How to stop the Mail app from running every 10 minutes on the Mac? I have Mountain Lion on an 27" iMac, and recently, for some reason, the Mail app launches every 10 minutes or so, and I have to quit it every time.

In the Preferences of Mail, I already tried every possible way to tell it not to start itself, but every 10 minutes or so, it still launches and I have to quit it manually.  I don't know whether it is because I set in Gmail calendar to send email alert on some special events in my Google Calendar, but that should be handled by the Gmail server, not the Mail app...

I don't know whether it is related to the Notification Center, as the last few times, I notices messages popping up at the top right corner of the screen, and the Mail just started to run all by itself as well.

Is there a way to stop it from running automatically?

This is not normal behavior. Edit your question with your console log information from the moment of launch, it might help.
Notification center will provide alerts when mail arrives if set to do so, and clicking on a message will launch Mail. Mail messages also reside in the notification center and clicking one there will also launch mail.
Short of these events, Mail should not launch itself, unless you have some background process or script you are unaware of.

There is a background process or helper to allow the notification center to show incoming messages while Mail.app itself isn't running. This is normal behavior. If Mail is turned off in the notification system preference you won't have any intrusions.

Of course different things such as shell scripts, other apps and so on can launch apps so if you've configured other apps to launch Mail you need to deal with that scenario. This is where the log files can give you a hint as to what happened immediately prior to Mail launching.

Check this article, it may help stop mail from launching.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2012894/stop-mail-launching-for-calendar-alerts.html


How do I open Google Chrome in Incognito mode by default Is there any way (using apple script or by using settings on chrome) to open Google Chrome in incognito mode.

This can be achieved with the following in script editor:

do shell script "open -a /Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app --args --incognito"

Save it as an application, throw the alias in the dock. Tested this in 10.6.8.

Only works if you don't have chrome open already.

This works as well.

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --incognito

If you want it to brought to the foreground,

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --incognito; open -a /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app


Simulate INSERT key in Mac OS X Long story short, I am using Citrix to remote into my PC at work, and several applications require the use of the INSERT key, which, as everyone knows, Apple chose to eliminate from their keyboards. I've tried everything I can think of, and never been able to find an easy way to send this keycode via Citrix.  I'm sure there are other uses for this, and I've read quite a few people's questions on the subject, but no one seems to have offered a viable solution.

I have the Apple USB keyboard (full-size, with numeric keypad), and in the position where the INSERT key would normally exist, Apple placed the "fn" key. Now, I still need this key from time to time, but what I'd love to see is perhaps Control-fn or similar to send the keycode for INSERT.  If anyone knows how to achieve this, preferably without installing 3rd-party software (adware?), I'm all ears.

For Midnight commander it seem to be ^/Ctrl+T=Insert. As suggested by jherran.

The more generic Insert function is supposed to be Fn+Return/Enter=Insert, see this other question for more discussion and details.

I have however had little success with Fn+Return working reliably in many applications.

From an iMac running OS 10.8.5 with an extended usb keyboard using Microsoft Remote Desktop to control my PC (Win 7), I can use shift-control+0 (keypad) to send the enter key.


Besides Skim, what OSX PDF viewers support SyncTeX? I hope this question is not a duplicate. I use a lot of pdfLaTeX in my daily work on OSX (10.8). I've been using Skim and its SyncTeX support to preview PDFs and link forward and backward and that's fine. There are a bunch of PDF viewers on OSX and I'm wondering if others also support SyncTeX (commercial or not). I tend to prefer standalone editors and previewers instead of integrated environments such as TeXShop, but I'd like to hear about all types of PDF viewers that offer SyncTeX support. I'm not finding that this information is easily accessible on the web so answers to this question might serve as a handy reference.

For starters, it seems the standard OSX Preview doesn't support SyncTeX. Is that correct?

If you don't mind using macports you can install okular:

port install okular

Consider editing the port file if you want to use kile (KDE's TeX editor) as well, as it depends on texlive and most mac users already have a TeXlive installation through MacTeX:

port edit kde4-kile
#remove the line which contains texlive
port install kde4-kile

After installing okular (and optionally kile) open okular and go to Settings > Configure Okular > Editor and insert the command to start your favorite editor( %f stands for the path, %l for the line). This question on tex.so describes the setup for kile.

Finally click on any part of the PDF while holding shift to use reverse sync.

A popular non-free option is Skim. It supports SyncTEx.


Dropbox to continue backing up images until it completes I come from Andriod where Dropbox did an amazing job of backing up all my phone's pictures. Since I moved to iPhone I noticed that Dropbox backs-up a few pictures and then stops, popping-up the following message:

How come Dropbox can't continue backing up until it is finished?
Is there a way to make it continue automatically?

This happens because of a restriction put on all apps performing background tasks, specifically those fetching data. For example, this happens with the Spotify-app as well when it downloads songs for Offline Mode.

There isn't really any way to bypass these restrictions, at least not on a non-jailbroken device. It might be impractical, but the only option is opening the app every time it has to pause/terminate it's background tasks. You can of course also keep the app open – that will allow for the tasks to be completed with no practical time limit.

If you have jailbroken your device, you can download an app enabling what's commonly called "true" multitasking enabling apps, such as InfinityTask, which disables many of Apple's multitasking-restrictions.

Usually, when an app acts up and there's no ready fix, deleting it, restarting (a real Restart) and reinstalling works.

Recently, Dropbox for iDevice was updated. In this case, I think the problem is fixed.


Are CPU and GPU embedded on the logic board? I'm thinking about whether I should get my MacBook Pro 6,2 repaired. The repair would include replacing the logic board, so I'm wondering if the CPU and GPU are replaced as well?

As you can see on the image below, the CPU (red border) and the GPU (orange and yellow border) are wave soldiered onto the logic board and they will be replaced together.

BUT, you should know this kind of replacements are extremely expensive. Prices goes up to $1,000 so in most cases it's better to buy a new Mac. It's not uncommon to find "older" refurbished Macs at similar prices to logic board replacements.

You Mac is almost 3 years old and if I were you, I wouldn't do the repair and just go for a new Mac.

Apple flat rate repair is $310.  Take your computer to the Apple Store.

I got my Macbook Pro 6,2 repaired, by taking it to the Apple Store.  The Apple Store offered me flat rate repair for $310.  They replaced my logic board 3 times and on the third time refunded their repair charge.  Authorized Service Provider  in Mexico had wanted $1,200 to replace the logic board or $250 to re-ball the BGA of the GPU.  He told me the re-balling might not work and sometimes works only for a few months.  So flat rate depot repair in the USA was the best option for me. Each logic board replacement took 5-7 days.

The flat rate repair is available in the USA, but not Mexico.  (There are only Apple resellers in Mexico.)  Start with an Apple Store genius.  I don't know about Norway.  Good luck!

Lots of people are having problems with the early 2011 Macbook Pro.  135 pages of discussion on it.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2768351?start=0&tstart=0


Is it possible for an iPad to get a virus? I was using Safari on my iPad and suddenly a pop up message saying "your device has a virus" appeared. I just clicked okay because that was the only option and then it redirected me to youradexchange.com. Is it possible for my iPad to get a virus?

I'm using iPad mini Retina with iOS 7 and it is not jailbroken.

Yes, you can get malware on an iPad if you install apps from untrusted sources (Anything outside of the App Store).

However, you cannot get a virus from simply going to a website, as the process of installing an app from a third-party requires your interaction and can't be done in the background.

There are many alternative stores for ios and they can contain some viruses
But the chance that you get caught by a virus is low.


how to recover data for a specific app, I just had a new ihone. I did my restore function and the only app that did not get back my data is killshot bravo.  does anyone know why.  I lost everything I had, guns money and gold in that game :((

According to this article, it sounds as game progress is only saved when you sign in using a Facebook or Google account.   If you aren't signing in to the game that way, it will not save / backup your progress.

Also, according to this article, the company offers no guarantee that game progress would be saved.   Sounds pretty shady to me.

You can reinstall an application and restore its data as long as you backed up iPhone with iTunes on your computer. (If you try to delete an application that hasn’t been backed up to your computer, an alert appears.) To retrieve the application data, you must restore iPhone from a backup containing the data." But if it does not work for your case, maybe there's no other way to retrieve the game data...


Is Bluetooth battery information readable in Windows on Boot Camp? Is there any way to see the battery level of a Bluetooth device (e.g. magic mouse) in Windows with Boot Camp?

There is an application for Windows called "Bluetooth Battery Monitor." It is in beta right now, but I use it for my Ghostek SoDrop 2.0 headphones, and it works well.

You can download the beta at: https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/

I don't think that BootCamp per se would make a difference as to whether the Windows program would work or not, or any program at all, for that matter.

Our software Magic Utilities can read the battery state of all Apple Bluetooth devices.

Besides this, we offer much better multi-touch and keyboard support than BootCamp and run on any Windows computer.


Lion OS X Installer Does not recognize any HD What would be the reason if Lion OS X installer does not show any HFS+ partitioned hard drive on the installation step, "Select a destination volume where
you want to install the Mac OS X software". The Disk Utility cannot see it either!

I am sure the hard drive is working fine C: Ubuntu NTFS and D: Windows 7 NTFS I can run windows or ubuntu fine.

The problem is not partitioning the HD, the HD does not appear at all hence the disk utility cannot perform any operation on HD.

Thanks
Looking forward to hearing from you...

Have you configured the disks to use a GUID partition table?

This was not required prior to Lion, but is in order to install Lion.

If it can't see your hard drive, then you have a hardware problem. The data on the drive (the partition structure itself is data!) is completely irrelevant.

Disk Utility is capable of partitioning any drive so long as it can see the hardware, though it may need to erase it first. It sounds like the hardware itself isn't being detected.

What hardware are you running? Is it under warranty? Make sure all the cables are plugged in properly, any jumper settings are correct, etc. Perhaps try plugging a different drive in or the same drive into a different mac.


