How to sort rows in Numbers without affecting the formula? I have a table with a basic formula:

The 7th column (1038€94) is calculated with the formula 1133€34 - 94€40 + (empty cell). In others words, the 7th column is calulated by (value in the row above) - (value of the 4th cell of the row) + (value of the 5th cell of the row).

All the rows have the same formula in the 7th column.

The first column is a date. If I choose to sort the rows depending on this date, the formula breaks because Numbers keeps a pointer to the cells before sorting the data:

Is there a way to sort the rows without breaking the formula? Or make the formula uses the cell above without specifying the line in the formula?

Thanks

I think there is no easy solution to this within Numbers. You should either copy your table to another sheet as values (formula results) whenever you need to sort it or recreate your formulas using, for example, the vlookup() function (also check the hlookup() and other reference functions in Numbers in case necessary) if you need to sort in-place. In the 2nd solution, instead of getting 1133,34 by a direct reference to its cell, you would get it (and any other numbers not at the same row in the formula yielding 1038,94) through a separate "vlookup" each. In addition, all "vlookup"s should be created sort-proof specifically against column-based sorts.

By column-based sort-proofing, I mean the cell references within "vlookup"s should directly refer only to the cells in the same row or the whole table. Then, assuming the formulas in the column where 1133,34 is calculated are parallel, you can use the same formula for all the cells in the same column by copy & pasting it.

Below is an example formula if you wish to take the 2nd option. It simply adds two values from the "some variable" column. The first value is from the current row and the second from two days earlier. Pls note the exact use of absolute cell references in the formula (the $ signs, necessary so that the same formula can be used in other cells in the same column by copy & paste) and how the date for two days earlier is referenced to in the vlookup in the formula.

Here is a copy of the same formula in text in case you have trouble recreating it and wish to copy & paste from here:

= B5+VLOOKUP($A5−2,$A$2:$C$5,2,0)

And here is how the table and the same formula looks like when the table is sorted based on the date:

If you are not using the dollar sign in your formulas sorting should maintain your correct algebra. If you click on a formula cell, you see a small colored box with a pulldown symbol on it. See the image below.  I'm referring to the blue box.

If you click on the downward pointing triangle you get the followin pane:

Make sure neither check boxes are checked.


Calendar set timezone automatically I travel a lot and change timezones quite often. Is there a way to let Calendar detect and change timezone automatically so I can work with Calendar in the same timezone I'm currently in?

I don't think Calendar will automatically change the time zone. In fact, it probably shouldn't, otherwise it could be confusing if the user didn't notice it has changed.

However there are two things you can easily do:

Enable Set time zone automatically using current location in System Preferences > Date & Time > Time Zone. This will ensure that the machine time zone is always correct.
Then, in the Calendar, select the time zone in the top right corner. In this dropdown, there should normally be all the time zones associated with the calendar events, as well as the current time zone. Select the current one, and that should do it. Since this setting is saved, you only need to do it once every time you change the time zone.

Automatically - don't think so. The least you can do, however, is enable Time-zone support in Calendar. To do so go to Calendar > Preferences and check Turn on time zone support. Next, you can switch between time zones from the top-right corner of the Calendar application.


Where to get older bootcamp drivers? I recently partitioned my MBP 15", early 2011 model, so I could run windows. I installed Windows XP and now I have no Wifi. I've installed the bootcamp drivers off CD of Snow Leopard and the disks that came with my machine. No luck, there are no wireless drivers.

What I am planning to do is install Windows 8. How can I get wireless drivers on my XP partition? Or if I download windows 8 on my OSX and make a bootable flash drive and upgrade the os, will I have Wifi that way?

Thanks

This website contains download links for the latest version of the Boot Camp WindowsSupport for older devices:

For Windows XP, Apple has provided Boot Camp Drivers Update v2.1 and v2.2 which…

  is intended only for use with Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows Vista running on a Mac computer using Boot Camp.

Both updates require Boot Camp 2.1. It also notes that…

  This download contains complete copies of Boot Camp Windows XP Drivers (version 2.1). If you have Boot Camp drivers already installed, it will update them.  If you do not have any Boot Camp drivers installed, it will install version 2.1 drivers onto your already installed Windows OS.

This should fix your XP issue, since it contains the latest XP-compatible drivers. If not, your only option will probably be Windows 8 (or Windows 7).

With regard to installing Windows 8, Boot Camp 5 brings full Windows 8 support.

Boot into Windows and insert Leopard DVD, you will see the Boot Camp drivers installer on the disk :-)


How to use the camera of an iPad connected to a Mac as a video camera? Is there a way to use the back camera of an iPad Mini as a video camera, so that I can use it from Screenflow as an input video device ?

I'm not aware of any software the directly captures the video from the camera, but like others have suggested you can capture the screen, which also works when the camera app is open, thus getting the camera video. After doing some research, it seems that you can record the screen right through Screenflow. Check out more about Screenflow screen recording here.

The next option, which is free, is to use the built in QuickTime application to record the screen of the iPhone. This can be done by

Open QuickTime
File -> New Movie Recording
Next to the record button, click the down arrow to the right
Select iPad Mini
Open the camera app and press record in QuickTime

The downside to these two options are that you won't get the native resolution from the camera, instead it is being downscaled to fit the screen size. For both Screenflow and QuickTime, you must plug in your phone, but this will provide better quality screen recording than doing it over WiFi. Best of luck!

This app works well: http://www.ipeekcam.com/

Notes:
1. You must use www in the url.
2. You may need to restart your router to get it to work (that's what I needed to do).
3. Free version has limited features (but works well).
4. Use /videoView to view the video without other info on the page.


How to re-download Yosemite for creating second partition? I have a paid Apple Developer account, and want to create a Beta-Partition with Yosemite.

I thought the way is pretty straight forward:

Downloading Yosemite
Install it
Choose second partition

But I cannot even download it from the App Store. I am on OS X 10.10.2 and want to try 10.10.3.

How can I create a Beta Partition after already having 10.10.2 installed?

If I boot in recovery mode and re-download Yosemite, will it delete my hard drive? Can I re-download and then choose my second partition?

When you go to the purchases-tab OS X Yosemite should show up with a Download button. When you click it it asks you if you want to re-download it event though it is installed. (Downloading from the purchases tab is different from downloading from the product page I believe.)

This is another scenario that illustrates why creating USB install media is a good idea, as opposed to simply downloading and running the installer. Link to instructions for creating a USB installer here.


How do I get my late-2012 MacBook Pro to work with my Seiki 39 inch 4k monitor? I've tried quite a few settings and haven't been able to get it to display anything better than 3840*2160 14hz, while I've ready about quite a few people that have their MacBook Pros working with the Seiki 4K pretty easily.

So I ask: what exactly are your settings with yours or how do I get mine to work?

Using a Belkin Thunderbolt-HDMI adapter (and have tried plain HDMI as well), have SwitchResX installed (but haven't gotten 3840*2160-30HZ to be accepted by the computer) with an Intel HD 4000 graphics card.

You will need an active adapter that converts the DisplayPort 1.1 signal coming from your Thunderbolt port to an HDMI 1.4 Signal. The UltraAV Mini DisplayPort 1.1 to HDMI 1.4 Active Adapter for example. The regular (passive) adapters will not give you the HDMI 1.4 that is required for your resolution.

Also, make sure your HDMI cable is High Speed certified (sometimes it's called a Category 2 cable), and that you use the right resolution, refresh rate and color depth.

HDMI resolutions

HDMI Standard    1.3a                 1.4                   2.0
HDMI cable       Standard/Cat1        HighSpeed/Cat2        HighSpeed/Cat2
Resolution       2880x576  2560x1600  3840x2160  4096x2160  4096x2160
Max Refresh Rate 50 Hz     75 Hz      30 Hz      24 Hz      60 Hz
Max Color Depth  48 bpp    30 bpp     36 bpp     48 bpp     30 bpp
                                      ^

Mind the maximum color depth, although 24 bits per pixel should suffice for most uses. On the Mac, 24 bit is sometimes called "millions of colors".

Word on the street is:  You need a Haswell Chip Mac to push 4K resolution


OSX Launch Daemon for Periodic Screenshots I'm trying to figure out how to create a daemon that will take screenshots every 5 minutes on OSX.

The daemon with launchctl seems to run under a separate session so the screenshots I'm getting right now are just of my blank home screen rather than my actual current session screen.

Currently I have a screencapture script:

#!/bin/bash

screencapture ~/Desktop/$(date +%y%m%d%H%M%S).png

And a plist file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
        <dict>
                <key>Label</key>
                <string>com.startup</string>
                <key>Program</key>
                <string>path_to_script/screenshots.sh</string>
                <key>StartInterval</key>
                <integer>15</integer>
        </dict>
</plist>

In the comments to the question you say "But just want it to track what I'm spending my time doing".
Interpreting your underlying question as being how to track application usage, I will risk being downvoted for not answering your question as in its title.
I think that a large collection of screenshots is not the best way to track what you are doing. Certainly further analysis will be complex.
To track application usage, I use Keyboard Maestro with a one action macro.

This creates a CSV file with three fields: Date, Time and Application name.
That will provide application usage in a form which is amenable to further analysis.

A simpler way to do this is to use cron - Automate running a script using crontab on macOS.
Also, the screencapture command has timer support:
screencapture -T 600 timedshot.jpg

(The above command will take a screenshot every 10 minutes, i.e. 600 seconds).


Force contacts to sync with iCloud right now I just updated a contact's phone number in the Mac Contacts app.  Now I want to call them on my iPhone (4S), but my iPhone does not have the new number.  Both the Mac and the iPhone are configured to sync to my iCloud account.  How do I force them to sync now, one after the other, so I can make this call?

I assume it's a little late for your phone call, but for anyone else with this problem you can force both the OS X and iOS Contacts apps to sync with different methods.

OS X
Close (and reopen?) the Contacts app.

iOS (8)
Touch Groups on the top left, then drag down until the spinner at the top fills up.

You can also try to click the circle / arrow thing in the upper left corner in the Contacts app.


Download iPhoto for Yosemite? How can I download the last iPhoto version for Yosemite?

Looks like any links are invalid now that Photos is out.

And upgrading a pre-Yosemite version does not work. There is an update button but it does not do anything but disable itself when clicked.

