Macbook Pro (2009) doesn't recognise 7200rpm HDD I've been searching and searching for a solution to my problem and I've seen a lot of people have similar, but perhaps not quite the same, problem.

My original HDD failed on my MBP and I'm in the midst of trying to replace it, I wanted to make sure it was the HDD that had failed, so after backing the drive up, I formatted it and began reinstalling OSX Lion, however it keeps hanging during the install process.

Next I managed to get hold of another 320GB HDD to try that one, however once I boot up the install disc and use DiskUtility, the drive does not appear. If I connect the drive externally via USB, I'm able to see the drive and format it to Mac OS X journaled, but once I connect it internally again, DiskUtility still does not see it.

After trawling through post after post, I've tried downgrading the firmware to EFI 1.6 (still no luck), I've also tried using masking tape to thicken the SATA connector.

The main answer to come back was that the issue was the SATA Cable Connector in the Mac itself, however I'm reluctant to spend money buying a new one as I'm not convinced that is the issue due to the following...

...I then connected a smaller (160GB) HDD which is a 5400rpm drive and amazingly this drive is recognised by DiskUtility and I can install OS X Lion onto it without any issue at all.

I couldn't care less about enabling the 7200rpm drive for the faster transfer speed I just want my Mac to recognise the drive internally so that I can get the thing back up and running.

Does anyone have any idea why my Mac recognises a 5400rpm drive, but not a 7200rpm drive?

I'll bet you a dollar that its the cable.


View IE (6,7,8,9) on Mac? I am a web developer. I would like to view my web design on IE(6 - latest). Is there a quick way to view it?

Thanks in advance

EDIT:

I already have a Windows OS on my Mac using VirtualBox. However, I dont want to load such heavy program just to preview IE :(
I need an alternative or faster way to view IE

Wine claims to support IE 6, 7, and 8 with varying levels of efficacy.

It's not a simple solution, but it sure is a hell of a lot lighter-weight then a VM, and it effectively runs the full browser on OSX.

You need to be at least somewhat familiar with the command line to get anywhere with Wine, though.

Crossover Mac is basically a MacOS GUI for wine. It has the same capabilities as wine, but the GUI makes installing things much easier. On the other hand, it's not free.

possibly the best route out of all the options and a great tutorial

http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/04/internet-explorer-for-mac-ie7-ie8-ie-9-free/


Besides ServersMan, any apps that can turn iPhone into an web/app server? I have read from  Has anyone ever tried to use an iPhone as web server?, there is an app called ServersMan  that can turn Phone into an web server. But it is not available in my local app store. Do you have suggestions of alternatives for turning iPhone into an web/app server?

Hopefully, it can provide tunneling-like function so that it can be used in 3G network.

ServersMan is not a web server It's a pseudo server. It merely lets you access files in its Local Storage over a WiFi network. If you want a full-fledged web server running on your iPhone, you're going to have to install Apache, and you'll most definitely have to be JailBroken. It's not as simple as you'd hope.

You can create US AppStore account and download it from another than local AppStore.
Alternatively it's possible if you jailbreak your iPhone, and have Cydia to install apache and php.


My IDE runs tests slower when in a different workspace I am developing a server-side application using Java and OSX and quite often I have to run a rather large test suite to make sure everything is alright. I am using IntelliJ IDEA (Java-based IDE).

When I use one workspace only, tests finish in about ~3 minutes no matter whether the IDE has focus or not. It just has to be in the same workspace.

When I move the IDE to a different workspace (so I'd have 2 workspaces) or into fullscreen mode (which essentially creates a new workspace), test execution is ~100% slower (takes about 6 minutes).

When I keep the focus in the second workspace for the whole execution time period, we're back to ~3 minutes.

This is really puzzling to me. I measured it using various number of workspaces and various number of applications per workspace, same results.

Clarification from the discussion from the comments, to avoid confusion:

  If the focus in in the workspace with the IDE or full-screen IDE, it's fast. Once the focus is on a different workspace (so the IDE is either on a different workspace or in a full-screen mode (but with no focus)) then it is slower.

It part of OS X itself to optimize the resources and to keep wise balance between foreground process and background tasks. Operating system devotes more resources to the active workspace, and to put less CPU processing capacity to the background tasks.

Benefits are obvious:

the higher responsiveness for user of the system in the overall for the foreground process;
and less CPU load (less heat is produced, CPU fan is quiet), lower impact on the battery life.

It should be clearly visible with Activity Monitor App, how much power system devotes to specific process.


TrueCrypt mount fails with cryptic error I am trying to mount a TrueCrypt file on my Mac (OS X 10.8).
When I do so I get the following error:

hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable file system

That is all there is. I tried running from the command line, but it switches to the GUI and then gives the same error.

The password is correct. It gives a different error, if I mistype it.
The file is mountable and readable on Linux (Kubuntu 12.08 and 13.04)
I have two files were this happens (one is 470 Gb, the other is 300 Gb). One file where this is not the problem and at least reading works fine (haven't tested writing). That file is only 90 Gb.
The external disk where these files are on is formatted as ext4, which I mount through ext4fuse.

Please help me, I am in the process of copying the data onto a Mac compatible external disk. At the moment I am rsyncing over Wifi and it requires two computers running and takes ages.
UPDATE

Yesterday night, I copied the 300 Gb file to my Mac formatted external disk. The same problem happened, thus I'd conclude that it is not an ext4fuse issue.

The TrueCrypt volume is internally formatted as ext4.

It does not contain a hidden volume.

Try mounting the volume as “read-only”:

TrueCrypt → Preferences → Mount Options → Mount Volumes as read-only

If that doesn't do the trick then it's possible TrueCrypt could be having some issue with file system implementation mechanism (ext4fuse) not detecting that an ext4 volume is mounted. I've used FUSE for OS X with TrueCrypt and it works without any issues, so giving that a try instead of your current mechanism might help as well.

The file you're trying to mount may have been made on a "none" file system.


Mac App Store update stuck (Installing - Calculating...) I opened GarageBand for the first time, to find that most of the loops required me to download the Apple Loops from Software Update. I agreed to this.

The App Store opened and gave me the option to install the update from Updates - I clicked Install and waited for the download to complete. It did, and then the installation began.

About half an hour later, the update is stuck on (Installing - Calculating...) This doesn't seem normal - the last time I installed the Loops, they were done in about ten minutes.

Force quitting and re-opening the App Store doesn't help, nor does a reboot. When I open the App Store, the update is still at the same process.

Is there anything that I could do to get the update to finish installing?

Here is a screenshot of the App Store in this state:

In an act of desperation, I managed to fix the issue by:

Deleting /Library/Updates
Doing

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist RecommendedUpdates
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist DidRegisterLocalUpdates

in a Terminal session
Restarting the Mac

The update is re-downloading now.

Interestingly, before I tested these steps, I found the update ready to install in /Library/Updates, however when I tried to install the PKG file, Installer claimed that another installation needed to finish (?). Deleting it and restarting fixed the problem.

just go to store option and click on reload page


How to extract InstallESD.dmg from my iMac Recovery Partition? I'm trying to extract the InstallESD.dmg image so that I can create a USB key any time I want to in the future, to recover/boot my 2011 iMac.  I would think this would be no problem at all, since the machine obviously is authorized to run Lion.

However, every time I try to run the installer in order to retrieve the image (following tutorials such as http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110831105634716&query=lion+usb for example), I am stopped cold by the need to sign into the App Store with my Apple ID.  Apple then checks to see if I've bought Lion - which I have not since it came with the machine - and refuses to let me proceed.

This is maddening, does anyone know how to simply and direct extract the InstallESD image from the recovery partition without requiring an App Store login?

And in case anyone mentions it, I do NOT have the installer as downloaded from the app store so I cannot just open the package to get the file - it's not available that way on the recovery partition.

I should also add that I've tried Lion DiskMaker and while it seems like a great concept, the AppleScript always crashes just before completion, and I don't trust the result.

The recommended way to create a recovery partition on an external disk is now to use Apple's Recovery Disk Assistant. It was released after that Mac OS X Hints article and Lion DiskAssistant.

If your Mac has firmware support for internet recovery mode (like Macs released after 2010-2011), you won't probably need any external recovery partition. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4718:

  If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery System, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion automatically use the OS X Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery System (Command-R method above) doesn't work. OS X Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's servers.

The Recovery Disk Assistant only replicates the Recovery HD. You will still need internet to download.

However, there is still a way. This will help you http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110831105634716.


How to list files of any installed app in the MAC programmetically? I am making MAC app in which I want to list of files / folders related to any installed app in the mac.

For example;

I want to get list of all the files and folders of Skype app installed in my MAC programmatically.

How can I do this?

Can I get list of files or folder related to installed mac programatically?

There are three ways to do this:

pay for or find people to install every possible app in a controlled environment and create a database of files and app versions
make code to patrol the file system and catalog changes and try to piece apart which changes resulted from which app install
pray all app developers use either the App Store distribution method or write an installation package receipt with a .bom file

Practically, none of these options is easy. The penalty of bad patrol code is worse than whatever problem you may be trusting to solve. The rest have miserable coverage or onerous errors and costs.

Try using this command : mdfind -name "Your app name"


Constant "please unlock iPhone" message in Photos 2.0 I recently upgraded my Mac Pro from Yosemite to Sierra, and whenever I plug in my iPhone 6s, both iTunes and Photos will open as they should.  However within Photos (and Image Capture), I get a "please unlock iPhone" message.  When I unlock my iPhone, everything proceeds.  While I do not get the "unlock phone" nag from iPhoto, however, my photo library has been converted to use Photos.

As per discussions at the Apple forums, I've reset my iPhone's network settings.  This prompted a fresh "trust this computer" dialog on my iPhone, for which I clicked "trust".  Unfortunately, this had no effect on Photos or Image Capture, which are still asking me to unlock the iPhone.