How can I configure Mac Terminal to have color ls output? How can I configure Mac Terminal to have color ls output?
I am using MacOS 10.5

Edit:

~/.bash_profile

or

~/.profile

and add the following line to simply enable color output via ls:

export CLICOLOR=1

To customize the coloring shown by ls you can optionally add this variable, LSCOLORS.

Examples

Default

export LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxBxegedabagacad

You can use this if you are using a black background

export LSCOLORS=gxBxhxDxfxhxhxhxhxcxcx

If you'd like to mimic the colors of a typical Linux terminal:

export LSCOLORS=ExGxBxDxCxEgEdxbxgxcxd

Once you've add the above to either ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile you can either logout/login or source the file in your shell, for eg:

$ . ~/.bash_profile

NOTE: If you need help in selecting colors to use you can use this online tool called LSCOLORS Generator.

Forget all those decades-old cryptic codes for gosh sakes, use the built in Terminal --> Preferences... Settings pane to set the default skin, and edit the ANSI colors to your liking. You can set the font, too. I prefer Menlo 12pt. This is how any regular Joe can do it, and avoid all the crazy command-line, unix-esque way of doing things as other posters have suggested.


Is it my imagination or do iPods charge faster using a car charger? Maybe I'm crazy, but it sure seems like when I plug my electronics (iPhone, iPod, etc.) into a car charger it gets up to a full charge MUCH faster than if I use a regular charger and an outlet.

Do these devices charge faster from car adapters, or am I imagining this? If so, why?

The answer to this question is that "it depends" and it is actually quite possible that your car charger is charging your devices faster than the AC charger you use at home. In both cases, there is significant power available at the source to do the charging relative to the number of watts being used to charge the device. That is, both the AC wall outlet and the cigarette lighter socket are both going to have "hundreds" of WATTS available if not more whereas the device being charged is only going to be consuming maybe "tens" of WATTs at the most during peak charging rates.

Therefore what makes the difference is the amount of power being OUTPUT by the particular charger itself....you just need to check the ratings of the charger and see how much power than can each OUTPUT. The output power is simply VOLTS times AMPS for the DC power that your device is likely to be using.

Some wall chargers that are very inexpensive have very small power supplies in them and only put out a limited amount of charging current at the rated charging voltage for your device. Others may be quite a bit beefier and will be output up to or above the maximum the device will take. Similarly for the car adapter.

Given that the DC source from the car is directly available and a very low cost regulator can be used to generate a regulated charging voltage without having to convert using a switching power supply from an AC line, it seems more than likely that you have a car charger that charges quicker than your home unit. Also, it is possible that the device accepts a variable input DC voltage and can take the 9V to 12V range from the car directly. In this case, it is quite possible that the car charger will end up delivering significantly more charging power than the AC charger.

I think it's because we're charging straight from USB and there's no Adapter involved. May not be how we're intended to charge...


MacPorts issue, "Error: Port aircrack not found" on OS X El Capitan Using MacPorts 2.3.4 on OS X El Capitan, I get an error when issuing the following command:

sudo port install aircrack -g

I get the message, Error: Port aircrack not found.

I've updated the list of ports using, port upgrade outdated.

The name of the port is "aircrack-ng", not "aircrack", and the install command is:

sudo port install aircrack-ng

Make sure you have the full installation of Xcode and MacPorts command-line tools for your Mac version. Run Terminal.app, then run this command: sudo port selfupdate


How to use iostat with AppleRAID volume? When I try iostat disk5, I get the error:

iostat: could not record 'disk5' for monitoring

Iostat works with my other drives, and with the individual disks which make up the RAID volume.  How can I get the speed of disk5, which is an AppleRAID volume?

BSD iostat - yeeeecchhhhh. There are some things that Gnu/Linux just does better.

What happens when you try iostat -d -n 9 - that should give you an iostat on the first 9 drives hooked up (if you have 9 drives).


Missing Safari settings option "Safari opens with" I am running OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and Safari 6.0.4

In Safari, the setting General -> "Safari opens with" is missing.

I remember using this setting to turn off session restore a few weeks back. But now its gone.

Type "Safari opens with" in google and "missing" is autosuggested. So I am not the only one with this problem. However, I didn't find any good pages/posts talking about this issue.

Can any one offer ideas on how fix this?

Edit:

To clarify, its not that some of the options in the setting are missing, but that I don't have the setting for "Safari opens with" at all.
I have the setting Default search engine and below that directly New windows open with, without Safari opens with in between.

That option has been removed from recent versions of Safari.

I'm not aware of which exact build removed it, but I can confirm it is gone and should be gone on all clean installs of Safari on top of OS X 10.8.3 and later. After running all available updates as of May 1 - you should have Safari version 6.0.4 (8536.29.13) and no Safari opens with preference.

Unless you have a defaults write… terminal command to re-enable that setting as a hidden-features, spending time troubleshooting this would be inadvisable since the control you are looking for is gone for now.

It looks like you have a corrupt safari plist.

To fix that (plist)
do following:

Quit Safari.

Go to ~/Library/Preferences

Move the com.apple.Safari.plist file from the Preferences folder to the Desktop.

Relaunch Safari.

If that helped, move the Desktop .plist file to the Trash.

If not, move it back to the Preferences folder.


DNS Problem with my Macbook Pro I have a problem with my Macbook Pro. I suspend it and if I should open it up and the wifi is connected and all looks pretty well. But I have no connection with my DNS Server. Other devices works well. I can ping all ip adresses but I can't resolve any hostnames.

My Router is a "Vodafone Easybox 903". I don't know what the problem is, and I don't know how I can solve it.

My Macbook is the only device with this problem. My girlfriends MacBook Pro, iPhones, Apple TV and my Ubuntu PC work without any Problems.

Try using Google DNS - it will solve the problem, but doesn't go very far as to explaining why it's only your computer experiencing it. It might be worth checking in your hosts file to see if there are any unexpected entries.

Open Terminal
Type "Sudo nano /etc/hosts"
Enter your admin password

Your ouput should be something similar to the following:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##

127.0.0.1       localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost

Push ctrl + x to close when finished, and then you can close terminal. You may also have two more localhost entries - you're looking for anything with a * or any of the websites you use normally. I know SelfControl.app modifies this file and sometimes doesn't change it back.


How can I restore the default dimensions of the Force Quit dialog I accidentally maximized the Force Quit dialoge on my Mac and I am looking for a way to restore it to its original size other than manually resizing it. I would like it to be have exact dimensions as before.

Is there such a way to do that, for example, with preference files or defaults?

You can delete a key in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist:

defaults delete com.apple.loginwindow 'NSWindow Frame ProcessPanel'

The changes seem to be applied immediately.

simply double click on the taskbar. that will do the trick :)


What app/notification is causing this sound on my MacBook Pro Early 2011 My MacBook Pro running macOS 10.13.6 sporadically makes the following sound (see here for .mp3 format). I'd really like to know where this is coming from. Sometimes it looks like the computer makes the sound when the Ethernet cable and/or the power cable are disconnected, but I haven't been able to reliably link the sound to any of these events as the sound is not played every time they happen. Even just being able to record the sound using my phone was lucky. Also, normally this sound is made a few times over the course of a few minutes and that has been happening once every day or two for the last week.
I have followed the suggestions in the answers here and here. As the sound is played infrequently, some of the solutions haven't yet turned up any results. Every time I restart the mac the first thing I do is start the following command on Terminal: sudo fs_usage -w | grep -i "\.mp3\|\.aif\|\.m4a\|\.wav\|\.caf". The sound has played multiple times while the command is running but no audio file with that sound is shown in the command line.
I have looked at the Notification Center notifications and, although I have some from around the time this sound was played, none of those programs make this sound. I have also looked at the Notifications preference pane in Settings and no app in that list makes this sound (that I'm aware).
I've also searched the following locations for any .wav, .aif[f], .mp3 and .m4a file:

/Library
/System
/Applications
~/Library

I played all the sounds I could find, but my search has come up empty. Naturally, the sound could be saved in another file format or be in another location...

Sound files are stored in ~Library/Sounds, Library/Sounds or in System/Library/Sounds folder. Look in these 3 folders and see if that particular sound file is there.


Fastest and safest way to copy massive data from one external drive to another I need to be able to copy about 2TB of data from an external drive (single USB external disk) to a another external drive (Drobo attached via Firewire).

Finder is not an option. If it hits any problem, it stops the process and I have to figure it out why it failed and start over. It could take me months to get through it.

I've read about CP and RSYNC but I'm not too familiar and I'm afraid I might get some of the switches wrong and miss files, or screw up the file dates, or worst...

Can anyone suggest how I might pull this off with minimum risk and cost?

remote sync, rsync, is a reliable choice for copying large amounts of data. You can prepare the command and perform a dry-run before committing to the copy; add --dry-run to simulate the copy.

Your final command will be fairly simple:

sudo rsync -vaE --progress /Volumes/SourceName /Volumes/DestinationName

The flags are:

v increases verbosity.
a applies archive settings to mirror the source files exactly, including symbolic links and permissions.
E copies extended attributes and resource forks (OS X only).
--progress shows progress during the copy.

sudo, is used to ensure rsync has appropriate rights to access and read all files on your drive regardless of owner. This also allows rsync to write the files to the new drive recreating the original owner information.

rsync is likely the best choice because it can be rerun in case of problems, offers detailed logging, and is as fast as can be while remaining safe.

There are numerous guides for getting the most from rsync, rsync command examples provides relevant examples. Take care with the trailing slashes; these can make a world of difference if your copy starts with a folder.

Alternative tools include ditto and cp. Both are reasonable choices but offer differing syntax.

If you don't want to go the command line route, I use the FreeFileSync app  routinely to sync 2 TB of data from an external array to a network location without issue.  You can control how it handles errors and get a log when its complete.


How do I prevent document preview over slow connections? Once in a while I have to work over a 3G network, which is reasonable, until I mount a file system on the other side of the world.

When that happens OSX tries to show me "previews" of every single document in the finder, an operation which takes forever because it usually tries to download the entire document in order to generate the preview. After spending hours downloading a 5 MB file, it often decides, "oh gosh, I don't know how to show thumbnails of Word files. I'll just show you a Word icon." In the meantime Finder is in bouncing-ball-hell for hours.

