Why are some apps keep running in OS X even if I quit them? At least three apps are now doing the following:

In its menu, I click on quit
It starts quiting but
then never finish quiting.

I can switch to it. The icon in the dock bar shows it is running. The menu is there, but the Quit option is disabled.

What's going on?

It is happening with:
- Microsoft Word
- Skype
- Another one, not by Microsoft

After an update, Word is not doing it anymore. It is puzzling.

It is due to bugs. Most likely in those programs, or in the OS X system. Essentially the program never completes the "Quit" action, so it doesn't exit and thus stays running.

Another cause could be hardware error - such as a non-responding hard drive. If that was the case, you would be seeing problems everywhere and not just with the Quit menu option in a few programs.

If you want to investigate the specific cause on your machine, I would suggest using dtruss to see what system calls the application makes as you hit quit. It could for example be hanging waiting for a mutex/semaphore, or similar - suggesting a deadlock or livelock. In other words, a bug.


How can I know if my iPhone had been erased? My iPhone was lost 3 months ago and I have decided to erase my iPhone since then but until now I don't know if it erased or not. I'm still afraid that the thief may have access to my private stuff.

How can I know that my iPhone have been erased or can I track at least if it was already erase?

I tried to check my email and apple account and yet there is no mail.

When the device is erased, you should receive an email notification informing you that the device has successfully been erased. This is regardless of whether the device was online or offline when you clicked Erase, since the next time the device is online the device will be erased and an email will be sent.

  If your device is online, the remote erase begins. A confirmation email is sent to your Apple ID email address.
  If your device is offline, the remote erase begins the next time it’s online.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2701

You will be unable to track the device through Find My iPhone if you erase it.

  Note: If you erase your iPhone, you won't be able to use Find My iPhone to locate or protect it, but your Apple ID and password will be required to reactivate it.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/TI79

I dont think an erased iPhone can be compromised.


How do I open terminal or browser windows in the current workspace? Whenever I open a new terminal or browser window via QuickSilver it switches control back to the last used workspace. I would like to always open in the current workspace, how do I do that?

I am on OS Mavericks. Please keep in mind that existing answers about modifying Expose or Spaces settings do not apply.

I've set up Alfred to open new Terminal and Safari windows in the current workspace by having it call an Apple Script. I'd expect that you could do the same in Quicksilver. These are the scripts I've used:

Safari:

tell application "Safari"
  make new document
  activate
end tell

Terminal:

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "uptime"
    activate
end tell

here is my solution with little tweak.
on that link, there is dropbox link of a Alfred workflow.

via Alfred
pop up new safari on current workspace, and make it front
(optional) if needed, open specific URL //currently this script valid for just 1 URL address.
(optional) in case of specific URL, no need of “http://”


Touch Bar no longer controls iTunes I installed the Google Play Music app on my Macbook (Sierra 10.12.4) then uninstalled it. Now my Touch Bar music controls no longer work with iTunes. How can I reset it?

The first thing I would do is reset your NVRAM.

Resetting the NVRAM on Late-2016 MacBook Pro models

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). To reset the NVRAM on all Late-2016 MacBook Pro models (with and without Touch Bar) follow these steps:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then immediately press the commandoptionpr keys.
Keep these keys pressed down for at least 20 seconds!
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

If resetting the NVRAM doesn't resolve it, try resetting your SMC as well.

Resetting the SMC

Shut down your Mac
Unplug the power cable from your Mac
For 10 seconds, press and hold at the same time the shiftcontroloption keys (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button
After 10 seconds let go of all keys and the power button
Plug in the power cable
Turn your Mac back on with the power button.

Let me know how you go, as there are other things you can try. However, I've found that resetting the NVRAM and also the SMC will usually resolve unusual or random issues pertaining to the Touch Bar.

--[EDIT]--

This edit adds further things to try in order to resolve this issue. However, since macOS 10.12.5 has just been released, I would update the OS prior to trying the following solutions.

Use Terminal to kill the Control Strip

This is a straightforward way to manually reset the Control Strip. To do this:

Launch the Terminal app (by default located within the Utilities folder)
Enter the following command killall ControlStrip (or you can just copy and paste it in)
Press return

There is no need to restart the Mac after doing this.

Change what the Touch Bar shows

In System Preferences you can change what the Touch Bar shows. I would change this, exit System Preferences, and then change it again (if necessary).

To do this:

Got to Apple > System Preferences
Click on the Keyboard preference pane
Ensure the Keyboard tab is selected
Around the centre of the screen you'll see a Touch Bar shows drop-down list
Change the selection to Expanded Control Strip (if this is already selected, change it to App Controls with Control Strip)
Exit System Preferences
Test your Touch Bar music controls
If it doesn't work, repeat steps 1 to 5 and change the Touch Bar shows drop-down list selection back to the original selection and test again

Troubleshooting steps

If all else fails, you can try these troubleshooting steps:

Function keys - Press the fn key and try using the F7, F8, and F9 keys respectively as your media control keys and see what happens.
Use another user account - Try using another user account temporarily to determine if the problem persists. If you don't have another user account, you can add one in System Preferences > Users & Groups. Once you've added it, log into it and see how your media controls work.
Safe Mode - Boot your MBP up in Safe Mode and try using the media controls keys. To do this, hold the shift key down as you boot up. This will take a little longer to boot as your Mac cleans caches, runs some diagnostics, etc. Once you've tested, exit Safe Mode by restarting your MBP and then test your media control keys again.

Once you've tried these troubleshooting steps, report back on what you found.

This function is broken.

Download HIGH SIERRA MEDIA KEY ENABLER from http://milgra.com/high-sierra-media-key-enabler.html to fix it


The full list of available options of Dock If I want to change some Dock preferences (for example delay before appears of Dock) I should type in terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0.1;

I tried to find all available options for Dock and find this link in Apple Developer documentation. But it doesn't contain a description of autohide-delay.

I conclude that that list is not complete. Because it also doesn't contain options I know:

-autohide-time-modifier
-autohide-delay
-tilesize
-mcx-expose-disabled

Where I can I find the full list Dock preferences?

Apple does not publish this and it’s considered the equivalent of a private API for developers. When Apple wants to test a new feature, they first expose it with hidden switches and then after it’s been tested and doesn’t cause issues, then it may become an official setting. Until it’s publicly documented, these change from build to build and sometimes can cause things to not work.

The only listing of these is by people who disassemble the code and then publish their work. You’re not missing any resource here, as this is undocumented and doesn’t always stay stable, so the effort to document these is quite high from a labor perspective.

I think that the command defaults read com.apple.dock shows the active settings but not the full list.
The answer https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/268090/401698 may be useful


How to remotely connect to a laptop's local users directory? besides opening ssh-  is there a way to connect and read local users defined in a machine?

Edit - further info.

My goal is to actually run an analysis on my network - to find out which local accounts reside in which machine.
the thing is that not all machines have ssh opened.

All the machines are part of my domain, and i have an administrative user and password in order to connect to the machines.

Thanks

You can get a list of all macOS-accounts with

 dscl . list /Users | grep -v '_'

daemon, nobody, and root are system-defined accounts. So here you have the list of all local users.


If I erase my iPhone, will this erase my iCloud too? If I erase my iPhone, will my iCloud be erased too?

No, factory resetting your iPhone will not alter your iCloud. Upon setting up your iPhone again you will be given the option to reconnect to your iCloud account if you desire. iCloud also stores iPhone backups that you can restore your phone from. Apple's apps are really good about storing items in iCloud, however many others are not. If you are worried about losing your content, be safe and make a local backup to a machine through iTunes, just to be safe. Alternatively, I believe you could schedule an appointment at the Genius Bar and have them reset your phone for you.
EDIT: If you have "Find My iPhone" enabled, no one will be able to use that device without your iCloud login credentials.

When you do a restore, only the stuff on your device storage gets removed. As long as you have access to the iCloud account and the stuff you need is on it, it is ok to restore.

But it is still a good idea to do backups too! :)


Should I buy an iPod touch in Canada in July or wait 'til September and buy it in Europe? My title is pretty clear: I'm going in Canada for a trip with my father in July and I wonder if I should buy a new iPod touch there or wait until the new one comes out around September and buy in Europe? The 8 GB version costs 199€ (roughly 256 Canadian dollars) in Europe and 199 Canadian dollars in Canada (roughly 154€).

I'm going to use it mainly as a gaming and Internet device. I might listen to music with it from time to time but I won't take the 32 GB version only to have my entire music collection on it.

So, given my use of it, will the new version be worth the extra 45€ (assuming the price won't change)?

The new model (if one comes out; it's not necessarily certain that one will) will be better. Will it be 45€ better? I don't know, and that's something only you can decide. If you don't need the extra disk space, the 8 GB model should be sufficient (despite what @comradsky's answer says, the internals of the 4th-gen touches aren't any different between the size models except the internal storage space.

All in all, I have to say the same thing I always say when it comes to buying Apple products: if you need it, buy it. If you wait, there's always the possibility that they won't release a new model when you thought they would, so you buy the old model, and then they release the new model a month after you thought they would.

Also: consider looking at the refurbished store on Apple's website. There are (from time to time) fairly good deals on current- or previous-gen items.

The price won't change. And, yes, it is definitely worth it. You should get the 32 Gig but thats your preference - it has a better CPU. I need to add a picture to my question, but to do that I need 10 reputation.


27" iMac won't stay asleep My 27" iMac wakes up from sleep randomly, even though I went through the "energy saver" preference pane, and bluetooth is only active for my mouse and keyboard.

What could be causing this?

In /Applications/Utilities/ run Terminal.app, then type this command:

syslog |grep -i "Wake reason"

What do you see?

The codes listed here might give you a clue as to what is going on: http://osxdaily.com/2010/07/17/why-mac-wakes-from-sleep/

go to safari in the top left hand corner and-prefrences-enable javascript. and turn down your brightness and turn it off then turn it back on and it shouldnt do that again.


DELL WD15 DOCK with Macbook Pro 2018 - max resolution issue I am the owner of a DELL WD15 Dock and a Dell U3818DW monitor.
I bought the dock to quickly switch between both of my macbooks.... But seems happen to not work as I'd like to.