How can I get Photos and Image Capture to recognize this iPhone and stop asking me to unlock it?

macOS Sierra 10.12.3
Photos 2.0
iPhone 6s running iOS 10.2.1

Being very quick to press "trust" (on iPhones dialog 'trust this computer') might be a solution. Please see the detailed description here:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/297828/254849


What is a good Apple podcast to listen to on a daily basis? If I have time to listen to just one podcast a day or every other day about Apple stuff, which one should I listen to?  I know there's a lot of different specialized Apple podcasts out there (i.e. Mac downloads, iOS apps, Apple news, etc.), but can anyone recommend a general podcast which has elements of all of these?  I'd also be interested in the best podcasts in certain specialized areas, but mostly I'm looking for one that I can listen to consistently and find out most of what is going on in the Apple world.

MacBreak Weekly seems to fit the bill except it's, er, weekly. I don't know of any daily podcasts.

I'm not sure about the "daily" but TED talks are very good. They have multiple "streams" for audio, video, and high definition video.


Fan / Processor picks up and runs hard when I let MacBook idle and sleep. Botnet? This problem just started happening since I got to my new apartment. I've had this computer (2014 maxed out MacBook Pro) for about a year, and it never happened before moving here.

Basically, when I am using the computer to browse the Internet or work on docs etc it is quiet and responds normally. When I stop using it for a while, but leave it on (or in sleep mode) it enters very intense activity. Or at the very least the fan starts running like crazy.

The activity/fan only stops if I power down the machine completely, or if I start using the machine again, in which case it gradually slows down (the fan noise) and then stops completely after about 20 secs of me being on the computer again. It is counterintuitive that the computer fan / activity picks up when I am NOT using the machine, rather than vice versa.

I have been able to find very little that is helpful based on Google searches, although I did find at least one post suggesting that this could be due to botnet infection, which was my initial thought and concern (prior to seeing that post).

Probably not much that can be done diagnostically via a message board analysis, but I thought I would post since there doesn't seem to be a lot of easily available info on this phenomenon. I suppose a less nefarious explanation would be that there are major updates that need to run in the background, but that explanation doesn't seem consistent with my experience using Macs previously.

Could be running Spotlight. Leave it on overnight and see if it eventually stops.


Changing my home address in iOS 7 not picked up in Maps or notification center I need to change my home address, following this post. I've moved, so I need to update my address, but it does not seem to work. My new street address does not exist in the map (as I've moved to a newly developed area), and when changing the address in my contact, the old address is still recognized as "Home" in my Maps application. (Thus, also displaying "Right now, it would take you XX mins to drive home" to my old address) Does anyone know how I can correct this?

I was able to clear the map history from Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services -> Frequent Locations. Doing this, changing my contact card and updating my AppleID seem to have solved the problem (Apart from the fact that my street doesn't exist yet).

On iPhone 7 go to map settings: change house number, city, state and zip. Pretty easy actually. Went to Samsung 7... so excited to get an iPhone again❤


How to upgrade OpenSSL in OS X? Today the heartbleed OpenSSL exploit was announced in the wild, which allows an attacker to surreptitiously detect and steal private server keys (allowing them to MitM and decrypt your encrypted data and steal passwords).  This affects OpenSSL versions including 1.0.1f which is the version on my up-to-date Mavericks computer Mac (because I used port/brew to install other software which updated my openssl without me realizing it):

$ openssl version
OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014

This demonstrates I am not using the Mavericks version of OpenSSL:

$ which openssl
/opt/local/bin/openssl

OpenSSL released a fix today in 1.0.1g and I wonder how I can get this fixed version installed over my current version?

For what it's worth, I just used homebrew (http://brew.sh/):

brew update
brew install openssl
brew link --force openssl
openssl version -a

If one of the bad versions come up (1.0.1a-f), you can figure out which version of openssl you're using, this way:

which openssl

Often this is from /usr/bin. To make sure you get the updated version, drop a symlink into /usr/local/bin to point to the updated openssl, like this:

ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/openssl/1.0.1g/bin/openssl /usr/local/bin/openssl

As an alternative to that final step, some people replace the openssl in /usr/bin with a symlink to /usr/local/Cellar/openssl/1.0.1g/bin/openssl (or whatever your version is):

mv /usr/bin/openssl /usr/bin/openssl_OLD
ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/openssl/1.0.1g/bin/openssl /usr/bin/openssl

But this is known to cause problems with some more recent versions of OSX.  Better to just insert a new symlink into /usr/local/bin, which should take precedence on your path over /usr/bin.

Whoever doesn't want to use brew or ports and just wants to replace the default OpenSSL 0.9.8 installation can always disable system integrity protection by rebooting into recovery mode (cmd+R) and issuing

csrutil disable

and afterwards compile openssl with

./config --prefix=/usr
make install

It successfully replaced OpenSSL in ElCapitan for me and I was able to compile curl and apache's httpd 2.4 without any issue directly from sources. The reasoning behind the method some might consider drastic is that ElCapitan is no longer maintained by Apple and no updates are forthcoming so it likely won't break. Secondly, it saves you from pointing to openssl folder in /usr/local for every program you compile making compilation more robust.


Is there a web inspector available on iOS? To be abundantly clear, I'm looking for a web inspector (like Chrome's) that I can use on an iOS device like an iPad to debug web pages without a computer.

I'm aware that you can connect your phone to your laptop and do remote debugging, but that's not what I'm asking about.

Background: I'm a web programmer thinking of ditching my MacBook Pro for the new iPad Pro. I have my full dev environment setup on Nitrous, and I have a multitude of possible replacements for Sketch (like iDraw, though I've been bugging the Sketch team non-stop to announce an iOS version, as I would love to stay with Sketch if at all possible). The only thing I'm missing is a web inspector to use on the iPad itself to debug CSS & JS.

So, are there any such solutions out there for debugging web pages on iOS without a computer?

I found this app, but not sure how extensive is it compared to a traditional web inspector

Ergo Web Tools by James Finley
https://appsto.re/us/3vdC_.i

Let me know if you've found an alternative or something

You have to go to Settings - > Advanced -> Web Inspector and then turn it on and plug in your computer and inspect a webpage that you want.


How do I extract a large voice memo file off my iPhone and into my mac How do I extract a large voice memo file off my iPhone and into my mac. It is too large to email.

Dock your iPhone via USB.
Open itunes.
Click the name of your iPhone under Devices in the left column.
Click the Music tab.
Click the checkbox for Include voice memos.
Sync your device.
Your files will appear under a new Voice Memos playlist in iTunes

I have tried @gentmatt's answer and it don't work for me.

Then I downloaded diskaid which is fantastic.


OSX Boot drive selection screen is slow, un-responsive and takes forever to load in Macbook Pro (early 2015) I have a Macbook Pro Retina 13" (Early 2015) and I have a bootcamp partition with Windows 10 installed in it. Also, there is an Ubuntu Linux on another partition, so it’s a triple boot computer. I’m not using rEFInd, but the stock startup manager instead. I am switching operating systems using the option key at boot and it was all working fine until recently.

The problem I am facing right now is that every time I turn my laptop on or try to switch operating systems using the option key the drive selection screen takes a long time to appear, like literally 20 to 30 seconds. This is not really normal because it used to be 2-3 seconds. Also, once the drive selection screen appears the mouse pointer just doesn't work or sometimes work un-reliably or extremely slowly. I can use the arrow keys in the keyboard to select the drives but the response is just too slow. Once i hit an arrow key it takes 15 to 20 seconds to register and move the selection, sometimes it doesn't respond at all. And then finally when I hit return it takes another half a minute or so to load up the boot sequence. After that the operating system works just fine. I also have GRUB on one of the partitions for loading Linux. When I select Linux in the Startup Manager drive selection screen the GRUB console starts and it works very slow as well: I have to type commands and wait 10 seconds for the letters to appear on the screen. Ubuntu itself works just fine.

Could anyone please point me out on any possible causes of the problem? I will provide any additional info if you request.

There is a very similar question, but it was solved by completely reinstalling everything. However I would like to find the real cause of the problem to be able to prevent it in future (my setup is kinda complex, and I don’t want to reinstall everything just to face this problem again in a month or two).

Update 1:
I have tried to reset NVRAM and SMC with no result.

Update 2:

I don't remember what exactly preceded the happening of this issue, but here are my thoughts:

Perhaps this happened after I installed "Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X" or "FUSE for OS X". I have both installed now and I use them to access Windows and Linux partitions
Maybe this happened after the hibernation of the Windows partition
It's possible that the issue happened after the system update, but it definitely happened long before the major update from El Capitan to Sierra.
The issue takes place not only in Startup Manager, but in any software that is running before the OS starts booting. Recovery, Hardware Diagnostics, Startup Manager, and even GRUB (which is on it's own partition) all work extremely laggy. If I don't hold any keys and let the macOS boot normally, then everything that occurs before the apple logo is taking much more time than it should. As soon the logo and progress bar appear - the lags are gone. Same with other OSes.

The operating system is macOS Sierra 10.12.1 along with Windows 10 and Ubuntu. I have tried to run Apple hardware diagnostics (by holding down the D key at startup) and got this message:

  There may be an issue with the SD card reader. Reference code VDC001

I've noticed that when I bought the laptop this test passed without any issues.

I also tried to boot in Safe Mode, but nothing happened, except that the macOS GUI was glitchy and choppy while in safe mode.

Update 3:

I have found an interesting behaviour. The issue is gone just for one boot whenever I do these steps:

Boot into Ubuntu Live USB stick
Choose "Shut down" -> "Restart" from Ubuntu system menu
The subsequent boot goes without slugging, seems like the issue is gone, no matter which OS I choose this time.

But the issue is back at the next boot. Also, if I choose to "Shut down" at the step 2, the subsequent boot is slugging like every other.
What could be so special in Ubuntu live stick, that it cures the issue for one time?

Troubleshooting is often a process of elimination, so it can take time and patience. We'll have to work through these steps one at a time until we can identify the cause and resolve it.

1. Software

As a starting point, I would update macOS Sierra to 10.12.2 (it's been out for about two weeks now).

I'd also ensure you have the latest version of Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X and FUSE for macOS installed.

Once you've ensured you have the latest versions installed, let us know how you go.

some 2015 macbook pro owner reporting the slow/unresponding issue has gone after update to the newest macos 10.12.4beta8. It is clearly a driver issue and apple has finally addressing that on their latest update.


iPhone 6 stuck in iTunes recovery logo After having a jailbroken iPhone for a while, I wanted a clean version of iOS 9.3.1. So i followed all the steps in iTunes to achieve this. But when the little black bar on the iPhone was filled up it restarted into the iTunes recovery logo.

