Apple iPhone 4 does not recognize my DC car charger Apple iPhone 4 does not recognize my DC car charger AC charger works fine. I bought a new DC charger and it still does not recognize that charger. I took it back and exchange it for another one and it does not recognize it as ever being plugged in. I did not buy a cheap charger—that was a $30 charger.

The most likely explanation is that this is a generic charger not designed/tested for use with an iPhone. Have a look here for a more detailed explanation, but in a nutshell, iPhone-compatible chargers need to put out some very specific voltage levels on the USB data (NOT power) lines to be recognized by the iPhone.

So, unless this charger specifically states that it is iPhone-compatible, it just won't work without internal modifications, and you should just return it and get one that is made for iPhone.

this is all related to the new upgrade of IOS7, the charger and cable are still good but Apple is trying to stick us into their products... you can still charge your device by rebooting it while charging :)


How do I change the number of desktops in Mountain Lion? I have just downloaded Mountain Lion and I would like more than one desktop (the default setting) how do I change the number of desktops?

Open "Mission Control" (icon should be in the Dock or else through Launchpad) and move your mouse to the upper-right hand corner. A '+' sign will appear allowing you to create an additional virtual desktop. The dimmed half of a new desktop appears in the upper left if the dock is changed to the right side of the screen but otherwise is in the upper right when the dock is in the left or the bottom.
Add a Desktop

Remove a Desktop

In Mountain Lion, if your dock is on the right side of the screen then you have to navigate to the upper left corner of the screen, not the upper right. Not sure why that change was necessary...


iPhone 4s dropped-now the screen is black My daughter dropped her iPhone 4s (ios version 6) and now the screen is black (this was only four weeks after I replaced a cracked screen myself on this same unit and everything was working fine). She said it first landed from waist height on the top edge of the unit. Even though the screen is black, calls still come in (but I can't seem to answer them despite my swiping the screen area to answer), texts come in, the vibrate feature works, music was playing for a while and then I touched the screen where I thought the play/pause button would be and it the music stopped.  When I hold the power button down to shut down the unit, I swipe where I think the "slide to power off" message on the upper screen area would be and in fact the unit powers off, so this tells me the digitizer is working at least in that area of the screen.  I removed the back cover with the power on and when I hit the power button, I could see the edges of the back of the screen light up even though the screen was still black, so this tells me that some kind of power is making it to the screen. I then powered down the unit and re-seated all the connections to the logic board; it didn't help.

I read somewhere that restoring the unit to factory settings may work.  She never backed up the iPhone to an iTunes account on our PC but did use iCloud backup.  When I attempted to backup the iPhone to the PC iTunes account it required me to unlock the iPhone and every attempt I've made to "blindly" swipe and enter in the passcode has not worked. I didn't even get a vibration indicating the wrong passcode was entered.

If I restore the iPhone to factory settings, I read that it will update to ios 7. I've read and been told by many people that ios 7 is not optimized for the iPhone 4s and that it's a bad move to upgrade and best to stay with ios 6.

I'm hoping for some help here in (1) what may be causing the black screen and (2) will restoring the iPhone to factory settings work and if so, is there a way to restore the iPhone, given my situation, without upgrading to ios 7?

It sounds as if it may be a simple case of the cable connecting the screen coming loose - the fact that the digitizer works could indicate that the cable isn't seated correctly - i.e. some of the connections are being made but not all of them. You say that you replaced the screen yourself, so I assume you're fairly competent at taking it apart again... If so, try doing this, removing the cable connecting the screen, and then reseating it.

Alternatively, it could be that the impact has broken the part of the screen required to display things, in which case, I'm afraid you're looking at replacing it again!

open your iPhone and you see blue line and press it for a long time and go to ifun box or iTunes and scan.


Apple keeps resetting my Apple ID password? For the last 4 weeks or so, I get the "This apple ID has been disabled for security reason... bla bla bla" notification at least two times per week. All my devices are up to date and have been updated to use the new password.

There are at least 5 people in my office that are experiencing the same problem. I have read the article @ http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2446 but it doesn't help me much.

How can I make them stop? I will run out of passwords very, very soon.

It might be the case that someone is trying to gain access to your and your coworkers accounts by trying out random passwords. After a certain number of failed attempts, your account will be disabled to prevent bad guys from continuously trying out passwords.

My suggestion would be to try to find out why it is being reset by contacting Apple support. They can probably tell you the specific reasons for disabling the account as it will probably be logged by them.

Sorry to redirect you, but this is not something we can 'solve' without knowing the reason behind the resets :-)

They have your email address and pasword. I would recommend to change email password and iTunes password in these situations.


Blacking out a part of a PDF, or redaction of text What methods are there to blackout a part of a PDF?

I don't want to simply use Preview's annotation tools and then save the document, since then someone could open up the PDF and remove the annotation to reveal the part of the document which I'm trying to black out.

If you are looking for a no-cost way in Preview.app

File->Export (or save as)
Export PDF to TIFF file format (it's a multipage image format)
Open TIFF file
Export TIFF to PDF file format

Maintains page structure, OCR will be lost.

The subject of redation of PDF files seems to be a difficult subject concerning programming. As Acrobat Pro CD is much to expensive for me as a private non-profit user, I was looking for an alternativ. It took me rather long time to find a real good alternative to Acrobat Pro:

PDF Studio PRO from Qoppa (http://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/): This tool really gives you virtually the whole functionality of Acrobat Pro. It is a solid part of software and according to my extensive tests the only tool that is really able to redact safely PDF files. Note that you need the PRO version, as the standard version lacks the ability of redaction.

I tried several other possibilities, which all don't work properly:

Apple Preview: this application allows to visually hide parts of a pdf behind a box, but it is always possible to remove the box or copy / paste the text behind as the sensitive information is NOT removed from the file!
PDF Pen: PDF Pen seems to be a nice tool and it offers a nice reaction functionality - seems to at least. Be careful about this tool: it messes up your PDFs completely as you redact. Therefore the functionality is limited to a files who are by chance compatible with this tool. Especially in PDFs with pictures (i.e. all scanned files) PDF Pen has big problems and messes up your file so it gets irreversibly unusable. My contact with the support never brought a solution so far over a time of several weeks.
Nuance PDF Coneverter for Mac: I bougth this tool as it offers a redaction functionality. Unfortunately there is no trial version available, but the refunding worked fine without problems. As soon as I had the tool installed, I had to realise, that it was nothing else than PDF Pen under a different hood. Now you don't have to wonder, why PDF Pen is using the OCR engine of Nuance :-). For the record: PDF Pen = Nuance PDF Converter for Mac. Same errors while redacting as expected. Result: equally useless as PDF Pen.

As a simple summary I suggest you spend the $129 for PDF Studio PRO from Qoppa.


Make TextMate run php from a different binary, not the original php I work with php and postgre, and since the stock php doesn't come with postgre I had to install a different php version.

So I installed php5 from this website: http://php-osx.liip.ch

It's a quick install, just downloaded php5 and its modules and put them in a different directory, now everything works, except the TextMate's "php run".

I couldn't find where TextMate makes the call to the php and I wanna change it, any ideas?

Thanks.

Under preferences, go into variables and update (or create) TM_PHP to point to your desired executable. E.g. I have /opt/local/bin/php because I'm using MacPorts.

In my case it was /usr/local/php5/bin/php whereas 'php5' is an alias that points to the liip installation dir /usr/local/php5-5.3.29-20141019-211753.
And by the way it solved my textmate line output on syntax checking on osx 10.12. Thanks a lot.


Can I swap the SSD from mid-2013 Macbook Air and mid-2014 Macbook Pro? I bought a Macbook Air with a 256 GB in mid 2013.

I bought a Macbook Pro with a 128 GB in mid 2014.

I'd like to swap the SSDs if possible. Are the parts compatible?

I'm looking at these two guides on iFixit.

Macbook Air 13" Mid-2013 SSD replacement
Macbook Pro 13" Mid-2014 SSD replacement

The parts look compatible, but I'd like to a little further confirmation before dissecting both of the laptops.

Additional info

I just did a speed test on each drive.

                  Model      Read        Write       Vendor
Macbook Air 13"   Mid-2013   ~750 MB/s   ~700 MB/s   Samsung/Samsung
Macbook Pro 13"   Mid-2014   ~750 MB/s   ~350 MB/s   Sandisk/Marvell

The Macbook Air's SSD has double the write speed! So if it works, I have even more (than disk capacity) to gain from making the swap.

Makes me really sad that Apple isn't more specific with these details on their website.

Tools required

              Security Bits
Macbook Air   P5 Pentalobe, T5 Torx
Macbook Pro   T5 Torx

I ordered the iFixit 54-Bit Driver Kit which includes the tools I'll need to try this.

I'll post the results here once I attempt the surgery!

It doesn't work

My Pentalobe and Torx bits arrived today and I tried swapping the drives. When I put the 256 GB drive in my Macbook Pro, it doesn't boot and displays this image

I tried holding down opt to boot to a usb drive and do a fresh install of Mavericks on the drive.

When I attempt to boot from the USB drive, the crossed out circle image is displayed again.

I've also tried holding down shift during boot to boot into safe mode. The neutral gray screen displays for a longer time, but eventually the crossed out circle appears again.

Restart computer hold CMD+R it will boot into recovery
Click reinstall OS X


Does Do Not Disturb mode turn off automatically? If I turn on Do not disturb mode from control center, will it automatically turn off in the morning?

No, just flipping it on in Control Center won't get it to automatically turn off.

To get Do Not Disturb to automatically turn off, you need to schedule it to do so in Settings > Do Not Disturb > Scheduled.

Go on Settings -> Do not disturb ...

__


How to replace Mac OS X utilities with GNU core utilities? I found there is some differences between the utility command I used on the mac OSX and linux. I want to make my experience united.

How could I replace all my mac utilities with GNU utilities?

This adds symlinks for GNU utilities with g prefix to /usr/local/bin/:

brew install coreutils findutils gnu-tar gnu-sed gawk gnutls gnu-indent gnu-getopt grep

See brew search gnu for other packages. If you want to use the commands without a g prefix add for example /usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin before other directories on your PATH.