On my Macbook Pro 2017 13", on Mojave 10.14.6, on the display options, if I press "option + scaled" to get the full list of available resolutions, I can get 3840 x 1600. On that one, the dock works like a charm.

On my Macbook Pro 2018 15", on Catalina 10.15.5, the maximum resolution I can get is : 1920 x 1080. But it works if I use the HDMI apple adapter (but it is not handy to unplug the monitor from the dock every time).

Has anyone ever faced that situation? Please tell me you found a solution!
Thank you anyway, and have a great day,
PS : the monitor is connected with HDMI.

The limitation is the Dell WD15 Dock only supports HDMI 1.4a (see specifications), which only supports 3840 x 1600 at 24p, and the dock does not support HDCP (content protection). Your Mac wants to run at 60p unless it is playing a movie, in which case Netflix wants HDCP. Count yourself lucky that your 2017 Mojave Mac will let you use 3840 x 1600 at all.
The fix is to use DisplayPort. Get yourself a mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable (around $10) and use that to connect your dock to your display and you should be able to get the full 3840 x 1600 at 60 Hz support.

Yeah indeed, I realized the issue with USB-C, so I ordered a caldigit TS3 plus, that should solve my issues.
Thanks for the help!


CCC reporting physical problem with a drive volume even though the drive is working I'm trying to create a read-only disk image archive of a High Sierra installation to later clone to other hard drives. I have tested the source drive and it is fine. No failed sectors or other indicators of a failing drive. I used DriveDx to perform these tests.

However, when I start the archive in CCC 3.5.7 on an early 2008 MacBook running Lion, I am greeted with

  CCC has detected a physical problem with one of your volumes.

  The backup task is still running, and CCC will copy as many files as possible. Please note:

  The first error occurred while trying to access:

  "/Volumes/Macintosh HD [Source]/.PKInstallSandboxManager-SystemSoftware/0A988266-8955-4100-BFD3-A3DA35DA92BB.sandbox/Root/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Info.plist"
  CCC will make two attempts to back up damaged files
  Physical errors may cause the backup task to take longer than normal.
  You can stop the backup task at any time. CCC will pick up where it left off the next time you run this task.

  Please click on the "?" button below to learn more about resolving media errors.

Why am I receiving this error? Will it affect future drive restores from this image archive?

In the end, I settled with Disk Utility. I know that CCC is typically faster since it copies in chunks but my goal was to create a one-time archive of an OS and then clone it to other drives whenever necessary so the benefit of CCC is less noticeable.

I found a forum post on Apple's forum about an issue that seemed similar or possibly the same. The accepted answer to that post suggested the older version of CCC was looking for mach_kernel files in the wrong place on the drive. Apparently, Yosemite and later now keep those files in a different location. Those particular kernel files are crucial to the boot process and the computer will not detect the clone partition as bootable unless those files are there. This explanation might explain my troubles since I'm using CCC 3.5.7 (unsupported) on Lion and the operating systems I was trying to image were High Sierra and El Capitan. Unfortunately, that forum post is lost in my browser history.

I never did try a new version of CCC because my early 2008 MacBook is incapable of running anything newer and I don't really have access to a newer Mac at the moment. I reverted to using disk utility which worked quite well. I created a read-only disk image and then, when I want to clone, mount the disk image and create a restore from the mounted image to the partition on the target hard disk.

Running Lion 10.7.5 on an early 2008 MacBook. CCC version 3.5.7.

Mike Bombich, the developer/owner of CCC provides excellent support and in a timely fashion.  You'd be much better advised to contact him vice post a plea for help here.


Will iCloud work with Mail and a Gmail account? Does iCloud  work with Mail and a Gmail account, or do I need to necessarily create a .me account and then forward the mails from gmail to .me ?

If you have a .mac or .me account, you will use that as your iCloud email address. Otherwise, you will get a new mail account. You can either forward your gmail messages or use two different accounts (or not use iCloud for mail).

A me.com iCloud.com or Mac.com are all the same. They all sync to iCloud. Then what you can do is go to your gmail account at gmail.com and go to settings/accounts and enter in some iCloud information found on https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202304 and you just enter the information in the help article to the gmail accounts page.


Big Mac Pro issue (1,1 - 2006) Three days ago for some damn reason I decided Snow Leopard wasn't good for my Mac Pro 1,1 anymore. I decided to embark on the quest of updating it to El Capitan.

So using the Pikify and downloaded the software it took me 3 days but yesterday I finally managed to boot it up and it was working okish... bit slow and had some issues with Final Cut but it was working.
This morning I decided to run updates and well... shit gets serious...

When I boot it up, I get the  logo and the bar starts filling up it gets to half way and it switches to my second screen and starts again (this time slower) reaches half, all screens go grey and I get the Language selection. Once I select the Language I'm stuck at a Utilities window where I can choose to restore from a backup (which I don't have) choose to reinstall OS X (done that but nothing changed) find help online or start Disk Utility up to try and repair damaged disks (tried that but all disks are working fine)...

I have 3 drives mounted on my computer:

500gb - 6 GB free space (OS installed here)
500gb - 293,51 GB free space
1TB - 217 GB free space (Windows 7 installed here)

12 GB RAM - 2,66 processor - 5070HD ATI

If anyone needs any more info please let me know...

PS: I tried booting in Safe Mode, which doesn't work.
I tried resetting VRAM by pressing cmdaltPR, but nothing changes.

Another big issue is the fact when I try to open Terminal I'm logged in as bash-3.2 not as User.

With a machine that old, I'd probably use a different Mac to download a clean OS installer and then try installing to a totally new drive (USB or FireWire) to ensure you have working hardware that can run an install.

Installs exercise a lot of functionality that only runs at install time. A marginal machine can keep running for a long time past when it can actually pull off an install let alone an install/upgrade in one pass.

The benefit of this is you keep your data safe (assuming you don't have a backup) and don't have to wait hours/days for migration of settings and data to know if the simple OS install worked or not.

Why don't you apply for membership of the MacProUpgrade Facebook group ? I did that and you'll receive good advice.


Macbook Pro 2016 touch bar freeze in bootcamp after installing Visual Studio with Hyper-V Yesterday I've installed bootcamp, Windows 10 Pro, on my new tb/MBP (late 2016). Everything worked fine until I've installed Visual Studio 2015 (Update 3) with all of its components (50GB~).

After I've rebooted the computer, it took ~10 minutes to load Windows (waiting at the dark screen with Windows logo and dots loading animation). Then - the keyboard and trackpad do not respond (even the keyboard light is turned off). The Touch Bar sometimes works and sometimes not.

I've rebooted to macOS and everything works fine.

I've read many threads and saw that it may be related to Hyper-V, which Visual Studio uses for Mobile Developement.

So, how can I disable Hyper-V so I can get back my MBP to normal? I don't want to re-install Windows, and I can't work without Visual Studio...

I've got Hyper-V working reliably under Windows 10 installed via Bootcamp on a 2016 MBP without TouchBar. The steps are relatively advanced, but were easy to follow and most people on this thread should be comfortable. You install and EFI boot manager called rEFInd (it's the "modern" successor to a tool I used to use on my old MacBook Air called rEFIt). By tinkering with rEFInd's configuration you can get it to EFI-boot Windows with the hypervisor enabled.

Follow the instructions here, CAREFULLY: http://nuts4.net/post/hack-force-vt-x-to-be-always-on-when-booting-to-windows-on-your-macbook

I also followed the steps in this article about enabling "legacy safe mode" for Windows 10 (allowing me to press the F8 key during boot if anything goes wrong): https://medium.com/@naokisatoname/newer-mac-windows-10-on-boot-camp-hyper-v-enabled-infinite-spinning-circle-5631b36f6d1…

The net result is a clean install of W10 via Bootcamp, with working Hyper-V. I need to use rEFInd as my boot manager to EFI-boot Windows, but that's totally fine in my book.

I hope this helps people. I intend to cross post this solution on the other linked threads to get the word out there.

Regards,
Mark

Easy for disable the hiper-v: http://www.poweronplatforms.com/enable-disable-hyper-v-windows-10-8/ ...


Disable Command-Control-Q shortcut I've a MacBook w/ the following specs:

Very annoyingly, CommandControlQ locks the screen. I can't even remap it to anything else; trying to do so in Keyboard locks the screen instead of registering the key combination.

Is there a way to get rid of this shortcut?

It's a system-reserved key combination so you won't be able to remap it.


Deleted almost everything from MacBook Air (2014) and still no storage? Last night, I was working on Photoshop and it said my scratch disc was full which, after looking it up, meant my startup disc was full. I went through and deleted a good 95% of my photos, all the apps I never use that MacBook doesn't deem necessary (because Chess is very necessary), a lot of my documents, etc., etc., etc. After that, PhotoShop worked for me.

I was working on it again today, and it said my startup disc is almost full once again? Hardly anything has changed last night. What does this mean/what do I do?

Reinstall macOS

It looks like cached system files are what's causing your storage problem. Reinstalling macOS will not delete any personal information or files, but resets all system files and restored deleted system apps.

here's what Apple says about reinstalling macOS. I've reformatted the directions below to make your life easier:

Start by pressing the appropriate key combination for what you need. I suggest Command-R:

Now, using macOS utilities, select Reinstall macOS:

Simply wait until the download and install is complete and your cached files should be cleared, solving your problem.


Off-site backup of “login.keychain” I’m using the Keychain.app to manage all my (website) passwords, and I am also using the “Password assistant” to generate secure random passwords.

But obviously I’m paranoid that my laptop is lost or damaged and that I’m using all my passwords so I’m searching for a secure, comfortable backup option.

In particular, the backup has to be immediate (as soo as I’m adding a new key or editing an existing one). This can be done by registering a launch agent.

Furthermore, the storage should be off-site. Ideally, this would mean Dropbox. But I’m paranoid: their storage may be encrypted but they theoretically still have access to my data.

Now, the keychain is encrypted anyway. But is this encryption secure? Can I just rely on this and upload the backup to an essentially public storage?

1Password is a product that may interest you.  Seems to tick all the boxes in terms of speed, off-site and secure storage.  Plus it allows you to use it on all your devices too (iPhone, iPad etc).

Suggestion

I myself actually dun care that much about preventing people to get in. I just do as many backups as I can, as that's the only thing I consider data security. Including everything online and offline. But that's not to say I don't try quite hard to prevent issues with anyone getting in anywhere.

