On OS X Lion 10.7.4 in Terminal.app I cannot type `C-M-@` or `C-M-%`, why?

In general, Mac applications that are expecting text input from the keyboard do not handle C-S combinations or C-digit combinations.  Programs that work with control-shift combos (like anything running under X11) do so by handling key events as events, not character input.  This is how they can differentiate between Tab and Ctrl-i, which both generate the same ASCII character. (You can read in detail how Lion (really Cocoa) handles key events if you really want to know.)

Historically (back in the Teletype days), there were only uppercase letters on the keyboard, and there were no caret (^) or underscore (_) characters on the keyboard (instead there were up-arrow and back-arrow). The shift key worked by toggling the 16's bit and the control key worked by zeroing the 64's bit of the 7-bit ASCII codes the keyboard produced.

What this means is that the control key had no effect for the 32 characters on the keyboard that already had their 64's bit set to zero (most of the non-alphabetic characters, including digits), and since the teletype was purposefully limited to upper-case letters only, the shift key had no effect on most of the alphabetic characters (and where it did have an effect, it produced a special character like @).

Additional weirdness was added in the migration to supporting lower-case text, as the control key combos were all typed without using the shift key but now the letter typed without using the shift key had changed, so the decision was to map control-lower-case to what had been control-upper-case.  But then what do you do with control-shift?

For a while the problem was handled by having the control key also zero out the 32's bit, which is what differentiated lower case letters from upper case letters.  But eventually ASCII was replaced with Unicode and those kinds of duplicate key assignments were too much of a waste of keyboard space to be allowed to continue, so they got different mappings, and on the standard Mac US keyboard most C-S combos are unassigned.

So what you have run into is the legacy support for keyboard input running back to Teletype days.  The characters Terminal (and other OS X apps) do not support are characters you could not type on the Teletype keyboard.  As evidence of this, note that C-S-2 (C-@), C-S-6 (C-^), and C-S-- (C-_) all work, because those keys have been re-mapped since the ASR-33, where S-2 was " (and @ was S-P), S-6 was &, and S-- was =,  but in general control-shift combos do not produce characters of any kind.


How to transfer the live photos to Mac via AirDrop?

This is not the fix but a workaround.

I exactly have the same issue with you. The interesting thing is that if someone send me Live Photos via AirDrop, (he is using iPhone 6), my laptop running High Sierra would give me the option to import via Photos app. But if I try to send live photos via AirDrop from my iPhone 7, I have no way of importing them directly into Photo app, and all I get is JPGs in download folder. I have been googling to see if anyone can offer solutions but so far, nothing except people are guessing as it is a bug...

But I really wanted to transfer my Live Photos wireless. And my solution was to use "Shared Albums" in iCloud. (I'm not sharing the album necessarily. Simply this is for me only.) I tested a few times and I see that Live Photos are intact under Shared Albums in Photo app on my laptop. Then I select them and import into Photo app. I can also add Live Photos from my laptop in the Shared Album, and I can grab them in my iPhone as well.

Another cool thing about this is "A shared album can hold up to 5000 photos and videos. The photos and videos in your shared albums are kept in iCloud, but they don't count against your iCloud storage limit." Although for me, I'll keep the album empty after importing photos.

Here is more info on Shared Album from Apple website:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202786

Till Apple can fix the bug, this is my workaround to import live photos on my iPhone without USB cable.


To answer my own question: my time was set to manual, not automatic, and a day in the past.

This was preventing Airplay from working, along with iMessage and Facetime.


To boot up in safe mode you can hold down the shift key when restarting.

I would go to the Finder and open any window and right click or control click in the gray part of title bar. See what your settings are set to.

There is also a new update to the system 10.10.2 that was just released. Maybe this will fix it, along with a bunch of other problems we have all been having with Yosemite. (I hope! :).

As far as the menu icons, I know that some of the system settings as in airplay there is a button that says "Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available" and there are more I am sure.

Good luck my friend.


Apps deleted from jailbroken iPad after battery died

SSH into your device as the mobile user and run uicache then respring.


Photos on my iPhone 5 (101) but only the latest (23) show up in iCloud

Photos in My Photo Stream are saved on the iCloud server for 30 days only.  If many of the photos are over 30 days old then they will no longer be available through PhotoStream:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201317


Is there a way to create new desktop spaces from keyboard only?

You can do it with some AppleScript. This will create a new desktop every time you run it:

tell application "System Events"
    do shell script "/Applications/Mission\\ Control.app/Contents/MacOS/Mission\\ Control"
    tell process "Dock"
        set countDesktops to count buttons of list 1 of group 1
        --new desktop
        click button 1 of group 1
        --switch to new desktop
        repeat until (count buttons of list 1 of group 1) = (countDesktops + 1)
        end repeat
        click button (countDesktops + 1) of list 1 of group 1
    end tell
end tell

You can save this as a Universal Service you can assign a globally-available shortcut key combination to call it.

Credit where credit is due.


What is the difference between MDM and third party services for distributing the app from Enterprise Developer Program?

Mobile Device Management (MDM) or Mobile Application Management (MAM) solutions can be used to distribute in-house apps to the employees. For this, they'll need to enroll the employees' devices in MDM or MAM. After this, they can upload in-house apps to the MDM console and bulk push to the enrolled devices. It is also possible to distribute apps that are in the App Store.

Can you make it clear what you told about TestFlight, as I didn't catch it? You said "He wants the feature like TestFlight", but TestFlight is an independent service (MDM do not come with TestFlight). Head on to the section 'TestFlight Beta Testing' in this article and you'll learn more about it.

The app that distributed through TestFlight is the 'beta app' which have a life of 60 days for each build. On the other hand, 'in-house apps' have an infinite lifetime.

If you need to know anything from me, leave a comment. I am happy to help.


iOS - Replace Siri with Google Assistant

Siri and Google Assistant are similar offerings from Apple and Google and are deeply integrated in their respective mobile OS. It is not possible to replace one with the other.

While Siri is exclusive to iOS (along with other OS by Apple macOS, watchOS and tvOS), Google provides the Google Assistance app for iOS.

Google Assistant app for iOS can be downloaded on iTunes App Store.

On an additional note, as Siri is deeply integrated into iOS, there are various features exclusive to it, which Google Assistant cannot perform on iOS.


Option to "open with..." on folders in finder

Folders will always open in Finder, an Open With option appears when you right-click on a file.

Is this what you mean or was there a particular program you wanted to interact with an entire folder with?


SSD w/ brand new clean in stall of Yosemite fails to boot

You are most likely suffering from a bad SATA cable. This is a very common issue with any MBP so far, and often presents itself when someone decides to swap out their drive.

You can check this by plugging in both the SSD and an external boot medium and then booting up with option key pressed. If you can see the external medium after some time but not the SSD, your SATA cable is most likely broken.

This is the thin black cable going to your motherboard from the SATA plug. It's pretty cheap to buy and can be installed really easy. It is screwed down to the chassis so you will have to unscrew it before you can replace it.

Addition to my post: TRIM has nothing to do with this. Neither does Yosemite :) TRIM is a garbage collection technology (or: a ATA command to initiate GC on a specific part). Modern SSD's work fine with or without it. The difference is that TRIM can be used by the operating system to direct some specific garbage collection. This is separate from the SSD controller's own garbage collection scheme. You do not need TRIM, you should not install a "TRIM Enabler" as they work (since Yosemite) by disabling kext signatures and blindly modifying some code and/or a plist for a kernel extension. Some newer enablers use local kext signing as an immediate solution. You will however not have any noticeable performance difference, but you will have a system that's been messed with. The only thing you have to make sure is that you don't have your SSD completely filled 99% of the time as this limits the SSD's ability to maintain itself properly in some cases.


Can I put a Keynote presentation in a Keynote presentation?

You can create an iBooks presentation which allows you to do this. Whenever I have multiple presentations in one topic, I combine them into an ibooks, which allows you to embed several keynote presentations onto one "slide" or "page". Plus it looks really good -- you just click (or tap in iPad) and the embeded keynote will display. Hope this helps.


Is there a way to turn off LibreOfficeUpdate via terminal?

You could try blocking all outgoing traffic of the application with the firewall (ipfw) or you can edit the hosts file in /etc/hosts to route the update server to localhost (127.0.0.1)

I don't know the specific update servers, but that would be not that hard to find out.

(for exampple here : update.services.openoffice.org -- so there should be a possible way. Be careful though because libreoffice/openOffice sometimes produce the error "The host name ... could not be resolved.")

Try also experimenting with the GUI on your Mac and the logfiles or list of open files (lsof)


How to restore MacBook Pro to factory settings? Prohibited sign on boot

These links may help:

1) https://mackeeper.com/blog/post/473-step-by-step-guide-to-reset-mac-to-factory-settings/

2) https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/reset-mac-3494564/

3) https://macpaw.com/how-to/factory-reset-mac


Partitioned hard drive and now missing half the space

You can tell APFS to grow the container to fill the disk as follows:

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

This is non-destructive, and will automatically grow it to fill the actual disk - that's what that last 0 means.

Full explanation:

Usage:  diskutil APFS resizeContainer <inputDisk> limits [-plist]
        diskutil APFS resizeContainer <inputDisk> <newSize> [<triple>*]
        where <inputDisk> = A Container Reference DiskIdentifier (preferred)
              or a Physical Store DiskIdentifier
              <newSize> = the desired new Container or Physical Store size
              <triple> = a { fileSystemPersonality, name, size } tuple
Resize an APFS Container. One of the Container's Physical Store disks will be
resized, and therefore the Container which it defines will be resized by an
equal amount. You do this by specifying a new Container size; to preview the
current available range, you can instead specify "limits"; no change will be
made. A new size of zero is taken as a request to do a grow-to-fit operation.
If the new size implies a shrink, you can specify ordered triples in the same
manner as `diskutil partitionDisk`, etc, to fill the partition map's free
space gap that would otherwise result. If there is more than one Physical Store
and you specify a Container Reference, the appropriate Physical Store will be
chosen automatically. Ownership of the affected disks is required, and all of
the Container's Volumes must be unencrypted or unlocked.
Example:  diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk5 110g
          diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 110g
          diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk5 0
          diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk5 1.5t jhfs+ foo 10g ms-dos BAR 0


Reset license key for MS Mac Office 2011

From this forum post:

  Ditch /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist. Start any Office application. Reregister/reactivate.