Have you purchased the iPhoto? If yes, you should see it in App Store > Purchases tab.

EDIT: The problem was: Clicking on "Update" button didn't update application.

Solution: Delete and redownload application.

Downloading from "Purchases" works for me (July 2015)


Settings: Tap to Click? My computer's battery was getting too old so I sent my macbook to an unofficial A/S center. After a week, I got my macbook back and my trackpad felt a bit wrong. It was moving and clicking like it was supposed to, but it wasn't making any of those satisfying 'click!' sound. In the settings>trackpad>point&click section, "Tap to Click" isn't even on. What do I do?

Go to Settings > Trackpad > Point & Click and than enable "Tap to Click" and disable "Silent Clicking".


Word problem with Adobe Garamond Pro I'm having a mysterious problem with Word (version 16.40) and the Adobe Garamond Pro font: Four variants of the font are installed (regular, italic, bold, and bold italic), but if I select regular, Word instead uses bold. It's as if the program can't see the regular (and regular italic) styles, except that Word itself lists all four styles in the font menu and displays the name of the font using the regular variant. It's just in the text that it's misbehaving.
No other app seems to have this problem, and Font Book reports no problems with the font. This behavior appeared only recently, as it was noticed first today in a file that uses the font and was last edited without problem on Aug 3.
The same problem appears with Adobe Caslon Pro.
I've tried clearing the system font caches and Word's font cache. I've tried disabling and re-enabling the font. I've restored a previous version of Word from Time Machine. None of these has had any effect. Other similar fonts work fine, for example, Garamond Premier Pro.
I have several files very carefully formatted using Adobe Garamond Pro, so I'm not eager to change the font to something that's working properly, then have to redo the formatting. Has anyone seen a problem like this and found a solution?
Edited to add: This is under macOS 10.15.5.
Added 8/13/20: I've now tested with a new account, but it's not revealing much, at least to me. In a brand new account, the first time I run Word the fonts are just fine. If I quit and reenter Word, the problem reappears — Adobe Garamond Pro appears only in bold and bold italic.
Another curious thing: The font menu that appears under Format->Font (rather than the one that appears in the ribbon) shows "Adobe Garamond Pro" as a choice the first time Word is run, but after that shows "Adobe Garamond Pro Bold" instead. It also, from the second time on, has a number of font names appearing in all upper case.
If I had to guess, the first time it's run Word reads in all the font data from the system correctly. When quit (or sometime before that) it writes that data to disk, but when it reads that data in subsequently, something goes wrong. However, I haven't been able to find where that info is being written, if that's what's actually happening. It feels like I'm trying to debug MS's app for them...

It's fixed. The culprit appears to have been Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and was fixed with a recent update (version 2020.12.20043). You may have to quit Word and restart it, you possibly have to run Reader once before the fonts work again.
Not my observation, but taken from a discussion at a Microsoft board. Thanks to H. Tomás Gómez-Arostegui for pointing me to his thread there.

I have Word v 16.16 and I don't see this issue on Mojave. Adobe Caslon Pro and Adobe Garamond Pro both work as expected. I can select Regular and Bold variants.
Word does treat fonts in its own special way, of course.
Presumably this is a new behaviour that didn't used to happen? I would test the behaviour with an existing document in a new user account. If the fonts behave there, then you know it's some issue in your user Library. Go back to the original account, and test removing things, such as Word's preference files, application caches, etc.


How do I sync two folders in OS X Lion? I have some files and folders on a USB drive connected to my iMac...I would like to sync them with a folder on my iMac...how do I do that?

Is there built-in functionality in Lion that allows me to do that, or do I have to use a 3rd party solution?

arRsync is a free OS X GUI to the rsync command line utility. It will get you started on the path to rsync enlightenment. You can save common sync operations to recall them at a later time for easy rsync. And it supports the common rsync use case scenarios: push A to B but leave stuff that's in B but not A in place, push A to B and delete stuff that's in B but not in A, make A and B look the same (with a conflict report).

Dropbox is the answer. Simple. Multi-platform. Free.

Give it a go!


Is installing Mavericks on Hackintosh legal? As we all know Mac OS X Mavericks is now free of charge officially! Does this mean that it is now legal to use Mavericks on non-Apple hardware?

It is not in accordance with Apple's license to run OS X on a non-Apple hardware as per Apple's license agreement for OS X Mavericks. Since this question is not about a preinstalled version of OS X (which is only on new Macs), the Mac App Store License section is applicable, along with the Other Use Restrictions section that is common for both kinds of installations. The license agreement states (emphasis mine):

  2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
  B. Mac App Store License. If you obtained a license for the Apple Software from the Mac App Store, then subject to the terms and conditions of this License and as permitted by the Mac App Store Usage Rules set forth in the App Store Terms and Conditions (http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ww/) (“Usage Rules”), you are granted a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive license:
  (i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running OS X Mountain Lion, OS X Lion or OS X Snow Leopard (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;

  ...
  H. Other Use Restrictions. The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so.

See the SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR OS X MAVERICKS PDF for more details. You can also get to this agreement by going to the Software License Agreements page, then navigating to Operating System Software Tools and Server, and choosing OS X (Mavericks).
As an additional point, even though OS X Mavericks is free for Apple Mac users, it's only because Apple has changed how it accrues revenue from Mac hardware sales by adopting the subscription model (which has been in use for iOS devices for longer), wherein Apple defers accruing a portion of the revenue from Mac sales for providing software updates in the future (including free apps and such). Apple has defined this deferral as two years for iOS devices and four years for Macs. This is the only way for Apple to adhere to accounting laws in the U.S. Searching for "apple subscription accounting" on the web would yield many results on this topic.

Whether using Apple's software in violation of Apple's license is illegal is a question with potentially different answers in different legal jurisdictions.

Yes, It is legal.
Apple's EULA says not, but their license agreement is in violation of the Sherman Anti-trust act, voiding their end-user agreement (in reference to the DMCA). Nothing is at loss for Apple. Go ahead and install the software.


How do I get Xcode 4.1 running under Snow Leopard? I'm trying to upgrade to xcode 4.1, but I it's not working as I expect. I am a registered iOS developer, so I downloaded the (huge) installer. When I double click, it appears to launch, but then it stalls -- nothing happens. There's no installer window with buttons to click, etc. I'm sure there's a better way to do the installation from the terminal and see what's really happening. What do I try next?

Also, I'm wondering if anyone has made this work with OSX 10.6.8 yet, as there were some descriptions of the installer crashing on the dev forums. No answers there as of yesterday.

Update: tried so far--
 Note: This is the correct version of xcode 4.1 for 10.6 (snow leopard) Not the one from the mac store, which is only for 10.7.

I removed the previous version of xcode (was 3.2.5) using /Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools --mode=all.
Looking at the syslog, I see a couple of errors that might be causing trouble: Firstly, when I shut down last night it shows Macintosh DirectoryService[11]: BUG in libdispatch: 10K549 - 1960 - 0x10004004. Secondly, this is showing up repeatedly: Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.SystemStarter): Failed to count the number of files in "/System/Library/StartupItems": No such file or directory
When I tried the installer again, the syslog reported the above no such file or directory several times, then Macintosh com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[93] (com.apple.coreservices.uiagent[230]): Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault and a crash report.

Perhaps something is corrupted in my /System/Library files that is causing it to choke. Any other ideas on suggestions on how to repair this?

Update 2: I never managed to install xcode 4 on my macBook. The root of the problem seems to be that this was one of the earliest models of macBook to use the Intel processor. And XCode 4 doesn't seem to run well on this processor. Someone may have found a work-around by now, but I ended up with a newer computer: late 2009 MacBook Air running Snow Leopard. No problems with xcode 4 installation.

Crash Report stuff: (hopefully the useful bits...)

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000000281e9000
Crashed Thread:  2

Thread 2 Crashed:
0   libSystem.B.dylib               0x96032401 sha1_block_asm_data_order + 29

Thread 2 crashed with X86 Thread State (32-bit):
  eax: 0xb02258a0  ebx: 0x93e07a69  ecx: 0x281e9000  edx: 0xb4148629
  edi: 0x85121bec  esi: 0xa1f8b822  ebp: 0xd7deffcd  esp: 0xb02257c0
   ss: 0x0000001f  efl: 0x00010286  eip: 0x96032401   cs: 0x00000017
   ds: 0x0000001f   es: 0x0000001f   fs: 0x0000001f   gs: 0x00000037
  cr2: 0x281e9000

Followed by a long list of addresses that all refer to various files in either /System/Library/Frameworks or /usr/lib/. Several of them have ???(???) in the line.

The last line is:
`0xffff0000 - 0xffff1fff  libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <2DCD13E3-1BD1-6F25-119A-3863A3848B90> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib`

I'd use Xcode 4.2, as it's the last supported version of Xcode on Snow Leopard.  It can still be downloaded from developer.apple.com.

I'm using version 3.2.6 (1761) with no problems. Might be an option for you.
https://developer.apple.com/devcenter/download.action?path=/Developer_Tools/xcode_3.2.6_and_ios_sdk_4.3__final/xcode_3.2.6_and_ios_sdk_4.3.dmg


How can I tell what's being backed up by Time Machine? Sometimes, when Time Machine starts a new backup, I see that it'll be several GB of data. I then wonder: What did I save that was so large? Is it perhaps backing up unnecessary data, that I should exclude in the future?

As a Mac developer, I understand that there must be some kind of database that Time Machine maintains in order to know what files need to be backed up. I like to have access to that so that I can stop a large backup process and then check the database for the pending files, and decide whether I want to take further actions.

I am so far unable to find out where the information is stored.

I checked the tmutil tool, but that doesn't seem to offer an option for listing the pending files, either.

I understand that I can use tmutil compare after a backup to see what was backed up, but I like to instead see the pending files in the queue.

The way the backup works is that it does a large base image of EVERYTHING and then each new backup just backs up changes.

However - If you perform a touch command, or you move files or interact with them in anyway, this can cause it to flag as being a change, and it will back it up again.


Apple Mail shows plain text instead of HTML email I have a gmail account setup as IMAP in Apple Mail and recently some new emails coming through have displayed the plain text version instead of HTML. If I check the same email through gmail.com it shows the HTML fine but back in Mail I can't even change it to HTML under View -> Message -> Next Alternative.