If I were as paranoid as you I wouldn't trust encryption, I would do my own nutzy way to store it in a HTML or even TEXT, and then replicate it along with many other stuff. The idea is hiding the password in plain sight, but only you know what to look for. Grab a digital book or something, make a simple rule only you know, and use it as your password. For instance:

  The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog... and DIED!

The password here could be: Tbjtd.D!2011 - There, I even added the year. Eventually I get used to typing it and I don't even need to look at the reference anymore.

As we were discussing, yes this is security through obscurity, but this is only for an individual. If you get such a random selection of characters in your mind only, and never write it down nor pass it along to anyone, there's conceptually not a safer password because it is unpredictable by definition (randomness). It only needs to be big enough to prevent computational power to brute force it. It's that simple.

So if you write it down in an unpredictable fashion and add a honeypot with all encryption and stuff you've talked about but don't add your main password in there, you just added yourself many layers of the topmost security while making a perfect and impossible to follow path that makes sense only to you. The point on writing it down in my suggestion is simply as a mnemonic device so you can remember your password may you ever forget it.

Keep in mind this is a very specific use case not meant to generate security measures for data nor encryption, but a password.

Direct Answer

But if you want to rely on some encryption and don't know if you can trust Keychain.app (I know I can't), try the open sourced KeePassX, which is the only way to trust encryption, as I see it. You can combine it with Dropbox and try to ease up your mind by trusting your key will never leak.

I'm glad to see you actually found a "better" (at least if you only use macs) replacement for KeePassX (the DMG) and were even able to add an automated way to updating it through LaunchAgents. The rest is basically what I said above.

No encryption or security measure can be 100% trustable almost per definition but it's still useful as an extra layer if you don't care for calling attention to your relevant data and concentrating it into a big safe saying "here, try here and if you succeed opening this, you got it all" considering it is indeed very hard to break it.


Ukelele keyboard not found by System Preferences I'm trying to install a custom keyboard layout I made in Ukelele that makes extensive use of dead keys and Unicode special characters. Ukelele seems to work fine and installation works for test keyboard layouts that contain fancy unicode characters. (By installation I mean copying the file into /Library/Keyboard Layout/, restarting, and checking System Preferences.) But the keyboard I actually want is never appears in System Preferences. I've tried overwriting a test keyboard that was found with the .keylayout file, resulting in the found keyboard vanishing from the list of keyboards in System Preferences. I've tried opening the console log and looking for XML errors and I don't see any; similarly I've run the file through a web service to check the XML which didn't turn up any problems. My best guess is that there's some problem with the XML produced by heavy editing, but I'm not finding it. How do I fix this?

I'm running OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 and Ukelele 3.0.3.70.
Link to the problem file.

In my opinion, you need a «your_language.bundle» in the /Library/Keyboard Layout/, which contains your "PhysicsType1 (MathPhysics)"

Then
Try pressing the "+" in the System Preferences> Keyboard> Input Sources, and then select the language in the list that appears, select your "PhysicsType1 (MathPhysics)"


How to force photo thumbnail download on iOS 8.3 I have 30,000+ photos synced to iCloud and am trying to get their thumbnails to show on the Photos app on iOS 8.3. On the (first) Photos tab, viewing at Years or Collections levels shows lots of grey placeholders instead of photos. Only when I click into Moments do the thumbnails actually load.

However, trying to scroll through all my photos at the Moments level, to trigger downloading of the thumbnail, would take hours. (It's a little faster under Albums > All Photos, but not much.)

Is there a way to force all the thumbnails to download? I tried disabling iCloud Photo Library and re-enabling it, but it did not force a sync. Note that I have Optimize iPhone Storage set, but I thought this should still download thumbnails.

I am having a similar problem.  All of my iOS photos have synced up to Photos on the Mac, but photos that I've added on the Mac show up blank in iOS. When I click on a photo, a blank comes up, with a progress clock in the lower right corner. However, that seems to stall at 25%. Even when I go into Edit mode, it appears to start downloading and appears to give up after 25%.

I may try to turn off iCloud Photos and try again, but I have nearly 70k photos and videos.

I found none of the above to work. The best solution I found was to hold your finger down in the year view to scrub through the pictures. Where you scrub it triggers the thumbnails to download. Not great, but it works.


Is there an easy way on a Mac to split an audio file at defined intervals? I have a 45 minute long audio (.m4a) file.

I would like to split this audio file into a separate audio file every 2 minutes.

So, that:

  AudioFile1.m4a is created from [00:00] to [02:00] of
  originalAudioFile.m4a.

  AudioFile2.m4a is created from [02:00] to [04:00] of
  originalAudioFile.m4a.

  AudioFile3.m4a is created from [04:00] to [06:00] of
  originalAudioFile.m4a.

  ...

and this is continued until

  AudioFile23.m4a is created from [44:00] to [45:00] of
  originalAudioFile.m4a.

Here are additional details:

I am not particular about the filenames of the resulting files.
I am not particular about the file types of the resulting files (e.g., whether they become .mp3 files or stay .m4a files).
This is not a situation where the resulting audio files will be mastered to a CD or something. I'm just looking for a quick and handy way to split an audio file based on a specific interval. A minor loss in audio quality is not a big deal (but this would obviously not be preferred).
I do not want the originalAudioFile.m4a to be altered in the process.

The most important condition is that the method requires minimal time and effort from the user.

There are various methods to accomplish what I want in Microsoft Windows, but can this be done on a Mac?

Use ffmpeg.  It's available via Homebrew and MacPorts, but I just prefer to use the prebuilt binaries

Just off the top of my head, you could do something simple like:

$ ffmpeg -i source_audio_file.mp3 -ss 0 -t 120 segment_1.mp3
$ ffmpeg -i source_audio_file.mp3 -ss 120 -t 240 segment_2.mp3
$ ffmpeg -i source_audio_file.mp3 -ss 240 -t 360 segment_3.mp3
.
.
.

To put this into a script wouldn't be too hard

find ./ -type f -exec ffmpeg -i {} -f segment -segment_time 300 -c copy {}%03d.mp3 \; -exec rm {} \;


Mac Pro early 2009 FireWire problems I have an early 2009 Mac Pro and a FireWire audio interface that I haven't used in a couple of years. I just plugged it in to the Mac and nothing happens. The device doesn't get power, and even if I connect external power to the device the system still doesn't see it. I found an article online that said to try resetting the NVRAM. I did that but the problem still exists. This is the only FireWire device I have and I only have one cable, so I don't have a way of seeing if the problem is the device or the cable. Does anyone have any ideas about how to track down the problem? Is there some way I can see if the FireWire ports are functioning without a device? (I did try all 4 ports.)

You can lookup connected FireWire devices in the Apple system profiler under Hardware > FireWire

Open the System Information or System Profiler app from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. Or just hold down the Option key while choosing System Information or System Profiler from the Apple menu.

Most FireWire devices will show up out of the box. FireWire audio devices usually require additional third party driver software.

Definitely check the driver for the interface. Download the most recent version from the website (the brand of interface i.e., Focusrite, Presonus, etc...). Hope this helps!


If I have an iPod touch (1st gen) can I install apps? I found what I think is a first gen iPod touch (see here).

I had to restore it and it says it cannot update beyond iOS 2.2.1, build version 5H11.

When I browse the App Store, all apps seem to require a minimum of iOS 4.3.

Can I upgrade iOS beyond 2.2.1?
Can I install apps?
Where can I browse for compatible apps?

You can update an ipod touch 1G up to ios 3.1.3.  Finding available apps that work on ios 3.1.3 or earlier can be painstakingly hard using the Apple app store.  An app store app called "VintApps" makes this super easy.

https://www.facebook.com/VintApps313

download ios 3.1.3  apps from here http://apptimemachine.com/apple.html


Copy Crucial SSD Firmware Update ISO to Bootable USB I want to start with the Crucial SSD Firmware Update and copy the ISO to a bootable Mac USB stick, using a minimal set of tools. I hope that means using only built-in Mac software, such as Disk Utility and Terminal for commands. If necessary, I will reluctantly use a commercial tool. (As of this writing, the latest is Crucial_m4_040H-04-00.zip.)

I've have waded through a muck of articles about how to copy an ISO to a bootable USB stick, but I have not found a solution that works and that I'm comfortable trying.

For example, I read How do I burn an ISO on a USB drive on Mac OS X? and followed the steps. The steps seemed to work, but the resulting USB stick would not boot. I tried two different sticks to reduce the chances that it was a hardware issue.
I've also read Updating firmware on Macs without a superdrive too. One part recommends using rEFIt-Syslinux.dmg_.zip. But how do I know if that DMG is up-to-date, reliable, and trustworthy? Even if it is, that route seems unnecessarily complicated. Why is there not a simpler option?

I downloaded the Crucial_m4_040H-04-00.zip and followed this tutorial and everything seemed to work for me. I hope this helps.

Try downloading a bootloader called rEFIt to boot the USB. Delete the EFI folder in the Hard Drive Root folder to remove it.

http://refit.sourceforge.net/#download


How can I permanently dismiss Updates Available notifications? With the Notification Center in Mountain Lion, I get an alert when software updates are available. The problem is, my only options are 'Details' and 'Update'. I don't want to interrupt my work to install the update and I don't want to launch the App Store to see what the update it. I just want to dismiss the alert so that it doesn't come back again. I know about the tip that swiping the notification off the side of the screen to make it go away, but it seems to come back a few minutes later.

I've looked in the System Preferences to change it to a 'banner' instead of an 'alert' so that it would go away by itself after a few seconds, but there is no option to control software update notifications. I've also closely read these two related questions and can't seem to make the answers there work for me to suppress repetitive update notifications.

I can turn off software updates all together, but I'm not really against the update notifications -- as long as I can acknowledge it and not have it bother me again.

Is there a hidden configuration option that I can invoke to control these notifications from re-appearing?

I have just disabled checking for updates automatically from System Preferences:

I install updates manually from App Store or with sudo softwareupdate -ia.

I tried adding this command to the root's crontab (and not restarting after updates):

0 14 * * * /usr/sbin/softwareupdate -ia

I didn't have any issues at first, but after the 10.8.3 update, Safari started crashing on launch until I restarted. After that I changed -ia to -da so the command just downloads updates. softwareupdate does not include updates for App Store applications though.

