try to avoid them if it would save money or not make my mac slower.

By "Best" I mean the best combination of detect-rate (or whatever that is called) and performance.
I don't intend to run it always in the background. Maybe I would do a onetime scan of my system and hard drives, and then it would be mostly on a need basis, especially on USB drives/portable hard disks of friends.
So primary objective: High Detect rate

I have used Norton Antivirus for Mac and Virus Barrier (got this with one of those software bundles sometime before, not the latest version) and had problems with both. Both sometimes hog my CPU, and somehow "lock" my USB drives preventing me from Ejecting it (I had to force eject them or just pull them off from the port) (thought off late Norton seemed a little better)

Ok, thats a long one. But my question is simple: What anti-virus do you recommend for the Mac?

Thanks.

ClamXav

It is open source and low resource consumption, but is not free.

There is also a free command line version available in brew, fink, and macports under clamav (less ugly).  There is some minor configuration, but there are decent guides on the ClamAV site and here, for example.


How to stream from iTunes(on iMac) to iphone/ipad on same network, at the same time? I can use the Remote app to control what is currently playing on the iMac, but is there a way to stream the audio so that it is playing out through the iMac AND the ipad/phone in parallel?

Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil can stream to multiple computers and iOS devices (using a free iOS app). It can stream from iTunes, or from many other applications.

Home sharing will let you access and play your Mac's music library from your iPad. However, there's no provision for synchronously playing the same track on the Mac and the iPad.


Reclaim disk space from old Windows partition? How do I reclaim the disk space used by my former Windows partition?

Clear free space in Disk Utility

  So I recently removed Windows 7 from my iMac, but Bootcamp didn't let me do it. I used Disk Utility instead. The old Windows 7 partition now shows up as free space. I want to reinstall Windows 7 again on my iMac, how do I set it up? Can I use the free space again? I want to give the Windows partition a bigger size than what the free space currently holds.

I'm having the exact same issue, but mine is 70 GB of data on 250 GB flash drive. I too am running OS X 10.10, Yosemite.

The accepted answer to the question above says restore the computer, but I don't want to lose my data or buy a Time Machine drive. What should I do?

I installed the Windows 10 Preview.
I then booted up into OS X.
I turned off FileVault, and removed my Windows partition via Boot Camp Assistant.

Finally, check disk utility and you'll see the free space went to your Mac partition.

The only correct way is indeed to use Bootcamp Assistant to free up the Windows partition space...


Why iCloud tabs not working iOS 11 iPhone and iOS 10 iPad? Unable to see iCloud tabs on iPad (safari).

Tried signing out and in of iCloud on iPad. I can see iCloud tabs on iPhone from iPad.

iPhone on iOS 11 but iPad is too old to update from iOS 10. Does the feature not work if the devices are on different OS’s?

I’ve concluded that iCloud tabs don’t work on older OS’s (when other devices are on newer ones).

They put it into Reading List whereas before it was at the bottom of tabs open on the iPhone.


Does using one USB port reduce performance on others? This was a difficult topic to search for on the Web, so I'll try asking here:

On a MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013) with 2 x USB 3.0 ports, if I transfer files to an external drive using one port, does this in any way "eat up" the performance of the other USB port? Or does each port have its completely own bus / capacity?

A relevant side question is how the same applies to other multi-port setups such as:

the USB ports on Cinema Displays
the USB ports on Thunderbolt Displays
the Thunderbolt ports on newer MacBooks

I have often faced this interesting question. Apple has always tried to make its operations transparent - and although this is fabulous, sometimes this approach obscures information we want.

To discover how many busses your machine is running (as you rightly distinguish from mere ports) go to system profiler, and select USB on the left.

USB is listed amongst all the other protocols within your machine.

You will then be presented with a device tree which (usually) gives a pretty clear idea of what’s going on with the bussing.

If you plug things in to the ports you should see the devices come up.

To get to system profiler, select “about this mac” from the Apple Menu and the click "system report" in the window that comes up. Another way us to call up spotlight by pressing command and space bar together, type system profiler and launch it directly from there.

When you are looking at the usb device tree you may be surprised to learn that the usb bus is also in use internally - for example on some older macs, Bluetooth was running off the buss internally.

Hope this helps.


iPhone recent calls list reappears after clear Today I've cleared my recent calls list about 6 times, and it keeps coming back. What gives?

it's a bug. not only Facetime on iPhone but iMac also. Apple have no solution!


Xcode 4 post installation problem I have successfully installed Xcode 4.1 from Mac AppStore on Lion, and restarted the machine to be sure that everything will run correctly, everything is ok up to this point. however, when I open Applications (and also when I open LaunchPad too), there is no XCode there, there is an icon named: "install XCode" (its size = XCode size = 3.5 GB, and contains a lot of packages inside it). I can run XCode without problems using either its icon on the dock or from spotlight.
my questions are:

1) where is the real XCode Icon located ?

2) what is the correct way to remove "install XCode" package icon that exists in Applications?

3) can I put the "install XCode" package on a USB stick and install it on another machine (running Lion of course) without problems?

thank you so much in advance.

I know it's a bit confusing, but you didn't actually install Xcode 4. What you did was installing the Xcode 4 installer. So what you got to do is:

Open the Install Xcode-app located in your launchpad.
Make sure iTunes is closed, this is necessary, and the installer won't check for this.
Finalize the setup (well, Lion will do this for you, just press the buttons).
Optionally, restart your Mac.
Optionally, remove the Install Xcode-app.

It'll probably prompt you that it's moving your existing Developer-folder to Developer Old so it can install Xcode 4.1 to /Developer/.

It's in /Developer/Applications/
Not sure what you mean.
Likely.


What is the process EscrowSecurityAlert in Activity Monitor? I'm a little worried about a process I see in Activity Monitor called 'EscrowSecurityAlert'
Descriptions provided other forums ranges from it being a sign of malware:

The threat to your Mac is CleanMyMac. Delete it.

through to it being harmless:

This should be perfectly fine as something

and descriptions I don't understand (I can't think of anything I use that requires 'data escrow'):

Escrow is a data security measure in which acryptographic key is entrusted to a third party (i.e., kept in escrow). Under normal circumstances, the key is not released to someone other than the sender or receiver without proper authorization. Key escrow systems can be considered a security risk at the user puts access to information into the hands of the escrow agent holding the cryptographic key; however, key escrow systems are used to ensure that there is a backup of the cryptographic key in case the parties with access to key lose the data through a disaster or malicious intent.

Question
Regarding the 'EscrowSecurityAlert' process - is this something that ships with macOS or have I installed it myself somehow?

Yes, it's part of macOS & has been since perhaps Mavericks.
Wikipedia lists it in List of macOS components but provides no description -
The iPhone Wiki gives a brief description

This application works with the iCloud Keychain servers. It manages the password uploads and anything that keychain tools does.

By definition an escrow service is one who acts as a middle-man in a complex or expensive process. It is often used when buying/selling a house. The escrow company holds both the deeds and the money until all parties have completed the legal requirements to transfer the property, preventing either one from 'running off with the money'.
In computing terms it is an arbitrator between two not-necessarily-yet-trusted 'clients'. It prevents any data from one leaking to the other until full trust is established. In effect, it doesn't let anything 'run off with the money'.
This is, in effect, a less mind-numbing version of your last link & quote.

Download and scan your Mac with free version of MalwareBytes : https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/


Find My iPhone shows device as 'Offline' My mom tried to track my iPhone 5 using Find My iPhone. My location services were turned on and everything was working properly. Then it said between a certain time that my iPhone was 'offline'. She thinks I manually went and turned it off, making me appear to be offline but I did not do this. It is the second time this has happened since I got the app last year. I need to know why this is happening so that I can explain to her I am not doing it.

