How can I get iTunes not to consider "Various Artists" an artist in the artist view? When I type "monkees" into the "Search Library" box in iTunes, it offers me three things: (A) "The Monkees" as artists, and (B and C) the two songs I have by The Monkees. The search dropdown shows, right below the artist name listed on (A), that I have 439 songs by The Monkees. This is wrong: I just have the two. But those two songs both come from compilations, which have the following tags, among others:

Artist: The Monkees
Album Artist: Various Artists
Part of a compilation: True

The number 439 appears to be the total number of tracks with Album Artist = "Various Artists" that I have. And sure enough, when I select choose the Monkees artist hit from the search boxes, it shows me not just Monkees tracks, but every Various Artists track, split up by album, and with the two Monkees tracks being nowhere near each other. I'd much rather see just the two Monkees tracks.

What is the preferred way to handle this issue? I believe I have my music collection set up right (say, as described by this page and in a variety of other conversations I've found online), but the current behavior seems silly to me.

Here are some things I've tried:

Going to View -> View Options under the Artists view and toggling the Group Compliations box
Switching to the Songs view and playing with the settings under View -> Column Browser.
Erasing Various Artists from the Album Artist field and leaving it blank instead.

Item #3 seems to work, but it's clearly not standard and so I would expect adopting it as a solution would cause other stuff to break, either now or at some point down the road.

Is there a clean way to handle this?

I only really see two options here.

1) Get rid of the Album Artists field altogether, select all tracks and Get Info. Set the Album Artist field to blank, meaning song are grouped solely by their Artist and not Album Artists. The songs in the various artists albums will still be linked by the album name if you just want that album.

2) Create a smart playlist with the filter being Artist is (or contains) "The Monkees". This will, of course, filter all Monkees songs into the playlist regardless of the Album Artist.

Beyond this, there doesn't seem to be much room for configuring various artist albums better.

Go to i tunes ,then edit ,get info and enter your preference or correct info then save Easy :-)


Error when booting Mac with FileVault Encryption Ever since I encrypted my MacBook Pro I am seeing this error right after I type in my password at the initial screen.

Any ideas what this means, how serious it is or maybe even how to fix it?

Larger size

Apologies for the smudginess and reflection in the pic - it's displayed for a fraction of a second and it's the best one I've managed to take.

What is really is might be a bit of a guessing game, but the next step is clear.

Boot to your Recovery HD and see what disk utility makes of the volume itself.

If you lack a Recovery HD - then it's time to make a back up of any files you can reach (attach the drive to a sled / boot in target mode / install the OS to an external drive and copy things off using another OS.)

At that point, you can re-run the installer which may fix the issue for you and will certainly get you back to having an Recovery HD or expose a hardware problem if you can't even re-instal the OS on top of the data that is there.

It's just some image files that are missing, so I'd say not too serious.


What is raid-ac protocol on port 2012 Yesterday I made OS X Server, on Mac Mini, for Xcode Continuous Integration.
Today, by scanning my local network, I see that this Mac Mini is having port 2012 open with this raid-ac.

I googled but can not find any info regarding this raid-ac.
I suppose that this raid-ac is used for this Xcode Continuous Integration feature.

Can somebody provide more info about it ?

As far I know RAID, it's a way to store data across multiple disks (HDD) acting like one.

There are multiple standard levels of them as explained on this Wiki (might be geeky as you say).

Based on that knowledge I would say the services works with redundancy in order to run smoothly. As you say yourself: Continuous Integration (as in, without interruption)

Please check source below:

  UDP port 2012 uses the Datagram Protocol [red. that's what UDP means], a communications protocol
  for the Internet network layer, transport layer, and session layer.
  This protocol when used over PORT 2012 makes possible the transmission
  of a datagram message from one computer to an application running in
  another computer. Like TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), UDP is
  used with IP (the Internet Protocol) but unlike TCP on Port 2012, UDP
  Port 2012 is connectionless and does not guarantee reliable
  communication; it’s up to the application that received the message on
  Port 2012 to process any errors and verify correct delivery.
  source


Creating a test environment for Mac software My company develops commercial Mac software. Our flagship product runs on OS X 10.6.8+. We want to improve our software quality with better and more comprehensive testing.

What hardware and OS's should we supply our tester with? My thought so far is either a Mac Mini or an iMac with an SSD, lots of RAM, and either Parallels or VMWare so that he can run OS X 10.6.8, OS X 10.7, OS X 10.8, OS X 10.9, and OS X 10.10 in virtual machines.

Is this feasible? Recommended? I'd love to hear your feedback.

I use VMWare Fusion Professional for software testing. Virtual machines make regression testing and replay of problems wonderfully easy.

I run a copy of VMWare Fusion on my older Mac Pro and it performs well. The professional edition allows for linked virtual machines – linked machines can share common content to save on disk space. Machines can quickly require ~20GB if no content is shared.

Snow Leopard Server

Be aware that Mac OS X 10.6 Server is required for a virtual machine. The standard client edition is not permitted to run within a virtual environment.

OS X 10.7 and later can all be legally run within a virtual environment, so long as the underlying hardware is an Apple computer.

Maximise Resources

You are right to opt for as many resources as possible for your Mac. Running virtual machines can push your Mac. Try not to require needing multiple virtual machines running at once.

Graphical Limits

Graphical applications or those needing OpenGL support are not yet well supported by either VMWare or Parallels. OS X copes but falls back to software rendering; this may not best match your customers' environment.

It is possible to run mutliple Virtual Machines on a Mac - i7 Macs with geq 16GB of RAM should be okey. If your Application does not need to much resources.

I think there are better Solutions - for Example a Beta Version ... I don't know what Application you would like to test, and how large the usernumber is.

Also interesting is: you can run on a VMware a Macintosh System - so if there is a Virtalization Server or sth like that already in your Company - try to start there a virtual instance ;)

Edit_2:
You can run on Non Apple Hardware a virtual MacOS but if you are in the US you will violate the EULA - here is the Point. For Example in Germany there is no DMCA clause and also the EULA not valid in this form.

Sources: Ask-Different - Chip.de - lowendmac  -
Chip.de


Installing Mavericks on a new Mac Mini (end 2014) shipped with Yosemite pre-installed? Excuse me for my english, I'm french and I try to find a solution for my new Mac Mini buy in December. My new Mac Mini it's configured with Yosemite 10.10.0. and it's a problem for me because I use some professional music software like Cubase Elements 7 or Studio One 2, it's not compatible for the moment with Yosmeite. I want to downgrade and I read your post and I'm in panic because I view that not possible to downgrade my new Mac Mini in OSX Mavericks. I have created a external bootable usb key with a Mavericks in my other Mac. When i restart on my usb key bootable, appear this symbol

It's the kernel panic when I try to boot on the usb key. I think it's mean it's not possible to downgrade on Mavericks with this New Mac Mini (end 2014) ?

Actually I'm in OSX 10.10.1, it's possible that the problem come because I'm in this version ?

Thanks for your help and your answers...

The general rule is, you cannot instal an OS on a Mac that is older than the Mac itself.
See Don't install a version of Mac OS X earlier than what came with your Mac

That said, Cubase 7 should run OK on Yosemite, though you will need the Steinberg Installer patch. I don't know Studio One 2 so I can't say on that.
Google did find this from Presonus about it.

Edit: I also found this, officially qualifying Studio One 2.6.4 as Yosemite-compatible

When installing OS X, it automatically check if you qualify for the update with the apple servers (OS X 10.8 and above i think). That is why you can't downgrade OS X by installing older software. I do not know if there's a workaround for it, but I also can't imagine downgrading to OS X 10.9 Maverick from OS X 10.10 Yosemite


How to remove security notifications about unapproved software after upgrading to macos High Sierra? Upgrading to High Sierra is really painful. I cannot do brew upgrade, I am getting thousands of security notifications - see the attached file.  There are some recipes in Internet but they are not working, maybe the latest upgrade does not allow them.  I can approve files one by one but there are hundreds of them.  Maybe at least I can approve all files in a directory? Or run a script approving all files?

It appears you have an anti-virus application called Bit9. If it is causing more difficulty than help, you can always deactivate or uninstall it. If this is a institutionally managed machine, contact your system admin or help desk.

If you feel you need to have an anti-virus application, be sure to confirm that it will run correctly with macOS High Sierra. You may need to disable the anti-virus' blocking of scripts if you are intentionally running scripts for what you are doing.

This does not look like any Apple software dialog box. The icon is unfamiliar, .exe is not an application extension on OS X and there's no reason why Apple should want (nor you should be required to provide) any justification for running a piece of software, nor your email address when you approve it.

It looks like that might be Eclipse (or some other IDE) running behind your dialog? If so is it possible this is coming from a plugin for that application?


Is there a way to remove App from iTunes Connect? Accidentally I used wrong naming convention for my Bundle ID in my App, and I want to delete that App from iTunes Connect, is it somehow possible? I already removed from developer.apple.com > Identifier > App IDs that certain Bundle ID. What else I can do?

App is still in Prepare for Submission state.

There is no way to do it. To delete an app, this must be approved first.

  Apps that have not been approved yet can't be deleted.

Transferring and Deleting Apps

Actually there is a way to hide it on App Store.

login to your developer console
choose your app
availability and pricing
set the availability to "remove from sale"

It does hide your app on iTunes for all new users. Remember, the old users who downloaded that version of app still have access to it.

Thanks,


Homebrew permissions & multiple users needing to brew update I'm using Homebrew to manage package installs on Lion (Lion Server actually but this shouldn't matter).

Homebrew was installed under one user. Now a different user would like to add a package and Homebrew isn't happy:

$ brew update
fatal: Unable to create '/usr/local/.git/index.lock': Permission denied
Error: Failure while executing: git checkout -q master

Is this considered bad? I thought one of the advantages of using /usr/local/ for your installs was that you don't need sudo. But clearly we do.

All users who would need to modify Homebrew are members of admin group. So, I could chmod -R g+w /usr/local/ but afraid this will bork something or create security issues?!?

Advice?

