merge folder trees on OSX by moving, not copying them It's backup time, and I've been trying to merge two big directory trees on the same (physical) partition, with lots levels of depth. The first one is the base containing all my projects up to 2014, and the other one is only a partial one containing the "changes" that have happened over the last few years (2014-16). New projects, and revisited ones.

In other words, mostly directories or files that have been added/modified exist in this new tree. There are a few files that only by accident ended up having the same name (but in essence are different, and not from the same original) and a few untouched files here and there (mostly files in projects that were revisited, updated, but not in every single aspect).

Now I wish to consolidate all the changes in one big base tree so I can put it in my drawer. In the past I used to work with arRsync but it makes actual copies of the files; and at this point I don't have the space (or time) to spare for all the files to be duplicated. It needs to be done by moving the files.

I've tried rsync, ditto, and the Finder on Sierra (with the alt key pressed), but all of them end up actually duplicating the files! Not sure if I missed something, but since I'm a bit stuck and afraid to mess up I thought of asking here for help!

Anybody who could point me to a safe direction on how to merge these trees without copying but moving the folders/files?

PS. I don't mind if the files with the same name get overwritten unintelligently - as long as no folder gets replaced, and all unique files come together it is good for me. The files that have the same name on both trees, are few and can be easily recovered. However it would be nice if the answer made mention on how to perform intelligently these overwrites for the sake of completeness (and future reference)

Have you tried DiffMerge ? Its an application that is used to merge and compare files and folders.

It updates the content of respective folders by comparing and merging contents graphically.

Product Features

DiffMerge is an application to visually compare and merge files on Windows, OS X and Linux.

Graphically shows the changes between two files. Includes intra-line highlighting and full support for editing.

Graphically shows the changes between 3 files. Allows automatic merging (when safe to do so) and full control over editing the resulting file.

Performs a side-by-side comparison of 2 folders, showing which files are only present in one file or the other, as well as file pairs which are identical or different.

Right-click on any two files in Windows Explorer to diff them immediately.

Rulesets and options provide for customized appearance and behavior.

Identical feature set on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

In Finder if you just drag a duplicate directory into the same directory where it already exists, OSX will ask you if you want to merge them. I'm assuming it will have the expected behavior, but am not very familiar with it.


What leads to Windows thinking I pressed the Insert key on a MacBook Pro? Note: This question is how to send an Insert keypress to Microsoft Windows running directly on Apple hardware. This is not about how to use Insert in OS X or through OS X to Windows running in a VM. See here or here for non-Windows Q&A's.

Somehow in my code editor and command line I keep toggling the Insert key, but I'm not sure how.  I can toggle it by clicking on OVR/INS in the status bar, but what is the key combo that I'm magically fat fingering?

Apparently, for Windows running natively on Apple hardware fn + return creates an Insert key press.

fn + Enter - it's working on Windows 7 installed at MacBook Pro


How to see a friend's reviews on the App Store? Recently my friend saw what I wrote as reviews on every application I downloaded.
Is it possible to see another friend's reviews & ratings? How?

When looking at reviews in iTunes for iOS apps, you can click on the username of the reviewer, which will bring up the reviewer's page and will show all the reviews that the user has left on apps. This does not work with the Mac App Store.

This is a random user's reviews I found by opening the reviews on the F1 2016 app. Clicking the username takes you to this page.

If you want to see all your own reviews instead of another user's, see Is there a single place I can see all the app reviews I've written in the iOS App Store?.

No, it's not possible. You can see only your own reviews.


How do I force iOS Reminders to sync? Reminders on iOS is often out of sync with Reminders on my other devices and iCloud. How do I force it to sync?

Opening up the calendar and allowing it (or forcing) to sync will do the trick, though oftentimes imperfectly.

To force calendar to sync, open it up and the tap "Calendars" at the bottom, then swipe down.

As far as "imperfectly" goes, I mean it doesn't seem to sync all tasks all the time. I haven't figured out what the pattern is there, but it seems that it's usually recurring tasks that have issues.

Reminders have to be synced manually. Go into settings, find reminders and press synch all reminders. Then reminders will synch.


How to record audio from an application/audio device? My nephew is gonna be on the radio tonight. I'd like to record the stream either from iTunes or from my web browser.

What are my options to accomplish that?

VLC has an option for listening to network streams, so if VLC is compatible with the stream that you want to listen to it also offers an option for saving that stream to your HD. In the dialog box that lets you enter the stream URL there is a drop down menu by the OPEN button that lets you save the stream.

Of course this does depend on if VLC will open the specific stream you want it to. Many streaming services use special players and DRM to prevent such things. Failing the VLC method Tetsujin has an excellent recommendation in Audio Hijack as it doesn't care about any of that and just records all the audio passing through your Mac.

I'm not aware of any recording feature in iTunes for Internet radios. Check if the specific radio station has a webpage/webstream and you might be able to record that via your standard audio recorder in the OS of your choice.
If you have access to an iOS device, the app Audials has a recording option and it's free of charge.


How do I create a custom ringtone for my iPhone? The iPhone has a very limited selection of default ringtones.

How do I create a new ringtone for my iPhone?

If the song/sound you want to use isn't already in your iTunes library, add it to your iTunes library first.
If you want to use just a part of the song/sound, right click it, select "Get Info", then "Options" tab, and enter a start and stop time there. Remember, ringtones can't be over 40 seconds!
On the File menu, select "Convert" > "Create AAC Version". If you don't have this option, go to Edit, Preferences, General tab, and click the Import Settings button. Make sure the import setting is set to "iTunes Plus" (AAC).
This will create a new file in your iTunes library. Delete it from your iTunes library now, but be sure to check "keep file" in the delete dialog so the file itself isn't removed, just the library entry.
Navigate to where the file was created on disk, somewhere like music\iTunes\iTunes Music\{artist}\{album}
Rename the file from .m4a to .m4r
Drag and drop this .m4r file into the Ringtones folder of your iTunes (or, just double-click it and iTunes will handle it automatically).
Sync your iPhone. Make sure that "Sync Ringtones" is selected in the phone sync options (mine was off by default).

After syncing, you can select your new ringtone in Settings, Sounds at the Custom section at the top.

I've used this method before, and I find it very reliable. I didn't create it though, and I don't want to take credit for it (plus I don't have the required pictures to match) so here is a very useful link that you can use to learn how to make your very own ringtones, using iTunes!


Get per process user and system CPU time on OSX via command line? I am familiar with pidstat command that gives separate user and system CPU per process on Linux:

$ sudo pidstat -p 3162
Linux 4.18.0-13-generic (ubi)   26.12.2018  _x86_64_    (1 CPU)

11:26:13      UID       PID    %usr %system  %guest   %wait    %CPU   CPU  Command
11:26:13     1000      3162    0.24    0.04    0.00    0.12    0.28     0  emacs

How can I accomplish the same on Mac OSX?

top on OSX gives these values but only on the machine level and not per process. For processes, it seems to give only total CPU used

Load Avg: 3.26, 3.02, 3.01  CPU usage: 3.13% user, 5.69% sys, 91.16% idle  SharedLibs: 169M resident, 44M data, 11M

PID    COMMAND      %CPU TIME     #TH   #WQ  #PORT MEM    PURG   CMPRS  PGRP  PPID  STATE    BOOSTS
97229  powerlogd    0.0  00:00.45 2     1    51    1160K  16K    1744K  97229 1     sleeping *1[1]

Per process, it shows only the total cpu percentage and not the user and system split.
How do I get both user and system time?

Not sure the information you are looking for is accessible so easily. You could try ps

$ ps -p 407 -o pid,time,utime,etime,comm
  PID      TIME     UTIME     ELAPSED COMM
  407   2:08.23   1:46.36 11-17:10:27 /Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Aquamacs

and calculate the system time (TIME - UTIME) and the percentages. This is just the total since the process started though, not an ongoing sampling.

You were close with Top command,

now try Top -A

and it will show you this per Process (PID)

or try this top -F -R -o cpu

All the possible Top command options

While Top is running press o (and/or Capital O) then use any of the listed options with it to modify what and how is it displayed in real time.


iPhone 3Gs turns on and off itself when being charged My iPhone 3Gs turns off and on itself, again and again when I charge it, then it shows the battery sign but does not start. It all started happening after I updated my iOS. What should I do? How should I make sure that my data on my iPhone is not erased?

after you updated did you restore from a backup or did you set it up as a new iPhone?  To be honest it sounds like your iPhone may have water/physical damage.

Change your battery this method will work


How do I choose the best color profile for a LG external monitor? I recently bought a LG monitor 22MP55, to use at home as a second monitor with my MacBook Pro.

But the color is a little weird! Slightly yellowish.

I tried using it with a Windows 7 PC with the same website, and the colors displayed with the PC windows were more accurate and better.

Why is the display color better with a Windows PC? How can I get a better colour profile on my MacBook Pro?

What you want to do is adjust the color profile on your Macbook Pro to take advantage of the LG 22MP55. So you would go to System Preferences -> Displays and then choose Color and play around with the selected Display profile: to find one that suits your needs best.

Or you can take it a step further by calibrating your own profile. Which can be tricky, but does work if you spend the time and effort.  In that same preference area choose Calibrate… to begin the process of adjusting your screen settings to best suit your needs.

But past any of that, you might find it worth it to invest in a calibration device such as a Spyder calibrator. I use the Spyder3EXPRESS and it works great. The newest version is the Spyder4EXPRESS which should be just as good if not better. It costs anywhere from $60 to $99 and is well worth the investment. The color on your display will be perfectly calibrated with little hassle or headache.

If your monitor's reader profile is on, please switch that off. It will make a difference.


SSH connection hangs out at SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT recieved I tried to connect to a server with ssh, but it failed. I tried UseDNS no, update OpenSSH with MacPorts. But it didn't work.