Wow, Big Brother is watching! Contrary to popular belief, the iPhone's cell reception is not perfect, and from time to time you can and will "lose cell," and it will appear offline. This can happen when it enters its energy saving mode when asleep, though you should still receive calls. This can really happen any time you're not within a reasonable line of site to a cell tower, or even when switching between towers, and cell frequencies really don't go through wooded areas or mountains or hills all that well, and by that I mean "not at all." It is completely normal for iPhones and cell phones in general to lose cell connectivity when behind a hill from the nearest cell tower. Also, holding the phone wrong can cause it to lose cell, because just holding it will de-attenuate the antenna. And all cell phones have this feature.

Also, the A-GPS system iPhone uses is also not perfect. GPS itself is far from perfect, and really doesn't work all that well (read "not at all") unless you have a line of sight to 3 or more satellites. The 'A' part of A-GPS means "assisted" and you can read about what that means in the link above, and it mitigates some of the issues with GPS.

Using "Find My iPhone" to track family members is a little extreme. I think a more friendly way to have the same functionality is to use Apple's Find My Friends app. Try to talk Mom into using that instead, and then you can track her at the same time, too, quid pro quo.

You must also go to:

Settings → iCloud → scroll down to Find My iPhone and make sure it is turned ON.


How to upgrade jailbroken iPhone 4 with iOS 6.1.3 to iOS 7.0.4? I bought an iPhone 4 online around a year ago, maybe more, without knowing it was jailbroken (I should have sensed this by the price, indeed too good to be true).

When I tried doing the upgrade everything got wiped out and I had to use RedSnow to restore the newest version at that moment. This was iOS 6.1.3 which was decent — I could use almost everything except making phone calls.

Now a few apps are requiring me to download the newest version of iOS in order to operate properly. The next iOS version that appears suggested is 7.0.4. I have backed up all of my information on both the computer and cloud.

Restore the device with iTunes (connect the device and click Restore in iTunes).
Once the device is restored, set up the device using an iTunes backup and select the iTunes backup that you made before you restored the device.
If you want the device jailbroken, jailbreak the device using evasi0n 7.

Since your iPhone is a jailbroken one, the upgrade needs to happen on the computer connected with iTunes. Firstl of all, backup all the info on the iPhone beforehand. Here are detailed steps:

Connect your iOS device to your computer using an USB cable. Wait for iTunes to open and connect to your device.

2.Click on device button to the left of the iTunes Store button in the top right corner in iTunes.

3.Click on the “Check for Update” . If the iOS 7.0.4 update is available it will automatically download and update your device to iOS 7.0.4.

4.You will get a popup message informing you the new update is available. Click on Download and Update button.

5.If you get a popup message informing you that iTunes will update your iPhone to iOS 7.0.4 and will verify with Apple. Click on the Update button.

6.It will then show you the release notes for iOS 7. Click on the Next button. Then click on the Agree button for the terms and conditions.

7.iTunes will now download the firmware file (which can take a long time depending on your internet connection as it can be as big as 2.1GB). After downloading the file, it will process it, extract the software, prepare the device for software update, and install the update.

8.Do not disconnect your device until the update has finished. It can take a few minutes. Your device will be updated to iOS 7.0 and reboot once or twice during the process. You will see while Hello screen after it is successfully update. Follow the on-screen instructions to start using the device.


Internal Mic stopped recording voice, but hears case/keyboard touching Since this morning I am unable to record my voice on my Macbook Air 2012 internal microphone but the microphone can hear me touching the keyboard, the Macbook case…

I tried to tweak system preferences, enabling/disabling noise ambient reduction and so on without success. Tried to reboot a couple of times with no luck.

Any idea on what should I try next?

I’m on Mountain Lion (10.8.3).

Screen is

my microphone is working on the side from your laptop use a needle to pinch and clean out the hole from the microphone

Could it be that the microphone is loose somehow? it could be that when you tough the case the microphone shifts a little bit and you can hear the sound when you touch the case.


broke my python easy_install how to fix? Any idea how to fix:

-bash: /usr/bin/easy_install: No such file or directory

I kind of deleted it by accident before I realized that being behind a proxy was my issue not easy_install

easy_install is part of setuptools. There's a handy script to bootstrap it:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -o - | python

You may need to put sudo before python if it throws a permissions error. There's a few more details here: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools#installation-instructions but that one-liner should do the trick in most cases.

You can check this documents to fix easy_install in python.

Click on this link: easy_install


Looking for a good SSH apps for iPhone I have been using a free SSH app on my phone for a little while but stopped because using VIM mostly broke it. Now after some updates I seems to have a limited number of key strokes before it expires. So now seems like a good time to shop around.

There are the requirements:

Can emulate color
Can run VIM, though being able to run EMACS would be cool too.
It does not have to be free.
it must run on a non jail broken phone.

What is everyone else using? What do you suggest?

Being the fanboy that I am, I completely admit that I am absolutely in love with Prompt (by Panic). It's already come a long way since it's initial release, and here's a few wonderful features;

It's not cluttered. They provided an app that offers what you need out of an SSH client and added a few bonuses that make it so much more worthwhile.
Command, and parameter, auto-completion. (Oh my god this is amazing.)
Public/Private key authentication support. Well documented, and also quite improved in recent versions with regard to how to load the actual key.
Leveraging the amount of free space in the meta key bar, you can assign 4 "favorite special character keys", so pick the ones you use most often so you rarely have to hit the 123 keyboard key, or worse, the #+= key. I currently have /\.- chosen.

Prompt is $8 (universal app!) on the iTunes App Store.

Why not try ssh term pro? It best in many case than above apps


How to set default Window position and/or size? Whenever I start an application like Terminal or Preview, they are always opened as a small window on the top left corner of the screen. Is there any way to set them to open in the center of the screen? Preferably maximized too?

In Terminal you can change the default window size from Preferences > Settings > Window:

You can also use window groups to set a default position and size for the window opened when you launch Terminal (but not for new windows opened later).

I use Sequential and Skim as alternatives to Preview and iTerm 2 as an alternative to Terminal. All of them have an option to open windows in full screen by default, and all of them have their own (pre-Lion and actually usable) implementations for full screen windows.

The sizes of Finder windows are saved in .DS_Store files and there are no default window size settings in com.apple.Finder.plist or anything. I use a script like this to reset the properties of windows:

tell application "Finder"
    if number of Finder windows is 0 then return
    tell Finder window 1
        set toolbar visible to false
        set sidebar width to 0
        set statusbar visible to false
        set current view to column view
        set bounds to {960, 44, 1920, 1076}
        tell its column view options
            set shows icon to false
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Get an app named SizeUp. It is not free but it pays for itself in productivity real quick.


How to open a new tab in iTerm in the same folder as the one that is open? I'm using iTerm for my command line needs, and when I open a tab using ⌘T I want it to open the tab cd'ed to the same location as the tab that was open when I hit ⌘T (instead of opening in my /Users/kramer65).

I searched around the Preferences, but I can't seem to find it. Does anybody know how I can do this? All tips are welcome!

Select "Reuse previous session's directory" from the preferences of your profile:

Alternatively click on "Advanced Configuration" then "Edit..." so you can set the working directory separately for new windows, new tabs & new split panes

To bind a special keybinding to this:

go to Settings (  Cmd  ⌘ + ,)
then keys
select the + sign
choose a keybinding
select the duplicate tab action.


Time Machine sparsebundle corrupted on disconnect I've been using Time Machine over wifi and have had a recurring problem with corrupted sparsebundles. The scenario is a relatively new Airport Extreme, a MacBook with Leopard, and a partitioned Western Digital drive hooked up via USB to the Airport.