$ brew info coreutils
coreutils: stable 8.21
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils
Depends on: xz
/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.20 (208 files, 9.4M)
/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.21 (210 files, 9.6M) *
https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/coreutils.rb
==> Caveats
All commands have been installed with the prefix 'g'.

If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you
can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:

    PATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

Additionally, you can access their man pages with normal names if you add
the "gnuman" directory to your MANPATH from your bashrc as well:

    MANPATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnuman:$MANPATH"

As an alternative to setting the PATH and MANPATH environment variables (which I would actually recommend), it is also possible to symlink binaries to an existing PATH location like this:

You need to know where Homebrew installs coreutils binaries.

/usr/local/opt/coreutils/bin

The /usr/local/opt directory is where Homebrew stores relatively static files that are unlikely to change between updates.

Then you can create symbolic links from there to a location that is already on your PATH. It must be a path that is loaded early on PATH, because the PATH is searched on a first-come, first-serve basis. /usr/local/bin is a good choice based on looking at echo $PATH.

which sha256sum # prove it is not on PATH
ln -s /usr/local/opt/coreutils/bin/sha256sum /usr/local/bin/
which sha256sum # prove it is on PATH

This way, it would almost as easy to create symbolic links. In some cases, like when you want tighter control, it is a good option rather than adding an entire directory to your PATH and MANPATH.


How does iTunes make its decision as to what artwork to provide? I'm trying to download Album Art by right-clicking a track in iTunes and choosing Get Album Artwork.  Sometimes this works fine, but sometimes iTunes finds the wrong Album.

As an example, I have A Taste Of Things To Come from the Mortal Kombat Soundtrack.:

But this is the only track on that same album with Album Art, so I ask iTunes to Get Album Art for the second track.  This is what it finds:

The Quigley soundtrack, starring Gary Busey and Oz Perkins.

How does iTunes make its decision as to what artwork to provide for any given track?  And ideally, how can I encourage iTunes to make better choices?

I'm running iTunes 10.6.0.40 on a Windows 7 PC.

iTunes uses an external site to search for album art.  I don't remember exactly which site it is, but I do remember that it was crowdsourced, so there's a high likelihood that, especially with relatively rare music, it will get the wrong thing.

itunes just gets confused sometimes i guess, an easy solution is to go to google, copy the album art you want and go to the album you want to change in itunes. click on advanced and add album art (top left hand corner). then you go to album art i believe and control and copy/paste the picture into the album art space. this allows you to get custom art work!

-:) iph4u on Youtube!


Snow Leopard installer ISO on USB flash drive I have the setup ISO file for my Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
I need to be able to boot this and install it to a USB drive (from a windows pc by booting the USB drive).

I can't run it in a virtual environment and I can't burn it to a DVD (it doesn't work for some reason. It only makes a ~120KB of data on the DVD).

So, I need to make a bootable USB installer from the Snow Leopard ISO so I can boot that and install it to another USB/hard drive (this has to be done from a windows machine).
I have tried Multiboot ISO but it requires the USB to be formatted as FAT32 and as the ISO is over 4GB, this won't work.

How can I create the bootable installer?


Safari 6: How to change default fonts? This is probably a duplicate. I can't imagine I'm the first person to notice this.

It seems that Safari 6 has removed the appearance tab from the preferences, and with it, the ability to change the default fonts.

How do I change the default fonts for Safari 6?

You can still use defaults:

defaults write com.apple.Safari com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2StandardFontFamily Georgia
defaults write com.apple.Safari com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2DefaultFontSize 16
defaults write com.apple.Safari com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2FixedFontFamily Menlo
defaults write com.apple.Safari com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2DefaultFixedFontSize 14

Another option is to set a CSS file like this as as the default style sheet in the advanced preferences:

body {
  font: 16px Georgia;
}
pre, code, tt {
  font: 14px Menlo;
}

Both options have precedence over the default stylesheet but not over styles specified by websites. So like the preferences in Safari 5 and earlier, they mostly apply to pages that would normally use 15px Times or 13px Courier.

Just get Tinker Tool for free. It will let you change the fonts and font size for Safari in OS X Mavericks.


ethtool Equivalent for OS X Lion Other than ifconfig, is there an app/script for OS X Lion that produces similar output/info to ethtool?

Specifically, I would like to be able to query the following:

driver info
online/offline
speed
duplex

Output from ethtool looks like this:

ajc@ajc-3] sudo ethtool eth0|grep Duplex                                                                                ~
    Duplex: Full
ajc@ajc-3] sudo ethtool eth0|grep Speed                                                                                ~
    Speed: 100Mb/s
ajc@ajc-3] sudo ethtool eth0|grep Link                                                                                ~
    Link detected: yes
ajc@ajc-3] sudo ethtool -i eth0                                                                                ~
driver: pcnet32
version: 1.32
firmware-version:
bus-info: 0000:00:03.0

My primary tools for reading OSX details on hardware are system_profiler and ioreg. For network interface details, ifconfig is the best bet. The first two will show you connection paths for the hardware as well as software driver information. In your example - media and status provide most of the details you listed.

mac:~ me$ ifconfig en0

en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=2b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,TSO4>
    ether 00:1b:63:a8:33:33
    inet6 fe80::21b:63ff:fea8:3333%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
    inet 172.16.1.8 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.1.255
    media: autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control>)
    status: active

mac:~ me$ system_profiler|awk '/^Ethernet Cards/{c=15;next}c-->0'

        ethernet:

          Type: Ethernet Controller
          Bus: PCI
          Vendor ID: 0x10de
          Device ID: 0x0ab0
          Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x10de
          Subsystem ID: 0xcb79
          Revision ID: 0x00b1
          BSD name: en0
          Kext name: nvenet.kext
          Location: /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/nvenet.kext
          Version: 2.0.17

In your case, you are grepping for Duplex, Speed and Link and on Mac hardware you can get all of that data from ifconfig en0 | egrep [media|status] as desired.

Please change en0 to your i/f name

$ networksetup -getmedia en0
Current: autoselect
Active: 1000baseT <full-duplex>


How to auto mount encrypted USB sticks after hibernate? I use 2 tiny USB sticks as extra storage space on my Mac. When I close the lid, I send the Mac to hibernate mode. Is there a way such that I auto mount the encrypted USB sticks right after I unlock the Mac?

What I currently do, is simply detach and put in again the USB sticks, so they are automatically mounted and decrypted. But that is obviously pretty annoying.

You can use a program called ControlPlane to automatically eject your USB drives when the system going to sleep.


Using AppleScript to Send Email from Mail.app to Multiple Addresses I am able to successfully send out an email with an attachment to a single email address using the code below:

on run argv
    set theSubject to (item 1 of argv)
    set theAttachmentFile to (item 2 of argv)

    tell application "Mail"

        set theAddress to "recipient1@domain.com" -- the receiver
        set theSignatureName to "Sig" -- the signature name

        set msg to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:theSubject, visible:true}

        tell msg to make new to recipient at end of every to recipient with properties {address:theAddress}
        tell msg to make new attachment with properties {file name:theAttachmentFile as alias}

        set message signature of msg to signature theSignatureName

        send msg
    end tell
end run

However, I can't figure out how to change this code to send the email to both recipient1@domain.com and recipient2@domain.com. Does anyone know how I would go about doing so? I'm very new to AppleScript, so I'd greatly appreciate the help!

I was able to tweak the set theAddress line and the tell msg to make new to recipient line to make the following code run as intended:

on run argv
    set theSubject to (item 1 of argv)
    set theAttachmentFile to (item 2 of argv)

    tell application "Mail"

        set theAddress to {"recipient1@domain.com","recipient2@domain.com"}
        set theSignatureName to "Sig" -- the signature name

        set msg to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:theSubject, visible:true}

        tell msg
            repeat with i from 1 to count theAddress
                make new to recipient at end of every to recipient with properties {address:item i of theAddress}
            end repeat
        end tell
        tell msg to make new attachment with properties {file name:theAttachmentFile as alias}

        set message signature of msg to signature theSignatureName

        send msg
    end tell
end run

Yes. It's possible assuming 1 email address per line:

set srcFile to ((path to desktop) as text) & "myFile.txt"

set theAddresses to paragraphs of (read file srcFile as «class utf8»)

repeat with theAddress in theAddresses
 # ... insert code to create and send email to each recipient "theAddress" is each email address
end repeat


Automatically share photos I'm looking for a way that my wife and I automatically have access to each others' photos and videos. My understanding is that iCloud can't do this, and you have to manually share or add to a shared album.
Right now we're using Google Photos as an alternative - just set Google Photos to use partner sharing, and turn on automatic backup. However, Google Photos is getting ready to end unlimited storage, and I'd rather not pay for their space since I'm already paying for iCloud. And I don't think I can just delete old stuff from Google since auto-backup will just pick it up again.
Has anyone come up with another alternate strategy?

Well, as you mentioned, there is no official or easy way to do this.
The only thing I can think of is to create a "Shared Album" (Go to the album tab in the photos app and click the "+" icon, then tap the three dots in the upper left and click "Share Album"). The only thing is you will manually have to add photos to that album (Which is easy to do, just go to the "Library" view and tap "Select", select the photos, and then tap the share icon and "Add to Album").
Hope this is helpful!


Facebook app not working I have an iPod touch. The Facebook application was working fine until three days ago. When I start the Facebook app, it shuts down immediately. I tried restarting the phone but it's the same. I tried deleting the app and reinstalling, but it will not allow me to reinstall stating the app requires iOS 4.3.
How can I make this work? Why would it have all of a sudden stopped working?

Did you sync your iPod Touch with iTunes recently? An iOS device won't download newer versions of an app if they can no longer run on your current iOS version, but iTunes doesn't stick to that rule. So if the Facebook app was updated in iTunes, and then you synced with your iPod Touch, it may have been updated to a version that it can't run, hence the immediate quitting.

You can verify this by going to Settings → General → Usage and tap on the app under the storage setting. You'll see a version number, and you can Google that to see if you have a version that supports old iOS or not.

i had the same issue with an ipod i bought my other son it wouldnt let me download facebook it said i needed to update my ipod 4th gen from 6.... to 7.....
but when i tried to update the ipod it said it was already updated,
my older son has an ipod 4th gen already with facebook installed so when i logged into itunes i could see all his apps including facebook
i then logged out of his apple id and i logged in with my other sons apple id (son with no facebook)
all the previous apps were still there so i clicked update facebook it downloaded and then went onto the ipod it asked if i wanted to download the older version so i clicked yes and it worked i hope this helps !
Edit


How big of a HDD can a Mid 2010 Mac Pro handle? I heard somewhere that the maximum HDD size that my Mid 2010 Mac Pro can handle is 4TB.  Is this correct?  If not, how big can I go?