Is there a way to prevent this specifically for network shares when I'm connected over a slow connection? Or, failing that, just prevent document preview for all network documents?

You can disable Icon preview in the view settings.
For example: right click the desktop and select "Show view option" and then uncheck the last box.

I haven't seen a way to disable icon preview just for network connections, but you can disable it for specific folders or for all of Finder.  http://www.bombippy.com/archives/2008/02/how_to_disable.php


What is the best way to clone a disk between two Macs? What is the best way to clone a disk between two Macs? I ask this every couple years or so and every time I get the same answer. "Use Carbon Copy Cloner", they say. But the unfortunate fact is that CCC is a file-level copy between disks. When I migrate to my new Mac, sure all the files are there but there are quirks here and there (including file dates being different etc).

So, really now, once again: how do you clone the disk over byte-for-byte?

You can use the dd command to make a bit-perfect clone of a drive. It's a command line tool that ships with OS X. In order to make the clone perfect you'll need to ensure the source and the destination aren't actively in use.
To prepare for the clone I recommend creating a secondary boot disk that you can boot from. Your source for the clone should be an offline volume, not in use, when you're making the copy. Otherwise you risk copying things that are in incomplete states on disk.
With your machine booted to your secondary boot disk, log in and fire up a Terminal or iTerm window.
Run diskutil to get a list of your available drives. One of them will be your target drive you're trying to clone. The other will be your source drive. For example:
> diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *320.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            319.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Backup                  499.8 GB   disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Clone                   499.8 GB   disk2s2

Let's say that Macintosh HD (disk0) is the source and Clone (disk2) is the target for our dd operation. Start the clone with:
> sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk0 of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m conv=noerror,sync

When dd finishes you may see an error like this:
dd: /dev/rdisk2: short write on character device
dd: /dev/rdisk2: Input/output error
3726+1 records in
3726+1 records out
500107862016 bytes transferred in 14584.393113 secs (34290619 bytes/sec)

That last error message is actually okay. The last block written was a short block because there wasn't a full 1MB block to copy. No worries.
Now you've got a bit-wise perfect clone of your Macintosh HD drive. Reboot your system using the Macintosh HD drive and enjoy your clone!

There are two types of cloning Mac drive. File level and block level based cloning. As we know carbon copy cloner can create file level based clone only and its one of the big competitor Superduper can create clone of volumes and partition only not the whole disk. So, I will suggest to go for a new emerging Mac cloning software that is Stellar Drive Clone capable to both file level and block level cloning.

It can create bit by bit exact copy of your entire drive and particular volumes on your any external drive, volume and network drive too. It can create clone of drive on folder and restore backups from the same in its free demo version feature. It can create clone of recovery HD and support window file formats, MBR, ExFAT, FAT32 etc on your Mac.


Install and run Linux on partition of external HD? Is it possible to install and run Linux on a partition an external HD in OS X?

Almost all the instructions I've found are about installing to the entire external HD, not to a partition.

I've install rEFInd on a Core2 Duo late 2007 iMac and dd'd a Linux .iso to a FAT-formatted partition on an external FW 800-connected drive, but the drive disappears from Finder and does not appear as an option in rEFInd when the iMac is rebooted.

I have to change the partition format back to OSX Extended (journaled) via selecting Disk -> Partition -> click on the particular partition in OS X 10.11.6 Disk Utility, and rename it to see it again, which of course wipes out the dd'd .iso. Duh!

Any ideas or is running Linux from an external HD partition impossible?

I think it is possible but you must partition/erase that partition as bootable.


Macbook not detecting all USB keyboard keys I have a Macbook Pro 2019. I recently purchase the Corsair K68 RGB keyboard which has a common USB Type-A connector. I used OTG for USB A to USB C.
The first time mac detects the new device. Worked great.
When I disconnected and reconnected the keyboard it only detects keys from A-Z. Not even spacebar or num keys.
Tried going to keyboard settings >> Change Keyboard Type. It does not detect my keyboard.
It only starts to work again when I restarted my mac. Now every time if my keyboard unplugged accidentally, I have to restart my mac.
Is there any other way to do it without restarting macbook again and again everytime?

The problem appears to be that you're using an On-The-Go adapter.

USB OTG introduces the concept of a device performing both master and slave roles – whenever two USB devices are connected and one of them is a USB OTG device, they establish a communication link. The device controlling the link is called the master or host, while the other is called the slave or peripheral.

The OTG adapter is designed to allow your device to switch roles of being the host or peripheral; this is necessary to connect devices such as mobile phones to devices like flash drives and keyboards because your mobile device has to be both -  a host when you plug in a keyboard and a peripheral when you plug it into a computer.
There's no need for this swapping of roles when you plug things into your computer as it will always be the host and whatever you plug into it will always be the peripheral.  Even your phone won't be a host to a computer.  The computer will always see it as an external device; maybe a storage device or even a camera.
What you should be using is just a plain USB-C to USB-A adapter/converter - I like and have used Anker adapters due to their quality and warranty. (I have about a half dozen of these everywhere from my briefcase and my desk).  You don't need anything expensive, but make sure you get from a known brand (this is not the time to save a couple dollars).  When plugging in a sub $10 item into a $2,000+ computer, I tend err on the side of caution and go with reputable names.

I have seen instances where USB ports stop working, but that's mostly been due to a static discharge on my part.
In a situation like this, the first thing I would do is see if the keyboard works without issue in another computer, with and without the OTG cable.  I would also see if you can use a different USB-A to USB-C adapter.
Another thing to check on is the System Profiler to see if the keyboard is being recognized properly. This way, you can try and rule out if it's the computer, the adapter, or the keyboard.
I hope it helps.


OS X internet recovery older version problem I am using Macbook Pro Mid 2012 13" with 128GB SSD.  The latest installed version of OS X was El Capitan which crashed during a Sierra upgrade.

Internet recovery mode worked somehow to land me to install download and install a new OS but it's Mountain Lion, which came installed when I bought the Macbook few years back However, it's rejecting to install on current SSD drive as shown in pic.

I have another 320GB HDD, so is this the only way to reinstall?  First I do a fresh install of Lion on the external HDD?  What I should I do?

What is a  step by step procedure as all I want to do is run OSX on SSD drive but keeping all my older data. I can not afford to wipe it.

However,  I did back up some of its backup onto my PC. If I install Lion the HDD can I then download Sierra and create an install disk to update/fix/install corrupted OS X on SSD?

Note: This answer has been updated because the comment below misunderstands how Recovery works. When your Recovery partition gets updated, not only will it run the newest version of macOS, but the installer gets updated to the newest version as well.

If a Mac shipped with macOS 12.3 or earlier, then Internet Recovery will install whatever version of macOS shipped on the Mac, even if the Mac had previously been updated.

If the Mac shipped with macOS 12.4 or later, or was upgraded to 12.4 or later, then Internet Recovery will install the most recent version of macOS that is supported on that Mac.

So if your Mac shipped with 10.11, and you updated to 10.12, then:
Internet Recovery will install 10.11
Recovery will install 10.12

If your Mac shipped with 10.11 and you updated to 10.12.4, then:
Internet Recovery will install 10.13 (or later)
Recovery will install 10.12.4

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. option-cmd-R, Disk Utility → Erase, install


How to make iPhone charge over USB cable when locked? iPhone 6s, running iOS 12.0.1

Plugging the phone into a computer to charge produces an "Unlock iPhone to use accessories" message and the phone refuses to charge.

How do I fix this nonsensical behavior? I know Apple added a privacy feature where the phone disables the data connection on lock to thwart hacktools that plug into the phone and brute-force the access code, but there's no reason to disable charging-only while it's locked. In this particular case, I only need to charge the phone over a computer; it doesn't need data access.

I'd like to avoid having to buy additional hardware such as a separate power-only limited USB cable.

Fixed.

Go into the security settings (Settings -> Touch ID and Passcode), and enable the "USB Accessories" switch (it should be green with the virtual switch-button to the right). This enables charging off any connection while locked.

Unfortunately this also disables the privacy/security feature that thwarts hacktools with physical access, so if you enable the USB Accessories option you will want to take extra precautions to prevent unauthorized physical device access and refrain from plugging into dodgy machines.

If you have an extra usb cable for your iPhone you may make a charge only cable by cutting the data wires. In an iPhone Charge&Sync cable, you will find 4 wires (because usb uses 4 wires to communicate, you have the data +/- and the +5v and ground) of various colors. I found a tutorial on how to clip the data lines on a usb cable on inscrutables. The general idea is the same, except it's an ios cord, and not a microusb. Charge Only Cable (Instructables)


Cellular (SIM card) stopped working on iPhone 5s I have an iPhone 5s whose iOS was updated to the 9.1 version yesterday night. Then, from today morning up to now something strange happened: the cellular signal seems to be completely off. The carrier text is replaced with 'Searching...' and (therefore) no calls can be made or 3G/4G access is available.

I tried to troubleshoot the problem by inserting my SIM card into another iPhone 5s, and it is working okay in there. I also tried to put another SIM card in my iPhone and it is not being detected as well.

I also tried a hard reset (=holding power + home button during 10 seconds until reboot) in the device and had no success.

After those tests it seems that the problem is with the iPhone itself and not with the SIM card.

Question is: what I can further try to do to troubleshoot it? Any hope?

Reset your Network Settings. Tap Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. This also resets Wi-Fi networks and passwords, cellular settings, and VPN and APN settings that you've used before.

Try to turn on Airplane mode, wait 5 sec. and then turn off it again..


How do I get an operating system onto a new hard drive? I will be installing a new 500GB hard drive in my macbook.  It is a late 2008, aluminum, 13-inch screen.  Once I install it, how do I get an operating system that's 10.7 or newer (downloaded from the App Store) on to the bare/unformatted drive?