If you hover over the notification and swipe from the left to right on the trackpad (assuming you have one), it will be moved to the notification list and off of your immediate screen.


Recommended malware/virus scanner for mac? I have been searching for a good virus/malware scanner for my mac. But I'm scared that I might download some trashy software because all the stuff I find on google just turn out to be ads.
Do you have any recommendations?

I would recommend MalwareBytes. However, macOS already includes XProtect, which is a regularly updated blacklist of malware. On top of that, there are lots of built-in security features that make it very difficult for malware to do damage: processes are limited in what they can read or write.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that 'Macs don't get malware'. But if you're already cautious about downloading 'trashy software', then that's as effective as anything.
What you didn’t ask is are there products more effective than one that just tries to catch up with known malware. There’s a class of products that scan for suspicious behavior so you can decide if a program is worth the risk or be alerted to an uncatalogued risk. Start with Objective See products in that case.

https://objective-see.com/products/blockblock.html

LuLu and KnockKnock are worth looking at as well as the linked BlockBlock app from above.

Many security researchers recommend this malware scanner. Myself even if I don't think much of 3rd AV software https://de.malwarebytes.com


Is it possible to control the Apple TV with the LG Magic Remote? The LG Magic Remote is a strange beast, because by default, the signals it sends to LG TVs tend not to be picked up by other IR controls (I don't know if that means it's communicating some other way, or whether the IR frequency it uses is really unusual). As a result, the Apple TV's "Learn Remote" functionality does not work straight away when operating the LG Magic Remote.

Nevertheless, there is a feature of the LG TV to configure its remote to serve as the universal remote of various inputs (i.e. select DVD player on HDMI 2, pick a make, verify it works, and then the remote will start sending IR signals whenever HDMI 2 is active).

The Apple TV is officially not supported by LG (per their phone support) and Apple does appear as a valid make when selecting a remote type. So I figured based on googling, that if I picked any nonsense DVD player, the remote would at least start sending IR signals that could be learned using the Apple TV "Learn Remote" feature.

Those linked threads report success, but in fact their advice of "rapidly mash buttons" for the Apple TV to learn the IR signal didn't work in my case, and I suspect it's a function of the newest 2017 version of the remote (I'm testing on an LG OLED65C7P). I've tried a dozen different "set top box" and "dvd/blu ray" device types, and in each case the IR signal for the arrow buttons is not strong enough for the Apple TV to register them at all.

Any ideas on how to overcome this?

I found a really gross workaround.

Buy a learning universal remote. I used this old thing
After selecting any "DVD/Bluray" make from the LG TV UI, have the learning remote learn the keys you want to use for ⬆
With both remotes, sit by the Apple TV and hold and/or mash that key. After a dozen or so tries the Apple TV should eventually fill its progress bar and accept it.
Repeat for ,⬇,⬅,➡, OK, and Menu. Note that the button in the center of the magic remote and most settings buttons around it are not programmable, so I had to settle for "O" to mean "OK" and "8" to mean "Menu"

Not ideal, but better than nothing. LG Magic Remote now works fine for navigating the Apple TV

I have the new lgb7 and after going into the SAP button on the remote and selecting input button in the lower right corner the remote started working with the Apple TV.  All buttons work with exception of the Siri that I can tell!


What external hardware allows a fingerprint to login/unlock a Mac? I own a mid-2009 MBP with OS X Mavericks installed. I'm a hi-tech enthusiast who wants to use the fingerprint scanning feature made available by many scanners on the market to login into my account after boot and unlock the screen after the screensaver has started.

The scanner I'm willing to buy is a DigitalPersona U.are.U-5160 which is not only FIPS 201 PIV certified, but it's also designed to work in harsh environments and situations. See: http://www.fulcrumbiometrics.com/Digital-Persona-U-are-U-5160-p/101106.htm

Please note that I've already read this article on StackExchange (How can I enable fingerprint authentication on a Mac? What compatible scanners are available?) which talks about the same, but I've found nothing interesting in it.

In particularly, supposed that I've gotten all the Smart Card Services/CAC Libraries:

How do I switch from password login to fingerprint login?
Can I use fingerprint login with FileVault 2 too? (i.e. decrypting the HD using my fingerprint, with no passwords to type)

I think these features require dedicated API's or SDK's, and Apple stopped deploying them since it bought AuthenTec. Now, all fingerprint-scanning feature are officially unsupported by Apple except for the iPhone 5S.

I've read somewhere that LastPass does a very similar job indeed, and is used for the purposes I've listed.

How can I achieve this?

I think this Mac OS Forge project might be your best bet – SmartCard Services.

My research leads me to believe Apple stopped putting 'official' efforts (documentation, etc.) after OS X 10.6.

I use a very useful tool, DriodID [http://suyashsrijan.com/droidid/][1] to unlock my Macbook Pro 2017 using my android.


Where does macports install programs I have installed both moria and ettercap using MacPorts (via pallet) and I can't find out where the things were installed to run them!
Where is the install directory?
EDIT: When I install things JUST using macports i.e. from the command line it works.
Pallet doesn't actually seem to install things :S

If you use contents, it will tell you where they are.

Yes, you have to explicitly point to the new app to get it to run:

/opt/local/bin/openssl   -- in my case,
otherwise you get the Apple version.


Is there a keyboard shortcut to move a window from one monitor to another? Is there a free app that I can use to move a window from one monitor to the other monitor (assuming only two monitors) via the keyboard? I shouldn't have to use the mouse at all (e.g., for selecting the window or the monitor, or for dragging).

I know this can be done in Linux using compiz; I'm surprised there isn't a (free) option for OS X.

UPDATE: Spectacle is no longer maintaned.  The website forwards users to Rectangle, see Jack's answer or https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle/releases.

I just tried Spectacle, great app and it's free.
This is what it can do with the selected group of windows.

You need to activate accessibility support.
System Preferences > Accessibility > Enable access for assisted devices
As per comments: The accessibility option in Mavericks is now in
System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility

This can also be done using the free, open-source tiling window manager Amethyst using the "Swap focused window to (counter-)clockwise screen" shortcut.


Install older OS X on latest Mac Mini I need Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) in order to work with some legacy software and I want to buy new Mac Mini computer.

Is it possible to install this OS on a new Mac Mini or it's not compatible with it?

If so, what is the latest model of Mac Mini that I can use in this scenario?

You can not install older OS X versions on newer models, the old OS X version are missing the required drivers for hardware not even available when the OS X version was released.

I see several options:

You may (legally) install 10.6.8 Server in a VM (Parallels or VMware) though.
The latest MacMini supporting 10.6.8 is the MacMini4,1: Apple Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" 2.4, Apple Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" 2.66 & Apple Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" 2.66 (Server)
With some workarounds and hazzle you will get 10.6.8 working on MacMini5,1 and MacMini5,2. In the comments there (March 12, 2013 Gregg Tomlinson) even a working MacMini6,1 is mentioned:

  I believe it does – I am using this on a 2012 MacMini that came with Snow Leopard [sic!], and reverse-engineered it to use 10.6 with this methodology.

Can’t you partiton the disk and do an install from a Time Machine back-up?

Then press alt at start and choose which system you want to boot from.

Of course this means wiping your existing system and reinstalling.


Disable 3G on iPhone 5 with iOS8 After the update to iOS8, the switch to disable the 3G has been replaced by a disable 4G switch.

4G is already off but how could I also disable also 3G (which is still active, as shown on the status bar)

iOS 8.1 which will most probably be released on 20 Oct will fix the issue by adding the ability to select between 2G, 3G and LTE


Weird chrome icon on my macbook pro? I am using MacBook pro. I have this weird chrome icon:

I dont know if its the official chrome icon, but it looks damaged or spoiled to me. If you are also using chrome on your macbook, does your icon looks like mine too?

I would suggest reinstalling Google Chrome rather than going to the trouble of manually replacing the icon. Download it here.

Oh, and to restore all your bookmarks, history, etc., go to Prefs>Personal Stuff>Sync. Login with your Google Account and ta da! All your bookmarks and data are synced. Then, when you reinstall Chrome, login again, and all your data will be restored.

I would bet that the problem lies in Lion somewhere.  Your Dock icon and the Chrome icon in your app folder look fine.  It is only in Launchpad that you have the problem.

Try this:  Delete the icon in Launchpad, because that is where the error is.  That will probably delete Google Chrome.

Restart or logout then back in.  If necessary, re-install Chrome.  Now add it to Launchpad if it is not already there.

Please post the result of whatever you try and what succeeded.


How do I restore a jailbroken iOS 6.1/iPhone 5? My iPhone 5 is running iOS 6.1, jailbroken.  I've managed to lock myself out of the phone and don't know the passcode.  Device is disabled for longer and longer periods of time in between incorrect passcode entries.

I've been backing up to iCloud and periodically locally to iTunes.

My objective: Ideally I would like to get back to my most recent iCloud (or local iTunes) backup, and stay jailbroken.  My second most preferred choice is to get back to my most recent backup and then re-jailbreak.  Worst case is bring the device to 6.1.2 (which is the latest version that there is a jailbreak for) and re-jailbreak and reinstall everything.

I am reading lots of conflicting and confusing things about how to do this, so I am not sure about the procedure.

My first attempt went like follows:

Attach iPhone to PC, iTunes sees it.
Download 6.1 firmware ipsw (because the latest version of iOS, 6.1.4, which iTunes tries to use, can't be jailbroken)
In iTunes, hold shift then click Restore iPhone, then I pick the 6.1 file

and I get the following much-mentioned but not much solved error:

  The iPhone [device name] could not be restored because the firmware file is not compatible.

Doing this while the phone is in DFU or Recovery modes doesn't change the result.

I then tried the same steps, but this time selecting the 6.1.2 ipsw file.  I get past the error above but after the file extracted and after talking to Apple's servers I get error 3194:

  The iPhone [device name] could not be restored.  An unknown error occurred (3194).

Lots of Internet activity for error 3194, all unsuccessful, eg. changing hosts file.

Recommendations?  To reiterate, I want to accomplish what I wrote after "My objective" above; perhaps I'm going down the wrong road and this error message I am getting is irrelevant because this might not be the right path anyway.