I tried every possible way of getting out of it, including trying DFU mode. But every single time I try something new it puts me back on the iTunes recovery logo.

What I have tried:

Updating phone
Restoring phone
Trying another computer
iRecovery

Sometimes a battery change will solve the problem


Is there a keyboard shortcut for sleeping a display? Possible Duplicate:
  Is it possible to put the display to sleep without putting the whole computer to sleep?

What is the keyboard command to sleep (or turn off) a display, but not actually put the computer to sleep?

The keyboard command for sleeping all displays is Control ^ + Shift ⇧
 + Eject ⏏
. This shortcut doesn't put the computer to sleep, but only shuts off the display.

At the risk of sounding like a smart-ass, pressing the Power button on the display I wish to "sleep" works for me.


My MacBook Pro freezes if nothing is moving on the screen My MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) started freezing every time I boot it.

I've tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC, and have even reformatted it.

After doing that, I noticed that if I kept moving the mouse (trackpad or external mouse), my computer would no longer freeze. However, if I stopped moving the mouse, then the computer would freeze again.

The computer doesn't have this behavior if I start it in Safe Mode.

How might I troubleshoot this further?

Edit: When I was trying to copy the log from Console, I had to move the cursor or the computer would freeze. But after I open Safari, I could stop with no issue. I shift tabbed on Console and then the Mac froze again!

Edit 2: After some test, I figured out new strange behaviors. If something is moving on my screen, no freeze.

I was on Youtube, and I played a video > no freeze during the entire video. I stopped the video > freeze after 2s.

I tried something else: I launched another video then I minimized the window > freeze after 2s, but I could still hear the sound.

It's like the computer's freezing only if nothing is moving on the screen.

From your Console log, the last event before reboot was the

Sep 26 03:35:00 Ashleys-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.bsd.dirhelper[379]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.bsd.dirhelper

What is Dirhelper

http://www.manpagez.com/man/8/dirhelper/osx-10.6.5.php

Possible solution..

Copy Dirhelper Plist as safety precaution  located in

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.bsd.dirhelper.plist

Then delete it.

Restart

You can also try Safe mode to isolate the issue..

What safe mode does...

Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed
Loads only required kernel extensions
Prevents startup items and login items from opening automatically
Disables user-installed fonts
Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files


Using Lightning headphones in my Dell laptop I have an iPhone 7 with Lightning headphones. I got a connecting adapter to use 3.5mm compatible headphones on an iPhone 7. But, is it possible to use these Lightning headphones on the 3.5mm jack of my Dell laptop? I tried Googling and haven't found any converter/adapter.

You would need a USB to Lightening adapter for that. The newer Dell laptops do come with USB-C port adapters.

The lightning to 3.5mm jack adapter that comes with the iPhone 7 should work with the Dell laptop and the iPhone. That adapter was constructed to work with the standard 3.5mm headphone jack that most devices use. I've yet to see a special 3.5mm jack, just because it was/is an industry standard.


How to Create Templates for Windows Publisher on a Mac I have a client who works in Publisher on a PC however, I work on a Mac and use InDesign. What is the best program for me to set up Templates in InDesign so they can open them up in Publisher on their system?

Jeff

I understand that there may be different ways to achieve the end goal but since no one has come up with a solution at this point, here is what I suggest you try:

There is a neat little application for the Mac called Wine. All in all it allows you to run Windows applications on a mac.
About 7 months ago, I used it to run Publisher on mac without a single hiccup along the way. Your client will save a bit of money with the InDesign app and (depending on the size of your project) perhaps it does the job better than any other third party applications.

Here is a link:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/open-microsoft-publisher-mac-56433.html

Give it a go and let me know if this answer suits your project.

I've tried Wine and found it really difficult to setup. And when I managed to get it working it often crashed or stopped working suddenly. There are apparently some good alternatives to Microsoft Publisher on Mac though although I haven't tried any of them yet:
https://machow2.com/publisher-for-mac/


How can someone coming from Windows learn Mac OS X file system and Finder? I have recently purchased a Macbook Pro and I am very impressed with the machine and OS X. Coming from Windows the one thing I have struggled with is the file system and the Finder application. I suppose I am very used to drag and drop of files in Windows Explorer. As a aspiring Mac developer, should I ditch Finder altogether and use the Terminal only?

Also, whenever I am trying to decide where to put a document or file I wonder what all the directories in the UNIX file system are for and where files should go, and I end up just putting it somewhere and it seems to be a real mess now :).

Do you know of any resources/ tutorials that would be of any help?

In windows you got:

Desktop, and
My Documents

On OS X:

You got $HOME folder ( represented as ~ which also comes from OSX's unix heritage) . Here is the usual and expected place for user files. Your Documents, Music, Downloads as well as the Desktop folders all live in your home folder.

So, everything, what is YOURS put into $HOME folder somewhere. Make your own hierarchy if the default one is unpleasant or unuseful.

Music, Movies, Pictures are - as in windows
Public - your own Shared folder
Documents - for your documents
of course, you can make any number of sub-folders in your HOME.

Applications belong in /Applications or ~/Applications folder. You can put them in the another place too and OSX will find and run applications no matter where they are stored. You can make hierarchy here too, as I told once in my older post.

One more thing - Fonts, you can put fonts into $HOME/Library/Fonts, or into /Library/Fonts (for all users)

For the start, this is enough. Don't touch other folders yet (you don't need). If something needs to be used by multiple users on the same Mac, generally store it in /Users/Shared or change the permissions in the alternate place you store them.

for the common unix standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

Personally, I would ditch finder altogether.
It is not an accurate representation of the file system, and gets VERY confusing.
The command line can be daunting at first, but if you keep working with it, you will have much better control over your machine.


iCal with Google CalDAV issues I currently have iCal syncing to one Google account with 1 main calendar and 3 sub-calendars (selected on Delegation tab). Let's say that this account is example@gmail.com.

This is the only one account set up in iCal.

Additionally I have 4 email accounts defined in Mail.app in this order:

example1@example.com
example2@example.com
example@gmail.com
example3@example.com

Problem 1 - iCal will not send out invites to attendees

I cannot make iCal send invites when creating an event within a calendar that's synced with Google.

I have to create a local calendar on Mac, create an event there - invites are sent out "correctly" (see Problem 2), then I simply move the event from one calendar to another and this seems to do the trick.

This seems to be a bit troublesome though (obviously, really). Is there anything I can do to make it work properly - so the invites are sent out from Google's CalDAV calendar?

Problem 2 - iCal invites email addresses

iCal seems to be totally inconsistent with using email addresses when sending invitations.

Consider the setup:

1 CalDAV account in iCal (example@gmail.com),
1 local calendar (as mentioned in Problem 1),
4 email accounts in Mail (as described above).

Now iCal seems to be sending invites using the topmost email account set up in Mail.app - in this case example1@example.com. Is there a way to use different email account to do this?

Also, it seems that iCal creates invites using the email account defined in iCal accounts - in this case example@gmail.com, even though I use local Calendar and not the CalDAV one!

This means that invite is sent from example1@example.com, but people replying to invites send them back to example@gmail.com. This really is plain wrong. Any way to sort it out?

NOTE: Ideally I'd like iCal to send invites from the second Mail account - example2@example.com.

iCal doesn't send invitations - Google Calendar do.

You need to set up Notifications for each Google Calendar - main and sub-calendars.

"Google Cal->Calendar settings->Calendars->[select calendar]->Notifications->[set check mark at Email and/or SMS for each type of invitations]"

Someone needs to read the help files on google's page... Just because you've sync'd your google cal w/ ical doesn't mean you can go & send invites to anyone willy nilly. Have you told google that your going to "share" your cal w/ this other person who may or may not have a google account? Did they accept your ical share? As far as "sending out" invites, that'll happen off your "default" email account. Generally iCal will send out a "link" to your event & lots of people just click on that to go to a page where they "accept" or "deny" or "reply" to your invite, so auto received from your gmail account. You could set up a rule to forward them to your other email account if you prefer?


Enter a filename in the File Open dialog Can I enter a path to a file and its name instead of selecting a file in Mac OS X file dialog?

I tried just typing into an open dialog but it will just try to "Go to a folder", it won't accept a full path.

I'm on Mac OS X Lion

Yes. When the Finder dialog box is active type ⇧⌘G to bring up the Go to the folder direct entry dialog. You can enter the path to the file in the dialog using the Unix-type path expressions you'd expect: ~ for your home directory, / for a directory separator, etc.

The really nice thing about the "Go to folder" dialog is that auto-completion works - type the first couple of characters in the name, then TAB, and it fills in the rest of the characters.  If you get an error instead (say, you forgot one directory name in the path) you can correct it immediately instead of having to find the mistake at the end.  The only significant limitation is that you have to type an absolute path, starting at either your home directory or the file system root.  There's no concept of a current directory, as in bash.


How do I type the euro value sign € on a Mac? I've tried bashing on my keyboard with the ⌥ alt/option key pressed with the ⇧ shift key pressed but I do not seem to be able to find how I can get the euro value sign.

⇧ shift+4 gives the dollar sign: $

What keystrokes do I need to use to get the euro € sign?

On an American English keyboard you can type the European Currency symbol (€) with Option + Shift + 2.

On a British Mac keyboard, type [fn]-[alt]-2 to get €


Manage iOS Developer Enterprise Programs for several companies I am a sole trader and I have developed an iPad app that I'm going to sell to several companies independently.
They are small companies (<50 employees) that have nothing to do with IT and it would be a nightmare for them to register with the Developer Enterprise Program.

That's why I'm probably going to register for each of them.

1- Can I register for several Enterprise Programs with my Apple ID, or does it have to be done by someone inside the companies (with a different ID each time that then adds me as as admin)?

2- In that case, am I going to be able to register on their behalf (if they provide me with their apple id + password? or if I appoint myself as the contact for Apple?)

3- Do I even need that program to deploy less than 100 apps to iPads?