Hope it helps.


Well, you could just start a recording every time you practice and delete it at the end. Not very practical probably.

Alternatively you could download Metronome which "is designed with the practicing musician in mind which means that it's fast and easy to use. Nearly all of Metronome's functions and settings can be changed by using a single key." Actually there are probably a lot of other metronome applications, this was just the first I found in Google.


Any way reinstall the old iWork in Mavericks?

The Mac App Store updates to iWork should not have replaced the original iWork '09 apps.

The original apps should still be available under /Applications/iWork '09 as well as if you search for them in Spotlight - just look for iWork '09 next to the name if you decide not to delete the newer versions.

If for some reason you have deleted the older versions, you can grab them from a Time Machine backup or reinstall them from a retail CD if you happened to buy them that way.


How to edit iCloud Photos Library EXIF metadata on the Mac?

Have you seen this?  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photos-exif-editor/id1202851767?mt=12. I've used it at work and it works well and its 99 cents.


Dragging cropped .pdf file to Mac Powerpoint 2011 - Result is completely different area of original!

Try this:

Press Shift +  CMD + 4
Move the cursor to the top right corner of your pdf, outline the area where you want to copy.
A screenshot will be taken. Find it in your desktop.
Use the screenshot in your PowerPoint.


localhost is always responding with "Connection refused: localhost:80"

It turned out that the problem occured only in Opera, not Safari or any other browser. I found out that I had Opera Turbo enabled which would of course let me access my own localhost correctly.


One possibility is that you have inverted the colors. In 10.11.6 I believe you might do that accidentally by pressing Command-Option-Control-8 at the same time. Try holding down the command, option, and control keys with one hand and pressing the number 8 key with your other and see if that fixes the color scheme.

Another possibility would be to look at the color profiles in the color tab of the Display section of System Preferences. If there are multiple profiles there, does changing profiles fix the problem?


Can I safely charge an iPhone 4S with a 5V 2A source?

When I travel, I only bring my iPad charger and use it interchangeably with my iPhone 4 without noticing any battery life performance and by that extension it should be the same for iPhone 4s.

Apple's website seems to confirm this; For the 10W USB iPad charger - "It also charges iPhone and all iPod models with a dock connector."


A coworker pointed out an inconsistency with my email account and that led to the resolution of the issue.

On our corporate server, there is a main email address and you could also make any number of aliases.  So for instance, my email address is frankrizzo@mycompany.com.  But if you send me an email to frank.rizzo@mycompany.com or frank+rizzo@mycompany.com, it will reach me as well.

In the iPhone, I entered my account as frank.rizzo@mycompany.com (with the dot).  However, people kept sending emails to my main account - frankrizzo@mycompany.com - without the dot.  The iPhone saw the one without the dot as not mine and thus was including it on the Reply All screen.


You should specifically not try to do any DNS or similar trickery to achieve failover. The way OD failover works is that the OD data includes configuration records listing all of the OD servers (master and replicas). The clients store (& periodically update) copies of this list, so if they ever have trouble contacting their primary server (generally the one they were told to bind to), they have a ready list of other servers to try.

(It's actually more complicated than this if you have locales defined, since that overrides the basic server list. But the same principles apply; just define the locales in OD, and the clients will automatically download the info they need.)


Recently Added is a smart playlist. In iTunes, select it, go to File → Edit Smart Playlist, and change the criteria. For example:

Re-syncing your iPhone will apply these changes.


Can you access an AirPort Extreme (5th Gen) disk from an iPad

Unfortunately you can't do it. The Airport Extreme runs SMB1 and can't be upgraded to a later version. SMB1 is not secure and the Files app will not allow connections to it.


Latency spikes on wifi - power saving measure?

Yes, there is indeed such a power saving measure implemented on the Mac. This is common across WiFi chipsets on all platforms and operating systems, and is actually part of the WiFi standard itself.

The PSM (power saving mode) of the WiFi chipset takes many forms. This you're probably experiencing is known as the "connected-idle" mode. In this mode it introduces a small latency of less than 100 ms (typically 50-100 ms) for the first packet received after the module was put in the connected-idle mode.

Other power saving modes exist that save more power, but for example the connected-sleep mode introduces an extra latency of typically 300 ms, which is more than you measure here.

Unfortunately there seem to be no official interface from Apple to change power saving modes manually, or to disable certain power saving modes. The only work around is simply to actually use the radio for something which will prevent it from going into the connected-sleep mode at all. That could be done with for example a ping running in the background permanently. Obviously this will consume more power, which could be a nuisance when running on battery.

However despite the above, you should be aware that this power saving mode isn't really something that the end-user is supposed to or normally notices at all. Remember that the latency only affects the very first packet received after the module is put into connected-sleep mode, and that it is only put in connected-sleep mode after a period of nonuse.

When using Steam In-Home Streaming you would have a constant stream of packets to/from your Mac. This means that the WiFi module isn't going to go into the connected-sleep mode while streaming.


Extract passwords from local items keychain files

Backup of Local Items keychain

Create a new keychain in Keychain Access via File > New Keychain...
Copy all the entries from Local Items over to this newly created keychain
Backup the keychain by navigating to ~/Library/Keychains/ and copying the newly created keychain to a safe place
You can now delete the newly created keychain in Keychain Access via right-click Delete Keychain (Delete References & Files)

Restore of Local Items keychain

Add the backed up keychain in Keychain Access via File > Add Keychain... and navigating to its location
Copy all the entries from this keychain over to Local Items
You can delete the previously added keychain since all of the entries now reside in Local Items


is there anyway to add a song to an existing specific playlist from my ipod touch

Assuming you're running the latest iOS:

Select a playlist. Select "Edit" from the buttons at the top of the playlist under the search field. Tap the "+" in the top left of the toolbar. Find the song(s) you want, and hit the "+" to the right of their name. Tap "Done" when finished.


You're better off using an Mac-supported cards from Apple or others.

Apple's card are seriously outdated, both 5770 and 5870 are slow card in today's standard.

There "should" be a renew of Mac Pro some day, you can wait for that.

There are a cards like the Quadro K5000 that is Mac-compatible. But NOT out of the box. You need to install the driver first, and then install the card.

Also, support for AMD HD 7 series cards ARE NOT IN YET in 10.8.2. I had one of those in my old Hackintosh running 10.8.3, and it's still recognized as "AMD Radeon HD 7xxx series", so I will say wait for it.

Don't make any moves before AMD 7 series is out, maybe Apple or third-party will release cards for it.

Good luck!


iPhone 5 displaying single 1x icon instead of 2x?

The app probably doesn't have a 2x icon. Apple doesn't allow apps in the store with only 1x, so I assume this app has not been updated in a very long time?

Contact the developer and ask them to fix it. Nothing else you can do, only the developer of an app can modify it (this is a security policy enforced on iOS to prevent malware attacks).


receipt is an element belonging to some parent object.  As with any instance of an AppleScript element that has already been created, it'll typically be referenced either by index, e.g.

receipt 1 of ...

or by name, e.g.

receipt "MyNamedReceipt" of ...

or by id, e.g.

receipt id "61405882-ee27-4c94-86bb-bcdecc8792ba" of ...

My feeling is that the add command will act on an instance of a library item (including receipt) that already exists.  If so, then

add receipt ...

would most likely generate the error you're seeing, because receipt is a class name, where add would be expecting an identifiable element, e.g.

add receipt "MyNamedReceipt" ...

Going by typical nomenclature in the AppleScript world, add commands typically get invoked when one wishes to take a pre-existing object from one location and insert/add it to another.  In Paperless, this might be taking a receipt from, say, a folder (or album) of receipts, and adding either a copy of or a reference to (most likely the latter) that receipt to a different folder/album.

The most common way to create new instances of an element in the majority of AppleScriptable applications is by way of the make command (which is part of the standard suite that an application's scripting dictionary is recommended to contain):

  make v : Make a new object.
      make
          new type : The class of the new object.
          [at location specifier] : The location at which to insert the object.
          [with data any] : The initial data for the object.
          [with properties record] : The initial values for properties of the object.
      → specifier

If Paperless includes the make command, try using that.  It would take a form similar to:

make new receipt with properties {name:"My Receipt", merchant:"Apple", amount:"$249.99", tax:"$0.00"}

You will need to consider which element owns the collection of receipts in which you're attempting to create a new one.  If library item is a top-level application object, i.e. owned by application, then the make command should not require the at parameter (if it does, it can be a generic at end of receipts).  However, if library item is owned by, say, a library class object, then the make command either needs to occur within tell block targeting that library element (e.g. library 1, or library "MyLibrary"); or it needs the at parameter to describe where to create the new receipt, e.g.

tell application "Paperless"
        .
        .
        .
    make new receipt at library 1 of document 1
        .
        .
        .
end tell

where, for illustrative purposes, I've pre-supposed that library items are contained by libraries are contained by documents are contained by the application.


Can I disable the Lion animation when switching to/from fullscreen apps?

There is, at least, a way to speed them up with a SIMBL bundle: http://www.yllier.net/SUFSA.html


Time Machine preferences - time estimate wrong, progress bar doesn't show any progress

You can open a Terminal and run the command tmutil status or check Console to see exactly what your Time Machine is up to; you can have a look at James Pond's website for help in interpreting them.

Unfortunately, Time Machine doesn't provide very detailed information on what it is doing, but this might give you a clue that gives you something to search for!


How to clear the cache or do a hard refresh in mobile Safari?

This can be done through the Settings: https://www.imyfone.com/iphone-space-saver/how-to-clear-cache-in-safari-on-ipad/

Launch the "Settings" app on your iPad through the home screen.
Scroll down the menu and select "Safari".
Scroll down to the bottom of right hand panel and tap on "Clear History and Website Data".
Confirm by tapping "Clear" from the pop-up window.

Warning: this wipes every data, save form field values, bookmarks, etc.