Being a 1 Mac household and an IT professional who has only supported PCs, I had a challenging time trying to figure out how to reload OSX after my husband's Mac hard drive died. Hopefully I diagnosed a bad hard drive correctly (I'll provide my method) and I hope this helps someone out there. This is probably overkill on instructions, but there are PC people out there who may try to help out the  (much more) rare critical Mac issue. I did most of this from memory, so I may have messed up a label here or there. Please use Common sense if I did this and look around the screen for something that looks like what I'm talking about.
NOTE: This process only worked because the hard drive was still able to access recovery mode by holding Command+R on startup. If your Mac is unable to access that feature, this may not work for you, but I included some other handy stuff, like recovering files from the drive.
Initial Symptom: My husband's Mac had been randomly shutting down for some time, but we were limping it along. Finally, on startup one day, he saw a progress bar that would complete and then the device would shut down. Here is the process I followed:
Things you'll need:

SATA/IDE to USB Adapter (Mine was Vantec USB 2.0, but it shouldn't matter. Be sure to get one with external power source. I've had little to no success with USB powered devices.
Mac running OSX Lion or later (prior versions didn't have the recovery partition)
New Hard drive that is compatible with Mac.
T8 Mini Torx screw driver
Small phillips screwdriver
Recommend: A cold beer and a lot of patience
Just in case you pull off the rubber coating, you'll need a case removal tool like you use to replace a cell phone screen. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XVPDSG/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk

Step 1: Troubleshoot the Device

Power off the Device
Hold down the Command+R keys as you start the device. Continue holding the keys until the Recovery Utility prompts you to select a language (Grey Screen) **NOTE:**You may have to hold the keys for up to two minutes.
After you've selected a language preference, Select the Disk Utility item in the list of utilities.
Select your drive on the left navigation panel (It's probably already selected)
Click the Verify Disk button in the Disk Utilities. It will probably show some erros. Click the Repair Disk button that will only appear after you click Verify. Do this until there are no errors or (like me) you receive a message saying that the disc couldn't be repaired.
Click the Verify Disk Permissions button. If this completes successfully, click Repair Disk Permissions
NOTE This may solve your problem. If you didn't receive a nasty message on step 5 saying the Disk was corrupt, to back up your files and such, good on ya! Try some Canadian troubleshooting -- When in doot (doubt) Reboot!

Step 2: Removing the Hard Drive from the Mac
Here's a great visual guide to the steps below: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2010+Hard+Drive+Replacement/4305

Turn off the MacBook.
Remove the hard drive from the device by removing the 8 screws from the bottom of the MacBook and pulling off the bottom cover, being careful not to pull at the edges as it will pull off the rubber coating. If you accidentally do this, tip to follow. To pull the cover, put your fingers at the hinge of the MacBook screen (from the bottom), and lift from the metal part under the rubber cover.
You will see a small black bar held down with two screws right next to the hard drive. This must be removed before the hard drive is pulled out.
If your hard drive is OEM, there should be a plastic tab that you gently pull on to lift the hard drive, being cautious of the SATA cable
Pull gently at the cable connector seated in the end of the hard drive facing the exterior of the case to disconnect the hard drive.

If you messed up and pulled off the rubber coating:

After you have finished removing the bottom cover, get out the case removal tool from the list of things you'll need that you diligently ordered with your new hard drive for just $1 or so
Hold the rubber coating on the metal case with the metal part (inside of the cover) facing you.
GENTLY slip the edge of the case removal tool under the edges of the rubber coating with the edge of the tool facing towards you and lift the edge back over the edge of the metal backing.
Slowly glide the tool around the edge, lifting the rubber back into place, being extra cautious around the corners.
Put the back plate down and don't breathe on it or the rubber stuff will come off again.

Step 3: Using a PC and HFS Explorer to Recover Files

Download HFS Explorer and install it on your PC (http://www.catacombae.org/hfsexplorer/)
Plug the removed hard drive into the SATA/IDE to USB device. There will be two cables to plug in and they are directional. The smaller plug is the data cable that goes into the rectangular USB connector. The other goes to the power cable. If you bought the same one I did, there is a connector that adapts the standard power supply connector to SATA. There is a power switch on this cable.
Plug the USB cable into your PC and turn on the power switch on the cable (if you haven't already).
You should hear the device chime in Windows, or you can verify that the device driver was recognized and installed in Device Manager. Note: You will not see it show up as a hard drive as the Mac drive format is not diurectly compatible as a disk drive with Windows.
Open HFS Explorer and click File > Load File System From Device
I was not able to use the AutoDetect Button successfully, but you can try. I selected the Select a Device radio button and in the Detected Devices drop-down and click Load
Select the files and folders you wish to back up in the tree to the left just like you would any Explorer (or Finder for you Mac peeps) tree, then click Extract. My husband's files were in the second partition under the Users > [Username] folder.
Follow the prompts to extract the files to the desired location. You will have to babysit it because there are a lot of Mac file names that are not OK on Windows. I used the "Auto-Rename" feature and it worked swimmingly.

Step 4: Installing OSX on the New Hard Drive
If you're still with me, crack open another beer, because you've probably finished the first one. This was the most frustrating part to research. When you Google, " How do I load OSX on a new hard drive using a PC ", you end up with some great suggestions to use VM Virtual Box, which means you have to get a copy of your OSX load. Well, mine happened to be on this one very broken Mac hard drive, and you can only make a Mac bootable with a Mac. Grr...So, I gave this a shot. I hope it works for you.

Install the NEW hard drive back into Mac. Before you do this, there are a couple of screw-in pins that are in the sides of the old hard drive that you will need to hold your new hard drive in place. Use the T8 mini Torx screwdriver to remove them and place them into the sides of the new drive. These will hold your new drive in place. Put a couple of screws on opposite corners of the bottom plate to hold it in place and protect all the precious bits in there. Do not turn on the Mac yet
Connect the OLD device to the SATA/IDE connector, connect the USB to the Mac and turn on the power to the new hard drive
Hold down the Option key and turn on the device to choose which device to boot to.
Select the OLD hard drive (Probably called Recovery_[something]) when prompted to choose a boot device.
The boot sequence will take you into the Mac Recovery Utilities menu
Select the Disk Utilities option from the menu
Select the NEW Drive in the list to the left and click Verify Disk. This should come out clean
Click the Erase option in the Disk Utility and complete a format of the hard drive using the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) option
If you like, partition the drive using the Partition option and set the number and size of partitions to the desired size.
Exit the Disk Utility tools using the menu in the upper-left
In the recovery menu, click the Reinstall OSX option
If you are prompted to connect to a wireless network, you can either connect it to an ethernet cable to speed things along, or click the Wireless icon in the upper-right of the top toolbar to search for an SSID to connect to. This will permit you to use the online recovery options to download the operating system.
Follow the prompts and enter your iTunes login info
When prompted to select a disk for installation, select the disk (or partition) you would like to install OSX on on the NEW hard drive and follow the prompts to initiate the installation.
IMPORTANT When the reboot after download occurs, if the installation gets stuck on Verifying Disks or shows symptoms of pixelation on the progress bar and corresponding status text, hold down the power button on the Mac to shut it down. CONGRATULATIONS! You successfully diagnosed that the old hard drive is bad. ;-) If this occurs and your installation doesn't go through, pull the USB cable from the SATA/IDE to USB adapter from the USB port, hold down the Control key and turn the Mac on. Select the Install OS X drive as the boot device.
Wait for an eternity...have a couple more beers...Voila.

My MacBook late 2009 didn't start properly and it turned out that the old hard drive had some I/O errors. I bought a new Kingston SSD hard drive, then switched it with the old Toshiba. I then plugged the old Toshiba to the computer using a USB interface cable and started the computer in Recovery mode (Command+R pressed while powering on).
Using the utilities I erased the new hard drive using the default options and made a new OSX install using my WiFi.
After the OSX was installed it automatically suggested to import applications, settings etc from the old hard drive still connected via USB.
Everything now works like a charm. No timemachine or cloning needed. I'm using the latest OSX version available for the late 2009 MacBook. Hope this helps!


What does this ribbon on the iPhone 5s LCD shield plate do? While opening up my iPhone 5s to replace the screen, I ripped this ribbon that was stuck to the LCD shield plate and I was wondering what it's called and what it's function is?

It's the grounding plane.  Basically it reduces electrical noise and interference. Replacing it would be ideal but, if it's a very small rip, you should be okay.  Very small being 1mm or less.  It may function with a bigger rip but I'm not sure how that will affect the performance of your device.


How does the "Copy" button work for iPad photos? When I click "Share" on an iPad photo not in Camera Roll, there's a "Copy" option. It seems to do nothing, how can I get it to work? Ideally I want to copy a photo to the Camera Roll so I can save it to my computer. It's annoying that I can't just save all the photos, Camera Roll or not, from the iPad to my computer.

The Copy function copies the photo onto the clipboard. You can then paste it into other apps, say Mail, by tapping and holding until a contextual menu appears that says "Paste". If you're on a web page, you can tap and hold an image and select "Save Image" to save it to your camera roll. But you can't use the Copy function to "paste" it into your camera roll.

When you click copy it saves in your photo stream then you can save from there


Do iPhone X cases fit on the iPhone XS? Does anyone know whether the iPhone X and the iPhone XS have the exact same measurements as far as cases are concerned?

I know that the measurements shown on the Apple iPhone compare webpage are the same, but what about the measurements of the camera? Apple does not show this on their website.

Let's suppose, that the X and the XS have the exact same measurements, then every iPhone X case should fit on the XS, correct?

But even if there is the slightest difference between them, there could be some iPhone X cases that can't fit iPhone XS.

Various sources on the Web affirm that iPhone X and iPhone XS are near identical in dimensions and cases for iPhone X should fit iPhone XS.

However, there are also various reports pointing out specific cutouts applicable to certain cases.

Like, if the camera opening on the iPhone XS is noticeably larger, so if you have a case with a very tight fighting camera opening, your iPhone XS may not fit. One point outs that the placement of microphone vent is slightly different between the two phones.

The various reviews are shared below for reference:

From the Q&A on Apple Online store:

  Yes! They have same dimensions and buttons location. So all your cases from iPhone X will perfectly fit iPhone XS.