You will need to use the Enterprise Program, unless you want to deploy everything on the iTunes store.

In terms of if you can register for several Enterprise Programs, a single organization can enroll in up to five iOS Developer Enterprise Programs.  However, each Enterprise distribution provisioning profile can only be associated with one App ID.

This Stackoverflow post should help.

you may need to register different  program , then each program invite your appleid as an admin.


What software is available (preferably free) to edit PDF files on Mac OS X? What free software/app is there to edit pdf files on Mac OS X?

Specifically I am looking to edit an existing PDF file and re-save it in PDF format.

For simple tasks like fixing typos, OpenOffice or LibreOffice do the job

The best solution is indeed, Preview... It's built into Mac OSX and is the easiest to use if you want to create/edit/view PDF files.

Thanks Apple for thinking this through! :)


What iOS games use multi-touch in an innovative way? I am looking for iOS games which use multi-touch in such a way that is not possible to emulate on other systems. This does not include games that use multi-touch to emulate a button and analog stick controller. So far I have found these apps:

Eliss - pinch in and out to combine planets
Sway - Left/Right side of screen to dedicated to each arm of the character
Cross Fingers - Must use multiple fingers on some levels to hold blocks out of the way

After more research I have found these games:

Galcon - Swiping multiple weapons to different enemy planets at the same time
Bed Bugs - Swiping away multiple enemys
Pinch 'n Pop - Very similar to Eliss
Pinch - Looks similar to Eliss but with a maze component
Touchgrind - It is also available for OSX but way harder due to not being able to touch the screen directly
Touchgrind BMX - From the makers of Touchgrind
Buggled - hold down as many bugs as you can?

I made this a community wiki so edit away.

Meeblings - Using two fingers, you can activate two of those little guys at once.

Check out Pangolin on IOS. - action puzzler that use two fingers to make trampolines


Is there a good Hotmail client for Mac OS X? I have had an Hotmail account since 1997 (i.e. don't ask me to switch - have hundreds of filters and folders and thousands of contacts) and I recently switched to a Mac and I am looking for a Mac client that would deliver the same functionality as Windows Live Mail did in my PC. Also, don't ask me to forward/import to Gmail. I have tried that numerous times - Gmail fails at importing filter rules or nested folders properly from Hotmail and it also has numerous issues with sync and contacts etc when importing from Hotmail.

The Mail.app only supports POP3 for Hotmail which I hate because it is only local sync - I am looking for either IMAP/DeltaSync/Exchange (i.e. 2-way sync) for my Hotmail to work in Mac. I tried Postbox/Sparrow Lite/Outlook in Mac Office 2011/Thunderbird with webmail plugin/Eudora and none worked. I tried mBox for Mac and it worked great for about 2 weeks and now it stopped working with the new Lion Mail.app update. In anycase, mBox has been out of development since 2009. I looked at IzyMail but I am not willing to pay a subscription - I don't mind paying a one time fee though.

Hotmail used Exchange ActiveSync which works well on my iPhone. Mac's Mail program works with many Exchange servers, so I am really confused why Mac Mail cannot ActiveSync with my Hotmail account which apparently supports Exchange.

I just want a mail client that truly syncs with Hotmail. Information to a POP3 clients flows one way so the Mac cannot update the server with read status, reply status and more.

I am willing to pay for a solution and I just can't find such a software! I am also willing to pay a one-time fee for an IMAP gateway too and I can't find any such thing either.

Is it really that hard to get Hotmail working in Mac?

Pipe your hotmail through a Gmail account, either by forwarding everything from Hotmail to Gmail or by setting Gmail to download your Hotmail using POP.

Configure your Gmail to send using your Hotmail credentials.

Then access your Gmail in Mail.app via IMAP.

Setup your Hotmail account as an exchange account in the apple mail. The domain is m.hotmail.com.


Custom keyboard layout problem High Sierra I have just upgraded my OS to macOS High Sierra.

I have been using a custom layout for my Magic Keyboard. But after upgrading to the newer version is stopped working.

I have installed the custom keyboard again using Ukele, but it doesn't work properly.

Here are some weird problems I have encountered

It shows the custom layout in top bar. However I am not able to select this layout. Also this layout is missed in the System Settings.

After rebooting, it may be able to switch to the custom layout and even work correctly, but after some time it may stop working, or there are a lot of duplicated layouts will be displayed in the Settings.

When switching to another input source using Cmd-Space it may show an empty list item without any title.
I need to add my custom layout every time I reboot my laptop.

Please suggest how to fix this problem, I cannot work with the default keyboard layout.

UPDATE

Something really weird is happening to new OS

Here is duplicated layouts, and as far as they are same, I can't remove duplicates.

Some things to try based on others who have had this kind of problem with other keyboards

Make sure you do not have Siri turned on and that its keyboard shortcut is set to none.
If your layout is in Home/Library, try Library instead.  And vice versa, and try it in both at same time.
Disable any antivirus apps
Safe Boot
Set up new user account and see if it works when logged into that

Ukelele is BUGGY software. I've had the problem you mention more than once, and the only answer was to forego the notion of creating an entire bundle and instead to create a layout only. You must be careful not to select the 'Name' option on the 'Keyboard' menu or the 'Rename' option on the 'File' menu. If you do, the keyboard will not install no matter what you do subsequently, up to and including loading and manually changing the content files.

Instead, just use the 'Install' option on the file menu, and it will install the keyboard using the filename you chose when you created the keyboard file.


Zipping bundle via Automator I am looking for a way to zip a fcpx bundle with an Automator service. Automator won't accept a bundle as an input for a service (zip, rename and copy to two different locations for backup purposes), neither as a file or directory. Any ideas?

I believe you want to define a watched folder that selects all, compress (zip), rename the archive.zip file, copy for another locations and erase all to wait new files. If the automator action is not working properly you could try using applescript to use Finder commands. For instance open the folder using Finder and run the script:

set numberOfFiles to number of files in folder (((path to desktop folder) as text) & "YourFolder")
tell application "Finder"
    activate
end tell
tell application "system events"
    keystroke A using command down -- select all
    tell process "Finder"
          click menu item "Compress " & numberOfFiles & " Items" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
    end tell
end tell

After that carry on with your actions to rename, copy and delete.


create file that can be mounted I am trying to create a bootable filesystem filename.fs from a directory that contains all the OS files.
My problem is that I cannot create a file that contains a filesystem. I found a explanation for doing this on ubuntu but macos does not have mkfs and newfs_* gives me the following error.
> newfs_msdos ./clonezilla-live-2.6.6-15-amd64.fs
newfs_msdos: warning: ./clonezilla-live-2.6.6-15-amd64.fs is not a character device
newfs_msdos: ./clonezilla-live-2.6.6-15-amd64.fs: Cannot get partition offset: Inappropriate ioctl for device

I may be going about this all wrong but I have not found any instructions on creating a bootable filesystem from a directory that contains all the files for my OS.

To create a mountable disk image, use hdiutil. The straightforward way just creates a DMG which can then be mounted and written to
hdiutil create -size 500m -volname CLONEZIL -fs FAT32 clonezilla.dmg

To create a DMG with the content of an existing directory use
hdiutil create -srcfolder my-clonezilla-dir -volname CLONEZIL -fs FAT32 clonezilla.dmg

To mount it afterwards either double-click the DMG file in Finder or run one of the following in Terminal
open clonezilla.dmg
hdiutil attach clonezilla.dmg

To unmount either eject in Finder or run
hdiutil detach /Volumes/CLONEZIL

Creating a file containing a file system on macOS is done with the utility hdiutil. hdiutil, to quote it's man page "uses the DiskImages framework to manipulate disk images".
Bootability of volumes in macOS is controlled by the bless utility.
A tutorial on using both utilities is outside the scope of an AskDifferent answer but you could start with this, on hdiutil, and the two man pages.
When you have a more specific question then ask away :).


How do I exit python in the Mountain Lion Terminal? I'm having a couple problems with basic command line stuff in the terminal of Mountain Lion.

control + D does not exit Python as it does in Lion; instead it splits the screen.

Meanwhile, I also haven't figured out how to continue writing after having viewed the contents of a text document - the terminal doesn't allow it.

Hello hello hello!
ex12.txt (END)

So far, no matter what I push after this, I get a nasty little beeping sound

As Control + D works for me on multiple Macs, I'll presume something is amiss with your installation, keyboard or keyboard handler. (Your difficulty with the pager also lends credence to this theory.)

You can use the alternate quit() to exit the interpreter until you have looked at how Python was installed or think of some modifications you might have on the key mapping on your Mac.

I had the same problem and I came across this post.

I think we both thought that we did ^ Ctrl-D but we actually did ⌘ Cmd-D, which is different shortcut and splits the terminal window.


Can I use non-apple headphones with an iPhone? Is it okay to connect non-Apple headphones to an iPhone (a 5s, in this case) or do I need to use apple branded or authorized headphones for some reason?

Here is the visual comparison of Apple TRRS plug and a standard TRS plug.

On the top you can see a 4-pin headset connector. A headset connector needs to be using the same TRRS standard, or it will not function properly if at all.

On the bottom you can see a 3-pin headphone connector. Any headphone connector will work fine.

Standard 3.5mm jack stereo headphones have a 3-conductor configuration of TRS (Tip, Ring, Sleeve). The pinout for these connectiors is: Left Audio, Right Audio, Ground. Connectors for headphones with a mic have an additional ring which results in a 4-conductor TRRS configuration (Tip, Ring, Ring, Sleeve).

There have been different TRRS standards:

The original OMTP configuration, which was created by Nokia and has a pinout of Left Audio, Right Audio, Mic, Ground.
AHJ (American Headset Jack) with a pinout of Left Audio, Right Audio, Ground, Mic.
CTIA, named after The Wireless Association, which replaced AHJ and has the same pinout. CTIA jacks have improved compatibility to support not only AHJ but also OMTP. CTIA is by default required for Android device manufacturers.

Source: All About Windows Phone

Wikipedia has a short overview for which device uses which standard.