$ ls -al /usr/local/.git/
total 432
drwxr-xr-x  14 ladmin  admin     476 Feb 24 11:48 .
drwxrwxr-x  14 root    admin     476 Feb  9 15:27 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 ladmin  admin      94 Feb 24 11:48 FETCH_HEAD
-rw-r--r--   1 ladmin  admin      23 Feb 24 11:48 HEAD
-rw-r--r--   1 ladmin  admin      41 Feb  9 15:28 ORIG_HEAD
drwxr-xr-x   2 ladmin  admin      68 Feb  9 15:27 branches
-rw-r--r--   1 ladmin  admin     218 Feb  9 15:27 config
-rw-r--r--   1 ladmin  admin      73 Feb  9 15:27 description
drwxr-xr-x  12 ladmin  admin     408 Feb  9 15:27 hooks
-rw-r--r--   1 ladmin  admin  200272 Feb 24 11:48 index
drwxr-xr-x   3 ladmin  admin     102 Feb  9 15:27 info
drwxr-xr-x   4 ladmin  admin     136 Feb  9 15:27 logs
drwxr-xr-x   4 ladmin  admin     136 Feb  9 15:27 objects
drwxr-xr-x   5 ladmin  admin     170 Feb  9 15:27 refs

Is this considered bad? I thought one of the advantages of using /usr/local/ for your installs was that you don't need sudo. But clearly we do.

Homebrew, by default, sets itself up for single-user access to /usr/local. So you need to open up the permissions on the directory tree for it to be administered by more than one person.

People don't need to run sudo here to administer homebrew. You just need to change some permissions. Since you already have:

  All users who would need to modify Homebrew are members of admin group.

You need to do two more things:

Make sure everything under /usr/local belongs to the group admin; and
Make sure anyone from the group admin can write to anything under /usr/local.

In this case the changes to make are:

chgrp -R admin /usr/local
chmod -R g+w /usr/local
chgrp -R admin /Library/Caches/Homebrew
chmod -R g+w /Library/Caches/Homebrew

And any user from the admin group should be able to manage the homebrew installation on the machine.  If you need to add a user to the admin group this can be accomplished like this:

 dseditgroup -o edit -a <username> -t user admin

(that user will need to login again to have the privileges granted).

For sanity on the machine, you may want to consider creating your own fork of Homebrew and have your local homebrew git repository point to the local fork. That lets you customize Homebrew for your environment and control the versions of packages that people are able to install with the brew command. With multiple people doing installs you could run in to version issues or dependency issues.

I would vote for setting the group permission - and to me it seems that's just what it's there for and should not create a security problem.

Don't use sudo.

tl;dr Sudo is dangerous, and you installed TextMate.app without sudo anyway.
Homebrew is designed to work without using sudo. You can decide to use it but we strongly recommend not to do so. If you have used sudo and run into a bug then it is likely to be the cause. Please don’t file a bug report unless you can reproduce it after reinstalling Homebrew from scratch without using sudo.


Installing Putty on OSX? I'm working on some Raspberry Pi's and I need serial communications to the units to determine IP address.

I've installed Putty via HomeBrew and with some assistance from this link.
 I also installed MacPorts via this link.

When I run $ putty, I get the error message:  (putty:36407): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

Anybody know what's going on?  Is there a better way to communicate with a remote device via USB - FTDI Serial Adapter and putty?

Note: I'm using MacOS Sierra (10.12.5)

So I gave up on Putty and MacPorts.. I've now removed both programs due to breakage around gtk dependencies.

For normal ssh communications, The built in terminal app and screen command line interface programs do everything putty is needed to do on windows or other os.

For a while my USB to FTDI serial communications used a program called Cornflake.  Choose ettings = device with USB in the title, baud: 115200, packet: none-8-1 and flow: none)

  Hint: You want to have the USB/FTDI device plugged in with Cornflake running BEFORE you power up the Raspberry Pi.

In the end Cornflake worked fine, kinda, sorta initially but has issues with some things you may want to do.

It didn't hide my login password which is not normally a problem, but I'm teaching others realtime with screen broadcast so those credentials leaked.
Any command line tool that does fancy stuff (e.g. nano) fails in
Cornflake.

Instead I've now migrated to using the native command line terminal and the screen command, per this reference.

Open Terminal.

$   ls /dev/tty.*          # to see all available ports.

You can now use the screen command to to establish a simple serial connection.

$    screen <port_name> <baud_rate>          # to create a connection.

In my particular case:

$    screen /dev/tty.usbserial-AE00BS5L 115200

This works quite well for all my needs.

Putty can be installed on MAC OSX in three easy steps as shown below:

Open Terminal
Install homebrew with the following command:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null
Run the following command to install putty:

brew install putty


iPhone 6 charging best practices Should I charge every night? (Assuming that I consume more than 50% during the day, but sometimes not much more.)
Should I turn off the device during the charge? (Assuming that I don’t need the device as an alarm clock.)

Any other tips are also welcome.

Yes, the ideal time to charge your phone is around 50% depletion. Ars Technica explains why:

  Full discharges put a lot of strain on the battery, and it's much better practice to do shallow discharges to no lower than 20 percent. In a way, this is like people running for exercise— running a few miles a day is fine, but running a marathon every day is generally not sustainable.

Turning off the device may assist slightly in lowering heat, which in turn may extend the life of the battery by a minuscule amount, but it is not really enough to worry about.

It's worth looking at what Tesla recommends for its (Li-Ion) batteries in the Model S. Range and overall battery life are a lot more important in a car than a phone.

The strong recommendation is (1) keep the state of charge between 20% and 80%; (2) NEVER run the batteries down to 0%; (3) only charge to 100% occasionally, when you want (in a Tesla) maximum range for a long journey; and (4) don't charge when the batteries are extremely cold (0C or less) - the Tesla will actually divert current to warming its batteries before beginning a full charge.

The Tesla supercharger is very careful about how it charges. It will charge slowly at first if the SoC is low, then increase to full charge rate and drop off again when the SoC reaches around 80%. So it might take 2 hours to get to 80%, and ANOTHER 2 hours for the remains 20%. I hope the Apple charging system is also smart.

Which leads to the question of whether an Apple charger is better than a cheaper but faster OEM charger. I believe that charging is managed by the iPhone or iPad, not by the charger, so that would indicate that OEM chargers are OK. However, the Apple charger is pretty smart about how it rectifies mains AC to DC current and in its design for safety, and these factors are worth extra cost over ultra-cheap alternatives.


Where does MacOS store remembered Wi-Fi Names? My mac knows about 50-100 different Wi-Fi network names. I'd like to know where they are remembered, I can't find it. I've searched.

I understand that there is a GUI for editing this information, but it is horrible.  I want to know the file where the data are stored. The Apple user interface is horrible because you can't search or sort. I have more than 100 names.

Ah. I finally found it. The file is /Library//Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and it's under the KnownNetworks key.

or alternatively, the best way to do it is to use the Keychain Access app


Is 0.4 GHz of extra processor speed worth €300? (about $430) I'm planning on buying a new macbook pro 13inch and I've got the choice between a 2.3ghz intel core i5 or an 2.7ghz intel core i7 for an extra €300 (= $430).

Can someone explain me what the difference is between i5 and i7? Would it be worth it to updgrade (eg will the performance be better)?

I would mainly use the laptop for matlab simulations (and other simple 3D simulations) and data processing. Some of these calculation are highly recursive and take a long time (fractal computation etc) on my current machine.

There is no simple answer. IMHO, the question is not about 0.4 GHz. (BTW, it is 17% above 2.3).

The real questions are:

do you have external USB or any other backup solution?

no - consider buying an external HDD first!
yes, I have - next question :)

have you already max. memory in your config?

no - consider investing into more memory first
yes, already max. memory - go to the next question

is there a config with better graphics performance?

yes - consider it first
no - next question

are you a heavy emulated Windows user (Parallels, VMware, VirtualBox etc)?

yes, go for the 2.7
no - next

do you need every millisecond of power (because of, for example, gaming, video editing, etc.)?

yes - buy the high-end one
no - next question

are you a bit paranoid (meaning, planning to use the FileVault encrypting for your $HOME folder)?

yes - buy the high-end one
no - next

how often are you upgrading your Mac?

every 18 months (one generation) - don't buy the high-end one, because usually they are a bit overpriced
every 2 years or more? - buy the high-end

misc. ;)

do you already own an iPad?

no?! - consider saving another 300 euros on notebook and buy an iPad - trust me, it is much better for browsing in the bed... ;)

is your girlfriend a technical geek?

yes - the high-end is a MUST! :)
no, bring her to somewhere for 300 EUR :)

misc 2 :)

Have iPad, no girlfriend - and have you decided to save 300 euros based on this answer? Consider sending me 50% ;) :)

To keep it for "human beings":

i7 is better for video editing.

If you do not plan to make it everyday the i5 will make you happy.


DVD to iPod touch (iTunes)? I have a big pile of DVDs and DivX encoded files with animation shorts that I sometimes would like to watch on my iPod touch 4G while I am on the go. What would be a quick and easy way to transfer the movies to iTunes and then to my iPod touch? Sometimes the DVD has a menu that list all the shorts, I would like to have each short as a separate files (or "item" in iTunes).

Is there also a way to (automagically) optimize the movies for viewing on the iPod (i.e. adjust quality and resolution for the small iPod touch screen and for better battery life).
This would be ideal: iTunes is my main repository for all my movies in the best possible quality so they'd also work on the large screen. Once they are copied over to an iPod they get reencoded with lesser bitrate and resolution.

The best, or, most commonly used method for transcoding DVDs and DivX files to an iPod would be Handbrake.  Handbrake has presets for almost all current iDevices.  I'd start by reading the Handbrake Mac GUI Guide and selecting iPod Touch from the destination presets (image on Stage 2 from the guide) and adjusting select a target bit rate of 700ish for a device with that small of a screen.

If you're interested in scripting out the process to save time Handbrake has a great CLI and guide that would streamline the process.

Another popular solution would be MacTheRipper.

DVD discs are formatted in VOB file and this is not a supported file type for iPod. The best way to watch DVD on iPod is to change the video format to mp4, m4v or mov which are compatible with all apple devices.


How to set the language of iCloud calendar reminder emails? Ever since iCloud Calendar became publicly available I have used it to arrange my schedule. I meet with people from other countries on a regular basis and I'd like the Calendar reminder emails I send to people when setting up a meeting to be in English. Unfortunately, that's not the case. iCloud always sends my meeting invites in my native language (the country my AppleID is assigned to).