It's not that they can't address a larger drive, it's that the screw holes don't fit the 'sleds' that the drives are mounted on.

OWC sell replacements - http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MPRODBKTLG6/ though I have no idea if they ship outside the US, or indeed if that would be worth it.

Standard sled - 4 mount points.

6TB compatible sled - 6 mount points

Pics from OWC [no affiliation]

The OS X HFS+ Operating System will max out around 8 EB (Exabytes)

To put that into perspective:

8EB = 8,000 Petabytes

1 Petabyte = 1,000 Terrabytes

1 TB = 1,000 GB

In other words...

8 EB = 8 Million TB or 2 million of your 4 TB Hard Drives.  I hope you have room under your desk.

However, a 4 TB drive will easily be installed or you could opt for one of the new 8 TB Helium Drives.


How to make ffmpeg use correct libfreetype version? I have a PHP application that uses ffmpeg with libfreetype.  I installed both ffmpeg and libfreetype from macports.  But I keep getting this error:

2013-08-30 14:44:21 - Generate poster - Create thumbnail using ffmpeg.
2013-08-30 14:44:21 - Generate poster - FFMpeg lib found.
dyld: Library not loaded: /opt/local/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
  Referenced from: /opt/local/bin/ffmpeg
  Reason: Incompatible library version: ffmpeg requires version 17.0.0 or later, but libfreetype.6.dylib provides version 15.0.0

otool -L /opt/local/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib shows

/opt/local/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib (compatibility version 17.0.0, current version 17.2.0)

But I also noticed another version on the system.  otool -L /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib shows

/usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib (compatibility version 15.0.0, current version 15.1.0)

So I suspect maybe ffmpeg is trying to use that library.  But I'm not sure.  Any ideas how to fix this?

Try to reinstall with Homebrew instead of macports..? I have had too many dependency issues when using macports.

brew install ffmpeg

If you have problems (you shouldn't on a clean Homebrew install) check the answer here.


Force wider viewport size in iOS Safari? Is there any way in iOS Safari (or third party app) to force a larger viewport? I'm fine scrolling around a website to see content but I'm not fine with sites hiding content when I use a narrower than desktop device.

Ideally I would like to set my width (say 1024) and then have my iPhone browse with that width and drag around to see the page. Kind of like magnifier but in reverse.

You can use the aptly named iOS app, Desktop Browser to do this. Here's what a site looks like in Safari on an iPhone:

Here's what the same site looks like in the aforementioned app on the same iPhone:

I'll bet there are other apps out there that do this. Albeit a little rough around the edges and ad-supported, this one is free and gets the job done.

The viewport is set by the amount of screen space your device has, so when you look at a webpage on a pre-retina iPad, an iPad Air and an iPhone each one can show different amounts of the page.
The formatting for the page you are viewing is set by the page, and if its elements are not positioned relative to the edges of the viewport then they can be rendered off-screen. No way around that, except using a HTML or CSS editor to modify the formatting on the fly .. meaning you modify it to have a better rendering. But then unfortunately such edits are lost as soon as you navigate away.


ss (netstat alternative) for OS X How do I install ss on OS X? I couldn't find the iproute package in homebrew.

  Red Hat recommends ss over netstat in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
   ss is provided by the iproute package.

Red Hat Docs

ss is not ported to macos right now as far as I now. (It is also not inclided https://github.com/brona/iproute2mac -> see issue #20 for details: https://github.com/brona/iproute2mac/issues/20)
But I think you can still use netstat on macOS or what feature is missing there ?

In order to get ss, you would need to get the source code for iproute. Since you mention Red Hat linux, go onto a linux machine running Red Hat, and run the following command:

sudo yum source iproute

Now, copy over the source code to your Mac, and compile it.

You could also go on the Red Hat packages site and get the source tarball.

Note: I have not tested this, but this is the normal way to get source code.


Windows sees iPhone but iTunes does not I'm running Windows 7 in VirtualBox with Linux as a host. I'd like to sync my iPhone with iTunes installed in the VM.

I've set up USB filters in VirtualBox, and Windows sees my iPhone upon connecting, however its icon doesn't show up in iTunes.

It did show up once after a few trials, I don't know if it was random or if I did something, but I can't get it to appear again.

This is what Windows displays when I connect my iPhone:

How do I get iTunes to detect my iPhone?

I've tried restarting my computer, the VM, and the iPhone, with no progress. Also, when I click "Open device to view files", I see only the DCIM folder in "Internal storage".

iTunes version is 12.3.1 which is latest

Try updating to your iTunes into the latest version. It happened to me one time but when I upgraded the my iTunes to the latest version, then it worked fine.


How can I mount an SMB share from the command line? I would like to mount an SMB network share from the command line (terminal); how would I go about that?

I am using Mac OS X 10.6.4.

You could easily achieve this using mount_smbfs (which is, actually, a wrapper for mount -t smbfs) :

mount_smbfs //user@SERVER/folder ./mntpoint

Optionally, add the workgroup :

mount_smbfs -W workgroup //user@SERVER/folder ./mntpoint

You could, of course, change the ./mntpoint (for something like /Volumes/smb).

After doing this, simply go to ./mntpoint to browse your data.

To unmount, using the following command :

umount ./mntpoint

old post but what about mounting like this:

smb://no_username:password@MACHINENAME

like the time machine drives?


Why can't I scale a wallpaper on iOS 7? When selecting a photo from my photo stream as the wallpaper (on my iPad 4 with iOS 7), the wallpaper is shown as a preview, allowing me to scale and move the visible area. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for most images, e.g. ones that I downloaded to the device from the web.

Using the two-finger pinch to scale the image doesn't work at all, and moving the visible area is very slow, if it works at all.

This behavior results in weirdly cropped and scaled wallpapers - the same was working fine on iOS 6.

Is this a known bug? It seems to be related to the size of the photo - the stock wallpapers coming with iOS work fine.

Don't know why it is happening but I use the app #nocrop (it's free) to make the pictures smaller before using them as wall paper.
You might also want to try switching reduce motion on/off in Settings > General > Assessibility > Reduce Motion.
Hope this helps


Macbook Pro (Mid 2012) Battery Not Charging I have a Macbook Pro (Mid 2012) 13" unibody and having issues with a battery that is not charging.

Here are the specifics:

Battery is not charging
Magsafe light not illuminating at all
Macbook is being powered off of the charger
Current battery charge level remains relatively unchanged as long as the computer is being powered by the charger
Macbook will not power up/respond with charger connected and battery removed
I have 2 chargers, both exhibit the same behavior
I just replaced the battery with a new OEM battery, no change
Macbook sees the battery
Condition = Normal

Health Information:

Cycle Count:    1
Condition:  Normal
Battery Installed:  Yes
Amperage (mA):  0
Voltage (mV):   11898

Here is what I have done so far...

I have replaced the battery with a new OEM battery, but this did not solve the problem.  I have also tried doing an SMC reset and a battery recalibration (remove battery, wait 5 seconds, plug in Magsafe, hold power button for 5 seconds, etc...), but none of the common possible fixes have worked.  The next step would be to replace the DC-In board, but I wanted to see if I can get any more specific insights before I go throwing more $$ at the problem.

So, my more specific question would be, based on the information I have provided, is if the issue can be narrowed down or isolated to a particular part or area of the system, and/or if there are any other possible fixes or troubleshooting steps I can attempt?

Below is the full text of the system power report:

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Serial Number:  W00505W75D3LA
Manufacturer:   SMP
Device Name:    bq20z45
Pack Lot Code:  0
PCB Lot Code:   0
Firmware Version:   201
Hardware Revision:  000a
Cell Revision:  165
Charge Information:
Charge Remaining (mAh): 4240
Fully Charged:  No
Charging:   No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5781

Health Information:

Cycle Count:    1
Condition:  Normal
Battery Installed:  Yes
Amperage (mA):  0
Voltage (mV):   11898

System Power Settings:

AC Power:

System Sleep Timer (Minutes):   0
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes):  0
Wake on AC Change:  No
Wake on Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake on LAN:    Yes
AutoPowerOff Delay: 14400
AutoPowerOff Enabled:   1
Current Power Source:   Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Hibernate Mode: 3
PrioritizeNetworkReachabilityOverSleep: 0
Standby Delay:  4200
Standby Enabled:    1

Battery Power:

System Sleep Timer (Minutes):   15
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes):  15
Wake on AC Change:  No
Wake on Clamshell Open: Yes
AutoPowerOff Delay: 14400
AutoPowerOff Enabled:   1
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Hibernate Mode: 3
Reduce Brightness:  Yes
Standby Delay:  4200
Standby Enabled:    1

Hardware Configuration:

UPS Installed:  No

AC Charger Information:

Connected:  Yes
ID: 0x0000
Revision:   0x0000
Family: 0x0000
Serial Number:  0x00000000
Charging:   No

Check the ac/dc adaptor with a multi meter it should match the writing on the unit. they can run hot and burn out it might be possible to have 2 broken units.

disabling or enabling devices that use power can be used to diagnose a battery problem e.g. blue tooth fire-wire thunderbolt SD CD and DVD drives

Disabling OR enabling as many as possible and changing the settings to low power or high performance should make it last longer or less long. either of these situations confirm a battery problem in a case of less or more charge. a logic board problem would make no difference if you get my drift. The idea is a normal battery would not suffer much impact like this in short term use but a dodgy battery would be very sensitive. Its not really relevant if you can't boot  because of no charge.