The backups work fine, if I'm just around the house, or if I remember to stop Time Machine and give it a few minutes to wind down before leaving. But if I just close the computer and run out the door, and am away from the network when I wake the computer, I come home to a corrupted backup, which generally cannot be repaired with Disk Utility (once or twice Disk Utility has been able to fix it).

This has forced me to delete my entire backup and start from scratch on several occasions. Is there any way around this problem, other than being vigilant about stopping backups before I leave?

Sadly this is why the Airport Extreme isn't supported for time machine. It doesn't have the smarts to repair the filesystem or handle a disconnect as reliably.  This isn't an issue with time capsules or a server than can clean up when the backup gets interrupted.

You will have to nurse your setup as described, but the lifespan of sparse bundles on airport as USB disk are limited.

Perhaps a firmware update or change to Mac OS X will make things better, but for now it's something to watch.

I have had the same problem now a couple of times on a Time Capsule even after upgrading to Lion 10.7.3... "Disc image xxx.sparsebundle could not mount". I simply switched the TC off and back on again, and next time Time Machine performed a normal backup without reporting any problems...


MacBook Retina Display for coding This is a question that could be better on Stack Overflow or Programmers, but I thought I'd try it here first.
As a programmer, I need lots of screen real-estate for the IDE and files that I'm editing.  If I need to work from a laptop, I currently use an Acer with 18.5" screen and 1920x1200 resolution. It's old, heavy (almost 4 kg) and in need of replacement.
Most of my work is on Windows, but the ability to do Mac and iOS development would be great, so I'm considering a MacBook Pro with VMware or Parallels instead.
The new MacBook Retina sounds great, but I'm worried that the ultra-high DPI won't work well when used with Windows on Parallels, and text will be so small it's unreadable (many Windows apps tend not to scale fonts well, and my eyesight isn't 100% any more).
Has anybody got experience of running an IDE (Delphi, Visual Studio, whatever) on a Retina MacBook Pro under Parallels? Was there a significant increase in the amount of usefully legible information compared to a non-Retina MacBook?
[Edit: I've just been reading some more detailed stuff about how the display can be scaled from AnandTech. The screenshot showing Portal with an illegible console is the thing that concerns me. ]

I am an active software developer and DBA, who looks at the code all day long, and I absolutely LOVE my new retina MacBook Pro with Windows 7 installed under Boot Camp!

A quick sidebar is that I am still confused when I read articles about the lack of NVIDIA driver availability and other issues posted in reviews even on prominent sites like Anandtech. I think they may have created their reviews before Apple started to officially ship these laptops... - i.e. I got my laptop on June 18th, used Boot Camp wizard to create USB with Win 7 Ultimate x64 with SP1 and installed it outright (after resolving a quick NTFS support issue using NTFS-3g under Lion) and have been happy ever since. There is a support folder created by Boot Camp that contains Boot Camp installer, which installs all of the drivers (including the supposedly missing NVIDIA driver) and everything is tip-top.

Now, back to the resolution, and the use of this laptop for development…

Out of the box you will get the maximum resolution (2880x1800) and Windows will apply 150% DPI scaling (actually it is 144 DPI as opposed to 92 DPI by default). And although you will marvel at the display, you will quickly realize that the text is still too small. I got a near perfect 20x20 and I still had to go up to 168% before I felt more or less comfortable. (Note that I tried 200%, 175% and some other values in-between, and although text gets bigger, many UI elements (even Windows / Office 2010) start mis-behaving, look pixelated, etc.) So, again, after some experimenting, I settled at 168%.

Once you settle in at whatever DPI you are most comfortable with, you will start setting up all of your apps – Office, Other browsers, RDP, Management Studio, Visual Studio, etc., and that is where it starts being a little challenging. Not all apps support high DPI (or non-"standard" DPI setting). While IE8 and MS Office 2010 handles everything reasonably well, other apps may require you to adjust compatibility setting and disable the effect of DPI, which makes them work right, but text is super tiny unless you go in and adjust default text size (which is what you will end up doing just about everywhere). So, get ready to Zoom like crazy, although many apps will remember and respect the zoom setting once you dial it in.

Quick note regarding other browsers - as of this commentary, I somewhat refrain from using Opera and Chrome, because I could not find a right Zoom combination that worked well for web page UI elements. Sure – the text is bigger – but layout breaks and things look weird enough for me to go to another browser. So far, I am happy with IE8, Firefox 14, even Safari, but not with Chrome or Opera.

Another side note is that unless you have other super hi-rez monitors, moving the application form MBP screen to a monitor with less than 25XX resolution will present a challenge (unless aforementioned compatibility setting is set, and even then you will need to reduce text / zoom out.) This is because even a "typical" hi-rez 1080p monitor (i.e. 1920 x 1080) will display your app like 680 x 480 when you move it from MBP display - not physically, but perceptually - blame your new retina display if you like...

But back to the retina display - the display itself is amazingly sharp and clear, and with a little effort you will get tremendous benefit (especially if you are a coder) as you get smaller, but much, much... much clearer text (so smaller text is no longer a problem), which means you can display a lot more code on the screen and your efficiency will improve significantly!

In closing, once you go retina, you cannot go back - a few hours working with it and you will not be able to use a typical laptop (or low-rez display), because everything will look pixelated and fuzzy.

That's all I have to say - thanks for reading.

Here's a video of someone running Visual Studio 2012 on Windows 8 via Parallels on the Retina MacBook Pro:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRwpCn2ennE


How can I restrict access to certain Preference Panes? Several of the preference panes on my Mac at work have are translucent and when I hover over them I get the following message:

  Your system administrator has not given you access to this preference pane.

How is this configured? I'd like to do the same for my machine at home that my niece and nephew use.

Clarification: On my Mac at work: National IT for my organization created the original image (I'm with local IT). I'm guessing when they created the image they used some admin configuration tool (similar to Group Policy on windows?).

Parental controls looks like a good answer for my needs.

However, what my work has used for restricting accounts is MCX policies applied through Workgroup Manager.

There are a couple of really easy ways of having somehow restricted accounts, one with non-administrator privileges or one which has Parental Controls.

The first one is a regular account without the privileges of making changes on a system level, while the parented controlled accounts can be configured to have limited access to specific Applications, Resources and can even limit the hours of use.

To set a non-administrator account just don't check the Allow user to administer this computer under System Preferences / Users & Groups isit up is quite straightforward.

Setting a parental controled account is quite straightfoward too. To do so, just go to System Preferences / Parental Controls and follow the instructions.

Bear in mind that you'll need and administrator account to set up and manage either of these.


Can Apple mail only sync the last month of a Exchange email? I just synced my Mountain Lion Mail app with my Exchange work email account in order to have it locally on my machine (rather than continuously going through the web interface). However, now Mail fetches all the mails since the very beginning (which are a couple of years).

Is there a way (like on iOS devices) to tell Mail to only sync the last month or something configurable amount based on message count, download size or other similar restriction to prevent all messages from being stored locally?

The feature to prevent your Apple Mail from downloading all of your emails has been removed from the application.

2290. How can I prevent Apple Mail from downloading all of my messages? : Frequently asked questions : ... : ITS : University of Sussex

Try going to Mail>MAilbox>Rebuild on each folder.  It will force a resync


easy way to manage VMware ESXi on Mac OS X I'm a VMware guy, running a dozen of ESXi ... and i'm also a mac user and I've had it with launching VMware Fusion to boot my Win7 to work on vSphere client...

Am I missing something? Sys Admins and Solution Architects are using Linux/Mac more and more ... Is there anyway that i can do that without having to rely on rdesktop and other unreliable workarounds?