Reddit thread, from /r/iphone, PSA: iPhone X Cases Will NOT Fit XS

  Just noticed this in MKBHD's review: https://youtu.be/YAF9BWpzwvI?t=2m7s
  The camera opening is noticeably larger. If you're upgrading from an X to XS, you'll need new cases.

iMore, Will your old case fit the new iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max?

  The iPhone XS is a refresh of last year's iPhone X, and appears to have the exact same design and dimensions. This means that you should be able to use your old iPhone X case with your iPhone XS. So all those great cases already available for the iPhone X are ripe for the picking!

  That being said, the microphone layout on the bottom of the iPhone XS is slightly different than the iPhone X, which means cases that have precise cutouts for those microphone holes in the iPhone X, may be slightly misaligned on an iPhone XS.

iPhone Hacks, Will iPhone X Cases Fit the iPhone XS?

  The answer is a resounding yes! The iPhone XS shares the same dimensions as the iPhone X and since all port locations are also the same, iPhone X cases will fit the iPhone XS just fine. The latter is 3gms heavier than the iPhone X but this difference is unlikely to create any issues for cases with a kickstand or a slim profile.

CNET, Will my iPhone XS fit in a iPhone X case? Yes!

  The two iPhones have the exact same height, width and depth.

MacRumors, iPhone X Cases May Have Slightly Imperfect Fit on iPhone XS Due to New Camera Bump Dimensions

  While the iPhone X and iPhone XS have identical overall dimensions, a new report suggests that iPhone X cases may have a slightly imperfect fit on the iPhone XS due to very slight changes to the camera bump dimensions.

Note: The official case design guidelines for devices from Apple are made available here. The linked Accessory Design Guidelines containing precise measurements should soon get updated to include iPhone XS. If interested, you can go through the measurements to get a better idea of what aspects have changed between iPhone X and iPhone XS, and case analyze case compatibility.

Yes. I have an Apple leather iPhone X case that fits my iPhone XS perfectly.


Dock doesn't disappear before reboot Every time when I'm trying to reboot my mac(macbook pro retina|el capitan), everything disappear except dock so the process stops and thats how my desktop looks:

Have you tried removing some of the items from your dock?  You can always add them back later. Also go under your Apple Icon in the top left corner to the force quit option and see if there is a application open somewhere you're not aware and force quit it.  Finally, look in your system preferences for the Dock. You can choose to hide the Dock to only appear when your cursor goes to the bottom of the screen. I doubt that would solve your problem though.  I have my Dock on the left side of my screen and it is hidden, that way I can see the entire screen and only access the Dock when I need to open an application.  Good luck.


Filter RSS feeds on iPad I'm looking for an app to read my rss feeds from my favourite websites but with a filtering feature by keywords. For example every article from a website that contains the word "pluto". On my mac I use RSS Bot to do so, but now that I have an iPad I don't know how can I do that again. Any help?

I highly recommend the newly updated Net News Wire for iOS (and Mac if you choose the extra bonus ability to have one unified feed synced across both OS).

http://netnewswireapp.com
http://netnewswireapp.com/ios/

The original author is a long time renowned developer and the current owners are equally respected in the community for doing top notch work.


Why didn't my Windows partition show up in the Startup Disk preference pane? I install Windows(XP after that 7) on my MBP with Boot Camp and every thing was fine but after a while in System Prefences -> Startup Disk my windows partition was lost and when I want to switch to my windows must restart my Laptop and Press Down option during startup. I can't switch directly from my OS X.

anyone know how can I solve this. or why this is happened?

Did you by any chance install the NTFS-3G driver?

It's a known bug (for quite some time, now). When installed, you can no longer have the Windows partition in the Startup Disk prefpane.

In the NTFS control panel, there is an option to uninstall. I did that, and, without restarting, I have the option again!


Has anyone figured out a keyboard shortcut to globally strikethrough selected text in any OS X app? We have ⌘B to bold, ⌘I to italicise, ⌘U to underline, but we don't (as far as I can tell) have a shortcut to strikethrough selected text in any OS X rich editor.

I added a keyboard shortcut into System Preferences, but that way doesn't work very consistently. I also tried using TextExpander, but it doesn't support rich text formatting.

Has anyone come up with a way to do this?

Hey I just came across this question because today I just started to use Stickies as a To-Do list for things I need to finish over the day and I also wanted to have that feature that you strikethrough items or text you are done with…

I think an easy workaround for this is that you have lets say 3 items, then you go to mark your first item with the strikethrough from the Fonts panel and then select that all the item and go to Font > Copy Style (Opt+Cmd+C) and then because it is copied in the Stickies app, after, anytime you use the shortcut Opt+Cmd+V (Paste Style) over a selected item it will paste the strikethrough style anytime later on the app, even if you have any other copied item in your clipboard.


Detecting Jailbreaking I jailbroke my iPad several months ago, and then could not open the Bloomberg app that I use for work. ("Device has been jailbroken.") I figured that work>jailbreaking (duh) and restored my iPad. I tried to open Bloomberg once more, and it said "Device has been jailbroken."

What does jailbreaking do that is irreparably detectable?

As far as I know, only iBooks has the power to truly block a jailbroken device. It does this by writing an unsigned executable to the root of the system. If the device is locked (not jailbroken) it can't run. But if the device is jailbroken the executable is run and iBooks quits (crashes). But this is Apple's proprietary app and third party software isn't given this level of control. In fact, all third party apps are sandboxed and can't touch anything outside of their respective installation directory.

So what it's it looking for? Rumors claim it looks for Cydia. But again, that would require the app have access to the system as Cydia isn't installed in your user's installation directory (/private/var/mobile/Applications) but rather at the system root
(/private/var/stash/Applications). And even if that were true, it would mean that once you wipe your jailbreak, it should work as expected. In this case, that doesn't look to be the case (unless it has saved the device state in the app's preferences).

But there is still one file that maybe it can access:

/private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.saurik.cydia.plist

Additionally, this file is carried along with your backups whether the device is jailbroken or not once it has been created.

Either that or the app simply queried your device's state when jailbroken and has saved that information, carrying it over even after you removed the jailbreak (as mentioned above). However, if you've uninstalled and reinstalled the app after the jailbreak, then you needn't worry about that. But if you have any preference files left over from the jailbreak, you might have to clear them out. Either re-jailbreak and remove them via ssh or reinstall iOS but choose rather than setting up your device using a backup, start clean.

This doesn't look like the only app that checks for a jailbreak. Time Warner Cable and Skype both have a history of doing this. Unfortunately still no credible information on how they achieve this. Since they are bound to restrictive APIs like all third party apps in the App Store, I don't think it's all that sophisticated.

There are many ways to identify a computer/device. For example, your MAC address or UUID may have been blacklisted.


Can iTunes now play HD music files in high definition? A record company is offering free downloads of high-definition music. I downloaded several music files encoded at 24 bit, 192 kHz ALAC. To my surprise, iTunes 12.0.1.26 on  10.10.1 Yosemite imported the track and played it successfully! And it lists that high-resolution information in the file information.

I had thought that iTunes could not play high definition files. I understood it to be limited to 16 bit, 44.1 kHz files. And so I had thought that special software is required to play anything higher than that.

So my question is: When iTunes is playing such files, is it actually playing them at full resolution, or is it down-converting them? (Or whatever the technical term would be for storing or playing the files at something less than full resolution.) I can't tell by ear because I don't have my computer hooked up to good speakers.

iTunes uses the same technologies as QuickTime for playback.

According to this document circa 2005, QuickTime is capable of playing 24-bit , 192kHz audio files. I think it's safe to say that iTunes is fully capable of playing these files.

However, you're probably limited by the hardware in your Mac. If you open the "Audio MIDI Setup" app, you'll probably find that your Mac is limited to audio output at 96kHz.

So, if you want to listen to these files in full 192kHz, you'll need to use a dedicated external USB DAC, and bypass your Mac's internal audio hardware. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Further reading: http://www.head-fi.org/t/671361/how-to-get-24-bit-192khz-files-from-my-macbook-pro-to-play-through-the-dac-of-the-fiio-e17

I have imported 96/24 AIFF files (downloads from HD Tracks) into iTunes. I play them on my iMac and MBPro (digital optical out from headphone jack to my PreAmp which has a DAC, and recently I switched over to USB just to see if there was a difference). To my knowledge, as long as you have the correct setting in MIDI (change the sample rate and bit rate to the maximum settings of the DAC). iTunes will play HiRes files. However, recently I loaded Audirvana Plus and am playing my iTunes files through Audirvana and there is a difference in sound. That makes me wonder if iTunes was playing the HiRes files in full HiRes properly. Admittedly, Audirvana bypasses a lot of Apple audio circuitry to reduce noise and this may be the explanation. But nevertheless, I am left believing that iTunes doesn't do HiRes music properly. BTW if you are spending all that money on HiRes downloads, just spend the money on Audirvana Plus (or JRiver) and enjoy HiRes music with greater sound quality than iTunes.


Problems getting macOS Sierra on a bootable hard drive I'm trying to get a bootable hard drive with macOS Sierra going so that I can use Octane Render. My Macbook is running macOS High Sierra, which is apparently buggy with Octane at the moment.

I purchsed a WD easystore, partitioned it to be Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and put the macOS Sierra installer on it (I downloaded this from the App Store). First, I was starting up with that disk and continuously getting the following error message:
"This copy of the Install macOS Sierra.app application is damaged, and can't be used to install macOS."

NOW I'm not even getting to that stage, the drive isn't even showing up as a bootable disk! When I go to System Preferences > Startup Disk, it's not even there as an option.

Please help me - getting verrrry frustrated as I have no idea what I'm doing. Thanks in advance!

Assuming that you don't have an additional thumb drive (according to Apple with at least 12 GB - I got it to work with a 8 GB thumb drive) I recommend the following method:

erase and repartition your WD easystore to two Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partitions - a bigger one first with the name "Sierra" and the size (total_size_of_external_drive - 12 GB) and a much smaller second one with the name "Sierra_Installer" and a size of ~12 GB. The partition scheme has to be GUID! If your MacBook's main partition already has the name "Sierra"  choose another name for the first partition of the external drive. Below I assume the bigger volume on the external drive has the name "Sierra".