It seems that iCloud is ignoring my OS and iCloud web interface language choice, as they're both set to English.

Is there a way to change the default language of Calendar reminders somewhere?

First visit Apple ID. Then click Mange your Apple ID, middle on the right of the page:

Login and then click Language and Contact Preferences.

Here you can select English US or English UK.

I had the same problem, and i finally solved it,

Go to appleid.apple.com and set the preferred language for your account.


Apple Calendar Time Zone This has been an issue on and off over the years, but I have never got a fully working solution.

The problems occur mainly with flights from one time zone to another.

I have a flight for which I enter the start and end times, both local to the airport. However, the destination is in a different time zone.

On my iPhone. I have Time Zone Overide turned off, and while in the destination city, I see 2 times for an event’s details: the local time and the time in the origin.

However, I find that:

The time in the Event List shows only the origin time, not the local time.
The reminder alerts at the origin time and not the local time.

This applies to other events which were set before the trip.

The question is What do I need to do to see event times and alerts in the local time?

To complete the story, I add the event on my iMac and then rely on my iPhone to keep me informed. Latest version of all software.

Update

I will be flying overseas in a few months, so I can put my possible solution to the test.

I have set the time zone of the flights to floating, which seemed to work when flying interstate earlier.

To be safe, I have also included the local times in the notes section so I can compare; I will also have the original tickets any way. A few years ago I was caught out by the time zone difference, but, fortunately I was early rather than late.

Update 2

I have just come back from an overseas holiday, which involved two other time zones and daylight saving.

I can safely say that setting all times to floating has ensured that all times are local, and everything works as expected.

I have taken to using floating times for all of my travel times, as well as for all of my automated events. What I need to do now is work our how to make it the default for other events.

I've just given up creating timezoned start and finish times in MacOS Sierra.  But in iOS 10 and iOS 11, you can assign a different timezone to start and finish.  It turns up correct in my linked iCloud calendar & my OSX calendar the right way, showing the correct duration and all.
Time to fix MacOS

This issue has been worked on by the microsoft office team and they launched a Dual time zone feature in the new verson (16.11) of outlook.  (FYI you need a Office 365 subscription in order to view it.) https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook-Blog/Outlook-for-Mac-adds-new-time-zone-features-in-Insider-Fast/ba-p/158278


What stopwatch timer app uses keyboard shortcuts on macOS? It’s not clear which of the timers from this other thread support hotkey / Keyboard only shortcut operation.

What stopwatch timer app to use on macOS?

Can anyone recommend a stopwatch timer for Mac which can be started or stopped using hotkey?

A low-tech solution is to open a terminal window, run time cat, and then stop by pressing control-c:

$ time cat
^C
4.487
$

Two ways to show the number of seconds since the last run:

f=${TMPDIR}stopwatch;date +%s>>$f;tail -n2 $f|awk '{l=$0;getline;print $0-l}'
now=$(date +%s);echo $((now-prev));prev=$now

You can use the 0.99$ M Stopwatch app from the App Store. It will allow you to export the logs to a text file too.


Why OS X never ejects drives before shutdown or suspend mode? I have this problem since Lion if I am not mistaken. If a leave an USB or even my FireWire (backup) HDD connected OS X does not eject the drives before shutting down or entering suspend mode.
Why?
I am using now macOS Sierra and the problem persist.
It bothered me for a while till I started unmounting the drives after using them.
But I need to keep my FireWire HDD connected to use Time Machine's backup.
How can I solve that since even with fresh installs of Mac OS X it happens?

I will share a why it is good to have it as is and a way around it if you are determined.

  When you put the Mac to sleep, it will try and also put the external
  drive to sleep, thus parking its heads and turning off the drives. It
  won't eject it, however, so you can use it as soon as you wake your
  Mac again without having to mount it.

  The benefit is that you don't have to worry about mounting it, as in
  most cases this would involve turning the drive off and on again,
  reconnecting the plug, or using diskutil from a Terminal—quite time
  consuming. Since I use my drive for Time Machine, I don't want to have
  to think about connecting it every time I wake my Mac.

  The only downside I see is that you could accidentally plug the drive
  out. In that case, the Mac will wake up, and show you the error about
  a drive being disconnected without properly ejecting it. Since all
  data is written to the drive before going to sleep, this shouldn't
  cause any data loss though.

  All in all, it's much more comfortable to just keep the drive mounted.

If you want to unmount the drives before sleep:

You can use the automator > files/folders > eject disk > tell it when
to eject.
Use terminal to unmount all drives before sleep. < not comfortable giving you the code as it can vary.


How do I silence Siri on my HomePod mini? By default, Siri on HomePod mini comes enabled and very loud, and the minimum volume (as far as I can tell) is irritatingly loud. In fact, the whole talkback from Siri (confirming commands, etc.) is irritating and unnecessary. But I can't find how to simply shut off talkback (as I can with Siri on my iPhone).
How do I silence Siri's talkback on my HomePod mini?

Try these:
In the Home app on your iOS or iPadOS device, touch and hold a HomePod.
Scroll down, tap the Settings button, then do any of the following:

Deny access to Personal Requests: Tap Personal Requests, then turn off each HomePod you don't want to use Personal Requests on.
Disable “Hey Siri” requests: Turn off Listen for “Hey Siri.”
Disable summoning Siri using HomePod touch controls: Turn off Touch
and Hold for Siri.
Disable indicator light when Siri is listening: Turn off Light When
Using Siri.
Hear a chime when Siri is listening: Turn on Sound When Using Siri.
Turn off VoiceOver: Tap Accessibility to access settings for
VoiceOver and for Touch Accommodations. See Use HomePod touch
controls.

Source: https://support.apple.com/guide/homepod/change-settings-apde6dc8093d/homepod


Lyrics for any iOS music? There are loads of iOS apps for song lyrics, but it seems that they all make me play music in THAT app if I want to see the lyrics.

But almost any iOS music app lets me see the artist and song title in Control Center/Lock Screen.  So why can't there be an app that just looks at that info and automatically searches the web for the lyrics using the given artist and title? There are of course several open lyrics search engines on the web usable via API.

Is there an app that does this?
If not, is it technically possible in iOS for an app to read the currently playing artist and title?

Any app that plays songs from the device library can read song title, artist, album and a lot more, this is included in the Apple Framework.
Lyrics can be read as well, so long as they are included in the meta data of the song file. Most songs don't include this information, so the lyrics meta data is empty.
If you subscribe to Apple Music, it will load lyrics for songs you have purchased.  An app called Get Lyrical can also look up and install lyrics.  Finally, you can type or paste them yourself in the Get Info window.
The only other way to get the lyrics is to load a separate file such as an .lrc  This is why apps that show lyrics require you to play the song in them, because they have written some code to display .lrc file contents, or the meta data if available. .lrc files can also contain time data so can sync the playback to the lyrics, meta data does not normally do this.


File don't show with "ls -a" but was detected by Malwarebytes On the terminal, I search for the file com.pplauncher.plist on the directory
/Library/LaunchDaemons/

through the command ls -a, but such a file wasn't found. Later, I installed Malwarebytes and ran it. Then, it detected the file com.pplauncher.plist as a malware exactly in the same directory I was looking at.
My question is: why this has happened? I thought every file on my computer could be shown on the terminal.
PS: I was trying to delete this file because I found mshelper running on my iMac, which turns out to be a malware used to mine cryptocurrency.

I would do the directory listing as root or with a sudo.  It is possible that the malware changed permissions on the plist file.


Why did the 10.8.3 update disappear from the App Store after I restarted my new Mac? I’ve just bought a new Mac with 10.8.2 pre-installed. When I started it up for the first time, once I’d gone through the initial set-up, the App Store launched, and showed me an iPhoto update, and some system updates including Mac OS X 10.8.3.

I quit the App Store, set up another account on the Mac to be my admin account, and edited my main account so that it wasn’t an admin any more. I restarted the Mac, logged in with my main (i.e. non-admin) account, and opened up the App Store again to install the updates.

The iPhoto update showed up, but the systems updates didn’t.

I installed the iPhoto update successfully. I then changed my main account back to being an admin account, thinking that maybe somehow that affected updates. I restarted the Mac, logged in using my main account (now an admin account again), and re-launched the App Store. Still no 10.8.3 or system updates listed.

Any idea what’s going on? On my old Mac, running 10.7, my main account was non-admin, and I didn’t have any problems installing OS X updates.

I had exactly the same issue: Brand new out of the box MacBook Pro 13" 10.8.2 preinstalled. Went through exactly the same process outlined by the OP.

Resolved by:

Closing the App Store
Restarting App Store
I then went to Store > Check For Unfinished Downloads

The 10.8.3 update then reappeared and I was able to redownload and install.

Hope this helps

I just unboxed my new iMac 27" i7. Clean setup with no migration, I did sign into iCloud. I ran updates first thing when getting to the desktop. Updates for 10.8.3, iPhoto, Airport Utility, Camera Raw and one other I can't recall. I hit restart and an error appeared stating the packages may have corrupted and to try the install again after restart.
I did so and now it says No Updates Available.

What a drag


Searching in iTunes 11 no longer filters column browser options? In iTunes 10.x, if you searched for items (top right) it would filter the column browser to only show values that matched your search query. Now when I search, it filters the list of items, but not the column browsers. Is this an option somewhere?

To get the desired effect you can click on the "magnifying glass" icon and deselect "Search Entire Library". This prevents the Miniplayer version of the search and filters both your Column Browser and the list of songs (or artists/albums/genre).

big problem with the search on top right : it doesn't search in all the tags! I use the grouping one to write the labels, if I search a label, it just doesn't show up.

edit: my bad, if I display the grouping column, it works. but not sure it was like that in itunes 10.


My iPhone keeps switching on and off charge whilst charging, how do I fix it? When I charge my iPhone 4 on my laptop, it starts charging but then it keeps going on and off charging even though it's not touched.
It charges fine with a plug charger or with any computers I use at college.

What things prevent a Mac from charging a connected iPhone so that charging can be resumed?

Running this in terminal worked for me: (it will ask for your user's password)

sudo killall -STOP -c usbd

This pauses the troublesome process instead of killing it altogether like other answers suggest. The difference is that macOS won't try to reopen it automatically and cause the issue again.