At last a few points to note:

Plugging an OMTP headset into an AHJ jack, and vice versa, will result in the audio-out being inaudible or very quiet. Converters to switch between the two types of headsets are readily available, but do add extra bulk, and may not work reliably with remote control functionality.
Apple uses a CTIA/AHJ connector arrangement, but uses a non-standard microphone and volume control signaling method. Simple commands like Play/Pause and Skip however should work across modern mobile devices.

I use Yurbuds Ironman Inspire Black In-Ear Sport Headphones, purchased at a TELUS store and they work perfectly well as regular earphones when I want privacy as well as in the proper mode including the mic function with my iPhone 5s and they should also work with an iPhone 6.


VMware Fusion vs. Parallels Desktop vs. Boot Camp I've been wanting to get Windows on my retina MacBook Pro for a while now but there are so many softwares that I simply gave up. I recently found out that VMware Fusion, Parallels, and Boot Camp are the best ways to get Windows running well.

I want to use windows mainly for Steam related games, and some other applications not available on OS X.

The question is: which one is the best and most reliable? I really want something that is easy to use, install, and uninstall (if needed).

I'm running Mountain Lion, if it makes a difference.

I recommend Parallels 7. I have run any number of games (Both Steam-based and not) this way. Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3, Blacklight: Retribution, World of Tanks, Diablo III, World of Warcraft and others all run with no problems. It's not going to be as fast as running native code, but it's about as good as you can get. Run the VM in fullscreen (and make sure you're using the discrete graphics card if you're using gfxCardStatus!) for best results. Boot Camp obviously will give you the best performance, but I hate dual booting and refuse to do it. I have no experience with VMware Fusion.

Bootcamp is my choice, Windows 7 64 in Bootcamp outperforms my Alienware by a mile!


Homebrew: Your CLT does not support macOS 11.0 I recently upgraded to macOS Big Sur developer Beta 8, when I do brew install jenv I get the error Homebrew: Your CLT does not support macOS 11.0. I am using CommandLine tools GM version.  Tried to reinstall it couple of times, nothing worked so far. Here is the complete error
Error: Your CLT does not support macOS 11.0.
It is either outdated or was modified.
Please update your CLT or delete it if no updates are available.
Error: An exception occurred within a child process:
  SystemExit: exit

Simplest solution that worked when upgrading to Big Sur. A clean install may not require the solution below. There is inconsistency with the way CLT is upgraded to 12.2.
sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
sudo xcode-select --install

Worked with the following versions (post-install)
❯ /usr/bin/xcodebuild -version
Xcode 12.2
Build version 12B45b

❯ pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables
package-id: com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables
version: 12.2.0.0.1.1603499215
volume: /
location: /
install-time: 1605632122
groups: com.apple.FindSystemFiles.pkg-group

Big Sur
11.0.1 (20B29)

I wanted to add, that the homebrew project has a tool to tell you how to fix Xcode tools related errors. Not all errors by "doctor" need to be fixed, but the ones relating to xcode-select and softwareupdate will fix tools issues on supported versions.
For the window while an OS is in pre-release and released-but-not-yet-supported, you will have to resort to answers like the ones here to manually fix the automated setup process.


Terminal.app reverse text color under cursor macOS Catalina 10.15.2, Terminal.app 2.10

In VIM:

and in for example VI-mode at the command line:

There is an o under the first cursor, and an s under the second cursor. In-person, I can just about   make out the tiniest difference, and distinguish the characters.

But it's not easy at all.

How can I make my Terminal.app invert the colors of light text when the cursor is over it?

You can go into Preferences and change the color of your cursor so the text is visible behind it. The cursor color is changed by going to Preferences/Profiles where you get a panel like the one shown in the figure below.

I changed my cursor color to red and I could see letters behind it fine. Another option is to change your cursor to underline or a verticle bar. Those optional are selectable on the same pane to the left of my red box.


How to stop my texts (iMessage) from showing on my Mac Whenever I send or receive messages on my iPhone they show up on my MacBook also. I was wondering how I could get that to stop?

It used to be that my texts wouldn't show up, and I could message through my MacBook also but now its just annoying and I'd rather not have my siblings creeping through my messages by reading them on my laptop.

Disable it in iMessages Prefs/Accounts...

[Edit] Re-reading your question, you want to be able to send from iPhone & MacBook, but not have the MacBook show any conversations initiated from the phone?
Never tried that one, but perhaps by disabling one or more of the account number/email address options further down the same page.

I've always had conversations appear in both locations, Mac & phone, never seen it behave any differently, unless I was in some poor reception area.

Go to System Preferences → Accounts and unclick on the iMessaging Service.
It will say it is "inactive".

This is for OS X 10.10.


AppleScript to read all notifications in the Notification Center OSX 10.10 Yosemite It seems like the following AppleScript is no longer working in the latest version of the OS X 10.10 (Yosemite):
on run
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Notification Center"
            set theseWindows to every window
            display notification (count of theseWindows)
        end tell
    end tell
end run

This were supposed to get all notifications listed in the Notification Center. However, the count attribute always returns 0.
Does anyone know how to retrieve all notifications in the Notification Center different than the script above?

I have not found a way for AppleScript to do this, but shell scripting has been effective for some people to get at the full database or log of past notifications.

Does the OS X log notifications from the Notification Center?

The format is an sqlite database, and it can be found inside this folder:
~/Library/Application Support/NotificationCenter

Assuming AppleScript is more important, you can call arbitrary shell scripts if needed from one, but other languages might be easier for database interactions / reporting.


Can iTunes find all songs with no Album Art? I want to find all songs or tracks which don't have Album Art associated with them in my iTunes music library.  I want to do this so that I can fix Album Art problems in advance of a backup.  How can I have iTunes show me just these tracks?

My iTunes library is on a Windows 7 PC.

You can do this by creating a Smart Playlist:

(I'm using a Mac, but it will be similar for you)

Set the "Album Artwork" rule to "false":

This will update automatically as you add artwork to your albums. And you can simply delete this playlist when you're done.

If you want to get all the album artwork for your songs or albums I recommend you find a program that gets metadata for your songs. Like I use TuneUp on my mac and it gave all my albums with no artwork an artwork that is one of the ones for your album.


Write to NTFS-formated drives on Yosemite I sometimes need to mount USB drives that are NTFS formatted and write to them. On Mavericks I achieved this using the Homebrew formula ntfs-3g which depends on osxfuse.

After upgrading to Yosemite, osxfuse is broken.  Homebrew message:

==> Upgrading osxfuse
osxfuse: OS X Mavericks or older is required for this package.
OS X Yosemite introduced a strict unsigned kext ban which breaks this package.
You should remove this package from your system and attempt to find upstream
binaries to use instead.
Error: An unsatisfied requirement failed this build.

I take this to mean that the kernel extension used by osxfuse is completely disallowed in Yosemite because it is not digitally signed by Apple, whereas in Mavericks it was allowed.

So, is there any way now to mount and write to an NTFS-formatted USB drive in Yosemite using either open-source software or free, unencumbered (not spyware/malware or bundled with useless toolbars etc.) software from the App Store?

Open Terminal.

If you have brewed osxfuse installed, you have to uninstall it, because unsigned kexts are banned now. Type:

brew cask uninstall osxfuse

On the other hand, if you don't have Homebrew at all, download it:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Updating Homebrew is recommended.

brew update

If you don't have Homebrew Cask installed, type:

brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask

Install a binary osxfuse package from Homebrew Cask:

brew cask install osxfuse

Install ntfs-3g:

brew install ntfs-3g

You need to create a symlink for mount_ntfs, in order to make drives mount automatically:

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.original
sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs

If you are running OS X 10.11 and the commands above fail, try:

sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0"

edit: This doesn't work for me in the final El Capitan (from Mac App Store). I had to disable SIP through recovery. Could someone confirm that this is indeed necessary?

... and reboot your machine. Then try symlinking mount_ntfs again.

Thanks to bjorgvino.

The best cross platform format I use is vfat. Not ideal, but it works a charm and there's no mess no fuss :)


Reinstalled my MacBook Pro, resync with iPad issues I just wiped my MacBook Pro clean as part of my yearly reinstall habit. The problem is, now when I connect my iPad or iPhone, there is no really trivial way to sync my PDFs and ePubs back with the clean MBP. If I sync Books, it will overwrite my iPad and I'll be left without said PDFs/ebooks. I have all of them backed up, that's not the problem. I was just wondering if there's a way to do a two way sync, meaning take the pdfs/epubs I have on my ipad then sync them with the MBP. Or is this going to require me manually putting back all of my content sourcing from the MBP first?

I do this all the time - introduce an iOS device with content to a new library (whether it's on the same or a different computer).

In your case, if you simply don't sync until you reintroduce the last good backup of iTunes then everything will be fine again. But let's assume you don't want to do that and continue with the question as asked.

You can cancel the sync when the warning about erasing the content appears. At that point go and deselect the automatic sync option so you have time to transfer the documents.

Then you can use the File menu
Transfer purchases from "device" to get all the "apple iTunes store" content into the new library. This is a smart merge so you don't get any duplicates. Lastly, inspect the Apps tab to check for any third party data you might want to transfer.

I also use the iBooks email to get a few PDF off an iOS device but you may want to look into trying and later purchasing PhoneView which lets you move documents to/from your device to a mac with ease. It's very powerful and goes far beyond what iTunes allows.

What you really want to do is convince the reinstall of OS X (and so iTunes) that it already knows your iPad, rather than a sync resulting in everything being overwritten.

How to do this? Well, the iTunes library has an ID that is linked to your iPad. Right now the iPad's ID has not changed, but your library's ID has changed. When you reinstalled OS X and iTunes, a new library was created with a randomly generated ID that is not the same as your iPad's ID.

The general process to correct this if you wanted to go this route:

Find out the ID of your iPad library (this would have been the iTunes library ID before you reinstalled).
Replace the ID of the reinstalled iTunes library with the iPad ID (rather than the ranomly generated one that was created on reinstall).