This solution did not work for me:
defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool FALSE

I'm running Apple Mail 5.2 on Mac OS 10.7.3

I have just found that the same email message will show HTML when viewed in the All Mail Folder but not when viewed in the Inbox.

I opened ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist in Xcode and searched for PreferPlainText.  It seems to want either YES or NO as a value.

I set it to NO and saved, then relaunched Mail.app.

HTML (Rich Text) mail is back.

I have a solution for this but not a reason on why it happens.
To solve the problem, you must delete the ".OfflineCache" folder found in "User/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-{youremail}/".

Note the folder is hidden (even Library is hidden), so you'll need to use this terminal command to show hidden files:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

You'll need to restart the Finder to make the command work, by the way.


What does it take to get FaceBook to stop pushing notifications to my iPhone? I don't want FaceBook to put any notifications on my iPhone's home screen for anything, ever.

I've gone into the iPhone's "settings" app and turned off all  notifications for FaceBook.

I've gone into the settings within the FB app itself and turned off all push notifications.

But I still get notifications.

What more do they want from me?

If there is something FaceBook is good at, it's in bothering it's users :)
So make sure you've unchecked those items:

Make sure you've switched the Notification Center-slider to off and the Alert Style to none in such a way FaceBook is listed in the Not In Notification Center.

And if you go to Settings < FaceBook, make sure you're Push Notifications are all switched off.

Go onto the persons page that u want to block you notifications from then click "friends"/"add frien" and press notifications and when u press it,it will get rid of a tick on the right hand side! If in stead a tick appears. press it again to stop the notifications! hope this answer helped! thanks! :)


How do I mount ejected external USB flash storage? Suppose that we connect our flash USB drive to a MacBook, then eject this storage from Finder sidebar. Now I want to remount this storage without unplugging and replugging it into the computer, but the disk is no longer listed with diskutil list command.

The problem you describe was initially the intention for me to write an app that allows you to manage your drives from the menu bar. It is called Mountain and you can get it here.

Hope you enjoy it!!

UPDATE: The only way to re-mount ejected external USB flash drives is to unload and load the USB mass storage kernel extension:

kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext

Followed by:

kextload /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext

Be aware that this will re-mount ALL external USB drives..

Disk Utility

No need for the commandline here. Open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility), select your drive and click Mount.

image comes from wikipedia


Can I log employees' working hours through Bonjour availability? We have a small office network with a Mac server, and all employees have their own Mac laptop they take home at the end of the day.

I am looking for a way to automatically log the employees' time at the office. Theoretically, it should be possible to periodically check for other auto-discovered Bonjour hosts on the network and deduce their time at the office from there.

Now my question is, is there an app or other readily available solution for that?

EDIT:

I should note that the users don't actually log in to the network nor log out. Their computers are not part of an Open Directory. I also really don't want to install or access anything on their computer directly.

I want to log their presence purely based on listening for their network presence. I also don't want to manually manage a list of computers, computers should be tracked automatically once they are discovered on the network.

At the end of the week/month I want to be able to get a list of all connected computer names during that period, with the time periods they were connected. Some graphical representation similar to day-view in iCal would be perfect, but if I have this information textual I could always implement that part myself.

EDIT 2:

I've been doing some research myself and found out about the dns-sd tool. For example:

dns-sd -B _afpovertcp._tcp local

lists all computers with AFP enabled.

However, two problems:

the dns-sd utility from the command-line is not well suited for scripts, the man page recommends against it, the command also doesn't terminate itself
The above example does not work when AFP file sharing is disabled

It looks like you want something like NetSpy or ActyMac to monitor employee activity. It will handle what you want and more, although I'm not sure I would suggest the orwelian approach to employee management.

You may want to look into a pure network monitoring tool like Paessler.

The easiest solution would be for you to just monitor the server log on your OS X server for the time the user logs-in and logs out. A simple script that tracks the time and totals them into a spreadsheet using a nightly cron job.

You can also just use the last command as seen in the screenshot aslong as the file has not be cleared.

You may want to try other basic unix system logging scripts.

You may want to look into a network monitoring tool like Motadata


How do I stop my iPad from wrongly auto correcting my name? When I set up my iPad last year I entered my name correctly. The iPad wrongly autocorrected it to Alien. Now anyone who gets an email from me is informed its from Alien. Irritating. I don't want to turn off autocorrect though as its useful.

I'm not sure where you entered your name incorrectly.

If your name is entered incorrectly as a contact then:

Click on Contacts
Scroll down until you see 'Alien'
Click on the contact
Click Edit
Change the name

If you entered your name incorrectly only in your email account settings:

Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars
In the ACCOUNTS section, click on the account that has the incorrect information (e.g. Gmail)
Click on Account
Change the Name associated with that email account.

Here's how to change your name:

Open the Contacts app
Scroll to your name
Click edit
Edit your name

This should fix your autocorrect issue.


Re-added certificate leads to unknown authority Messing around with Keychain Access on macOS Sierra, it seems like I have accidentally deleted trusted root certificates in Keychain Access.

What I did was opening a *.p7s file to add a S/MIME certificate. This threw an error:

An error occurred. Unable to import the certificate.
Error: -26276

, but still the certificate ended up being listed in Keychain Access. Next, opening Mail and creating a new Email I was able to use the certificate. I decided to delete the certificate from the Keychain and re-add it in order to resolve the error. Therefore I deleted all entries containing the name of the trusted source I have used for my certificate (I believe).
Now adding the same certificate again, still an error appears but the then listed entry says: This certificate was signed by an unknown authority, and Mail doesn't let me use it anymore...
I have also created and added a new certificate with the same authority leading to the same result.

Is it even possible I have deleted the default trusted root certificates from inside Keychain Access, or why else can I not use the certificate anymore? Is there a way to reset or fix it?

If you have in fact deleted a trusted root certificate, then you must

add it again
trust it again

In order to trust the certificate, open it by double-clicking on it in the keychain, open the Trust section, then set When using this certificate: Always trust.

In order to make Mail accept the newly trusted certificate, it may be necessary to quit and re-start Mail.

If all fails, you could re-install your macOS over the existing installation which will most probably restore all pre-installed root certificates again.

#when in doubt, delete#

Step 1: Deep Breath.
Step 2: Open Keychain. You should have two sets of tabs, one at top, one at bottom. Select "LOGIN" on top and "CERTIFICATE" on the bottom.
Step 3: Sort this by last modified. It should be one or two lines, I want you to right click, services > Revoke. If you do not see a function like that in services, then head on over to GPGTOOLS DOT ORG. The forum limits my amount of links, sorry. Download GPG Suite Beta 3, its on the home page. Right click > Services > Revoke them. If you did it through Comodo previously, go to the email and click the revoke button there and enter the password to revoke it.
Step 4: After revoking, delete them. Right click and delete. It will give you prompts about it. Again, it should only be one or two lines, there may be other line items right above and below that may have your email, don't to those. Do it by Date.
Step 5: After you delete them from the keychain. Delete the .P7S files in the directory structure where you downloaded them and send them to the trashcan. Ok, everything should be cleared out. Just in case, select "My Certificates" now instead of "Certificates" and make sure you don't see it duplicated there and its officially gone.
Step 6: Head to COMODO website and start the process here. USE SAFARI on this one, dont use firefox like it says. I have included the link below here. Sign up for the free one, its super easy.

https://www.comodo.com/home/email-security/free-email-certificate.php
Step 7: After downloading. Close that GPG software if you have it open. You will still get the error, just keep moving on though. Double click the .PZS file you see there. A screen will come up asking where to put it and will offer a drop box to select. Choose "LOGIN" and click okay.
Step 8: Open Keychain, if it isnt open after that import. Select the LOGIN keychain and "Certificates" on the bottom and you should see it there in the list. It should have a expander and it will expand with a key below it. Double click the key, not the certificate. If you click the certificate, the wrong dialog box will open.

Step 9: Now you will see another diologue box come up. Select the "Access Control" Tab at the top. Then click the "+" button and search for "MAIL" and select the program. Close the window, not keychain. Then close APPLE MAIL completely, then reopen it again. Compose a message and you should see the blue lock on the right, make sure the email is the correct one.

-Step 10: If you still don't see the encryption in Apple mail, go back to keychain and click the "login" keychain at the top and "KEY" category at the bottom. There won't be a modified date next to it but check to see if you have the "Key from Secure Comodo Com" in there, one should be private the other shared.

-Step 11: If its not there and still not working, in keychain, select "Certificates" again and right click on the one you just imported. Right click, select, NEW IDENTITY PREFERENCE, and type your email exactly how you have it in mail, select the certificate below that name. Close apple mail, reopen it and it should now work. If it didnt, you missed deleting something.


What are the practical differences between Bash and Zsh? With the news that Catalina will default to Zsh instead of Bash, I'm finding lots of results telling me about the switch, and that it may cause problems with shell scripts, but I'm not familiar enough with Zsh to know what those problems might be.

My shell scripts are really not that complicated, but I've only ever used Bash on macOS and Linux - zero experience with Zsh. Can anyone provide a simple practical comparison, or specific stumbling blocks I will need to know, so that I can start working towards being ready for the new shell when Catalina is released?

First, some important things:

Bash isn't going away. If you're already using bash, nothing will change for you. All that changes is that zsh will be the default login shell for new accounts, and even then, you can select bash instead.
Scripts are not affected. What changes is the shell for interactive use, i.e. the shell in terminals (and also a few other things that use the login shell, such as crontabs). If you have a script in a file with execution permissions, starting with a shebang line such as #!/bin/bash or #!/bin/sh or #!/usr/bin/env bash, it'll keep working exactly as before.
Zsh's syntax is not completely compatible with bash, but it's close. A lot of code will keep working, for example typical aliases and functions. The main differences are in interactive configuration features.

Now, assuming you're considering switching to zsh, which has been a possibility for years, here are the main differences you'll encounter. This is not an exhaustive list!

Main differences for interactive use

Configuration files: bash reads (mainly) .bashrc in non-login interactive shells (but macOS starts a login shell in terminals by default), .profile or .bash_profile in login shells, and .inputrc. Zsh reads (mainly) .zshrc (in all interactive shells) and .zprofile (in login shells). This means that none of your bash customizations will apply: you'll need to port them over. You can't just copy the files because many things will need tweaking.