Using user@ip -v I get the following output

OpenSSH_5.9p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8r 8 Feb 2011
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to 50.63.25.99 [50.63.25.99] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /Users/can/.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug1: identity file /Users/can/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /Users/can/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /Users/can/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_4.3
debug1: match: OpenSSH_4.3 pat OpenSSH_4*
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.9
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
debug1: Server host key: RSA 46:ef:da:91:a3:6d:60:54:ed:cf:d2:87:b2:85:b4:1d
debug1: Host '50.63.25.99' is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /Users/can/.ssh/known_hosts:1
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: Roaming not allowed by server
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received

My MAC OS version is 10.8.2.

Does anyone have a idea ?

Thanks.

From the log trace and from your screenshot one can see that ssh-agent is not running.  That is what is causing your ssh session to hang and not respond.

There might be multiple reasons for your ssh-agent not running, including misconfiguration or conflict between different versions of ssh binaries installed (Apple original one, macports or brew installed).  The best and easier, unless you're sure what you're doing and you have a reason to do it, is to stick with Apple's original.

Try to revert to a backup installation or re-install OSX properly.

This other question on ServerFault (and my answer) may help you further.

I think libssh2 messes up OSX default ssh install.
Try:

brew uninstall --force libssh2


"File Open" dialog is missing sidebar items I'm having the strangest issue since updating to OS X El Capitan. My "Open File" dialogs show the sidebar but all my main (and useful) locations are missing. Take a look at this screenshot. This screenshot shows Keychain Access but this happens in Safari when I'm trying to attach a file to Gmail for example, or uploading an image to Facebook.

What I would like is for the sidebar to show my home directories, such as Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc.

Help?

Go to your user library in Finder. Hold down ⌥ while opening the Go menu and click Library.
Navigate to the Preferences folder.
Remove any files that are or contain com.apple.finder.plist. (The removal of those files will very likely reset your Favourites list in Finder.)
Restart or log out and log back in again then empty the trash and try again.

Restarting might not be necessary. As madpoet says:

  You can also relaunch Finder if you don't want to reboot or log out. Right click on Finder icon while you're pressing ⌥ and you'll see the Relaunch option there.

Alternatively, you can use this Bash oneliner by Christophe Marois:

cd ~/Library/Preferences && sudo find com.apple.finder.plist* -exec rm {} \; && killall Finder

Today I received a reply to this very bug report I posted in nov, 2016. It's resolved in 10.13 GM, according to it.


In Sierra, did Apple remove the ability to play HLS streams in Quicktime Player? For years, I've been able to use Quicktime to play live HLS video streams such as http://hls.twit.tv/flosoft/mp4:twitStream_720/playlist.m3u8. I open Quicktime, go to File -> Open Location, and paste the URL.

After upgrading to Sierra, streams such as the above example no longer play.

Did Apple remove this feature in Sierra, or is there something else I'm doing wrong? Are there any types of live streams that Quicktime still natively supports? Is this just a bug that's likely to get fixed? I can't find actual documentation on this anywhere.

I have macOS Sierra 10.12 Beta (16A313a) and it seems, that Apple has fixed the issue.

I can't find release notes or something like this to point on exact QuickTime version, where this was fixed.

I didn't try QuickTime, but the URL you provided works fine with VLC:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
After installation, choose
File -> Open Network
paste in your URL.


Thin green lines on boot, then screen goes grey (late 2011 MBP – 8,2)? Last night I was using my late 2011 MBP (higher res screen, dual Intel/AMD graphics), and the screen suddenly went black. I left it go for a minute - no change. I open and closed the lid – it suspended just fine, but opening the lid back up gave me nothing. So, I killed the power.

Turning it back on, the screen now had thin green lines overlayed over the apple logo boot screen. This stays for a moment – until the loading scroll bar reaches about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way across – and then the screen goes grey.

The same thing happens if I try to launch recovery, internet recovery, or diagnostics whatever. BIOS shows ok (except the overlayed green lines), and then a grey screen. If I hold option, it will show me disk selection (I triple boot OS X/Linux/Windows). But in all cases, the screen goes grey when I try to select something.

The only thing I was able to get to run was internet based diagnostics. I ran extended tests, and no problems were detected (yeah, right).

I've also tried resetting NVRAM, but it doesn't seem to work properly. Usually it boots, goes bong, reboots, and then loads. Instead, it booted, went bong, and then the screen went grey. It never restarted itself.

At the moment I am pretty sure it's either an issue with the the display cable if I'm lucky, or the dedicated graphics adapter or the motherboard (Intel graphics are on-die on the processor) if I'm not.

I have NOT tried hooking it up via dongle to an external display to see if the issue exists there as well, I'll try that this evening.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? Any other possibilities I could look into? I'm assuming that a repair at the Apple Store will be prohibitively expensive.

You may be suffering from a known graphics card issue. The good news, if you are, is that Apple will cover it via a repair extension program:

Apple has determined that a small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts. These MacBook Pro systems were sold between February 2011 and December 2013.
Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will repair affected MacBook Pro systems, free of charge.


How much storage do photos take up? I am considering asking my parents for an iPhone 7 or 8 for Christmas, but I can't decide between which.

Straight Talk offers the iPhone 7 with 32 GB and the iPhone 8 with 64 GB.  I'm not planning on downloading any apps on my phone.  How much storage does each photo (all options, resolution, live or not, etc.) use?

The size of the photos will depend on the camera and the size of the images. I have photos on my Mac that run from a few hundred kB to around 4 MB. My backup folder for my Photos has more than 2000 photos and takes up 2.5 GB but I have no movies. I would check the difference in the size of the cameras in the 2 phones. They are probably the same but I don't recall. A 12 MP camera will take images that require more size than a 5 MP camera.

That being said, while 32 GB is probably fine for you, I would opt for the 64 GB option. You never know what your interests will be in the future, and you can't increase the size of your memory on an iPhone. You may decide you like to make movies with your iPhone which takes up much more space (think 30 images per sec for a 10-sec movie) or you decide you want to edit your photos or movies which could mean downloading apps. The 64 GB option allows your iPhone content to grow in more areas. This is just my opinion.

I'd recommend 64 GB over 32 GB in 2019, but a subscription to iCloud Photo Library will make either manageable.

At that point, you can turn on the option to "Optimize iPhone Storage".

  With Optimize Storage, smaller, space-saving photos and videos are kept on your device while all of your original, full-resolution versions are stored in iCloud. And as long as you have enough space in iCloud, you can store as many photos and videos as you want.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205703

With iCloud Photos Library you can have more photos in your Photos Library than your phone itself can hold.


Can't boot Windows 7 USB Install on iMac 8,5 I would like to install Windows 7 with Boot Camp on my 20 Inch iMac 8,5 from late 2008. My Superdrive seems to have failed, inserting a DVD or CD just results in it spinning a bunch clunking about and spitting it out. So I need to use the USB method to install.

I have tried the following methods of creating a bootable USB to various USB devices in s 4GB & 8GB and had zero success in booting them:

Boot Camp USB Creator directly from Boot Camp (I edited the .plist to allow this)
Unebootin (Linux distros won't boot either)
Windows USB Maker from a Parallels install of Windows 7 (the same ISO)
Terminal "sudo dd..."
Disk Utility converting the ISO to an IMG and successfully restoring it to the usb partition
WinToBoot and various other Windows applications to wipe and write the iso via Parallels Windows installation
rEFIT both directly on my mac and as a bootable usb, the bootable usb is recognized and sees the Windows usb but when launched it simply says no bootable device

I have also tried to do a simple linux install usb with Unebootin with no success in booting. I have created a bootable Mac OS install usb using Disk Utility which is recognized when holding Option.

I am starting to wonder if it is my computer or EFI firmware? All the USB ports work fine with other peripherals and recognize the usb devices when Mac OS or parallels is open.

As of yesterday I am running Mountain Lion (I'd hoped perhaps updating would make something work) made no changes.

I think the problem is the way the computer is locked, if your computer has a Super Drive, your Mac is automatically configured/locked to boot from that drive and ignore the USB.

Their is no amount of reconfiguration or software tricks that would change that, what you can do is take out the Super Drive, or try cleaning it with a CD cleaner - the one with the brush.


How to perform hard / cold reboot of iPhone or iPad? I understand that when I press and release the power button on the top of my iPhone or iPad, it stays on but turns off the screen.

Whereas if I press and hold the power button, a "slide to turn off" control appears on the screen.

Sliding this, as I was told, does turn the unit off, but it does so by suspending the RAM to disk (flash memory, actually.) So, when turning on the iPhone or iPad, it isn't so much rebooting the OS as it is resuming it from flash storage.

How to force the OS to completely reboot on these devices?

See Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support:

iPhone 8 or earlier
Press and hold the Home and Power Button until your iPhone / iPad reboot (ignore the "Slide to turn off"), you can release both buttons when you see Apple logo.
iPhone X
Press and hold Volume up [or down] and Power Button until your iPhone reboots (ignore the "Slide to turn off"), you can release both buttons when you see Apple logo.

See If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch won‘t turn on or is frozen - Apple Support:

If your screen is black or frozen
If your screen is black or frozen, you might need to force restart your device. A force restart won't erase the content on your device. You can force restart your device even if the screen is black or the buttons aren't responding. Follow these steps:

On an iPhone X, iPhone 8, or iPhone 8 Plus: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then, press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo.

On an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo.

On an iPhone 6s and earlier, iPad, or iPod touch: Press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo.

To cold boot your iPhone or iPad, hold down the power button and the home button together until your iPhone or iPad turns off (Ignore the swipe to turn off if it appears.)


MacBook connecting to wrong network? My neighbors just setup a Wi-Fi network, and my MacBook is now automatically connecting to it.

I've never manually connected to it
It has a single bar ("dot") of signal, my network has all 4

This is starting to get on my nerves, as I run lost of server software on my computer that I need access to from my other devices, and I don't want my neighbors to have access to. Additionally, I run a BitTorrent client often, and I feel bad using it on someone else's network, due to the high bandwidth usage.