If you've got access to vCenter, then you can administer your servers via the vCenter Web Access page. Otherwise, if you have any Windows VMs then you could install the vSphere client in there and remote-desktop into it as a standalone application.

vClient Mac APP @ vclient.top is native mac app to manage esx/vcenter


Third monitor on a 2008 iMac I currently have a 20-inch Early 2008 iMac (iMac8,1), with the iMac display and an external LG display. The graphics chip is an ATI Radeon HD 2400, which, as far as I can tell from the specs, only supports two monitors. Short of getting a new computer (which appears as if it would support three monitors), what are my options for getting a third display to work?

You can purchase a USB to DVI adaptor.  There are heaps of them on the market

eg http://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=8863

This will allow you to keep your existing setup and power another monitor from the USB port.

Just make sure that you purchase one that is Mac compatible as a lot of them on th market are not.

You can use thunderbolt to hdmi or thunderbolt to vga cable to connect the other monitor.


How do I set my computer to restart in the last operating system I swear when I first installed windows on a partition of my Mac HD my computer would restart in the last operating system used. By that I mean that if I hit restart whilst in Windows, my computer would restart and boot up Windows and likewise for OS X. Ever since I was messing around with my system preferences and selected a startup disc, I now have to pick weather I want it to always restart in OS X or always in Windows. How do I get it back to the way it was (or was it never that way)? Thanks.

The answer is it was never worked that way. If you want it to work that way, you have to install a boot manager.  The most common free one is call rEFInd. Most people install this software in the OS X partition, but this can lead to problems when you install updates. I installed rEFInd in its own partition to avoid such problems.

I would go with @ryebread's answer and just use either "Startup Disk" on OS X System Preferences or "Boot Camp" menu on Windows Control Panel. An example of this is shown below. Here, Windows is set as startup.

If I want to switch to OS X, then I need to click on the OS X icon to highlight it. This is shown below.

I am now set to boot to OS X. There is no need to do a Restart. I can just close the window.

(Actually in practice, you will probably end up selecting the Restart button.)

Update 1:

If you want to boot from OS X to Windows while leaving OS X as the default, then you would need to enter the bless command from a Terminal application window. Or, you can create a script launched as a Service via the Automator application. An example script is given here.

Update 2:

After some testing, I found if no system is highlighted in the Startup Disk window, then the computer always boots to OS X. I am not sure what your computer was doing originally. I think what you want is for the computer to always boot to the last operating system  that ran. If this is true, then rEFInd is probably the best way to go. On my computer, rEFInd only occupies 6 MB of space. If you need help installing, let me know.

BTW, I removed the highlighting by blessing a flash drive.

Firstly, if you hold down the Option key just after the boot chime, you can get to a "boot menu" where you can select the drive that you want to boot from.  It will look something like this:

Secondly, selecting your boot drive in System Preferences does exactly what you are describing.  You select Windows, and then it boots to Windows.  When you restart, you come back to Windows.  When you switch to boot from OS X in the boot selector from within Windows, then you will boot into OS X until told to boot to Windows.

AFAIK, if you switch the boot drive from the Option boot menu, that is a temporary change, and the next reboot will be whatever is selected in System Preferences.  I don't have a dual-boot machine here to test that theory, unfortunately.  However, since that boot menu can be used to boot onto optical media as well, it would make sense that it is a temporary change.


How to disable command-Q for Quit? Is there any way to disable command+Q for quitting apps?

I tried adding this menuitem to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" preference pane (as suggested here), and remapping it to command+option+Q (slightly harder to hit), and the menu item changed to show this, but command+Q still causes the app to quit.

I'm using OS X 10.7, but I'd happily upgrade to 10.8 if it fixed this.

The app I really want this for is Firefox, but if there was a solution that disabled command+Q for every app, that would be fine, too.

Go to System Preferences, then Keyboard. Select Shortcuts. On the left pane, find Accessibility. Now on the right pane enable Invert colors and then click on the shortcut box to reassign the shortcut to Cmd+Q.

That's it. Now when you press Cmd+Q the colors of the screen will be inverted. Press it again to go back to normal colors. No more accidentally quitting applications (like closing over two hundred tabs on Firefox when trying to use Cmd+a or three dozen pdfs on Preview when trying to use Cmd+tab; last two things I did, never again.)

P.S. Whoever thought it was a good idea to use Cmd+Q to quit applications should go back to usability school.

There's also a nice plugin that you can use called Always Ask, which forces a prompt dialog before leaving Firefox.

As you have seen, just setting a new keyboard shortcut in the System Prefs doesn't always work.  It will change the shortcut shown in the menu but the application could still be listening for the Commmand+Q keypress.  I've seen a few apps that do this.  Even some will listen to keypresses that are not listed as shortcuts in the menu (Photoshop for example).

A 3rd party option is to use something like ControllerMate.  It has the ability to remap any controller input (keyboard, mouse, trackpad, joystick, etc) and change what it does.  I use it to do many remaps and run macro scripts.  They can be set on a per-application basis or a global system-wide state.

Using ControllerMate, you could map Command+Q to do nothing then have Command+Option+Q call the Quit menu entry.  Or you could get fancy and have Command+Q do nothing except if you press Command+Q again within 1/2 of a second then it would call the Quit menu.

ControllerMate is an amazing app.  I've done many customizations like a "Boss/Spouse Mode" which is a single keypress that does the following

mutes the computer audio
pauses iTunes if it is playing
quits QuickTime and/or VLC if it is running
minimizes current Firefox windows and opens a new window to Google.com

Another suggestion (along with Henry's suggestion) is to use a session manager so if Firefox is quit by accident, you can restore easily.  The built-in session manager is OK but you should also look at Tab Mix Plus.  Not only does it give you amazing options for managing your tabs but its session manager is also great.  I have many sessions saved and can pull them up quickly anytime in new windows.


What's the best server/client combo to remote into your Mac (10.6) from a windows machine? I have a Mac OS X 10.6 computer at home, which I like to remote into from my work laptop from time to time. I've tried using RealVNC and UltraVNC with the built-in VNC client, but I can't get them to accept the adaptive compression, so I can either do

8-bit color that is low bandwidth
Full color that takes up too much bandwidth for my home's upload speed

Is there a VNC client that supports the adaptive compression on the built-in vnc server for Mac OS X? Some other things I have tried are

Using custom VNC server (Vine Server) to get higher color with acceptable bandwith
Logmein.com - which seems to have it's own adaptive compression, but is only free for use w/one computer

You could try TeamViewer.

Like Logmein.com, it is a full software and one based one Mac OS X vnc.

By the way, it also works from an iPad or an iPhone or from a web browser under Windows.

Here is the software we use in our company (Windows): Radmin
Highly recommend. Not sure they have MAC version but my colleagues say they used it on MAC.


MacBook Pro with Retina display - three external displays under Boot Camp Is it possible to drive three external displays (3x 22" inch monitors, each at 1680 x 1050) on my MacBook Pro with Retina display under BootCamp / Windows?

A couple of guys have shown that it works under OS X. Can this work under Windows as well?

I see no reason why you could not plug three external monitors into a Mac, whether it's running OS X, or Windows under bootcamp.

There are two Thunderbolt connectors and one HDMI connector, and they all work as video outputs - the driver should be able to handle a monitor plugged into each of these.

As the comment on the question mentions, Windows does not know how to handle retina displays all that well - but for external (non-retina) monitors it should not have any issues.

Well, it depends on which rMBP you have. Depending on the year and if you do or do not have the dedicated GPU, you may or may not be able to (easily) drive 3 external monitors.

As far as I know, none of the base model 15" rMBP (the ones without the dedicated GPU) can drive three external displays WHILE IN OS X.