Key bindings use completely different syntax. Bash uses .inputrc and the bind builtin to bind keys to readline commands. Zsh uses the bindkey builtin to bind keys to zle widgets. Most readline commands have a zsh equivalent, but it isn't always a perfect equivalence.

Speaking of key bindings, if you use Vi(m) as your in-terminal editor but not as your command line mode in the shell, you'll notice zsh defaults to vi editing mode if EDITOR or VISUAL is set to vi or vim. bindkey -e switches to emacs mode.

Prompt: bash sets the prompt (mainly) from PS1 which contains backslash escapes. Zsh sets the prompt mainly from PS1 which contains percent escapes. The functionality of bash's PROMPT_COMMAND is available in zsh via the precmd and preexec hook functions. Zsh has more convenience mechanisms to build fancy prompts including a prompt theme mechanism.

The basic command line history mechanisms (navigation with Up/Down, search with Ctrl+R, history expansion with !! and friends, last argument recall with Alt+. or $_) work in the same way, but there are a lot of differences in the details, too many to list here. You can copy your .bash_history to .zsh_history if you haven't changed a shell option that changes the file format.

Completion: both shells default to a basic completion mode that mostly completes command and file names, and switch to a fancy mode by including bash_completion on bash or by running compinit in zsh. You'll find some commands that bash handles better and some that zsh handles better. Zsh is usually more precise, but sometimes gives up where bash does something that isn't correct but is sensible. To specify possible completions for a command, zsh has three mechanisms:

The “old” completion mechanism with compctl which you can forget about.
The “new” completion mechanism with compadd and lots of functions that begin with underscore and a powerful but complex user configuration mechanism.
An emulation to support bash completion functions which you can enable by running bashcompinit. The emulation isn't 100% perfect but it usually works.

Many of bash's shopt settings have a corresponding setopt in zsh.

Zsh doesn't treat # as a comment start on the command line by default, only in scripts (including .zshrc and such). To enable interactive comments, run setopt interactive_comments.

Main differences for scripting

(and for power users on the command line of course)

In bash, $foo takes the value of foo, splits it at whitespace characters, and for each whitespace-separated part, if it contains wildcard characters and matches an existing file, replaces the pattern by the list of matches. To just get the value of foo, you need "$foo". The same applies to command substitution $(foo). In zsh, $foo is the value of foo and $(foo) is the output of foo minus its final newlines, with two exceptions. If a word becomes empty due to expanding empty unquoted variables, it's removed (e.g. a=; b=; printf "%s\n" one "$a$b" three $a$b five prints one, an empty line, three, five). The result of an unquoted command substitution is split at whitespace but the pieces don't undergo wildcard matching.

Bash arrays are indexed from 0 to (length-1). Zsh arrays are indexed from 1 to length. With a=(one two three), in bash, ${a[1]} is two, but in zsh, it's one. In bash, if you just reference an array variable without braces, you get the first element, e.g. $a is one and $a[1] is one[1]. In zsh, $a expands to the list of non-empty elements, and $a[1] expands to the first element. Similarly, in bash, the length of an array is ${#a}; this also works in zsh but you can write it more simply as $#a. You can make 0-indexing the default with setopt ksh_arrays; this also turns on the requirement to use braces to refer to an array element.

Bash has extra wildcard patterns such as @(foo|bar) to match foo or bar, which are only enabled with shopt -s extglob. In zsh, you can enable these patterns with setopt ksh_glob, but there's also a simpler-to-type native syntax such as (foo|bar), some of which requires setopt extended_glob (do put that in your .zshrc, and it's on by default in completion functions). **/ for recursive directory traversal is always enabled in zsh.

In bash, by default, if a wildcard pattern doesn't match any file, it's left unchanged. In zsh, by default, you'll get an error, which is usually the safest setting. If you want to pass a wildcard parameter to a command, use quotes. You can switch to the bash behavior with setopt no_nomatch. You can make non-matching wildcard patterns expand to an empty list instead with setopt null_glob.

In bash, the right-hand side of a pipeline runs in a subshell. In zsh, it runs in the parent shell, so you can write things like somecommand | read output.

Some nice zsh features

Here are a few nice zsh features that bash doesn't have (at least not without some serious elbow grease). Once again, this is just a selection of the ones I consider the most useful.

Glob qualifiers allow matching files based on metadata such as their time stamp, their size, etc. They also allow tweaking the output. The syntax is rather cryptic, but it's extremely convenient. Here are a few examples:

foo*(.): only regular files matching foo* and symbolic links to regular files, not directories and other special files.
foo*(*.): only executable regular files matching foo*.
foo*(-.): only regular files matching foo*, not symbolic links and other special files.
foo*(-@): only dangling symbolic links matching foo*.
foo*(om): the files matching foo*, sorted by last modification date, most recent first. Note that if you pass this to ls, it'll do its own sorting. This is especially useful in…
foo*(om[1,10]): the 10 most recent files matching foo*, most recent first.
foo*(Lm+1): files matching foo* whose size is at least 1MB.
foo*(N): same as foo*, but if this doesn't match any file, produce an empty list regardless of the setting of the null_glob option (see above).
*(D): match all files including dot files (except . and ..).
foo/bar/*(:t) (using a history modifier): the files in foo/bar, but with only the base name of the file. E.g. if there is a foo/bar/qux.txt, it's expanded as qux.txt.
foo/bar/*(.:r): take regular files under foo/bar and remove the extension. E.g. foo/bar/qux.txt is expanded as foo/bar/qux.
foo*.odt(e\''REPLY=$REPLY:r.pdf'\'): take the list of files matching foo*.odt, and replace .odt by .pdf (regardless of whether the PDF file exists).

Here are a few useful zsh-specific wildcard patterns.

foo*.txt~foobar*: all .txt files whose name starts with foo but not foobar.
image<->.jpg(n): all .jpg files whose base name is image followed by a number, e.g. image3.jpg and image22.jpg but not image-backup.jpg. The glob qualifier (n) causes the files to be listed in numerical order, i.e. image9.jpg comes before image10.jpg (you can make this the default even without -n with setopt numeric_glob_sort).

To mass-rename files, zsh provides a very convenient tool: the zmv function. Suggested for your .zshrc:

autoload zmv
alias zcp='zmv -C' zln='zmv -L'

Example:

zmv '(*).jpeg' '$1.jpg'
zmv '(*)-backup.(*)' 'backups/$1.$2'

Bash has a few ways to apply transformations when taking the value of a variable. Zsh has some of the same and many more.

Zsh has a number of little convenient features to change directories. Turn on setopt auto_cd to change to a directory when you type its name without having to type cd (bash also has this nowadays). You can use the two-argument form to cd to change to a directory whose name is close to the current directory. For example, if you're in /some/where/foo-old/deeply/nested/inside and you want to go to /some/where/foo-new/deeply/nested/inside, just type cd old new.

To assign a value to a variable, you of course write VARIABLE=VALUE. To edit the value of a variable interactively, just run vared VARIABLE.

Final advice

Zsh comes with a configuration interface that supports a few of the most common settings, including canned recipes for things like case-insensitive completion. To (re)run this interface (the first line is not needed if you're using a configuration file that was edited by zsh-newuser-install):

autoload -U zsh-newuser-install
zsh-newuser-install

Out of the box, with no configuration file at all, many of zsh's useful features are disabled for backward compatibility with 1990's versions. zsh-newuser-install suggests some recommended features to turn on.

There are many zsh configuration frameworks on the web (many of them are on Github). They can be a convenient way to get started with some powerful features. The flip side of the coin is they often lock you in doing things the way the author does, so sometimes they'll prevent you from doing things the way you want. Use them at your own risk.

The zsh manual has a lot of information, but it's often written in a way that's terse and hard to follow, and has few examples. Don't hesitate to search for explanations and examples online: if you only use the part of zsh that's easy to understand in the manual, you'll miss out. Two good resources are the zsh-users mailing list and Unix Stack Exchange.
An extensive collection of articles on switching to zsh on the mac can be found on scriptingosx.com and a useful Ruby script to bring your command history with you, can be found on Github.

In the spirit of keeping things simple...

  Can anyone provide a simple practical comparison, or specific stumbling blocks I will need to know, so that I can start working towards being ready for the new shell when Catalina is released?

If you're thinking using the new default shell consider:

If you want to give Zsh a whirl and feel some of the differences without changing shell settings on your machine you might try Powerline10k in a Docker container and see if it is your cup of tea.
If you don't need all the bells and whistles and use Bash for just basic scripts it's rather easy to set your shell as others here have explained. And if you decide you want to use features in Bash 5 it's a fairly trivial upgrade for macOS.
If you want to improve the portability of your scripts so they're more likely to function as expected in both shells, test them for POSIX-compliance and remove any "bashisms". I've used ShellCheck for this and it works quite well for less complicated scripts.

While no particular path is clear these three approaches should give you enough confidence to make an informed decision without over engineering the problem or solution space.


Can I type in inverse case, lIKE tHIS, with caps lock on? Every so often, I have to type some text consisting mostly of uppercase letters, but with an occasional lowercase letter—essentially, sentence case, but inverted. On Windows, I would simply have caps lock on the entire time, and pressing Shift would give me a lowercase letter. On OS X, however, if caps lock is on, I only get uppercase letters, whether Shift is pressed or not.

So, I can either hold down Shift the entire time I'm typing, letting go of it briefly to type a lowercase letter, or press Caps Lock twice for each lowercase letter I type. Neither works as well as what Windows does.

Is there a way to get Caps Lock to behave as it does on Windows, where pressing Shift while caps lock is on produces lowercase letters?

I am running 10.6.

See Update below...
It seems (only) the input source "French - Numerical" will behave like Window Caps Lock (with iNVERSE sHIFT):

Found that info here.
But note that this will come with a rather unusual keyboard layout (at least for me).