Running sudo killall -CONT usbd will resume the process, should anything require it.

Tested on: iPhone 7 (iOS 11) + MacBook Pro Late 2013 (10.13.6)

Besides software issues, there's a good chance that the cable is at least partially damaged so it might work for dumb power chargers but not with a MacBook that also relies on the USB data pins.

Also this might happen when either device needs an update. I've been asked "Install update to connect to device?" before and if I don't accept, this issue happens.

This happened to me with iPhone 5c. The way I charged was under a stack of books (6 or so). We went to the Apple Store to see if we could get it fixed but they said that getting it fixed would cost more than the actual phone. So I ended up just getting a whole new phone. But if you don't want to do that then like I said you could charge it under a stack of book with one on the bottom


Does the presence of Diagnostic Data mean someone unauthorized is checking my phone? What does Settings > Privacy > Diagnostic & Usage Data mean?

I think there is a chance that I am being watched.

Nobody is watching your phone (at least from this specific point).
The setting you are talking about is called Diagnostics & Usage. It looks like this:

It explicitly says what it does:

Help Apple improve its products and services by automatically sending daily diagnostic and usage data. Diagnostic data may include location information.

If you feel like you do not want to share your iPhone application usage data then just check Don't Send.
Note that diagnostic data will be saved, but not sent to Apple, on your device in any case even if you choose Don't Send.
If you proceed into Diagnostics & Usage Data then you can see what application and when saved its data on your phone. What looks something like this:

In case you want to find more information about this topic, consider visiting this official Apple page.

this is a useful feature. if you don’t want a privacy invasion (not actually an invasion) then turn sending off. it shows you all failures and most events that happen behind the scenes.


Is it safe to run a Mac Mini (i5) on its side? I recently got a Mac Mini with the i5 chip. Is it OK to set it on its side and run it that way? I wanted to shrink the footprint.

Sure.  Just make sure it is in a secure position so it doesn't fall over.

Apple actually has a support page on this:  http://support.apple.com/kb/TA22804


Show cursor in screen shot Is it possible to take a screen shot, using hotkeys, where the cursor will not disappear? I am making a short tutorial and it would save me time to have the cursor present, as opposed to post-processing the images.

For example, if there is a button I could press in addition to CommandControlShift4 to copy a screen portion to the clipboard, including the cursor, that would be great.

Use the Grab Application.  It allows you to superimpose the cursor on screen captures.  Just go into Grab preferences and select the cursor.  When you click on the screen to take the screenshot, Grab will "place" the cursor where you click. This works for Window capture. Choosing a pointer from the preference window enables this to work when capturing a window shot.

You need to use Grab. After starting Grab, go to preferences and chose a pointer. Now when you capture a window, the cursor will be shown. Choosing a pointer from the preferences window enables that pointer to be visible in a window capture.


If I hold a letter, my keyboard stops working for that app I can reliably reproduce this in several programs. If I hold a letter such as a to type aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, it doesn't repeat, it just types it once. But then when I try to input text in the app after that it doesn't work. Keyboard shortcuts still work in the app, but input no longer works. In Chrome, input in the page fails but I can input in the address bar ok.

What on earth could cause this and how do I fix it?

This is on a MacBook Pro 15 inch Mid 2015, OSX 10.12.2 (Sierra).

Here's a screencast of it happening:

Note how I type h a few times individually, then hit space and hold the h key. From that point on the keyboard completely fails to input any characters, though (as demonstrated) I can use the keyboard to copy/paste just fine. In Chrome, the keyboard is only broken in that tab (even through a refresh--the only way to get the keyboard back is to open a new tab). In text editors like PHPStorm, it's broken in all tabs and the entire app must be restarted to unbreak the keyboard.

I cannot reproduce the issue on my end but it sounds like you may have an issue with an Accessibility feature, seeing as how it's happening in multiple applications. Have you tried toggling 'System
Preferences > Accessibility > Keyboard > Sticky Keys' (or Slow Keys) on and off and trying to reproduce the issue?

Second option might just be that your keyboard settings were somehow changed from the preset delays that you're used to. You could check 'System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard' and check the delay sliders. Setting the first one to 'Fast' and the second one to 'Short' should actually allow you to press and hold a non-alpha-numeric key for multiple entries (such as the punctuation keys or keys like =, +, -, _, etc.)

Note: The Mac keyboard does not allow you to press and hold letters because certain letters such as 'a' and 'e' trigger an accent menu to create characters such as 'à' or 'ē'.

If I recall correctly, the issue here ended up being something related to an OS update gone wrong resulting in some deep-level corruptions. Sorry I can't remember what the specific fix was, but I do remember that being the cause.


El Capitan's Disk Utility won't format new 3 TB drives higher than 800 GB My iMac Mid.2010 running OS X EL Capitan v10.11.6 will not format any of my brand new 2 x 3 TB SATA drives and although I tried any other format like exFat, etc, it keeps making them no higher than 800 gigs.  I do connect each drive to the iMac with a "kdLinks HDD docking station" and a SATA-to-USB2 interface cable. The purpose is to use these 2 drives for Time Machine backups. What am I doing wrong?

Update:

Also:

2017-01-14 12:59:38.663 defaults[9465:6786462]
The domain/default pair of (/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist, MaxSize) does not exist

Also from mount:

/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
/dev/disk1s2 on /Volumes/OLDisk (hfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk2s2 on /Volumes/SATADisk2 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled)

Your problem is probably related to the 2.2 TB (or 2 TiB) limit. Your disks either have an MBR (instead of a PMBR) or it's a limitation of the firmware of the kdLinks HDD disk station.

Check the disks after getting their disk identifiers with disktuil list with sudo gpt -r show diskX with diskX the disk identifiers of the external disks (e.g. disk1 and disk2).

If you get an output like this:

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     .....

destroy the MBRs and add a proper GUID partition table.

To destroy the MBR and restore a proper GUID pt use:

diskutil umountDisk diskX
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/diskX bs=512 count=1

Destroy the GUID partition table and create a new one:

diskutil umountDisk diskX
sudo gpt destroy diskX
sudo gpt create -f diskX

with diskX: once more the disk identifiers of your external disks.

Be sure to use the proper diskX or you may accidentally delete valid disks!

After removing the MBR you often/sometimes have to completely eject the drive (or reboot your Mac) for the changes to take effect.

Update:

With your partition data posted one can definitely say it's a 2 TiB problem:

The default size of the disk is 5,860,533,168 blocks. Your gpt output shows a size of 1,565,565,872 blocks. The difference is exactly 4,294,967,296 blocks which are 232 blocks or 2 TiB.

Fire up terminal and do:

sudo defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist MaxSize

if it outputs a integer, like 1024000

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist MaxSize

diskutil list to see that this drive is visible, then create a
new hfs partition (put proper device where /dev/diskNumber is):
diskutil partitionDisk /dev/diskNumber 1 GPT HFS+ volumeName 100%

Parameters explained: 1 is the number of partitions, GPT is the table scheme, HFS+ is the filesystem and 100% is the Volume size. To format 1 HFS+ Volume on the entire drive you do:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/diskX 1 GPT HFS+ volumeName 100%

To get 2 partitions, each having 50% of your drive:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk5 2 GPT HFS+ firstVolume 50% secondVolume HFS+ 50%

If you want just the GPT table without HFS formatting:
change HFS+ to %noformat%
You can try APFS, Apple's new HFS replacement, its still in-dev though and I don't know if ElCaptain supports it, and I definitely don't recommend it for a TM backup, still you can try if it creates the volume

diskutil apfs create /dev/diskNumber

and you will get a warning message that's not very encouraging for backup but see if it creates the partition if HFS+ fails- you can reformat them.

Let me know what kind of errors you get, and what defaults read tells about MaxSize (if any). Please paste any diskutil output somewhere if you have issues with partitioning.

Update: Why the down votes people :(


Will a factory unlocked French iPhone 4S work on Verizon in the US? I have a factory unlocked iPhone 4S that I bought in France. I am coming to visit in California. Will it work on the Verizon network?

Probably not. Verizon (like Sprint) uses CDMA, not GSM. Your phone will probably work on AT&T, T-Mobile, or one of the smaller regional GSM carriers around here. All of the above have prepaid SIM plans available with and without data so you can compare options before you arrive.

No.  Verizon only allows verizon provisioned/ purchased phones on their network.


Multi threaded CPU intensive task throttles CPU way before temperatures limits I have written a very CPU intensive threaded task that works as expected on my 2012 MacBook Pro quad core. I turn it loose with 20 threads and the temperatures get up to about 100 °C as measured with Intel Power Gadget with minimal throttling.

Take the same program and data files home to my 2016 13" MacBook Pro with a dual core machine and start it up, I would expect that it would also keep up the 3.3-3.4 GHz until the temperature gets near the 100 °C mark. Top command shows the task at 350% (2 cores each dual threaded), but the CPU frequency gets cut to 1.6-1-8 GHz with the temperature only at 60 °C or so with the fans dead quiet.  If I start 4 separate single threaded CPU tasks, the machine behaves as expected with it keeping up the 3.3-3.4 GHz until it hits the 100 °C and the fans get cranking.  The question is why is my CPU being throttled?

Both machines are up to date and running the same versions of gcc. If I even take the binary from the working machine and put it on the 2016 Mac, it has the same problem.

If I run 3 or 4 CPU single threads so the machine is going at full speed, then start the threaded program, it slows the frequency down also.

Both machines have 16 GB of RAM.

Edit

After playing around with code, I suspect that it is getting throttled when a task creates too many threads. In this program, I take each record I read and create a thread for it. I only let 20 or so threads go at a time so at no time is there more than 21 threads, but there are 14,400,000 records to be processed so over the 30 minutes or so each of those records will be processed by a separate thread.

I created a trivial pthread program that sucked CPU time and set 10 of them running. The problem laptop ran that and warmed up to 95C without issues.

I guess I will rewrite my code to reuse the same thread instead of destroying them and starting them up again.

Update 5/13/17

After several hours of work, it now only creates n threads and just reuses them, that didn't help.  Other than CPU temperature, what will cause this machine to throttle down?

This may be a longshot, but perhaps the difference in single-core performance and/or cache performance between the 2012 and 2016 cpu packages are large enough that the cores are data-starved and throttling down until they are able to work again?