Here's where this is interesting to me. 3 external monitors works PERFECTLY in Windows 10 through Bootcamp. Which means that the lack of support for 3 displays is purely software limitations and nothing to do with hardware capability. I've no idea why there would be a limitation in OS X since I feel it runs lighter than Windows 10 in the first place, but for some reason, without some sort of adapter (or an Apple TV, but who really would enjoy using a wireless Apple TV-connected display as a computer monitor?) it is impossible to run 3 external displays on a 15" rMBP unless it is equipped with the dedicated GPU.


Siri: play all songs NOT shuffled Does anyone know a way to ask Siri on iPhone or iPad to play an artist, but have the songs go in album order instead of shuffled?

I have tried asking "don't shuffle" and "play X in order" and also "play albums by X"...

By default it will shuffle it, you may have better luck asking Siri to play a playlist instead.


Change System password When I set up my new macbook pro, I chose to use my apple store username / password. However, the password is a pretty long one, and it's annoying to have to type it in every time I need to change a program, run something as root, etc.

How can I set a simpler "local" password to use without resetting my apple ID?

It depends on how you setup your computer, if you set your computer to use your iCloud password to login then you'll need to unlike this. The best way to check is to follow the process for resetting the password as if your computer was using the traditional 'local' login method...

Click the Apple logo in the top left of the screen.
Click System Preferences
Select Users & Groups
Select the User account (if there is more than one) from the left of the screen.
Click the Change Password button.

At this point it should indicate you are using iCloud or not, if not then simply enter your existing password and carefully pick a new one.

Otherwise, it should give you an option to disassociate and use local login instead, and you'll be able to create a new local password.


Can't establish a ssh connection to my Mac OSX Yosemite I'm having a

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

error when trying to ssh into my mac, from a linux VM

if I try with the verbose option I get this

ssh mac-user@192.168.1.11 -v
OpenSSH_6.6.1, OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to 192.168.1.11 [192.168.1.11] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/linux-user/.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/linux-user/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/linux-user/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/linux-user/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/linux-user/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/linux-user/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/linux-user/.ssh/id_ed25519 type -1
debug1: identity file /home/linux-user/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert type -1
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu-2ubuntu2

I don't know what could be wrong, firewall options are ok.

Searching the web I found a temporary solution, disabling the "remote session" option and then using this command:

sudo $(which sshd) -Dd

Don't think its a propper answer.

This problem started when updating to Yosemite OSX.

Apreciate the help.

config.vm.boot_timeout - The time in seconds that Vagrant will wait for the machine to boot and be accessible. By default this is 300 seconds. (got this from) ServerFaqs

I'd increase this until you are able to vagrant ssh in.

I had the same problem. I deleted everything from SystemPrefereces->Security->Firewall and removed all services from SystemPreferences->Shared. Then I enabled remote login again. That fixed the problem in my case.


How do you activate an iPhone with broken home button iOS 10 My iPhone 5s had recently been cleaned of all files and data, including iCloud so I need to activate it. It prompts me to press the home button to activate but the home button on my iPhone doesn't work. Is there a way I can activate this phone without pressing the home button?

You need to activate the accessibility function, Voice Over, on your phone.

Connect your iPhone, to a computer with iTunes installed.
In iTunes, select your device.
From the Summary pane, click Configure
Accessibility in the Options section at the bottom.
Select the Voice Over and click OK.
Double tap on the Press home to
    open text.

Once you’re pass the activation, you can disable Voice Over. More details on the fix.

Yes, Just power cycle your iPhone to get a different screen asking for language selection.


Are there common causes of a text message sound in the night, but no text message? My iPhone 3GS has made the text message sound twice at like 3:30 am but when I look at it there is no text.

This is hard to explain to my husband, it's making us both paranoid! Can I look somewhere to figure out what's happening?

It sounds like you have another app that may be giving you untimely notifications. You can check by opening Settings.app > Notifications. Scroll through that list and tap on each application that you don't want sound notifications on. Scroll down slightly and turn Sounds off.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no (easy) way to look up notifications logs. I say easy, because notifications logs should be accessible with a jailbreak, however, as of writing, there is no jailbreak available for iOS 6 - if you have that installed.

As a last resort, if you are on iOS 6, you can also schedule Do-Not-Disturb times, from when you go to bed to when you get up. One thing you could do to verify that it is indeed the text tone, is change the text tone to something different. If the different sound goes off at night again (or anytime without a text message actually appearing to come in), that would narrow it down to it indeed being a pseudo-text-notification. At that point, Do-Not-Disturb, would seem like a reasonable "hack".

Perhaps there is a notification for when the battery is fully charged?
I have that on my non-iPhone, and it typically goes off in the middle of the night if I forget to set it to silent-mode.


Maximize window shortcut What is the keyboard shortcut to maximize a window on OSX? I'd like to know the shortcut that is equivalent to double clicking on the window title. I do not want to make the window full screen.

One of the default settings in System Preferences > Dock is [√] Double-click a window's title bar to zoom; however by default, Finder does not have a keyboard shortcut to zoom a window.

One may add a keyboard shortcut for the Finder > Window > Zoom command in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts, as shown in the image below.

Click the [+] and fill in the sheet, then click the Add button:

If I understand your question correctly then On your Mac, do any of the following in a window:

Maximize a window: Press and hold the Option key while you click the green maximize button  in the top-left corner of an app window. To return to the previous window size, Option-click the button again.

You can also double-click an app’s title bar to maximize the window (as long as the option to do so is set to “zoom” in Dock preferences).

Minimize a window: Click the yellow minimize button   in the top-left corner of the window, or press Command-M.

You can set an option in Dock preferences to have a window minimize when you double-click its title bar.

Most windows can be manually resized. Drag the window’s edge (top, bottom, or sides) or double-click an edge to expand that side of the window.


Firefox's Pinned Tabs in Safari Is there a way to mimic Firefox's Pinned Tabs in Safari on Yosemite?

I love the Pinned tabs in Firefox because they allow me to easily keep a few key tabs (webmails, calendar, todo list) open without them taking up too much space. But I love Safari because it syncs with all my other devices.

I tried to search for extensions that do this, but was unable to find any.

Note: Pinned Tabs (or App Tabs) offer several functionalities:

they allow you to select tabs that should always be loaded when Firefox starts
these tabs are minimally represented in the tab bar
these tabs stick to the domain, e.g. eternal links are opened in new tabs by default
these tabs are difficult to close (e.g. [cmd]+W is ignored)

See this screenshot (gmail and twitter are pinned), or the documentation

The only way you can really emulate this is if you create a Safari Extension for each website which you can put whatever picture you want for the buttons background. Don't think that's something really fluid in terms of work flow and realistic fixes, but trying to alter hard coded UI elements isn't easy to do for every day users.

Note: Creating an extension will require a developer certificate, but this is the closest option to your desired result https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/documentation/Tools/Conceptual/SafariExtensionGuide/UsingExtensionBuilder/UsingExtensionBuilder.html

Safari open file as shown and scroll down to import from > Firefox and you should be good to go.


Why does iPhone Voice Control turn on when I wear headphones while working out? I listen to music on my iPhone 4 while working out on stair master. After about an hour, voice control turns on by itself. I turn it off but it comes back on. Then the iPod is paused then skips couple songs. It doesn't stop.  I think it has to do with headphones or something. Maybe sweat getting into headphones?  This happens almost every time I work out.

Apparently this is common issue.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2512674?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/message/9714491#9714491

It certainly sounds like the headphones are causing this. It's likely that moisture is eventually getting into the in-line switch/microphone module which is bridging the switch terminals and sending spurious signals to the phone.