Update: Using Ukelele this can be applied to all keyboard layouts:
Thanks Daniel for pointing the right direction.
Open Ukelele and save your (current) layout to a file (e.g. by "New from current input source" and "Save"):

Open the .xml file in a text editor and find the mapIndex that you want to use for the combination ⇧ + ⇪ (shift + caps-lock). For German I used mapIndex="0". Insert this line:
<modifier keys="shift caps"/>

Find all other occurrences of this combination and comment them out (or delete the lines). Again for German it's:
<keyMapSelect mapIndex="1">
<modifier keys="anyShift"/>
<modifier keys="shift rightShift? caps? rightOption? rightControl"/>
<modifier keys="shift rightShift? caps? rightOption rightControl?"/>
<!--<modifier keys="shift rightShift? caps rightOption? rightControl?"/> -->
    </keyMapSelect>

Re-open the modified file with Ukelele.
Here is a comparison of the "German" layout before and after the modification:

Follow the instructions in Ukelele to create a new input source (Name, ID, installation).
I didn't test the modified file, should work though.

From what I have experienced, it cannot be done in OS X. None of the keyboard reconfiguration utilities I have tried seem to be able to do it either. Sorry. :(


What's the latest iOS that iPhone SEs shipped with? I found a similar question, but it's a few years old, and the answer wasn't definitive. Here's the question:

Did the 64GB iPhone SE ever ship with iOS 10 installed?

I need an iOS 9 device (for access to some old apps) since my iPhone 6 got caught in an Activation Error loop. I was gonna buy a sealed iPhone SE, since those originally shipped with iOS 9.3, but wanna be sure they never left the factory with anything higher, and if they did, how I can tell which is which.

While the iPhone SE originally shipped with iOS 9.3, you'd most likely not find find a recently manufactured one coming pre-installed with iOS 9.3 (or a later version of iOS 9.x).

iPhone SE models was discontinued on March 21, 2017 (16 and 64 GB variants) and September 12, 2018 (32 and 128 GB variants). Either one of these models, which you'd most likely find with a reseller who is still selling them, would most likely come pre-installed with either iOS 10 or later (but still below iOS 13).

If iOS 9.x is what you are looking for to access iOS 9 exclusive apps, here's the list of iOS devices that can't be upgraded past iOS 9.x. Getting access to one of them could serve your purpose:

iPhone 4S (latest operating system: iOS 9.3.6).
iPod Touch 5th generation (latest operating system: iOS 9.3.5).
iPad 2 (latest operating system: iOS 9.3.6 (Wi-Fi + cellular (CDMA)), iOS 9.3.5 (Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + cellular (GSM))).
iPad 3rd generation (latest operating system: iOS 9.3.6 (Wi-Fi + cellular), iOS 9.3.5 (Wi-Fi).
iPad mini (latest operating system: iOS 9.3.6 (Wi-Fi + cellular), iOS 9.3.5 (Wi-Fi).

Source: List of iOS devices

iPhone SE support latest iOS version till now, and it's 13.x is running currently. If you really want an older version you should downgrade by downloading iOS 9 firmware from third party site (https://ipsw.me/ )and install it via iTunes.


Carbon copy cloner to image OS X lion and restore from disk image Is it possible to create an image of my 64gb 2012 Macbook Air using Carbon Copy Cloner so that I can recover from that image (if my Mac does not boot) even if I am not connected to the internet?

The getting started section of the CCC online documentation will get you on your way.

For Carbon Copy Cloner support, please post questions to the Bombich Software Help Desk


Is there a way to encrypt data on iCloud? I currently use Backblaze for online backup. I am thinking of switching to just storing all my documents on my iCloud drive.

With Backblaze, you can set an encryption key. Without this key no one can access your data - not even Backblaze.

I know by default, iCloud does not do this. But is there a 'set-it-and-forget-it` workaround to have files encrypted before they are uploaded?

I don't have anything sensitive in my files. But after all the stories one hears in the media, I would be reluctant to put my files in a place where a rogue Apple employee (or contractor) can just open them up.

If you want set-it-forget-it like BackBlaze, then iCloud is not for you. Your data is safe from a rogue Apple employee, but not safe from a government agency or someone with a legal ability to extract it. When Apple can help you regain access to your iCloud files if you forget your password then they can help a government agency to do that too.

But if you create your own password-encrypted disk image (.sparsebundle file using Disk Utility and encryption in the Finder) then the password is known only to you, and is only stored in RAM on your machine while your disk image is open and mounted; it is destroyed when you unmount and close the encrypted disk image. You can keep copies of that encrypted disk image on your machine or in a cloud service.

If you never store that password in the Keychain iCloud or localitems keychain files, then it will never be uploaded to iCloud. If you store that password in a local-only Keychain file then it is secure but would not necessarily be proof against seizure of your hardware or a malicious remote control.

Regardless of how well you protect the password to your encrypted disk image, you might be forced to decrypt it whilst under arrest. If you 'forget' it, then that may be used against you in court. If you truly forget it, then your data is completely deleted and unrecoverable.

iCloud seemingly already does this by default

iCloud secures your data by encrypting it when it's sent over the Internet, storing it in an encrypted format when kept on server (review the table below for detail), and using secure tokens for authentication. This means that your data is protected from unauthorized access both while it is being transmitted to your devices and when it is stored in the cloud. iCloud uses a minimum of 128-bit AES encryption—the same level of security employed by major financial institutions—and never provides encryption keys to any third parties.
When you access iCloud services using Apple’s built-in apps (for example, Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps on iOS or OS X), authentication is handled using a secure token. Using secure tokens eliminates the need to store your iCloud password on devices and computers. Even if you choose to use a third-party application to access your iCloud data, your username and password are sent over an encrypted SSL connection.

And regarding the privacy:

Apple has a company-wide commitment to your privacy. Our Privacy Policy covers how we collect, use, disclose, transfer and store your information.
In addition to adhering to the Apple Privacy Policy, Apple designs iCloud features with your privacy in mind. For example:

from Apple Support | iCloud security and privacy overview


What did I do wrong - Safari 6.0.5 on 10.8.4 ... has recently taken a turn for the worse. Constant beach-balls, and after an hour's browsing, that damned Safari Web Content is running between 2 and 3GB, between real and virtual. If I leave tabs sit, Safari says it must force reload all pages.

A little memory-freer app helps release some "Inactive Memory," run frequently, but doesn't seem like a real answer.

Have 8 GB RAM in a 2.8GHz MBPro, and lately big page-out numbers. Did the RAM needed to run all this get ahead of me ... or is this all really Safari? Or Flash, which runs at high memory, but not so high as that "Web Content" - which is what? Another name for Flash?

On broadband, we used to say, Disable caches. Maybe not a good idea anymore. Or turning off pre-fetching?

Restarting Safari returns things to normal, for a while. I run a few extensions, not many. Keep machine in good maintenance. Do not have a problem with keeping many apps open. I just wanna surf!

For what it is worth, I generally recommend to people who don't want to update their OS that they use chrome. Apple only updates safari when they update the entire os, so you are better off with a third party solution for a browser.

(Mavericks came out after this question was posted, so this answer is only effective for people looking for an answer to the question now that it has been released.)

Memory leaks are typical of all browsers when visiting lots of pages, not just Safari. This problem is solved by the new memory management system in OS X Mavericks (10.9).

Having lots of inactive memory isn't an issue until paging starts, that's when systems start to not respond. The easiest solution to this is to disable the paging system all together, which isn't an issue on systems with sufficient RAM (4GB+). Here's how:

Turn off the paging system (requires restart):

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

Renable the paging system (requires restart):

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist


What happens if you plug more than one charger in the new MacBook Pro (2016)? Apple's controversial decision to convert all the ports on their 2016 MacBook Pro lineup to USB-C ports contributes to blur the difference between ports that supply power (such as a power adapters) and ports that can power external devices (such as USB keys, mice or other gadgets).

This made me think about the following scenario: you sit at a table where your laptop is plugged in on the right, and don't notice that it is plugged in, so you decide to charge it with a second nearby charger that is laying around (i.e. belonging to someone who lives with you and who recently sat at the same spot).

What would happen then?

Would the computer charge twice as fast, would one of the chargers be dismissed by the system (which one?), or would it generate a surcharge that would destroy the computer?

I couldn't find anything about this online, but since I am always trying to force a USB in the MagSafe charger of my MacBook Air, I think that I could easily end up making this kind of mistake.

Note: My question asks what happens when two chargers are inserted into a MacBook Pro, but I am also wondering what would happend if 3, or 4 chargers were inserted. Although this scenario is unlikely to happen by mistake, it would constitute an obvious vulnerability to an exposed device, i.e. in a public space.

The system will choose the power source that provides the most power, and it will not draw power from the others.
Apple has released a support article (and another one) describing this:

Your MacBook Pro draws power from only one power supply, even if more
than one is attached—so using multiple power supplies will not speed
up charging.

If you connect multiple power supplies to your MacBook
Pro, the one that provides the most power will be used, regardless of
the order in which you connected them.

You should not connect any
power supply that exceeds 100W, as it might damage your Mac.

This person tried it and it lost its ability to charge. Given this Apple support page that Alan Shutko linked in his answer, however, my guess is that this damage would be covered by the warranty.


iMessages - can one disable 'join/leave' messages in group chats? Does anyone know where you can disable the join/leave messages in group chats in iMessages? In low-traffic chats it's utterly annoying to have scrollbacks full of 'xxx joined the chat.'/'yyy left the chat.'

Thanks.

As far as I know this isn't possible, I checked the iPhone, iPad and Mac version but this setting is nowhere to be found.
As for changing it through terminal or fiddling with program files, that will only change the setting on the mac.

Adium is a much better IM client and allows one to toggle viewing the join/leave messages.
(no idea about iPhone client, though).

[


Why doesn't my Mac Pro see my new 4TB SATA drive? I purchased a Seagate ST4000DX001 4TB SATA Hybrid Drive (SSHD) and installed it into my Mac Pro (six core 3.33 GHZ MacPro5,1) in one of the internal SATA drive bays. However, the system didn't see it at all. Disk Utility didn't show the drive for me to format and the SATA Devices section under Apple System Profiler didn't show the drive listed at all.

The drive works because if I put it into a USB3 enclosure then it works, but since the Mac pro only has USB2 it's pointless for me to use it in a USB3 enclosure.

Why doesn't my Mac Pro see my Seagate 4TB SATA SSHD drive?

You've done all that I usually do to troubleshoot this in that you already know to use System Profiler to check the SATA bus for devices.