I'm making that guess because you indicate enough single-thread processes can run full speed on all cores, and a simple multi-thread program can run full speed on all cores.

That makes me think there is something in the program design of your real workload vs the test multi-thread workload that isn't letting the CPUs work all the time

Happened to me with poorly implemented thread control, my fault. Just dont run too many threads on a dual core CPU.


iCloud running out of space, but it's not I keep getting messages from iCloud saying my drive is out of room. It is not, it is about half full:

Any ideas here?

Open System Preferences and inspect your iCloud Storage there. What you are looking at in Finder is only the size of your iCloud Drive files.
After opening System Preferences, select "Apple ID" in the top row, or "iCloud" in the bottom row if you are running an older version of macOS. On this screen, you will see a meter indicating your storage usage. Hover over different segments to see information about them, and click "Manage" to see more detail.


Mountain Lion freezes after sleep on iMac (Mid 2007) After upgrading to ML, my iMac freezes when going to sleep. The fan goes off but i can't not wake it up. Its that weird i need to unplug the power, and then i can start it again.

Keeping the power-on button pressed is not working.

It does wake-up from the screensaver, but then the mac isn't asleep (yet).

UPDATE: after i set the "Computer Sleep" to never, and "Display sleep" to 30 mins. I did had the "hdd to sleep" and "wake-up" LAN checked. I still got a black-screen, and complete froze, noway to wake-up the Mac. Unplugging the power for a restart.

Please try resetting PRAM and SMC. Also, you may want to run Disk Utility to perform a validate and repair on your permissions and disk to see if that helps.

I'm copying in my answer from another post as the words "Mountain Lion", "Freezes" and "Sleep" instantly raise a few flags for me that suggest its all the same issue:

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark guess and say that this is related to the highly documented "Mountain Lion wake bug" (at least that's what I've dubbed it.)

It's been discussed in a variety of threads on apple support forums, but probably the most successful I found was this one. I had the problem too and I found that there was one simple fix on this thread.

Basically, the theory (and I'm 99% certain it's correct) is that the bug relates to bonjour, and some apps that use bonjour in mountain lion are causing wifi processes to hang and thus crashing OSX. Anyway, the program that was doing it for me, and probably what I've seen to be the most common one, is Transmit, the awesome little FTP client by Panic. Unfortunately, Panics Menu Bar icon which can be quite useful appeared to be the worst culprit, but toggling off "Show Transmit Disk in menu bar" in transmit preferences  solved the problem.

If you're not using Transmit or if you're still having issue, run through that forum and hopefully you'll find one of the other fixes works for you.

PS. Apple knows about the problem and I think they're working on a fix.


Is it possible to export Android OS data to iOS? Is there any way to export Android Data to an iPhone?

I got an old Android Phone, i want  to throw it away but i got very important data in it. Is there anyway to send that data directly into my iPhone 6s? Because i don't want to loose that data and i also don't want to have that android phone. Which software can help me in transferring data from Android to iOS?

I have got several things as my important data:

  Pictures, Videos and Contacts

Apple has an app in the Google Play store and a support article describing the required steps in details.

There's a nice page for switchers as well - https://www.apple.com/switch/ the one thing to pay attention to if you don't appreciate the marketing is the help from a live person through @AppleSupport and the Support App you can download on iOS once you've got your phone running. Try to transfer all the data within a day of getting your phone so you don't have two sets of photos and documents if you start making some on iPhone before you get everything over from the old phone.

Apple has made an app for that (it is WiFi based)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201196


New "Local Items" Keychain in macOS 10.9+: What's it all about? macOS (10.9 Mavericks) created a new keychain "Local Items" for me that can't be deleted. What's the idea here and why is there a second keychain in addition to my login keychain?

If you mean the keychain that is called Local Items in the U.S. English locale, I think it is used for keychain items that are eligible to be synced with iCloud Keychain.

From http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/5/:

  If the iCloud Keychain is subsequently disabled, the iCloud keychain highlighted in the screenshot above is replaced with a "Local Items" keychain that has the same contents as the iCloud keychain. Any items added to the Local Items keychain will be pushed out to other devices when iCloud Keychain is re-enabled.

I have never enabled iCloud Keychain, but I also have a Local Items keychain. It contains about half of the keychain items from my login keychain, or mostly web form passwords. The Local Items keychain does not seem to correspond to any file and it cannot be deleted.

Although the "Local Items" keychain cannot deleted, you can delete individual items stored in it.


How can I get an Applescript to copy the contents of a variable to the clipboard? This has to be fairly simple. I'm using Applescript with Pashua: Native macOS dialogs for scripting languages. What I'm trying to do is enter data into a text field in a dialog, and then copy that text field to the clipboard when the dialog box closes. Simply setting the clipboard to the variable tf doesn't work.

How can I get this script to copy the contents of tf to the clipboard? The Applescript results window shows {tf:"testme"} for an input of testme, but I don't want the output markup, only the text testme copied to the clipboard.

The relevant part of the script is at the bottom of the full script:

-- Get the path to the folder containing this script
tell application "Finder"
    set thisFolder to (container of (path to me)) as string
    if "Pashua.app:" exists then
        -- Looks like the Pashua disk image is mounted. Run from there.
        set customLocation to "Pashua:"
    else
        -- Search for Pashua in the standard locations
        set customLocation to ""
    end if
end tell

try
    set thePath to alias (thisFolder & "Pashua.scpt")
    set pashuaBinding to load script thePath

    tell pashuaBinding
        -- Display the dialog

        try
            set pashuaLocation to getPashuaPath(customLocation)
            set dialogConfiguration to my getDialogConfiguration(pashuaLocation)
            set theResult to showDialog(dialogConfiguration, customLocation)

        on error errorMessage
            display alert "An error occurred" message errorMessage as warning
        end try
    end tell

on error errStr number errorNumber
    display dialog errStr
end try

-- Returns the configuration string for an example dialog
on getDialogConfiguration(pashuaLocation)

    if pashuaLocation is not "" then

    end if

    return "

# Set window title
*.title = Page Settings

# Add a text field
tf.type = textfield
tf.label = Example textfield
tf.width = 310
"

    set the clipboard to tf   -- how do I set this variable to the clipboard?

end getDialogConfiguration

If you check Pashua's documentation, you will see that the result from showing the dialog is a record, with keys for the interface elements that you have declared.  To get specific items from the dialog, just get the value for the desired key.

The getDialogConfiguration handler just configures the dialog - the showDialog handler is what actually shows the dialog and returns a result, so that is where you would work with whatever parts of the result you are interested in.  Assuming you have the Pashua script and application in the same folder as the script, an example would be something like:

tell application "Finder" to set thisFolder to (container of (path to me)) as text -- get the folder path
try
    set thePath to alias (thisFolder & "Pashua.scpt")
    set pashuaBinding to load script thePath

    tell pashuaBinding
        try
            set dialogConfiguration to my getDialogConfiguration() -- configure the dialog
            set dialogResult to showDialog(dialogConfiguration, "") -- show the dialog
            set the clipboard to tf of dialogResult
        on error errmess number errnum
            display alert "Error " & errnum message "There was an error with the Pashua dialog:" & return & return & errmess
        end try
    end tell

on error errmess number errnum
    display alert "Error " & errnum message "There was an error setting up the Pashua script:" & return & return & errmess
end try

on getDialogConfiguration() -- return the configuration string
    return "
# Set window title
*.title = Page Settings

# Add a text field
tf.type = textfield
tf.label = Example textfield
tf.width = 310
"
end getDialogConfiguration

Shows how you get data back from Pashua:

https://github.com/BlueM/Pashua-Binding-AppleScript/blob/master/Example.applescript

example applescript code to set clipboard data

on run

  set myData to "Hello, world"

  -- copy myData to the system clipboard
  set the clipboard to myData

  display dialog "The clipboard data is " & (the clipboard) giving up after 3

end run


How to open files via Terminal I want to open videos and pictures from Terminal. Is there any way to do this?

To open any file from the command line with the default application, just type open followed by the filename/path.

Example:

open ~/Desktop/filename.mp4

Edit: as per Johnny Drama's comment below, if you want to be able to open files in a certain application, put -a followed by the application's name in quotes between open and the file.

Example:

open -a "QuickTime Player" ~/Desktop/filename.mp4

If you need further information about the open command, type man open.


iPhone 7 battery quickly discharges after using Philips dual USB car charger I drove a car for about 3 hours and during the ride my iPhone 7 was connected to the Philips dual USB car charger. All this time screen was on and also was using Waze app. In addition to this another phone was charging during the ride.

After this trip I noticed that my phone discharges very fast every time I charge it in classic way from home. Does it mean that my battery could been damaged because of the ride? Is there any options to solve this problem? The phone is year and a half old.

I highly recommend using M-Fi certified chargers and certified usb wall blocks! These are crucial for the health of your iPhone’s battery! Your battery may not have been charged well with that kind of chord and wall/car socket! I suggest buying a certified car kit! They sell them on amazon for like $20 max


How can I watch slowed down Youtube videos in iPad? I found this tutorial here but I am unable to find such type of buttons in iPad. I am also unable to slow down videos in OS X. I am trying to watch this video here but it is too fast educational video. So how can I watch slowed-down videos?

That tutorial on slowing down YouTube videos was made in iOS 5 with the older YouTube app. You probably have iOS 6 and are using the YouTube website or the YouTube app released by Google more recently.

Both the web app and the YouTube app no longer play videos with the QuickTime player with those controls. The only thing that still uses that interface is the YouTube app on the iPhone. I suppose you can try experimenting with other third-party YouTube video viewers, one of those may use QuickTime for playback, but I don't have experience with them.

By the way, I don't know how useful that video will be even slowed down, and there are a lot of great Blender tutorials out there if you look.

EDIT: Actually, embedded YouTube videos will use that player, so you just have to embed the video on a web page and then browse to that page on the iPad.


Voice/vocals are really hard to hear on my iPod I have an iPod Touch (4gen), and I listen to a lot of vocal music and spoken-word audio.

Sometime in the past week or so, voice became really hard to hear.  When I play music, it sounds like it's been turned into an instrumental.  When I play spoken voice, it sounds like the Peanuts teacher.