However, I'd try the following:

Check for liquid damage inside the headphone socket: Hold your phone up to the light so that you can see down inside of the headphone port. There's a small indicator at the bottom of the port which will have turned a red/pink colour if liquid has come into contact with it. If positive, this could indicate that the phone's headphone socket may (also) be at fault.
Obtain another pair of the same Apple headphones and see if the issue occurs again.

this has happened to me, its is the headphone jack, and it will need to be replacd, its not too expensive. about £30 uk money.


Change bitrate from the default 128kbps for syncing songs to iPhone I have a rather large (>25GB) music collection, and my iPhone is currently almost full.

I just saw this option in iTunes:

This would probably be very useful to me, but I'm concerned about sound quality at such a low bitrate. Is it possible to change it to at least 160kbps from the default 128kbps?

Also, if I check the box, will the conversion occur on the fly (i.e., seamlessly while copying songs to the iPhone), or will iTunes basically create copies of all my songs in 128kbps AAC (thus causing to take up a lot of space on my Mac)?

As far as I know iTunes does not offer any other options for bit-rate conversion. This conversion does indeed happen on-the-fly, as you sync your iPhone with iTunes, which makes the syncing take longer but saves space, so you have not to worry for duplicates on your mac.

If space is an issue and you have some spare $25 I also recommend you give a look to iTunes Match: it will allow you to store your music on the Cloud, so you can download the songs as you listen to them thus you have not your huge iTunes library sitting on your iPhone but it still is available when you need it.

There is a severe chance that your headphones won't be capable of producing sound so well that bit rate will make a noticeable difference


macOS Big Sur Fails on Internet Recovery Mode: "Installation could not be completed." I have a 13 inch MacBook Pro Mid 2014. I have been struggling with installation process since last night. At first, I started my Mac by pressing Option + Command + R and Power button so that I opened it with internet recovery mode. After that, I cleared my disk space and tried to install macOS Big Sur. But just before selecting my disk where I am going to install, it shows an error which says "Installation could not be completed." I tried to install the os which comes with Mid-2014 and tried to update it but it didn't work either.
When I look at logs with Command + L, it says OSISPredicateUpdateProduct: Incompatible Apps List: No product found

mine is 2017 macbook pro no touchbar with updated macos bigsur i formatted the whole ssd to make sure my data is gone because i am selling my mac due to this pandemic i lost my job =# now im stuck at internet recovery and cannot usb flash... when pressed opt key while booting doesnt work... pressing opt+cmd+R shows big sur update but and it can go to accept terms and conditions select HD then it keeps failing in remaining 13mins left error 08 anyone encountering this softbrick? is the server still own by intel? cos apple is dumping them as they switch to arm our intel mac is also dumped wtf?


WindowServer high CPU on Yosemite This is a follow up to So my Yosemite install is slow - what to do?

Since installing Yosemite a week or so ago my machine is very sluggish. I am a web developer so I change windows/apps a lot. Changing apps makes my machine hang for 2 or more seconds.

After observing the Activity Monitor I can see that WindowServer is taking up a lot of CPU when I move windows and also when I am just using one app.  I have tried closing apps to determine which, if any, is causing the issue but haven't come up with anything useful yet.

Here is an example.

Even right now as I type is flips between 10% and 20% usage. I am only typing!

How can I fix this?

I had a similar issue with high cpu usage in WindowServer which I managed to get back to something more normal by removing any items in my menu bar that were making high frequency drawing updates.

In my case it was the Network Monitor from Little Snitch that seemed to be the biggest culprit.

CrashPlan Tray is definitely one culprit for high CPU usage. It helps to disable animations in the tray preferences.

But it still did not solve the problem for me. The only thing that solves it for perhaps a week seems to be a full reboot. After that the machine simply becomes sluggish, and needs to be rebooted. Back to Windows95 yay! Apple should do something about this – but no, the problem seems to have been around forever. At least they should provide instructions/application to debug this and find the external culprit, if it is an external application. But I'm increasingly beginning to think it is is mainly WindowServer getting tangled up with itself, exacerbated by other applications' task bar updates etc.


Master volume control is grayed out on my Mac 10.6 (MacBook Pro Late 2009) master volume control for both Line-In built and for external USB Microphone is disabled (grayed out)

Nobody really wanted to help what is the reason and how to bring back such behaviour. Googling didnt provide answer.

What I want is to have master volume slider active at least in Blue Yeti microphone.
Any help?

I ran into issues where my audio controls were disabled similar to what you describe. I can't be sure it's the same issue, but in my case, killing the Core Audio process fixed it.

Open up Terminal and enter this command:

sudo kill -9 `ps ax | grep 'coreaudio[a-z]' | awk '{print $1}'`

You'll be prompted to enter your password, but that should find and kill the proper process, which will then auto-restart. Your volume control should come back to normal within a few seconds if this is indeed the problem.

Volume sliders
If software volume control is available for your device, the Volume sliders are blue to indicate they are active. Drag the sliders to set the volume for each channel.


My signed .pkg file is not accepted I'm struggling with signing my installer to keep Gatekeeper happy.

When building i sign the .pkg:

productsign --sign "3rd Party Mac Developer Installer: GNXXXXXXXXXX (XXXXXXXXXXX)" UnsignedJaXXXXXXXXXX0.5.pkg JaXXXXXXXXXXt0.5.pkg

using this certificate:

When checking with pkgutil I can see that the file is signed:

However still Gatekeeper is not happy.

spctl gives this result:

What am I missing?

Update

spctl with verbose:

You're using a signing identity that can only be used for Mac App Store distribution. You cannot sign with that identity and test it on your own Mac before submitting it to the Mac App Store - it won't pass GateKeeper validation.

If you want to create an installer for distribution outside the Mac App Store, you'll need to use a signing identity prefixed "Developer ID Installer".

As jksoegaard said, you need to use a signing key prefixed with Developer ID Installer.

If you're using an organizational apple developer account, you may need your account owner to create it. (Current docs suggest any admin can, but I have not found that to be the case)

As of today, this option is titled "Developer ID Application" and is the last one you can select.


Umlauts and Copy and paste I have a problem with copy and paste of characters like "ü". When I copy and paste the name "Gereon Müller" from this book http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/18 (choose the download tab) I get the ü decomposed into two characters on a Mac. This does not happen under Windows and Linux (xpdf, acroread, sumatra), but it does happen on a mac with acroread and with skim. Any ideas?

Edit: These are the two characters: ü In the text you can see an ü, but it is actually an u with two dots that are shifted over the u. Look at this: ẗ (as you can see, I composed a t with these two dots). This is not a problem for reading the ü, but if I want to continue to work with this ü I get problems, since LaTeX does not like these characters at all. In emacs I can edit these two characters seperately.

Edit II:

I played with different applications and they behave differently: Word gets one copy and paste right, while emacs gets both wrong.

Word:

Emacs:

Edit III

And this is text edit:

If having such characters in decomposed form (represented by two codepoints, base character plus combining accent mark)  is a problem for further processing you need to do, then you can use an app like Unicode Checker to convert the text to Unicode Normalization Form C.  That will change them into the composed, single-codepoint form.

http://earthlingsoft.net/UnicodeChecker/

"Type German characters - online German keyboard",  type your letter and when finished copy it to the document you need it on (in my case, I copy it to my email, no problem). That online keyboard comes in a lot of languages. Look it up, it's good, it's under German.typeit.org


Add info to Dock/Menubar from Shell in macOSX I'm working on MacOSX environnement, but I would like to tweak it a bit.
I have a few bash scripts I used in Linux to retrieve infos such as IP, average ping and so, that I would like to be displayed in a persistant place. (I.E. the doc, or the menu bar).