I would reboot the system and reset the NVRAM twice (keep holding the keys down and you'll hear the chime twice) and then re-check the profiler.

Sadly, if the controller doesn't make that device available - you'll need to use it connected to a non-optimal bus while you work with Seagate and/or Apple tech support to determine at a device driver level what settings need to be tweaked or updated to expose that particular drive to your Mac. Let's hope someone has the same drive and can either confirm or deny for their OS X level that the drive works for them.

reset NVRAM, 4 chimes; hope this helps. Works for me.


Is there any way to prevent an pop-up on any third-party apps on macOS (11.0.1)? After I bought an M1 MacBook and install iCleanmemory which I had used on other macs, I found that whenever the memory reaches a threshold, the pop-up shows up and I am forced to click OK to erase it.
This has not happened in my previous macs and there seems no setting on the app's preferences section to change the behavior. I'm not even sure why this happens, but anyway since it is so tedious to click it I would like to know if there is any way to prevent the pop-up on iCleanmemory, or more broadly, on any apps using system-level setting.

What you're calling "pop-up" are Notifications. They can be controlled for all apps that offer them in the Notifications Preference Pane of System Preferences.


Program for finding duplicate photos? I used to use Visipics and completely loved it, it's simple yet powerful. However it's only for Windows which I have abandoned. Are there any OS X (Lion) programs that do the same? I'm sure there are, am just wondering if there are any that stand out. After taking all the files from multiple computers and putting them on one hard drive to be organized and regrouped I'm sure there are a lot I will find of varying quality. I would prefer free software, since Visipics is free and worked fine, however if there's something outstanding that costs money I'll consider it.

I use photo fixer pro and works well too bad in the past with iphoto there was an auto select photo app now you have to select each one and for me its a pain why well because i have 80,570 photos mixed with videos


What traffic is sent over the build-in VPN connection? Under System Preferences > Network > VPN > Advanced > Options I can choose to "Send all traffic over VPN connection".

Contrariwise, this would mean that if this option is not enabled (which is default) some traffic is treated as if no VPN connection was established: e.g. The IP address when surfing is still the same.

What traffic is (not) sent over VPN when this option is disabled?

This really depends on the routes your VPN server is pushing when you connect. It could push only routes to private networks or it could push a route for the default gateway.

If you're using Windows PPTP VPN, all traffic will be routed through the VPN by default.  Your computer becomes literally a part of your office network just like you were at work.

If you don't want that, going to the advanced TCP/IP properties and disabling Use Default Gateway on Remote Network will change the routing of your internet traffic.  You'll still be able to access your office network, but then internet traffic will go to your network card's default gateway locally (just like you were not connected to the VPN).


Time Machine error - backup disk image could not be created I get this error and was wondering if anyone knew what the issue might be.

It is supposed to be backing up to Time Capsule but not sure if it's ever worked. It's actually not mine but if there was something quick to check, I'd appreciate it.

thx

Try to setup Time Machine from scratch:

Turn TM off

Turn it back on. Select a disk (the Time Capsule should show up ok).

You should get a message that TM is starting in 2 minutes..

If that has problems, can you post here again..

edit 1
was an issue with computer name needing to be set (see in comments)


What ports need to be opened to use the L2TP VPN server on Mountain Lion Server? I am using a Mac mini OS X Mountain Lion Server (10.8.5). My goal is to have the server's own VPN service running over L2TP only.

The Mac mini is behind an AirPort Extreme (4th generation)

AirPort Extreme has:

static IPv4 address
no connection sharing (bridged mode)
Back To My Mac disabled (as for all the Macs and AirPorts on the network)
Internet connection via Ethernet to my ISP's box

ISP's box:

has static public IP address
is the DHCP server with

IP addresses reservations configured for my AirPort Extreme & Mac mini and
private IP addresses from x.x.x.10 up-to x.x.x.50

has NAT/PAT rules for

UDP 500 - ISAKMP/IKE
UDP 4500 - IPsec NAT-Traversal
UDP 1701 - L2TP
ESP/IP 50
AH/IP 51

Mac mini Server:

has static IP address
is the DNS server for the network
is (of course) the VPN server with the configuration as follows:

setup for: L2TP only
VPN hostname: public IP address
Shared secret: dull-8caracter word
Addresses: 10 for L2TP x.x.x.200 up-to x.x.x.209
Name server:
my MacMini private-static IP address + ISP'Box private IP address + google DNS
Routes:
x.x.x.0 255.255.255.0 (my private network) private
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 public

NB: My ISP is NOT blocking any ports.

I am aware of the "advanced" guide provided by Apple.

I have been able to access the server when inside my network (-_-)

Trying to connect from 3G network with iPhone 4 gives

  "L2TP VPN server did not respond"

Trying to connect from 3G OR other ADSL network with Windows8 gives

  "error 789 the L2TP connection attempt failed because the security layer encountered a processing error during initial negociations with the remote computer"

Is this real life?

According to Apple, L2TP is currently inoperative when the VPN server is NATed. Looks like we have to wait for a bug fix, or use PPTP in the mean time despite it's much lower security.

Remember, if you configure PPTP, you need to activate OpenDirectory, and configure users there. Local users CANNOT use PPTP.

References:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5313
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4748

Works with Yosemite (L2TP VPN Server behind a NAT gateway)


What is the size of a typical iPhone backup to iCloud? I currently backup my iPhone and iPad to iTunes. I’m considering switching the backups to iCloud, but I am not ready to purchase one of the additional storage plans.

If my 32 GB iPhone has 3 GB of free space, does the backup to iCloud only backup settings, phone data, etc. which would require far less space? Most of the space used on my phone is my music collection; surely it doesn’t backup all of the music as well, right?

What is the typical size of an iOS backup stored to iCloud?

If you use iCloud Photo Library, then your photos won’t be uploaded to iCloud for backup. The same goes if you use iTunes Match and MUSIC: you music won’t need to be uploaded to iCloud for backup.

If you don’t use those services then yes, your iCloud backup will contain your photos and music. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to restore your device the way it was.

And yet, even though I’m an iTunes Match and iCloud Photo Library user, my fairly barebones iPad takes up 1 GB of storage for backup.

My iPhone has a few more apps, (2 pages’ worth). However under iCloud → Storage, only one app stores over 200 MB (Runkeeper) with everything else taking under 50 MB. The vast majority takes up mere kilobytes. I don’t backup my Health data because this seems to be causing issues. Somehow my iPhone’s backup takes up 2.2 GB.

As far as data consumption, I believe iCloud performs differential backups, because while the initial backup takes a significant amount of time, subsequent backups seem to complete much more quickly.

Here is a list of things that iCloud stores in your iOS Backup:

Purchased music, TV shows, apps, and books
Photos and video in the Camera Roll
Device settings
App data
Home screen and app organization
Messages (iMessage, SMS, and MMS)
Ringtones

iCloud does not back up the songs that you have NOT purchased from iTunes. iTunes purchases should not reflect in the size of your backup.  iCloud stores your purchase history and then re-downloads the files at restore.

Depending on the amount of data stored in your apps, I would estimate that the file size would be roughly 1Gb-2Gb.  Of course that all depends on the number of applications, photos and videos you have.


Mavericks 10.9.5 RAM problem and performance problems Macbook Pro Late 2011, Mavericks 10.9.5 had my RAM consumed up to 2.75 GB (out of 4.00 GB) with no apps running except Finder.
Hard Disk Storage: ~300 GB free out of 500 GB

Creating new, renaming, and/or deleting folders with Finder made it lag and had to load ~1 min before it did the process. This is very disturbing and distracting, even opening a Word document takes ages.

Activity Monitor Screenshot (Only Finder and Activity Monitor running):

I just had my Hard Disk cleaned and Re-Installed Mavericks recently, but there were no issues with previous experience of Mavericks. CPU is 70% idle.

I had exactly this same problem upon upgrading to Mavericks. Unfortunately, you're going to find that 4GB is on the knife's edge of barely being able to run the system at all - note how you already have compressed memory despite not running anything.

Apple needs to be smacked around for this, but unfortunately, it is what it is.

The first thing you need to do is put more memory in - I would go for 16 unless you absolutely can't afford it.

An SSD would help as well - I find that the IO performance on spinning drives has been getting worse and worse with every OS release.

If you can only pick one of these, get the SSD first. You'll benefit a lot more from the IO boost than the memory boost, at least in the short term.

I too experience this issue, adding more RAM will fix this problem. SSD is not necessary.


Mac Sierra won't boot - SmartBattery: finished polling type 4 I did an update on my Macbook Retina 13" to the most recent version of Sierra OS X. The computer never gets past the Apple logo (black screen with a full progress bar).

I booted into Verbose Mode (command + v) and see that it is stuck at the following point:

SmartBattery: finished polling type 4

Every now and then it will add another line of text (same text) but it never moves beyond that point.

Any advice please! It is a real pain to keep restoring from my Time Machine backup!

Had the same issue and found the solution here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7787207?start=0&tstart=0

Quotes:

  Now that I look a bit more closely, the issue may be a corrupt .kext
  file as I get two busy timeout [x] (60s)  kextd wait(1): messages with
  corrupt garbage characters listed just at the start of the infinite
  SmartBattery messages.

  Not convinced the battery is really the issue as the machine will boot
  quite happily when using another boot disk or USB drive and the
  SmartBattery checks in those boot logs are really no different. To me
  it looks like the boot process has hung at the kextd and the endless
  SmartBattery messages are the OS just passing the time waiting for a
  response to the kextd daemon its never going to get.

  Your (and my) problem is because auf a KEXT file which is not
  compatible to 10.12.2 - the software isn't clever enough to ignore
  this, so you have to do it yourself. There are some ways. I made it
  this way:
  Start into Recovery HD, Open Terminal, write down:

mkdir /Volumes/"Macintosh HD"/kextbackup
cd /Volumes/"Macintosh HD"/System/Library/Extensions

  look for .kext files which are not part of the normal system

mv KEXTNAME.kext /Volumes/"Macintosh HD"/kextbackup/

  I removed the following and after this the system booted again.