If I turn up the volume to the max, I can hear the voices fine, but then the low-frequency music is overwhelming, so that's not an option.

Is there some equalizer setting (I didn't think the iPod Touch had these but I could be wrong) that I could have screwed up to make this happen?

UPDATE:

I'm suspecting a hardware issue.  I've not mistreated it, but I've found that with some headphones, if I rotate the plug in just the right way, the vocals come back just fine.  I'm not sure how an audio jack can be plugged in and receive non-vocal sound but not vocal sound, but that's what it sounds like.  I'll take it by an Apple Store and see if they can do anything.  The audio jack is certainly the weakest part of the iPod these days, so it's not entirely surprising that it's the first thing to go.

There is in fact an equalizer setting on the iPod touch.  Go to Settings -> Music -> EQ to get a list of all of the different equalizer settings.  The best choices for you are probably "Off", "Spoken Word," or "Vocal Booster."  If your problem continues, feel free to leave me a comment.

If u don't have Dr. Dre head phones skip this. So I haved that problem. So when I read u have to mess with u head phone jack. The head phone jack that goes into the head phones is the problem. Listen to your most vocal word song and pull out the jack while listening and slowly put it back in while a song is running and the headphones are on. As u put them on u will hear the song in one side and then the other and right after that u will hear perfectly in both with word and ever thing. But don't put the jack all the in because if u do the problem will happen again


Get computer name from IP-address I have the IP address of a computer on my network but is there a way that with the IP address I can find the name of computer?

For example, if I know the IP address is 192.154.23.60, can I use this IP from my Mac to see the name, such as Jacob's MacBook?

From the Terminal.app (or equivalent) you can use the host command to show the network name of the computer. This returns the name even if it has all sharing settings turned off and thus not showing via Finder.

For example, in my network I get the following (where I know the IP-address and the first part of the returned name is the computer's name)

➜ ~ host 192.168.2.135

135.2.168.192.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer raspberrypi.private.lan.

It depends on the actual name of the computer if the network name is exactly the same, as in your example, I guess it would become Jacobs-MacBook.

In Finder, go to your computer (which should be listed on the left sidebar under Devices). Then double-click on Network. This will show you all of the other computers on your network that are browsable.


"Could not find installation information for this machine" after disk erase I erased my disk while planing to reinstall the OS.
Now I get the recovery screen as planed, I press "Reinstall OS X" and then press on "Continue". It checks my eligibility and tells me "Could not find installation information for this machine".

Obviously I cannot go back because the disk is already erased, and I have no time machine backups.

I do remember having this issue in the past, and all I had to do is login to the AppStore. But now this is kinda not relevant (and I was logged in before I erased the disk)

I resolved this issue by changing the Wi-Fi network I was connected to. I was on xfinitywifi which was requiring a registration I didn't see. As soon as I connected to my internal company Wi-Fi network without a click-through screen it worked.

Other avenues to resolve this are making a bootable installer, booting from recovery or otherwise connecting to a new network if that’s causing the issue (Ethernet instead of WiFi for instance)

Just keep trying. It took me 10 times before it finally went through. No USB needed, just bad connection to the Apple server!


Default Output Device is always wrong Since updating to Yosemite, whenever I plug headphones into my MBP, it selects Soundflower as the default output device. I then have to manually change it everytime. Anyone know why this is happening, or how to fix it?
Also, I can't get rid of Soundflower for some reason.

First of all, I'll address the how to uninstall Soundflower problem:

A number of people have run into problems uninstalling it in the past. The main problem seems to be that you have to reboot your machine after running the uninstaller but if that doesn't work for you try removing it from the Audio MIDI setup.

Open Audio MIDI Setup in the utilities folder and look for Soundflower listed there, select it and click the minus near the bottom left to remove it.

Now that you've removed Soundflower, you need to set the headphones as your default output device:

Connect your headphones
Open System Preferences and Open the "Sound" panel
Go to the "Output" tab
Select your headphones here
Close system preferences

Your system should now default to the headphones whenever you plug them in.

If you run into further problems, you can try a couple of advanced steps:

Open Finder and in the "Go" menu, select "Go to Folder..."
Type ~/Library/Preferences and click Go
Locate two files called com.apple.systempreferences.plist and com.apple.audio.AudioMIDISetup.plist and move them both to the trash
Reboot your computer
If you're still having problems reset PRAM by rebooting again and holding command-option-p-r as soon as your computer boots up, keep holding until your computer restarts again and you hear the startup chime.

Follow all the above steps from the beginning of this post and one of them should solve your problem, make sure you check each time if your headphones are now working by default.

Restart the computer, select the output device you want, restart again, then look in System Preferences again to see if it saved as the setting you previously had.


How do I deactivate a broken iphone 4s and switch to an old iphone 4s a friend gave me? I recently broke my iPhone 4s and am not due for an update for another year. My friend is going to let me use her old iPhone 4s. How do I deactivate my broken phone so that my friends phone will now be usable as mine? My carrier is Verizon

You can call Verizon customer support @ 1 (800) 922-0204. They should be able to deactivate your phone and activate the replacement. Even in the case of newer phones that are unlocked like the iPhone 6 - you still need a Verizon rep to activate the device after placing the SIM in it due to how their network is configured.

Try to put your device in DFU mode then do a full iTunes restore. If not fixed then vist the apple store or call Verizon Support.


How do I prevent my Mac from switching Wifi connections when at home? I have a MacBook Pro, running Mac 10.9.5.  I connect wirelessly to the Internet through my home Cisco LinkSys E900 router, which sits just 10 feet away from my computer.  However, frequently when I leave my computer inactive for a period of time and then return after waking it from hibernation, my Internet is connect to an xfiniti Wifi hotspot, without my having done anything.  How do I configure my Mac so that it will ignore the xfiniti Wifi hot spot and remain connected to my home network?

Looks like the computer is set to prefer or prioritise the xfiniti Wifi hotspot over you home wifi, you can set your home Wifi to be of priority to any other Wifi connection and this is how to do that,

System Preferences/Network/ then select Wifi and click on Advanced, you'll see all preferred networks there.

Click and drag your home Wifi to the top.

I had the same problem.  In advanced preferences, I removed xfinity completely (twice).  The problem persisted. My answer is conjecture, but this would seem to be a job for Apple tech. support...as they can show you how to install and use adware medic.  I believe this is xfinity marketing in action.


Can I add a custom ringtone to my iPhone without syncing to iTunes? We (bafflingly) have two great guides to adding custom ringtones to an iPhone via iTunes. Is there a way to do it without syncing with iTunes?

Unlikely.

Such functionality is indirectly excluded by the iOS Developer Program Licence Agreement under section 3.3.4.

There it is stated that applications may only write data to an application's designated container area on the device. Therefore, the library data for ringtones cannot cannot be manipulted unless there were API to do this.

I am not sure if I'm allowed to post a direct link here, therefore use this google search to get to the document.

But with iTunes to add iPhone ringtones is free. You don't have to buy ringtones from iTunes, you just have to sync the ringtones you have (bought from other sources, or made yourself) through iTunes.

What I had to do was in iTunes, use "Add File to Library" (under the file menu) to add the ringtone for free , this will place it in its own Tones library (if you didn't already have one).

Then you can connect the iPhone, and there will be a specific sync tab for Tones where you can select what you added to the library and then sync it to your phone.


My Notes app accidentally got deleted from my iPhone 4s and I cannot locate it in the app list in iTunes when I synch. Any ideas? I accidentally deleted the Notes app and cannot find it (although when I do a spotlight search it does come up).  Any ideas how I restore it to my screen?  Thanks!

It sounds like it's not deleted, but just off of the screen. I've had this happen to a few of my apps. What I always do to fix it is go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout. You'll get your Notes app back, but your Home Screen will be arranged into alphabetical order, and unless you're JailBroken, this is pretty much the only way to get it back without restoring.

Have you tried restoring your iPhone?

See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414 for the details on how to do this.


Alphabetically Sorting Safari Bookmarks How can I get my Safari bookmarks automatically sorted alphanumerically within Bookmarks manager?

I want to accomplish this without installing a bookmark management tool, nor by going through the process described at this link 1.

You cannot. Safari does not include that functionality.

You can easily achieve sorting using plugins such as SafariSort, but as you write that you do not in want to use any third party tools - you're out of luck.

You should consider using another browser if this functionality is important to you.

You can nearly get there with a bit of Applescript.

This script will read all the "Children" of your existing Bookmarks file and re-write them in the order you specify. "Children" consist first of History, Bookmarks Bar, Bookmarks Menu and Reading List, so you might want to leave the first 4 items in place. After that, specify whatever ordering you like - automatically finding an alphabetic ordering left as an exercise.

set tfile to (path to library folder from user domain as text) & "Safari:BookmarksWorking.plist"

tell application "System Events"
    set childrenOrdered to make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of property list file tfile with properties {kind:list, name:"childrenOrdered"}

    set myOrdering to {1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 5, 7} -- your preferred order
    repeat with i in myOrdering
        set thisChild to (property list item i of property list item "Children" of property list file tfile)
        set thisKind to kind of thisChild
        set thisValue to value of thisChild
        tell childrenOrdered
            make new property list item at end with properties {kind:thisKind, value:thisValue}
        end tell
    end repeat

    -- Instead of overwriting the contents of "Children", this empties the whole file. So do the rename manually for now.
    --set (value of (property list item "Children" of property list file tfile)) to (value of childrenOrdered)
end tell

I expected the last set line of the script to replace the contents of "Children" with the ordered array. Unfortunately this seems to result in an empty (0 byte) file! AppleScript considers the name field read-only, so changing it in place wont work either.

However, manually renaming the items in a property list editor (XCode, text editor, etc.) so that Children is moved aside and orderedChildren is in its place does result in the new ordering appearing in Safari on relaunch.

Pretty clumsy, but if this is heading in the right direction is could be cleaned up and automated.