I did not found any documentation on this topic, can someone provide a few link or the name of the correct man page to read about that?

thanks

I just found this: https://github.com/stretchr/bitbar.
Works like a charm.

How about a small tool: shellwrangler? - http://shellwrangler.com


Random songs appearing in my iTunes music library after activating iTunes Match After enabling iTunes match, my library is cluttered with hundreds of tracks which I don't own / haven't downloaded. They have the "cloud" icon on them which makes me think they are either from iTunes Match - or maybe Genius.

How can I get rid of these tracks from my library, they are driving me nuts.

P.S. using iTunes 11

Apple says I should turn off iTunes match everywhere and manually clean these tracks from my library and then turn it on again. I'll report back ...

Guess this is due to possbly due to a low quality of your mp3 files. Apple iMatch's algorythim doesn't work well with low quality music (< 128kbps. Try higher. Quality ones, with me it worked well


How do I prevent files from being saved as .webarchive Whenever I want to save files like .csv files that were open in a safari tab, it forces me to either name it as .csv.webarchive or .webarchive. Is there a way to disable this?

Here is another small tip, for downloading files like csv, pdf, mp3 etc, that are opened and viewable in a Safari tab/window and have been accessed directly through their urls (e.g. the url address in safari address bar is something like: www.example.com/mycsv.csv, or www.example.com/mymovie.mp4, and so on...)

Go and click inside the address bar, so it gets active.
Hold the ALT key down, and stroke once the ENTER key.

Safari will reload the current page, and immediately will start downloading the current file.

Just rename the file as .csv  It may leave some residual information you don't need but just delete it...simple.


Can I select a clip in imovie by specifying the start and end time? (rather than dragging mouse) Is there a way in imovie to select a clip by typing in the start and end time (rather than by dragging the mouse).  I would like to make a precise selection from, for example, 0:16 to 18:02.  Is there a way to do that typing in those times.  Seems very difficult to get that precise with the mouse.

There is Handbrake that does exactly that, in fact one can define the start and end point in several ways.
Just a user though.


Trying to recover from very old macOS backups, but not sure I can recall the login/passwords I was using then I realised recently that I'd lost some important very old photos from my laptop. Because I didn't notice, they've been lost from the online backup as well.
I think I have them on on some old physical backup disks, but I see the photos folder are locked, and I can't remember the login/passwords I was using for my machine back in those days.
Is there a way to unlock the files/folders?
Thanks

My old beagle (old but smart !) has a answer : Use a second Apple computer . Start the locked computer in target mode and use it as a external HD. Connect a Apple computer with the locked one (with a FW/USB/TB cable https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlp1443/mac) . The locked Apple will show-up on the desktop as external HD . Enjoy ! (Could not work if the MacOS are from different OS generations)


How do I disable iMessage for a contact who no longer has an iPhone A friend had an iPhone and when I added her contact I set it her number as "iPhone". She's  recently got an Android device but my iPhone keeps trying to iMessage her, needless to say  she's not getting my messages. I can obviously press and hold each message and "send as SMS" but I'd like a more permanent solution.

How can I make my phone always send messages to her by SMS?

To dissable iMessage on your phone (the one who has changed from iPhone to something else):
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts5185

Since it’s not your phone that needs changing, Your friend is the one that needs to take action to Approve the request to de-register their iCloud/AppleID from their phone number - https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage

As long as their SMS number is associated with iMessage via their Apple ID, iMessage delivery will be preferred by iOS when sending. If you must send an SMS without them fixing their account, you can turn off iMessage entirely on your iPhone and then send a SMS via your cellular carrier to that contact before turning on iMessage again if you wish to have that for other conversations.

You might want to try heading over to your iMessage setting (located in Settings > Messages) and toggle the switch to turn iMessage off then back on again. That may possibly reset the affiliated contacts.


Can't connect to internet on Wi-Fi since update to iOS 7.1.1 I recently updated to iOS 7.1.1 on my iPhone 5 and for the first couple of days everything was fine. Now, however, I can't connect to the internet on Wi-Fi.

The Wi-Fi is connected and the signal is there but when I browse on Google Chrome, access the App Store or even try iMessage it's not working.

Is this connected to the latest update? I've reset my network settings but that doesn't work, or switching the Wi-Fi on and off or switching the phone on and off. My 3G works fine.

I had the same EXACT problem when I upgraded my iPhone 4S to iOS 7. I had no wi-fi. I never got it to work, except, if I did the "freezer" trick with my phone, sometimes it would work for a little bit. This makes me believe it has to do with power use and heat.

I kept meaning to take it to the Apple Store to make them do something about it, but never got around to it. Then, when the latest iOS update came out, a couple days later, my phone started working fine again, and it has been ever since.

I think there is definitely something crazy going on with the power saving algorithms Apple uses. Did you get your iPhone 5 when it first came out? My iPhone 4s was one of the first ones. I stink the hardware changes during the production cycle, and sometimes us early adopters get left out when they start tweaking things.


Is it possible to hack facetime call? Me and my girlfriend are using facetime regularly for talking. I'm worried if anyone can hack our Facetime calls and record our videos? Is it possible? How safe is Facetime?

FaceTime calls are encrypted sufficiently for most anyone's needs. FaceTime's encrypted stream acts underneath any other WiFi encryption that might also be present. If you feel that end-to-end data streams encrypted with unique keys for each recipient is safe, then I'd say have fun with FaceTime.

Someone with special skills, tools and time could probably crack it, but you probably don't have a high enough profile to be worth the time/effort.

As far as I have read, you should assume your Facetime traffic is completely unencrypted. There have been assertions by Apple of encryption (the ZDNet article linked above), but they talked about using WPA2. WPA2 has nothing to do with encrypting the voice/video traffic. WPA2 is about making wireless connections to an access point private. Your Facetime traffic is sent to the AP, then to your router, then to your ISP's router then all over the place before it gets to your gf's home network or cellular provider/device. I should note that I have not done a protocol analysis of the Facetime protocol; I'm going by the published statements.

Saying that WPA2 answers the question is like being confident in transporting large sums of money to the bank using an armored truck only between the loading dock and the edge of the parking lot and then putting the money into a Corolla and driving it the rest of the way to its destination.


How to move files to trash from command line? I do a lot of terminal work, and today had the experience of typing

rm fileInQuestion.txt

Before finding out that I did actually need fileInQuestion.txt. If I'd deleted in the GUI then I would have just gotten it out of the Trash. I'd like to know if it's possible to overload 'rm' in the Terminal in such a way that it sends the file/files to the Trash on the way out.

The trash command line tool can be installed via brew install trash.

It allows you to restore trashed files via command line or the Finder.

A simple function could let you trash files by moving them to the user's .Trash folder:

trash() {
   mv $1 ~/.Trash
}


Wrong Root Name Appearing in Terminal | MacOS I just noticed today that a weird name that appeared on my teminal "rrmando2x13g" as shown in the image below. Usually only my computer name (removed in cyan) used to appear.
Does this mean its a malware or someone else has logged in to my computer?

Is there a way to remove this?

Ok So you can give a name to your HostName :
sudo scutil --set Hostname "The name you want"

You will have to give your password for this operation. And it's nor appear when you give it.

The name on the left is the name of your user directory.
You can change the name in the system settings under Accounts & Users
On the right the name is the HostName.
You can change your host name persistently
sudo scutil —set HostName YourHostname


Alt-keys (option-keys) in emacs emulation (jetBrains PyCharm) I suspect this is a general issue with the Mac as opposed to anything specific to the app I'm struggling with now, which happens to be PyCharm from jetBrains.  The reason I suspect this is a general problem is that I've struggled with it before with other apps, namely emacs itself and perhaps some other apps that have emacs keybinding emulation, but not sufficiently often (once a year or so) that I can remember the solution.  What I do remember is that the solution was really obscure and perhaps not something we had to do to the app directly, but to the environment or context.