Belcarra.USBLAN_netpart.kext
Belcarra.USBLAN_usbpart.kext
HuaweiDataCardDriver.kext
JMicronATA.kext
RemoteControl.USBLAN_usbpart.kext
UsbEthernetGadget.kext
USBExpressCardCantWake_Huawei.kext
vecLib.kext

  Of course everybody
  has his own not compatible kext files in this folder. Actually you
  can't do anything wrong by just moving them to another place... But I
  would recommend you not to move any of the APPLE*.kext files and the
  IO*.kext files. Other files with not that normal names, I would move
  and try to start.... At the moment my Sound is not working.. So I
  moved one kext too much, but anyway... I can write this.. in Safari on
  my Macbook Pro Retina....

EDIT: This worked for me. Note that I also had no sound but got it back after moving back "vecLib.kext" (by again returning to recovery mode and moving it back from the kextbackup-folder), so try to keep that in place from the beginning :)

Recover from backup only with apps and user data solve the problem.


Why does the highlighted text color in Xcode's Project Navigator sometimes switch to white with a blue shadow? Normally a selected item in Xcode's Project Navigator is indicated by a blue bar behind the item. However, sometimes for no apparent reason this changes to white text with a kind of very light blue drop shadow and no background color change. Does anyone know why this occurs  or how to prevent it? To fix it I always just have to restart Xcode.

I'm using Xcode 7.2.1 (7C1002) on an OSX El Capitan 10.11.3 machine.

It's just a bug which happens sometimes in Xcode, still happening in 8.1.

You don't have to restart to fix it, you can just hide and show the navigator by clicking this button twice:

This happens if you lower your brightness in the display...increase it and it will be fixed...


Finder doesn't work since Yosemite Has anyone experienced any issues with using finder since updating to Yosemite?

Since updating, I can't open finder at all. I click on the icon and the pc just hangs up and in activity monitor, finder is just (not responding).

I've rebooted the machine, tried to open/locate a file in spotlight search and when I find a file, it won't open.

Any help/thoughts what to do would be appreciated.

This fix from Reddit worked perfectly for me!!

http://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/2jtikj/finder_not_responding_new_yosemite_install/

You can most likely fix the issue by clearing out Finder's saved state, caches, and/or settings.

Use Spotlight (the search icon in the far right of the menu bar) to find and open the "Terminal" application. Triple-click the following line in order to copy and paste it into Terminal's window:

rm -fR ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.apple.finder.savedState ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.finder; killall Finder

If it still doesn't work, try this one:

mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder{,.backup}.plist; killall Finder


Converted from a basic disk to a dynamic drive in Boot Camp I got a MacBook Pro and installed Windows 10 using Boot Camp and all was fine. I then needed to create a 50GB NTFS partition, when Windows prompted me to convert to a dynamic disk, I mistakenly hit enter.

When I rebooted PC, the Mac option was gone. Could you please help me to restore my Mac partition and data?

Multiple people have hit the exact same issue that you described. As per Microsoft documentation, other operating systems like macOS and Linux do not understand Dynamic Disks.
Fortunately, what you did can be reverted. It's not straightforward, but it is 100% possible using the open-source utility named TestDisk. Do try it out -- there's some pain involved, but it will be worth the result.


How do I mount a network drive based on my IP address or wifi network? When I am at work, I mount a number of shared drives to use during the day. At home, I mount drives on my home network for home use. Is there a way that I can automatically mount the correct drives based on the network I am connected to? Ideally I would do this based on IP address, as I connect via Ethernet cable at work.

Is it necessary to use AppleScript or a shell script? I have tools like Hazel and Keyboard Maestro at my disposal.

Thank you.

set homeip to "Enter Your Home IP Here"
set homedrive to "afp://PlzUpvoteThis.Answer"
set workdrive to "smb://FeelFreeToEdit.This"

set myIP to (do shell script "curl ipinfo.io/ip") // Gets ip

if myIP is homeip then // Checks if your ip matches your home ip
    do shell script "open " & homedrive
else
    do shell script "open " & workdrive
end if

A few years ago I have used ControlPlane, but now I no longer use it. You need to test yourself whether it supports the latest OS X.

supports a number of evidence sources:

Current Audio Output destination (speakers or headphones)
Connected Power Adapter (based on serial number of the adapter)
Bonjour
CoreLocation, OS X’s location services for locating you
Current IP address
e.g

and you can perform many Actions

Change your default browser
Change your iChat status
Play an iTunes playlist
Lock or Unlock your keychain
Change IMAP server in Mail.app
Mount/Unmount external and network drives
Change OS X’s built in Network Location in order to change network
preferences.
and so many others


What RFID options exist for iOS devices? If I wanted to use an iOS device (iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad) to gather data from RFID chips on equipment in a motor pool, what would I need? Is it even possible today?

What type of RFID tags are you trying to read?  For a motor pool, I would expect you are looking for UHF Gen 2 RFID or even active tags (like Bluetooth LE) as opposed to NFC where you would need to be standing right at the tag on the auto to read it.

We are developing a UHF Gen 2 RFID system for iOS/Android.  The device, unfortunately, needs to be larger than a square since the 10' read range of UHF Gen 2 RFID requires a bigger antenna. Our dev site explains this.

Yes there is a RFID dongle that is compatible for iOS devices.
Power is about 1/4 watt.


How to create a desktop icon for downloaded iOS apps ("Find My Friends")? I've installed the Apple created "Find My Friends" app. It works great. But the only place I can launch it from is the App Store application. Every other app I've installed automatically creates a desktop icon.

How can I create a desktop icon for apps that are installed, but don't have desktop icons yet? Namely, Find My Friends?

Find My Friends on macos is not an application, per se, it is a part of the operating system and as such you access it through the Notification Center. You do, however, have to add it to the Notification Center.

Tap the notification center icon in the Mac's menu bar (top right corner) then click "Today" and then "Edit" down at the bottom. you can then add "Find My Friends." OSXDaily has a run through with screen shots.

So you can't install an icon for Find My friends.

My problem was on iOS / iPhone, and not a Mac.

This is what happened:
I have a folder on my iPhone desktop called "NeverUsed" where I stash apps that I expect to never use, such as: AppleWatch, iBook, and Health. I had also placed FindFriends in that folder and forgot about it.

I googled how to grep the iPhone which is done by touching the desktop and dragging down.  So, I grepped for "Find Friends" and there it was in the NeverUsed folder.


Transfer photos without backing up the iPhone I wanted to transfer a few photos from my computer to the iPhone and I though: lets do it quickly in a couple of minutes!

It was quite sad to realise iTunes only allows me to transfer photos into my iPhone 7 if I mark the checkbox "Sync Photos".
The, for a very strange reason, iTunes starts doing a backup of my iPhone when I click on "sync" in order to transfer the pictures.

Las backup I did took around 3 hours. And I definitely do not want to wait 3 hours to transfer 10 pictures...

Can someone explain me what am I doing wrong?
Because I seriously expect to be doing something very wrong... otherwise I ca not believe how bad Apple designed iTunes and the transfer of pictures/video.

I was forced to use Google Drive to transfer 10 pictures... quite sad...

Try AirDrop.

It's a very simple way to transfer any kind of files (not just photos) between devices. Just select the pictures, right-click them, select Share > AirDrop, and pick your iPhone. Make sure it's unlocked, or it won't show up.

Important note: To use AirDrop between Mac and iOS, your mac needs to be from 2012 or later (but not the mid-2012 Mac Pro) and running OS X Yosemite (10.10) or later, and your iPhone needs iOS 7 or later.

You may get tired of using iTunes to transfer photos from computer to iPhone. If you want to sync images directly to your iPhone camera roll, you can try to use document app with Wi-Fi sharing capability. To begin with, you need to make sure that your computer and the iOS device connect the same wireless network.

1.Open Documents app on your iPhone and click “Menu” on the top left corner.

2.Find “Settings” option, go to Wi-Fi Drive and choose “Enable Drive”. You will get an IP address with which you can transfer photos from computer to iPhone.

3.Turn to your computer and open a web browser. Go to the IP address showed on your iPhone.

4.Click “OK” when you see the prompt on your iOS device ask for access to sync photos from computer to iPhone.

5.Go back to your computer and click “Choose Files" button.

6.Select images you want to import to iPhone.

7.Click “Upload File” button to begin transfer photos from computer to iPhone.

After that, you need to do some more operations to move images to Camera Roll. Open your iPhone and go to “Photos and Videos”. Click “Edit” on the top right corner to select images you want to transfer into Camera Roll. Tap “Copy” on the button at last to start transfer photos from computer to iPhone Camera Roll.


Images are "Faded" Emailed from Outlook 2011 for Mac I have a rather odd issue. I'm running in a Mac/PC environment at work. When I email an image (JPG or PNG) to someone from Outlook 2011 Mac and they open in Outlook for PC (2010), the picture always ends up "washed out" or "faded."

This even occurs on the image signature I designed. Any ideas on what's causing this and how to resolve it? I'd rather not pop into Parallels every time I need to send an email.

Thanks!

I've been trying to figure this out at work and here is what I've learned.

Some PCs are prone to see a faded image when others don't, so be sure to test on a number of PCs (try to find the weakest link).

When a Mac user copies a PNG and paste it into his email signature or the body of an email, this error occurs.

I have to send out a company wide email signature, so here's what we do.

Have a PC user draft the email signature, placing the actual JPEG images. When that email is sent out, a Mac user can copy and paste it and it should work.

Have a PC user draft the email signature, placing the actual JPEG images. When that email is sent out, a Mac user can copy and paste it and it should work.This is method is good.


iPad doesn't rotate anymore My iPad won't rotate the screen anymore when I turn it. It just happend (like all problems of course) without any cause.

I've done everything I can think of.

Double tap on the Home button, swipe left and toggle the switch
Toggle the switch on the left side of the iPad with 'rotation lock' set to on
Reboot the iPad
Restore the iPad

I'm out of options... Anyone with more options? Or is it hardware to blame?

Since you've restored the iPad I would say that you've got some issue with the Hardware. If possible, Take it to an Apple Store for a Hardware test.

Using an app which requires the use of the Accelerometer may test it too.

EDITED: Its not the Gyroscope what tells the position of the device but the Accelerometer.

I had same problem and after a lot of other things thought I'd try one more thing, I ran the battery completely and let it sit for a day. Recharged it and its now working fine.