I've had battery problems before these are my steps I know you have probably tried already but if your desperate it might be worth trying again.

take the back off your mac and check to see all the ribbons are undamaged also check to make sure the the ribbon connectors are not cracked twisted or broken its a common problem when unplugging the battery to damage the connector they are very delicate and require a very light touch..  When unplugging them you cant just flip them out they need even pressure from each side and the middle and gentle levering very tiny amounts at a time if you are in the habit of flipping them out you may have inadvertently damaged them, if you think you may have been careless with the connectors you can get replacements inexpensively and this is a common issue on the mac.

i would disconnect the battery from the logic board and leave it for 15 mins then be very careful to firmly plug it back in using even pressure so all of it is plugged in evenly, be very careful. don't connect the mag. (trying to discharge the mac battery while the mains is plugged in won't discharge the battery). Then close your mac back up and screw it back together. before you plug it in the mag hold down the power button to 15 seconds or longer, something should happen a beep, a flashing light so just wait. if after a while nothing happens plug in the mag. But just wait for something to happen, mac batteries have an issue where they can get all screwed up and need discharging and this is how I would fix it.

the main reason for a battery needing this is usually due to hardware changes (for example recently I'm betting bet you have made some hardware changes like an SSD or just better memory), the mac will work fine for a while  after a hardware change then need a negative discharge, its a one time deal and due to a new power setup from voltage changes in the hardware. Replacing the battery won't change the situation as the system still needs to reconfigure its new voltage settings. Don't try to reset the battery with the mains pugged in its all done without any external power, i think its a lot to do with the boot up process and probably unique to MBP.

---edit i edited this to make it more informative and corrected spellings---

I had the same issue. I tried everything and nothing seems to work, but then I opened my MacBook and unplugged the battery socket with the charger connected and everything is perfect now.


Problem - 'DNS address could not be found' I've been trying to access the Myspace website and am receiving this message - 'www.myspace.com’s server DNS address could not be found'

I've tried using Chrome and Safari and keep getting the same result.

This is happening on my phone as well.

From the description of your problem you encounter a generic DNS misbehaviour.

If your Mac and your iPhone are within the same network, the origin of your problem is at your network router level. Either of thrre causes may lead to this no DNS servers:
 - the DNS servers of your ISP have changed and your router configuration
   wasn't upgraded,
 - the DNS servers of your ISOP aren't reachable,
 - your router was hacked and a bad DNS server IP address was provided to
   route all your traffic toward booby trapped web servers.

To analyse further this problem, just check what is the IP address configured at your router level. You might include its complete configuration within your original question, so as to get further help.

If you see that your router configuration was changed without
your knowledge, change its default password ASAP, and
restore its correct configuration.

Don't know if this will help but here you go: https://origin-discussions-us.apple.com/thread/6617003

It seemed to work for me now. Especially the last solution. Good luck!


How to tell if a Retina MacBook Pro has gone to sleep when the lid is closed? When I shut the lid on my Retina MacBook Pro (2014), how can I tell it's gone to sleep correctly?

On my previous MacBook Pro (~2008), the fans were audible, and there was a sleeping LED indicator in the lid latch that changed from "on" to "pulsing" when it was asleep. I used this as an "okay" sign to put it in the laptop bag.

Is there anyway to tell if a more recent MacBook Pro is asleep? I can't hear the fan most of the time, and I can't see any externally visible indicator lights that would indicate it's status.

I'm worried if it hasn't sleep correctly when I close the lid (occasionally this would happen with my old laptop) it will overheat when I put it in my bag.

It won't just overheat in its bag, but will also quickly drain its battery.
I always press the power button for about 1 to 2 seconds before closing the lid. The screen will go dark when you release. If you hold it too long, a dialog will come up asking if you want to sleep or shutdown. Choose wisely.

I don't think these laptops are quite capable of just 'failing to go to sleep' (it's not a problem I've ever read about before at least). If the lid is closed, it will go into that state, and it'll be safe to put in a bag.

One thing that might be worth a try is hunting around the system preferences to see if anything has the ability to take a laptop out of sleep mode, such as a bluetooth connection or receiving some data. Turning that off would stop the sleep problem.

I've checked the laptop all over, and the ridiculously useful light is gone. Future sucks.


iPod touch 4 doesn't connect to WIFI The following bug is something that started occurring today...

Whenever I try to connect to any WIFI network (routers, mobile hotspots), I can see my iPod tries to connect, but instantly loses connection. When I try to do this manually, it connects but immediately shows a screen with address http://www.apple.com, the title of the screen is "Log In" and the screen contains:

<TITLE>Success</TITLE>Success

The only thing I can do is press Cancel in the right top corner...
My ipod runs on iOS version 6.0.1.

1.) Go to SETTINGS next to your networks name there's a blue arrow click on that.

2.) Now turn ON auto-join

3.) Turn OFF auto-log in

4.) It Works!

I had the same problem this morning and it was solved by turning off the auto connection and auto log in.


iPad Air screen is black and unresponsive The screen of my 2014 iPad Air, is black and unresponsive, currently the alarm is going off (so I know it is working) but the screen is black and unresponsive. I have not dropped it, I have tried to power it off, but since there is no response, I don't know whether it had any effect.

I have charged it fully overnight. I tested the charger on another device and it works fine. I don't have another Mac computer to connect it to. Yesterday was the first time I used Siri, could that have something to do with it?

What else could I try?

I like to connect devices with no visible display to iTunes and see that I can make a backup of the device. At that point, I follow the 6 step process (even if I don't think the first few will work, sometimes going through the shutdown motions revives the screen.)

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3281

If you can make a backup, you have a good base and then can try a restore. Also, if you haven't powered it off, that might do the trick without needing a computer.

You might have broke it by over heating or dropping it, take it to the apple store.


Software Update badge won't go away After upgrading to 11.1.1 both the Settings->General menu item and the sub-menu for Software Update have a (1) badge which will not go away. Selecting the Software Update menu shows the phone software is up to date.

Is there some update I'm missing, or way to clear this badge?

This was fixed simply by upgrading to 11.1.2. The badge doesn’t return after re-checking for updates. It was only released in the last 24-48 hours and I upgraded to 11.1.1 pretty fast too, so pretty sure the badge was not originally showing for 11.1.2 availability.

I have that with Mail sometimes. Normally this should help: do a reset:
for older iPhones: press and hold the ON/OFF button (or the lower sound button) and the Home button, keep holding until you see the white apple logo appear. let go and let it startip.


Connecting Mac Pro with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9XX to Apple Thunderbolt Display I'm finding conflicting information about this topic on the web, so I thought I'd raise the question here.

I'm wanting to use an Apple Thunderbolt Display with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX9XX series card in a MacPro and/or eGPU box. I figure I could use this StartTech adapter to connect the Apple Thunderbolt Display to the Display Port of the card:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/945120-REG/startech_dp2mdpmf6in_displayport_adapter_6.html

However, I've found many websites that claim this doesn't work, and one lone comment on the link above under Q/A that said it does.

To be clear, I understand that I wouldn’t be able to send a Thunderbolt signal to the Apple Thunderbolt Display using any of the outputs from the NVIDIA display adapter.

I figured I could simply adapt the larger format DisplayPort to the Mini-DisplayPort and get it to connect that way. That is assuming that the regular DisplayPort and Mini-DisplayPort are essentially the same connection/protocol with just a different interface size.

Is what I'm trying to do possible and if so, will this adapter work, or do I need to buy something different?

In short, you can't.

This is because the Thunderbolt Display is a bit of a misnomer.  It's actually a Thunderbolt Dock with a display attached to it.

The requirements for the TB Display, per Apple are as follows:

  If your Mac has Thunderbolt ports, you can use a Thunderbolt display
  in macOS or Boot Camp. System requirements to use your Thunderbolt
  display in macOS:

  A Thunderbolt-capable Mac
  The latest software and firmware updates for your Mac
  OS X v10.6.8 Snow Leopard or later

  System requirements to use your Thunderbolt display in Boot Camp:

  A Thunderbolt-capable Mac
  The latest software and firmware updates for your Mac
  OS X Lion: Boot Camp 4.0 is included with Lion OS X v10.6.8
  Snow Leopard: Boot Camp that’s updated to version 3.3

  (Emphasis mine)

If you look at the ports of the TB Display, you will notice there are
no "display" type ports (DP, mDP, DVI, HDMI, etc).  Just TB, USB,
FireWire and Network.  The Display adapter is actually "embedded" in
the display itself.

This is one of the reasons why you cannot connect an Apple Thunderbolt Display to a PC

  I figured I could simply adapt the larger format DisplayPort to the
  Mini-DisplayPort and get it to connect that way. That is assuming that
  the regular DisplayPort and Mini-DisplayPort are essentially the same
  connection/protocol with just a different interface size.

This is correct.  However, what you are missing that that the Thunderbolt Display doesn't accept DisplayPort or mini DisplayPort signaling.  Your source has to be Thunderbolt to begin with.

buy a graphic card for a PC that supports Thunderbolt3


What are alternatives for Menumeters on El Capitan? Menumeters no longer works on El Capitan (see here), what are some alternatives? I just want to see my network and CPU stats.

I just ported MenuMeters for El Capitan, please go to http://member.ipmu.jp/yuji.tachikawa/MenuMetersElCapitan/.

If you want some free apps, you might want to check this out: iStat Pro Widget 4.92.

It's the same as iStat Menus suggested by @Mikey T.K., but:

pros: free
cons: discontinued

And it's not a proper app: as its name suggests it's a widget, so you'll find it in the Dashboard.


2013 macbook retina has extremely short battery life I've recently bought the new macbook pro 13" retina (2013) this November and noticed that it has extremely short battery life compared to my old macbook pro 13" (2010).

On a full charge, my new macbook has about 4H whereas my old one after three years of use still hovered close to 6H, and over 10H when new. Has anyone else been having this problem?

*** update

Here is another snapshot 7 minutes later. I've only been using chrome to do light browsing. notice that the battery life has gone down by 34 minutes...

The picture you post might not indicate any problem whatsoever with the hardware. However, the tools and steps to determine if this is hardware or software are quite easy and powerful.

Since the Mac is new, you would be free to use internet or in-person support to ask Apple to help determine if the battery is sound and the software installed properly. You can also check System Information (spotlight will locate it) and check the power settings. If the health isn't Normal initiate hardware service with Apple as software alone won't remedy the low battery life.