The problem is that alt keys don't work as expected as modifier keys, but instead input glyphs. For example, we want Alt-D to perform the editor function "Kill-to-end-of-word," but, instead, it inputs ∂; we want Alt-B to perform the editor function "Move-caret-to-previous-word," but, instead, in inputs ∫.  Oddly, Alt-F works as expected to perform "Move-caret-to-next-word" instead of inputting ƒ.

Here are some more details:

Mac OSX yosemite, PyCharm CE 4.5.3, emacs key bindings
(command-, / Preferences; Keymap; Emacs)

I check the key bindings on the right hand side, the spyglass-with-cannonball icon says "Find Actions by Shortcut" on hover, I click that, enter "Alt-B" and it finds "Move Caret to Previous Word." However, when I go back to the editor window and press "Alt-B" I get ∫. Likewise, when I search keymap for Alt-D, I get "Kill to End of Word" (just what I want), but in the editor window, it prints as the curly derivative sign ∂.

You need a replacement layout to allow M- key bindings. This forum post offers a downloadable keylayout file that can be copied to /Library/Keyboard\ Layouts/. I also made a dvorak-shaped map here.

put this in ~/.emacs

(set-keyboard-coding-system nil)

For more help you might find this useful
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MetaKeyProblems#toc15


How to Expose hidden App in Dock as it was in High Sierra? When I put cursor on an app icon on Dock I can do swipe down to Expose opened windows of that app. However since Mojave it is no longer possible to Expose apps which are hidden (with Cmd+H). On High Sierra it didn't matter whether app was hidden or not - Expose has been working.
How can I enable expose on hidden apps in Dock?

I haven't found any other option than this, although I'll be honest with me on macOS 10.16 it doesn't work. But I am sure that it will work with older versions.
Just enter this into the terminal here.
defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -boolean yes && killall Dock

You can give it a try and give me your experience.
You can also undo it again no problem.
 defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -boolean no && killall Dock

Activate Dock Exposé
The option shown in this example is available from Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
After changing the properties of the dock, the dock must be restarted.
If you want to activate the Dock Exposé (standard), you can do this as follows:
defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -bool yes; killall Dock


iPhone 5s goes to airplane mode by itself How does my iPhone 5s get to airplane mode if I do not go into Settings and change it manually to airplane mode?


How to fully disable auto-fill-mode in Aquamacs 3.3? After upgrading Aquamacs to version 3.3, many modes turned on auto-fill-mode. I've followed the answers from questions such as "How can I disable auto-fill mode in emacs?" to disable it, but without complete success. Specifically, I:

set line-wrapping option to "Wrap" (Options→Line Wrapping→Wrap)
turned off "Auto-Detect Line Wrap in Text Files"
set line-wrapping options as default (Options→Line Wrapping→Adopt as Default)
saved options
added lines to .emacs to disable mode globally:

(auto-fill-mode -1)
(remove-hook 'text-mode-hook 'auto-detect-wrap)

added (auto-fill-mode nil) to hooks for specific modes (e.g. html-mode, nxhtml-mode, xhtml-mode).
set text mode hook in customizations.el to disable auto-fill-mode:

'(text-mode-hook
  '((lambda nil (auto-fill-mode nil))
    smart-spacing-mode))

Despite these changes, auto-fill-mode is enabled for some newly opened files (e.g. txt, html, svg) in Aquamacs (the system emacs also enables auto-fill-mode when entering html-mode, but not text-mode). I've grepped for auto-fill in the load path directories that exist but haven't found anything that appears to be enabling it:

~/Library/Application Support/Aquamacs Emacs/
~/Library/Application Support/Emacs/
~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs/
/Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp
/Library/Application Support/Aquamacs Emacs
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp

Where else might auto-fill-mode be enabled? How can I fully disable auto-fill-mode?

Add this to  ~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el:

(remove-hook 'text-mode-hook 'auto-detect-wrap)


Is there an app that lets me use an iPhone as a mouse? I'm looking for an app which enables me to physically maneuver my iPhone on the desk to control my Mac's cursor. (I am not looking for a "remote trackpad" app—there are dozens of those.)

I did a great deal of searching and found nothing. Is this even possible? If so, is there an app in existence which provides this functionality?

To the best of my knowledge, the answer is no.  Of course, without trying out every single mouse app in the App Store, I can't be 100% certain.

I can tell you that I've been a long time user of Mobile Mouse.  They have about the best mouse/remote control app I've found.  They put a lot of effort into trying to get the app to work like a real mouse, and eventually decided that it couldn't be done, at least not with an acceptable level of performance (see FAQ #6).  They decided on the "air mouse" mode instead, and though it doesn't work like a real mouse, it does work very well for what it is.

Best of luck in your search, and of course if you do find such an app, please let us know!

For iPhone there is Rowmote and man more (just search for Mouse) - if you find them in the iPad-AppStore they work.

Also you may take a look at AirDisplay it can make your iPad to a second Monitor but also it gives you the abillity to have a touchscreen Display.

Also you could use a VNC client to Remote Control your Mac/PC.


Mac Mail has very slow to send/receive mail (plus other bugs too) It's been worse since Yosemite.

From the same exchange account (office365) I will send and receive emails instantly on my phone, but they will take several minutes through the app.

Loading existing conversations also often takes a long time.

Conversations often get jumbled up and emails that don't belong will be added to a conversation.

And finally accepting event invitations is a little messed up. I click accept and nothing happens. Then a few minutes later the email will dissapear and the event will appear in the calendar.

I am having these issues on both my laptops.

I've tried offlining and enabling the account. Also tried reindexing.

Does anyone know if these are just Yosemite bugs? Or is there somethinng I can do to fix it?

Thanks!

I also had extremely slow mail using Yosemite until I did this:

From the Mail menu, click Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors

Drafts:

Store draft messages on the server > leave unchecked

Sent:

Store sent messages on the server > leave unchecked

Junk:

Store junk messages on the server > checked
Delete junk messages when > Never

Trash:

Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox > leave unchecked
Store deleted messages on the server > leave unchecked

yep, Yosemite is the biggest release ever. For sure the biggest bug release.
Problem is caused by AirDrop which is so agressive that it causes network collisions all over. To shut it down and boost web & email type this in terminal:

sudo ifconfig awdl0 down


Create a font for use with the Japanese keyboard Is it possible to create a Japanese-style font for use with the Japanese keyboard layout, where I type two letters or a vowel, for example ba, and it converts it into a glyph?

EDIT: Clarification. I want it to act just like the Japanese input source, but use my own glyphs.

EDIT 2: Renaming the question to make it more clear.

The conversion of letters into glyphs is done by the keyboard, not by the font.  So there is no need to create a font, unless you want to generate glyphs not in Unicode.  If you want to type two letters and have it turned into an already existing glyph, there are lots of ways, including:

use the US keyboard and make entries in the replacement grid of system prefs/keyboard/text.
create a custom keyboard layout with the Ukelele or Karabiner apps.
create a custom input method as mentioned in OS X: Create and use your own input source

If you want to duplicate the mechanism of the Japanese keyboard, you will need to examine the workings of system/library/input methods/JapaneseIM.app

If you want to create a font with custom glyphs, there are various apps for that like Fontlab, Fontforge, Robofont, Type, and Glyphs.  Whether or not you can make the Japanese IM use a custom font to generate your custom glyphs you would have to test -- I have not seen this done by anyone before.

Simply add Japanese input (Kotoeri) in Languages preferences and it will do the exact job you need.