Example: if your external drive has a size of 1 TB, then the first partition "Sierra" should have a size of 988 GB and the second "Sierra_Installer" partition one of ~12 GB.
re-download the "macOS Sierra installer.app" on your MacBook
open Terminal.app in /Applications/Utilities
enter the command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Sierra_Installer --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app

hit the Enter key, enter your password (which won't be visible because it's masked), hit the Enter key again and let do createinstallmedia its job.
Quit Terminal after the job is done and any other app.
Reboot to "Sierra_Installer" (e.g. by choosing it in System Preferences > Startup Disk or by hitting the alt-key while booting and choosing Sierra_Installer)
After a successful boot of the "Installer Boot Partition" install macOS Sierra to the volume "Sierra".
After a successful installation configure Sierra.
Finally remove the partition "Sierra_Installer" with Disk Utility and resize the volume "Sierra" to the full size of the disk.

The method proposed by user3439894 in a comment to your question is preferred though: create an Installer Thumb Drive, boot to it and install Sierra to a single-partitioned external drive.

Take a copy with Carbon Copy Cloner

Boot MacOs High Sierra from Mac.
Format WD EasyStore to "Mac OS Extended" using Disk Utility.
Use a bootable backup software such as CCC5 to copy the drive you are currently booted from onto the WD Easystore
Restart, when you hear the startup sound hold 'alt' or 'opt'
Choose WD EasyStore as boot drive.


How to restore OS X on MacBook Air after installing Windows 8? After installing Windows 8 MacBook Air is not booting. I want to revert back to  OS X. I need help on how to do that.

press the Option key + R
select the disk that installed
Mac OSx.
maybe you're starting with
Windows.

Now if you want to
a new installation, you will
need access to another Mac,
to mount the flash drive installation.
follow these steps: http://osxdaily.com/2015/09/30/create-os-x-el-capitan-boot-install-drive/


Uptime report multiple users I'm not sure I understand the command "uptime"

uptime
13:58  up 5 days,  9:49, 3 users

I have 3 users detected, but I have only one user account on the Mac and no sharing enabled.

What the users actually are?

Close Terminal.app, then open one Terminal.app window and read the manual pages for uptime, w and who, e.g man uptime, then execute each command e.g. uptime, w and whoin that order in that one Terminal.app window you opened.

It should become apparent however if not... There are always at least two users logged in, you using console and note its time, it's corresponds to the time you logged into your account from the GUI, and you using ttys000 (the Terminal.app windows that you opened). In these instances you is as shown in the output of who am i.

Each additional Terminal window you open will show as another user using , e.g. ttys001, ttys002, etc.

Every terminal window you have opened counts as a login. Open more terminals and type the command again and you will see how the number changes.


Can I exchange an iPhone 4 with an iPhone 5 without getting a new SIM? I understand that for certain iPhone models it is necessary to get a new SIM if I want to exchange them.

If I have a 4S and want to exchange it with a user who has just purchased a 5, is this possible to do by simply following the same straightforward SIM-transfer procedures used to exchange (for example) a 4 with a 4S.

According to this article, the problem isn't just the size.

  It turns out, as well as a smaller size, the Nano SIM is reportedly
  15% thinner than the Micro SIM cards. So even if users cut the Micro
  SIM to Nano SIm size with a knife or nano SIM cutter tool, the Sim
  card would still be too thick to put in the iPhone 5.

I just took a family mobile sim card from my ZTE Zinger and cut the card with a broad wire cutter, (don't use scissors, you need something that will make the cut in one chop, like a nail clipper, but with a straight cutting end). I put the card into a newly unlocked iPhone 5, and it worked fine.


Can't add invitation to calendar My girlfriend sent me an invitation from an Apple device to an alias that sends to both my work and home e-mail addresses.  I clicked on the Accept button and it says that I Accepted but I don't see the event on my iPhone or on www.icloud.com.  None of these e-mail addresses -- home, work, or alias -- match my Apple ID.  Is there a way I can get this into my calendar?  I tried forwarding the work e-mail to my home address and adding the event from the .ics file but I get This invitation data is out of date when I try and do this.

I got the "this information data is out of date" message on my iPhone, and the work-around for me (based on a different discussion thread) was to temporarily disable wifi. With wifi disabled, the "add to calendar" option re-appeared. Go figure.

You need to add the receiving email as an "Alternate Email" in your Apple ID settings. Visit http://appleid.apple.com, login, and look at the Alternate Email section.

Once you've added it as an alternate, you can then successfully accept calendar invites sent to that email and have them show up on your iCloud calendar.


PATH not being changed for root user I have added .bash_profile, .bashrc, .profile exeuctables in the /var/root dir.  However, unlike the normal users which execute their .bash_profile(s) and change the path.  There is no difference in the profiles but the root user one does not work.

I am unclear about how to get this workinkg.  Any suggestions?  Thanks.

For system wide changes (including root user) you have to edit /etc/profile or /etc/bashrc.


How do I sync contacts between 2 iCloud accounts with iOS 8? I have one iCloud account, and my wife has another.  I have an iPhone, and so does she.  It's easy to share calendars in iOS 8, and I'd like to do something similar with our contacts.  How can we keep our contacts synchronized between the two accounts/devices?

Found this on a forum today.  Suppose a husband and wife want to share contacts.  In Settings > iCloud, the husband adds his account.  In it, he must sync contacts; he can also sync whatever else he wants.

In Settings > iCloud, the wife adds her account.  In it, she cannot sync contacts, but she can sync whatever else she wants.  In Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, she adds her husband's account. In it, the only thing she syncs is contacts.

That's it.

We have found the best way to share contacts and keep them synced in real time is to both use the same icloud account.


iPod Touch 5th generation; iMessages and Facetime doesn't work I recently got my iPod Touch, and a couple days ago, I was signed out of FaceTime and iMessage (not by my own doing) and I haven't been able to log back in.
I have already tried changing my DNS to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, I have logged in and out of my Apple ID on my iPod Touch, I have changed my email address and then changed it back, and I have used a different WiFi connection.  The message that pops up (after it fails to log in) says, 'FaceTime Activation Could not sign in.  Please check your network connection and try again.'  This happens for iMessage, as well.  I am using the right password and email, and I do not use an iCloud account.  What should I do to be able to log in again and keep my email the same?

I will try restoring the iPod itself. It sounds like a software issue, maybe about cache.

There's also another possibilities about your network routers. It might be blocking those ports or whatever. Try with an Apple one.

By chance do you have a cover/case on you iPod? Go into the room where your wi-fi router is and try again. If you do have a cover on it, remove it first to activate it and then if it works you should be able to place the cover back on still use it. I have a Survivor case on mine and that was blocking the signal needed to activate. It didn't get in the way of itunes, internet connection, or anything else. But for some reason it did for FaceTime and iMessages. Good luck!


Is there a standard format for HTML-emails? I have noticed that HTML-formatted graphical emails which I receive are the perfect width for the message pane in Lion's Mail app.

It almost looks as if Apple designed them (it didn't they are from random companies).

Is this a coincidence, or is there a standard? Did Apple play a role in defining it?

HTML emails from companies are usually made using an online HTML builder, such as xact target, Dot mailer, Mail Chimp and the like.

The templates use HTML to create the emails. In the HTML there is code which will render differently in Mail, and outlook, Hotmail, yahoo mail, etc. The suppliers of email software will spend significant amounts of time making sure teh same version is seen in the same way by all email recipients

The HTML code in a lot of HTML email also defines whether you are using a desktop app, web mail, or even mobile.

The reason your emails fit onto your browser is down to the flood of people using mobile email, on iPhones, iPads, Android devices, etc. The email is built in columns, usually no more that 2. These columns can then be narrow or wide depending on whether the recipient is using a mobile device or a desktop email client.

Next time you get a HTML email have a look at it on your desktop email, and then compare it with how it looks on a mobile.

The hardest mobile to support is Blackberry, as most models do not support HTML, instead they often render a plain text version.

So to finish off and answer your question,

There is no design standard, and Apple did not have a say in it.

You mean, something like this?

OS X has built-in stationary, that one can use to create HTML formatted emails.


How to remap 'Context Menu' key on external keyboard? I'm using a Cherry G80 (excellent 'clicky' keyboard btw.) on my Macbook Air. Everything works fine, I can use and remap all keys using Ukelele1 or directly in Emacs.

The only key behaving strange is the Context Menu2 Key.

It returns the same Unicode sequence as Control-P.

This is the output of Key Codes3 when pressing the Context Menu key:

Key Down
Characters:
Unicode:        16 / 0x10
Keys:
Key Code:   110 / 0x6e
Modifiers:  256 / 0x100

This is the output for Control-P:

Key Down
Characters:
Unicode:        16 / 0x10
Keys:       ⌃P
Key Code:   35 / 0x23
Modifiers:  262401 / 0x40101

(Notice the difference in 'Keys')

My goal is to use it directly in Emacs or be able to swap it to some other (modifier) key. Is there any way to do this? I can't find a way to bring Ukelele to do that.

Bad news. Apple's XML DTD format that Ukelele targets does not support modifiers outside of shift keys, option keys, control keys, and command keys.

As @Lri suggested KeyRemap4MacBook supports mapping the Context Menu Key, which it calls the Application Key. In KeyRemap4MacBook's preferences go to For PC Users -> Change PC Application Key to see all the supported options. Mappings that may be of use for Emacs: Fn Key;  Shift_L Key; Option_L Key; Control_L Key; and, Command_L Key.

The easiest way is to customize the key layout. You can do this by hand but I'd suggest using the utility Ukelele. I haven't used this on Lion so I don't know how well it works. If you want to do it manually (which I've done in the past as well) here's the tech note from Apple on how to do it.