Vagrant/VirtualBox extremely slow despite 8GB-RAM/SSD-HD/2.53GHz Core2Duo

try enabling SSD on the virtual drive. This helped in my environment.

As I cannot answer to comments:

settings->storage
mark hard disk
click "Solid-State Drive"


I cannot maintain Bluetooth connection between old MacBook and new iPhone, because standard has changed so much in 8 years?

Like Wayfanning Stranger said in comments, I'm going to try a (usb to bluetooth) extender. I had really given-up. I am sure I'll get the correct extender to work. What a break through. Thanks so much.


When Shortcuts first came out, I immediately created a Sleepytimes script. Among other things, it enabled Do Not Disturb. After some days of use, I realised that you could also add controls over Bedtime.

The two steps you are looking to do go like this.

Add the object Set Do Not Disturb. Set it to ON and the Until to your liking.
Add the object Edit Bedtime (search for it - if you cannot find it, just launch Clock -> Bedtime a couple of times - hopefully there will be an easier way to get this to show in the future).

Hope this helps! Also, I think I can just share a shortcut with Edit Bedtime in it. Let me know if you are able to access Edit Bedtime by opening this iCloud link - after that you could try and tap on the object and select "Set favorite". Would be interesting to see if this lets it show for you from now on in the searches or in the Favorite -tab?

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/54661787f1584383bf2c369507222382


Is there a way to export syntax color settings from one Xcode installation to a new one?

Custom syntax color themes are located in

~/Library/Developer/Xcode/UserData/FontAndColorThemes/

(Note that this directory may not exist if you've not yet modified any of your themes or haven't created a custom theme of your own, but will be created as soon as you do.)

The files have a .dvtcolortheme extension. Simply retrieve the file from that directory and copy it into the same directory on another machine.

I quite like Ethan Schoonover's Solarized themes; I find them to be very readable and easy on the eyes, and can be installed as explained above.


Connecting iPad to a USB powered monitor?

The iPad does not support video output over USB; it's a limitation you cannot work around with a jailbreak. Your only options are composite and VGA  video output via supported Lightening adaptors. There are jailbreaks that allow you to output the video 100% of the time though, not just from apps that support mirroring.


Doh!  It turns out there was a custom keyboard shortcut defined in BetterTouchTool.  Problem solved.


How can I find out why I have monthly charges from Apple/iTunes on my credit card?

Apple has instructions for your situation located at itunes.com/bill:

Compare your purchase history with the charges on your credit card and bank statement.
Check the status of your subscriptions.
Check all of your Apple IDs.
If you share your device with others, including young children, learn how to manage your password preferences.
Anyone who has your Apple ID password is able to make charges to your account. If you have unauthorized charges, change your Apple ID password.
If you compare your credit card or bank statement to your purchase history and still don't recognize the charge, contact Apple Support. If you don't use your Apple ID to make purchases from the iTunes Store or App Store and see charges on your statement, contact Apple for help with Apple ID account security. If you think you're being billed twice for the same item, it might be a payment authorization hold and not an actual charge. The charge will disappear after your purchase clears.

If you have followed all these steps, there may be a possibility that your card number was stolen. Call your bank and dispute the charge. Do note that if this purchase was indeed done on one of your accounts and you do a chargeback, you risk getting locked out of that Apple account.


Message tone played multiple times on receiving message/notification on iOS 5

Ok, I had the exact same issue after updating to IOS 5, SMS tones sounded like a stuck record and very garbled. Solution is back-up your iphone then do a complete restore and at the end set up as a new iphone NOT backup from previous. The back-up can cause glitches when 1st updating from 4.3.5 to 5. Then unplug and plug back in and right click your iphone and do a "restore from back-up" after the setup as new iphone. Hope that helps for you as it did for me.


Is there any free solution to remove unneeded architectures from Universal ppc/intel binaries?

All tools to manipulate architectures in binaries are covers over lipo the command line tool that Apple supplies as part of the Developer tools


OS X Yosemite installation error: File system verify or repair failed

You could try booting off a Linux LiveUSB to back up your files.

Once that is done, you can reformat your HD and then reinstall OS X.

You should also keep an eye on your HD; these types of errors often suggest that your drive is corrupted or damaged.


There is no feature to allow someone to sign in to a second Apple ID, so unless he guessed your new Apple ID and new password, he's not receiving your messages.

You could enable two factor authentication to ensure no one easily signs in as you. There are forensic and legal ways to read people's messages - but they are generally complicated or costly.

Most of this is explained at https://appleid.apple.com and if there is something specific you don't get - you can ask a new question more narrowly focusing on one aspect of privacy since the site works best with one question per question.

In summary, unless your husband (or ex) has installed key logging software on a computer, you should be able to prevent them from receiving any messages for you by changing your Apple ID password and making sure the phone company has a separate account for your devices.


Hold Control+Shift+Option and press the power button.  Release and power on normally.  This works... surprisingly


How can I resolve a situation in which my Mac keeps crashing while working with a specific video file?

No-one here is going to be able to give you a 100% definitive answer on why a specific video file is causing a crash (especially without full details of the file in question and without access to it), except of course to say it's most likely corrupted in some way.

Some things to try include:

Booting your MBP into Safe Mode and trying to import the file again.
I know you've tried re-encoding the file using Adobe Media Encoder, but perhaps you could try encoding the file into a totally different format first. Ideally you would try doing this within the Atomos Shogun Flame directly, but I'm not familiar with that device and don't know what export/editing functions it has. If none, have you got any other software to try converting it?
Another thing to try would be to manually copy the file from the SD card onto another card/drive (or to your Mac) without going through an import process. If that succeeds, then try importing the file (or converting it into a new format) from the new location.
Open the file using Quicktime Player and, assuming it opens okay, use Quicktime's export function to export it (with a new filename). Then see if the newly exported file can be imported into FCP and edited fine.
Take a look at your FCP preferences to see if changing how it deals with situations like dropped frames will make a difference.


Apple hardware issue. Battery not charging, service recommended

The response codes from Apple Diagnostics are listed in https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203747:

PPP003: There may be an issue with the power adapter. Disconnect the MagSafe power adapter from the computer and the power outlet, then reconnect. Run the test again.
If this code appears a second time, further troubleshooting may be required. Contact Apple or take your computer to an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Retail Store to determine which service and support options are available.

PPT006: The battery requires service. The battery is not functioning normally, though you may not notice a change in its behavior or the amount of charge it holds. You can continue to use your battery before it’s checked without harming your computer.
Contact Apple or take your computer to an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Retail Store to determine which service and support options are available.

So there still seems to be a problem either with the power adapter or the battery. Without access to the hardware it's impossible to analyze this further so it's probably best to visit the Apple Store again.


In which case I would lose my OS X license?

The worst thing you can unintentionally do is lose data!

So, before doing anything, ensure you have a backup regime in place (such as using Time Machine). Once you know you have a backup, then the risk is limited to potentially wasting a lot of time reinstalling macOS if things go wrong and then migrating your data across from your backup.

If you do need to reinstall macOS, then you have three options you can try:

commandR to reinstall the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac, without upgrading to a later version
optioncommandR to upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac
shiftoptioncommandR to reinstall the macOS that came with your Mac, or the version closest to it that is still available

But remember - you must have a backup regime in place!


Reminders badge shows wrong count on different devices

TLDR: Launch the Calendar app, go to Settings, Alerts, then enable "Show shared calendar messages in Notification Center" and reboot.

Longer explanation follows.

I was having this same problem: no badge on my iOS devices, but a badge of "1" on my Mac.

After searching through the Console app, I found some messages from CalNCService that indicated it was requesting a badge count of "1" on behalf of a EKCalendarInviteReplyNotification. This suggested that the badge was the result of some activity on a shared Reminders list. It even printed out the name of the list in question - a shared list that I had "left" a while ago.

But, there were no notifications in Notification Center related to this list. Well, it turns out the notification was being filtered out by a setting in the Calendar app. I went to Calendar.app -> Settings -> Alerts and enabled "Show shared calendar messages in Notification Center".

That by itself did nothing, because the event was already filtered. So I went to Activity Monitor and force-quit the CalNCService. I restarted the Calendar app so it would restart the service (rebooting would do the trick too), and BOOM, the system presented me with the missing notification!

The notification was that I no longer had access to this shared list (sigh, who cares). I'm guessing the person who originally shared it with me had deleted it. So I simply dismissed that notification and the badge went away.

Bonus explainer:

Why does Calendar have anything to do with Reminders? It's because Reminders, internally, was originally (and seems to still be) implemented using "secret" hidden calendars. They did this because, in the days before iCloud, Calendar syncing was one of only a handful of ways to share data between devices. So you could sync and share your Reminder lists even if you were using Google or Yahoo or whatever else. Another way to share data was through email servers - which is exactly what the Notes app did. Reminders == Calendars, Notes == Emails.

Clever at the time, but I'm sure the engineers are quite sick of it now.


Your battery is failing/has failed.

The symptoms that your iPhone is exhibiting is the same as what discussed in the following posts:

Mid 2012 MBP shuts down claiming no power with charge at 30% or 40% or more
Why is my MacBook Pro showing the low battery screen while at 100%?
Fully charged MacBook Air turns off when power cord removed

Basically, when you see a percentage of battery remaining, it's a calculation based on what it's measuring (volts, amps, draw, etc.) at that moment in time.  You cannot measure remaining capacity - this  especially noticeable if one of the in-line cells is faulty.

The only solution to this problem is to replace the battery.


The Mac mini has an HDMI port and a thunderbolt port. You can hook your TV up via the HDMI port and your monitor via the thunderbolt port, although if you are planning on using a non-apple monitor you will most likely need an adapter. Essentially you'll have a dual monitor computer. Move a browser window with the game on to the TV. You can run another browser session or some other app in the second monitor.


Bluetooth icon missing from iMac. How do I connect wireless keyboard

To setup Bluetooth keyboard:

Go to System Preferences app → Keyboard → Keyboard.
Click on Set Up Bluetooth Keyboard... button shown at the bottom.

Now, the Bluetooth icon may have been removed from System Preferences app.