While there is a great automated tool for this for Windows, there is not one that I know of for OS X. You most definitely want to backup your libary if you attempt this:

This link has very clear and detailed instructions on first recovering your Library ID from your iPad (because you can backup without having to clear the phone)
Now you must update your iTunes library with this ID. Clear instruction on how to do this are on this link. This requires getting down and dirty with a hex editor, which if you are not comfortable with, you'll probably want to avoid. You'll notice those instructions are in reference to managing an iOS device on multiple iTunes installations, the process and results are the same, you can consider that your old OS X install would still have access to managing the iPad if the install existed.

I've completed this process on a variety of OS X and Windows install when the machines have been reformatted. It works and allows me to transfer music and whatever else back onto the new iTunes install.


Can I put music files on an iPod without iTunes? I can't find any definitive info on this and I need to know for sure before I purchase one.

I hate iTunes with a burning passion, but I like iPods and I have a whole lot of music on my PC.

How can I move music from a Windows computer to iOS without using iTunes?

A google search for "iTunes alternatives" returns a lot of results. For example: http://www.copytrans.net/copytransmanager.php

use MediaMonkey.com :p you can manage everything from there


Photos taking up storage on iPhone when I have no photos Problem from iOS 10.1.1 to 10.2.1.

I have no photos at all on my iPhone yet in settings it says my photo library is taking up ~200MB of space. The number of space being taken up keeps changing constantly(in the settings app on my phone). In iTunes, the storage bar at the bottom does(when in the sync menu) not show photos.

What is taking up this storage, and how can I reduce it?

Troubleshooting:

I disabled iCloud photo library and iCloud photo stream, still showing the same thing.
Tried doing what @User9125 said, didn't work. I had set the date all the way back when I first got my phone, nothing showed up.
Rebooting
I had hundreds of photos in Whatsapp, I deleted them but I didn't get the storage back. It didn't even make a dent in the amount of storage being used by Photos so I don't think a third-party app could be taking up this storage.
I don't think a system app is taking this space either, because I cleared the pictures in mail and messages.
I tried using iCleaner(through sideloading) in Secure Mode and Fast Mode, but it did not clear up the photos.

There might be phantom photos still in your Photos app. Just do these things and it will solve your problem.

Go to Settings
Date & Time
Untoggle "Set Automatically"
Manually change the date back. For example, today is December 10, 2016, choose something ex: like March 21, 2015. (You can change it back once we're done)
Close out of that
Open "Photos"
Select "Albums" you had already cleared out everything from the Camera Roll and "Recently Deleted" folder, But now you'll see that your "Recently Deleted" folder now has thousands of images back. Those are your phantom photos
Open it, "Select" and start deleting
Now, go back into Settings - General - Usage - Storage - Manage Storage - and you'll notice your Photo & Camera is empty if you deleted everything.

Reboot iPhone that (usually) clears the ghost data


Where are my old (previous) iCloud files after upgrading to OS X 10.10 Yosemite? I previously had about 200 .txt files saved in iCloud via TextEdit.

After installing the Yosemite (10.10), there is now a folder hierarchy in iCloud, and all my previous files seem to have disappeared.

I have looked in /Library/Mobile Documents -- they're not there.

I have tried showing hidden files and looking through the Library with no success.

update - I have several Time Machine backups made well before I updated to Yosemite, but there are no documents in /Users/(username)/Library/Mobile Documents/(textedit folder)

The files are still there, just no longer accessible via Finder.

You can use ls ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/ to verify. To note, the folder has always been treated specially, and instead of just the App names, you'll see some unique strings followed by the app name.

For a paid solution, Path Finder by Cocoatech still displays all the files, helpfully removing the extra strings as Finder used to, while also directly jumping to the Documents section. It works pretty well, but Path Finder is expensive for its relatively unimpressive set of features, and the developers try to milk it each year.

For a free solution, Plain Cloud works, although its UI is pretty rough and bare bones, and the app itself is quasi-abandoned. (Currently there is a rendering error that causes the first app to be partially obscured, but using the reload button fixes this.)

Hope this helps.

PS. More directly to your question, if the files were truly stored in TextEdit's iCloud you should be able to access the files under TextEdit > Open > under iCloud Library choose TextEdit - iCloud.

bring them back with

cp -r ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/* ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/


What can be done to use iMessage when it is stuck on "Waiting for Activation" I bought an iPhone 3GS and tried to activate iMessage on it, but it won't work. I tried everything to activate it, but it still says "waiting for activation". What should I do?

A few of the things that are under your control are as follows:

Undo the iMessage settings, power off the device and try again in 5 minutes.
Check that iCloud isn't having system-wide problems
Same as step one, but wait 20 to 200 minutes. (sometimes the problem is in the network or the activation servers or the SMS network to tie your phone to the Apple system with the one time activation message and waiting is easier than working with all of the above parties)
Rather than wait - work through the steps to Troubleshoot iMessage and FaceTime Activation
Contact Apple for support

It's hard to guess what exactly is wrong, but you also can edit your question to list what steps you have done to troubleshoot this and perhaps someone can guess or point out a missed step.

Try logging into iTunes. Not sure what this would have done but it worked for me...


Can I make a symlink (to a .app folder) in Applications directory show up in spotlight? I used brew to install MacVim and it put it in /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.3-61/MacVim.app

I would like to be able to go to spotlight and type MacVim to launch the app. I tried creating a symlink in the Applications directory to /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.3-61/MacVim.app. But that doesn't seem to show up in Spotlight. I set the executable bits on the symlink. open MacVim.app from the command line works. How can I get MacVim to show up in Spotlight search?

In the Finder, press CommandShiftG for Go to the Folder. Type /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.3-61/ and press return. Select the file (actually a folder) MacVim.app Press CommandL for Make Alias. Depending on permissions, you may be prompted for an administrator password here.

Press CommandN to create a New Finder Window.
Press CommandShiftA to go to the Applications folder in that window.

Drag the newly created alias from the window in which it was created to the window containing the Applications folder. Rename the alias so it no longer ends in " alias".

Sounds like you could do the following from the Terminal.

$ ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.3-61/MacVim.app /Applications

You might have to use sudo to put the symlink in the /Applications directory.


Export iTunes music library information (album, artist, track names) to CSV or spreadsheet format? Is there a way to export album/track information from an iTunes music library into, say, a comma-separated values (CSV) file, or another spreadsheet-friendly format?

I'd like to be able to grab a snapshot of at least basic metadata – being artist name, album name, and track name – and copy into a spreadsheet or database software for reference, cleansing, & analysis.  (If you want to call me a music nerd for wanting to data-mine information about my CD collection, go right ahead! :-)

Is there a way to do such a metadata export within iTunes itself, or else might there be a third-party tool that can extract such information from iTunes library storage?  Or perhaps you have a quick & dirty homebrew script of your own you could share here?

I'm aware there is XML somewhere in the bowels of my iTunes library, and I'm a programming nerd too, but I'm hoping somebody has already invented this particular wheel.

Thanks!

Make sure all the columns you want metadata for are visible in the playlist or library you're looking at. Then, select the tunes you want with shift-click or ⌘-click or whatever:

Then, hit ⌘+C to copy. This will allow you to paste what's visible in the iTunes playlist into any sort of spreadsheet you like:

It won't label the columns for you, but it'll do the trick quickly.

Please consider giving www.iTunesStats.com a try. It is a Visual Basic script I wrote that loops through your iTunes library and provides a text file of all kinds of statistics. It then puts those stats into a .csv file for you to keep long-term.


Macbook slows down when connected to external monitor and power supply I have a Macbook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) with the following configuration: 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

I use Dell P2419H as my external monitor which I connect my macbook via HDMI cable. I have calibrated the external display profile using the settings > display. The issue is when my macbook is being charged and connected to the monitor it becomes excruciatingly slow to the point of not being of any use.

This does not happen when I am running my macbook on battery power and connect to the monitor.

In both the cases my macbook screen is open so the normal airflow is not hindered in any ways.

When I see my activity monitor it seems that on plugged in mode power the kernal task increases.

Here is a screenshot of activity monitor when laptop is running on batter and connected to monitor

Here is how it looks when on plugged in power + external monitor

Restarting SMC chipset helped fixing it.

Shut down Mac
Hold. CTRL+OPTION+SHIFT+POWER button for 10 seconds
Start mac


Macbook pro boot with kernel panic - can't perform kext scan I was trying to swap command and option key for my external keyboard following the instruction in
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110529094802391.

When I'm done with change and I restarted, my mac booted with Kernel panic message. I'm sure I've messed the info.plist file. Now I cannot boot in safe mode as well.

I know if I get a way to change the file it should be fine.

The message shown in screen is

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff80002c4794): Kernel trap at 0xffffff80005eae1e, type 14=page fault, registers: ...
Debugger called: <panic>
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Addressd
...
...
can't perform kext scan: no kext summary
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: Unknown

Mac OS version:
Not yet set

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 11.4.2: Thu Aug 23 16:25:48PM
Kernel UUID: ...
System uptime in nanoseconds: 11...

The error specifies the problem in kext as well.

Thanks.

The safest thing to do is boot into OS X Recovery and re-install the OS.

You could alternatively boot into Recovery and open terminal and hope to fix the format of the kext file on disk, but I'd say it would be safer to start that Mac in target mode and copy in an unmodified copy of IOHIDFamily.kext into /System/Library/Extensions

Unless you have a good backup of the Mac, it's safer to just reinstall the core OS which will leave your user files and accounts alone, but remedy this system file that is needed for the system to run.

Switch off S.M.A.R.T. in your bios settings


View SSL/TLS certificate in Safari 5+ when no padlock icon shown According to Apple,

  With Safari 5 through 5.1.7, a lock icon appears near the top right
  corner [only] if all of the webpage's content uses a secure connection.

That's all very well, but normally to view the SSL/TLS certificate for a webpage serving content over HTTPS, one would click the padlock icon.

Because the icon is not present on pages that serve only some of their content over SSL/TLS, there ought to be another way to view the certificate, but what is it?

Recent versions of Safari do not appear to display the lock icon or certificate unless all content loaded by the page is https. For example, if the page URL is https but it loads a JavaScript file via http, no lock icon.

The only workaround I've found so far is to run the openssl command in Terminal, like this:

echo ^d | openssl s_client -connect host.example.com:443

This will show you the certificate chain back to whatever root authority is used to sign, if any. "verify error" will show things like "self signed certificate".