To determine if software is the cause, I would do this as follows:

Back up your files or the entire drive. It could be hardware and why risk losing anything - whether during troubleshooting or if the Mac fails completely.
Make a new user account as administrator
Disable automatic log in
Shut down your Mac
Plug in power and wait for the LED to turn green and disconnect from power
Start the Mac and log into your newly created empty admin account

It won't have any saved state, nothing extra running except perhaps any software you have that starts at boot (instead of when your normal account logs in). Run Activity Monitor for 20 minutes and nothing else. Also, document the power in System Information -> Power:

You care about documenting the overall settings and these settings over time as the Mac runs:

  Charge Information:
    Charge Remaining (mAh):     5975
    Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 6432
  Amperage (mA):               -1101
  Voltage (mV):                12096

Open Activity Monitor and go to the Energy tab. Not all the programs listed are running as things from the last 8 hours of non-sleep time are displayed, but you can sort on Energy Impact to show running processes.

In the next 20 minutes where you don't do anything on the Mac except wait for the battery to go down a bit, watch for apps that are using non-zero energy. In general, apps that support App nap and sudden termination will let the OS be most frugal with power when the app isn't busy with work.

After 20 minutes, you should have a good reading on the estimated run time with no load as well as a baseline for what apps are using power before you start loading your menu bar extras, chrome. You can use the Activity Monitor to watch and determine whether your battery can run for 8+ hours idle (it should) and if programs you don't want are causing the CPU and GPU to drain that 8 hour allotment in half the time. Since all shipping MacBook are capable of draining their batteries in 3 hours if the CPU and GPU are loaded 100% - you'll have to determine your energy usage by using Activity Monitor or getting Apple to assist you in testing the battery.

They do have diagnostic tools that can read the power logs and battery information and summarize things more rapidly, so if none of this makes sense you can always get a new Mac checked during the warranty period for proper battery function for free.

This turned out to be longer than I hoped, but my guess is you will find a good battery and that the "light browsing" in chrome is actually one or two tabs that take continual CPU time as well as a few other background tasks that run constantly and prevent the energy savings that depend on App Nap and CPU sleeping for un-noticed to us, but significant portions of the time.

Chrome is a power hog on macs. Get rid of it.

Use a browser made by people who know how to write apps for MAC OS.


How to disable the most recently used items in App Exposé on Lion? When using App Exposé on Lion ( Control-↓ by default), the lower part of the screen above the dock is reserved for minimized windows. A new feature of at least TextEdit in Lion is that it also shows the most recent documents as icons, which makes for an absolutely crowded area. I never use MRUs in my workflow so that's an absolute waste of space and of time.

Is it possible to disable this behavior and only show minimized windows?

Apparently setting the Number of recent items to None in general preferences does the trick.

Unfortunately it also disables the Open Recent submenu, but I honestly care less: having an uncluttered minimized windows list in Exposé is much more important.

I have just cleared recent items by going to apple menu, selecting "Recent Items" then "Clear Menu".


Language spelling menu switch I understand that Mac OsX should recognise the language automatically - and to say the honest truth - it does but... on rare occasions I need to see which language in"ON" and what are the choices...

Menu indicator-switch would be of great help - maybe an extra function to the keyboard indicator would solve the problem.

I use 4 languages in many programs...

One way to maximize the ease of changing the spellcheck language is to use an app which allows you to synchronize the keyboard layout and the spellcheck dictionary.  I think both Nisus Writer and Mellel have this feature.

You should be able to see your selected lanugate in your menu bar if you have the option turned on.

In System Preferences > Keyboard, make sure you have the option "Show Input Menu in Menu Bar" checked

Your Menu Bar should now show a flag with the corresponding language

When you click on it, you should get a selection of the input sources you currently have available.


Shortcut Keys for Moving Desktops in Mission Control in Mountain Lion 10.8.x? Are there shortcut keys for moving a Desktop in the array of Desktops in Mission Control?

I can now do this manually using the mouse by dragging and dropping, but I would like to do this with shortcut keys. Sometimes they even get re-arranged on their own (not sure how that even happens).

Regrettably I don't believe this is possible. As you've probably noticed, there are no user-accessible options for this in System Preferences' Keyboard Shortcuts. As far as I can determine, there aren't any scriptable interfaces either (plists, Applescript). Options for building your own program seem to be pretty limited as well, according to a mailing list post I found. The most you seem to be able to do programmatically is get the current number of open spaces.

The only way to possibly do this without some serious OS X hacking is to use something like Keyboard Maestro to do some GUI scripting to do the dragging for you. However GUI scripting is always a bit messy, and you'd need to account for the changing positions of the desktops, depending on how many are open, etc. I suspect that's not exactly what you were looking for, but it's probably the closest you'll get, unless someone finds something I didn't. Sorry.

I was able to do this by using cmd+arrow(left or right)key


How to make ⌘N open a new window in Safari? ⌘N currently opens a new tab in Safari, but I would like for that key command to open a new window (like in Chrome). Is there anyway to do that?

In System Preferences > Dock if Prefer tabs when opening documents: is set to Always that will cause a tab to open instead of a new window.
Changing it to Manually will allow ⌘N to open in a new window.
 There is also an In Full Screen Only option.

How tell Safari to open new tab instead of a window I found an option for links but not for shortcuts, maybe give it a try.
Here is a other link to set the behavior for new tabs or new windows https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/setting-new-window-and-new-tab-behavior-in-safari/


Make Dropbox app upload in background without having to open every 10 minutes Is there any kind of workaround to get Dropbox on iPhone iOS to work as well as it does on Android?

Installing Dropbox on the iPhone requires manually triggering the upload process instead of it running itself in the background. Dropbox only runs for about 10 minutes every time you open the app or change location. If you rarely change location then it might as well be manual upload only. In my situation I rarely change location for days and even a week or two at a time. I might take as many as thirty photos, but they will only start uploading when I open the app, and they will only continue uploading for 10 minutes.

In addition to that, it seems to hang for no reason at every tenth photo or so (which might be a different issue, but please address it if you have ideas). The final result is a lot more annoyance than it's worth.

On Android, I installed Dropbox, set it up, then I never opened it again for nearly a year and it worked flawlessly.

How can I get the iOS version of Dropbox to work like it does on Android?

You can't. There are restrictions with iOS multitasking that prevent apps like this from running all the time. You might be able to bypass this by jailbreaking though.

Also, apps can't bypass this on the App Store due to guidelines such as:

  2.5 Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected

Source: https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html

Dropbox for iPhone has a new feature called "Background uploading" and it does just that. Check the settings icon and enable it.


How can I download book from Kindle app to Kindle Volume? How can I pass content I've bought on Amazon to my Amazon Kindle (Paperwhite)? Because it turned out that it is not that easy. Actually, it is really hard.

What I've tried so far:

Shared Wi-Fi from iMac, but Kindle says that "Peer-to-peer networks are not supported by Kindle". Fail.
Installed Kindle for Mac app, tried to find something like download to device. Fail.
Installed "Send to Kindle app" and realised that it solves completely different task.
Found path where Kindle for Mac stores downloaded books, copied files to Kindle's Volume document folder. These books are seen but Kindle refuses to open any of them claiming they are not mine.
Downloading to my good old Kindle DX, trying to copy to Paperwhite. The same shit as in previous attempt.

My MacOS is 10.8.2 if that helps.
I'll appreciate any kind of advice. Whole this situation is making me annoyed. I mean, it is my content, I've bought it.

I would use a different book manager on your mac. I would install something like Calibre to manage your e-books.

Calibre is very flexible and there are plug-ins which allow you to remove DRM. This then allows you to share your content across devices without having to have the device registered with Amazon.

I would then download your purchased e-books from Amazon using the "transfer via USB" option. You only need to have one device registered with Amazon for this method to work.  However if you have your paperwhite registered you can also do the transfer via USB with DRM in tact, as stated in the other answer.

When you import them into Calibre the DRM is removed and you can then move the books via USB to any device you want.

If you've purchased content (i.e., ebooks on Amazon) then all you need to do is register your Kindle paperwhite on the kindle website, http://kindle.amazon.com .

After you've registered your device, you can go into Cloud section on your device and see all your past purchases.  They will all be available for download.


Chrome continues running even when Mac should be is asleep I have the latest version of Chrome running on my Mac. I've noticed that even when I close the old intending to put my computer to sleep, Chrome continues running. I know this is the case because I have a Google Voice extension installed. It makes a "ding" noise when I receive a text and that noise comes out of my Mac even when it's supposed to be sleeping.

How do I make Chrome go to sleep along with my Mac? It's sucking the battery dry!

sure you dont have sleep turned off in power options might be on for battery use but not battery


Will I lose my game saves when I downgrade to iOS 4 from iOS 5? I have just recently upgraded from iOS 4.3.5 to iOS 5.1.1 on my 3rd generation iPod touch, but it seems that my iPod is slower and a little unresponsive, so I want to downgrade back to 4.3.5.

I want to know how to backup the data (mainly game saves) so that when I restore to 4.3.5 my game save is still there.

iTunes will backup the data, but there is another option.  You can also bring your game saves back to your downgraded firmware, but it will take some work.

Here is a walkthrough focusing specifically on Angry Birds, but you could use the same process for other games as well.

No, you will not lose your data.

I'm not sure that iTunes will let you downgrade your device - iTunes has been unforgiving with regretted upgrades since iOS 5 was released. However, if you download the firmware file (IPSW) from here, and press the modifier key while clicking "restore" in iTunes, you may be able to give it a shot. (The modifier key is Shift on Windows and Option on Mac.) Before you do this, you're going to want to take a backup.

In iTunes, secondary click (right click or control click) on your device and select "backup" from the menu.  After the backup is complete, you can go ahead and try to downgrade, as described above. Once the restore is complete, iTunes will prompt you to set up your iPod - either as a new device, or from a backup. You'll want to select your backup, naturally.

iOS devices keep apps on a separate partition from the firmware, so your game data should be safe.


Can I extract application data from an iOS device? I have a third party application on my iPad (Stanza) which has some data that I'm interested in doing some analysis of on my Mac (read statuses). Is there any way to get the data that the application has stored?

There is a tool called iPhone Backup Extractor.
It lets you extract app data from an iOS backup, which you create with iTunes.
I posted a detailed tutorial on how to use it on my blog: http://adriansieber.com/how-to-extract-data-from-ios-apps-on-mac-os/

iPhone Backup Extractor can access an iPhone backup and extract data from it. It may be worth checking out to see if it can meet your needs.