This YouTube video on Semi-Restore iOS 6.1.2, 6.1.1, 6.1, 6.0.1, 6.0 iPhone 5, 4S, 4 definitely works. It worked for me.


What's the easiest way to transfer photos from Google Photos to iCloud Photos? I have more than 5 000 photos stored on Google Photos and I'd like to know what's the easiest way to move them on iCloud photos. Since the free storage ends on June I want to move everything on iCloud.
Here's what I've tried :

Selecting all of them on the Google Photos app and downloading them, but it randomly skips some pictures, and it stops after some hours of download. Since it downloads them in a random order I have to delete them all and start over.
Downloading them from Google Takeout and uploading them from icloud.com on a PC, but it only accepts JPEG files, so most of the pictures are not uploaded (the file format is .HEIC) and videos are skipped.

I have no other idea on how to do this, I hope anyone can help!

You can download the photos from Google to your PC and then upload them to icloud.com

I have been attempting to do the very same thing for at least two weeks now.
I used Google Takeout and successfully imported all the files using the Photos application (which I sync to iCloud). I'd recommend this route.
My sticking point is that Apple's facial recognition is absolute trash. After two weeks of using both my 2017 i7 MBP and my iPhone 11 Pro Max, it still hasn't identified the majority of faces even after being tagged.


Can this RAM work with iMac 2010? http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Information-Ddr3-So-dimm-jm1333ksn-2g/dp/B007I5CMGK

It said it is a 2gb Ddr3 1333 So-dimm, is iMac support all Ddr3 1333 So-dimm?

From iMac (Mid 2010: Memory specifications):

  The iMac (Late 2010) computers have four SDRAM slots in the bottom of
  the computer and come with at least 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM installed as two
  2GB DIMMs into two slots.

  The maximum amount of RAM you can install in your computer is 16 GB (a
  4 GB SO-DIMM in each slot).

  You can use any Small-Outline dual inline memory modules (SO-DIMMS)
  that meet all of these criteria:

  PC3-10600
  Unbuffered
  Nonparity
  204-pin
  1333 MHz
  DDR3 SDRAM

  You can use RAM module sizes of 2 GB or 4 GB in each slot.

And from iMac: How to remove or install memory:


Prevent macOS Sierra from prompting for the password for other encrypted volume If dual boot is used to run a second macOS installation off a different volume on the same hard disk, and that volume is encrypted, booting the first macOS will prompt for the encryption password for the second volume on each boot.  However, there is no need or desire to mount the second macOS volume from the first macOS. How can this prompting for the encryption password be disabled?

The solution needs have been verified working on macOS 10.12 Sierra specifically.

You can edit /etc/fstab if you don't want a partition to mount on startup. I haven't tried personally but there's a writeup at Mac OS X Hints.

In short, get the UUID of the partition and add something like:

UUID=F0E430C1-5558-3BB3-9FA9-6904B663FEEA  none  hfs  rw,noauto


How do I delete a single file from the Trash? I'm trying to free up space on an external drive, and after deleting a bunch of stuff, it's still showing very little actual free space.  I went to the trash can, but can't seem to delete the files there other than by emptying the entire trash.

Am I missing something?  What's the point of having a "staging area" for stuff you (probably) want to delete, if you can't get rid of the files in it individually?  The drive will be used on an embedded system, so just "putting files in the trash" doesn't actually make space on the drive, as far as the consuming device is concerned.

The Trash isn't intended for files you may want to delete later but rather as a safety net if you delete the wrong files. If you want to mark files for later deletion, either use a dedicated folder (as already mentioned in another comment) or mark them with a specific label/color.

To delete individual files from the Trash

Open the trash in the Finder
Open Terminal.app
Type rm -rf and then one space character at the end
Drag one or more files to be deleted into the Terminal window ('til you see the green + sign)
Press Enter in Terminal.app
Puff, files are gone!

If you need this very often, I would recommend writing a service using Automator or getting more familiar with Terminal.app/bash.

If you restart your Mac, you can delete it from Trash.

When I move an app to Trash, some plist file the app used will be moved to Trash too, if you empty the Trash now, you will get a warning like "xxx.plist is using , you can not delete it", but if you restart your mac, you can delete it, restart system may unlock some plist from system, so you can delete it, also, you can delete it in Terminal described before.


Are there any good iPhone camera apps that properly rotate photos? I have an iPhone 4s. I'm happy with the default Camera app, however every time I import photos to Picasa or email them or use them on a website or something they're improperly rotated. This is because the iPhone doesn't rotate the photo, it only saves rotation in metadata, and it is extremely annoying. So are there any good camera apps that actually rotate the photo (not just metadata) and saves photos to Photo-stream and saves photos and videos to the camera roll/Photos app? I'd even pay $1 or $2 if need be, but it has to save pictures to the same place that the default app does and has to rotate properly.

If any I think ProCam might do this by default. There's no specific settings for where to do the rotation, but if I don't remember wrong it actually rotates the image. I'm not sure if the app is free or costs anything since I got it thru appoftheday for free.

Have a try. If you want I can check it out further so you don't need to purchase the app?

Edit:

Sorry to dissapoint you. Neither of the apps: ProCam, Awesomemize or Awesome Camera does this. I tested all of them by taking a photo upside down and mailing it to myself. The image arriving on my computer was also upside down.

If youre into code you should have a look at whats going wrong and how to fix it:
http://pleaselistencarefully.com/Why-photo-rotation-is-broken-on-the-iphone-4-and-how-to-fix-it-using-paperclip-on-heroku


Office 365 keeps prompting for login credentials on Mac OSX? Office 365 keeps prompting for login credentials within Mac OSX? I came across a problem where a client of mine had bought and installed Office Suite 2016 she than upgraded to Office 365 Business Premium.

Here is what solved it for me. (Copied from: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook-mso_mac/authentication-failedcheck-your-account/063826c1-1e4c-40ba-9bfa-54e745925fc1 )

Quit all Office applications (Word, Teams, Outlook, etc)
Go to KeyChain Access.
Search "Exchange" under Login --> All Items and delete everything.
Search "Office" and delete everything.
Search "ADAL" and delete everything.
Launch Outlook.
You will get the activation prompt and then If account is already added you will see the password prompt for app and ADAL again. Please do 2-Factor Authentication if asked to.
If that doesn't work, do steps 2-4 but restart the Mac before launching Outlook.

Removing (deleting) the exchange account in Outlook, letting it fully delete, then adding it again as recommended by ognockocaten worked for me!

This problem showed up after changing the user's login name on O365.


Can I delete /Library/SystemMigration Can I delete /Library/SystemMigration after my upgrade to 10.11. I think, there is nothing, that I want to save.

You can delete this folder.

This directory is a backup of shared caches (relevant to application launches) of the old system.

I saved ~ 600 MB from this.

Don't delete this folder! It's doing something important, because when I tried to delete it I saw a message that the files and folders are in use.


How do you pronounce the clover-like key (⌘)? How do you pronounce the clover-like key ⌘ ?

This is usually called the "command" key. Others just call it the "apple" key...

Actually the use of the Butterfly Key was in retaliation of IBM, and of the slavery early programers associated with Big Blue(IBM) as an oligarchic company bent on suppressing of new ideas and of the casual freedoms that the Bay Area was known for so they did away with the oppressive "Command Key" and thus gave it a splat, butterfly or whatever you want to call it.

The idea was to be liberated and not controlled. Which is funny since Apple literally controlled every aspect of their early computer architecture and squashed any freedom to developers to give the Mac OS the power or the programs it needed.

But the Butterfly is a statement, not a reality.


Upgrade iPad 2 from 4.3.5 to 5.1.1 I want to install iOS 5.1.1 on my iPad 2. Currently it's running on 4.3.5. iTunes just shows me a popup with the option to install iOS 6.0. How can I install 5.1.1?

There is no way to do that. Unless you already have a copy of the iOS 5.1.1 package for your iPad downloaded, you can only upgrade to the latest supported version for your device.

Yes! You can if you're willing to jailbreak!
Upgrade to iOS 6, then downgrade to 5.1.1.

Instructions can be found here: Downgrade From iOS 6.0 to 5.1.1 without SHSH Blobs


Why is application switching slow on Late 2013 Mac Mini compared to early 2008 Macbook Pro? I recently purchased a Late 2013 Mac Mini Quad Core i7 2.6Ghz with 4gb DDR3 ram, 1TB 5400 rpm drive model APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E662 running OSX 10.8.2

I used Migration Assistant to migrate apps and files from Macbook Pro to Mac mini over gigabit Ethernet.

The Macbook Pro is an early 2008 model equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor at 2.4Ghz with 4GB DDR2 Memory and an (upgraded) 750GB 7200 RPM hard drive model ST750LX003-1AC154 running OSX 10.7.5  Link to model: http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/laptop-hard-drives/momentus-xt-hybrid/

Why does my 2008 Macbook Pro completely outperform my Late 2012 Mac Mini when switching applications? (CMD+TAB).  The Mac Mini outperforms the Macbook on all other fronts.

I normally run Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop CS5, Adobe Bridge CS5, OpenOffice, and FireFox and I regularily switch between them all. Changing from Lightroom back to Firefox will bring up the beach ball for 15-30 seconds, and beachball again if I wish to open a new firefox tab.

This doesn't happen on the Macbook.

It is purely the hard drive RPM difference?

4GB of RAM isn't much to be running all of those heavyweight apps at the same time. My guess would be that it's doing a lot of paging to disk. Check the size of the swap files on both machines.

Go to the Finder's "Go" menu and select "Go to Folder…".
Enter /private/var/vm/ into the box and press the "OK" button.
Add up the sizes of the swap files.

If it's more than 1GB I usually reboot. That will clear out these files. I've seen these files up to 4GB on a machine with 8GB of RAM.

Since running out of RAM can cause writes to disk, the difference in disk speed may be what's causing the delay.

RAM issue.  Free memory with just one click, this is an example how Freememory.App it works, download from App Store.


What are the Best Ways to Speed Up a Mac? I have a 2012 Macbook Pro and although it seems to be working fine, over time it has seemed to become more sluggish and less snappy / responsive. So is there any good ways ways that I can 'speed up' my Mac? - this includes stuff like: maximising youtube videos 'lag', the RAM being used up very quickly, Photoshop operations taking a long time to load and Preview struggling to open very large (10000s x 10000s px in size) photos.