If a website is serving some content over HTTPS and some over HTTP then you shouldn't trust it. It's that simple. It doesn't matter what certificate it is using for the secure parts.

If part of the content is being loaded over an insecure connection then you don't know if it has been interfered with, and you don't know if it is interfering with the securely delivered parts.

There are various security experts who write on this subject. Troy Hunt is one who springs to mind right now. You can find a pertinent article here and others on related topics here.


Cyberduck replacement for SCP transfers Since Cyberduck uses Java, it's out for me.

Any replacement for Mavericks that is good, has similar to WinSCP functionality and has an option to try before I buy?

I’ve heard only good things about Transmit.

Cyberduck 4.4 or later requires no Java installation.


Cannot see iTunes Radio on my device after updating to iOS7 I just have a quick question regarding the iTunes radio function. My girlfriend and I updated our iPhone 5 at the same time. She got the iTunes Radio, and mine is nowhere to be found. I open iTunes and cannot seem to find it anywhere. Anyone else experienced this?

I currently live in Norway with a Norwegian account, if that matters :)

According to zdnet.com (today),

  iTunes Radio is only available to U.S. account holders at launch and is also available in iOS 7.

The article is about iTunes 11.1, but I presume the same goes for iOS 7.

Wikipedia (today) states:

  Currently, iTunes Radio is only available in the US.

TechCrunch (yesterday) has:

  Also remember that iTunes Radio is for U.S. iTunes account holders only for now, with no word on when international users will gain access just yet.

So when I updated my iPad yesterday I got I tunes radio but the next day it disappered then I read a post saying that if u double click ur home button and swipe all the thing away u will get it .and it works


A modern and faster alternative to Disk Inventory X Disk Inventory X was kind of nice, but it is painfully slow.

Are there any modern and faster alternatives?

I only care about the disk space, and not about the file type stats and about the graph which Disk Inventory X displays.

Starting with macOS Sierra, macOS comes with an built in app from Apple called Storage Management, which is a part of the System Information app. In different tabs it shows you the largest apps installed, as well as a folder viewer with their sizes listed. A special tab shows the largest files over all of your folders, which I find very practical.
To launch Storage Management open Spotlight Search by hitting ⌘ Command  Space, type "Storage Management" and hit ⏎ Return.
Pros:

Free,
Fast,
Provided by Apple, so it knows what it's doing.

You can find more information here.

Disk Inventory X doesn't work on Big Sur anymore... :(
I just installed Disk Space Analyzer from the App Store and it's free and works like a charm on Big Sur.


Mac OSX Mail; how to delay 'Mark as Read' In OSX 10.10 Mail app a message gets read immediately when as soon as it is selected.

Often this happens by accident; i.e. when organising folders, or it gets auto-selected when you delete/move another mail. Suffice to say this behaviour can disturb a workflow.

From other mail clients I'm used you can give it a small offset (few seconds for example) before it is 'Mark as Read'. Does anyone know if OSX has such a setting?

The Plugins MailHub and Mail Act-On have such options:

MailHub

  MailHub is a 'smart' plug-in for Apple Mail that revolutionises email management. It learns as you work, suggesting likely filing locations to take the pain out of keeping your mail organized. It also allows you to set reminders on emails, so you can follow-up later.

Mail Act-On

  Mail Act-On 3 new features give you unparalleled ability to manage your messages. Use Act-On's new templates to quickly reply to messages. Use Act-On composer options to specify when messages are delivered, where sent messages get archived, and even which outbox rules are applied.

Did you quit Mail, do the command, and then restart Mail? I did this and it seems to work intermittently. I did

defaults write com.apple.mail MarkAsReadDelay 3

and for some emails, there is a 1 second delay, and some there is 0. I can't find a pattern. ??!


App Store only sells latest OS X version? Can't get Lion 10.7 anymore? I have a MacBook model A1181, 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory. It's running Snow Leopard, and running fine including speed wise. I want to upgrade to make use of iOS simulator and XCode 4. Saw that App Store has only the newest 10.8 Mountain Lion for upgrade, and saw a few reviews saying it slowed down their Macs, even w/ 16GB memory, wonder what it will do to my machine.

I would prefer to get 10.7 Lion. Any way to get that anymore, maybe at Apple Stores? Or am I out of luck and have to go to 10.8 if I want to upgrade? Too bad I should have upgraded sooner when 10.8 wasn't out yet.

Update: looking around online, looks like my Mac may not even quality for requirements for 10.8, but 10.7 should be ok.

It is still possible to purchase 10.7 for installing/upgrading on your mac, see my answer at question Can we still upgrade to OS X 10.7 now that 10.8 is out?:

  Although you can no longer buy Lion through the App Store or directly
  by SKU from the online store, you can still order Lion after Mountain
  Lion was released.

  I called 1-800-MY-APPLE, it took some time to get through but they
  told me that I would be able to purchase Lion, OSX 10.7 from them for
  $19.99.  They would send me the physical copy through the mail.

  […]

Unfortunately you're out of luck. 10.7 got pulled as soon as 10.8 was released. That said,  most of what I've seen suggests that 10.8 is about on par, and possibly even a bit faster than 10.7.

The catch for you is that your model may not be supported with 10.8. The A1181 covered a lot of models, but the only ones that are supported under 10.8 are the ones with the model identifier Macbook5,2—which you can check in the System Information app, under Hardware Overview.

If yours is supported, the good news is that you can add more RAM (and do so fairly cheaply). 4 GB is what's officially supported, but you can go to 6 GB with a 2+4 configuration.


Computer name keeps changing OSX 10.10 (14A389) Since I upgraded to Yosemite 10.10 (14A389) my computer name keeps changing adding a (2) and (3) and so forth.

Any ideas how to fix this?

Go to Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences > SystemConfiguration
and delete the following files:

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist

Then reboot the Mac.

The host names should be recreated correctly.

(According to http://forums.imore.com/os-x-yosemite-10-10/304804-my-computer-name-changing-10-10-a.html these are instructions provided by an Apple tech.)

sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :ProgramArguments: string --no-namechange" \
         /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist


Why can't I access File Sharing when Open Directory is enabled in macOS Mojave? Here's the procedure I have followed:

Install a fresh copy of macOS Mojave to an APFS volume
Perform initial OS configuration and create 'admin' user at first launch. Assign a static IP from 192.168.168.0/24 private network. Use a DNS server located in private network. Ensure IP resolves to a FQDN ('test.mydomain.com') and vice versa.
Download macOS Server application (5.7) from App Store
Open macOS Server application
Create a new Open Directory domain with default options
Create a new user 'testuser' to Local Network Directory
Create a new group 'testgroup' to Local Network Directory
Assign newly created 'testuser' to 'testgroup'
Open System Preferences application
Open Sharing preferences
Enable File Sharing
Create a Shared Folder 'myshare' and assign 'testgroup' and 'admin' Read&Write access to it
Select 'myshare' and click Options button to ensure SMB sharing is enabled for it
Attempt to connect to the file server from a client computer within the same subnet via smb://test.mydomain.com/myshare or alternatively smb://192.168.168.X/myshare either using 'admin' or 'testuser' credentials

In the last step connection fails for both 'admin' and 'testuser' accounts. If I turn Open Directory to Off, I can connect with 'admin' user. Restarts in any phase of the procedure make no difference.

Why can't I access SMB when Open Directory is enabled?

Here are the opendirectoryd log entries from creating the OD master (step 5): https://pastebin.com/uQm8b8NM

Here are the opendirectoryd and smbd log entries from login attempt (step 14): https://pastebin.com/U2RS3LYC & https://pastebin.com/7bFNfd8V

The issue is the ACLs are not set up in the local directory for SMB and AFP. These used to be created in the older Server apps that had File Sharing in them. I've written an AppleScript that takes care of all this. It creates the appropriate ACL groups in the directory (/Local/Default/Groups/com.apple.access_smb and com.apple.access_afp), then adds all the users to it. The script is below. I threw it together today trying to solve this very issue. Hopefully it will help others.

-- Script to sort out ACLs for file sharing
set savedDelimiters to AppleScript's text item delimiters

display alert "Setup File Sharing ACLs" message "This script will set up the appropriate ACLs in the local directory to allow users to connect to file sharing on a macOS 10.14 server with OpenDirectory.

WARNING: Changes will be made to your local directory. Administrator privileges are required (you will be prompted for a password).

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Set for all users, or only a single user?" buttons {"Cancel", "All Users", "Single User"} default button "Single User" cancel button "Cancel"

if button returned of result = "All Users" then
    set progress description to "Loading User List..."
    -- Load all directory users from the server
    -- (identified by UserShell value of '/bin/bash'; most likely to be normal users)
    -- The delimiter is horrible, but it's the only way to do it
    set delimiter to tab & tab & "UserShell = (" & return & "    \"/bin/bash\"" & return & ")"
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {delimiter & return, delimiter}
    set users to every text item of (do shell script "dscl /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1 search /Users UserShell \"/bin/bash\"")
else if button returned of result = "Single User" then
    repeat
        set username to the text returned of (display dialog "Enter Username:" default answer "" with icon note)
        if username is "" then
            display alert "Please enter username, or click cancel to end"
        else
            exit repeat
        end if
    end repeat
    -- Add blank element to end, as this happens with output from dscl above
    set users to {username, ""}
end if

-- Create the SMB & AFP ACL groups if necessary (this may be the first user)
createACLGroup("afp", 250)
createACLGroup("smb", 110)
-- Go through all the users now
set total to (length of users) - 1
set progress total steps to total
set progress description to "Adding Users to ACLs..."
set current to 0
repeat with idx from 1 to total
    -- Need to use indexed repeat because of issue with missing username in list from dscl
    set username to item idx of users
    try
        set progress completed steps to current
        set progress additional description to "User " & (current + 1) & " of " & total & " (" & username & ")"
        -- Now, check to see if the user is already in the file sharing lists
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {" "} -- Split words, not letters!
        set currList to every text item of (do shell script "dscl /Local/Default read Groups/com.apple.access_smb GroupMembership")
        if username is in currList and length of users is 1 then
            -- Only alert if in single user mode
            display alert "Username already set up"
        else
            -- Go ahead and set it up
            -- Firstly, get the user's GeneratedUID from the LDAP directory
            set isError to false
            try
                set guid to second item of (every text item of (do shell script "dscl /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1 read Users/" & username & " GeneratedUID"))
            on error
                display alert "Error" message "User " & username & " is not a directory user"
                set isError to true
            end try
            if not isError then
                -- Add the user to the group
                addUserToACL("afp", username, guid)
                addUserToACL("smb", username, guid)
            end if
        end if
        set current to current + 1
    on error
        -- Likely an empty username from the delimiters tokenising the list from dscl
    end try
end repeat
set current to total
display alert "Process completed!"