You can watch this tutorial to find out more:


OSX Yosemite - Mission Control stopped working Not sure how long this has been happening, but I just noticed it AFTER Yosemite update.

Mission control just does not work: using hot corners, keyboard shortcut, or even double clicking Mission Control.app, there is no way to make my Mac go to Mission Control/Exposé. By the way, I have hot corners for showing desktop and app windows exposé, neither of which work. Hot corners for dashboard and Notification center work as usual.

Any ideas why does it happen, how could I solve it?

Thanks a lot.

(This irritating bug seems to be biting me more often after updating to 10.10.4)

When this happens and I don't want to have to reboot, I only restart the "Dock" process and the problem is gone.  There's probably some GUI way to do it, but I just drop into Terminal and do:

killall Dock

But before that, run killall -s Dock to see what would be killed, to make sure it's only going to directly kill the one "Dock" process.

Once you run killall Dock, Dock will restart in a few seconds and then Mission Control is working again. You can verify that the restart happened by checking the Process ID of "Dock" after the restart.

There is an additional way to reactivate mission control hot corners activation. This is possible by refreshing "system preferences" of mission control hot corner configuration.

You have to go to "system preferences", open mission control preferences, select hot corners. Change one of the hot corners possibilities, and go back to original settings. After this selection change, everything is back.


How to close a window without the application quitting? The OS X menu allows exit, minimize and maximize:

  I know the following shortcuts:

Exit:      command+Q
Minimize:  command + M
Maximize:  ?

When I use command+Q to exit the behavior differs from clicking the red button.  I want the UI to close and the application to remain running.  Instead, the application exits entirely.

How can I accomplish this with a keyboard shortcut?

Typically, an application will offer a way to both close the UI and quit the application. These are usually standardized to command ⌘+W to close the UI/window and command ⌘+Q to quit the application.

Some applications will still quit entirely when you use command ⌘+W, such as Preview. You can usually rely on this shortcut to close the window without quitting, however.

I should also point out that the red button in the top left does not "quit" the application as you mentioned in the question body. It will close the window (just like command ⌘+W).

It depends on the type of application

If the application is multi-document (.g Safari, Preview)  i.e. can have several different documents open in several windows then command ⌘+W will close the current window and leave the application running (until possible it is shut down if the OS needs more resources)

If the application has just one window e.g. App Store, System preferences then closing the window will also close the app. Thus command ⌘+W and command ⌘+Q do the same


How can I trigger a Notification Center notification from an AppleScript or shell script? I'd love to be able to take advantage of 10.8's Notification Center features in AppleScripts and shell scripts I write.

Is there a built-in command or a third-party library I can use from either an AppleScript or shell script?

Ideally the type and icon of the notification could be controlled, but even just the ability to trigger a basic banner with a stock icon (but custom text) would be appreciated.

With Mavericks and later, you can do this using AppleScript's 'display notification':

display notification "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" with title "Title"

That's it—literally that simple! No 3rd-party libraries or apps required and is completely portable for use on other systems. 10.9 notification on the top, 10.10 DP in the middle, 10.10 on the bottom.

AppleScript can be run from the shell using /usr/bin/osascript:

osascript -e 'display notification "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" with title "Title"'

You can also customise the alert further by adding…

a subtitle

Append 'subtitle' followed by the string or variable containing the subtitle.

display notification "message" with title "title" subtitle "subtitle"

The above example produces the following notification:

sound

Append 'sound name' followed by the name of a sound that will be played along with the notification.

display notification "message" sound name "Sound Name"

Valid sound names are the names of sounds located in…

~/Library/Sounds
/System/Library/Sounds

Posting notifications can be wrapped as a command-line script. The following code can be run in Terminal and will add a script to /usr/local/bin (must exist, add to $PATH) called notify.

cd /usr/local/bin && echo -e "#!/bin/bash\n/usr/bin/osascript -e \"display notification \\\"\$*\\\"\"" > notify && chmod +x notify;cd -

This is the script that the above will add to notify.

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/osascript -e "display notification \"$*\""

Now to display a notification:

notify Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
sleep 5; notify Slow command finished

Thank you, this was just what I needed for some user scripts. I made a slight modification to add a subtitle and sound. If a value is not provided, it is ignored.

function _sys_notify() {
local notification_command="display notification \"$2\" with title \"$1\" subtitle \"$3\" sound name \"$4\""
osascript -e "$notification_command"
}

alias sys-notify="_sys_notify $1 $2 $3 $4"

For the sound, use a sound filename without the extension from /System/Library/Sounds. For example, to use the file Ping.aiff, use Ping for $4


Calendar cannot be updated on iPhone 6sPlus After iOS 9.3.5 update installed, I lost the ability to add events in my calendar. How can I restore this capability?

Go into Settings then Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Scroll down to Contacts, open Default Account. Select iCloud.
Done.

After iOS 9.3.5 update installed, I lost the ability to add events in my calendar. After following every suggestion I could find here on this site and online, nothing worked. So I just started turning features related to the calendar and iCloud on and off. One by one I checked to see if anything I did affected the calendar. Nothing did. So I kept going. And found my fix: Go into Settings then Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Scroll down to Contacts, open Default Account. Select iCloud. That's it. That was my necessary fix. Hope this helps someone else out there!


Can I get iPhone charge status from my Mac? I have my iPhone plugged into my Mac via USB. Is there anyway to check on the charge status? I know iTunes does give you a small battery indicator, but I am looking for something a bit more detailed, like % charge.

I thought it is something nice to have and I am a bit lazy to reach for my iPhone to check every time I charge my phone.

You are able to see the charge status on the iPhone page on the new iTunes 11.

The answer is no.  See, the battery in your phone is connected to the "motherboard" of your iphone. Think of it as the battery is only working for the iphone.

When you plug your phone in via USB, you can't access the information about the battery from your computer because of this.


Only download new email on Apple Mail app on macOS Is it possible to set up a new email account on Apple Mail app on macOS and only have it download new emails from the time it was set up on the Mail app?
I want to have a fresh start with an existing email address but I don't want to delete any of my old emails.
Question: how do I add an email address to the Mac Mail app and only have it display new emails?

Make Use of the Archive Function
In Apple Mail, you can Archive mail that you no longer need immediate access to, but you don't want to delete.
See the Apple Support Document:  Archive emails in Mail on Mac

I want to have a fresh start with an existing email address but I don't want to delete any of my old emails.

This is exactly what Archive will do.  You will have a nice, fresh start with your In-Box, but you wouldn't have deleted any of the existing email messages.  If you ever need to search for them again, they are readily available.
In my personal workflow, I archive everything older than 365 days (you can set up a rule, but that's a different question).  The other day, I needed a Serial Number for a scanner I purchased 2 years earlier and was able to find it within a couple of seconds.  This feature works, and works well!

If you give yourself a new unique email address then the only files that will appear will be new ones sent to that new email.
To open a new email account, open apple mail and under the Mail menu there is an option to Add New Account.  The mail app will then ask you which account to enter. Select Google (for gmail) and follow the instructions.


Apple 30" Monitor Intermitently Flashes Off and On I have an apple 30" monitor plugged into my late 2008 15" Macbook Pro. Every once in a while when I start up the Macbook pro the monitor will first turn on, then off and repeat indefinitely until I unplug the DVI connection. If I place a finger on the power touch switch on the side the monitor, the display will usually stay on as long as I hold my finger there.

Has anyone else had this problem. Anyone know what causes it or if it can be easily fixed.

The monitor is not under any kind of warranty at this point.

I don't know why, but if you unplug the monitor power (not just press the power off switch) and then plug it back in the problem goes away.

My guess is that the on/off switch on the side of the monitor is heat sensitive and calibrated for the temperature of the room, if the room temperature changes, things become un-calibrated, and the monitor starts thinking it's receiving a touch even when it's not.
The stan marsh method resets this calibration.

I have the same problem, I think it is temp.and moisture issues.
after about 30 min. I can remove my finger from the on off button and the monitor will stay on.  Then if it goes to sleep, it starts all over again


How can I get ^C to show up when I do Control-C on a Mac terminal? If I type a command, and halfway through I decide not to run that command, I do a Control-C to cancel it without having to backspace the whole thing, e.g. mv foo.txt bar.txt. On Ubuntu it'll show up as mv foo.txt bar.txt^C to remind me I cancelled it, but on Mac it shows up as just mv foo.txt bar.txt. Any way to get that ^C behaviour on Mac?

I'm not entirely sure of this, but for a different reason I upgrade the Bash on my machine (brew install bash) and this behaviour started to show up. This post is what I followed to update Bash. It would be good practice not to overwrite your old Bash but instead just use the new one. Brew puts the new Bash at /local/usr/bin/bash anyway.

On most Unix systems you can modify the shell to either show the output of the control character as the character or as a "^C".  This can be done with the echoctl or ctlecho stty modes.

Use stty echoctl to print the ^C characters

and stty -echoctl to allow the shell to print the control character as the actual character, a SIGINT in this case.

Doing this on a Linux machine seems to alter the behavior correctly, but on my MAC it will not show the character either way, on 10.11.something.


Problem of installation xcode4 and then xcode3 I install Xcode4 first in the default path /Developer then I install Xcode3 in /XCode3 It seems that the installation was not completed because I can't see Xcode.app in /XCode3/Application. What should I do?

Update!
I noticed that while I'm installing Xcode3 in the window "Install Xcode and iOS SDK" in path of Custom Install the check box of Xcode Toolset under Essentials is disable with unchecked status. What should I do?

I think the way to have Xcode 3 and 3 is to install Xcode 3 first - it will be in /Developer. Then Xcode 4 install will move Xcode 3 to /Developer-old  and install Xcode 4 in /Developer. So in your case delete /Developer and start again.

Since your question infer that you're aiming to have both Xcode 3 and Xcode 4 installed on the same Mac, your approach (described in your first paragraph) is correct that you need both to be installed in different paths.

In my company, to achieve your goal, the engineers

first ensure the development Mac is clean (i.e. no residual libraries, receipts, etc) by executing sudo <Xcode>/Library/uninstall-devtools --mode=all
after rebooting (to ensure any libraries in memory are released and their files can be deleted by emptying the Trash), empty Trash.
install Xcode 3 in a path other than the default /Developer path.
Install Xcode 4 in a path other than the path (specified in step 3) though majority of the engineers simply install at the default /Developer path.