To get the Bluetooth icon back again:

With System Preferences app, click View → Customize... in the Menu bar.

Select the checkbox besides the Bluetooth icon and tap Done button shown in the toolbar.

Voila! Bluetooth icon is back again in System Preferences.


Samsung Portable SSD t3 2TB drive only shows 250GB capacity

I spoke with Samsung today support today: They said I had been sold a "Tampered Model". Amazon.com did honor the request to return the item even though it was well outside the 30 day window for returns.


No special firmware. No gotchas. USB 2 will work 'out of the box'. Just slot it in a 2.5 inch HDD enclosure (assuming it's a 2.5 HDD) and away you go.

The company that makes the external HDD enclosure you choose will provide instructions regarding how to put the HDD in the enclosure.


Applescript to open Get Info box for the previous iTunes track?

You can in a round about way using the "Recently Played" playlist.

You configure it the way you want, I've set it to the 5 most recent items,  and then run this code...

tell application "iTunes"
    set rp to get playlist "Recently Played"
    #get name of every track of rp
    #get name of last track of rp
    #set tid to get id of last track of rp
    reveal track 5 of rp

    activate

    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "iTunes"
            key code 34 using command down
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Hope this helped.

EDIT: This only works with songs that are fully played. Partially played tracks will not show up in the "Recently Played".


How to change the location of user's download folder?

Delete the old folder and symlink the new download path to the old download path. Make sure to copy everything in the old download directory to the new directory

# set newdir to the new directory
NEWDIR=/path/to/new/download/path
# This path can also be relative to the user path (~/relative/to/user/path)

# copy all files in old directory to new directory
find "~/Downloads" -type f -exec cp {} "$NEWDIR"/ \;

# delete folder and contents in the default path
rm -rf -v ~/Downloads/

# symlink new path to old path
ln -s "$NEWDIR"/ ~/Downloads


Is there an app/extension to have UTC appear in the Sierra Finder (10.12.2) menu?

Simply install BitBar and an additional plugin related to time (probably WorldClock direct download) which displays current UTC time in the menu bar, with various timezones in the drop-down menu:

All apps/plugins are free.


Traveling to US - Do I need to step up / down for Macbook Pro (2016)

You only need the correct adapter for your power adapter as it will automatically handle the input voltage

Apple has a World Travel Adapter Kit that supplies adapters for different countries/regions.  What you will need is the the US/Japan adapter included in the kit that has "flat parallel blades with holes."


It's indeed and issue with the RAM, and, despite the fact that you've already rechecked the placing of it, three beeps means that there's something wrong with how the RAM is placed in their banks.

Swapping the RAM modules usually does the trick.

You could, too, reboot just with one module to see what happens, and, afterwards, place the other.


The "python" CLI executable seems to ignore path hierarchy

Try closing your terminal window, and making a new one. The shell only actually checks where commands are located on launch, and doesn't check again if it thinks it knows where the command is located. It's a performance boost in scripts, so generally a good idea.


Looking for a "null" Sound Input to securely disable the microphone on a MacBook Pro

Check out SoundFlower

https://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/soundflower/

This virtual / software sound device allows sound to be passed from one application to another (so it of course includes virtual output and input devices).

You could achieve your goal by setting the input to soundflower, but making sure nothing it outputting to soundflower... this means soundflower's input would 'hear' nothing!


I am on a MacBook Air and using a guest account. I am trying to access a USB, but I can't

The reason this is happening is because "File Vault" is activated on your MacBook. File Vault is a program that comes with your Mac and encrypts your hard drive so only people with the password to do so can look at files on your Mac.
Apparently once File Vault is activated, you can only access Safari on a guest account, as stated here.

If you log in as that guest user, you don't get access to your hard
drive; you can only access the Safari web browser and a network
connection. Exiting Safari simply returns you to the FileVault 2
pre-boot login screen.

This means, you cannot save e.g. images to your computer and then put them on a external drive. This is (as far as I know) because files are not uploaded directly from an USB device to the Internet: your computer performs the task of moving the file from the USB device to the hard drive and from there to the Internet.
I'm afraid as long as you can't change the settings with the Admin Account (in this case you'd have to deactivate File Vault) you cannot save files to your computer or an external drive.
What you could do instead: access your e-mail client within Safari (if you have Gmail, just go to Gmail and then right-click on the picture you want to get and choose "Copy Image URL" and then paste the URL in your e-mail and have it send to yourself (just send an e-mail to your own e-mail address) With this way, you can download it on another computer, once you access the URL of the picture.
Google's instructions for this:

Computer
Do a search on images.google.com for the image you want to find.
In your browser’s address bar at the top of the page, click once
to select the entire URL.
(If you're looking for the URL of an image
result, you need to click on the image to open up a larger version
before selecting the URL.)
Right-click the image.
Depending on what system you’re using, select the image URL by clicking one of these:
Chrome: Copy image URL
Safari: Copy image address
Internet Explorer: Properties > Copy the URL address shown
Firefox: Copy image location

I hope this wasn't "too easy" for you and let me know if it works out!


Error / Hang Installing Yosemite and Mavericks on Mac Pro SSD

Not a brilliantly helpful answer, but a resolution nonetheless.

I contacted OWC's online chat tech support, who were incredibly helpful - continuing the conversation for an hour and a half - and talked me through diagnosing the problem.

The tech support rep first suggested using my old boot drive, and from there, testing whether my SSD was writable via the OS. The setup of this Mac Pro was 1 boot drive, plus 3 RAIDed drives. I found that with the RAID card still in, I couldn't access the SSD, but after removing the RAID card, and resetting the PRAM again, the SSD appeared and was certainly writable.

I don't think the RAID card was part of the original problem, because I'd tried installing without it as well, but getting feedback that I could write to the SSD was very encouraging!

I then simply tried installing Mavericks from the USB drive while already booted using the old boot drive and it worked!

So - as far as a solution for someone else encountering the same problem, I'm not sure what I can suggest, other than - if you can - boot normally, and install it that way, having selected the new drive that you want to install on.


How Do I Fully Flush Cached Redirects From Safari?

Based on quanta’s answer:

I wasn’t able to use launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist because I have System Integrity Protection enabled:

$ launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist: Operation not permitted while System Integrity Protection is engaged

However I was able to work around it by doing the following:

killall nsurlstoraged (stops your user’s nsurlstoraged process; I actually ran sudo killall nsurlstoraged, but I suspect it isn’t necessary to stop the system’s nsurlstoraged as well, since the cache is in the user Library folder)
rm -f ~/Library/Cookies/HSTS.plist (deletes the HSTS cache)
launchctl start /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist (restarts nsurlstoraged)


Is there a way to set a different Safari download folder per website?

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to do it in Safari. The only things you could do is use a Shell script to move stuff around (based on file types or so). Or you can use the Automator to define rules for your download folder. A good alternative, which specifically focusses on file management is Hazel.


Please see the 2020 and 2021 edits below.
The original answer, unchanged:
What you are referring to as "the built-in" firewall is actually the built-in Application Firewall.
There two other built-in firewalls in OS X Lion, pf and ipfw (the latter is being replaced by pf, but still exist in Mountain Lion). These can handle both incoming and outgoing connections and are typically controlled through command line scripts and settings. However, there are third party GUIs for these firewalls, e.g. IceFloor (for pf); WaterRoof and NoobProof (for ipfw). All these GUIs are free.
There is also third party software that can work as firewall, but doesn't use the built-in OS X firewalls. Examples are Litte Snitch and Hands Off (both paid). These can handle both incoming and outgoing connections.
You should be aware that there is some learning curve for these pieces of software, as their settings are not as simplified as the built-in Application Firewall.  Little Snitch or Hands Off could be easier to use compared to pf or ipfw or their GUIs.
2020, first edit: ipfw is not being used in the current versions of MacOS. New (since the original answer from 2013) frontend of pf is Murus firewall (has free version with basic functionality, but the more advanced versions are paid). New application firewall is Vallum (paid). Some kind of light hybrid combination of Murus and Vallum is Scudo. Hands Off! is available at a new site. Free application firewall for outgoing connections is LuLu. And of course, Litte Snitch is still available.
2020, second edit: As of macOS Big Sur, Apple apps can bypass the third party firewalls. There are some workarounds available, but these include disabling SIP (not recommended) or  enabling kernel extensions that may be disabled during macOS updates.
2021 It seems that the firewall bypass in Big Sur will be removed in version 11.2 and third-party firewalls will be able to monitor and filter all of Apple's software.


Is it better to create new Apple ID for my developer account, or is it ok to use my existing one?

I would recommend creating a new one. Apple doesn't seem to care either way, but it's usually a good idea to separate the two accounts.

  And what are the rules regarding names (like can I use nickname or I have to use my real one)?

You have to use your real name. This is for identification and since the agreement is legally binding, I wouldn't risk it (plus, do you really want DenverCoder9 to show up on your banking records?).


VirtualBox VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED opening Windows 10 partition/vmdk

This was (or obviously still is in VirtualBox 5?) a known bug of VirtualBox 3 which should have been fixed in 4.0.0!

The workaround is disabling the use of the new async I/O code... done by ticking "Use host I/O cache" for the SATA (and SCSI) controllers.


You are trying to access the accountservices.wipro.com site.

It looks like they certificate has expired.

  accountservices.wipro.com uses an invalid security certificate. The
  certificate expired on 2/13/15, 3:59 PM. The current time is 2/15/15,
  10:41 PM. (Error code: sec_error_expired_certificate)

What now? see this....


Apple support contacted by someone pretending to be me

You should way the risks and ensure that if in fact someone is trying to take advantage of your account or even using social engineering to compromise your account, you minimize the damage that could happen.

• You should call Apple support again, perhaps using the same ticket number, and explain your situation yet again. Explain to them what you just explained to us. If you can convince them, they will likely get a senior support advisor to handle the issue. Perhaps you can negotiate some sort of verbal password with Apple support such that anyone calling them on your behalf would need to know the verbal password before Apple would make any critical account changes. You also need to be careful that the other person does not convince Apple that they are the real you and you are the imposter.