My Specs - Macbook Pro 13" (Retina, Late 2012):

CPU: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
RAM: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB
OS: OS X Yosemite 10.10.4
SSD HD: 245/249.77 GB Used
Typical RAM Available with Safari + Chrome Open (with lots of
tabs): 2.5 GB

The only thing I can see which might help is freeing some space on your hard drive.

With the lack of free space OS X won’t be able to make use of Virtual Memory as efficiently as it should, or possibly at all. I’m not 100% sure about Yosemite, but I’ve experienced a big performance hit on previous OS X releases when the OS can’t allocate as much RAM as it wants to.

With tools like Photoshop, are you using a separate scratch disk? If not then you’ll be relying on the little internal storage available which will result in OS X having to free up RAM (rather than swapping it) to apply effects/filters/etc.

Your setup looks quite reasonable so there's nothing hardware to update.

You should definitely launch Onyx and do all the cleaning + do every checkbox proposed in automation.

In addition, I would install Magican, remove any redondant files and uninstall unused software.

At last, Yosemite transparency effect eats up a lot of memory and power. You can disable it in system preference > accessibility.


Can the iPad have multiple users? I'm thinking of getting a "household" iPad (the new iPad) to be shared.  Can the iPad have multiple users?  Or is there another way to keep email accounts, Safari bookmarks, and Angry Birds scores separated between users?

Apple really designed the iPad as a 1-to-1 device (one device to one person) so I don't think there is an EASY way.

I know they have deployment products out there that might make it so you can remove and restore profiles, but it's not on the fly and I think it's very clunky.

I also did a quick Google and noticed this software that is out in beta and is exactly what you want, but it looks quite experimental and your iPad needs to be jailbroken to install it: http://nowsci.com/userprofiles/

Check out Apple Configurator (by Apple, it's free) Here it can be used for families and not just businesses, edu, institutions.


macOS Catalina creates "Relocated Items" on every update I am running two new Mac's that both were delivered in 2020 with macOS 10.15 Catalina installed (2017 iMac Pro delivered in 2020 and the new 2020 MacBook Air).

On update from 10.15.4 -> 10.15.5 both of these Macs created Relocated Items and wiped out my the contents of my /etc and /var directories.

My understanding is that this behavior is not expected for Catalina -> Catalina updates. The documentation on Relocated Items seems to apply mostly to Mojave -> Catalina.

On the iMac Pro, I was also redirected to the full setup procedure because /var/db/.AppleSetupDone was moved. This was also moved on the MacBook Air, so I'm not sure why I didn't see it there as well.

My conjecture is that this has to do with my use of synthetic.conf to create a link from /p that points to /Volumes. This is to map directories between system when I connect to a smb drive on a linux computer. But I can't see why this would cause any issues as it is supported mechanism.

Why I think this may be related. The relocated items show in the directory: /Users/Shared/Relocated Items/Security/System/Volumes/Data/rivate which seems like a misspelling of "private" without the "p", which is my only clue. (Although, this seems like it would indicate something surprisingly sloppy in the coding...)
Also /Volumes/System/Data/private contains etc and var which are precisely the folders that are causing me problems.

Other software that is impacted includes MacTex 2020 (which installs its paths in /etc). This also wipes out all the printers I install (because they put stuff into /etc as well).

Possibly related...

Setup Assistant Runs on Every Restart

I ran the permissions to see if this has any impact on my next update.

Any ideas would be helpful!

I also experienced this problem over several Catalina and Big Sur updates.
I too had a /p link defined in /etc/synthetic.conf
I too noticed the rivate misspelling.

So before updating to macOS 11.4 today, I rebooted in recovery mode and removed my synthetic.conf. The update then installed normally, without blowing away my /var and /etc directories and without running the new installation setup. I conclude that having a /p link does cause this problem.

This is totally expected and a result of the software needing an update.

Every macOS install can be a full archive and install and run the full migration, so you will see all of the changes needed as if the OS was a major update. Apple is releasing more and more large features in dot releases, so I treat every update other than a security patch as major. Full backup, spot check that the backup has changed files (I use Time Machine and BackupLoupe) and this has saved me many lost days and worse when a reboot or update shows me I had damaged files or a software installer did things it should not have to make updates painless.


How can I hide / remove updates from the Mac App Store? I installed an app, didn't like it, and then moved it from Applications to the Trash and emptied the trash. Now when I go into the App Store, I am stil being prompted to update the application even though it has been removed.

I tried searching the hard drive and I don't see any other copies of the Application.

I also tried running this command which is supposed to update the database of what is actually installed on the system for the App Store:

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

It is still showing up. How can I get rid of it?

On a related note, I accidentally hid another update that I wanted to install by right clicking on it and choosing "Hide Update". I was not able to hide Clyppan which is the app I'm trying to ditch - but if you do accidentally hide something you want to install, how do you get it back?

Does it still show up in Launchpad? Or have you tried downloading the application again and removing it from Launchpad? It runs uninstalld, which doesn't normally remove many other files than the application bundle, but it probably makes some other changes.

just follow these instructions...
it worked for me.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences.
Click Spotlight.
Click the Privacy tab.
Drag a folder or an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list.
If prompted for confirmation, click OK.
Remove the item or volume you just added to the list by clicking it and then clicking the minus ("-") button.
Close Spotlight preferences.
Spotlight will re-index the contents of the folder or volume.


How do I get rid of Genieo from my MacBook Pro? I am trying to get rid of Genieo which accidentally got installed on my MacBook Pro, when I considered using jEdit. I followed their Download link which appears to be on sourceforge, when the following screen appeared:

I should not have been so naive and I should have read more carefully, but since it is not uncommon in having to push yet another button when downloading and because I though sourceforge was a trustworthy resource, I followed the link, ending up with Genieo installed on my mac.

The result is that I am currently being spammed with Genieo driven popups. I want to get rid of this, but the only howto I can find points to Genieo's site where I can download an uninstaller.

I can't say that I trust a site which uses murky marketing tricks to lure people in using their software in the first place, so I am quite hesitant in downloading their uninstaller. I am afraid of what that might unleash on my Mac.

Is there any way to get rid of Genieo manually?

Is there any way to get rid of Genieo manually?

The only way is to do so manually. Carefully follow Thomas Reed's Genieo Removal Guide to completely rid your machine of the offending adware. Here is an abbreviated version of Thomas Reed's guide:

Quit Genio. Remove /private/etc/launchd.conf.
If it's not present, move on. If it is, trash it and restart the machine (See the warning in the full guide about overlooking this step).
Remove the following files, if present:

/Applications/Genieo
/Applications/Uninstall Genieo
/Applications/Uninstall IM Completer.app
~/Library/Application Support/com.genieoinnovation.Installer/
~/Library/Application Support/Genieo/
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.genieo.completer.download.plist
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.genieo.completer.update.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.genieoinnovation.macextension.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.genieoinnovation.macextension.client.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.genieo.engine.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.genieo.completer.update.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.genieoinnovation.macextension.client.plist
/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.genieoinnovation.macextension.client
/usr/lib/libgenkit.dylib
/usr/lib/libgenkitsa.dylib
/usr/lib/libimckit.dylib
/usr/lib/libimckitsa.dylib
Restart the machine again.
Remove /Library/Frameworks/GenieoExtra.framework and empty the trash.
Remove the Omnibar Extension from your browser. See full guide if you are unsure how to do so.
Reset the Home Page, and possibly default search engine for your browser.

I downloaded uninstall from this site http://www.genieo.com/features/. It works.


How to resume iCloud restore? I formatted my iPhone and after setting up iCloud, my apps and pictures were downloading.

In middle due to net disconnection, it stopped and it's in stop state till now.

Apps icons are dim and lots of pictures have empty frame.

How do I start downloading/resume them again?

Go to

Settings
Reset
Reset All Settings

and the process will start over. You're not losing content this way, because that's the 2nd option on that page.

Erase again and restore again. This is the only way for now


How to connect OS X Yosemite to a Windows based SSTP VPN? I am trying to connect to a Windows based SSTP VPN network. I am using OS X Yosemite, I was wondering if there is any solution that can allow me to connect to a SSTP based VPN.

For the record, I have already tried using EasyVPN, iSSTP, iSSTP2. all of which failed to connect, and they all seem to be not supported anymore.

The sstp-client works for me. It is a command-line program. I installed it using the homebrew command:

brew install sstp-client

I think you will find Tunnelblick will do it without any problems. It's well supported and has good documentation on the site.


App Store asks me for a password, but won't let me change the Apple ID I'm taking over someone elses job and am using the computer he was using. In the App Store there are some apps that ask me to enter a password and have an Apple Id already filled in but won't let me change it.

For example there's an update to Evernote. In the Apple App store when I click on "update" it prompts me for the password and has the e-mail address of the previous employee automatically filled in (and I can't change it). What can I do? Evernote itself is signed out, so there definitely wouldn't be a loss if I reinstall it.

It won't let you change it because the apps are tied to the account that purchased them.  See here for the legal details.

Basically, only the original purchaser can update.  If you'd like to be able to keep up-to-date with an application, you must have it tied to your account...by buying/downloading it yourself. If that's the case...

Delete the application

open Finder
select Applications folder in left pane
drag apps tied to the old account to trash

Ensure that the old user is signed out of the Mac App Store
Sign in under an account you control
Purchase/download to your heart's content

You can go through Apple to change the Apple ID if you know the email and password for it.

So here are the steps:
 1: Go to this site: https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/wa/directToSignIn?localang=en_US

2: Log in using the email and password of the previous owner (If you changed the password enter that password)

3: Click on Password and Security

4: Enter the security answers (you may need to ask the previous owner or the person who setup the account)

5: Click Change Password

6: Enter Old Password, then the new one you want, then verify this by entering it again.

7 (optional): Change the security questions

8: Scroll to the bottom and hit "Save".