The reason why we install Xcode 4 after installing Xcode 3 is to ensure the latest supporting development binaries & tools are installed. FYI, these binaries & tools are not in your specified /Developer folder but in default paths throughout the Mac startup  partition.

From your description in paragraph 2, one possibility is you have "nested" installation of Xcode, one on top of the other. You'll have to remove the files installed or partially installed (by Xcode installer) to return your Mac to a clean environment before running the Xcode installer again.


Switching the desktop enviroment Would it be possible to change the default environment to something like Cinnamon? Or to a window manager like openbox or awesomewm?

Yes. Reference the XQuartz Project, which is developing an OS X friendly version of Xorg: http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki

Awesome WM has been successfully installed by at least this user: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.window-managers.awesome/7939

They go on to list a step by step. Your mileage may vary, but it looks like it is possible to replace the default:

Once Xquartz was installed, set the following prefences:

 CHECK option key sends alt instead of mode_switch
 UNCHECK enable key equivelants

I installed the following ports from macports

 port install awesome
 port install xmodmap
 port install xev
 port install rxvt-unicode

Then, I made the following configuration file changes to get it
configured with the X server.  B

.xinitrc

  cd /Users/≤username>
 xmodmap .Xmodmap
 exec /opt/local/bin/awesome

.xmodmap

 remove mod1 = Alt_L
 add mod4 = Alt_L

Now, create an rc.lua file based on the stock version from macports,
and make a few changes to set the keys up

 mkdir -p ~/.config/awesome
 cp /opt/local/etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua ~/.config/awesome

Making it more Mac-like

Define the commandkey as a variable.  Also set urxvt-unicode as

the default terminal:

    commandkey = "mod2"
    terminal = "/opt/local/bin/urxvt"

Command-W to close a window, like the default MacOS shortcut

    awful.key({ commandkey }, "w", function (c) c:kill() end)

Fixing the Tag navigation

The Mod4 + N key combination doesn't actually send you to tag N
using the default rc.lua.  You must add the following

    tagkeys = { "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9" }

and then change

    "#" .. i,

to
    tagkeys[i],

In the section where the awful.keys() functions switch tags

There are still some quirks with this setup, but overall I find it
better than having to resize and place terminal windows by hand.

the answer to all the suggestions you have made is basically no.
This is these are X11 based desktops or window managers. OSX does not use X11 as its main desktop. It uses is called Aqua to manage the desktop (I can't find the Apple doc that describes this - a newer one is here which describes the Cocoa application layer.

The term Aqua refers to the overall appearance and behavior of OS X. The Aqua look and feel is characterized by consistent, user-friendly behaviors combined with a masterful use of layout, color, and texture. Although much of the Aqua look and feel comes for free when you use Cocoa technologies to develop your app, there are still many steps you should take to distinguish your app from the competition. To create a beautiful, compelling app that users will love, be sure to follow the guidance provided in OS X Human Interface Guidelines.

You can run X11 applications on OSX using the normal OSX desktop but it will do the window management. I think you can run X11 on a background and so can use an X11 window manage to manage X11 windows but not anyones written to Apple's GUI APIs. (I think you can also boot OSX to a console (you are then just running Darwin) and then run X11 as the only graphics the you can use the environment you mentioned but again no  apps using Apple's GUI APIs)


El capitan upgrade takes forever (>48 hours) Problem

I am currently updating a computer at work to El Capitan. After downloading, I started the installation almost 48 hours ago and it hasn't finished yet. I know (by experience and through reading various threads) that El Capitan is pretty slow to be upgraded but 48 feels dangerously too slow.

Machine

Note that the machine has 500GB of storage and has been used in the past mostly for storing things and for running various processes coded in C, C++ and R.

How it looks like

The screen is blue and empty with only the below loading sign at one third of the height from the bottom. I did not stare at this computer for the past 48 hours of course, but I would tend to think that it reached this screen in a matter of minutes and then jsut got stuck there for the past 48 hours.

The chance that something useful is happening is low. If you are comfortable with terminal or have a second Mac I would power off the Mac and then examine the /var/log/install.log and /var/log/system.log to see what has transpired to get stuck.

Restarting the upgrade or reinstalling the OS from Recovery HD should be harmless and would very likely succeed.

You could also power off the Mac and connect it to another in Target Disk Mode and get a backup if you have none / don't trust the backup / it's not current. That way you can erase and install and migrate your user, settings and apps back using Migration Assistant or do it by hand.

Unless you can ssh in or use remote desktop to get the files mentioned above, you have few options but to pull the plug and pick up the pieces.


iPhone - how to disable Shake for undoing read/unread email? Can anyone help me understand if there have been changes to the "shake-to-undo" feature specific to Mail using it to undo marking messages read/unread? My mom gets a pop-up just about every time she opens Mail, asking "Undo read message?"
We both have shake-to-undo enabled globally, but mine does not do this (nor do I want it to). Shake-to-undo typing is working equally for both of us.
In further troublehsooting, I notice that I'm still in iOS 12.3.1, and she's on 13.x (not at her phone rn).
Does anybody recall this behavior being specifically added in iOS 13? By any chance has it been changed since then? I've done a lot of searching on this, and there are countless posts from others who are frustrated by it.
We had to turn off the global setting to get her phone to stop doing this, which is unfortunately b/c it is otherwise an important and useful feature.

Open the settings app
Swipe down slightly
Enter undo in the search field
Tap “Swipe to undo”
Make your choice

The setting is global and not app specific.
Since you didn’t list actual troubleshooting steps, once you conclude you can suppress this by disabling it globally and that it returns.
Look for other differences for your experience. Different accelerometer sensitivities, different actual accelerations or pursue software resets.

power cycle it normally
force reset the device
Leave the undo off for a day globally
restore the device
swap or repair the hardware

Being organized is the only way to troubleshoot a frustrating situation like you mention.


iTunes wishlist on ipad Is there a way to view your iTunes wishlist on an iPad? I checked at the bottom of the iTunes app but I couldn't find it there.

Unfortunately there is no way.
http://imore.com/wish-list


Yosemite changes QWERTY keyboard layout I have a qwerty keyboard, but I type in french and japanese quite often.

Up until now, I used to have kotoeri activated with Romaji writing for english and french. I used to write accentuated letters by :

option + e + letter for  é, ó, etc…
option + ` + letter for à è ù etc…
option + i + letter for î, û, ê, etc…
option + u + letter for ü, ï, ö, etc…

Under yosemite, this doesn't work anymore.

To get it back I had to activate US International – PC. But it still doesn't work properly. There is a huge bug :

when typing ' then a letter, I get á, é, etc… This is preventing me for writing properly stuffs like

l'arrosoir  → lárrosoir
qu'un → quún

There are a lot of stuffs like this in french. And even worse, auto-correction kicks in and transforms:

quún in quant

How can I fix this ? How can I still continue typing without learning a new keyboard layout ?

CLARIFICATION
=============

I am talking about several separate bugs.

Bug on U.S. International PC keyboard layout

While using this keyboard pressing option + e then a vowel produces the right output (for instance á) the key 'actually adds an accent to a letter instead of producing the 'character (for instance quelquúninstead of quelqu'un). This is most inconvenient as the character ' alone is quite frequent in french.

Bug on U.S. keyboard layout

Hitting option + e then a vowel has no effect (same for option + u then a vowel, etc…)
→ Solved by deactivating and and activating again this configuration. This is the only working configuration.

Bug on kotoeri

Kotoeri configuration let the user choose which keyboard configuration to use for romaji. I have selected U.S. as usual, and I have the same issues as with the U.S. configuration below. If I select US International PC, nothing changes, I don't even get the behavior of International PC without kotoeri. This is most definitely wrong.

UPDATE
======

Selecting US Extended yields the desired behavior (the old one from US international PC). However, US Extended is not available for kotoeri.

As far as I know, Yosemite Romaji IM's failure to honor option and shift dead keys is a bug that Apple will have to fix via an OS update.  It has been reported elsewhere (e.g. https://discussions.apple.com/message/26864874#26864874  ).  It would be good to use Apple's feedback channel to encourage quick action on this.

The OS X 10.10.1 update does not fix this bug in Kotoeri, but the 10.10.2 update of Jan 27, 2015 DOES fix it.

The behavior described for the US International PC keyboard layout is not a bug, but intended.  People who use this keyboard want the ` ~ ^ " ' keys to be dead keys for producing accented characters, and they learn to add a space when they need the stand alone version.

I have not seen any other reports of the US keyboard layout not working right in Yosemite.  When the US flag is showing at the top right of the screen, you should be able to use the standard option dead keys to produce accented characters without problems.  You should also be able to use the Character Picker, where you hold down the key for the base letter and a popup menu appears where you can select accented versions.  If that is not the case for you, the OS is broken somewhere and may need to be reinstalled.

' then space will result on a '.  I think this is what you want.


How do I use ipfw to allow LAN access but deny Internet access? How can I use ipfw (or another tool, if one is available) to allow unlimited access between computers on my LAN, but not allow access to the Internet?

(The IPs on my local LAN are 192.168.0.xxx)

Has been a while since I've used ipfw but running the following commands on all relevant computers should do the trick:

 sudo ipfw -f flush
 sudo ipfw add allow tcp from me to 192.168.0.0/24
 sudo ipfw add allow ip from me to 192.168.0.0/24
 sudo ipfw add deny tcp from me to any
 sudo ipfw add deny ip from me to any

To disable just run sudo ipfw flush again

you can use ipfw to block all traffic to port 80 which is http. You will need to check if you also need to block other ports e.g. 443, 110, 993 etc

From the comment below, did you want to have http access between machines on your network?
If so just do above and then add the exception to allow http to machines on your ip range. e.g. /24 if thats what your network is.


How (or where) I can set keyboard shortcut to "add new desktop place" please, how to set up keyboard shortcut to "add new desktop place", that must be added via "Mission Control" and by mouse click to "plus button" (top right corner)?? I'm looking at "system preferences" -> "keyboard" -> "Shortcut" ... but there is no any settings for "add new desktop" or someone same.