Note that I do have a terrible router that's normally sold for $10 now, and I do lose wireless for ≈ 10 seconds every hour or so, and it might see the other network as a good alternative to no network. How can I prevent it from connecting automatically, other than asking the owner to set a password?
Also note that my admin is quite paranoid, and I have very limited access to the Network. My options are "Turn AirPort Off", "Network Name", and "Show in menu bar". "Ask to join new networks" is permanently checked, and I have no advanced options. Might there be a "forget network" feature like on iOS?

If you go to Network Preferences in System Preferences, you should see a button labeled "Advanced" click on that to get to a window with many different network options. Click on Wi-Fi at the top and then rearrange/delete/add networks as you see fit. Then hit ok and you should be good to go! Depending on your OS this may not work, I have no idea. I am on Lion.

Best option is what Zizma pointed out, so better get in touch with your admin and ask him to rearrange/delete the network.


How can I convert a .eml file to a .mbox file for Apple Mail? How can I convert a Windows Live Mail eml file to Apple Mail mbox file

Assuming you have access to the PC with windows live mail.

Install thunderbird on the PC. This will allow you to import windows live mail, outlook express
mails etc.
Create a gmail account, with IMAP enabled. Upload your imported email from thunderbird to gmail. This should be as simple as dragging the mail over.
Point your Mail.app at gmail and download your mail.

Klammer will open Outlook .msg files, standard .eml files, and also winmail.dat files on your iPad. We purchased the app and took it for a spin on our iPad, testing its ability to open both eml and Outlook msg files.
It will be found at apple store.


What is the keyboard combination for the ⌘ symbol? There are many handy shortcuts for exotic characters in Mac such as Option + 7 for ¶ and Option + G for ©. Is there one to yield the command key ('⌘') sign?

As the other answers mention, by default there is no easy way to enter this symbol. You could use a text substitution as well (none of the other answers so far mentioned that), but that’s another imperfect solution.

If you need this (or any other Unicode glyph) frequently and want to be able to type it on your keyboard, your best bet is to create a custom keyboard layout. That way, you can assign a keyboard shortcut of your choosing to the ⌘ symbol.

Using my custom QWERTY layout, for example, I can use ⌥+Shift+C to enter ⌘.

COPYPASTE THIS> ⌘ Boldface: ⌘ Italic: ⌘ Both:⌘


Install shuf on OS X? Ubuntu Linux has a great tool called shuf, which works like head except that it gives you ten random lines. I couldn't find it on Homebrew. What is the simplest way of installing it on OS X?

You can install coreutils with brew install coreutils.

shuf will be linked as gshuf. Read the caveats when you install coreutils.

Another option is to install randomize-lines(homebrew) package, which has an rl command which has similar functionality to shuf.

Usage: rl [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Randomize the lines of a file (or stdin).

  -c, --count=N  select N lines from the file
  -r, --reselect lines may be selected multiple times
  -o, --output=FILE
                 send output to file
  -d, --delimiter=DELIM
                 specify line delimiter (one character)
  -0, --null     set line delimiter to null character
                 (useful with find -print0)
  -n, --line-number
                 print line number with output lines
  -q, --quiet, --silent
                 do not output any errors or warnings
  -h, --help     display this help and exit
  -V, --version  output version information and exit


Is there a way to refresh a file that is opened by TextEdit? As an academic, I often have to conduct "numerical experiments" by running a small computer program that outputs to a text file.
I use TextEdit to read the text file.
However, when I re-run the program, and the contents of the text file changes, I find that the contents in TextEdit do not automatically update to the new version.
In order to access the new version, I need to close the existing TextEdit window, and open the file again in TextEdit.

Is there a way to refresh the file to the new version in TextEdit?
For those of you who know about the program Vim, what I am looking for is like the command :e[dit] in Vim which allows one to

  Edit the current file. This is useful to re-edit the current file, when it has been changed outside of Vim.

There's a ugly way of doing it, as far as I know.

Once the file has been edited just try to save it. TextEdit will prompt you saying something like:

  The document "Untitled.txt" couldn't be saved. Other application modified the file.

Giving you the choice to either Restore or Save anyway.

While Save anyway will keep your changes and save as a new version the changes made by the other application, Restore will update your file with these new changes.

Unless there's a specific reason to use TextEdit I'd recommend using any other text editor, such as TextMate, which supports the automatic refresh.

Refresh current open file is refresh by using
 ALT+F and R


List the extensions installed in Safari for Mac OS X, and state whether each one is enabled I'd like a list, from which text can be copied.

(Not a screenshot of preferences.)

This information does not appear in any of the following:

Safari
System Profiler in Snow Leopard
System Information in Lion.

I wondered whether there exists an extension to list other extensions, but when I searched I could not find anything suitable.

If not a command or an extension, maybe there's an app, but again: I could not find anything suitable.

(I could instead have posted this opening question to Super User, where a command piping guru might step up, but I prefer Ask Different for the likelihood of someone knowing an extension or app.)

Background

With the extensions master switch off, the simple presence of installed extensions may cause some versions of Safari to take longer than expected to launch.

For that reason and others, it's sometimes necessary to have a comprehensive list of installed extensions, including those that are disabled.

It's primarily a matter of parsing the output of defaults read ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/extensions and formatting it in a user-friendly way. The result actually answers both of your questions:

defaults read ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/extensions | awk '
/Bundle Directory/ {
    split($0, t, /\"/);
    sub(".safariextension", "", t[4]);
    sub("-1", "", t[4]);
    bundle=t[4]
    e="disabled"
}
/Enabled/ {
    e="enabled";
}
/Hidden Bars/ {
    print bundle, "...", e
}' | sort --ignore-case

Creating a shell script out of it is left as an exercise to the reader.

Please note that this will most probably stop to work if Apple decides to change the format of ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/extensions

A simple starting point, posted at the same time as the opening question:

Simple list of installed extensions, sorted alphabetically

defaults read ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/extensions | grep "Bundle Directory Name" | sort --ignore-case

The result is quick, but dirty:

in the one line of interest, the leading "Bundle Directory Name" = " and trailing "; are unnecessary
some of the bundle directory names include -1 — this, too, is unnecessary.


Traffic of different Apps in Little Snitch with enabled VPN? What is the meaning? So, I am trying to understand my VPN connection observing the traffic in Little Snitch. My VPN is connected and I can see its connection to the server and the amount of data that is transfered. Shouldn't go all my data through this connection? Why is there, for example Firefox, connecting to a huge amount of IP-Adresses and sending/receiving a huge amount of data? When observing the map it looks like the connections start at my 'real location'. I looked up my IP on the browser and everything seems to be working fine.
Just wanted to understand the causal chain of data flow for Example googling something in Firefox.
Thanks for your answers!

A VPN is nothing more than a different connection to the internet. Without the VPN it looks like this:
Mac -> Local Network -> your Router -> your ISP -> the internet
This is vastly simplified, if course, but will work for what we are doing here.
The VPN is a TUNNEL that starts at your Mac and ends not at the network and servers of your ISP (AT&T, Spectrum, Verizon, etc.) but at the servers and networks of the VPN provider.
Mac -> VPN Tunnel -> (your Router) -> (your ISP) -> (Your VPN provider) ->the internet
That pathway above stays the same but it is like running a tube between your Mac and the internet in that your router, ISP and VPN provider, cant see what is in the VPN tunnel, as it is hidden by the VPN.
And instead of your traffic exiting your ISP for the internet in your town, it exits the VPN provider's network anywhere you want it to. Prague, Milan, Mexico City, Vancouver, Miami, wherever they have "exit points."
The key point here is that the VPN provides a secure tunnel between you and the end of the VPN. No one can spy on any traffic between those two points.
But everything on your Mac (or PC) still talks to everything that you point it to.
So if you browse the web using Firefox, it will still connect to every website you point it at. Not to mention all the cookies and tracking code that the website collects on you.
You are not being protected from what the website (and Firefox allows it to) does. You are being protected from being spied on between your Mac and the VPN exit point. And you can CHOOSE that end point. And Little Snitch still sees all of that activity, it is just going through the VPN. But it is still going.
The most common reason for a VPN is still my ability to connect back to my work network securely. The VPN creates a (virtual) tunnel (a private network) between my Mac or PC at home to my work network. This allows me onto that network as if I were sitting at my desk. And if I then google something the traffic exits from my work network and goes and connects to google.
A personal VPN, like you have allows you to appear as if you are surfing the web from the next town, state, country or continent and no one can tell where you are actually from. So your ISP may be in in Dallas Texas but with the VPN it looks like you are in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

No answer to your question, but a few safety tips on Little Snitch before you use it.
Little Snitch installs a kernel extension (kext) to read network traffic. This gives Little Snitch root privileges. Little Snitch looks at all network traffic and is therefore vulnerable to any network traffic. The root rights promise big booty if successful: Full control over Little Snitch and the computer.
If you want to secure your system, you should not increase its attack surface, but reduce it. The less software that runs with root rights, the better. This is a very unique Unix principle. If you mess up your system with 3rd party kexts, you can put an invitation label on the outside right away, because there are errors in every software. The only way to minimize the risk is to run as little as possible under root.
Can Little Snitch really control all traffic that goes out or comes in from the computer? Due to the principle: No! Why? All software on the computer can be compromised. Little Snitch isn't the only piece of code that runs under root on the Mac. A malware that also comes onto the computer as a Trojan or through a bug or in some other way, and also has root rights or gains these through another bug, can simply bypass Little Snitch, blind them at the necessary places, or deceive network traffic in front of Little Hide Snitch, make Litte Snitch completely useless.
But maybe some other software can't ...? No! The only way to reliably control what the computer is doing with the network is to examine the traffic on the next router to the Internet. No firewall, no software on the computer itself can tell you which traffic is really going in or out of your computer.
What is Little Snitch good for then? To review good-natured software that doesn't want to hide anything. An approach that runs on the victim's computer is completely unsuitable for checking malicious software.