My mac mini is not getting the FullHD Resolution for my FULLHD LED I am having a LED with 1920*1080 resolution .I have connected my Mac mini using the Mini DisplayPort to VGA cable .I am only getting the 1280*1080 p.Why i am not getting FULLHD display

Try using the alt/option button while you change the settings for your display; i could upgrade to 1600/900; still no max resolution though cause i also have a full HD display


Can a 3rd party charger damage my macbook pro? I forgot my macbook pro charger at a friends place and I won't have it for a week. I saw that there are 3rd party chargers being sold for half the price of official chargers. Can 3rd party chargers damage my macbook pro? After I get my normal charger back in a week I will be mostly using that one and keep the new one as an extra, so I won't be using it fulltime.

It's unlikely they will actually damage your MacBook Pro by delivering too much power to it. But there are many cautionary tales to be found on the internet of third party chargers overheating, and occasionally catching fire or exploding. Technically, using a non-Apple charger without Apple's written permission may also void your warranty if anything did go wrong.

Personally, I wouldn't risk it.

Yes it may hurt your battery, you need to be very careful when using 3rd party products. The charger needs to be compatible with your battery, check the information on it (input/output values - how many V and A), if they are the same as your original one then you shouldn't worry much. Still this doesn't guarantee that it won't damage the battery or the mac.


iPhone FTP utility with automatic backup? I am searching for an iPhone utility / application with an FTP client that can do automatic backup without user intervention. More specifically, I'd expect to configure the utility once and specify (somehow) that I want a certain type of file (e.g. photos) backed up automatically, in the background.  As an example, if I specified photo backup, I'd want the new photos to be ftp'ed in the background, shortly after they're created.

I've searched for hours on the AppStore and already bought two top rated FTP clients. Neither does what I want. Perhaps this is due to a limitation of the iPhone architecture?  If so, I'd be amenable to running a jail-breaked phone, if such application were available.

Any pointers gratefully appreciated.

BTW, I've specified FTP rather than than another protocol/service since the goal is to upload photos directly to a host that I control (where the photos will be further processed into a report and sent to a customer).  For this reason, it's important that the photos are moved as fast as they're created and, unlike ITunes/Dropbox/GoogleDrive/etc, they need to move to a computer that I control.  I mention this because IF an application can accomplish the aforementioned task without FTP, that's fine.

What you want can be done with Apple's iCloud backup (on your iPhone go to: Settings, iCloud, Storage & Backup, iCloud Backup). But you ask specifically for a whole iPhone backup over FTP.

You can also use your WiFi to backup your iPhone via iTunes. To set up Wi-Fi syncing, connect your iOS device to your computer with the included USB cable. Click the Device button in the upper-right corner. (If viewing the iTunes Store, click the Library button first.) If you don't see your device, choose View > Hide Sidebar. In the Summary tab, select "Sync with this [device] over Wi-Fi."

There are some good non Apple programs to backup your photo's over the internet (bittorrent sync, Dropbox, Copy for iOS, and much more), but none use old school FTP.

If you specifically want FTP, you should jailbreak your iPhone, setup your FTP connection and run a Cron job which syncs every x hours. I would strongly recommend not to go this way, it will eat your battery and FTP is not the correct way to do this, I would greatly suggest rsync over SSH. Or use SFTP. But yet again, I would strongly recommend not to go this way.

If you want to drop every photo you make onto an FTP host, you can do this if you setup an OS X device in between. You can use iCloud-Photostream to send the photo's to your photostream. Now, when your mac is running, it will automatically download this stream and store the foto's in ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub. Now you can use any software to start syncing your mac. For example you can create 'Folder actions' to start an FTP upload every time the folder gets a new image.

Another possibility is to make the photo from within file-exchange app like Dropbox or bittorrent sync or one of the others. The app will automatically upload your photo's to other devices.

I would go for the iCloud-Photostream -> Mac -> Client if I had to use it myself. I would go for creating the photo's from within the file-exchange app if I had to explain my mother how to do it. Furthermore, what are you planning to do with your backups? You can not use them to restore your iPhone, you need an iTunes or iCloud backup for that.

Use camera sync. The only problem I found is you have to manually open the app and then it backups your pic to the specified ftp server.


Start menu + taskbar for Mac OS X I am looking for a start menu and taskbar for Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) with as many following features as possible (approximately ordered by descending importance):

Start menu:

Multi-column application list (i.e. no need to scroll)
Applications shouldn't be split into different categories
no menu delay (i.e. the delay for opening submenus when the mouse hovers over a folder item should be 0.)
show the X recently launched applications
clicking on a non-leaf element of the start menu should have no effect

Taskbar:

can be configured to have several rows
doesn't let other windows to go under the taskbar
doesn't combine windows belonging to the same application
is not transparent

Is there any other great option? I am basically looking for an equivalent of Classic Start Menu (Windows).

It's okay if the suggested application provides only the start menu or the taskbar.

I am aware of uBar but it does not present applications in a multi-column application list, clicking on a non-leaf element opens some folder,  and maximized windows overlap with the uBar's taskbar.

I am also aware of iTaskbar but it has the same issues as uBar: it does not present applications in a multi-column application list, and maximized windows overlap with the taskbar.

Lastly, Fantasktik is no longer maintained and doesn't work with my OS X.

You can try this, Start Menu for Mac OS X:


What is the benefit of purchasing a Mac formatted External Hard Drive? I have seen in shops that you can buy external Hard drives in both Windows and Mac format.

I was under the impression that an external Hard drive will work across both platforms, however having seen this and the fact that the Mac formatted one was £20 ($32) more expensive for the same capacity. I wanted to know what the difference is and what the benefits of a pre-formatted hard drive were.

It's probably no different hardware-wise, just already formatted for the Mac. There's a whole pile of people who still think Macs need special everything, so the companies take advantage of that to fleece them out of an extra £20.

In general, you don't need special Mac-only hardware stuff anymore. Hard drives, RAM, peripherals, etc. are all fairly generally universally compatible; even the stuff that's generally seen as "Mac" (i.e., FireWire and now Thunderbolt) is Windows- and Linux-compatible and will generally work fine.

EDIT: I guess I can think of one good reason to buy a pre-formatted "Mac" drive: if the user is not someone who is comfortable formatting disks. On the other hand, Disk Utility is sufficiently straightforward I've walked my parents through formatting drives a couple of times over the phone, so I wouldn't waste the money.

There are some advantages of the HFS+ journaled file system that Apple uses. It works better with the Mac OS, so if you are not sharing the drive with wintel machines, go with the Mac format.

I am currently attempting to format a Western Digital 4 Tb drive, but because of the default Windows settings, the drive appears in Disk Utility as a 2 Gb drive. I cannot seem to find how to rectify the situation -- the WD documentation for the Mac is terrible! Maybe it is a jumper setting of some sort. This might be a reason to go with a drive that is already formatted for Mac, even apart from Firewire ports and all that.

I am a longtime Mac user and have reformatted tens of drives in my time, so normally I would say just buy a generic drive and reformat it. But this WD experience is annoying and it is related to Microsoft's 2 Tb limit. We all end up paying for their mediocrity and lack of foresight. Dead time.........

So if you are a mac user, you might spare yourself some headaches.


Is it possible to install an iPhone app in MacBook Pro? I use an application WeChat in my iPhone a lot, as typing on a smartphone is less convenient than typing on a keyboard, I would like to be able to use that application on my MacBook Pro.

The OS in my MacBook Pro is Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63). I have also installed VMWare Fusion.

So I am thinking if it is possible to install a virtual iOS 7 on my MacBook Pro, then install WeChat inside?

Could anyone help?

PS: WeChat does provide a web version where we can chat in a web browser, but it is not as good as the iPhone application, it is unacceptably slow...

Nope.

The only way you can run iOS apps on OS X is if you have the iPhone Simulator and have a version of the app specifically compiled to run on the simulator.

The iPhone Simulator (available from Xcode) is not an emulator and can't run ARM code, which means that it has to run a specific version of iOS 7 designed for OS X, and is not able to run iOS apps that have not been designed to run on this version of iOS 7 (i.e. IPAs from the App Store).

There's a OS X version of  Wechat on the OS X Appstore...


How to locally share photos on a Mac I have two user accounts on my Mac, and I need the photo library (full of Photos) on the secondary account to be shared with the primary account. I can't use iCloud as the library exceeds 5GB and I can't buy more storage. Solution?

Apple documents that every release of their photo app if things change.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517

Pretty easy to put the library outside the home folder of the users and share.

You could copy the photo library onto a thumb drive and transfer that way.

In Finder, go to your Pictures folder and find the file named “Photo Library”. Copy that onto a thumb drive, sign in to your other user account, paste it into the Pictures folder, then double click to open it.


Favorites disappears from sidebar in Finder Running Mountain Lion 10.8.3 I find that after a recent reboot my Favorites have all disappeared from the sidebar in Finder.

Finder > Preferences > Sidebar shows a number of boxes against Favorite folders, but these can not be selected

Hold together Option+Command+esc and then relaunch "Finder" that will solve your problem instantly.  If the problem persists, please try reinstall Mac OS X by Command+R after rebooting.

I had same problem on Yosemite. Hovering over "Favorites" and clicking "Show" worked.


How can I make a 3G video call (not Facetime) from an iPhone 4 to another brand's 3G phone? How can I make a 3G video call (not Facetime) from an iPhone 4 to another brand's 3G phone? Is it possible by default? or any apps?

Edit 11 November:

I just found this today: No 3G video calling on iPhone 4

Yes, you can use Skype for that, if the app allows 3G video-chat. Skype is available for a lot of platforms. When you are at home, you can also use Skype on your computer so you don't have to use your (probably limited) 3G network.

Unfortunately Facetime is only available for Apple devices and a Mac running Snow Leopard.

You can try Skype?

This is free to users, by downloading the app and informing your friend of the apps function, you will be able to essentially have a Facetime call. Best of all, you will be able to use an existing Skype account which means if you already have one you will get all your contacts, credits, and data.


Does Apple have administrative control over Developer program enrollment? I have tried for 2 weeks to complete enrollment in the Apple Developer Enterprise Program (US$ 299), but halfway through each attempt (10-12 by last count) the application switches from Enterprise to Developer (US$ 99).

Is there any administrative override for this program? I have re-applied 15-20 times by now.

Yes - Apple has very good administrative control and you deal with the sales organization (online web store) when you are purchasing any developer account. They aren’t going to know the in-and-out of why you were rejected a bunch of times but they are showing you clearly the way forward.

Pay the $99
Get your account going now
Upload your first two or three apps to TestFlight and get your testing going with hundreds of internal beta testers.