How do I debug Airport Extreme (5th gen) + iPhone 5 wifi performance problems? Right around when I bought iPhone 5s for my wife and me I also moved in to a new, larger house. I was finding that wifi performance on our fancy new phones was terrible: I have a 35mbps internet connection but the performance was so bad that iCloud backups could rarely complete. The SpeedTest app would show that performance varied between 5mbps and 0mbps (no activity, just frozen). At first Apple replaced our iPhones, but that didn't help one bit.

Since then, I've learned a few things: 2.4GHz signals perform poorly on iPhones and moderate on other devices, wile 5GHz performs very well (30mpbs+) on all devices, though range is limited with the iPhone compared to my MBP.

In order to compensate for this, I set my house up with two Airport Extremes connected via ethernet wired in the house: a 4th generation connected to my cable modem on one side of the house, and a 5th generation (hosting printer + disks) connected via ethernet broadcasting wifi on the other side of the house. I had hoped by doing this I could just use the 5GHz signal and the range issue would be addressed with my phones.

Surprisingly, I found performance to be incredibly spotty -- to the point that network activity would stop entirely until I turned wifi off/on on the phone. On other devices, everything was fine. Debugging this further, what I discovered is that my 5th generation AE basically freezes up wifi traffic on my iPhones after a certain amount of traffic and it never recovers. I confirmed this by sending a separate wifi signal from that base station and connecting directly to it. Sure enough, SpeedTest clearly shows the weird behavior.

I've tried various things:

Holding Alt in the advanced settings to only broadcast N signals
Broadcasting combined as well as separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals
Switching between "automatic" and manual channels for both frequencies
With authentication on and off
With guest wifi on and off

So far, the results are consistent no matter what: my 5th generation AE seems to simply lock up when sending data through my iPhones. One strange thing I can't find answers on, and my gut says is part of the problem, is what exactly "data rate" means when looking at connected clients. For my laptops, it's always very high (150Mbps) but for my iDevices & AppleTV, it can range between 1Mbps (usually) and sometimes as high as 60Mbps. I can't find any documentation on what this really means, but I am assuming it's not a coincidence that higher numbers equal better performance

Does anyone have any tips on what to do here? I'm past my Apple Customer Care period for all my AEs and iPhones, but I'm glad to pay $20 for a one time ticket if it'll help. Is it possible my 5th gen AE is just broken? Has anyone else had 5th gen AE + iPhone 5 wifi issues?

Thanks!

PS: I'm attaching a screenshot from my iPhone showing the weird behavior on my 5th gen AE. This does not happen on the 4th gen and I would just use that if it weren't for the unexpected range and 2.4GHz performance issues I'm also seeing.

PPS: The wildcard in this whole thing may be interferrence. I have read that sattelite dishes can sometimes cause problems (we have DirecTV). Our house is not in a dense urban area, but we are on a hill and not too far away (half mile?) are quite a few major broadcast towers for the Portland TV (and radio?) markets.

To understand signal vs noise, and how to interpret those numbers, see very useful guide, Airport Optimal Base Station Placement.


What is the difference between the WPA2 Personal, WPA and WPA2 WiFi security passcodes? I was editing the configuration for my Time Capsule, when I noticed that I had the following options for network encryption:

Why is there an option of WPA/WPA2? Is it as secure as WPA2 Personal?

When looking for the network with other devices, I'm am told to enter a WPA2 Password. Thus, I thought that I had configured it using WPA2 Personal.

Both 'WPA' and 'WPA2' use AES to encrypt the information transiting the WiFi network, but

WPA uses something called TKIP to manage the keys used to encrypt the data. TKIP is vulnerable to attack (it's not secure) and should not be used.

WPA2 uses AES-CCMP for key management.

"WPA/WPA2 Personal", also called mixed-mode, allows negotiation of key management modes and reduces the security of the network to the lowest common denominator.

BOTTOM LINE: If you're concerned about security/privacy of information on your networks (wired and wireless) , DON'T use WPA or WPA/WPA2. Use WPA2 only. And, if you don't already know, WEP is basically the same as having no security at all.

Another poster points out that the 'Enterprise' modes send authentication requests to a server before allowing a client on the network. The two big advantages are:

central management: I don't have to set keys on every access point, and I can disable accounts of individual users. There's also traceability: I know which WiFi device belongs to which user.
much longer keys (like 2048 bit, versus 128 for 'personal'). This further decreases the likelihood that an attacker can figure out the key in the time it's in use.

The 'personal' pre-shared key ("PSK") is derived from the passphrase you type into your client, so even if PSK allowed long keys, you'd have to type a passphrase that most people would object to.

I have a TimeCapsule also and had to use the WPA/WPA2 Personal mode to allow an older Brother wireless printer to connect.  Had the printer been capable of the newer WPA2 security protocol I would have used the WPA2 Personal setting in my TimeCapsule.  Basically using WPA2 Personal is a tiny bit more secure, but restricts your wireless connections to newer devices.


Yosemite won't list computers in windows workgroup We just bought a new Mini with 10.10 on it (updated to 10.10.1) and it won't list any of the computers in the Windows Workgroup.

I can however ping them by WINS name and connect using smb://EXAMPLE/share/ so WINS lookup seems to function.

However I need to be able to browse the network, and to install a windows printer. When I try and install the windows printer it shows our two workgroups as options, but none of the computers listed in them.

File sharing is turned on (both AFB and SMB) the WINS server is configured for the local Windows 2008 Server and the MacBook Pro with 10.9 works just fine and lists all the machines.

Are you using Windows 7/8 or XP?

I know that when I at home switched from XP  to Window 7, I needed to change the windows workgroup settings...

It sounds like you don't have the proper workgroup assigned.

Just set Configure IPv4 : Manually

Yosemite just set user password and best shared for Windows7 or Windows8.


How to upgrade from iOS 4 to iOS 6 without losing app data I am still on iOS 4, and I understand that I need to erase my iPad before upgrading. But I don't want to lose the game data stored locally, particularly Candy Crush. :) Is there a way to preserve data while upgrading?

Make a backup and then restore the backup once the update has finished.

A step by step guide is available here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4972, which states the following:

To update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from iOS 4 to iOS 5 or later, you must erase and restore your device first, before completing the update.

As part of the update and restore process, iTunes will (in order):

Back up key elements of your device, such as settings, Contacts,
Calendars, Notes, and your Camera Roll. iTunes will not, however,
back up media content from your iOS device, such as music, apps,
books, movies, and TV shows.
Update your device to the latest version of iOS software.
Restore your device from your most recent backup.
Restart your device.
Sync back media content from your iTunes Library to your device.

make a back up then restore and use the backup to get all of your data back


Can I change the brightness on a secondary display? I have a MBP with a secondary display. Is is possible to have the brightness keys (F1 & F2) change both the main display (laptop screen) and the secondary display (a VGA external monitor connected via a Thunderbolt port with an adapter)? If not, is it possible to change the brightness on the secondary display?

On Apple displays, if you press Control-F1 or Control-F2 the brightness on a secondary display will adjust. I have tested this on my MacBook Air 2011 13" and 27" Thunderbolt Display.
Important note: You have to plug in the USB cable from the Display to the Macbook Pro in order that the keyboard shortcuts work.
If you're using a MacBook with Touch Bar, this works for the "brighter"/"less bright" Touch Bar buttons but NOT for the Touch Bar brightness slider.

If you run Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8, you can adjust brightness easily with Mac Brightness Control utility.


Will Apple include Mac mini 2014 late in his next OS upgrade after Catalina? Catalina is supporting Mac mini late 2014 models. But I want to know about the next os upgrade. Will Apple include Mac mini late 2014 in his next upgrade?

And one more thing is: for how many year will I get an upgrade of the latest macOS for my Mac mini late 2014.

I know it's very hard to say about it but then also any guesses.

If I take the reference of the following screenshot for all old models of Apple, your macMini should last for a couple of years more. After 8 years also, late 2012 still supports Catalina.

In nutshell, if there are no any major hardware changes in upcoming macOS, I guess your 2014 will definitely support the next version of macOS.

It's impossible to say what Apple's future plans might be. However, you can of course continue to use a Mac perfectly well without upgrading.

But: if I still had a 2014 Mini, I'd be saving up for a better Mac. ;-)


So my Yosemite install is slow - what to do? I installed Yosemite today on a 2010 MBP, 8GB RAM, 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo.

Its awful, its so slow, everything seems to hang, even simple things like Finder. Chrome is going as a snails pace and Mail is struggling too. Its nearly, very nearly unusable.

My attempts to optimize the Mac for speed are as follows:

I have disabled all extensions in Chrome, turned off a whole host of stuff from 3rd parties in OSX that I thought might be giving me issues.

I can see CPU usage is high for a variety of tasks every now and again, including;

md_worker
Setup
WindowServer

Any ideas anyone to speed up my Mac or diagnose what is causing the slowness?

Troubleshooting a slow mac is fairly easy, but sometimes tedious.

You will want to and quit all apps.

You might even go to the Users & Groups preference and remove all applications that start when you log in to your Mac.

Turn off WiFi and then shut down the Mac so you can start isolating it. Remove all peripherals except the keyboard, display and power cord. Power on and then log in and let it run for 5 minutes and then take a snapshot of the Activity Monitor. Look and see what CPU usage is and if the background tasks are taking any CPU time.

If so, dig deeper - open terminal and run "sudo sysdiagnose"

If not, go ahead and connect your peripherals one at a time.

Check the CPU/Activity Monitor and watch both the Memory Pressure graph and the CPU. If you want, you can also look at energy, but that's better for half hour snapshots for me.

At this point, you should know the OS is fine and all of your peripherals and hard drives are not causing the slowness.

Now go ahead and start the apps you choose to run when it's slow. Again, you are still disconnected from any network - just checking the OS and the CPU.

When that's fine, you can conclude that the data coming in from the network was causing a load the OS wasn't handling.

If you can narrow things down, get a sysdiagnose from a clean start and again when it is "slow" and post a second question with details of what your initial troubleshooting has shown.

Only solution for general sluggishness was a reinstall.
There is a problem with Y.