What is the quality of the music sold in the iTunes store? What is the quality of the music sold in the iTunes store? Is this quality comparable to that of a lossless file or CD?

From this article:

  Music encoded as 256kbps AAC files first came to the iTunes Store in 2007 with the launch of Apple's iTunes Plus. That marked the debut of DRM-free music tracks encoded at a higher quality bitrate that Apple claims is virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.

As of 2007 the audio files sold in the iTunes store have been encoded using the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec and distributed with .m4a extensions from the iTunes store. The 256 kbps setting is an average bit rate encoding scheme, not a fixed bit rate encoding scheme. The actual sample rate is varied dynamically based on the content and time.

  Is this quality comparable to that of a lossless file or CD?

This is somewhat subjective. The encoding is a lossy encoding so from a purely bit-wise perspective the content sold in the iTunes store is not 100% identical to content from a CD -- when expanded back to a .wav format to match the bits on a CD, the expanded bits from the AAC file would not match perfectly with the bits on the CD because of of the lossy encoding. However, it is said, bitrate of the encoding used on iTunes files imparts no human-perceptible loss in the audio when compared to the source CD material. This sort of stuff is harder to verify, requiring double blind tests and the opinions of hopelessly fallible human beings.

Yes, an uncompressed file will always sound better than a compressed file from the same master, but Apple claims to encode their itunes files from the 192K/24bit masters. That changes everything.


How to send 'print' key with RDC (Remote Desktop Connection)? I use Microsoft's RDC on Mac. I need to click on print key to have some screen capture, but Mac Keyboard doesn't have one.

How do I send print key with Mac through RDC?

The print screen command on a Mac is:

Shift+Command+3

⇧⌘3

So on Windows it would most likely be:

Shift+Control+3

⇧Ctrl3


Safari: How do you get page titles back? This is what the top of my Safari page looks like right now:

I think I have around 90 tabs open. That's how I work, I multitask.
What made Safari stand out as a browser used to be the fact that no matter how many tabs you had open, you could still know what a page's title was.
I believe page titles are super-duper important, and that getting rid of them for users with many tabs open was a mistake they made with Yosemite/new Safari.

Is there a way for me to get the page's titles back?

Like, for instance, on my screen grab, I don't need the URL to be displayed in the white bar so much as the name of the page.
I've found that Safari's preference pane has a "show full website address" as if the URL was more important than a page name - something I disagree with whole-heartedly, but maybe there's another setting somewhere else to display page title instead of the URL?

Go to Safari preferences > advanced then uncheck the box that says 'Smart search Field - show full website address'

I don't know if this is possible with Safari, but with Firefox, you can:

Go to about:config. (You can click through the warning about your "warranty".)
Enter the option browser.tabs.drawInTitlebar in the search field on top and press return to filter.
Double click the option to toggle it to false.


Is there a mail merge solution on OS X besides Microsoft Office? I've been using Microsoft Office for mail merge and it is fraught with character encoding issues. I'm curious if there is another solution for mail merge besides Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. I've got a homegrown solution I use too, but looking for something more robust. It would be nice if it supported HTML formatted messages.

1-use Mailchimp (mailchimp.com) it has all the bells and whistles: address list management, import lists from a variety of formats, reports, subscribe/unsubscribe, drag & drop html layouts, etc. etc. All of this in their free product.

2-Go LibreOffice (https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Mail_Merge_Wizard). It compares nicely with what Office can do and it is a lot more flexible in the char encoding area. It looks clunkier than Office, but it is free.

Hope it helps

you can use Labels and Databases

  The Labels and Databases is a label maker and designer software with seamlessly integrated database management tool. It allows to create labels, envelopes, and cards using various built-in label formats, and then print merge them with the information contained in user databases.

http://cristallight.com/LabelsAndDatabases/mail-merge.aspx


How can I get a me.com e-mail address? Was this a service only offered with Apple's Mobile Me? Is there anyway I can still get an e-mail address ending in @me.com?

It's basically not possible to make a new MobileMe account while the transition to iCloud is happening. There are some loopholes (like adding a new account under an existing Family account) - but most will have to wait until iCloud is released. The official word on that is a vague - in the fall of 2011.
From the Apple preview page covering Contacts, Calendar and Mail as part of iCloud:

Mail that delivers. Free.
When you set up iCloud, you get a free me.com
email account. iCloud automatically
pushes new email messages to all your
devices, so your inbox is up to date
everywhere you check it. And iCloud
keeps all your folders in sync, no
matter which device you’re using.

That was posted June 6, 2011, and I think that's pretty definitive. Free me.com accounts for all. It's unclear if you can get a new one today, but when iCloud opens to the public, you'll be able to sign up for one.
The sign-up page for MobileMe was disabled when iCould was announced at WWDC. People with unredeemed paid memberships can request a refund as they can no longer create a new account. Also, the free trials are suspended - presumably until iCloud opens this fall. The MobileMe transition FAQ documents this in detail and should be updated if things change before iCloud details are released.
The only way to get an account is if you already have a Family Pack with unallocated sub accounts. It is not clear if and how that sub account will transition to iCloud, but that may be an option for some to establish MobileMe email after June 6, 2011 and before iCloud opens for business.

I don't recall seeing it mentioned during the process of signing up for iCloud but @me.com addresses/aliases are automatically created alongside your @iCloud.com email address.

For instance, if John Doe created an iCloud account today and subsequently obtained his John.Doe@iCloud.com email address he could also receive email sent to John.Doe@me.com without doing any extra work on his end.

tl;dr - If you already have an @iCloud.com email address you can automatically receive email sent to the same address ending in @me.com.


Outlook 2016 Mac change order of accounts Is there any way to change the order that multiple accounts are shown in the left (folders) pane of Outlook 2016 Mac's main window?  Or do I have to delete the topmost account and add it again to move it lower in the list?

Here's more info about why I want to do this:

I'm a new user of Outlook Mac 2016. I added two mail accounts (work and personal) and I want to keep them visually separate in Outlook. So I unchecked the "Group similar folders, such as Inboxes, from different accounts". But now my personal email account (that I added first to Outlook) is on top and my work account is on the bottom.

I'd like to reverse this order because I spend more time on work email and want to keep it on top.

In the PC version of Outlook I can just drag one account above another. But that doesn't work on the Mac version. Is there another way to reorder the accounts in the Mac version?

I know I can just delete and re-add my personal account, but I was hoping to avoid having to wait hours for it to sync years of email.

I wanted to know the same thing.  I searched and couldn't find an answer.  I finally figured it out myself.  You can change the "default" account and it will go to the top.  Go to Tools, Account and then select the account you want to be the default.  Click the gear at the bottom and select "Set as default."

Then, the remaining accounts will be put in alphabetical order.  You may need to exit Outlook and reopen it to see the new order.

This works better than deleting the top account - letting the items shuffle and then adding the other accounts below since the sort order doesn't always follow the order of addition to the app. Especially if you have delegate accounts you're adding.

Hmm, none of these solutions worked for me. The only way to get the account i want on top is to make it the default. But I don't want that account to be the default.
I have tons of folders in my main exchange account and having my .mac account at the bottom in the Sidebar won't work for me. My exchange account is my primary account. But i need to see when my .mac account has new messages.


How select date of full backup to restore with Time Machine - NOT the latest backup My hard drive died after files started disappearing for a couple days. I ended up getting a new Mac since the computer was old anyway.

I'm worried that the last couple days of Time Machine backups will be bad due to the dying hard drive, so I'd like to use an earlier backup date from before it started dying with Migration Assistant.

I don't see any way in Migration Assistant to select the date of the backup that I want to use.

Should I just "delete" the latest backup folder dates from the Time Machine drive? Will that screw up the backup?

Any other way to accomplish this?

You should temporarily move the backups from the corrupt/unwanted version of the system to a different location, and then attempt the Restore. You may also try renaming the unwanted backups. For more, please go to:

https://thedesignspace.net/2014/01/11/osx-migration-assistant-doesnt-see-all-time-machine-backups/

Just select the drive to restore from - the Migration Assistant will then give the list of backups by date to choose from.


How do I know what version the Mini DisplayPort port is on my 2010 MacBook Pro? I want to connect 2 monitors to my MacBook Pro (mid-2010). The problem is that I don't if the Mini DisplayPort is version 1.2, which would support daisy chaining.  How can I figure out what version firmware my Mini DisplayPort uses and whether or not it would support daisy chaining?

The 2011 MBP (MacBookPro8,1) has thunderbolt, so either your machine is not a 2011, or it has thunderbolt. the 2010 MacBook Pros have MDP that supports audio as well as video (I have a 2009 which only does video).

Keep in mind that MDP and Thunderbolt look identical.

So I looked up this question, it's 4 in the morning here in California, 2 years later...

I hope this answer finds you or anyone else interested because I think I backtracked a solid answer for both of us.

I have lately been getting into doing some specific display work and came across this question, how far can I really push my Macbook Pro 13 with 512mb GPU. It's all based on the video card, as I connected the dots to my experience with audio and sound.

Here's what I've found...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_DisplayPort

Which like you, led me to the same place, my Mac's about info/system report/graphics and displays and then... nothing. There were some clues though...

The intel 3000 graphics chipset

http://intel.ly/2enZo7q

I did some more research via Apple on my chipset and found this, it dates my computer very very well, check this out...

http://apple.co/2ePaukk

So for me I was a 3000 ok? something like 2011... then do this... it's like a complex math problem right? If you know the date of your computer, what connection you have (definitely, mini display port(WHICH ONLY SUPPORT SOME FORM OF HDMI)) but just need to know what kind of HDMI...drum roll please... then all you need to know is the date of your HDMI technology...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_1.4

The new technology including '4k' (1.4) was out 2009

At that point my only option is to assume that my late 2011 macbook includes the previous HDMI 1.4 technology.