Then engage the developer support team for free once they can see the sort of work you’re doing and when you have a specific need the basic account can’t meet. Now you’re a known partner they can work with - now you’re the guy keeping on banging on the sales door that was closed again and again. True enterprises are easy to verify and when Apple isn’t sure you are an enterprise, their job is to say no and reject the application so don’t get mad at the process or the people - just level up your goals and build your app now and work with developer support down the road - once they see your need, they will be your advocate so sales arrange an upgrade and/or pro-rated refund if you really need to get to enterprise features before the first year expires.

https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/enroll/

Since the test flight restrictions are so lenient now, you won’t need enterprise to distribute apps to hundreds of employees with the $99 program.

The enterprise account is really for people that start with a normal developer account and need added functionality. If you haven’t had one to two years of experience in the developer paid programs and are not actually an enterprise - I would strongly discourage you from going for the enterprise program out of the gate. You simply don’t need it to get going in my experience.

How to appeal rejection by Apple for Developer Enterprise Account?
I tried to enroll my company to Apple Enterprise program, but get message "Cannot enroll in Apple Developer program"

Apple offer no access to executive levels of administrators.


What happens to deleted texts on iCloud? If i deleted a text from my phone and then backed it up to iCloud, is that text now deleted from iCloud?

I want to tell you that the text is deleted from iCloud.
First, if your iPhone is charging, using wifi and iCloud has enough space for your iPhone to back up the text, the text would had been backed up. And then you set the manual backup, so the text data has been overwritten by new data.


Do I need an internet connection to update iOS on my PC? I've downloaded the IOS5 IPSW from Apple's site and want to update it from within iTunes. So,

Does the update require an Internet connection?
Does the iPhone switch off/reboot just as the update is initiated?

I ask because I'm at my new place where I'm yet to setup an Internet connection & my iPhone tethered to my laptop is my only Internet connection. I don't want my phone to be bricked because it cannot verify the update or what-not because there's no Internet connection.

Yes it does. It has to verify the firmware with Apple's servers (gs.apple.com). If it cannot, it will error out (usually presenting a 3XXX error, which is quite often 3004) and fail to update.

it does require internet. Just made the answer short.


The message "You do not have permission to open the application" is shown when trying to open a downloaded app This seems to be a new issue with Big Sur.
I have "App Store and identified developers" enabled in Security & Privacy, but I've run into a certain app outside the App Store that seems like it doesn't fall under the category of "identified developers".
When I try to open the app, it tells me "You do not have permission to open the application". Going into Terminal, however, I can see executable permissions are enabled for the app, just like for every other app.
What can I do to be able to open the app?

In playing with the Triangulator app I found the following issues on Big Sur:

When decompressing the .zip, the application contents didn't retain the execute bits.  Add it back with sudo chmod -R 755 /path/to/app.
Since the application was downloaded by a web browser (in my case) the quarantine bits are set on the decompressed files.  Remove that with sudo xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/app.

Once those issues are remediated then the application can be launched.
-Eric

I may have a solution. Check to see if you have two (or more) Application folders. You should only have one at the top level of your disk. Click on your hard drive and your should see your main Applications Folder (as well as Library, System and Users). If you Open Users, your username and see an Applications folder there with the problematic apps, you have found your problem. Move your apps to the Main Application folder or reinstall into that folder. You may have to Boot into Restore mode, launch Terminal and run repairHomePermissions (case sensitive) to get the installs to go into the right place.


Certain apps occasionally won't unhide once hidden On one of my Macs certain apps, e.g. Safari, Xcode and Disk Utility, sometimes cannot be unhidden once they were hidden by me, and it's quite annoying and disruptive to my workflow. I could use some help figuring out how to fix this.

The symptoms are:

I hide the app explicitly (either by typing cmd+H or option-clicking into another app's window, not sure if only one of them is causing it). This also makes the icon become dimmed in the Dock.
Then, sometimes, when I then click into the Dock's dimmed icon, the app would not react, i.e. it would not come forward, nor would it show its window(s), and the Dock icon remains dimmed.
If there are still some windows visible, clicking into them does not have any effect, either, even though the window might appear to be frontmost (i.e. the title bar is showing the colored buttons on the left).
The window would, however, track my mouse moves inside, just not react to clicks or drag operations (I can tell this in Safari windows where the content reacts to the mouse moving).

Basically, the app (or the Cocoa framework) doesn't know any more in which state it is: Hidden or Unhidden.

I can half-fix this by performing these steps:

Activate a different app, e.g. the Finder.
Right-click into the dimmed app's Dock icon, and choose Show All Windows
Click into any of the offered windows.

With that, the windows behave normally again, e.g. I can click into them, but the Dock icon remains dimmed (even though clicking the icon will bring the app forward again), and the app's Hide command (cmd+H) does not work any more, even though it's enabled in the menu.

Has anyone else seen this behavior and/or has an idea what's causing this?

Since I've been suffering from this for many years, and over several OSX versions, here's a few things I've tried and considered:

It does only happen with a certain set of apps. So far, most if not not (not entirely sure) are made by Apple. And they're all Cocoa (not older Carbon) apps. Most apps do never show this issue.
It doesn't seem to be caused by a 3rd party system extension, as I've disabled practically all of them to rule them out. This includes: Little Snitch, DragThing, iClip, Default Folder, TotalFinder, SizeUp, Timbuktu.
I just now even did a complete re-install of macOS 10.12.6, then using the Migration Assistant to clone my previous system. This did reset some stuff (e.g. got rid of old Brew, Fink and MacPorts installation), but the problem persists.
Oddly, I've also used the Migration Assistant to install 10.12 and 10.13 on my other Macs, and none of those show this issue.
It's not that particular Mac hardware, either - I used to have a MacPro 2008 until yesterday, but now it's a MP 2010 model, yet I see the problem on both (running the same system).
I suspect it's one of the many "secret" (i.e. unsupported) preferences I've set over the years in order to keep old behavior enabled that Apple has changed in newer systems. I had a look at many prefs using Prefs Editor, but could not identify anything related to this behavior.

One thing that may be of significance (though I also use this feature on other Macs where I don't see the issue): I am using 4 desktop spaces, and often switch between them using keyboard shortcuts. I wonder if the issue is a combination of switching to another space while hiding or unhiding the app, causing the app's "hidden" state to go into a permanent limbo state.

The only obvious thing where the problematic Mac differs from all unaffected others is that it has two monitors whereas the others only have one.

I'm getting this situation as well. The ways I've found to make them show again after switching to each app is either

Selecting Window > Zoom and then resizing it after it appears, filling the screen.
Selecting View > Enter full screen (or ^-command-F) then exiting full screen.

I haven't found a way to prevent it from happening. It doesn't happen to every app or happen every time I hide apps and close my laptop.

Perhaps related to the topic, try this hot fix.

On your Mac, open the App Store.
From the menu at the top of your computer screen, choose Store > View My Account. If prompted, authenticate your Apple ID.
On the Account Information page, scroll to Hidden Items. To the right of Hidden Purchases, click Manage.
Find the app that you want to unhide.
Click Unhide, then click Done.
After you click Done, you're taken back to the Purchased page. The unhidden app is again visible in your Purchased list.


Mac (OS X 10.9.2) no longer saving screen shots When I try to take a screen shot (Command + Control + Shift + 4) I hear the camera shutter sound but no image appears on my desktop.

I Googled the problem and tried to change the saving location using the terminal command line as such:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/

but this did not change anything.

Would anyone know what I can do to fix?

When I try to take a screen shot (Command + Control + Shift + 4)

That's the problem. The shortcut to put a screenshot on the desktop is just Command + Shift + 4 (or 3).  Don't press the control key; when you do, it copies to the clipboard instead.  That's why you're not getting a file on the desktop.

Just relaunch Finder and you'll be back to normal.  Easy peasy.


Apps take forever to start on OS X Mavericks Ever since I upgraded my main machine to Mavericks, every time I open a new app, two things happen:

the app takes a long time to open;
the whole system slows to a crawl until the app opens completely.

The interesting part is that this happens on an early 2011 MacBook Pro (with 4GB of RAM), while on an older machine (mid/late 2007 MBP with 2GB of RAM), also updated to Mavericks, everything is a breeze—it’s surreal! (Both machines were upgraded from Snow Leopard.)

And on top of that, Safari is completely broken—see my previous question.

What I’ve done so far:

repaired permissions;
cleared system and user cache;
reseted the SMC;
ran AppleJack;

What can I possibly do to make it work as it should?

When I see things like this I often suspect disk problems. (This is a HDD, correct?) The first symptoms of soft disk errors are often bad performance.

Open the Console and see if you see any disk errors. Also try booting into a Super Duper clone. Since a clone will have the same files, any problem would continue if it were a configuration problem. But if the problem goes away, it was likely a problem with the physical drive. As a bonus, a clone is exactly what you will need if you have a physical drive problem.

Buy a solid state drive.  Yeah, I know, expensive but EXCELLENT.  If you want an external usb 3 make sure the case has UASP. Very important.


dd cloned NTFS partition will not boot from flash drive I have a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.10 and a Windows 7 Boot Camp install.

I just bought a 64 GB flash drive that I would like to put a bootable copy of Windows on, to reestablish the hard drive as OS X only, and figured it would be easiest to just clone the BOOTCAMP partition that I already have.

I formatted the USB to GUID/NTFS and used dd to clone it:

dd if=/dev/rdisk0s3 of=/dev/rdisk2s2 bs=512 conv=noerror,sync

After 12 hours it finished, and does not work. Windows displays the partition as "RAW"

Anyone have any tips?

You cannot boot windows off a USB flash drive.  You need a special type of flash drive then windows ultimate which comes with a USB bootable creation tool and a specialized USBkey.  There are other methods with which to install USB bootable windows onto and I have tried them and they do not work.

You can try to copy the EFI partition. The EFI partition is required for macOS and Windows to start. That would be rdisk0s1 to rdisk2s1 in your case. You can mount both partition and copy boot files over.
For example:
diskutil mount disk0s1
diskutil mount disk2s1
cp -a /volumes/EFI/EFI/Microsoft /volumes/EFI\ 1/EFI/

Or:
dd if=/dev/rdisk0s1 of=/dev/rdisk2s1