Is there any way to set up this shortcut ??

Many thanks for ideas.

You could use this script then make a shortcut to it in Automator.

In Mavericks, Applescript to create a new Space in Mission Control

delay 0.5 -- time to release command if the script is run with command-R
tell application "System Events"
    key code 126 using control down -- control-up
    delay 1
    do shell script "MouseTools -x 1900 -y 60;sleep 1;MouseTools -leftClickNoRelease;MouseTools -releaseMouse"
    key code 53 -- escape
end tell

source https://stackoverflow.com/a/22873544

Get the MouseTools

Move your mouse to the top right corner and you should see a dim plus sign and the new screen.


Weird spotlight issue For whatever reason, when I launch spotlight, type in "1", "1", "2", spotlight closes automatically.  Does anyone else have this issue?

Running 10.12.6 (16G1510) on a 2015 Macbook Pro

I can not reproduce your problem and it is clearly not normal behavior.

So suggest for you to:

Re-index Spotlight database. It is a long process, but in background, you can keep using your computer meanwhile.

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


Keyboard shortcut for "Show Package Contents" I know you can use ⌘+O to open a folder, however when you do that on an application it opens the application.

Is it possible to either make ⌘+O always show the contents or is there another shortcut for that?

I suggest that you create a custom Finder shortcut in System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → App Shortcuts → +.

This way you can open packages with ⌥ as a modifier key.

⌘+O to open folders
⌥+⌘+O to open packages

Under snow leopard, I found the simplest way was to use SAVE A COPY as iwork 08. then right click to and the show package content option will be available.


How to charge the MacBook Pro from 12 Volts? Aim: I would like to charge my MacBook Pro (MBP) form a 12V lead-acid battery. However there are no official chargers from Apple for that purpose. There exist quite some alternative products on the internet. For example this one simply comes with a MagSafe adapter and lets you choose 18V. However I am afraid that such a solution might hurt my battery.

Does anybody know how exactly the MBP battery is charged? Does it require a particular charge line? Is it OK to simply connect 18 Volts and see what happens?

If you connect 18 V to the power/ground pins, your Mac will be powered off the 12 V battery, but it won't charge: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/132332/26231

To charge, the laptop needs to identify the charger by communicating over the signal pin in the middle. http://www.righto.com/2013/06/teardown-and-exploration-of-magsafe.html

Solution: Sacrifice an apple charger by cutting the cable and connecting the correct pins to your DC/DC converter. I recommend using the 45 W ones so your DC power supply doesn't have to be very big.

Use a DC to AC inverter.
You simply attach the alligator clips to the correct battery terminals, turn the device on  and plug your cord into the inverter. It's that simple.
Amazon sells a 400 watt inverter for $25, that's all you'll need.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001RNOHBC/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


How to get rid of booby-trapped pop ups to update flash player? I'm coming across a malicious pop up to update my flash player. The message in the pop up:

Warning! Your Adobe Flash Player version is outdated. Security risks. Please update now.

I've seen this pop up across multiple browsers (chrome, safari, firefox) and occurs on all OSX machines on the local network. I've attempted to disable on plugins and extensions in chrome but the problem remains. Clicking ok takes me to a website that appears to be an official adobe website but the link to download the update is clearly wrong.

This problem just happened today across three machines simultaneously and I'm stumped as how to proceed. What's the best way to remove these pop ups?

When weird things happen on my clients' Macs, the first thing I do is run the free Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (MBAM, formerly AdwareMedic software to see if any of the known "bad guys" is active on the system. As often as not, they are.

Also, have a look at your /etc/hosts file through Terminal:

Open Utilities > Terminal (or use Spotlight)
more /etc/hosts (press space bar to scroll a screen at a time)

See if fplayer.adobe.com is listed there. If so, we'll discuss how to remove it.

Try that and report back. Then we'll try step two.

Try delete your IP from OpenDNS if you are using this Open Source.


Yosemite (> 10.10.x) randomly freezes and crashes on my MacBook Pro 15" Early 2011 I already had a similar problem before and after more than two years of struggling (I had this problem long since the Yosemite) I am still being daily annoyed by the same problem.:

Is this crash normal?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3358689

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2768351?start=1650&tstart=1369#discussion-16646143

However this time it is slightly different. The thing is, it newer "randomly shut downs" while I'm on Windows, doing stuff, playing games, etc. - it only happens on Yosemite, and it is a fresh copy on the new SSD and all that. Therefore, I really don't think it's a hardware problem. There is even nothing in the logs at that time (???)

After I installed the new Yosemite OS with Boot Camp (Windows 8.1 Pro) on my brand new Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD, my MacBook Pro randomly froze and after a few minutes - shut itself down.

I even thought it could do something with my USB ports, because of this (only a few keys worked on login when external USB hub with Yeti mic plugged in): Some keyboard keys are not working on login to Yosemite but after some more testing, I can rule that out. It's reproducible with no devices connected over USB.

This problem occurs more frequently when I'm watching videos or working with Photoshop and Illustrator at the same time but sometimes it's totally random (but then, why it's not shutting down when I'm playing games on Windows?) I thought this could be a GPU issue, so I installed gfxCardStatus, but no luck here.

Could this be an "Automatic graphics switching" issue or is it something else?

I had the same problem since a couple of days. Here's what I've done to (apparently) fix it:

Created another Administrator account. Logged onto that account. Removed DropBox, Skype, Viber, Evernote.
Why? Those where the only applications my new account did not run, and my new account never experienced any crashes.

I then got back to my primary account and downloaded the latest version of Skype (7.1) and Viber. I am now running Skype and Viber as before. I had no use for DropBox or Evernote anyway.

I used to have crashes shortly after restarting. I am now on my second hour with a solid machine. I don't know if this will stay so, but at least you can see if it is any help to you.

There is not much to go on with what you have given.  It could be an Automatic graphics switching issue.  I've also had a bad SSD present similar freezes.  I would recommend performing diagnostics on the Hard Drive, RAM and anything else you can.  Rule out whether or not you have hardware that is failing.  Then from there, you can begin to troubleshoot the OS.


Home sharing on iPhone: "You don't have permission to access the requested resource " I've configured Home sharing to work just fine on my iPad and Apple TV, however for some reason on my phone I get an error pop up saying "You don't have permission to access the requested resource" when trying to play a song.

I can view my library just fine, but I cannot play any songs.

I've set iTunes to share my entire library which seems fine on the other advices.

I've restarted both my phone and PC, and also signed out of home sharing on my phone and signed in again, and also disabled and re-enabled home sharing on my PC.

Running the latest version of both iOS and iTunes.

Thanks!

Fix:

Sign out of Home sharing:  iOS Settings > Music > Sign out of Home Sharing
Sign in to Home sharing again, with your Apple ID.
Terminate the Music app. Double-click the Home button to bring up the iOS app switcher. Swipe the Music app with an upwards motion, to terminate it.
Open the Music app again. Home Sharing should now be working again. You will have to reindex the contents.

I don't know why this problem exists, but Home Sharing seems to have become increasingly unreliable as Apple post-Jobs appears to divert resources elsewhere.

You might want to try looking into the Apple Discussions boards when you have problems like this, as millions of other Apple users help each out with their problems there.

Jim

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5431643?start=0&tstart=0


How to upgrade bash with brew (permission error)? I work with Yosemite (10.10.3) and would like to upgrade bash (to version 4.x) and found this post. After brew update, I did brew install bash, but obtained:

==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/bash-4.3.33.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Pouring bash-4.3.33.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
==> Caveats
In order to use this build of bash as your login shell,
it must be added to /etc/shells.
Error: An unexpected error occurred during the `brew link` step
The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local
Permission denied - /usr/local/share/locale/af
Error: Permission denied - /usr/local/share/locale/af

How can I fix this? I cded into /usr/local/share/locale but the directory af doesn't exist. Why does brew try to access this?

Update

I forgot to say, if I use sudo brew install bash, I receive:

Error: Cowardly refusing to `sudo brew install`
You can use brew with sudo, but only if the brew executable is owned by root.
However, this is both not recommended and completely unsupported so do so at
your own risk.

You must be sure that the group of /usr/local and all inside it is admin (I'm supposing your username belongs to admin group too). If this isn't the case, fix it with:

sudo chown -R $USER:admin /usr/local

You will probably have to do the same on /Library/Caches/Homebrew:

sudo chown -R $USER:admin /Library/Caches/Homebrew

This line:

sudo chown -R $USER:admin /usr/local

Worked for me.


Is there a way to keep internal drive segments unmounted while booting from external device For forensic imaging of drives and/or segments with a native Mac application, I'm booting from external device (usb, hdd, etc.) into BaseSystem. I want to keep the internal drives and/or segments unmounted during the boot process. Later will disable disk arbitration, mount these drives/segments and image them. Since the drives should be kept unmounted, there is no way of knowing drive/segment volume names and/or UUID.

I've created a deamon (System/Library/LaunchDeamons) for mount blocking (on external boot device), but it only blocks newly attached devices, not internal ones.

Also, I've also tried disabling "diskarbitrationd" daemon (desperately, on external boot device), but not worked.

Note: I've created boot image from BaseSystem.dmg of Sierra (10.12.1), and modified the contents.

Nobody even commented. There may be a solution from a clue keyword  autodiskmount


Deleting Desktop Background Images I want to free up some space on my hard drive by deleting things and I found that 2GB were being used just on desktop backgrounds. I don't particularly care what my desktop background is so I'd like to delete these files.

Unfortunately, no matter what I try, I can't seem to delete these files.

Things I've tried:

sudo rm ./*
deleting them through finder
chflags nouchg location/nameoffile.extension - i.e. unlocking the file
giving Terminal Full Disk Access

How can I delete these files?

Thanks,

Update: My version of macOS is 10.15.3

Okay I think I've figured it out. This was the recipe that worked:

Delete the Files

Reboot into recovery mode
Open the Terminal from the "Utilities" menu
csrutil disable as suggested by da4 (thanks!)
Reboot
mount -uw / i.e. mount the filesystem as writable
sudo rm -r "/System/Library/Desktop Pictures"/*

Restore System Integrity Protection

Reboot into recovery mode again
Open the Terminal from the "Utilities" menu
csrutil enable
Reboot