Installing cocoapods on macOS Mojave I have looked through  a lot of these questions and none seem to apply. I am trying to install cocoapods and run pod init in my xcode project. When I run sudo gem install cocoa podsI get right the end and see this:
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing cocoapods:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

current directory: /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.3.0/gems/ffi-1.12.2/ext/ffi_c
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.3/usr/bin/ruby -I /Library/Ruby/Site/2.3.0 -r ./siteconf20200314-453-8td9mi.rb extconf.rb
mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.3/usr/lib/ruby/include/ruby.h

extconf failed, exit code 1

Gem files will remain installed in /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.3.0/gems/ffi-1.12.2 for inspection.

And of course when I run pod init inside my Xcode project I get:
-bash: pod: command not found

It looks like CocoaPods 1.9.0, the latest version as of this writing, depends on a newer version of Ruby than 2.3.7. But macOS Mojave only includes Ruby 2.3.7, so you have a few different options.

Upgrade to macOS Catalina and get Ruby 2.6.3
Use Ruby Version Manager to install a newer version of Ruby
Install an older version of CocoaPods
sudo gem install cocoapods -v 1.8.4

Sources

Other people have trouble with CocoaPods 1.9.0 on Mojave. 1 2 3 4 5

Some people got it working by upgrading to Ruby 2.6 or newer. 1 2

I solved the issue with this
https://medium.com/@pfxstudio21/cocoapods-error-error-installing-cocoapods-396ef7a1393d
It will work for you, it did the trick for me


Store attachments locally in Mail.app when using IMAP I'm reaching my quota on my IMAP account, one big space hog is email attachments.

Is there a way to tell mail.app that I want to "remove" certain emails from the server but keep them around locally?

My only other idea option is to forward them to a gmail-account and pop them back.

You will want to make a new mailbox with storage only on the Mac or use the Archive function in Mail to archive an entire folder/mailbox.

The built in help will guide you through the Archive path.

I just make folders "On My Mac" with the year, and then make Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 folders inside to keep each relatively small - you might only need one folder per year or one folder.

Once you move the message and are comfortable that it's on your mac with attachments intact, delete the original message from IMAP and your quotas will be happier.

Mail actually does this already for you. All of its files are located in ~/Library/Mail where '~' is your home folder. In there each account that you have has a folder and then you can flip through all of your inboxes and drag certain messages out into another folder  if you want to make sure they'll stay where you know where they are. Unfortunately the emails are just numbered with no real way to tell them apart but there is a separate Attachments folder if that's all you're interested


Is there a comparison of networks and costs for iOS 4.3's Personal Hotspot? Is there a comparison of networks and their cost for the new Personal Hotspot feature?

Also, how does the hotspot feature differ from internet tethering in previous iOS versions?

The hotspot feature is, in essence, very similar to the Internet Tethering feature. The differences are that a) there's no cable required and b) you can connect up to 3* wifi-capable devices, so you're not restricted to tethering only devices that have USB or Bluetooth.

*See the below comments for the correct answer.

Just jailbreak it and do it for free like most people have been doing for a few years now. MiWi works great!


Clean install of macOS Sierra not working I'm trying to perform a clean install of macOS Sierra on a late 2009 iMac, but I can't get it to work. The installation comes up with errors every time when it's almost finished. As I've tried a lot of things, I'll list them up first as they come with different errors.

Something also notable is that the iMac first failed an upgrade from El Capitan to Sierra via the Mac App Store. It gave the error that the installation had not been successful and should be run again. This, of course, did not work.

As there were only old files on the iMac, I decided to perform a clean install. First of all I erased the HDD via macOS Recovery. This all went well without any errors. I rebooted the iMac and went to Recovery and had selected the option to install macOS Sierra. After a long time waiting the installer finally ended up with the error: The installation was unsuccesfull, please try again. So I thought that maybe the installer was at fault so I created a bootable USB.

First I created a bootable USB via my MBP 2016 using the Terminal. It all went well and the USB was located in the Finder as Install macOS Sierra.

I plugged in the USB to my iMac, held the option key and than the USB didn't show up. After long Googling I found that unplugging and plugging the USB back in while the screen of 'select bootable' was shown, did work. So I selected the USB and went through the process again. But again with the same result. After some more Googling I tried to reset the PRAM with the commandoptionpr keys and booting it up twice. Same result again.

I than erased the USB and created a new one via the MacDaddy install disk creator. It showed fine in the Finder on my MBP, but the same as the first time for my iMac. And the installation gave the same error.

After some more Googling, I tried to reset the date via the recovery Terminal, via the format: date mmddHHMMYYYY. It than gave a new error upon installation: "The installer payload failed signature check".

After more Googling I tried to reset the date via the internet command in Terminal. This reset the date to American Timezone (time.apple.com). Again, with the same results.

Resetting it back to my own timezone via the date command, to be really sure I inserted the correct date, the installation came back with the first error: "The installation failed, please try it again".

I can't find any other solutions on Google and I really hope you guys can help me out.

NOTE: The error messages were in the Dutch language, so I've tried to translate them as best I can.

Title: THREE OPTIONS TO HELP IN YOUR CONCERN
+
*FIRST OPTION****......
If you continue to have concerns, noting the previous Stated Advise above, is of good quality....May one suggest going to Recovery Mode ...**First: Shut down the computer NEXT: restart holding the Key Stroke: (Option-Command-R)  You will see a box to select you preferred Language (click continue)(FYI: Mandatory: must be connected to the inter-Net via wifi>>> visible in upper top of bar) Next select Disk Utility> Erase the HD Continue by quitting Disk Utility NEXT Select  Reinstall OS X  (MUST HAVE APPLE ID AND PASSWORD for the Install) Finally When Exiting RECOVERY MODE you will be asked to select a start up Disk (there should be only one selection) Click and continue.  Your Computer will shut down then start up in El Capitain.  Finally, Please install updates  go to Apple.com and install Sierra..... .
+
SECOND OPTION.......
OTHER Possible AVENUES TO RESOLVE CONCERNS:  You may also go the Apple Support: https://support.apple.com and talk via phone call or Online Chat for clear concise steps with clarifications as needed......
+
THIRD OPTION......
If you feel the above may be TO DIFFICULT OR UNCLEAR, consider going to the Nearest Apple Store, make an appointment for the Genius Bar to help with this concern....
+
Good Luck...
Authored statements: ysureican Fogarty


How do you cancel 1000's of iTunes Match downloads on the iPad without swiping each one? I accidentally asked iTunes to download all my music from match to the iPad. There are 2500+ songs in the queue now and they won't download before my flight tomorrow. The music downloads are blocking more important app upgrades.

I can't cancel each one individually since it would take hours.

How can you cancel all downloads in one go?

(iOS 6)

I just have the same exact problem. It's a bug in iOS. If you go to iTunes App on your iOS device, you will see a Downloads section. There you will see all pending iTunes Match downloads. It's a pain if you have thousands of songs to delete them from this download queue one by one. So here's how to squash this bug.

You absolutely don't need to reset your phone and go back to square one or email iTunes. Spare yourself the trouble. Here is a simple fix.

Go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > iTunes Match
On that screen, turn iTunes Match off.
Tap your Apple ID on that screen and tap Sign Out. (I don't know if this is necessary but it works anyway. Just an added precaution for this to work.)
Restart your iOS device (Hold down Sleep and Home button for about 5 seconds until it goes black and the apple logo in a black background appears).
Go back to iTunes Store > Downloads and voila they're all gone. All those pending downloads are reset. And your iOS device won't download anymore of those songs unless you tell it to.

If you need to fix the problem right away, you can perform a full reset of your phone, but do not restore from a backup, otherwise you'll be back in the same situation. Instead, set up as a new iPhone. A pain, I know, but you'll have your phone back in some kind of working order a lot quicker, and can then re-download apps, media etc. at your leisure.


Slow SSD Performance on iMac I recently replaced my broken SuperDrive with an OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD with the following specs:

2.5" SATA 6Gb/s
SandForce 2281 Controller
Read 525Mb/s
Write 500Mb/s
85K IOPS

I have an Early-2009 24" iMac (9,1), and I purchased a caddy to place the drive in in order that it can sit where the SuperDrive was.
My iMac has a SATA2 bus, but after connecting the SSD it will only connect at SATA1 speeds.  I knew that the SuperDrive used to use this speed, but accepted that it was because is was simply an optical drive that could not push the speeds to saturate a SATA1 controller, so why bother with anything better.
However I expected the SSD to link at the SATA2 speeds that the bus supports.

I have the latest firmware on the drive itself, and on my Mac, I have reset my PRAM, and I don't know what to do next.  Why does the SSD not connect at SATA2?
I accept that I cannot get SATA3 like the drive supports, but some initial testing using a disk speed test tool suggests I am only getting just over 100Mb/s write and 145Mb/s read, which is a mere 20-80% more than the regular drive gets.
I cannot just swap the drives over, as it's not like the MacBook Pros that use 2.5" drives.  I have done a lot of Googling that suggested a firmware fix for MacBook Pros solved the same issue on those machines, but no luck for my iMac.
I have just put a normal SATA2 drive into the optical caddy, and it comes up at 3Gb (SATA2) just fine.  So it seems it's something about the SSD that it doesn't like.  Controller?  I wouldn't have thought that it cared what was connected, so long as it was SATA?

Looks like a known problem with the SSD. OCZ has a firmware on their forum that will fix the issue. See the post "Changing SATA speed on your "3" series SSD." in this thread.

  This portion of the instructions only applies to OCZ "3" series SSD's - Vertex3, Agility3, and Solid3 - all sizes.
  Some SATAII motherboards, when used with one of the above drives will
  downgrade the drive to SATA1 speeds. We find this mostly on Nvidia
  chipset motherboards for PC and Nvidia chipset based Mac's. To resolve
  this, we have a tool that will set the link speed to be locked at
  SATAII and improve performance. This can be reversed when you update
  your motherboard/system so you can have the full SATAIII speed again.

Installing the firmware involves burning a Linux LiveCD so I hope you have a computer with the optical drive still in.

Sandforce drives have had many issues with Macs and should be avoided with Apple hardware.  Go for non sandforce controllers like samsung, crucial, or the vertex 4