I've compared the numbers between Mini DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 and they are aligned. Now you know you have and Mini DisplayPort 1.2 that can push 4k @ 24hz

Peace in the universe has been restored :)

It's something like 4:15 now and I'm glad I found this. I hope this post finds you or helps person waking up from a deep sleep needing to know their max computer resolution. Share this with your friends, add me on the socials, good luck and may the force be with you ;)

Cheers,

C

other sites

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

www.displayport.org/


Switching to Russian keyboard from Japanese still types in English I feel like this (bug?) started happening after one of the latest OS updates applied.

I'm currently using Mac OS X High Sierra (10.13.2).

Steps to reproduce:

Start OS
Switch language to Russian
Able to type in Russian
Switch language to English

Result:

Still types in English, even though it shows Russian as selected language....

There is a known bug with 10.13.2: Switching from Japanese (or Chinese or Korean) to Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, or Greek will not work, you must first switch to US (or some other Latin layout) in between.

Ask Apple to fix this via their feedback page.

Language isn't the same as input method. You need to change your input method to achieve what you want.


Does a Boot Camped Windows alongside a Mac OS X partition profit from a Fusion drive like Mac OS X does? While writing an answer to this question Should I defrag my SSD before creating a partition for Boot Camp? i wondered if a Boot Camped Windows profits from a Fusion drive like OS X on the same drive in the sense of faster read/write access does.

The condition are clear for a pure SSD as well as for a common spinning HD.
In the first case a Windows installation profits like Mac OS X, in the second case the performance is slightly degraded because the Windows partition is almost always situated at the innermost "slower" parts of the disk.

But what's the case with a Fusion drive?

Fusion Drive is an OS X specific way of caching data.

If you use Bootcamp on a Fusion Drive you will get Windows on the hard drive only. Some information  from this Apple note

"Fusion drive" is yet another name dubbed by apple.. It's what's called generally a "hybrid ssd".

What that means is that part of the "drive" as such is "solid state", in that it world like ram/rom, and the other part is typical motorised magnetic disk hard-drive.

The boost in speed is where the "solid state" comes in. The most commonly things accessed by the system (loads of things that you won't be aware of) would be kept on there for "quick access". The things which the system wouldn't need all too often would remain on the spinning magnetic disc (which is slower to access).

All in all, it's a mid-step between spinning magnetic discs and SSD.

Personally, and as a mac user... I'd advise against spending that sort of money on a "fusion drive" and rather go for the "ssd" option.


Pillars of Eternity: Better to buy from Mac App Store or from Steam? I haven't played a video game on my computer in over a decade and I'm unfamiliar with modern technologies. If I want to buy Pillars of Eternity, am I better off getting it through the mac app store or through Steam?

Steam. With steam, you'll be able to play it on Windows too, should you ever have the need. The same can't be said for the MAS, which only offers the Mac version. It's a nice bit of future-proofing, incase you ever get a Windows PC in the future. To put it simply, you get more for your money.

Go with Steam.

Play on Windows if you want to.
Faster update.


Application development ON the iPod Touch? I have a pretty long commute to work and own an iPod Touch. I figure it would be nice to do some simple programming on the way. I'm not picky on which language to code on. Also, I usually have no internet connection on my commute so developing and editing on the cloud is out.

I've been looking through the app store but haven't found any apps that offer a "development environment" or an editor with a compiler. It's also not clear to me if I can access the iPod Touch's OS itself and do some coding on it.

Is any development ON the iPod Touch possible? Does an app for this exist?

I don't think there will be any with a compiler, due to iOS and App Store restrictions. The best thing on an iPhone or iPod I think would be a text editor to write code (I use Nebulous and its Dropbox syncing) and an SSH app (I use Prompt) to compile and run the code. Though it might be tough to keep a connection during a commute for SSH.

If you need a computer to SSH to, you could use an Amazon EC2 app to create and use a box on the go. I haven't done that yet, so I don't have a good recommendation, but it's on my list of things to try.

Also, if you have an iPad, Textastic is a fantastic code editor, but it's not available on iPhone or iPod.

For the iPad you could get Codea but unfortunately it doesn't run on iPod touch or iPhone.

If your device can be jailbroken and you're willing to do so, then you have many more choices and also direct access to all parts of the iOS.


Is it possible to edit a macOS alias with vim? I like to use macOS's alias feature to not have to make redundant files. These aliases work great with Chrome and TextEdit. When I open them with vim, however, I get a giant messy file (presumably the way macOS encodes aliases). Is there a way to edit the actual file through an alias with vim?

macOS aliases are just normal files. macOS knows when an alias is being accessed and passes the right file along to the app. Since aliases are just normal files, other tools just open the alias file itself rather than reading the contents of the file and finding where it points to.

If you actually want a link to another file, you can create a symbolic link instead of using aliases:

How can I create a symbolic link in Terminal?


Opening Mobile Documents folder in Finder on Sierra As of Sierra(?) opening ~/Library/Mobile Documents in the Finder actually takes you to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs. This the Finder stylizes as "iCloud Drive" and only has folders for certain applications.

It is still possible to access Mobile Documents proper through Terminal, but even when opening the directory in Finder directly from Terminal it redirects to com~apple~CloudDocs.

Is it possible to access the root Mobile Documents folder from Finder?

I found a really nice type of workaround for this from here. Essentially you need to run the following command in Terminal:

ln -s ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/ ~/Desktop/Real\ iCloud\ Drive

This will create an alias on your desktop that shows all the folders in the Mobile Documents folder when you open it. You are free to browse it to your liking—albeit with one caveat: you can't directly open any folders. You'll have to use the list view's ability to expand folders and then view files from there.

Open Terminal and enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Hold the ‘Option/alt’ key, then right click on the Finder icon in the dock and click Relaunch.

Mobile Documents will now show all the hidden files, including iCloud.


How to change computer name so terminal displays it in Mac OS X Mountain Lion? When I setup my computer I named it "Scott's MacBook Pro". And so when I go to System preferences->Sharing, it says Scott's MacBook Pro there as my computer name. However, opening up a terminal gives me this prompt:

Last login: Sun Oct  7 11:02:49 on ttys003
new-host-4:~ scott$

When I login to Backblaze, they list my computer as "new‑host‑4_2012_10_07". Did I not fully set my computer name? Should I use the traditional hostname command?

If you use:
sudo scutil --set HostName name-you-want

it will work a bit better. From the scutil(8) man page:

--get pref
    Retrieves the specified preference.  The current value will be
    reported on standard output.

    Supported preferences include:
          ComputerName   The user-friendly name for the system.
          LocalHostName  The local (Bonjour) host name.
          HostName       The name associated with hostname(1) and gethostname(3).

--set pref [newval]
    Updates the specified preference with the new value.  If the new value is not
    specified on the command line then it will be read from standard input.

    Supported preferences include: ComputerName LocalHostName HostName

    The --set option requires super-user access.

I didn't do anything to my computer, but eventually for some reason the hostname and computer name all registered as the name I initially set! In fact I had the following terminal open the whole time and this is exactly a cut and paste:

new-host-4:~ scott$ hostname
new-host-4.home
new-host-4:~ scott$ hostname
Scotts-MacBook-Pro.local


iPhone 5s trouble with cellular data My iPhone won't send texts and I can't recive any texts unless I'm on Wi-Fi.  My iPhone says I have LTE but nothing that requires internet will load. I have cellular data for all my apps turned on. I've tried rebooting my iPhone, and turning the cellular data off and on. My family members who are hooked up with the same data package can use their data just fine. Any advice on how to fix this?

Call your cellular service provider, they should be able to help you.

Check this troubleshooting article ;

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201415


How to auto-indent code in Coda 2? I just installed Coda 2 but can't find how to auto-format / auto-indent the code.
In Dreamweaver there is this useful function called "Apply Source Formatting" which basically removes white space and auto indents the code, I can't find how to do this in Coda.
The only thing I found is a plugin called "White Out", but it doesn't seem to work.
Thanks!

Select all text or code of your document and press CMD + Shift + F12


Request Mobile Site after requesting Desktop Site Safari I selected Request Desktop Site on a web page and now I want to go back to the mobile version. How?

I Google’d and got 20 results explaining how to get the Desktop version, but none how to go back.

Using Safari on iPad.

This can be done by closing the tab, opening a new one and opening the site again there.

I know m.linkedin.com works for substituting the ‘m’ prefix...


Mac OSX microphone input volume level auto-adjusts - can it be disabled? I've found this issue and various discussions online about this, but no obvious "just do this", so I'm wandering over here from ServerFault to ask this.

Is there a way to disable or hard-set the input level on a mic?  In the Sound preferences on the Input tab if I click on the device and set a level and then start talking it picks up the sound and then start to auto-adjust the mic input level.

This causes issues when talking with someone on Lync/Skype/etc because one minute the sound is fine and then if you raise your voice for a second and then lower it back down (or shift around in your chair) the auto-adjust causes the other party to think your whispering or yelling.

I'd like to be able to disable the auto-adjust if possible.  Yes/No?

NOTE: The issue is similar this one: iMac OSX 10.8.4 Volume adjusts by itself but rather on the input side and not the output side for me.

Turns out that the auto-adjusting mic level was not MacOS, but rather Skype (Version 6.6.0.467).  There is a check box in Skype Preferences to enable/disable it, and once I turned it off the level stays where I set it.

The problem is that, apparently, Skype's notion of auto adjusting the mic volume is simply to crank it up to max, no matter what -- even when no call is active.  At around 90% the mic starts picking up background noise, probably the Mac disk or fan, and by 100% that background noise is overwhelming.

I found that on my MacBook Pro (c. 2008) the mic level at about 75% was good, and I also found it helpful to check the "Use ambient noise reduction" check box (just below the mic level slider in the System Preferences/Audio).

I figured it out! I called Mac support and they had me start my computer while pressing Cmd + Opt + P + R and it resets some things that fixes the problem. Hope this works for everyone like it did for me!