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to savedDelimiters

on createACLGroup(acltype, groupid)
    try
        do shell script "dscl /Local/Default read Groups/com.apple.access_smb"
    on error
        -- Doesn't exist, so we need to create it!
        do shell script "dscl /Local/Default create Groups/com.apple.access_" & acltype with administrator privileges
        do shell script "dscl /Local/Default create Groups/com.apple.access_" & acltype & " RealName \"" & changeCaseOfText(acltype, "upper") & " ACL\"" with administrator privileges
        do shell script "dscl /Local/Default create Groups/com.apple.access_" & acltype & " PrimaryGroupID " & groupid with administrator privileges
    end try
end createACLGroup

on addUserToACL(acltype, username, guid)
    do shell script "dscl /Local/Default append Groups/com.apple.access_" & acltype & "  GroupMembership " & username with administrator privileges
    do shell script "dscl /Local/Default append Groups/com.apple.access_" & acltype & " GroupMembers " & guid with administrator privileges
end addUserToACL

on changeCaseOfText(theText, theCaseToSwitchTo)
    if theCaseToSwitchTo contains "lower" then
        set theComparisonCharacters to "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
        set theSourceCharacters to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
    else if theCaseToSwitchTo contains "upper" then
        set theComparisonCharacters to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
        set theSourceCharacters to "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
    else
        return theText
    end if
    set theAlteredText to ""
    repeat with aCharacter in theText
        set theOffset to offset of aCharacter in theComparisonCharacters
        if theOffset is not 0 then
            set theAlteredText to (theAlteredText & character theOffset of theSourceCharacters) as string
        else
            set theAlteredText to (theAlteredText & aCharacter) as string
        end if
    end repeat
    return theAlteredText
end changeCaseOfText

Re-install High Sierra with Server App 5.6 and it works.


Block Ads via AirPort Is there any way to block ads via an Apple Airport? I'd rather block all ads that way so that I can block ads on my iDevices.

You can set the Airport base station's DNS to a service such as OpenDNS. Then make an account with OpenDNS and set up a blacklist.

Dnsfool supports adblocking. I found it on google. Seems a bit slow. But its free.


Is there a way to get Terminal on Lion to start up cleanly (without the buffered history)? How can I prevent Terminal from showing me my old output when it starts?

I would like it to always start with a clean window.

You can change terminal only with this one command to write a new preference for that specific app.

defaults write com.apple.terminal NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

This is general, so of course, substitute safari or quicktimeplayerX or whatever in the com.apple.terminal portion of the command as needed. This setting switches the default save behavior upon quitting that one app. You'll find many of the other apps that work well with this setting by searching on NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows.

Of course, you should issue this defaults command after closing all windows and then quitting the application to ensure the settings are read the next time Terminal starts.

The only way to do this is to completely disable the resume feature in Lion

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/20/how-to-disable-lions-resume-feature/


How to hear/view files with extensions .VOB, .IFO, and .BUP on a Mac A friend of mine just got a new MacBook and is trying to look at some files she had from her old Wintel boxen with .VOB, .IFO, and .BUP file extensions.  What Mac conversion or viewing utility or app should be used?

I'm fairly sure these are files from a DVD movie disc.

Open the default DVD player app, choice, File > Open DVD Media and select the folder in which the files are located (not the file itself, the app will combine them all and if all goes well, play the movie).

Insert the DVD and open Macintosh HD and Applications and DVDplayer.app, the dvd will start playing.


Retrieving the "Version" attribute of an OSX Application file via Bash I was initially attempting to do this in Java using the UserDefinedFileAttributeView class but it turns out that is only available on Windows computers (This is being run on OSX)

So I switched gears with the hope that retrieving the information via a script would be the simpler route but it seems to not be as straight forward as I expected.

How would one go about retrieving an Application file's version number (file attribute) using Bash?

I've already looked into stat but that only returns the basic file information.
I also looked into xattr but I couldn't get that to return the "Version" attribute.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

You can use defaults to fetch specific keys:

VERSION=$(defaults read /Applications/AppName.app/Contents/Info.plist CFBundleShortVersionString)
echo $VERSION

Generally Linux does not support a file version attribute. However you can use mimetype utility to access file extension and type...

example

mimetype -d path_to_my_file


Painfully slow to browse large list of subfolders via SMB and/or AFP Having an issue where I have a folder on a QNAP NAS with over 68,000 subfolders within it.

I can browse it quickly and almost instantaneously within Windows 7 via SMB, however in OSX 10.6.8 and 10.7.2, it takes nearly 10+ minutes to display the subfolders, using both SMB and AFP.

Hoping there is an easy solution - we can't break the folders into smaller subfolders due to a requirement of proprietary software that accesses the sub folders.

I've tried the fixes suggested here, which don't seem to help: http://www.macwindows.com/snowleopard-filesharing.html#030311b

Have the same issue browsing the files on a Windows 2003 server, so it is not a NAS issue - rather, it's an issue with how OS X browses over the network.  Perhaps it is trying to cache all the files/folders before displaying them?

Windows 7 doesn't do this, and therefore the subfolders display almost immediately.

I, too, find this a pain with my QNAP box. FYI the firmware has now been updated to 3.6.0 released just a few days ago, and there is some noticeable improvement with the update. However, you may consider using the iSCSI feature among the QNAP settings to make the file shares appear as a hard drive showing up on your desktop for better speed. I've noticed iSCSI works better IMO if your connection to the QNAP is hardwired throughout and not wireless in any way; wireless iSCSI works, just not as fast in my experience.

try to relaunch your finder, some of my colleagues got improve after this.
if in same lan, some computer fast and some slow.


Folder displaying in terminal but not finder Alright, so I just started beginning web development using my mac. My localhost says "It works" and I read somewhere I need to add my code files etc in Library/WebServer/Documents.

However, inside my Library, I do not see any WebServer folder. I can only see WebKit.

But if I try to locate the folder with terminal, it exists right there inside /Library.

What mystery is this? Please help me out.

Mac OS has hidden folders within the depths of its hard drive. If you want to make these appear, you have to use the terminal.

Open the terminal.

Type the command defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE, then press Enter (Or Return)

Type the command killall Finder (make sure you do the capital F) and press Enter/Return.

If you ever want to turn this off, just repeat the commands above, substituting TRUE for FALSE.

The default storage location for web server documents is /Library/WebServer/Documents. You can open this directory without any problems if you enter this code in the terminal. You will then be taken straight to the directory.
open /Library/WebServer/Documents


Can I get my iPhone to see the "Other Calendars" from Google Apps for domains Calendars? Our office is using Google Apps.  I have it set up to sync calendars against Google, but none of my Other Calendars appear when I click the calendars button on the iPhone.  Is this possible?

I've tried the sync instructions, but navigating to google.com/sync from safari on the iPhone assumes you will log in with a Google account, not a Google apps account.

I found the answer

"By default only your primary calendar will be synced to your device. You can sync additional calendars by visiting the following page from any web browser:

https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect
(Google Apps users can go to https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/your_domain/iphoneselect, replacing 'your_domain' with your actual domain name.)"

If the issue is for your iphone go here:

http://carlsednaoui.com/post/55604535740/google-calendar-adding-other-calendars-to-your-iphone

It isn't necessary to do it on your mobile device.


What does a star next to a song in the Music app in iOS indicate? What does the star next to track #2 and #3 indicate in this screenshot?

Looks like it indicates a song's popularity.

  @rjonesy It's an indication of the song's popularity in the iTunes
  Store.

https://twitter.com/AppleSupport/status/720277245865107457

It's also the star rating that you've given a song/disc.  While listening to a song, tap the artwork.  From there you can give it 0-5 stars.  The stars will show-up next to the song, like in your image.


Alt+3 no longer types ‘#’, types ‘£’ instead I turned on my Mac one day and found that Alt + 3 no longer types a hash (#) symbol, but types a pound (£) instead.

I’ve checked the keyboard input source in System Preferences and it’s set to U.S. (which is to be expected). I’ve also found I can type a hash symbol with Shift + 3, but this is undesirable as I’m a website developer, use hashes frequently, and it’s in my muscle memory to hit Alt + 3 for a hash.

What would affect this?

The only keyboard layout that has Alt3 as hash # is the one called British: all others have Shift3

So you need to change the input source to British.

Note most developers have the opposite issue and want to match US and all Windows and Unix keyboards to have Shift3 as #

I went into Input Source, then I deleted the ABC Extended option leaving just the British option, and that solved it straight away.


Data Leak Prevention software for mac OSX We are using a software in window environment which provides the following feature to prevent a data leak. This software is protecting a folder which contains a lot of AI and PS file in window enviroment.

This software protect the file in the following way:

Passive encryption when file is saved so the file can't be opened in other computer if the whole harddisk is stolen.
Prevent unauthorized USB access the file is prohibited to copy to any external storage.
Limit the file access only in intranet, if the computer can't connect to intranet the file can't be opened.

In window, the software is based on Minifilter which is a Microsoft Technology

Can someone suggest a similar Data Leak Prevention software for mac OSX?

You don't really describe how your software works, but if you work with an app like Exces (that make it easy to work with, but the feature is available to OS X without the software) you can always work on an encrypted image and close it after use.

Of course you can use Filevault as well to maintain your filesystem encrypted.

Sadly, these have nothing to do with number three, since that is network dependent.

CoSoSys provide full Data Leakage Prevention software for mac OSX.

http://www.softek.co.uk/prod/co/dlp_data_leakage_for_mac_osx.asp