Keep copy/paste and TOC in PDF converted from ebook? For research, I often convert non-DRM ebooks to PDF using Calibre.  The resulting PDF has a TOC with working links.  However, it is not searchable in Preview, and copy/paste results in blank white space, even when pasting into TextEdit or nValt.
(Adobe Acrobat can search, copy/paste the PDF and the TOC works, but I use many tools that use Apple's PDF frameworks, so I'd like to solve this.)
To make it searchable and copyable, I run the PDF through Ghostscript using these commands:
gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile="output" "input"
This renders a new PDF that is searchable, and copy/pastes properly.  However, it strips the links from the TOC.
Is there a way to convert the PDF so that it will retain its TOC links and also be searchable and have copy/paste work?

I suppose the first thing would be to investigate Calibre's PDF output to see if it is to spec, and whether it has options that Preview might prefer.
Ghostscript normally should preserve bookmarks and other annotations. Maybe explicitly set -dPDFSETTINGS=/default.?
See the long answer here about using GS:
https://superuser.com/questions/466031/how-do-i-reduce-a-pdfs-size-and-preserve-the-bookmarks
If that doesn't work, you could use this python script, which will copy Bookmarks from one PDF to another. Note that it will overwrite the destination PDF.
#!/usr/bin/python

# Copy PDF Table of Contents from one PDF to another.
#
# copyOutlines.py <source file> <destination file>

from Foundation import  NSURL
import Quartz as Quartz
import sys

def copyOutlines(source, dest):
    pdfURL = NSURL.fileURLWithPath_(source)
    inPDF = Quartz.PDFDocument.alloc().initWithURL_(pdfURL)
    if inPDF:
        outline = Quartz.PDFOutline.alloc().init()
        outline = inPDF.outlineRoot()
    pdfURL = NSURL.fileURLWithPath_(dest)
    outPDF = Quartz.PDFDocument.alloc().initWithURL_(pdfURL)
    outPDF.setOutlineRoot_(outline)
    outPDF.writeToFile_(dest)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    copyOutlines(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2])


Count pages in a folder full of .doc files I recently found this very helpful link to count the pages in a large folder full of PDF files:

Count pages in PDF (for non-technical, mac using person).

It worked like a dream. Now, however, I need to do the same for a folder full of Word files. Does anyone know how I change the script provided in that link to do that? Or is there some other utility that I can use?

The AppleScript in the linked page queries Spotlight's metadata to get the page count for each PDF document. (Specifically, the kMDItemNumberOfPages value.)

It's up to applications to provide metadata to Spotlight, and MS Word doesn't provide page numbers to Spotlight.

So you can't change the script easily, and will need another method.


YouTube videos not loading fully Safari won't load YouTube videos fully like a 10:00 video it only load 6:50 of it

A. Iv tried restarted  my  wifi.

B. Iv tried refreshing.

C. Restarted my I pad.

D. Iv tryed the YouTube app

Kindly uninstall your current copy of Flash and then reinstall new >  Troubleshoot Flash Player | Mac OS

Then quit and relaunch Safari.

From the Safari menu bar click Safari > Empty Cache

Restart your Mac, try a video.

If you continue to have problems, go to ~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.flashplayer.installmanager

Move the Cache.db file from the com.adobe.flashplayer.installmanager folder to the Trash.

Quit then relaunch Safari, try a video.

Safari extensions can prevent some video from streaming. Go to Safari > Preferences then select select the Extensions tab.

If you have any installed, switch to OFF, quit then relaunch Safari, try again.

If you have ClickToFlash installed in ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins, move that plug in to the Desktop. Quit then relaunch Safari to test


Grayed out folder won't open in finder I've never see this before.

Here's the facts:

It appears to be grayed out in the finder
I can not open it by clicking
I can move the folder
The permissions are set to 777 (overkill i know)
I can rename the folder with the mv command
I can view the contents of the folder with ls
When I ls (list) the contents of the parent dir I can see it without -a (show hidden files)
The date is set to from before I was born.
I believe this folder to have been a copy of another

I have a folder and I can't open it. It appears to be grayed out in the finder.

I had the same issue with an account folder, which I restored from a backup via rsync. The problem seemed to be the corrupt or missing creation date. After setting it manually the folder was acting normal again. I used the SetFile command from XCode's command line tools. So this should solve the issue:

SetFile -d '12/31/1999 23:59:59' will-not-open

i copy pasted the grayed out folder into a new folder that i made. somehow it worked. i deleted the grayed out folder and used a copy pasted version of it. no Xcode needed


How to AirPlay or stream video to PlayStation 3 from OS X? I'm hitting brick walls it seems on finding any topics that pertain to streaming video and / or live display to a PlayStation 3.  I am not sure if I'm just missing the correct terminology or if a solution simply doesn't exist.

My primary goal is to be able to stream videos to a PlayStation 3 similar to how Beamer works.  A bonus would be to stream AirPlay. Are there any solutions for such scenarios?

Just came looking to see if I could use Airplay, as it would be very convenient to be able to stream from any of my devices.

However, I have been using medialink for years, using my mac mini as a media server.  It had some troubles when it first came out, but in recent years I've found it extremely reliable, quality is excellent for all definitions.

Using airplay to stream music to your ps3 is not possible because airplay is a function that is only available on apple devices.

If you want to stream music to your os3, you will need a media server on your mac.

Most of the times I use vuse to stream my media to my ps3/4 or smart tv.


Screen Sharing won't allow me to paste into remote system I am connected to a remote system via Screen Sharing.  I have text (plaintext) on my clipboard locally.  I am unable to paste into the remote system.  How can I make this work?  Here are some details:

When I open the Edit menu, only "Copy" is available, "Paste", "Send Clipboard" and "Get Clipboard" and so on are grayed out.
The buttons for "Send Clipboard" and "Get Clipboard" are grayed out.

Some other facts:

The clipboard functions work ok with JollyFastVNC and Chicken of the VNC (but I have other problems with these).
Both local and remote systems are on OSX 10.6.8
Keyboard and mouse functionality works fine to remote system
The remote system's local clipboard works fine -- if I CTL-V in a screen on the remote system, I paste what is on the remote system's clipboard (hope that makes sense)
It doesn't matter what app I'm in on the remote system

Apple answer: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH14152

  Choose Edit >Use Shared Clipboard.
  Using the shared clipboard, you can:

  Copy text and images from documents on one Mac and paste them into documents on the other.

  Select and drag text and images from one Mac to the other.

  Copy a link from your web browser and paste it into a web browser on the other Mac.

  Copy text from a document on one Mac and drop it on the desktop of the other Mac to create a clipping.

You could alternatively use the inbuilt VNC viewer to screen share, it has a "Get Remote Clipboard" and "Put to Remote Clipboard" feature that would overcome the issue you're having.

Instructions


How to force a page refresh in Chrome on iOS? I'm testing a mobile website and when changing javascript it doesn't seem to refresh it, even when using the "reload" in the menu or when appending a random variable, for example "?test=123" to the end of the url.
I also force quite the app but still no luck.
Any other ideas?

Per your comment that "a way to delete the browser cache completely" may be suitable, you can go to the Chrome menu → Settings → Privacy and clear the cache.

Yep. Maybe first you should clean up Chrome browser cache and some temporary files, and see how it goes.


Adding metadata for films/TV shows in iTunes When I purchase videos from iTunes, I get a lot of metadata information on the movie. For example, like this:

But when I add a DVD I own, I only get this:

I understand that on OSX you can use Subler to add iTunes metadata for videos, but how can I do this in Windows?

Any program that can tag MP4s should work fine. MetaX seems to be a popular one for Windows that can pull data from various online databases.

You can do this by editing the metadata in iTunes itself. Select a video, hit ctrl+I then edit the data.


Bluetooth mouse that doesn't require a USB dongle Since my Macbook only has two USB ports, I'd like to get myself a mouse that can pair with the Mac's built-in bluetooth. The obvious choice is the Apple Magic Mouse, but at $70 it's pretty much overkill. I don't need the touch functionality, since the Mac's trackpad already does a great job with that.

I'm mostly looking for something that allows me accurate control, isn't too large (so I can toss it in my backpack), and isn't too expensive. And looks nice next to the Aluminum Macbook, or course. :)

The Logitech V470 Cordless Laser Mouse for Bluetooth® may suit your needs.

BTW: I've used Logitech mice for a long time now and can say that they're built very well. They're a pleasure to use. The MX1000 is the greatest mouse ever built in my opinion. I've yet to use a Bluetooth mouse though.

Read about the Mad Catz R.A.T M. It is a mobile Gaming Mouse which doesen't require a dongle.


Is there an easy way to remove some of the built-in apps on macOS Mojave? In the past I was able to do sudo rm -rf /Applications/<app name>. The following resources indicate that this will no longer work without dealing with System Integration Protection (SIP):

How delete an application that is bundled with macOS?
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/976402-how-to-remove-defaultbundled-apps-in-macos-mojave/

The motivation is that I am not motivated to accept updates for apps that I do not expect to use within the foreseeable future.

Is there an easy way to remove some the built-in apps that I do not wish to update, such as GarageBand, Keynote, Pages, etc., without dealing with the SIP tool?

P.S. (edited): I completely understand that there may not be any easy or even difficult way to remove some built-in apps such as Safari, Siri, System Preferences, etc. This scope of this question is hereby limited to the some apps such as GarageBand, Keynote, Pages, etc.

Go to the Applications folder in the Finder tool;
right-click on the unwanted application;
click "Move to trash", and enter the password if requested by the system;
then empty the trash.

Note the following exceptions:

In case an unwanted application is in the Utilities subfolder, the first step should be to navigate into that subfolder.
There are some applications such as Safari and Siri for which there is no "Move to trash" option.

Each of these steps should be well documented. I would be happy to add some more pointers upon request.


Why do Apple's 2012 MacBook Pros cap the RAM limit at 8GB? According to apple's latest documentation (at the time of writing), the cap on the 2012 MacBook Pros is 8GB RAM.

The Mac Pros, however, can take up to 32GB RAM.

So, why do the MacBooks have this cap? Is it a hardware issue, because I don't think it's a software one.

The OS X that runs on the Mac Pros is the same that runs on the MacBook Pros. Being 64-bit software on top of a 64-bit Architecture (both the MacBooks and the Mac Pros), it's obvious that the OS can use as much as 32 GB of RAM.

Is it simply because manufactures don't make RAM sticks larger than 4GB for laptops?