How do I send invitations for Calendar events with locations? If a Calendar event has a location associated with it, no invitations are ever sent to any of the invitees. In fact, once a location is added to an event, no subsequent updates about changes to the event are ever sent to any invitees (including the addition of the location).

This failure is silent. No warning is given, the invitees are simply never informed of the event at all. This happens regardless of whether the invitees have iCloud addresses or not (in most cases, for me, all invitees are iCloud users).

I con reproduce this 100% of the time on both macOS and iOS. This error suddenly appeared recently, and since then I've learned from several friends that they have experienced the same problem.

How do I send invitations to events with locations from Calendar?

This turns out to be a known bug. Apple Support's recommendation is (astonishingly) simply:

  Do not add a location to events you plan to invite people to.

Apple is "working on it as we speak".

Open the Calendar app and navigate to the date on which you would like to create an event.Tap the + icon in the upper-right corner. There, you’ll be able to name your event, as well as add a location if you'd like.
Then you can designate start and end times for your event, as well as add any notes for your invitees to see. You can also choose which of your Calendars the event will go in.
(If you can't see the Invitees tab, go to Settings, iCloud, and make sure Calendar is turned on. If you're still not seeing the Invitees tab, make sure you’re putting the event in one of your iCloud calendars.)
Tapping the Invitees tab will allow you to choose individuals from your contacts to invite, provided you have their email address in their contact card. The Invitees tab will then be updated to show how many people you've invited.


How can I get rid of a stuck folder in the Finder's toolbar? I was trying to reorganize my desktop and had a folder dragging into another folder.

When I did this, the folder just got stuck in the toolbar and didn't copy over to the new location...

It's not a clickable button as if it were a favorites in the toolbar itself.

When I try to drag and drop it away from the toolbar, it doesn't work.

I then right clicked and went into "Customize Toolbar" and it wasn't in any of the lists for me to take it off.

Obviously its a 'favorites' feature, but how do I get the thing to get off all my finder toolbars now?

Well I don't know if this is what you mean, but I accidentally dragged a folder into the Finder, and when I removed it a question mark appeared.

How to delete an accidentally-dragged-in folder in the Finder toolbar:

Just hold Command ⌘ and drag the folder out of the Finder window and whoosh it's gone.

right click on the item and remove from sidebar is there.


Data still syncing with separate apple IDs So I moved to college and decided it was time for me to make my own apple ID. Up to that point I shared an account with my mother. Since updating my phone all of her contacts are on my phone. I created a new apple Id to keep all of our content separated. I now have a mac and want to use the cloud to get data from my phone but do not want to share everything with my mom. Everything on my phone that requires apple ID has only my account not hers. Help?

If I get what you mean, you would probably like Family Sharing. It allows you to share data with another Apple ID, but keep thing separate (e.g your mom can download iTunes things from your account and you can download things from her account, but she can't read your iMessage and you can't read hers).


View local HTML files using web browser on iPad Using a web browser (e.g., Safari, Chrome, etc.) can I view html pages that are stored locally on the iPad? The pages should render properly and execute Javascript/CSS properly.

Since the files are always local to the app in iOS. You can't open a html with apps like Safari and Chrome to load associated assets (js/images/css).

However, You could use apps like Documents to upload the folder and open in app browser (uiwebview).

Should work if the URL to assets in the html are relative.


High memory usage, macbook pro retina feeling sluggish My Macbook Pro Retina seems to be feeling sluggish and I don't think it should at all.

I'm running: photoshop, 1080p movie on VLC plugged into a Thunderbolt Display.

Looking at the activity monitor there's pretty much 100% RAM usage. I've read that 100% RAM usage is desired so the hard drive doesn't have to be accessed but I usually see max usage of around 8gb, not the whole 16gb... and there shouldn't be any Swap at all right?

It looks more like 8gb usage (as it says is in use in App Memory).

Is this correct or something up? Photoshop is extremely sluggish and it shouldn't be.. surely?

This is my iostat whilst the Mactop is being sluggish:

      disk0           disk1       cpu     load average
 KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
40.40   8  0.33   173.17   0  0.06   4  3 93  1.91 1.58 1.43
21.07  10  0.20   951.14   1  1.30   5  4 91  1.56 1.52 1.41
39.87  50  1.93   910.67   1  0.80   5  7 88  1.47 1.50 1.41
17.27  24  0.40   854.00   1  0.50   4  9 87  1.56 1.52 1.42

Your information is very good for RAM and CPU, but I don't see anything amiss and things look quite balanced. Yes, there is one program that's busy and not responding, so you could kill that to rule it out as something that's slowing down Photoshop.

My hunch is you will need to examine storage to find the slow down.

My reasoning is Photoshop does a good job of pre-allocating disk space for swap of it's own (so it doesn't even swap to the OS swap) as well as pre-allocating all the RAM it thinks it will need. Even without seeing the normal RAM and CPU charts you posted, it's unlikely your Mac is paging virtual memory to disk based on the stats you posted from a snapshot in time.

Open terminal app from /Applications/Utilities and run two commands to list the attached drives (so you know which is disk0, disk1 etc...) and another to monitor the actual input and output for the drive.

df | grep disk
iostat 30

The second command will run continuously until you press control+c or close the terminal app or window.

My guess is you will see that there is continuous load on one or more disks and quitting the programs that are causing the disk to be busy will make Photoshop more snappy. You've already ruled out high CPU load and memory contention (the pressure would be yellow or red if that were to slow down Photoshop) so the next likely candidate is that the system is waiting for the storage.

The other suggestions to try killing other applications are good ones, but you will be more successful if you can measure the exact slow item and then change things and re-measure later.

Here is a sample of what you might see on an idle system:

Mac:~ me$ iostat 30
          disk0           disk1       cpu     load average
    KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
   36.80  20  0.71    24.99   0  0.00   6  3 91  1.34 1.61 1.65
   32.00   0  0.01     0.00   0  0.00   1  1 97  1.32 1.60 1.65
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   1  2 97  1.37 1.61 1.65
    4.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   1  2 97  1.31 1.58 1.64
   28.57   1  0.04     0.00   0  0.00   4  3 93  1.48 1.61 1.65
    9.85   3  0.02     0.00   0  0.00   2  1 97  1.44 1.60 1.65

Here is what first a minute of activity on the internal SSD then idle, then a minute of activity on the Time Machine drive and idle, and finally Time Machine running with both drives having equivalent activity (read from one = write to another):

Mac:~ me$ iostat 30
          disk0           disk1       cpu     load average
    KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
   36.95  20  0.71    42.93   0  0.00   6  3 91  1.99 1.90 1.75
    8.1 1266 10.09     8.00   0  0.00   8 12 81  1.94 1.89 1.75
   10.18 774  7.69     0.00   0  0.00  22  9 69  1.64 1.82 1.73
   18.42 125  2.25     0.00   0  0.00  11  4 86  1.50 1.77 1.71
   32.27  21  0.67     0.00   0  0.00   6  2 92  1.40 1.73 1.70
   12.29  48  0.57     6.78 223  1.47  23  8 70  1.74 1.78 1.72
   20.30  14  0.28     9.61  53  0.50   2  3 95  1.39 1.69 1.69
   17.73   5  0.08    14.75   0  0.01  11  2 87  1.23 1.62 1.66
   32.30  23  0.73     0.00   0  0.00   4  2 94  1.50 1.67 1.68
   13.14   3  0.04     0.00   0  0.00   6  1 92  1.45 1.64 1.66
   21.07  24  0.50     6.12   0  0.00   9  3 88  2.23 1.80 1.72
   40.77 197  7.86    37.93 202  7.47  13 10 77  2.27 1.83 1.73

Playing a movie, plugged into thunderbolt, and Photoshop is a lot of memory usage. Maybe you should change a CPU. What CPU is or?


~/Sites folder gives 403 error This is likely a stupid question, and it should be easy, but I'm clearly not seeing it.

My local Sites directory seems to have changed permissions since using it yesterday. It's been working fine for months and I can't for the life of me figure out what's changed.

The localhost works fine, but my home Sites folder gives a 403
my local Sites directory (~/Sites) is 755 permissions, as are the directories inside, and the files are mostly 644
Permissions on ~/Sites is drwxr-xr-x+, owned by my shortname & staff, which seems right
Checked apachectl configuration and got a "Syntax OK" response
Just to be clear, this was working. My /etc/apache2/httpd.conf allows for user-directories (uncommented) and it resolves the virtual hosts I've set, they all just have some mystical 403 blocking them.
Adding insult to injury, the Sites work in other user profiles on the machine, and they have the same permissions

So - stumped. What am I just not seeing?

Take a look at other directories' permissions; for example, your home directory vs. the other home directories:

ls -le /Users/

It should look something like this:

drwxr-xr-x+ 13 user1   staff   442 12 Nov  2010 user1/
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x+ 63 user2   staff  2142  9 Aug 16:55 user2/
 0: group:everyone deny delete

There's a good chance that your home directory has somehow been set to different permissions (e.g. 700), and that's causing Apache to choke.

Right click, go to Get Info, and at the bottom you can change permissions.


How can I download a video from the web to my iPad? There's an m4v video for download on the web that I'd like to watch offline on my iPad. This is the process I know will work:

Open link in web browser on my laptop
Download video to my laptop
Stick video in iTunes
Connect my iPad to my laptop
Sync
Disconnect iPad from laptop
Watch offline

This is what I want to do:

Open link in web browser on my iPad
Download video to my iPad
Watch offline

Is there currently a way to do this?

This is not possible in MobileSafari on the iPad.  There may be an app for it somewhere on the App Store, though.

You may refer to this guide, it's regarding how to download website video to computer for free. It works pretty well for me.