• In order to make any account changes via Apple support, the caller needs to know some information about the account other than just the email address. After all, an email address is fairly public information. You need to make sure these pieces of info are not obvious. For example, your birth date would be required, however this is also fairly easy to find info.
You therefore need to make sure your security questions are secure, and by that I mean the answers to your security questions are not easily discovered information. Note that the answers to security questions do not need to be accurate. You just need to be able to remember them.
I also recommend setting up two-factor authentication on your Apple ID, which eliminates security questions with amore secure unique one-time code.

All security-related settings may be found at appleid.apple.com.


I use Irvue, by Leonspok.  You can get it on the Mac App Store and here.  It uses fantastic-looking, hi-res images from Unsplash.


Exporting jpg to pdf: file size grows significantly

PDF supports JPEG encoding, so the size should not increase very much at all. It should be able to wrap some header info around the jpeg stream and call it a day.

Unfortunately, Preview is very good at viewing PDFs, but when writing PDFs tends to use a subset of PDF that is easy for it to parse, but not space-efficient.

I'm sorry to say this, but you will need to look for a different program that can leave the JPEG alone and shove it in the stream.  Acrobat can do this, as can pdftex or convert from ImageMagick. There are probably others.


Can anyone make an iOS todo app recommendation


What software can find close duplicates from 2TB worth of pictures?

The best that I could find and have used is Duplicate Annihilator, which works with iPhoto, and is upgraded for 10.8.  You can download and do a run and hopefully get rid and clean your folders the first time through.  For what you need you might need a few passes to get the obvious dups, then find the harder to get ones.

http://www.brattoo.com/propaganda/

I am not exactly sure it will find your #2 and #3 right out of the gate, but since photos are marked with unique timestamps and other meta data, it should find them even if rotated.  The similar part is a bit harder as the criteria for similar could be many things.  Run through a few times first checking my filename, then maybe dimensions, creation date, etc.

KEY FEATURES

Detects duplicates
Detects imported thumbnails
Detects missing images
Easily find and annihilate duplicates created internally by iPhoto or during import.
Compare images using different algorithms to detect and understand differences.
Detect duplicates using effective algorithms using electronic checksums like MD5.
Detect duplicates by using file specific meta data such as filename, dimensions, filesize, Exif creation date or date of creation.
Delete duplicates upon detection or mark them with a keyword to make them easily found using iPhoto features like search or smart folders.
Only uses standard Apple features and API's. No hacking nor tampering with iPhoto system files.
Free updates!
Available in English, German, French, Italian and Swedish.


Opedirectoryd taking >90% of CPU + thousands of messages in console per second

I've got an answer to this problem for people coming here with this issue who aren't using Active Directory (meaning that it can't be the cause).

For me the problem was my Dropbox was struggling with broken symlinks inside my Dropbox folder. I had about 20-25 of these broken symlinks. You can see if this is the problem for you by whether the problem goes away when you quit Dropbox (and wait a bit for the Activity Monitor to calm down).

You can see the location of these broken symlinks with:

cd ~/Dropbox
find . -type l ! -exec test -e {} \; -print

If you want to then delete these (they're broken after all, just get rid of them), you can run this:

find . -type l ! -exec test -e {} \; -print | xargs rm

I quit my Dropbox program before doing this. After turning it back on, the problem was gone!

Note: I ran this with gfind instead of find, which is the GNU version of find that you can get by doing brew install findutils. It should work perfectly fine with regular find though.


MacBook Pro GPU Diode over 100 degrees Celsius hot?

Yes, that is bad.

Apple's fan controls favor quiet over safety and tend to key off the CPU temperature, ignoring the fact that the GPU can go far out of spec even while the CPU remains relatively cool.  3D games in particular can burn out the GPU because of the native control's bias toward CPU temperature.

If you are going to play video games on an iMac or MacBook, I strongly recommend obtaining fan control software and setting a steep profile so that the fans spin aggressively with CPU temperature, thereby keeping the GPU from going out of spec.  If you are playing games in Boot Camp, having a separate fan controller is absolutely essential.

It sounds like you may already have some damage to the GPU or motherboard.  If you are still under warranty or AppleCare, try to find an artifact that you can reproduce at the Genius bar and get the GPU/motherboard replaced.  Remember that the system will be cold when you get there, so it may take a while to reproduce heat problems.  The Geniuses like to use the iTunes visualizer as a test case, but if you have an offline game that produces  problems that will work as well.

In any case, increasing the fan speed to keep the GPU temperature down while playing 3D games will greatly extend the life of your system.


Received an email saying someone has hacked my email account

Fake. Delete It and Move On

I got a similar email last week and it is fake. All the details you mentioned are identical to the email I received. In my case, I use 2-factor authentication for my Gmail account, LastPass for my password management and a VPN for all my connected devices. The most telling part of the fakery is that the ‘hacker’ compromised you six months ago, yet has not taken any action. If they have the goods on you, why not sooner? Lastly, the email appeared in my Gmail SPAM filter. That’s the biggest clue to that it is SPAM.

Sample Spam

  Hello!

  My nickname in darknet is hort17.
  I hacked this mailbox more than six months ago,
  through it I infected your operating system with a virus (trojan) created by me and have been monitoring you for a long time.

  So, your password from  is  (and incorrect, btw).

  Even if you changed the password after that - it does not matter, my virus intercepted all the caching data on your computer
  and automatically saved access for me.

  I have access to all your accounts, social networks, email, browsing history.
  Accordingly, I have the data of all your contacts, files from your computer, photos and videos.

  I was most struck by the intimate content sites that you occasionally visit.
  You have a very wild imagination, I tell you!

  During your pastime and entertainment there, I took screenshot through the camera of your device, synchronizing with what you are watching.
  Oh my god! You are so funny and excited!

  I think that you do not want all your contacts to get these files, right?
  If you are of the same opinion, then I think that $890 is quite a fair price to destroy the dirt I created.

  Send the above amount on my BTC wallet (bitcoin): 1EZS92[...redacted...]E62e9XY
  As soon as the above amount is received, I guarantee that the data will be deleted, I do not need it.

  Otherwise, these files and history of visiting sites will get all your contacts from your device.
  Also, I'll send to everyone your contact access to your email and access logs, I have carefully saved it!

  Since reading this letter you have 48 hours!
  After your reading this message, I'll receive an automatic notification that you have seen the letter.

  I hope I taught you a good lesson.
  Do not be so nonchalant, please visit only to proven resources, and don't enter your passwords anywhere!
  Good luck!


Does the iPhone allow Circuit Switched Data dial-up?

In theory (totally theoretical) the iPhone does support CSD on the tech sheets, but you'd need your network provider to provision it onto your phone, and there's no apps in the app store that would allow you to do it due to the hardware access it'd need.

You could probably do it, but you'd need some jailbreak software and matching hardware which if you've got an engineering background wouldn't be impossible, but merely a pain in the backside.


Changing Bootcamp Partition ID on Terminal in Recovery Mode

The commands given in this answer should be entered while booted to macOS Recovery. Older versions of macOS (OS X) may require booting macOS Recovery from the Internet or a macOS installation USB flash drive. Also, some commands may need to be preceded by a sudo. The instructions given below will probably fail when hybrid partitioning is being used.

The command provided by macOS to change a partition type GUID is gpt. However, this command works differently from gdisk in that gdisk is interactive and gpt is not. Also, the gpt command requires removal of the partition from the GPT in order to change the partition type GUID. Once removed, the partition can be added back to the GPT with the correct partition type GUID. This removal and addition does not alter the contents of the partition.
The command below can be used to partially view the current contents of the GPT for the drive with the identifier disk0.
gpt -r show /dev/disk0

The commands below can be used to remove from the GPT the partition with the identifier disk0s2.
diskutil unmountdisk disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0

The commands below can be used to add to the GPT the previously removed partition. This partition will be given the Windows GUID type. Replace <start> and <size> with the integer values shown in the output of the command gpt -r show /dev/disk0 for the row with an index of 2.
diskutil unmountdisk disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b <start> -s <size> -t windows /dev/disk0

Note: The integers used in identifiers do not have to match the index values used by the GPT and gpt command. In this case, the 2 used in disk0s2 probably refers to the partition with index value of 2 in the GPT.


Brew - undo whatever the heck it just did for installation

Try running this command:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/uninstall.sh)"

Source/more info: https://discourse.brew.sh/t/uninstall-homebrew-from-mac/8696

For future reference, you probably would have been better off to let it finish installing and the uninstalling it. Hopefully their uninstall script is robust enough to help. If not, you might want to ask for help on the Brew forum at https://discourse.brew.sh where Brew developers help users with issues.


The trackpad doesn't work when starting Windows 7 bootcamp

Please check out TrackPad++. It's free with an option to donate.

I've used this in the past, when I had bootcamp with Windows 7 - you can set gestures like you can in Mac OS X.


Have to reset the SMC on Retina Macbook Pro very often

Instead of resenting the SMC (a painful procedure) try this free software.

gfxCardStatus
It is an unobtrusive menu bar app for OS X that allows MacBook Pro users to see which apps are affecting their battery life by using the more power-hungry graphics and

Manually switch to Integrated Only or Discrete Only mode to force one GPU on or the other.

Since I am not sure of your model year, it works on:

OS X Lion (10.7) or newer
2008-2012, 15-17" dual-GPU MacBook Pro


I made it, but it's quite a bit tricky.

Summary:

You have to change the Books.plist file in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books for the books you want to have in a series, and also you have to add rows in the BKSeries-*.sqlite  database on ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX/Data/Documents/BKSeriesDatabase for them and the series.

Here's how I did it:

The database has 4 tables: ZBKSERIESCHECK, ZBKSERIESITEM, Z_PRIMARYKEY and Z_METADATA. I only changed the first three tables. The "series" is treated just like a book in these tables.

Add the books and the series in table ZBKSERIESCHECK. The table has 5 columns.

Z_PK is the primary key. It has to be a sequential number.
Z_ENT and Z_OPT I just completed with a "1".
ZDATECHECKED is just the date the row is created. In my case it was auto-assigned.
ZADAMID is a unique code for the book or series.

This is the table with the data I added.