The limitation imposed is based on the chipsets used on the computer's motherboard. For example, the noted Apple maximums you mentioned for the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro, are smaller than the maximums that those machines can address in practice. The MacBook Pro tested maximum is 16 GB according to EveryMac's MacBook Pro max RAM listing. And as for the Mac Pro, its maximum is 128 GB according to EveryMac's Mac Pro max RAM listing.

As noted on Intel's Specs, the CPU supports a different maximum than the chipset on the motherboard does. The Xeon X5670 used in the Mac Pro supports up to 288 GB.

And as for the i7s e.g. a i7-2860QM used in the MacBook Pros, it supports up to 32 GB.

So these limitations come from engineering decisions made by Apple based on what kinds of chipsets are selected to be installed on the motherboard and what those chips support is what enforces the maximum amount of RAM that a particular Mac can address at or below what the CPU can actually address.

As for why Apple underrates their maximum numbers for RAM on some Macs, that's for Apple to know and for us to wonder. However, admittedly it is a nice practice to under promise and over deliver for whatever reason Apple has. Although, the Mac Pro supports more RAM than Mac OS X can address, according to OWC's testing on Mac Pros, where they discovered Mac OS X unofficially will not address more than 96GB of RAM, but other 64-bit operating system can get to the full 128GB.

Because they want to make more money by having you pay for more ram. I work with windows all the time. I have a dual boot on my mac. The mac end only sees 8gb of ram installed but windows utilizes all 16. hardware that meets the specifications required will work in the hardware world. It is the software that determines how it's utilized. Trust me I build gaming rigs all the time.


iPhone 4S Otterbox Defender: Exposed speaker? Advice? While I'm waiting for my iPhone 4S to come in, I'm agonizing over what kind of case to get. I've been quite well served by my Otterbox Defender for my old 3GS; the phone has bitten the dust once or twice but the phone doesn't have a single scratch to show for it.

I'm concerned, however, about the pictures of the case on Otterbox's website. It looks like the entire earpiece, perhaps along with the entire camera lens area, are exposed to the air. Someone asked about this on that page's Q&A section, and that's the only question so far that's been ignored.

I'm worried that dust and dirt are going to be able to get inside the case and stay trapped there, possibly damaging the device and hurting its later resale value more than if I just use a different, less protective case altogether. Of course, nothing hurts a device's resale value more than being dropped and broken.

So I ask you wonderful people: Do any of you have experience with this latest Otterbox Defender? Is  the speaker or the camera lens actually exposed to the air, or is there some protection there that I can't tell from the pictures? Are there any other considerations I should make before making my decision?

I own the Otterbox Defender Case for the iPhone 4S. The speaker for the earpiece, the speakers on the bottom and the camera lens (but not flash) are exposed to air. The Defender offers some protection because the thickness of the case creates a cavity roughly 3mm deep around the exposed speakers. These cavities DO collect dust.

When I opened my case to answer this question I found only a very slight amount of dust infiltration within a very close vicinity of the openings "exposed to air". I do not believe this dust will in any way damage the phone or mar the finnish (because the slight dust inside was more like "fuzz" than "grit") but I have only had my case for a few weeks. I have a screen protector on the front of my phone and on the back too, with the Defender case on top of that.

The biggest annoyance for me with this case is that dust collects in the "protective" cavity for the camera lens and is not easy to clean on-the-go (you need something like a q-tip or rolled piece of tissue) which makes my HD camera take blurry pictures.

I would recomend Otterbox include a silicone cover for the camera lens like they have included for the charge port, headphone port and silent button -OR- re-design the shape of the cavity to collect less dust or allow the user to wipe the lens with a finger or cloth to clear dust.

Otterbox defender for galaxy s5 is worthless with the camera lens completely exposed to all job hazards of a construction site. Wasted money on otterbox. Instead ended up using $5.00 fake leather case i bought off a street vendor for the last few years...


IOS 9.3.3 - 9.3.4, no dictionaries I recently updated my iPad Pro to iOS 9.3.3 and noticed that my dictionary always gives the message "No definition found".

This might have started earlier and I just didn't notice until now.

I tried selecting Manage from the bottom left of the empty dictionary message, however, I still get the same message and no dictionaries to add.

I already tried to restore my iPad with no success.

Now I updated it to 9.3.4 and the dictionary problem isn't fixed.

I had the same issue, to fix it go to this directory in your device: /var/MobileAsset/Assets.

There is a folder (com_apple_MobileAsset_DictionaryServices_dictionary2). Just replace the content of the folder from another apple device that has a working in-built dictionary.
Make sure the other device has the same iOS version as your device.
Of course, you need to jailbreak both devices in order to get root access to extract and replace the folder.
That, or update to iOS 10 beta.

Hope that helps.

The problem was solved by updating of the iOS to 9.3.4 and then changing region or language or both (i change both and get references to download all dictionaries. I think that Apple support team have heard us)


SIGSEGV Spotlight error My new MacBook Pro 2018 8 core on Mojave has some issues generating a proper Spotlight database. I tried the obvious methods of excluding the drive, re-including it, and the terminal commands for rebuilding Spotlight. Additionally I ran Disk Utility First Aid twice, which automatically restarted my machine each time during process (?!)

These are the constant errors coming up in system log, they are thrown around every second.

Dec  6 23:25:46 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.single.0A000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Dec  6 23:25:49 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.single.09000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[4085]): Service exited due to SIGSEGV | sent by exc handler[4085]

When searching with Spotlight, the "Indexing" bar is constantly showing up, never progressing significantly. Some days later, still there.

I double clicked one of the mdworker_shared Process Names in Activity Monitor and clicked the tab "Open Files and Ports" which revealed this:

cwd
/
txt
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mdworker_shared
txt
/Library/Preferences/Logging/.plist-cache.laC3ZYuM
txt
/usr/share/file/magic.mgc
txt
/usr/lib/dyld
txt
/private/var/folders/7l/6j3svjhs13l39y6f96hmw_j40000gq/0/com.apple.LaunchServices-231-v2.csstore
0
/dev/null
1
/dev/null
2
/dev/null
3
/Users/username/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/.DS_Store
4
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/.DS_Store
5
/Users/username/Library/Group Containers/QA2G25RMZ4.com.wunderkinder/Wunderlist/.DS_Store
6
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/.DS_Store
7
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/.DS_Store
8
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/.DS_Store

The open files remain the same even after double-clicking the mdworker_shared process again.

So apparently there is an issue indexing the .DS_Store files?

Whats the catch?

From your report it looks like the Wondershare is a problem maker and slowing down the Spotlight.

/Users/username/Library/Group Containers/QA2G25RMZ4.com.wunderkinder/Wunderlist/.DS_Store

Shut the Wunderlist down.

You might want to consider giving the Spotlight a break so it can start over.

Turn it off

sudo mdutil -a -i off

this turns off indexing of files,

To turn indexing back on, run

sudo mdutil -a -i on

After this you could run the complete re-indexing of your hard drive (be aware this could be an over night job), it will delete your Spotlight data base forcing it to start over.

sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/*


A Vexing Login Problem with WebDAV The issue I'm having is that I manage three Mac Mini servers. Two are for work, one is for me. I can log into our main work server and my personal box using WebDAV, however, the second work server rejects my login credentials with "The user name or password was not accepted by the server." errors.

The two work computers are pretty much mirrored in every way possible. The notable exceptions are the network (one is one city, the other a different one). Work server #1 is an Open Directory Master, the other is a replicant. The hardware is slightly different.

Server #1 is running 10.10.1; Server #2 is running 10.10.2. Both are running Server 4.0.3.

If I try to log into both servers through AFP or SSH, there are no problems. It's only when we try to access Server #2 that we're having issues on all accounts (both local and network users).

I believe WebDAV broke during a recent Server update, however, I can't pinpoint when that occurred.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

With OS X Yosemite 10.10.2, WebDAV is only accessible via HTTPS.


A file viewer like in Total Commander / Krusader I use DoubleCommander, which is a decent 2-panel file manager.
What I am missing is a viewer for the use case of peeking at a text file, especially logs:

quick to load
handles large text files (GBs)
handles page up/down
allows find / next / previous / highlight

remembers the searched strings

zoom, ideally with Control + mouse wheel
capable of closing with "esc"
capable of reloading the file on demand (F5)

remembers the position over reloads

ideally, configurable key shortcuts
etc.

In short, something to quickly open the file, find a string, have it open, reload when necessary at roughly the same place. Developers will find this very familiar.

Is there such app? Sublime it aint, File Viewer neither, jEdit neither, TextEdit neither... I've tried quite a lot of them but there's always some blocker.

Both Krusader and Total Commander have great viewers, so I believe Mac community produced one, too. (Not counting running Total Commander in Wine :)

I found that the closest match is DoubleCommander. With some Mac quirks, as Mac lacks keys like Insert, PgUp/PgDn so it's impossible to map the actions to shortcuts I am used to. But still, it's a decent (cross-platform) two-panel manager.

The Console.app is quite close. Except it doesn't support zooming and even I can't manage to set the font size. Not sure how that works on Apple, there's the font dialog but that doesn't change the text size.


Outlook 2016 - show sent messages in conversation list on the left I use the conversation view so I can keep track of threads, but it's confusing not seeing my own replies in the list. Is there a way to get it to show my replies by default?

I can see my replies if I click a thread and then click the Conversation arrow shaped button. But what I want is to see my replies in the thread list on the left by default.

I have the same problem in Outlook 2011 for Mac; I think this configuration is not possible.

As shown in the following links from the MS documentation, it looks like the option exists for the Windows version, but it is not available in the Mac OS X version. As you alluded to, (your own) sent messages appear in in "reading pane" but do not render in the message list.

One workaround is to automatically BCC yourself on everything. Enable this by Outlook menu -> Preferences... -> Email section -> Composing -> Format and account section -> enable "When sending messages, automatically BCC myself." This will have the effect of putting a copy of messages you send into your Inbox, so they will render in the conversation view/pane. I'm not sure if this will result in duplicate messages rendering in the "reading pane" for conversations. I'm personally not willing to do this, but it should/does work.

Until or unless...

I'm missing something, or
I learn some fancy keyboard shortcut or other UI trick, or
Give up my convictions and BCC myself on everything (which does render properly),

this interface (and its inconsistency) is unusable. Back to Apple Mail for me.

Try:

File: Options: Mail - check "Enable preview for Rights protected emails"