Make filename extensions hidden in specific folder (Desktop) or file (.jar) I want to make all filename extensions visible (which I did in Finder -> Preferences -> Show All Filename Extensions = true) except the ones in a specific folder (Desktop), or a specific .jar file.
Now, I can just hide all extensions and then just unhide the .jar file but I am afraid it will take too long if I can't select all the documents and Get Info but as far as I know, it will bring multiple Get Info windows as they do not have things in common?
What can I do?
I do not have Xcode installed by the way.
MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012), macOS Catalina 10.15.7

You can write an AppleScript that uses Finder’s extension hidden property to do this. See the accepted answer here:
https://superuser.com/questions/399899/show-hide-extension-of-a-file-through-os-x-command-line


Fix hard disk not detected after force eject I got an HDD on my Mid 2012 Macbook Pro 13 inch. I decided to upgrade to SSD and I want a clean install of El Capitan. After the SSD ugprade and OS installation I connect my old HDD as an external storage thru USB. After copying the files from the old HDD, I want to eject the HDD but it won't allow and the system shows a message that something is using the HDD and give me an option to force eject. So I force eject the HDD. After a while, I need to connect again the HDD to copy some files, but this time around the HDD is not anymore detected. I'm sure the external closure is fine because it can detect other HDD when I try to replace it.
When execute the diskutil list, I got the results below. But HDD is not listed on the Disk Utility window. I read that the HDD maybe corrupted (External hard disk not showing up on finder and can't be verified in Disk Utility). Is there still a way to fix the HDD?

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage SSDCrucial01            499.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS SSDCrucial01           +498.9 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 D54522C3-5817-4D10-A1C8-C35193CA2F78
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.2 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk2s3

The only i way i Fixed my HDD when i forced ejected is to do as Pelang said. PRAM reset and wait 3 sounds. It really important to plug your HDD while doing that PRAM reset, after 3 sounds its going to fix it.


How can I search through all mail folders on my iPad? My Gmail account has multiple folders and labels. The iPad mail app can search through one of the folders. How can I search through all of it at once?

You can search through the All Mail folder instead.

No way to do so on apple mail that I've seen, I've resorted to the cueup.com app (formerly called greplin) which has a search functionality that indexes all accounts you link to it, or cloudmagic as an alternative. it will pull up emails via search and open up the message on the browser (although you may have to mess with it if it keeps redirecting to gmail's mobile site). I'm sure one of these companies will be bought out by google or apple soon.


How to disallow iPhone from joining specific WiFi network without turning off keychain sync and thus still allow to join it on Mac? I want to keep syncing WiFi passwords through keychain, but I want to keep my iPhone off specific WiFi network, which I must use on my work Mac. How do I do this?

If you have admin control of the wifi network (or can contact who does), you could have your iPhone's MAC address blocked from the network with MAC Address filtering...

However this may (or may not, totally theoretical) impact your iPhone's battery life if the phone starts repeatedly trying to join the network when in range. Like I said, it might not, I'm not sure what it's behaviour would be if the network told it to sod off when joining :)

Depending on the network setup, when you tap the little (i) next to the network name, you can  turn off a option called "Auto-Join". So the keychain retains the network details, but does not join the network unless you tap on it. I think this is a setting enabled by RADIUS enabled networks or networks added to the device by a Profile though, I've never figured out why some networks show it and some do not.

On your iPhone, go to Settings > WiFi. Then tap the (i) button beside the network you don't want it to access anymore. At the top of your screen will be a blue "Forget This Network". Tap that and tap "Forget" to confirm your choice.

Your Mac should still remember the network and join it freely, but your iPhone should no longer join it.

If your iPhone keeps joining the network after doing the above, be sure to enable the option for "Ask to Join Networks" (at the bottom of the screen in Settings > WiFi).


How to find and remove duplicate calendar entries (Mac OS, Yosemite) I'm using the Calendar application on Mac OS X 10.10.1 "Yosemite". The calendar is laden with many years of history, and I've just imported some data from a phone as well. It turns out that some of the phone entries were new, but some were duplicates of entries already in Calendar.

Note that "duplicate" has some complicated cases. For instance, there are weekly repeating events where the phone's data correcting deleted some instances of the meeting (we didn't meet over the New Year holiday), while the original Calendar data incorrectly shows those instances occurring. Such pairs are "duplicate", even though they aren't identical.

How can I automate the process of identifying which calendar entries are duplicates, choose which one to keep, and delete the other? Is there AppleScript magic or something?

It can't be done since Apple doesn't think that's something anyone would ever need to do.

Maybe it's time for Apple to invest a few cycles in updating iCal, Contacts and Email - they haven't been updated in a decade.


Mount network share (AFP/SMB) for multiple users (fast user switching) i'm having the following problem with my network shares from my NAS (Synology 415+ if it matters) in Yosemite.

At home, we have an iMac with two different users. I moved all of our media (music & photos) to the NAS, so that both users could use the data with the according apps.
I thought, that it would be easy to mount the network shares for both users, but actually it isn't - or i'm doing something wrong.

I'm using a simple Applescript in the following form

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    mount volume "smb://ipaddress/sharename/"
end tell

that is started automatically when my user logs into the system.

That works fine for me. But when my partner switches to her user account, the mounts aren't accessible for her. Moreover, when she starts the same script as i do, the paths are getting messed up:

If two users mount the network shares, two different folders exist on the system: /Volumes/music for the first user and /Volumes/music-1 for the second user, which messes up all file paths (especially in iTunes, but also in Lightroom or other apps).

Is there ANY way to mount a network share for both users? I really don't care if i use AFP or SMB, i just want a network share which is usable for multiple users. Seems like a common scenario for me.

Setup your NAS to export a NFS-share. Refer to the Synology knowledgebase how to do this or use the following how-to to set it up, fine tune and secure your set-up.

You may do it manually in the command line also:
Let's assume your media folder is /Shares/Media. Create or edit a file named exports in /etc. The example below restricts the access to computers with an IP address in the range 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.254. You may have to restart your NAS or at least nfsd (nfs-daemon).

Linux/NAS file /etc/exports:

/Shares/Media 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(rw)

if you use a Mac Server use this line:

/Shares/Media -network 192.168.0.0 -mask 255.255.255.0

Edit /etc/auto_master on your Mac and add the line:

/-                                  auto_media

file /etc/auto_master:

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

and create a new file auto_media in /etc on your Mac

file /etc/auto_media:

/Media         IP-NAS:/Shares/Media

Please don't forget: all files mentioned above need a trailing empty line
enter sudo automount -vc in Terminal on your Mac with the output:

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

/Media will now always be visible in the root folder of your Mac and accessible for both of you as long as the NAS is up & running. No Apple Script to mount it nor a Connect to Server needed.

(Set up and tested on a Server 10.7 (no Synology NAS, because i don't own one, but it shouldn't make a difference) and Client 10.9)

AutomounMaker is an easy to use GUI tool (DONATEWARE OS X native Universal Binary) to create scripts that will mount an AFP, FTP, WebDAV(http), NFS or SMB network share.
You can use the script as a Startup Item in your user's session config to automatically mount the given share upon login.
If you use always the same shared volume on your desktop, AutomountMaker is more easy than the classic Connect to Server... proposed by Apple.
Go to http://jm.marino.free.fr/index.php?switch=sw_&title=AutomountMaker


Keyboard shortcut: shift+tab in chrome does wrong thing I'm a new mac user really (really) struggling to learn the mac keyboard shortcuts.  One that is just killing me right now is navigating forms in Chrome.

Say I hit Tab to go to the next element in a form.  When i hit Shift+Tab to try to return to that element, instead of going back up the form, Chrome navigates to the previous tab.

How do I fix this?  My strong preference is for Shift-Tab to simply reverse-navigate the form - that is pretty standard behavior..

As a workaround, or just to check whether the problem is with Google Chrome or something else, install this extension.

To configure it to go to the last input, type in Shift + Tab in Shortcut Key and as the Action, click Browser Action > Inner Page Action > Focus on the previous input element.

You could also try Reset Browser Settings and then try going back in a form in Incognito Mode - ⌘+Shift+N

They work for me. Out of curiosity, under the Window menu, what is the keyboard shortcut for "Select Next Tab" and "Select Previous Tab"?

Edit (because I'm an idiot and misused SO): If they aren't ⌥ + ⌘ + → and ⌥ + ⌘ + ←, then something's wrong. Check System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and see if they've been redefined there; otherwise, perhaps one of your extensions hijacked ⇧ + <tab>?


How to map Option+X but not change Option+Shift+X in KeyRemap4Macbook? I want to map Option+X to something. But this mapping effects Option+Shift+X key binding as a side effect. Is there a way to prevent it?

Here is an example mapping that I use:

<item>
    <name>movement home</name>
    <identifier>private.movehome</identifier>
    <not>VIRTUALMACHINE</not>
    <autogen>
        --KeyToKey--
        KeyCode::C,ModifierFlag::OPTION_L,
        KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT,ModifierFlag::FN
    </autogen>
</item>

<autogen>
  __KeyToKey__
  KeyCode::C, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE,
  KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, ModifierFlag::FN
</autogen>

The use of | ModifierFlag::NONE prevents other key combinations from being remapped.

Try System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys -> Change whatever..

or

Try System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts?

Hope I helped??


Is there any software for checking hardware in iOS? Is there anything like this in iOS for iDevices ?

This question & top answer are very relevant.
Basically "yes", but not so much from a customer / end user standpoint.  iOS has a diagnostics tool built in that is accessible from Apple once you give consent.
You can check your iOS device's health using Apple's main support site.  From that page you can select iPhone (or iPad), find an issue that would warrant running the diagnostic (I chose power, unexpected shutdown/restart), verify that a restore didn't resolve the issue and then enter your phone number / email address to start the diagnostic process.  Apple will text / email you a link to open.  The link opens the iOS diagnostic tool, which requires you to click through a legal agreement before starting the test.  The test results are sent back to Apple once they finish and you tap "done".  Back on the support site the page will refresh and show any issues that were found with the device as well as support options for resolving them.