MY theory is that perhaps the accelerometer can become magnetized and running the battery out and allowing it to sit, dissipated the energy. Just a though, but it worked.


Extended attributes reappear when reconnecting external drive Some files on my external drive appeared grey out. Hence, I removed all the extended attributes using xattr -rc command which successfully does the trick and all my files appears normal. However, after I unplug and replug my external drive, the same set of files again appears grey out. So, to copy any file, I had to re-run the xattr command for the files each time which makes them behave like normal files.

Types of Files

All types of files like .dmg, .epub, .docx, etc appeared greyed out there is not a specific type of file as such.

Regarding extended attributes

When I completely remove all extended attributes the problem disappears. Hence, I am not aware about which particular attributed is causing the files to be greyed out.

Here is the output of ls leO@ on such greyed-out files.

-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 username  staff  -   4433605 Jul  9 22:38 xyz.dmg
    com.apple.FinderInfo           32
    com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms          110
    com.apple.quarantine

-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 username  staff  -      3659 Jul  9 22:38 replug_facetime.zip
    com.apple.FinderInfo           32
    com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms          115
    com.apple.quarantine           58

-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 username  staff  -  22617886 Jul  9 22:38 robo3t-1.1.1-darwin-x86_64-c93c6b0.dmg
    com.apple.FinderInfo           32
    com.apple.diskimages.fsck          20
    com.apple.diskimages.recentcksum           80
    com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms          161
    com.apple.quarantine           58

Format of External Drive

NTFS; writeable initially via Mounty Software, now natively using some commands.

Here is the output of xattr -pl com.apple.FinderInfo atom-mac.zip

 com.apple.FinderInfo:
 00000000  62 72 6F 6B 4D 41 43 53 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |brokMACS........|
 00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
 00000020

The cause of the problem—or, rather, the cause of the symptoms of the problem—is indeed explained by learning the content of the extended attribute com.apple.FinderInfo. It reveals that the Finder has set the file’s file type and creator respectively to brok and MACS, signifying the file is engaged in the process of being copied and therefore cannot be accessed. (These flags are supposed to be erased upon completion of the copying process.) As a consequence, the Finder "greys out" the icons of such files to reflect their status of immutability by the user. Erasing the com.apple.FinderInfo extended attribute relieves the situation by removing the proximate cause.

The real problem, however, is the constant reassignment of this "busy being copied" status to the various files. Indeed, you specifically asked why the extended attributes reappear for particular files. My answer: I don’t know the mechanics of the events, but I do know what’s behind it.

Apple natively supports reading, but not writing, to NTFS drives. The bespoke fstab workaround method you are currently using to permit writing to the disk is known to be unstable, and is guaranteed to cause problems. (Is your username really username?) I wondered how it was you came to the abstruse idea of erasing extended attributes to correct the inaccessible file situation, and a visit to the Mounty Software site (the source of your previous workaround) showed me it was their specific recommendation. As you have learned, it is not a lasting solution. The problem will continue as long as you continue to use your current method of NTFS filesystem access.

If you must have read/write access to an NTFS formatted drive—and cannot replace it with one in the natively supported exFAT format—you will have to choose a third party offering to provide a permanent solution. Those I know of which offer acceptable usability are Tuxera, Paragon, and Fuse/NTFS3G. The first two are commercial products available on a free-trial basis; the third is a combination of two open source products.

  EDIT: Response to OP's comment below

I’m sorry to say I don’t have any command line instructions which would definitely help you. I believe that the only way to fix the problem is to change the method you use for filesystem access from one which is known to have issues, as your current method does, to one which does not.

That said, I offer the following purely as an experiment, as I have no way to test it. We know that the benefit of erasing the extended attributes of the affected files only lasts until the next time the drive is mounted. It is possible that assigning a dummy value to a file’s com.apple.FinderInfo attribute will allow it to persist unmolested through the mounting process and prevent the Finder from re-assigning brok/MACS status. Specifically, this command will give a bogus file type of hack to <targetfile.ext>.  Test it on just one or two of your problem files, and see what happens to them when the drive is unmounted / remounted.

xattr -wx com.apple.FinderInfo 6861636B00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 <targetfile.ext>

(Why all the zeroes? The com.apple.FinderInfo extended attribute must be written as a single 32-byte block. Anyway, whatever it may look like here, it's one command, all on one line as you'd expect.)

I realize this is a partial answer, but thinking and writing it out might help us get to the answer based on additional experience with this problem.

While yes, the built-in NTFS filesystem driver might be listed as unstable, the exFAT one should be mature; I've used exFAT for years in live event production to be able to transfer powerpoint decks and audio/video content for playback between Mac & Windows systems. It always worked more or less well.

And yet, just this morning, I had the Finder in Catalina 10.15.3 failing to clear the brokMACS extended attribute after copying to a known-good exFAT-formatted drive. Blaming Mounty for providing a better solution (using a GUI to utilize the built-in 1st-party-provided filesystem driver, instead of having to install additional 3rd-party drivers, SHOULD be considered better) when it comes to mounting NTFS read/write is ignoring the real issue; the Finder NOW fails to clear temporary extended attributes on more than one filesystem driver, when it didn't used to behave this way on the type of filesystems.

Using cp commands from the Terminal seems to avoid the issue, but that doesn't fix the Finder.


Wake On Lan (WOL) iMac 2009 El Capitan, Sierra, not working System:

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009)
El Capitan 10.11.6
Non-Apple modem/router

Wake on LAN isn’t working. I have tried a variety of methods: iOS apps (Fing, iNet, Mocha); Mac applications and scripting on another Mac (WakeOnMac, wakeonlan perl script).

Yes, I’m on a local network, and yes I’ve ticked the ‘Wake for network access’ in System Preferences. Also checked with pmset -g that womp = 1. I have also tried overriding networkoversleep (1).

I initially believed the Ethernet (which directly connects the iMac to the router and should make this process more reliable) disconnected during sleep. I tested this by opening System Preferences > Network and leaving that open while I sleep it. When I woke it from sleep, the Network Preferences panel was still open (obviously) and Ethernet (at the top) showed as Disconnected and features a red dot beside it. It reconnects very quickly, but that’s no good for WOL.

I have now tested installs of Mavericks, Yosemite and macOS Sierra on a separate partition. Mavericks and Yosemite both allowed WOL (despite the Ethernet 'disconnecting' issue still being there, suggesting it doesn't actually disconnect). macOS Sierra, as El Capitan, does not allow WOL. The pmset settings and 'Wake for network access' etc. are all the same.

Does anybody know of an obscure network setting somewhere that disables WOL despite it being enabled in pmset?

Wake on Lan only works if the Mac is sleeping. You cannot wake up a Mac that has been shutdown no matter what third party apps you have. Mac's are not designed to Wake-up from LAN when shutdown for security reasons.


MacOS 10.15 Catalina asks "AMPDevicesAgent wants to use your confidential information stored in iOS backup in your keychain" I have just updated to MacOS 10.15 Catalina, and it asks "AMPDevicesAgent wants to use your confidential information stored in iOS backup in your keychain" when I try to backup my iPhone.

It is a bit unexpected to see a requester like this without any explanation why, and whether it is legitimate. Mac users who are less technical may be confused by this, and others may also be susipicious as to whether this is a legitimate request from MacOS itself and should be permitted or not.

How can I tell if this alert is legitimate?

The process name is a legitimate process running as part of an iOS device local backup. Enter your login Keychain password to proceed.

To check that the prompt is actually on behalf of the right process, open Activity Monitor, search for the process name, select Sample Process and confirm the path is within

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AMPDevices.framework

The real fix to stop the error message from appearing is to add AMPDevicesAgent access to iOS Backup in Keychain, which you can do from Keychain Access as usual (link to my blog post has steps if you need, I think it’s a bit off topic for this Q&A).

There is an Apple discussion thread which discusses this problem, but to save having to read a long thread there, it might be better if the corect answer were posted here, as people may be more likely to look or search for the answer on StackExchange.

Apple discussion: Backing up iPhone/iPad with Catalina


How can I Unlock a iPhone 4S bought in London, in Denmark? My friend purchased two iPhone 4S's in London. The salesman in London refuses to unlock the devices since you need a UK credit card, which my friend doesn't have.

Is it possible to unlock the devices when he gets back to Denmark, in a Danish phone store?  Or should he refund the device before heading home on Sunday?

If it's carrier locked, only the carrier it's locked to can unlock it.

If you want an unlock phone, the easiest way to get one is buying directly from Apple. These factory unlocked phones will unlock as soon as you connect them to iTunes (and with iOS 5 possibly the first time you turn it on).

The easiest thing to do, is to go to an Apple store, and actually purchase an already unlocked IPhone. The only other way to unlock it, is to send it to an Apple factory to have them unlock it for you. It's part of the proprietary rights thing that Apple has. They've restricted all actual cell-phone companies from unlocking the phones, just because they didn't want to give out the information of HOW to unlock them.


macOS Sierra Archive Utility compress popping up new windows After updating my macOS to Sierra I've started experiencing a strange bug. When trying to compress some stuff to a zip (via the Archive Utility) it pops up a new Finder window after each compression.

Here are my Archive Utility settings:

As you can see "Reveal archive in Finder" is turned off. I've also tried turning it on and off a few times, but result was always the same.

It started to happen after upgrading to Sierra.

My current macOS version is 10.12.2.

Is there any fix to this?

After some experimenting, I finally found a solution of sorts.

Before I get to it, just a word on the Archive Utility preferences. As far as I can tell, the preferences on the lower half of the window no longer have any effect on the Finder's archive creation process. It may have in the past, but the Finder no longer uses Archive Utility for archive creation, only for expansion. For the record, Archive Utility is located at /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Archive Utility.app.

The problem arises from the Finder's desire to reveal the archive it's just created. If you are in column view and are viewing the contents of a folder, and want to compress that folder and do so like in the image below, the Finder may open a new window to reveal the archive because it doesn't want to lose your folder selection in the current window.:

If instead in column view, you select a file (it must be a file) in the same column as the folder, and then right-click on the folder you want to compress, like in the image below, the Finder won't open a new window (it will change your current file selection to the newly created file).

So far, that's the closest I've come to any kind of "solution".

Enabling and then disabling this option solves the issue for me on macOS 10.12.2.