The zAdamId I used are from Calibre, so I asume that you can use any number. Keep in mind that those numbers have to be different from the series/books you purchased.

The row with the zAdamId "1" is my series, the others are the books.
Add the relationships within books and series in the table ZBKSERIESITEM. This table has 16 columns.

Z_PK, Z_ENT and Z_OPT are not the same ones defined in the previous table. Z_PK has to be sequential and, Z_ENT and Z_OPT I just completed with "2" and "1" respectively.
ZISCONTAINER defines if a zAdamId is a series or not. "1" is true, "0" is false.
ZPOSITION defines the number of a book in a series, starting with "0" for the first book.
ZADAMID is the same defined in the previous table for the same item.
ZAUTHOR is the author of the series/books.
ZGENRE is the genre of the series/books.
ZSEQUENCEDISPLAYNAME defines how a book is displayed as a member of a series. For example, for the first book, you can define "Book 1" or "Volume 1" or "Vol.1". This string is going to be prepended to the name of the book. This column has to be empty for the series.
ZSERIESADAMID is the series zAdamId of the book. For the series, this is the same as ZADAMID.
ZSERIESTITLE is the name of the series.
ZSORTTITLE and ZTITLE is the name of the book or series.

Adjust table Z_PRIMARYKEY.

I found that this table has only two rows. One for each of the previous tables.

Here you have to change the Z_MAX column to the MAX(*) value of the Z_PK in each of the previous tables. For instance, in my DB, for the table ZBKSERIESCHECK (BKSeriesCheck) the MAX(*) of the column Z_PK is "22".
Save the changes.
Open the Books.plist file. Look for each of the books of the series and add these keys:

seriesAdamId as Number with the value of ZBKSERIESITEM~ZSERIESADAMID.
itemId as Number with the value of ZBKSERIESITEM~ZADAMID.
seriesSequenceNumber as String with the value of ZBKSERIESITEM~ZPOSITION + 1. (Remember that in the table it starts with "0".)
seriesTitle as String with the value of ZBKSERIESITEM~ZTITLE.

Save the file. Close iBooks (if you didn't close it from the beginning). Kill the com.apple.BKAgentService process. Start iBooks. You should be able to see your series.

Notes

Those columns I didn't name, I just left them empty and it didn't affect the end result.

I think it's waaay to difficult to put all your books and series properly when you have a lot of them. Hope to see someday something that do all this auto-magically.

This is my first post. I hope everybody finds it useful.


OS volume shows as type 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF'

A bootable OS X partition (except the Recovery HD) either has the GUID 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC for a standard OS X partition, the GUID 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC for a CoreStorage partition or the GUID 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC for an APFS volume. The FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF is an unknown partition type (but not no partition like the 000000-0000-0000.... one).

The GUID can be modified with gpt. You can only add, delete and modify GUID partition tables with gpt when all related disks are unmounted.
To reconfigure your partitions boot to a third party drive (e.g. Internet Recovery or a OS X installer thumb drive).

Under certain circumstances SIP has to be disabled to modify the GUID partition table.

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode (or a third party drive).
Open Terminal in the menubar Utilities > Terminal
Get an overview with diskutil list
Get an overview of your internal disk with the disk identifier found in the previous command. Below I assume the disk identifier of your internal disk is disk0 (SSD) (replace it with the one you have found in your environment).

gpt -r show disk0

Unmount disk0 with diskutil umountDisk disk0
Then remove and re-add the second partition with the same size but proper type. The most probable type for disk0s2 on an SSD with Sierra currently installed is 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC or with High Sierra installed 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (because a previous CoreStorage partition was almost certainly converted to APFS while upgrading Sierra to High Sierra).

Sierra (CoreStorage):

gpt remove -i 2 disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 431203056 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

or

High Sierra (APFS):

gpt remove -i 2 disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 431203056 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC  disk0

or

standard partition (HFSJ Extended):

gpt remove -i 2 disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 431203056 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC  disk0

Verify disk and volume:

diskutil verifyDisk disk0
diskutil verifyVolume disk0s2

Booted to your USB drive and logged in as an admin you have to prepend sudo to execute the gpt commands successfully.

If you forgot your system version or did some custom partitioning you can still inspect the first blocks of disk0s2 and determine the proper GUID type:

If you've booted to a full-fledged system you can use hexdump:

Unmount disk0 with diskutil umountDisk disk0
hexdump the first 3 blocks of the FFFF... partition:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0s2 count=3 | hexdump

The following result identfies it as a normal OS X partition:

0000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000400 48 2b 00 04 80 00 21 00 48 46 53 4a 00 00 01 ff
0000410 d3 8c 77 d3 d4 33 3c b0 00 00 00 00 d3 8c 5b b3
0000420 00 00 02 a8 00 00 00 25 00 00 10 00 00 fe b7 f6
0000430 00 fe 1e fa 00 ed 80 00 00 01 00 00 00 01 00 00
0000440 00 00 10 f2 00 00 5a 9d 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01
0000450 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000460 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 7d 9d b0 3a 02 31 62 f0
0000470 00 00 00 00 00 1f e0 00 00 1f e0 00 00 00 01 fe
0000480 00 00 00 01 00 00 01 fe 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000490 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
00004c0 00 00 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 00 06 00
00004d0 00 00 0a 00 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00004e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000510 00 00 00 00 03 10 00 00 03 10 00 00 00 00 31 00
0000520 00 03 ac 00 00 00 31 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000530 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000560 00 00 00 00 05 40 00 00 05 40 00 00 00 00 54 00
0000570 00 00 10 00 00 00 54 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000580 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000600

The first number is the byte count in hex: 0000000: 0; 0000600: 1536. The * denotes identical lines. This means: the first two blocks (0x000-0x3ff) are all zeros.

A CoreStorage partition shows some non-zeros in the first block (0x000-0x1ff):

0000000 0c 73 a1 a9 ff ff ff ff 01 00 10 00 07 14 d7 01
0000010 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000030 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000040 00 20 c1 cc 0f 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000050 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 43 53 01 00 00 00 04 00
0000060 00 10 00 00 00 00 40 00 11 bc fc 00 00 00 00 00
0000070 11 c0 fc 00 00 00 00 00 11 c4 fc 00 00 00 00 00
0000080 11 c8 fc 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000090 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
00000b0 62 02 98 59 ee a9 ab 51 9b 49 23 90 2e f8 8b 43
00000c0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000130 e4 6e f8 f2 63 99 45 c1 b2 13 86 28 a5 18 46 6d
0000140 c4 51 c0 f6 32 f9 43 ab 8e 59 42 d2 1a ef f6 50
0000150 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000400 48 2b 00 04 80 00 21 00 48 46 53 4a 00 00 01 ff
0000410 d1 98 a4 93 d4 33 8b d5 00 00 00 00 d1 98 88 73
0000420 00 06 07 53 00 01 82 39 00 00 10 00 00 fb 6a 00
0000430 00 c5 1c 55 00 25 73 c7 00 01 00 00 00 01 00 00
0000440 00 0d e2 65 00 3e a2 fb 00 00 00 00 02 20 00 fb
0000450 00 00 00 31 00 06 b9 ef 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000460 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 31 fb 48 1e a0 6c 47 a2 9f
0000470 00 00 00 00 00 1f e0 00 00 1f e0 00 00 00 01 fe
0000480 00 00 00 01 00 00 01 fe 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000490 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
00004c0 00 00 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 00 06 00
00004d0 00 00 0a 00 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00004e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000510 00 00 00 00 0e 40 00 00 01 30 00 00 00 00 e4 00
0000520 00 00 10 00 00 00 e4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000530 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000560 00 00 00 00 11 d0 00 00 01 30 00 00 00 01 1d 00
0000570 00 02 80 00 00 00 72 00 00 13 30 97 00 00 13 00
0000580 00 15 c5 aa 00 00 13 00 00 18 2d 23 00 00 13 00
0000590 00 19 d8 fb 00 00 13 00 00 1b 76 cb 00 00 13 00
00005a0 00 1c 34 70 00 00 13 00 00 1d 0e 4d 00 00 13 00
00005b0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000600

The line starting with byte 0x130 shows the UUID of the Physical Volume, the line starting with byte 0x140 shows the UUID of the Logical Volume Group.

The string 48 46 53 4a (= "HFSJ") in the first 16 bytes of the third blocks identifies a Journaled HFS+ volume on both partition types.

An APFS container looks like this:

0000000 e7 ec ab 5b a2 94 96 44 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000010 18 0c 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 80 00 00 00 00
0000020 4e 58 53 42 00 10 00 00 f6 37 ff 00 00 00 00 00
0000030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000040 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 11 f1 5e 40 31 10 4c 20
0000050 bb 47 53 66 7e 8b 42 d5 b9 c4 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000060 19 0c 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 01 00 00 18 6c 00 00
0000070 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 19 01 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000080 21 00 00 00 80 5a 00 00 1f 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
0000090 7a 5a 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000a0 37 fd 03 00 00 00 00 00 01 04 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000b0 00 00 00 00 64 00 00 00 02 04 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000c0 06 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 04 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000d0 66 a4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
00003d0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 21 06 00 00 00 00 00
00003e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
00004f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 91 3d 0f 00 00 00 00 00
0000500 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000510 78 f4 09 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000520 01 00 04 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000530 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

The string 4e 58 53 42 (= "NXSB") starting with byte 0x020 in the first block is the magic string of an APFS container superblock and identifies it as APFS container. The UUID of the container starts at 0x48 (here: 11 f1 5e 40 ...)

If you are limited to (Internet) Recovery Mode or an installer boot drive (all with a base system only which doesn't contain hexdump) you can still use vis:

Unmount disk0 with diskutil umountDisk disk0
vis the first 3 blocks of the FFFF... partition:

dd if=/dev/disk0s2 count=3 | vis -c

If you had a standard partition previously the first 1024 Bytes only contain non-printable (zeros): \0\0\0\0\0\0...
After ~Byte 1030 you will see the following sequence: \0HFSJ\0

If you had a CoreStorage partition some non-zeros in the first 512 Bytes and the string CS (...\0CS\^A...) are shown:

\^U\^D\^A\M-s\M^?\M^?\M^?\M^?\^A\0\^P\0\0\0\M-W\^A\a\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\^B\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\M^Pu\M-\7\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0CS\^A\0\0\0\^D\0\0\^P\0\0\0\0@\0X\M-7}\^C\0\0\0\0X\M-;}\^C\0\0\0\0X\M-?}\^C\0\0\0\0X\M-C}\^C\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\^P\0\0\0\^B\0\0\0006j v\^R\M-+\^U\M^[\f\M^CdG\M-y\^]...