For IOS function check, you can download free app Phone diagnostics from app store: https://itunes.apple.com/vn/app/phone-diagnostics/id1171677218?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

It's easy to use: just launch the app and click on each function test buttons to perform the test.


How to create recursive download and rename bash script I need to make a bash script that will download a image with curl and then rename the file, wait 5 mins and then re-download the file and rename it again so that the new file does not replace the old file. I understand the wait and curl download part but I cant make the script recursively rename the new files. It would need to rename the files like: latest.jpg --> latest1.jpg and then the next one latest.jpg --> latest2.jpg. Please help!

#!/bin/bash
while true
do
    curl -O link.com/latest.jpg
    let "i++"
    mv latest.jpg $ilatest.jpg
    sleep 5m
done

I would change two things to make it work

the variable need to be put in {} to separate it from the other text (how should bash know that the variable isn't called ilatest otherwise?
sleep expects the sleep time in seconds

This gives you

#!/bin/bash
i=0
while true
do
    curl -O link.com/latest.jpg
    let "i++"
    mv latest.jpg latest-${i}.jpg
    sleep $((5*60))
done

In addition, having the sleep as part of the loop code will require that you press ^C twice to terminate the loop. You might want to try the following instead

#!/bin/bash
i=0
s=0
while sleep $s
do
    curl -O link.com/latest.jpg
    let "i++"
    mv latest.jpg latest-${i}.jpg
    let 's=5*60'
done

I would do this as one-liner just saving file to a new location. Can't see any reason to move files around.

i=0; while :; do curl link.com/latest.jpg -o ${i}_latest.jpg && sleep $(( 5 * 60 )) && (( i++ )); done

I suppose this script takes long time to run and to be able to close terminal or logout suggest to use nohup command


How can one create a shortcut for pasting unformatted text in Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac? iWork provides the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Option-Shift-V to paste text without it's original formatting. How can I get this or a similar shortcut key for Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac?

I found the answer in this blog post

Create the AppleScript:

try
  set theClip to Unicode text of (the clipboard as record)
  tell application "Microsoft Word" to tell selection to type text text theClip
end try

  Save in
  /Users/YourUserName/Documents/Microsoft
  User Data/Word Script Menu Items as
  Paste unformatted\mosV.scpt (the
  backslashed bit at the end of the
  filename provides the shortcut).
  Restart Word and you can now paste
  without importing extraneous styles
  with Apple-Alt-Shift-V.

This blog post describes a method by redefining Cmd-V to a custom macro:

Unbind Cmd-V from standard “Paste”.
Record a macro for Cmd-V.
Fix the source code of the new macro (by replacing wdPasteDefault with wdFormatPlainText).

If you want to keep standard "Paste" functionality it might be better to use another key combination though.


"xcode-select --install" versus retrieving the dmg from Apple's developer website I would to ask a question closely related to already existing posts (How to install command line tools without error that is not currently available on Software Update server? and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19691701/failed-to-install-command-line-tools-on-osx-mavericks) but with the help of which I still could not fully solve my problem.

I have a MacBook Pro running Mac OSX 10.9. When I run xcode-select --install  from the terminal, the command fails with an error message Can't install software because it is not currently available from the Software Update Server (see second linked post for screenshot).

It was suggested by many to simply download the command line tools package from the developer website, which I have done (already had an account). My question, is the second procedure strictly equivalent to running xcode-select --install? I have suspicions that the paths to the different libraries and headers are not defined in the same way when downloading and executing the dmg.

I am running particle physics software called root and compiling with the available C++ interpreter fails with "Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64" error, probably due to the use of standard libc++ instead of libstdc++. Strangely enough this problem does not appear on another computer (running same OSX 10.9) where I was able to run the xcode-select --install command.

Is there any way to solve this error message when running xcode-select --install? People have suggested this could be due to the fact that command line tools are already installed but I have both tried deleting command line tools by hand (sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools) and even a clean install of Mavericks but no luck.

Are you sure they are installing the same version?

At the command line on both machines run cc -v - the latest version seems to be Apple LLVM version 5.0 (clang-500.2.79) (based on LLVM 3.3svn).

Also, try running

export

to see what environment variables you have set; it's likely that the development tools are prefixed somewhere you don't have a path, so the shell can't find them.


Very quiet audio output under Windows 10 (Late 2016 MacBook Pro) After installing Windows 10 with Boot Camp Assistant for my Late-2016 15" MacBook Pro, I'm finding maximum volume to be almost inaudibly quiet under nearly all uses. The audio is deafeningly loud at full volume under macOS, so something is definitely wrong

Windows shows the volume is maxed. Nothing obvious in control panel. The driver is apparently "Cirrius", but I know nothing about it.

Searching around yields a lot of similar complaints from 2009, and advice to install Realtek drivers, but that's so out of date I don't suspect I should risk it. Any ideas?

I have the same problem on a MacBook Air with the Cirrius drivers. I managed to get the volume to boost a little by checking the "disable all enhancements" box on the sound properties (as some online had suggested from a few years back), but still no where near as load as it gets on a Mac. It is certainly a driver issue but so far I've yet to find a fixed driver.

I have recently loaded windows 10 latest version on my MAC BOOK AIR 2018
Trust me its running like charm not even a single issue .
1 issue was low speaker volume .
But i figured out the problem and got a best solution
Follow Steps Below -
1) Open Control Panel
2) Go to sounds
3) In Playback Right Cick Speakers
4) Go to Properties and then to Enhancements
5) Disable all the enhancement
6) Apply and Enjoy


What does the "i" in Apple product names mean? iPhone, iPod, iPad, iCal, iLife, etc. Does the "i" mean anything? And is it a trademark for Apple?

When Steve Jobs first introduced the iMac in 1998, he proclaimed that the i stood for Internet. Jobs went on to say, "i also means some other things to us" and displayed a presentation slide with the keywords:

  internet
  individual
  instruct
  inform
  inspire

You can even view video of this event.

The "i" was first used on the iBook and iMac. These were produced as Steve Jobs wanted a pro and consumer model of a desktop and portable computer. This later rolled out with more products, iSight, iPod, iPhone, iPad.

Yes the products are trademarked, but using an "i" itself before a product is not trademarked and it cannot be. Here is Apple's trademark list

It's the I as in me. It means that these things somehow empower you.


Music from windows 7 to iPhone 6 without itunes I have a large number of songs I want to download from win7 to my iphone6,
What is the easiest way? I don't have iTunes on this computer.

It would be great to have file-access to iDevices, there appears to have been a lot of work done to make this difficult or nearly impossible from proprietary cords on up to inscrutable DB's. It seems unfair to pay so much for the products yet have such a trivial thing as open file access blocked so thoroughly and with such malicious intent! This, not just st for music files, but for ALL files.

I have seen two workarounds over the years -- one created a special driver that was used for low-level access to the entire storage device and created its own database with entries for every (music) file. The other method was to set up an FTP server using tFTP - an insecure and pretty featureless protocol.


Macbook Pro left (primary) click not working Two days ago, I noticed that my left clicking was acting off. When I would click something, it wouldn't register and I'd have to click repeatedly for it to actually work. Additionally, when I'm highlighting text, I'll still be holding onto the left click, but it'll cut out and I'll have to press down harder for it to continue registering.

The left clicking I use is the physical pressing down of the track pad. I prefer this method to the magic clicking because my hand can accidentally touch my track pad without it clicking on something eslse while I'm typing.

I thought my problem might be a minor fluke so I restarted my computer multiple times in an attempt to fix it, but nothing happened. I went through forums and only found problems vaguely similar to mine. None seem to have the problem of left clicking just cutting out randomly. Some forum posts suggested running an Apple Hardware Test and mine came back clear. Others have said to make sure there's no external mouse on bluetooth, but I don't have one.

I plugged a USB mouse in to make sure that left clicking as a whole wasn't a problem and it worked fine. I just want to know if anyone's had a similar problem and if there were any solutions to it before I take my computer in to the Geek Squad. I have a plan with them already, so there's no additional money being spent on taking my computer in, but I'd hate to have to waste their time and be away from my computer when I have school work to do on it.

It was my Magic Mouse. I turned it off and the problem was resolved. I had my mouse in a box with some other things that must have accidentally shifted and was pressing on the button. Once I found it and turned the mouse off, everything was fine.

the same behavior may also occur it seems when you would have two bluetooth mouses linked to your mac, (which could occur frequently), and both online, and close to the bluetooth antenna.
I had no effect on left click, with right click ok, both on trackpad and bt mouth on my 2015 macBook Air. I just had to reinitialize BTooth module through debug mode, forget the second mouse on the list, and all was ok from now on.


Is there a way to make Windows-style SMB share paths launch correctly? We have a mixed Windows/Mac network, with Windows fileservers, and an Exchange/Outlook mailsystem.

The Windows users send out emails with links to the shared files that look like:

\\FileServer01\topfolder\subfolder\shared.doc

If you right-click on the link in Mac Outlook 2010, it seems to have a pseudo-URL of:

file://///FileServer01/topfolder/subfolder/shared.doc

Mac Outlook 2010 makes that link clickable, but fails with an error:

The file ///FileServer01/topfolder/subfolder/shared.doc could not be found.

Given that we're not going to be able to get people to stop copy-pasting in Mac-unfriendly SMB links, is there any way to get the Finder or some handler to rewrite the URL into something the Mac can open?

I'm in a similar position at work, with a mixed environment. We use WinShortcutter, which is freeware. The allows you to right-click on a UNC path (such as \\FileServer01\topfolder\subfolder\shared.doc) and Open as Windows Link:

It's quite configurable as well, and allows drive mappings (so when you are sent a link that starts S:/folder, it will allow you to Open as Windows Link).

This works quite reliably for us.

In 10.8 there is functionality to do this built-in... so in a sense your wishes have been granted provided you can migrate to the newer operating systems. I can imaging the support for this will only get better with 10.9.