If you had a APFS partition the string NXSB (...\0NXSB\0\^P...) is shown in the first few bytes:

??[?\M^T\M^VD\^A\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\^X\f\0\0\0\0\0\0\^A\0\0\M^@\0\0\0\0NXSB\0\^P\0\0?7?\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\^B\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\^Q?^@1\^PL ?GSf~\M^KBչ?\0\0\0\0\0\0\^Y\f\0\0\0\0\0\0\^X\^A\0\0\^Xl\0\0\^A\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\^Y\^A\0\0\0\0\0\0!\0\0\0\M^@Z\0\0\^_\0\0\0\^B\0\0\0zZ\0\0\^F\0\0\0\0\^D\0\0\0\0\0\0007?\^C\0\0\0\0\0\^A\^D\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0d\0\0\0\^B\^D\0\0\0\0\0\0\^F\^D\0\0\0\0\0\0\b\^D\0\0\0\0\0\0f?\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\


How do I create a custom ringtone for my iPhone?

If the song/sound you want to use isn't already in your iTunes library, add it to your iTunes library first.
If you want to use just a part of the song/sound, right click it, select "Get Info", then "Options" tab, and enter a start and stop time there. Remember, ringtones can't be over 40 seconds!
On the File menu, select "Convert" > "Create AAC Version". If you don't have this option, go to Edit, Preferences, General tab, and click the Import Settings button. Make sure the import setting is set to "iTunes Plus" (AAC).
This will create a new file in your iTunes library. Delete it from your iTunes library now, but be sure to check "keep file" in the delete dialog so the file itself isn't removed, just the library entry.
Navigate to where the file was created on disk, somewhere like music\iTunes\iTunes Music\{artist}\{album}
Rename the file from .m4a to .m4r
Drag and drop this .m4r file into the Ringtones folder of your iTunes (or, just double-click it and iTunes will handle it automatically).
Sync your iPhone. Make sure that "Sync Ringtones" is selected in the phone sync options (mine was off by default).

After syncing, you can select your new ringtone in Settings, Sounds at the Custom section at the top.


Have you tried resetting your SMC (System Management Controller)?
I had a similar problem with an old MacBook Pro 15" that I solved with this:

You might check this link where Apple support indicates what you need to check before resetting your SMC.

Steps are:

Reset the SMC on Mac notebook computers

If the battery is nonremovable:

Shut down your Mac.
Unplug the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter from your computer.
Using the built-in keyboard, press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the keyboard, then press the power button at the same time. Hold these keys and the power button for 10 seconds.
If you have a 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch ID, the Touch ID button is also the power button.
Release all keys.
Reconnect the power adapter.
Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.

Reset the SMC on Mac desktop computers

Follow these steps for iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, and Xserve.

Shut down your Mac.
Unplug the power cord.
Wait 15 seconds.
Plug the power cord back in.
Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on your Mac.

Then I would recommend using tools like SMC Fan Control or iStat Menus to control your fans and check memory and power usage.

Sorry if I don't answer your question in Spanish (I'm Latin American), but I think that we can't write answers in anything but English.


Have Reminders use date format set in System Preferences

The Reminders app doesn't respect custom date format. It adheres to the default format for the currently set region and ignores any further customization made to the date format.

Apple support document, macOS Sierra: Customize formats to display dates, times, and more, specifies how date, time, number and currency format can be changed which is then respected by certain apps like Finder and Notes.

The document doesn't mention any app other than Finder and Notes and makes an ambitious statement:

  Your formats are visible in Finder windows and in some apps. For example, dates in Mail or Notes show your custom format.

It's likely a bug in Reminders app or this could be by design. If this functionality is critical for you, consider filing a bug report (RADAR) using Apple Bug Reporter.


Macbook Pro 2019 Bootcamp external display switches to 30hz when laptop lid is closed

As it turns out, this is an issue with the 2019 Macbook Pro and Bootcamp/AMD drivers. The solution is easy. Switch the resolution to something other than the default, and watch as the refresh rate magically increases to 60hz. Then just set the resolution back to the default setting and the refresh rate will still be at 60.


How to use iCloud as main storage location for all documents, application files, etc?

What you want to do is possible, assuming your internet connectivity is good on all devices (which I assume it is) and that they’re running a supported version of iOS and macOS.

More specifically, iCloud Drive requires iOS 8.0 or above and Mac OS X Yosemite or above.

If your Macs are running macOS Sierra or above, you’ve also got the option of Optimized Storage. I encourage you to read How to free up storage space on your Mac for detailed information.

I also encourage you to read Manage your photo and video storage to help you understand the best ways of doing this on iOS devices if you’re wanting everything stored online.

And, assuming you’re running iOS 11 or above on your iOS devices, you’ll want to use the Files app. Read Use the Files app on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for more information.


Can I compile mpich 3 with gcc 4.9 on Mavericks?

Yes, luck was had!

Why not install homebrew and let that handle the compiling for you?

That would be the easiest way to install mpich.

If you insist on compiling manually, you would have to provide information on where the configure programs hangs. I.e. what is the output of the program (take a look in the configure log).


Is there a way to skip a brew package when upgrading?

Another option is to pin the package to your current version.  Then brew won't try to upgrade it.  Later on it can be unpinned and upgraded.  Here are some of the relevant commands.
# To pin a package:
brew pin composer

# To list pinned packages:
brew list --pinned

# To see which version a package is pinned to:
brew info composer

# To unpin a package:
brew unpin composer


iOS 6 update problem: how to switch to Indian store?

I too faced this problem after the iOS6 Upgrade. This worked for me:

Open the Appstore
Go to Featured (scroll down to bottom until you see your Apple ID)
Click on Apple ID
View Apple ID
Enter your Password
Once you login it will say your account is transferred to the respective country.

Hope this solves your problem with updates.


Not every "tick" of scroll wheel is registering on physical mouse

I was having this issue also on sierra 10.12.1 with a wired Kensington mouse.  I just updated to 10.12.2 and even though there was no mention of anything changing related to mice mine seems to work as before, acknowledging each "tick".


Depending on your OS X version, it should be possible to open Font Book and then drag the entire collection of fonts you wish to install from Finder onto the Font Book window.


Free utilities for a power users switching from Windows to OS X?

Adium for instant messaging, it also has a nice menu icon. If you used Pidjin on Windows, this is the OS X alternative.


I've been doing exactly what you describe for 8 years, it works just fine.

I assume you set up Server with your internal IP address, and that it is a fixed IP on the local network? Server does NOT like having it's IP address changed.

The external address can change 10 times a day. You say you already have a domain and a dynamic update service - I assume it's one that updates your domain A record when your external address changes? All good.

Yes, you will have to forward a ton of ports. This is another reason you need a fixed ip address on your LAN. Either forward the ports you need or just DMZ the server ( expose it to the internet ) but mind that the router does not also assign the server the global IP address.

To get an idea of which ports are needed for each service, take a look at TCP and UDP ports used by apple products.


No, you can't without additional software. The only solution would be to cut the Internet connexion of your computer.

You can block incoming connexions though, using the standard Mac OS X Firewall (accessible in the Security & Privacy panel of the System Preferences). When activated, when an application wants to start listening on a certain port, you are prompted to allow or deny the listening.

With additional software, you can use the excellent Little Snitch application that allows blocking outgoing connexions as well.


What Mac are you using (Macbook Air / Pro)? Does it have a replaceable disk?

If the disk is not replaceable, I see the following options:

Assuming the T key is still functional: Access your Mac in target mode and unlock the disk from the other computer. For example this article explains the procedure.
Assuming the cmd and R keys are still functional: Recovery Mode
Assuming the alt key is still functional: Same as above, but you manually select the recovery partition

Sometimes the filevault2 volume cannot be opened easily. See here for a workaround.

If the disk is replaceable I would remove it asap, unlock the disk, and save the data e.g. with an USB-IDE adapter (like this one).


cannot download Safari 6.0.2 update from App Store on ML

Here you have a direct Apple link: http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/53/02/041-8081/2jwp4wjrwygtm4lc608qy4h0n4a9yyq37g/Safari6.0.2Mountain.pkg


Is TrueCrypt compatible with FUSE for OS X and SSHFS?

Yes, OS X 10.8.4-19.0.1 can use Truecrypt while osxfuse-2.6.2.dmg and SSHFS-2.4.1 are installed.
Also I did not observe any 'installation order issues'.


Phone calls from sons phone showing up on my phone

You may create a different Apple ID for your son (or for you), or disable iPhone Cellular Calls. Go to Settings > FaceTime and turn them off.

You can use Family Sharing –as suggested– to share purchased apps and media, among other things.


It depends on your paranoia level. Because of the way SSDs handle writing data, doing a zero-once on an SSD is not as good as doing so on a hard drive.

When you write a particular data page on an HD, the new data is simply written over the old data, replacing it. Write zeros over the whole disk and all the old data will be gone. SSDs, on the other hand, cannot simply overwrite individual pages. In order to replace the data on a page, the old data must first be erased, and SSDs cannot erase individual pages; they have to erase entire blocks consisting of many pages.

So what happens when you ask an SSD to overwrite, say, page #5, is that the SSD leaves the data on page #5 alone, but marks it as invalid, allocates another currently-blank page (say, #2305), writes the new data to page #2305, and makes a note that next time the OS asks for page #5 it should get #2305 instead. The original page #5 data sits there until some later time, when the drive needs more space, moves any remaining valid pages away from the block, and erases it. SSDs have more physical memory capacity than they expose to the computer, so they can juggle blocks like this for a while before actually having to erase anything (and when they do actually erase something, there's no good way to predict which blocks of leftover data will be chosen for erasure). See this AnandTech review for way more details (warning: it's fairly long, and the relevant stuff is spread around).

Net result: if you write zeros over the "whole" drive, you haven't actually overwritten all the old data. You have updated the controller's translation table so it'll never return any of the old data to the OS (those pages are all invalid). But if someone's hardcore enough to bypass the controller, they could get some of your data back.

Overwriting twice will probably work, but it depends on the controller's allocation strategy. Overwriting twice with random data (diskutil randomDisk 2 /dev/diskN) is a little more likely to work, but still not guaranteed.  Both of these also have some bad side-effects: they uses some of the lifetime of the drive, and also increase the logical fragmentation on the SSD, decreasing its write performance.

Note that recent versions of OS X's graphical Disk Utility disable the secure erasure options on SSDs (for the reasons discussed above), but the command-line version still allows them. BTW, I have also seen several recommendations to securely erase SSDs by converting them to encrypted format, but this is (if anything) slightly less secure than overwriting with random data.

The best way to secure-erase an SSD is to invoke the controller's built-in secure-erase feature. This should (if the controller designers did their jobs) truly erase all blocks, and also have the side-effect of resetting the logical page map, essentially defragmenting it and restoring its original performance.  Unfortunately, most of the utilities I've seen for doing this (e.g. CMRR's HDDErase) run under DOS, which won't boot on a Mac. I did find a posting on macrumors with (rather complex) instructions for doing a secure erase from a GParted boot CD. It might also be possible to use Parted Magic from a bootable flash drive, but I have not tried this.

Researchers at the Non-Volatile Systems Lab at UCSD have tested various ways of sanitizing SSDs by "erasing" the drive, then disassembling it to bypass the controller, and checking for remnant data (summary, full paper).  Their results mostly agree with what I said above (and also show that the built-in secure-erase command isn't always implemented properly):

  Our results lead to three conclusions:
  First, built-in commands are effective, but manufacturers
  sometimes implement them incorrectly. Second,
  overwriting the entire visible address space of an SSD
  twice is usually, but not always, sufficient to sanitize the
  drive. Third, none of the existing hard drive-oriented
  techniques for individual file sanitization are effective on
  SSDs.


How to create numbered sub-lists in Mail application?

In the Mail app go to the Format menu and click on lists and then on 'insert numbered list'. Go to your mail and enter text for the 1st item in the list. Now go back to the Format menu item and click on lists again and this time click on 'Increase List Level'. This will create sublists. See image below.

To go back to 1st level use Format/Lists/decrease list level.  You can create as many sublevels as you desire.


How can I view/inspect my Mac’s Parameter RAM (NVRAM)?

To clarify, for PowerPC based Macs, this memory was called PRAM, but for Intel based Macs, the proper name is NVRAM.

To show the contents of the NVRAM or even manipulate them, you can use the nvram shell commando in Terminal. For info on usage, execute man nvram.

If you just want to display the entire contents of the NVRAM, you can execute it with th -p parameter:

nvram -p


Macbook and iPhone not discoverable on bluetooth or airdrop

Not sure what was wrong with the Bluetooth discoverability, but I found a fix. It also fixes AirDrop since Bluetooth is its underlying technology.

You just need to delete a certain file, in my case I chose to rename it so I still had the original. You can do that using Finder or in the Terminal with the following command:

sudo mv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist.orig

Do this then restart Bluetooth and your devices should now be discoverable.


SMB connection to external Thunderbolt drive not working in MacOS Catalina

To solve this issue you have to do the following:

Open System preferences
Click on Security & Privacy
Click on the Lock in lower left corner to unlock
Click on Full Disk Access
Click on the + button
Navigate to /usr/sbin
Seach for smbd and select it
Click open

Now the SMB daemon should have permission to connect to the external drive.


Workflow does not finish when initiated by dictation command

I had to give permission to "Dictation" setting under to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Accessibility to get this to work.


Homebrew doctor warning: you have unlinked kegs in your Cellar

Like this, for each unlinked keg:

brew link imagemagick


Can I edit/create a PDF's Table of Contents with freeware?

I found PDFtk Server and Coherent PDF Command Line Tools have a wide range of PDF command line utilities.

I've used both tools on and off, but never needed to do any TOC work. The Bookmarks section in Coherent's Usage Examples Page looks like it may be an approach to experiment with:

6. Bookmarks

cpdf -list-bookmarks in.pdf

List the bookmarks in in.pdf. This would produce:

0 "Part 1" 1 open
1 "Part 1A" 2
2 "Part 1B" 3
0 "Part 2" 4
1 "Part 2a" 5

cpdf -add-bookmarks bookmarks.txt in.pdf -o out.pdf

Add bookmarks in the same form from a prepared file bookmarks.txt to in.pdf, writing to out.pdf.


Wanting help creating an applescript that is run when the contents of a folder changes

I would create one script that monitors both folders. My language of choice for this is Python. AppleScript is not terribly well-suited to this kind of operation. The basic idea is to listen for FSEvents on the two folders in question, and when one occurs, quickly unschedule the event stream for the other folder, do some conversion and sync operation, then reschedule the previously unscheduled event stream.

The completed script, downloaded here, with modified versions of those scripts you showed me. The MacFSEvents installation is now automatic:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oylvewk90ezwb3s/File%20Sync.app.zip?dl=1

Here are the steps to use it:

Extract the applet, right click on it and select "Show Package Contents", open Contents, and Resources, then edit the plist inside with your RTF and MMD folder pairings. You will be able to specify as many pairs as you need to keep synchronized with each other, just stick to the same format as what I used in the plist: One array per pair, each containing two items, the first item being the path to the RTF folder, the second being the path to the MMD folder. You'll see this when you open the plist.

This should work without any issues. The folders will now be watched for any sort of modification, and will have the files converted and transferred to the other folder.


How to Transfer slo-mo video from one mac to other in photos.app with slow motion edits options?

In Finder:

Create a folder for the media you want to transfer.

In the Photos app:

Select the media that you want to transfer.
In the menu bar, select File > Export > Export Unmodified Original For...
Select Export
Choose folder from step one

Transfer the folder from step one to the Mac where you want to import the photos
In the Photos app on that Mac:

In the menu bar, select File > Import...
Select the folder you exported from step one
Select Review for Import
Follow the dialog.

Enjoy.

(But do note: If you made a modification to the slow motion segment, it will be reset to the default after export. I'd love for this to be amended, but I suppose we're beholden to Apple for that...)


How to view monitor refresh rate in macOS?

You need to hold down the option-key while clicking the "Scaled" radio button to bring up the hidden part of the interface.

However, usually this does not give you any information on Refresh rate on this type of monitor as you cannot set it anyways.

You can click the Apple-logo in the top-left corner of the display, choose "About this Mac" and then "System Report" to bring up the system report. Choose "Graphics/Displays" and you'll have the information on the monitor. In the listing "Resolution" you'll see the refresh rate.


You are not first how met this problem.

Mail Won't Respond To Mouse Clicks
Magic Mouse doesn't select in Mail after El Capitan

From above support request no one doesn't know any workaround for resolving this rude bug. Hope it will be fixed at the nearest updates.


What can the LCI (liquid contact indicator) tell you?

In regards to 3 - no, you cannot infer that because an LCI hasn't changed color, then liquid was never present in the phone. It just means that the LCI didn't come in contact with the liquid. Another part of the phone might have been in contact with water. Also in case of "moisture" then slight dampness in the air doesn't necessarily activate an LCI.

In regards to 4 -  again no, you cannot infer that. However, I must say that it sounds extremely, extremely unlikely that you could be electrocuted by a dry iPhone while not charging. I think you probably want to say more about why you're asking this question in the first place.


macOS Catalina: Install Slows and Errors on MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012)

A rather brief answer…
A bad SATA cable could quite easily be responsible for all of the above aberrant behaviour - however I know of no way to test for that, short of replacing it & seeing if things improve.


sure, this will work. when you extend your wired network, change your airport express to either extend your existing wireless network or setup it up as an access point.


Retrieving boolean values of System Properties (Terminal commands)

The read qualifier shows the value:

$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1

$ defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles
1

$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 0

$ defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles
0

The man defaults Terminal command gives a wealth of information.


Found a VBA Script here :
http://samsoft.org.uk/itunes/UpdateTagInfo.vbs

You can find many other scripts there too:
http://samsoft.org.uk/itunes/scripts.asp


"Swift Programming Language" iBook Not Updating

You should be able to download a fresh copy by right-clicking on the book and selecting Delete. Then once the delete is complete, right-clicking and choosing Download "The Swift Programming Language".

Alternatively...

All books downloaded through iBooks are stored in the following folder.

/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

On both my Macs the Swift Programming Language book is contained in a folder called 881256329.epub. You can confirm this is the same on your Mac by checking the iTunesMetadata.plist file in that folder. You should see the book title towards the end of the file.

Close iBooks and delete this folder.

Then open iBooks again and try to open the book. iBooks will tell you This book can't be found. The original file can't be found. Then if you try to access the book again, iBooks will download a fresh copy.


How can I change the resolution of a PDF

You can use ImageMagick's scale or resize operators.

  ImageMagick® is a software suite to create, edit, compose, or convert
  bitmap images. It can read and write images in a variety of formats
  (over 100) including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD,
  PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF.

For example, from a terminal:

convert input.pdf  -resize 50% output.pdf

or

convert input.pdf -scale 50% output.pdf


macOS Sierra Internet Accounts Google login stuck

Combining part of your solution and part of the solution from Can't login with Google using Internet Accounts, I got mine to work again by:

Opening Keychain Access > login and searching for 'google', then deleting all the 'accountsync' and 'oauth' entries. The resulted in my Google account being removed from System Preferences > Internet Accounts.
Completing this: https://www.google.com/accounts/UnlockCaptcha

I was then able to go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts and add my Google account back. It showed the spinny wheel on the gray screen for a second, then disappeared and I was in! Mail and Calendar show my Google data now.

I have 2-factor auth enabled.

Another solution to this would be to login to your GMail account via another program that access's macOS's shared accounts, like Calendar.app.